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US drone kills 5 militants in northern Pakistan
Today's Headlines
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Page 6: Politix
3 18:58 Frank G [] 
10 22:13 Perfesser [] 
24 23:43 HAVAVE [] 
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Page 2: WoT Background
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Page 3: Non-WoT
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Page 4: Opinion
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Home Front: Culture Wars
Arizona Court: Public Office Requires English Proficiency
The Arizona Supreme Court on Friday upheld a state law that requires elected officials to be able to read, write and speak the English language.

The state’s top court, in affirming a lower court’s ruling, said the long-standing language requirement “manifests a legitimate concern that those who hold elective office be minimally proficient in English in order to conduct the duties of their office without the aid of an interpreter.”

The court rejected an argument that a lower court’s interpretation of the law violates the right to participate in government, with the high court holding that there is no constitutional right to seek office. The state law requiring English proficiency as a qualification for public office has existed since before statehood, the opinion said.

“Such a requirement helps ensure that the public officer will in fact be able to understand and perform the functions of the office, including communications with English-speaking constituents and the public,” Justice Robert Brutinel wrote in the opinion.

The case came about when the mayor of the city of San Luis sought to disqualify a candidate for city council on the grounds that she could not read, write and speak the English language as required by the law. The lower court conducted a hearing and decided to preclude her from the ballot.

The candidate contended that she met the state’s requirements and appealed to the state supreme court.
Posted by: Fred || 08/18/2012 13:41 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  How soon does this get denounced as racist, nativist, or both?
Posted by: Raj || 08/18/2012 14:03 Comments || Top||

#2  Raj, the simple fact of bringing the suit means that it has been dnounced as both so the court upholding the law (what a concept) doesn't change anything.
Posted by: AlanC || 08/18/2012 14:50 Comments || Top||

#3  IIRC all the parties (Mayor, Council, Candidate) were hispanic. Some were just TOO hispanic
Posted by: Frank G || 08/18/2012 18:58 Comments || Top||


-Election 2012
John Kerry: Obama being 'swift boated'
Sen. John F. I was in Vietnam, you know Kerry
Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, the Senate's current foreign policy expert, filling the vacated wingtips of Joe Biden...
, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate on Friday charged that critics are trying to "swiftboat" President B.O. with false and "ridiculous" claims and that Willard Mitt Romney
...former governor of Massachussetts, currently the presumptive Publican nominee for president. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney's charisma is best defined as soporific, which is probably why he is leading the Publican field. On the plus side, he isn't President B.O...
is a foreign policy rookie who embarrassed himself during a recent trip to London.

In a letter to Obama's supporters, he railed on the charges Obama has been hit with, including those from the so-called "birthers."
I've never been a 'birther.' The 'evidence' that B.O. was born in Kenya is less than overwhelming. I'm not too sure about any evidence that his parents were married, but I consider that unimportant. I do think, however, that the fact that he uses a Connecticut social security number and his refusal to to release his college transcripts both are.
The attacks, he said, "remind me all too well of the notorious 'Swift Boat' attacks I faced in the 2004 campaign." He was referencing devastating charges from fellow Vietnam War veterans questioning his service.
Well do I remember the 'swift boat' attacks, in which JFK's famous trip up the river into Cambodia made him a laughingstock. The story of his 'lucky hat' is seared into my mind.
In the note, he also slapped Romney for being a foreign policy novice and potential presidential disaster. "Republicans have a candidate with absolutely no foreign policy experience, who thinks Russia is our 'number one geo-political foe' and who is advised by people who think -- and have repeatedly said -- the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia are countries that still exist. Romney's two major foreign policy speeches never even mentioned Al Qaeda once, and he's prone to stumbles when he steps onto the foreign policy stage. He can't even manage to visit London without causing an international incident!"
Posted by: Fred || 08/18/2012 10:49 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Good. The most effective antidote to these fucktwits s the truth.
Posted by: DarthVader || 08/18/2012 10:59 Comments || Top||

#2  They keep trying to give the term a negative connotation, but "swift boating" was nothing more than exposing a self-important, lying asshat for what he was. The swift boaters are heroes. Kerry is nothing but an unorganized grabasstic piece of amphibian shit.
Posted by: Iblis || 08/18/2012 11:36 Comments || Top||

#3  release those DOD records yet, horseface? It's been 8 years
Posted by: Frank G || 08/18/2012 12:41 Comments || Top||

#4  so one serial liar that hides his records defends another?
Posted by: Frank G || 08/18/2012 12:47 Comments || Top||

#5  I wonder if he's ever paid the sales tax on his yacht (the Isabella) to the Mass. Department of Revenue?
Posted by: Raj || 08/18/2012 13:13 Comments || Top||

#6  Other than being a traitor to his country, has John Kerry ever held an honest job?
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 08/18/2012 13:27 Comments || Top||

#7  Rambler - that would be the cookie stand in Faneuil Hall.
Posted by: Raj || 08/18/2012 14:04 Comments || Top||

#8  As of today, JFK has not paid the taxes on his yacht.
Posted by: Deacon Blues || 08/18/2012 18:54 Comments || Top||

#9  What's worse, making money fine tuning companies or marrying a multi-milllionair hag?
Posted by: Jack Salami || 08/18/2012 20:41 Comments || Top||

#10  I am drawing a line in the sand here on Heinz. It is flat out the tastiest organic ketchup in the world.
Posted by: Perfesser || 08/18/2012 22:13 Comments || Top||


Champ attacks US Navy SEALS
On Thursday morning, campaign officials waged a full court press against the Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund, a group of former U.S. Special Forces and intelligence officials accusing President B.O. of leaking vital national security secrets and taking too much credit for the killing of the late Osama bin Laden
... who doesn't live anywhere anymore...
When the group launched its anti-Obama media campaign Wednesday, consisting of TV ads and a 22-minute film, it wasn't clear if Obama officials would avoid a potentially messy confrontation or refute the military veterans publicly. But now the campaign has made clear it views the attacks in the same light as the 2004 John F. I was in Vietnam, you know Kerry
Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, the Senate's current foreign policy expert, filling the vacated wingtips of Joe Biden...
"Swift Boat" attack ads, which, however misleading, were painfully effective.
And, of course, they weren't misleading...
"The Republicans are resorting to 'Swift Boat' tactics because when it comes to foreign policy and national security, Willard Mitt Romney
...former governor of Massachussetts, currently the presumptive Publican nominee for president. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney's charisma is best defined as soporific, which is probably why he is leading the Publican field. On the plus side, he isn't President B.O...
has offered nothing but reckless rhetoric," Obama campaign front man Ben LaBolt told Rooters' Mark Hosenball
...whose report may have been hacked. It's so hard to tell sometimes...
last night. Taking a direct shot at the leaders of OPSEC, an Obama campaign official lambasted the group's accusations about national security leaks this morning.

"No one in this group is in a position to speak with any authority on these issues and on what impact these leaks might have," said the official, speaking on background, "and it's clear they've resorted to making things up for purely political reasons."
Which is why he's speaking on background and won't release his name...
Posted by: Besoeker || 08/18/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  after all, "Navy SEALs don't have guts to admit they're running a GOP, anti-Obama campaign"

Yeah right, Navy SEALS are gutless wonders, unf***ingbelievable.

Hopefully they will stop any future leaks from occurring.
Posted by: Jan || 08/18/2012 0:36 Comments || Top||

#2  Attacking veterans has always been unseemly, the work of cowards and lesser men.
Posted by: Besoeker || 08/18/2012 2:07 Comments || Top||

#3  Of what use to say anything anymore?
Posted by: newc || 08/18/2012 2:34 Comments || Top||

#4  We must speak out newc, we are called to do so. And ..."At thy call we shall not falter".
Posted by: Besoeker || 08/18/2012 3:05 Comments || Top||

#5  "There are a lot of gutsy, successful American warriors who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been a successful special operator, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so skilled and athletic. There are a lot of fit, brave people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking SEALS out there.

"If you were gutsy and tough, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great gym teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American military system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in choppers and Zodiac boats. If you’ve got a hit on some big time terrorist -- you didn’t do that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. DARPA research created the Internet so that all the SpeOps could do G2 off the Internet.

"The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting radical Islamists, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own SEAL team. That would be a hard way to organize fighting terrorists.

"So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the G.I. Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That'w how we killed Osama Bid Laden. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President -- because I still believe I killed Osama not those SEALS. Their not on their own, we’re all in this together."
Posted by: Bari Shabbaz || 08/18/2012 9:26 Comments || Top||

#6  the Obama campaign isn’t hesitating to take down a group of former SEALs who’ve criticized the president’s national security decisions.

Obama, you are going to end up a bigger loser than you are now going after the special ops community.

It's not about his national security decisions (although some of these decisions suck), it is about Obama and his administration not being able to shut their collective pie holes in an attempt to take credit for something they did not do--to aggrandize themselves at the expense of spec ops security and methods. It is about a lack of humility by Obama and his minions--it is about puffing up and inflating the Narcissistic-in-Chief.
Posted by: JohnQC || 08/18/2012 9:41 Comments || Top||

#7  The rest of the military might feel the snake eaters get more ink than they deserve, even when it's not opsec dangerous. But everbody respects what they do.
These clowns are dissing all current and former service members.
It's a lame attempt to distract from such unforgivable crimes as outing the Pak doctor.
Won't work.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey || 08/18/2012 9:58 Comments || Top||

#8  Classic Obama.

Just keep him off script and off teleprompter and he will dig his own grave with his hate and leftist radicalism.
Posted by: DarthVader || 08/18/2012 10:11 Comments || Top||

#9  The rest of the military might feel the snake eaters get more ink than they deserve, even when it's not opsec dangerous. But everbody respects what they do.

Respectfully disagree, RA. When I was ACDU the SPECOPS guys got hardly any press, and that is the way they wanted it. Hard to work in the shadows when all the lights are turned your way. We had SEALs as part of our outfits and they were so low-key that until there was a full dress inspection, you most likely didn't even know they won the Trident.
And then President Big Ears tries to claim all the glory....
Posted by: USN, ret. || 08/18/2012 10:24 Comments || Top||

#10  Snake eaters? Why are they called that?
Posted by: trailing wife || 08/18/2012 10:45 Comments || Top||

#11  Considering that this administration seems heavily driven by focus groups and opinion surveys (e.g., Champ's campaign slogan "Forward" tested better than "Backward" or "Sideways" by a margin of 6%), you have to assume that Champ's advisers were having some kind of Ryan-induced mental breakdown when they recommended an attack on the OPSEC group. Every opinion poll since 1776 (like this ) has shown the US military to be the most-respected institution in in the country, and every little boy in the country plays "Navy SEAL" when his liberal parents aren't looking. So Champ is tugging on Superman's cape to begin with. And this particular attack -- "America's heroes vote Republican!"-- just has to have been suggested by Karl Rove.

And it's all Champ's fault for putting himself on that helicopter to Abbottabad.
Posted by: Matt || 08/18/2012 10:51 Comments || Top||

#12  Snake eaters? Why are they called that?

I'll defer to the experts on the exact origin of the name, TW, but as a Ranger friend of mine likes to say, "you should be able to eat anything that can't eat you, and some things that can."
Posted by: PBMcL || 08/18/2012 11:00 Comments || Top||

#13  Snake eaters? Why are they called that?

Used to have mandatory survival training which included live hands on instruction in the morning or early afternoon on killing various animals [usually chicken and rabbits and sometimes a snake], then skinning, prepping and then that evening, when we had our turn at 'Field Butchery 101', eating them. The instruction usually was done by a Ranger or other 'Special Ops' type who would also include the display of biting the head off a snake rather than chopping it off. Thus the tag 'snake eater'.

Later that evening when we were killing our 'meals', the real entertainment would begin as those who failed to pay attention to the earlier instructions found 'interesting' way to off the creatures.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 08/18/2012 11:23 Comments || Top||

#14  I can't see where this makes a bit of sense, except maybe under a "hit back twice as hard" strategy. It will appeal to BHO's left wing base who hate the military, but they are already in the tank. For everyone else, it is unattractive and rather petty, besides.
Posted by: SteveS || 08/18/2012 12:02 Comments || Top||

#15  Barack is REALLY messin up. Not that these guys would do anything illegal, but even from a political perspective, he is messing with people who are committed to a mission success rate of at least 100%.
Posted by: Dopey Thinetch6071 || 08/18/2012 13:15 Comments || Top||

#16  As of last night the video had over a million hits; as of just now it's 1.47 million. Instapundit linked to it last night. If someone would be kind enough to post the YouTube link in this thread, I would be grateful.
Posted by: trailing wife || 08/18/2012 13:47 Comments || Top||

#17  USN. Ret. The snake eaters get lots of popular, hero-worship ink. That's what I was talking about. It's why fat old guys in bars try to pick up chicks by telling them they're ex Navy SEALs instead of, say, ex Mech Infantry. There's something to be said for fighting off lethal boredom in an Orion shadowing Sov boomers for twenty years. Making stuff not happen is laudable, too, but gets no ink.
That said, Obama with his tin-eared, lefty, deliberate ignorance of things military, including minor issues like honor and brotherhood, thinks he's only arguing with some prima donna wannabe politicians.
All of us, from the WW II generation currently fading in nursing homes, to guys on active duty now, have had or contemplated having to do something which, if it had been blown would either not have happened or been a catastrophe.
CSM Eric Haney talks of two ops to get guys out of Laos, both blown. He didn't specify who likely did it. Nobody likes that shit. And you don't have to be in Devgru to be annoyed.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey || 08/18/2012 14:21 Comments || Top||

#18  TW here is the link from Rantburg's post yesterday

http://rantburg.com/poparticle.php?D=08/16/2012&SO=&HC=6&ID=350316
Posted by: Jan || 08/18/2012 15:13 Comments || Top||

#19  That's good, too, Jan. I,m glad you thought of it. :-)

Procopius2K and PBMcL, thank you for explaining snake eaters.. I believe OldSpook once wrote similarly about why it's critical to cook caterpillars to well done when eating in the field.
Posted by: trailing wife || 08/18/2012 16:02 Comments || Top||

#20  Somehow Caterpillar Eater just doesn't have the same joie de vivre.
Posted by: SteveS || 08/18/2012 18:06 Comments || Top||

#21  Have the real military leaders we have left come up with a plan yet to kill the stupid people who give phucking useless orders to troops and phuckedup rules of engagement yet?
Posted by: Unearong Angomosh4693 || 08/18/2012 18:15 Comments || Top||

#22  RA, I agree that riding a P3 hanging on 2 motors chasing a sub isn't as thrilling as offing bad guys, but anybody that uses "I'm a SEAL" to pick up chicks is lower than a Democrat, and I wouldn't call that ink; I was referring to actual pressers and the like.
(for the record, my ASW time was fixing Sikorsky stuff in a per diem free zone)
Posted by: USN, ret. || 08/18/2012 21:51 Comments || Top||

#23  Proc, they did that with us in SERE school back in the day: catch and eat small game.
Posted by: OldSpook || 08/18/2012 23:30 Comments || Top||

#24  USN retd
Although born and bred a grunt, the Sullivans act pulled me back from my choice of duty stations, SEA19770, and I was S1 of an ADA-Nike Hercgroup-- until I got out. You ever try to have a conversation with a bunch of engineers?
Hell, my xo thought
Medal For Horatius--available on line--was straight.
But we defended the Detroit-Cleveland Air Defense Zone until the Sovs got tired.
Posted by: HAVAVE || 08/18/2012 23:43 Comments || Top||



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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has dominated Mexico for six years.
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Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
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badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
Besoeker
Glenmore
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Two weeks of WOT
Sat 2012-08-18
  US drone kills 5 militants in northern Pakistan
Fri 2012-08-17
  Algeria’s Brahimi agrees to be Syria mediator
Thu 2012-08-16
  20 Shiites in Pakistan pulled from buses, gunned down
Wed 2012-08-15
  Pro-Saleh Troops Attack Yemen Defense Ministry
Tue 2012-08-14
  Al Qaeda front group claims Iraq attacks
Mon 2012-08-13
  Nigerian Troops Kill 20 Boko Haram Islamists: Military
Sun 2012-08-12
  Syrian and Jordanian forces clash in border area
Sat 2012-08-11
  More Than 100 Dead in Syria as Fierce Clashes Rage in Aleppo
Fri 2012-08-10
  Syrian rebels retreat Aleppo district amid heavy shelling
Thu 2012-08-09
  Yemen Strike Kills Key Al-Qaeda Leader, Foreign Militants
Wed 2012-08-08
  Muslim Terrorists Tell Nigeria's Christian President: 'Convert or Resign'
Tue 2012-08-07
  Libya’s interim authorities to hand over power to congress
Mon 2012-08-06
  Syria Prime Minister Riad Hijab defects
Sun 2012-08-05
  Kidnapped Syrian teevee host executed
Sat 2012-08-04
  IMU Emir Abu Usman Adil has Died

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