Just POlitics

F-16’s to Pakistan

The United States has agreed to sell about two-dozen F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan.

Pakistan has been vital in helping to prosecute the War on Terror.

The move evoked anger from next-door rival India, who is in the process of purchasing 126 new fighter jets. India offered protest to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her recent visit to India.

Social Security: progressive indexing?

The NY Times reports on the growing support for progressive indexing of cost of living increases to Social Security.

Social Security has been growing faster than the rate of inflation and contributing to unsound fiscal nature of the program. Support is growing for only indexing increases to the lowest income group receiving Social Security:

The Times reports:

Supporters of "progressive indexation" say it could achieve several goals: it would eliminate a big part of Social Security's long-running financial gap; it would guarantee benefits at current levels and allow them to rise in real terms for people at the bottom of the income ladder.

Progressive indexation involves reducing the growth in benefits for people with middle and higher incomes, but letting the benefits keep rising for low-income retirees in future generations.

"The president likes it, because it is more favorable to lower-income people than to higher-income people," Allan Hubbard, director of Mr. Bush's National Economic Council, said in an interview this week.

Many Democrats are skeptical. One problem, opponents say, is that middle-income and affluent people would feel increasingly short-changed as their benefits fell well behind their payroll taxes.

Carter & Baker election reform

Former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III are heading a study commission that will recommend improvements to the nation's federal election system.

The bipartisan panel, announced Thursday by American University's Center for Democracy and Election Management, is charged with examining such matters as the disputed 2000 presidential election.

Other members of the privately funded panel include former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who lost his seat in last year's election, and former Reps. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., Susan Molinari, D-N.Y., along with Robert Mosbacher, the first President Bush's secretary of commerce.

U.N. politics

The United Nations Security Council finally passed a resolution on Thursday establishing a 10,000-member peacekeeping force for Sudan to reinforce a peace agreement in the south of the country and to lend assistance in the conflicted Darfur region in the west.

The U.N. has done nothing as 300,000 individuals in that area have been killed.

The resolution was delayed because France wanted to tie the vote to having war crimes tried in the international court. America opposes the international court because several countries view the international court as where they can destroy America’s power in the world.

Kerry’s a frog

The Boston Globe reports on how Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is treating Sen. John Kerry. The reference is to a frog and it seems the princes is not going to pucker up:

Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to dissect John Kerry's political base like a frog in a biology class.

Slice. On March 16, New York's junior senator hosted a group of women, most from Massachusetts, for dinner at her Washington home on Embassy Row.

She wowed them in a house filled with intimate family photographs, including one showcasing Hillary and Bill Clinton gazing adoringly into each other's eyes. During a dinner of salad and fish, Clinton spoke briefly about her recent trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, the fight over Social Security, and other top Washington policy issues. Then she turned the evening over to questions from her guests, who of course asked about her plans for 2008. Of course, she told her guests she is focusing on her 2006 Senate race.

Barbara Lee, a Boston philanthropist, Democratic activist, and John Kerry supporter in 2004, hosted the day of support for Clinton in Washington. Lee says she, too, is focused first on helping Clinton win reelection in 2006, but notes, ''My life's mission is to elect a woman president. She would be a great president. If the country gets lucky, Hillary will be president in '08.''

MoveOn.org urges letters

MoveOn.org is urging their supporters to make sure that moderate Republicans don’t support efforts to end the filibuster of judicial appointees. Here is part of their latest e-mail:

Dear MoveOn member,

Radical Republicans are reaching for absolute power to appoint Supreme Court justices who favor corporate and extreme-right interests over the rest of us—and we only have a few weeks to stop them.

Their plan is to throw out 200 years of checks and balances in the Senate, by silencing the minority party for the first time in American history. It's a maneuver so outrageous that even Republicans call it the "nuclear option." It will take 51 senators to defeat them, and the vote is probably less than a month away.

The Republican leadership is working overtime to keep their plan out of sight, because they know most Americans oppose their bid for absolute power. To fight back, we need to expose them on the nation's editorial pages, and demand that our senators stand up against one party rule.

The next week is critical. All our senators will be home and paying close attention to the local press. Moderate Republican and Democratic senators will be looking this week to see where their constituents stand—and letters to the editor are one of the most powerful ways to show them that we are ready to fight.

We've set up an online tool that makes submitting a letter easy. We provide you with talking points and a list of local outlets. You write your letter, choose where you want it to go, and click to send. Please take a few minutes to write your letter today.

Soros guilty

Billionaire financier George Soros's conviction for insider trading was upheld by a French appellate court on Thursday.

Soros was found guilty of insider trading in 2002 by a French court for his involvement in a 1988 takeover battle of the French bank Societe Generale. Soros is facing a fine of $2.87 million.

McCormack to State Department

Sean Ian McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council and a career foreign service officer who has worked in Algeria and Turkey, is to be nominated as assistant secretary of state for public affairs.

Barbara: Hillary won’t win

Barbara Bush has predicted that Hillary Clinton will be the next Democrat Presidential nominee but that she will not win.