fire fallon, dhs crimes, pandemic drills & hagee

bush may fire fallon for someone more ‘pliable’
from thinkprogress: Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon “one of the best strategic thinkers in uniform today.” Fallon opposed the “surge” in Iraq and has consistently battled the Bush administration to avoid a confrontation with Iran, calling officials’ war-mongering “not helpful.” Privately, he has vowed that an attack on Iran “will not happen on my watch.”

crimes by homeland security agents stir whistleblowers' alert
from miami herald: Bribery. Drug trafficking. Migrant smuggling. US Customs and Border Protection is supposed to stop these types of crimes. Instead, so many of its officers have been charged with committing those crimes themselves that their boss in Washington recently issued an alert about the "disturbing events" and the "increase in the number of employee arrests." Thomas S. Winkowski, assistant commissioner of field operations, wrote a memo to more than 20,000 officers nationwide noting that employees must behave professionally at all times - even when not on the job. "It is our responsibility to uphold the laws, not break the law," Winkowski wrote in the Nov. 16 memo obtained by The Miami Herald.

rhode island natl guard holds surprise training drill
from ap: The Rhode Island National Guard held a surprise training drill to test how it would respond to quick activation by the governor in an emergency. More than 85 members of the Army and Air National Guard were awakened at about 4 a.m. yesterday and ordered to report to Camp Fogarty in East Greenwich and Quonset Air National Guard Base in North Kingston. The training exercise, "Operation Quick Resolve," was designed to test the Guard's ability to quickly alert, mobilize and deploy troops. In this case, the scenario was a massive civil disturbance during a pandemic flu scare. Among the strategies they practiced: using less-than-lethal tactics in crowd control.

beck & hagee: ‘is obama the antichrist?’

from thinkprogress: Today on his CNN Headline News show, Glenn Beck asked Pastor John Hagee whether Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is the embodiment of evil: "There are people - they say this about Bill Clinton - he might be the anti-Christ. Odds that Barack Obama is the Antichrist?" In 2006, Beck also called Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) the anti-Christ, stating, “I think we may have found our Antichrist and our next president.”