Czechoslovakia?

If it was a just one-time slip of the tongue, perhaps it could be dismissed as a verbal miscue in the heat of a long, tiring presidential campaign.

But Monday was not the first time John McCain has referred to Russia’s policy on fuel sales to “Czechoslovakia.”

Czechoslovakia? That nation hasn’t existed in more than a decade.

And McCain cites his experience in both domestic and international affairs?

For the record, Senator, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist back in January 1993 when the country split into two independent nations: Czech Republic and Slovakia.

It makes you wonder which international hot spot McCain will next focus on. Rhodesia? The Soviet Union? Burma? Formosa?

Maybe he’ll just attack the League of Nations.

This is no rhyme–It’s past Jesse’s time

This won’t be written in iambic pentameter, but maybe Jesse Jackson will still comprehend.

To borrow from the Andy Warhol observation, your 15 minutes of fame expired a long, long time ago.

Now you’re just an embarrassment — to your supporters, to Barack Obama, to the nation.

Before you make matters worse, just step back, out of the national spotlight. No more media events. No more headline-grabbing publicity stunts. No more freedom marches, no more hunger strikes. No more dim-witted sound bites destined to fill the seemingly endless hours of airtime on right-wing talk radio.

Use your devotion to prayer — and pray that your vulgar comments about Obama will soon be forgotten. Pray that the day will come again when the American public really wants to know your opinion on major issues of the day.

You speak often of forgiveness. Obama may have forgiven your vulgarities, but we haven’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The silence from the right is deafening

Just as sure as the sun rises in the East, you can count on the right-wing scream machine to throw out charges of “surrender,” “capitulation” or — my personal favorite — “cut and run” any time the issue is raised about a timetable for withdrawing our forces from Iraq.

Set a date to leave and the bad guys will simply sit back and wait to take over the country, or so the pundits of the right would have us believe.

Funny how silent those pundits have become now that the call for a troop withdrawal timeline has been demanded by none other than Iraq’s top government leaders.

If Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie can see the need for U.S. forces to begin a phased withdrawal, how can the right-wing fanatics remain so blind?

Barack Obama hasn’t waivered from his pledge to begin bringing U.S. combat troops out of Iraq — the details about timing may be subject to further revision, but his intent remains clear.

Expect the GOP attack ads to begin ramping up against Obama on this issue, just as soon as — they hope — voters begin to forget that Iraq’s leadership agrees with the Democrats on this one

Are newspapers dying?

Sadly, these announcements no longer seem to raise the collective eyebrows of Americans: Over the past week alone, more than 1,000 talented print journalists in newsrooms across America have been told to start looking for other work.

At major newspapers like the Los Angles Times and Baltimore Sun, midsized papers like the Palm Beach Post and Hartford Courtant, and community papers like the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times, publishers have announced new rounds of newsroom layoffs this week in a desperate attempt to deal with rising costs and falling revenues.

At most newspapers, this wasn’t the first round of layoffs or buyouts. And, sadly, it won’t be the last.

It would be easy to call the combination of factors weighing down on the newspaper industry a “perfect storm” except there’s nothing “perfect” about it: Newsprint costs are at an all-time high; display ad revenues have fallen by double-digits; and the housing slump has cut deep into real estate and classified ad revenues.

Add to that the near-crushing debt load for newspaper owners who leveraged high-priced acquisitions and it’s no surprise that newspaper stocks are near, or at, 52-week lows.

And then there’s the Internet. A generation of computer users who think they don’t need newspapers to get their daily dose of news and innovative ad-placement sites have also taken a mighty toll.

Ask any newspaper owner about the future of newspapers and he (or she) will say the future lies with the Internet. Then ask the logical follow-up question: How are they going to make money from the Internet?

That’s the great unknown. But those owners had better start figuring that one out…and soon.

Texas injustice

The final chapter has now been written, it seems, in the sad tale of Texas vigilante Joe Horn.

A Texas grand jury on Monday cleared Horn in the shotgun slayings of two men who were trying to flee after burglarizing a neighbor’s home. Not HIS home, a neighbor’s home.

The national media is paying attention to this shocking case, and for good reason.

Horn saw the two men breaking a window to force their way into his neighbor’s home and he promptly called 9-1-1.

After reporting the crime-in-progress, however, Horn advised the police operator that he had a shotgun in his home and would shoot AND KILL the burglars if police didn’t arrive in time to arrest the two.

Despite REPEATED warnings from the 9-1-1 operator to remain inside his home, and to NOT attempt vigilante justice, Horn fired three shotgun blasts at the two burglars as they ran across his property after leaving the scene of the crime. Both were shot in the back; both died at the scene.

On Monday, a grand jury refused to indict Horn.

In Texas, the state penal code allows the use of deadly force if the “actor reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary.”

Deadly force can also be used to protect property when “the other is fleeing immediately after committing burglary.”

But to shoot two fleeing burglars in the back?

Critics have raised the specter of a racially motivated killing. In his 9-1-1 call, Horn, who is white, described both burglary suspects as black. Both suspected burglars actually were Colombian nationals, were suspected of being part of a residential burglary ring and had criminal backgrounds. And both were in the U.S. illegally.

But does any of that justify being shot in the back? And, for what, the theft of some jewelry and cash?

In Houston, the answer, regrettably, is yes.

Joe Horn has become today’s poster child for the “Don’t Mess With Texas” campaign.

An end to 5-4 rulings?

How much longer can the U.S. Supreme Court maintain its liberal-conservative balance?

The recent spate of 5-4 rulings makes it pretty clear the court is evenly divided, and only the swing vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy has provided a narrow majority on this term’s most important cases, including guaranteeing Guantanamo detainees the right of habeas corpus to challenge their incarceration; and striking down Washington D.C.’s handgun ban.

Nobody doubts that Roe v. Wade is but a single vote away from being overturned by the High Court.

With at least two the court’s liberal justices — Stevens and Ginsburg — expected to step aside soon, this year’s presidential election takes on greater importance. John McCain has said he’ll nominate judges cast in the same mold as John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

If McCain gets that chance, it could alter the ideological tilt of the Supreme Court for the next 30 to 40 years.

Facing that realization, how can it be that so many of Hillary Clinton’s loyal primary election supporters insist they’ll not vote for Obama in November? The last poll I saw has Obama winning just 53 percent of former Clinton backers.

What could the others be thinking? How could they not care about the next appointments to the Supreme Court?

Their indifference to the nation’s well-being will represent more of a political setback than any setback perceived from Clinton’s failure to win the Democratic nomination.

Sorry, Charlie

Is McCain adviser Charlie Black out of his mind, or subtly playing the fear factor early in the campaign?

Black is apologizing for a weekend interview in Fortune when he observed that another terrorist attack on U.S. soil before the November election would help his candidate. McCain has already distanced himself from Black’s published interview, but hasn’t told the now-discredited adviser to take a hike.

Shouldn’t we expect more from the driver of the Straight Talk Express?

And what of the GOP strategy of trying to ensure victory in November by scaring American voters? Can a trusted McCain adviser remain in the campaign hierarchy after going on the record seeking to exploit a terror attack that could leave hundreds, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of victims in its wake?

The GOP, which says it’s making America safer from terrorists, secretly is pulling for another terrorist attack?

What’s the GOP solution going to be next time? Spend another $1 trillion in a failed war on terrorism? Invade another country on the basis of manufactured intelligence data about weapons of mass destruction?

Four more years of this?

Figures can lie, and liars…..

As the presidential election begins to heat up, expect to hear more GOP efforts to introduce the “Big Lie” into the debate — namely, that anything short of a continued open-ended commitment in Iraq represents a “cut-and-run” policy.

At what point, then, can Americans ask, “When is enough enough?”

Our military commitment in Iraq has exceeded the length of World War II. We’ve lost in excess of 4,000 brave members of the military. Tens of thousands of other Marines and soldiers have sustained devastating, life-altering injuries. The death toll of Iraqi civilians is, by most accounts, well above 100,000, and we’ll probably never know the real number.

The record is now clear: We entered into the Iraq war on false pretenses. So, again, at what point can we ask “When is enough enough?”

The administration promised to withdraw troops as soon as Iraq’s own military was able to take over. “As the Iraqi Army stands up, we will stand down” was one of  President Bush’s more catchy phrases. Too bad it was no more than hollow words.

Iraq’s military is no more ready to defend the nation today than it was five years ago.

Instead, U.S. troops forced into extended combat duty, or called back to active duty for three, four or five tours of duty in Iraq, are getting burned out. National Guard resources sent to Iraq to backfill U.S. troop staffing levels are being stretched so thin that the Guard cannot respond to its first priority: responding to domestic crises. The prolonged desert duty is wreaking havoc with our weapons systems, too. Most experts say it will take years to rebuild our military to full strength.

The war’s drain on the U.S. Treasury is nearly a staggering $1 trillion, and this year alone we’ll spend $170 billion. Mind you, that money’s not in the federal budget — we’re simply mortgaging our children’s future by borrowing the funds and adding to the national debt.

So at what point is it a matter of logic, rather than an act of cowardice, to ask our leaders, “When is enough enough?”

100 years in Iraq?

John McCain is justifying his open-ended commitment to a U.S. troop presence in Iraq by drawing comparsions to U.S. deployments in Europe and South Korea.

How often are U.S. forces serving in Germany, or Korea, or Japan, or Bosnia, being placed in harm’s way from suicide bombers or roadside explosives or mortar shells or sniper fire?

Our troops are at risk as long as they remain on Iraqi soil.