This is simply ridiculous:

"This amendment is as clear as day. It explicitly bars using the funds in this bill to 'transfer, release or incarcerate' any of the Guantanamo detainees in the United States. When the Administration closes Guantanamo, we will ensure it does so the right way."

What part of due process does he not understand?

From the LA Times:

Nice call

President Obama was rooting for Pittsburgh, but that didn't stop him from making a congratulatory call to Arizona Coach Ken Whisenhunt. Obama made the call a day after the Cardinals were beaten by the Steelers in the Super Bowl.

Whisenhunt said the call came after he returned to his home Monday afternoon. "He called my cellphone. I don't know how they got my number," Whisenhunt said. "I was humbled and I was stunned." (emphasis added)

I wonder if this guy had been paying attention the last eight years as the government displayed the ability to conduct illegal surveillance on everybody in the freakin' world. And they did so with the assistance of the telecom companies, that received immunity from the Congress (including Obama).

After all, when the President of the most powerful nation on Earth wants to reach out and touch somebody, ways and means are found.

So I live in New Mexico. Bill Richardson is my governor. I have specific reasons not pertinent to this post, and way too involved to be shared here, to be dissatisfied with his performance as NM's governor. But I think he performed well as Ambassador to the UN, and I am impressed with his performance as a free-lance diplomat in a number of crises since. I think he would be a great choice for Secretary of State (much better than HRC), or even in a reprise role as Secretary of Energy. But Secretary of Commerce? Why? His track record here in NM is decidedly mixed.

Our state has prospered even in recent tough times, not because of any particular strength Bill has shown, but because we have had two very senior Senators (and a few mediocre Representatives) who were great at keeping our federal doggie bowl full.

We have military bases that seem immune to BRAC and national laboratories that have kept decent funding even in the face of sometimes gross mismanagement (like Los Alamos National Labs' problems with custody of classified material). That's not Bill's doing.

We are blessed with a permanent fund and extractive industries that have benefitted from high prices for oil and natural gas. That's not Bill's doing.

Where Bill has been a player, the stories aren't so glowing. Not bad, but zero-sum stuff. We have typical cases, like many other development-hungry states, of big corporations playing for Industrial Revenue Bonds and then skipping when the grass grows greener on the other side. We were supposed to have Tesla, and now it looks like Eclipse is going under. We've held onto Intel, but it's been dicey. One call center after another pops up and then disappears.

Bill has courted Hollywood and entered the state into profit-sharing partnerships with studios. Seems like a big ego-stroke and a chance to brush elbows with some stars. Most of the films aren't what you'd call blockbusters; it looks like the loaned amounts still exceed the revenues to the state (but I'm no accountant, so I don't mind being corrected).

So why Commerce?

Is there any way to enforce a hard limit on post length and require the little 'more' thingy to visit the whole body of a lengthy post?

I really don't mind clicking that 'more' - it will leave more room for more current posts to appear, and it will encourage both more 'to the point' writing and more upfront sizzle as an enticement.

From Obama's website:

"I have consistently called for deepening relations between Georgia and transatlantic institutions, including a Membership Action Plan for NATO, and we must continue to press for that deeper relationship. "

and,

Barack Obama believes the process of NATO enlargement – which has helped countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe become more stable and democratic – should continue so long as new candidates for membership are democratic, peaceful, and willing to contribute to our common security.

Is this a good idea, given that both Russia and Georgia seem hell-bent on controlling both the Ossetian and Abkazian regions? If Georgia had already received NATO membership, as McCain's lobbyist minions were pushing for, we would now have a treaty obl;igation to defend the country from Russia, even though we have neither the national interest in Georgia nor the ability to interpose a meaningful force to secure that country's borders.