Hands off my clock
Congress, as part of its new energy bill, has arbitrarily decided to extend Daylight Saving Time by four weeks — one in the fall and three in the spring. If they were wise, they’d just adopt DST year-round and we’d permanently abolish the absurd semi-annual custom of changing our clocks.
Some fear that year-round DST will force children to wait outside in the dark for school buses on winter mornings. They would do much better to change their school’s schedule or drive their precious kids to school than to make everyone else suffer time-changes and dark winter afternoons.
In South Bend, Indiana, where I grew up, we never suffered the foolishness of “springing forward” or “falling back.” The only indication that people out East did so was that the network television shows shifted an hour later during the Winter. In the Fall, we went on New York time — or rather, New York switched to Indiana time — and it became a challenge to stay up late enough to watch Monday Night Football and wake up in time for class. In the Spring, Chicago switched to our time and it became more difficult to catch anything but the last few innings of Cubs’ home games on WGN.
I had always hoped that our little Hoosier island of time-sanity would be the hinge upon which the rest of the nation could swing back to one consistent clock year-round. But then our newly elected Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, immediately after proposing a tax increase, proceeded to sell us into time slavery by arm-twisting Republicans in the state House and Senate.
New Hampshire
I had the chance to visit New Hampshire last week, and the trip left a few early impressions about the 2008 field for the Republican presidential nomination.
People there see Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) much as we do in Washington — a nice guy who will never cut it as a presidential candidate. Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) was more impressive on his recent visit there to address a Republican women’s group. But as a well-known party man remarked, he is long on football analogies and short on red meat for the conservatives who vote in GOP primaries.
Sen. Sam Brownback’s (R-Kan.) name comes up again and again. Republicans are impressed by his sincerity and conservatism, but he will have to make a few more appearances in the state before he can join the top tier of candidates.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is still the man to beat in New Hampshire. His support among veterans and his old 2000 allies (many of them registered indepenents) remains strong.
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) is running as a backup — he will probably drop out unless McCain chooses not to run due to his age or health. It is tempting to think of Hagel as a “poor man’s McCain,” but in fact many of McCain’s backers do not like Hagel at all. The two senators are similar in that they both enjoy taking jabs at President Bush, but Hagel’s opposition to the Iraq War separates them dramatically, and it does not go down well with many Republicans.
Pro-Lifers Need Not Apply
Democratic Chairman Howard Dean received some good press over the weekend with his statement (actually the repetition of an old statement) that he wants to include pro-lifers in his party.
But how sincere can Dean be when the Democratic Party is embroiled in a court nomination fight in the U.S. Senate to prevent Americans from voting on the most controversial issue of the day? For all the talk of keeping abortion “rare,” the Democratic bloc in the Senate votes repeatedly against any parental rights over minor children seeking abortions and in favor of discrimination against medical professionals who refuse to perform them. They vote to allow use of U.S. military facilities for abortions, and oppose any judge they think will threaten the sacred right to kill in the womb.
Discussing President Bush’s nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court yesterday on Meet the Press, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that anyone who would overturn the Roe v. Wade precedent is “disqualified.”
Asked whether he could support anyone who would not uphold the so-called “right to privacy” that the court used in Roe to force legalized abortion on all 50 states, Durbin said, “I wouldn’t vote for him. That would disqualify him in my mind.”
Funeral Crashers
Leave it to angry leftists and greedy politicians to dishonor Americans who have died in the Iraq War, each in their own way.
On Saturday, the morning after she laid her slain husband to rest, Katy Hines awoke in her Cincinnati home to find her sister’s car ablaze. Someone had taken the American flags lining her family’s and neighbors’ yards and set them on fire beneath the car, which was parked on the street. This story is a real tear-jerker: Hines, the widow of Army Private First Class Tim Hines, is eight months pregnant with his second child. Pfc. Hines was mortally wounded in Baghdad on Father’s Day when an explosive device went off near his Humvee.
That’s the angry leftist’s method of dishonoring the dead, but how about a high-ranking politician from Pennsylvania? Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll (D) showed up last week, uninvited, at the funeral of Marine Staff Sgt. Joseph Goodrich and began campaigning. During the Lutheran service, Knoll quietly offered the Marine’s aunt assurances that “our government” (presumably the administration of Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell) is against the war. Knoll also handed out her business card to a grieving relative during communion. This angered the slain Marine’s mother, who went straight to reporters. Knoll has since gone into hiding.
David Freddoso, a native of Indiana, is a political reporter for Evans and Novak Inside Report.