2.0somethings

Subscribe

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Your Morning News 4.17.08

Posted by Josh in , , , , ,

Finally, our long national nightmare of not killing people is over. The Supreme Court decided yesterday in a 7-2 decision that lethal injection does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Within hours of the announcement, dozens of states lifted the moratorium they had placed on all lethal injections. Man, I sure am glad we managed to bring this issue to the forefront while the Pope is visiting. Careful, though, this is an awkward topic to bring up at work, probably even awkwarder if you work in a Federal Penitentiary.

The Pope has spent a lot of his trip apologizing for and trying to move the American church past the clergy sex abuse scandal. This is another one of those topics that is sorta tough to bring up at work. My go-to Pope related icebreaker is to mention how newspapers apparently have no problem publishing the term “Popemobile.”

As we mentioned yesterday, Senator Clinton and Senator Obama met in their final televised debate before the Pennsylvania primary. The general consensus seems to be that the debate focused on Senator Obama, with Senator Clinton and the moderators spending the first 45 minutes assailing him on a variety of topics. Whether you think this is fair or unfair probably depends one which candidate you support. However, I will point out that we can all probably agree that there are more important issues at stake in this election than the candidate’s choice of accessories.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Your Morning News 4.8.08

Posted by Josh in , , , , , , , ,

Not much news today as most of the country’s politicians and journalists hold their breath in anticipation of the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. Petraeus and Crocker will be testifying before Congress about the state of Iraq. Similarly to when they last testified, they are  expected to say that things have improved and that significant progress has been made. Their testimony might be undercut somewhat by the fact that there are currenly pitched battles going onin Baghdad between rival Shiite militias.

President Bush has backed and sent to Congress a free trade agreement with Columbia. This puts him at odds with the Democratically-controlled Congress and their Union allies. Luckily though, it puts Mark Penn on his side. If they could combine forces they could screw it up so much that they actuallly do a great job and get the bill passed.

The Pope is coming! The Pope is coming! (side note: coolest thing I learned from the article is that the Pope’s plane is named ‘Shepard 1′)

Finally, David Brooks has a good column today on what political progress in Iraq looks like. I am cutting him some slack even though I am pretty sure his column is a review of a book review.