Sarah Palin and the Gender Card

Jon Stewart does it best!

Video link: Sarah Palin and the Gender Card

Georgia and Kosovo: A Single Intertwined Crisis

Here is a different take on the recent Georgian crisis. One does not always need to invoke ‘Cold War’ rhetoric (like the neocons do) to understand the crisis.

clipped from www.stratfor.com The Russo-Georgian war was rooted in broad geopolitical processes. In large part it was simply the result of the cyclical reassertion of Russian power. The Russian empire — czarist and Soviet — expanded to its borders in the 17th and 19th centuries. It collapsed in 1992. The Western powers wanted to make the disintegration permanent. It was inevitable that Russia would, in due course, want to reassert its claims. That it happened in Georgia was simply the result of circumstance. There is, however, another context within which to view this, the context of Russian perceptions of U.S. and European intentions and of U.S. and European perceptions of Russian capabilities. This context shaped the policies that led to the Russo-Georgian war. And those attitudes can only be understood if we trace the question of Kosovo, because the Russo-Georgian war was forged over the last decade over the Kosovo question.

Sending the U.S. to war is not the president’s call

Well, this is my first post, but it is isn’t something that I wrote. It is just a part of an online article that makes the case that the Executive branch of the government is becoming far too powerful than the Legislative branch in matters related to war.

clipped from www.csmonitor.com Washington; and DeNver, Colo. – In the United States, the decision to go to war rests with the elected representatives of those who will do the fighting and dying. It’s one of the defining – and critical – elements of the republic. Our nation’s founders purposely rejected the European custom of kings starting wars essentially by decree. Instead, the drafters delegated war powers to the legislative branch of the new government. That constitutional assignment of power to Congress has not always been followed in practice. And it’s in jeopardy now. Presidents of both parties have sought to arrogate the power to go to war into the executive branch. In one recent and notable example, senior advisers to President George W. Bush asserted that he had no constitutional obligation to seek authorization from Congress for use of force in Iraq.

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