Letter Of The Day

I first must state that I am a lifelong "conservative" Republican. Having said that, our country is in dire straits.

The latest Abramoff scandal illustrates who controls this country - the lobbyists. Both sides of the aisle are concerned only with getting re-elected. The only solution I can see is term limits.

Prior to the 1994 Republican takeover of both houses, all we heard from them was term limits. Since then, it isn't mentioned. The only things they have accomplished since gaining control are to spend more money and to enhance their wages, retirement and medical plans, all on the back of the taxpayer.

President Bush is doing an excellent job for the most part, but our problem is with the Congress. Vote all the bums out, regardless of their party.

-Rick M. Nord, Norwalk.

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how about that?

a gay cowboy movie is tops (no pun intended) at the golden globes this year.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - "Brokeback Mountain" could be the big winner at tonight's Golden Globes. It has the most nominations: seven.

yahoo

my prediction has come true

the new mediciare drug plan has been a trainwreck waiting to happen, and it looks like it's still happening.

read this

the democrats have a plan

so where is the plan by the republicans? ooops, they don't have one.

WASHINGTON -- Democrats intend to unveil a sweeping plan this week to tighten Congress' code of conduct, officials said Saturday night, including a ban on lobbyists' gifts to lawmakers and a crackdown on special interest provisions slipped into legislation in the final moments before passage.

atribution

Letter of the WeeQ

It was reported Jan. 9 that Dick Cheney was hospitalized for complications from a foot ailment. It was later discovered that, after removing his foot from his mouth, his doctors discharged him to resume his duties as vice president.

—Tim Conlan, Des Moines.

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Letter Of The Day

In the Jan. 1 Opinion section, Senate Republicans Stewart Iverson and Jeff Lamberti respond to the question, "What would you like for the new year?" by listing "pay raises for math and science teachers" and "measurement of the school day in hours to assure taxpayers and students that they aren't cheated."

Where do I begin?

Why are only math and science teachers deemed worthy of a pay raise? What about that "world-class education" that we all claim we want? English, music, art and modern languages are all vital subjects in the total education of every student. What if I proposed a pay raise for Iowa House representatives only?

And why such an adversarial stance? To demand hour-by-hour accountability for school days, to fear that schools/educators are trying to cheat students out of instructional time displays an astounding paranoia. Professional work days are used by educators to - among many other issues - get briefed and trained on the ever-increasing and nonsensical requirements from laws like No Child Left Behind and those of the state. They add mountains of paperwork and data collection to an educator's day without compensatory pay raises or additional hours in which to finish them.

I invite Lamberti, Iverson or any other like-minded legislator to spend one day at work with me, a public-school educator. Would they appreciate the education, training and skill it requires to teach 10 classes at two schools in one day? Would they begin to fathom the effort and expertise required to teach 260 students a day with enthusiasm and caring?

Public school educators are hard-working, dedicated and skilled professionals who receive low pay and few accolades for a difficult yet personally rewarding job. Too bad the Republican leaders don't understand this, and probably never will.

—Kendra Leisinger, Ankeny.

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today's MUST READ article

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060115/OPINION01/601150320/1035/OPINION

regarding open records laws in iowa:

Perhaps the most citizen-friendly agency for records requests was the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, which maintains a records center in the Wallace State Office Building in the Capitol complex. There, employees quickly produced all information requests made in 2004 and 2005, including worker e-mails that were stored within the DNR's easily accessible files.

Within days of the Register's request for open-records information, the Iowa Department of Human Services - the state's largest agency, with 5,300 workers- managed to produce for free hundreds of formal and informal requests for information from human-service organizations, legislators and reporters.

well, DUH. DHS is full of democrats.

Conversely, the Department of Transportation, responded to the Register's request with a seven-page letter, outlining the considerable time and expense associated with finding and retrieving requests for public information within the huge agency, which has offices around the state.

Narrowing the scope of the search was of little help: Spokeswoman Dena Gray-Fisher estimated it would take 73 hours just to find written requests for information within her relatively small office, which employs 26 people, including the director. The estimated price tag to view those records: $1,460.

not surprising there. DOT is repuke land.

get my drift?

why is it always the democrats getting smeared?

ya never hear of republicans who have "earned' purple hearts getting smeared. doesn't that say something?

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), the former Marine who is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, has become the latest Democrat to have his Vietnam War decorations questioned.

n a tactic reminiscent of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth assault on Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) during the 2004 presidential campaign, a conservative Web site yesterday quoted Murtha opponents as questioning the circumstances surrounding the awarding of his two Purple Hearts.

David Thibault, editor in chief of the Cybercast News Service, said the issue of Murtha's medals from 1967 is relevant now "because the congressman has really put himself in the forefront of the antiwar movement." Thibault said: "He has been placed by the Democratic Party and antiwar activists as a spokesman against the war above reproach."

--source

Letter Of The Day

Recipients of gifts from lobbyist Jack Abramoff scrambled to give back the money. If these guys had even a shred of moral fiber or conscience, they would have never taken the money in the first place. Time to clean House (and Senate). Both sides of the aisle.

—Ross Cornelison, St. Charles

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FARPOINT.FACTOID

Every month’s full moon has a special name, and sometimes several, according to the Farmers’ Almanac.

February: Snow Moon, Hunger Moon.

March: Worm Moon, Crow Moon, Crust Moon, Sap Moon, Lenten Moon.

April: Pink Moon, Sprouting Grass Moon, Egg Moon, Fish Moon.

May: Flower Moon, Corn Planting Moon, Milk Moon.

June: Strawberry Moon, Rose Moon.

July: Buck Moon, Thunder Moon, Hay Moon.

August: Sturgeon Moon, Red Moon.

September: Harvest Moon.

October: Hunter’s Moon.

November: Beaver Moon, Frosty Moon.

December: Cold Moon, Long Nights Moon, Moon before Yule.

SOURCE

apple's itunes is spyware

The big problem, however, is that the new Mini Store feature installs spyware on your PC or Mac. In order to offer up targeted advertising, the Mini Store examines the music you're currently playing and transmits that information to Apple, which then provides relevant ads. iTunes never mentions that it's doing this, nor that it's also secretly transmitting the user's unique iTunes account information along with the song data. The revelation about Apple's secret transmissions has even the staunchest Apple supporters questioning their allegiance, as this isn't exactly the kind of behavior they'd expect from Apple. RealNetworks yes. Microsoft, maybe. But not Apple.

--from paul thurrot
(in email)

Quote of the Day

comes today from Matthew Yglesias, a columnist over at TPM:

"One would do well to note an ideological point here. Abuse of the government contracting process is bad, and perpetrators of wrongdoing should in no way get off the hook. Nevertheless, the entire concept of farming government out work to private firms is a more-or-less open invitation to corruption. There are instances when contracting is the only reasonable solution. But for some years now -- predating Bush, predating the DeLay era -- all the pressure has always been to privatize more and more government functions. The theory is that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector, so contracting functions out to private firms should save money. The reality has had a lot more to do with union-busting, machine-building, and "honest graft" than money saved or improved efficiency."

--Matthew Yglesias

just so nobody tries to sell you a lemon

that 'clinton did it too' is a lie.

Former President Clinton said Thursday that he never ordered wiretaps of American citizens without obtaining a court order, as President Bush has acknowledged he has done.
Clinton, in an interview broadcast Thursday on the ABC News program ''Nightline,'' said his administration either received court approval before authorizing a wiretap or went to court within three days after to get permission, as required by law.

--source

still lying after all these years

"The fact is we know that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were heavily involved with terror,". "They were carried as a terror-sponsoring state by our State Department for many, many years." He cited two terror organizations in particular -- Abu Nidal and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad - that operated out of Saddam's Iraq. He also noted that Saddam was making payments to families of suicide bombers. "All of this is very well established," Cheney said.

--source

fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me

Driven by the cost of hurricane relief, the federal budget deficit is expected to balloon back above $400 billion for the fiscal year that ends in September, reversing the improvements of 2005, a White House official told reporters yesterday.
...
"This administration has a history of overestimating the deficit early in the year, lowering expectations, then taking credit when it comes in below forecast," said Stanley E. Collender, a federal budget expert at Financial Dynamics Business Communications. "It's not just a history. It's almost an obsession."

--WaPo

Letter Of The Day

Clair Snyder's letter of Jan. 1 is a bit puzzling.

How can he or she characterize the Register as a "liberal rag" when the paper features a regular column by David Yepsen and frequent contributions from the likes of Cal Thomas?

Radical conservatives just cannot handle any criticism of our mean-spirited, intellectually challenged president, who has been responsible for thousands of deaths in an unjustified, unnecessary Iraq war, who has demonstrated amazing incompetence in dealing with domestic crises and who has exhibited unflinching loyalty to the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and vulnerable.

-Dean R. Prestemon, Ames.

attribution

FARPOINT.FACTOID

another one in the same day is a rarity.

Fetuses do not count as passengers when it comes to determining who may drive in the carpool lane, a judge ruled.
--source

FARPOINT.FACTOID

Lobbyists for BNSF Railway and United Parcel Service held a luncheon for Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.) at the Associated General Contractors townhouse ($1,000 per PAC, $500 a person), according to the Web site for the National Republican Congressional Committee. A few blocks away, according to the NRCC, lobbyists for MasterCard, Time Warner and DuPont honored Rep. J. Gresham Barrett (R-S.C.) at Tortilla Coast ($1,000). That evening, Promia Inc.'s Adrian Plesha hosted a reception for Rep. John E. Sweeney (R-N.Y.) at his East Capitol Street home—$5,000 for "sponsors," $1,000 for PACs and $500 for individuals
--SOURCE

i learned something new today

"There are no Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff," Dean answered. "Not one. Not one single Democrat. ...There is no evidence that Jack Abramoff ever gave any Democrat any money, and we've looked through all those reports to make sure that's true."

He's right, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, which keeps track of such things. The center's analysis of FEC records shows that Democrats received about a third of the $4.2 million donated between 1998 and 2005 by Indian tribes that had hired Abramoff to represent them in Washington.

The problem with such analyses is that they tell you how much money someone gave to a political candidate without telling you why the money was given. By all indications, donations from the Indian tribes were no less legitimate than the political donations any individual, organization or industry with an interest in legislation frequently gives to candidates. If anything, the tribes are the true victims in the Abramoff saga. Federal investigators claim Abramoff used racist slurs when he referred to his Indian clients in his e-mails and represented rival tribes competing for the same casino turf, the mother of all conflicts of interest.

Nevertheless, the stink of scandal is so fierce in Washington these days that numerous Democratic as well as Republican senators and representatives have been giving money to charity equal to the amount they received from tribes linked to Abramoff in order to avoid even the appearance of wrongdoing.

As a result, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), for example, gave up a measly $2,000 donation she received from a tribe and the Bush-Cheney campaign gave up a $6,000 donation. But as Democrats are quick to point out, the Bush campaign kept the $100,000 that Abramoff directly raised, which earned Abramoff the coveted "Pioneer" status among Bush campaign donors.
.

--chicago tribune

he's a liar

President George W. Bush defended his decision to authorize secret government eavesdropping on communications between the U.S. and other countries as fulfilling his oath to protect U.S. citizens from attack.
--bloomberg

oh really? attack us with what? words?

The National Security Agency has been spying on a Baltimore anti-war group, according to documents released during litigation, going so far as to document the inflating of protesters' balloons, and intended to deploy units trained to detect weapons of mass destruction, RAW STORY has learned.
--source

my rant on the local newspaper board

oh poor dennis, always the victim of the liberal establishment. always whining about others not having an answer, yet never providing one himself. this is called hypocrisy. the liberals aren't the ones who created these problems (i'd sure like to see someone blame iraq on liberals), so why should they be the ones to clean it up? it's just sad that the republican party had to get hijacked by the neocons - for they would have been the perfect ones for the job of cleaning up washington's corruption. but they've all sipped on the coolaid (well, not all of 'em, but the majority has and there aren't enough that haven't to bail the party out. there's just going to have to be a major turnover in republican leadership for the elephant to get back on her feet. and when you have leaders thinking the same way people like dennis think, you can understand why this country is in such deep doodoo. want proof? turn on fox.

the thread

give that guy a cigar

for he wins the 'HEAD ON YOUR SHOULDERS award.

The only way to win the global war on terrorism and end the fighting in Iraq is to stop groups of disaffected men from being willing to die to strike a blow against the United States, the commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command said Tuesday.

--source

DELAY WATCH

http://www.dccc.org/hos_get_involved/abramoff_talking_points

DELAY WATCH

Tom DeLay threatens to sue any station that runs a new ad connecting him to the Abramoff scandal.

from josh marshall

the start of the end?

Israel is updating plans for a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities which could be launched as soon as the end of March, according to military and intelligence sources.

from the herald

the liberal media and the conman president

After TP raised the issue last week, a WP editorial offers a red flag on the "signing statement" that Bush offered to the McCain anti-torture amendment suggesting the administration does not consider itself bound by the law.

[The White House] is explicitly reserving the right to abuse prisoners, while denying them any opportunity to seek redress in court. Having publicly accepted the ban on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, Mr. Bush is planning to ignore it whenever he chooses.

Number of news stories the Post, NYT, USAT, LAT, and WSJ devoted to the signing statement: one—and that's being generous.

wanna know what started the insurgency?

how about this (from the Washington Post):

In an article published this week in the Army magazine Military Review, British Brig. Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was deputy commander of a program to train the Iraqi military, said American officers in Iraq displayed such "cultural insensitivity" that it "arguably amounted to institutional racism" and may have spurred the growth of the insurgency.

something to remember this election cycle

A front-page Post piece notices that the two candidates vying to become House majority leader have both been plenty tight with lobbyists. Rep. Roy Blunt, R.-Mo., current substitute House Majority Leader, once tried to sneak into a bill a provision that would have benefited Phillip Morris, which his then girlfriend was a lobbyist for. The other guy, Rep. John A. Boehner, R.-Ohio, once gave legislators checks from the tobacco industry while on the House floor.

alito is a bore

The Post's Dana Milbank quantifies the combined effect of the senators speechifying and Alito's lengthy legal evasions: "By midafternoon, only 28 of the 130 seats in the press section were occupied, and not all of those seated had their eyes open."

Quote of the Day

from josh marshall:

But that's not the problem in Washington. The problem is a network of criminal activity stretching from the House of Representatives (and, to a lesser degree, the Senate) to K Street and then into the Executive Branch -- a network of bribery, money-laundering and fraud all aimed at selling public policy and official actions not in exchange for political contributions but money rewards to members of Congress, administration officials and their families.

Letter Of The Day

Time magazine has named Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono as "people of the year" for their work trying to end world poverty and disease. In my opinion, Bill, Melinda and Bono exemplify Christian behavior, unlike those who call themselves Christians and spend their time trying to deny rights of those of whom they do not approve.

-John Ousterhout, Windsor Heights.

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how NOT to win a war

when you're trying to win the hearts and minds of people, you don't go into mosques and tear up the place, spray painting crosses on cupboards. you just don't do that and expect any kind of respect in return.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops, some in helicopters, launched a pre-dawn raid on Sunday on the headquarters of the influential Sunni Arab Muslim Clerics' Association and detained six people in what they said was an anti-terrorist operation.
---
In one room, cupboards used to store the shoes of those attending prayers had what appeared to be Christian crosses scrawled on them. Other footage showed papers strewn on office floors and windows smashed.

--source

Letter Of The Day

If there is one thing the modern secular mind claims to be certain of about morality, it is that no one can really be certain about morality. If there is one thing about religious believers that is utterly incomprehensible to most of the media, public education and journalism today, it is the fact that believers claim they can know what is really, truly good and evil.

Typically, modern people say that morality is a complex issue. G.K. Chesterton explained why: "Morality is always terribly complicated — to a man who has lost all his principles."

—Roger Smith, Waterloo.

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spoken like a true patriot

and i can't remember a time when i agreed with this guy, but today, he's making sense.

James Dobson: "If the nation’s politicians don’t fix this national disaster, then the oceans of gambling money with which Jack Abramoff tried to buy influence on Capitol Hill will only be the beginning of the corruption we’ll see. Some religious leaders want new ethics rules for Congress, but that’s only a band-aid fix. Politicians need to root out this infection. Gambling – all types of gambling – is driven by greed and subsists on greed. That makes it morally bankrupt from its very foundation. Gambling creates addicts, breeds crime and destroys families. We need courageous office holders who will begin the process of shutting down lotteries, casinos and other gambling outlets."

--source

from the well, WAT DIDJA EXPECT file

WASHINGTON - Since the Bush administration took office in 2001, it has been more lenient toward mining companies facing serious safety violations, issuing fewer and smaller major fines and collecting less than half of the money that violators owed, a Knight Ridder Newspapers investigation has found.

At one point last year, the Mine Safety and Health Administration fined a coal company a scant $440 for a "significant and substantial" violation that ended in the death of a Kentucky man. The firm, International Coal Group Inc., is the same company that owns the Sago mine in West Virginia, where 12 workers died earlier this week.

The $440 fine remains unpaid.

--source

DELAY WATCH

did someone ever go with that moniker? i should have, but i jus dont have the time like i used to. from MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom DeLay, under indictment on criminal charges in Texas, announced Saturday that he will not try to reclaim his job as majority leader of the House of Representatives.

In a letter to rank-and-file Republicans, DeLay says he has “always acted in an ethical manner.’

At the same time, “I cannot allow our adversaries to divide and distract our attention,” the Texas Republican wrote.

oh, forgot the link to a lively thread HERE

bush's iraq war has cost U.S. over $1,000,000,000,000.00

that's TRILLION. from josh marshall's TPM cafe:

A new study by two leading academic experts suggests that the costs of the Iraq war will be substantially higher than previously reckoned. In a paper presented to this week’s Allied Social Sciences Association annual meeting in Boston MA., Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes and Columbia University Professor and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz calculate that the war is likely to cost the United States a minimum of nearly one trillion dollars and potentially over $2 trillion.

support the troops

is a phrase lost among the echelons of the armed forces i guess.

The NYT fronts an internal Pentagon report concluding that 80 percent of marines who died from upper-torso wounds in Iraq could have been saved by larger body armor. The Marine Corps has known this since last June, yet did not place an order for the armor until September. (The report itself was held up for four months when the corps failed to pay a medical examiner $107,000 to examine the data.) The Army, for its part, has not even placed its order yet. Based on this report and other studies, the Times concludes that 300 of the 1,700 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq could have been averted with the new armor, which has been available since 2003.

from today's papers

so we now know there are two insurgencies

The NYT lead is mostly sourced to "a Western diplomat," but it also features interviews with two insurgent leaders and with "a former associate of [Saddam] Hussein" who was, the insurgents assert, released by the United States as a "goodwill gesture" toward them. The American negotiators are trying to exploit a presumed rift between Iraqi nationalist insurgents (who simply want the U.S. gone) and al-Qaida (which has international, pan-Islamic goals). Predictibly, the "nationalist" insurgents blame most of the insurgency's carnage on Abu al-Zarqawi and other "foreign" al-Qaida leaders. The United States is talking to the insurgents via intermediaries, the paper reports, and the communications are part of a larger strategy to encourage Sunni participation in the new government. It's unclear from the article whether the two insurgent leaders, identified by pseudonyms, were interviewed by the Times reporters in person.

carry their hate around with them, like it's a flag

that's the best description of these whacko reich-wing nuts who support that punk in the whitehouse. got it from a scene in bonanza.

they just don't get it

this (p)resident of the whitehouse thinks he can do any damned thing he wants to, legal or not.

Earlier this week, TP flagged a "signing statement" President Bush submitted with the McCain antitorture amendment, seeming to assert that the administration was not ultimately bound by the law. TP suggested that the papers ask the White House where it stands on the amendment.

Well, the Boston Globe, at least, has done just that. The White House's answer: Sure we're bound by the torture ban—except when we decide we're not. Or as an (anonymous) administration spokesperson put it, ''Of course the president has the obligation to follow this law, [but] he also has the obligation to defend and protect the country as the commander in chief, and he will have to square those two responsibilities in each case." That did not make Sens. McCain, Warner, or Graham happy.

Letter of the WeeQ

Clark Sheets (Dec. 22 letter) criticized the Register’s Young Adult Board of Contributors for “simplistic moralizing.” I will not defend the viewpoints of the writers, but I think he's missing the point.

Morality is a concept rooted in thinking outside of your own ego. Perhaps, young people are less “tempered by life experience.” Maybe they are slightly idealistic, but this world wouldn't be the same without their contributions.

Jesus Christ, the most revolutionary “moralizer” in history, barely lived past 30. He was also criticized for bold, moral proclamations, but he didn't sign up for the job for self-gratification. He did so because he was passionate about his convictions.

Do young Iowa writers get everything right? Obviously not, but at least they are testing beliefs instead of treading through their days without ever engaging a formidable question. Why are their contributions so simplistic? They have only 100 words to express a thought.

These ideas aren't intended to win a debate. Rather they're intended to make the wheels turn for the prepubescent and elderly alike.

—Tony Coppola, Des Moines.

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Letter Of The Day

I must have read this statement in the Register dozens of times. “The administrative costs of Medicare are only 3 percent compared to the 15 percent administrative costs of private health insurers.” I have been using Medicare insurance for almost two years and can explain why. There are almost no checks for fraud or abuse in Medicare.

The most common expression in the medical profession is, “Medicare will pay.” Health-care providers are only too happy to help you fill out the forms, schedule monthly visits and provide all kinds of medical devices that require only the doctor's prescription. The TV ads pushing motorized chairs for disabled patients is only one of the many ways Medicare is being abused.

I have seen the government's version of health care up close, and I don't think the country can afford it in its present form.

— Richard L. Powell, Grimes.

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incompetence DEFINED

The Post goes inside with President Bush bypassing the Senate and making a raft of recess appointments last night. Among the fine new hires: Julie Myers who will become head of the immigration bureau, despite complaints across the political spectrum that she's unqualified. Another hire will head a preparedness office at the Department of Homeland Security after making a name for herself, as the Post puts it, "demanding that information about racial disparities in police treatment of blacks in traffic cases be deleted from a news release." And a third will head the State Department's office to coordinate emergency relief. She has no experience in emergency management or relief, but, don't fret, she did serve as a state chair of Bush's 2000 campaign.

from today's papers

the new medicare part D law

seems we're getting the typical bushlexia response from the government:

A Medicare official said the problems are relatively minor, and are being dealt with.

Larry Kocot, senior adviser to Medicare's top administrator, said early January is always a tough time for pharmacies, because many people switch insurance plans at this time of year. He said pharmacists are also learning how to use a new computer search tool provided by the government.
...
Lutz (president of the American Pharmacists Association) was unimpressed by such talk from Medicare's leaders. "They're saying, 'Well, there's a few glitches, but overall it's been going pretty well,' " he said. "They haven't been talking to pharmacists in the field, I can tell you that."

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read between the lines

and you get the same shit: bush is power hungry to the point of being drunk with lust. from today's papers

Yesterday's Post noted President Bush's penchant for "signing statements," which give the White House interpretation of a law being, well, signed. The idea is to have challenges to a law on paper and thus give the administration a potential leg up in future court cases. The signing statements are an attempt to "address specific provisions of legislation that the White House wishes to nullify," said one presidential historian. He added that they are "also in an effort to significantly reposition and strengthen the powers of the presidency relative to the Congress."

Letter of the WeeQ

Years ago, I decided that it was important to maintain balance in my exposure to political opinion. If I read Richard Cohen and Molly Ivins, I will also read Charlie Krauthammer and Cal Thomas. I figure that it does not make me a more informed citizen to read only those with whom I agree. I do not regret the decision, although I must admit that it is tainted with a certain amount of self-righteousness.

Speaking of self-righteousness, my dedication to this practice was severely tested on Wednesday morning, Dec. 21, while I read Cal Thomas' column. There Cal is, staring dreamily off into God-knows-where (however, as Cal seems to have a direct communications pipeline to God, I am sure they have agreed on a suitable place) telling me that my "civil liberties mean nothing."

He didn't use "right to privacy" — a concept whose existence is the subject of occasional argument. He didn't use the word "privilege," as if to suggest that it is optional. He said "civil liberties" — a concept central to the founding of the country.

And he wants me to know that they have no value, although he obviously values the "civil liberties" of the Iraqi people, as evidenced by the fact that he is willing to go, uninvited, to war in their pursuit. Benjamin Franklin said "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Who do we want to speak for us — Ben or Cal?

—Ken Schumacher, Ames.

attribution

Letter Of The Day

today's winner is from my hometown newspaper.

I am one Christian who would like to buck this year’s fundamentalist trend by wishing all of my neighbors “Happy Holidays.”

By this, I mean all the holidays: Christmas, yes, but also Thanksgiving, New Year’s and Epiphany. For six weeks, we have a number of holidays, or “holy days,” and I see wise stewardship of resources in creating advertising that lasts an entire season.

Where is the merit behind the extremists’ claims of a war against Christmas? I do not see what any truly faithless person would find meaningful in celebrating our holy day, anyway. However, I do see that Christmas can be a means of grace, a doorway by which questions of faith behind traditions come to be asked and people search for meaning which goes deeper than piles of gift-wrap.

If anything should be boycotted at Christmas, it is materialism, not gestures of hospitality and welcome. Our retail centers are not, and should not purport to be, Christian institutions.

I do not go to Kmart seeking faith, I go seeking socks. A quick review of Wal-Mart’s alleged exploitative personnel policies certainly demonstrates it is not a Christian institution. But the extremists are not boycotting Wal-Mart for its treatment of its poor.

What disturbs me most about the “inclusive greetings boycott” is the implications of anti-Semitism. Hanukkah is the most prominent non-Christian holiday celebrated at this time. Why would we want to exclude Jews from our greetings of goodwill? I would like to wish our Jewish friends “Happy Holidays” as well.

Instead of picking this fight, I wish these extremists would focus on feeding the poor, caring for the sick, visiting those in prison and working for peace. That would be a useful Christian witness any time of year.

By LE ANNE CLAUSEN, Mason City
attribution

Letter Of The Day

I am appalled at the idea that teachers are overpaid or that education and knowledge could be considered a commodity.

First, I challenge anyone who feels teachers are overpaid to step into a classroom of 30 15-year-olds and complete a lesson, then grade those students’ work, try to find current lesson plans and information in your 15-year-old textbooks and deliver the lesson with interest and have them actually remember it and learn something.

Second, education and knowledge are not commodities in the sense that one can buy and sell them for a profit. The educational system is cumbersome, yes; however that is because learning is cumbersome.

Does everyone learn how to read the first time they pick up a book or sing the ABCs? Students learn at different rates and in different ways. It takes a flexible model to allow for those differences and still encourage progress.

Why is teacher pay based on years of service then? It takes years to hone teaching skills. It takes the summers of curriculum building, classes, nights of lesson planning along with classroom experience to gain those skills. Yet base pay is necessary because teachers are the lowest-paid professionals with four-year degrees.

Don’t forget, it is the teachers who educate the doctors, lawyers and business people of tomorrow. The most educated people, who could also make great teachers, often don’t enter the profession because it doesn’t pay enough.

Is “performance” the answer? The best teachers are often given the most difficult students. Thus, their performance may be skewed by the results of some test score versus the progress a child has made in their classroom.

No matter what the scenario may be, teachers are worth way more than the measly salaries they are paid. Education is not for sale.

--J. Powers
attribution

thank you mr president

the news picked up on bush's response to the spying program:

SAN ANTONIO -- President Bush on Sunday strongly defended his domestic spying program, saying it's a limited initiative that tracks only incoming calls to the United States.

and in the words of a friend of mine:

The President, who decried the leak of generic information about the spying as "shameless" and causing "great harm to the nation," now singlehandedly undermined the effectiveness of his own program. Shameless indeed.

--kos