Bark Bark Woof Woof: February 2011

Monday, February 28, 2011

A Little Night Music

Question of the Day

There's another snowstorm headed for the Northeast.

Driving in snow: expert, intermediate, novice, or stay home?

I spent enough years growing up in the Midwest and living in Colorado that I'm pretty good at it. When I lived in Petoskey, it was pretty much a given that you'd spend at least four months driving in it. The last time I drove in heavy snow was Christmas 2009 when I visited my folks. We all survived.

Gas Price Survey

I got a hell of a shock yesterday morning when I stopped by to fill up the tank at the local Marathon station here in Palmetto Bay: $3.44* for regular. That is up 25 cents a gallon in one week. And of course they're blaming it on unrest in the Middle East, particularly Libya, where the turmoil continues. But we only get about 2% of our oil from Libya, and as far as I can tell, the refineries are still running, even if some of the foreign workers have left.

Oh, I am sure that there are other reasons for the steep spike in gas prices -- speculation, market demand, seasonal adjustments -- that make sense in some economic circles. But when you pull into the gas station and watch the numbers spin by like a slot machine, it's pretty easy to convince the average driver that the oil companies are doing it just because they can.

So, how much are you paying in your area?

*It was up to $3.47 when I went by this morning: a 3-cent hike in one day.

Building Up the Base

The Republicans often claim that the deficit will cause us to leave a huge tax bill for our children and grandchildren, and that cutting spending is the only way to save them from this punishing burden. But as Paul Krugman notes, the children are already suffering.

While low spending may sound good in the abstract, what it amounts to in practice is low spending on children, who account directly or indirectly for a large part of government outlays at the state and local level.

And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.

But wait — how can graduation rates be so low when Texas had that education miracle back when former President Bush was governor? Well, a couple of years into his presidency the truth about that miracle came out: Texas school administrators achieved low reported dropout rates the old-fashioned way — they, ahem, got the numbers wrong.

It’s not a pretty picture; compassion aside, you have to wonder — and many business people in Texas do — how the state can prosper in the long run with a future work force blighted by childhood poverty, poor health and lack of education.

There really doesn't seem to be much of a point of cutting spending if the result is leaving the children broke, sick, and ignorant... unless you're trying to build up the next generation of the Republican base.

States Righties

Some GOP-dominated states are telling the feds to butt out.

State legislatures, bolstered by the huge Republican freshman classes that were swept into power from New Hampshire to Montana last year, have intensified their attacks on federal authority in the name of states’ rights.

The efforts actually began before the election, in fights over the health care bill and gun regulation, but have spread to issues including the regulation of greenhouse gases, commerce and food safety.

“There is a lot more activity on a broader front,” said Karl Kurtz, a staff analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Fueled by the election results, more Republicans are pursuing their agenda.”

In Kentucky, the State Senate is expected to take up a bill this week declaring the state a “sanctuary” from meddling by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In Arizona, the State Senate approved a measure this month that would exempt all products made and consumed within its boundaries from federal interstate commerce laws.

The Montana Legislature is considering a bill that would allow the state to nullify federal laws that protect endangered species. And in Georgia, a bill that would override federal monetary regulations by requiring banks to accept payment in gold or silver has survived two readings in the State House of Representatives.

What most of these folks who are feeling like they can do everything for themselves are forgetting is just how much money they get from the federal government for everything from schools to paying for pot hole repair. It's in the billions for each state every year. So if they want to truly be on their own and kick the feds out, first they need to give all that money back. Then we'll talk.

(Here's how one president dealt with it.)

Quote of the Day

Colin Firth on winning the Oscar for Best Actor:

I have a feeling my career's just peaked.

Let's hope not.

Short Takes

Rebels in Libya are gaining supporters among defectors.

China makes sure that its citizens don't emulate those in the Middle East.

Demonstrators get to camp out in the state capitol in Madison.

Federal agents are trying to get Gov. Scott to reverse his stand on pill mills in Florida.

The King's Speech wins Best Picture Oscar.

R.I.P. Frank Buckles, 110, the last U.S. veteran of World War I.

Spring Training: The Tigers beat Toronto again, 1-0.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

A Little Night Music

My favorite "Best Original Song" from the Oscars.

Sunday Reading

The Test -- Jeffrey Toobin on President Obama's next step in the evolution of his views on marriage equality.

Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to cease defending the constitutionality of Section Three of the Defense of Marriage Act strikes me as very big news. It’s really all about President Obama’s self-proclaimed evolving position on same-sex marriage. But you’ll have to bear with me to explain why.

For starters, though, Holder’s letter is important on its own terms. It’s very unusual for any Administration to refuse to defend the constitutionality of a law that is already on the books. Of course, the Administration’s position is no guarantee that the courts, especially the Supreme Court, will agree with its interpretation of DOMA; but Holder’s view might well make an impression on Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court’s swing vote and the author of its two most important decisions protecting the rights of gay and lesbian people, Lawrence v. Texas and Romer v. Evans.

But the letter raises an even more important possibility. Holder takes the position that “classifications based on sexual orientation warrant heightened scrutiny.” This may sound like legal mumbo jumbo, but it’s crucial. To explain why, we need to examine seventy years of constitutional law (in two paragraphs).

At the beginning of the New Deal, the conservatives on the Supreme Court struck down a great many of F.D.R.’s regulatory laws. When Roosevelt’s own appointees took control of the Court, they vowed that they would stay out of the business of telling Congress what it could regulate. If Congress had a “rational basis” for its laws, the Court would affirm them.

There was one important exception to this rule. In the famous Footnote Four of the majority decision in United States v. Carolene Products Co., in 1938, Justice Harlan Stone said that the Courts should give greater scrutiny to one category of laws: those that affect minorities. In real terms, that meant that if a law treated a racial minority differently from other people, the Court would apply what became known as “strict scrutiny” and almost always declare it unconstitutional. In the nineteen-seventies, the Court started ruling on laws that treated women differently. The Court said that these laws wouldn’t receive strict scrutiny (like racial laws), but still “heightened scrutiny” (rather than, in legal lingo, a “rational basis” test). In real terms, that has meant that the Court has now also struck down most laws that treat women differently.

This brings us back to the Holder letter. What Holder is saying here is that the courts should apply the same level of scrutiny to laws about gay people as they do to laws about women. Under the heightened-scrutiny test, Holder concludes, there is no justification for DOMA, so it is unconstitutional. (DOMA says that the federal government will not treat gay people who are legally married in their states as married people under federal law. So a married same-sex couple in Massachusetts is not treated as married under, for example, the Internal Revenue Code.)

Here’s the key thing. The arguments against DOMA are virtually identical to the arguments against bans on same-sex marriage. As the Proposition 8 trial in California demonstrated, there are very few, if any, justifications for denying gay and lesbian people the right to get married. Judge Vaughn Walker applied a rational basis test to Prop 8 and struck it down. He said it was completely irrational to discriminate against gay people in this manner.

But if a Court would apply heightened scrutiny to the ban on same-sex marriage, there is no way that it would be upheld—and that’s what Holder is advocating. In other words, Holder is now on the record, with Obama’s explicit approval, advocating a legal standard that will almost certainly result in bans on same-sex marriage being declared unconstitutional.

So here’s the bottom line: Holder’s letter locks Obama in. Sooner rather than later, the President will officially change his position and endorse the right of same-sex couples to get married.

More below the fold.

Life After Death -- John Temple reflects on how his life in journalism has changed -- and improved -- since the demise of the paper he once edited.

Two years ago, on Feb. 26, 2009, journalists at the Rocky Mountain News learned their fate. E.W. Scripps President Rich Boehne told them the edition they produced for the next day would be the Denver newspaper's last.

"It's certainly not good news for you, and it's certainly not good news for Denver," Boehne told a throng of journalists assembled in the newsroom.

On that day, I was the editor, president, and publisher of Colorado's oldest newspaper, affectionately known as "The Rocky."

Today, I can't speak to what the loss of the paper has meant to Denver. I am in Honolulu, running a start-up news service, www.civilbeat.com. But I can give you a picture of what it has meant for the men and women who were on the editorial staff when Boehne spoke those words. Then, they were shoved into the ranks of the millions of victims of the Great Recession. Today, most are among its survivors.

In spite of all the negatives associated with the death of a business -- loss of income, meaningful work, camaraderie -- I found that people, and perhaps especially journalists, are resilient.

A survey I just conducted of the 194 members of the paper's editorial staff on its last day found that the blow of losing a job doesn't mean life is going to be worse down the road. My survey wasn't scientific. It's possible that those who didn't respond are struggling personally or financially more than those who did. But the 146, or 75 percent, who did respond have lessons for journalists and others who fear the instability of their jobs or who may have suffered a similar fate.

More (44, or 30 percent) said their life is better today than said it is worse (35, or 24 percent). The largest group -- nearly half -- said the quality of their life is the same. Among the reasons: more time with family, learning new skills, and new opportunities made up for the loss of a job. And maybe one more that went unsaid: fewer than 1 percent said they are unemployed, with 92 percent saying they're working (the others are retired or studying). That's extraordinary, considering a national survey that found just one-third of people who lost work had replacement jobs 15 months later.

There's no question, though, that losing their job meant most needed to adjust to a new, lower, standard of living. Ninety-eight, or nearly 70 percent, are making less money today than they did when they were employed by the Rocky, and that doesn't factor in benefits, a worry for many today. About 40 percent said they are earning "much less."

While you might expect a correlation between income and how people feel about their lives, plenty of former Rocky employees making less money today said their lives are better now than when they were at the paper. The difference in the proportion of those making more and those making less who said life is better now was negligible.

One striking finding -- perhaps encouraging for those who can't imagine life after journalism -- is that a greater percentage of those who left the profession said their life is better today than when they were at the Rocky. Half of those who responded who'd left the field said their life is somewhat or much better. Only a quarter of those who stayed in journalism said their life is better now. Of course, maybe the last few years of turmoil had just made life wear thin.

Evolution of the Crazy -- Kevin Drum remembers the good old days of moderate Republicans under Ronald Reagan.

Even after writing about this for most of the past decade, it's hard to fathom. When Ronald Reagan was elected, it seemed at the time like the ultimate triumph of hardcore right-wing politics. It was the Reagan Revolution! He was going to slash taxes, institute supply-side economics, bust the unions, appoint uncompromising judges, give the Christian right a seat at the table, and declare war on the welfare queens.

It couldn't get any worse, could it? Well, yes, it could: in the 90s we got the Republican Party of Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist, and they made Reagan look like the jolly old man he's since been mythologized as. Taxes? They wanted a blood oath against ever raising them for any reason whatsoever. Gingrich gleefully led an assault on a Democratic Speaker of the House that destroyed his career, something no previous leader of either party had ever tried to do. The GOP flatly refused to negotiate on healthcare reform, they shut down the government in 1995, and then did their best to impeach Bill Clinton over a blow job. This was a take-no-prisoners party like we'd never seen.

But the Newt Gingrich of 1995 was, as Clinton said, still somebody you could deal with. He may have been right wing, but he cared about policy and he cared about getting things done. Today even that's gone. Obama got virtually zero support for a stimulus bill designed to help get us out of the worst recession since World War II, he got no support for rescuing GM and Chrysler, he got no support for healthcare reform, and he got no support for financial reform even after a decade in which big banks were so far out of control they nearly wrecked the entire global economy. He's been attacked from Day 1 as non-American, non-Christian, and non-patriotic. The filibuster became not just a tool of intense opposition to big legislation, but an everyday tool of obstruction. Tea partiers and Glenn Beck accused him of being a socialist for sure, maybe a Muslim too, and quite possibly a fifth columnist as well. Rush Limbaugh mocks his wife and prominent GOP leaders make jokes about whether he was born in Kenya. A government shutdown isn't just something that might happen if Obama and Congress can't find a workable compromise on the budget, it's actively viewed as a positive goal. And, as Brownstein says, governors are no longer on the sidelines, sometimes working with the president and sometimes not depending on what's best for their state. They're fully enrolled in the war against Obama.

I don't know how this turns out. A parliamentary system of government can operate this way, but not a presidential system. Somewhere, somehow, this wave has to crest and then break. But when? And how?

Doonesbury -- Your very own newscast.

Short Takes

The U.N. imposes sanctions and calls for a war crimes investigation in Libya.

North Korea is starving and rattling its sabre.

Tens of thousands came out in the snow in Madison to continue the protest.

Warren Buffet is optimistic about the country's economic future.

It's Oscar night tonight.

The Tigers got spring training off to a good start by blanking the Blue Jays 4-0 in Dunedin.

There's a great car show today in Boca Raton.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

A Little Night Music

Quote of the Day

Bob Herbert in the New York Times:

Among the many heartening things about the workers fighting back in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere is the spotlight that is being thrown on the contemptuous attitude of the corporate elite and their handmaidens in government toward ordinary working Americans: police officers and firefighters, teachers, truck drivers, janitors, health care aides, and so on. These are the people who do the daily grunt work of America. How dare we treat them with contempt.

It would be a mistake to think that this fight is solely about the right of public employees to collectively bargain. As important as that issue is, it’s just one skirmish in what’s shaping up as a long, bitter campaign to keep ordinary workers, whether union members or not, from being completely overwhelmed by the forces of unrestrained greed in this society.

The predators at the top, billionaires and millionaires, are pitting ordinary workers against one another. So we’re left with the bizarre situation of unionized workers with a pension being resented by nonunion workers without one. The swells are in the background, having a good laugh.

Short Takes

Iran reports major problems with their nuclear reactor.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Libya as forces loyal to ~~Gadafi~~ ~~Kaddafi~~ Qaddafi battle protesters.

The GOP is working out a budget deal that might be acceptable to Democrats in order to avoid a government shutdown.

Yet another weekend of bad weather in the Northeast, and it even snowed in San Francisco.

The feds offer Florida more time to reconsider high-speed rail.

The week in review with Jon Stewart:

The Daily Show - Recap - Week of 2/25/11
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Friday, February 25, 2011

A Little Night Music

The Detroit Tigers spring training games began today. The late Ernie Harwell, who called games for the Tigers for generations, paid tribute to the game.

Question of the Day

Want some mayo with that?

What's your favorite deli sandwich?

Pastrami on rye with mustard. Throw in a kosher dill pickle.

Get Psyched

This is like something out of a Hollywood parody:

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

"My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."

[...]

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

So, I take it Angela Lansbury was not available?

Spending Cuts Will Cost Money

Via the Los Angeles Times:

Spending cuts approved by House Republicans would act as a drag on the U.S. economy, according to a Wall Street analysis that put new pressure on the political debate in Washington.

The report by the investment firm Goldman Sachs said the cuts would reduce the growth in gross domestic product by up to 2 percentage points this year, essentially cutting in half the nation's projected economic growth for 2011.

The analysis, prepared for the firm's clients, represents the first independent economic assessment of the congressional budget fight, which could lead to a government shutdown as early as next week.

Nonetheless, Republicans are unlikely to easily retreat from their insistence on more than $60 billion in reductions in federal spending as a condition of continuing funding for the government through the rest of the year.

A spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said the Goldman Sachs report represented "the same outdated Washington mind-set," comparing it to the thinking behind the 2009 Recovery Act that released federal funds to counter the effects of the recession.

It's interesting that this comes from Goldman Sachs, a company that is not known for being left-leaning. And it's also interesting that House Speaker John Boehner is so quick to dismiss the idea, just as he did with the CBO estimate, because they're not giving him the news he wants to hear.

Any Plans This Weekend?

You could always show your solidarity with the workers in Wisconsin.

On Saturday, February 26, at noon local time, we are organizing rallies in front of every statehouse and in every major city to stand in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin. We demand an end to the attacks on worker's rights and public services across the country. We demand investment, to create decent jobs for the millions of people who desperately want to work. And we demand that the rich and powerful pay their fair share.

We are all Wisconsin. We are all Americans.

It looks like they're doing it here in Miami at Bayfront Park. I have to work, but if you go, wear sunscreen, be nice, and for the love of Dog, spell your sign correctly.

Fox News Chief and Perjury

This could get interesting.

It was an incendiary allegation — and a mystery of great intrigue in the media world: After the publishing powerhouse Judith Regan was fired by HarperCollins in 2006, she claimed that a senior executive at its parent company, News Corporation, had encouraged her to lie two years earlier to federal investigators who were vetting Bernard B. Kerik for the job of homeland security secretary.

Ms. Regan had once been involved in an affair with Mr. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner whose mentor and supporter, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, was in the nascent stages of a presidential campaign. The News Corporation executive, whom she did not name, wanted to protect Mr. Giuliani and conceal the affair, she said.

Now, court documents filed in a lawsuit make clear whom Ms. Regan was accusing of urging her to lie: Roger E. Ailes, the powerful chairman of Fox News and a longtime friend of Mr. Giuliani. What is more, the documents say that Ms. Regan taped the telephone call from Mr. Ailes in which Mr. Ailes discussed her relationship with Mr. Kerik.

It may be corporate policy at Fox News to lie or just make stuff up, but when you do it to federal investigators, they have a way of making your life miserable and your lawyer very rich.

Even More of That Great GM Feeling

Things are really looking up at General Motors.

General Motors, which nearly collapsed from the weight of its debts two years ago before reorganizing in a government-sponsored bankruptcy, said Thursday that it earned $4.7 billion in 2010, the most in more than a decade.

It was the first profitable year since 2004 for G.M., which became publicly traded in November, ending a streak of losses totaling about $90 billion.

Recently the company announced that it would share the profits with its employees, giving out bonuses that average over $4,000 each.

Remember, now; this was the company that the Republicans said should be allowed to fail and that the government bailout would never work, or if it did it, the company would never be as profitable as it once was. These were the same people that said that the war in Iraq would pay for itself with oil revenues and that Wall Street didn't need any regulation; they were fine on their own. Ironically, the GOP is proud to be the party of business and corporate intelligence.

Friday Blogaround

Why is it that short weeks seem to be the longest?

A Blog Around The Clock links to a post about how the internet is being used to hijack medical science.
archy slides into history.
Bark Bark Woof Woof on the continuing saga of false equivalency.
Bloggg on paying for public schools.
Dohiyi Mir looks for the union label.
Echidne Of The Snakes takes on the WSJ.
Florida Progressive Coalition Blog: Kenneth has a moving post.
The Invisible Library wonders what is wrong with these people?
Left Is Right: bits o' the week.
Pen-Elayne on the Web wants her jetpack.
Rook's Rant on Governor Stupid.
rubber hose explains what the Crusades were all about.
Scrutiny Hooligans: action/news.
Stupid Enough Unexplanation proves that Jonah Goldberg earned the nickname "Doughy Pantload" honestly.
The Yellow Something Something is impressed by what you can get at Amazon.com.
WTF Is It Now?? -- how much does it cost?

I'm going to infiltrate a Republican gathering this weekend. I'll have pictures.

Short Takes

Libyan rebels are holding their own.

Wisconsin assembly votes to limit union rights.

A student in Texas has been accused of planning to bomb the home of former President Bush.

Oil prices retreat a little.

Unemployment claims have dropped again.

Aloha! -- Hawaii has legalized same-sex civil unions.

Space shuttle Discovery finally made it into space for the last time.

Friday Catblogging Classic

Tax time....

"The refund should be here next week."

Thursday, February 24, 2011

A Little Night Music

The Tigers play their first spring training game tomorrow.

Question of the Day

Do you like spicy food?

Yes, especially New Mexican food. I guess keeping a bottle of Tabasco sauce on my desk would be a giveaway.

Ring and Run

This is certainly a unique way of dealing with immigration.

Over the past few months, over a dozen immigration bills have been filed in the Texas legislature by lawmakers who are intent on getting tough on immigration. Most of the pieces of legislation are essentially carbon copies of bills that have been proposed in other state legislatures — namely Arizona’s. However, state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst (R) has introduced a bill that, to its credit, is certainly original. Kolkhorst’s legislation would allow local law enforcement officials to drop off undocumented immigrants at the doorstep of any U.S. senator or representative. The bill reads:
A law enforcement agency that has custody of an illegal immigrant to whom this article applies may:
(1) release or discharge the illegal immigrant at the office of a United States senator or United States representative during that office’s normal business hours; and
(2) request an agent or employee of the United States senator or United States representative to sign a document acknowledging the release or discharge of the illegal immigrant at the senator ’s or representative’s office.

A flaming bag of dog shit is optional.

Photo of the Day

This made me LOL:

Going Live

Hey, remember how after the shootings in Tucson everyone said we should all be nice to each other and not talk about guns and killings at political rallies? Those were the days.

On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building—something that didn't end up happening—one Twitter user sent out a chilling public response: "Use live ammunition."

From my own Twitter account, I confronted the user, JCCentCom. He tweeted back that the demonstrators were "political enemies" and "thugs" who were "physically threatening legally elected officials." In response to such behavior, he said, "You're damned right I advocate deadly force." He later called me a "typical leftist," adding, "liberals hate police."

Only later did we realize that JCCentCom was a deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana.

As one of 144 attorneys in that office, Jeff Cox has represented the people of his state for 10 years. And for much of that time, it turns out, he's vented similar feelings on Twitter and on his blog, Pro Cynic. In his nonpolitical tweets and blog posts, Cox displays a keen litigator's mind, writing sharply and often wittily on military history and professional basketball. But he evinces contempt for political opponents—from labeling President Obama an "incompetent and treasonous" enemy of the nation to comparing "enviro-Nazis" to Osama bin Laden, likening ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Service Employees International Union members to Nazi "brownshirts" on multiple occasions, and referring to an Indianapolis teen as "a black teenage thug who was (deservedly) beaten up" by local police. A "sensible policy for handling Afghanistan," he offered, could be summed up as: "KILL! KILL! ANNIHILATE!"

I'm happy to report that Mr. Cox can now devote his full energies to his Twitter and blog accounts because, according to the Indiana Attorney General's office, he's out of a job.

Mr. Cox later told an Indianapolis TV station that his comments were meant to be "satirical" and that "[p]ublic employees don't lose their own First Amendment rights, especially on their own time and own resources by virtue of their public employment. I think we're getting down a slippery slope here in terms of silencing people who disagree." Well, now he can use his free time studying up on what satire is and perhaps take a refresher course on constitutional law and the First Amendment: losing your job for saying something really stupid is not a violation of your rights.

Defense of Marriage Act No Longer Defensible

Here's some very good news on the civil rights front:

President Obama, in a striking legal and political shift, has determined that the Defense of Marriage Act — the 1996 law that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages — is unconstitutional, and has directed the Justice Department to stop defending the law in court, the administration said Wednesday.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the decision in a letter to members of Congress. In it, he said the administration was taking the extraordinary step of refusing to defend the law, despite having done so during Mr. Obama’s first two years in the White House.

“The president and I have concluded that classifications based on sexual orientation” should be subjected to a strict legal test intended to block unfair discrimination, Mr. Holder wrote. As a result, he said, a crucial provision of the Defense of Marriage Act “is unconstitutional.”

This doesn't mean that the law is no longer on the books; it just means that when it is challenged in federal court, as it has been on several occasions, the Justice Department will not defend it. This has major implications in going forward with the lawsuits.

Naturally the Republicans are incensed, accusing the White House of playing politics with the issue and using this news as a distraction from dealing with the economy. This from people who have so far spent their time reading the Constitution out loud, trying to pass bills that redefine what "forcible rape" is, using the budget cuts to strip away funding from Planned Parenthood, and repealing healthcare. Is that irony or chutzpah? I can't tell anymore.

What gets me is that DOMA should be a nightmare to a true conservative. Talk about big government barging into the private lives of citizens; this law is that on crack. And it should be anathema to the Tenthers; DOMA is a classic case of the federal government sticking its nose into states' rights and telling them who can and can't get married in Massachusetts or Florida or what rights are transferable from one state to the next. If you think the healthcare law is unconstitutional, then why isn't DOMA?

I understand why until now the Obama administration felt it had to defend the law in court. In the cold dry air of the law, the government has an obligation to defend the federal laws on the books whether they agree with them or not. But it's become increasingly clear that in the years since the bill was passed that it is a rotten law that is little more than legalized gay-bashing. (Besides, we now have the immigrants and Muslims to beat up on.) There really is no justice in the Justice Department defending something that is indefensible.

Call Me

As you probably heard, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker got a prank phone call from Ian Murphy, a blogger for the Buffalo Beast, posing as one of the Koch brothers.

According to the audio, Walker told him:

* That statehouse GOPers were plotting to hold Democratic senators' pay until they returned to vote on the controversial union-busting bill.

* That Walker was looking to nail Dems on ethics violations if they took meals or lodging from union supporters.

* That he'd take "Koch" up on this offer: "[O]nce you crush these bastards I'll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time."

Aside from the hilarity factor ("Governor, I've got Hugh Jardon holding on line 2..."), there's the very good point that Ezra Klein makes about who Gov. Walker will talk to and who he won't.

But if the transcript of the conversation is unexceptional, the fact of it is lethal. The state's Democratic senators can't get Walker on the phone, but someone can call the governor's front desk, identify themselves as David Koch, and then speak with both the governor and his chief of staff? That's where you see the access and power that major corporations and wealthy contributors will have in a Walker administration, and why so many in Wisconsin are reluctant to see the only major interest group representing workers taken out of the game.

Last year, when the Tea Partiers were making their voices heard, we were told by the GOP that they were "the voices of the people," and that it was true democracy at work to see them out there with their signs calling for change. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, they're nothing but a bunch of thugs trying to intimidate the duly-elected representatives. How quickly they change their view of people power. It might also have something to do with the fact that there were powerful interests behind the Tea Party such as the Koch brothers pulling the strings. What this call to Mr. Walker reveals is that the right-wing rallies were just a lot of window-dressing to cover the fact that a GOP governor will listen to the people... as long as they're the ones with the money and the influence.

Short Takes

Turmoil continues in Libya.

Hope is fading for survivors of the New Zealand earthquake.

Protests continue in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana over workers' rights.

There are signs of budget compromise in the House to avert a shutdown.

Stocks fell and oil prices rose thanks to the unrest in Libya.

Representatives of the federal government have been trying to convince Gov. Scott on the high-speed rail.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

A Little Night Music

Where were you in the summer of 1967?

Question of the Day

Read it and weep...

Do you read food package labeling? Another way of asking is: good or good for you?

Yes, but usually after I've bought it.

False Alarm

Digby examines Jon Stewart's critiques of the demonstrations in Madison and finds his attempts to play both sides against each other to be tiresome.

I'm so glad we have Jon Stewart around to reduce all political activities of ordinary people into a clown show. It makes it much easier to maintain our ironic distance. Silly people making noises in public is really beneath all smart liberals like ourselves -- the only respectable way for people to engage in politics is to let Jon Stewart explain it all to us in our special coded hipster humor....

[...]

The interesting thing about all this to me is that the left's original critique of the mainstream media was that they affected this pose of being "objective" with this he said/she said. (Jay Rosen has developed an entire thesis about it, called "the view from nowhere.") And Stewart isn't doing that exactly, even though he takes great pride in drawing an equivalence between the politics of Fox, which is owned by a giant corporation with an explicit, coordinated partisan goal and the "politics" of MSNBC which is also owned by a giant corporation and has allowed a couple of liberal voices to speak in public for purely pecuniary reasons. Instead, he's telling liberals (nobody else cares what he thinks) that it's more important to behave in a dignified, fair fashion than to stand up for your beliefs in a way that could be perceived as unseemly or one-sided. That makes you as bad as the other side.

Except, of course, it really doesn't. It's really about what you're fighting for. Tea partiers were trying to stop the federal government from reforming our health care system so that middle class workers will not go broke or die if they get sick. The Wisconsin protesters are trying to stop the Republican governor from making it illegal for them to belong to a union so that they can live a decent middle class life. Can we all see the pattern here? I'm sorry that people are misbehaving and failing to have the Oxford style debate that Stewart seems to think we should have, but this is a big argument that's taking place and I'm fairly sure that it's not going to be resolved by having some elite representatives of both sides sitting around Charlie Rose's table hashing it all out and then going out for drinks afterwards.

I think that's what bothered me about the Stewart/Colbert rally last October; it was more about the method and the theatrics than it was about what the two sides were saying. Mr. Stewart has effectively said that both sides in the national argument have merit, and the liberals, in their natural state, stroked their chins and said, "You know, you might be right."

Well, you know what? They're not. The false equivalency between the Obama supporters and the Tea Party people basically concedes that the cranky white people demonstrating to keep the government out of Medicare are right, or that they might have a point in looking into why the State of Hawaii hasn't sent out copies of the president's original birth certificate, or that maybe the direct election of the United States Senate by the people of their state isn't such a good idea after all. To even entertain these ideas means they win because it's the same as saying that while Charles Darwin came up with a very plausible and provable theory about the origin of the species, the story with the two naked people and the talking snake is also scientifically valid. It's one of the things that drives me crazy about liberalism. Sometimes there are very bright lines.

What I think is bringing this home to a lot of people is that now all the Tea Party rhetoric is no longer just abstract ideas and misspelled signs at rallies. We have elected officials who are trying to implement laws that will have tangible results on their lives. It's more than the reduction of benefits; it's the right to organize that is at stake. Jon Stewart can poke fun at both sides of the argument in Madison, but I'm pretty sure that if his union -- the Screen Actors Guild -- had its collective bargaining rights in jeopardy, he'd not be so quick to try to find the false equivalency. As it is, he's no different than Joe Scarborough being shocked, shocked, to find people carrying snarky signs about the governor of Wisconsin. (This is my favorite one, by the way.)

I also find it slightly ironic that when state and federal governments were passing laws that restricted the rights of people to live their lives -- i.e. the Defense of Marriage Act and tighter restrictions on reproductive rights -- there wasn't a groundswell of public opinion that rallied people to state capitals and shut down the legislative process. I don't remember the Democrats taking it on the lam when marriage equality was up for a vote. But now that it's about the rights of workers, regardless of sexual orientation or gender, being on the line, it's -- rightfully -- a big deal.

It's a pretty damn good illustration of the idea that rights are binary; you either have them or you don't, and if you take away one right from one person or group, you take all of them away from everyone. It's nice to see people getting it.

Scott: "Collective Bargaining is Fine"

Via TPM, Florida Gov. Rick Scott is okay with public employees and collective bargaining.

"My belief is as long as people know what they're doing, collective bargaining is fine," Scott said in an interview with Tallahassee's WFLA FM radio station.

Scott claimed that Walker has no choice but to pare back worker benefits because deficits are projected to be large and tax hikes are off the table.

"No one's voting for a tax increase," Scott said.

But as long as state workers are agreeing to pony up, Scott says the workers should be allowed to organize.

I suspect Mr. Scott's willingness to allow for collective bargaining has more to do with the fact that unions here in Florida don't carry nearly the weight that they do in the Midwest, particularly in the states with large manufacturing bases such as the auto industry. It's easy for him to be magnanimous to a group that doesn't have a lot of clout; it doesn't cost him anything, he comes off as a friend of labor when he tosses them a treat, and it gives him cover when he screws them over later.

Healthcare Law Wins One More

Yet another court case about the healthcare law has ended with a judge upholding the law.

A federal judge on Tuesday upheld the health care reform law signed last year by President Barack Obama and found that Congress had the clear authority to regulate health insurance under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler's 64-page ruling takes aim at the argument espoused by many conservatives which holds that the passive act of not purchasing health insurance does not constitute an activity that can be regulated under the Commerce Clause.

"It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not 'acting,' especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice," Kessler writes. "Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something. They are two sides of the same coin. To pretend otherwise is to ignore reality."

Earlier this month when a judge here in Florida ruled the law unconstitutional, the news got banner headlines and the right wingers hailed it as the end of the line for the law. I wonder if they'll even notice this ruling, or if they do, they'll give it the same weight. Somehow I doubt it.

Dreams' End

This story is just another reminder that there are dangerous places in the world.

Jean and Scott Adam shared a dream through 15 years of marriage: to retire, build a boat and sail the world. And that is precisely what they did, heading out in 2004 from Marina Del Rey, Calif., on a custom-built 58-foot yacht for a permanent vacation that brought them to exotic islands and remote coastlines: Fiji, Micronesia, China, Phuket.

“And now: Angkor Wat! And Burma!” Mrs. Adam wrote just before Christmas, her blog post bustling with characteristic excitement.

The dream came to a brutal end on Tuesday when the Adams and their crew — Phyllis Macay and Robert A. Riggle of Seattle — were killed by pirates off the coast of Somalia in one of the most violent episodes since the modern-day piracy epidemic began several years ago, American officials said.

It is not clear why the pirates killed their hostages, either accidentally during a firefight or possibly out of revenge for the Somali pirates killed by American sharpshooters in a hostage-taking in 2009.

I doubt that the pirates knew these people were going around the world doing Christian evangelism, either. The pirates did what they've been doing for years, and so far there's been not much anyone has been able to do to put a stop to it, other than tell people to stay away from that part of the world.

Short Takes

The death toll in the New Zealand earthquake has reached at least 75.

The kidnapping of four Americans by Somali pirates did not end well.

Libyan soldiers are defying Gadafi and siding with the protesters as the revolt continues.

The unrest in Libya explains the jump in oil prices.

Rahm Emanuel won the Chicago mayor race.

Indiana and Ohio are the next battlegrounds for unions.

Broward County Public Schools reacts to a scathing report from a grand jury.

There are twists and turns in the Miami-Dade County recall election.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

A Little Night Music

Question of the Day

Hit the road....

What's the farthest you've driven in one day?

From Boulder, Colorado, to Northport, Michigan in August 1986.

Fair Fight

If, as David Brooks postulates, Gov. Walker is being held hostage by the unions and his refusal to negotiate is based on his belief that the unions are all-powerful, Mr. Walker has some awfully powerful allies on his side as well, including the Koch brothers and the denizens of the John Birch Society.

So if Mr. Brooks is truly suggesting that in these tough times, everybody should hurt in order to make everything better, the least they can do is have a fair fight to begin with. That's not exactly what we have going on here.

Spellcheck

One of the things that probably will not be resolved by the turmoil in Libya is how to spell the name of the guy who has been the dictator there for over forty years. Is it Gadhafi? Or is it Qaddafi?

I've also seen it spelled "Khaddafi", "al-Gaddafi", "Kaddafi", and "Kadafi".

I hope the next time there's a revolution somewhere, the guy they overthrow is named Fred.

The State of the Unions

The demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin, have brought the question of public-sector employees being covered by unions to the forefront: should people who work on behalf of the taxpayer have the right to organize?

The Republicans have taken the view that all unions are greedy, corrupt, and intimidating to management, which translates into the fact that unions are usually supporters of the Democrats. The GOP talking heads are prone to say that the most powerful group in the country is the teachers' unions, which, according to them, has the public education system in every state by the throat and is holding everyone, including the children, hostage. That's a nice bit of hyperbole, but if that was really true, than why is it that teachers are among some of the lowest paid union workers in the country -- in Wisconsin, a teacher's salary is below the median income for the state -- and in some states, including Florida, it is illegal for them to strike? If that's a demonstration of the unions' power, they're doing a lousy job of wielding it. Now imagine what they would be like without it. That's exactly what the Republican governor in Wisconsin would like.

The mythology of how easy a teacher has it -- they only work nine months out of the year and only work six hours a day -- has long since been disproved, but you still hear it among those who don't know what teachers do. In many states the school year has been lengthened to ten months; several years ago in Miami, school ended the first week of June and began again the last week in July. During the summer recess, many teachers must take classes to maintain their certification or earn a supplemental degree to keep their job. Those courses are not free and the school district does not pay them for them, neither do they help pay off the student loans the teachers incurred while earning the minimum degrees that the state requires to get the job in the first place. During the school year, most teachers report to work several hours before the first bell, remain in the classroom long after the last student has left, and quite often must return to the school in the evening or on weekends for events and additional coaching or club duties. Then they take work home with them. On the job they have more than their share of duties, and for which they give up some pretty basic things most people in another workplace take for granted, such as going to the bathroom whenever they please, or getting a cup of coffee. Taking an hour for lunch or leaving a little early to go to the dentist is unheard of. Try enforcing those workplace rules at Goldman Sachs.

No one goes into the teaching profession to make a fortune; they do it to make a difference. A lot of people in the public sector work as hard as teachers do, and a lot of them put their lives and well-being on the line for a median salary and a pension that does not include a golden parachute. They don't ask for six-figure incomes, but the least they can expect is to be represented and protected by organizing and have the right to the same bargaining rules as the guy who installs the seats in a Chevy. And in a time when people on Wall Street are making huge bonuses for crunching numbers on a computer, now is not the time to be calling the people on the front lines of education and public well-being greedy.

PS: Ezra Klein has a good post on how you can't separate public and private unions.

Short Takes

A 6.3 magnitude earthquake has killed at least 65 people in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Libya: Qaddafi's grip on power seems tenuous as rioters take over cities and military pilots defect to Malta.

North Korea is begging for food.

The campaign for the run-off election for president of Haiti gets underway.

Egypt is seizing former president Mubarak's assets.

Gov. Walker of Wisconsin refuses to compromise with the unions.

It's Election Day in Chicago.

The plan to save high-speed rail in Florida still has some roadblocks.

Monday, February 21, 2011

A Little Night Music

For President's Day.

Day Off Diversion

This is a little quiz that's been making the e-mail rounds, but if you're one of those people who doesn't get tons of stuff forwarded from friends, you might not have seen it. The answers are below the fold. Try to do it without peeking.

1. Name the one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends.

2. What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?

3. Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year. What are the only two perennial vegetables?

4. What fruit has its seeds on the outside?

5. In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bottle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bottle is genuine; it hasn't been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?

6. Only five words in standard English begin with the letters 'dw' and they are all common words. Name two of them.

7. There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least half of them?

8. Name the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.

9. Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the letter 'S.'

Answers:

1. The one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends: Boxing.

2. North American landmark constantly moving backward: Niagara Falls. The rim is worn down about two and a half feet each year because of the millions of gallons of water that rush over it every minute.

3. Only two vegetables that can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons: Asparagus and rhubarb.

4. The fruit with its seeds on the outside: Strawberry.

5. How did the pear get inside the brandy bottle? It grew inside the bottle. The bottles are placed over pear buds when they are small, and are wired in place on the tree. The bottle is left in place for the entire growing season. When the pears are ripe, they are snipped off at the stems.

6. Five English words beginning with "dw": Dwarf, dwell, Dwayne, Dwight and dwindle.

7. Fourteen punctuation marks in English grammar: Period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation mark, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellipses.

8. The only vegetable or fruit never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form but fresh: Lettuce.

9. Six or more things you can wear on your feet beginning with 'S': Shoes, socks, sandals, sneakers, slippers, skis, skates, snowshoes, stockings, stilts.

I don't know if these are accurate or complete; I just cut-and-pasted them as I got them. Be that as it may, how'd you do?

Without Adult Supervision

Leave the GOP alone in a room and look what happens:

More than 400 amendments were filed Monday night. Among them were a proposal from Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., to eliminate funding for the president's Teleprompter and one from Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, to strip funding for the alteration, repair or improvement of the executive residence of the White House and instead divert that amount to deficit reduction.

Womack told Fox News Tuesday afternoon that he pulled his amendment because he wasn't able to get an estimate on how much it would save. "I think we made our point," Womack said. "We're asking people to do more with less. And I think the president ought to lead by example. He is already a very gifted speaker. And I think that's one platform he could do without."

Yes, the point you made is that you're a petty and childish little brat.

Happy Presidents Day

In honor of Presidents Day, I get the day off. Therefore blogging will be light and variable today.

However, according to those who keep track of this sort of thing, blogging is no longer the hip way to keep people informed; it's all Facebook and Twitter now.

Gee, it's a good thing I've never been trendy.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

A Little Night Music

The Province of Florida

NPR's Greg Allen had a report on Friday's All Things Considered about how Canadians are snapping up Florida real estate in record numbers thanks to the housing crash here and the strong economy in Canada.

The cars in a parking lot at Walmart in Hallandale Beach, near Fort Lauderdale, tell the tale. About 1 of out every 10 vehicles is from Canada. It's February; the weather is warm in Florida, so many are visiting tourists. But other Canadians are putting down roots.

One recent transplant, Doug Flood says, "If there ever was an 11th [Canadian] province, it probably would be Florida."

That got me thinking; with the U.S. economy in trouble and people from other countries willing to invest here, maybe Mr. Flood is on to something. In order to balance the books, maybe we could do what a lot of people do when they're in financial straits: sell off property. So maybe we could put out feelers to Ottawa: how much would they pay to buy Florida?

It would take a couple of appraisals, but I'm willing to bet that it would go for at least $10 trillion. That would put a big dent in the deficit, and it would save the U.S. a lot of money in the future by not having to defend the southern border against flotillas of boat people coming from Haiti and drug smugglers coming in from other places. And since Canada has full diplomatic relations with Cuba, the exile community here could travel back and forth to see their friends and families any time they wish instead of having to jump through all the ridiculous hoops that the State Department and Treasury make them go through just to get their abuelita a cell phone.

Going Canadian has some other advantages. Their economy is stable, thanks to strong banking regulations that would have prevented the housing crash. Their Charter of Rights and Freedoms is just as strong as the Bill of Rights. For the liberals, Canada is a paradise with marriage equality for all people, strong gun-control provisions, and a foreign policy that basically says, "Hey, we're a big country but we're not obnoxious about it." And for conservatives, there's a long tradition of hunting and fishing for the rednecks, and for the country-clubbers there's that link to the British heritage that still makes a big deal about class differences. Canada is a part of the Commonwealth, and Queen Elizabeth II is the Queen of Canada. Most Republicans are secretly monarchists, anyway; they've always believed in the divine right of elderly white people with lots of property being in charge of the masses. And when Fantasy Fest rolls around in Key West, we could invite the Queen to participate in the festivities; a Queen among queens, as it were.

Canadian politics are generally more liberal than they are here; the farthest right-winger up there would be a moderate Republican here, and they have such things as single-payer healthcare administered by the provinces (which amounts to Medicare for all, regardless of age), along with private doctors and insurance, too, so there's the best of both worlds. They also have a parliamentary system. It's a lot like our system, with a lower house elected by the people and a senate (although their senators are appointed by the government and basically do nothing), but in their case the leader of the political party with the most seats is the Prime Minister, and he or she can be voted out any time by a vote of No Confidence. Imagine doing that to John Boehner.

Other good points: the Canadian national anthem is much more singable and the lyrics are pretty easy. The flag is simple: red and white with the maple leaf in the middle. (The Florida provincial flag could have a palm frond.) Both English and French are the official languages, but I'm sure we could work Spanish in there somehow. They have different holidays than we do, but they're close to ours; Canada Day -- their Fourth of July -- is July 1, and instead of Memorial Day in May, they have Victoria Day around the same time. They have Labour Day when we do, and their Thanksgiving is in October instead of November. Retailers would love that; it adds six weeks to the Christmas shopping season. Their money is the same as ours with dollars and cents, and their bank notes are very colourful. The only thing we'd have to get used to is calling the dollar coin a "loonie," named for the bird on the back of the coin. (The two-dollar coin is called, naturally, the "toonie.") They have a form of football like we do; in fact, a lot of Americans have played in the Canadian Football League. The rules are a little different -- three downs instead of four and 110 yards instead of 100 -- but it's football, not soccer, so the Dolphins, Buccaneers, and Jaguars could easily adapt, and they might even win a few games. For those of us who love the arts, Canadians have always been strong supporters of theatre, art, and music. Oh, and they do know how to make really good beer and whiskey. As for technology, Waterloo, Ontario, is the home of the company that came up with the BlackBerry. (But we won't hold that against them, I suppose.)

There are some downsides: Canada uses the metric system, so there would be a lot of confusion for those who still don't know a meter (or a metre) from their foot. Taxes are higher, depending on the province. But I'm sure we could work things out; most of our cars already have metric speedometers (look at the little numbers inside the gauge) and buying gas by the litre wouldn't change how big your gas tank is. You could also go 100 on the Palmetto...assuming you know that it's only 62 mph, and assuming the traffic isn't bumper-to-bumper.

But the really big question is whether or not Canada would take us. Sure, they're buying up all the land and vacant homes and shopping at Wal-Mart and we provide a winter refuge for most of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec; in Hollywood, Florida, you see as many signs that say Ici on parle français as you do Se habla español. But would they want to buy this distressed property? It's a nice place to visit, but it's a real fixer-upper if you're going to buy.

Sunday Reading

The Close Friend of David Rivera -- The first-term GOP Congressman from Miami is facing increased scrutiny for his personal and campaign finances.

Before launching his bid for Congress last year, David Rivera embarked on a record-breaking campaign for the state Senate, amassing more than $1 million in donations some eight months before Election Day.

Rivera paid $250,000 of that money to his fundraiser and longtime ally, Esther Nuhfer — including $150,000 in “bonus” money, records show — all for a political campaign that Rivera never finished.

Rivera dropped that state Senate campaign early to run for Congress. With Nuhfer’s help, Rivera went on to easily win the congressional race, defeating Republican opponents in the primary and Democrat Joe Garcia in November.

But Rivera’s nascent Washington career is in jeopardy, as criminal investigators in Miami and Tallahassee comb through his personal finances and campaign accounts — including the Senate account that fattened Nuhfer’s pocketbook. Investigators also are focusing on Rivera’s tight relationship with Nuhfer.

Rivera has denied any wrongdoing. Nuhfer did not return messages seeking comment.

Since 2006, Nuhfer’s consulting firm has received at least $817,000 in fees from Rivera’s political campaigns, or from political committees tied to the Republican congressman and former state lawmaker, state and federal campaign records show.

How some of this money was spent remains unclear. Nuhfer’s firm received $150,000 from the Miami-Dade Republican Party last fall for radio advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts, but the party does not have a contract or detailed records verifying the expenses. Rivera was the party chairman at the time of the payments, though he did not sign the checks.

When asked about Nuhfer’s work for him, Rivera would only communicate with The Miami Herald through written questions sent to an e-mail account in the name of his campaign. Rivera described Nuhfer only as his “fundraising consultant.” In 2010, his last year in the Legislature, Rivera described Nuhfer differently to a Miami Herald reporter.

“She’s a close friend,” Rivera said at the time.

Nuhfer was more than that. She also was a lobbyist in Tallahassee, where her connections to Rivera often sparked whispers and criticism from fellow lobbyists, political consultants and lawmakers in the gossipy state Capitol, where Rivera held the powerful post of budget chief in the state House of Representatives in 2009 and 2010.

During the legislative session, Nuhfer was a constant presence in Rivera’s office: She often could be found sitting at or near his desk, using the telephone or typing on her laptop next to Rivera’s legislative aide, Alina Garcia, who was Nuhfer’s roommate in Tallahassee.

Rivera and Nuhfer also traveled together outside the state, according to sources close to the criminal investigation. Through his campaign, Rivera said any trips with Nuhfer were for “fundraising activities and events.” In December, Rivera accompanied Nuhfer to a black-tie gala for Miami Dade College.

More below the fold.

Talking to the Taliban -- Steve Coll of The New Yorker reports that the U.S. has been on contact with the Taliban.

On August 22, 1998, Mullah Omar, the emir of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, made a cold call to the State Department. The United States had just lobbed cruise missiles at Al Qaeda camps in his nation. Omar got a mid-level diplomat on the line and spoke calmly. He suggested that Congress force President Bill Clinton to resign. He said that American military strikes “would be counter-productive,” and would “spark more, not less, terrorist attacks,” according to a declassified record of the call. “Omar emphasized that this was his best advice,” the record adds.

That was the first and last time that Omar spoke to an American government official, as far as is known. Before September 11th, some of his deputies had occasionally spoken with U.S. diplomats, but afterward the United States rejected direct talks with Taliban leaders, on the ground that they were as much to blame for terrorism as Al Qaeda was. Last year, however, as the U.S.-led Afghan ground war passed its ninth anniversary, and Mullah Omar remained in hiding, presumably in Pakistan, a small number of officials in the Obama Administration—among them the late Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan—argued that it was time to try talking to the Taliban again.

Holbrooke’s final diplomatic achievement, it turns out, was to see this advice accepted. The Obama Administration has entered into direct, secret talks with senior Afghan Taliban leaders, several people briefed about the talks told me last week. The discussions are continuing; they are of an exploratory nature and do not yet amount to a peace negotiation. That may take some time: the first secret talks between the United States and representatives of North Vietnam took place in 1968; the Paris Peace Accords, intended to end direct U.S. military involvement in the war, were not agreed on until 1973.

When asked for comment on the talks, a White House spokesman said that the remarks that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made last Friday at the Asia Society offered a “thorough representation of the U.S. position.” Clinton had tough words for the Taliban, saying that they were confronted with a choice between political compromise and ostracism as “an enemy of the international community.” She added, “I know that reconciling with an adversary that can be as brutal as the Taliban sounds distasteful, even unimaginable. And diplomacy would be easy if we only had to talk to our friends. But that is not how one makes peace. President Reagan understood that when he sat down with the Soviets. And Richard Holbrooke made this his life’s work. He negotiated face to face with Milosevic and ended a war.”

Mullah Omar is not a participant in the preliminary talks. He does not attend even secret meetings of underground Taliban leadership councils in Pakistani safe houses. When he does speak, he does so obliquely, via cassette tapes. One purpose of the talks initiated by the Obama Administration, therefore, is to assess which figures in the Taliban’s leadership, if any, might be willing to engage in formal Afghan peace negotiations, and under what conditions.

Frank Rich -- After Tucson, the Republican talking heads have lost some steam.

SIX weeks after that horrific day in Tucson, America has half-forgotten its violent debate over the power of violent speech to incite violence. It’s Gabrielle Giffords’s own power of speech that rightly concerns us now. But all those arguments over political language did leave a discernible legacy. In the aftermath of President Obama’s Tucson sermon, civility has had a mini-restoration in Washington. And some of the most combative national figures in our politics have been losing altitude ever since, much as they did after Bill Clinton’s oratorical response to the inferno of Oklahoma City.

Glenn Beck’s ratings at Fox News continued their steady decline, falling to an all-time low last month. He has lost 39 percent of his viewers in a year and 48 percent of the prime 25-to-54 age demographic. His strenuous recent efforts to portray the Egyptian revolution as an apocalyptic leftist-jihadist conspiracy have inspired more laughs than adherents.

Sarah Palin’s tailspin is also pronounced. It can be seen in polls, certainly: the ABC News-Washington Post survey found that 30 percent of Americans approved of her response to the Tucson massacre and 46 percent did not. (Obama’s numbers in the same poll were 78 percent favorable, 12 percent negative.) But equally telling was the fate of a Palin speech scheduled for May at a so-called Patriots & Warriors Gala in Glendale, Colo.

Tickets to see Palin, announced at $185 on Jan. 16, eight days after Tucson, were slashed to half-price in early February. Then the speech was canceled altogether, with the organizers blaming “safety concerns resulting from an onslaught of negative feedback.” But when The Denver Post sought out the Glendale police chief, he reported there had been no threats or other causes for alarm. The real “negative feedback” may have been anemic ticket sales, particularly if they were to cover Palin’s standard $100,000 fee.

What may at long last be dawning on some Republican grandees is that a provocateur who puts her political adversaries in the cross hairs and then instructs her acolytes to “RELOAD” frightens most voters.

[...]

An opposition this adrift from reality — whether about Obama’s birth certificate, history unfolding in the Middle East or the consequences of a federal or state government shutdown — is a paper tiger. It’s a golden chance for the president to seize the moment. What we don’t know is if he sees it that way. As we’ve learned from his track record both in the 2008 campaign and in the White House, he sometimes coasts at these junctures or lapses into a pro forma bipartisanship that amounts, for all practical purposes, to inertia.

Obama’s outspokenness about the labor battle in Wisconsin offers a glimmer of hope that he might lead the fight for what many Americans, not just Democrats, care about — from job creation to an energy plan to an attack on the deficit that brackets the high-end Bush-era tax cuts with serious Medicare/Medicaid reform and further strengthening of the health care law. Will he do so? The answer to that question is at least as mysterious as the identity of whatever candidate the desperate G.O.P. finds to run against him.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

A Little Night Music

Previews of Coming Attractions

The House voted last night to cut spending drastically for the rest of the fiscal year, setting up a confrontation between them, the Senate, and the White House, and leading possibly to a shut-down of the government in two weeks.

The last time that happened was in 1995 when the Republicans, under the banner of Newt Gingrich, did it to President Clinton. It did not end well for the GOP; Mr. Gingrich was seen as arrogant and reckless, doing it more out of a fit of pique and personal pride -- he had to ride in the back of Air Force One coming back from Yitzhak Rabin's funeral and complained about it -- and Bill Clinton played it cool, taking it in stride, knowing that it would be the Republicans, who were asking for too much at once, who would get blamed for it. So he let the shutdown go forth. Less than a year later, Mr. Clinton was re-elected, the GOP lost some seats, and when they tried to remove Mr. Clinton for getting a blow job, it was Newt Gingrich who ended up losing his job.

The shutdown in 1995 also brought home to the American people just how much they needed the federal government. It wasn't just the people who work for the government who were sent home; non-essential personnel were sent home and non-essential services were shut down. That meant more than just the parks and museums were closed. In 1995, the Veterans Hospital in Albuquerque sent their non-emergency staff home, as did the defense labs. Things we take for granted were suddenly not available, including those monthly checks from Social Security because the people from the printing plant where the checks were processed were not there. The shutdown had a ripple effect to state and local governments since a lot of the money they use to pay for services such as education entitlements (Title I, for example) are funded through the federal government. It also meant that businesses who depended on the government employees -- like retailers -- saw the effects; if you're not being paid, you're not shopping for food and clothing or putting gas in the car or paying your credit cards, mortgage, and utility bills. In short, the people who complain about having too much government found out that it's a lot easier to say that than live with it.

It reminds me of one of best episodes of The West Wing when President Jed Bartlet faced a similar situation.

I wonder if President Obama will find the same backbone and deal with the GOP in the same way... and then throw in a Top Chef promo as well.

Friday, February 18, 2011

A Little Night Music

The little light in the gas gauge came on tonight as I pulled into the garage...

Question of the Day

In keeping with today's catblogging picture:

What toppings are on your favorite pizza?

I am a carnivore: sausage and pepperoni are my favorites.

South Dakota Steps Back

Cooler heads apparently prevailed in South Dakota.

A state bill to expand the definition of justifiable homicide in South Dakota to include killing someone in the defense of an unborn child was postponed indefinitely Wednesday after an uproar over whether the legislation would put abortion providers at greater risk.

The House speaker, Val Rausch, said that the legislation had been shelved, pending a decision on whether to allow a vote, amend the language or drop it entirely. A spokesman for Gov. Dennis Daugaard said, "Clearly the bill as it's currently written is a very bad idea."

Gee, ya think?

Now they can go back to debating what "forcible rape" is.

Quote of the Day

John Cole at Balloon Juice on another lawsuit to get a public school to take down the Ten Commandments.

The really appalling issue is not whether or not the Ten Commandments are present in schools. The problem is that if they are, most of the damned kids can’t read them.

Picking A Fight

The protests and the drama in Madison, Wisconsin, over Gov. Scott Walker's plan to limit collective bargaining for some -- but not all -- public employees have been getting the attention of the country. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the guy with the "sensible" budget plan for the country, has made the unfortunate comparison between Madison and Cairo, probably without thinking that he was casting Mr. Walker in the role of Hosni Mubarak, and the protesters won. The drama got even more amusing when the Democratic caucus basically went into hiding in order to avoid getting a quorum in the state house and blocking passage of the bill. (They headed for a restaurant in Rockford, Illinois, just over the border.)

But it turns out the governor actually created the budget shortfall willfully so that he could force through the cutbacks in the state employee benefits.

Furthermore, this broadside comes less than a month after the state's fiscal bureau -- the Wisconsin equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office -- concluded that Wisconsin isn't even in need of austerity measures, and could conclude the fiscal year with a surplus. In fact, they say that the current budget shortfall is a direct result of tax cut policies Walker enacted in his first days in office.

"Walker was not forced into a budget repair bill by circumstances beyond he [sic] control," says Jack Norman, research director at the Institute for Wisconsin Future -- a public interest think tank. "He wanted a budget repair bill and forced it by pushing through tax cuts... so he could rush through these other changes."

In other words, he wanted a way to screw over the unions -- except the ones that had supported him in the last election -- and the manufactured budget "crisis" was the way to do it.

It takes a certain amount of hubris and gall to deliberately tank the state budget just to exact political revenge. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before some other politically ambitious and callous hack tries it in another state... like, oh, say, Florida.

Gov. Scott's Train Wreck

Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) thought he was done with the high-speed rail plans for Florida, but the state legislature -- including 26 Republicans -- have other plans.

From Washington to Tallahassee, Florida lawmakers scrambled Thursday to save $2.4 billion in federal money for high-speed rail that Gov. Rick Scott rejected.

In Washington, members of Florida’s Congressional delegation met with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who gave them one week to cobble together a complicated deal that would give the money to a private entity such as Amtrak or a regional planning organization.

“The cart’s in a ditch right now and we’ve got to figure out a way if we can all pull it out together,” said U.S. Rep. John Mica, an Orlando area Republican who is chairman of the powerful House transportation committee.

In Tallahassee, a veto-proof majority of the Florida Senate rebuked Scott in a letter that urged the federal government to give the state the money Scott has refused.

“Politics should have no place in the future of Florida’s transportation, as evidenced by this letter of bipartisan support,” said the letter, signed by 26 members of the Republican-controlled Florida Senate.

“This project would create real jobs, cleaner and smarter transportation and true economic development for Floridians,” said the letter written to LaHood.

The letter was authored in part by one of Scott’s first Senate backers, Republican Paula Dockery of Lakeland, who argued that the newly created Florida Rail Enterprise could act independently of Scott because the state’s share of the rail money — $300 million — was already approved last year by a previous governor, Charlie Crist.

That's all well and good; it would be nice to get the funds and get the jobs, (and it's also fun to see the GOP fighting among themselves) but what would also be nice is if they fought that hard for funding for education.

Meanwhile, Mr. Scott joins the ranks of Michele Bachmann, John Bolton, and every other annoying Tea Partier with an ego and a mailing list in thinking about running for the GOP nomination in 2012. That's not really a big surprise; Mr. Scott ran against Barack Obama in his gubernatorial campaign last year, so it's no big secret that he would try for it. I'd back him; every day he spends on the campaign trail running for president would be one less day he'd be in Tallahassee screwing up the state of Florida.

Friday Blogaround

First Cairo, then Bahrain, then Madison...

A Blog Around The Clock links to a post from Sundance.
archy on the color of stupid.
Bark Bark Woof Woof: it was all a lie.
Bloggg: defund Kentucky.
Dohiyi Mir: NTodd ever subtly shakes the tin cup.
Echidne Of The Snakes on Lara Logan.
Florida Progressive Coalition Blog: Benjamin Kirby on total recall.
The Invisible Library: beware of this and that.
Left Is Right: bits and pieces, including MSNBC's plunging ratings after Olbermann.
Pen-Elayne on the Web has a fun video on find-and-replace in Huckleberry Finn.
Rook's Rant on lack of control.
rubber hose on what motivates the Egyptian army.
Scrutiny Hooligans shares a poem.
Stupid Enough Unexplanation: Shirley Sherrod sues Andrew Breitbart.
The Yellow Something Something: "We won't go back."
WTF Is It Now?? -- More of this, please.

Monday is President's Day. Dress up as your favorite.

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