For all his poise, Barack Obama comes across as a 14-year-old proponent of world government when he discusses foreign policy. Now, Sen. Obama has announced--again--that as president he would convene a meeting of the Muslim minds to "bridge the gap" between West and Islam.

He doesn't have to wait to become president to attend such a meeting. Iran's ambassador to the Netherlands has just announced he is inviting all of the Muslim ambassadors to The Netherlands to come together to "discuss" Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders' (newest member of my anti-jihad p ...

So, finally, CNN turns to foreign policy in last night's GOP presidential debate, the last such debate before Super Tuesday:

ANDERSON COOPER: Let's talk about foreign policy. You're all going to be able to weigh in on the question of Iraq.

(APPLAUSE)

Let's go right now to Janet for the first question.

JANET HOOK: Yes. I'd like to start with Governor Romney....

And what did she ask? Did she probe Gov. Romney about whether he is enthusiastic about the Bush administration's policy of democratizating Iraq and the wider Islamic world as a matter of US national security? Does he believe Islamic culture is receptive to Western-style liberty? How about John McCain? Could he answer that as well? And here's a follow-up: Describe a post-surge Iraq. Does Sentaor McCain believe American blood and treasure is best spent stabilizing just another Shiite majority, ...

Life in secular Egypt, which, not incidentally, receives billions of dollars in US aid:

From a Washington Times news brief:

EGYPT

Court rejects Christian convert

CAIRO — A Cairo court yesterday rejected a request by a Christian convert from Islam to have his new religion written on his identity card, a judicial source tole Agence France-Presse.

The Court of Administrative Justice said Mohammed Higazi, 25, had not followed the proper legal procedures and that in any case you cannot convert "to an older religion."

Um, why not?

"Monotheistic religions were sent by God in chronological order. ... As a result, it is unusual to go from the la ...

Hugh Hewitt runs the numbers are determines McCain is not inevitable (phew). 

Before viewing the Geert Wilders interview linked below, I had neither seen nor read much from the Dutch parliamentarian. The interview reveals him to be serious, certainly forthright, and articulately non-apologetic in his defense of Dutch culture and identity (and by extension Western culture and identity) against the Islamization process well underway in his country and the wider West.

Fox interviewer Greg Palkot, on the other hand, comes across as what you might call the Nolo Contendere Westerner whose idea of coexistence is based on self-censorship: never, ever mentioning what makes Islam in Wilders’ choice of English “retarded,” a belief system that fails to accept, let alone uphold, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, equality before the law, and other basic precepts of Western-style liberty. Palkot practically begs Wilders&rsquo ...

As confused as the state of American conservatism seems, particularly as wrangled over in today's dead-heat contest between Mitt Romney and John McCain in Florida, it's Reagan-clarity itself next to what passes for the Tory Party in Great Britain.

"Tory MPs back Hillary Clinton for president" reports the Sunday Telegraph.

Tory MPs are forging links with Hillary Clinton as the traditional alliance between the Conservatives and the Republican Party shows signs of increasing strain.

One Conservative MP is so convinced by the Democratic senator and wife of former president Bill Clinton that he travelled to the US this month to work on her campaign.

Simon Burns, the MP for West Ch ...

I don't think Fox's Greg Palkot will ever be the same after this fascinating, extended interview with Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders.

It seems that Mark Steyn is still weighing his words. Or is he? At this point, it’s hard to tell. Today at The Corner, he draws on British Lefty attacks on himself as “one response” to my contention that in pointing to “Islamism” and not to Islam for the explanation of sundry incursions of jihad and sharia into the West, Western thinkers (Mark included) are in effect shielding Islam from urgently needed scrutiny and analysis.

Actually, that’s not exactly how Mark puts it. He invokes British Lefty attacks as a reponse not to my argument but to what he calls my portrayal of him as a—and here he strings together a slew of words adding up to a personal attack (on himself).
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After Claudia Rosett lobbed a soaring journalistic salvo at the Pentagon last week in the form of an explosive piece on the distinctly fishy resume and record of Hesham Islam--the "personal close confidante" of Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England who, Bill Gertz has reported is behind the termination of Stephen Coughlin--it was only natural to wonder what would happen next. Would Islam be given the gate? (Dream on.) Would Congress get involved? (Unclear.) Would anyone do anything? (Apparently not.)

Well, kind of like the Kremlin of old, the Pentagon works in inscrutable ways. Today, Claudia posted an incremental, if bizarre

Over at The Corner, Mark Steyn replies to my post below, which discusses the use of words like "Islamism" and "Islamofascism," which, I maintain, effectively shields or obscures the tenets of Islam itself in considering what precisely drives jihad terror and, to me, the greater threat of creeping sharia.

Mark writes:

I do use what she regards as the weasel word "Islamism", but I generally reserve it for a particular strand of hyper-Islam. Its solitary appearance in my column was in reference to a speech by Osama bin Laden. Islam itself is a profound challenge to any free society, for reasons I explain in my book, an ...