The Christmas terrorist incident in Detroit, thankfully averted by attentive passengers, is prompting airlines and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), to look at ways of enhancing airline security.   Unfortunately, panic and political correctness, instead of common sense, appear to be assuming precedence.  Measures being considered include preventing people from going to the bathroom the last hour of the flight (this will eliminate prospective passengers above the age of 30), prohibiting passengers from using blankets, being able to read  (this would be a big deterrent to me), and not allowing passengers to keep carry on materials underneath the seats in front of them.  The TSA legally has to post proposed new regulations in the Federal Register www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/ and I encourage readers to let the TSA know if any of their proposed regulations are idiotic examples of political correctness instead of true enhancements to airline security.

True security enhancing measures would include consolidating the National Counterterrorism Center's terrorist watch list and no fly lists.  If you're on the watch list, you shouldn't be allowed to fly at all.  If you have been to Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia and were not on legitimate U.S. Government business you should not be allowed into the U.S. given the prevalence of terrorist training centers in those countries.  We should expand the use of body scanning machines and place particular emphasis on screening individuals with Islamic names and from countries or geographic regions with records of Islamist terrorist activity.  We should quit frisking old ladies and other individuals who do not fit the profile of Islamist terrorists who are likely to seek to blow themselves and airline passengers up in the delusional belief they will inherit heavenly bliss. The key focus of U.S. airport security personnel should be focusing on the religious, racial, and behavioral characteristics of  Islamist terrorists and their sympathizers. If a U.S. Embassy or consulate overseas receives notification that a foreign national with terrorist sympathies or actions has applied for a U.S. visa, that individual's application should be denied on the spot without right of appeal and information about this individual's application be instantaneously transmitted to the terrorist watch  list and to the Dept. of Homeland Security.  It should also be U.S. policy that individuals denied visas by allied countries such as the United Kingdom and Israel are also denied U.S. visas.  We need to announce to the world that individuals seeking to enter the U.S. do not have an inherent right to do so, but must strictly adhere to U.S. legal and national security requirements for the privilege of entering, visiting, working, or studying in this country.  We should also require our airport security screeners to be trained and certified by Israel which has the world's preeminent transportation security practices.

We also need to abandon our foolish notions that closing  Guantanamo Bay will improve our security and our delusional desire to curry favor with Islamist and European secularist world opinion.  When the security of the American public is at stake, we must do whatever we consider is necessary regardless of the howls it may engender in certain sectors of international opinion.  We must have the courage to profile all possible terrorists and prevent them from getting on board our airplanes and not inconveniencing law abiding passengers of all ages and backgrounds who desire to fly safely for personal and business reasons.

Yesterday, we were reminded that Islamist terrorists still desire to kill Americans on a large scale and are engaged in a titanic existential struggle to impose Sharia on the world.  Thanks to the courage of passengers on the Christmas day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit and thanks to the ineptitude of the attacker in seeking to detonate his explosive device near the end of the flight instead of just after the plane took off from Amsterdam, this was just a terrorist incident instead of a horrific attack with hundreds of fatalities.  We should be thankful that an investigation will be conducted on the security breakdowns that caused the attack instead of having to look for the black box in Atlantic Ocean waters.

A number of questions must be asked.  Why did the U.S. allow a flight which originated in Nigeria (a country noted for its lax airport security procedures) and presence of some Islamist terrorists, to come to the U.S?  Was the perpetrator of this attempted attack actually on the "no-fly" list?  If he was, why was he allowed to board?  Why was such a poor job done inspecting this individual's carry on baggage at either Amsterdam of the flight's place of origin in Nigeria?  Why was he allowed to carry explosive materials onto the plane? Throughout history our enemies have been emboldened by our expressions of rhetorical weakness or demonstrations of actual weakness when we're at war.  During the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong took great encouragement from the antiwar demonstrations in the U.S.  I expect Al Qaida and the Taliban take equal satisfaction when their useful idiots in this and other countries denounce our efforts to defend freedom.

This attempted attack is also a response to the Obama Administration's pathetic efforts to distance themselves from Bush Administration antiterror policies.  The absolutely imbecilic decision to publicly try the perpetrators of 9/11 in a Manhattan federal district court, instead of executing these monsters in a Guantanamo brig, is one example of their failure to understand the nature of the conflict we're in.  The multicultural political correctness of our airport security screening, which began during the Bush Administration, is a another sign of our weakness.  We know that the individuals most likely to cause terrorist incidents on airplanes are Arabic, Farsi, and Pashtun speaking Muslim males and females.  Yet we conduct detailed body searches on elderly women and other individuals who have no interest or ideological desire in blowing up planes in the name of Islam or any other cause.  We are so afraid of racial and religious profiling and being branded as "racists" that we weaken our defenses against the individuals most likely to commit terrorist actions and kill Americans as we genuflect before the false gods of diversity and multiculturalism.  We delude ourselves into thinking Islam is a "religion of peace" when its raison d'etre and modus operandi, since its origins in the Arabian peninsula nearly 15 centuries ago, have been to spread their religious beliefs by violence. 

Yesterday's attempted attack, along with the Fort Hood murder spree by an Islamist psychiatrist,  demonstrates that Americans are reaping the seeds of the Obama Administration's weakness in pursuing our enemies and understanding the existential threat they pose to us.    Unless we jettison politically correct multiculturalism in our transportation security and military counterintelligence, their will be more attacks on American soil which will result in large scale fatalities.  All individuals engaged in air and other forms of travel must serve as front line transportation security sentinels. It's time to wake up from the Obama hangover and face the cold brute reality of our rapacious Islamist enemies.  The war goes on despite the howlings of our antiwar critics.

News reports today indicate that Iranian troops have entered Iraq and planted Iranian flags at the Fakkah oil field.  The Iranians are undoubtedly emboldened by the vacillating appeasement being shown by the Obama Administration toward them.  Recent examples of Iranian assertiveness include seizing British citizens whose boat got to close to Iran and three American hikers who were stupid enough to go hiking in Iraq's Kurdistan region near the Iranian border and subsequently have been seized and are being held by the Iranians.  Perhaps the Iranians did this to celebrate the recent 30th anniversary of the hostage crisis which doomed the hapless and incompetent administration of Jimmy Carter.

Barack Obama seems well on  his way to being our generation's version of Jimmy Carter.  Instead of forcefully denouncing and addressing Iran's invasion of sovereign Iraq territory, the site of so much American blood, treasure, and sacrifice, the "Messiah" is in snowy Copenhagen trying to reach a superficial agreement to fight climate change which will not achieve its goals but create new and costly burdens on domestic and international economies and American consumers and consumers from other countries.  So far there has been no sign of protest from the Obama Administration which is hellbent on getting a empty climate change agreement at a fatally flawed international conference and getting equally bad health care legislation through a U.S. Senate.  This legislative chamber is being imprisoned by an approaching snowstorm in Washington, DC and by Obama's Senate KGB apparatchik and Nazi Gauleiter Harry Reid who is putting the Senate through what seems like 24/7 sessions lasting several days in an efforts to get supposedly recalcitrant Republicans to submit to the purportedly sublime and omniscient health care wisdom of the "President."

The Iranians are probably laughing their heads off at the incompetence of Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other members of the administration's foreign policy and national security team.  Keep your ears tilted for Vice President Joe Biden to proclaim his belief that it's still possible to "reset" relations with Iran and that some "grand bargain" can be struck with Tehran's mullahs to get them to return the hostages, leave Iraq, and stop their nuclear weapons program.  Oil prices are starting to rise again at a time of the year when they should be falling.  I fear we are headed for some rough times with Iran and there is no evidence that anyone in the upper echelons of this pathetically naive and delusionally utopian administration knows how to deal with the mullahs.  Eloquent words won't cut it with Tehran neither will increased economic sanctions no matter how widespread their imposition and enforcement by the  international community.  Only brute force and the willingness to use such force against Tehran without mercy or regret will work against the Iranian regime.

For the past couple of weeks, world governmental environmental leaders and self-appointed civil society environmental activists have descended on Copenhagen, Denmark like a biblical plague of locusts to attempt to reach an agreement on reducing carbon emissions and thwarting global climate change.  Most accounts indicate these deliberations are floundering amidst unrealistic expectations and the profound differences between developed and less developed economies on how best to address this issue.  Major world leaders such as Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are now on their way to Copenhagen to grease the wheel of conference deliberations and provide their secular anointing to  this "messianic mission" to rid the world of climate change.

It is both amusing and hypocritical to see these self-appointed environmental guardians descend on Copenhagen like ambulance chasing lawyers denouncing our alleged conspicuous consumption and environmental degradation.  Some news reports have indicated that the Danish limousine industry was unable to cope with the demand for its services from conference attendees and that wholesale importing of gas guzzling limousines had to be procured from Germany,  the Netherlands, and France in order to transport world leaders, environmental policy groupies, and celebrities who proclaim to be "concerned" about the environment as they jet set to the latest Hollywood cause du jour.  Adding to the festival circus atmosphere, has been the drama queen antics of the Group of 77 nations (an organization of less developed countries) who are reprising their antics of the late 1970s by demanding that the wealthier countries and the taxpayers of those countries (that's us folks) authorize massive transfers of wealth to their countries so they can cope with the consequences of climate change allegedly caused by our allegedly excessively materialistic lifestyles.

Climate change is a complicated matter that defies easy categorization.  A lot of it occurs due to naturally occurring climatic events which cannot be altered by human regulatory, scientific, or environmental policy.  Some climate change is human caused, but the world's leading economies, including the U.S., have made concerted efforts over the past few decades to reduce their pollution and have achieved significant breakthroughs in pollution reduction.  Growing industrializing economies such as China and India are probably responsible for most human caused climate change and you have to factor in the corrupt and incompetent economic development policies pursued by many of the world's dictatorial regimes in their efforts to achieve national economic development and personal enrichment.  It's especially amusing to hear countries like Nigeria and Venezuela complain about climate change when they and many other critics of western countries environmental policies have significant oil or natural reserves which they are seeking to develop with the financial and technological assistance of western and Chinese companies.  It's also amusing hearing ignorant socialist gasbags like Bolivian "President" Evo Morales say climate change is caused by capitalism's alleged evils and by Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, whose policies have grievously damaged his country's significant agricultural resources, denounce developed countries and demand reparations from these countries and their taxpayers.

What's especially  infuriating is that the proposed "solutions" to climate change such as cap and trade and various carbon emission reductions are sure to cause considerable economic hardship for average citizens the world over by drastically increasing their transportation and home heating and cooling costs at a time of global economic recession.  There is a devoted cadre of international environmental activists seeking to impose a new form of economic colonialism on citizens not genuflecting to their secularist religion of climate change environmental activism.  These activists, many of whom are national or international environmental policymakers, brazenly seek to subvert national sovereignty and personal choice to impose a global one size fits all environmental solution on the world regardless of whether it is scientifically sound or benefits personal and national economic development.  If these individuals are successful, it would be a dangerous capitulation to a pernicious movement that seeks to exert political and economic control over individuals who have not voted for such policies and cannot remove those individuals from their policymaking positions.  Fortunately, the intellectual credibility of many of these extortion artists has been grievously damaged by the recent revelations that significant "calculations" about global warming are rigged and fraudulent based on leaked emails from a climate change research center at England's East Anglia University.

We should follow the advice of prominent Danish climate change skeptic Bjorn Lomberg and seek to address climate change by developing more affordable and energy efficient technologies.  One way to begin is by increasing our use of nuclear power which is actually the most environmentally friendly energy technology available.  We should explore developing affordable technologies that power cars through methods other than fossil fuels while allowing cars to sustain speeds of up to 65-70 miles per hour and go up 400-500 miles at a trip without having to refuel or recharge.  We need to respect the national sovereignty of individual countries and quit trying to monomanically impose a global one size fits all solution to this matter.  With over 200 countries in the world, there is the potential to achieve solutions that reflect political, economic, scientific, and technological realities in these countries, are economically affordable for citizens of these countries, and actually result in improved environmental conditions in these countries.  Such prudent policies and policymaking can keep transportation costs affordable for those of us who might  like to travel to Copenhagen or other international locales and not have to be lectured at by self-appointed environmental extortionist caudillos who seek to impede our ability to travel and engage in normal economic activities.

Senators John McCain and Tom Coburn have provided an extremely valuable public service on their websites.  Both of these Senators have published a heavily documented report detailing the frivolous and wasteful pork expenditures in the Obama Administration's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) which is popularly known as the economic stimulus law.
The wasteful projects uncovered in this document encompass the geographic span of the country, a variety of federal agencies, and, undoubtedly, the pork barrel proclivities of Representatives and Senators from both parties seeking to maximize their earmarks privileges for local political benefit. 

Examples of this fiscal profligacy include $49,918 for 11 students and four faculty from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks to attend the Copenhagen Climate Change conference.  The report's comments on this particularly dubious appropriation mentioned that these students and faculty members will emit 53,940 pounds of carbon dioxide from their air travel alone which is the amount of emissions required to heat and light two single family homes in Fairbanks, AL for a year.  What would Al Gore say?

One outrageous appropriation in this legislation include $935,000 for an African Heritage dance troupe in Washington, DC to weatherize homes.  I didn't know home weatherization was part of the curriculum of American dance programs.  Can I get this troupe to perform the Nutcracker while they put insulation in the attic?  The National Institutes of Health was awarded $219,000 to study the "hookup" behavior of college students for one year.  Is there a line in this grant to document booze, condom, and prophylactic expeditures?  Another earmark documented by McCain and Coburn's report is awarding SUNY Buffalo $399,000 to study young adults who drink malt liquor and smoke marijuana?  $4.7 million is allocated for exploring the possibilities of corporate supersonic jets.  I guess the appropriators of this fund forgot about the example of the Concorde.  $1.9 billion was allocated to the Energy Dept. for its failure to cleanup nuclear waste at Washington state's troubled Hanford nuclear site.

My personal favorite is $100,000 to Minneapolis' Heart of the Beast Puppet Theatre whose reportoire includes "socially conscious" and anti-capitalist productions.  I suppose we can credit Al Franken's arrival in the U.S. Senate for this one.  While there are many worthwhile government research projects, you'll find none of them is McCain and Coburn's report.  All in all, this report shows that Obama Administration claims of promoting fiscal responsibility are empty rhetoric and that Chicago style pork barrel projects are alive and well in his administration.

It used to be common to see nativity scenes in many courthouse grounds around the country.  Unfortunately, this has declined in recent years as militant secularist groups have gone to court or threatened to go to court to prevent communities from erecting these structures on courthouse grounds or other publicly owned properties.  The extremely lame "rationale"  used by these groups, whose memberships include the American Civil Liberties Union, its state affiliates, and other pathologically deranged secularist groups and individuals, is that such displays constitute "government endorsement of religion."  The ultimate objectives of these groups and individuals is, of course, not concern that governmental entities endorse Christianity or any other religion, but that all traces of religious belief, particularly Christianity, are removed from American public life.

The true legal test courts and legislatures should follow in ruling on public displays of religious belief on government property is not, whether such displays constitute an establishment of religion, but whether these displays physically restrict the ability of individuals not holding the religious beliefs expressed in the display, to practice or not practice any other form of religious expression.  Of course, anyone with a modicum of intelligence will know that the presence of a nativity display or any other form of religious belief on governmental property, does not prevent them from holding or not holding particular religious views or practicing those views.

Governments desiring to place nativity displays on their properties should respond to extortionate attempts to remove religious expression from the public square in several ways.  They should seriously consider filing SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suits against the ACLU or any of its allied organizations or individuals who threaten to engage in litigation against any governmental attempts to restrict the free expression of religious views.  Congress and state legislatures should also consider legislation preventing these organizations and like-minded individuals from filing such suits on the grounds that such litigation blatantly violates the Constitution's "free exercise of religion" clause.  State and local governments should also encourage individuals in these states who oppose the ACLU's extortionate tyranny to publicly demonstrate outside the offices of these organizations, disrupt their meetings, and these governments and the federal government should also explore the feasibility of revoking or drastically revising the tax exempt status of these groups.  If the free expression of religious belief is to still occur on governmental properties throughout the U.S., it's up to concerned citizens and courageous governmental leaders to stand up to the militantly secularist mafioso in the ACLU and allied organizations opposed to the constitution's "free exercise" clause.

Last night, President Obama addressed the nation and world on his administration's strategy for Afghanistan.  The event was held in West Point's Eisenhower Hall and Obama's belief that he could emulate President Eisenhower and noted West Point alum Douglas MacArthur's grandiloquence fell woefully short in the address' delivery.  I will give Obama a modicum of credit for ignoring the surrender hyenas in his party  who want us to withdraw from Afghanistan and allow the restoration of Taliban rule and sanctuary for Al Qaida.  The administration's decision to increase our troop strength by 30,000, while short of what General McCrystal has requested, is at least a step in the right direction which can be augmented by additional contributions from our ISAF allies in that country.

The general idea of benchmarks for the  Afghan and Pakistani governments to meet has some merit, but determining how well these benchmarks have been achieved must be determined solely by theater military commanders and not Washington DC politicians with little understanding of regional political and cultural realities.  The worst part of the Obama Administration's plan is it decision to begin withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011.  During today's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker cogently asked  witnesses Defense Secretary Gates, Secretary of State Clinton, and Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Mike Mullen if there were any historical instances of a military power announcing a surge of troops and their targeted withdrawal date at the same time.  Due to this strategic imbecility, all the Taliban and Al Qaida have to do is lay low until July 2011 and then can emerge from their lairs and strike with full ferocity at Afghan and Pakistani targets.  Gates, Clinton, and Mullen said that our withdrawal timetable is flexible, but we should never commit to a specific date for withdrawal until theater military commanders, not domestic political considerations, make an educated professional assessment that security conditions in Afghanistan and Pakistan have improved to a point where the presence of our forces is unnecessary.

Obama did a decent job explaining that we don't want Afghanistan and Pakistan to become sanctuaries for terrorist again.  However, he failed to tell the American people and the international community that long-term nation building in this region is essential to ensure the viability of these countries and that we cannot expect these countries to stand on their own within the limited parameters of U.S. election cycles.  We cannot abandon Afghanistan and Pakistan to a ruthless enemy and ensuring the security of these countries will be a decades long commitment.  Yes, we must work to limit corruption among governmental officials in these countries but we must also consider our long-term geopolitical and strategic interests in that region.  We must be willing to use both the imperial cudgel on our enemies and demonstrate compassion to and build trust among the long-suffering Afghan people. Obama has demonstrated that he can speak in rhetorically pleasing platitudes, but he has failed to demonstrate that he has sufficient understanding of our enemies ideological objectives, the moral imperative for us to achieve victory in this conflict, and his need to abandon his multicultural fantasies and become a ruthless warrior president who can tell the American public and world opinion that tough steps must be taken to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

We often are told that oil is a source for potential military and geopolitical conflict and it's true that "black gold" has been a historical, contemporary, and future source of political tension and conflict.  However, oil's importance is less than water's when one calculates potential future arenas of natural resource conflict.

Individuals living in the western U.S. know how important and scarce water can be.  Considerable technological expertise and expense have been used, often at significant environmental cost, to ensure that sunbelt states as diverse as Arizona, California, and Texas have access to ample water sources to fuel their economies and maintain what early 21st century Americans consider as minimal standards of living.  Books such as Norris Hundley's The Great Thirst:  Californians and Water History document the political, legal, and environmental impacts of this unending quest for water in America's most populous state. Numerous other works and court cases document the contentiousness of water policy within the U.S.  Federal agencies such as the Interior Dept's Bureau of Reclamation and numerous state and local government water agencies, along with commercial water suppliers, engage in a continual struggle to find new and abundant sources of water at affordable costs for consumers and businesses.  This struggle is likely to become more intense if global warming is a reality and with continual population growth in the western states which may require these states to seek water resources from other areas of the U.S.  Imagine the consequences of California seeking to obtain water from the Missouri River or the Mississippi River.  Talk about stoking regional political antagonisms in the U.S. on a scale not seen since the Civil War.

Dependable access to potable water is also a major problem in numerous global areas.  I recently heard a National Public Radio story about problems accessing water in the Arabian Peninsula country of Yemen.  This country has experienced prolonged drought which has been exacerbated by corrupt individuals and governmental officials seeking to drill deeper underground in areas where there water reserves are highly unlikely.  There are water shortages in areas such as Israel which also affects many of its surrounding neighbors and could produce conflict beyond the already existing tensions in that region.  India and Bangladesh have difficulties in making effective use of regional water resources due, in part, to India's population growth.  Anyone familiar with Australian environmental history, will know the important role played by the Murray and Darling rivers in fostering that countries economic prosperity including its major status in global grain markets.  Think about the impact of drought depleting water resources in grain producing areas of the world as diverse as Canada, the U.S., Australia, Argentina, and Russia.  It is also possible to find increasing numbers of national security policy documents and substantive public policy analyses addressing the possibility of international political and military conflict over water resources.

Africa has also been victimized by droughts on a regular basis which has caused significant humanitarian catastrophe and created refugee flows which impact regional geopolitical dynamics.  No area of the world is immune to water shortages.  The 21st century may see governmental policymakers in the U.S. and elsewhere  compelled to take what might seem draconian steps such as limiting lawn watering and other areas of non-essential water use to ensure that there are sufficient water resources to meet personal household economic needs and essential national and international economic needs.  Most of the U.S. has been extremely fortunate that we have not been deprived of dependable and relatively cheap access to high-quality water.  There is no guarantee that this will continue if continued population growth, natural resources consumption, and existing legal and regulatory policies do not adjust to continually evolving economic, environmental, and political trends along with adapting to unpredictable climatic trends which may also restrict water availability.   Such water shortages could produce regional and global conflicts on a scale that might make us nostalgic for twentieth century conflicts because water effects us all in ways oil cannot.

This past Saturday night, the U.S. Senate agreed to open debate on health care legislation.  This 2,000 plus page monstrosity, as congressional Republicans have graphically pointed out by displaying it on the Senate and House floors, will increase a variety of taxes and ultimately do nothing to improvev the quality of U.S. health care.  Bringing this bill to the Senate floor reflects the childlike faith of the Obama Administration and its congressional sycophants that Americans will ignore the over six decades of unhappy experience with nationalized health care in countries all over the world despite overwhelming evidence that such systems decrease the quality and availability of health care to their citizens.

So far a considerable amount of political horsetrading and logrolling is occurring as the Administration seeks to garner the support of Democrats who may be politically or, dare we hope, intellectually and morally inclined to resist the seductive siren of socialized medicine.  One of these Democrats is Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, the scion of a prominent New Orleans familial political dynasty.  Landrieu has already secured an additional $300 million in Medicaid funding for Louisiana in a stunning affirmation of her genetic encoding to garner federal largesse for her state regardless of whether or not its taxpayers or national taxpayers can afford such spending during a time of double digit unemployment and trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see or budget prognosticators can forecast.  Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln will be another purportedly moderate Democrat the Obama Administration will try to entice with various favors.  Lincoln is now chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee and we may see Arkansas receive all kinds of favors when the next quinquinnial federal farm legislation is written a couple years down the road.  Perhaps features of this legislation might include giving Tyson Chicken monopolistic control of the U.S. poultry industry, additional Medicaid money for Arkansas, or no telling what other earmarks which may occur at the expense of other U.S. agricultural sectors.

Indiana Senator Richard  Lugar has wisely said that our current economic problems make health care reform extremely unwise at this time.  You would think Harry Reid would be intelligent enough to listen to a midwestern Rhodes Scholar.  Unfortunately, Reid, Pelosi, and Obama are dead set on imposing a nationalized health care system which Americans don't want, cannot afford, and has proven to be detrimental to health care quality in many highly developed countries.  Obama has convinced himself that his presidential legacy depends on enacting this legislation regardless of its abysmal quality.  His stubborn messianic insistence on this legislation may well make him the 2nd consecutive Democratic President to squander significant political capital on an issue that only appeals to a collectivist cabal on the leftist fringes of the Democratic Party.  The failure of this legislation can represent a seismic political defeat for mister "change you can believe in" and open up opportunities for the GOP to present sensible, pragmatic, and market-oriented health care reform that will empower individual American medical consumers and their families instead of an already titanic and ineffectual federal medical bureaucracy.

I've been a college football fan for as long as I can remember.  This interest has evolved over nearly four decades as I've seen players as diverse as Herschel Walker, Mark Herrmann, Doug Flutie, and many other past and contemporary gridiron stars take full advantage of their hours upon the stage.  There have been numerous great teams over the years including blue blood franchises such as Penn State, USC, Michigan, Oklahoma, and many others.  Classic titanic games have also been part of my visual football experience, including Texas' pulsating victory over USC in the Rose Bowl a few years ago, a late 1970s Sugar Bowl game between Alabama and Penn State which saw the Crimson Tide make a goal line stand to preserve a tenaciously fought 14-7 victory, Oregon spanking USC earlier this year, and who could ever forget Boise State's electrifying 43-42 overtime win over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl a few years ago. 

There are also the coaches whose personalities and skills make college football so special.  These include Penn State's eternal Joe Paterno who will probably be strolling the sidelines long after most of us are gone, Ohio State's crusty Woody Hayes, Alabama's Paul "Bear" Bryant" and current big guns such as Texas' Mack Brown, Florida's Urban Meyer, Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, and USC's Pete Carroll.  The festivity of a college football game is unrivalled.  There is the tailgate experience, the songs and chants of schools such as Kansas' "Rock Chalk Jayhawk," Oklahoma's "Boomer Sooner," Michigan's "Hail to the Victors", and Notre Dame's "Onward to Victory."  A variety of colorful mascots also add zest to the college football atmosphere as evidenced by Purdue Pete, Sparty Spartan of Michigan State, Texas A&M's collie Reveillie, and many others.

Determining who's the national champion as always been controversial in college football.  In 1998, in a good faith attempt to provide some clarity to this situation, the Bowl Championship  Series (BCS) was created.  This saw the four elite bowls:  Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, and Orange get the honor of  hosting the national championship game every four years with the top two ranked teams in the country.  This system was advantageous to teams from major conferences such as the Pacific Ten, Big 12, Big 10, Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference, and Big East conference whose champions were guaranteed spots in BCS games.  The BCS did not have room for powerful teams from less prestigious conferences such as the Mountain West, Western Athletic Conference, and other conferences.

This began to change in 2004 when an unbeaten Utah team received an invitation to the Fiesta Bowl where they promptly spanked Big East champion Pittsburgh 35-7.  This victory helped propel then Ute coach Urban Meyer to the  head coaching position at the University of Florida where he has won two national championships since then and is seriously contending for a 3rd national title this year.  In 2006, the unbeaten Boise State Bronchos from the Western Athletic Conference outslugged Big 12 champion Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl.  The following year, Hawaii from this same conference, had an unbeaten regular season and received an invitation to the Sugar Bowl where they were trounced by Georgia.  However, the next year an unbeaten Utah team was invited to the Sugar Bowl where they decisively defeated a strong Alabama team.  However, since the Utes come from the Mountain West conference which is not considered as prestigious, they did not receive the opportunity to play in the national championship game between Florida and Oklahoma and won by Florida even though Utah had a better record than either of these teams.

This year additional controversy is possible with the BCS.  Currently Alabama, Florida, and Texas are ranked in the top 3 and unbeaten.  Alabama and Florida will play each other in the Southeastern conference championship game and one of these teams will lose.  The way the BCS is set up Texas (if it stays unbeaten) will likely play Alabama or Florida for the national championship in the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, CA a few days after the regular Rose Bowl game.  However, Texas Christian University, the University of Cincinnati, and Boise State University are also unbeaten as of this writing and ranked among the nation's top teams.  Because of the way the BCS is set up, one of these teams (maybe Boise State) is likely to not get invited to a BCS bowl let alone have the ability to play for the national championship.

This unfair situation needs to be rectified because there is an increasing amount of parity in college football.  My modest proposal for resolving this situation is a sixteen team four round playoff in which each team is seeded as in the NCAA tournament.  For instance, the top seeded team would play the 16th seeded team in the first round.  There should be no more than two representatives from the six BCS conferences (in some years only one team from these conferences will deserve a BCS bid) and the champions of the Western Athletic Conference, Mountain West, Conference USA, and the Mid-American conference should also get invitations to this playoff.  The keystone four bowl games could be included in this as sites for quarterfinal or semifinal games and the championship game could be played at the site of the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange Bowls.  Such a system would be more democratic, allow for the emergence of a cinderella team, be a big financial bonanza for the television networks and participating schools, and excite the country's imagination.

Now if only the administrations and athletic departments of the BCS conference universities would end the restrictive cartel that the BCS is and open up the BCS to more competition!
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I was fortunate enough to be able to travel to England this summer.  Much of the trip was spent in the London area and as a bibliophile it's a pleasure to visit the wide variety of London bookstores and sample the rich output of the British publishing industry.  During this British sojourn, my wife and I were able to visit a number of museums, a couple of castles, and see the fabulous Royal Botanical Gardens.  Since I also enjoy British history, I was able to pick up some additional works in that subject area.

Collecting art museum handbooks has become a hobby of mine and I was able to add to this collection by collecting works on the  Wallace Collection, the Tate Britain, the British Museum's Chinese ceramics collection, the National Maritime Museum, Royal Astronomical Observatory, and the British decorative arts collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum.   The Wallace Museum features excellent collections of French porcelain, 17th-19th century French art, and a strong collection of armor and all of these items were acquired by a single affluent family over several generations.   The National Maritime Museum does a superb job documenting British maritime history and nautical culture.  The Queen's House, which is part of this museum, features an excellent collection of naval art work.

I also purchased a sleek book on the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew which commemorates this facility's 250th anniversary this year.  These gardens consist of 300 acres on the Thames and feature a wide variety of plant life from all over the world in keeping with the gardens international educational and research objectives. A visit to Hampton Court  produced an illustrated history of that remarkable facility plus a work on its equally remarkable gardens.  Hampton Court's history is phenomenal having served as a key residence of Henry VIII, the locale of the 1604 Hampton Court conference where the King James Bible was created, and possessing extensive gardens and a large kitchen complex to feed and quench the thirsts of the royal household.  My recent and growing interest in architecture was augmented by acquiring biographies of Inigo Jones and Lancelot "Capability" Brown.  A trip to Kensington Palace, just west of Hyde Park in west central London, saw us visit the residences of royals such as William and Mary who came to rule England as a result of the 1688 Glorious Revolution, features the royal dress collection, and was recently the home of the popular Diana, Princess of Wales. A day trip to the Cotswolds resulted in obtaining a nice picture book on the pastoral region approximately an hour west of London and this same adventure saw a visit to Blenheim Palace near Oxford and the opportunity to see where Winston Churchill grew up.  Additional works procured include a history of Wales published as part of Cambridge University Press' concise histories series covering various world countries and regions, a biography of Henry VIII, a history of the Thames River's multifaceted environmental and cultural impact, a biography of recent British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the travails of his premiership, and a work on captive experiences throughout the British Empire.

We were also fortunate to see an excellent exhibit of Indian Art at the British Museum called Garden & Cosmos and acquired the lavishly illustrated guidebook for this exhibit. 

London features a wide variety of excellent chain and independent bookstores.  Foyle's, who's main branch is on  Charing Cross Road, is one of my favorites but there are also other stores such as Hatchard's, Waterstone's, Blackwell's, and museum shop stores.  Visits to other areas in the United Kingdom will also produce excellent bookstores and careful planning and fortuitous timing on your part may produce significant bargains as well.  Happy browsing.

Today we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall and the stunning revolutions in Eastern Europe that toppled Communist governments in that region.  The Berlin Wall had been constructed by the East German government to stop its citizens from fleeing to the freedom and greater economic opportunity of West Germany.  In the nearly three decades this structure was up a number of people attempted to escape only to meet violent death.  I was able to experience the Berlin Wall when I visited both East and West Berlin in 1980.  On the western side of the wall, I enjoyed seeing the anticommunist graffiti sprayed on the wall with one statement, translated from German saying "For Capitalism" which gladdened my young conservative heart.  I went through Checkpoint Charlie which was truly a surreal experience and a vivid demonstration of the repressive power of totalitarian Communism.  On our way back from East Berlin as we were going through Checkpoint Charlie, I momentarily couldn't find my visa and had panicked visions of being hauled off to the East German gulag by the Stasi.  Fortunately, I found my visa okay.

It took the courageous leadership of individuals such as Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, Lech Walesa, and Vaclav Havel to maintain western resolve and strengthen democratic awareness behind the Iron Curtain to an extent where the Soviet bloc could no longer retain its iron grip.  Fortunately, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev understood that there was no way Moscow could maintain its dictatorial control over Eastern Europe and allowed these mostly nonviolent revolutions to occur.

Germany has had significant challenges in absorbing its eastern region into a reunified fatherland.  It and other countries of the former Soviet bloc, like most of the world's economies, are facing challenging economic times.  Historically, difficult economic times have, in many cases, produced conditions conducive to the rise of dictators.  Hopefully, countries in this part of Europe have learned from sad experience that dictatorial regimes do not produce higher living standards.  Contemporary governments of these countries must work to meet the material needs of their populations while also recognizing the importance of meeting spiritual needs and providing open and honest governance.  It's especially good to know that most of the former Soviet bloc countries are now part of the NATO Alliance whose security architecture must be sufficiently credible to deter any potentially revanchist desires by an increasingly assertive Russia.

Considering the U.S.' important role in restoring German freedom and economic prosperity, it's particularly sad that President Obama could not find time to join Berliners in their justifiable celebrations.  Perhaps, he realizes that he can't measure up to true champions of freedom like Walesa, Havel, Reagan, and the other leaders mentioned in this posting.

This year England has been commemorating the quincentennial of Henry VIII's accession to the English throne.  When my wife and I were in England this summer, we experienced this visiting Henry VIII's palace at Hampton Court and at the Tower of London where an exhibit of his military attire entitled "Dressed to Kill" was on display.  Henry was an enormously significant monarch and an equally complicated and contradictory person.  He built a series of coastal defenses that enhanced English power and this can arguably be seen as the beginnings of its aspirations for great international power status.  The young Henry was an athletic individual and a devoted theologian whose attacks against Martin Luther's rebellion against papal authority saw Henry  recognized as "Defender of the Faith" by the papacy.

Yet Henry himself would turn against Catholicism when he was unable to get papal approval to divorce Katherine of Aragon due to her inability to produce a son who would become heir to the throne.  Henry's frantic desire to have a male heir to succeed him would lead him into five additional marriages and would eventually produce a male heir in Edward VI who would die at 15 just a few years after Henry's 1547 death.  Ironically, it was Henry's daughters who extended the Tudor dynasty.  Mary ruled from 1553-1558 and sought to forcibly reinstate Catholicism as the preeminent religion with tragic results.  Elizabeth, who ruled from 1558-1603, was able to achieve relative balance in English religious affairs, presided over a growing economy and cultural renaissance which produced Shakespeare and other articles, and provided the leadership, aided by skilled advisors such as Walsingham and Cecil, to increase English power to the point where it could defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588 and firmly establish England as a global maritime power that also sought to influence continental European affairs.

The one-time defender of the faith sought to destroy the power of the Roman Catholic Church through measures such as the dissolution of the monasteries and through creating the Church of England whose existence continues nearly five centuries later.  In his later years, Henry became the bloated figure featured in numerous paintings.  Henry was the quintessential absolute monarch who would have no understanding of democratic governance and would have resisted any reduction of his power with every tool at this disposal.  Yet, the impact of his work is still felt in the United Kingdom today and in the still separate existences of the Roman Catholic Church and Anglican Communion.  The actions and decisions of political rulers can endure far beyond their lifetime as the case of Henry VIII demonstrates.

On the whole it was a good night for conservative political aspirations.  The Virginia gubernatorial victory, while expected, was nice due to the mandate Gov.-elect McDonnell received.  He will now have to deliver on his job creation goals.  A very pleasant surprise was Chris Christie's victory in New Jersey's gubernatorial election.  He'll face an acute challenge in dealing with that state's tradition of high taxes and regulation and systemic corruption.  We should wish him well.

The defeat of Maine's same-sex marriage statute was particularly nice.  It now means that all 31 attempts to foist this abominable practice on states have been rejected by voters even in particularly liberal states like Maine & California.  The closeness of the results indicate that traditional marriage proponents still have a lot of work to do educating the public on the need to constitutionally codify male-female marriage.

The Democratic victory in New York's 23rd congressional district is disappointing but not surprising.  The GOP party bosses in that district did an extremely poor job choosing a candidate whose commitment to core GOP ideology was very dubious.  That district will not produce as conservative a candidate as many other areas of the country would prefer, but it still should produce someone who's generally committed to fiscal, social, and national security conservatism in broad outlines.  Conservatives should back a candidate who actually lives in that district, is familiar with its history, economy, and political culture, and is actually selected by his or her constituents instead of being seen as a carpetbagger foisted by external interest groups such as the Club for  Growth (who are generally good) or by out of touch party machine personnel.

Last night was a good start but more work needs to be done to develop effective and appealing alternative policies to those being propounded to by the White House that will resonate with voters in the 2010 elections.