The New York Post’s Amir Taheri takes a look at the Ba’ath party in Iraq and calls the recent de-Baathification legislation passed by Iraqi Parliament a “major step toward meeting” the challenge of national reconciliation.  He even offers up some credit to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for his efforts to get the ban against public employment of members of the Ba’ath Party lifted.

To his credit, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been fighting hard to get the ban lifted. He started by bringing hundreds of ex-Ba'athist officers into the new Iraqi army and police on an individual basis. He also helped thousands of school and university teachers, technicians and MDs resume their interrupted public-sector careers.

But a law in due form was required to remove the stigma attached to past Ba'ath membership. The new act will let hundreds of thousands return to public-sector work and restore the pensions of hundreds of thousands more.

As Congress returns to work this week, it has a lot on its plate.  Recent polls show that the economy has taken over as the number one issue for Americans and a debate over how to stimulate the economy is underway.  David M. Herszenhorn, of The New York Times, lays out the infighting occurring between Congressional Democrats over how to address the issue.

Most Democrats want a quick tax rebate for middle- and lower-income workers. There are also Democrats who want investment incentives for small businesses and Democrats who want to create a fund for states with budget shortfalls, Democrats who want a short-term increase in food stamps and Democrats who want a temporary expansion of unemployment benefits.

There are Democrats who want a sizable increase in spending on roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects. And there are Democrats who want assistance for Americans struggling to pay high oil prices or whose homes are at risk of foreclosure.

And just to make the debate more interesting, there are Democrats who say that any of these initiatives should be “paid for” within five years — through spending cuts or revenue increases — to avoid increasing the deficit. Others say they should be paid for partially, and still others insist that deficit spending is appropriate in this case.

With all these spending plans to stimulate the economy, Republicans appear to be more united on their opposition to a stimulus package that includes wasteful or unnecessary spending that would end up placing a burden on the American taxpayers.  In Roll Call, Jennifer Yachin reports on a letter signed by Minority Leader John Boehner and Minority Whip Roy Blunt to Speaker Pelosi that makes their case.

Boehner and Blunt issued a letter to Pelosi on Tuesday, vowing that Republicans would oppose any attempt to abide by pay-as-you-go spending rules — specifically any tax increase required to offset additional federal spending — with regard to the stimulus package.
 
“Indeed if such tax increases or wasteful, unnecessary spending are included in the proposal, not only will House Republicans be forced to strongly oppose the plan, but it will also represent a major missed opportunity for Congress,” the letter states.

The House is also expected to pass a new defense policy bill as early as today that addresses the reasons behind the President’s veto and will likely include a pay increase for our troops.  As the Associated Press points out, the measure was sent to the House Armed Services Committee yesterday, and will be redrafted to address the President’s concerns.

Democrats on Tuesday sent the bill back to the House Armed Services Committee, which then would quickly redraft the measure to address Bush's concerns and send it back to the floor for a final vote by week's end.

The decision to revise the bill without attempting to block Bush's action reflects the difficulty that Democrats have had in challenging the president on even minor issues. Democrats lack the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto.

The new bill is expected to increase troop pay by 3.5%, retroactive to Jan. 1. Overall, the bill authorizes about $696 billion in defense spending, including $189 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to setting pay raises for service members, the bill's primary purpose is to guide Pentagon policy, including setting restrictions on the Pentagon's multibillion-dollar acquisition program.

The Wall Street Journal joins the chorus of criticism against The New York Times that has been growing over the past few days after The Times published an article last weekend claiming that veteran homicide was a symptom of dysfunction by military members returning from war.  The Journal op-ed argues that journalists should avoid the use of stereotypes in their reporting – regardless if they apply to racial or ethnic groups, people of a certain age, or veterans who have served their nation in a time of war.

The Times didn't try to establish a causal relationship between war service and homicide. It didn't even try to establish a correlation. The 7,000-word article contained no statistics on the size of the veteran population, or on the prevalence of homicide either in the general population or among young men, who are disproportionately represented among active-duty and recently discharged service members.

Various commentators performed their own back-of-the-envelope calculations, including Ralph Peters of the New York Post, who estimates that if the Times figures are accurate, recent war vets are only about one-fifth as likely to be implicated in a homicide as the average 18- to 34-year-old.

In Real Clear Politics, Gabe Schoenfeld argues that The New York Times’ Ombudsman was erroneous in calling the hiring Bill Kristol as a columnist for the paper a mistake. 

Was it wrong for The New York Times to install William Kristol as an op-ed columnist? The move to put an outspoken neoconservative in such a visible position is roiling the newspaper, inside and out. First, a hailstorm of hate mail arrived at the paper for hiring a "war criminal"--one of the milder epithets hurled in Kristol's direction by some 700 letter-writers, all of whom but one were venting against the appointment. Then, taking note of this groundswell of reader opinion under the headline, "He May Be Unwelcome, But We'll Survive," the newspaper's own ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, called the decision a serious mistake: not because Kristol is an "aggressive unapologetic champion" of the war in Iraq--but for something else.

That something else is remarks uttered by Kristol on Fox News Sunday in June 2006. "I think the attorney general has an absolute obligation to consider prosecution" of the New York Times is what Kristol told a television audience shortly after the newspaper splashed details of the highly classified Terrorist Finance Tracking Program on its front page.

This "leap to prosecution," wrote Hoyt on Sunday in his weekly column, "smacked of intimidation." It also revealed "disregard for both the First Amendment and the role of a free press in monitoring a government that has a long history of throwing the cloak of national security and classification over its activities." Someone of such ill repute is not one to be "rewarded with a regular spot in front of arguably the most elite audience in the nation."

Is Hoyt right or wrong about Kristol? For the light it sheds on how the most elite journalists in the nation regard themselves, this little contretemps is rich in a variety of ways.