Lady Thatcher Meets Pope Benedict XVI after Audience in St Peter's Square

(Francesco Sforza/AFP/Getty Images)

Lady Thatcher meets Pope Benedict XVI

From TimesOnline
By Richard Owen

A frail-looking Lady Thatcher, 83, today met Pope Benedict XVI at the end of his general audience on St Peter's Square.

The former Prime Minister, a Methodist by upbringing, was accompanied by Paul Johnson, the Catholic writer and historian, and Charles Moore, her biographer and the former editor of the Daily Telegraph, also a Catholic, who held an umbrella over Lady Thatcher's head to shield her from the sun.

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Pelosi-CIA Situation 'Untenable,' Security Risk

An Iowa congressman is pushing for a resolution calling for the suspension of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's security clearance.

From OneNewsNow
By Chad Groening

Speaker Pelosi (D-California) continues to refuse to provide evidence of her allegation that the CIA lied to Congress about interrogation techniques used at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. On Friday she brushed aside reporters' questions to elaborate on her earlier charges that the CIA lied about using waterboarding on terrorism suspects. The speaker said she would say no more on the matter.

"I have made the statement that I am going to make on this," she said emphatically when questioned. "I don't have anything more to say about it. I stand by my comment, and what we are doing is staying on our course and not be [sic] distracted from it."

Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) thinks Pelosi's refusal to give details on her allegations jeopardizes the trust between Congress and the CIA.

"This is an untenable situation," says King. "It puts our entire national security at risk, and it must be resolved."

The congressman says the speaker's accusations are a serious matter. "...[S]ince she cannot be legitimately briefed, because she has directly challenged the integrity of the CIA, ...I'm asking that her security clearance be suspended or removed until such time as the situation is resolved."

King says if Congresswoman Pelosi is unable or unwilling to provide evidence to support her allegation, the American people will be left with no choice but to conclude that she made this allegation for political purposes.

Napolitano to Canada: Stop Saying I'm Joe Biden's Twin Sister

The AP reports that Janet Napolitano is in Canada trying to calm a storm she created by wrongly declaring that the 9/11 terrorists crossed into the United States from Canada. In the long tradition of Democrat wreckage, Janet is telling Canadians that she wants to "move on."

Mike Huckabe on the Californa Supreme Court Decision

From Mike Huckabee

The California Supreme Court by a near unanimous vote of 6 to 1, upheld Proposition 8, which they should have. This is the second time that the people of California had affirmed traditional marriage with their votes, and this time, the Court accepted that the role of the court is to uphold the Constitution—not to re-write it. On November 4, 2008 voters in California approved this new amendment to the California Constitution, which says “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Marriage should be defined as a marriage between one man and one woman. I support a federal constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman so that we can have a clear affirmation of the only definition of marriage that has existed throughout history and which in fact reflects the beliefs of people on both side of the political spectrum, including President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton..

One in 7 Who Leave Guantanamo Involved in Terrorism

Our President's concern for his Muslim brothers will result in data more damning than a "misery index" when he runs again -- instead, we will be able to count the slaughtered that result from his terrorist-friendly policies.

From Reuters

Seventy-four, or one out of every seven, terrorism suspects formerly held at the U.S. detention site at Guantanamo Bay are confirmed or suspected of having returned to terrorism, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

Of more than 530 detainees transferred from the U.S. base in Cuba, 27 are confirmed and 47 suspected of "reengaging in terrorist activity," according to a written Pentagon summary.

The total of 74 has more than doubled since May 2007, when the Pentagon said about 30 had gone back to terrorist activity, and increased slightly since January, when the figure stood at 61.

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The Speeches that Helped Save Western Civilization

By Winston S. Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain (1940-45)

From AmericanDiplomacy.org
Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa

Text and audio: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/winstonchurchillbloodtoiltearssweat.htm
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/winstonchurchillbemenofvalor.htm
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/speeches-of-winston-churchill/128-we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/speeches-of-winston-churchill/122-their-finest-hour

When a nation is at war, its spirit, confidence, and will to achieve victory can be enhanced by the speeches of its leaders. Sixty-nine years ago, the civilized world, including Great Britain, was menaced by the seemingly unstoppable Nazi onslaught. On May 10, 1940, as German panzers thrust through the Ardennes Forest on their way to Belgium and France, the conservative government headed by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain fell from power. Britain now turned to the one statesman who repeatedly had warned of the folly of appeasement – Winston Churchill.

In his war memoirs, Churchill wrote that despite the dangers and trials ahead, he took the reins of power with calm and confidence. “I felt,” he wrote, “that I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.”

During the next 40 days, Churchill made a series of speeches designed to prepare the British people for a perilous future, but also to rally Britain and the civilized world to fight on to victory. Those speeches may have been among the most important speeches in world history, for as John Lukacs has noted, the fate of Western Civilization was at stake during these crucial days. Much of the British political elite sought to make the best deal possible with Hitler. Churchill, however, would not relent.

On May 13, 1940, in an address to the House of Commons, Churchill announced the formation of a bipartisan War Cabinet, and offered the nation nothing but “blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” The government’s policy, said Churchill, was to “wage war by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us...” The government’s aim, he said, was “victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be.”

Six days later, in a broadcast to the nation, Churchill detailed the early German military successes and expressed the hope that the French army would stabilize the war front. He warned, however, that German aggression would soon be directed toward Britain, and expressed confidence that Britain was “ready to face it; to endure it; and to retaliate against it.” In the battle for Britain, Churchill stated, “we shall not hesitate to take every step, even the most drastic,” to defend the homeland. Hitler had already conquered the Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Danes, and Belgians, “upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend...unless we conquer, as conquer we must, as conquer we shall.”

The impending defeat of France and the successful evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk led Churchill to address the House of Commons on June 4. He called German victories in France and Belgium “a colossal military disaster,” and warned British citizens that they must focus on “home defense against invasion.” It was necessary, he said, to “take measures of increasing stringency” against aliens, suspect British subjects, and Nazi Fifth Columnists. The government would use domestic security powers “without the slightest hesitation until we are satisfied that this malignancy in our midst has been effectively stamped out.” Churchill closed with some of his most memorable remarks:

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous states have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

The last in this series of speeches – perhaps the most famous – was made on June 18, 1940, four days before France formally surrendered to Germany. Churchill warned his colleagues against efforts to assign blame for the military disasters in France. “There are many who would hold an inquest ...on the conduct of Governments and of Parliaments...,” he lamented. “They seek to indict those who were responsible for the guidance of our affairs.” He called this “a foolish and pernicious process,” and warned that if “we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.” The country must focus, instead, on resisting the inevitable Nazi onslaught:

[T]he Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’

Rallying citizens for a civilizational struggle. Explaining the necessity of securing the homeland. Warning against partisan inquests in the midst of war. Establishing an uncompromising goal of victory. Churchill’s words echo in our own time.

The New Republic on Sonia Sotomayor

The New Republic published a series of reports on the prospective candidates for the open seat on the United States Supreme Court. The following is their profile of Sonia Sotomayor, nominated today by President Obama.

The Case Against Sotomayor

By Jeffrey Rosen

A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Sonia Sotomayor's biography is so compelling that many view her as the presumptive front-runner for Obama's first Supreme Court appointment. She grew up in the South Bronx, the daughter of Puerto Rican parents. Her father, a manual laborer who never attended high school, died a year after she was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of eight. She was raised by her mother, a nurse, and went to Princeton and then Yale Law School. She worked as a New York assistant district attorney and commercial litigator before Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan recommended her as a district court nominee to the first President Bush. She would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, if you don't count Benjamin Cardozo. (She went to Catholic schools and would also be the sixth Catholic justice on the current Supreme Court if she is, in fact, Catholic, which isn't clear from her official biography.) And she has powerful supporters: Last month, the two senators from New York wrote to President Obama in a burst of demographic enthusiasm, urging him to appoint Sotomayor or Ken Salazar.

Sotomayor's former clerks sing her praises as a demanding but thoughtful boss whose personal experiences have given her a commitment to legal fairness. "She is a rule-bound pragmatist--very geared toward determining what the right answer is and what the law dictates, but her general approach is, unsurprisingly, influenced by her unique background," says one former clerk. "She grew up in a situation of disadvantage, and was able, by virtue of the system operating in such a fair way, to accomplish what she did. I think she sees the law as an instrument that can accomplish the same thing for other people, a system that, if administered fairly, can give everyone the fair break they deserve, regardless of who they are."

Her former clerks report that because Sotomayor is divorced and has no children, her clerks become like her extended family--working late with her, visiting her apartment once a month for card games (where she remembers their favorite drinks), and taking a field trip together to the premier of a Harry Potter movie.

But despite the praise from some of her former clerks, and warm words from some of her Second Circuit colleagues, there are also many reservations about Sotomayor. Over the past few weeks, I've been talking to a range of people who have worked with her, nearly all of them former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York. Most are Democrats and all of them want President Obama to appoint a judicial star of the highest intellectual caliber who has the potential to change the direction of the court. Nearly all of them acknowledged that Sotomayor is a presumptive front-runner, but nearly none of them raved about her. They expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative.

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