President George W. Bush will officially say goodbye to the nation in a 13-minute television address at 7 tonight. “I’m going to urge our nation to continue to engage the world with confidence – confidence in the transformative power of freedom and liberty,” Bush said today, previewing his speech. If given the opportunity, how would WE Bloggers say goodbye to Bush?
Today brought a declaration that many Americans have long waited to hear from their Justice Department: “Waterboarding is torture.” The speaker was Attorney General-nominee Eric Holder, on the first topic of today’s confirmation hearing. He also said that he doesn’t believe the attorney general is the president’s lawyer and pledged to restore the independence of the Justice Department. Those would be welcome changes.
What fun it would have been to be a fly on the wall as President-elect Barack Obama dined Tuesday night at the home of conservative columnist George Will (in photo) with other right-thinking scribes including David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Michael Barone, Peggy Noonan and Paul Gigot. The gathering was said to be off the record, but it will interesting to see whether the tone of any of these pundits changes in the coming days.
Maybe the Obama administration won’t be hostile to coal after all. Steven Chu, President-elect Barack Obama’s chosen energy secretary, called more coal-fired power plants “my worst nightmare” two years ago. But in a Senate hearing this week he said coal is a “great national resource” and expressed optimism that his agency could help develop technology to capture and store coal plants’ greenhouse-gas emissions. He also said he would oppose a “hard moratorium” on the building of coal plants that lacked carbon-capture technology.
The over-the-top reactions of some Republicans to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ budget plan are unproductive and unjustified. For example, Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita, declared that Sebelius’ plan solved “nothing,” while others claimed that she left all the heavy lifting to the Legislature. Huh? There is plenty of room for honest disagreements about some of Sebelius’ recommendations, but her plan is thoughtfully crafted and is a strong start. Some GOP leaders also blasted as a “tax increase” Sebelius’ call to temporarily suspend the phase-in of two business tax cuts. Please. To solve the budget shortfall, everyone in Topeka needs to work together in good faith. Hyperbole doesn’t help.
Besides being an ineffective way to gain reliable intelligence, torture also can undermine criminal cases. That’s what happened with a Saudi national who allegedly was to be the 20th hijacker on the Sept. 11 attacks. The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring the case to trial decided that she couldn’t file charges because the U.S. military had tortured the detainee, reported Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution, said Susan J. Crawford. This is a man whom Crawford described as “very dangerous.”
President George W. Bush will officially say goodbye to the nation in a 13-minute television address at 7 tonight. “I’m going to urge our nation to continue to engage the world with confidence – confidence in the transformative power of freedom and liberty,” Bush said today, previewing his speech. If given the opportunity, how would WE Bloggers say goodbye to Bush?
