With the straight talk to our Canadian ally.  Peaktalk, a Southwestern British Columbia blog by a Dutch-Canadian whose feed is on my Google personalized home page, writes about how Britain's minister of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs Kim Howells just thrashes NATO for not joining the Brits, the Canadians and the Americans in the actual fighting for Afghanistan's future.  The blog later goes on to thrash Europe for being ignorant of the threat.

Also, Minister of State Kim Howells in his speech said in part,

As part of the International Security Assistance Force – or ISAF – our countries have responsibilities for neighbouring provinces in the South of Afghanistan – the UK in Helmand province, Canada in Kandahar – two of the toughest places on the face of the Earth.

Rep. Jim McDermott was rebuked by the House ethics committee on Monday. It’s about time. The Seattle Times reports on the unethical former ranking ethics committee member… 

WASHINGTON — In an end-of-year effort to wipe longstanding cases off its agenda, the House ethics committee on Monday rebuked U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott for leaking an illegally taped phone call between Republican congressmen a decade ago.

The committee’s carefully worded report said that McDermott, D-Seattle, did not violate congressional rules of conduct, which state that a member must behave “in a manner which shall reflect creditably on the House of Representatives.”

However, the 25-page report said McDermott’s actions were “inconsistent with the spirit of the applicable rules and represented a failure on his part to meet his obligations” as the ranking member of the ethics committee at the time.

“Representative McDermott’s secretive disclosures to the news media … risked undermining the ethics process,” the report said.

In a statement, McDermott said, “I am pleased with the conclusion” of the panel. A spokesman for ethics committee chairman Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Pasco, didn’t return telephone calls seeking comment.

The news has been hopping all over this, both locally and nationally, and the outrage has been huge.  It is no surprise they reversed their decision and are reinstalling the trees.  More on that in a moment.

The back story:  A few months ago a Sea-Tac Employee asked for permission to add a Menorah to a Christmas tree display.  He was initially granted permission, but after a second look it was denied.  The Port of Seattle determined that adding a religious icon to the Christmas display, which was primarily intended to be secular would violate the law, as Sea-Tac is technically a government facility.  The Employee consulted his Rabbi who engaged in a discussion with the Port of Seattle official.

Finally after getting nowhere, the Rabbi consulted an attorney who presented the POS the threat of a lawsuit, if they did not comply.