Month: July 2009

Compromise, Cheney Style

by digby

Reading this thing about the Tanks of Lackawanna, something has become clear to me that wasn’t before: the excesses of the Bush administration, the war, the torture, the wiretapping, were the result of compromises between the sociopathic Cheney faction and the merely dull and incompetent remainder of the administration, including the president.

“Ok, Dick, now don’t get crazy. We can’t send tanks into New York. Can you meet us halfway here? How about we just send tanks into Bagdad? Would that be good enough?”

It’s possible that Cheney did this on purpose, but I suspect he just went for it in all circumstances and got away with as much as he could. The president and his closest advisors, being boobs, thought they were being tough by denying Cheney his most outrageous proposals and only giving him “half a loaf.”

I think when the history is written, the most astonishing thing is that the Vice President of the United States, a man who chose himself for the job as second in command to a childlike fool installed by his father’s Supreme Court appointees, managed to get away with all he got away with. Perhaps even more astonishing is, as dday points out, the fact that president’s apologists are now trying to sell him as some kind of brave constitutional guardian for stopping Cheney from doing worse that what he did. Leadership, Republican style.

I think this proves that our vaunted system may have a few little holes in it, don’t you?

.

The Tanks Of Lackawanna

by dday

This is the second story in a week about how noble George W. Bush averted disaster. First he stuck to his principles about honesty and refused to pardon Scooter Libby (who he did already commute, incidentally, somehow that didn’t make it into the paean of an article). Today we learn he was all that stood between us and tanks rolling down the streets:

Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.

Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.

A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests has few precedents in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.

The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

It’s not that I disagree that this was brought up as an option, it’s the positioning of Bush as the defender of the Constitution that kind of galls me. Cheney was the Constitution’s chief beta-tester (“testing the Constitution” is quite a turn of phrase, no?), and considering the wealth of other illegal actions, all justified like this one by at-the-ready memos from John Yoo, I just doubt that Bush really made these decisions, even if he felt like he did.

Frankly, all this dumping on Dick seems like part of the Bush Legacy Project to me. While Fourthbranch has been ready for his closeup throughout the Obama Administration – right up until the moment that Eric Holder started talking seriously about prosecutions that didn’t involve him, that is, then he slithered back into the undisclosed location – Bush has kept a low profile in Dallas, gave a couple speeches, told stories about walking his dog and being jus’ folks, and one by one all of these articles showing how he wasn’t SO bad – he didn’t want to use the military in American cities, after all! – keep popping up, using anonymous sources. It’s a nice kickoff for the library.

Meanwhile, there is an important component to all of this, namely, the stated reason why the authority to use military force was sought:

Former officials said the 2002 debate arose partly from Justice Department concerns that there might not be enough evidence to arrest and successfully prosecute the suspects in Lackawanna. Mr. Cheney, the officials said, had argued that the administration would need a lower threshold of evidence to declare them enemy combatants and keep them in military custody.

Earlier that summer, the administration designated Jose Padilla an enemy combatant and sent him to a military brig in South Carolina. Mr. Padilla was arrested by civilian agencies on suspicion of plotting an attack using a radioactive bomb.

(This shows once again how the construction of Bush as a savior of the Constitution is false – he USED the powers granted by Yoo to designate Padilla an enemy combatant.)

So because of concerns that the evidence was weak, Cheney wanted to use “a lower threshold of evidence,” and denote the Lackawanna Six enemy combatants to keep them outside the criminal justice system. We’ve gotten rid of the enemy combatants term, but not really the thinking of getting around the standards of evidence when dealing with terrorism suspects. While the report on detention policy and Guantanamo Bay has been delayed a number of months, in the preliminary report, we see the seeds of a three-tiered system of justice based on the amount of evidence gathered, altering the due process granted to ensure that the government can continue to confine anyone it captured relating to the so-called war on terror. As Glenn Greenwald writes today, in reaction to the NYT article:

All of this underscores why it is so important to vigorously oppose the efforts of the Obama administration (a) to continue many of the radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism programs and even to implement new ones (preventive detention, military commissions, extreme secrecy policies, warrantless surveillance, denial of habeas corpus) and (b) to endorse the core Orwellian premise that enables all of that (i.e., the “battlefield” is anywhere and everywhere; the battle against Terrorism is a “War” like the Civil War or World War II and justifies the same powers). By itself, the extreme injustice imposed by our Government on the individuals subjected to such tyrannical powers (i.e., those held in cages for years without charges or any prospect for release) should be sufficient to compel firm opposition. But the importance of these issues goes far beyond that. Even if the original intention is to use these powers in very limited circumstances and even for allegedly noble purposes (“only” for Guantanamo detainees who were tortured, “only” for people shipped to Bagram, “only” for the Most Dangerous Terrorists), it’s extremely dangerous to implement systems and vest the President with powers that depart from, and violently betray, our core precepts of justice […]

Those are the stakes when it comes to debates over Obama’s detention, surveillance and secrecy policies. To endorse the idea that Terrorism justifies extreme presidential powers in these areas is to ensure that we permanently embrace a radical departure from our core principles of justice. It should come as no surprise that once John Yoo did what he was meant to do — give his legal approval to a truly limitless presidency, one literally unconstrained even by the Bill of Rights, even as applied to American citizens on U.S. soil — then Dick Cheney and David Addington sought to use those powers (in the Buffalo case) and Bush did use them (in the case of Jose Padilla). That’s how extreme powers work: once implemented, they will be used, and used far beyond their original intent — whether by the well-intentioned implementing President or a subsequent one with less benign motives. That’s why it’s so vital that such policies be opposed before they take root.

Those Presidents who fail to show respect and deference for the system of justice that has held over two centuries and more, even if they do not use the powers granted to them, set in motion a process to devolve that system. The precedents set by the Bush Administration, and potentially the Obama Administration, will have a lasting impact. So pardon me if I don’t send a thank you note over to the 43rd President for not ordering an up-armored Humvee through a Buffalo suburb.

.

Mighty White Of Him

by digby

Huckleberry whines:

When Sen. Lindsey Graham announced his support for Sonia Sotomayor this week, right-wing radio talk show host Mark Levin said it was a sign that Graham is “unreliable … as a thinker and a leader.”

Wendy Long, counsel for the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network, called it proof that Graham “still lacks courage, statesmanship and an understanding of the Constitution and rule of law.”

“May his antics get the attention they richly deserve.”

The response from Graham: Enjoy life in the minority.

In an interview with POLITICO Thursday, the South Carolina Republican defended his decision to back Sotomayor by laying out a broad critique of conservative activists who push “ideological purity” and refuse to cooperate with a Democratic Congress and White House.

“If we chase this attitude … that you have to say ‘no’ to every Democratic proposal, you can’t help the president ever, you can’t ever reach across the aisle, then I don’t want to be part of the movement because it’s a dead-end movement,” Graham said.

“I have no desire to be up here in an irrelevant status. I’m smart enough to know that this country doesn’t have a problem with conservatives. It has a problem with blind ideology. And those who are ideological-driven to a fault are never going to be able to take this party back into relevancy.”

Uhm no. This country has a problem with conservatives Huck. Don’t kid yourself. And you are one of them.

And the country, especially the Hispanic community, isn’t going to see your lugubrious condescension toward this exceptionally accomplished woman — speaking to her as if she were a dizzy, Puerto Rican teenager you were hiring to be your nanny — and then voting for her as some sort of magnanimous post-partisan act. Indeed, they will remember you as one of the faces and voices of the new whining, conservative xenophobes, right up there with Rush and Sessions.

Huck, you consciously and deliberately dirtied this person’s reputation on national television. Voting for her now does not mean diddly — she always had the votes, after all. You’re an ass and you are well on your way to filling the large shoes of Snarlin’ Arlen, who is about to find out that nobody likes him on either side of the aisle, pretty much because he also specializes in doing the nasty kind of knife work you just did and then not standing behind it. It’s the role of a sleazy hit man.

.

Gatesgate

by digby

I have been reluctant to really delve into the Gates story because well … it just seems so obvious. And it’s clear that it’s just taking the wingnut bait. But since I write often about police abuse of power, particularly with tasers, some readers seem to be interested in a larger discussion of this incident so here goes.

First, I think that there is obviously a racial component here, but I don’t see it as classic “profiling” at least in the traditional sense that someone is targeted for a police stop solely because of their race. The circumstance as I understand them are that the police responded to a call of a possible burglary with two black suspects. The idea that they wouldn’t have responded to that call if the description had been two white suspects is not believable. It’s what happened after that fits the racial narrative.

One racial component is the reflexive angry defensiveness that white people often feel at being called racist when they don’t believe (rightly or wrongly) that they are. This cop, a man who we are told teaches other cops how to avoid racial profiling, may have felt he was being unfairly targeted as a racist and he got angry. The “angry black man” syndrome, whereby blacks’ sensibilities in such situations are discounted as being a “chip on the shoulder” or somehow a function of an inherently angry temperament adds to the mix. Black people are assumed to be “dangerous” in situations where whites get the benefit of the doubt. I really don’t think that’s debatable.

Having said that, to me, this situation actually has far broader implications about all citizens’ relationship to the police and the way we are expected to respond to authority, regardless of race. I’ve watched too many taser videos over the past few years featuring people of all races and both genders being put to the ground screaming in pain, not because they were dangerous or threatening and not because they were so out of control there was no other way to deal with them, but because they were arguing with police and the officer perceived a lack of respect for the badge.

I have discovered that my hackles automatically going up at such authoritarian behavior is not necessarily the common reaction among my fellow Americans, not even my fellow liberals. The arguments are usually something along the lines of “that guy was an idiot to argue with the cops, he should know better,” which is very similar to what many are saying about Gates. He has even been criticized for being a “bad role model,” thus putting young black kids at risk if they do the same things.

Now, on a practical, day to day level, it’s hard to argue that being argumentative with a cop is a dangerous thing. They have guns. They can arrest you and can cost you your freedom if they want to do it badly enough. They can often get away with doing violence on you and suffer no consequences. You are taking a risk if you provoke someone with that kind of power, no doubt about it.

Indeed, it is very little different than exercising your right of free speech to tell a gang of armed thugs to go fuck themselves. It’s legal, but it’s not very smart. But that’s the problem isn’t it? We shouldn’t have to make the same calculations about how to behave with police as we would with armed criminals. The police are supposed to be the good guys who follow the rules and the law and don’t expect innocent citizens to bow to their brute power the same way that a street gang would do. The police are not supposed wield what is essentially brute force on the entire population.

And yet, that’s what we are told we are supposed to accept. Not only can they arrest us merely for being argumentative as they did with Gates, they are now allowed to shoot us full of electricity to make us comply with their demands to submit.

There is a philosophical underpinning to all this that I am only beginning to fully understand. It was discussed in this very interesting guest post over at Crooked Timber by a police officer and philosopher who went through the various elements of the case and offered his perspective. Much of what he wrote was very thought provoking and made me think a bit about my reflexive recoil against police behaviors in so many of these situations. But some of what he wrote reinforced my belief that something has gone wrong:

The judgments of policing are obviously difficult and subjective, and are often marred when they are made in the face of people issuing inflammatory comments even as the police are rendering routine services with an obvious cause. It is in the collective interest of citizens and police to promote an environment where the police can conduct an investigation calmly and with mutual respect. It cannot become commonplace for people to be allowed to scream at the police in public, threatening them with political phone calls, deriding their abilities, etc. Routine acts like rendering aid to lost children, taking accident reports and issuing traffic violations could be derailed at any time by any person who has a perceived grievance with the police. The police service environment is not the best venue for the airing of such grievances.

This is a form of blackmail similar to the CIA threatening to let terrorists kill us if they are held accountable for lawbreaking. It says that the police will not be willing to rescue lost children if they have to put up with yelling citizens. That is an abdication of their duties and the idea that they should then be given carte blanche to shut up all citizens by means of arrest, because it creates a social environment where someone might cause a distraction in the future, is Orwellian double talk.

And it makes a mockery of the first amendment. If police are to be shielded from public criticism when they are acting in their official capacity then we have an authoritarian state. If yelling at the authorities is a crime then we do not have free speech.

He goes on:

The police should not be cowed by threats of phone calls to people such as mayors, police chiefs and presidents of the United States, along with allegations that “you don’t know who you’re messing with.” It is traditionally whites who have had this type of crooked access and influence. These appeals to higher authorities are often meant to exempt the ruling castes from following the rules and laws that the rest of the community will be expected to follow. It happens, it is unfortunate, and it is not in the interests of justice for it to continue. Nobody trying to do their job fairly deserves to hear the equivalent of “My daddy donated fifty million to this university, and you’ll be getting calls from everywhere in the administration about raising my grade enough for this class to count as a distributive requirement.”

It is very rude of citizens to do that, to be sure. But it is not a crime. The idea that people should not get angry, should not pull rank, should be rude to others is an issue for sociologists and Miss Manners, not the cops. Humans often behave badly, but that doesn’t make it illegal. For people with such tremendous power as police officers to be coddled into thinking that these are behaviors that allow them to arrest people (or worse) seems to be to far more dangerous than allowing a foolish person or two to set a bad example in the public square.

He continues:

It is possible for a person to commit disorderly conduct by unabated screaming and verbal abuse in a public setting. Without drawing conclusions about the Gates case, there comes some point where a person is genuinely causing public alarm, and where he is acting with a rage that exceeds what we can expect from a reasonable person in a heated moment. The mere presence of the police conducting a legitimate investigation should not provoke continuous rage and epithets from such a person. One response is that the police should just leave if the investigation has been conducted successfully, and that this will calm the person down. In practice, this is indeed often the best thing to do. On the other hand, it should be noted that it is just as much the responsibility of the citizen to see that his actions are an inappropriate way to relate to police officers who have not, in the specific case at hand, acted unreasonably. This point may be hotly contested, but I believe it is true: there is no obligation for the police to hurry in their activities or to leave as soon as possible because they have incited the rage of a person who is acting unreasonably. There is a distinction between hanging around to show them who’s boss and working at a steady, professional pace, to be sure. But in the end the mere presence of the police cannot be seen as an acceptable reason for disorderly conduct, and should therefore not spur the police to leave a scene simply to de-escalate it. A police strategy of “winning by appearing to lose” emboldens citizens to attempt to get the police to lose in more and more serious matters, including walking away from situations where a person is genuinely guilty of a crime.

At this point we are seeing a tipping in the other direction. Police are emboldened when they repeatedly get away with using bullying, abusive tactics against average citizens who have not been convicted of any crimes. This is the kind of thing that results:

Police say they struggled to get inside the home to speak with the man. When police managed to get inside the home, the suspect was placed in handcuffs. The complainant alleged that he was Tased three times by police – once to his wrist, the second to the small of his back and the third to his buttocks.

The ombudsman’s report states that the suspect was tased only two times after an investigation. One of those tases, however, was in the buttocks.

The use of force “was after he was handcuffed,” said Ombudsman Pierce Murphy. “And it was in the most senstive, private areas, and accompanied by threats.”

The suspect can be heard pleading to the police several times that he couldn’t breathe when officers were on top of him.

“I can’t breathe – just let me up, I want to breathe,” he says.

The officer quickly replied, “If you’re talking – you’re breathing.”

The report also states that the officers used excessive language.

“If you move again, I’m going to stick this Taser up your (expletive) and pull the trigger,” the complaint said. “Now, do you feel this in your (expletive)? – I’m going to tase your (expletive) if you move again.”

It was determined that the cop had the taser literally pushed up against the man’s anus.

In an earlier portion of his essay on Crooked Timber, the officer talked about how we need to allow police to have discretion and explained that it works as often as not in the favor of the suspect as a matter of common sense. (Police often let people go with a warning, for instance, rather than adhere strictly to the letter of the law.) And that’s reasonable.

But when it comes to race we’ve got a terrible history of discretion not being extended in favor of blacks — and the increased use of tasers is turning this concept of discretion into a license to torture. A policeman using his discretion to arrest a man in his own home because he was not deferential enough is just one more incident along a long road of creeping authoritarianism.

I said the other night that I thought Gates was lucky he didn’t get tased and I really think he was. People all over this country are “subdued” by means of electricity every day, probably more blacks than whites, but it doesn’t seem to be particularly limited to race. We are accepting this kind of thing as if it’s just an inevitability because of the attitudes this police officer very thoughtfully lays out in his essay: we are told that we must defer to authority or risk all hell breaking loose.

And I would suggest that it is just that attitude that led to people in this country recently endorsing unilateral illegal invasions, torture of prisoners and the rest. You remember the line — “the constitution isn’t a suicide pact.” To which many of us replied with the old Benjamin Franklin quote: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

The principles here are the same. Sure, we should treat the cops with respect and society shouldn’t encourage people to be reflexively hostile to police. They have a tough job, and we should all be properly respectful of people who are doing a dangerous and necessary job for the community. But when a citizen doesn’t behave well, if not illegally, as will happen in a free society, it is incumbent upon the police, the ones with the tasers and the handcuffs and the guns, to exercise discretion wisely and professionally. And when they don’t, we shouldn’t make excuses for them. It’s far more corrosive to society to allow authority figures to abuse their power than the other way around.

Henry Louis Gates may have acted like a jackass in his house that day. But Sergeant Crowley arresting him for being “tumultuous” was an abuse of his discretion, a fact which is backed up by the fact that the District Attorney used his discretion to decline to prosecute. Racially motivated or not he behaved “stupidly” and the president was right to say so.

* And by the way, if anyone wants to see some real incoherence on this subject, consult the right wingers who are defending the policeman today, but who also believe that anyone has the right to shoot first and ask questions later if they “feel” threatened in their own home. By their lights, Gates should have been arrested for behaving “tumultuously” but would have been within his rights to shoot Sgt Crowley. This is why conservatives have no standing to discuss anything more complicated than Sarah Palin’s wardrobe.

.

Lower Your California Flag To Half-Mast

by dday

I’ve been live-blogging the events in the state capitol today over at Calitics. Basically, most of the horrible measures in the California budget revision passed, with a couple notable exceptions. Cities get to keep their gas tax money, and the controversial offshore drilling plan was defeated. Which puts the budget $1 billion or so out of balance, but Schwarzenegger has a line-item veto so he will blue-pencil his way to finishing this up.

It’s a dark day for California, which suffers a radical transformation of how it provides services today, because a literally insane minority refuses to budge and can hijack the legislature. Importantly, the process is the culprit here. The current system is designed to produce bad outcomes and provide no accountability for them. So until we change that system, we’ll keep running into this brick wall. In all likelihood, we’ll be back filling a new budget gap this winter.

.

Conspiracy Nutz

by digby

Man, is it ever rich to see M. Emmett Tyrell (“Bobby” to the insiders) chattering with Tweety about the kooky conspiracy nuts on the right. I don’t know if Matthews is brain damaged or what, but my God:

Like many political magazines of differing ideologies, in the 1980s and 1990s the conservative American Spectator received donations from like-minded benefactors who supported its mission. One of the Spectator’s larger donors over the years was Richard Mellon Scaife, a businessman who directed a number of foundations funded with his family’s wealth, through which he could support his causes. At first, donations from Scaife to the Spectator were unrestricted, but later, Scaife wanted to direct some of the spending for stories investigating the Clintons.

According to R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., editor in chief of the Spectator, the idea for investigating the Clintons was born on a fishing trip on the Chesapeake Bay in the fall of 1993. David Brock, who reported many of the Clinton scandals, described himself as a Republican “hitman” who “soon became a lead figure in the drive to” get Clinton. Writing for the American Spectator, he brought the stories of alleged sexual misbehavior by Bill and Hillary Clinton into the public notice in late 1993.[3] The Pacific Research Institute funded further attempts to discredit the Clintons. The “Arkansas Project” name that later became famous was conceived as a joke; the actual name within the Spectator and between the Spectator and Scaife foundations was the “Editorial Improvement Project.”

The Washington Post noted David Brock was “summoned” to a meeting with Rex Armistead in Miami, Florida at an airport hotel.[citation needed] Armistead laid out an elaborate “Vince Foster murder scenario”, Brock said – a scenario that he found implausible.”[4][5] David Brock, then of the American Spectator (and previously of the Heritage Foundation), explained Armistead was paid $350,000 to work with Arkansas Project reporters by the American Spectator.[6] Brock further noted Armistead was a “leader of white resistance to the civil rights movement” as he was working as a police officer.[7] Both Brock and Armistead were reporters who were funded by Scaife to investigate issues ranging from drug smuggling to Foster to discredit Clinton with the Arkansas Project.[8]

It’s impossible for me to believe that Matthews doesn’t know he’s dealing with one of the primary conspiracy kooks of the 1990s. He must. But there they sat, talking trash about the Birthers and the UFO people and the rest like Tyrell is a normal person.

Of course, Matthews himself is one to talk. He was one of the prime movers of the bogus Clinton scandals himself, frequently having Kathleen Willey and Gennifer Flowers on to share their sexual fantasies (and give him a thrill up his leg.)So, he may not realize that “Bobby” is a nutball. After all, when it came to those nutty conspiracy theories, Matthews was a true believer himself.

.

The End Of Obstructionism?

by dday

Henry Waxman is refusing to let the Blue Dogs make chicken salad out of the House health care bill. He’s talking about bypassing his committee entirely and bringing the bill already voted out of two other committees to the floor.

As it turns out, I was on NPR’s Tell Me More this morning talking about health care, and one of my co-guests was Henry Cuellar, a Blue Dog. 30 minutes goes fast with three guests, so I didn’t get to confront him and his arguments as much as I wanted. For instance, McAllen, TX, is in his district, and that was the subject of the widely touted Atul Gawande piece in The New Yorker about disparities in health care delivery and effectiveness. But Cuellar pretty much harped on costs, costs, costs as an impediment to getting something done. I countered that cost control and expanding access, in many cases, are complementary. This makes the Blue Dog argument incoherent. They want to cut costs, but they are reluctant to enact the reforms that actually would do it. Not to mention the fact that they talk of fiscal responsibility while trying to carve out funding for rural health care, for example, which is the exact opposite of cost-cutting. And Steven Pearlstein picked up on this today.

The challenge for the Blue Dogs is that they want an America where everyone has insurance but are reluctant to force workers to buy it or employers to help pay for it.

They understand that achieving universal coverage will require subsidies for low-income workers and small businesses, but they insist that none of those changes add to the federal deficit or raise anyone’s taxes.

They want to introduce more competition into the private insurance market, but not if it comes from a government-run insurance plan.

They complain constantly about the need to rein in runaway Medicare costs while at the same time demanding higher Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals in rural areas.

You see what I mean about mushy centrism?

Yes. Yes I do.

The truth is that the Blue Dogs are slaves to entrenched power, serving the interests of powerful lobbies rather than the middle-income voters in their districts. Cutting subsidies to 300% of poverty level from 400% would make health care less affordable to working people – and it’s only being considered in the House because Blue Dogs want to protect those making half a million a year from a surtax.

Which is why Waxman is absolutely in the right to do this. The Blue Dogs, cheered on by Republicans, are simply standing in the way of progress. You can tell because their arguments lack logic and coherence. They apparently got the President’s MedPAC proposal in the bill, as part of a larger deal over reducing regional disparities in Medicare reimbursements, but other measures that reduce costs they resist. And measures that increase costs they favor. They exist at this point to be nothing more than sand in the gears.

At some point, I think you do have to pull the trigger. Matt Yglesias makes the moral case, that good legislation matters more than good process.

Something a lot of progressive legislative leaders seem to have forgotten until this Congress actually got under way is that historically congressional procedure is a challenge to be surmounted when you want big change to happen. It’s not actually a fixed feature of the landscape that people “have to” accommodate themselves to. For years you couldn’t get a decent Civil Rights bill because segregationists controlled the Judiciary Committee that had jurisdiction. This problem was “solved” by just deciding to bypass the Judiciary Committee. When you decide you want to get things done, you find a way to get them done. Even the allegedly sacrosanct filibuster rule has been changed repeatedly over the years. The law is the law and the constitution is the constitution, but the rules of congressional procedure are not law. They’re internally made rules, they’re subject to change, and the criteria for a good set of rules is that you want rules that produce good legislation and good governance.

If the internal rules are in place you should work to change them if they obstruct a change both the majority of Americans and the majority of the Congress clearly want.

…and now, the Blue Dogs are claiming that talks fell apart this afternoon. I don’t know how that squares with the “breakthrough” earlier in the day, but it looks like something’s amiss. Will Waxman just report out the bill anyway and move it to the floor?

…I have to say that Mike Ross, head Blue Dog negotiator in this case, appears to be full of it. He says that Waxman took things off the table that, an hour before, Waxman was hailing in public as part of a breakthrough agreement? Doesn’t pass the smell test. Someone’s lying.

.

Proud To Be A Constituent

by digby

Henry!

The chairman of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, Representative Henry Waxman, said on Friday he would let the full House by pass his committee on healthcare reform if the panel could not reach agreement on its version of the legislation.

Fiscally conservative Democrats on that committee have refused to go along with the proposal over its high cost of $1 trillion over 10 years and that has stalled the process of getting a bill to a vote in the full House before it begins a monthlong recess on July 31.

Waxman told reporters that he was going to meet the conservative Democrats on the panel shortly to discuss another proposal to try to meet their concerns. But if they do not agree, “we going to have to look at perhaps bypassing the committee,” he told reporters. This would allow a health care reform bill go to the House floor without a vote of his panel.

Not that’s what a powerful Chairman should act like. Damn.

.

The Frenzy begins

by digby

Following up on dday’s post below, can I just ask if those of you who are older than 35 or so are getting that strange familiar feeling? You know the one, where the media are suddenly hostile to the president, the Democrats are running for the hills and the country is confused and doesn’t know what to think? The one where cable news gets obsessed with manufactured wingnut shitstorms designed to distract and diminish the president’s stature and sap his political capital just when he needs it the most? We’ve seen this movie before, haven’t we?

It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that we are seeing a rather sudden attention being paid to race. First, our black president nominated a Hispanic woman to the Supreme court. That got the right wing noise machine all hyped up about “reverse discrimination” a concept which began seeping into the mainstream almost immediately. Then we suddenly have a lot of attention being paid to the Birthers, out of the blue. It’s not like they haven’t been around for a while, but on the heels of the Sotomayor discussion, we are hearing a whole lot about them — and their claims are being aired over and over and over again on mainstream TV (even as they are being refuted.) Hmmmmm. Now we have the president having the temerity to suggest that the arrest of a black man for disorderly conduct in his own home was handled “stupidly,” which has sent the media into a frenzy the likes of which we haven’t seen since Jeremiah Wright.

Indeed, I heard a TV commentator suggest this morning that this one comment may be the reason for the death of health care reform because it sucked the air out of the conversation. The fact that it’s the media which is doing the sucking doesn’t seem to occur to anyone.

This is quintessential village behavior. They are being drawn into a right wing noise machine meme — and they are more than eager to go there. The health care debate is costing Obama some serious political capital and the mushy Dems are predictably getting restless. The villagers smell blood. When that happens, the wingnuts are always at the ready with some juicy, emotion laden trivia for the kewl kids to latch on to to make the narrative of impending failure really sing. And that brings us to the sexy stuff about “wise latinas” and police behaving “stupidly” and the weird idea that our black president isn’t really an American at all.

Race was always going to be the underlying issue in this presidency. This country didn’t magically shed its racial baggage in 2008 no matter how much everyone wanted to pretend it did. (The Jeremiah Wright episode should have given us a clue as to what would happen if Obama ever strayed too far into the black identity.) The villagers were all thrilled that we had the first black president. But it was quite clear to me that what they really loved was their own “enlightened” self-image. Cokie and Sally Quinn and their friends down at the beauty parlor were very pleased with themselves for being so post-racial that they didn’t even “see” race anymore. As long as Obama didn’t start to be too “black” that is.

We saw the first inklings of a change among the Villagers with Matthews and his laughable class identification with the litigious firefighter in New Haven. Since villagers all see themselves as working class white ethnics already (even as they plan their summer vacations in their multi-million dollar vacation homes in Nantucket) this handy narrative really got the ball rolling. Sotomayor and the Birthers and now Gates are all gelling into a narrative about Obama’s “race problem” and we are seeing the veil of racial tolerance among the Villagers slipping.

Obama’s “problem,” as it is for all Democratic presidents, is that he is allegedly “out of step” with the people — like Matthews and his firefighter brothers, and that cop in Cambridge and Rush and other Real Americans who are upset about how “liberal” he’s being with his tax ‘n spend health reform and the horrible deficits and his defense of loudmouthed black professors who are no better than they ought to be. You can feel the Big Money, the right wing noise machine and the Village all starting to find their collective voice and take control.

You can blame Obama for walking into the lion’s maw, as I’m hearing many of his allies do today — liberals always blamed Clinton for failing to be perfect too. But believe me, there’s no way to avoid this stuff when the frenzy begins. Once they smell blood they always find something.

Update: The press is very excited that the president came before the press corps because he “had to” address the race issue. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that he apologized quite the way they want him to apologize.

Call Orrin Hatch immediately. He’s the chief of the Village apology police and will determine if the president has sufficiently apologized.

Plus, there are tapes.

I could be wrong, but I think I heard one of the reporters ask Gibbs, “was he aroused?” I may have misheard.

Update II: By contrast, CNNs Kira Phillips had an on air orgasm over the president’s remarks today. I suspect this may be because she has been relentlessly promoting the idea that the pres should get together with Sgt. Crowley to have a “teachable moment” and I think she may believe that the president sees her as an advisor in this matter. I think she might want to be invited to share that beer with Gates, Crowley and Obama.

.

Shiny Objects

by dday

At a time where all the policy focus is on reforming health care for the first time in a generation, white reporters everywhere are obsessed with the story of a black man arrested in his own home for daring to be angry about it, and how terrible it was for the President to speak on behalf of those in such a circumstance. Similarly, while health care and urgent domestic issues demand attention, the wingnuts want to talk about Obama’s birth certificate and some grand conspiracy to plant certificates of live birth in Hawaii and articles in the local paper 47 years ago in the hopes that later on a biracial kid growing up on the islands in the 1960s would fulfill the obvious goal of becoming President. G. Gordon Liddy was absurd and doddering last night on Hardball. He lied about a deposition from Obama’s grandmother that the President was born in Kenya, a result of mistranslation. But you know what he did? He ate up five and a half minutes on prime time cable TV. I know that Chris Matthews was basically beating up on Liddy and the Birther movement in general. But that old saying about how there’s no such thing as bad publicity? It’s especially true when time is finite.

Bill Scher sees a linkage between those willing to believe the Birther nonsense and those willing to believe in the myth of socialized medicine in the Obama health care plan.

The Birther movement has received renewed attention in recent days, after video of a Birther-dominated congressional town hall surfaced, and CNN’s Lou Dobbs attempted to legitimize the conspiracy theory.

Less noticed is the propensity of Birthers to also believe the other conservative conspiracy theory: President Obama’s health care plan is a socialist takeover of our medical system.

The long-standing high-traffic conservative website World Net Daily regularly leads its front page with the latest Birther news, but that is directly followed by the latest “socialized medicine” news. (Well actually, sandwiched between the two sets of conspiracies are the all important “Special Offers!” — such as “Turn $200 investment into $1 million. Sound impossible?”)

Beneath its Birther fever swamp, World Net Daily offers the “Breaking News” that Congress plans mandatory “counseling” for seniors that will “attempt to convince seniors to die,” (the latest smear job from the discredited Betsy McCaughey) and the “Exclusive” that congressional members have exempted themselves from the public plan option (it’s so “exclusive” to WND because the opposite is true.)

And at that infamous town hall for (non-Birther) Rep. Michael Castle, the loud Birther crowd also gave cheers and applause to an audience member who ranted: “if we let the government bring in socialized medicine, it will destroy this thing faster than the twin towers came down.”

I just think it’s about distraction. The Birther movement exists to rally a certain group of people and get the media chasing after them. It’s a sideshow, and it makes for good TV. In the 1990s it was the murder of Vince Foster and a whole other lot of insane conspiracy theories. It made the more plausible but just as wrong conspiracy theories easier for the media to swallow. It’s Overton Window stuff to the extreme. But in the short term, it just kicks the debate away from the focus sought by the White House and the majority of the country. The same with the Gates comments.

The media fail to see their role in all of this. They are not bystanders. They make editorial decisions to follow one story over another. They can devote resources wherever they choose. They could convene panels of health care policy experts and go over the issue that affects everyone’s life in a visceral way. Or they could focus on the sideshow. They choose the latter, and that choice is not “driven by events,” or whatever they would say to cover themselves.

.