You could almost feel sorry for Wichita City Council members, who were caught off guard by Pat Salerno’s decision Monday to turn down the job of Wichita city manager. But then you recall how Salerno was the only candidate that the council brought in for interviews. And how the council rushed to hire him, even though there were serious concerns about his history as a city manager in Florida. And how he had been passed over repeatedly as a candidate for other manager jobs. In other words, the council got burned by its own botched process.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., was moved by the death of former Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., to release a statement hailing his “unwavering” conservative leadership: “Jesse Helms was a gentle man yet doggedly determined. He almost single-handedly helped launch Reagan-era conservatism and, in international affairs in particular, he articulated and put into action a determined, clear U.S. foreign policy stand that has served our country well to this day.”
But Christopher Hitchens of Slate magazine noted such Helms career high points as protecting apartheid in South Africa, opposing a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and blocking AIDs treatment programs for Africa (he later relented some on this last point). Of Helms’ tenure as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Hitchens wrote: “It was a scandal that a man with so little knowledge of the outside world should have had such a stranglehold on American foreign policy for so long.”
An Eagle reader asked whether the natural uranium removed recently from Iraq was evidence that Saddam Hussein was, in fact, developing weapons of mass destruction. No, it wasn’t. The United States has long known about the uranium, and it wasn’t part of an active WMDs program. Rather, it was left over from the Tuwaitha nuclear complex near Baghdad, which was dismantled after the 1991 Gulf War. The material — which would have to be enriched before it could be used for a nuclear bomb or even a dirty bomb — had been kept since that time under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Ironically, after the U.S. invasion in 2003, Tuwaitha was left unguarded, and the barrels used to store the yellowcake were stolen and sold to local people, which created potential health risks.
The name of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius was among those of likely vice presidential picks tossed around the roundtable on “Fox News Sunday.”
Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard said Sebelius “increasingly makes sense” as Barack Obama’s choice, because she could help at the convention with feminists and Clinton supporters. “If he brings a woman but not Hillary Clinton, who he clearly doesn’t want to be in the West Wing of his White House, then I think that would help.”
Bill Kristol, also of the Weekly Standard, mentioned Sebelius’ Ohio girlhood and father, former Ohio Gov. John Gilligan, as assets. “If you think Ohio is a key state to win, she is as close to being an Ohio politician as anyone can be who is governor of another state.”
Juan Williams of National Public Radio noted that Sebelius has led a heavily Republican state and “has managed to get the Legislature to work with her, so she represents that postpartisan” approach Obama promotes.
But Mara Liasson, also of NPR, countered: “If you’re going to pick a woman, you’d have to really explain why you’re not picking Hillary.”
Said Barnes: “One word: Bill.”
Many people were surprised by news that 24-year-old singer Amy Winehouse had been diagnosed with “signs of emphysema” — isn’t that the kind of smoking-related disease usually associated with older chain-smokers?
But doctors say Winehouse’s condition isn’t uncommon: The cardiovascular damage from smoking can start early, even among teens with a five-cigarette-a-day habit, and the diminished lung capacity can be permanent.
Teenagers who think they’re immortal need to understand that they will pay a heavy price for smoking, and perhaps sooner than they think.
You could almost feel sorry for Wichita City Council members, who were caught off guard by Pat Salerno’s decision Monday to turn down the job of Wichita city manager. But then you recall how Salerno was the only candidate that the council brought in for interviews. And how the council rushed to hire him, even though there were serious concerns about his history as a city manager in Florida. And how he had been passed over repeatedly as a candidate for other manager jobs. In other words, the council got burned by its own botched process.
