Pentagon

In what may be just an eerie coincidence, the Defense Department posted a contract award notice today to Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts for research into "Methods for Explosive Detection at Standoff." Of particular concern are Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) that have become a favorite among terrorists and gained widespread attention during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Tulsi Gabbard, a congresswoman representing Hawaii's Second Congressional District, responds to President Obama's proposed budget by expressing concern over missile defense cuts. "It would also cut our missile defense budget, even as Hawai‘i and the rest of the country face direct and heightened threats from North Korea," she says in a statement.

Gabbard is a Democrat, who otherwise praises Obama's budget, except for president's proposed Social Security "cuts."

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s address to the National Defense University today, hyped by the administration as a “strong message that the time has come for [the Department of Defense] to consider fundamental change in how it is organized and how it operates to better reflect 21st century strategic and fiscal realities” turned out to be a bit of a wet noodle.

John Podhoretz, writing in the New York Post:

The Senate confirmed Chuck Hagel as the next secretary of defense early Tuesday evening, with 58 senators supporting his nomination and 41, all Republicans, opposing. The boss, in his capacity as the chairman of the Emergency Committee for Israel, responded in a statement:

On Meet the Press, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal said that President Obama should delay Obamacare to cancel sequestration:

"But the president needs to step up to the plate and say to Congress, here’s how you cut 85 billion dollars. I’ve got an idea for them," said Jindal.

"Right," the host interrupted. "But he-- but he has-- he has said it, just Congress doesn’t want to raise-- doesn’t want to raise the revenues."

Quin Hillyer, writing at the Center for Individual Freedom, explains why Senate Republicans should continue filibustering Chuck Hagel's nomination for defense secretary:

A group of 15 Republican senators have sent the following letter to President Obama asking for Chuck Hagel's nomination as secretary of defense to be withdrawn:

February 21, 2013

Omaha, Nebraska
Chuck Hagel’s archive is housed here at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. But despite his nomination for secretary of defense, reporters, as well as the public writ large, are being denied access to the thousands of papers, speeches, audio and video files, and artifacts in the archive.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD is told that Hagel supports the university’s decision to keep the archives sealed.

Chuck Hagel, Barack Obama's defense secretary nominee and a former Nebraska senator, said in a 2008 interview that he agreed that the United States has not been a "fair or credible peace broker" in the Middle East, specifically with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Omaha, Nebraska
The largest known Chuck Hagel archive is located here, at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. But good luck accessing it: Despite intense national focus on the defense secretary nominee’s record, this reporter was shunned from taking a look inside the trove of Hagel’s videos, audio recordings, documents, pictures, and artifacts.

At a 2010 appearance at Rutgers University, former Nebraska senator and current defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel reportedly said that the state of Israel risks "becoming an apartheid state if it didn't allow the Palestinians to form a state." Hagel also referred to current Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a "radical." Alana Goodman at the Washington Free Beacon reports: