Revelation Must Be Terrible

Over the last few days I've been reminded of the journey I've taken in my life. I've been reminded of how utterly miserable I was - even though on the outside, hardly anyone could tell. I was living a lie and there was something deep inside of me that knew that. But I tried with every ounce of my being to be who it was I thought I was supposed to be.

Ultimately I couldn't silence the questions that kept surfacing...telling me that something was wrong. And so I had a moment of terrifying revelation. Here is how poet David Whyte describes it.

Revelation must be
terrible with no time left
to say goodbye.

Imagine that moment
staring at the still waters
with only the brief tremor

of your body to say
you are leaving everything
and everyone you know behind.

Being far from home is hard, but you know,
at least we are exiled together.
When you open your eyes to the world

you are on your own for
the first time. No one is
even interested in saving you now

 It was the realization that I was on my own that was so terrifying. I had been taught that I was weak, evil, sinful and that my only salvation was to do as I was told. Stepping out of that was perhaps the hardest thing I've ever done.

But here's the rest of the poem.

and the world steps in
to test the calm fluidity of your body
from moment to moment

as if it believed you could join
its vibrant dance
of fire and calmness and final stillness.

As if you were meant to be exactly
where you are, as if
like the dark branch of a desert river

you could flow on without a speck
of guilt and everything
everywhere would still be just as it should be.

As if your place in the world mattered
and the world could
neither speak nor hear the fullness of

its own bitter and beautiful cry
without the deep well
of your body resonating in the echo.

Knowing that it takes only
that one, terrible
word to make the circle complete,

revelation must be terrible
knowing you can
never hide your voice again.

Connect the dots...make your choice

Mitt Romney...



Or Barack Obama?

And one of the things I've done here, in addition to saying thank you to these firefighters, is to let them know that all of America has their back. One of the things that happens, whether it's a fire here in Colorado, or a tornado in Alabama or Missouri, or a flood or a hurricane in Florida, one of the things that happens here in America is when we see our fellow citizens in trouble and having difficulty, we come together as one American family, as one community...

...this is a good reminder of what makes us Americans. We don't just look out for ourselves; we look out for each other. And one of the things that I told these firefighters is that we can provide them all the resources they need, but only they provide the courage and the discipline to be able to actually fight these fires. And it's important that we appreciate what they do not just when our own communities are struck by disaster. It's important that we remember what they do each and every single day, and that we continue to provide support to our first responders, our emergency management folks, our firefighters, our military -- everybody who helps secure our liberty and our security each and every day.

The choice couldn't be more clear. It all comes down to whether we "just look out for ourselves" or "look out for each other." I would hope to gawd that we can figure that one out before its our town that is going up in flames.

I know that I'm very proud to be sticking with this guy.

Romney campaign embraces Breitbart/Drudge

In my last post, I talked about how President Obama's long game is about giving the Republicans the option of either working with him on solving the challenges we face as a country or careening off an extremist cliff.

If the folks at Breitbart are to be believed (I know, that might be a stretch), Romney has made his choice. They claim to have had an exclusive interview with Zac Moffat and Leonard Alcivar - members of Romney's PR team. Here are some of the things Moffat and Alcivar are reported to have said.

Drudge is the single most powerful force in the media today,...

I have two windows constantly up on my screen all day long, Twitter and the Drudge Report.

The rise of Breitbart, Drudge and others, combined with an aggressive Romney campaign is a powerful tool in the arsenal of the conservative movement.

Anyone who has been sentient for the last 5-10 years knows that Breitbart's crew and Drudge are the biggest liars and smear merchants in politics today. But if you need a reminder, there is Drudge's recent attempt to discredit Chief Justice Robert's ruling on health care reform by linking it to medication he might (or might not) be taking for seizures.

For the Romney campaign to embrace these people speaks MUCH more loudly than any attempt he might make to etch-a-sketch his way towards sanity.

Frum on Roberts v Scalia

The other day I speculated about how the SCOTUS ruling on health care reform may have vindicated President Obama's strategy as much as his policy.

Yesterday, David Frum posted a rather lengthy comment from a reader who clerked on an appellate court saying basically the same thing.

For some background, one of the main things the Court had to decide, if they were to find the mandate unconstitutional, was whether or not it could be "severed" from the rest of the law.

What we know from the 4 dissenters on this ruling (Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito) is that they were not willing to consider severability. They simply wanted the entire bill tossed out.

Frum's reader suggests that was a bridge too far for Roberts.

The following is speculation, but plausible, and would be an interesting parallel to the conservative legislative strategy. Any objective legal observer would tell you (and I'm trying to be one here) that the dissent's treatment of the severability issue is detached from 200 years of constitutional law. It's unsupported legally and it's a mess logically... In any event, rather than holding the mandate [un]constitutional and those portions of the bill inextricably linked with it (guaranteed issue/community rating), four members of the Court were primed to throw the whole bill out. That level of judicial activism, in a context like this one, would be nearly unprecedented.

I imagine the dissenters either had Roberts's vote or that Roberts left the post argument conference without commiting to a side and saying something to the effect of "let me see how it writes."... And he waited to see what was written.

What was written was not measured judicial analysis, but rather an opinion that started with a goal --- throw the bill out --- and then figured out how to get there, blowing by any precedent in its path...

That dissent intended to get his vote. It might have had it only struck a portion of the law. But Roberts correctly realized that he couldn't jump off that cliff without precedent or logic supporting him. Kennedy, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas went all in. And they lost their bet. Just like the conservatives in Congress.

In other words, the 4 dissenters took the same "total obstruction" strategy that we've seen from Republicans in Congress over and over.

Its no surprise that a conservative like Frum would recognize this as a failed strategy by the conservatives on the Court. It is exactly the same argument he made following passage of the health care bill that got him ejected from the Republican establishment.

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision:...No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994...

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none...

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

So if Frum's reader is right (and I suspect s/he is), Chief Justice Roberts just joined the few people on the right who have rejected the idea of total obstruction all the time, while justices like Scalia run ever faster off an extremist cliff.

Asking Republicans to make that choice is part of the long game President Obama is engaging. Score a win for him on this one!

No commentary required 6/29/12

Now that I've at least partially recovered from my obsession about the SCOTUS health care ruling, here are a couple of other stories that caught my eye.

I don't know why Peggy Noonan bugs me so much. Write it off to my own particular brand of neurosis. But I do love me a good Noonan smack-down. And Paul Waldman delivers.

When he began his still-brilliant show a few years ago, Stephen Colbert said, "Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you." And there's nobody who feels the news quite like Peggy Noonan, America's most unintentionally hilarious columnist. Pretty much every time she writes a column or goes on television, Noonan can be counted on to tell us about a feeling out there in the land. It's seldom a powerful feeling; instead, it's more often a stirring, an inchoate emotion still in the process of crystallizing. It might be a yearning, or an unease, or a doubt or a fear, but it lingers just out of our perception until Peggy Noonan comes along and perceives it for us.

Bingo!!!

On a couple of occasions, I have quoted this article by James Fallows about the basis of our democracy being not just rules - but norms. His fellow-writer at The Atlantic -  Ta-Nehisi Coates - has also written a response here and here. A short summary would not do Mr. Coates' thoughts justice. But to give you an idea of what he's exploring, here's a quote from the first link.

...I wonder at the strength and nature of our democratic norms. Was there ever a time where our representatives seriously placed loyalty to democracy over partisan interests? And granting that there was, what was that compromise, that sacrifice, premised on? What undergirded our democratic virtue? Was it the promise that, in a country explicitly understood as constructed for the white man, the majority could never sink as low as the cursed minority? If we grant that the past few decades have been a particularly trying time for our democracy, is it mere coincidence that this happens just as African-American power begins to morph into reality?

The Supreme Court ruling was not the only good news for President Obama this week. Although you wouldn't know if from the media, his polling numbers have seen significant improvement this week. Even Gallup's daily tracking poll today is at Obama 48 Romney 43 (Obama +5). And Nate Silver's model projects Obama's chance of winning at 67.8% - the highest its been so far. At this point on the electoral map, Silver has 303 electoral votes at 60% or better for Obama. And Florida, which had been trending towards Romney, is now a 50/50 tie.

If I was to have written a separate article on this story, I would have simply titled it "Duh."

The Justice Department declared Friday that Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to withhold information about a bungled gun-tracking operation from Congress does not constitute a crime and he won’t be prosecuted for contempt of Congress...

In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, the department said that it will not bring the congressional contempt citation against Holder to a federal grand jury and that it will take no other action to prosecute the attorney general.

So Rep. Issa and his friends had their little day in the sun (overshadowed, or course, by the SCOTUS ruling) and now the grown-ups are saying "enough!" Good for them.

Finally here are my two photos of the week...because I'm a sucka for adorable kids and dogs.

If SCOTUS says something is constitutional, is it constitutional?

Many on the left are making hay with Sen. Rand Paul's comments yesterday about the Supreme Court's ruling on health care reform.

The Supreme Court wrongly concluded that Obamacare can stand. But just because a majority of the Supreme Court declares something to be “constitutional” does not make it so.

Before we go too far with that, I'd suggest that it's important to think about how his statements differ from those we've heard from the left about Citizens United or Bush v Gore. Or how about going back in history and asking whether - in 1896 - it would have been correct to say that Plessy v. Ferguson was constitutional.

The truth of the matter is that when the Supreme Court says something is constitutional, in all practicality, it is constitutional. In other words, it becomes applicable law...end of story unless and until they change their minds.

That creates a tension because - since the Supreme Court is still made up of 9 imperfect human beings - they sometimes make the wrong call.

I think this tension is created because we tend to want to venerate what is constitutional to some rarified state of infallibility. I liken it to how some Catholics see dispensations from the Pope and how many Protestants view the Bible. As human beings we long for some set of rules that we can point to and say they are definitive.

But we're fooling ourselves when we go there. It doesn't take much reflection to see that even the Constitution itself was deeply flawed from the get-go. It is NOT the stuff of "divine inspiration." And to assume that either the document itself or its interpretations by the Supreme Court carries that kind of weight is a fools errand.

What we have in a democratic republic is instead - as James Fallows wrote - a set of norms with which we the people comply.

Liberal democracies like ours depend on rules but also on norms -- on the assumption that you'll go so far, but no further, to advance your political ends. The norms imply some loyalty to the system as a whole that outweighs your immediate partisan interest. Not red states, nor blue states, but the United States of America. It was out of loyalty to the system that Al Gore stepped aside after Bush v. Gore. Norms have given the Supreme Court its unquestioned legitimacy.

The risk - and potential danger - of questioning the constitutionality of what the Supreme Court declares is constitutional is that it undermines those norms. There might be a time and place for that. But we'd better be VERY aware of the consequences.

Let's be clear about ACA and taxes

It's clear that the Republicans are going to try to cash in on Chief Justice Robert's ruling that the mandate is constitutional because of Congress' taxing authority. The big line they're using is "See...we told you President Obama would raise your taxes!"

To those of us who know about what is in the health care reform bill, this is ridiculous. But just in case you run into people who don't have that information, here are some facts that might be helpful.

If you're part of the 85% of Americans who currently have health insurance...YOUR TAXES WILL NOT GO UP.

Of the remaining 15%, 26 million people (or 8% of the population) will be required to either buy insurance or pay a tax penalty (the rest will be exempt due to income, lack of affordable coverage availability, or because they are undocumented immigrants).

Of those 26 million, most will not have to pay for insurance themselves. Here's how it breaks down:

– 8.1 million will be eligible for free/close-to-free insurance through expansion of Medicaid under the law.

– 10.9 million will have to purchase coverage but receive subsidies to help with premiums

– 7.3 million (2 percent of population) will not be eligible for any assistance and will simply have to buy a plan or pay the penalty.

The 2% who will not be eligible for subsidies will be those with incomes over 4 times the poverty level (or $92,200 and above for a family of 4).

So all this screaming about tax increases comes down to the potential that 2% of the population might decide to pay a 2.5% tax on their income to avoid having to buy health insurance.

PUHLEEZE!!!!!!!!!

Was Obama's strategy (as well as policy) vindicated by the SCOTUS decision?

I've often written about how President Obama's embrace of pragmatism - combined with the Republican commitment to obstruction - has played a critical role in driving his opponents into an extremist corner. Let's take a look at how that might have played out in today's SCOTUS decision on health care reform.

We now know that the 4 conservative justices (including Kennedy) came down on the side of not just finding the mandate unconstitutional. They were in favor of striking the entire ACA. Almost no one predicted that as the final outcome because it would have been such an extreme position for the court to take. It would have forever tainted the "Roberts Court" as political and polarized.

So what were the Chief Justice's options? If the 4 conservative justices were as intransigent as their political counterparts, the only remaining choice he had was to work out a compromise with the 4 liberals.

Thinking about it that way takes me back to much of the conversation that was going on a couple of years ago about why President Obama nominated Elena Kagan. At the time, most people were talking about her potential to be an envoy to Justice Kennedy. But read this passage that was written back then and think about how it might apply to her working with Chief Justice Roberts on this decision.

Kagan distinguished herself as Dean of Harvard Law School by making peace between long-feuding factions on the right and the left. Few think she will be able to change the positions of the most devoted conservatives, Scalia, Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas. But apparently Obama thinks she may sway Kennedy...

But what's most important, her backers say, is her ability to work the process; her skill as a consensus builder, they argue, could eventually make a difference. Kennedy finds himself alone among the nine Justices on some issues, says Goldstein, and the question is which block of four can find the legal common ground to form a majority with him. "It's not infrequent that Kennedy is in a four-one-four posture and it's how you adapt to him that is what matters," Goldstein says. "It's not that she has intellectual capacities that others don't, but coalition building is a different thing, and she has an innate ability to find win-win solutions."

I doubt we're likely to learn about the machinations between Justices that went on behind closed doors unless one of them decides to write a particularly juicy memoir. But this seems like an extremely plausible scenario about how all this came down. If so, it would be fascinating that one of the first real breaks in the polarization President Obama has been fighting now for almost 4 years came - not in Congress - but in the Supreme Court.

Deal with it!

I'm ecstatic!

And before I get to my calm mature self - I just have to indulge in a little schadenfreude.

Most everyone who made a prediction about the SCOTUS ruling on health care reform was wrong. But those who spent hours talking about about how it was obvious that the decision was clearly going to be bad news for President Obama WERE REALLY WRONG!!!!!!

That doesn't just include the right wingers. It is also true of all the doom-and-gloomers on the left. I'm not going to call them out by name - you know who you are.

I'll admit that I was too cowardly to make an actual prediction. But what I will say in my defense is that I always considered the possibility that the ruling would be good news.

I'm not quite ready to embrace Chief Justice Roberts as my new BFF - but it does my heart SOOO good to see that those we often consider to be our opponents might not be as evil as we sometimes assume.

This is such a good day!!!!! All you naysayers who are so addicted to assuming the worst are just going to have to deal with that.

Ignore the spin

Jonathan Bernstein says pretty much what I said a few days ago.

What happens at the Supreme Court tomorrow is not being overhyped: it really is that important. But a lot of what you may hear tomorrow will be spin from both sides about the political meaning of the outcome — and even worse, reporting and commentary on that spin.

Ignore it. Dig deep here for the substance, because it really is more consequential than the shouting matches would lead you to believe.

The Court’s decision will matter, substantively, in two ways. First, depending on what the Court says, either millions of people will soon be able to get health insurance, or they won’t. Either insurance companies will essentially be transformed into regulated utilities — no lifetime limits, no recissions, a tough standard for the percentage of premiums that go to benefits — or they won’t. Either the new efforts to limit the costs of Medicare will continue to be implemented, or they won’t...

The second way this will matter substantively is about the Constitution. The Court may take a major step towards implementing an agenda of returning the Constitution — and the government in general — to how it was before the New Deal. Or it may re-affirm current Constitutional precedents. The results have incredibly far-reaching, and not fully predictable, consequences for everything that government currently does or that future Congresses and presidents might want to do.

That’s what’s at stake, and none of it will change based on who wins a short-term advantage in the spin wars. It just won’t.

And Ezra Klein reminds us what matters most regardless of what SCOTUS decides.

I have no idea how the Supreme Court will rule. But I do have a prediction: given the ways they’re likely to rule, what will really matter for the Affordable Care Act is who the next president is.

Broadly speaking, there are three ways the Supreme Court could go today. They could uphold the law. They could overturn the mandate, and perhaps some related regulations. Or they could overturn the whole law...

If the Supreme Court overturns the whole law, all bets are off. But most observers think that’s a fairly unlikely outcome.

If the Supreme Court overturns the mandate and some related regulations, then the law is missing its core regulations of the insurance markets. But it retains most everything else, from its subsidies to its cost controls to its delivery-system reforms. If Mitt Romney is then elected president, he’ll almost certainly repeal the remainder. But if Barack Obama is reelected president, the law survives. And, even without the mandate, it begins providing insurance to tens of millions of people in 2014, at which point there is no way Congress wil be able to remove it. So, eventually, Congress and the president will have to figure out some way to make the law work, either by replacing the mandate with other policies or by using waivers to kick the issue to the states.

If the Supreme Court upholds the law, then the law is unchanged. If Barack Obama is reelected, it goes into effect as written. But if Mitt Romney is elected, it is likely to be fully or substantially repealed before it goes into effect in 2014.

So, in the long-run, whether the law is fully upheld or the mandate is overturned matters considerably less than who the next president is.

I agree with these two 100%. And so, unless what we hear this morning is a clear up or down on the whole law, I expect to take some time today on understanding exactly what the ruling is and will likely not be reacting immediately.

Catch ya later.

An Open Letter to Mitt Romney

Dear Mr. Romney,

I can only assume that you thought you were being funny today when you said that "they're not sleeping real well at the White House tonight." But I don't find it amusing at all.

The way I see it - you and President Obama are probably able to sleep well most nights. You are both pretty much set for life financially and are not likely to ever have to worry about being able to afford health care for yourself or anyone in your family.

But if you had an ounce of empathy in your body, you would know that there are tens of thousands of Americans tonight who won't be sleeping real well...people like Susan Gardner and her daughter whose very lives depend on what nine people in black robes announce tomorrow.

If for no other reason, the callousness you showed to these Americans today with your flippant remarks makes you unfit for the job of being their President.

Sincerely,

Smartypants

Let Obama BE Obama

Remember during the 2000 election when everyone wanted Al Gore to loosen up and be less "stiff?" All that nonsense reached its height when the story broke that Naomi Wolf was consulting with the campaign on how Gore could express a more "alpha male" personality. The only thing American voters got out of that was to see Gore look like an awkward phony.

Fast forward to 2012 and there is no end of people who, every time things look difficult for the Obama campaign, feel free to give their arm chair advice about how he needs to get angry. That advice is just as ridiculous as what Gore received.

Let's start with what we know about President Obama's personality. We've watched him now for over 4 years and have both seen how he tends to react and heard him spell it out for us. He doesn't have a temper and is best suited to being a "counter-puncher." Before he acts, he tends to think things through.

What we know about human beings is that whether those kinds of things are genetic or learned, they tend to be pretty deeply rooted by the time someone is the President's age. In other words, if he tried to act otherwise, he would come off as phony as Gore did.

Whether we like it or not, this is the President we have. And I tend to like it.

The truth is that when people want him to get angry, they're really telling us more about themselves than anything else. In other words, they're suggesting what THEY would do in any given situation.

What I would suggest is that they don't understand President Obama's reactions and it would behoove them to spend a little time being curious about that before they venture into telling him what he should do.

For example, some people who rush to judgement about all this make the assumption that he doesn't get mad because he's a coward and is afraid to fight. I seriously thought we had put that one to rest a while ago. The man has nerves of steel. He has clearly shown that to be the case.

So doesn't that make you just a little curious about his style? The way I see it, he has NO problem with fighting. Its just not his style to do so by trying to punch someone in the nose (figuratively).

While it may not be a good approach for everyone, we all could learn a thing or two from President Obama's approach to fighting. Thinking about that always takes me back to a magnificent diary by AikidoPilgrim in which he defined the President's style as bearing a lot of resemblance to the Aikido Way.

If you prefer to get mad and rage about the insanity of Republicans these days...feel free to do so. But let's let Obama BE Obama rather than try to make him over in our own image. If for no other reason, I respect him too much for that.

"No matter how hard you try, you can't stop us now" (updated)

Years ago I attended a 3-day training. On the second day, one of the African American men who was also a participant came dressed in a suit and tie. I'd known this young man for a long time and was aware that it was not how he usually dressed. So while getting some coffee during a break I asked him why. He said that the movie Malcolm X was premiering that day and it was his way of showing respect.

I thought of that conversation when I saw this picture of a young boy attending President Obama's speech in Boston yesterday.

I imagine that this young man had been "schooled" on the importance of this event...not just of going to hear the President of the United States speak, but the first African American President of the United States. His clothes as well as his expression show that he knows the solemnity of occasion.

I also think of the thousands of little black boys and girls all over the country that have been "schooled" about this. Their perceptions of their country and themselves are forever altered by that awareness.

And so the opening line to this song comes to mind..."No matter how hard you try, you can't stop us now."



UPDATE: In the comments, Blackman reminds me that the line in my title actually goes back to the Temptations in 1969.

Romney campaign has gone to dog whistle heaven

I don't agree with the folks who are suggesting that Romney is waffling on his reaction to the Supreme Court ruling today on Arizona's immigration law. When I read the transcript of the exchange between his spokesperson and the media, I thought he was very clear. You just have to be able to hear the dog whistles to get it. Here...let me show you.

The governor supports the states' rights to craft immigration laws...

The governor supports the states' rights to do this. It's a 10th amendment issue."...

The governor believes the states have the rights to craft their own immigration laws...

The governor supports the right of states, that's all we're going to say on this issue.

Again, each state has the right within the Constitution to craft their own immigration laws...

Look, again, I¹ll say it again and again and again for you. The governor understands that states have their own right to craft policies to secure their own borders and to address illegal immigration...

Again, Jim. The states have the right to craft their immigration policy...

Jeebus, I don't know how he could be any clearer. Romney believes that states have the right to do whatever the fuck they want to brown people. And no librul federal guvmit has any right to tell them what to do!

Let's see...where have we heard that one before?

The SCOTUS case you might not hear about

 

From the Equal Justice Initiative:

The U.S. Supreme Court today issued an historic ruling in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs holding that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger convicted of homicide are unconstitutional. Kuntrell Jackson and Evan Miller, sentenced to life in prison without parole at 14, are now entitled to new sentencing hearings. Today’s ruling will affect hundreds of individuals whose sentences did not take their age or other mitigating factors into account.

The Court today struck down statutes in 29 states that provide for mandatory life-without-parole sentences for children, reasoning that mandatory imposition of life-without-parole sentences on children “contravenes Graham’s (and also Roper’s) foundational principle: that imposition of a State’s most severe penalties on juvenile offenders cannot proceed as though they were not children.”...

Today’s decision requires the lower courts to conduct new sentencing hearings where judges will have to consider children’s individual characters and life circumstances, including age, as well as the circumstances of the crime.

While the Court did not categorically ban juvenile life without parole in all circumstances, Justice Kagan wrote for the majority that, “given all that we have said in Roper, Graham, and this decision about children’s diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for change, we think appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon.”

Stevenson cautioned, however, that sentencing courts’ discretion must be exercised in an informed and thoughtful way that acknowledges that children are biologically different than adults and less responsible for their wrongdoing, and that the courts should provide the individuals affected by the ruling a meaningful opportunity to show they have rehabilitated themselves and are appropriate candidates for release.

Stevenson added that historically, race and poverty have been powerful forces in influencing which children receive life-without-parole sentences.

The decision was 5-4 meaning that the 4 conservatives on the court think its just dandy to lock a child up in prison for life with no possibility of parole. Neanderthals! Up until today - we were the ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD that allowed this to happen.

At least on this one, a small majority on the court got it right.  

The mandate is constitutional

Immediately following the oral arguments at the Supreme Court on health care reform, here is what President Obama said.

I’m confident that this will be upheld because it should be upheld. That’s not just my opinion; that’s the opinion of a whole lot of constitutional law professors and academics and judges and lawyers who have examined this law, even if they’re not particularly sympathetic to this particular piece of legislation or my presidency.

Bloomberg News demonstrated that he was right by surveying 21 constitutional law experts at the nations top 12 law schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court should uphold a law requiring most Americans to have health insurance if the justices follow legal precedent, according to 19 of 21 constitutional law professors who ventured an opinion on the most-anticipated ruling in years...

“The precedent makes this a very easy case,” said Christina Whitman, a University of Michigan law professor...

“There was certainly a lot of hostile questioning by the more conservative members of the court,” said Jesse Choper, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who described the court as likely to support the mandate. “It’s relatively straightforward -- if they adhere to existing doctrine, it seemed to me they’re likely to uphold it.”...

“When you take the fact of a high-profile, enormously controversial and politically salient case -- to have it decided by the narrowest majority with a party-line split looks very bad, it looks like the court is simply an arm of one political party,” University of Chicago Law Professor Dennis Hutchinson said in an interview...

“I continue to find it extremely unlikely that Justices Roberts and Kennedy will support a 5-4 decision that has such an insubstantial basis in 75 years of Supreme Court case law,” said Yale University Professor Bruce Ackerman, the only respondent who said the court is very likely to uphold the insurance-coverage requirement...

“It’s become just a very partisan battle cry on behalf of an argument which a few years ago was thought to be completely bogus,” Fried, who represented Republican President Ronald Reagan’s administration at the Supreme Court as U.S. solicitor general from 1985 to 1989, said in a telephone interview. “For objective observers on all sides, this was thought to be a lousy argument and the only people who were making it were sort of the wing nuts.”

This reality prompted a couple of political writers to issue some pretty dire warnings if the Supreme Court finds the mandate unconstitutional. First of all, here's Kevin Drum.

If the court does overturn the mandate, it's going to be hard to know how to react. It's been more than 75 years since the Supreme Court overturned a piece of legislation as big as ACA, and I can't think of any example of the court overturning landmark legislation this big based on a principle as flimsy and manufactured as activity vs. inactivity...It would mean that the Supreme Court had officially entered an era where they were frankly willing to overturn liberal legislation just because they don't like it. Pile that on top of Bush v. Gore and Citizens United and you have a Supreme Court that's pretty explicitly chosen up sides in American electoral politics. This would be, in no uncertain terms, no longer business as usual.

And here's James Fallows.

Liberal democracies like ours depend on rules but also on norms -- on the assumption that you'll go so far, but no further, to advance your political ends. The norms imply some loyalty to the system as a whole that outweighs your immediate partisan interest. Not red states, nor blue states, but the United States of America. It was out of loyalty to the system that Al Gore stepped aside after Bush v. Gore. Norms have given the Supreme Court its unquestioned legitimacy. The Roberts majority is barreling ahead without regard for the norms, and it is taking the court's legitimacy with it.

The other SCOTUS decision

In all the anticipation of the Supreme Court ruling on health care reform, lets not forget that we are also expecting a ruling on Arizona's dreadful immigration law - the one that allows local law enforcement to ask for "your papers" if they think you might be undocumented.

If that law is found to be constitutional, the Supreme Court will have given legal cover for racial profiling. That's it in a nutshell.

I'd like to introduce you to Lou and his family, some of the people in Arizona who will be affected by this decision.

Let me tell you a story about some MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS! My Tata Nacho and Nana Angelita immigrated to this country 92 years ago. Their legacy is profound. Contrary to popular belief these "Mexican Immigrants" were not terrorists, drug dealers or associated with crime. Instead they... worked hard, valued god and family, and passed those values on to all of us. Their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, great great grandchildren have fought and died for this country. None have ever gone to prison. We are all productive members of society, public servants, teachers, policemen, firemen, professors, successful business people, the list goes on.

They came to this country for freedom. For the opportunity to work hard, raise a family and have security. I am so fortunate to be a piece of this immigrant legacy and part of this vast family. We are part of something bigger than ourselves and hope that the same opportunity afforded to our family will continue to be afforded to others. BROWN OR OTHERWISE!

Given that no one involved with this law has been able to identify how people will be targeted - other than their race - Lou and his family are as likely to be profiled as anyone else.

We should all remember that, in the everyday lives of people of color, this one is as deadly serious as health care reform.

Politicizing SCOTUS

I truly have no idea what the SCOTUS decision on health care reform will be. We all know what Scalia, Thomas and Alito will do. But this decision isn't up to them any more than it will be up to Ginsburg or Sotomayor or Kagan or Breyer. What we're all waiting to find out is which way Justice Kennedy will go and whether or not he'll take Roberts with him.

Of course a lot of people are assuming the decision will be a bad one for Democrats. I think that alone is proof of what Jonathan Chait called our tendency towards despair. If we had an ounce of awareness we'd be out doing what President Obama did right after the oral arguments...suggesting that its inconceivable that SCOTUS would find this legislation unconstitutional.

I’m confident that this will be upheld because it should be upheld. That’s not just my opinion; that’s the opinion of a whole lot of constitutional law professors and academics and judges and lawyers who have examined this law, even if they’re not particularly sympathetic to this particular piece of legislation or my presidency.

What's interesting is that most of these same folks who have been wallowing in defeat for months now, are busy calling for President Obama and Democrats to scream bloody murder when it happens. Here's Michael Tomasky doing just that.

I expect, as I think most of us do, an unfriendly decision (from the Democratic point of view) on the health-care law. Can’t yet say how unfriendly; at the very least, an overturning of the individual mandate, and maybe more. Assuming that’s correct, the question immediately becomes how the president and the Democrats should respond. There’s very little they can do legislatively. But I’ll be watching for rhetoric, tone, even body language. And on those counts, they had damn well better dispense with the usual liberal woe-is-me hand-wringing and shoulder slumping and come out swinging. They had better communicate to their base that they stand for something, it’s important to them, and they’re pissed. And if they do it the right way, they can make the Supreme Court an issue this fall in a way that might even persuade some swing voters that the court overstepped its bounds.

See what he did there...predict defeat and then suggest that when it happens, Democrats should come out swinging at the Supreme Court. He then goes on to suggest how we should make SCOTUS an issue in this election.

Based on my observations of President Obama for over 4 years, I will predict that this is exactly what he will NOT do. Here's why.

The very thing that's wrong in our politics these days is the polarization of the last shreds of what used to bring us together...media, educational institutions, religion, and yes, even the Supreme Court. That has been the game plan of conservatives from the get-go. Its why Faux News exists. If they can convince enough people that this is a "he said/she said" kind of argument, we are forever divided along those lines.

Since he first appeared on the national scene, this - more than anything else - is what President Obama wanted to change.



And so the last thing I expect from him is an attempt to politicize the Supreme Court by making it an issue in this election.

What I do expect is that, if the mandate or anything else in ACA is ruled unconstitutional, he will get to work doing what needs to be done to ensure the benefits of this legislation are preserved. In other words, he'll keep his eye on his North Star - which is to fight for what is best for the American people.

That's what most people say they want in a President. And that's what we've got right now.

Picking a target

Just for fun, lets assume you are a right winger who salivates at the idea of bringing down the Obama administration. Now lets pretend like your party just won the midterm elections - which means you are now Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee...YES!!! Since you've already decided that "this is the most corrupt government in our history," its just a matter of picking a target to go after and watch the house of cards fall. Here are your choices:


You really hated that stimulus package that President Obama passed within less than a month of coming into office. And there's that whole TARP thing going to the banks. So perhaps Sec. of Treasury Tim Geithner would be a good target. Nah.

But the stimulus included loan money going through Energy Secretary Chu - and there's that whole Solyndra thing to work with. So perhaps we can go that route and make a physicist look like a criminal. Nah.

The truth is - what we hated more than ANYTHING President Obama has done is health care reform. Our base is absolutely rabid about that one and would LOVE the red meat of Sec. Sebelius' hide. Nah.

Secretary Napolitano is the one who pointed the finger at home-grown domestic terrists instead of the great Muslim threat - so maybe we should go after her. Nah.

How about Sec. Clinton? She's the one that advocated for working with the U.N. on military intervention in Libya. Can't we find a way to make that one illegal? Nah.

What we need is someone folks will "buy" as a criminal without looking into the details too closely.

Hey, wait a minute. Its staring us right in the face. Let's go after the "dark one!" He's already busy making things difficult for us old white guys anyway...what with all his talk about civil rights and shit like that.

Bing...Bing...Bing. We have a winner.

Next up - Trade Representative Ron Kirk. We're on a roll now!!!!!!

P.S. It worked with Van Jones, didn't it?

(As President Obama once said in another context - "That was just a joke...sort of.")

Why It might be important to take our time with the SCOTUS health care reform decision

I mentioned yesterday that I don't do panic. So I'm anxious now as we await the ruling from the Supreme Court on health care reform. But I'm not going into panic mode - either now or when the decision is announced.

There are two possible ways this could go that won't require much time to sort through - if they declare the whole law constitutional or throw out the entire thing. Of course the first would be cause for celebration and the latter would be a disaster.

At this point I think the least likely option will be to throw out the entire law. The idea of negating items whose constitutionality is not even being questioned would be the height of judicial activism. We all know that's likely what Scalia and Thomas (and possibly Alito) want to do. But I'd guess they'll have a hard time rounding up a majority on the Court to go along with them. If they do, we have much bigger problems than the loss of health care reform. We'd have a Supreme Court run amok.

That's why I think the options come down to either finding the whole law constitutional or some breakdown of what stays and what goes. If its the latter, we're going to need to take our time in sorting through the details before we react.

The other day Jonathan Chait did a pretty good job of outlining the possibilities. He starts off by reminding us that ACA has two major goals: (1) cost containment and (2) coverage expansion. He then points out that the items in #1 are not being challenged at all. And as far as #2 goes, half of the coverage expansion includes those who will be added to Medicaid. While that expansion is also being challenged in terms of its constitutionality, it is unlikely that the Court will find that to be the case. And so he concludes:

So if you think of the law as half cost containment and half coverage expansion, and the entire cost containment and half the coverage expansion is almost certainly safe, the part that’s legally up for grabs is the other half of the coverage expansion, or about a quarter of the law.

The quarter of the law that he's talking about includes insurance reforms (ie, requiring insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions),  the mandate, and subsidies for those who can't afford insurance on their own. In addition, there is a tax penalty for those who chose to not comply with the mandate.

With all this in mind, Chait outlines some of the various possibilities of what the Court might decide.

1. Leave it all in place.
2. Technically eliminate the mandate to buy health care while leaving in place the fine for not having health insurance. (Essentially upholding the fine as a tax while technically eliminating the requirement.)
3. Eliminate the mandate, and the fine, but leave in place the regulations that insurance companies not discriminate against people with health risks and the subsidies for buying insurance.
4. Eliminate the mandate, the fine, insurance regulations, and the subsidies.
5. Nuke the entire law.

In options 2-4 you begin to see the possibility for a very complex ruling. That's why - if the Court decides to go there - we'll need to take our time in analyzing it all. Its also why, until we know the specifics, its pointless to strategize a response.

I would also agree with Chait that this kind of measured response will likely not be the norm.

The main point to keep in mind is that the most likely scenarios in which the Court finds the mandate unconstitutional still leave most of the law in place. That is not going to come through in the coverage, should this come to pass, because all sides are going to hype the importance of the decision: Conservatives tend toward triumphalism, liberals tend toward despair, and the news media tends to overplay the importance of whatever thing just happened.

And so I would simply ask that those of us who care about health insurance reform and support what President Obama and the Democrats have done to move that ball forward - please prepare to engage your brains along with your despair/anger/fear if this happens. We're going to need that now more than ever!

Is silence golden?

I wanted to take a moment to say I'm sorry that posting around here has been a bit sparse over the last few days. I'm not totally sure of the reason for that. But something is troubling me lately and I didn't want to say anything until I understood what it was.

This happens to me quite regularly...my instincts tell me something and it can be days before my head catches up to understand what its all about.

The closest I've come to understanding what's up is that it has something to do with the tension many of us are feeling as we await a ruling from the Supreme Court on health care reform.

My reluctance to speak started when I read some articles by people at Daily Kos who had trashed President Obama and the Democrats every step of the way through the process of getting ACA passed and are now in full doom-and-gloom mode about it being overturned. On the one hand, they continue with their rants about it being the worst legislation ever while playing on the fears of what will happen to people if it is gone.

To tell you the truth - their approach sickens me. I have always had a very personal aversion to panic. I won't go there. To wallow in the fear of something that MIGHT happen does no good unless you get your jollies off of playing on other people's fears.

But I think my silence has been about more than that. We all know that there is an awful lot riding on this decision by the Supreme Court. It will not only mean much to the millions of people depending on it now, it has the potential to affect millions more in the future.

Beyond that, no matter what the decision is - the entire political conversation will change once its been announced. The possible variations in what the overall decision will be are so numerous and complicated that it doesn't do much good to strategize until we know the specifics.

So we wait for the shoe to drop and know that once it does, most of the things we're focused on today will be forgotten.

Who knows how I'll feel tomorrow. But as of today, I suspect that my pull towards silence has been my way of dealing with both the weight and wait of the moment.

Not Breaking: Romney lies about Obama

Romney began his speech to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials today with a few whoppers.

Unfortunately, despite his promises, President Obama has failed to address immigration reform.

For two years, this President had huge majorities in the House and Senate – he was free to pursue any policy he pleased. But he did nothing to advance a permanent fix for our broken immigration system. Instead, he failed to act until facing a tough re-election and trying to secure your vote.

We've all been witness to the fact that - due to Republican obstructionism - for the last 3 1/2 years it has taken 60 votes to get anything passed in the Senate. If we wanted to be generous, we'd state that Democrats had a total of 60 votes for 7 months from the time Sen. Franken was sworn in until Sen. Brown assumed Ted Kennedy's seat. The reason that's generous is that those 60 votes included Sen. Lieberman, an Independent who caucused with the Democrats but often opposed President Obama's proposals. Either way, it wasn't even close to 2 years.

But if truth be told, a President is always free to "pursue any policy he pleases." He's just not guaranteed success with Congress. So let's remind ourselves of some of the things President Obama has worked on.

Back in May 2010 Senator Lindsey Graham threw a temper tantrum as the Obama administration attempted to work with Congress on comprehensive immigration reform.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) assailed President Barack Obama’s attempts to find other Republican senators willing to support immigration reform this year, calling the effort a “raw display of partisanship.”...

Graham has been one of the lead Republican negotiators on immigration, but has not been in the middle of the White House outreach, and was venting his frustration...

Graham walked away from negotiations with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the immigration bill after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made clear he would push to move the legislation this year.

Graham’s move prompted the White House to reach out to other Republicans who might support moving reform.

Senator Graham threw these kinds of tantrums several times during discussions about immigration reform. But this one really does deserve some kind of award, doesn't it? First of all, he's crying because Reid brought up the bill at the wrong time. Then he's stomping his feet because President Obama is being way too partisan...by reaching out to other Republicans.

And they wonder why we talk about the President being the "only adult in the room."

Suffice it to say that these kinds of antics kept Congress from passing comprehensive immigration reform - despite President Obama's attempts to do so.

Then there was the DREAM Act...which was brought up for a vote during the 2010 lame duck session.  Fifty-five Senators voted for it. But that wasn't enough to overcome the Republican filibuster.

Following the failure of the DREAM Act, President Obama issued his first directive calling for prosecutorial discretion in the "apprehension, detention, and removal" of people fitting the Act's criteria.

And then he followed that up last week with a second directive that would allow DREAMers to qualify for a 2-year work permit.

So Mr. Romney, you are simply lying when you say that President Obama waited until a tough election fight to pursue progress on these issues.

I know the idea of Romney telling lies is about as newsworthy these days as a suggestion that pigs like mud (please don't jump all over me pig lovers - its just an analogy). So perhaps we will eventually be able to do away with these long explanations and shorten it all to something like this every time he opens his mouth.

Friedersdorf, Eric Holder is not your n****r either

On his first day as Chair of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee - prior to any testimony or investigations - Rep. Daryl Issa declared the Obama administration "one of the most corrupt" in history. It should come as no surprise that he would concoct a way to cite Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt. After all, he's been working his way towards this goal for almost 2 years, regardless of the facts.

But as I said back when I fist started focusing on the work of AG Holder and the DOJ, its not just the right that has been after him. He's also been the target of many on the left as well. Right on cue comes Conor Friedersdorf with his article titled The Real Reason Eric Holder Should Resign as Attorney General.

What Friedersdorf has done is to twist a story that was written up in USA Today about a conflict between federal laws regarding felons caught with guns and state sentencing laws in North Carolina to insinuate that DOJ is not doing anything to release "innocent" people from jail.

Without repeating all the details (please read them at the links if you're interested), I'll give you one example of how disingenuous these charges are. Friesdersdorf  includes this quote from the USA Today story.

Here's U.S. Attorney Anne Tompkins: "We can't be outcome driven. We've got to make sure we follow the law, and people should want us to do that."

He presents that as an accusation that DOJ isn't doing anything to correct the problem. But of course he conveniently leaves out the very next sentence in the article.

She said her office is "looking diligently for ways, within the confines of the law, to recommend relief for defendants who are legally innocent."

If it weren't so maddening it would be funny to see these folks - who constantly accuse Obama supporters of propaganda - being the very ones to utilize it to prop up their Obama Derangement Syndrome.

But all that was just a warm-up act for Friedersdorf. Eventually he gets to his real beef.

Attorney General Holder didn't create this mess. But it sure looks like it's another injustice that he's failing to clean up. After President Obama and Harold Koh, perhaps no one in the Obama Administration has been a bigger disappointment to civil libertarians than Holder, so much so that Wil S. Hylton mused in a 2010 profile about whether there was any reason for him to keep his job. "He has promised to end the policy of indefinite detention at Guantánamo by prosecuting some of its most notorious detainees; to investigate torture by the CIA; and to revitalize the department's most neglected offices, like the long-suffering Civil Rights Division," Hylton wrote -- and he got a bigger budget and improved staffing for the Civil Rights Division.

We've been around the block on these accusations over and over again. I'm as tired of them as I am of Rep. Issa's nonsense. Its clear that Mr. Fridersdorf is clueless about the role Congress played in not allowing the closing of Guantanamo and how the Military Commissions Act of 2006 shielded the Bush administration against prosecution for torture and how Holder's re-invigorated Civil Rights Division is tackling things like police brutality, voters rights, nativist immigration laws, etc.

So I think I'll simply quote Brown Man again (with a slight adaptation) and say, "Friedersdorf, Eric Holder is not your n****r either."

"What makes us American"

I hope everyone will take a few minutes to read President Obama's op-ed in TIME magazine.

We didn’t raise the Statue of Liberty with its back to the world. We raised it with its light to the world. What makes us American is not a question of what we look like or what our names are. What makes us American is our shared belief in the enduring promise of this country – and our shared responsibility to leave it more generous and more hopeful than we found it.

Also on the Statue of Liberty is the inscription The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus. She is, indeed, the "Mother of Exiles."

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

How President Obama drives the GOP off an extremist cliff

First of all, let me say that President Obama's move on giving young immigrants a reprieve was absolutely the right thing to do. Its good policy. End of story.

But its also a perfect example of how his conciliatory rhetoric acts as ruthless strategy...something I've been writing about for a very long time now.

We all know that Senator Marco Rubio was working on a Republican alternative to the DREAM Act as a way to soften the blows they've inflicted on their support in the Latino community. And we also know that what President Obama did was to basically implement Rubio's alternative via directive.

In a world where Republicans were sane, this would result in someone like Rubio congratulating the President and joining him in implementing a policy that he supported. But of course that's not what happened. Rubio is now crying, taking his toys, and going home. And its all big bad Obama's fault!

It comes as no surprise that Obama's directive is celebrated by immigrants and Latinos. And today we find out that it is generally supported by likely voters 2:1 (64% to 30%). Ruh-roh Republicans.

We've watched this happen over and over again over the last 3 1/2 years. Whenever President Obama embraces something Republicans say they support, they become terrified of what it would mean if they actually worked with him to tackle the challenges that face us. And so instead of working with him, they go into obstruction mode and paint themselves into an ever more extremist corner.

You want to know why Republicans keep insisting on jumping off an extremist cliff? There's your perfect example of how/why it keeps happening.

I'll close with 2 quotes that regular readers will have seen here before. The first is from Mark Schmitt.

One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict.

And the second from Jonathan Chait.

This apparent paradox is one reason Obama's political identity has eluded easy definition. On the one hand, you have a disciple of the radical community organizer Saul Alinsky turned ruthless Chicago politician. On the other hand, there is the conciliatory post-partisan idealist. The mistake here is in thinking of these two notions as opposing poles. In reality it's all the same thing. Obama's defining political trait is the belief that conciliatory rhetoric is a ruthless strategy.

Romney will do as he's told

Much has been made over the last few days about Mitt Romney's inability/unwillingness to answer Bob Schieffer's question about whether or not, if elected, he would keep President Obama's new directive on young immigrants in place. We all know that Romney is between a rock and a hard place on this one - wanting to not alienate Latino voters or his nativist base.  But I find one of his first responses to this question to be enlightening.

“I’d like to see legislation that deals with this issue,” he said. “And I happen to agree with Marco Rubio, as he will consider this issue."

First of all, it makes no sense. He agrees with Rubio as Rubio is considering the issue. Huh? So when Rubio figures out a position, Romney will take it?

You can almost see the synapses in Romney's head blowing up in an attempt to find some mooring outside himself (ie, in Rubio) that will give him direction on where to go.

It reminded me of some of the things Romney has said about Israel. Here's an example  from an interview in which he was asked about the subject of the location of the American embassy in Israel.

The actions that I will take will be actions recommended and supported by Israeli leaders. I don’t seek to take actions independent of what our allies think is best, and if Israel’s leaders thought that a move of that nature would be helpful to their efforts, then that’s something I’ll be inclined to do. 

Once again, when asked what HE would do on a controversial topic, Romney's synapses explode and he basically says he'll do what Israeli leaders tell him to do.

This goes beyond mere pandering to the different factions in the Republican Party and the American electorate. The man literally doesn't know what he thinks about controversial topics until he gets some indication from others.

I'm not so sure I buy the idea that he's hiding his policies so much as that he literally doesn't know - and won't until someone tells him. And I'd suggest that is nothing short of terrifying in someone who is running to be President of the United States. It gives us no clue about his moral compass - because he doesn't seem to have one.

But it does demonstrate why Mitt Romney is the only possible candidate that had any chance of traversing the current divide in the Republican Party. Someone with strong convictions would have alienated either the establishment or the tea party base. In Romney, both sides think they got someone they can control. Remember what Grover Norquist said about the nominee.

All we have to do is replace Obama. ...We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it.

What it comes down to is that Romney will do as he's told. The question that begs is "Who will be doing the telling?"

The Long and Winding Road

So Paul McCartney turned 70 years old today. He'll forever be that young fresh-faced phenom  in my mind.

I was in 4th grade when the British invasion happened and got my first record player that year. The first album that came with it was Please Please Me. In other words, the Beatles were where it all began as far as I'm concerned.

Over at The Maddow Blog they're asking readers to name their favorite McCartney song. That's an easy one for me.

Why I'll CONTINUE to have AG Holder's back

Immediately following the 2010 midterms when Republicans gained a majority in the House, I started the page up at the top of this blog titled DOJ Watch after writing an article titled Why I'll have Attorney General Eric Holder's back. In it I cited a prophetic New York Times article.

When the Obama administration wakes up next month to a divided capital, no cabinet member will be facing a more miserable prospect of oversight hearings and subpoenas than Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr...

Mr. Holder is a particularly juicy target because he presides over issues that have served as recurrent fodder for political controversy — including using the criminal justice system for terrorism cases, and federal enforcement of civil rights and immigration laws.

Of course that prediction has come true. AG Holder is now facing the possibility of contempt charges from Rep. Issa's committee and the blog The Daily Caller (yes, the same one that is now praising their reporter for his disrespect towards the President) has made it their mission to bring down the Attorney General.

For weeks now I've been thinking I should write something about all this. But honestly, getting into the content of all the crap that's being thrown around is just something I haven't been interested in doing. Part of me is feeling guilty though because this man deserves defending.

Today I found the answer to that dilemma in a blog post by Brown Man titled Senatory Cornyn, Eric Holder is Not Your Nigger (I'll apologize now for the language - but sometimes these kinds of words speak the truth).

Eric Holder is not your nigger.

He is not going to play the role of the servile coon you and your ilk fantasize about, not going to bow or scrape or say “yassa Boss”, and he damn sure isn’t going to smile in your face and tell you what you want to hear. This man has testified NINE MOTHERFUCKING TIMES ON THE SAME MOTHERFUCKING TOPIC and you chump change, "wish this were Whitewater" motherfuckers want to act like Holder is holding out on you?

Eric Holder is not your nigger.

He is a grown ass man who has probably forgotten more shit than you and the top five members of your staff combined can remember, but you wouldn’t know that, because you can’t believe that even now black people who rise to the top in America have to know their shit backwards and forwards. Unfortunately for you, the shit he knows backwards and forwards is the law of the land, the same one you have to obey like everybody else. So what is this about, really? Because from where I sit, and white folks with good sense sit, and every Latino in the country who is not motherfucking Cuban sits, this looks like you can't make the president do what you want, so you will abuse your subpoena authority with the next ranking black man in the Obama administration.

Yep, that about nails it. To give these allegations any time or thought misses the point that is being made here.  Not only is AG Holder pushing every button these people have on voting rights, civil rights, and immigration...he's the "next ranking black man in the Obama administration." That, my friends, is the threat these people are responding to. And its why I will say proudly that "I have AG Holder's back!"

Father-in-Chief

Listen to your elders!

From the Latino Rebels Facebook page.

"Social Change at breakneck speed"

Ron Brownstein looks at the demographics of Reagan's 1984 landslide election against Walter Mondale to give us some idea of how much the landscape has changed.

When Reagan routed Democratic nominee Walter Mondale in 1984, the white working class dominated the electorate. White voters without a four-year college degree cast 61 percent of all ballots that year, and they gave Reagan 66 percent of their votes, the NJ analysis found. White voters with at least a four-year college degree cast an additional 27 percent of the vote, and 62 percent of them went for Reagan. Eighty-one percent of minorities backed Mondale, but they represented just 12 percent of all voters then.

By 2008, minorities had more than doubled their vote share to 26 percent. College-educated whites had increased their share to 35 percent. The big losers were whites without a college degree, who dropped from 61 percent of all voters to 39 percent—a decline of more than one-third from their level in 1984. That is social change at breakneck speed.

Comparing 1984 to 2008, noncollege whites dropped their vote share by 22% while college educated whites increased theirs by 8% and minorities by 14%. Overall, non college educated white voters went from being 2/3 of the electorate to just over a third.

I know we've been seeing this kind of information in varying forms for a while now. But that's as powerful a summary as I've seen.

Did Justice Ginsburg just poke Justice Scalia?

Most of you will remember that in oral arguments about the ACA, Justice Scalia actually used the ridiculous right-wing trope about being forced to buy broccoli if the Supreme Court finds the health care mandate constitutional.

Yesterday, Justice Ginsburg didn't give us any scoop on what the final ruling will be. But she did seem to take a bit of a poke at Justice Scalia.

Ginsburg noted that one ACA-related question the court must decide is whether the whole law must fall if the individual mandate is unconstitutional — “or may the mandate be chopped, like a head of broccoli, from the rest of it?”

She has always reminded me that men should never take for granted the power of small women who are old enough to have been around the block a few times and don't have much to lose.

;-)

Liberals as early adopters

As we watch political conversations about things like women's access to contraception, support for marriage equality and immigration, I find it interesting to put these issues into the context of what Everett Rogers called the diffusion of innovations - "a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures." It is usually accompanied by a graph that looks like this.


The blue line represents the rate at which various groups adopt the new idea/technology and the yellow line shows its market share.

When it comes to something like GLBT rights, we might think of activists such as Harvey Milk as an innovator. Liberals and/or Democrats were the early adopters who joined the cause - even with a minority of support. As the early majority was building, folks like Karl Rove took advantage and - knowing all he needed was 50%+1 - worked to put things like marriage equality on the ballots in several states in order to drive up Republican turnout. But as we've seen recently, support for marriage equality has passed from being accepted by the early majority into the late majority stage just this year.



I suspect that we could take any number of liberal causes and map through their diffusion processes over time.

What we might learn from this is that most politicians won't act on an issue until it begins to reach the late majority. That is only to be expected in a democracy where, in order to win an election, they need to get 50%+1 of the vote (and of course now that has moved to 60%+1 for legislation with the Republican's addiction to the filibuster).

In order to get to the place where politicians can act, we need activist leaders working to reach the early majority and get them on board. That's why you almost never heard of someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. focusing his efforts on getting politicians to pass civil rights legislation. His activism was all about opening the eyes of the early majority to the devastation of Jim Crow laws. The scales tipped into the late majority (mostly in Northern States) signing on to the message in the early 60's and hence, the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. That never would have happened when they started the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955.

For me, this explains a lot about why liberals often feel victimized in the sense that they are right about an issue and yet lose battles politically. Our efforts are better spent in reaching that early majority than they are in pressuring Congress and/or the President. And they are certainly better spent on that task than raging at the laggards who are behaving like a dying cornered beast.

In our polarized political environment, you might wonder where this early and late majority lies. I think it can be found in people like Michael Stafford, who I wrote about earlier this week. They don't get as much air time these days with our conflict-driven media. But they're out there...I would suggest in big numbers.

P.S. If you'd like to learn a little more about how to reach the early majority, take a look at this fascinating TED talk by Simon Sinek.

This is Obama's second administrative move on DREAM Act

In the context of today's announcement, I think its important to note that President Obama took administrative action a year ago that directed staff to exercise prosecutorial discretion in the "apprehension, detention and removal" of undocumented people based on some of the same criteria cited in the DREAM Act.

What he did today goes beyond that in shielding DREAMers from deportation and giving them the opportunity to apply for work permits. That's a BFD!

"It's just insane," the graduate student at Texas A&M University said. "I've been working on this for six years. It is just overwhelming."

Zelaya was electrified by news that the Obama administration would stop deporting illegal immigrants who entered the United States as children if they met certain requirements.

Zelaya came to the United States illegally from Honduras at age 14 to find his mother, who was already in the country, he said.

Without the change announced Friday, he couldn't get a job to help pay for school;  Zelaya, 25, is pursuing a master's degree in education with hopes of earning a doctorate and teaching middle school. He also couldn't consider the job offers that presented themselves. The uncertainty over what loomed after graduation spooked him.

"Now, maybe I will be able to work without being afraid that someone may deport me," he said. "There is no fear anymore."

"The people have the final say"

I know that many pundits are criticizing President Obama's speech yesterday as being too long and wonkish. But I see it differently. It was billed as a policy speech on our economy more than a campaign rally speech. He needed to do this to lay out the specifics.

And then came this:

So, Governor Romney disagrees with my vision. His allies in Congress disagree with my vision. Neither of them will endorse any policy that asks the wealthiest Americans to pay even a nickel more in taxes. It’s the reason we haven’t reached a grand bargain to bring down our deficit -- not with my plan, not with the Bowles-Simpson plan, not with the so-called Gang of Six plan.

Despite the fact that taxes are lower than they’ve been in decades, they won’t work with us on any plan that would increase taxes on our wealthiest Americans. It’s the reason a jobs bill that would put 1 million people back to work has been voted down time and time again. It’s the biggest source of gridlock in Washington today.

And the only thing that can break the stalemate is you. You see, in our democracy, this remarkable system of government, you, the people, have the final say.

This November is your chance to render a verdict on the debate over how to grow the economy, how to create good jobs, how to pay down our deficit. Your vote will finally determine the path that we take as a nation -- not just tomorrow, but for years to come.

When you strip everything else away, that’s really what this election is about. That’s what is at stake right now. Everything else is just noise. Everything else is just a distraction...

Governor Romney and the Republicans who run Congress believe that if you simply take away regulations and cut taxes by trillions of dollars, the market will solve all of our problems on its own. If you agree with that, you should vote for them. And I promise you they will take us in that direction.

I believe we need a plan for better education and training -- and for energy independence, and for new research and innovation; for rebuilding our infrastructure; for a tax code that creates jobs in America and pays down our debt in a way that’s balanced. I have that plan. They don’t.

And if you agree with me -- if you believe this economy grows best when everybody gets a fair shot, and everybody does their fair share, and everybody plays by the same set of rules -- then I ask you to stand with me for a second term as President.

The day is coming soon when it won't any longer be an issue of what President Obama does/says any more than it will be about what Mitt Romney and the Republicans are doing/saying. It will be up to us. The focus will shift and it will be our chance to do something. We'll have a decision to make.

Without all the spin and lies the Republicans tend to employ, President Obama clearly laid out that choice for us when it comes to the different plans for our economic future. In other words, he asked us to think about our choices rather than simply react to the style of red meat Stephen Colbert calls truthiness.

I'm very aware that's not how most people see our politics these days. But President Obama promised a long time ago that he would work to change how we do politics in this country. He believes we're mature enough to move beyond the way the Republicans play to our fears and insecurities - that we can think and not just feel our way through these choices.

This is the antithesis of elitism...he believes in us. Those politicians/pundits who assume we'll only respond to gut punches demean us and the democratic process itself.

And so the people will have the final say. President Obama is asking us to think about that choice.

Republicans embarrass themselves with Latinos while Obama makes a bold move

The role of Latinos in the 2012 election is going to come into sharp focus over the next week as both President Obama and Mitt Romney speak at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials next Thursday in Orlando.

So lets remind ourselves where things stand right now based on a poll from Latino Decisions that I highlighted a few days ago.



To set the stage for Mr. Romney on this one, the RNC put up a new website, RNClatinos.com. Only there was one problem. Here's the header they used for the site.



Think Progress nailed them.

RNClatinos.com, the Republican National Committee’s new website aimed at Latino voter outreach, uses a stock photograph of Asian children as its banner picture.

The stock photo found on Shutterstock is listed with tags including “asia, asian, cheeks, children, cool… interracial, japanese… thailand, together, trendy.” But the words ‘hispanic’ or ‘latino’ are nowhere on the page.

No racism there, huh? After all, they don't "see" color. Its simply "us white folks" and all of "them."

But that's not the end of it. TPM also found this on the site.

The main page features a straw poll asking visitors whether they’re disappointed with President Obama, a talking point Republicans have been pushing as part of their outreach effort. As of Thursday evening, however, Obama was winning the unscientific survey 55 percent to 45 percent — highly unusual on a partisan website.

This is what happens when you want to pretend to care about something but don't really give a shit. It shows.

Meanwhile, today President Obama will make a big announcement in the White House Rose Garden.

The Obama administration will stop deporting and begin granting work permits to younger illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and have since led law-abiding lives. The election-year initiative addresses a top priority of an influential Latino electorate that has been vocal in its opposition to administration deportation policies.

The policy change, described to The Associated Press by two senior administration officials, will affect as many as 800,000 immigrants who have lived in fear of deportation. It also bypasses Congress and partially achieves the goals of the so-called DREAM Act, a long-sought but never enacted plan to establish a path toward citizenship for young people who came to the United States illegally but who have attended college or served in the military.

Yep, he's tired of waiting for the obstructionist Republicans in Congress to move. So once again he's going to do what he can on his own. These young people will still need the DREAM Act in order to gain citizenship. But at least they'll be able to let go of the fear of deportation.

Any further questions about the stark CHOICE in front of us for this election?

I can't even begin to tell you how much I love these pictures

Just hangin' with the Prez.

The man in the arena

The opening line of Jonathan Capehart's column yesterday summed the last few days up pretty well.

No one does panic like Democrats.

Of course he was responding to the "hair on fire" reactions initiated by talk from James Carville and Stan Greenberg as captured in a column by Karen Tumulty.

Is it time for Democrats to panic?

That’s what a growing number of party loyalists are wondering, amid a rough couple of weeks in which President Obama and his political operation have been buffeted by bad economic news, their own gaffes and signs that the presumed Republican nominee is gaining strength.

My response is to remember the days when Mr. Carville went into a panic criticizing President Obama about his response to the Gulf oil spill. Two months later, he didn't exactly issue an apology, but was forced to eat a little crow.

Any fair assessment would have to conclude that in spite of some people's criticism of the early response, (and by "some people" I mean Ms. Nippy's firstborn son James), one also must give credit to a much improved and vigorous response to the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf...

I don't know many people -- and no Democrats -- who were as tough on the Obama administration as I was when the oil started gushing.

But for now I'll take Mississippi governor -- and chairman of the Republican Governors' Association -- Haley Barbour saying President Obama has "done more right than wrong." In fact, I'll up Gov. Barbour's bid one and say that as of late, President Obama has done a lot more right than wrong.

Its been a long time since I trusted James Carville - but that's a long story for another day. Suffice it to say that he has always been a critic of President Obama's approach to campaigning, be that because of having a totally different style, his loyalty to the Clinton's, or jealousy at being replaced by David Plouffe as the latest campaign guru in Democratic circles...who knows?

But these folks are just the tip of the iceberg. As Capehart alluded to, a whole bunch of Democratic pundits now see it as open season on panic and time to shower the Obama campaign with their "words of wisdom" about how things should be done.

Of course Politico is going to pounce on a story like that - even going so far as to bring back people we haven't heard from for awhile like Drew Westen (puhleeze!). And every pundit like Michael Tomasky, who has spent their life sitting on the sidelines commenting on what others do, is now all of the sudden a genius at strategy.

I figure that if every one of these yahoos would take a page from the book of someone like Steve Benen and just write about the issues rather than try to assume the role of "campaign consultant," we'd be doing a MUCH better job of getting the message we want out there. In other words...do your f*cking job rather than constantly auditioning for Plouffe's.

Finally, I'm taken back once again to this marvelous quote from Teddy Roosevelt.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.