Cernig at Newshoggers has posted a critique of McCain’s proposal for a “league of democracies” to supplement the diminishing returns of the bloated United Nations. In his critique, however, Cernig embraces a classic strawman technique, ascribing a belief to McCain supporters that none of them actually embrace: (more…)

Armenia’s presidential election has finally passed after simmering for much of the month of March. For a synopsis of the events before and after the election, please refer to this article in the Diplomatic Courier, or read the following open to an article from the February 21st Economist.

ELECTIONS in former Soviet republics rarely yield surprises. (more…)

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has published a couple of articles about so-called Muslim organization CAIR. CAIR is, as we all know, an organization that pretends to speak for most if not all Muslims in America, and pretends to be moderate. Well, the IPT investigated CAIR and came to the following conclusion: CAIR is many things, but moderate isn’t one of them. In the latest dispatch IPT shows that CAIR portrays the “War on Terrorism” as a “War on Islam.” (more…)

The leader of the militant group Hamas — the Palestinian faction that took power in Gaza in a military coup last year and ever since has been raining missiles down on Israeli border towns — has offered Israel a deal: we won’t kill your civilians if you don’t kill ours. (more…)

The New York Times reports about a protest that disrupted an Olympic Ceremony last Sunday (when Greek officials handed over the Olympic flame to organizers of the Beijing Summer Games), but it seems to me that this is what they should have expected. China has one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, and the communists have tried to completely destroy Tibetan culture. This is the opportunity for Tibetans to force the world to pay attention to its plight. (more…)

Cernig’s website, the Newshoggers, has moved. They first had a blogspot blog, now they have a domain of their own. With regards to size it’s not one of the biggest liberal blogs, but with regards to influence it most certainly is. The design, by the way, looks very good.

Your “who gives a [explicit]”-news of the day: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie did not get married.

We’ll all be happy. Well: “Everyone’s favorite IRNA editor-at-large has taken issue with my UN death knell… I think Cernig’s primary hang-up here is how he views the UN, and what precisely the role of such a global, deliberative body should be.  The problem with his argument is that the UN was not an institution built for growth, but rather, an institution built for results.” Quite right Kevin. The problem with the UN is that the only ‘results’ are pro-Islamist and anti-Israel results. Interesting to see that Kevin’s referred to as a “liberal” with quotation marks. What, liberals are not allowed to be hawks with regards to foreign policy? If they are they’re not liberals but “liberals”?

While Obama’s critics get worked up into yet another trivialistic lather over whether he hates babies, here’s an update on what they are giving Hillary Clinton a pass for:

Atop yesterday’s report that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is stiffing small businesses for hundreds of thousands in unpaid fees for event coordination, today’s Politico reports that Clinton’s campaign is deeply in arrears in paying health insurance premiums as well. (more…)

The BBC has more on the case that has now been accepted by Turkey’s supreme court: “Turkey’s constitutional court has decided unanimously that it can hear a case aimed at closing down the country’s governing AK Party.” Aside from that, the prosecutor who filed the case also wants the court to ban Erdogan, Gül and 71 other MPs from politics for a number of years. (more…)

The Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Alphonso Jackson, became the upenteenth Bush Administration official to resign today. He cited tending to “family and personal matters” (of course) but the consensus is that it has more to do with the housing crisis and ethics investigations. From the LA Times for instance:

The investigation into Jackson began in 2006, after he publicly disclosed that he had revoked a contract because the vendor told him he did not like President Bush. Amid an inspector general inquiry, Jackson told investigators that he had misspoken

Someone needs to come up with a word for “lying or otherwise saying something I’ll soon come to find politically toxic” OTHER than misspeaking, if only for the sake of originality.

Since “Fitna” could have been produced by Al Qaeda, one wonders when those - ironically often fundamentalist - Muslims who are protesting against the movie, and calling on business and countries to boycott all products originating from the Netherlands, will protest against Muslim extremists. (more…)

Stephen Dinan makes the case for the Washington Times that the only reason that John McCain was able to make a comeback was that he reached out to blogs, conservative blogs, and that those blogs were more than willing to give him the time and attention the traditional media wouldn’t give him. (more…)

Earlier reports indicated that Izmir had won the battle for EXPO 2015. However, those earlier reports were false. Due to some technical error the first round of voting didn’t count and… Milan beat Izmir in the second round by 21 votes. 86 people voted for Milan, against only 65 who voted for Izmir. (more…)

(UPDATED: due to a technical error, the first round of voting didn’t count and… suddenly Milan won. Read our coverage here) This is breaking news (kindly e-mailed to me by Meltem): Izmir has just won the battle for EXPO 2015. The Western Turkish city is allowed to host this grand event. It’s a good day for Izmir and for Turkey as a whole: this is a great opportunity to show the world that Turkey is a modern, developed, hospitable and beautiful country with a people more than able to organize great events. (more…)

MSN reports that Geert Wilders will change his movie “Fitna” on three points: firstly, he’ll take out the Mohammed cartoons drawn by Kurt Westergaard. Secondly, he’ll take out the photo of a Dutch rapper, and he’ll use a real photo of Mohammed Bouyeri instead. Lastly, he’ll mention program maker Robbie Muntz in the adapted version. The latest complained that his voice could be heard interviewing Theo van Gogh in the movie, but that he wasn’t mention at the end of the movie. Wilders will change that.

Via Memeorandum comes the following: it seems that the latest cease fire in Iraq wasn’t brokered by the US, nor by Iraqi government officials but by an Iranian general. Members of Iraq’s Parliament said that “Iraqi lawmakers traveled to the Iranian holy city of Qom over the weekend to win the support of the commander of Iran’s Qods brigades in persuading Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr to order his followers to stop military operations.” (more…)

The Boston Globe reports that “Senator John McCain has retreated from his longtime commitment to public financing of campaigns since he started planning his 2008 bid for the presidency, according to nonpartisan advocates who had hoped McCain would be a strong voice for reform during the most expensive presidential campaign in history.” (more…)

I’m happy to be able to publish yet another guest post, written by reader Kemal. The guest post published today is, basically, a follow-up to the post he wrote which was published last week. In today’s post Kemal looks at how the EU has responded to the attempt of a Turkey’s highest prosecutor to shut down the Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The main point: EU representatives have no idea what they’re talking about. (more…)

Barack […] Obama has expanded his lead over Hillary Rodham Clinton: he’s now leading her 52% against 42%. (more…)