It says a lot about White House legal counsel Harriet Miers that she continued in her job as long as she did. Miers announced her resignation today, more than a year after her failed nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Miers is known for being smart, loyal and hardworking — which are great qualities for a legal counsel but, as President Bush quickly learned, not enough to warrant a spot on the high court.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
You have to figure that House Republicans took all that post-election talk about bipartisanship with a large grain of salt.
If not, they’re going to be disappointed during the next few days. House Democrats are kicking off the new year by kicking the now-minority Republicans to the curb.
Eyeing the political capital that could accrue from quick victories on the minimum wage, stem cell research and cutting interest on student loans, Democrats plan to use House rules to prevent the opposition from any significant say on those issues.
If there’s a political downside, it might be that Democrats will be seen as reneging on a specific pledge to run Congress differently than the Republicans did.
At least that’s what the Republicans hope. GOP lawmakers promptly submitted a “minority bill of rights” — demanding, without irony, the “fairness” they routinely denied Democrats over the last few years.
Posted by Dave Knadler
If you’re planning a trip to a major city in the last quarter of this year, you may want to reschedule: Millions are expected to die in urban terror attacks around then.
Then again, televangelist Pat Robertson has been wrong before. Last year, for example, he predicted gigantic storms and a tsunami on the Eastern Seaboard. He also famously claimed to have leg-pressed 2,000 pounds.
This year, he’s relaying a recent conversation with God in which he was informed of the terrorist threat.
“The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that,” Robertson said.
Posted by Dave Knadler
Why should Wichitans have to trek to small outlying towns like Cheney and Andale to buy liquor on Sundays, especially on New Year’s Eve?
Wichita consumers want the convenience of Sunday sales. And now that city liquor store owners see the competition stealing their business, most of them want Sunday sales, too.
As we argued in Wednesday’s editorial, the Wichita City Council should end the Sunday ban outright or send it to a public vote soon.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Not everyone is ready to praise Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon for his criminal role in Watergate. Leave it to Christopher Hitchens, ever the political provocateur, to challenge the conventional wisdom now awash in the media:
“The Ford epoch did not banish a nightmare,” Hitchens writes. “It ended a dream — the ideal of equal justice under the law that would extend to a crooked and venal president.”
The debate about whether Ford was right to pardon Nixon is not over yet.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
