For a brief moment last week it looked as if the arrest of an African-American university professor by a white policeman was about to become a major racial incident. When the first African-American President of the United States criticized the policeman at a White House news conference, the incident took on a national dimension. Instead, the situation became another lesson in how far America has progressed on the issue of race; and it reminded us how powerful a weapon suggesting someone is racist is.

Read my column at http://ewross.com/The_Professor_the_Cop_and_the_President.htm

President Obama's criticism of Cambridge police officer Sgt. James Crowley temporarily eclipsed healthcare reform as the top news story. Next week, as legislators return home to their states and districts for Congress' August recess, healthcare reform will be back on top.

Democrats will continue their efforts to convince their constituents that we need a wholesale replacement of the current system with a new one run by the federal government. That system, they will argue, will guarantee healthcare to everyone, pay for itself, and lower costs to American families. They will play down the tradeoffs--bureaucrats involved in the relationship between patients and doctors, inefficiency, and rationing.

Republicans will point out the negative aspects of the Democrats' plan, and they will argue that it will only further swell the deficits and hasten bankrupting the country. They will point out that the overwhelming majority of Americans are happy with the healthcare they receive and the insurance plans that cover them. It's not necessary to swap the current system for a worse one, only target what needs fixed in the current system.

It should come as no surprise that I side with the Republicans on healthcare. You don't trade in a Cadillac for a gas-guzzling Suburban when the Cadillac is cheaper to own and operate and all it needs is a tune up and a new set of tires.

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As the debate about how we should reform the American healthcare system rages in Congress and across the country, just about everyone has an opinion. That opinion is largely shaped by personal experiences and by whether or not a person has adequate and affordable healthcare insurance. Beyond that, it’s shaped by ideology. My views have been shaped by the fact that if it weren’t for the miracles of modern medicine and my access to them, I would have died in 1984. I rely on that access to stay alive, and I don’t want big government to get in the way.

In January 1985, I received a kidney transplant at Walter Reed. The kidney came from an 11-year-old boy killed in an automobile accident in Florida. That was nearly 25 years ago. The kidney is now 36 and I’m 65. The side effects and higher risk of disease the immunosuppressants all transplant recipients must take for the rest of their lives have kept me in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals.

The question currently before us, with Democrats pushing major healthcare legislation in Congress, is will it result in positive, affordable reform, or will it bankrupt the country and produce a system worse than what we currently have? Given my personal situation and past experiences, I want to know if I’m going to continue to have access to the healthcare that’s kept me alive for 25 years or, as I get older, if the government will place restrictions on it.

Read my column at http://ewross.com/Healthcare_Reform.htm

One of the most important things the Congress of the United States can do to bring down the cost of health care in America is enact tort reform. The exponential rise in malpractice insurance premiums and the excessive judgments levied against hospitals and doctors by juries in civil law suits are prime drivers of the spiraling increases in health care costs. Oddly, tort reform is nowhere to be found in the Democrat health care bill before Congress. Trial lawyers are one of the most influential interest groups in the Democratic party and they contribute millions to Democratic candidates. Instead, the Democratic plan proposes unnecessary government micromanagement of the American health-care system which will only increase cost, reduce efficiency, and result in the denial of health care to older Americans as limited resources are rationed by Washington bureaucrats. Coupled with tort reform, tax credits and other incentives to allow those who are currently uninsured to obtain private health insurance will go a long way toward insuring that quality health care is available to all Americans. If the Democratic health care plan becomes law, the quality of health care in the United States will only decline.

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For a while it appeared that Democrats would resist the overwhelming desire of those on the far left of their party to investigate members of the George W. Bush administration, including the president, the vice president, and the CIA. President Obama quickly realized what a bad idea that was when he saw the reaction to his release of top secret Bush administration memos on CIA interrogation techniques. He said he wanted to look forward, not backward.

Apparently, however, the temptation has proven too great. Now, Democrats want to investigate Cheney and the CIA over a statement by current CIA Director Leon Panetta that Cheney directed the CIA not to brief Congress on a program to assassinate al-Qaeda leaders after 9/11 that credible sources say was never operationalized. At the same time, Attorney General Eric Holder is seriously considering appointing a special prosecutor to investigate CIA personnel who may have gone “too far” in their interrogations of terrorist detainees. Like all special prosecutors, once empowered, he won’t stop there.

Wise heads in both the Democratic and Republican parties understand that pursuing these investigations might satisfy those who believe Bush, Cheney, and many people in their administration are war criminals, but it will do more damage to Democrats than to Republicans. Those who suffer from Bush/Cheney-derangement syndrome already think that way. They don’t need an investigation to confirm what they believe.

Fair-minded Americans, however, don’t what to see any US presidential administration prosecute its predecessor for what amounts to policy and political differences. President Obama is already losing airspeed and altitude with his out-of-control spending that isn’t curbing unemployment. Investigations of Bush, Cheney, and the CIA will only drive his approval numbers lower and lose more seats for Democrats in the House and Senate in 2010.

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Whatever the truth about global warming, the politics of the issue is as much about power and who has it as it is about the environment. Whether it’s those who believe man-made global warming is an imminent threat to human existence or those who simply see it as a key to greater political power, global governance is where the belief that we can manage climate change ultimately leads.

On July 9, none other than the venerable guru of climate change, Al Gore, articulated this in a speech at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford, England. In commenting on the US House of Representatives passage of the Waxman-Markey climate bill, Gore claimed that it “will dramatically increase the prospects for success” in combating the “crisis” of man-made global warming. “But it is the awareness itself that will drive the change and one of the ways it will drive the change is through global governance and global agreements.”

According to Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, Director Leon Panetta, in a classified briefing, told them he had terminated an eight-year-old program not previously briefed to them because former Vice President Cheney directed the CIA not to. They immediately demanded an investigation into the program and Cheney's role, making accusations they could not back up with out revealing classified information.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden reacted angrily. He said that he personally kept "top members" of Congress well-informed during his tenure. House Republicans charged that all House Democrats were doing was trying to give Speaker Nancy Pelosi political cover for her accusations that the CIA routinely lied to Congress after she denied receiving a CIA briefing on waterboarding.

Also we learned that Attorney General Eric Holder is considering appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's CIA interrogation practices, in contradiction to President Obama's stated desires.

Because we don't know the details of the program Panetta briefed to Congress and we don't know if CIA interrogators broke any laws, it's appropriate for a bi-partisan group of investigators reporting to the House and Senate Intelligence committees to conduct a classified look into these matters. According to Senator Diane Feinstein on Fox News Sunday, they are. If they discover any wrongdoing they can refer it to the Justice Department.

Democrats are taking big risks at the CIA's and the nation's expense if they continue to make this a public political issue and if Holder appoints a special prosecutor. Americans want their CIA to protect them from terrorist attacks, not constantly deterred from doing their job for fear of recrimination. They also expect the CIA to conduct its activities within the law, but they don't want to see it handcuffed and fog-marched in public before it's convicted.

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Why is Camille Paglia just about the only liberal feminist who ever has anything good to say about Sarah Palin. While liberal-feminist journalists like Maureen Dowd regularly ravage Sarah Palin in her New York Times column, Paglia has spoken admiringly of Palin while often critical of Palin’s policy views on which they disagree.

A good example of Dowd’s opinion of Palin is Down’s July 8 column which mocks Palin with a fictitious diary entry. “No one understands me. It’s like I’m speaking some Eskimo dialect or something. Andrea Mitchell follows me all the way to Kanakanak Beach and I get a French manicure and set up this huge photo op for her, even though she spooked the salmon.”

Paglia cuts to the chase. “Whether Palin has a national future or not will depend on her willingness to hit the books at some point and absorb more information about international history and politics than she has needed to know in her role as governor. She also needs a shrewder, cooler take on the mainstream media, with its preening bullies, cackling witches, twisted cynics and pompous windbags.” I wonder if Dowd was the cackling witch Paglia was referring to?

At any rate, if Camille Paglia finds something to admire and respect in Sarah Palin, then the soon to be ex-governor of Alaska can’t be a total dunce. Perhaps what Paglia sees in Palin is what so many other people who like Palin see in her. She, like Paglia, believes what she believes not because that’s what other people expect her to believe or because that’s what you have to believe to called a liberal or a conservative but because she came to her conclusions using her own intellect. That’s what the horde of liberal feminists don’t like about dissident-feminist Paglia, and that’s what they don’t like about Palin.

Two events dominate the news this week, Sarah Palin’s resignation and the continuing coverage of Michael Jackson’s death and funeral service. Both are newsworthy events that, unfortunately, commentators, entertainers, and pundits will talk about ad infinitum. Two other events this week will receive only scant attention in the media. One is the death Monday of former defense secretary and architect of the Vietnam War, Robert McNamara. The other is the commemoration Wednesday at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial of the 50th anniversary of the first American combat casualties in the Vietnam War. US Army Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand and MAJ Dale Buis died on July 8, 1959, when their compound was attacked by North Vietnamese communists. Theirs are the first two names on the Wall. These latter two events may not warrant the news coverage Palin and Jackson receive, but they are worth noting. They mark the beginning, and perhaps the end, of a 50-year American Odyssey that was far more controversial than either Palin or Jackson. For Vietnam War combat veterans like myself, Ovnand, Buis, and McNamara’s deaths give us pause to reflect. Sometime this week, whether you’re watching someone pontificate about Palin, eulogize about Jackson, or something altogether different, take a moment to think about the 58,000 men and women whose names are inscribed on the Wall. It will help you put things in perspective. 

When President Barack Obama arrives in Moscow Monday for meetings with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, he will be under intense pressure to cancel US plans to build missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) expires on Dec 5, and Medvedev will hold a new treaty hostage in exchange for Obama's concessions on missile defense in Europe. The Democratic left will encourage Obama to make those concessions. They've been opposed to missile defense from the outset, agreeing with those, including the Russians, who believe it's destabilizing and undercuts arms control agreements. But if Obama truly believes it's time to put Cold-War thinking behind us and face the realities and treats of the future, he won't negotiate away capabilities the US needs to defend and deter against Iranian ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons. Unless the US or Israel does something about Iran's nuclear weapons and missile programs, their far smaller arsenal will be a greater threat to US national security than Russia's because of the greater likelihood Iran would use them. How Obama reacts to Russian and left-wing pressure to abandon missile defense in Europe will tell the American people and our enemies much about how Obama intends to defend America.

I was a huge Elvis fan. I grew up loving and singing Elvis’ songs. His death saddened me, but not enough to make me want to make a pilgrimage to Graceland. His drug use disappointed me, but like most Elvis fans I chose to focus on his service in the Army, love of his family, and legendary generosity. To the best of my knowledge he never maliciously hurt anyone except himself.

Farrah Fawcett also died today. She too was an icon, but certainly not as big as Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley. Her death was duly noted in the media; mostly it talked about her brave struggle with cancer and how she died with dignity.

As much as Americans would like to see the popular uprising in Iran succeed, that’s not likely right now. Unfortunately, they’re not that well organized, not that well led, and completely out gunned. And despite claims by the Iranian government that the CIA is behind the demonstrations, it’s highly doubtful that President Obama has let the CIA get anywhere near the demonstrators. That’s also unfortunate. The US has a mixed record when it comes to CIA support for opposition groups in countries with governments we don’t like; and the risks are big. Then again, the risks of allowing the current Iranian government to remain in power and on course to produce nuclear weapons are even greater. At least the White House finally rescinded the invitations for Iranian diplomats to attend July 4 celebrations at our embassies overseas.