Wednesday Mashup (7/17/13)

Part of me truly wanted to avoid this recent column by Stu Bykofsky, but I believe it is too rank to be ignored (on the matter of PA AG Kathleen Kane’s decision not to enforce the commonwealth’s indefensible Defense of Marriage Act)…

It doesn’t matter whether you support or oppose gay marriage, this is an issue of law, current law.

The state Attorney General is substituting her own preferences to Pennsylvania law, which she is sworn to uphold. Ms. Kane doesn’t get to decide constitutionality, the courts do that.

This is materially no different than George Wallace blocking the entrance to a school because he didn’t agree with the court knocking down segregation. It is different only in that we don’t like where he was, but (most of us) do like Kane’s position. But that it (sic) not the issue. The issue is obeying (and in Kane’s case) defending the law, even if not palatable.

(Frankly, couldn’t she just have assigned a low-ranking, inexperienced attorney, who would botch the job? She could have. I think she is show-boating here.)

In response, I give you the following from here…

In a public statement on Thursday, Kane said, “I cannot ethically defend the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s version of DOMA where I believe it to be wholly unconstitutional,” adding, “It is my duty under the Commonwealth Attorneys Act whenever I determine it is in the best interest of the Commonwealth to authorize the Office of General Counsel to defend the state in litigation. Additionally, it is a lawyer’s ethical obligation under Pennsylvania’s Rules of Professional Conduct to withdraw from a case in which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement with the client.”

So Kane didn’t kill the case. Not at all! Instead, she rightfully disclosed a conflict of interest due to a difference of opinion, and passed the case along to Gov. Corbett.

How many politicians do you know that disclose a conflict of interest? You can count that number on one hand.

Oh, and paging “Byko” for this one…

Kane also didn’t sabotage the case by accepting it and then giving it to a lackey – an awful suggestion that has been made by some.

Instead, she took the high road and essentially recused herself and her office from handling the case.

Kane’s decision is making national news. But it shouldn’t. She’s hardly the first attorney general to refuse to participate in a case involving this or any other hotbed social issue.

Back when California Gov. Jerry Brown was the state’s Attorney General, he refused to defend California’s anti-gay-marriage measure, Proposition 8. Just last month, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed the case, ruling that those who defended Proposition 8 didn’t have legal standing to do so.

Time will show very soon that PA’s DOMA law is unconstitutional, too – the same way that Loving v. Virginia declared that banning interracial marriages was illegal.

And as far as “Byko” and the comparison between Kane and George Wallace (really?) is concerned, I give you this…

Of course, while similar on the surface (the law is involved?), Kane’s position isn’t really like Wallace’s at all! In Brown v. Board of Ed., the Supreme Court said that states could no longer segregate their own schools. In the Supreme Court’s DOMA decision this year, it was ruled that the federal Defense of Marriage Act is not constitutional, though doesn’t say the same about Defense of Marriage Acts passed in individual states.

When Wallace stood in front of the University of Alabama in 1963, he was refusing to enforce a federal court order to allow three students with perfect qualifications to attend the school.

(And somehow, I find it hard to believe that Eric Holder or another Justice Department attorney would ever show up on the steps of the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg, arguing with Tom “Space Cadet” Corbett about whether or not straights should be allowed to marry, parroting this iconic photo of Wallace with Kennedy Justice Department lawyer Nicholas Katzenbach.)

I will admit that there’s a bit of posturing by Kane going on here, since I’m pretty sure that she once claimed in her primary campaign against Patrick Murphy that the Attorney General didn’t have the right to decide which laws should be enforced. However, I definitely believe that she’s acting in the interests of the “greater good” here.

Besides, Kane is, aside from the head prosecutor in PA, also the chief administrator of law enforcement. Given that, what kind of judgment would it show if she committed personnel and resources of her office, all on the public dime, to defending a law that, on the federal level, had recently been invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court?

Next, if we’ve recently suffered a gun tragedy or a miscarriage of justice of some type over guns within the last week or so, you can always count on John Lott to pop up with more demagoguery and misinformation to try and show that it’s all the fault of those dastardly liberals somehow (here)…

Comments by President Obama, Al Sharpton and others surely stirred up the racial aspects of the case and appear to have led some blacks across the country to attack whites to avenge Trayvon Martin

Really? Obama “stirred up the racial aspects” by urging calm? Before he presses on another ugly piece of propaganda for Fix Noise, Lott should actually try reading their web site once in a while (here).

Also, Reverend Al said that the protests in the wake of the Trayvon Martin verdict were mostly nonviolent here, which is also borne out by this clip from Rachel Maddow here.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that John Lott has either demonized African Americans or whitewashed attempts to marginalize them at the ballot box, as he did here, claiming that he somehow wasn’t able to name a single person who was disenfranchised from voting in the Florida 2000 presidential election.

I don’t know what’s in the minds of these people when they concoct this garbage. And I really don’t want to know either.

Further, I got a bit of a laugh out of this item (here)…

Ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) charged that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was engaged in “unprecedented data collection.”

“The CFPB is collecting credit card data, bank account data, mortgage data and student loan data,” Crapo said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “This ultimately allows the CFPB to monitor a consumer’s monthly spending habits.”

Crapo’s comments came just hours after the Senate voted 71-29 to end debate on the nomination of Richard Cordray to lead the CFPB. A final vote on Cordray’s nomination could come as early as today.

I’d recently read comments from Mikey the Beloved to this effect also. And in response, let me ask this; who isn’t engaged in massive data collection these days (not approving it – just asking the question).

And in defense of Cordray, I give you this…

Cordray replied that the credit card and mortgage payment data are widely available and are bought from companies such as Argus and from credit records, which the CFPB is using to work with the Federal Housing Finance Agency to construct a national mortgage database. “The information is not personal but is anonymized,” he said. “If people want to misunderstand and think that it’s invading privacy based on speculation, I’d simply say, that’s not what it is.”

The bureau must gather such data if it is to prepare cost-benefit analysis of the structure of markets and to deliver reports required by Congress, he added. “If we didn’t, you’d be disappointed with us and rightly so.”

Similarly, the CFPB’s consumer complaint database, which has accumulated nearly 100,000 complaints about lenders, does not risk disclosing personal data, Cordray said. The complaints are “scrubbed” of personal identifiers after confirming that the complainer has a commercial relationship with the company. “We use it to communicate to companies on how to improve, and to the public too,” he said. “We need more of this, not less.” He did promise Crapo a visit from his staff to clarify the bureau’s privacy safeguards.

Also, while I’m on the subject of Cordray, allow me to congratulate him due to the fact that he was finally confirmed by the Senate as part of a recent deal “aimed at freeing up seven stalled appointments President Barack Obama has made to the consumer agency, the National Labor Relations Board and other agencies,” as the AP via HuffPo tells us here.

And concerning the NLRB part of the deal, I give you the following whining from Sen. Charles Grassley here (from “Tiger Beat on the Potomac,” as Charles Pierce rightly calls it)…

…Grassley (R-Iowa) said the decision to block Cordray ultimately helped lead to a deal that forced two previous nominees for the National Labor Relations Board to be replaced with new candidates as part of a broader Senate deal struck this week over how executive branch nominees will be handled going forward.

“We got two illegally appointed NLRB people off the agenda,” he said. “It was pretty important when the court says somebody’s been illegally appointed that they don’t get Senate confirmation.”

The two NLRB appointees in question, Sharon Block (a former labor counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy) and Richard Griffin (former general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers), had been serving on the board since January 2012, appointed by Obama during a Senate break after Republicans blocked their confirmations (as the New York Times tells us here).

The “legality” of Block and Griffin’s appointments was decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; as noted here, the court issued a ruling that, in essence, also retroactively invalidated about 300 other recess appointments of this type by prior presidents since 1981 (and of the three judges on the appeals court panel, one was appointed by The Sainted Ronnie R, one was appointed by Bush 41, and one was appointed by Bush 43).

And I think we also need to recall the following from here…

When Obama took office, the NLRB only had two members. In April 2009, Obama nominated three people to serve on the NLRB – Mark Pearce (D), Craig Becker (D) and Brian Hayes (R). Yet Senate Republicans’ silent filibusters were effective in preventing a Senate vote on these nominees.

In March 2010, Obama recess appointed Becker and Pearce to the board. In June, the Senate confirmed Pearce and Hayes, but continued to block Becker.

When Becker’s recess appointment expired on Jan. 3, 2012, the NLRB didn’t have a quorum to make decisions. Confronted with Senate Republicans intent on undermining the NLRB’s authority, Obama made three recess appointments – Sharon Block (D), Richard Griffin (D) and Terence Flynn (R) – to guarantee a fully functioning board. These members joined Pearce and Hayes, who left the board in December 2012. (Flynn resigned after an ethics scandal in March 2012.)

So basically, that’s the history of the Repugs doing their best to gum up the NLRB since Obama was first elected in 2008. In fact, they have such an animus towards the NLRB (how dare an agency of government create such a “burdensome” environment for business by allowing workers to present and seek redress of grievances??!!) that the House, apparently believing that the Senate would end up allowing the NLRB appointments, decided to make things worse on their own by passing the utterly odious HR 1120 here, which basically shuts down the NLRB altogether (Mikey the Beloved commendably voted No).

Grassley should shut his proverbial pie hole on matters related to the NLRB and Obama’s recess appointments overall. The actions of his party may not have been illegal, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t stink to high heaven anyway (besides, based on this, it looks like Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao got outfoxed for a change).

Update 7/18/13: And depressing though it is, here is more food for thought on this subject (to me the name James Sherk is a bit Dickensian).

Finally, I’m glad to hear that this guy is back on the air (here). I’m sorry that he will no longer be a political voice; I think that’s a monumental waste, but it was even worse for a reporter and broadcaster of his caliber to be effectively blackballed from TV journalism altogether.

So good luck, Keith, and just bite your lip if the Texas Rangers make it to the World Series and Former Commander Codpiece starts strutting and yakking all over the place, trying to take credit for something he didn’t do, as usual.

Abyseeinya, Little Ricky

As noted here, yesterday marked the final “regular” (???) column in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Former Senator Man-On-Dog himself, Little Ricky Santorum. And, true to form, he conjured up all kinds of “Oooga Booga!” scenarios in response to the news that “a federal district court judge in… Boston ruled that the majority of Republicans and Democrats in Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act for the one purpose forbidden by law: ‘to disadvantage a group of which it disapproves’.”

To which I reply, well…duuuuh! And of course, it is also appropriate that Santorum ended his stint at the Inky by taking another shot at Beantown, as he did here.

As noted here, “The (Boston) ruling relied on two arguments: that the law interfered with the rights of states guaranteed in the 10th Amendment, and that it violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause. “

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that a “tenther,” “states rights” argument was used to refute a position or belief most commonly held by Tea Party wingnuts?

Well anyway, I should note that, on the occasion of Santorum’s final Inquirer column, it really behooves us all to take a look back at some of his less stellar moments (I’m just providing excerpts here – if I included all of them, it would take two days to write this post)…

Said President Obama was “detached from the American experience” here…

Said Obama’s “charm offensive” was a bust in Muslim nations, though the numbers state otherwise (here)…

Blamed President Clinton for inflating the housing bubble here (seriously)…

Argued here that if a government-run public option had been included in health care reform, it would have meant fewer dollars for the life sciences industry in Philadelphia…

Defended Dutch filmmaker and politician Geert Wilders from Muslim attacks without noting that Wilders had drawn a correlation between the Koran and Mein Kampf here…

Criticized Joe Biden for blocking a resolution he sponsored against Iran when he was senator, though Santorum voted against a resolution penalizing companies doing business with Iran (here)…

Asked (and answered), “But are any treatments with embryonic stem cells being used today? No,” and also asked/answered, “Are there any anticipated in the near future? No,” and he was wrong on both counts (here)…

Said that Hugo Chavez of Venezuela was “replacing legitimate popular elections” here (uh, no – if that country rids itself of him, they’ll be able to do it without our help)

Criticized Obama for trying to control the manipulation of gas prices on the futures market here – meanwhile, he voted No on a bill to reduce our oil usage by 40 percent instead of 5 percent by 2025, voted Yes on terminating Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards for vehicles within 15 months, and voted Yes to defund renewable and solar energy…

Kept up the same theme as his signoff column about how “teh gay” is trying to destroy marriage here…

And just to let you know that I actually agreed with Santorum once in a great, great while, I did so in response to this column in which he criticized a PA voter for switching his party allegiance from Republican to Democratic in 2008 to vote for the “weaker” Dem presidential candidate in the primary election (Pennsylvania has “closed,” primaries, I should point out).

Finally, for what it’s worth, this was my reaction when I first heard that The Inquirer was going to give Santorum a “soap box” for his blather.

So there you have it, and with that, one “regular” right-wing ideologue columnist for philly.com bites the dust (don’t worry, though, since they still have at least three more between Kevin Ferris, Christine Flowers and John Yoo).

And I have no doubt that we’ll hear from Little Ricky again – I’m sure either The National Review or The Daily Caller is beckoning, probably among others.

More AP Fournier Follies On “Obama Care”

Boy, did Ron Fournier of the AP come up with some utterly craptacular nonsense on Obama’s health care reform speech last night (here)…

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama faces the same obstacles that plagued former President Bill Clinton during a health care standoff 15 years ago. But Obama took a strikingly different path around them Wednesday night, choosing the promise of compromise over Clinton’s sharp-edged veto pen.

For Clinton, the my-way-or-the-highway approach backfired. The legislation died, Republicans won control of Congress just 10 months later and health care fell from the public agenda, though Clinton himself recovered to win a second term.

I’m surprised that Fournier didn’t tell us that little fairies in the shape of elephants flew around and spread pixie dust that brainwashed the voters of this country into rejecting “big gumint” and those dastardly tax-and-spend liberals. That makes about as much sense as what he just said about the 1994 congressional election which (pathetically) gave the Repugs control of the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years.

I will grant you that there was a bit of overreach by the Clinton Administration, particularly on the issue of gays in the military (which, really, shouldn’t be an issue – I think Obama is handling this better by letting former Iraq war vet Patrick Murphy lead the effort to repeal DADT in the House, though it would be nice to hear some opposition to the ridiculous Defense of Marriage Act by the president himself, which would only help repeal of DADT).

Update 9/12/09: By the way, speaking of the Defense of Marriage Act, I thought this was good news.

And I will also grant that what happened with health care contributed to the perception also, though the following should be noted from here (I know I got into this in an earlier post, but I think it bears repeating – a lot)…

In mid-August, former President Clinton…argued that blaming his administration’s decision to hand a (health care) bill to Congress was an inaccurate depiction of what occurred and not a reason the effort failed.

As keynote speaker at the Netroots Nation conference of progressive/liberal bloggers in Pittsburgh, Mr. Clinton sarcastically denounced what he considers the false, revisionist history: “Everybody knows that Hillary presented this horribly complicated, 1,300-page bill, which would have broken the back of the federal statutes. And what she should’ve done was refused to present a bill and just have her committee issue a report to Congress with recommendations.”

In reality, Mr. Clinton said, the bill-writing was dictated by Congress: “We actually pleaded with the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to let us send a report with recommendations and have them write the bill, and he said, ‘I will not take this up unless you send me a bill.’ ”

Mr. Clinton recalled that the chairman at the time — Representative Dan Rostenkowski, whom President Clinton later pardoned for a mail-fraud conviction — countered that without a presidential bill, interest groups would swarm all over his committee. The lobbyists would overwhelm the lawmakers, in other words.

And according to Mr. Clinton, the chairman argued: “There’s not enough base-level knowledge in the Congress to resist it, and we will never get anywhere. This will not happen unless you give a bill.”

Also, the Clinton budget had passed the year before, which would eventually ensure economic prosperity which lasted through the rest of his administration. However, at the time, the Repugs (cheered on by our corporate media stenographers on this and everything else, including the failure of health care reform) did nothing but harp about tax increases to Medicare and Social Security. That, along with their caterwauling about the assault weapons ban, gave Baby Newton Leroy Gingrich an opening to yammer on and on about his Contract on America.

(I think it’s also important to consider that, back then, the concept of conservative movement, ideologue Repugs wasn’t as commonly accepted as it is now, unfortunately. By that I mean that, though voters were unhappy enough with Poppy Bush not to elect him to a second term in 1992, there were still enough grownups in charge of the Republican Party who voters thought could actually perform the hard work of governance, to the point where those voters gave their party congressional power in ’94. However, I always thought that Gingrich’s flameout, as well as that of a certain dancing former exterminator, was at least as telling as his ascent – that is, voters woke up and realized what wingnuts they both truly were, aided by the Monica Whatsername inquisition.)

So basically, for Fournier to assign the failure of health care reform to pass in ’94 as the sole reason for the Dems’ loss of Congress is laughable. And though it’s possible that that scenario could be repeated if somehow health care reform doesn’t pass in this session, that would also take place if the voters assumed that the Repug party could be trusted again as they once were in the early ‘90s. And it’s a whole new ballgame on that score, my fellow prisoners.

And here’s more Fournier dreck…

Liberals were frustrated that a progressive revolution had not yet materialized under Clinton’s watch. Even worse, Republican and Democratic skeptics alike wondered whether he had the stomach for a fight.

Clinton responded that night 15 years ago by brandishing a pen and declaring: “If you send me legislation that does not guarantee every American private health insurance that can never be taken away, you will force me to take this pen, veto the legislation, and we’ll come right back here and start all over again.”

From that flourish of political arrogance followed every bad decision that doomed health care reform — a task force headed by his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, meeting in secret to craft a Byzantine plan with little congressional input.

It died upon arrival.

As noted above, former House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski was the one who wanted Clinton to produce a bill instead of Congress.

But Fournier isn’t done, folks…

Obama knows there is no chance of having a truly two-party approach to health care reform, and only a slim chance of dragging more than two or three Republicans aboard a Democratic bill.

But he also knows — his pollsters surely have told him — that the public craves at least the appearance of bipartisanship.

An Associated Press-GfK poll released hours before his address shows that eight in 10 Americans say it’s important that any plan that passes Congress have the support of both parties.

According to this, that is actually correct (does it say something that the only place where I can obtain this information is a Repug-friendly site?), believe it or not (the bottom of the post tells us that the poll sampling included 39 percent Democrats and 33 percent Republicans…presumably, the other 28 percent were independents or undecided – I cannot locate any other sampling information on this poll).

However, I think the following should be emphasized (here)…

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

Yet the survey also revealed considerable unease about the impact of heightened government involvement, on both the economy and the quality of the respondents’ own medical care. While 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, 77 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their own care.

I think concern about the impact on the economy is understandable given its sorry state at the moment.

So, we have Fournier’s poll telling us that 8 in 10 Americans support a poll with input from both parties. And we have the New York Times/CBS poll telling us that Americans strongly support health care reform and the public option (though they are justly concerned about the numbers behind those reforms).

Well, armed with that information, you would think the Repugs would have put together at least a semblance of legislation to address those concerns (presumably, the papers some of them were waving in the air during Obama’s speech last night – and don’t worry, I won’t say that they were imitating Neville Chamberlain since that would invite more stupid comparisons between Obama and you-know-who).

However, as we read from here…

Top Republicans in the House today unveiled a GOP health-care plan, stressing that they were looking forward to working with President Obama and Nancy Pelosi.

The plan, devised by the House Republican Health Care Solutions Group, promotes specifically targeting groups among the nation’s uninsured that could be covered by the existing system as well as keeping health insurance within the private sector.

…

Another area that is not touched upon within the GOP plan is cost. When pressed on the issue by reporters, Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) struck back.

“We are not going to have a bill that is larger than the GDP of most countries,” he said, an apparent reference to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate on the Kennedy plan and other floated numbers — in the trillions of dollars — for the potential cost of other Democratic-backed plans.

He then went on to say the numbers for the GOP plan would come after the Democrats are done scoring their own legislation. When pressed harder for a ballpark estimate of the cost of the plan, Camp responded, “We do have ideas about that” before reiterating the GOP’s idea of insuring Americans under the age of 25.

So, as usual, they have something to amplify their talking points from their core constituencies (as well as fodder for more feigned umbrage), but nothing with enough detail to serve as a basis for serious legislation.

And Fournier concludes his piece with this…

Why wave a veto pen when Obama can make a pass at bipartisanship and declare victory over whatever Democrats muscle through Congress? He’s a good politician, and knows it.

Obama must figure he can make a half a loaf look like a bakery.

Well (taking Fournier’s trite metaphor a bit further), what else is Obama supposed to do when the Repugs don’t even bother to leave him any crumbs?

Also, Media Matters has more on Fournier here.

Update: Funny how Fournier didn’t mention the Bill Kristol ’93 memo that kos noted here, isn’t it (though Huckleberry Graham remembers, of course).

I Would Now Say That The Honeymoon Is Over

OK, to begin, I’ll say up front that I support President Obama. I have, I do, and I will. In the matter of the 2008 election, if the 2000 version of John McCain had run, it actually would have been interesting. But the 2008 version ran instead, trying to suck up to all of the typical Republican constituencies. And then he selected Just Plain Folks Sarah Palin as his running mate, dontcha know. And the economy tanked. And it became more and more obvious to me who was, resoundingly, more qualified for the job.

Yes, I know this has been covered over and over, but please humor me a bit here, OK?

So then we have the election and the aftermath, including the swearing-in and the parties. And the Lilly Ledbetter Act becomes law, as does the stimulus, followed by lifting the restriction on federal funding of stem cell research put into place by Dubya, SCHIP is passed, and he gives the recent Cairo speech…a lot of good stuff, to my way of thinking.

So what exactly is the problem? Well…

He signed a credit card consumer protections bill that won approval through a provision allowing loaded guns in our national parks, for starters (here).

He flip-flopped on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” here (yes, I understand his point that the bill signed by Clinton was written by Congress, but don’t say here that you plan to end it and then equivocate, especially when individuals such as Colin Powell have called for “reevaluating” it).

He has defended Dubya’s programs of torture, kidnapping, illegal imprisonment, government secrecy, and executive branch dominance over the other branches of government by using the Bush “state secrets” provision, as noted here (basically, all we have is Obama’s word that he won’t engage in the same garbage as his predecessor).

For some incomprehensible reason, he defended the Defense of Marriage Act in a recent legal brief as noted here by Americablog and the Human Rights Campaign (more here).

And to top it all off, we have this, which tells us the following…

NEW YORK The Obama administration is blocking access to the names of visitors to the White House, according to MSNBC.com — which recently requested the information. The Web site contends the reasoning is similar to Bush administration arguments that a president doesn’t have to reveal his visitors.

You may now consider your humble narrator be officially pissed off at our chief executive.

And by the way, given what I said yesterday about Randall Terry here, it might be a good idea to start enforcing the FACE law (yes, I know Scott Roeder’s craziness definitely predated Obama, but the incidents of Roeder gluing Tiller’s clinic doors shut – a clear FACE violation – occurred on the watch of Obama and AG Eric Holder also).

Also, I would like to reiterate what Bill Maher said here in the way of Obama “taking a page from his predecessor.” Use reconciliation on health care if the votes aren’t there, Mr. President, and if the Repugs stall your nominees like Dawn Johnsen and David Hamilton in response, then scream loud and long about it.

Given the fact that, in the past, Dems generally have shown all the spine of a bowl of warm vermicelli in response to relentless right-wing attacks, I for one would call that change I can believe in.

Update 6/17/09: A nice step in the right direction here… (Oops, looks like I updated too soon, based on this – relocation assistance?).