The Few

Mudville Gazette  "Marine Corps Times: Ambush survivor up for Medal of Honor." "The Marine Corps has recommended that a former corporal receive the Medal of Honor for braving a hail of enemy fire in September 2009 to pull the bodies of four U.S. troops from a kill zone in eastern Afghanistan, Marine Corps Times has learned."

"That story touched off a few debates over Rules of Engagement, the Army's support to Marines, and the general direction of the Afghan war."

HOWTO: Write a Good E-Mail

Cracking Chris Short It is embarrassing to read comments and columns that have been done at a high-school level as far as quality goes. This is private and just between  us conservatives: write as if you have some education so your opinions will be respected.

"E-mail is a(sic)* probably the most overused form of communication out there today. It is also probably one of the most poorly used communication methods on the planet. Here is a quick rundown on how not to look like a moron via e-mail."
*Irony alert.

Ted Koppel’s Delusions About TV News

Ron Radosh  "It was true that back then, the networks tried to pretend to be non-partisan and objective. They forbade their employees, for example, to attend anti-war marches even if they were completely partisan and on the movement’s side. An old friend of mine was a top producer in those years for 60 Minutes, and she recently told me of her conversations with the president of CBS News in which she argued with him that the entire news division should be allowed to protest the war and attend rallies if they wished. He turned her down, but her partisanship — and that of her colleagues — was apparent, and readily visible in the stories they put on the air."

Trying terrorists in civilian courts

Judge Excludes Damning Testimony Against Al Qaeda Terrorist, Ahmed Ghailani  "The government’s case against Ahmed Ghailani, the terrorist who participated in al Qaeda’s bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, took a major hit on Wednesday. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled that the government was prohibited from introducing a key witness. Why? Because the government learned about this witness’s identity during the CIA’s so-called enhanced interrogations of Ghailani. Therefore, this evidence is supposedly tainted – or “fruit of the poisoned tree.” "

The Obama administration is taking an Alinskyite approach to the prosecution of Ahmed Ghailani.
By Andy McCarthy. "Military commissions are not kangaroo courts. The administration has affirmed this, however reluctantly, by endorsing them. If they are too politically freighted for Obama to direct them for the likes of Ghailani, there is no reason we can’t design a new system for national-security cases — one that ensures fairness and trustworthy results without arming the enemies of humanity with a lawfare arsenal. All it takes is the courage to admit error and the will to correct it. That may be too much for those in the Alinsky thrall, but it would be a worthy task for a new Congress."

Investors Business Daily

A Failing Agenda Fails (Updated)

http://townhall.com/cartoons/cartoonist/GaryVarvel

Heritage  ...“Obama’s decision to allow the talks to collapse—and make no mistake, the decision was made at the presidential level—was a colossal blunder. It reflects serious shortcomings in his strategic thinking since it will have dramatic repercussions for U.S. foreign policy. Not only does it show the emperor has no clothes when claiming he favors free trade, but unless he can get this back in the very quick order he referenced in Seoul, the U.S. will lose all credibility in pushing other trade issues, such as the nine-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal."...

President Obama's disastrous Asia trip reveals the monumental decline in American power.

By Eliot Spitzer in  Slate Magazine " The president of the United States went as a supplicant to Asia, and he returned spurned and lonely. President Obama's trip to Asia may turn out to have been a more important event than the midterm elections, for it was in Asia that the new world order—and America's diminished place in it—became apparent."  Weasel Zippers photo

Smackdown in Seoul: Obama Gets an ‘F’ in South Korea  "The president has just created a rift with a nation of increasing importance to the United States."

http://townhall.com/cartoons/cartoonist/LisaBenson

Great news: Dems ready to push amnesty during lame duck session

Hot Air "‘READY’ ON IMMIGRATION: Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) told reporters on Monday that he might meet with President Obama this week to talk about a way to pass immigration legislation during Congress’s lame-duck session."
Photo: Weasel Zippers

OBAMA AND REID TO PANDER TO LATINO VOTERS AND ATTEMPT TO PASS AN AMNESTY BILL DURING LAME DUCK SESSION    

Gingerbread 'person', the PC pudding: Now even biscuits can't escape the politically correct brigade

UK Daily Mail   "In the nursery rhyme, the Gingerbread Man fled from the clutches of an old woman and her husband.But now he has been cornered by an even more unforgiving foe – political correctness.

Council bureaucrats have stripped gingerbread men of their gender and renamed them gingerbread ‘persons’ on menus for 400 primary schools.

Via Neal Boortz

Illegal Immigrants Flee Arizona Enforcement, Sanctuary Cities Attract Them

Heritage  "Our work (along with many others) to guide states and localities resulted in SB1070. More states are looking to follow Arizona’s lead. With the exodus occurring in Arizona, other states should make sure they don’t become the next home for those fleeing Arizona.

"Conversely, the Center for Immigration Studies released a report showing that $62.2 million in federal funds were sent to sanctuary cities to cover the costs of illegal immigrants. As pointed out by CIS, these sanctuary cities welcome illegal immigrants, but quickly ask the rest of the country to subsidize the costs of those policies."Emphasis added.

Westboro Baptist Protesters Get Tires Slashed Following Protest Saturday

Hot Air Pundit  "To make matters worse, as their minivan slowly hobbled away on two flat tires, with a McAlester police car following behind, the protesters were unable to find anyone in town who would repair their vehicle, according to police."

One and done: To be a great president, Obama should not seek reelection in 2012

Photo: http://terrellaftermath.com/

Douglas E. Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell  "We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents.

"The best way for him to address both our national challenges and the serious threats to his credibility and stature is to make clear that, for the next two years, he will focus exclusively on the problems we face as Americans, rather than the politics of the moment - or of the 2012 campaign."

Dead Souls

Victor Davis Hanson "Here is a daily inanity: “The great majority of Muslims are moderates,” and its ancillary “Only a tiny percentage of Muslims are terrorists.” Both are true, but they have value as admonishments only if there were a widespread Western effort to demonize Islam and persecute Muslims, or we knew that mass destruction required millions of conventional troops. But neither is true.
"Last year anti-Semitic hate crimes far outnumbered attacks in America on Muslims."

Barack and unintended consquences

American Thinker "This man and his administration are completely oblivious to the unintended consequences of their policies and actions."....
"Don't you think that players like George Soros, (who said, with no regrets, that the main lesson he learned from his collaboration with the Nazis' persecution of Jews, was to think ahead) is preparing to "have a good year" much like he had in profiting from the global fiscal crisis of 2009? And at who's expense?"

Cartoon:  http://terrellaftermath.com/

'Vanity, thy name is Obama'  ""American Narcissus" (article below) may deal with a familiar subject to AT readers. Several contributors have highlighted this aspect of Obama's personality since before he was elected. But Last has a good eye for the absurd, as well as being able to place Obama's vanity into a context that shows how it damages his presidency and the nation:"

Narcissus "was a hunter from the territory of Thespiae in Boeotia who was renowned for his beauty. He was exceptionally proud, in that he disdained those who loved him. As divine punishment he fell in love with his own reflection in a pool, not realizing it was merely an image, and he wasted away to death, not being able to leave the beauty of his own reflection."

This is the Moment "On the night that [Obama] defeated Hillary Clinton in the primaries, the hand of fate was so clear to him he could proclaim:

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.

American Narcissus/ The vanity of Barack Obama "Obama’s vanity is even more jarring when paraded in the foreign arena. In April, Poland suffered a national tragedy when its president, first lady, and a good portion of the government were killed in a plane crash. Obama decided not to go to the funeral. He played golf instead. Though maybe it’s best that he didn’t make the trip. When he journeyed to Great Britain to meet with the queen he gave her an amazing gift: an iPod loaded with recordings of his speeches and pictures from his inauguration."