After eight year lapse when the Democrats controlled the statehouse, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) quietly declared April 2010 to be Confederate History Month.  This was a practice started by former governor George Allen (he of macaca fame).  For some reason the California bred Allen had a predilection for confederate imagery.  While from my perspective the confederates were traitors who tried to tear apart this nation for a disgraceful motive couched in noble sounding words, I have no deep objection to such an acknowledgement as long as confederate symbols are not glorified and the context of the war is understood.  It is after all a part of the history of the South.  What does bother me is the revisionist movement of the past two decades that tries to minimize the extent to which slavery led to the civil war and the pandering of politicians to the racist fringe.

Revisionists would have you believe that the South fought solely for the cause of states rights.  This is bullshit.  Just like politicians ignore states rights when it suits them, the South had no reservations in infringing of the right of the free states to ban slavery.  The antebellum years were full of attempts like the Fugitive Slave Act that overrode states rights in the North.  But heaven forbid the Union attempting to ban slavery.  That was intolerable.  At the time of secession the Southern states made no bones about the fact that the “states right” at issue was slavery.  This is evident from their declaration of causes for secession where slavery dominates the reason of their departure.  See link.  Mississippi went on to declare “[o]ur position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world.”

Even the Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens in his infamous Cornerstone Speech, parts of which are quoted below, had no doubt of the part slavery played in the civil war:

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. Read the rest of this entry »

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People don’t always appreciate how much power prosecutors hold in America and how much harm an irresponsible one could cause.  A recent case in Wisconsin demonstrates just how.  After much debate the Wisconsin legislature passed a law requiring schools that have sex education programs to tell students how to use condoms and other contraceptives See link.  One can debate the merits of the law or whether it was good policy to pass the law.  However, the power of the Wisconsin legislature to pass this law is not in dispute.  But such trivialities do not concern Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth.  His primary concern is his sense of outraged morality and in his zeal the legislative mandate is no bar.  So he has fired off a letter to local school districts that any attempt to comply with legislative mandate could result in charges for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

How exactly he will obtain such a conviction for teachers complying with an express legislative mandate is not clear.  This is sheer prosecutorial intimidation.  Yet this is not the worst such case.

Maricopa County Arizona has not received the attention it should.  Over the last couple of years it has been the scene of abuse of the legal process that belongs in a tinpot dictatorship.  The perpetrators are controversial sheriff Joe Arpaio and his man Friday the county attorney Andrew Young.  Having no patience with the legal niceties they appear to have responded to criticism by bringing the force of their offices against critics in government by bringing flimsy indictments (since dismissed) against a local judge and a couple of county board supervisors.  See link.  The abuse of power included arresting attendees of a county board meeting for having the temerity to applaud criticism of the sheriff and intimidating county employees by sending deputies to their homes to find dirt on their bosses.  For a detailed read on the antics of the duo see here.  In the last few years the duo have branded themselves as front-line soldiers against illegal immigration, giving them a partisan shield from their excesses of power.  However, a backlash has set in and the duo are being investigated by a federal grand jury but the taxpayers will be footing the bill for the wrongful arrests and malicious prosecutions on their  watch.  See link.

These cases serve as a reminder for the need of constant vigilance when those in power infringe on liberty or abuse their authority, particularly in local government where seedy corruption often flies under the radar due to the public’s benign neglect.  A vigilant media and public can terminate the career of such officials, as was the case with now disbarred Durham County district attorney Mike Nifong who infamously pursued the Duke lacrosse team on flimsy rape charges to secure his re-election.

We take many liberties for granted in this country.  Stories like these show how real they can be without delving into the paranoid conspiracy theories that have been a fixture on cable news the past year.

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I will let the video below speak for itself.  Brings out the absurdity of the media’s hand wringing tendency.  Would like to see more of this Obama around.

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The news media and liberal blogs have eagerly lapped up the story of the Republican National Committee wooing donors at a “bondage themed nightclub” where topless dancers imitate lesbian sex.  See link.  Even though he was not present, it epitomizes the careless way Steele runs the RNC and his inability to control or monitor spending.  The story was broken by the right wing blog The Daily Caller which also highlighted Steele’s expensive habits.  See link.  Fed up donors are now pushing funds away from the RNC to other outlets.  See link.

The gaffe prone Steele was not what the Republican Party wanted when they tried to project an image of diversity by making him the head of the RNC.  And yet in the short run they are stuck with him for the near future.  See link.  Logistically it will be very hard to force him out and the optics of a diversity challenged party dumping its most prominent minority just before an election would be terrible.  It does not help that Steele is on record saying that white Republicans are scared of him.  See link.  But it is hard to see Republicans putting up with the constant drumbeat of embarrassment emanating from Steele all the way till 2012.  I think the clock has begun to tick on Steele’s leadership of the RNC and it will not be surprising to see him eased out next year.  Whether he goes quietly is another question.  Quiet does not seem to be in his DNA.

It is also another example of the risk of a political party sanctimoniously prosing on about morality.  Once again it brings to mind the paraphrased (the original quote is in Hamlet Act III, Sc. II) Shakespeare quote “Methinks thou dost protest too loudly.”  For example there have been a number of vocally homophobic right wing legislators outed for being gay lately.  For one of the latest see here.  It would be far better if politicians focused on doing their job honestly and stopped using personal morality as a political football.

Meanwhile, the latest RNC scandal was low hanging fruit for Jon Stewart to pick off and he has done so with glee.  Given the subject matter the sketch is a little more risque than usual.  Enjoy…

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Matt Yglesias has a good article comparing Romneycare to Obamacare and Mitt Romney’s transparently dishonest attempts to run away from his legacy.  See link.  He also discusses the fundamental flaw in the Republican position which accepts the need to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions without understanding that such a provision cannot stand alone.  This point is not new.  Others like Paul Krugman and Jonathan Chait have raised this point in responding to people like Peggy Noonan.  See here and here.

The point is simple.  If insurance companies cannot deny people with pre-existing conditions you create an incentive for healthy people not to get insurance until they fall sick.  Hence you need a mandate to take care of the free-riders.  But once you create a mandate you need subsidies for people who cannot afford health care.  The end product is something along the line of Romneycare, Obamacare or a robust public option (which is probably more popular than either).

Given that Republicans support an ban on insurance companies discriminating against pre-existing conditions they need to come up with a meaningful alternative to Obamacare, not that nonsense of a plan they previously issued which expanded coverage by only 3 million.  Otherwise it is time for them to focus on responsible fixes to the plan, notably on the issue of cost control.  Somehow, I don’t see that happening.

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The passage of health care reform may have had the unintended side effect of winnowing the 2012 presidential field.  While the 2012 Republican convention is over two years away, an eternity in politics, Mitt Romney may have just seen his hopes of securing the Republican nomination go up in smoke.

Romney’s ambitions and his willingness to adapt his positions to the prevailing winds are no secret.  Even by the low standards of politicians he displayed a chameleon like ability to change his colors for the prevailing audience and the brazen chutzpah to attack people for holding positions he held a short while before.  This made him very unpopular among his fellow Republican candidates notably John McCain and Mike Huckabee who barely concealed their disdain for him.  The 2007-8 Republican presidential debates often degenerated into “whack-a-Mitt” sessions where all the candidates ganged up in the self funded Romney with cheerful glee.  See link.  His Mormon faith also acted as a handicap as the Republican evangelical base looked at him with suspicion.

When John McCain all but wrapped up the Republican nomination the ever malleable Romney promptly dropped out to stump for McCain in hopes of securing the Vice Presidential nod.  Unfortunately all that sucking up came to naught when McCain went for the wonderfully clueless Sarah Palin.

In the aftermath of the elections Romney has tried to reposition himself as the only remaining adult among the Republican candidates.  His extensive business background lends him a public perception of gravitas on economic issues.  He has stayed away from an embrace of the occasionally unhinged tea party protests.  His attempts to burnish his credentials on foreign policy were less successful since his Palinesque use of jargon and tough words largely drew snickers.  See here and  here.

But for a long time the sword of Damocles hanging over Romney was his signature accomplishment as governor of Massachusetts – health care reform.  In the Republican primaries Romney defended his plan but faced a dilemma when the contours of Obamacare started to look very similar to Romneycare.  While even the latest Wall Street Journal editorial replete with Republican talking points (some discredited) refers to the two plans as “fraternal policy twins” Romney has been busy tying himself in knots in explaining how the plans are different and whining about the alleged abuse of power by the Democrats in not deferring to a minority that lost the last two national elections.

This is a big problem for Romney.  With the Republican base whipped up into a frenzy the next nominee will have to attack Obamacare.  A federalism argument could work, but can also be countered by the fact that the balanced budget obligations on most states make it extremely impractical for any of them to pass health care reform.  In any case federalism will not explain away Romney’s willingness to sign on to government interference at the state level, something that has the base in a lather.

Even with Romney penchant  for short term memory loss on his previous policy positions, it is hard to see how Romney will be the candidate to perform that task.  Democrats will gleefully paraphrase the attack used on the last nominee from Massachusetts that Romney was “for health care before he was against it” to cement Romney’s reputation as an unprincipled flip-flopper.  A base already predisposed to distrust Romney will have a hard time trusting him as the man to take down Obamacare, which practically will be very hard to pull off in any case.

So the man who should have been the Republican nominee and had the best understanding of economic policy will enter primary season severely hobbled.  Again things can change.  A continuing bleak economic outlook could cause Republicans to hold their nose and vote for Romney, like they did for McCain in the last election cycle.   Repealing health care reform could be a fringe issue by 2012 and Romney could position himself as the man best equipped to fix it.  But at present it is hard to see Romney securing the support of a distrustful base.  IMO the man the Obama campaign should worry about comes from next door Indiana – Mitch Daniels, though a lot can change in the next two years.

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I have never cared for Congressman Dan Lipinski.  The dislike is not personal since I do not know the man personally and not rooted by deep animus towards his political positions.  They stem largely from his nepotistic elevation to office in 2004 by his father Congressman Bill Lipinski.  Lipinski pere had been in Congress in various Chicago districts for about 20 years and won the 2004 Democratic Primary.  Then in August after the Republicans presented him with the usual token opposition in his Democratic district he abruptly withdrew and got party honchos to nominate his son, then a professor at the University of Tennessee.

Much could be forgiven had Lipinski fils emerged into a statesman of stature after this unfortunate introduction to politics.  Sadly he has been an undistinguished backbencher who occasionally aggravates local progressives with blue dog tendencies.  Understandably they get peeved at having to put up with this in what should be a safe Democratic seat.

On Sunday Dan Lipinski (after previously proclaiming his support of health care reform) became the only Democratic Congressman from Illinois to vote against health care reform. See link.  Since the bill passed I am not unduly incensed by Congressman Lipinski’s latest apostasy.  What has drawn my ire was this post by local Chicago journalist Lynn Sweet.  See here.  If accurate, and there does not seem to be a reason to doubt the reporting, Bill Lipinski’s nepotistic activities were not triggered by dreams of a local political dynasty.  Evidently they were triggered by the desire to create a comfortable Congressional sinecure for his son to provide him health insurance, which per Sweet’s latest edits gives him the opportunity to purchase lifetime coverage upon retirement.  Dan Lipinski is a diabetic requiring daily insulin shots.  He does not have to worry about being rejected for pre-existing conditions anymore.

And yet the good Congressman voted against a bill introduced by his party making insurance available to people with pre-existing conditions without parents who can get them into Congress as a backup plan.  Now that his sinecure has served its purpose it is time to send the Congressman back to Tennessee or wherever.  Unfortunately with Illinois’ ridiculously early primary calendar (a legacy of the last presidential primary) we are stuck with him for another term.

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• Howard Fineman who is a friend of the Bayh’s offers a kinder take on Bayh.  See link.  It paints him as a fundamentally decent man who did not have the stomach for nasty politics and the campaign this fall where his wife’s corporate directorships would come under scrutiny.  But one wonders why such a thin-skinned man thought he could rise to the presidency.  While praising Bayh, Fineman unintentionally opens up a couple of critiques for Bayh.  There appears to be an element of petulance at being passed over for the Vice Presidency yet again.  I find it interesting that a man who like Al Gore attended St. Albans, never suffered from financial hardship, worked in private practice only for about 3 years and parlayed his family name into statewide elected office at 31 knows so much about how America operates.  And could we please stop referring to politicians who do not have the spine to cut entitlement spending but want to slash government tax revenues by incessant tax cuts as deficit hawks.  Deficit peacocks seems more appropriate.
• Ross Douthat from the right repeats many of my critiques yesterday that Bayh was essentially an empty shirt who never had the guts to take a courageous policy stand.  See link.  He articulated conventional wisdom but for a self-professed executive never provided much leadership.  Now he leaves whining about partisanship in the Senate (which to be fair is toxic) but without doing anything meaningful about it.  And on his way out he repeated the nonsensical Republican canard that the stimulus did not create a single job.  The stimulus is unpopular (which naturally finds Bayh ranged in opposition) and one can question how effective it was and whether it was an appropriate policy, but in their honest moments (or when they petition for stimulus funds or while posing for the cameras at ribbon cutting ceremonies for projects they solicited but voted against) even the Republicans agree that jobs have been created.

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Evan Bayh’s resignation today rocked the political world.  Nobody saw this coming.  Even though Bayh was likely to draw a Republican challenger, he was expected to win re-election.  His departure leaves the Democrats scrambling for a candidate and makes it very likely that the Republicans pick up the Indiana Senate Seat.

Bayh joins a long string of moderates from both parties departing the Senate fed up with the partisan rancor that permeates the body.  Bayh has also been the target of vituperative attacks from the Democratic base which probably contributed to his weariness with the fray.

Bayh was once the rising star of the Democratic Party, particularly the centrist wing.  Always the bridesmaid never the bride, Bayh was seriously considered as a Vice Presidential running mate for the last three Democratic nominees but none of them took the plunge.  A fairly colorless persona and a policy platform designed to leave the base cold likely prevented Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama from making the pick.

Bayh represents the wing of the Democratic Party that appears to have over learned the mistakes of their fathers.  His father Birch Bayh was a liberal hero who lost his Senate seat in the 1980 Republican landslide to Dan Quayle.  His son was clearly determined to never become more liberal than his state, a fact reflected in his policy stances.

In a conservative state like Indiana, running as a moderate is not necessarily a bad thing.  What has soured the liberal base on politicians like Bayh is the fact that the blue-dog wing of the Democratic Party are essentially Rockefeller Republicans without a spine.  Cautious, timid and ever ready to roll over at a sign of Republican opposition, they are hardly the kind of leaders who can excite a base in a national election.  In fact in the face of an aggressive Republican challenge, as Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas will discover in November, the timidity and refusal to take any risks will be a recipe for defeat.

It is worth noting that for all the abuse hurled at Bayh (and his fellow blue dogs) the liberal base of the Democratic Party has not made any serious efforts to run a primary challenger against him (in contrast to the travails of former Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and the challenge facing Olympia Snowe in Maine).  While his vacillations and cheerful willingness to stick it to the base drove them mad, (so far) many on the left realize that a hard left candidate will not win Indiana (in fact the likely replacements on the Democratic ticket will be a centrist Democratic congressman in Indiana – which will likely cost the Democrats a seat in the House).

My personal feelings on Bayh are ambivalent.  I am not fond of dynastic scions.  Bayh’s success as a tax cutting governor in Indiana in the 1990s was made possible in large part by the economic boom/bubble, more a function of good timing rather than any gifts as an administrator.  The orgy of tax cutting in the states in the 1990s caused a fiscal nightmare after the Internet bubble burst in 2000.  Bayh is a self proclaimed “deficit hawk” who blindly supports increased military spending and reflexively supports unsustainable tax cuts (particularly on folks in his high tax bracket).  For the last 30 years this approach has guaranteed higher deficits.  Then there is the walking conflict of interest in his wife Susan being appointed to an assortment of corporate boards just as her husband entered the Senate.  For a man who claims he misses being in the executive branch, his waffling on the health care bill was excruciating to watch.

Bayh in many ways epitomizes the cozy corporate lobbyist culture that corrupts Washington DC.  So why am I ambivalent about Bayh?  Because his  Republican alternatives in Indiana will be far worse (particularly on social issues) and equally tied to the hip with K Street (the likely Republican nominee former Senator Dan Coats is actually a lobbyist in Washington at present).

After licking his wounds Bayh will probably run for Governor again.  There is speculation that Bayh is preparing for his long promised run for the Presidency.  People who think Bayh will successfully challenge Obama in 2012 are deluding themselves.  2016 will likely be a free for all that could draw in Bayh.  Age will likely take Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden out of the race.  But even though six years is an eternity in politics (in 2004 who saw Barack Obama in the White House 4 years later), I have a hard time seeing Evan Bayh getting the nomination.

The Democratic Party’s future probably belongs to someone like Brian Schweitzer of Montana.

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With Congressman Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island announcing his retirement the next Congress will not have a member of the Kennedy clan.  See link.  Patrick Kennedy in many ways showcased the advantages of his famous family name and the inner demons that have plagued the clan.  With no real accomplishments other than the luck of birth, he was elected to Congress in 1994 in the face of the Republican wave over a more experienced opponent.  In Congress he has been a reliable progressive Democratic vote, but his personal demons drew him more attention outside Capitol Hill.  Like both his parents he has struggled with substance abuse and today spoke of his desire help people with similar problems in a more hands on fashion.

About 15 years ago there were many promising Kennedys of the third generation holding or expected to seek elective office, with some prospective senators or governors in the mix.  None of that came to pass as scandals (Joe Kennedy Jr.), ineptitude (Kathleen Kennedy Townsend) or untimely deaths (JFK, Jr.) limited the rise of the generation.

Kennedys will probably run again, but the passage of time and public revelations have dimmed the lure of Camelot.  The Kennedy name with its implicit reliance on privilege can also be a hindrance (Caroline Kennedy).

But for all all the carping about the Kennedys and privileged politics, dynastic politics is still alive and going string today.  While the House of Bush is tarnished at present by the failure of W’s presidency, it is still likely to produce some more political candidates.  A Daley still governs Chicago.  Sons of sitting and former Congressmen and Governors litter the lists of candidates for elected office.

The reasons are not hard to find.  As the cost of running for office keeps rising, a famous last name gets instant name-recognition, a functioning Rolodex of and access to moneyed contacts and often a political infrastructure to aid the run.   Running as an outsider is incredibly hard.

The cost of running for office is also the reason why both political parties look for candidates who can self-finance (aka are filthy rich).  As a result about 44% of Congressmen (237 per a report last year) are self-reported millionaires.  See link.  With limits on campaign contribution going the way of the dodo, it is an amount likely to increase (an interesting statistic will be to examine how many of them became millionaires after getting to Washington).

Even as the Kennedys fade away the culture of dynasty and money will be around for some time to come.

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One of the more amusing (yet sad) events in the past few months has been to watch Republicans preening as they proclaim their new found desire to trim the budget deficit (ignored in all of this is their contribution in the past 8 years to creating the fiscal straitjacket the country finds itself in).  Of course it is all talk with no plan rooted in reality.  Republicans and Democrats are committed to no cuts in social security and Medicare, an understandable political impulse since pissed off old folks actually vote.  Republicans go further in wanting absolutely no cuts in the military budget (whether the United States can keep spending as much as the next five nations combined is a debate for another day) and absolutely opposing any tax increases (and actually wanting to cut taxes some more).  Somehow the trillion dollar deficit is to be magically erased by trimming the small remaining faction of the budget devoted to discretionary spending.

But as the President pointed out earlier this week, Republican commitment to cutting discretionary spending wanes when Republican districts are impacted.  After bloviating about the stimulus before the revelation of his extra-marital affair, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is now heading to Washington to get more stimulus funds (formerly known as pork) for his state.  See link. But the cake goes to Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama who seems to be trying to validate the caricature of the Party of No by blocking all 70 pending nominations President Obama sent to the Senate for confirmation.  The administration has drawn the Sentor’s ire by axing a couple of home state projects.  See link. As the article shows this is not the only time a Republican Senator has held up a nomination for issues unrelated to the nomination and to secure pork funding (I am sorry, critically needed funding for a dire emergency) in their state.  Shelby has tried wrapping his decision in the flag by citing the national security importance of funding his pet Alabama projects.  But how exactly is national security protected by placing intelligence and diplomatic positions on hold?  See link.

Holds and filubusters have been a problem in the Senate for the while, but lately they have gone out of control providing even more evidence that the Senate is broken.  Shelby’s actions have caused Paul Krugman to bring comparisons to the liberium veto that destroyed the Commonwealth of Poland (See link) causing my brother to joke that the Nobel laureate must have read my blog (See previous blog post on the liberium veto).

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It is in many ways a sad reflection of the nature and structure of American politics, when the televised event that occurred today when the President visited the Republican Party retreat is news in large part because it actually occured (and before the cameras no less).  Others (notably transplanted Briton Andrew Sullivan) have noted the major difference between American democracy and the one in Westminster, where the Prime Minister has to show up for question hour and defend his or her policies to the questions raised by the opposition.  Unfortunately the monarchical trappings of American democracy run deep and many Presidents probably felt it beneath their dignity to subject themselves to a grilling of this sort (which is still light compared to what happens in a parliamentary democracy).

There already has been some chatter that Republican operatives think it was a mistake to give President Obama a chance to call out Republican misstatements in front of the camera. See link.  Hopefully such considerations will not prevent events like this that allow a debate of a rare genuine debate of policy issues (in contrast to the histrionics that are inevitable in the tit for tat cable TV soundbite process) from happening in the future.  After all the Republicans also get their chance to call out the  President for his misstatements, and some did try today.  In other news Fox “News” appears to have cut away more than 20 minutes before the event ended to start playing the Republican party meme that the President was lecturing, leading a good deal of mockery on the liberal blogs.  Cannot wait to see the inevitable Jon Stewart spoof.

A few cherry picked comments I am glad the President managed to get in his response (link to transcript and embedded video is at end of post): Read the rest of this entry »

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James Fallows from The Atlantic posted this interesting chart of Wikipedia showing the expanding level of obstruction by the Republican Party.  See link.

The blue line shows how often the filibuster was invoked and the greenish gold line at the bottom shows how often it was overcome.  With the almost doubling of the filibuster’s usage since the Republicans lost the Senate and then the Presidency (and as has been noted previously in this blog for relatively innocuous items like the military budget) the main stream media like the Chicago Tribune have bought the line that all of this is the fault of Democrats failing to negotiate with Republicans rather than a deliberate Republican strategy of obstruction, epitomized by Republican ideological heavyweight Rush Limbaugh who welcomed Barack Obama into office by wishing for his failure.

If this somehow brings the Republicans back into a Senate majority, as Yglesias notes, the template has been established for the Democrats to return the favor.

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A lot of the focus of English and American studies into the evolution of constitutional governance naturally focuses on England.  The Magna Carta with its colorful villain in King John is too hard to pass up.  But the English Kings were not the only monarchs to find their power checked.  Various forms of parliaments rose up across Europe as monarchs haggled with their merchants and barons for funds while trying to avoid rebellion.

Eastern Europe was not immune to such trends.  Seven years after the Magna Carta, the Hungarian nobility forced their extravagant King Andrew II to issue the Golden Bull granting the nobility greater powers.

A series of dynastic shifts in the three premier East European monarchies of Bohemia (Přemyslid to Luxembourg to Jagiellon) , Hungary (Árpád to Angevin to Luxembourg) and Poland (Piast to Angevin to Jagiellon) caused a steady shift of royal power to the nobility (and as the list shows the three countries imported each others princes very often).  Each new foreign dynasty brought with it new privileges to keep the nobility happy.

However in the 16th century this pattern breaks.  Bohemia and Hungary fell to the Hapsburgs (who also married themselves into the crowns of of Spain,. (briefly Portugal and England), Naples, Milan, Sicily and the Netherlands).  After the Thirty Years War the ramshackle Hapsburg monarchy pulled back many of the privileges granted to the nobility.  Poland went in a different direction.  Faced with the impending death of the last male Jagiellon the magnates of Poland-Lithuania instituted an elective monarchy.

While the crown remained in the hands of female line descendants of the Jagiellons until 1660, the elective principle and the haggling by prospective monarchs for support took full control.    It was around this time that the legislative innovation that crippled Polish government for the next century was introduced – the Liberium Veto.

This measure allowed a single member of the Polish Sejm (parliament) to end the session and nullify all legislation by shouting Nie pozwalam! (I do not allow!).  Somehow this pernicious measure was allowed to continue.  Egged on with bribes from neighboring Prussia and Russia who were only too happy to see a weakened crumbling Poland and delusional deputies who considered this privilege as the hallmark of liberty, attempts at reform were thwarted for a century.  It wasn’t until 1764 that someone utilized a technicality to bypass this measure.  But by then it was too late.  In three successive partitions (1772, 1793, and 1795), Poland was wiped off the European map.

Obviously the filibuster does not even come close to the liberium veto.  But when a minority uses it of pretty much every single piece of legislation (including for example overwhelmingly popular bills like the military budget), it is hard to always appreciate the difference.  Not surprisingly calls to abolish it are rising.

In some ways the Democrats conversion on the filibuster (and boy did they love it when George W. Bush was President) mirrors their conversion on the advisability of the Independent Counsel Act.  When independent counsels targeted Republican Administrations all was fine.  It took one out of control independent counsel who acted like a heat seeking missile aimed at Bill Clinton’s rear end for the Democrats to switch sides on the issue.

The Republicans do risk overplaying their hand on this issue (they used more than 100 of them last year).  There is no constitutional right to a filibuster and the repeated use on every single item (which will likely increase with Scott Brown’s election) will increase the Democrats incentive to explore procedural technicalities like reconciliation to force a bill to a vote or even the nuclear option previously considered by the Bush Administration (which will be really hard for the Republicans to oppose since they drafted it).

The realization that they will one day return to the minority likely makes some Democrats squeamish on the issue.  But the legislative process in the Senate is currently broken on many issues (and don’t even get me started on the issue of anonymous Senatorial holds which have made the appointment of the President’s cabinet a travesty).  More appropriate protections for the minority (like giving them the ability to delay but not eternally block legislation) can be considered.  Otherwise ridiculous headlines like “Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate” will continue to proliferate around our broken legislative process.

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There will be enough postmortems about the Coakley loss in Massachusetts.  Wonder how many of them will actually bother to mention that Massachusetts voters had the least cause to be upset about Obamacare, since they passed Romneycare in 2006 which is pretty much the same thing and they are perfectly happy with it.  It is a distinction that Senator-elect Brown (who helped craft Romneycare) has twisted himself into knots about in trying to clarify why he conceptually opposes extending what his state has (and it is a benefit he explicitly supports) to the national level.  See link.   While this hypocrisy has been highlighted often enough on various blogs, the inept Coakley campaign failed to properly utilize this manna from heaven.

Andrew Sullivan’s rant (link here) on the subject captures my feelings on Republican nihilism and the newly found advocates of fiscal prudence who are unwilling to implement it in a meaningful way and is quoted in full below:

Since so much of the energy behind the Brown candidacy seems to be driven by anti-government sentiment, why is someone like me – who actually criticized Bush for being big government long before these late-comers – so dismayed?

Here’s why. The rage is adolescent. It did not exist when the Republicans were in power and exploded government during years of economic growth. Fox News backed Bush to the hilt through it all, as he added mounds of unfunded entitlements to the next generation’s debt, and then brought Beck in as soon as Obama inherited the mess. Scott Brown, moreover, has no plans to cut the debt or control government: none. He is running in defense of every cent in Medicare. He wants to increase the deficit by more tax cuts. He favors an all-powerful executive branch that can suspend habeas corpus and torture people. He has no intention of cutting defense. His position on the uninsured is: get your own states to help. His position on soaring healthcare costs is: stop the first attempt to control them.

We hear Karl Rove lamenting big government! We hear Dick Cheney worrying about deficits! The cynicism here is gob-smacking. And the libertarian right is just happy to go along.

There is, moreover, the incredible lie that somehow all the debt that lies ahead was created by Obama in twelve months, in a recession, when austerity would be fatal. This was a lie propagated mercilessly by the FNC/RNC and by partisan bloggers like Glenn Reynolds. And it has stuck, as Obama has pressed for centrist reform between the screamers on the left and the haters on the right.

I’m sorry but this is not an anti-government vote. It’s a hissy fit because reality has finally hit and the conservative bromides of the 1980s work as poorly as the liberal bromides of the 1970s. If Brown were urging big, structural cuts in entitlements, if he were proposing junking health insurance reform because he has a plan to balance the budget in five years, if he were pledging to vote against the wars for the deficit’s sake, if he were proposing ways to restrain private healthcare costs and Medicare’s GOP-passed Medicare D – whose fiscal impact makes the current reform look like a tightwad’s – it would be one thing. But he isn’t and they aren’t.

They merely want to kill a reform presidency. They have no alternative. They have no policy that could restrain health insurance costs and the desperate plight of the uninsured. They have no plans for tackling climate change, when they can bring themselves to admit it exists. They have no plans to win or end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that Obama himself isn’t trying. They have no idea how to balance the budget – except more tax cuts!

There is the no substance (other than tax cuts in all scenarios) in the strategy that is supposed to revive the Republican party.    The intellectual dishonesty and the willful blindness of their recent record is also breathtaking.  Sometimes a country does deserve the people it elects.  But in the meantime blue-dog Democrats led by Evan Bayh are already preparing to run for the hills.

One question has always puzzled me.  If the blue dogs are so intent on being Republican-lite (Bayh, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, etc. and the ever present narcissist Joe Liberman) how does it really help them against a charge that their state might as well elect the real thing.  There is a line between sensible moderation to reflect the values of your base and craven surrender at the first hint of Republican opposition, which the blue-dogs specialize in lately.  While the Democrats should not start weeding out moderates, it is past time for them to take a stand, grow a pair and identify what values are worth fighting (and if it comes to it, risking losing elections) for.  Otherwise they will by default return to their rudderless existence under George W. Bush, with a profoundly dispirited base.  It is also time for them to aggressively challenge the alternative set of facts that the Republicans have been peddling since inauguration, instead of relying on the media (which is wedded to the idea of balance for its own sake with no fact checking).

I will close with a clip by Jon Stewart a couple of days back, whose monologue directed at the Democrats at the end of the clip is very much on point.

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How did it come to this?  Health care reform hands by a slender thread based on the results of the Senate special election in Massachusetts to replace the Senator most associated with health care reform.  The election is a toss up with much of the energy in favor of Republican Scott Brown who could take down gaffe prone State Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Martha Coakley actively sought the Senate nomination after Ted Kennedy died, but having taken the nomination ran a curiously passive campaign.  This gave the opening to Scott Brown to define himself in positive terms and harness the resentment building up towards a self-entitled establishment politician.  Republicans winning statewide is not unknown in Massachusetts.  Deval Patrick’s election as governor in 2006, ended 16 years of Republican control of the office.  But since then, elected Republicans in Massachusetts have been fairly non-existent.

Health Care reform is the other 800 lb gorilla in the room.  Even though broad majorities of public opinion and a majority of the House and Senate support the public option (See link), the procedural rules of the Senate have ensured that it will not pass.  The resulting compromise pleases neither the left nor the right.  The question is whether the left will hold their noses and support this bill hoping to fix it down the road, just like the racial disparities in the original Social Security Act were corrected later.  Unhappiness at the existing bill likely drives some of the support for Brown.

Brown is an odd candidate for teabagger support. As a New England Republican he is a liberal by the standards of the national Republican rump.  The right wing which spurned a similar Republican in NY-23 (See link for previous posts) has embraced the opportunity to hand Barack Obama (as Senator DeMint of South Carolina put it) his Waterloo.  Given that he seems to back the universal health care plan in Massachusetts signed into law by Mitt Romney in 2006, his opposition to the national bill is somewhat puzzling and seems based on electoral calculations.

As Andrew Sullivan notes,  Democrats have to essentially hold their noses and vote for the rather unimpressive Coakley if they do not want the best chance for health care reform in a generation to slip through their fingers.  See Jonathan Chait’s review of the Democrats options in such an eventuality.  Another option the Democrats have is to force an up down vote on some of the more popular parts of the bill like prohibiting the use of pre-existing conditions to avoid issuing insurance policies, regulating the percentage of premiums that must be used for health care, etc.  Given the Republican strategy of filibustering everything, even items that later pass unanimously, it could give the Democrats talking points to carry into the fall against the party of No.

The biggest impact of a Brown win would be psychological.  Even though the number of Republican Congressmen retiring is still much higher than the number of retiring Democrats, the main stream media has already embraced the theme of Democrats abandoning a sinking ship.  A Brown win will raise that meme to a crescendo and by further depressing  Democratic turnout in November 2010 could make it a self fulfilling prophecy.

However, I am still not sold on Republican embrace of the tea baggers as a long term viable strategy.  Even though Brown has had some of these tendencies in in the past (like questioning the legitimacy of Obama’s birth) he has generally projected a moderate image in his campaign.  This was the strategy embraced by the successful Republican gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey.  The fire and brimstone true believers who pejoratively refer to Republican moderates as RINOs (Republicans in name  only) have had a hard time winning outside the deep south.  Add to that the continuing Republican problem attracting minority voters.

Ultimately the Democratic Party brought this on themselves.  The foot dragging on the bill, corrupt bargains with grasping  Senators that had incredibly bad optics combined with the incredible incompetence of the Massachusetts Democrats have brought about the previously unthinkable possibility of Ted Kennedy’s successor being a Republican.  It further confirms this blogger’s belief in the ability of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

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The revelation of Senator Harry Reid’s use of the “n” word while describing Barack Obama’s strengths as a candidate has set off the typical Washington fire storm.  While President Obama has accepted his apology and the Democratic caucus has rallied around Senator Reid the Republicans are crying foul.  They point to the double standard on race that forced them to jettison Trent Lott of Mississippi a few years back (though a lot of the pushing came from the White House in that one).  As others have pointed out,  the situations are not analogous.  Se here, here and here for a detailed explanation on the subject.

But the Republicans are right in that there is a double standard.  It seems unfair but they can look in the mirror for why Republicans (particularly southern Republicans) get so little leeway on race.

As the heirs to the Whigs, the Republican Party was born in its opposition to slavery.  After the civil war the Party of Lincoln could count on the support of the freed slaves.  However, things started to changed under FDR.  The New Deal created a blue collar coalition that included black voters.  By 1956 the Republican share of the black vote was 40% and has been heading down ever since.  However, the addition of Black voters to the Democratic coalition and the resulting push for civil rights fractured the Democratic Party

Southern Democrats who had reestablished control over the region after reconstruction and disenfranchised large portions of the African American population bristled when Northern liberals started preaching civil rights.  The breaking point came during the 1948 Democratic convention when Minneapolis mayor Hubert Humphrey urged the Democratic Party to “get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”  Outraged Southern Democrats walked out and nominated Strom Thurmond as the presidential nominee of the States’ Rights Party (aka Dixiecrats).  Things got worse for them with the election of John F. Kennedy.  But the unkindest cut of all came when one of their own, former Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson rammed through the Civil Rights Act.  According to legend when Johnson signed the Act into law he remarked, “We have lost the South for a generation.”  He was right because the Republicans were waiting in the wings.

Richard Nixon made some clumsy attempts to court black voters in 1960.  After that Republican presidential tickets actively started courting the Southern white vote.  Barry Goldwater stumped against the Civil Rights Act in 1964, Richard Nixon deployed the Southern Strategy, or Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign kicked off in Philadelphia, Miss., site of the ”Mississippi Burning” murders with the message of “states rights” (though as noted in the link some have disputed whether Reagan’s appeal was targeted at Southern whites).  It worked.  By the 1990s the South had turned Republican.  On the flip side, by then the Republican share of the black vote had dropped to the low teens.  By 1992, the Party of Lincoln was the Party of Pat Buchanan and Jesse Helms.

Next the Republican Party turned its attention to destroying its share of the Hispanic vote.  Pete Wilson eagerly embraced Proposition 187 to secure reelection in the 1994 California gubernatorial election.  He won  the battle but the Republican Party lost the war and the Hispanic vote in California.  The home state of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan with its 54 electoral votes is now solidly Democratic.  Even though George W. Bush tried to win  (and in his own elections won) back the Hispanic vote, the racially tinged rhetoric unleashed by the opponents of immigration reform locked up the Hispanic vote for Barack Obama.  Had John McCain not been on the ticket, the Republicans would have lost Arizona in the 2008 Presidential Elections.

This is the current breakdown of minorities in the Republican Congressional caucus:

• African Americans  - zero
• Hispanics – 3 (three Cuban-Americans from South Florida, and even that once loyal Republican community is trending Democratic)
• Asian Americans – 1 (Joseph Cao elected by fluke last year and who will almost certainly lose next year)

For a party that actively courts the Jewish vote, it has only one Jewish member in Congress (Eric Cantor).   Read the rest of this entry »

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Noticed a link to this animated film by Mark Fiore on Juan Cole’s site.  Cole also links to a report by Drudge noting a claim by Fiore that this video spawned death threats.  The video seems to hit some of the hyperbolic rhetoric (See previous blog) spot on.  Enjoy….

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On December 32, 2009 a Malaysian court overturned a government ban of usage of the word Allah to denote the Christian god.  Since then hell has broken loose with Churches in the moderate Muslim majority country being firebombed and vandalized.  Accusations have been made that the ruling party whose hold on power is weakening is using the issue to consolidate support among the majority Malay (and Muslim) community.  If so that would be a tragedy.  Before the Saudis found oil and exported their blinkered view of Islam globally, Malaysia (and neighboring Indonesia) were shining examples of how Islam can peacefully coexist with other religions.  Now that is being put at risk by a rather silly dispute on terminology.

Islam acknowledges that God sent prophets to other peoples before the arrival of Muhammad.  This list specifically includes Jesus and Christians are deemed “people of the book” to whom god made a divine revelation and provided a book of prayer.  It naturally follows in Islamic theology that the God of the Christians (setting aside the concept the trinity and the divinity of Jesus which Muslims do not accept and is not at issue here) is the same divine entity.  Indeed under the monotheism inherent in Islam a different interpretation cannot hold.  Yet for some reason Malaysia banned Christians from using the word Allah to denote God in the Malay tongue.  Evidently the alternative words available to be used in native dialects did not measure up to a representation of the divine and Christians asked that the ban be rescinded.  Now fanatics with a limited grasp on their own theology have resorted to violence.

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This emerging battle should be fun to watch.  Rupert Murdoch’s son in law Matthew Freud launched an on the record  broadside against Roger Ailes and Fox News for the “horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to.”  See link.  As the article notes, this follows reports (which were denied) over the summer that Murdoch Sr. was himself sometimes embarrassed by the content of Fox News.

Similar questions regarding the journalistic standards of Fox News have been raised by many commentators, the Obama administration and this blog.  See here, here and here.  But the ugly reality is that Mammon is king.  The market wants the tabloid-like opinion driven “news” peddled by Fox which financially is comfortably beating all its other rivals.  Mr. Alies is safe on his perch as the propaganda arm for anti-Democratic Party and anti-Obama political forces for the foreseeable future.  See another opinion on the matter here.

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The New York magazine has a long excerpt from John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime on the inner workings of John Edwards second attempt to run for president.  See link.

Nobody connected with the campaign comes out looking good.  John Edwards comes off as a narcissistic ego maniac (the ego-monster in the title of the article).  The sainted Elizabeth Edwards comes off as nasty, delusional and unbalanced.  Others have excoriated the staff of the Edwards for not getting it through to the candidate, on how the Rielle Hunter affair would be an albatross that would destroy an Edwards led ticket in the fall.  While the staff presents its side of the story in the article with generous amounts of back biting against the Edwardses, they still do not account for this signal failing.

John Edwards’ political career was truly meteoric.  Within a span of 10 years he blazed to the Vice Presidential nomination and burnt out into well deserved political oblivion.   The emergence of Barack Obama cut off his political positioning as the anti-Hillary candidate.  The Hunter affair was the coup de grace.

On a personal note, I was never a supporter.  Edwards talked a good populist game (which does not endear a candidate to me to begin with) but it was hard not to question the judgment of a candidate who spent a mere 6 years in public office and then apologized for having voted the wrong way (as far as the Democratic base was concerned) on almost every major issue put to vote in his one-term Senate career (bankruptcy reform, the Patriot Act, the Iraq war, assorted free trade agreements, banking reform etc).  Freed of the requirements of running for office in North Carolina he seemed to slither into the populist cloak too easily.

The Democrats lucked out in not having a candidate who would have scuppered a sure thing in the Presidential election.  Assuming he still felt the need to make such an irresponsible Vice Presidential choice, the country also experienced a fortuitous escape from a Vice President Sarah Palin.

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John McCain’s campaign manager comes out swinging on Sarah Palin’s issues with the truth.  This Sunday’s 60 Minutes could be entertaining.  Also read about previously disclosed emails regarding the Alaska Independence Party.  Alaska blog Mudflats has a great read of just how Palin could make stuff up with a straight face.  See link.

For the last 15 years or so the mainstream media has generally been awful in calling out politicians on their bullshit, acting as stenographers reporting stuff verbatim.  Fox News (when they are not making stuff up) is an extreme example of this when it comes to the Republican Party.

With the media not doing their job emboldened politicians up the ante. This was evident the last couple of weeks when Republicans (including Mr. 9/11 himself) started peddling the fiction that no domestic terror attacks occurred George Bush.  At least this time the media did step up.  See link.

Andrew Sullivan has compiled a fairly thorough list of Palin’s odd and often easily disprovable lies since she hit the national stage.  It is hard not to lose respect for John McCain for trying to position a truth averse clueless neophyte a 71 year old cancer survivor’s heartbeat away from the presidency.

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Britt Hume of Fox News insults the faith of about five hundred million people by suggesting that Tiger Wood’s Buddhist faith will not be up to the job of his redemption and he needs to convert to Christianity.  The video of the Fox News anchor turning his media position into a sectarian bully pulpit is below:

The relevant quote from the video above:

“The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith,” Hume said. “He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger would, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.”

The pomposity of a TV anchor (who ignores the recent rash of C Street conservatives (John Ensign, Chip Pickering and Mark Sanford) whose overt religiosity did not prevent their inclinations to adultery) is one matter.

But this is yet another example of how the right wing cannot resist injecting religion into debate.  Hume is hardly alone on Fox News.  Bill O’Reilly is on record bemoaning attempts to weaken the “White, Christian, male power structure” in this country.  Fox News regularly features Ann Coulter who infamously in the aftermath of 9/11 said we should “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”  Shortly before Christmas the otherwise highly regarded Indiana governor Mitch Daniels went off on an amazingly ignorant screed about the evils of secularism.

This is not new.  But coupled with the attacks on Barack Obama allegedly being a Muslim (not helped by Obama’s politically calculated response to treat the accusation as if it were a slur – previous blog here) they seem to be rising to a crescendo. Read the rest of this entry »

Link to the strip below is here.

Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau January 1, 2010

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Mike is Huckabee under fire for yet another clemency grant.  However, unlike his previous politically motivated attempt to pardon Wayne DuMond this one seems to have been motivated by a genuine attempt to do the humanitarian thing that will (and is already being) exploited by his political opponents.    I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, as Yglesias notes the commutation of the sentence (Huckabee did not send Clemons out of the jail house door) may have been justified at the time.  On the other hand as Joe Conason at Salon notes, Huckabee who disdains the separation of church and state may have let the professions of religion influence his commutations.  Just as when the conversion of death row inmate Karla Faye Tucker to Christianity brought calls for clemency from Pat Robertson, one wonders whether a conversion to another faith would have been as helpful to Clemons.

Even though Huckabee’s excessive public displays of religiosity and his refusal to acknowledge the utility of the wall between church and state are a turnoff to me and like Sarah Palin he is somewhat light in his grasp of policy,  he is in many ways an appealing politician.  He does not come off as mean spirited and has a affability and sense of humor that can draw people to him.  Whatever his motivations, in a culture where the way to fight crime is to incarcerate and forget about rehabilitation he was willing to stick his neck out on the belief that people can reform.  This time it had tragic results and he will pay the price at the hands of a political and media culture that prefers cardboard cutout politicians.  It is a pity that there is no room for him in the dog-eat-dog political world today.

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