Four Felons Gained Special Access To Bush To Win Clemency
<p>WASHINGTON — In December 2007, the names of about 700 federal prisoners seeking commutations reached President Bush’s desk. He rejected all but one. Among the disappointed petitioners was Reed R. Prior, an Iowa man serving a life sentence for a drug conviction whose application had been pending for nearly five years.</p> <p>Last month, Mr. Prior filed a new application with the Justice Department. Not much had changed. But this time, with help from the Iowa governor, Mr. Prior’s lawyer secured a face-to-face meeting with the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding. A week later, Mr. Bush commuted Mr. Prior’s sentence.</p>
Sarah Stephens: On the anniversary of Cuba’s Revolution, the case for evolutionary thinking here at home
<p>On New Year’s Day, as Cubans celebrate the 50th anniversary of their Revolution, we in the United States should remember another milestone. </p> <p>January 3rd will be the 47th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s Cold War-era decision to break diplomatic relations with Cuba. Ike might be surprised that a veritable conga line of his successors stood by the policy of trying to overthrow, isolate, or starve Cuba for five decades — even after the Soviet Union ceased to exist and the policy had long since demonstrated its uselessness.</p> <p>This is a moment for President-elect Obama to decide whether he wants to be the 11th president of the Cold War to champion a failed policy or the first president of a new era to be an advocate for a far more sensible course.</p> <p>This is Obama’s Cuba opportunity, and this is the direction he should follow.</p> <p>On day one, he should take executive action to restore the rights of Cuban-Americans to visit their families on the island and to support them financially and without limitations.</p> <p>He should get the Treasury Department out of the travel business, so that the faith community, the business community, artists and academics, among others, no longer have to apply to a government bureaucracy on bended knee for permission to travel to Cuba – permission that under the Bush administration was routinely denied.</p> <p>The President has much of that authority already, but he should promise Congress that he will sign legislation to authorize travel by all Americans to Cuba as soon as they put it on his desk.</p> <p>He should then remove restrictions on trade so that the American economy and the Cuban economy can enjoy the benefits that freer commerce can bestow – an increase in jobs and living standards, and the opportunity to learn and share ideas about innovation, management, environmental standards, working conditions, and the like. </p> <p>Most of all, he should engage the government of Cuba in a manner that respects its sovereignty, just as our allies across the world do every day, especially if he believes – as he stressed in the campaign – in the kind of diplomacy that emphasizes negotiation as means for settling disputes and differences. </p> <p>It is time to talk to Cuba – about problems in the neighborhood, security, law enforcement, environmental protection, and migration, to name just a few – and to talk about these issues without preconditions. President Raúl Castro has signaled he’s ready to do this, and we should not let this moment pass.</p> <p>There is ample historical precedent for conducting such talks, as Peter Kornbluh and Bill LeoGrande, in particular, brilliantly establish in their new article for Cigar Aficionado “Talking with Castro,” and there is no shortage of subjects to discuss, as my organization demonstrates in our new report, “9 Ways to Talk to Cuba and for Cuba to Talk to US.”</p> <p>Were Mr. Obama to reunite families, he would lift an emotional burden from the Cuban-American community and give long-needed support to those who have worked so hard and in such difficult circumstances to reconcile the Cuban families on both sides of the Florida Straits.</p> <p>Were he to fully open travel, commerce, and diplomacy, the impact on Cuba would extraordinary, and he would give all Latin Americans a new reason to engage with the United States.</p> <p>Most of all, in doing these things, Obama would send an unmistakable signal to Latin America and nations everywhere that our country is ready to embrace this world not as we found it 50 years ago, but as it exists today.</p> <p>Few actions could make these two January anniversaries, more memorable or momentous, or give the Obama presidency such a promising start.</p> <p>Sarah Stephens, director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, is co-editor of the forthcoming report: “9 Ways for US to talk to Cuba and for Cuba to talk to US”.<br /> </p>
Poll: Americans rate Obama leadership highly
A national poll suggests that three-quarters of the public thinks President-elect Barack Obama is a strong and decisive leader, the highest marks for a president-elect on that characteristic in nearly three decades. Seventy-six percent of Americans questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey said Obama is a strong and decisive leader.
John Tepper Marlin: Two-Way Look at America’s Brand Changeover
<p>Good riddance 2008. Bring on January, named for the two-faced Roman god linked to ends and doors. This god gave his name also to the janitors who keep our doorways clear.</p> <p>Dead-ends are what we see all around in Mumbai in the surprise U.S. hit <em>Slumdog Millionaire</em>. The story is about the persistence of hope in the “slumdog” Jamal (did the appealing actor playing the young Jamal remind anyone else of photos of young Barack Obama in Hawaii and Jakarta?), who grows up in a poor part of Mumbai, watched over by his mother until she is killed. We see Jamal when he is older, a lowly <em>chaiwalla</em> worker, never having given up hope of getting his girl, and going on the Millionaire show to do it.</p> <p>A door opens for the United States on January 20, when Brand America comes under new management. My friend Patt Cottingham, a branding expert with <a rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank” href=”http://www.genuineimprints.com”>Genuine Imprints </a>, has created a year-end image of the changeover, a two-way look at Goodbye and Hello. <img alt=”2009-01-01-FINALTINY.jpg” src=”http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-01-01-FINALTINY.jpg” width=”480″ height=”450″/> <br />
Patt’s two-way look is a powerful image, told, like all history, from the perspective of the winning party. The backward look is full of specific ills. The forward look is mostly about our wish for better. Like Jamal at the end of <em>Slumdog,</em> our President-elect has won – fair and square – command over huge resources. Getting as far as he has is an amazing victory. The President-elect now faces multiple wars and a frozen economy. He has our collective hope that he succeed, and that’s a lot.</p>
Blago Appointee Goes To Ill. Supreme Court
U.S. Senate appointee Roland Burris has asked a court to force Secretary of State Jesse White to certify his appointment to President-elect Barack Obama’s old Senate seat.
Race Card Dealt Into Blagojevich Scandal
The issue of race may become a complicating factor in Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s controversial appointment of former state Attorney General Roland Burris to the vacated seat of President-elect Barack Obama.
Burris asks court to confirm nomination
The man appointed by embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to fill President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat says his appointment to the position is legal, despite the charges against the governor. Former Illinois Attorney Gen. Roland Burris also says Blagojevich is innocent until proven guilty, even though his behavior “is reprehensible.”
Magda Abu-Fadil: Nadia al-Sakkaf: Yemen Times Editor on a Mission
Her stride is fast, her energy seems boundless, she seeks reforms, she’s bold, she’s articulate, she’s young, and she has her own newspaper in Yemen to use as a platform for action.
If being publisher/editor in chief of the Yemen Times bi-weekly isn’t enough, Nadia Al Sakkaf manages to juggle being a wife – her Jordanian husband is CEO – a mother, and has the makings of a politician with a mission to fix things from the inside.
Nadia Al Sakkaf (Abu-Fadil)
It’s not easy in a country of about 30 million at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula where illiteracy is estimated at between 60% to 70% (depending on whose figures one believes), where women are a minority in the job market, where the tribe takes precedence over the government, and where the president has been in power for close to 30 years.
But Al Sakkaf, who turns 31 in March, is undaunted by the responsibility.
“Change is good, and the current system is too faulty to remain in power, but change that comes by force and through bloodshed is not good, and it will only take us to an even worse situation,” she wrote in a recent editorial describing political and tribal divisions within her country.
Yemen, one of the poorest Arab nations, is difficult to govern. Weapons are plentiful. A northern region has been racked by unrest by a group fighting the government. And one of its claims to fame is that Osama Ben Laden’s family hailed from there before moving to Saudi Arabia.
“My late father used to tell me ‘Just do your job and the pieces will fall into place,’” she said looking at the wall behind her desk and a picture of Abdulaziz Al Sakkaf, a lecturer in economics at Sana’a University, who founded the paper in 1991 during the political spring that followed Yemen’s unification and first steps towards democracy.
He was hit by a car in 1999 and died shortly thereafter. His son Walid handled the paper’s affairs before Nadia took charge in 2005.
Within a year of taking over, she had replaced 50% of her unproductive staff. She constantly questions the Yemen Times’ mission statement with her reporters and editors.
Yemen Times logo
It’s difficult to operate in Yemen with no real freedom of information and limited access to basic data. Despite that, Al Sakkaf and her team have been instrumental in getting unfair Yemeni laws rescinded thanks to hard-hitting reports.
“I’m very proud of that,” she told me smiling in her Sana’a office, adding that she has not been harassed for her bold coverage of controversial stories. “People deal with us as an institution, not as a person.”
Al Sakkaf’s editorials can be biting. Her pointed answer to a questioner about how to fix things in Yemen was “ensuring the rule of law.”
It’s a tall order in a country where legislators are either corrupt or ignorant, she wrote, and where not all Yemenis enjoy equal citizenship.
“In Yemen, the family name, the tribe, the bank account, and the relatives in positions of power mean everything,” she said, noting that intelligence, talent, and a good character could become a curse.
Her solution: fix the judiciary and law enforcement system before anything else and the rest will follow smoothly.
A gargantuan task for an English-language cross between a broadsheet and a tabloid targeting mostly expatriates in Yemen, and with a view to increasing readership within the local population. The Yemen Times’ print run is 7,000 but readership is 1:5.
“We need to do a survey, but it’s expensive,” she said, adding that 60% of the hard copy readers were foreign and 40% Yemeni. “More people read it online.”
Al Sakkaf plans to introduce a new look and a youth supplement in 2009 in the newspaper noted for emphasizing human rights and democratic values.
The Yemen Times (www.yementimes.com) is among the strongest in influencing the government and in reflecting public opinion. It was the first Yemeni paper to go online in 1997.
Nadia Al Sakkaf impressed me when she visited Lebanon to receive the first Gebran Tueni Award in December 2006, marking the first anniversary of the assassination by car bomb of the Lebanese publisher of the leading daily An-Nahar.
The award honors an editor or publisher from the Arab region who has shown courage in defending press freedom and demonstrated excellence in leadership, managerial and professional standards.
Al Sakkaf receives Gebran Tueni Award (Barrak-AFP)
The award, granted during the “Press Under Siege” conference co-organized in Beirut by An-Nahar and the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers (WAN), has become a tradition honoring brave Arab journalists shaking up the status quo and fighting repression in their respective countries.
She came to Lebanon with her husband and baby daughter to demonstrate that a Yemeni woman could be seen, heard, read and could make a difference.
Al Sakkaf earned an engineering degree in computer science from India and a master’s degree in management information systems from the United Kingdom. She is a member of the board of the World Editors Forum, an arm of WAN.
Obama’s “One President” Gambit
While the “one president” philosophy has kept Obama mum on emerging foreign policy crises, he has abandoned it when it comes to the economy, talking at great length about his plans for the nation’s financial recovery, the Washington Post reports.
Benjamin Hart: George W. Bush is Not a Very Interesting Person
<p>On a recent episode of <em>The Daily Show,</em> Ron Howard, who was on the program to promote his film <em>Frost/Nixon</em>, said something that rankled me. He opined that, were George W. Bush to grant an exhaustive post-presidency interview the way Richard Nixon did in 1977, Jon Stewart would be the ideal interviewer — meaning that Stewart would ask Bush the tough questions the way David Frost grilled Nixon all those years ago.</p> <p>Howard can’t really be blamed; he was trying to sell his movie and endear himself to the youth contingent by kissing up to Stewart a little. But his comment propagated a myth that has been persistent and unwavering over the past eight years — a myth that should have died many moons ago. The myth goes like this: President Bush is actually a pretty complex guy, despite his one-note facade. In private, he’s capable of expressing remorse for his horrible mistakes, and maybe, if he were prodded in just the right way, he could do so in public.</p> <p>There has not been one shred of evidence that any of this is true. George W. Bush may be politically savvy, and his relationship with his dad may be grist for for many a <a rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank” href=”http://http://www.amazon.com/Bush-Couch-Inside-Mind-President/dp/0060736704″>pop psychologist’s</a> mill. But when it comes to unpopular presidents with murky morals, George W. Bush ain’t Richard Nixon. Never was, never will be. Historians will argue over who did more damage to the country, who had more of a penchant for hiring political cronies, and who played the elitism card more effectively. But in the contest of which president you’d rather see bare their soul on national television, Nixon wins going away. </p> <p>Bush’s stunning lack of self-awareness isn’t just patently obvious, it’s a hallmark of his presidency. But since he’s (still) the president, every little off-the-record or off-the-cuff remark he makes is treated as if it’s some kind of grand revelation. Thus, Bush saying that he was <a rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank” href=”http://http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/bush-i-was-unprepared-for-war/”>”unprepared for war”</a> in a recent interview is big news, despite the fact that he clearly meant he hadn’t expected to fight a war at the beginning of his term, not that he went into Iraq without a battle plan. And we have him “regretting” that the intelligence wasn’t up to snuff on Iraq. (Basically the equivalent of saying “I’m sorry that you’re angry” in a fight with your significant other.) Haven’t people learned that he’s not about to admit culpability for anything after eight years of not admitting culpability for anything?</p> <p>President Bush won a gubernatorial election and two presidential elections in large part thanks to his ability to stay on message. He excelled, and continues to excel, at saying the same thing in a thousand different ways, at working his talking points into every answer, and at avoiding slip-ups (English language gaffes excepted.) He may the least interesting interviewee to ever occupy the White House.</p> <p>Nixon, on the other hand, continues to fascinate for any number of reasons. It’s not just that he used his prodigious intellect to achieve sinister ends. (That’s a compelling enough story as it is.) It’s also that, beneath his political-mastermind exterior, lurked a reflective person. Paranoid, unstable, and ugly, yes, but also reflective. He was fully aware of how his actions affected people. And that made him oddly relatable — he was the political manifestation of the dark side in all of us.</p> <p>When George W. Bush talks, there’s not a trace of that sort of that Nixonian psychodrama — or of the Nixonian playfulness. Much of <em>Frost/Nixon</em> (by the way, it was only a fair movie, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of spaghetti) involves Nixon in playful mode, whether that means mocking Frost’s wearing of Italian loafers or going off on intellectual digressions to avoid answering a question directly. Can you imagine George Bush doing that? I’d rather watch twelve episodes of <em>The Moment of Truth </em>than a six-hour interview with the man.</p> <p>Perhaps the whole state of affairs can be best summed up in a bit of dialogue from that political powerhouse <em>Seinfeld</em>. Chatting with Jerry at the diner, Elaine proposes that Newman perhaps isn’t the simple monster Jerry thinks he is. “Maybe there’s more to Newman than meets the eye,” she says. “No,” Jerry responds. “There’s less.” </p>
