Month: May 2014

When in doubt, make it secret

by digby

Here’s one of the creepier items you’ll read all day. Evidently, the states that execute the most people have put secrecy laws on the books allowing them to hide the sources for their execution drugs. It’s very hard to see how a state can justify such a thing, but apparently they’re just doing it:

The growing secrecy adopted by death penalty states to hide the source of their lethal injection drugs used in executions is being challenged in a new lawsuit in Missouri, which argues that the American people have a right to know how the ultimate punishment is being carried out in their name.

The legal challenge, brought by the Guardian, Associated Press and the three largest Missouri newspapers, calls on state judges to intervene to put a stop to the creeping secrecy that has taken hold in the state in common with many other death penalty jurisdictions. The lawsuit argues that under the first amendment of the US constitution the public has a right of access to know “the type, quality and source of drugs used by a state to execute an individual in the name of the people”.

It is believed to be the first time that the first amendment right of access has been used to challenge secrecy in the application of the death penalty.

Deborah Denno, an expert in execution methods at Fordham University law school in New York, said that more and more states were turning to secrecy as a way of hiding basic flaws in their procedures. “If states were doing things properly they wouldn’t have a problem releasing information – they are imposing a veil of secrecy to hide incompetence.”

“This is like the government building bridges, and trying to hide the identity of the company that makes the bolts,” said Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center. “Those involved in public service should expect public scrutiny in order to root out problems, particular when the state is carrying out the most intimate act possible – killing people.”

A Guardian survey has identified at least 13 states that have changed their rules to withhold from the public all information relating to how they get hold of lethal drugs. They include several of the most active death penalty states including Texas, which has executed seven prisoners so far this year, Florida (five), Missouri (four) and Oklahoma (three).

Wouldn’t it be smarter to leave behind our medieval ways once and for all and ban the death penalty? This is absurd.

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They’d rather kill their own children than admit a hippie was right about something

by digby

Bradblog caught Joe Scarborough defending Marco Rubio’s cretinous position on climate change — and then let the cat out of the bag: the problem isn’t that climate change isn’t real, it’s that liberals are extremely concerned about it. That’s right. If there’s one thing American conservatives really hate it’s extremism.

Scarborough: I don’t think it’s [the base’s rejection of] science. In fact, I know it’s not [the base’s rejection of] science…On this issue, I think, speaking of televangelists, I think the far left overplayed their hand. Back in ’02, ’03, ’04, ’05, Al Gore overplayed his hand. You can look at polls — don’t listen to me, look at the polling numbers from 2004, 2005, 2006 — Americans were actually bought in to the concept of climate change and that we need to move aggressively on it. Since that time, since the overreach, since there were the climate versions of the Salem Witch Trials, where if you didn’t believe in the most extreme view, that you were anti-science — not only did Republicans wander away from this issue, but check the polling — most Americans began wandering away from this issue. They overplayed it.

…I think a lot of Republicans might agree with Marco, reflexively, going against this sort of extremism, Willie [Geist], that I was talking about before, but I would guess, I don’t know, I haven’t seen polls on this, but certainly most of the Republicans I talk to really believe there is climate change, they are smart enough to believe that seven billion, eight billion people have had a huge impact on it, especially what’s happening in China — China’s the number one producer of damage to the environment now — but they’re not willing to just start shutting down factories and changing the way America does things tomorrow to throw millions and millions of people out of work. I don’t know. I think there’s some subtlety there.

Geist:You get the sense that yes, Republicans who disagree with this point of view do disagree, but they also resent being hit over the head with it for a decade and people saying, ‘Fall in line or else.’ It doesn’t mean they’re right, but you get that idea that this is now a sort of a reaction to that reaction from Al Gore 

Scarborough: (after insisting that he wasn’t bashing Gore but merely criticizing his “televangelist” approach) I think there have to be those people that are out there that are pushing hard and go as hard as they can go in one direction or another, and I’m really glad he did it and he drew a lot of attention to that. I personally believed that he overreached and that a lot of people overreached.

Brzezinski Why are we talking about Al Gore? If it was someone more substantial, we should talk more, but it was Marco Rubio overplaying to the base. I suggest we move on…In order to defend him you have to loop all the way around to Al Gore and extremism. It was a long road to defend him there. Think about that one. It took you five minutes to explain why Marco Rubio was okay in his answering and it wasn’t. It was a bad answer.

Scarborough: Then let me do it in five seconds. A lot of us [on the right] believe the left have overreached on this issue and we’re not going to throw people out of work because of their ideological rampages.

In fact, we’re going to stomp our little feet and hold our breath until the planet is unihabitable because we don’t like the icky liberals being all exercised about this thing. Also too: Al Gore is fat.

Keep in mind that Scarborough is supposed to be one of the more reasonable conservatives. He’s got a flagship show on the liberal cable news network he’s so reasonable.

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And he admits that he and others are rejecting the consensus of 95% of scientists because they don’t like hippies.

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From a corner of the fever swamp

by digby

Just checking in:

Last week, the Utah Sheriffs’ Association promised to defend the constitution even to the death — if necessary. Thousands of Americans have pledged to ignore gun registration requirements in New York alone. And millions of Americans are openly discussing the possibility of secession. We live in surreal times.

But this isn’t one-sided. Now, Obama is apparently asking his generals a question: are you willing to fire on American citizens? If not, then they can’t go up the ranks. This means Obama is readying the US military to literally shoot and kill Americans. What is the source for this? A Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

Is he correct? There’s really no telling. It’s impossible to know for certain. He’s made other strong claims, specifically connected to the Sandy Hook shooting. It’s best that we strongly doubt strong claims like this — still, this is the kind of news we should be extremely sensitive to, because “messing up” on something like this is a mistake you only get to make once. An interview with the source is below:

That claim, needless to day, been totally debunked. (This “source” also claimed that President Obama killed Andrew Breitbart and Tom Clancy…)

FWIW being a Nobel Prize “nominee” isn’t the same as being an Oscar nominee where “just being nominated is an honor.” Any crank can nominate any other crank — or themselves — by sending in a nomination. And since the whole process is secret you can claim that someone did it without any proof at all.

Anyway, here’s a short rundown on Garrow from a Daily Kos diarist.

Oh, and in case you are wondering why I’m writing about this kook, that video has nearly a million views on Youtube.


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An act of political suicide

by digby

Over at Salon today I take a little trip down memory lane reflecting on the conservative movement’s tax crusade of the last 30 years in light of an astonishing act of political suicide by a Georgia millionaire running for the Senate:

Ed Kilgore speculates that this is a sign of Perdue’s inexperience and wonders if his rivals will pounce. He’s being polite. While it may be true that the Obama administration was able to reverse some of the Bush tax cuts (against the will of the GOP) he knows very well that a Republican running on raising taxes has just invited the screeching harpies of Dante’s Inferno to descend upon his campaign and leave nothing behind but bleached, white bones. And so it goes:

Hear the audio for yourself…Perdue laughs about tax increases & says they’re a “reality”>> https://t.co/kzr0fpuG4y #gasen
— Karen Handel (@karenhandel) May 14, 2014

There is literally nothing more sacred to modern conservatism than the absolute commitment to cutting taxes. For a Republican to even slightly suggest raising them in any context whatsoever is like declaring that God is dead. 

Read on …

It’s increasingly all about the big money people

by David Atkins

E.J. Dionne has a great column detailing what’s really going on inside Republican circles:

The language commonly used to describe the battle going on inside the Republican Party is wrong and misleading. The fights this spring are not between “the grass roots” and “the establishment” but between two establishment factions spending vast sums to gain the upper hand.

Their confrontation has little to do with the long-term philosophical direction of the GOP. Very rich ideological donors, along with tea party groups, have been moving the party steadily rightward. Political correctness of an extremely conservative kind now rules.

This explains the indigestion some Republican politicians are experiencing as they are forced to eat old words acknowledging a human role in climate change. It’s why party leaders keep repeating the word “Benghazi” as a quasi-religious incantation, why deal-making with President Obama is verboten and why they stick with their “repeal Obamacare” fixation.

Dionne goes into how the recent Republican primary in Nebraska was a reflection of this big donor on big donor dynamic, and closes:

Thanks to Supreme Court decisions opening the way for unlimited and often anonymous campaign contributions, we are entering a time when “follow the money” is the proper rubric for understanding the internal dynamics of the Republican Party. Washington-based groups tied to various conservative interests and donors will throw their weight around all over the country, always claiming to speak for those “grass roots.” Primary voters will be left with a choice between two establishments that, in the end, differ little on what they would do with power.

This trend toward warring money factions isn’t just present on the Republican side. There’s quite a bit of it on the Dem side as well.

To be sure, not all big money donors want bad things. Tom Steyer is spending nine figures to get politicians to take climate change seriously. George Soros wants more Keynesian policies.

But the problem is that a world in which it’s all billionaires fighting each other is a world in which only a few voices are heard, self-interest usually runs rampant (most of these guys didn’t get rich by being generous), and the scope of acceptable public policy is extremely narrow and rarely ever hits the ultra-rich in their pocketbooks.

Rampant inequality is one thing. Allowing the plutocrats created by rampant inequality to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections is another. Together, they constitute a death sentence for American democracy.

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Hero ‘O the Year

by digby

A Kitteh!

The Cecily McMillan question

by digby

The following is a wonderful compendium of articles about the Cecily McMillan Occupy case. I urge you to read through it to get a good idea of the depth of the problem it illustrates.

See, what makes this story so astonishing is that it happened in New York, America’s greatest city, home of the media and the so-called liberal elite. Doesn’t that bother you — and make you wonder just how “liberal” our elites really are?

Where’s the pushback?

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Symptoms of greed and decline

by David Atkins

This screencap is from the front page of the L.A. Times as I write:

Notice a trend?

A near-record heat wave is causing wildfires all across California. These increasing heat waves are a direct product of climate change. One of the fires threatens a nuclear plant.

Big ag and fracking are both causing earthquakes.

There’s a shortage of nurses to actually take care of people.

And the big internet service providers are lobbying heavily to stop the FCC from classifying the Internet as a utility, something that should have been done two decades ago.

These are the signs of a society in decline, and in the grips of plutocrats. When do people get angry enough to start doing something about it?

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Pushing the wave


by digby

If you read Howie Klein’s Down With Tyranny on a regular basis you already know that the DCCC’s strategy this cycle under the alleged leadership of Steve Israel  is a clown show of epic proportions. There are examples all over the country of the Democrats backing the losing candidates over the ones who might win, ignoring winnable races and leaving vulnerable GOP incumbents alone.  But nothing reveals the depth of the incompetence better than this:

Ed Jany, the Marine and former cop, national and state Democratic leaders hailed as an ideal candidate to take on newly elected U.S. Rep. David Jolly, R-Indian Shores, in Pinellas County’s Congressional District 13, is dropping out of the race.

The sudden and surprise announcement comes days after a Tampa Bay Times report about him seemingly padding his educational background and resume.

Jany entered the race at the last minute — after Democrats more or less threatened a prominent African-American minister to keep him out of the contest. In a statement Jany said he has realized he does not have the time to run for office:

“It is with deep regret that I announce my withdrawal from the race for U.S. Representative in the Thirteenth District. In my professional capacity, I am responsible for coordinating some of the Command and Control for Security at the World Cup in Brazil this year, something I committed to doing some time ago. I wrongly assumed that I could maintain my professional work requirements while running for office, just as I was able to work full-time as a police officer while pursuing a full-time education and balancing my military service in the past. Unfortunately, the political process does not allow for me to continue my professional work, and I cannot afford to support my family while campaigning without an income. This has been a very tough decision that I’ve considered thoughtfully over the course of the last week, but it’s the best choice for my family right now.”

Suffice it to say, the folks at the DCCC have had better days.

I guess they didn’t have the time to vet this fine fellow, what with having to threaten the popular African American leader out of the race and all. Because who needs African American votes in Florida, amirite?

The story leaves out the best part, though. This guy was a Republican until two weeks before the Democrats endorsed him.

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“Other than the 4th Amendment what indispensible American liberties would he sacrifice?”

by digby

I catch up with Lindsey Graham’s senate race over at Salon today.  He’s not exactly setting the voters on fire — unless it’s to fire him.  Just this week the Charleston county Republicans censured him for failing to be conservative enough. Seriously.

And if he does pull out the nomination anyway, he’s got a handsome, neer-do-well, socialite scion of a very famous South Carolina political family preparing to run against him the general as a libertarian:

It’s unlikely that South Carolina won’t end up reelecting Lindsey Graham. But it could be a very interesting race and one that Ravenel seems willing to wage just to make Graham’s life miserable. And he has a specific reason, according to this letter to the editor from last February:

Shortly after the federal government’s domestic spy network was exposed last spring, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham went on national television to say he was “glad” the National Security Agency was monitoring, collecting and storing our personal information.

“I’m a Verizon customer,” Graham said. “I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the government if the government is going to make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist phone with somebody in the United States. I don’t think you’re talking to the terrorists. I know you’re not. I know I’m not.”

I’m curious: Other than the Fourth Amendment (which Graham is explicitly rejecting), what indispensible American liberties would he sacrifice?

That’s an unusual comment coming from a South Carolina Republican. But then Ravenel is not a Republican. As he says, “having gone to prison, I was emancipated from the Republican Party.” Isn’t there an old saying that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged and a liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested? It’s hard to think of a better reason to put some Republican crooks in jail than that.

Whatever happens, it promises to be wildly entertaining. Pass the mint juleps and crab cakes …

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