Republicans are throwing nails?

The commentary by Derrick Z. Jackson, The Boston Globe, on the Repulican's behavior towards Obama's stimulus bill is an extremely biased perspective on the partisanship of politics today. Obama's stimulus bill was designed to help pull the people who had lost their jobs out of economic stagnancy, in theory. The effectiveness of such a bill is still to be seen, but there are different views taken by the Republican and the Democratic party. The Republicans, who generally view the economy as the people's responsibility, preferring free market over government involvement, take a very negative view on the bill. The Democrats, who are much more supportive of government financial assistance, are very much in favor of the bill. Jackson, in his commentary, talked about the Repulicans as almost inhuman for their total lack of support for the bill:

Not even the stimulus bill stimulated the Republican Party into any human feeling. It heard not the screams of 4 million people losing their jobs in the last year, not the slamming doors of shuttering factories, not the shrieks at kitchen tables from Saco, Maine, to Sacramento, Calif., as working Americans open their mail to see they've lost 40 percent and more on their 401(k)s. With the collective livelihood of America at stake, only three of 219 Republicans in the House and the Senate voted for the $787 billion economic recovery package, and the three who did — Maine's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter — slashed what they could before passage in the Senate.

It seems like Jackson is targeting the general public of America, but he also seems to be targeting a Democratic audience judging by his sheer contempt for the Republican party. His argument (If he has one, it's a little hard to see past his bigotry) is essentially that the Republcians in office, despite all their efforts are not slowing down Obama, and if anything are going to help him with his goals by causing voters to kick them out of office for their obstinacy. He makes this argument with approval and support ratings from various polls and the fact that only 3 of the 219 Republicans in the House and Senate voted for the bill and it still passed, and he's right. I think that because of the Bush administration, the Republican part has lost power in our government. It will be interesting to see how these approval ratings change over the course of the Obama administration.

Check it out the commentary by Jackson! What do you think about it?

CIA and Interogation Techniques. Change might not be so immeninant

One of the most controversial issues of the Bush administration was the interrogation techniques used in some out-of-country prisons. In these prisons the inmates could be essentially tortured for information. One of Obama's promises is to discontinue this, and he recently signed an executive order limiting interrogation to the 19 techniques outlined in the Army Field manual.

This article is on the recent election of Leon Panetta as the new CIA director. At 70, he is the oldest person to have run the CIA, and he was elected by unanimous consent. It discusses his views and some of what he plans to do (or not do). What I find interesting in this article, is that while Panetta will not use the "enhanced interrogation techniques" Obama has forbidden, he conceded that the 19 interrogation techniques might not be enough, and while he defined waterboarding as torture, he said that the intelligence officers who carried it out should not be prosecuted. It appears that Panetta does not intend to change much with the CIA either. The article also mentions that John Brennan was the leading candidate for CIA director until some political blogs linked him to the "enhanced interrogation techniques" and the pre-emptive war in Iraq, when he subsequently withdrew his name for consideration. While John Brennan is not the new CIA director, he is now Obama's homeland security advisor.

So what is our government saying about their actual beliefs about torture? Their words and actions seem to be doing two different things. Read the article by clicking the title of this post and form your own opinions. What do you think?