Conservatives Vs. Liberals, Lesson MCMXXXVII

The last Administration actually instituted a program asking people to call in tips on their neighbors or anyone who looked suspicious to them. After bipartisan outcry the program was supposedly canceled, and yet trained terrorism liaison officers culled from the law enforcement and elsewhere continued to look for "suspicious activity," secret surveillance programs continued to data mine the private communications of Americans, etc.

This Administration responds to deliberate misinformation passed out about health care reform by asking their supporters to flag them for them, essentially crowdsourcing the lies. This becomes twisted by the right as an effort to spy on neighbors and friends and "turn in" opponents of health care reform, to the extent that Sen. John Cornyn calls it a "data collection program." And predictably, the White House shut it down.

So one President actually rampantly spies on the entire population of America for eight years, the other asks for tips on misinformation, and not only are they described as the same thing, but conservatives are actually successful at shutting down what they find abhorrent, while this President joined Congressional efforts to legalize the abuses of the surveillance state from the last regime.

And we're surprised, in this environment, that it's difficult to pass health care reform?

Setup-Punch

John Cornyn misspoke when he claimed that we needed the F-22 to combat the rising national security threat from India.

He meant to say Indiana.

After all, they voted for Obama, and he's not even from here!

The Unknown War With India

The President had a big victory this week when the Senate voted to strip funding for additional F-22 fighter jets, which the Pentagon and the Air Force didn't want, which haven't been flown once in Iraq or Afghanistan and which are apparently vulnerable to rain. It was a small step toward breaking the stranglehold of the military-industrial complex. The lobbyists were out in force to keep this alive, and a lot of lawmakers who have parts of the F-22 made in their district wanted to keep the gravy train going, but eventually, sanity prevailed. The military budget is increasing this year, and eventually we have to end a circumstance where we spend more on the military than every other country in the world combined, but if we couldn't cancel the F-22, we would not be able to cancel pretty much anything. So it was a good step toward lessening the power and influence of military contractors. Robert Farley has a great roundup of opinions.

Naturally, John Cornyn (Bugfuck Crazy-TX) doesn't agree. In fact, he thinks we have to use the F-22 to counter all sorts of threats. Including... India.

"It's important to our national security because we're not just fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," Cornyn says. "We're fighting -- we have graver threats and greater threats than that: From a rising India, with increased exercise of their military power; Russia; Iran, that's threatening to build a nuclear weapon; with North Korea, shooting intercontinental ballistic missiles, capable of hitting American soil."

I wasn't aware that we were at war with India. In fact, I don't get over there much, but I'm pretty sure we're an ally. In fact, Hillary Clinton just spent four days there this week. We just completed a civilian nuclear power agreement with them last year.

I guess being Republican means "never having to say you're sorry to an allied country for calling them an enemy." Remember when John McCain thought we were at war with Spain?

What Election?

I'm watching Hillary Clinton school a bunch of wingnuts in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Particularly, she responded to Mike Pence, who put on his very serious voice to denounce that devastating smile and handshake between President Obama and Hugo Chavez. The Secretary of State responded that, and I'm paraphrasing, we tried to isolate enemies for eight years, and where did it get us? President Obama won an election, and won a primary against me, offering a different vision, and the people agreed with his approach.

The Republican Party and its allies, simply put, act as if there was no election in November. In some cases they quite literally act that way, trying to stall Democratic victories. But that's the overall tenor as well. Washington remains wired for Republicans, and the focus continues to be on either relentlessly trivial issues or the fundamentally conservative slant on those issues, and thus the key questions never get asked.

Meanwhile, I haven't seen any reporter ask Cheney or his staff what seems like an obvious question: If there exist documents that prove that torture prevented attacks on the US, and those documents can be released without jeopardizing national security, why didn't the Bush administration release them before leaving office?

It isn't like it's a surprise that the Obama administration has made some changes in Bush administration torture policy; Cheney and Bush had to know that was a possibility. So why didn't they release this evidence that supposedly proves that torture is a necessary national security tool? (If the answer is that they feared releasing the documents would jeopardize national security, there's an obvious follow-up: Why does Cheney want them released now?)

But of course the election has been essentially disappeared. That "accountability moment," as George W. Bush once famously called it, where the public considered the options and made their will known, didn't happen. And the likely loss of the bare minimum seats to sustain a filibuster, which even the man running the Senate races has acknowledged, doesn't impact this outlook, either. They have bought the Kool-Aid that they have a silent, non-voting (apparently) majority and refuse to be moved by public opinion but to retrench. It's actually quite remarkable and ahistorical:

After losing ground in 2006, you might have expected Republicans to start distancing themselves from the hugely unpopular president and his failed conservative policies. Instead, the caucus held remarkably firm behind Bush’s agenda. And then they lost a bunch of additional seats in 2008. At this point you again might have expected them to start acting conciliatory. But they haven’t been. Which might lead you to suspect that they have some kind of secret master plan to explain why this makes sense. But, clearly, they don’t—Cornyn acknowledges that his side is likely to lose more seats.

I've heard this called the Republican death spiral, as the rump Southern contingent gathers more and more power inside the party while eroding the party throughout the rest of the country. That the Republican Party is now less popular than Venezuela makes no difference. They have become less a political concern than a weird theater group obsessed over slights toward Miss California or Presidential public gestures than the clear expressed will of the public.

And wait until they get a load of this. Hissy fit alert!

Egyptians are cautiously rejoicing over the recent appointment of a veiled Egyptian American Muslim woman as an advisor to President Obama.

Dalia Mogahed, senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, was appointed this month to Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

...This was good too.



"I don't consider (Dick Cheney) a particularly reliable source."

"Years"

It's already astounding that the Norm Coleman-Al Franken Senate recount has taken this long to resolve. Franken has won the first recount and Coleman's lawyers even acknowledge that he will win the case before the Minnesota Supreme Court when the verdict comes down shortly. But this is the first time I've heard the word "years" to describe the timeframe for resolution.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn is threatening “World War III” if Democrats try to seat Al Franken in the Senate before Norm Coleman can pursue his case through the federal courts.

Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, acknowledges that a federal challenge to November’s elections could take “years” to resolve. But he’s adamant that Coleman deserves that chance — even if it means Minnesota is short a senator for the duration.

The big question concerns certification of the election. Democrats say that the Minnesota Supreme Court will grant certification after their ruling, regardless of an appeal. Cornyn thinks that Minnesota will be unable to certify if Coleman seeks a review from the US Supreme Court on the matter. Of course, the real "decider" in this case may be Republican Governor (and possible 2012 Presidential candidate) Tim Pawlenty.

It could takes months — or longer — to resolve a petition for review from the U.S. Supreme Court and even longer if the loser before the Minnesota Supreme Court files a new case in a U.S. District Court.

What happens in the meantime could come down to Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who was on John McCain’s vice president shortlist and is contemplating a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012.

So far, Pawlenty isn’t saying what he’ll do once the court rules.

“The recent Minnesota Supreme Court decision indicated that an election certificate could be issued once the state courts process is complete,” said Brian McClung, a spokesman for the governor. “However, if one of the parties appeals to a federal court, a question will arise whether the federal court might stay the issuance of a certificate.

“We’ll see what the courts determine,” he said.

20 guesses what the guy who may want to top the GOP ticket in 2012 will decide.

I've been saying for a while that this recount battle obstructing Franken from the Senate was a sweet deal for Republicans. They get to expend some resources and shockingly little political capital in exchange for denying Democrats a key vote on issues like health care and energy and the Employee Free Choice Act. There was some hope that the "losers pay" law in Minnesota, combined with Norm Coleman's campaign inadvertently revealing thousands of their donors' personal information online, would make it difficult to raise the necessary funds to continue the court battle. However, a little-remarked-upon FEC ruling allows both candidates to return to former maxed-out donors to pay up to $30,400 per individual into a party recount and trial fund. Even PACs can give up to $15,000. So it would take a relatively small amount of wealthy donors to keep this going as long as possible.

What I cannot understand is why Coleman has taken such little heat for prolonging what by all accounts appears to be a losing battle, and for nakedly political reasons besides. Once the Minnesota Supreme Court rules in a matter of days, Democrats need to loudly call for Franken's seating at every possible opportunity.

Conservative Losing-Team Slap-Fights

There ultimately will be no "conservative crackup" - a party espousing authoritarian and business-friendly policies will always exist. But there are fissures - and pretty much due to personality rather than ideology. For example, Rush Limbaugh gets personally upset when politicians challenge his "I want Obama to fail" mantra. Tim Pawlenty is personally hurt by national Republicans urging on Norm Coleman to continue fighting the Minnesota election despite impossible odds, because his state isn't getting what it needs. And another example is Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning, who the party wants to ease into retirement because, well, he's crazy and would lose a re-election fight, but who is too stubborn to go quietly:

But Bunning, a famously irascible former pitcher enshrined in baseball's Hall of Fame, is digging in. He insists he will run despite lackluster fundraising and is rebuking those who suggest he shouldn't.

McConnell has not publicly asked Bunning to retire, but he has ducked questions about the race, saying he will wait until Bunning makes his intentions clear. Bunning, who has said over and over that he is running, said later that McConnell must have "had a lapse of memory."

He has had even harsher words for Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who is leading the GOP's re-election efforts for next year. Cornyn had similarly deflected comment on the race, prompting Bunning to say Cornyn "doesn't understand English."

Bunning did not appear to be mollified when Cornyn said he supports the Kentucky senator. "I don't believe anything John Cornyn says," Bunning said.

That comment came around the same time that word leaked that Republican Kentucky state Senate President David Williams met with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which Cornyn heads. Bunning told reporters Tuesday that he would have grounds for a lawsuit against the committee if it backed a GOP challenger to him in the 2010 primary.

Bunning first threatened to sue the NRSC if they didn't support him. Then he apparently made an even more substantive threat:

WASHINGTON — Already in conflict with his party’s leaders, Sen. Jim Bunning has reportedly said privately that if he is hindered in raising money for his re-election campaign he is ready with a response that would be politically devastating for Senate Republicans: his resignation.

The Kentucky Republican suggested that possible scenario at a campaign fundraiser for him on Capitol Hill earlier this week, according to three sources who asked not to be identified because of the politically sensitive nature of Bunning’s remarks.

The implication, they said, was that Bunning would allow Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, to appoint his replacement — a move that could give Democrats the 60 votes they need to block Republican filibusters in the Senate.

“I would get the last laugh. Don’t forget Kentucky has a Democrat governor,” one of the sources quoted Bunning as saying.

“The only logical extension of that comment is, ‘(Make me mad) … enough and I’ll resign, and then you’ve got 60 Democrats,’ ” said another source who was present at the event.

Bunning is already backing away from the statement. But you can see how a strong daddy conservative with a runaway ego would say such a thing. Just like in sports, when you're a losing team, all the petty jealousies and angry backbiting comes out. I'd say it's unlikely that Bunning bolts, but he'd probably be thrilled to screw Mitch McConnell and the GOP. It's all a game to them, anyway.

Big John

Only one Senator missed the cloture vote on the stimulus (Judd Gregg recused himself, because why should he have to do his job?). That would be John Cornyn, the leader of the campaign committee for Republicans in the Senate, who was too busy wooing potential contributors to vote on providing unemployment benefits and food stamps to needy citizens:

Glenn Thrush says the question from the Senate floor this evening was "where was Cornyn," as the Texas Republican was the only senator to miss the crucial cloture vote on the stimulus package.

The answer: He was at a New York gathering of prominent media conservatives and Wall Street Republican donors called the Monday Meeting, held at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Midtown Manhattan.

Though not a fundraiser, the meeting is a hub of conservative money and buzz, a good place for Cornyn to tap into resources in his role as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Good optics, dude.

We Can't Have The Attorney General Following Laws

As you may know, John Cornyn has led a revolt that would delay the confirmation of Eric Holder in the Senate Judiciary Committee for at least a week, citing the fact that he might actually prosecute people who have committed crimes, which is simply off-limits to Beltway thinking (at least for people of import, he can prosecute all the poor people he wants for shoplifting, but at war crimes Cornyn draws the line):

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, convened the panel Wednesday and asked for an immediate vote to send Holder's nomination to the Senate. Republicans called for a one-week delay, permitted by committee rules.

Holder told the Judiciary Committee last week that waterboarding is "torture" and therefore illegal. Susan J. Crawford, the top Bush administration official overseeing the trials of detainees, told the Washington Post that at least one individual held at the prison center at Guantanamo Bay was "tortured."

The question Republicans want answered before Holder is confirmed: Will you prosecute those who took part in that torture?

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said that he would block committee proceedings, scheduled to resume at 2:30 pm on Wednesday, if he did not receive answer from Holder. "I'm not going to allow things to proceed," he said. He added that it was "physically impossible" for Holder to get the answers to him by then, thus assuring a conflict would ensue [...]

"Part of my concern, frankly, relates to some of his statements at the hearing in regard to torture and what his intentions are with regard to intelligence personnel who were operating in good faith based upon their understanding of what the law was," said Cornyn.

Well, at least he didn't bring 9/11 into it in a blatant attempt to scaremonger... I'm sorry, what was that next paragraph?

"There were provisions providing immunity to intelligence officials based up on good faith and what they understood the law to be," said Cornyn. "I want to know if he's going to enforce congressional intent not to second guess those things in a way that could jeopardize those officials but also could cause our intelligence officials to be risk averse -- the very kind of risk aversion...that the 9/11 commission talked about when they talked about what set us up for 9/11."

Ah, Republicans. Proudly using victims of terror as a human shield for going on eight years.

I don't need to recapitulate the arguments made by Tom Ricks, Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the UN special rapporteur on torture, and others. We need a reckoning for torture because if we don't, the successors to this legacy will do far worse in the name of national security; we need to "look back" because it's the basis for jurisprudence and we can't prejudge who or who not to prosecute absent all the facts; we cannot listen to the Beltway insiders who want to protect their friends by saying that ignoring clear crimes is very "appropriate"; etc. I would simply say that Holder would be breaking the law if he DIDN'T prosecute.

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture. . . .

That's from the Convention Against Torture, and it's pretty unequivocal. We are legally obligated to prosecute acts of torture, and "promising not to" is as much a crime, under this statute, as the torture itself. As to the argument that top Democrats are complicit in these actions and a Democratic Administration and the whole thing would have a look of a show trial if they were forced to admit that they were aware of but didn't object to these abuses, that's what an independent prosecutor would be for. And by the way, one of those top Democrats assumed to have been read in to the torture policy is open to prosecution, kind of blowing that theory out of the water.

The glib and cynical establishment press, desperate to protect their friends and defend THEIR OWN moral complicity in these crimes, may think this is a legitimate stand to take, but it only reveals their own moral hollowness.

To the standard Washington reporter, nothing is more contemptible than those who want to hold political leaders accountable -- and that fact is as potent a reflection of how diseased our political culture is, since journalists, in theory, ought to be those leading the crusade for such accountability, not leading the lynch mob against citizens who are demanding it. Yet since the zombie-like march behind the Leader during the run-up to the attack on Iraq, there hasn't been a more complete, virtually lockstep consensus among our media class than their vehement opposition to investigating the crimes of our political leaders.

Heck, even Lindsay frickin' Graham understands that no Attorney General could vow to rule out prosecution in a blanket fashion absent knowing what has been committed. He still thinks that "criminalizing policy differences" would be bad for the country, which is absurd, but he at least has enough sense to know that ruling out prosecution of a crime is not really an option for the nation's chief law enforcement officer.

All told, the Republicans don't have the votes to stop Holder, so this is a delay tactic at best. Why? Emptywheel has been working on her theory for a while now, and it's starting to make sense:

Two and a half weeks ago, bmaz predicted that the Bush Administration would appeal Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling requiring the Bush Administration to turn over a document that likely proves they violated FISA by wiretapping American citizens. Sure enough, on Friday and Monday, they did so [...]

Between that appeal and Arlen "Scottish Haggis" Specter's highly unusual one-week hold on Eric Holder's nomination yesterday, it sure does look like my theory--that Republicans are trying to delay the time when a Democrat takes over DOJ and starts reviewing Bush Administration actions and considering prosecutions.

In particular, I believe, they are delaying Holder's nomination to shorten the time between the day Holder takes over and the day the statute of limitations on violations of FISA Bush committed on March 11, 2004 start to expire--that is, March 11, 2009, just seven weeks away.

It would certainly be interesting if this was not about torture at all, but the violations of FISA. Especially given the revelation from Russell Tice that the US Government has been monitoring every single communication made by an American for years.

OLBERMANN: Let's start with the review. We heard the remarks from Mr. Bush in 2005, that only Americans who would have been eavesdropped on without a warrant were those who were talking to terrorists overseas. Based on what you know, what you have seen firsthand and what you have encountered in your experience, how much of that statement was true?

TICE: Well, I don't know what our former president knew or didn't know. I'm sort of down in the weeds. But the National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications, faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications. And that doesn't -- it didn't matter whether you were in Kansas, you know, in the middle of the country, and you never made a communication -- foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications.

OLBERMANN: To what degree is that likely to mean actual eavesdropping and actual inspection? In other words, if not actually read or monitored by the NSA, everything was collected by the NSA, recorded, archived? Do you have any idea to what degree the information was ever looked at, per se?

TICE: Well, it's actually, even for the NSA, it's impossible to literally collect all communications. Americans tend to be a chatty group. We have the best computers at the agency, but certainly not that good.

But what was done was a sort of an ability to look at the meta data, the signaling data for communications, and ferret that information to determine what communications would ultimately be collected. Basically, filtering out sort of like sweeping everything with that meta data, and then cutting down ultimately what you are going to look at and what is going to be collected, and in the long run have an analyst look at, you know, needles in a haystack for what might be of interest.

We have never fully known the extent of this lawlessness, and any delay in Holder's confirmation will keep Americans in the dark that much longer, if he chooses to exercise his prosecutorial discretion at all. If he does not, we may have to rely on lawmakers like Sheldon Whitehouse to offer the reckoning that this nation so desperately needs.

Our new President has said, "America needs to look forward." I agree.

Our new Attorney-General designate has said, we should not criminalize policy differences. I agree.

And I hope we can all agree that summoning young sacrificial lambs to prosecute, as we did after the Abu Ghraib disaster, would be reprehensible.

But consider the pervasive, deliberate, and systematic damage the Bush Administration did to America, to her finest traditions and institutions, to her reputation and integrity.

Read the whole thing.

A New Era Of Comity And Bipartisanship

I was half-joking when I said that John Roberts' flubbing of the Presidential oath of office (which he couldn't recite from memory - what a Constitutional literalist) would cause wingnuts to muse about whether Obama's Presidency is illegitimate because he didn't repeat the right words. (Short answer - it doesn't matter)

Well, Chris Wallace apparently put it out there on Fox News a little while ago.

And adding to that...

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s smooth ride to confirmation as secretary of state hit a small bump on Tuesday as one of her Republican colleagues blocked a vote on Mrs. Clinton’s nomination, citing ethical questions arising from donors to her husband’s charitable foundation.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas objected to including Mrs. Clinton’s name in a unanimous consent vote for several Cabinet nominees, scheduled for hours after the swearing-in of President-elect Barack Obama. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, plans to hold a roll-call vote on Mrs. Clinton’s nomination on Wednesday, which she is expected to win easily.

A spokesman for Mr. Cornyn, Kevin McLaughlin, said, “this is not an effort to scuttle or block the nomination, but a legitimate policy difference. Senator Cornyn’s goal is to create transparency on all levels of government.”

There will be a roll call tomorrow and she'll win. And Cornyn's claims about conflict of interest, given that he pocketed a million dollars from Enron executives before they collapsed, are absurd.

But none of that really matters. Republicans play trench warfare. If they can delay Hillary Clinton a day, they'll do it. They cannot be placated or bargained with.


...deep thought: Should the "Obama isn't President because he didn't say the oath of office exactly" lawsuits be combined with the "Obama isn't President because he isn't a natural born citizen" lawsuits to create an omnibus wingnut cert?

Republicans Fortify Their Bunkers For War In Minnesota

The Minnesota Canvassing Board, which is not really a body I ever wanted to hear a lot about, basically certified the victory of Al Franken today, putting him ahead by 50 votes with only the wrongly disqualified absentee ballots left to count. The working rule is that both the Franken and Coleman campaigns have to agree on allowing a ballot to be counted, and that is predictably falling along partisan lines. Of the 1,360 ballots that local election officials have cited as eligible for counting, Coleman is asking for just a portion to be counted, and most of them come from areas that voted for him in big numbers. They also want to look at ballots that officials did not put on the list. So Coleman is re-litigating the election, while Franken is perfectly content to have those 1,360 ballots counted and to leave it at that, which considering that he's only 50 votes ahead is something of a risk, although the absentees in general are thought to favor him.

Meanwhile, Coleman's strategy is to bash election officials and claim that the election is tainted as he moves into what will certainly be a contested election and a series of lawsuits. Funny, I don't hear anyone, inside or outside of Minnesota, saying that the election is over and the state needs time to heal, and for the sake of comity and bipartisanship Coleman needs to step aside. In fact, Senate Republicans are making every effort to block Franken from being seated, and using zombie lies to do it.

It now looks like the Senate GOP could end up trying to block the seating of Al Franken, assuming he is declared the winner next week in the Minnesota recount. NRSC chairman John Cornyn put out a statement accusing the Franken campaign of falsely declaring victory, and denouncing the idea of provisionally seating him while the expected legal dispute of the election is resolved:

"Al Franken is falsely declaring victory based on an artificial lead created on the back of the double counting of ballots. His campaign's actions in the last several days on the issues of rejected absentee ballots are creating additional chaos and disorder in the Minnesota recount. Those actions, coupled with the recent comments by Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who suggests seating someone even if there is an election contest, are unprecedented. Minnesotans will not accept a recount in which some votes are counted twice, and I expect the Senate would have a problem seating a candidate who has not duly won an election."

The double-counting issue was shot down by the state Supreme Court. The Coleman campaign has been the one cherry-picking which ballots it wants to count. And the Congress can ultimately do what it wants regarding seating members after elections, and indeed they have on a number of occasions, most recently to Vern Buchanan in FL-13 in 2007, when thousands of electronic votes just went missing in an extremely close race against Christine Jennings.

But consistency is the hobgoblin of those in the reality-based community. Those unwritten "rules" just don't apply when you're a Republican. They don't have to apply when you're a Democrat, either, particularly the nonsense about having to come together and bind up the nation's wounds, but Dems are obsessed with pleasing elites while Republicans exist to play partisan warfare. Asymmetrical warfare, at that.

A Brief Election Roundup

Here's a few things I saw in some of the downballot races that interest me in this election:

• CA-04: Charlie Brown, a patriot in the strictest sense of the term, has been running his campaign for Congress based on some simple directives - to help those in need, to work in their own community, and to lead before ever getting to Washington. This week, in the wake of the California wildfires, he has provided supplies and relief to evacuees in Butte County, one of the hardest-hit areas.

• VA-05: This kind of volunteerism and early leadership is something we're also seeing in the campaign of Tom Perriello, who's facing Rep. Virgil Goode in the general election. This is about service, but it's also about raising the bar for activism as an outgrowth of a political campaign.

Early on, Perriello set aside 10 percent of the time and resources of his campaign staff to work on local projects. Larry Campbell, assistant pastor at Bible Way Cathedral in Danville, Va., says he was surprised that Perriello's campaign wanted more than a photo op when they visited his food bank.

"I've had many political candidates come through, but I've never had any work along with us in the area of social-action changes," he says, citing ongoing help from Perriello volunteers. "Most candidates who are running for national office have more programs just getting people out voting for them, but to give back to the community is a heavy statement for social change."

• TX-Sen: The DSCC is hammering John Cornyn for only changing his vote to halt Medicare cuts after the bill was assured of passage. He already lost the Texas branch of the AMA's support over this vote. His opponent, Rick Noriega, is going to need a lot of cash to catch up to Cornyn, but he has raised $1M online, making him the "largest (non-presidential) online fundraiser with ActBlue since its inception." Unfortunately, Texas is such a big state that you probably need LOTS more than Noriega has been able to raise to run a solid challenge.

• CO-Sen: Bob Schaffer, the Republican vying for this open seat, can't stop stepping in scandal. The latest is that he helped negotiate a lucrative oil deal in Iraqi Kurdistan, against the wishes of the State Department, and it's causing major problems for Iraqi efforts to negotiate a hydrocarbon law. Tied to Big Oil and putting personal benefit over country; quite a feat! Mark Udall is the Democrat here.

• MN-Sen: I thought Al Franken's latest ad was pretty good, and represented some outside-the-box thinking:

"In Washington, they debate whether former members of Congress should wait one year or two years before they become registered lobbyists. How about never? I'm Al Franken, in Washington I'll fight for a new law to prevent members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists."

It's a sharp message, picking up on anti-Washington sentiment. What's more, it's not off the typical shelf of "Democratic issues" we hear over and over again.

• AK-Sen: In other ad news, Mark Begich's latest uses the culture of corruption which has consumed Alaska politics and contrasts it with his personal integrity.

Begich says how he's made all his finances public, so the people can know what he's up to. "But it's not that way in Washington, DC," Begich says. "It's time to end the secret deals for special interests, and the special favors for elected officials."

There's nowhere that will work better than Alaska.

• GA-12: The primary between John Barrow and Regina Thomas is this Tuesday. Blue America has been running ads in the district, and Barrow is peeved.

Howie Klein of Los Angeles, a retired music industry executive and one of Blue America's founders, said the PAC got behind Thomas because of Barrow's votes supporting the war in Iraq, President Bush's signature tax cuts and a recent bill to protect telecommunications companies that help the government eavesdrop on American phone and computer lines.

"He's in a Democratic district and he's still voting worse than anyone else," Klein said. "If we can somehow harm to his chances of being elected, there is a state senator who seems very progressive and intelligent who could do the job." [...]

Barrow responded with a statement saying his support for an increase in the minimum wage and opposition to cutting veterans benefits and privatizing Social Security, among other issues, have put him at odds with Bush plenty.

"Apparently the only way to persuade some people that I'm not a rubber stamp for George Bush is to become a rubber stamp for Nancy Pelosi," the Democratic House speaker, Barrow said. "And I refuse to be a rubber stamp for anyone."

Attacking liberals and dismissing Democrats seems to be an awkward strategy for a primary, but he is the incumbent and Thomas hasn't raised much of her own money. Frankly if we can make this competitive it'll be a win.

Food Fight Over The GI Bill

Old Man McCain decided to yell at a cloud today. See, he isn't allowed to vote on legislation while there's money to be raised on the campaign trail, so he wasn't allowed to give his opinion that lucky duckie Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are getting too many education benefits. But Barack Obama did on the Senate floor, saying that McCain's opposition to the Webb-Hagel GI Bill is unconscionable, and in response, McCain got really ornery, on the "how dare you disagree with me on veteran's affairs policy" tip:

"It is typical, but no less offensive that Senator Obama uses the Senate floor to take cheap shots at an opponent and easy advantage of an issue he has less than zero understanding of. Let me say first in response to Senator Obama, running for President is different than serving as President. The office comes with responsibilities so serious that the occupant can't always take the politically easy route without hurting the country he is sworn to defend. Unlike Senator Obama, my admiration, respect and deep gratitude for America's veterans is something more than a convenient campaign pledge. I think I have earned the right to make that claim.

"I know that my friend and fellow veteran, Senator Jim Webb, an honorable man who takes his responsibility to veterans very seriously, has offered legislation with very generous benefits. I respect and admire his position, and I would never suggest that he has anything other than the best of intentions to honor the service of deserving veterans. Both Senator Webb and I are united in our deep appreciation for the men and women who risk their lives so that the rest of us may be secure in our freedom. And I take a backseat to no one in my affection, respect and devotion to veterans. And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did.

See, only members of the military have earned the right to give members of the military education benefits.

They used this "he didn't serve his country" crap against Bill Clinton, too, and it didn't work. Obama hit back pretty forcefully.

"I am proud to stand with Senator Webb and a bipartisan coalition to give our veterans the support and opportunity they deserve. It's disappointing that Senator McCain and his campaign used this issue to launch yet another lengthy personal, political attack instead of debating an honest policy difference. He should know that this is not about John McCain or Barack Obama -- it's about giving our veterans a real chance to afford four years of college without harming retention. Senator Webb's bipartisan bill will do this, and the bill that John McCain supports would not. These endless diatribes and schoolyard taunts from the McCain campaign do nothing to advance the debate about what matters to the American people."

It's just not rational for McCain to claim some kind of support for the troops while essentially saying that we can't let them leave because there wouldn't be enough people willing to fight in multiple wars that he'll authorize. Go ahead and keep talking about it. I'd LOVE to have this debate play out in public.

...also, John Cornyn, who voted against the bill today, decided to call those who want to honor veterans' service "the antiwar crowd." Man, that's the wrong way to go with this. Cornyn is in deep trouble in November.

You Don't Mess With The VoteVets

I am kind of dumbfounded with John W. McCain's insistence that the GI Bill only get passed on his terms, with minimal benefits, instead of honoring the service of those he finds so honorable. I don't see the positives behind McCain going into states with large military populations like Virginia and North Carolina and proudly telling them that he cut down on their education benefits. It's not a large expense and it's part of the cost of war. It certainly makes more sense that some Cold War weapons system with a massive cost overrun.

Turns out that McCain has a history of shortchanging veteran's health care.

"Times have changed since McCain needed veterans services so urgently. And for many of those thirty-five years, McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, the candidate who talks the best talk on veterans issues, has demonstrated a tendency to work against veterans' interests, voting time after time against funding and in favor of privatizing services--in other words, of rolling back the VA's improvements by supporting some of the same policies that wrecked Walter Reed.

During a March 2005 Senate budget debate, McCain voted to kill an amendment that would have "increase[d] veterans medical care by $2.8 billion in 2006." That amendment lacked an assured funding stream, but lest one mistake this incident for a maverick's stance against budget-busting, there's more. Just a year later McCain voted against an amendment that would have "increase[d] Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in FY 2007 to be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes." Two days after it failed, he voted to kill "an assured stream of funding for veterans' health care that [would] take into account the annual changes in the veterans' population and inflation to be paid for by restoring the pre-2001 top rate for income over $1 million, closing corporate tax loopholes and delaying tax cuts for the wealthy." That amendment died quietly, forty-six to fifty-four.

In September 2006 McCain voted to table an amendment to a Defense appropriations bill that would have prevented the department from contracting out support services at Walter Reed. The amendment was indeed tabled--by a vote of fifty to forty-eight, the sort of margin a true veterans' senator might have been able to flip if he really cared about veterans' healthcare.

Hilzoy has a lot more and comes to the same conclusion by checking through votes from the past several years.

The reason you don't cut people off unless they serve 12 years, as McCain wants to do, is that those who suffer physical or psychological infirmities still deserve the rewards that ought to come with service. The GI Bill is an economic engine, but it's also a moral imperative.

McCain has made a big mistake here. He's raised the ire of VoteVets.

Sen. Barack Obama, McCain's most likely general election opponent, already has raised objections to McCain's resistance. And on Tuesday, a veterans' group that has been critical of the war in Iraq is launching an ad in Washington to pressure McCain to change his mind.

By taking issue with McCain on the subject of veterans, Democrats hope to weaken one of his biggest assets — his personal biography as a former Navy pilot who became a prisoner of the North Vietnamese and endured torture at the hands of his captors [...]

Other veteran's groups--from Veterans of Foreign Wars to the American Legion--support the Democratic bill. But VoteVets, which has been aggressive in its criticism of Bush's war policies, is the first to take McCain on directly.

"He's trying to run interference for the White House with a watered down bill," said Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org. "How could this not be an issue in the presidential campaign if he doesn't vote for this bill? There is no way for this to go away if he votes against it."

The ads are here. They're powerful.



There's a separate ad targeting John Cornyn in his race against Afghanistan vet Rick Noriega.

This was just stupid. McCain's twisted vision of bipartisanship, where everyone has to line up behind him, is coming back to bite him in the ass.

With Noriega You Get More And Better

I got a bit of pushback crowing about Don Cazayoux' victory in as special election in the Baton Rouge area. Considering the guy's political hero is John Breaux, he's not exactly going to be my favorite Democrat. My narrower point was that the "Republican attack machine" is not nearly as fearsome as advertised, that's all.

But this race for the Senate in Texas should satisfy the "more" and "better" requirements.

In a sign that the Senate Republicans could be in danger in even states usually deemed safe for them, a new Rasmussen poll of Texas finds that Sen. John Cornyn (R) could very well have a race on his hands against Democrat Rick Noriega, a state Representative and Iraq War veteran:

Cornyn (R) 47%
Noriega (D) 43%
Sample size: 500 likely voters.
Margin of error: ±4%

Now, Cornyn has a ridiculously large lead in cash on hand, and George Bush would probably be more concerned with getting his puppet Cornyn re-elected than he would getting John McCain in the White House. But as a baseline poll, before the campaign even really starts, this is quite incredible. Rick Noriega is a veteran and a state Senator who got into the race with the support of the Texas netroots. He believes in ending the war, restoring balance to the economy, and ending unfunded education mandates. If we turn the large Hispanic community into regular voters in Texas, we'd have a very large swing state. Rick Noriega shows the way. I'm very excited about this seat.

There are a few other Senate primaries coming up where we have the chance to pick a better Democrat, too. In North Carolina tomorrow, Jim Neal is the better choice against State Sen. Kay Hagan, although Hagan is favored. In Nebraska on May 13, millionaire Republican-turned-Democrat Tony Raimondo is trying to buy the nomination, but we have netroots favorite Scott Kleeb. And on May 20, the Democratic primary in Kentucky will hopefully give us Greg Fischer instead of terrible Liebercrat Bruce Lunsford. Senate Guru has more on all these races.

UPDATE: Bush Dog John Barrow will also have a primary challenger. Good.

The Difference In Priorities

Ted Kennedy:

The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA. But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retro-active immunity. No immunity, no FISA bill. So if we take the President at his word, he's willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies.

John Cornyn (shorter):

Those FISA requests sure do require a lot of paperwork.

By the way, here are some facts about telecom immunity.

Myth: The bill’s provision is necessary to extend immunity to telephone companies that responded in good faith to a government request.

Reality: Existing law already immunizes telephone companies that respond in good faith to a government request, as long as that request meets certain clearly spelled-out statutory requirements. This carefully designed provision protects the companies and Americans’ privacy by encouraging the companies to comply with legitimate requests but not to comply with requests that don’t meet the requirements laid out in the law.

Myth: Telephone companies should not be expected to know whether the government’s request for assistance was lawful.

Reality: Telephone companies have a long history of receiving requests for assistance from the government. In the 1970s, they worked with Congress to devise a law that tells them exactly which government requests they should honor, in terms that are clear and easy to follow. And they have lawyers who are well-paid to compare government requests with the requirements of the law.

Myth: If we don’t pass retroactive immunity, the government will lose companies’ cooperation in the future.

Reality: The immunity provision in current law gives telephone companies an ironclad defense if they received a government certification that meets certain clear requirements. It holds companies liable for complying with non-compliant government requests precisely because we don’t want the companies to cooperate with illegal government programs. Preventing that kind of cooperation, and protecting Americans from illegitimate government snooping, is one of the main reasons FISA was passed.

Myth: The telephone companies will not be able to defend themselves because the government has invoked the state secrets privilege.

Reality: There is no precedent to suggest that a court would rule against a defendant when there is privileged evidence that could possibly exonerate that defendant. That simply is not how courts handle such cases. But even if that were a risk, the state secrets problem should be addressed directly, in a manner that is fair to both parties.

There are more at the link.

UPDATE: Dodd could stretch this out for a week, and at some point Reid will have to decide whether or not it's worth it to give up the rest of his end-of-the-year agenda just to give telecom companies a free pass.

John Cornyn just lied about a 10-hour delay in trying to find 3 American soldiers in Iraq, a lie that's been totally debunked, and he's trying to scare Senators into believing that the Justice Department's own bungling in filing the proper warrant information killed American citizens. That was contemptible.

Tell John Cornyn To Move On

Box Turtle John Cornyn is pushing a ridiculous Sense of the Senate resolution today (apparently all the Republicans in the Senate want to do in a time of looming recession, endless war and an expanding health care crisis is to give their SENSE) codemning the MoveOn "General Betray Us" ad. Dick Durbin and Barbara Boxer gave the proper context to this today.

Mr. DURBIN. Would the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. CORNYN. I yield for a question.

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, in the 2004 Presidential campaign, I might ask the Senator from Texas, there was a group from Texas that attacked Senator John Kerry and said he was undeserving of the commendations and decorations he received for his courage in fighting in Vietnam and raised questions about others who served in the military who were part of his swift boat operation. One would have to say, by any stretch, that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were attacking the honor and integrity of one of our colleagues who served with honor in the Vietnam war.

I would like to ask the Senator from Texas if he is prepared to remain consistent and if he is also prepared to amend his amendment to repudiate the activities, actions, and statements of the Texas-based Swift Boat Veterans for Truth organization with their unwarranted attacks on our colleague, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, during the 2004 campaign.

It's selective, OK if you're a Republican punishment, although I'm uncomfortable with juxtaposing the Swift Boat Liars with an ad that truthfully called out a General's dishonest PR campaign. Military men are not gods, and if they enter the political arena to defend a war that's killing our sons and daughters they shouldn't expect fealty.

But clearly, just as it's no business of the Senate to go around condemning political ads attacking John Kerry, the same with the MoveOn ad. Simply put, get back to work. Which is the message of Rick Noriega, a Fighting Dem who's been very aggressive so far in his upcoming Senate campaign against Cornyn. From an email:

Today John Cornyn is introducing a Senate resolution to condemn a recent advertisement from MoveOn.org in the New York Times. While the Senate is debating important legislation focused on bringing a responsible end to the war in Iraq, this is what John Cornyn is focused on?

Yesterday, he voted against restoring the Constitution's basic right of habeas corpus. Yesterday, he voted against the Webb-Hagel amendment, legislation that would have provided a safety net for our troops, requiring that they spend as much time at home with their families as they spend deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. And today? He's wasting the Senate's and the people's time by introducing a resolution about MoveOn.org's ad!

Send an email right now to John Cornyn. Tell him to move on from MoveOn today!

This is to be expected of John Cornyn, a faithful practitioner of the politics of Karl Rove. Instead of public conversations about the large issues that are really important -- the war on terror, the future of Social Security, education and health care for working families -- we get distractions over non-issues and tirades over wedge issues to create divisions among people.

We should not be surprised that John Cornyn doesn't want to discuss his rubberstamping of this Administration's failed policies in Iraq. That he doesn't want to talk about his obstruction of comprehensive immigration reform. And that he doesn't want to talk about the fact he voted against CHIP, a program to ensure health insurance for millions of children across the country.

While Republicans make up things to sound like whiny-ass titty-babies about, challengers are simply going to address the public record. And voting against readiness, voting against SCHIP, and voting against habeas corpus is a hell of a record. And that's just this week. Good for Noriega, I'm liking this guy.

(Cornyn's crap resolution PASSED, by the way. Why did Reid allow a vote?)

Proof That Bloggers Are Foul-Mouthed

Just look at the nastiness and uncouth, vile language these bloggers spew... oh wait that's a Presidential candidate.

At a bipartisan gathering in an ornate meeting room just off the Senate floor, McCain complained that Cornyn was raising petty objections to a compromise plan being worked out between Senate Republicans and Democrats and the White House. He used a curse word associated with chickens and accused Cornyn of raising the issue just to torpedo a deal.

Things got really heated when Cornyn accused McCain of being too busy campaigning for president to take part in the negotiations, which have gone on for months behind closed doors. “Wait a second here,” Cornyn said to McCain. “I’ve been sitting in here for all of these negotiations and you just parachute in here on the last day. You’re out of line.”

McCain, a former Navy pilot, then used language more accustomed to sailors (not to mention the current vice president, who made news a few years back after a verbal encounter with Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont).

“[Expletive] you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room,” shouted McCain at Cornyn.

I could care less about saying f-you, I use it to make the point about how the media faints at the sight of any profanity directed at them. What should concern everyone is the line directly after the curse, "I know more about this than anyone else in the room." Do we really need another President that's as arrogant as all get out?

And by the way, if I had spent months in negotiations over this legislation, and this yahoo who's missed the last 42 roll call votes because he's running for President jumps into the press conference like he's been there all along, I'd be pretty pissed off myself.

Gonzales Watch

Abu G remains a marked man. I don't buy the White House's smug and whiny statements that they have even more confidence in him. Like all babies, they refuse to deny reality. Gonzales' failure to explain himself properly before the Senate, and his failure to even know what the hell's going on in the Justice Department, is a firing offense.

But there's more at work here. As long as Gonzales is still on the payroll, the focus remains on him. I think that Gonzales is the firewall so that the Congress doesn't get to the real culprit behind this story. And that road leads inside the White House.

After thousands of pages of documents and hours of testimony from Justice Department officials, it remains unknown who in the Bush administration conceived the plan to fire eight U.S. attorneys and why.

Gonzales' testimony Thursday left senators convinced he wasn't behind the plan or its execution and in fact knew far less than a department head should have about the details. Former and current members of Gonzales' staff who've been interviewed by congressional investigators also have said their roles were limited or nonexistent.

Absent another explanation, the signs point to the White House and, at least in some degree, to the president's political adviser, Karl Rove.

David Iglesias, the former New Mexico U.S. attorney and one of the eight fired last year, said investigating the White House's role is the logical next step - one that would follow existing clues about Rove's involvement.

"If I were Congress, I would say, `If the attorney general doesn't have answers, then who would?' There's enough evidence to indicate that Karl Rove was involved up to his eyeballs." [...]

"The arrow points more and more to the White House," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "The one thing I can assure you of: This is not over, far from it."

Iglesias continued that the lack of a paper trail suggests that the real papers on this are in the White House.

I mean, it's hard to even conceive this. Eight US Attorneys were fired and nobody seems to know how their names got on the list. Not the Attorney General. Not his chief of staff. Not any of the top officials at the Justice Department. They've all stated this in testimony. It's amazing that the Justice Department can make personnel decisions without anyone there knowing how they got there.

The truth is that we're finding politicization at all levels of the Justice Department, all the way down to the intern program:

After choosing potential candidates to interview, the division personnel forwarded their lists to the Office of Attorney Recruitment Management for what was traditionally final approval. This is no longer a final step, however, because the list had to go higher - to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. When the list of potential interviewees was returned this year, it had been cut dramatically.

When division personnel staff later compared the remaining interviewees with the candidates struck form the list, one common denominator appeared repeatedly: most of those struck form the list had interned for a Hill Democrat, clerked for a Democratic judge, worked for a "liberal" cause, or otherwise appeared to have "liberal" leanings. Summa cum laude graduates of both Yale and Harvard were rejected for interviews.

This is unprecedented, and the same concerns many of us see in firing federal prosecutors with clear ties to investigating Republicans or not pushing bogus voter fraud investigations. It's embarrassingly clear that the Bush White House has pushed these fraud cases for the singular purpose of restricting minority voter turnout, and were installing loyal apparatchiks into several swing states where they could continue this process unrestricted by any conflicting opinion. And in the absence of any DoJ admission that the firing was their idea, one can only conclude that this Prosecutor Purge was part of the plan.

Therefore, keeping Abu G in place, no matter what he's done, is crucial to this effort. Clearly he's lied to individual members of Congress, he's lied to the American people, he's lied in front of the Senate. But he's not the issue, ultimately. And so attention on him is misplaced. Some Senators are even admitting this:

That's why some Republicans think Gonzales should stay on the job.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told Gonzales in a telephone call Friday that the worst was probably over for him and that stepping down wouldn't necessarily help the president.

In a statement he released later in the day, Cornyn said, "Democrats see an opportunity to score a lot of political points, so I don't necessarily believe that the attorney general's resignation would quell the Democrats' desire to continue with a partisan fishing expedition."

As long as the media can report about "such-and-such Republican says Gonzales should resign," the White House can ultimately weather the storm. If it digs deeper, that's a road they don't want things to go down.

UPDATE: This Dahlia Lithwick article gets to the nut of things in a different way:

On sober second thought, it occurs to me that when I find myself in enthusiastic agreement with "White House insiders" and the National Review that Alberto Gonzales disgraced himself yesterday, I may have missed something important. Assuming the president watched so much as 10 minutes of his attorney general being poleaxed by even rudimentary questions from the Senate judiciary committee, it strains credulity to believe that Gonzales still has Bush's "full confidence."

Until you stop to consider that the president wasn't watching the same movie as the rest of us and that Gonzales wasn't reading from the same script. Perhaps what we witnessed yesterday was in fact a tour de force, a home run for the president's overarching theory of the unitary executive.

The theory of the unitary executive is a radical vision of executive power in which the president is the big boss of the entire executive branch and has final say over everything that happens within it. At its core, the theory holds that Congress has very limited authority to divest the president of those powers. An expanded version of this theory was the legal predicate for the torture memo: "In light of the president's complete authority over the conduct of war, without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the president's ultimate authority in these areas. … Congress may no more regulate the president's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield."

If you watch the Gonzales hearing through this prism (and in this White House, even the bathroom windows look out through that prism), they were a triumph. For six impressive hours, the attorney general embodied the core principles that he is not beholden to Congress, that the Senate has no authority over him, and that he was only there as a favor to them in their funny little fact-finding mission.

And that stonewalling keeps anyone from poking over the fence and inside the office of Karl Rove.

Question

Don't these Republican Senators who keep making these statements about no wrongdoing care about lying to Congress? I can give you about 10 statements that Abu G has made to Congress that he's now contradicting. They used to care about lying to Congress during the Clinton years.

I also think that Gonzales is REALLY pushing this "performance-related issues" line, continuing to slander these US Attorneys. Even Sen. Cornyn is trying to talk him off that ledge, before going all wingnutty and talking about the Lou Dobbs Two (the Border Patrol agents who are now in jail).