The Earth is the Lord's,
and the fulness thereof;
www.Christ.com
Politics & Opinion News, p.2
National Review
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National Review
Our news section is a collection of mostly unfiltered and g-rated news links, with both Christian and secular authors. We are linking to several news feeds, with each news provider supplying their own view of the world. The views range politically from the New York Times on the left (far left?), to the World Net Daily, which leans toward the right, so politically we have the far left to the far right represented here...
Most "news feeds" from news providers (like the Washington Post) require that the feed be published without editing, so we do not have the ability to accept or reject specific news items. When we do carry a "news feed" from a specific news provider, we do not filter the news links, so (as usual, and often said) "We do not necessarily agree with the views, opinions, morals, politic party, denomination, or expression of spiritual gift." This is a general mix of Christian and secular links, with both highlights and lowlights.
My prayer is that Christ would be glorified by the political discussion on issues that relate to God's people. It is clear that He is indeed glorified through our debate on issues like abortion, faith in public places, and other hot button issues for the Church.
To close this message, we would like to offer this prayer: Father, we thank You and praise You for the ability to read and hear the news around the world. Help us Lord to understand the news, and teach us how to respond to events in the news according to your will (e.g. leave a donation at your local Bible believing Church, volunteer at food bank...). Help us to grow in faith, as we read, hear, and see news that challenges our beliefs. Help us to use these tests as a means of spiritual growth as we study Your Word. And bring peace to the world, Lord, which we know is coming through You. We ask this in the name of Your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.
14And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: 15And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him. KJV: 1 John 5:14-15 14This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 15And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him. NASB: 1 John 5:14-15 14This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of him. NIV: 1 John 5:14-15
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. KJV: 1 John 1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. NASB: 1 John 1:8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. NIV: 1 John 1:8
20For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. 21For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: KJV: 1 Peter 2:20-21 20For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. 21For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, NASB: 1 Peter 2:20-21 20But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. 21To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. NIV: 1 Peter 2:20-21
But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. KJV: Isaiah 40:31 Yet those who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary. NASB: Isaiah 40:31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. NIV: Isaiah 40:31
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. KJV: John 16:13 "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. NASB: John 16:13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. NIV: John 16:13
Second American Mother Arrested in Jihadist Conspiracy -- By: Daniel Foster (Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:22:52 -0400)
Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, was once a small-town Colorado mother, until she abruptly converted to Islam last year, abandoned her family on Sept. 11 to marry a Muslim man in New York, and relocated with him to Ireland.
Now she is in the custody of police in Ireland, arrested along with six others on charges of conspiracy to commit murder:
Ms. Paulin-Ramirez is the second American woman to be linked to an alleged plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist who made fun of the Prophet Mohammed. An indictment was unsealed this week against Colleen R. LaRose, 46, a suburban Philadelphia woman who authorities said used the Web alias "JihadJane."
Ms. LaRose was accused of plotting to kill the cartoonist and attempting to recruit jihadis via the Internet.
She was arrested in October and later charged with providing material support to terrorists.
The Justice Department kept its case under wraps until this week while investigators in the U.S. and Europe pursued their investigation against other potential suspects in the U.S. and abroad.
The main contact for Ms. LaRose is believed to be one of the men in Irish custody, an Algerian, who has a relationship with Ms. Paulin-Ramirez, according to a person close to matter.
A person close to the Irish police couldn't confirm whether Ms. Paulin-Ramirez and the Algerian are married.
Ms. LaRose spent roughly two weeks in Ireland last fall, a person familiar with the matter said.
The Irish police are holding four men and three women, including three Algerians, a Croatian, a Palestinian, a Libyan and a U.S. national, according to a person close to the police.
They are being questioned and haven't been charged.
A U.S. official familiar with the matter confirmed that Ms. Paulin-Ramirez is the U.S. national. The Justice Department declined to comment.
Is the Gitmo Bar Pro-Islamist? -- By: Andy McCarthy (Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:27:57 -0400)
I appreciate Jonah's kind words. In fairness to Stephen Jones, I didn't know about his essay and I don't know whether he was told I'd be writing one. It wasn't pitched to me by the Journal as a point/counterpoint thing. They asked me to write about the issue from my perspective, and the only guidance I got was a suggestion that I address some precedents if any seemed relevant. (I thought Eric Holder's Heller brief was highly relevant -- particularly, the fact that no one came close to suggesting that the position he staked out on the Second Amendment as a private lawyer was off-limits in considering what he might do as a top policy-making official.) I imagine they did the same thing with Mr. Jones. By contrast, when I did a point/counterpoint thing for USA Today earlier this week, I was told in broad outline what themes their editorial would hit (I wasn't shown the actual editorial) so I had a better idea what I needed to respond to.
Now, to the more important question posed in the last paragraph of Jonah's post. Let's put DOJ's ten (and counting) Gitmo lawyers to the side and just talk about the volunteer Gitmo bar in general. I believe many of the attorneys who volunteered their services to al Qaeda were, in fact, pro-Qaeda or, at the very least, pro-Islamist. Not all of them, but many of them. The assistance many of them provided went disturbingly beyond any conventional notion of "legal representation." (And let's not forget that what Lynne Stewart called her "legal representation" of the Blind Sheikh was later found by a jury to be material support to terrorism.) I expect we'll be hearing much more about this in the coming days.
Islamism is a much broader and more mainstream (in Islam) ideology than suggested by the surprisingly ill-informed comments Charles Krauthammer made about a week ago (see Dr. K's commentary here; Mark Steyn's reaction, with which I agree, is here.) Jihadist terrorists are a subset of the Islamists, but many Islamists disagree with the terrorists' means -- they are mostly on the same page as far as ends are concerned.
Personally, I don't think there is much difference, if any, between Islam and Islamism. In that assessment, I'm not much different from Turkey's Islamist prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who claims it is "very ugly" for Westerners to draw these distinctions between Muslims as "moderate" or "Islamist" -- “It is offensive and an insult to our religion," he says, because "there is no moderate or immoderate Islam.Islam is Islam, and that’s it."
Islamists are Muslims who would like to see sharia (Islamic law) installed. That is the necessary precondition to Islamicizing a society. It is the purpose of jihad. The terrorists are willing to force sharia's installation by violent jihad; other Islamists have varying views about the usefulness of violence, but they also want sharia, and their jihadist methods include tactics other than violence. I reluctantly use the term "Islamist" rather than "Islam" because I believe there are hundreds of millions of Muslims (somewhere between a third to a half of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims) who do not want to live under sharia, and who want religion to be a private matter, separated from public life. It is baffling to me why these people are Muslims since, as I understand Islam, (a) sharia is a basic element, and (b) Islam rejects the separation of mosque and state. But I'm not a Muslim, so that is not for me to say. I think we have to encourage the non-sharia Muslims and give them space to try to reform their religion, so I believe it's worth labeling the sharia seekers "Islamists" in order to sort them out. But I admit being very conflicted about it because I also concede that the Islamists have the more coherent (and scary) construction of Islam. We wouldn't be encouraging reform if we really thought Islam was fine as is.
In any event, Islamist ideology is multi-faceted. You can be pro-Islamist, and even pro-Qaeda, without signing on to the savage Qaeda methods. And the relevant question with respect to progressive lawyers is not so much whether they are pro-Qaeda as it is whether, as between Islamists and the U.S. as it exists, they have more sympathy for the Islamists. That's a fair question, but a very uncomfortable one to ask. Indeed, as Jonah broaches it, he softens it to whether the insinuation that the lawyers are pro-Qaeda is "counter-productive." That's an interesting question but a very different one from whether the insinuation is true.
In a column a few days ago, I addressed the insinuation this way:
“Al-Qaeda Seven” reminds me of another legal shorthand expression: “mob lawyer.” It’s a common expression — everyone uses it. I’d wager that a number of the DOJ’s Gitmo lawyers have either used it or been in conversations where it rolled effortlessly, and without objection, off the tongues of other prosecutors. “Mob lawyers” are lawyers who regularly represent members and associates of the mafia. It’s such a commonplace that even the mob lawyers call themselves “mob lawyers.” It’s a handle; it doesn’t mean the people who use the term don’t see the moral difference between mobsters who commit heinous crimes and the lawyers who defend them. Same with the “al-Qaeda Seven.”
Much of the commentary on this point, including from some people who usually know better, has been specious. The normally sensible Paul Mirengoff, for example, huffs, “It is entirely inappropriate to suggest that these lawyers share the values of terrorists or to dub the seven DOJ lawyers ‘The al-Qaeda Seven.’” The values of the terrorists? Which values?
Jihadists believe it is proper to massacre innocent people in order to compel the installation of sharia as a pathway to Islamicizing society. No one for a moment believes, or has suggested, that al-Qaeda’s American lawyers share that view. But jihadist terrorists, and Islamist ideology in general, also hold that the United States is the root of all evil in the world, that it is the beating heart of capitalist exploitation of society’s have-nots, and that it needs fundamental, transformative change.
This, as I argue in a book to be published this spring, is why Islam and the Left collaborate so seamlessly. They don’t agree on all the ends and means. In fact, Islamists don’t agree among themselves about means. But before they can impose their utopias, Islamists and the Left have a common enemy they need to take down: the American constitutional tradition of a society based on individual liberty, in which government is our servant, not our master. It is perfectly obvious that many progressive lawyers are drawn to the jihadist cause because of common views about the need to condemn American policies and radically alter the United States.
That doesn’t make any lawyer unfit to serve. It does, however, show us the fault line in the defining debate of our lifetime, the debate about what type of society we shall have. And that political context makes everyone’s record fair game. If lawyers choose to volunteer their services to the enemy in wartime, they are on the wrong side of that fault line, and no one should feel reluctant to say so.
WASHINGTON — Two Hoosier lawmakers expected to play key roles in determining the fate of health care reform legislation pending in Congress remain cagey over whether they intend to support a package endorsed by President Barack Obama when it comes up for a vote expected later this month.
Rep. Brad Ellsworth, D-Ind., and Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., said they are studying the proposal that emerged from the White House. Neither was willing to make a commitment, although both supported an earlier version that passed the House in November.
Hill said earlier this week that he remains "consistently straightforward" regarding his support for some type of health care reform and is cognizant of the president's desire for progress. But some questions remain unanswered, and he is unsure about the manner in which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., intends to proceed.
As long-time advocates of health care reform, the U.S. Catholic bishops continue to make the moral case that genuine health care reform must protect the life, dignity, consciences and health of all, especially the poor and vulnerable. Health care reform should provide access to affordable and quality health care for all, and not advance a pro-abortion agenda in our country. Genuine health care reform is being blocked by those who insist on reversing widely supported policies against federal funding of abortion and plans which include abortion, not by those working simply to preserve these longstanding protections.
That can't be music to our "Thank God" for government-funding abortion Speaker and believers in a "God-given right" to abortion I've encountered among anti-Stupak activists on the Hill.
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Focus -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez (Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:53:50 -0400)
If you're inclined to call a member of Congress (or more) this weekend, these are some members (mostly pro-life Dems) who I gather could use some encouraging (you've seen some of these names before):
Charlie Wilson has the Franciscan University of Steubenville in his district. A few friendly calls from students and alumni -- I know some of you read The Corner, because you've told me you do! -- couldn't hurt.
Knights in for the Final Fight -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez (Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:51:15 -0400)
I talked with an official from the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic men's group with over 1.2 million in the U.S., last night. He says the state leadership of the organization is encouraging all their members to communicate to their members of Congress and the White House this weekend. Further work, he says, is being done to encourage pro-life Democrats to stick to their pro-life principles. "We're doing everything we can to encourage the pro-life Democrats who are under such tremendous pressure to remain strong, and hang in there with Bart Stupak," Patrick Korten, vice president for communications there, tells me. With great gratitude he continues: "Bart is a brother Knight and a real hero in the pro-life cause. He deserves, and will get, all the help we can give him."
“Maybe you remember what President Obama promised in his State of the Union address. He said he was going to finally focus on jobs and the economy for the remainder of this year. I applauded him for that. Well, here it is, it’s almost spring. And what is he out there talking about again? That same 2,700-page, multi-trillion dollar health care legislation.
“So, an entire year has gone to waste. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, and many more jobs are in danger. Even now, the President still hasn't gotten the message.
“Somehow, the greater the public opposition to the health care bill, the more determined they seem to force it on us anyway. Their attitude shows Washington at its very worst - the presumption that they know best, and they’re going to get their way whether the American people like it or not.
“And, when politicians start thinking like that, they don’t let anything get in their way - not public opinion, not the rules of fair play, not even their own promises.
“They pledged transparency. Instead, we have a health care bill tainted by secrecy, concealed cost, and full of backroom deals- and that’s just not right. They should do better. The American people expect more.
“They pledged a true bipartisan effort. Instead, they have resorted to bending the rules, and they now intend to seize control of health care in America on a strict party-line vote.
“In speech after speech on his health care plan, the President has tried to convince us that what he is proposing will be good for America. But, how can it be good for America if it raises taxes by a half trillion dollars and costs a trillion dollars or more to implement? In addition, how can it be good if it takes another half a trillion dollars away from seniors on Medicare, and still includes all the backroom deals you have been hearing about for months?
“Well, for the past year or more, the new establishment in Washington has tried again and again to sell this plan to the American people. But the Americans aren't buying it, and for good reason. And now, what’s going on is a last, desperate power play. They actually tell us that passing the bill is necessary, if only to prove that something can get done in Washington.
“Well, I haven’t been here very long, but, I can tell you this much already: Nothing has distracted the attention and energy of the nation’s capital more than this disastrous detour. And, the surest way to return to the people’s business is to listen to the people themselves: We need to drop this whole scheme of federally controlled health care, start over, and work together on real reforms at the state level that will contain costs and won’t leave America trillions of dollars deeper in debt.
"The Case for Unpopular Clients" -- By: Jonah Goldberg (Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:36:05 -0400)
I'm really surprised that the opposing view the Journal picked to match up against Andy's op-ed was so weak. It's not weak because it's bad, per se. It's just irrelevant to most of the issues. Stephen Jones argues that lawyers should be willing to take on unpopular criminal defendants as clients. Okay, nobody I know disagrees with that, and he makes an entirely adequate case for it.
But that's not what the debate is about. The debate is about, among other things: Whether DOJ should be able to hide the history of appointed lawyers from Congress and the public; Whether Gitmo detainees are criminal defendants at all; whether volunteering pro bono for declared enemy combatants is even analogous to working for other "unpopular clients" or whether that pro bono work was really an effort to use the legal system as a Trojan Horse to change national security policy. And on these and other fronts, Stephen Jones' argument is just deficient or non-responsive.
For starters, most of his essay is dedicated to the hardships he endured representing Tim McVeigh. Just going from his version of events, I'm entirely sympathetic to his case. He didn't deserve any of that. But what does any of it have to do with what we're talking about? He was a "draftee" into the case, by his own admission. That alone makes his experience different. Throw in the fact McVeigh was an American citizen, not a member of a foreign terror organization, and that his whole piece is almost entirely a response to an argument no one is making, and one has to wonder why the Journal even bothered running this piece. It would have been a lot more edifying if they found someone to actually respond to Andy's far more substantial argument.
That said, there is one point where Jones scores a glancing blow. If you watch the Keep America Safe ad there is the insinuation -- or at least reasonable people can infer it -- that KAS is suggesting the "al Qaeda 7" are pro-al Qaeda. If that's the insinuation some are trying to make, I think that's counter-productive. I don't think these lawyers are traitorous or anything like that (which is not to say that it's impossible). I think they subscribe to a coherent ideological view about the war on terror and priesthood of the lawyer class. I think that view is dangerous, wrong and naive, but it ain't treason.
Advocating for the enemy is a modern anomaly, not a proud tradition. -- By: Andy McCarthy (Sat, 13 Mar 2010 06:50:40 -0400)
That is the thrust of my essay in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, rebutting the letter filed by Ken Starr and other Republican lawyers, and making the case for full disclosure about the Justice Department lawyers who volunteered to represent al Qaeda terrorists in their wartime lawsuits against the American people.
I Guess She Doesn't Watch Charles Krauthammer -- By: Andy McCarthy (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:25:42 -0400)
Jamie Paulin, a 31-year-old Irish woman, converted to Islam last spring. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports (in a story called, "For the Love of Islam"), she's in custody for allegedly conspiring to murder a Swedish cartoonist who had poked fun at the prophet Mohammed. Must have been that bad Islamism again which, as we all know, has absolutely nothing to do with Islam. And yes, yes, I understand the Koran says stuff like, "Fight those who believe not in Allahnor the last day" (Sura 9:29), but surely you're not suggesting that anyone would interpret that to mean Muslims should, like, fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day." Can you imagine whack-jobs like Geert Wilders saying such a thing? Obviously, Guantanamo Bay must be what drove Ms. Pauling to this -- I mean, what else could it be?
The Bishops -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:10:00 -0400)
It is my impression that the U.S. Catholic bishops have not been in any kind of intense deal-making mode with Congress or the White House this time around, deeming it all too dangerous. For many bishops and the conference in D.C., the stakes are human life and my impression is that they will be driving that reality home this weekend and through the yes-or-no-band-aid (as a Pelosi deputy described next week) endgame.
Some Purge -- By: Ramesh Ponnuru (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:51:46 -0400)
David Frum writes: “Two years ago, I published a book on conservative reform that urged conservatives to pay more attention to the social costs of obesity. Those lines prompted National Review’s book reviewer to ceremonially drum me out of the conservative movement.” Frum has made this claim on a few occasions. So here are the closing words in that review: “I’ve been tough on some of Frum’s ideas, in the interest of furthering the necessary conversation that he is trying to start. Our cupboard is nearly bare, and too few conservatives have noticed it. David Frum can’t restock it by himself.” Pretty savage, huh? Other lines from that review are quoted to this day on the Amazon page for Frum’s book.
Frum is a smart guy from whom I have learned a lot—and he can feel free to use that blurb on his next Amazon page. He is right to tell conservatives that they need to learn from criticism instead of reacting with angry pride. I do wish he would learn this lesson himself; it would do his efforts to reform conservatism a world of good.
I hear this evening secondhand that the White House and Pelosi are focusing are 11 Democrats who are in question. Stupak not included, as he well knows now.
One source who has been active in the fight all along says of the Dems: "They are really pushing the inevitability narrative hard." The source adds: I truly believe that the president planned all along to delay his trip - as an attempt to build momentum."
Republicans oppose President Obama's health-care reform effort for many reasons: It will cost too much, it's "socialist," it's big government at its worst. But they are letting Stupak and his fellow antiabortion Democrats lead on that issue. And the more the GOP ignores abortion and focuses on economic populism -- taking up the "tea party" cause -- the more the party risks leaving crucial votes behind in November. . . .
The next few months of candidate recruitment and messaging will decide whether 2010 is a 1994 moment. The Republican Party seems to have a political advantage today; the February Washington Post-ABC News poll showed striking gains for the GOP in earning the public's trust over the past year. But it's not yet clear whether that advantage can translate into electoral success in November. The social-conservative, antiabortion engine combined with an electrified smaller-government, low-tax movement has the momentum. It's Republicans' chance to grab it.
They just need to remind people that theirs is still the pro-life party. If, in fact, it is.
Thank goodness for the many Republicans -- staff and all -- who are, in fact, holding the line, especially right now, in this health-care fight. Bart Stupak -- God bless him -- is not alone. (Have you listened to John Boehner lately?)
At a breakfast meeting with reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor this morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that he could vote for a health care bill that included insurance coverage for abortion.
TWS: Senator, progressive Rev. Jim Wallis recently said that including abortion provisions in health care reform would kill health care reform. One, do you agree with that assessment? And, two, will you vote for a health care bill that covers abortion?
Senator Reid: Does what with abortion?
TWS: Covered it--provided insurance coverage for abortion.
Senator Reid: Well, first of all abortion is an important issue, very emotional issue, but we have to recognize that unintended pregnancies is where we should focus our attention. Unintended pregnancies wind up--half of them wind up in abortions, so everything we can do to limit the number of unintended pregnancies helps with the number of abortions. I think that it's very obvious we don't do enough in that regard. I've worked--I don't want to boast, but I think I've been the leader if not one of the leaders in promoting legislation dealing with contraceptives. Hillary Clinton was a tremendous asset in that regard, and it's kind of unusual with someone with my standing about abortion to be awarded in Nevada a legislator of the year award by Planned Parenthood. So I think I'm heading in the right direction.
Reid didn't answer the question directly, so after the meeting concluded, THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked him again if he could support a national health care bill that provided coverage for abortion. "I could," Reid replied.
All too often, Europe gets lost in diplomatic protocol. The issues up for discussion between US and EU leaders can become secondary. Most seem primarily concerned with who gets to shake Obama's hand first or who will sit next to him during the meal. Such questions are debated for weeks among protocol-obsessed bureaucrats in Brussels. At the Madrid summit, the unassuming Belgian Herman van Rompuy, who has been president of the European Council since December, was insistent that he be the first to greet Obama. But advisers to Zapatero, the Spanish host, refused. After all, the Spanish prime minister also currently holds the position of "president of the European Council."
...A compromise was eventually found. Zapatero would get to say the first "hi," Rompuy would then be able to sit to the right of Obama at dinner. But soon enough, other EU top brass voiced complaints. The seat planned for Rompuy was actually a privilege reserved for European Commission President Manuel Jos Barroso, who is in third place on the current scale of most important people in Brussels.
And what about Catherine Ashton, the EU's new "high representative for foreign and security policy"? Her role at the summit hadn't even been addressed.
1. I would have your Member’s schedule pretty clear for next weekend. They will either be here or exhausted (or both).
2. I continue to encourage all of you not to get into debates about process and to try and persuade your Member not to get into process arguments either. At this point, we have to just rip the band-aid off and have a vote -- up or down; yes or no? Things like reconciliation and what the rules committee does is INSIDE BASEBALL. People who try and start arguments about process on this are almost always against the actual policy substance too, often times for purely political reasons.
3. Finally, I encourage you to study the final attached slide (#14) and give some thought to what your plan is post-vote, especially during Easter Work Period. If your Member is a yes, or might be a yes, I would lay the groundwork for some events to highlight the reforms that will quickly become law - no more donut hole, dependent children covered until 26, insurance access for those with pre-existing conditions, etc.
Dem Rep Mike McMahon of New York met yesterday with a top SEIU official and told him he’s likely to vote No, the official tells me. The official: Mike Fishman, president of SEIU 32bj, the largest property workers union in the country, with 120,000 members in eight states.
Fishman told McMahon that the union would not support him if he voted No — and suggested the hunt for a primary or third-party challenger would follow.
“He let us know he’s not supportive of the health care plan,” Fishman says. “We’ve let him know that we can’t support somebody who doesn’t support it.”
“We are going to begin talking to other unions about finding someone else for that seat,” Fishman continued.
The SEIU leader later says, “This is the most important issue on everyone’s plate. We’re sending a message to Democrats: If you can’t support this, we can’t support you.”
But one lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, quoted Pelosi as saying to her caucus: “I’m hearing that you’d like to move sooner rather than later. Is that the will of the body?”
“There was a broad shout of ‘Yes!’” the lawmaker said. “I think everybody understands. We need to move on, we’ve got other things we’ve got to do, this is our last, best chance, let’s get it in front of the bodies and have appropriate votes and if it passes, it passes, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”
Holbrooke Fumbles Afghanistan -- By: Michael Rubin (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:23:48 -0400)
For all the talk about Obama's Afghanistan dream team, it's amazing how frequently Obama's head Afghanistan adviser Richard Holbrooke is stumbling. Seehere.
I used to think that David Chase and the final scene of The Sopranos had assumed ownership of this song for all time. Might have to reconsider that.
An Encouraging Word? -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:07:48 -0400)
One close watcher of the health-care debate reminds me: "it has been 78 days since the Senate passed the bill, and not a single one of the 39 Democrats who voted against the House bill have yet publicly committed to support the Senate bill."
The Great Toyota Hoax -- By: Iain Murray (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:02:06 -0400)
I'm not well known for speaking up for hybrid cars, but the Toyota Prius should be able to sue on this one. A widely-reported incident about a Prius accelerating out of control has been shown to be a possibly malicious hoax.Conservative investigative journalist Mike Fumento has the goods.Most tellingly, he points out that the media should have been asking the simple questions that would have revealed the hoax instantly, but failed to do so because of the narrative they've bought into.No wonder old media is dying.
I assume you already know this as the father of a young child, but everyone can see Snuffy now. Apparently, this has been the case for 25 years.
And from another reader:
Man, you're dating yourself.
Sesame Street decided that having Snuffy invisible sent some kind of wierd message like grow ups won't believe children ... okay I'm lost already. Bottom line is the Snuffy is visible now.
Probably very few of your readers are under 5 years old and we all get the reference. Made me laugh.
re: 'They Just Want This Over' -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:41:58 -0400)
This is the most consistent list of pro-life Dems (well, and one Republican) who could cause some trouble for the Rahm-it-through Dem strategy:
Anh “Joseph” Cao (LA-02) Jerry Costello (IL-12) Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-03) Joe Donnelly (IN-02) Steve Driehaus (OH-01) Brad Ellsworth (IN-08) Marcy Kaptur (OH-09) Dale Kildee (MI-05) Dan Lipinski (IL-03) Jim Oberstar (MN-08) Bart Stupak (MI-01) Charlie Wilson (OH-06)
Longer lists include:
Jason Altmire (PA-04) Marion Berry (AR-01) John Boccieri (OH-16) Chris Carney (PA-10) Henry Cuellar (TX-28) Baron Hill (IN-09) Paul Kanjorski (PA-11) Alan Mollohan (WV-01) Solomon Ortiz (TX-27) Earl Pomeroy (ND-AL) Nick Rahall (WV-03)
That said, I've heard varying things all week about how strong these guys are. If you want to encourage some members to push back against the White House, these are the names I'd focus on.
The fact that Obama has delayed his trip to the Pacific is actually good news. Every time the president has changed his travel plans at the last minute, he has lost the issue for which he changed his plans. Whether it was the Olympics . . . or the Coakley campaign, the president changed his travel plans, liberals thought that it meant he was on the cusp of victory, and then the president’s agenda went over the precipice.
'They Just Want This Over' -- By: Robert Costa (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:31:12 -0400)
Sitting in an airport, on his way home to Michigan, Rep. Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat, is chagrined. “They’re ignoring me,” he says, in a phone interview with National Review Online. “That’s their strategy now. The House Democratic leaders think they have the votes to pass the Senate’s health-care bill without us. At this point, there is no doubt that they’ve been able to peel off one or two of my twelve. And even if they don’t have the votes, it’s been made clear to us that they won’t insert our language on the abortion issue.”
According to Stupak, that group of twelve pro-life House Democrats -- the “Stupak dozen” -- has privately agreed for months to vote ‘no’ on the Senate’s health-care bill if federal funding for abortion is included in the final legislative language. Now, in the debate’s final hours, Stupak says the other eleven are coming under “enormous” political pressure from both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). “I am a definite ‘no’ vote,” he says. “I didn’t cave. The others are having both of their arms twisted, and we’re all getting pounded by our traditional Democratic supporters, like unions.”
Stupak says he also doesn’t trust the “Slaughter solution,” a legislative maneuver being bandied about on Capitol Hill as a way to pass the Senate bill in the House without actually voting on it. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” he says. “I don’t have a warm-and-fuzzy feeling about what I’m hearing.”
Stupak notes that his negotiations with House Democratic leaders in recent days have been revealing. “I really believe that the Democratic leadership is simply unwilling to change its stance,” he says. “Their position says that women, especially those without means available, should have their abortions covered.” The arguments they have made to him in recent deliberations, he adds, “are a pretty sad commentary on the state of the Democratic party.”
What are Democratic leaders saying? “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue -- come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”
If Obamacare passes, Stupak says, it could signal the end of any meaningful role for pro-life Democrats within their own party. “It would be very, very hard for someone who is a right-to-life Democrat to run for office,” he says. “I won’t leave the party. I’m more comfortable here and still believe in a role within it for the right-to-life cause, but this bill will make being a pro-life Democrat much more difficult. They don’t even want to debate this issue. We’ll probably have to wait until the Republicans take back the majority to fix this.”
“Throughout this debate, even when the House leaders have acknowledged us, it’s always been in a backhanded way,” he laments. “I’m telling the others to hold firm, and we’ll meet next week, but I’m disappointed in my colleagues who said they’d be with us and now they’re not. It’s almost like some right-to-life members don’t want to be bothered. They just want this over.”
And the politics of the issue are pretty rough. “This has really reached an unhealthy stage,” Stupak says. “People are threatening ethics complaints on me. On the left, they’re really stepping it up. Every day, from Rachel Maddow to the Daily Kos, it keeps coming. Does it bother me? Sure. Does it change my position? No.”
UPDATE:
Congressman Stupak called NRO to clarify his comments. In recent conversations, he says that some Democratic members, not Democratic leaders, have been citing a Congressional Budget Office report that says his amendment will cost $500 million to implement over ten years. “I did not mean to infer that the leaders are using financial arguments to deny my amendment,” he says. “We have spoken about the CBO and my amendment’s costs, but the leadership has not said that it costs too much money. My point here was that if cost is becoming a concern about my amendment, then that should be addressed, since this is the sanctity of life we’re talking about. We can address those costs. Cost should not be a reason to deny my amendment.”
Brooks & Obama Cont'd -- By: Jonah Goldberg (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:49:31 -0400)
David Brooks has written another column insisting that he knows the real Barack Obama and the partisans on both sides of the culture political war are too locked into their positions and ghettoized worldviews to see the man as he really is. The column combines two recurring themes of Brooks's (1) The culture war should just go away and (2) Obama is the only reasonable guy in town. But he takes it to a new level by lamenting how unsensible the country is:
In a sensible country, people would see Obama as a president trying to define a modern brand of moderate progressivism. In a sensible country, Obama would be able to clearly define this project without fear of offending the people he needs to get legislation passed. But we don’t live in that country. We live in a country in which many people live in information cocoons in which they only talk to members of their own party and read blogs of their own sect. They come away with perceptions fundamentally at odds with reality, fundamentally misunderstanding the man in the Oval Office.
Brooks is turning out to be like Big Bird to Obama's Snuffaluffagus! He's the only one who can see the real Obama and nobody believes him.
I have been involved in elections for over two decades as a lawyer and an election official, but the democratic process never ceases to impress me. We take so much for granted in this country where our elections, despite lots of complaints, usually run very smoothly without violence or the many other problems and threats that occur in too many other places around the world. For those constant naysayers who criticized George Bush and our policies in Iraq, many of whom have disparaged the very idea that democracy could take root there, I have a report on the Iraq election from on the ground. Perhaps Iraq’s fledgling democracy won’t last and the violence of Islamic jihad will eventually overwhelm it. But then, a lot of people didn’t think democracy would flourish in Germany or Japan either after the end of World War II.
A good friend of mine has been in Iraq for several months helping them get ready for the election that just occurred in a largely peaceful manner. She sent me an email this week about her experiences that I reproduce below. I have only changed information that might identify her or other members of her team that could endanger their security; I also added explanations in parentheses for some of the military acronyms:
Just returned from election coverage. It was a long week with lots of movements. We had 4 people on my election monitoring team -- one guy from _________, another American guy who works in _______, the area that we were observing in ______ province, an Iraqi-American interpreter and me. All told, with the military and the personal protection team there were ## people. The election went very well -- it was well organized and well run. The Independent High Electoral Commission went to great lengths to make everything transparent and to prevent fraud. Political party and NGO observers were in heavy attendance during all phases of the election, which I think significantly helped keep most of the possible fraud in check. It was very moving to see nascent democracy in action.
Three things stood out for me: first, the number of women who were voting, especially young women; second, seeing the sea of ballot boxes full of voted ballots waiting to be counted; and third, the number of families bringing in their children just to stick their fingers in the ink and to teach them about voting and democracy - the kids were so proud - gives me hope for this country. Many of the women were thrilled to see me and smiled or came over to grab my hand. Seeing the old folks come and vote was also pretty cool.
We rode out to the outer tier of the polling sites with the military in MRAPS (armored personnel carriers). We were in a very conservative area, but people were in general very friendly. We were constantly surrounded by kids and the military was concerned about them possibly throwing rocks at us. They didn't, but at one site a couple of kids (around age 8) showed up with AK-47s. They shadowed us for a while, but ran away when our protection detail stared them down.
We had intelligence that Al-Qaeda was going to try to blow things up using female searchers wearing suicide vests inside the female search tents -- so being the only woman on the team, I refused to go in the tents to be searched. The Iraqi polling place security didn't seem to have a problem with that, thank goodness, but later I heard that the Independent High Electoral Commission had issued a letter stating that there were to be no searches of international observer teams. We heard of no actual attempts at such a plan, so it must have been bad intel -- we took it very seriously though.
We heard of other elaborate plans using smoke bombs, gas and vehicles equipped with VBIEDS (vehicle-born improvised explosive devices); also no sign of that plan during the course of the day. There were bombs set off in several places in Baghdad and a few other cities -- mostly small (tragically, "small" meaning less than 50 people were killed) -- and some occasional IDF (Indirect Fire).
We wore body armor and helmets, though took off the helmets inside the polling centers. Lists of all the eligible voters for a polling center were posted outside. Voters went through security searches then stopped at a central registration desk to show ID and sign the registration book. They were provided the correct ballot, which was stamped with the official seal, and took their ballot into a secret booth equipped with a pen to mark the ballot. Instructions on how to vote and lists of the candidates by number were posted behind the booths. (There were about 6,500 candidates nation-wide and they were each assigned through a lottery system a number on the ballot.) Once voted, voters took their ballots out to the ballot box, first sticking their index finger in indelible ink and then depositing their ballots.
We went out everyday from March 3rd through the 8th -- visited polling sites and the warehouse where they took all the ballot boxes after the election for tabulation. It was great to see so many people so proud that they voted by raising their ink-stained fingers at us in victory. Unfortunately, the last day we were out on coverage was very sad, as two soldiers were killed in an MRAP rollover. It is bad enough to lose troops from enemy fire -- sickening to lose them because of accidents and safety lapses. Anyway, other than that, it was a great experience.
I guess the ACLU and the League of Women Voters must not have heard that the Iraqi voters were going to have to show an ID to vote since they didn’t file any lawsuits to stop that commonsense requirement.
My hat is also off to my friend’s husband and the rest of her family for letting her go overseas into a potentially very dangerous situation to try to help the Iraqis put together something we have now had for well over 200 years -- a republic. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, let’s hope they can keep it.
Bloomberg Companion Taylor Considering Senate Run -- By: Daniel Foster (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:39:59 -0400)
The latest through the revolving door of New Yorkers considering challenges to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D.) is Diana Taylor -- former state banking superintendent and lady-friend of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Multiple sources confirm that Taylor was approached by some Washington-based Republicans privately to gauge whether she had an interest in making a play for the seat, which is already being looked at by a string of Republicans -- all men.
It wasn't immediately clear who made the ask, and officials at the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee couldn't immediately be reached. Neither could Taylor, who the sources said hasn't yet closed the door on the possibility.
Taylor is a registered Republican and has a lengthy resume in public service, including serving twice in the Pataki administration -- first as deputy secretary and then as banking superintendent starting in 2003. She later went on to the Wolfensohn Family Foundation, where she has spent the past few years working on global issues.
Prior to the banking superintendent post, she was involved in coordinating the state authorities for Gov. Pataki -- at a time when the World Trade Center rebuilding process was just beginning.
Hoyer Rules by the Rule of Rules -- By: Daniel Foster (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:29:15 -0400)
Starting at about minute five, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) ducks and dodges a question from Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R., Va.) as to whether the Democrats will use the Slaughter Rule to pass the Senate bill.
Also, an open invitation to any reader who wants to count the number of times Hoyer uses the word "rules" over the course of the entire clip.
UPDATE: That was quick. From a reader:
"Rules"
Hoyer used Rules (Committee), rule or rules 16 times.
Methinks he doth protest too much.
Generalissimo Franco Is Still Dead . . . -- By: Mark Krikorian (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:13:28 -0400)
. . . and so is amnesty. Yesterday's White House meetings on amnesty resulted in more of the same vacuous generalities. Lindsey Graham is still the only Republican senator willing to sign on, and he said that would come to an end if the Dems try to push health care via reconciliation. And if I were with one of the pro-amnesty groups, I wouldn't be especially heartened by the president's anodyne statement about the meetings:
Today I met with Senators Schumer and Graham and was pleased to learn of their progress in forging a proposal to fix our broken immigration system. I look forward to reviewing their promising framework, and every American should applaud their efforts to reach across party lines and find commonsense answers to one of our most vexing problems. I also heard from a diverse group of grassroots leaders from around the country about the growing coalition that is working to build momentum for this critical issue. I am optimistic that their efforts will contribute to a favorable climate for moving forward. I told both the Senators and the community leaders that my commitment to comprehensive immigration reform is unwavering, and that I will continue to be their partner in this important effort.
That's it -- no deadline, no timetable, no nothing. He's "pleased to learn" and "looking forward to reviewing" and "heard from a diverse group" and is "optimistic." That and four dollars will get you a cup of coffee.
And in fact, the White House’s public nods toward immigration reform in recent days could be intended, in part, to keep Latino members from breaking out in full-scale revolt over the health care bill’s treatment of undocumented workers.
Kaus Campaign Update -- By: Mark Krikorian (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:31:27 -0400)
Mickey Kaus has been busy getting the 65 (!) signatures he needs to get on the primary ballot against Boxer, as he relates in interviews with RealClearPolitics and the indispensable Beverly Hills Weekly. Republicans are in trouble if the Dems ever start taking his advice -- so let's hope he loses!
Our Race: American -- By: Mark Krikorian (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:10:04 -0400)
I was glad to see my friend Hans von Spakovsky explain the need for truthful answers on the census. (This was in response to my earlier posts here and here.) This is why I've made clear that you should not lie on your census form by, for instance, answering "Klingon" for your race, or "Guamanian" or "Chamorro" if you're not, in fact, Guamanian or Chamorro, as stupid and unjustifiable as such a question is.
Nor is the form overall especially onerous. It's one of the shortest ever, and no one's going to get the long form, with its questions about indoor plumbing and the like, because it's been replaced by the American Community Survey, which is an ongoing survey of a sample of the population. Filling out the census is your responsibility as an American -- do it.
Nor, while we're on the subject, do I have any problem with the letter we all got announcing that the census form was on its way. The Bureau's responsibility is to count everyone, and if they have good reason to think such letters (or even Super Bowl ads) are likely to help, so be it.
And finally, before I get to the main point of Hans's post, I think it's important to note that the number-crunchers at the Census Bureau are highly trained professionals with skills much in demand in the private sector, and we're lucky to have them working for us. It's not like they sat around at a staff meeting one day and said, "Hey, why don't we to ask Americans what 'race' they are?" Congress tells the Census Bureau what to do and ought to be the sole focus of anyone's ire. This is why Hans is completely correct in writing "The only real answer to this problem is for Congress to prohibit the Census Bureau from collecting such information and to make all government programs (and the reapportionment process) explicitly race-neutral."
But Congress isn't going to do that on its own. Our contemporary system of race laws is both stupid and evil, and thus supported by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. That's why it's necessary for citizens to come up with imaginative ways to register their disgust with the whole immoral concept of race laws and, if possible within the law, make them unworkable. And the decennial census is an ideal opportunity to do so, since it's one of the few civic rites where participation is almost universal.
As Hans pointed out, 13 USC 221 says "Whoever . . . willfully gives any answer that is false, shall be fined not more than $500." First of all, answering Question 9 by checking "Some other race" and writing in "American" is not false and therefore not a violation of the law. But if the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia disagrees, he just needs to call me and I'll be happy to turn myself in. If I lost, the $500 fine would come back to me 100-fold in a book contract; more importantly, simply shining a light on the utterly specious nature of our race laws would ring their death knell.
For example: the census considers Korean and Pakistani and Guamanian to be distinct races -- not ethnic groups, but "races," as evidenced by Question 9, which says "Other Asian -- Print race, for example, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Pakistani, Cambodian, and so on." If "Pakistani" -- a political/religious identity invented in 1934 -- is a "race," then "American" is a race. What's more, if these are "races," then so are Jamaican, and Italian, and Mixtec. In other words, apart from any questions of constitutionality or morality, the government's concept of "race" is simply gibberish, and I dare the Justice Department to try to defend it in court.
So the four "official" minority designations we now take for granted were essentially made up by civil servants preparing questionnaires for government contractors. This then led to an almost comical procession of groups trying to get on the gravy train. Hasidic Jews petitioned the Small Business Administration for participation in minority set-asides, but were rejected as a religious group. Then Asian Indians petitioned, and were accepted, bringing the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in their wake. Later, an Indonesian woman, initially rejected, finally mastered the lingo and argued in her appeal that Indonesian Americans "have suffered economic deprivation" and the "chronic effects of discriminatory practices for a very long time" -- this despite the fact that there were only a handful of Indonesian immigrants in the U.S., and they were wealthier and better educated than native-born Americans. Iranians, however, were rejected, apparently because "the chronic effects of discriminatory practices" stopped at the Pakistani border; Graham wryly remarks that "the SBA's ethnocultural line-drawing at the Khyber Pass, coming from an agency not noted for this expertise, made no sense in terms either of Middle Eastern cultural anthropology or of American history and law."
So for next week, remember: Question 9 on your census form -- check "Some other race"and write in "American." You're doing nothing wrong. And you may help set something right.
To begin: I really like Pat Buchanan. I think he’s a fine writer and a sometimes brilliant polemicist.
Also: I really hate Pat Buchanan. He sometimes writes things that make me clutch my head in dismay and disbelief.
Buchanan’s on again about industrial protectionism, one of his oddball hobby horses. Buchanan’s been delightfully indignant about the Wall Street bailouts, but he fails to appreciate that what he proposes for American heavy industry is precisely the same thing he opposes for the American financial industry, economically and morally: a giant wealth transfer from taxpayers and consumers to politically favored owners and producers. Over time, Buchanan-style protectionism is much more expensive than bank bailouts, and it’s premised on even worse thinking.
A few things that always get left out of the “Loss of American Manufacturing” sermon:
1.True, the United States did enjoy an enormous edge over such industrial powerhouses as Japan and Germany in the 1950s. Maybe that was due to the efforts of ingenious economic central-planners in Washington under the administration of such industrial super-geniuses as Truman and Ike. More likely it was due to the fact that there was basically not a single non-military industrial facility more significant than a pickle-canning plant left standing in Japan or Germany after World War II, that their work forces had been decimated, and that they had been occupied, flattened, partitioned, and, in Japan’s case, nuked twice. These things are hard on the manufacturing base. The United States exited World War II having largely escaped the domestic horrors visited on Europe and Asia, its manufacturing infrastructure amped up for wartime production but unscathed by the fighting, and we basically had the field to ourselves for a few years while everybody else recovered. Which is to say, the American manufacturing edge in the 1950s was not the work of the Commerce Department, but the unintended work of Hitler and Tojo. But the rest of the world’s recovery was inevitable -- and that was a good thing! Just as China’s getting richer today is a good thing for China, for the United States, and for the world. It’s one of the reasons that China is now the fourth-largest market in the world of U.S. exports. We do high-end goods, and it’s hard to sell them to Third World dirt farmers.
2.But even as the rest of the world catches up, the United States remains a manufacturing powerhouse. As Bruce Bartlett helpfully points out, production of “real goods,” i.e., manufacturing, accounts for a slightly larger share of GDP today than it did in the allegedly golden days of the 1940s or 1950s. And that’s a larger share of a substantially bigger economy.
3.What was really lost in the postwar era was not a wealth of manufacturing jobs, but a surfeit of farm jobs. Before World War II, one in four Americans lived on a farm, and one in five Americans worked on a farm. (And those numbers already were in steep decline; after the Civil War, about 80 percent of the population had been employed in agriculture, about 40 percent in 1900.) A great number of the people working in low-end service-sector jobs today would not have been earning a comfortable living in a factory in the 1950s -- they’d have been working on farms. You know what farm laborers the world over have in common? They’d really rather do something else, because being a farmhand is hard and insecure, and the pay is terrible. The general crappiness of farmhand life is the force that built Chicago in the 1920s just like it’s building Bombay today. Romantics lament the loss of farming jobs; people who work on farms don’t, and they’ll travel hundreds of miles on foot to get away from them.
4.True, the United States imports a lot of stuff, particularly stuff made by low-wage, low-skilled workers. Everybody’s got a comparative advantage, and sweatshops aren’t ours. I can live with that. But here’s a shocker: The majority of the stuff we import is not consumer goods. The majority of what we import is stuff we use for manufacturing. As Daniel Ikenson reports, as recently as 2006, 55 percent of our imports were industrial components, i.e.stuff that goes into our factories as inputs and comes out as products. Ikenson: “Meanwhile, U.S. factories remain the world's most prolific, accounting for more than 20 percent of the world's added manufacturing value. By comparison, Chinese plants account for about 8 percent. And manufacturing is thriving in large measure because of international trade. Manufacturing exports and imports hit records in 2006.”
5.Finally, I scratch my head in wonder when Buchanan writes: “How many know that every modern nation that rose to world power did so by sheltering and nurturing its manufacturing and industrial base -- from Britain under the Acts of Navigation to 1850, to protectionist America from the Civil War to the Roaring Twenties, to Bismarck’s Germany before World War I, to Stalin’s Russia, to postwar Japan, to China today?” I’m going to go ahead and take the bold position that Bismarck and Stalin are not my top picks for economic-policy insight. How did that central planning work out for postwar Britain or Depression-era America? Anybody want Japan’s sclerotic economy? The jury’s still out on China, but I suspect that in ten years the world’s awe of Beijing is going to sound silly.
6. American workers have some legitimate beefs, to be sure. But we’re mostly unhappy because we have radically higher expectations than our parents and grandparents did. Higher expectations are a good thing, too -- a very American thing -- but they have to be taken in a realistic context.
On reports that the Senate parliamentarian has said that the House must pass the Senate bill and the president must sign it into law before it can be changed through reconciliation:
Well, if it is so, then it's huge news. It means that the mountain that Pelosi has been looking at has become a cliff. And this is why:
House members don't like the Senate bill. They only want to approve it if they are guaranteed it will be amended.
But if the ruling that we heard is actually going to be . . . that means they [House Democrats] are going to have to accept the Senate bill as is, watch it signed into law, watch a . . . ceremony at the White House where the champagne is popped, backs are slapped, hats thrown in the air because [for] the first time in 100 years you have achieved universal health care -- and then expect that after that, the Senate will go back and do a reconciliation which will tear the Senate apart [with an] unusual procedure, extremely divisive, in order to introduce amendments [on measures in the Senate bill] that the Senate likes and then have to strip out -- in order to appease the House!
Now, if you believe all of that, you require a suspension of disbelief about [equal to] what I experienced when I watched Peter Pan [fly] at the age of seven. . . .
And there is only a single exit here. And that is if the vice president overrules the parliamentarian, which he can.
But if he does that, that's not a nuclear option. That's a thermonuclear option. That's Krakatoa. That's 100 megatons.
That will be a catastrophe if it is seen that the bill is pushed through by overruling a ruling of the neutral parliamentarian and passing what would otherwise be illegal.
Remarkably, DOJ has had nothing to say so far about the government’s big victory in yesterday’s Pledge of Allegiance case (a case briefed and argued by Bush DOJ officials).Might that tell you something significant about the values and priorities of Eric Holder’s DOJ?
Frank Gaffney, the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, is challenging Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, to a policy debate.
In a new letter, Gaffney sets the stakes. He highlights his interpretation of Norquist’s positions on numerous issues ranging from the Patriot Act (opposes) and closing Gitmo (supports) to trying KSM in NYC (supports) and and immigration (open borders). He also criticizes Norquist for “outreach to individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in the name of GOP ‘inclusiveness.’”
“You have claimed that those who disagreed with you on these recommendations were ‘scaremongering,’ ‘racists’ and ‘bigots,’” Gaffney writes. “It has been troubling to me that your policy preferences and efforts to advance them may have contributed to a serious diminution of the amount and quality of attention given to these and related subjects in the Conservative Action Project’s Mount Vernon Statement, the Conservative Political Action Conference’s program and the choices available to respondents as part of the development of the Contract From America.”
He continues: “It was, therefore, heartening to me to learn of the enthusiasm you have expressed together with The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel for the idea of debate as a means whereby arguments can be ‘tested and honed.’Rarely has it been more necessary than now, in the run-up to a potentially pivotal national election, to have a rigorous evaluation of the sorts of ideas you espouse and promote with respect to our national security and their suitability for American conservatives and Republicans.
“Accordingly, I formally challenge you to a public debate about those arguments in a mutually agreeable forum.I believe this should take place at the earliest possible moment, given the importance of sorting out whether your policy recommendations should be adopted or rejected by the Republican Party and/or the conservative movement. Knowing of your commitment to public debate, I hope you will promptly accept this invitation.”
According to London’s Sunday Telegraph, the president’s decision to not welcome British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last March with the customary press conference and State Dinner was not a result of a deliberate slight, rather POTUS was tired.
Enjoyed your column today. It reminded of the title of the third sequel to "Friday the 13th," which was 1984's "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter." Since that cathartic crescendo of the saga of Jason Voorhees, we have seen:
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986) Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) Jason X (2001) Freddy vs. Jason (2003) Friday the 13th (2009) Friday the 13th: Part 2 (2011)
So I look forward, as do you I'm sure, with some apprehension to the eventual release of "Obamacare Takes Manhattan."
Pelosi: 'We Will Pass the Senate Bill' -- By: Daniel Foster (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:47:34 -0400)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) today acknowledged that comments from the Senate parliamentarian precludes the House from passing reconciliation fixes to health-care without first passing the Senate bill. Pelosi told reporters she will do just that:
"The bills that have passed, ours with 220 in the House, theirs with 60 in the Senate, we’ll be acting upon the Senate bill with changes that were in the House bill reflected in the reconciliation. So in order to have the Senate bill be the basis and build upon it with the reconciliation, you have to pass the Senate bill, or else you're talking about starting from scratch. So we will pass the Senate bill. Once we pass it, the President signs it or doesn't, it’s - people would rather he waited until the Senate acted, but the Senate Parliamentarian, as you have said, said in order for them to do a reconciliation based on the Senate bill, it must be signed by the President.”
It is looking increasingly likely that Pelosi will employ the “Slaughter Rule,” a complex legislative maneuver that could allow the House to avoid a direct up-or-down vote on the Senate bill.
In a conference call with reporters, including NRO, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) commented on the House's plan.
“It doesn’t solve their political problem,” McConnell said of the maneuver. “The Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, Gator-Aid. . . . Every member of the House of Representatives who votes for the Senate bill will have voted for all these things.”
McConnell continued, saying the employment of the Slaughter Rule would at best reveal House Democrats as flip-floppers. “It’s not solvable. . . . And even if by some hook or crook or maneuver or parliamentary device some of [the special deals] will be removed, then the position they will be in is that they will have voted for these measures before they voted against them.”
“The reason all this arm-twisting and parliamentary maneuvers is going on is because people hate this bill,” McConnell said.
But CongressDaily reports that, despite the verbal guidance of the Senate parliamentarian that the reconciliation process cannot start until the Senate bill is passed by the House and signed into law, the House is undeterred in pursuing the rule as a means of passing health-care reform.
Rep. David Dreier (R., Calif.) ranking member of the House rules committee, said in a statement that “the Democratic Majority [sic] is further undermining the public's confidence in them by resorting to outlandish schemes like the Slaughter Solution. It seems nothing can convince them that they are headed down a dangerous path that flouts the will of the American people and the (small-d) democratic process.”
Liberals don't like getting political advice from conservatives. They especially won't like this advice: Obama needs to lose Congress.
A 'Strange' Exchange In Kentucky -- By: Robert Costa (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:20:29 -0400) Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s secretary of state, is trailing in polls behind physician Rand Paul (Ron Paul’s son) in the Bluegrass State’s GOP Senate primary. To try and generate some momentum, Grayson is putting his chips on national security, noting that such a strategy was “effective” for Sen. Scott Brown (R., Mass.) earlier this year. “This is the issue in Republican primaries,” he says.
This week, Grayson released a new web video calling Paul’s foreign-policy ideas “strange.” He then followed up with this website: RandPaulStrangeIdeas.com. “Rand is a lot slicker than his dad,” Grayson says. “He tries to avoid talking about national security, but it’s a weak issue for him. He lies about his views.” Grayson points to Paul’s stances on Gitmo, Iraq, and Afghanistan as examples.
While ready to hammer Paul the younger on national security, Grayson says he’s not entirely against the Paul-family brand of libertarian politics. Paul’s father, a Texas congressman and former presidential candidate, “is pretty accurate on economic stuff,” he says. Nonetheless, he still calls Rand “a radical.”
Paul, for his part, has been endorsed by Sarah Palin, Steve Forbes, and Dick Armey. He has also hit back at Grayson’s charges.
Is Foreign Ownership of Our Debt a Threat to the U.S.? -- By: Veronique de Rugy (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:20:26 -0400)
This is the question that economist Bruce Bartlett asks this morning over at Forbes. As with all his articles, Bartlett tackles an interesting issue. It's one where people have many preconceptions that are incorrect. As always, he does a terrific job at explaining the problem and its implications (especially since this time he refrains for saying that the only solution to our fiscal troubles is the implementation of a VAT without even reforming entitlement spending.)
First, let me say that foreigners own much less of our debt than you may think. I made this chart to show how much our debt "held by the public" is held by foreigners versus domestic investors.
Until the 1970s, Bartlett explains, foreigners owned less than 5 percent of our debt. Today, they own roughly 50 percent. That share is increasing as we can see in this chart.
Second, the Chinese own less of our debt than you may think. According to the Treasury Department, they own $894 billion out of the $3.6 trillion owned by foreigners. Bartlett argues that Chinese ownership is likely understated and is probably over $1 trillion.
But should we care that the Chinese or others own so much of our debt? Not really, Bartlett explains:
"The Chinese dilemma reminds me of a quip once made by economist John Maynard Keynes: "Owe your banker 1,000 and you are at his mercy; owe him 1 million and the position is reversed." (The quote can be found in his collected writings, vol. 24, p. 258.)"
It doesn't mean that we should be complacent about this increased foreign ownership of our debt. But, as long as the national debt is denominated in dollars, we are okay. To the extent that there is a risk it is the following: if foreign investors fear that the dollar will drop against their currency they could demand a higher interest rates as compensation, or they could insist that the Treasury issue bonds denominated in foreign currencies. This would be bad because it would shift all the foreign exchange risk to the taxpayer.
As Bartlett notes:
"While the U.S. Treasury has never issued bonds denominated in foreign currencies, it is conceivable that it could be forced to do so if the dollar falls sharply and foreign demand for U.S. bonds wanes. That will be the point at which our debt problem becomes more than theoretical and we are really on the road to national bankruptcy."
A Two-Decade Blunder -- By: Yuval Levin (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:42:57 -0400)
In the forthcoming issue of Commentary (and online now as a preview), Tevi Troy has a great overview of how the Democrats have found themselves in the mess they’re in on health care. As he very ably shows, there’s much more to it than a story of political miscalculation in the past year. Well worth your while.
About halfway through writing this column, I discovered I just don't want to talk about, read about, or hear about health-care reform anymore. I'm a huge fan of Real Clear Politicsand I check it everyday. But I get this vague feeling of nausea when I see that 70-80 percentof the columns are about health care. Health-care politics, health-care reconcilliation, health-care wonkery, health-care history, health care, health care, health care!I feel like Yosemite Sam with the coconuts (start at around 2:08):
That said, if you must read about health care -- particularly, if you must read non-NRO content -- then I think this should be the last thing you read for a while. Tevi Troy has written a monster, omnibus essay for Commentary on the history of health care as a political and policy issue.
The 'al Qaeda' Lawyers -- By: Jonah Goldberg (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:22:42 -0400)
Frankly, I don't quite get the controversy over the controversy. I just readUSA Today's andAndy's back and forth (linked below).Also, I listened to a conversation on the Diane Rehm show yesterday on the subject and there was near unanimity that Keep America Safe represented the return of Joe McCarthy. (And I have to say that if they put Brad Berenson on the panel for balance, he did no one, including himself, any favors. Which is too bad, because I like Berenson).
Anyway, was the Keep America Safe ad too strident? Maybe. Reasonable people can differ on that. But on the general question of whether it's permissible in a democratic society to criticize lawyers for the kinds of clients they take, I'm baffled as to how this suddenly became a serious debate. And on the question of whether it is legitimate to question the past clients of lawyers working in the Justice Department, all I can say is "huh?"
Take the first point. When did lawyers become this infallible priesthood of do-gooders? As a general rule, mob lawyers are somewhat less admirable than, say, first-amendment lawyers. Personal-injury lawyers understandably get less respect than civil-rights lawyers. I spent much of the 1990s listening to liberals like James Carville demonize dirty, filthy, "tobacco lawyers." Of course, honorable lawyers sometimes pick unsavory or unpopular clients on principle. I think reasonable people can debate the merits of those decisions. I think it ludicrous, however, to simply have a flat rule that any lawyer who represents any unpopular villain is heroic -- and beyond criticism -- for doing so. Just as I think it would be ludicrous to have a blanket policy of condemning as villainousany lawyer who represents any criminal. (And let us put aside the fundamental argument about whether al-Qaeda detainees are "criminals" in the conventional sense).
Then there's the twofoldissue of these lawyers working for DOJ and the administration keeping their identities a secret. How is this not a legitimate issue? I don't get it. As USA Today concedes, lawyers who defended al-Qaeda suspects need to recuse themselves from these matters. Everyone concedes that there are conflict of interest issues here. Are we to suddenly believe that Congress has no right to inquire about such things? Tell that to environmentalists who want lawyers for "polluters" kept out of the EPA. Seriously, has no one listened to Henry Waxman for the last 30 years? Do Obama's countless promises to be "transparent" have no validity when it comes to these lawyers? Why on earth would that be the case?
And yet, to listen to Holder's defenders, the people who ask these questions are being denounced as demagogues and (Joe) McCarthyites. This is coming from the same crowd that wanted to criminally prosecute Bush's lawyers? Spare me.
Is this really a standard the Left wants to establish? That policymaking lawyers inside the Justice Department will hence forth have a cloak of invisibility about their previous activities? That's going to be tough news for any number of left-wing activist groups come the next Republican administration.
Obama to Delay Asia Trip to Work on Health Care -- By: Daniel Foster (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:41:15 -0400)
President Obama will reportedly delay the beginning of his trip to Australia and Indonesia by three days, in order to devote more time to the reconsideration of the health-care bill.
The move signals that the White House -- already "all-in" on health-care -- believes a bill could reach Obama's desk this month.
The president’s international trip had grown into a frustration among many House Democrats, who complained privately to the White House that they were being forced to take a quick vote on health care so Mr. Obama and his family could leave on a trip to Indonesia next week.
The president agreed to delay his departure from March 18 to March 21, an administration official said, in an effort to show flexibility in the final push on health care legislation. The three-day delay effectively sets a new timetable for the House vote on the measure.
Australia, Delayed -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:02:40 -0400)
Breaking this morning: The president is officially postponing his trip next week for at least three days. It's all about health care. Unsurprisingly, he apparently has no interest in Caddell/Schoen advice.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its March 2010 employment data, revised its state employment numbers going back to 1990. The Buckeye Institute’s 2010 “State of the State” report [PDF] highlighted several sobering pieces of BLS employment data, but, according to these new numbers, the outlook for Ohio is even worse than we thought. Specifically, between January 1990 and January 2000, Ohio’s job market added 714,900 jobs, which was the 37th best in America. But between January 2000 and January 2010, Ohio’s job market lost 635,000 jobs -- the second-worst numbers in the country.
All told, Ohio had the third worst job market in America in the last twenty years. Only Rhode Island, Michigan, and Connecticut fared worse. (The Buckeye Institute’s original “State of the State” report had Ohio’s job market only sixth from the bottom.)
What’s worse, Ohio is fourth from the bottom in ratio of private jobs created to government jobs created. For every 1.19 private-sector jobs added to the state’s economy over those 20 years, Ohio added 1 government job, a performance outdone only by New Jersey and bottom-of-the-list regulars Connecticut and Michigan.
Looking at the state’s ten industry sectors, there are fewer jobs today than there were in January 1990 in five sectors: Mining & Logging; Construction; Manufacturing; Information; and Trade, Transportation & Utilities. Four more industry sectors have lost jobs since 2000: Financial Activities; Professional & Business Services; Leisure & Hospitality; and Other Services.
Only Education & Health Services -- the sector tied to government spending in K-12 schools, higher education, and health care -- has more jobs today than in 2000 or 1990.
Finally, when comparing states based on their labor policies, right-to-work states saw an average increase in jobs from 1990 to 2010 of 36 percent -- twenty points higher than the 16 percent seen in states that force workers to join a union. The bottom fifteen states in terms of job growth are all forced-unionization states, and 22 of the bottom 26 are. Ten of the top fifteen states have right-to-work laws. Given this troubling revision of BLS data, the issues raised in our report are more critical than ever. This new employment data, when seen in light of the high tax burden and the explosion of government worker compensation noted in our report (not to mention the state’s projected budget deficit of $4-8 billion), requires far bolder and more specific action than we have heard thus far from Ohio’s leaders -- and those seeking to lead us.
The question of the day is how this data will impact Ohio’s gubernatorial race. Conventional wisdom says the numbers support John Kasich’s narrative that Ted Strickland is not providing the leadership to turn Ohio around and that Kasich’s experience in balancing the federal budget is exactly what Ohio needs in a governor. Current polling supports this view.
The “but” here involves two pieces of baggage. First, the data strongly supports Strickland’s narrative that he inherited an enormous mess from the Republicans who had total control of state government from 1995 to 2006. He has a strong case -- government grew substantially more during those years than during his first term. Secondly, Strickland will work very hard to tie Kasich’s years at now-defunct Lehman to the financial crisis that hit America -- a “Blame Wall Street” move. This argument, although aided by Kasich’s refusal to release his pre-2008 tax returns, has thus far been undermined by news stories about the role Kasich played at Lehman. Fundamentally, Strickland runs the risk of looking like a governor who’s good at pointing fingers but not so good at providing solutions.
The bottom line: Things in Ohio will get more interesting as the months roll by.
-- Matt A. Mayer is president of the Buckeye Institute.
For Democrats to begin turning around their political fortunes there has to be a frank acknowledgement that the comprehensive health-care initiative is a failure, regardless of whether it passes. There are enough Republican and Democratic proposals -- such as purchasing insurance across state lines, malpractice reform, incrementally increasing coverage, initiatives to hold down costs, covering preexisting conditions and ensuring portability -- that can win bipartisan support. It is not a question of starting over but of taking the best of both parties and presenting that as representative of what we need to do to achieve meaningful reform. Such a proposal could even become a template for the central agenda items for the American people: jobs and economic development.
DOJ's al-Qaeda Lawyers Are Volunteers -- By: Andy McCarthy (Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:41:59 -0400)
Of all the causes to which they could have contributed their skills, they chose America's enemies -- who had no right to counsel in filing offensive lawsuits that, everyone knows, harm the war effort. That is the thrust of my op-ed in this morning's edition of USA Today. The newspaper's opposing view is here.
I have been deluged lately with requests asking me whether one has to answer all of the questions on the 2010 Census, particularly those about race and ethnic background. Like Mark Krikorian, I don’t like those questions and don’t think the U.S. government should be collecting that information -- its only use is to continue to separate us on racial grounds, for reapportionment purposes and for certain government programs.
Mark has said that he is going to answer “American” on the race question. I have always been tempted to answer “Native American,” since I was born and raised here. However, people need to understand that they may incur a legal liability if they use such answers or don’t answer questions at all.
In Article I, Section 2, the Constitution says that an “Enumeration” must be conducted every ten years “in such Manner as [Congress] shall by Law direct.” Congress has directed through a federal law that anyone who “refuses or willfully neglects…to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions” on the Census form can be fined $100 (13 U.S.C. § 221).If you deliberately give a false answer, you can be fined up to $500.
Although there are not a lot of reported prosecutions, this statutory requirement has been upheld by the courts as constitutional.There is even a 1970 court decision from Delaware holding that there is a separate violation for each question you don’t answer. So, on this year’s ten-question Census form, you could be fined as much $1,000 -- $5,000 if you refuse to answer or deliberately give false answers.If there was a mass refusal by millions of Americans to answer parts of the form -- like the race question -- the U.S. Justice Department would not have the resources to prosecute everyone who violated the law. But you could be prosecuted and fined, and there is a court decision from New York (which the Supreme Court refused to review) holding that a conviction for violating this law is valid even if there were other persons who also refused to fill out the form but were not prosecuted. (One curious exception to that: The liberal Ninth Circuit reversed a conviction when it was shown that the defendant might have been targeted due to his publicly held “dissident” view that the Census is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.)
Everyone should realize that if you don’t complete a Census form, you are violating federal law. The chances of actual prosecution may be remote, but it could happen.The only real answer to this problem is for Congress to prohibit the Census Bureau from collecting such information and to make all government programs (and the reapportionment process) explicitly race-neutral.
“Game on,” says Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, to National Review Online. “The Democrats are moving on reconciliation. They are revving up their machine, even though they don’t yet have the votes to pass the Senate bill in the House. This is their do-or-die moment. They know can’t let their members go home for Easter with this hanging out there.”
Ryan says that, come Monday, Democrats “will bring a shell piece of reconciliation legislation” to the budget committee. “The reconciliation process has to begin there,” he says. “Here’s what they’ll do: They will take the House health-care bill and mark it up so that it can become a reconciliation vehicle. Republicans will make runs at this via motions to instruct, but since we’re outnumbered, their package will get through the committee. Then they’ll send that shell of a bill to the House Rules Committee. The rules committee will then gut the budget committee’s reconciliation bill and drop in all of the deals that Speaker Pelosi arranges with members who vote for the Senate health-care bill in the House.” Those deals, he adds, “will be hard to scrutinize, and we may never know their full extent, since many of them will be orchestrated outside of health-care legislation.”
Regardless of how bad a reconciliation package looks, Ryan says it is the passage of the Senate bill in the House that troubles him the most. “The Senate parliamentarian made it clear today,” he says. “The Senate bill has to become law before reconciliation can be taken up in the Senate. Knowing this, the Democrats are doing whatever they can to convince House members to walk the plank. But let’s be very clear: If the Senate bill passes in the House, it’s not just some setup for reconciliation -- it’s a huge, new federal entitlement that’ll be signed into law.”
“To get that, they need to make promises to members about what’ll come next, so look for them to thread the needle on policy changes and abortion in the budget and rules committees,” Ryan says. “Reconciliation is a distraction for the Democratic leadership -- something to talk about with members while keeping their eye on the main prize, which is passing the Senate bill.”
The Roberts Kerfuffle -- By: Ramesh Ponnuru (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:30:59 -0400) Dahlia Lithwick writes that "the president has every right to criticize the court, and the justices have every right to appear annoyed." So far, so good. What's inappropriate, in her view, was not Obama's conduct or Alito's but rather Chief Justice Roberts's. She faults Roberts for "lobbing long-distance partisan attacks at Congress and the president" and lacking "the courage to insult" Obama to his face. So it's okay for justices to respond to criticism with facial expressions but not with words? How does that make any sense?
Ruth Marcus writes that Roberts is a "big crybaby" -- either for preferring not to be criticized in a forum where he cannot respond, or for responding later. She concludes that for the conservative justices to stay away from future State of the Union addresses would be "a mistake" -- although she identifies no reason for thinking that the justices have any duty to be there, nor even any good that their presence serves. She concludes, "If conservative justices boycott a Democratic president's State of the Union address, who, then, will be politicizing the court?" If by "politicizing the court" she means making the Court the subject of political controversy, then the answer is that both the president and the justices will have done so -- but by Marcus's own (correct) argument, that's alright, since "the court is and should be part of the conversation." If, on the other hand, by "politicizing the court" she means joining that conversation in some improper way, then the answer is that nobody will have done so; and she doesn't even try to explain why she holds otherwise.
Re: The Slaughter Solution -- By: Anthony Dick (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:27:36 -0400)
I'm surprised there hasn't beenmore constitutional outcry over the so-called "Slaughter Solution."As the Washington Examinerdescribes the proposal:
Each bill that comes before the House for a vote on final passage must be given a rule that determines things like whether the minority would be able to offer amendments to it from the floor. In the Slaughter Solution, the rule would declare that the House "deems" the Senate version of Obamacare to have been passed by the House. House members would still have to vote on whether to accept the rule, but they would then be able to say they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself.
The question here is whether the House can "deem" a bill to be passed without voting directly on it -- that is, without actually passing it. I think not.
Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution requires that "Every Bill whichshall have passedthe House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States" (emphasis added).
It seems that voting on a rule that deems a bill to be passed differs importantly from actually passing a bill. The difference is not just formalistic but deeply functional. A core purpose of the constitutional legislative process is to ensure that lawmakers are held accountable to the public. Their legislative voting record has to be clear, so that the electorate can make an informed decision on whether to reelect them. The Slaughter Solution is a piece of subterfuge designed specifically to short-circuit this purpose of electoral accountability, so that congressmen can "say they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself." The very attractiveness of the maneuver shows that it plays some role in insulating lawmakers from popular disapproval of their vote, and for that reason it is constitutionally noxious.
Just a few days after the European parliament punishes one euroskeptic MEP for being as rude to the EU Council's president--and to Belgium--as they both deserve, it's punishing another for making an awkward point or two. The Daily Telegraph has the details:
First, Nigel Farage, UKIP's leader in Strasbourg, was fined for describing EU President Herman Van Rompuy as having the "charisma of a damp rag" and the appearance of "a low-grade bank clerk". Now the Earl of Dartmouth has been asked to leave a debate for saying that for hot countries such as Greece and Cyprus to have an "Arctic Policy" was "as bizarre as the appointment of Baroness Ashton as the EU's high representative". Lord Dartmouth was taking part in a debate on policy towards the Arctic as the ice melts and sea lanes open up in an area until now not governed by international maritime law. Diana Wallis, the UK Liberal Democrat MEP who was chairing the debate, objected when Lord Dartmouth raised what he called the absurdity of southern European states being involved in any policy to do with the Arctic.
If you take the view that man-made climate change is a global threat that can indeed be headed off/minimized, then it is in fact easily possible to construct a rationale for Greece and Cyprus having some sort of Arctic policy. Nevertheless, it's not entirely bizarre to find it bizarre. That said, if anything is bizarre it's the appointment of Baroness Ashton as the EU's "High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy." A lifetime of patronage jobs (and a stint as a nuclear disarmament activist during the later Brezhnev era) is now, it seems, thought to be suitable training for such a magnificently titled role.
The real problem, of course, is that the EU parliament, a body noticeable mainly for the stupidity of its opinions, the greed of its representatives and the reluctance of voters to participate in its elections, just doesn't seem to get free speech.
For a reminder of a more robust approach, here's Frederick Forsyth writing in the Daily Express:
Over 200 years ago an outraged Lord Sandwich rose purple-faced in the House to shout at an opponent. “Wilkes, you will die either on the gallows or of the pox.” “That,” drawled John Wilkes without a pause, “must depend on whether I embrace your Lordship’s principles or your mistress.” Terribly rude but what a put-down. We should have more like that, not less.
The Sidecar Reconcilliation of the Slaughter Rule -- By: Jonah Goldberg (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:16:32 -0400)
I can't claim to have been following all of this parliamentary hootenanny too closely. But I've tried to a bit lately. At first, the Democrats' logic reminded me of Dewey Oxberger's (John Candy in Stripes) explanation of why he doesn't have to make his bunk:
"What are you doing? No, no... get off. Get off. See... you gotta make my bunk. See, we're in Italy. The guy on the top bunk, he's gotta make the guy on the bottom's bunk... he's gotta make his bed, all the time. See, it's in the regulations. See, if we were in Germany, I'd have to make yours. But we're in Italy, so you gotta make mine. [Shrugs] Regulations."
But I actually think that's too logical. I think the Democrats are going for what might be called the Fizzbin maneuver. It's all crystal clear:
Why Reconciliation is Necessary -- By: Stephen Spruiell (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:13:06 -0400)
Assuming the abortion language can't be fixed through reconciliation, the only reason the process is necessary is because the unions don't want to pay higher taxes on their "Cadillac" health plans. It really is that simple. If the Senate bill had exempted collectively bargained plans from the Cadillac tax the way Democrats wanted it to, then I think -- again, assuming they found a separate way to fix the abortion issue -- House Democrats would have rubber-stamped the Senate bill, the president would have signed it, and reconciliation would not now be necessary. So if Leader Reid does pursue reconciliation, let's not obscure the reasons in a blizzard of euphemistic talk about "fixes" and "tweaks": It's because the unions didn't want to pay higher taxes, and the Democrats obeyed their command.
It's Because They Don't Have a Plan -- By: Stephen Spruiell (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:40:22 -0400)
Last year, Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) put forward a plan to balance the budget by overhauling the tax code and cutting entitlement spending. It attracted virtually no attention -- the Democrats had not yet descended into their current morass. Now the political landscape has changed. Obamacare's unpopularity, combined with frighteningly large deficits projected into the foreseeable future and no forthcoming plan from the administration to fix them, have the Democratic party reeling. So this year, when Ryan released version 2.0 of his Roadmap, liberals started bashing it immediately in order to distract attention from their own quagmires and failures of imagination when it comes to addressing spiraling entitlement costs.
First they went after Ryan's proposed entitlement reforms (I've written about these attacks here and here). Liberals have every right to criticize Ryan's ideas, involving as they do a complete re-imagining of the Democrats' New Deal and Great Society defined-benefit social insurance programs. But only the most tendentious left-wing commentators would deny that these programs are going broke, and most of Ryan's critics had to admit that he had offered a real plan to fix the entitlement crisis. By contrast, the Obama administration's plan to balance the budget involves punting to a bipartisan commission.
Then Ryan embarrassed the president on national television, and now liberals have adopted a more aggressive strategy which involves denying that Ryan's plan would balance the budget after all. Two left-leaning think tanks have issued reports on Ryan's plan, each claiming that Ryan essentially fudged the revenue side of his Roadmap. Ryan has offered responses here and here, which I encourage you to read. I'll sum up the key points below:
1. Ryan did not "fudge" the revenue side of his Roadmap, unless you consider all long-term estimates of economic growth to be inherently fudged due to the uncertainties involved (which they kind of are). For reasons that had nothing to do with fudging the numbers, Ryan relied on revenue estimates from Treasury Department experts instead of the CBO or the Joint Committee on Taxation. CBO didn't want to step on the latter's toes, and the latter informed Ryan's office that it was not able to perform an estimate given the time frame of Ryan's proposal. Treasury's estimates do not get the same level of respect that CBO's and JCT's get, but there's no reason to think Ryan fudged the numbers when it's more likely that his estimates simply made different assumptions about future GDP growth than the two left-leaning think tanks.
2. With his Roadmap, Ryan has offered a starting point for debate, not a finished product. "Congressman Ryan stands by his numbers," his office states, "and of course would be open toadjustments in the specified rates under his tax reforms if in fact [the Tax Policy Center’s] estimates are closer to reality than Ryan’s estimates." But the point, his office states, is that "We clearly cannot chase our unsustainable growth in spending with ever-higher levels of taxes -- and the purpose of the Roadmap is to get spending in line with revenue -- not the other way around."
3. Certain of Ryan's liberal critics have stated that, compared to Obama's tax plan, Ryan's tax plan would involve tax increases for 90 percent of Americans while -- again, compared to Obama's plan -- the rich would pay less. First of all, according to the very same Tax Policy Center whose work these critics are citing, Obama's tax plan leaves gaping holes in the budget that, again, he has proposed no way to fill, save for his blue-ribbon panel (and we all know how effective that's going to be). To pretend that we can close these gaps simply by increasing taxes on the rich is not realistic. Second, the policy change that has the biggest effect on the distribution of the tax burden under Ryan's plan vs. Obama's is that Ryan would replace the corporate income tax with a value-added tax. This is hardly as controversial as Ryan's critics have made it sound, and there is a near-consensus among economists that VATs cause fewer economic distortions than corporate income taxes. Also, the changes to the tax burden are not as straightforward as Ryan's critics allege. The share of the corporate income tax that is borne by lower-income Americans is obscured by the fact that corporations act as tax collectors, not taxpayers, and often pass the costs of the tax onto their employees and customers.
I don't agree with every single thing in Ryan's Roadmap. Few would look at it and find nothing they would change, and the revenue provisions are probably where conservatives would disagree the most. But it is far more substantial than anything the other side has offered. Yet, rather than taking it as a starting point for debate, which is the spirit in which it is offered, Democrats are attacking it to distract from their political problems and to distract from the fact that they don't have a plan. That's a roadmap to bankruptcy.
Pass It First, Then Amend It -- By: Yuval Levin (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:29:12 -0400)
It’s fair to say this ruling from the Senate parliamentarian today will put a serious damper on the Democrats’ “dual bill” approach to passing their health-care plan.
Democratic leaders should be asking themselves just how they have gotten to the point that their strategy is to amend a law that doesn’t exist yet by passing a bill without voting on it. Surely it’s time to start over.
This Is Big -- By: Daniel Foster (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:22:37 -0400)
Via Philip Klein over at AmSpec, Roll Call is reporting from GOP sources that the Senate Parliamentarian has ruled the House must first pass the Senate bill -- and the president must sign that bill into law -- before reconciliation fixes to it can be considered.
House Democratic leaders have been searching for a way to ensure that any move they make to approve the Senate-passed $871 billion health care reform bill is followed by Senate action on a reconciliation package of adjustments to the original bill. One idea is to have the House and Senate act on reconciliation prior to House action on the Senate’s original health care bill.
Information Republicans say they have received from the Senate Parliamentarian’s Office eliminates that option. House Democratic leaders last week began looking at crafting a legislative rule that would allow the House to approve the Senate health care bill, but not forward it to Obama for his signature until the Senate clears the reconciliation package.
"Game Changer" is quickly replacing the various iterations of "under the bus" as the most overused political cliche of our age, but this certainly qualifies as one. And it leaves House Democrats with little but the fig leaf of the "Slaughter Rule" as political coverage.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, told colleagues about the ruling Thursday afternoon, according to a Democratic source familiar with the meeting.
[. . .]
Democrats acknowledged the parliamentarian’s ruling was a setback but argued that it does not deliver a fatal blow.
“It’s just going to require a little more trust from the House that the Senate is going to do its job,” said a Democratic strategist.
Democratic lawmakers such as Conrad had thought the Senate could pass the sidecar bill under reconciliation after the House had passed the Senate version of healthcare reform.
"The Senate Parliamentarian’s office has informed Senate Republicans that reconciliation instructions require the measure to make changes in law," said a senior GOP aide.
The Congressional Budget Office could give the broader healthcare bill an official cost estimate once the Senate and House acted.
Playing the Market -- By: John Derbyshire (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:19:12 -0400)
I am amazed to learn from a reader that in-the-pit commodity futures trading has been rendered as a card game. Just in case you can't afford one of those university courses.
ACORN, the liberal group notorious for allegedly trying to inflate voter rolls through fraudulent practices, has seen its last election in Ohio.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now will permanently surrender its Ohio business license by June1 as part of a legal settlement with the conservative Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, both sides said yesterday.
ACORN was active in Ohio in the 2006 and 2008 elections, working to register thousands of low-income people to vote and get them to the polls. The group's efforts were marred by irregularities, including one case in which ACORN workers allegedly induced a Cleveland man to register to vote 72 times, offering cigarettes as an incentive.
Several of these outraged readers have directed me to the wbsite for SFSU's Raza Studies Department. Prof. Martínez is not toiling away there alone: there are thirteen profs and assistant profs on the faculty.
What goes on in a Raza Studies Department? Let them tell us.
Roberto [Rivera] is presently finishing a book on Liberation Discourse which examines the semantics of counter-hegemony in the philosophies of Gustavo Gutierrez and Paulo Freire
[Prof. Tomas Almaguer] is currently completing work on a book manuscript entitled Border Men: Gender and Sexuality in the Life Histories of Chicano Gay Men, which will be published by the University of California Press.
[Prof. Teresa Carrillo]'s teaching and research interests reflect her fascination with Latinos as political actors in a constant interaction with local, national and transnational political forces …
In Systems of Elections, Latino Representation, and Student Outcomes in Central California and Faculty, Managers, and Administrators in the University of California, 1996 to 2002, [Assistant Professor Belinda] Reyes explores ethnic diversity in higher ed and k-12 and the potential consequences of under-representation.
[Writing Specialist Alejandro Murguia]'s memoir The Medicine of Memory: A Mexica Clan in California, University of Texas Press, has been nominated for the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing.
[Dr. Nancy Raquel Mirabal] teaches courses in the history of Latina/os, Caribbean diasporas, Afro-Latina/o diasporas, theory and methods, gender and sexuality, and oral history.
Publications by [the aforementioned Asst. Prof.] Martínez include: … "Real Women and Their Curves: Letters to the Editor and a Magazine’s Celebration of the 'Latina body'" in Latina/o Communication Studies Today, Ed. Angharad N. Valdivia (2008) …
Felix [Kury] is Program Director and Faculty Advisor for Clinica Martin-Baro SFSU-UCSF … a student-organized free clinic operating Saturdays out of CARECEN (Centro de Recursos Centroamericanos) in the Mission District of San Francisco … Clinica’s model is based on Liberation Theology …
[Velia Garcia] teaches Raza 485 — Criminalize Raza Youth, Introduction to Raza Studies, La Raza Women, Issues in Political Economy, Race, Crime and Justice, Sociological Perspectives and Step-to-College …
Currently, [Brigitte Davila's] area of focus is law and public policy, with an emphasis on community activism.
[Jose Cuellar's] recent publications include: "Chicanismo" in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures (2001); "El Saxofón in Tejano and Norteño Music" in ¡Puro Conjunto! An Album in Words and Pictures. U of Texas Press (2001); "Cesar E. Chavez" and "Farm Labor" in Pollution — A toZ …
[Prof. Carlos Cordova] presently teaches Raza 280 Acculturation Issues of La Raza; Raza 320 Raza Art History; Raza 460: Central Americans in the U.S.; Raza 450: Indigenismo: Indigenous Cultures and Personality; and Raza 440: Caribbean Cultures and Spirituality.
This is a public university, part-funded by the taxpayers of California . . . a state that is currently in the throes of one of the worst state-level fiscal crises in U.S. history.
Why do I feel perfectly certain that, whatever measures are taken to resolve California's budgetary crisis, however many extra burdens are placed on state businesses and taxpayers, Professors Carrillo, Almaguer, Cordova, Cuellar, Davila, Duncan-Andrade, Garcia, Kury, Martínez, Mirabal, Murguia, Reyes, and Rivera need not fear any interruption to the vital pedagogical and scholarly work they are doing over there in the Department of Raza ("race, breed, strain" -- Collin's Spanish Gem Dictionary) Studies. The departments of Medicine, Business, and Engineering will be closed down first.
To address these problems, 60 Senators voted to pass historic reform that will make health insurance more affordable, make health insurance companies more accountable and reduce our deficit by roughly a trillion dollars. The House passed a similar bill. However, many Republicans now are demanding that we simply ignore the progress we’ve made, the extensive debate and negotiations we’ve held, the amendments we’ve added (including more than 100 from Republicans) and the votes of a supermajority in favor of a bill whose contents the American people unambiguously support.*** We will not. We will finish the job. We will do so by revising individual elements of the bills both Houses of Congress passed last year, and we plan to use the regular budget reconciliation process that the Republican caucus has used many times.
I know that many Republicans have expressed concerns with our use of the existing Senate rules, but their argument is unjustified. There is nothing unusual or extraordinary about the use of reconciliation. As one of the most senior Senators in your caucus, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, said in explaining the use of this very same option, “Is there something wrong with majority rules? I don’t think so.” Similarly, as non-partisan congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein said in this Sunday’s New York Times, our proposal is “compatible with the law, Senate rules and the framers’ intent.”
Reconciliation is designed to deal with budget-related matters, and some have expressed doubt that it could be used for comprehensive health care reform that includes many policies with no budget implications. But the reconciliation bill now under consideration would not be the vehicle for comprehensive reform - that bill already passed outside of reconciliation with 60 votes. Instead, reconciliation would be used to make a modest number of changes to the original legislation, all of which would be budget-related. There is nothing inappropriate about this. Reconciliation has been used many times for a variety of health-related matters, including the establishment of the Children’s Health Insurance Program and COBRA benefits, and many changes to Medicare and Medicaid.
Matthew Continetti, in the course of defending Rep. Paul Ryan’s “roadmap,” links to a report by the liberal group Citizens for Tax Justice. CTJ says that the roadmap would raise taxes on 90 percent of Americans. Continetti writes:
That's a swipe at Ryan's zeroing out the stimulus and replacing the corporate income tax with a business consumption tax. You see, Ryan says the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit in Obama's stimulus bill is spending, not tax cutting. He'd eliminate it. And CTJ counts a reduction in that spending as a tax hike. The business consumption tax would be passed on to the consumer, making it regressive. But Ryan notes that Americans indirectly feel the consequences of the above-average U.S. corporate tax rate today, through lost wages and higher prices. And these effects are regressive, too. Unlike the current situation, Ryan goes on, the business consumption tax "is cleaner, simpler, and it's on paper." It would also make American exports more competitive than they are today.
Reining in the EITC and child credit raises two issues. First, is it right to consider those credits "spending" rather than "tax cuts"? Republicans have generally said that "refundable" tax credits -- credits that you get even when your income tax liability is already zero -- should count as spending. But payroll taxes are taxes too, and there's a reasonable case that people should be able to use either the EITC or the child credit to offset payroll taxes as well as income taxes. (It's not as though Representative Ryan is a purist on this issue, either: His plan creates a refundable tax credit for health care.) Second: Even if it is right to consider the scaling back of the credits as a spending cut, will it fly politically? Conservatives probably don't want to be in the position of telling people who are surrendering more of their paychecks to the federal government that it only looks like their taxes are going up.
I think that Representative Ryan is right that moving from a corporate income tax to a business VAT might not do much to change the distribution of taxes. The argument that a business VAT would make exports more competitive, though, is deeply flawed. First of all, there is considerable reason to think that any gain in the trade balance would be wiped out by changes to the exchange rate. Second, there's no good reason for the government to favor exports over imports. Adam Smith taught us that a while ago; you'd think Representative Ryan, of all people, would know better than to lapse into mercantilism.
The dismissal was procedural, meaning without prejudice. They can reload immediately.
House Approves Pelosi Investigation -- By: Robert Costa (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:29:09 -0400) This afternoon, by a vote of 402 to one, the U.S. House approved a resolution calling for the House Ethics Committee to investigate House Democratic leaders and their handling of ethical allegations concerning former Rep. Eric Massa (D., N.Y.). House Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) offered the privileged resolution.
In the resolution, Republicans urge the ethics committee, based on recent media reports, to probe into allegations of sexual harassment made by Massa’s former congressional staffers. Inaction by House Democratic leaders “may have exposed employees and interns of Rep. Massa to continued harassment,” the resolution reads. The resolution also asks the committee to investigate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.), and their staffs:
(1) The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is directed to investigate fully, pursuant to clause 3(a)(2) of House Rule XI, which House Democratic leaders and members of their respective staffs had knowledge prior to March 3, 2010 of the aforementioned allegations concerning Mr. Massa, and what actions each leader and staffer having any such knowledge took after learning of the allegations;
(2) Within ten days following adoption of this resolution, and pursuant to Committee on Standards of Official Conduct rule 19, the committee shall establish an Investigative Subcommittee in the aforementioned matter, or report to the House no later than the final day of that period the reasons for its failure to do so;
(3) All Members and staff are instructed to cooperate fully in the committee’s investigation and to preserve all records, electronic or otherwise, that may bear on the subject of this investigation;
(4) The Chief Administrative Officer shall immediately take all steps necessary to secure and prevent the alteration or deletion of any e-mails, text messages, voicemails and other electronic records resident on House equipment that have been sent or received by the Members and staff who are the subjects of the investigation authorized under this resolution until advised by the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct that it has no need of any portion of said records; and,
(5) The Committee shall issue a final report of its findings and recommendations in this matter no later than June 30, 2010.
Republican aides tell National Review Online that this issue is far from over. (Aides asked to remain anonymous due to this being an ongoing ethics investigation.)
“There is a fine line between acting on public information that continues to bear itself out versus taking a political opportunity, and we’re very mindful of that,” says one senior GOP House staffer. “The key here is to make sure, be it through political pressure or a formal resolution, that the American people, and other members, know about the who-what-when-where-why of the Pelosi-Massa case. It’s a disturbing, horrible situation.”
“The ethics committee’s decision to end the Massa investigation after he resigned does not mean that this is over,” adds another House GOP aide. “It is unacceptable to end the investigation of this case without knowing when Pelosi and her staff knew, what they did, and why. We’re going to make sure they live up to their promise to be the most ethical Congress in history. A privileged resolution raising questions is probably the most responsible course to take at this point, especially when we hear more and more about the speaker’s staff knowing about this for months on end.”
A third senior Republican aide says that the ethics committee’s recent ruling against Rep. Charlie Rangel (D., N.Y.), which blamed his staff for any wrongdoing, has led Republicans to believe that “clearly members are going to be held responsible for their staff’s work and actions.”
A senior Republican party official tells NRO that the 2006 ethics case of former Rep. Mark Foley (R., Fla.) could also serve as a crucial precedent in any Pelosi investigation. “All one has to do is look at the Foley report to see how the Democrats have not held themselves to the standard they set four years ago. They criticized the Republican leadership then for not confronting the situation in a member-to-member fashion. They said that reporting allegations to the ethics committee is an important step, but it does not mitigate the situation in the interim. We need to know if Pelosi made any effort to confront Massa about these charges. Saying you punted it to Steny Hoyer won’t cut it.”
Another GOP official says the Foley case could present many months of problems for Pelosi. “The speaker may have thought that this would be over after Massa resigned, but let’s remember that the ethics committee ruled it germane to continue to investigate Foley long after he left office, issuing their report months later.”
Here are some snippets from the Foley report that could trip up Pelosi:
“As a general matter, the Subcommittee observed a disconcerting unwillingness to take responsibility for resolving issues regarding Rep. Foley’s conduct. Rather than addressing the issue fully, some witnesses did far too little, while attempting to pass the responsibility for acting to others. Some relied on unreasonably fine distinctions regarding their defined responsibilities. Almost no one followed up adequately on the limited actions they did take.” (p. 70)
“While some did fulfill their responsibilities, the Investigative Subcommittee finds that too many exhibited insufficient diligence or willingness to take the steps necessary to ensure that the matter was being appropriately handled.” (p. 70)
“Several people were told about the emails and were asked to take action regarding them, including confronting Rep. Foley and telling him to stop communications with the former page, but none of those people saw - or insisted on seeing - the emails prior to taking such action.” (pp. 70-71)
“Almost no one followed up to make sure that the action they had taken had been successful.” (p. 71)
“Some or all of these factors (as well as others) may have played a role in decisions that were made about how this matter should have been handled, but in the Investigative Subcommittee’s view none of these factors mitigated the need for those involved to learn all the relevant facts and communicate those facts candidly and freely to those with authority to address the issues raised by the emails.” (p. 71)
“The Investigative Subcommittee finds that the weight of the evidence supports the conclusion that Speaker Hastert was told, at least in passing, about the e-mails by both Majority Leader Boehner and Rep. Reynolds in spring 2006.” (p. 85)
“All Members, officers, and employees of the House must pursue specific and non-specific allegations of improper interaction between a Member or House employee and a participant in the House Page Program -- even if the allegations are not readily verifiable or involve the sensitive subject of a Member’s personal relationship with a young person. This obligation applies regardless of whether the Member and page are of the same or opposite sex.” (p. 89)
Still, even though the House has approved further investigation into the Massa affair, that doesn’t mean an investigation is guaranteed. The ethics committee, chaired by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D., Calif.), a Pelosi ally, will ultimately make the decision on how to move forward -- if at all -- on their own. That distinction, the AP points out, could “kill any further investigation.”
“March 18th is a very interesting date,” Pelosi said, referring to the White House’s preferred deadline -- the date President Obama leaves for a foreign trip. “We will take up the bill when we are ready to take up the bill.”
Good news from the Ninth Circuit: A divided panel has ruled that teacher-led recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, with its reference to “one Nation under God,” is constitutionally permissible. Judge Carlos T. Bea wrote the majority opinion, which Judge Dorothy W. Nelson joined. Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote a 133-page dissent.
For what it’s worth, Judge Bea is a Bush 43 appointee, and Judges Nelson and Reinhardt are both Carter appointees.
Legislator: 'Why Should We Have to Vote?' -- By: Daniel Foster (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:59:09 -0400)
House Progressive Caucus co-chair Lynn Woolsey (D., Calif.) told ABC's Top Line today that she finds the Slaughter Rule attractive because she doesn't think the House should be "forced" to vote on the Senate bill:
“I don’t need to see my colleagues vote for the Senate bill in the House. We don’t like the Senate bill. Why should we be forced to do that?” said Woolsey, D-Calif. “But what we need to know, before any Senate bill is passed, that we have enough of the fixes that we’ve asked for, that we will be satisfied with the final product as a beginning for health care [reform].”
Asked if she would be comfortable with the House voting to deem the bill passed, rather than actually taking a recorded vote on the Senate-passed bill, Woolsey said: “I would be OK with that.”
Somehow this reminds me of absurdist comedian Zach Galifianakis's opinion of audiences at his stand-up comedy shows: "the nerve of people showing up at a place to sit there and you have to make them laugh. You can't find stuff that's humorous? You have to go watch people do it for a living? It's pathetic."
WASHINGTON — A top House Democrat says the leadership may be able to pass President Barack Obama's health care overhaul without resolving a dispute over abortion.
Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said Thursday that the leadership will try to secure the necessary 216 votes to pass the bill without reworking the divisive abortion provision.
Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak has said that he has about a dozen votes against the bill unless the language is toughened in restricting federal dollars for abortion. But leaders question whether the members of his group will stick together.
Waxman, a California Democrat, said that "many of the pro-life members are going to support passage of the health care bill."
Of course the authors are right that the Howard Zinn-Noam Chomsky view of U.S. history is an almost complete fraud, but it was made plausible only by the Washington’s-cherry-tree school of myth-making. The United States is still much the world’s greatest power, and its military is very efficient. The people are hard-working and productive; not demotivated and pretentiously world-weary like Europeans, nor encumbered by hundreds of millions of primitive peasants like the Chinese. But half the horses of American exceptionalism have already fled. Where I agree emphatically with Richard Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru is that President Obama is aggravating the problem. It is not nearly too late and can certainly wait for another president. But the problem will not be improved by the time-worn mantra about American virtue and superiority, as if they were entirely intact.
Whether you agree or disagree, your comments are, as always, most welcome.
House Democrat Subpoenaed -- By: Daniel Foster (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:30:18 -0400)
A Republican resolution calling for a formal investigation of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn't the only bad news Pelosi's office received this week.
Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D., Mich.) has been subpoenaed before a federal grand jury in Detroit:
Kilpatrick, a Detroit Democrat and the mother of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, let House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office know about the summons on Wednesday, as required by House rules. Her spokeswoman, Tracy Walker, would not confirm the subpoena or comment on it when reached Wednesday night.
On Tuesday, Kilpatrick’s office manager in Detroit, Andrea Bragg, let the Speaker’s office know she had been subpoenaed as well before a grand jury. She and Kilpatrick sent the letters to the Speaker’s office on Monday, March 1, but they were not made part of the Congressional Record until this week.
The topic of the subpoenas is not known. Kwame Kilpatrick has been fighting in state court over restitution to be paid on a perjury plea. The Free Press also has reported that a contractor who pleaded guilty in a federal corruption probe has told investigators he handed over bribes to the former mayor in 2002.
Cheeks Kilpatrick - Michigan’s only member of the powerful Appropriations Committee - has not been publicly implicated in any of those probes but has been a loyal defender of her son.
Her office issued a statement last night - in response to the subpoena of Bragg - saying only that officials “do not have any comment beyond the official notification” in the Congressional Record.
Kwame Kilpatrick's spokesman, Mike Paul, declined to comment this morning about the subpoena for the ex-mayor's mother.
UPDATE: A reader sends along this video of Cheeks Kilpatrick at her, um, finest:
Eric Holder vs. John Adams -- By: Marc Thiessen (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:12:02 -0400)
I have a piece up for the Washington Post explaining why the al-Qaeda lawyers are wrong to wrap themselves in the mantle of John Adams. Thanks to the spade work of Bill Burck and Dana Perino, we now know why Holder was stonewalling on the identities of the “Al Qaeda 7” -- he was one of them! If Holder and co. are simply carrying on the traditions of John Adams, why were they hiding their roles in seeking the release of enemy combatants? If they are proud of their work, why don’t they stand up and say so?
On Chief Justice John Roberts’s response to President Obama’s attack on the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address:
The chief justice as usual -- I would almost say, as always -- is right. A president can attack the Supreme Court over its decisions, but that's not the place to do it. It was a breach of protocol and decorum, and it was an insult.
The reason that the justices show up -- it's a dull evening, there is nothing in it if you are a justice. David Souter, the liberal who [recently] retired, never attended a single one because it is a waste of -- it's simply a way to pay respect to the presidency and the Congress. And you sit there and you don't expect you are going to be attacked gratuitously, as the court was.
First of all, if you are going to attack the court in a setting like that, you should get it right. It was not a century-old precedent. That is the 1907 Tillman law which outlawed the direct giving of money by a corporation to a candidate. That was never in dispute. It wasn't in this decision at all. It was left standing.
What the court overturned in the Citizens United case is the indirect expenditures of corporations and unions. So when Alito said "not true," he was right as well.
I hope that next year there are nine empty seats in the State of the Union address. That would be the appropriate rebuke. . . .
I like the delayed response, the leaving of a decent period between the attack and counterattack. It had the right judicial touch. It was slightly robed.
On the hearings before the Texas State Board of Education on Texas's social studies curriculum:
I know about the culture wars on textbooks. I was on my son's curriculum committee in his schools in middle school and high school, and I had to fight for five years to get American history introduced by eighth grade and to get European [history] introduced as a requirement [at] any time.
I had to give long disquisitions on why European history -- which gave us, for example, English, the common law, Western science -- was slightly more important than Inca history in which my son had been marinated for many years. In fact, he could almost speak Inca by seventh grade.
And this goes on everywhere. It is political correctness. There is no way to solve it ultimately. But I think it's good if you get some pushback from the parents, particularly since the teachers, who generally are the ones who have sway over this, are left-leaning and you get a lot of liberal slant in the textbooks.
We’ve been called war criminals by left-wing bloggers because we worked in the Bush administration and believe that President’s Bush’s national security policies kept the nation safe after 9/11. We don’t think we are, and we hope our friends and family don’t either, but we’re grownups and can handle name-calling. We’ve chosen to enter the political realm and the public debate, so that kind of thing sort of comes with the territory.
That’s one reason why we are having a hard time sympathizing with the lawyers at Justice who represented Guantanamo detainees or other suspected terrorists. They are not in cahoots with al-Qaeda. They should be allowed to work at the Department of Justice and advise Attorney General Eric Holder on detainee issues, assuming they comply with their ethical obligations to avoid conflicts of interest.
But they are political appointees hired in large measure because of their political viewpoints and policy preferences; they are not career officials for whom such considerations would be prohibited. So, forgive us if we think they should have a bit thicker skin. Like us, they chose to enter the fray. They are trained advocates who can defend themselves, and we are sure they are more than capable of withstanding a little bit of political heat.
Not to mention that many of them were more than happy to be identified by name in more friendly settings. Go online and you can find numerous press releases from their law firms, law schools, and advocacy centers celebrating the lawyers for their work on behalf of detainees.
Congress is entirely within its rights to know who advises the attorney general on matters of national security -- not so these people can be driven out of government or to shut them up, but so the public knows who is helping shape policy. What legitimate grounds could there be in a democracy to hide from the public the identities or responsibilities of political appointees? Because Keep America Safe might put up another ad? Please.
We wrote a piece yesterday about Supreme Court briefs Holder signed onto in 2004 and 2005 supporting Jose Padilla. Holder failed to disclose these briefs as he was required to during his confirmation hearings, and the Department of Justice has admitted this. As we discussed, the briefs provide a roadmap to many of Holder’s current policies, but one of them is also notable for admitting there might be trade-offs between protecting the individual rights of suspected terrorists and protecting national security, which Holder denies (as does the president) now that he’s atop the Justice Department.
We expect most people would agree that Holder’s policy views are very relevant to how he operates as a public official. So are those of the political appointees he chooses to surround himself with. We suspect many of them believe, as Holder did in his brief, that there is some level of risk we should be willing to bear to protect the rights of suspected terrorists. There’s no reason to think that this is anything other than an honestly held view. But how much risk they are willing to take is a legitimate topic for public debate.
House Republicans are seeking a formal House Ethics Committee investigation of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). This afternoon, GOP Leader John Boehner (Ohio) offered a privileged resolution on the House floor, raising numerous questions about how Pelosi and her staff handled ethical allegations concerning former Rep. Eric Massa (D., N.Y.).
Here is the resolution:
H. Resolution ______
RESOLUTION
Raising a question of the privileges of the House.
Whereas, on March 8, 2010, Representative Eric Massa resigned from the House;
Whereas, numerous newspapers and other media organizations reported in the days before and after Mr. Massa’s resignation that the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct was investigating allegations that Mr. Massa sexually harassed Members of his congressional staff;
Whereas, on March 3, 2010, Majority Leader Hoyer’s office issued a statement saying, “The week of February 8th, a member of Rep. Massa’s staff brought to the attention of Mr. Hoyer’s staff allegations of misconduct that had been made against Mr. Massa. Mr. Hoyer’s staff immediately informed him of what they had been told”;
Whereas, on Thursday, March 4, Roll Call newspaper reported, “Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she only learned Wednesday of misconduct allegations against freshman Rep. Eric Massa, though her staff had learned of it earlier and decided against briefing her. ‘There had been a rumor, but just that,’ Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference. ‘A one-, two-, three-person rumor that had been reported to Mr. Hoyer’s office and reported to my staff which they did not report to me because you know what? This is rumor city. There are rumors.’”;
Whereas, on March 11, 2010, The Washington Post reported, “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office was notified in October by then-Rep. Eric Massa’s top aide [Joe Racalto] of concerns about the New York Democrat’s behavior”;
Whereas, on March 11, 2010, Politico newspaper reported, “Democratic insiders say Pelosi’s office took no action after Racalto expressed his concerns about his then-boss in October”;
Whereas, on March 9, 2010, The Corning Leader newspaper reported, “Hoyer said last week he told Massa to inform the House Ethics Committee of the charges within 48 hours. ‘Steny Hoyer has never said a single word to me, never, not once, not a word,’ Massa said Sunday. ‘This is a lie. It is a blatant false statement.’”;
Whereas, numerous confusing and conflicting media reports that House Democratic leaders knew about, and may have failed to handle appropriately, allegations that Rep. Massa was sexually harassing his own employees have raised serious and legitimate questions about what Speaker Pelosi as well as other Democratic leaders and their respective staffs were told, and what those individuals did with the information in their possession;
Whereas, the aforementioned media accounts have held the House up to public ridicule;
Whereas, the possibility that House Democratic leaders may have failed to immediately confront Rep. Massa about allegations of sexual harassment may have exposed employees and interns of Rep. Massa to continued harassment;
Whereas, clause one of Rule XXXIII of the Rules of the House of Representatives, titled “Code of Conduct,” states “A Member, Delegate, Resident Commission, officer, or employee of the House shall conduct himself at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House”;
Whereas, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is charged under House Rules with enforcing the Code of Conduct;
Therefore, be it RESOLVED,
(1)The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is directed to investigate fully, pursuant to clause 3(a)(2) of House Rule XI, which House Democratic leaders and members of their respective staffs had knowledge prior to March 3, 2010 of the aforementioned allegations concerning Mr. Massa, and what actions each leader and staffer having any such knowledge took after learning of the allegations;
(2)Within ten days following adoption of this resolution, and pursuant to Committee on Standards of Official Conduct rule 19, the committee shall establish an Investigative Subcommittee in the aforementioned matter, or report to the House no later than the final day of that period the reasons for its failure to do so;
(3)All Members and staff are instructed to cooperate fully in the committee’s investigation and to preserve all records, electronic or otherwise, that may bear on the subject of this investigation;
(4)The Chief Administrative Officer shall immediately take all steps necessary to secure and prevent the alteration or deletion of any e-mails, text messages, voicemails and other electronic records resident on House equipment that have been sent or received by the Members and staff who are the subjects of the investigation authorized under this resolution until advised by the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct that it has no need of any portion of said records; and,
(5)The Committee shall issue a final report of its findings and recommendations in this matter no later than June 30, 2010.
Full Court Press on the Slaughter Rule -- By: Daniel Foster (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:51:51 -0400)
Rep. David Dreier (R., Calif.), ranking Republican on the House Rules Committee, said the Slaughter Rule is evidence that Democrats cannot pass their bill "while playing by the rules."
“With the Slaughter Solution, House Democrats have exposed themselves as willing to abandon the most fundamental element of legislating - a transparent, up-or-down vote— in order to achieve a unpopular partisan objective. This is highly disturbing and in some ways, dangerous. The American people do not want this health care bill and they certainly don’t want the democratic process turned on its head in an effort to pass it over their objections.”
Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans are mounting a two-pronged attack to counter the increasingly byzantine procedural gambit the Democrats are developing to pass the health-care bill.
On the Senate side, Republicans have been remarkably forthright that their strategy is to show wavering House Democrats unhappy with the Senate bill that they cannot trust the upper house to fix it.
Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) told HuffPo today, "that his role now is to make skeptical House Democrats even more doubtful that the Senate can change the bill it passes using reconciliation. He insisted that tough votes on non-health care related topics are bound to come up," and much as he did in conversation with NRO, "raised the specter that the reconciliation process will shut the Senate down."
Asked by the Huffington Post if he was trying to stir uncertainty among Democrats, the New Hampshire Republican replied: "Absolutely. We are trying to open the eyes of our colleagues on the Democratic side who are being solicited with goodies that the boat into which all these goodies are being put may not ever come to dock."
[. . .]
Should Democrats get beyond the starting gate, Gregg added, the Republican Party has a whole host of procedural hurdles that they will throw in the way. The senator told the gathering of reporters at the National Press Club that he and his colleagues will use arcane parliamentary processes to essentially force Senate Democrats to vote on controversial legislative topics, even if their relevance to the health care bill is ambiguous. Arguing that "everything in the jurisdiction" of the two Senate committees that handle health care -- Finance and HELP -- will be ruled "germane" to debate, he all but pledged to bring up "hot-button topics" like immigration, gun rights and certainly abortion as a means of forcing uncomfortable votes.
"Now you ask yourself, if you are a senator from the Democratic side of the aisle, do you really need to put yourself through this just to help out the president and the Democrats' side of the aisle in the House when you already have gotten what you want..." he said.
"I think that's a reach and it should cause questions for Democrats in the House."
And Sens. Thune, DeMint, Coburn, and Wicker -- all former House members -- hit the "you can't trust the Senate" theme over and over in a press conference yesterday:
For their part, House Republicans are raising hell about the Democrats' last-ditch gambit to defuse the situation via the Slaughter Rule, warning undecided House Democrats that the procedural ploy won't protect them.
Here's part of the statement Republicans on the House Rules Committee released on the matter:
Not only would this be an astoundingly byzantine and cynical attempt to advance a bill that no one, including House Democrats, wants or likes, it could very well backfire.
The Slaughter Solution depends upon the Senate’s acting to pass a package of fixes to a bill that can’t garner sufficient support in the House. But the likelihood a clean “fix-it” bill passing the Senate is slim. There will be challenges to some proposed fixes, and therefore changes to the package. There are also questions as to whether or not a bill can be “fixed” under the Budget Act before it is signed into law by the President. And then there is the question of abortion. If an abortion change cannot be made through reconciliation, would the Slaughter Solution be further expanded to implement an abortion fix, too? How would that fix make its way through the Senate?
With serious unanswered questions like these, why would any wavering Democrat take the bait and support the Slaughter Solution? There is a high probability that House Democrats ultimately will be forced into taking the tough votes they tried so hard to avoid, after putting themselves on record as supporting an end-run around a real, transparent vote. In the end, rank-and-file Democrats would be making themselves all the more vulnerable for having supported their Leadership’s egregious tactics.
We'll have to wait and see if rank-and-file Democrats buy the Republican argument, but at least one prominent supporter of Obamacare, The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn, seems to. He blogged this morning that "complication and delay seem dangerous. Given the widespread revulsion with legislative deal-making at this point--and the apparent success of Obama’s appeal for a "straight, up-or-down vote" on reform--crafting the rule to spare House members a certain vote seems quite likely to muddle the message."
With the way forward for Democrats unclear and frought with peril, is it any wonder Harry Reid told reporters today that "We're not done yet - and that's an understatement"?
Lawyers or Public-Policy Makers? Cont'd -- By: Mark R. Levin (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:32:14 -0400)
And on what basis do we think the Obama administration selected these seven lawyers (there may be more) from 1 million other lawyers to serve in top political positions at Justice?Is it a coincidence that they had roles (direct or related) in defending detainees?Is it a coincidence that the administration has, in fact, reversed course on a number of settled issues of procedural and substantive law respecting these detainees and other matters involving national security?Personnel makes policy, and that includes lawyers in policy positions.So, while the selection of these lawyers clearly has some relationship to their private practices, the attempt to identify who they are and what they're doing since being appointed is said to be off limits, unless, of course, you appointed them.Preposterous.
Spiders spend a lot of time crafting their webs in hopes of making a meal out of all manner of winged insect--but a recently discovered species of wasp is found to use the spider's engineering prowess to it's own advantage. Through a not yet understood chemical process, the wasps are able to, quite literally, enslave the unsuspecting spiders to build a nest for their larva, and after all that hard work, become their first meal. Sure, it seems pretty dastardly, but researchers say it's evolution.
Please choose your own Obamacare analogy.
Lawyers or Public-Policy Makers? -- By: Mark R. Levin (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:04:37 -0400)
This lawyer issue re DOJ appointees has taken an odd turn. No one is saying or has said that lawyers are not free torepresent whomever they wish or that anyone should be denied counsel because of their unpopularity. These are straw men, which made the letter signed by some of my friends allthe more specious. The fact is that the lawyerswho have represented the enemy have been, for the most part, true believers. They were not picked from a list by a judge. They sought out their clients and several of them have spoken in the past about how the"principles" they were litigating were, in essence,bigger than the individuals theyrepresented. Some of them were part of a strategic group of lawyers who sought out clients for the purpose of fundamentally altering the course of the war. Hence, the identity of the lawyers is certainly relevant not becauseanyone questions their right to practice law as they choose, but because they are not private-sector attorneys anymore. They are public-policy makers. And as public-policy makers, they are, indeed, answerable to us. The idea that we should not know their identities, their backgrounds, and their agendas is absurd. The lawyers who signed that letter should renounce it as a matter of personal and professional credibility.
