October 31, 2005

The Laura Bush We Don't Know
By Carey Roberts

The First Lady recently weighed in on the faltering support for Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers. Asked on NBC's Today show if sexism might be at the root of the criticisms of Miers' legal qualifications, Mrs. Bush coyly replied, "I think that's possible."

Excuse me, but somehow that remark struck a nerve. Because every time a woman hits a hiccup in the long march for female emancipation, it seems that someone trots out the specter of knuckle-dragging males trying to send their womenfolk back to the Cuissinart.

If male sexism is rampant throughout the hinterlands, then why did the CWA -- the Concerned Women for America -- come out expressing wonderment that a woman who has never written a single article on constitutional law is now being considered for the high court? Are the CWA members male cross-dressers who have failed to connect with their inner feminine? (Read the rest here)

Bush Administration Pushing Domestic Surveillance Envelope
By Chuck Baldwin

Secret wiretaps. Seized bank records. Unconsented physical searches. Secret computer tracking. Enter the ever-growing government world of domestic spying.

A recent Washington Post report (Monday, Oct. 24, 2005; A01) stated, "The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.

"Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicate that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its use of secret surveillance operations." (Read the rest here)

Critics on Iraq Policy Come Out of the Woodwork Too Late
By Ivan Eland

With the continued quagmire in Iraq and the likely indictments of senior Bush administration officials for trying to shore up the shaky rationale for the invasion, one would think that things couldn’t get much worse for the administration. But where success has a thousand architects, failure leads to much finger pointing. The administration’s latest headache comes from Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff. In a well-publicized recent speech before the New America Foundation, which I attended, Wilkerson lambasted the “Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal” that got control of U.S. foreign policy from a president “not versed in international relations and not too much interested either.”

Wilkerson’s scathing remarks were designed to deflect criticism from his former boss. As one anti-war Republican Senate staff member told me, Wilkerson “summoned his courage about three years too late.” The typically politically correct, inside-the-beltway audience was too polite to ask why Powell and Wilkerson didn’t resign over the invasion of a foreign nation that they privately opposed. (Read the rest here)

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