Month: January 2009

Totally Different

by digby

Jonathan Schwarz takes a trip down Israel’s Memory Lane and finds something interesting:

The funny thing about the Israeli attack on Gaza following its long blockade is that Israel’s original justification for taking over Gaza in 1967 was that Israel was being subject to a blockade. This is from the official Knesset history of the Six Day War:

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser blockaded the Straits of Tiran on May 21st and 22nd to all shipping from and to Eilat; the area was open to Israeli ships under UN supervision since 1957, and Israel repeatedly stated that such a blockade will be considered as casus belli (justification for acts of war).

Ooops.

Jonathan also does a search and finds that nobody in journalism seems to drawn attention to this obvious parallel in all the talk about blockade and retaliation.

How odd.

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Breaking With The Past

by digby

Peter Berkowitz has written an op-ed in the WSJ that lays out a bold new direction for the Republican Party. He calls it “Constitutional Conservatism” which he defines as being devoted to the preservation of constitutional principles. What good news.

He lays out this bold new agenda in some detail:

– An economic program, health-care reform, energy policy and protection for the environment grounded in market-based solutions.

– A foreign policy that recognizes America’s vital national security interest in advancing liberty abroad but realistically calibrates undertakings to the nation’s limited knowledge and restricted resources.

– A commitment to homeland security that is as passionate about security as it is about law, and which is prepared to responsibly fashion the inevitable, painful trade-offs.

– A focus on reducing the number of abortions and increasing the number of adoptions.

– Efforts to keep the question of same-sex marriage out of the federal courts and subject to consideration by each state’s democratic process.

– Measures to combat illegal immigration that are emphatically pro-border security and pro-immigrant.

– A case for school choice as an option that enhances individual freedom while giving low-income, inner-city parents opportunities to place their children in classrooms where they can obtain a decent education.

– A demand that public universities abolish speech codes and vigorously protect liberty of thought and discussion on campus.

– The appointment of judges who understand that their function is to interpret the Constitution and not make policy, and, therefore, where the Constitution is most vague, recognize the strongest obligation to defer to the results of the democratic process.

Whoa Nellie, bar the door. I don’t think they can take all that change in one fell swoop do you? Talk about bold new thinking!

I especially enjoy the idea that “constitutional conservatism” means “a commitment to homeland security that is as passionate about security as it is about law, and which is prepared to responsibly fashion the inevitable, painful trade-offs.”

You have to love them. They just can’t help themselves.

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Talking While Brown

by dday

I know that Barack Obama’s election ended all racial strife in America, but somebody forgot to tell the TSA.

Officials ordered nine Muslim passengers, including three young children, off an AirTran flight headed to Orlando from Reagan National Airport yesterday afternoon after two other passengers overheard what they thought was a suspicious remark.

Members of the party, all but one of them U.S.-born citizens who were headed to a religious retreat in Florida, were subsequently cleared for travel by FBI agents who characterized the incident as a misunderstanding, an airport official said. But the passengers said AirTran refused to rebook them, and they had to pay for seats on another carrier secured with help from the FBI.

Kashif Irfan, one of the removed passengers, said the incident began about 1 p.m. after his brother, Atif, and his brother’s wife wondered aloud about the safest place to sit on an airplane.

“My brother and his wife were discussing some aspect of airport security,” Irfan said. “The only thing my brother said was, ‘Wow, the jets are right next to my window.’ I think they were remarking about safety.”

Serves them right, making small talk to one another on a plane. While being dark-skinned and Muslim-looking at that!

The TSA and AirTran ended up taking everyone off the plane and re-screening them and their luggage, before allowing them to take off – only without that trouble-making family. According to TSA, this is an example of the system working.

Ellen Howe, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, said the pilot acted appropriately.

“For us, it just highlights that security is everybody’s responsibility,” Howe said. “Someone heard something that was inappropriate, and then the airline decided to act on it. We certainly support [the pilot’s] call to do that.”

In a society suffused with the “TIPS” program and Total Information Awareness and calls to “watch what you say” and to be on the lookout for suspicious activity, this is what we get. Those cultural signifiers are not easily washed away, the urge to be “alert” and “ready” and “aware” and “on watch”. And ultimately, there are very strict, not-even-subliminal definitions on who we have to watch and who we don’t have to watch. And ethnicity is the dividing line.

George Bush may be leaving office, but the culture of paranoia he helped to usher in most certainly has not. And deputizing Americans to be part of a 300-million-strong network of spies has impacts on public policy, too. After all, how far is it to leap from eavesdropping on conversations at the mall to eavesdropping on phone calls? As long as you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about, from a civil liberties standpoint.

One of the biggest changes a President Obama can make, if he cares too, is in the national mood, to reject this presumption of guilt, this culture of fear, this demonization of the other, this automatic transfer of second-class citizenship. There’s no kind of profiling that is more justifiable than any other. It’s all part of a creeping assault on our collective civil liberties and it has to stop.

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Forget Something?

by digby

I missed the second part of Dennis Prager’s “advice to women” column, which is just as well. Thinking about Prager and sex in the same moment has a tendency to ruin my day and I really wanted to enjoy the holidays.

He pretty much says that women need to agree to have sex on command because it is their contribution to the well being of the family, just as it’s a man’s obligation to go to work. (Apparently, Prager doesn’t realize that women have an obligation to go to work too these days, but no matter.) A woman needs to give it up whenever her man wants it because it’s her very special familial duty, akin to cleaning the toilet or taking out the garbage, which in the case of Prager is obviously pretty much the same thing. The problem is that ever since the 60’s women have been acting like spoiled children who fail to understand that men need sex and failure to give it to him whenever he demands it is immature self-indulgence. (Yes, you read that right.)

I was struck by the notion throughout this embarrassing little screed that Prager actually seems to think that all women just don’t like sex and so they allow themselves to be ruled by their silly, childish emotions and refuse to submit when they should be mature and think of England. Considering that fundamental error, it’s not surprising that he also clearly believes that a man has no obligation to be concerned with his partner’s sexual pleasure, which he fails to mention as being any kind of inducement to frequent sex. No wonder he can’t get any of his wives to fuck him.

I have to blame his wives also, however. One of them should have asked him at some point if he would willingly have sex on command with a creepy wingnut if he never even had an orgasm. But then Prager doesn’t seem to know that women have them in the first place so maybe they knew it was a lost cause.

Anyway, conservative religious wingnuts probably shouldn’t opine publicly about sex. It often turns out badly:

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Fighting The Good Fight

by digby

Jane Hamsher has written a good piece on the Burris mess over at Huffington Post, including a round-up of opinion. She highlights the opinions of Walter Dellinger, former solicitor general, who implored the senate to be very cautious and follow the intent of the constitution, which I think is correct.

If we are serious about the “rule of law” our first principle should be that the Senate’s power to decide (even if unreviewable) is the always and only the power to decide correctly under the law, not the power to decide however the majority of the Senate prefers to decide. The fact that some grounds for rejecting Burris might be unreviewable by the courts means that the Senate should take more care, not less, to be sure it is acting a constitutionally legitimate manner.

The fact is that the Senate Dems have been reacting like shrieking, maiden aunts in a roomful of bats, lurching from one outraged reaction to the next without any kind of due consideration as to the legality or the political ramifications. One wonders where this level of energy and scorn was when the Republicans were making fools of them over and over again.

I assume the Senate Dems feel that they have to assert themselves or risk being seen as weak. They are, as Jane points out, afraid that John Cornyn will hang Burris around their necks. But unfortunately, they are asserting themselves in a way that simultaneously appears to be petty, unlawful, panicked and potentially even racist. At the very least they are escalating a distracting political circus at a time of great national crisis, which hardly seems like a smart way to start the new Democratic era. I’m all for fighting the good fight, but it would probably be more useful to do it over something that actually matters.

But hey, maybe it’s actually good for them to have a big public, interparty hissy fit right now. With enough practice on each other, they might develop enough courage and skill to outmaneuver the Republicans someday.

Update: Oh Ferchristsake!

Bigger Than Bush

by digby

The Shrill One lays it all out. The modern conservative movement failed George W. Bush, not the other way around. He was, after all, their creature.

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Read This

by digby

… if you need a primer on the Great Depression.

From Hale Stewart:

This article is the first in a series on the Great Depression. I am writing this with the help of New Deal Democrat (who blogs over at Economic Populist). The purpose of this series is simply to talk about the Great Depression. The reason for writing this article is the emergence of the “FDR made the Depression worse” talking point from the Right Wing Noise Machine — econ division. While none of the stories using this line have any facts to back them up — no charts, no graphs no data — they continue to spew this talking point. So, let’s get some data — as in facts — to see that actually happened.

read on for the particulars.

If you or anyone you know has trouble understanding why the government should intervene to prevent what could be seen as a natural economic even, that article will dispel any confusion. The scope of human suffering is horrible and the instability that something like that engenders is very dangerous. They government is the only institution capable of doing what needs to be done to mitigate these effects.

And lest we think that the wingnuts have learned anything at all from history, this bit is especially instructive:

And one thing the Republicans and the plutocrats of the day were sure of, was that government should do absolutely nothing to help its destitute citizenry. When in 1930 a long summer drought killed cattle and crops in the southwest, Hoover asked Congress to appropriate money for government loans to enable farmers to buy seed, fertilizer, and cattle feed. But when Democratic senators sough to apply the same program to human beings in addition to livestock, Hoover “reaffirmed his unwavering opposition to such proposals.” (Schlesinger, p. 170)
Hoover appointed Walter S. Gifford, president of AT&T, to the “President’s Organization on Unemployment Relief.” Appearing before a Senate committee,

“Gifford disclosed imerturbably that he did not know how many people were idle, that he did not know how many were receiving aid, that he did not know that the standards of assistance were in the various states, that he did not know how much money had been raised in his own campaign, that he knew nothing of the ability of local communities to raise relief funds ,, that he did not consider most of this information as of much importance to his job….

But on one question Gifford was clear: he was against federal aid.”…that it would reduce the size of private charity.” His “sober and considered judgment” was that “federal aid would be a ‘disservice’ to the jobless.”

Perhaps someone sent that quote to Mark Sanford.

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Nymphos On The Honeymoon

by digby

I normally find Micheal Gerson to be one of the most sanctimonious jackasses in the Republican Party and always loathed the smarmy speeches he wrote for Junior that made the villagers swoon in breathless delight. But I have to give credit where credit is due for this felicitous turn of phrase:

So far, Obama is attempting to be a unifying national figure — in spite of his most insufferable supporters. “Indeed,” explains Joe Klein of Time magazine, “as the weeks have passed since the election, I’ve felt — as an urban creature myself — less restricted, less defensive. Empowered, almost. Is it possible that, as a nation, we’re shedding our childlike, rural innocence and becoming more mature, urban, urbane . . . dare I say it, sophisticated?” Indeed. Is it possible for a pundit to be more like a college freshman who has just discovered the pleasures of wine, co-ed dorms and Nietzsche — shedding the primitivism of his parents and becoming, dare I say it, an annoying adolescent?
Obama does not need the service of nymphomaniacs on his honeymoon. In 2009, he will require sober supporters — and loyal critics — to get through challenges that will not yield to charm.

(I don’t know why he wouldn’t want a nympho on the honeymoon, actually, but this is Michael Gerson and he’s very straightlaced so maybe he thinks too much pleasure is automatically a bad thing, I don’t know. But it is an evocative phrase until you think too much about it.)

He should have listened to his own advice, however, because let’s face it, stuff like this makes it a little bit difficult to take any Bush supporter’s criticism of starry eyed, hero worship seriously:

Nothing since Reagan has been as good in presidential oratory. The president’s speech writers crafted a luminescent call to arms. It was measured without being weak; it was moving without a trace of melodrama; it was stirring without being jingoist. And there was something about the president’s demeanor that suggested to me at last that he knows why he got this office. To speak of his growth at this point would be to condescend. He gets it. He means it. He knows what this war is fundamentally about. My cherished moment was when he rightly described this threat – and its twisted ideology – with the other great evils that have threatened freedom in the last century and before. “The unmarked grave of discarded lies” is a phrase that resonates deeply and truly. God bless the man and the country he finally indisputably leads.

(This is the kind of puerile drivel that turns people into cynics.)

It’s not that Klein and other city slickers (like me) don’t have a right to revel a little bit after years of beltway worship for pork rind scarfing Real Americans. There should be a few perks to winning. But as much as Gerson is hardly in a position to say it, his main point is true. Obama will need sober supporters and loyal critics. Just imagine how different things would have been if Bush had had some sober supporters and loyal critics instead of a cadre of sycophantic schoolkids drooling over his masterful manliness and a press corps that followed them around like wallflowers desperate for attention.

Hopeful idealism (and a strong sense of relief) is to be celebrated. But with eyes wide open and a willingness to call bullshit. Presidencies need this or they can become exercises in hubristic egomania inside the DC bubble and we’ve seen how well that worked out. I suspect that Gerson failed to see the irony of him preaching this particular sermon, but that’s just because he’s …. so him.

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Misunderstanding

by digby

My good friend Big Tent Democrat is disturbed by the intellectual errors committed by Jane Hamsher and myself on the Blagojevich case and has called me out for it specifically. So, seeing as this is a dead day in the blogosphere and I’ve just had some very strong coffee, I think I’ll indulge myself and reply. I warn you — this will be boring. (Oh, and I’m “speaking for me only.” Jane can certainly speak for herself 😉

He believes I’m completely wrong when when I write that the AG of Illinois showed a lack of respect for the law when she tried to have Blagojevich removed from office by the Supreme Court and I’ll try to answer that in a couple of ways.

First, the fact that she was one of the people being considered by Blagojevich for the seat (she’s “Senate candidate #2” in Fitzgerald’s complaint) and the fact that the court declined to even ask Blagojevich for a response before turning down her request shows that it was bad political judgment if nothing else and it may very well come back to haunt her as this case goes forward.

But also it showed a disrespect for the democratic process which requires that a democratically elected governor must be impeached by the legislature in order to be removed from office. The idea of unelected judges removing duly elected representatives strikes me as being a very bad idea. Sure, AG Madigan had a legal right to file the motion, but it showed a cavalier disregard for the intent of the law — even if there is a law on the books providing the court the ability to remove someone who is incapacitated (read: in a coma) that doesn’t mean those laws should be loosely applied for political purposes. Having it done by a partisan Attorney General who is involved in the scandal herself strikes me as nothing short of “Gonzalesesque.” (After all, it was perfectly legal for Bush to fire the US Attorneys at his discretion — that didn’t make it right or smart for him to do so. )

Blago has only been accused of a crime, he hasn’t been convicted, and he has every right to be judged according to the rules. Attorneys General, above all others, should respect those processes and not try to use the courts to circumvent them. Prosecutorial discretion is never more important than political cases which could overturn the electoral judgment of the people. Ask Don Siegelman.

As for my supposedly saying that Burris has a better claim to a seat than Lieberman, I implied nothing of the sort. I’ve never argued that Lieberman should be expelled from the Senate or that they should have refused to seat him. But the fact is that nobody elected Lieberman to be the Homeland Security chairman — he was appointed to it by the Democratic caucus — and they can un-appoint him any time they want. That’s party politics for which the rules are quite different than electoral politics.

Furthermore, the fact that the Democrats politically rewarded someone who actually campaigned for the GOP presidential candidate while threatening to lock out this fellow who meets all the requirements and will likely be a much more loyal backer of the Democratic cause, is politically obtuse, particularly with the racial aspect unfortunately being thrust into it as well. (Welcome to big city machine politics, Harry.) But there is no legal comparison between the two cases and I never made one. It’s a political argument.

Finally, far be it for me to even voice an opinion on the lofty constitutional issues regarding the Senate’s right to refuse to seat Burris, not being a constitutional lawyer and all, so I’ll defer to someone who is one. This is from a discussion last night on the News Hour

Dick Durbin: (video) …What we saw today was an act of political defiance despite the fact that the Democratic caucus has stated clearly that they will not seat his choice for that position.

Ray Suarez: Can the senate refuse to seat Roland Burris when the senate convenes next week? And what will be the political implications of taking such an action? For that we turn to political reporter Carrie Budoff Brown and Abner Green, professor of Fordham University of school of Law in New York.

Professor Green, not only has the Democratic caucus been adamant that it will not seat Roland Burris, but a lot of people are wondering, can they do that? What does the constitution say?

Green: I think the best argument is that they have to seat him. He fits the qualifications — he over 35, he’s been a US citizen for over 9 years, he’s a citizen of Illinois, and the 17th amendment process has been followed. The state of Illinois gave the governor the power to make this appointment and he made it, so the strictly formal reading of the constitution is that they have to seat him.

Suarez: Are there ways of reading “qualifications” and are there articles in the constitution that sets out the senate’s ability to regulate its own members that might give Harry Reid and the Democrats some daylight here?

Green: First of all they have a case against them called Powell vs McCormick that involved New York congressman Adam Clayton Powell. The House had refused to seat him because of charges of corruption, and the US Supreme Court held that qualifications only means the age, US citizenship and residency criteria and therefore the House had to seat Powell. So that cuts against what Harry Reid wants to do. The argument in his favor is that the constitution also gives the senate the power to judge the elections and returns of its members. That would clearly apply in cases where an election was corrupted or tainted or a contested election. The question is whether they can apply that language, elections and returns, to a case of an appointment under the 17th amendment. Remember the constitution was written in 1787 and the 17th amendment came about in the early 20th century and so what they’re trying to do is connect up their power to judge elections and returns to their power to judge an appointment in this situation.

Suarez: What grounds are senators talking about as grounds for them refuse to seat anyone appointed by Governor Blagojevich?

Carrie Budoff Brown: It is the fact that the process is tainted and the appointment itself is tainted. And that’s where they’re making their argument that anybody Governor Blagojevich appoints would not be acceptable. And that’s where they’re laying down the marker and that’s why you saw Harry Reid jump out do quickly and so forcefully yesterday. They laid down a marker several weeks ago pretty much vowing not to give Governor Blagojevich credibility and if they had accepted this appointment, they would be going back on what they said several weeks ago so that’s why I think we’re seeing this now.

Suarez: How does this square with the quiet reaction to the indictment and trial of the sitting senator from Alaska, just a few weeks ago?

Brown: Sure, there are quite a few examples of that in the last years of senators running into legal troubles and they have been allowed to stay in the senate. However, here you’re seeing a case of someone coming into the senate vs someone who is already there and in the case of Senator Stevens, until he was indicted, you didn’t see a movement for him to be ousted from the senate. So again, Harry Reid and Dick Durbin, his second in command, they’re talking about the process being troublesome, not so much the person.

Green: If I could jump in on that. They had a little cover with Stevens. They had to wait to see if he was going to be reelected and he wasn’t, so they were spared that. But if he had been reelected and had refused to resign, there’s a separate provision in the constitution that gives the senate the power to expel a member by a two thirds vote, but that provision does not apply to whether to admit a member, separately.

Suarez: This has to do with the only vote that matters, which in Illinois is the vote of Governor Rod Blagojevich. If the senate looks across the landscape and sees that Illinois law was followed, does it have any precedent for not seating a member?

Green: I don’t think so. They have to make this creative argument to extend their power to judge election and returns to a power to judge appointments. I think what they should do is let Patrick Fitzgerald and the Illinois legislature pursue Rod Blagojevich. And if they believe Burris himself is untainted then they should seat Burris.

(I suspect that a lot of people will find this high regard for abstract “process” somewhat bizarre in light of the fact that they blithely allowed Larry Craig to sit in the senate for two years, while this man who has not even been accused of wrongdoing will be barred from the door. The optics are terrible.)

Burris has been appointed by a duly elected Governor (again, who hasn’t even been indicted, much less convicted of a crime) and who has acted fully in compliance of the law. He meets all the qualifications of the office. There’s no good reason to reject him except for what Chicago journalist Jim Warren said was the primary problem — “he’s a lovable loser who won’t be able to keep the seat in 2010” — and pique that Blagojevich has defied them. Those are not principled reasons and they should just take their medicine. If something shows up against Burris on this case, they can expel him, which they clearly do have the constitutional right to do (but which they never actually do once somebody becomes a member of the club.)

This whole thing is a mess and there aren’t any simple ways to clean it up. But nobody’s covering themselves with glory. The legislature could have impeached Blago in a day if they really believed he needed to be gone (and you have to wonder just why it is they aren’t doing that.) They could have also passed a law calling for a special election and even passed it over Blago’s veto if necessary, and they didn’t do that either (partly at the behest of Harry Reid.) Now that Blago is using his power to shape his legal argument (which, after all, rests on the idea that he never intended to sell the seat) everybody’s running around with their heads cut off because he’s not playing fair. Well, boo hoo.

They have handled this badly on the politics and they had better get their act together. The whole Obama gang is from Illinois and I’m surprised that they’ve allowed themselves to be punk’d by Blagojevich — and from what I’m hearing, they are about to make it even worse. Chuck Todd sagely opined yesterday that Reid wanted to draw this out through the courts as long as possible.

That’s sheer political genius. Let’s milk this stupid story by bringing it right into the capitol and the federal courts. Why, if we’re really lucky we can spend a lot of time revisiting the cases of other senators who were actually convicted of crimes but who the senate refused to expel and then we can talk a lot about the last time the congress tried to keep from having to seat a black man and how it relates to their latest efforts to keep the senate lily white. It’s all hot political theatre that will take up precious oxygen and use precious political capital.

Obviously, people differ on the correct interpretations of the law and constitution on this issue. It’s not like there are a lot of precedents. But when it comes to things like this, I always look to the underlying principles, which it seems to me are obvious: when it comes to removing duly elected representatives from office, we should proceed very, very carefully and try not to make new law whenever possible. The last thing you want to do is give politicians more tools with which to usurp the democratic process. Even though this applies to an appointment there is no reason to allow the senate a new “right” to reject members, for any reason.

For the good of the constitution, they should respect the rules as they are clearly written, which as Professor Green says, requires a very “creative” reading of the provision about elections and returns to justify their action. The old document has been battered around quite a bit these last few years. It could use a rest. Instead, as Will Bunch writes here, they should seat Burris and then immediately introduce an amendment to require that all vacant senate seats be filled through special elections. This appointment process is a throwback to the days when the legislatures elected senators and didn’t met often enough to fill vacant seats in a timely manner. There’s no reason for these laws anymore and as we’ve seen with these recent appointment soap operas, it’s time to change the constitution to make sure the people are the ones making these decisions, not judges or governors or senators. The whole spectacle is unsavory and undemocratic and it leads to a lack of legitimacy for our representatives and institutions.

I realize that it’s bizarre that a disgraced governor could legally appoint a senator when he’s accused of trying to sell the senate seat in the first place. But I just don’t see a good political or legal basis for rejecting him. And neither do many legal beagles who, unlike myself, have the standing to weigh in on such important matters. It appears that my understanding of the law and the constitutional principles involved here are pretty mainstream.

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A Liberal Is A Conservative Who Needs A Bailout

by dday

One of the 50 “mini-Hoovers” in the states finally got religion when he couldn’t fix the problem of poor people not having enough to eat with another round of tax cuts. The episode is instructive.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Just hours before the unemployment benefits fund was to run out in South Carolina, the state with the nation’s third-highest jobless rate, Gov. Mark Sanford relented Wednesday and agreed to apply for a $146 million federal loan to shore it up, after weeks of refusing to do so.

The governor’s position had drawn rebukes even from fellow Republicans in the Legislature, one of whom denounced Mr. Sanford as “heartless,” and from newspaper editorial pages. On Wednesday, The State, the daily newspaper here in Columbia, accused the governor of playing “chicken with the lives of the 77,000” who are unemployed in South Carolina.

For weeks, Mr. Sanford, newly elected as head of the Republican Governors Association and known for being a fierce free-market foe of government spending, stuck to his stand, questioning the probity of the South Carolina Employment Security Commission and demanding a new audit of the agency.

It just couldn’t be that the state had so many jobless that the fund was broke. There had to be some big gubmint mismanagement, or they were lying about their bookkeeping. He kept asking for a strict audit of the unemployment office to “cut the fat,” although they have received a clean bill of health every year. But some freeloader at the agency had to be ruining it for everyone. The fact that the economy is in the shitter and South Carolina in particular has had their industrial base shipped overseas for the last 30 years had nothing to do with it.

I think Sanford’s problem with the unemployment agency is that poor people get money for not working. Their running out of cash wasn’t a bug, but a feature. But the inevitable outcome of conservative “ideas” in a crisis is people collapsing of starvation in the streets, and for some reason the public won’t tolerate that. These lily-livered cowards must have never heard of something called “work ethic.” And those rat-bastard bleeding heart reporters just ruin it for everybody.

Mildly rebuking the news media here, he said that “you can find any number of people, particularly around the holiday season, who have the most unfortunate circumstances, they’ve lost their job, and those are compelling personal stories.”

How dare they have an ounce of concern for their fellow man. Can’t they let Governor Scrooge a moment’s peace?

It goes without saying that Sanford is considered a leading candidate for the Republicans in 2012. But after this weak-kneed capitulation, he’s obviously hurt his chances as a paragon of freedom and liberty. It really mucks up his campaign slogan “Sanford: No To Lucky Duckies!”

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