Today's Daily Pulse takes its usual peek around the country, then traipses off to a few campuses to see what our future leaders are thinking about. They seem to be thinking about the same things as the rest of us, including the poisonous atmosphere of partisanship, and our President's obvious mediocrity.
I'm still looking for contributors, including people interested in starting now to look at swing-state editorials in the run-up to
'06 and even '08. If you're interested, let me know here. I can even send you a complete list of Ohio's, or Florida's, or most other state's editorial pages.
Baltimore Sun
Gonzalez's testimony was absolutely surreal, using Orwellian turns of phrase to describe the "terrorist surveillance program" and refusing to answer any actual questions about whether it actually targets just terrorists or not.
Indefensible
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales showed his unbending loyalty this week as he defended the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under pointed questioning by both Democratic and Republican senators, Mr. Gonzales conceded that "Congress has a role to play in time of war," but still barely budged from the idea that, when it comes to the war on terrorism, all bets are off as far as this administration is concerned. ...
Mr. Gonzales may be called again before the Judiciary Committee, and he is scheduled to appear at a closed-door session of the Senate Intelligence Committee tomorrow. We can only hope that at some point, the nation's chief legal officer will recognize his broader duty to uphold the rule of law on behalf of the American people instead of acting solely out of loyalty to the current occupant of the White House.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinal
We should all be outraged at this Administration's refusal to testify about what is arguably (actually, obviously) completely criminal.
A hearing producing nothing
Anyone who hoped that Monday's hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee would shed new light on whether the Bush administration is violating the law by conducting secret wiretaps on the international e-mails and telephone conversations of Americans was bound to have been sorely disappointed. Although he spent more than seven hours under sometimes sharp questioning, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales supplied virtually no new facts or insights that would help Americans make a more informed judgment about this important matter. One can only hope that Gonzales will be more forthcoming when, as expected, he comes to Capitol Hill to meet with the committee a second time. ...
As a result of Gonzales' unwillingness to be more candid and informative, neither the Judiciary Committee nor the country at large are any closer to a more reliable opinion about whether laws have been broken. Neither are they closer to learning whether, aside from these legal questions, the wiretap program has been abused for partisan political advantage. ...
The Mercury News
Is it time for public funding of elections? Perhaps even more important, should such public funding be MANDATORY (if it's not, only billionaires will be able to run for office)?
A clean money cure for voter cynicism
In a Field Poll last fall, only 27 percent of Californians said they liked how the Legislature was doing its job. That makes them more popular than spiders and snakes but less than even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger polled after the disastrous November election. ...
But late last month, some legislators demonstrated they understood why they get so little respect. Going against predictions, the Assembly passed the California Clean Money and Fair Elections Act and sent it to the Senate. ...
Modeled closely after systems in Maine and Arizona, and scaled up to fit California, it would provide public financing to candidates who chose it. To be eligible, candidates would have to demonstrate their viability by collecting a minimum number of $5 donations. They would have to agree to accept the public spending limits and forgo private donations (see accompanying explanation). ....
A clean-money system in California would cost between $100 million and $150 million per year -- less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the annual state budget, between $3 and $5 per person.
That amounts to odor-free politics for less than the cost of dry cleaning a suit.
Journal News
At least one editorial page is less than impressed by the selection of John Boehner to replace Tom DeLay. I wonder why that might be. Perhaps it's because he's just more of the same.
Boehner interview on 'Meet the Press' very troubling
We watched new House majority Leader John Boehner on NBC's 'Meet the Press' Sunday morning and at times could not believe what we were hearing. ...
- He said he doesn't favor independent oversight of special interest-funded excursions by congressmen, and believes the House can regulate any excess on its own. This from a man who has accepted trips to resorts around the globe worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, from special interests seeking to curry his favor. If he was traveling to Iraq, we'd consider ourselves well-served. But trips to golf courses in Scotland, Pebble Beach and Boca Raton give us little besides a well-tanned representative. ...
- He confirmed with pride that he took in about $630,000 for his campaign and $850,000 to his Political Action Committee last year alone, but reaffirmed his pledge to never ear-mark any federal money for projects in his home district. Although when pressed by Russert, Boehner would not agree to push for an end to ear-marking in general. This position by Boehner continues to infuriate and bewilder us. We are not asking for federal dollars for 'pork projects to build a spoon museum or a bridge to Fairfield. We are asking for a fraction of the millions we pay in taxes to come back to this county for special highway projects or redevelopment or job creation or even public transportation. Wouldn't it be nice if instead of a powerful congressman working on his golf game in Scotland, we could get a bus from here to the doctor's office in Oxford? ...
As majority leader, Boehner is supposed to be working to mend the reputation of Republicans damaged by the taint of scandal. But all we heard Sunday was business as usual.
Pasadena Star News
Betty Friedan changed the face of America. It is good to see her remembered in a few editorial pages.
Rememberance of a feminist icon
THE recent passing of Betty Friedan recalls the impact and profound changes triggered by her incisive appeal for women to reject the "contented" homemaker role of the 1950s and insist on fuller participation in American life. ...
The second wave of American feminism surely would have happened without Friedan, who died Saturday on her 85th birthday. But her book "The Feminine Mystique" hit with explosive force in 1963 and quickened the women's movement. ... Friedan gave voice to "a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that ... each suburban wife struggled with ... alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night - she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question - "Is this all?" Within two decades, the American
culture and economy had been transformed and entry of women into the workforce affected nearly everything. ...
The Roanoke Times
Bush's budget proposal is a farce. It is fantasy stacked on false presumption atop bald-faced lies. The goal is the same as ever- to enrich big contributors while starving every day Americans.
Bush's budget skews priorities
The budget presented by President Bush on Monday is unreal.
Treasury Secretary John Snow told the Senate Finance Committee, "This budget represents the president's dedication to fiscal discipline, an efficient federal government and the continuation of a thriving U.S. economy."
A budget deficit of $423 billion is fiscal discipline? ...
Worse than the president's unrealistic assumptions, though, are the very real and very skewed priorities the budget demonstrates. ...
To preserve $1.5 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade, Bush proposes cuts to health care and education that even Republicans called "scandalous" and disappointing. ...
No, paying for tax cuts is done by reducing spending. Defense and homeland security are getting increases, leaving the domestic programs that Bush wants to starve anyway. ...
Bush's budget proposal is both fiscally and morally irresponsible. ...
And now for a trip to campus.
The Louisville Cardinal
This is really just an interesting reflection on the meaning of the words "conservative" and "liberal," words we use every day, though they seem to have lost their meaning. However, I would argue (as I have several times before) that the real problem is gerrymandering that forces politicians in "safe" districts to run to the extreme to win their primaries.
Misuse of terms impedes dialogue
I have always considered myself a conservative without ever truly examining what the term means. I knew that I agreed more with George Bush on key issues than with Bill Clinton. I knew that Fox News made me grumble less than CNN and that I would never apply for membership to PETA or the ACLU, but until recently, I had not considered the matter any further. ...
By being categorized as a conservative or liberal, a person is perceived as a milder version of the most extreme case. Just think back a couple of years when some Republicans were trying to equate John Kerry with Joseph Stalin.
These tactics limit the effectiveness of American discourse. .
For example, political bickering has completely hijacked the ethical issue of abortion. Pro-choicers are femiNazis or murderers, while pro-lifers are chauvinists who want to take our country back to the 1800s. Both assertions are ridiculous.
No rational Republican wants to regulate when a woman can have a child, and no rational Democrat would kill her one-year-old child because she decides that she no longer has the means to take care of it. ...
College students though, would benefit from being more careful about when and how we apply these terms. Doing so may let us enter into dialogue which has not yet been allowed in the political arena.
The Independent Florida Alligator
Yes, George W. Bush is a mediocrity. But so are many of our politicians. As this editorial suggests, we as a nation have accepted such mediocrity, even embraced it, as if being among the best of the best was a mark of shame, rather than a badge of honor.
Politics lacks great speakers
Mediocrity, thy name is George W. Bush. ...
It was obvious from his first moments in the national spotlight that President Bush was an uninspired public speaker. His speechwriters haven't helped him -- they have consistently provided the president with addresses composed in dull, inelegant prose. Of course, they had precious little choice. The president's cadence and delivery would make "Ask not what your country can do for you..." sound laughable. ...
But there is a connection between the quality of our words and the quality of our policies. We trace our ideals to Athens and Rome, but those two societies uplifted and idolized the orator. Speaking eloquently in defense of one's ideas was considered a sign of moral strength. ...
Oratory is supposed to move us, to lift us up and inspire us to reach heights we never imagined. It's supposed to bring us to our feet, to make our hearts stop and our hair stand on end.
Politicians don't need to ostentatiously display their vocabulary in every speech.
But the English language is a massive world. If our representatives would be willing to occasionally make us thumb through a dictionary, we'd all be better off for it.