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Who's Lauer kidding?

NBC talking head Matt Lauer is facing stout criticism for a question he asked of General Motors chief executive Mary Barra.

The question: Can you be a good parent and a good chief executive of a major company?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2014/06/26/matt-lauer-defends-interview-with-gms-mary-barra/11435373/

Lauer, host of the “Today” show, said he’d ask a male CEO the same question if given the chance.

Interesting, yes?

I don’t think I’ve ever heard that question posed to, say, Lee Iacocca, Ted Turner, Malcolm Forbes, Rupert Murdoch or, heck, even Jack Welch, the ex-General Electric boss and Lauer’s former boss.

USA Today reports: “Lauer notes on his Facebook page that Barra addressed the difficulty of balancing her work and home lives in a Forbes magazine article. He says if a man in a high-level job had publicly discussed the issue he’d have ‘asked him exactly the same thing.'”

Umm, I don’t think so, Matt.

The sad fact of today’s world is that Corporate American remains a Man’s World.

I have no doubt that Barra will do a good job as she grapples with the issues facing a leading automaker. Is it relevant that she’s also a mother?

Maybe, maybe not. It would be were it to become known that her job interfered with her parental responsibilities.

Matt Lauer’s insistence that he would have asked a male CEO the same thing is almost as insulting as the question he asked Mary Barra.

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Should U.S. let Americans know when attacks are due?

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wants the U.S. government to spell out the conditions that warrant fatal attacks on American citizens.

By itself, that’s not an unreasonable request.

Let’s put this request in some context, though.

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/06/ron_wyden_says_americans_deser.html#incart_m-rpt-1

Wyden sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and is dismayed, I gather, about the drone attack in Yemen that killed American-born al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki. He was blown away in a blast delivered by an unmanned aerial vehicle. The Obama administration has made no apologies for striking him down … nor should it. The man had forsaken his country, taken up with an enemy fighting force and was plotting to inflict more damage on our national security.

Here’s how the Oregonian reported it: “The senior senator from Oregon, joined by fellow Democrats Mark Udall of Colorado and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, want to learn how and when Americans can be targeted outside of declared war zones.

“‘Specific details regarding lethal counterterrorism actions will sometimes need to be kept secret to ensure that the U.S. government can act effectively against very real threats to our country, but we firmly believe that the laws and rules that govern the executive branch’s actions should always be public,’ they wrote on Thursday. ‘We believe that every American has the right to know when their government believes it is allowed to kill them.'”

This war in which we are engaged seems to be one without “declared war zones.” Yemen has long been known to be a terrorist training ground. Al-Awlaki was in the midst of such activity. Thus, he became a target of U.S. military forces whose mission is to eliminate terror threats whenever — and wherever — they find them.

In this instance, the military acted as it should. If other Americans are foolish enough to take up arms against their country, then they will deserve the fate that befell Anwar al-Awlaki.

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Judicial independence bites Obama

Barack Obama has just gotten a taste of what many of his presidential predecessors have had to swallow as it regards federal judicial appointments.

Their court appointments didn’t vote nearly the way their benefactor — the president — wanted them to vote.

That, I submit, speaks quite eloquently to the need to keep the federal judiciary independent.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-27/obama-goes-too-far-for-even-supreme-court-liberals

In two 9-0 rulings in recent days, the court struck down a Massachusetts law that regulated anti-abortion protesters and then it reeled in presidential appointment powers relating to recess appointments made when the Senate is not in session.

That means both of President Obama’s high court picks — Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — voted against the wishes of the man who nominated them to their dream job in the first place.

We hear yammering — mostly from the right wing of the political spectrum — that “unelected judges” wield too much power. This carping comes usually when the court rules against a cause or principle near and dear to conservatives’ hearts.

Indeed, the court has comprised many Republican appointees who’ve gone against the wishes of their presidential benefactors: Dwight Eisenhower picked Earl Warren to be chief justice and all Warren did was launch the Supreme Court on a whole range of landmark liberal court rulings, starting with the 1954 school desegregation ruling known as Brown v. the Board of Education.

Harry Blackmum (picked by Richard Nixon) wrote the Roe v. Wade abortion decision; John Paul Stevens (Gerald Ford) became a staunch liberal court member; Byron White (John Kennedy) voted “no” on Roe v. Wade; John Roberts (George W. Bush) voted with the majority to uphold the Affordable Care Act.

Now two of the court’s liberal justices — Kagan and Sotomayor — have joined their fellow liberals and conservatives on the court to stick it in President Obama’s eye on a couple of key issues.

So, let’s stop the griping about the federal court system. The founders set up an independent branch of government for a reason, which was to prevent its politicization when trying to interpret the U.S. Constitution.

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Recalling Sawyer hatchet job

Diane Sawyer is leaving the ABC News anchor chair. Her colleague David Muir is replacing her.

That’s fine. Sawyer did a good job as anchor since taking the job in 2009. She was thorough and fair and presented the news accordingly.

However, my strongest memory of the body of Sawyer’s work involves a very high-profile trial that occurred right here in Amarillo. The defendant in this civil case was a fairly well-known personality in her own right: Oprah Winfrey. You’ve heard of her, yes?

Well, Winfrey got sued by some cattlemen over a comment she blurted out in 1997 during her TV talk show. She was interviewing this expert on “mad cow disease.” The expert made a comment about how ill-prepared beef can spread the disease, to which Winfrey exclaimed, “No more burgers!”

The cattlemen sued. The case was tried at the federal courthouse in downtown Amarillo. U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson tossed part of the case out. The rest of it was settled in Winfrey’s favor.

Shortly after that, Winfrey appeared on ABC News and was interviewed by Diane Sawyer, who tried for all she was worth to get Winfrey to paint Amarillo as a city full of gun-slinging rednecks who were bound and determined to convict her of defamation.

Amarillo is a “tough town,” Sawyer said. Winfrey didn’t take the bait. She spoke well of the hospitality shown to her here while she was in court every day.

Winfrey taped her show at the Amarillo Little Theater at night after she spent a day in court. She sold the place out every night. She brought guests in and bantered with them about the day she had spent in a federal courtroom.

I found Sawyer’s treatment of Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle offensive when I heard it. Oprah, though, was thoroughly gracious and grateful for (a) the decision that went in her favor and (b) for the treatment she got from the community that found itself in the national spotlight.

Whatever. I wish Diane Sawyer well as she goes on with the rest of her life.

I’ll wonder, though, if she’s ever watched that interview she did with Oprah and thought: You know, I kind of wish I could do that one all over.

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Boehner changes mind on executive orders

It still boggles my mind that John Boehner wants to sue the president of the United States for exercising his constitutional rights as the nation’s chief executive.

That is, the president has decided to issue executive orders — imagine that — to move projects forward.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/06/25/3453244/boehner-executive-order-suit/

Why, how dare he do that, says the speaker of the House of Representatives.

Well, as it’s been reported on the link attached to this post, it was just fine for President George W. Bush to use executive authority, but not President Barack Obama.

Obama has pulled out his executive signing pen fewer times than Bush ever did. He’s done far fewer times than many of his predecessors.

But that hasn’t dissuaded the speaker from taking the president to court in what many people think now is a stunt, a sop to the tea party wing of his Republican congressional caucus.

Wait a minute. Didn’t Boehner once declare that the tea party wing wasn’t to be taken seriously? Didn’t he incur their wrath when he said that?

The wrath must have gotten to the speaker, who’s now saying that the president has failed to carry out his duties “faithfully,” whatever that means.

Today, the Supreme Court stuck it to the president when it voted 9-0 in ruling that Obama’s recess appointments were improper. I get the court’s standing in reeling in the president’s executive authority in making these appointments while Congress is in recess.

I do not quite understand what in the world has riled the speaker enough to sue the president for doing what the Constitution says he is entitled to do.

Maybe the speaker will let us all in what he has in mind … in due course.

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What's wrong with Chiefs?

I am OK with changing the name of the Washington Redskins.

Who, after all, ever uses that term other than in a derogatory context? The name ought to change.

Now comes this bit of conjecture: Will the Kansas City Chiefs’ name also come under attack?

I hope not.

http://msn.foxsports.com/kansas-city/story/redskins-indians-will-native-americans-target-the-chiefs-next-062514

Given that I’m not a Native American — even though I was born in the United States to first-generation Americans — perhaps I don’t get what’s so objectionable about the name “Chiefs.”

I’ll concede that the Chiefs long have been one of my favorite pro football teams. I was delighted beyond belief over their dismantling of the Minnesota Vikings in the fourth Super Bowl ever played. But I digress.

To this white man’s way of thinking, “Chiefs” shouldn’t be seen as offensive to Native Americans. By definition, the term identifies the leader of a Native American community. He is the most exalted member of that community and is treated with utmost respect, even reverence.

“Redskins” is another matter altogether. Let’s stop there. Leave the Chiefs’ name alone.

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Towering U.S. Senate titan dies

Howard Baker didn’t fill a room with his physical stature. He wasn’t a tall or burly man. He was short and perhaps one could call him of slight physique.

The Republican senator from Tennessee was a giant nonetheless. Baker died today at age 88.

With his death, the ranks of senators who know the fine art of legislating have grown a bit thinner.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/26/politics/howard-baker-died/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Baker uttered perhaps the most memorable line not made by President Nixon during the Watergate hearings of 1973-74.

Baker served as vice chairman of the Senate select committee looking into the Watergate scandal. His presence on the panel was meant to preserve a bipartisan atmosphere at the hearings and meant to convey to the world that the Senate intended to conduct this investigation with dignity and decorum.

He then posed this question of a witness: “What did the president know and when did he know it?”

As we all would learn in due course that President Nixon knew plenty about the cover-up of the break-in at the Watergate office complex in June 1972.

Baker was among those senators of his time would could work across the aisle comfortably. He reached out to Democrats while working closely with his fellow Republicans. He understood the fine art of compromise and that one need not sacrifice principle if he or she intended to get something approved by Senate.

Sen. Baker served in the “world greatest deliberative body” with high honor and distinction.

Another of the Senate’s great statesmen has left us.

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Who should be filing suit?

Shouldn’t it be taxpayers suing Congress for LACK of action, instead of Congress suing the President for doing too much?

So said David Axelrod in a tweet just a few moments ago.

Axelrod is to President Barack Obama what Karl Rove is to President George W. Bush. I guess we should call Axelrod “Obama’s Brain,” correct?

But the former White House senior policy/political adviser does make a good point about House Speaker John Boehner’s decision to sue President Obama over the president’s supposedly “excessive” use of executive authority.

Axelrod wonders why Americans aren’t suing the do-nothing Congress for sitting on its hands while President Obama is trying to push programs forward.

I get that some Americans are glad to have Congress doing nothing. They welcome the stalling, fighting, arguing, threatening and obstruction that’s been occurring in Congress.

I’m more of a good-government kind of guy, even though some folks might consider the term “good-government” be an oxymoron — kind of like “military intelligence” or “jumbo shrimp,” to borrow two of the late George Carlin’s examples.

For the speaker, though, to suggest that Obama is overreaching with his executive authority when the president has used that authority less than any of his predecessors over the past century, does seem to be a bit of an overreach in itself.

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Turnabout not always fair play, says GOP

Thad Cochran’s stunning reversal of fortune in Mississippi makes me laugh.

OK, so I’m just snickering under my breath. But it does create some interesting water-cooler talk among Republican Party political strategists.

Cochran, R-Miss., was supposed to lose the Mississippi GOP runoff to tea party darling Chris McDaniel on Tuesday. Instead, he won. How? Apparently by enlisting the support of African-American Democrats to vote in the Republican primary.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-cochrans-strategy-to-draw-black-democrats-to-polls-appears-to-have-worked/2014/06/25/74d72932-fc8a-11e3-8176-f2c941cf35f1_story.html

That strategy didn’t go down well with hard-core Republicans. McDaniel himself said that Cochran owed his victory to “liberal Democrats” who were afraid to face a true conservative — such as McDaniel.

It well might be that the Democrats who crossed over to back Cochran will rue the day they did so, as the incumbent six-term senator will be a heavy favorite to win a seventh term this November.

There’s a certain richness in the irony of the GOP’s complaints about Cochran’s winning formula.

Some Republican leaders — and I’ll include the GOP’s blowhard in chief, Rush Limbaugh, in this category — at one time encouraged Republicans to cross over to vote for Democrats in an effort to serve as spoiler in hotly contested Democratic primaries. That clearly was the case in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign between U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. The 2008 Texas primary, for example, became notable because of the huge interest in the Democratic ballot, particularly in areas such as the Panhandle, where Democrats are nearly extinct.

Limbaugh and others were exhorting Republicans to vote for Clinton, hoping the party would nominate her in the belief she’d be easier to beat in the fall than Obama.

It didn’t work out that way, of course.

Now, though, they’re yammering about a reversal of that strategy — because, apparently, it worked.

Cry me a river.

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Show us your warrant

What’s this? The Supreme Court of the United States has voted unanimously on a ruling that makes sense for Americans? Did hell freeze over or what?

The court ruled 9-to-zip that police need warrants to search people’s cell phones. They can’t just grab them and start poring through text messages, missed calls, voice mails and the other stuff that piles up in people’s cell phones.

What’s more, the ruling has implications to go far beyond the devices people pack on their hips, in their pockets or their purses. It could involve other “smart” devices such as I-pads and laptops.

As the New York Times reported: “Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the court, was keenly alert to the central role that cellphones play in contemporary life. They are, he said, ‘such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.’”

Privacy advocates are happy. Heck, I’m happy about it, even though my own phone doesn’t have much in the way secret messages stashed on it.

A back story, here, is the unanimity aspect of the ruling. The court usually splits 5-4 or 6-3 — along liberal-conservative lines. This time all nine of ’em were on the same page.

The Digital Age keeps adding wrinkles that few of us ever imagined when this technology first became available. Even though we can access information much more readily these days, certain principles of privacy and constitutional protection must prevail.

The highest court in America has realized that truth.

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