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The Letter No Newspaper in Texas Will Print: Is Texas Harboring ...
By fromthewilderness
Jordan and most of her committee colleagues voted out articles of impeachment against Nixon, leaving him little choice but to resign or be impeached. Speaking to the House, Jordan described Nixon as a President “swollen with power and grown ... He served as an Army officer and CIA analyst for almost thirty years and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). The War Crimes Act of 1996: Bush, Cheney and the Boys could be Indicted under US Law ...
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Posted on July 8, 2009 by fromthewilderness
By Ray McGovern
July 7, 2009 Consortium News
Editor’s Note: Prior to giving some talks in Texas, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern offered the following op-ed to the Dallas Morning News and the Fort-Worth Star Telegram. Both newspapers in George W. Bush’s home state turned it down:
Seldom does a crime scene have so clear a smoking gun. A two-page presidential memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, leaves no room for uncertainty regarding the “decider” on torture. His broad-stroke signature made torture official policy.
This should come as no surprise. You see, the Feb. 7, 2002, memorandum has been posted on the Web since June 22, 2004, when then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales mistakenly released it, along with other White House memoranda.
The title seemed innocent enough – “Humane Treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees” – but in the body of the memo President George W. Bush authorized his senior aides to withhold Geneva Convention protections from suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees.
Like Shakespeare, the media seem harshest on the lawyers, including Texans Gonzales and William J. Haynes II (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s lawyer), who later outdid themselves trying to make torture legal.
What gets lost in the woodwork is this: Banal as their ex-post-facto “justification” for torture was, the lawyers were not the deciders.
After the decider-in-chief, the key decision makers were the eight addressees of the Feb. 7 memorandum: Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft, White House chief of staff Andrew Card, CIA Director George Tenet, National Security aide Condoleezza Rice, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers.
During the Q & A after a recent Myers talk in Washington, I asked him what he did after he had read the President’s memo on ignoring Geneva. The tone of his non-answer was this: If the President wanted to dismiss Geneva, what was a mere Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to do?
In his memoir, Eyes on the Horizon, he tries to blame the lawyers: “By relying so heavily on just the lawyers, the President did not get the broader advice on these matters that he needed.”
Myers and the other seven addressees might these days be called derivative deciders — or, more simply, accomplices. There is not a shred of evidence that any of the Gang of Eight gave the slightest consideration to resigning, rather than carry out the President’s decision.
They elected to “just follow orders,” a defense dismissed out of hand at the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal on war crimes. Together with the lawyer-advisers, the derivative deciders provide abundant proof that the “banality of evil” did not die with Adolf Eichmann and other functionaries of the Third Reich.
But the buck stops — actually, in this case, it began — with President Bush. Senate Armed Services Committee leaders Carl Levin and John McCain on Dec. 11, 2008, released the executive summary of a report, approved by the full committee without dissent, concluding that Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, memorandum “opened the door to considering aggressive techniques.”
Here is Conclusion Number One of the Senate committee report: “Following the President’s determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions…were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.”
It is essential that those responsible for torture be held to account. This is not about “policy differences.” It is about crimes. More important still, it’s about holding fast to our Constitution and enforcing accountability in the executive branch.
There was a time when we regularly looked to folks from Texas to defend the law. What would we have done, for example, without the late Barbara Jordan, African American jurist and member of the House Judiciary Committee, who spoke out with memorable eloquence in arguing that President Richard Nixon had to be held to account. He could not get away with placing himself over the law.
Jordan and most of her committee colleagues voted out articles of impeachment against Nixon, leaving him little choice but to resign or be impeached. Speaking to the House, Jordan described Nixon as a President “swollen with power and grown tyrannical.” She added:
“My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.”
Barbara Jordan was a Texan through and through. She was also, above all, an American patriot. I suspect she may be rolling over in her grave at the prospect of a chief executive escaping accountability for approving torture.
Ray McGovern will address these and other issues on Thursday evening, July 9, for the Dallas Peace Center. He served as an Army officer and CIA analyst for almost thirty years and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
The War Crimes Act of 1996: Bush, Cheney and the Boys could be Indicted under US Law
An Anti-Torture Memorandum for President Obama: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Geneva Convention
Filed under: 911 Truth, America, Crimes Against umanity, Genocide, Torture, War, War Crime Prosecution, War Crimes, War Profitering |
Tagged: 911 Truth, America, Bush, Crimes Against Humanity, International Law, Torture, War Crimes, War Crimes Prosecution
| |
Recovery Board To Provide Public With Original Stimulus Data
BY ALIYA STERNSTEIN 07/08/2009
The board responsible for overseeing stimulus spending said on Wednesday that the public would have access to the same machine-readable data that updates Recovery.gov, a functionality that open government activists have been seeking. But public watchdogs and federal auditors raised concerns that the data might be flawed.
Federal reporting rules for stimulus fund recipients issued on June 22 announced the creation of a data collection portal at FederalReporting.gov, which ultimately will send spending data to Recovery.gov, the official public site for tracking stimulus funds. FederalReporting.gov will allow agencies and organizations that receive stimulus funds to submit spending reports directly to the Office of Management and Budget.
"Recovery.gov's data pull will be the same data pull that is available to the public," said Ed Pound, a spokesman for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which maintains Recovery.gov. So-called citizen programmers "are going to be able to download the data that we have on our Web site and mash it up," he said.
Gary Bass, who sits on the steering committee of the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery, a group of about 30 public interest organizations, said members are adamant that the public have access to the same data feeds from FederalReporting.gov, which update charts, tables and maps on Recovery.gov.
Rights to the data are critical for transparency because obtaining content through an intermediary, rather than from the primary source, creates the possibility the data might have been manipulated, said Bass, who also is executive director of the nonprofit OMB Watch. In addition, a feed format is easier for citizen developers to use in building third-party Web applications, such as Stimulus.org, which foster independent oversight and a better understanding of recovery efforts.
Government transparency watchdogs are particularly interested in obtaining feeds coded in Extensible Markup Language (XML), a standard computer language for exchanging information over the Internet.
FederalReporting.gov is based on a platform the Environmental Protection Agency operates, called the Central Data Exchange, to collect data from state and local governments, tribes and industry. The contractor for FederalReporting.gov is CGI Federal, the same vendor that services the CDX, Pound said. The board simply bought into the CDX contract to support FederalReporting.gov, he added.
The coalition issued a report on Tuesday that praised the general framework of FederalReporting.gov, with some reservations. "This central reporting architecture has several advantages over an 'up-the-chain' system," in which agencies are responsible for retrieving the data, the analysis stated. The benefits include the ability to accommodate potential requirements "that all recipients of Recovery Act funds, regardless of how many layers removed from the initial federal disbursal that recipient is, to submit a report on the use of those funds," the report added.
But Craig Jennings, a senior policy analyst at OMB Watch, which co-chairs the coalition, cautioned that the Obama administration is focusing more attention on the displayof Recovery.gov than on the data collection end, which "is an important piece of the reporting puzzle."
Separately on Wednesday, at a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on tracking stimulus funds, the Government Accountability Office raised concerns about the integrity of the data.
Lead recipients and federal agencies are obligated to conduct data quality checks, but reporting requirements do not mandate a specific methodology for performing the reviews, said Gene Dodaro, acting comptroller general. Instead, agencies only are expected to ensure the reviews are conducted consistently, with predefined standards for what constitutes a "material" data omission and "significant reporting error," he testified. "Although recipients and federal agency reviewers are required to perform data quality checks, none are required to certify or approve data for publication."
Furthermore, Dodaro added, it is unclear how recipients or agencies that flag suspect information are expected to resolve the issues.
The coalition's report, similarly, criticized the "significant ambiguity about penalties for reporting noncompliance."
OMB officials said they are working out kinks ahead of the Oct. 10 due date for the first round of stimulus reports. "Between now and the deadline, OMB is running trials on FederalReporting.gov to make sure it will operate smoothly during the upcoming data collection period, while also working closely with the Recovery Board to plan a series of seminars to train agencies and recipients about how to use this new technology," said Robert Nabors II, OMB deputy director.
Rove Deposed By Conyers Under Cloud of Secrecy
…Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to confirm or deny that his client had appeared before the committee. Luskin said there was anagreement that the depositions would remain confidential until they were completed. However, in a court filing Monday, the Justice Department indicated that the deposition set for this week would be the committee's last.
That gibes with this reporters efforts. Several months ago, I spoke with one of John Conyer's legal team members who was supposed to be on the Rove questioning team. When I spoke to him today, he said he was not involved and gave me the name of another senior Conyers staffer. I spoke to this senior staffer who was con-committal, not even confirming that there had been an interview or deposition. He did say that when the process was finished, we'd get more information.
Then I noticed, in the Politico report, that Harriet Meiers had been deposed in June. Checking Google News, there was surprisingly little to be found on what should have been major news. The Meiers deposition flew almost totally under the radar, with brief mentions from Fox News, Alternet and Law.com.
I called back to the House Judiciary committee senior spokesperson. Again, no confirmation. Apparently, the two depositions of Meiers and Rove, with the possible addition of former White House lawyer William Kelley, are part of a deal, which includes terms that the depositions will not be discussed, not even confirmation that they occurred, until they are finished. When will they be finished? No answer there either.
One has to ask some additional questions that won't be easily answered. Now that Rahm Emanuel is White House chief of staff, and we're seeing his rough and tough, hard-ass approach to the job, clearly more aggressive than Rove's softer touch, could it be that behind the scenes, Emanuel is protecting HIS president's executive privilege and for that reason, behind the scenes, protecting Rove and Meiers? Such machinations would not be outside the range of the possible in the land of smoke and mirrors…
Rove Deposed In U.S. Attorney Probe - John Bresnahan And Josh ...
By John Bresnahan,Josh Gerstein
He was deposed by attorneys for the House Judiciary Committee according to Conyers, the panel chairman. ... Party: NA. Reply #19. Jul. 7, 2009 - 9:17 PM EST. Honeybunny: Jul. 7, 2009 - 9:08 PM EST. Please, if Bush adminstration is crucified for firing nine, then clinton should be jailed for firing all of them! You are a dumb one arent you. I've seen stupid in my day and you take the top prize . Reply; Quote; Report Abuse. default avatar for user garythelib ...
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Blue Herald » Rove Deposition Yesterday
By QuestionGirl
Conyers would not comment on what Rove told congressional investigators, what the next step in the long-running Judiciary Committee investigation would be or whether Rove would face additional questioning. “He was deposed today,” Conyers said in ... QG: It's July in South Florida. Every night is steamy. ha! Batocchio: There are some stupid things in this article: (link); Batocchio: Damn, Scottie, I just watched it, and you're right. Somewhere, Paul Wellstone is smiling. ...
Blue Herald - http://blueherald.com/
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/aig200908?printable=true¤tPage=all
Almost a year after A.I.G.’s collapse, despite a tidal wave of outrage, there still has been no clear explanation of what toppled the insurance giant. The author decides to ask the people involved—the silent, shell-shocked traders of the A.I.G. Financial Products unit—and finds that the story may have a villain, whose reign of terror over 400 employees brought the company, the U.S. economy, and the global financial system to their knees.
HOUSE INTEL CHAIR: CIA 'AFFIRMATIVELY LIED'
Posted: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 1:08 PM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under: Congress, Democrats
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro
The House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes claims the CIA "affirmatively lied to" his panel. He said so in a letter to Pete Hoekstra, the committee's ranking Republican,CQ reports.
Reyes "wrote that the committee has recently received information that reveals significant problems with the intelligence agency’s reporting to the panel," CQ writes. " 'These notifications have led me to conclude this committee has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to,' Reyes wrote. Reyes did not describe or detail the alleged false or misleading statements to the committee."
CQ characterized it as a warning to Republicans "to avoid politicizing the intelligence authorizaton bill later this week. ... Republicans contend a provision of the fiscal 2010 bill (HR 2701) scheduled for floor action Thursday would modify congressional notification procedures to provide political cover for Speaker Nancy Pelosi . Such briefings are a sensitive political topic, because Republicans have repeatedly criticized Pelosi over what she knew and when about the Bush administration’s use of harsh interrogation techniques and her assertion that the CIA “misled” Congress on that topic."
Obama's Support Collapses In Rust-Belt Ohio
Joe Weisenthal|Jul. 8, 2009, 9:52 AM|
The weak economy -- or, more importantly, the failure to create jobs quickly -- is flensing Barack Obama's support on Ohio, a crucial electoral state.
Here's the announcement from Quinnipiac, which conducted the poll:
President Barack Obama gets a lackluster 49 - 44 percent approval rating in Ohio, considered by many to be the most important swing state in a presidential election, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. This is President Obama's lowest approval rating in any national or statewide Quinnipiac University poll since he was inaugurated and is down from 62 - 31 percent in a May 6 survey.
By a small 48 - 46 percent margin, voters disapprove of the way Obama is handling the economy, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds. This is down from a 57 - 36 percent approval May 6. A total of 66 percent of Ohio voters are "somewhat dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied" with the way things are going in the state, while 33 percent are "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied," numbers that haven't changed since Obama was elected.
It's numbers like these, even more than bad economic data, that will really get Democrats to rally around a second stimulus, one that's especially focused on creating blue-collar jobs ASAP. Ed Rendell, who's home state of Pennsylvania shares characteristics with Ohio, was on CNBC this morning saying exactly that: This time, let's do that infrastructure stuff.
Nate Silver is a little skeptical, but even he concedes voters are judging Obama on the bad economy:
Ohio, of course, has suffered more than most states from the recession. It's employment rate, at 10.8 percent in May, is the eighth-highest in the nation, and has increased by 3.5 points (and counting) since Election Day:
States with Largest Increases in Unemployment Rate since November
Not so bad. A Rasmussen poll in mid-June put Obama's approval there at 59-39, including 39 percent strongly approving (and remember, Rasmussen has tended to have very bearish numbers on Obama overall). An EPIC-MRA poll of Michigan in late May, meanwhile, had 61 percent rating his job performance as "excellent" or "pretty good".
The point is not that Obama's approval ratings aren't suffering because of the economy, nor that they might not be suffering more in states where the economy is worse. (Whoa, too many double-negatives there). I just doubt that there any problems Obama has that are so unique to Ohio that you wouldn't also see them manifested in Michigan or Pennsylvania (where Obama's approval numbers have also generally been fine). As such, I think the headlines this poll has generated have been a little overwritten.
Given Obama's support for the auto industry, the Michigan numbers may be inflated a bit. We'd be really curious about Indiana, a traditionally red state that went blue.
The Left’s Angry Mob Recalls Madame Defarge
Brooksville, FL - It’s tough trying to please people who crave vengeance almost as much as Madame Defarge, the unsparing French revolutionary in Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities.” That’s what Barack Obama found out last week — and will find out next week and for weeks to come unless he settles once and for all that he will follow the practice of all his predecessors and not prosecute decision-makers in the previous administration.
The Madame Defarges of the Democratic left want to see the guillotine flash down and heads roll. Specifically, they want to see the prosecution or impeachment of officials who approved enhanced interrogation techniques — torture, in their view.
The president, it appears, is of two minds. On April 16, he released memorandums from the Bush administration Office of Legal Counsel approving the interrogation methods and said that CIA interrogators relying on them would not be prosecuted. Also released was the partial text of a letter from Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair characterizing those memos as “graphic and disturbing.”
Obama was criticized for revealing intelligence information useful to our enemies. “Nobody should pretend,” wrote Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who approved of Obama’s decision, “that the disclosures weren’t costly to CIA morale and effectiveness.”
On April 20, Obama journeyed to CIA headquarters and defended his decisions. But the Madame Defarges had their knitting needles out, hauling in petitions with 250,000 signatures and demanding blood. On April 21, Obama caved, saying that Bush administration officials who approved the methods could be prosecuted if the attorney general wanted to press the cases. He didn’t give the Madame Defarges all they wanted, resisting Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call for a 9/11-type commission.
It is an article of faith among the Madame Defarges that the interrogation techniques they consider torture didn’t produce useful information. All along Obama tried to pay homage to this dogma.
The text of Blair’s letter released to the public carefully omitted his admission that “high value information came from interrogations in which the methods were used.” Just normal editing, said his spokesman. Yeah, sure. Nor has Obama showed any sign of agreeing to Dick Cheney’s demand that the full results of the interrogations should be released. That might embarrass the Madame Defarges.
Whence cometh the fury of these people? I think it arises less from revulsion at interrogation techniques — who thinks that captured al-Qaida leaders should be treated politely and will then tell the full truth? — than it does from a desire to see George W. Bush and Bush administration officials publicly humiliated and repudiated. Just as Madame Defarge relished watching the condemned walk from the tumbrel to the guillotine, our contemporary Defarges want to see the people they hate condemned and destroyed.
It doesn’t seem to matter to our Madame Defarges that it’s not clear that Bush officials violated any criminal law. One of the core principles of our law is that criminal statutes must be construed strictly against the government. If the government wants to deprive someone of his liberty for doing something, it should be very specific about what that something is. This distinguishes our system from authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that demand, like Alice’s Red Queen, “verdict first, trial later.”
It also doesn’t occur to the Madame Defarges of our times that revolutions like hers tend to devour their own. Robespierre followed Marie Antoinette to the guillotine not so many months later. Today we see Pelosi trying to explain how she was present at confidential briefings where the enhanced interrogation methods were described and did nothing to stop them from being applied.
If there is going to be a “truth commission” — a title that is redolent of Stalinist purges — shouldn’t she be one of the first to testify? As for Barack Obama, asked in a September 2007 if we should “beat out of” an al-Qaida higher-up details of an impending attack, he said “there are going to be all sorts of hypotheticals, an emergency situation, and I will make that judgment at that time.” So “torture” just might be OK under the right circumstances.
In the meantime, Obama’s appeasement of the Madame Defarges carries a political price. Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that 58 percent of Americans believe his release of the CIA memos endangers national security. Show trials of Bush administration officials could raise that number. Appeasing the Madame Defarges may cost more than it is worth.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Michael Barone
Monday, April 27, 2009
http://mediamatters.org/items/200907080012
In a July 8 editorial, The Washington Times claimed that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor "assert[ed]" in three speeches "that there are 'inherent physiological' differences between the races" and suggested her comments should disqualify her from serving on the Court. In fact, as the quote the Times provided clearly demonstrates, Sotomayor made no such claim. Rather, in a 2001 speech at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, a 2002 speech at Princeton University, and a 2003 speech at Seton Hall University, Sotomayor repeated variations of the following statement: "Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague [federal district] Judge [Miriam] Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."
From Sotomayor's Berkeley speech:
In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
From Sotomayor's Seton Hall speech:
In private discussions with me on the topic of differences based on gender in judging, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that the seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant except I choose to emphasize that the people who argued the cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Robert Carter and Judge Constance Baker Motley from my court and the first black women appointed to the federal bench and others who were involved in the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the court that equality of work required equality in the terms and conditions of employment. Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences -- a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum -- our gender and national origins make and will make a difference in our judging.
Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that "a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion" in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes the line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, if Professor Martha Minnow is correct, there can never be a universal definition of "wise." Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion.
From Sotomayor's Princeton speech:
In private discussions with me on the topic of differences based on gender in judging, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that the seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant except I choose to emphasize that the people who argued the cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape were largely people of color and women.
I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Constance Baker Motley from my court and the first black women appointed to the federal bench and others of the then-NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the court that equality of work required equality in the terms and conditions of employment.
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins make and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that "a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion" in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes the line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement.
From the July 8 Washington Times editorial:
In the Berkeley speech, a 2003 speech at Seton Hall University and a 2002 address at Princeton University, Judge Sotomayor said this: "Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague [federal district] Judge [Miriam] Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."
In both the Princeton speech and the Seton Hall speech, she repeated another line, nearly verbatim, from the Berkeley address: "My experiences will affect the facts that I choose to see as a judge."
The first statement is the more abhorrent. In any other circumstance, any person who asserts that there are "inherent physiological" differences between the races -- especially when discussing mental abilities -- is automatically shunned from polite society and sometimes fired. If it is a fireable offense for sports and entertainment figures -- such as the late Los Angeles Dodger executive Al Campanis and the late oddsmaker Jimmy the Greek -- to assert that the races have inherent differences, then why is it OK for a judge to make such a bald assertion?
Judge Sotomayor, unlike Jimmy the Greek, took an oath to administer the law impartially. Her offense, therefore, is more serious.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the "inherent physiological ... difference" line -- expressing a belief that Judge Sotomayor said she does not "abhor" or "discount" -- is an assertion one would have expected to hear more from 1960s race-baiters like George Wallace than from somebody nominated for the Supreme Court.
Senate Democrats Still Seeking GOP Support
Balance of Power Not Changed Much By Supermajority
By Perry Bacon Jr. and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Senate Democrats spent their first full day holding 60 votes just as they have spent the previous 2 1/2 years without such a supermajority: scrambling to find Republican support for their key initiatives in order to choke off potential filibusters.
In short, Tuesday's seating of Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) did little to change the balance of power in the chamber.
Democrats still have a large enough majority to pass bills without any GOP support, but they are grappling with internal divisions on key issues such as health care, climate change and union organizing. In addition, caucus leaders and President Obama would like at least some Republican backing on key measures so they can say they are enacting a bipartisan agenda, which then-Sen. Obama made a cornerstone of his 2008 campaign.
Some conservative Democrats who live in GOP-leaning states believe that getting Republican votes on controversial bills provides them with a line of defense against political attacks back home.
Moreover, two members of the Democratic caucus, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) and Robert C. Byrd (W.Va.), have not cast a vote in months. It is not clear whether the health of either elder statesman -- Kennedy, 77, has brain cancer and Byrd, 91, is battling the effects of a staph infection incurred during a hospitalization in May -- will allow him to participate in any key matter before the Senate.
In greeting Franken to Capitol Hill this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) sounded a conciliatory note.
"Democrats aren't looking at Senator Franken's election as an opportunity to ram legislation through the Senate," he said Monday. "In turn, Senate Republicans must understand that Senator-elect Franken's election does not abdicate them from the responsibility of governing. That is why we have and will continue to offer Senate Republicans a seat at the table. It is up to them to decide whether they will sit down and work for the common good or continue to be the 'Party of No.' "
But the arrival of a 60th Democratic vote has been accompanied by increasing pressure from liberal groups nationwide that have helped bankroll the party's electoral successes the past few years. They are now demanding Democrats follow through on their campaign promises, with or without Republican votes.
"When it comes to health care, energy and the economy, Democrats have no excuses not to deliver on the changes that voters wanted last November," said Justin Ruben, executive director of the liberal group MoveOn.org. "On health care and on energy . . . you have conservative Democrats saying we have to compromise. That dynamic has just changed. Really they don't" have to compromise.
MoveOn blasted White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel this week after he suggested in an interview that Democrats should compromise on a government alternative to private health insurance companies and accept a weakened version of a so-called public option plan. MoveOn urged its members to call the White House and express their anger at Emanuel.
Meanwhile, the liberal blog Firedoglake is urging its readers to call liberal members of the House and insist on a "no" vote for any health-care legislation that lacks the public option.
Referring to health-care legislation, Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), one of the chamber's most liberal members, who almost always votes with the Democrats, said: "I would like to see Republicans coming on board, but you can't compromise on a strong bill to get Republicans on board for a weaker one." | CONTINUED 1 2 Next
Speaker Pelosi Makes Aggressive Push To Finish Healthcare Reform This Month
By Mike Soraghan
Posted: 07/08/09 07:45 PM [ET]
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has undertaken an aggressive campaign to move healthcare legislation this month, but she hasn’t been able to win over the conservatives in her caucus.
Pelosi’s push is in keeping with her commitment to pass a bill off the floor by July 31. With the Senate slowing its pace, that could allow Pelosi to establish her bill as the Democratic marker in the healthcare debate.
But centrist Blue Dog members remain skeptical of a proposal to create a government-run public insurance plan, and vulnerable members facing reelection in conservative districts next year don’t like the idea of voting for a tax increase to pay for it.
“I don’t think there’s been enough emphasis on removing the inefficiencies that exist in the current system before you put more money in,” said Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.), an influential Blue Dog who is also a chief deputy whip. “We’re not doing the reform. We need an incremental approach to get rid of these inefficiencies in the system.”
Tanner, a member of the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over the healthcare proposal’s tax policy, also says “there’s a great deal of uneasiness” about the tax plans under discussion.
It’s not clear if the conservative opposition would be enough to stop the bill. With 52 members, a united Blue Dog Coalition can stop a bill if Republicans also oppose it, and there are other equally conservative members who aren’t Blue Dogs.
But centrist Democrats say they still see healthcare as a higher priority than the energy bill. Climate change is an abstract concept for their constituents, but they hear from constituents constantly about problems in the healthcare system.
And even after the bill is introduced Thursday or Friday, conservatives will have a crack at making it more palatable during marathon committee markups next week. That’s what House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) did to get his climate change bill out of committee. And Pelosi cut deals with skeptics to get House passage.
But that process angered many centrist and liberal Democrats. Blue Dogs are sending signals that the Speaker shouldn’t count their votes just yet.
“From what I’m reading, we’re not coming from a position of ‘yes,’ ” said a senior aide to one Blue Dog member. “It would be nice to be a yes, but it’s not going to be automatic.”
Vulnerable Democrats are worrying that they’re being asked to vote on a bill with a significant tax increase and could face campaign advertisements next year about support for a government-run plan, even though that plan probably won’t be the one that emerges from conference committee.
“They want to vote for this, but they’re anxious,” said a Democratic aide. “They’re paranoid, but that’s their nature.”
Centrist lawmakers are trying to get the White House to push the House closer to the more conservative approach that’s emerging in the Senate.
But Pelosi is doing her best to win them over with a campaign this week that some aides likened to the whipping process before a bill’s final vote on the floor.
“It’s like there’s going to be a vote in two days,” said a senior Democratic aide.
Democratic leaders scheduled three caucus meetings with the three committee chairmen handling the bill, and also brought in White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who angered liberals when he was quoted saying a “public option” was open to negotiation.
The leadership has also scheduled six “listening sessions” to hear members’ concerns so they can be addressed in the bill.
In a caucus meeting Wednesday, Pelosi and her chairmen fielded a range of concerns, from regional discrepancies in Medicare reimbursement rates to a small-business exemption for the employer mandate, and told members that the public option could create billions of dollars in healthcare savings.
Liberals emerged from the sessions pleased with the progress.
“I was so impressed at every consideration that’s been given — to liberals, moderates and conservatives,” said Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.), a strong proponent of the public option.
The House Ways and Means Committee’s Democrats have been in marathon sessions to try to figure out how to pay for the bill. The leading contender appears to be a “surtax” on those with incomes exceeding $250,000.
The thinking is that could bring in money in one big chunk (depending on the size of the surtax), rather than an assortment of smaller taxes that spread pain but affect more people, such as a payroll tax or a soda tax.
Despite many members’ reservations, the surtax does have the advantage of squaring with what President Obama talked about during his campaign. Many centrists were particularly worried about a payroll tax — a reminder of a tax increase with every paycheck.
Still, that’s the kind of discussion that could raise concerns for centrist freshman Democrats like Rep. John Boccieri (D-Ohio), who says there’s “a little fear” among his constituents of a government-run plan, and no appetite for a tax increase.
“My feeling is there’s enough money in the system already,” Boccieri said.
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