The editorials are good today, but the signed pieces aren't.
The first editorial slams Dubya's support for the FMA as "radically rewrit[ing] the Constitution" and "inject[ing] meanspiritedness and exclusion into the document embodying our highest principles and aspirations." The second blasts "the Bush administration and its allies in Congress" for the gun lobby in Congress, which shows they are "focused simply on making it easier for gun manufacturers and gun dealers to turn a profit." The third provides a long list of Secretary Paige's missteps and concludes "Mr. Paige's 'terrorist' remark has finally exhausted his credibility and disqualified him as a spokesman for national education policy."
In the "Editorial Observer", Gail Collins laments the inclusion of Kucinich and Sharpton in the next two Democratic debates.
Now, we get to the stinky signed pieces. Nicholas Kristof makes a good point that the US is guilty of a double standard because we want to enforce UN resolutions in Iraq but provide billions in support to Israel despite their ignoring of UN resolutions. "President Bush has been cozying up to Mr. Sharon, despite his incursions into the West Bank, his use of settlements to grab Palestinian lands and his barrier that cuts off Palestinian farmers from their farms. Anyone who goes to Israel feels the gut fear of bombings that drive such policies, but anyone who goes to Gaza or the West Bank sees the humiliations that spawn bombings and a vicious cycle of violence." If he stopped there, it would have been a good piece. Instead, Kristof goes on and on about how Arabs are hypocrites and are also guilty of slaughtering and surpressing fellow Arabs. Then he winds up with "Yet in the end, other people's hypocrisy should not excuse our own." Then why bring it up?
William Safire submits an exercise in dubious logic - Latvia is doing okay as a democracy, so that means eventually Haiti and Iraq will eventually do okay. Latvia is the prototype for Iraq apparently because Safire wrote about it fifteen years before it had democracy and he wrote about Iraq before it had democracy. It is hard to argue with logic like that ;)
Kenneth Woodward warmly reviews Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" and says it will be a positive shock to easygoing American Christians. Mark Derr, despite having Parkinson's, doesn't want human cloning.
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