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Hey NRA, Why Doesn't Congress Have Guns?
Tweet Share on Facebook July 27, 2009 Comment (13)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne makes a good point in his column today: Members of the U.S. Senate should pack heat. Various senators and other legislators have been pushing a variety of pro-gun measures, from allowing guns in national parks to letting patrons of bars be armed. So, Dionne argues, why don't these same legislators follow their own dictates to their logical conclusion and allow guns in the senate? Or to put it another way, why waste taxpayer money on the security of the capitol police when the free market could do it probably more efficiently by simply arming the senators, their staffs and the tourists?
And he's not kidding:
Don't think this column is offered lightly. I want these guys to put up or shut up. If the NRA's servants in Congress don't take their arguments seriously enough to apply them to their own lives, maybe the rest of us should do more to stop them from imposing their nonsense on our country.
Agreed.
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Steroids, Baseball and the Hall of Fame
Tweet Share on Facebook July 26, 2009 Comment (17)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Today is baseball's Hall of Fame induction day, with Rickey Henderson, Jim Rice and Joe Gordon taking their places among the sport's celebrated greats. Rickey was a slam dunk, but Rice's credentials remain the subject of debate and Gordon played on the great 1940s Yankees teams and so too was apparently not a no-brainer inductee. The Hall of Fame debate is going to achieve a new level of sporting contentiousness, however, as the steroid becomes eligible. Mark McGwire has been eligible for a couple of years now, without making the cut. But he's the leading edge of a generation that will, in 15 or so years, wind down when Alex "A-Roid" Rodriguez becomes eligible. In between we'll have to worry about Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and many other great players who have been linked to performance enhancing drugs.
So how should Hall voters handle the steroid era?
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Obama's Henry Louis Gates Arrest Comment is His Second Race Mistake
Tweet Share on Facebook July 24, 2009 Comment (38)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Before this week, President Obama had only made one misstep in his political career on the highly explosive issue of race: not quitting his Chicago Church and dropping the company of its controversial former Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He reacted quickly and brilliantly to that controversy, however, by delivering an eloquent, game-changing speech on race in America. His second misstep took place this week when he entered into another race-based dustup—that between Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (an Obama pal) and a Cambridge policeman. Now, he's stopped for an apology to the Cambridge police department for saying it acted "stupidly" but he has once again put out a small blaze before it became a forest fire.
If you don't get a chance to see the video, President Obama ends his statement by saying he's going to set up a three-way meeting among himself, Prof. Gates and Sergeant James Crowley where they can drink beer together. Now that's bound to assuage the ire of any person of any color in America.
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Democrats' Healthcare Censorship Shows How Desperate They've Become
Tweet Share on Facebook July 24, 2009 Comment (28)President Barack Obama's prime time press conference having done little to reassure a wavering public, it seems the Democrats hope to create a national healthcare system may once again have slipped out of out reach. The president agrees that his timetable has been thrown off and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., says they won't take up the issue before the recess despite the fact that he has a filibuster-proof majority of Democrats behind him. The committee process in the House has ground to a standstill, with the less liberal "Blue Dog Democrats" almost in rebellion against House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., over the cost of the so-called tri-committee health care proposal.
Privately, the word is moving through Washington that the White House is prepared to abandon the idea of the public option that is causing so much concern, particularly in the medical community, which is not likely to endorse anything that leads to further federal price controls on healthcare.
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DeMint Doesn't Sound Like a Candidate for President in 2012
Tweet Share on Facebook July 24, 2009 Comment (2)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint is in the discussion as a potential GOP presidential candidate in three years, especially since he gained national publicity for saying that healthcare reform could be President Obama's "Waterloo" and could "break" him. And he's making the rounds promoting his new book Saving Freedom which talks about what he sees as creeping socialism threatening to destroy our country. But when my colleague Andrew Burt asked him about a 2012 run, he didn't sound like he's preparing a run:
When you put all your ideas down in a book, you're less likely to be able to endure a campaign--they'll take a lot of things out of context on you. For me, the big battle between socialism and freedom comes down to this healthcare issue.
Of course as DeMint well knows writing a book is a fairly common precursor to a presidential run. Perhaps he's less worried that his ideas will be taken out of context than that they'll be taken seriously? You can read the entire interview in the current issue of our weekly digital edition.
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Even if Henry Louis Gates' Arresting Officer Is Right, He Was Wrong
Tweet Share on Facebook July 24, 2009 Comment (200)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Assume for a moment that Cambridge Police Officer James Crowley is telling the absolute truth in his incident report and subsequent press appearances and that Henry Louis Gates is lying about the events that led to the Harvard professor's arrest. Assume for a moment that when Crowley showed up at Gates' home, Gates was belligerent, angry, immediately started in on race and racism and made a "your mama" comment. Assume that he spouted inanities to the effect that Crowley didn't know who he was "messing" with. Assume that when Crowley, satisfied that Gates did in fact live in the home and so was in fact not burglarizing it, started to leave Gates kept yelling at him.
Even if all of that is true ... Crowley was still wrong arresting Gates. "The professor at any time could have resolved the issue by quieting down and/or going back inside the house," Crowley said in a radio interview. Maybe so. But Crowley could also have resolved by rolling his eyes at the cranky--but not criminal--professor, getting back in his car and driving away.
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What Do Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan and Desmond Tutu Have in Common?
Tweet Share on Facebook July 24, 2009 Comment (8)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Check out this Web site by a group of international leaders calling themselves, The Elders.
OK, I get it. Even if the group includes former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, it's still a cocky name. But, there's some really interesting material on this site. And these people an incredibly gifted and credentialed group.
I'm especially pleased by their page on civil rights for women and girls worldwide. It reads in part:
Religion and tradition are a great force for peace and progress around the world. However, as Elders, we believe that the justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a higher authority, is unacceptable. We believe that women and girls share equal rights with men and boys in all aspects of life.
This approach is spot on and in a very reasonable way it points the finger of blame at theocracy which abuses its power to violate the human rights of its women and girls.
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Stop the Presses! Obama Dislikes But Still Uses Media Cycle!
Tweet Share on Facebook July 24, 2009 Comment (52)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Peter Baker's piece in today's New York Times is actually pretty interesting, but the headline ("Obama Complains About the News Cycle but Manipulates It, Worrying Some") and lede are a bit goofy. Baker writes:
It has become his common lament. Challenged about difficulties with his economic or legislative programs, President Obama complains about the tyranny of “the news cycle,” pronouncing the words with an air of above-it-all disdain for the impatience and fecklessness of today’s media culture.
Yet after six months in office, perhaps no other president has been more attuned to, or done more to dominate, the news cycle he disparages.
That's the equivalent of saying: Robert Schlesinger complains constantly about the summer heat. And yet weeks into the annual heat wave, no other blogger has used air conditioning as much. Just because you don't like the atmosphere in which you're operating, you're not obliged to operate as if it didn't exist.
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Racial Tensions Stirred by Henry Louis Gates Arrest Could Grow
Tweet Share on Facebook July 23, 2009 Comment (117)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
O.J. Simpson, Simi Valley, Rodney King. They all stand as visions of a racially divided America, an aspect of American life and culture of which no one is proud. I'm just wondering if the controversy surrounding the clash between renowned African-American scholar Henry Gates and a sergeant in the Cambridge police department is going to become a clash of larger proportions.
And I hope it does not.
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Obama Was Right About Henry Louis Gates Arrest
Tweet Share on Facebook July 23, 2009 Comment (156)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
So I was playing softball last night and missed the big news--I guess President Obama called a press conference to denounce the Cambridge police's arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., right? What? Not so much? OK, so Obama held a press conference on healthcare and apparently the only news he committed was ... saying that arresting someone in their own home when they're not committing a crime is stupid.
