An Oklahoma State Legislator offers up some traditional values thinking on homosexuality: “I honestly think it’s the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam.”
Oh noes — worse than Islam!
Blocking State Leadership on Global Warming
Last week, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson published the official explanation of his decision to deny a waiver of preemption for California’s program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. Robert Sussman, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, has a very good discussion of the misguided reasoning Johnson uses. The bottom line:
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MSNBC Host Falsely Claims McCain Opposes Bush On Torture Bill Veto
On MSNBC this morning, anchor Monica Novotny claimed that President Bush’s impending veto of the Intelligence Authorization Bill would put “a chill” in his alliance with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Bush is vetoing the bill because of an amendment that puts the CIA’s interrogation program under the standards of Army Field Manual, which Novotny claims McCain supports.
“He doesn’t like a provision that’s been pushed by, you guessed it, Sen. McCain,” claimed Novotny. Watch it:
[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2008/03/MSNBCIntelligenceBill.320.240.flv]
The problem is that Novotny has her facts dead wrong.
Though McCain has criticized the use of torturous interrogation techniques in the past, he voted against the bill that Bush is set to veto tomorrow:
Mr. McCain, a former prisoner of war, has consistently voiced opposition to waterboarding and other methods that critics say is a form torture. But the Republicans, confident of a White House veto, did not mount the challenge. Mr. McCain voted “no” on Wednesday afternoon.
Additionally, McCain has urged Bush to veto the bill. So, as often is the case, McCain has the same position as Bush when it comes to condoning torture.
More Wire Stuff
I also wrote a Current on the Wire‘s end. I also understand that the final episode has leaked on the web so some folks have seen it. I haven’t. No spoilers, please.
UPDATE: Also, I agree with Ross about this: “The Wire‘s greatest story was the rise and fall of Stringer Bell, and nothing’s matched it since.” I almost wish the great stuff with the kids had just been part of a separate, excellent television series rather than an additional narrative arc of The Wire.
No Files For You
Archivists at the Clinton Library blocking access “of hundreds of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.” The risk with this kind of thing is that, basically, Democratic partisans don’t want to hear about it and don’t care. We know perfectly well that the right-wing dragged all this stuff up as part of a crazy and pernicious scandal net and only talks about it to use their nefarious agenda. Thus maybe it won’t hurt Clinton much in a primary. But in a general election? In a country where her husband never secured a majority? It’ll be damaging.
Freedom’s Watch president resigns.
Brad Blakeman, president of the right-wing advocacy group Freedom’s Watch, will resign his position today “amid infighting among the group’s leadership.” According to the National Journal’s Peter Stone, critics said Blakeman neglected “major projects since the group sponsored a $15 million television ad campaign in 2007 to promote the Iraq war surge.” Blakeman previously served in the Bush administration.
UPDATE: Read Blakeman’s farewell statement here.
WireTAP 3
I discuss Season Five of The Wire with the American Prospect expanded universe.
Remapping SUSA
Nick Beaudrot redoes the Survey USA state-by-state polling maps to offer up some shading proportional to the level of support the candidates are drawing. It makes for a somewhat more nuanced picture of the landscape though, as before, I caution you that if you aggregate 100 separate polls, some of them are going to be those outliers (Obama-McCain tied in Texas?) they warned you about when they described the margin of error:
Nick also proffers the following Senate analysis: “in the states with the ten most competitive Senate races, Obama does better than Clinton in eight of them; only Kentucky and Louisiana are better for Clinton.” I don’t know how well this polling will hold up, but I think this is a crucial question. The issue is not so much coattails as it is anti-coattails. If this starts to shape up as a good year for Democrats, “let’s not give Obama/Clinton a blank check” will be a persuasive argument to some voters in states where Obama or Clinton is unpopular. You want to minimize the number of states like that.
Obama Adviser: I ‘Strongly’ Believe Telecoms ‘Should Be Granted Immunity’
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has consistently spoken out and voted against granting retroactive immunity for telecoms that participated with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. This stance was part of the reason he won the support of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), a leader on civil liberties issues.
One of Obama’s advisers on intelligence and foreign policy advisers, however, is someone who “strongly” supports telecomm immunity. John Brennan is a former CIA official and the current chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. In a new National Journal interview, Brennan makes it clear that he agrees with the Bush administration on the issue of immunity:
There is this great debate over whether or not the telecom companies should in fact be given immunity for their agreement to provide support and cooperate with the government after 9/11. I do believe strongly that they should be granted that immunity, because they were told to do so by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context, and so I think that’s important. And I know people are concerned about that, but I do believe that’s the right thing to do. I do believe the Senate version of the FISA bill addresses the issues appropriately.
These corporations may not have been acting within law, which is why many of them are now pushing for immunity. They chose to break the law and profited greatly from doing so. (At least one company refused to comply with the Bush administration’s request because it knew the actions were illegal.)
Because they complied in illegally wiretapping their customers, telecoms currently face around 40 lawsuits. Telecomms have nothing to fear from going to court, as long as they can prove that what they did is lawful.
Brennan also warned the next president from making any partisan “knee-jerk” decisions on intelligence when he or she takes office.
How Southern is the South?
Brendan Nyhan has a bunch of interesting charts about the Democratic race of which this one, showing the negative correlation between Obama’s level of white support and the size of the state’s southern baptist population. If you ignore all the states with really small southern baptist populations and just focus on the South you see a correlation that holds up really well. Basically, if you think of the number of southern baptists as a proxy for how “southern” a given southern state is, you see that the more culturally Dixie states are the ones where whites are most hostile to Obama’s message. They’re not, however, necessarily bad states for Obama overall, since some (like Alabama and, soon, Mississippi) have African-Americans as such a large share of the Democratic vote that he wins anyway.
