by Paul Findley – The Chicago Tribune
At the age of 82, Jimmy Carter entered the lion’s den. With the publication of his latest book, “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” he did what a patriot would do: rally Americans to vigorous debate of a critical issue that affects our future. He deserves a hero’s praise. Instead, he has been attacked and defamed. I had the honor to serve as the senior Republican on the Middle East Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee throughout the Carter administration. Carter frequently invited me to huddles in the White House; discussions that would ultimately lead to a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt. I know Carter well and consider him a friend. I also experienced firsthand what Carter now faces. Toward the end of my 22-year tenure in Congress, I spoke in favor of Palestinian rights and was critical of Israeli policies of Palestinian land confiscation and Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian lands…

by Joe Sobran – Sobran.com
Dozens of people have announced their candidacies for the White House in 2008, and if I had to bet at this point, I would put my money on the old woman. Hillary may be awful, but at least she is predictable. I suppose I can learn to resign myself to her. What difference does it really make? Our next president will have his or her hands full cleaning up after George W. Bush. In a negative sense, he has already set the agenda for his unfortunate successor. Just getting this country back to normal would be a labor of Hercules. And Hercules isn’t in the race. Politics doesn’t often produce good news, but I am slightly heartened to learn that Congressman Ron Paul is contemplating a run for the presidency. The Texas Republican has now taken the standard preliminary step of forming an exploratory committee….

by Bill Steigerwald – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Guess who was right all along about the folly of going to war in Iraq? That is, not counting Pat Buchanan, this newspaper, 156 members of Congress (seven brave Republicans) and thousands of others who opposed or voted against the Bush administration’s war plans for a multitude of good moral, principled, pragmatic, partisan or personal reasons? The French. No one west of Normandy’s beaches remembers or cares what French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said at the United Nations on Feb. 14, 2003, as President Bush and his neocon missionaries geared up to take down Saddam. Everyone in America was too busy making surrender jokes. But after nearly four years, several thousand deaths and half a trillion U.S. dollars, the arguments Mr. De Villepin made in a vain attempt to cool President Bush’s pre-emptive jets sound pretty sensible, not to mention prescient…

by Tom Piatak – VDARE.com
Shots Fired: Sam Francis on America’s Culture War, the new collection of columns and essays by Sam Francis, reminds us how much we miss Sam Francis, his masterful prose and matchless analysis. One of the essays, Sam’s tribute to University of Dallas historian Mel Bradford, is equally applicable to Sam. Sam noted that Bradford did not fit into Washington, a city “where appearance prevails over substance, where success often depends on forgetting as soon as possible the people and values that got you here in the first place”. Sam described Bradford’s love of the past, and noted that “without consciousness of the past, without remembering who we are, we virtually cease to be human.” Finally, Sam praised Bradford as “a highly serious man who combined the seriousness of the scholar and thinker with the good humor of one who recognizes and comes to be comfortable with his own mortality.” All of these qualities—a preference for substance over style, loyalty to his people and their values, a reverence for the Western tradition, and seriousness leavened with humor—are on display in the essays collected here. Of course, Sam’s sense of humor was not always genial…

Update and Backgrounder on the Michael New Case
One good thing in all this is that the National Institution for Military Justice has filed a “friend of the court” brief on our behalf with the Supreme Court. This is a very respected organization, and has some standing with the SC. In the end, if the Supreme Court refuses to hear our case, or if it rejects our case, then the net result will be that Americans can be forced to serve under foreign commanders, against their will, and their oath of allegiance will no longer be exclusive to America, nor to the US Constitution. If that happens, my friend, then men with understanding will understand that the death knell of the Republic has been sounded, and some will argue that the beginning of the American Empire may well be dated from that very day….

by Bill Conroy – Narco News – National Border Patrol Council
Sutton’s appearance on FoxNews was an effort to spin the story in his favor. He told Hannity and Colmes that the border patrol agents in this case “deliberately lied, deliberately covered-up … and filed false reports” about the shooting of the smuggler, an individual named Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila. Sutton also stressed that the agents were convicted by a jury based on the facts, which he alleged have been distorted by the media. I found Sutton’s comments on national TV very fascinating, given that Sutton has refused to talk to Narco News (or any other media for that matter) about the House of Death mass murder. I find that odd, given his intimate involvement in that case — which also involves acts of violence carried out against Mexican nationals with the involvement of U.S. law enforcers and prosecutors. Surely, though, if Sutton were to finally step into the media limelight to spin out talking points on the House of Death, his defense of actions taken by his office in that case would be grounded on the same philosophic underpinning that he is advancing in the case of the Border Patrol agents…

Glenn Beck Show – CNN Headline News
Then there are the bigger questions, the ones that really make you wonder who is the wizard behind that curtain? For example, why did homeland security staff members tell Congress that the border agents said they intended to shoot Mexicans when we now know that was a lie, an intentional deception of Congress? Why did the staff members also say that the agents admitted that they knew the suspect wasn`t armed when they shot him? Again, something we now know that never happened. Why did the lead prosecutor in the case reportedly infer that going soft on the agents would send the wrong message to Hispanic voters? But here`s the other thing I`m only starting to figure out. An agenda does exist, but don`t we deserve to know what that agenda is? OK. T.J., this is where you lead every time. It goes to conspiracy corner, because it doesn`t make sense. My gut tells me money is exchanging hands. We are looking at Mexico style corruption here. Do you believe that`s even possible? BONNER: It`s possible. You hate to think it, Glenn, because the ramifications are frightening. But it is certainly within the realm of possibility….

by Kevin Mooney – CyberCast News Service
Weeks after accusing President Bush of “shameful” behavior over the imprisonment of two Border Patrol agents who shot an unarmed suspected drug smuggler along the U.S.-Mexico border, a federal lawmaker turned up the heat further Wednesday, suggesting the president should be impeached if the two men are killed in prison. Speaking after the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that agent Ignacio Ramos was assaulted by inmates in his Mississippi prison at the weekend, California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher had a warning for the White House. “I tell you, Mr. President, if these men — especially after this assault — are murdered in prison, or if one of them lose their lives, there’s going to be some sort of impeachment talk in Capitol Hill,” he said during a press conference in Washington, D.C. “The president of the United States talks a lot about his Christian charity, and his religious beliefs,” Rohrabacher said. “He now is showing a mean-spirited side to him, an arrogance, in which he will turn his back, even after one of these officers in prison has been brutally assaulted…

by Jon Basil Utley – AntiWar.com
The murdered Israeli leader Gen. Yitzhak Rabin opposed the First Gulf War in 1990, warning that one never knows when starting a war where it will lead. As Bush and the neocons are reportedly planning to attack Iran, we should all think of the likely consequences. Most Americans already believe that George Bush is not much influenced by facts, but rather by his ideology. Already he is reportedly thinking of his legacy and dreaming that history will prove him “right.” More disturbing are his religious beliefs, in particular his daily readings of Scottish preacher Oswald Chambers, who argues that if plans and events go wrong, it just means that God is testing believers’ faith, not that strategies should be changed. This may also explain Bush’s aversion to diplomacy. After all, God does not “negotiate” with evil. Various reports state that Iran is years away from the ability to produce a single nuke. In a few years’ time the government in Iran could easily change or modify its positions; indeed, already President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is losing power. But time is running out for Bush (although not for America)…

by Paul Craig Roberts
The United States is a failed state, because in the US it is not possible for leadership to emerge. Politics is controlled by powerful interest groups, such as AIPAC, the military-industrial complex, transnational corporations, and “security” agencies that are accumulating vast amounts of unaccountable power. The American people spoke in November and it means nothing whatsoever. The people are enfeebled because the media no longer has independence. The US media serves as propagandist for the state. It cannot be otherwise in a highly concentrated media run not by journalists but by advertising executives protecting stock values that derive from federal broadcast licenses granted by the state. Like the three monkeys, Congress sees no evil, the media speaks no evil, and the people hear no evil. In the US “news” consists of the government’s propaganda. “News” in America is exactly like the “news” in George Orwell’s 1984. The US is a failed state, because it is not true to any of the principles upon which it was established. All over the world today, America is seen as a rogue state, a hegemonic evil, and as the greatest threat to peace and stability. In its new identify, America is the total opposite of the Founding Fathers intention. There is no greater failure than that….

by Robert Kuttner – The Boston Globe
Why does America need more bilateral trade deals, whose purpose is mainly to help US-based industry move production offshore? The liberal Economic Policy Institute (on whose board I serve) has called for a “pause” in such deals until the United States can reassess its economic interest in the face of globalism, and adopt policies to match. It’s one thing for progressive Democratic politicians to raise these issues. But the most remarkable new proposal, in a week when “free trade” was very much on the defensive, came from a group of corporate CEOs, none of whom can be dismissed as self-interested protectionists. The report, released Thursday by the newly organized Horizon Project, called for a healthy economic nationalism, of the sort practiced by every other major trading nation save perhaps Britain. The test, the report argued, should be not what benefits US-based corporations but what is good for America — its workers, communities, technology base, and ultimately its economy….