Daily Archives: Oct. 11, 2006

Open thread

Oct. 11, 200612:09 p.m.

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Open thread | Comments (32)

Not much progress against ‘axis of evil’

Oct. 11, 200612:00 p.m.

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
Ronald Reagan wasn’t talking about U.S. foreign policy when he uttered that campaign line in 1980, but the Gipper’s words are coming back to haunt the Bush administration today.
An analysis in the Washington Post notes that nearly five years after President Bush named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil,” the United States is now in crisis mode and facing diminished options with each.
In his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush said of the three nations: “These regimes pose a grave and growing danger. . . . In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.”
We’ll never know what the price of indifference might have been in Iraq — perhaps something less than we’re paying now. With North Korea and Iran, it’s hard to see how indifference could have been worse than a mulish refusal to engage.
In any case, the answer to Reagan’s defining question would seem to be “no.” It adds up to an election liability that will be hard to spin.
Posted by Dave Knadler

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Foreign affairs, President Bush, Presidential race | Comments (46)

Can friendship survive presidential politics?

Oct. 11, 200611:55 a.m.

Seems like only yesterday that Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton were hoisting shots of vodka together. At the time, McCain described Clinton as “one of the guys.”
That was then. McCain took the gloves off Tuesday, accusing the Clinton administration of failing to counter the North Korean nuclear threat during its eight years in the White House, and of trading food and energy aid for what turned out to be empty promises from Pyongyang. Hillary wasn’t president then, but you get the idea.
McCain, of course, is the GOP’s front-runner for the 2008 presidential election. Hillary Clinton enjoys the same position among Democrats. While the two work together and have seemed willing to occasionally break with the party line, there’s a White House up for grabs.
It will be interesting to see how their professional friendship fares over the next couple of years.
Posted by Dave Knadler

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Presidential race | Comments (36)

At Derby High School, a reflection of real life

Oct. 11, 200612:03 a.m.

With the continuing controversy over the 2006 Derby High School yearbook, you have to wonder what next year’s edition will look like.
More tattoos, body piercings and teen pregnancies? Or a renewed focus on the school’s best and brightest — the jocks, A students and Leaders of Tomorrow who normally crowd this sort of publication?
By choosing a more authentic depiction of high school life, the yearbook staffers opened themselves to a raft of criticism — and maybe learned more about journalism than they intended. They should now be well-versed in the First Amendment and the Kansas Student Publications Act, which — controversy aside — protects every choice they made with the yearbook. They’ve also learned that the right to print something is not quite the same as a right not to be criticized for it.
As for the gripes, some are understandable. There are only so many pages in a yearbook; devoting more to social issues presumably leaves less for scholastic ones. I can see how the parent of a kid who’s making all the right choices might feel a little undermined.
Still, this year’s Derby yearbook is more interesting than most. It got people talking. Next year’s staff might face a tough choice: Tone it down, or top it?
Posted by Dave Knadler

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under American life, Education | Comments (33)

Another argument against future father-son presidencies

Oct. 11, 200612:02 a.m.

Time magazine columnist Joe Klein goes all psychoanalytical on George W. Bush over the Mark Foley mess, contrasting the White House’s heartfelt defense of House Speaker Dennis Hastert to the way it dumped then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott overboard in 2002. The difference, Klein opines, is that Lott was disloyal to Bush’s dad on taxes and that Hastert has been a good soldier for this Bush administration. “George W. Bush prizes loyalty over competence or accountability,” Klein writes.
As for why Bush II refuses to get rid of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — that’s when the “family psychodrama” gets really weird. Rumsfeld and Bush I were longtime rivals, and the son wanted to prove the father wrong, Klein suggests. “It’s a perfect Freudian boggle: if he dumps Rumsfeld, isn’t George W. Bush tacitly admitting that his dad was right about a lot of other things too, like choosing not to overthrow Saddam Hussein in 1991?”
Posted by Rhonda Holman

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under President Bush | Comments (25)

Russia’s dirty war on journalists

Oct. 11, 200612:01 a.m.

The brazen murder last week of Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia’s top investigative reporters and a frequent critic of the Putin administration’s human rights record, is another chilling reminder that in Putin’s Russia, telling the truth can get you killed.
Politkovskaya reportedly was shot to death in a contract-style killing the day before filing a story about the torture of civilians by the Chechen government.
Her newspaper is offering a $1 million award for information leading to the killers. Don’t expect the Putin administration to do much. It has an abysmal record of investigating the murder of journalists.
Russia is one of most dangerous places in the world for reporters to work. Politkovskaya was the 12th journalist killed there during Vladimir Putin’s regime, which in its ongoing crackdown on press freedoms looks increasingly like a throwback to the oppressive Soviet era.
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev called Politkovskaya’s murder “a blow to the entire democratic and independent press” in Russia.
She was a fearless journalist who died defending democracy, or what’s left of it in Russia.
Posted by Randy Scholfield

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Foreign affairs | Comments (4)

But how would they define ‘firmly’ and ‘fight’?

Oct. 11, 200612:00 a.m.

Here’s how Kansas’ senators reacted to North Korea’s nuclear tantrum:
Sen. Pat Roberts said, “It is clear the North Korean government continues to pursue its provocative and defiant policies. The international community must quickly and firmly respond to this action.”
Sen. Sam Brownback said, “We will fight tyranny with freedom. We call on all freedom-loving nations around the world, especially the United States, to take every North Korean refugee that legally seeks entry into their country. . . . Over a million North Korean refugees have died of starvation, and it will only get worse, as this rogue regime isolates itself further from the world while more and more people flee such a desperate situation.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Foreign affairs, Kansas delegation | Comments (23)