Open Thread

At dinner in NYC. I love this city. Read the rest of this post...

Senate Democratic leaders demand Limbaugh apologize for dissing troops

Good. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Allen really needs to be in the Senate

Earlier this week, Tom Allen stood up for free speech and America's soldiers when he voted against the ridiculous resolution condemning the MoveOn newspaper ad. Just got this email from him on Limbaugh's slam against the troops:

I support all the troops, regardless of their position on the war. The men and women of our armed forces and their families have sacrificed a lot, and done everything that was asked of them. It is time to bring them home.

Tom is a great Congressman, but we really need that kind of sensibility in the U.S. Senate. While Susan Collins continues to do the bidding of George Bush, Tom has had a consistent message: We need to end the war. He didn't support the war in 2002, he doesn't support it now.

So, everyone's getting hit up because the FEC fundraising quarter ends of Sunday. But, if you're thinking of making a contribution to Tom Allen so he can beat Susan Collins, you really should do it now. The early money matters -- and in Maine, every dollar will go a long way.

AMERICAblog has an ActBlue page for Tom. Send him some early money so Maine can send him to the Senate. This is money well spent. Read the rest of this post...

Barney on ENDA Transgender controversy. And, he's right.

Openly gay Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) released a statement about ENDA this afternoon. It's long, but read it:

Being in the legislative minority is easy – pulling together to block bad things does not require a lot of agonizing over tough decisions. Being in the majority is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, we have the ability to move forward in a positive way on important public policy goals. Detracting from that is the fact that it is never possible for us at any given time to get everything that we would like, and so we have to make difficult choices. But it is important to remember that the good part of this greatly outweighs the bad. Going from a situation in which all we can do is to prevent bad things from happening to one in which we have to decide exactly how much good is achievable and what strategic choices we must make to get there is a great advance.

The current manifestation of this is the difficult set of decisions we face regarding the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. We are on the verge of an historic victory that supporters of civil rights have been working on for more than thirty years: the passage for the first time in American history by either house of Congress of legislation declaring it illegal to discriminate against people in employment based on their sexual orientation. Detracting from the sense of celebration many of us feel about that is regret that under the current political situation, we do not have sufficient support in the House to include in that bill explicit protection for people who are transgender. The question facing us – the LGBT community and the tens of millions of others who are active supporters of our fight against prejudice – is whether we should pass up the chance to adopt a very good bill because it has one major gap. I believe that it would be a grave error to let this opportunity to pass a sexual orientation nondiscrimination bill go forward, not simply because it is one of the most important advances we’ll have made in securing civil rights for Americans in decades, but because moving forward on this bill now will also better serve the ultimate goal of including people who are transgender than simply accepting total defeat today.

When the bill banning sexual orientation discrimination was first introduced by Bella Abzug and Paul Tsongas more than thirty years ago, it was a remote hope. Over time because of a good deal of work, education of the general public, and particularly the decision by tens of millions of gay and lesbian people over that time to be honest about our sexual orientation, we have finally reached the point where we have a majority in the House ready to pass this bill. Those of us who are sponsoring it had hoped that we could also include in the prohibition discrimination based on gender identity. This is a fairly recent addition to the fight, and part of the problem we face is that while there have been literally decades of education of the public about the unfairness of sexual orientation discrimination and the inaccuracy of the myths that perpetuated it, our educational efforts regarding gender identity are much less far along, and given the prejudices that exist, face a steeper climb.

We introduced legislation opposing sexual orientation discrimination with explicit inclusion of gender identity for the first time this year. Earlier this session under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, we were able to get through the House a hate crimes bill that provided protection against crimes of violence and property damage for lesbian, gay and bisexual people and people who are transgender. There was some initial resistance to the inclusion of transgender people but a very organized effort on the part of Congresswoman Baldwin, who took a major role in this, myself, and the Democratic leadership allowed us to overcome it, with the support of some of our Republican colleagues.

We then began the work on passing a transgender inclusive ENDA. I was optimistic at first that we could do this, although I knew it would be hard. One of the problems I have found over the years of discussing this is an unwillingness on the part of many, including leaders in the transgender community, to acknowledge a fact: namely that there is more resistance to protection for people who are transgender than for people who are gay, lesbian and bisexual. This is not a good fact, but ignoring bad facts is a bad way to get legislation passed. I have for some time been concerned that people in the transgender leadership were underestimating the difficulty we faced in a broadly inclusive bill being adopted.

Still this seemed to me an effort very worth trying, and, when I testified before the Education and Labor Committee on ENDA I spent much of my time explicitly addressing the need to include transgender people. In fact, I believe I spent more time on that than any other witness. Sadly, as the time approached for the vote to be taken in the Committee, we encountered a good deal of resistance. The great majority of Democrats remained committed to this, but with Republicans overwhelmingly likely to be opposed – even on hate crimes on the critical vote we were able to retain only nine Republican supporters out of two hundred Republican Members – it became clear that an amendment offered by Republicans either to omit the transgender provision altogether or severely restrict it in very obnoxious ways would pass.

Responding thoughtfully to this requires people to accept facts. Some have tried to deny this unpleasant reality. The Democratic leadership, which is in complete sympathy with a fully inclusive bill, did a special official Whip count – a poll of the Members. There had been earlier informal counts that had showed significant support for a bill that included transgender, although even these informal checks never showed that we had a majority. But Members will sometimes be inclined to give people the answers they think the people who are asking the questions want until the crunch comes. In the crunch – the official Whip count taken in contemplation of the bill – it became very clear that while we would retain a significant majority of Democrats, we would lose enough so that a bill that included transgender protection would lose if not amended, and that an anti-transgender amendment would pass.

The question then became how to proceed. There were several choices. One was to go forward with the bill understanding that an amendment would be offered to strike the transgender provision. There was a proposal to have the Democratic leadership do that in what is known as a manager’s amendment, in the hopes of avoiding a divisive roll call on the subject. But the Democratic leadership did not want to take the lead in killing a provision to which its Members are committed as a matter of principle, and in fact, given Congressional procedures, there is no way to prevent a roll call even on that. People have claimed that the desire to avoid a roll call is aimed solely at protecting some Democrats from having to make a tough choice. That is of course a factor, and asking your supporters to vote with you on a matter that is doomed both to lose itself and to lose you votes is not a good way to build up support. But it is also the case that a number of the Democrats were prepared to vote for the inclusion of the transgender provision even though they knew that it would hurt them politically. The main reason not to put this to a vote is our interest in ultimately adopting transgender protection. If we were to push for a vote now, knowing that the transgender provision would be defeated by a majority, we would be making it harder ultimately to win that support. As recent campaigns indicate, Members of Congress who are accused of switching their position on votes are pilloried, even when this is done unfairly as it was to Senator Kerry. Thus, forcing a vote on transgender inclusion now, which would without any question result in a majority against it, would make it harder to win when we have done better in our educational work, because Members who vote no now will be harder to persuade to switch their votes than to persuade them to vote yes in the first instance.

In addition, going forward in this situation leaves us open to Republican procedural maneuvers in which they could succeed not only in getting rid of the transgender provision. This would not kill the bill, but it would substantially delay it, and would be have very bad psychological effect in a situation in which maintaining the right psychology –optimism – is important.

That is why I believe that a strategy of going forward with a transgender inclusive provision that would certainly be stricken at some point in the procedure by a vote in the House would be a mistake.

Leaders in the GLBT community, who strongly support the inclusion of transgender, now acknowledge that this would be the case – namely that the transgender provision would lose – so their proposed alternative was simply to withhold the bill from the House altogether.

That is, their recommendation was that the Speaker simply announce that she was not going to allow the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to come up at all. I believe that would be a disaster – politically, morally, and strategically. While their reason for this would be the debate over how ultimately to achieve transgender inclusion, the impression that would be given to the country was that Speaker Pelosi, the first Democratic Speaker in thirteen years, and a lifelong strong supporter of LGBT rights, had decided that we could not go forward on what had been the major single legislative goal of gay and lesbian people for over thirty years.

Some in the transgender community and those who agree with them have given a variety of strategic arguments why they think it would be better not to go forward. One variant is that since the President is likely to veto the bill anyway, it does not make any difference if we fail to vote on it. But it should be noted that this is directly contradictory to the arguments that the LGBT community has been making for years. That is, we have been very critical of arguments that we should not push for votes on anti-discrimination legislation simply because it wasn’t openly going to win. People have correctly pointed to the value of getting people used to voting for this, of the moral force of having majorities in either the House or the Senate or both go on record favorably even if the President was going to veto it, and have in fact been getting Members ready so if that if and when we get a president ready to sign this, we are closer to passage. To repeat, the argument that we should not take up legislation unless we are sure the President is going to sign it is directly opposite to all of the arguments LGBT advocates have been making for as long as I can remember.

The real reason that people are now arguing that we should withhold any action on the antidiscrimination bill unless it includes transgender as well as sexual orientation is that they are, as they have explicitly said, opposed in principle to such a bill becoming law. That is the crux of the argument. There are people who believe – in the transgender community and elsewhere – that it would be wrong to enact a law that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation unless it fully included people who are transgender. I think this argument is deeply flawed.

First, I would note that since I first became a legislator thirty-five years ago, I have spent a lot of time and energy helping enact legislation to protect a variety of groups from discrimination. In no case has any of those bills ever covered everybody or everything. Antidiscrimination legislation is always partial. It improves coverage either to some group or some subject matter, but never achieves everything at once. And insistence on achieving everything at once would be a prescription for achieving nothing ever.

To take the position that if we are now able to enact legislation that will protect millions of Americans now and in the future from discrimination based on sexual orientation we should decline to do so because we are not able to include transgender people as well is to fly in the face of every successful strategy ever used in expanding antidiscrimination laws. Even from the standpoint of ultimately including transgender people, it makes far more sense to go forward in a partial way if that is all we can do. Part of the objection to any antidiscrimination legislation is fear of consequences, which fears are always proven to be incorrect. There is a good deal of opposition now to passing even sexual orientation legislation. Enacting legislation to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and getting a year or two’s experience with it, will be very helpful in our ultimately adding to it protection for people who are transgender. That is, if you always insist on doing all the difficult things in one bite, you will probably never be successful. Dismantling the opposition piecemeal has always worked better.

For these reasons I have proposed along with the Democratic leadership the following strategy. First, we have introduced two bills. One will be ENDA as it has historically existed, banning discrimination on sexual orientation. A second will add transgender protections to that basic scheme. We will move forward with the ban on sexual orientation for which we finally – after thirty-plus years have the votes. After we are successful in winning that vote, I will urge the Committee on Education and Labor to proceed with our next step, which will be to continue the educational process that I believe will ultimately lead to our being able to add transgender protections. This will mean within a month or two a hearing in the Committee on Education and Labor which, unlike the hearings we previously had on this bill, will focus exclusively on transgender issues, and will give Members a chance to meet transgender people, to understand who they really are, and to deal with the fears that exist. The other options are either to bring a bill to the floor in which the transgender provision will be defeated by a significant majority, making it less likely that we will be able to succeed in this area in the future, or ask the Speaker of the House in effect put aside her lifelong political commitment to fairness and be the one who announces that we will not pass a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation even though we have the votes to do it. Passing ENDA in part and then moving on to add transgender provisions when we can is clearly preferable to either of these approaches.

Read the rest of this post...

The Dem candidates' weird answer on Iraq withdrawal

When asked at the recent Democratic presidential debate about whether we'd be withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq by the end of their first term (i.e., in 5 years), neither Obama, Hillary, or Edwards were willing to say "yes." What disturbs me is that they could have easily given a qualified yes. Qualified because it is entirely possible that we'll need to leave some troops in Iraq, say a few thousand, for various duties. But that's a far cry from Bush's current bottom line of some 140,000 or so troops that we MAY get the number down to some time next year. So why couldn't any of the top three say "yes, though we may need to leave a small number in place for a variety of duties that don't include major combat operations as they do now"? And especially Edwards and Obama. If they wanted to shake things up, Read the rest of this post...

Bush repudiates Limbaugh's attack on the troops

About time. So will Bush and Cheney still be doing interviews with the troop-hater? And will Republicans in Congress finally distance themselves from this hateful excuse for a human being? Read the rest of this post...

Should we kill ENDA if transgendered people aren't included?

There's a debate raging in the gay community over an upcoming vote on the most important piece of civil rights legislation to the gay community, ever. We are on the verge of passing, at the federal level, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, legislation that would make it illegal for an employer to fire, not hire, no promote an otherwise qualified employee or job candidate simply because they're gay. Some are now arguing that if transgendered people are not included in ENDA, the gay community should not support its passage.

Most Americans, including lots of people in the gay community, do not realize that under federal law it is LEGAL to fire someone for being gay. It is also legal in most states. Contrary to popular belief, "discrimination" is not illegal in America, and it's not illegal under the Constitution. It is only illegal (more or less) if your particular class is specified in legislation. If you read the existing civil rights act, you'll see it lists very specific categories that are covered (race, religion, national origin...). It is not a blanket protection against "discrimination." That is why ENDA is needed. And that is why ENDA is not "special rights" or extra rights being granted to gay people and not other Americans - we are not included under the current civil rights laws, and that's unfair. Currently it is legal to fire someone for being gay under federal law and in most states. Don't believe me? Look it up yourself.

That brings us to today. ENDA is very close to passing, many expect it to pass, in both the US Senate and the US House. The bill was expected to include not just gays, lesbians, bisexuals and heterosexuals (i.e., all sexual orientations), but it also was expected to include "gender identity" (i.e., transgendered people):

Transgender is generally used as a catch-all umbrella term for a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups centered around the full or partial reversal of gender roles. More recently, the term transgender can also mean someone who considers that they fall "between" genders, not identifying strictly to one gender or the other, identifying themselves as neither fully male, nor female.

We now hear from House Democratic leaders, including openly-gay congressman Barney Frank, that ENDA is dead if it includes gender identity/transgender.

Some in the gay community, including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, say that if transgender is not included in ENDA, the legislation should be killed. Others say that we should take half a loaf, pass ENDA without gender identity, and continue to fight for transgender rights in the future - this is what happened in New York where the lead gay group accepted ENDA-like legislation that did not include gender identity.

I'm not going to weigh in, yet, because I'm curious what you all think and don't wish to prejudice the discussion. I will, however, give you a bit more background on the various points of view.

Kill ENDA if gender identity is not included
The main argument here is that we shouldn't leave a portion of our community behind. We'd never pass ENDA if it only included lesbians but left behind gay men, so why pass it if it doesn't include transgendered people? The underlying assumption here is that gender identity is the same thing as, or close enough to, sexual orientation as to make gays, lesbians, and transgendered people all one family.

Pass ENDA even if gender identity is not included
Depending who you speak to, there are various arguments here. The first is that it's better to take half a loaf than nothing. The second is that the gender identity issue is new to the game - gays and lesbians have been lobbying for decades to pass this legislation, gender identity advocates have not been lobbying, have not been a serious movement, nearly as long. Thus, their time will come, but it's not time yet. And a third argument is that gender identity has nothing to do with sexual orientation, so what is it doing in the bill at all.

This third point is perhaps the most crucial, the most controversial, and the least debated issue in this entire debate. While some, many, consider the gender identity community part of the gay community, others ask when this addition to the family occured. Some of the opposition to the inclusion of transgendered people is based on prejudice, a visceral dislike of "drag queens" and the like. And I suspect some of the support for the inclusion of transgendered people is based on the opposite gut instinct, a visceral like of and sympatico for transgendered people, rather than a rational argument as to why gay men are as similar to transgendered people as they are to lesbians. But some of the opposition is based on a legitimate disagreement as to whether believing you are a man trapped in a woman's body is the same thing as, or similar enough thing to, being a man who likes other men or a woman who likes other women.

I've not seen a lot of public debate in the gay community about the transgender issue being akin to sexual orientation, other than from those who argue that of course gender identity should be included in the larger gay community and of course we should kill ENDA if they're not included. I also suspect that the lack of a debate is not a true indication that a debate does not exist. So, let's have one. Read the rest of this post...

Why isn't the MSM covering Limbaugh's attack on the troops?

UPDATE: Greg Sargent has an excellent post up about this issue as well:

President Bush was recently asked at a press conference to comment on the MoveOn ad attacking Mighty Scholar-Warrior Petraeus. Many concluded it was a planted question, and naturally, Bush responded by slamming the group and saying that he was disappointed in Dems for their reluctance repudiate MoveOn's mean and nasty attack on the General.

So here's the question: Will anyone in the White House press corps ask whether Bush -- who's appeared on Rush's show, as has Veep Cheney -- will repudiate Rush for remarking that soldiers who don't agree with the President's war policies are "phony soldiers"?

When MoveOn legitimately called into question General Petraeus' honesty (he's lied before), the mainstream media dutifully covered the Republicans' crocodile tears. But when Rush Limbaugh - Dick Cheney's favorite interviewer - attacks the integrity of American troops dying in Iraq for our country, the most the media can muster is coverage in their "blogs." Whether it's CBS blog, the Baltimore Sun blog, or the Chicago Tribune blog, there isn't a lot of coverage of this issue in the real CBS News, the real Baltimore Sun, or the real Chicago Tribune, or anywhere else. Why the double standard? Senior Democrats have called out Limbaugh for his venom, which is usually what's needed to make a story "real" in the eyes of the MSM. So why the double standard - when Dems are accused of dissing the troops, it's a front page story for weeks. When Republicans actually diss the troops, it's no big deal. Read the rest of this post...

Jon Soltz of VoteVets to Rush: Say it to my face

Rush Limbaugh has no idea what he stepped into by denigrating those who actually served our country. We've seen a lot of outrage about Rush's slam on soldiers, but none from Republicans who are protecting the fat ass.

Jon Soltz, who did serve his country and does oppose the Iraq war, has a challenge for Rush. Say it to my face. Anyone who has seen Soltz in action knows this isn't a fair fight. If you haven't seen him, check out some of Jon's debates on the VoteVets' YouTube channel.

Soltz has a challenge for Rush, which we all know that fat ass will never take:

You weren't just flat out wrong, you offended a majority of those of us who actually had the courage to go to Iraq and serve, while you sat back in your nice studio, coming up with crap like this.

My challenge to you, then, is to have me on the show and say all of this again, right to the face of someone who served in Iraq. I'll come on any day, any time. Not only will I once again explain why your comments were so wrong, but I will completely school you on why your refusal to seek a way out of Iraq is only aiding al Qaeda and crippling American security.

Ball's in your court.

We're all waiting for that one. And, I know who I'd rather have defend my country. Not Rush. Read the rest of this post...

Top GOP Candidates blow off debate on minority issues

No Giuliani. No Thompson. No McCain. No Romney.

An empty podium for each of the top Republican candidates said everything. Well, not quite everything. Money was more important than minority issues:

As the candidates debated for 90 minutes on PBS, those who didn't were scattered around the country.

Thompson had three fundraising events in Tennessee, his home state. Romney was in California, wrapping up the day in Rancho Santa Fe. Giuliani also was in California, concluding his day with a fundraising event at the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds in Lancaster. McCain began his day with a speech at the Hudson Institute in New York and spent the rest of the day in meetings and fundraising activities.

And it was the top story on the TODAY Show: Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

Finally Friday.

Start threading the news. There's really a lot to discuss. Read the rest of this post...

Protests in Yangon continue, 9 dead on Thursday

After a very bloody Thursday, protesters in Myanmar are back out though most reports are saying that monks are not involved because of government troops limiting their movements to inside the monasteries and also busing them out of the city centers. Follow the Guardian Burma blog for regular updates.

If diplomacy was not so out of fashion in the White House, you would expect increased activity and pressure to be exerted on some of the regional partners who enable the dictatorship such as China and India but the days of active diplomacy and dialog seem long gone. Read the rest of this post...

Who do you want fixing the airline problems in the US?

Heaven forbid Bush touches that mess because the results will be predictably terrible for consumers. Please let the Democrats address this because even as bad as the US airline industry is today - and it's awful, among the worst in the world - Bush or any other Republican will somehow find a way to make it even worse. Instead of thinking about consumers including business travelers and tourists, Bush will find a way to create a new handout scheme to the long time players in the industry who always seem to struggle with the concept of old fashioned business ideas such as profit, customer service and decent pay for people who don't sit on the board. (In contrast, they do seem to excel in accepting billions in handouts from Congress and paying millions a year to executives while slashing workers pay despite being in bankruptcy and even finding a way to go out and right back in to bankruptcy.)

George, just leave this broken mess alone and let an adult handle it. You'll only make it worse. Read the rest of this post...

Consumer Product Safety Commission - less consumer, more product

Oh, you mean they were supposed to help consumers and not industry despite deadly and dangerous products? How does that fit with the GOP theory of industry self regulation?

The CPSC finally picked up the crib last week after the newspaper informed the agency of its investigation.

In announcing the recall, the CPSC said it had received reports of three deaths, seven infants trapped and 55 other incidents relating to faulty drop rail hardware and design. In all three deaths, parents had unwittingly installed the drop rails upside down.

"The fact that it has taken more than four years from the date of the first incident report and more than two years since the first report of an infant's death to announce a recall of these products is alarming," [Senator] Durbin said in the letter.

"It is unacceptable for the public to have to rely on journalists for this commission to act in a timely fashion."

A sad but true reality of consumer protection during Republican rule. Read the rest of this post...

Fred Thompson's increasing cluelessness

He does seem to be increasingly showing a lack of depth. First he claimed to not be familiar with the details of the Terri Schiavo case, and now isn't even up on big death penalty news in his own state when he claims the death penalty as one of his signature issues. I'm increasingly surprised, and amused, by how bad the GOP candidates really are. Read the rest of this post...