Kyl is right to delay this treaty. Reasons include:

1) The administration's failure to include warhead modernization before Kyl raised objections leads on to think that they're either stupid or deliberately flaccid on national defense.
2) So far, Obama has gotten NADA from propitiating the Russians on such matters as the anti-ballistic missile defenses in Poland and Czechoslovakia (while throwing allies under the bus, as is Obama's wont.)
It's hard to think that national defense is predicated on Russian missiles. It IS based on Russia's willingness to endorse actions against a nuclear Iran and the worldwide jihadi menace. Negotiating with the Russians has not been a strong suit for either Obama, Clinton or, indeed, the State Department historically. Agreements to "inspect" have rarely been devoid of loopholes or sheer lying.***
Clinton calls for Senate to act on nuclear treaty
By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press – 1 hr 45 mins ago
WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday beseeched the Senate to vote this year on a U.S.-Russia nuclear weapons treaty, saying delay was a threat to the nation' security.
Clinton held a breakfast meeting with lawmakers from both parties a day after a key Senate Republican, Jon Kyl of Arizona, stunned the administration by coming out against a vote on the treaty during the current lame duck session.
"This is not an issue that can afford to be postponed," Clinton said after the meeting.
She pledged to work with Senate supporters of the pact to overcome resistance. "We will do whatever it takes literally around the clock," Clinton said.
The secretary was flanked by Sens. John Kerry and Dick Lugar, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the main advocates for the treaty. The pact would reduce limits on U.S. and Russian strategic warheads and revive on-the-ground inspections that ceased when a previous treaty expired nearly a year ago.
"I refuse to believe that the door shouldn't remain open" to a vote during the lame duck, said Kerry, D-Mass. "The national security of our country deserves nothing less."
Kerry said there were no substantive disagreements on the treaty itself and that a major objection of Kyl's should have been removed when the administration pledged an additional $4.1 billion for weapons modernization programs.
The country "is unlikely to have either the treaty or the modernization unless we get real," said Lugar, R-Ind.
All three stressed national security: Those in favor of postponing or avoiding a vote "vastly underestimate the continuing threat that is posed to this country," Clinton said.
Kyl, the second-ranked Senate Republican, issued a terse statement Tuesday saying a vote should be put off until next year. That dealt a major blow to President Barack Obama's efforts to improve ties with Russia and to his broader strategy for reducing nuclear arms worldwide. The treaty, known as New START, had been seen as one of the president's top foreign policy accomplishments.
Without the support of Kyl, the leading Republican voice on the treaty, Democrats have little hope of securing at least eight Republican votes — the minimum they would need for ratification in the current Senate.
On the sidelines of the summit of the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) last weekend, Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he believed the treaty could be cleared by the Senate before it leaves for the year, calling it a "top priority" of his administration.
In Moscow Wednesday, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said officials there still expect the Senate to find time for ratifying the treaty this fall.
"We have taken note of Senator Kyl's comment. It's not our business to interfere in the procedure of agenda agreement and the Senate's work," Ryabkov said.
He added: "I would like to remind you that the Russian leadership's line that the ratification processes in Russia and the U.S. should be synchronized remains fully valid."
Unless reversed, Kyl's position would delay the vote until the newly elected Senate, with an expanded Republican minority, has been sworn in January. Democrats would then need the support of at least 14 Republicans.
The White House has been trying to avoid that fate, knowing that ratification could slip out of reach in the face of opposition to the treaty from most Republicans and an increasingly partisan political environment in Washington.
At a minimum, that probably would set the treaty back for months, because Republicans are likely to demand new hearings in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee so that newly elected lawmakers would be briefed.
Following Tuesday's setback, Vice President Joe Biden warned that failure to approve the treaty this year would endanger national security. He pointed out that the treaty would renew U.S. authority that expired last year to inspect Russia's nuclear arsenal.
The treaty would reduce U.S. and Russian limits on strategic warheads to 1,550 for each country from the current ceiling of 2,200. It also would set up new procedures to allow both countries to inspect each other's arsenals to verify compliance.
Republicans have argued that the treaty would limit U.S. missile defense options and does not provide adequate procedures to verify that Russia is living up to its terms.
Kyl has argued that it makes no sense to reduce the number of U.S. warheads until more is done to maintain and modernize the remaining arsenal.

Is a liberal approach to defense and foreign policy a result of hormones?

"...Women also get a boost of oxytocin, the feel-good hormone, when they speak to others, and estrogen enhances its effects. While men get this, too, testosterone blunts its effects. "This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view—men can't defend their families if they are burdened with high levels of a hormone that compels them to make friends of all they meet," says Dr. Legato, author of "Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget." "Thus, men in their prime with high levels of testosterone are the least likely to be interested in social exchanges and bonding to others."

****Perhaps this somewhat explains why women are predominately "liberal" and conservatives think liberals are a bit,ahem, "effeminate."***

The problem is letting a Congressman serve 20+ terms

The defense that he "didn't intend..." "...forgot..." is a hilarious because it points up the underlying problem:
Rangel, and others of his seniority, are so arrogantly sure that ordinary rules don't apply to them that they
don't even avail themselves of legal means to do the same things. How many of us would merely be subject
to censure for ethics violations if we willfully evaded taxes for over 20 years on $600,000 of assets that we didn't mention?
Term limits should be applied and not require the fortuitous intercession of the Grim Reaper for such as John Murtha and
Charlie Rangel.
http://tinyurl.com/2fkbxwt
Colleagues deny Rangel's plea for delay in trial By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Rep. Charles Rangel of New York walked out of his ethics trial Monday after pleading in vain for a postponement, saying his lawyers abandoned him because he ran out of money after paying them some $2 million. The proceeding went on without him.
With Rangel gone, House ethics committee chief counsel Blake Chisam pushed for a decision on the 13 counts of fundraising and financial conduct that allegedly violated House rules...

Islamic menace is beyond Al Qaeda

Despite Obama's deliberate blind spot, jihad is embraced by much more of the Islamic world than those identifiable as Al Qaeda. Islam is not just another religion but is a political system whose adherents strive for earthly hegemony and adoption of Sharia.It is hardly necessary to prove affiliation with A.Q. to know that such as Maj. Nidal Hassan is a jihadi terrorist when he screams Allahu Akbar while mowing down over a dozen of his fellow officers. It is past time to jettison the political correctness that fails to recognize the worldwide threat, including from American, home-grown Muslims.

http://tinyurl.com/2g265kq
Empowering our homegrown enemies By Caroline B. Glick

Disturbingly, the establishments in the two countries most actively targeted by the global jihad — the US and Israel — remain in deep denial about the challenges of homegrown jihadist fifth columnists...****These are not economically deprived or uneducated. Jihadism is a conscious and voluntary activity and extending extra rights to the community that engenders them is folly and counterproductive. Europe (e.g. Merkel,Blair...) is starting to recognize this while the most glaring example of denial is the Obama administration. Surprisingly, the Israeli Left is almost as wrong-headed making it a Left phenomenon that endangers Western Civilization ( that the Left doesn't seem to like, anyway.)

The unhelpful "Abu Hussein"

New York Post

Why Hamas loves Bam
By AMIR TAHERI





"Abu Hussain! Palestine loves you!!!"

This slogan, in English, appears on a poster and other products produced by the Palestinian Hamas movement and put on sale in Gaza. Yesterday, it adorned the front pages of several leading Arab dailies.

The "Abu Hussain" is President Obama. The poster pictures him wearing the signature Arab headgear, the kaffiyeh.

That the most radical Palestinian faction has declared its love for the president may be bad news for the stalled Middle East peace talks, which Obama has promised to help restart before the end of the year.

According to its charter, Hamas wants to eliminate Israel and to replace it with a single Palestinian state covering the territory of the Jewish state and the territories it occupied in 1967.

Iran, Libya and a range of radical Islamist movements, including al Qaeda, support Hamas' policy, sometimes known as the "one-state solution." But Obama has said he supports President George W. Bush's two-state policy.

If Hamas' declaration of love for Obama is based on a misunderstanding, the problem may lie in Obama's ambiguous approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

When Bush said he wanted a two-state solution, he saw the realities on the ground as the starting point. Obama and his special emissary, George Mitchell, however, have talked about a return to the pre-1967 "borders" as demanded by several UN resolutions.

But there were no borders in 1967 -- only cease-fire lines drawn at the end of the 1948 war. And there was no Palestine to have any borders -- the cease-fire lines separated Israel on the one hand from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria on the other. Indeed, a return to those cease-fire lines would be tantamount to recreating a situation that had already led to two wars.

Obama also drops hints that he means to be tough with Israel. To advertise his toughness, he makes occasional statements about Jewish settlements. Yet this puts the whole exercise on a different trajectory, with talks focused on the settlements rather than the core issue -- the creation of a Palestinian state.

Pressuring Israel may look good to "Abu Hussain" and his Hamas admirers. But it may reduce the chances of agreement on the creation of a Palestinian state.

Fearful that its chief ally, America, might be trying to abandon it or, worse still, stab it in the back, Israel may revert to what Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir called "the hedgehog strategy." Because Israel holds the lands on which a Palestinian state is to be built, there would be no progress in that direction.

History shows that Israel has made concessions -- including withdrawing from vast territories it captured from Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon -- only when it has felt sure of its principal ally.

Peace is made when

1) the winner of a war (or a series of wars) is convinced that he can create a new status quo in his favor, especially by ensuring his security, and 2) the loser also feels that the peace offer is the best it could hope for under the circumstances. Obama's approach meets neither condition.

The winner, Israel, feels threatened by what it feels is a US attempt at bullying it into a deal. The loser, the Palestinian side, is deluded into thinking that, thanks to Obama's support, it can hold out for an ever-elusive better deal. Believing that they have US support, some Palestinians are even talking of declaring statehood without winning prior Israeli approval.

Obama's Mideast policy has made progress toward peace more difficult. His promise of achieving a peace deal before year's end seems destined to join a long list of other broken promises.

Amir Taheri is the author of "The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution."

Obama panders in Muslim Indonesia; refuses to recognize "jihad" while in India

Guy Benson
Obama Criticizes Israel in Indonesia - UPDATE: Netanyahu Responds
The spectacle of President Obama openly chiding Israel hardly comes as a surprise any more, considering his track record in office and past personal associations. Still, it's jarring to see any President of the United States criticizing our closest Middle Eastern ally while on foreign soil -- especially that of the world's most populous Muslim nation:


JAKARTA, Indonesia – President Barack Obama has criticized Israel construction plans in East Jerusalem, saying they're unhelpful to the pursuit of peace.

The president said he was concerned Israel and Palestinian were not making enough of an effort to advance peace negotiations.

Obama's caution came as the Israeli government moved ahead with plans to build nearly 1,300 apartments in that disputed part of the city.

Israel has said the plans to seek public comment on the building plans were merely procedural. But the move comes on the heels of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday.

Obama said he did not receive a briefing on the new construction.



For a president who exhibited profound reservations about "meddling" in the internal affairs of Iran as its government stole an election and lethally suppressed freedom rallies, Obama demonstrates little hesitancy to publicly denounce Israeli domestic policy decision. This presidential tut-tutting of a key US friend is probably not what Congressmen and Senators had in mind when they wrote letters to the president last year urging a thaw in US-Israeli relations.

UPDATE: A reader reminds me that as President Obama was refusing to "meddle" in Iran, his administration was meddling hardcore in Honduras -- and doing so on behalf of the wrong side.

UPDATE II: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushes back:

A few hours later, Mr. Netanyahu’s office responded with a statement, saying that “Jerusalem is not a settlement; Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel.”
The United States and Israel have well-known differences over Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in the statement, adding that building plans should have no effect on the peace talks.

The PC attempt to include Islam in the historical American fabric is getting pukeworthy.

from Best of the Web by James Taranto:
CNN.com has a curious quote in a story about last week's thwarted package-bombing plot:

"Since two of the suspicious packages that were intercepted were addressed to religious institutions in Chicago, all churches, synagogues and mosques in the Chicago area should be vigilant for any unsolicited or unexpected packages, especially those originating from overseas locations," said FBI Special Agent Ross Rice.

Both of the "religious institutions" to which the packages were addressed were synagogues. By what logic does the FBI conclude that mosques need to be vigilant because Islamic supremacists are sending dangerous packages to synagogues?