Category Archives: national news

Randall County makes a dubious list

It’s not every day that little ol’ Randall County, Texas, gets a mention in a Washington Post investigative story about local government spending.

But that’s what happened recently when the Post included the county in a list of government agencies that used asset-forfeiture funds on things that, um, could be seen as a bit extravagant.

Here’s the Post story:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/10/11/cash-seizures-fuel-police-spending/

At issue is a $637 coffee maker that the Sheriff’s Department purchased with money seized from drug busts.

The rationale is a bit odd. Sheriff Joel Richardson said the money didn’t come out of taxpayers’ pockets. It came from drug forfeiture money, the money the cops take in when they bust people for carrying illegal “controlled substances.”

I haven’t bought a coffee maker in a good while. But it does seem as though that $637 is a bit expensive to spend on something that might cost, oh, about a 20th of that price. I think I saw a Mr. Coffee unit at Wal-Mart selling for about $30.

“It’s typical restaurant equipment,” Richardson told my pal Jim McBride at the Amarillo Globe-News. “It’s for any meeting with might have there. Yes, it’s a legitimate expense.”

The Post story chronicles some high-dollar expenses from drug forfeiture funds around the country, including a $5 million helicopter for the Los Angeles Police Department and a $1 million mobile command center for Prince George’s County, Md.

That’s pretty serious dough, but those expenses seem related directly to law enforcement activities.

The Randall County Sheriff’s Department coffee maker? It might be necessary for staff meetings after hours.

But at that price?

JFK conspiracy? I still doubt it … seriously

A few of my closest friends and members of my immediate family know that Robert F. Kennedy was the first politician I grew to actually admire.

I watched him grow from a ruthless operative to a serious leader of Americans looking for a serious change in the political landscape.

An assassin ended that dream in June 1968.

I am dismayed, then, to read that RFK harbored some doubts about the official findings associated with the death of his brother, President John Kennedy, who also was cut down by an assassin on Nov. 22, 1963.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/was-bobby-kennedy-a-jfk-conspiracy-theorist-111729.html?hp=pm_1#.VDvTQFJ0yt8

According to author Philip Shenon, Bobby Kennedy believed the mob had a hand in his brother’s death. The Warren Commission, charged by President Johnson to examine the details of the assassination, didn’t interview RFK, who reportedly had this notion that the mob figures working with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro played a role in the murder in Dallas.

I cannot pretend to know all the details. RFK, then the attorney general of the United States, had access to information very few Americans ever will have. Who am I to doubt his view that Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a grand conspiracy?

Well, I keep going back to this fundamental question: How does anyone keep quiet about such a monstrous act over the course of 51 years?

The answer I keep getting is this: Because there’s no one to blab; the one guy who did the deed was himself shot to death in the Dallas Police Department basement two days after he killed the president.

Still, this notion presents another set of questions.

What precisely did RFK know? If he knew something was amiss, why in the world didn’t he say something publicly at the time when the Warren Commission released its findings?

We cannot know the answer to either of those questions. Robert Francis Kennedy is the one man with the answer. We cannot bring him back.

Thus, these theories live on.

Krugman comes to Obama's defense

Paul Krugman isn’t exactly an impartial observer of American politics.

He leans hard left. He writes for the New York Times and other publications. He’s also an Nobel prize-winning economist who knows a thing or three about economics.

He also has determined that Barack Obama has crafted one of the most successful presidencies in American history.

http://www.lovebscott.com/news/rolling-stone-names-president-obama-one-of-the-most-successful-presidents-in-american-history

Go figure that one, eh?

Well, I’ll await the judgment of more historians on the Obama presidency, which still has about 26 months left before he leaves the White House.

Krugman has written a lengthy essay in Rolling Stone in which he lays out his case for the success of President Obama’s time in office.

Here’s a small part of what Krugman has written:

“Obama faces trash talk left, right and center – literally – and doesn’t deserve it. Despite bitter opposition, despite having come close to self-inflicted disaster, Obama has emerged as one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history. His health reform is imperfect but still a huge step forward – and it’s working better than anyone expected. Financial reform fell far short of what should have happened, but it’s much more effective than you’d think. Economic management has been half-crippled by Republican obstruction, but has nonetheless been much better than in other advanced countries. And environmental policy is starting to look like it could be a major legacy.”

I get that Krugman has his critics. They sit on the opposite end of the political spectrum. They’re going to dismiss his assessment of Obama’s presidency through their own bias, contending that Krugman’s bias has tainted his own view.

Funny thing about bias. We always see it in others, never in ourselves.

I must acknowledge this much, even though it pains my friends on the right whenever we lefties bring it up: Barack Obama inherited a first-class financial and economic meltdown when he took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009. He took measures almost immediately to stop the free fall. The government pumped billions of dollars into bailing out auto manufacturers; it slapped important regulations on lending institutions that had loaned money to millions of Americans who couldn’t afford to pay the money back.

All of this drew stinging rebukes from Republicans, who didn’t offer any serious solutions of their own — except to say that the president’s initiatives would fail.

Health care? Oh yes. There’s that. As Krugman notes, the Affordable Care Act isn’t perfect, but it’s working.

I’ll look forward to reading the entire article. I’ll still hold my own final judgment on Barack Obama’s presidency. We need some time to take it all in.

Bill Clinton helps more than Michelle Obama? Umm, yes

The headline over Dallas Morning News blogger Rodger Jones’s post asks: Does Bill Clinton help Van de Putte more than Michelle Obama helps Wendy Davis?

Well, duh? Do ya think?

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/10/does-bill-clinton-helps-van-de-putte-more-than-michelle-obama-helps-wendy-davis.html/

The 42nd president has endorsed Democratic lieutenant nominee Leticia Van de Putte. Meanwhile, first lady Michelle Obama has recorded a radio ad for another Democrat, the nominee for governor, Wendy Davis.

With all due respect to the first lady, who I consider to be profoundly successful in her role, she ain’t no Bill Clinton.

President Clinton is a genuine political rock star. He’s the 800-pound gorilla in any political setting imaginable. He can walk into deeply red Republican regions — as he did in 2008 when he campaigned in Amarillo for his wife’s bid to become president — and pack ’em in.

Jones refers to Clinton as “Bubba,” and his endorsement amounts to a “seal of approval.”

Van de Putte will need all the help she can get in her uphill fight against Republican nominee — and fellow state senator — Dan Patrick. Clinton’s standing as the leading Democrat in the nation — yes, even more than the man who now occupies his old office in the White House — gives any candidate who receives his blessing maximum oomph.

It’s an astonishing comeback for the second president ever to be impeached. The Senate acquitted him of those politically motivated charges relating to his misbehavior in the White House. It didn’t take long at all for the president to regain his standing among many Americans.

And in the 13 years since his leaving office, that standing has grown almost beyond all recognition.

Will his endorsement put Van de Putte over the top? I doubt it. Still, she isn’t going to erase this “seal of approval.”

War College revokes senator's degree

Here’s a welcomed post script to an embarrassing political story.

The Army War College has yanked the master’s degree from U.S. Sen. John Walsh after determining that the Montana Democrat plagiarized the paper for which he was awarded the degree.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/army-war-college-revokes-sen-john-walshs-degree-26108518

This is the final blow to a political career that was on the ropes to begin with, but which now has been dealt a knockout.

Walsh was running for election to the seat to which he was appointed after former Sen. Max Baucus became U.S. ambassador to China. It would have been a tough pull for Walsh to hold the seat in a Republican year running in a state that tilts toward the GOP.

Then came the revelation that he copied much of the master’s thesis he wrote while attending the War College. He pulled out of the race after receiving a torrent of criticism.

Honor and integrity have to count when one portrays oneself as a proud member of the military; Walsh is an Army reserve officer who served combat tours in Iraq.

Walsh blamed his transgression on PTSD, to which the Army College review board responded, according to ABC.com: “The board said in its findings that other students have had similar or more serious issues during their time at the war college, but they were able to do the work ‘without resorting to plagiarism or other cheating.'”

There you have it.

So long, senator.

A single vote causes confusion

Alison Lundergan Grimes wants to be the next U.S. senator from Kentucky.

She’s taking on a heavyweight, Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.

Grimes has much to commend her for the job. However, there’s a strangely awkward reticence that is getting in the way. She declines to say whether she voted for President Obama in 2012.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/alison-lundergan-grimes-obama-vote-111766.html?hp=r5

This is a strange distraction. Come on, Ms. Grimes. What’s the story? Did you or did you not support the president, a member of your very own Democratic Party?

Politics creates such a fickle environment. Little things like this become big things in a heartbeat.

In a way, I understand Grimes’s reticence. Our votes, after all, are supposed to be done in secret. We cast our ballots with no obligation to tell anyone how we vote. Where I come from, that’s a sure sign of liberty. Voters become “liberated” by their votes, giving them more than ample justification to speak their minds on policy issues and the people who carry them out.

However, Grimes is running for a public office. That means her life essentially is an open book. The public is entitled to know to what level they endorse another public figure’s public policy stances.

Thus, her vote becomes grist for comment. It also becomes a target for inquiring minds.

Her reluctance might have something to do with the president’s low standing among Kentuckians. His approval rating is about 30 percent. Grimes has told at least two newspaper editorial boards — in Louisville and Lexington — that she’s a “Clinton Democrat.” She has declined on several occasions to say whether she voted for the president.

This kind of clumsiness angers her base, which she’ll need if she intends to defeat McConnell on Nov. 4.

It’s such a petty matter in the grand scheme. It has become a bigger matter than it deserves to be.

Ebola patient dies; now, let's stay calm

Thomas Eric Duncan has died of Ebola.

He came to Dallas from Liberia carrying the virus that causes the disease. He checked into a hospital and was given the best treatment possible anywhere in the world. Still, the disease killed him.

It’s a sad end to a man’s life.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/10/08/dallas-patient-diagnosed-ebola-dies/

Now what? Do we panic? Do we quarantine the entire hospital staff? Or those who came into this man’s room?

Not at all.

Yes, I blogged recently about the difficulty of maintaining my composure when Duncan arrived in Dallas, given that I have immediate family members living in the Metroplex. My head has cleared since then.

I hope we start listening to the medical experts who are saying the same thing — over and over, repeatedly. The only way one can catch the killer disease is to come in direct contact with someone who’s infected.

CNN’s coverage of this “crisis,” as usual, has been a bit overblown — in my humble view. The network’s reporters and anchors keep harping on the crisis aspect of the disease in West Africa — and it’s real. However, I am concerned about what it’s doing to the American psyche as it relates to this disease.

Yet the network is trotting out infectious disease experts from all over creation to tell us that a single case of Ebola in one American city should not be cause to push panic buttons, or to sound sirens, or send people into undisclosed secure locations.

If this situation is going to produce any positive outcome, it might be this: We’ve got a lot of brilliant medical researchers right here in the U.S. of A. who are quite capable of finding it. If the Ebola scare has done anything at all, I am hopeful it has scared researchers into redoubling their efforts at finding a cure.

ISIL threat: real or imagined?

Here’s my fervent hope for the moment: it is for otherwise responsible members of Congress to quit saying things they cannot prove beyond any doubt — not just reasonable doubt.

U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., says at least 10 Islamic State fighters have been captured on our southern border.

Not so, says Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/isil-us-border-homeland-security-duncan-hunter-111722.html?hp=l8

Who’s telling the truth?

My relative lack of cynicism leads me to believe the guy in charge of protecting the homeland. That would be Secretary Johnson.

“Let’s not unduly create fear and anxiety in the American public by passing on speculation and rumor,” Johnson told CNN.

Rep. Hunter is feeding the national anxiety over the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Does he have proof that these individuals were apprehended and they, indeed, are members of the monstrous terrorist organization? No. Johnson replies that his agency has seen no “credible intelligence” that ISIL is at our southern doorstep, ready to cross into the U.S. territory and begin its reign of terror on unsuspecting and innocent Americans.

There is, though, another way to look at this matter.

It is that Border Patrol, Immigration and Naturalization Service, the FBI and local police authorities are on their toes. Suppose they are capturing individuals linked to ISIL. Wouldn’t that mean they’re doing their job?

I’ll stick with Secretary Johnson’s assessment that the situation lacks “credible intelligence” to suggest ISIL is on the march in North America.

We need physical proof, folks, that this is happening. And I’m not talking about fuzzy photos that Bigfoot believers produce to “prove” the existence of a mythical creature.

Let’s deal in reality and forgo the fiction.

Name's the same: It's called 'war'

The “fair and balanced” network that keeps proclaiming its journalistic integrity is at it again.

The Fox News Channel is trotting out a military expert to gripe that the war against the Islamic State doesn’t have a name, as in Operation Destroy ISIL or Operation Kill the Bad Guys.

The expert, whose name escapes me at the moment, was complaining that the Obama administration’s campaign to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State needs a catchy name to rally the nation, to give the mission a sense of purpose, to send a message to the Middle East terrorist monsters that, by God, we mean business.

Then he went on to suggest that absent a name President Obama is engaging in some form of denial about the severity of the heinous organization with which we’re dealing in Syria and Iraq.

Sigh …

Someone has to tell me in language I understand precisely why we need to call this campaign something catchy.

I heard the Fox expert prattle on about national purpose and unity. However, if memory serves, Operation Iraqi Freedom — which is what the Bush administration called its March 2003 invasion of Iraq — didn’t exactly gin up a whole lot of national unity simply because we hung a label on it.

The only thing that produces such unity is battlefield success. Yes, the United States succeeded on the battlefield. Our forces defeated Saddam Hussein’s overhyped army with ease — just as we did in 1991 when we liberated Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm.

However, we weren’t greeted as “liberators,” as then-Vice President Cheney predicted would happen. Then that unity thing kind of fell apart as public opinion began to sour on our continued occupation of Iraq.

Did the name chosen produce the sense of mission and national esprit de corps envisioned at the time?

Hardly.

Let’s get back to debating the merits of the air campaign against ISIL. I hasten to note, incidentally, that more nations are taking part. We aren’t alone in this fight.

Thus, it would be helpful if critics here at home — such as the Fox News “experts” — would cease carping on these side issues.

They serve only as a distraction from the bigger fight.

Waiting to hear from chairman-to-be Thornberry

Lame-duck House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, R-Calif., has weighed in on President Obama’s strategy to destroy the Islamic State.

He says the president needs to rethink the bombing strategy and possibly bring in ground troops to fight ISIL terrorists face to face.

That’s fine, Chairman McKeon.

However, he’s leaving office in January. The new Armed Services Committee chairman is going to be Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, Texas. He’s my congressman. He represents the sprawling 13th Congressional District, which includes the Texas Panhandle.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/220157-house-gop-urges-obama-to-rethink-isis-strategy

What does the chairman-in-waiting think ought to happen?

Thornberry’s been fairly quiet while the Middle East has been erupting in flames. As head of one-half of Congress’s key committee on military matters — the other half does business in the Senate — he’s going to be a critical player in this on-going discussion.

Thus, Rep.Thornberry is likely to be stepping outside of his comfort zone, as I have come to understand it. He’s going to be asked regularly to appear on those Sunday news talk shows. He’ll be grilled intently by journalists who’ll want to know where he stands on this critical question of the U.S. response to the ISIL threat.

Until now, Thornberry has been content to serve as a back-bench member of the House. He doesn’t act particularly starved for attention by the news networks, although he does acquit himself well on those occasions he has appeared. (I recall one interview he had on MSNBC with Chris Matthews. I reminded Thornberry that I once met Matthews “before he was ‘Chris Matthews.'”)

I appreciate where Chairman McKeon is coming from on this issue of ISIL and our response to it. Sadly, he’s rapidly become “old news.” I’m waiting for the new guy — Mac Thornberry — to step up.