The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is a federally funded provider of legal services to the poor. By law, no more than six members of the LSC’s 11-member board can be controlled by the same party, so the president traditionally nominates six members of his choosing, and the party-out-of-power’s Senate leader selects the other five.

In 1981, President Reagan tried to dismantle LSC by nominating the head of a right-wing legal organization called the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) to chair LSC’s board, although this nomination was eventually withdrawn due to outrage over Reagan’s decision to nominate an attorney to the LSC board who fundamentally disagreed with LSC’s mission.  Now, however, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wants to refight this battle by selecting another PLF attorney named Sharon Browne:

A member of the right-wing Federalist Society, Browne has worked on behalf of a panoply of conservative legal causes while at the industry-funded PLF, including opposing race-based school district assignment policies, and supporting Prop 209, a California ballot initiative to end most affirmative action programs in the state.

A look back at history makes clear that PLF, which describes itself as a promoter of free enterprise, private property rights, and limiting the role of government, is ideologically opposed to the mission of the LSC, a non-profit created as part of President Johnson’s Great Society initiative to provide free or low-cost legal services to the poor, and which was chaired in the late 1970s by Hillary Clinton, then an Arkansas lawyer.

In 1998 and 2003, PLF infamously participated in two Supreme Court decisions known as the “IOLTA cases,” in which a coalition of right-wing organizations tried to have a primary means of funding legal services for the poor declared unconstitutional (the justices ultimately rejected their claim, but in a 5-4 decision with Justice O’Connor casting the key vote). Although Browne does not appear to have worked on this case, her resume is riddled with assaults on laws intended to fight racism — including a key role in the recent Parents Involved case where Chief Justice Roberts wrote an opinion claiming that it is unconstitutional for school boards to desegregate public schools.

Browne’s appointment to the LSC board, however, is not etched in stone.  Although presidents have historically deferred to the other party’s nominees to this board, nothing requires them to do so. If President Obama wants to prevent Mitch McConnell from succeeding where Ronald Reagan failed, he has the power to withdraw Browne’s nomination.

Yesterday, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) — a 24-year Navy veteran and former Special Assistant to Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Wesley Clark — wrote an op-ed in The Hill noting that today, Christmas Eve, marks the 3,000th day of our war in Afghanistan and also carries another historic significance for the nation of Afghanistan: It’s the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of that country:

As we begin our deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, this Christmas Eve will also mark the 3,000th day of the war in Afghanistan and the 30th anniversary of the initial Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Thus far, this war has already cost the American taxpayer a minimum of $300,000,000,000 according to the Congressional Research Service (and that’s just the funding that’s “on budget”).

Sadly, the fact that we’re spending about $101 million per day in this war is the good news. The financial cost of this war is nothing compared to the fact that 937 American troops have been killed, and 4,434 have been wounded (and that’s not counting the thousands more that will carry the memories of this war for their entire lives).

Massa went on to call for an up-or-down vote on the funding for the upcoming escalation of troops, and insisted that we begin to drawdown our forces from the country — something President Obama has indicated he supports and which most Americans do as well. During an interview two months ago, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev shared his feelings on the Afghan war, given his country’s experience there. When asked what lessons he learned “that President Obama should heed in making his decisions about Afghanistan,” Gorbachev –- who ended the Soviet Union’s 10 year war there in 1989 — replied, “One was that problems there could not be solved with the use of force. Such attempts inside someone else’s country end badly.”

Until recently, the Build-A-Bearville website (part of the Build-A-Bear Workshop) featured online videos telling children about manmade global warming and the dangers it holds for the North Pole. In the videos, little animals learn about the problem and teach Santa Claus about it. The right wing has been outraged over the antics of these bears and penguins. One conservative called for a boycott of Build-A-Bear, and another said the the videos amount to “indoctrination.” In response to this right-wing pressure, Build-A-Bear has taken down the educational videos. A statement from “Founder and Chief Executive Bear” Maxine Clark:

Our goal is to entertain and engage the imagination of children with our stuffed animals, our store environment, and online. Our intention with the Polar Bear story was to inspire children, through the voices of our animal characters, to make a difference in their own individual ways. We did not intend to politicize the topic of global climate change or offend anyone in any way. The webisodes concluded this week with Santa successfully leaving on his journey to deliver gifts around the world. The webisodes will no longer be available on the site.

The scientific consensus remains as strong as ever that manmade global warming is real. In the past, conservatives have also attacked the popular movie “Wall-E,” saying that it was filled with “leftist propaganda” and taught children that “human beings are bad for planet earth.”

As of Nov. 4, active-duty soldiers under the command of Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo — who is responsible for operations in northern Iraq — have faced possible punishment if they either become pregnant or impregnate a fellow servicemember. The policy said that they could even receive jailtime, although Cucolo has said that he never intended to put pregnant women in prison. The policy was harshly criticized by women’s rights advocates, including U.S. senators. Reuters reports that Gen. Ray Odierno, Commanding General Multi-National Force in Iraq, said today that he would be lifting Cucolo’s rules:

General Ray Odierno said the new, Iraq-wide guidelines would take effect beginning January 1, lifting rules enacted by the U.S. commander in northern Iraq, who reports to Odierno, that laid out possible punishments for pregnancy among his soldiers. [...]

“That will not be in my orders from January 1,” Odierno told Reuters on the sidelines of a seminar in Baghdad, responding to a question about whether possible punishment for soldiers who become pregnant or impregnate other soldiers would be part of new, Iraq-wide guidelines Odierno plans to issue shortly.

According to U.S. policy now, individual commanders can issue rules on behavior for troops under their command that are more strict than those issued by their military superiors.