Via Breitbart.tv:

Via Breitbart.tv:

Tackling an environmental crisis quickly becoming one of the most serious political threats to his presidency, President Barack Obama insisted Thursday that critics of the federal government’s response to the oil spill in the gulf “don’t know the facts.”

“Those who think that we were either slow in our responses or lacked urgency don’t know the facts. This has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred,” Obama said during a rare news conference in the White House East Room. “We understood from day one the potential enormity of this crisis and acted accordingly.”

Amid escalating complaints of buck-passing between the well’s owner, BP, and federal officials, Obama also said that he understands that, when it comes to ending the spill, the buck stops with him.

“In case you were wondering who’s responsible? I take responsibility. It is my job to make sure everything is done to shut this down,” Obama said, directly addressing criticism that he hasn’t been more personally involved.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37875.html

Senate Panel Votes to Lift Military Gay Ban

Published May 27, 2010

| FOXNews.com

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted Thursday to allow gays to serve openly in the military.

The committee voted 16-12 to repeal the 1993 law known as "don't ask, don't tell." Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, was the only Republican to vote in favor of repeal while Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., was the only Democrat to vote against the initiative that was attached to a $760 billion defense spending bill.  

The full House planned to take an identical measure later Thursday or Friday.
House Republicans were strongly against it, citing letters from armed services chiefs urging Congress to wait until the Pentagon completes a study of the impact of the repeal on military life and readiness.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/27/senate-panel-votes-lift-military-gay-ban/

May 27 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economy grew in the first quarter at a slower pace than previously calculated, reflecting smaller gains in consumer and business spending and highlighting the risks to the recovery posed by the European debt crisis.

The 3 percent increase at an annual rate in gross domestic product was less than the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and compares with an advance estimate of 3.2 percent issued last month, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. Corporate profits grew and incomes were revised down.

Households are gaining confidence this quarter as employment improves, and manufacturing is powering ahead as business investment and exports keep growing. The setback in stocks and rebound in the dollar caused by Europe’s financial troubles may cool spending here and abroad, giving the Federal Reserve additional scope to keep interest rates low.

“We are at a fairly fragile turning point,” said Julia Coronado, a senior U.S. economist at BNP Paribas in New York. “There’s a lot of headwinds that the economy is struggling with.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=a9_SP2F3vb58

Via Heritage's The Foundry blog:

Tax Extenders Bill Still Contains Irresponsible Spending Increases and Dangerous Tax Hikes

Posted May 27th, 2010 at 1:38pm in Enterprise and Free Markets

Congressional leaders have responded to the backlash against the original $174 billion cost of the “tax extenders” bill by reducing its cost by $47 billion. Even with the reduction, the bill will still add $84 billion to the deficit over the next decade. They have reduced the amount of spending in the most cynical fashion possible – by cutting the number of years over which the spending would occur. Of course, they have every intention of extending the spending again when the current extensions expire.

The irresponsible overspending in the tax extenders bill is not the only fatal flaw of the legislation. The $43 billion of tax increases included in the bill to offset part of its cost will slow the recovery of the fragile economy. Even worse, Congress is once again in such a rush to pass a bill it isn’t bothering to figure out the broader impact these tax hikes, especially those affecting U.S. businesses operating abroad, could have on the economy and the competitiveness of United States businesses that operate internationally.

Of greatest concern in this regard are the proposed reductions of the foreign tax credit that would severely curtail the ability of United States businesses that operate internationally to avoid double taxation and will drive countless more jobs – and even corporate headquarters — overseas. That’s for sure. But what isn’t certain is how much damage would be done.  The troubling changes to the foreign tax credit came out of the clear blue sky. No one, including Congress and the businesses that would be affected, has had time to get a handle on how the provisions would operate or the broader impact they will have on the United States’ international competitiveness.

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/05/27/tax-extenders-bill-still-contains-irresponsible-spending-increases-and-dangerous-tax-hikes/

A hollow 'reset' with Russia

By Robert Kagan

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

It took months of hard negotiating, but finally the administration got Russia to agree to a resolution tightening sanctions on Iran. The United States had to drop tougher measures it wanted to impose, of course, to win approval. Nevertheless, senior Russian officials were making the kinds of strong statements about Iran's nuclear program that they had long refused to make. Iran "must cease enrichment," declared Russia's ambassador to the United Nations. One senior European official told the New York Times, "We consider this a very important decision by the Russians."

Yes, it was quite a breakthrough -- by the administration of George W. Bush. In fact, this 2007 triumph came after another, similar breakthrough in 2006, when months of negotiations with Moscow had produced the first watered-down resolution. And both were followed in 2008 by yet another breakthrough, when the Bush administration got Moscow to agree to a third resolution, another marginal tightening of sanctions, after more negotiations and more diluting.

Given that history, few accomplishments have been more oversold than the Obama administration's "success" in getting Russia to agree, for the fourth time in five years, to another vacuous U.N. Security Council resolution. It is being trumpeted as a triumph of the administration's "reset" of the U.S.-Russian relationship, the main point of which was to get the Russians on board regarding Iran. All we've heard in recent months is how the Russians finally want to work with us on Iran and genuinely see the Iranian bomb as a threat -- all because Obama has repaired relations with Russia that were allegedly destroyed by Bush.

Obama officials must assume that no one will bother to check the record (as, so far, none of the journalists covering the story has). The fact is, the Russians have not said or done anything in the past few months that they didn't do or say during the Bush years. In fact, they sometimes used to say and do more. Here's Vladimir Putin in April 2005: "We categorically oppose any attempts by Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. . . . Our Iranian partners must renounce setting up the technology for the entire nuclear fuel cycle and should not obstruct placing their nuclear programs under complete international supervision." Here's one of Putin's top national security advisers, Igor S. Ivanov, in March 2007: "The clock must be stopped; Iran must freeze uranium enrichment." Indeed, the New York Times' Elaine Sciolino reported that month that Moscow threatened to "withhold nuclear fuel for Iran's nearly completed Bushehr power plant unless Iran suspends its uranium enrichment as demanded by the United Nations Security Council" -- which prompted the Times' editorial page to give the Bush administration "credit if it helped Moscow to see where its larger interests lie." Nine months later, of course, Russia delivered the fuel.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/24/AR2010052403073.html?sub=AR

Document says number of attempted attacks on U.S. is at all-time high

Washington (CNN) -- Just weeks after the failed car bombing of New York's Times Square, the Department of Homeland Security says "the number and pace of attempted attacks against the United States over the past nine months have surpassed the number of attempts during any other previous one-year period."

That grim assessment is contained in an unclassified DHS intelligence memo prepared for various law enforcement groups, which says terror groups are expected to try attacks inside the United States with "increased frequency."

CNN obtained a copy of the document, dated May 21, which goes on to warn, "we have to operate under the premise that other operatives are in the country and could advance plotting with little or no warning."

The intelligence note says recent attempted terror attacks have used operatives and tactics which made the plots hard to detect.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/26/terrorism.document/index.html?iref=allsearch

North Korea says it will scrap naval accord with South

The pact is aimed at preventing clashes along a disputed sea border where three bloody battles between the two sides have taken place.

The Associated Press

May 27, 2010 | 12:56 a.m.

SEOUL

North Korea announced Thursday that it will scrap an accord aimed at preventing accidental naval clashes with South Korea in retaliation for Seoul blaming Pyongyang for a torpedo attack that sank a South Korean warship.

Tension on the divided peninsula has risen dramatically since a team of international investigators said last week that a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine tore apart and sank a South Korean warship on March 26, killing 46 sailors. North Korea has denied its involvement in the sinking and warned any retaliation would mean war.

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fgw-korea-naval-20100527,0,4745967.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews+%28L.A.+Times+-+Top+News%29

Via Ben Smith:

Palin neighbor sought author as tenant

Sarah Palin's next-door neighbor sought out author Joe McGinniss as a tenant, McGinniss's son said.

"No one is stalking anyone," Joe McGinniss, Jr., a novelist whose father is the non-fiction writer, wrote in response to an email from a Palin supporter who confused his email address and his father's. (He shared the email with me.) "A woman was renting her house and sought out the author because the Palins had crossed her (owed her money for renovations she had done at their request and never paid her for). So she knew McGinniss was writing the book and found him and offered him the house."

The neighbor "turned down more lucrative offers from the National Enquirer who wanted the house so they could 'stalk' and take pictures, etc... She said no," he wrote.

McGinniss, Jr. wrote that Palin is "inspiring a lot of hate in people, appealing to so many of people's worst instincts. Sad and scary." And he defended his father's decision to rent the house:

May 21, 2010 1:00 P.M.

Terror by Lawsuit
Will Congress ease the way for terrorists to sue U.S. officials?

Alleged Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad was presented to a judge this past Tuesday, after being held in custody, incommunicado from everyone except his interrogators, for two weeks. According to reports, the interrogators included federal prosecutors and agents from Manhattan, as well as members of the president’s newly minted High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG).

Infamously, the HIG was not deployed by the Obama administration to question underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab back in December — because (unbeknownst to the recently resigned director of national intelligence Dennis Blair) it did not actually exist yet, even though it had been announced with fanfare late last summer.

This time, the administration sprang into action much more spryly, taking its lead from Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, and others in law enforcement who prioritize public safety over safely covering their butts. Shahzad’s two weeks in custody without appearing before a judge is almost unprecedented and reflects the interrogators’ determination to get intelligence about other plots and prevent future attacks. Had the prosecutors followed the usual criminal-justice playbook, Shahzad would have been presented to a judge and given a lawyer as soon as possible after arrest, or at most 24 or 48 hours after arrest — even though he waived his rights to appear before a judge and have a lawyer. Instead, the prosecutors accepted Shahzad’s waivers so that his interrogation would not be disrupted, informing a judge during the interrogation that “uninterrupted access [to Shahzad] has been, and continues to be, extremely beneficial, if not essential, to the investigation.”

The interrogation has produced results, including raids of possible co-conspirators, search warrants, and overseas arrests of Shahzad’s bomb trainers, and it has made us safer. As we wrote last week, the prosecutors handling Shahzad deserve our praise and gratitude for taking the risk of a judge’s rebuke to gain knowledge about Shahzad’s co-conspirators.

http://article.nationalreview.com/434706/terror-by-lawsuit/bill-burck-and-dana-perino

May 27, 2010 12:00 A.M.

The ‘Second Israel’
How being Kurdish is like being Jewish.

Halabja, Iraq — Twenty-two years ago, in this dusty town hard up against the mountainous border with Iran, Saddam Hussein’s military used chemical weapons to murder 5,000 Kurdish men, women, and children.
 
The Halabja massacre was only the most infamous atrocity of Operation Anfal, a name Saddam took from a sura of the Koran that details permissible conduct against enemies of Islam. Of course, most Kurds are Muslims. But they are not Arabs. Kurds have had their own distinctive culture and language since long before armies from Arabia embarked on the first jihads — wars of Islamic conquest — in the seventh century.

The goal of Operation Anfal was genocide. At least 150,000 Kurds were slaughtered, many having first been herded into concentration camps, where mass executions were conducted. More than a million Kurds were driven from their homes.

Kurds have not forgotten that, in 1991, Americans established a “no-fly zone” over Iraq’s Switzerland-sized Kurdish region, to provide them some protection from Saddam’s predations. They regard America’s 2003 military intervention in Iraq as their liberation. Iraqi Kurds now enjoy substantial self-rule. Kurds living as minorities in Syria, Iran, and Turkey do not.

Six months after the collapse of Saddam’s regime, the Kurds erected a memorial on the edge of Halabja. It includes haunting photos; those of mothers clutching babies to their breasts as they died in the streets are perhaps the most heart-wrenching. A sign, in fractured English, gets its point across nonetheless: “Live and victory for all nations. Death for all kinds of racism.”

One result of this experience: Kurds see Americans as their allies and friends. “We appreciate the sacrifices Americans have made to liberate Iraq and bring the possibility of freedom,” Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Regional Government, tells me and other members of a delegation of journalists and think-tank analysts.

Many Kurds also have empathy for — and even feel an affinity with — Israelis and Jews. Unusual as this is within the “Muslim world,” it makes sense when you think about it: Like Kurds, Jews are an ancient Middle Eastern people. Like Kurds, Jews have been targeted for genocide. Like Kurds, Israelis face an uncertain future among neighbors who range from merely hostile to openly exterminationist.

http://article.nationalreview.com/434987/the-second-israel/clifford-d-may

Joe Lieberman open to backing Linda McMahon

By MANU RAJU | 5/27/10 12:46 PM EDT

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Thursday he's open to supporting Republican Linda McMahon over Democrat Richard Blumenthal in the Connecticut Senate race, a move that would once again infuriate Democrats in his home state and in Washington.

“I said I’m open,” Lieberman told POLITICO. “Is it theoretically possible? Yes. I probably know Blumenthal better, but I know Linda McMahon – she was on the state board of higher education, and I met with her a couple of times in that capacity. This is the great privilege that voters of Connecticut gave me in 2006 as an independent. Wait and see.”

Asked if he were concerned about backlash from the Democratic Party if he backed McMahon, Lieberman said: “I’m just saying I’m not eliminating it as a possibility,” adding that he was undecided on which party’s candidate to support in the Connecticut governor’s race as well.

A Lieberman aide said that the senator was simply indicating what he had said previously - that he has not yet made a decision on whether to get into the race and for the moment he isn't getting involved.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37870.html#ixzz0p9IRJDTC