PrairiePundit

CNN: Authorities raised the Afghan flag over the battle-scarred enclave of Marjah on Thursday, a ceremony symbolizing the presence of the Afghan government in the Taliban stronghold. The red, black and green banner was hoisted over an area where U.S. and other troops have been fighting the Taliban in Operation Moshtarak -- the biggest offensive of the war. A few hundred people watched the event, attended by Helmand Gov. Gulab Mangal, other provincial and local officials, and military officials. "I think we're feeling pretty good about the control of the populated areas, the infrastructure," said Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of U.S. Marines in southern Afghanistan . ... There appears to have been no final battle as such in Marjah. We went from pockets of resistance to a flag raising in a matter of days.This all happened within a week of commanders saying it might take another 30 days to clear the Taliban. I suspect they got hungry and ran out of ammo. The loc...

Reuters: U.S. President Barack Obama needs to get his poll numbers up -- in Israel -- if he hopes to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians, a senior Israeli official said Wednesday. Obama, who has made outreach to the Muslim world a feature of his presidency, has left many Israelis skeptical about his support for the Jewish state, particularly in comparison to his predecessors, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton . "We are literally taking the security future of our families, our kids, and placing it in the hands of the president of the United States and that's no small thing," said the Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Trust is an essential component of the peace process," he added, saying Israel ultimately looked to the U.S. president for support should it strike peace deals with the Palestinians or other Arab states that later unravel. A poll released in Aug...

Washington Post: A blizzard of bank notes is flying out of Afghanistan -- often in full view of customs officers at the Kabul airport -- as part of a cash exodus that is confounding U.S. officials and raising concerns about the money's origin. The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, flows mostly to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where many wealthy Afghans now park their families and funds, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. So long as departing cash is declared at the airport here, its transfer is legal. But at a time when the United States and its allies are spending billions of dollars to prop up the fragile government of President Hamid Karzai, the volume of the outflow has stirred concerns that funds have been diverted from aid. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, for its part, is trying to figure out whether some of the money comes from Afghanistan's thriving opium trade. And officials in neighboring Pakistan think that at least some o...

Washington Times: With uncharacteristic bluntness, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned Congress on Wednesday that the United States could soon face a debt crisis like the one in Greece, and declared that the central bank will not help legislators by printing money to pay for the ballooning federal debt. Recent events in Europe, where Greece and other nations with large, unsustainable deficits like the United States are having increasing trouble selling their debt to investors, show that the U.S. is vulnerable to a sudden reversal of fortunes that would force taxpayers to pay higher interest rates on the debt, Mr. Bernanke said. "It's not something that is 10 years away. It affects the markets currently," he told the House Financial Services Committee. "It is possible that bond markets will become worried about the sustainability [of yearly deficits over $1 trillion], and we may find ourselves facing higher interest rates even today." It was some of ...

Andrew McCarthy: C losing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay is “the pragmatic thing to do.” So says Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) in remarks reported by the Wall Street Journal . And why is that? “It’s an image problem for the United States.” Actually, Gitmo is not a problem at all for the United States. In fact, it’s a boon. It’s an image problem only for leftists, and an irrational one. There is no good reason to give in to their lingering Bush derangement — especially at the cost of endangering the American people. Senator Graham has evidently been huddling with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, struggling to find a solution to this imaginary problem that Graham has managed to convince himself is a “practical problem.” And what makes it a practical problem? “Having a jail where presidents don’t want to send anyone,” says the senator. But a presidential hissy fit is not a “practical problem.” We have 200 trained alien terrorists who want to kill Americans, and there ar...

WSJ: Dorothy Lee and her husband of 40 years were driving home from a Bible study group one wintry night when their car suddenly hit the curb. Mrs. Lee looked at her husband, who was driving, and saw his head bob a couple of times and fall on his chest. In the ensuing minutes, Mrs. Lee recalls, she managed to avoid a crash while stopping the car, called 911 on her cellphone and tried to revive her husband before an ambulance arrived. But at the hospital, soon after learning her husband had died of a heart attack, Mrs. Lee's heart appeared to give out as well. She experienced sudden sharp pains in her chest, felt faint and went unconscious. When doctors performed an X-ray angiogram expecting to find and treat a blood clot that had caused Mrs. Lee's symptoms, they were surprised: There wasn't any evidence of a heart attack. Her coronary arteries were completely clear. Doctors eventually determined that Mrs. Lee had suffered from broken-heart syndrome, a name given by doctor...

Karl Rove: ... ... Mr. Obama is basing his health-care pitch on the false premise that he can drive down health-care prices by creating a pricey new entitlement. He also maintains that he can do this without creating a mountain of federal debt or a bureaucracy that will determine when Americans can receive care. Americans intuitively know these things cannot be true, and they have therefore responded to the promise of ObamaCare with tea parties and by voting for Republican candidates in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts. Now voters are likely to support congressional Republicans if they can take Mr. Obama head on in a calm, respectful and factual way. If the president says his health-care plan "would reduce costs and premiums for millions of families and businesses," as he did in his State of the Union, Republicans must point out that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says premiums under ObamaCare would be higher than if nothing were done. If Mr. Obama repea...

Computerworld /Businessweek: At a news conference attended by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Silicon Valley start-up today took the wraps off a fuel cell designed to enable individual homes and businesses to generate their own power. Bloom Energy Corp. showed off the Bloom Energy Server , which is being billed as a game changer for the clean energy industry. The solid oxide fuel cell is built to generate electricity with a mixture of oxygen and renewable or traditional fuels -- all without creating any emissions. ... Sridhar noted that 20 corporate big hitters, including FedEx, Wal-Mart, Staples, eBay and Google already are using Bloom Boxes. Today's news conference was held at eBay's San Jose headquarters. Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick said in an e-mail to Computerworld that the search giant has been using four Bloom Boxes at the company's Mountain View headquarters for the past 18 months. "The boxes are a p...

Washington Post: A suspect's request that a lawyer be present before submitting to police questioning does not last forever, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. In fact, 14 days is long enough for police to wait before taking the alleged perpetrator into custody again and attempting another interrogation. The court ruled unanimously that Maryland could use an imprisoned child molester's statement -- given voluntarily 2 1/2 years after police first approached him -- to convict him on additional charges that he had abused his son. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that an initial request for an attorney does not mean that police can never reinitiate questioning, provided that the person has been released from custody in the meantime. When a suspect "has returned to his normal life for some time before the later attempted interrogation, there is little reason to think that his change of heart regarding interrogation without counsel has been coerced," Scalia wrote . But how...

Eli Lake: The embarrassing trail left by a suspected Israeli hit team — a trail that began with doctored European passports, led to the assassination of a Palestinian terrorist in a Dubai hotel room, and ended on the front pages of world papers — has not worsened the country's intelligence cooperation with Western countries, a senior Israeli official insists. "There is a lot of hyperventilating about this in the public arena," said the senior official, who asked not to be named because he was speaking about sensitive intelligence matters. The official said he was speaking only about the effects on intelligence links and was not confirming Israel's involvement in the hit. "The countries that coordinate the war on terror with allies like Israel and the United States and Europe are not as exercised about this as some of the public statements," the official said. "There has been no effect on the operational side." But this assessment stands in stark ...

Houston Chronicle: Behind armed guards and locked doors — in a secret hearing of judicial privacy not even given to some 9/11 terrorists or East Coast mafia dons — Osiel Cardenas Guillen, one of the most feared drug lords in history, was sentenced to 25 years in prison Wednesday. In a Houston courtroom sealed to the public, he also was ordered to forfeit $50 million, a small slice of his estimated earnings. Cardenas surrendered at least $23 million in cash seizures quietly made over the past year by federal agents. Cardenas, a 42-year-old native of the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, moved tons of cocaine and made millions of dollars as he ruled the Gulf Cartel drug empire with a viciousness and hands-on style seldom before seen, authorities said. “Osiel Cardenas Guillen headed one of the most prolific and certainly most violent drug trafficking organizations that Mexico has ever spawned,” said Mike Vigil, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was based in Latin Amer...

Washington Post: The human rights branch of the Organization of American States issued a blistering 300-page report Wednesday morning against one of its members, Venezuela , saying that the oil-rich country run by President Hugo Chávez constrains free expression, the rights of Venezuelans to protest and the ability of opposition politicians to function. The report is expected to draw a sharp response from the firebrand leader, a former army colonel who in 2008 expelled two Human Rights Watch investigators after they released a critical report in Caracas. Chávez in the past has railed against the OAS as beholden to the interests of the United States, a country he calls an empire with diabolical designs on Venezuela. The OAS report , compiled and written by the body's Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, reflects growing concern in the region over how Venezuela is governed. It has added weight because the OAS, which is made up of 34 countries and based in Washington, has at ...

Times: Washington refused to endorse British claims to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands yesterday as the diplomatic row over oil drilling in the South Atlantic intensified in London, Buenos Aires and at the UN. Despite Britain’s close alliance with the US, the Obama Administration is determined not to be drawn into the issue. It has also declined to back Britain’s claim that oil exploration near the islands is sanctioned by international law, saying that the dispute is strictly a bilateral issue. Argentina appealed to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, last night to intervene in the dispute, a move Britain adamantly opposes. “The Secretary-General knows about the issue. He is not happy to learn that the situation is worsening,” Jorge Taiana, the Argentine Foreign Minister, said after meeting Mr Ban in New York. “We have asked the Secretary-General, within the framework of his good offices, to stress to Britain the need to abstain from further unilateral acts...

NY Times: Inside a secret detention center in an industrial pocket of the Pakistani capital called I/9, teams of Pakistani and American spies have kept a watchful eye on a senior Taliban leader captured last month. With the other eye, they watch each other. The C.I.A. and its Pakistani counterpart, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence , have a long and often tormented relationship. And even now, they are moving warily toward conflicting goals, with each maneuvering to protect its influence after the shooting stops in Afghanistan. Yet interviews in recent days show how they are working together on tactical operations, and how far the C.I.A. has extended its extraordinary secret war beyond the mountainous tribal belt and deep into Pakistan ’s sprawling cities. Beyond the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar , C.I.A. operatives working with the ISI have carried out dozens of raids throughout Pakistan over the past year, carried out from bases in the cities of Quett...

Daily Mail: A teenage cheerleader had to have her her leg amputated after doctors missed her cancer four times - telling her it was 'growing pains'. Shannon Corr, 15, repeatedly visited GPs for over a two-month period complaining of agonising pains in her right knee and shin that left her struggling to walk. But doctors told her she was suffering from growing pains and told her to go home and rest. After GPs refused to refer Shannon to hospital, her desperate mother Jeannetta Swift, 44, took her to A&E and pretended she had fallen over so she could be fully examined. Doctors immediately spotted a problem, but by the time the rare bone cancer osteosarcoma was diagnosed it had spread to the soft tissue of Shannon's leg and surgeons were forced to amputate. ... This is another example of the horrors of rationed health care in the UK. Paul Krugman may think these problems do not exist, but he is suffering from delusional liberalism.

Scotsman: GREECE has touched Germany's rawest nerve by accusing the EU powerhouse of not fully compensating it for gold stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War. The incendiary comments came as some 50,000 Greeks took to the streets of Athens to protest over austerity plans aimed at wrenching the country out of a debt crisis that has shaken the eurozone. The 24-hour general strike grounded flights and disrupted services. "No sacrifices, the rich should pay for the crisis," demonstrators chanted as tens of thousands marched on parliament. Scuffles broke out on the fringe of the protest, with police firing tear gas to disperse groups of stone-throwing youths. Deputy prime minister Theodoros Pangalos criticised Germany's attitude towards the Greek debt crisis and said Athens had not received adequate compensation for the impact of the Nazi invasion of Greece in 1941. "They took away the Greek gold that was at the Bank of Greece, they took away the Greek money...

Jake Tapper: ABC News’ Kirit Radia and Jonathan Blakely report: Domestic political disputes are hurting America’s image abroad, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lamented this morning during testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs. The hearing addressed the State Department’s fiscal year 2011 budget. Clinton’s remarks were in reference to a number of President Obama’s diplomatic appointments that were held up by senators for political reasons over the past year. ... I suppose the Democrat opposition to John Bolten's appointment to the UN enhanced our image abroad? I am sure Democrats think that, but that is just another example of their partisan hypocrisy. Democrats were both partisan and abusive in treating John Bolten unfairly. There is nothing going on now that is remotely comparable.

The Hill: Sen. John Kerry said he is "deeply disappointed" in an Italian court's decision to send three Google executives to prison . The Italian court acted because of an offensive video hosted on a Google web site. While Kerry called the video depicting students bullying a boy with Down Syndrome "sickening," he said "justice is not served by criminalizing those who simply work for a company that hosts content on the Internet." ... The verdict and the sentence are both nuts. What are the Italians thinking? BTW, this is probably the first time I have posted anything in agreement with John Kerry. But he is clearly right in this instance. The video was removed as soon as it came to the attention of Google employees. What the Italians were probably looking for was some system of prior restraint. If that were the case a lot of blogs would never be posted.

Rasmussen Reports: Just days before Texas Republicans pick their nominee for governor, incumbent Rick Perry has his biggest lead yet. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely Republican Primary voters finds Perry leading Senate Kay Bailey Hutchison 48% to 27%, with Tea Party activist Debra Medina earning 16% of the vote. Nine percent (9%) of Texas GOP voters remain undecided. At the beginning of the month , Perry lead 44% to Hutchison’s 29% and Medina’s 16%. In September , just after Hutchison traveled statewide to announce her candidacy for governor, she posted a 40% to 38% lead over Perry, but that was the high point of her support which has been declining ever since. Early voting has already begun in the primary which wraps up on Tuesday. Turnout is often difficult to project for primaries, but among those who say they have already voted, Perry has earned 49% support, while Hutchison and Medina have picked up 24% and 20% respectively. ... Perry has taken advantag...

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