Previewing Saturday's editorial columns

Some highlights from the Saturday opinion cycle:

On Townhall.com, Burt Prelutsky is offering some interesting thoughts on the idea of term limits for federal judges. And he manages to couch the question in a rather amusing context, leading to an enjoyable tangent of sorts:

Although I am undecided about term limits when it comes to federal judges, it’s a whole other matter when it comes to senators. And forget term limits, I’d do away with them entirely. What purpose do they serve? What do those hundred buffoons do that couldn’t be handled just as ineptly by that crowd of stiffs in the House?

Also on Townhall.com, Mark Alexander is lambasting The New York Times. Now, don't get me wrong, the Gray Lady gives Americans plenty of due cause for criticism – including a radical editorial board – but Mr. Alexander is going after them for all the wrong reasons. Apparently enjoying a selective memory that excludes the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, the columnist argues:

In Tuesday's Times, the paper detailed a leaked working paper from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The draft report was highly critical of the U.S.-led reconstruction of Iraq, deeming the effort a failure in large part. Though incomplete, illegally leaked and intended as an internal document for discussion, The Times chose to run the story.

Once again, The New York Times, not the Bush administration, has broken the law protecting our nation's security, violating U.S. Code Title 18, Part I, Chapter 37, Section 798, pertaining to the illegal release of national-security information.

On a more uplifting note, The Washington Post has a deft editorial headlined “A Defeat for Anti-Americanism,” putting the recent Canadian elections into a proper context:

[Paul] Martin becomes the second G-8 leader in four months to exit from office after discovering that anti-U.S. demagoguery is no longer enough to win an election. Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor, also tried to rescue his political career last fall by parading his differences with Mr. Bush; the result was the victory of Angela Merkel, who has moved swiftly to repair relations with Washington.

An interesting editorial in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel tackles a recent ad likening Jim Doyle to a duo of notorious southern governors. And while the paper's editorial board seems more interested in discrediting the clearly hyperbolic claim, the piece also contains a relevant rebuke of Mr. Doyle's educational policy:

Orval Faubus, George Wallace, Jim Doyle. A segregationist axis of evil standing in the way of educational opportunity for African-American students? Of course not; the comparison is ludicrous on its face, believable only to those who prefer rhetoric over cold facts

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Doyle is wrong and is blocking opportunity for some students. But we think he sincerely believes that the choice program hurts public schools and that all students should have equal opportunity to receive a quality education in those public schools. This doesn't make him racist.