The Obama Administration has joined the schoolyard bullies: 

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Sunday that Israel is becoming increasingly isolated in the Middle East, The Associated Press reported.  

Panetta added Israel must restart negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and work to restore relations with Egypt and Turkey. 
Panetta made the comments as he was traveling to Israel, saying the ongoing upheaval in the Middle East makes it critical for the Israelis to find ways to communicate with other nations in the region in order to have stability. 

“There’s not much question in my mind that they maintain that (military) edge,” AP quoted Panetta as having told reporters traveling with him. “But the question you have to ask: Is it enough to maintain a military edge if you’re isolating yourself in the diplomatic arena? Real security can only be achieved by both a strong diplomatic effort as well as a strong effort to project your military strength.” – (my emphasis)

The very nature of all intelligence work is its fluidity and unpredictability.  What can be taken as stone cold fact and held to be true at the time, in retrospect and in future projections does not work in several areas of intelligence endeavor.  By its very nature, terrorism and counterterrorism work if is something of an elusive beast and an elementary Google search will produce many differing definitions and hairsplitting differences.  I could waste a great deal of time and effort in pointing out some examples but one will suffice. There are many different takes on the role of suicide bombers.  There is an influential group emanating from the University of Chicago which maintains that religion plays no part in the motivation for suicide bombing, a view which I do not share and I think is borne out by experience.  Only this past week, a former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was apparently prominent in drawing up a framework for discussions between the Taliban and the US and allies about a drawdown of military forces was killed by a suicide bomber who had slipped through the security cordon with explosives secreted in a turban.  I fancy this will not be popular with Sikhs.

A “Take Back the American Dream” three-day conference in Washington begins on Monday that features Van Jones, the disgraced former Obama Administration “Green Jobs Czar,” a Russian TV star, and a veteran of the Venceremos Brigades to Cuba who works for the AFL-CIO. Such is the nature of the modern progressive movement.  

“I think everybody should hold onto your seats,” said Jones on Thursday’s MSNBC program “The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell.”

[Editor's note: The following is the second installment of FrontPage's new series, "Union Gangsters." In this profile, award-winning investigative reporter Matthew Vadum unmasks Big Labor kingpin Richard Trumka, whose dirty agitation tactics have earned him the moniker "thug-in-chief." To read about union consigliere Craig Becker, click here.]  

Richard Trumka is a thug’s thug, and a crafty one at that.The AFL-CIO boss believes the end justifies the means.

Breaking the law is acceptable if it advances the cause. Unions should “forget about the law; this is about more than that,” he said at the “Future of Unions” roundtable in Detroit on April 7.

Editor's note: Bumper Sticker: FED UP WIITH THE FED - According to CNBC, the Federal Reserve "is planning on monitoring what you say about it on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook".  Apparently we are not supposed to be alarmed though, because as the CNBC headline states, the Federal Reserve just "wants to be your Facebook friend".  In fact, the CNBC article says that anyone that feels threatened by the fact that the Federal Reserve will be monitoring what we say on Facebook and Twitter is just "paranoid". 

Actor Morgan Freeman recently made a statement that Barack Obama was making racism worse in America and he was right about that part of his statement. Before the 2008 election, I was one of many white American’s who foolishly believed that we had mostly overcome racism in America. My children had no concept of racism and no concern for skin color, before the public school system taught them the differences between white folks and black folks, in the name of celebrating diversity.