Month: December 2014

Back to states’ rights. As usual.

by digby

I have written already about my skepticism that bipartisan criminal justice reform is any more likely than bipartisan immigration reform in the current environment. When race is involved, the Republicans have a teensy little problem with their base.

So, this doesn’t surprise me either:

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee said Thursday that the Garner case would no doubt be raised, as would questions about Ms. Lynch’s view of the federal government’s asserting itself in recent cases in which white law enforcement officers have not faced state charges after being involved in the deaths of black Americans.

“Why does the federal government feel like it is its responsibility and role to be the leader in an investigation in a local instance?” asked Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who said all state and local options should first be exhausted. “I want to know what her priorities are.”

Greg Sargent give us some interesting analysis of this whole thing:

Tracking the Republican response to this probe will help shed light on whether there are genuine prospects for bipartisan cooperation on the larger issues that have been raised by the Garner and other killings. After the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, hopes rose for bipartisan action against the problem of police over-militarization, an area where there is already some agreement between the civil liberties left and the libertarian right, and beyond that, drug law sentencing and criminal justice reform, another area of left-right overlap.

One Democrat points out that Grassley, Sessions, and Cornyn — all of whom will play a big role in Lynch’s confirmation hearings — were out front in opposition to bipartisan reforms that would have reduced the sentences of many low level drug offenders, arguing they were soft on crime. That perhaps doesn’t bode well for the Garner killing to help spur bipartisan agreement on broader reforms, particularly among the Senate GOP old guard.

On this score, Senator Rand Paul could play an interesting role. After the Ferguson shooting, he came out with a remarkable statement in support of action against police militarization, and even acknowledged that it is understandable that African Americans see racial disparities in the criminal justice system. But Paul’s response also demonstrated lingering disagreements among civil liberties progressives and libertarian conservatives over how deeply the inequities of our criminal justice system are rooted in longstanding racial inequality.

And when Democrats, in a bit of clever trolling, invited Paul to join them in supporting a federal probe into the broader civil rights and racial profiling ramifications of the shooting, he did not, to my knowledge, respond.

This is what “states’ rights” are all about folks. Retaining the power to discriminate. The federal system has always been the instrument of power to force this country to end racist and other discriminatory policies. And the conservatives have fought it from the get. Libertarians are, obviously, not for federal power either, which reveals why Paul is twisted up like a pretzel on these race issues.

And by the way, neither Brown nor Garner were killed by military equipment so that isn’t the be all and end all. The underlying concept — that police believe they are patrolling a combat zone — is the problem and I suspect that won’t completely go away simply because the no longer dress like Robocop. It’s deeper than that.

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She’s still got it

by digby

Phyllis Schlafly that is. She filed an amicus brief in the pregnancy discrimination suit argued before the Supreme Court this week. (The issue was whether UPS could put a pregnant woman on unpaid leave and take away her health insurance while accommodating people with other temporary health issues by giving them non-strenuous tasks.)

Anyhow, this is what Schlafly’s organization the Eagle Forum said:

As with many well-meaning efforts at social engineering, Young’s reading of PDA would harm not only the intended beneficiaries but also coworkers (who must support the beneficiaries) and economic competitors (who are disadvantaged by the bestowing of preferential treatment on others).

I was going to snark about this but Kaili Joy Gray at Gawker did it so masterfully that I knew I couldn’t compete:

In other words, the PDA itself is a terrible thing because “social engineering.” That’s conservative speak for Big Government getting in the way of straight white Christian men who own property making all the rules, as Thomas Jesus Jefferson intended. And SCOTUS forbid, if employers are forced to start accommodating pregnant persons who happen to be women who have temporary restrictions on the work they can perform the same way they already accommodate other non-pregnant persons who have far better excuses for needing accommodations, how fair would that be? Un! It would be so unfair, even though accommodating not-pregnant employees is somehow not unfair, but that is different because it is different so there. Besides, accommodating Ms. Young’s request that she be assigned other duties during the course of her pregnancy would — and brace yourselves, this is utterly THE WORST — “forc[e] her predominantly male coworkers — who support their own spouses and children — to do the heavy lifting.” Won’t someone PLEASE think of the men even more?

Officially a lame duck

by digby

Once they start dancing …

The best picture of President Obama dancing with Santa you will see today. Promise. http://t.co/hG5NElKhxq pic.twitter.com/yfx05cfPkg
— Chris Cillizza (@TheFix) December 5, 2014

The good news is that, unlike some, he can actually dance:

The failure of human rights
by Tom Sullivan

Eric Posner of the University of Chicago Law School looks at how the human rights agenda crafted in the latter 20th century has foundered in the 21st. Nine “core” treaties with weak enforcement and loose interpretation. Idealistic perhaps, but too impractical. Inauspiciously, given this week in the U.S., Posner begins his long examination in the Guardian with examples of extrajudicial killings (summary executions) by police in Brazil, “not as a matter of official policy, but as a matter of practice.” (We can relate.) Posner writes:

The central problem with human rights law is that it is hopelessly ambiguous. The ambiguity, which allows governments to rationalise almost anything they do, is not a result of sloppy draftsmanship but of the deliberate choice to overload the treaties with hundreds of poorly defined obligations. In most countries people formally have as many as 400 international human rights – rights to work and leisure, to freedom of expression and religious worship, to nondiscrimination, to privacy, to pretty much anything you might think is worth protecting. The sheer quantity and variety of rights, which protect virtually all human interests, can provide no guidance to governments. Given that all governments have limited budgets, protecting one human right might prevent a government from protecting another.

Everybody gets to pick and choose. The Americans focused on political rights. The Soviets on social and economic ones. But even if enforcement is lax, the effort at least requires governments to take human rights seriously.

But while governments all use the idiom of human rights, they use it to make radically different arguments about how countries should behave. China cites “the right to development” to explain why the Chinese government gives priority to economic growth over political liberalisation. Many countries cite the “right to security,” a catch-all idea that protection from crime justifies harsh enforcement methods. Vladimir Putin cited the rights of ethnic minorities in Ukraine in order to justify his military intervention there, just as the United States cited Saddam Hussein’s suppression of human rights in order to build support for the Iraq war. Certain Islamic countries cite the right to religious freedom in order to explain why women must be subordinated, arguing that women must play the role set out for them in Islamic law. The right of “self‑determination” can be invoked to convert foreign pressure against a human-rights violating country into a violation of that country’s right to determine its destiny. The language of rights, untethered to specific legal interpretations, is too spongy to prevent governments from committing abuses and can easily be used to clothe illiberal agendas in words soothing to the western ear.

The result of NGO efforts to expand and secure human rights, says Posner, has been too top down, and more directed to satisfy the psychology of donors than the needs in individual cultures we fail at understanding. It is the same failure in top-down development economics. He suggests an approach to promoting well being in other countries that is “empirical rather than ideological.”

But given the turmoil of the last few weeks, perhaps America should get started by removing the beam from its own eye.

Would Brian Williams Go To Jail To Protect A Source? Analysis of The Newsroom, Episode 4

by Spocko

 Daniel Ellsberg once said that he got the Pentagon Papers out to impress a woman. In his book Secrets Duncan Campbell at the Guardian said this about Ellsberg’s story.

“It is also, in a way, a love story about how he fell for his wife, Patricia Marx, and her pivotal role in ensuring that the papers were leaked.”

In the forth Episode of The Newsroom, Reese, the president of the company that owns the network ACN, is explaining to the female producer MacKenzie, why they can’t run a big story. The new network owner’s lawyers had advised him that the Justice department would hit ACN with “crippling criminal fines.”

MacKenzie calls this horseshit and starts shouting about what everyone gave up for this story. Will, the anchor, might go to jail to protect the source. If the story doesn’t get out she feels that it was all for nothing. Reese tells her why he thinks Will has been so willing to stand up for journalism for this story.

Reese: “Since the day you got here Will has been having a battle with himself, is he a real journalist or is he just good on TV? Did you ever think he might be doing this for you?” 

Mac: “I’ve got his ring on my finger he’s not doing this to win my approval.”

Reese: “Then it would be the first thing I’ve seen him do that wasn’t. “

All this season I’ve been watching The Newsroom to see what Sorkin can tell me about some of the pressures that real people might feel in his fantasy network newsroom.

 I then compare what I see that meshes with the experiences of myself and others in the corporate world, the world of media and in our personal lives. My goal is to figure out how we might use those same pressures on the real network news to our benefit.

The Will/ MacKenzie dynamic is something that might be hard to replicate with the journalists at the cable and network news. Lots of people assume that the network news people have no values. But I don’t think that is correct. I think that they are constantly trying to balance competing values and looking for excuses or reasons to follow one over the other. They tell themselves things like ‘live to fight another day” when they back away from a story.

I wonder, do any of the Sunday show hosts or network news anchors have a MacKenzie in their lives? Do they care what anyone thinks about their journalism? Are they looking for an excuse to not do the best they can, or a reason to do it?

In this episode the broadcast version of the Snowden-like story is squashed because of nervous lawyers’ opinion and the phrase, “crippling criminal fines.”

Of course they could be wrong, but it is a standard acceptable excuse to a corporation to not run a story. Blame the government! It will cost us too much! They have internalized that their duty is to the shareholders, not to the public. (Go ahead and say it’s all about money, money, money, but remember, MSNBC didn’t care about the money when it canceled the highly rated and profitable Donahue show. News Corp kept the money losing Glenn Beck Show on the air with no advertisers.)

 Sorkin has shown us that money, “crippling fines,” have the biggest impact on the network’s ultimately behavior.

If the parent corporation really wanted to make money on Sunday mornings shows they wouldn’t have Chuck Todd talking to President McCain every week. They have other reasons for keeping those shows on.

Sure we can beg Chris Matthews, George Stephanopolis or Chuck Todd to honor their inner MacKenzie, but they might not have one. Instead, why don’t we push the institutional investors, AKA, “The Almighty Shareholders” on how unprofitable the Sunday shows and the news divisions are?

Then the parent corp will start talking about its duty and quoting from the ignored FCC charters about “serving the public.” They would be making long speeches about how essential the news is and how it doesn’t have to make money.

When the TV networks decided that serving the public came after serving the shareholder, they became vulnerable to the same whims of advertisers as a sitcom. When they saw being “the press” as a way to make money from the access privileges and didn’t feel the need to fulfill their other press duties, they became vulnerable to Wall Street’s demand for quarterly profits.

In the end of the episode we see how people who try to hang onto their values in the network TV world do it. MacKenzie gets the story to a principled journalist, a 71 year old woman at the AP. The network that should have benefited from the scoop, ACN, won’t. No guts, no glory.

Charlie, the network news president, thinks he has found someone who shares his values who will buy the network. But it turns out he was suckered by another rich person using the upcoming sale of the network as leverage for her own purposes.

I think this is Sorkin’s way of reminding us that money people always have their own agenda that is only tangentially related to what a company actually does. They will say they are on the side of quality or schlock, as long as they get what they want at that time.

If “The Almighty Stockholders” don’t buy into the fundamental difference of owning a “press entity” vs owning a Content Creator, they will let “The most trusted name in news” become a slogan and nothing more.

Network News Brands and Their Value

Is the news network brand damaged when they fail to identify who is paying retired generals pushing drone strikes and bombings? Is their paid compensation from Raytheon or General Dynamics relevant? Or doesn’t it matter if “everyone is doing it?” Does that mean failing to identify the drug companies behind doctors is next? Would that hurt their brand? Why identify one funding source and not the other?

Sorkin is also showing us that individuals can maintain their values in an organization that says it can’t afford to have them. Right now the individuals pay the price. At one point in this episode MacKenzie challenges the source to flee to Venezuelan or face a grand jury instead the ACN staff. The source responds,

“Do you really think the price for telling the truth should be that high?”

MacKenzie shakes her head, “No I don’t.”

Who is paying the price for the failure of our network news? We know who benefits.

To quote John Stewart to the hosts of Crossfire, “Stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop. Stop hurting America.”

He’s got a crush on Hillary


by digby

I know I’m not the intended audience for this thing being a west coast commie elitist and all. But I am a country music fan.  And, I’m sorry, but this was hard to take:

God this is going to be a tough couple of years isn’t it?

I do think it’s interesting that they have decided to use the 2008 campaign as a sort of continuum. I have been making the point that since that primary was so close the subliminal decision was for Obama to go first and then it would be Hillary’s turn in 2016. Aside from all the sentimental dreck about Clinton being a mother and wife just like this working class white male’s (which makes her oh so wonderful) that seems to be part of the message here.

I’m just praying this thing isn’t an ear worm.  I’ve been trying to get Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” out of my head for days but this is much worse.

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White victims everywhere

by digby

I did a piece this morning at Salon about Eric Garner, Michael Brown, “black on black crime” and the true victims in all this: white people. It seems like we just can’t get a break in this society:

The ongoing conversation about race in the U.S. has evolved in recent years to include a lament from white Americans that they are the real victims of racism. Yes, that’s a fairly bizarre interpretation of how our society operates but it’s a surprisingly widespread belief among a certain sub-group of Americans. In some ways this idea goes all the way back to the Civil War when Southern slave owners felt they were being put-upon by non-slave owners by not being allowed to expand their institution into new states and so staged the most epic hissy fit of our nation’s history. They always felt persecuted by people they believed were trying to destroy their “way of life,” but the loss of that war was the catalyst for an ongoing sense of victimization, often believed to accrue to the benefit of African-Americans. The civil rights movement and resulting federal action to deny states and cities the right to discriminate further inflamed those feelings. A part of white America believes, and has always believed, that African-Americans are at the heart of all their troubles.

Back in the 1950s and ’60s the big victimization was white children being forced to attend public school with African-American children. We all know the story of how viciously some people fought that change. Just as viciously they fought being forced to accommodate black people in business in the same way they accommodated whites. The denial of “separate but equal” was seen as a terrible affront to their decency, both because it required them to serve blacks but also because it made it appear that they were not decent people. After all, hadn’t they gone out of their way to allow blacks to have their own separate society within which they would have all the same opportunities as whites. How could they be so ungrateful for that generosity?

It goes on to talk about more recent tales of white victimization at the hands of the all powerful black community including some cops who feel they’re being discriminated against because black officers aren’t scrutinized for racial bias when they shoot black suspects.

It’s always something.

Read on here.

“Each of us has to grapple with some hard truths about race and justice in America”

by digby

Nice speech by Clinton:

I want to say a few words about the  pain and frustration that many Americans are feeling about our criminal justice system,  I know that (applause) a lot of hears are breaking and we are asking ourselves, aren’t these our sons?  Aren’t these our brothers?  I’m very please that the DOJ will be investigating what happened in Ferguson and Staten island. (cheers) Those families and those communities and out country deserve a full and fair accounting, as well as whatever substantive reforms are necessary to ensure equality, justice and respect for every citizen.

Now more broadly, each of us has to grapple with some hard truths about race and justice in America, because despite all the progress we’ve made together, African Americans, most particularly African American men are still more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes and sentenced to longer prison terms.  And when one stops and realizes a third of all black men face the prospect of prison during their lifetimes, what devastating consequences that has for their families and their communities and all of us.  The United States has less that 5% of the world’s population yet we have almost 25% of the world’s total prison population.  Now that is not because Americans are more violent or criminal than others around the world, in fact that is far from the facts.  But it is because we have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance.  And I personally hope that these tragedies give us the opportunity to come together as a nation to find our balance again.

All over the country there are creative and effective police departments demonstrating that it is possible to keep us safe and reduce crime and violence without relying on unnecessary force or excessive incarceration,  So let’s learn from the best examples.  Let’s invest in what works. Let’s make sure that federal funds to state and local law enforcement are used to bolster best practices rather buy weapons of war that have no place in our streets or contribute to unnecessary force or arrests. (applause) And I support the president’s announcement of a  task force on policing that will make recommendations in about 90 days.  He’s proposed funding for technology and training which are important steps.

But as we move forward we can’t leave it to presidents, governors, mayors,  police commissioners and chief. The most important thing that each 9f us can do is to try even harder to see the world through our neighbor’s eyes, to imagine what it is like to walk in their shoes, to share their pain and their hopes and their dreams.  These tragedies did not happen in some faraway place.  They did not happen to some other people,  These are our streets, our children, our fellow Americans, and our grief.

I like this a lot better than some pablum about how we need to tell nice bedtime “stories about ourselves.” Admitting you have a problem is the first step toward dealing with it.

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QOTD: John Rizzo

by digby

Where’s Joseph Heller when you need him?

This is John Rizzo, former general counsel for the CIA kvetching about the torture report:

“Just because something is leaked doesn’t mean it’s still not secret. A national security secret is still a national security secret until the government says otherwise.”

Hookay. Evidently, we’re all just supposed to pretend we don’t know what we know because the government tells us we’re not supposed to know it.

Jesus H. Christ. These people are scary.

That quote is from this article revealing the details of the torture report “negotiations” in which Dianne Feinstein and the White House/CIA worked out what the American people are allowed to know about how their government tortures people and the foreign countries that help them do it.

The argument between the WH/CIA and the Senate Democrats is interesting, but this should be of interest as well:

The summary is expected to reignite the debate over whether the CIA’s coercive interrogation techniques in the first years of the war on terror amounted to torture. Although the summary report is said to not use the word “torture,” officials said it would describe practices that any layman would understand as torture.

“We tortured some folks,” President Barack Obama said in July. “We did some things that are contrary to our values.”

The heart of the substantive dispute between the two major parties is whether the harsh interrogation techniques that President Obama has called “torture” produced valuable intelligence that led to the capture of al-Qaeda operatives. Republicans, as well as former CIA director Leon Panetta and a former acting director, Mike Morrell, have said that it did.

Originally there had been bipartisan support for the majority staff’s investigation, and the committee’s Republican staff was initially part of the investigation — but it withdrew early in the process. Even after the Republican staff disowned the investigation, some Republican senators continued to support declassification, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

The committee’s release will include a written rebuttal from the CIA and a dissent from Republicans. That critique is expected to make the point that the Senate Democratic staffers who conducted the research never interviewed CIA officials for their report and make assessments that are contradicted by other classified information not included in the final public report.

Does anyone doubt that presidents will authorize torture in the future if the CIA tells them they need to do it? I don’t.  It is no longer a taboo. It’s simply a matter of when it might be necessary. That’s what happens when you refuse to punish people for violating the taboo.

This afternoon, representatives of various groups delivered a petition with nearly 200,000 signatures to Senator Mark Udall’s office requesting that he enter the report into the congressional record.

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Taking it to the streets

by digby

Here’s a link to find Eric Garner protests around the country. There are a ton of them in California.  All the UC campuses did walk-outs.

I’m going to head down to the one in Santa Monica this evening.  I’m sure there’s one near you as well.

H/t to Daily Kos

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