This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

Iran has been much in the news the past few days and – as usual – not in a good way.

On Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that the Islamic Republic had begun producing highly enriched uranium at an underground nuclear complex near its holy city, Qom.

The details are critical. To use uranium as fuel in a power plant, the percentage of its most volatile isotope must be raised to about 3.5 percent. Iran has been busy doing that for a long time, though its need for nuclear power …

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This editorial will appear in Tuesday’s print edition.

The Obama administration’s plan to trim the defense budget by $487 billion over the next decade – about 8 percent – has some critics saying it cuts too deeply and others saying it doesn’t cut enough.

But hardly anyone is disputing that Washington state’s military facilities are as well poised as any to weather the cutbacks in the new age of austerity – and perhaps even benefit from them.

That’s because as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, the Pentagon’s focus is shifting to threats along the Pacific Rim. For operations in that region, Joint Base Lewis-McChord and the state’s naval bases in Everett and on the Kitsap Peninsula have a geographical advantage over just about any other state’s military installations. Read more »

This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

So that’s that. As of the end of the year, the Obama administration will have withdrawn all U.S. troops from Iraq, with the exception of a small contingent of presumably nervous embassy guards.

Obama’s recent announcement that the war was over was mere formality. For America, the serious fighting in Iraq ended a couple years ago, when Iraqi security forces took full responsibility for Iraqi security.

What’s driving the final withdrawal – a legal dispute – seems ridiculously anticlimactic. Some Iraqi leaders would as soon have U.S. forces on hand to keep training their troops, and the Obama administration would as soon keep them there.

The deal-breaker was the U.S. insistence on criminal immunity for American troops in the face of the Iraqi parliament’s refusal to grant that immunity. No triumphal parades, no helicopters fleeing from rooftops, just a breakdown in back-room negotiations. A whimper, not a bang.

The whimper, though, says much about the achievements of American troops in Iraq.
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This editorial will appear in Friday’s print edition.

Free-trade pacts with Korea, Colombia and Panama – a hot topic in the other Washington – could heat up business in this Washington if they’re passed.

In fact, this state stands to be one of the biggest winners if Congress approves the long-delayed pacts in the next few weeks. The Korean pact alone could generate $10 billion in increased exports and tens of thousands of jobs.

Being the most trade-dependent state, Washington stands to be a huge beneficiary of increased shipping through the ports of Tacoma, Seattle, Olympia and other entry points if tariffs are eliminated or phased out on beef, cherries, apples, other agricultural items and manufactured goods. More goods being loaded onto ships headed toward Korea means more jobs and bigger payrolls.
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This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

As a couple Supreme Court justices and others have noted, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. It doesn’t require the president to passively watch international terrorists mount attack after attack on Americans from safe havens beyond the reach of the law.

Barack Obama’s decision to kill an al-Qaida leader hiding in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, was thoroughly justified regardless of al-Awlaki’s U.S. citizenship.

Some civil libertarians complain that this American-bred terrorist was denied his constitutional right to due process. U.S. agents, presumably, were supposed to try to arrest him in some terrorist snake pit, risking his escape and their lives, in hopes of spiriting him off to America to receive a court-appointed attorney, a proper trial and the usual rounds of appeals.

There’s no real doubt that al-Awlaki was an eager would-be murderer of Americans. His fiery calls for terror attacks were openly posted on the Internet; by all accounts he was complicit in the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound passenger jet in 2009 and the 2010 plot to detonate bombs concealed in printer cartridges at various U.S. targets, including a Jewish center in Chicago.

Nidal Malik Hasan, accused of massacring 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, reportedly exchanged many emails with al-Awlaki prior to the attack.

Al-Awlaki’s nationality seems about as relevant as the U.S. citizenship of a few German soldiers who fought against Americans in World War II. The struggle with al-Qaida abroad is a war, not a courtroom drama.
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This editorial will appear in Monday’s print edition.

Ten years after it was enacted, the No Child Left Behind Act needs overhauling. On that there is little disagreement.

But on how to do it? A lot of disagreement.

A polarized Congress hasn’t done anything to address the flaws in the education legislation that was a centerpiece of President George W. Bush’s presidency. The Obama administration’s unilateral decision to grant states waivers from the law should prod Congress to make substantive changes in NCLB.

The waivers – which are allowed under NCLB – would let states bypass 10 provisions of the act, including the requirement that all children show proficiency in reading and math by 2014. In return, states would have to impose their own standards to prepare students for college and careers and adopt more stringent performance-based evaluation standards for teachers and principals.

NCLB has served an important purpose by focusing money and attention on the worst-performing schools and the children who had few alternatives to attending them. Read more »

This editorial will appear in Friday’s print edition.

Well, is it or isn’t it?

The question of whether the federal health care insurance mandate is constitutional is all but certain now to go where everyone knew it would eventually – the U.S. Supreme Court.

The mandate for all Americans with taxable income to purchase at least minimal health insurance by 2014 is part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act approved by Congress in 2010. It has been challenged by 26 Republican attorneys general – including Washington’s Rob McKenna.

Two federal appeals court panels have ruled on it: The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals panel (Florida, Georgia and Alabama) struck down the mandate as unconstitutional but upheld the rest of the law while the 6th Circuit panel based in Ohio upheld the law and the mandate. With two federal courts ruling in opposite ways, the mandate was going to get to the Supreme Court eventually. But separate requests from both the Obama administration and the AGs have speeded up the process. Read more »

I am not often surprised at what appears on the opinion pages (especially since I read the pieces before they appear), but today’s column on war and peace by Eugene Robinson almost took my breath away.

Robinson complains at length about America’s continuing war in Afghanistan without once mentioning the name of the man who is prosecuting that war – Barack Obama.

Obama at some point deserves responsibility for the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan; I mean, we’re fast approaching the fourth year of his presidency. Robinson somehow neglects to note that Obama stepped up America’s involvement there.

Robinson’s …

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