Karl's Weekend Reading

The reading well was dry until Friday. We're trying not to post the primary-related articles, as many good ones as there are, because either you already read them, or like us, you are waiting for the nominations and the real campaign to start. Here is a short list, with two rare links to posts from fellow bloggers.

"Lord help a diplomat who tells the truth" is what the Journal editorial board is saying about Bush's special envoy for human rights in North Korea in Friday's paper.

We are reluctant to jump on the Bush-Bashing-Bandwagon, but when it comes to North Korea, we're riding shotgun. The North Korean Communists continue to strangle their masses while they wait for an American president that will succumb to nuclear blackmail. Eight years with no progress. This is the Bush Administration's black eye.

In this Foggy Bottom version of the vanishing commissar, Mr. Lefkowitz is being written out of the Administration's North Korea policy for a speech he gave last week at the American Enterprise Institute. Noting that it has been more than two years since Pyongyang pledged to abandon its nuclear weapons program, and more than two weeks since it violated the latest deadline to disclose the full extent of that program, Mr. Lefkowitz observed that "it is increasingly clear that North Korea will remain in its present nuclear status when the Administration leaves office in one year."

Ok, so we'll post one primary-related opinion piece from Wednesday's WSJ, "Obama's Clinton Eduction".

The Illinois Senator is still a young man, but not so young as to have missed the 1990s. He nonetheless seems to be awakening slowly to what everyone else already knows about the Clintons, which is that they will say and do whatever they "gotta" say or do to win. Listen closely to Mr. Obama, and you can almost hear the echoes of Bob Dole at the end of the 1996 campaign asking, "Where's the outrage?"

Hugh Hewitt touches on something that bugged us during the Republican debates. While others feel comfortable bashing President Bush, McCain seems to enjoy bad-mouthing Donald Rumsfeld. Thanks Hugh for responding!

Only small-minded people think Rumsfeld is other than a great American and patriot, though of course a contrroversial one. He continues to deserve the respect and thanks of the American people.

I thus wonder whenever Senator McCain snarls out "Rumsfeld"as he does in debate after debate if others beside me find it unsettling and off-putting that there is so much venom there? Rumsfeld was an opponent of McCain's and as a result the contempt the Arizona maverick has for the former SecDef is complete, but it is also unseemly and not in the best traditions of American politics, especially when Rumsfeld has left the field.

DougM at Sonrak.com reports of two Mesa, AZ lawmakers that are proposing a law that will allow concealed weapon permit holders to carry in Arizona's public schools.

We love Pro-Choice when it comes to packing heat!