PrairiePundit

Lance Izumi: Making effective appeals to Hispanic voters is a tricky business. Barack Obama’s education proposals are a case in point. Mr. Obama’s campaign notes that, “African-American and Latino students are significantly less likely to graduate than white students,” which is true. To combat such achievement gaps, Mr. Obama’s education plan specifically advocates, among other things, “transitional bilingual education” for English-learners. Yet, the question for Mr. Obama is whether his commitment to bilingual education, which emphasizes classroom instruction in languages other than English, overrides his interest in closing achievement gaps. Take, for example, Sixth Street Prep, a charter elementary school in eastern Los Angeles County. The school’s students are overwhelmingly Hispanic and low income. More than a third of the students, many of whom are recent arrivals, are learning English. Yet, among fourth graders, an astounding 100 percent of the students tested at the profici...

NY Post Editorial : As Congress slogged toward an apparent financial-market rescue bill over the weekend, the time arrived for a closer look at the roots of the crisis. Who were the culprits? Many and varied. But as Election Day grows ever nearer, the role of one candidate in particular stands out: that of Barack Obama . As Stanley Kurtz details on the opposite page, Obama spent many years cultivating ties with, working with - and even funding - the very folks who pushed for the risky lending that underlies the current mess. That is, "community organizer" groups like ACORN. ACORN is especially noteworthy, not only because of its prominence in the drive to relax mortgage requirements, but also because of its shady tactics. And its links to Obama. Various ACORN chapters across the country, led by folks like Chicago's Madeline Talbott, staged in-your-face protests in bank lobbies and filed complaints meant to hold up mergers sought by targeted banking ...

NY Times: The men who set fire to Valentina Basargina’s house arrived in the stillness of 3 a.m. There were three of them. Each wore a camouflage uniform and carried a rifle. One held a can of gasoline. They wore masks. They led Ms. Basargina and her son outside and splashed gasoline in their two rooms, she and her relatives said. One man produced a T-shirt, knotted onto a stick. It was damp with gas. “This is for the one who is gone,” he said in thickly accented Russian. Ms. Basargina’s nephew had recently disappeared; the police had said he joined the small but smoldering insurgency fighting for Chechnya’s independence from Russia. The man lit the torch and tossed it inside. The air whooshed. Flames shot through the house. The attack, late last month, was part of what Chechens described as an intensified government effort to stamp out the remnants of a war that has continued, at varying levels of ferocity, for nearly 15 years. In a campaign to punish families with sons suspected of ...

Some clearly think so.

Reuters: President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday Venezuela will develop a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes, in another challenge to Washington just days after Russia offered nuclear assistance to the socialist Latin American leader. "In Venezuela we are interested in development of nuclear energy, of course for peaceful purposes, for medical purposes, for purposes of electricity generation," Chavez said at a political rally. "Brazil has various nuclear reactors, so does Argentina. We will have ours." Chavez noted that Venezuela, which is a member of the oil-producing cartel OPEC, developed a nuclear reactor decades ago but abandoned it under pressure from the United States. He said Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had offered help with a reactor, adding that "we already have a commission working on this issue." ... Chavez seems to be well on his way to blowing the windfall oil profits so why not waste it on nuclear energy...

Times: Islamist extremists prepared last night to unload rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft guns from a Ukrainian freighter seized by Somali pirates even as foreign warships surrounded the vessel. A US destroyer and submarine from an international taskforce set up to patrol the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean and two European-flagged ships were reported to be tracking the freighter that had anchored off the southern Somali coast. The ship's captain contacted media outlets by satellite phone to say that one of his crew had died during the hostage drama. The pirates were demanding a $20 million (£10.8 million) ransom for the release of the MV Faina , its 20 surviving crew and cargo of weapons, which include 33 Russian tanks. It was seized on Thursday as it neared the Kenyan port of Mombasa. “The Islamists have sent pick-ups from Mogadishu to go and collect the gear,” said an analyst with a network of Somali informers. “There's not much they can do with the tanks — they...

Chicago Tribune: Antoin "Tony" Rezko , a convicted influence peddler who was once one of Gov. Rod Blagojevich 's most trusted confidants, has met with federal prosecutors and is considering cooperating in the corruption probe of the governor's administration, sources told the Tribune. Rezko's possible change of heart—after years of steadfast refusal—has sent ripples through a tight circle of prominent defense attorneys who represent dozens of potential witnesses and targets in the wide-ranging probe. His cooperation would give prosecutors investigating the governor and his wife access to someone they have described as an ultimate political insider at the center of a pervasive pay-to-play scheme. Rezko's trial this year laid bare a culture of scams, bribes and backroom deals stretching from City Hall to the Statehouse. It even became fodder in the presidential campaign of Democratic nominee Barack Obama , whose fundraising and personal ties to Rezko go back mor...

LA Times: A popular Sunni Muslim cleric with a television show and a website that churns out religious edicts and dieting tips agitated centuries-old animosities in the Islamic world recently by referring to Shiite Muslims as heretics seeking to invade Sunni societies. The bitter, often bloody, divide between the two main branches of Islam has been an undercurrent since the 7th century, but Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi's vitriol comes at a fragile time, when Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt are wary that the predominantly Shiite nations of Iraq and Iran could destabilize the region. With populist fervor, Qaradawi's comments intertwined religious mistrust with political suspicion. Iran's nuclear program and influence with the Shiite-led government in Iraq and the radical group Hezbollah in Lebanon have agitated Sunni governments. Fighting between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, which left tens of thousands dead since the U.S. invasion of 2003, has calmed, but the Sunni Ara...

Jeff Jacoby: 'THE PRIVATE SECTOR got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it." That's Barney Frank's story, and he's sticking to it. As the Massachusetts Democrat has explained it in recent days, the current financial crisis is the spawn of the free market run amok, with the political class guilty only of failing to rein the capitalists in. The Wall Street meltdown was caused by "bad decisions that were made by people in the private sector," Frank said; the country is in dire straits today "thanks to a conservative philosophy that says the market knows best." And that philosophy goes "back to Ronald Reagan, when at his inauguration he said, 'Government is not the answer to our problems; government is the problem.' " In fact, that isn't what Reagan said. His actual words were: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Were he president tod...

Hat tip to Danger Room.

Wall Street Journal: Top U.S. policy makers emerged from hours of tense negotiations with a clear message just after midnight Sunday morning: A deal to bailout U.S. financial markets has been agreed on and all that remains to be done is to commit the legislation to paper. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.), were flanked by key negotiators in the Capitol as they announced that a $700 billion plan to have Treasury buy up toxic assets had been all but finalized after hours of exhausting negotiations. "I think we're there," an exhausted Mr. Paulson said, a sentiment echoed in the statements of negotiators such as House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) and Senate Banking Committee head Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.). Those present said the bailout plan still needs to be drafted in its final form, a process staff members were expected to continue throughout the night in what o...

John S. D. Eisenhower: As the only living presidential son to serve in combat while his father was in office, I feel an obligation to express my concern that both of the current vice presidential candidates, Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator Joseph Biden, have sons in Army units on orders for duty in Iraq. In addition, the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, has a son who is in the Marine Corps and subject to a second deployment to Iraq at any time. Considering how small the force we have in Iraq is in comparison to the nation’s population, this is a startling circumstance. It is not, however, a desirable one. It reflects favorably on the patriotism of those involved, but in itself it can hardly increase the military understanding, the grasp on foreign relations or (least of all) the perspective of the parents. My unique position in this regard was called to my attention a few days ago in a radio interview. Did I believe that the children of presidents (or vice presidents) shoul...

Houston Chronicle: Neither Mark Davidson nor Mike Anderson intended to take a 14-mile ride on Hurricane Ike's storm surge after crashing waves and 110-mph winds decimated their beach houses on Bolivar. Nonetheless, the pair survived — one for 14 hours, another for 36 — as they were swept across East Bay and washed up into Chambers County along with tons of debris from Bolivar beach homes. What at first seemed implausible — these survivors finding soft drinks, a child's life jacket and even a kayak in the midst of a raging hurricane — is instead a story of two men on two separate journeys with a desperate determination to survive. Both were rescued among tons of debris, from refrigerators to furniture, compressed like a trash compactor along miles of the mostly uninhabited salt marsh of Chambers County. Today, the 49-year-old Anderson says it was thoughts of his family that kept him alive. Though his feet are still scabbed and swollen from a flesh-eating bacteria, the o...

Sunday Times: AL-QAEDA terrorists have targeted 800 Muslim criminals they want to recruit for their “holy war” against Britain, say prison probation officers. The officers believe that attempts have been made to convert one in 10 of the estimated 8,000 Muslims in the eight high-security prisons in England and Wales to the Al-Qaeda cause in the past two years. The Ministry of Justice has begun a programme to persuade convicted terrorists to give up their cause. It is also trying to protect vulnerable Muslim inmates from violent extremists. The ministry said this weekend that it had established a unit to tackle “the risks of extremism and radicalism in prison”. The radicalisation is being led by some of the estimated 150 terrorist prisoners in England and Wales. The number of Muslim inmates has grown over the past decade to more than 10% of the jail population. Most are young men, typically petty criminals serving two or three-year sentences for crimes such as burglary, theft, drug...

Sunday Times: FIRST it was the sheer ingratitude of the Irish, then it was the failure of the Dublin government to mount a successful yes campaign. Now Brussels has found a new explanation as to why Ireland voted down the European Union treaty in June - a CIA and Pentagon-backed plot, devised by American neoconservatives to weaken the EU. The European parliament wants an inquiry into whether Declan Ganley, the multi-millionaire chairman of the Libertas group that campaigned against the treaty, could be in the pockets of US defence and intelligence services. The calls have been led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the firebrand 1968 student leader turned Green MEP, who pointed to Irish press reports that “revealed there possibly exists a link between the financiers of the no campaign in Ireland and the Pentagon as well as the CIA. “If proved true, this would clearly show there are forces in the US willing to pay people to destabilise a strong and autonomous Europe”, he said. ... They must hav...

Sunday Telegraph: The Pentagon has ordered that raids on suspected terrorist targets within Pakistan be stepped up to pressurise al-Qaeda leaders and distract them from preparing attacks on American targets elsewhere. "The aim is to disrupt their scope for planning and keep their leaders on the move so that it is more difficult for them to co-ordinate complicated plots," a senior US intelligence official told The Sunday Telegraph. The operations launched from neighbouring Afghanistan have led to sharply increased tensions with Pakistan's armed forces since President George W.Bush recently authorised assaults involving "boots on the ground" without prior approval by Pakistan's government, a supposed US ally. Those hostilities almost turned lethal last week when Pakistani troops shot at two clearly marked US helicopters, and the two sides then traded fire. The Pentagon said the aircraft were just inside Afghan air space but Pakistani officials insisted they ha...

Observer /Guardian: The Taliban have been engaged in secret talks about ending the conflict in Afghanistan in a wide-ranging 'peace process' sponsored by Saudi Arabia and supported by Britain, The Observer can reveal. The unprecedented negotiations involve a senior former member of the hardline Islamist movement travelling between Kabul, the bases of the Taliban senior leadership in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and European capitals. Britain has provided logistic and diplomatic support for the talks - despite official statements that negotiations can be held only with Taliban who are ready to renounce, or have renounced, violence. Sources in Afghanistan confirmed the controversial talks, though they said that in recent weeks they had 'lost momentum'. According to Afghan government officials in Kabul, the intensity of the fighting this summer has been one factor. Another is the inconsistency of the Taliban's demands. 'They keep changing what they are asking for. One da...

It is a good ad.

It is a good ad that reinforces a point McCain made Friday night in the debate about Obama's willingness to cut off funding for the troops in a time of war.

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt: Gov. Matt Blunt today issued the following statement on news reports that have exposed plans by U.S. Senator Barack Obama to use law enforcement to threaten and intimidate his critics. “St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign. “What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment. “This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson’s thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil ri...