Bleeding Heartland is a community blog for Democrats and progressives in the state of Iowa. Join up, post your thoughts as comments or diaries, and help build up current majorities and keep our leadership honest.
It took me a week longer than I anticipated, but I finally finished compiling links to Bleeding Heartland's coverage from last year. This post and part 2, coming later today, include stories on national politics, mostly relating to Congress and Barack Obama's administration. Diaries reviewing Iowa politics in 2009 will come soon.
One thing struck me while compiling this post: on all of the House bills I covered here during 2009, Democrats Leonard Boswell, Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack voted the same way. That was a big change from 2007 and 2008, when Blue Dog Boswell voted with Republicans and against the majority of the Democratic caucus on many key bills.
No federal policy issue inspired more posts last year than health care reform. Rereading my earlier, guardedly hopeful pieces was depressing in light of the mess the health care reform bill has become. I was never optimistic about getting a strong public health insurance option through Congress, but I thought we had a chance to pass a very good bill. If I had anticipated the magnitude of the Democratic sellout on so many aspects of reform in addition to the public option, I wouldn't have spent so many hours writing about this issue. I can't say I wasn't warned (and warned), though.
Links to stories from January through June 2009 are after the jump. Any thoughts about last year's political events are welcome in this thread.
I support Senator Patrick Leahy's call for a "truth commission" to investigate abuses of power by officials in George W. Bush's administration. People who participated in or encouraged official law-breaking need to be held accountable, or at least exposed to public scrutiny.
An internal Justice Department report on the conduct of senior lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics is causing anxiety among former Bush administration officials. H. Marshall Jarrett, chief of the department's ethics watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), confirmed last year he was investigating whether the legal advice in crucial interrogation memos "was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys." According to two knowledgeable sources who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters, a draft of the report was submitted in the final weeks of the Bush administration. It sharply criticized the legal work of two former top officials-Jay Bybee and John Yoo-as well as that of Steven Bradbury, who was chief of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the time the report was submitted, the sources said. [...]
[T]he OPR probe began after Jack Goldsmith, a Bush appointee who took over OLC in 2003, protested the legal arguments made in the memos. Goldsmith resigned the following year after withdrawing the memos, and later wrote that he was "astonished" by the "deeply flawed" and "sloppily reasoned" legal analysis in the memos by Yoo and Bybee, including their assertion (challenged by many scholars) that the president could unilaterally disregard a law passed by Congress banning torture.
OPR investigators focused on whether the memo's authors deliberately slanted their legal advice to provide the White House with the conclusions it wanted, according to three former Bush lawyers who asked not to be identified discussing an ongoing probe. One of the lawyers said he was stunned to discover how much material the investigators had gathered, including internal e-mails and multiple drafts that allowed OPR to reconstruct how the memos were crafted.
Do any Bleeding Heartland readers happen to teach at the U of I Law School? I'd love to hear how his talk went. Please post a comment or send me an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) if you heard Yoo speak or took part in protesting his appearance.
UPDATE: Daily Kos user Vyan has much more background in this diary and speculates that Yoo and Bybee could be disbarred for their role in writing the torture memos. I would be very surprised if it comes to that. I don't think state bar associations like political controversies.
SECOND UPDATE: A little bird tells me that Yoo's appearance in Iowa City was uneventful, and no one present asked him about the torture memos. I have to question why any university would invite a "newsmaker" to speak if no one's going to ask about the controversy that made the person famous. Mr. desmoinesdem wonders if Yoo insists on a promise not to ask about the torture memos before agreeing to speak to any audience. Anyone out there know the answer?
* Public Persuasion
* Crisis Leadership
* Economic Management
* Moral Authority
* International Relations
* Administrative Skills
* Relations with Congress
* Vision/Setting An Agenda
* Pursued Equal Justice For All
* Performance Within Context of Times
Here are the overall scores and rankings. George W. Bush ranked 36th, ahead of Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding, William Henry Harrison, Franklin D. Pierce, Andrew Johnson, and James Buchanan. Doesn't that strike you as unfair to William Henry Harrison? Granted, he didn't accomplish much in the six weeks he was president before dying of pneumonia. But it's not as if he turned a record surplus into record deficits or got this country mired in the longest war in U.S. history or anything.
Other notable findings:
Abraham Lincoln ranked first again, as any normal person would expect (even though none of the men who sought to lead the Republican Party named him as the greatest GOP president). Lincoln is even more remarkable when you view his leadership in the context of his times. The three presidents who immediately preceded Lincoln and his successor all ranked in the bottom six overall.
George Washington moved ahead of Franklin Delano Roosevelt this time to finish second. That is a tough call, and I could see it either way. The New Deal changed this country forever, but Washington's commitment to regular presidential elections and serving only two terms set enormously important precedents.
Theodore Roosevelt and Harry S Truman ranked fourth and fifth, respectively, as they did in the 2000 survey. I'm no professional historian, but that seems high for Truman.
John F. Kennedy moved from eighth place in 2000 to sixth in this survey, putting him just ahead of Thomas Jefferson. They cannot be serious. Kennedy did more for this country as president than Jefferson did?
Dwight D. Eisenhower also moved up from ninth place in the last survey to eighth. Woodrow Wilson dropped from sixth in 2000 to ninth, which probably says something about current academic trends in the International Relations field, but I don't know what exactly.
Republicans will be pleased that Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson switched places; Reagan moved from eleventh into the top ten, while LBJ dropped down one notch to eleventh.
I have problems with putting JFK ahead of LBJ. I don't think Kennedy could have gotten such far-reaching civil rights legislation through Congress during that era. The great tragedy of LBJ's presidency was continuing the Vietnam policy begun by JFK. Johnson had serious doubts about this policy, but he stuck with it, and in doing so he was following the advice of almost all the Kennedy advisers who stayed on for his administration. I do not believe Kennedy would have kept us from deeper involvement in Vietnam, and I don't think he would have achieved nearly as much on the domestic front.
Speaking of which, ranking Reagan ahead of Johnson seems outlandish. I know Reagan is now a conservative cult hero (they whitewash his tax hikes during in his second term), but can his admirers explain to me which of his policies changed this country forever? Did he make the government smaller in some way? Did he manage the country's money responsibly?
Look at this list of LBJ's accomplishments, which Paul Rosenberg compiled at Open Left. (I hope he will forgive me for posting the list after the jump as well.) Can anyone imagine this country without Medicare or Medicaid? Head Start or Food Stamps? The Department of Transportation? Republicans may hate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, but they have been unable to get rid of them. The long list includes consumer protection and environmental progress as well.
The war in Vietnam was a terrible mistake, but even so, Johnson made lasting changes for the good in so many policy areas, it's mind-boggling. The Republican presidents who followed him were unable to undo this legacy.
Getting back to the historians' survey, Bill Clinton looks a lot better now than he did before George W. Bush screwed up the country. As a group, the historians ranked him 21st in 2000, but he has moved up to 15th place.
George H.W. Bush moved up slightly from 20th to 18th place.
Did someone's book launch a revisionist view of Ulysses S. Grant during the last eight years? He ranked 33rd in 2000 but moved up to 23rd place. No other president showed as large a jump in the historians' rankings. UPDATE: In the Daily Kos thread Judge Moonbox says:
Such a revision is almost certainly due to Eric Foner's Reconstruction; which wiped away nearly a century of the racist received history--a legacy which proves that history is not always written by the victors. Here it had been written by the Mugwumps.
I opposed the massive Wall Street bailout rushed through Congress this fall, but if the government can provide hundreds of billions of dollars to financial firms with no oversight, it's only fair that $13.4 billion of the Troubled Asset Relief Program be used to prevent General Motors and Chrysler from collapsing:
"These are not ordinary circumstances," Bush said at the White House today. "In the midst of a financial crisis and a recession, allowing the U.S. auto industry to collapse is not a responsible course of action."
The cost of letting automakers fail would lead to a 1 percent reduction in the growth of the U.S. economy and mean about 1.1 million workers would lose their jobs, including those in the auto supply business and among dealers, the White House said in a fact sheet.
'Necessary Step'
President-elect Barack Obama endorsed the plan, calling it in a statement a "necessary step" to avoid a major blow to the economy.
"I do want to emphasize to the Big Three automakers and their executives that the American people's patience is running out," Obama said later at a news conference. "They're going to have to make some hard choices."
The United Auto Workers are "disappointed" that Bush added "unfair conditions singling out workers," the union's president, Ronald Gettelfinger, said in a statement.
"We will work with the Obama administration and the new Congress to ensure that these unfair conditions are removed," Gettelfinger said.
This diary by TomP has a lot more detail and reaction to the bailout deal.
It would be grossly unfair for only the workers to be asked to sacrifice to make these companies profitable. Some Republicans, notably Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee are explicitly trying to drive wages in union shops down to the level paid to non-union employees of Japanese automakers in the southern states.
But it's no coincidence that the standard of living in states with more union workers is higher than the standard of living in the deep south.
I don't know enough about the details to know whether this bailout can save GM and Chrysler, but failing to act was not an option with so many jobs on the line.
By the way, all three U.S. automakers have made a lot of mistakes over the years, but kudos to management of Ford Motors for locking in a large credit line while credit was easy to obtain. In case you were wondering, that's why Ford is not currently on the brink of collapse, begging for a government bailout. Nevertheless, I'm sure Ford will have to do a lot of restructuring to adapt to this tough economy, just like GM and Chrysler. I can't imagine 2009 will be much better for new car sales than 2008 was.
Those actions may be necessary to save the automakers, but they will have disastrous ripple effects in all the communities where the idled factories are located.
Some of these problems could have been avoided if Congress had fixed our broken health-care system years ago. This report is more than two years old:
The competitive disadvantage of U.S. automakers resulting from the absence of a national strategy on health care financing is becoming increasingly clear. GM faces legacy costs (health care plus pensions for retired workers) of $1,500 per car. Together, the Big Three automakers support roughly 800,000 retirees, compared to less than 1,000 for foreign-owned competitors in the United States.
Clearly the failure to address America's health care finance problems has become a major competitive disadvantage for our economy as a whole and has placed U.S. workers in a diminished bargaining position for wages and job security in relation to the rest of the industrialized world. Targeting retiree health costs offers an opportunity to provide strong incentives for industry action on fuel savings investment and reduces the competitive disadvantage.
Share any relevant thoughts in the comments.
UPDATE: Why I am not surprised to learn that banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are giving out large bonuses to some executives after receiving billions in bailout money from the federal government?
Ramona Cunningham was sentenced to seven years in prison for her part in misappropriating $1.5 million in federal funds while she headed the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium (CIETC). Others involved in the fraud at CIETC will be sentenced later this month or next year, but presumably Cunningham will do the most time in prison, having been the central figure in the scandal.
The prison sentence seems fair; misusing funds meant for job training programs is a serious crime. I'm sure many people will say Cunningham should be punished more harshly, though. The hatred of her is out of proportion to the crimes at CIETC.
Speaking of crime and punishment, Glenn Greenwald wrote a good post contrasting the media's exhaustive coverage of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's alleged crimes with the near-total silence about the Senate Armed Services Committee's recent finding:
The bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report issued on Thursday -- which documents that "former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba" and "that Rumsfeld's actions were 'a direct cause of detainee abuse' at Guantanamo and 'influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques ... in Afghanistan and Iraq'" -- raises an obvious and glaring question: how can it possibly be justified that the low-level Army personnel carrying out these policies at Abu Ghraib have been charged, convicted and imprisoned, while the high-level political officials and lawyers who directed and authorized these same policies remain free of any risk of prosecution?
Great question.
UPDATE: CIETC's former chief accountant Karen Tesdell got sentenced to two years on Tuesday for looking the other way as her colleagues misappropriated money.
Marc Hansen's latest column reviews the arguments Cunningham's attorney Bill Kutmus used during the sentencing hearing. He said his client wasn't the ringleader and should not be punished more harshly than John Bargman (CIETC's former chief operating officer, who will be sentenced next year). He also said Cunningham was a victim of sexism, and that U.S. prosecutors had treated her unfairly.
I agree that misogyny was driving a lot of the intense hatred of Cunningham. But I have some advice for her: next time you decide to commit a bunch of federal crimes, strike a plea bargain like Bargman did if you don't want to do serious prison time.
Look at Mitchell Wade. He bribed a member of Congress with more than $1.8 million and just got sentenced to only 30 months in prison, because he cooperated with prosecutors.
When the administration launched the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief in 2003, the goal was to support 2 million people with lifesaving anti-retroviral treatment in five years.
"I'm pleased to announce that we have exceeded that goal early," said Bush, standing with first lady Laura Bush on the North Lawn of the White House, which was decorated with a giant red ribbon to mark the occasion. "The American people through PEPFAR are supporting lifesaving treatment for more than 2 million people around the world."
The Iowa Center for AIDS Resources and Education (ICARE) has a website here:
Who We Are
ICARE is a non-profit AIDS organization with staff and volunteers who provide comprehensive practical, emotional, and financial support to persons living with HIV/AIDS, their partners, families, friends and others concerned about HIV or AIDS in a safe, accepting and non-judgmental atmosphere.
What Is HIV?
HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is an infection that disables the human immune system�s ability to fight infections and overcome illnesses. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome).
Our Mission
ICARE's mission is to enrich the quality of life for persons living with and affected by HIV/AIDS. Through the distribution of information and services, we aim to foster the self-empowerment necessary to live productively and positively in the face of HIV/AIDS.
Our Approach
ICARE offers a client-centered, holistic service approach that actively involves the client and family in the service delivery process. All services are free and confidential.
The more I think about it, the more I think Hillary Clinton should stay in the Senate. However, most analysts are speculating she will accept Barack Obama's offer to become Secretary of State. Here's a roundup of recent coverage on the appointment.
Harkin said he was confident that former President Bill Clinton would not pose conflicts, as he's agreed to make public the donors to his foundation and clear his travel schedule and speeches with the Obama administration, should his wife become secretary of state.
"If he's willing to do whatever the Obama team and the president wants - and he should understand it, he's a former president - that would be fine," Harkin said.
He also said Obama naming her would be a demonstration of unity to the world. Sen. Clinton and Obama waged an intense, six-month campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination this year.
"I think it would send a good signal to the world if Hillary Clinton were secretary of state," Harkin said. "The signal it sends to the world is we can have big fights politically here in the United States and yet after the election's over, we pull together."
Where does that leave Bill Richardson? I hope he ends up in the cabinet. UPDATE: ragbrai08 has heard rumblings Richardson might become Secretary of the Interior, which would be a decent fit for him.
John Crabtree of the Center for Rural Affairs blog offers "A Different View of [Tom] Vilsack," the front-runner to run the U.S. Department of Agriculture:
It is difficult, if not impossible, to predict when, where and from whom leadership will emerge. The book on Tom Vilsack is not complete, and perhaps that is a good thing. He does not get a perfect score on my litmus tests. But, when I disagree with him in the future I will continue to engage him, just as I always have, whether he is a private citizen or the Secretary of Agriculture. And he will engage me, just as he always has.
I hope that, at the end of the day, our next Secretary of Agriculture is the kind of leader that can help create a future for rural America with thriving family farms and ranches and vibrant rural communities. I believe Governor Vilsack can provide that leadership. Perhaps he just might get the chance.
James L. of Swing State Project is concerned that Obama might choose either Representative Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin or Representative Collin Peterson for the USDA job. Both are from Republican-leaning districts that would be hard for a different Democrat to hold.
Haven't heard much about a possible secretary of transportation. Obama supports greater investment in core infrastructure as well as high-speed rail and public mass transit, so I am hopeful he will put someone with vision in charge of this department. The highway bill comes up for reauthorization in 2009 and is sure to be one of the major battlegrounds in Congress.
Most people seem to think Robert Gates will stay on as Defense Secretary. I don't see why Obama can't appoint a Democrat for that position. We have plenty of qualified people in our party. Keeping the Republicans in charge of defense supports their propaganda that the GOP is best for defending the country.
Share your opinions or predictions in the comments.
UPDATE: Why does Obama want to reinforce Republican stereotypes about how they're the only ones who can handle national security? Now General Jim Jones, a supporter of the Iraq War and John McCain, is tipped to run the National Security Agency. That is just crazy. Put some Democrats in charge, please. It's not as if we don't have people who could do this job well. I would not be surprised if Jones undermines Obama in this position.
NBC News says Bill Richardson will be Commerce Secretary. I don't like him nearly so much for that job as I would like him for Secretary of State, Transportation, or Interior. Richardson's a corporate Democrat, judging from his record in the 1990s. He ran the whip to get NAFTA through the House during Bill Clinton's first term.
Still no progressives in Obama's cabinet.
UPDATE 3: My brother, who works in the investment field and is much more of a moderate Democrat than I am, is "sick" about the prospect of Geithner running Treasury. His other comment about Geithner is not printable at this blog.
Credit derivatives have contributed to dramatic changes in the process of credit intermediation, and the benefits of these changes seem compelling. They have made possible substantial improvements in the way credit risk is managed and facilitated a broad distribution of risk outside the banking system. By spreading risk more widely, by making it easier to purchase and sell protection against credit risk and to actively trade credit risk, and by facilitating the participation of a large and very diverse pool of non-bank financial institutions in the business of credit, these changes probably improve the overall efficiency and resiliency of financial markets.
With the advent of credit derivatives, concentrations of credit risk are made easier to mitigate, and diversification made easier to achieve. Credit losses, whether from specific, individual defaults or the more widespread distress that accompanies economic recessions, will be diffused more broadly across institutions with different risk appetite and tolerance, and across geographic borders. Our experience since the introduction of these new instruments-a period that includes a major asset price shock and a global recession-seems to justify the essentially positive judgment we have about the likely benefits of ongoing growth in these markets.
Despite the benefits to financial resilience, the changes in the credit markets that are the subject of your conference have also provoked some concerns and unease, even among those on the frontier of innovation and the most active participants in these markets.
These concerns are based in part on uncertainty-a candid acknowledgment that there is a lot we do not yet know about how these instruments and the increased role of nonbank institutions in these markets will affect how the financial markets are likely to function in conditions of stress. [...]
Let me conclude by reiterating the fundamental view that the wave of innovation underway in credit derivatives offers substantial benefits to both the efficiency and stability of our financial system.
Hmmm, he didn't seem to have seen any of the current problems coming. Also, he apparently was involved in the bailout negotiations. So it seems like this is a very status quo pick for Obama.
Today I am beginning an occasional series on what George W. Bush will do for corporate interests and major Republican donors during the final weeks of his presidency.
This comes from the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition's e-mail newsletter:
EPA Administrator Signs Off on Final CAFO Rule: Last Friday, as a "Halloween trick" for the environment and public health, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson signed a revised Clean Water Act final regulation for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) permits and effluent limitations. EPA revised the CAFO regulations in response to legal challenges to a 2003 CAFO final regulation, brought in the case Waterkeeper Alliance Inc. v. EPA by both environmental organizations and the CAFO sector.
The revision opens a gaping hole in the 2003 regulation by allowing a CAFO, no matter how large, to self-certify that the CAFO does not "intend" to discharge to the waters of the U.S. EPA ignored the recommendation of the federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals to establish a regulatory presumption that large-scale CAFOs discharge pollutants. The presumption would have required that a large-scale CAFO demonstrate to regulatory authorities that it is designed and can be operated to avoid all discharges of regulated pollutants.
EPA also rejected making improvements in technology that reduce harmful bacteria and other pathogens that threaten public health, a problem aggravated by the development of antibiotic resistant pathogens in CAFOs. The revised rule does include one improvement required in Waterkeeper -- that a CAFO nutrient management plan must be included in a Clean Water Act permit for the CAFO and made available for public review and comment.
EPA is expected publish the revised final regulation in the Federal Register before the end of November. In the meantime, a copy of the unofficial version of the revised regulation is posted on the EPA website. You can also register on the website for a November 19 EPA webcast about the revised CAFO regulation.
SAC will be urging the new Administration to revisit this rulemaking on an expedited basis.
Why am I not surprised that industrial ag profits are a higher priority than the environment and public health?
I hope that the Obama administration will put this on the list of actions to be overturned.
But don't worry, Republicans, it won't be this bad. (Click the link for a funny video that doesn't want to embed here for some reason.)
Seriously, though, we won't see radical change from the next administration. Obama's not even trying to punish Joe Lieberman, who actively campaigned for the Republican ticket and repeated their talking points.
UPDATE: In case anyone doubts that Obama has a mandate for changing our direction, a Gallup poll that was in the field between November 6 and November 8 showed 70 percent have a favorable opinion of Obama, while 25 percent have an unfavorable opinion. 65 percent of respondents are confident in Obama's ability to be a good president, 28 percent do not have confidence in his ability, and 7 percent have no opinion. The same poll showed George W. Bush's approval rating at 27 percent and disapproval rating at 66 percent.
Keep in mind that no president since Nixon ever had disapproval numbers above 60 percent. Multiple polls have shown Bush in this range.
(There aren't enough political songs these days, so thanks for posting this one. - promoted by desmoinesdem)
I front a band in Iowa City, which isn't of itself worth your time, because half the knuckleheads in Iowa City are in bands — but we were working on a new record to be released later this year, and I decided this song needed to come out before the election. It's called "One Twenty Oh-Nine" and it is a celebration of that day, just a few months from now, when ends this great yawning Bushian darkness that has killed so many, subverted so much of our civil society and threatens the very homes under millions of people's feet. I sent it over to my occasional editor, blogger and former record label honcho Howie Klein, who rakes the muck in his blog DownWithTyranny, and he made it quickly into a youtube video. We want to send this out to Rob Hubler and Becky Greenwald in their vital, heroic fights to grow the Blue Tide, to take back our government from agents of venal, mean, wealth-fetishizing fear-mongers that have brought this nation to the brink of disaster. (You can contribute to Rob and Becky by clicking the above links; in fact, you know what, cut and paste your contribution receipt into an email to me at tetdog@mchsi.com, cite this blog, and I'll send you a free mp3 of the song.)
Conyers: Could the President order a suspect buried alive?
Yoo: Uh, Mr. Chairman, I don't think I've ever given advice that the President could order someone buried alive. . .
Conyers: I didn't ask you if you ever gave him advice. I asked you thought the President could order a suspect buried alive.
Yoo: Well Chairman, my view right now is that I don't think a President . . . no American President would ever have to order that or feel it necessary to order that.
Conyers: I think we understand the games that are being played.
Click the link to watch the video at TPMMuckraker.
The Bush administration's policy on torture is an international disgrace. One of its legal architects won't even concede that the president can't order a suspect to be buried alive.
I won't be tuning in, but if you watch the address, document the atrocities here (as Atrios would say).
Lucky break for Obama, as Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius will give the Democrats' response, raising her national profile just after she announced that she will back Obama's presidential bid.
UPDATE: Todd Beeton, the MyDD front-pager who supports Obama, didn't think much of the response by Sebelius:
I wasn't watching, but I am surprised if she did not do well. When I saw her speak in person a couple of years ago, she was fabulous. Of course, she wasn't reading a script of someone else's talking points on that occasion.
Water-boarding is term that describes strapping an individual to a board, with a towel pulled tightly across his face, and pouring water on him or her to cut off air and simulate drowning.
When asked directly last week whether he thought waterboarding is constitutional, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey was evasive. As noted by NPR, Mukasey "danced around the issue of whether waterboarding actually is torture and stopped short of saying that it is." "If it amounts to torture," Mukasey said carefully, "then it is not constitutional."
Waterboarding is torture, and anyone who is unwilling to identify it as such is not qualified to be the chief legal officer of the United States of America. If I were in the U.S. Senate, I would vote against Mukasey unless he denounces such specific forms of torture.
What about the Democrats in the U.S. Senate and other Democratic Presidential candidates? Will they oppose Mukasey unless he denounces the use of torture by our government?
Later tonight President Bush will address the nation on the subject of Iraq. It will be the eighth time he's done so since the Iraq war started in 2003.
Senator Dodd issued the following statement on Bush's anticipated announcement that the 30,000+ troops deployed to Iraq during the "surge" will be brought home early next summer (as has always been the plan).
"Moving us in 10 months to where we were 10 months ago is not progress. It is the very definition of status quo.
"Not only is the President not offering us anything new; he's insulting our intelligence.
"Despite the fact that his top General is unable to say that the war is making us safer, all the President offers today is quite literally more of the same. More loss of life, more strain on our military readiness, and more degradation of our national security and our standing in the world. It is time for Congress to say 'no more.'
"What was clear to me before, and what should be abundantly clear to my colleagues after today, is that this President is not going to change course unless we force him to. There is only one way to do that - we must set a clear, hard and fast deadline for redeployment and, in order to enforce it, that deadline must be tied to funding."
The rabble-rousers over at Open Left (Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller, and Mike Lux) have launched a campaign against "Bush dogs", defined as Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives who have in 2007 both capitulated on the Iraq funding bill and voted to allow Alberto Gonzales warrantless wiretapping powers.
You will probably not be surprised to learn that IA-03's own Leonard Boswell makes this list. Like many in the group, he is in the "Blue Dog" faction in the House. (Other "Bush dogs" are in the "New Democrats" group in the House, but Boswell does not belong to that club.)
Boswell's disappointing vote on these issues is only the latest in a long string of disappointments for me, from voting for all of Bush's horrible energy bills to supporting permanent repeal of the estate tax to voting for the "torture" bill in the fall of 2006.
Does Boswell really represent such a conservative district that he "has" to vote with Republicans on these issues? No, he does not. His district actually has a partisan index of D+1.4, whereas many of the Bush dogs are in districts that lean Republican, or deep-South districts where rank and file Democrats tend to be more conservative.
Chris Bowers specifically criticized Boswell in this post, in which he made the case that Boswell is NOT "voting his district" when he casts his lot with the Bush White House.
Paul Rosenberg provides some interesting data on the "Bush dogs" and how vulnerable they might be to a strong challenge: click here for more.
Some in the blogosphere have criticized this effort to target in possibly hit Bush dogs with primary challengers, saying it could endanger our majority in the House and is bad form to "meddle" in other states' politics. Chris Bowers responded to the criticism here, and Mike Lux weighed in on the dispute, and his desire to promote progressive voting in Congress without harming Democrats in truly vulnerable positions, here.
What do you think? I support letting Boswell know when we are upset about his voting, but I don't see a primary challenge as having much chance here. Anyway, Iowa is going to lose a district after the 2010 census, and Boswell will likely retire at that point.
Primary challenges against other "Bush dogs" may be well worth the effort, on the other hand. Even if we don't beat these people in the primary, we can push them to vote better, as Jane Harman and Ellen Tauscher (both California Democrats) have been doing since netroots progressives targeted them for primary challenges.
Yesterday's Washington Post reports that President George W. Bush considers himself a "dissident":
"You're not the only dissident," Bush told Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a leader in the resistance to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "I too am a dissident in Washington. Bureaucracy in the United States does not help change. It seems that Mubarak succeeded in brainwashing them."
Quite frankly, this is one of the most astonishing things I've ever heard Bush say, and he's said some truly confounding things during his tenure in the White House.
The last century has seen a great many dissidents fighting for democracy and freedom. Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Mahatma Ghandi in India. The students of Tiananmen Square. Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia. Otpor in Serbia.
Each one of these people and groups put their lives on the line for political change when facing oppressive, unjust governments. They were beat, shot at, killed, and imprisoned by their own countrymen and governments. Yet they still fought for change; some won, some continue to fight.
Nothing, I repeat, nothing, in the opposition President Bush has had to face to accomplish his agenda stands in the same category as what these heroic dissidents faced. The only thing President Bush has in common with a political dissident is that both words end with "dent."
Bush has faced opposition because he's presented policies that are out of touch with the desires of the American people and the legislators that represent them. He's divided the country through the war in Iraq and the dangerous roll-back of constitutional rights.
Chris Dodd would never be confused for a dissident as President. He has the experience of bringing people of both parties together to get legislation passed. He did it with the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Genocide Conventions, helped bring peace to Latin America, the first child care legislation and countless other pieces of critically important legislation. A Dodd administration will bring the leaders of both parties together in January 2009, make its priorities clear, and work with people to get the job done. If obstacles ever come up, you can count on Chris Dodd to not become a martyr who casts himself in the vein as people he has no business comparing himself to. That's because Dodd is an honest, experienced leader who has a global understanding of politics and the meaning of words. Two things that I believe our country sorely needs.
Remember how the Republicans always told us Clinton's impeachment wasn't about the sex, it was about the lying? That is, the false affadavit Clinton signed in connection with a civil case.
Scooter Libby committed perjury (lied to a grand jury) and made false statements in connection with a criminal case. Not just any criminal case, an investigation into the leaking of a covert CIA agent's name. Despite his all-star legal team, Libby was convicted on four out of five counts of perjury and making false statements.
Well, Bush made a big show of saying he would fire anyone involved in leaking covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the media. But when push came to shove, he didn't do it, and he made sure that convicted felon Scooter Libby didn't see a day in prison for lying to the FBI and to a grand jury.
Today, after a court ruled against Libby's efforts to delay his prison sentence until after he had exhausted his appeals, Bush commuted Libby's sentence to probation and a $250,000 fine. That fine is meaningless--Bush pioneers have been raising millions of dollars for Libby.
I found this nugget at Talking Points Memo particularly interesting. This comes from the Department of Justice manual on commutations, with emphasis added by Josh Marshall:
Section 1-2.113 Standards for Considering Commutation Petitions
A commutation of sentence reduces the period of incarceration; it does not imply forgiveness of the underlying offense, but simply remits a portion of the punishment. It has no effect upon the underlying conviction and does not necessarily reflect upon the fairness of the sentence originally imposed. Requests for commutation generally are not accepted unless and until a person has begun serving that sentence. Nor are commutation requests generally accepted from persons who are presently challenging their convictions or sentences through appeal or other court proceeding.
Even Bush's commutation didn't follow legal procedures.
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