World News Center
Author assumes guise of 10-year-old to punk famous
March 11, 2010WASHINGTON -- Over the years, "Little Billy" learned much from the country's top minds.
Massive school closures in KC to be done by fall
March 11, 2010KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Kansas City's school superintendent said Thursday the plan to shutter nearly half the district's schools, while "painful," will move forward quickly so that all the closures will be complete by fall.
Al-Qaeda seven were serving justice
March 11, 2010Marc Thiessen argues today that Justice Department lawyers who worked on behalf of terrorism suspects in private practice were not "doing what John Adam did" in defending British soldiers incriminated in the Boston Massacre -- "representing accused criminals already in the judicial system." "Rather," he argues, "they have reached outside the judicial systems and dragged the terrorists in." These lawyers, Thiessen concludes, were not noble and their values are thus suspect and legitimately subject to examination. Thiessen has it backwards. The Bush administration dragged suspected al-Qaeda operatives, some of them captured far from conventional battlefields, to Guantanamo to avoid the reach of the law. Thiessen argues that the Geneva Conventions and not the full-throated rights afforded under our federal justice system would suffice to process these prisoners. But let's not forget that the Bush administration resisted even this modest semblance of process; White House Counsel (and later Attorney General) Alberto Gonzales famously called the application of Geneva to unlawful enemy combatants "quaint." Few people initially questioned the propriety of holding enemy combatants under the laws of war. And then years started slipping by as men who claimed innocence languished at the island prison. It's not as if American forces were capturing uniformed Nazi soldiers and simply holding them in Guantanamo until the end of hostilities. How is one to know that those turned over by bounty hunters in Pakistan or captured in a remote village in Bosnia are in fact enemy combatants and suspected terrorists? And how is one to judge in this unconventional war when hostilities have actually ceased? The possibility of indefinitely imprisoning an innocent person was never as real -- nor was the need for robust representation of those held captive ever as high. And yet the Bush administration resisted any and all legal accommodations to ensure that such an abomination would not occur. With congressional allies, it fabricated military tribunals and commissions that would have been laughable had they not been the only recourse for detainees. Time and again the Supreme Court struck down administration attempts at faux process. Finally, a majority of the justices concluded that nothing short of independent federal court review would serve the interests of justice. These important developments would not have occurred without the involvement of talented and dedicated lawyers willing to put their reputations on the line to fight for systemic justice. Some of these lawyers undoubtedly represented bad guys, but to attribute to the lawyers the malevolence of some of their clients or to question now their loyalty to the U.S. government is to misunderstand a lawyer's duty to the law. These aren't potential traitors lurking about the Justice Department. There are patriots just as worthy of praise as Adams himself.
A Protestant judge's voice
March 11, 2010 Earlier this week, The Post???s Robert Barnes asked the provocative question: ???Does President Obama???s next Supreme Court nominee need to be a Protestant???? Justice John Paul Stevens, nearing age 90, is the last member of the once-dominant American Protestant establishment remaining on the high court. His retirement would leave only Catholic and Jewish justices -- and leave the advocates of diversity in a quandary. If religious diversity is a factor in selecting the next nominee, we can imagine the opening statement. ???Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to talk to you about my Protestant identity, where it came from, and the influence I perceive it has on my presence on the bench. Who am I? I am a proud member of the old-boy network, born and bred in the gated estates and prep schools of the Northeast. Like many of the best immigrants to this great land, my ancestors took a hard journey on the Mayflower, before eventually making their fortune in railroad speculation. My Protestant identity was forged and closely nurtured by my family through our shared experiences and traditions -- sailing off the Vineyard, touch football on Thanksgiving, long evenings of quiet repression. For me, a very special part of my being Protestant is the cuisine -- peanut butter and grape jelly on white bread, lots of pork, meat on Fridays and those little wafers at communion???. ???America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual tension. We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity. Yet we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race- and color-blind way. That tension between the ???melting pot and the salad bowl??? is being hotly debated today. I prefer, by the way, plain iceberg lettuce. Sometimes arugula, when I???m in an adventurous mood. I am proud that my Protestant identity inspires how I live my life???. ???The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it???s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. Justice O???Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and a wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure that I agree with the statement. I would hope that a wise, Protestant man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than someone who doesn???t know their fish fork from their salad fork???.??? I don???t imagine these remarks would be well received. But the prospect does raise some interesting questions. If diversity is an important value in choosing justices, why doesn???t America???s largest religious group deserve representation on the Supreme Court? Is it justified to punish Protestants for their past dominance by rending them voiceless? It is, in the end, a false issue. I suspect that most who want diversity in the courts are not so much interested in promoting diversity as in promoting liberalism. I also suspect that Justice O???Connor is exactly right. Impartiality in applying the law is the first duty and main measure of a judge, whatever his or her background.
D.C. mayor okays smoking permit for two events in District
March 11, 2010The stogies will burn on St. Patrick's Day, thanks to legislation signed Wednesday by D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, one of the leading sponsors in 2006 of the city's smoking ban.
Health care deadlines: Dead on arrival?
March 11, 2010President Obama has set them -- and they've repeatedly been missed. But with Easter recess coming, Obama's latest deadline to pass health care reform legislation could be his last one.
House GOP adopts yearlong earmark ban
March 11, 2010House Republicans agreed Thursday to adopt a ban on congressional earmarks in spending bills for next year, upping the ante with Democrats in the political battle over fiscal responsibility and pork barrel spending.
Ex-Obama adviser: Dems may get 'slaughtered'
March 11, 2010Steve Hildebrand, one of the top advisers who helped put President Obama in office, has a stark warning for his old friends at the White House and on Capitol Hill.
Dems try to finish health care reform
March 11, 2010Health care reform takes center stage Thursday as President Obama and top congressional Democrats work behind closed doors to nail down a final agreement.
Israeli construction plans irk Biden, Palestinians
March 11, 2010Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says it is difficult to have any negotiations with Israel unless it revokes plans to build new homes on disputed land in Jerusalem, Abbas' top negotiator said Thursday.
