With the House debate on health care at its hottest, the U.S. Catholic bishops issued a stunning ultimatum: Impose an absolute ban on tax funds for abortions, or we call for defeat of the Pelosi bill.
Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789
by President George Washington
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor, and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanks giving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many single favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.
Soldiers who took part in Israel’s 2008 war on Gaza have spoken out on what they say happened during the 22-day offensive. Now the activist group Breaking the Silence has published soldiers’ testimonies saying crimes were committed, and even encouraged. See fifty-four testimonies of Israeli combat soldiers in the booklet here…
It is ironic that President Barack Obama would travel to China and speak against government control over the internet. If the American Department of Homeland Security has its way new cybersecurity laws will enable Obama’s administration to take control of the internet in the event of a national crisis. How that national crisis might be defined would be up to the White House but there have been some precedents that suggest that the response would hardly be respectful of the Bill of Rights.
On Saturday, November 21st, Alan Dershowitz was appearing at the 92nd Street Y in N.Y.C. to debate a person representing the new lobby, J Street, on the subject of what the future policies of Israel should be. Dershowitz supports Israel’s most aggressive policies. Aware of that, members of the N.Y. group, Jews Say No, gathered outside the Y with signs and leaflets that said “No, not in our name!” and indicated opposition to the ongoing siege of Gaza, the separation wall, the settlements, and the occupation. People carried placards that read:
The man who challenged Al Gore to a debate is furious about the content of the leaked CRU emails — and says why you should be, too.
This is what they did — these climate “scientists” on whose unsupported word the world’s classe politique proposes to set up an unelected global government this December in Copenhagen, with vast and unprecedented powers to control all formerly free markets, to tax wealthy nations and all of their financial transactions, to regulate the economic and environmental affairs of all nations, and to confiscate and extinguish all patent and intellectual property rights.
Three years ago I was invited, along with 30 other guests – mainly politicians and journalists – to a private dinner party given by one of Britain’s richest Jews at a Jerusalem hotel. After a mediocre steak and some fantastic wine, we were addressed by our host. The British media were a disgrace, he told us, “real Goebbels-style.” Their coverage of the Second Lebanon War had totally ruined his summer holiday. And the British politicians, many of whom he had donated to in the past, were with few exceptions “all pusillanimous hypocrites” who had criticized Israel’s “disproportionate” response to Hezbollah’s attacks.
A weird concatenation of events – the Ft. Hood shoot-up, the decision by the Obama administration to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 plotters, and the seizure of a mosque and other properties said to be owned by a front for the Iranian government – has once again brought the question of domestic terrorism to center stage. This underscores a remarkable fact: that the 9/11 attacks, even more than the Japanese strike at Pearl Harbor, have influenced, even dominated, our domestic politics as well as our foreign policy. We are still standing in the long shadow of that event, and nothing, it seems, can haul us out of the dark and back up into the light.
It was the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland that declared “Sentence first! Verdict afterwards.” However, President Barack Obama appears to have taken a lesson our two from her majesty. Today, President Obama assured Americans that they should not be offended by trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court because he will be convicted and executed. I will be discussing this story tonight on MSNBC Countdown.
Thousands of firearms were confiscated from law-abiding gun owners. The police gave no paperwork or receipts for those guns. They just stormed in and seized them.
The American people, barely coping with nearly 20% in actual as opposed to statistical unemployment, a broken health care system, a skyrocketing federal deficit, and a collapse in home values really don’t need another war, but another war is what they are going to get. Blame the usual players in Congress and the mainstream media for a lot of it, but the case being made that Iran is a threat to the remainder of the world is largely being cranked up by Israel and its yapping poodles loosely described as the Israel lobby. That Iran spends only 1% as much on its military as does the United States appears to be irrelevant to the argument because everyone who reads the Washington Post and New York Times knows that those wily mullahs have nukes hidden up the sleeves of those loose gowns that they wear, secret warhead programs, and ballistic missiles that will be able to strike Europe someday for reasons that continue to be somewhat elusive.
It is conventional wisdom that it was the draft that ended the Vietnam war. According to this explanation, cowardly college students subject to the draft and their unpatriotic families, forced an end to the war. This is Karl Marx’s explanation. Material interests, not empty morality, are said to have brought the war to an end.
For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen?
Is it possible we have done an injustice to this man by keeping him locked up all these years without trial? For that is what this trial implies — that he may not be guilty.
When Irving Kristol died on Sept. 18, neoconservatism lost more than just its “godfather.” It lost its most unabashed exponent, “a true, self-confessed—perhaps the only—‘neoconservative,’” as he described himself in the title of a 1979 essay. Others of his persuasion have disclaimed the label, coined as a reproach by the socialist Michael Harrington. But Kristol embraced it. Indeed, he expanded on it, explaining in Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea that he had always been a “neo” of one kind or another: “a neo-Marxist, a neo-Trotskyist, a neo-socialist, a neoliberal, and finally a neoconservative.” After the Bush years, during which defenders of the administration insisted that anyone who spoke of “neoconservatives” really meant “Jews,” it is refreshing to return to Kristol’s frank self-description. He was not coy about his influences, either: he wrote that after Marxist philosopher Sidney Hook, “the two thinkers who had the greatest subsequent impact on my thinking were Lionel Trilling and Leo Strauss.”
Media commentary on the upcoming 9/11 trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has raised concern that state secrets may be divulged, including details about how the Bush administration used torture to extract evidence about al-Qaeda.
“I think that we’re going to shine a light on something that a lot of people don’t want to look at” is how American Civil Liberties Union attorney Denney LeBoeuf put it, according to The New York Times on Saturday.
Outstanding talk by former 27-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern on “Why Accountability for Torture Is Crucial for Human Rights, Our Security and Our Souls” given November 12, 2009 at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus in Seattle. McGovern served under seven U.S. presidents, presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House for many of them. Upon retirement, McGovern was awarded the Intelligence Commendation Medal from George W. Bush (which he later returned).
After President Obama announced he would fight the release of photographs showing American soldiers abusing “war on terror” detainees, Richard Haass, president of the quintessentially mainstream Council on Foreign Relations, said that Obama had learned the difference between campaigning and governing. He wasn’t being sarcastic.
It was said during the presidential campaign that one of the candidates was running for George W. Bush’s third term. Did you think it was Obama?
Obama has been doing a lot of “growing” in office. That’s the term the establishment uses when a candidate who apparently holds maverick views gets into office and abandons those views in favor of views more congenial to the permanent ruling elite.
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