This week while in Washington I had an opportunity to sit down with Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the chairman of the Kurdish Redevelopment Corporation.

The KRC is an organization that seeks to promote investment and capital projects in the Kurdish region, which is composed of northern Iraq as well as parts of Syria, Iran, and Turkey. The Kurds have their own democratic government and parliament separate from the above nations. The “host” nations only provide some national security and financial needs; everything else is done by the government of Kurdistan. (more…)

Today, President Bush addressed the NAACP for the first time in his presidency, narrowly avoiding becoming the first president since Warren G. Harding not to speak to the organization. At the same time the Senate was preparing to pass the extenstion for 25 years of the 1965 voting act. Among other things, this act prohibits literacy tests for voting, places voting procedures in certain states and counties, mostly in the South, under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Justice Department, and requires that these regions provide bilingual ballots to those who have trouble speaking English. The Act was set to expire next year. With Jesse Jackson looking on from a gallery, it passed last week in the House of Representatives by a vote of 390-33. After it had passed there were efforts to amend the extension to only ten years, which were also defeated by a healthy margin. (more…)

The Bee had a feature story this morning about parents keeping tabs on their teenage kid’s driving habits.

This is the type of thing that we need to help curb teen driver accidents, not silly legislation forcing kids to put a sticker on the back of their car (as was proposed by one Senator). Although some of the suggested measures are a little extreme in my opinion (ie: No driving after dark, and limiting what roads your kid can drive on) I agree with the basic premise of having a contract and would strongly urge all parents and kids to consider the ideas in the article.

A very good read.

I am playing catch-up this weekend on stories about two things – a state program and some political shenanigans – that Governor Schwarzenegger needs to wake up and put a halt to.

The first is the restoration of $6 Million in the state budget for the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California. The supposed purpose of the organization is to support efforts to educate the public about the history of unions and such. But it has in reality become a publicly funded shrill for big labor, producing biased studies and organizing workers against businesses. (more…)

I know that I have been writing a lot about Planned Parenthood and other abortion supporters lately. But I wanted to bring to your attention yet another stunning and hidden admission from the nation’s largest abortion provider.

Today Planned Parenthood came out with a report on “Reproductive Rights” in the state of Okalahoma. Most of it is the usual speel against pro-life laws, until you get to the second to last bullet.

Oklahoma recently passed Bill 1742, which, among other things, increases funding for so-called “abortion-alternative” programs and offers women ultrasound so they can see the fetus prior to abortion. (more…)

Not too long ago I read a book called The Right Nation, which by the way is an excellent read, and I highly recommend it to any conservative. At the end of said book the authors predicted a likely ‘conservative’ Republican hegemony in the near future. While I hesitate to forecast which political party will reign in the coming years, I must say that whatever the case, true conservatism will not be the reigning philosophy. Despite the fact that many more Americans consider themselves to be ‘conservative’ rather than ‘liberal’, I believe that true conservatism is little more than, as Tolkien’s elven lady Galadriel puts it, “fighting the long defeat”. I believe the reason for this is that a crucial period in our history, true American conservatism was dealt a crushing blow from which it has not, and I fear will never, recover. It was a time when the leaders of America turned their backs on what the Founding Fathers had constructed America to be. (more…)

This story really irks me. A social services agency is asking for a court order to force a 16 year old cancer patient to undergo chemotherapy for a second time. But after going through it once, he doesn’’t want to do it again, and his family agrees.

It would be a much different story if this were a little kid and the family was reckless in avoiding necessary and uncontroversial treatment. But that is not the case here, as there are definite reasons why the patient would not want to experience that very excruciating process.

This is a penultimate example of one of the biggest battles in this culture war: Who owns kids, their parents or the state?

Note to New York Times Editor Bill Keller: This could be the scene in the New York subway underneath your plush offices if you do not stop leaking national security secrets.

It is this that you are risking here in America by your irresponsible stories - nothing less, and perhaps much more.

What a pity. Poor Joseph Lieberman, one of the only fresh, bipartisan and perhaps only Democrats to step away from partisanship, has been roasted by his own party, for supporting his nation, his army, and his President. The Dems are prepared to thrust “Fighting Joe” into the abyss, and the primaries are getting even closer, scheduled for 8 August. If he doesn’t win the primaries, Lieberman says he may run as an Independent. Lieberman states that his duty to his country comes before that of his party, and I believe he’s correct:

I’m a loyal Democrat but I have loyalties that are greater than those to my party, and that’s my loyalty to my state and my country.

Although he’s Pro-choice, this man seems like one of the few innovative minds the Dems have in Congress, and if they’re willing to boot him out then they’re signing their death warrant. In 2009, they’re will be a Republican President in office, mark my words. And they’re is no telling how many seats we’ll gain in the legislature, with this going on. Maybe it’s for the good that they boot him out and he runs as an Indy, it will create further divisions within the Democratic Party. We Republicans have enough ourselves, with immigration and all.

Cindy Sheehan is at it again in her latest column about her protest and fast at The White House: (more…)