I don’t know if you know this — I didn’t, before Monday — but President Bush met with bloggers who focus on human rights in their countries of origin. I learned about this from Val Prieto, of
Babalú. He wrote about it here. And a photo from the meeting is here. Those in attendance do their writing about China, Iran, Belarus, Burma, and Cuba. Bush had this meeting before he went to Iraq and met his world-renowned shoe-thrower.

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Perhaps some day Bush will be given credit for his attention to human rights; perhaps some day he will be known as a human-rights president. Maybe if he called himself that, it would help. Jimmy Carter did — called himself a human-rights president, repeatedly. So did his people, and all the media. Anyway . . .

Val wrote me, “My father was in tears when I told him I had been invited to the White House. He said that giving me my freedom, by going into exile from Cuba, was the best thing he ever did in his life.”

A reader has some enjoyable comments on my Impromptus of yesterday:

Jay,

I have a slightly different take on Bush’s agile response to the flying shoes — different from those other readers’. As the former owner of a baseball team, he should have caught the shoes. Well, the second one, as the first was a surprise.

If you play baseball, you know that your first reaction to anything coming toward you is to catch it. I give high marks to the president for being quick on his feet, but I’d hate to think he’s lost some of his baseball mojo. Ah, if only he’d caught the second shoe and, in the same motion, hurled it back. That would have been something to behold.

By the way, won’t it be wonderful when history allows us to appreciate this president?

Well, there’s no need to wait for “history,” that fickle broad.

A report from the Associated Press, out of London: “An Iraqi doctor who claimed he intended only to frighten Britons has been convicted of conspiracy to murder with car bombs in London and Scotland.” Well, many Britons are plenty frightened as it is. And others, of course, are too blasé.

Hard to strike the right balance in these matters, huh?

For a few years now, I have commented on the reporters for the AP — and said that many should make honest men and women of themselves by working for (left-leaning) opinion journals, not a wire service.

Check out this report, written by Laurie Kellman: “When the auto bailout talks collapsed, Sen. Bob Corker won by losing. The freshman Republican from Tennessee represented conservative Republicans who opposed the $14 billion rescue package passed by the House and saw Senate negotiations as one last chance to bludgeon organized labor before the GOP minority shrinks and Democrats expand their control of government.”

Now, it may well be that the main purpose of conservative Republicans is to “bludgeon organized labor” (as opposed to, say, effecting smart federal policy). But that is an opinion. And does it belong in the lead of a wire-service report?

I’ve said it before (I’m sure): Can’t someone at The New Republic or The Nation give Ms. Kellman a job? Of course, if you can write like that working for a wire service, why change?

Many reports say that Arne Duncan, Obama’s choice to be education secretary, is a reformer — someone willing to stand up to the education establishment, including the teachers’ unions. Bill Bennett used to call this “the Blob” — the immense, immovable, oh-so-depressing education establishment.

I’m wondering, “How reformist can he be?” — because I read glowing comments about him from Sen. Ted Kennedy, Rep. George Miller, and so on. Let us hope he disappoints them. (But then, policy is determined — and even tone is determined — by “the man at the desk,” as Bush 41 used to say: and that’s the Big O, the man who will be president.)

John Kerry will become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Was it really so long ago that Jesse was chairman? How the worm turns . . .

At Judiciary, you’ve got Pat Leahy — and way back in the summer of 2001 (carefree days), I had a piece on him: “The ‘Nastiest’ Democrat”:

By consensus — a consensus of Hill Republicans — Pat Leahy is the meanest, most partisan, most ruthless Democrat in the Senate. Ask a Republican about Leahy, and he’ll shudder. Then he will say that, though Leahy can be nice and smiling on the surface, underneath he is — take your pick — “a left-wing brute,” “nasty,” “a pile of pure malice.” Republicans are not in complete agreement, however: One says, “He’s the most obnoxious [SOB] in the Senate now that Howard Metzenbaum’s gone”; another says, “Nah, he was always worse than Metzenbaum, it’s just that the general public didn’t know it.” . . .

So, what about this “junkyard dog in a Vermont sweater” (to quote yet another staffer)?

And so on. For that entire piece, go here. And one thing’s sure: Leahy is a fixture. He’s been in the Senate since 1975, when The Captain and Tennille, and Glenn Campbell, were topping the charts (“Love Will Keep Us Together,” “Rhinestone Cowboy”).