Capping the departed year on a variety of issues and heading into the new. . . Confirmation hearings on Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court are set to begin Monday. Will he make it? The general sense is yes. But the extremist sense is: He shouldn't. Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean wants a filibuster ("absolutely") of anyone he and his comrades find ideologically unacceptable. The biggest fight since those over Robert Bork or Clarence Thomas may be on the way. XXX Tennessee now is operating under a law requiring first-time offenders convicted of driving under the influence to spend 24 hours of roadside clean-up wearing orange vests proclaiming, "I am a drunk driver." Caterwauling complaints already are coming in. XXX The first national assessment of cardiovascular fitness has found one-third of teenagers failing to make the cut. That's one-third - grimmer than public health authorities had feared. Notes James Hill of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver: "This really points out that the low level of physical activity in our population is leading to a lot of kids and adults having low fitness levels, and those low fitness levels are related to a lot of bad outcomes. We haven't been able to communicate to the public what a crisis this is. It's scary. Maybe this will be a wake-up call." XXX Kerryists and others spent a lot of time demanding John Bolton explain himself more thoroughly before they would support his nomination to be ambassador to the U.N. Finally, given the opposition, President Bush gave Bolton a recess appointment. Now he is making a lot of sense - not least in demanding UN Secretary General Kofi Annan explain himself to an extent the Kerryists would not. In fact, Bolton is working to restructure the U.N. by, for example, moving it away from scandalous operations such as the oil-for-food scam in pre-war Iraq and the sex-slave industry run by U.N. peacekeepers in Africa. According to Reuters, he is demanding that the U.N. General Assembly approve "a new human rights body, new international accounting standards, a review of programs older than five years, and a stronger internal watchdog office." Oh, the multitudinous ways in which Bolton offends. XXX It looks like the end of the cruise for U.S. battleships. Just two remain - Iowa and Wisconsin - both about 60, both decomissioned and reactivated as naval needs changed. Now they'll probably sail into the sunset to become museums - Iowa to Stockton, Calif.; Wisconsin (the last to fire its guns in support of U.S. troops ashore, in 1991) to Norfolk, Va. XXX Continued... |