Tag Archives: Ronald Reagan

national news, Uncategorized

Should we set John Hinckley free?

Allow me to answer the question posed in the headline.

Yes, sort of.

John Hinckley has been housed in a psych ward since a jury found him innocent by reason of insanity after he shot President Ronald Reagan, White House press secretary James Brady and two law enforcement officers in March 1981.

Brady — nicknamed The Bear by the press corps — died a year ago from the grievous head wound he suffered at Hinckley’s hand.

http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/05/12/406175445/reagan-shooter-john-hinckleys-lawyers-say-hes-ready-to-be-free

Hinckley’s lawyer says he’s ready to be set free. And even the government prosecutors suggest he is able to be released from the hospital. The feds, though, say he needs constant supervision and must be monitored closely.

I concur with the feds’ assessment, although if I were King of the World, I’d be reluctant to let him out.

Why? Well, the man sought to murder the president of the United States. He wounded him with a gunshot wound in the chest and as we would learn after the chaotic day the president could have died from the wound had the bullet lodged an inch or so toward the president’s heart.

What’s more, a jury ruled that Hinckley was insane when he committed the crime. How many people usually go from being insane to, well, sane?

I am one who doesn’t trust John Hinckley to never do something so crazed again.

That’s why if he gets out of the psych ward he needs careful and never-ending scrutiny.

 

media news, national news, political news

Afflicting the comfortable no longer in vogue?

There’s a saying that a free press’s key mission is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

At the risk of sounding like a whiny baby who never got invited to one of these gigs, allow me now to say that the Washington Correspondents Dinner is a disgrace to the high-minded mission that the D.C. press corps is supposed to fulfill.

Check out this essay about what’s become of this annual event:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/white-house-correspondents-dinner-117287.html?ml=po#.VT2bCFJ0yt8

There’s something more than mildly offensive about seeing reporters and their dates parading along a red carpet, a la the Oscars, Tonys, Emmys and the ESPYs.

Those of us who toiled out here in the Heartland — aka Flyover Country — always have thought there ought to be a natural tension between the power brokers and those who cover them, reporting on their dealings to the “unwashed masses” who depend on journalists to tell them the truth.

Here’s how Patrick Gavin describes the event that occurred over the weekend: “What started off decades ago as a stately formal celebration of the best of presidential reporting has morphed into a four-day orgy of everything people outside the Beltway hate about life inside the Beltway—now it’s not just one night of clubby backslapping, carousing and drinking between the press and the powerful, it’s four full days of signature cocktails and inside jokes that just underscore how out of step the Washington elite is with the rest of the country. It’s not us (journalists) versus them (government officials); it’s us (Washington) versus them (the rest of America).”

Boy, howdy. I couldn’t have said it better.

The D.C. press corps has become something of an echo chamber, where journalists parrot each other’s views and simply cannot wait to be seen in the company of the famous and the powerful. In their own minds, that seems to fit the description of the people who cover government.

I loved Gavin’s note that unlike some of the other dinners — such as the Gridiron — where presidents occasionally are absent, POTUS’s attendance at the correspondents dinner seems to be required. Gavin writes:  “The last president to skip it was Ronald Reagan in 1981 and — let’s cut him some slack — he bailed because he had just been shot.”

The press’s mission to afflict the comfortable now seems almost quaint. How can it do so when the comfortable include the very journalists who keep slapping the backs and yukking it up with the folks they are sent to cover?

I much prefer the tension that is supposed to exist between the media and the government. It keeps everyone — reporters and their sources — a little more honest.

 

International news

Obama set to meet Castro

President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro are going to attend a meeting together this weekend.

They’ll shake hands. They’ll talk to each other. They’ll likely exchange an idea or two about the changing relationship between their two countries. And much of the world will be hanging on every look, gesture and spoken word.

Is this a big deal? Yes. But perhaps not for reasons that some have given for it.

Obama, Raúl Castro get ready for historic meeting

This won’t be a meeting between equals. Obama is head of state of the world’s pre-eminent military and economic power. Castro heads a third-rate, Third World nation that folks once thought posed some sort of threat to the United States of America.

Cuba never really did pose that threat. What danger existed essentially evaporated right along with the Soviet Union in 1991. Still, U.S. and Cuban relations remained frozen in time.

That’s changing now that Obama and Castro have agreed to proceed toward normalization. The economic, travel and diplomatic embargoes are going to end in due course. Cuba will get to become an actual neighbor of the United States.

The leaders will meet at the Summit of the Americas. They shook hands briefly at a memorial service for the great Nelson Mandela a couple of years ago. This meeting is supposed to signal the start of a new relationship.

Yes, critics chide Obama for ignoring Cuba’s human rights issues. Sure thing. As if we don’t have diplomatic ties with other nations around the world with dubious human rights reputations. Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Pakistan, the People’s Republic of China — they all come to mind. I believe it was President Reagan who followed what was called a policy of “constructive engagement” with South Africa when that nation was operating under its apartheid policy that denied its black majority any rights of citizenship.

This meeting is long overdue. The Cuban Missile Crisis has receded into history. Raul Castro’s brother, Fidel, has retired from his lifetime job as president, is in frail health and appears to no longer be the commanding presence in the island nation.

The time arrived long ago for the nations to establish a formal relationship.

It’s good that Barack Obama and Raul Castro are going to that important step together.

national news

Sarah Brady fought gun-control fight valiantly

If anyone deserved the right to believe in gun control, it had to be the wife of someone wounded grievously by a madman firing a handgun at the president of the United States.

The advocate was Sarah Brady, the wife of the late White House press secretary James Brady, who was shot in the head by John Hinckley — who sought on March 31, 1981 to assassinate President Reagan. Sarah Brady died today at the age of 73.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/sarah-brady-gun-control-advocate-dies-at-73/ar-AAapGeK

Hinckley ended up being acquitted by reason of insanity and he’s spent his time in a hospital ever since.

Meanwhile, Sarah and James Brady became advocates for gun control. James Brady died in August of complications relating to the terrible head wound he suffered.

The Bradys had become enemies of gun-rights advocates, such as the National Rifle Association, which occasionally took great delight in vilifying them for their sincere views on the firearm control.

They had reason to believe as they did. They insisted courageously in the face of intense criticism that the Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantee of firearm ownership did not preclude additional controls being placed on the sale and purchase of weaponry.

That didn’t matter to the NRA or to other firearm-owners-rights groups.

They saved lives. “In the history of our nation, there are few people, if any, who are directly responsible for saving as many lives as Sarah and Jim,” said Dan Gross, the president of the  Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence, in a statement.

Sarah Brady was a ferocious advocate for what she believed. May she now rest in peace.

International news, national news, political news

Foes 'all too willing to test us'

Here’s a tiny part of what former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said before a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“Here’s the simple truth of our foreign policy: Our allies doubt us and our adversaries are all too willing to test us. No one should be surprised, no one should be surprised that dictators like Assad would cross the president’s red line because he knows the president will not even defend the line that separates our nation from Mexico.” 

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/perry-compares-middle-east-troubles-texas-border

Did you get what he’s inferring here? Perry is possibly going to run for the Republican nomination for president of the United States — again — in 2016. To make the case to GOP voters, he must lambaste the president from the other party.

I understand how it works. Democrats do the same thing to Republican presidents as well, as U.S. Sen. Barack Obama demonstrated when he won the presidency in 2008.

But is this “testing” of U.S. power and prestige limited to just this president?

Let’s see: President Richard Nixon was tested when Arab nations executed an oil embargo in 1973, causing near-panic at gasoline service stations throughout this country. President Ronald Reagan was tested in 1983 when terrorists blew up the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 of our young Marines. President George H.W. Bush was tested in Panama when the dictator Manuel Noriega kept looking the other way while drugs were pouring into this country from Panama. President George W. Bush certainly was tested when terrorists flew those hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11.

Yes, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were tested too. Carter faced the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979-80  and Clinton had to deal with those warlords in Somalia.

Testing of U.S. presidents has been the norm perhaps since the end of World War II, when this nation emerged from that global conflagration as the world’s pre-eminent military and economic power.

It goes with the territory. It’s part of the president’s job description.

 

political news

'Born in the U.S.A' hardly a campaign theme

Bruce Springsteen makes great music and some of his songs have become American anthems — of sorts.

Should politicians running for public office use a particular song, “Born in the U.S.A.,” to somehow proclaim the nation’s greatness?

Highly debatable. Yet former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who’s thinking of running for president next year, strode onto a stage to that particular song.

As the blog attached by John Fea notes, Perry needs to think carefully about using this song as a campaign theme.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/02/14/why_rick_perry_should_think_twice_before_he_makes_born_in_the_usa_his_theme_song_125604.html

It’s not exactly a love song to the United States of America, as Fea points out.

The lyrics tell a story of a Vietnam War veteran’s heartache when he returns home and can’t get a job. His country didn’t take very good care of him. Springsteen sings about his “brother” who died in battle and how the love of his life is left with just a picture of him.

Fea notes that President Reagan in 1984 sought to wrap himself in the lyrics of the song, apparently believing they paid tribute to our great nation. They don’t — at least not in any traditional sense.

But as the blogger notes, Republican presidential candidates are going to pattern their own themes after The Gipper, perhaps even mimicking President Reagan’s misplaced salute to song lyrics that don’t mean quite what they think they mean.

Be careful, Gov. Perry.

It’s a great song, to be sure. Is it the stuff about which you should frame your campaign? Think again.

 

national news, political news, Uncategorized

Mitt now aims to fight poverty

Chris Matthews is loud, abrasive and occasionally rude on his TV talk show.

He’s also smart, shrewd and insightful when he delivers political commentary.

Matthews cannot believe that Mitt Romney can run for president a third time as an advocate for poor Americans, noting that in 2012 Romney was a champion for the “1 percent” of richest Americans while saying that the 47 percent, the poor folks, “are takers.”

http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/romney-to-focus-on-fighting-poverty-383924291861?CID=SM_FB

He wonders how Mitt can change his tune so dramatically and rapidly from his previous presidential campaign and get away with it. Will it sell to voters who remember the self-deportation talk, the spontaneous offer to wager a $10,000 bet with Rick Perry, references to “the illegals”?

I’ve got a name for Matthews to ponder: George H.W. Bush.

Let’s flash back to 1980. Former Gov. Ronald Reagan had sewn up the Republican presidential nomination. He began looking around for a running mate. He toyed with the idea of picking former President Ford to be on his ticket; the former president said “no.” Then he turned to George Bush, who ran against Reagan in the GOP primaries.

One little problem, though. Bush was a noted supporter of organizations such as Planned Parenthood. He voted routinely, while a member of Congress in the 1960s, for legislation that funded contraception and other family planning programs. His nickname in the House of Representatives was “Rubbers.”

But the GOP nominee in 1980 needed to run on a strong pro-life platform. Would “Rubbers” agree to switch his view on abortion if he ran? You bet he would. And he did.

George Bush took the phone call from Ronald Reagan. He got the offer to run. He said “yes,” and transformed immediately — as in right then and there — from a pro-choice Republican to a pro-life Republican.

The Reagan-Bush ticket won in a historic landslide.

Can Mitt make a similar switcheroo? Absolutely.

 

International news, national news

'We should have sent someone' to Paris rally

Think long and hard about this one.

When was the last time the White House admitted openly that it made a mistake. My best recollection goes back to, oh, around 1987 when President Reagan said as much about selling arms to rebel fighters in Nicaragua.

Still, the White House press spokesman, Josh Earnest, made a startling announcement today in declaring that the Obama administration erred in not sending a higher profile emissary to join the massive Paris “unity rally” in the wake of the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/229217-white-house-we-were-wrong-on-paris

Secretary of State John Kerry said today as well that the U.S.-France relationship goes far beyond a single event, such as the Paris rally. President Obama has noted that France is our “oldest ally,” dating back to the American Revolution.

But yes, the White House made a mistake. I’m glad the administration is acknowledging it.

The current war on international terror began on Sept. 11, 2001 when terrorists conducted the cold-blooded, premeditated attack on the United States. We issued a call to arms and enlisted the aid of nations around the world.

The United States has been the main player in the world’s fight against the monsters who seek to terrorize the rest of the world.

There should have been a high-profile U.S. delegation at the unity rally, which featured the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

That does not diminish our leading role in the global war. Indeed, today’s White House admission well might enhance it.

 

national news

Hinckley won't be tried again … for murder

It’s settled. John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan in March 1981, will not be tried for the murder of one of the men who died as a result of the injuries he suffered on that terrible day.

One of the other victims was the late White House press secretary James Brady, who died this past summer. A medical examiner said Brady’s death was a direct result of being shot in the head by Hinckley.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/228396-no-charges-for-hinckley-in-james-brady-death

This is a good call for a number of reasons.

Hinckley was acquitted of trying to assassinate the president. He fired the shots. The acquittal was because he was determined to be insane. That means he also was considered insane when he shot Brady and two law enforcement officers.

The Constitution prohibits what’s called “double jeopardy,” meaning criminal defendants cannot be tried twice or more for the same crime. As The Hill reported: “In explaining their decision Friday, federal prosecutors argued that because Hinckley was deemed insane by a jury in 1982, they would be unable to argue today that he had been sane when he shot Brady.”

Hinckley’s time in court has come and gone.

My initial reaction to Brady’s death was to put Hinckley on trial for murder. I thought better of it a few days later. I’ve thought even more about it months after that.

Prosecutors have made the right decision.

 

national news, political news

Gov. Cuomo told the harsh truth

A progressive voice is gone. Too bad for the nation he leaves behind.

Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo — who died Thursday at age 82 — once was thought to be a possible candidate for president. Why, he even might have become president one day, perhaps a good or great president at that.

He chose instead to stay in Albany, N.Y., and govern his state. Cuomo would lose his governor’s job eventually in that 1994 Republican sweep, the one that took control of Congress and tossed out a number of governors. Cuomo was gone from public office, as was, say, his friend and colleague Ann Richards here in Texas.

But take a listen to a speech this good man delivered a decade earlier, at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. He told of a “tale of two cities.” One was the “shining city on the hill” envisioned by President Reagan. But there was another city that Gov. Cuomo sought to lift up.

He sought to bring attention to the suffering he said the president was dismissing.

Cuomo’s brand of progressiveness wasn’t the knee-jerk brand. He spoke from his heart. No, his politics didn’t play well in much of the country in 1984. Was his progressive brand popular here, in Texas — and in this part of the Lone Star State? Not even close.

As he told the DNC delegates in San Francisco that evening, he wanted the nation to know that while, yes, the nation did symbolize the shining city, it was — and is — a more complex place. People who are suffering need help from the government.

After all, he said, it is their government, too.

Rest in peace, governor.