The following article was written by John M. Murtagh, a victim of Obama’s pal, William Ayers:

Watch this

Think Progress is a site that dedicates itself to pointing an accusatory finger at all things Republican, while rarely, if ever, discussing Democratic talking points. It is a site that references itself as the source. Within the past 2 weeks, Amanda, an author at the site has been caught telling fibs. Fibs may be a strong word, so I will change that to, Amanda did not take the time to verify what she was writing about:

Last week Think Progress blogger Amanda accused John McCain of plagiarizing a speech from Admiral Timothy Ziemer only to retract the story hours later. Amanda, last name unknown, had failed to check with McCain’s office before running her “exclusive,” and she failed even to check McCain’s website to see if he had used similar language in the past. In fact, he had. In a 1995 speech to the VFW, a speech predating Ziemer’s, McCain had uttered the same phrases he was now alleged to have plagiarized. Amanda apologized for her sloppy reporting, but apparently she didn’t learn much from the episode.

How else can this be explained?

Prosecutors haven’t classified the incident as a bias crime yet, but a Brooklyn resident who spoke to CBS 2 HD says he’s not encouraged by what happened.

There’s a movement afoot by prominent pro-Clinton diarists at Dailykos.com.

“We are going on strike and taking our writing elsewhere. When and if our beloved community is once more a focal point for Democratic election discussions, we will gladly return.”

…..Daily Kos and Markos himself no longer adhere to this purpose of electing Democrats. Daily Kos has become an Obama community and discussion of other Democrats is not welcome. We Clinton supporters are continually attacked and even threatened. The atmosphere has become so poisonous that we could do nothing else but take our discussions elsewhere. Places like MyDD.com where Clinton and Obama supporters chat without name calling. Heated discussions sometimes, but we tend to stay respectful of our fellow Democrat’s opinions. Our post is currently up on the Recommended List so we must have tapped into something a lot of others have been feeling for quite some time.

Contrary to reports put out by ABC News, in their rush to put something up that wasn’t true or maybe ABC is just that stupid, the documents given to them by the Penagon shows that Saddam Hussein had plenty of ties to all sorts of terrorist groups, including radical Islamist jihadis. Ed explains what you will find in the report.

The Republicans asked that it be closed because of the sensativity of the material. Look for me to post an undate after the Democrats go running to the press and give full disclosure of all the intelligence presented:

During the session, the chamber will discuss an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that has been gridlocked for months over the issue of granting immunity to telecom companies who aided the government in the wake of the Sept. 11.

Following the closed session, the House will debate the FISA bill, which does not include immunity. The Senate has already passed their own version with immunity — a bill President Bush has urged the House to sign.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) agreed to the session Thursday afternoon.

Guest post by Robert:

I’ve mentioned this on the blog a couple of times, but I don’t think anyone realizes the seriousness of the situation. This agreement allows the administration to deploy foreign troops on US soil without congressional approval:

U.S. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, and Canadian Air Force Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, commander of Canada Command, have signed a Civil Assistance Plan that allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.

WOW:

How the classified military documents from Iraq, which named the coordinates of where the Army suspected weapons of mass destruction to be hidden, ended up in an Arabic translator’s apartment on Hoyt Street in Brooklyn, is clear.

Not likely to be known anytime soon is what, if anything, the army contractor did with the documents.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, which is prosecuting the case, appears to have little direct evidence that Noureddine Malki passed information on to the insurgency, either during his time in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, or upon his return to America in 2005. But it has raised the possibility that he may have done so. The government has said Malki regularly called phone numbers connected to insurgents and took bribes of at least $11,500 from Sunni tribal leaders.

The government, prosecutors wrote in one court filing, could “establish that the defendant had an opportunity to provide stolen classified information to anti-coalition forces.”

The left just doesn’t get it.

BLACKFIVE:

Source says Grodner pled guilty, will pay $600 to Semper Fi Injured Marine Fund. The judge gave Grodner a history lesson about the Marines and finished with explaining why Marines have each others’ backs

Great catch Johnny!

“>Video

President Bush is expected to travel to Israel, the West Bank, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt from January 8-16, 2008. Prior to Air Force One leaving the tarmac on this journey, American al Qaeda member Adam Yahiye Gadahn renounced his U.S. citizenship, destroyed his passport and cited President Bush’s trip to the Middle East, Iranian boats threatened three U.S. Naval ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and two rockets fired from Lebanon struck northern Israel overnight. Jihadi Badr Brigades are thought to be the culprits for the attacks. On a positive note, U.S. and Iraqi forces launched, Phantom Phoenix, a major operation covering the entire country to strike against al- Qaida in Iraq and other extremists, in an effort to build on a recent overall reduction of violence and push militants from their strongholds.

According to the Washington Times, the U.S. press played a crutial role in the Marines loss of control in Fallujah back in 2004. What should have been a victory in a military fight, was anything but that:

“The outcome of a purely military contest in Fallujah was always a foregone conclusion — coalition victory,” read the assessment, prepared by analysts at the U.S. Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center, or NGIC.
“But Fallujah was not simply a military action, it was a political and informational battle. … The effects of media coverage, enemy information operations and the fragility of the political environment conspired to force a halt to U.S. military operations,” concluded the assessment. …

The authors said the press was “crucial to building political pressure to halt military operations,” from the Iraqi government and the Coalition Provisional Authority, which resulted in a “unilateral cease-fire” by U.S. forces on April 9, after just five days of combat operations.

For a brief history of the bill, refer to this and this. Now from the USA Today:

The White House just announced that President Bush intends to veto a major defense policy bill, citing concerns over language that it claims could endanger Iraqi assets held in U.S. banks.

In a written statement just released, White House deputy press secretary Scott Stanzel says the measure “would significantly amend current law (the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act) in ways that would imperil Iraqi assets held in the United States, including reconstruction and central bank funds.”

A provision in the measure “would permit plaintiffs’ lawyers immediately to freeze Iraqi funds and would expose Iraq to massive liability in lawsuits concerning the misdeeds of the Saddam Hussein regime. The new democratic government of Iraq, during this crucial period of reconstruction, cannot afford to have its funds entangled in such lawsuits in the United States. Once in place, the restrictions on Iraq’s funds that could result from the bill could take months to lift, and thus Section 1083 cannot become law even for a short period of time,” Stanzel says in the statement.

Based on the links found at Memeorandum to this NYT’s article, this is the story of the moment. The New York Times looks to be inputing their own hopes into the article and trying to get a dif in at The POTUS. According to the Times, Iran ended the program in 2003.

After reading the article and reading the declassified NIE report, I don’t see where one could come away feeling good about our intelligence gathering abilities. I also don’t see how a newspaper can claim the the program ended:

H/T to Tim Graham for this gem:

“I was asked how we can get politicians to stop speaking in sound bites and level with people, and [responded] ‘I suggest you bar the press.’ Apparently, that didn’t go over too well. . . . [National Press Club prez] Jerry Zremski asked, ‘Has Dean read the First Amendment?’ Well, Jerry, I have . . . and you can keep your guns. Fox News said, ‘Stalin thought he was right when he did the same thing.’ That was painful. . . . If anybody knows about Joseph Stalin’s tactics, it would be the people at Fox News. . . . How is it that this dinner is called off the record? [A reporter] explained it to me this way: Off the record means you can’t write about it for Sunday, you have to wait until Monday. . . . Seriously, though . . .” — Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean razzing his journalist hosts at Saturday’s Gridiron Club dinner. Ba-dum-bum.

The title alone, Fog of War, should give the reader an idea of their insincerity. The second paragraph should soldify any remaning question that the reader may have as to the sincerity of Foer:

When Michael Goldfarb, a blogger for The Weekly Standard, left me a message on a Tuesday afternoon in mid-July, I didn’t know him or his byline. And I certainly didn’t anticipate that his message would become the starting point for a controversy.

Of course they didn’t know him! But they do now, don’t they!

This story is not the result of any fog of war. This story was a deliberate attempt to paint our soldiers as savages as a result of war. The problems arose when it was revealed that the stories were made up. The soldier, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, wrote the stories, and what TNR didn’t share with the readers, was the fact that his wife worked for them.

This is a must read article:

I will never forget that breathtaking moment when, in the CNN/YouTube debate earlier this fall, the woman from Ohio held up a picture and said, “Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr. Edwards, this is a human fetus. Given a few more months, it will be a baby you could hold in your arms. You all say you’re ‘for the children.’ I would ask you to look America in the eye and tell us how you can support laws to end this life. Thank you.”

They were momentarily nonplussed, then awkwardly struggled to answer, to regain lost high ground. One of them, John Edwards I think, finally criticizing the woman for being “manipulative,” using “hot images” and indulging in “the politics of personal destruction.” The woman then stood in the audience for her follow up. “I beg your pardon, but the literal politics of personal destruction–of destroying a person–is what you stand for.”

There, they said it. Got it? Michelle Malkin was spying for Fox News:

NewsBusters-”In their report, Wes Alison and Eric Deggans asked if there wasn’t enough time for vetting (when they’ve been receiving questions for three months?)”:

And did CNN’s method for choosing questions, in which the 60 to 70 available queries were finalized in the 24 hours before the debate, make it impossible for the channel to fully vet any questioners for ties to Democratic campaigns?

CNN’s political director Sam Feist said the channel didn’t really investigate the political leanings of any questioners, focusing more on the questions they asked.

NewsBusters- “But Feist was trying to say it wasn’t CNN’s fault there was a Hillary plant in Gen. Keith Kerr, and they didn’t even pay the man’s way”: