Via The Washington Free Beacon: 8 Stories of Heroism from the Iraq War:
Early in the Iraq war, on April 7, 2003, ground forces ran into trouble on the North Baghdad Bridge. Enemy fighters had blocked the site, with allies advancing. A-10 fighter pilot and then-Capt. Kim Campbell was called in to provide air support. Campbell, call sign “Killer Chick,” deployed explosive rockets and scored a direct hit. But returning from that weapons pass, her A-10 sustained heavy damage. The jet rolled left, pointed toward the ground. Nothing Campbell did worked. She had lost all the jet’s hydraulics. At that point, Campbell flipped the jet into manual reversion—still with no steering, no brakes—regained control, flew the jet more than a 100 miles back to Kuwait, and became one of just a handful of people to land an A-10 manually. Lt. Col. Campbell was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for her efforts.
Continue reading all of the stories, here.
John Nolte asks at The Conversation: Why Aren’t the Bushies Out Defending the Iraq War?:
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the media would use the tenth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War as an opportunity to try and cement the dishonest failure-narrative they crafted in 2004 to hand the presidency over to John F’n Kerry.
So why aren’t Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al. out in force pushing back?
Fox New Insider: 10th Anniversary of Iraq War Marked by Bombings, Making It the Deadliest Day This Year:
Insurgents in Iraq left a bloody anniversary message on the day that marks the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war. Today was the deadliest day in Iraq this year. Almost two dozen bombings left at least 65 people dead and more than 200 wounded.
10 years ago tonight at 10:16 p.m. ET, President George W. Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office. 1.5 million American troops have served in the war, 4,488 service members were killed, 32,221 service members were wounded, and more than 1,000 Iraqis died.
It has been over a year since U.S. troops left Iraq, but the country remains a bloody battlefield. Bret Baier reported that the death toll from today’s apparently coordinated bombings could still rise.
Weasel Zippers: What Sequester? Feds To Continue Funding Study On “Duck Penis Length”…
Let me guess… they’re very small?(CNSnews.com) – The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $384,949 grant to Yale University for a study on “Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia”, according to the recovery.gov website.
Thank God this important work is still being done.
The Other McCain: S.C. Primary: Will Tea Party Rally Behind Curtis Bostic Against Mark Sanford?
Dana Loesch this morning expressed disappointment that disgraced former Gov. Mark Sanford finished first in the South Carolina GOP congressional special-election primary. But it’s a runoff state, and Sanford only got 37 percent of the vote, while former Charleston City Councilman Curtis Bostic was second with 13 percent in the 16-candidate field. There are only two weeks until the April 1 runoff and, as National Review‘s Jim Geraghty notes, the Republican establishment seems to be lining up behind Sanford, so . . .
What about Curtis Bostic? His campaign page is StopSpending.com — a basic Tea Party theme — and it seems entirely possible that the grassroots, tired of the corrupt GOP establishment’s old-boy style of politics, could rally behind Bostic.
Ace of Spades HQ: Kermit Gosnell: This Prosecution for a Dozen Murders is Nothing More Than a “Lynching”:
Moton sobbed as she recalled taking a cellphone photograph of one baby because he was bigger than any she had seen aborted before. She measured the fetus at nearly 30 weeks, and thought he could have survived, given his size and pinkish color. Gosnell later joked that the baby was so big he could have walked to the bus stop, she said.
He’s talking about killing babies the way hunters might talk about their biggest deer.
Another Gruesome Tale:He gave a fifteen year old a forcible abortion against her will.
The teen’s grandmother had brought her to the clinic. But she didn’t want the abortion herself. That didn’t faze Gosnell, who strapped her to the operating table.
Etc. Ace says the media is reluctant to cover the Gosnell story because it’s so grim and it puts abortion in such a negative light. Another possible reason – – Gosnell is being tried for murdering babies born as the result of botched abortions – the type of babies Obama fought so hard to keep the state from protecting when he was a State Senator in Illinois.
The Conversation: Does Ted Cruz Really Oppose Multiple Sclerosis resolution?
As we know from past experience, those who earn that top spot don’t even have to do anything particularly controversial for the media to go on the attack. The mere act of eating, drinking, breathing, or looking over bills before they pass them, is enough to inspire a blizzard of media attacks.
Consider these recent headlines from Wonkette, Raw Story, Daily Kos, and others in the left-wing fever swamps:
“Hero Senator Ted Cruz Will Death Panel Everyone With M.S.”
Ted Cruz: Multiple sclerosis commemoration is part of a Democratic plot to ‘malign’ me
Ted Cruz objects to Multiple Sclerosis resolution
Crazy Ted Cruz Opposes Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week …
Crazy Tea Party Guy Ted Cruz Opposes Honoring Multiple Sclerosis …
There’s much more, but you get the idea. What on earth are they talking about?
Michael Bates from Batesline looked into it:
Politico, at least, posted Cruz’s side of the story, albeit under the false and misleading headline, “Cruz opposes MS resolution.”
“The Senator, like many of his colleagues, will not grant consent to call up and pass a resolution or bill at the last minute without time for review,” spokesman Sean Rushton said in a statement. “The Texans who sent him to Washington expect nothing less.”After the story was posted about Cruz’s opposition to the resolution, his office pushed back harder.
“Senator Cruz does not oppose the substance of the MS resolution, and he never did,” his spokesman said. “Unfortunately, the sponsors of this resolution circulated their request for unanimous consent less than 48 hours before they wanted it passed. A member of Sen. Cruz’s staff–who herself suffers from MS–asked for time to review the language, and to perhaps suggest revisions to the language, as is typical. It appears that Senate Democratic staff, instead of working to ensure unanimous consent, instead decided to leak this story to try to malign Senator Cruz.”
Matthew Boyle, Big Government: House GOP Not Backing Off Fast & Furious Lawsuit Despite Media Claims:
House Republicans are standing strong in their pursuit of Operation Fast and Furious documents, The Hill’s Jordy Yager reports, undercutting a narrative the Department of Justice has tried to seep into the media.
President Barack Obama asserted executive privilege over the documents minutes before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted Attorney General Eric Holder into both civil and criminal contempt of Congress last summer. The full House followed up voting on a bipartisan basis to hold Holder in contempt shortly thereafter, spurning the current lawsuit against the administration for the documents. The DOJ has declined to pursue criminal charges against Holder.
“A fight over President Obama’s use of executive privilege on the documents that led to Attorney General Eric Holder’s contempt charges is increasingly likely to be decided in court,” Yager wrote on Tuesday. “The way the court decides could drastically limit congressional subpoena powers — or curb the extent to which the president can claim executive privilege.”
Quin Hillyer, The American Spectator: The Labor Nominee’s Other Lies:
Thomas Perez is a multiple prevaricator.
When the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (henceforth DoJ) last week issued a report blistering DoJ’s Civil Rights Division, much attention focused on the IG’s recognition that division chief Perez, under oath, had “not reflect[ed] the entire story regarding the involvement of political appointees” in the now-infamous 2009 decision to dismiss voter-intimidation cases against several New Black Panthers in Philadelphia.
While this aspect of Perez’s dishonesty deserves all the attention it can garner (also deserving attention is the extreme dubiousness of the IG’s assertion that Perez’s lies about political-appointee interference were not “intentional”), it is far from the only example, from that very same testimony, of Perez pushing stories that were flagrantly false.
Perez came awfully close to perjury, and some might argue that he committed it, when discussing the far more important, broader issue that was the main focus of the IG report. (It boggles belief, by the way, that the IG never even discussed this untruth, considering that it so directly involved the larger substance of his report.) That broader issue was the question, fairly definitively answered in the affirmative by the IG, of whether the Civil Rights Division is a hotbed of hostility against the very idea of race-neutral enforcement of civil rights and voting rights laws.
Michelle Malkin: Penny Pritzker: A Chicago Fat Cat for Commerce Secretary?
Will President Obama really nominate billionaire Chicago gal pal Penny Pritzker to head his Commerce Department? “It’s a done deal,” according to a White House source close to the Chicago Sun Times. As further confirmation, Pritzker resigned abruptly from the Windy City’s school board late last week. The crony fix seems to be in.
Taxpayers, beware. Pritzker is a deep-pocketed doyenne with a family history of dodging taxes — or siphoning them away from the public for her own family’s gargantuan private gain. If you want to see how she’ll oversee a $10 billion government agency, look at her own wealth redistribution record.
Most notoriously, Pritzker headed up subprime lender Superior Bank. Even after it went under in 2001 and left 1,400 mostly poor and minority customers destitute, Pritzker was pushing to expand its toxic subprime loan business. As I’ve reported previously, Pritzker and her family escaped accountability by forking over a discounted $460 million settlement over 15 years after the bank collapsed.
Glenn Beck: Stopping The UN Gun Treaty:
Nice Deb 