Month: July 2013

Nice little constitutional right you have, sweetheart. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

by digby

I’m so glad all these nice middle-aged white men are looking out for us. Why, without them we might have to make decisions for our selves and that makes me feel all icky:

As Texas lawmakers try to pass the abortion restrictions that Democrats filibustered last week, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) has signed one of the country’s most stringent antiabortion bills into law.

While Texas’ legislation was notable for packaging together several barriers to abortion, Ohio’s law contains something unique to the state. Clinics must have an agreement with a local hospital to transfer patients there in the case of an emergency, but public hospitals are barred from entering into those agreements. Opponents of the restriction say they will be used as an excuse to close clinics that have no way of complying.

Another way the new law is unusual: the director of the state department of health, a political appointee, has the unilateral power to revoke variances given to clinics without a transfer agreement. The director also determines whether transfer agreements are satisfactory.

Ohio’s history of antiabortion legislation made the confluence possible. In addition to the transfer agreement requirement for abortion clinics, the state has a longstanding ban on taxpayer funding of abortions and a requirement that abortion clinics be registered as ambulatory surgical centers.

A requirement for transfer agreements alone is more widespread in the country, though still relatively rare in the field of abortion restrictions. Eight states require them, according to data compiled by the Guttmacher Institute. Kentucky, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin are the other seven.

Abortion-rights advocates say that the agreements are not medically necessary, both because complications during abortions are rare and because in an emergency any patient would be admitted to a nearby hospital.

“We want clinics to be safe,” said Kellie Copeland, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, “But our fear is that this red tape, and really that’s all it is, will be used an excuse to close clinics.”

Abortion opponents counter that sending a patient to an emergency room on her own is not the same as having a settled relationship with a hospital.

Already, transfer agreements have made it difficult for Ohio abortion clinics to stay open. One of two clinics in Toledo closed earlier this year after losing its affiliation with the University of Toledo Medical Center. In fact, it was the University of Toledo agreement that inspired the legislation; the public hospital was under pressure from antiabortion advocates, including some state legislators, not to renew the agreement.

Only 18 of Ohio’s 207 hospitals are public, according to the Ohio Hospital Association. But in some regions (such as Toledo) there are no other hospitals that have been willing to enter into transfer agreements with abortion providers. The spread of religiously-affiliated medical centers adds to their concern.

One thing the two sides agree on: when it comes to abortion restrictions, Ohio is a trendsetter.

Thank you daddy.

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Putting your faith in a Church Commission

by digby

I just got this from Credo and it strikes me as a good idea, even though I’m a skeptic when it comes to congress reining in these abuses.

I have less faith in a new Church Commission than some others for reasons I laid out in the post below, which I wrote before President Obama’s first inauguration. I don’t mean to be cynical. As I said above, it’s important to try and to put the government on notice that people are paying attention. Sign the petition. But don’t get your hopes up that congress will fix the problem:


Tuesday, January 06, 2009


Going Back To Church


by digby


In dday’s post below he discusses this chatter about a challenge to the retroactive immunity in the wiretapping cases, he quotes McJoan over at DKos saying this:

That should not, however, preclude Congress from finally conducting its own investigation in the form of a reconstituted Church Commission and the Obama administration from cooperating fully with that investigation. There really isn’t a way for Congress to recover everything it lost in its myriad capitulations to a lawless administration. But a bright light shined on the whole affair might just keep it from happening yet again.

Sadly, if history is any indication, that is highly unlikely to happen. Over the holidays, at the behest of Rick Perlstein, I read a book called Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI by Kathryn S. Olmsted. I had written something similar to what McJoan says above and he thought I should look more closely into the results of the Church (and Pike) committees and what lessons the congress and the media have likely drawn from them.


It’s always interesting to have one’s own recollections challenged by historians. And this was, to say the least, mindblowing:

When Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974, the United States concluded one of the most traumatic chapters in its history. During the Watergate scandal, Americans had been shocked by the crimes of the Nixon presidency. Investigations by the press and Congress had exposed previously unimaginable levels of corruption and conspiracy in the executive branch. The public’s faith in government had been shaken; indeed, the entire “system” had been tested. Now, with Nixon’s resignation, two years of agonizing revelations finally seemed to be over. The system had worked.

Yet only four months later, New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh disclosed that the government’s crimes went beyond Watergate. After months of persistent digging, Hersh had unearthed a new case of the imperial presidency’s abuse of secrecy and power: a “massive” domestic spying program by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). According to Hersh, the CIA had violated its charter and broken the law by launching a spying program of Orwellian dimensions against American dissidents during the Vietnam War. The Times called it “son of Watergate.”

These revelations produced a dramatic response from the newly energized post-Watergate Congress and press. Both houses of Congress mounted extensive, year-long investigations of the intelligence community. These highly publicized inquiries, headed by experienced investigators Senator Frank Church and Congressman Otis Pike, produced shocking accusations of murder plots and poison caches, of FBI corruption and CIA incompetence. In addition to the congressional inquiries, the press, seemingly at the height of its power after Watergate, launched investigations of its own. The New York Times continued to crusade against CIA abuses; the Washington Post exposed abuses and illegalities committed by the FBI; and CBS’s Daniel Schorr shocked the nation by revealing that there might be “literal” skeletons in the CIA closet as a result of its assassination plots.

In this charged atmosphere, editorial writers, columnists, political scientists, historians, and even former officials of the CIA weighed in with various suggestions for reforming an agency that many agreed had become a ”monster.” Several policymakers, including presidential candidates Fred Harris and Morris Udall, called for massive restructuring or abolition of the CIA. Media and political pundits suggested banning CIA covert operations; transferring most CIA functions to the Pentagon or the State Department; or, at the very least, devising a new, strict charter for all members of the intelligence community.

Few barriers seemed to stand in the way of such reforms. The liberal, post-Watergate Congress faced an appointed president who did not appear to have the strength to resist this “tidal shift in attitude,” as Senator Church called it. Change seemed so likely in early 1975 that a writer for The Nation declared “the heyday of the National Security State’, to be over, at least temporarily.

But a year and a half later, when the Pike and Church committees finally finished their work, the passion for reform had cooled. The House overwhelmingly rejected the work of the Pike committee and voted to suppress its final report. It even refused to set up a standing intelligence committee. The Senate dealt more favorably with the Church committee, but it too came close to rejecting all of the committee’s recommendations. Only last-minute parliamentary maneuvering enabled Church to salvage one reform, the creation of a new standing committee on intelligence. The proposed charter for the intelligence community, though its various components continued to be hotly debated for several years, never came to pass.

The investigations failed to promote the careers of those who had inspired and led them. Daniel Schorr, the CBS reporter who had advanced the CIA story at several important points and eventually had become part of the story himself, was investigated by Congress, threatened with jail, and fired by CBS for his role in leaking the suppressed Pike report. Seymour Hersh’s exposes were dismissed by his peers as “overwritten, over-played, under-researched and underproven.” Otis Pike, despite the many accomplishments of his committee, found his name linked with congressional sensationalism, leaks, and poor administration. Frank Church’s role in the investigation failed to boost his presidential campaign, forced him to delay his entry into the race, and, he thought, might have cost him the vice presidency.

The targets of the investigation had the last laugh on the investigators. “When all is said and done, what did it achieve?” asked Richard Helms, the former director of the CIA who was at the heart of many of the scandals unearthed by Congress and the media. “Where is the legislation, the great piece of legislation, that was going to come out of the Church committee hearings ? I haven’t seen it.” Hersh, the reporter who prompted the inquiries, was also unimpressed by the investigators’ accomplishments. “They generated a lot of new information, but ultimately they didn’t come up with much,” he said.

This was immediately post-Watergate, probably the most likely time in history for the government and the press to be able to change the way things were done. The new congress, the bumbling appointed president, the country’s weariness with Vietnam and the shocking revelations of Nixonian overreach all argued in favor of the congress being able to step up and make serious changes. And I actually thought they did. But I misremembered. The sturm and drang of the period and my own youthful political leanings led me to believe that the Pike and Church Committees resulted in real reforms. And because it so damaged the careers of so many of those involved who tried, the political lesson is pretty stark.

A new front in the war on journalists

by digby

…. I wonder why mainstream journalist types aren’t worried about stuff like this. (Oh wait …)

The Texas lieutenant governor’s recent threat that statehouse reporters could potentially be arrested and jailed if their behavior is deemed “not respectful” of the legislature is being called “worrisome” and “absurd” by Texas journalists.

Several editors and reporters who have been covering the contentious abortion debate in the state Senate, which drew national interest last week during an 11-hour filibuster that derailed the legislation, said Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s threats of potential arrest during an interview Friday raised concerns.

During a June 28 interview with HotAir.com’s Ed Morrissey, Dewhurst said that his staff was reviewing security tapes of the Senate gallery to examine the behavior of reporters during the demonstration that occurred as Republican leaders failed to pass the bill before the legislative session expired. Dewhurst explained:

“We have reports and I have my staff taking a look at the video, the internet video that we keep, we store, on the proceedings that evening and if I find as I’ve been told examples of the media waving and trying to inflame the crowd, incite them in the direction of a riot, I’m going to take action against them. That is wrong. That’s inciting a riot. That is wrong. And we have a provision in our rules that if people do not deport themselves with decorum, they’re not respectful of the legislative process, one of our rules says we can imprison them up to 48 hours. Of course that was out of the question with that many people, but it is, we take a democratic policy seriously.”

They backed off when Wayne Slater confronted them saying they didn’t find any of the “bad behavior” among journalists that had been reported.

But hey, no biggie. We all know that when journalists don’t keep proper “decorum” (which includes genuflecting to the bigfoot journalists who identify with the power structure) well, they are no longer allowed the privileges of a free press. That’s how we keep the babies safe.

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That lethal combo of sexism, ageism and looksism …

by digby

To be honest, I’m not sure why anyone should have to study whether women’s looks affect their ability to win in politics since it seems so obvious to me, but I suppose it’s a good idea to get some empirical data to back up what anyone can see with their own eyes. The problem is when the political scientists get the data wrong, especially when it comes to long standing issues of equity.  Here’s one example:

In a post at the Washington Post’s Wonkblog, two researchers claim to have a study that finds press coverage of candidates’ appearance is not a problem for women candidates. But their data and research is not available to the media or anyone else to evaluate their work.

Our Name It. Change It. project has published research that finds such coverage does serious damage to candidates who are women. Our complete research is available here.

In their Wonkblog piece, Danny Hayes and Jennifer Lawless make inaccurate and sweeping generalizations about the Name It. Change It. research. We are therefore issuing this statement to correct the assertions of these researchers and restate our confidence in the research conducted for Name It. Change It. And we challenge Hayes and Lawless to make public their research methodology and data.

Name It. Change It. is a groundbreaking project of The Women’s Media Center, one of the nation’s premiere media accountability organizations and She Should Run, award winning national experts in addressing the barriers that keep women from serving in public office. Tracking and responding to sexist media coverage of women candidates and public leaders, Name It. Change It. also generates and disseminates groundbreaking research conducted by Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consulting, two firms with experience both researching women candidates and working with real women’s campaigns.

Danny Hayes and Jennifer Lawless, recently wrote that “women don’t pay a higher price than men for coverage of their appearance.” An American University press release touts Hayes’ and Lawless’ new research as “refuting a Name It. Change It. study concluding candidate appearance plays a significant role in voter candidate support.”

In their comments challenging our findings, Hayes and Lawless got much of our research wrong. Specifically:

They missed that Name It. Change It. had a control group, which meant we could correctly identify which variable in our experiment was having the effect.

In addition, in critiquing the appearance coverage Name It. Change It. tested as “unrealistic,” Lawless and Hayes missed that all of Name It. Change It.’s media quotes about women candidates were actual quotes pulled from media.

In addition, there are flaws in the methodology of their previous study on appearance-based coverage, voiding their conclusions that such coverage of women is “rare” and no more frequent than similar coverage of male candidates.

Of course appearance is a problem for women in politics in ways it isn’t for men. Look around you. It’s a problem for women in everything in a way it isn’t for men.

Name It Change It, went to the trouble to prove it and was challenged with shoddy work that was, unfortunately, featured prominently on the Washington Post website.You can read their whole rebuttal here and it’s worth taking the time to do it. I’ve worked with some of the people involved such as Celinda Lake and I know for a fact that they are of the highest integrity. Moreover, they have no good reason to tilt this data — why would they? It would be liberating for women candidates if they didn’t have this extra burden to worry about.

This whole subject reminds me of the obtuseness of much of the commentary we heard about Hillary Clinton in 2008. One of the most memorable being this one:

Is It Sexist to Discuss Hillary’s Wrinkles?

Prompted by an unflattering photo of the 61-year-old senator that appeared on Drudge, commentators are discussing not only how Sen. Hillary Clinton looks in that shot (you can view it HERE), but whether the discussion is sexist or appropriate at all.

Rush Limbaugh started much of this conversation, saying “Americans are addicted to physical perfection, thanks to Hollywood and thanks to television. …There is this thing in this country that, as you age — and this is particularly, you know, women are hardest hit on this, and particularly in Hollywood — America loses interest in you, and we know this is true because we constantly hear from aging actresses, who lament that they can’t get decent roles anymore, other than in supporting roles that will not lead to any direct impact, yay or nay, in the box office.”

Noting that “the presidency ages the occupants of that office rapidly,” Limbaugh asked, “Will Americans want to watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis? And that woman, by the way, is not going to want to look like she’s getting older, because it will impact poll numbers. It will impact perceptions.”

Yeah. Women’s looks don’t matter at all. Even when we see this lovely piece on the front of the New York Times just this past week-end:

Stuart Stevens, the top strategist for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, declared to an audience of reporters at a breakfast last month that electing Hillary Rodham Clinton would be like going back in time. “She’s been around since the ’70s,” he said.

At a conservative conference earlier in the year, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, ridiculed the 2016 Democratic field as “a rerun of ‘The Golden Girls,’ ” referring to Mrs. Clinton and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is 70.

And Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, seizing on the Fleetwood Mac song that became a Clinton family anthem, quipped to an audience in Washington, “If you want to keep thinking about tomorrow, maybe it’s time to put somebody new in.”

The 2016 election may be far off, but one theme is becoming clear: Republican strategists and presidential hopefuls, in ways subtle and overt, are eager to focus a spotlight on Mrs. Clinton’s age. The former secretary of state will be 69 by the next presidential election, a generation removed from most of the possible Republican candidates.

Again, I’m reminded of one of the more pungent statements someone wrote in my blog comments back in 2008: “her neck looks like a folded quilt. Yuck.”

It’s not that men aren’t hit from time to time by ageism or looksism. It happened to Bob Dole and it happens to Chris Christie, just to pick two examples. But the lethal combination of ageism, lookisim and sexism that a woman like Hillary Clinton will be facing is far more potent than anything those fellows had to endure.

You don’t need a study to prove it, but NameItChangeIt did. The numbers don’t lie and neither do my own eyes.

*By the way, Ed Kilgore does a nice job with that New York Times report on the GOPs strategy to run against Hillary the old hag. Is the GOP really going to be able to position itself as the party of young hipsters? Really?

Update: Sure enough, here’s a perfect example.

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Whose interests are the secrets serving?


by digby

Yesterday’s Washington Post featured a pretty ruthless analysis of the government’s ongoing dishonesty with the American people regarding these secret surveillance programs. The beginning lays out the non-denial denials and other obfuscatory behaviors toward the US congress and the press since 9/11, including George Bush’s clumsy misdirection and the cutesy interview president Obama gave to the servile Charlie Rose a couple of weeks ago.

But this was an uncharacteristically bold characterization of what’s been going on:

[T]he crumbling secrecy surrounding the programs has underscored the extent to which obscuring their dimensions had served government interests beyond the importance of the intelligence they produced. 

Secret court rulings that allowed the NSA to gather phone records enabled the spy service to assemble a massive database on Americans’ phone records without public debate or the risk of political blowback. 

The binding secrecy built into the PRISM program of tracking international e-mail allowed the NSA to compel powerful technology companies to comply with requests for information about their users while keeping them essentially powerless to protest. 

The careful depiction of NSA programs also served diplomatic ends. Until recently, the United States had positioned itself as such an innocent victim of cyber intrusions by Russia and China that the State Department issued a secret demarche, or official diplomatic communication, in January scolding Beijing. That posture became more problematic after leaks by the former NSA contractor and acknowledged source of the NSA leaks, Edward Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong and is thought to be stuck at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow. 

I haven’t seen the mainstream press willing to lay that out so blandly in a regular news analysis before. The facts are what they are — and the secrecy has clearly served the government and its corporate partners very well far beyond any intelligence gathering for which they might have been designed. And we still have no way of knowing if its served them well in other, more political, ways.  Certainly, if you go back in history under both Democratic and Republican administrations, you can see that this is the sort of thing that distorted our policies and our politics for decades.  I see no reason to believe that either human nature or political incentives have changed since that time.

As for the diplomatic problem, I’m afraid I think it’s nonsense.  The US may have been whining that it was an innocent victim but I doubt very seriously that anyone believed them. This is a phony diplomatic game, not serious policy, and nobody should be too worried that somehow the US has lost its moral authority.  It never had any when it came to spying.  These are word games, not serious threats.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen if the current congress has any integrity whatsoever. The old ones were less protective of their prerogatives than we might remember, but they did follow through at times:

Clapper’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in March has drawn comparisons to other cases in which U.S. intelligence officials faced, under oath, questions that to answer truthfully would require exposing a classified program. 

In 1973, then-CIA Director Richard Helms denied agency involvement in CIA operations in Chile, a falsehood that led to him pleading no contest four years later to misdemeanor charges of misleading Congress. 

There is no indication that lawmakers have contemplated pursuing such a course against Clapper, in part because he subsequently corrected his claim, although there is disagreement over how quickly he did so.

Clapper has to be the worst spy chief ever. He went on TV after this was revealed and pretty much admitted to lying. But there’s no indication it’s going to be a problem for him. So, there’s little reason for any of them to stop doing it.

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by digby

I’ve been cheered by the major newspapers’ willingness to employ an independent ombudsman over the past few years, but often disappointed in their work. Usually, they duck the most important issues and when they do weigh in are far too willing to let the insider culture rest easy.

But Margaret Sullivan at the New York Times is an exception. Her opinions are fiercely independent and she takes the fundamental responsibility of journalism seriously. Take this one:

Is Mr. Greenwald a “blogger,” as a Times headline referred to him recently? That headline was atop a profile that did not use the word journalist to describe the columnist for The Guardian United States, the New York-based Web site associated with the British newspaper. At the time, I wrote (on Twitter) that I found the headline dismissive. There’s nothing wrong with being a blogger, of course – I am one myself. But when the media establishment uses the term, it somehow seems to say, “You’re not quite one of us.” (And that might be just fine with Mr. Greenwald, who has written disparagingly of some media people, whom he calls “courtiers of power.”) 

Bruce Headlam, who edits media coverage in The Times and who was an important voice in deciding that a correction was in order on the reference to Ms. O’Brien, has considered the subject. 

“I don’t consider ‘blogger’ an insult and I don’t consider ‘activist’ to be an insult, either,” he said. But he acknowledges that “I might be in the minority” on those points.
He also noted, rightly, that these matters have taken on more significance in the current climate, and could be crucial for Mr. Greenwald. (Under fire, the Obama administration has recently said that it won’t pursue journalists for doing their jobs.) 

On the flip side, but in the same context, the journalistic credentials of at least one established broadcaster came under attack in the last week. 

Frank Rich, writing about the NBC-“Meet the Press” anchor David Gregory, smacked him around (as did many others) for asking Mr. Greenwald why he “shouldn’t be charged with a crime” for “the extent he aided and abetted” Mr. Snowden, the N.S.A. leaker. 

In a New York magazine piece, Mr. Rich wrote: “Is David Gregory a journalist? As a thought experiment, name one piece of news he has broken, one beat he’s covered with distinction, and any memorable interviews he’s conducted that were not with John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin or Chuck Schumer.” And he derisively suggested that Mr. Gregory begin to host his network’s “Today” show, so that he can “speak truth to power by grilling Paula Deen.” 

So, who’s a journalist? I could explore the legislative and legal questions, and that may be something worth returning to in this space. (Decisions that have been made in interpreting New Jersey’s strong shield law are of particular interest, as is the language before the Senate now on the proposed federal law.) 

But for now, I’ll offer this admittedly partial definition: A real journalist is one who understands, at a cellular level, and doesn’t shy away from, the adversarial relationship between government and press – the very tension that America’s founders had in mind with the First Amendment. 

Those who fully meet that description deserve to be respected and protected — not marginalized.

Thank you. Unfortunately, far too many journalists are so obsessed with Greenwald’s personality and lack of decorum that they are ready to dismiss both his story and the underlying principles.  It is the most petty example of DC provincialism I’ve seen since the sickening display that was the Monica Lewinsky scandal. (And frankly, the group think that defined that embarrassing episode is back on display here as well.)

This is a period of transition for journalism.  The internet has scrambled the system — and exposed the elite press as a group of powerful people who identify with the power structure they serve instead of the people.  This is the essence of the Village critique — we have a group of wealthy celebrities and their social and professional friends in positions of power whose central conceit is that they are just regular folks who represent Real America.  I think their most illuminating characteristic is their total lack of self-awareness.

Here’s an example from David Gregory himself:

MR. GREGORY: My mother out in California, I presume, is watching this morning. She’s like a lot of Americans, worried about her job and wondering why not just bank lending, but something called nonbank lending, securitization–what is that, and why does that matter to her?

Just like Joe and Jane American everywhere, Dave’s mom is fearing for her financial future and would like an explanation for why she finds herself feeling so insecure.

I have an idea. Maybe Dave could get his wife, the former General Counsel for Fannie Mae, to explain all this high flying financial mumbo jumbo to her mother-in-law. And if worse comes to worse and Ma Gregory loses her job, maybe Dave could hire her to clean his multi-million dollar Nantucket vacation home.

It’s this sort of decadent myopia that gave rise to an earlier group of renegade journalists called the muckrakers. And interestingly, it was also partially driven by a change in technology:

Before World War I, the term “muckraker” was used to refer in a general sense to a writer who investigates and publishes truthful reports to perform an auditing or watchdog function. In contemporary use, the term describes either a journalist who writes in the adversarial or alternative tradition or a non-journalist whose purpose in publication is to advocate reform and change.
[…]
The muckrakers appeared at a moment when journalism was undergoing changes in style and practice. In response to yellow journalism, which had exaggerated facts, objective journalism, as exemplified by The New York Times under Adolph Ochs after 1896, turned away from sensationalism and reported facts with the intention of being impartial and a newspaper of record. The growth of wire services had also contributed to the spread of the objective reporting style…

In contrast with objective reporting, the journalists, whom Roosevelt dubbed “muckrakers”, saw themselves primarily as reformers and were politically engaged. Journalists of the previous eras were not linked to a single political, populist movement as the muckrakers were associated with Progressive reforms.

Maybe you think we’ve been perfectly well served by the journalism served up by the Village press, particularly in the last two decades in which we saw trumped up sex scandals, partisan impeachments, stolen elections (“get over it!”) wars based on lies, financial corruption on an epic scale and the evolution of a humongous, unaccountable police and military apparatus. If so, then you will not think there’s much need for muckraking and you can go about your business secure in the knowledge that the wealthy elite are serving you well.

If not, then at least being a little bit respectful of those who have the courage to go against the grain and expose these massive institutional failures might be a good idea.

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Horrible tragedy in Arizona. Are we allowed to talk about why?

by David Atkins

A heartbreaking loss of brave lives in Arizona as 19 firefighters perished battling flames:

A fast-moving wildfire in central Arizona killed 19 firefighters on Sunday, authorities said.

Arizona State Forestry Division spokesman Mike Reichling said the firefighters were fighting the blaze near the town of Yarnell, Ariz., about 85 miles northwest of Phoenix.

The fire, which investigators believe was started by lightning, has destroyed more than 200 homes.

The victims were from the Prescott Granite Mountain Hot Shots, an experienced group of firefighters who had battled blazes in New Mexico and Arizona in recent weeks.

“If you ever met them, you would meet the finest, most dedicated people,” Prescott Fire Chief Dan Fraijo said. “These are the guys that will go out there with 40, 50 pounds of equipment. They’ll sleep out there as they try to develop fire lines and put protection between homes and natural resources and still try to remain safe.”
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Authorities told the Associated Press that the 19 were caught while trying to deploy their fire shelters, tents designed to trap in breathable air and shield the firefighters from flames and heat.

If this had been a terrorist attack, it would be socially acceptable to do more than just offer sympathy and prayers for the victims. It would be acceptable to ask why it happened, and what we can do to stop it happening again.

But when it’s a scorching wildfire on one of the hottest days of a record-breaking heat wave in a world growing hotter every year unequivocally due to climate change, then we’re not supposed to talk about that. That’s called “politicizing tragedy.”

When twenty children are needlessly massacred by gunfire at a school, we’re not supposed to talk about why or do anything about it to impinge on the “liberty” of gun owners. When nineteen firefighters die in a hellish blaze in record heat as a consequence of climate change, we’re not supposed to talk about why or do anything about it that might impinge on the “liberty” of fossil fuel producers. But if three people die in a terrorist bombing, then suddenly we can immediately start talking about why, and we can spend billions shredding the first and fourth amendments to the Constitution in order to possibly prevent it from happening again.

Personally, I think it’s very important to discuss why horrors happen and do what we can to stop them. But it’s time we held all preventable tragedies to the same standard.

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Mr Integrity

by digby

South Carolina stands with Rand:

Standing in front of more than 100 South Carolina GOP activists in West Columbia Friday night, the Kentucky senator largely steered clear of the week’s two dominant, divisive issues that are tying his party in knots: Gay rights and immigration reform.

Instead, he diverted from his early presidential-primary-state speech script and went for the jugular on a topic that, while not necessarily timely, would surely please a military-friendly crowd: A full-throated defense of profiling.

“After 9-11 we had a special program for student visas . . . Why?” Paul asked. “Because 16 of the 19 hijackers were overstaying their students visas. Was it targeting? Was it profiling? Yes. Because only certain people are attacking us. Why don’t we use some brain sense to go after the people who are attacking us?” 

The guests ate it up, rewarding Paul with sustained thunderclaps. It was one of his biggest applause lines of the night. But it was also a curious statement from a likely 2016 White House contender who built his brand on a libertarian approach to government. This, from the same guy who stood on the Senate floor for 14 hours to protest the potential use of drones to target Americans?
[…]
So gone were Paul’s barbs about the IRS, his musings about diversifying the party and his lengthy critique of the immigration bill that’s dominated Congress for the first half of the year. Even his standard line of attack against Hillary Clinton was subdued. Instead, in addition to endorsing targeted screening at airports, he earned audible accolades for his call to sever foreign aid to hostile countries and a forceful defense of Israel’s right to exist.

The address was almost exclusively devoted to foreign affairs and tactics employed in the country’s struggle against terrorism — a marked change from his previous early state primary speeches and a subtle acknowledgment that he must prove he’s no softy when it comes to national security.
[…]
Hogan Gidley, a former state party official who advised Rick Santorum’s 2012 presidential bid, said it was evident Rand’s mission was to wipe away any perception that he was weak on defense.

“His father, rightly or wrongly, was saddled with being anti-military. I think he wanted to say, ‘I’m a little tougher’ from the foreign policy standpoint. South Carolinians love that stance. He wanted to get out front of being outflanked on the right on military issues,” Gidley said.

Rep. Joe Wilson, one of two members of the congressional delegation who attended the event, said the speech allayed fears he had about Paul’s posture on the military.

“He really did address the concern I had, which was his position relative to national defense. I had a misperception that he did not recognize national defense as a paramount function of government. But he really made it clear tonight he does,” Wilson said in an interview. “He reiterated something very important to me and to the people of South Carolina,, that he is a stalwart of a strong national defense. I was very pleased by his positive comments.”

There are striking parallels between Paul’s effort to win over more hawkish members of the party in South Carolina and his play last month in Iowa to assure social conservatives he shares their values if not all of their exact issue positions.

It’s a thin line to walk for a candidate-in-the-making whose libertarian streak helped define his identity, but could ultimately limit his ambitions. He is astute enough to address his vulnerabilities with large sections of the party. But with every speech or position that’s calibrated to win converts and broaden his appeal, there’s the risk that he could end up losing part of the fervent base built for him by his father.

Yeah well, who needs ’em? If he can get the social conservatives and the rabid hawks and gull a few silly Tea Partiers with some pablum about bail-outs, he’s in like Flynn. Of course, he’s just be a standard issue right winger at that point, but I’m going to guess that’s not much of a stretch.

This story about one of Rand’s close advisers, shows how he could cultivate that extra bit of revolutionary zeal to seal the deal:

The theocratic intentions of Christian Right leaders sometimes surface in unexpected ways. Most recently David Lane, a top Christian Right political operative and longtime behind-the-scenes “power broker” called for violent dominionist revolution in an essay published (and then taken down) by World Net Daily.

Lane has, among other things, been the national finance director for The Response, the 2011 prayer rally that served as the de facto launch of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s ill-fated run for president, as well as the organizer of the Texas Restoration Project, which had boosted Perry’s political career. He has worked with and for such GOP pols as Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Michelle Bachmann, and most recently, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). Lane currently leads the American Renewal Project of Don Wildmon’s American Family Association which is targeting twelve states for political development towards the 2014 elections.

Such nuts and bolts electoral work not withstanding, Lane called in his essay for Christians to “Wage war to restore a Christian America.”
[…]
Lane expresses frustration with what he regards as the superficial politics of press releases of “inside the Beltway” Christian Rightists. He calls for “champions of Christ to save the nation from the pagan onslaught imposing homosexual marriage, homosexual scouts, 60 million babies done to death by abortion and red ink as far as the eye can see.” The champions for Christ of his vision will “wage war for the Soul of America and trust the living God to deliver the pagan gods into our hands and restore America to her Judeo-Christian heritage and re-establish a Christian culture.”

“America’s survival is at stake,” he declares, “and this is not tall talk or exaggeration.”

“If the American experiment with freedom is to end after 237 years,” he suggests, “let each of us commit to brawl all the way to the end because,” he explains, quoting a famous radio address by Winston Churchill during the darkest days of the war with Nazi Germany: “Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.”

“You ask,” Lane continued, “What is our goal?” To wage war to restore America to our Judeo-Christian heritage with all of our might and strength that God will give us. You ask, “What is our aim?” One word only: victory, in spite of all intimidation and terror.”

The tie between the Pauls and Christian Reconstructionism is well documented and very creepy. It fits quite well with their mutual States’ Rights philosophy:

It might seem that Paul’s libertarianism is the very opposite of theocracy, but that’s true only if you want to impose theocracy at the federal level. In general, Christian Reconstructionists favor a radically decentralized society, with communities ruled by male religious patriarchs. Freed from the power of the Supreme Court and the federal government, they believe that local governments could adopt official religions and enforce biblical law.

“One of the things we forget is that when the Constitution was passed, even though the Bill of Rights said there was going to be no federal religions, every state in the union had basically a state religion and the Constitution was not designed to overturn that,” says Nolder. Among Reconstructionists, he says, “there’s a desire for a theocracy, but it has to be one from the bottom up, not from the top down.”

Reconstructionists take biblical morality far beyond traditional social issues. They believe that the Bible contains specific instructions on every aspect of life, including monetary policy, something they place great emphasis on. Many argue that there’s a biblical mandate for a gold standard. “The constant concern of The Old Testament law with the honesty of weights and measures was equally applicable to honest money,” writes North in his book An Introduction to Christian Economics. He claims that “legal tender laws are immoral; currency debasement is immoral; printed unbacked paper money is immoral.”

If Reconstructionism remains marginal, Deace believes that the broader movement of covenant theology is growing. “The younger generation of American Christians, a lot of them are turning away from premillennial dispensationalism” he says. “The emerging generation does not trust the traditional religious right. They think we’ve largely sold out and have compromised our faith. They’re attracted to the fact that Paul hates all the people they don’t trust and don’t like.”

With forays to Iowa and South Carolina, you can begin to see how Rand Paul might be clearing his path to to the White House:

[Ron]Paul has been able to create one of the strangest coalitions in American political history, bringing together libertarian hipsters with those who want to subject the sexually impure to Taliban-style public stonings. (Stoning is Reconstructionists’ preferred method of execution because it is both biblical and fiscally responsible, rocks being, in North’s words, “cheap, plentiful, and convenient.”) “I described it recently as people who are mixing the philosophies espoused in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion,” says Deace. We’re about to learn whether that can be a recipe for victory.

It’s a tall order, but if he can make that coalition work, there’s no reason he couldn’t add in some good old fashioned South Carolina militarism and turn it into a Big Tent full of weirdos.

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