Outrageous! Let's have hearings

Various estimates have the past weekend's storm having dumped between 15 and 20 inches of snow on NYC. Now that outrage is flowing as freely as beer at a tailgate party, the estimates are reaching higher. In step the politicos: Mayor Bloomberg finally admitted that the storm was more than a mere inconvenience (to a rich man with a limo what else would it be?), and now other politicians are seen an opportunity to posture and glower.


Criticism of the city’s response to what has been called its sixth-largest storm has been widespread and top-to-bottom, from the man on the street to Christine M. Quinn, the City Council speaker, who announced hearings regarding the cleanup, which she called “unacceptable.”

Hearings? To determine what? For anything more than to allow politicians to appear indignant in front of the cameras?

Some things are becoming tolerably clear.

At her confirmation hearings last year, Sonia Sotomayor spent a lot of time assuring senators that empathy would play no part in her work on the Supreme Court. That was a sort of rebuke to President Obama, who had said that empathy was precisely the quality that separated legal technicians like Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. from great justices. Justice Sotomayor would have none of it. “We apply law to facts,” she told the Senate Judiciary Committee last year. “We don’t apply feelings to facts.” We are now three months into Justice Sotomayor’s second term on the court. That is awfully early in a justice’s career to draw any general conclusions. But some things are becoming tolerably clear. Justice Sotomayor has completely dispelled the fear on the left that her background as a prosecutor would align her with the court’s more conservative members on criminal justice issues.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. is in some ways Justice Sotomayor’s ideological and temperamental counterpart. In an amusing and astute post on his legal blog, Mike Sacks said the two justices had become “their sides’ enforcers.”

Hawaii’s Governor Takes On ‘Birthers’

Gov. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, who befriended President Obama’s parents when they were university students here, has been in office for less than three weeks. But he is so incensed over “birthers” — the conspiracy theorists who assert that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya and was thus not eligible to become president — that he is seeking ways to change state policy to allow him to release additional proof that the president was born in Honolulu in 1961. “It’s an insult to his mother and to his father, and I knew his mother and father; they were my friends, and I have an emotional interest in that,” Governor Abercrombie said in a telephone interview late Thursday. “It’s an emotional insult. It is disrespectful to the president; it is disrespectful to the office.” The governor, a Democrat and former congressman, said he has initiated conversations with the state’s attorney general and the chief of its Health Department about how he can release more explicit documentation of Mr. Obama’s birth on Aug. 4, 1961, at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital. He said he has done so of his own accord, without consulting the White House, which declined to comment.

Supreme Court debates shift to the left

From left, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan in the justices' conference room before Kagan's investiture ceremony. (Steve Petteway / Supreme Court / December 26, 2010)


For most of the last two decades, Supreme Court conservatives led by Justice Antonin Scalia dominated the debates during oral arguments. They greeted advocates for liberal causes with sharp and sometimes caustic questions, putting them on the defensive from the opening minute. But the tenor of the debate has changed in recent months, now that President Obama's two appointees to the court, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, have joined the fray and reenergized the liberal wing.  Gone are the mismatches where the Scalia wing overshadowed reserved and soft-spoken liberals like now-retired Justices David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens. Instead, the liberals often take the lead and press attorneys defending the states or corporations.


New York toughness has met New York toughness, and N ew York toughness has changed the balance, one again.

Five years ago, then- President George W. Bush strengthened the court's conservative wing when he named Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the court. Smart and capable, they had an immediate effect by combining with the senior conservatives to shift the law to the right on several fronts, most notably on widening the flow of money into politics. Obama almost certainly had a similar goal in mind, but from the opposite political perspective. Since October, the court seems to have shifted subtly, judging by the arguments, during which the justices grill the lawyers in an attempt to resolve their own doubts or win over an undecided vote. One thing, however, already is clear. Attorneys can expect to be grilled by conservative and liberal judges for years to come.

NORAD tracks flying sleigh

Who is that man in red?

More a party hack than revolutionary

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has become a hero in the Republican Party because he talks a blunt message about state government deficits.

He has scored early, and easy, points by showing a combative style and an unwillingness to let things continue as they have been. Well enough.

Christie, who sends his own children to Catholic parochial schools and like any good Republican supports school vouchers, clearly has it in for public schools.

He has been combative with teachers, and has seized on the parochial (pun intended) view of civil servants as overpaid, underworked, undeserving louts.


The Christie view, again solidly Republican, is that public employees have accrued too many benefits and enjoy financial security superior to those in the private sector — the ones who pay their salaries! This ignores a key point: Public employees also pay taxes. It also ignores the fact that when the economy was booming and private-sector employees were getting raises, bonuses and perks well beyond what teachers and police and firemen were getting, these same put-upon taxpayers didn’t hesitate to look down their noses at the “losers” who opted for the stability of government employment.

Those who can, do; those who can't teach is a favourite refrain of the corporate crowd. Heard it many times.

It’s inevitable that some of the benefits negotiated over the years by public-service unions in New Jersey, California and other states will have to be rolled back, and governments and unions will have to negotiate in good faith to that end. But it should be equally certain that state-level deficit problems won’t be solved by spending cuts alone. Voters will not let public services be cut to the bone: Even the well-to-do cannot isolate themselves completely from inadequate fire and police protection, crumbling infrastructure and dysfunctional government services.

Instead of castigating and insulting, and, yes, lambasting public employees, he and his ilk might start a dialogue and stop with the attacks and lectures. But the combative style is a calculated political ploy.


The most reasonable solution would be for the federal government to provide loans to tide over state governments until the economy recovers and restores state revenues. But while it was all right for Washington to rescue Wall Street bonuses, it seems to be politically anathema to provide the same support for such minor goods as public safety and our children’s education. Republican king-maker Rush Limbaugh has anointed Christie as “gutsy,” and numerous Web sites celebrate the “Christie Revolution” as a harbinger of America’s future. But Christie, appointed U.S. attorney in New Jersey in 2001 on the basis of his successful fundraising for the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign despite a lack of experience in criminal law, appears to be nothing more than the blunt-speaking Jersey version of a party hack.

This article appeared in MarketWatch. To say that that surpirses me does not begin to express how much it indeed surprised me.

Da Pres has a good day

His best day since inauguration.

Senate Passes 9/11 Health Bill as Republicans Back Down

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ 10 minutes ago

Facing criticism for stalling the bill to cover medical costs for 9/11 responders, Senate Republicans agreed to a deal providing $4.3 billion over five years.

With Obama’s Signature, ‘Don’t Ask’ Is Repealed

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG 11:44 AM ET

President Obama on Wednesday signed legislation ending the military’s ban on service by gays and lesbians.

Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency

Senate Passes Russia Arms Control Treaty

By PETER BAKER 28 minutes ago

A treaty that scales back cold war nuclear arsenals caps a successful lame-duck session for President Obama. Above, Senators John Kerry and Richard G. Lugar after the vote.

• How the Senate Voted | Times Topics: Lame-Duck Session

• The Caucus: Obama’s Day of Accomplishment

• Live Video Via MSNBC: Obama Speaks

Wasted money, diverted attention

Sand Berms Captured Little Oil, Panel Finds Sand piles designed to block oil in the Gulf of Mexico from hitting the Louisiana coast captured a "minuscule" amount of petroleum at an "overwhelmingly expensive" cost, according to a government report. The report by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling also says that federal officials who coordinated the government's cleanup efforts in the Gulf approved the use of berms not because they believed they would succeed in trapping oil but in response to the pleas of Louisiana politicians, whose demands "overwhelmed" the government's scientific analysis.

• Complete Coverage: Gulf Oil Spill

63 years of family history at end

Patrick Kennedy Packs Up 63 Years of Family History - When Patrick J. Kennedy’s eighth term in Congress ends next month, no member of his family will hold national office for the first time since 1947.

Declare victory, and leave

LBJ and Nixon shoulda done this: Obama Cites Afghan Gains as Report Says Exit Is on Track. It's over; go.

Post-Holbrooke Question: ‘What Now?’

When President Obama turned to Richard C. Holbrooke during a White House meeting on Afghanistan last year, Mr. Holbrooke spoke gravely of the historic challenge the two men faced, likening it to when Clark M. Clifford advised Lyndon B. Johnson about what to do in Vietnam. “Richard,” an impatient Mr. Obama interrupted him, “do people really talk like that?” That strained exchange helps explain why Mr. Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was an awkward fit in the Obama administration. A man of high drama and an acute sense of his own role, he ruffled feathers in a White House that prides itself on team-playing and a lack of drama.

That lack of acceptance of a dissenting voice can be the basis of failure. President Obama has made an impressive showing with his tax policy compromise with Republicans, but Afghanistan is his crucible.

Intelligence Reports Offer Dim View of Afghan War

With Mr. Holbrooke’s death on Monday, the administration has lost one of its most resonant voices, just as it completes its latest review of its Afghan war strategy. His death confronts the White House and State Department with some difficult questions, starting with how to replace a larger-than-life statesman in a post that was created for him and which he built from scratch.


For all the encomiums, though, Mr. Holbrooke was on tenuous footing with the White House. He was left off Air Force One on Mr. Obama’s last two trips to Afghanistan and was increasingly marginalized in policy debates. He held on to his job, several officials said, mainly because Mrs. Clinton protected him.

In the game of political hardball, he had his supporters and detractors. Only Secretary CLinton could protect him from the President's impatience, surely.

Got any money?

Over the last year, Save the Children emerged as a leader in the push to tax sweetened soft drinks as a way to combat childhood obesity. The nonprofit group supported soda tax campaigns in Mississippi, New Mexico, Washington State, Philadelphia and the District of Columbia. At the same time, executives at Save the Children were seeking a major grant from Coca-Cola to help finance the health and education programs that the charity conducts here and abroad, including its work on childhood obesity.

Sort of hypocritical, but:


The talks with Coke are still going on. But the soda tax work has been stopped. In October, Save the Children surprised activists around the country with an e-mail message announcing that it would no longer support efforts to tax soft drinks. In interviews this month, Carolyn Miles, chief operating officer of Save the Children, said there was no connection between the group’s about-face on soda taxes and the discussions with Coke. A $5 million grant from PepsiCo also had no influence on the decision, she said. Both companies fiercely oppose soda taxes. Ms. Miles said that after Save the Children took a prominent role in several soda tax campaigns, executives reviewed the issue and decided it was too controversial to continue.

Right. And the moon is green cheese.

Narco-state?

I have never liked this salute. No.


Despite being a federal fugitive, accused of laundering millions of dollars for one of Mexico’s most ruthless drug cartels, Julio César Godoy says he simply walked into the national legislature here unnoticed in September, right past the cordon of federal police officers watching the building. He then raised his right arm, swore allegiance to the Mexican Constitution and, 15 months after disappearing from public view, finally claimed the congressional seat he won last year. It was too late for prosecutors to do much about it. Mr. Godoy’s newly conferred status came with a special perk: immunity from prosecution.

Now, a political saga that underscores the persistent fears of political infiltration by drug cartels and the many frustrations of rooting it out continues to swirl around him. Mexico’s attorney general has been incensed at Mr. Godoy’s ability to hide in plain sight, while others debate intriguing details in local news reports, like accounts that Mr. Godoy had actually been spirited into the building’s basement garage in another lawmaker’s car.

What about those standing around him?

Once a conservative ...

In Health Law, Old Debate Gets New Airing

By DAVID LEONHARDT

Resistance to the expansion of the social safety net stems from tension between two competing traditions. Ronald Reagan took a stand against Medicare in the 1960s.

Dr. No's Yes roils GOP

Looks funky with that beard.s the Senator from Oklahoma going counter-culture?

Bubba's back in town

President Obama brought President Clinton out to the White House press room, handed te podium over to him, and left. Chris Matthews was deliriously happy, the New York Post sees it as O being overshadowed: amazing how people see what they want to see.

J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press - President Obama ceded the lectern to former President Bill Clinton at an unexpected news conference Friday in the White House briefing room. Mr. Clinton endorsed the tax plan the White House reached with Republicans and went on from there.

I have reviewed this agreement that the president reached with the Republican leaders,” Mr. Clinton told reporters. “The agreement taken as a whole is, I believe, the best bipartisan agreement we can reach to help the most Americans.”

After finishing one soliloquy, Mr. Clinton summed up with, “for what it’s worth, it’s what I think.” From the side, and just out of camera range, Mr. Obama piped up: “It’s worth a lot.”

But after Mr. Clinton began taking questions, the current president politely interjected that Michelle Obama was expecting him at one of the many holiday parties that presidents host during December. “I’ve been keeping the first lady waiting,” Mr. Obama said. “I don’t want to make her mad,” Mr. Clinton quipped. “Please go.”

Nader: Bloomberg can win

This makes sense?

Republicans Block U.S. Health Aid for 9/11 Workers
Senate Republicans raised concerns about how to pay for the $7.4 billion bill to provide medical care to those who became ill from fumes near ground zero.

Republicans extol their patriotism, but their actions show what hypocrites they are: tax cuts, yes, help 'heroes'? no.

Obama gets intense

It is about time. After the Election Day debacle, following Republican gloating and continued recalcitrance, the President struck a tax deal with the Republicans. It extends the Bush tax cuts for two years, cuts the payroll tax, and a few other things. Liberals are apoplectic.


If that's the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then, let's face it, we will never get anything done," Obama said. "People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position and no victories for the American people, and we will be able to feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are

Exactly. What liberals continue to fail to see and understand is that this country can not governed from the left. They thought they had their guy in Obama, and can not accept he is not doing their bidding. Katrina vanden Heuvel is one of the lefties that is upset: Obama: On the way to a failed presidency? This isn't about conventional politics. This is simply about the fate and future of our country. This president has a clear and imperative historic mandate. If he shirks it, he risks more than failing to get reelected. He risks a failed presidency.

She details the liberal agenda that she charges the President has abandoned, and the conservative agenda he has adopted. But, in his first two years the President (almost) had 60 votes in the Senate; in one month he won't. How is he supposed to accomplished the liberal agenda?

McWeasel

Today's front page of the New York Daily News castigates the Senator from Arizona, that purported patriot.

Ailing Ground Zero hero: Sen. John McCain said he 'can't help' on Zadroga bill before weaseling away is one story.

and a column  Heroes of 9/11 hear you loud and clear, Republicans; next time they should turn and run

Sex and the frequent flyer

A thoughtful, perceptive, insightful look at war, flying and x-ray machines.


Nov. 24, 2010, 12:01 a.m. EST
Sex and the frequent flyer
Commentary: Government will grope you — and kill you if needed

By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The home front is in an uproar over the war on terror, and all it took was some dirty pictures.

On Wednesday, a massive protest is planned in the nation’s airports to call attention to the latest indignity: invasive full-body X-rays and intimate searches. Objecting to the newest scanning technology that produces a nearly nude digital image of air travelers, the protesters say they’ll try to shut down the system on one of the busiest travel days of the year by insisting on time-consuming physical pat-downs.

The anger has been quietly building for months, as more and more passengers were subjected to the new imaging machines, which some say amount to “porno searches.” Even worse, those who object to posing in the virtual nude for the Transportation Security Administration can choose to have a uniformed stranger feel their genitals to make sure they aren’t hiding a bomb in their underwear.

Suddenly, the war is news again. Remember the war? It’s the endless war, the one where Americans weren’t asked to pay more in taxes or to subject themselves or their children to the military draft. It was the one where the only sacrifice that average Americans were asked to make was to give up their liberty.

A small price to preserve freedom, they told us without the slightest sense of irony.

Since the war began, our country has lied, spied, kidnapped, tortured and killed in our name and in cause of the war on terror. Thousands of American soldiers lost their lives. Tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghanis lost theirs. More than $1 trillion was spent. Some patriots protested the loss of freedom, the incompetent execution and the losing strategy, but nothing much changed.

The war on terror continues into its 10th year, with no end in sight. We still have troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places around the globe. The prison at Guantanamo Bay is still open. The torture and kidnappings continue, and we know innocents are also caught up in the dragnet along with the bad guys. The bombings and attacks by unmanned drones haven’t let up, and we know innocents are also killed along with the terrorists.

And we’ve come no closer to winning this war. How could we, when we are fighting an abstract enemy? When we create one enemy for each one we kill or capture?

Since the horrible events of September 2001, we’ve asked our leaders, our military and our intelligence services to keep us safe, and damn the expense!

It was exciting, at first. America was united, by golly, just like the Greatest Generation! We got to eat freedom fries, and we got to close our eyes as our leaders marched our army into the wrong country for the wrong cause. The government asserted its right to bug our phones and read our emails, and of course we went along with it because we have nothing to hide.

As time passed, for most of us, the war on terror retreated into the background. It was only when we traveled by air that the war came back home. It was only at the airport that we remembered the war was still on: Throw your coffee cup away at the security gate, take off your belt, empty your pockets, take off your shoes, segregate your liquids and gels, don’t crack a smile, don’t question authority, do as you are told. Don’t you know there’s a war on?

Looking at the line of passengers winding their way through the security lines and on board the planes and back off again at the destination, you’d think there had never been such a complacent people resigned to their fate. Flying has become a thoroughly degrading experience: mindless security rules, long lines, long waits, no real meals, crummy snacks, cramped seats… what’s not to love?

And then sex entered the picture.

The untested full-body X-ray machines may not be effective at preventing actual threats, and they may kill more passengers with cancer than they could ever save from terrorists. But we Americans are fine with that. We’re used to the government doing stupid or self-defeating things.

But tell us that the new machines will let strangers see what we look like without clothes, or that someone will grope you if you object to the porno search, and you’ve got the makings of a mass movement that should not be underestimated.

Don’t touch my junk, indeed! We are such prudes, and so vain too! Do we really think the TSA employees want to see us with our clothes off? Or touch our privates? Working for the TSA has officially become the worst job ever.

In response to all this, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas has introduced the American Traveler Dignity Act. Isn’t a little late for that?

The pornographic aspect of the TSA’s new machines certainly is creepy, but we should focus instead on the bigger picture.

Every American should know that, when national security is on the line, the government will lie to you even as it kills you. I had friends in Utah who died from the cancer the government gave them during above-ground nuclear testing in the 1950s. Read more about the nuclear testing.

The same thing happened to the Sept. 11 rescue workers, who were exposed to deadly chemicals and carcinogens without adequate protection.

And now millions of Americans will receive doses of unnecessary and unwanted radiation each time they fly.

Which bothers you more? That the government will grope you, or that it will kill you?

Copyright © 2010 MarketWatch, Inc. All rights reserved.

Kamikaze Capitalism: GOP out to destroy

I am not sure, at all, who this person is, but he has a column today in Marketwatch.com with this title.


Yes, Sen. McConnell, the drama’s unfolding, powered by your vow that the GOP’s “No. 1 priority” is destroying the Obama presidency. Not creating jobs … not economic recovery … not even national security.

Where will we be in twelve months? Eighteen?

Get it? America’s losing. And we better reinvent our Kamikaze Capitalism soon. Because the New Beijing Capitalism is winning the 21st century economic race, and we’re helping them beat us.

It doesn't take much imagination or perspicacity to see that the "Western" capitalist model is damaged. The right wing's response is to prescribe more of the same failed policies, to denigrate their opponents as unAmerican, America-haters or socialists, and promise bright days ahead for those that believe.

Friedman’s Disaster Capitalism peaked under Bush, adding trillions of new debt to pay for two costly wars, huge tax cuts and an increasingly privatized government. Today even Reagan’s Budget Director David Stockman warns “his GOP has destroyed the American economy.” Yet, even as GOP bullies keep adding insult to injury telling the world that their No. 1 goal is destroying Obama’s presidency, the gutless Dems continue talking compromise, failing by refusing to stand on principle and fight dirty on GOP turf, using their weapons against them, in a ruthless political war.

President Obama will have to make a choice in about four months, and no matter how many times he calls for bipartisanship, it will be a choice between caving in to the Republicans, or fighting them head-on.

Internecine warfare

After ripping Sarah Palin, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski isn’t mincing words about another one of her high-profile GOP critics: South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. “I think some of the Republicans in the Congress feel pretty strongly that he and his actions potentially cost us the majority by encouraging candidates that ended up not being electable,” Murkowski told POLITICO outside her Senate office. “And I think Delaware is a pretty good example of that, and I think there’re some folks that feel that DeMint’s actions didn’t necessarily help the Republican majority.”

“So the real question is, what’s his desire?” she said. “Does he want to help the Republican majority, or is he on his own agenda, his own initiative?” Asked what she believed the answer was, Murkowksi said: “I think he’s out for his own initiative.”

Let the fighting continue.

Sarah Palin says she can defeat President Obama Just which Republican aspirant is going to just let her walk into the nomination?

Boehner’s Army

John Heilemann, who co-wrote Game change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the race of a lifetime with Mark Halperin, a book that created quite a stir earlier this year, writes a political column for New York magazine. This one is subtitled The Republican revolutionaries have problems with authority—and that may provide Obama an opening.

John Boehner: “We must remember, it’s the president who sets the agenda for our government,” he said. And though two days later he suggested that Barack Obama was in “denial” about the meaning of the midterms, Boehner offered that he and Obama “get along well,” that maybe they could hold a Merlot Meeting (rather than a Slurpee Summit). “I don’t want gridlock,” he insisted. “I don’t want squabbling.” Mitch McConnell would never go that far, for fear that his pants would catch on fire.


But McConnell's stated primary goal is to make sure Obama is a one-term president.

That 1994 is much on the minds of Boehner and McConnell comes as no surprise—since for any politically sentient being, the analogy is inescapable. Most often, of course, the parallels are drawn to illustrate the challenge that Obama faces: Can he pull a Bill Clinton, tacking back to the center, triangulating his way to reelection? Yet as the two maximum Republicans are evidently aware, the historical antecedent raises an equally urgent question for the GOP: Can Boehner and McConnell avoid the sort of grievous errors that their forebears made, which opened the door to Clinton’s revival—and yet might do the same for Obama?

It's a big question. After his election, Team Obama seemed poised not quite invincible as much as on a winning streak, yet even with legislative accomplishments, it mired down in the politics of an angry opposition and a lost spin war. Now the President seems to be floundering, to be back on his heels. It remains to be seen how things will play out.

Comparatively speaking, Boehner and McConnell are peas in the proverbial pod. Both are Establishmentarians to their core, who see politics and their role in promoting Republicanism in similar terms.  They are not firebrands or visionaries, but they are bone-deep partisans. For the past two years, they have demonstrated enormous discipline and skill in working side by side in the exercise of obstructionism. And for the next two, they will both be afflicted with the same headache: managing the tensions not between their caucuses but within them, as each is simultaneously energized and roiled by the infusion of a new crop of members more populist and hard-line than the guys who ostensibly command them.

Both have to appear to be mindful of the tea party rhetoric, Boehner more so.

It’s this cadre to which Boehner was catering last week when he stated flatly that “we are going to repeal Obamacare”—an obvious impossibility given the remaining, if reduced, Democratic majority in the upper chamber and the president’s veto pen. This kind of talk will only get Boehner so far with the tea-partyers, however. His allegiance to their cause will be tested early, thanks to Michele Bachmann, who announced that she intends to seek a post in her party’s leadership: that of GOP-conference chair. Leadership fights are never pretty, but this one may be especially charged, as the hot-eyed lady from Minnesota (and Tea Party Caucus founder) campaigns among her colleagues on the grounds that the new majority needs a genuine “constitutional conservative” in its top ranks—an argument containing the implicit suggestion that Boehner does not qualify as one.

There are few developments that would please me more than to see Bachmann get a leadership position in the Republican caucus. That wingnut would alienate more moderates than just about anyone else, whilst simultaneously throwing red meat to her extreme constituency.

the pressure on McConnell from his party’s anti-Establishment flank may in some ways be greater than that on Boehner—because of the presence of Jim DeMint. More than anyone, the junior senator from South Carolina is the animating spirit of the tea party. Having broken with long-standing tradition and encouraged primary challenges this year to sitting members of his own party, he has already made clear that he has no intention of backing away from his crusade for ideological purity.

How luck y can the Democrats get? Enforced ideological purity in the Republican party gives the President a chasm wide enough to drive the proverbial truck through the middle. Especially if the left insists on its own ideological purity.

In the likely event that a stalemate arises between the White House and Republicans over the budget, many tea-partyers are already champing at the bit for a government shutdown; but Boehner and McConnell, recalling how well that worked out for Gingrich and Dole, will be loath to let it happen.

Intra-party bickering; too bad we won't get to see it play out in all its gory glory.

In all of this, Obama will find opportunities to exploit. If he and his team handle it adroitly, they stand a chance of forcing the Republican leaders into a series of devil’s choices between, on the one hand, making compromises that exacerbate intra-party tensions and, on the other, satisfying the appetites of the ascendant wing of the GOP by coming across as ideological extremists to the vast American middle. The degree of adroitness required will be enormous, to be sure. Unlike Clinton, Obama will not be blessed with a foe as prone to massive overreach—and to indiscipline, messianism, and just plain silliness—as Gingrich was in 1995. The president will need to be clever, flexible, patient, and tough in roughly equal measure.

O, but he well might: the teabags will push the extreme, and will not be silent if denied. Can't wait to see the first firebrand speech Rand Paul makes.

House Democrats spar - Blue Dog won’t back down

Top House Democrats said late Friday night that they had settled on an arrangement that avoided a divisive fight for the No. 2 position in the party when it reverts to the minority in January. In a statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would nominate Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina to be the No. 3 Democrat when the party holds an internal party election on Wednesday.

But what did Limbaugh say? Rush: Clyburn could be 'driving Miss Nancy' Idiot.

After a junior year in which he almost won the Heisman Trophy, Heath Shuler was picked in the first round of the 1994 National Football League draft by the Washington Redskins. In less than two seasons — and after a few too many interceptions — he was replaced as the team’s starting quarterback. ESPN described him as one of the all-time draft busts. He might be expected to play down such a distinction. But Mr. Shuler, 38, who just won a third term as the congressman representing North Carolina’s 11th District, has turned it into metaphor. “It’s no different than me as a quarterback,” he said in an interview here on Thursday. “I didn’t play very good. So what they’d do? They benched me.”

And eventually released him. I agree with his assessment, and would vote that way, for new leadership.

The Democrats’ achievements in the last Congress, Mr. Shuler said, are unpopular with the public because the party’s leadership has been too reflexively partisan. He says a more moderate approach is needed.

True enough, as far as it goes, but, why is it that when the right is overly partisan few people characterize it so and call for a "more moderate approach"?

Steele's first opponent

Former Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis announced this morning that he will run to be chairman of the Republican National Committee, becoming the first -- though almost certainly not the last -- candidate in the race against Michael Steele "We cannot be misled by our victories this year," Anuzis wrote in an announcement posted on his blog. "Chairman Steele's record speaks for itself. He has his way of doing things. I have mine."

Debatable point

Pelosi: 'We Didn’t Lose Because of Me'  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she has the “overwhelming support” of fellow Democrats in her bid to become minority leader in the next Congress, and says she’s not to blame for the Democrats’ mid-term debacle. She might be technically correct, but when a team loses badly the manager gets fired. She should step aside.

Dealing with the deficit

Paul Krugman is not impressed with the Commission, in the least.

Count me among those who always believed that President Obama made a big mistake when he created the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform — a supposedly bipartisan panel charged with coming up with solutions to the nation’s long-run fiscal problems. It seemed obvious, as soon as the commission’s membership was announced, that “bipartisanship” would mean what it so often does in Washington: a compromise between the center-right and the hard-right.

And:


It’s no mystery what has happened on the deficit commission: as so often happens in modern Washington, a process meant to deal with real problems has been hijacked on behalf of an ideological agenda. Under the guise of facing our fiscal problems, Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson are trying to smuggle in the same old, same old — tax cuts for the rich and erosion of the social safety net.

Gerald Seib, of the Wall Street Journal (wherein he qualifies as a moderate), called it differently: Deficit-Cutting Chairmen Call Washington's Bluff.

Matt Miller, who writes a column for the Washington Post (I have an email subscription to his column; I think I first read him on the Daily Beast), opines on the Simpson-Bowles Commission, also. Miller fancies himself "a Radical Centrist." I suppose he does not want to be tarred as a Liberal. Or call himself a Progressive.

21 versus 22. As I wrote in The Post a few months ago, the Bowles/Simpson plan to hold spending to 21 percent of GDP as the boomers age is a dangerous fantasy. All you need to know is that Ronald Reagan ran government at 22 percent of GDP when 76 million baby boomers weren't retiring. Today we're on the verge of doubling the number of folks on Social Security and Medicare. The Bowles/Simpson size of government goal is a fantasy -- it will not happen. Unfortunately, this wrongheaded goal undermines much of what they propose, since it's the organizing feature of their proposal.

2037. The co-chairs don't balance the budget until 2037! The outer limits of the ambition of a commission set up to get our fiscal house in order is thus a 27-year plan to balance the budget? Oy. The most you can say is that it's faster than the plan offered by that other falsely-hailed fiscal conservative, Paul Ryan, whose "Roadmap" wouldn't balance the budget until the 2050s!

He also criticizes them on health care, social security and gas taxes.

China to top US

Here’s a finding that will have any red-blooded American spluttering into his cornflakes. According to the Conference Board, a highly respected economic research association, China will overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy by 2012, or within two years.

Any? Point taken, nonetheless. That fact, and this picture, surely will infuriate many.

.Many people, especially those who already dislike Barack Obama, will take umbrage at the sight of the US president bowing to the Communist (or to a sheik or emir), ignoring the picture of George W Bush holding hands with the King of Saudi Arabia.

And this will add fuel to the fire:  Wednesday, Obama was in Jakarta, the capital of the world's most populous Muslim nation, issuing a call for trust and cooperation. He lived in Indonesia as a boy from 1967 to 1971 and found himself flooded with memories. "Let me begin with a simple statement: Indonesia is part of me," he said in Indonesian language, drawing cheers from the audience of more than 6,000 mostly young people at the University of Indonesia. Obama took care in his remarks to note that he is Christian; back home in the U.S., he continues to fight erroneous perceptions that he is Muslim..

Joltin' Joe

Love that Biden, if it is Biden.

Steele be gone

Could anyone not have anticipated this? From the very beginning of his tenure, it was clear he was a caretaker.

Turning their attention to the 2012 presidential election, Republican leaders are digging in for a battle over control of the Republican National Committee, judging that its role in fund-raising, get-out-the-vote operations and other tasks will be critical to the effort to topple President Obama.

So far, the effort has been tentative, with Mr. Steele’s most ardent opponents working behind the scenes to persuade an alternative to run against him — fearful that any overt moves will create a backlash in Mr. Steele’s favor among those committee members who tend to view the establishment in Washington with suspicion.

Of course, as long as Steele in chairman he, also, is part of the establishment, as are those teabags that propose they are not. Nonetheless, McConnell and Boehner are trying to play both sides of the field, establishment and teabags.

After the elections

Pelosi will run for leader She should not run, but should bow out gracefully.

Debunking the myths of the Midterm Every one seems to be repeating the same words, with little original thought.

Olbermann suspended schmuck

Black and Republican and back in Congress Even the New Mexico governor is a Latina.

Tea party's fervor Zealots.

Latino milestones

GOP senators fight over failure

As I said below, let the civil war begin.

Long-simmering tensions within the Republican Party spilled into public view Wednesday as the pragmatic and conservative wings of the GOP blamed each other in blunt terms for the party’s failure to capture the Senate.  The back-and-forth following an otherwise triumphant election amounted to a significant ratcheting up of the internecine battle that has been taking place within the GOP for the past year.

Don't Worry, Be Happy!

Not every observer is repeating the same mantra; this one actually seems to have original thoughts. How interesting. Lawrence D. Bobo is W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard.

There are good reasons to be hopeful after the midterm elections. Just look at what happened in 1994. For Democrats, this election is worse than the 1994 midterm with regard to losses in the House; Obama's losses are worse than Bill Clinton's. Obama, however, has presided over a far deeper recession. At the time of the 1994 midterm elections, the national unemployment rate was around 6 percent. Today unemployment is closer to 10 percent, indicative of much more widespread economic uncertainty and hardship. And this is almost certainly the principal reason that Obama's midterm setback in the House involves nine more seats than Clinton lost.

I'd like to see what the numbers were for total voters. Plus, Harry Reid won, the not-witch and Angle lost.


The difference here is the state of economy. To wit, this election is not a repudiation of a liberal agenda run amok or of an Obama administration out of touch with the American people. It is a loud declaration of deep disappointment with the weak and uneven pace of the economic recovery after a catastrophic economic downturn.

How interesting, that he sees the same evidence others see, and interprets it rather differently.


So the 2010 midterms were a setback for Democrats. Let's remember that this outcome was completely foreseeable in light of the economy. Republicans will celebrate with some measure of justification. But the presumption that Americans have repudiated Democrats and endorsed Republican ideology, or that Obama's electoral fate is now sealed, is just plain wrong. Assuming the economy continues to improve and the Democrats, including Obama, heed the lessons of Massachusetts, I'm feeling pretty good about 2012.

Ditto, I guess.

New sheriff is town

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) pledged on Wednesday to investigate both Barack Obama and George W. Bush with his newfound subpoena power when he takes over as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “I’m going to be investigating a president of my own party, because many of the issues we’re working on began [with] President Bush or even before, and haven’t been solved,” Issa said during an interview on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown.”

How long before he gets muzzled? Let the civil war begin.

Team Obama Blaming Rahm

his old colleagues in Washington aren’t too happy about it. Some of them shake their heads in disbelief that Emanuel would bolt at precisely the juncture when the Democrats needed to shape their strategy and message during the homestretch of what everyone knew would be the toughest election cycle in years.

They're simply in denial.  It wasn't his absence for a few weeks that cooked 'em. As an article in today's NY Times points out (Democrats Outrun by a 2-Year G.O.P. Comeback Plan ), it has been a long time coming. If they need to blame Rahm, they're missing the point: it is they themselves that are to blame, all of them.

Let 'em do the math

Let the spending cuts begin.

I am looking forward to seeing what the Republicans propose, other than repealing the health care law.

That was, after all, what Republicans campaigned on. Ohio's John Boehner, soon to be House speaker, promised "a new approach that hasn't been tried before in Washington—by either party. It starts with cutting spending instead of increasing it." Retiring Sen. Evan Bayh (D., Ind.) says Democrats should back a freeze on federal hiring and pay. Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) says, "We're going to be giving on spending."

Now he says that?

But as Republican spending cutters move from wooing voters to legislating, they confront two realities: Cutting government spending in general is popular; specific, substantial spending cuts are not. And bringing down the deficit by spending cuts alone, particularly cuts in annually appropriated domestic spending, is, well, arithmetically challenging.

Election campaign is on

In a Stratfor article on 26 October 2010, George Freidman wrote:

Reversals in the first midterm election after a presidential election happened to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. It does not mean that Obama is guaranteed to lose a re-election bid, although it does mean that, in order to win that election, he will have to operate in a very different way. It also means that the 2012 presidential campaign will begin next Wednesday on Nov. 3. Given his low approval ratings, Obama appears vulnerable and the Republican nomination has become extremely valuable. For his part, Obama does not have much time to lose in reshaping his presidency. With the Iowa caucuses about 15 months away and the Republicans holding momentum, the president will have to begin his campaign. U.S. Midterm Elections, Obama and Iran | STRATFOR

Nice: two years of campaigning have just ended, two more years of campaigning have just begun.

Obama now has two options in terms of domestic strategy. The first is to continue to press his agenda, knowing that it will be voted down. If the domestic situation improves, he takes credit for it. If it doesn’t, he runs against Republican partisanship. The second option is to abandon his agenda, cooperate with the Republicans and re-establish his image as a centrist. Both have political advantages and disadvantages and present an important strategic decision for Obama to make.

If he moves to the center more, his liberal base will howl and largely abandon him, and the right wing will chew him up: they don't want him as an ally; they want to defeat him.

I'd like to see it, too

In Market Watch (a Wall Street Journal sibling, thus, also, a Murdoch property), a columnist puts it bluntly: You win, Rand Paul; now balance the budget. If it were so easy as they said on the campaign trail it could be.

The only realistic way to balance the budget is to grow the economy. So maybe all those angry tea partiers will be pacified and start buying things again. And then all those companies that belong to the Chamber of Commerce, comfortable that the Republicans have their backs on taxes and regulation, will start investing again. Then the economy will boom, tax revenues will rise and, before you know it, we’ll be back in surplus again. But I don’t think so.

Nor do I. The anger won't end simply because the election is over: they still socialism to defeat, fully. O, and that communist in the the White House, too.

So Senator-elect Paul might go to Plan B. He and fellow travelers like Mike Lee, Utah’s freshly minted senator-elect, would filibuster the move sometime next year to raise the federal debt ceiling from its current $14.3 trillion to accommodate rising entitlements and interest payments. This, according to a current of thought circulating inside the Beltway, would lead to a default by the U.S. government — a wonderful way to balance the budget overnight.

Imagine what the markets would do: fall, and fall precipituously.

It can’t happen here, you think. But if I were a foreign investor, I’d start pricing a little default premium into Treasurys, because the level of economic ignorance and political irresponsibility in some of the lawmakers elected Tuesday is hard to overestimate.

 Perhaps impossible to overestimate.



What will happen now? More posturing, more hot air. The Bush tax cuts will be extended in a lame-duck session. But then McConnell and Boehner will try to ride herd on their new caucus members, and Obama will try to grow a backbone so he can start vetoing any bills attempting to roll back his signature legislation. 

And then Rand Paul will balance the budget. Or not.

We'll see.

Can they hear him? DO they care?

Obama Vows to Work With G.O.P. After ‘Humbling’ Losses


G.O.P. Leaders Vow to Repeal Health Law

When is he simply going to throw down the gauntlet and dare them to make his day?

Divided We Fail

Paul Krugman never minces words, and today's column is no exception to his rule.

Barring a huge upset, Republicans will take control of at least one house of Congress next week. How worried should we be by that prospect?

Very, he opines. And he clears the historical record: the era of partial cooperation in the 1990s came only after Republicans had tried all-out confrontation, actually shutting down the federal government in an effort to force President Bill Clinton to give in to their demands for big cuts in Medicare.

People forget that, and Republicans do nothing to remind them. They harp on big government and cutting taxes, but never explain just how they plan to do so. Mitch McConnell did say that “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

But what does that mean? If they have power, they can't keep blaming the Democrats and just saying no. They will be part of government and won't be able to just blame government for everything. Will that make them responsible and coöperative?


should any Republicans in Congress find themselves considering the possibility of acting in a statesmanlike, bipartisan manner, they’ll surely reconsider after looking over their shoulder at the Tea Party-types, who will jump on them if they show any signs of being reasonable. The role of the Tea Party is one reason smart observers expect another government shutdown, probably as early as next spring.

President Obama and his team will have to get real, get ready, and get tough. Because if the Republicans get power and get their way we’ll get the worst of both worlds: They’ll refuse to do anything to boost the economy now, claiming to be worried about the deficit, while simultaneously increasing long-run deficits with irresponsible tax cuts — cuts they have already announced won’t have to be offset with spending cuts. So if the elections go as expected next week, here’s my advice: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Something to look forward to?

Not our fault, theirs

Hallibuton, Replying to Report, Says BP Is to Blame in Gulf

Free, or just bad, speech?

The right wing was handed a new topic to rant about; it seems dumb. Juan Williams, who appeared on NPR, and also on Fox (where his moderate voice occupied the left), spoke freely, and got into trouble.

the public radio organization has come under severe criticism — largely from people who are not listeners, it believes — for having fired Mr. Williams, an analyst who was employed by both NPR and Fox News when he said on Fox that he felt fearful when he saw people in “Muslim garb” on an airplane. Some have said his comment was bigoted, but others have rallied to Mr. Williams’s defense, and many conservatives have seized on his firing to resurrect their war against public broadcasting.

Of course, the right wing nuts rant about free speech, and use NPR as a piñata, when it suits them.

Nix that idea

Raminder Pal Singh/European Pressphoto Agency - The Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, is a popular stop for famous visitors. Sikh scriptures require that men tie a piece of cloth on their heads to enter.

On President Obama's visit to India, the Golden temple had been considered a possible stop.

But the United States has ruled out a Golden Temple visit, according to an American official involved in planning. Temple officials said that American advance teams had gone to Amritsar, the holy city that is the site of the temple, to discuss a possible visit. But the plan appears to have foundered on the thorny question of how Mr. Obama would cover his head, as Sikh tradition requires, while visiting the temple.

Help, you want help?

The alliance between the Republican Carl P. Paladino and an Orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn has fallen apart, with the rabbi denouncing Mr. Paladino on Wednesday for his apology over remarks he had made about homosexuality on Sunday. The rabbi, Yehuda Levin, who helped write those remarks, said Mr. Paladino “folded like a cheap camera” because of the uproar they had set off. And the rabbi said he could no longer support Mr. Paladino’s candidacy for governor of New York. “Which part of the speech that you gave in Brooklyn to the Orthodox Jewish community are you apologizing for?” Rabbi Levin asked at a news conference in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, on Fifth Avenue. “Will we see you next year with your daughter at that gay pride march?”

The rabbi betrays his age in his choice of metaphors: fold like a camera? Cameras haven't folded in years.


Rabbi Levin said he was especially upset that Mr. Paladino gave him no notice that he planned to back away from the comments. “I was in the middle of eating a kosher pastrami sandwich,” Rabbi Levin said. "While I was eating it, they come running and they say, ‘Paladino became gay!’ I said, ‘What?’ And then they showed me the statement. I almost choked on the kosher salami."

He went from eating pastrami to eating salami; while rhyming, those are not components of a j\healthy meal, even if kosher.

Civilian Replaces General as Nat'l Security Adviser

General Jones’s exit had been expected at the end of the year, but it came earlier, administration officials said, after the White House became annoyed by the appearance of quotations attributed to General Jones in Bob Woodward’s book “Obama’s Wars.” [973.932 W]

 General Jones brought military experience to the White House team, but the president never let him into his inner circle, said David Rothkopf, the author of Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power. “Aloof himself, he served an aloof president, so there was zero chemistry or connection,” Mr. Rothkopf added.[355.033 R]

Justice's wife lobbyist

As one of the keynote speakers here Friday at a state convention billed as the largest Tea Party event ever, Virginia Thomas gave the throng of more than 2,000 activists a full-throated call to arms for conservative principles. For three decades, Mrs. Thomas has been a familiar figure among conservative activists in Washington — since before she met her husband of 23 years, Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. But this year she has emerged in her most politically prominent role yet: Mrs. Thomas is the founder and head of a new nonprofit group, Liberty Central, dedicated to opposing what she characterizes as the leftist “tyranny” of President Obama and Democrats in Congress and to “protecting the core founding principles” of the nation.

 Tyranny? They have no idea what in hell they are talking about, and purposefully obfuscate the issues.


“It’s shocking that you would have a Supreme Court justice sitting on a case that might implicate in a very fundamental way the interests of someone who might have contributed to his wife’s organization,” said Deborah L. Rhode, a law professor and director of the Stanford University Center on the Legal Profession. Steven Lubet, who teaches legal ethics at Northwestern Law School, said Mrs. Thomas’s solicitation of big contributions raised potential recusal issues for her husband. But he added, “There’s no reason to think that Justice Thomas would be anything other than extremely careful about it.”  

Who dat?

September 1, 2010, 2:06 pm

Blair Recalls Bush Asked, ‘Who Is This Guy?’ After Meeting Belgium’s Leader

By ROBERT MACKEY

Epa-Ansa/Alessandro Bianchi President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy with other world leaders at a Group of 8 summit meting in Genoa, Italy in 2001. Belgium’s prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, sat directly across a large table from the American president.

While most reports in Britain on the publication of Tony’s Blair’s new memoir have focused on his frank assessment of the weaknesses of his successor, Gordon Brown, one newspaper notes that there are also some recollections that might make another old friend, former President George W. Bush, uncomfortable. The Telegraph reports:

In his new book, A Journey, Mr Blair writes that the former U.S. president was confused by the presence of Guy Verhofstadt at the 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa.
“He didn’t know or recognize Guy, whose advice he listened to with considerable astonishment,” Mr Blair writes. “He then turned to me and whispered, ‘Who is this guy?’ ‘He is the prime minister of Belgium,’ I said.

Mr. Bush soon became better acquainted with the Belgian leader, who visited the White House later that year and again in 2006, when my colleague Stephen Crowley captured this triptych of Mr. Verhofstadt making the American president laugh while recounting a mountain biking tale:

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times As photographers set up before a news conference at the White House in 2006, Mr. Verhofstadt, amused President Bush with a story about mountain biking.

This, or that

This is a picture of the two main contenders in the recent Australian election, which remains undecided as of 31 August 2010 (Australian election remains on a knife-edge with Green MP the kingmaker). Ten days earlier this picture appeared, ad it seems a perfectly appropriate commentary on Australian politicians specifically, and all politicians in general: they will say anything, earnestly, and some times say exactly the opposite of what they just said. Ask a politician a question, and you'll get two answer (which amounts to no answer).

Stories

Israel natural gas
Software, not sonatas
Consumer agency  and videos
Russians in Staten Island
Biden predicts victory
Brooklynite gunned down and more stories on him

Stories

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMi5B2USfJStXxfqgWWr2xjRYpOgD9HMAJ8O0
Mexican mayor killed

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703649004575438243433457782.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Facebook location service

Alberto Gonzalez on 14th Amendment



TV shows for smart people: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-18/breaking-bad-creator-vince-gilligan-the-smartest-tv/?cid=hp:mainpromo7

Judging

In a thoughtful article appearing in the August 19, 2010 issue of the New York Review of Books, Ronald Dworkin writes about Elena Kagan and the hearing of her confirmation as the newest Justice to the United States Supreme Court.

As a law professor back in 1995 she wrote of such hearings as taking "on an air of vacuity and farce, and the Senate becomes incapable of either properly evaluating nominees or appropriately educating the public." Dworkin writes that her own hearings became just that, as she avoided answering any question with much specificity or substance. Since the Bork confirmation hearing in 1987 when said nominee was skewered, nominees have hewed to the same script: avoid controversy, answer generally, flatter opposing Senators, smile a lot, and play it safe.

Justices Roberts and Alito played that same game: smile, say little. After climbing toi the bench, they joined Justices Scalia and Thomas as a solid right-wing bloc, often getting Justice Kennedy's vote and deciding 5-4 to pursue a conservative agenda.

It is crucial to the role Supreme Court justices play in our constitutional system that they be free and able to reject popular opinion—to overrule the wishes of the majority in order to protect individual rights.

The Court is supposed to rule based on constitutional interpretation, not on individual philosophy. But what is proper constitutional interpretation?


the right-wing phalanx of the Court has used its power to overrule the will of the majority in what strikes many of us as an indefensible and dangerous way: not to protect a vulnerable minority from majority indifference or hatred but to protect conservative interests and privilege from progressive legislation.

Dworkin's politics and worldview are quite clear; I happen to agree with his judgment.

Richard Posner, himself a conservative judge, recently wrote that four of the five most conservative justices since 1937 are together on the Court now: Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Samuel Alito. Many lawyers believe it would have been better had Roberts and Alito been forced to disclose their real substantive intentions in their hearings because they would not have been confirmed if they had.

Richard Posner is a judge, and a prolific author.


Posner said of Roberts: “The tension between what he said at his confirmation hearing and what he is doing as a Justice is a blow to Roberts’s reputation for candor and further debasement of the already debased currency of the testimony of nominees at judicial confirmation hearings.”

 That tension is, in fact, that he lied at his hearings, not admitting he went in with the agenda he has pursued as a Justice and as Chief Justice. It has been an agenda of overturning precedent conservatives disagree with, an activist agenda, indeed.

Pressed to address precedent, Kagan spoke of using pragmatism and not overarching philosophical view.

Her answer was almost identical to what Roberts and Alito said about precedent and once they were confirmed they joined the other conservative justices in an overruling spree unparalleled in Court history.


Justice Roberts, overruling a recent decision, said that that decision “actually impedes the stable and orderly adjudication of future cases.” He cited the fact that the conservative justices who dissented in the earlier case had continued to declare their opposition to it. If that is enough to justify overruling, no important precedent would be safe.

Pragmatism? or pursuit of an agenda?

Abortion rights continue to be denounced by Scalia and Thomas and continue to be hated by many millions of Americans. Does that make Roe v. Wade “unworkable”? Many of the Court’s recent abortion decisions—in overruling a recent decision in order to permit a ban on “partial-birth” abortion, for instance—might well be thought to “erode” Roe‘s “doctrinal foundations.” Does that make Roe itself ripe for overruling? (Much of the Roberts Court’s jurisprudence might be preparing for the day it does that.)

Who can doubt that overturning Roe v. Wade is a priority for the right wing?

Greenspan Calls for Repeal of All the Bush Tax Cuts

Does anyone still actually listen to this man and take him seriously?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/magazine/08fob-q4-t.html?ref=us
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/us/07lemonade.html?ref=us
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/us/politics/07fourteenth.html?ref=us
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/us/07spill.html?ref=us
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/business/07aig.html?ref=business
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/business/07muffin.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/us/politics/07nixon.html?hp

The Supreme Court Confirmation Process Isn't Broken

Delivering on predictions, the Senate has confirmed Elena Kagan by a vote of 63-37 to become the fourth woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, UCLA constitutional law professor Adam Winkler defends the Kagan hearings.


With Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court going to the full Senate for a vote Thursday, once again we’re bombarded by moaning about how the confirmation process is “broken.” Kagan, despite her own characterization of the confirmation process as “a vapid and hollow charade” years ago, made it through her hearings without engaging in a profound, substantive debate about her jurisprudential philosophy or giving us any real sense about how she’d vote on the controversial issues of the day. The result of the over-politicized hearings was that we witnessed little more than kabuki theater and everyone from conservatives to liberals insists the process needs to be radically changed. They are all wrong. Senators don’t truly want to know about Kagan’s approach to judging. They want to know how she’ll rule on the controversial issues of the day.

When John Roberts and Samuel Alito went thorough hearing, conservatives didn't complain about the reticence of those candidates offering substantive answers.


When people say that the confirmation hearings should lead the senators and the nominee to join together in a serious, thought-provoking discussion about the nature of judicial review and the proper way for judges to decide cases, I am struck by a question: what planet do these people live on? When do we ever see elected officials engage in that sort of careful, thoughtful dialogue in an edifying way?

Consider Chief Justice John Roberts’ confirmation hearings, when he wowed the senators by analogizing a Supreme Court Justice’s job to an umpire calling balls and strikes. Such simplistic notions diminish rather than enhance the public’s understanding of how Justices make difficult decisions. Figuring out what ambiguous constitutional phrases like “equal protection” and “due process” mean is a lot more complicated than determining if a thrown ball crosses the plate above the batter’s knees.

Republicans love that line, and praise Justice Roberts for it.

My skepticism of the senators was only enhanced in the Kagan hearings by their dismissive and disrespectful portrayal of the late Thurgood Marshall, who was derided for his “activist” views. Excuse me, but Marshall will go down in history as one of the most important and influential people in American constitutional history. Without his “activism,” we might still be living with Jim Crow. If this is how one of America’s constitutional legends will be mischaracterized, I’d prefer if the senators keep their politically grubby hands off questions of judicial philosophy.

Amen, and right on.

Even the politicization of the process is salutary. Every nominee’s record is closely examined for controversial statements or ideas, meaning some qualified people are excluded. But the consequence is that anyone who does make it through the process is likely to have more or less mainstream views. Radicals whose jurisprudence would likely take us too far left or too far right need not apply. This is a net positive: the Court should stay within the broad mainstream of American political thought.

But Thurgood Marhsall didn't, nor did John Marshall; they broke new ground.

Democrats Split as House Backs War Funds

The House of Representatives agreed on Tuesday to provide $37 billion to continue financing America’s two wars, but the vote showed deepening divisions and anxiety among Democrats over the course of the nearly nine-year-old conflict in Afghanistan. The 308-to-114 vote, with strong Republican support, came after the leak of an archive of classified battlefield reports from Afghanistan that fueled new debate over the course of the war and whether President Obama’s counterinsurgency strategy could work.

Liberal? Progressive?

John McWhorter wrote an op-ed piece for today's NY Times discussing the terms Liberal and Progressive. In it he references an op-ed piece written by Timothy Garton Ash, on 25 January 2009 defining liberalism: A Liberal Translation.

Activist, or activist?

The entire process of Supreme Court nominee hearings is a charade. But every so often the truth wins out. Witness Senator Jefferson Beauregard "Jeff" Sessions III in the current Kagan hearings: It’s difficult to know whether “you’d be more like John Roberts or more like Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” he said, referring to the justice nominated by Clinton who aligns with the court’s liberal wing.

What he wants is a conservative, but he ain't getting one, coz the Democrats won.

Today's Journal

This is what passes for journalism in the Wall Street Journal these days: on top of page A1, a picture accompanied by the caption: The mystery of bad hair days. Inside, the story: Wash Away Bad Hair Days.

Oy vay.

Opposites

Two different stories on opposite pages in today's Wall Street Journal tell two different, indeed opposite, stories.

After Orszag, Red Ink and Hard Choices: The OMB director is resigning, and the deficit and national debt are being discussed in this story on page A4.

Mr. Orszag's decision to resign as director of the Office of Management and Budget comes as the Obama administration—and the Democratic Party—begin to confront disagreements between those who believe near-term deficit reduction poses too much risk to the fragile economic recovery and those, such as Mr. Orszag, who say the deficit itself may be a more profound economic threat. Behind that economic argument is a political one: The steps that might be taken to reduce red ink—such as tax increases or spending cuts to Medicare and other popular programs—will be politically perilous, especially given the magnitude needed to make any real impact.

The headline and subheading of a story on page A5 are: States Face New Pinch as Stimulus Ebbs. Tax Receipts Aren't Rebounding Quickly Enough to Offset Declining Federal Aid; Push for Additional Medicaid Help Stalls

States have long known stimulus funds sent their way early in the recession would taper off in the first half of 2011. But many hoped a rebound in tax receipts would close the gap.

Haley keeps taking the Southern test

This is a litmus test, which if administered by Demmocrats would be excoriated by conservatives. But, this is South Carolina.

She was born in small-town South Carolina, attended South Carolina schools and won election three times to the state legislature. But in her surging campaign for governor, Nikki Haley has been tested far more than other candidates on her cultural connections to the state. Mrs. Haley, 38 years old, is an Indian-American, born into the Sikh faith, who converted to Christianity as an adult. Her background has prompted some voters to seek assurances that she is committed to her Christian faith and understands the feelings among some about the state's Civil War history.

It is both disgusting and hilarious that anyone in 2010, 145 years after the Confederacy was defeated, believes this nonsense. But they do, and those that do have influence in this state.

Like her three GOP rivals for the governor's office, Mrs. Haley sat this spring for a videotaped interview with the Palmetto Patriots, a local activist group that aims to "fight attacks against Southern Culture" and talks with candidates "to ensure compliance with conservative values."

Balderdash!


Nikki Haley Goes Extra Mile in Proving Commitment 2:15

As WSJ's Peter Wallsten reports, Nikki Haley is having to prove that she understands the traditions and culture of the state she is seeking to lead. Ms. Haley, an Indian-American, is the surging GOP candidate for governor in South Carolina.

Mrs. Haley's half-hour meeting with the Palmetto Patriots illustrated how she has sought to assure potential skeptics while also embracing her ethnicity. She pledged to retain a political compromise that gave the Confederate flag a place of prominence in front of the State House, a position that puts her within the mainstream among GOP leaders in the state. Further, Mrs. Haley noted that "as a minority female" she was ideally suited to counteract an ongoing boycott led by civil rights groups.

Being a minority female does not obviate the use of the Confederate flag: the stripes and bars are objectionable, no matter who the governor is in South Carolina.

Mrs. Haley chose her words carefully in talking about the causes of the Civil War. "You had one side of the Civil War that was fighting for tradition, and I think you had another side of the Civil War that was fighting for change," she said.

Tradition versus change, a curious way of putting a war over slavery.

She did not use the word "slavery" but hinted at it, saying that "everyone is supposed to be free."

Supposed to be?