A computer hacker has uncovered online what he says are official Chinese documents that prove that Chinese gymnast He Kixen, the gold medalist in the uneven bars, is indeed underage, as many people suspect. Chinese birth records seem to show that she is 14 — not the minimum age of 16 required to compete.
The International Olympic Committee said Friday that it has ordered an investigation of He to clear up “discrepancies” and put an end to the controversy.
Meanwhile, IOC president Jacques Rogge went out of his way Thursday to criticize Jamaican sprint superstar Usain Bolt for his showboating after winning the 100 meter dash.
Nonsense. Bolt played by the rules and earned the right to celebrate his historic achievement. The question is, do He and other Chinese gymnasts deserve their medals?
Barack Obama is expected to announce his vice presidential pick Saturday, and the veepstakes talk has reached fever pitch. The media are focusing mostly on Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Tim Kaine and Kathleen Sebelius, who is staying mum. But is it possible that Obama still has a surprise in store?
Ralph Nader, for one, thinks Obama is planning to pick Hillary Rodham Clinton — and that it would be “dumb” not to. “The polls show 25 percent of her supporters have not gotten on board,” Nader noted.
If Clinton and Obama can get past their personal animosity and primary wounds, the pairing still might make sense, with Clinton bringing undeniable excitement to the ticket and uniting the party in a way that a Biden or Bayh pick couldn’t. Not to mention that she’s a tough, seasoned campaigner.
I wouldn’t count it out.
On paper, a Wichita Catholic school won a legal victory last week in a judge’s ruling that its English-only policy didn’t violate a group of Hispanic students’ civil rights.
But U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten made clear in his remarks that St. Anne Catholic School bore its share of responsibility for its poor handling of the controversy.
He said school officials implemented a “one-sided” policy “without consulting with the segment of the school it would impact the most.”
He noted, too, a double standard in enforcing it: “The Caucasian students were not told to go eat lunch with the Hispanic students or participate in their soccer games,” he said. “It was all directed at the Hispanic students.”
And where was the fairness, he asked, in expelling a student, Adam Silva, who had never done anything wrong?
Too bad each side didn’t work harder to understand the other’s position and truly find common ground. Too bad this had to end up in a courtroom.
The school might have won a narrow legal victory. But as the judge suggested, the entire school lost.
At the Saddleback Church forum on Saturday, it was interesting to hear the candidates’ differing responses to pastor Rick Warren’s question about how they would define “rich.” He asked for a number.
John McCain said $5 million.
Barack Obama said $250,000.
McCain seemed to realize that his figure could look high.
“I’m sure that comment will be distorted,” he said. “The point is we want to keep people’s taxes low.”
It’s a revealing look at how the two parties view wealth. For Republicans, apparently, mere millionaires don’t qualify. Don’t be surprised if Democrats use McCain’s remark this fall against charges that Obama is an “elitist.”
Friday’s Eagle had a letter from Special Olympics Kansas decrying the new movie “Tropic Thunder” for “retard” jokes and calling for a boycott.
Here is Slate movie critic Dana Stevens’ response to a reader about the controversy: “You hold the view that the movie’s use of what advocacy groups are calling “the R-word” isn’t targeting people with disabilities; they hold the view that it is. But if the discussion is to go forward, shouldn’t everyone at least be willing to see the movie with an open mind toward the other side?”
She’s right that pre-emptive criticisms of movies often fail to judge the offending material in context.
One example: Critics who complain about the “racist” use of the “N-word” in Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” miss the author’s ironic use of the word and his larger point about its offensiveness and racism.
That artistic context may be utterly lacking in “Tropic Thunder.” I don’t know — I haven’t seen the movie.
But it’s satire. And as Stevens notes, “Satire is a notoriously difficult thing to police.”
What if John McCain throws a party and nobody comes? Count Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts among a growing list of GOP senators who’ve confirmed they won’t be attending the party’s national convention next month in Minneapolis.
Instead, Roberts will be campaigning hard on a statewide tour. Although he has a double-digit lead over Democrat Jim Slattery, Roberts apparently feels vulnerable.
Republican Congressional Committee chairman Tom Cole reportedly advised some embattled Republicans to steer clear of the convention. So far, GOP no-shows include Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Ted Stevens of Alaska and Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina. And now Roberts.
I think there’s a good chance that Sen. Joe Biden will be Barack Obama’s vice presidential pick. The choice of Biden makes sense on several levels, as Chris Cillizza notes on his blog.
Among other strengths, Biden is the most experienced Democrat in Obama’s area of perceived weakness — foreign policy. He knows it inside and out, as well as John McCain’s weaknesses on Iraq and other strategic policy matters.
Biden is a great campaigner who can also go on the attack — a crucial skill for the second on the ticket.
Biden has a folksy, blue-collar appeal and sense of humor that would help loosen up Obama’s rather academic, aloof image.
He has roots in Pennsylvania and could help lock down that must-win swing state. Moreover, he’s a Catholic and could assist Obama with that important voting demographic.
Biden’s most talked-about weakness: He’s long-winded. That’s it? The important thing is, he’s fun to listen to and isn’t boring. He was great in the Democratic debates.
Another possible drawback: As a longtime Washington hand, he could be seen as old politics, not an agent of change.
But Obama’s greatest weakness is the sense that he’s inexperienced and an unknown quantity. Biden is one of the few veep candidates who reassures on both points.
If I had to pick right now, I’d say it’s Biden.
Spain’s Olympic basketball teams ignited a furor over separate photographs showing the men’s and women’s teams posing while using their fingers to make themselves slant-eyed. They were going to China, get it? It’s amazing that the pictures, a promotion for a team sponsor, didn’t set off bad taste alarms with anyone.
Some defended the pictures as being done in a spirit of fun. Even granting that, these images were offensive and never likely to endear the Spaniards to their Chinese hosts.
Former Clinton strategist Mark Penn approves of John McCain’s Paris Hilton “celebrity” ad and negative ads in general, writing on Politico.com that “Clever negative advertising works. That is reality.”
He adds, “Done fairly, (negative ads) serve a legitimate role” by exposing an opponent’s weaknesses.
He’s right, of course, on one level — negative ads often do “work.” But at what cost?
Note that in the primary, Penn recommended an all-out negative strategy that would have attacked Barack Obama for not being “fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.”
How would that have helped the party?
Clinton didn’t take the advice — to her credit. Penn’s piece is revealing about the warped mindset of winning at all costs that drives modern campaigns.
John McCain’s latest Web advertisement is a spoof about an Obama fan club but continues to take a low road, visually linking Barack Obama to airheaded young white women in racially and sexually charged ways. Like the Paris Hilton/Britney Spears “celebrity” ad, this one features several women, with one admiring his “soft eyes” and the voice-over calling him “dreamy,” followed by the message “Hot chicks dig Obama.”
Sorry, but the nation deserves a more elevated debate than “Hot chicks dig Obama.”
Obama has responded to McCain’s celebrity ad with his own negative advertisement calling McCain “Washington’s biggest celebrity,” and showing McCain repeatedly hugging President Bush. He’s also running much more positive ads that emphasize job creation, etc.
It’s unclear whether Obama has found a way to effectively counter McCain’s attack ads while holding to his promise to run a different kind of campaign. And are voters even paying attention right now?
The following satirical news story comes from borowitzreport.com:
“A member of the U.S. Olympic diving team was disqualified from competition today when it was learned that he did not have a sufficiently compelling human story line to exploit on the NBC telecast of the worldwide sporting event.
“Tracy Klujian, the expelled diver, was not raised by a single mother, never had a career-threatening injury, and did not overcome a personal tragedy of any kind before making the Olympic diving team, U.S. Olympic officials revealed today.”
The Bush administration is threatening the integrity of the Endangered Species Act by ending a requirement that federal agencies get independent scientific review of projects that could affect endangered animals and plants. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne defended the move, saying that the change will prevent the statute from being used as a “back door” to regulate greenhouse gases and climate change by protecting polar bears and other species. The administration also argues that individual agencies have their own expertise to evaluate the impact of dam, construction and road projects.
But this move should send up red flags, given the Bush team’s record of filling government jobs with partisan ideologues and hacks and of ignoring or marginalizing scientific expertise on a host of issues.
There might be ways the Endangered Species Act could be administered more efficiently, but President Bush’s record doesn’t inspire trust on this issue.
Coach Bill Self’s new contract with the University of Kansas — $30 million over 10 years — is nothing short of jaw-dropping.
I know the arguments: Sports programs pull in millions of dollars for the university. The coach’s salary is partly paid with private money, endorsements, etc. And Self delivered a national championship last year for KU — itself worth millions of dollars for the school. The university wants to keep him.
All the same — the idea of college basketball coaches making CEO salaries strikes me as ridiculous. Especially when heads of medical schools, top professors and other faculty make far less.
Where does it stop? Anybody else think our higher education priorities are out of whack?
Thomas Frank (“What’s the Matter With Kansas?”) has a new book on conservatism called “The Wrecking Crew,” which details how conservatives have actually governed in the Bush years. Bottom line: It’s not about incompetence, it’s about ideology. An excerpt:
“Yes, today’s conservatives have disgraced themselves, but they have not strayed from the teaching of their forefathers or the great ideas of their movement. When conservatives appoint the opponents of government agencies to head those government agencies; when they auction their official services to the purveyor of the most lavish ‘golf weekend’; when they mulct millions from groups with business before Congress; when they dynamite the Treasury and sabotage the regulatory process and force government shutdowns — in short, when they treat government with contempt — they are running true to form. They have not done these awful things because they are bad conservatives; they have done them because they are good conservatives, because these unsavory deeds follow naturally from the core doctrines of the conservative tradition. . . .
“Conservatism, as we know it, is a movement that is about greed, about the ‘virtue of selfishness’ when it acts in the marketplace. In right-wing Washington, you can be a man of principle and a boodler at the same time.”
T. Boone Pickens recently visited The Eagle editorial board, touting his plan to boost wind energy in the Great Plains. It’s a good plan that would bring economic development benefits to rural Kansas.
But one part of Pickens’ vision deserves more scrutiny: He has been buying up water rights in the Texas Panhandle and hopes someday to sell and ship groundwater via pipeline to thirsty cities such as Dallas and San Antonio, along the same corridor that he uses to ship wind energy.
As this BusinessWeek article observes, “Pickens owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property.”
Pickens refers to oil a “finite resource.”
Water is a finite resource, too — and Pickens sees it as just another commodity to mine and sell. Is he trying to corner the market for the region? Would his water pumping further deplete water levels in the Ogallala Aquifer and affect western Kansas, which also depends on the Ogallala?
The stalking claim filed by a woman against Wichita State University baseball coach Gene Stephenson has been settled out of court. But the unresolved questions in the case likely leave many Wichitans and Shocker fans with lingering feelings of unease — and doubts about whether WSU has done enough to address this matter, our editorial Wednesday said.
WSU athletic director Eric Sexton has offered no comment on the Stephenson case and settlement except to call it a “personal issue.”
But it’s not merely personal. Stephenson is a highly paid, high-profile public figure whose reputation and conduct are closely associated with the WSU athletic program. That makes it a personnel issue.
Bruce E. Ivins, the scientist who committed suicide as the FBI prepared to charge him with the 2001 anthrax attacks, could not have been the killer, according to a commentary by Richard Spertzel, a top government microbiologist.
Regarding the anthrax mailed to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, “The spores could not have been produced at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where Ivins worked, without many other people being aware of it,” he writes. “Furthermore, the equipment to make such a product does not exist at the institute.”
Daschle this week also expressed doubts about the FBI investigation.
But FBI officials released documents Wednesday that they say conclusively fingers Ivins as the killer. The Army scientist, they said, was the only person to have access to a pure strain of anthrax spores that had “certain genetic mutations identical” to the anthrax used to kill five people. And the envelopes used were also traced back to Ivins’ lab.
Let’s hope the government’s evidence is strong enough to settle this dispute and put the case to rest.
In the wake of several recent bar-related shootings, it’s good to hear that the Wichita Police Department is getting tough on problem bars.
The Eagle editorial board and neighborhood groups called for a crackdown in the wake of a July 27 shooting death at Big Chub’s at 31st Street South and Seneca, the scene of numerous late-night problems such as parking lot brawls and shootings.
Over the weekend, police shot and seriously wounded a man in the parking lot of Max’s Club on South Rock Road. Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz told The Eagle that both Chub’s and Max’s are among half a dozen clubs that are “on our radar” because of frequent violence and problems at closing time.
Stolz said the police would look at an ordinance change to tighten licensing requirements and provide an “accountability mechanism” for bars.
About time. Residents shouldn’t have to put up with these bad neighbors. And as Stolz pointed out, “to send, consistently, 10 and 15 officers to shut down a nightclub is not a wise use of resources and not a good way to spend tax dollars.”
The McCain campaign is mocking Barack Obama’s suggestion that Americans save gas by making sure their auto tires are properly inflated and engines tuned up. The campaign has even started to hand out tire gauges labeled “Obama’s energy plan.”
The gibe reveals less about Obama than it does about John McCain and Republicans’ apparent contempt for conservation measures. Experts recommend conservation as a significant and easy way to save gasoline and money. The Energy Department has been advising Americans to properly inflate car tires for years. Never mind?
It’s odd: Why would a party that touts personal responsibility and thrift ridicule a policy that incorporates those values?
President Bush can’t point to a lot of signature successes on the domestic front, but fighting homelessness might be one of them.
A new survey of the chronically homeless indicated that between 2005 and 2007, the numbers of those living in shelters and on the streets dropped about 30 percent, from 176,000 to 124,000, according to Bush administration housing officials.
If so, that’s a remarkable accomplishment, and it’s largely because of the administration’s embrace of the “housing first” model that’s been used successfully in many American cities (and is at the heart of Wichita’s new homelessness strategy).
In the past four years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has backed the development of more than 40,000 new units of housing with support services for the homeless — the idea being to get the homeless off the street and get them the help they need (such as mental health and alcohol treatment) to become self-sufficient again.
It appears to be working.
In the wake of the suicide of anthrax suspect Bruce E. Ivins, some critics argue that the government’s response to the anthrax mailings of 2001 was counterproductive: Previously, Ivins was one of only a few dozen military researchers with access to high-grade strains of anthrax.
After Sept. 11 and the anthrax attacks, the Bush administration greatly increased bioterror funding as well as the number of workers and labs with access to deadly biopathogens — hundreds of people now work with these once tightly restricted substances.
The move arguably increases the chances that another twisted individual will carry out a plot from within, and makes it much more difficult to narrow the list of suspects.
“We are putting America at more risk, not less risk,” said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of a House panel looking into safety lapses at bioresearch labs.
T. Boone Pickens is giving wind power a big boost with his energy plan. Another sign that America is poised for a renewable energy revolution: MIT researchers reported last week that they’ve discovered a way to save solar energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine — a major breakthrough. Previously, storing solar energy has been prohibitively expensive and inefficient, according to MIT, which said the team’s discovery could unleash a “solar revolution” and “transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source.”
It’s good news that federal authorities may have finally solved the case of the 2001 anthrax mailings, which killed five people and further terrorized a nation already traumatized by the Sept. 11 attacks. The FBI says a top Army microbiologist and anthrax expert, Bruce E. Ivins, committed suicide Tuesday as federal prosecutors prepared to indict him and seek the death penalty for the crimes.
Let’s hope they got their man this time. An earlier “person of interest,” Steven Hatfill, was wrongly hounded by the government and has received a $6 million settlement for his troubles.
China is on the verge of an automobile boom, according to this Washington Post article. And many Chinese like SUVs and other big gas hogs. While SUV sales are tanking in most of the developed world, they’re up 43 percent in China. In fact, more big Buicks are now sold in China than in the United States.
Fifteen years ago, few Chinese owned a car. Now there are more than 15 million autos in China — and the numbers are expected to explode in coming years.
That’s not only bad news in the global fight against climate change. The growing Chinese demand for oil likely will keep U.S. gas prices high, too.
John McCain has resorted to doing “nyah-nyah” name-calling attacks on Barack Obama, likening him in a new campaign commercial to Britney Spears – classy stuff. Here’s the best response – a funny Slate voice-over parody of a teen’s anguished defense of Britney (remember this one?). Leave Barack alooooone!
Meanwhile, Obama is having to denounce and distance himself from a Ludacris song that, among other offensive lyrics, calls Hillary Clinton the B-word.
A computer hacker has uncovered online what he says are official Chinese documents that prove that Chinese gymnast He Kixen, the gold medalist in the uneven bars, is indeed underage, as many people suspect. Chinese birth records seem to show that she is 14 — not the minimum age of 16 required to compete.
