Last week, the Texas Legislative Study Group released the first part of its recommendations for improving higher education in Texas. The LSG calls for repealing tuition deregulation, cutting and freezing tuition rates (and lowering costs by at least $500 per year), creating a new statewide scholarship system based on merit to help students and their parents afford higher education without being bu
As I’ve said before, it is time for progressives to start proposing their own ideas about the future for Iraq. We need an answer to the conservative “then what” question. Simply stated, what should we do after we withdraw from Iraq?
Before proposing our own plans, it is useful to read the major policy proposals that are circulating already. I will be going through as many worthy plans as I can find over the coming weeks.
To start, the most well known and well read of these plans is the Iraq Study Group Report. The report was commissioned by Congress and facilitated through the United States Institute of Peace. The group was made up of well respected and bi-partisan experts. The report was released in December, 2006.
Though the report is well over 9 months old, large portions of it ring very true today. It is the product of a long and thorough study by extremely knowledgeable people. Though it is not entirely progressive, large parts of it can be appropriated into prog
President George W. Bush is joined by Stephen Hadley, National Security Advisor, Vice President Dick Cheney and Chief of Staff Josh Bolten Monday, Nov. 13, 2006,during a meeting with the Baker-Hamilton Commission in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. Members of the Commission include: Lee Hamilton, James Baker, Sandra Day O'Connor, William Perry, Vernon Jordan and Lawrence Eagleburger. White House photo by Eric Draper.The Iraq Study Group met Monday with President George W. Bush and other members of his administration as it continues its process of making a forward-looking assessment of Iraq.The study group members also met with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte, General Peter Pace, General George Casey and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.Tuesday, the study group will meet with key Democratic fo
I don't think I could say it better than T.F. Boggs, returning from his second tour of duty in Iraq:"The Iraq Survey Group's findings or rather, recommendations are a joke and could have only come from a group of old people who have been stuck in Washington for too long. The brainpower of the ISG has come up with a new direction for our country and that includes negotiating with countries whose people chant "Death to America†and whose leaders deny the Holocaust and call for Israel to be wiped from the face of the earth. Baker and Hamilton want us to get terrorists supporting countries involved in fighting terrorism! If I am the only one who finds something wrong with that then please let me know because right now I feel like I am the only person who feels this way.Talking doesn't solve anything with a crazed people, bullets do and we need to be given a chance to work our military magic. Like I told a reporter buddy of mine: War sucks but a world run by Islamofacists sucks mor
Bill Clinton interviewed in Dutch current affairs programme NOVA last Wednessday (Soestdijk Palace, The Hague, The Netherlands)
Last Wednessday Twan Huys of Dutch current affairs programme NOVA interviewed former U.S. president Bill Clinton, which was broadcast last night. In the interview Clinton, who paid a visit to the Netherlands, made some some interesting statements on the report which the Iraq Study Group came up with last Wednessday.
Clinton admitted that he was familiar with only 3 or 4 of the 79 recommendations of the study group yet, but he thinks that "putting more emphasis on training and embedding [American] troops in advisory roles with the Iraqi's is a good tactical suggestion' and he thinks that the U.S. "has to have some lowering of [U.S.] troop levels if for no other reason than to free up some troops to go to the internationally approved mission in Afghanistan to stop the resurgent Taliban and the resurgent Al-Qaeda that would follow that.' Furthermore
