There's Hope....Maybe

As soon as I finished my previous "omnibus" post, expressing the need for hope in the wake of the Supreme Court's disastrous Voting Rights Act ruling, I surfed onto Rachel Maddow's blog and found this:

A House Republican who led the last push to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act exhorted lawmakers Wednesday to join him in bringing the law back to life.

The day after the Supreme Court quashed the anti-discrimination statute, Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) urged lawmakers to cast aside their differences and restore the rejected provisions for the sake of voter protection.

“The Voting Rights Act is vital to America’s commitment to never again permit racial prejudices in the electoral process,” Sensenbrenner, the second-ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday in a statement.

“This is going to take time, and will require members from both sides of the aisle to put partisan politics aside and ensure Americans’ most sacred right is protected.”
Republican Reps. Steve Chabot (Ohio) and Sean Duffy (Wis.) also expressed support Wednesday for congressional action in response to the high court’s ruling.

Source: The Hill

To borrow a likely-overused phrase: I'm cautiously optimistic. A few Republicans seem willing to do the right thing and fix the Voting Rights Act rather than simply sitting on their hands for the sake of their electoral chances.

At the same time, I do not want hope to turn into naivete. I don't exactly trust the GOP as far as I can smell it. The above Republicans may say one thing and end up doing another. Even if they do follow through on their word to reauthorize the Act, their caucus may put up a show of resistance and obstruction to keep things as they are.

There is, however, a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Maybe this isn't the death knell for the Voting Rights Act.

Week In Review

Because of assignments for my summer classes, I have been, up to now, unable to expound on what's been happening in the political world. Rather than write twenty-seven posts to make up for lost time, I thought I'd simply cover the highlights (or, perhaps more fittingly, the lowlights) in one large omnibus post.

What a week it has been! Already we have seen one of the worst decisions to come from the Supreme Court in recent memory, followed by one of the Court's best decisions.

I'm referring in part, of course, to the Court's execrable ruling on the Voting Rights Act. A majority of conservative judges, in their infinite wisdom, ruled unconstitutional section five of the Act, which provided a formula for determining which counties of certain states required preclearance before passing new voting laws. The basis for this decision was the fact that section five "used data from the 1960s and 1970s", and "our country has changed since then".

The court, ruling in a challenge brought by Shelby County, Ala., left standing Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which gives the federal government authority over states that historically suppressed minority votes. But that section was effectively nullified by the court, which said the formula used to identity such jurisdictions, contained in Section 4, is not constitutionally valid because it is based on decades-old voter-participation data.

 Source: Wall Street Journal

Using old data did not seem to be a problem as recently as 2006, when a Republican-majority Congress voted nearly unanimously to extend the Voting Rights Act. Bush, to his credit, did one of the few right things of his presidency and promised to sign the legislation that extended the Act.

Source: Washington Post

But somehow, the Act became unconstitutional in the seven years since Congress last extended it, thus prompting the conservative justices to strike down the enforcement part of the law. Because, after all, we elected a black President in 2008, and a couple of black state Representatives successfully ran unopposed in some Southern state. Therefore, in the apparent logic of the Supreme Court, racism no longer exists!

Never, in my twenty-nine years, did I think that the Voting Rights Act was either controversial or in danger of being struck down.

So what happens now? The Voting Rights Act goes back to - you guessed it! - our notoriously inept Congress, full of obstructionist Republicans who will likely view the situation as a boost to their electoral chances and thus have no motivation to act.

A nice big judicial "screw you" to the minorities of this country. I'm sure, however, that the Voting Rights Act ruling won't be seen as judicial activism. That only happens when the Court hands down decisions that liberals like.

In much happier news, the Supreme Court also saw fit to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)!

The 5-4 decision read: "DOMA violates basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the federal government. Under DOMA same-sex married couples have their lives burdened, by reason of government decree, in visible and public ways.
"By its great reach DOMA touches many aspects of married life from the mundane to the profound."

Source: ABC News



Jurist Antonin Scalia, however, is apparently outraged over the ruling. An enterprising journalist from Talking Points Memo collected some of the more notable passages from Scalia's dissent:

Referring to the issue of standing, Scalia wrote, “I find it wryly amusing that the majority seeks to dismiss the requirement of party-adverseness as nothing more than a ‘prudential’ aspect of the sole Article III requirement of standing.”

“As I have said, the real rationale of today’s opinion, whatever disappearing trail of its legalistic argle-bargle one chooses to follow, is that DOMA is motivated by ‘bare … desire to harm’ couples in same-sex marriages.”

“As I have observed before, the Constitution does not forbid the government to enforce traditional moral and sexual norms,” Scalia wrote. “However, even setting aside traditional moral disapproval of same-sex marriage (or indeed same-sex sex), there are many perfectly valid — indeed, downright boring — justifying rationales for this legislation. Their existence ought to be the end of this case.”

“We have no power to decide this case,” Scalia wrote. “And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation. The Court’s errors on both points spring forth from the same diseased root: an exalted conception of the role of this institution in America.”

“The Court is eager — hungry — to tell everyone its view of the legal question at the heart of this case.”

(Emphasis mine)
Source: Talking Points Memo

The last quote above is especially ridiculous coming from a Court who, only a day before, ruled unconstitutional a law that had been democratically adopted. Now Scalia is concerned with judicial activism involving the elimination of laws enacted through the democratic process?

In even better news, Secretary of Defense Hagel has promised that the Pentagon will grant marriage benefits to same-sex couples, saying that it was "the right thing to do".

Source: The Hill

If you're a part of the LGBT community or one of its supporters - or if you're white and a Republican - this has been an excellent week for you. If, however, you're a minority who is hoping to vote in the next election, it has perhaps been the week from hell. Maybe - just maybe - there's still hope....

The New Political Correctness

Note: This is not my work; it is from Paul Krugman's excellent blog 'The Conscience of a Liberal".

Remember the furor over liberal political correctness? Yes, some of it was over the top — but it was mainly silly, not something that actually warped our national discussion.

Today, however, the big threat to our discourse is right-wing political correctness, which — unlike the liberal version — has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of Newspeak: to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order.

Thus, even talking about “the wealthy” brings angry denunciations; we’re supposed to call them “job creators”. Even talking about inequality is “class warfare”.

And then there’s the teaching of history. Eric Rauchway has a great post about attacks on the history curriculum, in which even talking about “immigration and ethnicity” or “environmental history” becomes part of a left-wing conspiracy. As he says, he’ll name his new course “US History: The Awesomeness of Awesome Americans.” That, after all, seems to be the only safe kind of thing to say.

Actually, this reminds me of an essay I read a long time ago about Soviet science fiction. The author — if anyone remembers where this came from — noted that most science fiction is about one of two thoughts: “if only”, or “if this goes on”. Both were subversive, from the Soviet point of view: the first implied that things could be better, the second that there was something wrong with the way things are. So stories had to be written about “if only this goes on”, extolling the wonders of being wonderful Soviets.
And now that’s happening in America.


Source: The Conscience of a Liberal

Immigration

the benefits would mostly go to business owners.....He's afraid “the 21 million Americans who can’t find full-time work will have an ever harder time getting a job and supporting their families.” This bill, Sessions said, apparently with a serious face, could be “the biggest setback for poor and middle-class Americans of any legislation Congress has considered in decades.”

Source: AL.com

A Republican expressing concern about the poor and worrying that benefits from legislation would go to wealthy business owners?

Don't get too excited. Republicans only pretend to care about the poor and the middle class when they think it will benefit them politically. In this case, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama was trying to make up reasons on the spot to kill the pending immigration reform bill before Congress.

Recently, Republicans have been trying to use the tried-and-true "It costs too much!" argument against the bill, but unfortunately, that ended up not working for them:

The American economy would suffer some initial struggles if a Senate bill legalizing the nation's million unauthorized immigrants becomes law, but the overall effect would be a reduction in the federal deficit, according to an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.

But the CBO also found that the border security components in the bill would reduce illegal immigration only by 25%.

The CBO, which estimates the cost of legislation, stated the bill would decrease federal deficits by $197 billion within a decade of passing Congress and an additional $700 billion over the next decade.

(Emphasis mine)
Source:  USA Today

Whoops! So onward and upward, pandering to the poor and middle class by pretending to care about their plight.

And while we're at it, how about launching anti-immigrant, tea-party-like-it's-2010 rallies in DC?

At one point, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., addressed Hispanic media outlets in Spanish — only to get heckled.

“If they all learned English …” someone shouted from the sidelines, then trailed off, as a woman arrived wielding a sign that read, “Do not reward criminals, no amnesty for illegal aliens!!!”
The speakers sought to brush it off.

“I want to make a call for unity,” said Becky Keenan, a pastor with the Gulf Meadows Church of Houston, Texas, “a call for a tone that is civil, where we can discuss issues, see where we can compromise.”

Across the East Front lawn, a woman was shouting wildly into a much louder microphone, almost drowning out Keenan. Protesters wore T-shirts emblazoned with American flags and tea party slogans, and they waved homemade signs that read, “John Boehner: no amnesty, get a backbone,” “Boehner: go home,” “exporting illegals = importing jobs for Americans, stop socialism,” and “if we lose rule of law we become Mexico.”

Source: Roll Call

After losing to noted fearsome Socialist Barack Obama for a second time in 2012, Republicans launched a "rebranding" campaign in which they pledged outreach to women and minorities (both of which came out of the woodwork to vote for Obama in droves).

Despite all the talk of "rebranding" and a "softer, kinder" Republican party, however, we still see nativist "English only" idiots gathering at the Capitol to derail a bill whose passage would likely help Republicans with minority outreach!

Is it any wonder that the GOP is (deservedly) "in the wilderness" right now? Maybe they should stay there until party leaders actually start showing a modicum of common sense (for a change).

The Camel's Nose

The Colonel Flaggs responsible for this country's vast military-intelligence complex have responded to growing criticism over the NSA's PRISM program:

The National Security Agency surveillance programs made public this month have helped foil more than 50 terrorist plots since Sept. 11, including one to blow up the New York Stock Exchange, top intelligence officials told Congress on Tuesday.

The officials appeared before the House Intelligence Committee and answered mostly friendly questions to defend the programs, which collect phone records inside the United States and monitor Internet communications overseas.

“I would much rather be here today debating this point than trying to explain how we failed to prevent another 9/11,” said Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA director.
At least 10 of the foiled plots were “homeland-based threats,” he said.

Source: NBC News

You'll pardon me if I call BS - I'm just having trouble believing a single word the government says in defense of the PRISM program. Government spooks would say just about anything to keep the broad, unchecked powers they were granted in the hysteria following 9/11.

Were there not similar claims from the government that torture - pardon me..."Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" -  had "saved lives" in order to shut up justified criticism over our intel-gathering activities? To the surprise of nobody save perhaps Dick Cheney, it was later revealed that so-called "Enhanced Interrogation" had saved exactly zero lives, and may in fact have put our troops in greater danger.

I'm reminded of an allegorical story that is often trotted out in politics: the camel and the tent. It is said that once a camel sticks its nose in your tent, it's like having a foot in the door - there's nothing to stop the camel from working the rest of its body into the tent, thus taking it over.

After 9/11, scared Americans decided that they would give up much of their "essential liberty" for a "measure of security" and granted the government a battery of unprecedented powers to collect information on its own citizens.

In recent years, Americans have largely gotten over our post-9/11 hysteria that gave us the PATRIOT Act, Gitmo, and other questionable national security apparatuses. Nevertheless, it has proven exceedingly difficult to rid the government of the excessive powers that were granted after 9/11. Perhaps worst of all, however, is the fact that some Americans have gotten so used to the "new normal" of Big Brother government that they have barely batted an eye over the PRISM program.

The camel's nose is in the tent, and it's going to be tough to push him back out...

Credibility, Thy Name Is NOT Cheney

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, that paragon of virtue, was interviewed over the weekend on national security matters. As you might expect, the interview was chock full of gems:

Cheney voiced support for the administration's recent decision to supply arms to Syrian rebel groups working to unseat Syrian President Bashar Assad, but said the infusion of aid may be "a day late and a dollar short."

"I think it is important that Assad go down. I think my instinct would have been to support the opposition sooner," he said. "You had an opportunity earlier to provide support without having to get American forces directly involved, and they took a pass. Now they are going to do it."

Overall, Cheney said, "I don't think it's been well-handled."

 (Emphasis mine) This from the Vice President who lied us into Iraq, claiming that there were non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" and promised that we would be "greeted as liberators"? A war from which we were only able to disentangle ourselves after ten years?

Cheney has about as much authority on matters being "well-handled" as my foot.

Source: CBS News

Then there was this:

He added that President Obama's defense of the eavesdropping programs is ineffective because Obama has been weak on security issues. Cheney complained that under Obama, the Internal Revenue Service had targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny and the administration had made crucial errors in protecting Americans during terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, last year. Four Americans, including an ambassador, were killed in those attacks. "He's got no credibility," Cheney said of Obama.

 OK...let's, as they say on cable news programs, "unpack" this a bit, shall we?

Firstly, as I have been repeatedly saying on this blog and elsewhere: what scandal? Both the Benghazi and IRS "scandals" are a bust, as neither one has any apparent connection to Obama or the White House. I know that Republicans are trying very, very hard to milk these incidents for all they are worth, but as the president said: "There's no 'there' there".

Secondly, who is Dick Cheney, of all people, to dismiss anyone as having "no credibility"? Under Cheney's watch, 9/11 happened, torture happened, Gitmo happened, lying us into an unnecessary war with Iraq happened, and accusations of being a "traitor" for not following the Dubya administration unquestioningly happened. Cheney was repeatedly found not only to be wrong, but his actions in the wake of the so-called "War on Terror" proved to be extra-Constitutional.

If Cheney wants to point to anyone who has "no credibility" on national security issues, he need only to look in the mirror.

Why are we still listening to this man as though he knows what he's talking about?

A Letter To The Editor

A Letter To The Editor that I submitted to the Richmond Times-Dispatch was published today! Frequent readers of this blog will likely not be surprised by the content:


Washington is caught up in Scandalmania 2013, and so, it seems, is the letters section of this newspaper. Since news of the IRS scrutinizing conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status and the Benghazi attacks, there has been a flurry of letters from conservative correspondents breathlessly accusing President Obama of corruption and claiming that he is the second coming of Richard Nixon

As more facts have been released to the general public, however, Benghazi and the IRS controversy have begun to look less like scandals and more like molehills.

Take Benghazi. Emails released from the White House reveal that it was the intelligence community – not the White House – that was responsible for the infamous talking points from which Susan Rice read on Meet the Press. Besides Rice, Obama is also absolved from guilt, as military analysts have gone on record to say that even if military planes had been sent to Benghazi during the attacks, they would not have arrived in time to render aid. So much for Benghazi being used to derail Obama’s presidency.

Attempts to turn the IRS controversy have met with similar difficulties. Despite claims to the contrary, liberal groups received the same scrutiny as conservative groups, suggesting that the IRS was not targeting political opponents to the president but simply doing what it thought was its job. A conservative-leaning manager of the IRS recently told The Washington Post that he was responsible for the scrutiny of political groups and not the White House.

There are certainly valid reasons to be upset with Obama. Recent leaks revealing that the government has been spying on citizens’ phone records is appalling. If the president is to be criticized, however, he should be criticized for what he has done, and not imaginary scandals milked by the opposing party. What happened to Republicans vowing to focus on jobs, jobs, jobs?

Big Government Conservatives

Why is it that the people who so loudly claim to hate so-called "big government" and the "nanny state" are often the first ones to advocate big government policies while in office?

I'm referring, of course, to recent laws proposed and passed by Republicans that give the government - that hated institution - power to override the personal decisions made by women.

Take, for example, a recent law from the hopelessly Republican Iowa legislature which gives the governor the power to personally approve abortions. No; I'm not making this up!

Source: http://tinyurl.com/mhczlcq

Imagine the outrage - the howls about a burgeoning police state - if a liberal or Democratic governor wanted to assume for him or herself the power to personally approve gun purchases. But the government taking control of women's personal decisions? Perfectly fine!

This is also happening in good ole Wisconsin, where noted union-busting Governor Walker has decided to use the power of government to force women to have medically unnecessary ultrasounds before an abortion - because, you know, that worked so well for Governor Bob Ultrasound McDonnell here in Virginia.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/lkazzho

"I don't have any problem with ultrasounds!" said Walker recently, apropos of nothing. Of course, it's not his body that the Wisconsin state government wants to invade in the name of punishing women who want to undergo an abortion procedure. 

These are examples of a (recent?) trend among Republicans that Rachel Maddow rightly calls 'big government conservatism', the phenomenon of running on a platform that decries the "gubmint" and then, once elected, using the power of public office to control and micromanage people's (read: women's) lives. 

Whether this trend is truly indicative of a contradiction in conservative philosophy is debatable, though it certainly looks like one. It does, however, prove the old adage to be true: power corrupts.

"Our Number One Priority"

From George Stephanopoulos' recent interview with Speaker of the House Boehner:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, we asked-- our viewers for questions for you. And so many came in on the same exact theme. Where are the jobs? What is this Congress doing for jobs?

BOEHNER: Well, that's interesting, George. Because it really is our number one priority. If you look at-- the last four years, we've had anemic economic growth. There aren't enough jobs. People's wages aren't growing. And frankly, I believe the president's policies are getting in the way of creating more jobs.

Source: ABC News

Really, Boehner? You sure could have fooled us.

How many jobs are being jeopardized by sequestration, which Congressional Republicans refuse to remove despite numerous reports of the sequester hurting the American people?

How many jobs are being created by the anti-abortion legislation that Republicans keep proposing in front of Congress, despite the fact that such legislation will (thankfully) never see the light of day?

How many jobs have been created by the over thirty-five votes to repeal "Obamacare"? Or the innumerable hearings on Benghazi and the IRS "scandals" that have not revealed anything that we didn't already known? Or the union busting that has been happening in the states thanks to Republican majorities there? Or the numerous attempts by Republicans to ensure that less qualified voters are actually voting?

Obama has done more to create jobs for the American people in five years than Republicans in twice that much time. Yet we still hear the leader of the "do nothing" party complain that Obama isn't creating jobs fast enough to suit the same people that made it necessary to create an excess of jobs in the first place!

If this is what focus on a "number one priority" looks like, I'd sure hate to see what would happen if Republicans didn't care about a particular issue.

What Happened to the Democratic Party?

What has happened to some parts of the Democratic party nowadays?

First we hear of Big Brother-esque spying from the government, in which "metadata" from personal e-mails and phone calls is collected and placed into a colossal database of intelligence. Rather that actually issuing condemnations for the obvious Constitutional concerns that are caused by such programs, many top Democrats chose instead to defend the program! "It's called defending America" said Feinstein several days ago.

(NOTE: I am excepting Senator Franken, who also recently defended the program. I respect and trust Franken, and his support of the  program carries more weight with me than "party flaks" such as Feinstein)

Now I hear that in the wake of allegations of widespread sexual assaults in the military, which is undeniably a major problem that prompted John McCain to stop short of recommending that women join the military, Senator Carl Levin is now blocking efforts to fix the problem!

The plan was to add to the Defense Authorization Act (DAA) a proposal which would take investigation of sexual assaults out of the chain of command, thus ensuring that such assaults would receive due diligence instead of being whitewashed by top brass. The proposal, offered by Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), reportedly had twenty-seven cosponsors, including four Republicans.

Unfortunately, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, stripped the proposal out of the DAA:

An effort to place military sex assault cases in the hands of an independent prosecutor was thwarted late Tuesday when Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin sided with the top brass – and against a fellow Democrat.

Levin (D-Mich.) will strip a proposal by Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) from the policy-setting Defense Authorization Act and replace it with a measure that instead requires senior military officers to review decisions when commanders refuse to prosecute a case.

Source: NBC News

To be fair, the article later mentions that:

Levin, who is not seeking re-election, is expected to accept an amendment from Senator Claire McCaskill to prevent commanders from overturning jury verdicts.

At the same time, the Democratic party that I know - the one that I have proudly supported for nine years - is not one that supports an ever-increasing police/surveillance state and efforts to whitewash sexual assaults!

That is not to say that Democrats are necessarily becoming Republicans. For that to happen, they would collectively have to lose several dozen IQ points and begin showing utter contempt for women, minorities, and work getting done in Congress.

Support for Big Brother because the face of Big Brother is now a Democrat, however, is not much better...

"Meet the old boss, same as the new boss"

Big Brother Government....From An Unlikely Source

We've known for quite a while that the government has been collecting information such as telephone and library records in the wake of the September 11th attacks.

What we haven't known, at least until The Guardian broke the story a few days ago, is that the government has been collecting the records of its own citizens, aided by major technology companies, since at least 2006:

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers.

Source: The Guardian

It's one thing to collect information about those who are suspected to have links to terrorists, but it's frankly appalling to hear the the government has been collecting records of its own citizens - in complete defiance of Constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures and guarantees of privacy.

Perhaps even more appalling, however, is the fact that many Democrats, who claimed to be so outraged when Dubya was doing this during his presidency, have tried to tell us that these new revelations are "no big deal":

“It is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress,” Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) told reporters at an impromptu news conference in the Capitol. “This is just meta data. There is no content involved. In other words, no content of a communication. … The records can only be accessed under heightened standards.”

“I read intelligence carefully. And I know that people are trying to get to us,” Feinstein said. “This is the reason we keep TSA doing what it’s doing. This the reason the FBI now has 10,000 people doing intelligence on counter-terrorism. This is the reason for the national counter-terrorism center that’s been set up in the time we’ve been active.”

“And it’s to ferret this out before it happens,” she said. “It’s called protecting America.”

Source: TPM

No, Feinstein - it's called turning America into a police state in the name of national security".

I expect this kind of behavior from Republicans, who claim to care about the Constitution but have often been the first to violate it in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. I expect better from Democrats.

When I voted in 2008, I didn't just vote for Obama, but against the egregious power grabs and abuses that had happened on Dubya's watch in the name of 9/11: the torture - pardon me... "enhanced interrogation techniques", the PATRIOT Act, "Total Information Awareness", warrantless wiretapping, etc etc etc.

Now I find that Obama is not necessarily any better on these issues than Dubya. He puts on a good front for Democrats, claiming to be "transparent" and above the aggressive national security tactics while continuing many of the Bus-era programs.

It is, to say the least, disappointing.