The Guantanamo blues

I wish I’d have written this Philadelphia Inquirer editorial.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote, certain basic rights belong to all people simply by virtue of being human. At Gitmo and other “war on terror” prisons, that principle is being trampled. The damage being done to American values in the name of safeguarding American lives may be hard to calculate. But it’s real.

Long before the triple suicide, the sorry saga of Guantanamo called into question whether the White House’s lawless policy on detainees was doing more harm than good to Americans’ security. Gitmo may be a better recruitment tool for al-Qaeda than it is a source of useful intelligence.

It should be beyond debate that it’s wrong for a democracy that extols human rights to hold men indefinitely without charge or due process.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

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Pay-to-play ban must stay

The Asbury Park Press offers some tough talk on pay-to-play, as a top Democrat calls for a relaxation on rules put in place two years ago. The Democrat — state party Chairman Joe Cryan — says the rules are drying campaign funding. The Press responds this way: “Hey, Joe! That was the whole point: To prevent contractors from making political contributions to candidates in exchange for government contracts.”

Hard to argue. But Cryan’s basic point — that the shrivelling campaign accounts will leave the field only to those candidates wealthy enough to fund their own campaigns — is worth considering.

But the answer is not to gut the current rules. As the Press points out:

Pay-to-play is a scourge that has cost taxpayers in this state billions of dollars in inflated no-bid contracts. It also has helped produce public policy driven by what’s best for large campaign contributors rather than what’s best for the citizens of New Jersey.

The answer is to tighten them while crafting a real and effective public-financing scheme.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

New Dylan on the way


News for Bob Dylan fans — a new disc is due by summer’s end.

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Bob Dylan (music) will issue “Modern Times,” his 44th album and first new set in five years, on Aug. 29.

According to Columbia Records, the album features 10 new Dylan originals he recorded this winter with his touring band–guitarists Stu Kimball and Denny Freeman, multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron, bassist Tony Garnier and drummer George Recile. Dylan sang and played keyboards, guitars, and harmonica.

The “Modern Times” tracklisting includes “Thunder on the Mountain,” “Spirit on the Water,” “Workingman’s Blues” and “When The Deal Goes Down.”

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

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Another turning point, another ebbing tide

Tom Englehardt of TomDispatch offers this bit of perspective in the death of Abu Musad al-Zarqawi:

Every now and then, you have to rely on history as your guide. And hasn’t this happened to us enough? Don’t we know that, in every turning-of-the-tide moment in Iraq, it soon turns out that, despite the hoopla, our tide was ebbing and someone else’s invariably rising? A number of experts are already suggesting that Zarqawi’s death will have “minimal impact” on the Iraqi resistance and may, in fact, serve to strengthen it by removing the most divisive and detested oppositional figure in the country; or perhaps, as the superb independent journalist Nir Rosen suggests in a thoughtful obit at the Truthdig website, Zarqawi’s death “was the greatest advertisement for his cause” and the path he blazed into sectarian warfare is now unstaunchable.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.