Alaska’s Sarah Palin is one of the heroes of the conservative movement.  She frequently invokes the libertarian beliefs of America’s founding figures to tremendous applause. 

Yet, like most modern day Republican conservatives, Palin strongly supports our military invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq to the bitter, bloody end.  She is also open to more Presidential warfare in places like Yemen and presumably anywhere else.  Last month, she took the position the United States should, in circumstances short of a nuclear attack, explode nuclear weapons of our own.   Palin objects to a non-proliferation treaty that might limit killing hundreds of millions of innocents across the world on Presidential authority alone.  She proudly sends her own sons into harm’s way to a war our nation has no true stake in.  Story

The controversy over guns and Starbucks provides us with an opportunity to understand the relationship between gun rights and property rights.

The gun-control crowd is upset with Starbucks because the chain is permitting people to openly carry firearms into its stores. They say that this is carrying the right to keep and bear arms too far.

On the other hand, some gun-rights advocates are claiming that the Second Amendment guarantees the right of people to keep and bear arms in Starbucks.

Alaska’s law-enforcement lobby is about to give the Last Frontier something to go with the largest mountain in the world, a grand new crime lab to be built in Anchorage.

Through an ornamental gate and fencing on the 15-acre property, along a tree-lined route, one will come to the boxy monstrosity clad with $1,000,000 of charcoal black granite.  On entry, one sees in the large atrium a grand glass-enclosed stairwell with stairs of polished marble.  The three conference rooms and sixteen bathrooms offer plenty of elbow room for the lab’s 39 employees.  One key piece of forensic equipment the size of a microwave has its very own room. The exterior recreational amenities for lab staff are to be world-class.

The public, of course, will not be allowed access to the fineries of the new lab, unless you can get past the armed guards.  Our modern crime-fighters need a lot of privacy in their work.      Story

Obama Widens Drone Attacks in Pakistan

Republished from the World Socialist Web Site
By Bill Van Auke

The Obama administration has granted secret permission to the CIA to carry out more indiscriminate drone missile strikes in Pakistan, even as protests over civilian casualties caused by the attacks continue to grow.

Officials revealed this week that the US intelligence agency is operating under rules that allow it to target suspected “militants” in Pakistan based upon “pattern of life” analyses, without even ascertaining their identity. For the most part, they acknowledge, the names of those assassinated with Hellfire missiles fired from Predator and the larger Reaper drones are never known.

This description of the drone program flies in the face of official propaganda, which has presented the missile attacks as part of a carefully prepared exercise in “targeted killings” aimed against high-ranking leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But according to the Los Angeles Times, which cited current and former intelligence officials, “The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of drone strikes in Pakistan’s border region.”       Story

Election 2010:

Republican Power Bubble

Forgetful of their own blown reputation, the more warfare end of the Republicrat Party in America is celebrating its looming ascendancy on Capitol Hill following this year’s federal elections.  Nothing has changed in America's two-party politics, from the Republican point of view, despite the ongoing economic disaster.  Republicans are going to crush Democrats in November no matter what just because America’s economy continues to crumble under Obama’s rule just as it did under George Bush’s rule. 

Under this Republican bubble belief, every Democrat office-holder is imperiled by their Republican opposing candidate, but amazingly few Republican incumbents bear the same risk of being tossed from office just on general principles.  No one in Washington yet believes all of the bums would actually be thrown out of office, certainly not by a conservative tidal wave, a hugely soothing thought for conventional Republicans right now.   Story