Federal employees have told me they will get a 2% COLA. Or is this MERIT pay for getting up to a $1.4 TRILLION deficit?

Taxes are going up this year in spite of Obama's promises. Yes, some of us can get by without the $250, but can all when even people in the poverty level will pay $400 more for "universal" health insurance?

It is absolutely true that the Geneva Convention does NOT apply to terrorists. Read it or shut up.

They can be lined up and shot without a by-your-leave no matter how pious Obama and Holder want to be. If Obama wants to uphold our Constitution, he should be protecting it, not gutting it.

In recent years, the FBI has used profiling to seek the Washington sniper and the serial murderer in Louisiana.

The Washington sniper, according to the FBI profiling experts, was a white man in a white van, according to the FBI profilers. A massive search was put on reporting white men in white vans. I looked at traffic light intersections around me and at every stoplight I could see a white man driving a white van. It turned out to be two black men, John Muhammad and John Malvo. Was the FBI trying to avoid being politically incorrect?
Later, there was a serial killer in the Baton Rouge area. A white man in a pickup was said to be the profile. Dozens of white men I know were subjected to DNA screening based solely on the FBI...

I lived in Canada when Pierre Trudeau ran for Prime Minister. He, too, was eloquent, personable and an absolute leftist. No, even as a young voter, I voted against him because I studied his policies before the election. Now, in spite of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms (like our Bill of Rights), statements "denigrating a certain race or group" can be cause for government monitoring of your "free" speech and firing or imprisonment. Such a firing of a school teacher has been upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada and the UN Human Rights Commission. No comments were ever made in the classroom. The complaint came from the parent of a child AT ANOTHER SCHOOL! Unconscionable, unacceptable, but there it is.

Obama is America's...

Jimmy Carter's national security adviser said, "They [IAF fighter jets] have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? We have to be serious about denying them that right. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not." This from Jimmy the C's go to guy.

Since when is it OUR airspace? We gave the nation of Iraq back their government and their control of it. We are there helping out (ostensibly). Zbigniev is just a little out of touch. Perhaps he favors nuking Tel Aviv if we hit the nuke sites in Iran?

How do you say "total idiot" in Polish?

Like all the Democrats before (Jimmy C, Bill C. and crew) they seem to think that a stern lecture on the "perils that await" should be enough to deter the dacoits.

In reserve, a strongly worded letter telling them that they are misbehaving.

Finally, the ULTIMATE deterrent - recalling our Ambassador!!!

Thanks, Obama, for cancelling the missile defense the week the bad guys mention their nukes and missiles. The only transparency the Admin has this week is making our defense transparent to the enemies.

I guess Obama's got the Presidency now and he's bored. Chief of an expanded UN is the only thing left. (I mean, the Nobel Peace Prize is a mulligan if Jimmy Carter and algore can get one).

As a former Canadian, I am also proud of Prime Minister Steven Harper. He is acting rationally and is doing well in the polls.

Canada, while under the liberals still has a lot to answer for.

A school teacher was monitored for YEARS (Malcolm Ross) because he wrote doubts about the Holocaust. We know the Holocaust was a blight on the history of mankind. Malcolm Ross was wrong in his writing, but the parent of a student IN ANOTHER SCHOOL filed a complaint and in years of monitoring by the Canadian government they found that he never once discussed it in class.

He was fired. The local courts said the firing was OK. So did the Supreme Court of Canada (which has it's own skeletons). And finally, the UN Human Rights...

Dear Paranoid,
I don't think France is a particularly good example for you to use. There is rioting in the streets, buses and cars being overturned and burned.
Try googling "riots in France" and you'll find numerous times when youths have run amok.
Then, of course, there are the farmers who block the roads with tractors.
Dissent? Yes. But not the healthy kind.
They still tend to overdo things. We rebelled and set up a democracy which has witstood the tests of time. France had a bloody revoltion followed by a self-proclaimed emporer who tried to rule the world as it was.

America has the highest level of public participation in the world when it comes to dissenting. I am conservative but I defend the right of all Americans to speak their piece.
Elsewhere, dissenters go to jail or face large fines. Sound like a country in the middle east? Or China? Nope, CANADA stifles free speech, and many Canadians do nothing about it.
The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal is prosecuting Mark Stein for writing that radical Imams promote jihad. The "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms" actually denies free speech. A person's speech is monitored by the government after any complaint. That person can be sued for emotional hardship by the "injured" party.

And don't try lecturing me about Canada: I...

Paul has to include another group of Southerners - those who choose to be Southerners. - sort of a mental and moral diaspara TO the SOuth.

I came from another country - legally, I might add - and settled in the south. I love the people here, polite and charming, with a love of hunting and history and an openess that is completely foreign to a Yankee.

I adore grits and turnip greens and corn bread. I admire the honor and political independence that despises Washington's spending and authoritative thuggery.

I have read the Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote and consider it infinitely better written than anything to come out of the north.

When a professor of history from University of Virginia said that the...