Month: March 2012

Looking for trouble

by digby

On her show this morning, Melissa Harris Perry discussed the Trayvon Martin case, the subject of Charles Blow’s column this morning:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I’ve written a bit in the past about the “stand your ground” laws, but I always come back to this fascinating NPR program from 2005 in the immediate aftermath of the vote. It’s good for all sorts of reasons, but I think this passage illuminates the issue more than all the academic analysis:

CONAN:Following the approval of a new law in Florida, we’re talking about self-defense and the law. Our guest is George Fletcher of Columbia University Law School. Let’s talk with Frank, and Frank joins us on the phone from Jacksonville in Florida.

FRANK (Caller): How you doing?

CONAN: All right.

FRANK: Good show.

CONAN: Thank you.

FRANK: See, the main thing about this bill, and I’m holding it in my hand, is Section 4. We’ve already had all of these laws already in Florida; it’s just that you had to look them up. Section 4 states: `A person who uses force as permitted is granted immunity from criminal prosecution and civil prosecution for action that’s justifiable in the use of force.’ And that’s the whole thing. Now the criminal can’t sue me and the cops can’t arrest me if I defend myself. And that’s…

Prof. FLETCHER: Well, that’s correct.

FRANK: …the main thrust of this bill.

Prof. FLETCHER: Right. But you see, changing the language on the duty to retreat doesn’t basically change the fundamental requirements of self-defense. It still has to be necessary…

FRANK: Of course, but…

Prof. FLETCHER: …for you to use force…

FRANK: …it said that before. It said that before the law.

Prof. FLETCHER: No, no, no. Of course. That’s right.

FRANK: This isn’t a new thing…

Prof. FLETCHER: This is not a new thing.

FRANK: …’cause I’ve got the vote…

Prof. FLETCHER: I agree with you completely.

FRANK: …in my hand.

Prof. FLETCHER: No, I don’t think that the statute really changes anything; it’s largely symbolic. It’s a way of saying, `You have the right to be where you are. You can stand your ground. You don’t have to run away in order to protect the aggressor.’

FRANK: Yeah, but you can’t–before you could be sued for it; now you can’t be.

CONAN: Mm-hmm.

Prof. FLETCHER: Well, the standards in criminal cases and in civil cases are exactly the same except that the burden of proof is different in civil cases, and you couldn’t be sued for it. You couldn’t be sued if you were justified.

FRANK: Well…

CONAN: Well, Frank, do you see this as simply symbolic?

FRANK: No, of course, not, because I’ve been here for 26 years, and 20 of those years I’ve had a concealed weapons permit. All right? And it used to be in this state that the concealed weapons permit was only good county to county. It’s only in the past 10 years that it’s been good in the whole state.

CONAN: Mm-hmm.

Prof. FLETCHER: That’s a different law that we’re talking about.

FRANK: Yeah, but it all comes down under the same thing. It’s the use of deadly force in lawful self-defense.

Prof. FLETCHER: Yeah.

FRANK: I mean, it’s put out here by Charles Bronson, the commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services. It’s right here in black and white.

Prof. FLETCHER: I don’t think there’s any–there’s no state in the country in which you would be arrested and convicted if you used deadly force to protect yourself against an imminent threat to your life or bodily security.

FRANK: Well, I don’t know. You read the newspapers and it looks a little different.

Prof. FLETCHER: Yeah.

CONAN: Well, Frank, what about you personally? You’ve carried a concealed weapon, you say, for some time.

FRANK: Of course.

CONAN: And has this ever come up?

FRANK: Of course, it has, especially in Florida, because you–I mean, you have to down here. The police aren’t there when the action happens. I’m the one that’s there when something happens.

Prof. FLETCHER: You mean you’ve pulled your gun and used it?

FRANK: I’ve pulled my gun and it’s saved my life, twice in this state.

Prof. FLETCHER: I see. Uh-huh.

CONAN: By brandishing it or by using it?

FRANK: By brandishing it, of course, in self-defense of my property and myself.

Prof. FLETCHER: Yeah. Well, that’s good, so long as you didn’t have to use it. That was true in the Goetz case, too.

FRANK: Well, if I have to use it, then God bless this new law that exempts me from prosecution, doesn’t it?

Prof. FLETCHER: I would just expect that it would be nice if you had a witness whenever the circumstances…

FRANK: Well, see, if I can prove that I needed to use deadly force, I don’t need a witness.

Prof. FLETCHER: Well, actually, the burden is always on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you didn’t have the right of self-defense, or you don’t have to prove anything.

FRANK: And that’s the nice thing about this law, that this makes it that much simpler for me, doesn’t it?

Prof. FLETCHER: Actually, I disagree with you on that, Frank.

FRANK: Well…

Prof. FLETCHER: I don’t think it makes anything simpler. But if you feel better, more power to you.

FRANK: Well, I do. Thank you.

Prof. FLETCHER: Sure.

CONAN: Frank, thanks for the call.

FRANK: All right.

CONAN: And let’s hope you don’t have to ever pull it again.

FRANK: Well, thank you very much.

Does Frank seem like the kind of guy who should be packing? And yet, he’s exactly the kind of guy who always seems to do it.

NRA lobbying was the major impetus behind this law and others like it around the country, by the way. They’ve been such a positive influence on America, haven’t they?

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Sincerely Held Really Bad Ideas Are… Still Really Bad Ideas

By tristero

I just don’t understand this:

Mr. Santorum, hurting politically in Pennsylvania because of his defense of the Iraq war and President George W. Bush, had written a book, “It Takes a Family.” It was a blistering attack on liberal “elites” and what he saw as their moral relativism as well as “radical feminists” who, he said, had devalued mothers who preferred staying home rather than going to work.

“I said, ‘What are you doing?’ ” recalled David Urban, who had been chief of staff to Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and was close to Mr. Santorum. “ ‘You’re running for re-election! Why not wait till afterward?’ ”

Mr. Urban said Mr. Santorum told him that these were ideas he really believed.

”There are some guys — Paul Wellstone was one,” Mr. Urban said, referring to the liberal Democratic senator from Minnesota, “who know what they believe, they don’t take polls and they don’t worry about the consequences. For him, this book was a big marker.”

Ok. let’s skip over the outrageous insult to the great Paul Wellstone by maliciously comparing him to a moral midget like Santorum. The point of the story is obvious, a common trope of the mainstream public discourse: Santorum is a man who really believes what he says, and we should admire both his sincerity as well as his willingness to express what he believes.

But for the life of me, I can’t understand why anyone who really believes things that are completely wrong should be admired. Santorum really believes that Darwin is wrong and creationists are right. I should admire him for really believing something that is completely idiotic? I should admire his willingness to spout arrant, dangerous nonsense in public? Santorum really believes there is no difference between two lovers of the same gender making love and a man raping a horse. Why is it admirable to believe and say something so hateful?

Sincerely-held delusions, sincerely-expressed hate, and sincerely-treasured ignorance: how does the fact that the person is sincere mitigate the errors, the bigotry, and the lack of knowledge? And furthermore, are these even really sincere? Isn’t all this exactly the opposite of the kind of open-mindedness practiced by a truly sincere person, a person able to evaluate the worth of what to believe, and what not to?

We live in very strange times when it is somehow a mark of character to believe ridiculous things.

Alright, girls, that’s enough

by digby

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this sort of thing lately…

At the end of the Times piece, Senator Roy Blunt suggests that the new champions of women may be “in serious danger of overplaying their hand,” and I actually think he has a point. While I certainly praise the support that Democrats have displayed for women’s issues in this election cycle, I’m starting to be turned off by the giddiness with which they’ve taken on the mantle of lady defender. I admit that the issue of political tone is small potatoes compared to the very important programs and services at stake in these debates, but I’m still a little uncomfortable with the unequivocal friend-or-foe rhetoric that has come to dominate this conversation.

Yes, well, he would be. This isn’t about him. And everyone knows that “lady defender” is just a little bit well … you know.

For the sake of victims of domestic violence, VAWA should be reauthorized as soon as possible, but Democrats need to remember that we all know they’re in the midst of a tough election contest, too. Fight the good fight for women, but please, leave the noble posturing at home.

That’s right, it’s a tough election fight and the last thing Democrats need is to look like all they care about is a bunch of whiny bitches. Let’s not lose our heads here.

Believe me, this is not an uncommon reaction. How do I know this? Because I’ve been watching this go down for my entire adult life. Any time “women’s issues” start to become prominent, a certain kind of liberal male gets very nervous. The stuff I heard during the 1992 “year of the woman” election was enough to curl my hair. And I see no reason to believe anything’s changed. I’ve already seen plenty of evidence that it hasn’t.

I’ll be looking for a major Stanley Greenberg poll any day now showing that allowing all these women’s issues to dominate is alienating the American Holy Grail — the white male. We’ll be back to fetishizing NASCAR and fightinterrists with our bare hands right quick.

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Stepping Stone to Universality

by digby

Charles Pierce gave the president some excellent advice last week. Let’s hope the president — and the rest of the Democrats — take it. He was talking about Health Care:

Right now, it almost never comes up, except as an entry on the list of things cited by the president’s staunchest defenders in response to arguments that he hasn’t done as much as he promised to do in 2008. Let us be honest: The compromises struck to get it passed are biggest problem the ACA has, both politically and, when it fully kicks in, operationally as well. They are what made it both so hard to explain, and so vulnerable to arrant nonsense, in 2010. They are also what made the progressive base so distrustful of it in the first place, the phenomenon that so annoyed the president in that press conference. The last trump card always played in the ACA’s defense in the immediate aftermath of its passage was that the deal was the best that anyone could have managed at the time, and that it was a “stepping stone” toward true universal health care, the point the president made above in comparing it to the births of Social Security and Medicare.

The problem is that the “stepping stone” argument largely has vanished from the argument. (For that matter, in the political dialogue, the ACA itself seems to function only as a checkmark on a list for the administration, and as the seven-headed beast of the Apocalypse for the Republicans.) But if the president wants to talk about his achievement in the upcoming campaign, the “stepping stone” pitch is the best one he has, assuming he’s at all sincere about it. Enough of the law is in effect now to make a compelling case for health-care reform as an ongoing process. (Commercials with people who have pre-existing conditions who were able to get coverage now that they were previously denied. Students struggling to find jobs who were able to stay on their parents’s insurance.) To talk about it as a process is a way to admit that the law has its problems, but that it is not fatally flawed. Also, it recommits the president and the Democrats to universal coverage as a goal. The worst thing about the way the president has talked about health-care reform is that it often seems as though he’s achieved what he wanted to do, and now has moved on. Keeping promises, as Obama himself has warned us, can take some time. It would be nice to hear that he’s still working on keeping this one.

I still want Medicare for all, so I’d be happy if the president went all-in on defending that, but I’ll take what I can get.

Pierce is right except for one thing. The Democrats may say nothing about it except as part of the laundry list of achievements for which they feel they don’t get enough credit, but the Republicans can’t stop talking about it. So naturally, the Dems are now afraid to be the staunch defenders of average Americans because some Tea partier is calling them socialists.

Pierce is right. They should take a page from their positioning on women’s health and use it as a “stepping stone” to talking about expanding the health care bill overall. They aren’t going to lose any votes over it. People who hate “Ohbaahmacare” can’t hate it any more than they already do. But it might just appeal to a few people who are confused or dissatisfied with what they’ve seen.

I seriously doubt they will do it. You can see that the Democrats are desperately afraid to revisit the issue. They are still smarting from 2010, which many attribute to the bruising battle over health care. But it would be a good test of the trope that a good defense is a good offense. And if nothing else it would lay the groundwork for future legislation to fix the ACA when the Republicans and the courts inevitably start chipping away at it.

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Murderous Birthing Vessels

by digby

War on women? Why do you say that?

March 14, 2012 marks the one-year anniversary of Bei Bei Shuai’s unprecedented and inhumane incarceration for having experienced such a profound sense of depression while pregnant that she attempted to kill herself.

Ms. Shuai was arrested, charged, and has been held without bail based on the claim that Indiana’s murder statute (death penalty or 45-years-to-life) and attempted feticide statute (up to 20-years) may be used to punish pregnant women who cannot guarantee a healthy birth outcome.

We hope that you will sign the grassroots Change.org petition to the Marion County Prosecutor telling him to drop the charges. The petition, in short, says: Unless it is your intention to make clear that in Indiana the “Pro-Life” position is “Pro-Life-Sentences-For Pregnant-Women” position, we urge to you drop all charges and Free Bei Bei Shuai now.

When I use the unpleasant term “birthing vessels” this is what I’m talking about — this woman is only valued for the fact of her pregnancy. It’s directly out of Handmaid’s Tale.

Katha Pollitt wrote about this case in The Nation:

In December 2010 Shuai was running a Chinese restaurant in Indianapolis with her boyfriend, Zhiliang Guan, by whom she was eight months pregnant. Just before Christmas, he informed her that he was married and had another family, to which he was returning. When Shuai begged him to stay, he threw money at her and left her weeping on her knees in a parking lot. Despairing, she took rat poison and wrote a letter in Mandarin saying she was killing herself and would “take this baby with me to Hades”; friends got her to the hospital just in time to save her life. Eight days later her baby, Angel, was delivered by Caesarean section and died of a cerebral hemorrhage within four days. Three months later, the newly elected prosecutor, Terry Curry—a Democrat—brought charges, claiming that the rat poison that almost killed Shuai had killed her baby. If convicted, she faces forty-five to sixty-five years in prison.

Pollit goes on to point out that suicide attempts are unfortunately fairly common among pregnant women. I don’t know if this prosecutor has heard, but pregnancy affects women’s hormones, which can often result in personality and mood changes. It’s completely horrifying to criminalize this sort of behavior and as Pollit points out, the medical profession worries greatly that this will result in women failing to seek help or be honest with their doctors. It’s a recipe for disaster.

But it seems to be a very popular recipe:

Unfortunately, punishing women for their behavior during pregnancy is becoming more and more common, fueled by the passage of “unborn victims of violence” laws in at least thirty-eight states declaring the fetus (or, in twenty of those states, even the embryo or fertilized egg) a separate victim in cases of homicide. In most instances these laws were intended to protect pregnant women from violence, especially from abusive partners, not to apply to the women themselves. But that is not what has happened, as the antiabortion forces have gained power. “The prosecution’s legal arguments are exactly based on legal arguments behind the personhood measures now moving through the states,” Lynn Paltrow, executive director of NAPW, told me by phone. “They treat the fetus as completely separate within the pregnant woman. How can you be separate and within?”

That’s the ultimate question, isn’t it? And yet, we are rapidly becoming a society that not only values the potential person within, but values it more than the full realized person who contains it.

Pro-choicers have focused on the dangers fetal personhood measures present to abortion rights. That danger is real: they’re part of the antiabortion strategy to build up the legal status of the fetus as a person in so many parts of the law that when the Supreme Court finally revisits Roe v. Wade, a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy will look like a bizarre exception. But these laws pose broader dangers to women, because they hold pregnant women liable for any conduct during pregnancy that a local prosecutor suspects caused a bad outcome—and bear in mind that every year 15-20 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, 1 percent end in stillbirth and another 19,000 end in neonatal death. Under these laws, hundreds of pregnant women have been arrested, often on only tenuous evidence that their actions, including drug use, harmed their fetuses. In Alabama sixty women have faced such charges.

I’ve always felt that, at least for some, the intention of these fetal personhood laws was to make women responsible for “being bad” during the only time their lives matter — pregnancy. And I never thought it was just about abortion. I’ve heard too many people making judgments and casting aspersions on even mundane aspects of pregnant women’s behavior (like eating sweets or refusing to stop working) not to know that the impulse runs deep. For some people, a woman is never less human than when she’s pregnant, which is bizarre indeed.

Read Pollitt’s entire piece. And then go sign this petition. I don’t know that it will do much good, but the war on women is getting some attention, so perhaps the time is ripe.

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The glory of compromise

by David Atkins

Oh joy:

For a moment last year, Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s star shone brightly as he unveiled his party’s bold deficit-whacking budget proposal — that is, until seniors rebelled over his plan to dramatically change Medicare.

The backlash was swift and decisive. Democrats attacked the GOP, saying the plan would destroy the Medicare safety net, and the earnest Wisconsin wunderkind slid from the spotlight. When he walked the halls of the Capitol, he popped in his iPod earbuds, tuning out the noise.

Now Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, is returning to center stage as the GOP doubles down on his conservative budget priorities — including tax cuts for the wealthy and a new version of his plan for major changes in Medicare.

With an edgy new campaign-style video and a flurry of Ryan appearances timed with his upcoming budget release, Republicans believe theirs is a winning strategy: one that will showcase the GOP as willing to make tough choices to reduce federal deficits and present voters with a contrast to President Obama. Democrats believe just as strongly that the Ryan strategy will be a winner for them.

Perhaps Jackie Calmes at the New York Times can remind us again how this is all President Obama’s fault for hurting Paul Ryan’s feelings.

It will be an interesting election. The GOP is willing to take quite unpopular positions (being against birth control and in favor of privatizing Medicare, for instance) in order to establish policy contrasts with the President. Meanwhile, the President is at pains to mute the policy contrasts in order to present himself as a contrast in style with the Republicans. The compromiser in a room full of ideologues.

Aside from, you know, the actual policy consequences of not standing firm against conservative craziness, there’s also the fact that being the compromiser in a room of supposed ideologues only works if the press is willing to cooperate in accurately painting that portrait. I for one would be wary of leaving my electoral future in the hands of David Brooks and Jackie Calmes.

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Drew!

by digby

Oh boy, this is rich. Ed Kilgore reports:

When at the top of an aggregation site I saw the headline (“Breitbart Is Here”) and byline (Sarah Palin), I checked the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day. No, that’s still two weeks away. But it’s almost too rich for description:

There is a new street art poster that’s being emailed around and will no doubt eventually be spotted on a street corner near you. It’s a gritty black and white image of Andrew Breitbart looking both battle-worn and ever vigilant with the caption: “BREITBART IS HERE.”

Those three words express the instant connection many of us feel for our fallen friend. They express our identification with him, and our need to continue his fight for the good of our republic.

With the death of Breitbart, the conservative movement didn’t just lose a General – we lost an entire Special Forces Division. But he didn’t leave us without the tools and the knowledge we need to fight. This website – Breitbart 2.0 – is the culmination of his study of the technology and aesthetics of new media.

OMG. Andrew Breitbart is the Right’s very own Alinksky.

Or, as one wag said in email: the right’s Che.

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Dispatch from Torture Nation

by digby

From the Texas Observer:

“I am so sorry,” the young woman said with compassion, and nudged the tissues closer. Then, after a moment’s pause, she told me reluctantly about the new Texas sonogram law that had just come into effect. I’d already heard about it. The law passed last spring but had been suppressed by legal injunction until two weeks earlier.

My counselor said that the law required me to have another ultrasound that day, and that I was legally obligated to hear a doctor describe my baby. I’d then have to wait 24 hours before coming back for the procedure. She said that I could either see the sonogram or listen to the baby’s heartbeat, adding weakly that this choice was mine.

“I don’t want to have to do this at all,” I told her. “I’m doing this to prevent my baby’s suffering. I don’t want another sonogram when I’ve already had two today. I don’t want to hear a description of the life I’m about to end. Please,” I said, “I can’t take any more pain.” I confess that I don’t know why I said that. I knew it was fait accompli. The counselor could no more change the government requirement than I could. Yet here was a superfluous layer of torment piled upon an already horrific day, and I wanted this woman to know it.

“We have no choice but to comply with the law,” she said, adding that these requirements were not what Planned Parenthood would choose. Then, with a warmth that belied the materials in her hand, she took me through the rules. First, she told me about my rights regarding child support and adoption. Then she gave me information about the state inspection of the clinic. She offered me a pamphlet called A Woman’s Right to Know, saying that it described my baby’s development as well as how the abortion procedure works. She gave me a list of agencies that offer free sonograms, and which, by law, have no affiliation with abortion providers. Finally, after having me sign reams of paper, she led me to the doctor who’d perform the sonography, and later the termination.

The doctor and nurse were professional and kind, and it was clear that they understood our sorrow. They too apologized for what they had to do next. For the third time that day, I exposed my stomach to an ultrasound machine, and we saw images of our sick child forming in blurred outlines on the screen.

“I’m so sorry that I have to do this,” the doctor told us, “but if I don’t, I can lose my license.” Before he could even start to describe our baby, I began to sob until I could barely breathe. Somewhere, a nurse cranked up the volume on a radio, allowing the inane pronouncements of a DJ to dull the doctor’s voice. Still, despite the noise, I heard him. His unwelcome words echoed off sterile walls while I, trapped on a bed, my feet in stirrups, twisted away from his voice.

“Here I see a well-developed diaphragm and here I see four healthy chambers of the heart…”

I closed my eyes and waited for it to end, as one waits for the car to stop rolling at the end of a terrible accident.

What was it that the libertarian Megan “Jane Galt” McCardle wrote?

”I think that abortion should be legal, but I also think that it should be a last resort, and I’m all for the government using any non-coercive methods it can to encourage women to carry their pregnancy to term, including things that will make them feel bad about aborting. I think, for example, that sonograms should be mandatory before termination, I’m in favor of waiting periods and parental notification laws, and I’m agnostic on spousal notification.”

Looks like it worked in this case. That women feels very bad indeed. Mission accomplished.

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Some more good news

by David Atkins

Of all the economic indicators out there, trends that indicate a little more confidence and breathing room from the middle class are the most important. That’s why this is good to see:

HAVE you been eating more at restaurants with waiters rather than fast-food joints? If so, you are not alone, and that in fact is an indication that the American economy is improving.

Over the 12 months through January, sales at what the government calls full-service restaurants were 8.7 percent higher than in the previous 12 months. That was the fastest pace of growth since the late 1990s, when the economy was booming. Moreover, as is seen in the accompanying charts, that rate was much greater than the rate of growth in sales at limited-service restaurants.

Since those numbers became available 20 years ago, that difference has been a reliable indicator of how the economy is going. When times get tough, people may still eat out, but they cut back.

Of course, the economy’s fundamentals are still broken and skewed to the top 1%, and the situation in Europe is still volatile. But that doesn’t mean things can’t get better within the context of the economy we do have.

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Selfish girls, only thinking of themselves

by digby

Via LGM:

That really has it all. It’s even more offensively racist and sexist than this one, which I didn’t think was possible.

I do have to say, though, that I’ve also been accused of the same thing from non-psychopathic right wingers. If women’s rights are a priority for you, there are a fair number of people of all political stripes who will say you’re either a selfish bitch or a dim-witted dupe. But, you know, fuck ’em.

(You do have to laugh at the stuff that’s “bought off” the women in the cartoon, though: “medical care, homes, cars, birth control and … trains?)

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