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Ben Wattenberg died this week at the age of 81. He gave me my first job in Washington, as his research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. (I returned to AEI as a fellow a few years ago, my office just a few doors down from where Ben used to work.) Ben was one of the last star pundits of what might be called the Old Order, before cable news and the Internet transformed the landscape. When everyone was rushing to CNN to shout at each other on "Crossfire," he launched a PBS show called "Think...

The State Department on Tuesday released 3,000 pages of emails from the private server former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used while in office. The correspondence, released online, covers March through December 2009. Among the messages, on July 11, 2009, Clinton received an email from "Jimmy" — presumably former President Jimmy Carter — titled "N. Korea.” The message seems to be about freeing journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were charged and held with illegal passage into the Stalinist state. It read: "Hillary: As I explained to you on the phone, I don´t think it is appropriate to tell...

North Korea marked the 65th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War on Thursday with a 100,000-strong rally in Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Stadium, and a statement condemning the "fatty monster US imperialists". The "Pyongyang Mass Rally on the Day of the Struggle Against the US," was a carefully orchestrated display of angry speeches, fist-pumping and calls for blood revenge. The rally was just one event in what it officially known as "Struggle Against US Imperialism Month", during which North Koreans visit war museums and attend gatherings denouncing the evils of the United States. North Korea also issued a...

Former President Jimmy Carter said President Barack Obama "waited too long" to go after ISIS and criticized what he described as the president's changing foreign policy. "First of all, we waited too long. We let the Islamic State build up its money, capability and strength and weapons while it was still in Syria," Carter told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in an interview published Tuesday. The 39th president was in Texas working on a Habitat for Humanity project. "Then when [ISIS] moved into Iraq, the Sunni Muslims didn't object to their being there and about a third of the territory in...

A proposal to lay an undersea cable between Portugal and Brazil to circumvent US snooping has been praised by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. Rousseff on Monday (25 February) in Brussels at the annual EU-Brazil summit told reporters that privacy, human rights, and the sovereignty of nations must be respected. “The internet is one of the best things man has ever invented. So we agreed for the need to guarantee … the neutrality of the network, a democratic area where we can protect freedom of expression,” she said. Brazilian state-owned telecom provider Telebra is reported to have cut a deal last...

Sunday, May 17, 2015 Liberating Our Jerusalem Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog When Jordan's Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish population and annexed the city-- the only entity to recognize the annexation was the United Kingdom which had provided the officers and the training that made the conquest possible. Officers like Colonel Bill Newman, Major Geoffrey Lockett and Major Bob Slade, under Glubb Pasha, better known as General John Bagot Glubb, whose son later converted to Islam, invaded Jerusalem and used the Muslim forces under their command to make the partition and...

Apple CEO and Alabama native Tim Cook had some choice words on Sunday about meeting former Alabama Gov. George Wallace when he was a teenager. Cook, the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company, spoke of Wallace during a commencement address he gave at George Washington University. According to Business Insider, the Robertsdale native told the graduating class an anecdote about visiting Washington, D.C., as a 16-year-old who had won an essay contest at school. Before leaving for D.C., Cook had the chance to go to Montgomery and meet Wallace, who was notorious for his opposition to racial...

Carter the Elder has spoken. What says Obama the Younger? Former US president Jimmy Carter has created a stir with his call for Palestinian Arabs to hold elections to end the internecine struggle between Hamas and the PLO in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza. Speaking at a joint news conference with PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah - after cancelling his stop in Gaza where he was supposed to meet Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh – Carter – now a member of the independent Elders Group of global leaders - declared:.

Former Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley said that if he runs for president, he'll launch his campaign in Baltimore: "We haven't had an agenda for America's cities probably since Jimmy Carter ... We have left cities to fend for themselves. ... But look, the structural problems that we have in our economy, the way we ship jobs and profits abroad, the way we failed to invest in our infrastructure and failed to invest in American cities, we are creating the conditions. Please, Speaker Boehner and his crocodile tears about the $130 million, that is a spit in the bucket compared to...

Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Former US president Jimmy Carter on Saturday urged Palestinians to hold elections to end the de facto division of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Islamist-run Gaza Strip. He was speaking at a joint news conference with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in the Palestinian political capital Ramallah in the West Bank. "We hope that sometime we'll see elections all over the Palestinian area and east Jerusalem and Gaza and also in the West Bank," said Carter, a member of the independent Elders Group of global leaders. No election has been held in the occupied territories...

WASHINGTON - When two Russian immigrants and their American financial backer needed marketing help for their innovative electric motor, they turned to a merchant banker at one of the nation's largest investment houses - retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark. The meeting at the Washington office of Stephens Inc. in late 2001 proved fortuitous for both Clark, the former supreme commander of NATO, and the principals in WaveCrest Laboratories, at the time a small research and development company in Dulles, Va. "They hit it off pretty much right away," said WaveCrest spokesman Tom McMahon. Clark signed on as a consultant...

Once Obama is no longer president, I suspect he’ll be getting the same ‘warm welcome’ that Jimmy Carter is getting from the government of Israel right now. And it’s so satisfying: TIMES OF ISRAEL – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin have turned down invitations to meet with former US president Jimmy Carter during his upcoming visit to Israel over his “anti-Israel” views. Both the president and prime minister declined the invitations after consulting with the Foreign Ministry and the National Security Council, Haaretz reported Monday.

An Invasion of RefugeesPosted By Daniel Greenfield On April 17, 2015 @ 12:56 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments “This is a place of inspiring memories. Here less than a thousand men, inspired by the urge of freedom, defeated a superior force intrenched in this strategic position,” President Herbert Hoover said.“This small band of patriots turned back a dangerous invasion.”But no matter how often dangerous invasions are defeated, they come again.The thousand men that Hoover spoke of gained their victory at the Battle of Kings Mountain. The Spartan Regiment that fought there when, as Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “All the...

“We don’t mind–actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle, and he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community but not with domination and arrogance,” Yousef said in response to a question about the group’s willingness to meet with either of the Democratic presidential candidates. [http://cameron.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/04/16/a-hamas-problem-for-obama/]

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Former President Jimmy Carter has met with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muqrin during a visit to the kingdom. The official Saudi Press Agency says the two met in a palace in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Wednesday. The report says they discussed a number of topics but gave no details.

Bob Jones III Apologizes For Saying Gays Should Be Stoned By Ed Payne, CNN March 23, 2015 (CNN)Three and a half decades after calling for homosexuals to be stoned, former Bob Jones University President Bob Jones III has apologized. "I take personal ownership of this inflammatory rhetoric," Jones said. "This reckless statement was made in the heat of a political controversy 35 years ago." The weekend apology came days after the conservative Christian school in South Carolina received a petition asking for an apology for a statement Jones made to the Associated Press in 1980 at the White House. "I'm...

Gerardo Hernandez, a spy for Communist Cuba and the man responsible for the murder of four humanitarian workers (three of whom were American citizens) over international waters, was freed from prison last year by the Obama administration, due in part to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). This was revealed at a February 6, 2015, celebration of Hernandez’s release, along with two of his fellow Cuban agents (collectively known as the “Cuban 5.. At the beginning of the event, an IPS official thanked all who who took part in the 17-year campaign and singled out a number of organizations that...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress has not eroded Democratic support for Israel everywhere. With the speech now in the past, there has been more regarding the controversy of how the speech was arranged instead of what was said in it. For one Democrat, it is indisputable that the Prime Minister’s speech was alarming, convincing and momentous. Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-NY) was extremely impressed by his speech. […] Regarding President Obama, he felt the degree of pressure and antagonism he has reserved for the Prime Minister has been uncalled for. […] He went on to say that such overt...

Gov. Scott Walker still hasn't spoken with President Barack Obama about the president's love for America, but the possible contender for the Republican nomination now has an opinion on the subject. Wisconsin's governor tells "Fox News Sunday" that Obama or "anybody else who is willing to put their name on the ballot certainly has to have the love for country to do that." ...

The 2016 Republican nominating season is beginning to move to the next level as events like last weekend’s Iowa Freedom Summit give candidates more opportunities to interact with primary voters in early states. Although Jeb Bush’s announcement late last year that he will explore a candidacy has shaken up the race, the Republicans can hardly be described as closing ranks around the former Florida governor. It remains likely that the Republican primary field will be large, and by most measures, strong, leading to a genuinely competitive primary. Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin is the kind of candidate who can easily...