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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Out of bounds

Congress shouldn’t waste its time on college football

Newsday, May 7: Congress certainly has more pressing business than calling the signals for college football on what makes a legit championship. But members who showed up for a House hearing last Friday apparently had nothing better to do than kick around the setup of postseason bowl games.

“It’s like communism,” fumed Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, insisting the Bowl Championship Series is unworkable. His bill would prohibit promoting, marketing or advertising any postseason football game as a national championship game unless it’s the culmination of a playoff system. But what’s Washington got to do with it? Football is big business, he said, and the system is unfair to smaller schools.

Television networks do pay big bucks to broadcast bowl games – no doubt one reason the system endures. And there may be a better way to crown a champion than the current polls and computer rankings. But on the long list of issues vying for congressional attention, bowl games surely rank somewhere near the very bottom.

Orlando Sentinel, May 7: It’s a critical time for the U.S. space program. The shuttle is scheduled to stop flying as soon as next year. NASA has started whacking jobs, and layoffs on Florida’s Space Coast could reach 10,000. The United States is facing a gap of five years or more in sending astronauts into orbit, and problems plaguing NASA’s next manned program mean a longer delay. Yet there’s a maddening lack of urgency, and interest, among federal and state policymakers.

After months of inaction, the Obama administration was expected this week to announce a review of the next manned program, Constellation. The review would include an examination of whether the Ares I rocket is the best design for Constellation.

This is long overdue. Serious doubts about Ares have been raging for more than a year. But former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who helped design the rocket, deflected the questions and insisted the problems were not unusual or unmanageable. But Obama’s NASA transition team started asking pointed questions about Ares in December, and Griffin resigned in January.

Now that a review finally is coming, it needs to be thorough but quick. NASA can’t afford to keep plowing money and time into Ares if it’s going to get dumped in favor of another launcher.

But the review leaves a more important piece of unfinished business for the Obama administration: naming a new chief for the space agency. The president has said NASA is “adrift.” What agency wouldn’t be without a permanent leader in charge?

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, who says he has the president’s ear on space policy, has resorted to publicly pleading for him to name a new administrator. With so much at stake for NASA and the nation, the delay from the White House is confounding.

Nelson had one bit of good news to report this week from the president. Obama told him he will complete all the shuttle missions that have been planned, even if delays push them past the program’s scheduled retirement date in 2010.

America’s pre-eminence in space, billions of dollars in investment in science and technology, and thousands of jobs all hinge on decisions made by policymakers. That’s more than enough to demand more urgency.

Kansas City Star, May 6: President Obama’s record on trade sometimes has been hard to decipher. He voted in favor of a free-trade pact with Peru, but against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. At times during his campaign, he questioned some benefits of liberalized trade.

That’s why a recent speech by U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk is so encouraging.

Kirk announced that the administration is prepared to move ahead on free-trade accords with Panama, Colombia and South Korea. Those agreements, negotiated earlier by the Bush administration, still await action by Congress.

Bipartisan support exists for the deal with Panama, Kirk said, but the accords with Colombia and South Korea are more controversial. Indeed, Obama opposed those two pacts while in the Senate.

Kirk also said he would seek ways to revive global trade talks that have been dormant for months. This, too, represents progress. The administration’s annual trade report to Congress, made public recently, discounted the need to revive these negotiations, which would lower trade barriers on a global basis.

With international trade cratering and U.S. exports down 16 percent, Kirk’s announcement is good news. It’s a clear sign the Obama administration understands that economic recovery depends in part on pushing hard against the forces that seek to close markets around the world.