Thursday Roundup: Condi Gives Cheney The Deke

What are we doing talking with North Korea? I thought we didn't do that diplomacy thing. Doesn't that encourage the terrorists?

Maybe Condoleezza Rice, unlike the rest of the Bush administration, doesn't think diplomacy is a dead end after all. Or maybe she realized that that's what her department is supposed to be doing, so if she doesn't get any diplomatic brownie points in before Bush leaves office, her stock is going to be pretty low.

Either way, the Times addresses how Condi did an end run around Cheney & Co.'s recalcitrant refusal to have serious one-on-one diplomatic talks with North Korea. Not only did she release $25 million in funds that the US had frozen in exchange for North Korea's shutting down a nuclear reactor, but hours after that she announced that Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, was about to get on a plane and fly into North Korea to "get the six-party process moving," as Hill put it, and discuss ending North Korea's nuclear program. It's encouraging to read some positive progress coming from one of the three areas the CIA identified years ago as being the most potentially dangerous, seeing as the other two are either being actively made worse by our actions (the Middle East) or being comparatively ignored (Colombia).

But lest you think something got in the water in DC that was making everyone hold hands and sing Kumbayah, please observe the latest on the immigration reform bill. After weeks of back-and-forth wrangling trying to find an acceptable compromise, some legislators are pushing to address each of the four parts of the bill separately. One paragraph of the Politico story sums up the problem with that pretty succinctly:

This year, the bipartisan Senate negotiating group started from the premise that any legislation must be comprehensive, reflecting its read on political and legislative reality. Democrats would be unlikely to support an enforcement-only approach, just as Republicans would not back a bill that only legalizes the 12 million illegal workers.

The article also has a quote from our very own Senator John Cornyn, who is desperately trying to make himself look more important than his 77-out-of-100 power ranking would indicate he is. He is, of course, in favor of the piecemeal approach to immigration reform — probably so he can vote down a path to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented immigrants in Texas, despite the fact that nearly 60 percent of his constituency is in favor of what he calls "amnesty." (If you're interested — and you should be — StopCornyn.com has a useful roundup of the latest news on the candidates for the Democratic nomination trying to take out one of the most ineffective and unpopular senators in Congress.)

I wonder what the Fort Worth Star-Telegram thinks of getting Cornyn out of office. They just put out an editorial discussing our rank of 49 on quality of health care in the state. They note that while other states are working to improve health care for their residents, the Texas government seems to not care quite so much about that sort of thing. The best hope, according to FWST? Holding out for a national solution expanding health insurance coverage. "If our state leaders won't go to the mat, a national figure is our best shot. Ironically, no state would benefit more." Bet that wouldn't stop Cornyn (or KBH, for that matter) from voting against it.

Finally today, if you need another reason to support the federal push to allow Medicare to negotiate for its drug prices like the VA does, this might be right up your alley: Texas filed suit yesterday against three pharmaceutical companies for falsely reporting overly high prices for their drugs, costing the state millions in reimbursements to retailers. If you need the point driven home again: the corporate structure exists to maximize the profit of shareholders, and it only makes sense for it to do so at any opportunity — which is why it doesn't make sense to give them free rein over issues of public welfare.