Bush’s former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, on how Obama screwed up his predecessor’s handiwork in Iraq, the coming regional arms conflict—and what the president should say in his speech tonight about his decision to withdraw American troops.

President Obama has an opportunity in Tuesday’s Oval Office address on Iraq to show that he has finally learned something about American security in the hard world of international geostrategy. Of course, if he did, it would mean abandoning much of what he advocated during his election campaign, reversing many of his most-prized policies since his inauguration, disappointing his leftist political base, and causing acute heartburn on Norway’s Nobel Peace Prize Committee. I’m not holding my breath. But if the president was blessed with a revelation during his summer vacation, perhaps he now understands what we have at stake in Iraq going forward.

The consequence of an Obama policy that continues the withdrawal of American forces down to zero in Iraq would unquestionably strengthen Iran.

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A pastor who hates Muslims, Mormons and gays will start preaching Sunday. Will mosque opponents speak out?

A bigoted pastor who has assailed gays and Muslims is launching the “9-11 Christian Center at Ground Zero” a mere two blocks from the World Trade Center site this Sunday, but so far the project hasn’t drawn a peep of protest from those who are outraged by the “ground zero mosque.”

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MSN-He incriminates engineers, including one who refuses to testify at presidential inquiry

A contractor to BP testified Tuesday that he warned BP that it risked gas leaks in the Macondo well if it cut back on stabilizers for the pipe going down the hole. The warning, he told the Coast Guard-led inquiry into the disaster, was sent via e-mails to BP engineers, including one who refused to testify on Tuesday.

Jesse Gagliano, a technical advisor for Halliburton, which was contracted to cement the well, testified that two days before the explosion he sent BP a computer model showing severe risk of gas flowing into the cemented well if it used fewer than seven “centralizers” at different depths of the pipe.

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S-Jon Stewart demands that Americans stop watching Fox News as the only way to cut off the revenue stream to “these bad dudes.”

The Kingdom Foundation, funder of the Ground Zero Mosque is run by Alwaleed bin Talal, the largest shareholder in Fox News.

Fox News owner Alwaleed bin Talal, who, according to Fox News, has ties to terrorist organizations and the Iranian government, also owns, of course, Fox News and pays the salaries of those who say the man funding the Ground Zero Mosque is a terrorist.

What Fox News fails to mention is that the terrorist they are speaking of is their owner, Alwaleed bin Talal.

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DB….But the most striking thing about Beck’s heartfelt evangelism was its hypocrisy.

“We’re dividing ourselves,” Beck lamented. “There is growing hatred in the country. We must be better than what we’ve allowed ourselves to become. We must get the poison of hatred out of us, no matter what smears or lies are thrown our way… we must look to God and look to love. We must defend those we disagree with.”

It made me wonder if Glenn Beck has ever watched the Glenn Beck show.

The man offers a daily drumbeat of division for a living, earning $32 million last year selling his paranoid snake oil. It’s almost impossible to keep up with Beck’s serial fearmongering, though a stroll through Media Matters will give an authoritative sampling. Just a few of his greatest hits include:

• “We are a country that is headed toward socialism, totalitarianism, beyond your wildest imagination.”

• “There is a coup going on. There is a stealing of America… done through the guise of an election.”

• “The president is a Marxist… who is setting up a class system.”

• “The government is a heroin pusher using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state.”

• “The health-care bill is reparations. It’s the beginning of reparations.”

• And of course, speaking of President Obama, “I believe this guy is a racist” with “a deep-seated hatred of white people.”

You can’t profit from fear and division all week and then denounce them one Saturday on the National Mall in Washington and hope nobody notices……

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HP-”The Daily Show” has a knack for going on vacation when important things happen, so it’s nice to see Jon Stewart proactively “report” on Glenn Beck’s Aug. 28 civil rights rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In a segment dubbed “I Have A Scheme,” Stewart picked apart Beck’s plan to “restore honor” to the republic on the same day and in the same place as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did exactly 47 years ago.

Beck claims not to have realized the coincidence when planning his “Beckapalooza” and Stewart honestly believed him. “Wow, so Glenn Beck didn’t realize that was an important day in African-American history?” he asked. “I find that… Totally plausible. I find that totally plausible.”

While Beck will not be standing in the same EXACT spot as Dr. King did on that historic day (he’ll be standing two flights down) Stewart did take issue with Beck’s plan to “reclaim the civil rights movement.” Beck argued that white people can’t praise or support the mission of Dr. King without criticism.

“Who acts like white people can’t praise Martin Luther King?” Stewart said in disbelief. “Or is it that they don’t want people who called Barack Obama, the first black president, a racist to praise Martin Luther King?”

WATCH:

by Research Fellow William J. Watkins Jr.

A federal district judge in California has ruled that it’s unconstitutional to define marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman.

The impact of the decision, should it stand, is that it nationalizes marriage—one of many matters the 10th Amendment leaves to the people and the states. That amendment states that powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it, “are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The sanctioning of marriage is one of those powers.

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Conservative commentator Ann Coulter has been told she is no longer welcome to offer the keynote speech at WorldNetDaily’s “Taking America Back National Conference” because she is speaking at an event sponsored by a gay Republican group.

WorldNetDaily, a far right news website, posted on a story on its website stating that Coulter had been disinvited “because of her plan to address an event titled ‘HOMOCON’ sponsored by the homosexual Republican group GOProud that promotes same-sex marriage and military service for open homosexuals.”

“Ultimately, as a matter of principle, it would not make sense for us to have Ann speak to a conference about ‘taking America back’ when she clearly does not recognize that the ideals to be espoused there simply do not include the radical and very ‘unconservative’ agenda represented by GOProud,” WorldNetDaily’s editor and chief executive officer Joseph Farah said in the story. “The drift of the conservative movement to a brand of materialistic libertarianism is one of the main reasons we planned this conference from the beginning.”

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AOL-Authorities say a New York City cab driver is recovering after being brutally stabbed by a passenger who first demanded, “Are you Muslim?”

The attacks occurred as New York is in the midst of a contentious debate over plans to build an Islamic community center and mosque a few blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center.

“I think this clearly demonstrates that hate speech often leads to hate crime when you have the constant vilification of Islam and Muslims on talk radio, in newspapers, on cable news and on the Internet,” Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told AOL News.

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HP…..But if we say that a mosque and community center should not be built near the perimeter of the World Trade Center site, we would compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom.

We would undercut the values and principles that so many heroes died protecting. We would feed the false impressions that some Americans have about Muslims. We would send a signal around the world that Muslim Americans may be equal in the eyes of the law, but separate in the eyes of their countrymen. And we would hand a valuable propaganda tool to terrorist recruiters, who spread the fallacy that America is at war with Islam.

Islam did not attack the World Trade Center — Al-Qaeda did. To implicate all of Islam for the actions of a few who twisted a great religion is unfair and un-American. Today we are not at war with Islam — we are at war with Al-Qaeda and other extremists who hate freedom.
[snip]

The members of our military are men and women at arms — battling for hearts and minds. And their greatest weapon in that fight is the strength of our American values, which have always inspired people around the world. But if we do not practice here at home what we preach abroad — if we do not lead by example – we undermine our soldiers. We undermine our foreign policy objectives. And we undermine our national security….

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