Norm Ornstein has a great post on the AEI blog taking apart hypocrisy over the self-executing rule business:
Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration.
I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?
This particular procedural gambit strikes me as pretty silly, but I don’t actually see any reason for normal people to have any preferences about the “regular order” or not. Meanwhile, a plurality of voters now say it would be better to pass the bill.
As the Pentagon prepares to survey soldiers about President Obama’s decision to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a new poll of military personnel who served in the Afghanistan or Iraq wars has finds that sexual orientation is “not a burning issue that overwhelms veterans’ lives.”
The new poll, commissioned by The Vet Voice Foundation and conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters, finds that most veterans are “comfortable around gay and lesbian people, believe that being gay or lesbian has no bearing on a service member’s ability to perform their duties, and would find it acceptable if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.” Fifty-eight percent of veterans said they served alongside gays or lesbians, and only 22 percent thought they had not:
– 60% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans believe that being gay or lesbian “has no bearing on a service member’s ability to perform their duties.” Only 29% disagree.
– 73% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans say it is “personally acceptable to them if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.” Only a quarter (25%) would find it unacceptable.
– 73% Iraq and Afghanistan veterans say “they are personally comfortable in the presence of gays and lesbians.” Only a quarter (23%) is uncomfortable, and hardly anyone is very uncomfortable (only 7%).
The survey, which sampled 45% self-identified Republicans and just 20% Democrats, suggests that military personnel are more comfortable serving alongside openly gay and lesbian troops than previously thought. The poll also contradicts the findings of a widely circulated Military Times survey, which reported that 58% of respondents are opposed to efforts to repealing DADT, and undermines the claims of some conservative lawmakers who argue that lifting the ban would undermine the primary goal of the military.
“Simply put, our military is the most professional organization the world has ever known. Not only will service members abide by a repeal, but they’ll largely accept it and move on to the task at hand. For all of the hyperbolic rhetoric from those opposed to a repeal, today’s military really doesn’t see an issue here,” said Jon Soltz, Chairman of the Vet Voice Foundation. Indeed, the survey concluded that veterans under age 35 lean toward favoring allowing gay and lesbian people to serve openly (41% favor to 35% oppose) while veterans over age 35 lean toward opposing by five points (31% favor, 36% oppose).
As the Pentagon prepares to survey soldiers about President Obama’s decision to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a new poll of military personnel who served in the Afghanistan or Iraq wars has finds that sexual orientation is “not a burning issue that overwhelms veterans’ lives.”
The new poll, commissioned by The Vet Voice Foundation and conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters finds that most veterans are “comfortable around gay and lesbian people, believe that being gay or lesbian has no bearing on a service member’s ability to perform their duties, and would find it acceptable if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.” Fifty-eight percent of veterans said they served alongside gays or lesbians, and only 22 percent thought they had not:
– 60% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans believe that being gay or lesbian “has no bearing on a service member’s ability to perform their duties.” Only 29% disagree.
– 73% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans say it is “personally acceptable to them if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.” Only a quarter (25%) would find it unacceptable.
– 73% Iraq and Afghanistan veterans say “they are personally comfortable in the presence of gays and lesbians.” Only a quarter (23%) is uncomfortable, and hardly anyone is very uncomfortable (only 7%).
The survey, which sampled 45% self-identified Republicans and just 20% Democrats, suggests that military personnel are more comfortable serving alongside openly gay and lesbian troops than previously thought. The poll also contradicts the findings of a widely circulated Military Times survey, which reported that 58% of respondents are opposed to efforts to repealing DADT, and undermines the claims of some conservative lawmakers who claim that lifting the ban would undermine the primary goal of the military.
“Simply put, our military is the most professional organization the world has ever known. Not only will service members abide by a repeal, but they’ll largely accept it and move on to the task at hand. For all of the hyperbolic rhetoric from those opposed to a repeal, today’s military really doesn’t see an issue here,” said Jon Soltz, Chairman of the Vet Voice Foundation. Indeed, the survey concluded that veterans under age 35 lean toward favoring allowing gay and lesbian people to serve openly (41% favor to 35% oppose) while veterans over age 35 lean toward opposing by five points (31% favor, 36% oppose).
This afternoon, two Florida lawmakers introduced legislation to overturn the state’s ban on gay adoptions, something the legislature hasn’t debated in the law’s 33-year history.
Rep. Scott Randolph’s measure, which amended a bill about gun ownership and adoptions, would have prevented “adoption agencies from inquiring about a person’s sexual orientation as a requisite for adoption.” Randolph was forced to withdraw his amendment after the Speaker ruled that it was not germane to the bill. Sen. Charlie Justice also withdrew his bill in the Senate.
“This amendment points out that government should not ask irrelevant questions in the adoption process which tell us nothing about a person’s ability to provide a permanent and loving home. Rather, it’s lawful and responsible gun ownership or a person’s sexual orientation,” Randolph announced on the House floor. He also explained how lifting the ban would benefit children:
RANDOLPH: Three thousand children are in need of adoption and are waiting for us to do the right thing. But Florida’s current adoption ban does not allow gay and lesbians to adopt in this state. In an era of very tight budgets, this cost of inaction on this issue is $2.5 million a year. It’s time to let family judges and child welfare advocates do their job by making the best standard for each child to be the only standard for deciding adoption cases. The legislature has the power to stop that right now today.
Watch it:
Florida, which enacted its ban in 1977 — two years before the first reported case of an adoption by an openly gay person anywhere in the country — is the only state to explicitly prohibit gays and lesbians from adopting children. “Even those who voted for this ban more than three decades ago say they were caught up in they hysteria of the time and regret passing this legislation,” Randolph observed, referring to activist Anita Bryant’s campaign against expanded rights for homosexuals. At the time, Bryant and other conservatives claimed that “the recruitment of our children is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality–for since homosexuals cannot reproduce, they must recruit, they must freshen their ranks.”
“I hope there is a day very soon when this body will truly debate this issue,” Randolph said. “But unfortunately, that’s not today.” Randolph’s office told me that it’s unlikely that measure would pass the Republican dominated House or Senate, but stressed that a vote on the amendment would force lawmakers to publicly register their support for the restriction.
There is some hope that the attitude towards gay adoption is slowly changing in Florida. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that “a majority of Floridians now oppose the ban” and three recent court decisions have ruled that the ban violates Florida’s constitution. Currently, the issue is now “before Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals and is headed most likely to the state Supreme Court.”
This afternoon, two Florida lawmakers introduced legislation to overturn the state’s ban on gay adoptions, something the legislature hasn’t debated in the law’s 33-year history. Rep. Scott Randolph’s measure, which amended a bill about gun ownership and adoptions, would have prevented “adoption agencies from inquiring about a person’s sexual orientation as a requisite for adoption.” Randolph was forced to withdraw his amendment after the Speaker ruled that it was not germane to the bill. Sen. Charlie Justice withdrew a similar bill in the Senate. “This amendment points out that government should not ask irrelevant questions in the adoption process which tell us nothing about a person’s ability to provide a permanent and loving home. Rather, it’s lawful and responsible gun ownership or a person’s sexual orientation,” Randolph announced on the House floor. He also explained how lifting the ban would benefit children:
RANDOLPH: Three thousand children are in need of adoption and are waiting for us to do the right thing. But Florida’s current adoption ban does not allow gay and lesbians to adopt in this state. In an era of very tight budgets, this cost of inaction on this issue is $2.5 million a year. It’s time to let family judges and child welfare advocates do their job by making the best standard for each child to be the only standard for deciding adoption cases. The legislature has the power to stop that right now today.
Watch it:
Florida, which enacted its ban in 1977 — two years before the first reported case of an adoption by an openly gay person anywhere in the country — is the only state to explicitly prohibit gays and lesbians from adopting children. The Wonk Room has more.
Here’s ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema, speaking to a group of 150 University students last May on why South African President Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser must have enjoyed having sex with him:
“When a woman didn’t enjoy it [sex], she leaves early in the morning. Those who had a nice time will wait until the sun comes out, request breakfast, and ask for taxi money.”
Disgusting.
But of course there are people with disgusting views in the world and they say disgusting things. But the story then takes an unexpected turn. Here’s Lori at Feministing:
And now, according to a recent ruling by the South African Equality Court, these words also legally constitute hate speech and discrimination, and will not be tolerated without legal ramification.
And she’s cheering this on:
The credit for this monumental victory belongs to Sonke Gender Justice Network, an amazing South African organization that supports men and boys to act against domestic and sexual violence. It was them who filed the lawsuit against Malema when they recognized the opportunity to make a public statement about the harm and destruction caused by rape culture.
This move took bravery. It also took strategic vision. The organization where I work, which has partnered with Sonke since 2008, has been anxiously awaiting this verdict since Sonke formalized their complaint in May, but we also recognize that the outcome wasn’t really the point. The very act of them filing the claim was such a powerfully symbolic feminist victory.
Like a number of commenters on Lori’s post, I think this is misguided. The “statement” that what Malema said is unacceptable is a good one, but the practical consequences of criminalizing political speech are very real and not likely to be beneficial in the long run. The boundaries of what kind of discourse about race and gender is or isn’t acceptable is being constantly contested in civil society and I think it’s naive to believe that the state is going to consistently police those boundaries in a consistently beneficial way. It’s very easy to imagine expansive powers to restrict speech being turned against marginal groups, radicals, or anyone who’s politically inconvenient. Especially in a relatively new democracy like South Africa it’s important to stick to liberal principles.
Ndesanjo Macha has a roundup of responses from a variety of points of view that makes me think this ruling may well be reversed on appeal.
Yesterday, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) released the latest version of his financial regulatory reform legislation, after he decided last week that negotiations with Republican members of the committee were taking far too long. Of course, one of the biggest issues that the bill is meant to address is that of financial firms that are “too big to fail.” And already, Senate Republicans are claiming that Dodd’s bill doesn’t do away with them:
“This bill does nothing to change the expectations in the market that some firms are too big to fail,” said Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican who serves on the Banking Committee. “I’m disappointed that Senator Dodd has decided to abandon any sort of bipartisan approach in favor of political posturing on behalf of the Obama administration.”
This hews closely to the advice that GOP pollster Frank Luntz gave to Republicans earlier this year, which was to portray financial reform as inevitably leading to more big bank bailouts, no matter what the legislation actually says. House Republicans also used this tactic incessantly during the regulatory reform debate last year, falsely claiming that Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA) bill created a “permanent bailout fund.”
However, Dodd’s actual legislation tells a very different story. For one thing, it bars financial firms from owning more than 10 percent of the assets in the financial system, while creating a Financial Stability Oversight Council (formed by the Treasury Secretary and the heads of the regulators) that will recommend stricter capital and leverage standards for firms as they grow. It also includes the option for regulators to implement bans on proprietary trading (although it doesn’t mandate such bans). These provisions will discourage excessive growth and make it more expensive for companies to expand to an outlandish size.
Under the bill, financial firms would also have to craft a plan for “rapid and orderly resolution in the event of material financial distress or failure.” Basically, firms will have to write living wills, laying out their interconnectedness and liabilities in the event that they fail. It also envisions using the bankruptcy court for all but the biggest firms, with the Treasury, FDIC and Federal Reserve needing to act affirmatively to use resolution authority on a failing firm, instead of simply letting it go into bankruptcy court.
Plus, just like the House version, Dodd’s bill would levy a fee on big financial institutions (those with more than $50 billion in assets, as well as those deemed systemically risky) to build up a fund that will be tapped in the event that resolution needs to occur. The Senate bill also explicitly states that the fund can only be used to liquidate a firm, and “not for the purpose of preserving the covered financial company.” Even CNBC’s Larry Kudlow — who thinks that everything Congress does preserves too-big-to-fail — is impressed by Dodd’s work.
Now, at the end of the day, all of this is meaningless if regulators aren’t willing to pull the trigger and actually use resolution authority when faced with the impending failure of a big firm. But that’s going to be true no matter what the bill says. Dodd’s legislation isn’t perfect, but on this piece, he does seem to have thought through a workable way to ensure that firms have a hard time becoming gigantic, and have no expectation of a taxpayer funded bailout, regardless of their size.
Yesterday, while discussing the Democrats procedural options for finishing health care reform, the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein discussed how the political dynamics would change if the House passes the Senate bill and then a reconciliation bill with some substantive fixes is considered:
If the Senate bill is passed and Democrats are just getting rid of the Nebraska deal and easing the bite of the excise tax, Republicans will have a lot of trouble standing in the way and becoming defenders of the Nebraska deal and the excise tax. At that point, they’re not opposing health-care reform and instead opposing small, popular changes that make the bill better. They’re literally obstructing good government that fits with their recent rhetoric. After all, having spent the last few months hammering the Nelson deal, it doesn’t look very bipartisan to keep Democrats from taking your advice and reneging on it.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is one of those Republicans who has spent months “hammering the Nelson deal,” which he refers to as the “Cornhusker Kickback.” On Bill Bennett’s radio show today, Alexander — who admitted that health care reform would already be law if and when the Senate takes up reconciliation legislation — was pressed to explain why he would obstruct changes that would be positive in his view:
BENNETT: So what is the point of the obstruction — positive obstruction — of you all doing this if we’ve already lost the game?
ALEXANDER: Well, the point of our doing it is to not allow them to abuse the process further. I mean, they, we cannot allow the House or the president or any group of people to completely undermine the role of the Senate in American constitutional government, which is really to say that on big issues, we’re going to require consensus instead of majority and we need 60 votes.
BENNETT: I see. But the House bill that he would sign might be worse than the one with the amendments they’re trying to offer that you will debate.
ALEXANDER: Well, that’s a good point and but but but and we’ll…
BENNETT: It’ll have kickbacks, the Kickback and all that stuff.
ALEXANDER: We’ll have to, we’ll have to consider that as we go through the bill line by line, but basically, the Senate Republicans are not going to bail the House Democrats out by fixing a bill we all voted against.
Later in the interview, Alexander said that the GOP’s call to repeal health care reform “will define every congressional race in November.” Bennett then realized that Alexander was saying that blocking the fixes that Republicans approve of would benefit the party electorally. “Alright, that would be a rationale then for doing exactly what you’re doing in the Senate and letting that stinkbomb of a bill with all the kickbacks and all that stuff sit out there in the sun and fester,” said Bennett. Listen here:
After Alexander hung up the phone, Bennett praised him for his cynical plan to block fixes that he supports so that he can have a stronger argument going into the November elections. Bennett added that Alexander was “the definition of what a senator’s supposed to be” and “a living example of what the founders intended.”
Bennett then characterized Alexander’s argument — which he said could be used to scare House Democrats against voting for the Senate bill — as essentially saying, “they’re not going to fix it. The Republicans aren’t going to let you fix it. They want the most stinking mess there is sitting out there, rotting in the sun. So they can then repeal it. Why do they want to make your bill better?”
Matt Yglesias thinks Republicans may just be posturing about blocking reconciliation at all costs in order to psych out Democrats. “But once health reform does pass that House, that will be irrelevant,” writes Yglesias. “So are they going to vote no? If so, why? I doubt Senate Republicans want to end up on the receiving end of ads about special giveaways to Nebraska.”
The New York Times is failing to properly report the threat of man-made climate change, in part because its science section is corrupted by skeptics of global warming’s reality. In a piece about climate communications, former Scientific American writer John Horgan relates that “a majority of the section’s editorial staff doubts that human-induced global warming represents a serious threat to humanity”:
Two sources at the Science Times section of the New York Times have told me that a majority of the section’s editorial staff doubts that human-induced global warming represents a serious threat to humanity.
This unfounded skepticism flies in the face of the warnings of essentially every major scientific body on the planet, based on the broad corpus of scientific research conducted by the past few generations of natural scientists.
The reported anti-climate bias of the Science Times’s editorial staff is reflected in its coverage, which has grossly ignored the reality of climate change and its implications in its weekly Tuesday section. Between June 1, 2008 and June 22, 2009, out of 1,563 stories by the Science Desk, only 80 stories had any reference to climate change — and 13 of those were about climate skeptics — a highly disproportionate number:
New York Times Science Desk articles from 6/1/08 to 6/22/09. From LexisNexis search of “climate OR carbon OR greenhouse OR ‘global warming’.”
The editorial positioning of the stories was even more biased, as 28% of the Page 1 Science Times stories on climate were skeptical. The vast majority of climate science stories were buried, with two-thirds of the stories appearing either on Page 3 or Page 8. A quarter of the climate stories printed were merely excerpts from Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth blog. John Tierney’s contrarian columnsquestioning climate science, such as “The Aria of Prince Algorino,” are a regular feature in the Science Times. The New York Times even managed to completely ignore relevant climate change research in some stories, such as a 2008 piece about bark-beetle infestation of western forests.
In contrast, over 15% of stories on ScienceDaily.com, which produces a stream of science stories on all topics based generally on press releases from scientific organizations, were about climate science.
Recent science editors at the New York Times include top editor Laura Chang, health editor Barbara Strauch, James Gorman, restaurant critic David Corcoran, and Cornelia Dean.
Research contributed by former ThinkProgress intern Ben Bergmann.
Anyway, I would say it’s been a open secret for a long time that the NYT’s science writers and science editors don’t get it. The mere fact that they keep anti-science writer John Tierney on staff tells you everything you need to know.
