Monday, November 30, 2009

Is Huckabee Really a Liberal?

What a fascinating news item. It turns out that when he was governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee pardoned a large number of convicted criminals in his state. One of them has recently been accused of killing four police officers in the state of Washington. He gunned them down in a cold blooded murder. This brings up the question, is Mike Huckabee really a liberal in conservative clothing?

For those with long memories, Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts lost the presidency partly because of his releasing a convicted criminal named Willie Horton. He was accused of being soft on crime. From my perspective, one can ask: is Huckabee of the same stripe? It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the Republican primaries in 2012.

Friday, November 27, 2009

A More Important Question

As I write this, the nation eagerly awaits an announcement by President Obama regarding troop levels in Afghanistan. In case you have forgotten, we are at war in that far-away country. The commanding general has submitted a request for a major increase in the number of American troops under his command there. Obama has taken a long time thinking about this request and what his response should be.

From my perspective, a more important question the President needs to answer is “What is America’s goal in Afghanistan?” Most Americans have forgotten why our troops are fighting there. Obama needs to tell us what our basic goal is, then he can explain how many troops we need to accomplish that task. Hopefully he will do that sometime soon.