Here are some excerpts from editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:
Wednesday May 2 2:49 PM ET Editorial Roundup By The Associated Press,
April 28 The Cincinnati Post, on Tito the space tourist:
California tycoon Dennis Tito, who paid the Russians $20 million to take him to the international space station this weekend, is not the first space tourist. And NASA (news - web sites) is showing a selective memory in objecting to his superfluous presence.
The honor of being first American space tourist goes to Sen. Jake Garn, the Utah Republican, who in 1985 wanted to ride aboard a shuttle flight. Because he chaired the Senate committee that oversaw NASA's budget, the agency saw fit to oblige.
The next year Rep. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat and the chairman of the House subcommittee that oversaw NASA's budget, wanted to do likewise and the agency also obliged.
Then, in 1998, after three years of lobbying, Ohio Sen. John Glenn returned to space aboard a shuttle. Glenn also had substantial say over NASA's budget but his presence on the flight was billed as a ``study'' of the effects of space on the elderly. Glenn was 77. In fact, it was a valedictory victory lap for the first American who orbited Earth back in 1962.
There was no purpose to the lawmakers' presence aboard the shuttle other than they wanted to go and were in a position to make that happen. The difference is that Tito is paying his own way.
April 30 The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, on fighting the drug war:
There are two ways to combat drug abuse in the United States: The federal government can make a show of talking and acting tough, or it can actually try to accomplish something - by balancing efforts to crack down on drug suppliers with better treatment for the people who actually buy drugs.
John Walters, touted by Bush administration officials as the nation's next drug czar, will have to choose between the two approaches if he is confirmed for the post. But to judge from some of his past comments, he seems to favor the wrong one: an emphasis on law enforcement alone. ...
Granted, it is important to try to stem the flow of narcotics into the United States and catch drug traffickers within the nation's borders. The imprisonment of so many drug criminals during the 1990s, many experts say, is part of the reason why crime dropped so precipitously during the second half of the decade.
Moreover, reducing the availability of drugs and driving up their prices might well force some drug users onto the wagon sooner rather than later.
But it is hard to believe that the threat of criminal sanctions - or knowledge of the health risks - will prompt heroin, cocaine and other hard-drug users to kick their habits. And as long as there are millions of Americans who cannot fight their addictions, there will be a lucrative drug trade. If drugs can find their way into nation's prisons - and by all accounts they do - they can certainly penetrate thousands of miles of coastlines and porous international borders.
One has to question why, as a nation, we are so eager to crack down on drug producers in other countries but so reluctant to offer much besides jail time to the Americans who are actually using drugs.
April 30 The Salt Lake Tribune, on custodial arrests:
Courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) last week, the nation took another step away from the ideas of its founders that power resides in the people and that government is the servant and not the master of the people.
A divided high court decided that it is perfectly fine for police officers to do custodial arrests for minor, picayune offenses like seat-belt violations that carry judicial penalties of less severity. Basically, the court's majority told police they can ``lay the arm'' on anyone they want to for any convenient offense.
The legislative branch may well content itself with endless debate over creating various offenses and then rating them as to severity via differing penalties, but as Justice David Souter (news - web sites) said in the court's majority decision, the only thing that limits a peace officer's decision on whether to search, handcuff and book someone in jail is his or her own caprice. ...
This decision is a travesty of justice. It encourages law enforcement abuse, promotes the idea that high-handed punishment meted out on an arbitrary and capricious basis is acceptable conduct and will add more reality to the perception that police target some people - does racial profiling ring any bells? - for rougher treatment than others. ...
April 29 The Columbian, Vancouver, Wash., on President Bush (news - web sites)'s first 100 days:
Ever since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt vowed to make a real difference in a troubled world during his first 100 days in office, his successors have been matched against the mark. ...
The second Bush is about restoration of Reaganism. He aims to cut taxes that burden those who are otherwise well off. He sold himself during the campaign as a compassionate conservative, but there has been a lot more conservative than compassion for openers.
Like Reagan, Bush means to keep a load of promises to the military. He is fully invested in the Republican mythology that Reagan won the Cold War by standing at Brandenburg Gate next to the Berlin wall in 1987 and intoning, ``Mr. Gorbachev: Tear down this wall!''
The new president seemed to be indulging in such bluster this past week when he told a series of interviewers that he would use military force to defend Taiwan from China. The first of the interviews aired Wednesday morning. China was outraged. By the end of the day Bush was following a more careful script to assure China that the United States will continue to abide by the one-China policy built up layer by careful layer since Richard Nixon went to Beijing.
The fuss poses a question as the rest of the second Bush administration rolls out: Will the president learn to be more careful about what he says? ...
Perhaps, years hence, this climactic end to the first 100 days of George W. Bush will be seen as a minor misstep in a long, successful march. From this close, though, it seems more like a troublesome hint of worse accidents yet to come.
April 30 Star Tribune, Minneapolis, on Bush and national forest road rules:
Fate has handed the Bush administration what may seem a golden opportunity to roll back another important environmental protection without getting anyone's hands dirty.
A federal judge in Idaho has indicated that he will block a new policy protecting roadless portions of national forests from logging and mining unless the government can persuade him otherwise. So far the administration has offered no defense of the so-called roadless rule -- which Bush lambasted during campaign tours of timber country, and postponed on his first day in office. This Friday the clock runs out on the administration's opportunity to mount a defense.
The rule demands vigorous support for three reasons. First, it is sensible resource policy, an overdue recognition that taxpayer-subsidized logging, mining and drilling are not always the highest uses of the nation's best remaining wilderness. Second, it is a by-the-book piece of federal decision-making. Third, the sheer cynicism of the Idaho case deserves a sharp rebuttal.
For more than two years, since the Clinton administration first proposed to study a ban on bulldozing new routes into the roadless areas, industry has asserted that the outcome was preordained. The public comment process was a sham, the lobbyists said; the administration knew exactly where the roads would end. ...
May 1 The Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma City, on abandoned babies:
It's difficult to understand how anyone could even think of throwing a newborn baby into a trash bin shortly after birth. Nor is it right that any child could come into this world so unwanted.
But that happens too often in today's culture of abortion that treats pregnancy as if it were just an inconvenient consequence of a night of pleasure. With that attitude, it's not hard to jump to the sinister idea that birth is just another extension of that inconvenience.
Until this thinking changes, society is stuck wrestling with the problem of newborns abandoned in trash bins, bathrooms and other places while the moms - and dads - walk away to resume a ``normal'' life.
Several state legislatures in recent years, including Oklahoma's this session, have passed legislation that allows parents to leave their baby at a hospital, fire station, medical clinic or similar designated location without fear of prosecution. ...
The idea behind the bill is unsettling. But it's one way to save the lives of these babies from parents whose thinking is so muddled they would let their baby die. ...
In a perfect world, people would recognize that life is a miracle worth treasuring from conception to old age. No helpless baby would be so easily cast aside, left to fend for himself or die in a trash bin.
But it's not a perfect world. Everyone has to start working on changing the attitude that treats life so casually. ...
April 28 Florida Today, Melbourne, on the state's new autopsy photo law:
State legislators should have known better last month when they voted to exempt autopsy photos from Florida's open records law.
Acting in haste and amid strong emotions following the death of legendary NASCAR (news - web sites) driver Dale Earnhardt (news - web sites), the lawmakers quickly approved a measure that sharply restricted public access to such photos.
The move was a setback for the people's right to know and a slap in the face to all Floridians who favor government in the sunshine.
What's more, it turns out, the new restrictions could stymie police officers who need to distribute autopsy photos as part of their investigations. ...
``I don't know if the Legislature anticipated our ... job duties being curtailed because of this,'' said sheriff's Cmdr. Mark Riley. ``Hopefully, this legislation will be cleaned up.''
Accessible via the Legislature's Web site at www.leg.state.fl.us the new law is murky on the issue of how autopsy photos can be used by those authorized to see and copy them.
That needs correcting, preferably before the Legislature adjourns next week. Better still, the lawmakers need to repeal the bad law altogether.
May 1 Detroit Free Press, on late application for AIDS (news - web sites) Grant:
The Detroit Health Department should have cut one of Michigan's leading AIDS programs some slack when it turned in a grant application 55 minutes late.
Instead, the city decided not to renew a federal grant for the Wayne State University-Detroit Medical Center HIV (news - web sites)/AIDS program. The grant was $181,000 last year; the agency wanted $280,000 this year.
The city's hard line will mean fewer services to some of WSU-DMC's 1,500 patients, unless the clinic can secure emergency funding in the next two months. ...
The federal grant money will not be lost, but funneled to other area AIDS agencies. But that won't help those served by WSU-DMC, which has a track record of good work with indigent AIDS patients.
If the Detroit Health Department wanted to send a message that tardiness will no longer be tolerated, some kind of penalty would have done it. Pulling the entire grant is excessive punishment. The person responsible for the late paperwork is not the one who'll pay. Detroit's neediest citizens will take the hit. ...
May 1 The Guardian, London, on Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army (news - web sites):
It has been one of the more peculiar conventions of Northern Irish politics. Almost as a matter of politeness, one is meant to discuss Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army as if they were two separate entities. Ask Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein's president, why the IRA have done this or failed to do that and he will tell you to put that question to the IRA or insist he does not speak for them but for the wider and vaguer ``republican movement.'' He will never, despite countless attempts to trap him, speak of the IRA and Sinn Fein as if they were synonymous. Unionists may refer to Sinn Fein/IRA but republicans themselves never confuse the two.
Now Mr Adams' partner in the republican leadership has broken that convention. Martin McGuinness has ended decades of denial and hedging to admit what close observers said they always knew: that he was a senior figure in the IRA. ...
This was a risk worth taking. For the pretence of complete separation of Sinn Fein and IRA was another example of the abnormality of Northern Irish politics. The secretary of state, John Reid, says this burst of honesty signals a new openness. We hope that it signals not only that - but a new maturity, too.
April 29 Yomiuri Shimbun, Tokyo, on U.S.-China relationship:
The fundamental structure of the U.S.-China relationship under the Bush administration is almost the same as that of during the Clinton administration, which viewed China as a `strategic partner.' But, the U.S. administration seems to have shifted its focus from cooperation in the Clinton era to confrontation.
There are a number of issues between the United States and China that could lead to further deterioration of bilateral relations if not dealt with properly - including China's bid to host 2008 Olympic Games (news - web sites) in Beijing and China's entry into the World Trade Organization (news - web sites)....
We urge the two countries to engage in a constructive dialogue to build a stable relationship. But, at least for now, we have to be prepared for strained relations between the Untied States and China.
May 1 As-Safir, Beirut, Lebanon, on Iraqi sanctions and Saddam's birthday:
The kind of news that came out of Baghdad marking Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s birthday on the 28th of April evokes feelings of pity more than any other sentiment, including rage, pain and even disgust.
Pity is generated by the reality that what is truly an oppressive, decade-old siege against the Iraqi people and that which all the Arabs are trying to lift, seems like a mere drop in the sea of another siege that the Iraqi regime is imposing against its people.
Since the end of its invasion of Kuwait and the start of sanctions against Iraq, Baghdad has been saying that tens of thousands of Iraqi children have died because of lack of medicine and milk, and that a similar number of sick and elderly people have lost their lives because of lack of treatment, and that the oil for food program only barely provides the Iraqi people with their basic needs, etc.. There is no need to demonstrate that what Baghdad says in this regard contradicts totally with what this same Baghdad says about lavish expenditure on celebrations marking Saddam Hussein's birthday.
May 1 The Egyptian Gazette, Cairo, on easing Palestinian-Israeli tension:
Talk about easing Palestinian-Israeli tension should be a reason for cautious optimism. But Israel's gimmicks are adding to regional uncertainties. During his brief visit to Cairo on Sunday, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres announced ``unconditional and immediate steps'' to make life easier for the Palestinians.
The announcement inspired hope that at long last Israeli leaders have experienced a change of heart. But on the ground, Israel is as brutal as ever in its oppression of Palestinians.
Despite Peres' announcement, Israeli troops continue to wage an all-out war in Palestinian areas. Palestinian officials contend that the announced ``unconditional and immediate'' steps proclaimed by Peres during his whistle-stop tour of Egypt and Jordan are nothing short of hollow promises.
Israel's unchecked infringements and unkept promises are fueling regional turbulence and leave no room for the recovery of an apparently moribund peace process. Israelis will not escape the fallout.
April 30 The Bangkok Post, Thailand, on the first tourist into space:
NASA's firm opposition to Mr. Tito's space adventure was based on the notion that he had no business being on board the International Space Station (news - web sites). He is an amateur. He might do something foolish or get in the way. Such statements are the product of snobbishness. Only people with 'the right stuff,' such as NASA's privileged few, are capable of the discipline needed to function in space.
Mr. Tito's trip shows that not only has everyone the potential to fulfill his dreams through hard work and dedication but that we all have the innate ability to accomplish any task set before us. It shows that spacemen are not a superhuman breed but real people just like the rest of us.
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