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(Tehran, December '79 - amping up the noise machine)

With the situation regarding the American hostages in Iran at a standstill, now it was the UN's turn to get involved. An emergency session of the Security Council was called On December 2nd, with a universal condemnation of the situation in Iran.

Donald McHenry (U.S. Ambassador to the UN): “Governments, of course retain the right to require that foreign diplomatic personnel leave their soil. But every standard of International behavior, whether established by practice, by ethics, by treaty or by common humanity supports the principle that the personnel of a diplomatic mission and diplomatic property are inviolate. Even in the darkest moments of relations between countries, the security and well-being of diplomatic personnel has been respected.”

Iran however, decided its Ambassador would skip the session - so basically it turned into a sermon to the choir. It's interesting the Soviet Union stayed reasonably mum about the goings on, preferring the old "we don't dabble in others affairs" line of reasoning. Of course, nobody knew the Russians were going to be sending troops into Afghanistan two weeks later.

But that's another story.

And 1979 just kept rolling along.

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field negro: Here in Mississippi, we don't need our blacks educated

Pam's House Blend: Pathetically ignorant and perpetually dishonest Republican contributes more battsh*ttery to the public discourse

TPMMuckraker: CREW calls on State Dept. to probe Galbraith over Kurdish oil dealings

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(Richard Helms - What Didn't He Know and When Didn't He Know It)

Ever since the latest fiasco regarding the CIA surfaced, I kept thinking how adept the CIA has always been, historically in telling half-truths, no truths and "who me?" prevarications.

Beginning in 1975, a series of hearings took place in an attempt to investigate certain "illegal goings on" within the CIA, It ran the full gamut from wiretapping, domestic espionage, assassinations and mail tampering. Heading up the Senate Select Committee was Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), and the hearings were dubbed The Church Committee. The hearings lasted several months and fortunately most all of them were recorded and broadcast by NPR, back when NPR actually stood for something in the way of integrity and solid reporting.

This particular clip, from the afternoon session of October 22, 1975, features former CIA Director Richard Helms (who would later serve as Ambassador to Iran) being questioned by Senator Church over his role in the matter of illegal mail tampering - a practice that had gone on since the days Allen Dulles ran the CIA in 1953.

Since there are numerous hours of testimony to sift through from many witnesses, I will try and offer as much as I can in small doses over the next few weeks. Bear with me - it'll be worth it.

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Looks like another GOP moderate may be out of the running as a potential Presidential candidate in 2012.

President Barack Obama reached across the political divide Saturday and named Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a potential Republican presidential contender in 2012, to the sensitive diplomatic post of U.S. ambassador to China.

Fluent in Mandarin Chinese from his days as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan, the 49-year-old Huntsman is a popular two-term governor who served in both Bush administrations. He has made a name for himself advocating a moderate agenda in one of the nation's most conservative states.

Huntsman made headlines recently for encouraging the Republican Party to swing in a more moderate direction if it wanted to bounce back from the 2008 elections, angering some conservatives.

Obama's 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, said Huntsman is a Republican who "seems to understand the party has to adjust — not stubbornly believe that everything is OK and it is the country that has to change." Huntsman's positions have led some to consider him a potential contender for president in 2012. But Obama's decision to name him ambassador probably rules out the possibility he would run in 2012, writes NBC's First Read. As Politico notes, it's the equivalent of George W. Bush hiring John Edwards or Hillary Clinton in 2001-2002.