Thanks to all for making this better for your comments.
What is The Pulse? A daily randomized view of less than mainstream newspaper editorial pages. I pick papers from around the nation at random, and as soon as I find an editorial, column, or LTE on a story or issue of national interest, I grab it. I don't pick and choose, because I want the randomness, over time, to give us a better idea of the pulse of the nation, what communities find important.
This has been a hard night at the Pulse. I've looked at more than 70 papers, and gotten almost nothing. It seems to be all Pope, all the time. Other than that, local issue after local issue. Sorry for the thin product, but 2 hours is enough.
Okay, a little time in the morning, and I think it's better. I added the Oregon papers to the database, and they seem like some real thinkers out there.
Thanks for all the RECOMMENDS. I'll stop whoring now, and hope this thing has legs.
This makes me crazy. I work with a guy, the former communications director for Dan (is anybody more bug-f'ing crazy than me) Burton, and he laid the whole 'liberals are fascist pie throwers' rap on me this morning. I responded "I'll ask my father in law if he saw any cream pies while he was in the camps" (and yes, he's an holocaust survivor). Any decent human being, that would have shut them up. But this guy, nope, he just rambled on about liberals and fascism. Apparently, he's not alone, for this North Carolina paper, too, seems to fail to appreciate that a cream pie is a protest, not the start of something evil:
The Daily News (Jacksonville, North Carolina)
Auschwitz Cream Pie
There may be a tendency to dismiss the incidents as harmless, if annoying, college pranks, but in the last two weeks three conservative commentators speaking on college campuses have had their speeches physically disrupted.Most recently, David Horowitz, a critic of leftist political correctness in academia, was struck in the face with a pie at Butler University. ...
Attempts to suppress speech - and that's what these are - have a way of escalating.
It's conservatives now, but it could easily be somebody else later, and the chosen means could be something nastier than pies or salad dressing.
The sheer rudeness and immaturity of the acts aside, they are a chilling phenomenon.
This paper notes Gonzalez seemed more reasonable than Ashcroft about parts of the Patriot Act. Of course, given that the other guy was John Ashcroft, I'm not terribly impressed. And given that Gonzalez is Captain Torture, and lied about it, I'm not sure I'd be so confident in anything he said. But here it is, and judge for yourself:
News Observer (Raleigh Durham, NC)
Gonzalez More Reasonable on Patriot Act
Although the USA Patriot Act became law in a feverish effort to prevent a repeat of 9/11, the wisest provision of all was arguably its expiration date. If Congress doesn't renew them, 16 sections of the law expanding government surveillance powers will self-destruct at the end of this year. ...
As descendants of government persecution victims, most Americans have an independent streak in the genes. We cherish the Bill of Rights and tolerate no violations of it -- even if the intention is to protect us from terrorists. ...
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft's response to such fears was inappropriately hostile, suggesting that his critics gave comfort to the terrorists. In sharp contrast, Gonzales admitted that the administration had taken too long to inform Congress on how the Patriot Act had been used over the last four years. Even more helpful was his support for revising Section 215 to specify important rights for recipients of the secret court's orders: to consult an attorney and to challenge an order before that court.
That sort of a change strikes a better balance between law enforcement to keep Americans safe and civil liberties to protect cherished freedoms. Given that terrorists have been known to use library computers, placing library records out of law enforcement's reach wouldn't be wise. Yet spelling out the right to challenge one of these orders should discourage frivolous use of them.
Overall, moving toward common ground with advocates of civil liberties is the right posture for Gonzales and his boss, President Bush, to take.
This guy starts by lumping Howard Dean with Michael Jackson, and it's all downhill from there:
Siloam Springs (Arkansas) Herald
Dean is a Liberal
The media, including yours truly, are attracted to notoriety like ants to spilled molasses on a humid August Arkansas afternoon. Sure, we love true superstars like the late Pope John Paul II and Secretary of State Condi Rice, but we'll also report every syllable dripping out of celebrity freak-zone mouths, whose membership includes such TV regulars as Michael "I share my bed with little boys" Jackson and failed presidential candidate Dr. Howard "Yarrrrrgggghhhh" Dean. ...
The realignment is mostly attributed to the increasingly leftward ideological movement of the national Democratic Party. God-fearing Blue Dog Democrats from Oklahoma to Florida started abandoning the National Democrats for the conservative-values GOP more than a decade ago. Severe losses in congressional seats, state legislatures, governors and the White House because of the South's defection has proven to be a painful lesson for the Democrats. ...
Still, the Democrats are hoping to make Arkansas believe the national party shares the values of the average Arkansan. In the local vernacular, that dog won't hunt. ...
But calling Dean a fiscal conservative is like calling flip-flopper Kerry as unwavering as the Rock of Gibraltar. ... ...
Dean also was the first governor to sign a bill allowing "civil union" between homosexuals. Dean was cagey during the presidential campaign about officially supporting full-on homosexual marriage, but when ABC's Sam Donaldson asked Dean if he was against gay marriage, Dean replied, "I've never said that (I'm against homosexual marriage), as a matter of fact." ...
Lucas Roebuck is managing editor of the Siloam Springs Herald-Leader. He can be reached at lucasr@nwanews.com.
In Ohio, the Toledo Blade wasn't too impressed with Bush's West Virginia 'where'd the money go' stunt:
Empty IOUs
NOW that President Bush has declared that the Social Security Trust Fund amounts to a stack of "worthless IOUs" in a government filing cabinet in West Virginia, what will he do next?
How about a press conference in front of the Treasury Building next to the White House, where Mr. Bush could dramatize the fact that the folding money Americans spend every day is just a collection of "worthless pieces of paper." ...
What the President was glossing over is that the Treasury bonds are a legally incurred debt the United States government has promised to repay. Defaulting would precipitate an economic crisis too serious to imagine.
In short, the Social Security bonds are just like the Treasury notes, bills, savings bonds, and other securities issued and bought by investors to raise money needed to run the government and pay its debt. This promise to pay has not been breached in the 218-year history of the republic. ...
Ironically, Mr. Bush's plan to restructure Social Security with private investment accounts would require the borrowing of several trillion dollars, a crushing addition to the government's bonded indebtedness. The scheme would require benefit cuts for future recipients but would do nothing to make the system solvent, a point even the President has belatedly acknowledged.
Why make Social Security's long-term shortfall even worse? Why not just shore up the system with a minor tax increase and be done with it?
Mr. Bush doesn't say, which is why most of the American public and even Republicans in Congress are unwilling to invest their own faith and credit in his plan.
A letter writer wants Canada to pick up it's share of the military burden to "defend freedom." He concludes Canada is falling behind by comparing military budgets. I guess by that standard, the entire world is slacking, given that our military budget is bigger than the rest of the world's combined. It's an hell of a rant, and every sentence is rebuttable, so go for it. It seems to be 'conservatives malign Canada week.' Maybe it's all a set up- once they've run out of ways to discriminate against gays it will be Canada's turn. The bad guys will need another new war product to roll out before the '08 elections, and we're not ready to fight Iran. Canada, anybody?
The Niagara (NY) Gazette
Canada Falling Behind
By David Livingston
...It's because I had such affection for Canada and its people that I find it so painful to watch a nation I once loved drift away from the values that made it great.
Since 1945, there has been a pattern of Canadian reluctance to share the burden of defending freedom. If their shameful lack of responsibility were not bad enough, our neighbor to the north appears, at times, to take delight in subverting America's attempt to deal with terrorism.
Canadians are justifiably proud of their quality of life without ever acknowledging that they can afford expensive governmental programs because they depend on the United States to spend trillions of dollars to protect them. In 2004, the U.S. population was 10 times greater than Canada (293 million vs. 30 million) but we spent about 50 times more money than they did on maintaining a viable military deterrent ($420 billion vs. $9.1 billion). America's per capita spending on the military was $1,433, compared to Canada's $303. ...
I suppose it's natural to leave the fighting to others if you can, but what is particularly galling is the Canadian's incessant criticism. Americans are used to having to fight everyone else's battles, but if we're sending our young men and women to die in the place of Canadians, the least they could do is not subvert our efforts. ...
It seems that Canada actually enjoys nipping at America's heals while we are engaged in a deadly struggle with Al Qaeda, whose mission is to destroy us as well as them. ...
What is most baffling of all is that hundreds of Canadians were killed in the 9/11 attacks, and Canada was perfectly content to hold a few memorial services for their murdered countrymen and then quietly get back to life as usual. How can a nation be so devoid of emotion that they are incapable of getting angry enough to at least try to fight back? Apparently, sending a couple hundred soldiers to Afghanistan is enough to assuage their guilt over the lack of a backbone. ...
There was a time when Canadians were people you could depend on to cover your back. Whatever happened to that proud nation?
David Livingston is a Youngstown resident.
This editorial is concerned with both the filibuster and the nuclear option. It has another suggestion- Bush should try talking to Democrats. From The (Portland) Oregonian:
Pick Up the Phone
L et us suppose, if only briefly, that there is more than a simply partisan argument over whether United States senators should be able to use the filibuster to derail judicial nominations.
If that were the case, then even the Republicans who now suggest removing the prerogative might think twice about the whole thing.
Of course, it's a little hard to suggest that the current argument over the filibuster is anything except a partisan fight, if you've been watching the screaming heads' debate ramping up on the government-geek TV channels. ...
We don't want to suggest that there are not serious issues here. The Senate serves the republic, in part, by offering a bulwark against rushing to legislative judgment.
Its rules allow for a certain amount of obstructionism -- if that's what it is -- partly as a check on domination of the process by one party. The Republicans who currently want to invoke the "nuclear option" of banning filibusters in judicial nominations ought to remember something that may be hard to conceive of right now: They may not be in the majority forever.
In the meantime, maybe there is a more effective means of gaining approval of judicial nominees. The president could follow the suggestion of fellow Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. He could just pick up the phone and talk to some Senate Democrats now and then.
In Oregon, The Daily Astorian notes their Senator is telling his colleagues to settle down, given the conflict between their Schiavo/theocracy mindset and Oregon's assisted suicide law:
Cool it Senate
he "world's greatest deliberative body" has been anything but thoughtful, patient and reasoned lately. In the heat of the Terri Schiavo controversy, the U.S. Senate imitated the worst fears of the Founding Fathers about the House of Representatives. The founders feared lawmakers who would follow the mob. On Schiavo, a majority of senators ran with the stampede, passing legislation that violated the bedrock principle of federalism while intruding on the judicial branch.
In the wake of that intemperate behavior, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden counseled his colleagues to take it easy. In a well-reasoned speech delivered Monday afternoon, Wyden told the Senate "to cool its passions." ...
Sen. Wyden very much has Oregon's Assisted Suicide Statute in mind as senators muse openly about revisiting the Schiavo matter. The right-wing religious faction of congressional Republicans is itching to nullify Oregon's law. With Oregon's Sen. Gordon Smith silent on the matter, the Senate GOP feels enabled to shut down Oregon. ...
The religious right, which controls congressional leadership, and Oregon are on a collision course. Oregon's statute is about personal freedom and self control. The religious right has one solution for all of us. ...
