Former Vice President Dick Cheney said on “Fox News Sunday” that the attorney general’s decision to investigate prisoner abuse by the CIA “offends the hell out of me.”But many Americans, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., are offended that the United States, at Cheney’s urging, violated U.S. and international law prohibiting torture and set aside its own values and moral leadership. Though McCain doesn’t support a CIA probe, he said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “torturing harmed us.” McCain said that the interrogations were “in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan,” and that the interrogations “helped al-Qaida recruit” and harmed our ability to work with our allies. “The damage that it did to America’s image in the world is something we’re still on the way to repairing,” McCain said. And as for the effectiveness of the tactics, McCain noted that, according to the FBI and others, the information gained by torture “could have been gained through other methods.”
What to call that worrisome flu came up at last week’s Sedgwick County Commission meeting, with Chairman Kelly Parks noting the concern of hog producers about the negative impact of the use of the term “swine flu” on the pork industry. “There’s no correlation” between hogs and the virus, Parks stressed. “That’s why we’re calling it the H1N1 now.” According to the federal Web site www.flu.gov, H1N1 is not transmitted by food and “at this time, there is no evidence that swine in the United States are infected with this new virus.”
But a new poll sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12, suggests that message could use further reinforcement by elected officials and others. Of those Kansans surveyed last week, 67 percent said they refer to it as “swine flu” and 29 percent said they associate the virus with pigs.
Newly requiring underage students to take an interactive online course about the risks and effects of alcohol won’t wipe out binge drinking at the University of Kansas. But after two alcohol-related fatalities last spring, KU needed to do something. And more education and awareness can’t hurt. KU also has made changes to encourage students to get help with alcohol-related emergencies and to notify parents when their students violate drug and alcohol policies. The father of one of the KU students put it bluntly in the Denver Post: “One week of fraternity living killed him. He overdrank. Kids have got to understand alcohol is the worst.”
“Obama is spending the week at a $30,000 dollar-a-week beach house. And they call this guy a socialist? Come on!” — David Letterman
“On Martha’s Vineyard they’re serving a new drink inspired by Obama. It’s an Obamarita. After three Obamaritas, a $9 trillion deficit doesn’t look so bad.” — Letterman
“Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been a victim of identity theft. His credit card company became suspicious when they noticed repeated purchases of large, failing American car companies.” — Conan O’Brien
“The Cash for Clunkers program was a big hit. . . . The idea was if you have a car that guzzles gas, you can get $4,500 for abandoning it on the White House lawn.” — Jimmy Kimmel
“Another Cash for Clunkers program I guess they’re scheduling for like six months from now, when the Minnesota Vikings try to trade Brett Favre.” — Kimmel
Even if Sedgwick County Commission Chairman Kelly Parks and Commissioner Gwen Welshimer (in photo) said something to Wichita officials about the possibility of building a new work-release center or other jail facility in downtown Wichita — a big “if,” given that Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer and Vice Mayor Jim Skelton say it never happened — Parks and Welshimer clearly didn’t do a good job communicating. But what matters moving forward is that the county makes sure it involves city officials and downtown leaders in the planning, so that the location of the facility doesn’t undermine public and private efforts to redevelop downtown.
Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Topeka, said she was unaware that the phrase “great white hope” had “any negative connotation” when she used it recently to describe the GOP’s need for leadership. The term is associated with the desire among some whites in 1909 and 1910 to find a white boxer to challenge heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, who was African-American. His story inspired a 1967 play and the 1970 movie “The Great White Hope.” But in an interesting coincidence, noted the Lawrence Journal-World, “Jess Willard, a white man who knocked out Johnson in 1915 for the heavyweight championship, was born northwest of Topeka in St. Clere, about 30 miles from Holton, where Jenkins grew up.”
The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy has highlighted the comparative scarcity of great dealmakers on Capitol Hill. Former senators such as Democrats Patrick Moynihan and Lloyd Bentsen and Republicans Howard Baker, Warren Rudman and Bob Dole “were, like Sen. Kennedy, revered for their skill at knowing when the partisan arguments had exhausted themselves and that it was time to seek the possible rather than the perfect. They knew how to find the compromise that would work,” wrote Gerald Seib in the Wall Street Journal.
These days the pressure is relentless from outside groups to toe the party line or else. “When you campaign you try to destroy your opponent. And that’s become the legislative process now as well,” Kenneth Duberstein, who was White House chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan.
“If Gary Sherrer runs for governor, I’ll run for lieutenant governor.” — Kansas Board of Regents chairwoman Jill Docking, kidding (we think) during a visit with former Lt. Gov. Sherrer to The Eagle
“I think you better calm down this argument between the mayor and us.” — Sedgwick County Commissioner Gwen Welshimer, to The Eagle, on the city-county confusion over a July 29 meeting
“We need taxes to support their protests.” — Rep. Dale Swenson, D-Wichita, about how Friday’s anti-tax tea party was held at the county-owned and taxpayer-supported Sedgwick County Park
“I’m on socialized medicine. It’s called Medicare. I never have to wait, I choose my own doctors, and I get excellent care. Why should younger people be denied the same thing?” — Dodge City school board president Dan Reichenborn, to Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., at a town meeting last week
A blogger for the Atlantic wondered this week: “Where would health care be right now if Tom Daschle were in charge of shepherding it through Congress?” Former Senate Republican leader Bill Frist also said of former Democratic leader Daschle, who now has an informal advisory role to Obama: “His experience with being leader, his understanding of the legislative process, his ability to negotiate is what President Obama needs now, and what he needed months ago when he started the process — and he doesn’t have it.”
Attorney General Eric Holder did the right thing when, responding to a recommendation from the Justice Department’s ethics office, he appointed veteran federal prosecutor John Durham to investigate up to a dozen cases of terrorist suspects being subjected to illegal abuse during CIA interrogations between 2001 and 2004. Despite pressure within his own administration to protect the CIA, President Obama — to his credit — is leaving to Holder any decision to prosecute interrogators. Whatever the complications, or the embarrassment, of a legal accounting for past violations of U.S. torture statutes and the Geneva Conventions, a refusal to apply the law would only compound one betrayal of American values with another. — Boston Globe editorial
In 2004, the CIA’s inspector general did an investigation of those interrogations and found much that was “inconsistent with the public policy positions that the United States has taken regarding human rights.” The CIA then appeared to have acted properly. It referred the most egregious cases of prisoner abuse to the Justice Department. Those investigations resulted in a single prosecution. Attorney General Eric Holder should consider the conditions under which the agents labored in 2002-03. It was widely believed another Sept. 11-style terrorist attack was imminent. Many of the interrogators seemed poorly trained for the task, were poorly supervised and given little guidance. — Dale McFeatters, Scripps Howard News Service
“The reason Americans have turned against health care reform, after electing President Obama in part for promising it, is simple,” argues columnist Michael Kinsley. “Despite protestations to the contrary, Americans don’t like change. . . . You would think that while we might disagree about what kind of change we want, Americans are in total agreement that the current situation is intolerable in all areas and that change — big, immediate change — is essential. Americans do agree about this — in the abstract. But as soon as it seems that change might actually happen — as soon as we leave the abstract for the particular — we panic. We suddenly develop nostalgia for the comforts of the status quo. Sure, we want change — as long as everything can stay just as it is.”
Columnist Richard Cohen argues that the one sure thing we have learned about President Obama and “teachable moments” is that Obama can’t teach. Cohen contends that Obama failed to teach during the Henry Louis Gates controversy, and that his “above-the-fray” coolness is also hurting his ability to explain to the public the need for health care reform and the continued war in Afghanistan.
Rep. Todd Tiahrt (right), R-Goddard, said in a statement that new 10-year budget deficit projections of $9 trillion confirmed the need to repeal the federal stimulus plan and showed that President Obama’s and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “out-of-control spending is leading our country toward fiscal calamity.” Tiahrt said that the “skyrocketing deficit numbers should serve as a wake-up call to the administration that you cannot borrow and spend your way out of a recession.”
Tiahrt’s GOP opponent in the U.S. Senate race in 2010, Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, acknowledged that both parties share blame for the deficits. “Even though the numbers released today are the outcome of years of massive government spending, they are growing exponentially worse,” Moran said in a statement Wednesday. He called on Congress to “stop adding additional government programs and reduce wasteful government spending to prevent us from bankrupting our country and increasing the burden on future generations.”
If CIA interrogators engaged in torture, the blame extends to Congress, which has lacked “the courage and the energy to actually enact clear statutes on torture,” argues Salon’s Juan Cole. He calls the McCain anti-torture amendment of 2005 “watered down” and “easily interpreted away,” and noted that President Bush vetoed the most recent legislation in 2008. “The Democrats may only have a brief window through November of 2010 to get effective and unambiguous legislation on the books, and now we have a president who won’t veto it,” Cole writes.
The shortened Wichita Flight Festival is under the city’s management this year, presenting 1 p.m. air shows Saturday and Sunday at Jabara Airport and an evening air show and concert Saturday night. In a welcome acknowledgment of the community’s economic state, the festival also is free. That should allow more people in this aviation-crazy town to check out the aerial acts, displayed airplanes and exhibits. The festival’s organizers were right to try to keep the tradition going, and even make career assistance available at the event. Wichita’s role in aviation’s past and present are always worthy of celebration.
Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Topeka, says she was unaware of the negative connotation when she said at a recent forum that the GOP was still searching for a “great white hope” to stop President Obama’s political agenda. But even if you don’t know the racist history of the phrase, it’s not hard to imagine that it could be considered offensive, particularly when Obama is African-American and the overwhelming majority of GOP voters and politicians are white. Jenkins surely didn’t intend her comment that way, but she should be more thoughtful about what she says.
Columnist and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson argues that President Obama’s problems with passing health care reform are not poor communication or “town hall crazies,” as some have said. “In fact, Obama has a reality problem on health care, and it has begun to threaten his standing as a leader,” Gerson wrote. “He staked the success of his early presidency — perhaps of his entire presidency — on a health reform plan both vague and divisive, which manages to anger deficit hawks as well as liberals who believe that compromise has already gone too far. Obamacare has been the political version of the neutron bomb, vaporizing supporters while leaving every structural obstacle in place.”
Given that its unemployment rate of nearly 10 percent is higher than the national average, it was a bit surprising that Wichita was ranked among “America’s best places to find a job” by U.S. News & World Report. Wichita’s top 10 ranking appears to have been helped by its stable housing market, growing health care sector and proximity to a military base. The ranking did note that “the aviation industry has been affected by the downturn” (talk about an understatement) but said that “the industry’s recovery portends a strong opportunity for the city to grow in the future.”
Good for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for trying to maintain some civility in the health care debate. After a women at a town hall meeting in Arizona this week asked McCain if Obama knows we still live under a Constitution, McCain assured her that, yes, Obama knows that and respects the Constitution — which many audience members booed. But McCain continued, adding that Obama is sincere in his beliefs (more boos) but that he and Obama have a fundamental difference in philosophy about the role of government — which is why, McCain noted, we have elections and competition among political parties. “He is the president of the United States,” McCain said, “and let’s be respectful.”
Even many who had no use for the liberal politics of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., had to admire his peerless legislative skills during a Senate career lasting 47 years. Kennedy, who died of brain cancer Tuesday night at age 77, not only represented his constituents and priorities with uncommon zeal but understood the value of working across the aisle in order to get things done. Even conservatives, including President Bush and his No Child Left Behind bill, regarded Kennedy as the go-to guy. The statement of Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said it well: “The Senate has lost the lion’s roar of the left. . . . There were two Teds, one was personable and kind to those he met regardless of party affiliation, and the other was what we saw on the Senate floor, a passionate and fiery advocate for the cause.” It will be strange to see the Senate without a member of the Kennedy clan. And it’s hard not to wonder how health reform might be playing out now if Kennedy were leading the charge on what was a signature issue.
