In a rare closed Senate session Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., singled out Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., for criticism, calling Roberts on his pledge to conduct a "phase two" intelligence report on the administration’s role in prewar Iraq intelligence.
"Despite the fact that the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee publicly committed to examine many of these questions more than 1½ years ago, he has chosen not to keep this commitment," Reid said. "Despite the fact that he restated that commitment earlier this year on national television, he has still done nothing."
It’s a good question: Where is the promised follow-up? The status of the report remains unclear; Roberts says his committee is wrapping it up as soon as next week; Democrats say very little work has been done. It’s good that both sides at least agreed to appoint a bipartisan panel to give a progress report on phase two.
The Plame leak investigation has renewed debate about the Bush team’s use (or misuse) of intelligence. This is important stuff, involving questions of how this country went to war. Americans deserve to get some answers.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
It’s true that the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights proposed for Kansas differs from Colorado’s constitutional amendment. Nonetheless, the vote Tuesday in Colorado to rescind its TABOR law undermines arguments for the Kansas proposal. Even Colorado’s Republican Gov. Bill Owens, who earlier this year was in Wichita championing the virtues of TABOR, switched sides and led the anti-TABOR campaign (and is shown celebrating in the photo). So why would Kansas want to approve an amendment that Colorado now says was a mistake?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
An article in the Oct. 31 issue of The New Yorker about Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to former President Bush, is a damning indictment of current President Bush’s foreign policy decisions and decision-making process. But Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer faults Scowcroft’s “realist” approach to foreign policy — which he defines as caring only about how leaders interact with other countries, not how they treat their own people — for allowing Saddam Hussein to slaughter thousands of Kurds and Shiites. Krauthammer wrote: “It is not surprising that Scowcroft, who helped give indecency a 12-year extension in Iraq, should disdain decency’s return. But we should not.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
With Bush’s appointment of yet another white Catholic male, it appears that diversity was mistakenly taken out in the Harriet Miers shoot-out. That’s unfortunate.
Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post writes:
“The Miers pick represented the elevation of gender over quality; instead of adding to the sense that it is normal and appropriate to have women on the high court, the choice made it look as if presidents have to make sacrifices to scrounge up female nominees.
“But I also find it disturbing that the drive for diversity has been so quickly, so blithely abandoned: Been there, tried that, now we can pick who we REALLY want. Diversity at the expense of quality is no virtue, but quality without diversity is nonetheless a vice.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Karl Rove may not be out of the woods in the Valerie Plame investigation.
“Everyone thinks it is over for Karl and they are wrong,” a source close to Rove told The Washington Post. The strategist’s legal and political advisers “by no means think the part of the investigation concerning Karl is closed.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Much is unknown about the avian flu, including when it might begin to spread easily from person to person rather than from poultry to person. But nations need to prepare now for the worst — a worldwide pandemic. The $7.1 billion prevention plan announced Tuesday by President Bush seems warranted, especially as it will ready 20 million doses of the vaccine against the current strain. Congress should be wary of Bush’s push to immunize vaccine makers against lawsuits, but Americans deserve to know their federal government already is doing what it can to monitor, prevent and manage this deadly threat.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Painful as it was to see Max Ary put on trial for stealing artifacts from the museum he’d co-founded and led to greatness, the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, it was essential that he be held accountable for his shocking actions. And he was Tuesday, when a jury in federal court in Wichita found Ary guilty on 12 counts. As Ary violated the trust of so many at the attraction and far beyond for his own benefit, he called into question the integrity of all museums and their collections management. At least the Cosmosphere continues to thrive, as evidenced by Monday’s arrival of the Gemini 12 capsule in Hutchinson for one of the museum’s famously expert restorations.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Considering how challenging it’s been to get and keep the Kansas Flight Festival going, it took some nerve for the Wichita City Council to vote Tuesday to demand a name change back to the Wichita Aviation Festival for 2006 as it cut the event’s funding by $50,000. Council members’ concerns about cost overruns and giving the city more credit for its sponsorship had merit. But more gratitude was due Wichita Festivals Inc., which took over the aviation event from the city for 2005 and has made changes to help it become more self- and corporate-supported. Whatever it’s called, this celebration of all things airborne remains vital to the Air Capital’s tourism goals and quality of life.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
