• $47B Paid Out in Medicare Claims

  Gov't paid more than $47B in claims, wasting taxpayers dollars at rate nearly three times the previous year

Detainee Abuse Pics Blocked

Defense Secretary Gates signs order blocking pictures showing Americans abusing detainees in military prisons

November 14, 1951

United States gives military and economic aid to communist Yugoslavia

In a surprising turn of events, President Harry Truman asks Congress for U.S. military and economic aid for the communist nation of Yugoslavia. The action was part of the U.S. policy to drive a deeper wedge between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=2484

November 14, 1972

Nixon promises Thieu that U.S. will continue to support South Vietnam

One week after his re-election, President Richard Nixon extends to South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu his "absolute assurance" that the United States will "take swift and severe retaliatory action" if Hanoi violates the pending cease-fire once it is in place.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=1484

1979 - U.S. President Carter froze all Iranian assets in the United States and U.S. banks abroad in response to the taking of 63 American hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran.

Big Labor and Big Government Are Officially the Same Thing

Posted November 12th, 2009 at 2.25pm in Ongoing Priorities.

Who do the words “union members” bring to mind? United Auto Workers building cars in Detroit? Teamsters truckers hauling freight? Steel workers in Pennsylvania?

Not any more. Newly released numbers show that the actual face of today’s union movement is the teller at your local Department of Motorized Vehicles.

Preliminary estimates of union membership this year show that most union members now work for the government. The overall unionization rate between January and September 2009 stood at 12.4%, unchanged from last year. However, this difference masks a large difference between unions in the private and public sectors.

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/11/12/big-labor-and-big-government-are-officially-the-same-thing/

The House-approved healthcare overhaul would raise the costs of healthcare by $289 billion over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan, independent Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

(READ THE FULL REPORT HERE)

The long-awaited report sent to lawmakers late Friday by the Department of Health and Human Services should serve as a "stark warning to every Republican, Democrat and Independent worried about the future of this nation," Ways and Means ranking member Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said in a statement on Saturday.

Anita Dunn is No Rogue
Posted by Tom Bevan

In an interview with Al Hunt of Bloomberg, Anita Dunn offers a fairly definitive answer to the question about whether the President of the United States gave his stamp of approval on launching a war on FOX News:

HUNT: Just - just - just a follow-on on this. Was President Obama aware ahead of time that you were going to criticize FOX?

DUNN: You know, the - I am not a person who is known for going rogue, OK?

Just a bit prior, Dunn used the same phrasing in response to a similar question from Hunt:

HUNT: Let me ask you about your famous broadside against FOX News.

DUNN: Absolutely.

HUNT: Was that just Anita Dunn talking, or was that something you and Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod planned ahead of time?

DUNN: Well, you know, Al, I am not exactly one known for going rogue, to use a popular phrase these days.

http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/11/13/anita-dunn-is-no-rogue/

Crist on stimulus: ‘I think it’s pretty clear I supported the concept’

by George Bennett | November 12th, 2009 JUPITER — Gov. Charlie Crist today defended the “concept” of the $787 billion federal economic stimulus bill, saying it has saved about 20,000 teaching jobs in the state, but said he would have supported a “different form” of the legislation if he had been in the U.S. Senate.

Crist’s stimulus stance has been a hot issue in his Republican Senate primary against former House Speaker Marco Rubio.

Crist enraged conservatives in February when he stood with President Obama at a pro-stimulus rally in Fort Myers. But Crist recently told CNN “I didn’t endorse it. I didn’t even have a vote on the darned thing. But I understood that it was going to pass and I wanted to be able to utilize it for the benefit of my fellow Floridians.”

http://www.postonpolitics.com/2009/11/crist-on-stimulus-i-think-its-pretty-clear-i-supported-the-concept/

How low will he go? Obama gives Japan's Emperor Akihito a wow bow

Rogue's Eleven   [Mark Steyn]

If you wonder why American newspapering is dying, consider this sign-off:

AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this report.

Wow. That's ten "AP writers" plus Calvin Woodward, the AP writer whose twinkling pen honed the above contributions into the turgid sludge of the actual report. That's 11 writers for a 695-word report. What on? Obamacare? The Iranian nuke program? The upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

No, the Associated Press assigned 11 writers to "fact-check" Sarah Palin's new book, and in return the 11 fact-checkers triumphantly unearthed six errors. That's 1.8333333 writers for each error. What earth-shattering misstatements did they uncover for this impressive investment? Stand well back:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTE2YmEyMDZkM2Y3NjAzYWZjOTRmYjExZDg4MGE0NzE=

More in U.S. Say Health Coverage Is Not Gov’t. Responsibility

Marks significant shift from the attitudes of the past decade

PRINCETON, NJ -- More Americans now say it is not the federal government's responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage (50%) than say it is (47%). This is a first since Gallup began tracking this question, and a significant shift from as recently as three years ago, when two-thirds said ensuring healthcare coverage was the government's responsibility.

...

Gallup has asked this question each November since 2001 as part of the Gallup Poll Social Series, and most recently in its Nov. 5-8 Health and Healthcare survey. There have been some fluctuations from year to year, but this year marks the first time in the history of this trend that less than half of Americans say ensuring healthcare coverage for all is the federal government's responsibility.

The high point for the "government responsibility" viewpoint occurred in 2006, when 69% of Americans agreed. In 2008, this percentage fell to 54%, its previous low reading. This year, in the midst of robust debate on a potentially imminent healthcare reform law, the percentage of Americans agreeing that it is the government's responsibility to make sure everyone has health insurance has fallen even further, by seven points, to 47%. Half of Americans now say this is not the government's responsibility.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124253/Say-Health-Coverage-Not-Gov-Responsibility.aspx

Dems jam GOP with Al Franken vote

By MANU RAJU | 11/12/09 2:26 PM EST

When Al Franken ran for the Senate last year, the former “Saturday Night Live” star had to reassure skeptics that the fierce partisan attacks he lobbed at Republicans as an author and radio host wouldn’t define his style as a legislator. 

But because of one of his first pieces of legislation, Democrats now have their most brazen attack line of the emerging 2010 campaign season: that Republicans are insensitive to rape victims. 

The charge stems from a Franken-sponsored amendment that would prohibit the Department of Defense from contracting with companies that require employees to resolve workplace complaints — including complaints of sexual assault — through private arbitration rather than the courts. 

Thirty Senate Republicans voted against the amendment, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, liberal commentators and state Democratic Party chairs have been merciless.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29439.html

Dem senator opposes trying terrorists in civilian courts

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
11/13/09 1:27 PM EST

Virginia Democratic Sen. James Webb has just released a statement disagreeing with the president's decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorists in civilian courts in the United States:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Dem-senator-opposes-trying-terrorists-in-civilian-courts-69987147.html

When he was interviewed yesterday in Japan, he was asked whether or not the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the right decisions. He of course did not defend that decision:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/11/13/obama_refuses_to_defend_bombing_of_hiroshima_nagasaki.html

Tragedy or Scandal?
We weaseled and equivocated and appeased.

By Mark Steyn

Shortly after 9/11, there was a lot of talk about how no one would ever hijack an American airliner ever again — not because of new security arrangements but because an alert citizenry was on the case: We were hip to their jive. The point appeared to be proved three months later on a U.S.-bound Air France flight. The “Shoebomber” attempted to light his footwear, and the flight attendants and passengers pounced. As the more boorish commentators could not resist pointing out, even the French guys walloped him.

But the years go by, and the mood shifts. You didn’t have to be “alert” to spot Maj. Nidal Hasan. He’d spent most of the last half-decade walking around with a big neon sign on his head saying “JIHADIST. STAND WELL BACK.” But we (that is to say, almost all of us — and certainly almost anyone who matters in national security and the broader political culture) are now reflexively conditioned to ignore the flashing neon sign. Like those apocryphal Victorian ladies discreetly draping the lasciviously curved legs of their pianos, if a glimpse of hard unpleasant reality peeps through we simply veil it in another layer of fluffy illusions.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGYzZTExZWU0NjZhYTM2ODdiNmU2NDMyNzUzMTk5NzY=

GOP irate over trial move

By JAKE SHERMAN | 11/13/09 2:25 PM EST

Republicans are irate over the move to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York, perhaps within walking distance of Ground Zero. Yet Democrats — including some from New York City — are comfortable with the idea that the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks will ultimately be judged by a jury of New Yorkers.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a Long Island congressman on the homeland security committee, told POLITICO on Friday morning that terrorists should not be afforded the same rights to trials that Americans enjoy. King said President Barack Obama is “caving into political correctness and the left wing base of his political party.” Lower Manhattan, where many presume the case will be heard, could turn into a “circus,” he said.

“I am really disgusted by it,” King told POLITICO Friday morning. “To me, it’s truly an insult to the memory of those killed on 9/11.” 

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said holding the trial in New York “emboldens terrorists” and claimed the Obama administration’s “failure to recognize terrorist attacks as acts of war is a victory for the terrorists.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29488.html

Boehner: "Irresponsible."

Sen Cornyn: "Unconscionable."

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey also speaks out:

Mukasey Blasts Pre-9/11 Mentality in KSM Decision

By Philip Klein on 11.13.09 @ 4:45PM

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who as a judge presided over a trial stemming from the first attack on the World Trade Center, on Friday warned that the Obama administration's decision to bring Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York, along with three other terrorist detainees, to stand trial in a civilian court, reflected a pre-9/11 mindset that viewed terrorism as a simple criminal matter.

Speaking at the Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention, Mukasey described the move, as “a decision I consider not only unwise, but based on a refusal to face the fact that what we are involved with here is a war with people who follow a religiously-based ideology that calls on them to kill us, and to return instead to the mindset that prevailed before Sept. 11 that acts like the first World Trade Center bombing, the attacks on our embassies in Africa and other such acts can and should be treated as conventional crimes and tried in conventional courts.”

http://spectator.org/blog/2009/11/13/mukasey-blasts-pre-911-mentail

John Yoo, one of the co-authors of the so called "Torture Memos" or like I call it the documents that helped protect all Americans:

Trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda, tie up our courts for years on issues best left to the president and Congress, and further cripple our intelligence agencies’ efforts to fight terrorists abroad.

KSM and his co-defendants will have all of the benefits and rights that the U.S. Constitution accords those who live here, most importantly the right to demand that the government produce in open court all of the information that it has on them, and how it was obtained.

Arrested spies commonly use this right to get a better deal out of the government, which will want to avoid opening up its intelligence sources and methods on KSM, what information it got from him, and what else it knows about his fellow al Qaeda operatives.

Finding out what the U.S. intelligence agencies know about al Qaeda will be an incalculable boon to the terrorist organization, which will be able to drop plans and personnel it knows are compromised, and push harder in areas we appear to know nothing about.

Our intelligence agents and military personnel will now have to conduct their capture of the enemy—often in battlefield conditions—under all of the strictures that apply to arrests of garden-variety criminals in the United States. Knowing that al Qaeda leaders may be tried in court, our soldiers and agents will have to gather evidence at the scene of “arrest” and secure it to the standards of a civilian court, all while entering a hostile environment, protecting their own personnel, and leaving without casualties.

http://blog.american.com/?p=7158

Rudy Giuliani reacts to Obama's decision on Neil Cavuto's show: