Opinion-Columns.com

Sanctions--the Feel-Good Solution

Sanctions are the diplomatically imposed presidential equivalent to eight year-olds shouting at recess;

Did not!
Did too!!
Did not!!!

Kicking and Screaming Our Way to the G-8 Conference

It’s all so embarrassing.

Nation after nation tries to get America to limit its emissions and then we’re caught between 1st and 2nd base in a rundown over the cost to American industry. Top (and usually unnamed) administration officials tell the world that Americans will not support a wiggle or a squiggle in their standard of living in order to guarantee a living with standards.

The View of "Administration Hard Liners"

The subject is Iran and Washington has been thrown into its usual tizzy over the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report that the Iranians are not working and playing well with others.

The Fed-Ex War Czar

President Bush finally has his czar and he did it, reportedly, without having ever read Anna Karenina or War and Peace. Czars are easier to love the less you actually know about them.

540 Days to Go? I’m ALREADY Tired of the Candidates

How in the name of electoral-process did we get where we are?

Please! Lead me to the nearest smoke-filled room, where I can get my candidates the old-fashioned way—from political bosses. Dick Daley in Chicago is pretty much the last of the species left standing.

C’mon, Dick, give me a Democrat.

Staying With No Staying-Power

It’s stunning how difficult it is to get stubborn people to change (or leave) when they have no shame.

Paul Wolfowitz over at the World Bank is an example, but we’re not lacking for others in this administration. Rumsfeld was and Gonzales is yet a further example. The work of administering grinds to a halt, but the Bush administration shudders on like a rudderless ship.

Nuclear Lunacy from the Monastic Comfort of Purdue University

Seldom do I get sufficiently worked-up by a newspaper OpEd piece to drop what I expected to write about and fume without waiting for the customary drop of a hat. Louis Rene Beres, a professor at Purdue, dropped his hat and my jaw, simultaneously, on the OpEd pages of the Christian Science Monitor.

George Bush, Avoiding Personal Shame

Today’s story caught me a little off guard, because I somehow expected that Iraqi soldiers wounded in battle were getting the same sort of treatment as our guys. Our guys are in Germany in less than a day, getting the world’s best treatment. Their guys are lucky if they get first aid from the American military, then they’re on their own for recovery in what’s left of the Iraqi hospital system.

Just What’s Needed, Another Road Map

It’s a taxi-ride from Israel to Palestine and yet the Road Map for Peace in the Middle East hasn’t been much help in bringing these countries together. Drive down the coast to Tel Aviv and turn left—how hard can it be?

Catch-22 Over at Gonzalesville

Monica Goodling was the conduit between Karl Rove and what remained of the Justice Department under the tutelage of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Director of Public Affairs for the United States Department of Justice is the title, White House liaison is the job, which encompasses a wider ripple than Rove (if wider ripples exist).