MS-Sen: Barbour Fought The Law, And The Law Won

Good news from Mississippi: a county judge has ruled that Haley Barbour is breaking the law and must schedule a special election for Trent Lott's Senate seat within 90 days.

A Hinds County Circuit judge ruled today that Gov. Haley Barbour exceeded his constitutional authority by setting the special election to replace former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott for November [...]

DeLaughter voided Barbour's proclamation that scheduled the election for Nov. 4, 2008.

In his order, DeLaughter said the election should be held "within 90 days of the governor's Dec. 20, 2007 proclamation of writ of election...on or before March 19, 2008.

Hood cited Mississippi Code 23-15-855, which applies to U.S. senator vacancies. He and Barbour have differing interpretations of that statute.

Good for Attorney General Jim Hood for pursuing this in the interest of justice and the rule of law. DeLaughter's interpretation that the election must be held within 90 days of Lott's resignation means that there's only a little more than 60 days left. I expect appeals, but this could be a slingshot of an election, and Ronnie Musgrove, the Democratic former governor, is the only candidate with the statewide recognition in a quick-strike race. (Musgrove is a very conservative Democrat and is likely to be infuriating in the Senate, but it'd be good to reduce that vice-lock on the South that the Republics have).

UPDATE: Here's Gov. Musgrove talking about his effort to be elected to the Senate.

Trent Lott Inc., Open For Business

I'm watching the New Hampshire state dinner, and I saw Howard Dean note that the Democratic ethics reform law chased Denny Hastert and Trent Lott out of the Congress so they could cash in with lobbying shops before the hammer came down. Turns out that Lott and his good buddy John Breaux have teamed up to service corporate America.

Putting weeks of speculation to rest, former Sens. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and John Breaux (D-La.) confirmed Friday they plan to file paperwork next week to form a powerful lobbying partnership called The Breaux Lott Leadership Group....

“This is not a well kept secret to say the least,” Lott said. “We’ve worked together for many years in the House and Senate and in the leadership together in the Senate. We thought it was a good opportunity and a fun opportunity to work together.

It's so sad. Lott clearly left to cash in because he just couldn't wait to get rich from all those corporate dollars. He tried to lie about it for a while, but it was obvious. I'm sure Dean Broder will get visions of sugar plums from this bipartisan circle jerk (and really, John Breaux is no Democrat), but these two ought to be banished from lobbying their colleagues until every one of them is out of the Congress. That'd be a legitimate ethics law. Our government shouldn't be for sale. And it's a good thing for Howard Dean to bring up. This is a fundamental fault line between the two parties.

Meanwhile, while Lott's replacement Roger Wicker has been installed, Mississippi's Attorney General is suing Haley Barbour to force him to follow the law.

Republican Congressman Roger Wicker (R-MS) was named as the appointee to Trent Lott's Senate seat only two days ago, but the legal wrangling has already begun. State Attorney General Jim Hood (D) has made good on his promise to sue Gov. Haley Barbour (R) over when the special election for the rest of the term ought to be held.

Hood says that the election must take place within the next 90 days under state law, while Barbour maintains that Wicker can serve until the November election. A spring election might give a relatively conservative Democrat a decent shot, while a November race would be much more in favor of the Republican incumbent, running alongside the presidential election.

Good. Keep the pressure on. Barbour is writing his own rules here.

Not just Smith - Republicans AOK with segregationists now

I always thought that the 2002 purge of Trent Lott from his Majority Leader position had a strangeness to it. I was fond of telling a joke at the time that Lott was condemned for praising Strom Thurmond, but Thurmond was not condemned for BEING Strom Thurmond. There was this sense that the demotion somehow proved that we as a nation were understanding our past troubles with race, and we're moving on in a spirit of unity and tolerance, no longer condoning that kind of bigotry.

Five years later, the story has completlely changed.

Today Gordon Smith defended Lott's notorious comments, flip-flopping from his earlier condemnation back in 2002. Everyone's having a field day with that. But Orrin Hatch said essentially the same thing.



So did Arlen Specter.



These are some of the old lions of the Senate, claiming that Lott's comments were blown out of proportion, that the media sharks circled and attacked, that it was a travesty to do such a thing to such a good man.

Now, there are a lot of Villagers in Washington out there providing elegies for Trent Lott. But these three Senators are taking direct aim at one of his lowest moments, when he let his bigoted slip show and blurted out that the country would have been a lot better off with an open racist in the White House. Part of this is just the Senate protecting one of its own. But this wouldn't have been possible in 2002. And I think it's an example of the retrenchment of the Republican Party. As recently as 2002 it would have been radioactive to associate oneself with the remarks of a racist. By 2007 it's perfectly fine.

So, to sum up, Republicans are perfectly fine with segregationists. Maybe they could dig up some of these posters for next year:


The Republican Party has made a more open appeal to a Southern, "social conservative" base in recent years, one that dovetails very nicely with a culture of bigotry. Though these defenders come from around the country, they understand that their base is marginalized and regionalized. And so they prefer to sweep the genuine disgust with Lott's remarks under the rug, to appeal to this base.

One Less For The Baby Party

This may be the ultimate Baby Party move:

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) will resign his seat by the end of the year, he announced in his home town of Pascagoula on Monday.

The announcement took Capitol Hill by surprise because Lott, the former majority leader, seemed to be relishing his job as minority whip, the second-ranking GOP leadership job [...]

A Lott friend said part of the reason, and a factor in the timing, is a new lobbying regulation, signed by President Bush in September, extending the existing lobbying ban for former members of Congress from one to two years. The lobbying ban takes effect at the end of this year.

Lott was just elected in 2006. He waited to see if Republican Governor Haley Barbour, who will select a replacement to serve until November 2008, was re-elected at the beginning of the month. Then, seeing that his cash cow would slip away and he'd have to wait a whole TWO YEARS to make a bazillion dollars on K Street, he decided to put his wallet first and resign. Plus the Senate wasn't any more fun anyway, what with all this "minority" stuff.

You'd think a guy like Lott, with his history, would be relishing the Minority Whip position, but it didn't have the allure of making millions for the pharmaceutical industry or something.

Thing is, there's a good Democratic candidate named Mike Moore, a former Attorney General in the state, waiting in the wings. And Mississippi apparently has a funny thing called the law that won't let Lott resign without automatically triggering a Senate election within 100 days:

Gov. Haley Barbour (R) said in a statement Monday that he would schedule the special election for the same day as the November 2008 general election. State law, however, appears to require an earlier date if Lott retires this year, as he said he would.

While Lott sneaks in under the wire for the extended ban on lobbying Congress by retiring this year, the secretary of state’s office said Monday that state law appears to require a special election within 90 days if he does so.

Conversely, if Lott were to wait and retire in 2008, the law allows for the special election to be held the same day as the general. Of course, he would then be subject to the new two-year ban on lobbying his former colleagues, instead of the current one-year ban.

Whoopsie!

Not only is this the ultimate selfish act, it actually harms Republican chances in the Senate. Lott will have to choose between waiting a year for his payday or allowing a rushed general election in the middle of April. Three guesses what he'll pick.

The OTHER Proposed Massive Giveaway To Giant Corporations Today

Overshadowed by the Senate markup of the FISA bill including retroactive immunity for telecoms, Chris Dodd's noble hold on the bill, etc., is an item in today's New York Times that has just as damaging consequences for the future of American democracy. Apparently FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin is quietly planning to relax media ownership restrictions even MORE than they are now, an action that would prompt even more consolidation in the industry and control of the news and information media in even less hands. As it would increase the power of media conglomerates, the implications for all sorts of pernicious legislation, up to and including the destruction of net neutrality, are enormous.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission has circulated an ambitious plan to relax the decades-old media ownership rules, including repealing a rule that forbids a company to own both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city.

Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the commission, wants to repeal the rule in the next two months — a plan that, if successful, would be a big victory for some executives of media conglomerates.

Among them are Samuel Zell, the Chicago investor who is seeking to complete a buyout of the Tribune Company, and Rupert Murdoch, who has lobbied against the rule for years so that he can continue controlling both The New York Post and a Fox television station in New York.

There's a 3-2 partisan split on the FCC, and the majority Republicans are down with repealing ownership restrictions. The Democrats are questioning it for now, Michael Copps is totally against it and Jonathan Adelstein is making less forceful statements, also to his credit, he called the proposal "awfully aggressive." The plan for Martin, clearly, is to woo Adelstein and call it a bipartisan approach.

Martin's predecessor, Michael Powell, tried the same thing three years ago, was taken to court over it, and lost:

Three years ago, the commission lost a major court challenge to its last effort, led by Michael K. Powell, its chairman at the time, to relax the media ownership rules. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, concluded that the commission had failed to adequately justify the new rules. Mr. Martin’s proposal would presumably include new evidence aimed at fending off similar legal challenges.

Mr. Powell’s effort, which had been supported by lobbyists for broadcasters, newspapers and major media conglomerates, provoked a wave of criticism from a broad coalition of opponents. Among them were the National Organization for Women, the National Rifle Association, the Parents Television Council and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The agency was flooded with nearly three million comments against changing the rules, the most it has ever received in a rule-making process.

What's forcing Martin's hand are some new major acquisitions by some of the biggest names in media. Sam Zell is trying to buy out the Tribune Company, and receive by proxy the "temporary waivers" that allowed Tribune to own a newspaper and a TV station in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and Hartford. In addition, there's Rupert Murdoch's recent purchase of the Wall Street Journal, and his attempt to further consolidate the information market.

It can be argued that the media consolidation that we have already seen, dating from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, are in many ways directly responsible for the cheapening of information and the trivialization of American democracy that we witness today. We know that radio has become almost a two-owner game between Viacom and Clear Channel, and as a result talk radio in particular is grossly imbalanced and not reflective of the market. The lack of local participation in media management in particular has led to mass syndication and a depressing sameness around the radio dial, as well as an elimination of any local content. Consolidation has also led to a reliance on profit and meeting Wall Street expectations rather than reporting the news. Massive cuts in newsroom budgets and foreign affairs bureaus are a direct result of control from a corporation rather than anyone acting in the local interest. So newspapers rely more on AP wire stories, shared content with other papers in the conglomerate, syndicated content, and articles that are really press releases, while local broadcast "news" has cratered almost completely. People are turning to the Internet for their news and that has spurned something of an information revolution, but the vast majority of the public still gets their information from old-media sources, and that public is not being served.

A bipartisan coalition of Senators is trying to stop this in its tracks.

Chairman Martin’s secret plans were uncovered during a Commerce Committee hearing yesterday by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), one of the most vocal critics of media consolidation. Sen. Dorgan has co-authored a letter with Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) to the FCC calling for a more transparent and open public review of the media ownership rules.

“We do not believe the Commission has adequately studied the impact of media consolidation,” wrote Sens. Dorgan and Lott. “The FCC should not rush forward and repeat mistakes of the past. The Commission is under considerable scrutiny with this proceeding. We strongly encourage you to slow down and proceed with caution.”

Later, Dorgan said, “If the chairman intends to do something by the end of the year, then there will be a firestorm of protest and I’m going to be carrying the wood.”

Chairman Martin has preferred to operate in secret and broker deals that benefit major media conglomerates at the expense of the public interest. It's not likely that you'll hear much about this in newspapers or TV stations owned by those same conglomerates (Kudos to the New York Times for printing this, even if it came out in a public Congressional session).

Free Press has more. This is a big deal, and with telecom companies increasingly trying to insert themselves into media distribution as well, all of these bills are interrelated. A telecom industry immunized from lawbreaking could soon be owning the media that you watch - and they could be charging Web content producers in exchange for speedier access. The drive to beat back media ownership, net neutrality, and all of these deprivations is a classic case of people versus the powerful who have no intention of working in the public interest.

The FCC has a contact page. They should hear from you about this.

Can We Do Anything?

The Senate refused to close debate on the immigration bill today, after an encouraging vote to sunset the now-reduced guest worker program after five years passed late last night. At this point, it's questionable whether this gets to a conference committee at all, where it could get better. The pressure is on the President to have a legacy, so I think that the Democrats could easily make the bill more progressive in conference and not risk a veto. But I don't know if they can find 60 to close debate.

A central problem in this country is that the conservative base (and to a smaller extent the liberal one) has become so amped up about every little vote, thinking that it will bring about the end of civilization itself (which Tom Tancredo actually said in Tuesday's debate), that any kind of compromise just doesn't seem possible anymore. In this sense, Barack Obama's theme of unification is appealing, though I'm not sure it will be bought by the right.

We're talking about immigration here. It's already a problem that's unlikely to be fixed simply by shutting the border down; most people who are in this country illegally did so by overstaying visas. So the alternatives are continue this underground economy and shadow America, or actually try to do something about it. The process of earned legalization seems appropriately arduous, certainly more so than the 1986 amnesty by St. Ronnie. I'm very skeptical about that the workplace enforcement aspects of the bill will actually be, you know, enforced, but a new President with a shred of respect for the rule of law is likely to do so. The relief for agricultural workers who literally can't find anyone to work the fields makes sense. The guest worker program is indentured servitude and I'm glad that the Democrats are chipping away at it.

The conservatives are acting like passing this bill will lead to the end of the world. That's exactly what Lindsay Graham is responding to even while he attacks Obama. He's mad that his party has left reason behind in favor of demonization and fearmongering. Well, tough. You have a responsibility for that as much as anyone, Huckleberry. We have to understand that putting up a brick wall and acting like every tiny issue is as important as, say, Iraq, is counter-productive, and it's why so many of us feel that you simply can't get anything done through Congress anymore. No less than Trent Lott made this point the other day. Hopefully, the post-Bush era can be defined by ramping down the rhetoric. Of course, the Republicans, who started this pie fight and continue to play the fear card at every opportunity, are going to have to take the first step. I'm not hopeful.

September Morn

There's a lot of rhetorical laying down of law over Iraq, with Democrats and Republicans alike screaming "September! And this time we MEAN it!"

Congressional leaders from both political parties are giving President Bush a matter of months to prove that the Iraq war effort has turned a corner, with September looking increasingly like a decisive deadline.

In that month, political pressures in Washington will dovetail with the military timeline in Baghdad. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, has said that by then he will have a handle on whether the current troop increase is having any impact on political reconciliation between Iraq's warring factions. And fiscal 2008, which begins Oct. 1, will almost certainly begin with Congress placing tough new strings on war funding.

"Many of my Republican colleagues have been promised they will get a straight story on the surge by September," said Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.). "I won't be the only Republican, or one of two Republicans, demanding a change in our disposition of troops in Iraq at that point. That is very clear to me."

"September is the key," said Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), a member of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds defense. "If we don't see a light at the end of the tunnel, September is going to be a very bleak month for this administration."

I pretty much agree with Atrios that this is pretty much a useful fiction, and I'm wondering if the Administration itself is planting the seed just to get through these few months so they can get the Congress off their backs for a few months. I mean, John Boehner has given deadlines before. So has Trent Lott. But the next Friedman Unit rolls around, and the and the same rhetoric of surrender is frothed by crazy wingnuts, and nothing changes.

If you want to talk about deadlines, however, I'd say that May 15 is a more firm one:

Iraq's top Sunni official has set a deadline of next week for pulling his entire bloc out of the government -- a potentially devastating blow to reconciliation efforts within Iraq. He also said he turned down an offer by President Bush to visit Washington until he can count more fully on U.S. help.

Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi made his comments in an interview with CNN. He said if key amendments to the Iraq Constitution are not made by May 15, he will step down and pull his 44 Sunni politicians out of the 275-member Iraqi parliament.

"If the constitution is not subject to major changes, definitely, I will tell my constituency frankly that I have made the mistake of my life when I put my endorsement to that national accord," he said.

That would be the end of the national unity government, and a prelude to a full-on civil war. Maybe Republicans can wait a few months (maybe Democrats can too, as it looks like they'll be funding the way through at least July with no strings), but in Baghdad, there's one week left. Sometimes life doesn't fall under a set timeline.