Uncommon Sense

A green light for Plan B?

In the grand scheme of things, artificial birth control, which can come with its own set of moral issues, is not as objectionable as abortion — the taking of a human life.

So it is encouraging to see that the federal government may be about to make the former more available, which concievably could make the latter more rare.

It's about time that the politics of Plan B — an "after-morning" contraceptive that can reduce the chance of pregnancy for a woman who has had unprotected — has finally caught up with the science.

And yes, the morality, too.

Up to now, Plan B has been available only by prescription, which seems besides the point considering its purpose. FDA advisors several years ago recommended it be made available over the counter, but approval was hung up over right-wing politics and over "concerns" that it would lead teen-agers to have unprotected sex — as if there already isn't enough going on in society to encourage that.

However, news reports today suggest approval for OTC Plan B is imminent, as part of a deal to confirm a new FDA commissioner.

The Baltimore Sun reports:

WASHINGTON -- In a surprise move on the eve of confirmation hearings for a permanent commissioner, the Food and Drug Administration said Monday that it may soon allow sales of the morning-after pill to some women without a prescription.

Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, the FDA's acting commissioner, asked Plan B's manufacturer to meet within the next week to discuss the possibility of over-the-counter sales of the pill to women age 18 and older.

The manufacturer, Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc., has been asking the FDA to permit over-the-counter sales to women 16 years and older. In a letter, von Eschenbach asked Barr to meet about increasing the minimum age by two years.

"Assuming the issues can be addressed, we assume this process can be wrapped up in a couple of weeks," said Susan Bro, an FDA spokeswoman.

That would mark the end of three contentious years of consideration that ensnared the FDA in abortion politics. Abortion opponents had claimed that easy access to the pill would increase promiscuity while abortion-rights groups said the agency was sacrificing women's health to a conservative agenda.

The science was always solid. It is a good thing for women — whether they have been raped or somehow went without protection — that the politics has finally made Plan B possible.

Vietnam gives Chavez a reality check

The Hugo Chavez Insanity Mystery Tour hit a hiccup in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese signed a few bilateral agreements, but Hanoi is not about to give Mini-Me another platform to bash America — especially when Congress is about to consider a proposed U.S-Vietnam trade deal.

Maybe there is a lesson there for the United States has it tries to blunt Chavez's diplomatic campaign against America.

EFE News has more coverage of Chavez's visit to Vietnam.

(H/T to Publius Pundit.)

If looks could kill

Don't you get the feeling that if Venezuela wasn't paying so much of Cuba's bills these days, even Fidel Castro would want to take a swipe at his spawn?

Hunger strikes fading fast?

The New York Times reports that thanks to the likes of Saddam Hussein and Cindy Sheehan, hunger strikes as a form of protest are not what they used to be. At least in the cases of Hussein and Sheehan, their hearts were not really into it. They were not interested in forcing change as much as they were in generating publicity for themselves.

Of course, the Times did not mention a hunger striker who might have challenged the premise of the article — Guillermo Fariñas.

(H/T to Malkin.)

Arroz con Frijoles

Some Cuba-related news that ought to depress you ...

Might oil punch a hole in the American economic embargo?

There are are already plenty of loopholes that allow Fidel Castro to do a variety of buisness with American companies, especially agricultural exporters.

However, the Associated Press examines how the discovery of large reserves in Cuban waters about 60 miles south of Florida might deliver a fatal blow.

MIAMI - Some facts about America's trade embargo with Cuba:

• It's been U.S. policy since 1961.

• It has yet to loosen Fidel Castro's grip on power.

• It has cost America little strategically or economically.

Until now, that is.

From here on out, say a growing chorus of experts, America will pay a price for maintaining its 45-year trade ban with the communist nation - a strategic and economic price that will have negative repercussions for the United States in the decades to come.

What has changed the equation?

Oil.

As a practical and politica matter, the discovery of large reserves in Cuban waters at a time when the United States needs more oil might make it difficult for less-principled politicians to continue to support the continued embargo — since it now may start to cost the United States something.

But as Alfredo Mesa, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation noted, we would be going into business with a tyrant.

"Those who would advocate for ... allowing U.S. companies to drill off Cuba lose sight of how that would damage our ability to press the Cuban government on other issues, such as human rights," Mesa said.

In other words, America's oil interests — which lately, are the same as America's political interests — could be held hostage, precluding the United States from pressuring Havana on human rights and other matters that go to the truly nefarious nature of the Castro regime.

The embargo should be tightened to ban American involvement with Cuban oil development. We may get gasoline that's a few cents cheaper per gallon, more significantly, it will help enrich a totalitarian regime — with none of the benefits passed onto the Cuba people. Yes, we do the same with some our Middle Eastern suppliers, but none of them are sworn enemies of the United States, like Castro.

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One of the reservations some Cuban dissidents have to the CAFC effort by the United States is that it provides Castro another opportunity to brand the opposition as "mercenaries" for the United States, and an excuse to launch another crackdown — as if he ever needs an excuse to act like a dictator.

It's hard to whether the timing is related to CAFC, but Net for Cuba, via Blog for Cuba, reports that dissident Ismael Boris has been arrested and sentenced to four years in prison.

For more on Boris, in Spanish, visit here.

And yes, this is the same Cuba that on May 9, 2006, was elected to a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council.

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Finally, an example of the failure that is communism, Castro-style.

It has created a poverty so pervasive that it has turned people struglling to survivve into criminals.

And in typical fashion for the regime, it is cracking down.

EFE News reports:

Cuban authorities are cracking down on people who fail to pay for electric service and break other utility rules in Havana, where more than 800 violations have been registered so far this year, the press reported Sunday.

Cuba's state-owned power company has deployed 192 inspectors across the capital to uncover fraud by electric customers, the weekly Tribuna de La Habana said.

Among the violations being targeted are the unauthorized resetting of electric meters and other tactics to avoid paying electricity bills.

Violators face penalties ranging from service cutoffs to fines and even jail time if convicted of a repeat offense.

State-owned power company OBE said payments for service in Havana have not been matching consumption, drawing the attention of company personnel.

Company officials estimated that fraud in 2006 was running at three times the rate last year.

The realities of U.S. aid to Cuban opposition

The United States, as a beacon for freedom and democracy, has a moral duty to help Cuban political prisoners, their families and others in the democratic opposition. That was what made the CAFC II report so encouragaing, for how it proposed specific ways, some with specific dollar amounts, for the U.S. to assist a transition to a post-Castro democracy.

But will it work?

For good reason, there is skepticism among some of the people the U.S. says it wants to help.

Gary Marx of the Chicago Tribune provides a reality check:

One initiative cited ... as ill-conceived is the Georgetown University Scholarship Program, which received a $400,000 grant to provide family and friends of dissidents two years of study at U.S. community colleges.

The idea was for young Cubans to experience life in a democracy and then take their new knowledge and affinity for democracy home to Cuba.

In 2003, Georgetown selected 20 students out of 400 applicants. Castro wouldn't allow them to participate.

The Cuban leader has long denounced U.S. government-funded programs as violations of Cuban sovereignty.

"(President Bush) shouldn't even think that we would cooperate with a plan aimed at ... (training) agents of subversion and destabilization to serve his interventionist and imperial ends," Castro said.

Only one of the 20 students has managed to leave Cuba to begin studies. The students left behind are frustrated and disappointed.

"I was so happy when I was chosen," said Flavia Ribot, 21, as she proudly displayed her acceptance letter to Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, Wis. "I thought it was a great opportunity."

Despite the program's failure, U.S. officials are allocating $10 million of the additional $80 million to fund more scholarships for Cubans to study abroad.

Read the whole story, which is a must-read to understanding the obstacles facing the U.S. as it tries to assist Cuba's dissidents, here.

The politics of Venezuelan oil

Displaying a lack of understanding of basic economics not surprising for someone who works for Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan oil minister on Sunday threatened to cut the United States off from Venezuelan crude, if Washington continues its "hostile policy" towards Caracas.

If only the U.S. were more hostile.

Regardless, crude oil is a "fungible commodity" — all the oil from all the producers that sell it is put into one big pot. From there, buyers buy it for as low a price as possible; and sellers sell it for the most they can get. As a practical matter, only the market decides who gets what.

Of course, Chavez could cut what Venezuela puts into the market, punishing the United States, and the rest of the world, with higher prices for gasoline and other products. That's the way the law of supply and demand works.

But it also likely would have a detrimental effect on Venezuela's bottomline, hurting Chavez at home — just before December's elections — and limiting his ability to spread his largess — and his large ass — around the world.

Venezuela has nothing but oil to sell to the world.

More than anyone, Chavez knows that it is American dollars — and European Euros and other currencies used to buy oil — that are financing his "revolution."

Cut off oil shipments to the United States, if such a thing were really possible, and Chavez would also be hurting himself.

Chavez would have been wise while in Tehran this weekend to ask his Iranian soul brothers about whether and how to use oil as a weapon to make a political point. For all the pressure the mullahs have felt regardng their nuclear program, and all the bluster from their president, Tehran has not made threats to cut off oil shipments to the world.

After all, Iran has nothing else but oil to sell to the world, either.

As with so much that comes out of Chavez and his regime, the latest from the oil minister is just more crazy talk.

The make-you-sick-photo of the day

Caracas Chronicles, on the right side of its page, has other examples of Hugo Chavez hugging-it-out and sharing the love with other of the world's dictators.

(H/T to Mora at Publius Pundit, who has seen enough.)

Crazy dictator talk

(Reuters photo)

Hugo Chavez has arrived in Iran, for all kinds of troublemaking.

It didn't take long for the crazy dictator talk to begin, and for the leftist caudillo and fanatical Islamist to reveal what they have in common — a hatred of the United States and a hatred of Israel.

From EFE News:

"This man is my brother and I hope he will be my companion in the struggle." — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran.

Israel's current military offensive in Lebanon was similar to what "Hitler did with the Jews" during World War II. — Hugo Chavez.

As bothersome as it is to see Chavez get chummy with the Iranians, this actually is not the most worrisome stop of Chavez's current world tour.

That came earlier in Russia.

But in this smaller, ever-dangerous world we live in, where a terrorist cell really doesn't need that much except for good cover, the Iranian influence role in South America that Chavez is cultivating could be eventually be as dangerous, if not more, than a squadron of Russian-made jets.

Sheehan's porta-potty protests

Cindy Sheehan may have bought herself a piece of Crawford to host anti-war and and anti-Bush protests, but she is still fighting for the right to break the law and otherwise make a nuisance of herself to her new neighbors.

In the Waco Tribune-Herald, Sheehan's lawyer cut to the chase:

Fort Worth attorney David Broiles, who represents Sheehan’s group, said the lawsuit will continue because the protesters consider Camp Casey I, the original spot where Sheehan pitched her tent two years ago, meaningful ground.

“The lawsuit is not to achieve a venue where we can have large gatherings,” he said. “It is only to be able to re-create the small gatherings with some tents and porta-potties and parking.

“All the big activities will be at another venue, but Camp Casey I is an important symbol to us, and it is on the road to the president’s ranch. That is where Cindy first set up, and we have a right to protest there. The only issue is, can we have toilets, parking and small tents?”