HOT5 Daily 1/5/2011

1. "Putting Some Fight Into Our Friends" Links to an excellent Newsweek article on Afghanistan.

Representative Sample: Unless America wants to extend its stay in Afghanistan indefinitely, it would be prudent to create a professional adviser corps and more task forces like Golsteyn’s in the coming year. The State Department can tackle the Sisyphean task of nation building—while the U.S. military returns to the business of being warriors.

2. "Playing the Violence Card" Don't worry, violence is no big deal as long as it comes from the left.

Representative Sample: Despite a century of good press, the veiled or not-so-veiled threat of violence sits right at the center of left-wing politics. The very word "demonstration" is a euphemism for "show of force." Labor unions have always used the threat of violence. "Community organizing" is what left-wing activists do when they are trying to gin up a rent-a-mob for the benefit of the TV news cameras.

3. "Why Isn't Obama Pressuring the Palestinians?" Good question and points.

Representative Sample: the Obama administration is raising no public objection to the Palestinians' stance. It has not expressed one word of criticism of Abbas, nor used anything resembling the pressure tactics Obama has so freely used against the Israeli side. In fact, Obama did quite the opposite

4. "But I thought it was the body of Christ?" When transubstantiation goes bad.

Representative Sample: Parishioners who received Holy Communion may have been infected with Hepatitis A.

5. "Evidence and theory collide with galactic proportions" New discovery demonstrates how science works.

Representative Sample: Something else must be making these galaxies active; perhaps instabilities inside them, or internal gas cloud collisions, or some other phenomenon. But apparently, at least for the past 8 billion years, it’s not due to collisions on a galactic scale. Mergers don’t feed the supermassive black holes and make them active in the way everyone assumed.

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