Seventy-nine percent of Iraqi voters approved the constitution in the nationwide referendum held Oct. 15, according to official results released Tuesday. That’s great news and a historic milestone. It doesn’t mean, of course, that Iraq is safer now — as evidenced by Monday’s attack on a Baghdad hotel. Or that Iraq doesn’t still face a huge challenge holding together a divided country — the Sunni minority overwhelmingly opposed the constitution. But the vote is a powerful statement about the desire of most Iraqis to live in freedom and govern themselves.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
I’ll be surprised if Vice President Dick Cheney gets indicted in the Valerie Plame case. But even if he isn’t, the reports that it was Cheney who told his chief of staff Scooter Libby that Plame worked for the CIA are still damaging to the administration. And what about the White House pledge made on Sept. 29, 2003, that if the probe discovers that someone in the administration did leak, that person "would no longer be in this administration”?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Janet Murguia, a former KU vice chancellor who is now president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza, laid into the Bush administration in a commentary in Monday’s Washington Post over reports that officials are sweeping hurricane shelters looking to bust and deport illegal immigrants. She writes: "No matter what you believe about the nation’s failed immigration policies and the presence of undocumented immigrants in the United States, you should be alarmed that the federal government is willing to breach the promise of safe harbor offered by its own agencies and those run by private charities. Not only does it offend every basic humanitarian principle to round up those who have sought help out of desperation, but it does grave damage to the larger public health and safety." The tactic also seems at odds with President Bush’s immigration goals.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
It took a while, but the knives are finally coming out at The New York Times over its embattled reporter Judith Miller and her editors. Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote: "Sorely in need of a tight editorial leash, she (Miller) was kept on no leash at all, and that has hurt this paper and its trust with readers. She more than earned her sobriquet ‘Miss Run Amok.’ "
And noting Miller’s credibility problems, Dowd argued that Times management "should have nailed her to a chair and extracted the entire story of her escapade" before turning Miller’s case into a First Amendment battle.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Syria’s involvement in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is more damning than disclosed in a United Nations report. That’s because the names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, president of Syria, and other members of his inner circle were dropped from the report that was sent to the U.N. Security Council, The Times of London reported. How do we know this? It seems U.N. officials screwed up and distributed an electronic version of the report that allowed recipients to track editing changes.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Records recently obtained by a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show that the FBI has had hundreds of potential violations of surveillance rules, The Washington Post reported. Violations included conducting surveillance on U.S. residents for as long as 18 months without proper paperwork or oversight, obtaining e-mails after a warrant expired, seizing bank records without proper authority, and conducting an improper "unconsented physical search."
FBI officials downplayed the violations as mostly administrative errors. Maybe, but you don’t have to be a card-carrying member of the ACLU to be uneasy when the government keeps saying "trust us."
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
