Now U.S. strategy toward Afghanistan is comparatively robust — which may be damning with faint praise — and the resources devoted to a war in its ninth year are greater than they’ve ever been. But the focus of that effort is no longer on the east of the country. It’s in the also-Pashtun south, the heartland of the Taliban and the more densely populated region, befitting a strategy that considers popular sentiment to be ultimately decisive.

In the east, troop numbers have grown at a slower pace than in the south, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal has decided to pull back from harder-to-defend areas on the Pakistani border disconnected from significant population centers, as with the U.S. withdrawal from the bloody Korengal Valley earlier this year. Only 4,000 of President Obama’s 30,000 troop increase are devoted to the east.

Whatever the merits of that decision, al-Jazeera has documented insurgent fighters who consider the retrenchment to represent their strategic victory. Maj. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander in Regional Command-East for the past year, hasn’t claimed major victories over the insurgents. “I think that in terms of strength within RC East, I don’t believe that they’re any stronger now than they were a year ago,” he assessed in his final briefing in command of the area earlier this month, adding that he thought his forces now have “greater initiative” in the 14 provinces he’s been responsible for protecting.

All that has placed a number of burdens on the 30,000 NATO troops in eastern Afghanistan. Yesterday, they got a new commander: Maj. Gen. John Campbell of the 101st Airborne Division. And the message during the change-of-command ceremony from Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, McChrystal’s deputy, was clear: “Keep protecting and supporting the Afghan people.”

It’s an enormous challenge. There are about 10 million Afghans living in the area that Regional Command-East is responsible for securing. While McChrystal in March restricted the circumstances under which U.S. forces can conduct so-called “night raids” — violent intrusions into Afghan homes hunting for insurgents — a quick tally of many of the highest-profile and most inflammatory night raid show they occurred in the east, including Oct. 16 in Ghazni, circa Dec. 27 in Kunar, Feb. 12 in Paktia, March 21 in Wardak and April 28 and May 14 in Nangarhar. It would appear that these sorts of high-intensity missions have, to put it generously, supplemented any switch to a population-protection mission in the east. They’ve also inflamed and alienated many residents.

Reversing that alienation through demonstrated action to provide local security is Campbell’s task for the next year. One asset he’ll be bringing to bear: His counterinsurgency adviser is Doug Ollivant, a retired Army cavalry officer and former member of the Petraeus brain trust in Iraq. Ollivant knows counterinsurgency, but he doesn’t know Afghanistan yet, and the first principle of counterinsurgency is to collect local knowledge. Campbell and Ollivant have a ton to do in RC-East and not a lot of time to do it.

Research assistance for this post was provided by Rachel Hartman.

Ryan said his vote for the bailout was influenced by Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, a popular book among conservatives that argues that Nazism and other fascist movements were actually left wing in origin, and his belief that a second Depression would threaten capitalism—and rescue Obama’s presidency.

“I’m a limited-government, free-enterprise guy, but TARP… represented a moment where we had no good options and we were about to fall into a deflationary spiral,” he said. “I believe Obama would not only have won, but would have been able to sweep through a huge statist agenda very quickly because there would have been no support for the free-market system.”

I’ve had other Republican members of Congress with impeccable fiscal conservative credentials explain their votes in similar terms — I’m thinking Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) — but the citing of Goldberg is a first.

Via WorldNetDaily’s Andrea Shea King, who transcribes a stunning interview Posey gave her on her Internet radio show. Posey, who referred to the story as the “eligibility dilemma” and said King brought it to his attention, outright accused the president of hiding something: “The only people that I know who are afraid to take drug tests are the people who use drugs.” He also admitted speaking with “high-ranking members of our judiciary committee” about the chances of Obama “being removed from office,” but said there was “zero chance” of success there.

On how he got the co-sponsors:

I was talking to Neugebauer about it, and my good friend John Culberson was listening to the conversation and so Randy said, “Yeah, I told my staff I wanted to sign up on that already.” And having heard the conversation, Culberson says, “Yeah, sign me up.” And the judge (Carter) was sitting in the next row listening to the conversation and he said, “By God, sign me up!” So you know, we might start getting a little bit of steam here pretty soon. I didn’t strong arm these people. I haven’t begged anybody to sign on this thing, I haven’t asked anybody, really. The people that come up and slap me on the back and say, “Good luck to you!” I say, “Hey, there’s room for you on here!” And of course, they start doing the moonwalk, you know? “Oh no, no, no, congressman!” But you know, times change and time wounds all heels.

On the media and what seems to be a one-way feud with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow:

You may recall that [Stephen] Colbert used the “F” word to describe on national TV a relationship my grandmother, bless her heart, deceased grandmother, must have had with an alligator to come up with the likes of me. [Keith] Olbermann named me the Worst Person in the World and angry woman Rachel Maddow has just trashed me on every show, and asked me to come on her show. You know, I won’t do it cause she’s got a lousy, low rated show, and I don’t want to give her the ratings, quite frankly. I’d love to go on and debate her and set the record straight.

UPDATE: More from the interview, Posey recounts his conversation with Goodlatte:

He said, “You’re trying to do what is right and I want to be a part of that. I said, “There’s just not too many other people around here who want to be a part of that.” He said, “Well, some day they may regret it.”

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