It's about the Judiciary, Stupid!

Tomorrow, we go to the polls to select the candidate that will be our standard bearer in the general election in November.

The Republican nomination, based as it is on their oh-so-Republican "winner take all" delegate allocations might be sewn up tomorrow. But the Democrats, being, well, Democratic and awarding delegates proportionally, will probably have to battle on for another month or so.

For me, this election distills to one solitary issue...judicial appointments.

Appointments to the Federal bench are for a lifetime. And those lifetime-tenured appointments are the real source of power over the lives of ordinary Americans. They can make decisions that affect your ability to seek recompense in the face of negligence. They can interpret laws in such a manner that your fundamental rights and the relationship between citizens and their government are fundamentally altered.

Who sits on the Federal bench is the ongoing legacy of every president, Democrat or Republican.
With Judicial appointments in the forefront, the Alliance for Justice Action Campaign has assembled a voter handbook, and spells out five questions informed voters should not merely ask, but demand cogent answers to.

1. What criteria would you use to select a Supreme Court Justice?
2. What is the best Supreme Court decision in recent history? The worst?
3. Who do you have in mind as a potential Supreme Court nominee?
4. Which Supreme Court Justice would be your role model when you are appointing a nominee? Why?
5. How can Americans make their voices heard in the White House and in the Senate to influence the judicial nomination process.
   

Keep that in mind when you go to the polls tomorrow, and in November.

Insurgencies are becoming entrenched along Afghan-Pakistan border

Radical Islamic fundamentalist militants are bolstering their numbers and expanding their scope of influence in the forbidding terrain of the lawless tribal areas that flank the border on both sides.

From here, they traffic in disarray, violence and chaos over a vast area of both countries. This is the area that the remnants of al Qaeda fled to when they were allowed to escape at Tora Bora. Here they have found fertile soil and they have set about the business of regrouping, recruiting and resurging. The violence and bloodshed are spreading from the border areas to the Pakistani heartland and threatens to destabilize the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan - governments which have allied themselves with the United States and the western allies in those volatile countries.

From McClatchy:

In Afghanistan, U.S. and NATO forces are facing "a classic growing insurgency," Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday.

But the U.S. military, stretched thin by the war in Iraq, is hard-pressed to send more than the 3,200 additional Marines the Bush administration is dispatching to Afghanistan. The growing insurgency there is fueling rifts within the NATO alliance as Germany and other nations refuse to allow their troops to participate in offensive operations in Afghanistan. The Afghan army is making progress but still cannot operate independently.

"Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan," warned an Atlantic Council of the United States report last week. The report was directed by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, the former top NATO commander. "What is happening in Afghanistan and beyond its borders can have even greater strategic long-term consequences than the struggle in Iraq." (emphasis added)

The Pakistani army is ill-suited to confront a home-grown insurgency in the tribal areas - it is geared toward fighting a conventional land-war against India. To date the Pakistanis have avoided the George Bush modus operandi of "when the only tool you have is a hammer..." and avoided sending forces to battle the insurgency (using them to chase down al Qaeda has been volatile enough). The military leaders are reluctant to turn their guns on the insurgents because they fear that heavy casualties would prompt schisms within the military along ethnic and sectarian lines and that would destroy the Pakistani armed forces.

All the U.S. and the NATO allies can do is train a few Pakistani troops because U.S. military action would spark outrage among the populace, already on the verge of boiling over with anti-U.S. and anti-government fueled outrage.

But it gets better - the threat of terrorists trained and indoctrinated in the tribal areas directed at Afghan, Pakistani and even western targets is greater than it has ever been.

"The Taliban in Afghanistan now control more of the country than at any time since 2001, and their confederates in the tribal areas of Pakistan are expanding their operations almost day by day. While our attention has been diverted by Iraq, we've overlooked a potentially far more serious threat to the security of all Americans," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., told McClatchy.

There's no hard evidence of direct collusion between the Afghan Taliban and a new Pakistani Taliban alliance, both of which are made up mostly of Pashtun tribesmen, who dominate the region of soaring mountains and rugged deserts that span the frontier. Indeed, the Afghan Taliban deny links with the Pakistani insurgents.

But the ties among the Pashtuns are personal, historic, ethnic and ideological, and experts worry that the region faces a growing jihadi movement that's aided by al Qaida with Arab and Central Asian fighters, coordination, money and motivation.

"You see some indication that there is a blurring of the lines and some associations that are not helpful," said a senior U.S. defense official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Husain Haqqani, a political scientist and former aide to the late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said that the group "have become a seamless whole." The common thread that unites them all is that the groups calling themselves "Taliban" on either side of the border are descended from the Mujahadeen, the Islamic guerrillas that fought the Soviets in Afghanistan from 1979-89. Back then, they were the standard-bearers for the west and they battled the Soviets with arms that were supplied by the United States, Saudi Arabia and Britain and flowed through Pakistan.

One point enjoys widespread support: The Bush administration bears much of the blame for the current FUBAR security situation in the least stable nuclear nation on earth.

First, in Bush's idiotic invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan was left to twist in the wind after the focus changed and left that poor, beleaguered nation unsecured after the 2001 invasion. Then the Bush administration turned the screws on Pervez Musharraf to send troops into the tribal areas to hunt down al Qaeda operatives who had escaped there from Tora Bora. The presence of these troops outraged the tribes, and cemented opposition with heavy-handed tactics and high civilian casualties. While this was going on, little heed was paid to the Taliban, and their support among a pissed-off populace took root. Growth in support exploded after Musharraf ordered a strike against The Red Mosque last summer. That raid killed scores of people.

The Taliban Movement of Pakistan, which was only established in December of 2007, has already extended it's reach into all seven tribal agencies, as well as the North West Frontier Province.

Taliban-sponsored violence has shaken the provincial capital Peshawar to it's very foundation. It has killed hundreds of security forces personnel. Ammunition deliveries have been hijacked, major thoroughfares have been seized, and for the first time ever, a major city has been cut off from the rest of the country by militants.

Across the border in Afghanistan, the Taliban has expanded the territory under their control and now moves around freely in spite of heavy combat losses last year with NATO troops. "The number of districts in which the Taliban operate exploded last year," said John McCreary, a former senior intelligence analyst with the Joint Chiefs of Staff who's now with the private contractor dNovus RDI. "This is the first year they have managed to sustain over 100 attacks per month for the whole year since they started to climb back. One hundred attacks per month used to be surge figure. Now it's the new norm."

So Why Are People Joining the Military, Anyway?

I'm going to reproduce the first part of the article, not out of laziness, but because I think people should click the link and go read it. I don't have anything to add, plus or minus, I just thought it was a good read that brough up a number of key and relevant points.

Let's have a look at this article, shall we?

The Tenacity of American Militarism
What Progressives and Other Critics Don't Get about the U.S. Military
By William J. Astore

Recent polls suggest that Americans trust the military roughly three times as much as the president and five times as much as their elected representatives in Congress. The tenacity of this trust is both striking and disturbing. It's striking because it comes despite widespread media coverage of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the friendly-fire cover-up in the case of Pat Tillman's death, and alleged retribution killings by Marines at Haditha. It's disturbing because our country is founded on civilian control of the military. It's debatable whether our less-than-resolute civilian leaders can now exercise the necessary level of oversight of the military and the Pentagon when they are distrusted by so many Americans.

What explains the military's enduring appeal in our society? Certainly, some of this appeal is obvious. Americans have generally been a patriotic bunch. "Supporting our troops" seems an obvious place to go. After all, many of them volunteered to put themselves in harm's way to protect our liberties and to avenge the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. For this, they receive pay and benefits that might best be described as modest. Trusting them -- granting them a measure of confidence -- seems the least that could be offered.

Before addressing two other sources of the military's appeal that are little understood, at least by left-leaning audiences, let's consider for a second the traditional liberal/progressive critique. It often begins by citing the insidious influence of Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," throwing in for good measure terms like "atrocity," "imperialist," "reactionary," and similar pejoratives. But what's interesting here is that this is often where their critique also ends. The military and its influence are considered so tainted, so baneful that within progressive circles there's a collective wringing of hands, even a reflexive turning of backs, as if our military were truly from Mars or perhaps drawn from the nether regions where Moorlocks shamble and grunt in barbarian darkness.

If you want to change anything -- even our increasing propensity for militarism -- you first have to make an effort to engage with it. And to engage with it, you have to know the wellsprings of its appeal, which transcend corporate profits or imperial power.

-CLICK THE Link-

It's the Temperment, Stupid

Steven Benen picks up on this little nugget of Republican in-fighting:

MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. - Mitt Romney's campaign is blasting out automated phone calls that feature a recording of former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania raising questions about John McCain's "temperament" - a hot-button issue that Romney himself has assiduously avoided.

Santorum said in an interview yesterday that he wrote the script himself, and the campaign deferred to him and approved it.

"I think that to me it is a relevant issue for people to consider," he said. "I think it's one without question that factors into his ability to govern, to form coalitions, and to get things done."

But Romney had insisted as recently as last week that he would not make an issue of McCain's temperament, which some critics have said tends toward the hot-tempered and angry.

Santorum said he had witnessed problems with McCain's temperament, which he declined to detail. "I don't know anybody in the Senate who hasn't. Everybody has their McCain story."

The gift that keeps on giving. McCain is the weakest Republican out there and has only the support of the media and a few establishment Republicans who want to usher him off the stage (like they did with Bob Dole) once he finally shows that he can't win a national election. McCain has run through virtually every dime he's ever collected and has no chance of energizing the base of the Republican Party for more. Do you think Rush Limbaugh is going to help him raise money in South Florida? Do you think any of those US Senators who are tied to Washington Lobbyists are going to open up their rolodex and funnel money to McCain? Do you think anyone from the evangelical base of the party is going to tap the mailing lists and try to solicit funds? They may endorse him and say they support him on the surface, but underneath that surface, no way. They're not going to give money to a loser. They're going to put on a smile in public and swear to campaign for and support McCain, and then they'll go about their business and not contribute so much as a thin dime. Appearances matter. And if it ever appears that McCain is collecting millions from donors and is flush with cash, I'll certainly admit my error. I suspect he won't ever get that huge fundraising bump that Bush got in 1999 and 2000. Not even close to that.

If you can't get colleagues from your own party who served with you in the most collegial body in the country--The US Senate--then what possible chance do you have of winning? The last time the media got behind a candidate was Rudy, and Rudy ended up getting run out of town on a rail.

Exactly What We Don't Need Right Now

Great...

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkish warplanes bombed 70 Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq on Monday, the military said.

Turkey, which is planning operations against the rebels with the help of U.S. intelligence, has reported five aerial attacks against the PKK guerrilla group in northern Iraq in the past two months. The PKK, which is led by Turkish Kurds who seek autonomy in southeastern Turkey, has launched attacks over the frontier into Turkey from safe havens in Iraq.

"Warplanes belonging to the Turkish Air Force hit targets of the PKK terrorist organization in the Avasin-Basyan and Hakurk regions of northern Iraq in an effective aerial attack that began at 3:00 a.m. (0100 GMT)," the military said on its Web site.

It said the planes hit 70 targets that were "detected and verified by intelligence sources," but did not specify the origin of the intelligence. All planes returned safely from the 12-hour operation, the military said.

"Utmost sensitivity was shown so that the civilian population in the region was not affected," it said.

Adem Uzun, a member of the rebel command, said 15 to 20 Turkish jets bombed rebel areas in northern Iraq, according to Firat, a Kurdish news agency. The agency reported that Uzun said in an interview with a Denmark-based Kurdish television station that the rebels had not suffered any casualties.

Senior Iraqi Kurdish officials confirmed earlier Monday that Turkish jets bombed areas near the towns of Khnera, Khwakurd and Sidakan in Irbil province.

I don't know about you, but a "twelve hour" air operation that hits "70 targets" and is carried out by "15 to 20" aircraft constitutes a pretty clear violation of a whole range of international laws and doesn't say much for the sovereignty of Iraq, does it?

Officially, we're telling the Turks NOT to invade, but as long as they can come across the border and bomb anything they want--reportedly, five times since the middle of December--than who cares, right?

I know, I know. No one's paying attention anymore because the surge is working.