Mail from Vets for Freedom

Pete Hegsdeth at Vets for Freedom has a rebuttal for General Ricardo Sanchez's "nightmare speach".

NO "NIGHTMARE"... WHY 'SURGE' IS WORKING

New York Post
Oct 23,2007

The former top commander in Iraq - Army Lt.-Gen. Ricardo Sanchez (ret.) - recently called the situation in Iraq "a nightmare with no end in sight." Citing insufficient prewar planning and a strained military, he painted a dismal picture of American prospects there.

War critics painted a similar picture when violence in Iraq peaked in '05 and '06 - using terms like "civil war" and "sectarian violence" - as they pushed for a rapid draw-down or immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces. An Iraq "at war with itself" shouldn't be America's problem, they argued. In fact, the existence of a "religious civil war" remains the chief antiwar talking point to this day.

Problem is, the new U.S. strategy has changed the facts on the grounds...

DREAM Act Smackdown

I guess I may have paniced yesterday when I heard that Harry Reid was going to bring the Dream act to the floor of the senate for a cloture vote yesterday. Turns out the head count Harry made was a little off. It's one thing to get punked by the republicans but he didn't even get the vote count right on his own side of the aisle. Captains Quarters has a recap of the action here.

Alien Amnesty Act

Once again the open border crowd is attempting to give amnesty to people that have entered this country illegally. Harry Reed plans to submit the "DREAM" Act to give amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. It is time to once again fire up the immigration noise machine and deposit this bill in the shit can of bad ideas. Let your senator know that this plan is as unacceptable as that last piece of Immigration madness they tried to ramrod down our throats. In Iowa you can contact and Senator Grassley by email here or by phone at 202-224-3744.
Senator Harkin can be contacted by email here or by phone at 202-224-3254. You may want to remind the senator of his reversal in the last immigration bill. "Quite frankly, I'm hearing from a lot of Iowans," said Harkin after switching his stance on the legislation let him hear from us again.
NumbersUSA has a description of the legislation here.

U of I's Faculty

Iowa City is known as the most liberal city in Iowa so it should come as no surprise that the city’s largest employer is predominately infested with Democrats. Mark Moyar, a professor at the Marine Corp. University writes at NRO that the U of I History Department in particular is completely staffed by Democrats and because he is of the Conservative persuasion he was passed over for a position at the University. As I read this I got the impression that the article had a little tone of sour grapes. Mr. Moyar is an academic and should not be surprised that these things occur. Unfortunately being a conservative isn't a protected interest group in this state’s anti-discrimination laws (maybe it should be).
As a student at the College of Liberal Arts', (even the name should be a clue) I would have to say that for the most part the four History professors I have had my first semester have been objective with only hint of liberalism. I say that only because the choice of topics for the first essay assignment in one course was an interpretation of either socialism from the view of Marx and his infamous Manifesto, or how Josephine Butler addresses feminism in 19th century society. Even the TAs, which you would expect to be the young idealistic firebrands have been subdued in their indoctrination techniques.
Of course there were the occasional veiled references to how the capitalist white man exploited the world, killed its people, and stole their land, but I never had any professor come right out and say that as Americans "We Suck!" like occurred at Tall Corn College and Technical Institute and that’s a relief.

Education Update: I have made it through the dreaded midterms and have submitted at least one short paper (6 pages) in three of my classes. Some grades should be forthcoming this week. The fourth class consisted of getting familiar with the various arguments about WWI and now the rest of the semester will be dedicated to a topic of my choosing and a 15 page research paper.