Naivety

New York Times columnist Charles Blow rightly questions House Majority Whip James Clyburn and others who naively proclaim that with the inauguration of Barack Obama: "Every child has lost every excuse."

What? That’s where I have to put my foot down. That’s going a bridge too far.

I’m a big proponent of personal responsibility, but children too often don’t have a choice. They are either prisoners of their parentage or privileged by it. Some of their excuses are hollow. But other excuses are legitimate, and they didn’t magically disappear when Obama put his left hand on the Lincoln Bible.

Roberts' Fumble

Conservative jurists pride themselves on fidelity to the Constitution as written, which makes Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' screw-up of administering the oath of office to Barack Obama all the more comical. Or perhaps Roberts remembers that then Senator Obama voted against his confirmation. Nevertheless, the chief justice, erring on the side of caution, reportedly administered the oath a second time, and more importantly got it right.

Goodbye and Good Riddance

George W. Bush's two terms in the presidency are charactierized by serial incompetence and reckless arrogance that leave his successor Barack Obama with a remarkable array of problems to tackle.

Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe

What Robert Mugabe's rule in Zimbabwe has meant is described in graphic detail by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert:

If you want to see hell on earth, go to Zimbabwe where the madman Robert Mugabe has brought the country to such a state of ruin that medical care for most of the inhabitants has all but ceased to exist.

Life expectancy in Zimbabwe is now the lowest in the world: 37 years for men and 34 for women. A cholera epidemic is raging. People have become ill with anthrax after eating the decaying flesh of animals that had died from the disease. Power was lost to the morgue in the capital city of Harare, leaving the corpses to rot.

Most of the world is ignoring the agony of Zimbabwe, a once prosperous and medically advanced nation in southern Africa that is suffering from political and economic turmoil — and the brutality of Mugabe’s long and tyrannical reign.

The decline in health services over the past year has been staggering. An international team of doctors that conducted an “emergency assessment” of the state of medical care last month seemed stunned by the catastrophe they witnessed. The team was sponsored by Physicians for Human Rights. In their report, released this week, the doctors said:

“The collapse of Zimbabwe’s health system in 2008 is unprecedented in scale and scope. Public-sector hospitals have been shuttered since November 2008. The basic infrastructure for the maintenance of public health, particularly water and sanitation services, have abruptly deteriorated in the worsening political and economic climate.”

Geithner's Taxing Problem

Obama's Treasury Secretary designee Timothy F. Geithner is by all accounts very smart, which makes revelations about his failure to pay back taxes in the amount of $42,702 rather puzzling for someone whose primary responsibility will be tax collection.

The Truth About Gaza

Rashid Khalidi's op-ed on what most Americans don't know about Gaza is instructive and deserves wider recognition. He writes in part:

NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.

THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

Blago's Legal Right

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich could possibly go down as one of the most corrupt chief executives in the history of American politics but one thing is certain: he has the legal right to appoint Roland Burris to fill the senate seat vacated by Barack Obama. Whatever objections Harry Reid and Senate Democrats have in seating Mr. Burris, the law isn't on their side.

Sir Charles

Charles Barkley, basketball icon and vastly overrated commentator, was busted the other night for DUI. Subsequent details suggests that Sir Charles had less to do with running a red light under the influence of alcohol than with being the recipient an imminent blowjob.