Now, Huff Post mocked the guy - Republican House candidate John Runyan from New Jersey - but they're forgetting one crucial point. These are Republicans we're talking about. Opposing slavery is actually forward momentum. From Huff Post Hill:
During a debate last night between New Jersey Rep. John Adler and his Republican opponent John Runyan, Adler asked Runyan to name a recent Supreme Court decision "from the last 10 to 15 years" that he disagrees with. "That I strongly disagree with?" Runyan replied before taking a moment to compose himself. Then, with a surprisingly level of assertiveness, he said, "Dred Scott." Some members of the audience, themselves opponents of slavery (good for them!), erupted in applause.
Dred Scott v. Sandford, commonly referred to as the Dred Scott decision, was a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves (or their descendants, whether or not they were slaves) were not protected by the constitution and could never be U.S. citizens. The court also held that the U.S. Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories and that, because slaves were not citizens, they could not sue in court. Lastly, the Court ruled that slaves, as chattels or private property, could not be taken away from their owners without due process.
President Obama may be skipping a trip to a prominent Sikh holy site in India due to worries that wearing the appropriate headgear may reinforce incorrect rumors that he is in fact a Muslim, rather than a Christian.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that plans to visit one of India's most famous attractions had been nixed after it became apparent that the president would be required to cover his head with either a traditional Sikh turban or a skull cap like some Muslims wear. Requests to wear an altered baseball cap were not initially approved.
H. S. Phoolka, a prominent Sikh lawyer in New Delhi, said he was disappointed that Mr. Obama would not visit the temple.
“We have worked so hard to establish in America that Sikhs have a very different identity than Muslims,” Mr. Phoolka said. “It is very unfortunate that even the White House is conveying the message that there is no difference between Muslims and Sikhs.”
I get that the White House is having problems with the GOP slur that Obama is a Muslim. And silly as it sounds, donning the headgear probably would become the subject of a national debate. I do, however, think that this fits part of a larger pattern of what happens when you don't sufficiently stand up to the Republicans on all of their slurs - be they death panels, Maoists in the Cabinets, Obama is a socialist, the stimulus didn't create a single job, not born in the USA," etc.
At some point, the lies grow and feed on each other. Not sufficiently fighting back two years ago, during the campaign, and not fighting back subsequently, has only fed the GOP's lust for disinformation. Yes, the campaign had a very detailed Web page explaining how much of a Christian Obama was. At some point, Obama needs to skip the intellectualizing, and be willing to punch someone in the face (other than a DFH).
Read the rest of this post...
It's not quite on the same scale as accepting Karl Rove's lies about Iraq, but the much of the Washington press corps seems unwilling and unable to report on the shady campaign spending practices of Karl Rove and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. If Rove and the Chamber say something, it must be so.
I've heard and read many reporters just regurgitate Rove and the Chamber's talking points about not spending foreign money -- even though the Chamber does take in lots of foreign money and doesn't segregate it Then, the Washington Post's post op-ed writer, Marc Theissen (who used to work with Rove) pulled a vintage Rovian tactic. He accused the Democratic allied groups of doing what the GOP's supporters are doing. He claimed there is an equivalency between what the Chamber is doing and what unions do. It's not true, but what the hell. Rove and his crew learned that the Washington press corps will gobble up anything they say. See, unions actually have to report their spending. The Chamber doesn't. Not that complicated for most of us. But, it is way too complicated for the Post and its op-ed page writers.
SEIU's Political Director tried to explain this to the Washington Post, not that the Post is interested in facts:
And if Mr. Thiessen had looked at public disclosures, he would know that money from SEIU's Canadian members pays for Canadian programs for workers. It is not used on U.S. political campaigns.
Here's the irony: Anyone who wants to know where SEIU political dollars come from can go on the Internet and check out the detailed public reports all unions and their political action committees are required to file with the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. Labor Department. But just try to find out where the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Crossroads and other right-wing front groups are getting the hundreds of millions of dollars they are spending to try to cut people's health-care coverage, privatize Social Security and let Wall Street make its own rules. (Hint: It's not possible because they don't disclose the sources of their big checks.)
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the shadowy 527 and 501 (c)(4) groups that have sprung up in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, are conduits for vast sums of undisclosed corporate money that threaten our democracy. We are a union of working people, and the money we spend on politics is money donated by workers.
Less than 24 hours after a federal judge refused to block an injunction against "don't ask, don't tell," the U.S. court of appeals for the ninth circuit has done so — at least temporarily.
A three-judge panel with the ninth circuit ordered a stay requested by the Justice Department "temporarily in order to provide this court with an opportunity to consider fully the issues presented." Attorneys representing the Log Cabin Republicans may file an opposition to the stay by next Monday, the court ruled.
EK: And you don’t worry about an intervention like this freezing the market? Insofar as we're inching back to normalcy, that’s at least partly because markets are working normally. If I understand what you’re saying correctly, it’s that a moratorium makes sense not just due to paperwork problems but as a housing policy. But if the government freezes these contracts in order to open them up, that’ll be a whole new ballgame for everyone invested in, or connected with, these industries, both now and in the future.
JT: No, I don’t. We’re not out of the woods with this economy. We’re deep in the jungle. We’re still looking at twice as many foreclosures as we’ve already experienced, and if unemployment gets worse, those numbers will go higher. Unless this situation gets managed, properly, we’re going to continue to have foreclosures dragging down our economy. Things may be going well on Wall Street, but it’s really not going well on Main Street. If people think we’ve gotten through this, they’re really misguided.
This is beyond just the robo-signing and the paperwork. This is a continuing continuum of bad practices and fraudulent lending that got us into this situation. And yes, some of those institutions that did the worst of it are gone, but other institutions have purchased them -- and that means they purchased their responsibilities, too. These homeowners were thinking that the bank wouldn’t be making them a loan if they couldn’t pay it back. They were told interest rates were going down, that they could do this, and they believed it. The responsibility began with the lenders, and it still lies with them. Dodd-Frank actually had to legislate that you can’t make a loan to anyone who doesn’t have the ability to pay. The fact that we had to legislate that tells you how far our financial-services sector fell.
Yes. Could we have been even better off with a little courage from the President and the Congress? Yes.
Ronald Reagan famously called the nation's voters to ask themselves this question before heading to the ballot box in November 1980: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"
Most everyone is frustrated with the state of the economy today.
But compared to two years ago? It's not even a contest.
Yes. But no. People don't "feel" an impending depression. They do "feel" what it's like to have their salaries plummet and lose their jobs. The first was remedied, but we never felt it. The second still plagues us, and we feel it. So it's hard to explain to people without jobs that things are better, even if it is true.
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Mrs. Clarence Thomas decided to revisit the past by calling Anita Hill and asking for an apology. She was trying to rewrite history, too. But, funny thing about mucking around in the past. Sometimes, it comes back to bite you. So, not only is Virginia Thomas not getting that (undeserved) apology, she's put the Clarence Thomas sexual harassment story back in the news. And, Anita Hill's description of Thomas is corroborated by one of his former girlfriends:
But Lillian McEwen, a former Senate Judiciary Committee lawyer who said she dated Clarence Thomas from 1979 through the mid-1980s, told The Washington Post in an interview that Hill's long-ago description of Thomas's behavior resonated with her.
"The Clarence I know was certainly capable not only of doing the things that Anita Hill said he did, but it would be totally consistent with the way he lived his personal life then," said McEwen, who is writing her own memoir but has never before publicly discussed her relationship with Clarence Thomas.
McEwen also told the Post she was not surprised that Virginia Thomas would leave Hill a message, even after all these years.
"In his autobiography, Clarence described himself as a person incapable of doing what Anita Hill said he did," McEwen said. "He is married to a woman who is loyal to him and religious in a way he would like to be. This combination of religiosity and loyalty and belief that he is really the kind of person who he describes in his book would just about compel her to do something like that."
The message Virginia Thomas left for Hill again revealed the emotional toll that the Hill hearings took on the soon-to-be justice's wife. In the past, she has made unsolicited phone calls to voice support for people whose reputations have been shaken by what she sees as false accusations.
Now there's a surprise. The GOP is a party governed more by slogans than substance. I'm sure the mamma grizzlies can find some whale fat to cut at the potlach.
If there is a single message unifying Republican candidates this year, it is a call to grab hold of the federal checkbook, slam it closed and begin to slash spending. To bolster their case that action is needed, Republicans are citing major legislation over the four years that Democrats have controlled Congress, notably the financial system bailout, the economic stimulus and the new health care law.
But while polls show that the Republicans’ message is succeeding politically, Republican candidates and party leaders are offering few specifics about how they would tackle the nation’s $13.7 trillion debt, and budget analysts said the party was glossing over the difficulty of carrying out its ideas, especially when sharp spending cuts could impede an already weak economic recovery.
There's no way to sugar-coat this one. The Obama administration is about to enshrine executive illegality as precedence in the Supreme Court. And not just any illegality — summary extra-judicial detention. Here's the Wash Post's description (my emphasis):
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to examine once again the Bush administration's aggressive response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying it will consider whether former attorney general John D. Ashcroft can be sued by a U.S. citizen who claims he was illegally detained and treated as a terrorist.
Lower courts have said that Abdullah al-Kidd can press forward with his suit that attempts to hold Ashcroft personally liable for misusing federal laws to hold him without charging that he had broken any laws.
Al-Kidd, a onetime University of Idaho football star named Lavoni T. Kidd who converted to Islam in college, was arrested at Dulles International Airport in 2003 as he was boarding a plane for Saudi Arabia, where he planned to study.
He was held for 15 nights in three states under the federal material-witness statute, which allows prosecutors to take custody of key witnesses to ensure that they testify at trial. But al-Kidd alleges that was simply a pretext for a larger plan approved by Ashcroft to sweep up Muslim men the government could not prove had any ties to terrorism.
This occurred under Bush II. Our problem is that the confirmation of Ashcroft's illegal act will occur under Obama. Turley, from the clip:
This is what the Framers were talking about, arbitrary detention. ... You're left with this curious scene of Obama officials expressing concern over why liberals are so lethargic in this election, like it's "something that we said." Yeah! It is!
It's not a disappointing act ... it's a disgusting act, to try to create this type of prescedent. And I promise you, this prescedent will bear a horrible fruit. This will be repeated because of what President Obama and his administration are going to do before this court.
A very bad day at the office for Mr. Change You Can Count On. Because, you know, we really did want to count on that change. We really did believe you.
What You Can Do. If you think the White House needs to hear this, write or call (or both). Here's the White House web contact page. As always, be polite. If you believe as I do that actual letters carry more weight, the contact page says you can also call or write to the President here:
The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Please include your e-mail address
I think this one matters. If it goes wrong in the Supreme Court (and it will if Obama asks them to rule), Turley is right. We'll have enshrined exactly what the Founders created the Republic to prevent.
This was not unexpected, but Team Obama just keeps digging deeper.
Josh Gerstein from Politico broke the news via twitter:
Justice Department just filed emergency stay request with 9th Circuit on #DADT. More TK
From the motion, here's what the Obama administration wants:
We respectfully request that the Court enter an administrative stay by today October 20, 2010, pending this Court’s resolution of the government’s motion for a stay pending appeal, which would maintain the status quo that prevailed before the district court’s decision while the Court considers the government’s stay motion.
Joe and I have been arguing for over a year that the President doesn't have to enforce DADT, nor does he have to defend it in court. A number of LGBT apologists, political neo-phytes, White House lobbyists, and executive-branch-wannabes said we were wrong. But now that actual independent legal experts have looked at the issue, it turns out we were right.
From Newsweek (read the entire piece, it's quite interesting):
Some experts wonder why the administration even chose to defend the law in the first place. Turley maintains that they didn’t have to: “The president has a duty to separate his administration from an unconstitutional statute. If a statute required racial discrimination, would the president seriously be arguing that he and his administration would have to defend the statute all the way to the Supreme Court?” Many liberals feel betrayed by a president who they see as having chosen to enforce and defend a discriminatory law.
Obama had hit on a great point during the campaign, when responding to GOP charges that it was absurd for Obama to suggest that America could save more energy by properly inflating their tires than by new drilling offshore. (Obama was in fact right.)
"It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant."
It was spot on. And Obama never said it again. (He also changed his mind on drilling.) Maureen Dowd resurrects the theme. (Or as Sarah Palin calls her, Maureen O'Dowd.)
At least, unlike Paris Hilton and her ilk, the Dumb Blonde of ’50s cinema had a firm grasp on one thing: It was cool to be smart. She aspired to read good books and be friends with intellectuals, even going so far as to marry one. But now another famous beauty with glowing skin and a powerful current, Sarah Palin, has made ignorance fashionable.
You struggle to name Supreme Court cases, newspapers you read and even founding fathers you admire? No problem. You endorse a candidate for the Pennsylvania Senate seat who is the nominee in West Virginia? Oh, well.
At least you’re not one of those “spineless” elites with an Ivy League education, like President Obama, who can’t feel anything. It’s news to Christine O’Donnell that the Constitution guarantees separation of church and state. It’s news to Joe Miller, whose guards handcuffed a journalist, and to Carl Paladino, who threatened The New York Post’s Fred Dicker, that the First Amendment exists, even in Tea Party Land. Michele Bachmann calls Smoot-Hawley Hoot-Smalley.
Sharron Angle sank to new lows of obliviousness when she told a classroom of Hispanic kids in Las Vegas: “Some of you look a little more Asian to me.”
As Palin tweeted in July about her own special language adding examples from W. and Obama: “ ‘Refudiate,’ ‘misunderestimate,’ ‘wee-wee’d up.’ English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”
Joe covered this nicely here; now Keith and Countdown have video and interviews. Small government, Joe? What's going to happen when you guys get to command real cops?
We're on dangerous ground with these personal cops — and by "we" I mean the whole country. The streets of my town are filled with private cops, acting under color of some kind of authority. Literally filled; you find 10 of them for one actual policeman. The uniforms are allowed to be so similar that you have to look for the gun to spot the real cop. (Lobbying for indistinguishable uniforms — how's that for penetrating a market?)
That's the small people world. The Big Boy world — the world of the political retainers and their owners — is filled with private plainclothes types, pseudo-Secret Service if you will. It's the next big market for thugs like Blackwater and their ilk.
Hopfinger's not just a journalist; he's the editor of Alaska Dispatch.
And now a question. Why didn't the cop arrest the guys who put the reporter in cuffs? What did that cop falsely assume about the goon squad's right to do that? Serve and protect, sir.
What you can do: Action is always the antidote to news like this. You can encourage Mr. Hopfinger to sue. Here's the Alaska Dispatch's contact page. Here's Tony Hopfinger's email address: editor@alaskadispatch.com. Resistance is not yet futile.
It's been over a week since the injunction started. There's been no DADT law for over seven days and the military is still functioning. Yesterday was a significant day in the arc of the DADT repeal effort. Judge Phillips denied the Obama administration's motion to stay the injunction. Also, the Pentagon told its recruiters that they must accept gay applicants. Dan Choi re-enlisted. Last night, Mike Signorile tweeted:
Dan Choi's reenlistment seems like the Berlin wall of #DADT. They can try to stop it but it's coming down.
It feels like that. The Obama administration has lost control of this issue. Expect the Department of Justice to seek a stay in the Ninth Circuit, probably today.
The President is holding a meeting with his full national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan today. All the big players are there including Secretaries Gates and Clinton, Admiral Mullen and General Petraeus.
Later today, Obama is heading out on the campaign trail. He'll be in Oregon and Washington. He's spending the night in Seattle. Biden is starting his day in Reno, Nevada where he's doing an event for Harry Reid.
Unlike the Republicans, at least the Tories are consistent with chopping everything. BBC:
Unveiling the strategic defence review, David Cameron said defence spending would fall by 8% over four years.
The RAF and Navy will lose 5,000 jobs each, the Army 7,000 and the Ministry of Defence 25,000 civilian staff.
Axing the Harrier and Ark Royal means no planes will be able to fly from British aircraft carriers until 2019.
Mr Cameron opened his Commons' statement by denying the review was simply a "cost saving exercise", saying it was a "step change in the way we protect this country's security interests".
By the time they wake up (it will be the same story in the UK) the moment will be lost. The strict austerity in Germany isn't necessary today despite what the right believes. Spain, Greece and Portugal may be a different story, but in this case, the belt tightening is going to be costly in the long term.
"The German economy is nowhere near pre-crisis levels yet," Roubini told Capital on Monday. "The current growth rate may look good on paper, but that is mainly a statistical effect."
Germany can currently borrow money cheaper than ever and German Chancellor Angela Merkel should take advantage of this and only start consolidating once the rest of Europe is in better shape, Roubini said.
The switch to “savings mode” at that point would still slow growth, but at least it would prevent “an emergency stop without a safety belt,” he said.
Better late than never, but still very much appreciated. The banks listen to little other than an iron fist so hopefully the White House is ready to carry through on their talk.
Federal law enforcement officials are investigating possible criminal violations in connection with the national foreclosure crisis, examining whether financial firms broke federal laws when they filed fraudulent court documents to seize people's homes, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Obama administration's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force is in the early stages of an investigation into whether banks and other companies that submitted flawed paperwork in state foreclosure proceedings may also have misled federal housing agencies, which now own or insure a majority of home loans, according to these sources.
The task force, which includes investigators from the Justice Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies, is also looking into whether the submission of flawed paperwork during the foreclosure process violated mail or wire fraud laws. Financial fraud cases often involve these statutes.
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