Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., defended his “no” vote on a bill establishing clear anti-torture standards (it passed 90-9) by telling The Eagle editorial board that he was protecting a good source of intelligence as well as supporting the troops. The bill, he argued, was a “public vote of no confidence in our servicemen and women.”
He’s got it backward. Roberts should listen to Army Capt. Ian Fishback, the West Point graduate and Iraq war veteran who last month sent an eloquent letter to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., stressing that soldiers aren’t getting clear guidelines on torture and are thus being made scapegoats.
He also maintains that the Army is covering up widespread abuse of prisoners.
Roberts isn’t helping the average grunt with his vote — he’s putting them at risk. As for intelligence gathering: Many experts say that torture rarely produces dependable information anyway.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Iowa gets considerable media attention and economic benefit from being the first state in the nation to assess presidential candidates every four years. So its political insiders surely were heartened by the 68 percent of Americans who told the national Iowa Poll that they don’t care whether the Iowa caucuses continue to get first crack at candidates (only 9 percent said Iowa’s primacy should end). But in the “don’t care” number you see the real problem: Iowa and New Hampshire have so dominated the primary process that Americans elsewhere have no clue about the kind of door-to-door presidential politics they’re missing. This primary system needs to change.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
A night in Old Town is not supposed to be like one in the Old West. So it’s encouraging to see that the Wichita Police Department has been cracking down on troublemakers in the entertainment district, citing 26 people Saturday night alone. As Old Town is giving Wichitans and tourists a good time, it’s supposed to be delivering on millions of dollars of public investment. Public drunkenness and urination or worse are not welcome there.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
What does James Dobson know about Harriet Miers that the rest of us don’t know? That question has been pressing since last week, when the Focus on the Family founder told his radio listeners that he was supporting Miers because of something White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove had told him. The Denver Post even opined that Dobson and Miers should both be called to testify at the confirmation hearings for Miers’ nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Dobson is expected to say more on the radio today, having secured Rove’s permission to do so (is Plamegate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald taking notes?). All of which should make Americans wonder: Why is the White House telling Dobson things about Miers that it isn’t telling the rest of us?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Liberals who were hopeful that Hurricane Katrina would advance their poverty agenda are now scrambling — with food stamp and Medicare cuts on the table — to avoid setbacks, this New York Times article points out.
“We’ve had a stunning reversal in just a few weeks,” said Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal advocacy group in Washington, D.C. “We’ve gone from a situation in which we might have a long-overdue debate on deep poverty to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that low-income people will be asked to bear the costs. I would find it unimaginable if it wasn’t actually happening.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
With the recent spate of natural disasters and warnings of a flu pandemic, George Will points out in this column, people have a feeling of “pervasive menace from things out of control.”
Simon Winchester — in his book “A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906” — wonders at “humankind’s insistent folly in living in places where they shouldn’t.”
And when it comes to earthquakes, Will reminds us, it’s not just Californians who are living in the danger zone. Earthquakes around New Madrid, Mo., in a few-week period in the early 1800s were strong enough to ring the bells in a Charleston, S.C., church.
And, Will points out, “scores of millions of Americans now live on the unstable faults that shook mid-America in 1811-12.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
