Now that presidential senior adviser Karl Rove has left the White House, speculation heightens among those who care about what he'll do now.
Simple. He should replace Bob Schieffer as the host of CBS News' Sunday news program Face the Nation. Or how about him replacing Tim Russert as moderator of NBC's Meet the Press.
Or more to the point, he should boot George Stephanopoulos off ABC's This Week.
This would produce howls of protest from Democrats. How can you make President George W. Bush's biggest insider the host of a major news program? What about bias? They'd go berzerk.
And well they should. No one can fairly make the transition from top White House operative to host of a network news shows. They were right when they vehemently protested ABC's decision to make Stephanopoulos host of This Week. Stephanopoulos, you'll recall, was a senior political adviser to the former President Bill Clinton's first White House run and later became Clinton's communications direct.
What's that you say? They didn't protest? Oh. So I guess that they wouldn't mind if a major network would do Rove the same kind of favor. Or that they wouldn't hoot when he shows up on Fox News.
Sure they would
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Monday, August 20, 2007
“Deported immigration activist Elvira Arellano”
Wrong.
Elvira Arellano is a deported immigration lawbreaker. Yet, the writers and editors of hundreds of news stories feel compelled to call her an “activist,” a much more generic term that attempts to deflect her year-long spit-in-the-eye of U.S. immigration laws.
Even more egregious are the comparisons of Arellano to Rosa Parks, the heroic African-American woman who helped break the hold of Jim Crow segregation in the South. Parks broke an unjust and immoral law; Arellano broke a law that is neither. America’s immigration laws arise from the right of every sovereign nation to protect its borders.
Arellano was deported after her arrest in Los Angeles after leaving her yearlong refuge in a Chicago church. There was no question about the illegality of her multi violations; she admitted to them herself. She, in effect, dared authorities to arrest her.
Read more at Political Mavens
Elvira Arellano is a deported immigration lawbreaker. Yet, the writers and editors of hundreds of news stories feel compelled to call her an “activist,” a much more generic term that attempts to deflect her year-long spit-in-the-eye of U.S. immigration laws.
Even more egregious are the comparisons of Arellano to Rosa Parks, the heroic African-American woman who helped break the hold of Jim Crow segregation in the South. Parks broke an unjust and immoral law; Arellano broke a law that is neither. America’s immigration laws arise from the right of every sovereign nation to protect its borders.
Arellano was deported after her arrest in Los Angeles after leaving her yearlong refuge in a Chicago church. There was no question about the illegality of her multi violations; she admitted to them herself. She, in effect, dared authorities to arrest her.
Read more at Political Mavens
Filtering the facts from the fallacies of BP controversy
By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune
U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) is correct to call for congressional hearings into government approval given to BP for a $3.8 billion upgrade to its northwest Indiana gasoline refinery.
Just as long as the hearings help to clarify and correct the barrels of misinformation and distortions swamping the debate over the massive project that will bring cheaper and more abundant gasoline to the Midwest. The distortions have been sloshing around now for more than a month after approval of the project by federal and state regulators came under fire. A public summit of the major players in the controversy last week seemed to do little to clear them up.
Take the issue of "backsliding": Can any additional "pollutants," no matter how infinitesimal or harmless, be discharged into to the nation's lakes, rivers and streams, even if they are legal and within federal and state limits, as BP's are?
Some critics, such as Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) would go so far as to inaccurately suggest that any additional discharges are illegal. As he said in a letter to Benjamin Grumbles, the Environmental Protection Agency's assistant administrator for the Office of Water, "A specific provision in the federal Clean Water Act prohibits any downgrade in water quality near a pollution source even if discharge limits are met."
Well, yes, but there's a legal exception, according to the EPA, that he fails to mention, either from ignorance or mendacity: "Anti-backsliding provisions of the [Clean Water Act] contain an exception where material and substantial alterations to the permitted facility justify the application of less stringent effluent limitations...to accommodate important economic or social development." Regulators correctly determined that the economic and social benefits of the refinery expansion meet that requirement.
Other critics don't go as far. They regard the exemption as a "loophole" that BP will use to "foul" Lake Michigan. Such claims usually are made without precise evidence about how the discharges will "foul" the lake, endanger the water supply or lead to horrific events that might justify the critics' hysteria.
For example, in ranting about the relatively small amount of ammonia allowed into the lake, the critics ignore the fact that ammonia is not a bioaccumulative chemical. It breaks down in the water. If it didn't, all the fish in the Great Lakes might have disappeared eons ago from swimming in their own urine.
Also conveniently missing from the debate is the context that could be provided by comparing BP with other industrial and city "dischargers." According to the EPA, BP's 4,925 pounds of suspended solids allowed a day compares with 16,630 at International Steel Group's East Chicago plant and 121,861 at its Burns Harbor facility. Ispat Industries' East Chicago plant is allowed 130,453 pounds, about 27 times BP's limit. Chicago, of course, is on another planet, permitted 243,000 pounds, almost 50 times BP's. Maybe Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who is threatening to sue BP, ought to sue himself. Except, I suppose that Chicago's discharges don't count because they aren't into the lake; they're just gifted to the Illinois river system.
Note also might be taken of the fact that no ammonia limits are imposed on a bunch of papermakers and cities such as Milwaukee and Green Bay. Chicago's allowable ammonia discharge (from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District) is 61,000 pounds, compared with BP's 1,584.
Considering these facts, Stephen Elbert, BP America vice chairman, should have said at last week's summit, "Nuts. You don't want our jobs and economic development? We'll take them elsewhere." Instead, he went well beyond what is required and promised to look at suggested alternatives to cleaning up the plant's discharges. But, he added, any discharge alternative will have to "fall within the economic boundaries of the project," a perfectly legitimate position.
Mary Gade, EPA Midwest regional administrator, probably said the smartest thing all day when she asked everyone to get beyond the headlines and emotions and begin a more practical discussion.
The issue is larger than BP. In a way, it's a test of national importance of whether we can balance legitimate environmental and economic concerns. Of whether we can avoid couching the debate, as did Ann Alexander, a local Natural Resources Defense Council attorney, in such destructive and extreme terms as "sacrificing Lake Michigan in the name of oil addiction." Of whether politics will run roughshod over the public interest. Of whether demagoguery and emotion will trump facts and reason. Of whether radical environmentalism will prevail over science.
Chicago Tribune
U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) is correct to call for congressional hearings into government approval given to BP for a $3.8 billion upgrade to its northwest Indiana gasoline refinery.
Just as long as the hearings help to clarify and correct the barrels of misinformation and distortions swamping the debate over the massive project that will bring cheaper and more abundant gasoline to the Midwest. The distortions have been sloshing around now for more than a month after approval of the project by federal and state regulators came under fire. A public summit of the major players in the controversy last week seemed to do little to clear them up.
Take the issue of "backsliding": Can any additional "pollutants," no matter how infinitesimal or harmless, be discharged into to the nation's lakes, rivers and streams, even if they are legal and within federal and state limits, as BP's are?
Some critics, such as Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) would go so far as to inaccurately suggest that any additional discharges are illegal. As he said in a letter to Benjamin Grumbles, the Environmental Protection Agency's assistant administrator for the Office of Water, "A specific provision in the federal Clean Water Act prohibits any downgrade in water quality near a pollution source even if discharge limits are met."
Well, yes, but there's a legal exception, according to the EPA, that he fails to mention, either from ignorance or mendacity: "Anti-backsliding provisions of the [Clean Water Act] contain an exception where material and substantial alterations to the permitted facility justify the application of less stringent effluent limitations...to accommodate important economic or social development." Regulators correctly determined that the economic and social benefits of the refinery expansion meet that requirement.
Other critics don't go as far. They regard the exemption as a "loophole" that BP will use to "foul" Lake Michigan. Such claims usually are made without precise evidence about how the discharges will "foul" the lake, endanger the water supply or lead to horrific events that might justify the critics' hysteria.
For example, in ranting about the relatively small amount of ammonia allowed into the lake, the critics ignore the fact that ammonia is not a bioaccumulative chemical. It breaks down in the water. If it didn't, all the fish in the Great Lakes might have disappeared eons ago from swimming in their own urine.
Also conveniently missing from the debate is the context that could be provided by comparing BP with other industrial and city "dischargers." According to the EPA, BP's 4,925 pounds of suspended solids allowed a day compares with 16,630 at International Steel Group's East Chicago plant and 121,861 at its Burns Harbor facility. Ispat Industries' East Chicago plant is allowed 130,453 pounds, about 27 times BP's limit. Chicago, of course, is on another planet, permitted 243,000 pounds, almost 50 times BP's. Maybe Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who is threatening to sue BP, ought to sue himself. Except, I suppose that Chicago's discharges don't count because they aren't into the lake; they're just gifted to the Illinois river system.
Note also might be taken of the fact that no ammonia limits are imposed on a bunch of papermakers and cities such as Milwaukee and Green Bay. Chicago's allowable ammonia discharge (from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District) is 61,000 pounds, compared with BP's 1,584.
Considering these facts, Stephen Elbert, BP America vice chairman, should have said at last week's summit, "Nuts. You don't want our jobs and economic development? We'll take them elsewhere." Instead, he went well beyond what is required and promised to look at suggested alternatives to cleaning up the plant's discharges. But, he added, any discharge alternative will have to "fall within the economic boundaries of the project," a perfectly legitimate position.
Mary Gade, EPA Midwest regional administrator, probably said the smartest thing all day when she asked everyone to get beyond the headlines and emotions and begin a more practical discussion.
The issue is larger than BP. In a way, it's a test of national importance of whether we can balance legitimate environmental and economic concerns. Of whether we can avoid couching the debate, as did Ann Alexander, a local Natural Resources Defense Council attorney, in such destructive and extreme terms as "sacrificing Lake Michigan in the name of oil addiction." Of whether politics will run roughshod over the public interest. Of whether demagoguery and emotion will trump facts and reason. Of whether radical environmentalism will prevail over science.
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