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Thursday, September 20, 2007
Local elections and voter IDs; Jena Six case
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Headline correction: “Billable hours aren’t everything.” The headline writer neglected to observe that the story was about lawyers. (Of course, billable hours aren’t everything if one earns as much working 15 hours as when working 40, as asserted.)
• The Thinking Right translation service offers as a public service this translation of Jane Kidd, head of the state Democratic Party, referring to the three weak challengers lined up to take on U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss: “We’re still kind of eyeing that one.” Translation: “Surely there’s a rich trial lawyer or a wealthy businessman out there who can self-finance a statewide political campaign.” No charge. Public gratitude is sufficient.
• President Bush yields to Democrats and appoints a consensus nominee for attorney general. So how do the Dems react? Precisely as they would had he appointed former U.S. Solicitor Ted Olson. U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, says he’ll use the nomination to pressure the White House to turn over documents unrelated to the case for the nominee, Judge Michael B. Mukasey. This is political 2008 guerilla warfare, not governance.
• Headline: “Saudi women want to drive.” Some days I’m for that, and some days I’m not.
• Just after I popped for new ties comes this word from the British Department of Health, concerning hospital-borne infections and the role of doctors’ dress: “Ties are rarely laundered, but worn daily. They perform no beneficial function in patient care and have been shown to be colonized by pathogens.” Well, yes, but cartoonist Mike Luckovich, whose tastes ran to ’40s and ’50s styles, jettisoned those ties. And besides, they weren’t colonized by pathogens. Those were the patterns.
• George W. Bush has a chance to redeem himself. “My biggest frustration remained the president’s unwillingness to wield his veto against out-of-control spending,” former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan writes in his just-released “The age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World.” War-related spending is essential; higher domestic spending’s not. Make Greenspan happy. Veto the bloat.
• Voter ID Apology Window open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. to accommodate the long lines of naysayers expected. Tuesday’s local elections around the state, all requiring photo ID, came off without a hitch. Ordinarily I’d say: Thank Secretary of State Karen Handel, who was everywhere spreading the message that they’d be required. But I never thought the problem the critics hallucinated existed anyway.
• Jack! Jack! What’s a good conservative congressman from Georgia, a young guy with a promising future in statewide office, doing defending earmarks? Being the pork champion of Georgia’s U.S. House delegation may play well in U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston’s coastal district, but the way to shrink government is not to demand anything of it. You ask; they own you.
• Jena, La. Whites hang nooses in a tree on a school campus in September, for which they’re punished with in-school suspensions. Three months later, a white student who had nothing to do with the first episode is beaten severely in the school cafeteria by black football teammates, who are criminally charged. Supporters think the first explains the second. It doesn’t. The beaters may well have been overcharged initially with second-degree attempted murder, but it’s often difficult to get a full and impartial read on stories involving race, as was the case at Duke University.
• Jesse Jackson declared Jena to be “a defining moment, just like Selma was a defining moment,” and accused Barack Obama of “acting like he’s white” for refusing to take up the cause of the “Jena Six,” according to The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., where Jackson spoke. Jackson doesn’t remember the acting white comment. Jena is not Selma or even Duke, where no crime occurred.
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Move on from the 60s. But no.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After Wednesday’s failed effort in the U.S. Senate to pass legislation that would guarantee troops more time at home from Iraq, Democrats really should admit defeat and move on. It’s no wonder the nation’s approval rating for Congress has dipped to 11 percent, the lowest ever. Congress, believe it or not, hovers at a third of President Bush’s 29 percent — and he’s the guy the Left loves to hate. Eleven percent. That’s mass murderer territory.
You’d think the polls and Wednesday’s vote on the proposal by U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) to require the administration to grant troops as much time home from Iraq as spent in the country, would convey a clear message to move on — and to the moveon.org crowd.
Wednesday’s 56-44 vote — four shy of the 60 needed to advance — makes it clear that, even with the wobbly Republicans heading for the hills, Democrats cannot pass legislation that will directly or indirectly force a premature withdrawal from Iraq. Webb’s back-door approach to deny the Pentagon the manpower necessary to support troop levels in Iraq was their best shot, since it could be cast as an effort to “support” the troops. Most soldiers spend about 15 months in Iraq and a year at home.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who joined John McCain in leading the opposition, opined that “the idea of winning the war in Iraq is beginning to get a second look.” Head Dem Harry Reid of Nevada saw it otherwise. “In blocking this bipartisan bill, Republicans have once again demonstrated they are more committed to protecting the president than protecting our troops.” Bipartisan means they had the likes of Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Gordon Smith of Oregon.
To his credit, Virginia Republican John Warner, who voted for the measure in July, reversed course, concluding after talks with senior military officials that the consequences would be disastrous.
Since it’s now obvious to everybody that the Democrats will not prevail in their surrender campaign, you’d think Wednesday’s vote would be the end of their efforts. But no. Carl Levin of Michigan has a proposal to order combat troops home in nine months that’s likely to come up for a vote in coming days. Reid and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin also have legislation pending to cut off funding for combat next year.
Congress is shooting for a new record: Single-digit approval ratings. When another couple of percentage points of the country comes to realize that this is a majority incapable of moving beyond a political campaign, it’ll be there. It’s a party that can’t move on — from the 60s.
