TPM Reader DS chimes in: "All we need for ultimate confirmation is for Russert to call it the "constitutional nuclear option" tomorrow on MTP as he did with 'personal private accounts.'"
--Josh Marshall
A unified Times theory of GOP bamboozlement!
The LA Times gets hoodwinked too. From yesterday's paper: "Frist is expected to try as early as next week to push the Senate to ban filibusters on judicial nominations — a move so explosive that Democrats are calling it the 'nuclear option.'"
(ed.note: Thanks to TPM Reader DW for catching the West Coast bamboozlement.)
--Josh Marshall
As long as prestige press outfits like the Times and others are willing to embrace whichever self-serving phrase either political party demands as the debate on judges debate continues, certainly Democrats need to get into the act.
And TPM Reader RR makes an inspired suggestion which, I think, more faithfully captures what's in play than either 'nuclear' or 'constitutional'.
It's the Crybaby Option.
As he puts it, "Oh, boo-hoo, we only got 95% of what we wanted so we're changing the rules. Waaaaah!"
Sort of like at a seven-year-old's birthday party where they want the parent to change the rules of Pin the Tail on the Donkey because they're not winning every time.
They really are babies. So call them on it.
--Josh Marshall
Collaborative research is a wonderful thing.
When last we spoke, we were telling you how Republican press operatives were fanning out to editorial rooms around Washington and New York, attempting to ban the phrase 'nuclear option' from print and airwave, unless it is duly noted as a Democrat-created smear phrase.
We also noted one first small success in this new Republican lexical jihad. Today's Times notes that when discussing the abolishing of the filibuster: "Democrats call this the nuclear option, while Republicans call this a constitutional option."
As we went on to explain, this is pure crap. Republicans call it the "nuclear option" all the time.
Or at least they did until a couple days ago when some as yet undocumented focus group showed it didn't poll well. Indeed, Republicans have seemed most to relish the term, gleefully relishing its aura of threat and intimidation. Such was the case for instance when the Rev. Jerry Falwell told Ralph Neas on Crossfire on February 16th that if the Democrats persisted in not approving all of President Bush's nominees "he [i.e., Sen. Frist] will in fact impose the nuclear option. And there will be a 51-vote necessity only. When that happens, you guys are dead in the water, and you ought to be."
But who actually came up with the term?
When I first heard yesterday about these latest Republican word game antics, I was pretty sure that it was the Republicans themselves who coined the phrase 'nuclear option', for the reasons I note above. But I wasn't sure of the details.
But, in fact, as many of you have now written in, it seems that the guy who came up with this notorious Democratic smear was none other than its prime proponent, Sen. Trent Lott (R) of Mississippi.
For more on this we listen in on Jeffrey Toobin's piece from March 7th issue of The New Yorker ...
Changing the Senate’s rules on judicial filibustering was first addressed in 2003, during the successful Democratic filibuster against Miguel Estrada, whom Bush had nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Ted Stevens, a Republican Senate veteran from Alaska, was complaining in the cloakroom that the Democratic tactic should simply be declared out of order, and, soon enough, a group of Republican aides began to talk about changing the rules. It was understood at once that such a change would be explosive; Senator Trent Lott, the former Majority Leader, came up with “nuclear option,” and the term stuck.
You might have thought getting gamed on 'privatization' might have led some of these newshounds to a greater skepticism the next time those RNC operatives came calling. But it seems we have not yet plumbed the depths of the 'spank me, spank me' journalistic ethic.
--Josh Marshall
Are things going even worse for the GOP on judges than I thought?
If you're conversant with the Republican national political debate taxonomy, you know that there is a point at roughly 15 to 16 days after the GOP starts losing a debate that crack teams of specially trained GOP spinmeisters are sent out to bamboozle gullible newspaper editors and TV producers into changing their vocabulary to make it conform to the latest findings of GOP focus groups.
And it seems they've found their first easy mark.
At the tail end of David Kirkpatrick's piece in Saturday's Times is this graf (emphasis added) ...
Current Senate rules require 60 votes to close debate on a confirmation, allowing Democrats to thwart the action by mustering 41 votes. Republicans want to lower the threshold for closing debate on all nominations to a simple majority. Democrats call this the nuclear option, while Republicans call this a constitutional option.
Now, maybe I'm just selective in my memory. But I seem to remember Republicans and Democrats using this phrase all the $%*#%&@ time. Needless to say, what's <$Ad$> happened now is that Republicans are getting bad results in the polls. So they've come up with a new smiley-face vocabulary and they're hitting all the newsrooms telling editors that it's an example of bias to use the phrase 'nuclear option' since that's a slur devised by Democrats.
So is it really true that only Democrats use this phrase?
Well, setting aside that everyone who's listened to this debate for more than ten seconds knows that most Republicans used this phrase as their preferred one until about ten days ago, I still wanted to go back to the records and check. And I needed some way to narrow down the search. So I tried searching the Weekly Standard for any articles which included the word 'filibuster' and 'nuclear option'.
I came up with four hits, the first of which was from September 2004.
In the first article you don't have to go too far beyond the title: "Full Court Press; Will Senate Republicans 'go nuclear' over judges?"
Down into the article, author Duncan Currie writes, "With 10 nominations now blocked by filibuster, many GOP senators say it's time to use the 'nuclear option'--or, as they prefer to call it, the 'constitutional option.'" But even Currie seemed unable to keep a straight face for this early example of GOP word game bamboozlement since he continued to use the 'nuclear option' phrase through the rest of the article.
In December of last year, Currie was again writing about the subject and again using the phrase "nuclear option."
Then less than two weeks ago, on April 7th, Currie used this as the third line of yet another judges article: "Republicans talk of a 'nuclear option' to break the impasse."
The fourth example seems particularly apt since it actually takes place in the future -- the publication date is April 25th. In an editorial penned for the editors Philip Terzian, the first graf reads ...
THE SENATE MAJORITY LEADER, Bill Frist, and his Republican colleagues, face a momentous decision: Do they allow the Democratic minority to prevent the Senate from voting on judicial nominees, or do they invoke the "nuclear option"--that is, change the rules so a simple majority of 51 can force a vote?
Now, let's be frank. There's no intrinsic reason why banning filibusters for judicial nominations should be called the 'nuclear option'. And if Republicans want to start referring to it as the 'judicial act of love' they can do that. But one side in a debate shouldn't be able to order the refs in the game to rewrite the lexicon just because people don't like what's happening. And yet that's just what's happening. Republicans are now making a concerted push at a whole slew of news organizations, trying to convince them to stop using the term in their coverage, on the argument that it's an attack phrase concocted by the Democrats. And it would seem the editors and producers are either too ignorant or too lily-livered not to let them have their way.
Perhaps we can just call ending filibusters 'privatization'.
--Josh Marshall
TPMCafe Fundraiser Update!
First, again, thank you. We've now had over 500 readers contribute. And we're well on our way to raising the funds we'll need for the new site.
We've had more people asking this. So just to repeat: if you don't want to send a contribution via PayPal, you can find instructions here on how to send a check by mail. We'll be changing the page that the graphic on the right links to so that we won't have to keep pointing this out in posts. We'll also be adding a brief FAQ to that page that should cover the most frequently asked questions about our fundraiser. (I guess that's why they call it a FAQ.)
Finally, in addition to these public thanks above, you'll be hearing from us individually by email to express our appreciation. But there are already over 500 contributors. And the emails are not automated, but sent individually. So we're a tad behind. I appreciate your patience and you'll be hearing from us shortly.
--Josh Marshall
Andrew Sullivan nails this point so dead-on in this post, that I'm going to quote <$NoAd$> the post in toto ...
QUOTE FOR THE DAY I: "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote -- where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference ... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish -- where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source -- where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials." - president John F. Kennedy. At the time, the speech was regarded as an attempt to refute anti-Catholic prejudice. Today, wouldn't the theocons regard it as an expression of anti-Catholic prejudice? Wouldn't Bill Frist see president Kennedy as an enemy of "people of faith"? Just asking.
Clarifies where we are, doesn't it?
--Josh Marshall
This really is quite something.
This page right here is the one I go to to check the weather. It's put out by the National Weather Service. It's a lot like some commercial ones, only it has more information, costs nothing and contains no ads.
But as the Carpetbagger Report notes here, Sen. Santorum (R) of Pennsylvania has introduced a bill that would ban the federal government's meteorologists from making this information available for free since that creates a problem for outfits like The Weather Channel and AccuWeather, which want to sell it.
Plenty of federal legislation these days boils down to this sort of rip-off of the public. But seldom is the equation so clear.
You paid for the data. Your tax dollars fund a massive apparatus of meteorological data collection for reasons ranging from agriculture to disaster safety to keeping airplanes in the air -- everything under the sun. You pay for it and this is just the feds making it available to you on a website. The cost of letting you access it must be minuscule compared to that of collecting it. Indeed, most of the data these other guys sell is stuff they get from the feds or fed-subsidized data collection.
So they're in the business of selling to you the information that your tax dollars already went into collecting. And apparently they add so little added value that they can't handle the competition when the National Weather Service just gives it away. Santorum wants to make these guys into some sort of information age tax farmers.
This article in the Palm Beach Post goes into greater detail on the bill. And you can see from its proponents feeble justifications just what a con this is. They note, for instance, that the bill would not prevent the National Weather Service from alerting the public to imminent disasters, which is awfully generous of them.
Indeed, the executive vice president of AccuWeather, Barry Myers, probably had to have his face specially treated with some sort of fixing agent to prevent him from laughing out loud when he told the Post that the "bill would improve public safety by making the weather service devote its efforts to hurricanes, tsunamis and other dangers, rather than duplicating products already available from the private sector."
You just can't make this stuff up.
--Josh Marshall
As noted earlier, next Tuesday, Sen. Grassley (R) of Iowa is convening the Senate Finance Committee to begin writing a Social Security phase-out bill for passage in the senate. But you don't need to be one of our readers on the committee to make your voice heard.
If you live in the Washington area and you don't like what Sen. Grassley is doing under the president's orders, you can make your voice heard within earshot of the senator at the anti-privatization rally being held on the Upper Senate Park at the corner of Delaware and Constitution Avenues at 1 PM that afternoon, Tuesday, April 26th.
If you want more details, click here. They (Americans United to Protect Social Security) also needs volunteers. So maybe if you can't make it on Tuesday, you can volunteer. For more on that, click here.
Now, maybe you're one of Sen. Grassley's constituents out in Iowa or one of the wobbly Sen. Smith's constituents in Oregon. And you can't make.
No problem.
They're also organizing rallies in a couple dozens cities across the country on Tuesday. They're in Pheonix and Des Moines, in Connecticut and Louisiana, and a bunch of other places. Heck, they're all over the place. So click here if you want to see if there's one you can get to.
It sounds corny. But I get asked by TPM Readers all the time how they can make some difference on Social Security. This stuff makes a big difference. It really does.
--Josh Marshall
Next down the pike from the White House, as you know, is "tax reform." That means either a Flat Tax or a much flatter tax. And whichever names you dress it up with or rationales used to justify it, it's a fancy way to describe putting more of the tax burden on middle income earners.
But an important article that ran last week in the Christian Science Monitor (and which TPM Reader AM brought to my attention yesterday) explains that our tax code is already pretty darn flat.
According to the article (which relies on statistics compiled by the Congressional Budget Office and the irreplaceable Bob McIntyre at Citizens for Tax Justice), the top 1% of earners currently pay an effective rate of 32.8%, when federal, state and local taxes are added together. The bottom 99%, meanwhile, pays 29.4%. And even more striking figure is the effective rate paid by the middle 20% on the income scale. That's, pretty much by definition, middle income earners -- whose average income is $34,500. They pay an effective rate of 27%.
So the top 1% (average income=$978,000) pays 32.8% and the middle 20% (average income=$34,500) pays 27%. I'd say that's pretty flat already.
Now, an important part of the equation is state and local taxes, which tend to be fairly regressive. But even when you look at only federal taxes, the tilt isn't that great.
Needless to say, the effect of all President Bush's tax cuts has been to make the tax code more flat -- and, of course, intentionally so. That's the agenda.
--Josh Marshall
From the bootlicks to power at The Note: "While the filibuster fight and Social Security are giving the opposition party rare unity, it doesn't mean the Democrats necessarily have any good ideas, any plan for the future, or any capacity to make gains from all this."
--Josh Marshall
Clear your throat. Because Sen. Grassley (R) has something he wants to shove down it.
As the Times reports this morning and USA Today did yesterday, Chairman Grassley plans to use the Finance Committee hearings he's scheduled for next week to produce a Republicans-only Social Security phase-out bill.
The thinking behind such a move would be that having an actual bill in the senate would give the president greater leverage to muscle Fainthearted senators like Sen. Pryor (D) of Arkansas over into the phase-out ranks.
Truth be told, I would not be surprised if Sen. Grassley is himself having something shoved down his throat here. But let's leave that discussion for another time and look instead at the Republican-side committee membership on the Finance Committee and consider whether Grassley can even get a bill out of committee.
The membership includes Grassley, Hatch, Lott, Snowe, Kyl, Thomas, Santorum, Frist, Smith, Bunning and Crapo.
Three names on that list will immediately stand out to TPM Readers: Snowe, Thomas and Smith, each of whom is currently listed in the Conscience Caucus, though with quite varying degrees of actual rather than notional conscience.
Snowe has been fairly outspoken in her opposition to private accounts. Sen. Smith (R) of Oregon has been much more a finger-in-the-wind man on phase-out. But in mid-February, when Portland Oregonian columnist David Sarasohn asked him point-blank whether we were right to put him in the Conscience Caucus ... well, here's what happened ...
Is the Conscience Caucus the accurate address for him?"That's an appropriate conclusion," says Smith. "I have not signed up to anyone's plan.
"I'm open to the debate. I'm keeping my counsel."
So it sounds like Sen. Grassley may be making Sen. Smith come out and say where he stands.
Then there's Sen. Craig Thomas (R) of Wyoming. Thomas's caucushood has flown a bit under Washington's radar, but as we noted on March 3rd, he told the editors of Jackson Hole News & Guide he wasn't crazy about the president's plan ...
Wyoming’s senior U.S. senator says the federal government must do something to change Social Security, but he is hesitant to embrace a plan for personal savings accounts put forth by the Bush administration.Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., said the federal government may not be "financially able" to take on the expense of the private savings plan, which he pegged at $2 trillion. Thomas said it does not make good financial sense to reduce the amount of money flowing into the Social Security trust fund at a time when payouts to baby boomers are projected to increase.
"I’m willing to talk about it, but I’m not persuaded at this point," Thomas said Thursday during a meeting with News&Guide reporters.
So that's three of the eleven Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee who have been telling their constituents that they're leaning against phase-out. We can't wait to see what they'll be telling them next week, since phase-out will be in their hands.
--Josh Marshall
On Powell and Bolton, the former's critics will, quite fairly, point out that Powell waited until Bolton's nomination had sustained what were quite probably fatal knocks before choosing to go public -- when the costs and risks were low and the potential pay-off high. Sort of the Powell Doctrine applied to Washington politics, you might say.
--Josh Marshall
Is Powell stepping forward to put Bolton out of his misery?
Articles in Friday's NYTimes and Post describe how the former Secretary of State (and Bolton's boss in the first administration) has been doing what amounts to behind-the-scenes lobbying against Bolton's nomination.
The truth is that Powell is very much not the only Republican foreign policy heavyweight working in private to scuttle Bolton's nomination. But the degree to which he's going public is sort of extraordinary. While giving no comments himself and not explicitly stating he's bad-mouthing Bolton, Powell did authorize his spokesperson to confirm on the record that he has had recent phone conversations with Sens. Chafee and Hagel about Bolton while quite pointedly giving no reason to think much of anything he said was positive. If you look further into the articles you can see pretty transparently that on background Powell's people confirmed in some detail just what the former Secretary is doing.
That may well be fatal to Bolton's nomination. The foothold Bolton's supporters have in this fight is their contention that the only reason Bolton's in trouble is that Democrats are trying to take him down to score political points. Indeed, President Bush made that argument just yesterday. But Powells now-public lobbying knocks that argument right out of the park.
Republican senators looking to deny the White House this nomination need some partisan cover; and Powell just gave it to them.
--Josh Marshall
More DeLay shenanigans on the Energy Bill. See this site to see how it might affect you.
Late Update: There's also this, the League of Conservation Voters' list of Tom's Tainted Team (I kinda like the sound of that), the ten members of the House who Tom relies on most when he wants to carry the water of companies polluting your drinking water with MTBE.
--Josh Marshall
The Hill reports that Sen. Santorum (R) wants to slow down the push the for nuclear option in the senate after seeing that the issue isn't polling well for the Republicans.
There's also <$NoAd$> this ...
GOP aides said Santorum has made known to the leadership reasons for why Republicans should not move forward on the nuclear or constitutional option.“He was concerned that too many things are competing in the same area and you couldn’t get a clean shot at it,” a GOP aide said. The aide cited the “fallout” from congressional Republicans’ intervening in a Florida court’s decision to remove Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube and the subsequent controversy caused by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s (R-Texas) statement that “the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”
Democrats portrayed that statement as an incitement against judges, and it resulted in a spate of media critiques of DeLay and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who made a speech on the Senate floor raising the question of why judges are targets of violence.
Senate and House Democrats have woven the Republican intervention in the Schiavo issue, DeLay’s statement about judges who declined to save her life, and GOP consideration of the nuclear option into a broad message that Republicans are abusing power. John Bolton’s stalled nomination to become U.N. ambassador has also become a distraction.
Abusing power.
--Josh Marshall
Is anyone listening to this?
In remarks yesterday before the Bond Market Association -- one of the hardest partying groups on the street -- Treasury Secretary John Snow explicitly linked the administration's efforts to cut the deficit to the push to partially phase-out Social Security. The logic of that statement points to only one conclusion: the deficits the administration has run up with upper-income tax cuts will be reduced by benefit cuts in Social Security.
It's not about strengthening Social Security; it's about cleaning up the mess created by the president's tax cuts.
--Josh Marshall
Our TPMCafe pitch (hint, hint, hint) may have temporarily displaced the links to our Fainthearted Faction and Conscience Caucus, but that doesn't mean we've stopped keeping score.
In fact, in our next update you'll see that the Conscience Caucus list continues to grow, mostly <$NoAd$> out of sight of the national press.
But there's an article today in Roll Call (subscription req., unfortunately) which sheds some new light on happenings in the Fainthearted Faction. Under the headline, "White House, Democrats Meet, Quietly," Emily Pierce reports ...
Although Republicans have been publicly hammering Democrats for refusing to “come to the table” on a plan to overhaul Social Security, many moderate Senate Democrats have been meeting privately with White House officials to talk about what they may or may not be able to support.
On balance, when you get through the whole story, it's basically the same old story: lots of meetings, but no sign of real movement.
Of interest to TPM Readers, though, will be Pierce's list of the three senate Dem gettables. Sens. Conrad and Nelson of Nebraska are already down in the Senate Faction. But she also lists Sen. Pryor of Arkansas ...
“I have not yet heard an idea that I can vote for,” said Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), who noted that he met with Bush administration officials to discuss Social Security two weeks ago. “I’m someone who is open and listening, but not someone who is supportive at this point.”...
Pryor and Conrad, along with Nelson, are seen by the White House as the three Democratic Senators most likely to be persuaded to back President Bush’s proposal to allow workers to divert a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into private investment accounts.
Though he refused to confirm which Members the Bush administration is targeting, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said conversations that administration officials have had with select Democrats “have been very positive discussions and active discussions, which we view as very encouraging.”
Duffy added that the Democrats who have come to White House “want to keep the lines of communication open so we can solve the problem now.”
...
“They were still at a conceptual stage. It’s not like they had a real firm proposal,” said Pryor. “I told them, ‘You all need to come to Congress with a proposal, even if you have to use a back channel.’”
Now, as I said, Conrad and Nelson are old Fainthearted Faction regulars. And Sen. Lieberman has remained there not so much because of new statements or actions (most of which have been pretty supportive of Social Security) but what we might call accumulated soft-on-Social-Security mojo. Actually, I think Lieberman is the only member of Congress who's gone on and then back off of the list multiple times. But with this new information, we're taking Lieberman of Connecticut off the list and replacing him with Sen. Pryor (D) of Arkansas.
--Josh Marshall
Here's a question with some particular relevance to the Bolton nomination, but with a broader relevance to how business is conducted in Washington today: If a foreign government provides money to a Washington think tank to produce studies or hold meetings about that foreign government's relationship with the United States, should those payments have to be disclosed?
--Josh Marshall
I understand that the voting cardinals who took part in the conclave that elected Benedict XVI as the new pope took an oath of perpetual secrecy about what happened in the conclave. And yet many of them now seem willing to discuss rather precise details of what occurred on the record for the daily papers. I'll let the canon lawyers decide whether that's a problem for the cardinals. But it makes for good journalism. This piece out in Thursday's Post gives one of the first clear narratives of how Benedict came to be chosen.
--Josh Marshall
As noted earlier, if you would like to contribute to our TPMCafe.com fundraiser by check rather than by PayPal, we've now posted instructions for doing so here. Once again, thanks so much for making our new venture possible. Every contribution is greatly appreciated.
--Josh Marshall
So true, so true. President Bush today, while signing the Bankruptcy Bill: "If someone does not pay his or her debts, the rest of society ends up paying them."
Tell it to the Trust Fund.
--Josh Marshall
First, a very sincere thank you to everyone who's contributed so far in our fundraiser for launching TPMCafe.com (see this post for more details on the new site). As of mid-afternoon, we're coming up on 250 contributors so far. So that puts us a decent notch toward our eventual goal.
A number of you have written in to say that you would prefer to send a check rather than use PayPal. So this evening we'll be posting instructions for sending contributions by check through the mail.
If you haven't had a chance to contribute yet, well ... there's no time like the present! Just click right here and you can send us a contribution toward our new effort in just a couple minutes time.
--Josh Marshall
The JTA is reporting that AIPAC is now "negotiating severance packages" with Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, the two staffers at the center of the espionage investigation that broke last fall involving Pentagon civilian employee Larry Franklin, AIPAC and the possible passing of highly classified US intelligence to Israel. See the top item under 'Breaking News' on their site.
Late Update: The Forward has more details in this story just posted on their website (which they've made available to non-subscribers).
--Josh Marshall
According to a just-released Quinnipiac University poll, Democrat Robert Casey Jr. holds a 14 point lead over Sen. Rick Santorum (R) for next year's senate race. Quinnipiac has it at 49% to 35%, compared to 46%-41% in February. For Rick Santorum, phase-out may take on a whole new meaning.
--Josh Marshall
A good place to go to dig deeper into all the questions surrounding the Church, the new Pope and what it all means for Catholics and non-Catholics alike: Commonweal magazine.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, enough threatening to hold a fundraiser, here we go.
As I've mentioned several times now, we're launching a new site, TPMCafe.com, a companion site to Talking Points Memo. It will include a new group blog with an exciting list of contributors, a handful of topic-specific blogs like our Special Edition Bankruptcy Blog and discussion areas where we're going to try to facilitate more of what readers allowed us to do in tracking the Social Security debate in the first months of this year.
We're hoping to launch next month.
It will be a work-in-progress and, with your feedback, we'll make changes and let the site evolve as we go.
But we need your help to get started. Simple as that. Even small contributions go a long way. Click here to contribute.
And please accept our sincere thanks and appreciation in advance.
--Josh Marshall
The video of Tuesday's topsy-turvy Bolton hearing has now been posted on the Crooks and Liars website. And, no, any apparent similarity between the nominee and the name of the site is purely coincidental.
--Josh Marshall
There's a profoundly disturbing article out tonight from the AP about what appears to be a widespread climate of intolerance and even harassment of non-evangelical Christians at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. 'Widespread' is a vague word. And I'm only going on the basis of this one article -- and I'd strongly recommend reading the whole piece to decide for yourself if I'm using the correct word. But what the piece describes at least is not a matter of a few outrageous incidents but something much more pervasive.
Here's the passage that stands out to me ...
''There were people walking up to someone and basically they would get in a conversation and it would end with, `If you don't believe what I believe you are going to hell,''' Vice Commandant Col. Debra Gray said.Critics of the academy say the sometimes-public endorsement of Christianity by high-ranking staff has contributed to a climate of fear and violates the constitutional separation of church and state at a taxpayer-supported school whose mission is to produce Air Force leaders.
They also say academy leaders are desperate to avoid the sort of uproar that came with the 2003 scandal in which dozens of women said their complaints of sexual assault were ignored.
''They are deliberately trivializing the problem so that we don't have another situation the magnitude of the sex assault scandal. It is inextricably intertwined in every aspect of the academy,'' said Mikey Weinstein of Albuquerque, N.M., a 1977 graduate who has sent two sons to the school. He said the younger, Curtis, has been called a ''filthy Jew'' many times.
The superintendent, Lt. Gen. John Rosa, conceded there was a problem during a recent meeting of the Board of Visitors, the civilian group that oversees the academy.
''The problem is people have been across the line for so many years when you try and come back in bounds, people get offended,'' he said.
The board chairman, former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, warned Rosa that changing things could prove complicated. He said evangelical Christians ''do not check their religion at the door.''
These articles are always hard to evaluate since you don't get a sense of who the 'critics' are, how many of them there are, or even some objective measure of how legitimate their beef is. Though inappropriate, a few of the other incidents mentioned in the piece don't seem in themselves to be causes of great concern. But the Rosa quote above seems to suggest that there is a very real problem. And what's with Gilmore's response?
The piece ends with this delightful passage ...
Two of the nation's most influential evangelical Christian groups, Focus on the Family and New Life Church, are headquartered in nearby Colorado Springs. Tom Minnery, an official at Focus on the Family, disputed claims that evangelical Christians are pushing an agenda at the academy, and complained that ''there is an anti-Christian bigotry developing'' at the school.
Anti-Christian bigotry. That's marvelous. <$NoAd$>Needless to say, Focus on the Family is SpongeBob persecutor and Arch-Wingnut James Dobson's outfit.
--Josh Marshall
Many liberal Catholics await Benedict XVI's pontificate with dismay or even foreboding. But a dear friend calls my attention to this update on the Catholics Against Capital Punishment website which says Benedict played an "instrumental" role in strengthening the Church's opposition to capital punishment. That doesn't change the larger picture; but it adds a new dimension.
--Josh Marshall
This spring students at Swarthmore College, with the support of the school's administration, started producing a webcast called War News Radio. You can see a news release about it here and visit the broadcast site here.
Swarthmore has a tradition of political activism. And the aim of the broadcast is to cover the conflict in Iraq in all its dimensions -- from interviews with ordinary Iraqis to stories on returning US soldiers and everything in between, all with an eye to catching stories the mainstream media might miss. The first broadcast, for instance, featured an interview with a young Iraqi man who works as a clerk in one of the hotels that hosts many of the foreign press reporting from Baghdad.
It's still a work in progress. And Swarthmore is looking to hire a full-time journalist (at a full-time salary) -- with at least some radio or TV experience -- to oversee the project for a year, beginning this June. Age isn't important. What they are looking for is someone who will enjoy helping students find their own voice while mentoring them in responsible journalistic practices. If you're interested or know someone who might be, you can send them an email at swarthmorewnr@yahoo.com to find out more.
--Josh Marshall
A report from a TPM Reader on the <$NoAd$> Hill ...
Josh- I suspect that media reports of the hearing will clarify this point, but Hagel said he would vote Bolton out of committee, though he wasn't sure about confirming him on the floor. It was only when (much to everyone's surprise) Sen. Voinovich said that because he had missed some of the earlier hearings (he said he was chairing a subcommittee at the time), and had just learned of these allegations, that he would not vote Bolton out of committee today. Chafee sat silent through the entire hearing. Also, at some point find a good account of all the parliamentary tools Dems employed to delay the committee hearing, and how the Rs got it held anyhow (the Senate was in recess for about 3 hours today). It was a good preview of what will happen if/when we go nuclear.
I'm still quite curious to know the Voinovich backstory. Must have been some pretty engrossing subcommittee hearings if he hadn't heard about the charges leveled against Bolton.
--Josh Marshall
After letting the election of Benedict XVI sink in, the first thing I was curious to know was the reaction of Hans Kung, the Catholic theologian whose life has intersected with Ratzinger's at key points for both of them.
I found this in der Spiegel ...
Hans Kung, a respected German theologian and critic of Vatican policies whose license to teach was withdrawn by the Vatican in 1979 as a result of his criticisms against church policies, said he was "disappointed" by the decision. However, he compared it to an American presidential election and said people "should allow the pope 100 days to learn."
Here's the rest of the article.
--Josh Marshall
A big surprise on Bolton: Voinovich says he wants to hear more, delays the vote.
Hagel too, it turns out.
I guess that leaves someone from Rhode Island holding the water pail yet again.
--Josh Marshall
Wow. Cardinal Ratzinger becomes Pope Benedict XVI. I know he was spoken of frequently as a possible, even one of the most likely successors to John Paul II. But I'm still a bit stunned to see it.
--Josh Marshall
Our fundraiser for the new site gets under way later this week. So stay tuned for more.
--Josh Marshall
I spent way more time than I should have this weekend trying to distill my thoughts about the strategies and tactics Democrats should use to advance their agenda and unseat the Republican majority on Capitol Hill. Though my point was fairly straightforward -- forget about strategy and tactics, in so many words -- for some some reason I couldn't pull it together in a couple thousand words.
So let me, a bit more briefly, address how it applies to Social Security -- the issue that's on the table right now.
For starters, you may have seen this AP story that ran over the weekend, which read: "House Democrats have decided to quit emphasizing that they will not negotiate changes to Social Security until President Bush drops his idea for private accounts. The switch in strategy comes after Democrats learned from focus groups that people frown on the lawmakers for being obstinate."
Where to start?
The problem Democrats have is not bad tactics or bad strategies or poor framing. The problem is an over-reliance, even an addiction, to tactics and strategies.
For years I've argued that the Democrats' problem on national security issues is not so much that they aren't 'tough enough' or that they lack new ideas. The problem is a now-deeply-ingrained habit of approaching national security issues not so much as policy questions to be wrestled with but as a political problem to be dealt with and moved on from.
That has a host of damaging consequences, the most serious of which is that if you chart your policy course so as to avoid political damage, always casting about for the sweet spot of political safety, you tend to lack any greater programmatic consistency. And that tells voters (as it probably should) that you’re inconstant and unserious. It also muddles effective communication by confusing the communicators themselves about just what it is they are trying to say or accomplish.
What the last year has taught me -- both in good ways and bad -- is that this malady isn't limited to the national security domain but applies to Democrats pretty much across the board.
We hear a lot today about framing or being tougher or being united or dumping the failed consultants. But while each of these prescriptions has some element of merit, each also recapitulates the existing problem -- only dressing it up in clothes -- because each mistakes the disease for the cure.
When it comes to strategy and tactics, the current Democratic party is like a drunk in the early stages of recovery or a man or woman who keeps ending up in the same bad relationship again and again with different people. For folks like that, strong medicine is required. Indeed, they usually require steps, correctives, lists of dos-and-don'ts more drastic than anybody would ever need who didn't have a problem.
Today we hear Democrats asking whether they should take a hard line on Social Security or a soft line, stand in opposition or come up with a contending plan. Here's what I propose whenever Democrats have a question about just what stance to take on the Social Security debate.
One question ...
What is the actual policy outcome that would be most preferable on Social Security (to protect, preserve or augment it -- whatever) and how important is it that it take place in this Congress?
That's the first, second and third question.
That answer should drive everything else.
If add-on accounts are important to preserve Social Security or expand opportunities for middle class families to save for retirement, and if it’s important enough on the merits to make it a priority in this Congress, then let’s do it. Otherwise, I’d say forget it. Stick with opposing phase-out and take it to the voters. End of story.
If the demon rum of optics or tactical too-clever-by-halfism tries to slither its way back even into second or third, slap your wrist and get back with the program.
I'm not saying that the Democrats need to get in touch with their political or ideological roots or hold to orthodoxies. Nor is this an argument for political purism. My point is entirely agnostic on what the policy should be -- only that it should drive the politics.
Nor do I pretend that this will always generate the most effective political approach or the most supplely played tactical game. What I think is that we are dealing with a sick patient, one whose reasoning and judgment are often untrustworthy and one apt to slide back into the same old destructive habits without some firm and concrete correctives in place.
For a party so quick to get lost in the fog, this should be the compass.
--Josh Marshall
I opened the CNN website tonight to see a story about an American humanitarian aid worker killed by a car bomb in Iraq. And after I opened the story and glanced at the picture, I was reading the text, and suddenly I thought, "That's Marla!" Marla Ruzicka. I can't say I knew her particularly well. She lived in my building in DC for a while; I hung out with her at parties in town a handful of times. Nothing more.
Perhaps there's something or someone I'm forgetting. But thinking it over now I believe she's the first person I could say I knew in any real way who was killed over there.
I didn't know her nearly well enough to have any business describing her to you. I was always fuzzy about just what it was she did over in Iraq -- something you can find more information about in the various articles describing her death. I will leave it at sharing that memory. And may she rest in peace.
--Josh Marshall
Carl Pope, the executive director of The Sierra Club, has started his own blog. Click here to take a look.
--Josh Marshall
He just wants to be understood.
Tom DeLay: "It is unfortunate in our electoral system, exacerbated by our adversarial media culture, that political discourse has to get so overheated that it's not just arguments, but motives are questioned."
--Josh Marshall
