Source: IHT (1-7-09)

This time, Israeli military commanders are leading from the front, not trying to direct the infantry from television screens. This time, the military has clear plans, in stages, drawn up with a year's preparation. This time there is no illusion about winning a war only from the air. This time, the military chief of staff has kept his silence in public, all cellphones have been confiscated from Israeli soldiers and the international press has been kept out of the battlefield.

In these and many other ways, Israel is applying the lessons it learned from its failed 2006 war against Hezbollah in northern Lebanon to its current war against Hamas in Gaza. But Israel's failure in Lebanon also stemmed from a political and diplomatic inability to decide on clear objectives for the outcome of the war, and here the lessons of Lebanon have been not so well applied, according to senior Israeli military officials and political analysts.

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Source: CNN (1-6-09)

Talk about a power lunch. President Bush, President-elect Barack Obama and three living former presidents will meet in the Oval Office for a private gathering on Wednesday afternoon.

Former presidents Jimmy Carter, George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton will join Obama and Bush at the White House for lunch. Obama initially came up with the idea that all of the men get together after meeting with President Bush last month.

Perino speculated that they will discuss what it’s like to raise children in the White House and how to protect them. She praised the Obamas for doing a good job with that so far and said they got their daughters to their first day of school on Monday “in good fashion.”

Perino said the last time all of the living presidents got together was in 1981, and called Wednesday’s meeting a “historic moment.”

Source: CNN (1-6-09)

As a candidate, Barack Obama promoted hybrid cars. As president, he'll be handed the keys to one. Sort of.

In keeping with recent tradition, the Secret Service will place a brand-new presidential limousine into service January 20 to drive the new president on the 2-mile jaunt down Pennsylvania Avenue during the inaugural parade.

In the post-Lincoln horse-and-buggy era, it was customary for a security detail to closely trail the president, according to a Secret Service history.

With the advent of automobiles, the Secret Service acquired a 1907 H. White Steamer to follow Theodore Roosevelt's horse-drawn carriage.

White House chauffeurs drove later presidents, until the Secret Service assumed many of the driving responsibilities after Franklin Roosevelt's death in 1945.

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson was the first president to ride in a bulletproof limo in an inaugural parade, less than two years after his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, was shot and killed while riding in an open car.

Source: Foxnews (1-6-09)

President Bush won the praise of environmentalists Tuesday for leading the largest marine conservation effort in history, but his critics are still bitter over his environmental legacy.

Some went so far as to compare Bush to Teddy Roosevelt, who created the national park system a century ago.

But others said Bush's conservation effort, while laudable, was not enough to erase the lowlights of his environmental record. Groups like the National Resources Defense Council say Bush over the last eight years dismantled environmental safeguards, ignored climate concerns, undermined scientific results and pandered to industries that jeopardized Americans' health and natural heritage.

Bush defended his legacy Tuesday during his announcement of the marine conservation effort, citing all of his accomplishments since 2001, including a 12 percent drop in air pollution, protecting more than 27 million acres of federal forest land from wildfires and saving or improving more than 3.6 million acres of wetlands.

Source: BBC (1-5-09)

An Estonian court has acquitted four ethnic Russians accused of leading riots that shook the capital, Tallinn.

The riots started after the government decided in 2007 to relocate a Soviet-era war memorial, considered a reminder of Soviet occupation by many Estonians.

More than one-third of Estonians are ethnic Russians, who viewed the move to a military cemetery as an insult to Soviet troops killed fighting in WWII.

Russia, and many ethnic Russians in Estonia, consider that the monument commemorates those who died to liberate Estonia from Nazi Germany during World War II.