TID BITS HERE AND THERE.... for your perusal
.JUSTICE -- ASHCROFT GIVING STATES' RIGHTS THE CHAIR: Attorney General John
Ashcroft has been leading an aggressive campaign across America to have the
death penalty used more often and in more places
(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-death29sep29,1,371644.story?coll=la-home-headlines)
. Ashcroft is pushing to identify more crimes as under federal jurisdiction, and
thus open to the death penalty; often this effort comes over the objections of
the states in areas that have "banned or rarely impose capital punishment." The
department is "bringing what are essentially local cases to trial in federal
court to achieve the political aim of making the death penalty a reality in all
50 states." Although the Bush administration usually claims to be a staunch
advocate of the primacy of states' rights, in this case it "is making an end run
around local laws and customs against capital punishment."
NATIONAL SECURITY -- EXPENSIVE WISHFUL THINKING: The White House is relying on
expensive wishful thinking
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58080-2004Sep28.html) as its
strategy for national security. The Washington Post reports that the Bush
administration has blown $100 billion on a missile defense system that experts
agree hasn't had realistic testing and, chances are, won't work. Key components
of the system, which will be activated this fall, are "years behind schedule,"
and "flight tests, plagued by delays, have yet to advance beyond elementary,
highly scripted events." In fact, the total lack of test data "has caused the
Pentagon's chief weapons evaluator to conclude that he cannot offer a confident
judgment about the system's viability. He estimated its likely effectiveness to
be as low as 20 percent." Such heavy reliance on a costly, unproven system,
experts warn, "risks inducing a false sense of security and locking the United
States into flawed technology."
POLITICS -- TAKING CARE OF ZELL: In a bit of quid pro quo, Zell Miller is
getting handsomely rewarded by Republicans
(http://www.thehill.com/news/092904/miller.aspx) after his vicious attacks
against John Kerry. The Hill newspaper reports, "The Republicans are making sure
that Sen. Zell Miller, who launched a withering attack on presidential candidate
Sen. John Kerry last month, gets his pet projects paid for in appropriations
legislation." The week after his nasty diatribe against Kerry at the GOP
national convention, the Hill reports, "Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) grabbed
Miller's arm outside the Senate chamber and assured him, 'Don't worry about
appropriations, I've already put that stuff of yours in there.'" |
