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Supreme Court to decide whether Second Amendment applies to the states

Supreme Court to look at Chicago gun ban

The Supreme Court has decided to tackle another local gun ban, this time in Chicago, where a lower court upheld an ordinance outlawing handguns.  The decision indicates that the Roberts Court wants to clarify further its decision in Heller, which struck down a similar ban in Washington DC as unconstitutional.  The McDonald case gives the court an entree to broadening its incorporation doctrine for the Second Amendment

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Without Bush, media lose interest

With Bush out of office, media no longer interested in war caskets

Remember the controversy over the Pentagon policy of not allowing the press to take pictures of the flag-draped caskets of American war dead as they arrived in the United States? Critics accused President Bush of trying to hide the terrible human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.


But after that, the impassioned advocates of showing the true human cost of war grew tired of the story. Fewer and fewer photographers showed up. "It's really fallen off," says Lt. Joe Winter, spokesman for the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where all war dead are received. "The flurry of interest has subsided."
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Hollywood Isn’t Going To Like This

Swiss to extradite Polanski?

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Decision Point Requires A Decision

McChrystal report officially backburnered now

After everyone else had heard what General Stanley McChrystal needs for his mission to succeed in Afghanistan, the Obama administration took official custody today of the report that requests a significant troop increase for the Af-Pak theater.  However, Barack Obama will not officially get to see it for a while.  The Pentagon says they will hold his request, officially, until Obama officially makes an official decision about the officially official policy he wants to officially pursue in the war

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Told You So

Iran admits to secret uranium enrichment facility; Update: Built near Iranian holy city; Update: Iran working on detonators too? Update: Ahmadinejad warns Obama

Iran scurried to the IAEA in order to reveal a previously-secret uranium enrichment facility after it got wind that the US and its allies had discovered it.  Iran, which has insisted that it had fully disclosed its nuclear work and research, now has to provide an explanation for their deception.  If history is any guide, they won’t have to sing and dance for long

Update (AP): No surprise that the secret facility is apparently located near Qom, which is ground zero for Shiite theological scholarship. If Israel hits the enrichment plant, Tehran will scream that it’s an attack on an Islamic holy city to rally the public towards religious war. Here’s another fun detail:

The second nuclear facility, on a military base near the Shia Muslim holy city of Qom, is thought to be capable of housing 3,000 centrifuges, not enough to produce nuclear fuel to power a reactor, but sufficient to manufacture bomb-making material, a U.S. diplomatic source who read the letter told CNN.

Remind me again, how many secret nuclear facilities did the 2007 NIE suspect Iran of having? Hot Air readers know the answer by now.

Update (AP): I missed this earlier — apparently, Obama acknowledged in his comments this morning that the secret site wasn’t designed for nuclear “energy.”

Update (AP): Another detail I missed earlier: The September deadline for Iran to respond to the west’s negotiations offer has now been quietly extended to December, notwithstanding the revelation of a new nuke facility that appears to have no peaceful purpose. Oh, and via Israel Matzav, there’s this too



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Change

Obama WH adopts Bush indefinite-detention position

Remember when the Left scoffed at the argument from George W. Bush that claimed the authorization to use military force allowed the executive branch to hold captured terrorists indefinitely, without criminal trial?  Bush’s opponents screamed about human rights and due process, and claimed that Bush had abused his power.  Those critics included Barack Obama, who regularly castigated the Bush administration for its failure to provide his idea of due process to detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, as well as blasting Bush for his argument that he didn’t require Congress to act to maintain that power.

NowChange you can believe in, baby

If the White House doesn’t see the need to get Congressional authorization for continued indefinite detention, then it means that the White House believes it has that power under the Constitution, whence it derives all authority.  They may not want to say it out loud, but their actions speak volumes.  Obama has adopted the Bush position in its entirety.
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Bad, But Not Worse

I have to say I do not agree with this piece.  I post it to show what others think about what Glenn Beck said and McCain as POTUS. 

Defending President McCain from Glenn Beck

John McCain was not my choice for the GOP nomination. He ran a perfectly appalling campaign, all the more heartbreaking because he squandered the only exciting opportunity he managed to create: the selection of Sarah Palin. McCain’s greatest mistake, which America has not finished paying dearly for, was allowing the Democrat crooks behind the subprime crisis to skate away without penalty. The miscarriage of justice involved in leaving Barney Frank to happily count the money he looted from American taxpayers pales beside the damage he continues to inflict on the economy. In fact, the Washington Examiner just ran a story about the return of the very same policies that produced the subprime crash. McCain is accountable for every bit of the damage people like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd cause in the future, an accessory through his silence. He spent far too much of his campaign dreaming of a big, old-fashioned wedding with The Media, flanked by honored Senate colleagues in tuxedos and bridesmaid gowns… while the object of his affections staggered out of a tattoo parlor with Obama’s name written all over her, fell into the back seat of the Lightworker’s muscle car, and roared off in a shower of empty beer cans.

He was an awful candidate… but McCain would not have bitten his tongue while Iran murdered its citizens, leaving their Fourth of July picnic invitation on the table. He would not be working to install a Chavez puppet as dictator of Honduras. He wouldn’t have tried to sacrifice American intelligence agents in a show trial for political gain. He wouldn’t shower America’s adversaries with concessions while gaining nothing in return. McCain would have plenty of opponents, but he wouldn’t spend an unseemly amount of time designating groups of his constituents as enemies. He would know better than to casually accuse a cop of racism on national television.

This is not to say that President McCain’s domestic policies would have been superb. It’s impossible to predict exactly what anyone would have done in the Oval Office. The butterfly effect from swapping out presidents is so huge that it comes with pair of tiny Japanese girls, who speak in unison when they warn of its approach. However, nothing McCain said during the campaign made me anticipate a presidency of bold conservative reform. I suspect we would have gotten something like the lazy Bush slide to the left in most areas, sprinkled with the occasional conservative policy, and the unmitigated disaster of amnesty for illegal aliens.

During the campaign, disgruntled Republicans often said it would be better to have Obama in office, showing everyone just how horrible Democrat policies are, than tolerate a RINO like McCain pushing the same policies in low gear, with bipartisan fingerprints. Glenn Beck’s slap at McCain is a retroactive expression of the idea that conservatism is just one crushing defeat away from total victory. Anyone who thought it was worth putting Obama in office, as some kind of object lesson for the American voter, gravely underestimated the amount of damage he could do. Look at how far we’ve sailed past the edge of fiscal sanity, in only nine months. It would take decades of careful, moderate reform just to get us back to where George Bush left us… and that wasn’t exactly an enviable position. Freedom is an endless voyage, while tyranny has far too many points of no return. The course we steered away from President McCain has taken us perilously close to those terminal waters.


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Incompetence

Exclusive: CBO predicts Social Security cash deficits in 2010-11; Update: Too much sunny optimism at CBO?

Four years ago, George W. Bush attempted to reform the entitlement program Social Security, warning that the system was accelerating into collapse and would soon run deficits.  Democrats scoffed and claimed the Social Security system was solid and wouldn’t have problems for at least 50 years, as Harry Reid told PBS’ Jim Lehrer in June 2005.  Just last year, the CBO — under the direction of Peter Orszag, now budget director in the Obama administration — claimed that the first cash deficits in Social Security would not come until 2019.

Now, however, the CBO has determined that Social Security will run cash deficits next year and in 2011, and by 2016 will be more or less in permanent deficit mode.

As we can see, this trend reverses itself temporarily from 2012-15, but the surpluses are minimal.  By 2016, the deficits return, and begin to accelerate again.  By 2019, the primary surplus runs $63 billion in the red, almost triple the deficit in 2017, showing the rapid decline of the Social Security system.


The situation at Social Security is much worse than this administration and Democrats in Congress want to admit.  They want to continue busting the deficit and creating new entitlements while the existing ones careen towards collapse.  The new data shows that time has almost run out for reform.  Seniors will still get their checks, but those will increasingly rely on injections from the general fund and not revenues from Social Security payments.  At this point, one has to wonder when SSA becomes a flat-out Ponzi scheme, and who the suckers will be when it blows up.

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In Or Out?

The decision point on the Af-Pak theater

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Nuance

Jimmy Carter’s NSA: Hey, let’s shoot down Israeli jets if they fly over Iraq to attack Iran

. . . “So conjure the image — the Obama administration sending U.S. aircraft up to protect Iran’s airspace and it’s nuclear installations from an attack by a democracy that is one of America’s closest allies.” Indeed. Why is it, I wonder, that this eminence grise of the left, whose side is forever screeching at the right to stop warmongering and embrace diplomacy, is suddenly ready to start blowing F-15s out of the sky over Baghdad instead of reprimanding Israel diplomatically after the fact? That’s an awfully curious stroke of belligerence given that (a) the IAF would be entering Iraqi airspace to attack not the United States but one of its chief enemies, (b) a successful attack on Iran’s facilities would at least delay a nuclear crisis in the Gulf for a few years, and (c) the only reason Israel hasn’t struck already is because it’s put its faith, very stupidly, in the west’s ability to deter Iran with, ahem, diplomacy. In an odd way, it reminds me of the DNC promising a “rain of hellfire” on critics of ObamaCare while The One’s gearing up to schmooze with the dregs of international autocracy this week at the UN. Our side likes to bait the left by accusing them of weakness, but they seem plenty capable of tough talk and hardline reprisals if you’re an American conservative or Israeli Zionist. Funny, that.

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Oh My

Seven former CIA chiefs to Holder: Drop the interrogation probe

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One Of Those “Tiny” Countries

Biden: Iran not a threat

Why has the Obama administration decided to toss eastern Europe under the bus in order to make nice with Russia?  According to CNN, Joe Biden says that a missile-defense system in Europe isn’t really necessary, because Iran isn’t much of a threat. 

Nuclear weapons and long-range missiles in the hands of millenial Islamist lunatics in Tehran? No big threat … to us. Why should we risk annoying Russia to protect our allies against it? After all, Russia will use its influence to stop Iran from getting nukes, right? Right? Er …

So we threw our allies under the bus to not get Russian cooperation in isolating Iran’s mullahs?  This must be that smart power that Obama’s allies like to proclaim.

Don’t worry, the White House assures everyone.  We’re not abandoning the allies who took significant geopolitical risks in standing up to Moscow over the missile-defense shield.  The US will still provide some form of missile defense, even if it is much less reliable.  Michael Goldfarb explains

We’ve sold out the Poles and the Czechs, who have seen the West do this before.  The Times of London should get the last word here.

What is Obama getting from Russia for canceling missile defense? Jack squat


America’s missile defense surrender: Total victory for Putin

Confirmed: Obama cancels European missile defense
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Sauce For The Gander

A brief thought about Jimmy Carter

If Jimmy Carter believes that the “overwhelming” portion of criticism towards Barack Obama is due to racism, does he also believe that the overwhelming portion of criticism towards Israel is anti-Semitic?  Wouldn’t that apply to a man who hangs out with people who target Israeli citizens for terrorist attacks?  After all, Hamas regularly issues anti-Semitic harangues and smears, and yet Carter has no problem cozying up to them and claiming that their criticism of Israel is legitimate.

White House throws Carter under the bus on race comments



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