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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (13569)	10/23/2003 9:23:17 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 794275

The Senate was 59/38 on this vote. They need a 67/33 to override a veto. ____________________________________________________ October 23, 2003 In Blow to Bush, Senate Votes to Ease Cuba Travel Limits By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS - NEW YORK TIMES ASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — In a firm rebuke to President Bush over Cuba policy, the Senate voted overwhelmingly today to ease travel restrictions on Americans seeking to visit the island. The 59-to-38 vote came less than two weeks after President Bush, in a Rose Garden ceremony, announced that he would tighten the travel ban in an attempt to halt illegal tourism there. The House passed a similar measure by a wide margin on Sept. 9. So today's vote placed the president and Republican Congressional leaders uncomfortably on a collision course, leaving an angry White House threatening to veto an important spending bill and a growing number of lawmakers from both parties demanding an overhaul of the American sanctions regime against Havana. The vote also highlighted a widening split between farm-state Republicans, who oppose trade sanctions in general or are eager to increase sales to Cuba, and Cuban-American leaders, whom the White House views as essential to the president's political strength in Florida. Several influential Republican senators voted against the president, including John Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the armed services committee, and Pat Roberts of Kansas, the chairman of the intelligence committee, as well as numerous conservatives from rural states, including Senators James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. Senator Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican who co-sponsored the amendment, criticized what he called an American "stranglehold" on Cuba, a nation of 11 million located within 100 miles of United States shores. The decades-old travel ban, he said, merely deepens the misery of Cubans without providing fresh ideas to the Marxist-led nation. "Unilateral sanctions stop not just the flow of goods, but the flow of ideas," Senator Enzi said. "Ideas of freedom and democracy are the keys to positive change in any nation." The White House countered that allowing unfettered American travel to Cuba would provide the government of President Fidel Castro with an economic bonanza, allowing him to cover up his shortcomings as a repressive dictator. "It is vitally important to maintain these sanctions and restrictions," said one senior administration official. Their purpose, he said, "is to prevent unlicensed tourism in Cuba, which provides economic resources — American dollars — to the Castro regime, while doing nothing to help the Cuban people." The official said the president's advisers would recommend that he veto the bill if it emerges from a conference committee. President Bush made his own case for the restrictions on Oct. 10, when he pledged to step up enforcement of the travel ban, by intensifying inspections of travelers and shipments to and from Cuba. The Department of Homeland Security immediately announced that it would direct "intelligence and investigative resources" to identify travelers or businesses that circumvent the sanctions against Cuba. Mr. Bush's announcement, which included the creation of a commission to plan for a post-Castro Cuba, represented the first substantive response to a mounting outcry among some Cuban exile groups over Mr. Castro's imprisonment of about 75 Cuban dissidents last spring. In addition, some Cuban American leaders had voiced outrage of the administration's decision to repatriate 12 Cubans accused of hijacking a government boat. nytimes.com

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (13569)	10/23/2003 10:14:45 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 794275

I understand the frustration, but this approach won't work. Not only that, it is counterproductive. It lays them open to a "Thought Control" charge. "The Hill" __________________________________________________ Kingston backs academic diversity measure By Jonathan E. Kaplan Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) and several other conservative lawmakers lashed out at elite universities yesterday for their perceived intolerance toward conservative viewpoints in the academic world. The lawmakers put their political muscle behind a nonbinding “Academic Bill of Rights.” If the bill passes, universities could adopt any or all of 12 principles — ranging from the hiring and firing of professors to grading students solely on the basis of their answers and knowledge of a subject without respect to their political viewpoints. “This bill seeks academic diversity,” Kingston told the group of lawmakers, students and reporters. “When it comes to intellectual diversity, we want a level playing field.” Stanley Fish, a dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told The Hill: “This legislation is either superfluous because colleges have already enacted what is in the legislation or it is dangerous because it could become a possible instrument of political bullying.” He added conservatives should be uncomfortable with the bill’s “post-modern assumptions.” For example, the bill states “there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge.” Fish said there are established truths that universities must teach. Kingston said that the Committee on Education and the Workforce might consider the bill. There would be no mandates included in the legislation to punish universities that fail to adopt its provisions. He also dismissed a question as to whether it was smart politics to attack university professors and administrators, who are disproportionately Jewish, at a time when the GOP is making inroads among American Jews. “That’s bizarre,” he said. It is President Bush’s positions on Israel that Jewish voters care about, he added. Kingston started drafting the bill after a June meeting with Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and David Horowitz, a conservative commentator who has studied alleged anti-conservative bias in academia. Horowitz, who was unavailable for comment, also met with Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a former college president. A political firestorm erupted in Colorado last month when Republicans in the state Legislature backed a similar measure. Critics there called the bill a “blacklist.” Several of the conservative lawmakers and students spoke about their own experience of bias in college and graduate studies. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) said he felt he did not have a right to his point of view as a student at Washington & Lee University and the University of South Carolina Law School. “Students get an absolute brainwashing,” said Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.). Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) said his daughter, a law student at Michigan State University, was afraid to speak up in class to express her conservative views. Rep. Tom Osborne (R-Neb.), the former football coach at the University of Nebraska, said he wanted “to take extreme personal views out of the classroom. A free society depends on an electorate that can think.” But Fish dismissed those concerns. He said, “There is no relationship between your actions at the ballot box and how you teach in the classroom.” Jason Mattera, a student at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I., said that university administrators tried to shut down a conservative alternative newspaper. Ed Kavanagh, the university’s provost, told The Hill that no such thing had happened. The Hawk’s Right Eye, the conservative paper, had run a mock version of the school’s newspaper with swastikas over faces of prominent African Americans and another issue depicted a lewd act of child molestation. “We realized we had some oversight problems. We want to encourage freedom of expression,” Kavanagh said. For now, the group will have to get approval of its material from an academic adviser of its choosing. In an op-ed Mattera wrote for Horowitz’s website (www.frontpagemag.com), he credits fellow student Jedediah Jones as a co-author. Kavanagh said Jones is not a student at Roger Williams College. “The liberal chickens won’t show up,” Kingston said. “Thirty-five-year-old professors don’t have a problem intimidating an 18-year-old kid, but will they show up” for a debate? He said they would not. thehill.com