MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR

Regardless of ones religious beliefs or a lack thereof this is a special season that I treasure. When we get together with our friends and family we should not forget the brave men and women of our armed forces who guard the frontiers of freedom and who are as I write expanding those frontiers. We must remember those who have been injured and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. There are family's with an empty place at the Christmas table. We will think of them as well.
It's a wonderful country and we have much to be thankful for this Christmas and New Year as we celebrate the holidays with songs, gifts and good cheer.

The College Football Bowl Season has also begun.
Go Ducks! Beat Oklahoma in the Holiday Bowl!

Never Forget!

From Lawrence Kudlow, host of CNBC's Kudlow & Company:
"Never Forget
The latest Democratic bid aimed at undermining the Bush team’s fight against terrorism is further evidence that Democrats prize partisan politics over the safety of America’s men, women and children and are soft on national defense. This is not hyperbole. This is fact. This wiretapping “scandal” is anything but. I’m not going to delve into the myriad reasons why the Bush administration was legally justified for conducting wiretaps, nor am I going to explain why the Bush administration ought to be applauded for conducting wiretaps. You can read Byron York over at NRO for more on that. You might also check out the Wall Street Journal’s editorial on this subject. Or Dick Morris’ piece in the New York Post.What I want to talk about is how soon some people forget. What are these people thinking? It wasn’t so long ago that hijackers used our planes as missiles and flew them into our buildings. It wasn’t so long ago that militant Islamists stole the lives of countless innocent American civilians. Lest we forget, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters didn’t make it home from work that day. They died nightmarish deaths. They jumped out of windows, burned and died of asphyxiation. And we are not talking about ten, twenty, thirty people here. We’re not even talking a few hundred. We’re talking about thousands of lives. Take a trip down to Ground Zero. The World Trade Center is still gone. Yet the scars of September the 11th remain.This unspeakable threat has not magically disappeared. It lingers. Our enemies, the sick, twisted brutal souls who seek to destroy us, remain. They have not changed their plans. On the contrary, they continue in their resolute hatred for us. They continue to despise our way of life. They continue in their unwavering commitment to seeing us die. The threat remains.So pardon me if I ask some folks what exactly they’re thinking when they attack the president as he protects American lives. We must never forget."

Merry Christmas!

Bush on Solid Legal Ground on Surveillance of Terrorist Communications

James S. Robbins has written a excellent legal brief on President Bush's Powers to conduct electronic surveillance of terrorist communications crossing into or out of the Unites States. He cites U.S. Code: Title 50: Section 1801 and 1802. Click on the title above for his legal brief and then print it off and READ the U.S. Code sections cited above, as I did, and you see that President Bush is on solid legal ground. In reading the code it is important to read the definitions in Section 1801.

George Bush on the Attack!

John McIntyre on Real Clear Politics points out: "The political pendulum is swinging back towards President Bush....One of the major problems working against Democrats is many on their side appear to be rooting for failure in Iraq and publicly ridicule the idea that we actually might win. When this impression is put in context of the debate over eavesdropping or the Patriot Act, Democrats run the significant risk of being perceived to be more concerned with the enemy’s rights than protecting ordinary Americans. This is a loser for Democrats.

To read the entire article click on the title above.

Nice story on ESPN about some Duck Fans!

e-duck is a website I go to often to discuss the Oregon Ducks with other fans on their various forums. Click on the title above for a link to a story about a little girl suffering from leukemia that has been helped by the e-duck Oregon fans and the fans from other schools. It puts things in perspective.

We are at War!

We are at War with Islamic extremism and George W Bush is doing everything he can to carry the fight to the enemy. Too bad we cannot say the same thing about many Democrats, a few Republicans and the Main Stream Press. The New York Times has damaged our national security by their irresponsible conduct in reporting on our surveillance of Islamic terrorist .

George W Bush takes the battle to the Democrats and their allies in the press

President of the United States, George W Bush's live Saturday radio speech to the nation.:

"As President, I took an oath to defend the Constitution, and I have no greater responsibility than to protect our people, our freedom, and our way of life. On September the 11th, 2001, our freedom and way of life came under attack by brutal enemies who killed nearly 3,000 innocent Americans. We're fighting these enemies across the world. Yet in this first war of the 21st century, one of the most critical battlefronts is the home front. And since September the 11th, we've been on the offensive against the terrorists plotting within our borders.
One of the first actions we took to protect America after our nation was attacked was to ask Congress to pass the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act tore down the legal and bureaucratic wall that kept law enforcement and intelligence authorities from sharing vital information about terrorist threats. And the Patriot Act allowed federal investigators to pursue terrorists with tools they already used against other criminals. Congress passed this law with a large, bipartisan majority, including a vote of 98-1 in the United States Senate.

Since then, America's law enforcement personnel have used this critical law to prosecute terrorist operatives and supporters, and to break up terrorist cells in New York, Oregon, Virginia, California, Texas and Ohio. The Patriot Act has accomplished exactly what it was designed to do: it has protected American liberty and saved American lives.
Yet key provisions of this law are set to expire in two weeks. The terrorist threat to our country will not expire in two weeks. The terrorists want to attack America again, and inflict even greater damage than they did on September the 11th. Congress has a responsibility to ensure that law enforcement and intelligence officials have the tools they need to protect the American people.
The House of Representatives passed reauthorization of the Patriot Act. Yet a minority of senators filibustered to block the renewal of the Patriot Act when it came up for a vote yesterday. That decision is irresponsible, and it endangers the lives of our citizens. The senators who are filibustering must stop their delaying tactics, and the Senate must vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act. In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment.
To fight the war on terror, I am using authority vested in me by Congress, including the Joint Authorization for Use of Military Force, which passed overwhelmingly in the first week after September the 11th. I'm also using constitutional authority vested in me as Commander-in-Chief.
In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. Before we intercept these communications, the government must have information that establishes a clear link to these terrorist networks.
This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security. Its purpose is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends and allies. Yesterday the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country.
As the 9/11 Commission pointed out, it was clear that terrorists inside the United States were communicating with terrorists abroad before the September the 11th attacks, and the commission criticized our nation's inability to uncover links between terrorists here at home and terrorists abroad. Two of the terrorist hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon, Nawaf al Hamzi and Khalid al Mihdhar, communicated while they were in the United States to other members of al Qaeda who were overseas. But we didn't know they were here, until it was too late.
The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after September the 11th helped address that problem in a way that is fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities. The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time. And the activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad.
The activities I authorized are reviewed approximately every 45 days. Each review is based on a fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland. During each assessment, previous activities under the authorization are reviewed. The review includes approval by our nation's top legal officials, including the Attorney General and the Counsel to the President. I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups.
The NSA's activities under this authorization are thoroughly reviewed by the Justice Department and NSA's top legal officials, including NSA's general counsel and inspector general. Leaders in Congress have een briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it. Intelligence officials involved in this activity also receive extensive training to ensure they perform their duties consistent with the letter and intent of the authorization.
This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties. And that is exactly what I will continue to do, so long as I'm the President of the United States.
Thank you."

We need a special prosecutor to go after those that leaked this classified information to the New York Times. They have done great damage to this country and should be prosecuted.

Leave the Nukes Take out the Mullahs by Herbert E Meyer

Great column by Herbert E Meyer on how we need to encourage a coup in Iran. He states in part:

"To think clearly about how best to remove the looming threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, just keep in mind the National Rifle Association’s much maligned – but perfectly sensible – old slogan: Guns don’t kill people. People kill people."

"It’s the same with nuclear weapons. The threat isn’t from the warhead, but from the individual who controls it. For example, right now several countries whose governments aren’t always friendly to the US – China, Russia, France – each have enough nuclear warheads, and the means to deliver them, to obliterate our country. But we don’t lose one minute’s sleep over this prospect because, although the leaders of these countries are surly, petulant, sometimes vicious and often anti-American – they are also sane...."

"The president of Iran, on the other hand, is nuts. (The tip-off came a while back when, as mayor of Teheran, Ahmadi-Neshad Amadinejad ordered separate elevators for men and women. His insanity became more obvious – and more serious – when he demanded last month that Israel be “wiped off the map,” and then “clarified” this call to genocide by insisting that the Holocaust never happened, and adding that he had only meant to suggest that Israel be re-located somewhere in Western Europe.) Moreover, it’s clear that at least several of the mullahs who rigged the election that brought Amadinejad to power earlier this year are also dangerous fanatics. Allowing Amadinejad and these mullahs to get their hands on nuclear weapons is a risk the civilized world simply cannot take. It would be like allowing a bunch of escaped lunatics to roam the halls of your childrens’ school, armed with rifles, in hopes that maybe they really aren’t as crazy as they seem to be and won’t, after all, start firing into the cafeteria."

To read the rest of the column click on the title above for a link.

Richard Cohen on the movie Syriana!

Richard Cohen in his column sets forth the reason I will not waste my money on this left wing polemic. To quote from part of his column:

"The left's criticism of the war from the very start was too often a porridge of inanities about oil or empire or Halliburton -- or isolationism by another name. It was childish and ultimately ineffective. The war came and Bush was re-elected. How's that for a clean whiff?"

"Syriana'' is different because it's first and foremost a political statement, a cinematic manifesto of the tired and empty cynicism of too many on the left. ``Syriana'' is not a bad movie. It is just a better cartoon."

To read his entire column click on the title above.

Pride and the Prejudice

My wife and I saw the Movie the Pride and the Prejudice this last weekend. It is a beautiful movie. The music, cinematography , and acting is well done. The dancing at the ball at the beginning of the movie is magical. This is a fine film. For more information click on the title above for a link to the Internet Movie Data Base (imdb) information on this movie.

Good News from Iraq.... From ABC News!

Good news from Iraq from a surprising source ABC News.....yes ABC News!!!!!! To quote them:

" Surprising levels of optimism prevail in Iraq with living conditions improved, security more a national worry than a local one, and expectations for the future high...."

"An ABC News poll in Iraq, conducted with Time magazine and other media partners, includes some remarkable results: Despite the daily violence there, most living conditions are rated positively, seven in 10 Iraqis say their own lives are going well, and nearly two-thirds expect things to improve in the year ahead. "

"Surprisingly, given the insurgents' attacks on Iraqi civilians, more than six in 10 Iraqis feel very safe in their own neighborhoods, up sharply from just 40 percent in a poll in June 2004. And 61 percent say local security is good — up from 49 percent in the first ABC News poll in Iraq in February 2004...."

"There are positive political signs as well. Three-quarters of Iraqis express confidence in the national elections being held this week, 70 percent approve of the new constitution, and 70 percent — including most people in Sunni and Shiite areas alike — want Iraq to remain a unified country.... "

To read the entire poll results click on the title above

Panic over Iraq by Norman Podhoretz

"Like, I am sure, many other believers in what this country has been trying to do in the Middle East and particularly in Iraq, I have found my thoughts returning in the past year to something that Tom Paine, writing at an especially dark moment of the American Revolution, said about such times. They are, he memorably wrote, "the times that try men's souls the times in which the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot" become so disheartened that they "shrink from the service of [their] country "
But Paine did not limit his anguished derision to former supporters of the American War of Independence whose courage was failing because things had not been going as well on the battlefield as they had expected or hoped. In a less famous passage, he also let loose on another group:
"Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. . . . Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses . . . . [T]heir peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain for ever undiscovered.
Thus, he explained, "Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head," emboldened by the circumstances of the moment to reveal an opposition to the break with Britain that it had previously seemed prudent to conceal....

And so, "quitting this class of men . . . who see not the full extent of the evil that threatens them," Paine turned "to those who have nobly stood, and are yet determined to stand the matter out," and rested his hopes on them.
These hopes, we know and thank God for it, were not disappointed. And neither will be the hopes of those today who likewise see "the full extent of the evil that threatens" us; who understand the necessity of the war that our country has been waging against it; who recognize the moral, political, and intellectual boldness of how George W. Bush has chosen to fight this war; and who take pride in the nobility of what the United States, at whose birth Tom Paine assisted, is now, more than 200 years later, battling to achieve in Iraq and, in the fullness of time, in the entire region of which Iraq is so crucial a part."

For the rest of the column by Mr Podhoretz click on the title above for a link.

Office Christmas Lunch

Today is the day we have our annual Christmas lunch at the Jacksonville Inn in Jacksonville, Oregon in the room pictured above by a lit fireplace. The room is all decorated for Christmas and we do a gift exchange by picking a name out of a hat. I am starting to get in the spirit of the season. MERRY CHRISTMAS

No Free Speech for Ann Coulter

A speech by Ann Coulter was cut short at that bastion of free speech the University of Connecticut. The "liberal" students chanted so loudly that Ann had to end her speech. Yes, the dark side of the left. I remember many years ago as a young conservative arguing with an older conservative on why the University of Oregon should allow Gus Hall, head of the American Communist party, to speak on campus. A few short years later left wing students at Oregon burned US Navy recruiting pamphlets on the "free Speech" platform to cheers. Click on the title above for a link to the full story about Ann Coulter and the barbarians of the left.

Democracts say the Darndest Things!

Art Linkletter in the 1950's and 1960's had a TV Show and one of the segments was "Kids say the darndest things". He later wrote a book by the same title. Well, lately the Democrats have been saying the darndest things and they don't have the excuse of being kids.

For Example:


"that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, "John Kerry, a 2004 Democratic presidential nominee. on Face the Nation Dec 4, 2005 (He is talking about our boys)

"idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean Dec 2005 (tell that to the soldier in the field in Iraq)

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners." Democratic Senator Dick Durban, June 2005

Christmas Outdoor Lights

Not this year. Every year my family spends an entire day putting up our outdoor lights. We have light up snowmen, santas, reindeer,candles, drummer boys and lots and lots of of lights. If you saw the movie with Chevy Chase called National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation you get the idea. We have so many light we have develop a wiring guide and each set of lights is marked with it's location in our yard and on our house. Not this year. We are doing some different things this year for Christmas and decided not to put up the lights. My wife put up our tree last Sunday and we have decorated the inside of the house but less than other years. I put the light up snowman on the front deck with some lights but only so it can be seen from inside the house. Don't worry we will probable go back to the "Chevy Chase" Christmas next year but this year we will be celebrating Christmas in other ways that promise to be even more fun, though less traditional. Marry Christmas and it is "Marry Christmas" and as Uncle Herm used to say "a Happy New Year."

Oregon Ducks Holiday Bowl Web Site

Click on title above for a link to the University of Oregon's official Holiday Bowl Website . The University of Oregon sold out it's allotment of 11,000 tickets before the bowl bid was formally made on Sunday and had to get 4,000 more tickets from the Holiday Bowl in order to fill the request of donors and season ticket holders for a total of 15,000 tickets sold. Lets Go Ducks! Lets Go Ducks!

DUCKS TO HOLIDAY BOWL

The Oregon Ducks vs. The Oklahoma Sooners in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego on Thursday December 29, 2005. The Ducks are ranked #5 in the final BCS rankings. The Ducks finished as the #2 team in the Pac-10 conference only behind U$C. Not bad for a team that went 5 and 6 last year and did not go to a bowl, and had their starting QB injured with three games to go this season. The Ducks finished the regular season 10 and 1. Go Ducks beat the Sooners! (Click on the title above for a link to the Official Holiday Bowl web site.)

Notre Dame to steal Oregon's BCS Spot

Snubbed Oregon Players to be Sent Autographed, Notra Dame Coach, Charlie Weis Photos as Consolation. Click on title above for a link to the story.