This pragmatic Washington Post editorial (free registration required) calls on Senator Kerry to clarify his position on several key issues, including the following:

The most important confusion surrounds Mr. Kerry’s position on Iraq. In 1991 he voted against the first Persian Gulf War, saying more support was needed from Americans for a war that he believed would prove costly. In 1998, when President Clinton was considering military steps against Iraq, he strenuously argued for action, with or without allies. Four years later he voted for a resolution authorizing invasion but criticized Mr. Bush for not recruiting allies. Last fall he voted against funding for Iraqi reconstruction, but argued that the United States must support the establishment of a democratic government.
Mr. Kerry’s attempts to weave a thread connecting and justifying all these positions are unconvincing. He would do better to offer a more honest accounting. His estimation of the cost of expelling Iraq from Kuwait in 1991 was simply wrong; and if President Bush was mistaken to think in 2003 that there was an urgent need to stop Saddam Hussein from stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Kerry made the same error in 1998.

The Austin American-Statesman (registration required) reports that University of Texas law students, lawyers and civil rights advocates are contending that Army Intelligence questioning of people on the UT campus in Austin was an unjustified attempt to dampen free speech on the campus. The agents visited the UT Law School this past Monday to request a list of participants in a Feb. 4 conference at the UT Law School on women’s issues in Muslim countries. When informed that the conference was open to all citizens and that no such list existed, the agents interviewed students and asked for the contact information of the female who organized the conference.
Although the investigation of this conference is perhaps a bit over the top, the self-righteous reaction of some UT students and faculty members is even more so. The United States is at war, and reasonable intrusions on U.S. citizens’ civil liberties during war time are legal. Denouncing intelligence agents publicly simply because they are doing their job reflects a widespread attitude in current American society that it is unnecessary to sacrifice for the war effort. I am quite glad that the parents and grandparents of these UT students and faculty members did not have the same attitude during WWII.