Newfoundland’s premier, Danny Williams, will cross the border to the United States for heart surgery later this week, shunning government-sponsored healthcare in Canada, according to the National Post: “In consultation with his own doctors, he’s decided to go that route.”

That’s how deputy premier Kathy Dunderdale, who will assume his duties temporarily, today described the otherwise mysterious circumstances that prompted the 59-year-old Progressive Conservative to seek treatment in the United States. “He has gone to a renowned expert in the procedure that he needs to have done,” she said. She would not reveal the location of the operation or how it would be paid for.

In a future where U.S. healthcare has been nationalized and equalized, where will our elites find “renowned experts” for heart surgery or other care?

Al Mohler has beat me in his collection of Winston Churchill biographies. In a review of the latest, Churchill by Paul Johnson, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary confesses to having two entire sections of his library devoted to Churchill; I have a mere shelf full. But there’s never a better time than now to begin a study of “the man widely regarded as the greatest leader of the twentieth century.” Especially considering that Johnson is widely regarded as one of the best—and most accessible—historians of the twentieth century. The British Johnson, notes Mohler, “is a master of the English language, as was Churchill.” Johnson, he says, “deals honestly with [Churchill's] shortcomings, character flaws, and setbacks,” and in an epilogue distills five important lessons from the life of “the last lion.”

Stratfor has posted a helpful post-mortem on the Taliban attack in downtown Kabul yesterday. The report includes maps, too. The attack, which killed seven Afghan “friendlies” and 10 or so Taliban fighters, along with damaging government buildings and a shopping mall, was “a bold display of urban infiltration and tactical surprise,” the global intelligence think tank notes; but importantly, “Afghan security forces were able to end the attack” and prevent high levels of destruction and casualties.

The response of Afghan forces was an improvement over a similar Taliban attack a year ago, when the militants gained access to the Ministry of Justice in the same square of the capital and held the building for several hours. “Afghan security forces have proved they can respond and deny them their objectives,” Stratfor concludes.

In July I wrote a column about the widespread use of taqiyya, or the Muslim art of deception, after an Iranian told me, “A Muslim cannot be a real Muslim if he does not use taqiyya.” That helped to explain a lot about the perpetual seesaw the West confronts in dealing with, say, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (”I want to wipe Israel off the map,” “I am not anti-Jewish at all.”). As Mohammad’s confidante Abu Darda said (and Islamic scholars affirm) in describing taqiyya, “Let us grin in the face of some people while our hearts curse them.”

Now Raymond Ibrahim, associate director of the Middle East Forum and someone who has tutored me on the subject, has written a must-read article on the concept of taqiyya—and how it relates to the growing threat of homegrown terror in the United States.

In their statements directed at European or American audiences, Islamists maintain that the terrorism they direct against the West is merely reciprocal treatment for decades of Western and Israeli oppression. Yet in writings directed to their fellow Muslims, this animus is presented, not as a reaction to military or political provocation but as a product of religious obligation.

…Yet most Westerners continue to think that Muslim mores, laws, and ethical constraints are near identical to those of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The article is somewhat long and scholarly—but worth your time.

Climategate scientist Michael Mann received a $541,000 National Science Foundation grant under the stimulus bill passed by Congress in February. According to the government’s transparency website on stimulus spending, the grant has generated 1.62 jobs and is less than 50 percent complete (that’s $334,000 per job). But the job creation may not last due to Mann’s data creation. Mann is the stylist of the now famous “hockey stick” chart, which showed a dramatic spike in global temperatures. Let The Wall Street Journal explain its significance—from a 2005 article:

Just so we’re clear, this hockey stick isn’t a sports implement; it’s a scientific graph. Back in the late 1990s, American geoscientist Michael Mann published a chart that purported to show average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 1,000 years. The chart showed relatively minor fluctuations in temperature over the first 900 years, then a sharp and continuous rise over the past century, giving it a hockey-stick shape.

Mr. Mann’s chart was both a scientific and political sensation. It contradicted a body of scientific work suggesting a warm period early in the second millennium, followed by a “Little Ice Age” starting in the 14th century. It also provided some visually arresting scientific support for the contention that fossil-fuel emissions were the cause of higher temperatures. Little wonder, then, that Mr. Mann’s hockey stick appears five times in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s landmark 2001 report on global warming, which paved the way to this week’s global ratification–sans the U.S., Australia and China–of the Kyoto Protocol.

The Journal notes that “there were doubts about Mr. Mann’s methods and analysis from the start,” but what’s clear from the emails released in the last 2 weeks is how far Mann and others went to mishandle the data. And that has some colleagues at Penn State calling for his ouster. Overall, Mann and his colleagues have at least $6 million in U.S. taxpayer money to answer for. But so far, as Telegraph columnist Gerald Warner points out, all Congress has done is summon the “consensual warmists” in the White House to spin why it all happened.

Nearly simultaneous to President Barack Obama’s speech at West Point tonight, the Defense Department launched a slick new Afghanistan/Pakistan Policy web page . The site hosted a liveblog for 45 minutes following the president’s speech with Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Afghanistan David S. Sedney, and it promises a Twitter feed and other running news related to the scaled-up war effort.

The site mirrors what I took away from the speech tonight: The president appeared confident and engaged in his decision, and he clearly articulated three measurable objectives, what he called “core elements” of the new strategy. He also was forthright in addressing his critics, particularly those on the left who have whined incessantly about another Vietnam. I found it remarkable to hear a Democratic president, a Baby Boomer no less, go after the anti-war crowd.

What did you think?

Last week the White House said the president would issue his decision on Afghanistan around Nov. 19. Hmm. Now the White House gatekeepers are casually dropping “December” into their answers about questions on Afghanistan. To hear the Democrats talk, one would think we are not already committed with troops on the ground: “The decision to put troops in harm’s way is the toughest decision any president can make,” said former Clinton advisor Bruce Reed.

As we wait perhaps even this weekend a pronouncement from the president, I commend the recent commentary by Henry Kissinger on Afghanistan:

Full disclosure compels me to state at the beginning that I favor fulfilling the commander’s request and a modification of the strategy. But I also hope that the debate ahead of us avoids the demoralizing trajectory that characterized the previous controversies in wars against adversaries using guerrilla tactics, especially Vietnam and Iraq.

The former secretary of state and architect of the U.S. exit strategy from Vietnam, now 86, is a mellowed version of his realpolitick self of 30+ years ago. While acknowledging that “the most unambiguous form of exit strategy is victory,” Kissinger goes on to explain why military and political leaders need to move beyond the current counterterrorism/counterinsurgency debate to look at a regional peace involving Afghanistan’s neighbors. This is the dynamism and imagination that made Kissinger a loved/hated diplomat, and it’s sorely needed now. Read it.

Underscoring the relevance of WORLD’s cover story on domestic terrorism in this new issue (written by Lynn Vincent), are important developments this week. Two 20-somethings involved in a plot to blow up the Sears Tower were this week sentenced in federal district court in Miami. As AP reports:

One of the men, Burson Augustin, 24 was sentenced to six years in prison; his older brother, Rotschild Augustin, 26, was sentenced to seven years.

Today the ringleader of that plot is to be sentenced in Miami.

And in Chicago David C. Headley and Chicago businessman Tahawwur Hussain Rana have been arrested as “suspected Islamist militants” but with a twist: The two are charged not with targeting the United States, but with staging foreign operations from relative anonymity on American soil. As The Washington Post comments today:

Their profile is a fresh one, and it is being viewed by U.S. authorities with alarm.

Captives Maryam Rustampoor, 27, and Marzieh Esmaeilabad, 30, were freed today by Iranian authorities after almost nine months’ confinement in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison for refusing to deny their Christian faith. According to Open Doors and its sources in Iran, the two were set free without bail and are currently at home.

As I reported in the current issue of WORLD the two were charged with “propagation of Christianity,” apostasy (for converting from Islam), and “anti-state activity.” It is not known if their release is unconditional, and if all charges were dropped. The two are reportedly in poor health following their captivity.

Over at SarahPAC you can pay $100 for a signed copy of Going Rogue: An American Life or you can pay $14.50, half the retail price, at Amazon. Demand for the Palin memoir is so strong, reports the Wall Street Journal, that on the day of its official release HarperCollins Publishers is going back to press for an additional 100,000 run. That brings the total number  in print to 1.6 million copies. And

a spokeswoman for Amazon.com Inc.’s Web site noted in an email that the title “is already one of our bestselling nonfiction books of 2009.” At 2:40 p.m., the book ranked No. 1 on Amazon’s list of best sellers.