Yup, that is just what Barack Obama proposes for America. Has the man learned nothing over his two failed terms in office? Syria poses no threat to America. Syria has not attacked America. And Obama wants to print up $500 million to ostensibly arm and train rebels. Who are the rebels? As Pat Buchanan rightly notes, “President Bashar Assad is fighting against the al Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front and the even more extreme and vicious Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.”

Pat asks, “What are we doing? … Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin says he wants no part of Obama’s new wars. Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine rightly asserts that President Obama has no authority to take us into war in Syria or Iraq.”

Buchanan concludes, “Congress should block the $500 million for Obama’s wars and tell him his days as imperial president are over.”

Here at richardcyoung.com we will be posting, with special placement, the names of all members of Congress who vote to approve the Obama war-funding request. Americans will have a handy checklist with which to go to the polls this fall.

Hopes of a good wine harvest in Burgundy have been dashed for the third summer in a row, thanks to a three-minute storm that unleashed golf ball-size hail and heavy winds to the vineyards of Cote de Beaune. A wet spring followed by a hot and sunny June had winegrowers optimistic in the region, home to Santenay, Meursalt, Volnay and Pommard appellations. Officials estimate that 60 to 90 percent of the harvest may be lost.

In airspace over France there is a different storm brewing. There was chaos as Belgium air controllers joined the French in a show of solidarity protesting budget cuts. It’s not yet July and airlines were forced to cancel hundreds of European flights. According to The Telegraph, air traffic controllers, trains and ferry services have all threatened strikes for this summer. French strikers, protected by lifelong job security and extremely generous public sector pensions, are protesting the dastardly plot of those who would dare talk of a balanced budget.

Meanwhile, police faced rioting as tens of thousands of football fans across France took to the streets after Algeria’s win over Russia in a World Cup match. Several million people of North African origin live in France. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-Right anti-immigrant Front National, is calling for a ban on French citizens holding double nationality, claiming the riots are proof that the country’s immigration policy has failed. “The state must act, it must end double nationality, it must stop immigration.”

Related videos:

Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., has created one of the most vital books on the health of your family you will ever find, The 150 Healthiest Food on Earth. The lavishly illustrated, 358-page weighty tome gives you more vital information on foods that can keep your family healthy than any other publication I have ever come across. And I am always on the look out. I have given the book to family members and often advise it for others. My goal here is pass on ideas that perhaps you did not previously know about.

Oregano: Jonny describes oregano as the herb with the highest antioxidant activity. According to a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, oregano has 42 times more antioxidant activity than apples, 30 times more than potatoes, 12 times more than oranges, and, maybe the most surprising of all, 4 times more than the amazing blueberries. Jonny adds that oregano has antibacterial properties, anti-carcinogenic properties, and anti-inflammatory properties. This herb’s oil has been used as a digestive aid.

From our garden and dried on the AGA:

The neocon centric American Enterprise Institute and the somewhat less, but still troubling, neocon-sphere Heritage Foundation quickly fall off the radar if you are a non-intervention, small-government-focused individual. Which leads me to the Cato Institute, co-founded by my friend and former CEO of the Cato Institute, Ed Crane. I subscribe to The Crane Report, and see Ed at Cato conclaves. The Cato Institute is where it is today in no small part due to the decades of tireless groundwork by Ed Crane.

Debbie and I are Cato Club 200 members. Among the many outstanding Cato scholars we benefit from speaking with at Cato Benefactor events is Cato senior fellow Julian Sanchez. If you are as concerned as Debbie and I are about digital security and your privacy, Julian Sanchez is a guy, as Wired magazine has found out, you want to keep up with. Here in “The Supreme Court Tells Cops to Back Off Your Cell Phone,” Julian, perhaps shockingly to you, writes, “Compounding the risk of such pretextual searches, there was the growing popularity of powerful forensic devices, like those manufactured by the company Cellbrite, capable of quickly copying a Smartphone’s entire contents. That meant that even if a suspect were held only briefly, their files could be retained and scrutinized at leisure, with the owner potentially none the wiser.” Sounds chilling, does it not? Now as Julian summarizes the view of Jay-Z “you gon’ need a warrant for that.”

Well my iPhone is locked, so is the tablet in my pack, and I know my rights, so you gon’ need a warrant for that. That, with apologies to Jay-Z, is the upshot of the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling today in Riley v. California (PDF), which holds that police must get a judge’s approval before rummaging through the cell phones of people they arrest — closing a potentially massive loophole in the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The Court’s 9-0 decision limits the scope of a longstanding exception to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that law enforcement officers obtain a warrant based on “probable cause” to conduct intrusive searches.  Under the so-called “search incident to arrest exception,” when police place someone under arrest, they can conduct a warrantless search of the person and their immediate surroundings to look for weapons that might pose a threat to the arresting officer, as well as evidence the suspect might attempt to hastily destroy.

In the era of the smartphone, however, legal scholars have long worried that exception could metastasize, with lethal consequences for privacy. As Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, pocket-sized computers holding gigabytes of profoundly intimate data have become “such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” With increasingly powerful mobile devices routinely holding entire photo albums, personal videos, records of Web-browsing history, and vast archives of private correspondence, Roberts noted, giving police free reign to look through a modern phone “would typically expose to the government far more than the most exhaustive search of a house.”

Dick and I often drive to Newport from Key West in early April because I’m itching to get into the garden. KW has some great gardeners, the best of whom are transplants from England. There must be something in their DNA that allows them to garden as though they are back in merry ol’ England. It’s maddening. I don’t quite get sub-tropical zone #11 gardening and look forward to New England in spring. But most often, spring never comes. The weather this year was particularly miserable, and there was no going outside to muck in flowerbeds would have been enjoyable.

So, I’ve been mega gardening since we returned from France as well as from our annual June Harley trip. But on a recent Sunday, I wanted to stay out of the garden and cook for the family. But like everyone’s family, there are varied eating habits. Matt and Allison are vegetarian, Becky and E.J. are pretty much low-carb eaters, and our five grandchildren are … well, you know … children. Getting a meal together to please all can be challenging. Because we have an AGA cooker, I have the flexibility to cook by the seat of my pants. After deciding what we’re having, I put the food in one of the four ovens (each is a different temp), put a timer on as a reminder that there is indeed something cooking, and move dishes from one oven to another depending upon whether the meal needs to be delayed or hurried. But this Sunday I wanted to follow recipes from David Lebovitz’s new cookbook, My Paris Kitchen . His Dukkah-Roasted Cauliflower (Dukkah is an Egyptian spiced nut mix), which I think could become addictive, and French Lentil Salad with goat cheese and toasted walnuts were major hits, nicely rounding out our dinner.

I love that David doesn’t take himself too seriously. He pokes fun at many things, including the French and himself. Dick and I know David well from spending five days with him on one of his awesome “chocolate” tours (more aptly, chocolate-food-wine tour). The way he writes is the way he sounds—funny, insightful, down to earth. I think you’ll appreciate his food, his photos, his writing on France, and his eclectic mix of recipes in My Paris Kitchen. Something for everyone. Check it out.

Bon appetite,

Debbie