(H/T: Captain Ed)

This USA Today article is proof that miracles happen. When Keith Ellison starts talking about what a great job the US military is doing in Iraq, you know that divine intervention played a part in the transformation. Here’s what I’m talking about:

Ellison said that local leaders in Ramadi told him of how they partnered with U.S. and Iraqi military officials to virtually rid al-Qaeda from the city. Although the lawmakers had to travel in flak vests and helmets, “we did see people walking around the streets of Ramadi, going back and forth to the market.”

There have been fewer anti-U.S. sermons as the violence has been reduced, Ellison said, and religious leaders meet regularly with U.S. military officials.

“The success in Ramadi is not just because of bombs and bullets, but because the U.S. and Iraqi military and the Iraqi police are partnering with the tribal leadership and the religious leadership,” he said. “So they’re not trying to just bomb people into submission. What they’re doing is respecting the people, giving the people some control over their own lives.”

Ellison said he was particularly impressed watching Maj. Gen. Walter Gaskin, U.S. commander in the Anbar province, greeting people with “as-salama aleikum,” meaning peace be upon you.

Obviously, Keith Ellison isn’t a big fan of the Bush administration. If he’s now saying that we’re making progress, that anti-American fervor in the mosques is dropping, that he was able to walk the peaceful streets of Ramadi, that’s proof that something dramatic has happened.

Coming a day after the NY Times published an op-ed by Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack stating that progress is being made, this is a big blow against the credibility of the Democrats’ anti-war crowd. Isn’t it time for these anti-war crowds to admit that it’s worth giving Gen. Petraeus’ plan enough time to work?

It’s getting to be almost impossible for them to argue against giving him the time. Thank God for divine intervention.

Technorati Tags: Michael O’Hanlon, Kenneth Pollack, Keith Ellison, NY Times, USA Today, David Petraeus, The Surge

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

That’s what British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said during his initial news conference with President Bush. They’re also words that must’ve made Harry Reid’s and Nancy Pelosi’s crest fall.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told President Bush Monday he shares the U.S. view that there are “duties to discharge and responsibilities to keep” in Iraq. “Our aim, like the United States is, step-by-step, to move control to the Iraqi authorities,” Brown said, joining Bush at a news conference at the president’s Maryland mountaintop ranch.

Brown said that decisions about troops would only be made “on the military advice of our commanders on the ground,” echoing language often heard from Bush.

This isn’t a good start to the week for anti-war Democrats. In fact, it’s the worst possible start imaginable for anti-war Democrats. Democrats were hoping that Brown would pull British troops from Iraq. Now that that didn’t happen, they’re left holding a very empty bag.

That isn’t to say that Brown and Bush will have the same friendly relationship that Bush and Blair had. They clearly won’t. In the end, though, Brown’s promised steadfastness will provide a smooth transition into the next chapter of US-British relations.

Technorati Tags: President Bush, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

The Democrats’ worst nightmare is having the NY Times saying that Iraq can be won. Today, their worst nightmare came true thanks to this op-ed by Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack. This paragraph should be especially troubling to John Murtha and his fellow defeatists:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

Rush spent most of the first hour of his show talking about this op-ed and about a roundtable discussion on Chris Matthews’ Sunday Show where David Ignatius said that the cost of pulling out precipitously could cause a tenfold increase in civilian casualties. Rush said that you could just imagine Nancy Pelosi’s face cracking upon hearing this. I wholeheartedly agree. This is awful news for Democrats because they’re totally invested in defeat.

They’ve bet the ranch on perceived defeat in Iraq. I’ve said before that the worst thing for Democrats isn’t good news from Iraq. A Democrat’s worst nightmare is good news from Iraq that’s splashed across the front page of the NY Times. That’s why I called this op-ed the Democrats’ worst nightmare. (continue reading post »)

The local citizenry turned on the insurgents south of Baghdad late last week, pointing the troops to a major weapons cache south of Baghdad:

On July 23, a local Iraqi man came to Patrol Base Inchon, near the Euphrates River, staffed by Company D, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) out of Fort Drum, N.Y., and elements of the 4th Battalion, 4th Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division. He told troops that several other residents had chased a group of anti-Iraqi forces away from a weapons cache. He asked Soldiers to remove the weapons.

Several local residents guarded the cache and placed a fluorescent marking cloth to alert helicopters that they were not hostile. Soldiers of Company D moved out to find the cache and were met on the road by some of the local residents, who guided them to the cache, which was next to a canal.

The cache contained 210 57mm rockets, 25 82mm rockets, eight 120mm mortars, a large rocket, and a bag of homemade explosives. An explosive ordnance disposal team detonated the contents of the cache with a controlled explosion.

Although most rockets and mortars found in caches are not suitable for firing as intended, they are commonly used as improvised explosive devices.

In other words, people are stepping forward to help clear their areas of insurgents and weapons caches. This report also noted that this is a troubled area:

The rural areas south of Baghdad have long been a trouble spot for Coalition Forces. The fertile land was given by Saddam Hussein to Ba’ath Party members and close friends, and the ties made it a hotbed of terrorism.

If they’re able to start turning the tide in this rural area, that will provide an incentive for other citizens to come forward with more tips on insurgent locations and weapons caches. There’s lots of work to still be done but the progress continues.

The biggest question is whether Congress develops a spine and lets them win or if Congress continues to set policy by moistening a finger. Don’t be bashful people. It’s never wrong to pick up the phone and give your congresscritter a spine transplant. Let them know that you expect them to vote for victory.

Technorati Tags: Intel, Weapons Cache, IED, Rockets, US Military, Iraqi Military, Saddam, Baath Party Loyalists

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Yesterday, I wrote about MoveOn.org, the Daily Kos and the Campaign for America’s Future joining forces to silence the conservative voices on FNC. I’ve now uncovered more information who’s all involved in this unholy alliance. First, I went to CAF’s About Us page. Here’s what it said:

Over 100 Prominent Americans, citizen activists and policy experts concerned about our country and our planet, joined together to launch and build the Campaign for America’s Future. We are challenging the big money corporate agenda by encouraging Americans to speak up, to discuss and debate a new vision of an economy and a future that works for all of us.

America’s Future insists that the question of falling wages and rising insecurity be placed at the center of our national debate. We challenge those who suggest that nothing can be done and expose the conservative agenda that has made things worse. America’s Future works to revitalize a progressive agenda, and fights to make this economy work for working people once again. We engage citizens, activists and political leaders in a renewed debate about the kind of country, and the kind of world, we want to build for the generations yet to come.

When I read the line about CAF being a group of citizen activists and policy experts, red flags galore went off so I went to their advisors page. Here’s some of the people that serve as advisors to CAF:

Ann Beaudry, PFAW; Mary Frances Berry, US Commission on Civil Rights; Julian Bond, NAACP Board Chair; Hodding Carter; Betty Friedan; Tom Hayden, ex-husband of Jane Fonda, fmr. Gore Campaign manager; Denis Hayes, Earth Day founder; Jim Hightower, Hightower Radio; Patricia Ireland, fmr. Pres. NOW; Jesse L. Jackson, Rainbow Coalition; Gerald W. McEntee, AFSCME; Howard Metzenbaum, US Senator (retired); Robert Reich, Brandeis University, Former Secretary of Labor; Mark Ritchie, Inst for Agriculture and Trade Policy; John J. Sweeney, AFL-CIO; Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO

Does that sound like a list of “citizen activists”? In my opinion, it sounds more like a group of paid lobbyists and Democratic strategists. That’s why I did more digging. In CAF’s FAQ page, someone asked if they could contribute to their organization. The unsurprising response was “Yes!” They then linked to a secure website to contribute online. After that, they listed this address for people wanting to simply send a check via snail mail:

Campaign for America’s Future
1825 K Street, NW, Suite 400
Washington, DC 20006

Please make your check out to “Campaign for America’s Future.”

I didn’t think that citizen activists maintained offices on K Street in Washington, DC. That’s because K Street is known for housing major lobbying firms. That’s why I’ve nicknamed K Street the Lobbyists’ Lair. I’ll stand by that nickname.

The point I’m trying to make with this information is to inform you as to who’s behind the effort to silence conservatives on FNC. This is being directed from the highest levels of the Democratic Party. It’s impossible to convince me that Howard Dean doesn’t get frequent updates about this effort, especially after participating in the Take Back America Conference in June, 2005. That also means that Rahm Emanuel and Charles Schumer, the chairs of the DCCC and DSCC at the time, likely got briefed on CAF. That also means that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid got briefed about CAF’s activities. Here’s more information about who’s associated with CAF:

TomPaine.com and the Apollo Alliance are projects of the Campaign for America’s Future. We are also one of the founding organizations of Americans United to Protect Social Security. We have worked in coalition with organizations including MoveOn.org, the AFL-CIO, the National Education Association, USAction, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the Center for American Progress, ACORN, the NAACP, the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute, and others.

These are ‘the groups’ that Zell Miller spoke about when he was the lone conservative Democrat in the Senate.

Here’s who ACORN is:

Prosecutors in Seattle have charged seven people with committing voter fraud during last year’s election in King County. The seven were employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. They’re accused of using phony names and randomly pulling others from telephone books to fill out voter registration forms.

Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said the organization and the workers will be held responsible.

Dan Satterberg: “This was an act of vandalism upon the voter roles of King County. The massive volume of false registrations dumped into the King County data base required a tremendous effort to investigate and clean up.” (continue reading post »)

This Strib article is just the latest proof that liberals are good at picking losing fights. Here’s what their latest losing fight is about:

With each passing day, the dispute over whether President Bush can claim executive privilege to shield his aides from a congressional investigation into last year’s firing of nine U.S. attorneys creeps closer to court. The two elected branches of government appear determined to push this dispute into a full-scale confrontation over the limits of their constitutional powers, and it may be that only the unelected branch can declare a winner.

According to Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff, it isn’t difficult to predict who will prevail:

The president, of course, cannot use his power to appoint and remove U.S. attorneys to obstruct justice or engage in wrongful prosecution, and Congress has the right to investigate whether the president has abused his power in these ways. However, where Congress is merely conducting a fishing expedition, its interest in such an investigation is not very strong, and probably does not outweigh the executive’s interest in candid, unrestrained deliberation. In this case, even after taking the testimony of everyone in the Justice Department with relevant knowledge and even after reviewing mountains of documents, there doesn’t appear to be any solid basis for believing that the removal decisions at issue constituted obstruction of justice or any other crime. Thus, I think a claim by Congress that it needs the information to investigate criminal activity would not be very weighty.

Talk about a constitutional crisis is laughable hyperbole. The courts would likely rule that Congress doesn’t have the authority to compel testimony from someone on the president’s personal staff. (continue reading post »)

A few weeks ago, I viewed an interview by Peter Robinson of Fred Thompson. During that interview, Sen. Thompson spoke clearly about his commitment to federalism, which brought a big smile to my face. The reason I smiled is because I’ve yet to see a true federalist who wasn’t a limited government conservative. Today, Sen. Thompson posted his thoughts about federalism on his ImWithFred blog. I strongly recommend that every Republican activist read Sen. Thompson’s post because it’s a treasure trove of great information, information that you can use in evaluating Sen. Thompson and the other presidential candidates. Here’s what stood out for me:

The Framers believed in free markets, rights of property and the rule of law, and they set these principles firmly in the Constitution. Above all, the Framers enshrined in our founding documents, and left to our care, the principle that rights come from our Creator and not from our government.

We developed institutions that allowed these principles to take root and flourish: a government of limited powers derived from, and assigned to, first the people, then the states, and finally the national government. A government strong enough to protect us and do its job competently, but modest and humane enough to let the people govern themselves. Centralized government is not the solution to all of our problems and, with too much power, such centralization has a way of compounding our problems. This was among the great insights of 1787, and it is just as vital in 2007.

Now more than ever, we need government to stop taking away our freedoms, whether it’s economic freedom or whether it’s freedom from overregulation or overtaxation. We also need the federal government to not impose unfunded mandates on local governments. One of the items in the Contract With America was the elimination of unfunded mandates. When those were eliminated, states prospered. (continue reading post »)

MoveOn.org and other liberal hate groups are taking note of who’s advertising on FNC. Their goal is to build a database of FNC sponsors, then use that list in a phone call campaign to threaten these businesses with financial ruin if they continue advertising with FNC.

MoveOn.org, the Campaign for America’s Future and liberal blogs like DailyKos.com are asking thousands of supporters to monitor who is advertising on the network. Once a database is gathered, an organized phone-calling campaign will begin, said Jim Gilliam, vice president of media strategy for Brave New Films, a company that has made anti-Fox videos.

How is this not blacklisting these companies? This is the most despicable enterprise I’ve seen in my entire political life and that’s saying something. This is essentially the Fairness Doctrine achieved without legislation. The goal is simple: to silence opposing points of view through threats, intimidation and financial ruin.

That phone campaign is meant to silence FNC by threatening companies into pulling their advertising dollars from FNC. The proper response isn’t to threaten CNN’s or MSNBC’s advertisers. It’s to make Daily Kos, MoveOn.org and this coalition of organizations pay a heavy political price for their actions.

The other thing that’s necessary is for GOP activists to appeal to people of good will by stressing the evil nature of this campaign. It’s vitally important to tell them that this has a chilling effect on journalists everywhere, regardless of ideology. Today, FNC is the target. This certainly isn’t their final target, though. After watching what MoveOn and Daily Kos and other liberal hate groups did to Joe Lieberman last year, does anyone think that their next set of targets won’t include media organizations who aren’t ‘compliant enough’ with their ideology?

I’d bet the proverbial ranch that that next set of targets will include liberal media outlets who aren’t ‘progressive enough’.

VOTER BEWARE: This shows these organizations’ true nature. At their core, they are dictatorial, hateful and intolerant of opposing points of view. That’s the personification of evil and McCarthyism. They aren’t satisfied with getting their way most of the time. (continue reading post »)

Chuckie Schumer is one of the most disgusting, conniving and egomaniacal people on Capitol Hill. I’ve seen him do some of the brashest things in recent senatorial history. His declaring war against any potential Bush Supreme Court nominees is the most breathtaking stunt I’ve ever seen from a senator.

“We should reverse the presumption of confirmation,” Schumer told the American Constitution Society convention in Washington. “The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.”

Prior to that declaration, I thought Al Gore was the master of hyperbole. He likely still is but now I’m forced into giving serious consideration to Sen. Schumer. What criteria did Sen. Schumer use to determine that the Supreme Court “dangerously out of balance”? Was it because, for the first time in two generations, that the Supreme Court is actually basing its rulings on what the Constitution says instead of what legislators in black robes say it means?

I think that Sen. Schumer is throwing the Nutters something to spur their campaign contributions. I also think that Sen. Schumer also thinks it’s a bad thing when SCOTUS justices don’t write new law. That mentality was exposed during the Roberts confirmation hearings with this exchange between Sen. Durbin and then-Judge Roberts:

DURBIN: But you’ve been unequivocal in your statement supporting Brown v. Board of Education. No one has suggested, in any respectful way, that we should return to the bad old days of separate but equal. I mean, you’ve accepted that’s part of America.

And the point I’m trying to make to you is whether we’re talking about millions of uninsured people or millions of Hispanic children, I would think that it would be a basic value, you’d say, this is good for America, for people to have insurance, and bad for them to be denied. It is good for America to see children with education, rather than to see them in the streets, ignorant. It seems so fundamental.

ROBERTS: Senator, I don’t think you want judges who will decide cases before them under the law on what they think is good, simply good policy for America. There are legal questions there.

(continue reading post »)

I just finished reading John Hinderaker’s post about how Democrats put a higher priority on political gains than on national security. Just thinking about how they’ve undermined the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program is enough to get me fuming. When I think of how they gave NCLR veto power over major provisions in the ‘Grand Bargain’ negotiations, I get even more furious. Let’s start with how Democrats have crippled a valuable tool in surveilling the terrorists’ communications:

This has turned out to be an enormous mistake that has unilaterally disarmed one of our best intelligence weapons in the war on terror. To understand why, keep in mind that we live in a world of fiber optics and packet-switching. A wiretap today doesn’t mean the FBI must install a bug on Abdul Terrorist’s phone in Peshawar. Information now follows the path of least resistance, wherever that may lead. And because the U.S. has among the world’s most efficient networks, hundreds of millions of foreign calls are routed through the U.S.

That’s right: If an al Qaeda operative in Quetta calls a fellow jihadi in Peshawar, that call may well travel through a U.S. network. This ought to be a big U.S. advantage in our “asymmetrical” conflict with terrorists. But it also means that, for the purposes of FISA, a foreign call that is routed through U.S. networks becomes a domestic call. So thanks to the obligation to abide by an outdated FISA statute, U.S. intelligence is now struggling even to tap the communications of foreign-based terrorists. If this makes you furious, it gets worse. (continue reading post »)