Archive for March, 2010
One Reason Why Reconciliation is Much Ado About Nothing
The plan to use the reconciliation process in the Senate to pass fixes to the Health Insurance Reform law has conservative’s undies in a knot. One of the claims is that reconciliation undermines protection of the minority opinion. This is patently ridiculous, as well explained by my BlogTalkRadio show co-host Sandi Behrns. Now that every two-bit ignoramus has suddenly become a Constitutional expert, some education is needed. Her piece, reprinted with permission appears below. Well done Sandi.
Alright, I’ve had it. The problem with these here intertubes is that any ole ill-informed oaf with an opinion can publish. That in and of itself wouldn’t be such a problem if there weren’t so many other ill-informed oafs chomping at the bit to believe it, forward it, copy it on their own blogs, re-tweet it on Twitter, post it to Facebook, or toss it into the maelstrom of right-wing forums. The collective effort pushes the stupid and degrades the quality of political debate in this country. An alarming amount of the time, you can’t debate someone with an opposing viewpoint without first educating them. Drives me nuts!
So what’s got me so frustrated this time? A profound misunderstanding of the Constitution and what it says about the rules and nature of the House and Senate. For some time now, there has been discussion of the filibuster, both in terms of efforts to reform it and efforts, like reconciliation, to avoid it. A commonly held misconception these days is that the filibuster is delineated in the Constitution. (Why do I have to say this?) Not true. What the Constitution simply says is that the Senate and the House are to write their own rules. The Senate rules held the potential for a filibuster since 1806 (although it was theoretical) and the first filibuster occurred in 1837. Still, it was an exceedingly rare occurrence until the 1970’s. As we all are now acutely aware, its use has dramatically spiked since the GOP lost control of the Senate in 2006, accelerating even more since President Obama took office. I believe that bit of information as mostly been disseminated. Although I am certain there are some that still believe the filibuster is in the Constitution, I’ll leave that point alone.
More insidious, and more difficult to effectively educate against is a belief that the Senate was not intended to hold votes on a majority rule basis. (An example can be seen here.) “What?!”, you say. Bear with me and I will attempt to explain the thinking. It goes something like this:
The House was set up to be directly representative of the people, so majority rule votes are the law in the House. The Senate, however, was intended to be a check on the power of the majority (to protect against the tyranny of majority factions.) Therefore, the Senate was never intended to be held to majority rule votes of 50% plus one. This is why the filibuster (now that the GOP needs it) is sacrosanct.
Darn it! They were so close to the truth. Too bad they fail to grasp the obvious. The Senate is not majority rule, but not because it does or should require a supermajority. Rather, it is implicit in the very nature of the Senate itself. A little elementary civics: unlike the House, where representatives are determined by population, the Senate allows for two Senators per state, regardless of population. The result of this is the over-representation of smaller states. For instance, Wyoming, with a population of just over 544,ooo people, has two Senators, while California, where a single city has a population over 18 times that size, has the same allotment.
The Senate then, by its very composition, laid out in the Constitution, is not democratic. This satisfies the founders’ desire to put some limit on the over-rule of minority rights by majority factions. Within the Senate itself, any vote is inherently a check on the majority rule of the directly representative House. When California’s 37 million constituents get the same vote as Wyoming’s 544,000, it is clear that the majority is not ruling. There is no need for a filibuster to protect that discrepancy. The fact that the Senate rules allow for a filibuster is fine, but the rules also allow for reconciliation. Both are within the legal, constitutional framework of the Senate.
Everyone in the US that has made it through sixth grade should know this. So what to make of the people pushing this falsehood? Why are they misinterpreting the Constitution? Why are they referencing Madison’s Federalist papers when they clearly don’t understand them, either? There are three possibilities:
- They are intellectually challenged and simply cannot grasp this concept.
- They are willfully choosing to misrepresent the language of the Constitution and the founders’ writings to suit their viewpoint.
- They have been intentionally misinformed by others guilty of number 2.
I will leave it to you to determine the answer for any offenders you encounter.
Reprinted from The Cassandra Files.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Truth About the “Demon” Pass
There is a huge controversy brewing over the potential use of a House voting technique called “Deem and Pass”, or as conservative opponents call it, “Demon Pass”.
Time for some “Deem and Pass” education.
1. Deem and Pass is hardly unprecedented having been used by both parties at one time or another. The first known instance was in 1933.
2. The reason in 1933 as now was that the House needed to make a tough vote and Deem and Pass allowed them to make the vote without appearing to really have made the vote.
Let’s hit the current situation. The House doesn’t like all the compromises in the Senate bill and there are a number of Representatives who would vote the Senate bill down but vote for the reconciled bill which corrects the compromises (i.e. side deals like Cornhusker Kickback). So, a rule on voting for the reconciled bill is put forth and voted by the entire House. The rule deems the Senate bill (pre-reconciliation) passed for the purposes of voting on the reconciled bill.
Any Representative who does not like the Senate bill and thinks their vote for the “rule” would be viewed as voting for the Senate bill, will vote the rule down.
The hope is that Representatives can hide behind the rule by telling their constituents “I didn’t vote for the Senate bill, I only voted for the rule.” It’s a stupid distinction that with all the current publicity can’t work. If a Congressman’s constituents don’t like HCR, he will get voted out of office whether he votes for the Senate bill directly or via Deem and Pass.
Bottom line, the idea that the health care bill will become law without a vote is poppycock. The rule must be voted on; it isn’t just declared. So by voting on the rule, they indirectly vote on the Senate bill.
And yes, Pelosi and Slaughter are using a method they opposed years ago. So friggin’ what? The party in power does what it can to get what it wants and the party out of power does what it can to oppose what it doesn’t want. It’s called politics.
Here are my sources:
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010031116/deem-and-pass-not-without-vote
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/16/health-care-opponents-dem_n_501353.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/16/house-has-long-history-of_n_500623.html
Respectfully,
Rutherford
A Mass-a-ive Embarrassment
Forget Michele Bachmann’s demand that we investigate which Representatives and Senators are real Americans. Forget Liz Cheney’s desire to smoke out all those al Qaeda loving Department of Justice employees. What we really need to do in full-blown McCarthy style is to weed out the whack jobs!
Now of course, the aforementioned Bachmann is near the top of the list but insanity knows no political affiliation. The latest case is that of New York Representative Eric Massa. Massa announced he wouldn’t run for another term for health reasons, then said he was resigning because his fellow Democrats wanted to get rid of him. As it turns out he was facing an ethics investigation for inappropriate behavior with staffers. Glenn Beck smelled blood and booked Massa for a full hour in the hope of getting at some deep dark Democratic conspiracy to silence possible opposition to health care legislation. Then one of my favorite “Law and Order” plot devices was employed. Have you ever seen DA McCoy put a guy on the stand and then the guy does a complete 180 with his testimony, endangering McCoy’s chances at a conviction? Well that is exactly what happened to Beck. He put Massa “on the stand” and Massa did a complete 180, claiming that he had no one to blame for his resignation but himself. Later that night he went on CNN’s “Larry King Live” and announced that he wouldn’t answer whether or not he was gay. He just told Larry to ask his wife, his friends and his Navy buddies.
As if matters could not get worse, Josh Green of The Atlantic decided to take Massa up on his offer and interview a few of his old Navy cohorts. The verdict? Back in the Navy Massa made unwanted advances on fellow sailors.
On tonight’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”, guest host Lawrence O’Donnell interviewed comedian-cum-pundit Bill Maher who made a frightening observation. Essentially Maher said that to get elected to Congress all you have to do is memorize the right talking points and then charm the voters into electing you. You don’t have to be very smart and you can be flat-out crazy. This got me to thinking about the current mistrust of government. I have always interpreted it as a purely political position, one currently being exploited to the hilt by Republicans. But when you look at Bachmann, Grassley, Massa, Rangel and a list of others you see that this goes way beyond politics. We have a lot of very flawed people running our government. The easy answer is that as voters, we get what we deserve. Still one has to think, when one gets beyond Massa as a punchline, that this man had authority to vote on matters of grave interest to our country. This guy is clearly bonkers. How many of him are in Washington? Do we really have a problem here and if so, how in the world do we solve it?
An Unintended Consequence
Unfortunately, one of the aftershocks of the Massa fiasco that I have not yet seen in the main stream media but that I expect to see any day now, is the issue of his behavior in the Navy. This is just the kind of thing that advocates of “don’t ask don’t tell” cite as their worst nightmare. The folks interviewed by The Atlantic said they did not press charges against Massa because he was in a position of power on the ship and reporting his harassment would make waves, no pun intended. The important point to emphasize here is that heterosexual harassment is common in the military but the key difference that DADT advocates will cite is that Massa shared living quarters with at least one of the men he allegedly harassed, thereby facilitating the harassment. Then again, would DADT deter someone like Massa? Not likely. We will have to see how and if this plays out but it isn’t a good development for gay rights advocates.
Hypocrisy or Proper Representation?
Inasmuch as we’re discussing gay politicians, the case of Roy Ashburn, a State Senator from California, raises an interesting question. Ashburn has been in the closet his entire political career and voted against every pro-gay legislation that has come down the pike. When he was arrested for DUI on his way back from a gay bar, he decided to announce his sexual orientation. Faced with the seeming contradiction of his voting record he said, “I felt my duty – and I still feel this way – is to represent my constituents, not my own point of view, not my own internal conflict.” via Roy Ashburn, California State Senator, Says He’s Gay After DUI Arrest.
Is an elected representative sworn to reflect the wishes of his constituents or should his personal views play a dominant role? One of the constant debate points regarding health care reform is that our government is passing legislation that “the people” don’t want (a bogus claim but let’s run with it) and that the majority party is enforcing its sense of moral outrage on the rest of us, deciding what is best for us.
It will be interesting to see how Ashburn’s fellow Republicans handle this. Putting aside the DUI arrest which is unseemly, will the California GOP defend Ashburn based on his voting record and ignore his proclivities? Will they embrace him as a “log cabin Republican” in much the same way that the recent CPAC convention embraced GOPride, a conservative gay group?
Most importantly, is Ashburn a hypocrite or just a good legislator doing what his constituents sent him to the California Senate to do?
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Liz Cheney Finally Goes Too Far
Folks whose stomachs turn at the mere sight of Liz Cheney, whose only claim to fame is a genetic connection to the former Vice President of the United States, waited for this day to come. At last Liz Cheney revealed herself to be the bottom-feeder we all suspected her to be.
Liz runs a think tank (for lack of a more fitting phrase) called Keep America Safe. Her organization issued a video which I refuse to soil my blog with by embedding. You can find it here. Bottom line is Liz’s premise is that Justice Department employees who once defended al Qaeda suspects are somehow al Qaeda sympathizers. Marc “Torture” Thiessen now an editorial writer for the Washington Post had this to say:
If lawyers who once sought to free captured terrorists are now setting U.S. policy when it comes to the release of Guantanamo detainees, moving terrorists to the United States, trying senior al-Qaeda leaders in civilian courts, and whether to give captured terrorists Miranda rights, then, as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) put it, the public has “a right to know who advises the attorney general and the president on these critical matters.”
via Marc A. Thiessen – The ‘al-Qaeda seven’ and selective McCarthyism – washingtonpost.com.
All I can say is Marc is an incredible dumbass. Lawyers don’t seek to “free captured terrorists”, they seek to make sure that suspected terrorists get a fair trial. You see, Marc and Liz, that is the way our justice system works. Thiessen explicitly likens al Quada defense attorney’s to mob lawyers and drug cartel lawyers and asks wouldn’t you want to know if the prosecutors office hired them. Well for starters mob lawyers are paid by the mob. So there is a certain exchange of dirty money going on there that sullies things a bit. As far as I know combatant detainees are assigned counsel and do not pay for it. Again, in our justice system you don’t get prosecuted without an advocate working to protect you. But even if we buy the mob lawyer analogy, who has better expertise to apply to the prosecution of criminals than someone intimately familiar with defending them?
To my delight, Liz has gone so far out on the edge that even Republicans and other notable conservatives are ready to throw her into the shark tank. Even Ken Starr, Bill Clinton’s famous nemesis has come out publically against Cheney. The piece of history that has been brought up repeatedly in recent days is that of John Adams who as a colonist, defended British soldiers accused of massacring a group of Boston colonists. His decision to defend these men was unpopular to say the least but Adams knew that the foundation of justice was that every accused man has a right to a defense.
Of course, we can’t expect Liz Cheney to remember pre-revolutionary history. Heck, she spends all of her time now re-writing recent history.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Swimming in the Deep End of the Bunning Hypocrisy Pool
Now that the dust has settled, it’s time to weigh in on the Jim Bunning “controversy”. Bunning was alone in blocking a $10 billion spending bill that included extension of unemployment benefits. Now let’s get the obvious out of the way. Bunning is a hypocrite to end all hypocrites. None of George W. Bush’s wars were paid for yet Bunning voted time and again to fund them. He also voted to give tax breaks to the wealthy without worrying about finding another source for that revenue. The left went berserk with outrage. A few brave souls defended his fiscal courage, like the Wall Street Journal (should we be surprised?). And of course there was the occasional dumbass like John Kyl who suggested that unemployment benefits discourage people from going out and finding work. (More on that at the bottom of the page.)
But we need to swim over to the deep end of the hypocrisy pool. You see except for a few Republicans, virtually everyone either publicly or privately condemned Bunning’s actions. So what we really witnessed was a GOP who less than a week after opposing health care reform on the grounds of financial irresponsibility, jump on Bunning for holding up this legislation. True, they were not as vocal as the Democrats but they still felt Bunning had gone off the deep end. (Bunning actually has an interesting history of being a loon.) Senator Susan Collins of Maine urged the Kentucky Senator to back down.
What I love about this is the dirty little secret that was reveled by the whole incident. Everyone in Washington likes to spend money. Now we already knew this from the first six years of the Bush administration where a Republican Congress took us from surplus to deficit. Since Democrats have always put ideology above fiscal responsibility the remaining two years of Bush’s term went no better. But we were led to believe that the times had changed. The Republican party had learned its lesson and they were gonna rail against reckless Democratic spending every chance they got. That is the big health care reform argument right? But the truth is Republicans want to get re-elected as badly as anyone else and denying people unemployment benefits is not the way to get re-elected. If it weren’t for his voting record, Bunning might rightly be called a hero for walking the GOP talk. Alas this was just a case of one of Bunning’s neurons misfiring.
It kinda makes a guy sympathize with the old rallying cry “throw the bums out.”
The GOP Really Doesn’t Love America
Let’s return to Jon Kyl a minute. In defending Bunning, Kyl said that “”continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” So let me get this straight. The GOP, the ra-ra-sisboomba party that loves America, the real Americans, the hard-working Americans, thinks that the average American would prefer to receive unemployment benefits than to get off their ass and find a job. Do I understand this right? The industrious American who doesn’t want the government interfering in their lives, would in the same breath gladly go on the dole.
This is the fascinating paradox of the Republican perspective. Don’t provide government programs because the more the government does for people the more they will be slaves to the government. Yet these are the same people who supposedly don’t want the government in their lives. So which is it? Are Americans lazy good-for-nothings who will suck up every government program or are they independent proud citizens who want government out of their way? Democrats and Barack Obama in particular get flack for being elitists who disrespect and condescend to the average American. But what could be more disrespectful than to believe that providing a helping hand to Americans will be taken advantage of by them? The GOP doesn’t love the American people. The GOP thinks the American people are a bunch of lazy loafers who need “tough love”. I call that condescension piled on top of hypocrisy.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Reason is Six-sevenths of Treason
Children’s fantasies and fables are one of the most effective ways of helping us see our folly as adults. One story that I always cite is that of Dr. Seuss’ Sneetches, a band of creatures who learned that what they had in common was much more important than what separated them.
We live in a time of extremism. Political litmus tests are the rule of the day, not the exception. We see it on the right and the left. If you don’t toe the far left or far right party line you’re vulnerable to attack. Moderation cannot be tolerated. The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was an example of how Republicans will start to eat their own. Even mild-mannered Tim Pawlenty felt compelled to use golf club swinging (ala Tiger Woods’ wife) analogies to make his point. From my experience following fellow liberals on Twitter the rhetoric is often just as extreme and intolerant of moderation. This movement toward the extremes carries with it a diminishing intellectual curiosity and contributes to the dumbing down of America.
Thanks to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, I’ve stumbled upon another fable that is instructive and speaks to man’s insistence on conformity to a strict set of rules. If you don’t conform, you’ll find the folks you thought were friends are your worst enemies. Olbermann read this fable by James Thurber on Monday night’s edition of “Countdown”. It resonated with me and I hope it resonates with you.
The Peacelike Mongoose
by James ThurberIn cobra country a mongoose was born one day who didn’t want to fight cobras or anything else. The word spread from mongoose to mongoose that there was a mongoose who didn’t want to fight cobras. If he didn’t want to fight anything else, it was his own business, but it was the duty of every mongoose to kill cobras or be killed by cobras.
‘Why’ asked the peacelike mongoose, and the word went around that the strange new mongoose was not only pro-cobra and anti-mongoose but intellectually curious and against the ideals and traditions of mongoosism.
‘He is crazy,’ cried the young mongoose’s father.
‘He is sick,’ said his mother.
‘He is a coward,’ shouted his brothers.
‘He is a mongoosexual,’ whispered his sisters.
Strangers who never laid eyes on the peacelike mongoose remembered that they had seen him crawling on his stomach, or trying on cobra hoods, or plotting the violent overthrow of Mongoosia.
‘I am trying to use reason and intelligence,’ said the strange new mongoose.
‘Reason is six-sevenths of treason,’ said one of his neighbours.
‘Intelligence is what the enemy uses,’ said another.
Finally, the rumour spread that the mongoose had venom in his sting, like a cobra, and was tried, convicted by a show of paws, and condemned to banishment.
MORAL: Ashes to ashes, and clay to clay, if the enemy doesn’t get you your own folks may.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
American Abortion Hypocrisy
Passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) touched a lot of hot buttons among advocates and the opposition. One of the final thorny issues right up to the weekend that the bill passed was whether or not the bill properly honored the Hyde Amendment. It took a Presidential signing statement to appease Representative Bart Stupak and convince him to vote for the bill. The entire affair highlighted for me two levels of hypocrisy within our country where abortion is concerned.
Let’s start at the legislative level. Roe v. Wade in 1973 established that first trimester abortions were legal in the United States without restriction. Yet in 1976 an appropriations bill rider sponsored by Representative Henry Hyde restricted federal funding of abortion (primarily via Medicaid) without restriction. The wording of the amendment was subsequently changed to allow federal funding in the case of rape, incest or risk of mother’s life. This is where the first layer of hypocrisy arises. If Roe v. Wade does not make distinctions for first trimester abortions, why should the Hyde Amendment? One answer of course is that without the Hyde Amendment, the tax dollars of pro-life people would be going toward abortions. However I say, so what? We do not, on an individual basis decide how our tax dollars are used. I personally might like less of my tax money used for the military but ultimately I have no choice in the matter. From what I can see, the Hyde Amendment makes a value judgment that directly contradicts Roe v. Wade. Either first trimester abortions are legal or they are not. If they are legal, there should be no judgment restricting the funding of them.
But the typical wording of the Hyde Amendment, “except in cases of rape or incest”, raises a deeper level of hypocrisy of which many if not most pro-life advocates are guilty. If we agree that life begins at conception, then from my perspective the only viable reason to terminate a pregnancy is to save the life of the mother. The life inside the mother did not choose to be conceived under the circumstances of rape or incest. To terminate that life is to hold against that life a circumstance for which it was not responsible. The counter argument is that the mother and potentially the child may suffer irreparable psychological harm if the pregnancy is carried to term. Is this potential worth terminating a life? I would say not.
I maintain that the rape and incest exceptions are deeply rooted in America’s sexual hangups. Now I am hardly advocating rape and incest as normal sexual choices but I suspect that other countries in which sex is not viewed as shameful, have a much more mature and reasoned approach to these issues. Both should be viewed as unfortunate events but not life ending events. There can be healing. There are of course genetic health issues related to incest but even that is not a compelling reason for abortion in my judgment. As a disabled person I am particularly sensitive to the notion that some babies are worth being born and some are not.
Frankly, I think our country wants to have its cake and eat it too. Either the Hyde Amendment should be dropped or Roe v. Wade should be overturned.
Postscript: Despite all my reservations about abortion there is primarily one reason why I end up on the pro-choice side of the argument. I cannot abide the notion that a legislative body that is a good 70% male will dictate a biological outcome for a situation that is uniquely female. No man has ever faced nor will ever face the choice of terminating a pregnancy. Perhaps when NOW (National Organization for Women) and the League of Women Voters comes down on the pro-life side of the argument, then so will I.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance
March 31, 2010 at 1:00 am Rutherford 129 comments