San Diego Union Tribune
GOP’s Hunter will run for presidency in 2008

Rep. Duncan Hunter, who has championed national defense and border security during a quarter-century in Congress, announced yesterday he will retire from Congress in 2008 and run for the Republican presidential nomination.

The surprise decision came from a veteran lawmaker who has never exhibited any political ambitions beyond advancing through the House of Representatives hierarchy.

“This is going to be a long road. It’s a challenging road. There’s lots of rough-and-tumble. But I think it’s the right thing to do for our country,” Hunter told a hastily assembled gathering of friends and supporters yesterday morning on San Diego’s Broadway Pier.

[...] >> More… Duncan Hunter

Oops, I must have been in too much of a hurry. I missed this story in the East Coast MSM.

Wages, benefits up at 2-year best pace
Rocky Mountain News
Oct 31, 10:06 AM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) – Wages and benefits paid to American workers rose in the July-September period at the fastest pace in more than two years.

The Labor Department reported that its Employment Cost Index was up 1 percent in the third quarter, compared to a 0.9 percent rise in the April-June period. It was the biggest quarterly increase since a similar 1 percent rise in the second quarter of 2004.

The increase, which was above the 0.9 percent rise that economists had been expecting, was led by a big jump in the cost of employee benefits such as health insurance and pensions.

For the third quarter, benefit costs rose by 1.1 percent, up from a 0.8 percent gain in the second quarter. Wages and salaries were up 0.9 percent, matching the increase in the second quarter.

[...] >> More… Rocky Mountain News

The Washington Times

Former Prince George’s County Executive Wayne K. Curry and five fellow black Democrats on the county council excoriated their party yesterday and endorsed Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, a Republican, for U.S. Senate.

“The [Democratic] Party acts as though when they want our opinion, they’ll give it to us. It’s not going to be like that anymore,” said Mr. Curry, who in 1994 became the county’s first black executive and remains influential in the mostly black and heavily Democratic county.

Mr. Curry and the lawmakers said Democratic leaders repeatedly have snubbed the black community and their county, noting the lack of party support for the Senate campaign of former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chief Kweisi Mfume, who lost the Democratic primary to Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin.

The Democratic ticket lacks black candidates, they said, and candidates from Prince George’s County, which is home to more than 320,000 registered Democrats — the most of any jurisdiction in Maryland.

“We’re not puppets. We’re not gullible,” Mr. Curry said during a press conference at the Infusion Tea Cafe in Largo. “This ain’t the first time we’ve charged up a hill.”

He was joined by fellow black Democrats David Harrington of Bladensburg, Samuel H. Dean of Bowie, Camille A. Exum of Capitol Heights, Tony Knotts of Temple Hills and Marilyn Bland of Clinton — all officials on the nine-member county council.

Other black Democratic leaders endorsing Mr. Steele yesterday included Major Riddick, former chief of staff for former Gov. Parris N. Glendening; Ron Lipscomb, a major fundraiser and trustee of the state party; and businessmen Clayton Duhaney and M.A. “Mike” Little.

“There’s a revolution going on here,” said Jerry McLaurin, a county developer and Steele supporter who attended the announcement. “This is going to radiate throughout the county like an explosion.”

Mr. Steele, who lives in the county and is the first black to be elected to statewide office in Maryland, said he was “humbled.”

“As I started this campaign, I said to myself I didn’t want this to be so much about party as about people, and these individuals seem to understand and appreciate that as well,” he said.

The endorsements were issued as Democratic officials are scrambling to secure their most loyal bloc — black voters.

Mr. Curry said the Steele endorsements are “the continuation of a long civil rights struggle.”

Mr. Dean, a former council chairman who was elected in 2002 with 93 percent of the vote, said blacks have had a one-sided relationship with the Democratic Party since they shifted allegiance from the Republican Party in 1932.

“We were in the Democratic Party while they were lynching black folks. We were in the Democratic Party while they were segregating folks,” Mr. Dean said. “We have been loyal Democrats, [but] when the party has an opportunity to do something to show that their base is recognized, appreciated and acknowledged, they don’t.”

“The issue is what we want not only from the state party but from the national party,” he said. “Give us respect. We cannot continue to be in the room but not allowed to come to the table. What we are doing now is saying, ‘Forget it. We are not going to wait for you to bring us to the table. We are going to not only get to the table, we are going to take it.’ ”

Other Maryland Democratic leaders — such as U.S. House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer, Prince George’s County Executive Jack B. Johnson and Delegate Anthony G. Brown of Prince George’s County, who is running for lieutenant governor — declined to comment.

A Cardin campaign spokesman did not return calls.

Mr. Cardin, a white 10-term congressman from Baltimore, said this weekend that his “message to the African-American community and to all communities is that we’ve got to change the priorities in Washington.”

“You’re twice as likely to be without health insurance if you’re African-American. So, yes, [black voters are] concerned about a senator who’s going to stand up for universal health coverage. I will. Michael Steele won’t. He supports George Bush’s policies,” Mr. Cardin said.

Mr. Curry said that Mr. Steele is a “good man with a good plan,” and although he differs with some of Mr. Steele’s views, he also differs with some of the Democratic Party’s platform.

He said the lieutenant governor is “most responsive to the things that will make our futures brighter.”

###
>> The Washington Times

Republican Duncan Hunter to run for president in 2008

Hunter, who has represented the San Diego area district for 26 years, announced the surprise bid at a news conference in front of supporters on the San Diego waterfront.

[...] > eitb24: Republican Duncan Hunter…

H/T: Tammy Bruce: …Hunter to Run For President

USA Today

Celtics, NBA lose indomitable trailblazer with Auerbach’s passing

He was the first coach to put a premium on defense. He created the sixth man role. He spawned several generations of coaches and NBA executives. He advanced race relations by seeing no color except that of a winner.

As a champion and innovator, Red Auerbach had no NBA peer. And he wasn’t shy about letting it be known. When a game was in hand, up went his hand to light a cigar, as much a trademark of the Hall of Famer as his record 16 NBA titles as a coach or an executive with the Boston Celtics.

Arnold “Red” Auerbach, 89, in failing health the past few years, died of a heart attack Saturday in Washington, D.C., which he made his home.

[...]

Congress to courts: Get out of the war on terror.

Democrats are trying hard to sell the idea to voters that the 109^th Congress was a Republican ‘do nothing’ disaster. In fact, had Congress done nothing else, the law on military commissions would make up for a lot of sins…

WSJ – Opinion Journal
Sending a Message
BY JOHN YOO
Thursday, October 19, 2006

During the bitter controversy over the military commission bill, which President Bush signed into law on Tuesday, most of the press and the professional punditry missed the big story. In the struggle for power between the three branches of government, it is not the presidency that “won.” Instead, it is the judiciary that lost.

The new law is, above all, a stinging rebuke to the Supreme Court. It strips the courts of jurisdiction to hear any habeas corpus claim filed by any alien enemy combatant anywhere in the world. It was passed in response to the effort by a five-justice majority in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld to take control over terrorism policy. That majority extended judicial review to Guantanamo Bay, threw the Bush military commissions into doubt, and tried to extend the protections of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, overturning the traditional understanding that Geneva does not cover terrorists, who are not signatories nor “combatants” in an internal civil war under Article 3.

Hamdan was an unprecedented attempt by the court to rewrite the law of war and intrude into war policy. The court must have thought its stunning power grab would go unchallenged. After all, it has gotten away with many broad assertions of judicial authority before. This has been because Congress is unwilling to take a clear position on controversial issues (like abortion, religion or race) and instead passes ambiguous laws which breed litigation and leave the power to decide to the federal courts.

Until the Supreme Court began trying to make war policy, the writ of habeas corpus had never been understood to benefit enemy prisoners in war. The U.S. held millions of POWs during World War II, with none permitted to use our civilian courts (except for a few cases of U.S. citizens captured fighting for the Axis). Even after hostilities ended, the justices turned away lawsuits by enemy prisoners seeking to challenge their detention. In Johnson v. Eisentrager, the court held that it would not hear habeas claims brought by alien enemy prisoners held outside the U.S., and refused to interpret the Geneva Conventions to give new rights in civilian court against the government. In the case of Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, the court refrained from reviewing the operations of military commissions.

In Hamdan, the court moved to sweep aside decades of law and practice so as to forge a grand new role for the courts to open their doors to enemy war prisoners. Led by John Paul Stevens and abetted by Anthony Kennedy, the majority ignored or creatively misread the court’s World War II precedents. The approach catered to the legal academy, whose tastes run to swashbuckling assertions of judicial supremacy and radical innovations, rather than hewing to wise but boring precedents.

Thoughtful critics point out that because the enemy fights covertly, the risk of detaining the innocent is greater. But so is the risk of releasing the dangerous. That’s why enemy combatants who fight out of uniform, such as wartime spies, have always been considered illegals under the law of war, not entitled to the same protections given to soldiers on the battlefield or ordinary POWs. Disguised suicide- bombers in an age of WMD proliferation and virulent America-hatred are more immediately dangerous than the furtive information-carriers of our Cold War past. We now know that more than a dozen detainees released from Guantanamo have rejoined the jihad. The real question is how much time, energy and money should be diverted from winning the fight toward establishing multiple layers of review for terrorists. Until Hamdan, nothing in the law of war ever suggested that enemy status was anything but a military judgment.

While there may be different ways to strike a balance, this is a decision for the president and Congress, not the courts. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to determine the jurisdiction of federal courts in peacetime, and also declares that habeas corpus can be suspended “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion” when “the public Safety may require it.” Congress’s power is even greater when it is correcting the justices’ errors. Courts are ill-equipped to decide whether vast resources should be devoted to reviewing military detentions. Or whether military personnel’s time should be consumed traveling back to the U.S. for detainee hearings. Or whether we risk revealing information in these hearings that might compromise the intelligence sources and methods that may allow us to win the war.

This time, Congress and the president did not take the court’s power grab lying down. They told the courts, in effect, to get out of the war on terror, stripped them of habeas jurisdiction over alien enemy combatants, and said there was nothing wrong with the military commissions. It is the first time since the New Deal that Congress had so completely divested the courts of power over a category of cases. It is also the first time since the Civil War that Congress saw fit to narrow the court’s habeas powers in wartime because it disagreed with its decisions.

The law goes farther. It restores to the president command over the management of the war on terror. It directly reverses Hamdan by making clear that the courts cannot take up the Geneva Conventions. Except for some clearly defined war crimes, whose prosecution would also be up to executive discretion, it leaves interpretation and enforcement of the treaties up to the president. It even forbids courts from relying on foreign or international legal decisions in any decisions involving military commissions.

All this went overlooked during the fight over the bill by the media, which focused on Sens. McCain, Graham and Warner’s opposition to the administration’s proposals for the use of classified evidence at terrorist trials and permissible interrogation methods. In its eagerness to magnify an intra-GOP squabble, the media mostly ignored the substance of the bill, which gave current and future administrations, whether Democrat or Republican, the powers needed to win this war.

Mr. Yoo, professor of law at Berkeley and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, served in the Bush Justice Department from 2001-03. He is the author of “War By Other Means” (Grove/Atlantic 2006).

> WSJ OpinionJournal: Congress to courts: Get out…

Voters of Virginia that expect their Senators and Representatives in Washington to have some semblance of credibility and personal propriety should look carefully at the race between James Webb and George Allen.

Amy Proctor makes the point.

Halloween from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope:

“Something scary appears to be slithering across the plane of our Milky Way galaxy in this new Halloween image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. The snake-like object is actually the core of a thick, sooty cloud large enough to swallow dozens of solar systems. In fact, astronomers say its “belly” may be harboring beastly stars in the process of forming.”

>> Snake on a Galactic Plane!

Orlando Sentinel | Opinion
Gary Loftis

If you haven’t seen or heard the ad, actor Michael J. Fox apparently manipulated his Parkinson’s medication so he could do a pro-stem-cell-research ad for a Missouri Democratic candidate, demonstrating what a Parkinson’s patient without treatment looks like. In the ad, Fox implies that stem-cell research is the only hope for “millions of Americans — Americans like me.” [VIDEO]

As a Parkinson’s patient myself, I know that claim to be hogwash.

There are drug and non-drug therapies that ameliorate Parkinsonism for millions of patients. There apparently is even one that allows Fox to work as an actor — without the physical effects he displayed on the ad.

When he diagnosed me with early-onset Parkinsonism in August 2000, my neurologist explained that there were many therapies for the disease and many more on the horizon. The challenge was finding the one or a combination that worked for me. The involuntary physical movements that Parkinson’s patients display are the result of a lack of dopamine in their brains. To put it simply, all the messages don’t get from their brains to their muscles.

[...] >> Shame on Michael J. Fox

H/T: The Bear @ The Absurd Report

Choosing to Protect America
By: Newt Gingrich
The Ripon Society, October 27, 2006

This November American voters will vote in the third federal elections since the 9/11 attacks. Once again as in 2002 and 2004, we are having an important national dialogue as to how we will win the war against our enemies and protect Americans from an increasingly organized anti-American coalition of terrorists and dictators.

In this dialogue, voters should first consider five big facts.

First, the threat to our survival is mortal, direct, and immediate. In the age of nuclear and biological weapons, even a few determined hateful people can do more damage than Adolph Hitler did in the Second World War. The loss of two or three American cities to nuclear weapons is a real threat. The loss from a biological attack would be even more devastating.

Second, the threat is global in nature and involves increasing cooperation among an emerging anti-American coalition. America is an unavoidably engaged in an emerging third world war and any look at the active players and the centers of violence indicates just how worldwide it is. North Korea with its missile and nuclear weapons program are potential assets for Iran, which is allied with Syria and subsequently Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas, which operates not only in the Middle East but also in South Am erica. Iran also has ties with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. By simply marking on a map every place where there are acts of terrorism or dictatorships actively engaged in strengthening themselves for a possible future confrontation with the United States unmistakably reveals just how worldwide this threat is.

Third, our enemies are increasingly confident. Their statements of their intention to defeat us are direct and clear. Iranian Dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said, “To those who doubt, to those who ask is it possible, or those who do not believe, I say accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible.”

The Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said, “The world of Islam has been mobilized against America for the past 25 years. The peoples call, ‘death to America.’ Who used to say ‘death to America?’ Who, besides the Islamic Republic and the Iranian people, used to say this? Today, everyone says this.”

In our own hemisphere, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has called on Iran to “save the human race, let’s finish off the U.S. empire.”

Fourth, despite these unambiguous statements from our enemies, there is still great confusion among our elites and in the news media. Changing this by getting agreement on the scale of the threat is vital to the successful prosecution of the war. The key in this conflict, in military terms — the center of gravity, is the American people and secondarily all the free people of the world.

Fifth, we have to confront the fact that while much has been accomplished in the last five years much more must be done if we are to win. Time is not on our side. We must confront the reality that we are not where we wanted to be nor where we need to be. We have not captured Bin Laden. We have not defeated the Taliban in its sanctuaries in Northwest Pakistan. We have not stopped the recruitment of young fanatics into terrorism. We have not stopped either the Iranian or the North Korean nuclear programs. We do not have a stable democratic Pakistan capable of securing its own nuclear weapons. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is stable and secure. The United Nations is unreformed and we have failed to convince the people of America and of our fellow democracies of the correctness and necessity of what we are doing. We have vastly more to do than we have even begun to imagine.

The evidence from even before 9/11 through today is that our enemies are vivid, direct, and unequivocal in their desire to defeat us even if they have to die to do so. If they were to acquire biological or nuclear weapon, they would not hesitate to use it in order to kill us in substantial numbers and shatter our freedom. We cannot afford to be confused. Our cities and our own lives are at risk.

As the November election draws near, there are two factions of American politics that predominate. The appeasement wing declares the war too hard and the world too dangerous. These defeatists try to find some explainable way to avoid reality while advocating return to “normalcy,” and promoting a policy of weakness and withdrawal abroad.

A second faction argues our national security system is doing the best it can and that we have to “stay the course”–no matter how unproductive.

With American survival at stake, Americans must choose a path to victory that rejects as unthinkable the first group’s strategy of negotiated surrender and rejects as insufficient the second group’s unwillingness to do whatever it takes to win. The path to victory requires that we are willing to reorganize everything as needed in our national security system. We are in a real war in a lot of places and all of our national institutions need to be in that war. This path will require more entrepreneurship and more speed as well as more resources and more accountability.

A new war budget should be developed from war time requirements rather than peacetime constraints. Intelligence and the land forces (Army and Marines) are all under funded. Those who think we currently have a wartime budget simply have no notion of the scale of American war efforts historically. We have a robust peacetime budget while trying to fight three wars and contain four dictatorships. That is a risky formula and makes victory much more difficult.

Put to do what is required, pro-victory leaders must first understand Margaret Thatcher’s axiom that “first you win the argument and then you win the vote.” In the end, it is only with the support of the American people that political leaders can do what it takes in order to protect us from these mortal threats.

America knows how to win; we have been in such a situation before. In November of 1980, voters had had enough of the domestic and foreign policy failures of the Carter administration. They had just experienced the first year of what Mark Bowden in Guests of the Ayatollah called “the first battle in America’s war with militant Islam” — the seizure of the American embassy in Iran in November 1979.

In choosing to replace President Carter with former movie actor and former California Governor Ronald Reagan, the American people embraced a clear vision of victory. Famously asked by a reporter during the campaign about his vision of the Cold War, Reagan answered with these four words, “We win – they lose.”

Reagan’s personification of strength and courage coupled with his ability to connect with the American people with his warmth and wit stood in stark contrast to Carter’s humorless acceptance of weakness abroad and lowering economic standards at home. The voters heard Reagan loud and clear and so too did our enemies. On the day of Reagan’s inauguration in January of 1981, the 444-day ordeal of the 52 American hostages finally ended.

President Reagan along with his allies, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, went on to implement a systematic plan using economic and political might to defeat the Soviet Union without going to war. A few short years after Reagan left office, the Berlin Wall collapsed and the Soviet Union was no more.

Civilizations rise and fall because of the decisions of their political leaders. In the world’s democratic societies, these leaders are chosen by their voters and it is ultimately their choice that matters. In the 2006 midterm election, the stakes for this choice couldn’t be higher.

We are in an emerging third world war. We must choose leaders who will insist upon victory. We owe it to our children and grandchildren who deserve an even safer, freer and more prosperous American future.

###
Mr. Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America” (Regnery, 2005).