The Wisconsin teachers' union and the AFSCME encouraged public employees and their supporters to show up to two rallies today at the capitol in Madison, one at noon and the other at 5:00 p.m. The noon rally seemed a little sparse, and the 5:00 p.m. rally was even smaller. As you can see in this video, shot around 5:30 p.m. this evening, there couldn't have been more than hundreds of protesters outside the capitol:
As Ben Smith reports, “here's a situation pretty much without precedent: The Libyan Ambassador to the U.S. just called on the United States to denounce his country's leaders -- and his employers -- more forcefully.”
"I want the U.S. to tell the world and to work with the countries who love peace...they have to stop this," Ambassador Ali Ojli said, suggesting that he had resigned his post, in an interview with Al Jazeera English.
"I would never ask us to intervene physically in Libya," he said, but called on the Obama Administration to "take a strong position that what's happening in libya must be stopped now…”
An important op-ed today by Nathaniel Fick and John Nagl of the Center for a New American Security on how the COIN strategy in Afghanistan is paying off:
Madison, Wisc. "For the next minute or so, we're gonna have a good motherf---in' time!" musician Tom Morello told the crowd gathered outside the state capitol this afternoon. "I'm sorry if there are some children in the audience, but the struggle for justice is not always rated PG-13."
There were indeed dozens of schoolchildren scattered throughout the crowd. Some used protest signs as sleds to slide down the snow-covered hills outside the capitol. Others noshed on macaroni and cheese pizza, which was supplied for free by Ian's Pizza on State Street out of solidarity with those protesting pending legislation to curtail collective bargaining and require public workers to pay more for health insurance and pensions.
Ben Farmer of The Daily Telegraph (UK) reports that Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s peace council is going to send a delegation to Guantanamo. The council is requesting the release of about 20 Taliban commanders and leaders held there. There is no official indication, as of yet, that the Obama administration is going to allow the council’s delegation to visit. But the Telegraph cites a “senior Afghan official” as saying that the “delegation is being sent with the cooperation of the United States.”
Today, the Columbia Spectatorstated its support for renewing the university’s ROTC program and urged students to vote “yes” in the university Senate’s ongoing survey.
It's not exactly a secret that The Weekly Standard has many friends at Fox News. So we were a bit surprised to see the following story on Foxnews.com, 'Dishing Woes Don't Wash Away' by Mary Quinn O'Connor:
Since July, people have been wondering why their dishes are not as clean.
“I thought I needed a new dishwasher,” said Florida resident Gloria Share. “My dishes were very very filmy. I couldn’t even use them. I had to do it over by hand.”
Of all the mischaracterizations of social conservatives, none is more stubborn and pernicious than the notion (promulgated by liberals and eagerly snatched up by credulous media voices) that groups and politicians that espouse a "values" philosophy seek to impose a draconian moral code on a dissenting populace. This notion not only demonstrates a lack of understanding of conservatism and its self-imposed limits, but it also betrays a refusal to face the fact that nanny-state preoccupations are the province of the American left.
In a national poll, Rasmussen asks likely voters: "In the dispute between the governor and the union workers, do you agree more with the governor or the union for teachers and other state employees?"
