Reading George Packer's latest piece in The New Yorker was not an eye-opening experience. The sour details of the Senate's dysfunction and myopia came as no surprise, since the legislation produced by that body recently looks both dysfunctional and myopic. No surprise that those responsible for the dysfunction are aware of the problem. No shock that everyone has no idea what to do about it, including the obvious things. Packer's piece tells us much of what we suspect, if not know.

How is it possible to become so disconnected from clear thinking? By clear thinking, I mean the ability to see what is going on and then doing the obvious, simple, direct, most Occam's Razor-like response. Instead, what we have are public officials participating willfully in a system that all of them know doesn't work, yet deciding the clear solutions in plain sight are impossible to implement. For example, in the article, Packer tells the story of a Senate rule that requires the unanimous consent of all senators to allow committees to conduct any meetings after 2:30 in the afternoon while the Senate is in session. Yes, unbelievably, that is a rule. Naturally, just about anything short of a murder trial that requires unanimity will encounter problems:

So, four hours earlier, when Levin went to the Senate floor and asked for consent to hold his hearing, Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, and a member of Levin’s committee, had refused. “I have no personal objection to continuing,” Burr said. But, he added, “there is objection on our side of the aisle. Therefore, I would have to object.”

This is the sort of thing that isn't seen as silly and ridiculous, but is considered standard Washington procedure. It isn't wrong for Burr to use the rules to gum up the works. It is wrong to have such a works in the first place. It isn't Senator Burr's non-objection objection that is the problem here. It is the fact that Senator Burr, or any Senator, has the power to gum up something so mundane as a committee hearing with no explanation and no accountability. It is a blueprint for systemic failure. In the past, different political circumstances and better humans have prevented the rules from being used so counterproductively that they prevent the normal functioning of government. That, in and of itself, is a systemic weakness of catastrophic proportions. If the functioning of government is wholly dependent on the unanimous high moral character of public officials, then what happens when one degenerate ruins the whole thing? Systemic failure.

The Capitol City sees all this with a shrug of the shoulders. In Washington, it is dismissed as a problem for the voters to correct. Obstructionism, they call it. If the voters don't like it, they'll vote against the obstructionists. It's taken as an article of faith that has no basis in reality. In my lifetime, I have never witnessed an election where obstructionism was an issue. Despite the beliefs of the political strategists of the current majority, there is no political cost for obstructionism at the ballot box. The truth is that voting out Mitch McConnell or Ben Nelson won't change a thing. This is a people problem, certainly. But it is much more a systemic problem.

To face the truth, that rules of the game must be changed, is not something Washington is interested in hearing. The lawyers, lobbyists, congressional staff, regulators, fundraisers, political strategists, consultants, reporters, pundits, analysts, think-tankers, former members, activists, officials, media producers, and all of the rest...constitute an almost insurmountable force of inertia. The status quo is good for them. It sends their kids to elite schools. It pays for comfortable digs in Fairfax or Montgomery County. It even gets them on television.

Any legislative measure or presidential appointment will set in motion activists who tell the story of why any particular group of people should be afraid. Those people have to hire lobbyists to push one way or the other, because they are not in Washington, a distant capitol. The lobbyists see the need to hire former congressional staff members and former regulators who know the Hill. The congressional staff sees the political dimension necessitating the need for political consultants. The consultants demand payment from fundraisers. Fundraisers protect themselves with lawyers. The consultants message the pundits, who demand facts from reporters, who get the facts from the think-tankers, or the non-facts from the activists, or the pseudo-factoid-soundbytes from the officials. If there were ever anything serious done about it, a lot of the people listed above would be out of work. The system doesn't work, and it's failure is compounded by the fact that those involved have every interest in making sure it doesn't. It is a never-ending machine of cogs slowly going round and round, whizzing and buzzing, cranking, and churning, whistling and spewing fumes. The product? Inertia.

To disassemble this disaster will take more than can be mustered by elections. It will take someone, anyone, to lead the reform of government that works and works well. It will take a force mightier than any president or senator. Election after election brings a president or members of Congress promising to change the way this system works, but the system beats them every single time. I don't know what force will bring about this re-ordering of the status quo, but I am certain it will not come about as the result of an election. All too often, we have seen that "change elections" don't change the system.

This system was brought about by the actions of humans and therefore it can be destroyed, or at least reformed by humans. I believe that it can be fixed. In fact, I believe most of the players involved believe the same thing. The question is, when will the incentives align toward action and away from inertia? Perhaps a generation or two has to pass into history so that younger people can bring fresh thinking into the picture. Perhaps a revivalist wave of civic-mindedness will sweep across the land and storm the gates of the Forbidden City. Perhaps it will take a cataclysmic event so disruptive of the order, a mighty shock to the system so complete, that the obvious becomes the imperative. I don't know.

I do know that if this nation is to effectively confront the many challenges it faces, the people who constitute the ruling class of the distant capitol must not greet systemic failure with indifference. It has to start with reforming the filibuster. It has to continue with real, serious, meaningful campaign finance reform. Media conglomerates that use the public airwaves have to be subjected to stricter scrutiny for the right to use those airwaves. Lobbyists must not be allowed to contribute to or raise money for the people they are lobbying. Congressional members and staff must be banned from becoming lobbyists, federal contractors, or people who use the public airwaves for some period of time after leaving public service. Public service has to return to meaning what it says instead of being another rung on the corporate career ladder.

Maybe, just maybe, we would then have a government that sees problems and solves them.

Friday opinion.

Paul Krugman:

Ten years ago, one of America’s leading economists delivered a stinging critique of the Bank of Japan, Japan’s equivalent of the Federal Reserve, titled "Japanese Monetary Policy: A Case of Self-Induced Paralysis?" With only a few changes in wording, the critique applies to the Fed today...

Who was that tough-talking economist? Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Federal Reserve. So why is the Bernanke Fed being just as passive now as the Bank of Japan was a decade ago?

Linda Greenhouse:

The intense public and media attention to Judge Vaughn R. Walker’s decision in the California same-sex marriage case led me to wonder how the media responded 40 years ago to another Federal District Court ruling — the decision that declared the Texas criminal abortion law unconstitutional, in a case called Roe v. Wade.

My database search yielded a surprise. The New York Times reported the decision, issued by a three-judge Federal District Court in Dallas on June 17, 1970, in a 251-word article by The Associated Press, "3 U.S. Judges Rule Laws on Abortion Invalid in Texas." The story ran on page 37.

What a difference a generation makes.

That was before conservatives decided to make human rights into a wedge issue.

Eugene Robinson:

The big political story of the year may turn out to be the consequences of the GOP's foray into extremism and wackiness. It could be that the party acculturates its not-ready-for-prime-time candidates, harnesses the energy of the Tea Party movement and sweeps to a grand old victory. There is also the distinct possibility that the acute philosophical split within the party -- basically, a clash between bedrock conservatism and utter nonsense -- will hand victories to Democrats that they didn't anticipate and frankly might not deserve.

Anyone who doubts this assessment should reflect on the fact that major figures in the Republican Party are wasting valuable time and energy debating whether the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1868, should be repealed.

Charles Krauthammer: Today's hate column is about the Ground Zero mosque. God forbid there should be a religious structure anywhere near there, or near the Pentagon. That's just outrageous!

Michael Gerson:

The radical, humane vision of the 14th Amendment can be put another way: No child born in America can be judged unworthy by John Boehner, because each is his equal.

Gerson is a partisan conservative (he's an ex-Bush speechwriter) but he's not insane like so many other Republicans are.

At Solve Climate, Stacy Feldman writes:

Be sure to check out the Gulf Recovery series. So far 13 diarists have contributed to this blogathon organized by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, noweasels and myself. More diaries will appear Friday. Links appear in the jump below.

• • • • •

Green diary rescue appears on Thursdays and Sundays. Inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement with it. The GDR begins here and continues in the jump.

• • • • •

Haole in Hawaii is one lucky fellow, as he let us know in Beautiful Birds of Botswana - A Photo Diary: "Aloha! I am back in the islands after my second once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Okavango and Linyanti wilderness of northwest Botswana. I have to say that re-entry into my work life and also into the blazing insanity that is American politics after two weeks of wildlife photography is jarring to say the least. This diary as all my diaries here is meant primarily as a respite from the craziness and as a reminder that we share this fragile planet with some incredible creatures." That is a Saddle-billed Stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis) in the photo on the right.

Tonight's rescue brought to you by grog, HoosierDeb, Purple Priestess, rexymeteorite, and shayera, with srkp23 editing.

• Rei shares a tale of betrayal and defiance in On Wearing A Scarlet 'T'. (Purple Priestess)
• greendem brings us a story from the RECOVERY: SF Breaks Ground on High Speed Rail's "Grand Central". (shayera)
• gloriasb highlights an innovative way to deliver public health services in "Avon calling" in Uganda. (grog)
• Citing a recent study, Balanz poses the question Why talk about Race? It’s Good for You! (HoosierDeb)
• Maybe we can learn something from our distant relatives, palantir muses. (Purple Priestess)
• grabovcan looks at a typical day in his life and how all that will change in Gay Marriage: The Day After. Not. (grog)
• Recovering Republican GothmogIV shares a newly gained insight centered On Compassion. (HoosierDeb)

jotter serves up High Impact Diaries: August 11, 2010.

BeninSC brings Top Comments - Engagement.

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread.

There's no denying that administrative costs for insurance companies are out of control, and that ends up driving up premium costs. But it's not just those rising administrative costs that behind the still-increasing premium rates.

The top executives at the nation's five largest for-profit health insurance companies pulled in nearly $200 million in compensation last year — while their businesses prepared to hit ratepayers with double-digit premium increases, according to a new analysis conducted by healthcare activists.

The leaders of Cigna Corp., Humana Inc., UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint Inc. each in effect received raises in 2009, the report concluded, based on an analysis of company reports filed with the Security and Exchange Commission.

The study was conducted by HCAN, which laid out the solution in the press release accompanying the story.

State and federal insurance regulators are currently considering guidelines to induce health plans to spend a greater share of their premium revenue on patient care and less on executive compensation, administration and profit. The proposal revolves around a closely-watched financial indicator known to Wall Street investors as the medical-loss ratio (MLR). The new health reform law includes a provision that requires insurers to spend on patient care at least 80 percent of health plan premiums collected from individuals and small employers and 85 percent of premiums paid by large employers.

Crucial recommendations on implementation of these guidelines will be made soon to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Most of the plans reviewed in the HCAN report continued in the second quarter of 2010 to spend lavishly on non-medical activities while reducing the share of premium dollars used for members' actual health care.

The health insurance industry wants to expand the definition of allowable medical expenses to include costs that are not directly related to the delivery of care and have not historically been classified as medical. Instead of reducing costs and improving the efficiency of their operations, they simply want to change how certain expenses are classified. This approach would encourage CEOs to gouge consumers even more than they already do in order to jack up corporate profits and share prices, thereby increasing bonuses and grants of stock and stock options to them....

Strong standards for insurance company spending are needed to ensure that premiums are not jacked up merely to perpetuate bloated executive compensation. The MLR standards in the Affordable Care Act are critical to curbing the worst of the health insurance industry's consumer abuses, controlling rising premium costs, increasing the value of premiums paid by private and public customers, and reining in the profiteering of health insurance companies.

To enforce the MLR standards and fulfill the promise of quality, affordable health care for all, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services must reject the insurance industry's sophisticated efforts to undercut the law. If the rules governing medical-loss ratios, rate review and other consumer protections are implemented as intended, the health reform law will hold accountable an industry that abuses millions of customers when they need health benefits the most.

We knew that the legislative battle was just the first one, and the regulatory fight to make the Affordable Care Act actually have teeth was going to be just as tough, but a lot less public. Out-of-control compensation for CEOs and rising premium rates will hopefully make the insurance commissioners a little less amenable to the insurance company lobbying.

Good job, Jared Bernstein, Chief Economic Advisor to the Vice President.

John Boehner wants a lot of people to lose their jobs.

We were awfully surprised to hear Rep. Boehner come out for killing jobs en masse in his own state and district by stopping the Recovery Act on last Sunday’s news shows.

Though we’re sure he didn’t know it, the Congressman is advocating to kill the expansion of the Butler County Community Health Center and bring some of the twenty-five highway projects across the district to a grinding halt.  Across the state of Ohio, he said that approximately 4 million working families should get an unexpected cut in their paycheck as the Making Work Pay tax credit disappears, unemployed workers should go without unemployment benefits, and major Ohio road projects like the US-33 Nelsonville Bypass project and the Cleveland Innerbelt Modernization project should be stalled or stopped.  Oh, and some of the more than 100 clean energy Recovery projects employing workers across the state should be shut down....

[W]when critics like Rep. Boehner talk about stopping the spending, they’re essentially talking about taking away middle class tax cuts, leaving unemployed workers unexpectedly high and dry without an unemployment check, halting road and bridge projects and leaving them unfinished, leaving contractors unpaid for the work they’ve already done and more.

So when it comes right down to, is Rep. Boehner really ready to tell Ohioans they’d better off if we stopped the Recovery Act?

Of course, Boehner doesn't particularly care about Ohio at this point. His, and his colleagues', constituents have long since been the K Street and Wall Street. This is the guy who just spent a week railing about teachers and firefighters as special interests and aid to states as a bailout.

Good for the White House for pointing that out.

It's been a crazy two years of Palin-mania, hasn't it? I was reminiscing the other day about all the crazy she's given us, and began debating her best moment. So much good material to judge!

After some deliberation, I decided this was my favorite:

First, this:

Then, just three months later, this:

Palin had announced on Twitter that she would be running the 5k race organized by the Benton-Franklin Chapter of the Red Cross.

She didn't finish the race, opting to leave the course early to avoid more crowds at the end. About 40 minutes into the run, word started trickling out to people gathered at the finish line that she was gone.

But here's why I love this --

Palin is an attention monger, selling herself as a big runner with a splashy magazine layout in a premier running magazine. Yet given the chance to actually, you know, run, she couldn't even finish a measly 5K run.

Is there a better anecdote to illustrate the essence of Sarah?

So watch, she'll make noise about running for president in 2012, but when push comes to shove, she doesn't have the work ethic to actually campaign. She'll bask in the attention, sell lots of books, and get $100K per speech.

But the second it becomes hard work, she'll call it quits.

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Democracy Corps, and Campaign for Amerca's Future released a new poll this morning on the economy with a press call featuring pollster Stan Greenberg, Campaign For America's Future's Robert Borosage and MoveOn.org's Nita Chaudhary.

The most salient result from the polling, said Greenberg is that it reflected that the electorate is "remarkably sophisticated about the economic crisis and its causes" and hold the firm belief that the only way to address the deficit long term is with investment in the economy. The survey of 1,000 people who voted in 2008 was conducted at the end of July. Here are the key findings:

• 68 percent said they would oppose making major spending cuts in Social Security and Medicare to reduce the deficit, while 28 percent said they would favor cutting those programs. That included 61 percent of Republicans and 56 percent of independents.
• Strong majorities support progressive solutions for addressing the federal deficit: 63 percent back lifting the Social Security cap on incomes higher than $107,000 a year; 64 percent would favor eliminating tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs; 62 percent would support a tax on excessive Wall Street bank profits.
• Strong majorities also oppose common conservative proposals for addressing the budget deficit: 65 percent oppose raising the Social Security retirement age to 70; 65 percent oppose replacing Medicare with a private sector voucher; 62 percent oppose a 3 percent federal sales tax; 60 percent oppose raising the Medicare age from 65 to 67.
• More people support a message that embraces the need for both investments in our future and reduce the deficit over time (52 percent) than a message that only stresses cuts in spending (42 percent). Also, almost equal percentages of respondents were favorable toward “a plan to invest in new industries and rebuild the country over the next five years” (60 percent) and “a plan to dramatically reduce the deficit over five years” (61 percent).
• 62 percent of respondents support more federal to states once they understand that the aid comes in the context of states laying off teachers, first responders and other essential workers due to the recession. That includes 55 percent of independents and 48 percent of Republicans.
• 60 percent of those surveyed responded positively to an economic message that said that “we have a budget deficit, but ... we also have a massive public investment deficit” that requires us to “rebuild the infrastructure that is vital to our economy” and to the economic growth that will “generate revenues to help pay down the budget deficit.” This message tests better than any other progressive message on investment as well as more conservative messages focused on spending cuts.

Here's what that looks like:

Click the image to enlarge.

Note two of the hot political debates at the moment: letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire polls at 54 percent, while raising the retirement age to 70 nets 33 percent.

As Bob Borosage said on the call, "Republicans are getting this exactly wrong" politically and in terms of policy when they argue the way out of economic ruin is to slash spending, turn Medicare into a voucher program (Paul Ryan's big "roadmap" idea) and cut Social Security benefits or raise the retirement age. These are highly unpopular. And the average American voter is a lot smarter than the average Republican in Congress, because they understand that the only way to grow out of this economic crisis is with aggressive investment in jobs and infrastructure, and that that is necessary to reduce deficits.

CNN has a new poll revealing that 68% of Americans oppose the "Ground Zero Mosque" -- including 54% of Democrats, 45% of liberals, 72% of whites and 58% of non-whites.

But this is a case where you have to look at the question to understand what the poll means. The question:

As you may know, a group of Muslims in the U.S. plan to build a mosque two blocks from the site in New York City where the World Trade Center used to stand. Do you favor or oppose this plan?

When you ask the question with those words, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that you're going to find a lot of opposition. It's not just that it frames the issue in the same way that Republican have framed it, it's also that it completely sidesteps questions of tolerance and religious freedom.

The question didn't even explicitly ask whether people believed the government should intervene to outlaw the mosque; it merely asked whether people supported plans by American Muslims to build it. Those two questions are not synonymous.

CNN also didn't ask people whether they felt government should ban Muslims from choosing their own place of worship, nor did they ask whether all religious groups in America, even unpopular ones, deserve the same level of protection from the first amendment.

I'd have liked to see the answer to these questions:

Do you believe the New York City government should forbid American Muslims from building a private house of worship anywhere in the vicinity of where the World Trade Center used to stand?

And:

Do you believe that every religious group, including the American Muslims building a house of worship two blocks from where the World Trade Center used to stand, deserves the same protection from the First Amendment's protection of religious liberty?

Or, even succinctly:

Should the government control who builds houses of worship and where they're located?

Those questions (or questions worded similarly) get at the core question which is whether or not government ought to ban American Muslims from practicing freedom of religion. You don't need to be an active proponent of building the mosque to also believe that the government shouldn't ban it. And assuming you don't believe government should ban it, it's not hard to see that the only motive for opposing the mosque is bigotry. And that then raises the next obvious question I'd love to hear people answer: do you support the Republican Party's bigoted attacks on people of the Islamic faith?

Deductible me:

'bout time.

After years of deliberate neglect, the Justice Department is finally beginning to enforce the federal law requiring states to provide voter registration at welfare and food stamp offices. The effort not only promises to bring hundreds of thousands of hard-to-reach voters into the electorate, but it could also reduce the impact of advocacy organizations whose role in registering voters caused such a furor in 2008.
Related

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, better known as the motor-voter law, is well-known for making it possible to register to vote at state motor vehicle offices. However, the law also required states to allow registration at offices that administer food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, disability assistance and child health programs. States were enthusiastic about the motor-vehicle section of the law, and millions of new voters got on the rolls while getting a driver’s license. But registration at public assistance offices proved far less popular.

In part, that was because of additional paperwork at those offices, but in many states, Republican officials did not want to provide easy entry to the voting rolls for low-income people whom they considered more likely to vote Democratic. The Bush administration devoted its attention to seeking out tiny examples of voter fraud and purging people from the rolls in swing states. It did little to enforce the motor-voter law despite years of complaints from civic groups and Democratic lawmakers.

Republicans don't want to expand the voter pool. The fewer people vote, the better they do.

Roy Blunt offered up a big target, and Robin Carnahan has come out swinging in her first television ad of the cycle.

In a nice touch, the ad is paired with a Carnahan-centric web video making clear the contrast between the two candidates.

For further discussion, see TomP's recommended diary.

Mason-Dixon. 8/9-11. Likely voters. MoE 4% (5/5 results)

Here are the trends:

On the minus side, Alex hasn't gained much against McCollum since M-D's last poll. On the plus side, McCollum has cratered, gazillionaire teabagger Rick Scott is running far behind, and Chiles seems to be pulling votes from the GOP side.

Also on the negative side -- this is the first poll in a while that has McCollum leading Scott in the primary, but really, with a gazillion undecided:

McCollum is ahead of Scott by a 34-30 percent margin -- a huge shift from just a week ago, when Scott led 37-31, according to the latest survey from Mason-Dixon Polling & Research.

Pollster Brad Coker said both candidates' reputations are taking a hit as they sling tens of millions of dollars' worth of negative ads against each other heading into the Aug. 24 primary election.

"Democratic candidate Alex Sink is the clear winner from all of this,'' said Coker.

We're obviously rooting for Scott to win, but he's been hit with revelations that his firm engaged in massive Medicare fraud -- paying out a total of $1.7 billion in fines and claims.

The primary is in two weeks, August 24.

Nothing has changed. The GOP is still a Southern regional white people party. From the latest NBC/WSJ poll:

The GOP has a HUGE generic-ballot edge in the South (52%-31%), but it doesn’t lead anywhere else. In the Northeast, Dems have a 55%-30% edge; in the Midwest, they lead 49%-38%; and in the West, it’s 44%-43%.

And there's this:

Consider: 60% believe the current Congress is either below average or among the worst, an all-time high in the survey; the percentage viewing the GOP favorably (24%-46% fav/unfav) is at an all-time low; the numbers for the Democratic Party aren’t much better (33%-44%, and the "very negative" for the Dems matches an all-time high); nearly six in 10 say the country is headed in the wrong direction; and 64% think the U.S. economy hasn’t yet hit rock bottom (“Recovery Summer," anyone?).

Everyone hates everyone in DC, but they still hate Republicans the most. Of course, this doesn't mean we're out of the woods in November. There are plenty of congressional districts in the midwest and west that look more like Alabama than Minneapolis.

But for conservatives expecting the sweeping tidal wave, their own personal unpopularity still could get in the way.

And beyond this November, that unpopularity will team up with their demographic challenges (losing the brown and young votes) to create serious long-term challenges. Republicans don't currently have a viable path toward majority status, and doubling down on their teabagger-fueled nuttery isn't going to turn those things around.

It may be enough to make some decent gains in November, but again, it's a long-term loser.

Another hurdle crossed:

Chief Judge Vaughn Walker (N.D. Cal.), who struck down Proposition 8’s ban on gay marriage in California, has denied a motion to stay his judgment pending appeal. This means that same-sex marriages in California can start immediately.

Let the marriages begin!

Update: The ban will be lifted effective August 18th.

Update II: From the Los Angeles Times:

A federal judge today refused to permanently stay his ruling overturning Proposition 8's ban of gay marriage but extended a temporary hold to give supporters time to appeal the historic ruling.

U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who overturned the measure on Aug. 4, agreed to give its sponsors until Aug. 18 to appeal his ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. No new marriages can take place until then.

Walker said the sponsors of Proposition 8 do not have legal standing to appeal his order because they were not directly affected by it.

Walker’s decision came after supporters of the marriage ban warned they would take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to ensure that Walker’s ruling did not take effect.

Adam B will have an in-depth look at the ruling later today.

Update III:

Adam B adds: The important part of Judge Walker's order -- even beyond allowing marriages to resume within the week so long as the Ninth Circuit doesn't intervene -- is what it portends regarding the standing issue on any appeal of his opinion.

The court provided proponents with an opportunity to identify a harm they would face “if an injunction against Proposition 8 is issued.”  Proponents replied that they have an interest in defending Proposition 8 but failed to articulate even one specific harm they may suffer as a consequence of the injunction….

If [] no state defendant appeals, proponents will need to show standing in the court of appeals. See Arizonans for Official English, 520 US at 67. Proponents’ intervention in the district court does not provide them with standing to appeal. Diamond, 476 US at 68 (holding that “Diamond’s status as an intervenor below, whether permissive or as of right, does not confer standing to keep the case alive in the absence of the State on this appeal”); see also Associated Builders & Contractors v Perry, 16 F3d 688, 690 (6th Cir 1994) (“The standing requirement * * * may bar an appeal even though a litigant had standing before the district court.”). The Supreme Court has expressed “grave doubts” whether initiative proponents have independent Article III standing to defend the constitutionality of the initiative. Arizonans for Official English, 520 US at 67.

Nor do the Prop 8 proponents suffer any harms in the interim, because none of them "seek to wed a same-sex spouse," and "the court considers only whether the party seeking a stay faces harm, yet proponents do not identify a harm to them that would result from denial of their motion to stay."  Finally, that neither Governor Schwarzenegger nor Attorney General Brown (the actual defendants) requested a stay weighed heavily on the Court.

This now goes up to the Ninth Circuit, where Prof. Rick Hasen has noted that this month's Motions Panel (where the request for stay will be heard) is a fairly liberal one.  If they deny the request for stay, it can be appealed to the Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has jurisdiction over emergency appeals from the Ninth Circuit, and he can rule on it himself and/or refer it to the full nine.

• Alterman:

  It turns out that Obama, advised primarily by Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, was so committed to his strategy of bipartisan governance that he insisted on pursuing it, not only at the expense of his campaign promises, but also of his own (and his party's) popularity. Holding his own ideologically disparate party together was difficult enough. But bringing along enough Republicans to demonstrate a good-faith effort—whether they ended up supporting him in the end or not—resulted in legislation that however historic, was so watered down by compromise with corporate lobbyists that it pissed off almost everyone and satisfied pretty much nobody.

  Meanwhile, unnamed administration sources—at least according to Politico—have begun to lash out at the president's liberal base for being insufficiently enthusiastic about its accomplishments [...]

  This is rather rich. It wasn't so long ago, that liberals were being called "f------ retards" by Rahm Emanuel for refusing to get behind the president's compromises on health care. When they finally did, they were chastised for insufficient enthusiasm for a bill that they were instructed to hold their noses and support. Ditto financial regulation, which, in many respects, is a gift to Wall Street, not Main Street. And environmentalists, labor, and feminists have all received not merely nothing, but genuinely regressive rulings by the administration and told to take it and like it.

• Peter Daou examines the Obama paradox:

  In recent days, what has emerged from this cacophony is a seemingly contradictory amalgam of positions, dubbed the "Obama Paradox," that portrays the president as a successful failure.

  Don't freak out -- the "failure" in this case refers to Obama's and the Democrats' falling popularity. In other words, how can an administration and Congress that has accomplished so much on the legislative side, still be facing a disaster in November?

• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio can't figure out how to deal with Florida AG and Guv candidate Bill McCollum's election-season brown-hating bill.

  Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio on Thursday declined to take a firm stance on a newly proposed bill in the state that would require immigrants to carry identification or face a 20-day jail sentence.

  Armando/BTD:

  It's tough be a Latino Republican - you can't endorse hating yourself, but you can't really reject it either.

• Why does Rush Limbaugh hate all church employees and pastors?
• Once again, the GOP is out-of-step with America:

  A poll released Wednesday shows that 60 percent of Americans back the $26 billion state aid bill for which the House reconvened to pass this week.

  Sixty percent favor its passage compared to 38 percent who oppose it, according to the CNN/Opinion Research survey.

  Democrats in Congress argued its passage was essential to saving the jobs of teachers, police officers and firefighters whose jobs were in danger because of deep deficits in state budgets [...]

  Doug Thornell, a spokesman for Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), claimed that support for the aid could be even higher had the survey mentioned it was funded.

  "The question doesn’t mention that the bill is fully paid for and support is still at 60 percent," he said.

• When it comes to Latino voters, immigration tops list of concerns.
• Sen. Jon Tester gets some props.
• Pity the GOP establishment.

  Less than a year ago, top Republican Party officials boasted of an all-star lineup of experienced candidates poised to breeze through their Senate primary elections and put the hurt on vulnerable Democrats in November. The roster included Charlie Crist in Florida, Jane Norton in Colorado, Trey Grayson in Kentucky, Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Sue Lowden in Nevada.

  After Tuesday's primary votes, not one member of the dream team will be the Republican nominee in November.

  Instead of rolling to victory, the GOP's well-groomed recruits have been sideswiped by insurgents, unknowns and dark horses, challengers whose failure to win the party's seal of approval was suddenly viewed by voters as a plus.

  Thanks for the gifts, teabaggers!

• Daily Kos alum Page Van Der Linden (Plutonium Page) discusses nukes over at Foreign Policy Magazine.

  The U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing was a major turning point for the nuclear weapons complex. It meant that, without the ability to conduct nuclear tests, the labs would still have to be able to answer the questions: Will it work? How well will it work? What sorts of programs do we have to ensure that it will work? These questions form the nexus of the nuclear warhead "modernization" debate, which is now becoming a point of contention in the political battle over the ratification of President Barack Obama's new strategic arms treaty with Russia, known as New START. As we'll see, the treaty's opponents have created the false impression that Obama isn't doing enough to maintain America's fearsome nuclear arsenal, when in fact he's throwing billions into the effort -- even, arguably, expanding it despite his pledge to work toward a world free of nuclear weapons.