“Vietnam” on The Daily Caller

Congress will soon consider legislation to fix a pillar of the president’s China trade policy that has been ruled illegal by federal courts and the World Trade Organization. The bill’s passage will please the White House and the domestic industries and unions that have used the policy to deter foreign competition, but it will do little to solve the underlying flaws in the administration’s approach to China trade. Fortunately, there is a better way forward, and it simply requires Congress to do what it does best: nothing. (more)

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam may block its citizens from using Facebook, but that didn’t stop website founder Mark Zuckerberg from vacationing in the communist country. (more)

It was the end of the day. The bloated bodies of the dead Vietnamese soldiers baked under the cruel equatorial sun and littered the jungle highland’s hillside surrounding Captain Larry’s position like rotting clumps of jellyfish spit up on a hot sandy beach. (more)

President Barack Obama’s campaign heads to the Pacific and Asian corners of the world this week where his public relations crew will produce a symphony of visuals for American voters. The nine day trip will include visits to San Diego, Hawaii, Australia, Bali and Indonesia. (more)

A friend of mine’s son was injured in Afghanistan the other day. (more)

HA LONG BAY, Vietnam (AP) — An anchored boat packed with sleeping tourists sank early Thursday in Vietnam’s scenic Ha Long Bay, killing 12 people from nine countries in the deadliest tour boat accident since the country opened to foreign tourism 25 years ago. (more)

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnamese police say nine friends died during a lunar New Year party after they started a car parked inside a house to play music following an electricity outage. (more)

The media has done it again. They’ve presented the wrong message to the American people about the Egyptian crisis, and it’s not just because of the liberal bias of the U.S. media. It’s also because liberal and conservative media outlets have the same agenda: to sensationalize stories in order to raise ratings. They’re interested in creating the story that sells best. Facts come second. (more)

“Georgetown Prep did something right.” (more)

“Personally I wouldn’t advise a gay leading man-type actor to come out.” — Richard Chamberlain, a gay actor (more)

As one who knows a little about sex and politics and the way the establishment manipulates the system, I must say the sex charges against WikiLeaker Julian Assange sure sound like trumped up bullshit to me. A lady who admitted sex was consensual said he didn’t us a condom and that was why she called police. The other chick is fishy too. She went to his hotel room and was drinking heavily. This is a snatch and grab. (more)

As I reported earlier today at FrumForum, Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has died. (more)

My only meeting with Richard Holbrooke was a grim handshake during the saddest day I ever had in uniform. Our brief encounter took place at Arlington National Cemetery following military funerals for two close friends killed the week before on a treacherous road outside Sarajevo; another, General Wes Clark, had barely escaped the same fate. All three had been part of a diplomatic mission led by Holbrooke during the run-up to the Dayton Accords, which eventually halted the worst killing in Europe since the Second World War. It still seems ironic that a peacekeeping mission required an overland trek by armored personnel carriers into a besieged city through a sector regularly shelled by both sides. When a road-bank suddenly collapsed, their vehicle rolled down the mountainside, killing everyone inside. (more)

With the TSA handling more packages than Fed-Ex this holiday season, we need to revisit our overreaction to the sucker punch that was 9/11. (more)

The U.S. strides the globe as a colossus, stronger than any other state and more dominant than any empire at any time in human history. The entire militaries of “rogue” states have less total firepower than one American carrier group while terrorist groups create more popular angst than extreme danger. The U.S. faces no existential threat like it did during World War II and the Cold War. (more)

It’s been a long time since I was required to shower among 40 or so friends, acquaintances, and virtual strangers, or not do so at all — a socially unacceptable option.  Forty-two years after the fact, I no longer have a clear recollection of the experience, so it must not have made much of an impression on me.  I’m certain I would have vivid memories of the experience if my shower-mates had been potential sexual partners. (more)

The next two years do not bode well for the United States in relation to the rest of the world. (more)

Election handicappers say Republicans could possibly net 75 seats in the House. Here’s a look at prior wave elections: (more)

SANYA, China (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday made a rare visit by an American official to a Chinese island once a flash point in relations between the powers and pressed Beijing to settle territorial disputes with its smaller, wary neighbors. (more)

In Bob Woodward’s new book, Obama’s Wars, he reveals highly classified and sensitive information about lethal CIA clandestine counterterrorism operations, including drone attacks and secret CIA-run “counterterrorism pursuit teams” to kill terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Woodward does not reveal the identities of CIA covert operatives, but his and other revelations, including that President Barack Obama has authorized the killing of an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, suggest that one or more “assassins” not unlike Vince Flynn’s fictional Mitch Rapp are out there. (more)