Tom Clancy For National Security Advisor

“How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?” — James Madison, Federalist No. 41 — 1788”

In his comments regarding national defense in Federalist 41 Madison was not advocating a hostile posture towards other nations, but he was not so naïve to belief that mere words could prevent malevolent intentions of other nations towards the United States. His complete statement in Federalist 41 states:

”How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation? The means of security can only be regulated by the means and the danger of attack. They will, in fact, be ever determined by these rules, and by no others. It is in vain to oppose constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain; because it plants in the Constitution itself necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions. If one nation maintains constantly a disciplined army, ready for the service of ambition or revenge, it obliges the most pacific nations who may be within the reach of its enterprises to take corresponding precautions.”

While Madison was in no way advocating a large standing army that would pose a threat to other nations and the Constitution itself he did, however, realize that we should take precautions and actions that would safeguard our newly formed republic. It was Madison who, in 1812, requested Congress for a declaration of war against Britain for their trade restrictions brought about by Britain's ongoing war with France, the impressment of American merchant sailors into the Royal Navy, British support of American Indian tribes against American expansion, and outrage over insults to national honor after humiliations on the high seas.

Today we are under attack by the People’s Republic of China. Their attack is not an overt military action such as the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. This war is an attack on our commercial enterprises and our national security and the chief weapon is the computer and their soldiers are experienced and competent computer hackers. The PRC is attempting to damage our ability to be a leader in technology through their cyberattacks. This is not too much different than one of Madison’s reasons for requesting the declaration of war against Britain for their trade restrictions.

A group linked to the Chinese military has stolen massive amounts of data from over 100 different targets, most of which are based in the U.S., a security firm said in a report released Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal reports Internet security company Mandiant says in the report it traced 141 major hacking attempts to a People's Liberation Army building in Shanghai, 115 of which targeted U.S. companies or organizations.

Mandiant didn't name specific targets of the attacks but said they included information technology firms and telecommunications to aerospace and energy companies.

The stolen information allegedly includes blueprints, details on proprietary processes, pricing documents and contact lists.

Mandiant also cites a memo from a Chinese telecommunications provider supplying communications links to the building where the hacking allegedly occurs, saying it would "smoothly accomplish this task for the military based on the principle that national defense construction is important."

The Mandiant report comes a week after President Obama issued a long-awaited executive order aimed at getting the private owners of power plants and other critical infrastructure to share data on attacks with officials and to begin to follow consensus best practices on security.

Mandiant Corp. said in a 74-page report released on its website that a group attached to China's People's Liberation Army has since at least 2006 stolen data from 141 companies, 115 of which were in the U.S. Mandiant didn't name specific targets of the attacks but said they spanned industries ranging from information technology and telecommunications to aerospace and energy. Mandiant's accusations were reported earlier by the New York Times.

The report comes as China's potential role in hacker attacks has come under increasing scrutiny. In recent weeks, a number of news organizations, including The Wall Street Journal, have said they were infiltrated by Chinese hackers believed to have government links. People familiar with an earlier investigation by U.S. intelligences agencies into Chinese hacker groups infiltrating U.S. networks have said most are linked to the Chinese military. Previous targets of Chinese hackers have included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Nortel Networks Ltd.

In an October speech, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said China was "rapidly growing" its cyber capabilities.

"In my visit to Beijing, I underscored the need to increase communication and transparency with each other so that we could avoid a misunderstanding or miscalculation in cyberspace," he said, while also calling for greater information sharing about cybersecurity between private enterprise and the government.

Akamai Technologies, which provides services to help websites speed up connections and monitors large amounts of web traffic, said in the third quarter of 2012 China was the world's No. 1 source of observed attack traffic. China was the origin of 33% of the traffic, Akamai said, more than doubling from 16% in the second quarter. The U.S. was second, rising to 13% from 12%, and Russia was third, falling to 4.7% from 6.3%.

Mandiant said it believes the group behind the hacking is Unit 61398, within a wing of the People's Liberation Army. It said it has observed hacking attempts against nearly 150 victims over seven years. Hundreds of terabytes of data were involved, it said.

It pinpointed the group's location in facilities in Shanghai's Pudong district. It also reprinted a memo from a Chinese telecommunications provider supplying communications links to the facility that said it would "smoothly accomplish this task for the military based on the principle that national defense construction is important."

The Executive Summary to the Mandiant Report states:

“Since 2004, Mandiant has investigated computer security breaches at hundreds of organizations around the world. The majority of these security breaches are attributed to advanced threat actors referred to as the “Advanced Persistent Threat” (APT). We first published details about the APT in our January 2010 M-Trends report. As we stated in the report, our position was that “The Chinese government may authorize this activity, but there’s no way to determine the extent of its involvement.” Now, three years later, we have the evidence required to change our assessment. The details we have analyzed during hundreds of investigations convince us that the groups conducting these activities are based primarily in China and that the Chinese Government is aware of them

Mandiant continues to track dozens of APT groups around the world; however, this report is focused on the most prolific of these groups. We refer to this group as “APT1” and it is one of more than 20 APT groups with origins in China. APT1 is a single organization of operators that has conducted a cyber espionage campaign against a broad range of victims since at least 2006. From our observations, it is one of the most prolific cyber espionage groups in terms of the sheer quantity of information stolen. The scale and impact of APT1’s operations compelled us to write this report.

The activity we have directly observed likely represents only a small fraction of the cyber espionage that APT1 has conducted. Though our visibility of APT1’s activities is incomplete, we have analyzed the group’s intrusions against nearly 150 victims over seven years. From our unique vantage point responding to victims, we tracked APT1 back to four large networks in Shanghai, two of which are allocated directly to the Pudong New Area. We uncovered a substantial amount of APT1’s attack infrastructure, command and control, and modus operandi (tools, tactics, and procedures). In an effort to underscore there are actual individuals behind the keyboard, Mandiant is revealing three personas we have attributed to APT1. These operators, like soldiers, may merely be following orders given to them by others.

Our analysis has led us to conclude that APT1 is likely government-sponsored and one of the most persistent of China’s cyber threat actors. We believe that APT1 is able to wage such a long-running and extensive cyber espionage campaign in large part because it receives direct government support. In seeking to identify the organization behind this activity, our research found that People’s Liberation Army (PLA’s) Unit 61398 is similar to APT1 in its mission, capabilities, and resources. PLA Unit 61398 is also located in precisely the same area from which APT1 activity appears to originate.”

While we are fighting a shooting war in Afghanistan against the Taliban and other terrorist groups the Chinese are busy infiltrating and attacking our commercial and national defense infrastructure using bits and bytes.

This brings me to the title of this blog —Tom Clancy for National Security Advisor. I have been a reader and a fan of Tom Clancy’s techno-thrillers for years. It began with his best seller “The Hunt for Red October” where he provided us with an incredible amount of information on the Soviet Union’s nuclear submarine threat and our defense to these “boomers”.

In “Red Storm Rising” he detailed the Soviet threat to Europe and how NATO – led by U.S. forces would counter such an attack. He wrote quite a bit about the logistics problems in supplying the forces of NATO. Problems that became demonstrably evident in the NATO attack on Libya.

In “Sum of all Fears” Clancy warned of a possible nuclear attack on the United States from Middle Eastern terrorists using home-made nuclear weapons. And in “Clear and Present Danger” he warned of the growing power of the Columbian drug cartels — cartels that have now moved to Mexico.

In “Debt of Honor” Clancy portrayed a 747 loaded with fuel crashing into to Capital Building and decapitating our government six years before 9/11. In his sequel to Debt of Honor “Executive Orders” he addressed the potential of bio-warfare against the United States and how we might combat it.

In “Rainbow 6” Clancy wrote about an elite anti-terrorist group that could go anywhere to clandestinely take out terrorists before the general public ever heard of SEAL Team 6. He also exposed the tyranny of the environmentalist and their desire to let people die to save trees, bugs, and bunnies.

In his latest novel “Threat Vector” Chinese cyberwarfare experts have launched a devastating attack on American infrastructure. It's a new combat arena, but it’s every bit as deadly as any that has gone before. It’s as though Clancy predated the Mandiant report as he has been in front of the curve on many other national security issues. Either Clancy is clairvoyant or he has a multitude of contacts within the national security establishment.

Clancy will claim he is “just” and author of fiction. His modesty is overwhelming. As “just” an author of fictional novels he has the ability to take bits and pieces of data and assemble them into a cogent analysis of the threats facing us. His ability to think out of the box far surpasses the political appointees to our national security bureaucracy including the Directors of National Intelligence, the CIA, and the Defense Department with their embedded political agendas and party loyalties. Party loyalties as George Washington stated: “This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human Mind. It exists under different shapes in all Governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.”

It amused me to no end to find this quote by the Former U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who mentioned, “A lot of what I know about warfare I learnt from reading Tom [Clancy].” Even Ronald Reagan was a fan as documented by his wife, Nancy Reagan: “Ronnie especially enjoyed history, biography and the novels of Tom Clancy.” In a way former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave Clancy a left-handed compliment when she stated not everyone is a fan. In an interview, Rice showed her disapproval of Clancy’s work and fictitious US military warfare by saying, “No-one [but Clancy] could have imagined [terrorists] taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon [or] into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile”.

It for the reasons stated above that I nominate Tom Clancy for the post of either the National Security Advisor, the Director of the CIA, the National Intelligence Director, or the Secretary of Defense. I am sure Clancy would not have allowed those four Americans to perish at the hands of terrorist in Benghazi. Oh, and you can add Brad Thor and Vince Flynn to my short list. They are cut from the same mold as Clancy with Thor’s latest offering “Black List” a novel based on the premise that a group of powerful, well-financed people in cahoots with a foreign power are attempting to take over the United States through cyberwarfare and data mining.

The Legitimate Use of Taxpayer Money

“To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;” — Article I, Section 8.11 of the Constitution of the United States.

Columnist Charles Krauthammer calls the ceremonial interment of the shuttle Discovery an act of "willed American decline." He's certainly right about that. It is an historic retreat for America.

Mr. Krauthammer writes:

“As the space shuttle Discovery flew three times around Washington, a final salute before landing at Dulles Airport for retirement in a museum, thousands on the ground gazed upward with marvel and pride. Yet what they were witnessing, for all its elegance, was a funeral march.

The shuttle was being carried -- its pallbearer, a 747 -- because it cannot fly, nor will it ever again. It was being sent for interment. Above ground, to be sure. But just as surely embalmed as Lenin in Red Square.

Is there a better symbol of willed American decline? The pity is not Discovery's retirement -- beautiful as it was, the shuttle proved too expensive and risky to operate -- but that it died without a successor. The planned follow-on -- the Constellation rocket-capsule program to take humans back into orbit and from there to the moon -- was canceled in 2010. And with that, control of manned spaceflight was ceded to Russia and China.”

It was under John F. Kennedy, a liberal Democrat, that America was summoned to greatness. Frustrated by a series of Soviet "firsts" in space — first earth satellite (Sputnik), first man in space (Yuri Gagarin) — the young President Kennedy knew that his talk of "getting America moving again" would ring hollow if the Soviets bested us in space.

For the USSR, space was vitally important. Nikita Khrushchev was the Communist Party boss who had famously denounced his dead predecessor, Josef Stalin. Under Khrushchev, Stalin's embalmed remains were hauled out of Lenin's tomb, cremated, and buried in an obscure Kremlin grave. But how to legitimize Khrushchev's own dictatorship? How to show the world that Communism was the wave of the future? Space. For Nikita Sergeivich Khruschev, Marxism-Leninism would be validated by conquering space. Russian, not English, would be the first language spoken in the Cosmos. Cosmonauts, not Astronauts, would lead progressive mankind.

Khrushchev chose Yuri Gagarin to orbit the earth because Gagarin was a clean-cut, fit, and outspokenly atheist young Soviet pilot. When Gagarin came safely to earth, he told a press conference he had seen "nyet boga" up there. No God. One Soviet historian, Zheyva Sveltilova, told credulous Westerners that when the hammer and sickle conquer space, "people who now believe in God will reject him. Such belief won't be logical or natural. Man will be stronger than God."

It is noteworthy that the brave Apollo 8 astronauts — Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders — the first human beings to leave Earth orbit and travel to the Moon — did not reject God. In fact, they read from the Book of Genesis as their spacecraft orbited the Moon. On Christmas Eve, 1968, no less. And Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, celebrated Christian communion in the lunar lander as Neil Armstrong of Apollo XI took his famous "giant leap for mankind."

President Kennedy resolved to find that one goal that could inspire Americans and capture the imagination of mankind — and in an arena where he knew the United States could best its Communist adversary: the Moon. At a time when leading Republicans — Barry Goldwater; William F. Buckley, Jr. — carped that the effort to reach the Moon would be too costly, Kennedy's vision prevailed. He knew that being Number One in space would pay dividends on Earth. Surely, it has. The entire computer revolution we are living through was spurred by America's Moon landing.

The U.S. Earth satellite program began in 1954 as a joint U.S. Army and U.S. Navy proposal, called Project Orbiter, to put a scientific satellite into orbit during the International Geophysical Year. The proposal, using a military Redstone missile, was rejected in 1955 by the Eisenhower administration in favor of the Navy's Project Vanguard, using a booster produced for civilian space launches. Following the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, the initial Project Orbiter program was revived as the Explorer program to catch up with the Soviet Union.

I can remember watching the attempted launch of the Vanguard missile with nu buddy, who at the time was working for a firm that was making the guidance system. As we watched the missile fire up, begin.to lift off the pad and them tip over and crash and burn I saw my friend’s face turn white with embarrassment at the Vanguard’s failure. The American public was very saddened by this failure and wanted much better results.

After the second failure of Vanguard the Eisenhower Administration tuned to the Army’s Redstone Missile program in Huntsville. Alabama. This program was being led by the repatriated Nazi V-2 rocket experts under the leadership of Werner Von Braun.

Explorer 1 was designed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), while a Jupiter-C rocket was modified by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) to accommodate a satellite payload; the resulting rocket known as the Juno I. The Jupiter-C design used for the launch had already been flight-tested in nose cone reentry tests for the Jupiter IRBM, and was modified into Juno I. Working closely together, ABMA and JPL completed the job of modifying the Jupiter-C and building Explorer 1 in 84 days. However, before work was completed, the Soviet Union launched a second satellite, Sputnik 2, on November 3, 1957. The U.S. Navy's attempt to put the first U.S. satellite into orbit failed with the launch of the Vanguard TV3 on December 6, 1957.

On January 31, 1958 at 22:48 Eastern Time the 31 pound Explorer I satellite was successfully launched and a little beeping satellite was now orbiting the earth. The United States was now in the space race whether we liked it or not and the carping and debate began. The most common carp was; “why do we want to spend money on space when we have so many problems here like poverty and lack of jobs.” On the other hand those with vision believed we had to make these expenditures for our national defense. If the Soviets could launch a 184 pound satellite how soon before they could put nuclear weapons into orbit and hold the world hostage to their totalitarian way of life.

In 1961 when President Kennedy made his famous go to the moon speech I was just a few years out of high school and thinking of moving to California, the land of sunshine and gold. At the time of his bold announcement the scientists and engineers did not have the slightest clue as to how they would accomplish this feat. With the exception of Jules Vern not many folks had thought about going to the moon and for what reason. After all there was no one living there and it was a very inhospitable place. What would be the value of this beside a great public relations exercise?

To go to the moon meant not only rockets and space vehicles it required a whole new way of thinking, project management, and above all industrial innovations. New metals would have to be developed, computers were needed, ground launching facilities were needed, and thousands of new engineers and technicians were needed. This meant high paying jobs and professional careers for kids still in high school. It meant learning math and science. It meant getting good grades. It meant an exciting future for those who wanted to learn and join the program. It also meant millions of job for construction workers and those entrepreneurs who would build and run the ancillary facilities around the new space launch and control facilities.

You may now be asking that while all this public works spending is good for the economy by what Constructional authority did Congress have to spend this money. In Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution there are three enumerated powers authorizing Congress to allocated funds for this space/defense program:

Section 8.12: To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

Section 8.13: To provide and maintain a navy;

Section 8.14: To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

Also the preamble itself states:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

In the common defense statement the framers wanted the new nation to be strong enough to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. This might be a difficult feat with soviet nuclear weapons orbiting above our planet.

This is one time I take issue with Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley. While they thought the moon undertaking was too expensive I believe this space/defense enterprise paid tremendous dividends with the technology and jobs that technology created. This in turn increased the tax base of the United States and gave us unbridled scientific and industrial leadership in the world. I can recall visiting our friends in Paris in 1978 with our family. Our Parisian friends had a 12-year old son at the time. Vincent had models of every rocket the United States had built and was enthralled with our space program. He thought the United States was the greatest industrial and scientific nation in the world. How do we rank today? Our youth want to pursue careers in psychology, women’s studies, and almost anything except engineering. Today we get our engineers from India, Pakistan, and other points east.

The spin off from the space/defense enterprise is too numerous to catalog. New meals and carbon fiber materials were developed that are commonplace in the auto industry today. Computer chips were developed and then improved, and improved to where they are today. The astronauts on Apollo 8 did not have the computing power of one of today’s $300 dollar notebooks that you can purchase at Best Buy, and their computers cost millions. A new way of exchanging information was needed so DARPA along with other universities and private companies developed a new way of sharing information. This effort morphed into something called the Internet, a utility we all use today and which has allowed numerous entrepreneurs to create millions of jobs and make billions of dollars.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) industry was another one of those spin offs from the space/defense undertaking. Developed for the Navy in 1973 to overcome the limitations of previous navigation systems GPS was intended to give our nuclear submarines exact positioning in case they needed to launch the missiles in anger. Although classified at its inception it did not take long for the technology genie of GPS to jump out of the bottle and become an everyday utility today. In 1973 the average person did not much care about latitude and longitude unless he was a sailor and then he had to rely on imprecise radio navigation or the methods Magellan or Columbus used to navigate the seas.

The GPS satellites were place in a safe orbit at 12,600 miles (20,200 Km) in order to keep them safe from enemy rocket attacks. The high orbit of the GPS satellites also allowed for the precise navigation and docking of space vehicles such as the space shuttle. Once again when the GPS genie was out of the bottle it did not take firms like Trimble, Magellan and Garmin to spring up making GPS gear for the private sector. Today the use of GPS is commonplace in land surveying, construction, navigation, and monitoring of crustal movement. Almost every new car on the market has a GPS navigation unit and even digital cameras and cell phone are equipped with GPS. When you take a photo with your GPS enabled camera of cell phone and use the appropriate computer application you can see exactly where you took your photo. Even my iPad has GPS. So who said the consumer did not care about longitude and latitude? He may not understand the tremendous amount of science and technology that went into GPS, but he or she sure likes to set their destination into his or hers auto navigation system to find the best driving route and watch the little icon travel along the road or find a place to eat along the way. And you can buy one of these navigation units for less than $200 toady.

Once again I harken back to those who objected about the moon program. In 1964 Lyndon Johnson pushed his war on poverty on the American people and in almost 50 years we have not eliminated poverty. At that time, the poverty rate in America was around 19 percent and falling rapidly. This year, it is reported that the poverty rate is expected to be roughly 15.1 percent and climbing. Between then and now, the federal government spent roughly $12 trillion fighting poverty, and state and local governments added another $3 trillion. Yet the poverty rate never fell below 10.5 percent and is now at the highest level in nearly a decade. Clearly, we have been doing something wrong.

On the other hand the moon project and other related scientific and technological programs have delivered millions of good paying jobs, created trillions in wealth, and created untold benefits to our civil society through the free market. Sometimes our vision is not too clear or far reaching. When man is given the knowledge and opportunity great things are possible. Our Founders knew this very well.

In his jaunty way, JFK said, "America has thrown her hat over the wall of space, and we have no choice but to follow." President Kennedy was right. The American Apollo program was one of the greatest events in all of human history. By turning our backs on JFK's achievement, we have consented to national humiliation and national decline.

An American astronaut was asked recently what advice she had for a young child interested in space. "Learn Russian," she said. Inspired by John F. Kennedy, America went to the Moon. On Kennedy's grave at Arlington the night of July 20, 1969, someone put a simple note: "The Eagle has landed." In the Age of Obama, the Eagle has fallen.

Remembering Andrew Breitbart

“I want to remind you that success in life is based on hard slogging. There will be periods when discouragement is great and upsetting, and the antidote for this is calmness and fortitude and a modest yet firm belief in your competence. Be sure that your priorities are in order so that you can proceed in a logical manner, and be ever mindful that nothing will take the place of persistence.” — Walter Annenberg

Yesterday the conservative movement lost a great fighter by the untimely death of Andrew Breitbart. Andrew Breitbart died at the age of 43 from a massive heart attack while walking near his home in Beverly Hills.

Breitbart was, as many youth are, a liberal all through college. It was during the confirmation hearings for Clearance Thomas that he began to see the total hypocrisy of the left and the liberal bias in the media. He claimed that at the beginning he was rooting against the confirmation of Thomas, but as the hearings progressed he began to anger at the beating Thomas was taking from the Democrats and the media. What infuriated him the most was the absence of any defense of Thomas by the NAACP and other black leaders? In an interview with Sean Hannity last year Breitbart said he became incensed at the way the media and Democrats were piling on this good and honorable man.

Breitbart eventually began to realize that he was a conservative and that he wanted to do something with his like that would be important. He stated that one day while driving along in his car he was praying to God for guidance in his life and begging God to show him the purpose he should dedicate his life to. It was within two weeks of this event he met Matt Drudge and went to work for him developing his web site.

Working with Drudge gave Breitbart the skills and passion for using the internet as a counter to the left-wing main stream media. Soon after his tenure with Drudge he went to work for the Huffington Post, a job that allowed him to hone his skills and bring him into conflict with the Post’s left leaning journalism.

It was now time for Andrew to develop his own web site and he started sites like Breitbart.com, Breitbart TV, Big Journalism, Big Government, and Big Hollywood.” It was through these sites he began recruiting people of like mind who would assist him in getting the conservative message out to the public.

His friends saw him as a fearless truth-teller and provocateur. (The word “fearless” will have to be retired from overuse when all of his obituaries have been written.) His enemies, and they are legion even in death, saw him as the most vile creature who ever slithered upon the earth.

Within hours of the news, Twitter lit up with repugnant and ghoulish statements from left-wingers celebrating the premature death of a man with four small children. I won’t repeat them because the printable ones aren’t representative, and the representative ones aren’t printable.

Jonah Goldberg, a personal and professional friend of Breitbart writes in National Review Online:

“Andrew relished such attacks, truly, because they proved to him that he was having great effect in his work and that his opponents had run out of serious arguments.

This is not to say that Andrew was beyond criticism. He made mistakes. He took full swings at some pitches he should have just let go. He overstated some things that needed to be said, and said some things that didn’t need to be said at all. He was a human run-on sentence who showed deference to no punctuation mark save the exclamation point, a conservative Tasmanian Devil from the Bugs Bunny cartoons we both grew up on, whirling and whizzing through anything in his path. Giving him a dose of Ritalin to treat his hyperactivity would be like throwing a glass of water on a five-alarm fire.

But the hatred his enemies had for him overshot his faults like a dart thrown past the board and over the moon. Others will talk of his accomplishments: working for the Drudge Report in its infancy, creating websites and businesses, pioneering new forms of media, and exploiting the inherent weaknesses and pieties of the old media. And many who knew him will talk of his personal kindness: how the only times he slowed down were when he needed to lend an ear, do a favor, or talk about how much he loved his family.

Those things matter more than the politics, but they are not what made him a public figure. If being kind and loving your family made you famous, countless plumbers, carpenters, and accountants would be famous too.

No, what made him a public figure is what drove him to leap into battle day after day. Andrew had profound contempt for those on the left who claimed a birthright to a monopoly on virtue and tolerance.

He rejected in the marrow of his bones the idea that conservatives needed to apologize for being conservative or that liberals had any special authority to pronounce on the political decency and honesty of others.

Indeed, when liberals called him (or his heroes) racist, Andrew paid them the compliment of taking them seriously. He truly felt that to call someone a racist was as profound an insult as could be leveled. To do so without evidence or logic was a sin.

He believed, rightly, that much of establishment liberalism hurls such charges as a way to bully opponents into silence, and he would not be bullied. That was why, for instance, he offered a reward of $100,000 (payable to the United Negro College Fund) to anybody who could prove tea partiers hurled racial epithets over and over at black congressmen walking past them to vote on ObamaCare, as several alleged. No one got paid because the charge — recycled over and over by the media — was a lie.

The Internet was a boon to Andrew because it exposed liberalism’s undeserved monopoly on the “narrative” — one of his favorite words.

60 Minutes won awards for hidden cameras, but when he used the same technique to embarrass liberals, such tactics were suddenly proclaimed ethically beyond the pale. The joke was on the scolds because they had to cover the stories anyway. And the stories got results. Congress defunded ACORN. Heads rolled at NPR. Andrew understood that news and arguments change politics if you can get the news and arguments to the people — and if you don’t let those who don’t like what you say define you.

Whatever his faults, that was my friend’s great and remarkable strength: He never let the bastards get him down. That took away his enemies’ greatest power, and they hated him all the more for it.”

Jonah Goldberg is right on target. Breitbart was showing the way to deal with the left-wing media, especially the bloggers. He was not afraid to take them on and expose their bias and lies. He also provided inspiration to other conservative journalists and bloggers.

He was on the forefront of reporting several controversies, notably the salacious tweets former Rep. Anthony Weiner had sent to young women before his resignation.

Breitbart became embroiled in a controversy of his own, though, for his reporting on a web video of Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod. The edited video appeared to show Sherrod making a racist comment, but the full tape later put the remark in context and made clear that Sherrod was actually talking about bridging racial differences. Sherrod was fired after the edited video surfaced, and later filed suit against Breitbart.

Breitbart, though, went on to report on one of the biggest congressional scandals of 2011 — the tweets sent by Weiner to young women he met online. The former New York congressman, who is married, adamantly denied the reports at first, before admitting to them in a tearful press conference and resigning.

One of Breitbart's most memorable moments came when he commandeered the podium before Weiner's final New York conference, holding court with reporters and demanding an apology from Weiner — while Weiner waited to attend his own press conference.

Goldberg recalled how one of Breitbart's favorite pastimes was to retweet the nasty things other people said about him. "He considered it a badge of honor," Goldberg said.

According to Joel Pollak, the editor of Breitbart TV, Breitbart was a big baseball fan and fanatical Dodger fan. Pollack claimed that Breitbart wanted to be a scout for the Dodgers and give them advice on the talent they should be looking. This passion for talent gave Breitbart the ability recognize talented and passionate players for his endeavors. Pollack claimed, in an interview on Fox and Friends, that Breitbart was quick to recognize talent and bring them on board. This is how he built his organization.

As Bill Whittle, of PJ Media, claims, Breitbart will be sorely missed. Yes, there is a growing cadre of conservative journalists and bloggers and they are having an impact of the leftwing media. It is a “to the death” fight for the soul of this Republic and we have lost our General Patton.

Megan is Missing

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Conservatives Need to Learn How to Use the Internet – Now!

"By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation."— Edmund Burke

Last week Obama held a town hall meeting at the headquarters of Facebook. On April 20, Facebook held an online town hall meeting for President Barack Obama, personally hosted by billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It was filled with magically shifting budget numbers and time frames, packaged in endless talking-point speeches that left the Facebook crowd silent (or asleep) in a way that home videos of dancing housecats can never do.

Zuckerberg kicked off the affair by saying he can’t wait to pay more in taxes, something he mysteriously fails to do voluntarily (Psst, Zuckerberg, here's how you can make a donation to the United States Government). From there, attendees got to watch a President who gives nasty partisan campaign speeches instead of budget proposals call Rep. Paul Ryan's budget "radical, but not particularly courageous." Epic fantasies of a slowly "recovering" economy were spun, causing many to forget all that unpleasant, unexpected news that keeps skittering across their newspapers. Billions in new spending were proposed with every passing moment.

The President graciously acknowledged that America is "still the most dynamic and entrepreneurial culture in the world, but I can't do it all myself. People need to be engaged." It was incredibly humble of Mr. Obama to concede that he can't personally run the most dynamic culture in the world without a bit of help from his eager children in the American electorate.

Why shouldn't Republican candidates be allowed to have this kind of fun with the Facebook crowd? After all, Facebook is the largest media company in the world, with half a billion members. Plenty of them are conservatives and Tea Party members. Sarah Palin has been using this electronic medium to get here case out sans editing by the left-wing press.

Team Barack astutely exploited Facebook in the 2008 campaign to create legions of Obama Zombies who marched to elect the most radical and untested president in American history. In fact, did you know that Obama even hired the co-creator of Facebook, Chris Hughes, to help man his online operation in 08? No wonder why Obama was pulling in millions of Facebook friends and micro targeting hoards of clueless college students in their dorm rooms. As one McCain-Palin adviser self-deprecatingly observed after the election, "Memo to self: Next time get the co-founder of Facebook on your team."

There will eventually be a chosen Republican candidate to challenge Obama. When that happens, the candidate deserves his or her own Facebook Town Hall. It should be personally moderated by Zuckerberg, just as Obama's was.

If you think the Internet revolution encompasses only areas like business, advertising, publishing and entertainment, you are sorely mistaken — in fact you are delusional.

In less than a decade, starting from nearly nothing, left-wing powerhouse MoveOn.org and that other left-wing web site Media Matters created a force that can put a million volunteers on the ground, can raise $30 million in small donor contributions every cycle (several times that number in 2008 and likely 2012), and never needs help from big check writers. The group's small donors kept Barack Obama even or ahead of Hillary Clinton in fundraising throughout 2007, even while he was 20 points down in the polls, and their activists won him the caucus states by an average of 70-30, ultimately delivering the Democratic nomination.

There is nothing like that kind of online political powerhouse on the right. Nothing.

Conservatives have spent a decent amount of money on technology over the past few years, and they don’t lack for efforts to “be the next MoveOn” (at least if you listen to their fundraising pitches). What’s more, they’ve been quite successful in certain areas of technology, particularly blogging and other alternative media. They know how to use the new medium to broadcast. So why don’t they know how to use it to organize?

A similar question could have been asked of the French Army in 1940.

The tank dominated World War II battlefields, but it was invented in World War I. Needless to say, in 1917 and 1918, tanks were very different: they were slow (5 mph), their main armament was weak, and in many cases, rather than carrying a main gun, they carried a lot of smaller machine guns dispersed around the vehicle. They were also, being based on the automotive technology of the time with massive weight added and battlefield conditions factored in, very unreliable.

The armies that invented the tank saw them as infantry support vehicles, weapons platforms that would help break the trench warfare deadlock of WWI’s western front. As such, they spread them out all along the line with the troops, and gave them the job of machine-gunning pockets of stubborn resistance.

By World War II, tanks had become a lot more sophisticated in virtually every way. The French Army was believed to be the best in the world like the Char B1 (however difficult that may be to believe now), and it also had the heaviest, best armored tanks. But the French had not rethought armored strategy in a generation: it had not even occurred to them to do so — and neither had anyone else except a young Lt. Colonel named Chuck De Gaulle.

Except Germany.

In the 1930s, German General Heinz Guderian created a revolution when he realized that tanks were not simply infantry support platforms, but rather, the modern equivalent of cavalry. Guderian realized that the proper use of a tank was not singly along the line, but massed in formation; and that these armored formations should form spearheads, punching through the traditional front line and shooting behind it as far as lines of supply could be maintained. In so doing, the army could encircle its hapless foes and force their surrender with minimal fighting, even if the enemy force was technically superior.

And this is exactly what they did. After overrunning Poland in three weeks, the German army turned on the complacent French and forced the surrender of the world’s finest and largest army in a month. The same France that had held off the Germans for four blood-soaked years a generation earlier went tamely under the Nazi yoke in June of 1940. The better army was defeated by a better understanding of how to use the tools available.

Let’s say that again: it’s not the weapon, it’s what you do with it, and who’s using it.

This is why conservatives are failing online: they are employing an outdated paradigm as their model for use of a revolutionary technology that changes everything.

Their consultants view e-mail as if it were direct mail, but don’t see that online we call that “spam.”

Their candidates hire “social media experts” whose primary qualifications are that they’ve been paid to tweet for someone.

When Barack Obama decided to run for the White House, he didn’t hire a Beltway consultant: he hired a co-founder of Facebook. And he wound up beating odds too high to count.

The left succeeds because it’s serious. It understands the new medium because it hires genuine innovators, people who’ve actually helped build companies worth billions of dollars with tens if not hundreds of millions of users. They are not political junkies with a new toy: they are the best and the brightest in a cutting-edge field that has already completely changed the world. They are the Guderians, Rommels and Pattons of the Internet. They don’t use technology to simply inform or beg for money, they use it as an overall strategy to win.

Which group would you hire? Or to put that another way, would you have your airline pilot – no matter how good he might be – perform your brain surgery?

What the right is leaving on the table is staggering. Gallup tells us that just 20% of Americans self-identify as liberal, 42% call themselves conservative. If 2010 demonstrates anything it is this: That independents are overwhelmingly susceptible to a well-articulated conservative agenda. And Tea Party numbers imply the possibility of an online conservative force more than twice the size of the left’s.

Along with his friends from PayPal and Apple, Rod D. Martin is working to create that force through what they call The Vanguard Project. They have put a lot of money behind it but need more: Billionaire George Soros and his friends put $24 million behind MoveOn in its early stages. It’s not cheap, any more than PayPal or Facebook were cheap. Modern tanks were more expensive than horses too, and needed officers with different experience.

But the clock is ticking. The left has leveraged a minority into dominance: conservatism’s 2010 wave is no match for the full organizational power of our opponents. The Tea Party has given conservatives an army. Whether we back, fund and deploy a modern technological infrastructure to undergird and support that army will determine whether we take back America, or whether we experience the ugly lessons learned by the French Army, or worse, the Polish Cavalry.

Obama told his Facebook audience that he hoped they wouldn’t "get cynical and frustrated about our democracy." What would make us more cynical than watching the biggest media outlet on Earth give the incumbent President a massive in-kind campaign contribution denied to his challenger? Human Events is circulating a petition for Facebook to offer equal time to all candidates. Sign the petition, and demand equal time on Facebook!

Rod D. Martin, founder of The Vanguard Project, is a leading futurist, technology entrepreneur and conservative activist from Destin, Florida. He was part of PayPal.com’s pre-IPO startup team, serving as special counsel to founder and CEO Peter Thiel, and also served as policy director to former Governor Mike Huckabee. He is President of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA), a member of the Council for National Policy, and serves on numerous nonprofit and for-profit boards.