Wall Street Journal: Covering for Pelosi

Jul 12, 2009 at 02:41 PM

COVERING FOR PELOSI

Her allies pick loyalty over security

As political spectacles go, one would be hard pressed to find anything as ridiculous as the Washington Romper Room now starring congressional Democrats and the CIA. If only the consequences weren't potentially so damaging for national security.

The latest episode comes courtesy of Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. In a letter leaked to the press, he claims the agency "misled" Congress about its activities after 9/11. Recall that this all started when Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted the CIA failed to brief her in 2002 about aggressive interrogations during her time on intelligence earlier this decade. CIA Director Leon Panetta in May said the agency didn't, as policy or practice, "mislead Congress." Briefing notes from the time showed Pelosi was told and didn't object to waterboarding. The CIA this week felt compelled to issue another denial in response to the Reyes letter.

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Tom Standage: Of feast, famine and fear of the unfamiliar

TOM STANDAGE| Jul 12, 2009 at 02:39 PM

Scientists were enamored with this new foodstuff because it had several valuable properties. Potatoes thrive even in years when the wheat crop has failed, noted a committee of the Royal Society, Britain's pioneering scientific association, in the 1660s. Better still, potatoes can be grown in almost any kind of soil and take only three to four months to mature, against 10 for cereal grains. And potatoes produce two to four times as many calories per acre as wheat, rye or oats. The case for widespread adoption of the potato, the scientists argued, was obvious.

The public was much less enthusiastic. Potatoes aroused suspicion because they were unfamiliar. They were not mentioned in the Bible, which suggested that God had not meant people to eat them, said some clergymen. To herbalists who believed that the appearance of a plant was an indication of the diseases it could cause or cure, potatoes resembled a leper's gnarled hands, and the idea that they caused leprosy became widespread. More scientifically inclined botanists identified these first-known edible tubers as members of the poisonous nightshade family, and potatoes came to be associated with witchcraft and devil worship.

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Steve Chapman: The pretty ones always do well in politics

Jul 12, 2009 at 02:38 PM

In 2005, when President George W. Bush announced his nominee for the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Sandra Day O'Connor, conservatives who had been loyal to the administration rose up in perfectly reasonable fury. Harriet Miers was not their idea of a Supreme Court justice. She was, they noted, intellectually undistinguished, ill-qualified for the job, lacking impeccable conservative credentials and inept in handling basic constitutional questions.

All those things, of course, could also have been said about Sarah Palin. But just as quickly and vigorously as conservatives rejected Miers, they embraced Palin. Even after her bungling performance in the 2008 campaign and her strange decision to resign as governor of Alaska, some of them still do.

"This unusual move might be the right move for her to become president of the United States," insisted William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard. Columnist Jonah Goldberg assured the governor that no matter what, "You are the 'It Girl' of the GOP." National Review editor Jay Nordlinger confessed, "I am an admirer and defender of Palin's. Oh, what the heck: I love the woman."

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E.J. Dionne: Who are the court's true extremists?

Jul 12, 2009 at 02:36 PM

This week's hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court represent the opening skirmish in a long-term struggle to challenge the escalating activism of an increasingly conservative judiciary.

The Senate's Republican minority does not expect to derail Sotomayor, who would be the first Hispanic and only the third woman to serve on the court, and they realize that their attack lines against her have failed to ignite public attention, or even much interest.

Her restrained record as a lower court judge has made it impossible to cast her credibly as a liberal judicial activist. "They haven't laid a glove on her," said Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., her leading Senate supporter.

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Editorial: Find better ways to keep kids out of jail

Jul 12, 2009 at 02:33 PM

For most schoolkids, detention means a trip to the principal's office and a timeout in study hall. But for young people on the wrong side of the law, detention is the underage version of going to jail.

The practice of sending kids to lockup grew during the 1990s as fear of youth mounted and more children were certified as adults for violent crimes. Today, despite the lowest youth crime rates in a generation, hundreds of thousands of children and teens are confined annually in the United States' 600 secure detention centers.

Yet when it comes to lower-level, nonviolent offenders, research shows that jail isn't the best option. Three metro area counties are wisely steering away from detention by using the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiatives (JDAI) model. Promoted nationally by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the idea is to do a better job of evaluating which kids are truly dangerous or are flight risks.

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Letter of the day: Why should L.A. pick up the tab for Jackson's memorial?

Jul 12, 2009 at 02:35 PM

AL LEBERKNIGHT, BURNSVILLE

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Readers Write for Monday, July 13

Jul 12, 2009 at 02:34 PM

TRANSITION TO DTV

Help is still available

In the Twin Cities, many families that currently subscribe to cable may not be paying a lot of attention to the recent DTV transition.

But in the current economy, some families may decide to cut their monthly expenses by canceling their cable. If that's the case, families can still apply for a $40 government coupon to subsidize the cost of a digital converter box so they can continue to have access to emergency news and alerts.

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Lori Sturdevant: Who'll be the faces of 2010 campaign?

LORI STURDEVANT| Jul 11, 2009 at 12:54 PM

Speaking last month before a Twin West Chamber of Commerce audience sprinkled with gubernatorial wannabes, I was pressed to predict the two big-party nominees for governor in 2010.

The candidates in attendance-- all of them male -- sat in rapt attention. I took a deep breath.

"With all due respect to the male hopefuls here present, I think there's a lot of interest in both of the big parties in nominating a woman for governor this time," I allowed.

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Katherine Kersten: Hard to grasp swooning over Tony Kushner

KATHERINE KERSTEN| Jul 11, 2009 at 06:52 PM

Photo by Star Tribune

Tony Kushner on the 9th floor of the Guthrie theater.

If there's anything we Minnesotans don't like, it's bigotry. Want to be shunned by your friends and neighbors? Try engaging in "hate speech'' -- hurling vicious slurs at people based on race, religion and the like.

Odd, then, that we've just had one of the nation's foremost peddlers of such vitriol here in the Twin Cities. Instead of running him out of town, we've spent two months celebrating him in a communal swoon.

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Garrison Keillor: In the land of the free, health care is not a given

GARRISON KEILLOR| Jul 11, 2009 at 12:26 PM

It was a good Fourth of July where I was -- no Republicans or Democrats, just a crowd of sunburned people sitting on the grass, and a brass band played amid the smell of hot dogs, and Clarence and Ralph, two World War II vets, described their European tour of 1944-45 from Normandy through the Hurtgen Forest, and it was duly noted that the Revolution was not going well in the summer of 1776 when Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and Hancock put their names to the Declaration of Independence, an act of treason and great bravado, and then the crowd stood and sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" and discovered that, in the key of G, it is a fine piece of music and very singable. And people know the words.

It's interesting about the national anthem: First of all, nobody really wants to sing it, and if there's a soloist we won't, but if someone asks us to sing it and gives us a note and a downbeat we jump to our feet and sing and once we're into it, we love it. It is powerful and moving and when we hold the note on "free" and the sopranos wail, it's opera.

This simple less-is-more approach is the genius of conservatism -- get out of their way and the people will provide -- and it holds true in many areas of life, such as education, the arts, broiling hamburgers (a committee around the grill is always going to overcook the food), and not so much in others, such as national defense, bank regulation and health care.

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Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz: A war not easy to leave behind

LINDA J. BILMES and JOSEPH STIGLITZ| Jul 11, 2009 at 01:10 PM

Nearly two weeks ago, the United States "stood down" in Iraq, finalizing the pullout of 140,000 troops from Iraqi cities and towns, the first step on the long path home.

After more than six years, most Americans are war-weary, even though a smaller percentage of us have been involved in the actual fighting than in any major conflict in U.S. history. We've relegated the car and suicide bombings to the inside pages of newspapers, accepting at face value that the "surge" has calmed things down enough so we can finally leave the whole sorry adventure behind us. But not so fast.

The conflict that began in 2003 is far from over for us, and the next chapter -- confronting a Taliban that reasserted itself in Afghanistan while the United States was sidetracked in Iraq -- will be expensive and bloody. The death toll for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan reached 5,000 in June. An additional 80,000 Americans have been wounded or injured since the war in Iraq began. More than 300,000 of our troops have required medical treatment, and Army statistics show that more than 17 percent of returning soldiers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

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