Hank Kalet

I was about to comment on George Will’s pissy column on the George Bush-Jim Webb tet a tet, but Pauline Kael at Talking Points Memo beat me to the punch:

In his edited version, the President asked Webb “a civil and caring question,” only to be met with “calculated rudeness.”

But I’ll give it a whirl anyway.

Here is Will’s partial transcript:

Wednesday’s Post reported that at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress, Webb “tried to avoid President Bush,” refusing to pass through the reception line or have his picture taken with the president. When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, “How’s your boy?” Webb replied, “I’d like to get them [sic] out of Iraq.” When the president again asked “How’s your boy?” Webb replied, “That’s between me and my boy.”

Sen.-elect Webb wasn’t exactly playing nice, but then he had just spent the last year of his life taking the president to task and suddenly playing nice and standing on ceremony would make him look a bit hypocritical.

But there was far more to the exchange than Mr. Will was willing to let on. Here is what the news section reported on Wednesday:

At a recent White House reception for freshman members of Congress, Virginia’s newest senator tried to avoid President Bush. Democrat James Webb declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the man he had often criticized on the stump this fall. But it wasn’t long before Bush found him.

“How’s your boy?” Bush asked, referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

“That’s not what I asked you,” Bush said. “How’s your boy?”

“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

Will takes Webb’s explanation — his unwillingness to be a happy backslapper and his understanding that making nice with the president would have sent the wrong message to voters who elected him to stand up to President Bush — as an example of him being a loose cannon.

But this is what he said:

“I’m not particularly interested in having a picture of me and George W. Bush on my wall,” Webb said in an interview yesterday in which he confirmed the exchange between him and Bush. “No offense to the institution of the presidency, and I’m certainly looking forward to working with him and his administration. [But] leaders do some symbolic things to try to convey who they are and what the message is.”

Hard to argue with his reasoning.

Perhaps it’s time for the Post to impose term limits on Mr. Will — who I find to be one of the most unreadable columnists working, a man who relies on expansive blathering and big words to hide his rather vacuous take on the world — and let someone who is not so connected to the Washington power structure take a shot.

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The Blog of South Brunswick

Mike Lukovich’s latest, from the Truthdig Web site. Lukovich is one of the top cartoonists out there. For more, click here.

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The Blog of South Brunswick

Another voice heard on the civil war over whether to call the chaos in Iraq a civil war: Colin Powell, the secretary of state that helped lead us into this mess.

From Rueters:

DUBAI –Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday Iraq had descended into civil war and urged world leaders to accept that “reality”.

Powell’s remarks came ahead of a meeting between Bush and Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki in the Jordanian capital to discuss the security developments in Iraq.

“I would call it a civil war,” Powell told a business forum in the United Arab Emirates. “I have been using it (civil war) because I like to face the reality,” added Powell.

He said world leaders should acknowledge Iraq was in civil war.

So, suddenly Mr. Powell is willing to speak up publicly. He did, according to Bob Woodward, warn the president that taking down Saddam Hussein might plunge Iraq into chaos — remember the “Pottery Barn” rule? — but that was behind the scenes. Publicly, though, he played the role of the good little soldier, making the administration’s anti-Iraq case before the United Nations, and he deserves whatever opprobrium has been and will continue to be heaped upon him.

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The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments today regarding whether the federal government should be required to apply the Clean Air Act to emmissions of greenhouse gases.

The Bush administration, as expected given its harsh antienvironmental bias, opposes the move — the product of a lawsuit filed by 12 states and 13 environmental groups.

This case is a prime example of the destructiveness of the Bush years — and not only because it is shows the effect that Bush’s antiregulatory and environmental attitude has on the agencies assigned to protect the public.

It also will be one of the first chances that we will have to see the Bush court in action. It is this more conservative court — shifted significantly to the right with the confirmation of Samuel Alito — that will decide this case and too many cases well into the future.

Already, according to the AP report I linked to above, Chief Justice John Roberts (Bush’s other appointee) and Justice Alito are indicating they have a dim view of the case. Added to Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, that’s a pretty strong conservative block. The swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, has a relatively conservative voting record, though he has been moving more toward the center in recent years and maybe taking over the position held by Sandra Day O’Connor — essentially, the pragmatic conservative who respects precedent and the political process — before she retired.

Here’s hoping the recent change in party composition in Congress puts an end to Bush’s court packing.

By the way, buried in this story is an example of the kind of bad reporting that passes for balance:

Many scientists believe that greenhouse gases, flowing into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, are leading to a warming of the Earth, rising sea levels and other marked ecological changes.

“Many” makes it seem as if global warming remains an open question (many feel one way, therefore there is a constituency that believes otherwise) when in reality there is consensus in the scientific community and the only objections these days are coming from corporate sponsored scientists and ideological hacks.

I would have written it this way:

A consensus has formed in the scientific community over the issue, with the vast majority of scientists believing that greenhouse gases, flowing into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, are leading to a warming of the Earth, rising sea levels and other marked ecological changes.

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The Blog of South Brunswick

Hard to imagine an editorial that more directly dismantles the bogus legislation that state Sen. Gerald Cardinale (R-Bergen) is offering as a sop to offset his attempt to amend the state Constitution to prevent same-sex marriage than the one that ran in The Record today.

There is nothing equal about this proposed legislation. As an example, two seniors living together to curb expenses is not the same as a same-sex couple living and sharing a life together in a committed relationship. The Equal Benefits Act mocks the commitment same-sex couples want to legally make, and it underscores the problems of implementing the state’s high court ruling.

The court gave the Legislature the discretion to decide whether to call same-sex unions marriage or something else. The court, though, was clear that same-sex couples were entitled to all the benefits of marriage.

The court went beyond the dollars and cents of marriage; it addressed the heart and soul of marriage. It recognized that same-sex couples are raising families and want the same legal and societal recognition for their unions, for their families.

The court, of course, punted, dumping this in the lap of the Legislature and making the civil rights of gay couples a matter of negotiation and political expediency.

Couples like Sarah and Suyin Lael of Dayton (pictured) deserve a lot better.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick