What is Hamas doing?

Hamas isn't going to defeat Israel.

It isn't going to gain any territory. Israel isn't going to withdraw from Ashkelon or Sderot under a hail of rockets.

So if Hamas can't win, why is it fighting?

One reason is that Hamas has every reason to take heart from the responses it has received from Mr. Obama.

If you have ever been before a judge for any reason, did you think about whether the judge was appointed by a Democrat or a Republican?

Probably not. People expect judges, regardless of political leanings, to be fair and competent -- and for the most part, this expectation has been fulfilled in America, unlike many other places in the world.

The action by the Senate Democrats last week, though, to kill the long-standing agreement that required a 60 percent supermajority vote for the confirmation of a federal court judge (with the exception of the Supreme Court) and change to a simple majority vote causes many to fear the increased politicization of the federal judiciary.

The immediate cause of the Senate action in changing its rules appears to be the desire of the Obama administration to appoint three new federal judges to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. This court is often viewed as the most important appellate court, in part because many of the cases involving alleged federal government overreach go to that court.

That's why Obama wants to "pack" it with liberal judges.

Muamar Qadaffi has run Libya as an Islamic dictatorship since 1969.  The history of his oppression and sponsorship of terrorism is long.  Ronald Reagan called him "The Mad Dog of the Middle East."

It took George W. Bush to bring Qadaffi to heel.  After Bush chased Saddam Hussein out of Baghdad and into a spider hole, Qadaffi called up Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and told him he didn't want to end up like Saddam.

So Qadaffi came clean on his WMD program, the extent of which stunned the clueless CIA.  He invited international inspectors to Libya, where they removed several tons of chemical weaponry, and dismantled an active nuclear weapons program.

As a result, this past May 15, the State Department announced the US was restoring full diplomatic relations with Libya.  Hotels in Tripoli and Benghazi are full of US oil execs and other businessfolk making deals.  Yet Qadaffi remains a dictator and Libya the antithesis of a democracy.

Until this week.

Michelle Obama's Food Police are on the prowl: if you hear a knock on the door, hide the sugar bowl, the butter dish and the salt. Her campaign to force us all to eat a "low-fat" diet - called "My Plate" - is just getting started.  What's happening in Tennessee is a good example.

Her war on foods that are high in saturated fats, sugar and salt is all in the name of "protecting the children."  Yet there is a strong possibility that the "diabesity" epidemic she campaigns against has been caused largely by the very food police whom she champions.

So argues a devastating new book: The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz, an experienced journalist who spent eight years tracking down all the evidence for and against the advice to eat low-fat diets. She finds that it was based on flimsy evidence, supported by an intolerant consensus backed by vested interests and amplified by a docile press. And it made us fatter.

Low-fat became a craze. It still is: look at supermarket shelves.  Read Mrs. Obama's press releases.  But it's all a fraud.

"I wouldn't start here if I were you," is the punch line of an old Irish joke, which monetary scholar Kevin Dowd cites to illustrate the deeper and deeper hole the Federal Reserve is getting us into.

Mr. Dowd, in a paper delivered last week (11/14) at the Cato Institute's 31st annual Monetary Conference, concluded:

"The modern financial system has not only kicked away most of the constraints against excessive risk-taking, but positively incentivized systemic risk-taking in all manner of highly destructive ways . We have gone from a system that managed itself to one that requires management, but cannot be managed.

We have gone from a system that was guarded by market forces operating under the rule of law to one that requires human guardians instead -- but we have not solved the underlying problem of how to guard the guardians themselves."