Opinion: In today’s pages: Benazir Bhutto’s niece, David Brewer’s first year
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Fatima Bhutto debunks her aunt Benazir’s pro-democracy claims:
Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)Ms. Bhutto’s political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf’s regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.
The Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy says the Supreme Court has a chance to reaffirm the right to own guns. Matthew DeBord says Zipcar and Flexcar’s automobile-sharing revolution is about to begin. And Pamela Druckerman says that even expats get consumer fever around the holidays.
The editorial board evaluates Supt. David L. Brewer’s first year, and the results aren’t good. The board also follows up the the Los Angeles Unified School District’s payroll problem, and lists the lessons the pope might learn on his visit to the U.S. in April.
Readers react to a two-part Times series on one marine’s service in the Iraq war. Alhambra’s Patricia Huff says, ‘After looking at the photo of the Marlboro Marine, it looks like Jesus wasn’t the only one who took on the sins of the world.’