Editorial Roundup: Excerpts From Recent Editorials in Newspapers in the US and Abroad.

By The Associated Press

12:28 PM EST, January 7, 2009

Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:

Jan. 7

The Boston Globe, on the nomination of Leon Panetta to be the next director of the CIA:

In Selecting Leon Panetta to be the next director of the CIA, President-elect Barack Obama has opted for sound judgment and political savvy over intelligence experience.

Panetta is a good choice to help Obama end CIA involvement in torture. Because he will have Obama's ear, Panetta may also be better suited than most career intelligence officers to defend the agency's bureaucratic interests in the Washington scrum.

As a former eight-term congressman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and chief-of-staff in the Clinton administration, Panetta has the know-how and management skills to defend the agency's turf against military competitors and cure the CIA of its most harmful malady — the politicizing of intelligence. ...

Under Panetta, the CIA will no longer cut the cloth of intelligence to suit the designs of policy makers. And Panetta can be counted on to enforce the rule he set down last year, when he wrote that the United States "must not use torture under any circumstances." ...

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On the Net:

http://tinyurl.com/9yzqce

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Jan. 5

El Paso (Texas) Times, on a federal gasoline tax:

Western Refining CEO Paul Foster raised eyebrows last week when he told Fortune Magazine that the federal gasoline tax should be gradually raised to $2 a gallon. It's now 18.4 cents a gallon.

On one hand, this is certainly not the time to raise anyone's taxes. We are in a recession.

On the other hand, Foster is thinking of the future. As he said on the magazine's Web site, a higher federal gasoline tax, as is charged in some European countries, would help wean citizens off petroleum products and force everyone's hand at perfecting alternative — clean — sources of energy. ...

"I think the tax on gasoline needs to be at least $2 a gallon," Foster said. "But I don't think you can go there all at once," he told the magazine. ...

We are certainly not proposing the federal government, or the state of Texas, raise its gasoline tax at this time.

However, by an oilman such as Foster airing his theories, it makes all stop and think about how important it is to eventually wean ourselves off the importation of foreign oil and devising ways to power our country with fuels that are renewable, less expensive and kinder to the environment. ...

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