An astounding Gallup poll came out today that states that a majority of Americans (50%-47%) now believe the government shouldn’t be responsible for making sure everyone has health insurance. That’s amazing in and of itself, but when you look at the trend it’s simply astonishing. Just three years ago in 2006, the split was 69% in favor and 28% against. That’s a 44-point swing against governmental involvement in a fairly short amount of time.

Secondarily, but just as important, the percentage of Americans who want to maintain the current system based on private insurance has shot to a recent high of 61%. The majority have always wanted to keep it rather than replace it with a government system, but it’s only recently that the gap has widened so dramatically.

More than likely, as Ed Morrissey states, the reason the American populace has reversed its stand on federal mandated coverage is the high cost involved and the massive governmental bureaucracy and intrusion it entails. The bills being pushed now are quite simply awful, and their numerous shortcomings are recognized by conservatives, independents, and free-thinking liberals alike. There’s a responsible way to advance the laudable goal of health care reform, but a gargantuan all-or-nothing government program isn’t the way to do it.

Congressional Democrats, are you listening? The American people don’t want what you’re selling. We supposedly have a democracy, so it’s time to read the writing on the wall and change direction in the debate over health care reform. Tackling costs and helping those who can’t get insurance is worth looking at, but the big-government nanny-state approach we’ve seen so far isn’t the way to go about it.

Will they listen? I sort of doubt it. What’s being pursued on Capitol Hill isn’t a pragmatic and practical approach to figure out a centrist course on what’s best for Americans, but a partisan-driven fulfillment of an ideological goal. Democrats are so close to passing a public option that’s more like a funnel towards a single payer system than a humble alternative to private insurance, so they’re unlikely to care about the shift in attitudes when they have a Holy Grail to grab instead. Americans are growing massively skeptical, but the liberal base wants it, so the stupid voters can go to hell. Congress knows best, and all that.

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In a move that seems now too ridiculous to be believed, President Obama is hinting that his focus in 2010 will be on cutting the federal deficit in a shift toward fiscal responsibility. The move comes after the shocking gubernatorial defeats in New Jersey and Virginia amid rising voter concern about the growing gap between what the government spends and what it takes in.

It’s a great goal, but there’s a glaring problem – Congress is currently ramming through at the President’s behest massively expensive health care reform proposals that have been estimated to cost between $1-2 trillion over ten years after their spending kicks in. The spending is paid for by tax hikes and slashes to programs like Medicare Advantage. In addition, the administration has pushed through a bloated economic stimulus bill that has had little effect on the economy and, indeed, has seen its job numbers inflated by numerous states. This is to say nothing of the second half of the TARP money that Obama wanted released early and the industry-killing cap-and-trade bill that was passed by the House and is under consideration in the Senate (where it may languish eternally with both health care and increased deficit scrutiny hanging over it).

The bottom line is that the President is a little late to the party. Even the Politico reporters are highly skeptical that the Obama administration will be able to successfully follow through on cutting government spending in an election year – and that’s even if they plan on going through with it. It’s beyond disingenuous to posture yourself as a deficit hawk in the midst of pushing through one of the largest government programs of all time. It seems like a weak promise along the lines of a pathetic New Year’s resolution to give up soda, and what we’ll probably end up seeing is a few token cuts that will be held up as the model of fiscal discipline.

Myself, I’ll believe it when I see it, as it seems to me that the President’s new positioning is based strictly on political posturing and, based on his past profligacy, can hardly be believed.

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Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed would stand trial in New York City along with four other terrorists for the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on that bloody day eight years ago. Holder has said he would seek the death penalty for the terrorists and expressed confidence that the prosecution would get convictions.

One immediately thinks of the evidence that may be thrown out due to the waterboarding that was done to KSM. In a civilian court, the accused has the benefit of the doubt, which gives the terrorists a much stronger legal position and is a big reason moving the trials to the civilian legal system is a dicey proposition.

The trials will likely be a media circus on the order of OJ, which may provide a target for other terrorists to hone in on. But NYC and federal officials will probably have a pretty good handle on security (you would hope anyway). Still, there’s a valid argument that KSM should have remained under military tribunal jurisdiction instead of a civilian court where reasonable doubt and evidence disqualification may be big stumbling blocks.

Even with all that, you would think that a conviction would be almost guaranteed. And even if by some bizarre turn of events KSM or his cronies is acquitted, there’s no way Obama would release them. To do so would be committing political suicide as well as inviting a fresh wave of terror attacks by terrorists who will have been shown they have little to fear from American justice. So if the Obama administration doesn’t plan on letting them go anyway, then isn’t this all a big charade?

It’s interesting to note that Rudy Giuliani, former AG Michael Mukasey, and Democratic Sen. James Webb have all expressed grave concern over this move. They’re by far not the only ones – even New Yorkers are split about whether this is such a good idea. While it’s laudable that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his cronies will be facing justice, the American civil justice system isn’t the place for a foreign national plotting acts of war against the United States.

I’ll be interested to see how aggressive the defense teams plan to be. If they offer up a weak token effort, all’s well that ends well, I suppose. But if they go hard after evidence collected by intelligence officers and military officials who never dreamed they’d have to stand up to the exacting standards of proof of the American justice system, things may go south in a hurry. We shall see.

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Nearly three months after Gen. Stanley McChrystal submitted his analysis of the Afghanistan situation and a request for more troops, President Obama has now reportedly rejected all of the options submitted by his national security team and pushed for revising how and when America would hand over power to the Afghan government.

I fully understand and respect the need to consider decisions of magnitude, particularly those that will put more American soldiers in harm’s way. However, the President’s laborious process that now seems to start over from scratch is beginning to move away from acting responsibly deliberate to incoherently indecisive. McChrystal gave his recommendations to Obama back in August. Now November, the President has yet to reject McChrystal’s request, accept it outright, or modify it in any way that resembles a strategy going forward.

This is not an academic question. Troops are currently on the ground right now, being fired at right now, while the Taliban consolidates its power right now. For a President who chastised the Bush administration for putting Afghanistan on the back burner, I find it striking that the President apparently has no problem once in office of relegating the conflict below his efforts for health care reform, and will now delay a decision further until after returning from his trip to Asia.

I desperately want to give the President the benefit of the doubt on military matters. Politicizing national security is one of the tactics I found most disgusting over the last eight years. But America elected Obama to make hard decisions, and the current lack of any kind of direction undoubtedly has a negative impact on the morale of our troops. If his options are really so terrible that they must all be rejected, then Obama should get rid of his national security team. If, on the other hand, Obama just can’t make up his mind, then it’s a monumental failure of leadership.

We are past the point of prudently and intellectually weighing the options. American soldiers in Afghanistan deserve some sort of decision from their Commander-in-Chief. It’s what he was elected for in the first place.

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Quinnipiac University has released two polls over the last 48 hours that have shown severe warning signs for Democrats in Ohio and across the country. Yesterday’s poll had incumbent Dem Gov. Ted Strickland locked in a dead heat with challenger John Kasich in a race that hasn’t really begun in earnest yet. The poll says more about voters’ dislike for Strickland than it does about Kasich, as nearly 70% say they don’t know enough about Kasich yet. That’s good news for Kasich, by the way, as it gives him an opportunity to “introduce” himself to voters, and attempts to negatively define him by the Strickland camp won’t be as effective since the governor’s quite unpopular himself.

But the real shocker is the poll released today that shows Ohioans oppose the current health care plan by a tremendous margin – 55%-36%, with independents breaking strongly against it 57%-33%. Support for a public option remains, but I wonder how much is that is a belief that the option will in fact be one option among many and not a funnel toward a single-payer as has been argued. Regardless, Ohioans aren’t pleased at all with the current state of health care bills in the House and Senate – both of which contain a public option.

Republican Rob Portman holds slight leads over Democrats Jennifer Brunner and Lee Fisher in yet another race that hasn’t really started. The big story is that Democrats are losing independents in big numbers as they push a highly liberal and partisan agenda while the economy languishes. Voters that brought the Democrats to power in 2006 and 2008 wanted pragmatic, responsible and centrist leadership. Democrats have shown nothing of the sort, taking their electoral wins as proof that the nation instead yearned for its leftwing agenda. That miscalculation is what’s driving independents away, and it’s what will fuel a bad 2010 for Democrats.

Ed Morrissey is right when he says the GOP has a good opportunity here to reassert itself as the party of fiscal discipline and limited government. They need to stick to those principles and not overreach on secondary issues, and if they continue to do that, Republicans have a strong chance at making significant dents in the Democratic ruling majority.

Ohio is a key state in Presidential elections, so in a very real sense it’s a weathervane for the direction of the political winds. You would think that the negative-trending polls would give Democrats pause at enacting more of their radical agenda, but in a sign of how anti-centrist and non-pragmatic they’ve become, it appears they’ll keep pushing for as much as they can ram through until voters can punish them a year from now. That’s governing by ideology, plain and simple, the will of the public be damned.

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To all veterans past and present, all this blogger has to offer you is his heartfelt thanks for your service and sacrifice. For some, the debt is to great to ever repay. Many servicemen and women serving currently and in wars past often downplay their role, humble and job-oriented, and always concerned about their squadmates.

The truth is, however, that this nation wouldn’t have the strength it does today without your quiet determination and indomitable spirit. From the survivors of Midway Island to the men at Mole City to those in Kirkuk and Kandahar, we all owe you an appreciation for what you’ve done and what you’ve had to go through both on the battlefield and here at home. Thank you.

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Dede Scozzafava, the GOP nominee for the NY-23 Congressional district, has a sympathetic piece in the Washington Times about those mean ol’ Republicans and those rascally conservatives who “forced” her out of the race. Brave Dede even has a warning for those who weren’t jazzed about her nomination:

“There is a lot of us who consider ourselves Republicans, of the Party of Lincoln,” she said, her face now flush. “If they don’t want us with them, we’re going to work against them.”

Never mind, of course, that the GOP didn’t force Scozzafava out – to the contrary, the NRCC gave her $900,000 for her campaign. What forced her out were her sagging poll numbers and the realization the seat was a 2-person race between Bill Owens and Doug Hoffman. Did the Hoffman endorsements by prominent conservatives play a role? Probably a small one, but that would mean that those conservatives had some legitimate sway in the district.

The fact remains that Scozzafava was to the left of the Democrat on several issues during the campaign. Although she’s mad that Sarah Palin insinuated she was anointed by a political machine, the truth is that she was. The local Republican committee nominated her without a primary, so, sorry, you were in fact “anointed.” Her last-minute endorsement of Owens was revealing in showing that she cared more about scoring some petty revenge points than assisting the party for which she claims she wants to run again. Well, you endorsed the Democrat who promptly reneged on his opposition to Pelosi’s health plan and voted for it immediately on arriving to Congress. Now you’re making the Republican defeat in your district all about poor you. Good luck working within the GOP, Dede. Even level-headed Patterico goes ballistic on your hypocrisy.

Liberals and Democrats have been giddy about pointing to the race and the Owens victory as evidence of the crack up of the Republican Party and as some bizarre proof of the righteousness of the Democratic cause (never mind the Virginia and New Jersey results that same night). I rather doubt that any larger lessons about the national picture can be gleaned from NY-23 – if Hoffman had been the guy from the get-go, he probably would have beaten Owens. Likewise, if Scozzafava’s name isn’t on the ballot after she pulls out, Hoffman most likely wins. With the absolute mess that existed, it’s no wonder that Owens was able to win a historically Republican district, albeit with a slim margin owing to the above factors and Scozzafava’s endorsement.

My larger point is that moderates should absolutely have a place in the Republican Party. The only problem is that Scozzfava is no moderate – she was more liberal than the Democratic nominee in certain areas. Indeed, one has to wonder why on principle Scozzafava considers herself a Republican for any other reason besides political expediency. There are some areas where such a candidate might be electorally useful, but NY-23 wasn’t one of those places. In the end, politicians may disagree on issues, but there must a level of agreement that serves as the principled base from which the party moves forward.

The backlash against Scozzafava doesn’t represent a desire to kick out moderates, but a frustration by conservatives that the Republicans would try to put up a candidate so at odds with the goals of a majority of the GOP and try to assert with a straight face that she’d serve their interests in Congress. After a Presidential campaign that saw a moderate McCain get defeated despite “reaching out” and annoying many GOPers with his stands on immigration, campaign finance, climate change, and other issues, conservatives and Republicans are simply tired of being offered policies and candidates that are simply watered-down versions of their Democratic equivalent. It’s not a push to the extreme right that’s desired, it’s a clear enunciation of some message that means something besides “get elected at any cost,” of a vision inspired by principle and driven by common sense pragmatism.

So far, the Republican leadership is failing miserably.

Update: Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

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CBS News is reporting that President Obama has decided to send nearly 40,000 additional combat troops to Afghanistan, honoring the majority of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for that country. The administration still says that troops aren’t the only answer and Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai bears a lot of responsibility for cleaning up corruption in his country.

Giving his general what he says he needs is the right course of action for President Obama (if only he’d done it a tad more expeditiously, but that’s beside the point). It would be irresponsible to do nothing at all or even to draw down troops, and the distancing from Biden’s counterterrorism strategy is in my opinion (and others) the more prudent way to go. The buildup will be gradual, leaving some to think it will be too slow of  a trickle to make much of a difference:

The first combat troops would not arrive until early next year and it would be the end of 2010 before they were all there. That makes this Afghanistan surge very different from the Iraq surge, in which 30,000 troops descended on Baghdad and the surrounding area in just five months.
Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute says a slow motion surge will produce slow motion results. “If they’re going to be sort of trickled in very slowly over the course of a year than it’s unlikely to have a very decisive impact in the course of 2010,” he said.

I’m willing to give the strategy the benefit of the doubt for the time being. Let’s hope it works.

That’s assuming, of course, that this is what the Obama administration plans on doing. The CBS article now contains this major caveat:

Editor’s note, 9:57 p.m. EDT: The White House has issued the following response to this story, attributed to White House National Security Advisor James Jones:

“Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false. He has not received final options for his consideration, he has not reviewed those options with his national security team, and he has not made any decisions about resources. Any reports to the contrary are completely untrue and come from uninformed sources.”

Hmmm… Kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it? It could be the administration was already getting flak over the report from its liberal supporters and was forced to make a retraction of sorts. We shall see.

Update: Looks like CBS was fed some bad info or was a bit hasty. Wouldn’t be the first time. Obama’s national security advisor Jim Jones is dismissing the reports as premature. That’s what we get for trusting in a “real” news organization, I guess.

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Twenty years ago today, a decades-long symbol of division and oppression came crashing down. The roar of its falling stones was felt across Europe, across Russia, across America, across the entirety of the whole of planet Earth. It signalled the beginning of the end of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe and sounded a knell of freedom and hope that is still moving to this day.

A flashback to that time:

And who can forget President Reagan’s admonition to “tear down this wall”?

We all still share the same thrill of victory that the German people felt twenty years ago. That day was a day that belonged not to one political party or nation, but to all of mankind. Freedom was on the march that year throughout all of Eastern Europe, but no event so encapsulated it as the overjoyed Germans standing astride a barrier that had divided their city for so long – and tearing it down with their bare hands.

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A little after 11 pm on the East Coast, Democrats in the House were able to get the votes needed to pass the bill introduced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The margin, however, was extremely close for a party with a commanding majority – 220-215, with 39 Democrats opposing the bill and one lone Republican, Joseph Cao of New Orleans, voting to pass the bill, saying it’s what his constituents wanted and that President Obama has promised to work with him on some project in his home state.

Liberals are giddy with the victory, and there’s some momentary depression on the right. Passage seemed almost assured in the House, anyway, however, and it was only some last-minute wrangling with Bart Stupak and the passage of his abortion-funding amendment that got some wavering Dems back on board. Republicans stood on principle and supported the Stupak amendment, though its passage guaranteed the bill’s passage, and they may have been better served tactically by declining to approve the amendment. Stupak seemed to indicate that it wouldn’t have mattered in either case, but you can be sure of this – the amendment won’t last in the conference committee version. If it gets stripped out, I wonder if Stupak’s Democrats will still support the bill. My guess would be yes, which makes the whole exercise meaningless.

There’s a lot of talk of “history” and “landmarks” being bandied about by people who seem to be more concerned about a legislative win than the actual content of the legislation. Pelosi’s bill imposes an individual mandate and penalizes those who don’t go along, as well as imposing obligations on employers who may just decide to let their employees go on the included public option. Taxes and fees are levied to pay for the monstrosity that has been estimated will cost $2 trillion after the spending kicks in. All of this for a public option that seems less like an option to keep insurers honest, but more like a first step toward a single payer system with all other regulations penalizing private insurance and gradually funneling people into the public program, creating more government dependence and, yes, socializing medicine.

I still question why Pelosi had to rush this through after 8 days of its introduction with a late-night Saturday vote when most of the nation wasn’t watching. Is that legislative deliberate, or even responsible? I have extreme doubts that any of those who voted for it had time to read most of the nearly 2,000 pages – if they bothered to read it at all.

Though it’s a setback for those seeking fiscal responsibility and responsible limited government, Ed Morrissey thinks this might be the high water mark for this version of health care. The spotlight now goes to the Senate, where the minority has more tools at its disposal and the going will be much tougher. Majority Leader Harry Reid still hasn’t unveiled his own bill, and if he simply substitutes in Pelosi’s, he’s going to have an even rougher time.

In the meantime, Doctor Zero gives an eloquent and powerful essay on why the path Congress is taking is absolutely the wrong one for health care reform and for America. I couldn’t say it any better myself. I have to say, I’m getting awfully tired of the weak canard that those who oppose the current versions of health care reform just want people to die or don’t want health care reform at all. There are ways of reforming the system piece by piece instead of a massive all-or-nothing bill that creates massive new bureaucracy and massive deficits that still won’t be covered by the crushing taxes levied to pay for it. There are ways of reforming the system that don’t threaten to reduce health care choices and drive down our the quality of care.

That’s why this current effort isn’t “reform,” it’s not a benign attempt to just offer a government plan as competition, it’s an effort that seeks to place government as the controller and driving force of national health policy. It’s why proponents are looking to single payer European states for inspiration, hardly reassuring to those who believe the government option won’t remain an option for long. And it’s why this effort has less do with fixing health care than it is about accumulating power and sticking it to those who don’t agree with you.

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi had hoped to have a vote on her behemoth health care bill in a rare Saturday vote in what seemed to be a rush to hurry through unpopular legislation before any more issues could be raised about it. Today, however, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer indicated the vote may be delayed until Sunday or early next week. The reason? Democrats don’t have the votes to pass it as opposition to the bill is coming on multiple fronts, from both a fiscal perspective and a concern about federal funding for abortion led by Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak.

What’s even more comical is that Hoyer tried to pin the delay on those darn obstructionist Republicans. Um, don’t you have much-celebrated massive majorities in the House and Senate, Mr. Hoyer? The truth is the Democrats don’t need a single Republican vote to pass the bill, but Pelosi’s legislation is so bad that moderate Democrats are shying away from it. Tuesday’s election results didn’t go anywhere towards calming their fears, either.

There’s still a good chance that a vote will still happen tomorrow, but Democrats seem increasingly skittish, especially in the face of a new CNN poll (complete with a lame spin headline) that shows a 53/43 split in opposition versus support for the current bill and reveals a whopping 72% want Congress to either start fresh, make major changes, or quit altogether. That includes an astounding 60% of independents who reject the current proposals. Looking at all that, you can’t blame Democrats for getting heartburn and cold feet, but their fear of Pelosi may outweigh their fear of their constituents, as Byron York posits. Just the way the Founders would have wanted it, I’m sure.

It should be an interesting weekend in Washington.

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(See below for image credit.)

The latest unemployment figures continue to show a bleak picture for job hunters as the unemployment rate climbed to 10.2% in October. Counting those who have settled for part-time jobs or have stopped looking, the rate is 17.5%. It’s the first time that America has reached double digits in 26 years, but many in the government continue to insist that the recession is over and the recovery is underway. Yet these same people remain perplexed as to why the “expanding economy” has yet to translate into jobs, shrugging it off as unemployment being a lagging factor in economic recoveries and taking heart in the slowing of the rate of decline. (Not that we’re gaining jobs, mind you, just that we’re losing them at a slower pace now.)

Part of the reason the expansion hasn’t resulted in more jobs is that the expansion, happily celebrated in the Commerce report last week and recounted by numerous pundits, was driven primarily by short-term government spending programs. The sectors that had robust growth in the third quarter, durable goods and residential investment, just happen to be the same areas that saw government payouts in the form of Cash for Clunkers and the first-time home buyer tax credit. No government spending program can be counted on as a lasting remedy for the nation’s woes, and now that these two have ended, it will be interesting to see how those sectors perform in the next quarter.

The elephant lurking in the room is the $787 billion economic stimulus package rushed through Congress in February that was billed as a jolt to our sagging economy and a surefire method of keeping unemployment under 8%. To be blunt, it has done little to nothing of value. Jobs that have been billed as “created or saved” have been either overblown or not in any danger in the first place. Indeed, 25% of California’s count for saved jobs weren’t in jeopardy at all, along with nearly 7,200 education jobs in Ohio. Hot Air has details on seven other states that overstated the number of jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus, and it all adds up to a less than inspiring picture.

Stimulus supporters will then protest that most of the money has yet to be spent. Really? That’s supposed to be an acceptable excuse for the lack of performance by one of the biggest spending bills in history? So if I understand that line of thinking, a bill promoted as a quick jolt to the economy – hell, they even called it a “stimulus” – can’t possibly be expected to have better results because the majority of the money, by design, isn’t going to be spent until next year. That’s not a stimulus, that’s unnecessarily prolonging our economic troubles only to have a convenient election-year influx of government cash to save the day.

It’s all put in stark visual contrast when you look at graphs at Innocent Bystanders (which I’ve reproduced at the top of this post) and the GOP’s website (which, as Ed Morrissey says, is just a stylized version of the former). I don’t know how you can better illustrate the absolute failure of the stimulus and government spending to result in economic growth.

Instead of engaging in a timeless government solution and throwing taxpayer money at a problem, America needs to address its manufacturing problems and figure out how to keep blue-collar workers in the job force. Or pass a trillion-dollar health package and a cap-and-trade energy tax. No big deal, whichever one you can get around to first.

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House Democrats have scheduled a rare Saturday vote in an attempt to rush through Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s health care reform bill before any more moderates have a chance to get queasier in the wake of eye-opening GOP wins in Virginia and New Jersey. The bill is still getting text added into it, and the Speaker’s office seems to be on the verge of breaking a pledge of putting the final text of the bill up for 72 hours before a floor vote.

For a document that now runs north of 2,000 pages, even 72 hours seems like an inordinately short amount of time to digest what’s in the bill. Even supporters of the Democrats’ plan should take pause at the unprecedented lack of transparency and legislative stewardship on display here. Anyone who says that Congress doesn’t need time to pore over the bill because it’s too complicated is absolving Congress of a lot of  intellectual responsibility. And anyone who claims that all of the bill’s components have been looked at individually is missing the big picture. Without enough time to examine the legalese, who knows what may have crept in? Besides, the bill’s benefits won’t even begin to be paid out for at least another eighteen months, so what’s the urgent need for speed?

The answer has nothing to do with health care and everything to do with political strategy. Pelosi knows that the longer the bill sits out in the open, the longer critics will have to pick it apart. Furthermore, the longer she waits, the greater the chance that moderates will balk at the cost and the scope of the bill. Principled leadership would work to achieve a middle ground with moderate Democrats and Republicans (who, by the way, have received a fairly favorable CBO report for their own health care reform package that costs only $61 billion over 10 years). Instead, Pelosi has gone full-bore with tactics of partisanship and ideological rigidity by rushing to force through a bill that will please the left wing of her party but is growing increasingly unpalatable with the American public.

What’s tactically stupid is that it may all be for nothing anyway. The bill still lacks enough votes to pass through moderate Democratic opposition over budgetary concerns and federal funding for abortions. Throw into the mix an injection of nervousness by the GOP wins in Virginia and deep blue New Jersey, wins that despite the spin concern many Democrats on Capitol Hill, particularly in the utter defection of independents away from the Democratic candidates, one of whom had substantial support from President Obama.

And after all the heartburn in the House, it’s an even tougher sell in the Senate where Sen. Reid’s bill has a very real chance of being substantially modified or not even brought to a vote, period. Pelosi is essentially telling her own moderate members to walk the plank and risk electoral defeat in an effort that may be stymied by the upper chamber of Congress anyway. She may be attempting to provide leadership for the Senate by passing the bill, but she’s doing her own caucus members and the American electorate a vast disservice by hurrying her legislation through to please a segment of her party.

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Tragedy struck the military here in America as an Army psychiatrist opened fire with two handguns at Fort Hood in Texas. Twelve people have died as a result of the attack, and 30 were wounded in the attack by Major Nidal Malik Hasan, recently promoted and due to be deployed to Iraq on his first combat tour. My thoughts and prayers go out to all the victims and their families.

There were numerous conflicting reports coming out as the story developed, with some reports that there were multiple shooters using M-16’s. It was even reported that the shooter was killed, but it now appears he’s alive and in custody. What’s clear, though, is that Hasan was upset about his upcoming deployment, but even more disturbing, had made some comments about, among other things, Muslims rising up according to a co-worker. In addition, he’s been on the radar of federal law enforcement officials for some Internet postings made discussing suicide bombings.

Something smells fishy here, but I can’t put my finger on it. In any event, I’m not going to go overboard and say that Hasan’s actions prove that American Muslims are some kind of enemy within. I’m also not going to justify Hasan’s atrocities by the fact that he was called names because of his faith or that he was stressed about an upcoming duty tour. Those are cop-out explanations that try to absolve the killer of a measure of responsibility, and I’m not buying into it.

We’re sure to hear more about this in next few days, and hopefully we can eventually all make some sense out of it. In the meantime, remember the dead and wounded.

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On an issue of local importance to the Miami Valley, independent challenger Gary Leitzell has pulled ahead of Democratic incumbent Rhine McLin in the race for mayor of Dayton, OH. Leitzell leads McLin by 4 points with 94% of precincts reporting in. I’m making an executive decision and making a call (purely as an amateur) for a Leitzell victory.

McLin seems like a nice enough person, but after two terms as mayor that has seen hemorrhaging jobs and budget shortfalls, the city has little to show for her efforts. It was time for a change, and here’s hoping that Leitzell can do a better job (should he end up winning, of course).

I wonder, though, if McLin does lose, will she follow the path of her predecessor Mike Turner and run for Congress? That might be an interesting matchup, one that McLin won in a contest that sent Turner out of the mayor’s office and to Washington, D.C. Turner, though, now has a pretty good track record on the national level, and the district is larger than just Dayton. It’s some food for thought.

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