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