PrairiePundit

Image via Wikipedia VOA: Southern Sudan referendum officials say preliminary results show almost all voters chose to secede from the north in a referendum earlier this month. Figures published on the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission's website, accounting for all of the ballots cast in Sudan's north and the south, gave secession nearly 99 (98.83) percent of the vote. It was not immediately clear if that figure included votes from the diaspora. ... It is easy to understand why they would want to secede from the brutal repression by the Islamic North. The South is mainly Christian and black, while the North is Arabic and Muslim . The South also has oil resources that should help them survive, if they use the money wisely. Africa has a rich history of corruption so there is no assurance that wisdom will prevail. Related articles Official: Over 99 Percent in Southern Sudan Vote to Secede - Christian Post (news.google.com) South Sudan Votes to Secede (onli...

Image via Wikipedia N.M. Guariglia: Credit must be given to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair . During his testimony before Britain’s Iraq inquiry, Blair addressed an issue considered taboo in many Western national security circles: the alliance between the Islamic Republic of Iran and al-Qaeda . “What nobody foresaw,” Blair said, “was that Iran would actually end up supporting al-Qaeda. The conventional wisdom was these two are completely different types of people because Iran is Shi’a, the al-Qaeda people are Sunni, and therefore, you know, the two would never mix. What happened in the end was that they did because they both had a common interest” in fighting the United States. The Iran-al-Qaeda relationship is long and extensive. As with Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, the Iran-al-Qaeda alliance can best be understood simply by reanalyzing the very same documents that are said to contain evidence to the contrary. The 9/11 Commission, for example, states: “On November 4, 19...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife Reuters: President Hosni Mubarak, clinging to power despite unprecedented demands for an end to his 30-year rule, met on Sunday with the powerful military which is widely seen as holding the key to Egypt 's future. Mubarak held talks with Vice President Omar Suleiman , whose appointment on Saturday has possibly set the scene for a transition in power, Defence Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi , Chief of Staff Sami al-Anan and other senior commanders. An earthquake of unrest is shaking Mubarak's authoritarian grip on power and the high command's support is vital as other pillars of his ruling apparatus crumble, analysts said. Egyptians faced lawlessness on their streets on Sunday with security forces and ordinary people trying to stop looters after five days of popular protest. Through the night, Cairo residents armed with clubs, chains and knives formed vigilante groups to guard neighbourhoods from marauders after the unpopular p...

Image via Wikipedia AP/Houston Chronicle: Gangs of armed men attacked at least four jails across Egypt before dawn Sunday, helping to free hundreds of Muslim militants and thousands of other inmates as police vanished from the streets of Cairo and other cities. ... The NY Times reports that Arab executives are predicting regime change in Egypt. This photo from the NY Times suggest the army is not enforcing the curfew. The US better be prepared to deal with a militant hostile regime in Egypt if the army does not quickly organize around a leader to resist the Islamic religious bigots. We could be faced with a situation worse than that in Iran in the late 70s. Related articles Mobs Freeing Prisoners: Today in Egypt (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com) Thousands of Inmates Escape Jails in Egypt Turmoil (abcnews.go.com) Armed gangs free Muslim militants in Egypt (independent.co.uk) Inmates flee jails amid Egypt chaos (mirror.co.uk)

Image via Wikipedia NY Times: Leaders of more than 70 Tea Party groups in Indiana gathered last weekend to sign a proclamation saying they would all support one candidate — as yet undetermined — in a primary challenge to Senator Richard G. Lugar , the Republican who has represented the state since 1977. They are organizing early, they say, to prevent what happened last year, when several Tea Party candidates split the vote in Republican Senate primaries, allowing the most establishment of the candidates to win with less than 40 percent. The meeting in Sharpsville was hardly the exception. Just three months after the midterm elections, Tea Party organizers are preparing to challenge some of the longest-serving Republican incumbents in 2012. In Maine, there is already one candidate running on a Tea Party platform against Senator Olympia J. Snowe . Supporters there are seeking others to run, declaring that they, too, will back the person they view as the strongest candidate to avo...

Elliott Abrams: George W. Bush was right The Bush legacy continues to grow.  It is not a bad piece.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife NY Times: The story goes that Omar Suleiman rose to favor when he saved President Hosni Mubarak ’s life in 1995 by demanding the president ride in an armored car in Ethiopia. A gunman opened fire on the vehicle, and still Mr. Mubarak escaped unharmed. This time, however, Mr. Suleiman may not be able to save the president. On Saturday, Mr. Suleiman was named vice president of Egypt — and the clear successor to the top job — after years as Egypt ’s foreign intelligence chief and Egypt’s lead liaison with the Palestinians. With the streets filled with protesters for a fifth day, and the death toll rising across the country, President Mubarak turned to a longtime friend, confidant, and close ally of Washington to be his second in command. “The president is choosing a man he can trust while he is on shaky ground,” said Mahmoud Shokry , a former ambassador to Syria and personal friend of Mr. Suleiman. “There is no doubt that the president doesn’t ...

Image via Wikipedia Janet Daley: How long do we go on pretending that all we are facing is a choice of strategy for ending an economic crisis? That the only big argument that must be settled is whether it is more urgent to cut the deficit or to stimulate growth? How long before it becomes apparent that the answer which is going to be offered by all political leaders – or, at least those who have to rely on being elected – will be a hopeless fudge? And that the ambivalence and deliberate obfuscation of the politicians is not simply cowardice in the face of financial hardship but fear of facing the truly enormous political question that lies beneath this debate. ... Obama claims we still need to spend to grow the economy. Republicans believe that if we quit spending, companies will have more resources to invest in their own development and that will grow the economy. We already know that spending has not stimulated the economy in any material way. It is time to stop the spending. ...

Image via Wikipedia Washington Post: The murky case of an American diplomat who fatally shot two Pakistanis this week escalated into a diplomatic standoff Saturday, as the U.S. Embassy demanded the man's immediate release and accused Pakistan of illegally detaining him. In a statement and interviews, U.S. officials in this capital city said the man, Raymond A. Davis, was a diplomat who fired in self-defense and qualified for immunity from prosecution. Law enforcement authorities in Punjab province , where the shooting took place Thursday, had made no effort to verify his diplomatic status before arresting and detaining him, in violation of international conventions, officials said. "You don't treat a diplomat like another person. You don't arraign them before a court. That's serious, too, and this will escalate," a senior U.S. official said Saturday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The official added tha...

He was congratulating her on her kindergarten's winning Christmas float.  Click on the image for a larger view.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife Kevin Williamson: The Paul Krugman –led chorus trying to discredit Texas ’s economic model has been claiming that Texas relied more heavily than any other state on federal stimulus money to close its budget gap.... That 97 percent figure got retailed all over the place — CNN, Jon Chait at The New Republic, etc. But it is basically meaningless to say that “Texas was the state that depended most” on stimulus funds without taking into account the size of the gap covered. Texas’s was just $6.6 billion. For comparison, California’s deficit in 2009 was more than $26 billion. The fact is that Texas, at $985 per capita, received less stimulus funding than almost any other state. (Virginia and Nebraska were lower.) ... Most of the stimulus money went to states that supported Obama. He did very poorly in Texas and Nebraska, although he did win in Virginia. Krugman hates the success of the Texas model of low taxes and low government spending and is w...

Image via Wikipedia Politico: The federal lawsuits against last year’s health care overhaul were greeted with eye-rolling and snickers from many conventional legal scholars. Nobody’s laughing now. A federal judge in Virginia ruled late last year that a key underpinning of the health care law stretches the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution past the breaking point, while another judge in Florida is expected to rule on Monday. Both cases are likely to proceed toward the Supreme Court. And the challenges to the health care reform law are just the most visible sign of a broad, national flowering of state efforts to find shelter from the federal government in sometimes-neglected corners of the Constitution that touch conventional political hot buttons such as immigration and gun control, and exotic ones, such as citizenship and currency. “This has been brewing for decades, and it just needed a catalyst to set it off. The Obama health care package happened to be that cataly...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife Robert Robb: If President Barack Obama were being candid, he would have begun his speech on Tuesday as follows: "The state of our Union is ... we're broke." However, it is clear that Obama does not regard the financial condition of the federal government as the most important challenge facing the country. Instead, he regards additional government actions and spending to improve our global competitiveness as more important. Moreover, the real message of the State of the Union address is that Obama is not going to provide presidential leadership to put the federal government on a sound financial footing until at least after the 2012 election. ... It is now clear how Obama maxed out his credit cards before he started getting book royalties. He is a spendthrift, who is maxing out the national credit and he has to be stopped before he does further damage. Big spending liberalism has been a failure that has not stimulated the econ...

Image via Wikipedia LA Times: Deportations of illegal immigrants have reached new heights for two years running under President Obama, statistics show, but Republicans say they'll use their new majority in the House to press for more aggressive enforcement without any path to legal status. Republican lawmakers called on the Obama administration to return to the era of workplace raids to arrest illegal employees, an approach that contrasts sharply with the president's continued push to create a path to citizenship for "responsible young people" and deport only those illegal immigrants charged with serious crimes. Deportations under Obama have reached new heights for two years running, statistics show, but Republicans said they would use their new majority in the House to press for more aggressive enforcement without any path to legal status. Large-scale workplace arrests of illegal workers were hallmarks of the George W. Bush administration 's approach i...

Image via Wikipedia IBD: The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report blames regulators for falling asleep on the job and missing all the shoddy mortgage lending. They didn't miss it. They encouraged it. But they were only following orders from Washington politicians, who over two decades carried out a relentless and ultimately reckless crusade to ease credit for first-time homebuyers. These buyers traditionally could not qualify for a mortgage. It proved a recipe for disaster. Predictably, these politicians enjoyed blanket immunity during the inquiry panel's 15-month "investigation." The sham probe was led by longtime Democrat Phil Angelides , who was hand-picked by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi . His biased report, hitting bookstores now, cites nine causes of the crisis, none of which is federal housing policy — the chief culprit. ... This is as big a scandal as the original crisis. Issa should be investigating this commission for their failure to do their j...

Image via Wikipedia Ellen Knickerbocker: When security forces started firing on protestors earlier this month on the streets of cities around Tunisia , the military stepped in. President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's orders were to make the protests end, with live rounds if needed. The armed forces didn't listen. Troops moved into the streets and reportedly even deployed helicopters to stop paramilitary snipers who were shooting demonstrators from rooftops. The de facto head of the military, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Rachid Ammar, then prodded President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali into exile, saved the people's revolution, and -- most miraculously of all -- then declined to take power himself. Tonight in Cairo, where armed personnel carriers and tanks can be seen patrolling the streets to enforce President Hosni Mubarak 's curfew, Egyptian protesters may be wishing they were so lucky. The reactions of national militaries often determine whether a popular revolution lives or...

Image via Wikipedia George Will: ... The nation heard: You should trust the government whose recent innovations include the ethanol debacle that, four days before the State of the Union, the government expanded. And you should surrender more resources to the government whose recent innovations include the wild proliferation of subprime mortgages. ... The day after Obama told the nation that the key to prosperity is creativity defined by this government and propelled by more government spending ("investment"), the Congressional Budget Office said that this year's budget gap is widening to $1.5 trillion, making the national debt 70 percent of gross domestic product, up from 40 percent in 2008. ... The government already offers $7,500 tax incentives for people who buy electric cars such as the $32,780 Nissan Leaf and, more to the point, General Motors' $41,000 Chevrolet Volt . As The Post's Peter Whoriskey reported, these prices are "well above...

Image via Wikipedia Washington Post: Egyptians across this capital city expressed grave disappointment that President Hosni Mubarak was still their president on Saturday but, in protests spreading across Cairo , shouted their hope that he won't be for much longer. One day after the most serious demonstration in Egypt 's modern history, protesters appeared to have free rein as they swarmed a city devoid of police and littered with the burned-out hulks of armored personnel carriers. There were no immediate reports of fresh violence Saturday, but at midday the army issued a statement asserting that anyone gathered in Cairo's main squares would be treated as a criminal. The Egyptian capital descended into near-anarchy Friday night, as the government sent riot police, and then the army, to quell protests by tens of thousands of demonstrators. Since they deployed, Egyptian soldiers have remained steadfastly neutral and protesters have been imploring the troops to join th...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife Daily Mail: Artificial petrol that costs 19p per litre could be on forecourts in as little as three years. British scientists are refining the recipe for a hydrogen -based fuel that will run in existing cars and engines at the fraction of the cost of conventional petrol. With hydrogen at its heart rather than carbon, it will not produce any harmful emissions when burnt, making it better for the environment, as well as easier on the wallet. The first road tests are due next year and, if all goes well, the cut-price ‘petrol’ could be on sale in three to five years. Professor Stephen Bennington, the project’s lead scientist, said: ‘In some senses, hydrogen is the perfect fuel. It has three times more energy than petrol per unit of weight, and when it burns, it produces nothing but water. ‘Our new hydrogen storage materials offer real potential for running cars, planes and other vehicles that currently use hydrocarbons.’ The fuel is expecte...

Image via Wikipedia Independent: The view from the Normandy landing beaches is to be transformed – critics say "desecrated" – by an immense offshore wind farm. French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced this week that one of the most poignant sea and beachscapes in the world – the Calvados coast, between Juno and Omaha beaches – had been selected as the site for one of five vast wind farms to be built off the French Atlantic seaboard from 2015. Officials insist the generators, two-thirds the height of the Eiffel Tower, will only just be visible from the coast. But the leader of an official commemorative association and a militant ecologists' group said yesterday that France was failing in its duty to preserve the memory of D-Day, and the "essential character" of the five landing beaches on which 2,500 allied soldiers died on 6 June 1944. The choice of the site, 11 kilometres off Courseulles-sur-Mer ( Juno Beach ), was "inappropriate and incoheren...