Strickland Still Waiting for Assurances on Troop Equipment and Training

After the launch of State Sen. John Boccieri's congressional campaign in North Canton yesterday, Gov. Ted Strickland was asked by a reporter about his letter to George Bush, requesting assurance that Ohioans called up for military duty in Iraq would receive proper equipment and training before deployment. He replied that he has still not heard back directly from the president, but last week he did receive a "cordial" telephone call from the Secretary of the Army. However, that official was not able to give Strickland an affirmative answer to the two questions Strickland had asked, i.e., whether Ohio national guard personnel and reservists will have and be trained with the equipment they need to keep them as safe as possible, and whether the president will refrain from sending them into the war zone until they have that equipment and training. "I think what I am asking of the president is reasonable," said Gov. Strickland, "and I am troubled that I have yet to get an affirmative response."

Listen to the audio of his response here:

Strickland.mp3

News and Notes: National Scene

What's going on?

A Washington Post-ABC poll shows that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) leads other Democratic presidential hopefuls by 2-1 among women, even more among lower-income and lesser-educated women, and this factor accounts for her large lead over the others. Overall, Clinton garnered 51% support from women, compared to 24% for Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and 11% for former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC).

A new Gallup poll shows that Republicans reject evolution by a better than 2-to-1 margin, 68% to 30%. Overall the nation is about evenly split on evolution. Independents are more likely to believe in evolution (61% to 37%) than Democrats (57% to 40%).

A study shows that political considerations have played a major role in the selection of immigration judges by the Bush administration, although that is specifically forbidden by law.

New polls show Hillary Clinton pulling away in New Hampshire and also show John McCain continuing to fade nationally (he is now battling with "Don't Know" for third place behind Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney). However, social conservatives are showing signs of ganging up on front-runner Giuliani over his pro-choice and pro-gay positions.

President Bush is meeting GOP lawmakers at lunch today to urge them to support the immigration reform legislation that stalled in the U.S. Senate last week, and business lobbyists, labor unions, religious organizations and Hispanic advocacy groups plan to flood Capitol Hill this week in support of the troubled bill.

The 53-38-1 vote that killed the no-confidence resolution against Albert Gonzales yesterday could have been a little closer to the winning margin of 60. Presidential candidates Sen. Joe Biden, Sen. Sam Brownback, Sen. Chris Dodd, Sen. John McCain, and Sen. Barack Obama all missed the vote because they were on the campaign trail, costing at least three votes. The lone "present" vote was cast by Alaska's Sen. Ted Stevens, who faces a corruption investigation by the Department of Justice and thus perhaps didn't want to take a position as to the future of its chief official. Five of the seven Republican senators who voted for the no-confidence resolution are up for re-election in 2008: Gordon Smith (OR), Chuck Hagel (NE), Norm Coleman (MN), John Sununu (NH), and Susan Collins (ME).

Does anyone else find it disturbing that Democratic legislators negotiated directly with a lobbying group, the powerful National Rifle Association, to craft new federal gun control legislation in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre? The sway of the NRA over GOP lawmakers is apparently so utterly complete that the Republicans who actually fill the legislative seats are not a necessary part of the negotiations or the agreement. Don't get me wrong, I applaud better background checks for gun buyers and improving the databases of people who should not get guns due to criminal records and/or mental health problems, I just find it extraordinary and unsettling that the NRA has virtually stepped into the shoes of the Republicans who fill the legislative seats when it comes to this issue.

G-8 Climate Change Agreement Boils Down to "We'll Consider It"

You know what it means at a theatrical audition when the director says "we'll get back to you." That's about all that the G-8 Summit agreement on climate change trumpeted in the media today comes down to. The actual language of the G-8 Climate Statement reveals that the accord essentially consists of a promise only to "consider seriously" the goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050:

In setting a global goal for emissions reductions in the process we have agreed today involving all major emitters, we will consider seriously the decisions made by the European Union, Canada and Japan which include at least a halving of global emissions by 2050.

So, they'll think about it. "Don't get back to us, we'll get back to you."

Bush Nominee for Surgeon General is Anti-Gay Zealot Who Compared Human Genitalia to Pipe Fittings

"Under what rock precisely do they find these people?" A friend forwarded this news report about Bush's nominee for Surgeon General with the foregoing comment, which about sums it up (emphasis added):

Bush's Choice for Top Doc Compared Human Genitalia to Pipe Fittings and Said Homosexual Practices Can Cause Injury or Death

President Bush's nominee for surgeon general, Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr., wrote a paper in 1991 that purported to make the medical argument that homosexuality is unnatural and unhealthy. Doctors who reviewed the paper derided it as prioritizing political ideology over science, and Democratic aides on Capitol Hill say the paper will make his confirmation hearings problematic, if not downright bruising. ...

... Holsinger also belongs to a church that offers a ministry to "cure" gays of the sexual orientation [see more on this below]. ...

Holsinger's paper argued that male and female genitalia are complementary -- so much so "that it has entered our vocabulary in the form of naming pipe fittings either the male fitting or the female fitting depending upon which one interlocks within the other." Body parts used for gay sex are not complementary, he wrote. "When the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur." ...

Professor Eli Coleman, Director of the Program in Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota Medical School said that the paper seems to have a pre-1970s view of human sexuality. "I can't imagine that any scientific journal would be able to publish this material because of its very narrow views of homosexuality," he said.

In fact, if one of his students handed the paper in, Coleman would give it a failing grade, he said. "I find it rather outdated in terms of its scientific knowledge and also narrow in its view of homosexuality," Coleman said. "It concerns me because I think our public policy really should be based upon best available science."

"It's a totally faulty paper. The man doesn't know anything about human sexuality," said June M. Reinisch, Ph.D., director emeritus of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender & Reproduction. "There's clearly a political agenda in this paper. This is not a scientific paper." ... Reinisch, who was director of the Kinsey Institute when Holsinger wrote this paper, said that if Holsinger "is going to come up with this position in 2007 I think I can clearly say that he is not qualified to be surgeon general." ...

Actually, Holsinger doesn't just attend the church with the anti-gay iminstry, he founded it:

Holsinger founded the Hope Springs Community Church, a "recovery ministry" that caters to alcoholics, drug addicts, sex addicts and those seeking to "walk out of that [homosexual] lifestyle," according to its pastor Rev. David Calhoun. When not busy endorsing ex-gay conversion therapy, Holsinger served on the highest court of the United Methodist Church where he voted to remove a lesbian pastor from her position.

Bush Applies New "Long View" Philosophy to Greenhouse Gas Cuts Proposal at G-8 Summit

A definite pattern is emerging here. With less than two years remaining in his term, Bush has shifted to a long term, distant-target approach to the major problems confronting his administration and, by extension, his legacy as chief executive. A few days ago he was analogizing U.S. occupation of Iraq to our half-century-long military presence in Korea, adding many years to his prior comment that continuation of the Iraq occupation would be decided by his successor in office. Today at the G-8 Summit he is shifting real action on climate change far down the road, resisting calls by German Chancellor Angela Merkel for an immediate agreement on cutting greenhouse gases and calling instead for talks with the 15 largest emitters of such gases with the aim of agreeing on cuts by the end of 2008 -- in other words, the earliest possible time frame for any commitment to act is after he is on the way out.

The very real danger of Bush's proposal to address climate change through 15-nation talks is that he will derail not only immediate action by the G-8 nations but also torpedo U.N. talks aimed at devising a replacement for the expiring 169-nation Kyoto Protocol. The prospects for agreement among the 15 largest emitters of greenhouse gases are extraordinarily bleak, as Bush knows, because that group includes China and India, and they have steadfastly resisted joining in efforts to address the global warming threat. In essence, the Bush plan is to do nothing unless and until the nations most opposed to doing anything take action. That ought to put things off for a good long while, indeed.

Iraq Funding Impasse Bringing Down Approval Ratings for Democrats

The Washington Post political blog Capitol Briefing notes that a WaPo-ABC poll released Friday shows approval/disapproval ratings for Congressional Democrats fell from 54/44 to 44/49 over the last six weeks, and attributes the reversal to Democrats' inability to force Bush to change course on Iraq. The drop results as much from a decline in support from Independents (from 49/48 to 37/54) as among the anti-war liberal base (85% approval down to 67% approval). Bush's ratings remain mired at 35/62 and congressional Republicans are in lock-step at 36/58.

I think that frustration over Iraq is a big part of the change, but I also think it is not the whole story. Particularly among Independents, I suspect that the Democrats' slow pace on ethics reform is probably a huge factor as well. I would not want to see the Democrats re-focus on Iraq to the exclusion of other priorities, even if the prospects for shortening the war were brighter than they are. Congressional Democrats should be out front on ethics reform, not dragged along by GOP maneuvering and negative headlines.

From the "It Never Ends" Department, Global Warming Section

After years of insisting that global warming is a contested issue and not demonstrably linked to human activity, the White House signalled some softening on the issue by referring to "the serious challenge of climate change" in this year's State of the Union speech, and by subsequently claiming that this administration has taken steps to address the problem. Reuters reports today, however, that the Bush administration continues to work behind the scenes to suppress efforts to tackle the environmental crisis:

The United States is battling to stop next month's Group of Eight summit in Germany from pushing for urgent talks on a new deal to fight global warming after the Kyoto Protocol lapses in 2012.

In a draft of the final communique for the June 6-8 summit seen by Reuters, Washington wants taken out references to the urgency of the climate crisis and the need for a U.N. conference in Bali in December to open talks on a new global deal.