Category Archives: national news

national news

Let us not judge all on the acts of a few

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I went to sleep last night not knowing what we all know this morning about the shooting rampage in San Bernardino, Calif.

This morning, I awoke to learn that the two people killed in a shootout with police were a husband and wife. The husband was an American-born Muslim; his wife was born abroad, but moved here years ago; she also was a Muslim. They were the parents of a six-month-old girl.

I also heard this morning on National Public Radio that they weren’t particularly religious, nor were they outwardly political.

Something had snapped, or so it seems. They entered the social services center and opened fire with assault weapons. Fourteen people died.

The suspect then got into a fire fight with police. They died, too.

So, what are we to make of this?

Do these individuals represent all people of their particular faith? No. However, there likely is going to be a measure — perhaps even a large measure — of generalization about them and people all around the world who share their faith.

It’s better for everyone, thus, to accord those of the Islamic faith the same kind of tolerance we give those of other faiths. Are we condemning all Christians because someone, for instance, opened fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs — and then told the cops “no more baby parts”?

No. Nor should we.

An unspeakable tragedy has occurred in southern California. It’s horrific on any level imaginable.

Because the suspected perpetrators are of a certain faith, though, shouldn’t give us license to condemn everyone of that faith.

Let us turn our attention to the victims of this latest tragedy.

 

national news

Rosa Parks: an American icon

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Sixty years ago today, a 42-year-old woman became an American hero, an icon.

She might not have known at the moment of her heroic act that’s how she’d be remembered, but that’s what happened.

Rosa Parks was riding on a public bus in Montgomery, Ala. The bus was crowded and Parks was sitting while some passengers were standing. One of them told the bus driver to order Parks to stand up, to give her eat to him. She refused.

Parks was African-American; the passenger who demanded her seat was a white male. One did do such things in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955.

Parks was arrested, booked into jail.

At that moment a middle-age woman took her place among the legions of Americans who fought for equal rights for all citizens.

She would lead a bus boycott of the Montgomery transit system. Parks would become the face of bravery in the fight against racial discrimination.

She had grown tired, she said, of “giving in.”

On that day in a capital city of one Dixie’s states, she didn’t give in. Six decades later, the nation still salutes her bravery.

Rosa Parks wasn’t a gifted orator. One didn’t hear her make compelling speeches before monstrous crowds, a la Martin Luther King Jr. No, all she had to do was simply be there.

Parks made an appearance in Amarillo; I believe it was the late 1990s. My wife and I felt compelled to see and hear her. The meeting room at the Civic Center was packed.

Rosa Parks was introduced. She strode to the microphone. Parks said some truly forgettable things and then sat down. It didn’t matter one single bit that Parks didn’t stir our souls. Just seeing her — being in the same room with her — was enough for any of us present that day.

Parks died in 2005. Her courage will live forever.

 

International news, military news, national news, political news

Have we — or have we not — contained ISIS?

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One of two key figures in the war against the Islamic State has it wrong about whether American military power has “contained” the terrorist organization.

President Barack Obama said ISIS has been “contained” on the battlefield. He said so the other day and then on the very next day, the Islamic State launched those horrifying attacks in Paris.

U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee that ISIS is “not contained.”

Who you gonna believe? The politician or the career military man?

I am going to stick with the Marine on this one.

Do I think we’re losing the war? I tend to believe we will be able ultimately to destroy the Islamic State. It’s going to take a lot more than just U.S. air power to do it. More nations already have joined in the fight, most notably France and Russia, two nations that have paid heavily for ISIS’s terror tactics.

Gen. Dunford told the committee — chaired by Republican Mac Thornberry of Clarendon — that “technically we are not at war” with the Islamic State. The word “technically” is critical here. To be at war requires — in the strictest sense — a declaration issued by Congress at the request of the president.

But in reality, we’re at war.

As for whether the general has contradicted the commander in chief and the secretary of defense and whether that puts Gen. Dunford’s status in some jeopardy, I’ll just add one final point.

We put the military under civilian command. Gen. Dunford answers to Defense Secretary Ash Carter and President Barack Obama, both of whom have said one thing about ISIS containment; meanwhile, Dunford has said something else. Yes, I believe Dunford’s time as Joint Chiefs chairman might be coming to a close.

 

national news, political news

Will these justices stay away from SOTU?

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Do you ever hear something from someone and think, “Damn! I wish I’d have thought of that”?

That happened to me today.

One of my Facebook pals wondered out loud if the only mystery surrounding President Obama’s upcoming State of the Union speech would be whether the three most conservative members of the Supreme Court would stay away, as they have done in recent years.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia all have been absent during Obama’s recent speeches before a joint session of Congress.

I’ve long wondered — as have others –whether it is because they detest the president’s politics so much that they’d rather do something else than sit in front of him while he makes policy statement with which they disagree?

Look, gentlemen, this is the last one of these speeches Barack Obama will give as president of the United States. Surely you can find the time — not to mention the courtesy — to attend this speech along with the rest of your colleagues. Chief Justice John Roberts usually attends, and he’s in the conservative camp right along with the three no-show justices.

It might have been a single event that ticked them off. That would be the time that Obama scolded the court for its Citizens United ruling that took the limits off of corporations and enabled them to give unlimited amounts of money to political candidates. Justice Alito was seen mouthing the words “not true” when the president made his critical comments.

That was then. If the scolding is the reason, well, get over it, will you?

The president is entering his final full year in office. The Joint Chiefs of Staff will be there. Most of the Cabinet will be there; custom calls for one of them to stay away in case something catastrophic happens at the nation’s Capitol Building.

I hope all nine justices see fit to make an appearance. They don’t have to applaud. Just be there.

 

national news, political news

One more, and final time, for State of Union speech

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Barack H. Obama is going to get one more chance as president of the United States to lay out his vision of the state of our Union.

On Jan. 12, he’ll take the podium in front of a joint session of Congress and tell us how he thinks we’re doing, where we’ve been, where we’re headed and likely will propose a laundry list of legislative solutions to the nagging problems that never seem to get cured.

This is it, Mr. President. My advice to you, though, is this: Don’t expect to change any minds or sway anyone’s view of the job you’ve done.

Republicans will continue to say the president has all but destroyed American greatness — single-handedly. Democrats will hail the achievements and the rescuing of the nation from a financial collapse.

I happen to belong to the latter category of Americans. Yeah, it’s a shock, I know.

This final State of the Union speech by President Obama will produce the usual applause dominated by the Democrats in the chamber. Republicans will sit on their hands … for the most part while their Democratic “friends” cheer and holler.

While there’s no denying that the world is in difficult straits right now in this fight against international terrorism, there also can be no denying that the American ship of state has corrected its course in the seven years since Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office.

The economy is in far better shape than before. Our annual budget deficit has shrunk by two-thirds. Energy production is up; energy imports are down. Housing has rebounded. Banks are lending money. More people are working today than they were in 2009. Millions of Americans have health insurance now who didn’t have it before.

And oh yes, we’ve been kept safe from terrorists. There’s that, too.

That’s not the view of those who oppose the president.

But what the heck? It goes with the territory.

House Speaker Paul Ryan was correct in his letter inviting the president to speak. They have a duty to find solutions together, he said. Yes, Mr. Speaker, you do.

It’s time to get busy.

Meanwhile, the president will get one more shot at telling the country he leads what many of us out here already know.

The state of our Union truly is strong. We’ve got work to do, but our footing is a lot firmer than it was when the president took office.

 

business news, International news, national news, political news, State news

Cuba opens door to business for Texans

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott could have responded differently to President Obama’s decision to restore normal relations with Cuba.

The governor could have dug in his heels and condemned the move — as many of his fellow Republicans have done — as a sop to a repressive dictatorship that has a horrible human rights record.

Instead, he chose the more pragmatic approach. He sees the move as a potentially huge boon to Texas business and industry, which is why he’s leading a large trade delegation today to the island nation.

Abbott is no dummy. He believes that Cuba presents Texas with a growing market for state-produced goods and commodities, which is why he has decided to hang his partisan hat on the rack.

A Texas A&M University study says that increased trade between Texas and Cuba could produce as much as a $43 billion total impact on the Texas economy and more than 250 permanent jobs.

The long history of frostiness between the United States and Cuba is well known. The communist government has been deemed an “enemy” of the United States. There once was a missile crisis on the island that brought the world close to a world war.

The Soviet Union has disintegrated. Cuba remains one of the few Marxist nations on Earth.

However, Cuba no longer presents a direct threat to the United States.

Instead, it presents opportunities for the U.S. government and private businesses — not to mention individual state governments and businesses — to exploit.

Go for it, Gov. Abbott.

 

national news, political news

He’s a poster boy for various causes

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Robert Lewis Dear’s picture has been plastered all over the media of late with good reason.

He’s about to become a poster boy for a number of key debate points in our modern political environment.

Dear is accused of killing three people and injuring several others in that Friday shooting rampage at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo. He’s going to court Monday to be arraigned.

Usually, someone accused of a high-profile crime gets to see his face related to one, maybe two, issues at once. Not so with this guy, Dear.

For instance.

  • He’s being discussed in the context of Planned Parenthood and women’s abortion rights. He told the cops “no more baby parts,” leaving authorities and the media to speculate that the shooting rampage was politically motivated. Is he a longtime anti-abortion activist?
  • Dear has been called a “domestic terrorist” who could become the face of non-Muslim, Anglo Americans who are just as prone to commit acts of terror as those evil foreigners seeking to sneak into the United States.
  • He carried a rifle into the Planned Parenthood building, which brings to mind the issue of gun control. Some will ask, “How did this guy obtain a gun so easily?” Ah, yes, the gun control debate will flare up once again.
  • And, finally, he might become the face of mental health treatment and the need to be on the lookout for those who are capable of committing such horrible crimes?

Wow! That’s four of them — four issues that, taken separately, all provide enough grist for friends to become foes in a heartbeat.

And to think that one man could be at the center of it all.

 

International news, national news, political news

Parker: How do you fight crazy?

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I want to shake Kathleen Parker’s hand and tell her in person that I believe she is one of the country’s most thoughtful political commentators.

She writes for the Washington Post and she calls herself a conservative, although I have doubts that today’s modern conservatives — if you want to call ’em that — would welcome her into their fold.

She has written another brilliant essay, this time about the war against the Islamic State.

How do you fight crazy? she asks.

The path to defeating the Islamic State will take far more than “boots and bombs,” she says. It will require genius.

By that she means it will take a comprehensive combination of diplomacy, economic pressure and, yes, an application of military muscle.

It’s her belief, though, that bombs alone won’t do the job.

She writes: “What leverage does an army have against an enemy that welcomes death? We say: If you don’t stop murdering innocent people, we’re going to bomb you into oblivion. They say: Bring it on. No, wait, we’ll do it ourselves. Boom.”

That is the nature of the enemy with whom we are at war and Parker is right to assert that our strategy cannot exclude other avenues.

Parker writes: “This is a call not to look away but to be solemnly cautious, thoughtful and creative. Is the Islamic State’s mission to establish a caliphate, thus to hasten the End Times, a mental disorder? Is it treatable? Is their tactical savagery pathological? Is there a doctor in the White House?”

Any ideas out there?

 

International news, military news, national news, political news

‘Boots on the ground,’ means human beings

Hundreds of coalition forces servicemen and women met aboard Camp Leatherneck, Helmand province, for a September 11 memorial service. During the service, Maj. Gen. John A. Toolan, commanding general of Regional Command Southwest and II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward) gave a speech reflecting on not only the lives lost 10-years before, but also on the heroes who have fought for the freedoms America stands for.

Is it me or is anyone else out there growing increasingly annoyed at a euphemism that’s getting a lot of use these days by the political class?

I refer to the term “boots on the ground.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich this morning used the term repeatedly in discussing the crisis in Syria and whether the United States should send troops into the fight.

Let’s put “boots on the ground,” said the GOP presidential candidate.

Boots on the ground!

I happen to like Gov. Kasich, but for crying out loud, we aren’t talking about footwear. We’re talking about the individuals whose feet slip into that gear and who would be put in harm’s way were we to order them into battle.

And yet politicians on both sides of the divide seemingly find it easier to talk about “boots on the ground” rather than what those boots symbolize. They symbolize young men and women with families, with real-world stories, with dreams and aspirations.

I am just weary of this game of verbal dodge ball that politicians keep playing.

If you’re going to support sending young Americans into battle, then call it what it is — and do not disguise it with rhetorical nonsense.

 

national news, political news

Sen. Cruz is eligible, period, Rep. Grayson

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Alan Grayson is a Florida Democratic U.S. representative who repeatedly exhibits his ability to be the loudest blowhard on the block.

Grayson vows to file a lawsuit if the Republican Party selects Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz as its presidential nominee next summer. Why? Well, Grayson said Cruz isn’t constitutionally qualified to serve as president. Grayson, thus, has become the de facto head of a new  presidential birther movement.

News flash, Alan: Yes … he … is!

Cruz was born in Canada to a Cuban father and, here it is, an American mother. That, right there, made young Teddy a U.S. citizen from the very moment he came into this world. He is qualified to run for president. He would be qualified to serve as president.

Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution stipulates that “no person except a natural born Citizen” is qualified to serve as president. Mrs. Cruz gave birth to her baby Teddy and that is all the qualification he needs to run for the presidency.

Meanwhile, Rep. Grayson needs to devote a lot more of his attention to the affairs of his Florida congressional district and stop looking for ways to garner cheap publicity.