Friends and fellow citizens, Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my...

Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds,...

Friends and Citizens: The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the...

And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights...

The House had under consideration a bill proposing to draft men for service in the War of 1812. MR. Webster: Mr. Chairman: After the best reflection which I have been able to bestow on the subject of the bill before you, I am of the opinion that its principles are not warranted by any provision of the constitution. It appears to me to partake of the nature of those other propositions for military measures, which this session, so fertile in invention, has produced. It is of the same class with...

The Australian The Times UK US plots to arm Syrian rebels with Muammar Gaddafi leftovers THE US is launching a covert operation to send weapons to Syrian rebels for the first time as it ramps up military efforts to oust President Bashar al-Assad. Mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles will be sent through friendly Middle Eastern countries already supplying the rebels, according to well-placed diplomatic sources. The US has bought weapons from the stockpiles of Libya's former...

This was one of the all-time most memorable and hilarious columns by the late, great Jeff Huber, who died way too young and we all miss very much. Alexander the Great, eat your heart out.  Et tu, Julius Caesar.  The same goes for you, Charlemagne.  Dead or alive, Osama bin Laden is the greatest military and political strategist in human history, bar none. Neither Alexander nor Caesar nor Charlemagne managed, as bin Laden has, to lure the best-trained, best-equipped military of the world’s...

By Jeff Stein CQ Politics April 22, 2009 California Democrat Jane Harman, battling a controversy over her interactions with a suspected Israeli spy, was overheard on a 2005 wiretap discussing a failed fundraising ploy designed to get her named chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, according to a former national security official who has read the transcript. Harman was heard lamenting to the suspected Israeli agent how the tactics of a major Jewish fundraiser to use the threat of...

Jeff Stein April 21, 2009 2:20 AM The tremendous interest in my story yesterday about a 2005 NSA wiretap picking up California Democratic Rep. Jane Harman conversing with a suspected Israeli agent took me by surprise, frankly. It’s always gratifying to find so many people paying attention to things like this when Carrie Prejean is only a click away. The first thing I want to dispel, though, is the apparently widespread notion that the timing of my story Monday was somehow related to: (1) the...

By Jeff Stein | CQ Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington. Harman was recorded saying she would 'waddle into' the AIPAC case 'if you think it’ll make a difference,'...

I. The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory...

The Year is 2004. –It is a year before PM Ariel Sharon "disengages" from Gaza –Two years before Hamas wins a plurality in the election W. Bush forced them to hold –Three years before Elliot Abrams' failed coup which led to Hamas kicking the PA out of Gaza and seizing "control" of the strip [under Israeli overlordship of course] and the institution of the full-scale siege and the beginning of the "mowing the grass" campaigns which began in 2008. Sharon's advisor Arnon Soffer explained to the...

The hawks who launched the Iraq war believed the deal-making exile when he promised to build a secular democracy with close ties to Israel. Now the Israel deal is dead, he's cozying up to Iran -- and his patrons look like they're on the way out. By John Dizard Salon.com May 4, 2004 When the definitive history of the current Iraq war is finally written, wealthy exile Ahmed Chalabi will be among those judged most responsible for the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam...

By Richard H. Shultz Jr., The Weekly Standard, January 1, 2004 SINCE 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly declared that the United States is in a new kind of war, one requiring new military forces to hunt down and capture or kill terrorists. In fact, for some years, the Department of Defense has gone to the trouble of selecting and training an array of Special Operations Forces, whose forte is precisely this. One president after another has invested resources to hone...

Influence on Bush aides: Bolshevik's writings supported the idea of pre-emptive war by Jeet Heer, National Post, June 07, 2003 Leon Trotsky has influenced such White House confidants as journalist Christopher Hitchens an ad hoc consultant to the Bush administration and an advocate for military intervention in the Mideast. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, was paranoid. Perhaps his deepest fears centred around his great rival for the leadership of the Bolshevik movement, Leon Trotsky. Stalin...