From The Washington Post:

A surgeon general’s report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration’s policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate.

….

Richard H. Carmona, who commissioned the “Call to Action on Global Health” while serving as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, recently cited its suppression as an example of the Bush administration’s frequent efforts during his tenure to give scientific documents a political twist.

But whether American tax dollars should be used “to help tackle global health problems” is not a scientific question, it is a political question. Whether “to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy” is a political, not a scientific, question. And asking “corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate” is a political request, not a scientific one.

Clearly, the writers at The Washington Post (and other similarly misguided liberals) don’t understand what are scientific questions and what are political or policy questions. It looks like the former surgeon general isn’t very clear on the concept either. Good thing a man with such a basic misunderstanding was not reappointed. Or maybe these are just more in the long, unending stream of disingenuous, partisan hits from the president’s ideological enemies. We report, you decide.

Via The Oregonian:

The two boys tore down the hall of Patton Middle School after lunch, swatting the bottoms of girls as they ran — what some kids later said was a common form of greeting.

But bottom-slapping is against policy in McMinnville Public Schools. So a teacher’s aide sent the gawky seventh-graders to the office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school soon interrogated them.

After hours of interviews with students the day of the February incident, the officer read the boys their Miranda rights and hauled them off in handcuffs to juvenile jail, where they spent the next five days.

Now, Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, face the prospect of 10 years in juvenile detention and a lifetime on the sex offender registry in a case that poses a fundamental question: When is horseplay a crime?

Bradley Berry, the McMinnville district attorney, said his office “aggressively” pursues sex crimes that involve children. “These cases are devastating to children,” he said. “They are life-altering cases.”

Oh, this is devastating to the children alright, and will likely leave life-long scars. And the person who is most responsible for heaping this devastating, life-altering abuse on these two boys is Bradley Berry himself. At least Mike Nifong went after grown men.

Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison are quite simply victims of child abuse. We don’t say that to engage in hyperbole; they are being abused. The fact the abusers are agents of the government only makes it worse. When the state, which exists to protect the rights of its citizens, is the abuser, there’s essentially nowhere else to turn. Bradley Berry’s fate should be at least as bad as Mike Nifong’s.

In a just society, Mr. Berry, along with the principal who allowed the cops to interrogate the boys, the cops who did the interrogating, the cops who put the boys in jail for five days, and any judge that lets the case proceed would be fired, disbarred, forced to resign, etc. Some will argue they were just following the law. Well, injustice doesn’t become justice simply because it’s legislated. Slavery and segregation were legal at one time, that didn’t make it right. For starters, we certainly would not allow our kids to return to that school if they attended there.

If you’d like to contribute some money, even a few dollars, to help these boys’ families with their legal costs, the information is here.

From the Chicago Tribune (via Opinion Journal):

Opponents of the withdrawal proposal argue that Iraq would be left in chaos and that genocide would occur as a result.

“We heard that argument over and over again about the bloodbath that would engulf the entire Southeast Asia, and it didn’t happen,” Kerry said, dismissing the charge out of hand as he argued that the American presence only makes the situation worse every day.

Wow. Somebody quick, run over to a video store and rent “The Killing Fields” for Senator Kerry. Next thing you know, he’ll be telling us that Dick Cheney detonated WTC Building 7, and fire can’t melt steel.

The ability of Democrats to get away with making the most outrageous and obviously untrue statements is simply staggering. Whether it’s “Bush lied us into war”, or comparing U.S. troops to Pol Pot (which we guess according to Kerry isn’t a bad comparison since there was no bloodbath in SE Asia), or bellowing over and over “how dare you question our patriotism!” when no one has, or claiming we’ll all be under 20 feet of water due to global warming – real journalists would not allow these kinds of statements to go unchallenged. But too many members of the DeMSM clearly don’t qualify as real journalists. If a prominent Republican made such a ridiculous and offensive assertion as Kerry made, CNN and the NY Times would each do a 14 part series debunking the comments and accusing the offender of all sorts of malicious intent. But we’re confident that following these comments, Senator Kerry’s MSM status as “war hero” will remain intact.

At Monday night’s Democratic presidential primary debate, amid his usual vapid boilerplate like his “…commitment on issues like education, my commitment on issues like health care…”, Senator Barack Obama made a terribly misguided statement about meeting with the leaders of various regimes, promising in effect to meet with the leaders of all the worst rogue nations in the world during his first year in office as president:

QUESTION: In 1982 [sic], Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since.

In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

COOPER: I should also point out that Stephen is in the crowd tonight.

Senator Obama?

OBAMA: I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire. And the reason is because they understood that we may not trust them and they may pose an extraordinary danger to this country, but we had the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward.

And I think that it is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them. We’ve been talking about Iraq — one of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria because they’re going to have responsibilities if Iraq collapses.

They have been acting irresponsibly up until this point. But if we tell them that we are not going to be a permanent occupying force, we are in a position to say that they are going to have to carry some weight, in terms of stabilizing the region.

Now, this answer is ridiculous on so many levels. Iran and Syria are now deeply involved in destabilizing Iraq. The notion that a President Obama is going to go over there and convince the leaders of these two terror states, which are involved in trying to chase the Great Satan out of Iraq, to help stabilize the country, is naive in the extreme. This is especially true since Obama is in favor of retreat.

One of Senator Obama’s spokesmen, David Axelrod, quickly tried to spin the statement after the debate:

But after the debate, speaking to reporters in the spin room, Axelrod claimed Obama didn’t mean any such meetings would actually take place.

“He said that he would be willing to talk,” Axelrod explained. “And what he meant was, as a government, he’d be willing and eager to initiate those kinds of talks, just as during the Cold War there were low-level discussions and mid-level discussions between us and the Soviet Union and so on. So he was not promising summits with all of those leaders.”

But this attempt at spin after the fact doesn’t wash. To begin with, it obviously completely ignores the context of the question. Obama began his answer by suggesting that the Bush administration had no contacts with these other countries. But that is obviously untrue. An agreement was reached on North Korea’s nuclear program just a few months ago, for example. Whether that agreement was a good one or not is a separate issue, but to suggest that the administration isn’t engaging in diplomacy is an obvious falsehood.

So if Obama was really referring to “low-level discussions and mid-level discussions” as Axelrod suggests, then the statement meant nothing – he promised merely to continue doing what the government always does, while trying to pass it off as a call for a dramatic change of course.

The most likely scenario is Obama was simply spouting off without thinking through what he was saying, a further indication that he’s too inexperienced, not nearly ready to be the President of the United States.

It just doesn’t matter what the intelligence says, or what the facts on the ground in Iraq are, the Democrats will continue regurgitating the same talking points –

From the declassified summary of the new NIE:

“The terrorist network Al-Qaida will likely leverage its contacts and capabilities in Iraq to mount an attack on U.S. soil, according to a new National Intelligence Estimate on threats to the United States.”

From Democrat Congressman Ike Skelton:

“We must responsibly redeploy our troops out of Iraq, handing responsibility for security over to the Iraqis and leaving only those forces required for limited missions,” said Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “This will allow us to concentrate our efforts on Afghanistan and the al-Qaida terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.”

Pathetic.

They aren’t interested in debate, which makes last night’s dog and pony show in the Senate all the more absurd. There are some positive initial signs in Iraq as a result of the “surge”; it’s almost as if the Democrats are afraid it might work, they seem so intent on undermining the new strategy. If General Petraeus comes back in September with a report that indicates progress and greater hope for victory, the Democrats’ electoral strategy for 2008 collapses. That’s what the current “debate” is all about. They are invested now in defeat.

Senator John McCain eloquently elaborated on the point today on the Senate floor:

During our extended debate over the last few days, I have heard senators repeat certain arguments over and over again. My friends on the other side of this argument accuse those of us who oppose this amendment with advocating “staying the course,” which is intended to suggest that we are intent on continuing the mistakes that have put the outcome of the war in doubt. Yet we all know that with the arrival of General Petraeus we have changed course. We are now fighting a counterinsurgency strategy, which some of us have argued we should have been following from the beginning, and which makes the most effective use of our strength and does not strengthen the tactics of our enemy. This new battle plan is succeeding where our previous tactics have failed, although the outcome remains far from certain. The tactics proposed in the amendment offered by my friends, Senators Levin and Reed – a smaller force, confined to bases distant from the battlefield, from where they will launch occasional search and destroy missions and train the Iraqi military – are precisely the tactics employed for most of this war and which have, by anyone’s account, failed miserably. Now, that, Mr. President, is staying the course, and it is a course that inevitably leads to our defeat and the catastrophic consequences for Iraq, the region and the security of the United States our defeat would entail.

Yesterday, Democratic Senator Harry Reid called for a continued presence of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq:

“Understand even if you take (the) Feingold-Reid (proposal), Feingold-Reid called for American troops to remain in Iraq to do counterterrorism, to protect our assets in Iraq, to train the Iraqis,” Reid explained. “There’s estimates that that would still leave tens of thousands of troops in Iraq.”

[Reid] also said, “No one is calling for a precipitous withdrawal in Iraq.”

But Reid’s second assertion is not true. There is strong support on the left for a complete withdrawal from Iraq:

So the Senate consensus this week is building for partial withdrawal of American forces, with the remaining troops – the exact number unspecified by senators who speak on the topic – garrisoned inside U.S. bases in Iraq.

This outcome would not satisfy presidential contender Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., who has staked out the position of calling for complete exit of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Of course, Richardson is taking that position to appeal to a large segment of the Democratic party primary electorate. And essentially all the Democratic party leadership has been making statements about “ending the war” and “getting our troops home” for months or years now, without indicating that tens of thousands would remain in Iraq.

This item from Senators Robert Byrd and Hillary Clinton yesterday is a typical Democrat statement on the war:

This is not the fight Congress authorized, Mr. President. If you want to continue to wage this fight, come to Congress and make your case. Otherwise, bring our troops home.

There’s nothing in the column indicating that tens of thousands of troops would remain in Iraq. (Tellingly, there’s no mention at all of al Qaeda in the column either.)

And from the National Journal’s Blogometer:

[Lefty nutroots blogger Chris] Bowers responds [to the Reid statement]: “Wow. This is a remarkable admission, and one that virtually every Democratic politician has avoided like the plague. … After all, Democrats don’t exactly want to go around boasting that they will keep “tens of thousands” of troops in Iraq after claiming for nearly a year that we will end the war once in power.”

Democrats claiming one thing publicly while actually planning something else entirely? Color us shocked!

As for the idea of leaving a smaller force in Iraq for counter-terrorism operations, recall that these are some of the exact same people who complained that President Bush didn’t leave enough troops in Afghanistan for counter-terrorism operations. Now they want to leave fewer troops in Iraq for counter-terrorism operations, while leaving tens of thousands of troops in Iraq, while claiming they want to “end the war.” The utter incoherence makes one’s head spin.

The Democrats’ twin goals are to damage President Bush and to fool more people into voting for them so they can win the next election. Any harm done to the national interest is just collateral damage.

We were going to comment on the absolute nerve of Bill Clinton (and Hillary!) in criticizing President Bush for his commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence. You know, when you pardoned your felonious former business partner, your brother, the fugitive ex-husband of a rich campaign donor and a few terrorists, you ought to show just a little humility. But as the Clintons might say: “Humility? Huh? What’s that?”

But why re-invent the wheel? Here’s a great summation of the Clinton record on pardons and respect for the rule of law. Read the whole thing.

The commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence can be considered just partly by the fact that it has outraged all the right people. The Angry Left, including the nutroots bloggers, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, reacted with the expected feigned, and nakedly partisan, outrage.

Barack Obama, as we’ve no come to expect, responded with some vapid boilerplate from one of his routine campaign appearances:

“This decision to commute the sentence of a man who compromised our national security cements the legacy of an Administration characterized by a politics of cynicism and division, one that has consistently placed itself and its ideology above the law. This is exactly the kind of politics we must change so we can begin restoring the American people’s faith in a government that puts the country’s progress ahead of the bitter partisanship of recent years.”

Of course the conviction of Mr. Libby had nothing to do with compromising national security, that is a lie. He was convicted for lying under oath. Lying under oath is a serious offense, and a $250,000 fine (not to mention million of dollars in legal fees) is a serious penalty. As he shoehorns his empty rhetoric about “cynicism and division” onto another unrelated issue, perhaps Mr. Obama should take a look in the mirror.

We would have preferred a pardon for Mr. Libby, but the president at least mitigated the damage. Meanwhile, the criminalization of political disputes, to the detriment of our system of government, will likely continue unmitigated.