Policy and Politics
tfk | January 6, 2007J.D. asks does the kansas gop hate me?:
Look. I’m a secular conservative and a non-combatant in the "culture war". I think we (my readers and I) can all agree on that.
You already chased me off with this unhealthy fixation on gay marriage and this "intelligent design" crap. I’m not really a "joiner" to begin with, but you together with the national GOP really made it easy on me.
It looks like you’re ready to pick a state party chairman. Your choices are… Phill Kline, Kris Kobach, and Tim Huelskamp.
Seriously, what did we ever do to you?
The answer to the first question is: Yes, they hate you…
tfk | January 4, 2007Finally, someone or other has put together a means by which you can evaluate the important question of the day: Is President Bush Psychotic?
Take the test, decide for yourself.
tfk | January 4, 2007The Pitch has a nice piece on Kris Kobach, examining his ongoing role in a racist anti-immigrant group, his failed campaign for Congress, the reversals of the policies he pushed while at the Justice Department, and controversy surrounding his classes at the UMKC law school. The piece, and frankly his career, can be summarized by this comment:
"Everything he does has been a failure, except for looking very good and sounding very good and having an amazing résumé," Mdivani says.
Mdivani is an immigration lawyer who points out that advice he has given in legislative hearings is so wrong that…
tfk | January 3, 2007The article I cited earlier reports that:
By mid-September, Mr. Bush was disappointed with the results in Iraq and signed off on a complete review of Iraq strategy — a review centered in Washington, not in Baghdad.…
This year, decisions on a new strategy were clearly slowed by political calculations. Many of Mr. Bush’s advisers say their timetable for completing an Iraq review had been based in part on a judgment that for Mr. Bush to have voiced doubts about his strategy before the midterm elections in November would have been politically catastrophic.
The translation of these paragraphs is…
tfk | January 3, 2007GOP Lawmakers Divided About 'Surge' in Troops:
Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.) … said in an interview Saturday that he could favor more troops if they were a "precursor" to political stability. But he added: "A short-term buildup in troops, if it simply is to impose military order without the possibility of political equilibrium, that doesn't seem to me to be too farsighted."
I would go further. It was a mistake to send troops into Iraq in 2003. In part, that mistake resulted from the total absence of a clear plan for getting them back out – the lack of clear goals led to a lack of any exit…
tfk | January 3, 2007Yesterday, the Bush administration awoke from its long slumber and noticed that chaos overran Iraq plan in ’06, Bush team says. The Times story barely requires commentary:
President Bush began 2006 assuring the country that he had a "strategy for victory in Iraq." He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch trying to devise a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed.
The original plan, championed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Baghdad, and backed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, called for turning over responsibility for…
tfk | January 1, 2007
As both parties urge aging lawmakers to hang on for one more term, "Memory Pills" Roberts quips, "'I have my track shoes on,' …, still feisty at 70, who said he intends to seek another term."
Track shoes may not be the best good luck charm, I don't think that they did much for Jim Ryun. Indeed, they suggest not someone running toward re-election, but running from some secret.
I'm still waiting for someone to clarify what medicine Senator Roberts was shaking around on Meet the Press. Hunting around on Google suggests that the only prescription drugs that are referred to as "memory pills"…
tfk | December 31, 2006A brief note before a New Year's dinner. The 3000th US soldier has died in Iraq. I suppose that means it's 2007 in Iraq, but the landmark fatality will be mourned in the United States as we swallow the dregs of 2006.
I hope that future generations remember last November's elections as a turning point, but this sad milestone in the unswerving course we've taken in Iraq is a reminder that change is not instantaneous, and there will probably never be a single moment we can point to and say "That's the end of that era."
So let's celebrate tonight as if it were the end of that era. And when we…
tfk | December 27, 2006A few years ago, a number of small children got sick from E. coli infections; the bacteria were traced to petting zoos. Ms. TfK and I both thought that a smart Congresscritter could win the suburban mothers' votes by requiring better scrutiny of hygiene at petting zoos.
Little did we know that within years, we'd be seeing similar problems emerging from our spinach and green onions (and undoubtedly other veggies soon). The Baltimore Sun dug in and discovered the FDA complaining that it's research on food safety had stalled:
Recurring outbreaks of food-borne illness from contaminated produce…
tfk | December 27, 2006A source tells the Washington Post that Uafter much pressure, the Feds will be listing the Polar Bear as a "threatened" species:
The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world's most recognizable animals out of existence.
This is a remarkable step, and it is not the least bit surprising that the administration is announcing this between Christmas and New Years, when the minimum number of people read newspapers or the Federal…
tfk | December 27, 2006The Wichita Eagle's staff ask "Could private savings accounts be a bipartisan reform?" I cannot identify the bipartisanship in their text, though:
I was surprised when President Bush said last week that Social Security reform was one area on which he hoped to reach an agreement with the new Congress. … But Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., also promoted private savings accounts as a bipartisan solution in a Washington Post op-ed piece this week.
Just saying that it's bipartisan does not make it so. Two Republicans are pushing this, that is not bipartisan. Even if Joe Lieberman and a couple of…
tfk | December 24, 2006Ivo Daalder examines Candidate Bush's critiques of Clinton-era foreign policy with President Bush's foreign policy. You can imagine the result when I tell you that the first item he quotes from the 2000 GOP foreign policy platform is "The [Clinton] administration has run America’s defenses down over the decade through inadequate resources, promiscuous commitments, and the absence of a forward-looking military strategy."
It's like looking in a mirror.
tfk | December 21, 2006Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, said, in Arabic to a Palestinian audience:
In the past, they said: "Under no circumstances will we accept a state, unless it includes all of Palestine, because Palestine is a land of Islamic endowment." Fine. This doesn't work. I can say: "We demand all of the land," and you will applaud me. This doesn't work. This doesn't work. This doesn't work. There is a reality -- either you acknowledge it, or you will get crushed.
This doesn't work. Powerful words in almost any context. Accepting that the old ways haven't succeeded and that…
tfk | December 20, 2006While she couldn't block Phill Kline's selection as District Attorney, Governor Sebelius didn't have to sign the paper granting him the post. At the time when the selection by GOP officials took effect, the governor said:
With the overwhelming election of Paul Morrison as Attorney General -- an outcome even more pronounced in Johnson County -- the people of Kansas made a strong and unequivocal statement about Phill Kline’s fitness for law enforcement and his pursuit of misguided, personal priorities in public office. Out of a deep and enduring respect for the will of the people, I cannot…
tfk | December 19, 2006Go to Participate.net and get one of 50,000 DVDs of the famed documentary. I presume this resolves whatever issues had emerged between the National Science Teachers and the film's producers.
tfk | December 19, 2006Senator Brownback decided to back down on his wacky crusade against a judge who attended a lesbian commitment ceremony. Whether this will help him or hurt him in Iowa and especially South Carolina is unclear.
I continue to find it deeply disturbing to find Sam Brownback being treated as an increasingly serious candidate for president. I guess that just shows how remarkably shallow the GOP bench actually is.
The bloom is even off the rose that was St. McCain:
Earlier this year a close friend of John McCain gave me [Richard Cohen] fair warning: McCain was about to become much more…
tfk | December 18, 2006This is excellent news. The Magnuson-Stevens fisheries act which passed not long ago has a lot of measures to cut overfishing in the oceans. Many important fish species have been fished to the breaking point, and need serious efforts to allow them to recover. This isn't just a matter of protecting seafood restaurants, it's also a matter of watching out for the ecosystems that sustain life in our oceans.
Among the measures approved are cuts in fishing quotas for several species, but more importantly:
While much of the bill focuses on tightening the 30-year-old fisheries law, it also…
tfk | December 18, 2006Ed Abbey, in a great essay on development in Arizona (anthologized in One Life at a Time, Please), commented that "the religion of endless growth – like any religion based on blind faith rather than reason – is a kind of mania, a form of lunacy, indeed a disease. And the one disease to which the growth mania bears an exact analogical resemblance is cancer. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell. Cancer has no purpose but growth; but it does have another result – the death of the host."
Sebastian Mallaby made me think of this when he writes:
Modern societies worship…
tfk | December 16, 2006Good news!
Anti-Torture Statute Used to Indict Son of Liberia's Ex-Leader:
The Justice Department invoked a 12-year-old federal anti-torture statute for the first time yesterday, indicting the son of former Liberian president Charles Taylor in connection with the alleged use of a hot iron, scalding water and an electrical device to shock and burn an ally of his father's political opponents.
The indictment involves a rare use of a U.S. human rights law against a foreign national or a U.S. citizen over an act committed outside U.S. territory. Taylor's son allegedly committed the torture in the…
tfk | December 16, 2006After a long delay, New Jersey approves $270 million for stem-cell research:
In 2004, Gov. James E. McGreevey signed a bill to establish the country’s first state-supported stem-cell research institute …
New Jersey also earned the distinction of becoming the second state in the nation, after California, to approve a law specifically legalizing embryonic stem-cell research …
But as politicians in New Jersey squabbled over the details of how to translate the idea of a research institute into a bricks-and-mortar reality, at least half a dozen states — including Connecticut and Maryland — created…