Vacation

I'm going on vacation. Back in a week. I'll leave you with this happy post. . .

Steve Benen: ACTIVE ATTEMPTS TO UNDERMINE THE COUNTRY...

In general, criticizing U.S. politicians by questioning their patriotism is cheap and unnecessary. But once in a while, Republican opposition to the administration is so counter-productive to the nation's interests, it's hard not to wonder whether the GOP official is deliberately trying to undermine the United States.

Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) now appears to have taken a bold step in the debate over the budget deficit: Openly telling a foreign government not to trust the administration in Washington.

The Straits Times reports that Kirk spoke to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, and discussed a meeting he had with Chinese leaders. Here's the video:

"One of the messages I had -- because we need to build trust and confidence in our number one creditor," said Kirk, "is that the budget numbers that the US government had put forward should not be believed. The Congress is actually gonna spend quite a bit more than what's in the budget, and the health-care bill probably being the lead driver of additional spending by the Congress."

Now, I realize that Mark Kirk is poised to launch a Senate campaign, so he'll need to make ridiculous attacks as often as possible, in order to boost his fundraising prospects. The more intense the vitriol, the more likely GOP donors will feel generous.

But that's not a compelling excuse. America's credibility -- and, in particular, the President Obama's reliability -- with China is absolutely necessary to the health of the nation's economy. It's one thing for conservative lawmakers to try to undermine confidence in America's leadership on Fox News or in some tirade on the House floor, but Mark Kirk, by his own admission, went directly to the Chinese and told them not to believe the Obama administration. Our role in international finance is predicated on the full faith and credit of the United States government, and Mark Kirk wants China to think this isn't worth much.

There may be more reckless and irresponsible moves a congressional Republican can make, but very few come to mind.

Here's hoping Kirk was just engaging in some right-wing bluster, and he never issued any such warnings to the Chinese. Perhaps he just wants people to think he tried to undermine the nation's credibility with China, but he knows actually doing this would be the height of foolishness.

Misguided bravado in advance of a campaign is understandable. Traveling overseas to undercut confidence in the United States is not.

And, as a remdy to that, via TPM: President Obama Orders General Odierno to Shave Stephen Colbert's Head

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Obama Orders Stephen's Haircut - Ray Odierno
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Stephen Colbert in Iraq

This and That

publius: Moving On

Ed Whelan has written both publicly and privately and apologized. I know it was not an easy thing to do, and it is of course accepted. I therefore consider the matter done, and don't intend on writing about it anymore.

The real story here wasn't really about me anyway -- it's about whether the norm of pseudonymity is a good thing. And there's a legitimate debate about that. Personally, I think that pseudonymity is a net benefit, whatever other costs it brings. More voices are better than less -- and pseudonymity (to me) enriches the public sphere by adding voices that could not otherwise be heard. But people can disagree in good faith about these things, as Whelan correctly notes.

Anyway, I'm moving on. I appreciate Whelan's update. And that's all I have to say.

• A.L. adds:

  Credit where credit is due. It took a while, but this is an actual apology. And given the size of the hole he had already dug for himself on this issue, I'm sure it wasn't easy for Whelan to write this. Though, as he acknowledges, this apology doesn't do much for publius, it is nevertheless important and welcome. By acknowledging that he should not have done what he did, Whelan sets a helpful precedent and makes it less likely that someone else will do the same thing in the future. That's important. This episode had the potential to create a chilling effect in the blogosphere, to discourage people in certain lines of employment from participating. But I think the near universal condemnation of Whelan's conduct, coupled with his apology, may actually end up having the opposite effect. I think this episode goes a long way toward officially ratifying one of the most important unwritten rules of online ethics, i.e., that a person's decision to write under a pseudonym should be respected barring compelling reasons not to do so. And retaliating against criticism is not such a reason. To the extent that rule is widely understood and acknowledged, it will encourage greater participation in online politics and result in a greater variety of voices being heard.

NYT Editorial: Honest Justice

The right to a fair hearing before an impartial judge, untainted by money or special interests, is at the heart of the nation’s justice system and the rule of law. That right is more secure following a 5-to-4 ruling on Monday by the United States Supreme Court.

The case involved some egregious ethical myopia on the part of Justice Brent Benjamin of the West Virginia Supreme Court. Justice Benjamin, who is now the state’s chief justice, twice cast the deciding vote to throw out a $50 million verdict against Massey Energy, one of the country’s biggest coal companies. He sat in judgment on the case even though Massey’s chief executive, Don Blankenship, spent an extraordinary $3 million to help Justice Benjamin get elected to the state’s top court.

In Monday’s decision, the majority correctly found that Justice Benjamin’s failure to recuse himself from a case involving his major campaign supporter — which John Grisham has cited as an inspiration for one of his legal thrillers — amounted to a Constitutional violation.

“Not every campaign contribution by a litigant or attorney creates a probability of bias that requires a judge’s recusal, but this is an exceptional case,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion, which was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

...

In a dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts said he was concerned that the majority’s ruling will lead to an increase in allegations that judges are biased. We believe that risk is exaggerated. More important, this ruling comes at a moment when judicial neutrality and the appearance of neutrality is under a severe threat from big money state judicial campaigns and the special interest money that fuels them.

The majority’s recognition of the threat posed by outsize contributions amounts to a crucial statement that judges and justice are not for sale.

Indeed, the only truly alarming thing about Monday’s decision was that it was not unanimous. The case drew an unusual array of friend-of-court briefs from across the political spectrum, and such an extreme case about an ethical matter that should transcend ideology should have united all nine justices.

Chief Justice Roberts is fond of likening a judge’s role to that of a baseball umpire. It is hard to imagine that professional baseball or its fans would trust the fairness of an umpire who accepted $3 million from one of the teams.

• Joe Sudbay (DC) adds: And, then, there's Scalia:

  Justice Scalia, in a separate dissent, said Monday’s decision illustrated a larger jurisprudential problem.
  
  “The court today continues its quixotic quest to right all wrongs and repair all imperfections through the Constitution,” Justice Scalia wrote.
  
  “Should judges sometimes recuse themselves even when the clear commands of our prior due process law do not require it?” he asked. “Undoubtedly. The relevant question, however, is whether we do more good than harm by seeking to correct this imperfection through expansion of our constitutional mandate in a manner ungoverned by any discernible rule. The answer is obvious.”

  Yeah, not so obvious to Scalia. He's such an authority on ethics that he went hunting with Cheney even while the court was considering a case involving Cheney:

  Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent part of last week duck hunting together at a private camp in southern Louisiana just three weeks after the court agreed to take up the vice president's appeal in lawsuits over his handling of the administration's energy task force.
  
  While Scalia and Cheney are avid hunters and longtime friends, several experts in legal ethics questioned the timing of their trip and said it raised doubts about Scalia's ability to judge the case impartially.
  
  But Scalia rejected that concern Friday, saying, "I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned."

  Right.

Palin the plagiarizer? June 8: MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell discusses reports that a recent speech by Gov. Sarah Palin was largely plagiarized from one given by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

• Benen adds: SHE'S GETTING WORSE....

  Maybe it's just me, but it seems like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), instead of becoming more credible and serious as her time in government progresses, is getting more ridiculous as time goes on.

  In her appearance on "Hannity" on Monday night, Sarah Palin claimed that the country was headed towards socialism. [...]

  Hannity, who bragged that he was interviewing her near his New York home, asked Palin about the country's debt and Obama's federal programs, prompting Palin to outline her fears.

  "Our country could evolve into something that we do not even recognize, certainly that is so far from what the founders of our country had in mind for us."

  Hannity interrupted her: "Socialism?"

  To which Palin responded: "Well, that's where we are headed."

  Palin added that increasing the national debt "defies any sensible economic policy that any of us ever learned through college."

  I'm going to assume Palin was absent the day they taught Keynesian theory. She really seems to believe the principal goal of government in the midst of an economic crisis is to lower the deficit. In other words, what she "learned through college" is that Hoover was right.

  "[T]his many months into the new administration, [I'm] quite disappointed, quite frustrated with not seeing those actions to rein in spending, slow down the growth of government," Palin argued. "Instead, Sean, it is the complete opposite."

  Well, yes, it is the "complete opposite." That's the point. Facing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, we want the opposite.

  Mark Halperin referred to this bizarre Fox News interview as the "ALASKA SHOCKER!!!" (emphasis in the original). I have no idea what prompted this -- the only thing "shocking" is how little sense Palin made.

  The governor went on to say that she rejected a "bucket of money" in stimulus funds because of the "strings attached." As it turns out, Alaskan lawmakers can't find any of these imaginary strings and even Republican officials are poised to override her veto. (That Palin would even consider complaining about federal funds is amusing given the largesse Alaska keeps accepting from D.C.)

  At this point, Palin manages to make George W. Bush look like a sophisticated policy wonk. That so many far-right activists consider her their political savior is astounding.

From BarbinMD's Abbreviated Pundit Round-Up

Frank Gaffney continues his descent into madness (both of the insanity and the still being mad about November variety) with a screed that's beyond belief. Here's the CliffNotes version:

... Barack Hussein Obama would have to be considered America's first Muslim president ... a stunning conclusion seems increasingly plausible: The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich ... there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself ... he has aligned himself with adherents to what authoritative Islam calls Shariah -- notably, the dangerous global movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood -- to a degree that makes Mr. Clinton's fabled affinity for blacks pale by comparison ... Whether Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim or simply plays one in the presidency may, in the end, be irrelevant. What is alarming is that in aligning himself and his policies with those of Shariah-adherents such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the president will greatly intensify the already enormous pressure on peaceful, tolerant American Muslims to submit to such forces - and heighten expectations, here and abroad, that the rest of us will do so as well.

Eugene Robinson weighs in on President Obama's Cairo speech:

There are those who believe that admitting mistakes is a sign of weakness. I think it's a sign of confidence and strength, and I believe that's how it was received by Obama's intended audience.

Perhaps the best indication of how Obama played in Cairo is the reaction of his competitors for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. The Associated Press reported Sunday that the Iranian-backed, Lebanon-based guerrilla group Hezbollah, an influential radical Saudi cleric and the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood all warned followers not to be taken in by Obama's seductive words -- which suggests a fear that Obama had been dangerously effective. A Web site that often reflects the thinking of al-Qaeda referred to the president after the speech as a "wise enemy."

William McGurn has some complaints about the White House tricking the media about job creation numbers, and so who better to go to for some perspective than a former Bush administration spokesman?

David Gratzer is concerned about health care reform, or as he explains it, CANADA!!

Kevin Baine states the obvious:

There is something profound, but also something superficial, about the debate that occurs every time a Supreme Court justice is nominated. The debate is profound because it probes the delicate role of an independent judiciary in a democracy. But it becomes superficial when it turns into an argument over whether judges should be making law or simply interpreting it. For a nominee, the safe answer is that the Supreme Court should interpret law, not make it. It would be refreshing, however, if the nominee acknowledged that courts, including the Supreme Court, make law all the time -- and then explain how they do so.

Yglesias: Very Old Quote of the Day

Here’s a line allegedly from Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws that I’ve only ever actually seen quoted in other works:

As Rome, Sparta, and Carthage have lost their liberty and perished, so the constitution of England will in time lose its liberty, will perish: it will perish, whenever the legislative power shall become more corrupt than the executive.

I’m not sure this means American liberty is doomed, but I think it would be hard to deny that the corrupting influence of special interest politics weighs heavier on the Hill than it does on the White House.

Meanwhile, I do think you can see an inkling of what Montesquieu is talking about in the fact that there’s a persistent impulse in the contemporary United States to say that if something is really important, we need to basically cut congress out of the loop. This probably happened first with the steady decline of congress’ war powers. But you also saw it in the way that the Treasury/Fed response to the financial crisis was shaped by an overwhelming desire to avoid the need to go back to congress, by the way that proposals for improving the operations of MedPAC all involve trying to circumvent congress, etc. Tellingly, the judgment that congress can’t handle these issues is a judgment largely shared by congress. In the England of Montesquieu’s day, of course, the “executive” was understood to mean the unelected King, so a shift in the balance of power from legislature to executive constituted the death of liberty. Here in the US, obviously, it’s a different situation.

Yglesias: It’s All “Real” Health Care Reform

Katrina Vanden Heuvel has an interesting interview with Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) about his quest to create some room for single-payer around the health reform table. I’m in sympathy with Sanders’ goals, and it’s my belief that if we get a health reform package that includes a “strong” public plan—something along the lines of what’s in Ted Kennedy’s bill—then we’ll be on the right track. But I did want to push back against a piece of language she uses that I’ve also heard elsewhere:

This week, Senator Bernie Sanders has been firing on all cylinders as he continues his advocacy for real healthcare reform that controls costs while extending quality care to every American.

Even something very watered down like this proposal from Third Way would, especially when combined with the other reform proposals that relate to other issues, very much be real reform that would do a lot to help a lot of people. I think a robust public plan is highly desirable and people ought to work for it. But they shouldn’t be working for that goal in a manner that winds up disparaging all the other aspects of health care reform. Creating a regulated health care exchange and providing subsidies to ensure that insurance is affordable for all are very important in their own right. It’s all real reform. It’s just a question of how much real reform are we going to get.

The fight for health care reform June 8: As President Barack Obama calls on the Senate to be more aggressive in pursuit of health care reform, one GOP senator isn't so happy about the president's encouragement. Dr. Howard Dean discusses.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

• Joe Sudbay (DC) adds:

  Today at the White House, Obama is doing an event with the House Blue Dog Democrats on the subject of fiscal responsibility. While that crew is at the White House, Obama better get commitments from them not to screw up health care reform. Because, they're just the kind of Democrats who will sell out to the insurance industry.

Yglesias: Are Rival Websites Killing Newspapers?

A very useful point from Conor Clarke about the contention that the Huffington Post is damaging an institution like The New York Times by being parasitic on its work. As Clarke points out, it appears to be that there’s a rising tide of “reading stuff on the internet” that’s lifting both boats:

My guess is that this point applies a fortiori to more “nromal” blogs (like, say, this one). Far from being “parasitic” on heavily linked-to news sites, these are complementary endeavors, driving readers to the sites that the bloggers use as their main sources of information. And of course America’s best newspapers are already hugely successful websites—thanks to the Internet, far more people read The New York Times today than at any previous point. The problem for everyone trying to make money on the internet—and that goes for everyone from the NYT to Josh Marshall to Arianna Huffington to whoever decided to hire Ezra Klein—is that ad rates on the web just don’t bring in very much money. In England, two of the best sources of information, the BBC and the Guardian, are already run as non-commercial enterprises and I have a feeling that more and more of the serious newsmedia will come in that form in the future.

What digby said . . .

digby: Refusing To Pander

I had to read this twice this morning because I simply couldn't believe it the first time. Stuart Rothenberg has had it. he won't appear on Chris Matthews anymore.

But it's not what you think:

America's cable "news" networks have concluded - on the basis of considerable research and evidence, I'm sure - that most viewers don't want straight news and analysis as much as they want to hear what they already think or to watch predictable partisan attacks.

The three big cable "news" networks don't exist to provide a public service, after all. They have corporate officers and stockholders to answer to, which means they need more and more eyeballs to generate more advertising dollars.

Their answer: talk radio on TV. Forget about the serious implications and political fallout that follow an event or policy, and instead attack your opponents repeatedly using half-truths, glittering generalities and inapplicable analogies. Given the high ratings of Fox News Channel and MSNBC, the cable gurus probably are right. Advocacy has won out over neutrality.

Chris Matthews is a smart, politically astute observer of politics, but my last appearance convinced me that "Hardball" has evolved from a straight political news program with quality guests to one that has more in common with its network's prime-time slant. Like most of the evening programming on MSNBC and the Fox News Channel, "Hardball" has become a partisan, heavily ideological sledgehammer clearly intended to beat up one party and one point of view.

During the show on which I appeared, Matthews referred more than once to Republicans as "Luddites" and took every opportunity imaginable to portray them as crackpots. The show's topics inevitably pander to the most liberal Democratic viewers and present Republicans and conservatives in the least flattering of terms.

I don't mean to single out Matthews for criticism because he actually understands politics and I believe that he would prefer to do a serious political show.

Yes, that's right.Rothenberg believes that Chris Matthews prefers to do a serious political show but these days he has no choice but to pander to liberal Democratic viewers and that's just wrong. Jamison Foser asks:

Uh, when, exactly, was Chris Matthews's Hardball a "straight political news program"? When has anything about Matthews ever been "straight"?

When he was insisting that "everybody" likes George W. Bush, except "the real whack jobs"? (Bush's approval ratings at the time were in the 30s.)

When he was comparing Bush to Atticus Finch?

When he said Bush "glimmers" with "sunny nobility"? Or when he gushed over Bush's "mission accomplished" stunt, revealing what could only be described as a crush on the president?

When he derided Democratic critics of Bush's handling of Iraq as "carpers and complainers"?

Or when he ridiculed Barack Obama for ordering orange juice in a diner and said Obama's bowling was insufficiently "macho"? When he called Obama an elitist who had trouble connecting with "regular people" -- by which he meant "white people"?

Or when he called Hillary Clinton a "She Devil" and said she was "witchy"? Or when he said of Clinton "I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for"?

Or when he spent two years absolutely trashing Al Gore, helping to hand the presidency to George W. Bush? Or when he turned over his airwaves to Gennifer Flowers, allowing her to accuse President Clinton of murder?

But that was when he was just speaking to "regular" people, telling it like it is. Now that he's trashing Republicans he's being a partisan. And Stu Rothenberg wants no part of such unseemly pandering.

Can these Villagers possibly be more obtuse?

Wingnut Messaging: "Let’s kill the survivors!” Edition

QOTD, from the comments at Balloon Juice, Bill E Pilgrim on interpreting wingnuttery:

It’s sort of like reading something in Elizabethan English at this point, you need footnotes or Cliff’s Notes or something.

QOTD2, when wingnut messaging goes horribly awry, here's Paul A. Eisenstein on the planned RW boycott of GM:

Will the critics make a boycott stick, potentially strangling the new GM right from its inception, thereby hurting U.S. taxpayers, or is is this tale, as William Shakespeare wrote, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

When asked if he fears the call for a boycott will cut into sales, GM’S CFO Young said, “I don’t think so,” adding that, “I believe the vast majority of Americans want us to succeed. They want the hometown team to succeed.”

For his part, analyst Jim Hall, of 2953 Analytics, cautioned that, “You always worry when people are organized against you, but,” Hall stressed, “you’re talking about a small wing of a party that’s imploding.”

Benen: THE BEST SYSTEM SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME...

There's a script Republicans lawmakers are supposed to stick to on health care. They're encouraged to engage in anti-government demagoguery, but they're also not supposed to defend the status quo. After all, if there's one thing most Americans agree on in this debate, it's that the current system is a mess.

It's why I found Sen. Richard Shelby's (R-Ala.) remarks on Fox News yesterday pretty interesting.

"One, we don't know how much [a reform package is] going to cost and who's going to pay for it," he said. "Secondly, it will be the first steps in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known."

Really? The current U.S. health care system is the best, not only in the world, but in the history of the world?

I haven't seen this quote generate much in the way of attention, but Shelby's remarks yesterday strike me as a possible opportunity for Democrats. Here we have a prominent Republican senator defending the status quo as the best system "the world has ever known." Do the tens of millions of Americans with no coverage agree with that? How about the Americans who've had to declare bankruptcy because they couldn't afford their health care bills? Or the workers who've seen their premiums quadruple? Or the families who wait in long lines for care? Or the businesses who struggle to compete because of health care costs?

It seems like a fairly difficult position to defend -- Republicans think the dysfunctional status quo, which costs too much and covers too few, is "the best care system the world has ever known."

Seems like a loser for the GOP, should Dems try to capitalize on this one.

• Benen: IS 'ENTITLEMENT' A NEW SCARE WORD?....

  The Wall Street Journal editorial page is a near-constant source of distortions, but on this specific point today, it was entirely right.

  The now-famous Obama-Orszag mantra -- "entitlement reform is health-care reform" -- really means that when they're done, all health care will be an entitlement.

  Yep. The president believes Americans are entitled to access to quality, affordable care. It's nice of the Wall Street Journal editorial page to notice.

  Jon Chait noted, "Ooh! Gotcha! Except nobody is denying that Obama wants to make health care an entitlement. That's kind of the point, isn't it? All Americans will be entitled to health care? Is this supposed to scare us?"

  Probably, but like most of the WSJ's editorials, there's a problem with the execution of the idea.

  As for the editorial's other point -- by passing health care reform, the administration can bring costs down and help address Medicare expenditures -- the WSJ hardly tries to explain why the White House might be wrong. It just wants to get that zinger in there about the scary prospect of health care becoming "an entitlement."

  Coming soon to a list of Republican talking points near you.

• Ezra Klein: Peter Orszag Responds to His Critics

  In his New Yorker profile of Peter Orszag, Ryan Lizza argued that Orszag was the Obama administration official who best represented -- and even guarded -- "Obamaism." I think you see a bit of that today over at Orszag's blog. This is his first post, to my knowledge, linking to other bloggers. And he kicks it off by linking, and respectfully responding, to criticisms made by three conservatives who he "reads regularly": Virginia Postrel, Mickey Kaus, and Richard Posner. He starts it, in other words, by reaching out to critics and trying to convince them that he understands their concerns. Call it the David Brooks strategy.

  To draw out one point implicit in Orszag's response, you need to separate health care reform into two pieces. Coverage and cost. The reforms meant to expand coverage are big, expensive, coercive, and largely occur in the private market. They're things like government subsidies to purchase health insurance, individual mandates to make sure people buy health insurance, and market reforms to end the days of cherrypicking and underwriting.

  The cost reforms, by contrast, are being done cautiously, cooperatively, and with a focus on Medicare. They're things like the idea to make it easier for MedPAC to reform Medicare, which Orszag talks about in his post. They're things like "comparative effectiveness review," which simply creates data on which treatments are most effective. There is no coercion attached to that data. No statute that forces your doctor to read the findings. But it's a pretty safe guess that its recommendations will be embraced first by government health programs like Medicare.

  Which is why it's a bit bizarre to read Postrel writing that "if more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare?" When it comes to cost, they actually are starting with Medicare. They hope that the efficiencies work and are voluntarily adopted by private insurance. But there's no actual mechanism to make that happen.

  Most people, however, don't notice the Medicare focus, because it's the coverage issues -- insurance market reforms and subsidy costs and employer taxes and individual mandates -- that get all the attention. But another way to think of health reform is that the administration is proposing policies to reform coverage in the health care system and to control costs in the government insurance system.

Sudbay: It's hard to be bipartisan with catty, petty Republicans like Iowa's Charles Grassley

Obama keeps talking bipartisanship, as John notes below. But, Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley exposed the level of his pettiness (and bitchiness) over the weekend. He launched a catty attack on Obama via Twitter;

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley says that President Barack Obama "got nerve" to go sightseeing in Paris while telling lawmakers it's time to deliver on a health care overhaul.

Grassley, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, is key to any bipartisan health care deal. Using Twitter — the Internet-based social connection service allows users to send mass text messages called "tweets" — the Iowa Republican issued two angry "tweets" Sunday morning as the president wrapped up an overseas tour.

For months Obama had left the details of health care legislation to Congress, then inserted himself firmly into the debate in recent days, including using his weekly radio address Saturday to declare "it's time to deliver" on health reform.

Grassley's first tweet: "Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us 'time to deliver' on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND."

Seriously. That is the GOP's point man in the Senate on health care reform. He's that petty for the world to see. And, it's only going to get worse.

Good thing the health care bill allows for 51 votes. Because, the Republicans aren't going to play ball -- despite what Obama and Senator Max Baucus think.

Sudbay: GOP drama continues: Republicans don't want Palin to upstage President Gingrich

Tonight's the big, big, big Republican fundraising dinner here in D.C. It'll be the biggest gathering of haters and losers in one place at one time since the GOP convention.

You may remember the controversy a couple months ago when Sarah Palin was invited to be the keynoter, but said she wasn't. So, the GOP dumped her -- and replaced her with their leader, Newt. That was fun enough.

But, there's been a round two. She was re-invited, then re-dumped. All to protect Newt's fragile ego:

Sarah Palin’s on-again, off-again appearance at Monday night’s gala GOP fundraising dinner is off — again.

After being invited — for a second time — to speak to the annual joint fundraiser for the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Palin was told abruptly Saturday night that she would not be allowed to address the thousands of Republicans there after all.

The Alaska governor may now skip the dinner altogether, and her allies are miffed at what they see as a slight from the congressional wing of the Republican Party.

The reason given for the snub, said a Palin aide, was that NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions was concerned about not wanting to upstage former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the fundraising gala’s keynote speaker.

And, there is that other new controversy over whether Palin used GIngrich's words in a speech. That would be a problem if she gave his speech right before he did.

Benen: IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS...

Hoping to spur faster growth and take advantage of the summer months, President Obama intends to spend stimulus money at a more aggressive pace in the coming months, with the intention of creating more than 600,000 jobs. Many of the projects were in the pipeline anyway, but will be moved up for greater impact.

On the other hand, we have Republicans and conservative activists, who've decided the economy is moving along just fine, and officials should scrap the economic recovery package altogether.

With the economy showing signs of recovery, fiscally conservative economists and Republican lawmakers are suggesting that the large unspent portion of the nearly $800 billion stimulus fund should be redirected to slash this year's nearly $2 trillion annual deficit.

Democratic lawmakers, Obama administration officials and many economists doubt the wisdom of truncating the stimulus program so soon after it began. But Republican congressmen and economists who were not thrilled with the stimulus effort are increasingly calling for it to be foreshortened as a return to economic growth appears closer at hand. [...]

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, told The Washington Times that he too thinks the recession will be coming to an end within months and he will push to bring the stimulus fund's spending to a halt.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) added that he believes "the economy is just as likely to begin to recover on its own."

And while it's frightening to hear these arguments made, there appears to be very little chance that Republicans will succeed. The administration's ramped up schedule aims to fund thousands of additional jobs in education, law enforcement, and military construction.

Benen: A BOYCOTT IS A VERY BAD IDEA....

I can appreciate why government intervention in support of General Motors is controversial. I can even understand why Republicans would hope to exploit the issue for short-term partisan gain.

But organizing a boycott of a struggling U.S. auto manufacturer, just to spite the nation's elected leadership, seems like a spectacularly bad idea. Hugh Hewitt, for example, had this item the other day. (thanks to reader T.B.)

This is a decision that must be reversed. GM must be denationalized, the federal government divested of not just its controlling interest but all of its interest in the company. The Republican leadership must immediately and loudly demand the sale of the federal share in the company, even if it costs a large part of the $50 billion already invested. [...]

In the effort to reverse this lurch beyond the farthest left fringe of previous Democratic statist urges, individual Americans have a role to play. They have to say no to GM products and services until such time as the denationalization occurs. This is a painful conclusion for those of us with friends still working for the company, and who had supported aggressive efforts to help the private company restructure.

But there isn't any alternative, every dollar spent with GM is a dollar spent against free enterprise.

It would be an exaggeration to say this is catching on, but as one prominent industry blog noted, "Hewitt is by no means alone. The boycott theme is quickly spreading across the conservative talk radio world, as well as on websites like the one operated by the rightist Washington Times."

There's no shortage of reasons to find these efforts bizarre, but the one that stands out is how backwards it is. The Obama administration intervened to prevent the collapse of a major American company, but its goal is to see GM get back on its feet and divest as quickly as possible. A boycott, organized by far-right activists, would work against Americans' interests -- it would undermine GM, exacerbate the company's problems, and undercut taxpayers who obviously have a lot invested in this arrangement.

This isn't complicated. If GM's finances improve, the government can divest, American jobs will be saved, and taxpayers can get a return on their money. That would be a good thing.

There's been debate in conservative circles over the last several months about whether, in the midst of multiple crises, it's appropriate to root for failure. But it's even more striking to see some conservatives trying to actively ensure failure, regardless of the consequences for the country.

• DougJ: The Physical Impossibility of Wingnuttery in the Mind of Someone Not a Wingnut
  

  It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of the various wingnut boycotts and the reasons for them. GM is the latest. Here’s the explanation from Dear Leader:

  Limbaugh reassures any GM workers who might be listening that the boycotters aren’t angry at them. “They don’t want to patronize Obama. They don’t want to do anything to make Obama’s policies work!” he explains. “This is an untold story, by the way. Of course, the government-controlled media is not gonna report anything like this but there are a lot of people who are not going to buy from Chrysler or General Motors as long as it is perceived Barack Obama is running it, because people do not want his policy to work here because this is antithetical to the American economic way of life.”

  In other words, buying American is now an act of treason. But that should not be taken as a slap in the face to American auto workers. Got that?

  I first became aware of how complicated it was to be a conservative during Ben Domenech’s brief fiery ride across the landscape:

  Any red-blooded American conservative, even those who hold a dim view of Patrick Swayze’s acting “talent,” knows a Red Dawn reference. For all the talk of left wing cultural political correctness, the right has such things, too (DO shop at Wal-Mart, DON’T buy gas from Citgo). But in the progressive halls of the mainstream media, such things prompt little or no recognition. For the MSM, Dan Rather is just another TV anchor, France is just another country and Red Dawn is just another cheesy throwaway Sunday afternoon movie.

  Oh, for the simple times of hating France and Dan Rather! Now, both major American donut makers are off-limits, granite countertops are strictly verboten, you can’t buy American cars, and field mice, bear DNA, and volcano-monitoring have replaced Islamofascism as the greatest threats we face. Anyone who doesn’t know what “where’s the birth certificate” means is suspect.

  Billboards that make no sense, protests that take their cue from contemporary sexual slang, self-contradictory messages about consumerism…At some level, isn’t this all beginning to resemble some kind of huge, conceptual art piece (the kind that real conservatives don’t want the NEA to fund)? Is it fair to say that modern conservatism has now jumped the embalmed shark?

• John Cole: Cutting Off Your Wingnuts to Spite Your Face
  

  The first thing I thought when I looked at DougJ’s post about these morons organizing a boycott of GM and Chrysler was that they just spent the last three weeks incorrectly screaming that Republican Chrysler dealerships were unfairly targeted by the Obama administration for closure, so now they want to boycott them and finish off the rest of them- “Republican dealerships were unfairly targeted! Let’s kill the survivors!”

  Does this mean we will get months of amateur hour statistical analysis proving that wingnut boycotts disparately impacted McCain voters? Or is Hillary still to blame?

  These idiots can’t even keep an internally consistent wingnut meme going for a couple weeks. No wonder the rest of the country has no clue what the hell they are talking about.

Scarecrow: Conservative Justices Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas Say Virtually Bribing Judges is Okay

Well, here's a revealing Supreme Court decision that tells you all you need to know about what's wrong with the radical right wing Justices of our Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that a judge who accepts campaign contributions from a corporate CEO during his/her reelection campaign must recuse him/herself in a case involving that corporation. From the New York Times:

By a 5-4 vote in a case from West Virginia, the court said that a judge who remained involved in a lawsuit filed against the company of the most generous supporter of his election deprived the other side of the constitutional right to a fair trial.

''Just as no man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, similar fears of bias can arise when -- without the consent of the other parties -- a man chooses the judge in his own cause,'' Justice Anthony Kennedy said for the court. . . .

The West Virginia case involved more than $3 million spent by the chief executive of Massey Energy Co. to help elect state Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin. At the same time, Massey was appealing a verdict, which now totals $82.7 million with interest, in a dispute with a local coal company. Benjamin refused to step aside from the case, despite repeated requests, and was part of a 3-2 decision to overturn the verdict.

The wonder is that the company/CEO and judge are not on trial for bribery.

The decision is entirely sensible. (See supporting statement from the Constitutional Accountability Center, which had filed an amicus brief.) You can't have a fair trial without a judge whose impartiality is beyond question. You can't gain respect for the administration of justice if a judge appears to accept payments from those involved in the litigation. It's hard to think of a more important foundational principle to our system of justice.

But the four radical right wing justices don't think that way. According to Justice Robert's dissent (Scalia, Alito, and Thomas also dissenting), we should fear [trying the craft] rules that prevent judges from looking like they've been bribed by litigants with cases before them:

''It is an old cliche, but sometimes the cure is worse than the disease,'' Roberts said. He wrote that it is not clear that Blankenship's money even affected the outcome of the election.

''I would give the voters of West Virginia more credit than that,'' he said.

Both Scalia and Roberts said that the ruling would end up undermining confidence in the judicial system, not enhancing it as the majority contended.

So as we continue the confirmation process of Justice Sotomayor, whose main offense appears to be that she's empathetic to victims of injustice, consider what the radical right is telling America about the views they'd like to see in a Supreme Court Justice:

Shorter conservatives:

1. A fair trial does not require an impartial judge, let alone the appearance of one.

2. We think our courts should be just as corrupt as our legislatures.

3. We think it should be lawful for judges to rule in cases involving their biggest campaign contributors, when those campaign contributors made the contributions knowing their cases were headed for the court.

4. This is called, "strict construction" or not being an "activist" judge or "calling balls and strikes." The Founding Fathers would have approved this.

5. Anyone who disagrees with us suffers from empathy.

6. You were surprised by Bush v. Gore?

Anonymous Liberal: It's Okay to Use a Pseudonym, But Only if You're Important

Over at National Review today, various writers are attempting to defend the indefensible, the decision by their colleague, Ed Whelan, to retaliate at a critic by publishing his identity. Whelan's childish behavior was almost universally condemned yesterday by writers from across the political spectrum. But because he's a fixture at the National Review, his colleagues are trying--not very successfully--to defend his conduct.

My favorite defense so far is this one from Jonah Goldberg. He quotes a reader email that asks: "If it's cowardly to blog anonymously, were Madison, Hamilton, and Jay cowards for publishing the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym 'Publius'?" Goldberg then responds:

Answer: No. Madison, Hamilton and Jay weren't amateur pundits. Seems like a pretty big category error.

After posting this, Goldberg apparently got a number of emails pointing out that Madison, Hamilton, and Jay were in fact "amateur pundits" by any reasonable definition. So he wrote an update to clarify his "larger and more important point":

Madison, Hamilton and Jay were anonymous not because they wanted opine [sic] on the news of the day for fun. They were anonymous because they were heroically successful revolutionaries trying to secure a republic and a constitution. Whatever the merits of this Blevins guy, he ain't Madison, Hamilton or Jay, even if he does call himself Publius. My point was the comparison is silly, and my point stands.

I see, so apparently the way we should determine whether writing under a pseudonym is appropriate is by looking at the actual identity of the writer and judging whether or not that person is important enough to warrant the privilege. Is it possible to make a dumber, less coherent argument?

The whole point of pseudonymous writing is that people don't know who the writer is. They have to judge the writing on its merits, not on the credentials of the writer. That was precisely why Madison, Hamilton, and Jay chose to use a pseudonym. They wanted their ideas to be judged separately from any opinions people had about them personally. If they wanted to cash in on their reputations as "heroically successful revolutionaries," they would have signed their own names to what they were writing.

The "category" distinction that Goldberg is trying to draw, between people whose opinions matter and those whose opinions do not, is the very distinction that the use of pseudonymity is meant to eliminate.

Secondly, the suggestion that someone like Publius' contribution to the general political dialogue in this country is insignificant because he is simply "opin[ing] on the news of the day for fun" is pretty insulting. Publius, like most political bloggers, is attempting to engage and influence the national discussion on those issues he chooses to write about. That's absolutely no different than what Goldberg does (except for the quality of writing and analysis being much higher). And though he has to compete with a great many more voices due to advances in technology, what this Publius was doing is no different in nature from what Madison, Hamilton, and Jay attempted to do with the same pseudonym two hundred years ago. With the hindsight of history, we now know who the original "publius" was and the significance of his (their) writings. But there's no way to apply a "significance" test to the present. There's no way to pick and choose who is worthy enough to write under a pseudonym (because we don't know who they are!). And without knowing the future, there's no way to fairly or reliably judge the relative significance of people's writings.

You either have a political environment in which it is possible to influence the political debate through pseudonymous writing (as was the case in the post-revolutionary period) or you don't. Those are the only two options. And when thin-skinned people like Whelan decide to publish bloggers identities for no good reason, they're pushing us toward the latter.

As an aside, I find it particularly ironic that Jonah Goldberg of all people is mocking someone as an "amateur" because he chose to write under a pseudonym and let his writing do the talking. Goldberg, after all, is someone who has been able to make a living as a professional writer due in no small part to his family name (he's the son of Lucianne Goldberg). Would Goldberg have been nearly as successful if he had chosen to write under a pseudonym and was forced to build a following based solely on the quality and persuasiveness of his prose? Who knows. I do know, however, that there are any number of pseudonymous bloggers (on the right, left, and center) who contribute as much or more to the overall political dialogue in this country than Goldberg does.

Wingnut Messaging

QOTD (A.L. comments):

Ken_L said...

I'm an Australian who has loved and admired the USA for 50 years. At the risk of sounding condescending or superior, I can only say I've been staggered to watch the descent of the conservative voice since 2000 through immaturity into childishness.

There is no fun any more in mocking these people. The fact that they apparently represent a significant section of the US population and continue to have influence on policy-makers is just a stunning national tragedy.

3:50 AM

Think Progress: Franchise defends its ‘Global warming is baloney’ signs: Burger King is acting like ‘cockroaches.’

The Memphis Flyer recently caught multiple local Burger King restaurants sporting big “Global Warming is Baloney” signs. The Burger King corporation quickly distanced itself from the controversy: “The two restaurants where these signs appeared are independently owned and operated and were not authorized to display this statement. The signs have since been removed.” However, Leo Hickman of the Guardian reports that many of the signs are still up, and the corporation in charge of the franchises — a Memphis-based company called the Mirabile Investment Corporation — is defending its position:

Media attempts to contact MIC to establish why it was taking an apparently defiant stance were rebuffed, but the Guardian managed to grill MIC’s marketing president, John McNelis.

“I would think [Burger King] would run from any form of controversy kinda like cockroaches when the lights get turned on,” said Mr McNelis. “I’m not aware of any direction that they gave the franchisee and I don’t think they have the authority to do it.”

McNelis added: “The [restaurant] management team can put the message up there if they want to. It is private property and here in the US we do have some rights. … Burger King can bluster all they want about what they can tell the franchisee to do, but we have free-speech rights in this country so I don’t think there’s any concerns.”

Susan Robison, vice president of corporate communications for BKC, responded that “BKC has guidelines for signage used by franchisees [which] were not followed. We have asked the franchisee to remove the signage and have been told that the franchisee will comply.”

Scott Lemieux (LGM): Advocate of Arbitrary Torture Shows Lack of Ethics

Although I regret this particular manifestation highly, it's obviously not surprising that Ed Whelan is a reprehensible, thin-skinned bully. (Who apparently can't use a search engine.) Or as Cole says:

For those of you keeping score at home, the current President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center not only worked for the Bush administration OLC while they were creating the legal justification for torture, but is now using their email address to send juvenile emails while outing anonymous bloggers because they pointed out he was wrong.

Meanwhile, for anyone tempted to read any of Whelan's "analysis" of Obama's judicial nominations, I would just get your relentless parade of vacuous cliches -- especially embarrassing in a post-Bush v. Gore era -- from Pajamas TV commentators; at least they're funnier when they're mangled.

• Kevin Drum adds: I see that the conservative movement is continuing its long descent into juvenile thuggery and intellectual gutlessness as a substitute for actual ideas. It's like being back in seventh grade. Nice work, NRO.

• DougJ has A quick note on the publius outing - Ed Whelan, the man who revealed the identity of publius, is the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, as many have pointed out. It should be noted that Jeff Rosen’s wife works at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

• Chaoticgnome notes that
  

  Whelan seems to have bypassed Godwin’s Law and found some new bonus stage.

  If you ‘out’ your opponent you have not only admitted to losing the argument but revealed yourself as unfit to argue with.

  If this happens again we’ll have to refer to it as Whelan’s Law.

Yglesias: NR’s Sotomayor Cover

Neil Sinhababu has a smart take on the NR Sotomayor cover:

[T]he way I see the joke actually depends on incongruities between the stereotypes of the nonwhite ethnicities involved. The Buddha-like pose and Asian features are tied to lofty pretensions of sagelike wisdom. And what sort of person is it who’s pretending to be some kind of sage? A Hispanic woman! As if.

The in-joke in this cover is for people who have already internalized a stereotype of Hispanic women as hotheaded and not that bright. Put one of them in the Buddha suit, and if you’ve absorbed the right racist stereotypes, the incongruity is hilarious.

I think that definitely captures some of what’s happening here. It should also be said that some of the ugliness of this whole thing clearly stems from the whole dysfunctional relationship our political system has to Supreme Court appointments. I remember from the Alito nomination that it’s somehow very difficult to articulate the view that “the president is someone whose ideas I think are wrong so I’m convinced that his SCOTUS pick also has bad ideas, but those who like the president are bound to see this differently.” Instead, there’s incredible pressure to “unearth” the “truth” about the nominee and how deep down he or she is history’s greatest monster.

hilzoy: Stuart Taylor Goes Through The Looking Glass

In his column this week (h/t), Stuart Taylor argues that most Americans want racial preferences abolished, and 71% want the Ricci decision overturned. (That's the case in which New Haven threw out a test for promotions when all but one of the candidates who passed were white.)

Personally, I don't think that judges should decide cases on the basis of polls, especially when the poll questions do not include a summary of the relevant laws and precedents. I would have thought that conservatives who oppose judicial activism might agree. But not Stuart Taylor:

"But is it judicial activism when the justices stretch the Constitution to go over the heads of the political branches -- which are dominated by special-interest lobbies -- not to overrule the voters but rather to give them what they want?

Maybe not. And it's clear that the voters want racially preferential affirmative-action programs abolished.

Scholars have long applauded liberal justices who have stretched the Constitution's meaning to get rid of unpopular laws that had persisted only because of special-interest pressure. One example is the 1965 decision striking down Connecticut's anti-contraception law.

Conservatives could invoke similar logic, as well as several major Supreme Court precedents, to justify curbing unpopular racial-preference programs that -- like that anti-contraception law -- have persisted only because of special-interest pressure."

I'm opposed to judicial activism, though I disagree with a lot of commenters about what counts as 'activism'. I don't think it's activism when courts settle on a specific meaning for a contested term that Congress has not defined, for instance. Much more controversially, I think there's a very interesting argument to be had about what response to the existence of the ninth amendment would count as 'activist'.* In general, I don't think it's always obvious when someone is engaging in "judicial activism", but I do think that it should be avoided.

But I would have thought that if anything counts as judicial activism, "stretching the Constitution" to enact policies that the Congress has not passed would. But apparently I am wrong! I look forward to further articles by Stuart Taylor explaining why it would not be "judicial activism" if the Supreme Court created a program of national health insurance -- after all, a majority of people in the US favor that as well.

In all seriousness: I can't believe that Stuart Taylor wrote this article with a straight face. Of course it's judicial activism when you "stretch the Constitution" to enact new policies. Of course you don't find out how a case should be decided by taking a poll, especially when that case involves the application of some fairly complicated law that there's no reason to think the poll respondents know much about, and double especially when you claim to be concerned about judicial activism.

It's hackery, pure and simple.

***

*The ninth amendment states: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." This plainly implies that the people have rights other than those enumerated in the Constitution, and that these should be respected, but it does not say what these are. Is it more "activist" to try to come up with some such rights, at least in the easiest cases (e.g., the right not to have the government expropriate one of your kidneys, which the framers would surely not have looked kindly on), or to pretend that the ninth amendment does not exist? Isn't it plausible to read the ninth amendment as implying that the courts should protect not only those rights that are enumerated in the Constitution but other unenumerated rights as well, and doesn't this imply that it actually invites "judicial activism"?

If so, doesn't the ninth amendment force us to choose between the 'activism' of discovering unenumerated rights, and the opposite 'activism' of pretending that there is no ninth amendment? And if you choose the latter on the grounds that granting courts the power to discover new rights in the Constitution is too dangerous, aren't you just disregarding the plain text of the Constitution in favor of producing the consequences that you think are best -- which is judicial activism if anything is?

That is the point, isn't it?

bluegal at C&L found this video. She said: The CBC covers this new phenomenon known as "the internet" in 1993. Wow. Just wow.


Josh Marshall (TPM): Get ReWrite

Following the lead of this post by Jon Taplin, you really must read this article in the Times on the battle over including a 'public option' in the new Obama health care reform bill. If you're not familiar with the lingo of this debate, the 'public option' refers to allowing the federal government to sell its own insurance plan which would compete with private health insurance providers. Think of it as a version of Medicare that everyone could buy into.

Here's the key graf from the Times piece ...

But critics argue that with low administrative costs and no need to produce profits, a public plan will start with an unfair pricing advantage. They say that if a public plan is allowed to pay doctors and hospitals at levels comparable to Medicare's, which are substantially below commercial insurance rates, it could set premiums so low it would quickly consume the market.

As Taplin suggests, these 'problems' sound remarkably like 'the point' of the whole exercise. Most of the argument here is that a big government plan would just provide the insurance 'service' much more efficiently and cheaply than private carriers. And that the private carriers wouldn't be able to make any money off selling the service any more. But this is the argument that single payer advocates routinely make -- namely, that a lot of the money that goes into private health insurance goes to paperwork, much of which is tied to finding ways to deny people coverage. That, and the need to earn profits on providing the service.

Presumably if there were other quality advantages to the private plans, the carriers wouldn't be so worried that everyone would switch to the public plan. I think I might be open to some effective scare-mongering on that front. But the private carriers don't seem to have much confidence there's much to scare people about.

C&L: Matt Dowd Thinks It's a "Huge Problem" That the GOP Isn't Getting Its Ideas Out to the Public

Heather Sunday Jun 07, 2009 6:26pm

While discussing the number of Republicans that President Obama has brought into his administration, Matt Dowd claims that the Republicans falling apart means that they have not had a chance to get their message out.

Dowd: I agree it's a smart move. I also think it has a much bigger, profound effect. As the Republicans are in disarray and they can't seem to settle on any leader, any issue, are becoming a minority party in this country, really and truly a minority party at this time, that is not what the American politics needs.

We need two vibrant political parties that are able to present competing visions and then fight it out over with the American public. Right now we have one vibrant party that is very strong and one party that is in total disarray as I say, and so there's not this conflict of ideas that is able for the American public so sort of see out there so they can pick and choose from it. That's a huge problem.

Apparently Mr. Dowd doesn't watch much American television if he thinks the Republicans have not had more than a sufficient chance to get their ideas out to the public.

Dowd also lets one slip about what George Bush thought of listening to competing ideas:

Dowd: I think it does help demonstrate that Barack Obama's interested in diversity of opinion within the decision making process, which was a huge problem, and a perception that people had of George W. Bush. He had no interest, people thought he had no interest in getting diversity of opinion. At least Barack Obama by doing this is demonstrating that he wants it.

I think Dowd was being honest before he corrected himself.

Chess vs Checkers

Benen: PICKING PLAYERS FROM THE OTHER TEAM....

At this point, there are five Republicans with degrees of power and influence in the Obama administration -- LaHood, McHugh, Gates, Huntsman, and Leach -- and it would have been six were it not for the unpleasantness with Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). The NYT has an item today on the ways in which these moves have taken a toll on "Republican morale."

In picking Republicans like Mr. McHugh for top jobs, the Obama administration says it is assembling a coalition government that welcomes qualified members of the opposition. It gives the White House a claim to bipartisanship despite continuing clashes with Republican Congressional leaders.

But the political benefits are an equally strong incentive. Remaining Republican colleagues become discouraged and feel further isolated in the minority. Political vacancies are created. And Republicans can be painted as being hostile to more moderate Republicans or those willing to engage the Democratic administration.

It works, in other words, on more than one level. They'll no doubt keep doing it anyway, but it's more difficult for congressional Republicans to label the White House as strident partisans, unwilling to take GOP ideas seriously, when Obama has more members of the opposition party on his team than any modern president.

John McHugh's decision to join the administration as Secretary of the Army, though, seems to hurt more. Gates was already at the Pentagon, Leach and LaHood were already out of Congress, and Huntsman was out in Utah, but McHugh was a popular Republican leader in the House. Worse, his departure opens up a competitive House race in New York

These moves demoralize the minority, dwindle their numbers, make the president appear more magnanimous, and give the administration more bipartisan credibility. John Feehery, a Republican strategist and former top House aide, however, hopes to sow some seeds of division among Democrats.

"At some point," Mr. Feehery said, "the liberals are going to catch on, and they are going to have a fit."

Maybe. When the McHugh announcement was first announced, I received a few emails from Dems complaining that they'd like to see fewer Republicans in positions of military responsibility, fearing that Gates and McHugh reinforce bogus stereotypes.

But I suspect we're still a ways from a "liberal fit." The key, it seems, is the policy. If the president is going to work with a Republican Defense Secretary and a Republican Secretary of the Army to a) implement procurement reform; b) reform military spending in general; c) scrap "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"; and d) revamp use of the military in the context of improving U.S. foreign policy, my guess is the left will give the Democratic president a reasonable amount of slack.

Think Progress: Gingrich Shifts Rhetoric On Sotomayor, Calls Her A ‘Racialist’

Newt Gingrich attracted a great deal of attention for himself last month when he said that Judge Sonia Sotomayor should withdraw her nomination because she is a “Latina woman racist.”

That rhetoric proved too much for even right-wing Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL), both of whom distanced themselves from Gingrich.

So Gingrich pretended to back down. “The word ‘racist’ should not have been applied to Judge Sotomayor as a person, even if her words themselves are unacceptable,” he wrote.

But this morning on CBS’s Face the Nation, Gingrich again used the word “racist” but suggested that what he really meant is that Sotomayor is a “racialist”:

When I did a Twitter about her, having read what she said, I said that was racist — but I applied it to her as a person. And the truth is I don’t know her as a person. It’s clear that what she said was racist, and it’s clear — or as somebody wrote recently, “racialist” if you prefer.

Watch it:

A spokesman for Gingirch told Politico recently, “nothing has changed in the structure of his argument, he is just retracting the word racist.” And apparently replacing it with the word “racialist.”

Benen: 'WISE ENEMY'...

The AP reports this afternoon that President Obama's speech in Cairo this week has already begun "undercutting extremists" in the Middle East.

Hamas, for example, was predictably unsatisfied with the president's ongoing support for Israel, but officials praised Obama's "shift in tone." A Hamas spokesperson said, "We think we can build on this speech."

From Lebanese guerrillas to Saudi preachers, Islamic extremists have warned followers not to be taken in by President Barack Obama's conciliatory words _ a sign that some may be nervous about losing support if animosity toward the U.S. fades. [...]

[M]any Muslims were heartened by Obama's speech because they saw it as a significant change in the tone of discourse with Muslims. They noted he did not use the word "terrorism" or "terrorist" once in the 55-minute address -- words that many thought had been devalued under the Bush administration and too often equated with Muslims.

They also heard a more respectful U.S. leader who quoted from the Quran, or Islamic holy book, greeted them in Arabic, and removed his shoes when he toured a Cairo mosque.

One militant Web site that often carries statements from al-Qaida had unusual praise for Obama after the speech, noting his quotations from the Quran demonstrated respect for Islam and branding him the "wise enemy."

It's a start.

Media malfeasance:hard to overstate how foolish

digby: Wrong Again

The torture apologists are out in force trying to confuse and obuscate and the paper of record is helping them do it. Marcy's on it:

As I have pointed out in the last two posts, the NYT has a story up claiming that Jim Comey approved of torture, but that grossly misreads the Comey emails on which the story is based. In fact, the memos appear to show that the White House--especially Dick Cheney and David Addington--were pushing DOJ to approve the torture that had been done to Hassan Ghul, without the specificity to record what they had done to him; in fact, one of the things the push on the memos appears to have prevented, was for Comey and Philbin to have actually researched what happened to Ghul.

But the NYT instead claims that Jim Comey approved of torture legally, even while downplaying his concerns about the "combined techniques" memo that was the focus of his concerns (and not mentioning his response to the third memo).

But there is more news than that in the Comey emails--news the Grey Lady doesn't seem to think is news.

I can't tell you how often I heard over the past week that the crisis in journalism is going to destroy democracy as we know it. How can we live without the great investigative reporting of the papers of record, something with which I agree? But never once did I hear any of those who defend mainstream journalism actually admit the fact that its stuff like this that is killing them as much as anything. The story is factually wrong, which can be proved by their own previous reporting.

Read Marcy's series of posts on this. it's going to take a lot of work to unravel this nonsense. It's journalistic malpractice. Again.

Benen: MESSAGE DISSEMINATION....

As much trouble as conservatives have had with governing, they're adept at not only getting their message out, but getting the media to internalize their talking points.

Here's CNN this morning:

As the world continues to digest and dissect President Obama's historic speech directed at the Muslim world, a senior aide to the president is pushing back on the suggestion that Obama's latest overseas trip amounted to an apology tour.

And here's ABC:

Stephanopoulos says "[w]e've heard some say that this was an apology tour"

Yes, "some" being the Republican National Committee, Republican lawmakers, and Republican activists at Fox News.

Pointing to President Obama's current overseas trip during the June 3 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Gretchen Carlson asserted that "[l]ast time" Obama went to Europe and the Middle East, "a lot of people said, Steve [Doocy, co-host], that he was on an apology tour of sorts." Prominent among those "people" who characterized his April trip as "an apology tour" were many Fox News hosts, contributors, analysts, and regular guests, who often took out of context remarks Obama made during his trip to support their claim. Moreover, Fox News has trotted out its smear for Obama's current trip to Europe and the Middle East, baselessly promoting "another apology tour."

It's hard to overstate how foolish this is. The president's speech in Cairo was an important address, helping establish a new foundation for a stronger relationship between the United States and the Middle East. Obama told some hard truths -- tackling issues U.S. leaders rarely discuss in public, better yet in front of a Muslim audience in Egypt -- and challenged those throughout the region. It's the kind of outreach that can pay dividends for the United States for years to come.

And the main point of interest for much of the traditional media is, "Yeah, but did he apologize?"

First, Obama didn't apologize in Cairo. Second, he didn't apologize in France, either. This is a manufactured fantasy, which major networks are embracing, basically because they've been told to by Americans who hope to undermine the administration's international standing.

The president has been candid with domestic and international audiences about the sources of strained relationships, but candor is not a crime and honesty does not undermine American prestige. Indeed, Fox News and even legitimate news outlets fail to recognize the ways in which the president's rhetoric improves U.S. credibility around the world, and establishes a base upon which improved relations are built.

Instead, Blitzer, Stephanopoulos, and others believe the baseless "apology" nonsense has merit, simply by virtue of Republican repetition.

• For Gawd's sake even Rich Lowry of the National Review understands what happened:

  All that said, the fundamental question about Obama's address is whether it worked as public diplomacy. On balance, will it make the intellectual and political isolation of Islamic extremists more or less likely? Because the speech makes it likelier, it must be judged a success.