Memorial Day

The Madison Capital Times looks to John Edwards in a Memorial Day editorial:

There is only one way to "support the troops" in this conflict, and Edwards has summed it up well in his call for a respectful Memorial Day agitation to extract U.S. forces from Bush's war of whim. "The American people voted last fall to stand by our troops, end the war, and bring our soldiers home. The Congress sent the president a bill that would fund the troops and bring them home," argues the most outspoken war critic among the leading contenders for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. "But President Bush has embarked on a stubborn path -- rejecting the will of the people and Congress. ... It has become clear that the only way to support our troops and end the war is by direct action -- by democracy."
...
Adds Edwards, "It has been said that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Mark Twain once wrote that the government must not decide who is a patriot and who isn't.' President Theodore Roosevelt went even further. He said that to say there should be no criticism of a president is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it is morally treasonable to the American public.' "

Edwards has hit on an important theme. It is often said that U.S. troops are fighting for democracy. If this is so, then those fights are only really won when American democracy is open and vibrant enough to allow for a realistic discussion of the nation's circumstance. By suggesting that this Memorial Day is the right time to challenge the Bush administration's false assertions and failed policies, Edwards is marking himself as precisely the sort of bold leader that America will need in the post-Bush era.

Couldn't say it better myself.

College for Everyone

While Senator Edwards won't make it to the White House until 2009, the campaign so far has emphasized steps that we can take now to make things better, even in the absence of the presidency. Here's a terrific example:

Based on a pilot program at Greene Central High School, which serves a rural area in Eastern North Carolina, Edwards said his effort would make college opportunities more broadly available.

Starting in 2005, Edwards initiated a privately-funded "College for Everyone" program that cover the cost of tuition, fees and books at a public college for one year. In exchange, students must work at least 10 hours a week in college, take college preparatory courses in high school and stay out of trouble.

The program has increased the rate of kids from Greene Central High going to college from 54 percent to 74 percent, according to the Edwards campaign.

College is the great equalizer in American society, so we're lucky to have Senator Edwards speaking out with a real plan to improve access to higher education. There's nothing worse than when high schoolers who wants to keep learning, keep improving and keep increasing their earning potential, and they just can't afford to do it. Hopefully we'll have a plan soon that'll do for the country what Senator Edwards' College for Everyone has done for Greene, North Carolina.

John Edwards: Stop Tolerating Ann Coulter

It's funny, having just finished finals I wanted to write a new post, but I was concerned there wouldn't be anything new with Senator Edwards that would make me feel happy to support him.
I shouldn't have worried. This snippet from an article in The Hill is all I needed to see:

Presidential hopeful John Edwards Wednesday strongly criticized conservative pundit Ann Coulter for remarks she made about Edwards’s main rival for the Democratic nomination — Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.).

“Just when we thought Ann Coulter couldn’t take the politics of personal destruction any lower, she proved us wrong,” Edwards said. “Her outrageous comments are inexcusable and should not be tolerated in the public dialogue.”

I find it amazing that conservatives continue to support Ann Coulter. Now, many conservatives support Ann Coulter - she was applauded at the Conservative Political Action Conference where she used offensive language to describe Senator Edwards - so maybe, for some of them, they think our political system needs more people like Ann Coulter. But as a purely political matter, sooner or later the mainstream political press is going to start asking Republican politicians whether (and why) they support Ann Coulter, and it won't help their movement that she's so closely tied in. Hopefully she'll abandon the political scene and this will be the end of it, but failing that, I'm glad John Edwards is standing up to Ann Coulter and her vicious brand of politics.