PMC Commentary

Another Dorothy Parker week

One clicks on the latest news from, or of, Syria with the greatest reluctance; this can't be good, it simply cannot be good--what fresh, sulfurous, diabolical news is this, and sure enough, it's always hellish.

The strangest bedfellows relentlessly emerge, and the latest from Syria is that our good friends the Qataris are smuggling to rebel forces shipments of heat-seeking, shoulder-fired, Chinese-made FN-6 missiles, which, say dyspeptic American officials, "could one day be used by terrorist groups, some of them affiliated with Al Qaeda, to shoot down civilian aircraft."

But friends are friends--Qatar is hosting Afghan peace talks; and besides, we've a military base there, which could come in handy when al Nusra starts shooting down civilian aircraft--so we must overlook their, uh, faults.

The latest news of Syria? Even weirder. In the House, the likes of tea-partying Michele Bachmann and Vermont's superprogressive Peter Welch have joined forces to inhibit the president's move to militarily intervene. (And even weirder is that Obama is probably privately rooting them on: "Would somebody please tell me I can't do this?")

The mere idea of a Bachmann-Welch alliance is creepy, but creepier still is that they're right. And the consequent thought of Michele Bachmann trumping Barack Obama in the logic department is at least borderline apocalyptic. 

More GOP gangsterism

I can only assume that Mitch McConnell & Co.'s letter to the NFL (and other sports leagues) was composed with letters cut from newspapers and magazines and pasted onto blank stationery:  

Given the divisiveness and persistent unpopularity of [ObamaCare], it is difficult to understand why an organization like yours would risk damaging its inclusive and apolitical brand by lending its name to its promotion....

We have long been concerned by the Obama Administration’s record of using the threat of policy retaliation to solicit support for its policies or to silence its critics [italics mine, intent McConnell's].

Nice little professional league you have there, boys. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it. And don't for a minute think we'd hesitate to pull the trigger; see debt ceiling crises, sequestration, and our gutting of ACA's lawful implementation in every malicious, underhanded way.

I lifted McConnell's extortion letter from TPM, which notes "the suggestion in the [letter] that the administration"--the administration!--"may be threatening or pressuring the NFL." It seems the NFL, though, read the letter in the same way I did: "[W]e currently have no plans to engage in this area."

"Serious doubts" = serious trouble for GOP

Scant and too-early evidence, for sure, but Jamelle Bouie points to a new Democracy Corps poll, which "suggests that the landscape for Democrats is better than it looks":

In its survey of the 24 most competitive Republican congressional districts, the GOP holds just a one-point advantage over a generic Democrat, 43 percent to 42 percent. What’s more, a large number of voters in these districts (54 percent) want Republicans to do more to work with President Obama. Overall, the Republican brand has taken a serious hit over the last six months--GOP opposition to universal background checks and the Violence Against Women Act, among other things, has raised "serious doubts" about the performance of Republican incumbents in competitive areas....

Another 12 months of this, and the GOP could find itself in a worrisome position next November.

Which is why denying them (probably unnecessary; they'll deny themselves) any political points on immigration reform is so vital. Aside from the plain, undeniable fact that they deserve no points, a "denial strategy" goes far beyond the rough and tumble of mere partisan politics.

In my view, not only is there nothing cold-hearted about such a strategy, it is, rather, of the highest ethical order. The GOP is a party that must be killed, before it kills again ... and again. The party's obstructionism is well known, but it has turned treacherous, too. Its past actions and current threats regarding the debt ceiling alone are enough to convict and condemn; the GOP is, again, promising national devastation and global waste--odds are, it ain't kidding. 

Voters can't do much to avert the GOP's next self-imposed debt crisis, this fall, but they can gut the party for good, in November '14.

Give it another chance--which an immigration notch might ensure--after that November? The nation would only be asking for more partisan squalor, and more treachery, and of course the coup de grace against Obama's second term. I'd prefer to see the president go out on high notes of success, rather than surrender perforce to yet another two years of Republican betrayal.

No thanks. A more humane, less costly immigration bill would emerge from the first year of new Democratic majorities--and after all these years of waiting, another 18 months are but a pause. No, if there's a chance to retake the House and protect the Senate, Democrats would be recklessly cold-hearted only in not taking that chance--and that means denying Republicans any success on immigration (if necessary, which, again, it probably won't be).  

Ah, Newt, Herman, Mitt and Michele, they're all here

In one of those nostalgic, where-are-they-now? columns, Dave Weigel looks at the 2012 crop of GOP presidential candidates, ranking them in ascending order according to the self-benefits of their descents. My two favorites:

4. Jon Huntsman. The press loves Republicans who Speak Truth to Power (i.e., tell Republicans that they should take positions that appeal more to the press), so the utter failure of Huntsman's campaign did not stop him becoming a reasonably well-cited centrist pundit and No Labels ... leader? Is that the word?

3. Herman Cain. By quitting the race as a sex scandal brought him down, by not fighting on, Cain retained most of the fandom he'd won in his primary debates. His "CainTV" empire isn't impressing anybody, but his radio show is, in the words of still-consigliere Mark Block, "kicking ass."

Weigel ranks Rick Santorum as #1, who will soon be matched against the list's #8, Rick Perry, in another contest to see who will lose to the next Democratic nominee.

Let them be, for God's sake let them be

From The Hill, the astounding: 

Washington Democrats are planning a full-court press on John Boehner now that immigration reform is squarely in the Speaker's court....

Sen. Charles Schumer is endorsing a million-person march on Washington to pressure Boehner to act....

Obama is using his bully pulpit to call on House Republicans to act swiftly.

And the most astounding of all ...

The Hispanic, Black and Asian Pacific American caucuses are whipping hard against smaller reforms moving through the House Judiciary Committee.

Head fakes I understand. But these don't seem like head fakes. They seem sincere.

Right, my Democratic friends, do go ahead and pressure Republicans to save themselves--and thereby abolish the cardinal motivation of Hispanics, Blacks and Asian Pacific Americans to turn out in seething, midterm hordes.  

Thankfully, we on the left's unintoxicated fringe still have confidence that Mr. Boehner will do the epically wrong right thing and hold tight. Don't let 'em get to you, John. Be a moron man.

From a nobody geek to a top brass's ass

Oh, the irony. The ironies. Sometimes you're sorry you probed.

Such as when you're looking for the leaker of the Stuxnet program--a "very damaging" leak, says one intelligence specialist; one of "devastating consequences," says another (even though Iran already knew Who Done It)--and instead of a Rand Paulian youngster possessed of a possibly overactive libertarian imagination, you find a retired four-star Marine general, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was "one of the president’s 'inner circle' of national security advisors."

"[T]he Justice Department has not made a final decision on whether to charge" the general, reports Michael Isikoff. But if the Justice Department does, it really must charge him, fair is fair, under the Espionage Act--the Great Equalizer, the atomic bomb of all intelligence investigations, to be deployed against the naughty and nice alike.

And what gripes your butt even more, assuming you're sitting atop the Justice Department, is to find that "prosecutors were able to identify [the] suspected leaker without resorting to a secret subpoena of the phone records of New York Times reporters."

Damn! Foiled again, in a way.

"Moral premises"

Good piece by Chait on "irreconcilable moral premises." His column treats only abortion ...

There's no real resolution to this dispute. Nobody even makes much of an effort to resolve it. Both sides advance arguments that only make sense if you already accept their premise about what a human life is.

... but his intelligent critique applies widely.

Greenwald, feeling the heat

Greenwald is getting testy, and I don't blame him.

The evil press, of which he is supposed by many to be part, is now snooping into his personal background, which will lighten the heavy hearts of more than a few NSA defenders, who will promptly spot some saintliness in the heretofore evil.

But, what the hell, that's politics--a rather vulgar game, played by vulgar, unchanging rules. They don't bother me (much).

What did bother me about Greenwald's defense, however, is this passage of unbelievable naivete: 

I never quite understood why the Nixon administration, in response to his release of the Pentagon Papers, would want to break into the office of Ellsberg's psychoanalyst and steal his files. That always seemed like a non sequitur to me: how would disclosing Ellsberg's most private thoughts and psychosexual assessments discredit the revelations of the Pentagon Papers?

It is a non sequitur (in logic, not politics). There's nothing "seeming" about it. And Greenwald, being of a linear, lawyerly mind, had to know that. So why the feigned puzzlement?  

I can only guess. I could be magnificently wrong, but my guess is that he needed to find a way to compare the Ellsberg case to his own, in the Snowden story. Thus from the baffling Ellsberg Question, we get Ellsberg's answer:

When I asked Ellsberg about that several years ago, he explained that the state uses those tactics against anyone who dissents from or challenges it simply to distract from the revelations and personally smear the person with whatever they can find to make people uncomfortable with the disclosures.

Well, as they say, fucking duh.

Yet here--to me--is the really fascinating part. Greenwald needn't have played that game. He could have taken a more direct route: The Ellsberg and Snowden cases are similar in that both men revealed what was already, commonly suspected--that, in the first instance, successive presidential administrations had consistently lied to the American public about our involvement in Southeast Asia; in the second instance, that the government was "secretly" amassing vast amounts of private data as part of its anti-terrorism efforts.

The commonality lies not in the subject material itself, of course, but in the reality that most everyone sorta "knew" this stuff, prior to its blockbuster revelations. Which says something paradoxic about secrecy.

Texas in full flower

Gail Collins, on the lone sanity within the vast political nuthatch of Texas:

Texas is now engaged in a debate over whether it is worse to yell in the State Senate or declare a senator out of order for discussing the state abortion laws during a debate on abortion.

She ends on a more serious note (although, for all we know, Texas Republicans really are serious about the above): 

A few years back, [Wendy] Davis told me about an incident during a debate when she had asked a veteran Republican a question about a pending bill. Dodging her query, he said: “I have trouble hearing women’s voices.”       

I guess they can hear her now.

Think creeping purple--egregiously slowed by the Supreme Court yesterday, for sure, but inevitable.

VRA decided 13 years ago, Part II

Yale Law's and the NY Times' Linda Greenhouse makes the searing distinction--which I further emphasize--between attempts at voter suppression then and attempts at voter suppression now: 

[T]he ink was barely dry on the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder when Attorney General Greg Abbott of Texas announced that his state’s voter-ID law, blocked by a federal court last summer, "will take effect immediately."

It couldn't in 2012. It can in 2013, and beyond.

Last year Justice was legally empowered, in Texas and elsewhere, to intervene; now it's a legally beached mackerel in the moonlight. The Old Confederacy, as well as Ohio and Pennsylvania and other occupied outposts of pseudoconservative reactionaryism, can finally have their voter-suppression hoedown. Yee-haw.

In sum, we no longer can--or should--safely predict 2012's backlash as a 2014/16 event, because conditions have changed. Restrictions will soon apply that were barred from application before.

Does that mean another backlash is impossible? Of course not. The only absolute in physics and politics is that there isn't one--that, plus those proverbial actions compelling reactions. The one safe prediction, though, is that voter suppression is now far more likely to tangibly manifest itself in the next several election cycles. One could even go so far as to say that that's a fact, the denial of which portends an even worse electoral disaster. 

VRA decided 13 years ago

I've rarely seen Dionne so pained:

Recall that when conservatives did not have a clear court majority, they railed against “judicial activism.” Now that they have the capacity to impose their will, many of the same conservatives defend extreme acts of judicial activism by claiming they involve legitimate interpretations of the true meaning of the Constitution.

It is an inconsistency that tells us all we need to know. [The Voting Rights Act decision] is not an argument about what the Constitution says. It is a battle for power. And, despite scattered liberal triumphs, it is a battle that conservatives are winning.

And, like so many of today's national ills, its origins reside in--what else?--Bush v. Gore.

Absent that 2000 Rehnquist decision, we never would have suffered Roberts and Alito's VRA decision, because they too would have been absent, along with their Bush v. Gore-like obscenity of Citizens United. Still present would have been nearly 4,500 Americans lost to neocon madness in Iraq, and maybe, just maybe, an economy unafflicted by almost criminal neglect. 

We don't know whom the duly elected President Gore would have nominated to the Court, but we can be sure it would have been men or women--white, black, or brown--who regarded the Constitution as something more than an ideologically dessicated party's platform.  

As laudable as the DOMA and Prop 8 decisions are, they don't mean political power. Shelby County v. Holder and Citizens United do. The unscrupulous designs of the former are already in motion, and though a few bags of cash are ruefully rethinking their 2012 activities, they'll be back in '14 and '16--bigger, badder, and smarter than ever. You can literally count on it.

All because of Bush v. Gore--though not as morally dreadful as Dred Scott, the Court's fin-de-siècle version of it.

E.J., we'll have that drink with you now.

Add immigration to the critical list

This good day is getting even better. Now Politico reports that "The elusive goal of 70 votes for the Senate immigration bill started to slip from the Gang of Eight’s grasp on Wednesday, as potential swing GOP votes began to peel away from the reform effort." Splendid news, in that it further reduces the odds of any movement in the House.

This is the worst possible time to throw a life preserver to the delightfully endangered Republican Party, and successful immigration reform--even inadequate immigration reform--would be just that: a political lifesaver for a party that by rights should be pushed--and held--under.

No matter how wretched, any passed bill would be hailed by GOPers as legislative proof of their cultural enlightenment, their philosophical turnaround, the end of their despicably nativist days. It would mostly be a lie, of course, but that the GOP does exceptionally well. All the party needs is something in writing, signed by the president, to certify its rehabilitation and thus con millions of Latinos.

Republicans could pull it off. They just need a bill, any bill, which some Senate Democrats seem foolish enough to procure for them--all in a misguided, shortsighted attempt to deliver reform straightaway, as promised.

No, no, deliver it in 2015, with Democratic majorities, in a more liberal, Democratic way. Give nothing to Republicans; deny them all opportunities to take credit in the run-up to 2014--which is one of the major routes to possessing those delivering majorities in 2015.  

That, anyway, is my take.

"This exists"

It's beyond me why anyone would bother engaging an idiot like this, but, there it is.

(Tweeted by Josh Marshall as, "This exists." It's an easy thing to forget.

I was once--really not that many years ago--in the Capitol Hill office of a rather powerful Democratic congressman, who happened to look up at his closed-circuit House feed just as Barney Frank was talking, and the congressman said, to no one in particular, "Can you believe that's on the floor of the U.S. House?"

My, that now seems like centuries ago.)

Now THAT'S good politics

... and I'm sorry I missed it:

Two of the plaintiffs who challenged California's same-sex marriage ban before the Supreme Court were discussing the ruling during an appearance Wednesday on MSNBC when the interview was interrupted by a phone call. The caller? President Barack Obama....

"The President's on the line from Air Force One," [announced Human Rights Campaign President Chris Griffin].

The president's formal statement was as elegant as the theatrics:

The laws of our land are catching up to the fundamental truth that millions of Americans hold in our hearts: when all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.

Naturally, the president's assessment swelled the despondent and oddly blue eyes of John Boehner, who, in his own formal statement, said he was "obviously disappointed in the ruling." Yep, love and equality are real downers.

Scalia and hypocrisy squared

Coming on the heels of his Voting Rights autocracy, through which he tossed aside the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution as well as democratically elected representatives in successive Congresses, Justice Scalia's dissent in the DOMA case is especially breathtaking: 

[T]he court had "no power" to reach its decision and was suffering from "an exalted conception" of its role in the nation, [he said].

"We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation."

Kinda leaves you speechless, doesn't it?