Cuba travel ban debate elicits strong feelings
No one can remember the last time they had a full House of Representatives committee hearing on whether to lift the U.S. travel ban on Castro’s Cuba.
Perhaps that’s why some strong feelings spilled out into the open.
Florida Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a staunch defender of keeping the decades-old travel ban, told one witness who had advocated lifting it that she found some of his comments “shameful.”
The witness, retired U.S. General Barry McCaffrey, riposted that he was offended by Ros-Lehtinen’s “marginalization” of his viewpoint, adding that her line of questioning was “silly.”
The hearing Thursday of the House Foreign Affairs committee started out peacefully enough. Chairman Howard Berman said lawmakers should examine why Cuba was “the only country in the world where our people are not allowed to go.”
Most of the witnesses then spoke in favor of changing U.S. policy, which was launched in the 1960s in a Cold War bid to isolate Fidel Castro.
But Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American born in Havana, was clearly determined to resist what proponents say is their best chance in years to lift the ban on travel to Communist Cuba, 90 miles from her state.
The Governor of Idaho – a staunch Republican – and his young young wife (why?) traveled to Cuba (apparently on taxpayer’s money) supposedly to promote business between his state and the communist island. How does that work? Why can he go to buy, sell, trade, or whatever with a communist state? http://gov.idaho.gov/mediacenter/press/p r2007/prapr07/pr_032.htmlOne newspaper noted that “Otter made his fourth trip to Cuba since 2000 — the others came while he was a U.S. House member — to persuade the Castro government to buy more Idaho foodstuffs.” http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/ story.asp?ID=9831