Month: August 2015

Scowcroft: U.S. at an ‘Epochal Moment’ with Iran

Buck Banks

My generation is on the sidelines of policy making now; this is a natural development. But decades of experience strongly suggest that there are epochal moments that should not be squandered. President Nixon realized it with China. Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush realized it with the Soviet Union. And I believe we face it with Iran today.

— Brent Scowcroft, quoted by the Washington Post, urging the Congress to support the Iran nuclear deal.

Former Pres. Jimmy Carter Had Some Bad-Ass Friends

Trish

BenGrayAtlantaConstitution
Photo by Ben Gray and printed in the Atlanta Constitution

Like former Pres. Jimmy Carter himself, his friends seem pretty bad-ass. They put up 500 signs around Plains, Ga., where Carter lives, that said, “Jimmy Carter for Cancer Survivor.”

Of course, the 90-year-old won’t live forever but it’s hard to make the case that he left anything on the field, as the saying goes, and it would be nice if he could.

Carter’s recent press conference announcing that he has metastatic cancer included two wishes for the rest of his time:

  • That the last guinea worm, which causes a painful and horrifying disease and which Carter has worked to eradicate, precede him in death.
  • That peace is achieved in the Middle East.

Neither outcome is likely, but the wish Carter didn’t make, for a long and happy life, is a done deal.

Rand Paul Seeks to Buy an Election in Kentucky

Buck Banks

$250,000

Amount Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has transferred to the Republican Party of Kentucky “as a down payment on the presidential caucuses he has asked the party to conduct in March,” the Lexington Herald Leader reports. “Paul is seeking the party’s help in bypassing a state law that prohibits him from running for president and for re-election to his Senate seat on the same ballot next year. He wrote to the party’s state central committee, which has nearly 350 members, in an effort to quell concern about the cost of a caucus.”

LePage Loses Bid to Block 65 Maine Laws

Buck Banks

65

Number of bills already processed into law that Maine’s top court has ruled unanimously that Gov. Paul LePage (R) does not have more time to veto, the Portland Press Herald reports. The ruling “delivered a significant blow to the governor, who has been engulfed in criticism and scrutiny in the seven months since he began his second term… LePage indicated in interviews before the ruling that he would not enforce the 65 laws and would seek additional court relief to block their implementation. But Adrienne Bennett, the governor’s spokeswoman, said in an email Thursday that the governor will implement and enforce the laws now that the court has ruled.”