Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s frank, poignant speech at an Indiana pro-life dinner Thursday carried a message in line with her view that abortion should be illegal except to save the life of the mother. Palin revealed that she had fleeting thoughts of having an abortion — “of trying to change the circumstances” and “make it all go away,” as she put it — when she learned she would give birth at 44 and later that her baby would have Down syndrome.
But, argues Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, Palin ended up underscoring the value of choice to each pregnant woman. Marcus wrote that “for the crowd listening to her at last week’s dinner, Palin’s disclosure served the comfortable role of moral reinforcement: She wavered in her faith, was tempted to sin, regained her strength and emerged better for it. As for those us less certain that we know, or are equipped to instruct others, when life begins and when it is permissible to terminate a pregnancy, Palin’s speech offered a different lesson: Abortion is a personal issue and a personal choice. The government has no business taking that difficult decision away from those who must live with the consequences.”
Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, ripped President Obama for lifting Cuban travel and money transfer restrictions. “Instead of standing with the people of Cuba who are waiting for their day of freedom, the Obama administration is sending a message of approval to the Castro dictatorship,” Tiahrt said. But Rep. Jerry Moran (in photo), R-Hays, who will be competing against Tiahrt for a Senate seat in 2010, had the wiser response in calling the move “a good step toward allowing U.S. democratic principles to reach Cuba.” Moran, who has been lobbying for years to increase U.S. agriculture exports to Cuba, also said that Obama stopped short of enacting real economic reform. “For a change in policy to have any impact on Kansas,” Moran said, “the president needs to remove the 2005 regulations that unnecessarily restricted agricultural exports to Cuba.”
Biographer Jean Edward Smith argued in a New York Times commentary that President Obama might learn how to end a war from President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Smith noted how Ike inherited the Korean War and how he had to buck security advisers and party hard-liners to bring the war to an end. “Like President Obama, Eisenhower was an incrementalist who preferred to move gradually, often invisibly, within an existing policy framework,” Smith wrote. “But on the question of war and peace, his views were categorical. He rejected the concept of limited war, and believed that American troops should never be sent into battle unless national survival was at stake.”
