thank goodness for the op/ed section

Budget cuts fall heavily on needy
Bush blames spending, but revenue slide drives deficit

Destructive fine print is showing through the budgetary bandwagon President Bush has designed for his re-election drive. It turns out that hundreds of thousands of poor and low-income families will lose child care and housing assistance if the administration's ballyhooed spending cuts take place. In trying to campaign as a late-blooming fiscal disciplinarian, the president is making a show of marking 128 programs--count 'em, GOP budget hawks, 128--for elimination or cutbacks in many vital social service areas. As if they are at the heart of the administration's rolling deficits, which threaten the nation's economic future.

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In cutting these indispensible programs, Bush is trying to tell voters that down is up--that the deficit problem is rooted on the ledger's spending side, not the revenue side, which he has systematically choked by trillions across the decade. Government data actually indicates that spending as a share of the economy has not rocketed and remains relatively low, while the Bush tax cuts increasingly drive the grim deficit outlook.

Congress should be the first to recognize and dismiss the president's budget as an arrant campaign pamphlet. It would leave profligate Republicans picking on the poor in a desperate attempt to stand for fiscal responsibility.

--The New York Times, as printed in The Ann Arbor News, Feb. 19, 2004

good news in the news

Experimental Vaccine May Stop Lung Cancer

Go, go, Chicago

Entering a national debate over gay marriage, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said he would have “no problem” with Cook County issuing marriage licenses to gay couples in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city. Daley's views came as President Bush said he was “troubled” by San Francisco’s same-sex wedding spree.

Daley urged sympathy for same-sex couples because “they love each other just as much as anyone else.”

Daley also dismissed a suggestion that marriage between gay couples would undermine the institution. “Marriage has been undermined by divorce, so don’t tell me about marriage,” he said. “Don’t blame the gay and lesbian, transgender and transsexual community.”

San Francisco sues California Over Gay Marriage Prohibitions

(no subject)

Dare I mention it. . . ?

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these, as the Chinese would say, are interesting times

Effort to reopen Roe v. Wade

A federal appeals court has agreed to hear a request from the woman formerly known as "Jane Roe" to reconsider the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion.

[...] Dallas County District Attorney Bill Hill, whose predecessor Henry Wade who was named in the original lawsuit, has not filed a response to McCorvey's appeal. That may put the appeals court in the unusual position of hearing arguments from only one side.

Wade was named in the original case because he was charged with enforcing the Texas law that prevented McCorvey from having an abortion. Hill's office has argued that since that law no longer exists, Hill has no authority to prosecute and should not be sued.

More than 20 Texas law school professors concerned about an unbalanced hearing filed a brief Wednesday asking to be allowed to argue the other side of the case.

"It's important that the court hear from somebody representing the position that the district court took, which I think is clearly right," said David Schenck, a lawyer representing the professors. "At this point, the case is moot, and she's presenting at best a political question."