Nancy Pelosi; in her own words (Updated post)

GaryVarvel, World Mag

NY Times  Question: "As the speaker of the House of Representatives, where Democrats just lost 60-odd seats as well as their controlling majority, you led your party into the worst electoral defeat in decades. And yet you chose to run for Democratic leader in the next Congress. Why not just step down?" And she answered, Wellll...

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Mike Ramirez, World Mag

The Ground Zero Mosque Holds the Key to the Attack on America

Big Peace  "...Did Osama bin Laden really think he could conquer the U.S.A. with nineteen jihadists, wielding boxcutters?

"Yes. And he may very well be right. America is under siege from an enemy who doesn’t need the blitzkrieg tactics of tanks, infantry, artillery and air power. These enemy combatants use bursts of violence to terrify us; then, they smile and overwhelm us with floods of radical asylum seekers, hate preachers and Ph.D. students. When the time is right, they unleash bare-knuckled threats and intimidation, demands for special privileges, decimation of our free speech, cooption of our ruling class, and relentless legal warfare, in which they turn our own laws against us. Right now, they’re winning."

A Triumphal Mosque  "...When a mosque is open, there's a claim of territory. When you open a mosque it establishes Islamic law within the purview of the mosque. There is a history of Islam putting up mosques that are associated with claims of victory.""

Netanyahu Needs to Stop Appeasing Obama

Rachel Ehrenfeld  "When Netanyahu caved in to the Obama administration by freezing Israeli construction in November 2009 as a prerequisite to renewed negotiations with the Palestinian Authority (PA), opponents of the move cautioned that the freeze would set a dangerous precedent. It would, they argued, reset the bar for Israeli concessions to any future engagements with the Palestinian Authority. The freeze also weakens Israel’s sovereignty over the land, advancing Palestinian claims of disputed ownership of the territory."  Via Big Peace

A New Era: American Hegemony

Financial Times Deutschland, Germany  "At one time Bill Clinton sometimes came to similar summits an hour late for no reason, and all the others had to wait for him. Obama is more polite and punctual. However, it is no longer certain that they would wait for him as well."

Ghailani Verdict Links

Weekly Standard "Senator Webb: Ghailani Verdict Affirms Need for Military Commissions"
 Link: "The new commission system is consistent with international standards. Moreover, it balances robust procedural and substantive rights for the defendants, including prohibiting the introduction of evidence obtained through torture, against the reality that these are not common criminals but violators of the law of war.”"  Senator Jim Webb

Wrong Again On Terror Trials    “You’ll recall that Attorney General Holder assured the American people last year that Ghailani would not be acquitted of the charges against him." Sen.Mitch McConnell

Justice Was Not Done "The civilian prosecution of Ahmed Ghailani was a misadventure because politics was permitted to trump justice and, predictably, justice was not done. "  Andy McCarthy

The Ghailani Debacle  "In other words, what in the world was the bomber doing in an Article III courtroom? He was, quite bluntly, part of a stunt by the Obama administration, which had vilified Bush administration lawyers for failing to accord terrorists the full panoply of constitutional rights available to American citizens who are arrested by police officers and held pursuant to constitutional requirements." Jennifer Rubin

Civilian Trials for Terror Suspects and America’s Image Abroad  "For all President Obama’s miscalculation in sending Ghailani to a normal criminal court, he also remains committed to holding some detainees indefinitely simply because of the risk they would pose — a risk that has been amply documented by the number of Gitmo detainees released by the Bush administration who have gone back to terrorism."  Max Boot

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

Ghailani Trial Provides Road Map to Victory for Future Terror Detainees  'The trial also provided a legal roadmap for future detainees to escape entirely, or like Ghailani, to severely limit the scope of conviction should the Department of Justice attempt to continue with this misguided policy.'

Professor Richard Lindzen’s Congressional Testimony

Watts Up With That? "Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating."

Don't touch my junk

Charles Krauthammer "We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety - 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling - when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.
"The junk man's revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy. "
Remember the villain is not the poor, put-upon inspector at the security gate; it is the oppressive force of political-correctness that suffocates us all.

For the GOP, California is a deep blue hole

LA Times  "The negative overlay both explained and helped determine the fates of the party's candidates in November. As a GOP tide swept the nation, Republicans here lost all statewide offices, with one contest, for attorney general, still unresolved but leaning toward the Democrat. Republicans here also failed to gain any congressional seats and lost a legislative seat."

'Captain Kinetic' receives Military Cross for holding off Taliban's Zulu-style attack with his men using fixed bayonets

UK Daily Mail  "The combat was so fierce that soldiers were ordered to fix bayonets as the insurgents pushed to within just 30 metres of the tiny compound's mud walls.

"Had the patrol base been over-run, it would have been a catastrophic defeat that could have threatened the UK mission in central Helmand.

"But at the end of six weeks of attacks, the soldiers of 5 Platoon, No 2 Company, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards had killed at least 84 of the enemy while barely suffering an injury themselves."

Bristol the Pistol

Jeannie DeAngelis  "How ironic, liberals blaming excessive voting for an "undeserving" contestant being in contention to win the "whole shebang." If the coveted, oversized mirror ball trophy finds a home with Bristol ‘the pistol' way up in Wasilla, Alaska, liberals are the reason. Wasn't it two just years ago that "democracy at work" taught Dancing with the Stars viewers to vote for an unqualified, "ubiquitous" candidate who ended up walking away with the ultimate prize? "

New battle lines in the fog of ObamaCare

American Thinker "An assortment of unions, including the United Federation of Teachers, are among 111 entities receiving ObamaCare waivers, reports the Examiner. Also notable on the waiver list are health insurers Aetna and Cigna."

A Time for Strength‪

National Review  "The current environment requires clear, decisive leadership, and President Obama is not providing it.
"The ruling in the Ghailani case makes clear that President Obama’s decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other Gitmo detainees in civilian courts was a mistake and will not work. The Ghailani case was supposed to be the easy one, yet the Obama administration failed. "....
"...we should all have grave concerns about President Obama’s overall approach to national security. His artificial 2011 deadline to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan has led to confusion and a guessing game on the ground about Washington’s long-term intentions."

Terror-trial travesty    "Defense lawyers had argued that Ghailani's disclosures were inadmissible because they were coerced -- and prosecutors were loath to risk having their entire case tossed by the judge.
"Under normal circumstances, that's fine. But this case involved a foreigner making war on America.
"The result: A bloody-handed terrorist will now largely escape accountability for his heinous acts.
"Yes, Ghailani is facing 20 years to life -- but that's only about a month for each of the 224 people he helped kill.
"Team Obama is still trying to figure out what to do about KSM & Co. There's no longer any question: Trying them in a civilian court would invite disaster. "