Dear Fellow Conservative:

Although Al Gore and his media cronies endlessly bleat that "global warming" is an unprecedented global crisis, they really think of it as a dream come true.

Why? Because "global warming" is the ideal scare campaign for leftist demagogues like Gore who are doing all they can to secure strict control over the economy and the minutest details of individual life.

But now, in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming, Christopher C. Horner tears the cover off the Left's manipulation of environmental issues for political purposes – and lays out incontrovertible evidence for the fact that global warming is just more Chicken-Little hysteria, not actual science.

For a limited time, Human Events is making The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming available to you ABSOLUTELY FREE.

Another piece for political comments later when I have time. 

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USA Today
March 28, 2007
Pg. 13

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

The Founding Fathers made the president commander in chief of the armed forces for a reason. Wars cannot be run, at least not successfully, by committee, and one decision-maker is more accountable than hundreds of members of Congress.

That fact didn't deter the House last week from narrowly approving a measure containing objectionable features, including language constraining the way in which U.S. troops are prepared and scheduled for deployment in Iraq, as well as how and for how long they may participate in combat.

These decisions, however, are up to the president.

The House's $124 billion Iraq spending bill — a version of which is working its way through the Senate this week — would violate the Constitution's separation of powers principle by interfering with the president's ability to exercise his powers as commander in chief.

The fact that the House bill also is larded with pork, including subsidies for such critical wartime industries as spinach growing and dairy farming, simply adds insult to injury. It is not every day that the Democratic leadership must bribe its own members with new spending, or even — as reported by The Politico — threaten them with yanking the earmarks for their districts, to obtain enough votes for a raid on the president's constitutional authority.

The Bush administration must resist this blatant combination of a congressional power grab and "cash and carry" politics.

As commander in chief, the president is entitled to make the strategic, operational and tactical decisions relating to combat, including such key questions as determining troop ceilings in the particular theaters of operations, the local rules of engagement, and troop redeployment and disengagement schedules.

The House action, in addition to setting a firm deadline of Aug. 31, 2008, for the exit of all U.S. combat troops from Iraq, raises serious questions about how Congress can properly go about forcing the president to end the war. Congress can, of course, cut off funding for the prosecution of the Iraq war.

Indeed, Congress followed this approach in Southeast Asia in the 1970s, eliminating monies for the Vietnam War — and ultimately setting off the chain of events that led to Hanoi's victory, an event forever symbolized by desperate Vietnamese grabbing onto the last American helicopter as it lifted away from a U.S. government building in Saigon.

There is, however, a fundamental difference between the Vietnam War and the current conflict in Iraq. Although Congress' determination to limit aid to the South Vietnamese government adversely impacted American foreign policy by diminishing U.S. credibility and emboldening the Soviet Union to embark upon years of interventions around the world, it did bring the war to an end for the United States. The victorious North Vietnamese did not follow us home and attack targets in the USA.

By contrast, as even the most strident congressional critics of the Iraq war must acknowledge, the United States finds itself today in a global struggle with an enemy who is entirely prepared to come to us as they did on Sept. 11, 2001. If Congress did block U.S. combat operations in Iraq, there is every reason to believe that it would quickly be transformed into a new al-Qaeda sanctuary. That is the goal of al-Qaeda, a key jihadist entity in Iraq that declared an "Islamic state" there last November. From that sanctuary, new attacks could be launched against the United States.

There is a good question whether Congress, constitutionally, can forbid the president — even using its spending power — from engaging the declared and active enemies of the United States wherever he can find them. Significantly, the Constitution requires the three branches of government to defend the United States. After all, providing for the common defense was one of its primary stated purposes.

Realizing, perhaps, that it is on thin constitutional ice, Congress appears willing to grant the power for the president to prosecute "counterterrorism" operations in Iraq, even while cutting off the funding for combat missions. Unfortunately for its proponents, this language — whatever its merits as a political gimmick designed to demonstrate Congress' anti-terrorism machismo — makes the problem even worse. It would amount to true congressional micromanagement — telling the president, for example, that he may attack an al-Qaeda training facility in Fallujah, but cannot engage the local militias operating alongside al-Qaeda.

This type of militarily nonsensical splitting-the-difference compromise, of course, is a perfect example of war by committee — and confirms the Framers' wisdom in vesting the power to direct America's armed forces in one individual, the president of the United States.

David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey are Washington attorneys who served at the Department of Justice under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

I found this article on the early bird defense briefs this morning and am posting it here so I can comment on it later.  It is a very important piece and all (especially our UK friends) need to pay attention to.

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Surrender At Sea?

By Jack Kelly

That noise you hear as you pass the crypt at St. Paul's cathedral in London is Lord Horatio Nelson spinning in his grave.

Admiral Nelson was the greatest seaman of a seafaring nation which has produced many. If he had been in command of the HMS Cornwall in the Persian Gulf last Friday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair would not now be begging the mullahs in Tehran for the release of his illegally seized sailors and marines.

"No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy," Lord Nelson said.

Lord Nelson, alas, was killed at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The captain of the HMS Cornwall is Commodore Nick Lambert, a more modern sort. He did nothing as six Iranian speedboats seized the boarding party from his ship as they were leaving the freighter they had inspected in Iraqi territorial waters.

The 14 men and one woman have been taken to Tehran, where the mullahs are threatening to try them as spies.

U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Erik Horner, executive officer of the USS Underwood, which shares patrol duty in the Shatt al Arab with the HMS Cornwall, expressed surprise that the British let their sailors and marines be taken without a fight.

"U.S. Navy rules of engagement say we not only have a right to self defense, but also an obligation to self defense," Lt. Cmdr. Horner told the British newspaper the Independent. "Our reaction was 'Why didn't your guys defend themselves?'"

British rules of engagement "are very much de-escalatory, because we don't want wars starting," the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Alan West, told the BBC.

"Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back and that, of course, is why our chaps were, in effect, able to be captured and taken away," he said.

Lord Nelson never met Admiral West or Commodore Lambert, of course, but he knew the type very well: "If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain his opinion is against fighting," Lord Nelson said.

So Britain has responded to the seizure with stern words. "We have certainly sent the message back to them very clearly indeed," said Prime Minister Tony Blair. "They should not be under any doubts at all about how seriously we regard this act, which is unjustified and wrong."

But actions -- or in this case, inactions -- speak louder. Mr. Blair has a much bigger problem on his hands now than if Commodore Lambert had acted as Lord Nelson would have, and sent the Iranian gunboats to the bottom of the Shatt al Arab.

What Iran did is an act of war. What Iran is threatening -- to try as "spies" sailors in uniform seized on the high seas -- is a clear cut violation of Article 46 of the Geneva Conventions.

If you respond to such provocations only with sternly worded letters of protest, you can be sure there will be more such provocations in the future.

Why would Iran engage in such a provocation now?

First, taking hostages is what the mullahs do. When the Islamists first took control of Iran, they seized the American embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. (They were released on the day Ronald Reagan took the oath of office. He'd made it clear during the campaign that he lacked Jimmy Carter's forbearance toward the Islamist regime, and the mullahs didn't want to risk testing his resolve.) In 2004, they seized eight British sailors on a similar maritime inspection mission. (The sailors were released after three days, but not before being paraded blindfolded on Iranian TV.)

Second, the Iranians need somebody to trade. The mullahs have been embarrassed by the apparent defection of two high ranking officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and U.S. and U.K. forces have arrested five Iranian intelligence officers within Iraq since the surge began. (The CIA apparently warned the British the mullahs were planning reprisals.)

Third, the mullahs need to distract an increasingly restive Iranian public from a deteriorating economy, and the high likelihood that the economic sanctions imposed by the UN last weekend will make things worse. Tyrants frequently beat war drums in such circumstances.

Whatever the reason or reasons, a firm British response is required. The worst thing Mr. Blair could do is make some kind of trade.

"We wait anxiously to see whether this weakened and discredited Prime Minister has the necessary spine to do what is required, or whether Britain will persist in presenting its weakest aspect to a potential enemy," said the London Telegraph in an editorial Monday.

Jack Kelly, a syndicated columnist, is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.