151 search results for ""14th amendment""

Devolution for some of the people

by digby

As always, Adele Stan nails the story when it comes to the connections among the far right fringies. In today’s piece she draws together the strands that bring Ron Paul and the lunatic Christian Reconstructionists together. I urge you to read the whole thing — it’s quite illuminating. Here’s the conclusion:

Ron Paul seeks to shrink the federal government to minimal size not because it intrudes in the lives of individuals, but because it stands in the way of allowing the states and localities to enact laws as they see fit — even laws that govern people’s behavior in their bedrooms.

Here’s what Paul published on the Web site of Lew Rockwell — allegedly one of the authors of his racist, homophobic newsletters — about the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas that struck down the state’s anti-sodomy laws, which prohibited sex between men:

The Court determined that Texas had no right to establish its own standards for private sexual conduct, because gay sodomy is somehow protected under the 14th amendment “right to privacy.” Ridiculous as sodomy laws may be, there clearly is no right to privacy nor sodomy found anywhere in the Constitution. There are, however, states’ rights — rights plainly affirmed in the Ninth and Tenth amendments. Under those amendments, the State of Texas has the right to decide for itself how to regulate social matters like sex, using its own local standards. But rather than applying the real Constitution and declining jurisdiction over a properly state matter, the Court decided to apply the imaginary Constitution and impose its vision on the people of Texas.

This plays neatly into the hands of Paul’s Christian Reconstructionist friends, who seek the destruction of the federal government for the opportunity to implement “God’s law” on earth. Via Warren Throckmorton’s invaluable Web site, comes this quote from the Christian Reconstructionist Bojidar Marinov, who writes of why “theonomists,” as Reconstructionists define themselves, should root for Ron Paul:

The theonomic solution to the problems of sodomy and abortion can not be achieved at the Federal level because at that level liberals outnumber conservatives 20 to 1. And theonomic Christians are almost non-existent at that level. It is only when the socialist state is dismantled and power returned back to the states and the counties that we will be able to successfully deal with the other social and moral issues. As long as sin is protected at the Federal level, our political job as Christians is to dismantle the Federal bureaucracy and return all power to the local communities. Therefore, the great battle is against the socialist state.

Given that, Ron Paul is the man with the best position to work for that goal on the national level.

I continue to wonder why Ron Paul is considered a libertarian. He’s an isolationist Tenther. If that’s your philosophy, then fine. But I think an awful lot of libertarians are missing the bait and switch.

Update: There’s a lot of talk about how all this libertarian white supremacy was just a political pact with the devil 30 years ago, along the lines of the Southern Strategy. That may be true. But it seems that Ron Paul has bought his own hype, if that’s the case.

He could be crusading to end the drug war, for instance, on a moral or philosophical level. But as with his defense of Lawrence as a states’ rights issue, he isn’t. He crusading for it to be devolved to a state by state issue. That is not the same thing.

Dealing with Terrorists
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

A slight glimmer of good news today is that an increasing number of commentators and high-level Democrats are unafraid to use the word “terrorism” to describe Republican tactics on the debt ceiling. For instance, here’s Joe Nocera today in the New York Times:

You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them.

These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took…

As has been explained ad nauseam, the threat of defense cuts is supposed to give the Republicans an incentive to play fair with the Democrats in the negotiations. But with our soldiers still fighting in Afghanistan, which side is going to blink if the proposed cuts threaten to damage national security? Just as they did with the much-loathed bank bailout, which most Republicans spurned even though financial calamity loomed, the Democrats will do the responsible thing. Apparently, that’s their problem.

For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough. After all, they’ve gotten so much encouragement.

And Joe Biden, courtesy of Politico:

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.

The “terrorism” rhetoric from Democrats is a day late and a dollar short, of course. Results are all that matter, and cynical observers might be inclined to see this sort of language as part of the kabuki act, an attempt to appease liberal voters after giving away half of the entire discretionary spending budget.

Still, the recent willingness to call a spade a spade is a good sign, a flicker of hope in an ocean of darkness. But better still would be action to take away the terrorists’ tools. Joan McCarter aptly highlighted the conservative intent, clearly outlined by both Mitch McConnell and Grover Norquist, that the Republicans intend to use the debt ceiling as a tool to hold the nation hostage to their extremist will:

MCCONNELL: It set the template for the future. In the future, Neil, no president—in the near future, maybe in the distant future—is going to be able to get the debt ceiling increased without a re-ignition of the same discussion of how do we cut spending and get America headed in the right direction. I expect the next president, whoever that is, is going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again in 2013, so we’ll be doing it all over.

The longest-lasting impact of this whole farce has been to create yet another structural impediment to progressive change in Washington. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson describe this sort of thing in their tremendous new book Winner-Take-All Politics as a “ratchet effect”: hidden, arcane structural effects whose result is to create nearly unstoppable advantages for big business, and insurmountable obstacles economic justice for the American People. Other ratchets include the filibuster, unequal vote apportionment in the Senate, “phased out” tax cuts that never really phase out, changes to the way unemployment is calculated, etc.

Now the debt ceiling can be added to that list as perhaps one of the biggest, most important such ratchets of all time.

These ratchets are the tools of the GOP terrorist trade. If Democrats are actually serious about countering this sort of terrorist activity instead of just talking about it, they will move to eliminate as many of these structural hurdles as possible. That should already have happened with the broken filibuster rule, but Senate Democrats didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger on it.

The debt ceiling ratchet is an existential crisis for progressives and for the nation. If the GOP is allowed to continue to use this ratchet, the nation will never be able to make the infrastructure investments it needs. That means actually following through on the 14th Amendment solution Joe Biden originally threatened, even at the expense of expanded Executive power. The debt ceiling has always been somewhat preposterous: how is it Constitutional to have to approve debt for spending that has already been approved? Isn’t that pretty much the definition of calling into question the “full faith and credit of the United States?”

If Democrats are actually serious about their recent rhetoric, they will need to nip the terrorists in the bud by removing this latest ratchet from their arsenal.

Update: Or maybe not. Always count on Democrats backing off once they start to gain rhetorical momentum:

As we covered yesterday, meeting with anxious House Democrats yesterday, the Vice President heard from Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Penn., who said “the Tea Party acted like terrorists in threatening to blow up the economy.”

Doyle used the term several times. What happened next is in dispute. Several sources told Politico that the Vice President responded by saying, “they have acted like terrorists.”

Other sources told ABC News that the vice president said something along the lines of “if they have acted like terrorists, we’re taking the nuclear weapon away from them.”

The Vice President told CBS News’ Scott Pelley, “I did not use the terrorism word…What happened was there were some people who said they felt like they were being held hostage by terrorists. I never said that they were terrorists or weren’t terrorists, I just let them vent. I said, ‘Even if that were the case, what’s been happening when you now have taken and paid the debt and move that down so we can now discuss, the nuclear weapon’s been taken out of anyone’s hands.’”

One reporter today asked White House press secretary Jay Carney about reports that the Veep had used the term, wondering if “the president thinks that’s appropriate discourse?”

“No, he doesn’t, and neither does the vice president,” Carney said. “And I think the vice president spoke to this and made clear that he didn’t say those words, and I think the congressman in question has said that he regrets using them.”

I have no doubt that Biden actually said it, because it’s truth, and because Joe Biden is known to speak his mind.

But the Village pearl clutchers would tut tut at the use of such (accurate) incendiary language. We can’t be having that, of course.

The House Vote

by digby

Wow. This is a great way to make this vote for The Deal a nearly sacred act:

@Rep_Giffords Gabrielle has returned to Washington to support a bipartisan bill to prevent economic crisis. Turn on C-SPAN now

Giffords being there adds a poignancy to the whole thing that will take the sting out of the horror. I don’t know whose idea it was, but it’s very clever.

The good/bad news is that the bill is so bad that Republicans wanted to take credit for it so they didn’t make the Dems do their dirty work for them and pass the bill so at least the whole caucus isn’t on the hook. That was the final ignominy that I’d been predicting and I’m glad, for their sake, to be wrong. A few Democrats were allowed to maintain some shred of their integrity so that’s good. On the other hand, if they’d all said no, we’d be looking at a different picture right now…

And they could have — Biden told them earlier that the president would be willing to use the 14th amendment if they couldn’t get it done.(Of course Representative Giffords returning for the purpose of supporting the bill would have made them look churlish…) Too bad. It would have been quite the fireworks.

On the other hand, Giffords looks well and everyone seemed genuinely happy to see her and have something positive to cap off this hideous process. You can’t blame them.

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Trigger Happy
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

As the default deadline approaches in two short days, the scrambling in Washington continues. The deal reportedly on the table involves $900 billion in cuts, followed by a Super Committee tasked with figuring out $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction–probably through a mix of mostly cuts but some revenues, at the discretion of the Super Committee.

That general outline seems to be the basis of every plan under discussion. The key negotiating point right now seems to be the so-called “trigger”: namely, what happens if the Super Committee doesn’t come to an agreement on the $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction, and/or Congress refuses to pass the Super Committee’s recommendations. The “trigger” is designed to be very painful to both sides should they not agree to the Super Committee’s suggestions. And what is that trigger as it stands now?

If the committee fails to reach $1.2 trillion, it will trigger an automatic across the board spending cut, half from domestic spending, half from defense spending, of $1.5 trillion. The domestic cuts come from Medicare providers, but Medicaid and Social Security would be exempted. The enforcement mechanism carves out programs that help the poor and veterans as well.

Basically, the trigger is designed to have Democrats wail about Medicare cuts, and Republicans wail about defense cuts. As anyone with an ounce of sense knows, however, Republicans will insist on taking more hostages when it comes time to approve the Super Committee’s recommendations, and they will be just as intransigent against any revenue increases in the Super Committee’s recommendations as they were to the revenue increases in the current fight. That is why Boehner is actively trying to scuttle the defense cuts in the trigger currently on the table.

But keep in mind that the Tea Party types that have given Boehner such headaches aren’t actually all that scared of defense cuts. Many of them believe in cutting all government spending, military spending not excepted. These people hate every government program FDR used to pull us out of the Great Depression, including the massive government spending jobs program that was World War II. Which means that a great portion of Bachmann’s House and Demint’s Senate will happily take Pentagon spending hostage as a way to extract even more tax and spending cuts.

That is why John Kerry said yesterday that revenue increases must be part of the trigger, since taxes are the only thing that scare Republicans enough to actually let a hostage live:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) isn’t saying why both sides aren’t any closer to a debt deal after a day filled with feverish negotiations Saturday, but Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) spelled it out during a floor speech Saturday night. …

“You do not just cut, you also have to have the possibility of revenue,” he said. “Because if you do not have the possibility of revenue, then the side that only wants to cut can wait for nothing to happen and the cuts take place automatically. There is no threat to them. There is no leverage for them to come to agreement on the other things.”

So far, the “or else” has focused on a trigger that would slash spending across the board — including for entitlement programs like Medicare, a near-sacred program for Democrats, as well as to defense spending, which Republicans historically have sought to protect. One of the models for the so-called trigger goes back to the Reagan era when, in 1984, Congress passed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act in 1984, which included a trigger imposing draconian across-the-board spending cuts unless hard-and-fast deficit reduction goals were met.

Back then, during the Cold War anti-communist fervor, Republicans were dead-set against cuts to defense spending so the threat of an across-the-board cut that included slashing defense spending was the equivalent of “shared pain.” Fast forward to 2011, however, and that threat no longer packs the same punch. Tea Party conservatives are eager to draw down U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and don’t believe that nation-building is helping efforts to combat al-Qaeda or international terrorism.

So Democrats want to ensure real leverage and are demanding that any so-called trigger include revenue raisers.

Within the confines of the already preposterous “deal” in which accepting the deficit recommendations of an unaccountable Gang-of-Six-style Super Committee is the “best” possible outcome, John Kerry is right. Revenues are an essential part of the whatever trigger is put in place.

But today’s reports indicate that whatever backbone Kerry was suggesting Democrats might have, appears to have disappeared. None of the reports mentions anything about revenues as part of the trigger–which is fairly obvious since Boehner appears to believe he can get away with scrapping even the Pentagon cuts.

Or maybe not. Nancy Pelosi is suggesting the current deal may not pass the House:

“We all may not be able to support it,” she said. “And maybe none of us will be able to support it.”

Liberals in her caucus are set to revolt. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), a leader among House progressives, blasted the deal in an official statement earlier Sunday.

“”This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it,” he said.

And the details may become even less palatable for Democrats, as Republicans grit their teeth over potential defense spending cuts in the bill.

But no word on whether the lack of revenue provisions in the trigger have anything to do with House Democrats’ revolt. Hopefully they do. Within the context of a horrible, no-good bill, insisting on such revenue as part of the trigger might be the best salvage Democrats can hope for at the moment. If Dems do stand up for this, the only question then becomes whether Wall St. will force enough of the GOP to the table, or whether we go forward with the 14th Amendment route.

In all likelihood, though, we’ll get neither. The current “deal” already constitutes a series of Democratic caves to GOP hostage-taking, and the details of the trigger will probably be no exception.

Fingerprints

by digby

Obviously, I don’t have any more idea of how this is finally going to come down than anyone else has at this point. It’s clear that the GOP is milking this for every last drop and the leadership can’t satisfy its greedy teabaggers with mere assurances that there will be more to come down the road. But one thing is looking more and more to me to be the sad, obvious outcome and it’s something I thought would happen from the beginning: the Democrats are going to pass a terrible, contractionary bill filled with spending cuts that will devastate the economy and affect their own constituents far more than the opposition.

If it’s Reid’s bill, which we’re all supposed to be rooting for at this point, at a minimum it will attach the names of liberal politicians to the aforementioned spending cuts and the Super Congress that will undoubtedly force cuts to all the safety net programs and it will spell the end of any vestige of rational economic thinking on the left as well as the right. That doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.

The answer at this point is to punt on all negotiations and have the president use the 14th Amendment remedy. It would be risky, of course. After all, the market Gods with the apt names of “Standard” and “Poors” (helped by the centrist Dem eunuchs who serve at their pleasure) have joined the Tea Party and decreed there must be horrifying, painful austerity. But all the backroom deals on the table are so bad that it is preferable at this point to take a chance with some bold leadership than go through with any of them.

As I said, I don’t think this will happen. I think Democrats will pass this bill and the Democratic President will sign it. And honestly, I’m not sure there’s a worse outcome.

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Torture Zombie

by digby

Wow. If I didn’t know better I would think that this man was in the employ of America’s most hated enemies. It’s hard to think of a more destructive person:

[T]he debate doesn’t simply involve warring economists. Instead, one of the louder voices belongs to David Addington, the architect of the George W. Bush administration’s harsh interrogation policies and a former chief of staff for then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

Addington has taken on a new role as enforcer of tea party dogma during the intensifying partisan bickering over the debt ceiling. From his perch as the Heritage Foundation’s vice president for domestic and economic policy, Addington is throwing verbal thunderbolts at House Speaker John Boehner’s current debt-ceiling proposal, which he argues will pave the way to tax increases…

Addington kept a low profile during the Bush years, granting no interviews and largely shunning lawmakers from either party. But he wielded enormous power behind the scenes, helping Cheney craft the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program and most of its detention initiatives.

Critics of those policies say they’re horrified by Addington’s reemergence onto the public stage.

“To see this person who led the country into legal and moral disaster resurface as a respected commentator is somewhat galling,” said Ben Wizner, the litigation director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “Addington was as responsible as anyone else for the U.S. becoming a torturing nation. He has done damage to the U.S. that will take decades to reverse.”

Addington didn’t respond to e-mails seeking comment, but Heritage Foundation spokesman James Weidman noted that Addington had handled domestic issues for Cheney as well as national-security ones.

This would be the problem with not playing the blame game or looking in the rear view mirror. If you don’t destroy these zombies’ ability to wield their malevolent influence, they just keep coming back. Some day people will realize that they are dangerous, even when they’re out of office.

Some liberal legal scholars—citing the fourth section of the 14th Amendment, which says “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned”—believe that Obama has the power to disregard the congressionally imposed debt ceiling. The White House has disregarded that advice, preferring to continue the to-date fruitless negotiations with Boehner and Republicans. That means Addington, as strong a proponent of unbridled executive branch authority as can be found in either party, is now in the strange position of supporting lawmakers trying to bind a president’s hand.

That’s just hilarious. There is no such thing as hypocrisy or intellectual consistency among conservative zombies. They just eat your brains and move on.

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Go ahead and fight but you can’t possibly win

by digby

I hope that everyone remembers the day the constitution changed to make the House majority the supreme ruling body of the United States of America:

So the proper way to see the current negotiations are in the context of watching both sides surrender. Republicans, as I’ve argued, are having to do most of the surrendering; what they’re going to get will be nothing remotely close to what they bid, and most of the drama of the past weeks has been trying to find a way to convince the House Crazy Caucus of that.

This is just funny. The House Republicans have gotten a Democratic president to agree to trillions of dollars in domestic spending cuts in the middle of an ongoing economic downturn featuring 9.2% unemployment. No, it appears they may not manage to privatize Social Security or invade Cuba, but it’s a pretty good job of work they got accomplished considering that the debt limit vote has always passed before without any deals at all.

Meanwhile, learn to take your licks Democrats — and thank them for the privilege of being allowed to voice your difference — because regardless of whether you have a Senate majority and a Democratic president in the White House with legendary political gifts, this country is run by the House Republicans and there’s nothing you can do about it:

But Democrats will have to surrender too. In that context, the question becomes what, exactly, they want to give up. Of course Democrats are upset about coming cuts to programs they believe are vital to the nation, and of course they’re upset about what they see as nonsense economic policy, and of course they’re upset, for that matter, about the possibility that they may make their best deal only to find that House Republicans who persist in believing things that are not true will still spike the who deal and send the economy into a tailspin anyway. And of course liberals should be pushing for the best deal they can get, and fighting for their priorities.

But the bottom line is that whether it’s associated with the debt limit or with FY 2012 spending bills, Republicans are going to get some of what they want, there’s no magic way — not the 14th amendment, not the McConnell plan, not brilliant negotiating or brilliant speeches by the man in the White House — to make that go away. What we’re seeing now, therefore, is Democrats coming to grips with that reality, and battling over what specific losses they should absorb.

Right. And next time, when Republicans ask for the total destruction of the Federal Government we must pray that they “surrender” again and agree to only destroy Medicare and Social Security. But the good news is that you have every right to fight your little hearts for what you believe in as long as you understand that it’s inevitable you will lose.

The problem with all this is that we know that the president wanted to do a Big Transformational Deal To End All Deals since before he came into office and it is equally clear that he saw this as an opportunity not a roadblock to his agenda. So this idea that it was thrust upon the poor hapless president and his party is wrong. All negotiations have at least two parties or they aren’t negotiations. And in our government system one of the parties holds the White House and one half of the congress. They are not powerless and they do have leverage over the Republicans. The idea that one faction in the House of Representatives trumps everything else is simply not true.

If that were true, Bill Clinton would never have survived impeachment. Indeed, plenty of Villagers insisted that he simply had to resign because it was all just so very awful. But he knew he had something on his side — the power of the presidency itself and the backing of the American people. And until Barack Obama started pounding the drum for his Grand Bargain, a majority of the American people were indifferent to spending cuts and wanted him to focus like a laser beam on jobs. But he got on that bully pulpit and convinced them that he was elected to do Big Things and that a “balanced approach” to the horrors of deficits was imperative and they’ve come around quite smartly. They also came around on the fact that raising the debt ceiling was absolutely necessary — just in time for the House Democrats to be tarred as the crazed obstructionists if they object to this massive, unnecessary slashing of government at the worst possible time. I suspect that was sheer luck, but I will give the President credit for his timing.

One can only wonder what might have happened if he had done the same thing to convince the public that a clean debt ceiling vote was imperative instead and never put these cuts on the table in the first place.

Digging Into the Legacy

by digby

I just have to pile on to David’s earlier take-down of today’s NY Times coverage of the default crisis talks by pointing out this one laughably nonsensical passage:

[T]he president and Mr. Boehner were moving ahead with their plan, aides said, trying to agree on matters like how much new revenue would be raised, how much would go to deficit reduction, how much to lower tax rates and, perhaps most critical, how to enforce the requirement for new tax revenue through painful consequences for both parties should they be unable to overhaul the tax code in 2012.

The White House wants a trigger that would raise taxes on the wealthy; Mr. Boehner wants the potential penalty for inaction to include repeal of the Obama health care law’s mandate that all individuals purchase health insurance after 2014.

And what excellent incentives. Either the Republicans agree to cut spending or the President will follow through on what he’s already promised to do. Twice. Or the Republicans refuse to cut spending and get to destroy Obamacare. That’s one helluva deal.

I really don’t think Obama’s going to agree to let them mess with his health care plan beyond what he’s already agreed to do (which is slash the hell out of the Medicaid provision.) He’s already potentially sliced millions of people out of the system as it is and put medicare on the table. But at this point, the fate of the world economy is on the line and the President has foreclosed the 14th amendment remedy, so who knows?

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The Perpetual Democrats’ Dilemma

by digby

Greg Sargent reports that the House progressives are getting very nervous:

Dem Rep. Peter Welch is urging fellow liberals to vote No on the debt ceiling compromise if it’s a bad deal, on the idea that it’s the only way House Dems can break a dynamic which continues to leave them with little influence.

Ultimately, though, the question of whether House Dems can exert any leverage over the talks lies with Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer. As E.J. Dionne notes today, if a sizable bloc of liberals can be counted on to vote No, that could actually strengthen the position of Pelosi and Hoyer, since GOP leaders will be relying on them and a sizable number of middle-of-the-road House Dems to vote Yes.

Pelosi, of course, has been urging Dems not cave on cuts to Medicare benefits. If history is any guide, of course, many House Dems will ultimately support the eventual deal once the President asks them to for the good of the party, his presidency, and the country. But if Pelosi holds firm — and persuades Obama and John Boehner that enough House Dems agree with her to make passage difficult — it’s not inconceivable that she can help bring about a deal that isn’t quite as terrible as the one we’re all expecting.

I hope nobody’s counting on Hoyer because he’s been agitating for “entitlement” cuts forever.

The problem, as usual, is that progressives really want to raise the debt ceiling while the conservatives really would like to see the economy crash and burn. (If it weren’t for their corporate masters, they’d do it too.) Sooo, we get to the deadline and the progressives who come out making all kinds of “pledges” to hold fast are faced with being accused as the instrument of Armageddon. (You’ll note that the teabaggers who refuse to vote for the package will not be similarly tarred.)

I’m fairly sure John Boehner and Barack Obama understood this dynamic before they even began their “talks.” After all, it’s been happening over and over again since January of 2009. And it’s also one of the best reasons to drag this out until the very last minute — it gives the Democrats no time to maneuver before the end of the world.

It’s possible that the Democrats will hang tough this time. After all, the country is entirely on their side on the ‘entitlement’ issue. But the consequences of failing to raise the debt limit are serious and neither side wants to be blamed for it.

Well, there are some lunatics out there …

Also too: With the treasury mulling whether to use the 14th amendment option in case no deal is concluded, progressives face impeachment as part of the GOP threat. No kidding.

Update: So begins the semantic spin from the White house:

There is no news here – the President has always said that while social security is not a major driver of the deficit, we do need to strengthen the program and the President said in the State of the Union Address that he wanted to work with both parties to do so in a balanced way that preserves the promise of the program and doesn’t slash benefits

“Strengthening” is in the eye of the beholder, of course. If it’s the “chained-CPI” change we’ve been hearing about for a while now, it certainly will result in a benefit cut. The oldest people will bear the brunt of it — mostly older women, and who cares about them? However, by injecting Social Security into the phony debt ceiling “crisis” despite the fact that it has no bearing on the deficit, they are ensuring that there will be no time for deliberation or discussion of what these “strengthening” policies really are. It’s a classic Shock Doctrine tactic.

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After-birthers running through the fever swamps

by digby

I’m so sick of this birther BS that I can hardly stand it. But since the right wingers seem to be ratcheting up the crazy on this, I guess it’s necessary to at least bring attention to the aggressively stupid nonsense that’s out there. Here’s Media Matters:

A lot of attention is being paid to last night’s Follow The Money on Fox Business Network, during which host Eric Bolling and crew had themselves an extended wallow in the birther swamp, in spite of the release of Obama’s birth certificate, and in spite of Fox News’ Shep Smith exhorting the media to “just freaking stop it.” Monica Crowley was on Bolling’s panel and she eschewed the spittle-flecked lunacy of co-panelist Pamela Geller, instead going for a more high-brow justification of birtherism, bringing up the question of whether Obama qualifies as a “natural-born citizen”.

Gateway pundit Jim Hoft is full-on on the kerning watch, with charts and graphs and Youtubes like this “proving” that the birth certificate is a fake:

And this “expert” opinion:

And he also flogs Monica Crowley’s nitwit garbage about Obama not being a “natural born citizen”:

Finally, also wanted to make the point that regardless of where Obama is born, he’s still not a Natural Born Citizen since both parents were not born on U.S. soil but I won’t hold my breath waiting for the media to educate the public on this fact.

This has been floating around the fever swamp since 2007, when the morons suddenly caught up with the fact that McCain was born in Panama, so he “must be born on American soil” part of their argument got dicey. So, they came up with a few other back-up theories to prove that Obama couldn’t possibly be legitimately elected to the White House.

The first was the “natural born parents” theory, which is obviously just made up fantasy since seven former presidents had parents of foreign birth, including one of the founders:

• Thomas Jefferson‘s mother was born in England
• Andrew Jackson‘s parents were both born in Ireland
• James Buchanan had an Irish father
• Chester A. Arthur had an Irish father
• Woodrow Wilson‘s mother was English
• Herbert Hoover had a Canadian-born mother

And needless to say, unless the 14th Amendment has been repealed when I wasn’t looking, this whole argument is utter nonsense since Obama was born in America.
US v. WONG KIM ARK (1898)– the 14th Amendment guaranteed citizenship to all persons born in the United States, regardless of their ethnic heritage

The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: The fourteenth amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes. The amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born within the territory of the United States of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin’s Case, 7 Coke, 6a, ‘strong enough to make a natural subject, for, if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject’; and his child, as said by Mr. Binney in his essay before quoted, ‘If born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle.’

And:

To hold that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution excludes from citizenship the children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of other countries, would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German, or other European parentage, who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.

Another stupid right wing trope is that Obama couldn’t possibly be an American because his mother was only 18 and therefore hadn’t fulfilled the citizenship requirements that would allow her to confer citizenship on her son if his father was another nationality. (Look it up — it’s too dumb to even try to explain.)

I’m sure there are other theories about the “usurpation” I haven’t run across. But the fact that there are so many proves that these people are determined to find a way to defend their primitive belief that this man is not a legally elected president. And that belief lies in their fundamental, bedrock definition of what constitutes a Real American — a white, Christian conservative. There’s no way they will ever be able to reconcile the idea that a black Democrat could legitimately represent a majority the American people. Clearly, they will rewrite history and the constitution if they have to in order to make that case.

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