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16 Mar 2010 16:23:55 GMT

Government & Politics
Treasury Bonds Substituted for Soc. Sec. Cash Already Spent by Congress
Source: AP/The Washington Times
The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration. It's time to start cashing them in. For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits - billions more each year. Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes -- nearly $29 billion more. Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs -- in the form of Treasury bonds -- which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg's municipal offices. Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn't be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion-dollar deficits for years to come. Social Security's shortfall will not affect current benefits. As long as the IOUs last, benefits will keep flowing. But experts say it is a warning sign that the program's finances are deteriorating. Social Security is projected to drain its trust funds by 2037 unless Congress acts, and there's concern that the looming crisis will lead to reduced benefits. "This is not just a wake-up call, this is it. We're here," said Mary Johnson, a policy analyst with the Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group. "We are not going to be able to put it off any more."

Government & Politics
Stupak Amendment Excluded from Healthcare Reconciliation Bill
Source: CNS News
The House Budget Committee voted 19-17 Monday night against recommending that the Stupak-Pitts Amendment be included in the health-care reconciliation bill that the full House is likely to consider later this week. The amendment would ban funding of abortion through federally subsidized health care plans...The reconciliation bill is designed to amend the full health-care bill that passed the Senate in December and, together with that bill, enact the dramatic restructuring of the nation's health-care system sought by President Obama and the Democratic leadership. The Senate health-care bill would allow people to use federal subsidies to buy health insurance plans that cover abortions, while insisting that everyone who buys such a plan must pay at least one dollar of their own money in a special supplemental premium, under the theory that this particular dollar -- and not the many federal tax dollars flowing into the same insurance plan -- would cover any abortions the plan funds. The version of the health-care plan that passed the House in November included an amendment sponsored by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Joe Pitts (R-PA) that would ban any federal funds from paying for any part of any health care plan that covers abortions. The Stupak-Pitts Amendment mirrors the language of the Hyde Amendment that has been included in various annual federal appropriations bills for more than three decades. The Hyde Amendment itself will not apply to the new health-care programs initiated under the Senate health-care bill because they will not be funded through annual appropriations. The Budget Committee met Monday afternoon and evening to consider amendments to a draft of the health-care reconciliation bill. The amendments approved by the Budget Committee are considered non-binding recommendations to the House Rules Committee, which is expected to approve a final version of the reconciliation bill later this week.

American Fifth Column
House May Try to Pass Healthcare Bill Without Voting
Source: The Washington Post
After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate's health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it. Instead, Pelosi (P-CA) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers "deem" the health-care bill to be passed. The tactic -- known as a "self-executing rule" or a "deem and pass" -- has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure. "It's more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know," the speaker said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. "But I like it," she said, "because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill." Republicans quickly condemned the strategy, framing it as an effort to avoid responsibility for passing the legislation, and some suggested that Pelosi's plan would be unconstitutional. "It's very painful and troubling to see the gymnastics through which they are going to avoid accountability," Rep. David Dreier (R-CA), the senior Republican on the House Rules Committee, told reporters. "And I hope very much that, at the end of the day, that if we are going to have a vote, we will have a clean up-or-down vote that will allow the American people to see who is supporting this Senate bill and who is not supporting this Senate bill." House leaders have worked for days to round up support for the legislation, but the Senate measure has drawn fierce opposition from a broad spectrum of members. Antiabortion Democrats say it would permit federal funding for abortion, liberals oppose its tax on high-cost insurance plans, and Republicans say the measure overreaches and is too expensive. Some senior lawmakers have acknowledged in recent days that Democrats lack the votes for passage. Pelosi, however, predicted Monday that she would deliver.

Government & Politics
'Slaughter Solution' Once Opposed by Pelosi, Slaughter
Source: The Washington Examiner
You've been hearing a lot this week about the Slaughter Solution, the rule devised by House Rules Committee Chairman Louise Slaughter of New York whereby the House would pass an Obamacare reconciliation bill via a rule that "deems" the chamber to have voted for the Senate version of Obamacare even though no such recorded vote was actually taken. It's been dubbed the "Slaughter Solution in the media. I prefer to call the Alice in Wonderland way of passing Obamacare. But put aside the present for the moment and step into my time machine. Dial the date selector back to 2005 when the Republican majority in Congress approved a national debt limit increase using a self-executing rule similar to the Slaughter Solution. Guess who went to federal court to challenge the constitutionality of the move? The Ralph Nader-backed Public Citizen legal activists. Here's the argument they made: "Article I of the United States Constitution requires that before proposed legislation may "become a Law," U.S. CONST. art. I, § 7, cl. 2, "(1) a bill containing its exact text [must be] approved by a majority of the Members of the House of Representatives; (2) the Senate [must] approve[] precisely the same text; and (3) that text [must be] signed into law by the President," Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417, 448, 118 S.Ct. 2091, 141 L.Ed.2d 393 (1998). Public Citizen...filed suit in District Court claiming that the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005...is invalid because the bill that was presented to the President did not first pass both chambers of Congress in the exact same form."...And now for the kicker, guess who joined Public Citizen in that suit with amicus briefs: Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman and Louise Slaughter. If the Pelosi/Slaughter/Waxman argument against using a self-executing rule against a debt limit increase measure sounds familiar, it should because it's the same argument now being used by Republicans to oppose the Slaughter Solution for moving Obamacare through the House. Of course, there is one major difference between 2005 and 2010. Increasing the debt limit is a almost a regular piece of business in Congress and has been for decades. Turning over the private health care system of the US to government control - effectively socializing one-sixth of the US economy - has never been done before.

National & Local
Wachovia, DoJ Discuss Money-Laundering Investigation
Source: The Charlotte Observer
Wachovia, now part of Wells Fargo & Co., is in discussions with the US Justice Department to resolve an investigation into the bank's ties to Mexican money exchange houses and its compliance with money-laundering laws. San Francisco-based Wells, which bought Charlotte's Wachovia in 2008, disclosed the negotiations last month in its annual report. Wells said it's cooperating with the probe led by the US Attorney's Office in Miami and is discussing paying penalties and entering into agreements about its future conduct. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that a settlement could come within weeks. The Journal said the probe involves the role that a Wachovia unit played in processing illegal money transfers for the exchange houses, which are known as "casas de cambio." The exchange houses are part of the international remittance business that allows immigrants to send money home to Mexico. But federal officials also have targeted the outfits as a way for drug traffickers to transfer cash, the Journal reported. The investigation first came to light in April 2008, part of a rash of bad news at the bank that preceded the ouster of former chief executive Ken Thompson in June 2008...Wells Fargo spokeswoman Mary Eshet noted the investigation involves matters that occurred before the merger and that Wells has continued to cooperate with the government...Wachovia decided to stop doing business with the exchange houses in 2007 and exited the relationships in early 2008.

International
US Withdraws Mexico Consular Families After Attacks
Source: The Times of London
Mexico's drug wars crossed the border yesterday as American officials removed their families from a string of northern consulates and the FBI joined the hunt for the killers of the first US Government employees to die in a battle between crime cartels. A seven-month-old baby, found crying in the back of a bullet-riddled car, was among the few survivors of two hit-and-run shootings that took place minutes apart in the border city of Ciudad Juárez at the weekend. She was being cared for by relatives while funeral arrangements were being made for her parents, who were found in the front of the car with multiple gunshot wounds to the head and neck. President Obama has expressed his outrage at the killings and said that the US would work tirelessly to bring those responsible to justice. That will not be easy in Ciudad Juárez, the world's most dangerous city. More than 2,500 people died last year in a war between the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels for control of the Juárez-El Paso border crossing in west Texas and the lucrative distribution routes that fan out from it throughout the US. There was speculation that the recent extradition to America of several Mexican drug barons may have been behind the murders of Lesley Enriquez, a worker at the US consulate in Ciudad Juárez, and her husband, Arthur Redelfs, as they drove away from a children's birthday party. Witnesses said that they saw a group of armed men in a vehicle begin following them at 2.42pm on Saturday. The couple attempted to escape, apparently intending to cross the border into the US, but were fired on when they tried to turn a corner and crashed when they swerved into oncoming traffic. Minutes later the Mexican husband of another consular worker was shot dead while driving home from the same party...The consulate in Juárez has been temporarily closed after the killings and employees of five US consulates in the northern states of Mexico have been told that they can send their families home. The US has 485 locally engaged consulate staff in Mexico and its Consulate General in Ciudad Juárez is the largest operation in the world, handling 800 visa cases a day.

National & Local
Mexican Military Helicopter Violates US Air Space
Source: KGBT-TV/ValleyCentral.com
A US Congressman spoke to Action 4 News about a Mexican military helicopter's incursion into a rural community near Falcon Dam. The Mexican chopper made an unauthorized entry into American airspace in the Zapata County community of Falcon Heights last week causing an uproar among Rio Grande Valley residents. Action 4 News spoke with US Congressman Henry Cuellar (D-TX) about the situation over the weekend. Zapata County is included in Cuellar's district, which spans from Laredo to parts of Hidalgo County. Cuellar told Action 4 News he had a classified meeting about the issue on Friday. "It's been confirmed that one of the helicopters from Mexico did come over," Cuellar said. "No hostility, of course. Proper notifications have been sent and we're going to keep those lines of communications open." Witnesses said the helicopter had a Mexican Navy logo, armed men inside and the cargo ramp down. Although Cuellar reassures that there was no hostility and officials on both sides of the border will communicate more, Valley residents are still uneasy given the increasing violence in Mexico.

International
Islamic Group Protests Obama's Visit to Indonesia
Source: AP/Yahoo! News
Thousands of followers of a conservative Islamic group held peaceful demonstrations Sunday in several Indonesian cities against the planned visit of President Barack Obama. Witnesses and police said members of the Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir protested in East Java's provincial capital of Surabaya, South Sulawesi's capital of Makassar and three other cities. The group, an international network which believes Muslims should unite in a single global state governed by Islamic law, urged the Indonesian government to reject the American leader's trip, scheduled for late March...Hundreds of police monitored the protests, which drew around 2,000 people outside the US Consulate in Surabaya and another 2,000 in the streets of Makassar. No violence was reported. Dozens of demonstrators also rallied in the Java city of Yogyakarta, the West Kalimantan town of Pontianak and the eastern town of Mataram. Men and women wearing black veils held up yellow banners reading "Reject the visit of Obama" as they marched in the streets of the two larger cities. "He doesn't work for a peaceful world...on the contrary, Obama is the same as George Bush, who has destroyed the Muslim world in Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore we have to reject the visit of Obama to Indonesia," said Nasrudin, who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation. Most of its nearly 200 million Muslims practice a moderate form of the faith.

Islamist Terrorism
Riots in Jerusalem as Hamas Calls for 'Intafada'
Source: AFP/Yahoo! News
Hundreds of Palestinians clashed with security forces in east Jerusalem on Tuesday as tension boiled over in the city and a senior Hamas leader called for a new "intifada," or uprising...Police fired rubber bullets, stun grenades and tear gas at protesters who hurled stones and petrol bombs, and set up barricades with dumpsters and burning tires in several neighborhoods. Eight Palestinians were taken to hospital, with fractured bones, eye and stomach injuries, and dozens more were treated on the spot, according to the emergency services of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said six officers were taken to hospital and 42 Palestinians arrested. There were clashes near Jerusalem's Qalandia checkpoint with the West Bank, in the Shuafat refugee camp and in several other parts of east Jerusalem which Israel occupied in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed in a move not recognized by the international community. Clashes also broke out in the nearby city of Hebron in the...West Bank. As the rioting was under way Hamas deputy politburo chief Mussa Abu Marzuk called for a popular Palestinian uprising. "The intifada must enjoy the participation of all of Palestinian society," he told Al-Jazeera television. "Every Palestinian should rise up... against the forces of the (Israeli) occupation." In the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip thousands of people took to the streets, chanting: "With our blood, with our souls, we sacrifice for you, Jerusalem." Anger was high among Palestinians over plans to build new homes for Jewish settlers in east Jerusalem. The reopening of a synagogue in the Old City further fuelled tensions.

International
Pro-Mullah Militants Target Iranian Opposition
Source: The Christian Science Monitor
Hard-line militants in Iran defaced the Tehran apartment block of senior opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi, using splashes of blood-red paint and graffiti to step up the conservative campaign to silence the former presidential candidate. Right-wing officials have accused Karroubi, former candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and former President Mohammad Khatami, of "sedition" for continuing to reject as fraudulent the June 2009 reelection of arch-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Weeks of street violence followed, during which scores of activists of the opposition Green Movement were killed by pro-regime security forces, more than 100 hundred were tried, and thousands were arrested in the most serious crisis faced by the Islamic Republic in nearly 30 years. Spray-painted black graffiti on the apartment read "Death to Karroubi" and "Death to Khatami," according to photographs published on Monday by the government-run Borna News Agency. In one image, a bearded man with an untucked white shirt and a white scarf with thin black lines - the typical "uniform" favored by hard-line militants and ideological Basij militiamen - used a can of spray paint in daylight to write "the donkey Karroubi" and "the donkey Mousavi" near the front door. "They vandalized the building. These are thugs who are on a payroll" and had the "support of intelligence and police forces," Fatemeh Karroubi, the cleric's wife, was quoted on Monday as saying on Karroubi's website Sahamnews.

Islamist Terrorism
Mumbai Police Arrest Terror Suspects
Source: UPI
Mumbai police arrested two men suspected of planning attacks on the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, a fuel storage depot and a shopping center. The men, aged 29 and 23, are brothers-in-law and residents of Mumbai. They are also said to have been taking their orders from someone in Pakistan, a report in The Times of India newspaper said. "These two have been in constant touch with their leaders sitting across the border and when we thought they were planning to act, we arrested them," Mumbai's anti-terrorism police chief KP Raghuvansh told reporters. "The suspects are being interrogated and will remain in custody until Thursday, when they will appear before a judge and be assigned lawyers." A report in the Hindustan Times quoted an anonymous source saying that the calls the two men were receiving were traced to Karachi in Pakistan. "They had received calls on a regular basis in which they were instructed to ensure that the targets get reduced to ashes," said the official on the condition of anonymity. The target at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, India's primary nuclear research center, is believed to have been the administrative building and not laboratories or reactors. Media were giving no other details of the plans or of the men's identities.

Culture Wars
Study: Green Halo Worn by Selfish, Self-Centered
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
When Al Gore was caught running up huge energy bills at home while lecturing us all on the need to save electricity, it turns out that he was only reverting to "green" type. According to a study, when people feel they have been virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of, say, organic baby food, it leads to the "licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behavior," otherwise known as "moral balancing" or "compensatory ethics." Do Green Products Make Us Better People? is published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that people who wear what they call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others and more likely to cheat and steal. The pair found that those in their study who bought green products appeared less willing to share with others a set amount of money than those who bought conventional products. When the green consumers were given the chance to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the opportunity to lie about it - in other words, steal - they did, while the conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honor system in which participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves their spoils, the green consumers were six times more likely to steal than others. Mazar and Zhong said their study showed that "green products do not necessarily make for better people." The study involved three separate experiments with 305 undergraduate students at the University of Toronto.

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Editorials

16 Mar 2010 16:21:17 GMT

We Simply Can't Afford Another Entitlement Program
by Frank Salvato, Managing Editor, The New Media Journal

Congressional Progressives are arm-twisting, threatening, promising and cajoling each and every member of the Legislative Branch in an effort to advance proposed healthcare insurance reform legislation. They are setting the stage to use the reconciliation process to advance the legislation in the Senate, even though the process was created to address budgetary financial issues, exclusively. And one House member, Louise Slaughter (P-NY), is even concocting procedure that would literally bypass any need for the House to vote on the Senate proposal. The effort that is going into circumventing the will of the American people is wickedly stunning..
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Counting the Votes Before They Are In
by Nancy Salvato, Senior Editor

Everyone can identify with foreshadowing, you know what I'm talking about, the part in a book or a movie or a play when you have that sense of foreboding that something isn't quite right, that the characters are celebrating too early. Maybe the real killer is still lurking out there, somewhere, waiting for the right moment to pounce. You're sitting on the edge of your seat, wanting to shout, wait, no, be careful! But to no avail. Sometimes, like in 24, the hero, Jack Bauer, comes in to save the day, just in a nick of time. Sometimes, as in Silence of the Lambs, the killer escapes the odds and disappears, no one knowing just when he will resurface. How many reincarnations of Jaws movies are there? Events don't always come to what feels like proper closure, for example, in Gone Baby Gone, folks may question their values of right and wrong and wonder about whether the ends or the means is more justifiable. The point I'm making, if I haven't made myself abundantly clear, is that I'm feeling a bit unsettled whenever I read or hear about how optimistic Republicans are about the 2012 elections. As if status quo Republicans coming into more power will settle our problems.

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Analysis

16 Mar 2010 16:21:15 GMT

States Rush to Legalize Sports Betting, Expand Gambling
by Diane M. Grassi, The New Media Journal
With the melt down of the global economy over the past 2 years, multi-national brokerage firms and trusted financial institutions bore the brunt of accusations of gambling away the financial health and futures of investors, primarily through the sale of toxic mortgages with credit default swaps as the vehicle in doing so. Yet, it is the mainstreaming of gambling on many levels that has created a culture whereby it has become an acceptable norm for not only corporations but governments in the United States, on both the federal and state levels, to literally invest in the gambling industry, with the recession as the excuse for its necessity.

The Approaching Crown Fire
by Ron Ewart, The New Media Journal
Flash points can come in many forms: taxation that led to the Boston Tea Party; the shot at Concord heard 'round the world that led to the American Revolution; the secession of southern states that led to the Civil War; the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine off the coast of England that led to World War I; the attack on Pearl Harbor that led to America entering World War II; the Vietnam War that led to massive unrest in America; a financially broke government forced to cut back on services, that leads to civil unrest, as is now happening in Greece; and now we have an American government hell bent on putting the American people in chains. Could a flash point be near?

Islam
by Susan Dale, HumanEvents.com
A 'Profile In Courage' the TSA Is Not. After the thankfully unsuccessful terrorist activities of the underwear bomber in an airplane over Detroit last Christmas Day, discussion resumed regarding the use of the full body scanner at American international airports. This is a highly sensitive machine that, when used for security purposes, displays the body in its full naked glory.

Wrong Bill at the Wrong Time
Shikha Dalmia, Forbes.com
Even if Democrats extract the votes to put ObamaCare over the top, it will at best be a Pyrrhic victory for them. Regardless of the outcome, this monstrosity might cost the Democrats the Congress this November, ruin the party for a long time and prematurely render Barack Obama a lame duck president for the rest of his term. So why didn't the Democrats pull back when they still had the chance?

Trusting Terrorists, Abandoning Troops
by Ben Lerner, The American Spectator
I recently returned from a week-long media tour in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some of our finest soldiers and sailors are tasked with a difficult and thankless job: guarding dangerous detainee enemy combatants captured in the course of the Global War on Terror. In the same week, Reps. Burton (R-IN) Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Gohmert (R-TX) presented Pentagon officials with 170,000 signatures from Americans asking that courts-martial proceedings against three Navy SEALs be dropped.

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NMJ Radio

16 Mar 2010 16:19:42 GMT

The Debate Is Over...Let the Debate Begin
by Peter Lemiska
On March 3, Barack Obama announced, with obvious frustration, that the healthcare debate was over. Everything to say has been said, and every argument has been made. No doubt the public agrees with those comments. After a year and a half, they've heard and seen it all. They're growing weary of the orchestrated photo ops that exploit doctors, technicians, researchers, and sundry white-suited medical professionals in a clumsy effort to sway the American people. They're tired of watching the impassioned speeches before hand-picked audiences, reinforced by the obligatory nodding of on-stage supporters. And though they are sympathetic to the plight of those who have fallen through the cracks in our healthcare system, they've had enough of the countless heart-breaking anecdotes suggesting mass victimization by ruthless health insurance companies.

There Is Method in Obama's Healthcare Madness
by AJ DiCintio
President Obama and other liberal elites can lie until the limousines come home that the near landslide majority of Americans who reject Obamacare have been duped by fear mongering geniuses of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. But that won't change the truth: This majority have simply combined their knowledge of the bill's various incarnations with their experience, common sense, and understanding of arguments made by experts and thoughtful commentators to arrive at the conclusion that Obamacare is a treacherous scheme concocted by liberals to federalize 16% of the nation's economy.

Musings on Mores-Manners
by Ercille I. Christmas
For the past two weeks, the Winter Olympics and "reform" of health care dominated the news cycle. The bobsledding, curling, snowboarding, and other forms of physical activities have ended with the closing of the Winter Games. But, the other "games" of health care reform go on, and on. "Reform" has become like twin 800-lb gorillas, at almost 5000 pages for the two bills proposed by the legislative branches, squatting in our living rooms, waiting for a medal, if only for survival! "They" are sitting on me and I cannot get out or up! In order to salvage the two reform bills that the majority of Americans do not want, the health care summit was tried, modeled after that Beer summit, but minus the beer, I think. To put it bluntly, the summit lacked dignity.

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Polls

16 Mar 2010 16:19:40 GMT

Pres. Obama
Positive: 49.0% (+0.1)
Negative: 45.9% (+0.1)

Congress
Positive: 19.3% (+0.3)
Negative: 75.7% (+0.1)

Sen. Reid
Positive: 24% (-7.0)
Negative: 56% (+5.0)

US Rep. Pelosi
Positive: 29% (-4.0)
Negative: 64% (+7.0)

US Debt as of Feb. 2010
US National Debt: $12.434 Trillion
US Unfunded Liabilities: $107.643 Trillion

International

16 Mar 2010 16:19:38 GMT

For Iran, Enriching Uranium Only Gets Easier
by William J. Broad, The New York Times

In the Iranian desert, at a sprawling industrial site ringed by barbed wire and antiaircraft guns, a shift in the enrichment of uranium is producing global jitters because it could shorten Iran's path to the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

It is also illustrating one of the peculiarities of uranium enrichment, a version of the rich getting richer, really fast. The tricky process accelerates as it moves ahead. "The higher the concentration, the easier it gets," said Houston G. Wood III, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Virginia who specializes in nuclear enrichment. The process is, as scientists like to say, nonlinear.

Four years ago, Iran began enriching uranium on an industrial scale with centrifuges, machines that spin extraordinarily fast to separate uranium 235 from the more common form of the element, uranium 238. Uranium 235 is a natural rarity that splits easily in two, or fissions, in bursts of atomic energy, either in a reactor or a bomb. Reactor-grade fuel is usually defined as uranium 235 of about 4 or 5 percent, and bomb-grade as 90 percent or higher.

The desert complex, the Natanz nuclear facility, raised the level of uranium 235 to roughly 4 percent from its natural concentration of 0.7 percent. Over time, the facility produced two tons of concentrated material, enough, if further enriched, to make about two atom bombs....

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Islamist Terrorism

16 Mar 2010 16:19:36 GMT

National Security Case Studies: Special Case-Management Challenges
by Robert Timothy Reagan, Federal Judicial Center

On Friday, February 26, 1993, a bomb exploded in the parking garage of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, killing six people and injuring more than one thousand.

On April 24, 1992, Ahmad Mohammad Ajaj moved from Houston, Texas, to Pakistan, where he attended a terrorist training camp called Camp Khaldan on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He learned how to make bombs, and he met Ramzi Ahmed Yousef. On September 1, 1992, Ajaj and Yousef entered the United States using false identities. Ajaj s passport was discovered to be a forgery. He was indicted in the Eastern District of New York, where John F. Kennedy International Airport is located, and imprisoned for six months on a guilty plea. Yousef was stopped for traveling on an Iraqi passport without a visa but released on his own recognizance because the detention center was full.

In the United States, Yousef assembled a conspiracy of terrorists. With the assistance of Mahmoud Abouhalima, Yousef and Mohammad A. Salameh rented in Jersey City, New Jersey, a storage unit and an apartment, where they made and stored explosive materials. Nidal Ayyad, a chemical engineer, acquired the explosives.

On February 23, 1993, Salameh rented a Ryder van, which the conspirators loaded with explosive materials. Three days later, Yousef and Eyad Ismoil drove the van-bomb to the World Trade Center, where they exploded the bomb by timer at 12:18pm...

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Government & Politics

16 Mar 2010 16:19:33 GMT

How Urban Planners Caused the Housing Bubble
by Randal O'Toole, The CATO Institute

Everyone agrees that the recent financial crisis started with the deflation of the housing bubble. But what caused the bubble? Answering this question is important both for identifying the best short-term policies and for fixing the credit crisis, as well as for developing long-term policies aimed at preventing another crisis in the future.

Some people blame the Federal Reserve for keeping interest rates low; some blame the Community Reinvestment Act for encouraging lenders to offer loans to marginal homebuyers; others blame Wall Street for failing to properly assess the risks of subprime mortgages. But all of these explanations apply equally nationwide, while a close look reveals that only some communities suffered from housing bubbles.

Between 2000 and the bubble's peak, inflation- adjusted housing prices in California and Florida more than doubled, and since the peak they have fallen by 20 to 30 percent. In contrast, housing prices in Georgia and Texas grew by only about 20 to 25 percent, and they haven't significantly declined.

Randal O'Toole is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and author of The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future.

In other words, California and Florida housing bubbled, but Georgia and Texas housing did not. This is hardly because people don't want to live in Georgia and Texas: since 2000, Atlanta, Dallas-Ft. Worth, and Houston have been the nation's fastest-growing urban areas, each growing by more than 120,000 people per year.

This suggests that local factors, not national policies, were a necessary condition for the housing bubbles where they took place. The most important factor that distinguishes states like California and Florida from states like Georgia and Texas is the amount of regulation imposed on landowners and developers, and in particular a regulatory system known as growth management...

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National & Local

16 Mar 2010 16:19:31 GMT

What Powers for the Federal Reserve?
by Martin Feldstein, American Enterprise Institute

The roles and responsibilities of the major central banks differ substantially and have evolved significantly over time. The Federal Reserve's operation and authority have also changed frequently in the nearly 100 years since its founding in 1913. The recent financial crisis, the widespread losses of personal wealth, and the severe economic downturn have raised questions about the appropriate powers of the Federal Reserve and about its ability to exercise those powers effectively. As possible changes are contemplated, it is reasonable to ask what powers should reside with the Federal Reserve, what powers might be given to other government entities, and what actions should be left to free financial markets.

The financial sector is already one of the most heavily regulated parts of the American economy. The financial crisis was not due to a lack of regulation but to a failure of supervision and of policy actions more generally.

Although the Fed is an independent agency that is not subject to White House orders, it does not have the Constitutional independence of the Supreme Court or the type of political independence that the Maastricht treaty grants to the European Central Bank. The Federal Reserve was created by the Congress and the Congress has the power to determine what it can and cannot do.

As I considered the wide range of possible changes that have recently been discussed, I have reached three general conclusions. First, the Federal Reserve should remain the primary public institution in the financial sector. Second, the changes that are made should not endanger the Fed's ability to make monetary policy decisions without political interference. Third, its emergency powers should be limited in duration and, in some cases, should require formal Treasury concurrence backed by Congressional pre-authorization...

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American Fifth Column

16 Mar 2010 16:19:29 GMT

Victims of Islamist 'Lawfare' Fight Back
by Ken Timmerman, NewsMax.com

What do Hamas, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the National Iranian American Council all have in common? They all are using the protections of western legal systems to harass and in some cases imprison their political enemies.

Hamas lawyers have filed lawsuits alleging war crimes against senior Israeli officials in British courts. Former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni cancelled a recent trip to Britain for fear of being arrested.

CAIR has sued a wide variety of individuals and groups that have dared question its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, even though documents describing those ties has been entered into evidence by U.S. federal prosecutors in terrorism-related cases.

NIAC has filed a libel suit against Iranian-American journalist Hassan Daioleslam for alleging that the group acts as a lobbyist for the Islamic Republic of Iran, something the group vigorously denies.

Defending against these lawsuits is costly, and that's part of the point. Even when the complaints are withdrawn, as CAIR has done frequently once challenged to produce internal documents through the discovery process, they can cost unsuspecting defendants hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

The practice is known as "lawfare" - using the law as a weapon of war...

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Culture Wars

16 Mar 2010 16:19:27 GMT

Immigration, Political Realignment & the Demise of GOP
by James G. Gimpel, Center for Immigration Studies

How has the growth of the immigrant population changed the political partisan leanings of the places where immigrants have settled? The answer to this question is of considerable interest to academic specialists, journalists, interest groups, and political parties engaged in the immigration policy debate. If the impact of mass immigration is politically neutral, there is no reason to be concerned that constituencies will change appreciably by the settlement and naturalization of new arrivals. In that case, immigration might have economic and cultural impacts that should be anticipated, but no one need be concerned about political shifts. On the other hand, if immigration does change the politics of locales, districts, and even entire states, then what might those changes entail? Certainly one important implication will be a resultant public shift toward favoring governmental activism -- a belief that government should do more, rather than less. Latino voters, for instance, are presently among the demographic groups that are most strongly behind an activist government. This is undoubtedly because they have, on balance, lower incomes, and concentrate in areas monopolized by Democratic Party politics into which they are easily socialized...

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Quote of the Day & This Day in US History

16 Mar 2010 16:19:25 GMT

Quote of the Day
"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." -- Samuel Adams

Contra-Quote of the Day
"It's time that we raise up above immature name-calling and start talking to the teabaggers"
-- Mike Elk, Campaign for America's Future

This Day in US History
March 16, 1802: The United States Military Academy--the first military school in the United States--is founded by Congress for the purpose of educating and training young men in the theory and practice of military science. Located at West Point, New York, the US Military Academy is often simply known as West Point.