Operation Protective Edge is now two weeks old. Since the ground offensive began last Thursday (7/17) night, we have begun to get a better picture of just how dangerous Hamas has become in the nine years since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip. And what we have learned is that the time has come to take care of this problem. It cannot be allowed to fester or grow anymore.

As an example, Hamas tunnels have been found with shafts rigged with bombs located directly under Israeli kindergartens.

As a member of the Moslem Brotherhood, Hamas is not a stand-alone terror group. It is part of a much larger web of Islamic jihadist terror groups including al-Qaida and its affiliates as well as the Shi'ite Hezbollah. Like Hamas, all of these threaten several major Sunni Arab states.

Due to their recognition of the threat Hamas and its allies pose to the survivability of their regimes, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have taken the unprecedented step of supporting Israel's efforts to defeat Hamas.

Israel is making good progress.  But it hasn't completed its missions. It needs several more days of hard fighting.  Recognizing this, Israel's newfound Moslem allies - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE - have not been pushing for a cease-fire.

In contrast, the Obama administration is coming to Hamas' rescue by insisting on concluding a cease-fire immediately.

TTPers are readers and thinkers.  A number of you have asked what I've been reading lately.  I thought that now would be a good time, as we start a new year, to answer.  It's also a chance to take a break from the general insanity of current events.

What follows is not advice for you.  Your interests are specifically yours, and none of these books may ring your bell.  But they all rang mine to various degrees.  There are too many to provide reviews.  The link for each is to the listing on Amazon containing a multitude of comments and quotes.

The list here is the books I read in 2012.  Most of them, I bought the Kindle version and read them on my iPad.  I really recommend this.

Yet I also re-read favorites ensconced in my library - such as Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (the link is to the Kindle edition, at $4.27). Also on Kindle now is Ludwig von Mises' compact classic, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality.  This should be required reading for every conservative.

About once a decade I complete Will Durant's entire The Story of Civilization.  This takes some time, as it's eleven volumes, 10,000 pages, and four million words.  I've had the set in my library for 40 years, and last year I finished it once again.  Amazon has The Story of Civilization (11 Volume Set) in hardcover for $439 - but the Kindle edition is only $12.74 per volume.

OK, so here we go - one year's reading.  I think you'll find at least some things here that will intrigue you.  And now, please tell us what your favorite books are on the Forum!

Any denizen of the TTP User Forum will instantly recognize "Cephren," the all-time champion poster.  And any participant in previous TTP Rendezvous, such as last month's in Boston, knows Cephren is Chris Baldi, a hail-and-hearty fellow you'd have to try very hard to dislike.

At Boston, everyone agreed that the Winter Rendezvous had to be someplace where there isn't winter, someplace warm, and that it should be out West.  Last February it was in the East, in Sarasota.

We had a wonderful time in Sarasota, and Chris promises us all an equally good time where he lives.  Thus we hereby announce the Southwest Winter Rendezvous in Phoenix, Arizona, January 23-25.

[This letter is in lieu of the Half-Full Report this week, as the HFR glass today is totally empty. I'd like to encourage all TTPers to both email and fax a printed copy of this letter to the District Office of any nearby GOP Congressman or Congressman-elect, and ask any patriotic friend of theirs to do the same.]

An Open Letter to the Incoming Republican House Members of the 113^th Congress

Dear GOP House Members and Members-Elect -

Congratulations to you all for surviving the absurd calamity of November 6^th.  You need to know what's in store for you.

To put it bluntly, you have two years to live.  Politically live as the House Majority, that is.  You are going to be demonized and destroyed by the Chicago Gangsters who run the White House and the presstitutes of the CorruptMedia.  Your chances of retaining your majority in 2014 are 0%.

The question is:  what are you going to do with these two years?  Realize that the political outcome will be the same no matter what you do.  While many of you may individually survive and be reelected in 2014, collectively your majority will be gone and you'll all be just minority schmucks.

So if you plan to cringe, compromise, and cooperate with the gangsters just to be reelected as a minority schmuck, why not just quit now, resign and collect your pension - rather than continue a charade in order to keep your perks of power for a little while longer, and all that while you'll have to look into the mirror every morning and see a coward?

Why not, then, see someone of courage in that mirror instead?  There is a power that only you - a majority of members of the House - have that neither the Senate, the President nor any of his agencies, nor even the Supreme Court has.  If you choose to exercise it, you will be feared and respected, instead of being Obama's poodles. 

But far more importantly, you will have done your patriotic duty to protect your country from the lethal damage Obama is poised to inflict upon it.