My high school Latin teacher loved the phrase Veritas Vos Liberabit – “The truth shall set you free.” Nice sentiments – for the Romans. But in these politically-charged times, perhaps the operative phrase should be: “Who shall set truth free?” God knows there ain’t a lot of truth floating around the halls of power in Washington these days. In fact, truth took a sabbatical decades ago – and never returned.
Former stripper turned weight-loss promoter Anna Nicole Smith will face the scales of justice on Tuesday, a Supreme Court showdown with millions of dollars on the line.
President George W. Bush’s job rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, amid strong opposition to the Dubai Ports World deal and increasing pessimism over the war in Iraq, according to a CBS News poll released on Monday.
Sen. Robert Byrd, the dean of the Senate and its resident constitutional expert, counts only a few regrets in his 48-year Senate career: filibustering the 1964 Civil Rights Act, voting to expand the Vietnam War, deregulating airlines.
To describe the White House’s report, titled “Lessons Learned,” on the government’s response to Katrina as a whitewash is a little too strong, but it is far from a hard-eyed, take-no-prisoners dissection of what was clearly a botched response, at least at the outset.
Congress seldom does anything simple — especially in the realm of so-called entitlements, where efforts to balance the needs of a diverse population with the demands of a free-enterprise system always are difficult and generally more expensive than they should be.
Suddenly, President Bush is having trouble keeping the troops in line. On issue after issue, prominent Republicans are breaking ranks, cracking open the bonds of solidarity Bush maintained with his GOP allies throughout most of his first term.