Presidential advisers often leave their jobs before their bosses do. Still, it’s almost impossible to imagine a Bush White House without Karl Rove, the chief adviser variously known as "the architect," "boy genius" and "Bush’s brain." And does this mean GOP politics also will lose Rove, once key to realizing the dream of a permanent Republican majority? Rove is out as of Aug. 31, "for the sake of my family," he said over the weekend. Of course, though Rove weathered the CIA leak investigation, he remains in an executive-privilege fight with the Democratic Congress about the firings of U.S. attorneys. Rove is expected to spend more time in Texas and write the inevitable memoir. President Bush is expected to miss Rove mightily. "We’ve been friends for a long time and we’re still going to be friends," Bush said today.
Rove’s divide-and-conquer strategy narrowly won two elections, but left Bush unable to govern and helped lose Congress.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
It’s easy to see why ordinary soldiers would be resentful: The tens of thousands of private security mercenaries working in Iraq are paid far more than U.S. soldiers and operate in a legal gray zone without the official oversight or ethical codes that apply to U.S. soldiers, according to an Associated Press article.
Congress is finally calling for stricter accountability.
Critics point to numerous instances of private soldiers exacerbating anti-American tensions by shooting civilians who get too close to their vehicles. Yet no private contractor has yet faced murder or abuse charges, as have scores of military personnel.
Moreover, the Defense Department has paid more than $200 million in cost overruns to two private British contractors alone, reports the Washington Post. A Brookings Institution analyst called the cases "the tip of the iceberg."
Posted by Randy Scholfield
It’s good that the federal government is finally cracking down on the hiring of illegal immigrants, which will include more raids on workplaces. But our country also needs some type of guest-worker program, especially for industries that depend on foreign labor. For example, growers’ associations estimate that more than 70 percent of farm workers in the fields of the United States are illegal immigrants, the New York Times reported. Our economy depends in part on these workers.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
More evangelicals are starting to care about the environment and not just a few social issues. The crossover is being led by Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter and others and is seen as a sign of how dramatically public opinion has shifted on global warming, the Washington Post reported. “I did sense this is one of these issues where the church could take leadership, like with civil rights,” Hunter explained. “It’s a matter of who speaks for evangelicals: Is it a broad range of voices on a broad range of issues, or a narrow range of voices?”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Whatever their other benefits, the tighter ethics rules approved by Congress haven’t changed the much-criticized practice of earmarking legislation with lawmakers’ pet projects, such as Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens’ infamous $200 million “bridge to nowhere” proposal.
In fact, the new rule that links legislators’ names to earmarks has actually become a point of pride for lawmakers intent on bringing home the bacon, reports the New York Times.
After one lawmaker derided an earmark by Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Topeka, that provided $100,000 for a prison museum at Fort Leavenworth, Boyda went on the offensive, boasting that Leavenworth County had more prisons than any other county in America and had housed such luminaries as Machine Gun Kelly and the Birdman of Alcatraz.
“Democracy is a contact sport, and I’m not going to be shy about asking for money for my community,” said Boyda. “My guess is that next year I’m going to be putting in more earmarks.”
How about a few million for an earmark museum in Wichita?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
