New Korea?
All the promises by campaigning Democrats in 2006 to have the U.S. military to begin withdrawing immediately from Iraq turned out to be empty.
Indeed, more than six months after the Democrats swept to power on Capitol Hill, the last thing Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean thought he would be hearing is President Bush propose an extended U.S. troop presence in Iraq.
"A 50-year plan for Iraq is not a strategy and it's certainly not acceptable," said a frustrated Mr. Dean.
Adding insult to injury, Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain of Arizona is leaving open the possibility that Americans will grow comfortable with U.S. troops stationed in Iraq for years to come.
"We have had troops in South Korea for 60 years and nobody minds," Mr. McCain pointed out. "If you stay a long, long time, but have the Iraqis doing the fighting, and your people are back in the bases and away from the firing line, I think Americans would be satisfied."
Senator Revels
Saying black history "is too often ignored," Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas this week recalled the life of a U.S. senator whose accomplishments are all but overlooked in academic textbooks.
"During the Civil War, he helped organize Maryland's first two black regiments for the U.S. Army. In February 1870, he was elected from Mississippi to the United States Senate seat formerly held by Jefferson Davis," Mrs. Jackson-Lee says.
Hiram Rhodes Revels was in an extraordinary position; not only was he the first African American in Congress only a few years after the Civil War had ended, but he was representing a state where black men had only been in positions of servitude."
Revels' seat did not come without controversy, she notes, and "a great debate arose in the Senate as to whether a man of color was entitled" to serve in Congress.
The argument was closed with a quote from former Republican Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, who declared: "All men are created equal, says the great Declaration [of Independence], and now a great act attests to this verity. Today we make the Declaration a reality."
Parents first
The Washington law firm Skadden, Arps will provide legal advice, pro bono, to the Virginia Tech Review Panel investigating the April 16 massacre on the Blacksburg campus.
The panel, established by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and including former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, is charged with providing an objective analysis of the circumstances of the tragedy and make appropriate recommendations for the future.
"As citizens, and especially as parents, we are pleased that we are able to assist the panel with this very important inquiry," says Michael Rogan, head of Skadden's Washington office.