With little fanfare in this country, U.S. forces have began withdrawing from Iraqi cities as part of a status-of-forces-agreement negotiated during the Bush administration. In Iraq, they're understandably much more excited about this. It would be wise to remember on this milestone that the benefit of toppling foreign dictators comes at the cost of the humiliation of occupation and the blood of thousands.
Norm Colemanconceded to Al Franken today in a quickly-arranged presser following the Minnesota Supreme Court's decision ruling against the Republican. Franken followed up with brief, graceful remarks, and Governor Tim Pawlenty has said he will sign the certificate "as directed by the court and applicable law."
The day of reckoning has arrived for all but four U.S. states as their fiscal year comes to an end. Thirty-two states, in fact, do not have budgets prepared for 2010, which could lead to widespread government shutdowns and cessation of services unless state legislatures draft emergency funding measures. Meanwhile, this might be a good time to start rethinking fiscal federalism.
I don't understand this fascination with reliving the 2008 presidential campaign -- once was enough for me. But the temptations of gossip and insider information are too great to prevent Vanity Fair from running a 9,000+ word piece on the Republican vice-presidential candidate from last year who shall remain nameless here. The picture that emerges is that of a hybrid: the vindictiveness and obsessiveness of Nixon and the lack of any intellectual curiosity and incompetence of Bush. Not a exactly a flattering combination.
I've heard that Thomas Sowell has a reputation for being some sort of public intellectual. Reading this rant deemed publish-worthy by National Review, one wonders how he acquired that reputation. What difference is there, exactly, between believing that the president is going to institute Sharia law in the United States and birthers handing out typo-laden "Citizen’s Grand Jury presentments" on Capitol Hill (while Congress isn't even in session) accusingBarack Obama of treason? An editor to remove the typos, apparently.
Remainders: Sen. Olympia Snowe is skeptical about the public option because it might (gasp) lower costs; Sen. Robert Byrd leaves the hospital; yes, the pro-life movement is largely made up of people who don't believe women can make moral decisions regarding their own sexuality; oh, Jonah Goldberg, you're so cute when you try to sound smart; debauchery economics makes a stunning debut in Oklahoma; and more tea parties are coming this Independence Day.
After eight months and $50 million dollars, today’s unanimous decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court declaring Al Franken the winner in his Senate race against Norm Coleman could be the first step toward ending the longest Senate vacancy in 34 years. But before Senate Democrats and liberal bloggers crow too loud over their oh-so-close filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, a few things to keep in mind….
First, even if Franken is seated, he will not make for a particularly crisp #60. Though no one wants to say it, it is not clear that Sen. Ted Kennedy will ever vote again in the Senate, given his medical condition. Massachusetts lawmakers are already quietly jockeying for his seat. A replacement senator in Massachusetts needs to be chosen by the electorate (the governor has no role), which could mean weeks, even months, for primary and general election campaigns to be conducted. Meanwhile, after a month in the hospital, Sen. Robert Byrd was released today to continue his recovery at home, but the 91-year-old remains in delicate health.
Even if senators always voted party-line, which they don’t, it takes 60 senators present and voting to vote cloture. Democrats aren’t there yet.
While the verdict for Franken is a victory for Democrats, in many ways the GOP stall has had its intended effect. It is a public-relations accomplishment: They’ve managed to blur the likely result of the 2008 election, casting doubt on the circumstances under which Democrats have come to dominance in the Senate. That’s not a trivial accomplishment during these early months when a new president’s political capital is at its peak.
While there will be plenty of hand-wringing over how Republicans have hurt the state by drawing out a race Minnesotans wanted to be over long ago, nothing has been irreparably damaged by this extended vacancy. It isn't like Gov. Sanford disappearing for a few days. Executives really do run things. Senators don't. While it’s unfortunate that senior Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s office has had to pick up the slack, the Democrats in the Senate haven’t lost any roll call result through the absence of a Franken vote.
More than anything, this prolonged partisan battle has been a headache for a state that’s famous for its friendly demeanor and squeaky-clean politics. It’s been an oft-repeated refrain in the last eight months, but it’s still true today: We’ll have to wait and see (though hopefully not for too much longer).
In a lot of ways, the Iranian election saga seems to be winding down. The Guardian Council pronounced yesterday that Ahmadinejad was the official victor. National newspapers are increasingly featuring their protest coverage below the fold. And #iranelection has even fallen somewhere between "Neverland Ranch" and "Vibe Magazine" as a trending topic on Twitter. But just because much of the action has ceased doesn't mean that things are anywhere near settled.
Dissent continues to be quashed by militia forces, and reports say that security is only tightening in Tehran. Closer to home for us, dozens of journalists are still being detained, including Iason Athanasiadis who has contributed to the Prospect.
Athanasiadis wrote two pieces for TAP Online in 2007. He recounted his experience as a graduate student there, describing the closure of his master's program after Ahmadinejad's election. He also reported on the sometimes strained relationship between Iranian reform activists and Western NGOs. Both stories are still relevant today, arguably more so than when they were first published.
With any luck, Athanasiadis will be released, just as Roxana Saberi was last month. Given heightened tensions, it's even more important that the Greek Foreign Ministry continue to put pressure on the Iranian government to get Athanasiadis home safely.
TTR is a whole lot more than a simple affair; it is a love story. A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day. We've crossed lines with several exciting new reports, including a look at the U.S.' green deficit, an analysis of instability in Pakistan, a new plan for green jobs, and worries about state budget deficits. Have at it!
Lagging Behind in Green. Ahead of the House’s passage of the Waxman-Markey bill last week, the New America Foundation released a paper on America’s “Green Trade Balance,” or lack thereof. The report asserts that America’s dependence on foreign countries for the majority of our green goods undermines President Obama’s plan to use green investment as a key part of the economic recovery. The U.S. ran an overall “green trade deficit” of $8.9 billion in 2008, down from a surplus of $14.4 billion less than 10 years ago. Huge deficits in two major categories -- pollution management and renewable energy, a cornerstone of Obama’s green agenda -- are mainly responsible for the deteriorating trade balance. If the U.S. cannot find a way for domestic production of green technology to meet increasing demand, the report predicts that the U.S. will sacrifice the opportunity to create millions of high-paying green manufacturing jobs. Equally important, a trade imbalance this early on compromises the country’s potential to be a leading global producer, not just consumer, of green technology. -- MD
Counterinsurgency: Pakistan. A recent Council on Foreign Relations policy paper outlines the quickly growing threat of extremist insurgency and militant operations conducted within Pakistan’s cities, and the Pakistani military’s inertia and their potentially fatal aversion to becoming a "counterinsurgency force." The report emphasizes the complicated relationship between the United States and Pakistan, as they see the U.S. as an "unreliable partner," one that will pull foreign aid as soon as security interests shift. The memo’s corresponding recommendation is the continued assistance to the Pakistani military, including a controversial F-16 program, as a way to win the trust of Pakistani elites. -- AS
Saving the Job Market…and the Planet. Create 1.7 million new jobs. Sounds like a lofty goal, right? According to a new report by the Center for American Progress, putting $150 billion into clean energy could do just that. Modeled off of two government initiatives, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act, the report argues that a yearly budget of $150 billion could add 1.7 million net jobs to the country, with an even higher number if funding was increased. The passing of ACESA would create jobs in every state of the union, as demonstrated by state-to-state fact sheets and an interactive map, and unemployment would drop about 1%, from 9.4% to 8.4%. Both acts provide incentives for private investors to invest in clean energy as opposed to fossil fuels, such as tax incentives, loan guarantees, and bonds. The overall program aims to increase energy efficiency, lower the cost of supplying renewable energy, and mandating limits for pollution. Now we just have to pass ACESA. -- CIA
48 Budget Crises. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that the fiscal situation for most of America's states has continued to worsen over the past few months. With most states starting their new 2010 fiscal year on July 1, the Center reports that 48 states (North Dakota and Montana are in the clear) project budget shortfalls in 2010 due to decreasing tax receipts, despite federal stimulus funding. Nationally, state budget gaps may amount to more than $350 billion through 2011, leading to inevitable cuts in state jobs and services. Don't pack your bags for Bismarck just yet, though -- the Center also finds that federal stimulus funding is closing 30 to 40 percent of state budget shortfalls, thanks to its timing and flexibility. With 48 states still in the red, though, these findings make a compelling case for considering another stimulus. -- CKS
Just now, the Minnesota Supreme Court handed down its unanimous verdict [PDF] on the long-running, unresolved contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman to determine who will fill the state’s vacant U.S. Senate seat. Specifically, the decision pertains to which candidate received the most votes and whether those votes were counted (and recounted) properly. This was the whole basis of Coleman’s case against Franken, rejected by a lower court, and now rejected by the state’s highest court as well.
What remains to be seen is whether Norm Coleman will concede — which leaves Gov. Tim Pawlenty bound to multiple statements claiming he will certify the results — or appeal his case to the federal level. Legal scholar Rick Hasenexplains that there’s a ten-day “rehearing” period before the opinion is final, in which the litigants could file an emergency stay application to the U.S. Supreme Court. Such an application would be considered by Samuel Alito, who handles the Eighth Circuit.
Paul Waldmanon why 2009 isn't 1993 in the battle for health-care reform:
Talk to progressives on the subject of health care, and you will find they've gotten more and more nervous in the last couple of weeks. They are acutely aware that momentum for health-care reform seems to gain sufficient speed to make real change a possibility only every 15 or 20 years. Screw it up now, and it'll be a long time before there's another chance at it.
It isn't only those on the Hill who are issuing dark warnings. Stan Greenberg, who was President Bill Clinton's pollster during the last health-care reform effort, recently penned a gloomy article in The New Republic, making the case that from the standpoint of public opinion, 2009 is starting to look like 1993 all over again.
Should we be nervous? Of course -- lives are at stake, after all. But should we panic? Absolutely not.
Adam has done an excellent job with Ricci in general and Alito's bizarre race-baiting concurrence in particular. But it's worth addressing one more point. According to Kennedy, New Haven acted illegally because there was "no strong basis in evidence" that an "equally valid, less-discriminatory testing alternative" existed. Admittedly, it's hard to say that Kennedy is wrong, exactly, given that his new standard seems to mean that Kennedy knows a strong basis in evidence when he sees it. Nonetheless, as you'll see if you look at the amicus brief filed by DeStefano, the evidence that an equally valid test that wouldn't produce an equally disparate impact existed can be found by heading a couple stops down the Metro-North line:
Because the City’s weightings were arbitrary, a different weighting would have been at least as valid. Testimony indicated that neighboring Bridgeport’s tests use different weightings and are less discriminatory.
Based on the raw test scores, if the tests were weighted 70%/30% oral/written, then two African-Americans would have been considered for lieutenant positions and one for a captain position.
Seems pretty strong to me, and if Kennedy has any reason to believe that the precise weighting of oral and written exams arrived at (through negotiations, not the judgment of professional testers) is required for a test to be valid he didn't bother to share it. Moreover, assertions that not certifying these particular test results would be a blow to meritocracy notwithstanding, it's also worth noting that the creator of the test "never suggested that the tests were calibrated closely enough to be used to rank-order candidates, which requires that each higher score reflect better anticipated job performance."
And, as Ginsburg pointed out in dissent, the arbitrariness of the test also makes hash of Kennedy's argument that "[t]here is no genuine dispute that the examinations were...consistent with business necessity. [my emphasis.] Perhaps reasonable people can disagree, but the idea that there's "no dispute" that the tests were justified by business necessity is absurd; the point most certainly is subject to dispute, particularly given the strong definition of "business necessity" that was reinstated by the 1991 Civil Rights Act. As Scalia's concurrence ironically also noted, "business necessity" is in fact a "demanding" standard, and if Kennedy was going to hold that New Haven had no reasonable fear that its essentially arbitrary testing process couldn't meet that standard he needed to do better than this feeble hand-waving.
Watch associate editor Dana Goldstein and senior correspondent Michelle Goldberg debate the meaning of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's proposed ban of the burqa.
Spencer AckermanflagsRobert Gibbs denying that there will be an executive order from the White House reasserting the "inherent" authority of the president to detain terrorist suspects indefinitely:
I think the President addressed the notion and the very tough issue that the administration is likely to face, and that is that we are going to have detainees that will be hard to prosecute and too dangerous to release. And while the administration is considering a series of options, a range of options, none relies on legal theories that we have the inherent authority to detain people. And this will not be pursued in that manner.
I'm inclined to believe this. While the adminsitration has continued a number of Bush policies, a reoccuring theme is that the powers asserted are drawn from Congress, rather than from the "inherent" authority of the executive branch. The thing is, Congress doesn't actually seem very interested in curbing that authority, particularly in the case of indefinite detention. Which, when you think about it, is actually somewhat strange: no matter what your position is on the issue, creating an alternate legal framework for indefinitely detaining people not captured in a zone of military combat, instead of trying them in court, is a radical act. But you wouldn't know if from the complete lack of controversy, either in Congress or among high-profile public intellectuals.
Yesterday NARAL: Pro-Choice America endorsed Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand in the New York special Senate primary slated for September 2010. Gillibrand has gotten mixed reviews since her January appointment to Hillary Clinton's seat, with some New Yorkers critiquing her lack of legislative gravitas, while others are still stewing over the moderate positions Gillibrand took on gay rights, gun control, and immigration during her 2006 House run in a moderate, upstate district. Others are willing to cut Gillibrand some slack. She's new to the job, and what's more, she has the support of President Obama, who supposedly has asked other Democrats to refrain from mounting costly primary challenges against Gillibrand.
But Manhattan congresswoman Carolyn Maloney is ignoring that call, forging ahead with plans to primary Gillibrand from the left. The NARAL endorsement of Gillibrand is widely being read as "a blow to Maloney," to borrow the phrasing of Jonathan Martin. And indeed, Maloney has built her reputation on issues that matter to feminist organizations, such as reproductive health, domestic violence, and family and medical leave benefits for gay couples.
But we shouldn't read too much into NARAL's choice. Unlike Feminist Majority PAC and NOW PAC -- both of which supported Maloney this past winter -- NARAL made no endorsement for the seat back when Gov. David Paterson was stumbling through the appointment process. Over the past year, NARAL has consistently shown more deference to Team Obama and Democratic Party unity than other feminist groups; in May 2008, they became the first major feminist organization to endorse Obama, signaling that Clinton's bid for the nomination was no longer realistic.
The real blow to Maloney's candidacy will be if more women's organizations follow NARAL's lead. For now, though, the jury is out.
Update: EMILY's List has also endorsed Gillibrand.
Dana Goldsteinon why most women lack bargaining power during the recession, and what it means for work-life balance.
You can't always get what you want. Especially in a recession.
Unfortunately, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, network television correspondents on a nationwide book tour and media blitz, haven't gotten the memo. In their book, Womenomics, Kay and Shipman tell women that all they need to do to fulfill their work-life balance dreams is, well, ask. Want to work three days a week instead of five? Just ask. Want to work from home? Just ask. Need to walk your dog every day at 5:15? Heck, march right into you boss' office and tell him it's nonnegotiable!
The authors advise, "Your company needs you more than you realize and quite possibly more than you need them."
But as the national unemployment rate inches toward the double digits, is that true?
Speaking at yesterday's White House gathering marking the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, President Obama said this to LGBT activists about the administration's slow progress on repealing laws like the Defense of Marriage Act or Don't Ask Don't Tell:
So this story, this struggle, continues today -- for even as we face extraordinary challenges as a nation, we cannot -- and will not -- put aside issues of basic equality. (Applause.) We seek an America in which no one feels the pain of discrimination based on who you are or who you love.
And I know that many in this room don't believe that progress has come fast enough, and I understand that. It's not for me to tell you to be patient, any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African Americans who were petitioning for equal rights a half century ago.
The president made an explicit comparison between the civil-rights movement and the LGBT-rights movement. Maybe that was rhetoric, meant to smooth tensions between the White House and the LGBT community, but it doesn't excuse the administration's behavior; it does the opposite: it implicates the president for not acting more swiftly to end bigotry enshrined as law. The president has made some important steps, such as extending federal benefits to same-sex couples, but his administration has also defended DOMA in court and hasn't taken any concrete action on DADT.
In 1955, the Supreme Court ordered school desegregation to commence with "all deliberate speed." Lately, it seems like the Obama administration has been moving in slow motion.
Conservatives latched onto one out-of-context quote from one of Sonia Sotomayor's speeches to argue that she was a dispenser of race-based justice. Today they're praising Justice Kennedy's opinion in the Ricci case calling for "a strong basis in evidence" for cities to throw out test results based on disparate impact, but the overwhelming evidence shows that Sotomayor's ethnic background has done nothing to influence her rulings in race-related cases. Conservatives didn't have a "strong basis in evidence" to claim otherwise, but they did anyway.
Of course, there is another justice who testified to how his ethnic background affected his jurisprudence, and that was Samuel Alito. Testifying in front of the Senate during his confirmation hearing, Alito said:
When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.
Frank Ricci, the plaintiff in that case, is Italian American, just like Samuel Alito. Was Alito thinking about "people in his own family" who "suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background" when he cast his vote in the Ricci case? Was his ruling and concurrent opinion affected by his "taking that into account" as he says he does in such cases?
There's no way to know. But what I find interesting is that no one's even asking the question. No one is suggesting, despite Alito's own statements, that his ruling was based on racial or ethnic sympathies. No one is questioning his motives or his judgment. In our national conversation, bias is something people of color and women have toward white men, not the other way around, history be damned. This isn't a new phenomenon either, based on some sort of (nonexistent) "reversal of fortune" for white men in society--they asked the same questions of Thurgood Marshall that they're now asking of Sotomayor.
Via Pat G., some underappreciated news from yesterday's release of Supreme Court decisions: The Court ruled 5-4 that state attorneys general have the right to investiagate nationally chartered banks for violating consumer protection laws. Previously, banks monitored by certain national regulators like the Office of Comptroller of Currency did not come under the jursidiction of state officials.
This all comes from a case argued by NY AG Andrew Cuomo, crusading as always -- what do they give those New York AGs to drink up there, anyway? Answer: An incredible jurisdiction and a huge media spotlight. Cuomo wanted to see if national banks were engaging in discriminatory practices by funnelling minorities into dangerous sub-prime loans. Fannie Mae estimates that more than half of sub-prime borrowers qualified for prime loans; many were minorities suffering under redlining practices. The map to the right (click for a larger version) shows the distribution of foreclosures in New York City; foreclosures are most dense where minorities are concentrated, in large part because of these practices.
But when Cuomo tried to look into the problems, the banks told him that their national regulator preempted any state efforts to monitor their business. Since the national regulator, the OCC, didn't really do much at all, it was licensce to behave poorly. But now the OCC is set to be shuttered under the Obama administration's financial regulation plan, and Cuomo has free reign to protect the consumers of his state thanks to the Supreme Court. Good stuff! This is part of a general trend in government against federal preemption; the administration is trying to make consumer protection laws into a floor, not a ceiling, and with this decision -- with the ever-Federalist Antonin Scalia joining the court's four liberals -- we have some judicial confirmation of the strategy.
Last year, there was quite a lively debate over the role of superdelegates in the Democratic primary process, particularly whether these so-called unelected party officials would override the will of the voters. Now the DNC’s Change Commission is looking to seriously reform how the party picks candidates, including the possibility of eliminating the superdelegates altogether. More significant will be the actual primary calendar, not so much in 2012 when President Barack Obama will almost certainly face no competition, but for 2016 when the field will be wide open again.
Did Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty really unequivocally state that he would certify the state supreme court’s ruling that will determine whether Al Franken gets to take his Senate seat? He did! But as Eric Kleefeldpoints out, Pawlenty also re-asserted that he would follow Coleman’s lead if the matter was appealed to a federal court, which has always been his position.
I’m glad The New York Times has used editorial space to make the point that Republican holds on administration nominees are nothing less than deliberate obstructionism that threatens, in their words, “good government.” I know the minority party has very little in the way of pushback at this point, but it’s high time this issue received more attention than the "GOP goes ballistic over latest Democratic proposal/nominee" storyline.
Roll Call has a brief look at the renewed focus on a “liberal agenda” for the second half of the legislative year, and it’s worth looking at the big picture in terms of prioritizing legislation. Obama could -- and should -- have done more addressing these "hot-button" cultural issues during the first five months of his term and should take some heat, but it's clear that the economic problems facing the country -- in addition to health care and energy reform -- simply dominated the early days of his administration.
Weekend Remainders: The Census Bureau gives Michele Bachmann a lesson in high school civics; it’s not that Fox News is conservative, it’s that they don’t seem to grok the basics of journalism; apparently the John Birch Society is still chugging along even without the threat from global communism; the ACLU wants the UN to investigate extraordinary rendition; and the research goes on for those elusive ties between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers.
I have a long, ill-considered rant over at Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog, where I'm guest-blogging, on the Ricci case that TAPPED readers might want to check out.
The Prospect is co-hosting a D.C. event for Kevin Mattson's new book. He will be discussing some of the themes from his article in the April issue. Details below:
What the Heck are You Up To, Mr. President?": Jimmy Carter, America's "Malaise," and the Speech that Should Have Changed the Country.
A book talk with Kevin Mattson.
Monday, June 29, 6:30pm
Busboys and Poets
1025 5th Street, NW
5th and K
Ross Douthat is the author of a book arguing that marriage-promotion -- even among the very poor and the very young -- should be a major goal of national social policy. He has an aversion to birth control and abortion. He has even written about his own efforts to stay sexually chaste. So it is surprising that Douthat now writes, "Our meritocrats could stand to leaven their careerism with a little more romantic excess."
What's responsible for Douthat's change of heart? Like me, he is currently reading Cristina Nehring's A Vindication of Love: Reclaiming Romance for the Twenty-First Century, which uses the lives of literary greats to argue that foolish love -- passion, sex, and even obsession -- fuels genius and productivity. Nehring believes that today's college-educated professionals have sanitized love through feminism and "companionate marriages," focusing too much on child-rearing and real estate acquisition, and not enough on sex. This line of argument offers Douthat an opportunity to engage in one of his favorite pastimes: attacking the culture of affluent liberals. "The same overclass that was once most invested in erotic experimentation ended up building the sturdiest walls against the passions it unleashed," he clucks.
But make no mistake -- the likely appeal of Nehring's work, for Douthat, lies in its negative assessment of feminism as an anti-romantic killjoy. This is a major flaw in Nehring's book; she treats feminism, as an ideology, as if it ceased to exist in the 1980s during the internecine wars over the acceptability of pornography and heterosexual relationships. In fact, feminism is a dynamic movement that has continued to evolve over the last two decades. Many feminists call themselves "sex-positive." Some sex workers identify as feminist and even strive to create feminism-friendly pornography. Some feminists are anti-marriage altogether. Others advocate open relationships because they are inherently skeptical of sexual monogamy.
Yet Douthat buys, hook, line, and sinker, into Nehring's reductive analysis of feminism as anti-sex. One possible solution to dull marriages, he suggests, is less equity between marriage partners. He's not talking about the kind of sexual power-play that Nehring adores. Rather, he suggests that highly educated men are "ideal soulmates" for less-educated women, who could benefit from the economic stability such men offer as husbands and fathers. The problem is that many highly educated men want to marry women who share their intellectual interests. And what single moms need -- more than a rich husband who may or may not make them and their kids happy -- are social supports such as decent jobs, health care, child care, and schools.
MoveOn sent out an e-mail today asking its members whether the group should fight to make the weak cap-and-trade bill better. My assessment of the Senate's ability to improve legislation is so pessimistic that MoveOn is probably better off focusing on health care, but at the same time it's always a good idea for lefty groups to be vocally pushing improvements in legislation. I am skeptical of its focus on eliminating the concessions in the bill that obtained the votes needed to pass it in the House. There is no way the Senate, where there is neither a Henry Waxman-style legislator nor a strong progressive constituency, will end up passing a stronger bill than the lower chamber.
More realistically, progressives' immediate focus' ought to be making sure this bill gets through the Senate intact, with no further concessions -- see Brad Plumer on that -- so that it can be improved after it is on the books, not while it exists as a nebulous legislative compromise. As more evidence for the idea of continuous legislating, I thought climate guru Joe Romm's piece at Salon made a good observation:
It is worth noting that the original Clean Air Act -- first passed in 1963 -- also didn't do enough and was subsequently strengthened many times. Similarly, the 1987 Montréal protocol would not have stopped concentrations of ozone depleting substances from rising and would not have saved the ozone layer. But it began a process and established a framework that, like the CAA, could be strengthened over time as the science warranted. The painful reality of climate change is going to become increasingly obvious in the coming years, and strengthening is inevitable.
I'd only disagree with the idea that "strengthening is inevitable." Strengthening will require effort from a lot of different constituencies. But the idea that this single bill will make or break climate-sustainability efforts is the wrong way to approach policy-making. This is the kind of thorny problem (and complex solution) that will require much revision, and I think the climate bill of 2010 or 2011 will be much more progressive than the one in 2009 simply because it will build on what has been accomplished this year. (That assumes that the Dems keep their congressional majority, etc., but I'd say odds are still on for that.)
Responding to Justice Alito's allegation that the City's decision to throw out the test was based on the political calculations of New Haven's mayor in order to avoid a backlash among New Haven's black voters, Justice Ginsburg writes:
Most of the allegations JUSTICE ALITO repeats are drawn from petitioners’ statement of facts they deem undisputed, a statement displaying an adversarial zeal not uncommonly found in such presentations. What cannot credibly be denied, however, is that the decision against certification of the exams was made neither by Kimber nor by the mayor and his staff. The relevant decision was made by the CSB, an unelected, politically insulated body. It is striking that JUSTICE ALITO’s concur-rence says hardly a word about the CSB itself, perhaps because there is scant evidence that its motivation was anything other than to comply with Title VII’s disparate-impact provision. Notably, petitioners did not even seek to take depositions of the two commissioners who voted against certification. Both submitted uncontested affida-vits declaring unequivocally that their votes were “based solely on [their] good faith belief that certification” would have discriminated against minority candidates in viola-tion of federal law.
More on this later. But obviously I think that's a pretty strong rebuke to the notion that DeStefano was acting out of political concerns, although he would argue that the mayor's influence goes against the notion that the CSB was "politically insulated." Ginsburg, however, adds that "Kimber and others no doubt used strong words to urge the CSB not to certify the exam results, but the CSB received “pressure” from supporters of certification as well as opponents."
The outsize Byron York-like concern with politicians "pandering" for black votes (because conservatives are completely uninterested in the interests of their constituencies) though, is just the kind of analysis one would expect from a partisan Republican. Just not from a judge.
Eli Sanderson what's next for drugs in America. The "war on drugs" may be over, but that doesn't mean legalization is around the corner:
As far as statements from high government officials go, it was a radical declaration. Kerlikowske, and by extension Barack Obama, was rejecting four decades of federal government marching orders -- a bold departure that would have been unthinkable in previous administrations. But even more striking than his announcement was the reaction: crickets.
What's fascinating about this moment in the drug-reform debate is not just how strongly the tide has turned against the failed war strategy but also how little clarity there is on the ultimate end goal of policy reform.
Tom Lee on the problem with a privately owned service -- Twitter -- serving as a platform for political activism:
That discussion of the Iranian election popped up on Twitter was not particularly surprising. The microblogging service is often mocked as a venue for the discussion of daily minutia -- a recent spoof was made up entirely of real-time reports about the sandwiches that users were eating -- but by now Twitter is clearly one of the most popular forums for online chatter about current events. But when the action on Twitter began to affect events in Iran, well, that was downright shocking. And to the extent that it signaled Twitter's arrival as an important political tool, it was also somewhat alarming.
Twitter is far from the only online tool being used for political ends, but it's one of the few that is both a medium and a company. Yahoo.com might handle your e-mail, but if it went down, the e-mail system would still work. Google search is important, but its disappearance wouldn't make the sites it indexes stop working, and there are plenty of search engines that would be glad to take its place.
Twitter is not like that. If it went away, that would be that.
Justice Sam Alito, from his concurring opinion in the Ricci case, written mostly as a rebuke to the liberals' dissent, my emphasis:
Therefore, the decision below, which sustained the entry of summary judgment for respondents, cannot be affirmed unless no reasonable jury could find that the City’s asserted reason for scrapping its test—concern about disparate-impact liability—was a pretext and that the City’s real reason was illegitimate, namely, the desire to placate a politically important racial constituency.
I'd say that's a pretty startling accusation of bad faith on Alito's part. Namely, Alito seems to believe that the sole reason for the city throwing out the tests was a fear of pissing off black voters, noting ties between New Haven Mayor Michael DeStefano and the Rev. Boise Kimber, a local black leader known for having made racially inflammatory comments in the past. Alito basically alleges that Kimber browbeat city officials and the mayor into not certifying the results by threatening the political consequences from the black community in New Haven. This is important because Alito is arguing that the decision to throw out the tests was not based on a good faith concern about disparate impact but about avoiding the political consequence of a backlash among black voters.
Of course, it also needs to be said that there's no way Italian Americans could be considered anything like a "politically important" ethnic constituency in the Northeast.
The number of concurring opinions here--Scalia filed one as well--rebuking the dissent of the court's four liberals is interesting. The court's conservatives are protesting, one might say, a little too much.
The military coup in Honduras is, at the very least, an occasion for Barack Obama and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to agree on something, albeit with a wide variance in expression. It sure is another sign of the times to hear a leftist South American leader -- oustered President Manuel Zelaya -- say something like this before the coup occurred:
"Everything was in place for the coup, and if the U.S. Embassy had approved it, it would have happened. But they did not. I'm only still here in office thanks to the United States," he said in the interview, which was published Sunday.
I don't think the coup went through after Zelaya's remarks with U.S. approval -- American officials are now apparently trying to have Zelaya reinstated and disputing a seemingly forged resignation letter produced by coup organizers. John Boonstra at UN Dispatch observes that there is some ambiguity surrounding the controversial referendum to extend Zelaya's power that led to the coup, but that it behooves a cautious U.S. foreign policy to support legitimate democratic process over military coups, whatever the policy differences are. Thus, Obama's statement last night:
"I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel [sic] Zelaya. As the Organization of American States did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference."
In the past, of course, coups in Latin America have led to a lot of domestic political turmoil in the United States, with conservatives and liberals lining up with their respective factions -- contras and Sandinistas, etc. Seeing Obama and Chavez on the same side -- which will, ironically, help undermine Chavez' authority as chief anti-American demagogue in South America -- will no doubt angry up Republican blood. Who will be the first American conservative to side with the military junta? Or will we see a general agreement that taking a stance against military coups is a net benefit for U.S. national security? I hope it's the latter, if only to avoid sending mixed signals abroad.
-- Tim Fernholz
Photo of Zelaya (R) and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa (L) from the official photostream of the Ecuadorian Presidency.
The three founders of The American Prospect debate the perils and the promise of a public insurance option:
In "The Perils of the Public Plan,"Paul Starr warns that a public-insurance option could turn into exactly the opposite of what progressives want. Here he discusses the problems with the Prospect's two other co-founders, Robert Kuttner and Robert Reich.
The opinion released by the court in the Ricci case is 93 pages long, so it's going to take me a while to wade through it. The court ruled along ideological lines, 5-4 in favor of the white firefighters who were alleging racial discrimination. Having read the introduction however, I can already take a good guess at what the lede will be, particularly for those opposed to Sonia Sotomayor's nomination:
All the evidence demonstrates that the City rejected the test results because the higher scoring candidates were white. Without some other justification, this express, race-based decision-making is prohibited.
The facts of the Ricci case are this: The city threw out a series of tests under the results of which several white and Hispanic firefighters would have been promoted, because there was a serious racial disparity in the results. The city feared being sued for discrimination, so it threw the tests out.
Clearly, this is a pretty ham-handed way of following affirmative action laws. But the above sentence from the Court oversimplifies. The city didn't throw the tests out because it didn't want any white firefighters, or because it believes whites aren't smart enough to be firefighters, or because whites are inherently unskilled and therefore can't be firefighters. The city didn't throw the tests out because they contradicted long-held beliefs about the "racial characteristics" of whites. The city threw the test results out because it feared getting sued for discriminating against others who didn't fare well on the test. Saying that the city simply "threw out the test results because the higher scoring candidates were white" is not exactly correct.
There's probably more like this in the rest of the opinion, but those opposed to Sotomayor's nomination partially on the grounds that minorities have all the rights these days already have plenty to work with.
Today at 10 AM, the Supreme Court will be releasing its last opinions and orders for the term, including the controversial Ricci affirmative action case. The conservative lean of the court suggests it will overturn the lower court's ruling, but we won't know how far it's gone until the orders are released. SCOTUSBlog will be liveblogging the release.
In the meantime, whatever the court decides, it's unlikely to affect Sonia Sotomayor's chances at confirmation. A recent poll from The Washington Post shows 62% of Americans want to see her confirmed.
There was a huge newsdump last week, with TheWashington Postreporting that President Obama intends to circumvent Congress and reassert indefinite detention authority by executive order. At the same time, the Brookings Institution released a paper by Ben Wittes and Colleen A. Peppard giving the possible outlines of a preventive detention statute. Although I didn't post about it, I initially assumed that the administration's move would be along the lines of what Wittes is proposing.
That isn't the case. I interviewed Wittes at length this weekend for a feature I'm doing for the print edition, and I had a chance to look over the whole proposal. Wittes told me personally that he thought Obama re-asserting--as Bush did--the inherent authority to detain terrorists suspects indefinitely would be "a disaster."
The Wittes proposal is not likely to make any civil libertarians happy. But unlike the administration's move--if the Post story is accurate--it does propose some meaningful constraints on the indefinite detention power, which up till now we've seen being used arbitrarily except where the courts intervene. The Wittes proposal would set up a FISA-like system, where terrorist suspects could be detained for 14 days without court oversight, but their cases would be subject to judicial review every six months afterward to determine if the suspect should remain detained, according to a "three pronged test." The individual would have to be: "(1) an agent of a foreign power, if (2) that power is one against which Congress has authorized the use of force, and if (3) the actions of the covered individual in his capacity as an agent of the foreign power pose a danger both to any person and to the interests of the United States." The president would also have to submit a list of groups to Congress every few months that it wants covered by the AUMF, and whose members can be subject to preventive detention. The evidence threshold for detaining someone would be lower than that used in criminal trials. There's more to the proposal, but I won't try to explain it all in one blog post.
Don't read this post as an endorsement. If you're against indefinite detention in principle, the Wittes proposal will be unacceptable. But it's very different from the powers the administration would allegedly be asserting, in that it installs some checks from the other branches of government. -- A. Serwer
The Waxman-Markey climate change bill is being debated in the House as we speak, with a vote likely to come around 6 PM EST. Prospect alum Kate Sheppard is following the intense floor debate on her Twitter feed here. In other cap-and-trade legislation news: Henry Waxman has added some more progressive amendments to the bill; Barack Obama's Twitter feed (and its 1.5 million subscribers) has come back to life; the GOP "Manhattan Project" alternative energy bill still uses magic budgeting; John Boehner couldn't make an informative chart to save his life; and Nate Silver takes a first crack at looking at the impact of Waxman-Markey on a state-by-state basis.
Turning to the health care reform debate, Ezra Kleingames out the White House strategy for getting a decent bill passed. Time will tell. Meanwhile, Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) has come out against including a public option, and Arlen Specter is in favor. Amazing what a potential primary challenge can do for you.
The president hosted German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House today, greeting her with a respectful "Willkommen." Spencer Ackermansnarks, "Barack Obama has now converted to German. Just like Andy McCarthy promised, his totalitarian-liberal instincts preordained this moment. Obama’s both a Nazi and a Muslim, an unstoppable Islamofascist Voltron."
There's definitely something to this Daphne Eviatarpost that sees the rise of outside experts on the subject of "preemptive detention" as being enabled by the GOP's continued stonewalling of OLC nominee Dawn Johnsen. Furthermore, as Hilzoyobserves, this is just one more piece of evidence that our upper legislative house is essentially broken. Matt Yglesiasrecommends that progressives get back to their institutional reform roots, which is excellent advice.
Dan Froomkin's final column for The Washington Post not only encapsulates his unique value as a reporter but near-perfectly reflects how I feel about the Bush years and the transition to Barack Obama. Appropriately, Froomkin urges vigilance in the Obama years, particularly in the areas of government transparency and secrecy, lest it consume any progressive agenda coming from the White House.
Remainders: Connecticut's governor does away with appointments for Senate vacancies; somehow I don't think the GOP tent is big enough to accommodate pro-choice Republicans; CRS concludes -- gasp -- that Sonia Sotomayor is no liberal judicial activist; and at long last, God, nationalism, and guns can be worshiped simultaneously.
Last night, I talked to some participants at a march organized by “Where Is My Vote,” an international pro-Iranian democracy grass-roots campaign. The people there offered a mixed bag of political opinion on Iran's political situation, ranging from an overall approval of Obama’s tempered handling of the matter to a more skeptical critique of the Iranian opposition.
A number of protesters wore paper signs praising Obama for “condemning but not meddling,” and carried the expected “Neda is alive in our hearts” posters. A few people came with what looked like Mullah effigies, but they were clearly on the fringe.
Many voiced a staunch, unconditional support for opposition leader Mousavi, but I spoke with numerous protesters who were only pro-Mousavi by default. Several felt great unease over the fact that they were supporting a candidate who was, in his own words, “ready for martyrdom.” One of the protesters was particularly nervous about such a man possibly becoming president of a potential nuclear power, but stressed that “democracy isn’t perfect, but we’re for it,” and that Mousavi was nevertheless, “a first step toward real political reform” in the region.
A particularly enthusiastic rally-mate emphasized that “denouncing human-rights violations is what we want from Obama, and, please, let the Iranians on the ground handle the rest. So, so far, so good.”
--Asawin Suebsaeng
Asawin Suebsaeng is a Prospect summer 2009 intern.
We've lost a number of American cultural icons in the last week, and among all that sad news there are reports that legendary newsman Walter Cronkite is seriously ill. Most are familiar -- and should be -- with his biography, how he made his name as a reporter in World War II, served as UPI's Moscow correspondent and then moved on to CBS, eventually anchoring the evening news from 1962 to 1981. I came across this video of Cronkite broadcasting the news of President John F. Kennedy's death in 1963, only one year into his job as anchor.
What strikes me first is Cronkite's calm. You wouldn't blame a reporter for displaying some emotion while discussing a story so tragic and shocking, but then again, this is a man who landed in a glider on D-Day and reported on the Battle of the Bulge. But watch closely and observe how he's doing his job, working from his desk, taking information from other journalists around him, switching to live video from Dallas, coordinating reports from the CBS affiliate there and a young Dan Rather, on the scene as CBS' national correspondent, sorting out confirmed facts and unconfirmed rumors, giving people the information they needed during that dark hour.
The whole experience reminded me of reading Andrew Sullivan's blog during the the past weeks of conflict and protest in Iran. While Andrew was certainly more excited than Cronkite -- Andrew's an opinion journalist, anyway, that's his bread and butter -- the activities were the same: Aggregating multiple reports, passing on relevant video, assessing rumors and confirming them, airing skepticism and bringing together news from varied outlets and perspectives.
Throughout the debates over whether blogging is journalism or not, I've always stuck by the posture that content is king. True, the medium will always be an influence, but the ultimate judge is what information is provided. Seeing Cronkite and Sullivan performing very similar work reporting on a breaking crisis should reinforce that fact. Ultimately, good journalism is a pretty straightforward task. It's just not an easy one.
Ex CIA Inspector General's John Helgerson's report dealing with the use of torture by the CIA has been delayed for a second time. A heavily redacted version has already been released, this one would reveal more details The administration was meant to release the document last week, but demurred. The administration asked the ACLU for an extension of three days, and they accepted. Spencer Ackerman posts the letter from the Justice Department here.
I don't take Michael Goldfarb particularly seriously, but I thought this paragraph sums up his skewed worldview quite nicely:
Basically, cap and trade strikes me as the Iraq war of the Democratic domestic policy agenda. It's the overreach moment. It's a massive program that, unlike health care reform, no one is demanding, no one understands, and no one can explain. Cap and trade may be the only thing that can save the Republican party from eight years in the wilderness.
Yup, cap-and-trade is like the Iraq War, except that it won't waste billions of dollars, kill hundreds of thousands of people, or be unnecessary. Instead, it's going to reduce the deficit, cost very little per household even over the long term ($175 per household in ... 2020), encourage the development of alternative energy and green jobs, and be a major first step toward reducing the effects of climate change. Even though it is a complicated proposal, it's also relatively popular.
Regarding Goldfarb's prediction that cap-and-trade will save the GOP, observe that the average voter is not going to feel the effects of cap-and-trade the way they will a lot of other economic indicators, like unemployment, rising gas prices, etc. Republicans hoping to save their party from the wilderness would be better served by coming up with some kind of coherent critique of the Obama administration's economic policies rather than ginning up false hysteria over a difficult-to-understand regulatory scheme whose overreaching goal is broadly popular.
Another question: Does Goldfarb now think that the Iraq War is a massive program that no one demanded, no one understood, and no one could explain?
This afternoon, Sir Richard Dalton, the former British ambassador to Iran (2002-2006), spoke at the New American Foundation. He made a few provocative statements on the Iranian unrest, alleging "the Islamic Republic of Iran is not unraveling." Why not? Civil society and military institutions, Dalton observed, have largely hedged their bets in the wake of the disputed election, waiting to see how strong the protest movement would become, and what Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's public stance would be. The problem is that these "wait and see" institutions are the same ones that could have provided key support to the protesters. Without their support, the reform movement has little chance of facing down the might of the regime, which we now know is standing firmly behind the election results. "The people who want a change … are not going to have the stomach for continuing the fight for very long," Dalton predicted.
What's more, the reformers are disorganized, Dalton said. In 1979, organized political parties joined together to mobilize support for overthrowing the shah. But what we're seeing today are "ad hoc coalitions," according to Dalton, which find it hard to agree on specific policy positions beyond contempt for the election.
It's not a hopeful analysis, but it may prove to be a hard-headed, realistic one. Notably, though, Dalton clearly stated that sanctions and further isolation are not the way to react to this crisis, and that Obama and the G8 must continue the course of united diplomacy, even as the true face of the anti-democratic Iranian regime emerges. When it comes to the nuclear issue, Iran is not "completely un-deterrable or completely self-interested," Dalton said. It is a nation whose institutions are concerned with their own survival, security, and place on the international stage.
Terence Samuel on the unique undoing of Mark Sanford by love:
Mark Sanford's press conference on Wednesday -- the most recent in what seems like a weekly series of GOP infidelity apologies -- made for riveting television; the more you listened to the South Carolina governor, the less interesting the story's political implications became compared to the raw human drama of a man getting crushed by the consequences of falling in love. Sanford's sudden implosion seems that the political fates have decided that to save the GOP they must destroy it, or, in their own parlance, the party must be born again. Sanford was that rare figure who fought at the barricades of the GOP revolution in 1994 and who survived its collapse with enough credibility intact to think about a future.
The Republican Governors Association, which Sanford chaired until his resignation this week, presently blares this headline: "The GOP Comeback Begins with Republican Governors." Sanford was to lead that comeback. Now he can't.
This didn't make it into my piece on gay rights and race in D.C. today, but it's important enough that I feel the need to mention it. Dennis Wiley, a Baptist minister who is co-pastor of the Covenant Baptist Church in Ward 8 with his wife, studied with James Cone and considers himself a follower of Black Liberation Theology.
Now, because of Jeremiah Wright's inflammatory and intolerant statements before and after the election, and because of a concerted effort on the part of the right, Black Liberation Theology got reduced to a kind of doctrine of "black supremacy." Wright may have made an accurate evaluation of what BLT is actually about basically impossible. But Wiley told me, in no uncertain terms, that, aside from personally meeting LGBT folks, it was his study of Black Liberation Theology, and its focus on what Wiley called the "multidimensional aspect of oppression" that led him to see the fight for gay rights as a civil-rights struggle and to start performing same-sex-union ceremonies at his church. (Wiley says that if same-sex marriage becomes legal in D.C., he will perform those too.) That's not surprising--whatever Jeremiah Wright's faults, he is not a homophobe. I'm not sure what all this means, exactly, but I think it's worth mentioning. -- A. Serwer
Adam Serwer on the D.C. gay-rights movement's ties to the African American community:
The anti-gay-rights movement has long sought to use the relative religiosity of the black community to marshal its support. Anti-marriage-equality leaders often cite the results of Proposition 8 in California, which was supported by a majority of African American voters in the state, as proof that the black community as a whole is against gay marriage.
There's only one problem: The face of LGBT leadership in D.C. is often black.
The Chicago Reader has posted a piece from its archives about the day Bad was released. It's not only a great late-80s pop-culture time capsule but a fascinating snapshot of how music fans saw Michael Jackson.
Pete, lithe and black, with his hair squared like Grace Jones's, takes a black magic marker and draws an erect penis on Jackson's image. His friend Mikey, a stringy Puerto Rican, giggles. Their box, a silver radio about half the size of Pete, is relatively quiet. From it comes a barely thumping bass.
"You think he's gay?" asks Pete, bursting with laughter.
Mikey can barely answer; he's holding his sides. "I used to think he was just, you know, weird," he finally says, all grins. "'Cause, you know, he was a born-again Christian or something like that."
"That's pretty weird!" cracks Pete in mock shock.
"You know what I mean, man," Mikey says. "He had a giraffe as a pet or something."
Most tributes to Jackson have made some sort of distinction between the musical prodigy he was early in his career and his later life as a plastic-surgeried, baby-dangling weirdo who liked to sleep with children. The article is a glimpse at the moment when Jackson's eccentricities were beginning to overshadow his music:
It certainly isn't for Amy LeBlanc, a 12-year-old accompanied by her mother, Donna, who isn't buying Bad. "I don't know," she says, clutching a Rose Records bag containing recordings by the Beatles and Ministry. "He just doesn't sound real anymore."
"Oh, she was absolutely wild about him!" Donna says.
"I was?" Amy asks, with the kind of embarrassed, condescending look only a child can give a parent.
"Don't you remember how upset you were when he burned his hair?"
"I was?" Amy asks again, scrunching up her face.
"Well, you have Thriller," Donna says.
"Yeah but, I mean, it was good. He was kind of a fad at school." Amy is the paragon of her peers' contemporary dress: Her hair is fashionably uneven. She sports an oversize facetious letter sweater, red high-top sneakers with rolled-up pants, a Swatch, and bead wristbands a-go-go. All these accessories serve to make her look like an androgynous wisp, which makes her next comments particularly ironic.
"He doesn't look like he used to," she says of Michael Jackson. "He's wearing so much junk on his face, he looks more like a girl than his sister."
Yet, even given all the record-store shoppers' comments, we all know how well Bad went on to do.
Pivoting off of Spencer'sanalysis of the upcoming withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraqi cities (and my post from earlier in the week), it's important to recognize how well the military and the U.S. government overall are handling the politics of the situation:
The Americans asked to keep open an outpost in Sadr City, the Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad that once served as the base of Shiite militias, only to be rebuffed.
“This is one we wanted,” Brig. Gen. John M. Murray said. “The Iraqi government said ‘no,’ so now we are leaving.”
... The Americans have been strikingly sensitive to [Iraqi Prime Minister] Maliki’s political position, emphasizing Iraqi primacy in all public remarks. They have declined to specify how many American troops will remain in cities, seemingly fearful of undercutting Mr. Maliki’s public declarations of a full withdrawal.
...“Symbolically,” General Lanza said of the withdrawing American forces ahead of Tuesday, “this is what we want for the Iraqis as a sovereign nation.”
Being a world power demands humility. In the last administration, this pullback would have become some kind of propaganda party and political club, complete with banner; now, the Iraqis are front and center. That doesn't mean this can't go terribly wrong -- it certainly can, and we're going to see at the very least a dicey few months in Iraq -- but Maliki seems to be staking his political future on the move. That's the point of this withdrawal effort: Providing incentives for Iraqi political leaders to take responsibility for the future of their country.
The supplementary appropriations bill signed by President Obama yesterday doesn't just prevent funds from being allocated to relocate Gitmo prisoners, it forces the president to submit regular reports to Congress on the legal status of each detainee, as well as a “summary of the evidence, intelligence, and information used to justify the detention of each detainee.” Daphne Eviatarthinks the provision might be unconstitutional because it effectively denies the detainees' Habeas rights. Deborah Pearlsteinexplains more about the legislation and its legal background.
What's significant about the provisions on detainees is that it's clearly not meant to ensure that the detainees themselves are given justice. It's meant to give Congress influence over which detainees are safe enough to let go--which, given Congress' paranoid reaction to the Chinese Uighurs who were declared not to be dangerous and ordered released, means essentially no one.
-- A. Serwer
Jaclyn Friedmanon the legacy of Stonewall after 40 years, and why waiting isn't working for gay rights:
Forty years ago, a raucous group of transvestites, queens, dykes, hustlers, and homeless queer kids gathered at their local bar in Greenwich Village: The Stonewall Inn. This wasn't a political meeting -- and contrary to the common historical narrative, they weren't leaders in the nascent gay-rights movement. (Those leaders were far too concerned with convincing the powers that were that gay Americans were "just like everyone else" to set foot inside the Stonewall.) No, this was just an average Saturday night in 1969, and the Stonewall's patrons had gathered for the same reasons that most people gather at a bar -- to dance, drink, hang out with friends, and maybe get lucky.
Then something extraordinary happened.
It wasn't the police raid. Raids were pretty average then, too, as cops made a habit of targeting gay hangouts. What was extraordinary was that, for whatever reason, on that night everyone at the bar began to fight back.
This morning The Washington Postpicks up on a reference Mark Sanford made in his confessional press conference to meetings he had at "C Street" to discuss his infidelity. He was referring to 133 C Street, S.E., in the District, where a secretive group of power elites known as "The Fellowship" or "The Family" meets. According to the Post:
The house pulsed with backstage intrigue, in the days and months before the Sanford and Ensign scandals -- dubbed "two lightning strikes" by a high-ranking congressional source. First, at least one resident learned of both the Sanford and Ensign affairs and tried to talk each politician into ending his philandering, a source close to the congressman said. Then the house drama escalated. It was then that Doug Hampton, the husband of Ensign's mistress, endured an emotional meeting with Sen. Tom Coburn, who lives there, according to the source. The topic was forgiveness.
(The Post also reports that the townhouse is actually owned by Youth With A Mission, the worldwide youth evangelism complex that most recently was in the news because Matthew Murray, who shot up New Life Church in Colorado Springs in 2007, blamed his troubles in part on the YWAM program, which has been accused of brainwashing and coercive techniques.)
JS: . . . . They talk about how we can do conflict resolution, a couple of brothers in Christ can just get together and share their love for one another. If they're "top men." If they're chosen by God for this, if they're elites, if they're chosen by God according to Romans 13 . . . . Are you willing to submit to this Christ, are you willing to say that you're obeying Christ before you obey the will of the people, what The Family calls "the din of the vox popula." They don't like that.
SP: So you're listening to this imaginary Christ instead of representing your constituents, because the will of the people is just the riff-raff?
JS: It's actually a little worse than that. What you're doing is getting a collection of elites who are submitting to the authority of an American-led fundamentalist network, not following their conscience but following Christ as he reveals himself secretly to the elite.
In my post yesterday about the Waxman-Markey bill and the need to shift perspective on the legislative process, I referred to the "pernicious corn barons of the Midwest," but didn't do an amazing job of explaining what exactly they were up to. Luckily, Steve Pearlstein has that covered in today's Post:
For farmers, it wasn't enough to get a free pass on carbon emissions. They are unhappy that the effect of the caps and pollution permits will be to raise the price of their fuel, fertilizer and electricity. No matter that other Americans will suffer similar effects. In the mind of the entitled American farmer, any increase in costs or reduction in revenue -- whether from natural causes, market forces or government regulation -- must be compensated for by the government.
So farmers demanded that they be allowed to earn some extra cash by reducing the carbon footprint on their farms and selling these "offsets" to the factories and power plants unlucky enough to be subject to the carbon-cap regime. They want to be paid extra if they change the feedstock to cut down on cow burps and farts. Or if they use the no-till method for planting seeds, which doesn't release the carbon trapped in the soil. Or if they put in devices to trap the methane released from animal poop.
And they demanded to be paid not just if they do these things in the future, but also if they did them last year or the year before. They demanded the payments even if they are already getting a check from the government to do the same things as part of some other conservation program. And perhaps most notably, they demanded that the job of supervising this offset program be shifted from the Environmental Protection Agency, whose focus would actually be ensuring that the reductions are real, to the Department of Agriculture, which sees its mission as preserving, protecting and defending American farm subsidies.
Ugh. And that doesn't have cover the ethanol concessions. It's no wonder that one of the first cost-cutting methods proposed by the president -- cutting some hundreds of billions of dollars in unecessary agricultural subsidies -- was DOA in Congress.
Also, when you read the whole column, figure out what's going on with the "Elmer" thing. Is that just a stereotypcial farmer name? Is the farm lobby referred to as Elmer a lot? I didn't get it.
Daphne Eviatarreports that the recently passed war supplemental, now signed by President Obama, contains a potentially unconstitutional provision preventing the president from releasing Guantanamo Bay prisoners without congressional approval. In addition to being a suspension of habeas, the provision also leaves unresolved the question of which branch of the federal government actually has control over the fate of the Gitmo detainees.
President Obama has been evasive on the question of whether he'll veto a health care bill that does not contain a public option. But White House aides are now suggesting that the first Obama veto could be over the defense budget, should Congress continue its "weaponized Keynesianism" as it pursues all the F-22s under the rainbow.
Steve Benenreminds us that the GOP's relationship with the CBO is highly conditional, meaning they only praise its objectivity and nonpartisanship when scored legislation synchronizes with the Republican political agenda. Nothing shocking about that, but this fundamental intellectual dishonesty has yet to be rigorously called out when the likes of Eric Cantor, Mike Pence or Newt Gingrich show up on your TV.
I'm not sure what the relevance of this Politicopiece on the "politics of personal perfection" is supposed to be. Apparently, "certain people -- mostly Republicans" believe that what Americans really pine for is presidential leadership that is mediocre at best. Didn't we already hear the "celebrity" critique last year? How'd that turn out? Did voters secretly wish Joe the Plumber had been on the November ballot? And are Republicans really going to revisit the "guy you'd have a beer with" strategy of George W. Bush?
Remainders: Michelle Obama wants to add more substance to her new role; Rudy Giuliani wants to turn New York into California; Michael Goldfarb thinks cap-and-trade is the Democrats' Iraq War; and I thought wingnuts were supposed to approve of the Japanese internment?
Some good news to end a relatively slow news day: Harold Koh was finally confirmed as the State Department's legal adviser in a 62-35 vote. It only took three and a half months, but hey, better late than never.
President Obama nominated two people to be Federal District Court judges today. Both seem well qualified, and though I don't know too much about them, one notable fact is that both nominees have backgrounds as public defenders (see bios after the jump). It smacks of empathy! I certainly hope they're not racialist.
-- Tim Fernholz
Judge Charlene Honeywell: Nominee for Middle District of Florida
Judge Honeywell currently serves as a Circuit Court Judge for the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida. She was appointed to that position by Gov. Jeb Bush in 2000. Judge Honeywell graduated from Howard University cum laude in May 1979 and from the University of Florida’s College of Law in December 1981. From 1982 to 1985, she served in the Tallahassee Public Defender’s Office and then spent two years as an assistant public defender in the Tampa Public Defender’s Office. From 1987 to 1994, she worked as an Assistant City Attorney for the City of Tampa and then spent six years at the Tampa law firm Hill, Ward & Henderson. In 1994, Judge Honeywell served as a County Court Judge for the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit in Florida. She has also served a four year term on the Florida Federal Judicial Nominating Commission. Judge Honeywell received a well-qualified rating from the ABA and is being nominated to the District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Jeffrey Viken: Nominee for District of South Dakota
Jeffrey Viken is currently the Federal Public Defender for North and South Dakota and has served in this capacity since 2003. Mr. Viken received his Bachelor of Arts in 1974 and law degree in 1977 from the University of South Dakota. From 1977 to 1981, Viken was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of South Dakota. During his tenure as an AUSA, he served as First Assistant U.S. Attorney and acting U.S. Attorney. From 1981 to 2003, Viken worked in private practice, specializing in criminal and civil litigation in federal court. Mr. Viken received a well-qualified rating from the ABA and is being nominated to the District Court of South Dakota.
Via Brad Plumer, a little update on the progress of cap-and-trade ("cap and tax," "cap and cash back," etc.). Brad and other folks following the debate more closely than I make clear that the legislation, though weakened to the point where it will not create a much-needed dramatic reduction in emissions, is a pretty good start -- even the deal between Rep. Henry Waxman and Rep. Colin Peterson didn't so much give away the farm as ratify long-standing concessions to the pernicious corn barons of the Midwest. But of course some people are still trying to improve the bill.
The other day, Dave Robertsasked the most pertinent question -- what happens if this bill passes? (Democrats hunt for votes in the House; as always, the Senate will be ... interesting.) One important result may be that, judging by the scoring of the bill and this phenomenon, people aren't going to suffer economically and will become acclimated to this kind of regulatory scheme -- call it the gay-marriage model of legislative progress: One of the best ways to lose credibility is see your apocalyptic warnings proven totally wrong. But Waxman has a long history of keeping the ball moving forward, and we can expect the Obama administration to continue revisiting energy policy, especially as a forum for developing economic growth.
As we see a lot of big, landmark-style bills coming to the floor in the coming months and stress out over whether they are "good" or "bad," failure or success, and instead look at legislating over the longer term as a process of constantly pushing toward better policy. Obviously, Congress' institutional structure -- it's very hard to pass anything substantial or with any kind of speed -- creates an incentive geared toward achieving huge breakthroughs, since you may only get this chance -- and this majority -- once. The extremely time-sensitive nature of climate change legislation in particular makes it important in this case to try and get the job right, right away.
But, on a lot of issues, it might make sense to adopt a take-what-you-can-get, then go back and ask for more mentality. That's certainly not to excuse the timid Democrats who love to muck up good legislation with intellectually baseless compromise. But if Ezra's right about this dynamic -- I think he is, and that it applies to a lot of what the administration is doing; Mattdisagrees -- we could end up with a health-care bill that is both a great improvement and a bummer for those who know what could have been done. But there's no law saying that Barack Obama and the rest of the Democrats can't take another bite at the health-care apple -- or energy, or financial regulations, or whatever -- after the midterms or, hell, as soon as the first bill passes. It's not the way we usually approach the legislative agenda, and there are good reasons for the the current modus operandi, but the usual way also produces a lot of sub-optimal outcomes. Time for a change?
If you want to see Dana Goldstein on the real TV (as opposed to the Internet TV), she will be on MSNBC today around 3:40, discussing Obama and his health care agenda.
ViaMatt Yglesias, I think this post from Gary Schmitt on yesterday's U.S. soccer team upsetting No. 1 Spain (HELL YEAH!) accurately, if accidentally explains modern American conservatism:
As someone who didn’t play soccer growing up, but had a dad who did and whose own kids played as well, I can say unquestionably that it is the sport in which the team that dominates loses more often than any other major sport I know of. Or, to put it more bluntly, the team that deserves to win doesn’t. For some soccer-loving friends, this is perfectly okay. Indeed, they will argue that it’s a healthy, conservative reminder of how justice does not always prevail in life.
[...]
For sure, there may be a number of reasons that is the case but my suspicion is that the so-called “beautiful game” is not so beautiful to American sensibilities. We like, as good small “d” democrats, our underdogs for sure but we also still expect folks in the end to get their just desert. And, in sports, that means excellence should prevail. Of course, the fact that is often not the case when it comes to soccer may be precisely the reason the sport is so popular in the countries of Latin America and Europe.
Schmitt doesn't really believe "excellence" should prevail, or he wouldn't be lamenting that the team that played better won the game. What he laments is that the team that was supposed to play better lost--in other words, it bothers him that it's even possible for someone with a distinct, inherent advantage to fail. This isn't support for "good "small "d" democracy", this is romanticizing oligarchy. It's the pathetic lament of someone who is disappointed that structural inequalities don't always produce a positive result for the advantaged. Schmitt is, in effect, arguing that nothing should have to be earned--you earn it depending entirely on who you are. He doesn't believe in competition that allows, well, competition. Aside from being really weird, this attitude basically defeats the point of watching competitive sports.
It is however, the kind of philosophy that explains conservative hostility to everything from the progessive tax system and universal health care coverage to Sonia Sotomayor being nominated to the Supreme Court. Everyone, especially those at the bottom, are meant to stay in their place.
Welcome to "Ask a Feminist," in which our own Dana Goldstein and Ann Friedman address a topic related to gender and feminism. Today's very special wedding season episode features a question from Justin Elliott: "If a hetero couple has already mutually decided to get married, is it sexist for the man to then plan a traditional-style proposal?"
Secretary of Education Arne Duncanannounced yesterday a new, simpler version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. For nearly two decades college aid advocates have pushed for a more accessible FAFSA, currently a six-page goliath of a document whose detailed financial questions are a significant hurdle for low-income and middle-class students who need financial aid to attend college. Students will also now be able to auto-fill several of the financial questions with tax data imported online from IRS forms.
It’s a welcome change, if for no other reason than that it’s not all that often that the federal government manages to simplify something. Duncan also announced expansions in the Pell Grant and Perkins Loan programs, both effective programs that lost funding during the Bush years.
All of these are important accomplishments that will improve college access -- but they are not enough by themselves. Saying that a simplified FAFSA is the solution to the college barrier for low-income students is a bit like saying that simplifying the tax code is the solution to poverty. Low-income students face disadvantages in the college process long before they fill out -- or attempt to fill out -- the FAFSA. Many lack even the most basic information about the process, and often have no counselor or mentor to help them find it. A recent Economic Mobility Project study [PDF] found that at high schools serving low-income students, college counselors have caseloads of over 1,000 students.
Duncan acknowledged the challenges yesterday and made a vague statement about plans for a national information campaign:
We're actually going to launch a campaign starting this fall, the upcoming school year, to make sure that every high school student knows that this is available. And to be clear, what we want is not just to campaign for high school students. … I want to get that message out, again, to 10- and 11- and 12-year-olds, because I worry about those families, where the dream starts to die at an early age.
A simpler FAFSA and expanded grant programs are welcome progress on an oft-ignored issue. But if low-income students aren’t informed about their options, have no counselors or mentors to help them, and don’t start planning for college early, no amount of aid money is going to create the mass college-going that President Obama envisions. In other words, K-12 education reform and poverty alleviation must be part of the solution.
Leigh Ferrara on an advice columnist with a unique subject: peak oil.
In a small liberal town in Massachusetts' Berkshires, Kathy McMahon makes her living spicing up people's sex lives. But arguably her most prescient work is not as a couple's therapist; it's as an online advice columnist for people who are freaked out about the coming peak-oil crisis.
More than three years ago, peak oil -- the idea that we have exceeded or are fast approaching the earth's maximum capacity for oil extraction -- rocked this middle-class, middle-aged clinical psychologist's mind-set.
With all of the attention given to Iran's civil conflict and the rapidly changing situation in Afghanistan, it sometimes feel like the war in Iraq is being left a little by the wayside. But with the rapid approach of the June 30 deadline for U.S. forces to pull out of all Iraqi cities and towns violence is renewing and mistrust increasing -- some Iraqis even believe that the U.S. is facilitating the disruptions so they can continue to occupy the streets -- though it's true that the level of violence in Iraq is still relatively low. The White House has said that the pull out will be going forward, although in the past commanding General Ray Odierno has suggested that some troops may stay in cities if the Iraqi government so requests.
There's going to be a lot of clamor, especially from the right, for the administration to keep soldiers in the cities after the deadline, and increasing attacks will be the cause of that. It's going to be important for U.S. legitimacy in Iraq and the international sphere, as well as for President Obama's domestic political aspirations, to take this tangible step toward full U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and limit or eliminate any exceptions to the withdrawal. It seems likely that violence will increase at first without U.S. troops among the people, but at the same time the hope is that seeing U.S. forces withdraw will be a signal to Iraqis that insurgency isn't necessary and that occupation is drawing down, leaving only the most ideological groups in operation for Iraqi security forces and U.S. troops to address. (I'll be curious to hear what the counterinsurgency folks think of this.) As well, the move will hopefully be another incentive for Iraq's political elites to seek further reconciliation.
It's amazing that the bruising political battles over Iraq that dominated the news from, oh, 2003 through last summer, have been reduced as realities in Iraq have led policy-makers to converge in a wary compromise around this staggered pull-out while all the noise surrounds the long-neglected Afghanistan war. But all that may change as withdrawal changes the dynamics within Iraq.
Dana's already posted on the verdict in Safford Unified School District v. April Redding, but I gotta say it's gotten to the point where I skip to Clarence Thomas' dissents rather than reading the whole opinion first. It's kind of like eating ice cream before dinner.
In an 8-1 ruling, the court decided that school authorities' strip search of 13-year-old Savana Redding in an attempt to find ibuprofen was illegal, with the more liberal justices dissenting from the larger opinion that school officials couldn't be held liable for violating Redding's Fourth Amendment rights.
Thomas, the lone dissenter, took a different view, based on the fact that "drug use and violent crime in the schools have become major social problems." Before we look at Thomas' dissent however, let's look at the Court's description of what happened:
Wilson then had Romero take Savana to the school nurse’s office to search her clothes for pills. After Romero and the nurse, Peggy Schwallier, had Savana remove her outer clothing, they told her to pull her bra out and shake it, and to pull out the elastic on her un-derpants, thus exposing her breasts and pelvic area to some degree. No pills were found.
Thomas doesn't think that the relative danger posed by the drugs should matter, or that school officials should have some reason to believe that you're hiding drugs in your underwear if authorities have already failed to find drugs with a normal search. He concludes:
Seeking to reconcile the Fourth Amendment with this unique public school setting, the Court in T. L. O. held that a school search is “reasonable” if it is “‘justified at its inception’” and “‘reasonably related in scope to the cir-cumstances which justified the interference in the first place.’” The search under review easily meets this standard.
Easily. I mean it's a total no-brainer, that you'd strip-search a 13-year-old in order to find headache medicine, right? I wonder why the other eight justices had such a hard time figuring that out. -- A. Serwer
Matthew Yglesiason how the conservative take on Iran has never been focused on the well-being of the Iranian people:
Conservative hawks, who just a few weeks ago were eager to drop bombs on Iran, have not hesitated to take advantage of the recent political unrest to launch criticisms on President Barack Obama for being insufficiently concerned with the welfare of the Iranian people. In its most extreme guises, this criticism has taken the form of National Review writers accusing Obama of having an active preference for tyranny. Victor Davis Hanson alleges that Obama is "almost more at ease with virulent anti-Westerners." Andy McCarthy deems Obama "steeped in Leftist ideology, fueled in anger and resentment" and thus eager to embrace theocracy. However, McCarthy continues, the president recognizes that it "would have been political suicide to issue a statement supportive of the mullahs" and thus chose to mask his hidden pro-dictatorship views behind a veneer of calm and restraint.
These are outliers (though they were published on the Web site of the right's flagship publication), but toned-down versions of the same basic complaint can be found all over the place. Interestingly, actual Iranians seemed to have no such concerns. Instead, they generally supported the White House's view that heavy-handed foreign intervention into the crisis would be counterproductive.
On the heels of its surprise upholding of key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court has now ruled, 8-1, that Safford, Arizona, middle school officials broke the law when they strip-searched a 13-year-old girl, Savana Redding, because they suspected she was carrying ibuprofen. Retiring Justice David Souter, who seemed somewhat skeptical of the plaintiff's position during arguments, actually authored the decision, writing:
What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear.
The caveat is that seven of the nine justice agreed that the man who authorized the strip search, vice principal Kerry Wilson, cannot be held financially liable for his actions. The Court's most liberal members, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, disagreed, writing, "Wilson's treatment of Redding was abusive and it was not reasonable for him to believe that the law permitted it."
This ruling further cements that Supeme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will not significantly tilt the Court to the left, despite the wailing of conservatives. Sotomayor has ruled against school strip searches in the past. Now we know that the man who she will replace on the court, David Souter, feels the same way.
I hadn't blogged about the populist revolt of the White House Press Corps over Nico Pitney's question to President Obama, because I'm honestly in disbelief that it's become any kind of issue. This is such a flagrant example of reporters placing their personal anxieties and interests ahead of anything the larger public is interested in. It's pure, whining, narcissism: a blogger got to ask a question, without having spent years fluffing the powerful or focusing on the trivial in order to get a comfortable seat in front of the podium. The White House Press Corps spent about 15 minutes discussing this issue yesterday, which prompted Jake Tapper to ask "Can anyone ask about something that the American people actually care about?" Well, no!
The sour grapes in the press are over the fact that the White House had apparently let Pitney know he might be called on the night before the press conference, because of his work culling on-the-ground Internet reports of the unrest in Iran. Pitney now stands accused of helping the White House do "message control." The subtext, in case you hadn't figured it out, is that only old-fashioned reporters, the ones who ask questions about the president's smoking habits, or what breed of dog he's chosen, can be trusted to get to the nitty gritty, while bloggers are mere partisan puppets.
Of course, Pitney did ask a tough question, and the president evaded it. Over at The New York Times, Kate Phillipsadmits as much, noting that Pitney had spent time working on the same "arduous task" of sorting through information coming out of Iran as the staff at the Times. "No one is diminishing his work," Phillips says. Sure. Phillips is just accusing Pitney of being "an actor for the president’s agenda" -- which isn't diminishing to a journalist at all.
Phillips then quotes Jeff Zeleny, who says of Pitney's advance notice, “That never happens. I’ve never been notified in advance of a question.” Maybe If Zeleny had gotten a heads up the last time I remember him asking the president a question, it wouldn't have included the word "enchanted." But hey, I'm not diminishing his work.
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who fails in his anti-Pitney column to inform his readers what Pitney's question actually was, writes, “The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world — Iran included — that the American press isn’t as free as advertised." (Translation: Nico Pitney gives aid and comfort to our enemies.) But Obama didn't answer Pitney's question about whether or not, and under what conditions, the U.S. would recognize Ahmadinejad. So how could this possibly be an instance of Pitney becoming "an actor for the president’s agenda?" The point of "planted questions" is to knock them out of the park with a prepared answer, not to avoid the question. By any objective evaluation, the president's agenda wasn't helped by Pitney's question--and not because the press corps had a temper tantrum about it.
NPR has an interesting feature up on their site today--they had their photographer turn around and photograph the lobbyists in attendance at the first health-care reform bill hearing on June 17:
That's a crop of the panorama of the room. They are asking people to write in (dollarpolitics@npr.org) if they can ID anyone in the crowd. Here's to transparency!
Ahead of Saturday's Stonewall Uprising 40th anniversary, Census Bureau officials announced last week that same-sex married couples will be counted as such for the first time in next year's census. The Obama administration’s decision overrules a Bush-era policy that claimed counting gay married couples would violate the Defense of Marriage Act. The shift represents an important first step toward fulfilling the White House's pledge that the upcoming census will be a “fair and accurate count of all Americans.”
Besides ideological objection to counting gay couples, there are tactical reasons Republicans continue to fight Democratic attempts to modernize the census. The 1990 census, which used a traditional door-to-door headcount, missed over 8.4 million people (mostly African Americans) and double-counted another 4.4 million (mostly white). So the Clinton administration proposed that future censuses use statistical sampling, a much more accurate, much less expense method for determining the size of the population. Republicans have fought tooth and nail against sampling since a 1997 RNC memo warned that adjustments that would accurately count poor, minority, and non-English speaking citizens could cost Republicans 24 House seats. A Supreme Court decision later ruled out the use of sampling to apportion House seats, but Republicans continue to resist even the smallest changes.
More broadly, the GOP seems committed to a strategy of spreading fear and suspicion about the census. Case-in-point: Rep. Michele Bachmann’s comment last week that her family will refuse to answer census questions next year because of concerns about ACORN’s role in collecting data. Refusing to answer census questions is, of course, illegal and can result in a $5,000 fine.
This posturing has serious consequences. Uncounted citizens are denied their fair share of congressional representation, Presidential electors, and their slice of the $300 billion in federal aid that is allocated according to census numbers. Given the groundwork laid by the Bush administration, it’s unlikely that Obama will able to change much about the 2010 census. But the decision to formally recognize gay married couples in the census isn’t nothing, considering that the opposition has made the census such a stalking horse.
David Nasaw on the search for American identity after the Civil War and the new book "Rebirth of a Nation: The Remaking of Modern America."
History is lived forward but written backward. In October of 1929, no one knew that the Great Depression had begun and would last for over a decade. The soldiers who marched off to fight in the Civil War -- and the families and loved ones who saluted their departure -- had no idea of the carnage that would follow. Historians know better but can't let their knowledge of what came next overdetermine the story they tell. Neither can they make believe that the future of that past was an open book. It wasn't. There were options, openings, possibilities, but only one path was taken. The historian's task is to explain why it was that path and not another.
The best historians strike the right balance between the Scylla and Charybdis of inevitability and randomness. As Jackson Lears demonstrates again in his latest book, Rebirth of a Nation, he is one of the best, certainly of his (and my) generation of historians. His new book is a work of synthesis, an attempt to tell the story of "the making of modern America" in the long half-century from the end of the Civil War to the end of the Great War.
Compared to the mass protests by hundreds of thousands of Iranians, the numbers have dwindled in the face of punishing reprisals by security forces on the streets. Mr. Moussavi urged followers on Thursday to assemble at the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution, on the outskirts of Tehran.
But the likely response to the call was initially unclear after security forces overwhelmed a small group of protesters on Wednesday with brutal beatings, tear gas and shots fired in the air. Another protest called for Thursday by the second-place candidate, former Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi, to mourn protesters killed in the demonstrations was called off, Mr. Karroubi said on his Web site.
The Times also reports that Moussavi hasn't been seen in public in a week and that the opposition claims academics who met with Moussavi have been arrested. Meanwhile, the hardliners are celebrating--but perhaps not the way they'd like to be:
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments, quoted on the semi-official Fars news agency, came as at least three Iranian newspapers reported that of 290 members of the Iranian Parliament invited to a victory party for him Wednesday night, only 105 attended, suggesting a deep divide within the political elite over the election and its aftermath.
It was optimistic, I suppose, to think that the protests alone were really going to topple the regime. At this point, it's a war of attrition and conversion--the question is whether popular discontent over the election has irreperably harmed the legitimacy of the government, even in the eyes of the insiders who run it. -- A. Serwer
Sen. Kent Conrad has denied reports from yesterday claiming that the White House was willing to sacrifice a public option in health care reform in order to get the bill passed. Meanwhile, we learn that Max Baucusregrets not making an attempt at implementing a single-payer plan, as it would have made the current public/private competition proposals on the table the clear compromise legislation.
The Waxman-Markey climate change bill hasn't even made its way out of the the U.S. House of Representatives and already two important regulatory provisions have been compromised, giving authority to the USDA instead of the EPA. I'm not sure what this chimera is going to look like once it emerges from the Senate, but if Grist's Dave Roberts is "not freaked out" about the fate of the bill, then I suppose one can still remain cautiously optimistic.
After three months, hearings, and a few anonymous holds, Legal Adviser to the State Department nominee Harold Koh finally received a cloture vote from the Senate, passing 65-31. Apparently, Republicans are threatening to use the entire remaining 30 hours of debate time to, I guess, stamp their feet and pout.
I know hindsight is 20/20, but you would have thought that Politico would choose not to run their piece about the "Republican comeback" three stories below (as of this writing) screaming coverage of Mark Sanford's affair. It makes the story even harder to take seriously than when we were all ignorant of Sanford's lusty Latin adventures.
I'm having real difficulty sympathizing with Dana Milbank's whining about White House press corps protocol being broken as an affront to Serious Journalists when he participates in garbage like this. I think Matt Welch is right to call it "probably the worst video in the history of YouTube."
Remainders: Reihan Salam is on a roll with poorly-argued columns; funding for the F-22 has more lives than a cat; and the GOP has sunk nearly $1 million into Norm Coleman's ongoing court battle.
At the web site of the Palmetto Family Council, the South Carolina arm of Focus on the Family, is an undated recording of an interview Governor Mark Sanford did on families and fatherhood. He serves up the usual platitudes about families being the bedrock of society, and then launches into the particular responsibilities of fathers.
To wit (or witless): When asked about the best way to keep families strong, Sanford advised spending more time with one's family (ahem) and praying together. "I don’t want to be old-fashioned here," he added, "but I think the father has the responsibility of being the spiritual leader of the house, and there are some lessons on a daily, nightly, morning basis that need to go from the father to the little ones in talking about how shall we then live. And I think that particular responsibility is on the backs of fathers."
Sanford is exploiting a Christian fundamentalist fixation on "male headship," a claim that the Bible requires men to exercise "spiritual authority" over their wives and children. (Kathryn Joyceexplores this theology in greater depth in her book, Quiverfull). Perhaps Sanford is Exhibit A for an uprising by fundamentalist women whose husbands demand spiritual submission? Jenny Sanford, you have a calling.
When it was first confirmed that Gov. Mark Sanford had been located in Argentina, my first thought was that whatever he was doing was none of my business. My second thought was that when it comes to politicians, that usually means something pretty bad. As it turns out, Sanford had disappeared for several days because he was having an affair.
Politicians having affairs isn't shocking, especially given the divorce rate here in the land of traditional marriage. I suppose what's shocking to me is that we still engage in ritual moralistic hyperventilating whenever a politician is unfaithful. In some cases, outrage is warranted--such as when politicians try to legislate their personal views on morality, or when they use the infidelity of their political rivals against them even as they engage in similar behavior. Sanford, incidentally, is one of these people. But in such cases, outrage should be directed at the hypocrisy, rather than pearl-clutching fury about the very possibility that someone might cheat on their spouse.
Marital problems shouldn't be political fodder--unless the unfaithful individual has sought to make political hay of other people's private affairs. Personally, I don't care that Sanford was unfaithful to his wife--that's none of my business. What I don't understand is why he thinks other people's relationships -- particularly those of gay people -- are his business. Like Tim, my issues with Sanford are confined to his nutty political positions, like his opposition to the stimulus even as the unemployment rate in South Carolina skyrocketed. And likeDana, I suppose I'm glad for her that his wife wasn't forced to stand beside him in public while he copped to it.
As for whether this ends Sanford's political ambitions, I doubt it. In the long run when it comes to affairs, Republicans are pretty forgiving of their own. As long as the affair was heterosexual.
Just around this time in the Clinton administration, the country was consumed with Travelgate, the Vincent Foster case, and other assorted minor and pseudo-scandals. This spring the scandals have been Republican as Sen. John Ensign and Gov. Mark Sanford have admitted infidelities. It's a pattern that seems to follow Obama. When he ran for the U.S. Senate, his chief political adversaries imploded, and when he ran for president, he benefited from the unsteady performance of John McCain and the selection of Sarah Palin.
Of course, there have been Democratic implosions along the way (like Eliot Spitzer). I would prefer more of a separation between public and private life, but a lot of politicians invite scrutiny because they make their family life part of their campaigns. And there is something peculiarly delicious about social conservatives like Ensign, Sanford, and David Vitter being exposed as hypocrites.
Alexandra and Dana make good points. I'd add this: It took an admittedly sensational story about Gov. Mark Sanford's personal life to get the national press to converge on South Carolina and declare his political career "over" due to "values" issues. (Whatever, he wouldn't be the first Southern governor to be a comeback kid after marital infidelity.) But when he attempted to deny much needed unemployment funding to people suffering under the recession while cutting school funding and the social safety net, in the name of an economically baseless austerity policy that involved telling his his weakest constituents to effectively drop dead, well, those decisions didn't threaten his political career or reflect on his values. That made him a "star" in the GOP. Priorities, priorities.
It was just this morning that I was swearing, in our daily editorial meeting, to never, ever write anything about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's jaunt to Argentina. Now I feel overtaken by events, by the sheer importance and newsiness and depth of this story, and I cannot stay silent. So to recap: Sanford has a girlfriend in Argentina. His wife supposedly knew about it. The affair began about a year ago with what Sanford called, so touchingly, that "whole sparking thing." He claims he went to Argentina, incognito, to break things off with the "dear, dear friend." He is resigning as head of the Republican Governors' Association, though his term would have expired next year anyhow. He is very, very sorry.
The best news about this whole thing is that Sanford's wife, Jenny, who had claimed to be totally ignorant of her husband's whereabouts, stayed home from the presser. Thank you. The "stand by your man" routine -- see: Silda Wall Spitzer, Dina McGreevey -- is so demeaning. And the most hilarious commentary on Sanfordgate comes from libertarian writer Will Wilkinson over Twitter: "Problem with being an American conservative is that from-the-gut romantic individualism is part of our heritage. Makes affairs likely." That's definitely a creative justification for infidelity! And I guess when liberals cheat, it's because we just love humanity so much we can't choose just one person to love! Yes. That must be it.
Whoa, boy. Gov. Mark Sanford's press conference was various shades of uncomfortable. After disappearing for a few days, the South Carolina Republican turned up on television to explain that -- no, the Appalachian trail "ain't where [he] went" -- yes, he was off cavorting in Argentina -- and, by the way, the jaunt had something to do with an extramarital affair.
Sanford apologized to all of the usuals: his wife, his kids, the people of South Carolina. He was candid about the relationship, even offering details that were, by his own admission, unnecessary. He had sinned in the eyes of God, and now he is willing to accept responsibility for his actions.
So, will his apology have it's intended effect? That is, is his political career not completely and absolutely shot?
Last year, Sam Boydoffered some hints on how to craft a political apology in reaction to Sen. David Vitter's affair:
The admission of guilt should ... explain what exactly the offense was. ... In most cases, the public knows what the politician did wrong; avoiding naming the offense undermines the admission of guilt, which is essential for a credible apology.
Excuses are another way of denying guilt, and therefore undermine apologies. Apologizing while blaming drug addiction or upbringing is as common in political apologies as it is counterproductive. ...
Finally, an apology should be prompt -- ideally coming before the public learns of the misbehavior or, if the transgression was public, as soon as possible after it occurred.
Sanford may have been upfront, but was this too little, and too late? Is the total weirdness of the situation just too much to overcome?
Paul Starr on how a public health-care plan could turn out to be the opposite of what progressives intend:
In the current battle over health reform, progressives may have set themselves up for trouble by pinning all their hopes on the creation of a government-run insurance plan. A public plan is not a bad idea -- indeed, it could be a critical element in successful reform -- but it could also easily turn out to serve the opposite purposes from the ones progressives intend.
Here's the delicate political problem: Depending on the rules, the entire system could tip one way or the other. Unconstrained, the public plan could drive private insurers out of business, setting off a political backlash not just from the industry but from much of the public. Over-constrained, the public plan could go into a death spiral itself as it becomes a dumping ground for high-risk enrollees, its rates rise, and it loses its appeal to the public at large. Creating a fair system of public-private competition -- giving the public plan just enough power to offset its likely higher risks -- wouldn't be easy even if it were up to neutral experts, which it isn't.
The National Association of Evangelicals has finally replaced Richard Cizik, its longtime Washington presence who was forced out last December after endorsing civil unions. The group chose someone from within its ranks, Galen Carey, who, according to a press release, has worked for the NAE's related humanitarian mission, World Relief.
Notably, the NAE did not select a known quantity from religious-right advocacy circles or someone recognized for firebrand activism on wedge issues. In its statement, it highlighted how Carey will help expand the NAE's visibility beyond white evangelicals, and (implicitly) away from the wedge:
He is a committed Christian who is active in his large multicultural church in Maryland. He has formal theological education with a masters degree from an evangelical seminary and doctorate from a mainline seminary. Galen not only speaks about the growing number of Hispanics in our communities and churches but also speaks to them; he is fluent in Spanish. Caring for the vulnerable is not an abstract policy issue but a passionate personal commitment arising from more than twenty years living among the poor in Chicago and ten years working with victims of disaster, persecution and poverty from Africa to Indonesia. His concern for protecting the unborn comes not only from moral theorizing but also from his own journey as the father of a special needs child. Galen Carey speaks from experience.
Michelle Goldberg on what the debate over the burqa means for France:
On Monday, Nicolas Sarkozy became the first French president since Charles Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte to address the Parliament, thanks to recent reforms that scrapped a 19th-century law meant to protect the independence of the legislature. Given the occasion, it was rather odd that Sarkozy's strongest words were reserved for denouncing a garment that hardly any women in France wear. The burqa, he said, "is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission, of women." It is, he added, "not welcome in France." Headscarves have been banned in French schools since 2004. Now Sarkozy wants to go much further, banning burqas, loose, full-body veils that cover women entirely, as well as niqabs, or face veils, from being worn anywhere in public.
We saw this most clearly with Pim Fortuyn, the flamboyant, anti-immigrant politician who nearly became prime minister of the Netherlands before his 2002 assassination. Fortuyn crusaded against the threat he claimed Muslim immigrants posed to the famously tolerant Dutch culture. He spoke of men suddenly being afraid to hold hands in the streets, of teachers reluctant to admit their homosexuality to immigrant students. "I have no desire," he told a reporter, "to have to go through the emancipation of women and homosexuals all over again."
There was something to his critique. Conservatives have long pointed out -- and liberals have long largely ignored -- that there are real contradictions between liberalism and multiculturalism.
Without a public option, the other parties that make up America's non-system of health care -- private insurers, doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and medical suppliers -- have little or no incentive to supply high-quality care at a lower cost than they do now.
Which is precisely why the public option has become such a lightning rod. The American Medical Association is dead set against it, Big Pharma rejects it out of hand, and the biggest insurance companies won't consider it. No other issue in the current health-care debate is as fiercely opposed by the medical establishment and their lobbies now swarming over Capitol Hill. Of course, they don't want it. A public option would squeeze their profits and force them to undertake major reforms. That's the whole point.
Critics say the public option is really a Trojan horse for a government takeover of all of health insurance. But nothing could be further from the truth. It's an option. No one has to choose it. Individuals and families will merely be invited to compare costs and outcomes. Presumably they will choose the public plan only if it offers them and their families the best deal -- more and better health care for less.
More after the jump.
--Robert Reich
Private insurers say a public option would have an unfair advantage in achieving this goal. Being the one public plan, it will have large economies of scale that will enable it to negotiate more favorable terms with pharmaceutical companies and other providers. But why, exactly, is this unfair? Isn't the whole point of cost containment to provide the public with health care on more favorable terms? If the public plan negotiates better terms -- thereby demonstrating that drug companies and other providers can meet them -- private plans could seek similar deals.
But, say the critics, the public plan starts off with an unfair advantage because it's likely to have lower administrative costs. That may be true -- Medicare's administrative costs per enrollee are a small fraction of typical private insurance costs -- but here again, why exactly is this unfair? Isn't one of the goals of health-care cost containment to lower administrative costs? If the public option pushes private plans to trim their bureaucracies and become more efficient, that's fine.
Critics complain that a public plan has an inherent advantage over private plans because the public won't have to show profits. But plenty of private plans are already not-for-profit. And if nonprofit plans can offer high-quality health care more cheaply than for-profit plans, why should for-profit plans be coddled? The public plan would merely force profit-making private plans to take whatever steps were necessary to become more competitive. Once again, that's a plus.
Critics charge that the public plan will be subsidized by the government. Here they have their facts wrong. Under every plan that's being discussed on Capitol Hill, subsidies go to individuals and families who need them in order to afford health care, not to a public plan. Individuals and families use the subsidies to shop for the best care they can find. They're free to choose the public plan, but that's only one option. They could take their subsidy and buy a private plan just as easily. Legislation should also make crystal clear that the public plan, for its part, may not dip into general revenues to cover its costs. It must pay for itself. And any government entity that oversees the health-insurance pool or acts as referee in setting ground rules for all plans must not favor the public plan.
Finally, critics say that because of its breadth and national reach, the public plan will be able to collect and analyze patient information on a large scale to discover the best ways to improve care. The public plan might even allow clinicians who form accountable-care organizations to keep a portion of the savings they generate. Those opposed to a public option ask how private plans can ever compete with all this. The answer is they can and should. It's the only way we have a prayer of taming health-care costs. But here's some good news for the private plans. The information gleaned by the public plan about best practices will be made available to the private plans as they try to achieve the same or better outputs.
As a practical matter, the choice people make between private plans and a public one is likely to function as a check on both. Such competition will encourage private plans to do better -- offering more value at less cost. At the same time, it will encourage the public plan to be as flexible as possible. In this way, private and public plans will offer one other benchmarks of what's possible and desirable.
Mr. Obama says he wants a public plan. But the strength of the opposition to it, along with his own commitment to making the emerging bill "bipartisan," is leading toward some oddball compromises. One would substitute nonprofit health insurance cooperatives for a public plan. But such cooperatives would lack the scale and authority to negotiate lower rates with drug companies and other providers, collect wide data on outcomes, or affect major change in the system.
Another emerging compromise is to hold off on a public option altogether unless or until private insurers fail to meet some targets for expanding coverage and lowering health-care costs years from now. But without a public option from the start, private insurers won't have the incentives or system-wide model they need to reach these targets. And in politics, years from now usually means never.
To get health care moving again in Congress, the president will have to be clear about how to deal with its costs and whether and how a public plan is to be included as an option. The two are intimately related. Enough talk. He should come out swinging for the public option.
Last week, many conservatives attacked President Obama's wise decision to stay relatively quiet on the Iranian unrest, therefore preventing the regime's attempts to blame "outsiders" for massive discontent over possibly fraudulent election results. Jonathan Chaitnoted that criticisms of Obama for being weak or timid didn't bother to engage the president's argument: More aggressive American involvement, given our history in the region, would hurt the reformers rather than help them.
I should have mentioned this at the time, but I think there are generally two reasons for conservative outrage over Obama's response: One is a general narcissism and nostalgia about American power; the other is simple politics. Some of the conservatives attacking Obama have been betting that the regime would come through the protests intact all along, and having criticized Obama for failing to be more belligerent, they can now say he "missed" an opportunity to destroy Iranian theocracy entirely. They didn't engage Obama's argument against interfering because they didn't care whether he did or not; they just wanted to be able to criticize him after the fact for failing to bring down the mullahs.
ViaAndrew Sullivan, we have Melanie Phillipsmaking this exact argument:
What a disgrace that this man is leader of the free world; and at such a point in history. If he had put America stoutly behind the protesters and championed them against the regime, by now they might have toppled it.
This is the Three Little Pigs theory of Iran: All Obama had to do was huff and puff, and he would have blown the entire Iranian regime down. It's pure fantasy. Islamic theocracy in Iran may have been fatally injured by the reform movement, which exposes democracy in Iran as a myth. Only time will tell. But nothing we could have done in the past two weeks would have ended the regime. -- A. Serwer
A news photographer told me that when he was covering the war in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, he discovered that the Army color-coded photographs that appeared in newspapers and magazines: Green meant that they liked the picture and that it reflected well on the troops; yellow meant that they had mixed feelings about the picture; and red meant that the photograph showed the troops in a bad light. The people who were guilty of taking too many red-coded photographs found it harder to get access to soldiers. That was back when Donald Rumsfeld was in charge -- a man who was, of course, hostile toward the media and tried to guilt-trip them into presenting a positive picture of U.S. forces in Iraq. When he left office, those days were supposed to be over.
Except that they are not over -- not by a long shot. An article in today’s Stars and Stripes, a publication that receives federal funding but is editorially independent from the Pentagon, said that one of their reporters, Heath Druzin, was told that he would not be allowed to embed “with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division that is attempting to secure the violent city of Mosul.” Why not? Because his newspaper has “’refused to highlight’ good news in Iraq.” Specifically, Druzin had written -- surprise, surprise -- that “many Iraqi residents of Mosul would like the American soldiers to leave.”
People who work in the public-affairs offices at the Pentagon can be helpful and professional, and some of them are a pleasure to speak with, but they can also be petty and controlling, behaving like small-town officials denying reporters access to documents and interviews. They have, for example, Googled my name and then canceled interviews that I had scheduled at military installations in the United States, because they did not like some of the articles I've written. Whether public-affairs officials are color-coding war photographs, determining the good-news level of the image, or banning a reporter access to troops, they are antagonizing the people who report on their activities -- not, it would seem, a good way of getting the kind of positive coverage they are after.
Sarah Posner on the future of the religious right:
After nearly two years, it's time for a change. That's why the Prospect editors and I have decided that this week will mark a send-off for The FundamentaList.
After rallying around Palin and losing, the religious right now faces a mediocre bench of prospects for 2012, including an MIA governor. The movement has not anointed a single figure outside of electoral politics who would act as its unitary spokesperson -- or at least be perceived that way by the media like James Dobson, the late Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson have been.
But this might not be a weakness for the movement.
Good news today on the diplomatic front: The United States will be returning an ambassador to Syria after more than four years. It's a step in the right direcetion, and will be seen as an attempt to push back against Iran's dominant role in the region and split apart the Syria-Iran axis -- a role that it was able to assume in part because of the United States' disengagement from Syria during the Bush years. The ambassador in Syria will also play an integral part in negotiations between that country and Israel in search of a peace treaty and normalization of relations, and in convincing the Syrian government to support the new government in Iraq, especially by assisting in effective border control between the two states.
Embassies aren't just important for engaging with other countries; they are also clearing houses for gaining intelligence, as Bruce Reidelobserves. On the political front, it will be interesting to see if Senate Republicans try to hold up the future ambassador's confirmation or make a point of using hearings around that nomination to attack the administration's strategy of engagement. Although Iran has really seized center stage in discussing the president's diplomatic outreach in the Middle East, it is the relationship with Syria that has the most promise for early returns on an agressive policy shift.
Spencer Ackermanreports on some encouraging news from the executive task force on interrogations -- they've spent a great deal of time and effort researching interrogation methods, and they seem to be settling on a proposal for an interagency interrogation team that would eschew anything resembling torture, according to former Deputy Attorney General Philip Heymann:
Heymann said that interrogators from across the military, CIA, and FBI, would be charged with creating a “syllabus” of best interrogation practices that fall within the boundaries of the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogations, which complies with the Geneva Conventions. Heymann said that the social science research supporting the Intelligence Science Board’s work ruled out all forms of physical and psychological torture as methods for soliciting information. “What I mean by ‘non-coercive’ is in line with what our major allies do — Britain, France, other European nations — and not out of line with what’s accepted by western nations,” Heymann said. “We would not do anything to other people that we would complain about if done to Americans abroad in other circumstances, we wouldn’t do something we wouldn’t do to an American in the U.S., and we would be pretty well in line with the views of our major allies,” a perspective adopted in order to ensure robust intelligence cooperation with U.S. allies concerned about torture can continue.
The debate over torture has generally been hijacked by Hollywood fantasies about torture's immediate effectiveness. The reality is that torture has a number of external consequences -- both domestic and international. The use of torture forced the FBI to withdraw its experienced interrogators and analysts in order to avoid breaking the law -- but internationally, torture made other foreign intelligence services wary of cooperating with us. Even if torture was as effective as Jack Bauer makes it seem -- and judging by what we know about the internal evaluations in the 2004 CIA Inspector General's report, it isn't--the externalities associated with using torture create costs that far outweigh the supposed benefits. -- A. Serwer
New York City, with its well-developed network of small schools and charters, is seen as a nationwide model of public school choice. Of course, it is the wealthiest and most educated families who have learned how to access those choices. At GothamSchools, Philissa Cramer does a bang-up job of explaining how "choice" can lead to more educational inequality, not less.
...a disproportionate number of the city’s neediest students continue to wind up in large, lower-performing high schools, even as the number of small schools has increased. Their concentration has in turn caused the large schools to struggle even more.
Here's what the problem looks like for parents looking to place their child in an out-of-neighborhood school, via a new report from the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School (you'll have to download the report to see a larger version of the chart). Would you want to navigate this system? Who do you think would have the time, inclination, and wherewithal to do so?
So what's the solution? Doing away with school choice entirely seems like a bad idea; choice encourages middle class families to keep their children in public schools, which in turn provides more resources and parental involvement for less advantaged students. And yet, through both "choice" enrollment and neighborhood sorting, we are creating segregated mini-systems within larger school districts. In New York, for example, at P.S. 234 in Tribeca, a neighborhood popular with finance-industry types, 70 percent of students are white, compared to 14.2 percent of students in the larger system. As P.S. 234, only 9 percent of children qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. In the larger New York City schools, a whopping 77 percent of students are eligible.
There aren't any easy answers. It's just a reminder that school reform means reforming all schools for all kids, not just giving middle class parents an "out" of bad schools, or giving a few very lucky poor children the opportunity to attend a small school or charter.
The questions President Obama fielded during today's press conference were fairly low-quality and repetitive and not one took up the issue of climate change legislation -- which the president noted in his opening remarks -- that could come to a floor vote in the House as early as Friday.
The unorthodox manner in which Obama called upon Nico Pitney of The Huffington Post has led some conservatives to speculate that the exchange was coordinated by the White House. But isn't the point of having scripted questions to produce softballs the president can field without having to talk out of both sides of his mouth? Pitney's question was actually one of the best of the entire conference and produced the least satisfying answer from Obama.
Politico has an interesting look at the low-key tenure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. First observing the expectations that Clinton would be a high-profile Cabinet member in the Obama White House, the piece reminds us that a commitment to quiet, hard work is precisely what she did after winning the U.S. Senate race in 2000. It's refreshing to see Clinton portrayed as a professional doing an important job, rather than the unflattering characterizations that have attached themselves to her over the years.
Remainders: Barney Frank vs. the F-22; let's all take a moment to give thanks that Judd Gregg is not our Commerce secretary; Janet Napolitano kills off a Bush-era domestic surveillance program; and the Clean Water Act gets the Roberts Court treatment.
Today's TTR looks at how recessions are affecting our economy, how a "pay or play" health-care mandate would work in practice, what the Heritage Foundation thinks about the president's Iran policy, and a new report that raises fears about the budget. Enjoy!
All eyes on the cities. From housing prices to average wage changes, the Brookings Institution's new MetroMonitor has the skinny on the economic situation of the 100 largest American cities. For instance, Washington, D.C., is one of the 20 cities least affected by the recession, while all of the cities in California fall into the two lowest brackets. The report seeks to explain why cities have fared differently. Two "manufacturing belts" are identified as areas of deep recession and two "sun belts" as areas of relative prosperity, though the report also points out the connection between national drops in tourism with deep hardship in certain cities. Each metropolitan profile compares a city's change within the last year to the 100-metro average and the national average. Going forward, MetroMonitor will offer quarter-to-quarter comparisons as well, which Brookings thinks will make even more apparent the different reactions to the recession from city to city. --CIA
'Play or Play': Pretty great, actually [PDF]. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute makes a strong and unique case for why a well-constructed "play or pay" health care mandate for employers will actually create jobs rather than end them, as many critics have asserted. "Pay or play" as currently considered in various congressional proposals would require employers to either offer health care directly or accept a payroll tax to provide public coverage. The report uses a very unlikely worst-case scenario to play out the highest possible job losses -- 166,095 -- assuming no firms currently "playing" decide to pay the payroll tax instead, no benefits occur from the reduced burden on employers, and lawmakers make no exemptions for small businesses. Provided any of those things do happen, the report finds a conservative estimate of 55,365 jobs that would be created. -- CKS
Dissent 2.0. Amid the floods of Twitter feeds and protest in the streets of Tehran, the United States should see this as a grand opportunity for aggressively proactive Middle Eastern democracy promotion. Or at least the Heritage Foundation is happy to adopt that position while encouraging President Obama to take a unrealistic, hardline stance in Iran. According to their recent memo, the U.S. is not doing nearly enough to support the organic and student-driven democracy movements in Iran, and must go beyond simply facilitating Tweets. With Iranian authorities cracking down on local media outlets and restricting satellite news broadcasts, the memo urges the Obama administration to offer vocal support for Iranian dissidents, demand that the leadership ceases all interference with free media, and utilize Web 2.0 tools to reach out to the Iranian population. -- AS
Deficit hawks air budget concerns. A report released yesterday by the Tax Policy Center offers a pessimistic view of the budget: the government’s still-unaccounted-for liabilities contribute to what they call the "collapse of the budget." The report adjusts the CBO’s baseline projections of the 10-year cumulative deficit to a number they believe is more realistic: $10.1 trillion by 2019. Even under the Obama administration’s budget, the deficit over 10 years is a projected $9.1 trillion. Despite the fact that projections further than five years are unreliable at best, the report concludes that "the situation is unsustainable." The report brings the need to balance short-term recovery with long-term fiscal discipline into stark relief. -- MD
I'm trying to be amused rather than offended by Richard Nixon's view of abortion and biracial children ("necessary") that Danawrote about, but something's still bugging me, not just because of what he said, but how Nixon said about is necessary when pregnancy results from rape or an interracial relationship. I don't think it's a coincidence that those two are linked in his mind. It's hard to imagine that Nixon was referring to an interracial marriage; an interracial couple who get married aren't likely to want or think it's necessary to abort their child on racial grounds. Given that Nixon seemed to buy wholesale into racial myths regarding Jews and blacks, I think it's likely that he assumed that rape was related to sex that produced an interracial pregnancy, if the two weren't, in his mind, the same thing entirely.
At any rate, the whole thing really makes you wish Nixon was still alive to see Barack Obama become president of the United States. I can only hope he's looking on from somewhere: How do you like them apples, Dick?
Our Voting Rights series continued: Heather Gerken, a law professor at Yale University, suggests an opt-in approach to the Voting Rights Act.
An opt-in approach would create a simple, administrative procedure for enforcing the Voting Rights Act, allowing minority voters to opt into the VRA when there is a problem, rather than forcing states to preclear thousands of unproblematic decisions. Such an approach would preserve a sturdy safety net for minority voters while excising the features that the Court has hinted render Section 5 unconstitutional.
The Court’s decision in NAMUDNO suggests that Section 5 may be unconstitutional because it imposes heavy burdens on select jurisdictions. It requires jurisdictions to preclear haystacks of innocuous practices -- 15,000 to 24,000 each year -- so that the Department of Justice can spot the discriminatory needle. An opt-in approach would present the DOJ with needles not haystacks; it would focus only on practices that minority communities find discriminatory. The result would be a more flexible, locally informed, and targeted enforcement strategy.
Under an opt-in approach, jurisdictions need not preclear every change. Instead, civil-rights groups and community leaders would “opt in” to the Voting Rights Act only where there’s a problem, filing a simple, one-page complaint with the DOJ. DOJ staffers would look into claims that raise red flags and suspend discriminatory changes to voting procedures. Like Section 5, the opt-in approach can ferret out both small-bore and large-scale discrimination, as it relies on a low-cost administrative procedure rather than a costly law suit. Unlike Section 5, it minimizes the burdens placed on local officials while concentrating DOJ resources on genuine problems. An opt-in approach thus rids Section 5 of its potentially burdensome features while ensuring that DOJ can keep pace with the changing face of discrimination.
One might worry that community leaders and public interest groups shouldn’t be responsible for doing the legwork needed to initiate an investigation. But that’s how Section 5 has always worked. The DOJ has never had enough resources to review every change, so staffers rely on a network of civil-rights advocates and minority representatives to help them sort the wheat from the chaff. Going forward, the only difference is that the decision about which changes get investigated will be made in the first instance by community representatives, not distant bureaucrats in Washington. This sort of cooperative regulatory strategy has a proven track record in other areas where the stakes are high and enforcement resources are sparse.
--Heather Gerken
For more on Gerken's take, read her white paper on Section 5 at the Tobin Project or her write-up at Election Law Blog.
More than a year ago, Ezra Klein, on this site, put the health care lessons of the Clinton years as succinctly as it's ever been done. Quoting an administration official who directed the bill's legislation for the president:
"I was the biggest mistake of the Clinton health care bill," says Sara Rosenbaum, who sat in a hotel room with other policy experts and drafted the legislation. "It was a terrible error to have the President doing what Congress was supposed to do. It was a misuse of the relationship between the legislative branch and the executive branch. The executive branch is supposed to generate action and the committees are supposed to actually take the action. By sending a 1,300 page bill, you're writing a detailed blueprint for the policy rather than using the congressional process to create a consensus."
Ezra referenced the argument this morning, recommending that Obama “sit and wait,” and use political capital only later.
For anyone who worked on the Hill through the Clinton debacle, the Klein/Rosenbaum analysis rings exactly true. No mistake in the Clinton process was half as significant as the process itself, which sidelined Congress and then produced a legislative proposal that had no constituency and generated no enthusiasm. The Obama administration has plainly taken this advice to heart, and at this point is gently cheering on each turn in the congressional process, over-optimistically hoping that the Dance of Legislation will eventually lead not just to consensus, but to an actually good health care plan.
But is that the actual lesson of 1994? What do we suppose would have happened if Clinton had taken Rosenbaum's advice? It would not have been a smooth, elegant process leading step-by-step to the higher ground. Rather, it would have looked a lot like the process we're seeing right now, and the process after Clinton backed off and former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell took up the reins: an ugly, seemingly aimless ramble, in which various committees and ad hoc caucuses put their bids on the table, all distorted by the ever-present lobbyists, by Democrats' endemic fear of right-wing slogans, and by the disruptive interventions of the Congressional Budget Office. The problem in 1993-94 is that by the time that ugly process started -- in early 1994 -- the administration had already lost momentum, Republicans were in the ascendant, and the issue was tainted by the Clinton failure. The lesson, then, is not back off and let the grandees of the Hill do their thing. It is, don’t waste a year and poison the issue before getting the process started.
The Obama White House has a huge advantage that the Clinton administration didn’t: The plan is basically written, and it has a constituency. Everything Clinton spent a year on is done. All the work to build consensus around fundamental features – a regulated insurance market, an individual mandate, and a public plan to provide a competitive benchmark – made up the outlines of every Democratic presidential candidates’ proposals. They have been further developed at the think tanks and various “strange bedfellow” coalitions that have been at work in Washington for at least four years. There are some questions about details and cost containment, but all the major alternatives have fallen by the wayside. It’s an extraordinary accomplishment, and a real testament to the infrastructure that’s been constructed for progressive policy as well as politics.
The White House should not squander all the work that went into that consensus. It doesn’t need a 1,300 page bill. But it should also not just gently cheer on every twist and turn in the debate. It needs to set the outlines of an acceptable health plan as sharply as possible, and make clear that pushing a plan that doesn’t meet a minimal standard of coverage, regulated competition, and cost-containment is a vote for no health plan at all. It’s not 1994 anymore.
There is something really fishy about people who seem unable to talk about abortion without also talking about race. First, there's the Mike Huckabee/Sam Brownback version of the disease: Folks who compare abortion to the Holocaust and slavery. The implication is clear: The lives of fully sentient human beings living outside the womb, those who were murdered in the Holocaust or enslaved and raped during slavery, have the same value as a fetus. Respectful!
Now The New York Times reports that on the day Roe v. Wade was decided, President Nixon expressed -- on tape, of course -- ambivalence. In some situations, abortion "breaks the family," he said. But when it came to interracial couples, Nixon fully supported abortion -- six years after the Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Virginia. "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he said, adding that rape was also such a situation.
Well. Being racist is about the worst reason ever to be pro-choice. And about the worst reason ever to be anti-choice. Just saying.
Our Voting Rights series continued: Michael McDonald, a professor of politics at George Mason University, proposes “proactive bailout,” where the Department of Justice actively reviews which jurisdictions merit continued federal scrutiny per Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
Which jurisdictions should be required under Section 5 to receive federal approval before they can change their election procedures? The Supreme Court sidestepped this thorny issue in its NAMUDNO decision. However, a problem remains. Section 5 must be "narrowly tailored" to target suspect jurisdictions, but it must not be overly broad to capture those without discriminatory practices.
There are two components to the "trigger formula" that define which jurisdictions are covered by Section 5. The first provision requires that a jurisdiction has previously employed a discriminatory voting test, such as a literacy test. In 1975, this provision was amended to include jurisdictions with substantial non-English speaking populations. The second considers whether a jurisdiction’s voter turnout was low in the 1964, 1968, and 1972 presidential elections.
The formula is not perfect. It is an easily applied way of identifying places that were clearly discriminating. However, it failed to include some jurisdictions that perhaps should be monitored, and it included some that perhaps should not. In the former case, courts can place jurisdictions under coverage. In the latter, courts can exempt jurisdictions through a "bailout," a process whereby jurisdictions petition federal courts for escape from Section 5 coverage.
More after the jump.
-- Michael P. McDonald
Many jurisdictions routinely submit election administration changes without objection from the federal government, which is a condition for bailout. However, only 17 Virginia local jurisdictions have successfully petitioned for bailout since 1983. Bailout is an onerous process, deterring many jurisdictions from attempting it. A jurisdiction must further document its proactive steps toward erasing discrimination. It is ultimately less costly for jurisdictions to just continue federal oversight.
The federal government should conduct a ‘proactive bailout’ review for all currently covered jurisdictions, ending this perverse incentive structure that traps them unnecessarily. There would be upfront costs, but if fewer jurisdictions were covered resources could be better targeted on those that deserve monitoring. Furthermore, such action would address the Justices’ concern that Section 5 “differentiates between the States in ways that may no longer be justified.” In this way, the constitutionality of Section 5 in future litigation would be preserved.
Our Voting Rights series continued: Stephen Ansolabehere, a government professor at Harvard University, and Nathaniel Persily, a professor of law and political science at Columbia University, argue that more electoral data is necessary to understand where voting discrimination is happening and to what extent.
The Supreme Court dodged a bullet yesterday by deciding not to decide the constitutionality of Section 5 of the newly reauthorized Voting Rights Act. The decision, which makes small jurisdictions eligible for bailout from the act, will have little practical impact. Of the 12,000 jurisdictions covered by the act before this decision, only a small number of municipalities, all in Virginia, have bailed out since 1982. The expansion of the bailout option to smaller municipalities is unlikely to lead to a flood of requests, given that very few eligible jurisdictions who always could have bailed out have decided to take that step.
The rarity of bailout is somewhat of a mystery. Perhaps the criteria for bailout are too difficult or politicians are loath to make their cause célèbre the escape from a civil-rights law. Or perhaps, as many of the covered jurisdictions have indicated, they prefer to be covered because it gives them a DOJ stamp of approval for their voting laws that they can wave in the face of those who otherwise might sue them. Whatever the reasons for the rarity of bailout, one must suspect that those reasons will still be present for the jurisdictions newly eligible for escaping coverage under the act.
More after the jump.
--Stephen Ansolabehere and Nathaniel Persily
Given the concerns over the constitutionality of the Act voiced at oral argument by what seemed like a majority of the Court, the administration and Congress should take actions now to shore up the Act’s constitutionality.
First, the Department of Justice should communicate to certain covered jurisdictions their intention not to oppose bailout. In fact, it should encourage qualified jurisdictions to seek bailout. Several hundred covered jurisdictions have virtually zero minority population, and therefore pose no threat to minority voting rights. They, along with others that have a spotless record regarding discrimination in voting, should be urged to bail out.
Congress too can help shore up the Act’s constitutionality. It could alter the bailout statute itself, as some have proposed, to make bailout automatic or more prevalent. However, at a minimum, it should establish a national reporting system that will allow us to evaluate the quality of democracy among the 50 states. Such a system should include the reporting of all results in federal elections down to the precinct level, so that we can match turnout, registration and other measures of election system performance with census demographic data. It should also expand the election supplement to the 2010 Census Current Population Survey and the American Community Survey by including various election administration questions to assess which voters in which locations are more likely to face longer lines, voter ID barriers, and other aspects of election maladministration.
There is, of course, a chance that the data will reveal a new coverage formula is necessary or that levels of discrimination against minorities are more consistent nationwide. If so, then Congress should amend the Voting Rights Act before the Court tells it to do so.
Greg Anrig on the four ways states could squander the stimulus:
When President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law Feb. 17, he underscored how state governments would be largely responsible for implementing the legislation. Edward G. Rendell, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and chair of the National Governors Association, said at the time: "All of us, whether we supported the bill wholeheartedly or whether we had questions about it, intend to be good stewards of the money we spend. All of us intend to do it in an effective and efficient way."
While the stimulus bill has unquestionably eased some of America's economic pain just a few months after its enactment, already four main roadblocks have emerged that threaten the success of the legislation's state-focused aspects: state budget shortfalls; political dysfunction in many populous, economically important states; limited administrative capacity, exacerbated by budget cuts, at the state and local level; and state resistance to new programs that are only temporarily funded at the federal level.
If yesterday's decision declining to hold Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional was about as good as you can expect, another decision yesterday was more predictably dismaying. Coeur Alaska v. SAC concerned the question of whether the dumping of toxic industrial "slurry" --"discharge [that] would kill all of the lake’s fish and nearly all of its other aquatic life" -- should be regulated by the EPA or the Army Corps of Engineers. If the slurry was a pollutant -- which you might consider an obvious description of 45 tons of industrial discharge that "would contain concentrations of aluminum, copper, lead, and mercury" -- it would be regulated by the clean Water Act and hence the EPA. Seems like an easy case, right?
I'm afraid not. In a 6-3 decision consisting of the Court's conservatives and all-too-frequent honorary conservative Steven Breyer, the Court held, against the Court of Appeals, that the toxic slurry was "fill material" rather than a "pollutant," and hence the permit issued by the Corps permitting Coeur Alaska to effectively destroy the lake was valid. If that doesn't make a lot of sense to you, you're not the only one: In dissent, Justice Ginsburg argued that "[t]he statute’s text, structure, and purpose all mandate adherence to EPA pollution-control requirements. A discharge covered by a performance standard must be authorized, if at all, by EPA."
Two additional points should be made here. First, this is yet another example of why it's inappropriate to apply pieties about "following the law" to Supreme Court decision-making. As the majority opinion concedes, "The CWA is ambiguous on the question whether §306 applies to discharges of fill material regulated under §404," and whether the decision-making by the executive agencies was "reasonable" is similarly a matter of judgment that can be made either way. That five conservatives and the Chamber of Commerce's favorite Democrat would side with a polluting industry over environmental protection isn't surprising, but the Court was hardly compelled by the law. Second, it should be remembered that it's not just the Court -- which will tend to defer to administrative agencies -- but the Bush administration that's the villain here. Allowing toxic slurry to be classified as "fill material" rather than a "pollutant" is the kind of regulation that the Obama administration can and should overturn.
Heather Gerken on the uncertain future of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act after yesterday's Court decision:
Yesterday the Supreme Court wrote a cliffhanger of an opinion on the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, one of the most powerful weapons in the civil-rights arsenal. In the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One (NAMUDNO) v. Holder opinion, the Court raised serious questions about Section 5's future, but it didn't pull the trigger. The question is how this story will end.
You can see why it's a cliffhanger. The Supreme Court has cast doubt on the most obvious arguments for letting Section 5 stand -- that it was OK for Congress to apply the statute selectively to Southern states, that Section 5 imposes a minimal burden on those jurisdictions, that the evidence Congress provided was powerful enough to justify the burden it did impose. The Court has done everything, in short, except pull the trigger and strike Section 5 down. Is there a chance Section 5 will survive when we tune in next?
A common thread in the debate over how to regulate the financial sector is the claim that protecting borrowers will lead to higher fees and less service -- a kind of financial blackmail against reform-minded progressives. Like false automaker claims that new emissions standards would be extremely expensive to reach, it's hard to believe that commonsense consumer protections would destroy a firm's business model. (Conversely, any firm that depends on ripping people off doesn't really have a business model we want to preserve.) Now, two economists have done an interesting comparative study between credit unions and credit card companies and determined that it is indeed possible to make money without oppressive fees.
We found that credit unions are less likely to charge the fees and penalties that the new act hopes to eliminate — and when they do, they charge less than other issuers.
While virtually all banks and other for-profit issuers increase the interest rate if the borrower fails to make a minimum payment on time, most credit unions do not. Similarly, credit union fees for exceeding the credit limit are on average just half those of other issuers. But contrary to industry assertions, more responsible card users don’t pay the price. Credit union cards actually offer lower annual fees and longer grace periods than regular cards.
Is the lending model used by credit unions feasible for banks and other issuers? Absolutely. Banks and credit unions compete for customers in the same market. The primary distinguishing characteristic of credit unions is that they answer to a different group of owners: profits that are not reinvested are paid to the union’s shareholder-customers as a dividend, much as investor-owned banks reinvest or pay dividends to their shareholder-investors.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued a decision that avoided ruling on the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). While the VRA is intact for now, its future is ultimately in jeopardy. Today, TAPPED will feature guest posts from legal scholars offering suggestions on how the United States should move forward on the issue of electoral rules that discriminate.
Bruce Cain, a political science professor at Berkeley, and Daniel Tokaji, an associate law professor at The Ohio State University, argue that states with low participation rates should be required to issue “electoral impact statements,” which would discourage practices that suppress turnout among poor and minority voters.
In avoiding the question whether a key section of the Voting Rights Act violates the Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court has provided a welcome respite for civil-rights advocates worried that a cornerstone of racial justice would be decimated. The fact remains, however, that there are some serious cracks in the foundation of voting-rights law that need to be addressed. Foremost among them is the current law’s failure to adequately deal with practices that may impede participation by people of color and lower socioeconomic status. Even though the VRA has been left standing, at least for the moment, the current Congress should get to work filling these cracks promptly.
In the earliest years of the Voting Rights Act, the central problems were discriminatory barriers to participation, like literacy tests. These practices are sometimes referred to as “vote denial” because they prevented eligible citizens from voting or having their votes counted. In later years, the emphasis shifted to “vote dilution,” especially practices like at-large elections and unfair legislative districts that weakened minorities’ representation, even where they were allowed to vote.
Since the 2000 election, the pendulum has swung back to vote denial. Confusing voting equipment, inaccurate registration lists, and onerous voter-identification rules were all revealed to be barriers to equal participation. Collectively, these practices can be thought of as a new form of vote denial. But the VRA has not kept pace with this change. Though effective in combating minority vote dilution, it has been remarkably ineffective in eliminating barriers to equal access.
We recommend that Congress adopt a new form of preclearance, applicable to rules and practices that affect voter participation. States would be covered if participation rates fell below a certain prescribed level for a set period of time -- say, three consecutive federal election cycles. Those states would be subject to special requirements designed to prevent practices that disproportionately exclude minorities and people of lower socioeconomic status.
In particular, covered states would be required to issue an “electoral impact statement,” analogous to environmental impact statements, before changing voting rules. Election officials would be required to consult with representatives from the affected communities, including minority groups in preparing this statement. For example, if authorities decided to close down an early voting center that principally served the black community in a given county, they would have to provide a basis for their decision. We need a 21st-century approach to voting rights, one that targets the right parts of the country and makes sure that poor people and racial minorities are able to participate fully in our democracy.
--Bruce Cain & Daniel Tokaji
For more on Cain and Tokaji's take, read their white paper on Section 5 at the Tobin Project.
That the Latino community would have responded poorly to the GOP's years-long effort to taint all Latinos as diseased illegal immigrants who only get jobs because they're not white. Greg Sargentcomments:
The latest numbers from the nonpartisan Research 2000 for Daily Kos find that only eight percent of Latinos view the party favorably, while an astonishing 86 percent view it unfavorably.
That’s a real shift from what were already pretty bad numbers from before the Sotomayor nominatino [sic], when 11% of Latinos viewed the GOP favorably, and 79% viewed it unfavorably.
Funny how people react to being demonized by uniting against those who are denigrating them. Apparently, it's not just a "black thing."
Amid the excitement over yesterday's Supreme Court ruling upholding key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, another decision was lost in the shuffle: In Forest Grove School District v. T.A., the Court reaffirmed that local school districts must reimburse the parents of special education students for private school costs. The case concerned a high school student, "T.A.," who, after years of public schooling, was placed in a $5,200 a month boarding school, and thereafter diagnosed with a number of learning disabilities. T.A.'s home school district, in Oregon, is now on the line for those fees.
Many education reformers will be disgruntled with this decision: In D.C., for example, gadfly Schools Superintendent Michelle Rhee has frequently cited special education costs as a major road block to her planned overhaul of the public schools, which includes a merit pay proposal that would allow teachers to earn as much as $130,000 a year. As TheNew York Timesreports, about 90,000 American special-ed students are enrolled in private school, most of them there via a referral from a public school that is footing the bill. Last year New York City paid $89 million in private school special-ed tuition. The city had filed an amicus brief in support of Forest Grove.
In the decision -- in which only Justices David Souter, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas dissented -- the Court actually expanded the situations under which public schools are responsible for these costs, saying that student tuition must be provided even if the child was never classified as "special ed" by the public district itself.
Diagnoses of autism-spectrum disorders and ADHD are increasing faster than many schools can deal with them, so parents of special-ed students will undoubtedly celebrate this decision. But that won't quiet debates over whether such large revenue streams should be directed toward educating just a few students outside of the public system -- especially amid state budget crises, when so many public schools are in dire need of financial support.
Paul Waldman on why it's time for Obama to start naming the bad guys on health care reform:
What will probably turn out to be the most contentious debate of the Obama presidency -- health care reform -- is now moving into its most intense phase, and the Obama theory of change is about to be put to the test.
The campaign against health care reform is just now gearing up -- the focus groups completed, the talking points assembled (noticed how many times you’ve heard Republicans warning about "government bureaucrats getting between you and your doctor” in the last couple of weeks?), the ads are being shot, and the forces opposed to reform are ready to throw down. So the time is nearing when the administration has to stop reaching out and start fighting back.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued a decision that avoided ruling on the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). While the VRA is intact for now, its future is ultimately in jeopardy. Today, TAPPED will feature guest posts from legal scholars offering suggestions on how the United States should move forward on the issue of electoral rules that discriminate.
Richard H. Pildes, a law professor at New York University, argues that Congress should respond not by trying to rejigger Section 5, but by adopting national, universal voting-rights protections.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court gave Congress a reprieve on the Voting Rights Act, but a temporary one. The Court strongly suggested the act’s constitutionality is in doubt, unless Congress confronts issues it passed over in 2006, when it last addressed the act. The question, then, is what Congress and the president ought to do.
In my view, the Court’s decision presents one of the best opportunities in many years to press for serious voting-rights legislation. To seize this opportunity properly, we need to begin by appreciating that two different models for national voting-rights legislation exist. If Congress gears up to respond to the Court’s decision, the initial choice between these two models will be, far and away, the most important one Congress faces.
Section 5 was historically an important tool, but it represents only one model of how the national government might protect voting rights. I called this a “targeted” or anti-discrimination approach. When the national government first began protecting voting rights, in the aftermath of the Civil War, this is the form national legislation took. In this first model, Congress does not protect the right to vote as such but enacts more narrowly targeted legislation. Section 5 is targeted in two ways. First, it singles out particular areas of the country for unique federal oversight. Second, it singles out one particular reason, race, that voting rights might be denied or abridged. For much of post-Civil War constitutional history, the national government was thought to have power to protect voting rights only against racial discrimination. That is partly why this kind of targeted model of national voting-rights legislation has been historically so important.
The second model emerged only more recently and is reflected in the national legislation of the last 20 years, (e.g. the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act). I call this a “substantive right-to-vote" model. This vision is universal in geographic scope and protects the right to vote as such, rather than protecting only against racially discriminatory denials of voting rights in selected areas.
In the immediate wake of the Court’s decision, there might be much scrambling to try to find a way to reconfigure yet another version of Section 5’s targeted model. But the deeper insight, I believe, is to recognize that targeted models of this sort grew out of the political and constitutional constraints of earlier eras -- constraints that, at least on the constitutional side, no longer exist. Moreover, targeted laws of this sort are inherently limited: They require difficult, often intractable, efforts to sort out whether a law that impinges on voting rights is racial in character or not. Moreover, the Court that just cast doubt on the constitutionality of the current Section 5 will surely insist that any reconfigured Section 5 prohibit only voting practices that can be tied to a discriminatory purpose, rather than banning practices that have racially disparate impacts alone. This will further limit the effectiveness of even a refigured Section 5.
Instead, we can more effectively protect voting rights over the next generation, including those of minority voters, if we channel policy efforts toward the more modern model of national legislation that protects the substantive right to vote against all unreasonable and unjustified limitations.
--Richard Pildes
For more on Pildes' take, read his white paper on Section 5 at the Tobin Project.
Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ordered the release of Guantanamo Bay detainee Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al-Janko, a former member of al-Qaeda who was believed to be a spy for the U.S. and was tortured until he confessed. (I'm sure al-Qaeda was nonetheless convinced that it had foiled several American anti-terrorist plots.) Al-Janko was then imprisoned for 18 months by the Taliban. Al-Janko was then abandoned in his prison as the Taliban retreated, at which point he was detained as an enemy combatant based on his association with al-Qaeda, and it is on this basis that the Obama administration sought to keep him detained. Al-Janko argues that he was no longer part of al-Qaeda at the time of his capture by U.S. forces, given his torture and imprisonment; the U.S. says he was. Judge Leon described the government's position as "[defying] common sense."
Perhaps more significantly, we're beginning to see elements of an emerging standard for the government when it comes to defining who is and is not an "enemy combatant" (a term the Obama administration no longer uses, but it's essentially a cosmetic change). Judge Leon writes, "Whether someone is 'part of' the Taliban or al Qaeda is a factual question that the Government has the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence." He also adds--and I've never seen a judge in these cases use an exclamation point before--this:
The Government also contends, in essence, that the extreme treatment Janko was subjected to over a substantial period of time thereafter was not sufficient to vitiate that relationship [with al-Qaeda]. As such, the Government contends he was still "part of' those organizations when he was ultimately taken into custody by the U.S. forces some two years later. I disagree!
Leon does it again later, referring to al-Janko being tortured: "Surely extreme treatment of that nature evinces a total evisceration of whatever relationship might have existed!" In the eyes of the administration, apparently not.
Obama's defenders have argued that his policy isn't so much Bush's policy as Bush's policy once the courts were done with it--and it seems like the courts will once again emerge as the most powerful force in reigning in the government's attempts to assert wide authority in the war on terror, particularly when it comes to using military authority to detain suspected terrorists indefinitely.
Well, that certainly took long enough. After languishing in appointment purgatory for over three months, former Yale Law Dean Harold Koh may finally be confirmed as legal adviser to the State Department. Sen. Harry Reidfiled a petition for cloture on Koh's nomination yesterday evening, which would force a vote on the nominee's fate tomorrow. According to Dave Weigel, Reid's office is optimistic that they have the 60 votes necessary to end debate (and the 50 to actually get Koh confirmed).
Weigel has a thorough and very worthwhile take on the confirmation saga, but the gist is that Koh became the center of a conservative firestorm for holding exactly the sort of views one might hope the State Department's top lawyer would possess. His detractors call him a "radical transnationalist," which frankly seems to be a scary euphemism for someone who shows respect for international law.
Generally, Koh's a fan of things like "democracy, human rights, fair play." More specifically, he believes that the U.S. should cooperate with the United Nations and that the U.S. is not authorized to act as a unilateral aggressor in the name of preemptive self-defense. And, as Adam previously noted, Koh is very much against torture -- a point of contention for conservatives, given that the legal adviser may be able to influence detention policy and help Obama move away from the previous national-security regime.
If the Koh confirmation is successful, Republicans will have essentially lost two major legal appointee battles in the past couple of months. By most accounts, the campaign to cast Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as a not-all-that-smart racist has been a disaster. Senate Republicans are already conceding, and a new poll shows that the GOP's approval rating among Latinos is at an abysmal 8 percent. Seriously, that's Battlefield: Earth-level popularity.
Now maybe this is pushing it, but if this streak continues, perhaps Dawn Johnsen could even take up her Office of Legal Counsel post by the end of summer.
The Post today has a polling story about how confidence in the president's economic stimulus legislation has dropped from 59 to 52 percent; the piece never really discusses why people might feel that way except to mention rising unemployment numbers. But perhaps it has something to do with the fact that much of the stimulus funding is still going out the door and is yet to be spent.
If you recall the Bush stimulus from spring of 2008, it's strongest effect was felt in the third quarter of that year when it led to a modest rise in GDP growth. In an article yesterday that touched on concerns about unemployment, Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, said, "There will be big increases in stimulus spending in the fall and early next year. We have to wait to see what happens with that." Ultimately, public opinion right now only matters insofar as confidence is important to economic recovery, but that's not the right way to judge the stimulus. That's also a separate debate from whether or not the stimulus was too small (answer: probably) but it's still too early -- only four months after the law was passed -- to judge this massive investment strategy.
One other funny paragraph from the Post article:
One factor that continues to work for Obama, however, is that most Americans still see him as a new type of Democrat, one "who will be careful with the public's money," rather than an old-style, "tax-and-spend Democrat." By this point in 1993, Clinton had lost the new-style label, which he had maintained over the first months of his presidency.
Beyond the weird idea that Clinton, who brought you the balanced budget, had for some brief period in 1993 "lost" that label, how long exactly are Democrats going to be the party of fiscal responsibility before the media catches on? In the past two decades, nearly every Democrat of national prominence has been of this "new type," while the various Republican candidates have espoused an economic strategy predicated on tax cuts that lead to deficits and debt. That's what Grover Norquist's tax pledge means. The Democrats re-adopted PAY GO rules in 2007 that the Republicans had thrown by the wayside for years. It boggles my mind that a party can stand for something for 20 years and still have it considered "new" by the press.
Regardless of widespread support for a public option in health care reform reflected in variouspolls, Paul Krugman is correct to note in his column that the issue isn't Republican intransigence in the face of a receptive public, but instead dealing with "centrist" Democrats in the Senate who are busy protecting their local monopolies. Nate Silver has some useful statistical analysis which bolsters this last point.
Nobody could have predicted that trying to use the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court as a base-rallying "political lightning rod" would pay few dividends to a Republican party trying to cope with its diminished status. Instead, the tactic has helped turn the fastest growing demographic in the country away from the GOP. They really are incapable of seeing themselves through the eyes of someone who isn't a while male conservative who feels victimized.
The CBO scored the Waxman-Markey climate change bill and found that unlike GOP agitprop claiming the legislation would cost American families $3,000 per year, the impact would be at most $175 per family per year -- in 2020. Meanwhile the RNC is sending candles to Congress, warning members that the legislation will "tax our lights out." I smell another "drill baby drill" Twitter party in the works...
Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio seems to think that if Iran's constitution had a Second Amendment, "the situation would be a little different." Yeah, I guess states do tend to roll over when citizens threaten armed insurrection. In related Iran policy news, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) shows off his mind-reading abilities by claiming that "They [Iranian protesters] want us, they are appealing to us to recognize it [electoral fraud]."
Back during the presidential campaign, one couldn't say for certain whether the more outlandish accusations leveled at Barack Obama were true beliefs or simply designed to sow doubt in the public. Well, we can now say definitively that The Corner's Andy McCarthy, a leader in this genre, actually believes that Obama is "steeped in Leftist ideology, fueled in anger and resentment" and that he secretly supports the Mullahs over Iran's "freedom fighters."
Weekend Remainders: Governor Mark Sanford is missing; the CIA delays release of the torture report; Meghan McCain's opinion is still, inexplicably, solicitied; a birther gets an extended profile; and the Congressional Sovereignty Caucus ought to be a hoot.
To expand on my concluding comments a bit, I agree with Adam that Section 5 is by no means out of the constitutional woods yet. I also agree that the Court's decision should be read as a warning shot to Congress. The question -- and given the nature of minimalist opinions, it's almost impossible to answer -- is what exactly the shot consists of. It seems to me that there are two major scenarios:
The optimistic scenario is that the Court is instructing Congress that to be upheld, Section 5 will have to apply to all states rather than a select number based on their pre-1965 records of vote suppression. (In this scenario, either Congress changes the legislation, or at worst the Court strikes down section 5 with language making it clear that a preclearance requirement that applies to all states would be upheld.) As I said, I think this would actually represent a salutary exercise of judicial review, making the statute better on the merits and actually broadening the ability of the federal government to protect voting rights.
The darker scenario is that the majority is setting a tarp similar to the disgraceful Catch-22 it set leading up to Bush v, Gore (in which the Florida court was told not to create a uniform vote counting standard and was then reversed because it failed to set a sufficiently uniform vote counting standard.) In this scenario, if Congress keeps the statute as is, Section 5 will be stuck down because as Roberts argued (quite convincingly) the targeted states are no longer necessarily the ones most likely to impermissibly restrict the franchise. But if Congress applies it across the board, it will be struck down because Congress's enforcement remedy isn't "congruent and proportional" to the scope of the constitutional violations and should be more narrowly targeted. In this case, minimalism becomes a shell game in which the Court holds out hope that Congress could pass a constitutional preclearance standard but can never find one that actually passes constitutional muster.
As for which of these is more likely, well, I'm certainly inclined to share Adam's pessimism. But I would reiterate my caveat: I suspect that Roberts be veryreluctant to explicitly strike down a provision of major civil rights legislation. Such an opinion would attract negative attention to the Court in the way that narrowly construing a statutory provision wouldn't, and as Thomas reminded us today if the Court really wanted to strike the legislation there's no reason that it couldn't have done so today. It may be wise for Congress to try to address the Court's implications today to the extent that they can to improve the odds, however.
People like Pat Buchanan should learn how to speak English before they rag on other people for not being able to speak English. Really kind of messes up that whole "white men are all supergeniuses" thing.
EzrareadsFelix Salmon on the administration's new financial regulation proposal:
Felix Salmon is right: This sort of financial regulatory arbitrage is some impressively repulsive stuff. And the White House's proposed reforms won't fix it.
But Ezra is wrong: the White House's proposed reforms were specifically designed to fix the type of regulatory arbitrage that Salmon is talking about. Salmon doesn't even suggest that the WH's reforms won't fix the problem; he just notes that a different kind of problem might arise from the fix -- and it's a much less pernicious one.
See, financial institutions can choose which regulators will be their primary supervises. Depository institutions, state and national, are regulated by the FDIC, but national commercial banks can come under the authority of the Fed, the Office of the Comptroller of Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision (and this is a simplified version). OCC and, to an even greater extent, OTS, were known as lax regulators. Countrywide Home Loans famously switched to a thrift charter in 2007 because it offered weaker capital requirements and greater federal preemption over state regulators seeking to stop predatory mortgage lending. But the administration would eliminate the OCC and the OTS and consolidate them into a National Bank Supervisor.
This would eliminate the pernicious competition between the two agencies and give national banks a single primary regulator. True, this may result in competition between the FDIC and NBS for national banks that have depositors. But given that the FDIC is a stronger regulator than most (go Sheila Bair!) that has primary jurisdiction over any deposits, and there will be a primary regulator for any non-depository national banks, it strikes me as much less of a problem. Whereas previously a Countrywide or an AIG could pick and choose between regulators, under the new proposal, they would likely have to go to the NBS. They would also be likely to receive even more supervision from the Fed under the new rules for systemically risky institutions.
That's not to say all problems of regulatory arbitrage (or even all problems with the financial sector) were eliminated by the President's plan. In particular, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission both have jurisdiction over derivatives that will prove very difficult to fix in practice; working out how the new council of regulators will work with the Fed in its systemic risk monitoring role will also be a huge challenge. But the elimination of the OCC and the OTS and the creation of the NBS are among the high points of the plan, and aim to fix exactly the problem Ezra is describing.
Matt Dusson how the lessons al-Qaeda learned in Iraq are informing the next generation of fighters:
One of the key developments leading to the decline in violence in Iraq was the creation and deputization by U.S. forces of Sunni tribal paramilitaries -- many of them former al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents -- to police their own neighborhoods. Initially referred to as "the Awakening," this phenomenon soon became known as "the Sons of Iraq."
But what of the other "sons of Iraq," namely, the thousands of young men from around the Middle East, South Asia, and Europe radicalized by the Iraq invasion and fed a steady stream of images of U.S. occupation by satellite television channels such as Al Jazeera? Many of these men were inspired to travel to Iraq to join in the fight against the American occupation and the U.S.-supported government -- and others who were unable to go have joined with extremist movements in their home countries.
One country in which all of these elements -- returning fighters, new tactics, and new technologies perfected in Iraq -- have combined is Yemen, where the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh is currently threatened by a growing insurgency, led by what many analysts believe to be among the most formidable affiliates of the global jihad movement.
As Adam already noted, the Supreme Court today, by an 8-1 vote, narrowed but did not strike down the "preclearance" provisions of the Voting Rights Act that require certain states to get federal approval for any changes in their election laws.
Unlike Adam, I'm not actually surprised by the outcome. The Court's conservatives have generally been much more likely to narrow civil rights legislation and major Warren Court precedents than overturn them outright, and it seemed especially unlikely that they would start a new trend with a provision of the Voting Rights Act however much they disliked it. And while I tend to be skeptical of "minimalism" -- the idea that judges should resolve cases as narrowly as possible -- in general and how the Roberts Court has used it in particular, in this case I actually think it's meaningful and appropriate. The outcome in this case is both reasonable on its face and doesn't completely gut the statute.
While I'm engaging in rare praise for John Roberts, I should also say that I think that conservatives do have one objection to Section 5 that I consider reasonable. As regular readers know, I have less than no use for arguments that the "sovereign dignity" of states should trump human rights, and also think that the localized American electoral system is a disaster that should be mitigated as much as possible. However, I do think Roberts has a good point when he questions the ongoing selective applicability of the preclearance provisions: "The evil that §5 is meant to address may no longer be concentrated in the jurisdictions singled out for preclearance. The statute’s coverage formula is based on data that is now more than 35 years old, and there is considerable evidence that it fails to account for current political conditions." It's not obvious to me that, say, Indiana is less likely to enact legislation restricting minority access to the ballot than Virginia or Kings County, New York. To the extent that the Supreme Court is signaling that the legislation would be more easily defensible if it applied to everyone, I think they have a point (although I suspect that the Court's conservatives may be planting a Catch-22 in which the legislation will turn out to be under- or over-inclusive depending on how Congress deals with this question).
As I wrote earlier, the Section 5 ruling was pretty narrow, and that "the majority opinion reads at times more like an argument against Section 5 than one for it." Election law expert Rick Hasenwrites that the reason for this is that the Roberts court seems to be setting up Section 5 for a future constitutional challenge, meaning that while Section 5 may have dodged a bullet, there may be more bullets coming. Hasen writes that "Eventually the section 5 question will come back to the Court, but it will likely be two or three years at the least."
Tom Goldstein also believes that the minimalism of the ruling is meant to tee up a constitutional challenge. He writes that "Congress is now effectively on the clock: it has the period between now and the date that it decides a follow-on challenge by a covered jurisdiction that is not permitted to “bail out” of the statutory scheme to amend Section 5. If the statute remains the same by the time the next case arrives, the Court will invalidate the statute."
So while the narrow ruling allows Section 5 to remain intact, the future of the law--and the protections it offers to voters of color, is shaky--particularly since the conservatives are likely to remain a controlling majority on the court the next time around. And uh, looks like Jeffrey Toobin is still right about John Roberts after all. Disappointing.
This afternoon, President Barack Obama will sign the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, which among many good things noted after the jump, will allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate cigarettes. It's a particularly important day for the bill's chief sponsor, Representative Henry Waxman, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which, however logically, has jurisdiction over health issues. This weekend I read Waxman's forthcoming legislative memoir (a burgeoning and exciting genre), written with the assistance of Atlantic reporter Joshua Green, The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works. It's a very useful primer on Congress and the long battles Waxman has led on behalf of a variety of key progressive causes. You also learn, strangely enough, that Waxman was one of the first Members of Congress to undertake the now common practice of donating to his colleagues' campaign funds in an effort to keep around representatives he saw as effective and curry favor. For all Waxman's idealism, you can't say he isn't savvy.
Waxman began his attempts to regulate tobacco in the early 1980s, with oversight hearings featuring Captain Kangaroo, and continued his work through then-Representative Dick Durbin's controversial 1987 amendment to ban smoking on airplane flights shorter than two hours, Waxman's own groundbreaking 1994 hearings where tobacco executives lied under oath, Newt Gingrich's torpedoing of a 1998 tobacco regulation compromise, and finally President Bush's threat to veto this bill last July that left it hanging...until today.
It says something about Waxman's tenacity and how political change comes about in the face of entrenched interests that it has taken nearly thirty years to achieve federal regulation of something most people will concede is a drug. Harold Meyerson has written eloquently about Waxman's work in the past, and you really have to concede that in terms of sheer legislation, if with Waxman's help we see successful health care reform and/or a Cap-and-Trade bill, he could very well be the the single greatest liberal legislator of the last half century -- especially when you consider the Clean Air Act, the earliest HIV/AIDs legislation, Tobacco regulation, nutrition labeling, not even to mention protecting medicare throughout the Reagan and Bush years and his exemplary oversight work when the Democrats took back the congressional majority in 2006. Who else would you nominate?
-- Tim Fernholz
The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009
* New Center for Tobacco Products: FDA will create a new Center for Tobacco Products to oversee the science-based regulation of tobacco products in the United States.
* Banning Candy-Flavored Cigarettes: By October 2009, cigarettes will be prohibited from having candy, fruit, and spice flavors as their characterizing flavors.
* Full Disclosure of Ingredients and Additives: By January 2010, tobacco manufacturers and importers will submit information to FDA in their possession about ingredients and additives in tobacco products, a description of the nicotine content and delivery, and the health consequences of tobacco products.
* Stopping Youth-Focused Marketing: By April 2010, FDA will issue the agency's 1996 regulation aimed at reducing young people's access to tobacco products and curbing the appeal of tobacco to the young. When the regulation becomes effective, a number of measures will take effect, including:
o Tobacco manufacturers may no longer sponsor sporting, athletic, and entertainment events using tobacco product brand names and logos;
o Tobacco manufacturers may no longer sell or give away clothing or other items which bear the brand name or logo of a tobacco product; and
o Tobacco manufacturers will no longer be able to distribute free samples of cigarettes, and free samples of smokeless tobacco will be allowed only in adult-only facilities.
* Prohibiting Other Marketing Measures Misleading Consumers: By July 2010, tobacco manufacturers may no longer use the terms "light," "low," and "mild" on tobacco products.
· * New Warning Labels: By July 2011, warning labels for cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products will be revised and strengthened. Warnings will comprise the top 50 percent of the front and rear panels of the package. FDA will issue regulations requiring graphics on labels depicting the health risks of smoking.
The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 also provides FDA with regulatory authority to regulate marketing and promotion of tobacco products and set performance standards for tobacco products to protect the public health.
At first glance, you might think that a settlement could be glimpsed, albeit at a distance, in the increasingly bitter fight between the hotel workers’ union leaders who now control UNITE HERE and the onetime apparel workers’ union leaders who have left the union and since affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Can both sides’ harassment of the other side’s members, locals, and organizing campaigns be brought to a halt? (SEIU says, for its part, it has now stopped this harassment, but UNITE HERE insists that it continues, even as its own campaign of harassment continues, too.) Can a unified movement turn again to fighting for labor-law reform and universal health care and to organizing the unorganized?
Proving that young people are the solution to, well, just about everything, there’s an important nugget of information buried in the much-discussed New York Times/CBS News health care poll released Saturday.
The poll found 72 percent of respondents supported a public plan, but also a striking generational gap in attitudes about universal health care. Americans under 45 were considerably more confident about a public option: only 28 percent were “very” concerned that access to treatment would be limited, compared to 40 percent of people 65 and over. Only 21 percent of younger people were concerned they’d be required to change doctors, versus 52 percent of senior citizens.
It’s safe to assume we can expect even more confidence in "Big Government" from those born since 1980. A Pew study on political attitudes found Americans 18 to 29 are noticeably less skeptical of government running things (43 percent) than their elders are (64 to 73 percent).
What does it all mean for the current health-care debate? Young people could be an important voice of advocacy and grassroots activism for the plan that eventually emerges from Congress, just as they were for Obama during the campaign. Then again, most colleges -- the foundation of Obama’s youth organizing -- aren’t back in session until late August, at which point it may be irrelevant.
I'm seeing a bit of liberal alarmism around the web on the Supreme Court's Voting Rights Act decision which I think is really misplaced. Over at ThinkProgress, Ian Millheiserwrites that "the Court instead handed down an 8-1 decision today that chips away at the landmark law." At The Nation, John Nicholswrites that the decision "pulls teeth from the Voting Rights Act." This is untrue.
The decision is really quite narrow: it expands the pool of jurisdictions under preclearance that are allowed to apply for bailout. All that means is that smaller political subdivisions will have an easier time getting out from under Section 5--a fair decision if you buy the court's rationale that since only 17 jurisdictions have bailed out, that proves the law isn't working as it's supposed to.
What the law does not do is alter the conditions jurisdictions have to meet for bailout, such as the 10 years of "good behavior". Kristen Clarke of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund says that "the Court's decision leaves in place the heart of the Voting Rights Act-- Section 5 -- which has long protected and shielded the rights of minority voters from discrimination." Gerry Hebert, a former chief of the Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department, described the ruling as "narrow" and said "The Voting Rights Act dodged a bullet."
This was a fair ruling--in fact it's beyond what many folks who support Section 5 were hoping for. "There was some real concern after the oral argument questioning that they were giving Congress very little deference despite the fact there was such overwhelming support for the Voting Rights Act extension in Congress," Hebert says. "So it's good that the court leaves the Voting Rights Act intact for another day."
In other words: the upholding of Section 5 is unequivocally good news--I think we're so used to being mad at the decisions handed down by the Roberts court that we're ignoring that this was a good decision--one might even say a conservative decision--one that respects precedent and Congress' legislative authority.
Just in time for Father's Day, Men's Health editor-in-chief David Zincenko penned a USA Today op-ed heralding the "Great He-cession" as one more example of how men are "an endangered species." Citing statistics about men's declining job security, shorter life span, and lack of government attention, he pits women against men in a delusional race for resources.
Newsflash: Men aren't from Mars and women aren't from Venus; we're all struggling to make healthy, meaningful lives on the same damn planet -- and it's time we started acting like it.
In a stunning 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court has upheld Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which holds that certain jurisdictions with a history of discriminating against minority voters must submit changes to their election laws to the Justice Department for "preclearance." The lopsided decision is something of an upset -- like finding out your local little league team beat the Boston Red Sox -- because in oral arguments, the court's conservatives seemed entirely unconvinced of the ongoing need for Section 5. Divining internal politics that led to the courts' decision are better left to reporters with much better connections to the court, such as Jeffrey Toobin. But for now, it's worth noting that Toobin's devastating evaluation of Chief Justice John Roberts, that he has "sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff,” wasn't exactly true in this instance.
The significant change to Section 5 is now that smaller political subdivisions will be eligible for preclearance. Only 17 jurisdictions have bailed out of preclearance since 1982, even though the requirements aren't that onerous: they require at least ten years without a Section 5 violation, and the process costs about $5,000. As Roberts might say, all you have to do to be eligible for bailout is to "stop discriminating on the basis of race."
Still, the majority opinion reads at times more like an argument against Section 5 than one for it. The Court is deferring to Congress, as Roberts writes, "Congress amassed a sizable record in support of its decision to extend the preclearance re-quirements," and even acknowledged the deterrent effect of Section 5, despite deriding it as "whistle to keep away the elephants." This was then, a rare act of judicial restrain on the part of the court's conservatives--"Whether conditions continue to justify such legislation is a difficult constitutional ques-tion we do not answer today." Eight of the nine justices agreed, except for the most activist judge on the court: Clarence Thomas.
Thomas delivered a partial (post-racial?) dissent arguing that Section 5 was unconstitutional because "[c]overed jurisdictions are not now engaged in a systematic campaign to deny black citizens access to the ballot through intimidation and violence," and therefore we no longer require the federal intrusion of Section 5. This is a strawman -- voter suppression need not be conducted through violence to be effective, just ask Hans von Spakovsky, whose record of disenfranchising minority voters disappears on the horizon. Despite the relatively good performance of our election system last year--due in large part to the tireless efforts of voting rights lawyers and Section 5 -- Pew's evaluation showed that the effect of restrictive voting rights still falls disproportionately on minorities. This is what the "purpose or effect" clause in the Voting Rights Act refers to -- not just intimidation and violence, but laws targeting minority voters under the pretense of deniability.
The 8-1 decision was unexpected, and welcome. A complete reversal of Section 5 would have likely resulted in an avalanche of partisan efforts to skew voting laws against minority voters. Now jurisdictions will have to get out the (relatively) hard way, through good behavior, and by the time jurisdictions have bailed out, the partisan targeting of minority voters for disenfranchisement will hopefully be a thing of the past.
Last week was financial regulation reform roll-out, and while the final result was a mixed bag of good ideas, bad ideas and some plain old vague ideas, there was some dark speculation from critics like Simon Johnson about whether or not bank lobbyists had written the proposal:
The reform process appears to be have been captured at an early stage -- by design the lobbyists were let into the executive branch's working, so we don't even get to have a transparent debate or to hear specious arguments about why we really need big banks.
I'd go right ahead and say that's unfair. For starters, Johnson links to this article that reports on the variety of people the administration spoke to about the plan, including but not limited to bank lobbyists. Although it's hard to blame Johnson, an economist, for not doing any reporting for his post, if he had bothered to talk to anyone at Treasury, he would have found out that besides meeting with representatives of the various financial sector stakeholders -- who don't have a monolithic agenda; one primary reason we don't have as much regulatory consolidation is because the well-regarded small community banks objected to it -- it also included multiple discussions with Paul Volcker and other members of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, multiple discussions with staff and members of the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, multiple meetings with the various regulators, and meetings with representatives from places like the Consumer Federation of America as well as a variety of academics. That's not say all stakeholders are created with equal influence or that this proposal is free of malign influence, but even if you don't buy the public statements from financial sector reps criticizing the plan, it's clear from reading it that there are sections that will limit both the risk-taking and profitability of banks.
That isn't to say that Johnson's concerns about the plan aren't valid or important (here's an introduction to his world view). But getting good policy has to be about more than name-calling. For instance, the administration isn't making any arguments, specious or otherwise, that we need big banks -- they're actually taking an approach articulated by Paul Krugman. The administration has also been transparent about why they think the crisis occurred, even if that view is wrong. And though Johnson criticizes the lack of consolidation in the plan, the fact is that the elimination of the thrift charter and the consolidation of consumer regulation are going to eliminate some serious problems of regulatory arbitrage. And I can't stress enough how unhappy the financial sector is with the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, the single bona fide progressive aspect of the plan.
Speaking to folks on the Hill and at Treasury about this package and why it is not as ambitious as it should be, my impression is that it's a problem of several competing interests: One, getting through a regulatory overhaul as soon as possible, since by the time this becomes law (at the soonest, early 2010) many banks will have been operating profitably under the old regime for some time, and because the closer to the crisis reform comes the more ambitious it can be. At the same time, though, there is already a lot on congress' plate, and regulatory reform that included a lot of consolidation -- and inevitable intra-committee fighting -- might have slowed down the entire agenda. My biggest worry is that the Administration still underestimates the banking industry's power on Capital Hill -- maybe one senior official I spoke with was just trying to spin me, but the official seemed confident that the banks didn't have the political pull to deeply upset the plan. That view certainly belies what we've seen before on issues like bankruptcy loan modification, and if financial regulation goes that way, we're in trouble.
After being held by the Taliban for seven months, David Rohde, a New York Times reporter, is free. I never met Rohde, but I felt a tremendous sense of release when I heard the news. Several weeks ago, I asked a colleague of mine – another journalist – about him, and my friend’s answer was succinct: “He’s screwed.” Luckily, that turned out to be untrue. An Afghan journalist named Tahir Ludin, who had been seized along with Rohde, recounted their harrowing escape in Sunday’s New York Times. One reader commented, "What I consider really amazing is that the entire press, I suppose that included international press, were able to keep this confidential for so long."
For months, I had heard about Rohde’s kidnapping and was surprised that nobody wrote any stories about it. The reason for the silence was simple: His family did not want the media to report on it, and so nobody did. But it was never clear – to me, at least – whether a news blackout was the best strategy in securing his release. Yet there was no opportunity to discuss this question openly. It’s an important topic because the kidnapping of journalists has become oddly normal these days and has an impact on how journalists work in Afghanistan and Pakistan and, of course, how the news is reported. At a dinner party in New York several months ago, I sat at a table with two other journalists who had been kidnapped by the Taliban. Both had gotten away unharmed.
It seemed natural to protect the secret of the Rohde family, particularly when the stakes were so high. But it also seemed strange to talk with a bunch of international journalists for months about the different strategies that the families of kidnapping victims might use -- visiting the country where the individual has been kidnapped, offering money for ransom, hiring kidnapping experts -- and yet none of this debate appeared in newspapers or on blogs. The past few months have been an ordeal for everyone who knew Rohde, and even for those who did not know him personally. Thank God the story has turned out well. I hope now that people will have a chance to talk about kidnapping theories in a more open fashion and be prepared for the time when the next kidnapping occurs.
A San Francisco protester holds a photo of "Neda," via Flickr user Steve Rhodes
The video circulating of the death of "Neda," the Iranian woman shot through the heart protesting in Tehran on Saturday, further cements women's faces as symbols of this uprising. The mullahs are aware that feminist fervor and frustration is, in part, behind the outpouring of pro-democratic sentiment, and they are responding: Iran's state propaganda apparatus is beginning to defend its abysmal record on women's rights. Mehri Souizi, head of Iran's Interior Ministry department for women and family affairs, offers the line that since 1979, "women’s involvement in social, cultural, and political arenas has increased by 170 percent."
Wherever that "170 percent" number comes from, it doesn't come close to telling the real story of Iranian women. Only 13 percent of Iranian women participate in the paid work force, compared to over 25 percent of women in Turkey and over 38 percent in Indonesia. With the permission of a court, fathers can arrange marriages for daughters under age 13. Polygamy is legal, and under Ahmadinejad, Parliament even tried to ease restrictions on the practice. Women cannot run for president, and family law discriminates against them when it comes to divorce, child custody, and inheritance. Dozens of feminist political leaders have been arrested and detained since 2006, when police violently attacked a women's rights demonstration in Tehran, leading to the founding of the One Million Signatures Campaign for women's legal equality.
Even more so than men, women are on the line in Iran. If the Ahmadineajd government returns to power, women will be subjected to ever-stricter "modesty" laws and caps on their enrollment in higher education. There will be harsh crackdowns on the feminist movement that offered so much support to Mousavi. Women in Iran understand the alternative and dread it -- and that is why so many of them are in the streets.
Momentum for universal health care is slowing dramatically on Capitol Hill. Moderates are worried; Republicans are digging in; and the medical-industrial complex is firing up its lobbying and propaganda machine.
But, as you know, the worst news came days ago when the Congressional Budget Office weighed in with awful projections about how much the leading health-care plans would cost and how many Americans would still be left out in the cold. Yet these projections didn't include the savings that a public option would generate by negotiating lower drug prices, doctor fees, and hospital costs, and forcing private insurers to be more competitive. Projecting the future costs of universal health care without including the public option is like predicting the number of people who will get sunburns this summer if nobody is allowed to buy sun lotion. Of course the costs of universal health care will be huge if the most important way of controlling them is left out of the calculation.
If you want to save universal health care, you must do several things, and soon:
1. Go to the nation. You must build public support by forcefully making the case for universal health care everywhere around the country. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows that three out of four Americans want universal health care. But the vast majority don't know what's happening on the Hill, don't know how much money the medical-industrial lobbies are spending to defeat it, and have no idea how much demagoguery they're about to be exposed to. You must tell them. And don't be reluctant to take on those vested interests directly. Name names. They've decided to fight you. You must fight them.
2. Be LBJ. So far, Lyndon Johnson has been the only president to defeat American Medical Association and the rest of the medical-industrial complex. He got Medicare and Medicaid enacted despite their cries of "socialized medicine" because he knocked heads on the Hill. He told Congress exactly what he wanted, cajoled and threatened those who resisted, and counted noses every hour until he had the votes he needed. When you're not on the road, you need to be twisting congressional arms and drawing a line in the sand. Be tough.
3. Forget the Republicans. Forget bipartisanship. Universal health care can pass with 51 votes. You can get 51 votes if you give up on trying to persuade a handful of Republicans to cross over. Eight year ago George W. Bush passed his huge tax cut, mostly for the wealthy, by wrapping it in an all-or-nothing reconciliation measure and daring Democrats to vote against it. You should do the same with health care.
More advice after the jump.
--Robert Reich
4. Insist on a real public option. It's the linchpin of universal health care. Don't accept Kent Conrad's ersatz public option masquerading as a "health-care cooperative." Cooperatives won't have the authority, scale, or leverage to negotiate low prices and keep private insurers honest.
5. Demand that taxes be raised on the wealthy to ensure that all Americans get affordable health care. At the rate health-care costs are rising, not even a real public option will hold down costs enough to make health care affordable to most American families in years to come. So you'll need to tax the wealthy. Don't back down on your original proposal to limit their deductions. And support a cap on how much employee-provided health care can be provided tax free. (Yes, you opposed this during your campaign. But you have no choice but to reverse yourself on this.) These are the only two big pots of money.
6. Put everything else on hold. As important as they are, your other agenda items -- financial reform, home mortgage mitigation, cap-and-trade legislation -- pale in significance relative to universal health care. By pushing everything at once, you take the public's mind off the biggest goal, diffuse your energies, blur your public message, and fuel the demagogues who say you're trying to take over the private sector.
Ben Smithwrites that Father's Day is Obama's "rhetorical sweet spot." President Obama has a number of rhetorical sweet spots on different issues, but at one point or another his subsequent actions have been a disappointment. I first reported on Obama's fatherhood agenda last year, and since then we've seen some important, if limited, movement on this front. Yesterday, Obama said that "In many ways, I came to understand the importance of fatherhood through its absence—both in my life and in the lives of others. I came to understand that the hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children is one that no government can fill. We can do everything possible to provide good jobs and good schools and safe streets for our kids, but it will never be enough to fully make up the difference."
Has the Obama administration done everything it can to make up the difference? Not exactly, but it has taken some important steps. The stimulus bill temporarily rescinded the effect of the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act that eliminated the incentive payments to state child support collection programs. When there's a shortfall, states often make up the difference by taking money out of child support payments--because those payments come straight out of your paycheck, the non-custodial parent is basically being encouraged to get paid off the books, which under some circumstances can get them in trouble. Twenty-five million dollars were set aside in the budget for research and funding transitional and reentry programs for ex-felons, many of whom are non-custodial parents. Without proper training, the newly released are at great risk to falling back into the illicit economy, which can and usually does result in their being reincarcerated.
Still, many of the changes made in the stimulus bill were temporary, and some things haven't been changed--for example, two-parent families receiving TANF funds have to work twice as hard to get the same amount of assistance as single parents. Dealing with families affected by incarceration will require more than just a line item in the budget, it will require reforming the criminal justice system. All in all, when it comes to Obama's fatherhood agenda, I'd say the administration is doing an alright job, but it could be doing better.
-- A. Serwer
Unsurprisingly, the Mike Pence-introduced House bill condemning the Iranian regime's response to protesters and expressing support for the people of Iran passed today on a 405-1 vote, with Ron Paul voting nay and two Democrats voting present. Changes to the wording of the original bill were made by Howard Berman (D-CA), chair of the House Foreign Affairs committee and reportedly the White House also had a hand in toning down the original bill.
This past week has felt eerily like the dark days of 2002-03 when you couldn't throw a stone without hitting a neocon describing how the people of Iraq would greet us with flowers as the "liberators" of their country. Obviously, without a manufactured national security threat and a president gullible enough to trust his bellicose Cabinet, there's less of a case to make for a U.S.-led regime change in Iran. Yet neocons are feeling emboldened, taking to the op-ed pages of The Washington Post, giving us a Krauthammer/Wolfowitz twofer that makes you feel like you stepped into a time machine. Fortunately, Jacob Heilbrunn is available to take out the trash.
House Democrats have released their health-care reform bill, a joint effort of the House Education and Labor, Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means Committees. The bill includes a public option, lacking in both current Senate proposals, but does not specify total cost, even though some tax proposals are on the table to fund it. Meanwhile, RNC Chair Michael Steele is worried about a "national ID system" and "health police" tracking our every movement. I wonder if Steele has the same concerns about private companies logging phone and email records, installing surveillance cameras everywhere, and data mining us online for marketing purposes.
This Reihan Salampiece arguing that Glenn Beck is nobly helping wingnuts vent their frustrations is not very convincing. In addition to being totally speculative (i.e. it proves nothing) it has trouble reconciling two claims: a) real fringe groups thing Beck is a "government stooge" and b) "Rather than stoke the fears of his audience, Beck's occasionally loopy warnings about socialist totalitarianism and the coming American civil war actually inoculate his viewers against truly extreme sentiments." So which is it? Real extremists don't watch him or they do and it's therapeutic for them?
Remainders: The Senate passes the war supplemental; Google translates Farsi so you don't have to; the DNC outraises the RNC in May; Sen. Tom Coburnbacks a birther bill; and the future of motivational speaking has arrived.
In light of two controversial 5-4 Supreme Court decisions this week, Matt Yglesiasis reminded of Jeffrey Toobin's point that "In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff."
On Osborne, Matt does a good job of pointing out the obvious injustice of a state preventing a prisoner from presenting potentially exculpatory evidence at his own expense. We should add to Toobin's litany that Roberts and his right-wing colleagues share another longstanding trait of American conservatives: prioritizing "state's rights" over human rights. And as in most cases, it's hard to discern the benefits of this as applied to this case. While federalism may promote liberty in some respects, there is no tangible benefit to permitting states to imprison potentially innocent people when assessing exculpatory evidence would have little expense. And interpreting the due process clause to give the defendant a right to present exculpatory evidence in this case can only be a threat to the "sovereignty" and "dignity" of the states if one believes that there should be virtually no federal supervision of the state criminal procedure, which the 14th Amendment precludes even if it wasn't a stupid idea on the merits. If preventing illegal detention isn't at the heart of due process, I'm not sure what is. (And why the abstract "dignity" of states should trump the very real dignity of human beings I can't tell you.) Gross v. FBL's denial of an age discrimination claim was equally predictable. The key dispute in the case is whether statutory language that makes it illegal to fire an employee "because of" age means that (as Thomas asserts) a plaintiff must prove that she would not have been fired "but-for" her age, while the dissent argues that any firing motivated in whole or in part by age discrimination is illegal. As Stevens points out, the context of the legislation and Supreme Court precedent makes Thomas's read of the statute highly dubious:
The “but-for” causation standard endorsed by the Court today was advanced in Justice Kennedy’s dissenting opinion in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, a case construing identical language in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Not only did the Court reject the but-for standard in that case, but so too did Congress when it amended Title VII in 1991. Given this unambiguous history, it is particularly inappropriate for the Court, on its own initiative, to adopt an interpretation of the causation requirement in the ADEA that differs from the established reading of Title VII. I disagree not only with the Court’s interpretation of the statute, but also with its decision to engage in unnecessary lawmaking.
It should be noted as well that these cases demonstrate another point made by Toobin: The argument made by Roberts that Justices are simply "umpires" making judgments about clear rules are absurd. In these cases, as in most interesting appellate court cases, the relevant constitutional and statutory provisions admit multiple plausible interpretations, and choosing among these interpretations inevitably involves value judgments. If you don't place a high value on protecting the ability of states to arbitrarily detain individuals and protecting the ability of employers to discriminate against their employees, you don't want justices like Alito and Roberts on the Court, and this has nothing to do with whether or not they're competent lawyers.
There are compelling reasons for Obama to stay relatively quiet as the unrest continues in Iran -- thus avoiding the appearance of protesters there being "tools of the West," which would strengthen the regime's hand. But now, in the face of Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei's threats to protesters today, the president has responded, in an interview with CBS:
I’m very concerned based on some of the tenor — and tone of the statements that have been made — that the government of Iran recognize that the world is watching. And how they approach and deal with people who are, through peaceful means, trying to be heard will, I think, send a pretty clear signal to the international community about what Iran is and — and is not.
As Spencer Ackermanwrites, the statement "continues the rhetorical move toward clarifying that only one side is responsible for the violence. But Obama frames it in a fairly non-confrontational way here."
Ben Smith has a clever story on a small political development that's telling of the way legislating has changed in recent years. The break down: New Representative Tom Perriello -- hey, didn't someone write an expansive profile of him? -- has declined to support an earmark that would fund a center run by political prognosticator Larry Sabato; the prior incumbent in the seat, Virgil Goode, had religiously protected Sabato's funding. To make the situation more interesting, the center's top spokesperson is apparently thinking of challenging Periello in the next election.
That's all interesting stuff politics-wise, but for students of government, the interesting nugget is how the last decade of debate around earmarks has changed the incentives for legislators to use them:
Sabato said he doesn’t know why he lost his funding and says he’s never let a personal or financial relationship get in the way of calling them as he sees them. Perriello spokeswoman Jessica Barba said the funding denial had nothing to do with Sabato’s skepticism of Perriello’s prospects, or Sabato’s friendship with Goode, or even the fact that Sabato’s current spokesman, Cordel Faulk, is considering a challenge to Perriello in 2010.
“Congressman Perriello certainly respects and supports the work of the Center for Politics and the [center’s] Youth Leadership Initiative, but it did not meet his criteria for appropriations requests, which were focused on clean energy investments, infrastructure and job-creation projects,” said Barba.
... Goode didn’t respond to a message left at his law office; however, a congressional source said the former congressman, an appropriator of the old school, didn’t follow a bureaucratic process for earmarks but, rather, simply awarded them as he saw fit. And until recently, the earmark went directly to Sabato’s center, bypassing the University of Virginia administration, though the request now flows through a more formal internal channel, said the center’s chief of staff, Ken Stroupe
The idea that earmarks contribute to our fiscal problems is laughable; however, earmarking procedure did contribute to the rampant corruption of Congress. Now that earmarks are more transparent, members of Congress are forced not only to reveal what they are funding but also justify it politically -- which is why Perriello's office is choosing to fund economic projects they hope will help their constituents. That's not to say a political science center at a state university is an undeserving project, but it's the other earmarks Goode supported that indicate the problems behind awarding taxpayer money as you see fit.
Earlier this morning I was at the U.S. District Court downtown for a hearing on the Mohammed Jawad case. Jawad is a Guantanamo detainee who is accused of throwing a grenade at an American convoy in Afghanistan. He's been in custody for almost seven years. We know he was a minor when he was apprehended in 2002, but a recent letter sent to the U.S. from the Afghan government suggests he was as young as 11 or 12. But based on the folks I've spoken to who are familiar with the case, that seems unlikely.
In any case, the hearing itself was mostly procedural stuff, focused on scheduling dates for other motions and hearings. But there was an amusing exchange between the judge and a lawyer from the DoJ who tried to explain that she had a scheduling conflict with one of the dates the judge had set. "I'm going on vacation that week," the lawyer explained.
The judge paused and stared at the lawyer. "He's been incarcerated for a very long time," she said.
-- A. Serwer
Technically, this old Max Roach joint celebrates the day of the Emancipation Proclaimation. But it still seems appropriate for Juneteenth, since Freedom Day didn't come to Texas until years later.
UPDATE: They're even celebrating over at The Corner!
Dave Weigel has been offering excellent coverage of the debate over the Iran resolution. Spencer Ackermansays that the White House would support a version with toned down language. But I'm struck by how quickly the party of torture has acquiesced to the rhetoric of human rights:
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the minority whip who has put out blistering statements about the White House’s response, spoke loudly and emotionally about “America’s moral responsibility to speak out on the protection of human rights wherever they are violated” — hint, hint. “I urge President Obama to follow the lead of this House,” Cantor said.
This is, quite frankly, astonishing. Republicans have universally opposed bringing any suspected terrorists detainees to trial, and in 2005 Cantor voted against the military appropriations bill that banned cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of terrorist detainees. If Cantor truly believes in "America’s moral responsibility to speak out on the protection of human rights wherever they are violated," he might want to start at here at home, preferably by reconsidering his own support of torture. -- A. Serwer
Looking at the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling denying that prisoners have a constitutional right to potentially exculpatory DNA evidence after they've been convicted, Matt Yglesiasmakes an important point about conservative jurisprudence:
Obviously, the purpose of the established system of criminal justice is to use punishment of the guilty as a means of controlling crime. The general hostility of most people in the law enforcement and prosecutorial universe to exonerating evidence is a little bit hard to understand. The predominant thinking of Alaska in this case seems to be that the punishment of the innocent works as a close substitute for the punishment of the guilty, so that given the heinous nature of the crime the state has a strong interest in convicting someone or other of it irrespective of the facts.
Sadly, this approach to the law, where punishing someone is as good as punishing the guilty if judges arbitrarily feel that reconsidering potentially exculpatory evidence could "overthrow the established system of justice," is likely to influence the results of Troy Davis' June 25 appeal to the Supreme Court. Davis' appeals have been rejected time and time again despite the fact that there is no physical evidence linking him to the murder of police officer Mark McPhail and 7 of the 9 original witnesses have recanted with several saying they felt coerced by police. Several have also identified one of the remaining two witnesses as the real perpetrator.
It may seem strange, but in a larger sense, yesterday's ruling affects a smaller number of people than it might seem at first. Most state governments are more humane than our current court, and 47 have laws granting prisoners the right to seek DNA testing in at least some cases. It's states like Alaska, which has no such laws, where incarcerated people seeking potentially exculpatory DNA evidence will be left high and dry without a better federal standard. The Supreme Court basically just invited Congress to establish one. -- A. Serwer
According to an annual U.N. report, Global Trends, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq produced nearly half of the world’s refugees and dispossessed people in 2008. The U.N. refugee agency also reported that developing nations carry the greatest burden, hosting an estimated four-fifths of all worldwide refugees.
Last July, then-Sen. and presumptive nominee Barack Obama wrote in an op-ed piece for The New York Times that his administration would “commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.” Under the previous administration, the United States accepted about 13,000 Iraqi refugees, with the vast majority given entrance during Bush’s final year in office. This year alone, the goal is to accept close to 17,000 Iraqis.
But that number is minuscule when compared to the actual size of the region’s refugee population. Advocacy groups, including Refugees International and Human Rights First, maintain that the past Bush -- and current Obama -- refugee policies are insufficient. Recommendations include a U.S.-led international effort to resettle up to 85,000 “extremely vulnerable” displaced Iraqis and increased funding to support admitted refugees.
Advocates are also watching to see if Obama makes good on his $2 billion pledge. According to Human Rights First refugee policy analyst Amelia Templeton, positive signs include the administration’s request of $1.48 billion from Congress for the 2010 Migration and Refugee Assistance Account. Bush never actively sought such funding, instead relying on Congress’ emergency war supplemental appropriations to deal with Iraq's refugee crisis. The current administration is attempting to “mainstream” these costs in official budget requests. Less reassuring are the “egregiously underfunded” U.S. resettlement agencies, Templeton says.
--Asawin Suebsaeng
Asawin Suebsaeng is a summer 2009 Prospect intern.
And he's got an interesting post on the idea of TBTF, which has been a big part of the debate in the past few days over the financial regulation reforms. On one hand you have people like Bob Reichsaying that the plan doesn't eliminate the problem of TBTF, which is true to a certain extent. On the other you have conservatives who say that the plan enshrines TBTF, which isn't true. The administration says that the TBTF is sort of a red herring: It's not just size; it's also interconnectedness -- Lehman, as these folks like to point out, was not too big, it was too interconnected. Paul Krugmanlooks at the problem and comes down on the Treasury side:
I’m a big advocate of much strengthened financial regulation. One argument I don’t buy, however, is that we should try to shrink financial institutions down to the point where nobody is too big to fail. Basically, it’s just not possible.
The point is that finance is deeply interconnected, so that even a moderately large player can take down the system if it implodes. Remember, it was Lehman — not Citi or B of A — that brought the world to the brink.
And as far as I know, there never was a time when policymakers could have viewed the collapse of a major money center bank with equanimity.
... So I think of the pursuit of a world in which everyone is small enough to fail as the pursuit of a golden age that never was. Regulate and supervise, then rescue if necessary; there’s no way to make this automatic.
That's certainly the administration's approach -- by identifying firms that are too large, leveraged or interconnected and imposing special additional regulations, they hope to keep large firms acting in a stable way. The new resolution authorities, which will allow them to be thrown into recievership in a responsible way should they fail, will (and this is the talking point) eliminate the false choice between a catastrophic failure and an expensive bailout.
As a sidenote, Krugman's increasing mastery of blogstyle is really worrying me. If he's got Nobel-prize winning smarts AND posts about beer, there's no way to compete. (Special bonus for econ students: Identify my comparative advantage relative to Krugman).
The New York Times has an article this morning on Gwendolyn and Kendall Myers, who allegedly stole information and sent it to Cuba over the course of 20 years. Kendall Myers worked for the State Department (with a high level security clearance), and Gwendolyn Myers helped transfer stolen data to Cuban agents.
The strongest argument in support of the government’s case may have been made by the Myerses themselves. In the 40-page complaint they are quoted telling an undercover F.B.I. agent how much they admired Fidel Castro, how they sent secret dispatches to Havana over short-wave radio, dropped packages to handlers in shopping carts at local grocery stores, traveled across Latin America to meet with Cuban agents and used false documents to travel to Havana for an evening with Mr. Castro.
The Myerses might as well have been invented by conservatives concerned about left-wing activity in the United States government. The article reports that they held a romanticized view of the Cuban government, and they refused monetary compensation beyond what was needed to reimburse for equipment. Ms. Myers worked on the McGovern campaign, and Mr. Myers worked as an adjunct professor at SAIS. They were deeply disillusioned by American foreign policy. In 1979, shortly before Mr. Myers took his position at the State Department, their farm in South Dakota was raided by police and several marijuana plants were seized.
The key thing to remember is that intelligence sold to foreigners doesn't stay in the country that bought it. Every intelligence organization has ties to other organizations, and shares information (especially valuable information) accordingly. Similarly, foreign intelligence communities suffer from lapses and penetration just like our own; even if Cuba had wanted to keep secrets from the Soviets, it's unclear how successful they would have been. This is to say that espionage cannot be judged harmless based on the notion that the spying country is innocuous. Information, as they say, wants to be free, and when it gets free it tends to stay free.
Moreover, there really isn't any such thing as harmless data. Every bit of intelligence collected by a foreign organization contributes a piece to the puzzle and can lead to revelations about agents, methods, and the success of various operations. It's unclear precisely what the Myer's stole or who saw it, but the consequences may have been serious. This is why espionage is a serious crime, whether the information is sent to Britain, France, Israel, or, for crying out loud, Cuba.
This op-ed in the Times doesn't vary much from the tone we've been seeing among other forms of communication coming out of Iran, but two things strike me. One is this student's insistence on rebutting the idea that Ahmadinejad may have actually won, and his rejection of the stereotypes being applied to
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arguing that marriage-promotion -- even among the very poor and the very young -- should be a major goal of national social policy. He has an aversion to birth control and abortion. He has even written about his own efforts to stay sexually chaste. So it is surprising that Douthat now 
, which uses the lives of literary greats to argue that foolish love -- passion, sex, and even obsession -- fuels genius and productivity. Nehring believes that today's college-educated professionals have sanitized love through feminism and "companionate marriages," focusing too much on child-rearing and real estate acquisition, and not enough on sex. This line of argument offers Douthat an opportunity to engage in one of his favorite pastimes: attacking the culture of affluent liberals. "The same overclass that was once most invested in erotic experimentation ended up building the sturdiest walls against the passions it unleashed," he clucks. 
and even strive to create feminism-friendly pornography. Some feminists are anti-marriage altogether. Others advocate open relationships because they are inherently skeptical of sexual monogamy. 
. It's a very useful primer on Congress and the long battles Waxman has led on behalf of a variety of key progressive causes. You also learn, strangely enough, that Waxman was one of the first Members of Congress to undertake the now common practice of donating to his colleagues' campaign funds in an effort to keep around representatives he saw as effective and curry favor. For all Waxman's idealism, you can't say he isn't savvy.
