The Seventh Sense

Well Done, Internet

Did The Framers Intend Gridlock?

Jeff Jacoby has an insanely stupid column in The Boston Globe arguing that "Yes, Virginia, the founding fathers wanted our governing bodies to be dysfunctional".

It's one of those pieces that makes you dumber for reading it.

Jacoby conflates "checks and balances" with "girdlock" as if the two things are synonymous:

What the smart set bewails today as “gridlock’’ or “brinksmanship’’ or an “agenda of pure nihilism,’’ the architects of the American system regarded as indispensable checks and balances. They knew how flawed human beings can be, and how ardently propelled by their passions and ideals.

No, Jeff.  The "smart set" is bemoaning gridlock and they know the difference between gridlock and "checks and balances".  Jacoby then attempts to support his thesis with, you know, evidence:

That was why they regarded restraint — not speed, not deference to presidents, not bipartisan cooperation, not administrative expertise, not popular opinion — as the linchpin of their constitutional plan. “Impressions of the moment may sometimes hurry [Congress] into measures which itself on mature reflection would condemn,’’ Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 73. They may not have envisioned supercommittees, Gallup polls, or MSNBC. But they knew that presidents and lawmakers would always be under pressure to act too fast, do too much, decide too quickly. So it was essential, Hamilton said, that hurdles and roadblocks be incorporated into the constitutional structure - “to increase the chances in favor of the community against the passing of bad laws through haste, inadvertence, or design.’’ True, that might sometimes hold up needed change. But “the injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing . . . bad ones.’’

But is this the choice?  Reckless speed or gridlock?  Is there no in between for Jacoby?

What's more, Federalist 73 isn't about, nor does it endorse gridlock.  It is about presidential powers -- most specifically, the veto power and the reasons for its necessity.  The veto power is necessary to prevent Congress to act without reckless haste.  And that makes sense, and I'm all for the veto power.

But congressional gridlock has nothing to do with the presidential veto power.  In fact, taken to its extremes (an accurate characterization of the current Congress' dysfunction), it actually denies the president his veto power.  This is precisely the intent of the GOP-led Congress.

Yes, the framers arguably intended the political process to be deliberate, even frustrating at times.  But not to the point where obscure congressional rules could thwart progress and literally LOCK legislation before it even gets to the President.

GOP Filibusters Middle Tax Cut Again

A bill to extend the payroll tax holiday failed in the Senate this afternoon after Republicans filibustered the extension for a third time, preventing it from getting the 60 votes needed to begin debate or receive an up-or-down vote. The latest bill would have paid for the extension of the holiday, which primarily affects middle and low income Americans, by assessing a small, temporary tax on the top 0.2 percent of income earners. The vote was 50-48.

CFPB Nominee Filibustered

I don't know how the Republicans think they can possibly benefit from things like this:

Earlier today, 53 percent of the Senate voted to move forward with Richard Cordray’s nomination to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — depriving him of thesupermajority he needs in order to be confirmed. One of the senators joining this filibuster, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), was uncharacteristically candid about why he helped build this wall of obstruction — he simply wants to sabotage the agency:

I have met Mr. Cordray, and my decision to oppose his confirmation by the Senate has nothing to do with his qualifications. Rather, I feel it is my duty to oppose his confirmation as part of my opposition to the creation of CFPB itself. . . . Confirming any director for this bureau would be tantamount to agreeing that we need a uniquely powerful super-agency that is not even designed to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis. Until the CFPB is reformed, I will not support it in any way.

Simply put, this is nothing less than a direct assault on the rule of law. The CFPB was created by an Act of Congress and can only be repealed or modified by an Act of Congress. By his own admission, Lee’s filibuster is an attempt to make an end run around the Constitution’s legitimate lawmaking process.

But, of course, this filibuster is also just once more example of the Tea Party senator’s nihilistic approach to governance. Lee believes that federal child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution. He not only sponsored a radical constitutional amendment that would force the United States to adopt Tea Party fiscal policy forever, he then openly admitted that he was using last summer’s debt ceiling crisis to extort the rest of the Congress into passing his amendment.

People really need to stop and process this.  The CFPB is designed to protect consumers against things like preditory lending (one of the lead reasons for the economic crisis we are in), and fraud against consumers commited by banks and credit card customers.  It protects you; it protects me.  Why would any politician NOT IN THE POCKETS OF BIG BUSINESS be opposed to such a thing?

These people hate Obama so much, they are willing to hurt ordinary Americans rather than give Obama a victory.

That's messed up.

Not Just Warren Buffet

WSJ reports:

A new survey from Spectrem Group found that 68% of millionaires (those with investments of $1 million or more)  support raising taxes on those with $1 million or more in income. Fully 61% of those with net worths of $5 million or more support the tax on million-plus earners.

So the lower and middle AND wealthiest classes all support a tax on the millionaires.  It's unanimous.

Yet, the GOP-controlled Congress simply refuses to do it.

Related:  The favorability rating of Congress is at an historical low of 9%.

Yes, that's related.

Congress Hits All-Time Low

Congress is on track to register its lowest annual average approval rating for any year since Gallup began measuring congressional approval in 1974. The existing lows are 18% recorded in 1992 (based on one measure that year) and 19% recorded in each of three years: 1979 (based on one measure), 2008 (based on monthly ratings), and 2010 (based on monthly ratings).

Right now, Congress is polling at a 13% approval rating.

Can you take a hint boys?  Stop doing this.

The Long National Obsession Is Over

Weiner is stepping down.

Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York will step down from office amid intense pressure from congressional Democrats following his admission of risque online chats and photo swaps with multiple women and lying about it, sources tell ABC News.

Weiner, 46, has begun sharing his decision with close friends, the sources said, but has not yet sent a formal letter to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo indicating his intentions.

A Democratic source said Weiner called House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Wednesday night while they were at a White House picnic to inform them he would resign today.

I'm still not convinced that Weiner's misdeeds warranted a resignation.  He broke no law (as far as I know); he's not a moral hypocrite.  Yes, he's a little ookey sexually, but then again, so was Ben Franklin.  And Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), meanwhile, remains a senator in good standing, despite his lies and habit of hiring hookers. 

Insult To Injury

Jon Stewart may be a comedian, but when he barely masks his outrage behind the comedy, he's most effective.

Tuesday night he took on Congress.  It finally passed a bill to help pay for the medical bills for the 9/11 first responders.  That's right -- those that survived 9/11 and went on to dig body parts out of the rubble have been having substantial medical problems these past nine years -- mostly respiratory illness.  And it only took Congress nine years to do something about it.

And even then, as Stewart notes, that just HAD to stick on a little amendment to the law: i.e., before first responders can get money to cover their injuries, they have to show that they are not terrorists.

Seriously.

Watch Stewart's righteous (yet comedic) indignation - it's a classic:

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They Blinked

What happened at the budget negotiations?

It seems Obama et al grew a pair:

At one crucial moment in the game of chicken over a looming shutdown of the United States government, President Obama and the House speaker, John A. Boehner, faced off in the Oval Office. Mr. Boehner, a Republican heavily outnumbered in the room by Democrats, was demanding a provision to restrict financing to Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions. Mr. Obama would not budge.

"Nope. Zero," the president said to the speaker. Mr. Boehner tried again. "Nope. Zero," Mr. Obama repeated. "John, this is it." A long silence followed, said one participant in the meeting. "It was just like an awkward, 'O.K., well, what do you do now?' "  That meeting broke without an agreement.

The sane senior Democratic aide relayed the story to ABC News, and added, "There were a good 10 minutes of just sitting there of everybody looking at each other.... [Republicans] realized that kind of the gig was up. They weren't going to get [defunding for family planning] included. It wasn't going to happen. The president and Sen. Reid were prepared to say, 'This bill will go down if you make this about social policy.' That was the line in the sand."

Awesome.

Stupid Government Shutdown Is Stupid

Tomorrow is, of course, Passport Day -- perhaps my favorite holiday except for Christmas.

No, it's not really a holiday, but tomorrow is Passport Day, where people like me with an old obsolete and therefore unusable passport can get a new one.

EXCEPT for the stupid government shutdown.  That's right.  Just like when it was too cold for Santa to deliver toys on Christmas, the evil stupid Republicans in D.C. are going to close down government today (and why are they doing that? Because abortions are baaaaad), so it looks like NO PASSPORT DAY tomorrow, kids!

Rep. Jackie Speier’s Inspiring Speech

Yesterday's House debate on stripping Planned Parenthood of federal funding (aka the Pence Amendment) included a few bright spots, notably this moving, impassioned and dead-on speech from California Representative Jackie Speier. She didn't plan to talk about this, but after listening to Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, who read aloud from a book passage describing how a second-trimester abortion appears on an ultrasound and argued that women cavalierly undergo this procedure.

 

BTW, between Republicans in Congress trying to defund Planned Parenthood and what's happening in Wisconsin, if you're beginning to detect a pattern, you're not alone.  It seems pretty clear that Republicans are using the fiscal crises to roll back all kinds of social and economic improvements from the last century. 

Unions?  Sorry.  Reproductive freedom for women?  Can't do it anymore.

It was the GOP's fiscal policy that got this country into this mess in the first place.  And now they're trying to take advantage of their own crisis to roll this country backwards.

UPDATE:  I would remiss in noting that the GOP governor of Wisconsin came into office with a huge budget surplus.  Now, after giving away huge tax breaks to corporations, he finds his state in dire straits.  

Ezra Klein explained the situation nicely:

...The governor signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues. The new legislation was not offset, and it turned a surplus into a deficit. As Brian Beutler writes, "public workers are being asked to pick up the tab for this agenda."

But even that's not the full story here. Public employees aren't being asked to make a one-time payment into the state's coffers. Rather, Walker is proposing to sharply curtail their right to bargain collectively. A cyclical downturn that isn't their fault, plus an unexpected reversal in Wisconsin's budget picture that wasn't their doing, is being used to permanently end their ability to sit across the table from their employer and negotiate what their health insurance should look like.

That's how you keep a crisis from going to waste: You take a complicated problem that requires the apparent need for bold action and use it to achieve a longtime ideological objective. In this case, permanently weakening public-employee unions, a group much-loathed by Republicans in general and by the Republican legislators who have to battle them in elections in particular.

Wither Representative Christopher Lee

Which is funnier regarding the Rep. Christopher Lee (R-NY) story:

That Lee, a man with the finely-toned body of a PGA golfer, described himself as "a very fit fun classy guy" after lying about his profession, his martial status and his age. 

or

That in the post-Mark Foley era, a married US congressman with a child would be so naive as to think, in the digital age, that appealing to a strange woman on Criagslist whom he's never met with half nude photographs wouldn't wind up on a website like Gawker.com for public ridicule such as this.

It's a tough call.

[h/t: Brilliant at Breakfast]

P.S.  For those keeping score... Number of resignations from the "new" Republican-controlled House: 2;  Number of legislative bills passed: 0

UPDATE:  The Left Coaster suggests that we make this a "teachable moment" for our kids:

Let's salvage something from Christopher Lee's misadventure and seize the opportunity to explain to our children that it's cool to have a phone that can take a picture and it's wonderful to have a mirror where we can do a little prep work before we go out in public, but when you stand in front of mirror with your phone camera and start clicking, you really have to expect that the resulting photos may show up anywhere.

Yes.  Especially if you are famous or in a position of public trust. 

Doing It Old School

MSNBC:

Sanders, currently in his fifth sixth hour of speaking on the Senate floor against the Obama-crafted tax cut compromise with Republicans, is getting lots of web buzz from filibuster enthusiasts and progressives irked at the president for cutting the deal.

An independent who caucuses with Democrats, Sanders has threatened to speak out against the extension of cuts for the very wealthy – which he called “a moral outrage” earlier this week – for “as long as possible” on the Senate floor.

“You can call what I am doing today whatever you want,” he said. “You can it call it a filibuster, you can call it a very long speech.”

Not quite a filibuster, in all honesty, because...

Sanders’ speech isn’t actually stopping any particular Senate business from happening today.

There are no votes scheduled today, nor are there other senators wishing to speak.

If it were a true filibuster, he would be blocking Republicans from conducting business or speaking. And those Republicans would be angry.

But Republican senators aren't even in the chamber today. Not one has been or the floor or sought time to talk on the floor.

Sanders is one of many senators whose objections will require a cloture vote to break the filibuster on Monday. And his roadblock of the bill would be in place whether he’d spoken for seven minutes or seven hours today.

Still, it makes for great CSPAN-2 viewing.

And good for Sanders, who is trending now on Twitter.

The New House Republicans Off To A Great Start

Press release from the Republican Study Committee:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   11.8.2010   Tackling Spending: Save $25 Billion by Restoring Welfare Reform  Washington, Nov 8 - With the national debt quickly approaching $14 trillion, Washington needs to get serious about cutting spending. One option the next Congress should consider is to restore welfare reform, one of the most successful bipartisan initiatives of the 1990s. The 1996 welfare reform law created incentives for states to help people get back on their feet and off of taxpayer assistance.  However, the 2009 stimulus package created a new “emergency fund” under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program which actually incentivizes states to increase their welfare caseloads without requiring able-bodied individuals to work, get job training, or make other efforts to move off of taxpayer assistance.  Specifically, a state must increase its welfare caseloads in order to receive any funding, and states receive an 80% match to cover all expenses associated with increasing their welfare caseloads.  This costs taxpayers $2.5 billion each year. “The goal of welfare programs should be to help people get back on their feet as quickly as possible rather than simply expanding dependence on government,” said Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA).  “In addition to saving taxpayers $25 billion over the next 10 years, cutting the emergency fund from the President’s failed stimulus package will refocus temporary assistance on its rightful role.” This is just one of the many common sense spending cuts proposed by the Republican Study Committee.  For more, check out the RSC Sunset Caucus and our FY 2011 Budget Plan.

Okay.  Fine.

Except that the program you wanted to cut -- the TANF -- expired over a month ago (the word "Temporary" is in the title itself), so there's no savings there.

Any other ideas?

Elections Have Consequences

Remember Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the guy who -- at the height of the spill -- apologized to BP on behalf of America for the "tragedy" of the $20 billion clean up fund put together by the White House?

Well, he's now your next chairman of the Energy Committee.

Bachmann Quote Of The Day [Update: Rep. Barton (R-TX), Too!]

Wow.  Just wow.  Here is Rep. Michelle "Crazy As A Loon" Bachmann on the BP escrow fund to compensate Gulf shore residents for their losses:

The president just called for creating a fund that would be administered by outsiders, which would be more of a redistribution-of-wealth fund.  And now it appears like we’ll be looking at one more gateway for more government control, more money to government.  If there is a disaster, why is it that government is the one who always seems to benefit after a disaster, and that’s of course what cap-and-trade would be.

Well, yes, I suppose the fund does involve redistribution-of-wealth.... in the same sense that when a guy smashes into my car, he has to pay me for the damages to it.  Problem?

And the notion that the government benefits from the fund -- well, that's just bizarre.  As Bachmann herself acknowledges, the fund will be administered by outsiders, i.e., an independent panel.  How does government "benefit"?  It doesn't, except for the fact that the fund will prevent the government (and by extension, American taxpayers) from being fiscally responsible for BP’s actions.

UPDATE -- she's not alone.  This happened 20 minutes ago....

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), ranking member of the House Energy committee, where BP's CEO is testifying today, just said "It is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case a $20 billion shakedown."

He also apologized to BP for Obama's address yesterday and the $20 billion escrow.

What is wrong with these people?

Isn't the real "tragedy of the first proportion" that a private corporation can literally break the Gulf of Mexico -- ruining wildlife, natural resources, and livelilhoods of those who depend on the Gulf -- and have people like Rep. Barton think that's okay?

UPDATE #2 -- TPM has a running list of Republicans who are taking issue with the escrow fund.  Jash Marshall adds:

Demonizing particular individuals can go way too far. And we're going to see a lot of it, just as we have in other calamities where the political breakdowns are different. But this almost literal groveling or knee-defense of BP executives is exactly what Democrats will want to show on a national level that Republicans are on the wrong side of this issue. And I suspect it will have a real effect, if only in strengthening a number of embattled incumbents.

Steve Benen echoes:

I find all of this rather bewildering. Given the nature of the crisis, it stood to reason that politicians would be tripping over each other to appear "tougher" on BP than the next guy. What elected official in his/her right mind would want to side with the oil giant responsible for the worst environmental catastrophe in American history? Apparently, we're getting a clearer picture of the answer.

I don't think Republicans have thought through the politics of this. If they don't want to praise the Obama White House for its success with BP yesterday, fine. But the GOP is approaching the point at which Dems will reasonably be able to argue that Republicans are siding with BP over the country

UPDATE #3 -- And now the White House responds...

Statement by the Press Secretary on Congressman Joe Barton's Apology to BP

"What is shameful is that Joe Barton seems to have more concern for big corporations that caused this disaster than the fishermen, small business owners and communities whose lives have been devastated by the destruction. Congressman Barton may think that a fund to compensate these Americans is a 'tragedy', but most Americans know that the real tragedy is what the men and women of the Gulf Coast are going through right now. Members from both parties should repudiate his comments."

Should Taxpayers Pay For The Oil Spill?

Republican leaders think so.

This is tremendously stupid politics.  The public -- particularly Republicans -- are weary of taxpayer bailouts already.  Now we want more?

Oh, sure -- count on Republicans to say, "Well, we bailed out the banks.  So why not BP?"

But that argument falls flat.  The bailout of the banks was necessary to stem the economic downflow.  It was designed to make sure that the entire banking system stayed afloat.  (And remember, we did let Sheasron Lehman die first).

This is not the same situation.  BP messed up.  While the oil spill may wreak havoc with BP's bottom dollar, it doesn't send the entire oil industry into turmoil and collapse, unlike the financial sector bailout.  Plus, the oil and gas companies get huge tax breaks already.

Also, BP is, you know, British.  Let the Brits bail them out.

Democrats need to jump on this one.  Politically, it's a huge gamechanger.  The 30 second ads write themselves: "Democrats want BP to pay for its spill; Republicans want you to pay for BP's spill."

P.S.  Although I agreed with it at the time, and still do, voters might want to be reminded that the bailout of the banks was done when Bush was president.

UPDATE from Josh Marshall, noting that Boehner is backtracking:

Okay, it seems like we know what Boehner meant. It seems he thinks BP should be on the line for everything. But only up to $75 million once the oil itself if cleaned up.

UPDATE:  Boehner steps into the ridiculous again --

Washington (CNN) - House Republican Leader John Boehner mocked Congress for holding multiple hearings on the BP oil spill before experts have figured out how to halt oil still gushing into the Gulf. He sarcastically called the packed hearing schedule, "Congress at its best."

"You know, why don't we get the oil stopped, alright? Figure out what the hell went wrong, and then have the hearing and get the damn law fixed!" an exasperated Boehner told reporters at his weekly press conference on Capitol Hill.

I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that figuring out how to cap the spill is in no way impeded by Congress looking into the root cause of the spill.  If it is an impediment, then we're in serious trouble.

Third Time A Charm? Don't Bet On It

As I am writing this, the Senate is voting on financial reform legislation.  This is the third time in three or four days that the Senate has held this vote, and each time, the Republicans have universally voted "no".

Important to understand, however, is what the Senate is actually voting on.  They are voting on merely whether to have a debate on financial reform legislation.  That is what Republicans are saying "no" to.  A debate -- not an actual bill, but a debate about whether to have a bill and what it should contain.

I'll update this post if I hear what the results are, but I am guessing the Republicans will -- again -- vote "no".

UPDATE:  yes, it's a no.

UPDATE #2:  The Senate Dems are going to try again this evening.  Ezra Klein notes that the Democratic leadership is considering a new procedural approach, which I call the "Kentucky Derby" ploy:

Word is that the Democrats might make the Republicans actually filibuster FinReg tonight. That is to say, stand on the floor and talk and talk and talk. And if the Democrats are serious about forcing the Republicans to really filibuster the bill, this is the right week for it: The Kentucky Derby starts Friday, and Kentucky's senior senator, Mitch McConnell, would surely prefer to attend. Given that his members are already talking about breaking ranks, McConnell may find himself eager to get this kabuki dance over with a little bit early.

UPDATE #3:  GOP caves.

Congress Rules!

I hate all the gibberish about parliamentary proceedings, but I think it comes down to this:

If the minority party can use the filibuster to do an end-run around the majority-wins rules of Congress, then the majority party is well within its rights to do an end-run around the filibuster by using "reconcilliation".

That's it.  That's all I have to say.  Rules are rules.  If one party can use the rules to their advantage, why can't the other party?

UPDATE:  David Frum has an interesting piece on why Congress is so fucked up today.  it starts...

At the end of his career, former House Speaker Tip O’Neill was asked how Congress had changed between the 1950s and 1980s. O’Neill answered: “The people are better. The results are worse.”

Watching last week’s health summit, you see what O’Neill meant. The conversation was intelligent, civil, well-informed. It also predictably achieved nothing. How could it? Deals are never reached in front of the television camera.

Take this quiz. Name the most important legislation enacted in the 30 years between 1950 and 1980.

Overwhelming isn’t it? Civil rights. Voting rights. Interstate highways. Medicare. Medicaid. The deregulation of the airlines, natural gas, trucking, rail and oil. The immigration act of 1965. Clean Air, Clean Water, and the Endangered Species Acts. Supplemental Security Income in 1974. I could fill the whole screen.

Now … the next 30 years.

There’s the Reagan tax cuts of course. Deregulation of the savings & loans in 1982. The Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Welfare reform in 1995. Medicare Part D. What else?

Leave aside whether you are liberal or conservative, whether you approve the measures mentioned above or disapprove. It’s hard to dispute: Congress just got a lot more done in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s than in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

Why?

You hear many grand, sweeping explanations. Let’s try just one simple one.

Congress in the first period was controlled by a handful of committee chairmen, who owed their positions to seniority. The committees did their work in secret. Bills written in committee typically could not be amended on the floor of Congress. The institution was authoritarian, hierarchical, opaque. And stuff passed.

In the mid-1970s, Congress underwent a revolution. The power of the committee chairmen was broken. The number of subcommittees proliferated. The committees met in public. Amendments multiplied. Congress become more open, more egalitarian, more responsive. And stuff ceased to pass.

Again and again, today’s gridlock can be traced to yesterday’s reform.

He goes on to discuss the filibuster...

Is the filibuster grinding Congress to a halt? Before the 1970s, filibusters were both very rare and very difficult. But when Congress took action to make filibusters easier to break, it inadvertently made them easier to use. Back in the 1950s, a filibuster would bring the entire Senate to a halt, as the filibustering Senator talked and talked and talked.

A filibuster was both spectacularly visible and personally exhausting: it exacted a high price from the filibustering senator. Then Congress took action to make filibusters easier to break, requiring only 60 votes instead of 67. But that same deal made them much easier to start. No need to speechify all night; no colleagues enraged that the filibustering senator has paralyzed the chamber.

Today, a filibustering senator need only notify the majority leader of his intention. The filibustered legislation is sidetracked until 60 votes are found to enact it, while other business continues as normal. The price of the filibuster has been drastically cut. No surprise we get more of them.

...as well as campaign fundraising, and the influence of lobbyists, among other things.  but his meta-point seems to be that the reason things happened in the 50's, 60's, and 70's is because legislation happened behind closed doors.  In effect, openness and transparency has killed the ability of Congress to get things done.

Kevin Drum agrees, but offers a much simpler explanation:

The era between 1950 and 1980 was an essentially liberal one. That applies to the 60s and 70s pretty obviously, but even the 50s, underneath McCarthyism and the man in the gray flannel suit, was defined mainly by consolidation of the New Deal. Eisenhower wasn't called a New Republican for nothing.

The succeeding 30 years, famously, were primarily conservative. And that makes a fundamental difference. Liberals, by nature, want to change things. They want to pass big stuff. Conservatives, by nature, want to conserve. They want to prevent change. Occasionally this takes the form of rolling back liberal programs (tax cuts, welfare reform), but rolling back progress is hard and rare. For the most part, conservatism takes the form of not undertaking big legislative changes. So it's hardly any surprise that a conservative era is marked by lack of seminal congressional actions.

In other words, despite the fact that Obama is president, we are hardly in a liberal era.

The Girl Who Wouldn't Stand For The Pledge of Allegiance

Bit of a controversy surrounding a 12 year old student in Maryland who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court resolved this issue more than half a century ago:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

We think the action of the local authorities in compelling the flag salute and pledge transcends constitutional limitations on their power, and invades the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment to our Constitution to reserve from all official control.

Next....

Are Filibusters Unconstitutional?

Finally, someone makes the argument that requiring 60 votes on every piece of legislation is not what the Framers intended.  Here's the problem, in a nutshell:

So on the health care bill, as on so many other things, we now have to take what a minority of an inherently unrepresentative body will give us. Forty-one senators from our 21 smallest states — just over 10 percent of our population — can block bills dealing not just with health care but with global warming and hazards that threaten the whole planet. Individual senators now use the filibuster, or the threat of it, as a kind of personal veto, and that power seems to have warped their behavior, encouraging grandstanding and worse.

Ending filibusters require supermajorities.  In effect, any bill cannot be passed if there is a filibuster standing in its way.  This is clearly not what the Framers wanted:

Here’s why. First, the Constitution explicitly requires supermajorities only in a few special cases: ratifying treaties and constitutional amendments, overriding presidential vetoes, expelling members and for impeachments. With so many lawyers among them, the founders knew and operated under the maxim “expressio unius est exclusio alterius” — the express mention of one thing excludes all others. But one need not leave it at a maxim. In the Federalist Papers, every time Alexander Hamilton or John Jay defends a particular supermajority rule, he does so at length and with an obvious sense of guilt over his departure from majority rule.

References to the tone taken by Hamilton and Jay in The Federalist Papers are not particularly persuasive.  However, the explicit mention of supermajorities by the Constitution does create, in my view, a negative inference that all other legislation must be passed by majority.

Second, Article I, Section 3, expressly says that the vice president as the presiding officer of the Senate should cast the deciding vote when senators are “equally divided.” The procedural filibuster does an end run around this constitutional requirement, which presumed that on the truly contested bills there would be ties. With supermajority voting, the Senate is never “equally divided” on the big, contested issues of our day, so that it is a rogue senator, and not the vice president, who casts the deciding vote.

The procedural filibuster effectively disenfranchises the vice president, eliminating as it does one of the office’s only two constitutional functions. Yet the founders very consciously intended for the vice president, as part of the checks and balances system, to play this tie-breaking role — that is why Federalist No. 68 so specifically argued against a sitting member of the Senate being the presiding officer in place of the vice president.

I find this more persuasive.  The filibuster effectively denies the VP one of his constitutional duties.

Third, Article I pointedly mandates at least one rule of proceeding, namely, that a majority of senators (and House members, for that matter) will constitute a quorum. Article I, Section 5 states in part that “a majority of each shall constitute a majority to do business.” Of course, in requiring a simple majority for a quorum, the founders were concerned about no-shows for a host of reasons — not least of all because the first legislators had to travel great distances by stagecoach.

That's nice, but I don't think that really speaks to passing of legislation.

But the bigger reason for the rule was to keep a minority from walking out and thereby blocking a majority vote. In Federalist No. 75, Hamilton dismissed a supermajority rule for a quorum thus: “All provisions which require more than a majority of any body to its resolutions have a direct tendency to embarrass the operations of the government and an indirect one to subject the sense of the majority to that of the minority.”

It would be illogical for the Constitution to preclude a supermajority rule with respect to a quorum while allowing it on an ad hoc and more convenient basis any time a minority wanted to block a vote. Yet that is essentially what Senate Rule 22 achieves on any bill that used to require a majority vote.

That makes sense.

The problem is, how does this get changed?  It is unlikely that the U.S. Supreme Court would dare intervene in Senate Rules -- that would be one branch of government monkeying around with the internal procedural rules of another branch.  Mind you, I think the Supreme Court should do that, but I'm fairly certain they won't.  The author proposes another solution:

The president of the Senate, the vice president himself, could issue an opinion from the chair that the filibuster is unconstitutional. Our first vice presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, felt a serious obligation to resolve the ties and tangles of an evenly divided Senate, and they would not have shrunk from such a challenge.

That's all well and good, but once the VP does that, we find ourselves in a bit of a constitutional crisis which will have to be resolved by.... the courts.  And we're back to Square One.

Still, I'm glad there is dialogue about this.

Teabaggers Turn On GOP

Oh, my.  Look what they have created.

In Florida and Missouri and elsewhere, the tea baggers are attacking Republicans candidates for being "DC insiders".  Put another way, they are splitting the Republican party.

What does this mean for Democrats?  Well, the Democratic Party was never going to be the choice of teabaggers.  But the further the GOP moves to the right to accomodate the screeching minority, the more that centrists will gravitate to the Dems.

Put another way, Democrats will have some smooth sailing for the next election cycle -- and possibly more -- if this trend continues.

Who Opposes Victims Of Rape Getting Their Day In Court?

I don't expect Republicans to be in favor of all, or even most, of the things I support.

But really, this seems like a no-brainer:

In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and “warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.” (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.”

Franken wasn't asking to punish Haillbuton/KBR for their past indiscretions.  He wasn't trying to screw them out of future contracts.  All he was saying was, "If you want a government contract, and if you gang-rape your employees, then you must allow them to sue you in court, rather than in private arbitration."

Now, honestly... who has a problem with that?

Fortunately, Franken's measure passed the Senate, 68 to 30.

But it is that thirty no votes that I find troubling.  30 Senate Republicans -- 75% of the entire Republican Senate caucus -- voted against this.

But why?  What possible rationale could three-fourths of the Republican Senate caucus have for voting against this?

Is it merely because the amendment was offered by a liberal Democrat?

Or do they actually have a substantive reason for not letting victims of sexual assualt sue their rapist-employer?

Bizarre.

UPDATE:  Female Republicans voted unanimously in favor of the amendment.  The 30 no-voters were all (white) male Republican senators.  You know, the "family values" crowd.

Bloody Sock To Replace Liberal Lion?

Just because he's got he had a decent split-finger fastball doesn't mean he'll be a good political leader:

Can a Republican fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts? Among the list of possible GOP candidates is Curt Schilling.

The former right-handed starting pitcher for the Boston Red Sox is not ruling out a possible run.

"I've got a lot on my plate," says Schilling. "Right now, I'm not even going to speculate on it."

But, Schilling admits he would need to make a decision pretty quickly.

"I think for the first time in a long time, it will take the right candidate," Schilling said of a Republican beating a Democrat for the Senate seat.

"I have been contacted," says Schilling about a possible Senate run.

Schilling, a registered independent and longtime Republican supporter, wrote on his blog that while his family and video game company, 38 Studios, are high priorities, "I do have some interest in the possibility."

A registered independent?  Uh, Curt, if you want to run as a Republican, you missed the deadline.

Silliest "Serious" Objection To The House Health Reform Bill

It still gets a lot of play, even among congresspersons:

"The health care reform bill is over 1,000 pages long!"

I'm not sure what that objection really means.

Are they suggesting that, because it's a huge bill, it must represent a massive government program?

If that's so, why don't they say it's a massve government program?

Or, are they complaining that the bill is so big, nobody can possibly read and understand it?  If that's so, then critics are merely exposing their ignorance or lack of education.

Let's make a comparison.  Atlas Shrugged is 1,200 pages.  People can read and understand that.

But here's the thing -- Atlas Shrugged is printed in small type-face, single spaced.

This is what a typical page from HR 3200 looks like.  This is a page from the actual bill:

You see that?  Double spaced, huge font, and margins that are actually wider than the text itself.

A typical bill contains about 160 words per page -- a typical book, like a Harry Potter, book -- twice as many.

In other words, the House Health Care reform bill is about half a Harry Potter book.  And a teen can knock that one out in half a day.

Yes, you may say, but that's still too big for a bill.

Is it?  A bill to reform health care?  That's pretty broad subject.  Half a Harry Potter book sounds about right, considering the subject matter.  You not only have to make the actual changes themselves -- to insurance practices, to administrative practices, to doctor-patient practices -- but you have to address private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security -- AND you have to set forth a way to monitor the reforms to make sure they actually are being implemented -- AND establish procedures about enforcement for violators of the new policy, etc.  It IS a lot of ground to cover.

Yes, you may say, but the language of the bill is far more convoluted than a Harry Potter book.

And that's true.  But this is legislation -- not quippy thirty second sound bites.  It's ALWAYS been written in legislative-ese. 

But it IS in English.  Don't understand what a particular term means?  There's an entire definition section (which occupies a few dozen pages of the bill). 

And a congressman with a paid staff of (one hopes) educated people can certainly figure this out.  After all, congressmen (through their paid staff) wrote it.

So the notion that the bill is really long and full of big words and doesn't have pictures is not only a specious criticism, but an embarassing one showing the ignorance or laziness of the person making the criticism.

Quote Of The Day

In discussing the need for a balanced budget and PAYGO legislation, Congressman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) shockingly exclaimed:

"We're not going to cry 'emergency' every time we have a Katrina."

In other words, having a balance budget is of paramount importance, and we're not going to muck it up by spending money on emergency appropriations like we did when Katrina hit.

Here's here full quote and the video:

Let's agree that we're going to have PAYGO enforcement.  That we're not going to cry 'emergency' every time we have a Katrina, every time we have a Tsunami, every time we have a need for extra spending, that we don't go call for a special appropriation that allows us to circumvent the PAYGO rules.

One wonders if Blackburn now regrets her support of the "Emergency Appropriations" bill passed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (which took 1,436 lives).

Opposing A Marker Acknowledging Slave Labor

The United States Capital Building, its wonderful dome, and the Statue of Freedom that sits atop it, were built by slave labor.

Yeah, I know.  Bit of national shame and embarassment.

Tuesday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives sought to redress that grievance in some small way with a resolution acknowledging the role slaves played in the Capital's construction.  The purpose of the resolution, according to its text, was to direct "the Architect of the Capitol to place a marker in Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center which acknowledges the role that slave labor played in the construction of the United States Capitol."

A casual observer of national politics might watch the 24 hour news or read blogs and come away thinking that everything that happens in the halls of Congress turns into a divided partisan bicker.  But in fact, Congress tends to agree a lot on a lot of things, especially relatively minor things like the slave labor resolution.

And indeed, the resolution passed 399-1.

Of course, one wonders what was in the mind of the sole congressman who voted against it.  His name is Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

So why did he do it?

Well, his first explanation was this (I'm paraphrasing): (1) Congress had already changed the name of the Great Hall in the Capital Visitor's Center to Emancipation Hall in honor of all them slaves -- ain't that enough???? and (2)  Congress has been reluctant to plaster "In God We Trust" on every portico, doorknob and urinal in the Capital building.  So his vote was to defend religion.  (His actual words were:

"The architect of the capitol has been for years trying to eradicate any sign of faith or Christianity from the capitol itself and from the historical documents that flow from it," King says. "...I'm out of patience with these kind of maneuverings.")

But in an interview with Radio Iowa yesterday, King, after he established his "I'm no racist no really I'm not" bonafides, offered a new explanation for his vote, complaining that the slave labor resolution wasn’t a “balanced depiction of history”:

KING: I would just add that there were about 645,000 slaves that were brought to the United States. And I’m with Martin Luther King, Jr. on this. His documents, his speeches – I’ve read most of them. And I agree with almost every word that came out of him. Slavery was abhorrent, but it was also a fact of life in those centuries where it existed.

And of the 645,000 Africans that were brought here to be forcibly put into slavery in the United States, there were over 600,000 people that gave their lives in the Civil War to put an end to slavery. And I don’t see the monument to that in the Congressional Visitor Center, and I think it’s important that we have a balanced depiction of history.

Riiiiight.  A balanced depiction of history.

How many monuments are there in Washington D.C. which acknowledge slavery? ZERO.

How many monuments are there in Washington D.C. which acknowledge the contributions of those who fought in the Civil War?  Enough to fill a book... including the Grant Memorial just outside the Capital Building itself.

But setting that aside, a marker noting that the Capital was actually built by slaves seems highly related to the, uh, Capital Visitor Center -- the place which provides visitor information for people who want to learn about the Capital Building.  On the other hand -- while the deaths of Civil War soldiers bears historical importance, I'm not quite sure what those deaths have to do with the Capital building itself.

And finally, King wants to honor the "over 600,000 people that gave their lives in the Civil War to end slavery".  Someone needs to tell him that about 360,000 of the 618,000 war casualties actually died to end slavery.  The other 258,000 or so died to preserve it.  Just sayin....

CIA Admits It Lied To Congress For Years

Dog Bites Man story:

WASHINGTON — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed “significant actions” from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee members said.

In a June 26 letter to Mr. Panetta discussing his testimony, Democrats said that the agency had “misled members” of Congress for eight years about the classified matters, which the letter did not disclose. “This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods,” said the letter, made public late Wednesday by Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the signers.

In an interview, Mr. Holt declined to reveal the nature of the C.I.A.’s alleged deceptions,. But he said, “We wouldn’t be doing this over a trivial matter.”

I think we can safely assume that it relates to "enhanced interrogation techniques", but we can't be sure.

Why, by the way, are only Democrats upset that Congress was lied to by the CIA?

Well, recall a few months ago.  Nancy Pelosi said the CIA misled her about waterboarding, and the Republicans were all "The CIA?  Lying to Congress?  No, you are lying Ms. Pelosi".  So they can't stand togather now and admit the CIA has lied to Congress -- it might hinder their efforts to attack Pelosi.

60

With Coleman's concession, Al Franken finally becomes Senator Al Franken, Democrat from Minnesota.

Finally.

First Read writes:

Most significantly, yesterday’s developments resulted in Democrats obtaining a filibuster-proof majority -- 60 votes -- in the Senate, and Dems want to have him seated by as early as Monday. Having 60 votes will shift the balance of power from the Republican Maine-iacs (Collins and Snowe) to the Joe Liebermans, Ben Nelsons, and Mary Landrieus, meaning that the upcoming fights over health care and energy will be on Democratic turf.

I largely agree with Franken on this.  The magic "60" doesn't necessarily mean anything.  No matter what the issue, there are always a few Democrats who vote with the majority of Republicans, and a few Republicans who vote with the majority of Democrats.  Obviously, Franken's presence makes getting to a filibuster-proof majority easier, but that's about it.

Besides, I think this notion of "60" being the magic number is borderline unconstitutional.  It has always been majority wins in the Senate, which means 50 was, and should be the magic number.  Parliamentary tricks should not be able to supercede constitutional requirements.

UPDATE:  Kevin Drum agrees:

The corruption of the filibuster into a routine requirement for 60 votes in the Senate (an arguably unconstitutional evolution, IMHO) combined with the continuing presence of half a dozen non-liberals in the Democratic caucus combined with an almost iron self-discipline within the Republican caucus — well, all that combined means that liberals now have the illusion of control of Congress but not the reality.  In a way, it's almost the worst of all possible worlds.  Dem vs. Dem is now practically the only narrative that anyone will pay attention to, and since unanimous agreement is the only way for that narrative to play out well, this means it's almost always going to play out badly.

Still, that's a glass-half-empty point of view.  So let's be more positive: one more vote is one more vote. 

Also, TPM has a must-read about the gasket collectively thrown by the Murdoch media empire over the Frenken victory.  Of particular note is the bogus Wall Street Journal editorial, which "accuse[s) the Franken campaign of committing supposedly dirty maneuvers, without mentioning that the Coleman side was participating in the exact same activities just as fervently or even more so."  I also love this from the same editorial, printed without the slightest bit of irony:

The unfortunate lesson is that you don't need to win the vote on Election Day as long as your lawyers are creative enough to have enough new or disqualified ballots counted after the fact.... If the GOP hopes to avoid repeats, it should learn from Minnesota that modern elections don't end when voters cast their ballots. They only end after the lawyers count them.

Um.... that "lesson" was learned in 2000, guys.  Too late to complain about it when it works against you.

Enough Is Enough

Six months after the November elections, we read this today:

This has to be a bit ironic: In the three-judge trial that Norm Coleman (R) asked for, it turns out that Al Franken's lead has grown, after the addition of some 350 absentee ballots to the count.

Coleman's camp, of course, wanted a larger number of absentee ballots to be considered than just those 350.

Here's the AP's write-up: "Democrat Al Franken's lead in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race has grown to 312 votes after hundreds of absentee ballots were added to the race. Franken led by 225 votes going into Tuesday's count of the absentees. He gained more from the 351 absentees that the judges allowed than Coleman did. Other issues are still pending in Coleman's lawsuit, and he has said he will appeal to the state Supreme Court if he loses."

Crafty lawyers can keep this "disputed" election tied up in courts for years.  But with every court challenge Coleman makes, he loses.  It's time that Minnesotans had representation in the Senate.  This silliness has gone on long enough.  Soon, a court is going to have to step in and put an end to this charade.

Why Many People Can't Take Congress Seriously

Exhibit A.

This is Representative John Shimkus, Republican from Illinois.  He serves on the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, a body which considers, among other things, global warming and climate change.

Below is a clip of Representative Shimkus speaking on March 25 in the Energy and Environment Subcommittee.  He is expressing his view that global warming is not happening because..... wait for it... the Bible says so. 

That's right.  God had declared in the Bible that He would not destroy the Earth again in a flood, therefore there was no threat of worldwide flood from global warming.

Look, I'm not knocking God or the Bible.  But I do think we run into serious trouble when biblical interpretation dictates environmental policy.... or any policy coming out of Washington, for that matter.

Shimkus also believe, contra scientific evidence, that limiting CO2 in the atmosphere is a bad thing because plant life thrives on CO2.  Therefore, he says, capping Co2 emissions will kill plants.  Nice theory, but not true.

Shimkus, by the way, was aware of the Mark Foley scandal (where House Representative Mark Foley was making advances to teenage male congressional pages) years before the story broke.  He knew of it, but didn't inform anyone of it.

UPDATE:  On Republican Senator James Inhofe gets the runner-up award, for saying today on the Senate floor that global warming can't exist because his home state of Oklahoma just got a snowstorm.

I loved how he prefaced his remarks about "not getting into the science".  Yeah.

President Bartlet, Toby Ziegler, and Josh Lymon To Go To Capital Hill Tomorrow

Yes, they are fictional, but they're still doing good work:

If there was ever any doubt that fictional President Jed Bartlet's administration was pro-labor, the answer is now clear.

Actors Martin Sheen, Bradley Whitford, and Richard Schiff — all of the fictional NBC presidential drama "The West Wing — will appear at an event in Congress on Tuesday seeking to bolster support for the Employee Free Choice Act ("card check").

Sheen (President Jed Bartlet), Whitford (Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman), and Schiff (Communications Director Toby Ziegler) will meet with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and other lawmakers in meetings on the Hill.

The event is being coordinated by organized labor groups, including American Rights at Work, AFL-CIO, and Change to Win.

Fun With The GOP Budget

Like me (see post below), everyone else is laughing at the GOP budget, and their helpful graphs. 

Yes, it's spoof time.

Nate Silver has some fun:

 

 

 

And others join in:

 

 

 

I Love Michelle Bachman

This is why.  She presses Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on the Constitiutional authority for the Treasury to give out TARP money, apparently not understanding that Congress, of which she is a member, passed a bill which provided not only the TARP money, but the authority of the Treasury to dole it out.

In an interview with after the hearing, Bachmann said, “My intent to the line of questioning is legitimate because I have a number of constituents that ask me ‘Can they do this?’”

Geithner is understandably confused at the stupidness of the question.  It's kind of like asking "Where in the Constitution does it say we have to sit on chairs?" 

Still Geithner answered the question, saying "the laws of the land, of course", which is technically correct.  Article I, Section I grants Congress the right to legislate, and the TARP funds were legislated to give authority to the Treasury.  Article I, Section 8 would have been a good answer, too.

Bachmann also asked if the United States was giving up the dollar. “I’m wondering would you categorically renounce the United States moving away from the dollar and going to a global currency as suggested this morning by China and also by Russia, Mr. Secretary?”

Of course, China and Russia were not advocating a "global currency".  They were merely suggesting that the international community use something other than the dollar as its reserve currency.

Gillabrand Takes Clinton's Old Seat

Who?

I still don't know why Carolina dropped out.  And the first thing I heard about Kirsten Gillabrand was that she was endorsed by the NRA.

That doesn't bode well.

Dumb Analogy Department: Caroline v. Sarah

I'm reading this sentiment a lot these past few days:

In fact, Sarah Palin was more qualified to be vice-president than Caroline Kennedy is to be a Senator.

Well, duh!  Seriously, the only qualification to being vice-president is to have a pulse.  (The stickier issue, and one that dogged Sarah Palin, is that the vice-president could conceivably become president, and for that, Sarah Palin was less qualified than me).

But the notion that Ms. Palin is even in the same league as Ms. Kennedy is a joke.  Just do a thought experiment.  Put the two of them onstage side-by-side discussing matters of policy.  On any political subject; your choice.  You know Sarah would do?  Winky-winky and talk all folksy about how they do things in Wasilla, you betcha. 

Kennedy, on the other hand, would actually speak to the issues.  She's intelligent and coherent.  What's more, I think Kennedy would (unlike Palin) be able to articulate the specific things she wants to do in public office.

Is Kennedy inexperienced as an elected representative?  Sure.  But so was her Uncle Bobby and Hillary Clinton, both of whom occupied that same Senate seat.

Minnesota Senate Seat Still Ridiculously Close

Norm Coleman's lead over Al Franken melted away during the Board of Canvassers' deliberations on Coleman-challenged ballots yesterday. According to the Star Tribune, it is down to five votes. According to the AP, it is down to two.

UPDATE:  Now we're hearing that Franken is, for the first time, ahead.  The Minnesota Star-Ledger has a real-time running (re)count.  As of 11:38 a.m., Franken is up by 166 votes.

About this data	Coleman	Franken	Other/rejected
Challenged ballots awarded by board	262	616	230
Current vote count including awarded ballots	1,209,197	1,209,363

UPDATE:  Oh, look, a real-time widget:

Caroline Or Change?

Several A-list liberal bloggers are quite unhappy with the prospect of Caroline Kennedy taking over Clinton's Senate seat:

• Firedoglake's Hamsher: "It seems Caroline Kennedy has decided she'd rather have a US Senate seat than a pony for Christmas. [...] It appears Ms. Kennedy thinks that US Senate seats are something to lobbied for amongst political elites when one decides one wants them, and that the public should be happy to simply fall in line. The fact that one has a family political machine currently in the process of steamrolling David Paterson and a famous last name should be enough for the little people. I thought at least she'd get out before the cameras and start making her case to the public before she announced her intentions, because simply lobbying your well-connected buddies just oozes an outrageous sense of entitlement and insufferable pomposity."
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "Frankly, I consider [Kennedy] to be undeserving of the seat, given that she has never won an election and that basically her only qualification would be her family name. Further, at a time when Democrats are suffering from a major corruption scandal over Senate appointments, appointing a dynasty candidate would only add fuel to that fire. Republicans will run in 2010 on an argument that one-party rule leads to waste and corruption, so nepotism like this would be a bad idea."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "Rich and famous people already have a huge leg up when it comes to winning political office, but at least they still have to run and win. Appointing them instead so they can avoid the whole messy business of engaging in a campaign is just a little too Habsburgian for my taste. Needless to say, I've got nothing against Kennedy. But appointing her to the Senate just isn't the right thing to do."
• Daily Kos' Moulitsas: "When you're rich and come from a political family, and are heir to American royalty, you can apparently dispense with dealing with pesky voters by simply ringing up the governor. [...] Kennedy might very well be a favorite of Democratic primary voters in a contested race (and current polls suggest that), but that would require her to run, and elections can expose candidate weaknesses not readily apparent before the harsh glare of the spotlight is trained on them. In 2002, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend lost her bid for the governorship of heavily Democratic Maryland despite entering the race with a 27-point lead in the polls. In 2004, Sen. Jean Carnahan lost the special election to the seat she was appointed to in 2002 after her husband was tragically killed in an airplane accident. But running for office is an icky process. It's hard work. Much harder, of course, than merely picking up the phone and calling the governor."

I respectfully dissent.  I think she would be an excellent choice.

Sure, she's a Kennedy, but I don't think that makes her less qualified than otherwise.  She's certainly been around politics her whole life; there's no learning curve there.  And it's not like she's going to be a Kennedy in the womanizing and getting-drunk sense.

Furthremore, she's a Columbia Law graduate and co-author of two books: In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action and The Right to Privacy.  Having a senator cognizant of the Constitution is a good thing.  She will also be a champion for education and funding for the arts.  She's served on several prominent boards, including Obama's transition team.  And her "celebrity" status might bring some light to key progressive bills and legislation that might not otherwise be there.

Yes, it's true that she could have decided to be a politician decades ago.  And yes, she chose other paths, never having run for elected office.  But again, how does that make her a less able senator than someone who has been a career politician?  It's worth noting the seat she is seeking was held by both her Uncle Bobby and Hillary, neither of whom ran for political office before becoming a senator either.

RELATED:  In an article at Politico, discussing the "nepotism" of the Democratic Party (e.g., Caroline taking Hillary's seat; Jesse Jackson Jr. taking Obama's seat; Beau Biden taking Biden's seat), we find this quote:

“Democrats seem to lack a common man who can just win a good, old-fashioned election,” said Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.), the former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “They’ve got seat-warmers, seat-sellers and the making of pillows for the seats of royalty. No wonder the public wonders what’s going on in Washington.”

Excuse me?  Who is currently the president, and what was his father's prior occupation???

Blago Arrest

I guess everyone knows about the arrest this morning of Illinois governor Rod R. Blagojevich and his Chief of Staff, John Harris -- on corruption charges.

What surprises me was how blatant his corruption was.  I mean, the governor of Illinois gets to choose who fills Obama's now-empty Senate seat, so he literally auctioned it off.

Or as the governor himself said (according to wiretaps): "I've got this thing and it's [expletive] golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing. I'm not gonna do it."

And noting that he was under political fire for suspected corruption, he thought maybe the Senate seat would serve as an escape hatch for himself: "And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there."

Don't think that's gonna happen, now, governor.

Kennedy Dynasty Lives On

Caroline -- the normally quiet, non-spotlight-seeking daughter of JFK and Jackie, sister to the now-dead JFK Jr., may take Hillary's seat in the Senate -- the same seat once held by her Uncle Bobby.

I like it.  I like it a lot.

Alaska Senate Race: It Ain't Over, Folks

Maybe the convicted felon didn't win after all.

Right now, Stevens is up 106,351 votes to Begich's 102,998.  That's a gap of only 3,353 votes.

However, according to the Alaska Division of Elections, there are over 81,000 absentee, early vote, and questionable ballots to be counted.  (63,000 votes if you ignore all the questionable ballots).

Nate Silver chunked the data and determined that, of the early votes counted so far, Begich got 61% of them.  Looking at the districts where early votes and absentee ballots come from, and assuming voting patterns are the same, Silver predicts that Begich picks up a net 6,450 votes, which would make him the winner -- assuming there is no cheating.

Democrats picked up a 57th Senator with the squeaker win in Oregon.

If Begich wins Alaska, that would make 58.

If Al Franken wins Minnesota on the recount, that would make 59.

And if Martin somehow upsets Chambliss in the Georgia run-off (because neither candidate got over 50%), which is possible, but a slight uphill battle, that would make 60.

I predicted 58 before the elections.  I still stand by that.

Senator Stevens (R-AK) Who Immortalized "The Internet Is A Series Of Tubes" Is Convicted

As the Wall Street Journal notes, this has some historical significance.  Sen. Stevens is a sitting senator, one of only five in all of history to be convicted of a crime, and the first since 1981.

Stevens is 84 years old -- soon to be 85 on Nov. 15 -- and is the longest-serving Republican with almost 40 years in the Senate representing Alaska.

He's been running for re-election this year, despite the trial.  His Democratic challenger has been edging ahead by 1 or 2 points in the polls, but Stevens' conviction will, I'm guessing, lock it up for the Democrat.  This means Democrats are one seat closer to the ideal 60 seats.

Here's Stevens from this past summer, pallin' around with a friend of his, who once served as director of the 527 group Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.

Jesse Helms -- Leader Against HIV?

What is Elizabeth Dole smoking?  From the Congressional Record dated July 14, 2008:

SA 5074. Mrs. DOLE submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by her to the bill S. 2731, to authorize appropriations for fiscal years 2009 through 2013 to provide assistance to foreign countries to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows: On page 1, line 5, strike ‘’and Henry J. Hyde’’ and insert ‘’, Henry J. Hyde, and Jesse Helms‘’.

That's right.  Elizabeth Dole wants to change the name of the

"Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008"

to the

"Tom Lantos, Henry J. Hyde and Jesse Helms United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008"

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that Jesse Helms probably would like his name attached to a bill that seeks to rid tuberculosis and malaria.  But HIV/AIDs?  Jesse is rolling in his grave (as are, I suspect, thousands of victims of HIV/AIDs).  Jesse was no fan of AIDS prevention, as Joe My God notes:

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1987 described AIDS prevention literature as "so obscene, so revolting, I may throw up."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1988 vigorously opposed the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS research bill, saying, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1995 said (in opposition to refunding the Ryan White Act) that the government should spend less on people with AIDS because they got sick due to their "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 2002 announced that he'd changed his mind about AIDS funding for Africa, but not for American gays, because homosexuality "is the primary cause of the doubling and redoubling of AIDS cases in the United States."

This last bit is true.  Helms did come around (after two decades) to think we should fight AIDS in foreign children who aren't, you know, teh gay.  Some moral epiphany, huh?

On the other hand, one could argue that putting Helms' name on an AIDS prevention bill has a ring of justice to it -- kind of a posthumous "fuck you" to a man who is too dead to complain. 

What's next?  The George Wallace Civil Rights Act?

War Powers

I know the Constitution is, in places, ambiguous, but this language seems pretty straightforward:

The Congress shall have power... to declare war...

That's Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution.  It's the "War Powers Clause".

The dirty little secret is that Congress, in all its history, has only declared war five times: the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), the Spanish-American War (1898), World War I, and World War II.

That's right.  Congress never made a declaration of war for the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War ("Desert Storm"), or our current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In some situations, Congress merely authorized military action, without a formal declaration of war.  This was the case with Vietnam, as well as our current situation.

On other occasions, the President merely committed armed forces on his own initiative.  Truman, for example, committed U.S. troops into the Korean War, citing the fact that we were bound by United Nations obligations.  But here's the rub -- this has happened on at least 125 occasions throughout American history.  Remember the invasion of Grenada under Reagan?

So what does the War Powers Clause mean when a President can commit troops to conflict without a formal congressional declaration of war -- or indeed, even absent a mere "authorization" by Congress?

This problem was taken up by Congress following the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam in 1972.  Congress passed what is known as the "War Powers Resolution".  It stated that the President of The United States of America can send troops into action abroad only by authorization of Congress or if the United States of America is already under attack or serious threat. The War Powers Act requires that the president notify Congress within 48 hours of committing troops to military action and forbids troops from remaining for more than 60 days without an authorization of force or a declaration of war.

That was all well and good, and the War Powers Resolution has generally been followed since its inception.  The problem, unfortunately, is that it arguably contradicts the Constitution's War Powers Clause.  Or severely renders that clause virtually meaningless.

No court has passed judgment on the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution of 1973.  It remains controversial.  Supporters of the law seem to bog themselves in silly semantics (e.g., "Well, we're not really at war with al Qaeda, because the word 'war' means we're fighting a recognized country, and AQ isn't a country").

In my view, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 is unconstitutional.  It is certainly not what the Framers envisioned.  Even though the Constitution says that the president is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, the Framers clearly did not want one man to decide when to commit our nation's troops to combat.

Granted, the Constitution's War Powers clause is antiquated.  If, for example, nuclear missiles are literally flying over the ocean toward our cities, we simply don't have time to convene Congress and have them pass a vote that military action on our part is required.  Congress itself would be vaporized before such a vote could take place.  Clearly, the Framers did not envision such a scenario, being only familiar with wars waged with muskets and bayonets.  So, in a sense, the War Powers Clause of the Constitution must be modified (or interpreted) to allow for such real-world realities.

But the War Powers Resolution of 1973 simply went too far.  It allowed for the President to commit troops to conflicts anywhere, anytime in the world, and then get after-the-fact approval from Congress.  Even when there is no imminent threat.

Enter James Baker III (Secretary of State under Bush 41) and Warren Christopher (Secretary of State under Clinton), who headed up a bipartisan committee to look at the War Powers Resolution of 1973, following the somewhat disastrous process of several years ago which resulted in the Iraq War quagmire we now find ourselves.  In today's New York Times, they pen an op-ed detailing the conclusions and recommendations of that committee.  The headline: "Put War Powers Back Where They Belong"

Their findings?  The War Powers Resolution of 1973 is "ineffective at best and unconstitutional at worst".  Well, yes.  No duh.

They continue:

The statute has other problems as well: it too narrowly defines the president’s war powers to exclude the power to respond to sudden attacks on Americans abroad; it empowers Congress to terminate an armed conflict by simply doing nothing; and it fails to identify which of the 535 members of Congress the president should consult before going to war.

As a consequence, the 1973 statute has been regularly ignored — a situation that undermines the rule of law, the centerpiece of American democracy.

Rather than tweak the 1973 Resolution, Baker and Christopher recommend scrapping it in favor of what they call "The War Powers Consultation Act of 2009".  The general thrust?  The President and Congress should consult each other before committing troops to combat.

As usual, the devil is in the details, but already, I don't see this as a vast improvement over the 1973 Resolution.  For one thing (as Baker and Christopher acknowledge), it still is probably unconstitutional, as it runs afoul of the War Powers Clause.

But let's get into the details:

Our proposed statute would provide that the president must consult with Congress before ordering a “significant armed conflict” — defined as combat operations that last or are expected to last more than a week. To provide more clarity than the 1973 War Powers Resolution, our statute also defines what types of hostilities would not be considered significant armed conflicts — for example, training exercises, covert operations or missions to protect and rescue Americans abroad. If secrecy or other circumstances precluded prior consultation, then consultation — not just notification — would need to be undertaken within three days.

I don't think they get it.  Their proposal is still too "executive-focused".  The President must consult with Congress before ordering an armed conflict?  How about the President ask Congress?  After all, as the Constitution clearly says, Congress shall make that determination.  Congress, not the president, holds the rubber stamp.

Baker and Christopher address this criticism:

Some may argue that Congress should have the dominant role in war powers debates. But it hasn’t played that role under the 1973 resolution. Rather than endorse any absolutist position, our statute would give Congress access to intelligence, a full-time staff for studying national security issues and a well-defined mechanism for consulting and voting on significant armed conflicts.

Yeah, "Some may argue that Congress should have the dominant role in war powers debate".  That "some" would include Madison, Jefferson, and all the other Founding Fathers.  Oh, and the American people, too: according to a Gallup Poll, 79% of us want the president to get Congress's approval before sending our troops overseas.

So apparently, while their essay is entitled "Put War Powers Back Where They Belong" -- apparently, Baker and Christopher, contra the Framers, believe that war powers "belong" primarily with the President.

No, no, no.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Baker and Christopher's proposal is no better than the War Powers Resolution of 1973.  In fact, it's arguably worse, because it takes the "bug" of the 1973 Resolution and turns it into a feature.  As the op-ed argues, their proposed statute is a good thing because it

[gives] the president the political benefit of forcing Congress to take a position on going to war. And it would do so without insisting that the president get the consent of Congress.

Well, gentlemen -- if that's the case, then your proposed statute fixes nothing, and clearly runs afoul of the Constitution.  If the President can commit troops to armed conflict without "consent of Congress", then we're back to the same unconstitutional problem we have always had.

I'm glad that the general issue of war powers is being taken up by very important people, and this proposal may be serve as a good launching point for a national debate.  It's nice that Baker and Christopher are talking about "increased Congressional responsibility" when it comes to war powers.  But they still appear to make Congress subservient to presidential military whims, and I strongly suggest a revisit to the drawing board for Baker and Christopher.

Gonzales: Another Bit Of Perjury Yesterday

This centers around a meeting held on March 10, 2004 with members of the Bush Administration and the "Gang of 8", members of Congress who head up intelligence committees.  The topic discussed was --  well, that's the issue. Here's what Alberto Gonzales said under oath on Tuesday:

At a heated Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Gonzales repeatedly testified that the issue at hand was not about the terrorist surveillance program....Instead, Gonzales said, the emergency meetings on March 10, 2004, focused on an intelligence program that he would not describe.

Gonzales, who was then serving as counsel to Bush, testified that the White House Situation Room briefing sought to inform congressional leaders about the pending expiration of the unidentified program and Justice Department objections to renew it.

...."Not the TSP?" responded Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. "Come on. If you say it's about other, that implies not. Now say it or not."

"It was not," Gonzales answered. "It was about other intelligence activities."

Other intelligence activities? Not the TSP? Despite the recollections of other participants that the meeting on that day was precisely about the TSP?

Well, guess what? It turns out the dates of all the TSP meetings were the subject of a memo from John Negroponte last year. So it's all down on paper. And you know what date shows up? March 10, 2004.

Short version: Gonzales lied (again) before Congress.

Olbermann does a good job of breaking it down.  As the reporter says, "this is a really, really big deal and a big problem for Gonzales. … The legal expert I talked to tonight said this is a clear case of perjury."

CNN is on this, too.  Well, everybody is, I guess.  When the nation's top lawyer commits perjury, you know the nation is deep in the crapper.

Hardin-Smith offers advice:

Here’s a tip for Bush Administration cronies:  if you are going to lie under oath, on the record, with a video camera in your face, don’t lie about something for which there is documentary evidence directly contradicting your statements.  It makes you look unprepared, panicked and sloppy.  Even petty thieves get their stories straighter than this in magistrate courts across the nation.  Juries still find them guilty, and see right through their lying skeezeball stories, but at least they have enough pride in their thievery to put a little work into covering their own asses.  It’s especially pathetic when you are given a number of the questions in advance.

Flashback a few months ago to an interesting conversation between Bill Moyers and Jon Stewart regarding Gonzales:

So prescient.

Glenn Greenwald on Gonzales: “That is what Alberto Gonzales does. He lies to protect the President. And the President will never fire him. Gonzales isn’t keeping his job despite his willingness to lie to Congress, but because of it. Congress has no choice but to act meaningfully — impeachment of Gonzales and a Special Prosecutor — and if they do not, then, I suppose, one could say that Congress deserves to be lied to.”

UPDATE:  Oh, man -- as the day gets on, it gets even worse for Gonzales:

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said Thursday the government's terrorist surveillance program was the topic of a 2004 hospital room dispute between top Bush administration officials, contradicting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' sworn Senate testimony.

Mueller's statement came hours after Senate Democrats called for a perjury investigation against Gonzales and subpoenaed top presidential aide Karl Rove in a deepening political and legal clash with the Bush administration.

Obstructionist GOP

In 2004, Americans elected a Democratic majority in Congress.  What was the GOP response?  To tie up bills, filibuster, and engage in other parliamentarian tactics to prevent reforms from even coming to a vote.

How bad is it?  Really bad.  At the present pace, the Republicans will be three times more obstructionist than any Congress in recent history.  Margaret Talev reports for McClatchey Newspapers on the GOP's unprecedentedly frequent use of the filibuster. This chart, though, kind of says it all:

No wonder Congress is rated as so low....

Gonzales Lied -- Blatently Lied -- Under Oath, To Congress

Lying to Congress is a crime:

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Two Justice Department officials say that Gonzo was kept very well informed of FBI civil liberties violations:

The two officials spoke in a telephone call arranged by press officials at the Justice Department after The Washington Post disclosed yesterday that the FBI sent reports to Gonzales of legal and procedural violations shortly before he told senators in April 2005: "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse" after 2001.

"I have discussed and informed attorneys general, including this one, about mistakes the FBI has made or problems or violations or compliance incidents, however you want to refer to them," said James A. Baker, a career official who heads the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review.

"I've discussed a number of times oversight concerns and, underlying those oversight concerns, the potential for violations. And I'm sure we've discussed violations that have occurred in the past," said Assistant Attorney General for National Security Kenneth L. Wainstein.

Gonzales’ office has a spin to rationalize all of this.

[Assistant Attorney General for National Security Kenneth L. Wainstein] defended the 2005 statement by Gonzales that he was unaware of civil liberties abuses related to the government’s counterterrorism effort. Wainstein cited what he described as a dictionary definition of “abuse” in defending Gonzales’s remark. […]

Wainstein said Gonzales was saying only that there had been no intentional acts of misconduct, rather than the sorts of mistakes the FBI was self-disclosing. “That is why I cited the definition of ‘abuse,’ which in Webster’s . . . implies some sort of intentional conduct. And I think that is sort of the common understanding of the word ‘abuse,’ ” Wainstein said.

Got that? Those weren’t abuses; they were just instances in which FBI agents illegally obtained personal information about Americans that they were not entitled to have.

Oy, these people!

It's A Family Affair

CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) has released a devastating report on government nepotism -- how Congresspersons are using their positions to financially benefit their family members.

Highlights:

96 members of Congress used their positions to financially benefit members of their family (44 Democrats and 52 Republicans)

64 paid family members through their campaign committees or PACs (26 Democrats and 38 Republicans);

24 have relatives who lobby Congress (10 Democrats and 14 Republicans);

19 used their campaign committees or PACs to pay a family business or a business that employs a family member (9 Democrats and 10 Republicans);

17 used their campaign funds to make campaign contributions to relatives (11 Democrats and 6 Republicans);

15 used their positions to benefit a family member or a family member’s client (3 Democrats and 12 Republicans);

At least 7 paid offspring who ranged from school-age to college-age (all Republicans)

Some examples:

• Rep. Randy Forbes’s (R-VA) campaign committee paid his three children over $45,000.
• Rep. Paul Kanjorski’s (D-PA) campaign committee and leadership PAC have paid his own company (which he co-owns with his brother) over $40,000 in rent and his campaign committee paid two of his nephews over $70,000. In addition, two companies which are partly owned by Rep. Kanjorski’s family members have received over $9.4 million in earmarks.
• Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s (D-CA) campaign committee has paid her husband’s two businesses almost $350,000, mostly for event management, accounting and fundraising services.
• Rep. Chris Cannon’s (R-UT) campaign committee paid six of his eight children over $60,000. In addition, Rep. Cannon has used his position to assist his brother’s clients.

None of this is, technically speaking, illegal, but it is the hope of CREW that changes should be made in the law to prevent this sort of thing.

Read the full report here (PDF format).

"I'm Not Whining" He Whined

That's the best line from a Dana Milbank piece about the GOP returning to the 110th Congress, where they find themselves not in the majority after several years of bribery and page-seducing.  The whiner is Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.).

Yup -- already the GOP is complaining that they aren't allowed to drive the car anymore, and the session hasn't even begun yet.

The Rude Pundit (rudely) adds his views:

The fact that Republicans even think the victim act will work is laughable, in a "Christ, that's sad, let's shoot Old Yeller way." They don't realize that people love it when the bully gets beaten up. When an abused wife shoots the shit-faced, pummeling husband in the back of the head. When the convicted serial rapist is turned into the gang-banger's punk in prison.

***

They seriously think saying, "Democrats promised to share their toys" is going to have traction as a counter argument to the election results, even when the entire country knows that Republicans kept the playground locked to Democrats for all these years. This is a Karl Rove ploy, the weak wimper of a cancer-ridden corrupt old man, trying to turn the Democrats on themselves, hoist them on their promise of better bipartisanship.

You can smell his sausage-like finger grease all over George Bush's sad editorial in the Wall Street Journal. "What Congress Can Do For America," it was titled. And the simple answer, the one demanded by all Americans whose paychecks don't rely on desperately trying to make Bush into a "leader," is "Fucking stop you."

South Dakota Law

Here you go:

12-11-1. Special election to fill congressional vacancy--Time of election of representative. If a vacancy occurs in the office of a senator or representative in the United States Congress it shall be the duty of the Governor within ten days of the occurrence, to issue a proclamation setting the date of and calling for a special election for the purpose of filling such vacancy. If either a primary or general election is to be held within six months, an election to fill a vacancy in the office of representative in the United States Congress shall be held in conjunction with that election, otherwise the election shall be held not less than eighty nor more than ninety days after the vacancy occurs.

Why this matters...