Princeton and Harvard Cuba Conference to be held at Princeton this year
Kenny Sinkovitz writes to tell us that, on April 20-23, 2006, Princeton Univeristy is hosting this year's 3rd annual "Raíces de
Esperanza" National Cuban-American Youth Conference featuring high
profile speakers and student leaders from 50 or more schools around the
country and world. Read about Raíces de Esperanza and save the date.

New blog: Camp Katrina Blog
Camp Katrina Blog: Proving that the United States military does much more than just kill people and break things. The blog's creator, Spc. Phil Van Treuren, has talent, looks, and personality, posts on interesting news, and has a sense a humor. I just added Camp Katrina to the blogroll.

The worst governor in American history?
Louisiana Conservative states his case. Mr. Snitch! also looks into it.

Lost Budgie's been posting while I was away
and reminds us that 425 cars were torched in France during New Year's Eve. Plus, he has Greetings from the Saudi Cultural Attache - Washington D. C., or maybe not.

Maria's articles
Tony Snow says it's Time for the President to call their bluff by opening his State of the Union Address by asking Congress to give him official authority to approve warrantless searches of known and identified terrorists, or of people in regular contact with those terrorists whom authorities reasonably suspect of plotting to commit acts of murder, terror or sabotage.

Mark Steyn looks at our lack of civilizational confidence and says, It’s the demography, stupid

One obstacle to doing that is the fact that, in the typical election campaign in your advanced industrial democracy, the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much all parties in the rest of the west are largely about what one would call the secondary impulses of society—government health care, government day care (which Canada’s thinking of introducing), government paternity leave (which Britain’s just introduced). We’ve prioritized the secondary impulse over the primary ones: national defense, family, faith, and, most basic of all, reproductive activity—“Go forth and multiply,” because if you don’t you won’t be able to afford all those secondary-impulse issues, like cradle-to-grave welfare.

Steyn's article is lengthy, but is a must-read.

Thomas Sowell looks at Iran and asks, are we Serious or suicidal?

Munich Revisited: Under the guise of caring, there is actually a doctrine of indifference
Spielberg phone home: Munich is a distortion of truth and morality (emphasis mine)

Perhaps the greatest perversion of truth in Spielberg's Munich is the line he claims is the key to the entire film. In a scene that never actually happened, Golda Meir justifies the mission of the agents she sends to carry out justice with the words, "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values." Golda never said it because she understood that holding mass murderers responsible is not a compromise with civilized values, but the only way to insure that civilization survives. It is only a world that abdicates the need for a Golda's list that ends up with a Schindler's list.

Carnival #33
The Coalition of the Swilling hosts.

And, on a lighter mode, a list of New Year's wishes