PrairiePundit

BBC: Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, says it has discovered a huge new offshore oil field off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state. The Papa-Terra field was found in the Campos Basin, which is already Brazil's most important oil-producing region. Petrobras estimates it contains at least 700 million barrels of crude - about 10% of Brazil's current reserves. The field, which is jointly operated with the US company Chevron, should start producing oil by the end of 2011. Petrobras said the oil from the Papa-Terra field was heavier than the sweet light crude favoured by international markets, but the firm was investing $2bn in adapting its refineries to process heavy oil. The new field is expected to help Petrobras achieve its goal of making Brazil self-sufficient in oil. Since 2003, the company has been meeting 91% of the country's needs. The Campos Basin region already contains 40 other offshore oil fields producing more than 1.1 million barrels a day, am...

ShrinkWrapped does an analysis of the left's position of listening to terrorist phone calls in the US. ... It seems to me there are only two possible reasons the leakers, and those who print the leaks, can have for airing such potentially harmful information. The first possibility is that they are true believers in the absolute primacy of civil liberties; these are people who believe, for all sorts of often excellent reasons, that government power to control individuals is the ultimate danger and that any compromise of their position starts us on the "slippery slope" to totalitarianism. This position is, in some ways, quite admirable, though the logic of their uncompromising position leads to great harm to their own cause and to any influence they might wield or seek to wield. The other possibility is that they are political opportunists, using the issue for its value in damaging the Republican opposition for short term political gain. Aside from the noxiousness of t...

Rasmussen Reports: Sixty-four percent (64%) of Americans believe the National Security Agency (NSA) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that just 23% disagree. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Americans say they are following the NSA story somewhat or very closely. Just 26% believe President Bush is the first to authorize a program like the one currently in the news. Forty-eight percent (48%) say he is not while 26% are not sure. It appears that the terrorist rights Democrats are out of touch on this issue. The 23 % who disagree is probably the anti war puke base of the Democrats who have been driving their Kamikaze liberalism.

BBC: Two more members of Vietnam's national football team have been arrested for match-fixing during the South East Asian Games in Manila this month. Midfielder Huynh Quoc Anh and defender Le Bat Hieu were taken into custody on Wednesday, according to officials. It followed the arrests last week of striker Pham Van Quyen and mid-fielder Le Quoc Vuong. The arrests are the latest in a series of bribery and gambling scandals to hit Vietnamese football. The latest scandal revolves around a semi-final match with Burma, which Vietnam won 1-0. According to state-controlled newspapers, some of the players were paid 20 million dong (US$1,300) by local bookmakers to make sure Vietnam did not win by more than one goal. The bookmakers were able to offer attractive odds on various bigger winning margins, and profit from a guaranteed result. ... I thought communism was suppose to take away the incentive for corruption. Why should soccer players make more than garbage collectors in a c...

Wall Street Journal: The television commercials are attention-grabbing: Newly found Iraqi documents show that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, including anthrax and mustard gas, and had "extensive ties" to al Qaeda. The discoveries are being covered up by those "willing to undermine support for the war on terrorism to selfishly advance their shameless political ambitions." The hard-hitting spots are part of a recent public-relations barrage aimed at reversing a decline in public support for President Bush's handling of Iraq. But these advertisements aren't paid for by the Republican National Committee or other established White House allies. Instead, they are sponsored by Move America Forward, a media-savvy outside advocacy group that has become one of the loudest -- and most controversial -- voices in the Iraq debate. While even Mr. Bush now publicly acknowledges the mistakes his administration made in judging the threat posed by Mr. H...

A.J. Strata: Surprisingly, the liberals want a fight for the future of America over the issue of national security. In their world there is no war, simply crimes to fight in court. In their world we cannot monitor communications from people who are willing to die to kill as many of us as possible. We must protect the terrorists’ rights to plan and execute deadly attacks once they have crossed our borders. The left is West Wing, the rest of want something like 24. The liberals are for the Gorelick Wall that ensures we will not be able to stop a future 9-11 attack, since they are desperate to pretend 9-11 changed nothing. ... The NY Times is expecting to put terrorists back on the street again. And they seem giddy about it.... ... Yes, the idea is for the freeing of terrorists who have been caught red handed planning to kill Americans simply because the FISA Court could not accept their new, more limited role. FISA did not want to taint their process with NSA information. The pr...

John O'Sullivan: ... But are we -- the U.S. armed forces and our Iraqi allies -- winning? I put that question to a friend in the Army reserve, just returned from a year in the Sunni Triangle. He is a level-headed and sober observer, a historian by profession, who was working directly with Iraqis in tasks directly related to fighting the insurgency. His reply was unqualified: "Of course we are winning. We know it. The Iraqis know it. And al-Qaida knows it. The only people who apparently don't know it live in Washington." If Iraq did not explain Washington's hysteria, what did? Well, one clue lies in how the speech was reported. Murtha was generally described as being a conservative Democrat and a supporter of the Iraq war. That description was essential to the prominence of the story. An anti-war speech from a pro-war conservative was a far stronger sign that America's support for the war was cracking than another criticism of Bush on Iraq from another parti...

The sad stories go on and on . Mostly Iraqi civilians killed accidentally in the war. Yet the writer truly fails to comprehend why there are so many civilian casualties. It is another example of the ignorance of reporters in the war in Iraq. Not once in the story does the writer mention that the enemy illegally disguises and camoflages himself as a civilian and attempts to use real civilians to cover his attacks. This obvious violation of the Geneva Convention is never mentioned, nor is it mentioned that the reason for the specific provision requiring distinguishing uniforms is to avoid civilian casualties. The writer does not come out and blame the US troops directly, but many of the Iraqis do. Others correctly blame the enemy.

CNN: Interpol, the international police agency, issued an "international wanted persons notice" Wednesday for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq. The agency issued the "Red Notice" at the request of the North African nation of Algeria, which is pursuing the arrest of the insurgent leader "in connection with the kidnapping and murder" in July of two Algerian diplomats in Iraq. Red notices are passed along to all of Interpol's 184 member countries. They "serve to communicate to the world's police that a suspect is wanted by a member country and request that the suspect be placed under provisional arrest pending extradition," said Interpol, headquartered in Lyon, France. Al Zarqawi is wanted by U.S. and Iraqi authorities in connection with a slew of terror-related actions in Iraq and he is being sought by Jordan, where his group claimed responsibility for last month's deadly hotel attacks. "We congratulate Algeria fo...

Jack Kelly: It isn't absolutely necessary to be a hypocrite in order to be a liberal, but it sure helps. During the first week in December, ten thousand people gathered in Montreal for a UN-sponsored conference on global warming. ... In his address, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin took a poke at the United States for refusing to sign on to the Kyoto Accord. Toronto Star columnist Richard Gwyn agreed with what Mr. Martin had to say about the evil Bush administration, but speaking of Canada in general and Mr. Martin's Liberal government in particular, Mr. Gwyn noted: "We've done nothing about climate change and about global warming except talk. For us to now preach at others is pure hypocrisy." ...

Michelle Malkin: 2005 was a banner year for the nation's Idiotarian newspaper of record, The New York Times. What's "Idiotarian"? Popular warblogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (littlegreenfootballs.com) and Pajamas Media (pajamasmedia.com) coined the useful term to describe stubborn blame-America ideologues hopelessly stuck in a pre-September 11 mindset. The Times crusaded tirelessly this year for the cut-and-run, troop-undermining, Bush-bashing, reality-denying cause. Let's review.... ... In June, Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of downed American Airlines Flight 77, blew the whistle on plans by civil liberties zealots to turn Ground Zero in New York into a Blame America monument. On ...

Robert F. Turner: In the continuing saga of the surveillance "scandal," with some congressional Democrats denouncing President Bush as a lawbreaker and even suggesting that impeachment hearings may be in order, it is important to step back and put things in historical context. First of all, the Founding Fathers knew from experience that Congress could not keep secrets. In 1776, Benjamin Franklin and his four colleagues on the Committee of Secret Correspondence unanimously concluded that they could not tell the Continental Congress about covert assistance being provided by France to the American Revolution, because "we find by fatal experience that Congress consists of too many members to keep secrets." When the Constitution was being ratified, John Jay--America's most experienced diplomat and George Washington's first choice to be secretary of state--wrote in Federalist No. 64 that there would be cases in which "the most useful intelligence" may b...

Frank Gaffney: One of the most serious threats we face in this War for the Free World is the possibility terrorists with radioactive material will find ways to detonate it inside the United States. Such an attack could involve a "dirty bomb," capable of contaminating large parts of a city with dangerous levels of radiation, effectively making it uninhabitable for many years. Or the perpetrators might have access to a crude atomic device, capable of utterly destroying the targeted community. How serious are these dangers? The former is likelier than the latter, but neither can be ruled out. We know al Qaeda is interested in such weapons of mass destruction. Reports have been persistent of plots involving radioactive material in one form or another. It is the first responsibility of government to prevent these and other sorts of attacks on this country and its people. Consequently, we should not be surprised that federal authorities have used various means to detect...

AP via Washington Post: Israeli jets blasted a Palestinian militant group's base a few miles outside the Lebanese capital Beirut on Wednesday, hours after rockets fired from Lebanon hit a northern Israeli border town. In their deepest strike into Lebanon in 18 months, the Israeli planes attacked a base of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a small, Syrian-backed group that has been fighting the Jewish state for decades. Two guerrillas were lightly wounded, the group said. ...

AP via Washington Post: Police on Wednesday shot dead a militant on Saudi Arabia's most-wanted list, the second major terror suspect to die in the country in 24 hours, a Saudi security official said. Abdel-Rahman Saleh Abdel-Rahman al-Mutab, who was No. 4 on the list of the kingdom's 15 most-wanted suspects, was fatally shot north of Riyadh, the security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Police had been chasing al-Mutab since he escaped from the running gunbattle in which fellow militant Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Mohammed al-Suwailmi, No. 7 on the most-wanted list, killed five policemen before being fatally wounded Tuesday, officials said. The deaths of the two militants brings to 10 the number of people on the most-wanted list who have been captured or killed. The list was issued in June. ... Probably one of the biggest of many strategic mistakes made by al Qaeda has been the attempt to terrorize its base in Sau...

Donald Lambro: Some centrist Democrats say attacks by their party leaders on the Bush administration's eavesdropping on suspected terrorist conversations will further weaken the party's credibility on national security. That concern arises from recent moves by liberal Democrats to block the extension of parts of the USA Patriot Act in the Senate and denunciations of President Bush amid concerns that these initiatives could violate the civil liberties of innocent Americans. "I think when you suggest that civil liberties are just as much at risk today as the country is from terrorism, you've gone too far if you leave that impression. I don't believe that's true," said Michael O'Hanlon, a national-security analyst at the Brookings Institution who advises Democrats on defense issues. "I get nervous when I see the Democrats playing this [civil liberties] issue out too far. They had better be careful about the politics of it," said Mr. ...

AP via NY Times: The state's highest criminal court has agreed to hear Tom DeLay's latest request for a quick resolution to money laundering charges that forced him to give up his leadership post in the U.S. House, his spokesman said Tuesday. The all-Republican Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that both sides have a week to submit arguments, DeLay spokesman Kevin Madden said in an e-mail. DeLay's attorneys asked the court either to dismiss money laundering charges or to order a lower court to try him immediately. DeLay attorney Dick DeGuerin took the case to the criminal appeals court Friday, one day after the 3rd Court of Appeals denied his request that the case be sent back to the trial court or expedited through the appeals process. ... I think this is probably good news for DeLay. It would not surprise me to see them throw Earle's entire sorry case out.

NY Times: Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda. The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out. The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency's domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration's most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say. The question of whether the N.S.A. program was used in criminal prosecutions and whether it improperly influenced them raises "fascinating and difficult questions," said Carl W. To...

Arab News: A few public girls’ schools in Jeddah submitted requests to have gymnasiums built, but their hopes for introducing physical education classes were dashed after the Ministry of Education announced that physical education for girls would not be allowed. Speculation in the media and among the public had circulated in the past year that the ministry would allow physical education in girls’ schools by this year, but the ministry refuted this “rumor” as baseless. ... Arab News contacted a girls’ high school that had submitted a request two months ago and had already set up a gymnasium with exercise machines for the girls to use in their spare time and was waiting for the approval. The school’s principal said that she was not allowed to speak to the media about this but she did not deny setting up the gym and submitting a request. “Religious men have a great influence on our education and the ministry listens only to those with certain views about women and their role and place in ...

Gateway Pundit: Although director Steven Spielberg calls "Munich" his "call for peace" the mastermind behind the Munich attacks says he doesn't regret his role in the operation. ... Munich mastermind, Abu Daoud alleges that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, provided financing for the terrorist attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. ... "We did not target Israeli civilians," he said. "Some of them (the athletes) had taken part in wars and killed many Palestinians. Whether a pianist or an athlete, any Israeli is a soldier." Daoud also said in an earlier interview that the Munich operation had the endorsement of Arafat. It does not sound like he has given up his bigotry. Here is another story from the Arab perspective. The reviewer says: See “Munich” by all means. Expect not a great film but, at best, a cerebral thriller — decidedly a pro-Israeli movie, but not an anti-Pale...