The President is threatening to veto a bipartisan Senate proposal to increase the State Children’s Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over five years. His opposition is on “philosophical grounds.” Bush’s philosophy, like everything else in his Administration, is dogma. In this case, the moral principle is that “when you expand eligibility…you’re really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government.” At...

First it was neocon darling and war drum beater William Kristol, who in a WaPo op-ed argued that the Bush presidency “will probably will be a successful one” because there hasn’t been a terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, the economy is going great guns and that war thingie is going to turn out okey-dokey. Now comes president press secretary Tony Snow, who in a USA Today op-ed opines that “Politics sometimes manages to muddle the obvious” and goes on to muddle the...

The Michael Vick story isn’t a political one, but it relates to racial politics in that a tactic used by those who want to defend him is often used when discussing political and social issues within the black community and it is a tactic that prevents our community from being honest with each other and finding solutions to our problems; especially those problems most affecting black males. I was reluctant to blog about the whole affair because it’s just sick. Dog fighting is a felony...

Michael has the makings of a pretty good thread on that subject over at discourse.net. Click here for more.

Watching America is one of the greatest resources available on the Internet. It’s a profoundly uniquely designed and painstakingly assembled site that offers both original translations and links to newspaper articles and opinion pieces on America — unfiltered by comments or opinions of its website owners. It’s the closest to hiring your own translators and political officers to give you original source material so you can keep tabs on what’s going on around the world. And...

Harry Harrison, Hong Kong

In an unhappy confluence of events, one blogger friend has just lost a beloved pet and another is now having to prepare for that eventuality. Dave Schuler, who toils at The Glittering Eye, lost Mira, a four-year-young Samoyed, while our Dr. Clarissa Pinkola-Estes has learned that Pepino, a 13-year-old Dalmatian, has untreatable cancer. This got me to thinking about the great joy that the many animals in my life have given me, as well as the sadness I felt at their passing. And how with so much pain...

President George Bush is opting to leave some children behind by refusing to renew a program to provide health insurance to poor kids: President Bush yesterday rejected entreaties by his Republican allies that he compromise with Democrats on legislation to renew a popular program that provides health coverage to poor children, saying that expanding the program would enlarge the role of the federal government at the expense of private insurance. And that’s logical, isn’t it? George Bush...

It’s NOT a good sign when a certain, onetime-top-ranked candidate whose campaign is not doing well (columnist Robert Novak has called it “all but dead”) begins snapping angrily at the press. And it’s even a WORSE SIGN if he says he won’t discuss his campaign anymore. Due to this news report, it might be humbly suggested that working reporters begin writing their “evergreen” obituary articles on the death of Senator John McCain’s campaign (if they...

There’s yet another case of someone who wasn’t a buddie of Russian President Vladmir Putin having been on an assassin’s list — only this time British authorities averted it: The murder of a second Russian dissident on British soil was averted last month when police and intelligence agencies intercepted a suspected killer in London, it was confirmed last night. In a move likely to damage already strained relations between Britain and Russia, Scotland Yard said that officers...

RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch

The qualities he says he’s looking for are not what you’d expect from a guy whose been very keen in presenting himself as moderate, mainstream, and not wedded to the interests of the disadvantaged. I approve, though.

Ask yourself this simple question: Nearly six years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, do you feel safer? No. Of course you don’t. There are two interrelated reasons for this state of affairs: Terrorists in the 21st century are fiendishly adept at recruiting and adapting, while the Bush administration’s War on Terror has been a failure. I am inclined to say that the latter doesn’t much matter because at the end of the day it is the former that counts the...

When it rains it pours for the White House. And the latest intelligence report came in the form of storm clouds: The White House faced fresh political peril yesterday in the form of a new intelligence assessment that raised sharp questions about the success of its counterterrorism strategy and judgment in making Iraq the focus of that effort. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush has been able to deflect criticism of his counterterrorism policy by repeatedly noting the absence of any...

I have to say, I was surprised to see the whole immigration debate has died down a bit. Oh, I’m sure there are still some smoldering paleo-cons in back rooms creating new “Tancredo” bumper stickers at a furious rate. But by and large, the explosion of xenophobic hysteria that I expected to dominant the next few election cycles, at least, has faded into the background. So, with that in mind, can somebody please inform Senator Tom Coburn that killing people trying to cross the border–if...

NOTE: The Moderate Voice runs Guest Voice posts from time to time by readers who don’t have their own websites, or people who have websites but would like to post something for TMV’s diverse and thoughtful readership. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Moderate Voice or its writers. This guest post is by Hunter Hatfield, who is also writes comments under our posts here under the name of Paca True. Let’s Go Private By Hunter Hatfield I have always...

There’s a new campaign challenger in the Republican 2008 Presidential nomination sweepstakes — a new candidate who’s taking a new poll by storm. So far he/she has no negatives. Or positives. Or anything. Except that this candidate isn’t one of the ones running — or likely to be on the ballot. After months of an exhaustive pre-primary campaign, an AP Poll says, Republicans are increasingly preferring a candidate/noncandidate named “none of the above”: The...

Cathy Young, writing in Reason Magazine, asks:”Why is the president so kind to Vladimir Putin?”: In June 2001, when George W. Bush held his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, he famously declared that he had “looked the man in the eye” and “was able to get a sense of his soul,” in which he evidently saw only good things untainted by years of KGB service. This beginning of a beautiful friendship was reportedly aided by Putin’s touching story of a cross which...

Mike Lane, Cagle Cartoons

Oy vey! It’s summer. And here at TMV you may find our postings are a bit more erratic than usual. That’s because some of our co-bloggers are on vacation. Some have other immediate issues that will keep them from posting for a bit. In my own case, I have a killing travel schedule that sometimes entails driving for 7 hours a day and doing shows in three Southern California counties. There will also be some long out-of-state airplane trips. So please keep checking back. This situation should...

On the GOP filibuster story. Accuracy, shmaccuracy...

The worlds leak into each other sometimes… Most often when our lives are surrounded by people who are facing life and death challenges, we don’t want to burden them with sorrows going on in our own lives. So I was thinking. …until July 1st of this year, when, on Freecycle ads, I saw “WANTED: Christmas wreath.” I had one. I contacted. The son of a father who is dying quickly wants to make one more Christmas for his dad. In July. No better place my Christmas wreath could go. But...

Mike Lane, Cagle Cartoons

Cardinal Mahony prays for “a final resolution” In the interests of full disclosure, I inherited some fairly heavy baggage when it comes to the Roman Catholic Church. My father attended a parochial school for 12 years and dutifully returned the favor as an altar boy when he was younger and as a star football player when he was older. But when it came time to get hitched, he had the temerity to want to marry a woman whose father was a Jew in a church ceremony and the local diocese said...

UPDATED AGAIN & MOVED UP: AP via Earthlink: Nuke Waste Drums Tipped in Japan Quake KASHIWAZAKI, Japan – A nuclear power plant near the epicenter of a powerful earthquake suffered a slew of problems, including spilled waste drums, leaked radioactive water, fires and burst pipes, the reactor’s operator said Tuesday – more than 24 hours after the tremors struck northern Japan. The malfunctions at the Kashiwazaki power plant and the delays in acknowledging them are likely to feed...