GOP Agrees on One Thing About Afghan War: Obama’s Wrong

“I don’t like the drift of the Republican Party toward what appears to be a retreat or a move more towards isolationism.”

– Former Minnesota Gov. and Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty in an interview with Politico.

President Obama will announce tonight a “significant” withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan despite pleas from the Pentagon to stay the course, but he will still be more of an Afghan hawk than most of the Republicans looking to replace him.

As Republicans move away from the international interventionism of the post-9/11 era, Obama faces less risk of being accused of pacifism and more danger of being branded as playing policeman to the world at a time of ongoing domestic distress.

When the 2008 Republican presidential nominee rose in the Senate Wednesday to rebuke Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia for an “isolationist, withdrawal, lack of knowledge of history attitude” about Afghanistan, John McCain may have been talking to the members of his own party too.

Of the entire Republican field, only former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is expressing the kind of “no retreat” attitude on U.S. interventions in the Muslim world that McCain made a centerpiece of his second presidential run and that President George W. Bush championed in his 2004 re-election campaign.

On the moderate side of the GOP, frontrunner Mitt Romney has called for withdrawal from Afghanistan as circumstances allow and Jon Huntsman actually made the oxymoronic-sounding “aggressive drawdown” part of his Tuesday campaign rollout.

But among the conservatives in the field, like Reps. Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann, there is even less support. While they, like Huntsman, bemoan the high cost of the war, they also suggest that the ongoing American presence in Afghanistan is counterproductive.

This presents a serious challenge to the interventionists across the political spectrum.

Unless the Republican presidential candidates are threatening to make Obama pay some political price for not maintaining the 100,000-troop level in Afghanistan (an increase of almost 70,000 troops since taking office), hawks will have far less leverage is seeking to maintain the status quo.

The greater political risk for Obama when he takes the podium for a 10-minute speech on his Afghan plan is that he will be accused of maintaining an unaffordable, nation-building effort in that woe-begetting country. It’s a real danger for Obama given public exhaustion with that war and a fatigue with the expensive, Clintonian “smart power” Obama has employed around the globe.

It’s hard for the hawks to drive the Republican field back into a pro-Afghan war stance because Obama has been such an interventionist himself. Aside from the two troop surges in Afghanistan, Obama has hugely escalated the covert war in Pakistan and embroiled the U.S. in a stalemated civil war in Libya.

With news that al Qaeda has sprung dozens of baddies from prison in Yemen, itself rent by civil war, the chances for a growing American commitment there are growing too.

When Obama took office, hawks feared that he would plunge America into an isolationist foreign policy, but he has instead expanded the nation’s military commitments far beyond those he inherited from George W. Bush.

Republicans generally don’t mind using force but have long had misgivings about long-term military commitments and “foreign entanglements.”

The Bush Doctrine’s emphasis on standing up stable democracies in the Muslim world came after the initial retributive and preemptive strikes on Afghanistan and Iraq. For Obama, nation building has been more of an end unto itself than a necessary consequence of initial military actions.

The risk for Obama is that he is increasingly seen as pursuing the kind of expensive, vague, internationalist goals that American voters so dislike. Remember the success with which Bush himself hit Al Gore in 2000 for the Clinton administration’s U.N.-sponsored interventions of the 1990s.

If Obama were talking about “winning” or “victory” he might find Republicans rallying to the cause, but given the fuzzy objectives he has laid out for the use of force in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and elsewhere, conservatives feel uncomfortable continuing to empower him with their support.

Obama tonight will try to preserve his activist, internationalist foreign policy by placating his own political base that resents his turn toward militarism after nominating him, in part, for his opposition to the Iraq war. If Obama wants to maintain his 70,000-troop army in Afghanistan until 2014, he will have to convince the left and skeptical center than the war is ending… eventually.

The twist is that in starting this very gradual retreat he all but guarantees that Republicans will increasingly turn against the war.

There is political opportunity for Pawlenty or another Republican in attacking Obama for being a defeatist in Afghanistan, but even that is unlikely to revive conservative support for the war at this critical juncture.

Europeans, Arabs Sour on Libya War After Civilian Deaths

“When I see children being killed, I must have misgivings. That’s why I warned about the risk of civilian casualties. You can’t have a decisive ending. Now is the time to do whatever we can to reach a political solution.”

– Arab League President Amr Moussa to The Guardian (UK) urging a ceasefire in the Libyan civil war.

After a weekend of errant NATO air strikes killed rebel fighters and Libyan civilians the Italian government is calling for an immediate end to hostilities in the Libyan civil war and the Arab League now wants a cease fire.

This proves problematic in Washington where the Obama administration is fighting to preserve U.S. involvement in the conflict.

The White House cites the sanctioning of the war by the Arab League as part of the reason that congressional authorization for U.S. involvement is unnecessary and points to the need to stand by our European allies as a rationale for the continuing U.S. commitment there.

The Italians have never been the strongest supporters of the Libyan intervention, but with the British and the French growing increasingly frank about their inability to prosecute the war it looks like the rest of NATO might lose heart before America would have the chance to abandon the Europeans.

That European disheartening will speed up as Arabs continue to decry the war and demand some kind of negotiated truce between the Eastern and Western tribes. The fear of terrorist reprisals for more civilian casualties will push NATO nations toward the exits.

The Chinese and Russians have now said they can do business with both sides in the war and the Euros may follow suit. The two nations that would emerge would be a motley pair of twins. In the east, Islamists in the new government would find fast friends in the radicalizing Egyptians next door. In the west, the Qaddafi clan would, with the help of other allied African despots, plot its reprisals against their cousins to the east and the Westerners who helped them break away.

With some 50,000 troops from other NATO countries providing non-violent (except for the remaining Brits) support in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is keen to help. But having declined to get Congressional approval, the president can hardly now deploy the requisite force needed to crush the western tribes.

But once Obama begins his own gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan, he may be unable to convince the increasingly impoverished, war-weary Europeans to provide a garrison force that would allow the president to show substantial troop reductions before the 2012 election without risking a humiliating collapse of the government Americans have propped up since 2002.

Congress is trying to rouse itself to the issue, but leaders find few good options.

It is unlikely that a pro-war resolution offered by Sens. John McCain and John Kerry could pass in the House. It’s just as unlikely that a House resolution de-funding the war could pass in the Senate. It’s another stalemate.

That helps Obama in the short term because Congressional inaction buys time for the air campaign against the western tribes. It looks increasingly likely that by the time Congress ever gets around to expressing its will on the war that the conflict will have moved into a new phase whether through the killing of Col. Muammar al Qaddafi and his family or the collapse of NATO support and international tolerance for Western involvement.

And whatever happens in Libya, Obama will have struck a serious blow on behalf of presidential power by defeating the War Powers Resolution that has bound all of his predecessors since Richard Nixon.

And Now, A Word From Charles

“I think the task the president has in the speech is to reassure the left among the Democrats and some of the concerned Republicans who want to pull out that we are in fact getting out, while at the same time reassuring our allies and particularly the Afghan peasantry that we are not getting out. That is a contradiction he has had since the December 1, 2009 speech at West Point where he announced the surge and the next sentence announced we’re getting out in July of this year.

And I think it is a problem that the president cannot solve. He has sent 30,000 additional Americans in harm’s way, some of who will not return, in a war to which he shows remarkably little personal commitment. I think that’s his problem.”

– Charles Krauthammer on “Special Report with Bret Baier.”

AP

This undated handout photo provided by Define American shows Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

WASHINGTON — A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covered presidential politics and the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings for The Washington Post is going on network television to announce he is an illegal immigrant. 

Jose Antonio Vargas tells ABC News in interviews airing Thursday and Friday that he is outing himself as one of millions of illegal U.S. immigrants after living with the secret for years. He also told his story in a New York Times Magazine essay published online Wednesday. 

“I’m done running. I’m exhausted,” Vargas wrote. “I don’t want that life anymore.” 

He referred a request for comment to his public relations team, which did not immediately make him available Wednesday. 

He said in the interviews with ABC that he wants to push Congress to pass a bill called the DREAM Act that would allow people like himself who came to this country as children to become citizens. 

When Vargas was 12 and living in the Philippines, his mother took him to the airport and sent him to California to live with his grandparents, he said. He didn’t know about his citizenship status until four years later, when he applied for a driver’s permit and handed a clerk his green card. 

“This is fake,” a Department of Motor Vehicles clerk said, according to Vargas’ account. “Don’t come back here again.” 

Vargas confronted his grandfather, who acknowledged he purchased the green card and other fake documents. 

“I remember the very first instinct was, OK, that’s it, get rid of the accent,” Vargas told ABC. “Because I just thought to myself, you know, I couldn’t give anybody any reason to ever doubt that I’m an American.” 

He convinced himself that if he worked hard enough and achieved enough, he would be rewarded with citizenship, Vargas wrote in the magazine piece. 

His grandfather imagined the fake documents would help Vargas get low-wage jobs. College seemed out of reach, until Vargas told Mountain View High School Principal Pat Hyland and school district Superintendent Rich Fisher about his problem. They became mentors and surrogate parents, eventually finding a scholarship fund for high-achieving students that allowed him to attend San Francisco State University. 

Vargas was hired for internships at The San Francisco Chronicle and the Philadelphia Daily News. He was denied an internship at The Seattle Times because he didn’t have all the documents they required. But he kept applying and got an offer from The Washington Post. 

The newspaper required a driver’s license, so Vargas said his network of mentors helped him get one from Oregon, which has less stringent requirements than some other states. 

Once hired full-time at the Post, he used the fake license to cover Washington events, including a state dinner at the White House, Vargas recalled. 

He wrote that he was nearly paralyzed with anxiety that his secret would be found out at the Post. He tried to avoid reporting on immigration policy, but at times, it was impossible. At one point, he wrote about then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s position on driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. 

Vargas eventually told his mentor, Peter Perl, now the newspaper’s training director. Perl told him that once he had accomplished more, they would tell then-Editor Leonard Downie Jr. and Post Chairman Don Graham together. They kept the secret until Vargas left the paper. 

On Wednesday, Washington Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti strongly condemned their actions. 

“What Jose did was wrong. What Peter did was wrong,” Coratti said, declining to comment further on personnel matters. “We are also reviewing our internal procedures, and we believe this was an isolated incident of deception.” 

An e-mail seeking comment was sent to Perl. 

Vargas shared a Pulitzer Prize for the Post’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. A 2006 series he wrote on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Washington inspired a documentary film. Last year, he wrote a profile of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for The New Yorker. 

Most recently, he was a senior contributing editor at Huffington Post. He said he left after less than a year and was worried professionally about a looming deadline: the expiration of his 8-year-old Oregon driver’s license. 

Just before he turned 30 this year, Vargas said he obtained a Washington state driver’s license, which would have given him a five-year reprieve — and meant five more years of lying. He said he couldn’t deal with that. 

On Wednesday, Vargas launched a campaign called Define American to use stories of immigrants like himself with a goal to “elevate the national discourse” with an honest dialogue about immigration. His high school principal and superintendent have signed on as board members.

AP/Leesburg Police Department

This undated image released by the Leesburg, (Va.) Police Department shows Yonathan Melaku, 22, of Alexandria, Va., after his May 2011 arrest in Loudoun County, Va., charged with four counts of grand larceny. Melaku, a Marine Corps reservist is in custody after authorities detained him in Arlington National Cemetery after closing in the early morning of Friday, June 17, 2011, with a backpack containing suspicious items.

The case had apparently gone cold. But after several months of no progress, federal authorities have now zeroed in on a suspect in last year’s shootings at several military sites around the nation’s capital. Their suspect: the 22-year-old Marine reservist arrested Friday after causing a terror scare near the Pentagon.

Ballistics obtained at the suspect’s home have been linked to evidence found at the scenes of the 2010 shootings, including the Marine Corps Museum in Triangle, Va., a vacant Marine recruiting station in Chantilly, Va., and the Pentagon itself, Fox News has learned.

Authorities are now trying to track down a vehicle once owned by the suspect, Yonathan Melaku of Alexandria, Va., who has since sold the vehicle.

Melaku was arrested early Friday morning at Arlington National Cemetery when the site was closed. He was carrying a backpack with what authorities initially thought might be explosives, and they found a notebook containing words and phrases such as “Taliban,” “Al Qaeda,” “defeated coalition forces,” and “mujahedeen.” The discoveries caused “concerns about the public’s safety,” the FBI said at the time, and shut down major highways for much of Friday.

In the hours after Melaku’s arrest Friday, FBI agents swarmed his home in Alexandria and interviewed neighbors.

Asked to confirm that evidence found in Melaku has been linked to last year’s shootings, an FBI spokeswoman declined comment, citing “an ongoing investigation.”

At a press conference in Washington in October, in the midst of the investigation into the shootings, a top FBI official said authorities believed the person responsible “has a grievance surrounding the U.S. Marine Corps.”

“It may be that he feels he has been wronged by the Corps in his professional and or personal life,” said FBI Acting Assistant Director John Perren, whose Washington Field Office has been leading the FBI investigation. “The subject of his grievance does appear to be the institution of the United States Marine Corps and not the individual men and women Marines for whom he may feel a great deal of respect, admiration and even loyalty.”

Perren said authorities “do not believe it is his intention to harm innocent citizens or Marines,” adding that the suspect “has attempted to avoid casualties by acting during the nighttime and non-business hours.” In fact, no one was injured in any of the shootings.

Still, Perren said, “Acting out in this way however can lead to disastrous and tragic consequences that we all wish to avoid.”

The first bullet holes were found Oct. 17, when $20,000 worth of windows and glass was shattered at the Marine Corps Museum. Two day later, six shots were fired into the south side of the Pentagon, which will be serving as a staging area for runners and others during the Marine Corps Marathon. The suspect then struck the recruiting center. Later in October, shots were fired again at the museum, apparently from the side of the building facing Interstate 95.

The shootings all occurred within 40 miles of each other in northern Virginia.

According to the FBI, Melaku joined the Marine Corps Reserve on Sept. 4, 2007, and he is currently listed as a motor vehicle operator with the Marine Corps reserves. He has previously been awarded the National Defense Service Medal and the Selected Marine Corps Reserve Medal. He has not been deployed overseas.

Members of the U.S. military reportedly are taking more medication than ever, and lawmakers want the Pentagon to do a better job of tracking prescriptions the military hands out. 

According to The Daily, a House Appropriations Committee report last week called on the Defense Department to provide information on “the required steps and potential obstacles toward electronic transmission of prescription drug data” within two months of the budget’s approval. 

According to the article, military spending has skyrocketed over the past decade on prescription drugs ranging from antidepressants to antipsychotics. Spending on the latter reportedly reached $16 million in 2009. 

One 2010 Army study showed 14 percent of soldiers were prescribed an opiate painkiller — mostly the addictive drug known as OxyContin. 

The Daily reported that 17 percent of active-duty troops are taking antidepressants, while as many as 35 percent of wounded soldiers are addicted to some form of drug while awaiting medical discharge.

The NASA scientist who once claimed the Bush administration tried to “silence” his global warming claims is now accused of receiving more than $1.2 million from the very environmental organizations whose agenda he advocated.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., a group claims NASA is withholding documents that show James Hansen failed to comply with ethics rules and financial disclosures regarding substantial compensation he earned outside his $180,000 taxpayer-paid position as director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

“Hansen’s office appears to be somewhat of a rogue operation. It’s clearly a taxpayer-funded global warming advocacy organization,” said Chris Horner, a co-founder of The American Tradition Institute, which filed the lawsuit. “The real issue here is, has Hansen been asking NASA in writing, in advance, for permission for these outside activities? We have reason to believe that has not been occurring.”

The lawsuit claims Hansen privately profited from his public job in violation of federal ethics rules, and NASA allowed him to do it because of his influence in the media and celebrity status among environmental groups, which rewarded him handsomely the last four years.

Gifts, speaking fees, prizes and consulting compensation include:

– A shared $1 million prize from the Dan David Foundation for his “profound contribution to humanity.” Hansen’s cut ranged from $333,000 to $500,000, Horner said, adding that the precise amount is not known because Hansen’s publicly available financial disclosure form only shows the prize was “an amount in excess of $5,000.”

– The 2010 Blue Planet prize worth $550,000 from the Asahi Glass Foundation, which recognizes efforts to solve environmental issues.

– The Sophie Prize for his “political activism,” worth $100,000. The Sophie Prize is meant to “inspire people working towards a sustainable future.”

– Speaking fees totaling $48,164 from a range of mostly environmental organizations.

– A $15,000 participation fee, waived by the W.J. Clinton Foundation for its 2009 Waterkeeper Conference.

– $720,000 in legal advice and media consulting services provided by The George Soros Open Society Institute. Hansen said he did not take “direct” support from Soros but accepted “pro bono legal advice.”

Hansen did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

Federal rules prohibit government employees from receiving certain types of income outside their job. Employees are required to file Form 17-60 in writing before any outside activity. And annually, they’re required to submit Form SF 278, after receiving outside compensation.

The American Tradition Institute filed a Freedom of Information Act request for those two documents for Hansen. The lawsuit claims NASA has “repeatedly and unlawfully refused to produced the requested materials.”

“Should the taxpayer know what’s going on? Should, as FOIA intends, NASA disclose documents to shed light on its operations and its compliance within the law? We say yes. The law says yes. NASA says no,” Horner said.

Mark Hess, chief of communications for the Goddard Space Center, sent Fox News NASA’s response to Horner’s FOIA request. It said in many cases the documents Horner requested did not exist. Horner claims they should, if Hansen was complying with the law.

AP

John and Patrice Tierney

Rep. John Tierney is hosting a fundraiser Friday night on “Women Taking the Lead,” but don’t expect his wife — listed on the invitation — to attend since she’s under house arrest.

The Massachusetts Democrat listed his wife Patrice as part of the host committee for the $100-a-plate fundraiser, the Boston Herald reported Wednesday, but Mrs. Tierney won’t be there because she’s got to stay home until August, when the sentence is lifted on her conviction for aiding and abetting her brother, Robert Eremian, in filing false tax returns. Eremian is currently a fugitive.

“Mrs. Tierney is definitely not attending the event,” Tierney spokeswoman Jennifer Flagg told the newspaper. ”She wouldn’t do anything to step out of the terms of her probation.”

Patrice Tierney spent a month in jail and was released in March, at which time she was put on supervised probation, the first five months at home. She reportedly does not wear a GPS bracelet.

Click here for more of the story from The Boston Herald.

The Federal Reserve acknowledged Wednesday that the economy is growing more slowly than it expected. But it said it will complete its $600 billion Treasury bond buying program by June 30 as planned and announced no further efforts to boost the economy.

Ending a two-day meeting, the Fed repeated a pledge to keep interest rates at record lows near zero for “an extended period,” a promise it’s made for more than two years.

Fed officials said in a statement that they think the main causes of the economy’s slowdown, such as high gas prices and supply disruptions from Japan’s disasters, are temporary. Once those problems subside, Fed officials said the economy should rebound.

Still, the statement stood in contrast to the Fed’s more upbeat view when officials last met eight weeks ago. At that time, the central bank said the job market was gradually improving.

The new statement acknowledged the slowdown that’s occurred over the past two months. The economy added just 54,000 jobs in May, far fewer than in the previous two months. Consumer spending has weakened, too.

The Fed said it would keep its holdings of Treasury bonds at current levels. That policy is intended to keep consumer and business loan rates at low levels to stimulate spending.

Though the central bank noted that inflation has risen, it expects those pressures to be temporary as well.

The Fed announcement had little effect on the stock and bond markets. The Dow Jones industrial average was down slightly before and after the Fed issued its statement at mid-day.

“The markets got exactly what they had been expecting,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at the Martin Smith School of Business at California State University. “The fact that we did not have any surprises is comforting.”

Bernanke and his colleagues are trying to keep a fragile economy on track two years after the Great Recession officially ended. A spike in gasoline prices earlier this year made consumers and businesses more cautious about spending. Consumer spending drives about 70 percent of the economy.

The economy grew at an annual rate of only 1.8 percent in the first three months of the year. It isn’t expected to be much higher in the current quarter.

Beyond high gas prices and supply disruptions caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the Fed is now facing a new problem: renewed jitters that a debt crisis in Greece could spread to other heavily indebted European nations and send shockwaves through global financial markets.

The Fed has kept rates at ultra-low levels since December 2008. Once the Fed decides to abandon the “extended period” language, it would be viewed as a signal that it is getting ready to reverse course and start boosting interest rates. Many private economists think it will be another full year before the economy has recovered enough for the Fed to actually start raising interest rates.

The Fed is also winding down its Treasury bond-buying program. Supporters say the bond purchases have worked, in part by keeping rates low and encouraging spending. Low long-term rates are vital for consumers buying homes and cars and for companies making investments.

They also argue that those lower rates fueled a stock rally. When Bernanke outlined plans for the bond-buying program in late August, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index was down 6 percent for the year. Eight months later, the S&P 500 was up 28 percent. Lower rates made stocks more attractive to investors than bonds, whose yields were falling.

Falling bond yields have also helped keep mortgage rates near record lows. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage has stayed below 5 percent for all but two weeks this year and was 4.5 percent last week. Still, low rates have done little to boost home sales, which fell in May to the lowest level since November.

Critics, including some Fed officials, saw things differently. They warned that by pumping so much money into the economy, the Fed increased the risks of high inflation later.

Setting tax rates is always a tricky political proposition, but with the economy stalled and government debts continuing to mount, Congress is embroiled in a brutal battle over federal taxes. 

While conservatives demand low rates to encourage growth, liberals say that it is time for upper income earners to start paying more in order to finance stimulus spending and debt reduction. Many on both sides say the time has come to simplify the tax code. 

And as Republicans and Democrats wrangle over President Obama’s requested increase to the government’s $14.3 trillion borrowing limit, everything is on the table. The result of the current tax debate could determine the trajectory of the currently weak recovery. 

“In the short run, if we were to lower taxes, that would provide some stimulus to demand, it would put more money in people’s pockets and give them more money to spend,” economist Martin Bailey of the liberal Brookings Institution told Fox News. “We have these huge budget deficits. So while on the one hand you might be contributing positively to demand, on the other hand, you’re contributing more to this problem or as much to this problem of the big deficit. “ 

In contrast, Veronique de Rugy of the conservative Mercatus Center at George Mason University argues that higher taxes and a redistributive approach is counter-productive. 

“Government cannot create wealth,” de Rugy said. “We’ve come out of three years where a government has told us that by spending massive amounts, it could actually create jobs, enhance, and create wealth, and we’ve seen that it hasn’t worked.” 

History is full of examples that support both views. The Reagan years saw tax cuts and a growing economy. The Clinton years saw tax hikes and a growing economy. 

But most economists are careful not to confuse correlation with causation. The economy, in sum, is the culmination of literally trillions of exchanges of goods, services and transactions occurring every day. Economists say no one person, no president, and no economist can predict with certainty what changes tax policy may cause. Predictions, they say, are frequently wrong. 

Indeed, economist Mark Robyn of the non-partisan Tax Foundation admits, “The science of economics is looking at unintended consequences.” 

If that is the case, one cautionary tale about raising taxes, especially on one targeted segment of the population, comes from the early 1990′s. 

In 1990, Congress passed a tax on luxury goods. It was seen as a way to raise revenue by targeting those people who could most afford it. But as a result of the tax on luxury goods, by 1991, car importers like BMW and Mercedes lost 20 percent of market share in the U.S. And the pleasure boat industry laid-off 19,000 craftsmen, carpenters and other blue-collar workers. It was, as common sense would dictate, the less wealthy who ended up paying the ultimate price for wealthy citizens decision not to spend as freely as they might otherwise have. 

Taxing the wealthy is on the table once again. Obama has made the case for it many times, including at a major address at George Washington University on April 14th of this year. 

“In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of all working Americans actually declined,” he said. “The top 1 percent saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each. And that’s who needs to pay less taxes?” 

What the president did not say in that address was that while the wealthy may be getting more so, they’re also shouldering a larger share of the tax burden. 

According to the IRS, the top 1 percent of income earners paid 38 percent of all federal income taxes in 2008, while the bottom half paid only 3 percent. Forty-nine percent of U.S. households paid no federal income tax at all.

This is the latest piece in Fox News’ series “10 Ways to Save the Economy.”

A 1040 IRS income tax form.

FNC

FILE: Sarah Palin launched the “One Nation” bus tour on May 29, fueling speculation of a possible presidential bid.

Sarah Palin on Wednesday denied reports that her “One Nation” bus tour is winding down. It is on hold while she returns to Alaska for jury duty, she said, but she is “looking forward to hitting the open road again.” 

The former Alaska governor responded to the reports on her Facebook page, saying the next leg of the tour will happen “when the time comes” but that nobody should “jump to conclusions.” 

“Imagine our surprise when reading media reports today that the ‘One Nation Tour’ has been cancelled. Why didn’t anyone tell me? Oh, wait, that’s because it hasn’t been cancelled,” she wrote. 

Palin said the “coming weeks are tight because civic duty calls (like most everyone else, even former governors get called up for jury duty) and I look forward to doing my part just like every other Alaskan.” 

Reports about the tour had surfaced on RealClearPolitics and elsewhere, fueled in part by the fact Palin had not offered any reports about the tour on her SarahPAC website, where she had been tracking the destinations, since June 8. Palin started the tour on May 29.

According to RealClearPolitics, she also has not “reconnected” with key early-state personalities like Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. 

But Palin has also shot down reports that an announcement of her political plans was imminent. 

Though Palin may disappoint those who want her to run for the presidency, the 2008 vice presidential candidate is not entirely out of the limelight. 

“The Undefeated,” a documentary about Palin’s career in Alaska politics, is set for national release on July 15. RCP notes that Palin’s PAC was offering an early-release DVD of the film for a $100 or more donation to SarahPAC.

Lastly, as RCP notes, Palin never said she was on the verge of an announcement, and as a notoriously difficult person to predict, she may just like the curious to remain that way.

Click to read the RCP story.

The following are President Obama’s prepared remarks as released by the White House:

Good evening. Nearly ten years ago, America suffered the worst attack on our shores since Pearl Harbor. This mass murder was planned by Usama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network in Afghanistan, and signaled a new threat to our security – one in which the targets were no longer soldiers on a battlefield, but innocent men, women and children going about their daily lives.

In the days that followed, our nation was united as we struck at Al Qaeda and routed the Taliban in Afghanistan. Then, our focus shifted. A second war was launched in Iraq, and we spent enormous blood and treasure to support a new government there. By the time I took office, the war in Afghanistan had entered its seventh year. But Al Qaeda’s leaders had escaped into Pakistan and were plotting new attacks, while the Taliban had regrouped and gone on the offensive. Without a new strategy and decisive action, our military commanders warned that we could face a resurgent Al Qaeda, and a Taliban taking over large parts of Afghanistan.

For this reason, in one of the most difficult decisions that I’ve made as President, I ordered an additional 30,000 American troops into Afghanistan. When I announced this surge at West Point, we set clear objectives: to refocus on Al Qaeda; reverse the Taliban’s momentum; and train Afghan Security Forces to defend their own country. I also made it clear that our commitment would not be open-ended, and that we would begin to drawdown our forces this July.

Tonight, I can tell you that we are fulfilling that commitment. Thanks to our men and women in uniform, our civilian personnel, and our many coalition partners, we are meeting our goals. As a result, starting next month, we will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer, fully recovering the surge I announced at West Point. After this initial reduction, our troops will continue coming home at a steady pace as Afghan Security forces move into the lead. Our mission will change from combat to support. By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security.

We are starting this drawdown from a position of strength. Al Qaeda is under more pressure than at any time since 9/11. Together with the Pakistanis, we have taken out more than half of Al Qaeda’s leadership. And thanks to our intelligence professionals and Special Forces, we killed Usama bin Laden, the only leader that Al Qaeda had ever known. This was a victory for all who have served since 9/11. One soldier summed it up well. “The message,” he said, “is we don’t forget. You will be held accountable, no matter how long it takes.”

The information that we recovered from bin Laden’s compound shows Al Qaeda under enormous strain. Bin Laden expressed concern that Al Qaeda has been unable to effectively replace senior terrorists that have been killed, and that Al Qaeda has failed in its effort to portray America as a nation at war with Islam – thereby draining more widespread support. Al Qaeda remains dangerous, and we must be vigilant against attacks. But we have put Al Qaeda on a path to defeat, and we will not relent until the job is done.

In Afghanistan, we’ve inflicted serious losses on the Taliban and taken a number of its strongholds. Along with our surge, our allies also increased their commitments, which helped stabilize more of the country. Afghan Security Forces have grown by over 100,000 troops, and in some provinces and municipalities we have already begun to transition responsibility for security to the Afghan people. In the face of violence and intimidation, Afghans are fighting and dying for their country, establishing local police forces, opening markets and schools, creating new opportunities for women and girls, and trying to turn the page on decades of war.

Of course, huge challenges remain. This is the beginning – but not the end – of our effort to wind down this war. We will have to do the hard work of keeping the gains that we have made, while we drawdown our forces and transition responsibility for security to the Afghan government. And next May, in Chicago, we will host a summit with our NATO allies and partners to shape the next phase of this transition.

We do know that peace cannot come to a land that has known so much war without a political settlement. So as we strengthen the Afghan government and Security Forces, America will join initiatives that reconcile the Afghan people, including the Taliban. Our position on these talks is clear: they must be led by the Afghan government, and those who want to be a part of a peaceful Afghanistan must break from Al Qaeda, abandon violence, and abide by the Afghan Constitution. But, in part because of our military effort, we have reason to believe that progress can be made.

The goal that we seek is achievable, and can be expressed simply: no safe-haven from which Al Qaeda or its affiliates can launch attacks against our homeland, or our allies. We will not try to make Afghanistan a perfect place. We will not police its streets or patrol its mountains indefinitely. That is the responsibility of the Afghan government, which must step up its ability to protect its people; and move from an economy shaped by war to one that can sustain a lasting peace. What we can do, and will do, is build a partnership with the Afghan people that endures – one that ensures that we will be able to continue targeting terrorists and supporting a sovereign Afghan government.

Of course, our efforts must also address terrorist safe-havens in Pakistan. No country is more endangered by the presence of violent extremists, which is why we will continue to press Pakistan to expand its participation in securing a more peaceful future for this war-torn region. We will work with the Pakistani government to root out the cancer of violent extremism, and we will insist that it keep its commitments. For there should be no doubt that so long as I am President, the United States will never tolerate a safe-haven for those who aim to kill us: they cannot elude us, nor escape the justice they deserve.

My fellow Americans, this has been a difficult decade for our country. We have learned anew the profound cost of war — a cost that has been paid by the nearly 4500 Americans who have given their lives in Iraq, and the over 1500 who have done so in Afghanistan – men and women who will not live to enjoy the freedom that they defended. Thousands more have been wounded. Some have lost limbs on the field of battle, and others still battle the demons that have followed them home.

Yet tonight, we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding. Fewer of our sons and daughters are serving in harm’s way. We have ended our combat mission in Iraq, with 100,000 American troops already out of that country. And even as there will be dark days ahead in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance. These long wars will come to a responsible end.

As they do, we must learn their lessons. Already this decade of war has caused many to question the nature of America’s engagement around the world. Some would have America retreat from our responsibility as an anchor of global security, and embrace an isolation that ignores the very real threats that we face. Others would have America over-extend ourselves, confronting every evil that can be found abroad.

We must chart a more centered course. Like generations before, we must embrace America’s singular role in the course of human events. But we must be as pragmatic as we are passionate; as strategic as we are resolute. When threatened, we must respond with force – but when that force can be targeted, we need not deploy large armies overseas. When innocents are being slaughtered and global security endangered, we don’t have to choose between standing idly by or acting on our own. Instead, we must rally international action, which we are doing in Libya, where we do not have a single soldier on the ground, but are supporting allies in protecting the Libyan people and giving them the chance to determine their destiny.

In all that we do, we must remember that what sets America apart is not solely our power – it is the principles upon which our union was founded. We are a nation that brings our enemies to justice while adhering to the rule of law, and respecting the rights of all our citizens. We protect our own freedom and prosperity by extending it to others. We stand not for empire, but for self-determination. That is why we have a stake in the democratic aspirations that are now washing across the Arab World. We will support those revolutions with fidelity to our ideals, with the power of our example, and with an unwavering belief that all human beings deserve to live with freedom and dignity.

Above all, we are a nation whose strength abroad has been anchored in opportunity for our citizens at home. Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war, at a time of rising debt and hard economic times. Now, we must invest in America’s greatest resource – our people. We must unleash innovation that creates new jobs and industry, while living within our means. We must rebuild our infrastructure and find new and clean sources of energy. And most of all, after a decade of passionate debate, we must recapture the common purpose that we shared at the beginning of this time of war. For our nation draws strength from our differences, and when our union is strong no hill is too steep and no horizon is beyond our reach.

America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home.

In this effort, we draw inspiration from our fellow Americans who have sacrificed so much on our behalf. To our troops, our veterans and their families, I speak for all Americans when I say that we will keep our sacred trust with you, and provide you with the care, and benefits, and opportunity that you deserve.

I met some of those patriotic Americans at Fort Campbell. A while back, I spoke to the 101st Airborne that has fought to turn the tide in Afghanistan, and to the team that took out Usama bin Laden. Standing in front of a model of bin Laden’s compound, the Navy SEAL who led that effort paid tribute to those who had been lost – brothers and sisters in arms whose names are now written on bases where our troops stand guard overseas, and on headstones in quiet corners of our country where their memory will never be forgotten. This officer – like so many others I have met with on bases, in Baghdad and Bagram, at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital – spoke with humility about how his unit worked together as one – depending on each other, and trusting one another, as a family might do in a time of peril.

That’s a lesson worth remembering – that we are all a part of one American family. Though we have known disagreement and division, we are bound together by the creed that is written into our founding documents, and a conviction that the United States of America is a country that can achieve whatever it sets out to accomplish. Now, let us finish the work at hand. Let us responsibly end these wars, and reclaim the American Dream that is at the center of our story. With confidence in our cause; with faith in our fellow citizens; and with hope in our hearts, let us go about the work of extending the promise of America – for this generation, and the next. May God bless our troops. And may God bless the United States of America.