There are those who get upset just from looking in another person's direction. The mere mention of the other guy's name, the sight of his hair is enough to send them into a tailspin and launch them into convulsions.

And so it goes with the Palestinians and the Israelis. Responding to Israel's building of 900 settlements in Gilo, a neighborhood in east Jerusalem, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that he is dismayed because the settlements will make peace more difficult.

If that's what he and the rest of the Obama administration believe, then they might want to consider another vocation. The truth be told, the sight of an Israeli nose hair, the sound of the notes of a piano rising from an apartment in Haifa, the smell of their hummus or tehina on pita bread is enough to send the average Palestinian into a fit.

It is not the building of Jewish settlements that they so object to; it's the fact that the Jewish state is still there and after all they have done to try and destroy it. They have waged wars; they have lobbed rockets into Jewish neighborhoods, they have strapped bombs to themselves and their children, and the Jewish state and the Jews are still there because we have to be. After else, where else are we going to go? What else are we going to do? We just don't up and die that easily.

The only thing that is going to make the Arabs, the Palestinians and most of the world happy is when Israel folds up like a makeshift tent in the desert and become a mere page in history. And that just is never going to happen.

The universal wisdom is that there is absolutely no chance that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed can get anything but a swift conviction and the death penalty. The wisdom also says that it matters not whether the trial is in New York, another American city, or on the moon. No jury anywhere will be fair, impartial and unbiased. The memory and passions of 9/11 still rage at white hot temperatures. They all could be wrong.
KSM wins no matter what a jury decides. KSM's attorneys will turn the trial into a bully pulpit to expose every sundry, despicable, and patently illegal tactic that the US has dumped into and dug out of its bag of dirty tricks against suspected terrorists--illegal detention, kidnapping, torture, isolation, sleep deprivation, waterboarding, beatings, forced confessions, coercion, and suppression of evidence.
His conviction will be promptly appealed. This will give KSM another chance to publicly dredge up every dirty trick the US used to get him into the docket in the first place. None of this has even the remote bearing on whether he is the mastermind as charged behind the 9/11 attacks. It just gives the government a chance to make an unwelcome revisit of the unprecedented pain and suffering that 9/11 caused. Worse, it gives a terrorist, or in this case a suspected terrorist, a platform to make himself appear a victim of a vengeful government's thirst for revenge that tosses out all rules of constitutional law and conduct to wreak that revenge.

The release of the U.S Preventive Services Task Force's recommendation to curtail routine annual mammogram screenings for breast cancer is terrible news for nearly everyone--except the insurance companies. Eliminating annual screening for women in their 40s and making screening every other year for women in their 50s is ill-conceived and ill-considered. Thousands of women will die needlessly. Many will die directly because their cancers were not found early, and more will likely die because this is a cultural change.

This is a gift to those opposed to true health care reform. This is a panel that dealing only in numbers and not seeing the lives of women, releases its recommendations blind to the consequences of their report. Thinking like actuaries and not human beings, while denying that they essentially did a cost benefit analysis (which is what they did) they decided that detecting one cancer out of 1,300 tests (women in their 50s) was worth doing, but that detecting one cancer out of 1,800 tests (women in their 40s) was not. Tell that to their faces or through the tears of their husbands, partners, children and parents.

©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

I know that I'm considered a reliable supporter of President Obama, having been in his camp since before Iowa. However, I think he and Atty. General Holder are wrong to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his band of plotters and murderers here for trial in our criminal justice system.

We need to designate Al Qaeda as the equivalent of a state actor and try those who plot and plan, who fight us on far-away battlefields, as prisoners of war and as potential war criminals.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Some have speculated that an upside of terrorist trials in New York is that the accused will lose their aura of super-villainy amidst the drudgery of the American judicial system. That is good both for Americans and for those who the terrorists seek to recruit. Their "cosmic war" would seem a good deal less glamorous.

But a friend offered me an intriguing insight into those Americans who decry the idea of terrorists being tried by our American justice system instead of secretive military tribunals: they trust the latter more than the former. They believe the former is more capricious and unreliable. They prefer the values of the military more than that of a jury of Americans. Given that our military is supposed to be giving their lives specifically to defend things such as our justice system, that's a bit ironic.

When the electoral public elected the Obama Administration under the moniker of change, they did not mean the chance to let them lose on the public to do whatever they want. And this applies to their decision to hold the 9/11 terrorist trials in New York City.

First off, former New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, feels that it would be dangerous to hold the trials in New York City because several plots have already been thwarted there, so he feels that it would be too charged and too much like a terrorist diving rod. While his fears may be true, the whole world has become their stomping ground because of our dependence on slick black gold, Texas tea, so any place where the trial was held would likely become a target.

The reason the Obama Administration shouldn't hold the trial in New York City is simply because Giuliani doesn't want them to. The other choice would be Guantanamo Bay, which is where Khalid Shiekh Mohammed and his five cronies will most likely wind up anyway.

Other than that, the place where they had the utter temerity to unleash their plot and take the lives of people who were merely going to work and going about their business is the place where they should be tried. After all, there is something to be said in rising up, looking our perpetrators squarely in the eye and letting them know that they can knock us down but not out.

In September, 2008, Oprah Winfrey was the reigning queen of daytime TV chatter. She flatly said no to any talk about then Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin gracing her set. Oprah made no effort to square having then presidential candidate Obama on her show twice with her cold shoulder of Palin, a woman who made history in her own right by being the first female GOP VP pick, and who seemed like a natural for Oprah's show. And since half of her female audience didn't and don't share her politics, they liked it even less that she was Obama's top TV cheerleader. But Oprah was unfazed by the rage she got from many women at ditching Palin, her attitude was it's my show, and I'll do what I want with it and that means I'll invite who I want on the show.
Oprah didn't need Palin to make her, a show, or ratings. Now, however, it's a different story. Though she's still the reigning queen of daytime TV talk and there are millions who wouldn't dream of ending their day without Oprah, her ratings have plunged. The estimated seven million who view her show is about half of what of the number who watched it a decade ago. She's even negotiating to move her show to cable in a couple of years. That's wise, bail from network TV while the money and her name and allure are still there. The relentless war for ratings makes Palin a hot property, and her much buzzed book, Going Rogue, is the hook for the interview.

But there's another reason that Oprah needs to pay back door homage to Palin. Though it sticks in the craw of millions of Palin loathers to admit it, she has a following, a big, and impassioned one. She has greater national political name recognition than any other Republican except McCain. She energizes and rallies the conservatives, and polls say far more Americans self-identify themselves as conservatives than liberals, let alone progressives. Palin's motherly, family values, fundamentalist pitch fascinates even those that personally disdain her. That includes much of the Palin obsessed media. Her politically inept, naivete smacks of a bumbling political innocence that far from being a liability endears her to throngs. This has made her a hot ticket item on the media and on the lecture circuit.

GOP regulars and political pundits routinely laugh her off as a possible GOP presidential candidate in 2012. She's still a favored running joke of late night comics. But this has endeared her to many as a scorned mother-non politician, and that serves to keep her public stock and appeal high.

The irresistible mix of Palin fascination and the sensationalism attached to it draws Oprah to her. Oprah hopes this formula will help push her numbers up. With memories still fresh that Oprah did what she'd never done before and that's not only endorse a presidential candidate, but crusade for him makes the Palin-Oprah talk duet even more tantalizing. Oprah will meticulously observe political decorum with Palin and not mention her unshaken Obama bias. Palin's appearance is billed simply as a talk about her book. But the Oprah-Obama connect will hang heavy in the set air. That's terrific for ratings too; ratings that Oprah can use. Oprah needs Palin for that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010.

Read this. And weep for our nation. Set aside political correctness for just a moment and call this what it is: Terrorism. Cold, fowl terrorism.

It looks like the politically correct brigade is out, and this time their warship has landed at Brookstone, a gift shop at Boston's Logan Airport.

Peter Vadala, a deputy manager at the store, was their latest casualty. The 24 year-old was tending to his duties when in walked a manager from another store.

"I'm getting married," she said sometime during their conversation.

"Congratulations," said Vadala. "Where is he taking you for the honeymoon?"

"Where is 'she' taking me," the manager corrected.

Vadala, who is a Christian, kept mum, though after repeated references to her impeding nuptials during his shift, he privately told her that thought gay marriage was wrong. After reminding him that it is legal in Massachusetts, she opined with a parting sentiment: "HR, buddy. Keep your opinions to yourself. Get over it." And Vadala was fired.

Had he threatened to kidnap the happy couple, set fire to the hall or make off with the wedding gifts, that would have been one thing. But all he did was exercise his right to free speech and freedom of religion, so he will hopefully sue - and win if nothing else to be a crimp in the seat of the pants of that movement.

Loosely speaking, the manager also missed a chance to make a friend. While I favor a commitment ceremony over gay marriage, there are couples whose weddings I would attend, and it's because they've always been loving, kind and considerate. It's too bad no one thought about that before.

If the shooting at Fort Hood teaches one thing, it is this: The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Hassan gave signals early on that he was a few cards short of a deck, meaning that it was merely a matter of time before he did something crazy. In this case, no one should be surprised. Even in medical school, he had problems and needed extra help and supervision. (Bingo and Clue # 1)

In medical school, the students would give a lecture about a topic of their choice on Wednesday afternoons. While others were lecturing about things like new medications and mental illness, Hassan chose to go the political route by telling his fellow classmates about Islam. (Bingo and Clue # 2)

At the end of his psychiatric residency in the military while his classmates were giving presentations related to medicine, Hassan chose Islam and suicide bombers and even said, "It's getting harder and harder for Muslims to justify being in the service when they have to kill their fellow Muslims," and "We love death more than you love life." (Last clues, end of story.)

This is not someone who should have been hoisted onto the public to practice medicine. It should have been the other way around where he is held in observation.

While I agree with Jonathan that it is unfair to lump everyone together and understand Rob's embarrassment, that doesn't mean that doing nothing is an option when the warning bells go off.