http://www.realclearpolitics.com/…

Mikheil Saakashvili’s decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia’s invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.

Nasser’s blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili’s blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili’s army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.

Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.

Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America’s lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli.

Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.

Read More…

http://www.washtimes.com/…

Environmentalism, says Czech President Vaclav Klaus, is the new communism, a system of elite command-and-control that kills prosperity and should similarly be condemned to the ash heap of history.

The provocative Mr. Klaus, an economist by training and former prime minister, said in an interview that today’s global warming activists are the direct descendants of the old Marxists who trampled on individual freedoms and undermined free markets in pursuit of a greater good.

“I understand that global warming is a religion conceived to suppress human freedom,” he told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. “It is used to justify an enormous scope for government intervention vis-a-vis the markets and personal freedom.”

The 66-year-old Mr. Klaus was in Washington this week for talks with senior U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, and to tout his new book, “Blue Planet in Green Shackles,” about the dangers to life, liberty and prosperity posed by the modern environmental movement.

He may be just stirring things up to sell his book but there are many who see this environmentalism movement as an excuse to give governments more power. I can’t say I disagree. Very few of the eco people advocate non-statist solutions.

http://www.reuters.com/…

Calling for the impeachment of U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, Cindy Sheehan and 45 fellow Iraq war protesters were arrested on Monday after they refused to leave a U.S. lawmaker’s office and adjoining hallway, authorities said.

Before police escorted her away, Sheehan, who emerged as a leading peace activist after her son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004, announced what she had earlier suggested — that she would be a candidate for Congress next year.

Sheehan said she would challenge House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat. Pelosi has refused calls to start impeachment of Bush and Cheney for what critics charge was misleading the United States into war.

As I reported here I’m all for her running. She has been screwed by both major parties and the 2008 House race against Pelosi could get very interesting.

http://www.reuters.com/…

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday narrowly defeated a Democratic amendment to deny funds to operate Vice President Dick Cheney’s office next year in a feud over his handling of classified documents.

By a vote of 217-209, the House defeated legislation designed to rebuke Cheney for refusing, over objections by the National Archives, to comply with an executive order that set government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information.

Looks like our friendly libertarian Republican presidential candidate voted for the defunding and against the pay raise. Unfortunately they both failed.