Wichita education activist Cindy Duckett thinks social conservatives will retain their majority on the State Board of Education. “As we’ve seen before, I think conservative voters are motivated; moderates aren’t,” she told The Lawrence Journal-World. Why does she think that? “Where do conservatives gather? They gather in church,” she said. “They meet, they talk, they get motivated. Now, where do moderates meet? That’s just it. They don’t. They may go to church, but they’re not motivated by church.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The Democratic Leadership Council’s new initiative, which was partially unveiled Monday by Sen. Hillary Clinton, aims to help Democrats recapture Congress by recapturing middle class voters. The agenda includes providing additional support for college costs, creating a refundable tax credit to help provide the down payment on housing, and providing universal health care for children. The DLC would help offset the cost of these programs, The Washington Post reported, by eliminating corporate subsidies in the tax code, cutting federal contractors, and making a more aggressive effort to collect taxes.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Letting their upset over Iraq and support for Israel get the better of their judgment, some Democratic congressmen pressured House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., to cancel Wednesday’s address to Congress by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (in photo), arguing in a letter that because of “mounting evidence that the Iraqi leadership’s goals are not in the best interests of the United States — nor the Middle East — Prime Minister Maliki’s address is inappropriate.” There also has been talk of a boycott of the speech. True, Maliki has condemned Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, a position at odds with U.S. policy. But surely Congress can set aside that disagreement long enough to welcome the duly elected prime minister of the new Iraq.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Signed in May, the Darfur Peace Agreement is not holding. Meanwhile, four of the Bush administration’s top five most important figures on Darfur, including Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, have resigned or left for other posts. New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, who won a Pulitzer Prize this year for his reporting on Darfur, has called for the president to appoint James Baker or Colin Powell special envoy on the issue. He has other substantive suggestions — such as a no-fly zone and help for the African Union force in Darfur. And “we need to press Europeans to become more involved and to remind Arabs that the slaughter of several hundred thousand Muslims in Darfur is every bit as worthy of protest as cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
It sounds like the opening line of a political joke: Karl Rove and Madeleine Albright were called to jury duty. It was reality, though, in a courtroom at D.C. Superior Court Monday, where both were potential jurors for a cocaine distribution case. According to The Washington Post, the president’s top adviser was heard telling Albright that Omaha is considered a terrorist target (and therefore entitled to a good measure of anti-terror money) because it’s the site of crossing phone lines. He was dismissed for knowing the judge socially, leaving Albright in the pool.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
