A few years ago, Senate Democrats were in an uproar over the Republicans’ slow pace of confirming President Clinton’s nominees. Now, the story is the same, with the roles reversed as the Democrats allegedly try to run out the clock on the Bush administration. Last week, Senate Republicans stepped up their threats to use parliamentary tactics to force confirmation votes on 15 of President Bush’s nominees for federal appeals court seats. “This is going to really slow this place down, if not grind it to a halt,†said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. Why must the ruling party in the Senate always play games over judicial confirmations? Doesn’t justice merit some bipartisanship?
John McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance, one of his top advisers said. But that’s not what McCain said just six months ago, the New York Times reported. McCain told the Boston Globe that “presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is.†And when asked specifically whether a statute trumped a president’s powers as commander in chief when it came to a surveillance law, McCain said, “I don’t think the president has the right to disobey any law.â€
At a time when America’s image abroad is at rock bottom, Barack Obama’s nomination victory is generating excitement in many foreign countries and even admiration for the United States.
“The primaries showed that the U.S. is actually the nation we had believed it to be, a place that is open-minded enough to have a woman or an African-American as its president,†said a Japanese political analyst.
“Obama is the exciting image of what we always hoped America was,†echoed an Englishman.
In Kenya, which was home to Obama’s father, people are ecstatic.
Not everyone is enamored — some Israelis worry that Obama won’t be tough enough on their Arab enemies. Russians just aren’t following the race.
Still, it’s a glimpse of the good will that an Obama presidency could generate.
“She has grown up in an environment of men, and she is very good at being one of the boys.†— Burdett Loomis, a political science professor at the University of Kansas, discussing his former boss, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, in a (London) Times article pondering other contenders to become America’s first woman president. “The list is pretty short,†he noted.
A few years ago, Senate Democrats were in an uproar over the Republicans’ slow pace of confirming President Clinton’s nominees. Now, the story is the same, with the roles reversed as the Democrats allegedly try to run out the clock on the Bush administration. Last week, Senate Republicans stepped up their threats to use parliamentary tactics to force confirmation votes on 15 of President Bush’s nominees for federal appeals court seats. “This is going to really slow this place down, if not grind it to a halt,†said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. Why must the ruling party in the Senate always play games over judicial confirmations? Doesn’t justice merit some bipartisanship?
