Thursday, May 28, 2009

Just stop! There, that'll do it.

Aravosis: General orders soldiers to stop committing suicide
I sincerely hope the Obama people can turn things around. The GOP truly broke our military. They're very good at waving the flag, Republicans are. Less good about actually following through. From CNN:
The 101st Airborne's senior commander in effect ordered his soldiers Wednesday not to commit suicide, a plea that came after 11 suicides since January 1, two of them in the past week.

An Army honor guard stands ready to fire a salute at Fort Campbell.

"If you don't remember anything else I say in the next five or 10 minutes, remember this -- suicidal behavior in the 101st on Fort Campbell is bad," Brig. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend told his forces. "It's bad for soldiers, it's bad for families, bad for your units, bad for this division and our army and our country and it's got to stop now. Suicides on Fort Campbell have to stop now."

Fort Campbell's suicide rate, the highest in the Army, "is not a good statistic," he said in remarks to one of four divisions he addressed during the day.
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Thursday Morning Potpourri

A friend sent this about the problem with journalism:
My law of journalism is that there are only 3 things that will garner sustained coverage:
1. scandal
2. someone making an embarrassing mistake
3. controversy, preferably nasty
4. polls

sickening, but the reason that CNN & Co. are covering the wing nuts is that it’s the only clear-cut controversy they can find at the moment, and it also involves things that “she said” that can be cast as mistakes, AND they can poll it! Meanwhile, back at the ranch, they’re counting on Burris to supply the scandal… which so far, is lacking. While they’re using Newt and Spitzer… who are truly scandalous… as commentators. And yet… I do want to preserve the press… God knows why.

As if to prove the above point, at 8:05 in the following Olberman piece (in which he discusses Sotomayor's writings and speeches in full context instead of the out of context snippets that are all the RW rage) he notices on one of his monitors that CNN just played one of those snippets out of context, and were discussing it out of context. ...
GOP targets Sotomayor May 27: MSNBC's Eugene Robinson discusses the GOP's charges of racism by Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Froomkin: Online Humor

The Economist's pseudononymous Lexington writes that President Obama baffles most comedians: "David Letterman, a talk-show host, describes him as 'cogent, eloquent, and in complete command of the issues' and sighs: 'What the hell am I supposed to do with that?'"

But the one exception to the rule is The Onion, Lexington writes. "Hence the headline that greeted Mr Obama's election victory: 'Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job'. The Onion News Network, an online video venture, did a segment entitled 'Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters to Realise How Empty Their Lives Are'."

Furthermore, "the way more serious journalists fawn over the new president offers an irresistible target. 'Media Having Trouble Finding Right Angle on Obama's Double Homicide', the Onion reported last month. '"I know there's a story in there somewhere,"' said the editor of Newsweek, after Mr Obama brutally murdered a suburban couple."


Jane Hamsher: Bernie Kerik Indicted for Lying to White House
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you:

Former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik was indicted on charges of making false statements to White House officials vetting him for the secretary's seat at the Department of Homeland Security in 2004, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Kerik, who served as commissioner from 1998 to 2002, allegedly gave false and misleading answers to Bush administration officials about his relationship with contractors who renovated his Riverdale apartment, according to the indictment handed up by a Washington grand jury.

Prosecutors allege Kerik received and concealed benefits of about $255,000 in renovations to his home from contractors seeking to do business with the city of New York.

Bernie adds this to his fine collection of indictments for tax fraud, corruption and conspiracy.

Not sure what my favorite Bernie Kerik story is, but it may be from Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City:

The CPA's Interior Ministry team shared a modest office in the palace with American advisers working with the Justice Ministry. They often brought in Iraqi judges, along with interpreters, for meetings.

"Bob , who are these people?" Kerik asked Gifford one day. "Who the fuck are these people?"

"Oh, those are Iraqis," Gifford replied.

"What the fuck are they doing here?"

"Bernie, that's the reason we're here."

And the war turned out badly. Can't imagine why.


Terrific interview. It shouldn't be hard to be this clear on the issue, but . . .
Changing the torture debate May 27: WSL radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller admitted that waterboarding is torture after experiencing it firsthand, yet Fox News' Sean Hannity still isn't convinced. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow discusses what it's going to take to convince the right of the horrors of this practice.
Benen: LIZ CHENEY'S LECTURE ON THE 'RULE OF LAW'....
Liz Cheney -- who appears on national television so often, her mail is now sent directly to network green-rooms -- was on Fox News again this morning. She seems to be expanding her repertoire a bit, moving beyond attacking Obama over torture, and now attacking Obama over the judiciary.

"[Y[ou know, you're not supposed to make decisions based on how you want the law to come out -- how you want the results to come out," Liz Cheney argued. "If you're a judge or a Justice, obviously one would hope that you would be just strictly interpreting the law, and I think we've heard in a number of instances President Obama talk about, sort of, a results-oriented approach to the law, or you know, making these determinations based on your heart or your empathy. And I think that's dangerous. I think that moves us away from the rule of law."

There's quite a bit of nonsense here, most notably the fact that President Obama has never "talked about" a "results-oriented approach to the law." Cheney just wants to smear, but she's a little too lazy to worry about details like facts and accuracy.

But the more hilarious aspect of this was hearing Liz Cheney lecture the Obama administration about the rule of law. This is, of course, the same Liz Cheney who has spent months insisting that no one from the Bush administration be held accountable, in any way, for systematic illegal abuse of detainees, authorized and endorsed by officials at the highest levels.

Last week, when the issue was torture, Cheney was unfazed by the prospecting of "moving us away from the rule of law." This week, the issue is apparently "empathy," and Cheney feels justified in lecturing the administration cleaning up her father's legal mess about the concept of impartial application of the law.

That she has no idea how ridiculous this sounds only adds insult to injury.

Benen: LOOKING BEYOND THE NARROW CONFINES OF THE LAW....
In light of all the talk about "empathy" and allowing personal background to "influence" application of the law, part of me can understand why a quote like this one, from a Supreme Court nominee, might seem inappropriate to conservatives.

"[W]hen a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.

"And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result. But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, 'You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country.' ...

"When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account."

As has been obvious this week, the right considers this kind of thinking outrageous. Impartial judges are tasked with following and applying the law, without bias or preconceived prejudices. They are, to borrow the popular metaphor, umpires responsible for calling balls and strikes. Thinking about one's "ancestors," and feeling "empathy" for struggling defendants, is a recipe, conservatives have told us, for judicial disaster.

When a nominee says, "It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result," it's not acceptable, we're told, for the next word to be, "but...." The rule of law simply cannot withstand this approach to jurisprudence.

Except, the above quote didn't come from Sonia Sotomayor; it came from Samuel Alito, during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. What's more, he was responding to a question from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), one of the Senate most ardent conservatives, who didn't find Alito's response controversial in the slightest.

At the time, Alito's remarks were, oddly enough, considered a selling point. He's not a cold-hearted conservative, we were told, because Alito is willing to look beyond the letter of the law and consider his own family's background when ruling on all kinds of cases.

If our surprisingly strident right-wing friends care to explain why this sentiment is a disqualifier for a Latina nominee, but a strength for an Italian male nominee, I'd sure appreciate it.


Joe Klein: Robert Gates: The Bureaucrat Unbound

A few weeks ago, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates trooped up to Capitol Hill to answer questions about the new Pentagon budget. This is an unseemly spectacle under the best of circumstances. Even reasonable members of Congress have been known to empretzel themselves shamelessly, attempting to defend weapons the Pentagon doesn't want or need, but which provide jobs for their constituents. Usually, they win, too. It is just too difficult for a Secretary of Defense to argue against shiny new weapons systems with subcontractors in 46 states, even if they are fantastically over budget and designed to counter a missile threat that the Soviets never perfected 30 years ago.

But this is a different year, and Gates is a different sort of Defense Secretary. He warned the legislators that each decision was "zero sum." Any money that went to things he didn't want would come out of programs necessary to support the troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Read "Can Robert Gates Tame the Pentagon?)

Undaunted, the legislators pressed their case — especially the Republicans, who seemed convinced, as one said, that the Pentagon budget was part of a nefarious Obama Administration plot: "Fiscal restraint for defense and fiscal largesse for everything else." Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona was very concerned about anti-missile defense — a gold-plated pipe dream, if there ever was one — and especially a product dramatically called the Kinetic Energy Interceptor. To which Gates replied, in a manner so casually dismissive that Franks seemed to shrivel in his seat, "I would just say that the security of the American people and the efficacy of missile defense are not enhanced by continuing to put money into programs ... that are essentially sinkholes for taxpayer dollars." (Read about the troubled SBX radar.)

And as for that kinetic contraption, it was a "five-year development program, in its 14th year, not a single flight test, little work on the third stage or the kill vehicle, etc., etc., no known launch platform ..."

Rat-a-tat, Gates continued on, in that flat, unassuming Kansas twang that screams: No bull here. The next day, testifying on the Senate side, Gates performed a similar anti-missile evisceration of Senator Jeff Sessions, who responded, "I'd say you were ready for that question."

After a quietly impressive career in government that has spanned more than 30 mostly Republican years, Robert Gates is suddenly seeming almost, well, charismatic. He reeks authority. He is, according to several sources, the most respected voice in National Security Council debates. The President is said to love his unadorned manner. Much of which is attributable to the fact that, in the self-proclaimed twilight of his public career, Gates has emerged as that most exotic of Washington species — the bureaucrat unbound, candid and fearless. He tells members of Congress what he really thinks about their pet programs. He upends Pentagon priorities, demotes the military-industrial hardware pipeline and promotes the immediate needs of the troops on the front line. He fires high-ranking subordinates without muss or controversy — an Air Force secretary and chief of staff who didn't agree with him on the need to end production of the F-22 aircraft; the commandant of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, who presided over disgraceful conditions; even a well-respected general like David McKiernan, a conventional-warfare specialist unsuited for the asymmetrical struggle in Afghanistan.

When, in a recent conversation, I noted that he seemed gleefully outspoken these days, Gates offered a twinkly smile and said, "What are they going to do, fire me?"

In truth, Gates has been bulletproof ever since George W. Bush lured him from Texas A&M University to replace the disastrous Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. His mission, Gates said, was "to put Iraq in a better place," which is a spectacular understatement. Iraq was falling apart in late 2006, and Gates found the Defense Department in paralytic denial. His nonstop effort to reform the institution — abetted by military rebels who had been cast into the outer darkness by the powers that were — is a great untold story of the war on terrorism.

"If you ever get a chance to interview Donald Rumsfeld," a retired four-star general told me in 2005, "ask him two questions and see which one lights up his eyes. Ask him what our force posture should be toward China 10 years from now. And then ask him what tactical changes we should make on the ground in Iraq as a result of the last three months of combat. I'll bet you anything, he gets more excited about China."

And that was the problem. The Cheney-Rumsfeld axis, which essentially ran national-security policy in the first half of the Bush Administration, was stuck in the Cold War. Rather than fight the enemy we had — the stateless terrorists of al-Qaeda — they sought more conventional enemies. Attention quickly — too quickly — shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq. And then, once the conventional armored push to Baghdad was completed, the ongoing war effort became — amazingly — a bureaucratic orphan. "Every time we tried to do something for the troops in the field in both Afghanistan and Iraq, we had to go outside the regular Pentagon bureaucracy to get it done," Gates recalled. "For example, there was no institutional home" for figuring out how to combat roadside bombs — but there were plenty of people working on how to counter missiles from North Korea.

On the day after he took over, Gates summoned General David Petraeus — no favorite of Rumsfeld's — from near exile at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., where he had supervised the writing of a new counter insurgency-warfare manual. Gates was about to travel to Iraq and wanted to know what the big questions were. "The biggest question is whether we have the right strategic concept to fight the war," Petraeus told him. "Instead of concentrating all our efforts on transitioning to Iraqi control, we need to go out and secure the population." (See pictures of Basra getting back to business.)

Gates seems uncomfortable talking about military intellectual stuff like counterinsurgency doctrine. He insists that logic, not doctrine, has driven everything he has done as Secretary of Defense. The highest priority was supporting the troops. "He resourced the important bureaucratic knife fights," said one senior Army officer. "He sided with us on MRAPs [mine-resistant vehicles] and unmanned drones, and increased intelligence, and more helicopters. Those should have been no-brainers, but it had been a real struggle to fund them before Gates." A military intelligence officer who was an Iraq specialist told me he had been pleading for more resources throughout the Rumsfeld years: "Iraq was Rumsfeld's fourth highest priority, after China, North Korea and Iran," he said. "But Gates called me in and asked, 'What do you need?' And he gave us everything we requested." Senior combatant commanders say these decisions, no less than the new tactics and increase in troops, helped change the course in Iraq.

And that, according to the Secretary of Defense, is the rationale for his new Pentagon budget; Bush had funded his wars outside the usual budget process, via so-called supplemental appropriations. Gates has included the war funding in his base budget, "so the programs will be institutionalized and the various services will fight for them." He insists that he is not abandoning the fancy hardware and future gizmos that his predecessors and Congress loved. "The things we've cut," he told me, "wouldn't have been in the budget even if we had $50 billion more to spend. They were programs that simply were unnecessary or weren't working."

The negotiating over the budget is likely to turn brutal, although Obama aides insist the President will veto the budget if Gates isn't satisfied with the result. And then there are the wars — especially Afghanistan, which Gates has said he hopes will turn around in the next year, but which has obviously become a more difficult enterprise than anticipated. Gates originally had planned to retire after a year or so, but he seems to have settled in, found a level of comfort and influence with the Obama Democrats that he never quite expected. "I don't do maintenance," Gates told me. "I would never do a job just to sustain the status quo. I like to go into an institution that's already good and do everything I can to make it better."

The Pentagon was good at some things, dreadful at others. It is better now, but there are lives at stake every day. Gates keeps track of those killed and wounded on his watch. He knows the exact numbers. He can get misty talking about the troops he's met downrange, young people the same age as the carefree students he supervised at Texas A&M, "which makes this all so much harder," he says. They — not future fights with China, not last week's tactics in Afghanistan — light up his eyes. He won't be abandoning them anytime soon.

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Unusually Reckless

Ricks: McCreary: NoKos acting unusually reckless

I said I was gonna ignore North Korea, and I still intend to. But I was struck by this comment by proven provider John McCreary in his NightWatch:

During the past 40 years North Korean leaders have been blustery but fundamentally risk averse. They have done nothing that would risk the total destruction of their state -- which means Pyongyang for all practical and symbolic purposes -- until now.... The actions in the past two days represent risk accepting behavior, defiance bordering on recklessness. This behavior began shortly after Kim Chong-il's stroke in August 2008. If Kim is ordering these actions, he has had a personality change, which can occur if dementia follows a stroke, according to medical authorities."

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Wingnuts: Identity Politics II Edition

We'll open with that rare, sentient conservative. It's all downhill from there.

But first, the QOTD, BarbinMD: Which leads us to a classic case of, rock, meet hard place, because the very people given the "leaders of the party" label -- the Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich wing of the party -- aren't struggling at all. They've come out against Sotomayor in full attack mode, calling her, among other things, a "reverse racist," a "radical," and a "disaster." And it probably doesn't help when the media outreach person for the Republican National Committee is retweeting claims of racism against Sotomayor.

Josh Marshall: Bachmann Comic Debuts!

No kidding. It pretty much had to happen. The Michele Bachmann comic book is set to go on sale.

This is separate from just Bachmann herself, who of course seems like a comic book. This is a real comic book. See the cover here -- it even has the flying imams.


Benen: 'A LOT LESS PROVOCATIVE AND TROUBLING'....
It's a 32-word quote: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." That line, from a speech Judge Sonia Sotomayor delivered in 2001, is necessarily a disqualifying remark for a Supreme Court nominee, according to a variety of conservatives.

Indeed, those 32 words not only have prompted some of the right's more unhinged activists (Gingrich, et al) to call for Sotomayor to withdraw from high court consideration, it's also prompted many more conservative leaders (Limbaugh, et al) to smear the nominee as a "racist" and a "bigot."

It's why I was I was impressed by this item from conservative writer Rod Dreher, who took the time to read the entire 2001 speech. The headline of his piece today reads, "I was wrong about Sotomayor speech."

Taken in context, the speech was about how the context in which we were raised affects how judges see the world, and that it's unrealistic to pretend otherwise. Yet -- and this is a key point -- she admits that as a jurist, one is obligated to strive for neutrality. It seems to me that Judge Sotomayor in this speech dwelled on the inescapability of social context in shaping the character of a jurist. That doesn't seem to me to be a controversial point, and I am relieved by this passage:

"While recognizing the potential effect of individual experiences on perception, Judge Cedarbaum nevertheless believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law. Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases."

Relieved, because it strikes me as both idealistic and realistic. I am sure Sotomayor and I have very different views on the justice, or injustice, of affirmative action, and I'm quite sure that I won't much care for her rulings as a SCOTUS justice on issues that I care about. But seeing her controversial comment in its larger context makes it look a lot less provocative and troubling.

Good for Dreher. He and I agree on practically nothing, but I appreciate the fact that he took the time to read Sotomayor's speech and was willing to admit that he was mistaken about its meaning.

I suspect any intellectually honest and serious observer would read the same speech and reach the same conclusion. The "controversy" over the remark is little more than a foolish exercise, launched by partisans who couldn't be bothered to do with Dreher did: read the whole thing.

This "wise Latina" matter may be at the top of the right's list of talking points, and I really doubt Limbaugh, Gingrich, & Co. care about the integrity of their criticisms, but if this is the best they've got against Sotomayor, it says more about them than her.

Benen: DISGRACED FORMER LAWMAKER REFUSES TO GO AWAY....

The lead story on CNN's political blog right now:

Rush Limbaugh isn't the only one calling Sonia Sotomayor a racist. Newt Gingrich is, too -- and he's demanding that Obama's pick to the Supreme Court withdraw her nomination. [...]

On Wednesday, Gingrich tweeted: "Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman.' new racism is no better than old racism."

Moments later, he followed up with the message: "White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw."

I see. The disgraced former House Speaker, who hasn't served in public office for over a decade, and has no relevance or influence in the Senate at all, wants to see Judge Sotomayor withdraw. I guess the administration won't have much choice but to get right on that.

As hard as this may be to believe, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs encouraged the public and members of the Senate to "look at more than just the blog of a former lawmaker."

(I know, I know, Gingrich's Twitter feed isn't the same thing as Gingrich's blog. The prior features Newt's madness in smaller bursts.)

So, once again, we're back to the common question: why are Newt Gingrich's silly ideas the lead story at CNN's political site right now? And why does CNN treat his rants as political news on a nearly daily basis? Were his screeds surprising? Were his accusations of racism against Sotomayor compelling? Is there any chance at all that anyone will actually care whether Newt wants to see the nominee withdraw?

BarbinMD( DK): GOP Struggles To Avoid The Racism Label ... Fails

Just a few days ago, the Republican Party was struggling to disassociate themselves from the Party of No label, and now, with the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court of the United State, the new battle cry is, "We are not racists":

Lionel Sosa, a Texas-based Republican ad maker who designed Latino outreach for GOP presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, said that opposing Sotomayor "would be one more nail in the Republicans' image coffin in terms of Latino voters."

"When you're anti the first Latina on the Supreme Court, you're anti-my-family. . . . I would take it that these people are anti-Latino," Sosa added. "The worst thing the Republicans can do is oppose her."

The Senate's Republican leadership, aware of the potential pitfalls, began conferring Tuesday with several Latino strategists, seeking their assessment of conservative opposition.

The GOP's dilemma on Sotomayor is the latest example of the party's internal struggle over how to reinvent itself at a time that its voter base is increasingly dominated by Southern, conservative white men.

Which leads us to a classic case of, rock, meet hard place, because the very people given the "leaders of the party" label -- the Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich wing of the party -- aren't struggling at all. They've come out against Sotomayor in full attack mode, calling her, among other things, a "reverse racist," a "radical," and a "disaster." And it probably doesn't help when the media outreach person for the Republican National Committee is retweeting claims of racism against Sotomayor.

Nono, the Goposaur

Nono is very happy.

In which Lawrence O'Donnell says: “It’s like watching a dead fish flop around on the deck. You’re dead on this one, Pat. It’s all over.”


Kurtz (TPM): Parody?

Are The Hill -- and anti-Sotomayor operative Curt Levey -- really suggesting that the judge's fondness for Puerto Rican cuisine is a handicap for higher office:

Sotomayor also claimed: "For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir -- rice, beans and pork -- that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events."

This has prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo -- pigs' tongue and ears -- would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench.

Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative-leaning advocacy group, said he wasn't certain whether Sotomayor had claimed her palate would color her view of legal facts but he said that President Obama's Supreme Court nominee clearly touts her subjective approach to the law.

"It's pretty disturbing," said Levey. "It's one thing to say that occasionally a judge will despite his or her best efforts to be impartial ... allow occasional biases to cloud impartiality.

We're looking into whether this was a joke, because, really, it can't be serious, can it?

Late Update: Our crack news editor Justin Elliott, who caught this passage in the first place, also flags for me the use of the verb "claimed" to describe Sotomayor's assertion, as if they're hedging against this not being a true statement. You really need an eyewitness for solid confirmation because otherwise, what, it might be a faked love for rice, beans, and pork?

Later Update: It's no joke.


Matt Yglesias: Sonia Sotomayor and Identity Formation

As anyone who knows me can attest, I don’t have what you’d call a strong “Hispanic” identity. Three of my four grandparents are Jews from Eastern Europe. My paternal grandfather, José Yglesias, was a Cuban-American born in Florida. But that puts the family’s actual Hispanic ancestry pretty far back in the past. He grew up in a Spanish-dominant immigrant community, but spoke English fluently. My dad grew up in an English-speaking household and knows some Spanish. I took a semester of Spanish at NYU one summer. And Cuban-American political identity in the United States is heavily oriented around a highly ideological far-right approach to Latin America policy that neither I nor anyone else in my family shares. The Yglesiases emigrated from Cuba before the Revolution, José was initially a Castro supporter, and though he gave that up he and my dad and I all share what you might call anti-anti-Castro views.

But for all that, I have to say that I am really truly deeply and personally pissed off my the tenor of a lot of the commentary on Sonia Sotomayor. The idea that any time a person with a Spanish last name is tapped for a job, his or her entire lifetime of accomplishments is going to be wiped out in a riptide of bitching and moaning about “identity politics” is not a fun concept for me to contemplated. Qualifications like time at Princeton, Yale Law, and on the Circuit Court that work well for guys with Italian names suddenly don’t work if you have a Spanish name. Heaven forbid someone were to decide that there ought to be at least one Hispanic columnist at a major American newspaper.

Somehow, when George W. Bush affects a Texas accent, that’s not identity politics. When John Edwards gets a VP nomination, that’s not identity politics. But Sonia Sotomayor! Oh my heavens!

At any rate, Ann Friedman wrote a great piece on the hypocrisy of this back during the Democratic primary. And I think this item from Neil Sinhababu on constructing political identities is insightful. I think conservatives are playing with fire here, and underestimating the number of, say, Mexican-Americans in Texas who didn’t think of themselves as having a great deal in common with Puerto Ricans from New York who are waking up today to find that in the eyes of the conservative movement normal qualifications for office don’t count unless you’re a white Anglo.

Yglesias: Sotomayor Risk is Primarily on the Downside

Shailagh Murray and Michael D. Shear write that “An all-out assault on Sotomayor by Republicans could alienate both Latino and women voters, deepening the GOP’s problems after consecutive electoral setbacks.” But on the other hand, “sidestepping a court battle could be deflating to the party’s base and hurt efforts to rally conservatives going forward.” It seems to me that it should be easy enough to get the conservative base riled up about something else in the near future. I recall that as recently as last week, the conservative base was furious that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi didn’t want to torture people.

In terms of Latino voters, meanwhile, the problem facing Sotomayor’s critics is that she’s almost certainly going to be confirmed. And, once confirmed, she’ll be the first Latina justice on the Supreme Court. Soon after that, there’s going to be an inspirational Sonia Sotomayor biography for kids. Probably two, since one will be in Spanish. Responsible parents and teachers of poor Latina students are going to want to point to her life as an example of how if you work hard and stay in school, you can succeed in America despite many disadvantages. Indeed, look at this editorial in today’s edition of El Diaro (English translation here):

Tras la muerte de su marido, Celina Sotomayor veló por sus dos hijos. Les dio techo y proveyó el pan de cada día. Los guió en medio de las vicisitudes y tentaciones de la adolescencia en EE.UU. Como tantas mujeres latinas, es la roca de la familia.

La hija de Celina, Sonia, tuvo que seguir probándose en instituciones dominadas por hombres – en la Universidad de Princeton, en la Facultad de Leyes de Yale, en la Fiscalía de Manhattan, en tribunal de Nueva York. Cada paso requirió gran trabajo y una seguridad inquebrantable.

Para la madre y la hija, hubo pocas latinas que pudieron servir como modelos a seguir y guiarlas. Hoy, gracias a sus luchas y su arduo trabajo, podemos decirle a nuestras hijas: estudien y podrán llegar tan alto y tan lejos como la juez Sonia Sotomayor.

They’re saying that when Sotomayor was growing up under difficult circumstances, there weren’t a lot of examples she could look up to. But today, thanks to the hard work of Sotomayor and her mother, we can say to our daughters that if they study that can go as far as Sonia Sotomayor. Senators who don’t fight and scrape against Sotomayor’s confirmation will take some crap from their base. But Senators who do fight and scrape to derail her nomination are going to become the villains in a story that a lot of kids are going to hear from their parents and teachers.

BarbinMD (DK): Rush Limbaugh: The Republican Party Is "Today's Oppressed Minority"

From the titular head of the Republican Party:

"If ever a civil rights movement was needed in America, it is for the Republican Party. If ever we needed to start marching for freedom and constitutional rights, it's for the Republican Party. The Republican Party is today's oppressed minority, and it know how to behave as one." The GOP, Rush continued, know to go to the "back of the bus" and drink from the right water fountain. Rush then assured us that he is an "intellectual," whereas Obama is a "narcissist." And just in case you're not sure what that means, Rush elaborated: "He's like Narcissus." Washington, D.C., Rush concluded, is the "Old South" for Republicans, and they are comfortable being an "oppressed minority."

Please mock and deride.


Blue Texan: Republicans: Gender, Ethnicity and Empathy Shouldn’t Matter for Judges, Unless They’re Conservatives

Since the GOP pushback on Sonia Sotomayor consists mainly of screaming "identity politics!" and "empathy!", it's worth remembering -- yet again -- how both are totally OKIYAR.

Sandra Day O'Connor, chick vote bait.

According to Ronald Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, during the 1980 presidential race between Reagan, the Republican nominee, and Democratic President Jimmy Carter running for re-election, Reagan had a small lead over Carter as of mid-October. But Reagan's political strategist Stuart K. Spenser, concerned that support from female voters was slipping, wanted to close the perceived gender gap. The strategist and his boss discussed ways to win back women and the idea of naming a woman to the Supreme Court was born.

Before any public announcement was made, some Reagan staffers questioned the decision. If the court's first vacancy was the position of chief justice, his pledge to nominate a woman would be controversial. Reagan hedged his bets; on October 14 in Los Angeles, he promised to appoint a woman to "one of the first Supreme Court vacancies in my administration."

Antonin Scalia, Italian-American proof of the American dream.

STROM THURMOND: Judge Scalia is now cast in the role of a symbol. Certainly, he creates great pride by being the first Italian-American who will sit on the Court. However, he also serves as a symbol in an even larger context. Judge Scalia, a first-generation American and the son of an immigrant, has been chosen by the President to be a member of the Supreme Court. By dedication and hard work, Judge Scalia has reached the apex of his chosen profession and stands as proof of the vitality of the American dream.

Clarence Thomas, paragon of empathy.

PRESIDENT BUSH: I have followed this man's career for some time, and he has excelled in everything that he has attempted. He is a delightful and warm, intelligent person who has great empathy and a wonderful sense of humor.

Clarance Thomas, inspirational African-American.

RUSH: And your grandfather, with the rules and his high expectations of you, all of this is profoundly inspiring, which is exactly why I'm happy you're here today, because these are the things that people don't know about you. All of this sounds like a pure recipe, Mr. Justice Thomas, of being really devoted to yourself. You had some great role models, your grandfather especially. You came from a background that was...Well, I use the word "unfair." It was just unfortunate, but you don't seem to have allowed any of it to be an excuse for not being the best you could be. ...

In a segregated part of the country, then, how did he deal with you and your brothers in teaching you or informing you about race and what you faced in your future as a result of being African-American? ...

They're seeing you exactly as the civil rights coalition feared from the first day of your nomination that you would be seen: a genuine, humble human being who has become, in their fearful view, the way they look at you is, you are now the most powerful African-American man in the country, and you have shown that it can be done without them.

Miguel Estrada, shiny Hispanic example of what's possible in America.

Republicans prefer to portray Mr. Estrada principally as an inspiring example of an immigrant reaping the rewards of America. Mr. Estrada came to the United States from Honduras when he was 17 and spoke little English.

...

''Here's a kid who comes to our country, works hard, learns the language. He's a brilliant jurist,'' President Bush told a gathering of Hispanic civic leaders at the White House in one of the many events held by the administration to promote Mr. Estrada's nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. ''I want this man to serve as a bright example of what is possible in America.''

Such crass identity politics!

Don't these Republicans understand that the only quality that matters in a judge is his ability to side with the powerful impartially call balls and strikes?

DougJ: An enigma wrapped inside a riddle, shrouded in an American flag

Modern conservatism is nothing if not self-contradictory. It stands athwart history yelling “stop”, but it would never interfere with the free market forces that drive history. It worships Burke and Oakeshott, but it distrusts anyone who’s read a non-Regenery book in the past year. It believes that Ivy League pedigree is a true mark of distinction, but finds that everyone at an Ivy League school—except Robert George and Harvey Mansfield—is a pinko commie. It rejects science and polling, but believes that a few surveys are all it takes to prove that feminism is a failure.

None of this is surprising. In fact, it is exactly what you would expect from the love-child of William F. Buckely and John Birch.

But it can make for an incoherent message. Part of the reason Republican attacks on Obama haven’t worked is that they alternate between describing Obama as an arugula-loving, elitist mastermind who will lead us to commusociafascism and as a watermelon-eating nitwit who will unwittingly cede our sovereignty to North Korea.

I think the same thing is happening with Sonia Sotomayor. They can’t even decide whether to make fun of her for eating Puerto Rican food or to paint her as a fancy-pants who only pretends to like it. It reminds me a bit of the mother-sister scene from “Chinatown”: she’s an elitist, no, she’s a wetback, she’s an elitist, no she’s a wetback. SHE’S AN ELITIST AND A WETBACK!

It’s hard to see how this is going to work.

John Cole: They’ve Gone Plaid

The evidence keeps piling up against Sotormayor, and now President Gingrich has joined Tom “Nuke Mecca” Tancredo and Rush Limbaugh in deciding she is a racist:

On Wednesday, Gingrich tweeted: “Imagine a judicial nominee said ‘my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman.’ new racism is no better than old racism.”

Moments later, he followed up with the message: “White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.”

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs responded to Gingrich’s criticism at Wednesday’s briefing.

In other news, Nate Silver has the greatest blog post title ever:

“Grandmother of World’s 23rd Best Economist Posthumously Offended by Sonia Sotomayor’s Spending Habits; Will Obama Withdraw Nomination?”

Is that unfair? You be the judge:

Apparently, the new Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is an example of the latter. The Washington Post reports that the 54-year-old Sotomayer has a $179,500 yearly salary but

On her financial disclosure report for 2007, she said her only financial holdings were a Citibank checking and savings account, worth $50,000 to $115,000 combined. During the previous four years, the money in the accounts at some points was listed as low as $30,000.

My grandmother would have been shocked and appalled to see someone who makes so much save so little.

Nate unpacks why this is such a ridiculous statement, and shoots any number of holes in the ridiculous argument, but what I thought was amazing was how unaware Mankiw was of the America the vast majority of people live in around him. How about a show of hands of people who have less than $50-115,000 sitting around in their savings account. Yeah. That is kind of what I thought.

Meanwhile, Karl “Permanent Republican Majority” Rove thinks she might be stupid:

Rove – “She is competent and will be confirmed….She has an interesting and compelling life story…”

Charlie – “She is very smart.”

Rove – “Not necessarily.”

Charlie – “What do you mean? She went to Princeton where she graduating with honors and then went on to Yale Law School….”

Rove – “I know lots of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools.” The crowd applauds.

Sotomayor didn’t just attend Princeton, she graduated summa cum laude. She didn’t just attend Yale Law School, she edited the Yale Law Journal.

***

Last night I noted that the only question the Republicans needed to answer was whether or not they are going to filibuster, and then figure out what to do from there. If not, they should go into damage control, and by all appearances it seems like they will not filibuster:

Sessions appeared on the Today show, and said that Sotomayor “has serious problems.” And he urged against rushing through to a confirmation. “But I would think that we would all have a good hearing, take our time, and do it right,” he said. “And then the senators cast their vote up or down based on whether or not they think this is the kind of judge that should be on the court.”

However, he also added: “I don’t sense a filibuster in the works.”

Instead of realizing there is no real political upside here and spinning into damage control, they seem to have gone berserk, and I haven’t even visited NRO, the Weekly Standard, or any of the various wingnut blogs I regularly read. Most of what is quoted here is from top-tier Republicans- former elected officials and the leadership and brains of the party (with the exception of the Nate Silver post). Meanwhile, as usual, one guy sort of gets it but is helpless to do anything:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele told CNN Radio Tuesday the party that he hopes will include more Hispanics must be cautious in how it scrutinizes a groundbreaking Latina judge.

“You want to be careful,” he said when asked about juggling Hispanic outreach with potential opposition to Sotomayor, “You don’t want to be perceived as a bully.”

But overall, the new Republican leader is calling for the GOP to avoid the explosive rhetoric attached to many Supreme Court fights.

“I think our party right now will avoid the partisan knee-jerk judgements that typically come with these things,” Steele said.

The funny thing about this is that despite all his faults, Steele has, for the most part, seen all the landmines his wingnut cohorts are tap-dancing through, but can’t do anything about it. And what makes that even funnier is that Michael Steele will be the one blamed for the GOP fail in 2010, when there was, quite literally, nothing he could do.

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"identity politics"

atrios makes A Rather Obvious Point: But, sadly, one which frequently needs to be made. The greatest practitioners of whatever it is we call "identity politics" in this country have always been white males. The lack of self-awareness of this fact is what is termed unexamined privilege.

QOTD, from the comments at Yglesias' place:

  1. Ape Man Says:
    May 26th, 2009 at 9:28 pm

    Shorter conservatives:

    In a truly race-blind world, there wouldn’t be any goddamn mud people on the Supreme Court.

David Gergen: via DK)

To watch the first African-American President from a broken family promote to the U.S. Supreme Court an Hispanic woman from a broken neighborhood was one of those moments that Americans will long savor. In his announcement today of his first nominee to the Court, President Obama quickly brought back memories of why the country elected him.

...

President Obama’s announcement stirred those same, overwhelming feelings. It is said that a president campaigns in poetry and governs in prose. Today was almost all poetry. It is likely to be remembered as one of the President’s finest hours.

Unequal pay

and0531blog.jpg

Nick Anderson at May 30, 2007 04:59 PM (h/t C&L)


BarbinMD (DK): Nevada Governor Refuses A Meet and Greet With Obama

Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons is holding a grudge against Barack Obama:

The White House offered Gibbons the chance to greet Obama after he lands tomorrow evening for a fundraiser at Caesar’s Palace for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. But Gibbons, a Republican, declined because he was insulted by a comment the president had made about Vegas a few months ago, although he says he’s asked Obama to meet with him “to discuss improving tourism and business travel to Nevada.”

“While I appreciate the offer, I am not interested in a handshake and a hello from President Obama, I am interested in an apology and plan to undo the damage the President did,” Gibbons said in a statement posted on his Web site.

“Working families are suffering because of the President’s remarks."

At issue is a comment Obama made in February:

“We’re going to do something to strengthen the banking system," Mr. Obama said, “You are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you pay taxpayers back. You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime. There's got to be some accountability and some responsibility.”

So there you have it. Three months ago, the tourism industry in Las Vegas was humming until Obama said bankers weren't going to be able to take luxury junkets on the taxpayers dime, which naturally meant that every Joe and Jane Q. Public who were packing their bags for Vegas, cancelled their trip. Or not.


Spin on Sotomayor May 26: Not even 24 hours since his announcement and conservatives are already criticizing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, calling her a "liberal activist judge." Meanwhile, The White House is selling Sotomayor as a moderate choice. Rachel Maddow is joined by to Slate.com's Dahlia Lithwick to talk about where Sotomayor really leans.

hilzoy: Sotomayor: The Record

This is one of the things I love most about blogs: Barack Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court; I, a non-lawyer, wonder what her record is like, and find the summaries in newspapers much too shallow and focussed on the politics of her appointment rather than her record; but voila! SCOTUSBlog has anticipated my every whim by running a series summarizing a whole lot of her decisions. The first one has gotten some attention, but there are more! (1, 2, 3, 4.)

They are really worth reading, especially if you are not a lawyer, since they'll give you a much richer sense of the kinds of decisions she has made than anything I've read so far in newspapers. To pick one example: you'll have a much more informed response to the idea that Judge Sotomayor will reflexively support the interests of minorities if you know about her dissent in Pappas v. Giuliani, which SCOTUSBlog summarizes as follows:

"One of her more controversial cases was Pappas v. Giuliani, 290 F.3d 143 (2d Cir. 2002), involving an employee of the New York City Police Department who was terminated from his desk job because, when he received mailings requesting that he make charitable contributions, he responded by mailing back racist and bigoted materials. On appeal, the panel majority held that the NYPD could terminate Pappas for his behavior without violating his First Amendment right to free speech. Sotomayor dissented from the majority's decision to award summary judgment to the police department. She acknowledged that the speech was "patently offensive, hateful, and insulting," but cautioned the majority against "gloss[ing] over three decades of jurisprudence and the centrality of First Amendment freedoms in our lives just because it is confronted with speech it does not like." In her view, Supreme Court precedent required the court to consider not only the NYPD's mission and community relations but also that Pappas was neither a policymaker nor a cop on the beat. Moreover, Pappas's speech was anonymous, "occur[ring] away from the office on [his] own time." She expressed sympathy for the NYPD's "concerns about race relations in the community," which she described as "especially poignant," but at the same time emphasized that the NYPD had substantially contributed to the problem by disclosing the results of its investigation into the racist mailings to the public. In the end, she concluded, the NYPD's race relations concerns "are so removed from the effective functioning of the public employer that they cannot prevail over the free speech rights of the public employee.""

It's worth noting that the speech in question is genuinely offensive:

"The fliers asserted white supremacy, ridiculed black people and their culture, warned against the "Negro wolf... destroying American civilization with rape, robbery, and murder," and declaimed against "how the Jews control the TV networks and why they should be in the hands of the American public and not the Jews."

If you read Sotomayor's actual dissent, she makes very good points. While I am not qualified to say whether it's a valid legal argument, it is a subtler and (to my mind) deeper take on the relevant issues than that in the majority opinion. The justification for firing Pappas was the damage it would do to the NYPD's mission if it were known that one of their employees was mailing such racist screeds. Sotomayor notes, correctly, that this is often a good reason for firing someone: if, for instance, a beat cop held such views, one might legitimately worry about how he might treat any African-Americans or Jews he happened to encounter.

But Pappas was not a cop on the beat, a police commissioner, etc. He worked on the NYPD's computer systems. Moreover, he mailed the offensive literature anonymously, on his own time, and it took a police investigation, involving sending more charitable appeals out in special coded envelopes, to show that he had sent it. But besides making those points, Sotomayor also said this:

"The majority's core concern seems to be that, even though Pappas was a low-level employee with no public contact who was speaking privately and anonymously, the possibility remained that the news would get "out into the world" that the NYPD was employing a racist. I agree this is a significant issue, and I do not take it lightly. (...)

This case differs from others we have confronted in a critical respect. In the typical public employee speech case where negative publicity is at issue, the government has reacted to speech which others have publicized in an effort to diffuse some potential disruption. In this case, whatever disruption occurred was the result of the police department's decision to publicize the results of its investigation, which revealed the source of the anonymous mailings. It was, apparently, the NYPD itself that disclosed this information to the media and the public. Thus it is not empty rhetoric when Pappas argues that he was terminated because of his opinions. Ante, at 147-48. The majority's decision allows a government employer to launch an investigation, ferret out an employee's views anonymously expressed away from the workplace and unrelated to the employee's job, bring the speech to the attention of the media and the community, hold a public disciplinary hearing, and then terminate the employee because, at that point, the government "reasonably believed that the speech would potentially... disrupt the government's activities." Heil v. Santoro, 147 F.3d 103, 109 (2d Cir.1998). This is a perversion of our "reasonable belief" standard, and does not give due respect to the First Amendment interests at stake."

Or, in short: the NYPD claims it has to fire Pappas because if word got out that they employed someone with his beliefs, that would hurt their ability to do their job. But they were the ones who first investigated these anonymous mailings, figured out who had sent them, and then publicized the fact that it was an NYPD employee. That makes it hard to argue that it was Pappas' mailing offensive stuff that harmed the NYPD: but for the NYPD's own actions, that harm would never have occurred. (It reminds me of someone I used to work with: when our college reached decisions he didn't like, he used to foment huge pseudo-controversies about them and then say: we can't go ahead with this; it's just too controversial!)

This is a really good point. As I said, I'm not competent to say whether it is or is not the best reading of the Pickering test, but I do think it's a subtler analysis than the majority's, and one that takes the First Amendment issues more seriously, and engages more seriously with the underlying rationale behind curtailing them. More to the point, however, knowing that in a case like this, where political correctness was plainly on the side of the majority, Justice Sotomayor was in dissent. And whether she was right or wrong, this case is worth knowing about, given how often we're likely to hear that she is all about identity politics at the expense of the rule of law.

And that's just one example. The whole series is worth reading.


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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Failed and Non-failed Media

Kurtz (TPM): Not Enough Hispanics in Rolodex? CNN found it necessary to bring Alberto Gonzales on to reflect on the Sotomayor nomination.

I'm opening this Greg Sargent grab-bag piece on Sontamayor with a comment from the thread following his post. It's an important point about the traditional msm, embedded in a new media post by a blogger who worked his way through his own excellent blog (Horse's Mouth), then Talking Points Memo (TPM), and now is on-line at the Washington Post:
  1. flounder | May 26th, 2009 at 07:14 pm

    I think it is worth keeping track of the overall bias the traditional media shows during this period. I was listening to NPR’ Talk of the Nation, and they had 2 conservatives and zero liberals on to discuss the pick. I couldn’t listen to more than half the program, because Richard Vigurie [sic] was saying the same garbage he said when he had a whole segment of Talk of the Nation to himself last week.
    I turned it to MSNBC and they had about a 2 : 1 conservative bias talking about Sontamayor. The bias is getting so bad, with this story and most others, that I don’t think even Howie Kurtz is going to be able to explain it away much longer.

  • * Kurtz: Beware the Numbers

    So what to make of the charge from the right that Judge Sotomayor has an allegedly high rate of reversals by the Supreme Court? Fox News' Major Garrett just raised it with Robert Gibbs at the daily White House press briefing. Here's the text of exchange (video here):

    Garrett: Is a nominee's history of opinions and reversals a relevant factor for the public and the Senate?

    Gibbs: Well, I think it is one of the many factors that likely will be picked over and weighed as we go through this.

    Garrett: How does the White House evaluate Judge Sotomayor's record on this score?

    Gibbs: Well, I think if one were to create 380 opinions and have 3 reversed.

    Garrett: What's the Supreme Court ratio?

    Gibbs: You tell me.

    Garrett: 6 opinions, 3 reversals.

    Gibbs: Well, Major, don't just judge, I wouldn't judge you on the stories I call you about, I might judge you on the full package of your repertoire. Whether or not you ultimately see fit to change any of the rhetoric on ...

    Garrett: I am not a nominee for the Supreme Court, let the record reflect.

    Gibbs: I would agree with that.

    So when outfits like the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network say that Sotomayor has a "terrible record of reversals by the Supreme Court," what they're referring to is the narrow and misleading issue of how the Supreme Court has ruled when it has gone so far as to accept the case on appeal. There does not appear to be any sort of unusually high number of her cases making it to the Supreme Court.

    Late Update: TPM Reader JH checks in:

    About those reversals: It's worth pointing out that the Supreme Court reverses most of the decisions it takes. The percentage of cases it affirms usually is somewhere in the 25 to 30 percent range, and rarely as high as 40 percent. There's actually a saying among Supreme Court lawyers that the court grants cert to reverse. In that context, a .500 record is pretty good.

    Later Update: Here's a piece on the Supreme Court reversal rate in recent years that confirms what JH is pointing out.

Sully: Bold And Boring

Hard to disagree with Jonathan Martin on the Sotomayor pick:

Obama, with his usual combination of professorial coolness and political calculation, has stayed within the judiciary’s 40-yard lines while also squeezing the opposition in a manner that would make a Chicago ward heeler smile.

John Cole: No One Could Have Predicted- Sotomayor Edition

Your quote of the day:

Conservatives are already citing my initial piece on Sotomayor as a basis for opposing her. – Jeffrey Rosen

Yes. We are all shocked to see that development. No one could have predicted that an anonymously sourced hit piece focusing on Sotomayor’s inability to serve as an “intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices,” her lack of “command of technical legal details” and her “bully on the bench” temperament might later be used against her by Conservatives.

Also, we’ll be greeted as liberators and the war will pay for itself.


dday: Media Know-Nothings
It happened the Friday before Memorial Day and went almost unnoticed, but this small bit at the end of Hardball fairly well sums up the Village approach to government.

CILLIZZA: Here's the problem. She, she holds a press conference, she brings the leadership with her to show that everyone is behind her.

MATTHEWS: Yeah, but Steny was acting like her defender, he's her biggest rival...

CILLIZZA: I agree. She talks for, they talk for twenty-five minutes about essentially nothing. Everyone knows she has a plane to catch...

MATTHEWS: It's called policy, by the way, Chris. (LAUGHTER) Something only a political reporter would say.

CILLIZZA: That gets me. Well-played.

SIMON: Stuff we don't care about...

MATTHEWS: All this stuff, health care, cap and trade, all this stuff.
Political reporters are often derided as being sportswriters. But sportswriters actually bother to watch the game. Cillizza's comment is akin to saying that the Lakers and the Nuggets for four quarters did "essentially nothing" to run out the clock on the postgame press conference so reporters couldn't ask Kobe about his relationship with Phil Jackson. I've never seen a group of journalists so openly dismissive about a subject they ostensibly exist to cover.

Because every report of this press conference focuses on the attempted extension of the Pelosi-CIA dust-up, you cannot actually find a record of what the House leadership talked about in those first 25 minutes. I assume it tracks closely to this statement about legislation passed in the last week and since the beginning of the new Congress. Here's an excerpt:

SIGNED INTO LAW THIS WEEK

CREDIT CARDHOLDERS’ BILL OF RIGHTS, to provide tough new protections for consumers by banning unfair rate increases, abusive fees, and penalties—such as retroactive rate hikes on existing balances and double-cycle billing — giving consumers clear information, and strengthening enforcement.

MILITARY PROCUREMENT REFORM, to crack down on Pentagon waste and cost overruns, which GAO says amount to $296 billion just for the 96 largest weapons systems, by dramatically beefing up oversight of weapons acquisition, promoting greater use of competition, and curbing conflicts of interest.

HELPING FAMILIES SAVE THEIR HOMES ACT, building on the President’s housing initiative, to provide significant incentives to lenders, servicers, and homeowners to work together to modify loans and to avoid foreclosures, which cost families their homes every 13 seconds in America.

FIGHTING MORTGAGE AND CORPORATE FRAUD & CREATING COMMISSION ON CAUSES OF CRISIS, to provide tools for prosecuting the mortgage scams and corporate frauds that contributed to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression; and to create an outside commission to examine its causes.
The housing bill had the guts ripped from it with the loss of cram-down, and the credit card bill mirrors closely rules already put in place by the Federal Reserve; this legislation will just accelerate their effective start date. But it would be nice for Americans to actually know what their Congress manages to pass, instead of having those statements of passage ridiculed as "essentially nothing" by the reporters employed, presumably, to inform the public. In fact, reporters could even detail the legislation and separate the facts from the spin, separate from dart-at-a-board predictions of political consequences or positioning. It's a novel idea, I know.

I'd like to pinpoint the moment at which reporters stopped covering policy and began to cover "politics," which they defined as mini-controversies and gossip and what each side of the political divide says about the other (news flash: they're critical!). I have a sense the consequences haven't been all that stellar.
Fallows: On Memorial Day

25 May 2009 10:15 am

Consider the Map the Fallen project, here. It is an overlay on Google Earth that provides details on the lives and deaths of 5600+ U.S. and coalition men and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sample:

FallenMap.jpg
Details for installing the overlay at the site above. (Mac users: it definitely does require the latest release of Google Earth, here.) As the project's originator says:
I have created a map for Google Earth that will connect you with each of their stories--you can see photos, learn about how they died, visit memorial websites with comments from friends and families, and explore the places they called home and where they died.
Respect to him, and to those he is honoring. (And, yes, I do realize that there could be a much more densely-populated map of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. That takes nothing away from the power of this project or the sacrifice it commemorates.)
John Cole: Completely Missing the Point

Andy Rooney had a Memorial Day piece up that was worth watching:

He made multiple great points, first of which is that many people don’t think of Memorial Day as anything other than a day off, and that honoring the memory of our fallen should include some memory of who they were as people. Hence the anecdote about Richie M. and his different colored socks and the fact that he thinks about his lost buddies every single day, not just on Memorial Day.

His second point was just as potent- if you really want to remember and cherish the memories of those who gave their lives, or, as Andy notes, had their lives taken from them, the way to best serve their memories is to work to make sure no more young Americans have to give their lives in combat. Idealistic and unlikely, but still a noble goal.

How do the wingnuts react to this? By freaking out:

Useful Idiot Andy Rooney Shames America on Memorial Day (Video)

Andy Rooney couldn’t help himself. The bitter liberal could think of nothing better for his Memorial Day segment than to shame America for participating in war…

Angry old liberals like Rooney will never see the greatness of America, the values we stand for, the people we’ve liberated and the lives we’ve saved.

It’s just a shame this bitter man had to use the Memorial Day holiday to spread his sick propaganda.

These guys have seriously lost the plot and still think it is 2003. And considering that Andy Rooney was one of the first American journalists on the ground as we liberated the concentration camps in WWII, I think Andy Rooney knows a think or two about the people we’ve liberated and the lives we’ve saved:

That is from Andy Rooney’s best-selling book, My War. I’ll take Andy Rooney’s experiences over the rantings of some idiot on the internet.


Benen: ROMNEY AND HUCKABEE?....
I often wonder what the standard is for major news outlets that receive press releases from political figures who no longer hold public office. How do editors decide what constitutes actual news, when these folks issue a statement about something?

We know, for example, that Newt Gingrich's every thought is frequently considered news worthy, despite the fact that he hasn't held public office in more than a decade. Today, Mitt Romney's dissatisfaction with Judge Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination was also deemed news.

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney issued a statement Tuesday on Sotomayor's nomination:

"The nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is troubling. Her public statements make it clear she has an expansive view of the role of the judiciary. Historically, the Court is where judges interpret the Constitution and apply the law. It should never be the place 'where policy is made,' as Judge Sotomayor has said. Like any nominee, she deserves a fair and thorough hearing. What the American public deserves is a judge who will put the law above her own personal political philosophy."

This is pretty hackish, of course, but content aside, who cares what Mitt Romney thinks about a judicial nominee? He finds Sotomayor "troubling." So? There are plenty of former governors out there; Romney's thoughts on Supreme Court vacancies are as relevant as theirs are.

Around the same time, Mike Huckabee weighed in, too.

Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee issued a statement Tuesday on Sotomayor's nomination:

"The appointment of Maria Sotomayor for the Supreme Court is the clearest indication yet that President Obama's campaign promises to be a centrist and think in a bi-partisan way were mere rhetoric. Sotomayor comes from the far left and will likely leave us with something akin to the 'Extreme Court' that could mark a major shift. The notion that appellate court decisions are to be interpreted by the 'feelings' of the judge is a direct affront of the basic premise of our judicial system that is supposed to apply the law without personal emotion. If she is confirmed, then we need to take the blindfold off Lady Justice."

As a substantive matter, Huckabee's whining is blisteringly dumb. But in terms of actual news, the only thing interesting about the former governor's press release is that Huckabee, after weeks of coverage about Sotomayor and her prospective nomination, is under the impression that her first name is "Maria."

Collectively, Romney and Huckabee have no power, no influence, and no public responsibilities. So why would CNN run their silly public statements as news?

I suppose this is a lesson on why so many politicians flirt with possible presidential campaigns -- it prompts major news outlets to pay attention to your press releases. Otherwise, various rants from Romney, Huckabee, and Gingrich would -- I hope -- be easier for editors to ignore.

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