151 search results for ""14th amendment""

Teabag Originalism

by digby

After reading my piece yesterday about the call for the repeal of birthright citizenship among the neocon teabaggers, a reader sent me this link to the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association’s website. If you have any illusions about the motivations among certain police officers in Arizona, you will lose them once you read this:

Is This the Intent of the 14th Amendment?

Danny_Ledezma_MartinezDHS and ICE indices were negative for the suspected shooter Danny Ledezma Martinez (DOB 10/16/79). Database information indicates that the suspect is a native born US Citizen. The suspect’s parents Ezequiel Martinez-Lopez and Norma Ledezma-Soto both became naturalized in Phoenix on May 25, 1987.

Was the intent of the 14th amendment to the US Constitution to allow foreign nationals to run onto US soil to birth their children as a means of obtaining US Citizenship? This practice has become so frequent over the years that children born in this manner are referred to as “Anchor Babies”. Phoenix Police Officers and their families continue to pay the ultimate price at the hands of suspects who are themselves illegal immigrants or who like Daniel Martinez have a direct connection to illegal immigration.

Once again Chief Harris is on the wrong side of the issue. While officers continue to die in the street, the Chief was in Washington DC along with police Chief’s from several other states to meet with Attorney General Eric Holder and hold a national press conference for the express purpose voicing their opposition to SB-1070.

So it’s not just “illegal immigrants” and children of “illegal immigrants” it’s even children of naturalized citizens or anyone who’s a “direct connection to illegal immigration.” What do you suppose are the chances of profiling among the people who belong to this organization?

It’s becoming clear that the 14th amendment really is under assault. But just because it’s the amendment put in place after the civil war to guarantee the citizenship of former slaves, due process and equal protection doesn’t mean these people are racists. Not at all. Why would you even think such a thing?

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Neocons Join The Tea Party

by digby

Regarding the news that one of the activists killed in the flotilla was an American citizen, Powerline writes:

The facts are not entirely clear, but it appears that Dogan was born in the United States to Turkish parents who returned to Turkey not long thereafter. (The ABC story says he was two years old.) Apparently Dogan had lived in Turkey with his family since that time. He apparently was, in other words, a “birthright citizen,” solely by virtue of the fact that his parents were residing in the U.S. when he was born.

If that is the case–and, again, the facts are not yet entirely clear–it is silly to call him an “American of Turkish descent.” He, like the other members of his family, was a Turk. The idea that his presence among the dead raises a special diplomatic problem is absurd; if it does, it shouldn’t.

Coincidentally, Scott Rasmussen published a poll this morning that found 58 percent of voters favor the abolition of birthright citizenship. I think the majority is right on this issue. Birthright citizenship is an anachronism, and in some respects a dangerous one, in an era when millions of people travel internationally and millions more enter the U.S. illegally, some for the specific purpose of having a baby here.

As for Dogan, it is reported that he was shot five times at close range, four times in the head. If that is correct, it is reasonable to infer that he was one of those attacking Israeli soldiers with a club, knife or other weapon and was shot in self-defense. The Times quotes his brother saying, on behalf of the family, “we were not sorry to hear that he fell like a martyr.”

Wow, there’s a lot to consider in those paragraphs. First there is the idea that actual American citizens under current law, shouldn’t be called Americans. I don’t know who will decide which Americans deserve the designation, but perhaps the next teabagger convention could set up a system for the press so they’ll know what’s appropriate and what isn’t. (No profiling please!) This is followed by the use of the phrase “birthright citizen” which I haven’t heard before. Is it the politically correct version of “anchor baby?” If so, why would proudly politically incorrect right wingers bother? Call ’em all terrorists and let’s be done with all the subterfuge.

And it sounds as though he is suggesting that it’s dangerous for people to be having children in this country. Is this because terrorists are planning ahead for future invasions from within? Or is it just that Hispanics are “dangerous” by their very nature? Either way, the idea of tying this particular story to the anchor baby issue is a bold new step in the right’s overarching narrative. I’ll be looking for more of it.

Probably the most amazing statement in all this is the last paragraph which says that it’s “reasonable” to infer that that this person was attacking one of the Israeli commandos with a knife and was shot in self-defense? I suppose it’s possible, but one would hardly naturally assume that in the middle of a melee someone amazingly gets shot four times in the head. I knew those IDF commandos were skilled but I didn’t know they were that skilled. Indeed, the reasonable inference is usually something quite different. (I’m not making a judgment about the facts in this particular case beyond the four shots to the head, which I don’t know, only whether or not it’s obvious that a “reasonable inference” of self-defense can be made of that.)

The old neocon “spreadin’ democracy” we’re all one big happy family of wingnuts is really out of fashion if even the Bush loving Powerline is pushing the 14th amendment repeal line.In fact, even the Bush administration didn’t try to make the argument that American citizens who were born of foreign parents shouldn’t be accorded their rights. We are seeing a joining of the neocons and the teabaggers in the spirit of shared nativism. It figures. When you strip them down to their essence they are all garden variety paranoid, neo-confederate birchers and not much more. It’s all a matter of emphasis.

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Anchors Away

by digby

We’ve been waiting for this to bubble up:

A Phoenix news station (KPHO) is reporting that the state Senator behind Arizona’s new immigration law, Russell Pierce (R), does not intend on stopping at SB-1070. In e-mails obtained by the local CBS affiliate, Pearce said he intends to push for an “anchor baby” bill that would essentially overturn the 14th amendment by no longer granting citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants born on U.S. soil. “Anchor babies” is a derogatory and “politically charged” term used to refer to the U.S. citizen children of undocumented parents. KPHO obtained a troubling email from one of Pierce’s constituents who is encouraging him to pursue the “anchor baby” legislation. KPHO reports:

One of the e-mails written by someone else but forwarded by Pearce reads: “If we are going to have an effect on the anchor baby racket, we need to target the mother. Call it sexist, but that’s the way nature made it. Men don’t drop anchor babies, illegal alien mothers do.” […] Pearce said his new idea is not only legal but constitutional. “It’s common sense,” Pearce said. “Again – you can’t break into someone’s country and then expect to be rewarded for that. You can’t do it.” When Pearce was shown the e-mail referring to “anchor babies” that he forwarded, he said he didn’t find anything wrong with the language. “It’s somebody’s opinion…What they’re trying to say is it’s wrong. And I agree with them. It’s wrong,” said Pearce.

Howie wrote about how this issue was huge at the tea party rally he attended last summer here in LA.:

I’m not a social anthropologist, but I’m well aware that not all teabaggers are the same. I’ve never been to a tea party in the South or in the Midwest or the Northeast. But I did spend a whole day with the teabaggers of the L.A. area back in August and reported on it here (lots of pictures of me up close and live with actual teabaggers), here and here. What I noticed about the Southern California teabaggers– and I was hanging out with them for hours before the event started and talking with every one of them I could– was that in the end, no matter what confused issues they had foremost in their dim minds, they were all just a bunch of fearful, hate-filled racists. Really, every single one of them.

Every argument they couldn’t defend ended in racial slurs about “anchor babies” and “illegals.” No matter how the discussion began, no matter what the topic– and this was a healthcare town hall– it always ended in bigotry and their anti-Hispanic psychosis. Like I said, I never visited a tea party in Arkansas or Tennessee or Georgia. And it would only be a guess to say that they’re not as obsessed about Hispanics and they might have another group at the bottom of their grievances. Or maybe it’s just the Southern California teabaggers who are racist maniacs, and the ones in the South are just defenders of the constitutional order.

Early in the teabagger media cycle, before Fox had been able to market it fully and cross it over to the mainstream, Cincinnati was on the bandwagon. Poor Steve Dreihaus hardly knew what hit him when a horde of teabaggers descended on his town hall meeting. A friend who was there told me that Cincinnati is more like a Southern city than any other place in the Midwest, and that there were probably more people from Kentucky there than from Ohio. They were shouting the same canned slogans and bromides the well-organized teabaggers were in L.A., but they weren’t concerned about Mexicans in Cincinnati. The President’s skin color, on the other hand, and his Hawaiian birth and “Muslim faith,” of course, bothered them greatly and became the default for any losing position in an argument.

I understand that we are not supposed to use the “R” word when talking about the tea partiers because, well, it’s hurtful and unfair to people who have legitimate grievances. Except this “grievance” about anchor babies is made up in their heads and they are being nativist and racist by pushing it. Children of undocumented workers who are born in America are Americans. They speak English, they pay taxes, they are citizens like anyone else who was born of immigrant parents, which nearly all of us or our ancestors were. The idea that it’s appropriate to punish American children (not one of whom asked to be born) for the fact that their mother gave birth to them in the United States without proper papers is disgusting and cruel. I don’t know why I should respect that.

I’m also told that it’s wrong to ridicule these people because it’s wrong and besides, ridicule never works.

Really?

“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.”

— Ronald Reagan

A huge part of the (very successful) conservative movement was based upon the ridicule and marginalization of American liberalism. It went on for year after year, decade into decade until people were so indoctrinated that liberals actually had to start calling themselves something else. The most important Republican campaign consultant of the era made a fetish of it. Indeed as the loathed vehicle for social change and destruction of traditional white male privilege, anti-liberalism is the main organizing principle for the conservative movement and now, the tea parties. That’s why when you scratch the surface of their “small government” message, what you usually find is someone who doesn’t like government because it is the institution which enforces the rights guaranteed under the constitution for people they despise.

I understand that people think ridicule makes it difficult to have a reasonable conversation. And if what you want is to make the tea partiers “understand” you, like politicians for instance, you probably shouldn’t engage in it (although, as you can see, Ronald Reagan certainly didn’t have any problem doing it.) But if you are involved in movement politics, as opposed to a specific legislative strategy or some kind of Machiavellian inside game, values, identity and tribalism are necessary organizing principles and that means the right wing should be treated with the only respect you should grant anyone who sees you as their enemy: you take them seriously and do not underestimate their hostility toward you or their strength and commitment to their cause. I certainly grant them that respect. Anyone who lived in the 20th century would be foolish not to. That’s the best I can do.

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Only A Comic Can Inquire Into Such Madness

by dday

The Colbert Report last night featured one of the most subversive and brutally honest half-hours of television in recent memory. It’s a sad commentary that it takes a comedy program to provide more news and information on one of the most critical subjects in American politics that anywhere else in our broken media and political landscape, but I’ll take this argument wherever I can get it. Colbert spent two full segments of his show focusing on the Citizens United Supreme Court case, which could – and probably will – lead to deregulating the entire campaign finance process, allowing corporations to give unlimited money to any candidate of their choosing. This severe step backwards with enormous implications has been barely discussed in any traditional media setting, but Colbert went after it vigorously, discussing the consequences and even the flawed legal rationale, a true third rail of American politics, corporate personhood. Colbert explained that the 1886 case (Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad) that conferred 14th Amendment equal protection rights onto corporations wasn’t even in the original ruling. But when the Chief Justice made an off-hand comment that the Court wouldn’t hear an argument on whether the 14th Amendment applied to these corporations (saying, “We are all of the opinion that it does”), the court reporter wrote it into the ruling opinion, and the precedent has held ever since. And that reporter of the Supreme Court didn’t only have ties to the railroad barons, he used to run one.

These are subjects you just never hear about in the American media, precisely because the American media is owned by giant multinational corporations, who benefit from the corporate personhood rule and would stand to benefit more from deregulating elections so they could use their “speech” to buy candidates and fund their own with unlimited resources. And despite being on a Viacom-owned network, Colbert says, skewering the immorality and psychopathology of the corporation, “Corporations are legally people… they do everything people do, except breathe, die, and go to jail for dumping 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson River.”

There’s some backstory to that remark. Colbert actually worked with Robert Smigel on the “TV Funhouse” bits from Saturday Night Live (he’s one-half of the Ambiguously Gay Duo), including the infamous episode from March 1998, Conspiracy Theory Rock. Here are some of the actual lyrics (remember this aired, albeit one time, on NBC, whose parent company is General Electric):

It’s a media-opoly
A media-opoly.
The whole media is controlled by a few corporations
thanks to deregulation by the FCC.

You mean Disney, Fox, WestingHouse, and good ol GE?
They own networks from CBS to CNBC.
They can use them to say whatever they please,
and put down the opinions of any one who disagrees.
Or stuff about PCB’s.

What are PCB’s?
They come from power plants built by WestingHouse and GE.
They can give you lots of cancer that can hurt your body,
but on network TV, you rarely hear anything bad about the nuclear industry […]

But the bigshots don’t care.
They’re all sitting pretty.
Thanks to corporate welfare.
What’s that now?

They get billions in subsidies
from the government.
It’s supposed to create jobs,
but that’s not how it’s spent.

They pulled this cartoon from the rerun broadcasts and it never aired again.

Colbert didn’t just provide this lesson in corporate control of government in his “The Word” segment, but then had Jeffrey Toobin on to explain how the expected Supreme Court ruling would impact elections:

COLBERT: If this goes through, if they decide in favor of the corporations here, what’s going to happen to elections?

TOOBIN: Well, they will be essentially deregulated. Corporations will be allowed to give money, corporations will be allowed to broadcast programs that are in favor of one side or another, it’ll basically be no more rules about what corporations can do in political campaigns.

COLBERT: Now when I ran for President in 2008, as the Hail to the Cheese Doritos Stephen Colbert campaign for President, I was told that I actually couldn’t do that, that I was breaking federal election law by being sponsored by that corporation. But if this goes through, if this court case, if they win, does that mean that I retroactively won the election?

TOOBIN: I don’t think it means that.

COLBERT: But could you do that? Could I actually just wear a NASCAR suit and just have logos all over me and run for President as the sort of Gatorade Thirst for Justice campaign for President?

TOOBIN: You definitely could. No question.

COLBERT: What does it mean to individual donation? A corporation, as a person, gets to give any amount of money, but I as a person can give only $2,500.

TOOBIN: That’s what’s potentially the next legal challenge. Because if giving money is a form of speech, as the Court has held at various times, you can’t prohibit a company from giving money. And then presumably the next step would be that you couldn’t have limits on how much individuals could give either. That’s the potential implication of this decision.

COLBERT: So right now, corporations would actually have more power as people than people, until people catch up with corporations.

Here’s the point. Stephen Colbert, a comedian, devoted his show to arcane campaign finance law to show the power of corporations to engage in a hostile takeover of government and extract virtually any law they choose, with no consequences for any wrongdoing. Consequently, the self-described populists on the right – aided by a hapless political class – are working their minions into a frenzy over some unidentified alien “other” coming to take your hard-earned tax dollars, without the pernicious influence of rapacious corporations ever entering into it. Anonymous Liberal had a great post on this yesterday.

But even if you take these film-makers at face value and assume the worst, the reality is that ACORN has thousands of employees and the vast majority of them spend their days trying to help poor people through perfectly legal means (and receive very little compensation for doing so). Even before yesterday’s Senate vote, the amount of federal money that went to ACORN was very small. This is a relatively insignificant organization in the grand scheme of things, but it’s an organization that has unquestionably fought over the years to improve the lives of the less fortunate in this country.

That the GOP and its conservative supporters would single out this particular organization for such intense demonization is telling. In September of last year, the entire world came perilously close to complete financial catastrophe. We’re still not out of the woods and we’re deep within one of the worst recessions in U.S. history. This situation was brought about by the recklessness and greed of our banks and financial institutions, most of which had to be bailed out at enormous cost to the American taxpayer (exponentially more than all of the tax dollars given to ACORN over the years). The people who brought about this near catastrophe, for the most, profited immensely from it. These very same institutions, propped up by the American taxpayer, are once again raking in large profits.

But rather than focus their anger on these folks, conservatives choose to go after an organization composed almost entirely of low-paid community organizers, an organization that could never hope to have even a small fraction of the clout or the ability to affect the overall direction of the country that Wall Street bankers have. ACORN’s relative lack of political influence was on full display yesterday, when the U.S. Senate (in which Democrats have a supermajority) not only entertained a vote to defund ACORN, but approved it by a huge margin (with only seven Democrats opposing).

Absolutely. Set aside the fact that the Glenn Becks of the world are smearing community organizations that help low-income folks, often at variance with the facts. It’s the intensity of focus from the privileged on the poor, the disenfranchised, and yes, minorities, when measured against the influence and giant multinational corporations who are on the verge of buying American elections, that strikes such a discordant note. But not for the hucksters pushing the smears and the paranoids and racists who lap it up. They want to believe that black people have the power in America and they’re coming for you and your children, so they can ignore the fact that they’ve been duped – that the ruling class has controlled the political machinery to keep them underfoot, and handed them welfare queens and illegal immigrants and all sorts of other members of the “lower orders” on which they can focus their attention. This boils down to a largely homogenous class of people not wanting their money, or anything, really, to go to people who don’t look like them. “Illegals” or the undeserving poor need not apply. It’s been a time-tested tactic going back to Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy. And it allows a majority ruling class of whites, terrified that their stranglehold on the country is slipping away, to pretend that a race war is coming when it’s the class war grinding them into the dust.

Matt Taibbi called it the peasant mentality. The powers that be get the lower classes to fight amongst themselves and split along ideological or tribal or other identifying lines, leaving room for them to prosper. For Republicans, that means painting their opponents, who are less homogenous and are made up of so-called “outsiders” of society – the poor, the disenfranchised, African-Americans, Hispanics, gays and lesbians, etc. – as undeserving of really anything; and painting the leaders of that party – whether it be a Governor from Arkansas or a war hero from Massachusetts or South Dakota or a multicultural community organizer from Illinois – as the head of a movement to destroy American culture. That’s really basically it.

And all the while, both sides in DC studiously ignore the near-complete capture of the country by companies seeking only profit, and the corporate-owned media just follows the manufactured drama and goes mute on the critical stuff, such that it takes a comedian to shine a spotlight on this unexamined corner.

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Breaking The Dam

by dday

I’m going to have to pretty much agree with Thers’ take:

Like I said over at the Cerulean Cherub’s place, getting a health care bill passed through reconciliation would be great fun even if it were a crap bill […]

From a democratic (small d) perspective, the Senate has been asking for it for a long time now. The filibuster is not a constitutional tradition, and as we’ve seen, amply, is a safeguard of made-up Senatorial principles, not democratic principles, and the public good be damned.

Yes, we need sane healthcare, but we need lots of sane things that we’re not getting because of the absurdities that the Senate enables — Max Baucus directly represents fewer than a million people, and has extensive power over the healthcare of over 300 million Americans. Why? Because he’s a fucking healthcare maven genius! Or not! It’s all amazingly silly.

A case could be made that whatever the content of any specific bill, a punch to the solar plexus of the pudgy, complacent Senate would be good for the nation. The nation’s health literally rests at the whim of a very small number of individuals who are only directly accountable to a very, very small percentage of the nation’s voters. Whatever this is, it’s not democracy.

The Senate has basically gotten completely out of control. It was conceived as a saucer to “cool the cup” of the passions of the House, but there’s a fine line between that and freezing the cup and throwing it into a meat locker. If the Senate were instituted after passage of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court would likely have found it unconstitutionally in violation of the equal protection clause. California has 69 times as many citizens as Wyoming, and yet their citizens get the same amount of Senate representation. The Senate was a bad compromise put in by the Blue Dogs of the 18th century.

What’s more, it’s gotten worse, as runaway egos and peculiar Senate rules have completely paralyzed the legislative process. The filibuster has only recently been transformed from an occasionally used temper tantrum to a de facto 60-vote supermajority requirement. This recent development is a significant intrusion to the ability of the country to govern itself.

The filibuster, however, has undergone little-noticed changes. Even as successive generations have weakened it by creating the option of cloture, the filibuster itself has become more present in everyday legislative maneuvering. The political scientist David Mayhew argues that we’ve misremembered our own past on this matter. He’s written that Senate has never faced “any anti-majoritarian barrier as concrete, as decisive, or as consequential as today’s rule of 60.”

That seems strange, of course. After all, the filibuster was stronger back in the day. But it wasn’t used to create a de facto 60-vote majority. It used to be more akin to a temper tantrum. Mayhew looked at FDR’s court-packing scheme as one of his examples. The filibuster hardly figured into the discussion. “General opinion is that the [bill] will pass,” wrote the conservative Portland Herald Press, “and sooner than expected, since votes to pass it seem apparent, and the opposition cannot filibuster forever.”

Its elevation to the decisive rule in the U.S. Senate is a recent development, and one that has taken a countermajoritarian institution (both in its structure and representation) and saddled it with a supermajority requirement. The product is an almost impossibly obstructed legislative body. We tend to assume this will work out fine, as we’ve had the filibuster forever, and we’re still around. But the evidence is that the filibuster did not really exist in this form before, and so it’s very hard to say whether it will work out fine. And those who think that the political system will always respond to emergency, and that countermajoritarian rules don’t matter, should really take a look at what’s going on right now in California.

Hear hear on that last point.

Reconciliation may or may not be able to produce a bill worth a darn; YMMV. But if the fallout from using it produces a demystification of “Senate process” as some kind of holy writ, the effects would be profound. Process changes have often preceded substantive policy changes. Unless you want health care reform and financial regulatory reform and climate change and energy and all the rest in the tender hands of President Ben Nelson in perpetuity, it may be worth breaking the dam that’s holding back the country.

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Throwback To Calhoun

by digby

Trying to keep up with GOP hypocrisy is difficult even in the best of times, but these days it’s so pervasive it will give you a migraine just trying to sort out the most egregious from the merely laughable. The examples are flowing now that their eight year reign is over. I think one of the most interesting is their retreat to states’ rights after the greatest expanse of not just Federal, but executive, power in history. It’s quite a leap in just a few months, but they seem to be making the seamless transition that only a truly incoherent movement can make — no shame or even awareness of their hypocrisy plagues them.

The New York Times touches on this rebuilding of the states’ rights and secession movement today, indicating that it’s having some problems since most people don’t know what in the hell these weirdos are going on about. But it’s an old old strain in American politics that asserts itself when the Conservative Southern Party shrinks to its essence.(Conservative isn’t really the right word, of course, but it’s the oxymoronic label most people now attach to this political rump. These people are radicals, always have been.)

Anyway, some people around the sphere have been doing some nice work on this that should be read. First of all, Daily Kos asked some questions along these lines in its latest Research 2000 poll that sheds light on the subject:

Do you think the state that you live in would be better off as an independent nation or as part of the United States of America?

US Independent

All 79 5
Northeast 90 2
South 61 9
Midwest 86 4
West 84 4

Would you approve or disapprove of the state that you live in leaving the United States?

Approve Disapprove Unsure

All 4 82 14
Northeast 1 94 5
South 8 63 29
Midwest 3 89 8
West 3 87 10

In most of the country, the 9 out of 10 people love America. But in the South, less than two-thirds would disapprove of their state leaving the US. And sure, while the “approve” contingent in the South is just 8 percent, 29 percent aren’t sure.

Aren’t sure? There’s a debate as to whether leaving the US is good or bad? Is their love of America so shallow, so skin deep, that leaving the country is even an option? And check this out:

Would you approve or disapprove of the state that you live in leaving the United States?

Approve Disapprove Unsure

All 4 82 14
Dem 2 95 3
Rep 9 63 28
Ind 3 83 14

This is objective evidence that Democrats love America more than anyone else. 95 percent of them want their states to remain as part of the union, while only 63 percent — less than two-thirds — of Republicans similarly love their country.

Hence we’ll continue to see wingnutty “sovereignty” resolutions and proclamations made in the South, and you’ll continue getting wingnuts like Pittsburgh cop killer Richard Poplawski motivated to defy the authorities. As his friend said, “We recently discovered that 30 states had declared sovereignty. One of his concerns was, Why were these major events in America not being reported to the public?”

There’s a lot of crazy out there, and it’s mostly percolating among Republicans. Those bumper stickers that say “these colors don’t run”? Well, they’re running.

And to think it was only a couple of years ago that Ann Coulter was feted on the cover of TIME magazine for her book about liberals called Treason. Again, it’s hard to keep up with the inconsistencies, but there you are. The great patriots who draped themselves in the red, white and blue for years are now metaphorically ripping it in tiny little pieces.

But as I said, this is an old story. Ed Kilgore takes us back to the beginning with this post about the history of the Southern State Sovereignty and the concept of “nullification” which is all in vogue among people who believe we are only one country under leaders of whom they approve:

There was plenty of chuckling in progressive circles when Texas Gov. Rick Perry made public remarks that sounded like a semi-endorsement of the idea that his state might want to secede from the United States, as it tried to do in 1861, or reclaim the independence it gave up in 1845. But Perry and a growing number of other Republican politicians are now embracing an idea that dates all the way back to 1832: that states have a constitutional right to nullify what they consider to be illegitimate acts of the federal government. As you may recall from your high school history lessons, the effort to put that idea into practice, by South Carolina at the urging of former vice president John C. Calhoun, didn’t work out too well, though it was later cited as a precursor to the secessionist movement led, again, by South Carolina.

The vehicles for the sudden contemporary resurgence of nullification theories are “sovereignty resolutions” being introduced in the legislature of as many as 20 states, and passing in at least one legislative chamber in eight states this year.

The language of these resolutions, and particularly the throat-clearing “whereas” clauses, isn’t uniform, but virtually all have a kicker similar to this Texas resolution, which Rick Perry endorsed:

That the 81st Legislature of the State of Texas hereby claim sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States; and, be it further RESOLVED, That this serve as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers; and, be it further RESOLVED, That all compulsory federal legislation that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited or repealed.

While these resolutions obviously aren’t going to be enforced, they squarely assert the power of states to unilaterally define the powers of the federal government and to order said government to “cease and desist” in exercising them. That is nullification.

He goes on to discuss the more recent uses of this concept:

As someone just old enough to remember the last time when politicians in my home southern region made speeches rejecting the Supremacy Clause and the 14th amendment, I may take this sort of activity more seriously than some. But any way you slice it, Republicans are playing with some crazy fire. For all the efforts of its sponsors to sell the “sovereignty resolution” idea as a grassroots development flowing out of the so-called Tea Party Movement, its most avid supporters appear to be the John Birch Society and the Council of Conservative Citizens, the successor to the White Citizens Councils of ill-fame. And given the incredibly unsavory provenance of this “idea,” it’s no surprise that these extremist groups are viewing the “movement” as an enormous vindication of their twisted points of view.

There you have it.

Finally, I wanted to point you to this piece by Lance Mannion discussing the history of the Democratic Party in the South, should you find yourself confronted with one of those cretins who pulls out the standard “I know you are but what am I” idiocy about how the Democrats are the racists because Lincoln freed the slaves. It’s a nice primer and beautifully written as always.

I’m certainly not surprised to see these arguments make a comeback. I’ve long seen a certain through line in American political history as essentially a two century battle between the old confederate states (and their later allies) and the rest of the country. The nation was forged through compromises (mostly over slavery)that were never fully accepted and which the civil war actually exacerbated. We have always been a country at war with itself to one degree or another.

This latest little throwback to Calhoun is clumsy and somewhat silly, but it’s tapping into a strong and resilient strain in American history. It would be a mistake to simply discount the feeling that undergirds it. It goes far deeper than race or politics — it’s tribal and it is a definitional feature of American culture.

Update: Hilzoy demonstrates that in Georgia they are going all the way back to 1798 — and cribbing from Jefferson for their nullification language, like nothing has happened in the interim. It’s going to be a fun few years.

About That Voter Registration Drive

by dday

It had better come with a trip to the DMV:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights, validating Republican-inspired voter ID laws.

In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana’s strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to deter fraud.

It was the most important voting rights case since the Bush v. Gore dispute that sealed the 2000 election for George W. Bush.

Stevens actually wrote one of the majority opinions in this one, in addition to the conservative bloc and Kennedy joining the ruling.

This is, as we know, a solution in search of a problem. Voter fraud is a made-up conservative issue, backed by no evidence. While Stevens suggested that there are no “excessively burdensome requirements” imposed on voters who must show ID at the polls, he’s answering an unknowable question. We simply have no idea how photo ID centers (if there will be any outside the DMV) in Indiana or anywhere else would be managed, whether the same groups that truck elderly and poor voters to the polls on Election Day will be able to do the same to get people their IDs, and so on. If they require the same documentation that the DMV does, many poor and elderly people simply don’t have them. If it requires an application fee, how is that not a poll tax?

Justice Scalia’s broader ruling shows exactly what Republicans want out of this:

Scalia, favoring a broader ruling in defense of voter ID laws, said, “The universally applicable requirements of Indiana’s voter-identification law are eminently reasonable. The burden of acquiring, possessing and showing a free photo identification is simply not severe, because it does not ‘even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.'”

But during the arguments, Scalia conceded that such laws would “inconvenience… a small number of people,” and the Solicitor General for the state of Indiana actually said that “an infinitesimal portion of the electorate could even be, conceivably be, burdened by” the ID law.

You know, that’s how the 14th Amendment WORKS, with equal protection for all, even that “infinitesimal portion of the electorate”. And, as Amanda Terkel notes, that’s a major soft-pedal of the impact:

Voter ID laws, however, affect more than an “infinitesimal” number of Americans and are more than a “minor inconvenience.” According to the federal government, there are as many as 21 million voting-age Americans without driver’s licenses. In Indiana, 13 percent of registered voters lack the documents needed to obtain a license, and therefore, cast a ballot. These restrictions disproportionately hit low-income, minority, handicapped, and elderly voters the hardest, leading to lower levels of voter participation.

Those affected also tend to vote Democratic, which may explain why Karl Rove and his colleagues have pursued so-called voter fraud with such zeal. Several U.S. attorneys ousted in the Bush administration’s infamous prosecutor purge even alleged that they were fired because they refused to aggressively prosecute baseless voter fraud claims.

Considering that we have at least one Democratic campaign predicated on bringing new voters to the process, this is an incredibly calamitous outcome that could upset the entire effort. Somebody in the Obama campaign had better get out in front of this; the courts are already stacked against them.

UPDATE: I found the part of the majority opinion referring to whether or not there’s an application fee for a driver’s license. Some of this is unbelievable (emphasis mine):

(c) The relevant burdens here are those imposed on eligible voters who lack photo identification cards that comply with SEA 483. Because Indiana’s cards are free, the inconvenience of going to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, gathering required documents, and posing for a photograph does not qualify as a substantial burden on most voters’ right to vote, or represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting. The severity of the somewhat heavier burden that may be placed on a limited number of persons—e.g., elderly persons born out-of-state, who may have difficulty obtaining a birth certificate—is mitigated by the fact that eligible voters without photo identification may cast provisional ballots that will be counted if they execute the required affidavit at the circuit court clerk’s office. Even assuming that the burden may not be justified as to a few voters, that conclusion is by no means sufficient to establish petitioners’ right to the relief they seek.

See, they can just cast provisional ballots! And we all know that every single one of those are counted.

UPDATE II: Let me promote this comment, which is all too typical of depressed areas, I suspect:

Being a Hoosier, I have another piece of news, many of our BMV locations have been closed, especially up around Gary (a horribly depressed industrial area, neighboring Chicago).

OOh…I guess all those poor working class minority types will have to drive three counties away. QUICK, LOOK, Obama scored 37 bowling!

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“I Would Leave The Tube In”

by digby

Reason #5677

“You would have kept the tube in?” asked NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert.

Lieberman, a Demcoratic U.S. senator from Connecticut who ran as his party’s vice presidential nominee in 2000, replied, “I would have kept the tube in.”

The exchange began when Russert mentioned Lieberman’s Republican House colleague, Rep. Christopher Shays.

Shays said he believed the GOP would suffer “repercussions” from voting last week to try to get the brain-damaged Florida woman’s feeding tube replaced.

“This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy. … There are going to be repercussions from this vote [on Schiavo’s constitutional rights],” Shays said. “There are a number of people who feel that the government is getting involved in their personal lives in a way that scares them.”

Russert asked Lieberman if he “agreed” with that statement.

“I don’t,” Lieberman said. And though he said Shays’ statement was “a very credible and respectable opinion, the fact is that, though I know a lot of people’s attitude toward the Schiavo case and other matters is affected by their faith and their sense of what religion tells them about morality, ultimately as members of Congress, as judges, as members of the Florida state Legislature, this is a matter of law. And the law exists to express our values.

“I have been saying this in speeches to students about why getting involved in government is so important. I always say the law is where we define the beginning of life and the end of life, and that’s exactly what was going on here,” Lieberman continued.

“And I think as a matter of law, if you go – particularly to the 14th Amendment, [you] can’t be denied due process, have your life or liberty taken without due process of law, that though the Congress’ involvement here was awkward, unconventional, it was justified to give this woman, more than her parents or husband, the opportunity for one more chance before her life was terminated by an act which was sanctioned by a court, by the state.”

Lieberman added, “These are very difficult decisions, but – of course, if you ask me what I would do if I was the Florida Legislature or any state legislature, I’d say that if somebody doesn’t have a living will and the next of kin disagree on whether the person should be kept alive or that is whether food and water should be taken away and her life ended – that really the benefit of the doubt ought to be given to life.”

In conclusion, Lieberman said, “The family member who wants to sustain her life ought to have that right because the judge really doesn’t know, though he heard the facts, one judge, what Terri Schiavo wanted. He made a best guess based on the evidence before him. That’s not enough when you’re talking about aggressively removing food and water to end someone’s life.”

“You would have kept the tube in?” asked NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert.

Lieberman replied, “I would have kept the tube in.”

Lieberman grossly misrepresented the legal issues and endorsed the novel conservative theory that a married adult’s parents should have equal say in these situations as his or her spouse — but that doesn’t make him a bad guy, right? And while the vast majority of Americans may have disagreed with this outrageous government intrusion (that he mildly calls “unconventional”) you can’t really hold it against him. He’s a man of integrity with deep religious beliefs. Just like these people:

Randall Terry must have been so pleased.

With all that talk about the law choosing when life begins and ends, how long before Joe switches on abortion? He’s hedging on birth control already. It’s only a matter of time…

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For The Sake Of The Constitution

by digby

Al Gore has become the conscience of the Democratic Party. Following the lead of the new media, and the blogosphere in particular, he just laid out the case as to how the invertebrate Republican congress has sold out its constitutional duty to a president who sees himself as above the law and why this poses an unprecedented threat to our constitution.

There are reasons for concern this time around that conditions may be changing and that the cycle [of presidential overreach during wartime] may not repeat itself. For one thing, we have for decades been witnessing the slow and steady accumulation of presidential power. In a global environment of nuclear weapons and cold war tensions, Congress and the American people accepted ever enlarging spheres of presidential initiative to conduct intelligence and counter intelligence activities and to allocate our military forces on the global stage. When military force has been used as an instrument of foreign policy or in response to humanitarian demands, it has almost always been as the result of presidential initiative and leadership. As Justice Frankfurter wrote in the Steel Seizure Case, “The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.”

A second reason to believe we may be experiencing something new is that we are told by the Administration that the war footing upon which he has tried to place the country is going to “last for the rest of our lives.” So we are told that the conditions of national threat that have been used by other Presidents to justify arrogations of power will persist in near perpetuity.

Third, we need to be aware of the advances in eavesdropping and surveillance technologies with their capacity to sweep up and analyze enormous quantities of information and to mine it for intelligence. This adds significant vulnerability to the privacy and freedom of enormous numbers of innocent people at the same time as the potential power of those technologies. These techologies have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways both subtle and profound.

Don’t misunderstand me: the threat of additional terror strikes is all too real and their concerted efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction does create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the Executive Branch with swiftness and agility. Moreover, there is in fact an inherent power that is conferred by the Constitution to the President to take unilateral action to protect the nation from a sudden and immediate threat, but it is simply not possible to precisely define in legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not.

But the existence of that inherent power cannot be used to justify a gross and excessive power grab lasting for years that produces a serious imbalance in the relationship between the executive and the other two branches of government.

There is a final reason to worry that we may be experiencing something more than just another cycle of overreach and regret. This Administration has come to power in the thrall of a legal theory that aims to convince us that this excessive concentration of presidential authority is exactly what our Constitution intended.

This legal theory, which its proponents call the theory of the unitary executive but which is more accurately described as the unilateral executive, threatens to expand the president’s powers until the contours of the constitution that the Framers actually gave us become obliterated beyond all recognition. Under this theory, the President’s authority when acting as Commander-in-Chief or when making foreign policy cannot be reviewed by the judiciary or checked by Congress. President Bush has pushed the implications of this idea to its maximum by continually stressing his role as Commander-in-Chief, invoking it has frequently as he can, conflating it with his other roles, domestic and foreign. When added to the idea that we have entered a perpetual state of war, the implications of this theory stretch quite literally as far into the future as we can imagine.

This effort to rework America’s carefully balanced constitutional design into a lopsided structure dominated by an all powerful Executive Branch with a subservient Congress and judiciary is-ironically-accompanied by an effort by the same administration to rework America’s foreign policy from one that is based primarily on U.S. moral authority into one that is based on a misguided and self-defeating effort to establish dominance in the world.

The common denominator seems to be based on an instinct to intimidate and control.

Yes. A president who can so easily toss aside international law, treaties and decades of mutual understanding is now showing that he looks upon the rule of law within our own country much the same way. We should not be surprised. It’s clear that this particular political faction has an instinct to dominate and control. It’s a facet of human nature and those whose personalities feature it strongly tend to gather together under the banner of authoritarianism.

The Enlightenment was in many ways a study of human nature and those who were educated in its ideas, like the founders of this country, used those observations to understand how power works. Knowing that some leaders will seek ever expanding power is exactly why the constitution was designed with its careful system of checks and balances and why the Bill of Rights was written. It’s a flaw in our species which, if recognized, can be held at bay by systemic roadblocks. That’s what’s being fiddled with here and it’s dangerous.

Gore went on to point out the obvious — that this (oft repeated on the right) aphorism “the constitution isn’t a suicide pact” in terms of islamic fundamentalism is absurd considering the threats we’ve faced in the past:

One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the flow of information is by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. As President Eisenhower said, “Any who act as if freedom’s defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.”

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: “Men feared witches and burnt women.”

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment’s notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

He goes on to say that we must do four specific things:

1) demand a special counsel to investigate the wiretapping leaks. This is exactly the kind of investigation that should not be left in the hands of an executive branch appointee who approved the measures in question.

2) demand comprehensive hearings and go where the facts lead. I and others in the blogosphere have been calling for a select committee to invetigate the wiretap leaks so that we can have legal counsel rather than elected bloviators lead the questioning. This is absolutely necessary.

3) we must not rubber stamp the Patriot Act

4) demand that telecommunications companies cease and desist in their illegal invasion of Americans’ privacy.

The Liberty Coalition sponsored this speech today and it looks like they are a non-partisan group working on privacy issues. I’m all for that. Here’s their mission statement:

The Liberty Coalition works to help organize, support, and coordinate transpartisan public policy activities related to civil liberties and basic human rights. We work in conjunction with groups of partner organizations that are interested in preserving the Bill of Rights, personal autonomy and individual privacy.

The Liberty Coalition is concerned about the threat to Americans’ fundamental and inalienable rights. The Coalition is dedicated to upholding and protecting our basic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In order to accomplish our task, we seek to protect those freedoms as articulated in the Bill of Rights. We base our concerns on the fundamental values and principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, particularly the separation of powers and federalism, and Bill of Rights. These are also embodied in the 14th amendment, especially the due process and privileges and immunities clauses.

To accomplish this mission, the Liberty Coalition seeks to restore, maintain, and improve individuals’ right through developing a networked forum for information and policy education and advocacy. The Coalition examines and expresses opinions on legislation and other government actions that would, on the one hand, limit the rights of citizens that would, on the other, advance efforts to enhance citizens’ rights.

Our primary focus is on restrictions on privacy, autonomy and liberty related issue such as the Patriot Act, National Identification Cards/National Drivers License and government databanks. We are also concerned with medical and financial privacy and confidentiality, and work more broadly as appropriate The Liberty Coalition seeks politically and judicially to retain our liberty while increasing our safety.

When it comes to this issue of presidential overreach and government spying, the most effective action will be bi-partisan. (Townhall is ostensibly part of the coalition which I’ll believe it when they pull their noses out of Bush’s spidey hole.) But any conservative or libertarian with intellectual integrity should be on board with this. I can guarantee you that if a Democrat tried what Bus has done I would feel exactly the same way about it. These are not transitory partisan issues, they are fundamental American values.

If you didn’t get a chance to see Al Gore give his speech, at least read the transcript (via Raw Story.) He’s singing our song today. If he’s crazy then so am I and I’m proud of it.

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Just Don’t Count ‘Em

Steve Benen of the Carpetbagger Report is filling in for Kevin over at Political Animal and he has an interesting post up about the new movement to deny automatic citizenship to babies born in the United States. It’s one of those Lou Dobbs obsessions that’s gaining ground among the wingnuts.

His post reminded me of another Dobbsian boogeyman that I’ve been meaning to discuss which will have a very pernicious effect on politics if it is enacted: the anti-immigrant fanatics want to change the census to only include citizens. And they quite openly say it is because they want to change the make-up of the congress.

This is another one of those Karl Rove specials. It’s ostensibly about the scourge of illegal immigration, and plays perfectly into people’s cultural anxieties, but it’s really about structural political change.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson’s exceedingly interesting book Off Center talks (among other things) about how the Republicans have gone about creating a “backlash proof” system in which Republican seats are safe no matter how unpopular their beliefs or voting records are in the country at large. It’s a huge part of their long term strategy to change the political system in their favor. The book doesn’t mention this specifically, but it’s exactly the kind of thing that Karl and Tom would try to push to assure a long term majority.

This article in the Arizona Republic, shows that the estimate is that the seats lost would mostly be in Democratic states:

The U.S. Constitution should be changed so that only legal citizens can be counted when determining a state’s number of congressional districts, a Republican lawmaker argued Tuesday.

“This is about fundamental fairness and the American ideal . . . of one man or one woman, one vote,” said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich, testifying to a U.S. House subcommittee on federalism and the census.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that, “Representatives of the (U.S.) House shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state . . . “

But Miller, backed by 29 House co-sponsors, is pushing a vote on an amendment that would change the word “persons” to “citizens,” excluding non-citizens as a factor in determining how many of the 435 U.S. House seats each state gets.

According to the 2000 census, there were more than 18 million non-citizens in the country, representing about 6.6 percentof the nation’s total population. They included as many as 8 million undocumented immigrants, along with guest workers, foreign students or others on temporary visas.

[…]

Recent studies, including one in May by the Congressional Research Office, show that had only citizens been counted in the most recent apportionment based on the 2000 Census, California – with more than 5.4 million non-citizens — would have six fewer U.S. House seats.

Texas, New York and Florida would each have one seat less.

Lower-immigration states like Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Wisconsin and Indiana would each have one more seat.

There could be a shift of 10 seats affecting 15 states if non-citizens are excluded in 2010, according to early projections by Polidata, a Lake Ridge, Va., firm that analyzes demographic information.

Arizona would not lose any of its seats. The state’s 462,239 non-citizen residents represent 9 percent of its total population – the seventh highest percentage in the nation. However, even if these individuals were not counted, Arizona’s population would still be high enough to still qualify for eight congressional seats in 2010.

But removing non-citizens from those calculations would have impact within the state. Arizona’s congressional district lines would have to be drawn much differently than they are now to equalize “citizen” representation.

For instance, based on their existing congressional districts, Rep. Rick Renzi, a Republican, is currently representing 620,000 “citizen” residents in his largely rural district, while Rep Ed Pastor, a Democrat, represents 480,000 citizen residents in his central-southwest Valley district. If non-citizens are no longer be counted , both Renzi’ and Pastor’s districts – as with all of Arizona’s congressional districts — would have to be redrawn so that they have more-comparable citizen numbers.

… an estimated 10 million legal permanent residents in the nation who are eligible to become citizens are Latino, and that 77 percent of these Latinos live in California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey or Arizona.

While not disputing there are large undocumented populations in these states, Gonzalez said, “the reality is that these states also have hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are law-abiding citizens, have played by the rules and are preparing to become full participants in this nation.”

Kenneth Prewitt, director of the Census bureau from 1998-2000, warned Miller’s amendment would lead to less cooperation by immigrants who are already too often wary of census takers, and a less complete and less accurate census.

I think it’s pretty clear which party would benefit from this, don’t you? It’s true that a couple of upper midwest swing states might gain a seat or two, but for the most part it’s the big blue population centers that will suffer. And you can bet that the necessary gerrymandering that comes with such a scheme will be well planned to take care of Republicans in states in which immigrant communities suddenly “disappear” from the body politic.

These are the little landmines that Karl and company have set throughout our political structure that are going to have reverberations for decades. Right now the immigration debate is dividing the GOP more than the Republicans and Democrats. But who knows where things will be in a couple of years? Karl and company play the long game and bet that it’s always better to institutionalize their strict numerical advantage.

Short term they may be trying to play to the hispanic vote, but ultimately it’s all about solidifying their base to such an extent that they never have to do more than win a few showy races to maintain a majority. Big business doesn’t care one bit about whether legal and illegal immigrants are represented in the census. If it takes the heat off of the cheap labor debate, they would be perfectly happy to support it. And this feeds the angry white vote nicely.

This is how you keep a political machine well oiled and working even if you wind up spending quality time in a federal prison. The mob works this way too.

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