The White House said on Saturday that President Bush would veto a bipartisan plan to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program, drafted over the last six months by senior members of the Senate Finance Committee.

The vow puts Mr. Bush at odds with the Democratic majority in Congress, with a substantial number of Republican lawmakers and with many governors of both parties, who want to expand the popular program to cover some of the nation’s eight million uninsured children.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said: “The president’s senior advisers will certainly recommend a veto of this proposal. And there is no question that the president would veto it.”

The program, which insured 7.4 million people at some time in the last year, is set to expire Sept. 30.

Leave no child behind, sure, but a littel case of rickets never hurt anyone.

Dublin, indeed Ireland as a whole, has a well-deserved reputation for misty, grey skies. Although rain seldom adorns our streets, on any given day one can expect to trudge through a thick cloud that, having imbibed far too much Guiness the night before, was simply too hung over to deign rise above sea level. However, if the past five years have taught me anything, it’s that summer brings a welcome reprieve from our soggy existence. Sure, weather in the land of Eire is fickle and even the most splendiferous morn could find a shower or two lurking behind the next rolling green hill. But for the most part, Irish sheep don’t have to worry so much about the smell of wet wool between the months of May and September.

That is, of course, until this summer. As I prattle away on my latest procrastination, I am all too aware of the 30^th consecutive day of a cold and wet summer. Between Dublin and deadly storms in my old homestead, I can’t help but think about climate change and the uncertainty of chaos theory. To make matters worse, all this extra water tends to overtax our aging city plumbing and the not uncommon smell of sewage makes me a bit weary of drinking out of the tap. So as I suck down my second straight bottle of water, my daily dose of environmental guilt jabs me in the gut with this piece on yet another reason why bottled water is destroying the environment.

Now to be clear, I have considered myself an environmentalist since long before it became vogue. I am by no means a radical, though for lack of fortitude rather than belief, but I passionately recycle, am cautious about what products I purchase even if paying extra, shy away from extraneous pollutants, and try to conserve as much raw material as feasible. Then again, I drive a car which, while the most fuel efficient I can afford, adds unnecessary greenhouse emissions to an already suffering atmosphere. I also absentmindedly leave lights on, flush the toilet more often than needed (…let it mellow), buy produce out of season, and yes, drink bottled water.

If someone as environmentally conscious as myself can leave such a carbon footprint, what hope can we possibly have as our numbers continue to approach Malthusian limits? All of which has gotten me to thinking about the conflict between the individual and collective society. As an individual, it would be ludicrous and irrational to expect me to make choices running against my own self-interest. When the winter colds hit my island, and the grocery store is carrying tropical fruits high in vitamin-C, I’m going to buy them even though I’m aware of the human and environmental costs involved in such a purchase. When I’m running late for an important meeting, I’m going to drive my car rather than waiting for a bus to show up. And when all the plumbing in the house reeks of sewage, I’m going to drink bottled water.

Environmentalists, lacking the political clout to do anything else, have long focused on our individual responsibility as stewards of the environment. And we really ought to give them credit for having made as much progress as they have. With the abundant and indisputable scientific evidence of an impending crisis, I’m even noticing support in unlikely places. Yet in the end, no amount of volunteerism will prove as beneficial as a single, well-placed legislative shift.

We all have the capacity to make bad decisions. I would never expect my dog to eschew the tasty morsels in the trash even when they are mixed with dangerous chemicals and so, with his best interests in mind, I make that decision for him. Likewise, as children, the lucky among us had parents who set boundaries so that we learned to look before crossing the street and not to stick our heads out the window of a moving car no matter how much fun it is. The fact is, sometimes it is both desirable and necessary to cede our autonomy in order to save us from ourselves.

Our western notion of hyper-individualism is precisely why we establish certain institutions in the recognition that we cannot always make wise decisions. If it were up to me, that pot-hole would never be filled, building would never be maintained, and that lake would never be cleaned. Likewise, even though as a member of the human race I believe in sharing my burden of environmental stewardship, as an individual I am going to do what I feel I must in order to survive. In other words, I cannot be trusted to make decisions for the good of the whole when such choices are beyond my sacrificial threshold. And it is for this reason that we need a representative government to get it done.

The willfully ignorant among us will charge me with an assault on personal freedom, even when such individual freedom is so clearly infringing on the long-term health of the collective. So to them I say, let them have their SUV and eat it too … but tax them dearly for the privilege. And let’s use that revenue to fund incentive programs for alternative fuel research, renewable energy construction, and public education. Let’s stop looking at the government as the enemy and start seeing them for what they are – a collection of individuals setting the boundaries we’ve asked of them. The US is us, and it’s time we start saving us from ourselves.

With the onset of another episode in administration malfeasance, Bush chose the site of a previous scandal to answer questions regarding his commutation of Libby’s prison sentence. When asked about his decision, our Dissembler-in-Chief told reporters, “I had to make a very difficult decision. I weighed this decision carefully…I thought that the jury verdict should stand. I felt the punishment was severe. So I made a decision that would commute his sentence but leave in place a serious fine and probation. As to the future, I, you know, rule nothing in and nothing out.”

If Bush truly believes that the jury verdict should stand, then how could he possibly fail to rule out a pardon? It seems like only yesterday that Bush’s Attorney General was arguing passionately for stiffer minimum sentencing guidelines:

For victims, another key aspect of any fair and equitable criminal justice system is to ensure that those convicted of crimes serve tough and fair sentences. And since 1987, we have had a sentencing system for federal offenses that responded to this demand - and has helped to achieve the lowest crime rates in a generation … But it is inevitable over time that, with so many different individual judges involved, exercising their own individual discretion, in so many different jurisdictions, shorter sentences and disparities among sentences will occur under a system of advisory guidelines.

The DOJ under both Ashcroft and Gonzales have been pushing for stiffer sentencing from the beginning. Specifically, the call has been to simultaneously remove a judge’s discretion to factor mitigating circumstances into sentencing while also removing the barrier of maximum terms by relegating them to mere guidelines. In other words, there would no longer be anything preventing a judge from issuing a 30-year prison terms for a crime with a 5-10 year guideline.

So I ask you to consider the following two cases: The first is Victor Rita, a man who got snagged in a criminal investigation involving unregistered sale of machine gun parts. Rita was never convicted of the original crime, though he was indicted and found guilty on five felony counts of perjury and obstruction of justice. Rita, a 24 year Marine veteran who served in two wars, received over 35 medals and awards, and is now an elderly man in poor health, is currently serving a 33 month prison sentence.

Sound familiar? I. Scooter Libby was also caught up in a criminal investigation and, while not yet indicted for the original crime (Tony Snow is, to date, the only member of the administration to have even, albeit facetiously, apologized for it), was convicted on 4 out of 5 felony counts of perjury and obstruction of justice. Libby, who was admittedly involved in a scandal which caused immeasurable and irreparable harm to the security of the entire country, was sentenced to 30 months in prison – a term later commuted by the President of the United States.

Two men, both convicted of nearly identical charges, both with similar sentences. Yet the former, whose crimes were no doubt horrific yet finite in scope, is serving time while the latter, whose involvement in the Valarie Plame leak obliterated clandestine operations against groups actively hostile to US interests, benefits from his personal relationship to the White House.

Besides once again bathing in the stench of cronyism, George W. Bush has, with the stroke of his pen, caused unforeseeable harm to the future of this country. For years now, the Bush administration has dismissed critics who complain about inflated sentencing guidelines as well as the ability for courts to consider factors not proven to the jury while ignoring a defendant’s positive contributions and the burden imprisonment would pose on the families. Pish-pash, says King George the W, unless of course the defendant happens to be a loyal courtesan.

According to Law Professor, Ellen Podger, we can expect to see the courts inundated with the “Libby Motion” from defense lawyers expecting their clients to get similar treatment:

The motion will likely include a comparison to the client's circumstances with that of Libby. It will probably also contain language from the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines that speaks to a basic policy consideration of the guidelines being to obtain "reasonable uniformity in sentencing by narrowing the wide disparity in sentences imposed for similar criminal conduct." … And the judges, what will they do with these motions? The activist ones - might follow the activist executive and say - yes this is grounds for departure.

Once again, the administration evades even the faintest glimmer of accountability and, in the process, metes out untold damage in his wake. And we can all take this opportunity to remind ourselves of the immortal words of Mel Brooks - It’s good to be King.

To be perfectly frank, I consider the ability to see shades of grey in social policy as a predominantly liberal mindset.  Of course, I’m basing this on a reality which resides strictly in my own head, though I believe it forms an important distinction surrounding baseline political discourse. 

The liberal mindset presumes its own ignorance regarding the future and therefore meanders freely through any number of crappy ideas in the hopes of stumbling upon something brilliant.  This freedom with which to engage in creative solutions is precisely why liberals have such a difficult time sustaining a unified front.

The conservative mindset, on the other hand, is predicated upon the notion that things have somehow gotten off track and must be restored.  Such an ideology preserves a highly fabricated and glorified conception of life circa 1950.  With a generally detailed belief in the “right” way to do things, developing public policy becomes simply a dichotomous balance between right and wrong.

Obviously I have my own bias in this matter, but I believe liberalism to be an evolutionary step forward in human intellect.  This is in no way meant to cast doubt upon conservative intelligence, which anybody can have in abundance, but rather to argue that the ability to think in abstract terms provides a much more fertile ground from which to apply that intelligence.  It is my belief, therefore, that the ability to think in abstract terms is a skill that some people choose to develop and others consider basically unnecessary.  It is for this reason that the intellectual elite – those with advanced university degrees – are overwhelmingly liberal.  And it is for this same reason that children and young adults are so often quite conservative. 

All of this is a meandering (and vaguely insulting) way of saying that I am incredibly proud to see that this years Presidential Scholars from high schools around the country seized the opportunity to tell the president, in lucid and unambiguous terms, that they do not approve of what he is doing to our country.  'Cuz right now, I could use a dose of optimism for the future.