http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/281849-brennan-spars-with-senate-dems-over-drones-

CIA director-designate John Brennan stands by his boss’s use of drones against terrorists bent on destroying the United States of America.

Someone please tell me: Why is that such a bad idea?

The drones have been used by the Obama and the Bush administrations with deadly effectiveness. Both presidents, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, sought to deploy these pilotless aircraft seeking to minimize the hazards to young American pilots. What’s more, the missions have worked.

Has the drone policy worked flawlessly? Of course not. Then again, manned airstrikes and commando raids have gone bad on occasion. That’s is one of the givens of battle, whether they’re being controlled by men in the field or in a computerized control room many thousands of miles away.

Brennan’s hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee also featured questions about whether it’s legal to kill American terrorists, such as what happened when a drone strike in 2011 took out a major al-Qaida leader in Yemen – who also happened to have been born in the United States. I prefer to take a pragmatic view: Someone who sides with an organization that declares its intention to kill Americans becomes an enemy of this nation; he takes up arms against us and exposes himself to the consequences of thrusting himself into harm’s way against the mightiest military force in the history of the world.

Granted, the CIA should be as transparent as possible about the drone strikes, which Brennan pledged to the committee. But in times of war, there must be some secrets kept from the public.

I happen to agree with Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who called Brennan the “right man for the job” of CIA director. And Brennan stood firm on what is proving to be a successful strategy in protecting this nation against who seek to do us harm.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=857775

I’m actually proud to admit that I don’t claim expertise in anything. That lack of intimate knowledge protect me, I suppose, from those who think I should understand the intricacies of every subject that crosses my mind.

The latest perplexing subject deals with gasoline prices. They spiked dramatically in the past few days, up about 16 cents per gallon across Amarillo. Remember when they drip-dripped their way back down to around $2.92 per gallon at some locations? As my friend Jon Mark Beilue noted in a recent newspaper essay, it almost made him want to “wash my car with gasoline.”

I’m always bumfuzzled by the pace of these price increases compared with the pace of their decreases. What goes up does so rapidly; but what goes down does so at a snail’s pace.

The cynic in me – and it’s just a tiny fraction of my DNA – suggests it’s greed. Retailers want to hold on to those few extra cents for as long as they can before giving us poor shmucks a break when we fill our vehicles with fuel.

I’m acquainted with some folks in the gasoline retail business in town. I’ll just have to ask them straight up: Why don’t the prices seemingly ever decline at the speed with which they increase?

My hunch is that I’ll get some gobbledy-gook response that only will confuse me even more.

Maybe someone out there can explain it to me.

A Facebook friend of mine recently noted that America’s “greatest president,” Ronald Reagan, would be 102 today and lamented the economic course on which the nation has set under President Obama.

I responded with a short note that questioned whether the economy has “collapsed,” as he had said. Then a friend of his fired back a note, apparently challenging my assertion about the state of the economy, that noted the media report “nothing negative” about Obama.

I could hardly hold back the laughter. Of course the media have reported plenty of negatives about the president: the jobless recovery, the tragedy that occurred last September in Benghazi, the mounting debt and budget deficit, the continuing war in Afghanistan, the president’s failure to close Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba and … well, you get the point.

I’m sure I’ve missed someone’s hot-button issue.

But my intent is to suggest that the media haven’t protected Obama from criticism. How do I know that? Consider all the negative comments that show up on social media outlets, on websites all across the Internet and the infinite sources of opinions being offered by commentators of all stripes. They all represent the “media.” The fact that these items are seen, heard and read by Americans, who then distribute them on social media outlets suggests to me that the media – liberal and conservative alike – are doing their job.

Does the president have his friends in the media? Certainly he does, just as George W. Bush had his media allies. Every president dating back almost to the beginning of the Republic has cultivated his share of media friends and had to cope with his share of media foes.

To suggest the current president is being sheltered, pampered and protected by the media illustrates a profound naivete.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=856546

Dumas school officials have employed sworn police officers in their school district for the past 15 years. Has the presence of cops on campus deterred heinous acts of violence during that time? Maybe so.

For my money, that is a far better investment than arming teachers with Glocks and then asking them to protect students when trouble erupts.

This, too, might be an investment worth making in other school districts that have the resources to pay for it.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in Newtown, Conn., late this past year has elevated public awareness of gun violence to new levels. The deaths of 20 students and six of their teachers at the hands of a madman should be cause for all kinds of serious discussion. And that discussion is under way.

Sadly, at least one goofy notion that has emerged has been to arm teachers. Let them put a gun in their desk drawer and when trouble breaks out, let them take down the bad guy with a single shot to the head.

That’s how it’s supposed to go … but my fear is that it wouldn’t happen quite that way. There’s the fear of stray bullets resulting in even more carnage.

Cities and counties too often lack the resources to deploy officers full time to school campuses. They, too, have many other constituents to protect.

That leaves school districts to create and staff their police departments, such as Dumas Independent School District has done.

I have just one caveat: that the officers are as well-trained as their law enforcement colleagues and that school districts wouldn’t settle for officers who couldn’t cut it in other departments. The lives of our children and those who teach them demand only the best protection possible.

Senate Republicans now are sounding as though they might filibuster President Obama’s nominee to be the next defense secretary.

If they pull it off, it will mark a new low in what used to be a dignified legislative body.

Republicans senators dislike one of their own, former GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel, because – in my view – he wants to join the administration of a Democratic president. Hagel’s major allies now are Democrats who believe, correctly, that he’s eminently qualified to lead the Pentagon.

But what might Republicans do to stop him? They’ll filibuster, which is to say they’ll block the nomination without ever having to stand on the Senate floor to actually talk his nomination to death. It’s a procedural trick that some Senate leaders want to change. They want senators to actually talk until they pass out, the way senators used to do when they filibustered legislation.

That they would filibuster a Cabinet nominee, though, is virtually without precedent.

I’ve long believed that elections have consequences. They give the president the right to nominate those with whom he will work in the executive branch of government. Obama – who was re-elected in November with a significant Electoral College majority – has chosen a fine former senator, a Vietnam War veteran, a former Army sergeant and a proven businessman to lead the world’s greatest military apparatus.

But that darn filibuster might get in the way. Democrats (and Democratic-leaning independents) hold 55 seats in the Senate, which is enough to confirm a nominee. But they need 60 votes to break a filibuster, if Republicans decide to launch one. They’ve already gotten pledges of support for Hagel from GOP Sens.Mike Johanns of Nebraska (Hagel’s home state) and Thad Cochran of Mississippi. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who gave Hagel the third and fourth degrees during Hagel’s confirmation hearing said he opposes filibustering this nomination.

The president earned the right to nominate qualified individuals to serve in the Cabinet. He did exactly that by tapping Hagel for Defense.

Don’t filibuster this nomination, Senate Republicans – unless of course you want to shed even more political blood at the next election.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/281059-major-cantor-speech-to-recast-image-of-gop-and-conservatism

U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is going to make a big speech in which he hopes, or so it’s been reported, to start remaking the Republican Party’s brand.

He might not be the right guy to deliver this speech. Why? Well, he’s on record saying a few things he might wish he could take back.

Let’s look at one such stated policy view.

Remember when that tornado ripped through Joplin, Mo., in 2011? The F-5 monster twister flattened the city, killing many residents. The city was desperate for federal aid, which in the old days would have been a given. Congress would have approved the emergency expenditure and federal help would be on its way.

Well, Majority Leader Cantor didn’t see it that way. He declared that Congress needed to cut spending to match the money it intended to spend on relief for Joplin. Cantor’s statement drew a firestorm of criticism, particularly from those who wondered how he might have felt had a tornado done that kind of damage in his Virginia congressional district. Cantor never answered that question directly.

The money went to Joplin eventually, but after considerable public teeth-gnashing.

The GOP brand is damaged these days. President Obama won re-election in 2012 at a time when he should have been ripe for defeat, given the fragile state of the nation’s economy. The Republicans, though, ran a miserable campaign under the banner carried forward by Mitt Romney. They lost the Latino vote huge, the African-American vote by an even larger margin; they lost the female vote, the Asian-American vote; they lost the Jewish vote. The GOP is now seen as the party of white, male evangelical Christians.

Majority Leader Cantor will have his hands full trying to recast his party’s image. He’ll have to start with his own image among many Americans.

Best of luck, young man.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=856269

Here we go again, more than likely.

A state district judge has determined that Texas’ public school financing system, which relies heavily on property taxes, is unconstitutional. He issued a bench ruling after a three-month trial meant to settle the state’s clumsy school finance mechanism.

It didn’t settle anything. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said he plans to appeal the ruling to the Texas Supreme Court.

This isn’t the state’s first public education funding rodeo. In the late 1980s, the Edgewood school district near San Antonio got involved in the first such landmark ruling in which another judge ruled the funding system to be in violation of the Texas Constitution. The reforms produced the infamous “Robin Hood” plan in which property-tax-wealthy school districts – such as Bushland and Highland Park – were forced to surrender some of their tax revenue to poorer districts. That went over badly.

The state cannot seem to get itself out of this conundrum.

One of the reasons is the Legislature’s decision to tie the state’s hands behind its back by declaring that a state income tax should be left up to the voters, who would have to change the Texas Constitution. We all understand how that would work. Texans won’t approve a state income tax, period, end of discussion.

Why is this critical? Because an income tax is seen by many reformers as the only way the state ever will extricate itself from the continuing legal battles over the constitutionality of its school finance system.

Stubbornness is resisting ways to find a fair and equitable system for financing public education in Texas is no virtue.

I can’t stop thinking about the roughing up Chuck Hagel received when he testified this past week before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senators, led by Hagel’s fellow Republican John McCain, kept harping on statements the former Nebraska senator made about Israel, Iran, gays in the military and God knows what else. Hagel found himself rethinking many of those statements, expressing regret over poor word choices.

But here’s what galls me today: Why didn’t anyone ask Hagel about what he intends to do for today’s returning veterans? The hearing was long on gotcha and quite short on specifics related to the here and now.

Hagel will confront spending issues within the Defense Department. Among those expenses will be whether the Pentagon will be able to treat returning warriors suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, which is leading to a shocking level of suicides among these brave Americans. How will he deal with that?

He also faces issues relating to across-the-board cuts in defense spending. What are his plans for those upcoming cuts, which every responsible politician ought to know are needed. No, this man won’t disarm the United States unilaterally, as some of his chicken hawk critics have implied he would do.

I keep waiting for someone to explain why senators spent so much time grilling this decorated Vietnam War veteran on things he said years ago and spent so little time quizzing him on how he intends to deal with today’s defense issues.

I still believe Hagel is highly qualified to lead the Pentagon. As the first defense boss who comes from the enlisted ranks – he saw combat in ‘Nam as an Army infantry sergeant – Hagel has a special perspective on the consequences of sending young Americans into battle. His two Senate terms also count for plenty, as does his business acumen.

I am hoping he gets confirmed and serves his country once again with honor. I just wish senators who questioned him would have given him more of a chance to offer his vision for the future instead of harping on the past.

I’ll throw this one out there for others to ponder.

John McCain grilled his former U.S. Senate colleague Chuck Hagel hard recently on statements Hagel made about U.S. defense policy. Hagel wants to be the next defense secretary and apparently will be recommended for approval next week by the Senate Armed Services Committee on a party-line vote, with the full Senate likely to follow suit.

Sen. McCain’s intense questioning of Hagel got me thinking about these two men. I long have thought they are friends. They’re both Vietnam War veterans. They’re both Republicans. Hagel served as McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign co-chairman. But now he has been tapped to run the Pentagon for President Obama, who beat McCain like a drum in the 2008 election.

Are they still friends? Are are they now enemies?

I know that Capitol Hill politicians say some angry things to each other in public then retire to the back room, pour themselves a drink and laugh it off. President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill did that in the 1980s. Former U.S. Rep. Larry Combest used to tell me about how Texas Republican John Tower (for whom Combest once worked) and Minnesota Democrat Hubert Humphrey would debate ferociously on the Senate floor then walk out of the chamber arm-in-arm.

So, did McCain give Hagel a heads up prior to stoking the Senate hearing coals the other day? I kind of think such a conversation could have gone something like this:

“Hey Chuck, this is John. Your appearance tomorrow is going to get tough. I’ll get rough with you. But you surely know why. I’ve got these tea party Republicans back home who’ll get steamed if I don’t stand up for them and question why you said those negative things about the troop surge in Afghanistan. I hope you understand.

“Sure thing, John. I get it. I know how the game is played here. I’ll take my lumps. I’ll even act contrite to you and your committee colleagues if that’s what it takes. Hey man, no hard feelings.”

Many observers think McCain is truly angry with Hagel over accepting the nomination by Obama. A few of my friends think McCain has just gotten to be a bitter old man who takes certain perceived slights a tad too personally.

But I also know that good politicians, like good lawyers, say things for show.

Any thoughts on this? I’m all ears.

http://amarillo.com/news/2013-02-02/beilue-cellphone-ban-castor-oil-drivers

My pal Jon Mark Beilue once again has done a great job explaining what occasionally is the unexplainable.

In this case the issue the city’s ban on handheld cellphones while driving a motor vehicle. Some naysayers are circulating petitions around the city seeking to put the measure to a vote. They have until the middle of the month to get slightly fewer than 4,000 valid signatures.

My hope is that they fail and that the Amarillo City Commission’s decision stands on its own.

I was proud of commissioners for actually leading and deciding that, yes, driving while operating a motor vehicle inside the city limits is too risky an endeavor to tolerate. The best quote came from Ellen Robertson Green, who I’ve declared publicly to be my favorite city commissioner.

“As Americans, we love our cars so much that we forget driving is a privilege, not a right,” Green said. “But you have to get a license, insurance, an inspection and registration. You can’t drive drunk or have an open container and (must) wear a seat belt and follow traffic laws. We’re driving a missile, and that comes with responsibility. So often we think, ‘my car, my road, my right.’ It might be your car, but not really the other two.”

Green’s point, I think, is that when we take that “missile” onto our public streets, the drivers’ business becomes every other motorists’ and pedestrians’ business. They need to follow the laws set down to seek to ensure a safer driving environment.

The cellphone ban will take some time to embed itself in motorists’ minds. I’m still waiting for some visual evidence that the activity has subsided since the ordinance went into effect. I hope it comes, and I applaud city commissioners for forcing the issue on drivers.