What they're saying …

Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:

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Jan. 14

Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press, on political wrongdoing:

With the Tennessee General Assembly responding to the indictment of several of its members by considering new ethics legislation, and with big-time lobbyist Jack Abramoff having just pleaded guilty to crimes involving Congress, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee commendably says he will be pressing for new law that might at least help minimize some "legal" and "illegal" bribery of members of Congress.

We all should know what "illegal" bribery is, paying an official to perform some special official action.

That's often hard to prove, short of catching a transaction on video or audiotape in a "sting" operation. "Legal" bribery, however, may come in countless forms, with big political campaign fund contributions perhaps being the worst and most widely accepted.

Since giving political money has been ruled by the Supreme Court to be equivalent to "free speech," it can't be banned. But it should certainly be limited, with givers, recipients and amounts immediately made public. Then citizens at least could judge whether they smelled something suspicious or not.

Lobbying is constitutional as free speech and petitioning government, but buying officials isn't. Sen. Frist says he wants to ban privately financed travel (those posh golf trips and vacation jaunts) for officials and their spouses. Current law that limits lobbyists to giving not more than $50 in individual gifts is a joke. While lobbying is legal, why should a lobbyist be allowed to give anything of value -- including campaign funds -- to an official being lobbied? There is no foolproof system, sadly. But public disgust should prompt federal, state and local officials to adopt tougher new laws -- and then demand that officials lean over backward to avoid any reason for suspicion of wrongdoing.

Jan. 17

Star Tribune, Minneapolis, on school vouchers:

Placing another barrier before the misguided school voucher movement, the Florida Supreme Court last week rejected part of the nation's only statewide voucher program.

While state-to-state voucher rulings have been mixed, the handful of similar programs nationwide should take a lesson: Precious tax resources should be focused on fixing struggling schools. If that fails, shut them down and move students into more successful public programs.

In a 5-2 ruling, the Florida high court said the program is unconstitutional. Other voucher opponents had argued that the program violated church-and-state rules -- a position a lower court affirmed. But the state court overturned vouchers based on educational, not religious, clauses in the constitution. Justices said the state provides for a "uniform ... system of free public schools," and that a voucher program "diverts public dollars into separate private systems parallel to and in competition with the free public schools that are the sole means set out in the Constitution" for publicly funded education.

In Florida, about 700 of the state's 2.5 million schoolchildren attend private or parochial schools through the Opportunity Scholarship program. The decision does not affect another 30,000 students in similar programs for disabled and low-income students.

This ruling underscores the bedrock American notion that universal public schooling has an equalizing, unifying effect that is well worth preserving. Though public systems clearly need to improve, they should not be abandoned or diluted.

Jan. 12

Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times, on Iran:

Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has renewed his anti-Semitic ranting with another absurd accusation of European genocide against the Jews.

President Ahmadinejad, who took office in August, made the ridiculous claim that the state of Israel was created as a "Jewish camp" to rid the continent of Jews.

"Don't you think that continuation of genocide by expelling Jews from Europe was one of their aims in creating a regime of occupiers of Al-Quds (Jerusalem)?" he was quoted as saying in the official Islamic Republic News agency.

This is the same man who distorted history last month when he claimed that the Holocaust was a myth. When that drew international condemnation, he called for Israel to be moved to Europe, the United States or Canada.

And in October, this national leader called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." The Los Angeles Times quoted another Iranian Holocaust denier in support of the president. "I'm happy to see the Western world ache," said Amir-Reza Vaezi-Ashtiani, a city councilman who worked with the president, "because that means the president is putting his finger on the right spot. They know the Holocaust is a scenario spun in their own hands."

The United States and the European Union have been pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear program, which the Bush administration has long claimed to be moving toward production of nuclear weapons.

The Iranian president's remarks were followed last week by an announcement from the country's atomic energy agency that Iran would resume research into nuclear fuel production next month.

President Ahmadinejad's outrageous diatribe might be given less attention if it apparently did not have some support from within his country, and if he were not the head of a country feared to be developing nuclear weapons

Jan. 18

San Francisco Chronicle, on assisted suicide:

Making decisions over life and death is never easy, or comfortable.

But in 1994, the people of Oregon voted for the Death with Dignity Act -- the only one of its kind in the nation -- empowering terminally ill patients to make that decision for themselves.

Both the Bush administration and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft challenged the state's law and invoked an unrelated federal drug law to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.

But on Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court rightly decided, with a 6-3 ruling, to uphold Oregon's assisted-suicide law.

"The court's decision today is perhaps driven by a feeling that the subject of assisted suicide is none of the federal government's business," wrote a dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia. "It is easy to sympathize with that position." The idea of allowing doctors -- or anyone -- to help end one's life has, understandably, outraged many Americans. But it is a decision that must be made by an individual, not by the government.

Oregon's law includes rigorous safeguards, ensuring a thoughtful and reflective process between patients and their doctor before making the deeply personal decision.

Still, critics argue that the law will encourage an easy way out for patients. There's nothing easy about death, as evidenced by the small number of people who have used the law to end their lives. In Oregon, where the law has been in effect since 1998, about a third of the 325 people who requested lethal drugs never used them.

In this complicated case, where politics and religion have created a passionate debate, the government should remember who's really involved -- real people with terminal illnesses who, through this law, can find some sense of peace and comfort in knowing that they have a choice.

The Supreme Court recognized that the government has no place at the bedside of terminally ill Americans who have made firm decisions on the level of care they will or will not receive in their final days.