Ross Mackenzie
Tribune Media

Bulleted comments on items currently in the news....

• With the arrest of infoterrorist Julian Assange, maybe the Obama administration should offer to lock him up at Guantanamo and try him by military tribunal. The last time civilian trial of a terrorist was attempted (on Ahmed Khalfani Ghailani), the defendant was acquitted on 284 of 285 charges. Remember?

• Who’s a solid dark horse for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Perhaps first among several is Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana. Watch him.

• President Obama wants immediate Senate ratification of a new — and greatly flawed — START treaty with Russia’s regnant mafiosi regime. The president has failed to explain why START treaty ratification is more important than ratification of a long-pending free-trade treaty with Colombia, our best Latin American friend.

• Given that George Soros has lavished $1.8 million on National Public Radio for the hiring of 100 leftist reporters pristine and pure, two questions. (1) Why does NPR need $93 million in federal taxpayer monies? (2) If it is wrong (as the left argues) to take seriously any of the reportage at Fox, how is it in any way right to take seriously the bilge flowing out of the Soros- and government-funded NPR?

• Anwar al-Awlaki, a dual-citizenship Yemeni-American, is the new Osama. Awlaki routinely urges his jihadi to slaughter Americans and he may have inspired disciples re the Fort Hood murders, the would-be Christmas underwear bomber and the attempted blowing-up of Times Square. So — well, why not? Why not dispatch Awlaki to paradise with a gazillion virgins?

• Let’s see. California has (a) a $45.5 billion 2009-10 budget gap — the largest of any state ever. (b) California’s pension plan for its state and public employees is short of its funded liabilities by about $500 billion (that’s half a trillion dollars). And (c) with 12 percent of the U.S. population, California has 31 percent of the nation’s welfare recipients. Maybe (a), (b) and (c) suggest “The Golden State” should be renamed, more aptly, “The Welfare State.”

• There’s the Pentagon poll saying lifting “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” wouldn’t have much effect on the military. And there are the contrary comments from the heads of most of the service branches, a vast array of retired officers and enlisted personnel, and friends of the military (such as Sen. John McCain) —that lifting “Don’t Ask” would have disastrous consequences for combat readiness, unit cohesion and the nation’s security. Roger all. Leave the policy alone.

• Tin-eared corporate bigwigs just don’t seem to get it about how greed plays with the general citizenry. Once again, they’re raking in record compensation. A November Wall Street Journal article notes regarding a survey of CEOs at 456 companies that “the median pretax value of CEO salaries, bonuses, and long-term incentives, such as grants of stock and stock options, rose (in the just-ended fiscal year) by 3 percent to $7.23 million.”

• Regulators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are proposing tougher warnings on cigarette packs -- such as “Smoking can kill you” and “Cigarettes cause fatal lung disease.” But why doesn’t everyone heed those warnings, including our president? At last report, Barack Obama was keeping on as a closet smoker.

• Question: If Sarah Palin is such a ditz, then why do leftists so fear her?

• Probably for the same reasons they dissed Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush as dumb. Underestimating one’s ideological opponents rarely brings political success.

Ross Mackenzie may be contacted at rmackenzie@tribune.com.