Most Recent Posts

Anyone still looking for Dr. Ben Carson to apologize for criticizing President Obama's policies to his face at the recent National Prayer Breakfast, won't hear one in his conversation with host Michel Martin's of NPR's Tell Me More.

Carson, the famous Johns Hopkins pediatric neurosurgeon, made a large splash last month with a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in which he criticized progressive taxation and President Obama's health care overhaul as the president sat just feet away.

Michel asked the physician what he thought of the reaction of conservative columnist Cal Thomas, a longtime prayer breakfast attendee, who called the speech's political nature inappropriate for an event with a 61-year tradition of non-partisanship. Thomas recommended that Carson apologize to Obama. When Michel asked Carson if he agreed, he said:

"I don't think so at all. In fact, I don't believe that expressing your opinion, regardless of who's there, is being rude. And it's a shame that we've reached a level in our country where we think that you don't have the right to put your opinion out there."

In the exiled Tibetan calendar, March 10 is an emotive day, the anniversary of a failed uprising in 1959. It's marked by large protests by the exiled Tibetan community overseas, though this year Nepalese police reportedly arrested 18 Tibetans for "anti-China activities." This comes as the number of self-immolations by Tibetans protesting Chinese rule has already surged past a hundred.

Within China itself, exiled groups reported five Tibetans were arrested for staging a protest in Ganzi, a Tibetan autonomous prefecture in Sichuan province, while in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, police are reportedly launching a crackdown on personal cellphones.

State-sponsored repression seems entrenched in everyday life for Tibetans. For those who have any doubts, look no further than an exhibit in the National Museum of China — reportedly the world's biggest museum — flanking Tiananmen Square. It features a multimedia exhibit about the world's highest train ride from Qinghai province to Lhasa that allows visitors to sit in train seats and browse through photos showing everyday life in Tibet.

One of those pictures, under the heading "National Customs," shows the Nagqu horse festival in northern Tibet.

The foreground shows the horse race, but the detail in the background is telling: dozens of paramilitary police, armed with anti-riot shields and helmets, are standing guard, watching the race. Behind the crowds, more police are stationed in the stands, spaced out at regular intervals, some facing away from the race and looking into the distance for any sign of approaching trouble.

It's telling that such a state of affairs is considered so ordinary that it should slip into the county's showpiece museum.

On the other side of Tiananmen Square, the country's legislators are holding their annual meeting in the Great Hall of the People. The latest budget allows spending on domestic security of 769.1 billion yuan ($123 billion), which is more than the army's budget of 740 billion yuan ($118 billion). It's the third consecutive year that the domestic security budget has outpaced military spending.

China's ballooning security apparatus needs money to ensure domestic stability, by whatever means. And the "security maintenance" machine was openly visible outside the museum, on Tiananmen Square, where plainclothes policemen were marching along the outskirts of the square in formation in full view of the world.

Contrary to what you read, everything politicians say and do don't necessarily always have to be only about 2016. Sometimes, really and truly, presidential calculations are not part of the conversation.

But regarding the coverage of Jeb Bush in the past week, it's hard to think anything else. Bush, of course, is the son and brother of former presidents. He has been urged to run for president since 2008, and the drumbeat for 2016 is getting louder ... especially since he helped it along by saying he is not ruling it out. With a Republican Party still trying to find its way after a second consecutive presidential defeat — and having lost the popular vote five of the last six times — what Bush says matters. Of course, whatever utterances he makes are always described as being part of White House strategic planning. Sometimes such conclusions are silly. This time they may make sense.

The former two-term governor of Florida has not run for office since 2002, and has up to now refused to get caught up in public presidential speculation. Widely acknowledged as a power behind the scenes, he is seen as politically savvy and astute. It's long been thought that had he won his 1994 gubernatorial campaign against Lawton Chiles in Florida, it would have been Jeb — not brother George W. — whom the GOP turned to in 2000. What he says carries great weight, and when he criticized his party last year for its approach to overhauling the nation's immigration laws, people sat up and paid attention. You're not going to win over the hearts of Latino voters, Bush said over and over, by talking about self-deportation and blocking paths to citizenship for those who are here illegally.

But in his new book, Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution (co-authored with Clint Bolick), Bush is no longer focusing on a path to citizenship. Let's talk instead about residency rights. "A grant of citizenship," Bush now says, "is an undeserving reward for conduct we cannot afford to encourage." Pay a fee, he says of those 11 million people here illegally. Pay back taxes. Do community service. Learn English. But the end would be residency, not citizenship. For many, however, the headline was about 2016.

There has been some confusion about what Bush meant and whether he was retreating from his previous statements. But that was drowned out by White House speculation.

Most took the tone of the Washington Post's Peter Wallsten and David Nakamura, who write that the book "puts him more in line with his party's base — the kind of thing a potential presidential contender would be mindful of."

Personally, I think Politico's Alexander Burns has it right when he wrote that this "may have less to do with electoral maneuvering than with Bush's disdain for what he views as the strictures of political debate." But if it began with the theory that Bush was dipping his toe into the 2016 waters, it ended up with a consensus that he stubbed that toe.

Under the header, "Jeb Bush's Poorly Times Flip-Flop," National Journal's Beth Reinhard said Bush is "denting his own reputation as a bold policymaker," all of which "comes down to a colossal political miscalculation":

"Bush's revamped position on citizenship looks like the maneuvering of a potential presidential candidate who wants to outflank [Marco] Rubio and appease the conservative, anti-amnesty contingent that dominates GOP primaries."

Risa Hirai is a Japanese artist who paints detailed images of bonsai trees and Japanese meals. But instead of using paint on a canvas, she works with icing on a cookie.

The 23-year-old is a senior at Tama Art University in Tokyo, whose mouthwatering works will be exhibited at Gallery Tokyo Humanite all this week. Assistant director Maie Tsukuda tells The Salt it's the gallery's first cookie exhibit and notes that it's not an ordinary medium for artists.

"I started making these cookies as presents to my friends," Hirai told The Salt via email (Tsukuda helped translate). "I had painted in oils until then, but I became so into making cookies and began to think that this could be a form of expression as art."

Hirai paints various things like animals, flowers and jewelry, but because she's especially interested in juxtaposing "Japanese style" motifs on a Western material (cookies), many bonsai, sushi, Daruma dolls and a one-pot meal called sukiyaki.

Enlarge image i