PrairiePundit

Sunday Telegraph: Mr Obama is expected to speak to Mr Clinton for the first time since he won the nomination in the next few days, but campaign insiders say that the former president's future campaign role is a "sticking point" in peace talks with Mrs Clinton's aides. The Telegraph has learned that the former president's rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence. A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could "kiss my ass" in return for his support. A second source said that the former president has kept his distance because he still does not believe Mr Obama can win the election. ... I think he will probably get over it. The chances of his backing McCain are remote, but it is an indication of the hard feeling of many Hillary supporters. She...

BBC: Final results from Zimbabwe's one-candidate presidential election have been delayed, election officials say. They said they hoped they would be able to announce the results on Sunday - a day later than originally expected. President Robert Mugabe was said to have won by a wide margin, after the opposition boycotted the vote amid claims of violence and intimidation. But international observers have reported many spoilt ballots, which in some areas could outnumber votes cast. Earlier, officials said the count was complete, but later reports said results from rural areas were still trickling in. "Tonight we cannot give the results. I don't want to give a time-frame, but I hope it will be tomorrow," Utoile Silaigwana, the deputy chief elections officer for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, told Reuters news agency. ... It would be embarrassing to lose a one man race. It appears that several voters deliberately spoiled their ballots. If they outnumber the ...

Daily Mail on Sunday: The fanatical Taliban mastermind behind recent attacks in which six British soldiers died in Afghanistan has been killed in a missile attack by an Army Apache helicopter. In what military chiefs described as a 'deliberate and surgical strike', the 35-year-old rebel leader - known as Sadiqullah - died alongside nine fellow Taliban fighters after the Apache fired two laser-guided Hellfire missiles at their red pick-up truck and destroyed it. The rebel leader had been tracked down after weeks of secret intelligence work. His death would have been instantaneous, as the warheads of the 5ft-long missiles, which travel at 950mph, are loaded with high-explosives designed to destroy even the heaviest tank armour. The British military spokesman in Afghanistan, Lt Col Robin Matthews, said last night: 'This was a deliberate and surgical strike against a man who facilitated a number of fatal attacks on British, Nato and Afghan forces and civilians. 'It was co...

Daily Mail on Sunday: American counter-terrorism chiefs are demanding a full explanation from Britain of how radical cleric Abu Hamza was able to smuggle murderous messages from his UK prison cell to Al Qaeda's deputy leader. The major diplomatic row comes in the wake of a long-running battle by US prosecutors to extradite the former imam of London's Finsbury Park mosque to stand trial in America. Hook-handed Hamza was jailed for seven years in Britain in 2006 for inciting murder and racial hatred and is held at Belmarsh prison, South-East London, supposedly one of Britain's most secure jails. But according to senior American intelligence sources, Hamza evaded the extensive security measures surrounding him to send a series of questions to Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man. ... Late last year, Al-Zawahiri - who has a £13million bounty on his head - posted a message on an extremist website run by Al Qaeda saying he would answer questions on any topic. U...

NY Times: One morning last month, Arwa Abdu Muhammad Ali walked out of her husband’s house here and ran to a local hospital, where she complained that he had been beating and sexually abusing her for eight months. That alone would be surprising in Yemen, a deeply conservative Arab society where family disputes tend to be solved privately. What made it even more unusual was that Arwa was 9 years old. Within days, Arwa — a tiny, delicate-featured girl — had become a celebrity in Yemen, where child marriage is common but has rarely been exposed in public. She was the second child bride to come forward in less than a month; in April, a 10-year-old named Nujood Ali had gone by herself to a courthouse to demand a divorce, generating a landmark legal case. Together, the two girls’ stories have helped spur a movement to put an end to child marriage, which is increasingly seen as a crucial part of the cycle of poverty in Yemen and other third world countries. Pulled out of school and forced to ...

NY Times: In the first action against Taliban militants threatening this city, Pakistani security forces shelled territory held by an extremist Islamic leader Saturday in an operation designed to push the militants back from the city perimeter. Mortar shells were launched against two bases of an Islamic militant known as Mangal Bagh, whose well-armed men have taken control over much of Khyber agency adjacent to Peshawar, senior military officials said. “The ultimate objective is to establish the writ of the government where it is challenged,” Mohammed Allam Khattack, inspector general of the Frontier Corps, said at a news conference here. General Khattack said the operation was undertaken in response to “growing public demand” for a show of force against militants who have kidnapped city residents on an almost daily basis in the last several weeks, and intimidated surrounding towns by shutting down courts. The show of force Saturday, which included a blockade around the area of Ba...

Chicago Tribune: ... The blues bars of "Sweet Home Chicago" are smoky no more, thanks to one of the most restrictive city smoking bans in the country. Chicago is one of just a few cities in the world to limit the use of trans fats in its restaurants. Even a place once christened Hog Butcher for the World engaged in an embarrassing public debate over the discomfort of fatted geese. Thanks in large part to the efforts of an aggressively anti-alcohol mayor, the tipsy town that used to boast more than 7,000 taverns in the postwar 1940s now sips its suds in barely 1,300 bars. And you can forget about owning a gun in this town. Chicago has some of the most restrictive gun laws in America. The fact is, a lot of "little soft cities" have become brassier and freer and, well, funner than Chicago. At Reason Magazine, we recently took a look at how the 35 most-populous cities in the United States balance individual freedom with government paternalism. We ranked the cities on ho...

Gallup: When given a choice about how government should address the numerous economic difficulties facing today's consumer, Americans overwhelmingly -- by 84% to 13% -- prefer that the government focus on improving overall economic conditions and the jobs situation in the United States as opposed to taking steps to distribute wealth more evenly among Americans. ... Americans' lack of support for redistributing wealth to fix the economy spans political parties: Republicans (by 90% to 9%) prefer that the government focus on improving the economy, as do independents (by 85% to 13%) and Democrats (by 77% to 19%). This sentiment also extends across income groups: upper-income Americans prefer that the government focus on improving the economy and jobs by 88% to 10%, concurring with middle-income (83% to 16%) and lower-income (78% to 17%) Americans. ... A separate question finds Americans more likely to believe government is doing too many things that should be left to individuals an...

Simon Heffer: A few years ago, when the tyrant of Zimbabwe was moving from being wicked to being downright evil, I wrote that we should invade Harare, depose him, and supervise free elections. Invited to appear on a BBC programme to defend this stance, I was assailed by an "Africa expert" who told me that diplomatic pressure on Mugabe was bound to work, that the idea of sending the Parachute Regiment in to sort the monster out was offensively colonialist, and that I was wrong. White liberals like him are as much to blame for the terror, starvation, brutality and genocide that now scar this once-rich and stable country. The supposedly civilised world has allowed Mugabe and his horrors to happen, mainly unchecked. Sanctions on his country merely starve those who disagree with him. Zimbabwe has all the natural, and had all the human, resources to be an example to the rest of Africa. It is now merely a symbol of what happens whe...

Robert Tracinski: ... It seems that the first time Americans begin to experience anything like the economic consequences of global warming regulations -- $4-per-gallon gasoline is just a down payment on the green agenda -- they begin to have second thoughts about whether they really want to reduce their carbon footprints. Can it really be that easy to defeat cap-and-trade-just to point out, "Hey, this will raise the price of gasoline"? Why does this argument work? Invoking high gasoline prices works, not just because of the immediate pain it inflicts on politicians' constituents, but because it exploits a fundamental contradiction at the foundation of the current "green" fad. The contradiction behind the green lifestyle fad is the idea that we can reject industrial civilization -- and the fuel that powers it -- while still enjoying a modern, prosperous, "First World" standard of living. The more shallow followers of the green fad get around thi...

Stephen Moore: ... Most of his former colleagues probably can't fathom why Wall Street bankers make tens of millions of dollars in salaries and bonuses each year. How would he justify these fat pay days? "It's simple," he lectures, sounding very much like the Texas A&M economics professor that he was in the 1970s: "In economics, we define labor exploitation as paying people less than their marginal value product. I recently told Ed Whitacre [former CEO of AT&T, who retired with a $158 million pay package] he was probably the most exploited worker in American history because he took Southwestern Bell, which was the smallest of the former Bell companies, and he turned it into the dominant phone company on earth. His severance package should have been billions." Mr. Gramm says that today there is "a lucrative premium for talent. When we were all hunters and gatherers, and you were better with a bow and arrow than I was, there were limits on how mu...

Ralph Peters: THE facts about your security are being torn to shreds by activist liars. And they think that you're too stupid to know the difference. Let's lay out the worst current examples of media make-believe and election-year truth-trashing: Whopper No. 1: America is less safe today than it was on Sept. 10, 2001 . Oh, really? Where's the evidence? The Clinton years saw New York City attacked and Americans slaughtered by terrorists around the globe. Nothing was done to protect us. And the true end of the Clinton era came on 9/11. A record to be proud of. Countless aspects of the Bush-Cheney administration deserve merciless criticism. But fair is fair: Since 9/11, we haven't suffered a single successful terrorist attack on our homeland. Not one. Explain to me, please, how this shows we're less safe. What factual measurement applies, other than the absence of attacks? God knows, the terrorists desperately wanted to strike our homeland. And t...

NY Times: A Mexican citizen who is a distant relative of a prominent congressman from Texas was kidnapped last week in Ciudad Juárez , Mexico , and then released within three days after the victim’s immediate family paid ransom of $32,000. United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, helped the Mexican authorities pursue the case, and an internal ICE memorandum, much of it confirmed in interviews with American officials, says the congressman, Representative Silvestre Reyes, facilitated the release. That has led families of other victims of violence in Ciudad Juárez , a forbidding city with warring drug cartels and rampant murder rates, to say that Mr. Reyes, whose district is directly across the border, has not been nearly so responsive to their requests for help. ... “What is striking is how rapidly it was solved,” said Kent Paterson, who runs a border blog operated by New Mexico State University and says there are scores of unresolved cases of kidnapping of United ...

Houston Chronicle: In a country where drug-related violence has killed nearly 2,000 people this year, including four police commanders, a beleaguered Mexico cheered U.S. congressional approval of a record $400 million to help it battle narcotics gangs. In a 92-6 vote late Thursday, the U.S. Senate authorized a three-year, $1.6-billion package to combat drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America. The bill includes $65 million in anti-narcotics assistance for Central America this year. President Bush, who originally proposed $1.5 billion in aid for Mexico and Central America under the provisions of the Merida Initiative, is expected to sign the measure into law. "The United States is finally recognizing that this is a joint problem, a bilateral problem, and that it has a responsibility in this fight to work with the Mexican government," said Juan Camilo Mouriño, Mexico's interior minister, who oversees internal security. The news came as another top police official w...

Donald Lambro: If the presidential election hinged on who could best protect us from terrorism, veteran Sen. John McCain would probably defeat freshman Sen. Barack Obama. The Arizona Republican beats the Illinois Democrat by 19 points (52 percent to 33 percent) when voters are asked who would do a better job on that issue, according to the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll. ... On the bedrock issue of terrorism, Americans trust the decorated war veteran, fighter pilot and national-security leader far more than they do the youthful, inexperienced former neighborhood organizer from Chicago. But terrorism is not the leading issue in the country today. It ranks fifth among the eight election issues that are most important to the American people. Obviously, it would climb to the top of the list if we were attacked, but that isn't likely to happen while George W. Bush is in the White House. Whatever his deficiencies as president, he will leave office in January with the vast majority of Ameri...

Thomas Ayodele: Food prices have skyrocketed internationally. In my own Nigeria , rice has epitomized the crisis after doubling in price since last year. Riots around the world over food supplies are prompting panicked governments to find solutions to stem the crisis. Whether they will bring about an abundance of food is debatable. Nigeria, for example, is considering increasing rice imports and disbursing loans to domestic rice processors. While this might provide brief improvement, it will not prevent future shortages or ensure food abundance. Promotion and management of food imports in Nigeria in the past has bred abuse — so much so that the primary result is no longer the protection of local food producers. Such actions do show the economic folly of allowing government to manage what private individuals could do better. It's not hard to link African food crises to inappropriate government agricultural policies that stifle the continent's great agricultural potential...

Michael Barone: The office of vice president has long been the butt of jokes -- you know the punch lines -- but as we await Barack Obama's and John McCain's choices for vice president, we do so with the knowledge that vice presidents in the last five administrations have been important officers of government. (Yes, including Dan Quayle -- see Bob Woodward and David Broder's book). How the vice presidency has been transformed is an interesting story that takes us from the Founding Fathers to recent history. The framers of the Constitution created the vice presidency to solve the problem of succession. They expected that electors meeting in state capitals would vote for two candidates from different states, with the No. 2 vote-getter becoming vice president. It worked well twice. Then the unexpected emergence of political parties produced bizarre results. In 1796, John Adams was elected president and his opponent, Thomas Jefferson, vice president. In 1800, the electors pro...

Reuters /NY Times: The Revolutionary Guards said Iran would impose controls on shipping in the vital Gulf oil route if Iran was attacked and warned regional states of reprisals if they took part, a newspaper reported on Saturday. Fear of an escalation in the standoff between the West and Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer, have been one factor propping up sky-high oil prices. Crude hit a record level on international markets near $143 a barrel on Friday. Speculation about a possible attack on Iran because of its disputed nuclear ambitions has risen since a report this month said Israel had practiced such a strike, prompting increasingly tough talk of retaliation, if pushed, from Tehran. "Naturally every country under attack by an enemy uses all its capacity and opportunities to confront the enemy," Guards commander-in-chief Mohammad Ali Jafari told Jam-e Jam newspaper in some of the toughest language Iran has used so far. Analysts say Iran may not ...

Washington Times: Sen. Barack Obama 's recent efforts to woo American Jewish voters by staking out pro-Israeli positions seem to have fallen on deaf ears in the Jewish state, according to a poll published Friday. Asked to name their preference to become the next president, a sample of 500 Israeli Jews favored presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain , over the Illinois Democrat by a 36 percent to 27 percent advantage. The poll, the first presidential such survey in Israel since the end of the Democratic primary race, was conducted June 18-19 by Israel's Mutagim survey institute for the right-wing weekly paper Mekor Rishon. The 500-person sample has a 4.5 percentage margin of error. As in the U.S., the balance of support for the candidates moves rightward as voters get older. Mr. Obama's sole advantage among Israelis comes among voters aged 18 to 24, who support him by a seven percentage-point margin. But among Israeli senior citizens, Mr. McCain holds a 30-po...

The New Editor reports on a Texas pollster who skews results toward the Dems by skewing his sample to claim there are more self identified Democrats than Republicans in the state. Even if he flipped his skew, it would still understate Republican strength in Texas. People who are still Democrat are embarrassed to admit. As The New Editor points out, Democrats have not won a statewide race in Texas this century. They will not this year either. I expect Republicans to carry Texas by between 55 and 60 percent of the vote in November unless something unusual happens between now and election day. Hat tip Larwyn. The Houston Chronicle does not mention the problems with the polling methods but does discuss its projection for the governor's race in two years. The poll puts Sen. Kay Baily Hutchison ahead of Gov. Perry. That may be the current snapshot. I am not sure why Perry is perceived unfavorably by many voters. I think he has done an OK job and has not screwed up. I am also n...