The word is that Sarah Palin intends to resign as governor of Alaska. Reports MSNBC:
Sarah Palin plans to resign as governor of Alaska in a few weeks, KTUU-TV reported Friday.
Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008, made the announcement at her home Friday morning, the station said.
Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will take over at the end of the month, KTUU reported.
At the 1939 World’s Fair organizers predicted what life would be like in 2000. How amazingly prescient! Check out the video helpfully added to show how right they were!
Politics makes strange bedfellows, it is said. No stranger than how the Obama administration and Big Tobacco collaborated on passage of the recent legislation allowing the FDA to regulation the industry.
It turns out that big business likes using government to create cartels and stifle competition. Timothy Carney in the Washington Examiner has the story:
President Barack Obama signed a bill Monday that the largest tobacco company in America had championed for years. Obama nevertheless claimed he had taken on Big Tobacco and won.
As Obama signed the “Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act,” giving the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco, he proclaimed in the Rose Garden: “Today, despite decades of lobbying and advertising by the tobacco industry, we’ve passed a law to help protect the next generation of Americans from growing up with a deadly habit. …”
But on Tuesday morning, the home page of Philip Morris, which controls a majority of the U.S. cigarette market, blared “Philip Morris Supports Federal Regulation of Tobacco.”
Was Obama ignorant of the $40,000-a-day pro-regulation lobbying effort by the country’s biggest cigarette maker?
Was Obama surprised by the applause Monday from Philip Morris’ parent company Altria, calling the bill “an important and historic achievement”?
Altria’s support Monday didn’t reflect some conversion on the road to the Rose Garden. Altria stated it “has supported tough but reasonable federal regulation of tobacco products for more than eight years.”
Indeed, an aide to a Republican congressman told this columnist in 2004 that an Altria lobbyist, behind closed doors, asked his boss to back this bill. After it died in the House that year, an Altria spokesman told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “We spent a lot of time and effort on it. We think it’s very important to the industry as a whole. We don’t have any regrets about pursuing it.”
My Cato Institute colleague Michael Cannon asks the president several pointed questions about his health care reform proposal:
Mr. President, in your inaugural address and elsewhere, you said you are not interested in ideology, only what works. Economists Helen Levy of the University of Michigan and David Meltzer of the University of Chicago, where you used to teach, have researched what works. They conclude there is “no evidence” that universal health insurance coverage is the best way to improve public health. Before enacting universal coverage, shouldn’t you spend at least some of the $1 billion you dedicated to comparative-effectiveness research to determine whether universal coverage is comparatively effective? Absent such evidence, isn’t pursuing universal coverage by definition an ideological crusade?
Well, Mr. President?
Uh, oh. Most jobs have been lost. So much for that great “stimulus” bill.
Reports Michael Scherer in Time magazine:
Fueled by Coke Zero and a double-chocolate protein bar, Vice President Joe Biden is roiling, ranting, being his usual self. Five mayors and county executives listen in silence on the other end of a White House speakerphone as the Delaware ear bender tries to ride herd on the stampede for dollars known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the $787 billion monster that is the largest domestic-spending effort in U.S. history. “My rear end is on the line just like yours,” Biden barks, surrounded by a flock of aides in his West Wing office. “I’m the guy in charge of this deal. So if this doesn’t work, it’s me.”
When Congress passed the stimulus bill in February, it came as both good news and bad news to the Obama White House. The good: never before had an Administration had so much money to spend on voters in need — to rebuild public buildings, save jobs, weatherize homes and fund community health centers. The bad: rarely has the passage of a measure been accompanied by such skepticism about the government’s ability to spend the money wisely or well.
Given the government’s well-earned reputation for waste, inefficiency, and pork-barreling, how could anyone have expected anything different?
Well, as I always say, it’s only money!
It’s a tragic story. Mark Sanford has cheated on his wife, put his family through hell, and wrecked his governorship. Once talked of as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, his political future has sunk along with his reputation.
Yet he just can’t shut up.
It’s time for him to go. That’s the growing judgment within South Carolina. Reports the Washington Post:
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford defied calls for his resignation yesterday from GOP leaders, insisting he will remain in office even as his political fortunes dimmed in the wake of his admission that he secretly traveled abroad to meet a mistress.
The tide of political opinion shifted following an emotional interview Tuesday in which Sanford (R) described his Argentine mistress as his soul mate and admitted to a handful of encounters with other women that “crossed lines.” Republican lawmakers in South Carolina who had supported the governor since he acknowledged the extramarital affair last week suddenly turned against him, saying the disclosures amounted to a distraction that would prevent him from effectively doing the state’s business.
Nearly two dozen GOP lawmakers called on Sanford to step down, saying he has lost credibility, in part by making such personal comments to the Associated Press, some of which contradicted earlier statements.
“What we saw in that interview was just him being irrational,” state Sen. Larry A. Martin (R) said in an interview. “The very idea that he would be that candid, that frank, that brutally honest about his feelings for the woman in Argentina versus his wife versus the other girlfriends, I just find that incredible. Rational people don’t do that.”
“He doesn’t need to be talking to reporters,” Martin added. “He needs to go find him some professional help. That’s just the facts.”
Sanford, 49, who once was talked about as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, remains committed to serving out the remaining 18 months of his term, said his spokesman, Joel Sawyer.
“The governor has given a full and truthful account, and he is finished discussing this matter,” Sawyer said yesterday. “He is focused on being governor, on rebuilding his marriage, and on building back the trust of South Carolinians.”
But pressure is escalating for him to relinquish the governorship and turn over power to Lt. Gov. André Bauer (R). U.S. Rep. J. Gresham Barrett (R), who is running for governor next year, became the first South Carolina congressman to ask Sanford to resign, saying that he can no longer be an effective leader.
Performance is the most important issue for any public official. But Gov. Sanford has sacrificed the basic credibility and trust necessary to be effective. He also might think about his family, and how best to promote their interests. It certainly isn’t by remaining in the public eye, blabbering on about his many other loves.
Go, Gov. Sanford. Go!
There are both moral and practical arguments against torture. Among the latter, getting bad information and harming America’s international image are two of the most important.
The moral problems with torture are, or should be, self-evident. We prosecute others, such as Japanese officers after World War II, who use torture against Americans. We can hardly justify using the same practices on others.
But it turns out that torture did not end with torture. Rather, it often ended with death. Writes Glenn Greenwald:
After numerous delays sought by the Obama administration, it is expected that a 2004 CIA Inspector General’s Report — aggressively questioning both the efficacy and legality of Bush’s interrogation tactics — will be released tomorrow. A heavily redacted version of that document was already released by the Bush administration in response to an ACLU lawsuit and it remains to be seen how much new information will be included in tomorrow’s version.
In anticipation of the release of that report, there is an important effort underway — as part of the ACLU Accountability Project — to correct a critically important deficiency in the public debate over torture and accountability. So often, the premise of media discussions of torture is that “torture” is something that was confined to a single tactic (waterboarding) and used only on three “high-value” detainees accused of being high-level Al Qaeda operatives. The reality is completely different.
The interrogation and detention regime implemented by the U.S. resulted in the deaths of over 100 detainees in U.S. custody — at least. While some of those deaths were the result of ”rogue” interrogators and agents, many were caused by the methods authorized at the highest levels of the Bush White House, including extreme stress positions, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and others. Aside from the fact that they cause immense pain, that’s one reason we’ve always considered those tactics to be “torture” when used by others — because they inflict serious harm, and can even kill people. Those arguing against investigations and prosecutions — that we Look to the Future, not the Past — are thus literally advocating that numerous people get away with murder.
The record could not be clearer regarding the fact that we caused numerous detainee deaths, many of which have gone completely uninvestigated and thus unpunished. Instead, the media and political class have misleadingly caused the debate to consist of the myth that these tactics were limited and confined. As Gen. Barry McCaffrey recently put it:
We should never, as a policy, maltreat people under our control, detainees. We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A.
Understandably, none of us has any sympathy for actual terrorists. But torture often has been used against suspects, some or many of whom had nothing to do with terrorism. And even when actual terrorists are involved, when we become callous towards life we risk losing something very important within ourselves.
The government has a lengthy “no fly” list. Alas, the list seems to be better at victimizing innocent Americans than protecting us from terrorists.
According to Liliana Segura on AlterNet:
Chris Calabrese is counsel for the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project in New York. He recently called the TSC watch list a “comedy of errors.”
The occasion, just last month, was an audit by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice. Among its findings: Of more than 68,000 names on the terrorist watch list, the DOJ found that 35 percent were outdated.
The report mirrored previous assessments of the watch list, including an audit released in March 2008 that led to headlines such as, “Terrorist Watch List Riddled With Errors.”
“The government’s terror watch list includes inaccurate and outdated information, increasing the risk that innocent people will be misidentified as terrorists, while terrorists are overlooked,” Marisa Taylor, a McClatchy reporter, wrote last spring. The most recent audit proves that this is still very much the case. According to the DOJ inspector general, “The failure to place appropriate individuals on the watch list, or the failure to place them on the watch list in a timely manner, increases the risk that these individuals are able to enter and move freely about the country.”
Never mind guns; Calabrese argues that the true problem at the heart of this latest controversy is the terrorist watch list itself. “I think the real question is more about why anyone should have their rights deprived,” he says. “The way it is constituted right now, innocent people are routinely being denied their right to fly.”
North Korea continues to be one of the Obama administration’s greatest challenges. China has the greatest influence in Pyongyang, but so far won’t use that influence, apparently out of fear of encouraging a collapse of its smaller ally. However, I argue on National Interest online that the U.S. might be able to persuade Beijing of the benefits of regime change. Maybe China couldn’t deliver, but it sure would be worth the effort.
The Obama administration is attempting its own “surge” in Afghanistan. However, one consequence of this policy may be to drive the Taliban into surrounding nations, creating new insurgencies and instability.
Commenting on a recent spate of Taliban attacks in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer admitted that it was possible that as the international forces escalate military operations in Afghanistan, the insurgency might move north into Central Asia’s former Soviet states.
“If people want to cross borders, NATO cannot prevent that. If extremists want to cross borders into Central Asia to continue their horrific work there, NATO cannot possibly stop that,” Scheffer conceded. He added that NATO’s current mandate doesn’t allow it to conduct operations in those nations.
Since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, the former Taliban government has grown in influence in neighboring nations, particularly Pakistan where the group’s presence has led to the founding of several sympathetic groups among the tribesmen along the border.
The U.S. was right to drive the Taliban from power for hosting Osama bin Laden. But Washington should now focus on arranging a negotiated settlement that prevents a reemergence of terrorism while leaving the future of Afghanistan up to the Afghans. Trying to build a nation in Afghanistan is likely to meet with bloody and expensive failure.
Doug Bandow is Vice President of Policy for Citizen
Outreach, a Washington-based grassroots political organization.
He also is the Bastiat Scholar in Free Enterprise at the
Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cobden Fellow in
International Economics at the Institute for Policy Innovation.
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