Joe Lieberman tried to make nice with Democrats to retain his committee assignments, but now that he continues to threaten to filibuster a health care reform bill, his stock with Democrats is on the decline.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, one of 13 Democrats who voted last fall to strip Joe Lieberman’s gavel of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, answered sharply when asked if Lieberman should be kicked out of the Democratic Caucus if he filibusters the health care bill.

“Let’s see what happens. I don’t think anybody should be filibustering — nobody should be filibustering health care. Either vote it up or vote it down.”

Nomentum!

On Larry King Live Wednesday night, dismissed beauty queen Carrie Prejean got quite upset when King asked why she agreed to settle with the Miss USA Pageant rather than continue her lawsuit.  He was clear that he wasn’t asking the terms of the settlement, just what motivated her choice. Prejean blasted King for being “inappropriate,” and when King moved on and took a phone call she removed her microphone.

President Obama is not ready to accept any of the options presented by his national security team, and wants more information about how and when we’d be able to turn security over to the Afghan government.

That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official.

In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Obama is still close to announcing his revamped war strategy — most likely shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends on Nov. 19.

[...]

Administration officials said Wednesday that Obama wants to make it clear that the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan is not open-ended. The war is now in its ninth year and is claiming U.S. lives at a record pace as military leaders say the Taliban has the upper hand in many parts of the country.

Eikenberry, the top U.S. envoy to Kabul, is a prominent voice among those advising Obama, and his sharp dissent is sure to affect the equation.

Let’s hope so.

Colorado State Senator Dave Schultheis tweeted that President Obama doesn’t want what’s best for the US, doing the same thing the 9/11 hijackers did.

“Let’s roll” were the final words of Todd Beamer, a passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 93, one of the four flights hijacked on September 11 and the only one to crash before reaching its intended target. The flight was diverted to Washington, D.C. after it was hijacked, but crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers tried to thwart the hijackers.

This isn’t Schultheis’s first indication of insensitivity. When he voted against requiring pregnant women to undergo HIV testing, he reasoned, “Poor behavior has its consequences.”

• More than six decades after the end of World War II, 13 of the Navajo Code Talkers – U.S. Marines whose coded messages helped defeat the Japanese – marched for the first time today in New York City’s Veterans Day Parade. Two of the Code Talkers, Bill Toledo and Frank Willetto, sit down with Alan to share their fascinating experiences.

• Should President Obama expand the war in Afghanistan? Alan discusses the issue with Marine Corps veteran Rick Reyes, who co-founded Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan, and retired Air Force Gen. Thomas McInerney.

• Alan examines the latest troubling report of corruption in Iraq by the private contractor Blackwater.

Secret payments of $1 million to Iraqi officials, approved by the contractor Blackwater, were intended to bribe them into silence and gain their support after the company’s security guards fatally shot 17 civilians and wounded dozens more in Baghdad in 2007. On September 16, 2007, Blackwater personnel opened fire on Iraqi civilians at Nisour Square. Automatic weapons fire sprayed indiscriminately, according to investigators. Grenades were launched into a nearby school.  Four former company officials say then-president Gary Jackson (above, l) approved the bribes.

Then-Blackwater Vice Chairman Cofer Black (c) is said to have confronted founder Erik Prince (r) who did not deny the claims.

Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, [former company] officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

[...]

Stacy DeLuke, a spokeswoman for the company, now called Xe Services, dismissed the allegations as “baseless” and said the company would not comment about former employees. Mr. Black did not respond to telephone calls and e-mail messages seeking comment.

Reached by phone, Mr. Jackson, who resigned as president early this year, criticized The New York Times and said, “I don’t care what you write.”

[...]

Five Blackwater guards involved in the shooting are facing federal manslaughter charges, and their trial is scheduled to start in February in Washington. A sixth guard pleaded guilty in December. The company has never faced criminal charges in the case, although the Iraqi victims brought a civil lawsuit in federal court against Blackwater and Mr. Prince.

[...]

Separately, a federal grand jury in North Carolina, where the company has its headquarters, has been conducting a lengthy investigation into it. One of the former executives said that he had told federal prosecutors there about the plan to pay Iraqi officials to drop their inquiries into the Nisour Square case. If Blackwater followed through, the company or its officials could face charges of obstruction of justice and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans bribes to foreign officials.

You’re not supposed to use House franking privileges to promote party or movement-building events, but Michele Bachmann may have violated that rule.

Could be, at least technically. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s House home-page shout-out to tea party types for her Nov. 5 rally on the West Front steps may have violated the letter of the administration committee’s rules on the use of official, taxpayer-funded websites.

[...]

Bullet point No. 3 in the Web “Content” section of the rules says member sites: May not include grass-roots lobbying or solicit support for a member’s position.

That’s why the tea party gathering was called a “press event” rather than a “rally,” although Bachmann’s invitation didn’t make it sound that way:

The people need to make a House Call on Washington this week and tell their Representatives to vote no to a government takeover of one-fifth of our economy. This is gangster government at its worst.”

Besides, there was no press availability at the “press event.”

From: Mike
Date: November 10, 2009 8:29:53 PM EST
To: Alan
Subject: Unbelievable

Hi Alan,

I have watched you for several years on the Hannity and Colmes show. I always had a little bit of respect for you even though I found no grounds for agreement with your liberal positions.

Tonight on The Factor, you proved to be so far left that you are actually stupid. Your stand against calling the Ft. Hood massacre a terrorist act proves to me, and I am sure many other Americans, that you are  brainwashed, ignorant, a Socialist/Communist and an Anti American citizen.

Wake up and smell the coffee before your Muslim friends and colleagues ban it from the United States.

You and the liberals are trying to doom this great nation and remake it into something that the majority of Americans do not want.

Regards,

Mike

Top advisers to President Obama are coalescing around a plan for 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.  Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are in the loop. But President Obama is reportedly skeptical as to how much the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan can execute a US strategy.

Three of the options call for specific levels of additional troops. The low-end option would add 20,000 to 25,000 troops, a middle option calls for about 30,000, and another embraces Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for roughly 40,000 more troops. Administration officials said that a fourth option was added only in the past few days. They declined to identify any troop level attached to it.

For those who say the government can’t run anything, how about its ability to execute, as it did Tuesday night to John Allen Muhammad?

A prison spokesman says John Allen Muhammad died by injection at 9:11 p.m. Tuesday at Greensville Correctional Center.

Prison spokesman Larry Traylor says Muhammad had no final words. He says he didn’t hear him utter a word the entire time.