We Knew He was a Tax Cheat, but...

From a  Bloomber News story in the Houston Chronicle

Geithner had AIG hide details about payments to banks

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer's payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.

AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008. The e-mails were obtained by Representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The New York Fed took over negotiations between AIG and the banks in November 2008 as losses on the swaps, which were contracts tied to subprime home loans, threatened to swamp the insurer weeks after its taxpayer-funded rescue. The regulator decided that Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks would be fully repaid for $62.1 billion of the swaps, prompting lawmakers to call the AIG rescue a “backdoor bailout” of financial firms.
“It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important information,” said Issa, a California Republican. Taxpayers “deserve full and complete disclosure under our nation's securities laws, not the withholding of politically inconvenient information.” President Barack Obama selected Geithner as Treasury secretary, a post he took last year.

Read the whole article here.

Steele says Republican Party will "embrace" Tea Partiers

The Republican Party will "embrace" the grassroots conservative and libertarian activists of the tea party movement, the Republican National Committee chairman says. RNC Chairman Michael Steele, appearing today on "Fox and Friends," said the movement "puts in stark relief where the American people are" and asserted it's important for the GOP to "understand this so that we can move towards it, embrace it, and then move into the future."

The moderate-conservative Republican credited the wins of Republican gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey last year on the movement of the GOP toward the positions of the tea party backers, saying, "I think it's what you saw in special elections that have been held since early 2009, where Republicans have won a significant number of special elections." The GOP leader predicted that as the mid-term November 2010 elections approach, it will be "one of those moments where we can crystallize that new foundational support for our principles and tie it" to Republican positions on such issues as healthcare and organized labor.

From UPI via Booker Rising

Riddle me This

From Alamo City Pundit:
Texas Republicans Make Ham-Handed Mis-Step Before 2010 Elections

January 5, 2010 by Johnny Alamo

Republican Party of Texas Welcomes
New Executive Director
January 5, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Austin - The Republican Party of Texas starts the New Year off with a new leader. Chairman Cathie Adams has selected Jesse Lewis to become the Party’s next Executive Director. Mr. Lewis comes to the Party having served here before, as a Field Representative, a Statewide Field Director and its Deputy Political Director from 1999 to 2003. His extensive background includes everything from grassroots work training thousands of candidates, campaign managers and volunteers, to serving on the executive staff of a large state agency, overseeing 90 employees. He also served as Chief of Staff to Texas House Members Arlene Wohlgemuth and Sid Miller.

“Jesse is a remarkable Texan, a remarkable Republican and he’ll be a remarkable leader for our Party,” said Chairman Adams. “Having him at the helm as we enter the crucial 2010 election means that we will have a sure hand who has steadily led many winning campaigns, and whose experience covers every aspect of state politics. We’re excited to have him bring his knowledge and enthusiasm to the Republican Party of Texas.”

“Selected”? What is this “Selected” Crap?!?This is Texas here. We were an Republic before we were even a state, and good men died at the Alam and at Goliad so that free Texans could be free to vote for their representatives....

....Assuming this is the same Jesse Lewis (and Cathie Adams’ statement is deliberately vague in this regard, isn’t it?), it means Jesse Lewis works for the state government in Austin as essentially a PR shill for the Perry Administration.

If you are a Republican or a conservative in Texas, you will want to read the whole article.

C-Span is on the Job

via Wizbang Blog
CSPAN's Brian Lamb to Dems: Open them closed doors

The C-SPAN television network is calling on congressional leaders to open health care talks to cameras -- something President Barack Obama promised as a candidate.

Instead the most critical negotiations on Obama's health plan have taken place behind closed doors, as Republicans repeatedly point out. In a Dec. 30 letter to House and Senate leaders released Tuesday, C-SPAN chief executive Brian Lamb asked for negotiations on a compromise bill to be opened up for public viewing, as Democrats work to reconcile differences between legislation passed by the two chambers.

Real Clear Politics has a video of President Obama saying it would be on C-Span during a Democratic debate of 2009. That was then, this is now.

Are We Actually Going to Start Profiling at Airports

Looks like we are at the overseas locations. You may have already heard this on the news last night.
Obama Administration Orders New Airline Security Directives
by Jake Tapper of ABC News

In the wake of the attempted terrorist bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas Day, the Transportation Security Administration today announced extra security directives to combat threats of terrorist attack, effective Monday, January 4.

"TSA is mandating that every individual flying into the U.S. from anywhere in the world traveling from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest will be required to go through enhanced screening," a statement read. "The directive also increases the use of enhanced screening technologies and mandates threat-based and random screening for passengers on U.S. bound international flights."

A senior official identifies the relevant" countries of interest": Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, or Yemen, or one of the following countries designated as a state sponsor of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria

Read it all here..

A Constitutional Crisis and Security Crisis

So says Andy Mc Carthy in National Review The Constitutional Crisis and the Security Crisis
On detainees, either ignore the judges or rein them in.

We do not want a situation where the executive is defying the courts,” a senior Obama administration official told the Washington Post. The spokesman was rationalizing the administration’s release of jihadist detainees, who are returning to the jihad and targeting Americans. Such defiance, said the official, would be “a recipe for a constitutional crisis.” Evidently, the president doesn’t appreciate that we already have a constitutional crisis.

These are not just bad decisions. They amount to a scandal. Let’s count the ways.

CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS

First, there is the matter of the ongoing constitutional crisis that, as al-Qaeda’s attempted Christmas Day attack amply demonstrates, is now endangering our nation. The Constitution gives the political branches plenary responsibility for the conduct of war. The conduct of war includes the detention, trial, or release of enemy combatants. The federal courts have no role except the one they have usurped. This brazen power grab flouts the bedrock constitutional separation of powers, and the political branches do not have to abide it. Indeed, as national defense is their chief responsibility, it is their duty not to abide it.

This is a long article, well worth reading.

"More fries? Sorry sir, according to the Ministry of Wellness charts, you have exceeded your recommended calorie allotment today."

According to Kevin Ross, writing in the American Thinker, this may be one thing you can expect if the health care bill makes it to the final stages and is signed, sealed and delivered.
The Ministry of Wellness

As a restaurateur, I've been following the heath care debate especially attentively. I have already determined that the health care bill, if passed, will cause a significant reduction in our net profits -- depending on how many employees we can shed. After reading the fifty or so pages of the Senate "Affordable Health Choices Act" devoted to "Employers' Responsibilities," I still have no idea whether my businesses are "small" or "large" -- but I am pretty sure that it will cost me $100-$150 a month in bookkeeping, accounting, and payroll service fees just to find out. Again, I suspect that there will be a distinct incentive to shed employees in order to stay "small."

But what really caught my attention was a part of the Senate bill called "Nutrition Labeling of Standard Menu Items at Chain Restaurants" (Section 325, Subtitle C, "Creating Healthier Communities," of Title III, "Improving The Health Of The American People"). This section requires nutritional content labeling at any point of sale, as well as labeling indicating "a succinct statement concerning suggested daily calorie intake as specified by the Secretary by regulation." Other language in this section gives the secretary the power to determine any nutrient that must be disclosed by regulation. ...

....On nearly every page of the Senate bill is some phrase giving the Secretary of Health and Human Services the statutory power to determine, regulate, and generally micromanage anything related to public health. This is not just insurance, doctors, or hospitals -- but food. Think of the size of the bureaucracy (unionized, of course) that will be needed to write and promulgate these regulations. It is not a stretch to imagine the day when the secretary, at the urging of the department's grant partner, The Center for Science in the Public Interest, will regulate the fat, salt, and sugar content of everything we eat and drink. It's bad enough that the FDA was poised to start regulating food as though it were a controlled substance. Now Congress is codifying food and menu regulations in a health insurance bill? We could soon be living in a sugar-free, low-fat, lactose-intolerant world courtesy of the food police and your local nanny -- I mean, congressperson.

Read it all, I did and thought, "these are not unintended consequences, these are intended consequences," and that is even worse.

Newsbusters says John Laughlin Thinks Freedom is Overrated

He did say that but when you read the whole thing the meaning becomes clearer and I am not sure I don't agree with him. This is what he actually said, 

"The most overrated is freedom," McLaughlin said. "When faced with economic uncertainty, people don't want freedom. When they can't see their economic future, they want the nanny state."

From what I have heard from a lot of callers on C-Span we have a lot of those people in our country. So many, in fact, they elected a man who promised them the nanny state.
The good news is they have now realized the nanny state leads to socialism or fascism and they DO NOT want that. That's why the Democrats are going after the bearer of the bad news, Rasmussen Reports and his polls.

12 Step Program to Defeat the Obama Agenda

by Michael Steele- via Big Government

Exclusive book excerpt: Right Now a Twelve Step Program to defeating the Obama Agenda
These are good words to hear, especially from the head of the Republican Party.

Within our own party, we need to make it clear that from now on there will be a price to pay for abandoning conservative principles. The grassroots – activists from tea parties to town halls – have sent a message: no more ‘fake-it-until-you-make-it’ conservatives. The days of merely espousing conservative principles and then, once elected, governing or legislating without principle, are over.
At least one senator has already got this message – Arlen Specter. In early 2009, after years of distressing votes for big government, Specter’s vote for the stimulus bill provoked an outcry among Pennsylvania’s Republican grassroots. Having barely survived a 2004 primary challenge from principled conservative Pat Toomey, Specter asked me what he could do to mend fences with conservatives. I said he needed to stand with us against card check (which abolishes the secret ballot on forming unions) and against the cap-and-trade carbon cutting scheme.
He agreed, publicly declaring himself against those proposals – and soon after, he abandoned the party and became a Democrat.
All the talk about pushing Specter out of the party, or making it hard for him to stay, was just bunk. For him, the politics of reelection outweighed taking any principled position on the issues.
Since then he has switched his position on card check, and I won’t be surprised if he switches on cap-and-trade. He exposed himself as a political opportunist, and we don’t need political opportunists in our party. If he survives his next primary, my goal will be to retire him....
...outright abandonment in the name of power and acceptance and going along to get along.”
Here’s why we’ve fallen out of touch with typical Americans: we’ve acquiesced to big government, big spending, and increased federal control that diminishes the authority of families and the rights of individuals.
Over time, many of our party’s leaders abandoned conservative principles in a misguided effort to maintain and expand their political influence. We became in many ways just another party of big government. In short, we behaved like Democrats.
Republicans gave in to big government, and we paid the price. The road forward is clear: we need to reclaim conservative values.  (RC emphasis)
We must explain our principles clearly and forcefully, directing our appeal to the American people as a whole—not to balkanized racial groups and competing special interests.

For more from his book click here.  I hope he means what he says here. This is the goal of all the newly formed 912 and other groups who are fighting to bring conservatism, and the constituion, back to the party and our country.

On National Security by A J Strata

I know I have quoted this man a lot lately but he knows what he is talking about. Today he analyses what went wrong and why the dots were not connected.
One Key Problem With Our National Security – It Turned Bureaucratic

One of the major problems with a heavy government hand in key national activities is the tendency for the bureaucrats to take over and lose site of the primary mission. Surprisingly, you find the private sector folks (bias alert, that would be people like me) much more willing to take chances, push the career risk to try something and see if it works or fails, and to ignore building organizations (verses building solutions).

As Rush would say here, "right on, right on."

I was reading up on the 2009 Intelligence Strategy document put out in August by the Director of National Intelligence (the organization created to connect the dots, which runs the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)) and it has some disturbing priorities. To provide some context I must note this document was being published just as young Abdulmutallab was entering Yemen for his training with al Qaeda and months before the Ft Hood massacre. So this document is a good sign of the Obama administration’s focus prior to these re-aligning events. A focus developed from the time they took office to August when the report was produced.

This is just a teaser - go read what he says.

UPDATE: Apparently J. Brennan & E. Holder Turned Down The Sensitivity Of Our National Security Network   Very Important, click title link to read.
By AJStrata on Surveillance: Posted on: Sun, Jan 3 2010 1:47 PM

AP May be Losing Faith in the President's Policies

This is through Yahoo News
Will latest jobs bill really produce jobs?
More spending is certain, more jobs are not in Democrats' new jobs bills
By Jim Abrams, Associated Press Writer

When the Senate takes up a jobs bill later this month or early in February, the debate will center on whether it really will create jobs and be worth plunging the government tens of billions of dollars further into debt.

Republicans scoff at the "Jobs for Main Street Act" title that House Democrats put on their $174 billion package last month. They refer to it as "son of the stimulus," the $787 billion economic recovery plan of nearly a year ago that they say was ineffective at producing jobs.

In its last vote of 2009, the House narrowly passed the bill, 217-212, without a single Republican supporter.

Go read the story here.  It says a lot of what we have been thinking, speaking through Republican spokesmen.

Yemen - The New Big Story

We are getting more and more news stories about Yemen since the Christmas Day almost bomber. Today we have the big news of the US and the UK closing their embassies there. That follows closely on the visit yesterday of General Petraeus. This post from Politco's John Gerswin's "Under the Radar" was posted yesterday before that announcement and shows how totally confused our current administration is on the issue of Yemen.
A new (or old?) halt to Gitmo-Yemen transfers

"The senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing sensitive security matters, said the government was gaining confidence in Yemen’s willingness to handle returning detainees after months of 'intense' talks under the Obama administration, as well as counterterrorism assistance from the United States that dates back to the Bush years....[Sr. Official:] 'That has given us greater confidence that the Yemeni government and president would deal with this issue very seriously.'"

--New York Times, 12/20/2009

"A senior administration official said Thursday that Mr. Obama’s interagency team had already decided quietly several weeks ago that the security situation in Yemen was too volatile to transfer any more detainees beyond six who were sent home in December. The government concluded it had to release those six because it was about to lose habeas corpus hearings in court that would order them freed.

As for the rest, 'we all agreed we couldn’t send people back because of the security situation,' said the official, who like others requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The administration will re-examine the question in late 2010, when an Illinois prison is ready to take remaining Guantánamo detainees, the official said."

--New York Times, 1/1/2010

Hmmm. Is "quietly" a euphemism for "despite telling us more or less the opposite ten days ago"?

The administration's claim that it had, before the Christmas Day bombing attempt, put a halt to Yemen repatriations is also curious since the Washington Post suggested on its front page back on December 18 that the release of the six was a "prelude" to further releases. Shouldn't the White House have leapt up and said, "Actually, no, it isn't?"

And when various members of Congress said we shouldn't send any more detainees to Yemen in the foreseeable future (see here, here, here and here), shouldn't the White House have leapt up and said, "We agree. Never planned to"?

It's also curious that the fact that no more detainees would be sent to Yemen was being touted to reporters as a finding or result of the post-Christmas bombing intelligence review, if indeed such repatriations were halted "quietly several weeks ago."

On the other hand, in the pre-Xmas bombing environment, being candid about a decision not to send more prisoners to Yemen, would have 1) been offensive to the Yemeni government and 2) underscored the instability of the country to which we just sent six former Gitmo prisoners. So the earlier reticence was understandable even if the spin seems a bit whiplash-inducing in retrospect.

Posted by Josh Gerstein 04:55 PM

Even the New York Times?????

A New Zealand professor from New Zealand penned it, but the NYTimes actually ran it as an op-ed.
It’s Always the End of the World as We Know It

No doubt part of the blame must go to those consultants who took businesses and governments for an expensive ride in the lead-up to New Year’s Day. But doom-laden exaggerations about Y2K fell on ears that were all-too receptive. The Y2K fiasco was about more than simple prudence....

This really sounds very familiar, the end is near--Y2K is coming, Global Warming is coming.

....Religions from Zoroastrianism to Judaism to Christianity to U.F.O. cults have been built around notions of sin and the world’s end. The Y2K threat resonated with those ideas. Human beings have constructed an enormous, wasteful, unnatural civilization, filled with sin — or, worse in some minds, pollution and environmental waste. Suppose it turned out that a couple of zeros inadvertently left off old computer codes brought crashing down the very civilization computers helped to create. Cosmic justice!

 

The theme of our fancy inventions ultimately destroying us has been a favorite in fiction at least since Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” We can place alongside this a continuous succession of spectacular films built on visions of the end of the world. Such end-time fantasies must have a profound, persistent appeal in order to keep drawing wide-eyed crowds into movie theaters, as historically they have drawn crowds into churches, year after year.

Apocalyptic scenarios are a diversion from real problems — poverty, terrorism, broken financial systems — needing intelligent attention. Even something as down-to-earth as the swine-flu scare has seemed at moments to be less about testing our health care system and its emergency readiness than about the fate of a diseased civilization drowning in its own fluids. We wallow in the idea that one day everything might change in, as St. Paul put it, the “twinkling of an eye” — that a calamity might prove to be the longed-for transformation. But turning practical problems into cosmic cataclysms takes us further away from actual solutions.

This applies, in my view, to the towering seas, storms, droughts and mass extinctions of popular climate catastrophism. Such entertaining visions owe less to scientific climatology than to eschatology, and that familiar sense that modernity and its wasteful comforts are bringing us closer to a biblical day of judgment. As that headline put it for Y2K, predictions of the end of the world are often intertwined with condemnations of human “folly, greed and denial.” Repent and recycle! (RC emphasis)

Go read it all, it's long but an interesting take on why people fall for these things.

Obama Administration was Warned about the Underwear Bombers

There are a number of stories hitting the blogs this evening about the warning given the administration earlier in the year. I'll list first my favorite, The Strata Sphere.
White House Briefed On Flight 253 Bomb Technology Two Months Prior

Drip, Drip, Drip. As more information is known, the depth of the Obama Administration’s failures continue to deepen and shock. Not only did:

* the NSA pick up chatter in August about al Qaeda planning attacks on the US with a “Nigerian” - possibly going by the name Umar Farouk,

* the NSA pick up Nigerian Umar Farouk Adbulmutallab this fall communicating with radical Yemen cleric and al Qaeda recruite al-Aulaqi sometime this fall,

* the the UK revoke Abdulmutallab’s student visa earlier this year (and in all likelihood notified the US),

* Abdulmutallab’s father alert the US State Department and CIA of his sons radicalization while in Yemen in November,

* Yemen know Umar Faroul Abdulmutallab was in Yemen from August to early December,

* a Somali man get stopped by Somali airport security attempting to use the same sophisticated stealth bomb in November as Abdulmutallab used,

* the President get a briefing on December 22nd about some kind of holiday attack.

It turns out the White House was also briefed in October regarding this exact same explosive device – and its ability to make it pass airport screening systems:

White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan was briefed in October on an assassination attempt by Al Qaeda that investigators now believe used the same underwear bombing technique as the Nigerian suspect who tried to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, U.S. intelligence and administration officials tell NEWSWEEK.

Go read the rest of this.

Politico Lists 25 Politicians to Watch in 2010

From Politico:

Nearly everything that occurs in Washington this year will take place against an important and unavoidable backdrop—the combined total of more than 500 House, Senate and gubernatorial races on the 2010 ballot.

Within that expansive political universe, there is a small galaxy of candidates and officeholders whose actions—or reactions—are especially consequential and worth watching because of the role they will play in shaping the legislative or political environment.

Here is POLITICO’s list of 25 of politicians to watch in 2010.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.)
Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.)
Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.)
Maine State Senate President Libby Mitchell (D)
Marco Rubio (R)
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)
Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.)
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.)
Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.)
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.)
Gov. Deval Patrick (D-Mass.)
California Attorney General Jerry Brown (D)
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.)
Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden (D)
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.)
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)
Sarah Palin (R)
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.)
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas)
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.)
Rod Blagojevich (D)
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (D)

I'm surprised Michelle Bachman is not on the list.  For details and explanations as to why each politician is listed go here.

Clueless

by Linda Chavez
from townhall.com

Clueless. It’s the word that best describes the Obama administration’s first year in office. They’ve proven themselves clueless about creating jobs; clueless about handling growing nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea; and now, most devastatingly, clueless about protecting Americans from terrorist attacks on our own soil. And with nearly one year under the belts, they can’t keep blaming the Bush administration for everything that goes awry.

It is hard to imagine a more incompetent handling of the thwarted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. jetliner. First, the commander in chief was too busy enjoying his vacation in Hawaii to do much more than issue platitudinous assurances that he was "actively monitoring" the incident, while dispersing White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to the weekend talk shows to downplay the significance of the event.

Read entire article here

Blazing New Trails? Maybe Not

Mark Tapiscott analyses this article much better than I can.  Read his essay, then if  you want to go to the original article follow his links.
New Media leader exposes myth of Obama's 'bottom-up' Internet-driven 2008 campaign

UPDATED: More storm clouds gathering on the Left

End-of-year media pieces tend to be boring rehashes but occasionally a thoughtful person will use the opportunity for some genuinely original and useful thinking about the most recent past. Such is Micah Sifry's powerful and significant post on Personal Democracy Forum's Tech President, "The Obama disconnect: What happens when myth meets reality."

Remember how the Mainstream Media endlessly told us in 2008 about how the Obama campaign was blazing new trails by raising millions of dollars of campaign donations and creating the first-ever bottom-up, people-driven Internet-focused presidential campaign apparatus?

Sifry's post is a must-read for those across the political spectrum who seek to understand why the truth about the Obama campaign in 2008 was almost exactly the opposite of that mythic rendition that was at the heart of the conventional wisdom.

Sifrty's post also makes clear why many of the Obama administration's major political and personnel decisions events of 2009 make little sense apart from that truth.

Sifry summarizes the difference between the truth and the myth at the outset of his post, noting that "the truth is that Obama was never nearly as free of dependence on big money donors as the reporting suggested, nor was his movement as bottom-up or people-centric as his marketing implied.

"And this is the big story of 2009, if you ask me, the meta-story of what did, and didn't happen, in the first year of Obama's administration. The people who voted for him weren't organized in any kind of new or powerful way, and the special interests--banks, energy companies, health interests, car-makers, the military-industrial complex--sat first at the table and wrote the menu. Myth met reality, and came up wanting.  Read the rest.

Health Care Bill Doesn't Fix It

Senate health-care bill would still leave millions uninsured

Even as Democrats seek the biggest expansion of health coverage in decades, as many as 23 million people could still be without insurance by 2018, illustrating the complexity of achieving the long-held Democratic goal of universal health care.

 Read the whole story.  In my opinion this bill is a farce that will impose restrictions on healthcare, change the health care system in numerous ways and in time will destroy the American way of health care that has been so remarkable.

Michael Yon from Afghanistan

A heart wrenching report from Afghanistan.
Into Thine Hand I Commit My Spirit
Arghandab, Afghanistan
New Year's Eve, 2009
On this small base surrounded by a mixture of enemy and friendly territory, a memorial has been erected just next to the Chapel. Inside the tepee are 21 photos of 21 soldiers killed during the first months of a year-long tour of duty. The fallen will belong forever to the honor rolls of the 1-17th Infantry Battalion, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and they will join the sacred list of names of those who have given their lives in service of the United States of America.
  Go to Michael's blog and read this completely. Then subscribe to his newsletter and support his efforts in reporting this war.
Be sure to  pray for those who are there and those who are grieving today for the loss of the military and the CIA. Pray for our country.

Blackwater Charges Dropped

From the Washington Post:
Judge dismisses charges against Blackwater guards in Iraq deaths
By Del Quentin Wilber

A federal judge dismissed charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in a controversial shooting in a busy Baghdad square two years ago in a ruling that sharply criticized the tactics of Justice Department prosecutors handling the case.

The judge, Ricardo M. Urbina of the District's federal court, found that prosecutors and agents had improperly used statements that the guards provided to the State Department in the hours and days after the shooting. The statements had been given with the understanding that they would not be used against the guards in court, the judge found, and federal prosecutors improperly used them to help guide their investigation. Urbina said other Justice Department lawyers had warned the prosecutors to tread carefully around the incriminating statements.

"In their zeal to bring charges," Urbina wrote in a 90-page opinion, "prosecutors and investigators aggressively sought out statements in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and in the subsequent investigation. In so doing, the government's trial team repeatedly disregarded the warnings of experienced, senior prosecutors, assigned to the case specifically to advise the trial team" on such matters.

The five Blackwater guards -- a sixth has pleaded guilty -- were indicted in December 2008 on manslaughter and weapons charges accusing them of killing and injuring unarmed civilians.

We may never know all the facts on this case but I hope this is an attention getting action for the DOJ when they consider charges against others who were acting in a war zone, and not charge them as if they were in a peaceful, civilian area. Read it all.