From the New York Post Editorial:Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, an appalling scold from California, wasted no time yesterday in dragging the debate over Iraq about as low as it can go - attacking Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for being a childless woman.... Rice appeared before the Senate in defense of President Bush's tactical change in Iraq, and quickly encountered Boxer.....
"Who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price," Boxer said. "My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young."
Then, to Rice: "You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family."
Breathtaking.
Simply breathtaking.
We scarcely know where to begin.
The junior senator from California ap parently believes that an accom plished, seasoned diplomat, a renowned scholar and an adviser to two presidents like Condoleezza Rice is not fully qualified to make policy at the highest levels of the American government because she is a single, childless woman.
It's hard to imagine the firestorm that similar comments would have ignited, coming from a Republican to a Democrat, or from a man to a woman, in the United States Senate. (Surely the Associated Press would have put the observation a bit higher than the 18th paragraph of a routine dispatch from Washington.)
But put that aside.
The vapidity - the sheer mindlessness - of Sen. Boxer's assertion makes it clear that the next two years are going to be a time of bitterness and rancor, marked by pettiness of spirit and political self-indulgence of a sort not seen in America for a very long time.....
It would take a truly hard heart not to be touched, deeply, by the sacrifices made by the young men and women now wearing their country's uniform.
And one can only imagine the pain felt by the families of those killed and cruelly wounded in service to America. Just as it was hard to imagine the agony of the loved ones left behind on 9/11.
But even to suggest that Condoleezza Rice is not fit to serve her country because she is childless is beyond bizarre.
It is perverse.
Sen. Boxer needs to apologize.
And she needs to do it today.
(To read the Rest of the New York Post editorial click on the title above for a link)
