Look for the Union Fable

Ann Coulter  "Government unions have nothing in common with private sector unions because they don't have hostile management on the other side of the bargaining table. To the contrary, the "bosses" of government employees are co-conspirators with them in bilking the taxpayers."....

http://townhall.com/cartoons/lisabenson

"Democrats buy the votes of government workers with generous pay packages and benefits -- paid for by someone else -- and then expect a kickback from the unions in the form of hefty campaign donations, rent-a-mobs and questionable union political activity when they run for re-election."

UN Asks Lefty Hollywood to Write Global Warming Propaganda Into Movie Story Lines…

Weasel Zippers  "Now the beleaguered multi-national agency, fresh from a disappointing round of climate negotiations in Cancun, wants something more concrete: actual story lines in movies, television and social media drawing attention to the dangers of global warming."

Breaking: Obama to abandon DOMA defense

Hot Air  "President Obama has decided that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and has asked his Justice Department to stop defending it in court, the administration announced today.
"“The President believes that DOMA is unconstitutional. They are no longer going to be defending the cases in the 1st and 2nd circuits,” a person briefed on the decision said."

Obama Won't Go to Court Over Defense of Marriage Act  Attorney General Eric Holder "said that Obama also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, which defines “spouse” as a member of the opposite sex, “fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the president has instructed the department not to defend the statute in such cases. I fully concur with the president’s determination.”

Government Unions vs American Taxpayers

Heritage  "Conservative governors across the nation should absolutely work to reform the way public-sector unions drain our economy. As Governor Christie told MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ today: “We’re not trying to break the unions, the unions are trying to break the middle class.”"

http://townhall.com/cartoons/henrypayne

Civility from the left

Skip Maclure

Wisconsin Unions vs. The Tea Party: A Classic Double Standard  "A story-by-story analysis by the Media Research Center shows the Wisconsin protests are a perfect case study in the media’s longstanding double standard favoring left-wing causes while demonstrating much more hostility to the Tea Party and conservative protest."

Can American Values Radicalize Muslims?

Raymond Ibrahim  "In fact, far from eliminating radicalization, there is reason to believe that Western values can actually exacerbate Islamist tendencies. It is already known that Western concessions to Islam — in the guise of multiculturalism, "cultural sensitivity," political correctness, and self-censorship — only bring out the worst in Islamists. Yet even some of the most prized aspects of Western civilization — personal freedom, rule of law, human dignity — when articulated through an Islamist framework, have the capacity to "radicalize" Muslims."

But That’s What Community Organizers Do

Victor Davis Hanson   "So we should cease being surprised that the president editorializes about extraneous issues while ignoring critical ones, or that the administration is now addressing breast pumps, or that Obama has ignored the findings of his own debt commission, or that he has added 200,000 new federal workers at a time of fiscal insolvency, and on and on.
"You see, that is what community organizers do, now and in the past."

http://townhall.com/cartoons/mikelester

The US and the Revolutions

 Blackfive   "A few thoughts on the revolutions, and how to respond.  Responses are meant to be effective without opening a new ground war, which is a condition that has to be avoided for obvious reasons."....
"We can imagine the heartening effect among the protestors of seeing US warplanes guarding them above. We can also imagine the effect the memory of that sight will have on post-revolutionary Libya."

US warships box in Iranian flotilla, delay Suez passage

USS Enterprise

DEBKAfile  "The Iranian warships found themselves cheek to jowl with a major concentration of America naval might piling up in the Red Sea and Suez and were not sure what would happen if they went forward with their mission to transit the Suez Canal for the Mediterranean for the first time in 30 years on their way to Syria."

Cables show China used debt holdings to press US

Breitbart  "China's clout -- gleaned from its nearly $900 billion stack of US debt -- has been widely commented on in the United States, but sensitive cables show just how much influence Beijing has and how keen Washington is to address its rival's concerns.
"An October 2008 cable, released by WikiLeaks, showed a senior Chinese official linking questions about much-needed Chinese investment to sensitive military sales to Taiwan. "

What Unions Do: How Labor Unions Affect Jobs and the Economy

Heritage  "What do unions do? The AFL-CIO argues that unions offer a pathway to higher wages and prosperity for the middle class. Critics point to the collapse of many highly unionized domestic industries and argue that unions harm the economy. To whom should policymakers listen? What unions do has been studied extensively by economists, and a broad survey of academic studies shows that while unions can sometimes achieve benefits for their members, they harm the overall economy." Hat tip to Neal Boortz, who also contributed this:

And this:

Plus these videos: MEGYN KELLY TAKES ON WI TEACHERS' UNION PRESIDENT

How often does the president of the AFL-CIO speak to somebody in the White House?

How the GOP Can Win the Budget Battle

Wall Street Journal  "Democrats will bewail every domestic program cut. Can Republicans convince the public we can't afford to play this game any longer?" Fred Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a commentator on Fox News Channel.

Shutdown: Does GOP have the edge this time?  "It all adds up to this: Republicans have less to fear from a government shutdown now than they did when they endured the blame 15 years ago — at least that’s the thinking in some GOP circles."

http://townhall.com/cartoons/glennfoden

It's Crunch Time for Organized Labor .

Former Gov. Ted Strickland (D., Ohio)
speaks to protesters in Columbus.


.

Heritage  "Gov. Walker and other Republicans say they have no choice as states struggle to cover huge budget gaps. Gov. John Kasich, who is pushing a similar measure in Ohio over heated union opposition, says the moves are not an attack on unions, but an effort "to restore some balance."

""We have finally elected people who are doing what they said they would do," said U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, the newly elected Republican from Wisconsin, who supports efforts to trim labor's powers. "I certainly hope that voters will stand by Gov. Walker when he makes these tough decisions.""

Admiral Provides Details of Somali Piracy Killings

GlobalSecurity.org   "The admiral gave a timeline of the action. Pirates captured the vessel about 190 nautical miles southeast of Masirah Island, Oman, Feb. 18. Four U.S. Navy warships responded: the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, the guided-missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf and the guided-missile destroyers USS Sterett and USS Bulkeley.
"The ships found the vessel and made contact with the pirates via bridge-to-bridge radio, and began a series of negotiations. Yesterday, two pirates boarded the USS Sterett to continue negotiations.

Southern California residents Jean Adam,
 66, and her husband, Scott, 70, were in
 the  seventh year of an off-and-on,
 round-the-world
 trip on their beloved sloop, Quest.
 (Del Rey Yacht Club / October 20, 2005)

"“At 8 a.m. this morning … a rocket-propelled grenade was fired by the pirates from the Quest toward the Sterett,” Fox said. “Immediately thereafter, gunfire erupted from inside the cabin of the Quest. Several pirates appeared on the deck of the Quest and moved up to the bow with their hands in the air in surrender.”"

Four Americans, including Southern California couple, are killed by Somali pirates, U.S. officials say  "Such a jarring end to what had seemed a charmed life devastated scores of people around Southern California, in the array of communities they touched — at Fuller Theological Seminary, where Scott Adam was a long-time student; in the television industry, where he had worked in production and direction; among patients Jean Adam had treated as a dentist; and in Marina del Rey, where the couple hosted deck-top dinners and holiday parties with Christmas lights wound through the rigging of their yacht."  Remember that LA is the home of Michael Moore and Oliver Stone; you may expect the LA Times to run some columns on understanding-the-poor-pirates-side-of-things in three...two...one.