Drought in the Southeast

The Southeast right now is experiencing a record-breaking drought, and because of its severity and length, the states are beginning to work together to apportion their current limited water supplies. They are also looking for a long-term solution, but neither of the articles I read said that the senators were willing to go to the heart of the problem – and push to take steps that counter global warming.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/16/southern.drought/index.html?iref=newssearch

http://www.newsweek.com/id/80824

Politicians are still willing to blind themselves to the fact that in order to best keep our country safe from intense natural disasters, like the fires in Southern California, storms like Hurricane Katrina, and this drought, decisive action has to be taken to fix the Earth’s climate, not just the immediate problem. In the southeast, they say “real progress has been made” – well I say that this progress is only a patch to cover the true problem, the roots of this problem, and the US as a whole can’t continue to rely on these patches. Sooner or later the whole thing is going to fall apart if no one admits that the issue needs to be addressed and nothing is done to help.

The Second Iraq

The official reason we went into Iraq was that Iraq may have had nuclear weapons, and yet, we found none. Now, even with evidence against this, we are trying to convict Iran of having nuclear weapons or of trying to make them (http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/06/iran.nie/index.html)

Recently, the NIE disclosed a report saying that Iran had canceled its nuclear program four years ago, in 2003. This makes calling for intervention against nuclear weapons in Iran seem like warmongering.

This article (http://www.newsweek.com/id/73904) points out that there is more depth to this however. It discussed the fact that the government decided to release this information in the first place. This was a random and complete u-turn from the attempt to keep everything classified before, and the article explores the reasons why this happened. The official reason was that this report expressed new information, and thus the public had a right to know it. They also said that keeping it classified would make it look like a major cover-up if the info ever leaked.

In the end, we don’t know the exact reason or reasons why this information was released, but now that it’s out, President Bush is finding it more difficult to stir up anti-Iranian sentiment, and I believe that that is how it should be.

Hillary's New Security Threat

Today, in Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters in New Hampshire, some of the staff who worked there were held hostage by a middle-aged man, Lee Eisenberg, who was complaining that his insurance didn’t help him treat his mental problems. One of the hostages with an infant was released early, and she said that he had a bomb strapped to his chest. Later, it was found that he only had some flares strapped to his chest. This article is a more complete version of the story. [http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/30/clinton.office/index.html]

This is pretty shocking because I’ve never heard of an incident quite like this before. It’s strange to think that even the offices of our presidents-to-be are not free from the risk of something dramatic and potentially dangerous, like this incident. It made me wonder what the security around our presidential candidates was like now and how this incident would change it. This article gave me the answers to some of those questions [http://www.newsweek.com/id/73188/page/1]. In this interview with J. J. Funk, Funk said that this incident necessarily means that security will be or needs to be stepped up because this kind of incident was mostly a personal issue by a man who used Hillary’s absence and a public place to make a big statement and get some attention without directly endangering a political figure.