HAIL TO THE CHIEFS
Last week was not a good one for proponents of social re-engineering of the U.S. military. They had been buoyed by the previous week's congressional testimony of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, widely seen as evidence the Pentagon was prepared to accede to President Obama's demand that avowed homosexuals be allowed to serve in the armed forces. Now, however, four other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have weighed in, and all bets are off on the idea of experimenting with - and possibly breaking - the All-Volunteer Force. One by one, they poured cold water on Mr. Obama's agenda of homosexualizing the US military.
JUST HOW DUMB IS THIS GUY?
Why does Barack Hussein Obama hate insurance companies? He explained why he was traumatized by one of them at the recent "Healthcare Summit." He had to buy auto insurance for a "beat up old car" when he got out of college. When he got rear-ended, he called up the insurance company to get his car repaired, and "they laughed at me." He's hated them ever since. Especially now, when they won't cooperate with his ObamaCare program. For, as he put it, "it's one thing if you've got a beat up old car that you can't get fixed. It's another thing if your kid is sick or you've got breast cancer." 25 years ago, college-graduate Obama didn't understand - just as President Obama still doesn't understand today - the difference between liability insurance, required by law to protect other drivers from injuries or damage you may cause, and collision insurance to protect you and your car (and which he had not purchased). So of course the insurance agent he called laughed at him. After laughing at him ourselves, we need to ask, Just how dumb is this guy?
HALF-FULL REPORT 02/26/10
I better be careful here, as there's so much to talk about this week the HFR could be the length of a small novel. Before we begin - an important announcement. So many TTPers can't wait six months for another Rendezvous that we've decided to have an extra Spring Rendezvous in San Diego, California May 14-16. Details next week, but mark your calendar now. *** So - let's start with the HFR International Hero of the Week, Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. Then I'll tell you a extradinary story about General Alexander Haig's heroism that no one has ever heard-- then why we should look upon Republicans in Congress as heroes. And yes, that still includes Scott Brown.
A SULTAN’S ARABIA
Muscat, Oman. If you want to see an ultra-rich Arab sheikdom with exotically designed skyscrapers, the world's most upscale shopping malls featuring indoor streams plied by Venetian gondolas, or fantastically expensive on-the-water condo developments where everyone drives a Ferrari or Rolls - all in the middle of a featurelessly flat desert wasteland - you go to Qatar. But if you want a more genuine Arabia of Sultan's palaces, of forts and castles perched on rocky crags, of traditional villages tucked away in mountain fastnesses, of rock pools and grottoes gushing with spring water hidden in secret valleys, a place out of Arabian Nights rather than one of garish ostentatiousness - then you come here to Oman. 
OBAMA IS PUTTING PERFUME ON A PIG
The President has wrestled control of the health care debate away from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid by finally introducing his own plan. Unfortunately, the White House's proposal includes everything we found untenable about the old Senate bill - only this one is even more expensive! This is what you might call putting "perfume on a pig." What's in this "new" proposal? It has the unpopular (and arguably unconstitutional) individual mandate that forces people and employers to purchase health insurance - only this time with much harsher fines on employers who choose not to go along with another expensive government mandate. It has provisions that will make employers think twice before expanding their workforce. It has cuts to Medicare Advantage, a popular program which allows seniors to pay a little more money out of pocket for better coverage. And, of course, it still has sweetheart deals - only this time they've been extended even more.
AN APOLOGIST FOR JIHADI ISLAM IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Rashad Hussain, 31, is President Obama's choice to be the U.S. envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, an organization of 56 Islamic states that promotes Moslem solidarity in economic, social and political affairs. A Moslem of Indian extraction born in Wyoming and a brilliant young attorney (BA from the University of North Carolina in two years; two masters degrees from Harvard, a law degree from Yale), Mr. Hussain would seem a fine choice for the post. But there's a problem. In 2004, Mr. Hussain made a speech at a Muslim Student Association conference in Chicago in which he said the trials of Sami al Arian and several others were "politically motivated persecutions."
DO CONSERVATIVES TODAY CARE ABOUT NATIONAL SECURITY?
On Feb. 17, I joined a group of prominent conservatives assembled for the purpose of unveiling a document dubbed The Mount Vernon Statement. It was intended to emulate an earlier articulation of the principles that unite the right issued 50 years ago at the Sharon, Conn., home of William F. Buckley Jr., known as The Sharon Statement. The Sharon document advocated victory over totalitarian Communism. By contrast, the Mount Vernon document made no mention at all of today's totalitarian ideology - what authoritative Islam calls Sharia - or the threat it poses to America, let alone declare that victory should be our purpose in dealing with this menace. Still, the Mount Vernon Statement is a paragon of robust national security-mindedness in contrast to what took place in the succeeding three days at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
DEFEATING THE ELECTRONIC POLICE STATE
There's an odd thing that happens when politicians get scared: They grudgingly call in the smart guys and let them loose. Most of us learn about this in elementary school: The smartest kid in the class is more or less abused until the class gets into real trouble; then they run straight to him and promise to do whatever he says. That was how the Internet was created. It was a "smartest kid" project. The event that scared the politicians into gathering the smart kids and setting them loose was Sputnik, launched in October 1957. The USSR surging ahead of the USA in space meant that they had to pull out all the stops. The resulting Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was where the Internet was born. The Internet is structured different than anything a controlling type would make. (People in government are mostly controlling types; the smartest kid in class is most always not a control type.) The Internet's fundamental design characteristic is decentralization. Let's see how we can use that to defeat the The Electronic Police State.
THE ELECTRONIC POLICE STATE
Perhaps you saw the story headlined on Drudge (2/11) about the Obama Administration asserting that Americans have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" regarding their cell phone conversations. It's yet another sign of the emerging Electronic Police State. When we think of a "police state," most of us summon images of Nazi storm troopers or Stalin's henchmen dragging people out of their houses in the middle of the night. These images are accurate enough, but they reflect the conditions of the world over a half-century ago, and they really do not very well reflect what is happening in the world today. In other words, these images are mostly out of date. The modern police state is generally silent and transparent. It is electronic. I want you to think very hard and long on this: any email you have ever sent can be grounds for felony federal wire fraud prosecution threatening you with 20 years in prison. The email, or "electronic transmission," does not itself have to be fraudulent. It can still be "wire fraud" if it is only somehow "involved" in what the government deems to be a "fraudulent scheme." Nervous now?
HALF-FULL REPORT 02/19/10
Jaime Glazov, managing editor of Front Page, is a friend and all-around good guy - but his diatribe on Moslems hating Valentine's Day is proof he's never been to Bahrain. I just took this picture in a Bahraini shopping mall: 
What Jaime says about Valentine's being hated by Jihadis and banned in Saudi Arabia is certainly true. But Moslems in places like Bahrain and Qatar (both of which border Saudi) love to celebrate it and are free to. It's seriously counter-productive not to make and promote the distinction. It's a serious mistake to paint all Moslems with a Jihadi brush. The gulf between Jihadis and Moslems who just want to live normal lives needs to be widened, not narrowed. Jaime gives the impression he's unaware of the very existence of the gulf. Correcting this impression is something he might consider. *** Who knew Bill Gates is a glowarming idiot?