For a gripping account of what it’s like for Iraqi civilians living in Baghdad, check out this first-person account from an Iraqi reporter who says he and his neighbors are so scared that they don’t dare help someone who’s lying in the street wounded.
“Fear dictates everything we do,” he writes. “I see my neighbors less and less. . . . We’re afraid of an enemy among us. Someone we don’t know. It’s a cancer.”
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Since last spring’s protests and the backlash to them, commonsense talk on illegal immigration has been scarce. But Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (in photo), a potential GOP presidential nominee in 2008, had some smart things to say on the subject this week in a South Carolina appearance. When a person tells him that illegal immigrants are taking jobs from Americans, he asks him to name someone “who cannot get a job because a Mexican illegally here has taken the job they want.” Huckabee goes on: “If that’s the case, if you can get me their name and phone number by 5 this afternoon, I can have them making a bed, plucking a chicken, tarring a roof or picking a tomato by the morning at 8 o’clock.” He’s still waiting for a name. That’s because, as Huckabee argues, most of the jobs that illegal immigrants are doing in the United States are jobs that Americans don’t want.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Top GOP senators such as John McCain, John Warner and Lindsey Graham are bravely opposing the Bush administration’s creeping moral relativism on torture and the interrogation of prisoners.
As we argue in our editorial on today’s opinion page, the outcome of this debate touches on America’s soul, on our very identity and ideals as Americans.
If any senator should understand what’s at stake in this debate, it’s Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, who has been a leading conservative champion of human rights abroad, opposing torture in North Korea, Iran and elsewhere.
But so far, he’s been silent on this standoff. Why?
The administration wants Congress to do an end run around the Geneva Conventions and to sanction practices, such as water-boarding, sleep deprivation and “cold cells,” that when practiced in Soviet gulags or North Korean prisons Americans have rightly called “torture.”
Just this week we read of a Canadian terror suspect (in photo) whom the United States “renditioned” to Syria, where he was interrogated and was beaten repeatedly with metal cables.
Turns out he was entirely innocent. What do we say — “Oops”? And what kind of moral authority will America have in the war on terror if we continue to sanction or turn a blind eye to such abusive treatment?
Instead of joining a rush to the bottom, Brownback should join the senators in upholding America’s high ideals.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The campaign of GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Barnett has reason to question whether Survey USA’s September poll numbers on the race are a good predictor of November’s election results. In a similar automated phone poll in September 2002, the same firm showed then-candidate Kathleen Sebelius at 55 percent to GOP candidate Tim Shallenburger’s 38 percent. In the end, Sebelius beat Shallenburger by 8 percentage points. This time, Survey USA’s poll, for KWCH Channel 12 Eyewitness News and The Wichita Eagle, has Sebelius at 58 percent and Barnett at 38 percent. Still, inflated or not, a 20-point lead is hard to discount. If Barnett has an October surprise, he’d better get it wrapped and ready.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The Bush administration created Project BioShield to stockpile vaccines. But five years and $5.6 billion later, we are no closer to being able to combat a bioterrorist attack.
Squabbles among the major pharmaceutical companies, federal bureaucracy and liability risks have all but stopped research, and only two companies are left working on the project. The old anthrax vaccine, for example, needs to be reformulated to decrease side effects such as multiple sclerosis and allow for a longer shelf life. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., described the program as “a torturous labyrinth of federal fiefdoms into which billions disappear.”
Posted by Angie Holladay
James Frey, the discredited author of “A Million Little Pieces,” the fictional “memoir” of his crack- and alcohol-addicted days, claims he is a victim of the times. “Pieces” was the book that first made Oprah Winfrey cry before she called him out on her show when the fabrications surfaced. In an interview with the London Guardian, Frey claims that his “manipulated text” became such a hot issue because of the times. “People feel frustrated by a lot of distortions by politicians . . . and it was like a sorta confluence of events that I happened to be in the middle of.”
He compares his book to Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” which is a fictional work with autobiographical elements. Frey fails to recognize the difference between Hemingway’s fictional work with nonfiction elements and his self-proclaimed nonfiction work of mostly fiction.
Posted by Angie Holladay
