Residents surround the compound where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was reported to have been killed in this ariel view in Abbottabad May 4, 2011. Bin Laden was unarmed when U.S. special forces shot and killed him, the White House said, as it tried to establish whether its ally Pakistan had helped the al Qaeda leader elude a worldwide manhunt. REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that Osama bin Laden was not armed when a Navy SEAL raiding party confronted him during an assault on his compound in Pakistan. (May 3)

The Associated press reported yesterday:

After two days of shifting accounts of the dramatic raid, Carney said he would no longer provide details of the 40-minute operation by the team of elite Navy SEALs. That left unresolved numerous mysteries, prominent among them an exact accounting of bin Laden’s demise. Officials have said he was unarmed but resisted when an unknown number of commandos burst into his room inside the high-security compound.

The officials who gave the latest details said a U.S. commando grabbed a woman who charged toward the SEALs inside the room. They said the raiders were concerned that she might be wearing a suicide vest.

Administration officials have said bin Laden’s body was identified by several means, including a DNA test. Members of Congress who received a briefing during the day said a sample from the body killed at the compound in Pakistan was compared to known DNA from bin Laden’s mother and three sons.

After two days of speculation about releasing the photographs, there was no detectable public debate in the U.S. about the merits of the raid itself against the man behind the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001.

Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress the operation was “entirely lawful and consistent with our values” and justified as “an action of national self-defense.” Noting that bin Laden had admitted his involvement in the events of nearly a decade ago, he said, “It’s lawful to target an enemy commander in the field.”

Holder also said the team that carried out the raid had been trained to take bin Laden alive if he was willing to surrender. “It was a kill-or-capture mission,” he said. “He made no attempt to surrender.”

Bin Laden had evaded capture for nearly a decade, and officials said he had currency as well as two telephone numbers sewn into his clothing when he was killed, suggesting he was prepared to leave his surroundings on a moment’s notice if he sensed danger.

Administration officials said the two dozen SEALs involved in the operation were back at their home base outside Virginia Beach, Va., and the extensive debriefing they underwent was complete. Saluted as heroes nationwide, they remained publicly unidentified because of security concerns.

In addition to bin Laden’s body, the SEALs helicoptered out of the compound with computer files, flash drives, DVDs and documents that intelligence officials have begun analyzing in hopes the information will help them degrade or destroy the network bin Laden left behind.

In New York on Thursday, Carney said, Obama will lay a wreath at the World Trade Center site and hold a private meeting with relatives of some of the victims of the attacks, in which jetliners hijacked by terrorists were flown into the side of first one tower, then the other.

The buildings collapsed within minutes, dooming office workers as well as rescuers who had run in hoping to save them.

A few days later, then-President George W. Bush stood amid the rubble and spoke through a bullhorn. When one worker yelled, “I can’t hear you,” the president responded, “I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

A decade — and long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan later — Obama said he had no intention of gloating.

Obama’s decision not to release any photographs was unlikely to be the final word, though.

Some members of Congress have been shown at least one photo of bin Laden, and others have asked to see it, an indication of the intense interest generated by the raid.

John Fund at Chamber Day, Part 1

He joined The Wall Street Journal as a deputy editorial features editor in 1984 and was a member of the editorial board from 1995 through 2001. The articles he has written have appeared in Esquire, Reader’s Digest, Reason, The New Republic, and National Review. He became an editorial page writer specializing in politics and government in October 1986 and was a member of the Journal’s editorial board from 1995 through 2001. Next month’s guest speaker will be Andrew Breitbart.

First, we got to hear from Dave Elswick of KARN   who came up with the idea of this luncheon, and then from Teresa Crossland of Americans for Prosperity. After listening to their inspiring short talks I had determined in my heart that I was going to get the word out about these luncheons to all my conservative friends who want to know what is going on politically in Washington and in our beloved Arkansas.

One subject that Fund brought up was the red tape that Arnold Schwarzenegger had to deal with in California. That brings me to the subject that I am going write  about today.

Yesterday on the Arkansas Times Blog, I wrote:

Mike Huckabee recently moved to Florida? Why? The answer is easy. Huckabee wants to avoid Arkansas’ high state income tax. Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times wants to call Huckabee a tax fugative, but who can blame him.

Liberals like Brantley and Ernie Dumas want to praise former Arkansas governor Dale Bumpers for raising the state income tax to 7%, but that is the reason our state has the highest state income tax in the area (all bordering states have either lower state income taxes or no state income tax).

Is it any suprise that during the last census that the seven states that do not have an income tax grew in population? Arkansas has suffered from bracket creep and in 1929 you had to make 5 times the average wage to pay any state income tax at all, but now over 66% of tax payers in Arkansas pay at least some of their income at the 7% level.

Check out my latest post that takes on Ernie Dumas and exposes him to the real data http://haltingarkansasliberalswithtruth.co…

Arkansas per capita income increased from 44 to 71 percent of the U.S. total between 1939 and 1971. However, we have just grown to 77 percent since 1981.

I go by the username of SalineRepublican and I got this response from “Couldn’tBeBetter“:

And Saline, we can all read about what great shape the Texas budget is in with their no income tax and low taxes. Plenty of money to fight those non-Glovbal Warning brush fires. But then again, their governator wants to be left alone except when he doesn’t want to be left alone. Maybe, Mexico will take them back for a token 25 cents and a future soccer player for a kicker for UAF.

This reminds of an article I recently read by John in the Wall Street Journal. In it he asserts: 

It wasn’t your usual legislative hearing. A group of largely Republican California lawmakers and Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom traveled here last week to hear from businesses that have left their state to set up shop in Texas.

“We came to learn why they would pick up their roots and move in order to grow their businesses,” says GOP Assemblyman Dan Logue, who organized the trip. “Why does Chief Executive magazine rate California the worst state for job and business growth and Texas the best state?”

The contrast is undeniable. Texas has added 165,000 jobs during the last three years while California has lost 1.2 million. California’s jobless rate is 12% compared to 8% in Texas.

“I don’t see this as a partisan issue,” Mr. Newsom told reporters before the group met with Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry. The former San Francisco mayor has many philosophical disagreements with Mr. Perry, but he admitted he was “sick and tired” of hearing about the governor’s success luring businesses to Texas.

State Assemblyman Dan Logue, R., and Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway, R., during a news conference on the Texas meeting.

Hours after the legislators met with Mr. Perry, another business, Fujitsu Frontech, announced that it is abandoning California. “It’s the 70th business to leave this year,” says California business relocation expert Joe Vranich. “That’s an average of 4.7 per week, up from 3.9 a week last year.” The Lone Star State was the top destination, with 14 of the 70 moving there.

Andy Puzder, the CEO of Hardee’s Restaurants, was one of many witnesses to bemoan California’s hostile regulatory climate. He said it takes six months to two years to secure permits to build a new Carl’s Jr. restaurant in the Golden State, versus the six weeks it takes in Texas. California is also one of only three states that demands overtime pay after an eight-hour day, rather than after a 40-hour week. Such rules wreak havoc on flexible work schedules based on actual need. If there’s a line out the door at a Carl’s Jr. while employees are seen resting, it’s because they aren’t allowed to help: Break time is mandatory.

“You can’t build in California, you can’t manage in California and you have to pay a big tax,” Mr. Puzder told the legislators. “In Texas, it’s the opposite—which is why we’re building 300 new stores there this year.”

Other states are even snatching away parts of California’s entertainment industry. The Milken Institute, based in Santa Monica, Calif., reports that 36,000 entertainment jobs have left the state since 1997. The new film “Battle: Los Angeles,” which is set in California, was filmed in Louisiana.

“The red tape is ridiculous,” says Mark Tolley, the managing partner of B. Knightly Homes, which relocated to Austin from Long Beach in 2005. “Regulators see developers as wearing a black hat and the environmental laws have run amok.”

“I’m a pro-jobs Democrat,” Mr. Newsom told me. “My party needs to get back into the business of jobs.” Mr. Newsom says he’s developing an economic development plan to present to Gov. Jerry Brown, who he says “gets it” on the need for business-friendly policies. Mr. Newsom told me that what impressed him most about Mr. Perry and the Texas legislators was their singular focus on job creation.

California, by contrast, seems to constantly lose focus. Several Democrats who agreed to go on the Texas trip were pressured by public-employee unions to drop out—and many did. And just as Texas business leaders were testifying about how the state’s tort reforms had improved job creation, word came of California’s latest priority: On April 14, the state senate passed a bill mandating that all public school children learn the history of disabled and gay Americans.

One speaker from California shook his head in wonder: “You can have the most liberated lifestyle on the planet, but if you can’t afford to put gas in your car or a roof over your head it’s somewhat limited.”

The most dramatic reform California could make would be to change its boom-and-bust tax system so it doesn’t depend on a small number of wealthy residents who can flee the state. The idea would be to broaden the income tax base and lower the state’s high rates. It works today in seven states ranging from Colorado to Massachusetts. Of course, the Lone Star State has no state income or capital gains tax at all.

“Texas’ economy is far less volatile due to its having neither a progressive income tax system nor a large tax burden,” concludes “Rich States, Poor States,” a study by the American Legislative Exchange Council. Less volatility also allows Texas to keep expenditures in check. While it shares with California the challenge of a huge budget deficit this year, it’s expected to close it without raising taxes. Texas’s overall spending burden remains below what it was in 1987—a remarkable feat.

When Jerry Brown ran for president in 1992, he understood the distorting nature of the tax code and proposed a flat tax with deductions only for rent, mortgage interest and charitable contributions. He called it “a silver bullet” for the economy. Mr. Brown has since abandoned that idea, grousing recently to a state legislator that “the flat tax cost me the New York Democratic primary.”

But if California continues its economic decline, something Texas-sized in its ambitions may be called for— whether it’s a moratorium on new business regulations or a restructuring of the state’s dysfunctional unemployment compensation or litigation. Nothing less is likely to stem the outflow of businesses and jobs from the Golden State.

The Los Angeles Times article, “Bin Laden’s wives are all alive; one may have identified him,” reported yesterday :

Osama bin Laden may be at the bottom of the ocean, but all of his wives are alive, and one of them may have identified him to the SEALs.

Time magazine reports that “a U.S. intelligence official says one of Bin Laden’s wives identified her husband by name as the SEALs closed in for the kill.”

It would be safe to assume that was a different wife from the one who purportedly was willing to take a bullet for Bin Laden.

It was reported Monday that one of Bin Laden’s wives was used as a human shield and died in the raid. According to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, the woman who was in the room with the Al Qaeda leader was one of Bin Laden’s four wives. He said she was shot but not killed, and she was not being used as a shield.

“In the room with Bin Laden, a woman — Bin Laden’s wife — rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden was then shot and killed,” Carney read Tuesday from a new account of the dramatic firefight that took place in Pakistan a few days ago…

“We will continue to gather and provide to you details as we get them and we’re able to release them,” Carney said at the news briefing.

Bin Laden’s wife wasn’t the only woman in the compound. Twenty-three children and nine women were in the three-story building at the time of the assault and were turned over to Pakistani authorities, said a U.S. official who requested anonymity to discuss an intelligence matter, the Associated Press reported.

http://bbcbreakingnews.co.cc/
Osama bin Laden is dead, Obama announcesOsama bin Laden, the mastermind behind al-Qaida, is dead, President Obama announces from the White House