Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles try to scare America into doing something about the deficit.

Slate "In their deficit-reduction plan, all budgets would be eventually balanced, all ledgers in the black. Earmarks would no longer exist, nor would tax expenditures. More Americans would pay federal income taxes, if at lower rates.
"Then cuts, lots of cuts, cuts making up more than half of the chairs' proposal. Seniors would work longer and get less from Social Security in many cases, for instance. Dozens of federal programs would face the axe. The National Zoo would start charging admission."

Obama's Malignant Narcissism

American Thinker  "I don't think we've had this extreme and radical a president ever before in American history. Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR took radical actions, but only at a time of huge national crises. We don't have a national crisis today. Obama is our national crisis."

I'm sure he means that in a nice way. 

"This is why the People have Thrown You Out"

Atlas Shrugs “There's nothing about -- because it's all rigged," Bennet said. "I mean, the whole conversation is rigged. The fact that we don’t get to a discussion before the break about what we’re going to do in the lame duck -- is just rigged. This stuff’s rigged.”

This is a great reaction by republican Rep. Steve Buyer of Indiana  "When Indiana Republican Rep. Steve Buyer sought recognition to speak for five minutes about legislation dealing with veteran’s issues, Rep. Laura Richardson, the presiding speaker, looks confused and seemed to look like she is taking direction from someone on how to react. You may say she almost looks like an Obama zombie.
"Richardson keeps turning down the request and keeps asking an empty House if someone objects to Buyer speaking. No one does. Yet she keeps asking and waiting for an answer!"

California, There It Went

Google Cartoons

Jennifer Rubin  "As promised, Prop 13 drastically reduced property taxes and permitted residential homes to be re-assessed only at the time of sale, fixes that relieved homeowners of the heavy tax burden that had fueled the revolt. But Prop 13 had other effects as well. Local governments lost nearly a quarter of their revenue, and the state, which was then flush with cash, stepped in to take over school and social-welfare funding. This centralized spending in Sacramento and made the state capital an unparalleled target of opportunity for special-interest groups, which became expert in navigating the unwieldy bureaucracy and convoluted budgeting apparatus."

Did the Obama Administration Truly Want to Stop WikiLeaks?

Big Peace   "The leaks show America as pusillanimous, feckless, and blundering. While the State Department apparently pegs many world problems correctly – Russia is indeed turning away from democracy, North Korea works with Iran, China hires computer hackers to target US websites, and the Iranian regime is Hitlerian – the State Department has no solutions whatsoever to these pressing problems. The same countries we have correctly labeled problematic are treated with kid gloves, handed re-set buttons, and sold US debt.

"So here’s the question: why did the Obama Administration allow WikiLeaks to move forward with this information?"

Emphasis added

Mike Huckabee: Leaker should be executed  "“They’ve put American lives at risk,” Huckabee said. “They put relationships that will take decades to rebuild at risk. They knew full well that they were handling sensitive documents, they were entrusted. And anyone who had access to that level of information was not only a person who understood what their rules were, but they also signed under oath a commitment that they would not violate. They did. … Any lives they endangered, they’re personally responsible for and the blood is on their hands.” "

Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle

Wikileaks a terrorist organization? "What to do? Durn .. this one is tough. I always default to freedom. I believe that once the media has this information the protections of a free press come into play. As for this Julian Assange character ... clearly he dislikes America intensely and seeks to weaken our country. That's not a crime. In fact, that makes him not unlike our esteemed ruler.

"The solution here is, I'm afraid, to lick our wounds and do something about protecting our classified material. As for this Army PFC being held at Quantico? If it's proven that he's the one who leaked the information to Assange ... then it's a firing squad."

Russians targeting Wikileaks to stop new data dump  "Russia will most likely contain itself to cyberwarfare on a massive scale to shut down Assange rather than violence. If they succeed, they may wind up doing Barack Obama a huge favor, since the continuing exposure of communications data has the White House continually on the defensive. But if someone winds up grabbing Assange, he may want to pray that it’s the Americans rather than the FSB."


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

Interpol Issues Red Notice For Wikileaks Founder Traitor/Pervert

"A Red Notice is kind of international wanted poster seeking the provisional arrest of a fugitive, with an eye towards extradition to the nation that issued the underlying arrest warrant. Interpol transmits the notices to its 188 member countries, including Britain, where Assange is believed to be located. Interpol has no authority to compel a subject’s arrest. It issued 5,020 Red Notice last year for a variety of crimes."

The Slippery Slope Toward National Science Standards

Heritage  "National standards—in any subject—are bad policy. They are unlikely to result in high standards but rather the standardization of learning. They would also result in the standardization of mediocrity, because the rigor and content of national standards would tend to align with the mean among states, weakening states with higher quality standards such as Massachusetts, California, and Virginia. But perhaps worst of all, national standards would further diminish parental authority in education. The federal government would gain more power over education as a result, which would come at the expense of parents and local communities."

Texas Social Studies Standards Promote the Blessings of Liberty  "(In fact, in the 1990s, the federal government tried to create history standards. They ended up being so anti-American, however, that they were unanimously rejected.)
"While some liberal media outlets were prompted to call Texas’s standards “propaganda,” the outcome was in fact a strong set of social studies standards that emphasize the American founding, highlight the role of free-market enterprise in American economic success, and institute “Celebrate Freedom Week.”"

Karzai and the Scent of U.S. Irresolution

Good neighbors

FOUAD AJAMI "A big American project, our longest war, is now waged with doubt and hesitation, and our ally on the scene has gone rogue, taking the coin of our enemies and scoffing at our purposes. Unlike the Third World clients of old, this one does not even bother to pay us the tribute of double-speak and hypocrisy. He is a different kind of client, but then, too, our authority today is but a shadow of what it once was."

Victor Davis Hanson: The Confused Morality of WikiLeaks

National Review "Under Bush, press discussion of leaks focused on their embarrassing contents (after all, it was supposedly a higher calling that made brave whistle-blowers release confidential communications emanating from the Bush-Cheney right-wing nexus). In contrast, the press now seems more interested in responses of “How dare they” to the WikiLeaks methodology — as in, how could one be allowed to break laws and leak things from the Obamian State Department, if doing so might harm liberal diplomats, human-rights activists, etc., and embarrass a progressive government?"

The Arab Press on Wikileaks

Yes, the truth hurts "One question yet to be answered is whether the US can ever be trusted again. Will the leaks cause a major rift between the superpower and the rest of the world or will most countries try to play the controversy down? All that we know for sure is this: With a lot more secrets bursting to get out of the box, Obama and his administration are in for the rollercoaster ride of their lives."  Obama will probably just blame Bush, then go shoot some more hoops.

‘No evidence’ that WikiLeaks releases have hurt anyone   "The newspapers also communicated US government concerns to WikiLeaks to ensure that sensitive data didn’t appear on the organisation’s website.
"“After its own redactions, The (New York) Times sent Obama administration officials the cables it planned to post and invited them to challenge publication of any information that, in the official view, would harm the national interest,” The New York Times said in a story published on its website. “After reviewing the cables, the officials - while making clear they condemn the publication of secret material - suggested additional redactions. The Times agreed to some, but not all.”"

Reaction to WikiLeaks documents    "Several major media organisations have published detailed reports on a massive trove of leaked US diplomatic cables.
"The files address negative perceptions of various world leaders, repeated calls for US attack on Iran, and requests for US diplomats to spy on other countries' officials.
"Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has said the release of the classified documents by the whistle-blower website will amount to a "diplomatic history" of global affairs.
"The leaks, so far, have drawn different reactions from mainly the western world."                                     ALJAZEERA

Just Another WikiLeak On An Already Sinking Ship

Heritage  "Leaks are not going to stop nations from cooperating with the U.S., or for that matter sharing secrets with us. Nations cooperate with the U.S. because it is in their interest to do so. And no leak will stop nations from acting in their self-interest.
"But what is in our best interest? This has not been a good month for the Obama Doctrine: The President came home empty-handed from Asia, North Korea fired artillery at South Korea just days after revealing nuclear facilities no one knew they had, and Obama failed to get the G-20 to take any action limiting trade imbalances. It was not supposed to be this way. After apologizing for all of our nation’s sins, the world was supposed to swoon at President Obama’s unparalleled charisma. As American military power withered away, President Obama would use soft power and the United Nations to manage world affairs. But like Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter before him, this progressive foreign policy vision has failed."

US tries to contain damage from leaked cables   "None of the disclosures appeared particularly explosive, but their publication could become problems for the officials concerned and for any secret initiatives they had preferred to keep quiet. The massive release of material intended for diplomatic eyes only is sure to ruffle feathers in foreign capitals, a certainty that already prompted U.S. diplomats to scramble in recent days to shore up relations with key allies in advance of the leaks.
"At Clinton's first stop in Astana, Kazakhstan, she will be attending a summit of officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a diplomatic grouping that includes many officials from countries cited in the leaked cables." Related: The leaked cables make it impossible for Hillary Clinton to continue as secretary of state.  Slate Magazine.

Big Peace.com has a wealth of links you can follow.

State Department Cables, Wikileaks, and Classification  "Part of the answer is probably better counterintelligence: Manning should have been seen for the obvious security risk that he was. He should not have had the access that he had, but that doesn't mean that soldiers in general shouldn't have access. It means we should be looking for people who have personal reasons to betray our trust. Just as we should be looking for bombers and not bombs in counterterror efforts, we should be looking for traitors in CI, not taking steps that would keep people who need to know this information from having access to it." Blackfive

Wikileaks Hath Spoken; Now Step Aside Or Get Stampeded By Journalists Seeking Pulitzers  "When Wikileaks becomes an equal opportunity leaker and starts thumbing its nose at Vlad Putin, for instance, then maybe we'll talk. The thing is, journalists and intelligence folks who run afoul of Vlad have a strange habit of getting dead. (One would think there would be a story to be leaked in there somewhere to the industrious folks at Wikileaks.)"  ThreatsWatch

Outrage Now, Back Then, Not So Much "At least we know the leak of 250,000 pages of sensitive documents and State Department cables weren't being used for blackmail. Of course we'll never know about the use of 700 raw data FBI files that just happened to be in the hands of the Clinton White House (do we all remember Craig Livingstone?)."

Max Boot on journalism and The Leaks

Challenge to the New York Times: Publish Your Internal Correspondence  "Reading the New York Times’s “Note to Readers” explaining why it has decided once again to act as a journalistic enabler of WikiLeaks, I wondered why, if the Times believes that openness is so important to the operations of the U.S. government, that same logic doesn’t apply to the newspaper itself."

Journalism That Knows No Shame "These are, after all, the sorts of people who, over a few drinks, would no doubt tell you that diplomacy is far preferable to war-making. But it seems that they have no respect for the secrecy that must accompany successful diplomacy either. That, at least, is the only conclusion I can draw from their decision to once again collaborate with an accused rapist to publicize a giant batch of stolen State Department cables gathered by his disreputable organization, WikiLeaks."

This related comment from American Thinker: 
Pious and hypocritical; media malpractice and Wikileaks: "The justification for it - nothing should be secret - rings hollow. When Wikileaks starts publishing Iranian or North Korean nuclear documents, then I will give them the benefit of the doubt. Until then, they are nothing but garden variety, hate America leftists who, like thoughtless children playing with gasoline, are looking to burn us down. Stuck as they are in 1960's perpetual adolescence, they are becoming a bore to grown ups who are once again forced to clean up after their mess. "....
"Who elected the New York Times to decide what constitutes a blow to national security and what is just a "diplomatic controversy?"
"Pious, hypocritical, arrogant fools."

Rich Terrell, cartoonist:  at AfterMath