A U.S. decision to bend policy and sit down with Iran at nuclear talks fizzled Saturday, with Iran stonewalling Washington and five other world powers on their call to freeze uranium enrichment.

In response, the six gave Iran two weeks to respond to their demand, setting the stage for a new round of U.N. sanctions.

Iran's refusal to consider suspending enrichment was an indirect slap at the United States, which had sent Undersecretary of State William Burns to the talks in hopes the first-time American presence would encourage Tehran into making concessions.

Officials and diplomats refused to characterize the timeframe as an ultimatum, but it appeared clear that Iran now has a de-facto deadline to show flexibility.

The Bush Administration has done everything a superpower can do except use military action.  Iran's mullahs come to the conclusion that the U.S. and Israel either will not or cannot stop their nuclear ambitions.  If strikes are launched against the mullahs' nuclear facilities, the U.S. will have tried every avenue to stop the program without resort to bombing. but Iran is an outlaw regime and it does not care a bit what the world demands of it.

"Former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland was an icon of Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 campaign, a badly wounded war hero who lost his seat, Kerry deplored, after a television advertising campaign questioned his commitment to national security.

But to the Obama campaign, Cleland has another qualification: Registered lobbyist."

Twenty-nine years ago, Samir Kutar broke into an apartment in Naharya to attack a young Israeli family. After murdering the father, he killed the four year old by crushing her skull against a rock. As the mother hid from the terrorist, she stifled the screams of her two-year-old, accidentally suffocating the child.  

Now the killer has been released from his life-sentence in return for the bodies of two kidnapped, murdered Israeli soldiers—and the unrepentant killer is welcomed as a triumphant hero by Hezbollah.  

The episode shows the value of the death penalty, especially in cases of terrorism: an executed killer can’t be freed and then honored for his ghastly crimes. Second, the incident exposes the true nature of Islamic extremism, which glorifies a vicious monster whose only accomplishment in life brought death to three innocents in their own home. 

Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times.

As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history — "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" — when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow."

Read the whole thing.  It's tough, but (and because) it's all too true.

“After Sen. John McCain publicly repudiated his close friend and adviser Phil Gramm's comments about a ‘nation of whiners’ and a ‘mental recession,’ the two old political comrades patched up their relationship. Gramm apologized to McCain for his remarks … McCain told Gramm not to worry about the expected pitfalls of a campaign surrogate. Gramm will continue as an adviser and surrogate.”

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We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.