I suppose it's a matter of semantics, but it's interesting to hear someone who is anti-abortion like Ross Douthat decry the "absolutism" of liberals like Ted Kennedy who was pro-choice -- the idea being that women have a right to make the choice about whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term and therefore may, without coercion from either side, make up their own mind -- while saying that his sister, the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver, was pro-life and therefore not an absolutist when it comes to reproductive rights.
Pro-choice means exactly that: you have the right to choose, and assuming that because a woman has the right to have an abortion does not automatically mean she will have one. The only thing that should be "absolute" about it is that the choice should be hers and those she chooses to seek counsel from, be it her family, her spiritual counselor, or anyone else she decides to have a say in it, and not some absolute stranger who stands on the sidewalk outside a clinic waving a sign, a bible, or a gun.
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Following up on the post below, via TPM, Mary Jacoby notes that former Vice President Dick Cheney has an interesting interpretation of the Constitution and the role of the Attorney General.
The former vice president said in an interview on “FOX News Sunday” that President Obama has final authority to make law enforcement decisions. Cheney, whose muscular view of executive power underlay many of the controversies of the Bush administration, referred to Holder as a “political appointee.”
Well, I think if you look at the Constitution, the president of the United States is the chief law enforcement officer in the land. The attorney general’s a statutory officer. He’s a member of the cabinet.
Cheney appears to be taking an expansive view of Article II of the Constitution, which says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States.” Yet in practice and common understanding, the chief law enforcement officer of the United States is the Attorney General. The Judiciary Act of 1789 established the AG’s office, “which evolved over the years into …. chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government,” the Department of Justice’s Web site says.
It's very revealing to see the world and our form of government through the eyes of someone like Mr. Cheney. Remember, he was the one who basically said the Office of the Vice President was outside both the executive and the legislative branches of government; a world unto its own, as it were.
Perhaps in the Bush administration the Attorney General was the lapdog of the president -- certainly Alberto Gonzales proved to be a boot-licker and a lackey -- but the idea that the chief law enforcement officer is a political appointee on the same scale as the ambassador to Freedonia is the view of someone who sees the government and the Constitution as part of his political mechanism, designed solely for the advancement of his own political agenda.
I can only say that it was a very good thing that Dick Cheney never got close enough to the levers of power to actually do anything that could have permanently damaged both the Constitution and the institutions of government that it establishes. Oh, wait....
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Former Vice President Dick Cheney told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that the probe into excessive torture by the CIA "offends the hell" out of him.
"I guess the other thing that offends the hell out of me, frankly, is we had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from al Qaeda," Cheney said. "The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, how did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?"
And, Cheney maintains, he has "serious doubts" about whether President Barack Obama "understands and is prepared to do what needs to be done to defend the nation."
This is not the casual observation of some pundit like Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck; this man was the Vice President of the United States who is on the record as saying that he really doesn't care if the CIA or our contracted interrogators broke the law. He also wistfully reflects that he was overruled on going even further. He's also making the argument that doing so has prevented someone else from attacking us. This kind of smug arrogance -- echoed by a fawning and snide Chris Wallace -- ignores the fact that the attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred during the Bush administration a month after they ignored the warning that Osama bin Laden was determined to attack us within the United States. The clock on the Bush administration did not start on September 12. And are they going to take credit for the fact that we haven't been struck by an eight-mile-wide asteroid, either?
All in all, it's arrogant, self-serving, and sounds suspiciously like the opening statement of a defense attorney at a criminal trial. His sniping at the Obama administration makes him look petty, small, bitter, and more interested in furthering his own agenda -- and those of his book sales -- than really caring about what happens in the defense of our country or the reduction of the threats we all face. So if he takes offense at the fact that the Justice Department is looking into the conduct of the administration he served, that's just too damn bad.
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Jenna Bush Hager has landed a part-time job reporting for NBC's Today show.
The daughter of former President George W. Bush will contribute stories about once a month on issues like education to television's top-rated morning news show, said Jim Bell, its executive producer.
Hager, a 27-year-old teacher in Baltimore, said she has always wanted to be a teacher and a writer, and has already authored two books. But she was intrigued by the idea of getting into television when Bell contacted her.
"It wasn't something I'd always dreamed to do," she said. "But I think one of the most important things in life is to be open-minded and to be open-minded for change."
She'll essentially work two part-time jobs as a correspondent and in her school, where she will be a reading coordinator this year.
I'm sure Ms. Hager will have some interesting things to say, and far be it from me to jump to any conclusions about her journalism skills before she even get on the air. But as Glenn Greenwald notes, it's a continuation of a trend.
They should convene a panel for the next Meet the Press with Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain and Jonah Goldberg, and they should have Chris Wallace moderate it. They can all bash affirmative action and talk about how vitally important it is that the U.S. remain a Great Meritocracy because it's really unfair for anything other than merit to determine position and employment. They can interview Lisa Murkowski, Evan Bayh, Jeb Bush, Bob Casey, Mark Pryor, Jay Rockefeller, Dan Lipinksi, and Harold Ford, Jr. about personal responsibility and the virtues of self-sufficiency. Bill Kristol, Tucker Carlson and John Podhoretz can provide moving commentary on how America is so special because all that matters is merit, not who you know or where you come from. There's a virtually endless list of politically well-placed guests equally qualified to talk on such matters.
There are two sides to this; you can't choose your family, and even if you do have a connection via a famous parent or relative, one would hope that if it opened doors for you, you had to prove yourself once you landed the job. In some cases, being the son or daughter of a well-known person may place even more of a burden on you to prove yourself worthy of the name and the reputation that comes with it.
But I do agree with the main point: let's not fool ourselves with all this talk about the virtues of achieving success without inside connections, and I doubt that Ms. Hager would have been considered for the job over any other 27-year-old teacher/writer in Baltimore if her parents and grandparents hadn't lived in the White House. One thing I will grant her; she has more legitimate claim to being a reporter on education than Liz Cheney does to being a pundit on fighting terrorism.
Speaking of the Cheney family and nepotism, Andrew Sullivan watched Chris Wallace "interview" former Vice President Dick Cheney on Fox News Sunday:
Now look: there are softball interviews; and then there are interviews like this. It cannot be described as journalism in any fashion. Even as propaganda, which is its point, it doesn't work - because it's far too cloying and supportive of Cheney to be convincing to anyone outside the true-believers. When it comes to Cheney, one of the most incompetent vice-presidents in the country's history, with a record of two grotesquely botched wars, war crimes and a crippling debt, Chris Wallace sounds like a teenage girl interviewing the Jonas Brothers.
This may be one of the reasons the press has turned into such a collection of stenographers and lapdogs for the people in power; it's really hard to write hard-hitting investigative examinations of the doings inside the Beltway when you have to ask them for an increase in your allowance.
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Tropical Update: Invest 94 isn't really making many waves.
They can have mine: The Discovery Channel relocates some peacocks in Coconut Grove to South Dade for a TV show. (They are nice to look at, but they're noisy, messy, and mean.)
And he's got the pink slip, Daddy... the original Little Deuce Coupe gets restored.
Shane (1953). One of the classic Westerns and one of the classic scenes. Starring Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, Brandon de Wilde, Jack Palance, and a dog.
The film was shot outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with the Teton Mountains as the backdrop. I spent five weeks at Teton Valley Ranch Camp in 1966, and they still talked about shooting the movie on the ranch property nearby.
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Where'd Everybody Go? -- Florida's population is shrinking, which is fine for traffic but terrible for schools and revenue.
The smiling couple barreling ahead on the cover of Liberty magazine in 1926 knew exactly where to go. “Florida or Bust,” said the white paint on the car doors. “Four wheels, no brakes.”
Sandra Woodward, 25, who grew up in Hollywood, said she was considering leaving.
So it has been for a century, as Florida welcomed thousands of newcomers every week, year after year, becoming the nation’s fourth-most-populous state with about 16 million people in 2000.
Imagine the shock, then, to discover that traffic is now heading the other way. That’s right, the Sunshine State is shrinking.
Choked by a record level of foreclosures and unemployment, along with a helping of disillusionment, the state’s population declined by 58,000 people from April 2008 to April 2009, according to the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research. Except for the years around World Wars I and II, it was the state’s first population loss since at least 1900.
“It’s dramatic,” said Stanley K. Smith, an economics professor at the University of Florida who compiled the report. “You have a state that was booming and has been a leader in population growth for the last 100 years that suddenly has seen a substantial shift.”
The loss is more than a data point. Growth gave Florida its notorious flip-flop and flower-print swagger. Life could be carefree under the sun because, as a famous state tourism advertisement put it in 1986, “The rules are different here.”
But what if they are not? Or if those Florida rules — an approach that made growth paramount in the state’s sales pitch, self-image and revenue structure — no longer apply?
“It’s got to be a real psychological blow,” said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who predicted that census data in December would confirm the findings. “I don’t know if you can take a whole state to a psychiatrist, but the whole Florida economy was based on migration flows.”
Continued below the fold.
Trading Places -- The embargo against Cuba still stands, although American-made products are getting through.
President Obama's decision in April to lift the limit on visits by Cuban Americans to their homeland was seen by some as a sign that the embargo, centerpiece of U.S. efforts to isolate the island, might be nearing its final days.
Don't count on it.
The president can weaken the embargo, but only Congress can rescind it. Embargo supporters in both houses, including Florida lawmakers from each party, remain confident they have the votes.
But something more nuanced is happening, a slow erosion:
• Miami Herald reporters visiting the island found that, embargo or no embargo, huge stockpiles of American-made goods are finding their way to Cuba -- sometimes legally, often not. From sunglasses to jetliners, if it's made here, you can probably find it there, although often at an exorbitant price.
Loopholes carved into the embargo in recent years have helped make the United States Cuba's top supplier of food and agricultural products and its fifth-largest trading partner.
• A persistent campaign by farm-state Republicans and business interests to junk the embargo has shifted its focus to chipping away at it piece by piece.
Their probable next target: the rule that prevents Americans not of Cuban descent from traveling to Cuba as tourists. Longtime opponents of the embargo have filed three bills this year that would do just that. Advocates insist the idea has gained traction -- and the backing of a diverse coalition of groups ranging from the American Farm Bureau to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to Human Rights Watch.
''The theory is that travel is the thread that will unravel the whole sweater of the embargo,'' said Dan Erickson, a senior associate at the Inter-American Dialogue and author of The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution.
Majority Rules -- The New York Times tells the Democrats to Just Do It.
The talk in Washington is that Senate Democrats are preparing to push through health care reforms using parliamentary procedures that will allow a simple majority to prevail in their chamber, as it does in the House, instead of the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster that Senate Republicans are sure to mount.
With the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, the Democrats do not have the votes just among their 57 members (and the two independents) to break a filibuster, and not all of these can be counted on to vote in lock step. If the Democrats want to enact health care reform this year, they appear to have little choice but to adopt a high-risk, go-it-alone, majority-rules strategy.
We say this with considerable regret because a bipartisan compromise would be the surest way to achieve comprehensive reforms with broad public support. But the ideological split between the parties is too wide — and the animosities too deep — for that to be possible.
In recent weeks, it has become inescapably clear that Republicans are unlikely to vote for substantial reform this year.
[...]
Clearly the reconciliation approach is a risky and less desirable way to enact comprehensive health care reforms. The only worse approach would be to retreat to modest gestures in an effort to win Republican acquiescence. It is barely possible that the Senate Finance Committee might pull off a miracle and devise a comprehensive solution that could win broad support, or get one or more Republicans to vote to break a filibuster. If not, the Democrats need to push for as much reform as possible through majority vote.
From Screen to Stage -- How movies become musicals instead of the other way around.
SEATTLE -- As opening night approached early this month for the new musical “Catch Me if You Can,” about a con man on the run from the F.B.I., the director Jack O’Brien and his creative team were making changes to the production here almost hourly. Dialogue was added; dialogue was dropped. The pacing of some scenes was stepped up. Actors’ hand gestures and body language were tweaked. And one entire section — “mostly nuts-and-bolts exposition” — was excised entirely.
What Mr. O’Brien did not do — did not even contemplate doing, he said — was turn for last-minute inspiration to the commercially successful 2002 film by Steven Spielberg that is the basis for the musical (and shares its title). Mr. O’Brien directed the Broadway productions of “Hairspray” and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” which were also created from movies, and he said he believed it was essential to reimagine the original movies, add new layers to the stories and characters and demonstrate clearly to audiences why a theatrical version of a popular film is warranted.
“The ones that usually don’t work are the musicals that are slavish to the original movie,” Mr. O’Brien said over breakfast with the rest of the “Catch Me” creative team. “I’m not going to talk about any specific musicals. But there are some movies that have an inherent theatricality, where you can imagine these characters singing and dancing. And there are others that simply don’t.”
The Democrats are trying to get at least one Republican -- Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine -- to work with them on healthcare reform.
This has given Ms. Snowe a high degree of leverage as Democrats ask, What does Olympia Snowe want?
The senator, a centrist from Maine who is no stranger to breaking with her party on policy, said she was still working out the answer, though she said the August recess had led her to believe that Congress might have to scale back its health care expectations.
Ms. Snowe says she wants the public to understand that there is a serious problem, that the health care system is in crisis and that even people who are happy with their current coverage will not stay content for long, given rapidly rising costs and steadily shrinking benefits.
“They may say they are satisfied now,” the senator said in an interview, “but it is going to get worse, given the skyrocketing increases that are only going to persist. Something needs to be done to remove the deep anxiety that people find themselves in because of the lack of health insurance.”
As for the details, Ms. Snowe has been the rare Republican willing to show any interest in a public health insurance plan as an option, though she favors a trigger to institute such a government-operated program only if private health insurers do not make coverage more affordable.
Whatever comes out of the negotiations, what is remarkable is that Ms. Snowe is willing to work at all with the Democrats and the White House on this. Contrary to the now-mainstream Republicans who vow to shut down any version of healthcare reform even if it came with candy and a stripper or have yet to come up with anything of their own, she is doing what senators and representatives are supposed to do: put the people of her state and the needs of the country ahead of campaigning for re-election.
Tropical Update: What's left of Danny -- a tropical depression -- is making for a wet weekend along the Eastern Seaboard. The next wave is brewing off the Antilles.
"Key Asset" -- How a terrorist became a CIA source.
Change of plans -- Libyan leader Qaddafi won't camp out in New Jersey.
Gov. Charlie Crist chose his political shadow and former chief of staff, George LeMieux, to stand in as Florida's U.S. senator until Crist can win the seat himself in the 2010 election.
Crist has said that he wanted his appointment to have some time to get ready before Congress reconvenes on Sept. 8.
Crist faced the delicate task of filling a seat he is running for after Sen. Mel Martinez announced three weeks ago that he was stepping down. In choosing LeMieux, Crist signaled that personal loyalty and political instincts mattered more than any potential perception of cronyism.
What's more, the clean-cut, well-spoken, 40-year-old LeMieux could serve as an effective surrogate for Crist on the campaign trail. LeMieux was born and raised in Fort Lauderdale and served as chairman of the Broward Republican Party from 2000 to 2002.
The two men have been in lockstep since 2002, when Crist was elected Florida attorney general and made LeMieux his deputy. LeMieux went on to earn the nickname "the maestro'' for orchestrating Crist's successful gubernatorial campaign and served as his right-hand man for one year. Even after he left the Capitol for the Gunster Yoakley & Stewart law firm, LeMieux remained one of Crist's most trusted confidantes.
Mr. LeMieux will hold the seat for Mr. Crist, then retire in 2011 and go back to his law practice. Nice work if you can get it. Of course, that's assuming that Mr. Crist will win the election.
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There are some really interesting people in the pulpit these days. One such is a fellow named Steven Anderson at the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. Among his sermons that include the usual diatribes against gays and anybody else who doesn't believe in every word written in that book that starts out with two naked people and the talking snake, he calls for the death of the President of the United States.
Let me tell you something: Barack Obama has wrought lewdness in America. America has become lewd. What does lewd mean? L-E-W-D? [Pause] Obscene. Right? Dirty. Filthy. Homosexuality. Promiscuity. All of the -- everything that's on the billboard, the TV. Sensuality. Lewdness! We don't even know what lewdness means anymore! We're just surrounded by it, inundated with it!
... And yet you're going to tell me that I'm supposed to pray for the socialist devil, murderer, infanticide, who wants to see young children and he wants to see babies killed through abortion and partial-birth abortion and all these different things -- you're gonna tell me I'm supposed to pray for God to give him a good lunch tomorrow while he's in Phoenix, Arizona.
Nope. I'm not gonna pray for his good. I'm going to pray that he dies and goes to hell. When I go to bed tonight, that's what I'm going to pray. And you say, 'Are you just saying that?' No. When I go to bed tonight, Steven L. Anderson is going to pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell.
You say, 'Why would you do that?' That our country could be saved.
Ironically enough, Mr. Anderson is alleged to be an adherent to a faith that worships a man who was called "The Prince of Peace" and who admonished his followers to "turn the other cheek." Perhaps someone should introduce Mr. Anderson to his teachings; he might learn something. (I also think the United States Secret Service might want to have a little come-to-Jesus meeting of their own with Mr. Anderson. He is the pastor of the gentleman who showed up at the president's speech in Phoenix last week toting a semi-automatic weapon.)
There will be some people who will use Mr. Anderson's fervor as an excuse to bash Christianity and organized religion, but I really don't think that would be fair to either Christians or organized religion. Mr. Anderson represents Christianity the same way the Taliban represents Islam or the Ku Klux Klan represents American patriotism; perverted and grotesque rather than affirming and inclusive. The vast majority of Christians in this country -- and they number about 80% of the population -- are nothing at all like this nutball, and many of them support the idea of gay rights, reproductive choice, and universal healthcare. Organized religion has been a force for good in this world, too; I'm thinking of groups like the American Friends Service Committee (although some Quakers might have an issue with being called "organized"), and many other groups that are affiliated with faith that do not discriminate on the basis of belief or use it as a method of evangelism. Like all human endeavors, religion has been exploited and turned into a horrible distortion of its original intent -- a quest for knowledge and understanding -- but so have a lot of other human endeavors, such as government and the rule of law. That doesn't mean we should give up on it; it only means we need to discard the people who have exploited and perverted it.
There are also some people who think that giving Mr. Anderson any publicity by writing about his hatred only gives him visibility and the attention he so desperately craves. But I think we need to call attention to these people and make sure that the public is aware of this despicable and perverse kind of discourse. Keeping it in the shadows only gives them the room to grow and spread.
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David Brooks says the Republicans deserve credit for making Ted Kennedy the great leader in the Senate.
American voters welcome politicians who propose reforms that smooth the rough edges of the system. They do not welcome politicians and proposals that seek to contradict it. They do not welcome proposals that centralize power and substantially reduce individual choice. They resist proposals that put security above mobility and individual responsibility.
In 1980, Kennedy proposed an agenda that jarred with the traditions of American governance. In the decades since, a constrained Kennedy and a string of Republican co-sponsors produced reforms in keeping with it. The benefits are there for all to see.
It's one thing to honor a man's memory and his life's work even if you disagreed with it. But to claim you enhanced his legacy is a little much.
The RNC sent out a fund-raiser masquerading as a survey in which they asked a somewhat loaded question:
“It has been suggested that the government could use voter registration to determine a person’s political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system. Does this possibility concern you?”
It has also been suggested that the world is flat and if you sail too far out to sea you'll fall off the edge.
The RNC admitted later that the questions was "inartful," even though they remain concerned about giving "government bureaucrats access to a range of Americans’ personal information." As opposed to handing it over to a private corporation like UHC who will then use it to send me "friendly e-mail reminders" to schedule a check-up with my gynecologist.
Besides, it's too late: the government already knows my Social Security number.
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Steve Inskeep of NPR interviewed RNC Chair Michael Steele on Morning Edition. It did not go well.
At one point, Steele tied himself into knots trying to explain his view on the proper role of government after saying that “there are issues in the insurance market that we can regulate a little bit better”:
INSKEEP: Wait, wait — You would trust the government to look into that?
STEELE: No, I’m talking about the private — I’m talking about citizens. I’m talking about — (CROSSTALK)
INSKEEP: Who is it you — You said it is something that should be looked into. Who is it that you think should look into that?
STEELE: Well, who regulates the insurance markets?
INSKEEP: That would be the government, I believe.
STEELE: Well, and so what. Now wait a minute. Hold up. You’re doing a wonderful little dance here and you’re trying to be cute. But the reality of this is very simple. I’m not saying the government doesn’t have a role to play. I’ve never said that. The government does have a role to play; it has a very limited role to play.
INSKEEP: Mr. Chairman, I respect that you think I’m doing a dance here. I just want you to know that as a citizen, I’m a little confused by the positions you take because you’re giving me a very nice nuanced position here —
STEELE: It’s not nice and nuanced. I’m being very clear.
Steele also had to admit that sometimes private insurers do get “between the doctor and the patient,” but he quickly added that if the government were involved, it would be “10 times worse.”
Steve Benen noted, "There were several candidates seeking the RNC chairmanship this year. The party chose the most ridiculous, least qualified, most confused one. That Steele reflects poorly on the party, its agenda, and its ability to be serious about public policy is a dramatic understatement."
Freshman Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS) says she meant nothing offensive by saying that the GOP still had to find a "great white hope."
"Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope," said Jenkins. "I suggest to any of you who are concerned about that, who are Republican, there are some great young Republican minds in Washington." As examples, Jenkins mentioned Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).
[...]
Jenkins' spokeswoman Mary Geiger told the [Topeka Capitol-Journal] that Jenkins' remark was not meant to refer to "race, creed or any background." Said Geiger: "There's no doubt the Republican Party has gone through some dark and challenging times in recent years, but thankfully bright young leaders have stepped up to lead the party into the future and she hopes to be a part of it. That was the intent of her comments -- nothing more and nothing less. Congresswoman Jenkins apologizes for her choice of words."
Unless Rep. Jenkins was taken out of context and she was looking for a copy of the 1970 film The Great White Hope starring James Earl Jones as Jack Johnson, it's pretty clear what her intentions were, more or less. I know a dog-whistle when I hear it.
On the other hand, it was mighty nice of her to include Rep. Cantor, though; he's Jewish. So I guess her bigotry is limited only to race. How enlightened of her.
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Florida's ban on adoption by gays or lesbians has already been overturned by one court. Now that ruling is being appealed.
A Miami appeals court that will help decide the fate of Florida's ban on adoption by gay people grilled lawyers on both sides of the dispute Wednesday as it grappled with a thorny question: Does the law protect children from a risky lifestyle, or merely punish a group disliked by lawmakers?
During oral arguments before the Third District Court of Appeal, an attorney representing the Department of Children & Families defended Florida's 32-year-old ban on gay adoption by insisting the state has a sensible interest in protecting children from social ills that are more common among gay men and women.
''There is evidence that homosexuals have higher rates of mental disorders, suicide and domestic violence,'' said Timothy D. Osterhaus, deputy solicitor general for Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who is representing DCF. ''This is a plausible rationale.''
And in comments outside a Florida International University courtroom, where the arguments were held, John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, declared it was good public policy to promote the adoption of vulnerable children only by households headed by married mothers and fathers.
''We should focus on what is best for kids, not on what we can get by with,'' said Stemberger, who was heckled and interrupted by activists as he answered questions from the press.
I doubt that it occurs to Mr. Osterhaus that one of the reasons homosexuals might have higher rates of mental disorders, etc. would be related to being demonized by the ignorant homophobes like Mr. Stemberger and a legislature that went out of its way to single out gays and lesbians for the adoption ban in 1977. Nothing engenders a little self-doubt like being ostracized and marginalized by state statute.
The appeals panel -- Judges Gerald B. Cope Jr., Frank A. Shepherd and Vance E. Salter -- is not expected to render a decision quickly, and it is not likely to be the last word: Most legal experts predict the case ultimately will be decided by the Florida Supreme Court.
A central question before the appeals court is whether the state has a ''rational basis'' to declare all gay men and women ineligible to adopt. Lawyers for both Gill and the two boys argue the state can effectively screen for mental illness, substance abuse or other risks to children -- as it does with all other prospective adoptive parents.
In his questioning of Osterhaus, Shepherd asked whether DCF had a means to determine whether prospective adoptive parents are susceptible to mental illness, drug abuse or domestic violence -- or whether such risks were ''unascertainable.''
''If these conditions can be examined,'' Shepherd said, ''the statute fails.''
Cope noted that lawmakers chose not to forbid drug addicts, child molesters or even murderers from adopting, but explicitly banned only gay people. ''This is the only absolute disqualifier, as far as I can tell,'' Cope said. ''How can that be justified?''
It can't.
And for all their sanctimony about wanting children to be raised by the likes of Ozzie and Harriet, the "family values" crowd don't seem to actually care about the children being raised by Martin Gill, who has been a foster parent to two boys for four years. These kids have been raised in a loving and caring home and now they want to yank them out and put them back into the hands of the state. But wait; aren't these the same people who are always carrying on about how government can't do anything right? So they're saying it's better to hand these kids over to DCF and their bureaucracy rather then let a gay man adopt them? Wow, it takes an awful lot of fear and loathing to be that cruel to children.
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Ellie Greenwich, who wrote songs that provided the soundtrack for a whole generation of teens, has died.
The Brooklyn-born writer joined forces with producer Phil Spector and her then-husband Jeff Barry to compose elaborately crafted "Wall of Sound" tunes for the likes of the Crystals and the Ronettes, just as the Beatles were about to lead a shift away from outside songwriters.
Working out of New York's famed Brill Building, a haven for singer/songwriters, she also shepherded a young performer named Neil Diamond, producing his early hits "Cherry, Cherry" and "Kentucky Woman."
All told, Greenwich's songs sold tens of millions of copies, and yielded 25 gold and platinum records, according to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, into which she was inducted in 1991.
During 1963 alone, a year after she graduated university with an English degree, the trio hit the top-10 list with such tunes as the Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Then He Kissed Me," and the Ronettes' "Be My Baby." The following year, they hit No. 1 with the Dixie Cups' "Chapel of Love."
I actually had a lot of those songs -- they came on these little plastic discs called "45's" -- and listened to them for hours on AM radio when I was in grade school. I never gave a second thought as to who wrote them. But Ms. Greenwich was a real pioneer; the pop music business is a tough world for anybody, and it must have been especially hard for a young woman in the early 1960's.
"It wasn't that accepted back then — a female being in that end of the business," Greenwich said.
Even today, women usually break into the industry as singers. Greenwich was a good singer, but her Midas touch as a writer and producer earned her a perch in the Brill Building, New York City's famed pop-music factory, along with Carole King. Greenwich told NPR that the girl groups she produced were not always happy about a woman being in charge.
"At first it was like, 'Well, who does she think she is, giving us orders here or telling us what to do?' " Greenwich said. "But on the other end, if you were very open to them, they saw you could be their friend, and then it became an asset to be a woman dealing with girl groups."
Thanks for the music, Ellie. You made a difference.
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Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart didn't let a little thing like Ted Kennedy's death get in the way of his invective against him on Twitter.
Breitbart unapologetically attacked Kennedy, calling him a “villain,” “a big ass motherf@#$er,” a “duplicitous bastard” and a “prick.” “I’ll shut my mouth for Carter. That’s just politics. Kennedy was a special pile of human excrement,” wrote Breitbart in one tweet.
[...]
When a fellow conservative tweeted to Breitbart asking him not to treat Kennedy like they believe some on the left treated the passing of Tony Snow and Ronald Reagan, Breitbart responded “How dare you compare Snow & Reagan to Kennedy! Why do you grant a BULLY special status upon his death? This isnt lib v con.” Despite his claim that his attacks weren’t about “lib v. con,” Breitbart repeatedly justified them in ideological terms.
Even if some on the left had made snide comments about Tony Snow and Ronald Reagan -- although I recall that they were few and far between -- it's both infantile and irrelevant. Common human decency would expect that critics hold their tongue until after the funeral. Even Michelle Malkin, not known for her reticence, wrote that "now is not the time" to attack Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. Breitbart probably thinks it's hypocritical to be nice for a moment to someone just because they've died, then go back on the attack once they're buried. Actually, it's just a sign of empathy to other peoples' feelings, like their family and friends, and we all know how some conservatives feel about empathy.
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The gauze of nostalgia and fading memories are no doubt going to be all over the tributes and recollections over the next few days, but it's hard for those of us over 50 to think about the passing of Teddy Kennedy without thinking back to what it was like when it all began. I was a mere eight years old when his older brother Jack was sworn in as president, but I felt a touch of excitement and connection in 1960 when the White House, previously occupied by people old enough to be my grandparents, would now have little kids running around on the lawn. The assassination of President Kennedy was my first taste of real tragedy on a national scale and made me aware of things outside of my own little world. When I was fifteen and started to care about politics and things like civil rights and war, Bobby Kennedy represented real hope that even if I was still six years away from being able to vote (the voting age wasn't lowered until 1972), I thought I could help make a difference... only to have the dream die on the floor of a hotel kitchen in Los Angeles.
I never wanted Teddy Kennedy to be president. I knew in my heart that his heart wasn't in it, and even if he had been a successful two-term president, he would never have been able to escape the shadow and the legacy of his brother's thousand days. But he found his place in the Senate, and he probably accomplished more there than he would have in the Oval Office.
There will undoubtedly be a push now to pass healthcare reform -- Senator Kennedy's lifelong goal -- and do it in his name. I have a feeling he wouldn't be in favor of milking his death and legacy for the sole purpose of passing the legislation (and there are no doubt going to be people who will exploit it on both sides), but it would be a fitting way of bringing the debate back to a level of sanity that has been sorely lacking in the discussion so far. Sen. Kennedy was there when Medicare was created, he worked throughout his career to make healthcare affordable and accessible, and he did it without resorting to guns and threats of insurrection. Perhaps that will be the lesson for us all.
It is reminiscent of times long past to read headlines this morning and see "Hyannis Port" once again in the dateline and see reporters on the TV news doing their stand-ups outside the Kennedy compound. And while we may remember "Camelot" more for what it represented as the Kennedy era rather than the Broadway musical, the line from the title song that JFK supposedly liked -- "Don't let it be forgot...that once there was a spot" -- also reminds us that while Teddy's "dream will never die," it's the hard work that he did every day that should not be forgotten.
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Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a son of one of the most storied families in American politics, a man who knew triumph and tragedy in near-equal measure and who will be remembered as one of the most effective lawmakers in the history of the Senate, died Tuesday night. He was 77.
There will be a lot of tributes, honors, and memories from people around the nation and around the world who are far more important, insightful, and who knew him far better than I. All I can add is that this loss to his family and to the nation is deeply felt and it goes beyond politics. If you are under the age of 60, you never lived a day without a Kennedy representing Massachusetts in the United States Senate. But beyond the politics, beyond the liberal vs. conservative, beyond the mystique of the Kennedy family, he was a true representative of the people of his state and, in a larger sense, the rest of us. He had his flaws -- and some people will remind us of them over the next few days -- but he always wanted the best for the nation, not for how it benefited him but for how it would make this a better place to live.
I hold him, his family, and the rest of us in the Light.
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Charles Isherwood of the New York Times gives Brian Bedford a rave for his performance as Lady Bracknell at in the Stratford Shakespeare Festival's production of The Importance of Being Earnest.
Brian Bedford (Lady Bracknell), Ben Carlson (John Worthing), Sara Topham (Gwendolen Fairfax), Mike Shara (Algernon Moncrieff)
After fruitlessly seeking a bipartisan compromise on health care reform for months, the White House seems to have finally realized that Republicans have no interest in compromising and that progressives are fed up with making nice. Now, the administration is preparing to go it alone, even if that means passing reform on a straight party-line vote.
[...]
Over the weekend an anonymous source told Bloomberg that the White House is "devising a strategy to pass a measure by relying only on the Democratic majority in each house of Congress."
And former Senate Majority Leader (and Obama confidant) Tom Daschle says Obama's giving up on the GOP. "He's waited and waited," Daschle said after a meeting with the President on Friday. "He has indicated, much to the chagrin of people in his party, that virtually everything's on the table. And he's gotten almost nothing in return for it."
Well, it's about time.
I mean, seriously, what took them so long? The GOP has been saying all along that they will not pass anything that the Democrats come up with, and they haven't bothered to come with anything of their own. I understand why the president wanted to make an attempt at bipartisanship, but after making reasonable tries and getting back "death panels" and Hitler comparisons from members of Congress, it's a bit hopeless to think that they were going to get anything out of them.
There will be some nattering from the GOP about using the reconciliation tactic, but that just proves the depth of their hypocrisy; they were all in favor of it when they were the majority. So the demand by Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) and others that the Democrats get a hypermajority of 75 to 80 votes on the bill is ludicrous.
Now the real test will be if the Democrats stick to it.
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Are you ready for this? The latest right-wing lunatic fringe guessing game is now whether or not President Obama was circumcised.
What is it with right-wingers and Democratic penises, anyway? I seriously think these people have some issues that would make Sigmund Freud quit the business.
On the other hand, it does give me a chance to tell one of my favorite jokes from Leo Rosten's classic The Joys of Yiddish: A man walking down the street comes across a shop with a big clock in the window. He goes in and asks the man behind the counter, "How much to clean my watch?" The man replies, "How should I know? I'm a mohel.*" The customer asks, "So what's with the clock in the window?" The man replies, "What would you put?"
Glenn Greenwald sums up the CIA report on "enhanced interrogation."
Manifestly, none of this happened by accident. As the [Inspector General] Report continuously notes, all of these methods were severe departures from long-standing CIA guidelines (if not practices). This all occurred because the officials at the highest levels of the U.S. Government pronounced that this was permissible, the protections of the Geneva Conventions were "quaint," obsolete and inapplicable, and the U.S. was justified in doing anything and everything in the name of fighting Terrorists. As stomach-turning as these individual acts of sadism are, it is far worse to consider that only low-level interrogators will suffer consequences while those who were truly responsible -- the criminally depraved leaders and lawyers who ordered and authorized it -- will be protected.
The historical record of what the U.S. did during this period is clear and growing. The only question that remains is what, if anything, we will do now that we are seeing the full picture.
Mr. Greenwald notes that he is a consultant for the ACLU, the organization behind the FOIA suit that got the report released.
In the meantime, the Obama administration has announced that it will continue the policy of rendition -- sending terrorism suspects to a third country for interrogation -- but with better oversight.
The argument isn't whether or not we should torture suspects; it is against the law, and all of the "Yes, but..." excuses dreamed up by the defenders don't mitigate that. The simple reality is that no reliable source has indicated that it works.
As for what should happen to the people who committed these acts, the temptation to go after the people who held the drill, fired the guns, or threatened the rapes is powerful since they were the ones who actually were there. They could have chosen not to do them, even if they thought they had legal clearance. But ultimately the responsibility comes down to those who gave the orders. They're the ones who knew the rules; it's why they get the big bucks.
Some folks are complaining that prosecuting the torturers will make us look weak in the eyes of the terrorists. But what's more important; what a bunch of crazy religious fanatics think, or whether or not we live up to the ideas of the rule of law that we're supposed to be fighting for?
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Tropical Update: Invest 92 is nothing but clouds and won't come near land.
One more time: Ben Bernanke, head of the Fed, will get a second term.
Looking into it: Attorney General Eric Holder has named John Durham as the special prosecutor to investigate the CIA torture.
Come on over: North Korea has invited a couple of U.S. diplomats to Pyongyang to talk nukes.
Afghan Vote: A cabinet official says Karzai won the election.
More time: The government has extended the deadline for filing the paperwork for the Cash for Clunkers program that ended last night.
They got theirs: Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez gave raises to 12 staffers while cutting the budget elsewhere, and the County commissioners are not happy.
Taking a cue from the post below about "truth" vs. "facts" in the media...
How many different news sources do you have? Newspapers, blogs, radio, TV, e-mail, your tin-foil hat, or all of the above?
Being completely wired, I read a bunch of papers on line, plus aggregators like Memeorandum and any number of blogs of all stripes. I try to get a balance of views and I take most of it with sodium added. Fetch more...
Ross Douthat believes that if healthcare reform doesn't pass, it won't be President Obama's fault.
In reality, the health care wrestling match is less a test of Mr. Obama’s political genius than it is a test of the Democratic Party’s ability to govern. This is not the Reagan era, when power in Washington was divided, and every important vote required the president to leverage his popularity to build trans-party coalitions. Fox News and Sarah Palin have soapboxes, but they don’t have veto power. Mr. Obama could be a cipher, a nonentity, a Millard Fillmore or a Franklin Pierce, and his party would still have the power to pass sweeping legislation without a single Republican vote.
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If the Congressional Democrats can’t get a health care package through, it won’t prove that President Obama is a sellout or an incompetent. It will prove that Congress’s liberal leaders are lousy tacticians, and that its centrist deal-makers are deal-makers first, poll watchers second and loyal Democrats a distant third. And it will prove that the Democratic Party is institutionally incapable of delivering on its most significant promises.
It's not that the Democrats are incapable of it, it's that they are still unable to grasp the fact that they're dealing with an opposition party that is ruled by lunatics. Even the most seasoned pol has to gape in stunned disbelief that John McCain, the one-time presidential candidate, is willing to give credence to made-up claims about "death panels." And while the "centrist deal-makers" may be hindering the Democrats' progress on crafting a bill with the elements that the president and his allies want, at least they're not turning it over to members of their party whose grasp of reality is in doubt, and their goal is to at least come up with something rather than to kill healthcare reform just to watch it die. Talk about your "death panels"....
One of the most aggravating things about the way the Democrats run their party is that they are perfectly willing to be open about their disagreements and self-doubts. The Republicans have no such problem; they happily march in lockstep and quash any querulous tremors of possible disloyalty. Besides, it's easier to chant "just say no" rather than actually do anything.
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Neal Gabler has some good points to make about the decline of journalism.
T.S. Eliot was wrong. August is the cruelest month. As we head toward next month's congressional face-off on a national healthcare bill, the news media are infatuated with town hall meetings. Over and over, we see angry citizens screaming about a Big Government takeover of the healthcare system, shouting that they will lose their insurance or be forced to give up their doctors and denouncing "death panels" that will euthanize old people.
Of course, none of this is even remotely true. These are all canards peddled by insurance companies terrified of losing their power and profits, by right-wing militants terrified of a victory for the president they hate and by the Republican Party, which has been commandeered by the insurance industry and the militants. But the lies have obviously had their effect. Recent polls show that support for healthcare reform -- reform that would insure more Americans, would force insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions and prevent them from capriciously terminating coverage, and would provide competition to drive down costs -- is rapidly eroding.
Maybe Americans should know better. Maybe they shouldn't fall for the latest imbecilic propaganda and scare tactics. Maybe. But a citizenry is only as well-informed as the quality of information it receives. One can't expect Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin or the Republican Party or even the Democrats to provide serious, truthful assessments of a complex health plan. Truth has to come from somewhere else -- from a reliable, objective, trustworthy source.
It isn't all the fault of the media -- journalists -- that the message has gotten muddled or treated with passive objectivity, relying on little more than a they said/they said tactic, which allowed talking heads with carefully coached and focus-group tested sound bites to say their piece and leave it there. After all, when someone comes on TV, sounds convincing and uses a catch phrase like "death panels" or "socialized medicine," what the heck? You've got your story, and there's neither the time nor the incentive to question their claims or do your own work.
To look at this in a larger context, journalists would no doubt say that it isn't really their job to ferret out the "truth." It is their job to report "facts." If Palin says that Obama intends to euthanize her child, they report it. If Limbaugh says that Obama's healthcare plan smacks of Nazism, they report it. And if riled citizens begin shouting down their representatives, they report it, and report it, and report it. The more noise and the bigger the controversy, the greater the coverage. This creates a situation in which not only is the truth subordinate to lies, but one in which shameless lies are actually privileged over reasoned debate.
Don't think the militants don't know this and take full advantage of it. They know that the media, especially the so-called liberal mainstream media -- which are hardly liberal if assessed honestly -- refrain from attempting to referee arguments for fear that they will be accused by the right of taking sides. So rather than be battered, the media -- and I am talking about the respectable media, not the carnival barkers on cable -- increasingly strive for the simplest sort of balance rather than real objectivity. They marshal facts, but they don't seek truth. They behave as if every argument must be heard and has equal merit, when some are simply specious. That is how global warming, WMD and "end of life" counseling have become part of silly reportorial ping-pong at best and badly misleading information at worst.
One of the core reasons might have something to do with the fact that news is now seen as prime time entertainment, replacing sitcoms and dramas on broadcast TV with their own core of comedy and emotion on programs like The O'Reilly Factor and Countdown. Why watch Two and Half Men when you can watch Pat Buchanan, Glenn Beck, and William Kristol ruminate about Barack Obama's birth certificate? And conversely, why does it take The Daily Show to provide more in-depth insight into what is actually in the healthcare bills than what you find on the round table on ABC's This Week?
This isn't meant to let the Obama administration off the hook for the flat-footed response they've offered in response to the coordinated attacks by the insurance industry and the wing-nuts who are still whistling "Dixie" over the election of a black man as president. It's not like they weren't warned before the election and during the dress rehearsals of the "teabaggers" in April. And it is always easier to put on the loop of a clip of someone waving an Obama-as-Hitler poster than it is to actually dig into the proposed bill and find out that most of the claims being brought up are bogus, exaggerations, or willful ignorance.
Telling the truth requires shoe leather. It requires digging up facts that aren't being handed to you, talking to experts, thinking hard about what you find. This isn't easy. It takes time and energy as well as guts, especially when there are conflicting studies, as there are on healthcare. But finally, we may not have a journalism of truth because we haven't demanded one. Many of us are invested in one side of the story; we are for Obama or against him, for healthcare reform or against it. These are a priori positions. Truth won't change them.
Yet the danger of not insisting on the truth in a brave new world of constant lies is that it subjects our policies to whichever side shouts the loudest or has the most money to spend to mislead us. That is likely to lead to disastrous governance: a needless war, a great recession, a continuation of a failing healthcare system.
What is ironic is that in an age when we are surrounded by the technology that could provide us with instant communication, it's harder than ever to know the truth. Perhaps that's because the journalists who used to do that are relying on the same sources their readers are and leaving it to bloggers to do their fact-checking for them (in spite of the fact that some "journalists" don't think bloggers do any fact-checking at all). They don't call out obvious falsehoods and repeated talking points, they're not stunned and sickened by people brandishing automatic weapons at a presidential event, and they don't point out to people like Joe Scarborough that when he says the both sides are equally responsible for the breakdown in civil discourse, he's full of it. That's not reporting; that's stenography, and it's a disservice to their craft and democracy. Fetch more...
Strange Times -- Leonard Pitts, Jr., on change some people can't deal with.
These are strange times. They call to mind what historian Henry Adams said in the mid-1800s: ''There are grave doubts at the hugeness of the land and whether one government can comprehend the whole.''
Adams spoke in geographical terms of a nation rapidly expanding toward the Pacific. Our challenge is less geographical than spiritual, less a question of the distance between Honolulu and New York than between you and the person right next to you.
Such as when you look at a guy who thought it a good idea to bring a gun to a presidential speech and find yourself stunned by incomprehension. On paper, he is your fellow American, but you absolutely do not know him, recognize nothing of yourself in him. You keep asking yourself: Who is this guy?
We frame the differences in terms of ''conservative'' and ''liberal,'' but these are tired old markers that with overuse and misuse have largely lost whatever meaning they used to have and with it, any ability to explain us to us. This isn't liberal vs. conservative, it is yesterday vs. tomorrow, the stress of profound cultural and demographic changes that will leave none of us as we were.
And change, almost by definition, always comes too fast, always brings a sense of stark dislocation. As in the woman who cried to a reporter, ''I want my country back!'' Probably the country she meant still had Beaver Cleaver on TV and Doris Day on Your Hit Parade.
Round and round we go and where we stop, nobody knows. And it is an open question, as it was for Henry Adams, what kind of country we'll have when it's done. Can one government comprehend the whole? It may be harder to answer now than it was then.
The distances that divide us cannot be measured in miles.
Those on the right who defend the reckless radicals inevitably argue “The left does it too!” It’s certainly true that both the left and the right traffic in bogus, Holocaust-trivializing Hitler analogies, and, yes, the protesters of the antiwar group Code Pink have disrupted Congressional hearings. But this is a false equivalence. Code Pink doesn’t show up on Capitol Hill with firearms. And, as the 1960s historian Rick Perlstein pointed out on the Washington Post Web site last week, not a single Democratic politician endorsed the Weathermen in the Vietnam era.
This week the journalist Ronald Kessler’s new behind-the-scenes account of presidential security, “In the President’s Secret Service,” rose to No. 3 on The Times nonfiction best-seller list. No wonder there’s a lot of interest in the subject. We have no reason to believe that these hugely dedicated agents will fail us this time, even as threats against Obama, according to Kessler, are up 400 percent from those against his White House predecessor.
Blogging from Cuba -- Yoani Sánchez writes frankly about life in Havana.
With her skinny frame and dark hair, she looks a tad like Olive Oyl. But that's where the comparison to Popeye's weak-kneed girlfriend ends. Sánchez is a much tougher figure, a tech-savvy representative of a growing youth-oriented Cuban counterculture who tells it like it is -- about having to feed her family rice with bouillon cubes when there is nothing else, about the surging number of women on the island who deny their realities by popping black-market Valium, about the cops who are assigned to tail her.
From her blog -- desdecuba.com/generationy/ -- translated into more than a dozen languages, she once asked those ''selfless companions who monitor the entrance to my building'' to give her neighbors a break. Their presence inhibited illegal activity in the building, which meant residents could not get anyone to sell them anything on the black market.
''I feel I'm to blame for the commercial strangulation in which the other 143 apartments are plunged, and I have to do something to relieve them,'' Sánchez wrote. ''So, I ask them . . . look the other way when it comes to food.''
''After speaking your mind, you can't one fine day return to silence,'' Sánchez says.
Gov. Charlie Crist (R-FL) says he appealed to a higher authority for help in preventing hurricanes from hitting Florida.
Town Hall reports that Crist was speaking to a group of real estate agents, and credited prayer notes in the Western Wall in Jerusalem with preventing his state from being hit by hurricanes during his time as governor.
Crist told of how he visited the Wall in 2007, and placed a note saying: "Dear God, please protect our Florida from storms and other difficulties. Charlie."
"Time goes on -- May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December -- no hurricanes," Crist said. "Thank God."
Crist has also had other people place notes in the Wall in 2008 and 2009.
Far be it from me to mock someone for their personal religious beliefs, but that's if you keep it personal. Bragging about it to a group of people in a rather blatant effort to appeal to the Jesus-shouter faction of the Republican Party in Florida when you're running for the Senate against a far-right primary opponent smells of craven toadyism and opportunism, not to mention leaving him wide open for mockery from snarky bloggers.
And if Florida gets hit by a hurricane this year, we know who to blame.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told Sean Hannity something odd the other day. (Yeah, I know; it's not exactly a news flash for her to say something odd.)
"...people need to continue to go to the town halls, continue to melt the phone lines of their liberal members of Congress," said Bachmann, "and let them know, under no certain circumstances will I give the government control over my body and my health care decisions."
That sounds a lot like what people who are pro-choice have been saying about a woman's right to choose for decades now. Welcome aboard, Ms. Bachmann.
Of course, she probably didn't mean it that way. After all, she's all in favor of government-run healthcare when it comes to reproductive choice.
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I’ve noticed that President Obama frequently forgoes the necktie — lately, even in public appearances. That reminded me — I have no idea why — that the Iranian regime has shunned the necktie ever since Khomeini pronounced it a symbol of Western decadence.
One of the more disconcerting myths out there about the proposed healthcare reforms is that people would be forced to buy "government-run" healthcare insurance.
Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), the Blue Dog point-man on health care, said yesterday he would not vote for a plan that would "force government-run healthcare on anyone. Period." But he added that the House contained a public plan that is "strictly ... an option."
As Steve Benen points out, that the word "option" is the clue that no one would be forced into buying it. When something is optional, it means you don't have to take it.
But does anyone really want a choice in the matter?
More than three out of every four Americans feel it is important to have a “choice” between a government-run health care insurance option and private coverage, according to a public opinion poll released on Thursday.
A new study by SurveyUSA puts support for a public option at a robust 77 percent, one percentage point higher than where it stood in June.
Yes, but then, the argument goes, the public option might work too well:
“I have a problem with this government option plan,” [Democrat Rick] Boucher said. “I’m troubled that the government option plan could become very popular and if it became sufficiently popular it could begin to crowd out the other” private insurance companies.
The Miami Herald goes after a blogger who used some Herald photos -- with credit. (It's a little ironic since the Herald courted bloggers to promote their blog community page.)
The opinions expressed in the postings on this site are, unless otherwise noted, solely those of the author (me). I take no responsibility for the opinions or contents expressed in referenced links or websites. The opinions expressed in the Comments section are solely those of their author and are subject to editing or deletion for offensive content.
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Stop That Noise!
