Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Once upon a time that would have been embarassing and led to being shunned by decent people from across the spectrum , , ,

"t doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment." --Ronald Reagan

"This is what I know. Mitt Romney was not at Chappaquiddick. Mitt Romney has not been accused of rape. Mitt Romney did not have an affair with a mob babe. He didn't have an affair with an actress who committed suicide later on. Mitt Romney did not father a child out of wedlock. Mitt Romney did not support the tapping of Martin Luther King's phone. Mitt Romney was never a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Mitt Romney did not lie about his law school grades. Chappaquiddick is Ted Kennedy. Accused of rape is Bill Clinton. Affair with the mob babe and an actress, John Kennedy. Didn't father a child out of wedlock, that's John Edwards and Democrats too numerous to mention. Didn't support the tapping of Martin Luther King's phone, that's Robert Kennedy. Never a member of the Ku Klux Klan, that's Robert Byrd. Didn't lie about his law school grades, that's Joe Biden. All Democrats, and all of those Democrats did those things well after high school. And Obama even wrote in his book 'Dreams from My Father' how he bullied a young girl. And he hasn't even apologized." --radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh

JDN:  My sense of this is that it is the sort of thing about which you will go on endlessly and in part not particularly responsively, so this will probably be my last post.

1) First and foremost, this law is about ALL foreign law, not just Sharia.  Therefore it is not discriminatory.   As I have already noted and various threads on this forum have discussed in more than a little detail, there is ample reason to be concerned forces within the American legal and political systems tying down and or replacing American law.  In a democratic republic such as are, the people may do as they have done here and vote to block this.    Just because you and the courts don't like that the final straw in this regard MAY have been the dislike of a particular form of law seeking to insinuate its way into our legal system, does/should not mean that the courts get to overturn the people's will.

2) Coincidentally enough, my wife was watching a FOX piece last night, "Honor Killings in America" with focus on a horrific case.   One of the points the piece brought home was that with honor killings, typically many family members support the murder of their daughters and that the whole concept of honor killings only makes sense in the context of a community that shares the same values.   In such a context, to pretend that a woman is voluntarily signing and arbitration agreement is simply quite disingenuous.

" the problem is the Sharia Law is anti-American in its values.  It does not respect free speech, freedom of religion, legal equality between the sexes-- indeed the Koran describes how a husband may beat his wife etc and honor killings mean that the reality is that the freedom of contract you assume is a fiction-- and much more.  Do they get to hack off a little girl's clitoris in the name of religious freedom?  Do they get to deny her the right to go to school in the name of religious freedom?  Do they get to beat (or kill!) their daughters for seeing non-muslim boys?  These things are parts of Islam in some parts of the world, AND SOME OF THEM HERE."

What of a Sharia court "arbitrating" a domestic abuse case?  Is it OK with you that the court say the husband has the right to beat his wife?   How likely is a muslim woman in fear of her safety and/or fear of her daughter's safety, to hire a lawyer to legally challenge a pre-nuptial agreement specifying that marital and family matters are to be arbitrated a sharia court?

3)  "You, along with many other people simply don't like Muslims; I acknowledge that there are valid reasons."

NO, there are many Muslims who are good people (they tend to disagree with certain tenets of Islam), people whom I like so please do NOT say that "You don't like Muslims".   It is ISLAM and some of its anti-American values that I have profound problems with.  I will go further and say that there are things about Islam that I do like. 

I will add that Islam is not the only religion with which I have problems.  For example, I have profound problems with the Catholic Church's many, many vast conspiracies protecting the pedophiles within its ranks-- conspiracies which apparently go to the highest levels of the Church's hierarchy.

4) "That is your personal prerogative."

And so it appears that you too think people have the right to discriminate , , ,

The Geopolitics of Israel: Biblical and Modern
May 14, 2011 | 0500 GMT

 Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of monographs on the geopolitics of countries influential in world affairs.

The founding principle of geopolitics is that place -- geography -- plays a significant role in determining how nations will behave. If that theory is true, then there ought to be a deep continuity in a nation's foreign policy. Israel is a laboratory for this theory, since it has existed in three different manifestations in roughly the same place, twice in antiquity and once in modernity. If geopolitics is correct, then Israeli foreign policy, independent of policymakers, technology or the identity of neighbors, ought to have important common features. This is, therefore, a discussion of common principles in Israeli foreign policy over nearly 3,000 years.


.For convenience, we will use the term "Israel" to connote all of the Hebrew and Jewish entities that have existed in the Levant since the invasion of the region as chronicled in the Book of Joshua. As always, geopolitics requires a consideration of three dimensions: the internal geopolitics of Israel, the interaction of Israel and the immediate neighbors who share borders with it, and Israel's interaction with what we will call great powers, beyond Israel's borderlands.


.Israel has manifested itself three times in history. The first manifestation began with the invasion led by Joshua and lasted through its division into two kingdoms, the Babylonian conquest of the Kingdom of Judah and the deportation to Babylon early in the sixth century B.C. The second manifestation began when Israel was recreated in 540 B.C. by the Persians, who had defeated the Babylonians. The nature of this second manifestation changed in the fourth century B.C., when Greece overran the Persian Empire and Israel, and again in the first century B.C., when the Romans conquered the region.

The second manifestation saw Israel as a small actor within the framework of larger imperial powers, a situation that lasted until the destruction of the Jewish vassal state by the Romans.


.Israel's third manifestation began in 1948, following (as in the other cases) an ingathering of at least some of the Jews who had been dispersed after conquests. Israel's founding takes place in the context of the decline and fall of the British Empire and must, at least in part, be understood as part of British imperial history.

During its first 50 years, Israel plays a pivotal role in the confrontation of the United States and the Soviet Union and, in some senses, is hostage to the dynamics of these two countries. In other words, like the first two manifestations of Israel, the third finds Israel continually struggling among independence, internal tension and imperial ambition.

Israeli Geography and Borderlands
At its height, under King David, Israel extended from the Sinai to the Euphrates, encompassing Damascus. It occupied some, but relatively little, of the coastal region, an area beginning at what today is Haifa and running south to Jaffa, just north of today's Tel Aviv. The coastal area to the north was held by Phoenicia, the area to the south by Philistines. It is essential to understand that Israel's size and shape shifted over time. For example, Judah under the Hasmoneans did not include the Negev but did include the Golan. The general locale of Israel is fixed. Its precise borders have never been.

Thus, it is perhaps better to begin with what never was part of Israel. Israel never included the Sinai Peninsula. Along the coast, it never stretched much farther north than the Litani River in today's Lebanon. Apart from David's extreme extension (and fairly tenuous control) to the north, Israel's territory never stretched as far as Damascus, although it frequently held the Golan Heights. Israel extended many times to both sides of the Jordan but never deep into the Jordanian Desert. It never extended southeast into the Arabian Peninsula.


.Israel consists generally of three parts. First, it always has had the northern hill region, stretching from the foothills of Mount Hermon south to Jerusalem. Second, it always contains some of the coastal plain from today's Tel Aviv north to Haifa. Third, it occupies area between Jerusalem and the Jordan River -- today's West Bank. At times, it controls all or part of the Negev, including the coastal region between the Sinai to the Tel Aviv area. It may be larger than this at various times in history, and sometimes smaller, but it normally holds all or part of these three regions.

Israel is well-buffered in three directions. The Sinai Desert protects it against the Egyptians. In general, the Sinai has held little attraction for the Egyptians. The difficulty of deploying forces in the eastern Sinai poses severe logistical problems for them, particularly during a prolonged presence. Unless Egypt can rapidly move through the Sinai north into the coastal plain, where it can sustain its forces more readily, deploying in the Sinai is difficult and unrewarding. Therefore, so long as Israel is not so weak as to make an attack on the coastal plain a viable option, or unless Egypt is motivated by an outside imperial power, Israel does not face a threat from the southwest.

Israel is similarly protected from the southeast. The deserts southeast of Eilat-Aqaba are virtually impassable. No large force could approach from that direction, although smaller raiding parties could. The tribes of the Arabian Peninsula lack the reach or the size to pose a threat to Israel, unless massed and aligned with other forces. Even then, the approach from the southeast is not one that they are likely to take. The Negev is secure from that direction.

The eastern approaches are similarly secured by desert, which begins about 20 to 30 miles east of the Jordan River. While indigenous forces exist in the borderland east of the Jordan, they lack the numbers to be able to penetrate decisively west of the Jordan. Indeed, the normal model is that, so long as Israel controls Judea and Samaria (the modern-day West Bank), then the East Bank of the Jordan River is under the political and sometimes military domination of Israel -- sometimes directly through settlement, sometimes indirectly through political influence, or economic or security leverage.

Israel's vulnerability is in the north. There is no natural buffer between Phoenicia and its successor entities (today's Lebanon) to the direct north. The best defense line for Israel in the north is the Litani River, but this is not an insurmountable boundary under any circumstance. However, the area along the coast north of Israel does not present a serious threat. The coastal area prospers through trade in the Mediterranean basin. It is oriented toward the sea and to the trade routes to the east, not to the south. If it does anything, this area protects those trade routes and has no appetite for a conflict that might disrupt trade. It stays out of Israel's way, for the most part.

Moreover, as a commercial area, this region is generally wealthy, a factor that increases predators around it and social conflict within. It is an area prone to instability. Israel frequently tries to extend its influence northward for commercial reasons, as one of the predators, and this can entangle Israel in its regional politics. But barring this self-induced problem, the threat to Israel from the north is minimal, despite the absence of natural boundaries and the large population. On occasion, there is spillover of conflicts from the north, but not to a degree that might threaten regime survival in Israel.

The neighbor that is always a threat lies to the northeast. Syria -- or, more precisely, the area governed by Damascus at any time -- is populous and frequently has no direct outlet to the sea. It is, therefore, generally poor. The area to its north, Asia Minor, is heavily mountainous. Syria cannot project power to the north except with great difficulty, but powers in Asia Minor can move south. Syria's eastern flank is buffered by a desert that stretches to the Euphrates. Therefore, when there is no threat from the north, Syria's interest -- after securing itself internally -- is to gain access to the coast. Its primary channel is directly westward, toward the rich cities of the northern Levantine coast, with which it trades heavily. An alternative interest is southwestward, toward the southern Levantine coast controlled by Israel.

As can be seen, Syria can be interested in Israel only selectively. When it is interested, it has a serious battle problem. To attack Israel, it would have to strike between Mount Hermon and the Sea of Galilee, an area about 25 miles wide. The Syrians potentially can attack south of the sea, but only if they are prepared to fight through this region and then attack on extended supply lines. If an attack is mounted along the main route, Syrian forces must descend the Golan Heights and then fight through the hilly Galilee before reaching the coastal plain -- sometimes with guerrillas holding out in the Galilean hills. The Galilee is an area that is relatively easy to defend and difficult to attack. Therefore, it is only once Syria takes the Galilee, and can control its lines of supply against guerrilla attack, that its real battle begins.

To reach the coast or move toward Jerusalem, Syria must fight through a plain in front of a line of low hills. This is the decisive battleground where massed Israeli forces, close to lines of supply, can defend against dispersed Syrian forces on extended lines of supply. It is no accident that Megiddo -- or Armageddon, as the plain is sometimes referred to -- has apocalyptic meaning. This is the point at which any move from Syria would be decided. But a Syrian offensive would have a tough fight to reach Megiddo, and a tougher one as it deploys on the plain.

On the surface, Israel lacks strategic depth, but this is true only on the surface. It faces limited threats from southern neighbors. To its east, it faces only a narrow strip of populated area east of the Jordan. To the north, there is a maritime commercial entity. Syria operating alone, forced through the narrow gap of the Mount Hermon-Galilee line and operating on extended supply lines, can be dealt with readily.

There is a risk of simultaneous attacks from multiple directions. Depending on the forces deployed and the degree of coordination between them, this can pose a problem for Israel. However, even here the Israelis have the tremendous advantage of fighting on interior lines. Egypt and Syria, fighting on external lines (and widely separated fronts), would have enormous difficulty transferring forces from one front to another. Israel, on interior lines (fronts close to each other with good transportation), would be able to move its forces from front to front rapidly, allowing for sequential engagement and thereby the defeat of enemies. Unless enemies are carefully coordinated and initiate war simultaneously -- and deploy substantially superior force on at least one front -- Israel can initiate war at a time of its choosing or else move its forces rapidly between fronts, negating much of the advantage of size that the attackers might have.

There is another aspect to the problem of multifront war. Egypt usually has minimal interests along the Levant, having its own coast and an orientation to the south toward the headwaters of the Nile. On the rare occasions when Egypt does move through the Sinai and attacks to the north and northeast, it is in an expansionary mode. By the time it consolidates and exploits the coastal plain, it would be powerful enough to threaten Syria. From Syria's point of view, the only thing more dangerous than Israel is an Egypt in control of Israel. Therefore, the probability of a coordinated north-south strike at Israel is rare, is rarely coordinated and usually is not designed to be a mortal blow. It is defeated by Israel's strategic advantage of interior lines.

Israeli Geography and the Convergence Zone
Therefore, it is not surprising that Israel's first incarnation lasted as long as it did -- some five centuries. What is interesting and what must be considered is why Israel (now considered as the northern kingdom) was defeated by the Assyrians and Judea, then defeated by Babylon. To understand this, we need to consider the broader geography of Israel's location.

Israel is located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, on the Levant. As we have seen, when Israel is intact, it will tend to be the dominant power in the Levant. Therefore, Israeli resources must generally be dedicated for land warfare, leaving little over for naval warfare. In general, although Israel had excellent harbors and access to wood for shipbuilding, it never was a major Mediterranean naval power. It never projected power into the sea. The area to the north of Israel has always been a maritime power, but Israel, the area south of Mount Hermon, was always forced to be a land power.

The Levant in general and Israel in particular has always been a magnet for great powers. No Mediterranean empire could be fully secure unless it controlled the Levant. Whether it was Rome or Carthage, a Mediterranean empire that wanted to control both the northern and southern littorals needed to anchor its eastern flank on the Levant. For one thing, without the Levant, a Mediterranean power would be entirely dependent on sea lanes for controlling the other shore. Moving troops solely by sea creates transport limitations and logistical problems. It also leaves imperial lines vulnerable to interdiction -- sometimes merely from pirates, a problem that plagued Rome's sea transport. A land bridge, or a land bridge with minimal water crossings that can be easily defended, is a vital supplement to the sea for the movement of large numbers of troops. Once the Hellespont is crossed, the coastal route through southern Turkey, down the Levant and along the Mediterranean's southern shore, provides such an alternative.

There is an additional consideration. If a Mediterranean empire leaves the Levant unoccupied, it opens the door to the possibility of a great power originating to the east seizing the ports of the Levant and challenging the Mediterranean power for maritime domination. In short, control of the Levant binds a Mediterranean empire together while denying a challenger from the east the opportunity to enter the Mediterranean. Holding the Levant, and controlling Israel, is a necessary preventive measure for a Mediterranean empire.

Israel is also important to any empire originating to the east of Israel, either in the Tigris-Euphrates basin or in Persia. For either, security could be assured only once it had an anchor on the Levant. Macedonian expansion under Alexander demonstrated that a power controlling Levantine and Turkish ports could support aggressive operations far to the east, to the Hindu Kush and beyond. While Turkish ports might have sufficed for offensive operations, simply securing the Bosporus still left the southern flank exposed. Therefore, by holding the Levant, an eastern power protected itself against attacks from Mediterranean powers.

The Levant was also important to any empire originating to the north or south of Israel. If Egypt decided to move beyond the Nile Basin and North Africa eastward, it would move first through the Sinai and then northward along the coastal plain, securing sea lanes to Egypt. When Asia Minor powers such as the Ottoman Empire developed, there was a natural tendency to move southward to control the eastern Mediterranean. The Levant is the crossroads of continents, and Israel lies in the path of many imperial ambitions.

Israel therefore occupies what might be called the convergence zone of the Eastern Hemisphere. A European power trying to dominate the Mediterranean or expand eastward, an eastern power trying to dominate the space between the Hindu Kush and the Mediterranean, a North African power moving toward the east, or a northern power moving south -- all must converge on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and therefore on Israel. Of these, the European power and the eastern power must be the most concerned with Israel. For either, there is no choice but to secure it as an anchor.

Internal Geopolitics
Israel is geographically divided into three regions, which traditionally have produced three different types of people. Its coastal plain facilitates commerce, serving as the interface between eastern trade routes and the sea. It is the home of merchants and manufacturers, cosmopolitans -- not as cosmopolitan as Phoenicia or Lebanon, but cosmopolitan for Israel. The northeast is hill country, closest to the unruliness north of the Litani River and to the Syrian threat. It breeds farmers and warriors. The area south of Jerusalem is hard desert country, more conducive to herdsman and warriors than anything else. Jerusalem is where these three regions are balanced and governed.

There are obviously deep differences built into Israel's geography and inhabitants, particularly between the herdsmen of the southern deserts and the northern hill dwellers. The coastal dwellers, rich but less warlike than the others, hold the balance or are the prize to be pursued. In the division of the original kingdom between Israel and Judea, we saw the alliance of the coast with the Galilee, while Jerusalem was held by the desert dwellers. The consequence of the division was that Israel in the north ultimately was conquered by Assyrians from the northeast, while Babylon was able to swallow Judea.

Social divisions in Israel obviously do not have to follow geographical lines. However, over time, these divisions must manifest themselves. For example, the coastal plain is inherently more cosmopolitan than the rest of the country. The interests of its inhabitants lie more with trading partners in the Mediterranean and the rest of the world than with their countrymen. Their standard of living is higher, and their commitment to traditions is lower. Therefore, there is an inherent tension between their immediate interests and those of the Galileans, who live more precarious, warlike lives. Countries can be divided over lesser issues -- and when Israel is divided, it is vulnerable even to regional threats.

We say "even" because geography dictates that regional threats are less menacing than might be expected. The fact that Israel would be outnumbered demographically should all its neighbors turn on it is less important than the fact that it has adequate buffers in most directions, that the ability of neighbors to coordinate an attack is minimal and that their appetite for such an attack is even less. The single threat that Israel faces from the northeast can readily be managed if the Israelis create a united front there. When Israel was overrun by a Damascus-based power, it was deeply divided internally.

It is important to add one consideration to our discussion of buffers, which is diplomacy. The main neighbors of Israel are Egyptians, Syrians and those who live on the east bank of Jordan. This last group is a negligible force demographically, and the interests of the Syrians and Egyptians are widely divergent. Egypt's interests are to the south and west of its territory; the Sinai holds no attraction. Syria is always threatened from multiple directions, and alliance with Egypt adds little to its security. Therefore, under the worst of circumstances, Egypt and Syria have difficulty supporting each other. Under the best of circumstances, from Israel's point of view, it can reach a political accommodation with Egypt, securing its southwestern frontier politically as well as by geography, thus freeing Israel to concentrate on the northern threats and opportunities.

Israel and the Great Powers
The threat to Israel rarely comes from the region, except when the Israelis are divided internally. The conquests of Israel occur when powers not adjacent to it begin forming empires. Babylon, Persia, Macedonia, Rome, Turkey and Britain all controlled Israel politically, sometimes for worse and sometimes for better. Each dominated it militarily, but none was a neighbor of Israel. This is a consistent pattern. Israel can resist its neighbors; danger arises when more distant powers begin playing imperial games. Empires can bring force to bear that Israel cannot resist.

Israel therefore has this problem: It would be secure if it could confine itself to protecting its interests from neighbors, but it cannot confine itself because its geographic location invariably draws larger, more distant powers toward Israel. Therefore, while Israel's military can focus only on immediate interests, its diplomatic interests must look much further. Israel is constantly entangled with global interests (as the globe is defined at any point), seeking to deflect and align with broader global powers. When it fails in this diplomacy, the consequences can be catastrophic.

Israel exists in three conditions. First, it can be a completely independent state. This condition occurs when there are no major imperial powers external to the region. We might call this the David model. Second, it can live as part of an imperial system -- either as a subordinate ally, as a moderately autonomous entity or as a satrapy. In any case, it maintains its identity but loses room for independent maneuvering in foreign policy and potentially in domestic policy. We might call this the Persian model in its most beneficent form. Finally, Israel can be completely crushed -- with mass deportations and migrations, with a complete loss of autonomy and minimal residual autonomy. We might call this the Babylonian model.

The Davidic model exists primarily when there is no external imperial power needing control of the Levant that is in a position either to send direct force or to support surrogates in the immediate region. The Persian model exists when Israel aligns itself with the foreign policy interests of such an imperial power, to its own benefit. The Babylonian model exists when Israel miscalculates on the broader balance of power and attempts to resist an emerging hegemon. When we look at Israeli behavior over time, the periods when Israel does not confront hegemonic powers outside the region are not rare, but are far less common than when it is confronting them.

Given the period of the first iteration of Israel, it would be too much to say that the Davidic model rarely comes into play, but certainly since that time, variations of the Persian and Babylonian models have dominated. The reason is geographic. Israel is normally of interest to outside powers because of its strategic position. While Israel can deal with local challenges effectively, it cannot deal with broader challenges. It lacks the economic or military weight to resist. Therefore, it is normally in the process of managing broader threats or collapsing because of them.

The Geopolitics of Contemporary Israel
Let us then turn to the contemporary manifestation of Israel. Israel was recreated because of the interaction between a regional great power, the Ottoman Empire, and a global power, Great Britain. During its expansionary phase, the Ottoman Empire sought to dominate the eastern Mediterranean as well as both its northern and southern coasts. One thrust went through the Balkans toward central Europe. The other was toward Egypt. Inevitably, this required that the Ottomans secure the Levant.

For the British, the focus on the eastern Mediterranean was as the primary sea lane to India. As such, Gibraltar and the Suez were crucial. The importance of the Suez was such that the presence of a hostile, major naval force in the eastern Mediterranean represented a direct threat to British interests. It followed that defeating the Ottoman Empire during World War I and breaking its residual naval power was critical. The British, as was shown at Gallipoli, lacked the resources to break the Ottoman Empire by main force. They resorted to a series of alliances with local forces to undermine the Ottomans. One was an alliance with Bedouin tribes in the Arabian Peninsula; others involved covert agreements with anti-Turkish, Arab interests from the Levant to the Persian Gulf. A third, minor thrust was aligning with Jewish interests globally, particularly those interested in the refounding of Israel. Britain had little interest in this goal, but saw such discussions as part of the process of destabilizing the Ottomans.

The strategy worked. Under an agreement with France, the Ottoman province of Syria was divided into two parts on a line roughly running east-west between the sea and Mount Hermon. The northern part was given to France and divided into Lebanon and a rump Syria entity. The southern part was given to Britain and was called Palestine, after the Ottoman administrative district Filistina. Given the complex politics of the Arabian Peninsula, the British had to find a home for a group of Hashemites, which they located on the east bank of the Jordan River and designated, for want of a better name, the Trans-Jordan -- the other side of the Jordan. Palestine looked very much like traditional Israel.

The ideological foundations of Zionism are not our concern here, nor are the pre- and post-World War II migrations of Jews, although those are certainly critical. What is important for purposes of this analysis are two things: First, the British emerged economically and militarily crippled from World War II and unable to retain their global empire, Palestine included. Second, the two global powers that emerged after World War II -- the United States and the Soviet Union -- were engaged in an intense struggle for the eastern Mediterranean after World War II, as can be seen in the Greek and Turkish issues at that time. Neither wanted to see the British Empire survive, each wanted the Levant, and neither was prepared to make a decisive move to take it.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union saw the re-creation of Israel as an opportunity to introduce their power to the Levant. The Soviets thought they might have some influence over Israel due to ideology. The Americans thought they might have some influence given the role of American Jews in the founding. Neither was thinking particularly clearly about the matter, because neither had truly found its balance after World War II. Both knew the Levant was important, but neither saw the Levant as a central battleground at that moment. Israel slipped through the cracks.

Once the question of Jewish unity was settled through ruthless action by David Ben Gurion's government, Israel faced a simultaneous threat from all of its immediate neighbors. However, as we have seen, the threat in 1948 was more apparent than real. The northern Levant, Lebanon, was fundamentally disunited -- far more interested in regional maritime trade and concerned about control from Damascus. It posed no real threat to Israel. Jordan, settling the eastern bank of the Jordan River, was an outside power that had been transplanted into the region and was more concerned about native Arabs -- the Palestinians -- than about Israel. The Jordanians secretly collaborated with Israel. Egypt did pose a threat, but its ability to maintain lines of supply across the Sinai was severely limited and its genuine interest in engaging and destroying Israel was more rhetorical than real. As usual, the Egyptians could not afford the level of effort needed to move into the Levant. Syria by itself had a very real interest in Israel's defeat, but by itself was incapable of decisive action.

The exterior lines of Israel's neighbors prevented effective, concerted action. Israel's interior lines permitted efficient deployment and redeployment of force. It was not obvious at the time, but in retrospect we can see that once Israel existed, was united and had even limited military force, its survival was guaranteed. That is, so long as no great power was opposed to its existence.

From its founding until the Camp David Accords re-established the Sinai as a buffer with Egypt, Israel's strategic problem was this: So long as Egypt was in the Sinai, Israel's national security requirements outstripped its military capabilities. It could not simultaneously field an army, maintain its civilian economy and produce all the weapons and supplies needed for war. Israel had to align itself with great powers who saw an opportunity to pursue other interests by arming Israel.

Israel's first patron was the Soviet Union -- through Czechoslovakia -- which supplied weapons before and after 1948 in the hopes of using Israel to gain a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean. Israel, aware of the risks of losing autonomy, also moved into a relationship with a declining great power that was fighting to retain its empire: France. Struggling to hold onto Algeria and in constant tension with Arabs, France saw Israel as a natural ally. And apart from the operation against Suez in 1956, Israel saw in France a patron that was not in a position to reduce Israeli autonomy. However, with the end of the Algerian war and the realignment of France in the Arab world, Israel became a liability to France and, after 1967, Israel lost French patronage.

Israel did not become a serious ally of the Americans until after 1967. Such an alliance was in the American interest. The United States had, as a strategic imperative, the goal of keeping the Soviet navy out of the Mediterranean or, at least, blocking its unfettered access. That meant that Turkey, controlling the Bosporus, had to be kept in the American bloc. Syria and Iraq shifted policies in the late 1950s and by the mid-1960s had been armed by the Soviets. This made Turkey's position precarious: If the Soviets pressed from the north while Syria and Iraq pressed from the south, the outcome would be uncertain, to say the least, and the global balance of power was at stake.

The United States used Iran to divert Iraq's attention. Israel was equally useful in diverting Syria's attention. So long as Israel threatened Syria from the south, it could not divert its forces to the north. That helped secure Turkey at a relatively low cost in aid and risk. By aligning itself with the interests of a great power, Israel lost some of its room for maneuver: For example, in 1973, it was limited by the United States in what it could do to Egypt. But those limitations aside, it remained autonomous internally and generally free to pursue its strategic interests.

The end of hostilities with Egypt, guaranteed by the Sinai buffer zone, created a new era for Israel. Egypt was restored to its traditional position, Jordan was a marginal power on the east bank, Lebanon was in its normal, unstable mode, and only Syria was a threat. However, it was a threat that Israel could easily deal with. Syria by itself could not threaten the survival of Israel.

Following Camp David (an ironic name), Israel was in its Davidic model, in a somewhat modified sense. Its survival was not at stake. Its problems -- the domination of a large, hostile population and managing events in the northern Levant -- were subcritical (meaning that, though these were not easy tasks, they did not represent fundamental threats to national survival, so long as Israel retained national unity). When unified, Israel has never been threatened by its neighbors. Geography dictates against it.

Israel's danger will come only if a great power seeks to dominate the Mediterranean Basin or to occupy the region between Afghanistan and the Mediterranean. In the short period since the fall of the Soviet Union, this has been impossible. There has been no great power with the appetite and the will for such an adventure. But 15 years is not even a generation, and Israel must measure its history in centuries.

It is the nature of the international system to seek balance. The primary reality of the world today is the overwhelming power of the United States. The United States makes few demands on Israel that matter. However, it is the nature of things that the United States threatens the interests of other great powers who, individually weak, will try to form coalitions against it. Inevitably, such coalitions will arise. That will be the next point of danger for Israel.

In the event of a global rivalry, the United States might place onerous requirements on Israel. Alternatively, great powers might move into the Jordan River valley or ally with Syria, move into Lebanon or ally with Israel. The historical attraction of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean would focus the attention of such a power and lead to attempts to assert control over the Mediterranean or create a secure Middle Eastern empire. In either event, or some of the others discussed, it would create a circumstance in which Israel might face a Babylonian catastrophe or be forced into some variation of Persian or Roman subjugation.

Israel's danger is not a Palestinian rising. Palestinian agitation is an irritant that Israel can manage so long as it does not undermine Israeli unity. Whether it is managed by domination or by granting the Palestinians a vassal state matters little. Nor can Israel be threatened by its neighbors. Even a unified attack by Syria and Egypt would fail, for the reasons discussed. Israel's real threat, as can be seen in history, lies in the event of internal division and/or a great power, coveting Israel's geographical position, marshaling force that is beyond its capacity to resist. Even that can be managed if Israel has a patron whose interests involve denying the coast to another power.

Israel's reality is this. It is a small country, yet must manage threats arising far outside of its region. It can survive only if it maneuvers with great powers commanding enormously greater resources. Israel cannot match the resources and, therefore, it must be constantly clever. There are periods when it is relatively safe because of great power alignments, but its normal condition is one of global unease. No nation can be clever forever, and Israel's history shows that some form of subordination is inevitable. Indeed, it is to a very limited extent subordinate to the United States now.

For Israel, the retention of a Davidic independence is difficult. Israel's strategy must be to manage its subordination effectively by dealing with its patron cleverly, as it did with Persia. But cleverness is not a geopolitical concept. It is not permanent, and it is not assured. And that is the perpetual crisis of Jerusalem.

http://papermoneycollapse.com/2012/05/europes-voters-say-no-to-economic-reality/
Europe’s voters say ‘No’ to economic reality
BY DETLEV SCHLICHTER ON MAY 10, 2012 • 23 COMMENTS
 
Image by Salvatore Vuono


“Europe fights back against austerity” was how The Daily Telegraph headlined its weekend election coverage. “Anti-austerity movements are gathering pace across Europe following political earthquakes in France and Greece. A total of 12 European governments have now been dismissed in three years.”
As the European welfare state is officially in its death-throes none of us should be surprised if political strife gets cranked up to eleven. I firmly expect that we will see much more of this in the future. While I can understand the anger of the electorate and sympathize with the sense of desperation and foreboding, I can, however, not consider the electoral choices of the weekend particularly enlightened, and I do not think that they reflect a coherent, let alone intelligent strategy as the Daily Telegraph headline seems to imply. If those who ‘won’ the election deliver on their promises, economic disintegration will only accelerate. What is being offered in terms of ‘solutions’ is a dangerous assortment of economic poisons, more suitable to describe the European disease than provide a recipe for stronger growth.
Recovery through early retirement and infrastructure spending? – C’mon. Nobody can take that seriously.
But it seems that just because this heap of economic stupidity can neatly be swept under the wide tent of ‘anti-austerity’, the commentariat seems somehow willing to believe in the wisdom of the crowds and look for some deeper insights here.
I guess the reason for this is that the economic ideologies that are now being strenuously interpreted into the election results rhyme with the economic prejudices of most commentators. They, too, believe that state bankruptcy is best to be ignored or not to be taken too seriously so that we can spend our way out of this mess. For a long time media pundits have treated us to the perceived wisdom that economic growth can only come from the actions of the government. Only devaluation through euro-exit, inflation through more money printing and more government deficit-spending, preferably by the still credit-worthy Germans and then fiscally-transferred to the maxed-out Greeks, can revive the economy because only this can lift aggregate demand, the magic cure-all of economic problems.
What is lost on these commentators is that the European mess is nothing but the inevitable result of government-stipulated aggregate demand.  Easy money funded the Spanish and Irish real estate booms and bankrupted their banks and by extension their governments. Easy money allowed Greece’s political class to go on a borrowing binge that has now bankrupted the country and lured large parts of the population into zero-productivity, soon-to-be-eliminated public sector jobs.
Do you still want the state to ‘stimulate’ the economy? – Be careful what you wish for.
The real culprit of high youth unemployment in Spain and Italy is not ‘austerity’, which hasn’t even started there, but a bizarrely overregulated and sclerotic labour market in which it is almost impossible for firms of a certain size to fire people. The incentives are thus stacked massively against hiring. Yet, in France one of Hollande’s election promises is not to deregulate the labour market. If I were unemployed in France I would not be counting my chances of getting a job over the next five years.
In France the state runs more than half the economy, yet Hollande promises not to privatize state-run industry. Where is the wisdom in that?
Yet, the statists and socialists are delighted. Paul Krugman, who never saw a debt crisis you could not borrow and spend your way out of, rejoices at such display of economic genius. We are all Keynesians now! Listening to Krugman you would think Greek and French voters were not using the ballot to cling desperately to some remnants of the welfare state but were in fact positively advertising the wisdom of government stimulus and the mystical ‘multiplier’.
Some of the commentators tried to argue that what happened over the weekend was also some kind of anti-establishment vote, a verdict against centralisation and the dominance of the deservedly despised bureaucratic elite in Brussels.
Nice try but I think that that is rubbish.
This was not an anti-establishment vote at all. It was not a vote for change but a desperate vote for the status quo. Of course, the old elite deserved the sack but they were largely booted out not because people got tired of the old policies but because the leadership now finally admitted that they could no longer deliver on the old promises.
The established parties lost because they could not continue upholding the false promise that had kept them in office for years or decades, the promise to make the “European model” work. They had to admit that the European welfare state was now bankrupt. Kicking the can down the road is increasingly not an option as the end of the road is now in sight.
 And the election winners were those who had the chutzpah to maintain that drastic belt-tightening and painful reform were not required but that the people just had to ‘stick it to the man’, who is Angela Merkel and sits in Berlin. The tactic is straightforward. Shoot the messenger!
In France that meant voting for a charisma-free Socialist bureaucrat who will revive France with higher taxes, early retirement and a Hoover dam funded by Eurobonds and the ECB. In Greece, the big winner was an ex-Communist firebrand who admires Hugo Chavez, and who has raged against austerity measures and structural reform.
I guess we now know what the electorate is against. “Say no to cuts!” But what is it for? Over in Ireland, the deputy leader of Sinn Fein, Mary Lou MacDonald, had the answer: “A No vote (to the ‘Austerity Treaty’) in Ireland will strengthen those arguing for jobs and growth.”
Well, who could not love a politician who promises jobs and growth? But the relationship between politics and jobs and growth is a tenuous one. Politicians are not savers who fund the creation of a capital stock through saving, and they are not entrepreneurs who put that capital to productive use. Politicians are people who spend other people’s money. In Ireland the budget deficit runs at 13 percent of GDP per annum, which according to Krugman’s logic must be a fantastic recipe for jobs and growth. Let’s just sit back and watch how that economic miracle is going to unfold.
My guess is that many people in Europe still know, or at least instinctively sense, that the promises of jobs and growth through state spending and money printing are hollow. They know that the state is bust and cannot keep spending money it doesn’t have. The policy options are much more limited than the campaign rhetoric indicates. On trend, fiscal consolidation and structural reform will continue, and Germany’s negotiating position will remain strong.
Yet, on the margin this was an indication that Europe, and in particular France, remain in many areas unreformable, and that the pressure on the ECB to sustain the unsustainable with sizable money injections will, if anything, intensify.
In the meantime, the debasement of paper money continues.

"“earned success,” or slide into “learned helplessness.”"

Methinks that a catchy and pithy phrase worth remembering , , ,

Umm , , , OK named one particular religion's law (Sharia) and KS does not.

As Pravda on the Hudson struggles to understand (and impugn) I am reminded of an old Bob Dylan song, "The Ballad of the Thin Man" I think it was called which had the line "There's something going on here and you don't understand what it is, do you Mr. Jones?"

================

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/us/politics/tea-party-focus-turns-to-senate-and-shake-up.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120513

"a supporter of the bill said it reassured foreigners in Kansas that state laws and the U.S. Constitution will protect them." 

Sounds like a rational basis (and that would be the standard of review, yes?) to me , , ,

Ibrahim Cooper of CAIR is a dishonest guy leading a dishonest organization.

"If I remember correctly, the holding of Medellin really focuses on whether or not there is a presumption of self-execution for treaties.  The court found that there is a presumption that treaties are not self-executing unless the treaty itself or the Senate makes clear that the treaty is self-executing.  

"The more on-point case for treaties that conflict with state laws is Missouri v. Holland, where the court found that treaties trump all state laws and constitutions through the supremacy clause.  However, a treaty cannot conflict with the U.S. Constitution.  There is still some question about whether the federal government can accomplish through treaty what it does not have the power to do in Art. I-II of the Constitution.    

"As it currently stands, the Second Amendment provides a minimum floor for a right to arms, states cannot provide lesser rights to their citizens.  There is no upper limit, and many states choose to provide their citizens with a broader right to arms than guaranteed by the Second Amendment.  A treaty could theoretically also make the Second Amendment the upper limit by restricting the right to only what is protected in the Constitution."

This sounds sound to me BD.  What do you think?

Using BD's source, here is a citation for Missouri v. Holland:   http://oyez.org/cases/1901-1939/1919/1919_609

http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/fleetwood-mac/concerts/roundhouse-chalk-farm-april-24-1970.html?utm_source=NL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=120511

By DAVID FEITH
Washington, D.C.

'The distant rear of an army engaged in battle is not the best place from which to judge correctly what is going on in front."

The words are from Ulysses S. Grant's recollections of the Battle of Shiloh. But they are being quoted to me by H.R. McMaster, arguably the Pentagon's foremost warrior-scholar, to stress that the increasingly common American perception that the Afghan War is lost doesn't jibe with what he witnessed during his recent 20-month deployment to Afghanistan.

"The difficulties are apparent," says the two-star Army general, "but oftentimes the opportunities are masked."

For a sense of those opportunities, consider some of the metrics of battle. When Gen. McMaster arrived in Afghanistan in July 2010—as President Obama's surge reached full strength—enemy attacks numbered 4,000 a month. A year later, they had dropped to 3,250. In March, there were 1,700. Every month from May 2011 through March 2012 (the latest with available data) had fewer attacks than the same month the year before, the longest sustained reduction of the war.

Meanwhile, Afghan security forces will number 350,000 this summer, up from 240,000 when Gen. McMaster arrived. Afghans now lead nearly half of all combat operations. Eight million Afghan children attend school, including three million girls, compared to one million and zero girls in 2001. Where finding a telephone 10 years ago often required traveling a full day, now more than 12 million Afghans own cellphones (out of 32 million total).

"Our soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors, working alongside Afghans, have shut down the vast majority of the physical space in which the enemy can operate," says Gen. McMaster. "The question is, how do we consolidate those gains politically and psychologically?"

The political and psychological dimensions of warfare have long fascinated the general, who first became famous in the Army when he led his vastly outnumbered tank regiment to victory at the Battle of 73 Easting in the first Gulf War. Six years later, he published "Dereliction of Duty," based on his Ph.D. thesis indicting the Vietnam-era military leadership for failing to push back against a commander in chief, Lyndon Johnson, who was more interested in securing his Great Society domestic agenda than in doing what was necessary—militarily and politically—to prevail in Southeast Asia. For 15 years it's been considered must-reading at the Pentagon.

But Gen. McMaster really earned his renown applying the tenets of counterinsurgency strategy, or COIN, during the war in Iraq. As a colonel in 2005, he took responsibility for a place called Tal Afar. In that city of 200,000 people, the insurgents' "savagery reached such a level that they stuffed the corpses of children with explosives and tossed them into the streets in order to kill grieving parents attempting to retrieve the bodies of their young," wrote Tal Afar's mayor in 2006. "This was the situation of our city until God prepared and delivered unto them the courageous soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment."

Gen. McMaster's troops fought in Tal Afar with the understanding that victory would not be achieved by using maximum violence to hunt and kill insurgents. Instead, the key tasks were to secure and improve life for the local population, establish reliable local government, and project determination and staying power.

Before long, President George W. Bush was citing Tal Afar as a model. It helped inspire the strategy shift that turned around the Iraq War under David Petraeus, Gen. McMaster's mentor and a fellow West Point graduate with a Ph.D. and a penchant for quoting theorists like Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), the Prussian officer who famously defined war as the continuation of politics by other means.

Enlarge Image

CloseKen Fallin
 .Now Gen. McMaster has been attempting to apply counterinsurgency strategy in another war most Americans have written off.

As the head of Task Force Shafafiyat—the word means "transparency" in Pashto—his job was to identify how U.S. and Afghan funds flow not only as payments to contractors, subcontractors and local Afghan officials, but as kickbacks or protection money to criminal networks and insurgents. Since August 2010, the coalition says, it has vetted some 1,400 American, Afghan and foreign companies, barring or suspending more than 150 firms and individuals from doing business with the U.S.


Trying to stop corruption in Afghanistan is often seen in the West as akin to trying to stop the tides. Gen. McMaster calls that view "bigotry masquerading as cultural sensitivity."

But there is little doubt that corruption is a formidable problem. The abuse of official positions of power for personal gain, the general said last year in Kabul, "is robbing Afghanistan of much-needed revenue, undermining rule of law, degrading the effectiveness of state institutions, and eroding popular confidence in the government."

In 2010, Kabul Bank—Afghanistan's largest, and the main source of payment for Afghan security forces—nearly brought down the country's financial system when almost $1 billion in reserves apparently disappeared into the briefcases and Dubai villas of Afghan elites. In another case, Gen. McMaster's investigators found evidence that Afghanistan's former surgeon general had stolen tens of millions of dollars worth of drugs from military hospitals.

Though corruption charges have dogged senior officials and intimates of Afghan President Hamid Karzai for years, not a single person with high-level political connections has been convicted of wrongdoing. In many cases, Mr. Karzai appears to have personally blocked or hampered efforts at accountability.

Staying politic, Gen. McMaster notes that Mr. Karzai and other senior officials have at last acknowledged the problem publicly. "Now, have they matched that with decisive action? No. But is [public acknowledgment] a first step? Yes it is."

Perhaps Gen. McMaster is reluctant to pin too much blame on Mr. Karzai because he thinks the root of Afghanistan's corruption problem goes deeper, to three decades of "trauma that it's been through, the legacy of the 1990s civil war . . . [and] the effects of the narcotics trade." Add to that the unintended consequences of sudden Western attention starting in 2001: "We did exacerbate the problem with lack of transparency and accountability built into the large influx of international assistance that came into a government that lacked mature institutions."

Yet the Afghan War's most important factor, in his view, could be the Afghan people's expectations for the future. "Why did the Taliban collapse so quickly in 2001?" he asks. "The fundamental reason was that every Afghan was convinced of the inevitability of the Taliban's defeat."

Today it's not clear who the strong horse is, so many Afghans are hedging their bets. "What you see in Afghanistan oftentimes," the general says, "is a short-term-maximization-of-gains mentality—get as much out of the system as you can to build up a power base in advance of a post-[NATO], post-international-community Afghanistan."

In this respect, the Strategic Partnership Agreement signed last week by President Obama and Mr. Karzai may help, since it pledges some American military and diplomatic commitments through 2024. Gen. McMaster calls it "immensely important." Still, it doesn't erase the record of Obama administration rhetoric to the effect that American withdrawal is inevitable even if the enemy's defeat is not.

Gen. McMaster steers far clear of any such political criticism. Instead, he argues that the Afghan people can be convinced to bet against the insurgency—and in favor of their government—if they see a crackdown on public corruption.

Some of the signs are good. Afghan civil society, he says hopefully, has a growing number of "groups that don't want to see the gains of the past 10 years reversed, that want a better future for their children, and that are demanding necessary reforms from their leaders." Last year saw the launch of the Right and Justice Party, with an anticorruption message and multiethnic leadership of Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras.

One of the general's historical models is Colombia, where a few years ago many people believed the government couldn't stand up to the narco-terrorist FARC insurgency. "What was the problem of Colombia in the late '90s? It was political will to take [the FARC] on," he says, adding that U.S. counternarcotics and other efforts helped lay the groundwork that Álvaro Uribe built on after winning Colombia's presidency in 2002.

We could see such an outcome again, says Gen. McMaster, especially given "the innate weakness of Afghanistan's enemies."

"What do the Taliban have to offer the Afghan people?" he asks. They are "a criminal organization, criminal because they engage in mass murder of innocent people, and criminal because they're also the largest narcotics-trafficking organization in the world. Are these virtuous religious people? No, these are murderous, nihilistic, irreligious people who we're fighting—we along with Afghans who are determined to not allow them to return."

Taliban groups, he adds, are increasingly seen by Afghans "as a tool of hostile foreign intelligence agencies. These are people who live in comfort in Pakistan and send their children to private schools while they destroy schools in Afghanistan." He notes, too, that indigenous Afghan fighters are wondering where their leadership is: "One of the maxims of military leadership is that you share the hardships of your troops, you lead from the front. Well they're leading from comfortable villas in Pakistan. So there's growing resentment, and this could be an opportunity to convince key communities inside of Afghanistan into joining the political process."

As a tool for this, Gen. McMaster praises the U.S. military's "village stability operations," which send small teams of Special Forces to live among Afghans in remote villages vulnerable to Taliban intimidation.

Still, it's easy to get carried away by the glimmers of hope, and the general is very much a realist. For one thing, Pakistan remains a haven for insurgency, and Gen. McMaster says little more than that it "remains to be seen" whether Pakistan's leaders will conclude that their interests lie in defeating the Taliban.

Just as worrisome, though far less noticed, is the influence of Iran, which is pressuring Kabul to reject the Strategic Partnership Agreement.

"Many of the media platforms that operate in Afghanistan—television, radio, print media—are either wholly captured and run, or owned by hostile organizations or entities," Gen. McMaster says. The Iranian government has about 20 television stations operating in Western Afghanistan. Another disheartening hearts-and-minds metric: Iran and other foreign entities run more schools in Herat City than does the Afghan government.


Near the end of our interview, we turn to the future of American warfare. U.S. troops are scheduled to end combat operations in Afghanistan in 2014, perhaps sooner. Focus is turning from the Middle East to East Asia, and to the air and sea power required in the Pacific.

Does that mean that for the foreseeable future the U.S. won't "do" another Afghanistan or Iraq? "We have a perfect record in predicting future wars—right? . . . And that record is 0%," says the general. "If you look at the demands that have been placed on our armed forces in recent years, I think the story that will be told years from now is one of adaptability to mission sets and circumstances that were not clearly defined or anticipated prior to those wars."

That's fortunate, Gen. McMaster makes clear, in light of Clausewitz's 200-year-old warning not "to turn war into something that's alien to its nature—don't try to define war as you would like it to be."

Mr. Feith is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.

A version of this article appeared May 12, 2012, on page A13 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Warrior's-Eye View of Afghanistan.

===============

Thoughts?

When the suicide bomber exploded, the world skidded to a stop. The Afghan police pickup truck, 30 yards directly behind us, disappeared in a geyser of thick gray-brown smoke. The only visible object was its hood flying through the air, a black silhouette against the murk, followed by the sound of broken glass falling. Then the smoke thinned, like the curtain rising on a stage, revealing the chaos the bomber had set loose.

The pickup truck wasn't where it was supposed to be. The blast had hoisted it into the air and dropped it onto the median strip. There was a moment's hesitation among the troops next to me in the lead pickup. A lone motorcyclist emerged from the cloud, inexplicably upright and seemingly uninjured.

Police waved angrily at bystanders to get them clear. One Afghan officer fired his rifle in the air to disperse the crowd. I spat out a string of expletives, maybe aloud, maybe in my head. The four Marines and the Afghan policeman in the stricken truck had to be dead. How could they not be?

Sure, this is war, and people die. But it wasn't supposed to be here, and it wasn't supposed to be today.

Zaranj, a town in Afghanistan's Nimroz province, is relatively prosperous, partly because it straddles Highway 9 just before the road crosses the Helmand River and goes into Iran. Every day, 150 or so trucks drive across the border bridge into Afghanistan filled with tiles, cement and other goods. Zaranj gets electricity and clean water from across the border.

Photos: Attack in Afghanistan: Eyewitness Account.View Slideshow

Michael M. Phillips/The Wall Street Journal
 
When a suicide bomber struck a convoy in Afghanistan, a routine Marine patrol turned into a harrowing firefight. The Journal's Michael M. Phillips documented what happened.
.It's a town so normal-seeming that U.S. officers consider it evidence that they can leave behind a stable Afghanistan in 2014. Zaranj hadn't seen a major insurgent attack since suicide bombers tried to penetrate the governor's compound four years ago. It was an unusual story—an Afghan town dependent on Iran, America's nemesis, as an example of success—and traveling with the Marines was the way to report it.

Because the U.S. doesn't have a base anywhere nearby, every few weeks Marines fly in to escort civilians working to improve the local government and promote economic growth. Instead of their typical armored vehicles, they travel in unarmored forest-green Ford Ranger pickup trucks driven by the Afghan police.

That Saturday, April 28, was sunny and hot. Spring in southern Afghanistan is like a hot summer anywhere else. The patrol was routine. It started at a construction compound where crews were building U.S.-funded facilities for the Afghan Border Police. The Marines paused to take pictures of each other near the 2,100-kilometers-to-Tehran sign. Then they dropped in on the director of the Zaranj customs office, who complained that he hadn't received the scanners he'd been promised.

The director was enormously proud of his huge conference room. The American visitors admired the black chairs, so pristine that they confirmed everyone's belief that few conferences take place at the Zaranj customs office.

The Saturday Essay
Renting Prosperity (5/5/12)
Rethinking the War on Drugs (4/21/12)
Why Airport Security Is Broken—And How To Fix It (4/14/12)
How I Stopped Drowning in Drink (3/17/12)
.There were four pickups in our convoy. Three were all green; one had white sides. I jumped into the latter because I figured that it would be easier to remember which was my ride. It took off in the lead, and I sat on a toolbox in the bed, facing backward so that I could take photos and watch the sights go by. On the way we passed a billboard with pictures of a smiling mother, her daughter and a suicide bomber with an unholy array of explosives strapped to his chest. The police want people to tip them off to coming attacks.

Also in the pickup's bed were 1st Lt. Gabe Sganga and Cpl. Adam Spaw, who wore a tan metal backpack called a Thor. It had an antenna that rose above his head and was supposed to jam wireless signals that insurgents use to detonate roadside bombs. Just before we left, an Afghan police officer in a gray uniform leapt into the truck bed in a fluid stepping motion.

The police tend to drive very fast, and the road was potholed and speed-bumped. Those of us in the bed had to hang on to the black roll bar and sides to keep from getting bounced out.

In a few minutes, we were back in downtown Zaranj, where the road becomes a commercial street, divided down the center by blue and white metal fencing. Carpet dealers, barber shops and other small stores lined the roadsides.

On the dirt sidewalk to our south, a man in a light-colored trousers-and-tunic combination spoke on his cellphone as he watched the trucks pass, eyeing us in a way that made me wonder if he was letting someone know we were coming. But there were also children on the street, many of them waving cheerfully at the passing Marines. The conventional wisdom is that you only have to worry when the locals fade away and take their children with them.

We drove past a motorcycle-parts store. Then the second pickup truck approached the same spot. At that moment a man on the south side of the road pushed a handcart loaded with explosives and ball-bearings into the traffic and detonated it. The Taliban later identified him as Khalid Baloch, dispatched to carry out a "martyr attack on the military convoy of combined U.S.-puppet cowardly forces."

In the truck bed were three men. Benny Flores, a 29-year-old from Talofofo, Guam, was a Navy corpsman. The Marines called him Doc, since he was the guy who was supposed to patch them up if they got wounded. Sgt. Caleb Rauscher, a 22-year-old Brooklynite, had extended his enlistment to go on his third combat tour. Maj. Andrew Kingsbury, 38, a mustachioed former forest firefighter from Seattle, coordinated air cover and evacuation. In the front seats were an Afghan policeman and Marine Master Sgt. Scott Pruitt, a beefy military accountant from Mississippi.

Thinking back I can't recall whether the explosion was a thud or a crash or just a boom. I just remember it was shocking and heavy and unfair.

Everyone in the lead truck jumped out. The Afghan policeman sprinted toward the column of smoke, gripping his rifle. There was a moment's confusion, which couldn't have lasted more than five or 10 seconds, after which one of the Marines said something like: "We have to get to them" or "We have to go help." Capt. Jewelie Hartshorne, whose job is to talk with Afghan women, ran toward the explosion, dropping something on the dirt sidewalk. It was her tan gloves.

Maj. Kingsbury, who gets his music from Philip Glass and his news from National Public Radio, had been blown onto the north side of the median strip. He had suffered no shrapnel wounds or broken bones. But he had a severe concussion and perforated eardrums, and was confused about why he was no longer in the truck bed. He couldn't see Sgt. Rauscher, his young radio man and sidekick, who had been thrown onto the south lane, just the other side of the truck. Running through the acrid haze, Maj. Kingsbury was seized by a fear that insurgents had somehow snatched him in the aftermath of the blast.

"Caleb," he yelled. "Caleb!"

Unable to find the sergeant, Maj. Kingsbury joined up with Doc Flores, and together they pulled the injured Afghan policeman out of the driver's seat. They could see Master Sgt. Pruitt, badly wounded in the front passenger seat. Shrapnel from the blast had shredded the side of the truck and had hit the master sergeant in the neck. The metal fragments and explosion had also cut deep wounds into his legs, where main arteries flow.

They clambered over the median fence, hoping to reach Master Sgt. Pruitt through the passenger door. On the way, Maj. Kingsbury found Sgt. Rauscher collapsed in a heap on the roadway amid shards of blue plastic police lights. The major knelt beside him, his rifle scraping on the asphalt.

Doc Flores appeared beside them. The explosion had left bright red skid marks where it had burned the back of his neck. The sleeve of his camouflage shirt had been shredded and hung loose on his left arm, which was perforated by metal fragments. He ignored his own wounds and bent over to examine Sgt. Rauscher.

Most of the smoke had cleared by now. Oil bled down on the street from a damaged electrical transformer overhead. Master Sgt. Pruitt sat upright in the passenger seat. I felt a moment of relief. Then his chin dropped to his chest.

Maj. Kingsbury and Capt. Jason Bowers, one of the Marines in the lead truck, yanked at the fence lining the median strip to pull it clear of Master Sgt. Pruitt's door, which had been crushed inward by the blast. They wrenched the fence back but couldn't get access to the cab. Crisscrossing the median again, the two men, rejoined by Doc Flores, went back to the driver's side. The doc reached across to secure tourniquets around Master Sgt. Pruitt's legs. He couldn't find a pulse.

Suddenly, there was a crack of gunfire as insurgent gunmen launched an ambush from three positions. A sniper fired on the patrol from a three-story building to the northeast, while another militant took shots at the police and Marines from the southwest. Two or three fighters opened fire from behind the decorative metal grating of an unfinished three-story building on the north side of the road, directing their shots down onto the pickup's carcass and those around it.

The police sprayed rifle fire back at the insurgent positions. The Marines joined in. Next to the damaged vehicle, Capt. Hartshorne dropped to one knee and aimed her rifle at the source of the shots.

Lt. Sganga had moved up to help Sgt. Rauscher as the others went around to the far side of the pickup. "I need you to try to stand up," the lieutenant, a 30-year-old from Larchmont, N.Y., told the sergeant. The sergeant's legs betrayed him. With his rifle, body armor, radio and other gear, he weighed somewhere close to 300 pounds, and his body was so limp that the lieutenant alone couldn't budge him.

The lieutenant and I grabbed the shoulder straps of Sgt. Rauscher's body armor and tried to drag him off the road. We moved in heaves and lurches, the sergeant's legs and boot heels scraping in the debris that littered the street. The lieutenant told me later that insurgent rounds were skipping off the street around us.

Maj. Kingsbury must have spotted us struggling because he appeared and took my place. Together, he and Lt. Sganga had the horsepower to pull Sgt. Rauscher to the door of the motorcycle-parts shop. At the threshold the sergeant tried to stand, his legs skewed awkwardly beneath him. He collapsed on all fours on the shop floor.

By now even I realized there was a lot of gunfire. I ran into a barber shop with a bright blue metal doorway, a chunky old television and chairs upholstered in red plaid. It was a bad choice. The entire front of the store was glass, and most of that was in shards on the floor. I was alone. I didn't want to be alone.

I scurried next door to the motorcycle-parts store where Maj. Kingsbury and Lt. Sganga had taken Sgt. Rauscher for cover. A small group of bearded Afghan men, apparently shopkeepers, seemed eager to leave and, using hand gestures, asked permission to do so. The Marines shooed them out.

Sgt. Rauscher slumped onto the floor, red streams dripping from his mouth and left eyebrow. "I bit my tongue," he said. The officers took turns holding Sgt. Rauscher's gloved hand and reassuring him that he was going to be OK. Maj. Kingsbury gingerly removed the sergeant's helmet, revealing lacerations that left the helmet's padding wet with blood.

We both knew the head wounds were likely not the only ones he'd suffered. We detached the Velcro straps at the front of the sergeant's body armor and lifted the heavy plate carrier, rolling him onto his left side and exposing what looked like a small entry wound. After rolling him the other way, I ran my hand along his back and side, and when I pulled it away I saw a smear of blood from a spot where shrapnel had cut into his torso. But it was a drip, not a torrent. I didn't notice the burns on his forearm.

The lieutenant was on the radio in the doorway, ducking in and out. The major was busily arranging a medical evacuation and helping with the casualties on the street.

I sat with Sgt. Rauscher. His eyes were bloody, but he could count fingers. Two. Then three.

His mind, though, was a scratched record. "What happened?" he asked.

You were in a pickup truck. It hit an IED. (At the time, we didn't know the blast had come from a suicide bomber, and an improvised explosive device, hidden in the road, seemed the most plausible explanation. Such bombs are the main source of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan.)

Sgt. Rauscher held on to the answer for no more than 15 seconds. He asked again: "What happened?"

You were in a pickup truck. It hit an IED.

Again: "What happened?"

You were in a pickup truck. It hit an IED.

"Is everyone OK?"

"Is my face burned?"

"Is everyone OK?"

"What happened?"

I tried to answer the questions with the same words and intonation, as if I'd not already answered them. I'm not sure why; maybe I thought the words would stick that way. "You were in a pickup truck. It hit an IED."

I didn't want to lie to the sergeant when he asked about his fellow Marines. But I didn't want to worry him either. I didn't answer directly, saying instead, "They're figuring that out right now."

But in the doorway, the lieutenant was on the radio with headquarters, filing a preliminary casualty report. Sgt. Rauscher didn't seem to catch on to what the lieutenant was saying, or if he did, he couldn't remember it for long.

About 18 minutes after the bomb went off the drama was pretty much over, at least on Highway 9. Sgt. Rauscher was able to stand again and, with help, hoisted himself into the bed of one of the police trucks. Doc Flores, his arms covered in a mix of his own blood and Master Sgt. Pruitt's, climbed in next to him and began examining the sergeant's wounds. They sped off to the city's hospital.

The explosion had also wounded four civilians, three of them children.

The ambushers melted unseen into the town, except Mr. Baloch, whose corpse lay on the side of Highway 9, his abdomen ripped open by the force of the blast he caused. (The next day, Afghan security agents arrested four men with explosives and trigger devices, who confessed they were operating under the Taliban leadership in Pakistan, according to a provincial official. They had planned to try to kill the provincial governor but took advantage of the opportunity to target Americans.)

In the early evening, the rest of the patrol returned from the hospital to the provincial governor's guesthouse, where we were staying. Sgt. Rauscher wore just a T-shirt and black anti-blast underpants developed by the military to help guard against roadside bombs. A corpsman wrapped his head in white gauze and bandaged Doc Flores's neck. Sgt. Rauscher was later evacuated to military hospitals in Germany and Maryland, where doctors diagnosed him with a moderate case of traumatic brain injury. His body was peppered with welts from ball-bearings that didn't have quite enough force to penetrate the skin.

Nobody said it aloud, but it was obvious that Master Sgt. Pruitt hadn't survived. There was no urgent medevac helicopter landing. A civilian ambulance had pulled up outside the compound even though the two wounded men were back already. Master Sgt. Pruitt's body was inside.

Doc Flores and Capt. Hartshorne had worked furiously to try to stem the bleeding. But saving his life was never within reach.

Master Sgt. Pruitt, a 38-year-old military accountant, had grown up in Gautier, Miss., and had lobbied hard to get to Afghanistan. Commanders wanted to send a more junior man. But with his retirement planned for next year, Master Sgt. Pruitt didn't want to leave the Marine Corps without having experienced war. "I'll replace someone who's there," he told his mother, Lydia Hobson. "It'll be that much sooner that they get to come home."

He was an accountant through and through. During long meetings, he'd count how many times his colleagues fell back on "at the end of the day" or other clichés or interrupted their thoughts with "uh." As they filed out of the room, he'd jokingly report their scores.

Master Sgt. Pruitt had two daughters, aged 4 and 9, from a previous marriage, and was engaged to a civilian accountant working for the military. He planned to take the family to Walt Disney World during his home leave in July.

Unlike most military accountants, who remain safely at big bases, Master Sgt. Pruitt's job involved visiting U.S.-funded infrastructure projects to make sure taxpayers were getting their money's worth. He'd pack a bag of candy canes or other surprises for the children he'd meet along the way.

On Friday, the day before he died, Master Sgt. Pruitt put his rifle aside and huddled with Shams Assad, the 5-year-old son of one of the officials at the governor's guesthouse. They shared a box of Crayolas and a Sesame Street coloring book.

When he finished coloring in a picture of Grover playing volleyball, Master Sgt. Pruitt tore out the page for the Afghan boy, signed it "Scott" in crayon, and dated it: April 27, 2012.

—Ziaulhaq Sultani contributed to this article.

Pravda on the Hudson saying what one would expect:
==========
It was nearly 10 p.m. on Wednesday when Paul Broun, a Republican congressman from Georgia, rose on the House floor to propose that no more money be spent enforcing a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The act is one of the most momentous laws ever passed by Congress, removing the discriminatory barriers that had blocked generations of African-Americans from the polls. Yet a Southern representative tried to slip in an amendment to an appropriations bill that would prevent the Justice Department from supervising election-law changes in his state and in 15 others where there has been a history of discrimination.

Moments later, Representative John Lewis, a Democrat of Georgia, strode to the microphone with a furious denunciation. Mr. Lewis, whose skull was fractured by a police baton in Selma, Ala., during a 1965 voting rights march, said it was “unbelievable” that a fellow Georgia lawmaker could offer such an amendment.

“It is shameful that you would come here tonight and say to the Department of Justice that you must not use one penny, one cent, one dime, one dollar to carry out the mandate of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,” he said, his voice loud and trembling. “People died for the right to vote! Friends of mine, colleagues of mine! Speak out against this amendment — it doesn’t have a place.”

On the floor, Mr. Broun’s explanation for getting rid of Justice Department supervision was that it had become “antiquated” and unfair. But he also said he wanted the Justice Department to back off because it has raised objections to a voter identification law in his state and several others. Those laws are the Republican Party’s modern attempt to disenfranchise minorities, the poor and older Americans for political gain.

After being confronted by Mr. Lewis, he withdrew his amendment, condemned discrimination and apologized “for any hurt feelings anyone has.” The issue, however, is far bigger than hurt feelings. Mr. Broun owes an apology to history.
==========

Thoughts?   Why didn't Broun insist on his POV?  What on earth is wrong with Voter ID?  Why not frontally face down the progressive assertion of disenfranchisment?  To start and not finish is worse than to never have started.

Wapo conveniently has shady Romney hit piece ready to go:

What are the odds that the Washington Post would have a full scale hit piece accusing Mitt Romney (as a teenager) of bullying gay classmates, ready for press the very same day President Obama declares he’s the Abe Lincoln for gays?

second post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/federal-appeals-court-says-illegal-immigrants-dont-have-right-to-bear-arms/2012/05/08/gIQAvovfAU_story.html
DENVER — A federal appeals court says illegal immigrants don’t have a right to own firearms under the U.S. Constitution.
Emmanuel Huitron-Guizar of Wyoming pleaded guilty to being an illegal immigrant in possession of firearms after his arrest last year. He was ordered held by immigration authorities at the Natrona County Detention Center in Wyoming.
An attorney for Huitron-Guizar appealed the case, saying illegal immigrants are not excluded from possessing firearms like felons and people who are mentally ill, and should have the same rights as U.S. citizens to buy a gun for hunting and protection.
The 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver ruled Monday that illegal immigrants have only limited protection under the Constitution.

Do Barbers Really Need a License?

By DICK CARPENTER
AND LISA KNEPPER

As Ohio natives, we aren't eager to extol the virtues of Michigan, but credit should be given where it is due—particularly for a proposal that would expand economic freedom and opportunity.

In April, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder proposed abolishing 18 occupational licenses and eliminating nine occupational licensing boards. It is a reform long overdue, and not just in Michigan.

Since the 1950s, the number of U.S. workers needing an occupational license—effectively a government permission slip to work—has grown from one in 20 to nearly one in three, according to a 2010 study by Morris Kleiner (University of Minnesota) and Alan Krueger (Princeton). The burdens these licenses impose on would-be workers and entrepreneurs are substantial, as a study released this week by the Institute for Justice documents. "License to Work" collected licensure requirements for 102 low- and middle-income occupations—barber, massage therapist, auctioneer and interior designer, for instance—in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

All 102 occupations are licensed in at least one state. These licenses force aspiring workers to spend an average of nine months in education or training, pass one exam, and pay more than $200 in fees. One third of the licenses take more than a year to get. These barriers make it harder for people—particularly minorities and those of lesser means and with less education—to find jobs and build new businesses that create jobs.

Every state needs reform, but some stand out. Louisiana licenses 71 of the 102 lower-income occupations, more than any other state. Hawaii's licensing requirements are the nation's most burdensome.

Arizona, however, imposes the heaviest combination of the number of licensed occupations (64) and the regulatory burdens (in time and money) required to secure them. Arizona is followed by California, Oregon, Nevada, Arkansas, Hawaii, Florida and Louisiana. In those eight states it takes, on average, one-and-a-half years of training, one exam and more than $300 to get a license.

Are all these regulatory barriers to entry really necessary to protect public safety or prevent consumers from shoddy work, as defenders of occupational licensure claim? Regulatory inconsistencies from state to state undermine this argument.

The vast majority of jobs we studied are done in one state or another by people without any government-issued license. Interior designers are licensed in just three states and the District of Columbia, for example, funeral attendants in only nine states, and shampooers in a mere five states. We know of no evidence that consumers in the remaining states demanded occupational licenses to protect them from an epidemic of dangerous shampooing.

License requirements often vary greatly. In five states, aspiring auctioneers must complete about a year or more of training—but only about nine days in Vermont and four days in Pennsylvania.

Is it plausible that cosmetologists need, on average, 10 times as many days to fulfill their educational and training requirements (372) than emergency medical technicians (33), who literally hold lives in their hands? That is the reality in most states. In fact, 66 occupations face greater average licensing burdens than EMTs.

The occupational licenses Mr. Snyder has slated for the chopping block are a diverse lot, including those for auctioneer, interior designer, community planner, security alarm contractor, and private security guard—several of which were included in our study. Reform will not be easy, as defenders of the status quo will undoubtedly play the safety card.

Take the response of the director of a barbering school in Michigan to a different proposal by a state legislator (not included in Mr. Snyder's proposal) to repeal barber licenses: "I'm not saying we are as important as doctors, but we are the closest you can get. We are turning this into the Wild, Wild West. . . . I'd like to see them get a haircut in a barber shop five years from now. It will be like rolling the dice."

The risk of a few bad haircuts seems worth a roll of the dice if the upside is more economic opportunities. But the truth is that consumers are capable of judging the quality of many services for themselves. If lawmakers in Michigan and elsewhere want to help more Americans find jobs, they should start by reducing or removing burdens that do little more than protect some people from competition by keeping others out of work.

Mr. Carpenter and Ms. Knepper are directors of strategic research at the Institute for Justice. For more information on their report, visit www.ij.org/LicenseToWork

By HENRY I. MILLER
Much of the political conversation in Washington these days concerns innovation, job creation and competitiveness. But talk is cheap, and elected officials must enact policies that enhance economic activity and job creation. The medical device industry is an example of Washington doing exactly the opposite.

Medical device manufacturing is one of the nation's most dynamic and vibrant industries. The United States is the global leader in medical technology innovation, and it is one of the few major industries with a net trade surplus. This industry is responsible for more than 400,000 American jobs—and is indirectly responsible for almost two million more that supply and support this highly skilled workforce. Most important, its products are essential elements of modern medical care. They include everything from CT scanners and pacemakers to blood pressure cuffs and robots used by surgeons.

Yet instead of protecting this paragon of American ingenuity and innovation, the Obama administration and Congress have viewed the industry as a cash cow from which they could milk profits to help pay for the president's health law. So they added to the Affordable Care Act a 2.3% excise tax on medical devices that will take effect at the beginning of 2013.

This tax is especially pernicious because it is assessed on sales, not profits. To put this in perspective, imagine that you've manufactured medical devices and had sales of $1 million, after all your costs and expenses—everything from materials and labor to research and development—your profit was $100,000. The excise tax would be $23,000, wiping out almost 25% of your profits.

Many medical device companies have to ramp up sales before they become profitable. Due to the long, draconian and sometimes unpredictable regulatory process that must be negotiated before a product can be sold, it can take from $70 million to $100 million in total sales before these businesses make their first cent of profits. Nevertheless, they would have to pay the excise tax on their revenue.

The nation's medical device industry is vulnerable. It is not comprised of behemoths: 80% of its companies have 50 or fewer employees, the very businesses we are relying on to turn the U.S. economy around. The new excise tax comes when regulatory delays and uncertainty are increasing, and as many device firms are shutting down or moving abroad to take advantage of the more favorable tax and regulatory climate in Europe. The tax will force companies to lay off employees, cut back on research and development, or diminish capital investment.

The governors of five prominent states—Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Robert McDonnell of Virginia and Scott Walker of Wisconsin—agree. "As governors of states with a significant concentration of medical technology manufacturers, we believe that this tax could harm U.S. global competitiveness, stunt medical innovation and result in the loss of tens of thousands of good-paying jobs," they wrote in an April 30 letter to congressional leaders.

Anticipating the excise tax, several companies already have announced layoffs or withheld investments. Recent surveys show that medical technology executives are examining a host of other undesirable options, including passing along the added costs through price increases. Even if the market would tolerate that—which is surely questionable given the current pressure to drive down costs—it would, ironically, raise the costs of medical care. That was not supposed to be an outcome of ObamaCare.

The U.S. remains the global leader in medical device development and manufacturing, although reports from PricewaterhouseCoopers and others show that its lead is tenuous, in part due to regulatory uncertainties and dysfunction that thwart innovation. If we allow foreign competition to seize the lead, it will be difficult to regain.

We need to create a more nurturing entrepreneurial climate, one in which ingenuity and innovation are rewarded, not penalized. Legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate to repeal the medical device excise tax. That would be a good start.

Dr. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He was the founding director of the FDA's Office of Biotechnology.

My point about BO's position of leaving it to the States is correctly undercut by this piece noting that failure of the BO DOJ to defend DOMA:

===============

The Foundation
"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics." --John Adams
Government & Politics
A 'Gutsy Call' on Same-Sex Marriage
 
No surprise, but Obama backs same-sex marriage

"I think same-sex couples should be able to get married," Barack Obama told ABC News Wednesday. Media lemmings and Democrats -- but we repeat ourselves -- fawned over this "evolution" in Obama's thought on the subject, calling his statement brave, principled and, as The New York Times put it, "strong national leadership." That this was a "gutsy call" could not be further from the truth.

The only thing one could construe as "brave" about Obama's predictable cave is that he came out of the closet the day after North Carolina voters approved, 61-39, a constitutional amendment affirming marriage as being between one man and one woman. Now 30 states have similar amendments. Coincidentally, Democrats will hold their national convention in North Carolina, a state Obama hopes to carry once again. Obviously, he thinks his base needed this cause to rally around him for re-election, which is, after all, the point of everything he does. He certainly didn't waste any time fundraising off his flip-flop.

Forward!

The president's hand was forced when Joe Biden opened his trap Sunday, saying he is "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marriage. Still, Obama swears he "had already made a decision that we were going to take this position before the election and before the convention." He said Biden "probably got out a little bit over his skis," but insisted, "all's well that ends well."

Obama's true position on the subject has always been known, despite his effort to eat his wedding cake and have it too. "I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages," Obama said ... in 1996 when he was running for Illinois state senate. When he ran for U.S. Senate in 2004 and president in 2008, his view was that "marriage is between a man and a woman." Then in 2010, he belatedly declared that his views were "evolving." In other words, his position always has been a political charade. As evidence, we submit his latest campaign ad, which slams Romney as "backwards on equality" -- a place Obama found himself just 24 hours earlier.

Obama would be correct with his newfound federalism to call marriage an issue for states to decide -- if indeed the government has anyrole -- but that too is a charade. After all, his Justice Department has refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, which leaves the matter to the states. (That bill passed both houses of Congress with large majorities before being signed into law in 1996 by Bill Clinton.) And if the Supreme Court discovers same-sex marriage to be a constitutional right under some obscure penumbra, no one doubts that Obama will celebrate.

For presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, this is the latest in a string of Obama's orchestrated distractions, but who can blame the president for not wanting to talk about the dismal economy? He would much rather talk about a phony "war on women," dogs on car roofs and same-sex marriage than 324,000 women leaving the labor force in the last two months alone, or the fact that one in three young Americans is underemployed. To be sure, Obama admitted, "Sometimes I forget" the magnitude of the recession. Small wonder.

Romney took on the marriage issue anyway, saying, "My view is that marriage itself is a relationship between a man and a woman," and insisted, "I have the same view I've had since, well, since running for office." Yet he also expressed frustration with reporters who aren't asking about "issues of significance."

We won't go so far as to call the issue a distraction, though it's of far lesser import in this election than the economy or the size of the federal government. Marriage is the building block of family and society, and to redefine it so drastically is to undermine its integrity. All people have inherent dignity and worth -- no one here is engaging in what the Left derides as "gay bashing" -- but words and institutions have meanings, and it's important that we maintain them. It's a shame that some would use the issue as nothing more than a campaign fundraiser.

Just how brave was Obama? And who should decide the issue?

This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award

On how same-sex marriage squares with the Obamas as "practicing Christians," he said, "

• bviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others, but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it's also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated." Never mind the rest of the Bible.

On the military, Obama opined that his rationale came from "when I think about those Soldiers or Airmen or Marines or Sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage."

The military fights on his behalf? On the contrary, the military fights for the nation, and they do it far too well to serve as political pawns for Obama's craven attempts to rally his base.
=================================

Who is Keith Judd? He's federal prison inmate Number 11593-051 at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Beaumont, Texas, where he's serving a 210-month sentence for extortion. Earlier this week, however, he was also a Democrat presidential candidate in the West Virginia primary, and he managed 40 percent of the vote and won 10 counties against the sitting president. In fact, his share of the vote was so large that he's entitled to at least one delegate at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte later this year. Democrats quickly attributed the result to racism, but it could have a lot more to do with Obama's anti-coal policies. In all fairness, though, Obama was at a serious disadvantage. What would you rather defend -- a felony conviction or Obama's record on the economy?

===========================

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/family-of-romneys-alleged-bully-victim-speaks-out-the-portrayal-of-john-is-factually-incorrect/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-prep-school-classmates-recall-pranks-but-also-troubling-incidents/2012/05/10/gIQA3WOKFU_print.html

Although I oppose gay marriage, from a handicapping point of view I must say that it looks like over time the trend seems to be for it. 

It might have been a safe out for MR to say leave it to the states (as BO has done by the way?) but whoops, he has called for a Constitutional amendment.

Given the ongoing societal separation of marriage and reproduction and that gay adoption and test tube babies seem to be already established,  is blocking gay marriage really addressing lesbian paternity suits?

"A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species." --James Madison, Essay on Property, 1792

Morris flogs his latest book here, but the point made seems quite sound to me.

=============

China Has Hacked Our Electric Power Grid: Read About It In Screwed!
By DICK MORRIS
Published on DickMorris.com on May 10, 2012

In our new book Screwed!, we report that almost unnoticed and with no threat of retaliation, China has likely hacked into the United States electric grid, potentially giving it the ability to paralyze our economy and our nation by tapping a few keys on a computer.
         
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bush's anti-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke reports that "in 2009, the control systems for the U.S. electric power grid [were] hacked and secret openings created so that the attacker could get back in with ease.  One expert noted that the hackers "left behind software that could be used to cause disruptions or even shut down the system."
         
While we cannot confirm that it was China that did the hacking, it is the only country with the technical expertise in hacking to have accomplished it.
 
What were the hackers after?  Clarke notes that "there is no money to steal on the electrical grid, nor is there any intelligence value that would justify cyber espionage.  The only point to penetrating the grid's controls is to counter American military superiority by threatening to damage the underpinning of the U.S. economy.  Chinese military strategists have written about how in this way a nation like China could gain an equal footing with the militarily superior United States."
         
Anti-terror watchdogs have long been aware of the danger of an electromagnetic pulse triggered by the explosion of a nuclear device in the atmosphere over the United States.  But by acquiring the ability to enter our grid anytime it wishes and disable it, China has likely acquired the ability to accomplish the same result without exploding a bomb.
         
Not only has Beijing likely hacked into our grid but, according to authors Brett M. Decker and William C. Triplett II in their excellent book Bowing to Beijing, China has even hacked into the Pentagon computer network "including the one serving [then] Defense Secretary Robert Gates." 
         
James Lewis, director of the technology and policy program at the Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies called the Chinese hacking "an espionage Pearl Harbor."  Lewis told 60 minutes that China had downloaded vast amounts of information from every major U.S. agency saying that we have lost more information than is stored in the entire Library of Congress through Chinese hacking.
         
What is the U.S. doing about it? Nothing.  The modern day story of appeasement is not Obama's kowtowing to Muslim extremists as much as his total failure to confront China.
         
The president and Secretary of State Clinton fret over alienating China for fear that they will stop lending us money.  Romney, who understands these things better than either Obama or Clinton, emphasizes China's vulnerability. "We sell then $50 billion.  They sell us $400 billion.  They want a trade war?  Bring it on!"
         
The Chinese lend us money because they have to.  They buy dollars to make our currency artificially expensive and theirs' commensurately cheap.  With their currency manipulation, our products are 40% more costly in their markets and theirs' are 40% cheaper in our stores, fueling the imbalance of trade.  Once they own the dollars, what are they going to do with them?  The only safe thing is to buy U.S. Treasury notes, hence they "lend" us money.  If they stopped buying dollars and acquiring an unfair trade advantage over us, we wouldn't need them to keep lending us money, our economy would be thriving.
         
We cannot sit by complacently and let China rob us blind, hacking our technology, our military secrets, and our power grid.  We need a president who will stand up for America.
         
To grasp the appalling extent of Chinese hacking and espionage against the U.S. commercial and military sectors, read about it in Screwed!, on sale now!

Gun Owners of America
________________________________________
Last week, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent a 44-page memorandum to members of his committee outlining the instances in which Attorney General Eric Holder perjured himself before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which Rep. Issa chairs.
 
In the eyes of GOA’s membership nationwide, this signals that Darrell Issa is a Constitutional and American hero.
 
Eric Holder and his subordinates in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) have lied under oath.  In fact, they even sent a letter to the congressional committee investigating Fast and Furious (the gun running scandal between the U.S. and Mexico) essentially admitting that they lied.
 
Appointees in the Obama administration such as Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton and Janet Napolitano have historically shown themselves to be radically anti-gun.  And the Fast and Furious debacle is just the latest instance of this.  That’s why pro-Second Amendment Americans need to join in the fight to help Issa get rid of Eric Holder as the Attorney General.
 
H.Res. 490 is a resolution which sends a message loud and clear that Congress has lost confidence in the Attorney General.  Over 100 members of Congress have already signed H.Res. 490 (see the list here).  If your Representative is one of them, please contact and thank him or her for helping.
 
If your representative has not signed on to H.Res. 490, contact them and demand to know why he or she has refused to do so.  Ask your congressman if they are anti-gun or if they condone lying to Congress?  Do they condone the U.S. sending guns to Mexican drug cartels who turn around and kill U.S. law enforcement and Mexican law enforcement, which is exactly what has happened under Eric Holder’s watch.
 
ACTION:
 
Darrell Issa is doing a monumental job for Americans and the Constitution, and he needs your help to bring his colleagues into accord.  Please email Congress, thanking your Representative if he’s signed onto H.Res. 490, but taking him to task if he hasn’t.
 
There are two different letters (one saying “thank you” and one saying “cosponsor the resolution”).  Click here to contact your Representatives, the appropriate letter will be automatically selected.
 
 
Gun Owners of America needs your help to continue this fight.
Please click here to send a donation to help.