The Korean War is perhaps the least understood of America’s modern conflicts. It is hard for me to understand the deep hatred between the different countries in the Pacific forged through centuries of occupation and wars. Former enemies are now allies; countries are split apart by ideology. Korea Strait
The framers wrote the Constitution to provide for a separation of powers, or three separate branches of government. Each has its own responsibilities and at the same time they work together to make the country run smoothly and to assure that the rights of citizens are not ignored or disallowed. This is done through checks and balances. A branch may use its powers to check the powers of the other two in order to maintain a balance of power among the three branches of government. The three branches of the U.S. Government are: Legislative, Executive, Judicial
Human Events has been sending out a series of emails listing 365 Ways to Drive a Liberal Crazy
It is just a coincidence that I finished this book on the anniversary of D-Day. Although author Jeff Shaara’s 
Having just returned from a two day “college tour” with our high school junior I actually was in bed at 9:30 last night and did not hear the news until this morning. The great news. It was funny listening to the right-leaning talk shows today as the hosts grudgingly gave praise to Obama, but not quite happy about it. I am happy about it and can acknowledge that “It’s Bush’s fault.” Having taken the mess of our intelligence community left after Clinton and Garelick (the “Wall” lady) and infusing a mass of support and pride our human intelligence (“humint”)capabilities were greatly improved. That’s not saying much since our humint was so lacking, but yesterday’s events prove the value of himint. We may never know what all transpired, but Obama, perhaps unwittingly gave props to Bush,
Perhaps there is no greater proof that talk radio host and Fox News personality Glenn Beck has uncovered the truth and exposed much of the inner workings of the George Soros project. Like a spoiled child the left doesn’t like when it’s own tactics (read Alinsky) are used against them. Glenn Beck has perhaps mastered the techniques and has enough dedicated staff to take on the Soros machine; additionally Beck admits to his desire to expose the left and does not fear losing anything. He is very dangerous to the left as a crusader for what’s right.
News briefs are a collection of interesting news stories…
Brief 1: In the town where ground troops first met in battle during the Civil War (Manassas, VA or Bull Run for you northerners) another battle is looming. Obama’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) held a press conference yesterday proudly announcing that 160 “foreign nationals” (illegal aliens) were arrested. All was not joyful in the story however as local politicians reminded that ICE has a slushy record regarding detaining illegals even when they have criminal records.
It is often interesting to look at the ease with which non-incumbent candidates can point to the incumbent’s record and critique their performance and bloviate about what they would do in similar situations. It is hard to prevent such a successful strategy and we have learned with the current resident of the White House that a blank slate can be a powerful tool when combined with a thorough lack of inspection of a candidate’s qualifications by both the main stream media and many of the voters.
In case you haven’t noticed Afghanistan has sort of become a major hotbed of resistance to our military. There has been heavy fighting and far too many deaths of our military personnel. One thing that seems the most disappointing to me about Iraq and Afghanistan is how the local citizens do not seem fully committed to their freedom. As Americans I am not sure that we can completely understand this because most of us were born free and continue to live free.
Update – many on the conservative side breathed a cautious sigh of relief when General David Petraeus was placed in charge of the NATO war effort in Afghanistan. Not many criticized his predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal, but there were grumbles about how he handcuffed his troops through tight rules of engagement as discussed in the original post.
Patraeus was seen as perhaps more of a warrior who would take the gloves off and permit our soldiers to do what soldiers do in war…kill the enemy and break things. To many Patraeus was Patton. As expected General Patraeus did modify the complex rules of engagement in Afghanistan. He actually made them even more stringent in an attempt to win the support of the Afghan people.
