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Politics

Kyl Threatens GOP Boycott of Sotomayor Hearing

By Ian Millhiser on Jun 12, 2009 at 4:20 pm

kyl_175x258shkl.jpgSenate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) told Roll Call yesterday that he and his Republican colleagues on the Judiciary Committee may boycott Judge Sotomayor’s hearings if Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) does not cave to right-wing demands to delay the hearings:

“As the hearing time approaches we will evaluate whether we can make that deadline,” Kyl said, explaining that if Republicans do not feel they can adequately question Sotomayor they will try to meet with Leahy to make a plea for more time.

However, Kyl, who serves on the Judiciary Committee, did not explicitly rule out the use of delay tactics, including a Republican boycott of the confirmation hearings, if an accommodation cannot be made.

But Kyl is not entitled to any more accommodations than what he has already received. Far from expediting Sotomayor’s confirmation process, Leahy set a schedule which is virtually identical to that enjoyed by Bush appointee John Roberts, even though Chief Justice Roberts’ record was more difficult to investigate because it was necessary to track down thousands of pages of documents Roberts produced while he worked in the Reagan and Bush I Administrations, and even though thousands of new documents relating to Roberts were uncovered just two weeks before his hearings began.

Kyl’s threat to take his ball and go home if he doesn’t get his way is unfortunate, but it is hardly surprising. Earlier this week, all seven GOP members of the Judiciary Committee signed a letter demanding that Sotomayor complete a series of irrelevant or even impossible tasks before her nomination may be considered.

Security

Arrested White Supremacist Blogger Tied To Hannity, Buchanan

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Jun 12, 2009 at 4:00 pm

Harold “Hal” Turner, a white supremacist New Jersey blogger and former radio host who frequented the same right-wing circles as Sean Hannity and Pat Buchanan turned himself into police today after encouraging his audience to “take up arms” against two lawmakers and a state official. The comments that lead to Turner’s arrest were made because he was reportedly “angry over legislation that would have given lay members of Roman Catholic churches in Connecticut more control over their parish’s finances.”

Aside from serving as the North Jersey coordinator for Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign, a 2005 article by The Nation points out that Hannity “offered his top-rated radio show as a regular forum for Turner’s occasionally racist, always over-the-top rants.” The Nation also reported that Turner and Hannity’s conversations continued off-the-air as Hannity offered Turner “encouragement” while he struggled to kick his cocaine habit and overcome his “homosexual leanings.” In 2007, Hannity backed away from his association with Turner in a tit-for-tat debate with Black Panther leader Malik Shabazz. Watch it:

Much like Wednesday’s Holocaust Museum shooter (who Hannity conveniently didn’t cover on on the day of the attack), Turner has promoted violence in the name of racism, anti-semitism and white nationalism. In 2006, Turner left former Jersey City Deputy Mayor, Jaime Vazquez, with a back injury and a fractured wrist when Vasquez began publicly protesting his anti-immigrant comments:

TURNER: “(T)he illegal immigrants are breaking the law, and people like me should break the law as well by shooting them down.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Turner as:

“A belligerent, foul-mouthed talk show host, Turner is the maestro of radio hate — a man who rants about a ‘Portable Nigger Lyncher’ machine, ‘faggots,’ ‘savage Negro beasts,’ ‘bull-dyke lesbians’ and ‘lazy-ass Latinos … slithering across the border.’”

Yglesias

The End of the Panic of 2008

By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 12, 2009 at 3:58 pm

Brad DeLong notes that the TED spread, a key indicator of banking system confidence, has returned to normal:

ted-spread-1

Unfortunately, while there was a long time when we were experiencing a financial panic combined with a fairly mild recession, for the past six months or so we’ve been in a severe contraction in the “real” economy. The financial system getting back to something approach normal is definitely a good thing, but it’s no longer clear that an end to the banking panic will lead to recovery. On the contrary, we’re to some extent now at a point where “real” problems are causing financial ones. After all, even a person with a very responsible mortgage or and little credit card debt is going to have trouble making his payments if he loses his job and spends 12 months unemployed.

Ordinarily, you’d be looking for an export-led recovery but there’s noplace to export to.

Politics

Leading White Nationalist To Speak At Pat Buchanan’s American Cause Conference This Month

By Ali Frick on Jun 12, 2009 at 3:30 pm

Peter BrimelowThe Southern Poverty Law Center reports that MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan has invited the editor of a white nationalist, anti-immigrant website to speak at the upcoming conference for his group, the American Cause.

Peter Brimelow, editor of VDARE.com, has written numerous tracts railing against immigration. He has said that the Republican party must “appeal to its base: white Americans,” and noted that John McCain “easily carried the white a.k.a. American vote.” Hitting back at critics of his website, he defended the site’s “white nationalist” writers:

We also publish on VDARE.COM a few writers…whom I would regard as “white nationalist,” in the sense that they aim to defend the interests of American whites. … Get used to it. As immigration policy drives whites into a minority, this type of interest-group “white nationalism” will inexorably increase.

Other writers on the site are even more outspoken in their racism, particularly Steve Sailor:

[W]hat if there is disparate impact for a good reason that is unmentionable: that blacks, on average, aren’t as smart as whites? We are supposed to constantly act as if the racial gaps seen on the New Haven firefighters’ written test were surprising when they are exactly the same as those seen on, say, graduate and professional school exams. [LINK]

In other words, what Obama hasn’t figured out yet…is that Better Teachers means Whiter Teachers. [LINK]

It’s no surprise that Buchanan would invite such a hatemonger to his conference. Buchanan himself has appeared at least twice on a neo-Nazi radio show; one appearance was streamed live on Stormfront, one of the most prominent white supremacist online forums. More recently, Buchanan has led the far-right attack against Sonia Sotomayor and in supposed defense of white men, going to far as to claim that “what is happening now to white men right now is exactly what was done to black folks for years.”

As Media Matters’ Jamison Foser asked, what exactly would Pat Buchanan have to say or do to get himself fired from MSNBC?

Yglesias

Co-Ops are No Substitute for a Public Option

By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 12, 2009 at 3:14 pm

Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND)

Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND)

Ezra Klein’s interview with Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) is probably the best source for information for Conrad’s thinking about health care co-ops as an alternative to for-profit private plans. I think the interview also makes clear that Conrad’s thinking about this is still a bit on the vague side. Part of the issue is that a lot of the thinking is clearly political thinking, thinking about how to come up with something that Republicans will vote for. As Ezra says and as Jonathan Cohn agrees, the merits of this proposal aside it’s just not a substitute for a robust public health insurance option.

To put it most crudely, the available evidence appears to overwhelmingly indicate that governments can provide health insurance of equal quality at lower cost to the private sector. It’s also true that a certain kind of ideological dogma says this can’t possibly be true. The view behind the public insurance option is that the dogma ought to be put to the test through competition. Proposals that aim to do something, nut that don’t aim to put the dogma to the test, are not a compromise. Indeed, the idea of a “public option” is itself a compromise between ideological dogma and the evidence in favor of single payer. The health co-ops seem like an interesting idea to me, but anything that drops the public plan is a proposal to drop the public plan not really a public plan “compromise.” That said, insofar as Congress is inclined to do this it ought to be done well.

Igor Volsky has some suggestions:

Mayo Clinic (Wikimedia)

Mayo Clinic (Wikimedia)

1. To exert maximum purchasing power and achieve bargaining clout to compete with provider oligarchies (that are currently setting prices) Congress would have to establish a single national cooperative.

2. Congress should allocate federal start-up funds to quickly establish the cooperative.

3. The cooperative should follow all of the rules of the Exchange. It would have to guarantee coverage at community rates and would not be able to discriminate against individuals with pre-existing conditions, or impose lifetime or annual limits on benefits for any participant or beneficiary. The cooperative must commit an appropriate percentage of premiums towards medical benefits.

4. It should be transparent and accountable to its members and the public.

5. The cooperative should be required to provide the same minimum benefits as private insurers.

6. The cooperative could be required to implement delivery system and payment reforms and “replicate the accountable care organizations like the Mayo Clinic and Seattle’s Group Health that provide a proven model for delivering high quality, affordable care in a non-profit, group practice setting.”

It strikes me as a little weird that this idea seems to be flying into place so suddenly out of left field, but it seems to be gaining a lot of momentum over the past few days.

Justice

Washington Times Demands More Activism From Sotomayor

By Ian Millhiser on Jun 12, 2009 at 3:00 pm

sotomayor-and-obamaAn editorial in today’s Washington Times accuses Judge Sotomayor of being unwilling “to provide more reasoning than a few hundred words for controversial cases in which the public clearly sides against [her] position.” Citing four cases in which Sotomayor handed down a short dissenting opinion or a brief unpublished order, the editorial claims that she is “dismissive[] when ruling against individual weapons rights, property rights and the employment rights of white firefighters and against a state’s traditional authority to prohibit currently imprisoned felons from voting.”

This editorial, however, reveals far more about the ignorance of the Washington Times‘ editorial board than it does about Sotomayor. The overwhelming majority of federal appeals are resolved by a brief unpublished order–Tom Goldstein’s seminal study on Sotomayor’s race cases, for example, found that her court published a decision in only 5 of 55 decisions affirming a district court’s decision. Lengthy published opinions are rare, not because judges are “dismissive,” but because their use is reserved to groundbreaking decisions that resolve previously unresolved questions of law. Yet, according to research compiled by The Wonk Room, each of the four decisions cited by the Washington Times, did nothing more than follow well-established law:

  • The Second Amendment: Last year, the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. But another Supreme Court decision, which has never been overruled, held that the Second Amendment does not apply to state laws. So, in Sotomayor’s decision upholding a New York State ban on nunchaku, she did nothing more than recognize that only the Supreme Court has the “prerogative of overruling its own decisions.”
  • Property Rights: In 1999, two developers learned that their land was part of a “redevelopment zone” and subject to seizure by eminent domain. Yet the developers waited until 2004 to file suit–two years after the three year statute of limitations had expired. Sotomayor’s decision held simply that land developers cannot wait forever to file a claim, just like everyone else.
  • White Firefighters: In her now-famous Ricci decision, Judge Sotomayor held that an employer could decide not to certify the results of a promotion test that had an adverse impact on minorities. In 1984, eight years before Sotomayor became a judge, her court decided a virtually identical case called Bushey v. New York State Civil Service Commission, and it reached exactly the same result. So Sotomayor simply followed the binding precedent established by Bushey, which has never been overruled.
  • Felony Disenfranchisement: Bizarrely, the Washington Times lumps Sotomayor’s published dissent in Hayden v. Pataki together with the other cases on this list as an example of her “dismissive approach.” Although Sotomayor’s dissent in Hayden was brief, she also joined a 32-page dissent by George W. Bush appointee Barrington Parker–judges frequently join the opinion of another judge that they agree with rather than waste effort repeating what has already been said. Moreover, Sotomayor’s dissent in Hayden rejected the majority’s claim that they could invent an exception to the Voting Rights Act which does not exist in the text of that law. Sotomayor thought that Congress gets to decide what the law says, a majority of her colleagues thought that they knew better than Congress.

In the end, we can either live in Judge Sotomayor’s world, a world where judges follow the law, or we can live in the Washington Times‘ world, where the law must take a backseat to whatever is popular.

Politics

George H.W. Bush condemns right-wing attacks on Sotomayor: Those ‘radical’ statements are ‘not right.’

By Amanda Terkel on Jun 12, 2009 at 2:45 pm

George H.W. Bush Today in an interview with CNN, President George H.W. Bush condemned the right-wing attacks on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Specifically, he took issue with the assertion that Sotomayor is “racist,” which has been made by Newt Gingrich, Tom Tancredo, and Rush Limbaugh:

“I don’t know her that well but I think she’s had a distinguished record on the bench and she should be entitled to fair hearings. Not – [it's] like the senator John Cornyn said it,” he told CNN. “He may vote for it, he may not. But he’s been backing away from these…backing off from those radical statements to describe her, to attribute things to her that may or may not be true.

“And she was called by somebody a racist once. That’s not right. I mean that’s not fair. It doesn’t help the process. You’re out there name-calling. So let them decide who they want to vote for and get on with it.”

In 1991, Bush nominated Sotomayor as a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, making her “the youngest judge in the Southern District of New York and the first Hispanic federal judge in the state.”

Related Posts

Yglesias

Bibi’s Speech

By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 12, 2009 at 2:26 pm

Eli Lake reports for The Washington Times that Bibi Netanyahu is prepared to make major concessions toward the Palestinians. This turns out to mean that he’s willing to accept, in principle, that someday there should be a Palestinian state. But only after all kinds of conditions are met and so on and so forth. Spencer Ackerman aptly characterizes this as Bibi stepping boldly into the cutting edge thinking circa 1993.

That said, while cynicism is appropriate, it shouldn’t cloud all. Politics is a pretty cynical business, and there’s always been a lot of cynicism in Netanyahu’s hard-line approach. A cynical and nominal embrace of a two-state solution still means that there’s no longer any meaningful Israeli political space to the right of the common sense and appropriate view that the only way for Israel to enjoy long-term security is by peacefully coexisting with an independent Palestine. What will follow from that in practice is, as of yet, hard to see. But a great deal follows from that logically. In particular, on the controversy du jour regarding settlements, it’s crystal clear as a matter of logic that if you can’t have a settlement freeze then you also can’t ever have a Palestinian state. Conversely, if you believe there needs to be a Palestinian state, then no matter what you think about when or how that should happen, you’re ineluctably drawn to the conclusion that the settlement project needs to be halted. Will Netanyahu embrace those conclusions? Well, I have my doubts. But the terms of the debate are nonetheless changed by him shifting his position, however much the “shift” doesn’t amount to anything beyond Israel formally accepting Israel’s responsibility for Israel’s previous diplomatic commitments.

Health

Can Conrad’s Cooperative Compromise Meet The Goals Of A Public Health Care Plan?

By Igor Volsky on Jun 12, 2009 at 2:12 pm

conradrulesIn yesterday’s interview with the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) suggested that his proposal to replace the public health insurance option with a non-profit consumer-driven health cooperative, might allow the new plan to bargain with hospitals and doctors:

They might have that weight. One option is for a national cooperative. That would give it the heft and weight to compete. But you know, one of the interesting things when we talk to experts, is that they say critical mass is probably around 500,000 members. Puget Sound is probably around 580,000 and they compete successfully against much larger entities. The experts tell us that there are probably advantages of size up to a point, but after that point, the law of diminishing returns sets in.

Documents released by Conrad’s office have described the proposal as establishing multiple state or regional health insurance cooperatives. Multiple cooperatives — operating as non-profit health insurance plans — would lack the market leverage to bargain for lower prices, but an independent national program could attract large numbers and substantial market share to exert significant purchasing power.

Still, on its face, a non-profit cooperative in the mold of Group Health Cooperative in Washington State, is just another non-for profit health insurance company, a la a Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The theory relies on the belief that a truly consumer-drive health plan that elects a board of directors and hires a CEO, would have an incentive to reduce costs for its members and champion delivery system innovations. But a single health insurance plan has limited scope to influence the practices of providers and other insurers. In other words, it lacks the clout of Medicare — which can drive system innovations and payment reforms — Medicare-like administrative efficiencies, or the ability to use Medicare leverage to ensure a large provider network that accepts Medicare prices. A new cooperative health care plan won’t be able to lower costs and drive private insurers to aggressively bargain with providers (and pass the saving on to its beneficiaries in the form of lower premiums).

Some of these deficiencies can be overcome if Congress orients the new cooperative towards greater efficiency and care quality. Here are some suggestions:

1. To exert maximum purchasing power and achieve bargaining clout to compete with provider oligarchies (that are currently setting prices) Congress would have to establish a single national cooperative.

2. Congress should allocate federal start-up funds to quickly establish the cooperative.

3. The cooperative should follow all of the rules of the Exchange. It would have to guarantee coverage at community rates and would not be able to discriminate against individuals with pre-existing conditions, or impose lifetime or annual limits on benefits for any participant or beneficiary. The cooperative must commit an appropriate percentage of premiums towards medical benefits.

4. It should be transparent and accountable to its members and the public.

5. The cooperative should be required to provide the same minimum benefits as private insurers.

6. The cooperative could be required to implement delivery system and payment reforms and “replicate the accountable care organizations like the Mayo Clinic and Seattle’s Group Health that provide a proven model for delivering high quality, affordable care in a non-profit, group practice setting.”

While Congress can write the aforementioned rules into the plan’s new charter, the new cooperative will still lack the inherent advantages of a new public option. Thus, co-ops should be considered as a supplement to — not a replacement for — a public health plan.

Related Posts

Politics

Neocons Claim Iranian Elections Don’t Matter

By Ryan Powers on Jun 12, 2009 at 1:45 pm

Yesterday, the American Prospect’s Dana Goldstein noted that the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), despite warning of the dangers of an Iran led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are now suggesting that his possible ouster in today’s elections in Iran will not have any impact on how the Iranian government approaches relations with the West. Goldstein characterized AIPAC’s message this way: “If you are concerned about the expansion of Iran’s nuclear program, the argument goes, it doesn’t matter whether Ahmadinejad wins or loses.”

As the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss and HuffPost’s Rachel Weiner have noted, AIPAC’s read on the Iranian elections is nearly identical to that of the broader neo-conservative community:

Daniel Pipes: “The president tends to have power in the areas — in the soft areas — having to do with culture and religion and education. And it is the Rahbare, the Supreme Guide of Iran, Khomeini at first and now Khamenei who has control of the military, the law enforcement, the judiciary system, the intelligence agencies. So its not clear that the president matters that much.” [Heritage Foundation Panel, 6/03/09]

Michael Rubin: “[S]hould someone more soft-spoken and less defiant [than Ahmadinejad] — someone like former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi — win, it would be easier for Obama to believe that Iran really was figuratively unclenching a fist when, in fact, it had it had its other hand hidden under its cloak, grasping a dagger.” [National Review, 06/11/09]

Elliot Abrams: “In fact, a victory by Mr. Ahmadinejad’s main challenger, Mir Hussein Moussavi, is more likely to change Western policy toward Iran than to change Iran’s own conduct.” [New York Times, 06/12/09]

In apparent confirmation that such sentiments have now become neoconservative dogma, John Bolton echoed them on Fox News this morning. Bolton — who has long demonized Ahmadinejad as a significant threat to U.S. national security — argued to Fox’s Bill Hemmer that an Ahmadinejad defeat would not change Iran’s foreign policy because such issues are handled by the Iran’s religious leaders:

HEMMER: It doesn’t matter who wins then, based on what you’re telling us.

BOLTON: In terms of foreign policy. People like to joke this dispute between moderates and hard liners is that you have Ahmadinejad who tells people that he’s proceeding with the nuclear program and plans to wipe Israel off the map, or whether you have a moderate who proceeds with the nuclear program but is smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

Watch it:

In fact, it would be significant for the Iranian people to reject the radical politics and hard-line policies of Ahmadinejad. As Duss explains, the clerical leadership does not appear to be as interested in pursuing nuclear weapons as Ahmadinejad appears to be. Goldstein adds, “The thing to remember is that despite buzz to the contrary, there are key foreign policy differences between Ahmadinejad, who does not support international talks regarding the Iranian nuclear program, and Mousavi, who does.”

Laura Rozen agrees, writing that “the voting out of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would undoubtedly be seen in Washington and the West as a welcome sign that the Iranian public supports greater liberalization and a less hostile attitude toward the West.” Indeed, even if Ahmadinejad’s main challenger, Mousavi, loses, the campaign demonstrates that “there’s clearly a lot of popular disconnect with Ahmadinejad’s rule, and a lot of it centers around his bizarrely self-defeating approach to foreign policy,” Stephen Walt concludes.

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