A sliver of good news out of Congress:
A bipartisan group of senators predicted Tuesday that Congress was ready to pass legislation to allow all Americans to travel to Cuba.
….Sponsors said the bill would free Americans to travel to the one place in the world they can’t go and encourage Cubans to push for democratic reforms by exposing them to new people and information.
The trade embargo against Cuba has long outlived whatever usefulness it might have had. It accomplishes nothing and has turned us into an international joke. Still, it’s well within the bounds of normal international relations. I don’t like it, but it’s not fundamentally antidemocratic or an assault on basic freedoms.
The travel ban has always been in a separate class. Autocracies and dictatorships control the movements of their subjects, but free citizens of a liberal democracy should be able to travel wherever they want. So whatever happens with the trade embargo, removing the travel ban should be a no-brainer. This is America, not North Korea.
