Valerie Plame hadn’t said much since Bush administration officials blew her cover as a CIA agent to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, a critic of the Iraq war. But in testimony to Congress today, she didn’t hold back, saying officials "carelessly and recklessly abused" her name and identity, and prevented her from doing the work for which she’d been trained. She rightly warned: "If our government cannot even protect my identity, future foreign agents who might consider working with the Central Intelligence Agency and providing needed intelligence would think twice."
Posted by Rhonda Holman
"Good God, by that standard, I should long ago have been committed and the entire borough of Brooklyn quarantined."
– Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer on an article in the New Republic claiming Vice President Dick Cheney’s use of the F-word in an exchange three years ago with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is an example of how Cheney’s circulatory problems are affecting his brain.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The Wall Street Journal published pro and con commentaries on President Bush this week from two conservative Republicans. Joseph Bottum, editor of First Things, blasted Bush for hurting conservatism by being so incompetent.
“In all that he has tried to do — reform education, fix Social Security, restore religion to the public square, assert American greatness, appoint good judges — Mr. Bush has proved himself a conservative. Of course, along the way, he has also proved himself hapless. The problem isn’t his lack of conservatism. The problem is his lack of competence.”
Bottum also faulted Bush for many of the problems in Iraq, both perceptions and realities. He wrote: “Iraq is not America’s failure, and it is not conservatism’s failure. We are where we are because of George W. Bush’s failure.”
But Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute responded that Bottum is using an impossible standard to judge Bush, given the inertia of the federal bureaucracy.
“By no means should President Bush get a pass for his errors and misperceptions, or his slowness in correcting them,” he wrote. “Still, one ought to use standards that are cut to the cloth of human nature.”Novak also contends that the war in Iraq isn’t nearly as bad as it is portrayed, and that Bush deserves credit for his work on AIDS and human trafficking and for being the most openly pro-life president ever.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, has the highest “power ranking” among the Kansas delegation, according to Congress.org — though his overall ranking dropped dramatically after Democrats took over Congress last November. Tiahrt was ranked the 13th most powerful Republican and the 170th most powerful member of the 435-member U.S. House. Last year, he was No. 40. Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Lenexa, was next highest in delegation at No. 178, followed by freshman Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Topeka, at No. 242 and Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, at No. 296. In the Senate, Kansas’ Pat Roberts was ranked 67th and Sam Brownback was 73rd. The rankings were based on position, indirect influence and legislative activity. Overall, the Kansas delegation ranked 32nd of the 50 states.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
In the end, the Legislature figured out Thursday how to both give businesses a deserved break in what they pay into the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund and also how to help unemployed workers awaiting benefits. The earlier GOP resistance to eliminating the workers’ one-week wait for benefits had signaled that businesses that lay off matter more than the laid off. Fortunately, the final bill was a win-win.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The company famous for bringing us America’s favorite fruit was fined $25 million for consorting with a terrorist organization. Officials from Chiquita said that the region in Colombia in which their bananas are grown is fraught with violence from leftist rebels and far-right paramilitaries, so company officials decided to “buy” some protection. Fernando Aguirre, Chiquita’s CEO, told Associated Press: “The payments made by the company were always motivated by our good-faith concern for the safety of our employees.” But an investigation showed that Chiquita attempted to conceal the payments to the terrorist organization and that its legal counsel advised company officials not to make the payments.
Posted by Patrice Hein
