PrairiePundit

NY Times: The Qaeda network accused by Pakistan’s government of killing the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is increasingly made up not of foreign fighters but of homegrown Pakistani militants bent on destabilizing the country, analysts and security officials here say. In previous years, Pakistani militants directed their energies against American and NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan and avoided clashes with the Pakistani Army. But this year they have very clearly expanded their ranks and turned to a direct confrontation with the Pakistani security forces while also aiming at political figures like Ms. Bhutto, the former prime minister who died when a suicide bomb exploded as she left a political rally on Thursday. According to American officials in Washington, an already steady stream of threat reports spiked in recent months. Many concerned possible plots to kill prominent Pakistani leaders, including Ms. Bhutto, President Pervez Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif , another ...

David Broder: New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a potential independent candidate for president, has scheduled a meeting next week with a dozen leading Democrats and Republicans, who will join him in challenging the major-party contenders to spell out their plans for forming a "government of national unity" to end the gridlock in Washington. Those who will be at the Jan. 7 session at the University of Oklahoma say that if the likely nominees of the two parties do not pledge to "go beyond tokenism" in building an administration that seeks national consensus, they will be prepared to back Bloomberg or someone else in a third-party campaign for president. Conveners of the meeting include such prominent Democrats as former senators Sam Nunn (Ga.), Charles S. Robb (Va.) and David L. Boren (Okla.), and former presidential candidate Gary Hart. Republican organizers include Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.), former party chairman Bill Brock, former senator John Danforth (Mo.)...

Earlier AP reports said that Pakistan "rejected foreign help in investigating the assassination of Benazir Bhutto," but in a later report said the Pakistani government was reaching out. ... The officials said it was still not entirely clear whether Pakistan was seeking international assistance in an investigation, or simply wanted backing from other countries as it conducts its own probe. "The Pakistan government is discussing with other governments as to how best the investigation can be handled," said one senior U.S. government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because no agreement had yet come from the discussions. ... It would be the politically wise thing to do. There is already great distrust of the government and the three different stories on how Bhutto was killed has only further added to that distrust. An international investigation like the one into the Heriri murder in Lebanon is what is needed. they can run down the credible leads wit...

BBC: Three-quarters of al-Qaeda in Iraq has been destroyed over the last year, the Interior Ministry in Baghdad has said. Iraqi and American commanders said the improvement in security in the country over 2007 had been remarkable. But top US commander Gen David Petraeus warned al-Qaeda remained the greatest threat facing the country and security gains could easily reverse. It came as a tape purportedly by Osama Bin Laden urged Iraqis to reject the US aim of a national unity government. "Our duty is to foil these dangerous schemes, which try to prevent the establishment of an Islamic state in Iraq," the internet audiotape said. The recording in the name of the al-Qaeda leader also warned Sunnis in Iraq not to join the US-allied tribal councils fighting his organisation. Iraqi interior ministry spokesman Maj Gen Abdul Kareem Khalaf said the disruption of the al-Qaeda network was due to the weeding out of security force personnel with ties to militias. He said: "[A...

AP /NY Times: Osama bin Laden warned Iraq's Sunni Arabs against fighting al-Qaida and vowed to expand the terror group's holy war to Israel in a new audiotape Saturday, threatening ''blood for blood, destruction for destruction.'' Most of the 56-minute tape dealt with Iraq, apparently al-Qaida's latest attempt to keep supporters in Iraq unified at a time when the U.S. military claims to have al-Qaida's Iraq branch on the run. The tape did not mention Pakistan or the assassination of Benazir Bhutto , though Pakistan's government has blamed al-Qaida and the Taliban for her death on Thursday. That suggested the tape was made before the assassination. Bin Laden's comments offered an unusually direct attack on Israel, stepping up al-Qaida's attempts to use the Israeli-Arab conflict to rally supporters. Israel has warned of growing al-Qaida activity in Palestinian territory, though terror network is not believed to have taken a strong role ther...

NY Times: ... In previous years Pakistani militants directed their energies against American and NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan and avoided clashes with the Pakistani Army. But this year they have very clearly expanded their ranks and turned to a direct confrontation with the Pakistani security forces while also aiming at political figures like Ms. Bhutto, the former prime minister who died when a suicide bomb exploded as she left a political rally Thursday. According to American officials in Washington, an already steady stream of threat reports spiked in recent months. Many concerned possible plots to kill prominent Pakistani leaders, including Ms. Bhutto, President Pervez Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif , another opposition leader. “ Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and Pakistani people,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters in Washington on Dec. 21. The expansion of Pakistan’s own mili...

Washington Times: A strict policy to arrest, prosecute and jail illegal aliens who cross into the U.S. has shown significant success in reducing crossings and crime along the Texas border, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials said this month. The first 45 days of Operation Streamline — a collaborative effort of local, state and federal agencies in Texas — has resulted in decreased illegal border crossings and crime since its implementation Oct. 31 compared with last year's numbers, said Laredo Border Patrol Sector chief patrol agent Carlos X. Carrillo. "As more and more illegal aliens are prosecuted and incarcerated under Streamline-Laredo, the word is spreading quickly that illegal entry has its consequences," Mr. Carrillo said. "Those found guilty of violating this statute face penalties that can include fines and up to six months in prison." During the first 45-day period of Operation Streamline in the Laredo sector only 2,833 illegal entries were reporte...

Amir Taheri: ... Whoever killed Benazir belonged to one of the nebulae of organisations that have vowed to kill not only those who stand for election but also those who vote. Their slogan is: “From box to box!” This means that, by slipping one's vote into a ballot box, one risks ending up in a coffin. To people in the West voting in an election might appear banal. In the Muslim world, where the fight today is between democracy and terror, it could be a matter of life and death. Over the past decade, thousands of people, from top politicians to ordinary voters, have been murdered by Islamists in Muslim countries that have held reasonably free elections (Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia). Islamist opposition to democracy is based on the claim that allowing men to legislate would be a form of sherk, that is to say associating Man with God, who is the “sole and ultimate legislator”. Man-made law cannot rival God-made Shariah. Refe...

Washington Post: Trained as a military propagandist in North Korea , Kim Seong Min has turned his skills against the government that once forced his allegiance. From a small radio studio in Seoul, he and a handful of other North Korean defectors deliver daily broadcasts to people who remain behind in the isolated communist state run by Kim Jong Il. "To give food provisions, if the Kim Jong Il regime still exists, is merely prolonging their lives in a state of slavery," said Kim, founder and director of the station known as FNK, for Free North Korea Radio. "But broadcasts . . . give an opportunity to change their own future, and provide food for the spirit." The North's estimated 23 million people have little accurate information about the outside world. Listening to foreign news sources is illegal, part of a government effort to block infiltration of subversive ideas. But as more North Koreans buy low-cost radios brought in from China , violating that ban has...

CNN: A top aide who helped bathe Benazir Bhutto's body after her death said it was clear that the former Pakistani prime minister suffered bullet wounds to her head, contrary to a government report that she died because she hit her head on a sunroof lever. Pakistan People's Party information secretary Sherry Rehman, who was riding in the car behind Bhutto's when it was attacked, called the government's conclusion that Bhutto was not shot "the most bizarre, dangerous nonsense." "It's beginning to look like a cover up to me," Rehman said in a CNN interview. Rehman said Bhutto was hemorrhaging on the way to the hospital and that the two cars used to get her there were blood-soaked. "There were clear bullet injuries to her head," said Rehman. "When we bathed her we saw that." Watch Sherry Rehman's interview with CNN On Thursday, hours after Bhutto's death, the Pakistani Interior Ministry said she died from a gun...

Newsweek: ... Polls point to an unusually large number of undecided voters in Iowa. In the most recent CNN poll, in mid-December, just 38 percent of Iowa's likely voters had definitely decided on a candidate. The number who said they were still trying to decide was 40 percent. (A Pew Research poll in Iowa four years ago at the same stage found just 17 percent answering "don't know." ) These undecided voters will either break in the final days of the Iowa campaign (as they did for John Kerry in 2004), or they'll simply stay at home. ... The story is mainly about the Democrat race, but the volatility of the race in both parties makes predictions pretty much guess work at this point, but history seems to suggest the undecided don't break for the current front runner.

Houston Chronicle: Recently released FBI "hate crime" statistics suggest Texas and its largest city, Houston, could be growing more tolerant than many other parts of the country. While nationally the number of hate crimes climbed in 2006 to the highest number in five years, the FBI reported Texas' hate crimes fell to the lowest level in seven years. At the same time, Houston had the lowest per-capita number of hate crimes of the nation's 10 largest cities, the report showed. That does not mean that acts of prejudice are nonexistent in the Lone Star State, as evidenced by intimidating nooses being displayed at a refinery in Baytown, an oil field equipment manufacturer in Houston and a high school campus in Pearland this year. ... However, in Texas, the number of ethnic hate crimes was actually lower in 2006 than in 2004, the data show. ... Not mentioned in the story is that Texas has no hate crime statute. Proponents of hate crime laws made a big push during the 200...

AP /Washington Times: The government said it plans to go ahead with Jan. 8 parliamentary elections, even as the deadliest wave of political violence in years swept the nation after the funeral of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. "Right now, the elections stand where they were," Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro told reporters. "We will consult all the political parties to take any decision about it." But it was not clear how anyone could campaign in the final 11 days before the balloting with Bhutto supporters rampaging through cities in violence that has left at least 27 dead. ... Not clear? Oh come on. This is a golden opportunity for Bhutto's PPP to win a huge victory if they play on the emotions generated by her murder. It is also a great opportunity to hand an overwhelming defeat to al Qaeda, because every vote cast in the election will be a vote against al Qaeda which wants no election. Pakistan is making the right move and deserves our suppor...

Michael Barone: There are lessons to be learned from the dazzling success of the surge strategy in Iraq. Lesson one is that just about no mission is impossible for the United States military. A year ago it was widely thought, not just by the new Democratic leaders in Congress but also in many parts of the Pentagon, that containing the violence in Iraq was impossible. Now we have seen it done. We have seen this before in American history. George Washington's forces seemed on the brink of defeat many times in the agonizing years before Yorktown. Abraham Lincoln's generals seemed so unsuccessful in the Civil War that in August 1864 it was widely believed he would be defeated for re-election. But finally Lincoln found the right generals. Sherman took Atlanta and marched to the sea; Grant pressed forward in Virginia. Franklin Roosevelt picked the right generals and admirals from the start in World War II, but the first years of the war were filled with errors and mistakes. Ev...

Robert Novak: While public polls show Mike Huckabee leading Mitt Romney in Iowa, a new survey of an oversized sample shows Huckabee slipping and no longer ahead of Romney. A private corporate interest commissioned a phone bank survey of 15,000 Iowans who say they will attend Republican presidential caucuses Jan. 3. It showed Romney with 30 percent and Huckabee at 26 percent. Sen. John McCain was third with 12 percent and Rudy Giuliani fourth at 9 percent. Fred Thompson had only 1 percent, with slightly fewer votes than Rep. Ron Paul (also at 1 percent). Numbers for both Huckabee and Romney dipped sharply when Iowans were asked their second choice. In contrast, McCain was the leading second-choice candidate for both Huckabee and Romney voters. Unexpected late intervention by Bob Dole in the Iowa Republican caucuses confirms that Mike Huckabee may have blundered by assailing President George W. Bush's "arrogant bunker mentality" in international affairs. "Why...

Stephen Schwartz: IN the brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto, it appears that the shadow of Iraq has fallen over Pakistan. It's not clear whether Western intelligence has gathered any real hard evidence of a formal shift in priorities by the terrorists from Iraq to Pakistan. But from the perspective of murderous jihad, such a shift certainly makes sense - because al Qaeda has failed in Iraq and faces too many obstacles in Afghanistan. As retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni told Time magazine this week, al Qaeda is shopping for a new battlefield. "I really think they're trying to ignite Pakistan into the kind of chaos they need to survive," Zinni says, "and create a fundamentalist, even radical, Islamic government." Meanwhile, Al Qaeda in Iraq is confronted with the US-led surge under Gen. David Petraeus, the consolidation of the Shia-majority administration in Baghdad and the widespread disillusionment of Iraqi Sunnis with al Qaeda's introduction of ...

Washington Post: ... U.S. officials fear that a renewed campaign by Islamic militants aimed at the Pakistani government, and based along the border with Afghanistan, would complicate U.S. policy in the region by effectively merging the six-year-old war in Afghanistan with Pakistan's growing turbulence. "The fates of Afghanistan and Pakistan are inextricably tied," said J. Alexander Thier, a former United Nations official in Afghanistan who is now at the U.S. Institute for Peace. U.S. military officers and other defense experts do not anticipate an immediate impact on U.S. operations in Afghanistan. But they are concerned that continued instability eventually will spill over and intensify the fighting in Afghanistan, which has spiked in recent months as the Taliban has strengthened and expanded its operations. Unrest in Pakistan and increasing fuel prices have already boosted the cost of food in Afghanistan, making it more likely that hungry Afghans will be lured by ...

David Oshinsky: Coming of age in the 1960s, I heard the word “fascist” all the time. College presidents were fascists, Vietnam War supporters were fascists, policemen who tangled with protesters were fascists, on and on. To some, the word smacked of Hitler and genocide. To others, it meant the oppression of the masses by the privileged few. But one point was crystal clear: the word belonged to those on the political left. It was their verbal weapon, and they used it every chance they got. Forty years have passed and not much has changed, complains Jonah Goldberg, a conservative columnist and contributing editor for National Review. Leftists still drop the “f word” to taint their opponents, be they global warming skeptics or members of the Moral Majority. The sad result, Goldberg says, is that Americans have come to equate fascism with right-wing political movements in the United States when, in fact, the reverse is true. To his mind, it is liberalism, not conservatism, that embraces ...

Arab News: The high-profile case of Salman Al-Huraisi, a 28-year-old Saudi hotel security guard who died as a result of alleged beatings by two members of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, has been transferred to the Cassation Court, the Kingdom’s court of appeals. A ruling is expected within a month. Raif Badwi, a human rights advocate, has teamed up with the family’s attorney, Yahya Al-Huraisi, to appeal the lower court’s decision on Nov. 28 dropping all charges against two defendants in the murder case — both of them Commission members. Badwi is expected to highlight the case from a human rights perspective and underscore the conclusion made by the General Investigation and Prosecution Authority (GIPA), the Kingdom’s equivalent of a district attorney’s office, which had declared the two agents culpable for Al-Huraisi’s death. “The ruling (by the lower court) implies what I refer to as a ‘license to kill’,” Badwi told Arab News. “If the Cassation Court do...

Guardian: The holy grail of renewable energy came a step closer yesterday as thousands of mass-produced wafer-thin solar cells printed on aluminium film rolled off a production line in California, heralding what British scientists called "a revolution" in generating electricity. The solar panels produced by a Silicon Valley start-up company, Nanosolar, are radically different from the kind that European consumers are increasingly buying to generate power from their own roofs. Printed like a newspaper directly on to aluminium foil, they are flexible, light and, if you believe the company, expected to make it as cheap to produce electricity from sunlight as from coal. Yesterday Nanosolar said its order books were full until mid-2009 and that a second factory would soon open in Germany where demand for solar power has rocketed. Britain was unlikely to benefit from the technology for some years because other countries paid better money for renewable electricity, it added. "O...