Disturbing White House security breach

The New York Times reported  uninvited guests got past security into the state dinner with the Prime Minister of India..

Coming two days after the 46th anniversary of the Secret Service's failures which contributed to the death of President Kennedy, this is seriously disturbing.

No matter what the cause, security breaches like this cannot be allowed with the threat level against President Obama.

46th anniversary of the assasination of President Kennedy

Today on the 46th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, I'm reading Brothers in arms:The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder, by Gus Russo and Stephen Molton.

The authors researched recently released archival material. The cover up which has fueled conspiracy theories was not of who killed President Kennedy but the extensive U.S. war against Cuba. Oswald acted alone but was motivated by a desire to retaliate for the attempts to assassinate Fidel. The authors found evidence that Cuban intelligence had been in contact with Oswald and may have known of his plan.

Are among the reasons that relations with Cuba are not normalized the lingering bitterness towards the Castro because of the Cuban intelligence service's relationship with Oswald?

On a related note, I hope the Secret Service learned from their incredible failures on that day to improve security for our president today.

What lesson can conservatives learn from the resignation of Van Jones?

Some Republicans and conservatives are celebrating the resignation of Van Jones. They misunderstand the significance of what just happened.


By marginalizing a 9/11 truther, mainstream Democrats took a step towards restoring civility and rationality to our national discourse. In her column today, progressive African-American Atlanta Journal Constitution writer Cynthia Tucker agrees.


Responsible conservatives and Republicans now need to do the same to the conspiracy theorists and other extremists in their own camp: the birthers, deathers, tenthers, and those who openly carry firearms at political rallies or make other suggestions of violence. 


Two recent actions provide tiny rays of hope.


Mainstream Idaho Republicans quickly condemned fringe Republican gubernatorial candidate Rex Rammell for joking about buying a license to hunt President Obama.


In an act of courage and integrity, former educator and former First Lady Laura Bush condemned  the attacks on President Obama’s back to school pep talk and decried the increasing polarization of the nation.


What is unfortunate is that neither her husband or father-in-law, the two living former Republican presidents, joined her.

What are Birthers, Deathers, and Tenthers?

In my previous post, I referred to birthers, deathers, and tenthers. Someone asked for definitions.


Birther: Someone who despite all the overwhelming evidence, questions if President Obama was born in U.S. and therefore questions if he meets the Constitutional requirements to be president. The anger and persistence of some implies a racist agenda, questioning how an African-American could have been elected.


Deather: Someone who claims that President Obama's health care reforms include hastening the death of the elderly and people with disabilities through rationing or denial of health care or euthanasia. This is conscious misinformation by opponents of not only reform but of almost everything President Obama does, which again suggests some racist motivations.


Among the proposed reforms is a guarantee of Medicare reimbursement to a physician for regular end of life discussions with their patients. The discussions would be voluntary and would include options such as hospice and palliative care, and the preparation of advanced directives.


President Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel’s brother, Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, has written articles discussing questions such as the appropriateness of aggressive chemotherapy for a very elderly person with terminal cancer. This has been distorted to imply he is advocating withholding care or euthanizing the elderly.


Among the “Deathers” is former Alaska governor Sarah Palin who while governor actively encouraged Alaskans to prepare advance directives.


Tenthers: Someone who claims the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the Federal government from doing anything regarding health care.


The Tenth Amendment states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The tenthers ignore that a significant portion of health care is already provided by the Federal government through Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, care for active duty military personnel and their dependents, and the provision of private insurance for Federal employees.


The Tenth Amendment has been inappropriately cited over the year to oppose such Federal actions as enforcement of civil rights which adds to the suspicion of racist motivations.


The tenthers ignore years of Supreme Court decisions that have settled this issue.

Should the Green Jobs Czar have resigned?

Former Obama administration green jobs czar Van Jones showed incredibly poor judgement by becoming a “celebrity” signer of a 9/11 Truth petition. Either he sympathized with it, which suggests a disqualifying lack of discernment, or he didn’t read it, which displayed a disqualifying lack of attention to detail.

There are many legitimate critiques of 9/11 that someone can express without disqualifying themselves from positions of public responsibility. 9/11 conspiracy theories are not among them. They are best viewed in the same way as are Holocaust denial, intelligent design, alien abductions, birthers, deathers, and tenthers.

Seemingly legitimate petitions may not be worthy of our signatures. Some petitions are authored by ideologues and extremists whose agendas are not immediately obvious such as petitions that appear to be calling for peace in the Middle East at the same time as they call Israelis Nazis.

I declined to sign a petition to impeach George Bush. I had grown weary of my progressive colleagues viciously criticizing Democratic members of Congress for failing to do something that was utterly impossible.

I treasure our Constitutional right to petition government. However, signing every petition that is put before us devalues one’s signature and as Van Jones discovered risks serious consequences.

Why didn't McNamara speak out when he could have made a difference?

As an anti-Communist, McNamara may have thought the Vietnam War just. One of the tragedies of McNamara is that he knew at least the means being used during the Vietnam War were wrong and ultimately ineffective. 

There was too much corruption among the anti-Communist Vietnamese and they were out of touch with the majority of Vietnamese to effectively oppose the Communist led coalition. The anti-Communist elites were Roman Catholics (descendants of the converts from the missionaries that as always accompanied the French colonials) while the majority of Vietnamese were Buddhist.

Information such as this was readily available to McNarmara in the Rand Corp.'s analysis, later known as The Pentagon Papers when they were released by Daniel Ellsberg. They were written during McNamara's tenure, classified but circulated within the Pentagon. McNamara was enough of an intellectual to understand their significance. 

Had he spoken out publicly while Sec'y of Defense or immediately after he left office, he might have saved thousands of American and Vietnamese lives. 

Had the war in neighboring Vietnam ended in the 60s before Nixon overthrew the Cambodian monarchy and invaded Cambodia, the Cambodian king might have been able to maintain his relative neutrality, continue to marginalize and isolate the Khmer Rouge. and save Cambodia from the horror of Khmer Rouge rule.

The only way the Vietnam War could have been "won" would have been to attempt to occupy the whole country. The Soviet Union and China were committed to a Communist nation in at least the northern half of Vietnam. Attempting to occupy all of Vietnam would have risked a land war with China which easily could have escalated into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Even if we had figured out how to occupy Vietnam without provoking an end of the world nuclear war, we would have found ourselves fighting an insurgency far worse than anything we face in Iraq today.

I'm treading on shaky grounds as the intellectual giants of history urge extreme caution when in speculating on historical "what ifs"!

Had McNamara spoken up when that could have made a real difference, he would have risked losing appointments to various private sector positions and earning obscene amounts of money. Instead he would have had to settle for something as the more modest pay of a job in academia. Was that too much risk and cost to him to do the right thing?

McNamara exhibitted moral cowardice as did Colin Powell. Powell knew the Iraq War was wrong. Prior to the Iraq War, Colin Powell spoke of what he learned from his service in Vietnam about when and how American troops should be sent into combat. He knew that the Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were ignoring those lessons.

Yet while Powell was in a position in power when saying something might of prevented the Iraq War, he told lies to the American people and the U.N. to promote the war.  By failing to speak the truth, Powell betrayed not only his own intellectual and moral integrity but also all of his comrades who served in Vietnam. That makes his silence more tragic.

Powell is no longer being seriously considered for the Republican presidential nomination. His pensions are secure, he is retired and therefore has nothing to risk, Now Powell suddenly discovered his ethical and moral voice. He endorsed Obama  and just made a statement of support for Judge Sotomayor.

Do the comparatively minor risks of some social ostracism. decreased job options, and lower pay cause people such as McNamara and Powell to ignore their moral compasses when their words could make significant difference?

Does the NFL have higher ethical standards than the U.S. Senate?

The State's Attorney for Sagamon County, Illinois which includes Springfield has decided that he lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute Roland Burris for perjury for the lies of omission Burris used to obtain his Senate seat. The level of evidence needed for a jury to convict  Burris is very high.

About the same time as the state's attorney was declining to prosecute Burris, NFL Commissioner Goodell issued his decision regarding Cleveland Browns' player Donte Stallworth. Stallworth had successfully minimized the criminal consequences for having killed someone while driving drunk. Goodell judged that the resolution of the criminal charges did not shield Stallworth from further civil consequences. Goodell indefinitely suspended Stallworth.

The Senate Ethics Committee continues to review what Burris said and withheld. They would do well to follow Goodell's example.