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“Senator Hatch says if Democrats push through the health care bill it will destroy bipartisanship. Oh no. Don’t kill the dodo.” -- Daily Dose of Durst 3.10.10 “The September 11 incident was a big fabrication as a pretext for the campaign against terrorism and a prelude for staging an invasion against Afghanistan.” -- Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, agreeing with the 9/11 Truthers. 3.06.10 "We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn't that ironic." -- Sarah Palin, to a conservative audience in Calgary, noting that her family that used to border-hop to get free Canadian socialist, single payer, death panel health care. 3.08.10 "I got all my Republican colleagues out there saying 'No, no, no, we want to focus on things like costs.' You had 10 years. What happened? What were you doing?" -- President Obama (video) 3.08,10 "Maybe someday Karl Rove will write a thoughtful and candid account of how he helped guide George W. Bush downward from the national-unity president of the months after 9/11 to the derided figure who left office with a 34 percent approval rating in the Gallup poll, on par with the exiting Jimmy Carter and Harry Truman." -- Walter Shapiro 3.09.10: "I think this whole story is ridiculous. I think the latest excuse is silly and ridiculous .. but we're focused not on crazy allegations but instead on making this system work for the American people." -- Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (video) on Congressman Massa's allegations. 3.09.10 The word McCarthyism is overused, but in this case it’s mild. Liz Cheney, the former vice president’s ambitious daughter, has in her hand a list of nine Justice Department lawyers whose “values” she has the gall to question. She ought to spend the time examining her own principles, if she can find them. -- Eugene Robinson on the Keep America Safe web ad 3.08.10 "Today they are asking the race question to try to increase slavery. Your dependence on the master in Washington. No way, don’t answer that question." -- Glenn Beck fear-mongering about the Census. (audio) "What is troubling is that this decision opened the floodgates for corporations and special interests to pour money into elections - drowning out the voices of average Americans. The President has long been committed to reducing the undue influence of special interests and their lobbyists over government. That is why he spoke out to condemn the decision and is working with Congress on a legislative response." -- WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responding to Justice Roberts statement that he found it "very troubling" that President Barack Obama would criticize the court during his State of the Union address. 3.10.10 “This system of justice that we’re so proud of in America requires the unpopular to have an advocate and every time a defense lawyer fights to make the government do their job, that defense lawyer has made us all safer.” -- Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), adding his name to the opposition of the Keep America Safe ad. 3/09/10 "[Kucinich] is not elected to grandstand and to give us this ideal utopian society. He is elected to represent the people of his district and he is not representing the uninsured constituents in his district by pretending to take the high ground here." -- Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas on the Ohio Democrat's pledge to oppose reform on grounds that it doesn't go far enough. 3.09.10
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IN THIS ISSUE
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1. Bill Moyers Journal Bill Moyers sits down with former insurance executive turned public health advocate Wendell Potter, who argues that all is not lost in the healthcare bill and details what he likes about the legislation. Watch it at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03052010/watch.html 2. RNC document mocks donors, plays on 'fear' Republicans can no longer deny that they are peddling fear when they are literally selling it as their path back to power. It is a sad commentary on the state of the Republican Party that, devoid of ideas and solutions to our nation’s problems, problems created on their watch, that they would resort to these type of tactics. It’s sad. But true. http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0310/DNC_blasts_RNC_fundraising_document.html
3. Mark Fiore: Plummeting Death Reform (animation) 4. From the DAILY GRILL
5. Poll: Dems Hold Slight Advantage in 2010 Election Preferences Democrats lead Republicans by a slight 47% to 44% margin when registered voters are asked which party's congressional candidate they would support in their district "if the elections for Congress were being held today."At the same time, Gallup's inaugural weekly tracking update on the 2010 elections shows Republicans with a distinct advantage over Democrats in terms of enthusiasm about voting this year. 3.09.10 http://www.gallup.com/poll/126503/Dems-Hold-Slight-Advantage-2010-Election-Preferences.aspx 6. We get health care reform, we get rid of Rush Limbaugh!
Any chance they can move up implementation of most reforms to next year? Then again, what will happen when Rush realizes that Costa Rica has universal health care? 3.09.10 http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/3/9/844413/-We-get-health-care-reform,-we-get-rid-of-Rush-Limbaugh 7. From MEDIA MATTERS
8. Going Rove: Courage and Consequence is full of falsehoods
3.08.10 More at http://mediamatters.org/research/201003080030 9. Late Night Jokes for Dems
10. Jon Stewart (videos)
11. Congress Sinks Lower While Obama Holds Steady A new Associated Press-GfK poll found that just 22% of Americans approve of Congress -- the lowest point yet during the Obama presidency. However, neither Republicans nor Democrats are safe; half of all people say they want to fire their congressman. Conversely, Obama's job approval is holding fairly steady at 53% 03/10/10 http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/10/ap-gfk-poll-obama-more-popular-than-congress/ 12. ABA Blasts Liz Cheney Ad As 'Divisive And Diversionary' "A fundamental tenet of our justice system is that any one who faces loss of liberty has a right to legal counsel. Lawyers have an ethical obligation to uphold that principle and provide representation to people who otherwise would stand alone against the power and resources of the government--even to those accused of heinous crimes against this nation in the name of causes that evoke our contempt. The American people understand this obligation, and the corollary principle that representing a client is a commitment to a legal system that requires justice, not to any one client's political, economic, social or moral views or activities. Impugning the character of lawyers who have sought to protect the fundamental rights of unpopular clients is a divisive and diversionary tactic." ABA President Carolyn Lamm 3.04.10 http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/aba_blasts_liz_cheney_ad_as_divisive_and_diversion.php 13. Brown takes aim at GOP rival in Calif. gov race A day after launching his campaign, Brown took aim at former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, the front-runner in the GOP race who is running on her corporate record. He said CEOs are used to hand-picking their employees, but a governor must confront an independent and sometimes hostile state Legislature and deal with public employee unions and courts that are constantly second-guessing their decisions. "The political process is about civic engagement, not autocratic executive decision-making in the corporate suite. The two have virtually nothing in common," he said in an interview with The Associated Press at his campaign headquarters in a converted warehouse in Oakland. JULIET WILLIAMS 3.04.10 http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hzgpKJONxuo_7ydyTogxJtfdgKrAD9E7I2B00 Volunteer to help and/or contribute to Jerry Brown’s campaign at http://www.jerrybrown.org/ 14. Colbert: Tip/Wag - James O’Keefe and Sean Hannity (video) 15. Slide show: Billboards of Hate Click HERE to take a tour of just one dozen examples of what happens when Obama Derangement Syndrome imposes itself on roadside America. 16. The Rachel Maddow Show helps Liz Cheney ferret out Al Qaeda (video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKQ5AGk_FCo 17. Methane Releases From Arctic Shelf May Be Much Larger and Faster Than Anticipated A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to the findings of an international research team led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov. The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is starting to leak large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming. 3.04.10 http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=116532 18. Liz Cheney: Chip Off The Old Crock by Madeleine Begun Kane
More at http://www.madkane.com/madness/2010/03/06/liz-cheney-mccarthy-smears/ 19. Torture memos resemble Clarence Thomas' way of thinking In the so-called torture memos in 2002, Yoo reasoned that subjecting prisoners to simulated drowning or "stress positions" in cold cells was not illegal torture because it did not cause the intense pain of a serious injury, equivalent to "death or organ failure." Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' consistent record of dismissing claims of prison brutality, most of them joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, shows that Yoo's view of torture was not that of a rogue lawyer. Instead, it represents a strain of conservative thinking that looks back in history to define cruelty and torture, rather than toward what the court has called the "evolving standards of decency." David G. Savage 3.07.10 http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-thomas-yoo7-2010mar07,0,3782840.story 20. Donald Rumsfeld Torture Lawsuit Clears Hurdle, Allowed To Proceed A federal judge refused Friday to dismiss a civil lawsuit accusing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for the alleged torture by U.S. forces of two Americans who worked for an Iraqi contracting firm. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/05/national/main6271868.shtml 21. Markets Defy GOP Rhetoric About Obama "One year after U.S stocks hit their post-financial-crisis low on March 9, 2009, the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index has risen more than 68 percent, and it's up more than 41 percent since Obama took office. Credit spreads have narrowed. Commodity prices have surged. Housing prices have stabilized." Mike Dorning 3.10.10 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aeSenIUvpSK0# 22. Salon Slide show: anti-gay politicians who don't practice what they preach http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/03/09/closet_hypocrisy/slideshow.html 23. Tea Party racism exposed (videos)
24. Ann Telnaes: Passing the Torch (animation) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/telnaes/telnaes03102010.html |
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1. Glenn Greenwald: The lawyers smeared by Liz Cheney As I noted yesterday, the group run by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol released what is certainly one of the more repugnant political ads of the last decade, if not the most repugnant. It's the type of McCarthyite act which would, if we had any minimal standards in our political culture, result in the shunning of Cheney and Kristol by all decent people (instead, it will likely land the Vice President's daughter on multiple Sunday talk shows where she can pose as an expert on national security). The ad brands Eric Holder's DOJ the "Department of Jihad" because it employs 9 lawyers who previously represented Guantanamo detainees (including Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who successfully represented the Guantanamo-plaintiffs in the 2006 Hamdan case before the U.S. Supreme Court). The ad darkly asks of these lawyers: "whose values do they share?," and labels 7 of those unidentified DOJ lawyers "The Al Qaeda 7." The premise of the ad is as clear as it insidious: any lawyers representing accused Terrorists are of suspect loyalties and allegiances, are devoted to "jihad," and are sympathetic to, if not part of, Al Qaeda (this profoundly ugly smear campaign began with the always-unhinged Andrew McCarthy in National Review, who branded such lawyers "terrorist sympathizers"). This slander encompasses scores of American military lawyers, who have vigorously, passionately and often successfully defended numerous Guantanamo detainees, including those accused of being Al Qaeda operatives. Adam Serwer and Spencer Ackerman both have excellent pieces on this ad, featuring quotes from several military officers who have defended accused Terrorists, including retired Col. Morris Davis, who was once a lead prosecutor in Guantanamo's military commissions only to became a vocal critic of that system. Watching as their integrity and character are smeared by the likes of Dick Cheney's daughter and Bill Kristol is really revolting.3.03.10 http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/radio/2010/03/03/hafetz/index.html 2. Adam Serwer: The New McCarthyism The "Gitmo Nine" aren't terrorists. They weren't captured fighting for the Taliban. They've made no attempts to kill Americans. They haven't declared war on the United States, nor have they joined any group that has. The "Gitmo Nine" are lawyers working in the Department of Justice who fought the Bush administration's treatment of suspected terrorists as unconstitutional. Now, conservatives are portraying them as agents of the enemy. In the aftermath of September 11, the Bush administration tried to set up a military-commissions system to try suspected terrorists. The commissions offered few due process rights, denied the accused access to the evidence against them, and allowed the admission of hearsay -- and even evidence gained through coercion or abuse. The Bush administration also sought to prevent detainees from challenging their detention in court. Conservatives argued that the nature of the war on terrorism justified the assertion of greater executive power. In case after case, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the administration's critics. "These lawyers were advocating on behalf of our Constitution and our laws. The detention policies of the Bush administration were unconstitutional and illegal, and no higher a legal authority than the Supreme Court of the United States agreed," says Ken Gude, a human-rights expert with the Center for American Progress, of the recent assault on the Justice Department. "The disgusting logic of these attacks is that the Supreme Court is in league with al-Qaeda." 3.03.10 http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_new_mccarthyism 3. David Corn: Rove Protects the Rear With his soon-to-be-released book, Karl Rove is trying to mount something of a rear-guard action in the war over George W. Bush's legacy. According to the AP, which has obtained a copy of the book, Rove
Rove can argue that in the run-up to the war, Bush and the others believed what they were saying about Iraq's WMDs. But Bush and his crowd demonstrated a profound disinterest in sorting out the truth. They made no effort to distinguish between known facts and convenient suppositions. They exaggerated. They trumped up unconfirmed pieces of information. They presented rosy assumptions. They overlooked or discounted data that didn't advance the cause. It was a PR campaign girded with misrepresentations and false statements. Rove contends that his old boss did not knowingly bamboozle the public. (Bush, though, did in a January 2003 meeting with Tony Blair raise the idea of staging an incident—in which US reconnaissance planes painted in UN colors would fly over Iraq and try to draw fire—to provoke an excuse for war.) But Bush, Cheney, and other administration aides exercised a thoroughly reckless disregard for the truth, as they pushed an utterly phony and over-the-top case for invading Iraq. As Rove makes the rounds on his book tour, he ought to be pressed on all this. There is no doubt that the Bush posse mischaracterized what was known and not known about WMDs in Iraq. It was easy—and useful—for them to do so, for they didn't care to get this right. (After all, as Rove writes, the Iraq war would have likely not occurred without the WMD argument: "Congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without the WMD threat.") Bush and his aides, Rove included, were not looking to lead an informed debate based on the best information available; they were aiming to start a war. Almost by any means necessary. They spun the nation into Iraq—and now Rove is spinning to cover that up. http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/karl-rove-book-george-bush-iraq-wmd 4. Eric Alterman: Playing the Fear Card Well, this is something. Just when you thought politics could not possibly get any more cynical than phony accusations of “death panels” and “Tea Party” conventions that rip off crazy people with the promise of revolution, we discover that the Republican National Committee thinks its funders are so stupid that they can soak them the basis of “fear,” “socialism,” and tchotchkes. No really. According to a document uncovered by Politico, RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart gave a presentation at a party retreat in Boca Grande, Florida, on February 18 in which he explained how “ego-driven” Republican donors could be bilked by a campaign of fear and the promise that only the Republicans could "save the country from trending toward socialism." The document is breathtaking in the contempt demonstrated for Republican supporters, expecting them to insist that a president who, on the one hand, is accused by his own supporters as being overly cozy with Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry—to say nothing of his hawkish foreign policy—while he's also dubbed the second coming of Joe Stalin. "What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House, or the Senate...?" the memo asks. The answer is apparently a series of cartoons in which Obama is portrayed variously as The Joker, and “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leaders Harry Reid are depicted as Cruella DeVille and Scooby Doo, respectively.” The document, which stretches on for 72 pages, has been both defended and disowned by RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s staff. This is understandable. On the one hand, it’s bad form for a party to admit that the only way to excite its base is to treat them as, er, mentally challenged. On the other hand, the guys who came up with it are themselves big-money guys and so were all the people present for the horror show they presented. (The document was apparently leaked by someone who found a stray copy lying around the Gasparilla Inn & Club, the hotel hosting the $2,500-a-head retreat.) 3.03.10 http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-03/playing-the-fear-card
5. E.J. Dionne: The Big Lie About ‘Reconciliation’ For those who feared that Barack Obama did not have any Lyndon Johnson in him, the president’s determination to press ahead and get health care reform done in the face of Republican intransigence came as something of a relief. Obama’s critics have regularly accused him of not being as tough or wily or forceful as LBJ was in pushing through civil rights and the social programs of his Great Society. Obama seemed willing to let Congress go its own way and was so anxious to look bipartisan that he wouldn’t even take his own side in arguments with Republicans. Those days are over. On Wednesday, the president made clear what he wants in a health care bill, and he urged Congress to pass it by the most expeditious means available. He was also clear on what bipartisanship should mean—and what it can’t mean. Democrats, who happen to be in the majority, have already added Republican ideas to their proposals. Obama said he was open to four more that came up during the health care summit. What he’s unwilling to do, and rightly, is to give the minority veto power over a bill that has deliberately and painfully worked its way through the regular legislative process. Republicans, however, don’t want to talk much about the substance of health care. They want to discuss process, turn “reconciliation” into a four-letter word, and maintain that Democrats are just “ramming through” a health bill. It is all, I am sorry to say, one big lie—or, if you’re sensitive, an astonishing exercise in hypocrisy. 3.03.10 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_big_lie_about_reconciliation_20100303/ 6. Joe Conason: The Politics of Earthquakes In a society with sane politics, rules and regulations needed to safeguard life don’t provoke much debate, even on the furthest ends of the ideological spectrum. Everyone realizes that there are certain dangers to which anyone can fall victim; protecting and ensuring against those dangers is a social responsibility, a government function and a measure of human progress. Here in the United States, however, anti-government ideology is a pandemic mental tic that has now developed into a virulent disorder afflicting a large number of citizens—including many of our self-styled conservatives. Infuriated because their party cannot permanently control the White House and the Congress, they have gradually persuaded themselves that all government is evil, that all taxation is theft and that all regulation is tyranny. Or at least that is the tone of their rhetoric. If the Chileans had adopted this kind of manic and reflexive attitude, many more of them would undoubtedly be dead today. The “free market” extremists who call themselves conservative probably wouldn’t worry much about the loss of life, because they are far more concerned with ideological consistency than with practical effects. 3.03.10 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_politics_of_earthquakes_20100303/
7. GLENN GREENWALD: American elites abandon their faux regret over Iraq The New York Times' Tom Friedman, who did as much as any single individual to persuade large numbers of Democrats and "moderates" to support the invasion of Iraq, today writes:
Sure, the war that I helped sell and cheered on led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings (at least), the long-term displacement of millions more, and the complete destruction of another country that had done nothing to us. But I'm not interested in clouding my mind with any of that. I don't care about that. That can be talked about once I'm dead. After all, as the great humanitarian Joseph Stalin taught us, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, and as the great scholar and torturer Condoleezza Rice explained, we should just gently shut our eyes and think about the massive slaughter and destruction we caused in that country as mere "birth pangs" on the road to something beautiful. 3.10.10 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/03/10/friedman 8. Glenn Greenwald: Who are the actual "crazy" people in American politics? My Salon colleague, Mark Benjamin, writes about last night's Larry King Show -- featuring a debate between Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson and GOP Rep. Michelle Bachmann -- and does so by repeatedly branding Grayson as being every bit as "crazy" as Bachmann. Beginning with the article's headline ("Bachmann and Grayson: A diary of crazy") to his sarcastic description of "these two towering intellects" to his claim that Grayson and Bachmann are "the Candy Stripers of Crazy of their parties," Benjamin denigrates Grayson's intellect and mental health by depicting him -- with virtually no cited basis -- as the Democratic mirror image of Bachmann's rabid, out-of-touch extremism. This view of Grayson has become a virtual Washington platitude, solidified by The New York Times' David Herszenhorn's dismissal of Grayson as "the latest incarnation of what in the American political idiom is known as a wing nut." There are so many things wrong this analysis. To begin with, it's a classic case of false journalistic objectivity: the compulsion of journalists to posit equivalencies between the "two sides" regardless of whether they are actually equal (since I'm calling a GOP member of Congress "crazy," I now have to find a Democrat to so label). Benjamin cites numerous Bachmann statements that demonstrate her penchant for bizarre claims (and there are many he omitted), but points to only one Grayson statement: his famous floor speech in which he claimed: "If you get sick in America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly." One could reasonably object to that statement as unduly inflammatory rhetoric, but Grayson was one of the only members of Congress willing to forcefully connect health care policy to the actual lives (and deaths) of American citizens. There's nothing crazy about dramatically emphasizing that causal connection; far crazier is to ignore it. 3.04.10 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/03/04/crazy 9. Leslie Savan: Dems' 'Up-or-Down Vote' Meets GOP's 'Up Is Down' Tricks A few weeks ago, Talking Points Memo started asking a question that now seems so obvious you wonder why you hadn't heard it before: Instead of blabbing on about filibusters, cloture, reconciliation, and other "arcana," as Josh Marshall put it, why aren't the Dems trying to pass health care reform with red-blooded American words like "up-or-down vote"? Or "majority vote"? After all, though the reconciliation procedure has been used 22 times, mostly by Republicans, since 1980 to pass major legislation, most Americans have no idea what it means (outside, perhaps, of a happy ending to divorce). But they do know up-or-down vote: Thumbs up, thumbs down, count 'em. Next. Which is essentially what the White House has finally decided to say. Yesterday, President Obama called for an "up-or-down vote" on health care, without once mentioning "reconciliation." "The American people, all they want is an up or down vote," David Axelrod said earlier, adding a few other clear, slogany phrases, "let the majority rule and let's move on." Oh, the Democrats aren't shouting "up-or-down vote" with as much bully-boy gusto as the Republicans incessantly did during the 2005-2006 battles over the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts and Sam Alito. Then, the constant cries from conservative politicians and media was that the two judges deserved a "fair up or down vote," the frequent fillip of "fair" tapping the put-upon resentment of the populist heart (and not seen much from Dems these days). But the daintier D's are at least now deigning to use some punchy, Germanic, monosyllablic words. By comparison, and with the aid of aggressive Republican dissembling, the Latinate, multisyllabic "reconciliation," has been made to seem serpentinely sneaky, if not also overeducated elite. But no matter how much Fox & GOP Friends repeat that Obama is trying to "ram," "jam," and/or "cram" the health care bill through by reconciliation, it's hard to make the word sound downright evil. So, in a coordinated talking-point fulsilade, the right is trying, and often succeeding, to redefine reconciliation as something it's not, a "nuclear option." 03/04/10 http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/537304/dems_up_or_down_vote_meets_gop_s_up_is_down_tricks 10. David Corn: Shocker: Cantor Exploits Unemployment In response to the latest unemployment numbers—which showed unemployment holding steady at 9.7 percent, but with 36,000 people having lost their jobs last month—House minority whip Eric Cantor declared:
So Cantor's blaming this job loss on President Barack Obama's push for health care reform. But here's a question for him. In late 2008 and early 2009—when there was no effort under way to repair the nation's troubled health care system—the economy was shedding several hundred thousand jobs a month. So if those massive unemployment numbers weren't connected to health care reform, why are the more modest job losses tied to this effort? Might the answer have something to do with...political convenience? 3.15.10 http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/03/shocker-cantor-exploits-unemployment 11. Joe Conason: A wave of phony indignation over Charlie Rangel When did the Republicans start to worry so much about ethical purity? Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., who replaced Hefley as ethics chairman, was notable only for stalling probes into the truly repugnant misconduct of Mark Foley, R-Fla., Randy Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., and Bob Ney, R-Ohio, as well as his sponsor DeLay. Foley narrowly escaped criminal indictment, while the other two went to prison (where Cunningham will remain for the rest of his life). The rule that Rangel violated when he took those now-infamous Caribbean trips was instituted by the Democratic majority as part of its ethics reorganization. This was a rules change that Boehner vocally opposed -- and it is a rule that Boehner would have violated more than once had it been in effect a year or two earlier. Back in July 2006, the New York Times reported on one of Boehner’s many subsidized vacations: "Mr. Boehner flew to a golf resort in Boca Raton, Fla., in March for a convention of commodities traders, who have contributed more than $100,000 to his campaigns and are lobbying against a proposed federal tax on futures transactions. During the trip, Mr. Boehner assured his hosts that Congress would most likely not approve a tax they opposed. His leadership committee, the Freedom Project, which in recent months has enlisted the use of corporate planes from Federal Express, Aflac and the Florida Power and Light Company, later reimbursed the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for the cost of the Boca Raton trip." Naturally Boehner’s leadership PAC is funded heavily by corporate interests – so he was “reimbursing” one corporation with money donated to him by others. Boehner has always been known as an obsequious servant of business lobbyists, dating back to the moment in 1995 when he was observed handing out checks from the Brown & Williamson tobacco company political action committee on the House floor. (Confronted by a few naive GOP freshmen, he conceded that such brazen grifting “didn’t look good” and was sorry that he had been caught.) At this point it is clear that Rangel is guilty of hubris and sloppiness, and perhaps worse. It isn’t easy to understand why he should be branded irredeemably “corrupt,” however, while someone like Boehner is considered an honorable public servant. The notion that he and his cronies would restore ethical standards if they regain the majority must be a joke. 3.04.10 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/2010/03/04/rangel/index.html 12. Marc Ambinder: On Terrorism Trials, Obama Is in a Box Given the constraints about to be imposed by Congress, administration officials concede that it seems next to impossible to bring the 9/11 terrorism plotters to the United States for an Article III, or federal, trial. A decision, made by the president, is weeks away, but the Justice Department's National Security Division has already given up hope, in a sense, after the violent counterreaction to the announcement that KSM would be tried in the Southern District of New York. The problem there was that the administration faced a court imposed deadline to make an announcement, and yet it was not ready to effectuate the prisoner transfer, leaving opponents plenty of time to create objections, both real and manufactured. The legal consensus -- the options being given to the president by David Kris, by Mary DeRosa, the legal adviser to the NSC, and by Bob Bauer, the White House counsel, make it clear that military tribunals would be the most feasible option at this point. These advisers seem to have arrived at this conclusion reluctantly, but without prejudice. Goal number one is to close Gitmo, and that means introducing its detainees to the justice system. Goal number two is to bring the 9/11 plotters to justice -- lower-case "j" -- because the venue and manner has always been a matter of intense dispute. Officials know full well that Obama himself is committed to the principle his administration has been trying to articulate since its inception, which is that combating terrorism need not be at odds with full adherence to the rule of law. Primarily, and this is something the president has said privately and publicly, whatever legal rules he creates or uses to deal with detainees, he wants them to be permanent and legitimate--accepted by the courts, Congress and the public. The irony is that legitimacy comes at the price of compromise, because there is an opposition that wants nothing less than a complete dismantlement of Obama's modifications. 3.05.10 http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/03/on-terrorism-trials-obama-is-in-a-box/37114/ 13. Steve Benen: McCain slips a little further from seriousness.... Perhaps during the next "exclusive!" interview with John McCain, a reporter can ask the senator to defend this shameless nonsense.
Specifically, McCain, engaged in the cheapest and most embarrassing of pandering, is arguing that "entitlements should not be part of a reconciliation process," because they're "too important." How absurd is this? Let's the count the ways. First, in recent years, McCain has voted for nine separate piece of legislation through the reconciliation process -- four of them included cuts to Medicare. He is, in other words, pushing a new measure to prevent a step he's already taken several times. Second, it's hard to take seriously the notion that McCain is worried about cuts to Medicare just two years after he ran for president on a platform that included steep cuts to Medicare. And third, McCain claims to believe that "entitlement reform" must be a top priority for policymakers, but he's now pushing a foolish amendment that would make "entitlement reform" almost impossible. 3.05.10 http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_03/022720.php
14. Walter Dellinger: A shameful attack on the U.S. legal system It never occurred to me on the day that Defense Department lawyer Rebecca Snyder and Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler of the Navy appeared in my law firm's offices to ask for our assistance in carrying out their duties as military defense lawyers that the young lawyer who worked with me on that matter would be publicly attacked for having done so. And yet this week that lawyer and eight other Justice Department attorneys have been attacked in a video released by a group called Keep America Safe (whose board members include William Kristol and Elizabeth Cheney) for having provided legal assistance to detainees before joining the department. The video questions their loyalty to the United States, asking: "DOJ: Department of Jihad?" and "Who are these government officials? . . . Whose values do they share?" That those in question would have their patriotism, loyalty and values attacked by reputable public figures such as Elizabeth Cheney and journalists such as Kristol is as depressing a public episode as I have witnessed in many years. What has become of our civic life in America? The only word that can do justice to the personal attacks on these fine lawyers -- and on the integrity of our legal system -- is shameful. Shameful. 3.05.10 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/04/AR2010030404181.html 15. Paul Krugman: Senator Bunning’s Universe So the Bunning blockade is over. For days, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky exploited Senate rules to block a one-month extension of unemployment benefits. In the end, he gave in, although not soon enough to prevent an interruption of payments to around 100,000 workers. But while the blockade is over, its lessons remain. Some of those lessons involve the spectacular dysfunctionality of the Senate. What I want to focus on right now, however, is the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties. Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally. Take the question of helping the unemployed in the middle of a deep slump. What Democrats believe is what textbook economics says: that when the economy is deeply depressed, extending unemployment benefits not only helps those in need, it also reduces unemployment. That’s because the economy’s problem right now is lack of sufficient demand, and cash-strapped unemployed workers are likely to spend their benefits. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office says that aid to the unemployed is one of the most effective forms of economic stimulus, as measured by jobs created per dollar of outlay. But that’s not how Republicans see it. Here’s what Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, had to say when defending Mr. Bunning’s position (although not joining his blockade): unemployment relief “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” In Mr. Kyl’s view, then, what we really need to worry about right now — with more than five unemployed workers for every job opening, and long-term unemployment at its highest level since the Great Depression — is whether we’re reducing the incentive of the unemployed to find jobs. To me, that’s a bizarre point of view — but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe. 3.04.10 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/opinion/05krugman.html 16. Dana Milbank: Karl Rove sets the record straight -- sort of His new book, "Courage and Consequence," promises to "pull back the curtain on my journey to the White House and my years there." What he divulges nearly made me choke on a pretzel. That business about President George W. Bush misleading the nation about Iraq? Didn't happen. "Did Bush lie us into war? Absolutely not," Rove writes. Condoning torture? Wrong! "The president never authorized torture. He did just the opposite." Foot-dragging on global warming? Au contraire. "He was aggressive and smart on this front." You thought Bush was responsible for turning a budget surplus into a record deficit and nearly doubling the national debt? That he was in charge when the economy plunged into the worst collapse since the Great Depression? Guess again. Spending was "far below average" under Bush, who led the nation through "the longest period of economic growth since President Reagan." Even Bush's televised claim that the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Michael "Brownie" Brown was doing a "heckuva" job after Hurricane Katrina wasn't what our lying ears told us it was. "Bush was responding to compliments others had offered to Brown." Rove has had 2 1/2 years to reflect on what turned Bush into the least popular president in modern history. Yet Bush's Brain is still in the war room. His lessons learned are those of a job applicant who claims that his greatest weakness is being too conscientious. He doesn't regret the Iraq war; he regrets that he did not attack the war's critics more fiercely. He doesn't regret the administration's bungling of the Katrina response; he regrets the lack of Republican leadership in Louisiana. Rove offers an occasional nod to reality, such as his doubt that the Iraq war would have been waged if it had been known that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately for Rove's credibility, however, he revives claims discredited long ago. 3.07.10 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/05/AR2010030502872.html |
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