I’ll miss Jack. It’s only television, but I think he’s summed up something important about the American spirit: a will to defend his country, against all attackers, no matter what the odds. That fighting spirit is still evident among American troops on the battlefield. But in Washington’s political quagmires, over the nine years since Sept. 11, it’s been substantially snuffed out. Instead, policy revolves endlessly around denial of real threats and the impulse to Mirandize enemies on foreign fields of war and bestow upon them the rights of U.S. citizens at home–even if that means releasing them to kill Americans again.

But at least the data collected to excuse oppressive laws to “fight” global warming here in the old U.S. of A. are reliable. Aren’t they?
Well, not exactly. This fair and balanced (as they say) headline speaks to the point:
NASA Data Worse Than Climate-Gate Data, Space Agency Admits

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After 14 months of committing 100% to health care reform, the day after the signing of the Health Care bill was to mark the Democratic Party’s new primary concern: destroy the uprising, annihilate by all means necessary, the Tea Party movement.

(Reuters) – Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a leader of the court’s liberal wing, will decide soon whether to retire after 35 years on the court, two newspapers on Saturday quoted him as saying.

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Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a “wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care” package.

“We are over-taxed as it is,” Doris said bluntly.

Obama started out feisty. “Well, let’s talk about that, because this is an area where there’s been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I’m going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have,” the president said.

He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze.

Palaeontologists and human evolutionary experts behind the discovery have remained silent about the exact details of what they have uncovered, but the scientific community is already abuzz with anticipation of the announcement of the find when it is made on Thursday.

The skeleton was found by Professor Lee Berger, from the University of the Witwatersrand, while exploring cave systems in the Sterkfontein region of South Africa, near Johannesburg, an area known as “the Cradle of Humanity”.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – Russia has offered to help Venezuela set up its own space industry, including a satellite launch site, as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made his first visit to the South American country on Friday.

The weekend introduction is the first real test of demand for the iPad, which Apple pitches as a new category of device making it easier to surf the Web and do other basic computing tasks. Since it was unveiled by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs in January, debate has swirled about how much the $499-and-up tablet computer will appeal beyond the company’s stronghold of technology enthusiasts.

Spurred in part by iPad anticipation, shareholder enthusiasm has more than doubled Apple’s market capitalisation in the past year, driving it past Google and Walmart. At $214bn, Apple is worth more than every US company but ExxonMobile and Microsoft.

Apple is trading at 23 times its profit from the past 12 months, which does not include iPad sales – higher than most companies, certainly, but well below Google’s price-to-earnings ratio of 28.

April 3 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner delayed a scheduled April 15 report to Congress on exchange-rate policies, sidestepping a decision on whether to accuse China of manipulating the value of the yuan.

(Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge on Friday ordered eight members of an extremist militia group held in custody until they could be tried on accusations of plotting to kill police officers and wage a war on the U.S. government.

ATLANTA – 11Alive News first broke the story about several anti-Obama billboards that popped up around Atlanta two days ago.

On Friday we found out who’s behind them.

“There’s a group of entrepreneurs, small business owners, that have frankly just said, ‘we’ve had enough’ and they’re taking the gloves off,” says Atlanta author and motivational speaker Tommy Newberry.

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Where better to look for Obama’s successor, therefore, than in the uniformed ranks? Not since 1952, when a certain Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during the Second World War, was elected President, have the chances of a military man winning the White House been more propitious.
Within those ranks, no one stands out like General David Petraeus, head of United States Central Command, leader of 230,000 troops and commander of United States forces in two wars. Having masterminded the Iraq surge, the stunning military gambit that seized victory from the jaws of defeat, he is now directing an equally daunting undertaking in Afghanistan.