PrairiePundit

AP/Arab News: Most Afghans want a binding security pact with the United States that would keep American troops in Afghanistan indefinitely, a senior adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Wednesday. Negotiations for such a pact have lagged in part because “some in the Afghan government are trying to sabotage it,” said Taj Ayubi, minister-counselor to Karzai. Ayubi was not specific, but was apparently referring to factions within the weak central government with ties to Iran, or to a lesser extent, Pakistan or the Taleban insurgency. Iran opposes any US military presence in Afghanistan, and US and other officials say Iran is trying to use its growing influence in neighboring Afghanistan to lobby against a deal that would provide the US a long-term military perch. The agreement, now in draft form, would give the US use of Afghan-run or jointly-run bases after 2014, when the formal combat role is set to end. Senior US officials have said its central function is to provide a...

IBD: A departing Obama administration bureaucrat just made the forcible unionization of American workers a lot easier. When it comes to bullying, this president has a double standard. To do something about kids in school getting shoved around, the White House sends the first lady onto the Ellen Show to bemoan the supposed "culture of bullying" in America. But when it comes to those kids' hard-working fathers and mothers struggling for a paycheck amid 9.1% unemployment, President Obama is only too happy to see them bullied at the hands of labor thugs. Wilma Liebman, who has worked as a lawyer for big labor- and union-coddling government agencies unceasingly since 1974, left behind quite a present for her benefactors Sunday as she ended her chairmanship of the National Labor Relations Board. Included in a series of pro-union decisions was the bureaucratic enactment of "Card Check" over the heads of Congress. Card Check means that if union forces can get ...

BBC: Islamists have played an important part in the uprising against Col Muammar Gaddafi, sparking concern about what role they will play in the new Libya, writes Middle East analyst Omar Ashour. Abdul Hakim Belhaj spearheaded the attack on Col Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound, but the commander of the newly-formed Tripoli Military Council is raising red flags in the West. Mr Belhaj - known in the jihadi world as Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq - is the former commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a jihadist organisation with historical links to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the al-Jihad organisation in Egypt. Established in 1990, the LIFG led a three-year low-level insurgency mainly based in eastern Libya, and staged three attempts to assassinate Col Gaddafi in 1995 and 1996. By 1998, the group was crushed. Mr Belhaj spent time in the notorious Abu Salim Prison, before being freed in 2010 under a "de-radicalisation" drive championed by Saif al-Islam Gaddaf...

Guardian: David Cameron has been operating a secret unit in Whitehall charged with undertaking covert economic operations to choke the Gaddafi regime of the one thing it had in abundance: oil. The "Libyan oil cell" was run by the international development minister Alan Duncan and helped to strengthen sanctions against the oil-rich country, blocking supplies of crude oil to the dictator's side while allowing petrol and diesel to flow to the rebels. But the government is likely to face intense scrutiny over the fact that the unit was involved in linking the rebels to a Swiss oil firm, Vitol, which has been credited with keeping the revolutionary engine running through the war. Duncan was previously a consultant with the firm and has close personal ties to its chairman, Ian Taylor. Taylor has also been a Conservative donor in the past. The unit was backed by Cameron and William Hague, the foreign secretary, and involved half-a-dozen officials with help from MI6. It w...

Independent: When you have a parliamentary majority of one, the last thing you want is a sex scandal enveloping an MP in a marginal constituency. But that is precisely Julia Gillard's situation, a year after the inconclusive election that brought her Labor government to power. Police are investigating allegations that Craig Thomson, a Labor backbencher who used to be national secretary of the Health Services Union, used his union credit card to pay thousands of dollars to a Sydney brothel. He has denied any wrongdoing and claims that another person, not named, took the card and forged his signature. With support for Labor at rock bottom – an opinion poll yesterday put it 14 points behind the conservative coalition – the affair has the potential to topple Ms Gillard's government. If convicted, Mr Thomson would have to quit parliament, triggering a by-election that Labor would almost certainly lose. The coalition would then either take control or there would be fresh electi...

Washington Post: Solyndra, a California solar company backed by a half-billion dollars in loan guarantees from the Obama administration, on Wednesday announced it was shutting its doors and laying off 1,100 employees. The unexpected announcement raised questions about whether taxpayers would be responsible for the entire $535 million in loans that the company used to build a Silicon Valley factory. The wisdom of loan guarantees granted to the company by the Obama administration had already been questioned by government auditors and been the target of a subpoena from House Republicans. The start-up venture has long been an administration favorite, and its Fremont, Calif., factory received visits from both the president and Energy Secretary Steve Chu. Both used their visits to praise the company for creating jobs and leading the way into a new economy fueled by green energy businesses. The company was backed by venture capital from Tulsa billionaire and Democratic fundraiser Geor...

Douglas MacKinnon: Was Barack Obama smart enough to make it as an Air Force pilot? I don't think he could have passed the drug screening at the time. Aside from that there is Obama's lack of leadership skills and refusal to take responsibility that would have been unacceptable for an officer. Could he understand aerodynamics that is required of pilots? It is not a simple subject.

Caucus Blog NY Times: Obama Sets Jobs Speech That Collides With G.O.P. Debate Since every times he gives a speech his numbers go down, this will probably benefit the GOP candidates more than the debate will.  I suspect if the GOP went with its debate at its scheduled time it would probably get more viewers as people tuned out the Obama attempt to spend his way out of the recession. I think his intention with his schedule is to mess with the Republicans.  I think their best bet is to ignore him.  The real problem for the GOP is that its debate is on MSNBC.  Since very few people actually watch their programming they have had a smaller audience before Obama elevated their debate by creating a conflict. At this point it is not clear to me that the Republican House will go along with his play.  They could tell him to do it a day earlier, which would be interesting.

Houston Chronicle: The United States is poised for an energy “renaissance” that could create thousands of jobs and lessen the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, yet it will only be achieved with federal policies that expand access to domestic oil and gas resources and reduce the regulatory burden on producers, Chevron CEO John Watson said in a speech today in Houston. Without such a framework, the nation’s second-largest oil company may also be hesitant to boost investments, hiring and production much beyond current levels, he said, in a veiled threat to Washington. “Even the best of energy companies can perform only as well as the legal and regulatory environment allows,” he said, at a luncheon event downtown hosted by the Greater Houston Partnership, according to an advanced transcript of the speech. He noted that of the $26 billion Chevron will spend globally this year, $7 billion will go to projects in the U.S. “We could achieve great things if America had a rational, ro...

We need it. I don't think 10 inches of rain will cause any flooding around us, but it might refill my pond.

David Hirsanyi: ... In a recent Politico piece (one that mistakes wonkery for overall intelligence), readers are asked, Is Rick Perry dumb? "He is not an ideas man," explains Politico. He "hasn't spent his political career marking up the latest Cato or Heritage white papers or reading policy-heavy books late into the night. Advisers and colleagues have informed much of his thinking over the years." Listen, I love reading a Cato white paper as much as the next guy, but that doesn't make me smart; it makes me tragically boring. No doubt Barack Obama picked up his sad conviction in redistributionist economics perusing stacks of white papers -- highlight marker within reach -- but his presidency was won on crude progressive populism anchored in emotion, not reason. Policy ideas had little to do with Obama's election victory, though they have almost everything to do with his failures as president. I've not seen or heard enough of Perry to form any...

Larry Bell, Forbes: ... Cohen observed that “[Perry] occupies the cultural and intellectually empty heartland of the Republican party.” The article scorned Perry for publicly stating that he stood with an increasing number of scientists who have challenged the existence of man-made global warming threats, commenting “…whoever they (italics noted) might be. In Appleton, Wis., Sen. Joe McCarthy’s skeleton rattled a bit.” His reference to McCarthy went on to elaborate that “The late and hardly lamented demagogue pioneered the use of the concocted statistic” in suggesting that communists were literally everywhere. He further amplified “There were some, of course, just as there are some scientists who are global warming skeptics, but these few – about 2% of climate researchers – could hold their annual meeting in a phone booth, if there are any left. (Perhaps 2% of scientists think they are).” This would require a pretty big phone booth, and actually, there really are many of those “...

Washington Post: Rep. Carson: Tea party wants to see African Americans ‘hanging on a tree’ These guys have really taken their lynching metaphors to an extreme that defies logic.  The Tea Party does not think in terms of black and white.  It is about spending and taxes and the Black Caucus sees cuts in spending as a racial attack.  They really need to get a grip on reality or they will have even less influence that they currently have.  Allen West appears to be the only member of the group that is tethered to reality.

Jennifer Rubin: Rick Santorum will talk your ear off with no press handler. Mitt Romney has done a limited amount of print press sitdowns, although he’s being doing a limited amount of cable TV. Gov. Rick Perry has kept the press at bay (no cable TV, no print interview, few questions from the press gaggle since the Bernanke gaffe). After an interview with radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham didn’t go well, he retreated to Sean Hannity’s comfort zone. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) did all the Sunday talk shows after her win in the Ames straw poll but has since been criticized as being overhandled and sheltered at press events. Part of the reason for this is the relative standing of the candidates. So long as Perry is riding high in the polls (and investing great stock in national polling) there is no need to expose himself to the media. Santorum needs oxygen, so free media is a necessity for him. Romney, until recently, has been playing the four-corner offense and avoiding errors,...

Washington Times: An al Qaeda North African affiliate group likely trained the terrorists who carried out the deadly suicide attack on the U.N. headquarters in Nigeria. A suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives through a security barrier and into the lobby of the U.N. headquarters building in Abuja, the Nigerian political capital on Friday, killing 23 people and wounding 76 more. A Nigerian Muslim extremist group called Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attack, and a U.S. official said intelligence reporting revealed that members of the group had trained at al Qaeda camps in nearby Mali. “Some Boko Haram members trained with AQIM [al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the group’s North African affiliate] which probably contributed to this more violent attack,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in discussing intelligence matters. Nigerian news media reported this week that some of those arrested in connection with the bombing attack were gradua...

Reuters: Libya's new military commanders are using informants from among Muammar Gaddafi's entourage to track down the fugitive former leader, while tightening the noose around his last strongholds to force them to surrender. Hisham Buhagiar, a senior official in the military body behind Libya's ruling National Transitional Council, is coordinating efforts to hunt Gaddafi, chased out of his Tripoli compound after a six-month uprising. Buhagiar said he believed Gaddafi was either in the Bani Walid area, southeast of Tripoli, or in his hometown of Sirte, 450 km (265 miles) east of Tripoli. "There are some groups who are looking for him and also trying to listen to his calls. Of course he doesn't use the phone, but we know the people around him who use the phones," he said. "Usually we trace a lot of people who are not in the first inner circle with him, but the second or third circle. We're talking to them," said Buhagiar. "Some of...

David Freddoso: Spanish economist Gabriel Calzada caused the central economic planners' heads to explode in March 2009 when he released a study showing every "green job" the Spanish government was creating with its regime of open-ended subsidies was simultaneously devouring enough resources to create 2.2 jobs in Spain's private sector. "Green jobs," the professor concluded, were economic losers, destroyers of wealth and productivity. What's worse, 70 percent of them were short-lived installation gigs, not long-term jobs at all. Spain's socialist government, which had presented "green jobs" as the way out of the country's economic problems (perhaps that sounds familiar), reacted to Calzada's study with fury. The Industrial Ministry took the incredible step of trying to make his university disavow his work. But behind the scenes, the same government officials were quietly coming to the same conclusions as Calzada. In the United...

Alexis Simendinger: Do federal regulations save lives, protect the environment and establish uniform rules nationwide? Or do they burden commerce, hike costs for consumers and choke off hiring? A decades-long and highly partisan debate raged anew between the Obama administration and congressional Republicans Tuesday when the president advised John Boehner, in response to an inquiry from the House speaker, that the government is considering seven new regulations that could collectively cost the economy from tens of billions of dollars to more than $100 billion per year. In fact, a tally of regulatory cost ranges identified by Obama has a high-end total of $105 billion for four rules administered by the Environmental Protection Agency, and another $5 billion for regulations that would be administered by the Department of Transportation. The most expensive regulation on Obama’s list, dealing with health hazards from smog, is estimated to cost the economy between $19 billion and $90 ...

Conn Carroll: Both on the ground and in the polls, it is rapidly becoming apparent that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has a huge credibility problem with the Tea Party that he must solve if he is going to have a chance against Texas Gov. Rick Perry. FreedomWorks announced yesterday that they will protest Romney’s appearance at a rally this Sunday in Concord, N.H. The rally is part of the Tea Party Express’ cross country bus tour that is set to culminate in Tampa, Fla., before the Sept. 12 CNN presidential debate. “We have to defend our brand against poseurs,” FreedomWorks organizer Brendan Steinhauser told Politico. “If we can’t make any distinction between any of the candidates, if we’re just going to provide cover for the establishment candidates, then what is the point of having the tea party?” Other self-identified Tea Party groups echo FreedomWorks concerns. Andrew Hemingway of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire predicted at least five other Tea Party aff...

Zogby: In his first polling test against other announced Republican candidates for President, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is far ahead of the field with 41%, more than three times the total of second-place trailer Mitt Romney. Four of the announced GOP candidates are tied or ahead of President Barack Obama, with Romney the only one with a lead beyond the poll's margin of error. These results are from an IBOPE Zogby interactive poll conducted from Aug. 25-29. The likely voter sample size for match-ups of Republicans against Obama is 2,335, and for the Republican nomination is 1,184 likely Republican primary voters. ... Perry also leads in a match up with President Obama. The 41 point support for Gov. Perry is his highest in any poll to date and blows away second place Romney who came in at 12 in the poll. This will add even more fright to liberals who are already on their Perry is scary push.

The Hill: ... "What's dumb is to oversee an economy that has lost that many millions of jobs," Perry said on conservative pundit Sean Hannity's radio show, in an apparent reference to an article this week that asked, "Is Rick Perry dumb?" Policies from Obama that have driven the increased spending and the downgraded U.S. credit rating are what's dumb, Perry said. He accused the president, who formerly lectured at the University of Chicago law school, of relying too much on the counsel of academics. "They are intellectually very, very smart. But he does not have wise men and women around him," Perry said. "He has listened to all the academics around him, plenty of smart people, but nobody who has wisdom." ... Perry has a knack for turning attacks on their head and he does so here. Politico wrote the article questioning his intellect as a way of helping the Obama team. It is not looking so smart right now.

IBD: Mitt Romney reportedly intends to use the "third rail of politics" — touch Social Security and you die — to kill Rick Perry. But the winning strategy next year may be something novel for politicians: the truth. For unexplained reasons, Mitt Romney's people in New Hampshire told former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen about their grand strategy to defeat Texas Gov. Rick Perry — and the plan couldn't be more out of sync with the anger currently raging at the Republican grassroots. "Romney strategists are quick to note that in his book, 'Fed Up!,' Perry writes that 'By any measure, Social Security is a failure' and calls the program 'something we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years now' that was created 'at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government,'" Thiessen wrote in the Washington Post on Monday. The Romneyites promise their man "will use Perry's book to sca...

Washington Post: Mitt Romney on Tuesday offered a dark, ominous assessment of America’s standing in the world, castigating President Obama for a foreign policy he described as dithering and suggesting that the nation’s mounting debt threatens its global security. “We stand near the threshold of profound economic misery. Four more years on the same political path could prove disastrous,” Romney, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said in an address before the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention. “Unfortunately, when we look around the world today, we see a muddled picture of American’s foreign policy and our power.” “Have we ever had a president who was so eager to address the world with an apology on his lips and doubt in his heart?” Romney said. “He seems truly confused not only about America’s past but also about its future.” Making his first stop in the Lone Star State since Texas Gov. Rick Perry jumped into the race earlier this month, Romney d...

Washington Times: Israel’s cutting-edge missile defense called Iron Dome scored an 85 percent success rate in knocking out rockets launched against Israel’s southern cities in recent clashes with Gaza. “Iron Dome in April became the first anti-ballistic missile system to be used in combat,” said Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. Israeli officials said the country’s two batteries of Iron Dome missile interceptors shot down Russian-made Grad and Qassam rockets fired from Gaza positions by smaller terrorist groups such as the Popular Resistance Committees and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The battlefield success of Iron Dome could change the political calculus in Israel by providing protection against attacks that prevented Israel from withdrawing after it dismantled settlements in Gaza in 2005. Mr. Oren said 1,000 Qassam rockets were fired into southern Israel from August 2005 to May 2006. At the time, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon formed a political party, Kad...

NY Times: Exxon Mobil won a highly coveted prize in the global petroleum industry on Tuesday by striking an agreement to explore for oil in a Russian sector of the Arctic Ocean that is opening for drilling even as Alaskan waters remain mostly off limits. The agreement seemed to supersede a similar but now-defunct partnership that Russia’s state oil company, Rosneft, reached with BP earlier this year. The deal announced Tuesday replaces BP, the British oil giant, with its American counterpart and introduces some differences in the geopolitical bargain. Where BP had swapped stock, Exxon agrees to hand over to Rosneft unspecified assets elsewhere in the world, including some that the Texas-based company owns in the deepwater zones of the Gulf of Mexico and onshore in Texas. It was not immediately clear whether Rosneft would gain operational control of any Texas or Gulf of Mexico sites or merely obtain a portion of the equity in the projects. ... It is absolutely absurd that Exxo...

Houston Chronicle: A new poll released by Public Policy Polling on Tuesday shows Texas Gov. Rick Perry taking a commanding lead in South Carolina, further cementing his status as the new front-runner in the Republican battle to challenge President Barack Obama in the fall. The survey of 750 South Carolina Republicans who usually vote in the primary puts Perry out in front with 36 percent of the vote. Mitt Romney is a distant second, attracting 16 percent of the vote, and Michele Bachmann is supported by about 13 percent of the sample. The race in South Carolina wouldn’t dramatically change if Sarah Palin jumped into the Republican presidential race: Perry would still be backed by 36 percent of primary voters. ... I am not surprised. I think he is in tune with South Carolina voters. PPP is a Democrat polling firm.Perry gets his strongest support from the most conservative voters. The poll also found that voters tended to agree with Perry on issues that the media found "...

Susana Martinez and Rick Perry might make an interesting team.  They could both scare the liberals.

Washington Examiner Editorial: Any hopes that President Obama might somehow recognize the utter failure of his economic policies and seek new ideas and directions were dashed by his selection Monday of Princeton University economist Alan E. Krueger to succeed Austan D. Goolsbee as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Krueger previously served as an assistant secretary of the Treasury under Timothy Geithner. Obama praised Krueger's work during the first two years of his administration, and said Krueger's chief task in the new job will be to help develop policy recommendations to get the stagnating economy growing again. Don't expect any new ideas from Krueger. He was among the architects of such economic stimulus failures as the "cash for clunkers" program. As The Washington Examiner's Conn Carroll pointed out in Beltway Confidential, the clunkers initiative destroyed half a million functioning automobiles as a means of providing automakers a short-...

John Bennett: Recent flash mob violence has alerted Americans to a troubling wave of sadistic racial mayhem. A notable outbreak occurred in Denver in 2009, setting a pattern of delay, denial, and silence. Now that same scourge has returned to Denver, among many other places. In 2009, a four month wave of mayhem broke out in Denver. There were at least 26 violent robberies committed by two black gangs. The victims were -- without exception -- whites and Hispanics. When the dust settled from that initial spate of violence, victims were left with injuries ranging from a skull fracture to broken noses and shattered eye sockets. The local Denver ABC news affiliate summarized the crime spree: Black gangs roaming downtown Denver often vented their hatred for white victims before assaulting and robbing them during a four-month crime wave, according to interviews and court records obtained by 7NEWS. That is not the language of a conservative commentator; it's simply a mainstrea...

Ana Marie Cox: "If the world were a logical place, Mitt Romney would be president by now. I'm sure that's what he thinks – or that is what the chips in his circuit board tell him. His business background in the context of America's financial meltdown should have won him the Republican nomination in 2008 – seriously, John McCain? Seriously? – and his mixed-marriage political history (as the conservative governor of a liberal state) could have given him a fighting chance against any Democratic nominee. The logic of that equation is so strong, and Romney and his team are so helpless in the face of logic, that they appear to be running for the 2012 GOP nomination as if all of that worked out the first time. How else to explain the slow, easy lope Romney is taking around the primary states, refusing to look hurried or even like he's campaigning? It's true that, for decades, Republican primary voters have tended to nominate the person "next in line", an...

Hank Campbell: 'Creationism' is a confusing term. In science, militant atheists will intentionally call all religious people 'creationists' and then complain creationists are anti-science, even about the religious people who are not anti-science at all. 'Young Earth' creationists think we were created in whole form 6,000 or so years ago and believe paleontology and biology are some test of faith but commingling the terms is intellectually dishonest. Politics makes even otherwise smart scientists do bad things. It's the same scam progressive militants pulled regarding 'stem cell research'. No Republican had objected to 40 years of 'stem cell research' but when Bush restricted federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research to existing lines, Republicans were supposedly 'against stem cell research'. Generally, when a scientist uses a political term, you need to be extra-skeptical about how they are framing their data. ...

Steve Huntley: ... The point is that any president has to deal with “head winds” to the economy from unexpected and uncontrollable events domestic and foreign. What’s remarkable about this presidency is the never-ending whining about them. This finger-pointing is just passing the buck to avoid responsibility for policies that have failed to revive the economy and, worse, served to prolong the economic suffering. There’s the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus that failed its goal of keeping unemployment from breaching 8 percent. ObamaCare and the new financial regulatory law have bureaucrats working overtime writing new regulations. That’s frozen investment by businesses large and small worried about the yet-to-be-determined costs of the new rules. Obama and his advisers never flinch from anti-business rhetoric, further undermining investment. They rail about millionaires and billionaires but their tax proposals would hit small businesses earning far less than a million dollars. ...

Susan Ferrechio: ... ... Obama is all but certain to oppose the Republican plan, which includes a massive tax cut and an attempt to roll back some of the key environmental regulations his administration put in place to reduce so-called greenhouse gas emissions. ... Cantor on Monday outlined a series of bills the House will take up in September, including the repeal of regulations Republicans deem burdensome to businesses. Key among those are new standards and rules about to be implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency that are aimed at curbing pollution from power plants, farms and industry. The Republican agenda will also take aim at the National Labor Relations Board with legislation that responds to the NLRB's recent decision to try to block Boeing from moving aircraft production to a new plant in South Carolina. The proposed bill, "Protecting Jobs From Government Interference Act," would prohibit the NLRB from restricting where a company can move p...

Houston Chronicle: Rick Perry is trouncing his Republican presidential rivals in the battle for the all-important Tea Party constituency, a series of new polls find. A new Gallup Poll shows that the Texas governor has the backing of 35 percent of Republican primary voters who identify with the Tea Party movement — nearly three times the support garnered by any other candidate. Perry rivals Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann are tied at 14 percent of Tea Party backing, followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul at 12 percent, the survey finds. This is particularly significant because Gallup found that 58 percent of likely GOP primary voters consider themselves Tea Party supporters. ... Romney has a slight lead among non Tea Party voters. I think the pollis significant because Tea Party voters are unlikely to be swayed by those they do not trust which includes much of the main stream media. It probably explains why none of the daily hit jobs on Gov. Perry have gained any traction with those...

Rasmussen Reports: 38% Agree With Perry’s Goal of Making Washington, DC Inconsequential, 34% Don’t I suspect this is a surprise to liberals.

Watch the latest video at <a href="http://video.foxnews.com">video.foxnews.com</a> What does it say about Obama that a guy they are calling dumb has created more jobs than the President?

The Hill: A new poll released Monday reaffirmed Texas Gov. Rick Perry's (R) standing as the front-runner in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Thirty-two percent of Republicans named Perry, who formally launched his presidential campaign about two weeks ago, as the candidate they'd most like to see win the Republican nomination. Eighteen percent of Republicans said they would like to see Romney win the nomination, according to the CNN/ORC poll conducted last week. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) placed third at 12 percent, followed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) at 7 percent and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) at 6 percent. ... Adding Palin to the mix did not change the outcome. The poll was evidently taken after the media unloaded most of its hit pieces on Perry. They do not appear to be gaining any traction at this point and Perry actually extended the lead he had in last week's Gallup poll.

IBD: ... What's missing from the Democrats' tireless refrain is the fact that the "subsidies" the oil industry enjoys are the same legitimate, passed-by-Congress tax deductions available to all companies — even those companies the Democratic lawmakers own stock in. Simply put, Big Oil, which pays more than $86 million in taxes each day and sends 41% of its net income to Washington, is not supported by the U.S. taxpayer. Renewable energy companies, however, are. The Energy Information Administration says that $14.7 billion in taxpayers' money was handed directly to renewable energy companies last year. Politically connected ethanol raked in $6.6 billion, bird-killing wind power $5 billion, unreliable solar $1.13 billion and energy-deficient biomass $1.1 billion. Combined, those subsidized sources provide roughly 11% of all U.S. energy output. Not much, in other words. Total subsidies for renewables in 2010, the first budget the Democrats had full co...

Telegraph: Defections in Rastan, which is a well known recruiting centre for the army, are the most recent reports of mutiny which one analyst said may indicate that the regime’s grip on the military was weakening. At dawn, about 40 light tanks and armoured vehicles and 20 buses of troops deployed at the southern entrance to Rastan, which is approximately 12 miles north of the city of Homs. “The tanks deployed at both banks of the highway, which remained open, and fired long bursts from their machine guns at Rastan,” said one witness. Residents fled in fear as the armoured column attacked. Water and electricity to the town, which has a population of about 30,000 people, had been cut, said the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Estimates of the number of defectors in the town varied from four to dozens. ... That does not sound like enough to be a threat to the despots in Damascus, but it is apparently enough to frighten them into a disproportionate response...

Daily Mail: Blundering private security staff sacked after putting electronic tag on offender's FALSE LEG It is the security staff who get this award.

Marc Thiessen: Rick Perry may have jumped to the front of the GOP pack in national polls, but here in first-in-the-nation New Hampshire Mitt Romney still holds an 18-point lead. When I asked Romney about Perry during a recent campaign swing through the Granite State, he replied, “I don’t know what all of his positions are, you’ll have to ask him . . . I don’t spend a lot of time looking at [other candidates’] positions.” That may be, but Romney’s campaign strategists are certainly spending a lot of time poring over Perry’s positions — and developing a plan to stop the surging Texas governor. Romney has been criticized for refusing to engage Perry, but his campaign advisers see no need to do so now. They point out that the Democratic National Committee is going after Perry, hundreds of reporters hoping to make names for themselves are scouring his life and record, and other candidates that Perry has passed in the polls are determined to take him down. Why should Romney attack Perr...

Houston Chronicle: While some wonder whether Gov. Rick Perry’s red-hot rise in the polls may cool as quickly as the fortunes of Fred Thompson and Wes Clark before him, others see a more apt comparison to a different late-starting candidate. He was a governor and natural politician with a knack for working the crowds. He was late to join what was seen as a less-than-stirring field, and he had a laser focus on the economy. Perry might not appreciate his politics, but he’d sure like to emulate how Bill Clinton changed his address in 1992. “Perry wouldn’t necessarily like the comparison, but he may turn out to be the Republican Bill Clinton for ’12,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. There are clear differences — a Rhodes scholar who tacked to the center versus a proud Aggie decidedly on the right –but it’s the political path to which Sabato refers. “Clinton wasn’t the winner in either Iowa or New Hampshire (though he finished s...

He used the opportunity to explain how he would use force as President.  He also talked about how veterans should be welcomed back into society.

Houston Chronicle: Facebook no-no: Juror friends defendant Usually it is the defendants who get this tag, but you have to ask this juror, "What were you thinking?"

Breaking barriers to kill the enemy.  Taliban troops usually set up out of range of most US rifles, which makes the sniper all the more important.

The Hill: Poll: Only 17 percent hold positive view of federal government Perry seems to have tapped into a very broad audience.

Politico: ... Strip away the euphemisms, and Rick Perry is confronting an unavoidable question: is he dumb - or just misunderestimated? Doubts about Perry’s intellect have hounded him since he was first elected as a state legislator nearly three decades ago. In Austin, he’s been derided as a right-place, right-time pol who looks the part but isn’t so deep – “Gov. Goodhair.” Now, with the chatter picking back up among his enemies and taking flight in elite Republican circles, the rap threatens to follow him to the national stage. “He’s like Bush only without the brains,” cracked one former Republican governor who knows Perry, repeating a joke that has made the rounds. The Texan’s loyalists reject the suggestion, asserting that it owes to political bias and sour grapes, but Perry himself seems to welcome the low bar. He cracked on the campaign trail earlier this month that the difference between he and Bush was that he went to Texas A&M and the former president attended Yal...

NY Post Editorial: This one’s truly, uh ... rich: Billionaire Warren Buffett says folks like him should have to pay more taxes -- but it turns out his firm, Berkshire Hathaway, hasn’t paid what it’s already owed for years. That’s right: As Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson notes, the company openly admits that it owes back taxes since as long ago as 2002. “We anticipate that we will resolve all adjustments proposed by the US Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) for the 2002 through 2004 tax years ... within the next 12 months,” the firm’s annual report says. It also cites outstanding tax issues for 2005 through 2009. Obvious question: If Buffett really thinks he and his “mega-rich friends” should pay higher taxes, why doesn’t his firm fork over what it already owes under current rates? ... His actions seem inconsistent with his political statements on not paying enough taxes.

Opinion Journal: Since everyone has a suggestion or three about what President Obama can do to get the economy cooking again, here's one of ours: Immediately suspend the Environmental Protection Agency's bid to reorganize the U.S. electricity industry, and impose a moratorium on EPA rules at least until hiring and investment rebound for an extended period. The EPA is currently pushing an unprecedented rewrite of air-pollution rules in an attempt to shut down a large portion of the coal-fired power fleet. Though these regulations are among the most expensive in the agency's history, none were demanded by the late Pelosi Congress. They're all the result of purely bureaucratic discretion under the Clean Air Act, last revised in 1990. As it happens, those 1990 amendments contain an overlooked proviso that would let Mr. Obama overrule EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's agenda. With an executive order, he could exempt all power plants "from compliance with any st...

Washington Times: President Obama’s re-election campaign has appropriated for its voter-registration operation the name of an existing group, Project Vote, that has been the target of voter-fraud complaints tied to the much-criticized and now-defunct activist group ACORN. “It’s astonishing,” said Thomas Fitton, president of the public-interest group Judicial Watch. “Project Vote has a terrible reputation for people who care about voter fraud, but the campaign doesn’t care.” Obama for America announced Thursday that is launching Project Vote as an in-house effort to increase voter registration and participation among the Democratic base, including young voters, blacks, Hispanics, gays and American Indians. “Project Vote will embark on a voter registration effort to maximize voter participation,” the campaign said in an email from its headquarters in Chicago. “Project Vote will drive our campaign strategy — from paid media, to digital outreach, to grassroots organizing and voter ...

Bill Peacock, Texas Public Policy Foundation: ... When examining what makes Texas the benchmark conservative state, the best place to start is the size of its government. Back in 1987, total state and local expenditures in Texas were about 18 percent of private gross domestic product (GDP), versus a national average of just over 19 percent. In 2008, Texas was still at about 18 percent, while the national average had risen to over 22 percent. Spending in California, our biggest competitor, grew during that period from about 19 percent to more than 25 percent of private GDP. Stats about where Texas ranks in taxes and spending tell the same story. The Tax Foundation says that Texas ranks 45th in state and local tax burden. StateHealthFacts.org ranks Texas 47th in total state spending. And the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau has Texas 42nd in education spending. Of course, these figures are used by liberals to pillory some state officials — including Governor Perry — as un...

Brian Hughes: ... The White House has not released any details of the proposals Obama might recommend to Congress. But the president has suggested publicly that he may revive earlier proposals for higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, an extension of the payroll tax cut, an infrastructure bank to fund construction projects, patent reform and the approval of free-trade deals. However, as Baker pointed out, those proposals would produce few jobs in the near term and Obama will likely need to make more tangible progress if voters now largely critical of his handling of the economy are to change their minds by Election Day. Adding to the challenges Obama faces with the public is a new chorus of critics, the Republican presidential contenders, some of whom plan to unveil their own jobs programs around the same time as Obama. ... I do not think he is acting in good faith on this jobs package. He is hoping to shift the blame for the lack of jobs to Republicans who will likely o...