Both the Clinton and Bush administrations were wrong in their approach to North Korea's development of nuclear weapons.  One cannot deal with a dictator who seeks free international aid and money, yet is not trustworthy in any negotiations.   Stop giving any aid to North Korea.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Saturday said North Korea had a stark choice -- to remain a pariah or "chart a new course" - but suggested that the Obama administration would not return to a policy of trying to bribe Pyongyang to stop building nuclear weapons.  The Obama administration is totally correct on stopping aid to this dictator.

Five days after North Korea tested a nuclear device for the second time, Mr. Gates issued a tough warning to the reclusive state, "The choice to continue as a destitute, international pariah, or chart a new course, is North Korea's alone to make," The world is waiting."

The defense secretary said the U.S. would protect itself and its allies if North Korea escalates further. At the same time, he suggested that the Obama administration would not pursue a policy followed by its two predecessors.  North Korean leaders "create a crisis, and then the rest of us pay a price to return to the status-quo ante," he told the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security conference in Singapore organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Mr. Gates referred to steps North Korea took in 2002 and 2003 to expel U.N. inspectors from its main nuclear plant at Yongbyon and begin producing plutonium for atomic weapons after the collapse of a prior agreement with the United States.  In 2007, during six-nation negotiations, Pyongyang agreed to disable the complex in exchange for a series of economic benefits from the U.S. and the four other countries in the talks - South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.

Until 2002, Yongbyon was frozen under the 1994 accord known as the Agreed Framework, which was negotiated after another crisis created by the North, and gave North Korea various economic benefits, including heavy fuel oil and the foundation for two civilian nuclear reactors.

"As the expression goes in the United States, 'I'm tired of buying the same horse twice,' " Mr. Gates said Saturday in an allusion to Yongbyon's freezing or disablement.  The Obama administration has asked Congress for $100 million in economic aid for the communist state as part of the six-party talks in next year's budget, but that money looks unlikely to be spent as North Korea continues a belligerent response to U.S. overtures.

"Clearly, we've taught them bad habits," said Richard Armitage, who was deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2005 and is also attending the Singapore conference. "They sold Yongbyon to Bill Clinton once, to George Bush twice, and I have no doubt that they will try to sell it to Mr. Obama."

North Korea's bad behavior should not be rewarded and that the US should not be blackmailed.  It is time to be tough with North Korea.  It is time for a total blockade of North Korea.  If this had been accomplished 8 or 16 years ago, we would not have nuclear weapons in North Korea or Iran.

Being a retired military officer, I fully believe in using waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques to get critical information from terrorists to protect our country.  I do not endorse beheading people or other dangerous life-threatening techniques that are used by the Muslim terrorists. 

I fully believe that Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about the CIA plans and "lied" about what she knew.  In order to get to the truth, she should be waterboarded and within 10 seconds we will have her answer since I believe that she cannot take any pressure.  Liberal politicians like Speaker Pelosi can talk a good game, but when it comes to protecting their county at their expense, they are gutless.

A Director of National Intelligence report on congressional briefings about enhanced interrogation techniques conflicts with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claim that she was never told that waterboarding would be used on terror suspects. The report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, indicates that a classified CIA briefing of Mrs. Pelosi included specific details of the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques," or EITs, on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaydah.

"Briefing on EITs included use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed," the report said of the Sept. 4, 2002, briefing.  

Mrs. Pelosi maintains that in the September 2002 classified briefing on CIA techniques, she was told that the agency considered waterboarding to be legal but was never told of any intention to use the technique.  The CIA says that she is not telling the truth.

Maybe the CIA can snatch Ms. Pelosi and take her on a secret trip to an undisclosed location and get her to tell the truth.  As a member of Congress, she fully deserves this type of treatment.

The below is from a member of the Heritage Foundation and is a good analysis of the Obama budget.  This budget plan will not be good for our country.  We will be in debt for generations.

Obama's eight bogus budget arguments

Brian M. Riedl

President Obama has proposed a historic expansion of spending, taxes and debt. His budget would increase real spending from $25,000 per household to $32,000 per household by 2019. It would raise taxes by $1.4 trillion. And it would double the national debt - a staggering $9.3 trillion in new borrowing.

A master communicator, the president employs clever rhetoric to defend his tax-borrow-and-spend budget. Unfortunately, this rhetoric fluctuates between misleading and false. Here are eight of his bogus budget arguments:

Assertion No. 1: "I pledged to cut the deficit in half" by 2013.

Fact: The president doesn't mention that the deficit has quadrupled this year. Merely cutting it in half from that bloated level would still leave budget deficits twice as high as under President Bush. This is like eating a 5,000 calorie meal, and then pledging to halve your calories from that level.

Furthermore, three upcoming developments - the end of the recession, troop pullout in Iraq, and phase-out of the supposedly temporary "stimulus" spending - would, by themselves, cut the budget deficit in half.

Despite Mr. Obama's talk of "inheriting" President Bush's $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009, then-Sen. Obama supported nearly all the policies that created the deficit. That deficit estimate has surged to $1.8 trillion since his inauguration. And when the recession ends, Mr. Obama would still run $1 trillion deficits - compared with President Bush's $162 billion deficit immediately before this recession.

Assertion No. 2: "We have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade."

Fact: Savings relative to what? The president first creates a fantasy baseline that assumes the Iraq surge continues forever (which was never U.S. policy), and then "saves" $1.5 trillion against that baseline by ending the surge as scheduled. It's like a family "saving" $10,000 by first assuming an expensive vacation and then not taking it.

Another $1 trillion in "savings" is actually tax increases. Government savings used to mean spending cuts that save taxpayer dollars. In the Obama White House, they mean tax increases that feed the government.

Assertion No. 3: "If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime."

Fact: This is patently false. The president has already signed into law a 61-cent cigarette tax increase. His budget proposes a $646 billion cap-and-trade tax that would be passed onto households at an average cost of $600 to $2,000 annually.

Assertion No. 4: New spending is "temporary" to fight recession.

Fact: Does anyone believe Mr. Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will allow stimulus bill expansions, including Pell Grants, food stamps and "make-work pay," to expire? The president's own budget already extends several expensive stimulus provisions. Overall, his budget would create the largest peacetime government in American history by 2019. There is nothing temporary about it.

Assertion No. 5: Economic "day of reckoning" was caused by a lack of liberal social policies.

Fact: Mr. Obama claims that the current economic day of reckoning partially resulted from current health care, education and energy policies, and that enacting his tax-and-spend reforms are the solution. Nonsense. The recession was caused by a financial crisis brought on by a housing bubble.

To argue that national health care, energy taxes and education spending would have prevented this recession (they didn't save Europe from the same financial calamities) or may prevent the next is simply to use a financial crisis to shove an unrelated big-government agenda down the throats of recession weary Americans. Or, as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel succinctly put it, "to never let a crisis go to waste."

Assertion No. 6: "A return to honest budgeting"

Fact: Mr. Obama deserves credit for reversing Mr. Bush's policy of not budgeting for the Alternative Minimum Tax patch, the global war on terrorism, and future unanticipated emergencies.

But the Obama budget has large gimmicks, too. In addition to the $1.5 trillion Iraq "savings" trick described above, the president ignores the economic consensus and assumes an economic boom will begin next January. His budget assumes that he will allow most of the "stimulus" spending to expire. The president also assumes that - after a 7 percent increase next year - real discretionary spending will be frozen for the following nine years. Finally, he simply excludes the cost of his massive health plan from his budget totals. These gimmicks lowball the 2019 budget deficit by more than $500 billion.

Assertion No. 7: A new direction from Mr. Bush's "deep fiscal irresponsibility"

Fact: For all his criticisms of Mr. Bush's economic policies, Mr. Obama is actually accelerating many of them. Mr. Bush engaged in a massive spending spree, with large financial bailouts and big deficits; Mr. Obama's budget proposes an even bigger spending spree, more financial bailouts, and larger budget deficits. Mr. Bush had the Medicare drug entitlement; Mr. Obama has a massive health plan. Mr. Obama isn't rejecting Bushism, he's doubling down on it.

Assertion No. 8: Agenda reflects "hard choices."

Fact: The president titled his budget "A New Era of Responsibility." Yet promising voters huge new federal subsidies - paid for by doubling the national debt - isn't exactly a profile in courage. Instead, it is the most fiscally irresponsible budget in American history. To propose dumping $74,000 per household of new debt into the laps of our children and grandchildren is economic child abuse.

• Brian M. Riedl is a Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs at the Heritage Foundation.

I offer my prayers to the family of Jack Kemp. 

On Saturday Jack Kemp, a Reagan-era conservative, died after a long battle with cancer.

I met Jack in 2004 when I was running from the US Congress from Maryland's 8th District.  He helped me with campaign strategy and fundraising.  Jack was always seeking ways to help others.  He had a very distinguished career in football, business, and politics.  Our family was blessed to have know Jack Kemp over the last few years. 

We will always remember his "can-do" spirit and attitude.  He was a civil rights leader and always offered a hand to those who needed it.  When I called Jack to discuss business or politics, he always had time. 

Our thoughts and prayers are with Jack's family and he will certainly be missed by all.