Editorial voices from elsewhere
Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States as compiled by the Associated Press:
As part of its serial rebuttals to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address the House Republican leadership has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress Feb. 11.
“I don’t believe I’m poking anyone in the eye,” House Speaker John Boehner said of the invitation, although of course it was, a direct jab at Obama and a gross breach of traditional protocol.
Congress can invite whomever it wishes to speak to it, but when the guest is a foreign leader, the White House as a matter of courtesy is consulted, or at least informed, well in advance.
Obama learned of the invitation just shortly before Boehner announced it publicly.
Netanyahu has never been reluctant about meddling in U.S. politics.
He lobbied strenuously, and thankfully unsuccessfully, for a U.S. airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, an attack whose results would have been problematic given Iran’s defensive preparations.
In the current political climate, Netanyahu would add weight to Republican lawmakers’ push to impose additional sanctions on Iran despite Obama’s threat to veto them and diplomatic warnings that new sanctions would blow up talks with Tehran about scrapping its development of a nuclear weapons capability.
The Republicans may get yet another chance to run U.S. foreign policy after 2016. They should wait until the voters decide whether they deserve that chance.
There’s a disappointing controversy clouding the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala. that became the tipping point for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. President Barack Obama has scheduled a trip to coincide with the anniversary of the March 7, 1965, march, cut short by a violent standoff with law enforcement at Edmund Pettus Bridge. However, March 7 is a Saturday, and the anniversary march is scheduled for the next day, just as it has always been observed on the Sunday nearest to March 7.
Hence the kerfuffle – Congressman John Lewis, who was badly beaten in the 1965 march, invited the president to Selma on March 7, and local black leaders are insistent that the Sunday observance is sacred and must not be rescheduled.
Considering that the Bloody Sunday march is about something far greater than a presidential visit, rescheduling the observance to fit the schedule of a dignitary is unreasonable. However, it would not be unreasonable to extend the observance of the 50th anniversary of this pivotal civil rights event into a weekend, with anniversary events planned for both Saturday, when the president is scheduled to arrive, and Sunday, the somber gathering on Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Far greater obstacles have been cleared in the course of civil rights in America.
Nearly everyone agrees that Ohio is in the midst of an epidemic of heroin and prescription pill abuse. But getting a handle on its size is nearly impossible.
Attorney General Mike DeWine has announced a task force on real-time reporting of drug overdose deaths. The Overdose Prevention Task Force was created after efforts by DeWine’s office to gather statewide statistics revealed that the state lacks a standard for classifying overdose fatalities.
Ohio must find a way to better quantify its overdose problem. Time is of the essence. The task force must act soon to develop reporting requirements that will allow health departments, police agencies, EMS, and coroners to cut through the red tape that continues to keep one of our most pressing public health issues a relative mystery.