This stuff really is amazing. It's not just evolution that's beyond the pale anymore. Bush administration campaign flacks are making NASA employees put the word 'theory' in front of references to 'big bang' in NASA publications. Lucky we can still talk about dinosaurs.
It sounds broad brush but facts, empiricism really have become an issue of the day.
--Josh Marshall
You can see below that I've published a couple reader comments about the Muslim cartoon controversy in Europe. I should say, as I've said before many times, that when I reprint something a reader writes in to me that does not necessarily mean that I agree with it in every respect. Certainly, it's not random that I pick out one comment over another; the ones I pick have struck some chord for me and I want to pass them on. Still, don't read the reprinting as a proxy for agreement.
In any case, there is a hint of the absurd in this story, the way continents of people get swept up in reaction to some simple pictures. But this episode seems like a model for what I imagine we'll be living with for the rest of our lives. There's something peculiarly 21st century about this conflict -- both in the way that it's rooted in the world of media and also in the way that it shows these two societies or cultures ... well, all I can think of to use is the clunky 21st centuryism -- they can't interface. The gap is too large. The language is too different. One's coming in at 30 degree angle, the other at 90.
There were episodes vaguely like this in India during the Raj, probably in other parts of the British empire (read Churchill's The River War) and other European colonial empires. But the outraged Muslims were thousands of miles away from the colonial centers. So it was a problem of Imperial management. It didn't hit home.
For Europea and North America, this hits home.
A number of readers have written in this evening and explained that the source of Muslim outrage is not that Muslims are being stereotyped as violent. It is that there is a specific and deeply-held taboo in Islam against graphical portrayals of Mohammed. You're not supposed to draw pictures of Mohammed, to put it quite simply. And you're especially not supposed to draw pictures that are insulting of the religion or portray him in sacrilegious ways.
I know that. I already knew it. I know the whole backstory.
In isolation, in the abstract, it's certainly a taboo I'd want to respect, or at least not needlessly offend.
But all of that is beside the point. An open society, a secular society can't exist if mob violence is the cost of giving offense. And that does seem like what's on offer here. That's the crux of this issue -- that the response is threatened violence and more practical demands that such outrages must end. It's back to the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the Satanic Verses (which, if you're only familiar with it as a 'controversy' is a marvelously good book) -- if on a less literary and more amorphous level.
The price of blasphemy is death. And among many in the Muslim world it is not sufficient that those rules apply in their countries. They should apply everywhere. Perhaps something so drastic isn't called for -- at least in the calmer moments or settled counsels. But at least European governments are supposed to clamp down on their presses to heal the breach.
In a sense how can such claims respect borders? The media, travel and electronic interconnections of the world make borders close to meaningless.
So liberal mores versus theocratic mores. Where's the possible compromise? There isn't any. On the face of it this gets portrayed as an issue of press freedom. But this is much more fundamental. 'Press freedom' is just one cog in the machinery of a society that doesn't believe in or accept the idea of 'blasphemy'. Now, an important cog? Yes. But I think we're fooling ourselves to reduce this to something so juridical and rights based.
I don't want to imply this is only a Muslims versus modernity issue. I know not all Muslims embrace these views. More to the point, it's not only Muslims who do. You see it among the haredim in Israel. And I see it with an increasing frequency here in the US. Is it just me or does it seem that more and more often there are public controversies in which 'blasphemy' is considered some sort of legitimate cause of action -- as if 'blasphemy' can actually have any civic meaning in a society like ours. Anyway, you get the idea.
Much, probably most of what gets talked about as the 'war on terror' in politics today is a crock -- a stalking horse for political power grabs, a masquerade of rage and revanchism, a running excuse for why we've made so many stupid decisions over the last five years. In some cases, on a more refined plain, it's rooted in intellectual or existential boredom. But beyond all the mumbojumbo about how we're helping ourselves by permanently occupying Iraq and running the country's finances into the ground, there is a conflict. There is a basic rupture in the world.
(Along these lines, read this short Talk of the Town piece in this week's New Yorker. A lot of meaning is packed into a very short space.)
It's not the US or the West versus Islam. At least it's not that simple. In any case, the government in this country is too close to illiberalism, militarism and theocracy for that to work as a model. But it is there -- liberalism and authoritarianism, modernity and theocracy.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader NG: "I, for one am sick and tired of being bullied by fundamentalists of all stripes. The Muslims spend all their time being offended, and the Evangelicals in this country spend all their time on the offensive. I applaud the European papers who have republished the cartoons, and hope that some of that courage sets an example in this country."
--Josh Marshall
Waters rise for Ralph (AP) ...
On Friday, 21 of Georgia's 34 Republican state senators _ all Cagle supporters _ signed a letter urging Reed to withdraw from the race, saying his involvement in the Abramoff scandal "threatens to impact the entire Republican ticket."
--Josh Marshall
Tim Russert getting the low-down and secret handshake from Bob Novak -- pictures 1, 2 and 3.
Actually, if you look at picture 2 closely you can see Dick Parsons there in the background. He's the head of Time Warner who just hired Tom DeLay's chief of staff to be the chief lobbyist in DC for CNN.
These are from the Reflections photo archive -- the folks who helped scrub the Bush-Abramoff photos. So go look soon before they go down the memory hole too.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JL: "I know the incident with the cartoons in Denmark is now very difficult, but why has no journalist or anyone else pointed out the irony of the Muslims calling for the violent death of those who dared portray Muslims in an editorial cartoon as violent? Not to mention the anti-Semitic cartoons and print published throughout the Arab world on a regular basis. The situation is very scary. I'd like to read your thoughts on this."
--Josh Marshall
Can't get the monkey off his back? Rep. Tom DeLay doesn't just schedule his indictments and court appearances in Travis County, Texas. He's got some fundraisers on the docket too. Next week (actually, they've just rescheduled it) he's got a $2,100-a-plate dinner in town at the home of a local lobbyist.
--Josh Marshall
Pressure grows for an Abramoff special counsel. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Who's yer daddy, CNN?
You probably know that CNN has been doing a lot of late to get right with the Republican political machine in Washington.
But it turns out that even as Tom DeLay was entering his political death spiral late last year, CNN parent company Time Warner decided to ante up with the DeLay machine by hiring a key DeLay soldier as its chief DC lobbyist.
Can ya say K Street Project?
Tim Berry worked for Tom DeLay for ten years. He became his chief of staff in August 2002 just as the really fun stuff was starting to go down with the Texas money shenanigans and Jack Abramoff was really hitting his stride. As the LA Times put it, "Berry was DeLay's right-hand man as the majority leader came under fire over alleged ethics violations."
Then in the late summer of last year Time Warner decided Berry was their man. As John Bresnahan put it in Roll Call last year, "Berry said he had no intention of leaving DeLay's office, but Time Warner officials approached him recently with an offer he couldn't turn down."
As the Times put it, "the hiring of Berry is aimed at boosting Time Warner's influence with the GOP." And that's not surprising, I guess. But did Time Warner chief Richard Parsons and CNN really need to hire a guy at ground zero of the Congressional corruption meltdown, even after most of the facts were starting to spill out?
--Josh Marshall
AP: "A federal judge on Friday set former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's trial date for January 2007, two months after the midterm congressional elections. Libby, who faces perjury and obstruction of justice charges, will go on trial Jan. 8, said U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton. Walton said he had hoped to start the trial in September but one of Libby's lawyers had a scheduling conflict that made an earlier date impossible."
'Scheduling conflict'. Nice.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, so John Boehner is Majority Leader now. And you'd think he'd want to get behind him this on-going civil suit against Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA).
But maybe he can't. Maybe he's too far over-extended.
A quick perusal of the case shows that what Boehner is mainly after now is a recovery of his legal fees. Already in late 2004 his lawyer told the DC district court that he'd racked up $500,000 in legal fees. And Boehner wants McDermott to pay them. (In 1998 Boehner got permission from the FEC to use campaign money to fund the suit. Boehner's lawyer is GOP top gun lawyer Mike Carvin.)
That was a year and a half ago. The fees must be much higher now.
--Josh Marshall
What about that conference call Majority Leader Boehner was part of back in 1996 in which Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Boehner and a bunch of other Republicans plotted to defy the will 
of the House Ethics Committee?
Remember that?
This usually comes up in the news these days because Rep. Boehner has been pressing a longstanding civil suit against Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) over how the prohibited conversation took place.
To make a long story semi-short, Gingrich, DeLay, Dick Armey, Boehner and several others got together on a conference call to plot a counterattack against a finding of the House Ethics Committee -- something Gingrich was explicitly prohibited from doing as a condition of the punishment he received for various ethical infractions.
Boehner, though, called into the call on a cell phone. Because of that, a Florida couple picked up the conversation on a police scanner. They recognized Gingrich's voice, thought it sounded important and recorded it. They in turn gave a copy of the recording to Rep. McDermott who was then, co-chair of the Ethics Committee. McDermott later leaked copies of the recording to news organizations to show that Gingrich et al. had broken the rules.
The whole thing was a big to-do at the time.
Boehner later sued McDermott alleging violations of privacy and so forth. And he may well have a point (here's McDermott's side of the story and here's a post from John Aravosis on why the legal argument Boehner is pressing could have a seriously stifling effect on the press.)
But if that's a problem, it's McDermott's problem. It doesn't get Boehner off the hook. He did have the conversation. And he did plot with Gingrich and DeLay to obstruct the will of Ethics Committee, break House rules and to violate the terms of the punishment imposed on Gingrich.
The whole suit is a brilliant example of using the means of your getting caught to divert people's attention from what you got caught doing.
Is Boehner prosecuting a frivolous lawsuit? Did McDermott do something bad too? Like I said, that might be an issue if McDermott was the new Majority Leader. But he's not. It's what Boehner got caught doing, red-handed. What about it?
--Josh Marshall
Interesting. Allen Raymond, one of the guys at the center of the New Hampshire phone-jamming case, was sentenced today up in New Hampshire.
In court, his lawyer, John Durkin, said that when Raymond was executing the election tampering plot he "was acting at the behest of the state and federal Republican parties (italics included)."
The call came from the campaign committee run by Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN). Jim Tobin, who's now appealing his conviction, was the guy who worked for Frist's committee, the NRSC.
This investigation ain't over.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, so it's Rep. John Boehner of Ohio for the new Majority Leader in the House of Representatives.
Let's not forget that Boehner is the guy who got a black eye back in the mid-90s for handing out checks from Tobacco lobbyists on the floor of the House. And of the three guys running for the job he had the most former staffers working on K Street.
But Boehner ran as a candidate of reform who would clean up the House GOP Caucus. So why not take him at his word? Because, think about it, there's so much cleaning up to do.
Isn't it time to get the Ethics Committee up and running again? How about Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) whose close campaign supporter Brent Wilkes repeatedly bribed fellow Rep. Duke Cunningham? (Who says? Cunningham says.) What about all the stuff coming out now about Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)? How about Roy Blunt's ties to Wilkes? What about some concrete steps to dismantle the K Street Project? What about Doolittle and Pombo or the other members of his caucus who were free-mealers at Signatures.
I could, believe me, go on and on. But I trust the point is made. Put the man to his test. The truth is that the rot simply runs too deep in the Republican House to be easily or painlessly excised. Actually cleaning House would be brutal, bloody and debilitating since it would shake the bases of Republican power to their foundations. No absolution, shall we say, without blood on the floor.
--Josh Marshall
The Hill has a quick run-down of what happened in today's surprise GOP House Majority Leader vote.
The first round was Blunt 110, Boehner 79, Shadegg 40 and 2 for write-in candidate Jim Ryun.
Shadegg then dropped out, though he wasn't technically required to since Ryun was eliminated.
The next vote was Boehner 122, Blunt 109.
So basically every vote Blunt didn't get in round one turned out to be an anti-Blunt vote -- actually, plus one. On the surface the pre-vote tallies looked like Blunt winning with a wide margin. Actually, it was Blunt versus anti-Blunt. And he could never get into the lead. That's actually a sort of similar dynamic to what happened yesterday in the Democratic caucus race.
--Josh Marshall
No honor among vote scammers!
This is actually kinda funny. Rich Lowry just filed this little squib at the Corner. "More ballots cast [on the House leadership vote] than there are members. Re-voting now...."
Roll Call has it too: "House Republicans are taking a mulligan on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting."
Says TPM Reader JP: "This is priceless. They try to steal their own elections!"
TPM Reader JW is even more biting: "That's right, the Repubs are so corrupt they can't even hold an honest INTERNAL election..."
TPM Reader JM has a constructive suggestion: "Shouldn't Jimmy Carter have monitored the GOP vote?"
--Josh Marshall
They've got muck; we've got rakes.
Just a little update here on TPMmuckraker.com. With your help we've just hired our second full-time muckraker. And we'll be launching the site this month.
More updates and details soon.
--Josh Marshall
Tom DeLay stands up for lobbyists right to use the House gym. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Government workers get an out from Blackberry shutdown? What about the rest of us?
--Josh Marshall
Nick Lampson represented the 
Texas 9th congressional district from 1997 to 2005. He was one of five Democratic members of the Texas House delegation defeated in 2004 as the result of the mid-decade redistricting engineered by then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) in 2003.
Now Lampson is challenging Tom DeLay in the 22nd district.
As part of the redistricting, DeLay himself agreed to bring a substantial number of Democratic voters into the 22nd district. And that, along with DeLay's mounting legal woes, has put Lampson in the lead in the most recent polls.
You can find more information about Lampson's campaign at his campaign website. If you're not familiar with his opponent, Tom DeLay, you can find out more about him at his campaign website or at the TPM Grand Ole Docket.
Yesterday, February 1st, we sat down with Lampson in New York for a brief interview ...
TPM: You’re running against Tom DeLay in the 22nd District of Texas … And the backdrop to this race goes back to what happened in 2003 on a couple different levels: It’s the reason you’re no longer in Congress; the reason now-former Majority Leader DeLay is in a slightly more Democratic district than he used to be; and it’s also the source of all these legal troubles that he’s having.So, for our audience, can you tell us what that whole redistricting fight was about? What happened back in 2002, 2003?
Former Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX): Well, it was all about control of the House of Representatives. It was an effort on the part of Tom DeLay to strengthen the Republican majority. They thought they were going to have much larger growth than what ultimately happened. The net gain that they got came from the state of Texas, with those I think, six – five actually changed because of the elections and one person switched parties. So that was their net gain for the year.
What happened? A bunch of things … What led up to it was an overreaching of the law and the use of corporate money that has led to indictments of some of DeLay’s employees as well as DeLay himself. They were using corporate money to help change the political makeup of the Texas legislature. They ultimately forced the redistricting.82 % of the people in the state of Texas said that they were opposed to doing the redistricting in the middle of the decade. But they pushed hard enough that they made it happen.
TPM: And this is the summer of 2003?
Lampson: Yeah, that’s right. We immediately challenged it. We took it to the courts. I think we won at the state district court level. We lost at the appellate level. And then it went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court remanded it back -- didn’t make a decision, but remanded it back to the lower court -- and said it needed to be looked at again. They made the same decision – said it’s got to go back to the Supreme Court. It did. They made the decision to take it. Oral arguments will be heard on March the 1st, and we expect a decision during the month of June – late May, early June, something of that sort.
TPM: So what’s the problem with this exactly? States redistrict when they get a new census…
Lampson: Couple of things, maybe even more than a couple. One of them is that this is the first time that redistricting has been done in the middle of the decade. The Constitution doesn’t say that you can’t do it in the middle of the decade. But what it does say is that you do redistricting following a census, which happens at the end of the decade. And certainly the implication is that you don’t do it at other times. You do it with as good information as you have about the location of population. That’s the purpose – of allocating the votes among the people of the country. So that’s certainly one big thing, and I believe that’s part of what the Supreme Court will make a statement about.
Gerrymandering. That’s been going on for a long, long, long time. It’s designing districts for the purpose of helping one party or the other. My personal feeling about what’s happened with this is that as we’ve packed more Democrats into Democratic districts and packed more Republicans into Republican districts, we have polarized the nation. Because if you only have a primary, and you push people as far to the left or as far to the right as you can, then it becomes purely a matter of numbers in Congress. If you hold your numbers, then you can force through the policy of whatever you want to force.
And ultimately it leads to discomfort, to people not willing to work with each other. And consequently the compromise that was intended for our legislative body goes away. And that’s part of what happened during the redistricting period.
What was the strongest delegation in the country -- the Texas delegation -- ended up not speaking to each other. And if you can’t talk, if you’re so uncomfortable being around someone that you don’t even want to speak to them, you’re certainly not going to sit down with them and debate real policy issues.
TPM: Now, this wasn’t just in the abstract, trying to get more Republicans or more Democrats. There were a handful of Democrats who were the targets of this. So how did this effect you, and a few other, former members of the Texas Congressional delegation?
Lampson: Well, it gave us districts that we couldn’t win, essentially. But I think most of us tried to look at it, not so much as what it would do to us, but what it was doing to our communities.
Communities of interest should be the focal point for us trying to do redistricting. You should be able to design a plan that’s going to help people set goals for themselves and be able to achieve those goals for economic growth and for whatever other reasons. You don’t want to have a district that is so diverse, for example, that you have extremely poor people as a small minority within a district that is very affluent, and you fix it so that they have no political say, because the likelihood of their having any of their concerns addressed becomes smaller.
So that was a big thing for me in my own mind. It wasn’t about me. It was about my community. And I think our communities got very seriously hurt because of it.
TPM: Now, obviously, what people around the country know about is [Travis County District Attorney] Ronnie Earle, the fact that Tom DeLay was subsequently indicted. How does that fit in to what we’re talking about here? How does the legal news that people are hearing today fit in with what happened in 2003?
Lampson: The legal news that we’re hearing on Abramoff?
TPM: No, just Ronnie Earle and that whole series of indictments down there.
Lampson: It was a matter of using corporate money and washing it through, because corporate money is illegal in campaigns in Texas and federally.
They were able to get corporate dollars and send them to the National Republican Party, and from the Republican Party back down to be used in those elections. At least, that’s the accusation.
And Ronnie Earle began to investigate this – it was $190,000 worth of money that was involved. He early on indicted John Colyandro and Jim Ellis, who were both former employees of Tom DeLay. And then later [he] indicted Tom DeLay himself.
Those three people are still involved with those suits. They have not been brought up yet, but I’m assuming that it’s going to come up in the next few months or so, that trial will begin.
TPM: Now, our readers are across the country. Before a few months ago, they’d never heard of Ronnie Earle. And there’s a whole long backstory here. Tom DeLay says that Ronnie Earle is a partisan and the Democrats are out to take him down. People on the other side say you commit a crime, you get indicted.
Give us a sense of the backstory. Who is Ronnie Earle?
Lampson: I personally have never met Ronnie Earle. But I do know his record over a long time, because we’ve been reading about it in Texas for a very long time. He has actually indicted and brought to trial and gained more convictions against Democrats than he has Republicans. Everybody seems to think that he is a person who will do what’s right, who will do the right thing for Texas.
And in that context, you just have to consider that Tom DeLay says everything is about politics. When he was brought before the ethics committee, he said that he was innocent, that he didn’t do what they were charging him with. And it was just a political witch hunt. Yet he got sanctioned. I think that’s just his modus operandi, unfortunately.
Obviously, we’ll wait and see what the courts do, and what kind of prosecution Ronnie Earle ultimately puts forth. But I don’t think that it is fair in any way to say that he’s just a partisan hack and the only reason he’s doing this is to get Tom Delay because of his political affiliation.
TPM: Around the country there aren’t many more polarizing figures than Tom DeLay. People either love him or hate him. You’re running in this one district, the 22nd District of Texas. It’s a different district now after that redistricting, but [DeLay’s] been there for what, about 20 years?
Lampson: 21 Years. At the end of this year, it’ll be 22.
TPM: All right. What is the case you’re making to the people of the 22nd District why they should dump their congressman, who was until recently the most powerful guy in Congress? What is the case you’re making to them?
Lampson: Well, first of all, they deserve to have a representative who is making headlines for the right reasons -- someone who will take a bipartisan approach to Washington and do the right thing for Texas and for that congressional district.
It’s important that we work on issues that will make a difference for them – and Homeland Security, and fiscal responsibility, and education and health care are the kinds of issues that certainly I have worked on, and that I think is what the people, not just of the district, but of the nation, want us to be doing.
Tom DeLay had the opportunity to do that. But he spent his time doing something else, something different. I want to work on those issues every day that I’m in Congress.
TPM: So what is the other thing – when you say “something different?”
Lampson: He was more about either his personal wealth, or his personal power, or his party’s power. He clearly did some things that are -- not just should be, but are being questioned. Whether or not something comes of it remains to be seen as they go through the process.
Standing up for sweatshops and sweatshop owners in the Marianas islands and then coming back following that trip with Jack Abramoff -- and the involvement with Jack Abramoff out there -- coming back to the floor of the House of Representatives and defending these actions on the floor of the House. Clearly that was something different from paying attention to the needs of the people of the 22nd Congressional District.
Using the lobbyists for his own personal benefit, taking a $56,000 golfing trip to Scotland. That is clearly something not in the best interest of the people of the 22nd Congressional District.
And then, just to pick another thing, the million dollars that was contributed by Russian oil people through a London law firm that came into a charity that DeLay had set up – ultimately some of the funding was used for the purchase of a building that he uses for his political activities. Those have to be reasonable questions to be asking.
Whether or not he’s guilty, that’s for the courts and the ethics committees to decide. But the questions certainly ought to be asked. And certainly those were things that he was doing, rather than attending to the business of the 22nd Congressional District and the citizens of the United States of America.
He was too focused on his special interests.
TPM: Now, this election as a whole, for the Democrats as a whole – ethics and political corruption are going to be defining themes. National Democrats are trying to balance, ‘how much are we against the amount of sleaze that the Republican majority has brought to Congress’ versus a positive agenda, whether that’s health care, fiscal responsibility, on the foreign policy, front, whatever.
Now, you’re up there front and center with the man who literally and figuratively was the leader of what the Republican majority created. How are you balancing that? How are you balancing what you were just talking about -- in terms of all these accusations of wrongdoing against Tom DeLay -- versus the positive agenda – on policy issues, on health care, on fiscal responsibility?
Lampson: I want to make sure that this race is about those issues. I don’t need to talk about Tom DeLay. And I try not to talk about Tom DeLay in the district. People are reading about those things that he was involved with. So I can concentrate on the legislation that I worked on when I was in the House of Representatives, my efforts on task forces that dealt with Homeland Security, with education and health care specifically, the work I did on creating the Congressional Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. If I can concentrate on those things, then I believe that I will win the confidence of the people to put me there.
Certainly there is a question of integrity that could come up in that comparison. And I think that I bring something different to the table. I hope I bring a different kind of openness and a willingness to look at the needs of the people of my district first.
TPM: Another question. Not as much as Tom DeLay, but over the last five years, President Bush nationally has become a very polarizing figure. His poll numbers are fairly low now, they’re right around the low forties, forty percent, something like that.
You’re running in his home state, in a district that is, I would say, at best a swing district. There are a lot of Republicans in the district … A race like this against someone as prominent as Tom DeLay has sort of an in-district and a national dimension. So where are you on President Bush?
Lampson: I’ve been campaigning with him since, I think, 1992. I think that was the first time that I met him and started showing up at different places when we were campaigning for different offices.
I made a comment, right after his first election, before he was sworn into office when I was asked by a reporter whether or not he would be able to pull this divided congress together. And I said that I think that no matter what his interests were in trying to accomplish that, that there were other forces in play that would prevent him from doing it. And what I was referring to, and I even said the name at that time: Tom DeLay has caused such a polarization and such a lack of civility within our congress that regardless of what he was able to do, the president was able to do, they were going to stop him from doing it. And I believe that.
So I believe that there have been those who have, not intentionally, I don’t believe they intentionally set out to divide it, but they certainly intentionally set out to win their issues. I think they’re preventing him from accomplishing a lot of what perhaps he would like to be doing.
TPM: Preventing President Bush?
Lampson: Yeah.
TPM: On a few basic issues – the President has been in office for five years – what would you say from your perspective are his biggest successes and his biggest mistakes in office on basic points of policy?
Lampson: Let me start with his mistakes. I think that certainly you have to consider that we still have problems with access to health care and Social Security in this country. They’re both huge problems for us. 46 million Americans don’t have access to health care. And the bill that we passed -- I didn’t vote for it -- but the Medicare bill that passed in 2003 was a piece of legislation that put the resources of the nation behind the pharmaceutical manufacturers more than it did the people who we were trying to help.
I think the foreign policy, the position, the reputation of the United States in the eyes of much of the rest of the world is significantly diminished and so I think you can’t look at that positively.
Maybe from his perspective -- and I voted for some of the tax cuts -- from the President’s perspective, he’d probably say that some of his biggest successes have been to pass the tax cutting legislation that they had. I believe very strongly that we need to have tax cuts, but to be put in an area where it’s going to help small businesses, where it’s going to help people who have less rather than those who have more.
I guess that’s at first blush my answer to that.
TPM: Final question. Again, around the country, you’ve seen… you’re running against Tom DeLay, who’s the architect of what’s really on the ballot in these midterm congressional elections: that political machine that he built, the way they were dealing with political money in D.C. with the lobbyists and so forth.
People around the country, they know lobbyists have been around forever. They know that there’s a lot of political money around in Washington. And there’s a tendency to say, “Look, everybody does it. This is business as usual.”
Do you think what Tom DeLay created over the last decade on Capitol Hill really is different? Is this something that people around the country and in the 22nd District should be concerned about, that there’s something wrong in Washington? And if there is, what is it?
Lampson: There is something wrong in Washington. And not everybody is using the political money in the way that a few have used the political money.
We have to have a reform of our ethics rules. But it’s not just about reform. It’s about making sure that we have the ability to enforce the laws that we’ve put on the books. The ethics committee in Congress needs to be active, and it needs to have the independence to be able to act, regardless of what accusation is brought before them. Our Federal Election Commission and agencies that oversee some of the political activity certainly need to have the teeth and the enforcement capabilities that can make a difference.
TPM: Well, thank you very much for your time.
Lampson: My pleasure. Thank you.
To find out more about Lampson's campaign, you can visit his campaign website or his entry at Wikipedia. If you're not familiar with his opponent, Tom DeLay, you can find out more about him at his campaign website or at the TPM Grand Ole Docket.
--Josh Marshall
Another edition of, Great Moments in Wingnut Forbearance.
The Times tomorrow has an article about a controversy that has erupted over a movie called "End of the Spear." It was made by Every Tribe Entertainment, an evangelical film company. But it stars an out gay actor, Chad Allen, in the lead role.
One fellow speaking out on the controversy is Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Seminary in Minneapolis. On his blog he said: "Granted, we must not overreact. And it would probably be an overreaction to firebomb these men's houses. But what they have done is no mistake. It is a calculated strategy."
Usually, it's a cheap shot for a reporter to troll around the web to find something some whack-job has written on a blog and present it as somehow representative of a particular point of view. But this guy is the president of a seminary.
I'm just glad these guys aren't wallowing in fantasies of revanchist violence and theocratic domination.
Phew ...
--Josh Marshall
Say you're in some big city in a faraway country.
Or perhaps you're stranded on a desert island with a good Internet connection and need to find out the date David Safavian goes on trial.
Just type in grandolddocket.com and all your questions will be answered.
If you insist on being folksy you can just type in grandoledocket.com.
--Josh Marshall
Why isn't indicted GOP moneyman Tom Noe listed on our new TPM Grand Ole Docket?
Good question, which a number of you have asked. So let me take a moment to note a few points about our Grand Ole Docket methodology.
Admittedly, once you throw the net wide open, there's just no end of GOP malefactors out there. So we've tried to focus the Docket a bit more narrowly, limiting it to DC public corruption and scandal stories, particularly the Abramoff web of bribery and sundry hijinks.
So, for instance, we don't have Larry Franklin (of the AIPAC case) listed, or Tom Noe, or Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, or anyone from the Kentucky governor's scandal-rama.
We do have Scooter Libby, who's probably on the edge of the criteria, but makes it in on sheer indictment-hood.
We also have the three guys who (okay, allegedly) whacked Gus Boulis down in Florida. But that's pretty tightly connected to the SunCruz-Ney subdivision of the Abramoff scandal. So in fairness to them, they make it in too.
At first we didn't have James Tobin and the rest of schemers from the New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal. But we ended up including them -- mainly because our reporting (and, from what we can tell, the DOJ's too) strongly suggests there's a nexus between the phone-jamming case and the Abramoff scandal.
After thinking about it, we don't want let TPM Readers in Ohio wallow in a sinkhole of corruption without some relief. So we may set up an Ohio sub-Docket. We'll keep you posted.
--Josh Marshall
It may be the closest watched race of the year. In 2003, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) engineered an unprecedented double-dip redistricting which cost then-Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX) and a handful of other Texas Dems their jobs. Now Lampson wants to return the favor. Lampson and DeLay square off this November in Texas' 22nd district.
One of the ironies of the race is that in the 2003 redistricting, DeLay agreed to take a bunch of new Democratic voters into his staunchly Republican district. That, combined with being associated with pretty much every corruption scandal in Washington today, is making DeLay quite beatable. In fact, the most recent poll shows Lampson beating DeLay as of today.
This morning we sat down for a short interview with Lampson to talk about Texas, Tom DeLay, political corruption and the 22nd district.
We hope to bring you the interview tomorrow.
--Josh Marshall
Now that he's not Majority Leader anymore, suddenly Tom DeLay's having a harder time raising money for the defense fund. In fact, he's deep in the red. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
Speaking of the Muck, check out what Paul has in today's column on Abramoff, Alexander Strategy Group and the Heritage Foundation and their intermingled dealings in Hong Kong (scroll down to 'ASG, Abramoff, The Heritage Foundation and Hong Kong'). Small world. Smaller everyday.
--Josh Marshall
One of our readers found this in a brief New York Daily News update on the status of the Scooter Libby prosecution. The meat of the article is about Libby's effort to get prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to fork over White House documents he got copies of during the investigation.
But down there in the last graf there's this ...
Fitzgerald, who is fighting Libby's request, said in a letter to Libby's lawyers that many e-mails from Cheney's office at the time of the Plame leak in 2003 have been deleted contrary to White House policy.
Does that seem a bit odd?
Fitzgerald's letter says that "we have learned that not all email of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system."
Anyone know anything more about this?
--Josh Marshall
Surprise Result: Rep. John Larson (D-CT) beats Crowley and Schakowsky for Dem Caucus Vice Chair.
--Josh Marshall
Out doing a 2006 election interview for TPM. More posts this afternoon and a TPMmuckraker.com update.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, a small twinge of regret. TPM emailers tell me that the best moment of the speech came when the president said that last year Congress 'failed' to act on his plan to phase out Social Security. Dems cheered; Republicans sat with stony silence. I would like to have seen that.
Maybe Crooks & Liars get that clip online for us.
--Josh Marshall
The president to call for new technology to end addiction to oil? Yeah, I bet. Do we actually have to listen to pundits opine about this into the wee hours as long as the president doesn't commit to doing anything beside saying it would be nice?
(Yes, a rhetorical question ...)
--Josh Marshall
I have a confession: I'm not sure when the last time was when I watched the State of the Union address. I think I may have watched it in 2003. But I'm not even certain of that. Perhaps a glance through the archives would show that I watched a bit of it last year, I don't know.
The truth is, I find it unwatchable.
Now, I read the transcript later. I'll often go back and watch key sections so I can get the flavor of a particular passage in the speech or of a debate it has spawned.
But the thing itself (watching the actual production in real time) and then the imbecile chatter afterwards -- I just can't deal. I just find it unbearable.
Are there others out there like me? I know that a great portion of the country never watches the thing and can't be bothered with politics in any case. But are there others out there who are genuine political junkies -- downright incurables -- and yet can't bear to watch this thing?
--Josh Marshall
They're some of those basic questions young children learn to ask in civics class. Who represents me in Congress? And when do they go on trial?
Yes, it's just a sign of the times. But these are the questions one wants to know the answer to. So today we're rolling out a new feature, the TPM Grand Ole Docket.
The number of individuals reportedly under investigation in the Abramoff and other public corruption scandals is getting pretty large. But this isn't a list of just anyone who's been tagged in a news report. We're being a good deal more strict.
We're including 1) people who have pled guilty to federal corruption or corruption related charges, 2) those who have been indicted for such charges and 3) those who have been identified as unindicted cocospirators in public legal filings. By our count there 21 such people. Certainly more to follow. But 21 so far.
These are, in other words, all the folks in the Capitol Hill corruption mess who prosecutors have publicly identified as participants in criminal activity.
As usual, we'll be updating the Docket as the story unfolds. And we'll be relying on you to send us updates, corrections or additions as you find them.
--Josh Marshall
Kate Steadman has a primer on HSAs, the centerpiece of the president's State of the Union address, over at DrugBillDebacle blog.
--Josh Marshall
It seems worth noting that last year's State of the Union address was the kick-off, the beginning of the downhill slide that the president continued on for the rest of the year. He set his legislative sights on privatizing Social Security and then proceeded to lose that battle after a multi-month barnstorming tour around the country.
From there it was into the Fitzgerald investigation, into Katrina and then Abramoff. The key development came early when members of the opposition united against him and then members of his own party refused to stand with him.
The president has been trying to overcome that pattern, reverse the slide for months. But his poll numbers seem stock near rock bottom, at 39% according to today's NBC/WSJ poll.
He has to hit some big hit to reverse the pattern of slide and stumble. But the proposals he appears poised to announce aren't ones with much public support. And the members of his party in Congress, though eager to see him reverse his decline, are mainly looking to protect themselves in the face of the Abramoff investigations.
--Josh Marshall
Chris Matthews holds a no-smooches-barred interview with Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX). The vultures continue to swirl around Rep. Doolittle (R-CA). Those stories and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Start Change and MyDD just commissioned a 23 question national poll covering a variety of questions of national import. And they posed two on the subject of Iraq.
Question #12 is, did you support the invasion. Not how are things going or is it time to go. But did you support it at the time.
The results aren't surprising: strongly support 18.7%, support 28.7%, oppose 21.8%, strongly oppose 25.0%.
But they followed with an open-ended, why?
You can see the data here. But the thumbnail version is that there's no consensus for why people supported or opposed.
Some of this is a matter of the fuzziness built into an open-ended question. For instance, among supporters, 3% said they supported because it was "the right thing to do." 3.3% said that it was "inevitable/ [or] someone had to do something." Presumably these are different flavors of the same answer, though precisely how it answers the question, I'm not entirely sure.
Basically, what I draw from this is that every conceivable theory and ground of opposition to the war at least clocks in with a few percentage points of support. But no single reason registers even as much as ten percent.
At a deeper level, I suspect that there are more gut-level roots to both positions, ones that don't sound reasoned enough to state in their purest form. People then articulate those views from the various arguments on offer.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Curt Weldon spreads the wealth. One lobbyist at a time. That and other news of the day is today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Cingular applies for patents for cell phone emoticons/smileys. See the application here.
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Obama (D-IL) said this morning that Democrats need to focus on convincing voters that "their values are at stake" in cases like the Alito hearings rather than relying on procedural gambits like the filibuster.
But I'm not sure I understand why it has to be either/or.
The fundamental challenge for Democrats on the judicial front is that these debates are too drowned in technical jurisprudential debates to really resonate with the public. So I think Obama is certainly right on that count. I would add that confirmation debates like this one tend to be focused on too narrow a set of issues. There's an elemental of Mark Schmitt's 'policy literalism' in play here.
But again, why does it have to be one or the other? I don't get that.
The nomination is a sop to the president's rightwing base. The man is a rightwing ideologue. He doesn't belong on the court. There's nothing to be ashamed of in doing everything possible to prevent his being seated if there's any chance of success.
--Josh Marshall
According to his hometown paper, the Auburn Journal, Rep. Doolittle (R-CA) is reaching out to his inner circle of funders to raise $100,000 in January to fend off what he's describing as a concerted attack by Democrats -- presumably run through the Bush Justice Department -- to drive him from office.
Says Doolittle in his money appeal: "Make no mistake about it. The liberal media wants the Democrats back in control of Congress. They don't like conservatives. They don't like President Bush, and they don't like what we stand for. They will stop at nothing to accomplish their goal."
Doolittle's plea comes amidst new disclosures tying him to the Duke Cunningham influence-peddling and bribery scandal.
--Josh Marshall
There are a lot of trial dates, court appearances and sentencing hearings coming up in the next months -- the DeLay case, Abramoff fixer David Safavian's trial, the Gus Boulis murder trial, the Duke Cunningham case and a lot more.
Many of you have been writing in asking for info about when this or that court date is coming up. So tomorrow we'll be a rolling out a new feature. It's a timeline, but about future events not stuff that's already happened. We're calling it the Grand Old Docket.
We'll post a link when it's up.
--Josh Marshall
Seems the floodgates are opening. At least three Republican senators and representatives this morning called on the president to release the White House Abramoff Records.
--Josh Marshall
