Saturday, May 30, 2009
Editorial: Short takes
Quick views on some of the week's news
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
Former councilman lived for Roanoke
David Lisk wasn't born in Roanoke, but he devoted much of his life to his adopted city.
Lisk, who died Monday at the age of 80, moved to Roanoke in 1953. He served on city council from 1966 to 1976.
He also served on a wide range of civic associations, including Roanoke Valley Sister Cities, a group he helped found in 1964.
Jack Tompkins, executive director of that group, credits Lisk for much of its success. "It's very unusual a city the size of Roanoke would have seven sister cities, and the reason Roanoke does is because of David Lisk," he said.
Lisk's devotion to the city should be remembered.
"He lived his life for Roanoke, and even when he was off the council, he promoted the city," his son Tim Lisk, a retired Roanoke County police officer, told a Roanoke Times reporter.
She is not amused
The commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normady is next week. But one person will be missing from the ceremonies at Utah Beach, the American war cemetary and Colleville-sur-Mer and other locations, and she is not pleased about it.
Queen Elizabeth II, the only living head of state who served in uniform during World War II, was not invited. You could practically feel the chill in the announcement from Buckingham Palace: "We have not received an invitation to attend a D-Day ceremony, and therefore the Queen and senior members of the Royal Family will not be attending the commemorations next weekend."
The British press is up in arms over the slight. The French are blaming Britain's government, though French officials also called next week's events "primarily a Franco-American ceremony."
Some have suggested that French President Nicolas Sarkozy didn't want to share the limelight when he hosts President Obama -- or turn attention to the British-American alliance that made the D-Day invasion possible.
The diplomatic kerfluffle is unfortunate. Given the age of most of those who participated in the momentous invasion, this is likely to be one of the last commemorations that will be witnessed by its survivors.
Let the machines run the campaign
"It's stupid and it's counterproductive and it was in completely bad form. Not to mention the fact that it didn't have a disclaimer, which makes it illegal," said a consultant to Sen. Ken Cuccinelli of Fairfax.
"I detest such tactics in political campaigns," said Dave Foster, an Arlington lawyer. "It's unfair and destructive of the political process."
"It's just a shame that politics has to go like this," said John Brownlee, former federal prosecutor in Roanoke who demands a formal investigation.
Cuccinelli, Foster and Brownlee this weekend all seek the GOP nomination for attorney general at the party's convention in Richmond.
What could elicit such condemnation from all three campaigns? An anonymous automated call -- a robocall -- to convention delegates that attacked Brownlee.
Alas, their outrage wasn't that someone used campaign robocalls -- both of Brownlee's opponents deny involvement -- but that the miscreant used a child's voice and didn't identify the sponsor.
Average people get outraged about any annoying calls at dinner time that don't even have a human on the other end. Those calls only bother politicians if they violate unwritten rules of fair inter-party campaigning.
Politicians really are a different breed.
