Do you think a truly liberal media outlet would have held this story for two weeks? Conservatives conveniently forget incidents like this that demonstrate a media all too willing to kowtow to the military and the administration.

“Let’s hope we can get Saddam back,” Pinkerton writes. “Yes, it will cost us; we’ll have to go back to giving him arms and money. But fortunately, Don Rumsfeld is still available for another Baghdad grip-and-grin — just like old times.”
–James P. Pinkerton, a former White House aide in the Reagan and Bush I administrations

Peter Carlson of the Washington Post writes:
[Pinkerton’s] piece [in American Conservative] seemed like wild satire until our military commanders in Iraq announced that they were handing Fallujah over to one of Saddam’s former generals and an army of Saddam’s former soldiers. It’s tough to write satire in times when reality is far weirder than anything a satirist can conjure up.

Speaking of The Post, it’s lost 3% of its circulation in the last six months.

A cable news channel for young adults? With Al Gore as chairman of the board?

There are no immediate family members of any of the prime civilian planners of this [Iraqi] war serving in it — beginning with President Bush and extending deep into the Defense Department. Only one of the 535 members of Congress, Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota, has a child in the war — and only half a dozen others have sons and daughters in the military.

…It was not always so. In other wars, the men and women in charge made sure their family members led the way. Since 9/11, the war on terrorism has often been compared to the generational challenge of Pearl Harbor; but Franklin D. Roosevelt’s sons all enlisted soon after that attack. Both of Lyndon B. Johnson’s sons-in-law served in Vietnam.

This is less a matter of politics than privilege. The Democratic elites have not responded more nobly than have the Republican; it’s just that the Democrats’ hypocrisy is less acute. Our president’s own family illustrates the loss of the sense of responsibility that once went with privilege. In three generations the Bushes have gone from war hero in World War II, to war evader in Vietnam, to none of the extended family showing up in Iraq and Afghanistan.

….The only solution is to bring back the draft. Not since the 19th century has America fought a war that lasted longer than a week with an all-volunteer army; we can’t do it now. It is simply not built for a protracted major conflict. The arguments against the draft — that a voluntary army is of higher quality, that the elites will still find a way to evade service — are bogus. In World War II we used a draft army to fight the Germans and Japanese — two of the most powerful military machines in history — and we won. The problems in the military toward the end of Vietnam were not caused by the draft; they were the result of young Americans being sent to fight and die in a war that had become a disaster.

One of the few good legacies of Vietnam is that after years of abuses we finally learned how to run the draft fairly. A strictly impartial lottery, with no deferments, can ensure that the draft intake matches military needs. Chance, not connections or clever manipulation, would determine who serves.
If this war is truly worth fighting, then the burdens of doing so should fall on all Americans. If you support this war, but assume that Pat Tillman and Other People’s Children should fight it, then you are worse than a hypocrite. If it’s not worth your family fighting it, then it’s not worth it, period. The draft is the truest test of public support for the administration’s handling of the war, which is perhaps why the administration is so dead set against bringing it back.

–William Broyles Jr., founding editor of Texas Monthly

The budget conference committee has adjourned until Thursday, even though there are still decisions to be made if a vote on the budget is to be taken Friday, as currently planned. (Giving lawmakers a couple of hours to study the budget; you get what you pay for part-time legislators)

The budget conference had reached tentative deals in several areas, including public schools, higher education and health and human services. Areas that [Del. Vince Callahan, leader of the House conferees] said appeared unresolved were salary increases, public safety and new judicial posts.
Now, Callahan said, public education and other areas are back on the table.

Responsibility for teacher pay raises would fall to the localities and presumably would be heavily underwritten with the burst of new state aid to county and city schools.

However, a lobbyist for the state’s teacher union said Richmond eventually would have to assume a direct role in boosting pay for teachers, now trailing the national average of $45,930 by about $2,500.

As a cushion against a future economic downturn, the negotiators – five from the House of Delegates and four from the Senate – earmarked an extra $87 million for the state’s depleted rainy-day account.

By the end of the next budget cycle, in June 2006, the fund will total more than $300 million. Less than four years ago, the fund had nearly $1 billion.

The Richmond Times Dispatch also compares revenues raised by the approved tax bill and the one Gov. Mark Warner (D) first proposed:

$35 million more for higher education
$40 million more for mental health

According to the Bristol Herald Courier, how to allot the ¼-cent for K-12 education is still unanswered.

Lawmakers must decide whether to allocate the money based on a locality’s school-age population, its ability to pay or where the sales tax revenue is generated.

The final decision could leave some school divisions with millions of dollars in new money, while others would get less than $1 million, Delegate Bud Phillips, D-Sandy Ridge, said Monday.

“If I had to pick one issue that could throw this whole budget process into disarray, it would be the distribution of the education funds,” Phillips said. “It was a sleeping giant. It was sleeping in the revenue bill, and it was not until it woke up that anybody saw the implications.”

…Some Northern Virginia school systems could get as much as $60 million in new state money if lawmakers use school-age population or the point of origin of sales tax revenue to allocate the funds, Phillips said. Rural schools could miss a golden opportunity to receive a generous portion of state money that only comes once in nearly two decades if ability to pay is not used in the formula, he added.

“Rural Virginia stands to gain millions or lose millions,” Phillips said. “Counties in Southwest Virginia could raise real estate taxes to $4 or $5 and we still wouldn’t have enough to educate our kids.”

Phillips said he favors a compromise that would allocate the money based on ability to pay and school population.

“It will be a huge fight if a compromise is not found,” the delegate said. “I don’t believe there would be enough votes to pass the House budget if a compromise is not found.”

…”The compromise that is gaining the most support is one-eighth based on school population and one-eighth on the composite index (ability to pay) and we already send one penny of sales tax back to localities based on school-age population,” [Sen. William Wampler, R-Bristol] said. “The good news is local schools will be receiving more funds, it’s just a question of what blend of formula we use.”

Smelling red meat, the Club for Growth, which recently failed to derail the re-nomination of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Spector, a moderate Republican, seems more bent on punishing its own rather than advancing an agenda. The group seems to want anybody but the incumbent. Maybe now’s the time for Virginia Dems to nominate Bill Clinton for a House seat.

Virginia’s pro-tax Republicans – “Benedict Arnolds” – will be targeted next year by the Club for Growth, its national president said yesterday.

“I would be willing to defeat every Republican who voted for the tax increase, even if it meant the Democrats took back control,” Stephen Moore told a breakfast meeting of reporters in Washington.

“The thing that was so frustrating as a Republican is that we had this opportunity to drive a stake through the heart of Mark Warner,” Moore said of Virginia’s Democratic governor.

“Up until last week, his governorship had been a complete and utter failure. Everything he had tried to do had failed. It’s so frustrating to see Republicans bail this guy out politically,” he said, referring to how 17 breakaway Republican delegates helped to pass a historic tax increase last week.

Freshman Del. Jeff Frederick (R-Prince William) plans meetings with advisory groups on education “to help develop proposed legislation.” Given the way he voted against the tax bill, I suspect, the only education group he’ll care about is the one for home-schoolers.

This will be a challenge:

Although UVa has no mandatory retirement age, many faculty members are reaching the time when most people retire.

Can UVA and other distinguished Virginia universities maintain highly respected faculty in times of tight budgets? That’s an issue that needs to be addressed in the ’05 elections.

The editorial page of the Richmond Times Dispatch characterizes those who came to the town hall meetings as being self-centered.

…it would be refreshing if the pleas echoing in Virginia this year more frequently would go beyond mere self-promotion, self-aggrandizement, and self-service. The sullen practices apply to all parties, influences, ideologies, philosophies, and persuasions. Those who would benefit – directly or in- – from greater spending laud the virtues of so-called public investments; those who would benefit – directly or in- – from specific tax reductions laud the virtues of tax-cutting. Certain groups confront dilemmas of competing interests, but self-interest dominates the stage.

A few years ago when parents of a local high school, myself included, criticized our school board for accelerating the building of a new high school and delaying the renovation of ours, we were roundly criticized for “pitting one neighborhood against another.”

I don’t think everyone advocating either for or against increased taxes is selfish. But the Times-Dispatch has a point: It’s responsible to question choices governments make and to advocate, for example, exactly where one would change a budget to accommodate one’s interests. That, after all, is the decision we often ask of government. We should be willing to take the heat for our choices.

But be prepared for criticism. In a story about our local school issue, a Washington Post report included this:

RENEW’s [the organization I was part of] activities have been “very destructive and very divisive,” said a School Board member who did not want to be identified.

Never mind that the School Board member cowardly criticized a neighborhood group anonymously (a Post editor later admitted he shouldn’t have let the official get away with it), but our questioning the board’s priorities was somehow out of bounds.

One hopes both RTD editors and local officials are ready for what a real debate would sound like.

A recent incident involving the Alexandria superintendent charged with drunk driving but not fired from her job was noted by Fredericksburg Cree Lance Star editors:

The decision [not to fire her] also illustrates the double standard that exists in the public schools regarding unacceptable behavior. Earlier this year, for example, a Spotsylvania County governor’s school student, whose record is “blemished” only with commendations, drew a five-day suspension because her backpack contained two Tylenol tablets. And she was lucky. Under Spotsylvania School Board rules, she could have gotten the boot for the year. Horror stories abound across Virginia and the nation about kids being furloughed from school for innocuous or merely technical offenses.

Such zero-tolerance policies may make rulings easy for educrats, but they ignore the targeted student’s prior record–the main factor that saved Ms. Perry–and the individual circumstances of a given case. (Ms. Perry suggests she was tired when she had some wine at an Alexandria restaurant and that the vino sneaked up on her.) Was Ms. Perry immune from the zero-tolerance regime because she is an adult holding an important position–one that pays $168,000 a year?

…Finally, this episode should be required reading for school boards everywhere before they derail the careers of students without considering the merits of each case. Rote punishment is a much more difficult policy to defend than one of compassion and forgiveness for human weakness.

Here, here.

Maybe it isn’t just the right wingers who will be drafting candidates.

The latest political phenomenon to emerge, however, is that Main Street types — the deep-pocketed, big business crowd — are vowing to cut off the political cash to those who voted against new investments in public schools, higher education, workforce training, health care and public infrastructure, and infuse with overly generous support those who did. No longer, they say, will their backing be taken for granted. And, moreover, a number of these fed-up, pinstriped folks are taking it a step further, planning to take a page from others’ playbooks and recruit “pro-Virginia” primary challengers to run against incumbent “nay-sayers,” both Republicans and Democrats, delegates and senators.

Al Qaeda has apparently enlisted the National Rifle Association as its lobbyist.

Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., said Monday he is introducing legislation that would ban the commercial sale of .50-caliber rifles. Backers of the bill say the weapons are easily attainable and less regulated than common handguns.

The legislation would exempt military and law enforcement use.

Moran said al-Qaida is known to have purchased 25 of the rifles.

Tom Diaz, an analyst at the Violence Policy Center in Washington, estimates there are thousands in circulation. The guns have turned up in arms caches of militia groups and drug dealers in the United States, he said.

Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, said the guns are used for hunting big game and in marksmanship competitions, among other purposes.

The legislation is an attempt to play on people’s emotions, he said.

“This a continuation of a trend started by gun ban groups and politicians to try and exploit the tragedy of 9-11 to further their flailing agenda of gun control,” he said.

…Moran read from an advertisement for Barrett Firearms that he said touts a $10 round of .50-caliber ammunition as capable of bringing down an aircraft.

Give me home where the buffalo roam

We are not alone!

Picture if you will, a sitting president, say one named Bill. He presents a plan to overhaul the medical industry and offers a plan that he says costs X. He twists arms, cajoles, turns on the charm, and finally, after an extraordinary eleventh hour battle on the House floor, gets it passed.

But wait, a few weeks later, Bill admits the price is X plus 50%. A low level bureaucrat goes public that he had the right figure all along, but the administration put pressure on him to conceal the information.

A marginally Democratic Congress refuses to investigate so the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service does and finds Bill’s administration might have broken the law.

My guess is Tom Delay would yell liar and call for impeachment.

This wasn’t very cleaver. You know who we’re talking about. He’s caught lying again and this time, it’s not only immoral, duplicitous, and business as usual at the Dubya White House, it’s illegal.

President Bush speaking, probably lying

The Columbia Journalism Review has an article about how the Texas media has covered Dubya since his days as governor. Most of the coverage was positive early in his career but not always since then. The most encouraging thing I read in the story is that Lou Dubose, former editor of The Texas Observer and author of books disparaging of Bush (the Observer has been one of the few a constant critics), is now co-writing another one – about Tom Delay.

But then again, finding something critical to say about Tom Delay is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Was transportation neglected in the budget battle or is there another plan?

Barnie Day thanks Republicans for doing all the heavy lifting, while Patrick Sweeney suggests House Speaker William Howell and House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith didn’t do their jobs in the budget battle.

Here are lessons learned by Gov. Mark Warner.

“They call it a freeze [on the car tax], but it’s a tax increase,” Gilmore said Friday. “It’s bad policy and bad for working people and families.”

I’m so sick and tired of the GOP claiming there are the only ones looking out for “working people and families.” Dems ought to appropriate the language when they talk about schools, health care, transportation, etc.

Again, The Washington Post quotes only one common man in an article about taxes – and it again is James Parmelee.

The new inspector general position sounds ominously like a political weapon instead of a true reform measure. As Jeff Schapiro points out in his weekly column, there are already plenty of state government watchdogs, but the most visible one, JLARC, hasn’t been giving conservatives the right answers.

Regarding Del. Gary Reese’s role in this, I’m reminded of the Oscar Levant quote: “I once said cynically of a politician, ‘He’ll doublecross that bridge when he comes to it.'”

Here’s a story that every Dem. should take to heart. Demonstrate responsibility

Some of our favorite lawmakers in the Assembly were handed their walking papers by the judge.

Lighten up, Chris Graham

Round-ups of the state’s local elections are here, here, and here, and here’s why.

Can you hear me now? Yes, but not for long.

Ah, to live in enlightened Virginia. “I’m just not for civil unions,” said [Del. Tim Hugo (R-Fairfax)]. “I think I’ve said enough on that one.”

Which is to say nothing and leave it the imagination.

Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax) made it official with his announcement that he is running for Lt. Governor in ‘05.

Petersen was first elected in 2001 when he surprised the political establishment by beating Jack Rust, the only incumbent to lose his job that year. Petersen also brought back to life a staple of retail politics, claiming to have knocked on 14,000 doors in his district. He was elected again last year by a 60-40 margin over Rust. Petersen was formerly a Fairfax City councilman.

One of his opponents, Del. Viola Baskerville (D-Richmond), was at the “first annual” Jefferson Jackson Day dinner in Loudoun County Friday night, where Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine addressed 250 Dems about his political roots, which included Republican parents but a feisty Democratic grandmother who set on the straight and narrow.