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Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton Are Wrong on Cuba and the Embargo
Tweet Share on Facebook January 13, 2009 Comment (22)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today that President-elect Obama wants to lift travel restrictions on families wishing to visit relatives in Cuba. This is not, strictly speaking, news: It's a policy Obama articulated (and Clinton opposed) during the campaign.
And while it's a laudable step, it's not nearly enough. The embargo has outlived its usefulness (in much the same way that Fidel Castro has outlived Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, etc., etc.) and should be lifted. That would be a bold stroke—but it's a secondary issue, and so that's not going to happen.
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Hamas Steals Aid From Palestinians; Outrage to Follow?
Tweet Share on Facebook January 13, 2009 Comment (93)By Sam Dealey, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The Israeli Defense Forces continue to face a good deal of heat from humanitarian groups such as Human Rights Watch, which say the military's tight cordon around Gaza City is taking a punishing toll on civilians who are in desperate need of humanitarian supplies.
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More Children Refuse to Eat Meat Than You'd Think, and for the Right Reasons
Tweet Share on Facebook January 13, 2009 Comment (10)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Uncle Sam has finally given us a figure worth knowing about: In the government's first estimate of how many children avoid meat, the number is about 1 in 200.
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Investigating Bush Not on the Obama Agenda, and That's Fine
Tweet Share on Facebook January 13, 2009 Comment (2)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Bonnie and I have been going back and forth on whether Obama and his administration should investigate the Bush administration. She may not have suggested that prosecutions be Obama's first act in office (and I didn't think she had), but the political point, and the lesson that can be drawn from the initial Clinton stumbles in office (LAX haircut, gays in the military, etc.) is that a president doesn't have full control of his own agenda. One couldn't simply announce an investigation and hope everyone ignores it for a year or two—it could quickly come to crowd out more important agenda items.
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Why Bush Should be Punished for His Acts in Office
Tweet Share on Facebook January 13, 2009 Comment (62)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I must respectfully disagree with Robert Schlesinger's take on whether Barack Obama should have equivocated while responding to a question on Sunday about investigating the Bush administration. First off, Robert refers, more than once, to Obama "kick[ing] off his term" or "mak[ing] one of [his] first acts in office" the pursuit of Bush administration criminals. I never implied it should be one of his first acts in office. It's clearly something that should be investigated, and if it's pursued, pursued in years two or three down the road, and only then if his investigators find clear evidence of wrongdoing.
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Recommended Readings From Michael Barone
Tweet Share on Facebook January 13, 2009 Comment (10)Some interesting reading materials on various subjects:
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Joe the Plumber, Now Joe the War Correspondent in Israel, Is Still Joe the Clown
Tweet Share on Facebook January 13, 2009 Comment (47)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, aka Joe the War Correspondent, has been in the Middle East on his new covering-the-war-as-a-reporter gig long enough to conclude that reporters should not be permitted to cover wars. Alas, I think he was referring to reporters not named Samuel J. Wurzelbacher.
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State Department E-mail Server Crash Illustrates Bigger-Picture Diplomatic Problems
Tweet Share on Facebook January 12, 2009 Comment (2)By Sam Dealey, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It's a general principle among diplomats that talking can solve every problem. And, by extension, the more that people communicate, the better a situation can be. If the United Nations wasn't disproof enough of that notion, consider the recent crash of the State Department's E-mail system when a stray message was sent to thousands of employees.
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Democrats May Use GOP Rule to Roll Back Bush Regulations
Tweet Share on Facebook January 12, 2009 Comment (3)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Robert's Eighth Rule of Politics says that pols and their parties never give much thought to how their actions—laws they pass, precedents they set—might boomerang against them when the other party comes to power.
I thought about this today when I read that Democrats are considering using the 1996 Congressional Review Act to roll back some of the Bush administration's last-minute regulations. The law in question was passed by the GOP-controlled Congress in the spirit of the Contract With America, the idea being that Congress could use it to block or delay the noxious sort of regulations that the Democratic Clinton White House was pumping out. It seems safe to say that the authors of the law (which has seen little use anyway) did not have in mind the sort of pro-business regulations that may now be reversed.
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Barack Obama Is Smart Not to Investigate George W. Bush
Tweet Share on Facebook January 12, 2009 Comment (12)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I have to respectfully disagree with Bonnie's take on Obama's needle-threading regarding the extent to which his administration will investigate the Bush administration.
When I saw the story on the front page of today's Times noting Obama's reluctance to prosecute Bushies, my first thought was: Well, that'll piss off the lefty blogs. My second thought was: It should surprise no one. My (much later) third thought: It's smart politics.
