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This page contains an archive of the last 100 entries posted to ProgressNow.org Daily News Digest in the Opinion category. They are listed from newest to oldest. You can find older entries using the search box below.

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February 29, 2008

An ethics compromise implodes - The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/02/...
HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi's special task force on ethics enforcement toiled for a year to create an independent body to review ethical breaches by House members, only to have it sabotaged Wednesday on the eve of a vote to adopt the recommendations. The bipartisan bludgeoning of the proposed new ethics panel leaves the House in bad odor with the voters. House leaders need to go back at the issue as soon as possible, lest the body's dismal approval ratings sink even further.
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Time and Time Again - New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/opinion/29fri3.html?ref=opinion...
The Bush administration has tried repeatedly to kill or shortchange government surveys. Motivated in part by pound foolishness, but also by a disdain for information that might upset partisan or ideological agendas, the attempts have had mixed results. Taken together, however, they amount to an assault on reliable data that’s necessary to judge the effectiveness of existing government programs and the need for new ones.
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Help against the superbugs - The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/02/...
THE WHITE HOUSE and the Democratic-led US House reached a budget agreement this week to spend $50 billion over five years to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. That's good news. The not-so good news is that the World Health Organization is raising an alarm about strains of TB that are resistant to some of medicine's most potent drugs.
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More Safeguards - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022803550....
IN THE COMING days, the Senate will be tasked with salvaging a badly discredited agency: the Consumer Product Safety Commission. After last year's repeated recalls of unsafe toys and consumer panic over just about everything coming out of China (which covers a lot), the House in December unanimously passed a bill to modernize the agency and increase its funding. The Senate's most recent companion bill, which will probably be voted on next week, in several ways would even better equip the CPSC to deal with the new demands of the global marketplace and rightly restore consumers' faith in the things they buy.
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Safe from searches - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-exclude29feb29,0,3397602.story...
Two Supreme Court cases will help define the boundaries between privacy and policing.
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The Global AIDS Fight - New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/opinion/29fri1.html?ref=opinion...
Congress and the White House are preparing to ramp up spending on programs to combat AIDS and related diseases around the world while removing some of the ideological blinders that have long undermined the effort to slow the spread of the AIDS virus. It will be a welcome strengthening of a foreign aid program that was already one of the shining accomplishments of the Bush administration.
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Olympic Speech - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022803557....
RUN, HIGH-JUMP, hurdle or kayak -- but whatever you do, don't speak. That's the message some countries are sending to their athletes ahead of the Beijing Olympics. Last month, the Belgian Olympic Committee announced that it will not permit its athletes to make political statements, verbally or sartorially, in Olympic venues. The British Olympic Association similarly muzzled its athletes, who will be expelled from the team if they talk about political issues anywhere at all. The New Zealand Olympic Committee has also waffled about exactly how much freedom of expression its athletes will enjoy. The decisions must please China, which has been condemning human rights groups for "politicizing" the Games. The Belgian, British and New Zealand committees argue that the gag orders are just meant to uphold the Olympic charter, which declares that "no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted" at the Games.
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Angelina Jolie - Staying to Help in Iraq - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022702217....
The request is familiar to American ears: "Bring them home." But in Iraq, where I've just met with American and Iraqi leaders, the phrase carries a different meaning. It does not refer to the departure of U.S. troops, but to the return of the millions of innocent Iraqis who have been driven out of their homes and, in many cases, out of the country. In the six months since my previous visit to Iraq with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, this humanitarian crisis has not improved. However, during the last week, the United States, UNHCR and the Iraqi government have begun to work together in new and important ways. We still don't know exactly how many Iraqis have fled their homes, where they've all gone, or how they're managing to survive. Here is what we do know: More than 2 million people are refugees inside their own country -- without homes, jobs and, to a terrible degree, without medicine, food or clean water. Ethnic cleansing and other acts of unspeakable violence have driven them into a vast and very dangerous no-man's land. Many of the survivors huddle in mosques, in abandoned buildings with no electricity, in tents or in one-room huts made of straw and mud. Fifty-eight percent of these internally displaced people are younger than 12 years old.
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Dana Milbank - Don't Get Around Much Anymore - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022804135....
The bulletin reached President Bush toward the end of his news conference yesterday. Peter Maer of CBS News Radio asked what seemed to be a straightforward question. "What's your advice to the average American who is hurting now, facing the prospect of $4-a-gallon gasoline, a lot of people facing . . . " "Wait, what did you just say?" the shocked president interrupted. "You're predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline?" "A number of analysts are predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline," Maer explained. You could've knocked Bush over with a feather. "Oh, yeah?" he said. "That's interesting. I hadn't heard that." Uh-oh. The president, once known for his common-guy skills, sounded eerily like his old man, who in 1992 appeared surprised that supermarkets had bar-code scanners.
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Ships keep polluting, for now - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-ships29feb29,0,1327974.story...
International shipping companies are celebrating this week, having won a court victory that will allow them to save a few bucks by poisoning Californians. They should enjoy it while it lasts. State regulators, politicians, environmental groups and the ports have other ways to make container ships clean up their toxic act. Wednesday’s ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was a setback, though not a fatal one, to efforts to force ships to control engine emissions and burn cleaner fuel as they approach the coast. The cheap bunker fuel typically used by cargo ships is high in sulfur and other pollutants, which cause lung cancer, heart attacks, asthma and other ailments that cost Southern Californians billions of dollars in healthcare expenses and kill us by the thousands. The court ruled that the state Air Resources Board can't impose its 2005 ship rule unless it seeks a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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Scot Lehigh - The obstacles facing Clinton - The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/02/29/the_obstacles_facing_clint...
AN UNDERDOG'S plight is always difficult at this stage in a campaign. Unlike the front-runner, who can sound unifying themes, underscore ideas of proven appeal, and command attention by sparring with the other side's likely nominee, the lagging candidate must scramble to show why he or she would make a better choice than the intra-party rival. That's a difficult challenge under the best of circumstances. It means a candidate has to be on the attack, something that voters often find offputting, and which is even trickier for a woman. But there's a more fundamental problem confronting Hillary Clinton: Obstacles from the past sit athwart the comeback route she's trying to navigate.
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Joel Stein - A little something for the ladies - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-stein29feb29,0,3354996.column...
You know how ladies, when they don't get what they want, can go a little crazy? Am I right, fellas? Right now, they're pretty upset about losing their first chance at a female president. This would have empowered little girls, shattered sexist beliefs about female incompetence and forced men around the world to view a woman as an agent of power instead of a sex object -- all of which, it turns out, are important to women even though they buy Star magazine. Ladies are complicated. Because women do most of the voting, and the shopping and the TV watching and the book reading -- porn really must take up a lot of men's time -- they need to be placated. Which shouldn't be hard. You know how when your dog dies, your wife wants to get a puppy right away? That's what America has to do. We need a replacement Hillary.
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Erin Aubry Kaplan - See Obama for who he is - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-erinkaplan29feb29,0,7703552.story...
The month of February saw one victory after another in the astonishing, historic ascent of Barack Obama as a presidential contender. It seemed like perfect timing to me -- Obama marched steadily toward the ultimate political prize week after week during Black History Month. But that's not an association people seem terribly eager to make. In fact, the closer Obama gets to representing us all, the more people struggle with the notion of him as a black man -- reflecting in growing detail America's chronic schizophrenia about racial identity. The question of race that has been raised repeatedly in Obama's campaign is both straightforward and existential: Is he really black? Isn't he really biracial? Or maybe post-racial, even nonracial? A writer for Salon.com, analyzing a swing through Kansas during which Obama lauded the relatives on his white mother's side, delved into why Obama wasn't playing up that part of his heritage and embracing his "inner diversity"; "Can America elect a zebra?" the piece asked. Another admiring Salon article credited Obama for taking the path to a "post-racial destination" -- but also for the bold move of "making himself black."
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Eugene Robinson - Personality Matters - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022803231....
If you're among those who believe the news media have focused too much on the presidential horse race and the personalities of the candidates -- and not enough on vital issues of state -- let me submit that you're wrong. I'm not saying that coverage of the campaign thus far has been flawless, mind you. There have been errors of judgment, sins of omission and missed opportunities; there have been instances in which much was adone about nothing. And I'm sure there's more of the above to come. But the issues haven't been neglected. Perhaps it seems they have because on matters of real substance -- the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism, the economy, health care -- neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have seen much internal disagreement. The two parties have strikingly different positions on all these issues. Within the parties, though, the major candidates have all been pretty much on the same page. After 20 debates, where do Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton differ on the issues? On Tuesday night in Cleveland, they argued passionately about universal health care -- whether or not it's necessary to impose a mandate requiring all Americans to buy health insurance. For 16 minutes, moderators Tim Russert and Brian Williams -- hardly a couple of wallflowers -- couldn't get a word in.
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Michael Gerson - Words Aren't Cheap - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022803229....
When Hillary Clinton sensed her presidential hopes beginning to slip away, she turned to an attack on Barack Obama's rhetoric. "There's a big difference between us," she argued, "speeches versus solutions, talk versus action. . . . Words are cheap." And further: "Speeches don't put food on the table" -- as though her own hectoring and position papers were an all-you-can-eat buffet. John McCain will be tempted to make a similar attack, having already accused Obama of offering "only rhetoric." And it, too, would be a mistake. Many political advisers in both parties employ "rhetoric" as a synonym for "folderol." Winging it in speeches is generally viewed as more authentic, and authenticity plays well with dial groups -- groups that also helpfully inform us that Americans don't like downbeat words such as "war" or "sacrifice" or "poverty," preferring instead cheerful terms such as "marshmallows" and "pixie dust." This is nonsense. From the Greek beginnings of political rhetoric, the wise have described a relationship between the discipline of writing and the discipline of thought. The construction of serious speeches forces candidates (or presidents) to grapple with their own beliefs, even when they don't write every word themselves. If those convictions cannot be marshaled in the orderly battalions of formal rhetoric, they are probably incoherent.
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E. J. Dionne Jr. - The Last 'Yes, We Can' Candidate - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022803316....
Barack Obama's critics bear a remarkable resemblance to the liberals who labored mightily to dismiss Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan's foes wrote him off as a right-wing former actor who amiably spouted conservative bromides and must have been engaged in some sort of Hollywood flimflam. Like Reagan's enemies, Obama's opponents concede that he gives a great speech. Indeed, both Obama and Reagan came to wide attention because of a single oration that offered hope in the midst of a losing campaign -- Obama's 2004 keynote to the Democratic National Convention and Reagan's 1964 "A Time for Choosing" address delivered on behalf of Barry Goldwater. But surely speeches aren't enough, are they? Yes, Obama gets his crowds swooning. So did Reagan. It's laughable to hear conservatives talk darkly about a "cult of personality" around Obama. The Reaganites, after all, have lobbied to name every airport, school, library, road, bridge, government building and lamppost after the Gipper. When it comes to personality cults, the right wing knows what it's talking about.
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Al Kamen - Not All of the Old Clinton Gang Is Backing Another Clinton - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022804068....
The painful endorsement switch Wednesday by John Lewis, the Democratic congressman from Georgia and civil rights icon, from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) reflects the difficulties some members of former president Bill Clinton's Cabinet have been going through as they decide between the candidates. Of two dozen former Cabinet heads, about half appear to have contributed to, or campaigned for, Clinton, our colleague Julie Tate reports after a review of Federal Election Commission records through the end of January. That includes former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and, more important for the Texas primary on Tuesday, Henry Cisneros, the former secretary of housing and urban development and former mayor of San Antonio. Another five have not contributed to either candidate. For example, former Treasury secretary and Harvard president Lawrence Summers, now a global economic commentator, is staying out of the battle. Ditto for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who was U.N. ambassador and energy secretary for Bill Clinton.
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February 28, 2008

Jack Abramoff, Jack Abramoff ... - New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/opinion/28thu2.html?ref=opinion...
Anxiety is palpable in the House as lawmakers try to wriggle out of a vote on whether to create an independent Office of Congressional Ethics. Despite last-minute cries of alarm and resistance from both sides of the aisle, the public is counting on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to stand fast and steer this overdue dose of ethics reform to passage.
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Dan Froomkin - Congress to Bush: You've Lost Mail - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/02/27/BL2008022702079.htm...
The Bush White House has made a mockery of the Presidential Records Act and its requirement that official White House records -- including e-mails -- be preserved for posterity. At a congressional hearing yesterday, it became clear for the first time that top White House officials knowingly adopted a new e-mail system in 2002 that was riddled with technical problems that not only risked data loss but could easily be exploited by those who wished to keep their e-mails from public scrutiny. We've known for a while that a lot of White House e-mails, by some accounts numbering in the millions, are missing and have possibly been erased. Yesterday's discovery raises the question of whether that happened by accident -- or by design. And the White House's unhurried approach to addressing the problem is hardly reassuring.
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Rosa Brooks - War and peace, the Army way - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks28feb28,0,783039.column...
Another 100 years of U.S. troops in Iraq? "Fine with me," GOP presidential contender John McCain said in January. McCain, who's famously irascible, was presumably exaggerating. His point, he clarified, wasn't that he actually foresaw another 100 years of war, but that U.S. troops may retain an important role in Iraq that goes on for many years after direct combat operations end. Don't like that idea? Get used to it. Because in many ways, McCain's comments are squarely in line with the latest Army doctrine.
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Bad Beef - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022703193....
NOT SINCE Upton Sinclair's 1906 book "The Jungle" has the American meat market been this shaken. On Jan. 30, the Humane Society of the United States released undercover video showing employees at a Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. plant abusing and forcing into the slaughterhouse animals that could not stand. The actions contained in this footage constitute a violation of federal animal cruelty laws as well as food safety legislation. Animals that can't stand -- so-called "downer" animals -- cannot be used for human consumption without the approval of an Agriculture Department inspector; the inability to stand can be a symptom of mad-cow disease, and it can also lead to wallowing in pathogen-containing feces.
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David Ignatius - The Fading Jihadists - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022703179....
Politicians who talk about the terrorism threat -- and it's already clear that this will be a polarizing issue in the 2008 campaign -- should be required to read a new book by a former CIA officer named Marc Sageman. It stands what you think you know about terrorism on its head and helps you see the topic in a different light. Sageman has a resume that would suit a postmodern John le Carre. He was a case officer running spies in Pakistan and then became a forensic psychiatrist. What distinguishes his new book, "Leaderless Jihad," is that it peels away the emotional, reflexive responses to terrorism that have grown up since Sept. 11, 2001, and looks instead at scientific data Sageman has collected on more than 500 Islamic terrorists -- to understand who they are, why they attack and how to stop them. The heart of Sageman's message is that we have been scaring ourselves into exaggerating the terrorism threat -- and then by our unwise actions in Iraq making the problem worse. He attacks head-on the central thesis of the Bush administration, echoed increasingly by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, that, as McCain's Web site puts it, the United States is facing "a dangerous, relentless enemy in the War against Islamic Extremists" spawned by al-Qaeda.
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Dana Milbank - At the High Court, Damage Control - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022703207....
Chief Justice John Roberts was pained. Exxon Mobil, the giant oil corporation appearing before the Supreme Court yesterday, had earned a profit of nearly $40 billion in 2006, the largest ever reported by a U.S. company -- but that's not what bothered Roberts. What bothered the chief justice was that Exxon was being ordered to pay $2.5 billion -- roughly three weeks' worth of profits -- for destroying a long swath of the Alaska coastline in the largest oil spill in American history. "So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such as this?" Roberts asked in court. The lawyer arguing for the Alaska fishermen affected by the spill, Jeffrey Fisher, had an idea. "Well," he said, "it can hire fit and competent people." The rare sound of laughter rippled through the august chamber. The chief justice did not look amused.
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A Little Nuke Music - New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/opinion/28thu1.html?ref=opinion...
The New York Philharmonic’s concert in Pyongyang was a tantalizing taste of what might be in America’s relationship with North Korea. It was also a reminder of the missteps and dangerously wrongheaded judgments that have kept the two countries apart and at saber-point for more than a half century.
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Too confident in the FDA - The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/02/...
LAST WEEK, the US Supreme Court ruled that patients injured by defective medical devices have no right to sue for damages if the devices were approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The decision would be defensible if the 1976 law on FDA oversight of devices actually called for such a sweeping immunity from liability, or if the agency's review process for devices and drugs were uniformly thorough, science-based, and immune from commercial pressures. Neither is the case.
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TB emergency - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-tb28feb28,0,2950206.story...
In the early stages of the AIDS epidemic, most Americans were aware of the arrival of a horrible new disease that was spreading rapidly. But they weren't particularly afraid, because the victims were mostly outside the mainstream: homosexuals, drug users and Haitians. By the time Middle America did get scared -- when movie stars and heterosexuals and people they knew began dying -- HIV had already gone global. With drug-resistant tuberculosis, there is still time to prevent such a hideous outcome. But perhaps not much.
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Gail Collins - Hillary, Buckeye Girl - New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/opinion/28collins.html?ref=opinion...
If Hillary Clinton were a state, she’d be Ohio. This is a no-frills kind of place, suspicious of glamour. Barack Obama’s promise to make politics cool again doesn’t necessarily resonate here. Eight presidents came from Ohio, and the coolest was William McKinley. When I grew up in Cincinnati, we always rooted for the players who worked really, really hard, not the ones who were so talented they made everything look easy. If Hillary were a baseball player, she’d be Pete Rose. Minus, of course, the unfortunate gambling issues and the tendency to scratch inappropriate places while standing in the infield. So there she was Wednesday here in Zanesville, holding an economic summit in a gymnasium with a huge table stuffed full of participants, including the founder of Weight Watchers; former Senator John Glenn, the heroic astronaut who once put the entire Democratic presidential convention to sleep with his keynote speech; and the governor of Ohio, a vice presidential hopeful who looks like an unidentified passer-by.
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Robert D. Novak - How Not to Run for Vice President - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022703177....
Minnesota's Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, carefully prepared his plan for controlling greenhouse gas emissions to present it at the annual winter meeting of governors in Washington. That effort coincided with Pawlenty's fast-rising prospects to become Sen. John McCain's choice for vice president. But behind closed doors, governors from energy-producing states complained so vigorously that Pawlenty's proposal was buried. Pawlenty's position as chairman of the National Governors Association may prove to be his undoing. While party insiders sing his praises as ideal to be McCain's running mate, leading conservative Republican governors have been less than pleased with him. Pawlenty has collaborated with the association's Democratic vice chairman, Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, on a fat economic stimulus package as well as the energy proposal. Hours after Pawlenty's energy plan was derailed, McCain himself was privately urged by GOP governors not to appear to be anti-coal or anti-oil. The upshot of a busy Saturday at the J.W. Marriott Hotel downtown was that Pawlenty came across as somebody considerably different from what McCain needs to calm conservatives. He left the nation's capital as a less attractive vice presidential possibility than he was when he arrived.
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Garrison Keillor - Why they are looking at the skinny guy -- chicagotribune.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0227keillorfeb27,0,855648.col...
Sen. John McCain is 71 and most likely he will be the last Old Guy presidential candidate for all of you Boomers. Goodbye, Great White Father in Washington. It happens as you age: Other people get younger. The pilots flying you to New York are teenagers. Your banker, your therapist, even your urologist is young. Still, you go along thinking of the Leader of the Free World as your old civics teacher, genial, omniscient, wielding his pointer, patiently answering dumb questions, and then one day one of your classmates has the pointer in hand and he is not one of the smart ones. It's a big whoosh in your life: Mr. Teacher has left the building and Larry has taken over. It's a long throw from McCain's 71 to Sen. Barack Obama's 46 and that may be the big invisible issue in the fall: Do we feel better with Papa at the helm or the whiz-kid brother? It's a visceral choice you make without thinking too hard about tax policy or judicial appointments. For people like me who think the war in Iraq is a horrible wrong turn, it's an easy choice, but the election won't be decided by people like me -- it'll be decided by people who could go either way and who make up their minds at the last minute.
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James H. Fowler - Sharing the wealthiness - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-fowler28feb28,0,1569470.story...
Hillary Clinton is out of money. She recently loaned $5 million to her own campaign just as Barack Obama was setting records by raising $32 million in January. As the two of them race ahead, winning the money game now is more important than ever. But where can she turn? Two words: Stephen Colbert.
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William F. Buckley Jr. - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022703161....
READING SOME of the things written about William F. Buckley Jr., yesterday and over the past 30 years or so, one might get the idea that conservatism hardly existed in America in the immediate post-World War II era -- that liberalism, however defined, had driven all opposition from the field. This wasn't exactly the case. The halls of Congress did not lack for conservative voices: Midwest and Western Republicans who had never accepted the New Deal and all it represented, Southern Democrats fighting a long and ugly battle against racial progress and labor unions, demagogues looking for Reds under every bed. Conservatism, in fact, was not so much impotent before Bill Buckley came along as it was incoherent. It was seen by the country's growing educated classes as lacking any intellectual respectability, and, to the extent it might be regarded as a "movement," it was vaguely associated with such outfits as the John Birch Society -- which regarded President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy -- or perhaps with Sen. Joseph McCarthy's reckless actions.
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David S. Broder - The Governors Read the Race - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022703180....
While the nation's governors were in Washington from Saturday through Tuesday for their winter meeting, the campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama accomplished some important political business. On Saturday night, McCain addressed a fundraising dinner for the Republican Governors Association, delivering a speech that Mark Sanford of South Carolina, one of the few who has withheld his endorsement from the almost-certain GOP nominee, told me, "got even a right-wing nut like me all fired up." Earlier that day, a half-dozen pro-Obama governors huddled with some of his staff members and received assignments to various locations in Ohio and Texas for this pre-primary weekend.
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February 27, 2008

Getting Real About the Rescue - New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/opinion/27wed1.html?ref=opinion...
Some big banks are supporting new proposals to rescue homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth, but let’s get one thing straight: the banks haven’t been struck by a sudden urge to help the needy. Rather, by advocating bailouts, the lending industry is trying to head off a possible change in the law that would let troubled borrowers modify their mortgages in bankruptcy court — where lenders, not taxpayers, would be stuck with the losses. Congress must not kowtow to the lenders. It should insist that borrowers be given a chance to modify their mortgages under bankruptcy court protection before it even thinks of asking taxpayers to pick up the tab for the mortgage mess. Under current law, borrowers cannot rework the mortgages on primary homes in bankruptcy proceedings. Senate Democratic leaders are pushing a bill to let many at-risk homeowners do just that. The House Judiciary Committee has passed a similar measure. Republicans, who are balking, should get on board, or risk leaving their constituents without an effective way to save their homes.
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Setback in Kenya - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-kenya27feb27,0,7104325.story...
Hopes were dashed again in Kenya on Tuesday as former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan suspended mediation talks between presidential rivals Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga. The power-sharing agreement that appeared within reach last week is proving elusive, and it's not hard to understand why. Kenya's elections, like those in many other developing democracies, can be an effective mechanism for imposing majority rule. But that doesn't necessarily translate into equitable divisions of power, wealth, economic opportunity or natural resources. Elections have destabilized such countries as Ivory Coast, Pakistan and Ethiopia, and the Palestinian territories. In Kenya, they have historically been winner-seizes-all contests that have been marred by violence and have left an increasingly bitter taste in the hungry mouths of the losers.
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Better treatment for allies - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-rendition27feb27,0,1769635.story...
The Bush administration should be ashamed for duping Britain about transporting terrorist suspects.
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Robert J. Samuelson - The Specter of Stagflation - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/26/AR2008022602648....
"Stagflation" is back in the headlines -- but the term is being misused. Eminent commentators describe stagflation as the messy mixture of high inflation and high unemployment. It isn't. Stagflation, at least as the concept was initially understood in the 1970s, meant something different. Yes, it signified the simultaneous occurrence of high inflation, high unemployment and slow economic growth, but its defining feature was the persistence of this poisonous combination over long periods of time. Let's see why this is a distinction with a difference. The coexistence of high (or rising) inflation and high (or rising) unemployment is not an abnormal event. But it's usually temporary, because the higher unemployment -- stemming from an economic slowdown or recession -- helps control inflation. Companies can't pass along price increases; they're stingier with wage increases. It's only when this restraining process is not allowed to work that inflationary psychology and practices take root, creating a self-fulfilling wage-price spiral. Higher wages push up prices, which then push up wages. Then we get stagflation: a semipermanent fusion of high joblessness and inflation.
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Jim Hunt - Why the Superdelegate Idea Works - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/26/AR2008022602649....
In presidential election years, Americans see the face of a political party most clearly in the personality, views and character of its presidential candidates. But a national political party is about more than just the president. Its senators and House members pass the nation's laws and budgets. Its governors lead the states. All must work together for progress in America. I chaired the 1982 Democratic Party Commission on Presidential Nominations that created certain automatic delegates to the Democratic convention -- the "superdelegates." It was a good idea then, and it is still a good idea. The superdelegates will be crucial to Democrats winning the presidency in November and governing successfully for the next four years. In creating superdelegates, the Democratic Party recognized the expertise that its top holders of public office have gained by running for office themselves. They are experts at winning. They know the issues. They are in a unique position to evaluate presidential candidates. They have a well-honed instinct for how candidates will be received in their own states and districts. In short, they can help the Democratic Party pick a winner.
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Ruth Marcus - Universal Coverage's Mavericks - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/26/AR2008022602651....
Away from the distorting glare of the campaign trail, away from the inflammatory rhetoric about socialized medicine and Hillarycare, garnished wages and millions left uncovered, a remarkable thing is happening in the national health-care debate. An unlikely pair, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden and Utah Republican Bob Bennett, have assembled a group of 12 senators, equally divided between the parties, to sign on to health-care legislation far more radical than anything the presidential candidates have proposed. A dozen senators -- 13 for an instant, when Mississippi Republican Trent Lott signed on just before retiring -- may not sound like much. But this is, Wyden says, the biggest bipartisan group of senators ever to sponsor a measure for universal coverage. They span the ideological spectrum from Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow to Idaho Republican Mike Crapo. The roster includes key Republicans: Minority Whip Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and the ranking members of the finance and budget committees, Iowa's Chuck Grassley and New Hampshire's Judd Gregg.
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Steven Pearlstein - Mobilization for Globalization - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/26/AR2008022603197....
Most significantly, the stagnation in wages and income for the vast majority of households -- as top executives and industry superstars are walking off with the lion's share of gains from economic growth -- has created a backlash against trade and immigration and badly eroded political support for further globalization. Rather than Germany and Japan, it is China and India that are viewed as the imminent threats to U.S. prosperity and economic hegemony. I have no doubt that Americans overstate the degree to which globalization is responsible for this economic malaise, just as I have no doubt that economists and business executives understate it. We could probably spend the next decade figuring out whether it is free trade or changing technology or the decline of unions or simply the herd instincts of corporate executives that are most to blame for decisions to move production to Mexico or outsource to Lithuania. But as Matthew Slaughter, a Dartmouth economist and one-time Bush economic adviser has written recently, it doesn't much matter how the responsibility is apportioned. As long as trade and globalization are factors, which they clearly are, then whether they account for 25 percent of the problem of 65 percent, the public will be against them.
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Lipitor’s Pitchman Gets the Boot - New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/opinion/27wed3.html?ref=opinion...
Pfizer has been relying on the reputation of Dr. Robert Jarvik, one of the pioneers in designing artificial hearts, to bolster sales of Lipitor, its cholesterol-lowering drug. Now that a Congressional committee is investigating the credibility of those ads, the company has dropped Dr. Jarvik as its pitchman. It was a telling reminder that consumers, besieged by drug promotion ads on television and in print media, need to take what they see, hear and read with a very large grain of skepticism.
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Sabin Willett - How do you take down a great soldier? - The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/02/27/how...
TORTURE BEGAN to steal a march on us soon after Sept. 11, 2001. Born in fringe scholarship (No organ failure, no foul, according to former Justice Department official John Yoo), nurtured by fringe debate ("Waterboarding works! Film at 11!"), it made its way to the academy (Time bombs are ticking, worried Professor Alan Dershowitz), and by slow degrees to Capitol Hill (Too close to call, said Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey). Last month the United States took the logical last step and gave torture judicial recognition. A federal appeals court in Washington announced that when US armed forces take custody of prisoners, it is reasonable to foresee that they will torture them.
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Harold Meyerson - Winter of the Patriarchs - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/26/AR2008022602650....
Batista, it is clear, is not coming back. The revolution is safe -- unchanged, undiluted, embalmed. In most nations that have experienced far-reaching revolutions, the revolutionary generation tends to cling to power tenaciously, looking almost as askance at its children as it did at the regime it deposed. The Chinese equivalent of Cuba's Sierra Maestra was the Long March -- slogging with Mao Zedong and Zhou En-Lai across China in the '30s was a ticket to ruling China in the '80s, provided you survived Mao's many purges. The generation that fought alongside Ho Chi Minh in the '50s still ran Vietnam in the '90s. Revolutionary generations may have some capacity for change, as Deng Xiao-Ping demonstrated in China. But in Cuba, the revolution has been a more closely held affair. There, the revolution and the nation have been identified with one man since the Eisenhower administration. Now it is identified with one family. As my friend Marc Cooper, the Nation magazine writer, has noted, the success of the 50-year project of creating The New Socialist Man, with children raised on party-written textbooks and grown-ups reading party-written news, seems questionable when the best Fidel can do is turn to his own brother. Scientific socialism, apparently, isn't teachable; it's genetic. The Castros got it. This is a cult of the Indispensable Man.
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The Problem With Biofuels - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/26/AR2008022602827....
AS THE United States searches for alternative ways to feed its addiction to petroleum, ethanol and other biofuels derived from organic material have been considered a miracle motor vehicle elixir. The energy bill signed by President Bush in December mandates that at least 36 billion gallons of biofuels a year be used by 2020. Yet separate studies released this month by Princeton University and the Nature Conservancy reveal that biofuels are not a silver bullet in the battle against global warming. In fact, they could make things worse.
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Michael Gerson - Faith Without a Home - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/26/AR2008022602647....
I have seen the future of evangelical Christianity, and it is pierced. And sometimes tattooed. And often has one of those annoying, wispy chin beards. Those who think of evangelical youths as the training cadre of the religious right would have been shocked at Jubilee 2008, a recent conference of 2,000 college students in Pittsburgh sponsored by the Coalition for Christian Outreach. I was struck by the students' aggressive idealism -- there were booths promoting causes from women's rights to the fight against modern slavery to environmental protection. Judging from the questions I was pounded with, the students are generally pro-life -- but also concerned about poverty and deeply opposed to capital punishment and torture. More than a few came up to me between sessions in anguished uncertainty, unable to consider themselves Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative -- homeless in the stark partisanship of American politics.