David Brooks critiques Bobby Jindal New York Times and PBS commentator David Brooks this week discussed Gov. Bobby Jindal's recent statements calling on his Republican Party to stop being the "stupid party." Brooks view is that Jindal, a possible GOP presidential candidate in 2016, is onto something, but his strategy is in need of better follow-up. Jindal's comment, Brooks...
David Brooks critiques Bobby Jindal
New York Times and PBS commentator David Brooks this week discussed Gov. Bobby Jindal's recent statements calling on his Republican Party to stop being the "stupid party." Brooks view is that Jindal, a possible GOP presidential candidate in 2016, is onto something, but his strategy is in need of better follow-up.
Gov. Bobby Jindal, a possible GOP presidential candidate, gets evaulated by commentator David Brooks.
Jindal's comment, Brooks said on PBS, "is a sign that a lot of Republicans, a lot of smart Republicans, like Jindal, understand the problem." But in the New York Times, he said Jindal needs to go further.
"In his speech, for example, Jindal spanked his party for its stale clichés but then repeated the same Republican themes that have earned his party its 33 percent approval ratings: 'Government bad. Entrepreneurs good,'" Brooks wrote. "In the reinvention process, Republicans seem to have spent no time talking to people who didn't already vote for them."
He elaborated a little more on the PBS News Hour show.
"But he is still locked within the prism of those code words," Brooks said. "And so does he tell a story about what it's like to be a waitress in Ohio or what it's like to be a struggling Hispanic worker in Texas?"
Brooks is seen as the conservative voice of the New York Times op-ed pages. But some conservatives argue that he is a conservative in name only. Here's what Brooks says about himself. "If you define conservative by support for the Republican candidate or the belief that tax cuts are the correct answer to all problems, I guess I don't fit that agenda. But I do think that I'm part of a longstanding conservative tradition that has to do with Edmund Burke, which is to be cautious, don't think you can do all things by government planning, and Alexander Hamilton, who wanted to use government to help people compete in the capitalist economy."
Landrieu: Let Russian adoptions resume
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., led an unusual meeting this week of senators with Russian Federation Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in an effort to end a ban on Americans adopting Russian children. Afterwards, Landrieu expressed hope that Russia would at least allow those adoptions - perhaps as many as 500 - that were pending when Russia adopted the ban to go forward, though the meeting failed to reach a solution.
"There is an immediate bond that occurs on the part of the parents seeking to adopt and the adoptive children, many of whom are old enough to know what is going on and have been told and seen and met (their adoptive) parents," Landrieu said. "And they have been waiting, some of them, two, three years - only to have this law, in my view, passed without due consideration of the humanity of the issue."
Kislyak made no promises, but said he would pass on the senators' comments to his government.
But he also said there are issues that Russia needs resolved. He pointed to a case in which a Russian child was abused by his adopted parents in the United States, and said Russia hasn't had access to investigate the matter.
Landrieu and Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who has an adopted child from Russia, said they would work with the U.S. State Department to get Russia the answers it wants.
The ban on U.S. adoption of Russian children is seen by some in the Congress as retaliation for legislation, adopted by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama, which established sanctions on Russian officials connected to the death of an imprisoned Russian whistleblower.
Scalise: Obama economic policies are failing
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, joined many fellow Republicans Friday in blaming the slight uptick in unemployment and a 0.1 percent reduction in the national economy on President Barack Obama's economic policies.
"Rather than pushing a radical liberal agenda of big government spending, job-killing regulations, and mountains of debt, President Obama should roll up his sleeves and work with House Republicans on the bipartisan solutions we have to create middle class jobs and get our economy back on track so hard-working families can enjoy higher wages through lower costs for health care, food, and gas at the pump," Scalise said.
But the White House saw some good news in the Labor Department report that U.S. employers added 157,000 jobs in January and that new data shows that the nation added 335,000 more jobs than originally estimated in 2012, including an extra 150,000 in the last three months of the year. That refutes GOP claims that the Obama administration was inflating job data to help the president get re-elected, White House officials said.
"While more work remains to be done, today's employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression," said White House Council of Economic Advisors Chairman Alan Krueger.
A hearing that became a news show
Maybe, it's a sign of how out of control gun violence is. But last Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence included more than a discussion of past violence. Two incidents that day were getting regular updates from hearing participants. At one point, Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabriel Giffords, D-Ariz., who two years ago was shot in the head and badly injured, reported that he had just gotten a bulletin on his Smartphone about a shooting back home in Arizona. It turned out two died in that attack. And Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill, reported that people in Chicago were morning the death of a promising 15-year-old teen-ager, Hadiya Pendleton, at a community park. She had just performed as a majorette for her Chicago high school band at the presidential inaugural in Washington, and one year ago had performed with the band at a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade. During the hearing, Kelly said his wife would not be at the hearing had there been better background checks that might well have prevented the mentally ill man who shot her and others at a street corner town hall meeting to purchase his weapons. But Wayne LaPierre, executive director of the National Rifle Association, told the Judiciary Committee members that the problem with expanded background checks is that criminals get their guns without going through background checks.
Vitter: GOP wants changes in consumer board
Sen. David Vitter, R-La, joined 42 fellow Republican senators Friday in urging President Barack Obama to make changes in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- including creation of a board of directors with congressional appointees, to make sure it doesn't exceed reasonable regulations of financial firms. Vitter and the other signers of the letter to the president vowed to block the president from appointing officials to the bureau until he makes the requested changes.
"The Dodd-Frank bill (the legislation passed in response to the financial meltdown in 2008) created an all-powerful super bureaucracy that goes well beyond the need for targeted regulation to prevent what has happened in the last five years," Vitter said. "This bureau is a huge overreach, and structural changes must be made to create both accountability and checks and balances. We don't need one all-powerful credit czar to rule the economy and decide which products consumers should use."
Democrats contend Republicans are unwilling to impose the kind of oversight needed to prevent past financial abuses - including issuing mortgages with accelerating interest rates to low income Americans the banks had to know would have troubling meeting the payment requirements.