You mean Bush's "sinking" approval rating will make it difficult to pass more highway prescription drug bills? Doesn't sound too bad to me.
This will all blow over long before the 2006 election.
Well, let us see......the agenda items are:
1) Get John Roberts through
2) Name and win on another Strict Constructionist to the SCOTUS
3) Some kind of Social Security reform
4) WIN MORE SENATE SEATS IN 2006
Does that sound like the agenda you believe in?
I'm interested in the issue of the promised congressional hearings on the relief response to Katrina.Clearly Congress has the authority to investigate the conduct of the Administration; Congress after all has the authority to impeach the president of the United States.
But does Congress have the authority to investigate a sitting governor? Congress doesn't select or ratify the nominations of governors, and Congress doesn't have the authority to impeach them, either. And governors don't report to the president, either - President Bush was completely stymied when the Governor of Louisiana did not elect to do what President Bush recommended.
So the issue becomes whether in fact the Republican congressional majority can do anything at all about the propaganda assigning all blame for the aftermath of the hurricane to the Bush Administration. But when the issue is framed as a propaganda issue, it should be clear that the federal government does in fact have some resources. And a legitimate investigative target.
The problem is in fact that the distiction between "objective journalism" and the Democratic Party is not a substantive difference. Liberal "objective" journalism will always hype any problem, and will always blame the nearest Republican for any given problem. And that is all that is going on in the fingerpointing over the Katrina aftermath.
The organizational reality is that the local and state governments of New Orleans and Louisiana were the first responders in the Katrina disaster; the federal government has a role only as the governor of Louisiana requestst it. And the fact is that the (Democratic) governor of Louisiana did not ask for - did not allow - federal involvement in the aftermath of Katrina until the die was cast that there would be an insurrection in New Orleans delaying rescue efforts and until unnecessary suffering in the Superdome and the Convention Center was inevitable.
True to form, "objective" journalism and the rest of the Democratic Party has been insinuating that President Bush should have done what only the Democratic governor and mayor in question were authorized to do. Print journalism is as independent of the Congress as the governor of Louisana is, but print journalism is not where the action is. The core of the problem is broadcast journalism, and broadcast journalism - all broadcasting - exists at the pleasure of Congress. It exists because the FCC censors competion in radio transmission, and the FCC exists by congressional statute.
IMHO the right thing for Congress to do is investigate the disaster response to define the limits of the president's authority to respond, and compare that to the actual behavior of the administration. And compare the performance in Louisiana with that in Mississippi and Alabama, with the differing behaviors of the governors of those states. But part of documenting the problems in Louisiana must be to discuss the coverage of the event. The broadcast coverage which is ultimately done under government sanction. The real issue is the fact that government is giving sanction to claims of objectivity from Democratic activists.
Cindy Sheehan, Rush Limbaugh, and CBS
August 22, 2005 | conservatism_IS_compassion