A little comment(ary)...

Fred Thompson and the value of 'easy does it'
By Ralph Keyes
The Christian Science Monitor

Yellow Springs, Ohio - Pundits and Democrats are making the same mistake with Fred Thompson that they did with Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower: underestimating him because he's not a workaholic. Mr. Reagan liked to joke that "They say hard work never killed anyone, but I figure, why take the chance?" Reagan also once observed of himself, "I've really been burning the midday oil." The same could be said of Mr. Thompson. To detractors, this is clear evidence of his limitations. It isn't.

Any wise manager knows that long hours are not synonymous with added productivity. It could be the other way around. Working too hard usually indicates that an executive is disorganized, can't manage time, and has problems delegating authority. That person stays up late and brings work home on weekends because he has to. But working overtime is hardly the same as working effectively. Typically, it's just the opposite.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20071023/cm_csm/ykeyes;_ylt=AsnX0whKz_ThpHTmn5sNaf.s0NUE

Why FEMA Fakes it With the Press
By AMANDA RIPLEY
TIME Magazine.com

FEMA held a press conference on Oct. 23 to respond to fake questions about the real wildfires in California. Here's how it happened: Real reporters were only notified 15 minutes in advance, so all they could reasonably do was call in to a conference line. But the line was set to "listen-only" mode, so asking questions was out of the question. Only the people there - a group consisting almost entirely of FEMA public affairs employees - could grill FEMA representatives.

None of this was disclosed by Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator of FEMA, who dutifully responded to the softballs from his underlings (i.e. "Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?") as if they were real.

To his credit, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff lambasted FEMA after the story broke in the Washington Post several days later. "I think it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I've seen since I've been in government," Chertoff said. "I have made unambiguously clear, in Anglo-Saxon prose, that it is not to ever happen again and there will be appropriate disciplinary action taken against those people who exhibited what I regard as extraordinarily poor judgment."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20071029/us_time/whyfemafakesitwiththepress;_ylt=Anm3QnZ2Xi8v.Hhs7VF2pb.s0NUE

Our view on cleaning up Congress: Lawmakers still find ways to preserve their perks
USAToday

On Capitol Hill these days, a shrinking ration of perks has leftmembers of Congress grasping to hang onto every lingering sliver ofspecial treatment they can find — whether it's a free trip to PalmBeach or a way to slip dubious spending projects into the budget.

Such is the mixed legacy of ethics reform passed by the newDemocratic majority that took control of Congress in January on a waveof voter revulsion about corruption. The Democrats banned an assortmentof sleazy practices, such as the gifts lobbyists used to shower onCongress. They also ordered lobbyists to report more fully on contactsand contributions. But they left plenty of wiggle room and, notsurprisingly, there's plenty of wiggling going on:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20071031/cm_usatoday/ourviewoncleaningupcongresslawmakersstillfindwaystopreservetheirperks;_ylt=AmFDvPXefD7besfSUHTs0fWs0NUE

Our view on filling court seats: Justice for sale
USAToday

Just about everything bad about the way this country elects membersof Congress and presidents — the deluge of special interest money,sleazy attacks and last-minute TV blitzes by secretive groups — is nowpart of contests for state high courts. Only the effect is morecorrosive. It looks as if justice is for sale.

Exhibit A for this political season is a contest in Pennsylvania, wherevoters will choose two new members of the state Supreme Court onTuesday. Judicial candidates have broken state fundraising records,pulling down $6.8 millionso far. A political action committee (PAC) supported by plaintiffs'trial lawyers has lavished about $865,000 on four candidates — much ofit on two Democrats.

On the other side, a Virginia group called the Center for IndividualFreedom parachuted in last week with TV ads praising one GOP candidatefor "cracking down on violent crime." The source of the group's moneyis secret, and its agenda shrouded, though its website decries lawsuitsagainst corporations by "disgruntled shareholders."

Mix in money from organized labor and health care PACs and you havea seamy, expensive brawl. It gives people every reason to questionwhether the money corrupts judges' rulings.

Over the past decade, state judicial races have frequently degenerated into battles between business interests and the trial lawyers who sue them.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/ourviewonfillingcourtseatsjusticeforsale;_ylt=Ap2FQL10qHpehvH_lD2CiQys0NUE

Blacks must drop victimhood and reclaim dignity
By Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint
Christian Science Monitor

New York and Boston - Martin Luther King had a dream that some day his children would "live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

He wanted his children to become strong, beautiful people. But what we see today in poor African American neighborhoods is a nightmare.

We know there are forces that make the ability to escape poverty seem bleak: overburdened single-parent homes, a high dropout rate, joblessness, gangs, drugs, crime, incarceration, deaths at an early age from guns fired by angry black men. We know that systemic racism and governmental neglect still exist.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/ycosbypoussaint;_ylt=AtVIQMnkU1uSOSNODkKSr_ms0NUE

Our view on screening fliers: Does this 6-year-old look like a terrorist?
USAToday

Eighty-year-old John Mitchell, of Irving, Texas, hardly fits theprofile of a terrorist. But every time the gray-haired retiree flies,he is confused with one.

Mitchell, who apparently has the samename as someone on the government's terrorist watch list, discovered in2005 that he could no longer print out a boarding pass at home or at anairport kiosk. He went to the ticket counter, learned his name was on awatch list and had to prove he was not that John Mitchell. Ittook him 13 months to straighten out the confusion — and then not verysatisfactorily. Every time he flies, he still must go to the counter toshow an ID.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20071109/cm_usatoday/ourviewonscreeningfliersdoesthis6yearoldlooklikeaterrorist;_ylt=AogNxMdp1EM9tn6ViM7Hmuqs0NUE

To help veterans confront war: pen and paper
By Sue Diaz
Christian Science Monitor

San Diego - "Take another minute or two to bring your writing to a stopping point," I tell the six veterans sitting with me around a fold-out table at the San Diego Vet Center.

Their pens, moving more quickly now, make a soft rustling sound across the pages of their spiral notebooks. Looking up from mine, I wonder if that rustle in any way resembles sounds they might have heard or listened for on moonlit patrols decades ago along the Mekong Delta. A light wind through river reeds. A snake in a tree. The muffled footfall of Vietcong.

It's not something I'd know from direct experience. During the Vietnam era, I was a bell-bottomed college coed, a high school English teacher not long after that, and, for the past 20 years, a freelance journalist. In the last five, I've written about the war in Iraq and my son's two tours of duty as an infantryman in the area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20071109/cm_csm/ydiaz;_ylt=Ai03QuFdqZm6z2Tx7lOv6sSs0NUE

A way to keep needed foreign laborers
By Lionel Sosa
Christian Science Monitor

San Antonio - Twelve and a half million undocumented immigrants populate the United States today. Some of us want them gone. But really they are here for one simple reason: We invited them, by offering them a job and then hiring them.

We need immigrant labor. So instead of spending money to deport immigrants and build a border wall, we should do what's best for us and what makes sense – create an orderly system to keep the workers we need here.

Americans pay undocumented workers several times more than they earn in their own country to do the work we don't want to do – the work we don't want our children to do.

These workers clean our offices. They take care of our elderly and our children. They help build our homes and roads. They pick our fruits and vegetables. They process the meat and poultry we eat. They do our nails. They do this and more.

Getting rid of them would be easy. All we'd have to do is fire them. In a few months they'd be gone.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20071109/cm_csm/ysosa;_ylt=AjAqtwFtoF9OXDMRxHzyRWT9wxIF

Mellowing Out on Marijuana
By RITA HEALY/DENVER
TIME Magazine

Those Rocky Mountains are getting higher. Two municipalities - Denver, Colorado, and the small town of Hailey, Idaho - passed pro-marijuana measures on election day this week, joining a growing number of liberal localities that are reducing or removing penalities on using pot. It's part of a slowly evolving populist rehabilitation of the drug. San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Monica in California, along with Missoula, Montana, and Seattle, Washington, have previously passed laws that give the lowest priority to enforcing existing marijuana laws.

Federal regulations, which supercede local ordinances, continue to prescribe heavy penalties - even in some cases death - for major dealers of illegal drugs, including marijuana. The federal penalty for possession of even a miniscule amount is a misdemeanor punishable by one year in prison and $1,000. Penalties are higher with cultivation, sale and crossing state lines. However, magistrates generally use state and local laws as sentencing guidelines - unless there is federal intervention, which doesn't occur in every drug case because they would increase court time and costs.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20071111/us_time/mellowingoutonmarijuana;_ylt=AmLwIWwbuzLiKh6H3qAGzPSs0NUE

Veterans Day fast facts
By BDN Staff
Bangor Daily News

Veterans Day, celebrated every Nov. 11, was first observed in 1919 as Armistice Day, after a proclamation signed by President Woodrow Wilson.

The document read, in part, that "the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory."

President Dwight Eisenhower changed the name of the national holiday to Veterans Day by signing a House resolution in 1954. The change was meant to honor not just those who died, but also the living who fought or still are fighting for the United States.

Veterans Day is sometimes confused with Memorial Day, which is observed on the last Monday in May and commemorates men and women who have died in military service. Its history dates to the end of the Civil War, when it was called Decoration Day and honored only Union soldiers who had died.

http://bangornews.com/news/t/news.aspx?articleid=156448&zoneid=500