There may be no such thing as a silver bullet in public policy, but
universal parental choice is the closest thing we have to one — assuming
our politicians summon the courage to run with it. And based on the
current trajectory of academic achievement in America, it is clear this
courage needs to be summoned immediately.
Time is running out for another generation of American students – yet
despite overwhelming evidence of failure of government “solutions,”
there remains little willingness to think outside of the bureaucratic
box when it comes to raising academic achievement.
Even the latest indictment of the failed public education monopoly — a
documentary called Waiting for “Superman” directed by liberal
filmmaker Davis Guggenheim — fails to take the necessary step of
endorsing solutions that fall outside of the public system.
By Adam
Bitely
Continuing on Americans for Limited Government’s series investigating
the effects that the “Summer of Recovery” and the “Stimulus” had on
the states we covered Montana,
Oklahoma,
Idaho,
Rhode
Island and Utah
over the past week. With news this week that the recession ended in
2009, it is hard to notice any “recovery” in the states we have
examined. Further, with the most recent release of the unemployment
situation state by state for the month of July, it is more evident than
ever that the economy is not recovering.
Just look at Rhode Island. Since January of 2009, the unemployment
rate has increased by 2.3 percent and is now hanging just below 12
percent! While Rhode Island is a less populated state than most, the
effects of the recession are deep across the board. Even though the
recession has been declared over, the unemployment trend in Rhode Island
is not good and is continually creeping upwards.
Oklahoma is another good example of a state that has been devastated.
While the initial impacts of the recession in Oklahoma were better
than most, the “Sooner State” has had a rough year in 2010. The
unemployment rate alone has increased by nearly 2 percent since Obama
took office.
And Oklahoma is also a good state to look at for the “success” of
“Recovery Summer.” If you look at the employment
rate in Oklahoma for 2010, you will see that at about the time
that the “Summer of Recovery” began, the employment rate plummeted at a
tremendous rate. Across the board, the notion of the “Recovery Summer”
is anything but.
CHICAGO — The wife of U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. said she and her
husband have undergone marital counseling and spiritual therapy since he
told her nearly two years ago of an extramarital affair.
"He said
it was over. I was mortified and in agony, but he knew if I found out
any other way it would be over. That the only way to save our marriage
was to come clean," Chicago Alderman Sandi Jackson said in an interview
published in Sunday editions of the Chicago Sun-Times. "There were
sleepless nights and I started losing hair and I told him I would only
consider staying if we got into therapy."
She said she immediately
questioned herself and whether it was her fault, but she never wanted
details. When word of the affair became public last week, she said it
was like opening the wound again.
Jesse Jackson Jr., a Democrat,
has been dogged by corruption allegations in connection with former Gov.
Rod Blagojevich since December 2008, shortly after Blagojevich was
arrested.
Last week, more allegations surfaced that Jackson told a
businessman to offer Blagojevich $6 million in exchange for an
appointment to Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat. The businessman
also told the FBI he purchased plane tickets for a woman identified as a
"social acquaintance" of Jackson.
Well folks, this story continues to get more and more “interesting”
and complicated.
We’ve just learned that a fourth young man, Spencer
Legrande, 22, has just filed suit against
Bishop Eddie Long for sexual coercion. As a member and and
while adjutant to the Pastor of New Birth Charlotte (in North Carolina)
he claims that Bishop Long took him to Kenya in 2005 when he was 17 and
began their alleged sexual relationship there. The suit also claims
Bishop Long later encouraged him to move to Atlanta and that the alleged
relationship continued there until 2009.
Read Jamal Parris’ complaint.
Art Franklin, Bishop Long’s representative issued the following
statement after the 4th lawsuit emerged. “Our position about the lawsuits has not changed. Bishop Long
categorically deny the charges. We believe that it is unfortunate the
young men have chosen to take this course of action. The defense team
will review the complaints and respond accordingly at the appropriate
time and in the appropriate forum.”
This really is getting a little bit ridiculous. Not to be crass but
can we get them all to file at one time. I joked the other day but now
this REALLY IS starting to feel like the Tiger Woods
situation all over again. Just yesterday, the attorney of the
plaintiffs BJ Bernstein released rather
suspect and suggestive (but not explicit) pictures of Bishop Long that
allegedly were sent to this 4th young man. However, because of plaintiff
Maurice Robinson’s arrest and charge for
breaking into Bishop Long’s office, some folks are second guessing the
use of the pictures as evidence claiming that those pictures could have
been sent after the robbery since it’s believe Long’s cell phone and
iPad were stolen in that burglary.
We also learned today that Bishop Long held a conference call with
select members of his church, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, to
speak to them about the allegations. According to CBS Atlanta who was on the phone for the call,
Bishop Long said he had to be careful what he said because he wasn’t
sure who was on the phone. Some quotes from the call:
“We will arise through this situation, and go forward, and we are
moving forward,” “I have never dealt with anything like this before. I have been
under attack before, but everything else has been different levels and
different challenges,” “Know that I am also praying for the families and the young men
who are accusing. I always operate in the spirit of love, and we are
going to move through this.
It’s also been reported that Bishop Long didn’t actually deny the
allegations on the call.
Will this be the end of the lawsuits or is it only just beginning?
Rumors are swirling around that there could be dozens that come forward
to file suits or at the very least testify on the behalf of the other
plaintiffs. As always, I’m paying attention and will keep you updated
but this is going from bad to worse QUICKLY! Keep praying because as
I’ve said before, regardless how this ends, it won’t be anything nice!
Bishop Long is scheduled to make a statement to his congregation on
Sunday. It’s rumored that he will step down soon after his speech. I’ll
be watching.
Torrence
Remember when Afghanistan was the "war of necessity" that we must
win, whereas Iraq was the losable "war of choice"? Bush's surge having
turned the tide in Iraq put a whole new perspective on Afghanistan.
Evidently, losing is not only an option now, it's Obama's
plan:
President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in
Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers
for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting
notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.
Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently
offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama
finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms
sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in
"Obama's Wars," to be released on Monday.
According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo
account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk
of victory as he described his objectives.
"This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it
off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama is quoted as telling White House
aides…
Obama kept asking for "an exit plan" to go along with any
further troop commitment, and is shown growing increasingly frustrated
with the military hierarchy for not providing one.
As Woodward's book sinks in, it will become more and more
difficult for President Obama to pretend that he has any desire to see
to the nation's defenses. This will be a particularly ugly issue for the
men and women of the US military. They're going to have little choice
but to begin rejecting Barack Obama categorically as unworthy of being
their commander-in-chief.
Again, this is a very ugly situation to have: a president
who has zero desire to defend the United States giving orders — and not
giving orders — to the US military to carry out its duties in combat,
overseas. The widespread contempt and disgust which a majority of
military men felt for President Bill Clinton is nothing compared to what
is brewing right now.
Imagine being out there on the front lines with your life in constant
danger, forced to fight under absurdly restrictive rules of engagement,
knowing that your farcical "Commander in Chief" plans for you to lose
and is only stalling until your defeat can be arranged so as to cause
him minimal political damage. If the most crucial weapon in our armed
forces' arsenal is morale, Obama is disarming them.
Delegates to the North Korean Workers Party conference, slated to
take place tomorrow, are arriving in Pyongyang decked out in their finest grey
suits and shiny Kim Il-sung/Kim Jong-il badges.
As with all things regarding the opaque Kim Jong-il regime, observers
are reduced to speculation about what is going to take place over the
next few days. The consensus among Pyongyang watchers is that the main
business of the conference will be to promote one of Kim's children to a
senior leadership position, marking him as Kim's successor.
The favorite candidate is Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il's youngest son.
The elder Kim reportedly believes that Jong-un's older brother,Kim
Jong-chul, is to effiminate to lead. Half-brother Kim Jong-nam, the
oldest of Kim Jong-il's sons, apparently took himself out of
consideration for the top job when he was caught trying to sneak into
Japan under an assumed name to go to Disneyland.
Former Japanese defense minster Yuriko Koike speculates that the throne may pass
to Kim Jong-il's sister, rather than to any of his sons:
"Kim Kyung-hee, Kim Jong-il's sister and the wife of the
second-ranking figure in North Korea's hierarchy, Jang Song-taek, may
balk at power slipping through her fingers," she said. "Indeed, in a
country where trust rarely exists, Kim Kyung-hee is the only blood
relation whom Kim Jong-il has ever fully trusted."
I still believe Kim Sol-song, Kim Jong-il's daughter and
the product of his only official marriage, has an outside shot. She is
reportedly (that word again) smarter and better versed in Pyongyang's
politics than any of her half-brothers. She is trained in economics
(although educated in economics in North Korea, hardly a harbinger of
success in the field). She also speaks several languages and has served
as a personally advisor to her father and in various important
positions in his administration.
The delay in the party conference, originally scheduled to take place
in early September, may have been delayed due to in-fighting among the
Kim clan over the succession issue, although heavy flooding may have
been the main factor.
Yesterday afternoon I watched the Teacher Town Hall* that was the kick-off event for Education Nation,
NBC’s self-congratulatory, week-long look at education on their news
shows, quasi-news shows (ie. Dateline), and talking heads cable
channels.
This is not a summary of the two hours (minus an odd assortment of
ads), just a short collection of observations. If you saw the program
and came away with something different, please leave a comment.
Although Brian Williams, the moderator, claimed several times that
Education Nation was all about “the future of American education”, this
town hall was very much about the status quo. Any changes being
advocated, by either the people interviewed on-stage or those who got a
few seconds on mic from the audience, were minimal at best.
I didn’t hear much about student learning, which is supposed to be
the core purpose of school. And on those few occasions when the subject
of learning did come up, it was always in terms of standardized tests.
Unfortunately, even many teachers are associating genuine learning with
test scores.
On the other hand, almost all the teachers who spoke from the
audience seemed very proud of their work and of their particular schools
and students. Almost defensive.
Maybe not almost. Many speakers talked about the profession being
“under attack”, “under siege”, and about their work “in the trenches”.
It’s rather depressing to hear people discussing teaching in terms of
war.
And Williams seemed to take great pleasure in keeping the waters
churning. It quickly became clear that he and the producers were far
more interested in the conflict that is the staple of what passes for
news reporting these days than they were in a serious discussion of
education issues.
Lots of talk about unions and tenure, although those who blame either
for not being able to fire bad teachers don’t understand the system.
In the super large districts, it’s the general bureaucracy that is the
biggest impediment to making corrections – of any kind.
The online discussion, using CoverIt Live, was worthless. Besides
being too many people contributing comments, some of them short essays,
making it very hard to follow, it was also clear that the posts were
being filtered. The criteria for which were allowed through wasn’t so
clear.
Finally, did you know the event was taking place on the skating rink
at Rockefeller Plaza in New York? It was impossible to miss that fact
since Williams told the audience about it after Every. Single.
Commercial. Break.
So, with the obigitory airing of teacher opinion out of the way – on a
football Sunday afternoon – the rest of Education Nation can begin in
prime time.
Bring on the expert panel!
A private company in Maryland
has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon,
Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library
system.
There's more:
“There’s this
American flag, apple pie thing about libraries,” said Frank A.
Pezzanite, the outsourcing company’s chief executive. He has pledged to
save $1 million a year in Santa Clarita, mainly by cutting overhead and
replacing unionized employees. “Somehow they have been put in the
category of a sacred organization.”
The company, known as L.S.S.I., runs 14 library systems operating 63
locations. Its basic pitch to cities is that it fixes broken libraries —
more often than not by cleaning house.
“A lot of libraries are atrocious,” Mr. Pezzanite said. “Their policies
are all about job security. That’s why the profession is nervous about
us. You can go to a library for 35 years and never have to do anything
and then have your retirement. We’re not running our company that way.
You come to us, you’re going to have to work.”
Michael Vick sparked a rally against Green Bay,
dismantled Detroit and picked apart Jacksonville.
What does he have left to prove? Maybe nothing – until some guy named
Donovan McNabb returns to Philadelphia next week. For now, though, Vick
made Andy Reid’s quarterback decision look like the right one. Vick
threw three touchdown passes, ran for another score and led the Eagles
to a 28-3 victory over the Jaguars on Sunday.
“He played his heart out today, so it’s more about him than me or
anybody else,” Reid said. “It’s a tribute to what he’s done and how he’s
handled things.”
Vick completed 17 of 31 passes for 291 yards, mostly staying in the
pocket and dissecting Jacksonville’s beleaguered secondary. One of the
few times he did run, he broke a tackle, juked another defender and
scored from 17 yards.
Vick found DeSean Jackson for a 61-yard touchdown and hooked up with
Jeremy Maclin for two scores. Jackson finished with five catches for 153
yards, Maclin had four receptions for 83 yards, and the Eagles (2-1)
improved to 2-0 with Vick as their starter. “I moved on Thursday with
all the hoopla that was going on,” Vick said. “I understand the
circumstances and the reason for all the talk. … It is a sigh of relief
to move on and not talk about it anymore.”
Vick became the latest in a growing list of quarterbacks to torch the
Jaguars (1-2). Denver’s Kyle Orton and San Diego’s Philip Rivers burned
them repeatedly for big gains the last two weeks. Vick offered plenty
of answers to anyone who criticized Reid’s decision to go with him over
Kevin Kolb.
Reid had insisted Kolb would start when he returned from a
concussion. But Vick’s play prompted Reid to reverse field and stick
with Vick, saying the shifty left-hander gives Philadelphia a better
chance to win. He sure did against Jacksonville.
“I always believed I could come back and play quarterback,” said
Vick, who missed two years while serving time for his role in a
dogfighting operation. “It was all about me getting an opportunity and I
got it and it’s time to make the most of it.”
Vick now gets to spend a week talking about McNabb, Philadelphia’s
longtime starter whose offseason departure helped pave the way for
Vick’s return. But he wasn’t ready to discuss it Sunday. “I’m not
getting involved in that,” he said. “I’m not getting involved in Donovan
McNabb-Mike Vick controversy.”
Oooooh Weeee, our boy is lookin’ gooooood. SMH. We can’t wait until
next Sunday.
I’m
betting there are quite a few residents of the Second City who were
glad to bid Rahm Emanuel a not-so-fond farewell. We’ll guess what
Chicagoans? He’s baaaaack!
The likely departure of the White House Chief of Staff,
Rahm Emanuel, to run for Mayor of Chicago is part of a
half-term reshuffle of top aides that will signal a new chapter in the
history of Barack Obama’s increasingly embattled presidency.
It also raises a vital question: will Mr Obama continue to rely on
the small and trusted group of intimates who have followed him from
Chicago to Washington – or will he seize the chance to bring in new
blood from the outside to invigorate an administration high command that
critics say has become insular and out of touch?
The official word at the White House remains that Mr Emanuel is still
“in the process of thinking about what he’s going to do next”.
Unofficially, it is virtually taken for granted he will leave. The
filing deadline for the race to succeed the outgoing mayor, Richard
Daley, is 22 November, and the Chicago Sun-Times reported yesterday that
Terry Peterson, head of the city’s transit authority, had signed up as
Mr Emanuel’s campaign manager.
Wonder if Mayor Emanuel will find former President and First Lady
Obama some nice, good-paying desk jobs come November of 2012…?
...it
must be Democrats. And you can smell it all the way to the Obama
Administration.
Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by
Steve Caddle, who also works for the Service Employees International
Union. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000
registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other
registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the
same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in
one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597
registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with
different signatures.
Caddle told local newspapers that there "had been mistakes made," and
he said he had fired 30 workers for filing defective voter registration
applications. He could not be reached for this article.
The SEIU are, of course, Obama's brownshirts, and have specialized in intimidation and
corruption. Their leader, Andy Stern, was Obama's top
visitor to the White House.
And yes, that is the same Houston district where the fraud is so
rampant. Dead and fraudulent Democratic voters can be expected to turn
out in droves November 2nd, across the country.
The question is whether enough real voters who are tired of these
games turn out to assure that this fraud goes for naught. As the saying
goes, "if it ain't close, they can't cheat."
By: David Dayen
Matt Yglesias decides
to chide liberals and tell them that they risk losing universal
health care by not “cheerleading” for the Democrats enough. That’s the
nub of the argument as near as I can tell. I thought Yglesias was the
determinist who believes elections are a reflection of the state of the
economy and the normal swings of a non-Presidential year, particularly
when the current President relied on a voter base of just the people
least likely to turn out in an off-year election. But I guess someone
needed to take the blame.
What this neglects is that more people in the country, and given the
big numbers I assume not just liberals, don’t think the law that passed resembles
universal health care:
President Barack Obama’s health care
overhaul has divided the nation, and Republicans believe their call for
repeal will help them win elections in November. But the picture’s not
that clear cut.
A new AP poll finds that Americans who think the law should have done
more outnumber those who think the government should stay out of health
care by 2-to-1.
“I was disappointed that it didn’t provide universal coverage,” said
Bronwyn Bleakley, 35, a biology professor from Easton, Mass.
More than 30 million people would gain coverage in 2019 when the law
is fully phased in, but another 20 million or so would remain uninsured.
Bleakley, who was uninsured early in her career, views the overhaul as a
work in progress.
I suppose the answer here would be that the law will not have a
chance to gradually become universal if the Democrats lose. But the
Democrats at risk for losing either grudgingly supported an imperfect
law or opposed it on the grounds that it cost too much. Maybe they’re
not the people to fix it.
I’m not sure when this “clap louder” approach to politics ever worked
throughout history, and therefore I am puzzled as to why anyone thinks
it would work now. But the consistent approach for those dissatisfied
with the Affordable Care Act would be to work for a better health care
law, not the politicians who birthed this one. And the numbers are on
their side, as 75% of Americans want substantial changes to the system.
We’re,
of course, a long way away from the next presidential election. But
the midterms are upon us, and with numbers like these it’s hard not to
think of the President and his policies as a dead
weight for Democrat candidates.
A significant majority of voters are considering voting
against President Barack Obama in
the 2012 election, expressing sour views of his new health care law and deep skepticism about his
ability to create jobs and grow the sluggish economy, according to the
latest POLITICO / George Washington University
Battleground Poll.
Only 38 percent of respondents said Obama deserves to be reelected,
even though a majority of voters hold a favorable view of him on a
personal level. Forty-four percent said they will vote to oust him, and
13 percent said they will consider voting for someone else.
What’s odd is that voters like Obama as a person, but dislike his
policies:
It’s Obama’s policies that are hurting him right now. By a
13-point margin, voters are down on the health care law. In an
especially troubling sign, more than half of self-identified
independents — 54 percent — have an unfavorable opinion of the law,
compared with just 38 percent who have a favorable opinion.
And by an 11-point margin, voters trust congressional Republicans to
create jobs more than Obama. His approval rating stands at 46 percent,
according to the poll of 1,000 likely voters, conducted Sept. 19 to
Sept. 22.
The message for Democrats from Americans: It’s nothing personal,
guys, we just don’t like your policies.
Manhattan, NY - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s six-night
visit to NYC included a secret sit-down with militant minister Louis
Farrakhan, the New York Post reported Sunday.
The president shared a hush-hush meal with Farrakhan and members of
the New Black Panther Party Tuesday at the Warwick Hotel on West 54th
Street.
The meeting took place during Ahmadinejad’s stay in NYC to address
the U.N. General Assembly. He met Farrakhan, the fiery 77-year-old
leader of The Nation of Islam, in the Warwick Hotel’s banquet hall.
Ahmadinejad’s speech Thursday, during which speculated that the U.S.
was behind the 9/11 terror attacks caused outrage, caused a walk-out by
U.S. delegates.
The speech was just part of the Iranian leader’s bizarre six-night
NYC visit.
On Thursday night, Sudanese diplomats trying to get in to see him at
the Hilton Manhattan East, on 42nd Street, squared off with security and
a pushing match ensued.
Two well-dressed women in their 40s then came in, sat at the hotel
bar and ordered drinks.
One of them caught the attention of the president’s security detail,
which had set up a station in the hotel lobby.
She was soon surrounded by eight angry Iranians, who ordered her to
leave. She refused.
A manager tried to calm things down. Suddenly, the woman stood up and
pointed at the Iranians, yelling, “You stoned my sister! You’re
murderers!”
Paranoia was on parade at the Hilton the moment the president checked
in on Sept. 18.
Ahmadinejad’s team took six floors of the Hilton to themselves in the
hotel’s south tower, about 90 rooms in all, when they checked in. More
than 20 rooms were for security.
Southwest Airlines has agreed to buy
AirTran Airways for $1.37 billion in cash and stock, more than doubling
its potential gate space at Boston’s Logan International Airport.
“The acquisition also allows us to
expand our presence in key markets, like New York LaGuardia, Boston
Logan, and Baltimore/Washington,” Gary Kelley, Southwest’s chief
executive, said in a statement on Monday. AirTran is a low-cost carrier,
similar to Southwest.
It’s unclear whether an expansion at
Logan expansion would effect Manchester airport, where Southwest is the
dominant carrier, handling almost 60 percent of the passenger traffic.
Southwest’s arrival at Manchester in
1998 kicked off a boom decade for Boston-Manchester Regional Airport,
sending fares plummeting and traffic soaring.
Last summer, Southwest returned to
Boston, flying out of two gates. AirTran has three gates at Logan.
Manchester airport officials said that
despite the Boston presence, Southwest says it remains committed to
Manchester.
The proposed deal would also give
Southwest access to Atlanta, the biggest domestic market that the
airline currently does not serve.
by
Publius From the San
Francisco Chronicle:
Californians are left with a deeply unsatisfying choice for the U.S.
Senate this year. The incumbent, Democrat Barbara Boxer, has
failed to distinguish herself during her 18 years in office.
There is no reason to believe that another six-year term would bring
anything but more of the same uninspired representation. The challenger,
Republican Carly Fiorina, has campaigned with a vigor and directness
that suggests she could be effective in Washington – but for an agenda
that would undermine this nation’s need to move forward on addressing
serious issues such as climate change, health care and immigration.
It is extremely rare that this editorial page would offer no
recommendation on any race, particularly one of this importance. This is
one necessary exception.
Boxer, first elected in 1992, would not rate on anyone’s list of most
influential senators. Her most famous moments on Capitol Hill
have not been ones of legislative accomplishment, but of delivering
partisan shots. Although she is chair of the Environment and
Public Works Committee, it is telling that leadership on the most
pressing issue before it – climate change – was shifted to Sen. John
Kerry, D-Mass., because the bill had become so polarized under her wing.
For some Californians, Boxer’s reliably liberal voting record may be
reason enough to give her another six years in office. But we believe
Californians deserve more than a usually correct vote on issues they
care about. They deserve a senator who is accessible, effective
and willing and able to reach across party lines to achieve progress on
the great issues of our times. Boxer falls short on those counts.
Boxer’s campaign, playing to resentment over Fiorina’s wealth, is not
only an example of the personalized pettiness that has infected too
much of modern politics, it is also a clear sign of desperation.
In past elections, Boxer has had the good fortune of having
Republican opponents who were inept, underfunded, on the fringe right –
or combinations thereof. Her opponent this time, Fiorina, is proving to
be articulate, well-funded and formidable.
Read the whole damning editorial here.
If you are a liberal Democrat politician in California and
you’ve lost the San Francisco Chronicle, well…you’ve lost.
Ever wonder what happens when ET lands
on earth and says, “Take me to your leader?”
There is no need to worry about what happens at that critical moment
in human history.
The UN has stepped
in and appointed a Malaysian astrophysicist for “first contact.”
Mazlan Othman, the head of the UN’s Office for Outer Space Affairs
(UNOOSA), said that when contact comes with extraterrestrials “We should
have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the
sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism
for such coordination.”
So when ET lands, the bureaucracy-laden, impotent and resolution
loving UN will be in charge.
UNOOSA deals with international cooperation in space, prevention of
collisions and space debris, use of space-based remote sensing platforms
for sustainable development, coordination of space law between
countries and the risks posed by near-earth asteroids. Now it also has
the space ambassador for extraterrestrial contact affairs.
Hopefully, ET does not want anything done, because the UN is only as
powerful as its member states can agree. As we all know, they don’t
agree on much.
This sounds like a good reason for ET to skip a visit to earth.
By Allan Lengel
WASHINGTON — As expected, the Justice Department’s
Inspector General report released Monday found that a number of FBI
agents cheated on a test on bureau policies for conducting surveillance
on Americans.
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine says he found
“significant abuses and cheating” and that people worked together or got
answers to the open book exam in violation of FBI policy.
The report said more than 200 finished the test in 20 minutes or less
and many of them received high scores. It said FBI officials who
developed the test said it takes at least 90 minutes. Agents have told
ticklethewire.com that the test actually can easily take three to four
hours.
“The FBI should take appropriate disciplinary action against those
employees identified by the OIG who cheated or engaged in inappropriate
conduct related to the …. exam,” the report said.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a call for comment Monday
morning. Read report
By Allan Lengel
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is making
moves to try and get a better handle on the activities of terrorists.
Charlie Savage of the The New York Times reports that federal law enforcement and national
security officials plan next year to seek new regulations from Congress
that would allow agencies to get information on the Internet with a
wiretap order.
The Times reports that agencies fear “their ability to wiretap
criminal and terrorism suspects is ‘going dark’ as people increasingly
communicate online instead of by telephone.”
The Times reports that the administration would ask Congress to
change laws so that they could get info from encrypted e-mail
transmitters like BlackBerry and social networks like Facebook and
Skype.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima reports that the
Obama administration wants to require all U.S. banks to report all
electronic money orders in and out of the country to keep better tabs on
terrorist financing and money laundering.
Currently, banks are required to report transactions that exceed
$10,000. The new regulations would require all transfers to be reported
regardless of size, the Post reports.
With summer officially behind us, the fall campaign season
is shifting into high gear. Over the next few weeks, in addition to the usual
flurry of political ads, rallies and newspaper stories, we also will have an
opportunity to see candidates square off against their opponents in campaign
debates.
But how much do debates really tell us about how well a
candidate will perform in office?
Former President
George H. W. Bush saw no connection between being a good debater and a good
president.
“You can have a good president that might not be the best in
the top of his game in a staged debate,” he told Jim Lehrer for a PBS series on
the role of debates in presidential elections. “But maybe he can do it quietly,
maybe he can do it without having a hair part and make-up just right and a
smile at the right time.”
Former President Clinton, in another interview for the PBS
series, said presidential debates are an important component of the democratic
process, but he also acknowledged their shortcomings.
“They don't test all
the skills,” he said. “They don't really show whether you're a good decision
maker, although they show whether you can understand a situation in a hurry and
respond to it, particularly if there's a surprise question or, you know, a
surprise development in the kind of the chemistry of the players. They don't
show whether you're good at putting together a team and carrying out a plan,
but they do give people a feel for what kind of leader the debater would be,
how much the person knows, and generally how they approach the whole idea of
being president.”
Bush and Clinton each took part in presidential debates,
which are conducted every four years under the auspices of the Commission on Presidential Debates. The commission was
established in 1987 to ensure that debates remained a permanent part of the
nation’s presidential election process.
The most well-known presidential
debate, however, took place long before the commission was established. Fifty
years ago, on September 26, 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon participated
in the nation’s first live televised presidential debate. Not only was the event
a historic first, but over years it has come to be regarded as a turning point
in media and politics because of Kennedy’s ability to use the relatively new
medium of television to increase his appeal and because of Nixon’s apparent
lack of recognition of the impact of a candidate’s appearance.
A popular theory about this debate
is that those who listened to the exchange on radio thought Nixon had won,
while those who watched it on TV gave the nod to Kennedy. I decided to put the
theory to a test this summer while I was teaching a media and elections course
at JohnCabotUniversity in Rome, Italy.
My students, who were young and from five different countries, entered the
course with little if any knowledge of America’s 1960 presidential
campaign. I played a few minutes of audio from the debate and asked them to
assess the performances of the two candidates. Then I played a few more minutes
with both video and audio. Surprisingly, they felt the candidates were pretty
evenly matched in both settings. And I must admit, after having heard and read
so much about Nixon’s five o-clock shadow and sweaty brow, I expected him to
look much worse than what I saw.
Appearances
aside, 50 years after the historic telecast, legitimate questions are being
raised about the debate and its ultimate impact on the outcome of the race,
which Kennedy won by a narrow margin. Two University
of Illinois professors, interviewed
recently by The News-Gazette of Champaign, said no
tangible evidence has ever been presented to support the widely accepted theory
that radio listeners felt Nixon won the debate.
They also noted that nine out of
ten U.S.
households had televisions at the time, so there were more people watching the
debate on TV than listening to it on radio.
“The areas of the country that did
not have television also happen to be the areas of the country where a Catholic
candidate is going to have a tough time simply because the natural support of
voters was not going to be concentrated there,” Scott Althaus, an associate
professor of political science and communication, told the newspaper.
“There's not a definitive answer
here,” he added, “but it certainly suggests that one possible explanation for
this finding, if it was valid, was simply that the people who were listening to
Nixon on the radio were not coming from the places that were going to support
Kennedy.”
While it is not possible to quantify the impact the
candidates’ physical appearances had at the polls that November, Nixon’s
post-election observations – contained in a book he authored two years later –
were quite fascinating and offered a glimpse into the direction politics and
media would take in the ensuing years.
“I believe I spent too much time in the last campaign on
substance and too little time on appearance,” Nixon wrote in Six Crises. “I paid too much attention
to what I was going to say and too little to how I would look.”
Unfortunately, we learned the wrong
lesson from the historic Kennedy-Nixon debate. We should have learned that
substance should never take a back seat in campaigns and elections. Instead we
have headed in an entirely different direction -- as evidenced by the tone and
nature of politics in the 21st Century.
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Richard A. Lee is Communications Director of the Hall
Institute of Public Policy – New
Jersey.
