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We hope everyone had a restful weekend. To kick off our work week, we have a number of stories that are what we call “actionable,” meaning news you can use. Friday’s Food for Thought is the space for all things strange, interesting and somewhat sublime. Monday morning, it’s all about business. And business time it is. Well, perhaps there is one story at the end of this post that may be more of a fit for Friday’s post. Happy Monday!

Obama Rebukes Cheney Criticism
Last night, President Obama appeared on 60 Minutes. For those who did not see it — and no big surprise here, since this was how 60 Minutes was marketing the segment — Obama did a rebuttal to Cheney’s recent interview on CNN where he dissed Obama’s decision to shut down the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Here’s the comment by Obama:

“I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney — not surprisingly,” Obama said. “I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can’t reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don’t torture, with our national security interests. I think he’s drawing the wrong lesson from history.”

Panetta Hits The Road
For his first big trip abroad as the new CIA Director, Leon Panetta traveled this to India and Pakistan late last week. The main mission of the trip was to address concerns that political turmoil in Pakistan is distracting its government from dealing with insurgents who threaten the region. In addition, he stopped off in India to discuss the terrorist attacks in Mumbia last year. Panetta also reassured Pakistani Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gillani that Washington was lining up more economic assistance for Pakistan, as well as more equipment and training for its security forces.

GIS Catching On With Government
Our friends at GISUser ran this piece last week on how GIS is catching on with the government sector in Europe and North America. According to a recent study by Datamonitor, nearly three-quarters of government agencies in Europe and North America have, or plan to implement geographic information systems (GIS), with over half of agencies surveyed having implemented GIS in the last 12 months. Good stuff! Read more here.

Mapping the History of Britain
In news from across the pond, here’s a quick story about a researcher winning a grant to write a biographical history of the Ordnance Survey, which started out in 1791 as critical military maps for the French Revolution. GEOINT in its earliest form. Read more here.

Without a Map
For our final story, it seems that some people are going “old school” and are ditching their GPS systems to get lost in the woods. In a recent and interesting story from the Washington Post, the Quantico Orienteering Club recently held an “orienteering event,” where competitors race through the woods using only an old school map and a compass to find various markers.

Happy Monday!

Tags: Cheney, CIA, GEOINT, geospatial intelligence, Intelligence Community, Mapping, Obama, Orienteering, Panetta, Quantico Orienteering Club