According to the Guttmacher Institute, an elective first trimester abortion costs about $413 on average in this country (although it can run as high as $1,800), so the women employed at the Republican National Committee could have been hit worse. At least RNC Chairman Michael Steele hasn't banned birth control, although that would seem to be the next logical step for the party boss.

For those who may have missed it last week, Mr. Steele decided to drop abortion coverage from the health insurance plan covering RNC employees. Apparently, the health plan has covered abortion as an elective procedure since 1991. That struck the former Catholic seminarian as an inappropriate use of "money from our loyal donors."

Perhaps, but that puts the party in a peculiar moral quandry. What other sacrifices will RNC employees be required to make? Must they all attend a certain church? Are they banned from donating money to stem-cell research? One assumes benefits for same-sex partners is pretty much out of the question.

For all the talk of broadening membership in the GOP, Mr. Steele seems more interested in a stricter adherence to a narrow political faith. And he's headed down a very exclusive path -- only five states restrict private health coverage of abortion.

Continue reading "The Church of the GOP" »

Posted by Peter Jensen at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: National politics
        

On the eve of the first anniversary of Barack Obama's election as president, his party lost the governor's seats in Virginia and New Jersey, both by fairly decisive margins. They're both states that the president carried last year, and they're both elections in which he campaigned for the Democrats this year. What does that mean? Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele was on CBS's "The Early Show" this morning saying the results showed a "transcendent" Republican Party that the GOP "has really found its voice again."

That's a bit of a stretch.

Those results certainly aren't a great sign for the president, but then again, the sitting president's party, whichever one it is, routinely loses the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia. The exit polls in both states showed more voters approved of President Obama's job performance than not, and most people in both states said he had nothing to do with how they voted. (In fact, those who said the president was a factor were evenly split between showing support and opposition to him)

People expressed much more concern about the economy than anything else, but local issues in both states -- Democrat Creigh Deeds' inability to connect with voters in Virginia, and a desire for change in scandal-ridden New Jersey -- also played major roles. (ABC News has a good rundown of the numbers here.)

But if anything belies the notion of a "transcendent," unified GOP, it's the victory of a Democrat in the solidly Republican 23rd Congressional District in upstate New York. In that race, Republicans nominated a socially liberal Republican, Dierdre Scozzafava, only to see conservatives rally around a much more right wing candidate, Doug Hoffman. National Republicans, including Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, endorsed Hoffman, and Scozzafava dropped out over the weekend. She endorsed the Democrat, Bill Owens, and recorded robocalls on his behalf. He won.

So what voice exactly has the GOP found? The moderate one that brought victory in Virginia and New Jersey, or the hard-line conservative one that flopped in New York?

Posted by Andy Green at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (85)
Categories: National politics
        

I'd like to thank reader Jean Palmer of Brooklyn Park, who wrote a letter to the editor today taking The Sun's editorial board to task for having not written an editorial in support of Fox News in its feud with President Barack Obama. She notes that the situation is similar to the Ehrlich administration's decision to ban state employees from talking to two Sun reporters five years ago, an instance that prompted The Sun to file a federal lawsuit claiming a violation of First Amendment rights. (A suit we lost, incidentally.)

Ms. Palmer is right. We have been remiss on this point. The Obama administration can criticize Fox all it wants. It can decide not to book high-profile surrogates (or the president himself) on its talk shows. But at the point at which the administration sought to exclude Fox reporters from interviews with pay czar Kenneth Feinberg that were available to all other members of the press corps, it went too far.

As former Sun editor Tim Franklin said during the Ehrlich ban, "the government doesn't get to pick and choose who covers the government."

Posted by Andy Green at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (24)
Categories: National politics
        

President Obama took a bit of a gutsy gamble in putting his personal prestige on the line on the world stage twice this week. Today, he few to Copenhagen and made a pitch to bring the Olympics to his adopted hometown of Chicago. He lost. Yesterday, he sent his diplomats to Geneva to join in multilateral talks with Iran over its nuclear program in the highest level contacts with that country in 30 years. With all due wariness for Iran's record of follow-through, that one went pretty well. Iran agreed to a plan that would reduce its stock of enriched uranium and allow international inspectors into its newly declared nuclear facility. Iran may or may not fully live up to their end of the bargain, but even getting this far is more than could reasonably have been expected.

So Mr. Obama won one and lost one. I'm guessing he's OK with that.

Posted by Andy Green at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)
Categories: National politics
        

There's a bit of media critic in all of us, and it appears President Obama is no exception. During his round of Sunday TV talk show interviews, he frequently made the point that the cable news programs prefer their talking heads rude and outrageous.

Here's what he said on "Face the Nation":

"They can't get enough of conflict; it's catnip to the media right now. And so the easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody. In that environment I think it makes it more difficult for us to solve the problems that the American people sent us here to solve."

The health care debate (and probably Fox News) may be what's on the president's mind, but his observation applies to much of the media, particularly blogs where outrageous and unfounded claims and other forms of wild accusation are the standard, not the exception.

It's part of the coarsening of the nation's culture, and it's troubling not just for the White House but anyone who cares about public policy.

Continue reading "More civil actions" »

Posted by Peter Jensen at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: National politics
        

Former President Jimmy Carter voiced what a lot of President Barack Obama's supporters have been thinking recently: that an underlying factor in the passionate opposition in some quarters to Mr. Obama's policies has something to do with his race. They point to the diffuse anger of Tea Party protesters and others, who go beyond opposing particular policies and passionately decry a country they say they don't recognize anymore. President Carter said he sees that as having everything to do with race, concluding that “an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man."

So what if it is? Does that mean it doesn't count? That naming it as racism makes it magically go away? For the last six months, liberals have been finding reasons to invalidate the criticism of the president -- that it's all orchestrated by Fox News or racist. But even if that's true, does calling it out make it easier for the president to enact health care reform? No.

There are plenty of reasons for people to feel uncomfortable about the direction of the country. We've just been through a tremendous financial crisis, we're fighting two wars, and the government took over General Motors. Unemployment is rising, the promise of leaving a better future to our children seems ever more elusive, and the simple, safe America we like to remember seems ever under threat from everything from al-Qaeda to online predators.

Oh, and the president is a different color from all his predecessors.

Does that last fact make some people profoundly uncomfortable? Probably. But is calling people racist going to fix that? Not likely. The president seems to have concluded that the best way to overcome that is not to talk about it but to do his job. That's the wisest course. The only thing that is going to ease the discomfort and anxiety many Americans feel about the future is for the president to lead us to a better one. That's going to take time, and to get there, he needs to stay focused on his goals, not argue about whether his opponents are racists.

Posted by Andy Green at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (39)
Categories: National politics
        

What will be the effect of President Barack Obama's address to Congress last night? Only time will tell, but the evening did prove that a fraction of the Republican Party has cast its lot irretrievably with those opponents of health care reform who are unwilling or incapable of listening to facts or reason.

It was shocking to hear the president -- any president -- heckled by a member of Congress during a joint session, and Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina later apologized for yelling "you lie" when Mr. Obama debunked the falsehood that the health reform plan would cover illegal immigrants. But that unplanned outburst is less telling than the planned vacation from reality taken during the GOP's response to the president's speech.

Republican Rep. Charles Boustany of Louisiana -- a heart surgeon -- gave a speech that clearly demonstrated that Republicans, rather than arguing with the president's actual ideas, want to fight against boogeymen. The response was not a response at all; someone who came into this debate last night without having paid attention thus far might have concluded that the president was arguing for, and the Republicans fighting against, completely different plans.

Continue reading "Obama's health care speech to Congress" »

Posted by Andy Green at 6:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (37)
Categories: National politics
        

Now that the text of President Barack Obama's planned noontime back-to-school address is out, I hope the people who manufactured this controversy feel appropirately silly, but somehow I doubt it. In the speech, the president exhorts students to study hard and stay in school, that hard work can, as in his case, lead to great things. If this is indoctrinating kids into socialism, perhaps I didn't study hard enough in the political theory part of school, because that sounds a lot like American-style, free-market capitalism to me.

How exactly did we get to the point at which a speech by the president stressing the importance of education become a political firestorm, leading some local schools and even one entire county -- Harford -- to decide not to show it?

There are two things going on here. One is an increasingly hysterical political fringe that is inconsolable in its belief that the president is some kind of Manchurian Candidate come to utterly destroy traditional American values, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. The second is the trend toward absolute spinelessness among school officials who are so worried about offending a vocal minority of parents that they would miss out on the opportunity to have their children hear from the most persuasive advocate for the power of education to spur upward mobility that the country has today, and perhaps the best it has ever had.

Neither trend embodies what is best about America, and I'm afraid neither is going away anytime soon.

Check out more reader responses to the controversy about President Obama's speech here.

Posted by Andy Green at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (62)
Categories: National politics
        

Ted Kennedy was an important person in my household when I was growing up. We didn't live in Massachusetts, and we weren't Catholic. But Mr. Kennedy seemed to represent something special. My dad felt that most elections were a choice between "Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee." But I remember how excited he was when Ted Kennedy ran for president in 1980, and how disappointed he was, for many years afterward, that his political hero had failed to rise to the heights to which his brother John had ascended.

I finally met the man in the early 1990s, when I was a young reporter for a suburban Boston newspaper. Mr. Kennedy stopped by the office for an interview. His new wife was with him. He spoke that day about tax policy and health care reform, and although I don't remember many of the details, I do recall that he was friendly, down to earth and polite, even with a young reporter for a paper with a circulation of about 10,000.

Continue reading "Kennedy: The "Lion" at rest" »

Posted by Michael Cross-Barnet at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: National politics
        

Rep. Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania, an Iraq war veteran, is making a push this summer for a congressional repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military. Even back in 1993, when President Clinton first proposed this artless dodge, a majority of Americans favored letting gays serve openly. Sixteen years and some huge advances in gay rights later, the numbers are overwhelming; a CNN/Opinion Research poll in December found 81 percent of Americans now share that belief.

But not in Congress, where a repeal is going to have to originate. Murphy has about 160 co-sponsors, almost all of them Democrats. Unless he picks up more support, that's not going to be enough.

The Maryland delegation's stance so far is indicative of the uphill battle he may face. In spite of a fairly liberal electorate, only half of the House delegation has signed on to the bill: Reps. Elijah Cummings, Donna Edwards, John Sarbanes and Chris Van Hollen. That leaves four, including three Democrats, on the sidelines: Democratic Reps. Steny Hoyer, Frank Kratovil and Dutch Ruppersberger and Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett.

The idea that openly serving gays would ruin military cohesion was wrong in 1993. Today, it's laughable. Maryland's representatives should be taking a more active stand to reverse this policy. 

Posted by Andy Green at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: National politics
        

“War is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend,” wrote former defense secretary Robert S. McNamara. “Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.”

That realization came late in life for Mr. McNamara, who died Monday at the age of 93. As defense secretary during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, he was the architect of America's tragic misadventure in Vietnam, a decade-long conflict that even he was eventually forced to conclude had been a terrible mistake. But by then the war already had claimed  the lives of 16,000 Americans, and 42,000 more would die before it finally ended seven years later.

As the antiwar movement grew during the 1960s, McNamara became more and more personally identified with the war's costs in blood and treasure. But throughout that period he insisted publically that victory was at hand, even though privately he had begun to doubt both the military and moral justification of the war. It was not until 1995 that he finally admitted the war had been futile from the start and that America's involvement had been "wrong, terribly wrong." His critics excoriated him for his belated confession, and for the rest of he life he was haunted by the consequences of his failure as one of the country's "best and brightest."

Kennedy called McNamara the smartest man he had ever met. So how could such a brilliant leader and administrator -- before becoming defense secretary, McNamara had risen to president of  Ford Motor Co. and dramatically turned its fortunes around -- have erred so grievously in his prosecution of what turned out to be an impossible war?

The answer may lie in the classic formulations of Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military theorist, and Thucydides, the Greek historian who chronicled the decades-long war between Athens and Sparta. Both cautioned against embarking on wars lightly, since the outcome is always unpredictable; they also warned that knowing one's enemy is crucial to success. America ignored both those lessons in Vietnam, a conflict it entered on the basis of flawed intelligence and against an enemy whose motives it never clearly recognized or understood. One can only hope the country won't repeat those mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan, where out enemies are equally determined to waste the blood and treasure of an entirely new generation of Americans.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: National politics
        

He was good enough, he was smart enough, and in the end, doggone it, enough people liked Al Franken to elect him to the United States Senate.

That's the outcome, a mere eight months after Election Day, now that the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled in the Democrat's favor and his opponent, former Sen. Norm Coleman, has agreed not to pursue further challenges.

Coleman, a potential candidate for governor, perhaps concluded that his continued efforts to hold onto his seat in the face of multiple court setbacks were starting to annoy the very people whom he may shortly be asking to vote for him again.

The seating of Al Franken as a senator, which could happen as soon as Monday, is a milestone for several reasons. In a way, it is the final act of repudiation of former President George W. Bush and the Iraq war (Coleman was a big fan of both). Democrats, of course, are salivating at the prospect of a 60th vote in the Senate -- enough to foreclose on the possibility of Republican filibusters (if all 58 Democrats and two independents can be persuaded to fall into line together, that is).

[ASSOCIATED PRESS]

Continue reading "Franken gets last laugh" »

Posted by Michael Cross-Barnet at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: National politics
        

Joyce E. Thomann is one of the latest people to discover that just because an idea occurs to you, it doesn't necessarily make that idea worth sharing with the world.

The president of Republican Women of Anne Arundel County learned that truism the hard way after she opined on her organization's Web site that "Obama and Hitler have a great deal in common in my view. Obama and Hitler use the 'blitzkrieg' method to overwhelm their enemies."

What followed was thoroughly predictable, as Thomann's words were denounced by fellow members of her group, local candidates to whom she had contributed money, and observers nationwide after the Obama-Hitler comparison was picked up by the Huffington Post.

The shame of it is, not only were Thomann's comments asinine and offensive, they didn't even score points for originality. Indeed, the Obama/Hitler nexus has been a staple of conservative debate for years now -- and not just on the fringes but deep in the mainstream.

[ASSOCIATED PRESS]

Continue reading "Heil, Obama?" »

Posted by Michael Cross-Barnet at 7:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (54)
Categories: National politics
        

Remember Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's toe-tapping come-ons in an airport men's room? New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's out-of-town trysts with a high-class call girl? (He put it on his credit card, for crying out loud.) Or Nevada Sen. John Ensign's dalliance with campaign staffer who turned out to be the wife of one of his own top aides, poor guy (the aide, not the senator)?

 It's enough to make the Starr Report and Monica Lewinsky's stained blue dress seem almost tame.

It would be easy -- and wrong -- to point the finger just at hypocritical Republican conservatives who jabber about "family values" and the sanctity of marriage. This clearly is one area in which true bi-partisanship prevails: Dems seem no less ethically challenged when it comes to keeping their trousers zipped than their GOP colleagues, and they're no less likely to get caught, either.

Gov. Sanford and Sen. Ensign were both up-and-comers in their party, though their prospects for higher office seem considerably dimmed. Still, they set a high bar for those who will (inevitably) follow. The way things are going, the next scandal-prone pol may have to do it all -- tap the foot, bed the staffer, charge the hooker, stain the dress and disappear for a few days on another continent altogether -- just to get anyone to take notice.

(AP photo)

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 7:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: National politics
        

Two stories have caught my attention:

1. People for the Ethcial Treatment of Animals has sent President Obama a "catch and release" device for house flies after he was captured on film killing one of the bugs that was buzzing around the White House during an interview.
2. Frank Roylance reports Thursday that, thanks to our recent round of monsoons, there's a bumper crop of mosquitoes in Maryland this year. Like maybe four or five times more than normal.

So, PETA, if you've got a "catch and release" device that can transport a few zillion mosquitoes to Delaware, go right ahead. Otherwise, maybe the president could flash some of his insect kung fu up here in the Free State. I mean, check out the guy's moves:

Posted by Andy Green at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: National politics
        

Michael Steele gave a much anticipated speech Tuesday afternoon in which he was expected to reboot his chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, and perhaps the party itself. He promised the that "the era of apology for Republican mistakes of the past is officially over," declared that "we're going to take the president head-on" and boasted that the Republican comeback is already under way.

But, speaking to state GOP chairmen at the National Harbor development in Prince George's County, he failed to reach beyond tired party platitudes to any sort of actual road map for Republicans to dig themselves out of the electoral hole in which they find themselves.

He pledged that the GOP would, once again, be the party of ideas, but he failed to mention any. He said the times are grave -- "This is serious; families are suffering and businesses are closing" -- and argued repeatedly that Obama was making them worse by ramping up federal spending. What the Republicans would do instead to help those families and businesses, he didn't say. Steele at one moment criticized Obama as the most partisan president in memory and in the next promised that "the two-party system is making a comeback, and that comeback starts today" -- implying what? That partisanship is OK as long as it's your partisans doing it?

Contrast that speech with the one California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gave on CNN just before the network cut to Steele. The governor was speaking from the White House lawn at a news conference announcing that Obama, cooperating with Schwarzenegger, auto industry executives and others, had finally secured a compromise on raising auto emissions standards. Schwarzenegger praised Obama for working with him to secure what has long been a top priority for his constituents. Which Republican offers voters real leadership?

(AP photo) 

Posted by Andy Green at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (48)
Categories: National politics
        

It's been weeks since President Barack Obama slammed the door on prosecuting CIA operatives who tortured terrorist suspects in secret locations overseas and left it up to his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., to decide whether to press criminal charges against the government lawyers who wrote the absurd legal memos saying war crimes are OK. Now reports have surfaced that an internal Justice Department inquiry has determined the lawyers shouldn't be prosecuted either, despite the evident incompetence of their handiwork, and Mr. Holder is likely to accede in that judgment.

 But the Justice Department finding reportedly didn't rule out asking state bar associations to consider disciplinary action against the authors of the memos. One of them, Jay S. Bybee, was rewarded for his diligence as an enabler of the Bush administration's torture policy with a federal judgeship on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. His subordinate, John Yoo, is now a law professor at the University of California Berkley. Having so gleefully trashed the Constitution and international law to curry political favor, neither deserves to occupy positions of such power and prestige.

Judge Bybee deliberately concealed his involvement in drafting the torture memos during his Senate confirmation hearings. At the very least, he should be called to account for that omission, even if lawmakers have to impeach him to get the whole story. And having demonstrated such egregious contempt for the law, Mr. Yoo, a garden variety right-wing ideologue, really has no business instructing future jurists how to uphold it. He should be disbarred and never allowed to practice again.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: National politics
        

The decision of Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania to switch to the Democratic Party, announced Tuesday, is a major political game changer -- providing Democrats with what may be the 60th vote in the Senate needed to break Republican filibusters as the Democrats try to act on the Obama administration’s legislative agenda.

Mr. Specter's decision will also put a spotlight on potential disagreements within the Democratic Party on issues ranging from the mounting federal deficit to defense spending priorities. The Democrats will have only themselves to blame for any voter dissatisfaction with future congressional actions.

“I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,” Mr. Specter said.

If Al Franken wins, as expected, in the court dispute over his election to the Senate from  Minnesota, and Mr. Specter begins caucusing with Democrats, Democrats would have 60 votes and be able to block any Republican effort to derail legislation.

“It helps on everything,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California. “This is a substantial change.” 

Specter’s decision could be more consequential because it came just as the Senate was beginning work on health care reform legislation, one of President Obama's key goals this year.  The president has recently convinced congressional leaders to set the stage for approval of major health care reform legislation this fall by a simple majority vote in the Senate -- avoiding a Republican filibuster. But that controversial course may now not be necessary.

Posted by Larry Williams at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: National politics
        

                                                AP Photo 

Someone at the Defense Department had a very bad idea.

For understandable reasons, Manhattan workers got nervous when they spotted jets flying low over their city Monday morning. The planes in question appeared to be an Air Force One lookalike pursued by two F-16 fighter jets and concern turned to fear.

Scores of frightened office workers, fearing a terrorist attack, fled buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City after the aircraft were seen flying at low altitudes over the Statue of Liberty and parts of lower Manhattan, turning low over the Hudson River, near the site of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and circling several times.

Later, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters said that the plans were participating in  'photo op' being carried out by the Defense Department coordinated in advance with the FAA and state and local officials. But officials at The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said they did not know about the event. Nor did security forces in a number of buildings. The worried office workers were not amused. Neither was the mayor of New York, who was described as furious. The White House later appologized for the incident.

Posted by Larry Williams at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: National politics
        

U.S. Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland is concerned that federal agencies aren't adequately sharing information on national security and terrorism issues. He's just as concerned that civil liberties aren't violated under the pretense of protecting national security.

While chairing the Senate judiciary subcomittee on terrorism and national security this week, Mr. Cardin was reminded of Maryland's messy little spying scandal that featured a unit of the State Police conducting undercover investigations on peace activists, anti-death penalty groups and others over 14 months. As a result, some Marylanders ended up in national law enforcement databases -- and for no good reason.

Mr. Cardin later asked: "Why would law enforcement try to enter information about an individual that hasn't violated any laws and there's no credible information that they have?"

He answered his own question, and it was the right response: "You don't label people because you disagree with their views or they do things that are unpopular ... you need credible information." State police investigators need to be reminded of the same.

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: National politics
        

President Obama went to the CIA Monday to assure staffers he was standing behind them even though they had tortured terrorist suspects. Like most everything he does these days, it required a delicate balancing act, and he carried it off about as well as could be expected. Having said earlier that torture would have no place his administration, the president added last week he wouldn't allow agency personnel to be prosecuted for acts approved by the Bush administration. And on Sunday, White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel extended the general amnesty to government lawyers who crafted the harsh interrogation policy.

Clearly, Mr. Obama doesn't want to pick a fight with an agency the support of which he needs in the war on terror. That leaves it up to Congress to demand a full accounting of CIA mistreatment of prisoners.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont has called for a congressional inquiry; a good place to start would be with Jay Bybee, currently a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, who was rewarded with that post for the role he played in crafting the legal fiction that the CIA could torture suspects without breaking U.S. or international laws. As early as last January, Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman wrote on the Slate.com web site that the Senate never would have confirmed Bybee for a judgeship had it known he signed off on the incompetent legal reasoning made public in the four Justice Department memos on torture released last week. Read his arguments here.

Congress should impeach Bybee for concealing his role as an enabler in the CIA's misdeeds, and use the inquiry to demand a full accounting of the crimes committed in America's name.

Editorial cartoon by Dana Summers/Orlando Sentinel

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 5:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: National politics
        

Reports of the brutal methods employed by CIA operatives to extract information from terror suspects in secret agency prisons surfaced last week when the Justice Department released  four detailed memos describing interrogation tactics that the Obama administration has condemned as torture. President Barack Obama reiterated his position that torture has no place in his government. But he also said the C.I.A. operatives who carried out torture under the Bush administration won't be prosecuted for war crimes.

We can live with that, because at the time the C.I.A. officers involved thought they were acting under legal orders authorized by the commander-in-chief. But what about the lgovernment awyers who wrote the boilerplate that supposedly made their actions legal? Why should they get off? The Bush Justice Department apparently was full of lickspittle attorneys who were all too eager to trash U.S. and international law to give the president powers to conduct the war on terror however he saw fit. They churned out convoluted legal argument justifying every abuse the spy agency could come up with, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, slamming prisoners against walls, dousing them in freezing water and shoe-horning them into tiny cells for days at a time. One new wrinkle that emerged Thursday described the psychological terror inflicted on one detainee with a primative fear of insects by interrogators who trapped him in a box with a bug and told him its sting, though painful, was not quite lethal. However you wrap it in the gloss of scientifically modern interrogation techniques, this stuff reeks of the kind of sadistic glee you'd expect from the butchers in a Medieval dungeon.

The C.I.A. torturers will be immune from prosecution under President Obama's edict, but why should the lawyers who enabled them by tearing up the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions go unpunished? At the very least, they were derelict in their duty as officers of the court; they should have known the barbaric methods they were enshrining with the law's majesty  contravened every principle of decency and right. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is seems to be the only politician willing to call for a full-scale investigation of the matter so the American people can know exactly what crimes were committed in their name -- and who the men were who created the shameful legal fiction that torture is OK. It surely would serve them right if they were disbarred and never allowed to practice again.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 7:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: National politics
        

The conservative Republican Tea Partiers in Annapolis and across the nation are hoping that if they mimic the energy of anti-war protests and the savvy of Obama’s new media operation, that at some point an actual movement will spawn.

Getting together a bunch of very angry middle-aged white people with no clue about how the tax system works in public areas will generate a coherent agenda designed to combat the stimulus; if it gets enough media coverage, they will Dominate!!! The!!! Agenda!!!

It’s like taping a horn to a horse and waiting for it to alight on a magic cloud of stardust and pixies.

Posted by Larry Williams at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: National politics
        

The Federal Reserve recently reported that in 2007 the net worth of the typical African American family was only 10 percent of the net worth of the typical white family — down from 12 percent in 2004. Put another way: For every $1 held by whites five years ago, blacks had 12 cents. Three years later, they had a dime.

The staggering statistic has taken some powerful lawmakers by surprise. Participants in a wealth gap summit on Capitol Hill last month said that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who attended the event, was shocked to learn the extent of the disparity.

But incredulity is one thing; closing the gap is another. And congressional lawmakers with that goal in mind face a series of barriers to getting the job done. Not only is there little recognition that such a divide exists, but the causes, according to reform advocates, are so rooted in history and ingrained in policy that they're tough to iron out. Furthermore, the solutions reside largely in tax code reforms - among the thorniest issues to tackle on Capitol Hill. Advocates for closing the wealth gap say that congressional lawmakers are well behind the curve.

Continue reading "The African American Wealth Gap " »

Posted by Larry Williams at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Economic recovery, National politics
        

There's pork and then there's PORK. And when you review the Maryland congressional delegation's list of earmarks as reported by The Sun's Paul West, their requests appear to be pretty pedestrian. There's no Bridge to Nowhere in the more than $1 billion request of special projects -- at least none that presents itself so plainly.

 Most of the requests fall into the category of transportation and military base improvements, help for the Chesapeake Bay and aid to schools, hospitals and other institutions. And they are only requests -- Maryland would be lucky if it receives a fraction of the proposed spending.

 What deserves closer scrutiny are requests that directly benefit private companies, even if they are Maryland companies. Why? Because federal tax dollars shouldn't be used to reward contractors that haven't performed well or aren't delivering services at the best price. Take for example, the super computer Rep. C.R. "Dutch" Ruppersberger requested for the National Security Agency. Is that the best one and at the best price? We'd like to know.

Earmarks have long be the object of scorn and abuse. President Obama wants to tighten the rules on congressional earmarks and ensure that contracts are competitively bid, though he let the pork project requests in the most recent budget go right on through. He says he'll offer reforms for next year. We'll wait and see.

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: National politics
        

Reports Tuesday by the International Committee of the Red Cross that CIA doctors participated in the "inhuman" torture of terrorism suspects at secret agency prisons underscore the reality that Americans have yet to get a full accounting of the war crimes committed in their name. The Obama administration has pledged to end torture of detainees, and the president's biggest applause line when he spoke in Turkey on Monday came when he reiterated his intention to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. But Mr. Obama has stopped short of calling for an official inquiry into the mistreatment of prisoners under the Bush administration. That's not good enough. Finding out exactly what went wrong is the key to making sure it doesn't happen again.

Basically, there are two models for investigating the misdeeds that have cost the United States its moral standing in much of the world, especially in Muslim countries. One is the 9/11 Commission hearings into the intelligence failures preceding the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The other is the Senate Watergate hearings of the 1970s that led to the resignation of former President Richard M. Nixon. University of Maryland law professor Michael Greenberger, who directs the school's Center for Health and Homeland Security, says the Watergate model is preferable because Congress did the investigating itself in that case.  "If a case is serious enough to be investigated, it should be investigated by people who have the power to do something about it," Greenberger says.

 An inquiry on the Watergate model would require Congress to employ skilled, experienced investigators with the highest security clearances who could get to the bottom of exactly how many people were tortured, where they were tortured and what methods were used -- without compromising classified information. That's presumably what Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had in mind when he called for a full-scale investigation of CIA torture sites. Such an inquiry need not become a partisan witch hunt if handled properly. Opponents argue there's no point in dwelling on the past and that revealing the CIA's interrogation methods will make it harder to get information out of terrorist suspects. But most experts think torture doesn't produce reliable information anyway because people will say anything to make the pain stop; techniques that produce bonding between interrogators and detainees are more likely to result in actionable intelligence. As for dwelling on the past, denial simply is not an option at this point: As the philosopher George Santayana observed, those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.  

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: National politics
        

When most people think of Martin Luther King Jr., the “I Have a Dream” speech usually comes to mind. Five short years later on April 4, 1967, King gave a controversial speech, that is not as well known but poignant nonetheless – “Beyond Vietnam,” in which he spoke boldly about his opposition to the Vietnam war. He challenged Americans to define and address their core values as citizens of the world and not to be afraid to speak out against the government.

My name is Makeda Crane, and as a member of the editorial board staff, I am guest blogging in this space. I was recently listening to the King speech. And once again we are a nation at war and President Obama, who opposed the war in Iraq, is sending an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan. I oppose this war unlike some of my colleagues here. This war is being fought on the same premise as the Iraq war --- to stamp out the same “nameless and “faceless” al Qaeda terrorists and their Taliban allies.

Intensifying our war effort isn't going to make America safer. And it will likely increase Afghans' hatred of us. This new surge will again disrupt and “destroy the two most cherished institutions” in a society, as King mentioned in his 1967 speech – “the family and the village.” Surely, this will not gain us “new friends” but instead new enemies with each day that we are there. An expansion of this war will not address the issue of the Taliban or resolve the problems of the Afghan people. As Dr. King said, “There will be no meaningful solutions until we make some attempt to know these people and hear their broken cries.”

 At a time when the country is almost evenly divided about the war in Afghanistan, according to a recent poll by CNN in which 51 percent of Americans oppose the war in Afghanistan while 47 percent are in favor of it, people should speak out and challenge President Obama on his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. Dr. King urged his audience, "There comes a time when silence is betrayal."

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 6:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: National politics
        

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has a gift for putting the best face on things. Despite taking a drubbing recently for a series of controversial remarks on everything from abortion to Rush Limbaugh, the former Maryland lieutenant governor encouraged fellow Republicans at a dinner in Anne Arundel County last night to follow his lead and be "unconventional," "unpredictable" and "unexpected."

 Now there's a man who knows himself. We don't doubt the GOP could use some spice and sizzle but convincing traditional, buttoned-up, conservative party members to shake off their conventions would require more of  Mr. Steele than a clever use of alliteration. 

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: National politics
        

Continue reading "Campaign finance reform" »

Posted by Peter Jensen at 5:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: National politics
        

In recent weeks, President Obama has come under increasing criticism for trying to tackle too many issues in his first few months in office, but a majority of Americans (56 percent) reject that criticism, saying he is doing about right. Still, 35 percent say he is trying to address too many issues at once, including a majority of Republicans (53 percent) as well as 36 percent of independents and 21 percent of Democrats.

A majority of independents (52 percent) say Mr. Obama is doing about the right amount, a recent Pew Research Center poll shows. Only 4 percent of Americans believe he is focusing on too few issues.

Let us know whether you think the president is focusing on too many issues.

Posted by Larry Williams at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: National politics
        

 Any politician who talks likes he's soft on crime risks the wrath of voters and a swift involuntary separation from his job. That's why the "lock 'em up, throw away the key" school of crime prevention is the only safe path for any ambitious law-maker today, Democrat or Republican.

Only problem is, it doesn't get us anywhere.

We've got the world's highest percentage of people locked up, but crime still tops the list of things Americans worry about. Our streets aren't safe even though we've put 2.5 million people behind bars, while the really violent criminals and fat cat drug kingpins are still on the street. We could put another million people in the poky and nothing would change.

But who's got the courage to call this charade the failure it is, a caricature of a criminal justice system? 

I'm betting on Jim Webb, the freshman Democratic senator from Virginia and a former Marine who was once Ronald Reagan's secretary of the Navy. Last week he called America's prison system "a national disgrace." He's a big guy and, in the tradition of his scrappy Scots-Irish ancestors, he likes a fight. Nobody's going to call him soft on criminals.

But Webb is also smart enough to know that the nation's prison systems are broken and it's getting worse. He says we've been filling the jails with low-level drug offenders, parole violators, addicts and the mentally ill -- like Maryland's Kevin Johns, whose story we discussed in a blog entry last week - instead of the violent gangs that perpetrate most of the violence. Webb says there are four times as many mentally ill people in prison as there are in mental health hospitals.

And he thinks it's unfair that a disproportionate number of those incarcerated are poor and black. African-Americans make up 13 percent of the population but they're more than half of all prison inmates. He just not buying the argument that blacks are more prone to crime.

So last week Webb announced he was sponsoring a bill to to create a commission that would conduct an 18-month assessment of prison systems and offer concrete recommendations for reform. He wants a top-to-bottom overhaul that puts the really bad guys in jail and the addicts and mentally ill in treatment. And he's willing to fight for it.

Read more about Webb's crusade here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/28/AR2008122801728.html, then tell us your view.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 6:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: National politics
        

President Obama is breaking ground this morning with an innovative online town meeting where he will answer questions from ordinary Americans about the nation's troubled economy and what can be done to fix it. As of 9:30 this morning the White House had received more than 100,000 questions. Visitors to whitehouse.gov have been invited to vote for their favorite questions and the president has promised to answer those most popular in an online video stream from whitehouse.gov at ll:30 p.m. More than 3.5 million votes have been cast on the most popular questions.

If you had a chance to ask the president a question, what would it be?

Here are a few of the most popular questions:

 "The Founding Fathers believed that there is no difference between a free society and an educated society. Our educational system, however, is woefully inadequate. How do you plan to restore education as a right and core cultural value in America?" Takeok, Boston, MA

"For students graduating from college and graduate school, many of us have obscene amounts of debt. Do you have any plans to help alleviate some of that debt, given the current state of the job market?" Am, Chicago, IL

 "Mr President What are you going to do about local public schools cutting enrichment programs (arts, science, PE) due to the budget issues? While we need to increase our education levels, yet we see less dollars for schools. Thanks Sunnyvale_mom" sunnyvale_mom, Sunnyvale CA

Posted by Larry Williams at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: National politics
        

In its 2009 annual report on "The State of Black America," the National Urban League says that despite the political advances represented by the election of President Barack Obama, blacks are still being hit the hardest by the economic downturn and calls on Mr. Obama to focus on continuing racial disparities in employment, education and health care.

Among its recommendations, the the 288-page report calls for using the stimulus package to create green jobs in poor communities, funding job training for laid-off workers, pre-Kindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-olds and comprehensive universal health care.

For a capsule digest of the report's findings go to the league's web site, www.nul.org, click on the "State of Black America 2009" icon with Obama's picture. But there's not much that's really in the report, at least judging from the executive summary.

We already knew that disparities existed in employment, education and health care. A study just last week published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that young blacks are 20 times as likely as whites to develop heart failure. That's an endorsement right there for universal health care in America. 

The Urban League's report does offer one new measure on its equality index: a comparison of how well blacks and whites did during the last two major economic expansions.  The analysis suggests that while both groups made important gains during the 1990s expansion, there was actually a loss of ground in median income, poverty and homeownerships during the 2001-2007 expansion.

Hard data like this can point the way towards more effective policies, but not when the Urban League is charging $20 a volume for its report. This information should be made as widely available as possible to have an impact and not used just as a fundraising tool.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 6:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: National politics
        

Alphanumerics faults my lack of eloquence, but this blog really isn't about elevated discourse.

I'll be satisfied if I can just keep things lively and interesting. And I'm glad Alphanumerics and I are both on the same page so far as being candid about where we're coming from.

The stock market jumped nearly 500 points today on new details of President Obama's plan to buy troubled assets, and we got a better than expected report on existing home sales, too. But that's what markets do: They go up and down. It's what happens over time that counts.

That's why I still think the administration's critics are jumping the gun when they say the president's policies won't work. This is an unprecedented situation, and there's simply no way to know what things will look like six months from now.

They probably won't go exactly as planned (what does?), and they may even be worse than they are today. But at least then we'll have a better idea of the direction we're headed.

In the meantime, keep in mind that events will always have the last word. My crystal ball isn't any clearer than anyone else's.

If I end up totally off the mark, as columnists have been known to do, so be it. I'll cheerfully concede the point in the same words Lincoln wrote to Grant after the fall of Vicksburg: "I wish to acknowledge that you were right, and I was wrong."

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 6:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: National politics
        

President Obama has barely been in office two months, and already conservatives are criticizing his every move and demanding that he fire one or two members of his Cabinet to show he’s in charge. What is wrong with these people?

They know as well as anybody that it took more than two months for us to get into this mess, and it’s going to take more than that to get out – they know it better, actually, since a lot of them were busy running the country into the ground themselves every chance they got.

We’ll be lucky to see any sign the economy’s turning around much before fall.

Still, that’s months, not decades. It’s almost as if the naysayers hope the whole economy collapses tomorrow just to prove them right. Why else would Rush Limbaugh say he wanted Obama to fail?

These guys are so keen to bring back the loony mindset that got us into two wars and a Depression-style banking crisis that they’d rather see a few million more Americans lose their jobs than admit they’ve been living in cloud-cuckoo land for the last eight years.

I bet they hated Obama's appearance on the Jay Leno show last week. He looked presidential and like a regular guy at the same time. The most galling thing to them probably was the simple fact that he looked like he actually enjoyed being president -- while they're grinding their teeth in frustration.

I just hope the body politic will hold up under so much partisan rancor without imploding from sheer cussedness.

The other day, for instance, I ran into a guy who’s a gun dealer in Maryland, and he told me customers are beating down his doors for military-style assault rifles, shotguns and handguns.

The funny thing was, it’s not that people are afraid of crime, he said. Rather, they fear Obama is going to take away their guns, so they want to stock up before he gets the chance.

Now where, if not from talk-show blowhards like Limbaugh, would they get an idea like that?

Oh, don’t get me started.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: National politics