PrairiePundit

Daily Mail on Sunday: 'Half of Damascus falls to rebels' as breakaway army slowly seize control of capital from Assad regime If true, it is probably caused in part by attrition of government forces.

Sunday Telegraph: Britain could not reclaim Falklands, warns General It is a point I have made in recent post.  It is especially true with Obama in the White House where they could expect no support. But the Guardian finds doubts growing in Argentina. 'The Falklanders eat fish and chips. How can they belong to Argentina?' 28 Jan 2012:  A growing number of young Argentinians are questioning their nation's claim to the disputed islands

The internet was not available for blogging today, but we will be back strong soon.

Stephen Moore: The Most Important Non-Presidential Election of the Decade It is do or die for public sector unions.  Hopefully, they will fail in their attempt to remove Walker who is showing how important getting rid of the unions corrupt bargain with Democrats is to the well being of his state.

NY Times: Some State of the Union Viewers Tuned Out Fast People have been tuning Obama out since the debate over Obamacare.  The more he talks the less people like him and his policies.  I think the coming campaign is going to see his numbers in decline with every speech.

Loren Steffy: President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union speech, called for an “all-of-the-above” strategy to develop energy that’s “cleaner, cheaper and full of new jobs.”  He’ll be lucky to get one out of three.  It’s likely that our energy sources will become cleaner. Stricter pollution and carbon standards are inevitable, and the abundance of natural gas from hydraulic fracturing in the U.S. means it’s likely to become a viable alternative fuel – both for electricity generation and powering fleet vehicles. To drive home the point, Obama was in Nevada on Thursday touting the prospects for natural gas.  By 2040, natural gas will surpass coal as the world’s second-biggest fuel source behind oil, according to a recent study by Exxon Mobil Corp.  Obama wasn’t just referring to natural gas, though. He wants to improve the reliability of other sources – wind, solar, biofuels. For that, he wants to shift tax incentives from the oil industry to renewables...

Houston Chronicle: As the threat of internal corruption dogs the ranks of border security forces, the Obama administration is considering regularly rotating agents to other locations to distance them from the persuasive power and money of Mexico's drug cartels. Such a decision would subject locally recruited  U.S. Border Patrol  agents and  Customs and Border Protection  officers to the periodic relocations already required for agents within the FBI,  U.S. Secret Service , the  Drug Enforcement Administration  and other premier federal law enforcement agencies. "It is something we are looking at very carefully,"  James Tomsheck , chief of internal affairs for Customs and Border Protection, told the  Houston Chronicle  in an interview. "It is too early to make a (final) assessment, but we certainly believe it does have an impact." Four CBP employees have been arrested on corruption-related charges in the last four ...

The Hill: Panetta: Officials in Pakistan had to know about bin Laden It is informed supposition, but I tend to agree with him.  Bin Laden had to feel protected or he would not have had such a small security force in the compound.

Mark Steyn: Had I been asked to deliver the State of the Union address, it would not have delayed your dinner plans: "The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter. Thank you and good night! You've been a terrific crowd!" I gather that Americans prefer something more upbeat, so one would not begrudge a speechwriter fluffing it up by holding out at least the possibility of some change of fortune, however remote. Instead, President Obama assured us at great length that nothing is going to change, not now, not never. Indeed the Union's state — its unprecedented world-record brokeness — was not even mentioned. ...  It is there is the Democrat Senate's budget... oops.  Like the non existent budget, the Democrats try tide their spending ways and spring a spending bill on the Republicans  so they can charge them with trying to shut down government.

Daily Mail: Muslim couple 'murdered their three daughters in honor killings' - because they wanted to cut off 'the diseased limb of their family tree' It makes some people crazy.

Daily Mail: George Soros says there 'isn't all that much difference' between Romney and Obama I doubt he is supporting Romney.

The Daily Mail has the story .  The piece also has several more photos and a map of the location of the former bridge.

Guardian: Boko Haram demands sharia law No sane person would want to live under sharia law as administered by these kooks.  It would just be a way of institutionalizing their religious bigotry and oppression.

Telegraph: Reviving Western concerns that his government is still contemplating unilateral military action against  Iran , Ehud Barak gave one of the clearest signs yet that Israel's support for new US and EU sanctions remains strictly limited. "We are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear," he told the World Economic Forum in Davos. "And even the American president and opinion leaders have said that no option should be removed from the table. "It seems to us to be urgent, because the Iranians are deliberately drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical operation could block them." Although  Israeli  intelligence and military officials have privately spoken of Iran's nuclear programme entering a "framework of immunity", it is the first time that a senior figure in Benjamin Netanyahu's government has done so in public. Israel's fears that it might soon be too late to launch mil...

LA Times: US may rely on aging U-2 spy planes longer than expected The Global Hawk has been an expensive disappointment.  That is pretty damning when you consider that a spy plane developed in the 1950s out performs it.

NY Times: 434 People Killed in Iraq Since US Pulled Out And, counting.  The Iraqis share some of the blame for Obama's premature retreat.  Both sides should have found a way to keep US forces in the area to act as fair arbitrator of the distrust between the Shia and Sunni factions.

WSJ: Pentagon war planners have concluded that their largest conventional bomb isn't yet capable of destroying Iran's most heavily fortified underground facilities, and are stepping up efforts to make it more powerful, according to U.S. officials briefed on the plan. The 30,000-pound "bunker-buster" bomb, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, was specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea to cloak their nuclear programs.   But initial tests indicated that the bomb, as currently configured, wouldn't be capable of destroying some of Iran's facilities, either because of their depth or because Tehran has added new fortifications to protect them.   Doubts about the MOP's effectiveness prompted the Pentagon this month to secretly submit a request to Congress for funding to enhance the bomb's ability to penetrate deeper into rock, concrete and steel before exploding, the officials said.   The p...

Fox News: Vice President Biden claimed Friday that  Leon Panetta  was the only member of the inner circle who definitively urged  President Obama  to green-light the raid on Usama bin Laden's compound, as Biden discussed new details about the behind-the-scenes deliberations.   Biden, speaking to the House Democratic Issues Conference in Maryland, candidly admitted that he told the president not to go forward with the mission. Biden said at the time he thought the administration should do more to find out whether  bin Laden  was actually inside the compound in Abbottabad,  Pakistan .  ... I find it stunning that there was so much hesitancy in going after this mass murderer.  Panetta seems to be the only one who understood the importance of the mission and had confidence in our special ops team that was responsible for it.   It shows you just how weak Obama's national security team is and why some of them charac...

Toby Harnden: Romney's Moon Mockery vs. Lunar Tunes Newt I think Romney is closer to the mark on what our priorities should be.  Newt is probably a decade or more too soon.

Washington Times Editorial: Those who say man alone is responsible for overheating the planet frequently dismiss any role the sun might play. As can be seen in an ongoing freedom-of-information lawsuit leveled against the University of Virginia (UVA), sunshine is precisely what the heralds of climate catastrophe fear most of all. The American Tradition Institute (ATI) is going after 12,000 emails sent or received by  Michael E. Mann  while he was on the staff of the publicly-funded university.  Mr. Mann  is famous for coming up with one of the “tricks” used to “hide the decline” in global temperatures. On Wednesday, ATI released a small selection of emails it hopes will convince a Prince William County judge that full disclosure of the rest is in the public interest. In March 2003, for example, a trusted colleague of  Mr. Mann ’s emailed to find out how the UVA professor arrived at his conclusions.  Mr. Mann admitted he was missing crucial data and ...