Spitting On A Dead Man’s Grave

Way to play to “the base,” Repugs (hat tips to Atrios and The Washington Monthly for this). As Steve Benen says, “And the Republican Party’s outreach to minority communities suffers yet another setback.”

…here’s a brief presentation on the man whom Kyl and Sessions tried to denigrate (and who, of course, successfully argued this case).

(And by the way, kudos to Dick Durbin for this.)

Obama And The Kagan Conundrum

I have to admit that, when I first heard that Solicitor General Elena Kagan was chosen by the Obama White House as its Supreme Court nominee, I really wondered what the hell they were thinking. After all, Judge Diane Wood, for example (noted here), has a long record of rulings in favor basically of individual rights versus corporations, landlords and school faith organizations, among others, to say nothing of following RICO statutes against anti-abortion protestors. And, as Wikipedia tells us, Wood has managed to work successfully on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals with conservative jurists Frank Easterbrook and Richard Posner, so she knows a thing or two about consensus-building.

Also, I understand the arguments posed by Glenn Greenwald and Will Bunch, among others (Bunch’s post is here), that Kagan is too submissive to presidential authority, with Greenwald saying “Kagan’s absolute silence over the past decade on the most intense Constitutional controversies speaks very poorly of her,” as Think Progress notes here.

I also wonder why (with due respect to Bunch) he would think the Obama White House would actually care about the opinion of progressive bloggers on this subject. Yes, when it comes to legislative issues or other presidential appointments, to say nothing of congressional legislation, we should make our voices heard loud and long as appropriate. And we should also speak out on this issue as we see fit. All I’m saying is that this decision has probably been vetted about a dozen different ways at least, and I can’t imagine Obama pulling back this nomination because of an outcry from Greenwald, The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, Liberal Oasis, firedoglake, or anyone else, leading to the automatic corporate media chastisement that Obama is a puppet of “the left.”

To me, the explanation for the Kagan choice can be summed up in two words: Citizens United.

Obama wants if not the liberal/progressive counterweight to Roberts, Scalia and the rest of that bunch, then at least a deferential centrist (and we’re finding out just how much of a blind eye Obama is turning to the excesses of his predecessor, by the way – apparently, Kagan would have no problem there). And yes, I think this decision has more to do with politics than the law. And I bemoan that also, but though Kagan will have to compete eventually with fellow jurists if she is confirmed, for now, she will be served up for consumption by the political elites and beltway blowhards as part of the confirmation process, and my guess is that she knows this battleground pretty well. Maybe Wood, Merrick Garland or someone else would be able to navigate that territory also, but now, we probably will never know.

But to me, the Citizens United ruling for Obama (as it was for many others) was a message that the High Court of Hangin’ Judge JR needed to be “reined in,” particularly in its deference towards corporations. And I think Obama believes that Kagan would represent an opposition force against that.

However, if he thought the Kagan selection would somehow placate the wingnuts (as if anything ever would), our president is very much mistaken, as noted here.

Update 5/11/10: Oh, by the way, in a related story as they say, here is another illustrious move for Snarlin’ Arlen.

Arlen Specter, The “Ladies Man”

I should point out that, personally, I had a big issue with the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the High Court apart from any of the Anita Hill business; one year on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, and Poppy Bush thought that qualified him for “the show.”

One lousy year.

And then, here comes Snarlin’ Arlen to lay siege to the reputation of Professor Hill, causing enough of a distraction to avoid looking into what really mattered about Thomas (who, as noted here, just marked his fourth anniversary of saying absolutely nothing during oral arguments on the Court of Hangin’ Judge JR).

And we have Specter to thank, in part, for Thomas’s presence (and to do something about that, click here).

Friday Mashup Part One (4/9/10)

1) For anyone out there who thinks that I will never chastise the Obama Administration (not sure why after reading this post, but you never know), I should point out the following (from here)…

Changes in the way the federal government plans to allocate money to increase and improve literacy pose a severe threat to one of the country’s best-known nonprofit groups, Reading Is Fundamental.

Known commonly as RIF, the organization, which provides free books to needy children and has been promoted in memorable public service announcements by celebrities like Carol Burnett and Shaquille O’Neal, stands to lose all of its federal financing, which accounts for roughly 75 percent of its annual revenues.

“We are looking at having to completely reinvent ourselves,” said Carol Rasco, chief executive of RIF, which has received an annual grant from the Department of Education for 34 years.

Under the federal budget proposed for the 2011 fiscal year, the Department of Education has proposed pooling the money it allocates to RIF, another nonprofit organization, the National Writing Project, and five of its own grant programs, and instead distributing it to state and local governments. Under that plan, RIF and the writing project would have to compete state by state for federal funds.

…

“They don’t have a huge amount of cash on hand that would buy them some time to change their business model to get different types of funding,” (Clara Miller, chief executive of the Nonprofit Finance Fund) said. “Switching from a program that is almost fully funded by government to one that is privately funded, or where you would be competing on a state level, that’s a new business model, and it will need time and investment in new skills.”

She said that putting longstanding organizations through such a complete overhaul so abruptly might not make sense from the taxpayer’s standpoint either. “The thing that’s getting lost here is that the government has already built whole programs in these organizations that it is now throwing out,” Ms. Miller said. “That’s kind of wasteful, unless they’re saying buying kids books is a bad idea.”

God, is this stoo-pid – as Wikipedia tells us here…

Today, through its contract with the United States Department of Education to operate the IBDP, now supplemented with private funds, RIF programs operate in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. RIF is also affiliated with programs in Argentina and the United Kingdom.

In 2004, Kappa Kappa Gamma, a national women’s fraternity, selected RIF as it’s national philanthropy.[1] Together, Kappa and RIF have come up with the Reading is Key program, through which children are exposed to new books.[2]

It would be simply beyond belief if RIF, which survived threatened budget cuts from prior Republican presidential administrations, ended up going under because of a change in funding allocation to make it compete with the states, an idiotic idea conceived, shockingly, by a Democratic president.

2) Also, with the now-announced news of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’ retirement, Mark Halperin of The Page came up with the following (here)…

“Stevens retirement causes Republican fundraisers to rejoice.”

That’s an interesting bit of speculation totally unsupported by anything whatsoever in the post Halperin links to, I should note. Further, this story tells us the following…

The Democratic National Committee has reported $13 million in donations for the month of March, outperforming the Republican Party, which only raised $11.4 million. The disparity is unusual, as the Democrats typically draw fewer donations than their Republican brethren.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – A Democrat with the committee pointed out to the Huffington Post pointed to a rejuvenated and enthusiastic Democratic base that is willing to open up their wallets after the passage of health care reform.

Also, it looks like Our Man Snarlin’ Arlen isn’t going to get his wish after all (here).

3) Finally, I give you the following from The Moonie Times…

Eleven months ago, the Justice Department suddenly and surprisingly dropped its case against three defendants and accepted a weak injunction against a fourth, stemming from the incident in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008 in which Black Panthers disrupted a neighborhood polling place. Since then, the Justice Department has stonewalled multiple requests for information from news organizations, a number of congressmen and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

In response, I give you this from Greg Sargent and TPM…

Fox News and other conservatives on the Web are pushing hard on the story that two black panthers may be intimidating voters at a polling place in north Philadelphia.

But an Obama campaign volunteer who’s been on the scene since 6:30 AM this morning tells me in a phone interview that there’s been absolutely no intimidation of voters at all today. And a Pennsylvania spokesperson for Obama said the two men aren’t in any way affiliated with the campaign.

Fox News’ story…says one of two black panthers on the scene was “allegedly blocking the door,” says another was “holding a nightstick.” and adds that “the concern was that they were intimidating people who were trying to go inside to vote.”

But Jacqueline Dischell, the Obama volunteer, tells me by phone that that’s false.

And by the way, for the record, the Black Panther Party members in the photo in the Times’ story are Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton.

Standing in front of the Party’s headquarters in Oakland, Ca.

And I would guess that the photo was taken in, oh, say, 1967 or so.

…

Stay classy, wingnuts.

Justice Stevens, Please Snub Snarlin’ Arlen

I look at it this way – the man has been on the High Court for 35 years; he should be allowed to leave when he wants to (more here), as long as it’s during Obama’s term.

Stuff like this makes me wonder how well Specter will be able to stand up to the wingnut assault of Pat Toomey, the teabaggers, and the rest of the right-wing noise machine – to make sure the best Democrat wins the nomination for Specter’s seat, click here (to be fair, Specter has been a loyal ally of Obama, but all good things – you know the rest).

Wednesday Mashup (3/31/10)

1) Jim Hightower tells us here of Joseph Casias, a 29-year-old former employee of a Walmart store in Battle Creek, Michigan (one with an exemplary record, and “former” is the key word here of course).

What happened? Well, five months ago, Casias developed a cancer that invaded his sinuses and brain, leading to what you might expect: a severe level of chronic pain, as Hightower tells us. However, Casias was able to do his job by using “a controlled dose of marijuana that his doctor prescribed to alleviate pain, a prescription that is perfectly legal under Michigan’s medical marijuana law.”

Hightower continues…

By carefully scheduling his daily dosage, Casias never came to work under the influence, and he never took the medicine on the job, so Walmart saw nothing but an employee performing well.

Until last November. In a routine drug screening by the company, Casias tested positive for pot. He showed his state medical marijuana permit to the corporate cogs, but instead of using common sense or showing a smidgeon of human compassion, the managers mindlessly clicked into Program 420g, Section 21-mj (or some such) of corporate-code — and summarily cashiered Casias.

Get Sick. Smoke Pot. Feel Better. Get Fired. Wal-Mart.

Ugh…

Well, here’s something to put in the “elections have consequences” file from last October…

MONDAY, Oct. 19 (HealthDay News) — The Obama administration has decided it will no longer prosecute medical marijuana users or suppliers, provided they obey the laws of states that allow use of the drug for medicinal purposes.

The new guidelines, which were to be sent in a Justice Department memo to federal prosecutors on Monday, are designed to give priorities to U.S. Attorneys who are pursuing drug offenders.

“As a general matter, pursuit of these priorities should not focus federal resources in your states on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana,” the memo states.

During his campaign, President Barack Obama promised to change the government’s policy on the use of medical marijuana in those states that allow it. The administration of President George W. Bush had opposed the use of marijuana as medicine.

“This is a huge victory for medical marijuana patients,” Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access, a nationwide medical marijuana advocacy organization, said in a prepared statement.

And as noted here from last May, The Supremes upheld California’s medical marijuana law and said the feds did not have the right to supersede it, a departure from a 2005 ruling in which they claimed that the feds could do so.

To me, it looks like our politicians and – reluctantly, perhaps – our courts are recognizing that this country has grown more amenable to legalizing pot over time, as reflected in this poll.

And if those smiley-faced bastards refuse to do so…well, there’s always BJs and Costco, people.

2) Also, since this week marks Holy Week in the Christian calendar as well as Passover in the Jewish calendar, I suppose it’s time for some wingnut site to post something about Obama and religion, and clownhall.com dutifully obliges here (and the line about “a different messiah than Obama” is just way too damn funny)…

More than a full year after taking office and a handful of church appearances, President Barack Obama has announced that he and his family will not regularly attend a church here in Washington.

…

…In the meantime, he’ll have to rely on the “spiritual guidance” of advisor Jim Wallis, who preaches wealth redistribution as “biblical justice.”

Ordinarily, I could care less about whether or not politicians go to church, but I need to link once more to this article by Amy Sullivan to remind us all (as if we could’ve forgotten, I guess) of how Obama’s predecessor used his faith as a justification for every horrific decision he ever made (oh, and by the way, he never joined a Washington congregation either…and I’m not sure why the argument that both Dubya and The Sainted Ronnie R made – that they basically created too much of an intrusion by their presence – is good enough for those two, but not Obama).

And another thing, according to Sullivan…

Okay, Bush’s defenders say, but even if he did go to church, it’s tough for a president to be really involved with a congregation. He is, after all, running the free world. But, then again, he has spent almost 500 days on vacation over the past four years. You’d think some of that time could have been devoted to planning the next church social or sitting in on mission board meetings. Jimmy Carter found time to teach Sunday School at a local Baptist church while he was president.

…

On the Sunday that I joined (Foundry Methodist Church), I was seated in the pew just in front of Bill and Chelsea Clinton. I spent the service listening to the president sing too loudly and slightly off-key (just like my own dad) with his daughter elbowing him (just like me). I turned around at the sound of scribbling during the sermon to see him jotting notes in his Bible. And when it came time for communion, I was powerfully affected. All of us–president, senator, student, welfare mom–drank from the same cup, shared the same sacrament. “His blood, shed for you,” was the sentiment offered to each of us. Shed for me, shed for the president, shed for any who would come forward. For the first time, I understood the humanizing (in every sense) and equalizing aspects of the act of communion.

However, I honestly don’t believe Jessup actually cares about spirituality here (and based on this, I don’t think she cares a whole lot for legal due process either).

3) And hey look, kids, The Weakly Standard is holding a contest (here)…

Lots of great submissions to the haiku contest. The judges inform me that they’re also willing to accept haikus about politics in general, not just the EU or its haiku-loving president. So email wws [at] weeklystandard.com with your best haiku on Obama, the Democrats, or anything else and you may be the lucky winner of a year-long subscription to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

ZOMG! A year-long subscription to The Weakly Standard? Why, that sounds like as much fun as a case of dry heaves after an Ipecac cocktail (…or, maybe not).

And Haiku also? Gee, I wonder if any of these would qualify…

Ah, Wingnuttia
Truth mangled and read by drones
God, I need a drink

Teabaggers all hate
Our President from “Kenya”
Sarah Palin too

Call our media
Time to rouse the “sheeple” for
Bill Kristol’s new war

Here comes “Gramps” McCain
Talks to the kids who will vote
“You Get Off My Lawn!”

Report on issues?
So this country is informed?
You must be crazy!

Well, perhaps not.

4) Finally, five years ago today, Terri Schiavo died; for the benefit of the handful of people on this earth who don’t know who she was, this HuffPo post provides a reminder, as well as background on issues surrounding end-of-life care (it’s hypocritical for me to remind people of the importance of a living will since I don’t have one either, but we all should).

Also, this post linking to the story of the passing of Keith Olbermann’s dad earlier this month also contains commentary and information that we should consider when dealing with end-of-life planning issues.

Lastly, though the Schiavo story was a human and legal tragedy first and foremost, there was most definitely a political component to it. Along with Hurricane Katrina and the drip-drip-drip of the Iraq catastrophe, it numbered the days of the ruinous conservative rule in this country, as Bill Frist, Mel Martinez, Jeb Bush and way too many others sought some kind of electoral advantage over it. It showed just how far the Repugs are capable of overreaching when they believe they have the upper hand, no matter how cringingly awful their excesses turned out to be (and for what it’s worth, it was one of the main reasons I started blogging, because I felt like I had to do something in response).

The Schiavo story is a cautionary lesson for those who dream of a Republican electoral resurgence later this year. Don’t think it could never happen again if they were in charge once more.

Friday Mashup (2/19/10)

I haven’t paid much attention to Christine Flowers of the Philadelphia Daily News lately, but she came up with a whopper today in her column about “anti-social networking,” in which gangs reportedly use Facebook, etc. to congregate for juvenile delinquency…

It’s beyond frightening – and frustrating – to think that this is what is being spawned in our urban incubators these days, clueless, rudderless and amoral boys and girls who don’t give a damn about private property and the safety of others. Their anti-social, criminal behavior shouldn’t be cleaned up with euphemisms.

In recent times, bleeding hearts who have more sympathy for the lawless than for their victims have urged understanding. Argued against stiff sentences. Opposed placing these baby felons into adult proceedings and have even, somehow, convinced the Supreme Court that minors shouldn’t be eligible for capital punishment, no matter how heinous their crimes.

Notice that Flowers didn’t say anything about “rural incubators” (so clever with the wingnut code, Christine).

And Flowers is right that The Supremes ruled against juvenile capital punishment in 2005, as noted here. However, we should keep in mind the following…

(Justice Anthony) Kennedy’s (majority) opinion rested in large part on the fact that 30 states, including the 12 states that have no capital punishment, forbid the death penalty for offenders younger than 18. That number represented an increase of five since the court upheld the juvenile death penalty in 1989.

The court weighs death penalty laws according to what a 1958 ruling called the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,” and looks to state legislation and jury verdicts to decide whether a “national consensus” has developed against a previously accepted practice.

In 2002, the court voted 6 to 3 to strike down the death penalty for the moderately mentally retarded, which it had upheld 5 to 4 in 1989. In the 2002 case, Atkins v. Virginia, the court noted that the number of death penalty states banning that practice had grown from two in 1989 to 13 in 2002, while none had gone the other way.

The recent shift of states against the juvenile death penalty, though less dramatic than the evidence the court found sufficient in the mental-retardation case, was enough to carry the day, Kennedy concluded.

For the Supreme Court itself, perhaps the most significant effect of yesterday’s decision is to reaffirm the role of international law in constitutional interpretation.

The European Union, human right lawyers from the United Kingdom and a group of Nobel Peace laureates had urged the court in friend-of-the-court briefs to strike down the juvenile death penalty.

Even a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger such as yours truly opposes destruction to people and/or property, no matter who the alleged perpetrators are. But is Flowers seriously contemplating the death penalty here for a bunch of dumb kids who vandalize a department store?

Also, Dick Polman of the Inquirer weighed in on the brewing travesty concerning the production on the Kennedys currently being worked on for The History Channel here (I got into this here)…

(Filmmaker Robert) Greenwald is unhappy that the top guy on the Kennedy film project is Joel Surnow, a conservative who created the Fox show “24.” Greenwald insists, however, that he’s not trying to censor anybody. But judge for yourself whether Greenwald ally Ted Sorenson, a former Kennedy aide and one of the earliest Kennedy hagiographers, is threatening censorship when he warns that “there will be hell to pay if anyone is ever foolish enough to put this banal, repetitive, old hat lists of libels and slanders on the air.”

This bid to, at minimum, pre-spin an unproduced docudrama is foolish for many reasons. Attacking the partial early drafts of any film script is akin to attacking a singer-songwriter on the basis of how his new material sounds as it’s taking shape in early studio sessions. In that sense, Greenwald’s campaign is an attack on the artistic process itself. Things change. There are endless revisions, additions, and deletions. Perhaps the Kennedy flamekeepers should take chill pills and let this process play out; as Stephen Kronish, the project’s writer – and a self-described liberal Democrat – reportedly said the other day, “Next year, when it’s done and it’s on the air, if people want to criticize it, so be it.”

Soo…Polman thinks that Sorenson, Greenwald etc. are supposed to know this stuff is going on…and say and do nothing?

Polman points out that Greenwald and others have objected to scenes where “JFK” is making out with some floosie in a swimming pool while a crisis develops, as well as a remark about Kennedy needing sex to prevent migraines, and Polman responds that both of those episodes have been documented.

However, there is also a moment in this production when Joe Kennedy Sr. breaks a crucifix over his knee, when there is no record anywhere of that ever having occurred. Further, there is no mention whatsoever of the Cuban Missile Crisis. What the hell kind of a Kennedy “documentary” is this, then (Polman would have learned this from Greenwald’s approximately-twelve-minute film, which you can view from the link to my prior post, in which Greenwald features Sorenson, along with historians Thurston Clarke, David Nasaw, Nigel Hamilton – who is hardly a Kennedy fan – and Rick Perlstein, as noted here).

The point of all of these individuals is that, if Surnow wants to make some trash biopic on the Kennedys, that’s his right, Polman’s editorializing to the contrary. However, such a mess has no place on The History Channel (and it’s more than a little disingenuous for Polman to mention “The Reagans,” since that didn’t show on The History Channel either; it ended up on the Showtime cable network, which has a significantly smaller audience than CBS, where it was originally slated to run before the right-wing outcry).

Finally, as we wind down towards the weekend, it’s time for some comedy from Matthew Continetti of The Weakly Standard (here, concerning a certain presidential election)…

In 2000, George W. Bush’s solid lead collapsed the weekend before the election when media broke the news of his 1976 DUI. Florida was the result.

Too funny (the Dubya DUI story broke too late to matter, just before November 4th) – as noted here…

Bush took an early lead in the polls but his opponent, Vice-President Al Gore, bounced back after the Democratic convention, when he started sounding a populist theme. The media had a field day with Bush’s tendencies to malapropisms and Gore hammered at his foreign policy weaknesses and lack of experience. There was also some criticism of an alleged subliminal messages in a Bush campaign ad in which the word “Democrats” morphed into “rats” for a split-second. Bush immediately pulled the ads, and continued to display his people skills. “What Bush does with people is establish a direct, personal connection,” wrote reporter Nicholas Lemann in the New Yorker. Lemann claims that Bush has “a talent for establishing a jovial connection with an unusually large number of people.” The polls drew close and a series of three debates in October was expected to be decisive. Gore, portrayed as a man with more command of policies and details, was expected to win. However, Bush more than held his own, and his folksiness made Gore look stiff by comparison. In a second debate Gore was more agreeable, and the two candidates declared much common ground. However, Gore’s dramatic mood shift made him appear insincere to some voters. Bush remained adamantly “on message,” repeatedly sounding his issues of education reform, social security privatization, and tax cuts, while downplaying controversial issues such as abortion.

And I would argue that former Commander Clueless was aided in no small part by some big-time media love in 1999-2000; how many “Bush as a regular guy” stories did we hear, as opposed to variations on this theme when it came to Gore?

Continetti concludes, by the way, by saying that “in politics, ignorance rules.”

Spoken like a true Republican.

A K.O. Encore On “Citizens United”

This is for the benefit of Smerky, who actually defended the decision in the Philadelphia Inquirer today (here).

And I would have left a comment at the Inky expressing my disagreement, by the way, but I got tired of my comments being rejected even though I used no profanity whatsoever (though veiled threats of violence against liberals make their way online at their site from time to time). Apparently even a slight hint of sarcasm from a Dem/liberal/progressive/whatever is enough to offend the paper’s delicate sensibilities.

A Double-Barreled Dubya Disgrace

Via HuffPo, this article from The Atlantic last Friday tells us the following…

(Last) Thursday’s annual Census Bureau report on income, poverty and access to health care-the Bureau’s principal report card on the well-being of average Americans-closes the books on the economic record of George W. Bush.

It’s not a record many Republicans are likely to point to with pride.

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush’s two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country’s condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton’s two terms, often substantially.

…

Bush’s record on poverty is equally bleak. When Clinton left office in 2000, the Census counted almost 31.6 million Americans living in poverty. When Bush left office in 2008, the number of poor Americans had jumped to 39.8 million (the largest number in absolute terms since 1960.) Under Bush, the number of people in poverty increased by over 8.2 million, or 26.1 per cent. Over two-thirds of that increase occurred before the economic collapse of 2008.

The trends were comparably daunting for children in poverty. When Clinton left office nearly 11.6 million children lived in poverty, according to the Census. When Bush left office that number had swelled to just under 14.1 million, an increase of more than 21 per cent.

The story is similar again for access to health care. When Clinton left office, the number of uninsured Americans stood at 38.4 million. By the time Bush left office that number had grown to just over 46.3 million, an increase of nearly 8 million or 20.6 per cent.

The trends look the same when examining shares of the population that are poor or uninsured, rather than the absolute numbers in those groups. When Clinton left office in 2000 13.7 per cent of Americans were uninsured; when Bush left that number stood at 15.4 per cent. (Under Bush, the share of Americans who received health insurance through their employer declined every year of his presidency-from 64.2 per cent in 2000 to 58.5 per cent in 2008.)

When Clinton left the number of Americans in poverty stood at 11.3 per cent; when Bush left that had increased to 13.2 per cent. The poverty rate for children jumped from 16.2 per cent when Clinton left office to 19 per cent when Bush stepped down.

…

So the summary page on the economic experience of average Americans under the past two presidents would look like this:

Under Clinton, the median income increased 14 per cent. Under Bush it declined 4.2 per cent.

Under Clinton the total number of Americans in poverty declined 16.9 per cent; under Bush it increased 26.1 per cent.

Under Clinton the number of children in poverty declined 24.2 per cent; under Bush it increased by 21.4 per cent.

Under Clinton, the number of Americans without health insurance, remained essentially even (down six-tenths of one per cent); under Bush it increased by 20.6 per cent.

The article also provides comparative information on the presidencies of Poppy Bush and The Sainted Ronnie R, though I would argue that that doesn’t help Dubya at all (I have to admit that I was surprised to learn that real income grew under Reagan, though so did both childhood and adult poverty).

Also, the New York Times published an extensive feature article yesterday on water pollution focusing on Charleston, West Virginia, though a series of articles will follow this one focusing on other states…

Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va.

In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.

Neighbors apply special lotions after showering because their skin burns. Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system.

“How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?” said Mrs. Hall-Massey, a senior accountant at one of the state’s largest banks.

She and her husband, Charles, do not live in some remote corner of Appalachia. Charleston, the state capital, is less than 17 miles from her home.

“How is this still happening today?” she asked.

An excellent question – basically, what we learn from the article is that we’d made a lot of progress in water cleanup efforts until about the last ten years or so, when everything started to slide backwards (we also learn about how politicians have taken their marching orders from the polluters to fire inspectors for trying to do their jobs; the story tells us about a man named Matthew Crum who suffered this fate – as far as I’m concerned, Crum is a great American).

And a big reason why we’ve fallen down on water safety is as follows (you knew what was coming, didn’t you?)…

Enforcement lapses were particularly bad under the administration of President George W. Bush, (E.P.A.) employees say. “For the last eight years, my hands have been tied,” said one E.P.A. official who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. “We were told to take our clean water and clean air cases, put them in a box, and lock it shut. Everyone knew polluters were getting away with murder. But these polluters are some of the biggest campaign contributors in town, so no one really cared if they were dumping poisons into streams.”

The E.P.A. administrators during the last eight years — Christine Todd Whitman, Michael O. Leavitt and Stephen L. Johnson — all declined to comment.

Of course – however, the following should also be noted…

In statements, E.P.A. officials noted that from 2006 to 2008, the agency conducted 11,000 Clean Water Act and 21,000 Safe Drinking Water Act inspections, and referred 146 cases to the Department of Justice. During the 2007 to 2008 period, officials wrote, 92 percent of the population served by community water systems received water that had no reported health-based violations.

…

The Clean Water Act, (lawmakers and environmentalists say), should be expanded to police other types of pollution — like farm and livestock runoff — that are largely unregulated. And they say Congress should give state agencies more resources, in the same way that federal dollars helped overhaul the nation’s sewage systems in the 1970s.

Some say changes will not occur without public outrage.

“When we started regulating water pollution in the 1970s, there was a huge public outcry because you could see raw sewage flowing into the rivers,” said William D. Ruckelshaus, who served as the first head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Richard M. Nixon, and then again under President Ronald Reagan.

“Today the violations are much more subtle — pesticides and chemicals you can’t see or smell that are even more dangerous,” he added. “And so a lot of the public pressure on regulatory agencies has ebbed away.”

And as noted here, The Supreme Court of Hangin’ Judge JR has played a particularly nefarious role in all this, especially in the ruling linked to above which overturned a Court of Appeals verdict and allowed 4.5 million tons of lethal mining waste to be dumped into Alaska’s Lower Slate Lake, with the full knowledge that doing so would exterminate all life in the lake (somehow, though, The Supremes, by a 6-3 ruling… Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens dissented…determined that doing this was “less environmentally damaging than other options” – yep, you read that correctly).

Fortunately, the Clean Water Restoration Act was introduced by Sen. Russ Feingold here; no vote has been scheduled yet, but one should be with all speed (so many Bushco screwups to fix, so little time, I know).

Finally, in a Bushco-related matter, The Philadelphia Inquirer decided to give column space to Torture Yoo again today (the appropriate takedown from Will Bunch via Atrios is here).

Bunch takes on the main issue of Yoo’s past culpability head-on, of course (with Yoo weighing in against the upcoming Holder investigation of course – pathetic that the Inky doesn’t realize that they’re allowing Yoo to, in essence, try to obstruct justice), though Yoo pointed out something of lesser significance in his column that I still want to address anyway…

Henry L. Stimson, secretary of state under President Herbert Hoover, once explained the shuttering of the United States’ only code-breaking unit with these words: “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” Unfortunately, we do not live in a world of gentlemen. Stimson realized this in his next cabinet post, as FDR’s secretary of war on the day of Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

In response, I give you the following from this interesting article about U.S. code breakers during World War II…

Fifty years ago–and more than a year before Pearl Harbor–Americans scored one of their most brilliant victories of World War II.

The commander was a Russian immigrant and sometime geneticist named William Frederick Friedman. The nature of the battle might be suggested by Friedman’s intense interest once in the 50,000-word novel “Gadsby,” which Ernest Vincent Wrigh wrote without using the letter “e.” Friedman’s troops were a motley assemblage of academics, math wizards and puzzle freaks. With a left-handed assist from William Shakespeare.

Together, after 18 baffling months of dead-end days and floor-walking nights that temporarily collapsed Friedman into a mental ward, they broke the Japanese diplomatic code.

Their collective genius did not foil, of course, the sneak Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States actively into the war. Crossed and sometimes disconnected wires in American intelligence enabled that. But code breaking by Friedman, et al., laid the groundwork for the pivotal victory of the U.S. fleet at Midway in June, 1942. Indeed, code breaking was an essential ingredient of the Allies’ ultimate triumph.

Yes, the quote from Stimson is accurate, though how Yoo could claim to know what Stimson “realized” 78 years ago is laughable (and assuming some fault lies with Stimson for Pearl Harbor – which, to me, is debatable at best – I cannot think of a word for the egomania of someone criticizing past history who belonged to a regime that had its own problems with “crossed and sometimes disconnected wires in American intelligence,” to the point where the result of that circumstance was observed just about eight years ago today).

Update 9/15/09: Yep, this egotistical jackass would know all about “five-spiral crashes,” wouldn’t he?

Update 9/23/09: Of course…

Saving A Life By A Slender Legal Thread

While many of us are rightly gratified by the news that Troy Davis has been granted a new trial, I think it is important to consider how long a shot his appeal to the Supreme Court truly was (as the New York Times tells us in an editorial here today, Davis was convicted of the 1989 murder of an off-duty Savannah police officer and had resided on Georgia’s death row ever since; many witnesses have since recanted their testimony, according to Amnesty International).

The Times’ editorial also points out the frightening extent to which Antonin “Red Queen” Scalia and Clarence Thomas felt “considerable doubt” that Davis’ claim was “constitutionally cognizable” (and by the way, kudos to Prof. Alan Dershowitz for claiming here that Scalia’s remarks are an “outrage against his church,” which would be the Roman Catholic one, by the way…not sure exactly what it says about those in the hierarchy of my faith that that needs to be pointed out a Jew, and I use that term towards Dershowitz with all due respect).

As the Times tells us, the supposed legal rationale for Scalia and Thomas’ dissent in the Davis case was the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which the two claimed “prevent(ed) the courts from intervening on behalf of a death row inmate who claims to have proof of his own innocence” (fortunately, Justice John Paul Stevens explained in a separate opinion that Scalia and Thomas were wrong).

And Elaine Cassel of Counterpunch tells us here that…

The Antiterrorism Act of 1996 was a response to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. (Authors David) Cole and (James X.) Dempsey describe the Act as a massive assault on First Amendment rights of speech, assembly, and petition, and a deeper entrenchment of the “guilt by association” tradition active in the FBI.

As noted above, the Act removed barriers to FBI investigation of activities protected under the First Amendment. It also removed some restrictions on the famous FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court–where federal judges sit in secret to consider, and mostly approve, Justice Department requests for widespread surveillance of “terrorists,” including pen registers and “trap-and-trace” surveillance, methods that can capture income and outgoing telephone calls. The law also opened the door for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deport mostly Muslim citizens. The deportations were based on largely secret evidence, and no overt acts needed to be alleged.

And this tells us that the 1996 Act “was introduced as part of Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, passed with broad bipartisan support by Congress.”

More fool them, including President Clinton for signing it into law.

Finally, bmaz of firedoglake makes the following points here about the Supreme Court verdict that granted Davis a new trial…

Scalia is right, this particular form of relief is exceedingly rare (that is the only thing he is right about here). What is even more shocking is that it got done in this case, with this court, at this time. While Davis’ family and attorneys maintained their optimism relief would be granted, scant few other folks experienced in these things did including, quite frankly, me. Sonia Sotomayor did not participate, so the majority had to find five votes somewhere, and this is a real head scratcher. The majority opinion was unsigned, but an attached concurring opinion was noted as “Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer join, concurring”. Thomas, predictably, tagged along with Nino on the dissent. That would appear to mean the majority found two more votes for Davis among Kennedy, Alito and Roberts. Now that is shocking.

At the very least, I hope this prods Congress into reviewing the ’96 Act reinstituting the legal protections that were foolishly gutted in the panicked wake of the ‘90s terrorist attacks (all of this occurred before 9/11, of course).

However, since this Congress is primarily the bunch that gutted FISA last year, I’m definitely not holding out much hope.