Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Is it STILL August?

Rich Galen

Monday August 22, 2005

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Are you certain that this August hasn't been longer than most Augusts?
Thirtydayshathseptemberapriljuneandnovemberalltherest �

Nuts. We've still got nine days to go.

Friday afternoon I played a double-header: First, I taped a Sunday show which airs here in the Washington, DC market on the ABC station, WJLA, with P.J. Crowley. The subject was the Iraqi Constitution.

I made the point - as I did in last Monday's MULLINGS - that it took the new United States of America from the Declaration of Independence in 1776 until the final adoption of the Constitution in 1789 - and that didn't include the instantaneous necessity of fixing it with not one, not two, but TEN amendments which didn't get approved until 1791.

Crowley, served on the National Security Council under President Clinton, and is a 27-year veteran of the US Air Force having retired as a full Colonel. I mention all this because he is very smart, and fun to debate on the air.

In any event, during the course of the conversation P.J. noted that the Revolutionary War was still going on for most of that period, so we were trying to get that done while still fighting for the Independence we had declared.

Fair enough.

But don't use that argument at the water cooler because Europe is not, as of last night, at war. How is that EU Constitution coming along?

The second half of my two-fer was an appearance on CNN with Mullfave Donna Brazile. There, the discussion was about US Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) who has been all over the tube claiming a mystical knowledge of what constitutes success in Iraq.

Hagel said, in effect, we are losing the War on Terrorism. Hagel is wrong.

I noted the Israeli pull-out from Gaza which wouldn't have happened if Saddam were still funding homicide bombers.

That in Kuwait and Bahrain not only do women now have the right to vote, but in Kuwait there is a woman Minister for the first time.

The Lebanese have thrown the Syrians out of their country. The main political party in Syria is the Ba'ath party. Think Saddam's Ba'ath party would have allowed their brothers to the west to have been embarrassed that way?

The Egyptians are working on their first multi-party elections.

Afghanistan is preparing for its next round of elections in mid-September.

Even the Saudis are poking their royal toes into the oasis of reform.

And the Iraqis are working on their Constitution. According to CNN, this is the kind of thing they are stuck on:

The [discussion of the] role of religion has revolved around whether Islam will be termed "a" main source or "the" main source of legislation.

Even in the part of the world where haggling was invented, that doesn't appear to be a show-stopper for very long.

New Topic: The New York Times ran a "Week in Review" piece yesterday examining the role of spouses in politics when the candidate is a woman.

The writer, Clifford J. Levy, looked at two of the candidates for US Senator from New York next year: Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham and one of her challengers, Westchester County District Attorney, Jeanine F. Pirro, who according to Levy's lead, has:

"� a husband who went to prison for cheating on his taxes, and then went to tabloid hell for cheating on her (and fathering a daughter along the way)�"

Of course the Mr. Big in all this is none other than William Jefferson Clinton.

Levy reminds us that, "Geraldine A. Ferraro, whose Democratic vice presidential candidacy in 1984 was scarred by revelations about her husband's business dealings" was the first big-time woman candidate with a hubby prob.

If Pirro wins the GOP primary and faces Clinton in the general election in 2006, it will be more than a little fun to see whose spousal glass house suffers the most broken panes.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to the NY Times piece with the very, very odd drawing which accompanied the article, and the CNN piece on the Iraqi Constitution; a Mullfoto of a contest I am sorry I missed; and a Catchy Caption of the Day.

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