Tuesday Roundup - Selective News

Vice President Dick Cheney is currently on a diplomatic tour of the Middle East, and earlier today, at the Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, a suicide bomber made it through one security gate before detonating. The attack happened far from Cheney and he wasn't harmed, but a number of NATO soldiers were hurt or killed along with some Afghani truck drivers. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

This is of particular interest after the revelation late yesterday that General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, feels as if the US military is not well-equipped to handle other conflicts than what it currently has on its plate. Things, as they say, are tough all over.

Presidential politics involves finding things out about people and then publicizing those things very hard. The hysteria that accompanies that behavior sometimes results in the release of information about people that doesn't really matter. For instance, Senator Clinton has been the treasurer and secretary of the Clinton family charity since 2001, and has forgotten to include that in her Senate ethics filings several times. Rules are rules and obviously she should have disclosed it, but I don't think it is necessarily worth a Washington Post two-pager.

Even more silly is this from the Drudge Report — Al Gore has a big house and his utility bill is really high. This obviously means he's a bad person or something. It seems like there could be more important stuff to talk about.

Or I could be wrong. He's a screenshot of CNN.com from this morning:

So they have the Cheney story on the left there, and you can't see it, but there's a big peacock selling mortgage refinance loans over on the right. But the thing in the middle of the page, the Latest News, is a collection of the stories they lead with — they want you to see these very important things. The Dow is down, the White House and Congress argue, and then we get to stories about thick sorority girls, and Anna Nicole Smith, and crappy grades. Believe me, I understand the need for content, but still — you should be able to cook up a better headline than "Mom admits coaching kids to fake retardation."

Attorney General Greg Abbot ruled last week that county clerks must remove social security numbers from official documents before making them public. This creates a problem for clerks because with most current county office structures, it is extremely difficult to meet the new regulations. More people will have to be hired in offices across the state. It is a level of bureaucratic unpleasantness, and I am curious to see how it will be paid for.

There is a lot of legislation floating around this session about law enforcement use of tasers. Representative Lon Burnam filed four bills on the subject on Monday alone. I think that training with tasers and requiring a license to use them isn't unreasonable to ask. I also think that a moratorium on their use for a while during a period where some of those protocols are worked out isn't a terrible idea either.

Finally, there is some in-fighting being made public in Harris County over Judge Robert Eckels' successor. He is stepping down as Harris County Judge for a private sector gig, but it is widely assumed that he is going to run for something statewide. Now the Harris County GOP is saying that Eckels might lose "the base" if he doesn't support someone they like as his replacement. I know this sort of thing can work towards a desired political end sometimes, but in this case I'm happy it is Republicans doing the hollering.