Time to Tear Down the Peanut Gallery

Among the back-page news items of March (if it made the papers at all) was a report that American University in Washington, D.C., has organized a bipartisan commission to make recommendations for improving elections in the United States. It is to be headed by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker.
Carter is objectionable. As president and after, Carter never seems to have met a dictator he didn't want to please, and he's shown he's willing to overlook even a rigged election in his efforts to do so.
But consider Carter's performance in Venezuela last August, where dictator wannabe Hugo Chavez won Carter's approval of an almost certainly rigged recall election that Chavez officially survived.
Carter's monitors (and those of the Organization of American States) were limited in what they could do and see. The monitors were permitted to analyze only 150 voting machines and ballot boxes - three days after the voting - machines and boxes chosen by the Chavez-controlled National Electoral Council! That this 1 percent sample was consistent with the official tally surprised no one.

Jimmy was a few beers shy of a sixpack (nod to Billy) when he was president. Now, he has the age thing going for him so he's twice as dangerous (if that's possible). Let him keep building homes, where somehow he's managed to keep all his fingers, but keep him the hell out of world politics.

Tip of the stetson to the Boston Herald.