It is "first 100 days" season in Washington. This is when lazy journalists (I include myself in that designation) write about an artificial timeline first instituted for Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. The roundness of the number, and the ease at fashioning a "hook" to your storyline prompts a flood of "100 days" stories for each and every president.

But before I get to writing mine (which will appear this Friday), I'd like to take a look back at Obama's closest predecessors and how the media saw their first 100 days in office. What is striking is how often the media gets it wrong when measuring up new presidents. What seems negative at the time can later be viewed positively by the consensus of history, and vice versa. So all journalists should approach the subject with some humility, and consider how often their snap judgments turn out later to be wrong.

Today's article will look at the first 100 days of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. Tomorrow's article (to be posted at ChrisWeigant.com) will look at George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. And then Friday I'll jump into the fray and write about Obama's first 100 days, which will likely prove later to be wrong in many ways, when read years from now.

Continue Reading »

OK, I fully admit that's a provocative title for me to write. To be more accurate (and a lot less sensationalistic) it should probably read: "In Support Of Dick Cheney's Call To Declassify The Evidence To Prove Whether Torture Worked Or Not." Call me biased towards openness and knowing what was done in the American public's name, but I support Cheney's recent call for more (not less) disclosure in this case. Whether it makes logical sense to anyone's argument about the subject or not.

The right's argument currently is that President Obama's release of the Bush Torture Memos was "dangerous" and "irresponsible" and put our national security at risk, and even may have been aiding our enemies. This is not overstating their case -- if anything, it understates their case. The release of the memos was dangerous and naive, they argue, and was solely a political move designed to embarrass former president Bush. In other words, Obama sacrificed American national security for politics. Keep this in mind, we'll return to this argument later. But first....

Enter Dick Cheney. Now, for those of us who are accustomed to loudly humming "Darth Vader's Theme" from "Star Wars" every time Cheney is shown, an interesting side note from Maureen Dowd needs attention. She actually asked a man who should know something about the subject -- George Lucas himself -- and here is what he had to say on the matter:

Continue Reading »

President Obama called last week for simplifying the United States income tax code. This issue may be too big for even Obama to succeed at changing, though. Because while politicians love to rail against the briar patch that is our tax code, and love to call for "reforming" or "simplifying" it, very little progress is ever actually made at doing so. But there's an easy one-step solution for this systemic problem that would go a long, long way towards simplifying the thousands of pages of instructions from the Internal Revenue Service. This idea could fit on a postcard: "Force Congress to do their own taxes. With no help. And then immediately audit all of them, and post the results publicly."

But before we get to the solution, let's take a look at the problem. Our tax code is complex, by design. There was a great overview last week on the Huffington Post which explains why this is so. In a nutshell: the tax code is written by Congress (who writes all laws). Corporations lobby Congress for favorable language in the tax code, which will benefit only them (or, at the most, only their industry). This language is purposely intended to be as obscure as possible, to hide what they're doing from everyone else (who might object to such favorable treatment as being "unfair"). Most people don't read even one-tenth of the whole tax code when filling out their own returns, which further obscures such favorable treatment. Which leaves everybody with extremely puzzling and obscure verbiage outlining how taxes are to be paid.

Continue Reading »

Pirates are in the news these days. So is torture.

What a strange set of sentences that is to begin an article about the twenty-first century world we live in. But pirates are attacking ships with regularity off the coast of Somalia. This has been going on for years, but Americans just realized it is happening (because an American ship was just attacked). And, while the two are not connected (and I am not advocating for their connection, sorry for the slightly-misleading headline), people are finally talking about torture after President Obama released the Bush torture memos to the public. We'll get to the Bush torture memos in a bit, but I'd like to begin with a proposed solution to the pirate problem first.

While the U.S. Navy pulled off a spectacularly successful rescue last week, this should not be seen by anyone as the ultimate answer to the problem. It's not going to end this way every time, folks, no matter how much of an optimist you may be. There are millions of square miles of open ocean to patrol, and we'd have to throw something like half our Navy at the area to adequately secure it. Which just isn't going to happen. There is a better answer to the problem which I haven't heard proposed yet, which is why I am doing so now.

Continue Reading »

The "Tea Party" tax day protests which took place yesterday apparently got mixed reviews from all concerned. They did get a lot of media coverage, most of which at least tried to be respectful of their views. That's more than most protests get from the media, but this was largely due to the fact that Fox News was a de facto sponsor of the events. They reportedly broadcast live from several locations throughout the day. One of these was in Sacramento, where a Fox News personality attended the rally. Right down the road, Fresno, California also had a big turnout for their tea party. The rural areas which surround these cities are fairly conservative, even though they are in the heart of California, so it's not too surprising that they both got a good turnout.

But what wasn't mentioned, at least not in any news that I've seen, was that Fresno has an ugly history of violent terrorist actions against the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS has a processing facility here, where millions of Westerners send their tax forms each year.

On April 1, 1991, it was attacked by mortars. You read that right -- mortars. A group calling itself "Up The IRS, Inc." later claimed responsibility. The authorities took this claim seriously, since they had already claimed responsibility for a car bomb the previous February at the Los Angeles IRS office.

Continue Reading »

American Violet is not a "horror movie." It has no monsters, zombies, or mass murderers in it. Just people. But the movie's powerful message on the role racism plays in the Drug War will likely horrify you just the same. So while American Violet is about as far from the "horror" genre in moviemaking as you can get, audiences may indeed be horrified (or perhaps outraged) at the injustice displayed by one district attorney in Texas.

This impressive new film tells one woman's story of abuse at the hands of a hostile legal system. For different reasons, it evokes such past films as Erin Brockovich, Mississippi Burning, and the works of Sidney Poitier in the Civil Rights era. American Violet tells the story of legal injustice and systemic, institutionalized racism -- and the struggle to overcome such prejudice. One big difference from these earlier films, however, is that the events which inspired American Violet happened in the year 2000. Throughout the movie, news clips are shown in the background which chronicle the election (and aftermath) between Al Gore and George W. Bush, just to remind us that this is not some story from the 1960s-era, but that this sort of thing still happens all too often in today's America.

Continue Reading »

I have to admit, when I sat down to write about President Obama's change in America's Cuba policy, the first headline which suggested itself was: "Obama Does Exactly What He Said He Would Do -- Media Stunned." But then, that headline could apply to so many things these days, that I thought I needed to be a bit more specific.

While Obama's change in direction on Cuba is indeed stunning, it is not at all unexpected. Here is Barack Obama from the campaign trail, speaking in Miami last May:

Continue Reading »

Tea doesn't get much respect in America. This historical snubbing will continue Wednesday, with protests across America meant to evoke the Boston Tea Party, a seminal event in the foundation of our county. How effective these protests will be is going to be open to interpretation, however.

But first, some sympathy for tea itself. Americans consume far more coffee than tea, and don't even realize that the reason they do so can be traced back to the Boston Tea Party itself. Tea is such a quintessentially English drink that during and after the Revolution, not drinking it was a simple political statement: "We're not British, we're Americans." Even today, tea is held to be somewhat suspect, rather feminine, and not as red-blooded American as drinking coffee. A quick observation of any Denny's in the country at breakfast will confirm the ratio of coffee drinkers to tea drinkers among today's Americans. If you don't believe that patriotic feelings get attached to food, then you must not remember "freedom fries" from a few years back. Such feelings sometimes get so ingrained in society that the reason behind them is lost in time. As happened with tea in America.

Continue Reading »

A bumpersticker seen in more liberal areas of the country reads: "Jesus save me from your followers." Now, that may not be a very "Christian" way to open a column which falls on the Christian Good Friday, but I was reminded of it by yet another episode of Catholic leaders denouncing liberal politicians. To these leaders, I have to say, isn't there something about beams and dust motes and eyes which you could be more productively teaching about? Or perhaps that one about throwing the first stone?

The occasion for the outrage this time is Notre Dame -- a Catholic college -- inviting the President of the United States to speak at its graduation ceremony. Outrageous, huh? Some bishops and priests and other Catholic leaders have raised an outcry and, if Obama was Catholic, would no doubt be calling to ban him from taking communion. Their theological logic (ahem) is that since Obama supports the law he swore a holy oath to uphold for all American citizens (the Constitution), he should be shunned by the Catholic community. Yes, it was a "holy" oath, since Obama added the (non-required) words "so help me God" at the end. And yes, abortion rights are part of that law. Meaning that, to the bishops and other leaders, Obama cannot be given the right to speak at a Catholic forum, since he does not follow to the letter the holy laws laid down by the Pope.

To which I have to say: Hypocrites!

Continue Reading »

We apologize for today's interruption in service, and are glad to announce that ChrisWeigant.com is back "on the air" (on the wire?).

At approximately 2:30 A.M., someone cut eight "trunk line" fiber optic cables in two different locations in the San Jose, California area, which knocked out phone and internet service for a multi-county area. At this time, nobody seems to know who did this, or why. Four of the cables cut belonged to AT&T, which has offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of those responsible.

Not only was internet service interrupted (the reason for our site being dark all day), but also local phone service (cellular and landline both) was down as well. This led to local failures in emergency (911) services. Meaning anyone with a medical or criminal emergency was simply not able to contact help. Police and fire services did their best, cruising around more than usual, in the hopes that people could flag them down in the event of any emergency.

ATMs and credit card processing were also out for the entire region. Further details at this point are sketchy, at best. So while it is impossible to draw conclusions as to what happened, we can now at least be thankful that the break in the fiber optic cables has been repaired, and can now resume service here at ChrisWeigant.com.

We apologize for the lack of an article today, and for any inconvenience this may have caused.

-- Chris Weigant