Sounding shrill
“Maybe Sen. Hillary Clinton has come down with a bad case of tone-deafness. Or maybe she’s caught MoveOn disease,” the New York Post’s Deborah Orin writes.
“But over the past week the wannabe moderate with an eye on a 2008 White House race suddenly sounds shrilly left wing,” Miss Orin said. “Just hours after last [week’s] London terror bombings, Clinton tried to score instant political points off those deaths by accusing President Bush of failing to protect U.S. mass transit.
“A few days later, she compared Bush to Mad magazine’s goofy Alfred E. Neuman, painting him with a ’What, me worry?’ world view. ’That’s not how people want to hear a president or a first lady speak,’ says a veteran Democratic fund-raiser.”
“Then Tuesday she copy-catted Sen. John Kerry and nodded to echo his view that Bush guru Karl Rove must go even though the special prosecutor probing who leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name has yet to accuse anyone of wrongdoing. Clinton of all people should be wary of jumping to conclusions before a probe is done.”
Hatch’s advice
“In 1993, President Clinton sought my input when considering a replacement for the retiring Justice Byron White,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, writes at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com).
“Some senators are today fond of waving my book ’Square Peg,’ in which I described cautioning President Clinton that confirming some candidates he was considering, such as then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, would be difficult. President Clinton instead nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and she was easily confirmed.” Mr. Hatch said.
“President Clinton sought my input without my demanding it because he believed it would help him fulfill his constitutional responsibility for making judicial nominations. He did so not because Senate Republicans threatened filibusters or demanded some kind of veto power over his nominations. We did not try to impose a ’consensus’ standard or insist that a nominee meet some super-majority ’widespread support’ threshold.”
“While I appreciate publicity for my book, I have yet to hear a Democratic senator who holds it up also quote from page 126, where I write: ’One of the consequences of a presidential election … is that the winner has the right to appoint nominees to the court.’ In fact, at the same time I was giving President Clinton the input he sought, I also said on the Senate floor: ’The President won the election. He ought to have the right to appoint the judges he wants to.’ Some who today demand consultation appear to have rejected that notion altogether.”
Biased coverage
“An assistant editorial page editor with the St. Paul, Minn., Pioneer Press has written a column, headlined ’Why They Hate Us,’ castigating his fellow journalists for biased coverage of the Iraq War,” the Media Research Center’s Rich Noyes reports at www.mediaresearch.org.
Mark Yost explained that he saw the same media pattern when he served in the U.S. Navy in the 1980s.
“Substitute ’insurgent’ for ’Sandinista,’ ’Iraq’ for ’Soviet Union,’ ’Bush’ for ’Reagan’ and ’war on terror’ for ’Cold War,’ and the stories need little editing,” he said. “The U.S. is ’bad,’ our enemies ’understandable’ if not downright ’good.’ ”
Mr. Yost, in his July 12 column, chastised most of the Iraq coverage as inaccurate.
“I know the reporting’s bad because I know people in Iraq,” he said. “A Marine colonel buddy just finished a stint overseeing the power grid. When’s the last time you read a story about the progress being made on the power grid? Or the new desalination plant that just came on-line, or the school that just opened, or the Iraqi policeman who died doing something heroic? No, to judge by the dispatches, all the Iraqis do is stand outside markets and government buildings waiting to be blown up.”
Arnold’s other job
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was criticized yesterday for accepting millions of dollars from fitness magazines.
Mr. Schwarzenegger is being paid about $8 million over five years to write monthly columns for Muscle & Fitness and Flex, and to serve as executive editor for both magazines published by American Media, the Associated Press reports.
The publications derive much of their profit from advertisements for nutritional supplements. Last year, Mr. Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill seeking to crack down on the use of performance-enhancing substances in high school sports.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jackie Speier, called on Mr. Schwarzenegger to sever his ties with the publisher.
“The governor of the state of California makes some important decisions every day. Today, he has to make a decision about a conflict of interest — his own,” the senator said.
The governor does not accept his $175,000 annual salary from the state, and California law allows elected officials to keep outside jobs.
Court betting
Internet bettors think the odds are good that a Hispanic, possibly Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, will be confirmed as the next justice on the Supreme Court, Reuters news agency reports.
Dublin-based Tradesports.com on Wednesday put the odds that Mr. Gonzales will replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor at 9 to 1, while Emilio Garza, a U.S. appeals court judge, was the favorite at 4 to 1.
The numbers have reversed in Mr. Garza’s favor over the last week or so of the political battle, said Mike Knesevitch, a spokesman for the Web site, which is designed as an exchange that allows traders to buy and sell option contracts.
On sites that let gamblers bet against the house, Mr. Gonzales remains the favorite.
Costa Rica-based Bodog.com has Mr. Gonzalez at 3 to 2, followed by John Roberts, another U.S. appeals court judge, at 2 to 1. Mr. Garza’s odds are 4 to 1.
Expensive trip
Forty-four members of Congress flew to Cape Canaveral for the scrubbed launch of space shuttle Discovery at a cost of more than $73,000, according to figures provided to the Associated Press yesterday.
Some lawmakers would be willing to try again once NASA sets a new launch date, but it depends on the congressional schedule.
The Air Force flew 35 lawmakers to Florida on Wednesday in two C40B aircraft, the equivalent of a 737-700 business jet. The cost, based on an hourly rate of $7,960, totaled $63,680, the service said. The round trip is about four hours.
NASA ferried nine House members in a smaller executive jet, similar to the type used by corporate executives. The space agency said the cost of that plane was $9,456.
• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.
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