The St. Petersburg Times comes out against the loyalty test the White House is imposing at Social Security events on the president's Bamboozlepalooza Tour: "The Bush administration might not appreciate the difference between campaign events that are paid for through private donations and official events put on with the public's money, but the Constitution surely does."
--Josh Marshall
With all of Tom DeLay's bossism and corrupt rule now finally being revealed to a wider audience, I figure it's time to revisit the DeLay Rule, and remember which Republican members of the House were so devoted to DeLay (i.e., owned by DeLay) that they were willing to rewrite their caucus's rules on his request because they thought he was about to indicted back in Texas. We've got a whole library of the letters the DeLay Rule backers sent to their constituents trying to explain themselves.
--Josh Marshall
Another nice Dana Milbank article, this one on some of the borderline-violent anti-judiciary nut-cases the Republican majority (particularly in the House) is in the process of selling itself to.
How high on the list of national priorities for the American people do you figure disciplining the federal judiciary is? Higher than the economy? Terrorism? Health care? Iraq? Social Security? Long-term care? Road quality?
Perhaps it is time for the Democrats simply to embrace their destiny as the party of grown-ups. No members of congress threatening judges. No gonzo federal legislation cooked up in the middle of the night to game a family struggle in Florida. Borrowing money and saving money are not the same thing. A reasonable respect for the rules under which the country has long been governed. Congressional staffers will neither steal work material from members of the opposition party nor stand on principle when caught. Bribes tendered on the floor of Congress will be frowned upon ...
--Josh Marshall
Somehow I found my way over this article by John Hinderaker at the Weekly Standard website. And in the course of providing an elaborate history of press malfeasance and liberal bias in the coverage of the Schiavo talking points memo, he notes: "The Post's story was picked up by the Reuters news service and by dozens of newspapers, and was, in large part, the basis for a widespread popular belief that the leadership of the Republican party had played politics with the Schiavo case."
Spinning and BSing is always less interesting than the genuine article of denial and self-deception. Was it really the reporting of this memo -- however accurate or inaccurate (and we're finding out it was pretty much completely accurate) -- that led overwhelming numbers of Americans to judge that 'the Republican party had played politics with the Schiavo case'?
You really have to be far gone to believe that.
I think most people judged this one by believing their eyes.
Andrew Sullivan sounds the same waters in this post out this evening.
--Josh Marshall
I'd missed this article from the Post.
It's about Wes Clark and Richard Perle testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on Iraq and WMD this week, a reprise of a similar engagement in 2002 and a sort of anticipation of a reckoning before the judgment of history.
Watch a hustler dig himself even deeper.
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Chafee (R) of Rhode Island tells the Projo he's voting to confirm John Bolton unless some bombshell at the hearings convinces him not to.
(I guess that means he's voting for him unless he decides not to?)
Does Chafee want to hear what Carl Ford (former Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research while Bolton was at State) has to say?
We hear Ford is quite willing to tell the committee what he knows about Bolton's track record of intel monkey business while Bolton was Under Secretary, Arms Control and International Security. As head of State's intel shop in the president's term, Ford should know.
But will Ford get the call? If Chafee really wants to find a way to vote against Bolton, he'll certainly make sure Ford gets called to testify. If he's dead-set on carrying the president's water, he'll do the opposite.
--Josh Marshall
From the Miami Herald ...
The campaign ads were bitterly divisive, even by the standards of a bare-knuckle primary, accusing the opponent of then Republican senatorial hopeful Mel Martinez of playing to the ``radical homosexual lobby.''Martinez blamed the ads on "young Turks" in his campaign and apologized to his GOP rival. Weeks later Martinez found himself again blaming a staff member after a press release from his campaign likened U.S. immigration agents to "armed thugs" for seizing Elián González from his Miami home in 2000.
Now, for the third time, Martinez finds himself under fire -- and blaming an aide for the conflagration.
Good help is so hard <$NoAd$>to find.
--Josh Marshall
While dingbats throw brickbats, Mike Allen continues his reporting on the Martinez-Schiavo memo in the senate.
If I understand this right, the new line of thinking is that there is no reason to believe this talking points memo (which is, after all, written to be distributed) was distributed to other Republicans. And it was, in fact, only distributed, inadvertantly, to Sen. Tom Harkin (D) of Iowa. (Who knew Occam's Razor could get so dull?) The reasoning behind this uncanny logic is that Harkin is the only one to have come forward and said, on the record, that he received a copy.
Why only Harkin would come forward and no Republican senators or staffers remains a mystery, it would seem.
So the Allen-eaters are confident that this memo wasn't distributed to Republicans. But Sen. Martinez's office isn't so sure. They're doing an internal investigation.
And one unnamed Martinez aide tells Allen that Darling (the memo-ist) "may have disseminated [the memo] to other offices."
But then, I guess, we have only Allen's word that this unnamed "aide" is really an employee of Sen. Martinez, don't we?
--Josh Marshall
Some Senate Republicans seem intent on conducting an intelligence test on their Democratic colleagues. Only they mean to eschew the normal square pegs and round hole approach and instead use a new gambit in the Social Security debate.
Says the AP's David Espo: "Senate Republican leaders are considering whether to seek Democratic support for Social Security legislation without the personal accounts sought by President Bush, aiming to restore them later, officials said Thursday."
So given that privatization now seems dead in the water, these senate Republicans want to enlist Democratic support for enacting what will no doubt be highly popular benefit cuts and tax increases because this will smooth the way for them to partially phase out Social Security with private accounts, as part of a two step gambit.
And to structure the experiment so as to get a clear read on whether we're talking about mere substandard intelligence or some more profound sort of incapacitation they're telling the reporter from the Associated Press that this is their plan.
Setting aside this foolery, why would any Democrats agree to do anything on Social Security before getting agreement from Republicans -- embodied, where appropriate, in legislation -- that phase-out is off the table for good and that the Treasury notes in the Social Security Trust Fund will be repaid in full.
The Democrats' priority here is to protect Social Security. And the most pressing dangers to Social Security are not deficits in the 2040s but the present threat of privatization and President Bush's effort to renege on the promise that money loaned out of Social Security payroll tax funds will be paid back.
--Josh Marshall
The liberal Houston Chronicle thought Sen. Cornyn's comments were out of line too.
--Josh Marshall
The headline in the Dallas Morning News tells the tale: "DeLay defense fund donations slow."
The article notes how John Podesta and the folks at the Center for American Progress have now chosen to rain down still more woe upon the unfortunate and ignoble bug man by starting a campaign to embarrass big corporations out of writing all those checks to cover his legal expenses.
As they should.
It's such a bummer to know that some small sliver of my monthly cell phone bill has to go to the DeLay legal defense fund just because I do business with Verizon.
Yeah, that Verizon.
Head over to DropTheHammer.org to find out more and soften the hammer down into a mallet.
--Josh Marshall
"Privatization is dead," saith Sen. Baucus, "won't pass, no way, no how."
(ed.note: Thanks to this fellow for the heads up.)
--Josh Marshall
Oh, have I criticized her.
But I'm willing to do homage to Maureen Dowd for these three peerless sentences: "Before, Republicans just scared other people. Now, they're starting to scare themselves. When Dick Cheney tells you you've gone too far, you know you're way over the edge."
(ed.note: Special thanks to TPM Reader (and father-in-law) II for sending the link.)
--Josh Marshall
Schwarzenegger abandons phase-out in California, at least until 2006.
It's sort of like with Bush and Arnold and dope. They both did it; but Arnold just comes out and says it.
--Josh Marshall
Here's a question -- not the rhetorical kind, a genuine question.
I didn't delve deeply into the legal -- as in black letter law -- side of the Schiavo case. But watching that part from a distance at least, I didn't have the sense that any of the various rulings in the case -- original or on appeal -- departed in any meaningful way from the black letter law as it exists in the state of Florida.
Maybe the law is wrong and should be changed. Or maybe the law is proper but in this case it produced a bad result -- and even a good law can fail to produce the 'right' result in a given case. But set those points aside.
Was there any clear point in the legal history of this case at which, purely on legal intepretation grounds, any significant question should have been judged in a different manner?
I raise this because one of this site's regular readers and correspondents just dropped me a note about some program he was watching on C-Span in which some staffer from the Hill was about to blow a fuse over unaccountable activist judges and how they all need to be impeached.
But if the answer to the question above is 'no', then isn't the real beef of all these Schiavo-hounds that these judges aren't activist enough in departing from the law to get results the hounds want?
--Josh Marshall
The Post has just posted a .pdf of the 'Schiavo talking points' written by one of Sen. Martinez's staffers and distributed to senate Republicans.
Of course, if Mike Allen were even a half-way decent journalist he would have correctly identified these not as 'Republican talking points on the Schiavo case' but rather as 'a series of bullet points written on plain, unmarked white paper by a senior staffer from Sen. Martinez's office who, as far as we know, was not operating under a direct order from the senator to write talking points about the Schiavo case which stated what a good political issue the Republicans thought it was before the first round of polls came back.'
Kurtz and Kaus, take it away.
--Josh Marshall
The Post says that the Bamboozlepalooza Tour "may be one of the most costly in memory, well into the millions of dollars, according to some rough, unofficial calculations." And even Republicans on the Hill seem to be getting concerned.
Remember, too, that that money comes into a whole different light when you see that Americans are being systematically excluded from these taxpayer-funded tour events on the basis of political ideology.
--Josh Marshall
Here's a point I'm surprised no one has made more of.
As you know, the president says the Treasury notes in the Social Security are 'worthless IOUs'. And we've explained, probably at too much length at this point, why that is both factually incorrect and morally wrong, in as much as stealing other people's money is ever wrong.
The only sense in which the president's claim has any meaning at all is that while those Treasury notes are assets in the hands of the Social Security Trust Fund (payroll tax money collected overwhelmingly from middle income earners) they are also claims against future money out of general revenues (money collected disproportionately from upper-income earners).
That doesn't make them unique: all the debt we've been running up over the last three decades is in Treasury notes that will have to be paid back, with interest, out of general revenue. The ones owned by the central banks in Asia, the ones that President Bush has most of his personal wealth tied up in, all of them.
It's always seemed to me that it's a good thing, not a bad thing, that some of that money at least can go to people's Social Security checks.
That's not a reason to get rid of Social Security, as the president wants. It's a reason to stop running chronic budget deficits.
In any case, the point the president is trying to make is that those bonds built up in the Trust Fund will have to be paid in coming years out of general revenue, which means for the most part out of income taxes.
But consider this.
On what basis are we endlessly told that President Bush's private accounts system would be a secure retirement security vehicle for Americans? Because he says that a substantial proportion of the accounts would be made up of US government bonds, the safest investment in the world.
So what's the difference exactly?
Private accounts advocates would say that there's all the difference in the world since people would have a personal property right to those assets rather than what they have now. I'm not so sure that's really true, as I'll try to explain later. But even if it is, that doesn't make any difference in terms of the fact that they are obligations against general revenue from the US Treasury.
Under either scenario, a substantial portion of the US government's retirement security program will be paid for by general revenue funds. And you can come up with the same scare-quotes about this or that number of hundreds of billions of dollars being needed and whether it's going to come out of budget cuts or new taxes. As far as I can see, there's no difference.
So perhaps reporters should ask the president what will make those bonds any less worthless when they start funding his private accounts plan.
Now, one separate point. Private accounts advocates, as I said, will argue that a big difference is that you'll own these assets. But will you? As I understand the president's program, you'll have a choice of investing in a handful of separate funds, which will vary by risk -- some weighted more to stocks, others weighted more to bonds. Whatever theoretical ownership right you might have, it sounds to me like this just means that instead of having one big Trust Fund -- with all those worthless IOUs -- President Bush is going to set us up with maybe 4 or 5 mini-Trust Funds, each with their cabinet drawer of worthless IOUs. It'll be sorta like the baby-bells after the break up of ATT.
As near as I can figure it, the only way to get around this problem is to have the private accounts invested entirely in stocks. Or, rather, to have none of their funds invested in US government bonds.
Of course, if you do that, the risk level goes through the roof.
--Josh Marshall
Max Speaks!
A couple days ago we wondered aloud how many 'worthless IOUs' President Bush has himself written to the Social Security Administration. Max Sawicky ran the numbers and came up with the total: $639 billion.
That's about 1/3 of the 'worthless IOUs' currently in the fund.
Over the next five years, he plans to write another trillion dollars worth, according to his recent budget projection.
Max has the details.
--Josh Marshall
A bad news Wall Street Journal poll for the president ...
Almost three months into President Bush's second term, a raft of economic and social issues -- Social Security, immigration, gay marriage and the recent national debate over Terri Schiavo -- is splintering the Republican base.After winning re-election on the strength of support from nine in 10 Republican voters, the president is seeing significant chunks of that base balk at major initiatives, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows. One-third of Republicans say Democrats in Congress should prevent Mr. Bush and party leaders from "going too far in pushing their agenda," and 41% oppose eliminating filibusters against Mr. Bush's judicial nominees -- the "nuclear option" that Senate Republican leaders are considering.
Also of note ...
On his centerpiece initiative of Social Security, for instance, 32% of Republicans call it "a bad idea" to let workers invest payroll taxes in the stock markets.Despite Mr. Bush's cross-country tour to sell his plan, that proportion has held steady since January, while resistance among Democrats and senior citizens has driven overall opposition to 55% from the 50% recorded on the eve of his second inauguration. On Social Security, "opinions are hardening in a way that makes Bush's job more difficult," Mr. McInturff says.
On judicial nominations -- a cause of contention between the White House and Democratic leaders -- resistance among rank-and-file Republicans is even higher. Four in 10 say the option of filibusters should be preserved.
Tomorrow, more on the <$NoAd$> doctrine of Rovian infallibility.
--Josh Marshall
If I'm not mistaken, this new story about Tom DeLay's junket to the Marianas back in the late 1990s is pretty much the same story we read in the late 1990s.
(Just to be clear and fair: The reporter with the byline on the ABC report -- Brian Ross -- is one of the journalists who reported on the story back at the time.)
This is the case where DeLay and his family got a luxe trip to a resort in Saipan so he could help make the US territory safe for sweatshop labor.
Don't get me wrong. It stinks to high heaven.
But the resurrection of this story does seem to suggest that we're in that phase of the battle where all the stuff that was long written up about DeLay, but routinely ignored, is getting written up again. And now we're shocked, shocked that this hustler has been polluting the people's House with his neo-Tammany shenanigans.
--Josh Marshall
There's going to be rather an abundance of gloating and knife-toothed smiles (as well there should be) among Democrats tonight as people read Mike Allen's piece in Thursday's Post revealing the identity of the person who wrote the infamous Schiavo 'talking points' distributed in the senate last month.
This is the document that called the Schiavo tragi-circus a "a great political issue" and one that "the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating."
Turns out it was the legal counsel to freshman Sen. Martinez (R) of Florida, a former gun-rights lobbyist named Brian Darling. As you might imagine, Darling's now chosen to leave the senator's employ and move on to other opportunities.
I'll let others dig into how many other Republicans knew about the memo, or helped distribute it or whatever else.
To me, though, the folks who really deserve to be tarred and feathered over this are the almost criminally fatuous commentators and reporters who wrote up stories suggesting the memo was actually a dirty trick by the Democrats, a false flag operation meant to make the Republicans look bad.
In politics, anything is possible. And often the most improbable and devilish things turn out to be true. So, sure, anyone could have been the author.
But look at the evidence some folks walked into print with ...
Look, all the Republicans senators say they didn't do it! And if they didn't, who did?
And did you see that the strategy memo wasn't written on RNC letterhead? And you want us to believe it was written by a Republican?
I hope some folks have sense enough to feel like real fools tonight.
--Josh Marshall
CNN in the bag? Or in the sack?
Lou Dobbs insta-poll question tonight is: "Do you believe House Majority Leader Tom Delay is the victim of a campaign by the 'liberal' media to embarrass him?"
There's truly no end to the comedy.
--Josh Marshall
One thing I always say is that Washington needs more bipartisan cooperation. And since David Keene, Chairman of the American Conservative Union, seems to be the head conservative leading up the effort to defend Tom DeLay and keep him in place as House Majority Leader, it occurred to me that I should reach out to him and see if we can form a coalition, bringing together Republicans and Democrats of goodwill, who want to keep Tom DeLay where he is as head of the House Republican caucus, doing what he does best.
Some groups and leaders in the Democratic neck of the woods might not want to join our coalition publicly, sort of like all those brokerage houses that fund the Social Security phase-out front groups. But behind the scenes I have no doubt we can enlist many of them in our joint effort. And they'll be quite active in support.
David, what say you?
Late Update: We can call it the CDI: The Coalition to DeLay the Inevitable.
--Josh Marshall
News Flash: CNN reports latest DeLay stories on front page!
Oh, no, wait ... They report DeLay's calling the reports "seedy" on the front page.
My bad ...
--Josh Marshall
Let me mention a few more details about the new site we're getting ready to launch.
It has a few different components. But the main one is a new group blog with a few more than a dozen individual contributors. The group blog will be a forum both for posts on topics and questions of interest to the individual contributors and also, we hope, for debate and discussion amongst them.
As you might expect, the focus of conversation will be politics and current affairs, but neither narrowly nor exclusively. We're also hoping for lively exchanges about the arts, literature, religion and the sciences.
We're still putting together the list of contributors. And we'll be bringing you more on that in the coming days. But the list of those who've already signed on includes Todd Gitlin, Ed Kilgore, Mike Lind and Judith Shulevitz, among others.
--Josh Marshall
The Moose sees it too. Marshall Wittman says that the sourcing of those DeLay hit articles makes it look a lot like Rove may be pulling the trap door lever on the bug man.
Meanwhile, the Mallet got his House caucus to line up in support and got Rep. Roy Blunt (R) of Missouri, their #3 man, to sign up as chief spear-catcher: "I don't see any wavering of the support for the leader. I think a lot of members think he's taking arrows for all of us."
(Can someone out there translate that line into Italian for us?)
Finally, a conservative pal sent me a form letter from the ACU's David Keene calling on all conservatives to line up behind Tom DeLay and defend him with every measure of their strength.
So it would seem that to small government, strong national defense and traditional values has been added a fourth pillar of the conservative movement: defending Tom DeLay no matter what new ethics infractions, crimes or generalized corruption might show up in tomorrow's papers.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, at just after 2 PM, CNN rolled out their DeLay story. It's prominently linked ... Actually I can't find it linked anywhere. But a bunch of TPM Readers sent me the link so it must be linked somewhere on their page.
Late Update: TPM Reader MF sends in a handy guide to finding the DeLay story on the CNN site ...
FYI:main page:
http://www.cnn.com/
click on 'politics':
http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/
go down to "Other News" and click on the tiny 'more stories' button which leads to
http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/archive/
and it's the fourth story down.
Sheesh, how could I have missed it?
--Josh Marshall
As we told you earlier, an article in the Boston Globe this morning suggests that Sen. Chafee (R) or Rhode Island was sending signals he might vote against the nomination of John Bolton as UN ambassador.
(Steve Clemons has some good commentary on this latest development.)
But I hear from a senate source that Chafee aides are busily trying to walk back the Globe story, telling reporters and fellow Republicans that he's actually leaning toward casting a vote in Bolton's favor.
So hard to strike the right balance when you're a senator from a blue state trying to carry the water of tomato-red administration.
--Josh Marshall
White supremacist Matthew Hale sentenced to 40 years for attempting to pay an undercover FBI informant to kill U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow. No word on whether judicial activism was one of his beefs.
--Josh Marshall
Yet another anti-DeLay website: dropthehammer.org ...
The more the merrier, we say.
They even have a cool DeLay corruption flow chart!
--Josh Marshall
Can someone drop me a line when something, anything on the new DeLay revelations shows up on the CNN website? Thanks ...
--Josh Marshall
Stuff you just can't make up ...
Rep. Tom Cole (R) of Oklahoma on being a Social Security phase-out supporter: "This is like being for the Civil Rights Bill in 1960. You may not win but it makes you feel good and you're on the right side."
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Chafee (R) of Rhode Island considering voting against John Bolton? See Clemons for more details.
--Josh Marshall
So how much debt has President Bush run up on his watch?
This page on the Bureau of Public Debt website gives some month by month and year by year benchmarks.
If I'm reading the data right (and math isn't my forte, so don't assume that's a throwaway line), at the end of September 2001, the total debt of the United States government stood at just over $5.8 trillion dollars.
At the end of last month it stood at just under $7.8 trillion.
($7,776,939,047,670, to be precise.)
So, a bit less than $2 trillion of debt piled up on President Bush's watch.
(Note: these numbers do also include interest on previous debt. But for the purposes of this discussion, I'll set that aside.)
Needless to say, that is much more than the entire Social Security Trust Fund, which President Bush says there is no way to make good on.
(According to the recently released Trustees' report, the Trust Fund currently has just under $1.7 trillion in it.)
Now, federal debt is divided into "public debt" and "intragovernmental holdings", which means debt held in various government Trust Funds. Social Security and Medicare are the big trust funds. But there are several smaller ones too.
Over that same period I mentioned above, the total of these 'Intragovernmental Holdings' went from just under $2.5 trillion to just over $3.2 trillion. Now, remember, that's not all the Social Security Trust Fund. It's all the trust funds combined. But if the Social Security Trust Fund is worthless then the other trust funds must be worthless too.
So that means that President Bush (his administration) has borrowed some $700 billion of your payroll taxes that he now says will never be paid back. In fact, just last year (2004), on the president's watch, $156 billion (and change) of your Social Security payroll tax dollars went for what he calls worthless pieces of paper.
Now, one more batch of numbers. As you remember, the federal debt is divided into public debt and trust fund debt. Or, to put it into the president's terms, debt that actually gets paid back and suckers' debt that just amounts to worthless paper.
So now let's look at the public debt, the stuff even President Bush admits will be paid back. Over the same time period noted above (September 2001 to last month), public debt went from about $3.3 trillion to just under $4.6 trillion (the exact numbers are $3,339,310,176,094 and $4,572,715,640,119.) So let's call that around $1.2 trillion.
I know I'm tossing around a lot of numbers here. But just bear with me. We're almost to the end.
The Social Security Trust Fund is now at about $1.7 trillion. And President Bush says there's no way that can or will be paid back. But just in his first term he's racked up about two-thirds that much money in new debt. And he'll easily exceed that number in his second term. And that'll amount to maybe a couple trillion dollars that even President Bush concedes will be paid back to all those bond purchasors here and abroad.
If we hadn't gone on President Bush's red ink binge, that would be more than enough cash to pay back all the money owed to the Social Security Administration.
Do you understand what Al Gore was talking about now with the 'lockbox'?
Yeah, exactly.
Instead we got President Bush who's run up a ton of debt that he just wants to walk away from. And he keeps borrowing more and more every day.
Isn't the bankruptcy bill supposed to deal with folks like him?
--Josh Marshall
A TPM Reader wants to help ...
Josh,Would you pass this along to Tom DeLay for me? He might be needing it sooner than later:
http://www.west-ext.com/employment.htmlCheers,
RL
I guess we can all get along.
--Josh Marshall
Somebody's talking.
From the Post ...
A six-day trip to Moscow in 1997 by then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was underwritten by business interests lobbying in support of the Russian government, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the trip arrangements.DeLay reported that the trip was sponsored by a Washington-based nonprofit organization. But interviews with those involved in planning DeLay's trip say the expenses were covered by a mysterious company registered in the Bahamas that also paid for an intensive $440,000 lobbying campaign.
Reminds me of the days I used to spend making photocopies at the FARA office in downtown DC.
--Josh Marshall
Nice work if you can get <$NoAd$> it.
From the NYT ...
The wife and daughter of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, have been paid more than $500,000 since 2001 by Mr. DeLay's political action and campaign committees, according to a detailed review of disclosure statements filed with the Federal Election Commission and separate fund-raising records in Mr. DeLay's home state, Texas.Most of the payments to his wife, Christine A. DeLay, and his only child, Dani DeLay Ferro, were described in the disclosure forms as "fund-raising fees," "campaign management" or "payroll," with no additional details about how they earned the money. The payments appear to reflect what Mr. DeLay's aides say is the central role played by the majority leader's wife and daughter in his political career.
Drip, drip?
I think we're past that.
--Josh Marshall
The American Constitution Society is the progressive counterpart to the conservative Federalist Society, a group which, whatever you think about its effect on America, has been extremely effective in seeding the courts and the legal academy with committed Movement conservatives who've worked for years to shape American law and government.
This weekend, the Yale Law School chapter of the ACS, the national ACS, the Open Society Institute and the Center for American Progress are putting on a conference at Yale Law School that will discuss and plan how to build a movement within the legal community that will do the same for progressives -- law shaped to serve the many, rather than the few and the powerful. The conference is titled The Constitution in 2020. And National ACS is launching a new Constitution in the 21st Century project to continue the discussion that will begin this weekend.
Like all the best stuff being done on the center-left right now. This isn't about 2006 or 2008 or figuring how all the cards might fall right in this or that cycle. It's about creating the building blocks of progressive reform, one step at a time, one lawyer at a time, one new idea at a time, building networks of like-minded individuals who create enduring change. That's stuff that doesn't show results in a week or a month; but it endures. And if done wisely, it's something progressives need a lot more of.
In any case, the conference goes from Friday the 8th through Sunday the 10th. Some of the noteworthy participants include Judge Guido Calabresi and former Judge Patricia Wald, former Solicitors General Drew Days and Seth Waxman, former Acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger, former Dean of Stanford Law School Kathleen Sullivan, ACS Executive Director Lisa Brown, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress John Podesta, Cory Booker, and constitutional scholars and big-think big-wigs Bruce Ackerman and Cass Sunstein.
Pre-registration is required; but the conference is open to the public with a nominal fee (15 bucks) for attendence. You can see the full schedule here. And they're even chattering about it already on a new conference blog.
It's open to the press too. So if you're within a reasonable distance of New Haven and you care about these issues, you might want to stop by.
--Josh Marshall
Now a newspaper in New York Rep. John Sweeney's (R) district has offered to put on a townhall meeting for him to discuss Social Security with his constituents. These folks have the details.
--Josh Marshall
Good news from Iraq from the AP ...
Lawmakers put the finishing touches Tuesday on an agreement making Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani president and Shiite Adel Abdul-Mahdi and interim President Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab, his two vice presidents.On Thursday, the 275 lawmakers elected Jan. 30 likely will name Shiite leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari prime minister, clearing the way for lawmakers to begin focusing their attention on writing a permanent constitution by their Aug. 15 deadline.
Every step is a small one. But these are all in right direction.
--Josh Marshall
Don't go! Don't go!
With news now breaking that Rep. Tom DeLay had a 1997 trip to Russia paid for by lobbyists who were, in some fashion or another, working on behalf of the Russian government, there must be a few Democrats out there who worry that he might actually be taken out by these burgeoning scandals. After all, he's great for the Dems. Heck, we're even planning on having a section of the new site we're launching devoted to tracking the DeLay/Abramaff scandal. So it might even require some site redesign on our end.
But, really, I wouldn't worry.
Even if the White House tries to get rid of DeLay (which would not surprise me) I doubt he'll go that easily. And even if he goes, actually make that when he goes, the truth is (and anybody who covers the Hill knows this) that his corruption has seeped all through the House GOP caucus.
There's a reason they call it the DeLay machine. It's not just DeLay. It's a system of organized corruption that many, many Republican members of the House have benefited from. Not all corruption is illegal or even against congressional ethics rules, mind you. But enough of it is, as we're now seeing with DeLay. And he's splashed his mud all over the House.
Late Update: Two other points about DeLay, or rather one question with possibly two answers. Who's turning on the bug man? Call me cynical: but Drudge is playing this story awfully prominently. That makes me wonder whether a thumb at the White House that used to be turned up just turned down. More concretely, a lot of DeLay's lieutenants are now under indictment or on their way there. Eventually, you've got to figure one of them starts to squeal. You've seen Deliverance, right?
--Josh Marshall
So let's see where we are.
The president went to Parkersburg today and said, didn't hint, but said that the Social Security Trust Fund doesn't exist. In other words, he said that the Treasury notes that make up the Trust Fund won't be paid back. And that means that he intends for the government to default on that portion of the national debt.
I know he didn't unpack it that way. But that very much is what it means
Let's break it down to essentials and explain what we're talking about.
For two decades your Social Security payroll taxes have been used to offset the cost of upper-income tax cuts. If I'm not mistaken that money has been used at the highest rate (i.e., in absolute dollars terms per year) under this President Bush. The money is supposed to be paid back, with interest.
That's the deal. That's what bonds are.
But now the president stands there holding on to one of these notes and jokes that they're not worth anything.
Foreigners hold quite a bit of US debt. What are theirs worth? Are they going to get their money paid back?
Wealthy Americans do too. In fact, most of President Bush's personal wealth is in the form of US government debt. Is he going to get his money paid back?
He wants to borrow $5 trillion more. Are those folks going to get paid back?
That's what this is all about. Defaulting on that portion of the federal debt. Those folks will all get their money back. But the president figures you can be stiffed.
If you pay most of your taxes in payroll taxes (like the overwhelming majority of Americans) he's trying to play you for a fool.
Simple as that.
Late Update: Here's a number someone should run. President Bush has been president for four years. He's run very big deficits and during that same period, if I'm not mistaken, Social Security has been running very big surpluses. So his government has been sticking the Social Security administration with Treasury notes that he says and believes are worthless. Obviously the debt obligations of the United States government don't begin and end with each new presidency. That would what, at least until recently, differentiated us from the banana republics of the world. But if he really believes these obligations will never be paid back, why did he use that money -- what must amount to hundreds of billions of dollars -- to subsidize his tax cuts?
--Josh Marshall
Good stuff!
Democratic Whip, Rep. Steny Hoyer's office has an informative and fun calendar posted documenting the first half of the president's Bamboozlepalooza Tour, with a nugget of bad press for each day of the tour so far.
Definitely give it a look.
Ahhhh, March 11th, the NYT reports Bush reduced to using Bamboozlepalooza to win over Republicans. Brings back memories. Okay, okay, I'll spare you ...
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader BD sends along word that Sen. John Cornyn has posted the full text of the speech he gave on the floor yesterday on his senate website. Presumably this is in an effort to blunt the controversy over his remarks by putting them in the context of the entire speech. To me, the offending passage -- suggesting a connection between judicial activism and violence against judges -- speaks for itself, notwithstanding the fact that other passages say (what else do you expect?) that such violence cannot be justified.
But, no need to take my word for it. Read the context and decide for yourself.
(ed.note: For reference and searching sake, the passage that has caused the controversy begins 'Finally, I don't know'.)
--Josh Marshall
Sen. John Cornyn's hometown is San Antonio, Texas. And San Antonio is a city with some tragic experience with violence against judges.
On May 29th, 1979, a killer-for-hire, Charles Voyde Harrelson murdered Federal District Judge John Wood Jr.
In the words of a New York Times article (11/20/1982) that appeared three years later during Harrelson's trial, he hid "in ambush outside the judge's apartment [and] used a high-powered rifle to shoot Judge Wood in return for a $250,000 payment from a drug dealer [Jamiel Chagra] who was facing trial before the judge."
(ed.note: Note of thanks to TPM Reader JW. And for those of you who are addicted to trivia, yes, Harrelson is the father of actor Woody Harrelson.)
--Josh Marshall
Who was in charge of rapid-response for the president's visit this morning to the Bureau of Public Debt in Parkersburg, West Virginia, the physical home of the Treasury notes that make up the Social Security Trust Fund?
Half the point of President Bush's privatization jihad is to make off with all that money which is owed to future recipients. And here he goes to case the joint, but I'm not hearing a lot about it.
Here's an update from the local paper.
--Josh Marshall
Dallas Morning News on Sen. Cornyn's new theory of violence against judges.
--Josh Marshall
A TPM Reader with a question for Sen. Cornyn ...
Sen. Cornyn hypothesized that violent acts against judges are the work of people reacting against "unaccountable political decisions" by judges. Really? Perhaps the Senator could flesh that theory out a little to Judge Joan Lefkow of Chicago, who recently endured the murder of her husband and mother. Is that one of the "episodes of courthouse violence" that Cornyn refers to? Exactly what unaccountable political decisions did Judge Lefkow make that led the deranged Ross to brutally murder her family? Cornyn owes Judge Lefkow an apology for this apalling and outrageous comment.
The Lefkow case clearly was one of the instances of violence Cornyn was referring to. That, and presumably the murder of Judge Barnes in Atlanta.
--Josh Marshall
In case you haven't stopped by our Special Edition Bankruptcy Bill blog recently, Professor Elizabeth Warren has posted a detailed response to Judge Richard Posner's and economist Gary Becker's blog endorsement of the Bankruptcy Bill.
--Josh Marshall
One of the great weaknesses of blogs, across the political spectrum, is the repeated and convulsive expression <$Ad$> of more or less contrived outrage. Of course, some of the folks are just outrage-addicts and so it's not contrived, but more of an addiction. But same difference.
Yet at the risk of committing the sin I've just described or the malady I've just diagnosed, I invite everyone to again look at this statement today from floor of the United States senate in which Sen. Cornyn (R) Texas suggested that a slow build-up of outrage against activist judges may be the root cause of the recent rash of murders and assaults against members of the judiciary around the country.
(Bear in mind that Cornyn is a former District Court judge, a former member of the Supreme Court of Texas and a former Texas Attorney General.)
I'll print it one more time ...
I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news and I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in - engage in violence.Let alone the fact that the statement is ridiculous on its face since violence against judges in this country is almost exclusively the work of disgruntled defendents or homicidal maniacs who manage to wrestle a gun away from a bailiff, what Cornyn is trying to suggest here seems genuinely outrageous.
I'm curious to know whether you agree.
Late Update: The Post has picked up the story. And if anything, the context of the statement some of which they provide, makes the statement even more of a stunner. The passage I quoted above was apparently preceded by this: "It causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority that they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions. [Sometimes] the Supreme Court has taken on this role as a policymaker rather than an enforcer of political decisions made by elected representatives of the people."
Still A Later Update: Let's not forget that Sen. Cornyn is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Bush White House.
--Josh Marshall
I think we may have found the Achilles' heel of the House Republican majority: Incompetent schedulers.
It was barely two weeks ago, you'll remember, when President Bush came to Albuquerque to hold a Bamboozlepalooza event in Rep. Heather Wilson's (R) district. But, Wilson couldn't be there because she was "on a long-planned trip with her husband and two children."
And now it seems the same sort of snafu has cropped up happening again. Tomorrow morning, as we reported last week, President Bush is heading to Parkersburg, West Virginia to get an up close look at his legacy. That is to say, he's doing a walk through of the Bureau of Public Debt. That's where he'll check out the Treasury notes in the Social Security Trust Fund, the ones he wants the country to default on.
The other reason for making a pit stop in Parkersburg is to do an event in the district of Conscience Caucus member, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R). Unfortunately, according to her staff, Capito won't be able to make it because she has a previously scheduled meeting to discuss medical malpractice suit abuse with West Virginia doctors visiting Washington.
In other news, Capito had a recent profile in courage moment when she said: "I'm glad I'm undecided. I don't want to react to something that's never going to come down the pike."
That's really weaseltude for the ages.
(ed.note: Notes of thanks to TPM Readers RP, RM and JEH.)
--Josh Marshall
Apropos of Sen. John Cornyn's suggestion today that judicial activism may be an underlying cause of the rash of murders of judges and their families, perhaps the Democrats need to introduce a sense of the senate resolution condemning those who threaten violence against judges or offer excuses for those who commit violent acts against members of the bench.
--Josh Marshall
Amazing.
I'm told Sen. John Cornyn (R) <$NoAd$> of Texas just said the following on the senate floor ...
I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news and I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in - engage in violence.
So the recent murders of judges and their families are blow-back from widespread judicial activism?
Suddenly the folks in robes are like the girl who dresses too provocatively to the fraternity dance.
And who knew Cornyn and crew wanted to embrace Brian Nichols, the accused rapist who murdered Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes and three others last month, as one of their own?
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JC makes a good point: Do you wanna trust Tommy Lasorda with your Social Security after what he did to Orel Hershiser's arm? I didn't think so.
--Josh Marshall
This letter of support for the nomination of John Bolton is so strong that one of the 65 signatories couldn't help but sign it twice.
--Josh Marshall
Not your granddaddy's Bamboozlepalooza!!!
Today's Roll Call (sub. req.) has a piece, announcing renewed White House-Congressional coordination pushing phase-out <$NoAd$> and what I guess is some sort of super-duper now-we're-serious Bamboozlepalooza.
“We’re looking at putting all the bells and whistles on the Social Security message train,” said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who himself appeared to be off message last week when he said a Social Security overhaul, including private accounts, may not be possible until next spring.Indeed, getting nervous Republican Members to publicly support the White House’s proposal is a key goal of the campaign, which begins this week with high-profile House and Senate press conferences and a staged Senate floor debate between Republicans and Democrats.
“It’s important that Republican leaders on the Hill and in the White House show Members that they’re very serious when it comes to communicating the message on Social Security,” said Bonjean. “It shows the seriousness that our leaders have toward reforming Social Security by pounding home our message on a weekly basis.”
Republican spindoctors in Congress hope that all the planned events over the next month will complement the president’s own 60-day speaking tour. Bush reached his 30-day midpoint on Friday.
It's worth noting that most of the big quotes come from Hastert's guy Ron Bonjean. And this whole piece may be something Hastert felt he needed to do after he found that severed horse head at the foot of his bad over the weekend. (After all, they've gotten better men than Hastert to recant after a trip to The Chamber.)
But, this definitely isn't over.
So let's see those senators and reps get up on the floor and announce their support for phase-out. Let's draw the drum tighter. We can't wait. Especially the switch-hitters like Chris Chocola and Heather Wilson and Jeb Bradley. For now let's just start with the Conscience Caucus list. Who among them is going to flip?
--Josh Marshall
Ahhhh, ye olde flippity-floppity ...
Last week Speaker Denny Hastert told National Journal that it might not be possible to get a phase-out bill passed this year.
"Politically," he said, "we probably need to get something done by next spring, a year from now. You can't carry it right up to an election. That's just political dynamite."
Today, Hastert's spokesman Ron Bonjean tells Roll Call they took the Speaker's words out of context: "The Speaker wants to get Social Security done by the end of this year. It’s not like he’s doubtful we can get it done this year.”
--Josh Marshall
I'd figured that with all the <$NoAd$> astroturf maestros behind Progress for America that they'd have a more selective spread with their Tommy Lasorda phase-out phone calls. But we're hearing from not just Dems but Dem activists and even officeholders who've been getting the call. And now this one ...
Josh --Congrats on getting hitched, BTW ...
Anyway, I also got a robo call from Tommy Lasorda. I live in Scottsdale, AZ, so I thought he would told me to call Hayworth, McCain or Kyl. Yet he told me to call Chuck Grassley! Why would Grassley listen to me -- I'm not an Iowan!
Anyway just thought you should know,
AC
They're going to get Grassley off the dime with a flood of calls from Arizona?
--Josh Marshall
For those of you in the New York City area, our friend Ruth Gerson is going to be performing at the Mercury Lounge at 217 E. Houston Street tomorrow evening, April 5th, at 7 PM.
The New York Times Jon Parales said: "With a voice that rises from tender endearments to a bluesy, impassioned growl, Ruth Gerson sings folk-rock songs that reach for the status of anthems; she's a Bob Dylan fan who can be as galvanic as Bruce Springsteen."
Stop by.
--Josh Marshall