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As I have said over and over and over, the left has one trick that it will use again and again when its back is in the corner: shout ‘racist’ in a crowded country.

On Saturday, during the peaceful and patriotic tea party protest at the Capitol, the Democrats staged a series of symbolic acts meant to manipulate the media to do its bidding. The Congressional Black Caucus pulled the Selma card and chose to walk through the crowd in the hopes of creating a YouTube incident.

As soon as President Obama signs the health care bill into law today, the Attorney
Generals from Virginia and South Carolina will both file law suits protecting the
people of their States by challenging the federal government's overreaching action.
These states are able to take this stand because their state legislatures had previously
taken appropriate measures to do so.
Other States ready to join the suit include Alabama, North Dakota, Nebraska, Pennsylvania,
South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington.
Kansas needs to be included in this list. The people of Kansas want the right to
 vote on a constitutional amendment. Notwithstanding your personal position, you
 have a duty to represent what a majority of the people want. (more...)

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On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings to consider the nomination of Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

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Israel will defy American pressure to halt the construction of controversial Jewish housing in Arab east Jerusalem, when President Obama meets Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, in the White House today.

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Will yesterday’s passage of health-care reform give a positive jolt to U.S. foreign policy? Is Obama the new “comeback kid,” with new clout at home and a more formidable hand to play abroad? Will he now pivot from domestic affairs to foreign policy and achieve a dazzling set of diplomatic victories? My answers: no, no, and no.

Obama may have passed historic health-care reform, but former Ambassador John Bolton says the twin insults from Russia to Hillary Clinton and Israel to Joe Biden show the U.S.’s waning influence on the world stage. Plus, Benjamin Sarlin on Hillary’s AIPAC speech.

In Berlin the chancellor is at loggerheads with her finance minister over the Greek debt crisis, in Brussels and Paris she faces attacks about Germany’s export successes. Yet Angela Merkel is confident of victory and her uncompromising position is popular with the German people.

On Saturday, U.S., French, Polish and Lithuanian aircraft completed three-day air exercises above the territory of the three Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The maneuvers are a welcome if belated response to repeated regional calls for Western reassurance in the face of Russian revisionism. Perched precariously on an age-old strategic fault-line, NATO’s smallest and most exposed members are watching for signs that America will weary of its role as security guarantor to far-flung protectorates as it scrambles to cope with new geopolitical contenders and pressing economic woes at home.

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MEXICO CITY — Earlier this year, Mexican President Felipe Calderón admonished a meeting of the nation’s top diplomats, urging them to speak better of Mexico in order to counter negative perceptions of the country generated by its ongoing war on drug cartels and the 2009 outbreak of the H1N1 virus.

Calderón raised eyebrows, however, when, to emphasize his point, he mentioned Brazil, saying the emerging South American power is perceived abroad in far more favorable terms than Mexico, in part because its own citizens speak well of it.

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They say that the first step in dealing with a problem is acknowledging that you have one. It is therefore good news that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a delegation to Mexico tomorrow to talk with officials there about efforts to fight the mob violence that is being generated in Mexico by the war on drugs. U.S. recognition of this shared problem is healthy.

But that’s where the good news is likely to end.

If Italian voters put in the boot, the Prime Minister’s coalition partners can seize the chance to bring him down.

Now that the rift between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government has acquired the status of “crisis,” it is worth stepping back from the details of the spat and looking at the big picture. While the Ramat Shlomo announcement and its immediate aftermath were the immediate cause of the Obama administration’s ire, this was a crisis that was waiting to happen and was probably inevitable. The primary reason for this is the fundamental disconnect between Obama and Netanyahu, not only as personalities but, more importantly, in terms of their long term goals for Israel and the Middle East.