President Barack Obama's inaugural committee billed his January 20 National Prayer Service at the National Cathedral as a celebration of America's "diversity of faith." Among the official participants offering prayers at the event was Dr. Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America.

As we have reported in the past week (here and here), former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has been extraordinarily busy of late, flitting about the world and proclaiming the need for President-elect Obama and other leaders to seize current crises as opportunities to build a "new world order." Now Kissinger has formalized his verbal statements in an essay for the International Herald Tribune, which is the global edition of the New York Times. The essay, entitled, "The chance for a new world order," came out on January 12, when Kissinger was in Beijing (along with new world order advocates Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcrosft and Winston Lord) to celebrate our growing interdependence with communist China, a key part of the new world order crafted by Kissinger nearly 40 years ago when he paved the way for Nixon's historic trip to China.

According to Henry Kissinger, the various political and economic crises currently conflicting the world offer President-elect Barack Obama an opportunity to create a "new world order." That's what the former Secretary of State told CNBC's Mark Haines in a January 5 interview from the busy floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Shortly before the opening of the 1995 United Nations World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen, Denmark, the Commission on Global Governance issued its much-heralded report, Our Global Neighborhood, which was presented as a guiding star to the summit. In the foreword to the report, written by Commission co-chairmen Ingvar Carlson, former socialist president of Sweden, and Shridath Ramphal, former president of the World Conservation Union, we are assured that the Commission on Global Governance is not advocating world government. "The development of global governance is part of the evolution of human efforts to organize life on the planet," write the co-chairmen. "As this report makes clear, global governance is not global government. No misunderstanding should arise from the similarity of terms. We are not proposing movement towards world government...."

Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott's longtime connections with KGB agent Victor Louis, whose role was to recruit Westerners to peddle pro-Soviet disinformation, were profiled by Kenneth Timmerman in the April issue of The American Spectator. Talbott met Louis during a trip Talbott took to the Soviet Union as an intern for Time magazine in 1969. "Soon after," observed Timmerman, "Talbott's career took off."

On November 26, President-elect Barack Obama named former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker to head what he calls his Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Volcker was appointed to the Federal Reserve in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter and was later reappointed by President Ronald Reagan.

"Brilliant," "brainy," "super-smart," and "Wall Street smarts" — these seemed to be some of the recurring words used to describe President-elect Barack Obama's two top economic picks — Timothy Geithner, chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, for sectretary of the Treasury; and former Secretary Treasury Lawrence Summers for National Economic Council director. The praise for Geithner and Summers did not just come from Democrats. According to USA Today, "'Brilliant,' 'outstanding' and 'exceptionally talented' were some of the words used to describe [Obama's] two top choices ... and that came from Republicans."

The Republican Party must accept much of the blame for its recent drubbing in the presidential and congressional elections. President Bush and GOP congressional leaders betrayed and alienated their party base, as well as conservative Democrats and independent swing voters by outdoing the liberal Democrats on federal spending, foreign aid, foreign interventionism, foreign wars, border security, immigration, and a host of other issues. And Senator John McCain was rightly identified with most of those discredited policies.

Rahm Emanuel may have been a ballet and dance major at Sarah Lawrence College, but in political circles Obama's choice as chief of staff is infamous as a profane "tough guy." Politicos and pundits frequently reference his reputation as a Chicago-style "enforcer" and his ready use of "sharp elbows" and "brass knuckles."

"Police departments in cities across the country are beefing up their ranks for Election Day, preparing for possible civil unrest and riots after the historic presidential contest," reported The Hill, a Washington, D.C.-based newspaper and Internet site, on October 21.