Help the U.S. Auto Industry? Vote Against It
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Good News is Bad News
Romania, Parade magazine, and network news show- enders all have
something in common beyond an attempt to deliver an item on
conservative wish-lists: they suggest just the opposite of what they
intend.
Given the definition of news, Ro- mania’s proposed requirement that half of all news broadcast must be good news sends a message to the world that this is such a god-awful, gloomy place where nothing ever good
hap- pens, that good events have become so rare they now qualify as news.
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The Myth of Guns for Self-Defense
News item: Man stabs to death at least five officers inside Shanghai police station. Chinese police are well-armed. If they were unable to defend themselves with their handguns, what chance does anyone else have.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia rests much of the 5-4 majority opinion of the court in D.C. v Heller on the alleged right to have the right to one’s defense of one’s self defense. Sup- posedly, if one has a gun, one can protect oneself against at- tackers, intruders and all sorts of evil-doers. The evidence is sparse, and what there is of that is old, but it puts the lie to the claim that personal possession of a gun is an effective defense.
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Scalia's Pretzels for Guns
The next time you hear Justice Antonin Scalia call himself a constitutional “originalist,” laugh out loud. As we suggested in the previous piece he might, Scalia tortured the words, twisting them this way and that to make them support an ideologue’s view of the Second Amendment. Gun nuts, and their few rational supporters, are celebrating the decision, but they don’t realize that lower courts are going to be hard put to make any sense of it. This is the muddied opinion. For better writing and better judgment on this issue, we recommend the dissenting opinions of Justices Stevens and Breyer at the end.
Scalia's Vote on Gun Control
Antonin Scalia calls himself an originalist to explain the reasoning behind his Supreme Court votes. In truth, Scalia is one of the most activist of the justices, a term applied to justices they don’t like by most originalists. Sometimes this poses a conundrum for the political conservative. Read his clash of ideologies in his vote on the D.C. v Heller gun-control case and how he pretzel- twists words to make them fit what he wants them to fit.
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Obama's Old, Old Politics Not Much Change
Barack Obama’s decision to eschew public financing for the
general election is disappointing at best, hypocriti- cal at worst. We
are fairly certain this is not the type of “change” his supporters
thought they were voting for dur- ing the primaries. The type of change they thought they were voting for was the
type that followed the corrupt years of the Nixon administration and
its Watergate scandal that led in part to several campaign-funding
re- forms enacted into law beginning in 1974.
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Is Our Past Our Prologue, Again?
An increasingly ignorant America (well, maybe half of Amer- icans if
we’re lucky, or unlucky) will go to the polls Nov. 8 to choose its next
president. As we are learning with the current gas crisis and as we
appear to be learning too late from the foolish Iraq invasion, history
and its mistakes are repeated be- cause we are ignorant. Our
ignorance keeps getting us into trouble that easily could have been
avoided. As a small ex- ample, although this year’s floods in the Midwest
are unusually extreme, they have occurred every year for decades and we
have heard or read the same heart-rending stories every year right on
schedule. No one seem to learn that rivers do flood.
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McCain's Un-American Activities
McCain’s campaign site uses only generalities about his efforts to combat terrorism. This immodesty is uncharacteristic of a presidential candidate, and an examination of the issue and the Supreme Court’s take on it suggests why that is. Three years after the loony U.S. invasion of Iraq, McCain helped auth- or the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which established pro- cedures for denying “terrorist” detainees access to federal courts, i.e, the habeas corpus guarantee of the U.S. Constitu- tion, the only right included in the body of the document (the rest were added as the Bill of Rights amendments).
Ted Kennedy: Maturation of a Senator
The news that Ted Kennedy has a fatal malignant brain tu- mor is about to lead to a flood of eulogies about the man. He has been a Massachusetts senator since 1962. While none of the contributors to this site has covered Washington, much less Congress, quite that long, many of our reporting careers overlap his career. We watched him mature from a shallow senator un- able to say why he wanted to be president to his iconic status of today.
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Solution to Fuel Crisis? Build Refinery
The economic mess in the United States, a mess reverber- ating throughout
the world, should bring a renewed focus on the basic element of the
mess--fuel prices on the verge of having quadrupled since 2000. The federal government may not yet have the figures to declare a
recession or to measure a huge rise in inflation, but the public from
the middle-class on down know both already are here. The housing crisis
was only fuel to a fire made inevitable by a steady and unconscionable
increase in fuel prices.
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Pope's Oxymoron, Bush Without the Oxy
George W. Bush did a big disfavor to the pope during his visit to the White House. Bush lifted a thought from a speech the pope gave before he became pope, a speech that had been unknown to just about all but Catholic Church insiders. In ex- posing that speech to the world, Bush showed the pope to be just about as disconnected from the reality of the world as Bush has been. Bush also exposed further and gave a name to one of the huge chinks in his own armor.
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'Bin Laden Will Have Won?' He Won Big
As we count down to the seventh anniversary of 9/11, al- most forgotten were these words uttered three months later: "Dead or alive....It doesn't matter to me....And so, he may hide for a while, but we'll get him." Those words were spoken by George Bush, Dec. 14, 2001. The excuse for subsequent ac- tions by the Bush administration, an attitude that filtered down into the rest of a frightened American society at ridiculously low levels, was "if we don't do this, Osama bin Laden will have won," or conversely, "if we do this, Bin Laden will have won." Osama bin Laden won years ago.
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Iraq Fiasco Cost Nears 5,000 U.S. Dead
The Bush administration's misadventure in Iraq is closing in on another sad milestone--the 5,000th American death. The number itself is not magic. In fact, some counters come up with slightly different figures. But it is startling, nonetheless, in its big-round-number starkness. Americans should remember, more strongly with each passing month to this year's elections, the real cost beyond the deaths. ---Veritas
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Five Years Later, the Question is Still: Why?
After Bush leaves office, we should not expect a revealing autobiography from him. His speech on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and reassertion of his decision-making infal- libility indicates we may never know why he and the Bush F- Team engaged in that lunatic mission. Not even thousands of American lives and a trillion wasted dollars later. And the sneer- ing man in the room is not saying either.
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Another Form-Over-Justice Tragedy
Lawyer ethics can sometimes lead to an unethical outcome. Take the recent airing by the CBS program "60 Minutes" of an almost unbelievable admission by a pair of lawyers who ack- nowledged they had allowed an innocent man to rot in prison for 26 years because of supposed lawyer ethics. The lawyers said they were prevented by lawyer-client confidentiality rules and le- gal ethics from revealing their client's guilt even though an inno- cent man was sent to prison. After 26 years of silence, the law- yers went public on "60 Minutes." Read more...
The Case For a Brokered Convention
Almost forgotten in the settling of the dust stirred up by the contentious and extra long Democratic primaries is the fact the party still has to hold its nominating convention, Aug.25-28 in Denver. We have advocated superdelegates holding off climbing aboard the Barack Obama bandwagon until the convention just in case "stuff happens" in the lag time between the final primar- ies and then. That concern remains, but there's also the fact that Hillary Clinton still has nearly half the delegates committed to her candidacy. Right now, she's making nice, but there will be a lot of power in her hands to shape the party's platform and perhaps even the selection of a running mate for Obama.
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When Words Are Not 'Just Words'
The Bush administration has rediscovered Afghanistan, now that the Taliban is resurgent, Pakistan is in tatters and the mis- begotten war in Iraq is far from over. Remember Afghanistan? The war we could have won? Where we could have doomed the Taliban? Bush and his handlers had decided Afghanistan had no good bombing targets and besides, Iraq was home to the guy who wanted to kill Bush's Daddy. ----Veritas
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PBS, Not Only Necessary, But Valuable
Sometimes the "Gray Old Lady" can get downright ridicu- lous. Take a recent item, "Is PBS Still Necessary? As journal- ists ourselves, and with more experience than the New York Times writer, we are cognizant of the need to take a somewhat different tack on a story or to attack a long-held "given." Fine, but do not throw away fact and reason in doing so. PBS de- serves support, not trashing.
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Can Democrats Win With Obama?
A third of an electoral college majority might say no. The Democratic Party's cadre of superdelegates may be the best instrument it has if it wants to win the presidential election this fall. Those delegates would be well-advised to hang on to their convention vote instead of jumping on an Obama bandwagon now or paying off old debts to the Clintons. Obama may not be electable this year. Defer the new Camelot a few more years.
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The Democrats' Dilemma--and Ours
Even at StraightRecord, this political season has been
divisive. While, as you should have guessed by now, we tend to be
somewhat liberal on the issues of the day, we do not all agree on how
the politics of them should be practiced. ---Veri- tas, a familiar
presence on this site and taking the "optimist" side, and another
journalist we'll call ---Curmudgeon, arguing the "pessimist" side,
basically the latter's screeds about the value of a brokered convention and doubts about whether Obama can win in the fall because of American racism.
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Afghanistan Still There, Still A Mess
- The Bush administration has rediscovered Afghanistan, now that the Taliban is resurgent, Pakistan is in tatters and the mis- begotten war in Iraq is far from over. Remember Afghanistan? The war we could have won? Where we could have doomed the Taliban? Bush and his handlers had decided Afghanistan had no good bombing targets and besides, Iraq was home to the guy who wanted to kill Bush's Daddy. ---Veritas Read more...
In Iowa, caucus attendees actually made their choices based on sycophancy and fealty to evangelism. None of this has to do with making the proper choice for president. Why not some common-sense criteria? Then consider the issues.
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Iowa, Oprah, Jesus and Joe
It is about time the two leading political parties consider the silliness of allowing a couple of states such as Iowa and New Hampshire to have so much influence over the selection of pres- idential candidates.
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Overlooked Election Dilemma
Voters were not able to choose Howard Dean as president in 2004, nor could they vote for Bill Bradley in 2000 or Colin Powell in 1996. Yet each was considered at the beginning of the pri- mary season to be the front-runner for his party's nomination. Their failure to emerge as their party's candidate was due to a reality overlooked every four years at this time. The reality is, to put a decent turn on a crude phrase, "stuff happens." Given that, there could have been a late-minute chance for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson or Chris Dodd.
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Baseball Owners Again Seek To Do Nothing
The Mitchell Report is out, the major league baseball sea- son is in full swing and there is little cheering about home rec- ords, save for Ken Griffey, Jr. Most fans expected the conclu- sion that some of the biggest stars in Major League baseball had taken performance-enhancing drugs. Major League owners already are trying to say they cannot do much because the in- fractions were not illegal. Yes they can. Fire all of them and ex- punge them from the record books along with their teams' per- formance statistics.
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Guns Again--The Time Has Come
Columbine, Virginia Tech, Helsinki, Omaha and on and on. The incidents go on and on and what is the National Rifle As- sociation's response? "Guns don't kill people, people do." That is a non-sequitur response, as it was intended to be--deflect the question you do not want to answer and turn it to something else. Who ever said guns kill people by themselves?
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Supreme Court to decide D.C. handgun ban
The U.S. Supreme Court is days away from ruling on case 07-290. That could mean a United States returning to the gun- toting West depicted in horse operas or just the latest in a long line of decisions based upon the Constitution as it is rather than one some quarters want it to be saying. Or, more likely, some- thing in between.
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Standing Tough On Lies
If the president tells you the sun rises in the East, would you believe him? Not if you have been listening to his utterances. Then it turned out intelligence had determined Iran suspended-- long ago--its weapons-related nuclear program. In fact, the Na- tional Intelligence Estimate said, the program was suspended long BEFORE Bush asserted just the opposite.
Read more... ---Veritas
Stem Cell Views Invite New Setback
Conservatives are expected to weigh in heavily once again in the presidential campaign as John McCain tries to woo the Republican right-wing to his candidacy. One of the tools con- servatives are likely to use in one key health issue is some of the latest research to justify President Bush's limits on federal help for stem-cell research. That view could set back research even longer.
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What's With the Hillary (Michelle) Hate?
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign was hammered by the crazy fringe of the Republican right-wing and its flood of nasty and outrageous comments. Many similar screeds are posted by bloggers and conspiracy theorists on just about everything, and they are easy to dismiss as the work of nut cases. But the Hillary hatred was and remains inexplicable. We saw the ultimate use of this hatred in the impeachment pro- ceedings against President Clinton, but it continues in the hate e-mail about Hillary and Michelle Obama is likely to be next.
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I Understand Day Va Ju
The United States wants to locate a missile defense site in Europe, the Russian leader protests and relations between the two nations become icy. The U.S. is saber- rattling in Iran, threatening another country over the issue of nuclear weapons. And a U.S.-supported dictator em- barrasses the administration in the middle of an interna- tional conflict. Anybody get a sense of déjà vu?
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Paper? Plastic? Not a toss-up
The confusion over whether it is better to ask for paper or plastic bags at the grocery store stems from a failure by most people to complete the recycling circle. For recycling to occur, the entire circle must be completed.
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