I wish I could say that only George W. Bush had the gall to stand up on a day set aside to honor those who died in service to their country and use that day as a propaganda backdrop to promote an illegal and immoral war.
It has been 18 days since a liberal web site reported Karl Rove had been indicted and given 24 hours to get his affairs in order.
To date, 73 journalists have died in Iraq, more media casualties than an in all of World War II. Many more have been wounded. These deaths are in addition to the 2,400-plus American soldiers who have died in the war.
This is the story of a love affair, one that lasted more than 60 years in this dimension and now for eternity in another.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., once said the conservative interest in life begins at conception and ends at birth. By that I took him to mean that religious conservatives are furiously preoccupied with bringing each and every pregnancy to term. But they lose that apparent passion for children when it comes to subsidizing indigent parents. He had a point.
It is safe to say that everybody involved was stunned by the reactions to the FBI’s raid on a congressional office and the continuing repercussions. And it is safe to say that this flap of more heat than light over the separation of powers is largely the fault of Congress itself and especially the U.S. House.
It’s time for a national conversation on war. The avalanche of bad news from Iraq and Afghanistan is a signal that we need a bipartisan consensus on when to resort to armed force; on what circumstances, if any, call for going it alone, or whether we should always act in concert with allies; and on what foreseeable or imaginable situation would warrant resort to nuclear weapons.
There is a lot of fine print in the 600-plus-page bill passed this week. It’s true, as senators say, that the legislation would erect more border barriers and seek to better manage the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. But it also includes perks to the privileged, blurs some border security provisions, and makes other substantive changes that activists on both sides of the debate are only now beginning to understand.
Unlike his over-reactive House colleagues, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says the FBI had a legal right to raid a corrupt Congressman’s office and feels the issue has been “put to bed.”
Asked to describe his attitude in his last few months in office, Sen. Mark Dayton cited a line from the 1960s song “Me and Bobby McGee.” “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” he says.