Obama Ain't Jesus

Seeing Tougher Race, Allies Ask Obama to Make ‘Hope’ Specific

2008-08-17T13:34:00.001-05:00

From the NYT on August 17, 2008: "As Senator Barack Obama prepares to accept the Democratic presidential nomination next week, party leaders in battleground states say the fight ahead against Senator John McCain looks tougher than they imagined, with Mr. Obama vulnerable on multiple fronts despite weeks of cross-country and overseas campaigning.

These Democrats — 15 governors, members of Congress and state party leaders — say Mr. Obama has yet to convert his popularity among many Americans into solutions to crucial electoral challenges: showing ownership of an issue, like economic stewardship or national security; winning over supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton; and minimizing his race and experience level as concerns for voters.

Mr. Obama has run for the last 18 months as the candidate of hope. Yet party leaders — while enthusiastic about Mr. Obama and his state-by-state campaign operations — say he must do more to convince the many undecided Democrats and independents that he would address their financial anxieties rather than run, by and large, as an agent of change — given that change, they note, is not an issue.

“I particularly hope he strengthens his economic message — even Senator Obama can speak more clearly and specifically about the kitchen-table, bread-and-butter issues like high energy costs,” said Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio. “It’s fine to tell people about hope and change, but you have to have plenty of concrete, pragmatic ideas that bring hope and change to life.”

Or, in the blunter words of Gov. Phil Bredesen, Democrat of Tennessee: “Instead of giving big speeches at big stadiums, he needs to give straight-up 10-word answers to people at Wal-Mart about how he would improve their lives.”

Obama advisers say he has made significant headway defining his positions on issues like tougher trade policies, the links between new energy sources and job creation and projecting American leadership abroad. At the same time, his trip last month to Iraq, Afghanistan and Europe helped reassure voters about his experience, they said, and his agreement to a roll-call vote on Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy at the convention should bring her disappointed supporters into the fold.

Moreover, the Obama campaign has started running negative advertisements against Mr. McCain in battleground states — often without announcing them beforehand. The reason, Obama aides say, is to try to convince voters that Mr. McCain is barely different than President Bush through a day or two of uncontested advertisements — until the Republicans learn about them and begin to counter the ads.

Yet these advisers also acknowledge that the Obama phenomenon — the candidacy that helped inspire record voter registrations and turnout during the primaries — has come down to earth in a divided, economically stressed nation. Even though political analysts say that the economic conditions favor the Democrats in this election, and Mr. Bush’s unpopularity could hurt Republicans, Mr. Obama has not broken away from Mr. McCain in polling — a reflection, in part, of the huge numbers of undecided voters across party lines.

“Democrats should take a deep breath and realize that there are a group of voters who won’t make up their mind about a candidate until deep in the fall,” said David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager. “And there are 18 states that are battlegrounds for a reason, and they’ll be decided by 2 to 4 points. I don’t care about national polls.”

A New York Times/CBS News poll last month found the race between Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain to be a statistical dead heat, not unlike where Senator John Kerry and Mr. Bush stood in a Times/CBS News poll in July 2004. The poll four years ago was conducted after Mr. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, picked Senator John Edwards as his running mate, yet before both the party conventions and the most intense period of political attacks on Mr. Kerry’s war service record as skipper of a Swift boat in Vietnam.

The McCain campaign has sought to turn Mr. Obama’s celebrity against him by portraying the freshman senator as out of his depth in crises like Russia’s invasion of Georgia. As Mr. Obama was in Hawaii last week, Mr. McCain presented himself as a man-at-the-ready, opining daily about Russia, as well as repeatedly invoking action verbs like “drill” in pledging to address high fuel prices.

To a considerable extent, political analysts say, the closeness of the race at this stage reflects the fact that many voters are not paying attention to it, after the long, wearying primary season. Many Democrats pointed to the election of 1980 when voters, choosing between a relatively inexperienced former governor, Ronald Reagan, and an unpopular incumbent, Jimmy Carter, finally flocked to Mr. Reagan at the end after resolving whatever qualms they had about him.

But some Republicans disputed that analogy, saying the difficulty Mr. Obama faces getting traction in public opinion polls reflects the country’s reservations about this relative newcomer to national politics — both because he has little experience in national security but also, inevitably, because of his race.

“I think Senator Obama is a motivational speaker, but at the end of the day I don’t think that will translate into votes, and certainly not the image of strength that Ronald Reagan had,” said Jim Greer, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party.

“Florida has not yet been locked down by either candidate, or all but won by either candidate, but I think Obama’s inability to prove his experience or prove that he owns a political issue far more than McCain is a real problem for him,” Mr. Greer said.

In response, several Democrats said that choosing a seasoned party leader as his running mate would help Mr. Obama in the fall if he is unable to fully allay voters’ uncertainty that a one-term senator is ready for the presidency.

“The one area he still needs credibility in is experience, and picking an Evan Bayh or a Joe Biden as vice president would help a lot with that,” said John B. Breaux, a former Democratic senator from Louisiana. “It wouldn’t be bad if he came out early and said who his secretary of defense and secretary of state would be — that would address and stabilize the concerns about his experience.”

Mr. Obama and his aides made several strategic decisions this summer that had clear payoffs, yet also carried some risks that could play out in the general election.

He quit the public campaign finance system and built a formidable bank account for his campaign, while the Clintons and their supporters still smarted from her loss and grew frustrated that he did not do more to help pay down her campaign debt. He traveled overseas for a week, and was widely praised for his statesmanlike bearing, yet Republicans derided him as vainglorious for holding a huge rally in Berlin. And while Mr. Obama kept a low profile during his Hawaiian vacation, Mr. McCain sought to burnish his image on national security by responding to the Georgian crisis.

Some Democrats said Mr. Obama must still demonstrate that he would be a more effective president than Mr. McCain, and that he could unite the Democratic Party before its convention. Jane Kidd, the party leader in Georgia — where Mr. Obama is hoping black support will help him succeed where other northern Democratic nominees have failed — said Mr. Obama had a good deal more work to do to win over Clinton supporters as well as white voters who are loath to support a black candidate.

“In rural parts of Georgia and the South, there is still some fear about people who look different from themselves,” Ms. Kidd said. “And there’s also healing left to do among women who wanted to see the day that a woman was elected president,”

Mr. Bredesen, of Tennessee, said that while the Democrats had little chance of carrying his state — the Obama camp is sending Mr. Bredesen to campaign in other states — Mr. Obama could still take steps to appeal to undecided Democrats there that might increase his chances elsewhere.

“I would really like to see him do things in Tennessee that would help in other working-class and blue-collar places, like Ohio,” Mr. Bredesen said. “Job security and health care are huge here. He needs to come to the aisle of Home Depot and show them that a Harvard graduate — which I am as well — knows how to help them.”

Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado, the host of next week’s Democratic National Convention, said Mr. Obama needed to hone and amplify his plan to create more jobs if he wants to woo undecided independent voters, who make up the largest bloc of the electorate in the swing state.

“His message is the right one, but he needs to turn up the volume and sharpen it a bit because these are voters who care a great, great deal about the future of the economy,” Mr. Ritter said. “He has to convince them he is ready for that huge task.”

Obama Flip-Flops on Oil Drilling

2008-08-11T13:20:00.001-05:00

From guardian.co.uk on August 5, 2008 by Maura Kelly: "On Friday, saying it was time for a compromise on the energy issue, presidential hopeful Barack Obama voiced his tentative support for a bipartisan proposal calling for the expansion of offshore oil drilling, along with the development of alternative fuels and more efficient motor vehicles. Soon after, Obama implied that his willingness to allow the drilling in Florida "wasn't really a new position". But, of course, it is.

As recently as late June, he said that, in order to protect the US coastline, he would enforce a drilling moratorium that has been in place since 1981. (Democratic leaders and environmentalists have supported that ban for years.) What's not new: Obama's interest in working with Republicans to move the country toward greater energy independence, and his eagerness to appease voters. That's why he made a gesture that many of them believe would lower prices at the pump.

While I've been or more less accepting of Obama's float toward the centre as a political imperative as the election gets closer, this is one move I can't support. Reversing his position on campaign financing, for example, is one thing - a tactic that upset some of his supporters but won't necessarily have any kind of permanent or global repercussions. Offshore drilling, on the other hand, is sure to contaminate marine life and the water along Florida's coast, produce a number of small oil spills and, ultimately, contribute to the problem of global warming. A catastrophic oil spill is also a possibility.

Now, it's true that Obama said that any compromise he would agree to would have to involve "a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage" - which sounds pretty, doesn't it? Too bad the reality is much uglier.

"There is no such thing as environmentally friendly drilling," says Greenpeace USA spokesperson Michael Crocker. After noting that damage to drills caused between seven and nine million gallons of oil to be spilled during Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, Crocker says: "There's a real irony when it comes to offshore drilling. It's done so we can get more oil in the hopes of reducing gas prices. In the meantime, we keep burning fossil fuels, which causes more global warming, which leads to more hurricanes, which lead to more oil lost in spills - and yet, drilling does almost nothing to alleviate the cost of gasoline."

Why doesn't it? "There's simply not very much oil on America's shorelines," he says. "Government studies have indicated that it will take a decade for any offshore drilling to pay off even minimally - and even then, prices will only be reduced by a few cents per gallon."

It's irresponsible of Obama to be cavalier about an issue that is of so much importance to the environmental health of the country, and the world. He should have stuck to his guns and insisted on finding cleaner alternatives that would truly make the US energy independent, instead of trying to placate short-sighted American car owners.

To be fair, Obama did point out that it was "important to recognise if you start drilling now you won't see a drop of oil for 10 years, which means it's not going to have a significant impact on short-term prices. Every expert agrees on that." And yet, that's really the fine print. What most voters will be paying attention to are the headlines announcing his willingness to let offshore drilling move forward - as I'm sure he and his strategists know.

And of course, most voters don't care about contaminating the shoreline. According to a Rasmussen poll released on July 29, 57% percent of Americans favour offshore drilling (only 29% are opposed). And why is that? Because nearly the same number - 56% - believe gas prices would be likely to fall if the ban is lifted.

So while Obama is wrong to waver on this issue - he's punting on his duty as a public steward - voters are wrong, too. Many Americans might be willing to watch the new "green" cable channel, eat organics and recycle (although not in Houston, Texas), but they've got to start supporting the environmental movement in truly meaningful ways, not just trendy ones.

They should start by getting over fuel prices and realising that one of the things we're paying for at the pump is our role in accelerating the pace of global warming. What voters should be clamouring for is not cheaper gas, but a truly longterm and sustainable solution - one that emphasises new, clean forms of energy and fuel-efficient transportation alternatives.

About this articleClose Maura Kelly: Barack Obama caves on offshore oil drilling
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Tuesday August 05 2008. It was last updated at 14:00 on August 05 2008. "

Obama Faking It

2008-07-23T18:05:00.002-05:00

From RealClearPolitics.com on June 23, 2008 by Maggie Gallagher:
"Obama has a problem: What do you do when you're a lightly accomplished one-term senator, a former state legislator from Illinois, a Harvard law graduate who has no substantive record of accomplishments, and you are running against a war hero whom polls show that Americans overwhelmingly view as far more fit to be commander in chief?

Pose, of course.

What else can a guy like Obama do?

So the man who would be president of the United States of America flies around the world in the middle of a political campaign, enlisting the U.S. military and the Berlin Wall as free campaign commercial backdrops, to lend him the emotional weight and substance -- the aura as a commander -- that he hasn't yet earned on his own.

NBC's Andrea Mitchell was the one journalist with the courage to name what she was actually seeing happen: Obama faking even being interviewed by the press.

"Let me say something about the message management. He didn't have reporters with him, he didn't have a press pool, he didn't do a press conference," either in Afghanistan or Iraq, noted Mitchell on the air. Instead Obama manufactured "what some would call 'fake interviews,' because they are not interviews from a journalist," Mitchell went on.

Mitchell understands very well that this contrived image management is powerfully all to Obama's political advantage. He's shameless when it comes to managing his own image. "Politically it's as smart as can be," she conceded before noting the big obvious truth nobody else in the media was bothering to expose: "We've not seen a presidential candidate do this, in my recollection, ever before."

The whole Obama campaign is something we've never seen before -- at least not executed to this level of perfection with a media willing to go along because, well, so many of them want it to succeed.

Poor John McCain. He's so last-century. Still living in a world in which deeds matter, policies matter, what you would actually do with the power entrusted to you matters.

In the op ed the New York Times refused to print (which appeared in the New York Post this week instead), McCain lays out the facts in Iraq:

"Progress has been due mainly to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Sen. Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent."

Obama, he points out, still claims no political progress is being made. "Perhaps he's unaware that the U.S. embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, 'Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress,'" McCain jabs.

He jabs at an opponent who melts away from his punch.

McCain's approach is all so, well, cognitive. McCain thinks that reality is something that really exists, that has to be dealt with, instead of recognizing that we live in a Brave New World where highly paid symbolic analysts construct reality by manipulating symbols.

The left imagines they learned this from Ronald Reagan and the rise of the right: big strong guy, genial, looks good on camera -- bingo! Maybe you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool 51 percent every time, with the right branding and the right kind of images.

God help us when the people who think like that actually run all three branches of our government.

President Obama, if that's our future, and his team of symbolic analysts will find out soon enough there are realities out there which none of his contrivances are going to be able to help him handle."

More important, so will we.

A Top Obama Fund-Raiser Had Ties to Failed Bank

2008-07-21T16:56:00.002-05:00

From Wall Street Journal By JOHN R. EMSHWILLER
July 21, 2008; Page A10

"For the Pritzker family of Chicago, the 2001 collapse of subprime-mortgage lender Superior Bank was an embarrassing failure in a corner of their giant business empire.

Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family's 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama's national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her -- and perhaps to the campaign.

Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. Government investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices. Ms. Pritzker, a longtime friend and supporter of Sen. Obama, served for a time as Superior's chairman, and later sat on the board of its holding company.

Sen. Obama has long criticized predatory subprime mortgage lenders and urged strong actions against them.

In a prepared statement, the Obama campaign noted that Ms. Pritzker was never accused of wrongdoing by regulators in connection with Superior, and that her family agreed to pay $460 million to help defray the costs of Superior's collapse.

In a written response to questions, Ms. Pritzker said the reasons for Superior's fall "were complex. They include changes in accounting practices, auditing failures, reversals in regulatory positions and general economic conditions." During her tenure at the thrift, she said, she believed it followed "ethical business practices" and complied with "fair lending laws." For years, she said, Superior's financial statements were found to be acceptable by regulators.

The Obama campaign recently faced a controversy related to mortgage lending. A member of Sen. Obama's vice-presidential selection committee resigned after a Wall Street Journal story1 said he received favorable treatment on personal loans from Countrywide Financial Corp., a major subprime lender.
Ms. Pritzker's connection to Superior dates to the late 1980s, when the late Jay Pritzker, her uncle and then the family patriarch, moved to buy from federal regulators a troubled Illinois savings and loan. Ms. Pritzker, who has law and business degrees from Stanford, was to be the venture's chairman, said Mr. Pritzker's partner on the deal, New York real-estate developer Alvin Dworman, in a December 2006 deposition. "Jay bought the bank for her," he said in the deposition, taken in connection with litigation in Illinois state court related to the collapse. Mr. Dworman declined a recent interview request. Ms. Pritzker, in her statement, said she never heard her uncle mention her as a reason for the purchase.

Ms. Pritzker served as Superior chairman until 1994. During that period, Superior "embarked on a business strategy of significant growth into subprime home mortgages," which were then packaged into securities and sold to investors, according to a 2002 report by the Treasury Department's Inspector General.

"Superior was at the forefront of the securitizing of subprime mortgages," says Timothy Anderson, a retired bank consultant who has studied Superior and other failed thrifts.

Ms. Pritzker said her "main role" as chairman was to help clean up past financial problems. "I did not set strategy or policies" on lending or securitization, she said. In 1994, she moved to the board of Superior's holding company.

Through the 1990s, Superior reported rising profits and paid $200 million in dividends to its owners, according to a 2002 report by the inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. But the profits came through "flawed" accounting and masked operating losses, the FDIC report said. The dividend payments were made "without regard to the deteriorating financial and operating condition."

Ms. Pritzker said that she didn't have a personal financial interest in her family's investment, and only received "nominal" directors' fees.

In 2001, under regulatory pressure, the Pritzkers agreed to a $351 million recapitalization plan, which would help "once again restore Superior's leadership position in Subprime lending," Ms. Pritzker wrote in a May 31, 2001, letter to employees.

The Pritzker name lent credibility. In June 2001, Fran Sweet deposited about $480,000 of retirement funds with Superior. The 64-year-old former telephone-industry employee recalls that when she asked if Superior was sound, an official told her, "Don't worry. The Pritzkers own it."

By July 2001, the recapitalization plan had unraveled and regulators took over Superior. It was the biggest thrift collapse in nearly a decade.

Later that year, the Pritzkers reached a settlement with regulators. Without admitting wrongdoing, they agreed to pay $100 million immediately, and another $360 million over 15 years. "I am proud of how I and my extended family dealt with" Superior's closure, Ms. Pritzker said.

Superior's failure could still cost the federal deposit insurance fund tens of millions of dollars or more. And hundreds of people whose deposits exceeded federal insurance limits, such as Ms. Sweet, are still out millions of dollars, which will be reduced some by future Pritzker settlement payments."

Disillusioned about Barack Obama

2008-07-17T19:53:00.000-05:00

From SacBee.com By Nat Hentoff -
Published 12:00 am PDT Thursday, July 17, 2008:
"During my more than 60 years of covering national politics, I have never seen a candidate's principles and character so effectively tarnished — after so extraordinarily inspiring a start — as Barack Obama's. He has come to resemble another mellifluous orator I came to know in Boston during my first time reporting on a campaign — James Michael Curley, the skilful prestidigitator whom Spencer Tracy masterfully played in the movie "The Last Hurrah." Obama's deflation has not been due to ruthless opposition research by John McCain's team but by the "change" candidate himself. Like millions of Americans, I, for a time, was buoyed by not only the real-time prospect of our first black president but much more by the likelihood that Obama would pierce the dense hypocrisy and insatiable power-grabbing of current American politics.

Also, as a former teacher of constitutional law, Obama gave me "hope I could believe in" that he would rescue the Constitution's separation of powers, resuscitate the Bill of Rights and begin to restore our reputation around the world as a truly law-abiding nation.

Savoring the high expectations he had secured among so many Americans, Obama has decided he can also come closer to securing the Oval Office by softening his starlight enough to change some of his principles toward the calming center of our stormy political waters.

In a defense by Dan Gerstein, a New York political consultant — echoing what you'll be hearing more of from Obama's campaign operatives — the gossamer script goes: "He is trying to broaden his appeal to a larger electorate and to be true to this postpartisan, unifying message that he's been campaigning on." But instead of the ennobling clarion trombones of CHANGE we have been promised, this "adjusting" of one's principles has long been the common juggling of our common politicians.

Accordingly, as his presidential campaign gathered such momentum, Obama, with justifiable pride, pointed to the resounding fact that most of the bountiful funds he was raising came from small donors, "the people," not the sort of supporters who move above us in private jet planes.

But after abandoning his pledge to abide by public financing, this apostle of cleansing the political culture is now going after the high rollers. As the July 3 New York Times reported, "Last week, the Obama campaign collected about $5 million at an event featuring celebrities in Los Angeles. The evening began with a dinner at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for more than 200 people who had contributed $28,500 per couple, or raised $50,000." Then there is the current furor among a rising number of Obama contributors with wallets far below the $50,000-a-pop crowd about his change on the "compromise" FISA Amendments Act of 2008 that passed the House and Senate, and has been signed by the grateful president.

The flimflam candidate had assured his faithful enthusiasts that he would filibuster this bill (which will immunize the telecommunications companies that enabled the president to break the law in his once-secret warrantless wiretapping) that turned our privacy rights upside down and out.

Now, by dismissing the scores of lawsuits against these companies from Americans wanting to know whether they've been ensnared in this giant government-spun Web, the president and such supporters as Obama will have made it close to impossible to conduct meaningful investigations of the intricate nexus of the ways these telecommunications giants can collect leads to Americans with no connections to terrorism — and could continue to so long as they're assured by a future lawless administration that national security demands breaking another law.

But what could be wrong with a new Obama approach, to assert his religious faith by, if elected, expanding the government funding of faith-based social services through churches and other religious institutions? The former constitutional law professor does avoid one separation-of-church-and-state problem by pledging that the recipients of these taxpayer funds could not engage in hiring discrimination on the basis of an employee's religion, thereby not limiting those hired to that particular faith.

However, I expect professor Obama knows of the importance in constitutional case law of the need to avoid excessive entanglements of the state with religious institutions. To prevent churches and other religious groups that get government funds from both discrimination in their employment practices, and from proselytizing with taxpayers' money, will require careful and extensive monitoring by the state.

Says the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, a Baptist minister and president of the Interfaith Alliance, in the July 4 Jewish Week: "You can say none of this money should be used for proselytizing or that there shouldn't be discrimination, but what does that mean for the little storefront agency, where there can be a subtle or even more blatant form of discrimination, and where proselytizing does occur?" And not just storefront recipients.

But Obama insists this program will be the "moral center" of his administration. Just where is his own center of credibility? I remember the surge of hope for a national change as a child, during the Great Depression, when, while my mother would walk blocks to save a few cents on food, there came Franklin Delano Roosevelt! I haven't seen such a surge since Obama's first chorus, but I can no longer believe in this messenger of such tidings."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hill Democrats miffed at Obama

2008-07-15T23:54:00.001-05:00

Politico.com on July 15, 2008:
"After a brief bout of Obamamania, some Capitol Hill Democrats have begun to complain privately that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is insular, uncooperative and inattentive to their hopes for a broad Democratic victory in November.

“They think they know what’s right and everyone else is wrong on everything,” groused one senior Senate Democratic aide. “They are kind of insufferable at this point.”

Among the grievances described by Democratic leadership insiders:

• Until a mailing that went out in the past few days, Obama had done little fundraising for Democratic candidates since signing off on e-mailed fundraising appeals for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee immediately after securing the Democratic nomination.

• Obama has sometimes appeared in members’ districts with no advance notice to lawmakers, resulting in lost opportunities for those Democrats to score points by appearing alongside their party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

• The Obama campaign has not, until very recently, coordinated a daily message with congressional Democrats, leaving Democratic members in the lurch when they’re asked to comment on the constant back and forth between Obama and John McCain — as they were when Obama said earlier this month that he would “continue to refine” his Iraq policies after meeting with commanders on the ground there.

• Coordination between the Obama campaign and the House and Senate leadership is so weak that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — who will chair the Democrats’ convention in August — didn’t know of Obama’s decision to move his final-night acceptance speech from the Pepsi Center to Invesco Field until the campaign announced it on a conference call with reporters.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton dismissed the criticism as not-for-attribution complaints of staffers who aren’t knowledgeable about the campaign’s Hill coordination efforts.

“It’s a favorite parlor game in Washington for low-level staff to take shots at anyone they can, given the opportunity,” Burton said. “But as leadership aides across the Hill have confirmed even in this story, we have a constructive working relationship with the House and Senate leadership and continue to work with them to bring about the change the American people demand this November.”

On the record, spokesmen for Democratic leaders and the campaign committees say they’re pleased with the coordination they’re getting from the Obama campaign.

“We have a great relationship with the Obama campaign and work closely with them on everything from message strategy to on-the-ground coordination in states where we have races,” said DSCC spokesman Matthew Miller. Jennifer Crider, the DCCC’s communications director, said the DCCC and the Obama campaign are working together “to bring our change agenda to the country.”

Privately, however, there is a different message coming from some Democratic quarters on the Hill and on K Street. Some Democratic leadership staffers complain that, having defeated the vaunted Clinton political machine in the primaries, the Obama campaign now feels a “sense of entitlement” that leads to “arrogance.”

One Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, compared the Obama campaign unfavorably to President Bush’s administration.

“At least Bush waited until he was in the White House before they started ignoring everybody,” the aide said.

“These relationships matter,” said a House Democrat close to the leadership. “I really hope these guys try to get off on the right foot. We all know what happened to [former President] Jimmy Carter and [former President] Bill Clinton. We don’t want to see a repeat of that.”

Brian Wolff, the DCCC’s executive director, said that some of the “supposed arrogance” coming from the Obama camp is in reality a misinterpreted sense of confidence in the campaign’s plan for winning the Oval Office, including grass-roots mobilization, in-state political infrastructure, messaging and get-out-the vote operations.

“They have to set the tone, and they are setting the tone,” Wolff said. “Arrogance is sometimes mistaken for competence. I think having a real competent approach to your campaign, whether it’s field [operations] or politics, or overall message, I think it’s really important. ... They’re really doing a really good job at this.”

Some of the complaints about the Obama campaign are the result of tensions inherent in any presidential campaign — Democratic or Republican — as a candidate’s staff tries to deal with the Washington establishment.

Others are the result of the circumstances in which Obama finds himself: Having battled Hillary Rodham Clinton into June, Obama hasn’t had much time for the normal interaction between a campaign and Congress. And having to struggle to help Clinton pay off her own debt, he hasn’t had the time or the resources to raise money for Democratic House and Senate candidates.

But some problems are specific to the choices Obama has made — to run as a “change” candidate and to base his operations in Chicago rather than Washington. In distancing himself from “politics as usual,” Obama has shown little interest in being seen with Reid, Pelosi or other members of the Democratic congressional leadership.

And by forbidding lobbyists from playing formal roles in his campaign, Obama has denied himself access to people — in many cases, former Democratic members and aides who are still close to leaders and other lawmakers — who could help him smooth over issues with the Hill. Without lobbyists involved, hotel rooms and tickets for the convention are harder to come by, spurring protests and leaving bruised egos among congressional Democrats used to being treated like VIPs.

The Obama campaign has already moved to address some of these sore spots, recently appointing Phil Schiliro, former chief of staff to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), as Obama’s Capitol Hill liaison. Schiliro, who also served as an aide to former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), sat in on his first Democratic leadership meeting and House Democratic Caucus meeting last week, said House aides.

“I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t a priority for Sen. Obama and the campaign,” Schiliro said of his new role.

Daily message conference calls have been established, and Obama’s campaign has begun consultations, still in the early stages, with Democratic leaders over political strategy for November. Schiliro said it was “premature” to criticize the Obama camp’s level of outreach to congressional Democrats.

Other Obama campaign sources repeatedly noted that the drawn-out fight with Clinton has “put the campaign behind schedule” in terms of Hill outreach and message operation, but that the campaign remains confident it can make up lost ground."

Why Obama & the Democratic Leadership Are Caving into Bush

2008-07-15T14:53:00.004-05:00

From Salon.com by Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday July 15, 2008 08:16 EDT:
"The motivation for blocking investigations into Bush lawbreaking
Harper's Scott Horton yesterday interviewed Jane Mayer about her new book, The Dark Side. The first question he asked was about the Bush administration's fear that they would be criminally prosecuted for implementing what the International Red Cross had categorically described as "torture."

Mayer responded "that inside the White House there [had] been growing fear of criminal prosecution, particularly after the Supreme Court ruled in the Hamdan case that the Geneva Conventions applied to the treatment of the detainees," and that it was this fear that led the White House to demand (and, of course, receive) immunity for past interrogation crimes as part of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. But Mayer noted one important political impediment to holding Bush officials accountable for their illegal torture program:

An additional complicating factor is that key members of Congress sanctioned this program, so many of those who might ordinarily be counted on to lead the charge are themselves compromised.
As we witness not just Republicans, but also Democrats in Congress, acting repeatedly to immunize executive branch lawbreaking and to obstruct investigations, it's vital to keep that fact in mind. With regard to illegal Bush programs of torture and eavesdropping, key Congressional Democrats were contemporaneously briefed on what the administration was doing (albeit, in fairness, often in unspecific ways). The fact that they did nothing to stop that illegality, and often explicitly approved of it, obviously incentivizes them to block any investigations or judicial proceedings into those illegal programs.

In December of last year, The Washington Post revealed:

Four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

The article noted that other Democratic members who received briefings on the CIA's interrogation program included Jay Rockefeller and Jane Harman. While Harman sent a letter to the CIA asking questions about the legality of the program, none ever took any steps to stop or even restrict the interrogation program in any way.

Identically, numerous key Democrats in Congress -- including Rockefeller and Harman -- were told that Bush had ordered the NSA to spy on American without warrants and outside of FISA. None of them did anything to stop it. In fact, while Rockefeller wrote a sad, hostage-like, handwritten letter to Dick Cheney in 2003 (which he sent to nobody else) -- assuring Cheney that he would keep the letter locked away "to ensure that I have a record of this communication" -- Harman was a vocal supporter of the illegal NSA program. Here's what she told Time in January, 2006 in the wake of the NYT article revealing the NSA program:

Some key Democrats even defend it. Says California's Jane Harman, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee: "I believe the program is essential to U.S. national security and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities."
Harman then went on Fox News and pronounced that the NSA program was "legal and necessary" and proudly said: "I support the program." Even worse, in February, 2006, Harman went on "Meet the Press" and strongly suggested that the New York Times should be criminally prosecuted for having reported on the illegal program. And indeed, in 2004, Harman demanded that the NYT's Eric Lichtblau not write about the NSA program. As Lichtblau wrote in his recent book about a 2004 conversation with Harman:
"You should not be talking about that here," she scolded me in a whisper. "They don't even know about that," she said, gesturing to her aides, who were now looking on at the conversation with obvious befuddlement. "The Times did the right thing by not publishing that story," she continued. I wanted to understand her position. What intelligence capabilities would be lost by informing the public about something the terrorists already knew -- namely, that the government was listening to them? I asked her. Harman wouldn’t bite. "This is a valuable program, and it would be compromised,' she said. I tried to get into some of the details of the program and get a better understanding of why the administration asserted that it couldn't be operated within the confines of the courts. Harman wouldn't go there either. "This is a valuable program," she repeated.
In light of this sordid history of active complicity, is it really any wonder that these leading Democrats are desperate to quash any investigations or judicial adjudications of Bush administration actions that they knew about and did nothing to stop, in some cases even actively supporting?

Yesterday, I was on Warren Olney's To the Point discussing the FISA controversy. The guest interviewed immediately before me was Jane Harman (and before her was Lichtblau). Harman was vigorously spouting every false talking point to defend her vote in favor of telecom immunity and the new FISA law, including the painfully absurd claim that the new FISA law actually "makes the law stronger than the original law. It's a better law." She kept saying things like this to justify her support for terminating the lawsuits arising out of the illegal NSA program:

OLNEY: But back to the question, though, of the phone companies. Why was it that one company, Qwest, seemed to think that there were serious questions to be raised about this and the others didn't? Can you tell us that?

HARMAN: Well, I respect what Qwest did. Qwest said that the strict letter of FISA isn't being followed, as I understand it. That was some very careful lawyering.

The other telecoms that complied with requests believed -- so they say -- that they were complying with valid requests from the Government. And remember that when this happened, it was shortly after 9/11 and so forth --

OLNEY: Yeah, but if they didn't, and privacy was violated, shouldn't they be held to account?

HARMAN: I think that a process should be followed. I think the people who should be held to account are the people who made the decision not to follow FISA, and those were not the telecom executives.

Actually, "the people who made the decision not to follow FISA" most certainly did include the telecom executives -- as well as people like Jane Harman herself who, in her capacity as ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, was told about the illegal spying program and supported it as "legal and necessary," and even tried to bully journalists into refraining from exposing it.

Exactly the same thing happened with Jay Rockefeller and Bush's torture program. It is absolutely the case that, as Mayer pointed out yesterday and as I wrote about at the time, Bush officials faced serious danger of criminal liability in the wake of the 2006 Hamdan ruling that the Geneva Conventions applied to Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. But the Military Commissions Act, passed several months after the Hamdan ruling, took care of that problem by immunizing the lawbreakers. Jay Rockefeller was right there supporting that retroactive immunity, too -- thereby helping to block investigations and prosecutions for illegal torture programs about which Rockefeller knew and in which he was complicit.

This is exactly the dynamic which Law Professor, Fourth Amendment expert, and Simple-Minded, Confused Leftist Hysteric Jonathan Turley was describing on MSNBC on June 19:

I mean, the Democrats never really were engaged in this. In fact, they repeatedly tried to cave in to the White House, only to be stopped by civil libertarians and bloggers. And each time they would put it on the shelf, wait a few months, they did this before, reintroduced it with Jay Rockefeller's support, and then there was another great, you know, dustup and they pulled it back. . . .

I think they're simply waiting to see if the public's interest will wane and we'll see that tomorrow, because this bill has, quite literally, no public value for citizens or civil liberties. It is reverse engineering, though the type of thing that the Bush administration is famous for, and now the Democrats are doing -- that is to change the law to conform to past conduct.

It's what any criminal would love to do. You rob a bank, go to the legislature, and change the law to say that robbing banks is lawful. . . .

This is a very frightening bill. What people have to understand is that FISA itself is controversial. This court issued tens of thousands of warrants granted applications for surveillance without turning down any. Only recently did they turn down two. . . . What you're seeing in this bill is an evisceration of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. It is something that allows the president and the government to go in to law-abiding homes on their word alone, their suspicion alone, and to engage in warrantless surveillance. That's what the framers that drafted the Fourth Amendment wanted to prevent. . . .

Well, there's no question in my mind that there is an obvious level of collusion here. We now know that Democratic leadership knew about the illegal surveillance program almost from its inception. Even when they were campaigning about fighting for civil liberties, they were aware of an unlawful surveillance program as well as a torture program. And ever since that came out, the Democrats have been silently trying to kill any effort to hold anyone accountable because that list could very well include some of their own members.

And, I'm afraid this is Washington politics at the worst. And, so, I think that what you're seeing with this bill is not just caving in to a very powerful lobby, but also caving in to sort of the worst motivations on Capitol Hill since 9/11. You know, the administration was very adept at bringing in Democrats at a time when they knew they couldn't refuse, to make them buy in to this program, and now that investment is bearing fruit.

So, of course key Congressional Democrats who were made aware of these illegal torture and surveillance programs are going to protect the Bush administration and other lawbreakers. If you were Jay Rockfeller or Nancy Pelosi, would you want there to be investigations and prosecutions for torture programs that, to one degree or another, you knew about? If you were Jane Harman, wouldn't you be extremely eager to put a stop to judicial proceedings that were likely to result in a finding that surveillance programs that you knew about, approved of, and helped to conceal were illegal and unconstitutional?

When President Bush and Vice President Cheney celebrated the signing of the new FISA bill at the White House along with Jay Rockefeller, Steny Hoyer and Jane Harman (see the wonderful photos here), they weren't just celebrating with the political officials who helped protect them from consequences for illegal acts. They were celebrating with those who were participants in those acts, and who were therefore just as eager for immunity and an end to judicial proceedings as Bush officials themselves.

Barack Obama purges Web site critique of surge in Iraq

2008-07-15T14:37:00.001-05:00

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Monday, July 14th 2008, 8:10 PM

"WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop "surge" in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.

The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a "problem" that had barely reduced violence.

"The surge is not working," Obama's old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province.

The News reported Sunday that insurgent attacks have fallen to the fewest since March 2004.

Obama's campaign posted a new Iraq plan Sunday night, which cites an "improved security situation" paid for with the blood of U.S. troops since the surge began in February 2007.

It praises G.I.s' "hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics and enormous sacrifice."

Campaign aide Wendy Morigi said Obama is "not softening his criticism of the surge. We regularly update the Web site to reflect changes in current events."

GOP rival John McCain zinged Obama as a flip-flopper. "The major point here is that Sen. Obama refuses to acknowledge that he was wrong," said McCain, adding that Obama "refuses to acknowledge that it [the surge] is succeeding."
jmeek@nydailynews.com

Obama veers to the right, but does he need to take the Constitution with him?

2008-07-10T12:44:00.001-05:00

From Slate.com By Doug Kendall and Dahlia Lithwick on July 9, 2008:
"Barack Obama's rightward drift in recent weeks has hardly gone unnoticed or unrewarded. What's most fascinating about his efforts to appeal to the American center is the extent to which Obama, as a constitutional law professor and Harvard Law Review president, has repeatedly chosen the Bill of Rights as his vehicle for doing so. It's not an overstatement to say that in the past month Obama has tugged the First, Second, Fourth, and Eighth amendments to the center. Not a day goes by, it seems, without a constitutional wink to the right on guns (he thinks there is an individual right to own one), the wall of separation between church and state (he thinks it can be lowered), the Fourth Amendment prohibition on warrantless wiretapping (he's changed his position on FISA), and on the death penalty for noncapital child rape cases (he thinks it's constitutional) as well as a possible shift this week on the right to abortion (which could further limit the reach of Roe v. Wade). Such accommodations are not all unexpected. Some of these positions (like his stance on capital punishment) have long been a part of his unorthodox constitutional thinking. Others (such as the hair-splitting on guns) are politically expedient. Nor are such nuanced views unwelcome. Obama is well aware that the ways in which liberals talk about the Constitution are sometimes mired in 1960s mushiness and feel-goodery that no longer resonates with the American public.

But Obama appears to be compromising on the wrong constitutional issues while backing away from fights on the right ones. A liberal re-examination of constitutional philosophy need not involve a capitulation to conservative values. Obama can certainly move to the right on gun-control policy or support a limited death penalty if politics demand that he do so. But he should not, in so doing, shift to the right on the Constitution itself.

Consider the fact that Obama spent the final days of the Supreme Court term celebrating conservative constitutional outcomes rather than calling out dubious conservative methodology. Who was better situated to chide the court's conservatives for what sure seems to be an activist ruling that saved Exxon $2 billion in damages stemming from the Valdez oil spill? Just as Obama was reiterating his support for guns (certainly a tenable liberal position these days), he was missing an opportunity to turn the conversation to another 5-4 case decided that day—in which the court struck down the so-called millionaire's amendment—an important part of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. That case was a constitutional minefield for John McCain: His dream judges ruled an important portion of his most significant legislative accomplishment unconstitutional. But all we heard were crickets chirping in Chicago.
Obama also needed to do far more than he did to highlight McCain's shocking assertion that the court's ruling in the Guantanamo detainees' case was one of the "worst in the nation's history." As George Will effectively chronicled, that was a patently ridiculous statement that revealed a deep misunderstanding of both the law and the courts. Had Obama directly addressed McCain and—by extension—McCain's model judges on that issue, it would have gone a long way toward assuring Americans that in his administration the Bill of Rights will not be a luxury reserved only for the sunny days.

But perhaps the most important fight over the Constitution facing Obama is not about the Constitution itself, but over the composition of the Supreme Court. McCain has signaled that he plans to campaign hard on the issue—taking numerous opportunities to excoriate "judicial activists" and promise more jurists like Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito. McCain pledges that he wants to appoint only judges who would "strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States" (whatever that means). And Obama should welcome this debate; it's one he should win hands down, but he won't be able to capitalize on his strengths unless he can change the way progressive candidates talk about judging and the Supreme Court.

Obama's scattered statements so far on his philosophy for appointing Supreme Court justices instantly reveal the problem. In response to one of McCain's stemwinders on liberal activist judges, Obama started with the boilerplate argument that he will nominate judges who are "competent and capable" and who "interpret the law." So far, so good. He then shifted to "those 5 percent of cases or 1 percent of cases where the law isn't clear." In those cases, Obama asserted, judges must rely on "his or her own perspectives, his ethics, his or her moral bearings," and thus he wants judges who are "sympathetic enough to those who are on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless, those who can't have access to political power, and, as a consequence, can't protect themselves from being—from being dealt with sometimes unfairly, that the courts become a refuge."

Remarks such as these make Obama sound like the careful law professor he's been in the past, patiently explaining to his students why it is inevitable in some cases that judges will rule based on their gut leanings. But this is precisely the wrong way to talk to Americans about judging, and it's guaranteed to turn Obama's advantage into a disadvantage. Inevitable or not, Americans just don't like it when judges rule based on their personal political preferences rather than being guided by the Constitution and the law. A recent Rasmussen poll tested, side-by-side, the McCain and Obama messages about the court. The results: 69 percent of Americans agreed with McCain's message; only 41 percent agreed with Obama's. Obama will lose the war over the Constitution if he keeps pushing, as he's done, for judges with "empathy." Voters see that as code for "latte-sipping, out-of-touch, smarty-pants elitism."

Obama doesn't have to stumble here. Nor should he maintain the curious silence that leaves his supporters wondering about his constitutional values. A growing number of Americans believe the Roberts Court is too conservative. Polls indicate that the public likes progressive judicial results: The public responds favorably to questions asking whether judges should strongly protect civil rights and civil liberties, rule for the powerless over the powerful, and ensure broad access to justice. Put simply, Americans want to live in Justice Stevens' America, not in Clarence Thomas'.

If McCain genuinely thinks it's smart politics to run against the Warren Court in 2008, Obama simply needs to run against the Roberts Court. He must promise to nominate Supreme Court justices who will protect civil liberties, civil rights, and ensure equal access to courts and justice. He needs to talk and talk about these issues not because these are tender, liberal values he wants his judges to share, but because they are values enshrined in the Constitution, values that have been corroded and neglected in recent years.

When Obama talks about nominating justices who will protect the powerless as much as the powerful, he shouldn't just cite pregnant teenage mothers but instead quote the preamble, which lists establishing justice as a pre-eminent goal of the Constitution, and the words "Equal Justice for All" enshrined in marble over the Supreme Court's entrance. When he talks about courts protecting civil rights, civil liberties, and equal protection, he should explain that we fought a Civil War over these principles and we amended the Constitution to enshrine them in our founding document. In recent weeks, it's become easy to forget that Obama is campaigning as a visionary. He needs to carry this over into how he talks about the Constitution and the Supreme Court rather than falling back into careful, hyper-technical law professor mode.

By rooting the results he seeks from the judiciary in the words of the Constitution—by marrying method to results, rather than divorcing these concepts—Obama can mobilize progressives and also reach beyond his base in speaking about what's at stake at the Supreme Court. By meandering to the right on some of the most important provisions in the Bill of Rights while mumbling about appointing judges who rule based on their "own perspectives," he risks alienating both groups and weakening the Constitution right along with his political prospects.
"

Obama Votes to Silence Debate and Pass FISA

2008-07-10T12:03:00.001-05:00

From The Nation on July 10, 2008 by John Nichols:
"Arizona Senator John McCain did not bother to show up for Wednesday's Senate votes on whether to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to absolve George Bush of responsibility for initiating an illegal warrantless wiretapping program and to provide retroactive immunity to the telecommunications corporations that violated the privacy of their customers in order to collaborate with a lawless president.

But that's O.K., Illinois Senator Barack Obama cast the votes that McCain would have.

In addition to joining the majority in a 69-28 Senate vote to approve legislation that the American Civil Liberties Union describes as "a Constitutional nightmare," Obama backed a key move to silence debate on the FISA bill.

During a day of decisions on amendments, cloture and formal approval of the FISA rewrite, Obama cast several votes in favor of failed amendments to limit certain forms of retroactive immunity for the telecommunications corporations. But, in the essential votes on whether to advance and pass the unamended bill, the senator from Illinois broke the majority of his Democratic colleagues -- including New York Senator Hillary Clinton -- as they worked to keep the debate open and block final passage.

In the case of the cloture vote, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president sided with Republicans who argued that the essential Constitutional questions raised by the White House-backed FISA legislation did not merit extended or thoughtful debate.

Seventy-two senators backed the move to end the debate, while 26 sought to keep it going. Two senators – McCain and ailing Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy – missed Wednesday's votes.

Those 26 "no" votes on cloture were cast by Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders and 25 Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, Obama's Democratic colleague from Illinois, and Clinton, Obama's primary competitor for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Leading the fight to keep the debate about the FISA rewrite open were Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd and Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, the two senators Obama promised earlier their year to work with in an effort to block this assault on the Constitution and corporate responsibility.

Said Feingold, "I sit on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, and I am one of the few members of this body who has been fully briefed on the warrantless wiretapping program. And, based on what I know, I can promise that if more information is declassified about the program in the future, as is likely to happen either due to the Inspector General report, the election of a new President, or simply the passage of time, members of this body will regret that we passed this legislation. I am also familiar with the collection activities that have been conducted under the Protect America Act and will continue under this bill. I invite any of my colleagues who wish to know more about those activities to come speak to me in a classified setting. Publicly, all I can say is that I have serious concerns about how those activities may have impacted the civil liberties of Americans. If we grant these new powers to the government and the effects become known to the American people, we will realize what a mistake it was, of that I am sure."

Unfortunately, while Obama once promised to work with Feingold, he wasn't listening on Wednesday when the Wisconsin senator explained to his colleagues that granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications corporations would effectively block the ability of Congress and the courts to address not just massive corporate wrongdoing but attacks on the privacy rights of Americans.

"If Congress short-circuits these lawsuits, we will have lost a prime opportunity to finally achieve accountability for these years of law-breaking," said Feingold, who flatly rejected Obama's argument that, while unappealing in some aspects, the FISA rewrite was somehow acceptable as a whole. "That's why the administration has been fighting so hard for this immunity. It knows that the cases that have been brought directly against the government face much more difficult procedural barriers, and are unlikely to result in rulings on the merits."

Russ Feingold was speaking the truth about a moment in which the ACLU said the Senate was on the verge of passing "an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance."

But Barack Obama did not want to hear it."

Barack W. Bush?

2008-07-10T11:51:00.001-05:00

From RealClearPolitics.com on July 10, 2008 By Victor Davis Hanson

"Almost everyone is talking about Barack Obama's flip-flops, as the Senate's most liberal member steadily moves to the political center and disowns firebrands like Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger.

But less noticed is that Obama is not just deflating John McCain's efforts to hold him to his long liberal record, but also embracing much of the present agenda of an unpopular President Bush on a wide variety of fronts.

Take social issues. Obama is now a gun-rights advocate. Like Bush, he applauded the Supreme Court's overturning of a Washington, D.C., ordinance banning the possession of handguns.

The senator, also like Bush, supports the death penalty. He recently objected to the court's rejection of a state law that allowed for the execution of child rapists.

And although Obama is still pro-choice, he now, like the president, thinks "mental distress" should not justify late-term abortion.

In addition, the new Obama would like to continue -- and even expand -- Bush's controversial faith-based initiative program of involving churches in government anti-poverty programs.

In fact, Obama is sounding a lot these days like those red-state, small-town conservatives he once caricatured in his infamous comment about Pennsylvanians who "cling" to such hot-button, but extraneous, social causes.

Consider also the campaign trail. Like a Republican in good standing -- but unlike the maverick John McCain -- Obama has, by his sudden forgoing of public funds, rejected the idea of campaign-finance reform.

In fact, he's the largest raiser of private cash in American political history, and seems to have dropped opposition to accepting pernicious "special interest money." Like a Republican, he raises the most among the nation's wealthiest on Wall Street.

During the primaries, Obama seemed to advocate the dismantling of the North American Free Trade Agreement. But now candidate Obama has little desire to overturn the present Bush trade policies.

On foreign policy and the war against terror, Obama once leaned left in his primary battles against Hillary Clinton. But his latest mutations move him once again closer to George Bush.

For all his prior talk of the loss of civil liberties, a President Obama, like a President Bush, would give telecommunication companies exemption from lawsuits over tapping private phone calls at government request.

Obama wants to continue Bush's successful multilateral efforts to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, and now praises the Bush-inspired six-party talks with North Korea that led to the apparent dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear program. Like Bush, he advocated expanding the military after the Clinton-era troop cuts. Obama once advocated lifting the embargo against Cuba -- but no longer. Like Bush, he thinks that it is wise to leave it be.

There is suddenly not much difference when it comes to the Middle East, either. Palestinian supporters were dismayed to hear Obama promise that Jerusalem must be Israel's eternal and undivided capital.

Obama once criticized Bush for his unwillingness to meet directly with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and exaggerating the danger from Iran, which supposedly didn't "pose any serious threat." Lately though, he agrees with the president that Iran now in fact is a "grave threat."

Obama's most serious about-face is on Iraq. He once promised a rigid and rapid timetable for withdrawing our troops. But given the radical success of Gen. David Petraeus' surge and change in tactics, Obama is now calling for withdrawals to be based on the conditions on the ground in Iraq. How different is this plan from the present administration's policy of incrementally sending home brigades as Petraeus hands off security responsibilities to Iraqis in additional provinces?

It makes political sense that Obama is moving to the center since he knows that a Northern liberal like himself has not won a presidential election since 1960. So don't expect Obama's metamorphosis to stop now. Before this campaign is over, he may well flip some more; would anybody be surprised if he starts supporting some of Bush's proposal for expanded domestic oil drilling or backtracks on raising trillions in new payroll taxes?

In fact, replace George Bush's Texas twang, cowboy strut and evangelical Bible thumping with Barack Obama's mellifluous "hope and change" rhetoric, easy grace and leftwing Christianity and we may discover a flashy new cover to an old book.

A final question: If, even as Obama trashes Bush, he seems to agree with him on so many fronts, why don't conservatives and Republicans adopt Obama as a welcome convert?

Some may, but most I've talked with don't think Obama is sincere and feel he will flip back to being left wing if elected. Or they think that Obama is changing so fast and so radically that it's hard to believe he really knows who he is -- or would be as president.
"

Judicial Watch files complaint over Obama’s mortgage

2008-07-09T20:41:00.000-05:00

From The Hill on July 9, 2008: "A watchdog group filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the Senate Ethics Committee Wednesday against Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) over a discounted mortgage he received from Northern Trust. Judicial Watch, a conservative legal watchdog group, filed the report after The Washington Post reported that Obama received a discount on a mortgage for a Chicago home valued at $1.65 million. The complaints said the Illinois senator received a loan at the interest rate of 5.625 percent, which Judicial Watch says is lower than the standard rate of between 5.93 and 6 percent indicated by surveys.

The complaint asks the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate whether the favorable rates constitute a prohibited “gift” under Senate rules.

“It appears that due to his position as a U.S. senator, Barack Obama received improper special treatment from Northern Trust resulting in an illicit ‘gift’ which has a value of almost $125,000 in interest savings,” wrote Judicial Watch President Thomas Fitton in a letter to the Ethics Committee.

The complaint also notes that Northern Trust employees have given $71,000 in donations to Obama’s campaigns."

Today's coverup of surveillance crimes and Barack Obama

2008-07-09T15:06:00.001-05:00

More From Glenn Greenwald: "What we learned in December, 2005 that George Bush and the telecoms were doing -- listening in on the private conversations of American citizens without warrants -- is a felony under clear U.S. law, punishable by up to 5 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine for each offense. Anyone can go read the section of FISA -- right here -- that says that as clearly as can be:

A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally -- (1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute; . . .

An offense described in this section is punishable by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.

It was also as clear a violation of the Fourth Amendment as can be. For the Government to invade our communications with no probable cause showing to a court is exactly what the Founders prohibited as clearly as the English language permitted.

But today, the Democratic-led Congress -- with the support of both John McCain and Barack Obama, neither of whom will even bother to show up and vote -- will cover-up those crimes. Law Professor and Fourth Amendment expert Jonathan Turley was on MSNBC's Countdown with Rachel Maddow last night and gave as succinct an explanation for what Democrats -- not the Bush administration, but Democrats -- will do today. Anyone with any lingering doubts about what is taking place today in our country should watch this:

As Turley says, and as I've written many times over the last two weeks, what is most appalling here beyond the bill itself are the pure falsehoods being spewed to the public about what Congress is doing -- and those falsehoods are largely being spewed not by Republicans. Republicans are gleefully admitting, even boasting, that this bill gives them everything Bush and Cheney wanted and more, and includes only minor changes from the Rockefeller/Cheney Senate bill passed last February (which Obama, seeking the Democratic Party nomination, made a point of opposing).

Rather, the insultingly false claims about this bill -- it brings the FISA court back into eavesdropping! it actually improves civil liberties! Obama will now go after the telecoms criminally! Government spying and lawbreaking isn't really that important anyway! -- are being disseminated by the Democratic Congressional leadership and, most of all, by those desperate to glorify Barack Obama and justify anything and everything he does. Many of these are the same people who spent the last five years screaming that Bush was shredding the Constitution, that spying on Americans was profoundly dangerous, that the political establishment did nothing about Bush's lawbreaking.

It's been quite disturbing to watch them turn on a dime -- completely reverse everything they claimed to believe -- the minute Obama issued his statement saying that he would support this bill. They actually have the audacity to say that this bill -- a bill which Bush, Cheney and the entire GOP eagerly support, while virtually every civil libertarian vehemently opposes -- will increase the civil liberties that Americans enjoy, as though Dick Cheney, Mike McConnell and "Kit" Bond decided that it was urgently important to pass a new bill to restrict presidential spying and enhance our civil liberties. How completely do you have to relinquish your critical faculties at Barack Obama's altar in order to get yourself to think that way?

The issues implicated by this bill -- government spying, lawbreaking, manipulation of national security claims for secrecy and presidential power, the extreme privileges corporations inside Washington receive -- have been at the very heart of progressive complaints against the Bush era for the last seven years. The type of capitulation and complicity which Jay Rockefeller and Steny Hoyer embraced is exactly what progressives have spent the last seven years scathingly attacking.

All of that magically changed for many people -- by no means all -- the day that Obama announced that he supported this "compromise," when these issues were suddenly relegated to nothing more than inconsequential, symbolic distractions, and complicity with Bush lawbreaking magically morphed into shrewd pragmatism. It's the same rationale that the dreaded Blue Dogs have been using since 2001 to justify their complicity which is now pouring out of the mouths of Obama defenders (we need to win elections first and foremost, and can only do that if we don't challenge Republicans on National Security and Terrorism).

* * * * *

Stanford Professor Larry Lessig has been a hard-core Obama supporter since before the primaries even began. He knows the candidate himself and has all sorts of contacts at high levels of the campaign. Yesterday, Lessig wrote a scathing criticism of what the Obama campaign has been doing over the past several weeks: "All signs point to an Obama victory this fall. If the signs are wrong, it will be because of events last month." This is what Lessig said about the Obama campaign's attitude towards the FISA bill:

Yet policy wonks inside the campaign sputter policy that Obama listens to and follows, again, apparently oblivious to how following that advice, when inconsistent with the positions taken in the past, just reinforces the other side's campaign claim that Obama is just another calculating, unprincipled politician.

The best evidence that they don't get this is Telco Immunity. Obama said he would filibuster a FISA bill with Telco Immunity in it. He has now signaled he won't. When you talk to people close to the campaign about this, they say stuff like: "Come on, who really cares about that issue? Does anyone think the left is going to vote for McCain rather than Obama? This was a hard question. We tried to get it right. And anyway, the FISA compromise in the bill was a good one."

So the highest levels of the Obama campaign believe this bill is "a good one." Lessig adds that the perception of Obama's craven, nakedly calculating behavior as illustrated by his support for the FISA bill is by far the largest threat to his candidacy as it "completely undermine Obama's signal virtue -- that he's different":
The Obama campaign seems just blind to the fact that these flips eat away at the most important asset Obama has. It seems oblivious to the consequence of another election in which (many) Democrats aren't deeply motivated to vote (consequence: the GOP wins).
I can't count the number of emails I've received demanding that I stop criticizing Obama for his support of this bill on the ground that such criticisms harm his chances for winning -- as though it's the fault of those who point out what Obama is doing, rather than Obama himself for completely reversing his position, abandoning his clear, prior commitments, and helping to institutionalize the destruction of the Fourth Amendment and the concealment of Bush crimes.

Ultimately, it's the sheer glibness of the support for this corrupt and Bush-enabling bill among Obama and his supporters that is most striking. Revealingly, Lanny Davis -- a pure symbol of everything that is rotted and broken in our political culture -- wrote an Op-Ed yesterday lavishly praising Obama for his support of the FISA bill on the ground that it "provided the senator an important chance to demonstrate his 'Sister Souljah moment.'" Beltway operatives like Davis can only understand the world through the prism of this finite set of clichés -- Stand up the Left. Sister Souljah. Move to the Center. That's the same oh-so-sophisticiated political analysis one finds everywhere to justify what Obama is doing. As Dan Larison put it yesterday:

In Obamaworld, apparently wrecking the Fourth Amendment is roughly equivalent to ridiculing some obscure rapper. The only thing more depressing than the conceit that supporting unconstitutional measures is a way to "signal" to swing voters that you are not a radical loon bent on "ideological purity," which is basically to make defending the Constitution a position held only by radicals and extremists, is the dishonest representation of support for the compromise legislation as being a pro-civil liberties position.
John Nichols of The Nation -- one of the most pro-Obama media organs in the country -- pointed out yesterday that Obama won the critical Wisconsin primary in large part by holding himself out to Democratic voters there -- for whom civil liberties is a vital issue -- as a steadfast ally of Feingold on these issues:
Before the February 19 Wisconsin primary, which confirmed his front-runner status in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Illinois Senator Barack Obama went out of his way to associate his candidacy with the name of Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold. . . .

Obama wanted to secure the support of the substantial portion of Democrats nationally who, in polls conducted in 2006, indicated that they would back Feingold if he entered the presidential race. Internal polls by the various campaigns indicated that Feingold drew as much as 15 percent of the vote in a number of key states, coming mostly from anti-war and pro-civil liberties progressives. . . .

"I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grass-roots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty," declared Obama, who indicated that he would support efforts to filibuster any attack on the ability of citizens to use the courts to defend their privacy rights.

Obama's stance helped him. It was cited in endorsements by prominent progressives and newspapers in Wisconsin and other later primary states. No doubt, it contributed to his landslide victory in the Badger State, where the Illinoisan won a vote from Feingold himself.

Yet, now that he is the presumptive nominee, Obama is standing not with Feingold, but with Bush and the special interests Obama once denounced. He says he'll vote for a White House-backed FISA rewrite -- which is likely to be taken up by the Senate this week -- in opposition to the position taken by civil liberties groups, legal scholars on the left and right and, of course, Russ Feingold.

Who can justify that?

* * * * *

Ultimately, what's most amazing about all of that is that -- as Senate Intelligence Committee member Russ Feingold pointed out yesterday -- even the vast majority of the Congress, let alone Obama apologists, have no idea what these spying programs even entail or how they work. As someone who isn't on the Intelligence Committee, does Obama even know?

Either way, here's what the ACLU's Caroline Fredrickson wrote to The Washington Post yesterday in response to Fred Hiatt's latest Editorial praising Obama and the FISA bill:

The fact is that the revisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act under consideration in the Senate this week would virtually do away with the role of the FISA court in overseeing new dragnet surveillance. Its role would be reduced to little more than serving as a rubber stamp.

It is a shame that the paper that uncovered the Watergate scandal, which helped lead to more congressional oversight of executive authority and the checks and balances of FISA, now believes that the president once again should have unfettered power to spy on Americans.

Sen. Feingold -- who, as a member of both the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, probably knows as much about the NSA program as any member of Congress -- added:
The government absolutely must be able to wiretap suspected terrorists to protect our security, and every member of Congress supports that. With this bill, however, for the first time since FISA was adopted 30 years ago, the government would be authorized to collect all communications into and out of the United States without warrants. That means Americans e-mailing relatives abroad or calling business associates overseas could be monitored with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing by anyone. This bill overturns the laws and principles that have governed surveillance for the past 30 years.
The San Fransisco Chronicle editorialized today:
Warrantless wiretapping of Americans should outrage Congress into banning the practice. But, in a display of political expediency, the Senate is about to bless it, following a similar cave-in by the House last month.

Making matters worse, both likely presidential candidates -- Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain - plan to reverse their opposition and vote for the White House-backed rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The bigger of the two reversals is Obama, who earlier this year had promised a filibuster to defeat the bill.

These are just facts -- facts about Barack Obama, the FISA bill he supports and which the Democratic Congress will approve today. Recall that James Comey testified last year that what he and other DOJ officials learned in 2004 about Bush's spying activities for the several years prior was so extreme, so unconscionable, so patently illegal that they all -- including even John Ashcroft -- threatened to resign en masse unless it stopped immediately. We still have no idea what those spying activities were. We know, though, that even the right-wing DOJ ideologues who approved of the illegal "Terrorist Surveillance Programs" that we know about found those activities indisputably illegal and wrong. But Barack Obama and the Democratic-led Congress will today enact a bill to immunize all of that, to protect the lawbreakers who were responsible.

As I've said many times before, there are clear differences between an Obama and McCain presidency. Denying that is just as irrational as those for whom the only political rule is Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Obama.

But it's equally clear that politicians like Obama are unable within the prevailing political establishment to do much to stop the continued growth of the lawless surveillance state and our two-tiered system of justice, even if they wanted to stop it, even if they were willing to expend political capital to take a stand against it. And Obama -- with his support for this wretched assault on the Constitution and the rule of law -- is demonstrating that, contrary to his many prior statements, these issues are anything but a priority for him (Larry Lessig: Obama aides say "the FISA compromise in the bill was a good one"). Differences between Republican and Democrats exist and are important in many cases, but those differences are often dwarfed by the differences between those entrenched in and dependent upon the Washington Establishment and those -- the vast, vast majority of American citizens -- who are not.

UPDATE: The Savannah Morning News has an article on the ads running against Democratic Rep. John Barrow.

The vote on the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment to remove telecom immunity from the bill is taking place now. I will post the vote total and details as soon as it is done.

UPDATE II: The Dodd-Feingold amendment to remove telecom immunity from the bill just failed by a vote of 32-66.

I was mistaken about Obama's not showing up to vote (that was the case, as I understood it, when the vote was scheduled for yesterday). He is in the Senate and, as he said he would, just voted (along with Hillary Clinton) in favor of the amendment to remove telecom immunity from the bill.

From listening, these are the Democrats who have voted in favor of removing immunity from the bill: Akaka - Baucus - Biden - Bingaman - Boxer - Brown - Byrd - Cantwell - Cardin - Casey - Clinton - Dorgan - Durbin - Feingold - Harkin - Kerry - Klobuchar - Lautenberg - Leahy - Levin - Mendenez - Murray - Obama - Reed - Reid - Sanders (I) - Schuemer - Stabenow - Tester - Whitehouse - Wyden.

Every Republican (and Lieberman) voted against removing immunity (including Arlen Specter, who spent all day arguing against immunity). Democrats voting against removing immunity: Bayh - Carper - Conrad - Feinstein - Innouye - Johnson - Kohl - Landrieu - Lincoln - McCaskill - Mikulski - Nelson (FL) - Nelson (Neb.) - Pryor - Rockefeller - Salazar - Webb.

Specter's amendment is next (to ban immunity if the spying was unconstitutional). Then they will vote on the Bingaman amendment (which I wrote about yesterday). They will both fail, and then they will vote on the final bill in its unchanged form.

UPDATE III: Specter's amendment -- merely to require the court to determine the constitutionality of the NSA spying program and condition immunity on a finding of constitutionality -- just failed 37-61. Obama (and Clinton) voted in favor of the amendment, and Specter was the only Republican to do so.

All Republicans (and Lieberman) voted against, and these were the Democrats voting against: Bayh - Carper - Johnson - Landrieu - Lincoln - Mikulski - Nelson (FL) - Nelson (Neb.) - Pryor - Rockefeller - Salazar. [NOTE: I'm recording these roll calls from watching the proceedings, and so it's likely there are some errors and omissions. I will correct them as they are brought to my attention and will link to the official roll call vote once it is available]. The Bingaman amendment is next.

UPDATE IV: The Bingaman amendment -- merely to require that the Senate waits until the IG audit of the NSA program is complete before immunizing the telecoms (and here's an excellent piece documenting how inadequate IG investigations are for real oversight) -- just failed by a vote of 42-56 (60 votes were required for passage, courtesy of an agreement not to force the GOP to do a mount filibuster).

Obama (and Clinton) voted in favor of the Bingaman amendment. McCain wasn't present to vote on any of this (though almost certainly would have voted with the GOP on all amendments). Specter was the only Republican to vote in favor of the Bingaman amendment. The Democrats voting against: Bayh - Landrieu - Nelson (Neb.) - Pryor - Rockefeller. They are now in recess until the afternoon, after which they will vote to pass the underlying bill.

UPDATE V: I was on the Brian Lehrer Show this morning debating the FISA bill with former Clinton National Security Advisor Nancy Soderberg (who favors the bill). Because of some technical difficulties, I wasn't on the show until roughly 7:30 in. That debate can be heard here.

UPDATE VI: Cloture on the bill just passed 72-26. Obama voted in favor of cloture along with all Republicans. Hillary Clinton voted against cloture.

After the cloture vote, the Senate just approved final passage of the FISA bill, by a vote of 69-28. Obama voted with all Republicans for the bill. Hillary Clinton voted against it.

Democrats voting in favor of final passage of the FISA bill: Bayh - Carper - Casey - Conrad - Dorgan - Feinstein - Innuoye - Kohl - Landrieu - Lincoln - McCaskill - Mukulski - Nelson (Neb.) - Nelson (Fla.) - Obama - Pryor - Rockefeller - Salazar - Webb - Whitehouse.

Democrats voting against final passage of the FISA bill: Akaka - Biden - Bingaman - Boxer - Brown - Cantwell - Cardin - Clinton - Dodd - Dorgan - Durbin - Feingold - Harkin - Kerry - Leahy - Levin - Lautenberg - Murray - Reed - Reid - Sanders - Schumer - Stabenow - Tester - Wyden.
"

Congress votes to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, legalize warrantless eavesdropping

2008-07-09T15:01:00.002-05:00

From Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com on July 8, 2008:
"The Democratic-led Congress this afternoon voted to put an end to the NSA spying scandal, as the Senate approved a bill -- approved last week by the House -- to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, terminate all pending lawsuits against them, and vest whole new warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President. The vote in favor of the new FISA bill was 69-28. Barack Obama joined every Senate Republican (and every House Republican other than one) by voting in favor of it, while his now-vanquished primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, voted against it. John McCain wasn't present for any of the votes, but shared Obama's support for the bill. The bill will now be sent to an extremely happy George Bush, who already announced that he enthusiastically supports it, and he will sign it into law very shortly.

Prior to final approval, the Senate, in the morning, rejected three separate amendments which would have improved the bill but which, the White House threatened, would have prompted a veto. With those amendments defeated, the Senate then passed the same bill passed last week by the House, which means it is that bill, in unchanged form, that will be signed into law -- just as the Bush administration demanded.

The first amendment, from Sens. Dodd, Feingold and Leahy, would have stripped from the bill the provision immunizing the telecoms. That amendment failed by a vote of 32-66, with all Republicans and 17 Democrats against (the roll call vote is here). The next amendment was offered by Sen. Arlen Specter, which would have merely required a court to determine the constitutionality of the NSA spying program and grant telecom immunity only upon a finding of constitutionality. Specter's amendment failed, 37-61 (roll call vote is here). The third amendment to fail was one sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, merely requiring that the Senate wait until the Inspector General audits of the NSA program are complete before immunizing the telecoms. The Bingaman amendment failed by a vote of 42-56 (roll call vote here). Both Obama and Clinton voted for all three failed amendments.

The Senators then voted for "cloture" on the underlying FISA bill -- the procedure that allows the Senate to overcome any filibusters -- and it passed by a vote of 72-26. Obama voted along with all Republicans for cloture. Hillary Clinton voted with 25 other Democrats against cloture (strangely, Clinton originally voted AYE on cloture, and then changed her vote to NAY; I'm trying to find out what explains that).

With cloture approved, the bill itself then proceeded to pass by a vote of 69-28 (roll call vote here), thereby immunizing telecoms and legalizing warrantless eavesdropping. Again, while Obama voted with all Republicans to pass the bill, Sen. Clinton voted against it.

Obama's vote in favor of cloture, in particular, cemented the complete betrayal of the commitment he made back in October when seeking the Democratic nomination. Back then, Obama's spokesman -- in response to demands for a clear statement of Obama's views on the spying controversy after he had previously given a vague and noncommittal statement -- issued this emphatic vow:

To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.
But the bill today does include retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. Nonetheless, Obama voted for cloture on the bill -- the exact opposition of supporting a filibuster -- and then voted for the bill itself. A more complete abandonment of an unambiguous campaign promise is difficult of imagine. I wrote extensively about Obama's support for the FISA bill, and what it means, earlier today.

With their vote today, the Democratic-led Congress has covered-up years of deliberate surveillance crimes by the Bush administration and the telecom industry, and has dramatically advanced a full-scale attack on the rule of law in this country...

What is most striking is that when the Congress was controlled by the GOP -- when the Senate was run by Bill Frist and the House by Denny Hastert -- the Bush administration attempted to have a bill passed very similar to the one that just passed today. But they were unable to do so. The administration had to wait until Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over Congress before being able to put a corrupt end to the scandal that began when, in December of 2005, the New York Times revealed that the President had been breaking the law for years by spying on Americans without the warrants required by law.

Yet again, the Democratic Congress ignored the views of their own supporters in order to comply with the orders and wishes of the Bush administration. It is therefore hardly a surprise that, yesterday, Rasmussen Reports revealed this rather humiliating finding:

Congressional Approval Falls to Single Digits for First Time Ever

The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.

The Congress, with a powerful cast of bipartisan lobbyists and the establishment media class lined up behind telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping, looked poised to pass this bill back last December, but a large-scale protest was organized -- largely online -- by huge numbers of American who were opposed to warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity, and that protest disrupted that plan (the movement borne of opposition to this bill is only beginning today, not ending, here). Today, Sen. Chris Dodd, the leader of the opposition effort along with Russ Feingold, said this on the Senate floor:
Lastly, I want to thank the thousands who joined with us in this fight around the country -- those who took to the blogs, gathered signatures for online petitions and created a movement behind this issue. Men and women, young and old, who stood up, spoke out and gave us the strength to carry on this fight. Not one of them had to be involved, but each choose to become involved for one reason and one reason alone: Because they love their country. They remind us that the "silent encroachments of those in power" Madison spoke of can, in fact, be heard, if only we listen.
Today, the Democratic-led Senate ignored those protests, acted to protect the single most flagrant act of Bush lawbreaking of the last seven years, eviscerated the core Fourth Amendment prohibition of surveillance without warrants, gave an extraordinary and extraordinarily corrupt gift to an extremely powerful corporate lobby, and cemented the proposition that the rule of law does not apply to the Washington Establishment.

* * * * *

FISA Passes Senate, Vote 69 to 28 - Obama Votes to Shred Constitution

2008-07-09T14:28:00.001-05:00

From Talkleft.com on July 9, 2008:
"Via the ACLU (no link yet but check here soon):

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was approved by a vote of 69-28 and is expected to be signed into law by President Bush shortly. This bill essentially legalizes the president’s unlawful warrantless wiretapping program revealed in December 2005 by the New York Times.

On the bill:

[T]he Senate passed an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance.

“Once again, Congress blinked and succumbed to the president’s fear-mongering. With today’s vote, the government has been given a green light to expand its power to spy on Americans and run roughshod over the Constitution,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “This legislation will give the government unfettered and unchecked access to innocent Americans’ international communications without a warrant. This is not only unconstitutional, but absolutely un-American.”

More...

The FISA Amendments Act nearly eviscerates oversight of government surveillance by allowing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to review only general procedures for spying rather than individual warrants. The FISC will not be told any specifics about who will actually be wiretapped, thereby undercutting any meaningful role for the court and violating the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

The bill further trivializes court review by authorizing the government to continue a surveillance program even after the government’s general spying procedures are found insufficient or unconstitutional by the FISC. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever information was gathered in the meantime. A provision touted as a major “concession” by proponents of the bill calls for investigations by the inspectors general of four agencies overseeing spying activities. But members of Congress who do not sit on the Judiciary or Intelligence committees will not be guaranteed access to the agencies’ reports.

The bill essentially grants absolute retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies that facilitated the president’s warrantless wiretapping program over the last seven years by ensuring the dismissal of court cases pending against those companies. The test for the companies’ right to immunity is not whether the government certifications they acted on were actually legal – only whether they were issued. Because it is public knowledge that certifications were issued, all of the pending cases will be summarily dismissed. This means Americans may never learn the truth about what the companies and the government did with our private communications.

“With one vote, Congress has strengthened the executive branch, weakened the judiciary and rendered itself irrelevant,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “This bill – soon to be law – is a constitutional nightmare. Americans should know that if this legislation is enacted and upheld, what they say on international phone calls or emails is no longer private. The government can listen in without having a specific reason to do so. Our rights as Americans have been curtailed and our privacy can no longer be assumed.”

I Do Not Believe Obama On The FISA Capitulation Bill

2008-07-09T08:31:00.001-05:00

From Talkleft.con by Big Tent Democrat on July 9, 2008:
"Yesterday, Barack Obama said:

Obama blamed criticism from "my friends on the left" and "some of the media" in part on cynicism that ascribes political motives for every move candidates make. "You're not going to agree with me on 100 percent of what I think, but don't assume that if I don't agree with you on something that it must be because I'm doing that politically," he said. "I may just disagree with you."
I do not believe Barack Obama. I will go further. I do not want to believe him. Because the alternative is worse. Because if Obama believes the BS he said about the FISA Capitulation bill, then he is not fit to be President. More . . .

If Barack Obama really believes this about the FISA Capitulation bill, then he is as dangerous as George W. Bush:

[G]iven the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives -- and the liberty -- of the American people."
(Emphasis supplied.) Excuse me, but the Constitution does not work that way. Firm pledges from the President do not compensate for evisceration of the Constitutional right to privacy. As John Adams said:

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
(Emphasis supplied.) Obama's "firm pledge," (given he pledged to filibuster any bill that contained telecom immunity, the irony of his new pledge is nauseating), IF HE WINS is worth nothing. His position here is nothing short of disgusting.

But politics is disgusting. And pols do what they do. I remind Barack Obama of the words of Louis Brandeis:

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
They tell me Obama is a Constitutional scholar. I assume he is familiar with Brandeis' words. So no, I do not believe he believes this FISA Capitulation bill is good or even acceptable. I believe he is acting out of political calculation (and bad political calculation at that.) Indeed, if that is not the case, then his position is unacceptable and he is not fit to be President. "

Obama's online muscle flexes against him

2008-07-09T08:19:00.002-05:00

From Chicago Tribune on July 9, 2008: "The same Internet-fueled power that led to historic gains in organizing and fundraising for Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is now providing a platform for fiery dissent in a most unlikely place: his own Web site.

Amid criticism from the left that he has eased toward the center on a number of issues in recent weeks, the presumptive Democratic nominee has angered some of his most ardent supporters while triggering something of an online mutiny. Thousands are using MyBarackObama.com to angrily organize against him because of a changed position on terrorist wiretap legislation that awaits Senate action as early as Wednesday.

The dispute has forced Obama to respond in ways never before seen in a presidential campaign, demonstrating the Internet's growing role in the democratic process and the live-by-the-click, die-by-the-click potential it holds for politicians.

The controversy centers on modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the government's quest to monitor suspected terrorists that civil libertarians worry could infringe on the privacy rights of others. Obama had pledged earlier this year to oppose—even filibuster—legislation that would immunize telecommunications companies against lawsuits that challenge cooperation with federal authorities in warrantless wiretapping.

But with that immunity now part of compromise legislation, Obama has softened his stance and suggested that he will back the bill. At a Chicago news conference on June 25, he said the proposal was a "close call" for him.

"The underlying program itself actually is important and useful to American security," he said. "I felt it was more important for me to go ahead and support this compromise."

Online but not on board
That same day, a new online group named "Senator Obama—Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity—Get FISA Right" formed on his campaign's social networking Web site. Now with more than 22,000 members, it is the largest group on MyBarackObama.com.

The online group is flooded with messages of disappointment and disillusionment. Some threaten to ask that their campaign contributions be returned, while others suggest they will simply stay home this fall.

One man even said he had removed his Obama bumper sticker from his car. "It's the first and only bumper sticker that I've ever put on a vehicle that I owned, so my disappointment felt personal and significant," he wrote.

Others, meanwhile, are countering that Obama is simply being pragmatic, now that he is in the midst of a general election campaign, and that a single issue should not be used to push supporters away.

"Some people in the group clearly are disillusioned," said Jon Pincus, a consultant and social networking author from the Seattle area deeply involved with the discussion. "A lot of people are saying, 'Let's see how real the rhetoric is.' "

Pincus said he is disappointed with Obama's changed position, but still plans to support him.

The group is eagerly waiting to see if Obama will speak from the Senate floor on the issue, something Pincus said could generate an "Obama moment," like those triggered by other passionate speeches he has given on such topics as race.

Still, that may not be enough for those who say they have lost trust in Obama's conviction on this and other matters.

"This just seems like a tremendous betrayal," said Tom Vincent, a Web designer from upstate New York. "It's a deal-breaker for me."

Seeking to calm the online crowd, Obama has already written extensively about his changed position on his campaign Web site.

"I understand why some of you feel differently about the current bill, and I'm happy to take my lumps on this site and elsewhere," he wrote. "I do promise to listen to your concerns, take them seriously, and seek to earn your ongoing support to change the country."

Obama's Senate office did not respond to a query on how busy the phone lines and e-mail boxes have been in recent days. His campaign says it appreciates all points of view on the topic.

"This campaign has an extraordinary group of committed supporters, and we greatly appreciate their willingness to share their time and ideas with us," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement. "We believe that an open dialogue is an important part of any campaign."

Mutters over moderations
Obama may have a higher standard to meet in promise-keeping, in large part because he has sold himself as a new kind of political leader, one who pledged to be more honest and less calculating.

During the primary campaign, he often ran left of Sen. Hillary Clinton, a tactic that helped him win over liberals, boost his fundraising, and ultimately secure his party's nomination.

Now facing Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona in a general election, Obama has been criticized by some for moderating some of his views in an effort to attract independent voters.

Besides the FISA legislation, Obama has also offered more moderate views in recent weeks on gun-ownership rights and a death penalty ruling by the Supreme Court. He also expressed a willingness to "refine" his timeline for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, depending on the situation on the ground there.

Republicans, meanwhile, are pleased with the Democratic infighting and are trying to use the FISA debate to challenge Obama's integrity.

"Barack Obama has made it increasingly difficult to take him at his word," McCain senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin wrote to reporters this week. "After pledging to accept public financing, he decided not to. After saying he would debate 'anywhere, any time,' he decided against participating in any of the 10 joint town hall meetings. After backing the D.C. handgun ban, he now says it was unconstitutional."

While campaigning Tuesday in Georgia, Obama disputed suggestions that he is moderating his positions. "The people who say this haven't apparently been listening to me," he said."

Newsweek: Four Myths of Obama's Money Machine

2008-07-09T00:36:00.001-05:00

From Newsweek on July 8, 2008:
1. Obama Opted Out of Public Financing for Reasons of Principle
Um, no. This one would've been too obvious to refute, except that when Obama ducked his promise to "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election" last month, he tried to portray the decision as something other than pure pragmatism. "Declare your independence from this broken system," he told supporters. Baloney. In early 2007, Obama informed Larry King that "the presidential public financing system works," and the next month, he co-sponsored legislation to preserve the current setup. At the time, Obama was well-aware of the havoc 527s could wreak; after all, he'd watched the Swiftboat Vets attack John Kerry. And it was no secret—as Howard Dean had proved more than three years earlier—that the Internet could democratize the process of funding a favored politician. Since then, the 527s haven't gotten scarier, and the Web hasn't gotten webbier. What's changed is that it's now Obama (not Kerry) who's in the GOP's crosshairs and Obama (not Dean) who's rolling in the dough. So he did what any pol would do—he broke his pledge and followed the money. This was undoubtedly a wise move—with his money machine up and running, he'll certainly raise more than the $84.1 million he'd receive from taxpayers and have a better chance of winning the White House because of it. But it's hardly principled.

2. Obama Gets All—or Even the Vast Majority—of His Money from Small Donors
Rationalizing his decision, Obama said that only by opting out of public financing would his campaign be "truly funded by the American people." Besides being sort of absurd on its face—when did accepting $3 from each individual taxpayers become less egalitarian than accepting private money?—the senator's claim rests on a shaky premise: that all (or even most) of Obama's cash comes from regular guys and gals sending in $5 donations over the Internets. Fact is, that's not true. Now, don't get me wrong. Obama's massive fundraising machine—which rejects money from federal lobbyists and PACs and boasts a record number of small-sum donors among its 1.5 million individual contributors—deserves a ton of praise. It is, simply put, the most democratic in American political history.

That said, Obama's fundraising base still looks a lot like Al Gore's or John Kerry's. For starters, the majority of Obama's money continues to come from folks with fat(ter) wallets. In the primaries, for example, donations larger than $200 accounted for 55 percent of Obama's haul, or about $150 million. Lawyers forked over $18 million of that total; the largest single contributor was Goldman Sachs. And now that the primaries are over, Obama is free—like McCain—to funnel checks larger than $2,300 through the national party. He's taking full advantage of that luxury. In June, Obama reaped $6 million from guests at Ethel Kennedy's Hickory Hill home in Virginia. Ten days ago, the campaign pulled in $5 million at a Hollywood fundraiser. And just last night, Obama visited a pair of plush money events in the tony suburbs of Atlanta. At each appearance, supporters shelled out $28,500—the legal limit on donations to the DNC—for the privilege of Obama's presence. And there's more where that came from. As Penny Pritzker, Obama’s campaign finance chairwoman, told the New York Times recently, the main reason the campaign has relied on small donors for so long is that it had yet to find the time to milk the big ones. "We have not been able to have much of the senator’s time during the primaries," she said, "so we had to rely more on the Internet."

None of which is to say that Obama's money machine isn't the most democratic we've ever seen. It is. (At least 90 percent of his donors—more than 1.3 million—give small sums of money.) It's just that it's not more democratic than public financing--despite the spin from Chicago.

3. The Share of Obama's Money That Comes From Small Donors Is Completely Unprecedented
This one's kind of surprising. Obama has certainly set the record for small-sum donations as a share of his total take—about 45 percent of his money comes from checks of $200 or less. But while Obama is definitely doing better with small donors than previous presidential candidates, it's not by the *astronomical* margin you might have assumed. According to an analysis by Joseph Graf, 31 percent of Bush's money in 2004 came from donations of $200 or less (compared to 16 percent in 2000). Kerry, meanwhile, raised 37 percent of his money in 2004 from small donors (as compared to 20 percent for Gore in 2000). That's only eight points less than Obama—and there's a strong chance Kerry would've increased his haul with 2008's improved technology.

4. Obama Won't Receive Any Help From Outside Groups
Yesterday, I mentioned a few of the extracurricular organizations planning to boost McCain's bid with unregulated and unrestricted "soft money" investments: the NRA, the Christian Defense Coalition and the former Swift Boat Vets for Truth (among others). But McCain's not alone. Even though the Obama campaign has sought to maintain message control by discouraging its top fundraisers from giving to outside orgs—a directive that killed off a pair of Democratic-aligned soft-money groups, Fund for America and Progressive Media U.S.A., in their infancy—there may be more 527s poised to assist the senator from Illinois than his rival from Arizona. These include America Votes, an umbrella organization planning a $20 million voter mobilization drive; PowerPAC.org, also planning to invest $15 million on GOTV; a host of unions, including the SEI and A.F.L.-C.I.O., which announced its $53.4 million election effort late last month; and, of course, MoveOn.org, which recently closed its 527 but is hoping to raise some $40 million for the general election through its political action committee.

FISA Vote Scheduled for Wednesday July 9 (Obama PLans to Vote with Bush)

2008-07-09T00:11:00.001-05:00

Obama Playing Voters for Dupes

2008-07-08T19:27:00.001-05:00

From RealClearPolitics.com By Rich Lowry on July 8, 2008:

"A signature moment of Barack Obama's primary campaign came last November in Des Moines, Iowa. He gave a speech at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner that electrified the crowd and gave his campaign a kick that helped win the Iowa caucuses -- a victory without which he wouldn't be the Democratic nominee.

Obama declared that "the same old Washington textbook campaigns just won't do." Deploring "triangulating and poll-driven positions," he said that "telling the American people what we think they want to hear instead of telling the American people what they need to hear just won't do." The Democratic Party had been at its best, he told the crowd, when "we led, not by polls, but by principles; not by calculation, but by conviction."

"I run for the presidency of the United States of America because that's the party America needs us to be right now," he vowed, staking his candidacy on the achingly idealistic premises of a new, more forthright and uncalculating politics.

What makes Obama's "textbook" dash to the center so extraordinary is not just its speed, but how it falsifies the very essence of his candidacy. It's as if Bill Clinton won the Democratic nomination in 1992 and announced suddenly that actually he was not a "new kind of Democrat"; or if George W. Bush, after winning his party's nomination in 2000, forswore "compassionate conservatism"; or if John McCain, after winning the GOP nomination this year, declared in favor of a hard deadline for withdrawal from Iraq.

In the past few weeks, Obama has broken two pledges (to take public financing in the general election and to filibuster legal immunity for telecoms that cooperated with the government in terrorist surveillance); has belittled his own rhetoric during the primary campaign (saying it could get "overheated and amplified" on the issue of trade); redefined his promise to meet without preconditions with the leaders of hostile states until it's basically meaningless; endorsed a Supreme Court decision striking down a Washington, D.C., gun ban his campaign had previously said he supported; and made muddy, centrist-sounding statements about his positions on Iraq and abortion that he had to go back and try to clarify.

Has there ever in recent political memory been so much calculation and bad faith by a politician who has made so much of eschewing both? We now know that Barack Obama is not naive, but his ardent supporters are. Obama exhorted them to "believe" -- one of his favorite words -- in him and his virtue above all, and as soon as they gave him the nomination he wanted, he showed how foolishly credulous they had been. When it comes to triangulating, he's Hillary Clinton without the baggage.

Forget the debate about whether Obama is "American enough." He's that great American archetype, the audacious salesman with an eye on the main chance. Nothing in his utterly orthodox left-wing record ever suggested he was a transformationally unifying figure, but he sold himself as that to the audience he needed in the Democratic primaries. Nothing in his record suggests he's a sensible centrist, but he's going to sell himself as one to the audience he needs in the general election, whatever contortions it takes. In his current TV ad, he touts his support for welfare reform when he actually opposed it.

Obama is calculating shrewdly now -- just as shrewdly as back when he was attacking calculation. His left-wing base won't abandon him, and all the dewy-eyed new voters attracted by him will stay that way, so long as he continues to look and sound good. His task is to win over general-election voters in a center-right country who value hardheadedness and practicality in their presidents.

Barack Obama doesn't need to be a messiah figure. He needn't even be particularly admirable. In a poisonous year for Republicans, he just needs to be a minimally acceptable Democrat, and so minimally acceptable he aims to be. But we're a long way from Des Moines."

© 2008 by King Features Syndicate

Obama Should (Still) Be Standing With Feingold on FISA

2008-07-08T19:10:00.002-05:00

From The Nation by John Nichols on July 7, 2008:
"Before the February 19 Wisconsin primary, which confirmed his front-runner status in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Illinois Senator Barack Obama went out of his way to associate his candidacy with the name of Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold.

It wasn't just about winning Wisconsin, although that undoubtedly was part of the calculus.

Obama wanted to secure the support of the substantial portion of Democrats nationally who, in polls conducted in 2006, indicated that they would back Feingold if he entered the presidential race. Internal polls by the various campaigns indicated that Feingold drew as much as 15 percent of the vote in a number of key states, coming mostly from anti-war and pro-civil liberties progressives.

Obama knew he needed the support of those highly engaged party activists. And so, in early February, he embraced an issue that mattered a lot to them: the defense of civil liberties.

Obama, Feingold and Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd did not want Congress to support the Bush administration's efforts to block civil suits against telecommunications firms for spying on customers.

"I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grass-roots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty," declared Obama, who indicated that he would support efforts to filibuster any attack on the ability of citizens to use the courts to defend their privacy rights.

Obama's stance helped him. It was cited in endorsements by prominent progressives and newspapers in Wisconsin and other later primary states. No doubt, it contributed to his landslide victory in the Badger State, where the Illinoisan won a vote from Feingold himself.

Yet, now that he is the presumptive nominee, Obama is standing not with Feingold, but with Bush and the special interests Obama once denounced. He says he'll vote for a White House-backed FISA rewrite -- which is likely to be taken up by the Senate this week -- in opposition to the position taken by civil liberties groups, legal scholars on the left and right and, of course, Russ Feingold.

That's bad -- not just because Obama is putting politics ahead of principle, but because he's calculating the politics wrong. As Feingold proved when he was overwhelmingly re-elected in a swing state in 2004, after casting the sole vote against the Patriot Act, standing strong for the Bill of Rights attracts rather than sacrifices votes.

Even worse is the deceptive claim that the "compromise" on FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) reached by the Bush administration and congressional leaders allows for meaningful scrutiny.

As Feingold says, "The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation. The House and Senate should not be taking up this bill, which effectively guarantees immunity for telecom companies alleged to have participated in the president's illegal program, and which fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home. Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity."

Despite what some apologists for this sellout by Democratic leaders might suggest, it is comic to claim that multinational corporations given civil immunity might still face criminal charges.

Citizens have always been in the forefront of tackling corporate crime. At best, prosecutors play catch-up. Providing telecommunications corporations with immunity from civil suits gives them blanket immunity. To suggest otherwise is to buy into a fantasy that would make America less free and less safe.

Russ Feingold knows that. So does Barack Obama.

It is unfortunate that they are not standing together on the right side of history -- and the Constitution.

Obama's Chicago Boys

2008-07-08T11:18:00.002-05:00

From The Nation on June 12, 2008 by Naomi Klein:
" Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market."
Demonstrating that this is no mere spring fling, he has appointed 37-year-old Jason Furman to head his economic policy team. Furman is one of Wal-Mart's most prominent defenders, anointing the company a "progressive success story." On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, "I won't shop there." For Furman, however, it's Wal-Mart's critics who are the real threat: the "efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits" are creating "collateral damage" that is "way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing 'Kum-Ba-Ya' in the interests of progressive harmony."

Obama's love of markets and his desire for "change" are not inherently incompatible. "The market has gotten out of balance," he says, and it most certainly has. Many trace this profound imbalance back to the ideas of Milton Friedman, who launched a counterrevolution against the New Deal from his perch at the University of Chicago economics department. And here there are more problems, because Obama--who taught law at the University of Chicago for a decade--is thoroughly embedded in the mind-set known as the Chicago School.

He chose as his chief economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist on the left side of a spectrum that stops at the center-right. Goolsbee, unlike his more Friedmanite colleagues, sees inequality as a problem. His primary solution, however, is more education--a line you can also get from Alan Greenspan. In their hometown, Goolsbee has been eager to link Obama to the Chicago School. "If you look at his platform, at his advisers, at his temperament, the guy's got a healthy respect for markets," he told Chicago magazine. "It's in the ethos of the [University of Chicago], which is something different from saying he is laissez-faire."

Another of Obama's Chicago fans is 39-year-old billionaire Kenneth Griffin, CEO of the hedge fund Citadel Investment Group. Griffin, who gave the maximum allowable donation to Obama, is something of a poster boy for an unbalanced economy. He got married at Versailles and had the after-party at Marie Antoinette's vacation spot (Cirque du Soleil performed)--and he is one of the staunchest opponents of closing the hedge-fund tax loophole. While Obama talks about toughening trade rules with China, Griffin has been bending the few barriers that do exist. Despite sanctions prohibiting the sale of police equipment to China, Citadel has been pouring money into controversial China-based security companies that are putting the local population under unprecedented levels of surveillance.

Now is the time to worry about Obama's Chicago Boys and their commitment to fending off serious attempts at regulation. It was in the two and a half months between winning the 1992 election and being sworn into office that Bill Clinton did a U-turn on the economy. He had campaigned promising to revise NAFTA, adding labor and environmental provisions and to invest in social programs. But two weeks before his inauguration, he met with then-Goldman Sachs chief Robert Rubin, who convinced him of the urgency of embracing austerity and more liberalization. Rubin told PBS, "President Clinton actually made the decision before he stepped into the Oval Office, during the transition, on what was a dramatic change in economic policy."

Furman, a leading disciple of Rubin, was chosen to head the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, the think tank Rubin helped found to argue for reforming, rather than abandoning, the free-trade agenda. Add to that Goolsbee's February meeting with Canadian consulate officials, who left with the distinct impression that they had been instructed not to take Obama's anti-NAFTA campaigning seriously, and there is every reason for concern about a replay of 1993.

The irony is that there is absolutely no reason for this backsliding. The movement launched by Friedman, introduced by Ronald Reagan and entrenched under Clinton, faces a profound legitimacy crisis around the world. Nowhere is this more evident than at the University of Chicago itself. In mid-May, when university president Robert Zimmer announced the creation of a $200 million Milton Friedman Institute, an economic research center devoted to continuing and augmenting the Friedman legacy, a controversy erupted. More than 100 faculty members signed a letter of protest. "The effects of the neoliberal global order that has been put in place in recent decades, strongly buttressed by the Chicago School of Economics, have by no means been unequivocally positive," the letter states. "Many would argue that they have been negative for much of the world's population."

When Friedman died in 2006, such bold critiques of his legacy were largely absent. The adoring memorials spoke only of grand achievement, with one of the more prominent appreciations appearing in the New York Times--written by Austan Goolsbee. Yet now, just two years later, Friedman's name is seen as a liability even at his own alma mater. So why has Obama chosen this moment, when all illusions of a consensus have dropped away, to go Chicago retro?

The news is not all bad. Furman claims he will be drawing on the expertise of two Keynesian economists: Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute and James Galbraith, son of Friedman's nemesis John Kenneth Galbraith. Our "current economic crisis," Obama recently said, did not come from nowhere. It is "the logical conclusion of a tired and misguided philosophy that has dominated Washington for far too long."

True enough. But before Obama can purge Washington of the scourge of Friedmanism, he has some ideological housecleaning of his own to do. "

Obama Leaves Blue Women Seeing Red

2008-07-08T11:00:00.001-05:00

From Washington Post on July 9, 2008 By Marie Cocco:

"WASHINGTON -- Somewhere along Barack Obama's winding road through the red states, he lost me. It happened when he talked about women who are "feeling blue."

Obama says that these women should not be able to obtain a late-term abortion, because just "feeling blue" isn't the same as suffering "serious clinical mental health diseases." True enough. And totally infuriating.

During the recent Obama pander tour -- the one in which he spent about a week trying to win over conservative religious voters -- the presumptive Democratic nominee unnecessarily endorsed President Bush's faith-based initiative, a sort of patronage program that rewards religious activists for their political support with public grants. Then in a St. Louis speech, Obama declared that "I let Jesus Christ into my life." That's fine, but we already have a president who believes this was a qualification for the Oval Office, and look where that's gotten us.

Obama's verbal meanderings on the issue of late-term abortion go further. He has muddied his position. Whether this is a mistake or deliberate triangulation, only Obama knows for sure.

One thing is certain: Obama has backhandedly given credibility to the right-wing narrative that women who have abortions -- even those who go through the physically and mentally wrenching experience of a late-term abortion -- are frivolous and selfish creatures who might perhaps undergo this ordeal because they are "feeling blue."

The wordplay began when Obama, in an interview with the religious magazine Relevant, said he believes late-term abortions can be banned except in cases where "a serious physical issue ... arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems with the mother carrying that child to term." In other words, a woman's emotional and psychological health would not be considered factors. Obama said he doesn't think "'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother."

Since this contradicts the landmark Roe v. Wade decision and subsequent court rulings that have upheld mental health exceptions to abortion bans, the campaign had to flip back from the flop. Obama spoke to reporters on his campaign plane and gave a definition of a mental health exception that goes like this: "It can be defined by serious, clinical mental health diseases. It is not just a matter of feeling blue." He noted that neither abortion-rights supporters nor the courts have ever interpreted a mental health exception that way.

They have not. Because this sort of language -- that women might have late-term abortions just because they feel "blue" -- is that of the anti-abortion lobby. As part of its campaign to ban the procedure, anti-abortion activists have consistently depicted women who have abortions as doing so for convenience, to get themselves out of an uncomfortable jam of their own making.

In all the years I have covered the incendiary politics of late-term abortion -- procedures that comprise only about 1 percent of abortions in the U.S. -- I have never come across a woman who terminated a pregnancy late because she was "feeling blue." I have interviewed married women who ended a planned pregnancy after it went catastrophically wrong. One was carrying a fetus whose brain had grown outside the skull. Another had endured months of unexplained and uncontrollable bleeding, only to discover after her abortion that the placenta was breaking up and being passed from her body.

The medical conditions these women suffered might or might not have been considered purely physical under a restrictive abortion law that a state legislature -- or the U.S. Congress -- might pass. Their lives weren't in direct jeopardy; the pregnancies were. They agonized over their choice. Did they feel "blue"? No. It was much, much worse than that.

A campaign spokesman said Obama made the point about "feeling blue" to show that women do not make abortion decisions lightly. I do not question Obama's support for abortion rights; he's been clear that he supports keeping abortion legal.

But I do wonder why a candidate praised for his rhetorical gifts talks about women in the way that he does. During the primary campaign, he said Hillary Clinton launched political attacks on him "periodically, when she's feeling down." He called a Detroit reporter "sweetie" when she was trying to ask him about job creation. Now he has incorporated a myth created by the right -- that women who seek late-term abortions should not be allowed to do so if they are "feeling blue" -- into his own lexicon. And this is enough to make me see red."

Obama's Support on Telcom Immunity & Why it Matters

2008-07-05T14:44:00.003-05:00

From Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com on July 5, 2008: "Nancy Soderberg was deputy national security advisor and an ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration. Today, she has an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times defending the FISA bill and telecom amnesty. The entire Op-Ed is just a regurgitation of the same trite, vague talking points which the political elite are using to justify this bill, accompanied by the standard invocations of "National Security" which our Foreign Policy elite condescendingly toss around to justify whatever policy they're claiming is necessary to protect us. But it's the language that she uses -- and the brazeness of the lying (and that's what it is) to justify this bill -- that's notable here.

It's notable because the political establishment is not only about to pass a patently corrupt bill, but worse, are spouting -- on a very bipartisan basis -- completely deceitful claims to obscure what they're really doing. This is what Soderberg says is what happened:

The Senate is dragging its feet because the compromise bill's opponents -- mostly Democrats -- want also to punish the telecommunications companies that answered President Bush's order for help with his illegal, warrantless wiretapping program. That is the wrong target.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the White House directed telecommunications carriers to cooperate with its efforts to bolster intelligence gathering and surveillance -- the administration's effort to do a better job of "connecting the dots" to prevent terrorist attacks. In its review of the effort, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the administration's written requests and directives indicated that such assistance "had been authorized by the president" and that the "activities had been determined to be lawful."

We now know that they were not lawful. But the companies that followed those directives are not the ones to blame for that abuse of presidential power.

I would really like to know where people like Soderberg get the idea that the U.S. President has the power to "order" private citizens to do anything, let alone to break the law, as even she admits happened here. I'm asking this literally: how did this warped and distinctly un-American mentality get implanted into our public discourse -- that the President can give "orders" to private citizens that must be complied with? Soderberg views the President as a monarch -- someone who can issue "orders" that must be obeyed, even when, as she acknowledges, the "orders" are illegal.

That just isn't how our country works and it never was. We don't have a King who can order people to break the law. I have no doubt that people like Nancy Soderberg are spending the July 4 weekend paying shallow homage to the Founding, all the while being completely ignorant of or indifferent to the principles they pretend to celebrate. Just compare her claim that telecoms were justified, even required, to comply with the President's "order" to break the law with Thomas Paine's view, set forth in his 1776 revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense concerning how our country was supposed to work:

But where says some is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.
Nancy Soderberg and the rest of our political establishment about to immunize telecoms for having broken the law simply don't believe in those principles. And they're saying so explicitly. To them, the President's order to break the law both should and must be obeyed. Where did they learn that?

So much of this comes from the constant fetishizing of the President as the Supreme Leader, "our" Commander-in-Chief, rather than -- as the Constitution explicitly states -- "commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States." In the U.S., private actors don't have government "commanders" who can "order" or "direct" them to do anything. Even soldiers, for whom the President is actually the Commander-in-Chief, are prohibited from obeying unlawful orders. Yet here is Nancy Soderberg -- in tandem with the rest of the political establishment -- claiming that private telecoms were justified, even compelled, to obey unlawful "orders" from the President, and are therefore entitled to be immunized from consequences.

Beyond that, her mentality reveals a profound ignorance of privacy laws and the history of spying abuses in the this country. Soderberg repeats the standard Democratic excuse for immunizing telecoms -- that telecoms are "the wrong target" because "the government should be held responsible, not private industry," and thus, "the companies that followed those directives are not the ones to blame for that abuse of presidential power."

This is all based on the false claim that privacy laws such as FISA were meant to restrict Government conduct, not those of telecoms. The exact opposite is true. FISA and other laws which the telecoms broke -- not just after 9/11, but for many years -- were written specifically to restrain how telecoms cooperate with Government spying requests. As Cindy Cohn, lead counsel for Electronic Frontier Foundation, explained when I interviewed her last October:

We brought the case only against AT&T because AT&T has an independent duty to you, its customers, to protect your privacy. This is a very old duty, and if you know the history of the FISA law, you'll know that it was adopted as a result of some very deep work done by the Church Committee in Congress, that revealed that Western Union and the telegraph companies were making a copy of all telegraphs going into and outside the U.S. and delivering them to the Government.

So this was one of the big outrages uncovered by the Church Committee -- in addition to the rampant surveillance of people like Martin Luther King.

As a result of this, Congress very wisely decided that it wasn't sufficient to simply prevent the Government from listening in on your calls - they had to create an independent duty for the telecom carries not to participate in illegal surveillance.

So they are strictly forbidden from handing over your communications and communications records to the Government without proper legal process.

Contrary to what the Nancy Soderbergs of the world want people to believe, these laws enacted by the American people in order to prevent spying abuses weren't only directed at the Government but specifically at the telecom industry as well. The whole point was to compel telecoms by force of law to refuse illegal Government "orders" to allow spying on their customers. That's why Qwest and others refused to "comply", but the telecoms that were hungry for extremely lucrative government contracts agreed to break the law. They did it because, motivated by profit, they chose to, not because they were compelled. Breaking the law on purpose and then profiting from the lawbreaking is classic criminal behavior. The conduct which those laws were designed to make illegal -- and which they unambiguously outlawed -- is exactly what the telecoms did here.

* * * * *

Nancy Soderberg shouldn't be singled out. She's just disseminating the settled-upon talking points of the Democratic establishment and media elite in justifying this bill -- the same basic ones that pervade the manipulative and at times misleading statement issued by Barack Obama on Friday. She's speaking from the same script. But Soderberg's formulation is particularly artless and she thus advances statements which are just inexcusably false, so flagrantly and knowingly false that they're just offensive to read. She writes:

But what's most objectionable to some Democrats is a provision that provides telecommunications companies accused of past wrongdoing the right to have their cases reviewed in district court.
As everyone acknowledges, this bill effectively compels the district courts to dismiss the lawsuits against telecoms without any examination of whether the law was broken. Yet, in praising this bill, she says the bill gives telecoms "the right to have their cases reviewed in district court" -- as though they're being denied that "right" now, and as though the bill restores that right. Is it even possible to describe telecom immunity more dishonestly, with more Orwellian deceit, than that?
Clearly, the intelligence community cannot succeed in the war on terrorism -- cannot really connect the dots -- without help from the private sector. Congress must protect those companies so they can and will help, when it's necessary.
Under the law -- both the current FISA and the new bill -- telecoms are legally required to comply with lawful requests from the Government. They don't have the option to "refuse to cooperate." What she's actually saying here is indescribably Orwellian -- that telecoms had the obligation to obey Bush's illegal orders to allow government spying, but they have the option to ignore legal warrants to do so. That's exactly backwards -- there is no danger that telecoms will "refuse to cooperate" because they are required to do so when the government requests are legal.
Without such protection, phone and Internet companies, if they cooperated at all, would do so on a case-by-case basis, with their own lawyers exercising lawyer-like caution.
What she snidely dismisses as "lawyer-like caution" exercised on "a case-by-case basis" is called "obeying the law." That's what we want people to do; that's the whole purpose of law.
The bill passed by the House will prevent any repeat of that wrong, but it also lets those companies off the hook for past actions.
The reason the President broke the law was because he claimed that he has the power under Article II to ignore Congressional statutes restricting eavesdropping. He still claims that power, and this law does nothing to address that. It does the opposite: by putting an end to the pending lawsuits against the telecoms, it ensures that this Article II theory of presidential omnipotence will continue undisturbed -- both for the current President and for the next ones. To assert that this law does anything meaningful to address the Bush/Addington/Yoo theory of presidential lawbreaking that gave rise to this scandal is simply false. It blocks the only avenue for adjudicating the central cause of presidential lawbreaking, thus ensuring its continuation.
The compromise bill satisfies both sides: Under congressional oversight, it puts the responsibility for past surveillance squarely on the administration, where it belongs, and allows the courts to determine the legality of these actions.
This is the most flagrantly dishonest claim she makes, which is really saying something. The bill does the exact opposite of what she claims. It does not "allow[] the courts to determine the legality of these actions." It bars the courts from doing so in the case of telecoms, while ensuring that the Bush administration remains protected from judicial review by all sorts of procedural obstacles such as "standing" and "state secrets" that Congress is choosing to do nothing to address.

The bill thus ensures that what Soderberg admits is lawbreaking by both the Government and telecoms will never be addressed or resolved by a court of law. It shields the lawbreakers from accountability in court. That's its whole purpose. She has to know that, and yet here she is, telling people that this bill is a just and good policy because it "allows the courts to determine the legality of these actions." Can anyone coherently deny that it's outright lying to claim that this bill "allows the courts to determine the legality of these actions" when it does the exact opposite?

* * * * *

What all of this is really about -- the reason why political elites like Nancy Soderberg are so eager to defend it -- is because they really do believe that lawbreaking isn't wrong, that it doesn't deserve punishment, when engaged in by them rather than by commoners. People who defend telecom immunity or who say that it's not a big deal are, by logical necessity, adopting this view: "Our highest political officials and largest corporations shouldn't face consequences when they break our laws as long as they claim it was for our own good." That's the destructive premise that lies at the heart of this deeply corrupt measure, the reason it matters so much. Just like the pardon of Nixon, the protection of Iran-contra criminals, and the commutation of Lewis Libby's sentence, this bill is yet another step in cementing a two-tiered system of justice in America where our highest political officials and connected elite can break our laws with impunity.

Protecting government and corporate elite from flagrant lawbreaking is what our own political establishment always claimed was the hallmark of third-world, under-developed tyrannies. This 1998 essay by Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace -- in the ultimate establishment organ, Foreign Affairs -- was entitled "The Rule of Law Revival," and argues optimistically that the "rule of law" has now become the centerpiece, the prime consensus, for most international relations and has been recognized as the linchpin for third-world countries developing into functioning democracies. It speaks for itself in terms of what the Nancy Soderbergs, Jay Rockefellers, Fred Hiatts, Dick Cheneys and all their establishment comrades are doing to our country by acting to cover-up the single most flagrant act of Bush lawbreaking and immunizing the key lawbreakers:

LEGAL BEDROCK

THE RULE of law can be defined as a system in which the laws are public knowledge, are clear in meaning, and apply equally to everyone. They enshrine and uphold the political and civil liberties that have gained status as universal human rights over the last half-century. . . . Perhaps most important, the government is embedded in a comprehensive legal framework, its officials accept that the law will be applied to their own conduct, and the government seeks to be law-abiding. . . .

The primary obstacles to such reform [in the Third World] are not technical or financial, but political and human. Rule-of-law reform will succeed only if it gets at the fundamental problem of leaders who refuse to be ruled by the law. Respect for the law will not easily take root in systems rife with corruption and cynicism, since entrenched elites cede their traditional impunity and vested interests only under great pressure. . . .

Type three reforms aim at the deeper goal of increasing government's compliance with law. A key step is achieving genuine judicial independence. . . . But the most crucial changes lie elsewhere. Above all, government officials must refrain from interfering with judicial decision-making and accept the judiciary as an independent authority.

Our Congress, with the political and media elite cheering, is about to violate every one of these principles. They are taking away from the judiciary the power to adjudicate allegations of lawbreaking. They are creating a two-tiered system of justice in which our most powerful corporations can break the law with impunity and government officials remain immune from consequences. And they are, in unity, spewing rank propaganda to the commoners -- who continue to be subjected to the harsh punishment for violations of the law and one of the world's most merciless justice systems -- in order to convince them that granting license to our political and corporate elites to break the law is necessary for their own Good and for their Safety.

Following numerous requests from those who contributed to our campaign against those responsible for this FISA and telecom amnesty travesty, we are in the process of preparing a full-page ad -- highlighting how false are the claims being made to justify this bill and the reasons it is so corrupt -- to run this week in The Washington Post (assuming it is accepted) and other similar venues.
"

Poll: Some Clinton supporters still not embracing Obama

2008-07-05T14:07:00.001-05:00

From CNN.com on July 5, 2008: "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One week after Sen. Hillary Clinton made a public show of unity with Sen. Barack Obama, a new survey suggests supporters of the New York senator are increasingly less likely to follow her lead.

A growing number of Clinton supporters polled say they may stay home in November instead of casting their ballot for Obama, an indication the party has yet to coalesce around the Illinois senator four weeks after the most prolonged and at times divisive primary race in modern American history came to a close.

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Friday, the number of Clinton supporters who plan to defect to Republican Sen. John McCain's camp is down from one month ago, but -- in what could be an ominous sign for Obama as he seeks to unify the party -- the number of them who say they plan to vote for Obama is also down, and a growing number say they may not vote at all.

In a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey completed in early June before the New York senator ended her White House bid, 60 percent of Clinton backers polled said they planned on voting for Obama. In the latest poll, that number has dropped to 54 percent.In early June, 22 percent of Clinton supporters polled said they would not vote at all if Obama were the party's nominee, now close to a third say they will stay home.

In another sign the wounds of the heated primary race have yet to heal, 43 percent of registered Democrats polled still say they would prefer Clinton to be the party's presidential nominee. Watch why Clinton supporters are struggling with supporting Obama »

That number is significantly higher than it was in early June, when 35 percent of Democrats polled said they preferred Clinton to lead the party's presidential ticket.
Obama won 59 percent of support from registered Democrats polled in June; now he garners 54 percent.

"These things always take time to heal," said Bill Schneider, CNN senior political analyst. "I think Clinton's supporters are waiting to see if Sen. Obama will pick her as vice president. That would certainly be very healing to them."

But most political observers agree the prospects of an Obama-Clinton ticket are dim, most notably because Clinton remains a divisive figure in American politics and Obama's message of change threatens to be muddled by the 16 years Clinton has spent in Washington

But the question remains whether Obama can win enough Democrats without Clinton as his No. 2.

"If he doesn't pick her, a later stage of grief is depression and then acceptance," Schneider said. "In the end I expect Clinton supporters will accept Obama, because they will listen to Sen. Clinton, who has said the stakes are too high for Democrats to sulk."

The analysts said maybe more than four weeks is needed for many of Clinton's most devoted supporters to move past her loss, especially considering the primary campaign stretched more than 17 months.

"Many voters find it tough to immediately switch allegiances to a candidate that they once opposed, so they find a 'neutral' setting more comfortable for awhile," said Keating Holland, CNN polling director. "If that's what is happening to the Clinton supporters who now say they plan to stay at home, Obama may have nothing to worry about. If not, there's a big chunk of the party base that Obama won't be able to count on in November."

While Clinton's stock among many Democrats remains high in the latest poll, her husband's is decidedly lower since a year ago.

Much has been made of Bill Clinton's role in his wife's White House bid -- the increasingly aggressive campaign style, the sharpened attacks leveled at Obama that some viewed as carrying racial overtones and the outbursts at some reporters over what he viewed as unfair media coverage.

The former president increasingly came under fire from neutral Democrats and party elders concerned he was fracturing the party in an election cycle during which Democrats appeared to hold the advantage in nearly every way.

Among all registered voters questioned in the latest poll, his approval rating is down 9 points in just more than a year, from 60 percent to 51 percent.

"Former presidents are supposed to be above politics, but Bill Clinton couldn't be above it in this campaign since his wife was a candidate for president," Schneider said. "But he was seen as too political. Democrats thought it was appropriate for him to support his wife but not appropriate to get overly critical of Obama."

So can Clinton, who left office eight years ago with approval ratings well over 60 percent, repair his image with most Americans?

"He needs to show he's gotten over it," Schneider said.

Obama: Sounding Like Thomas and Scalia?

2008-07-05T13:45:00.001-05:00

From ABC News on July 04, 2008 12:34 PM:
"The Supreme Court fired a shot last week that ricocheted into the political campaign when it struck down a Washington DC law that banned people from owning handguns. For the first time in history, the justices said the Constitution's 2nd Amendment protected an individual's right to keep and bear arms.

The decision was 5-4 and, as we've seen on contentious social issues, divided the justices along ideological lines. In this case, the conservatives opposing the gun ban carried the day. Liberals ended up in bitter dissent.

But here's the curious thing: both presidential candidates — Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama — praised the conservatives' position. The same thing happened the day before in another sharply divided 5-4 case over whether states can execute people who rape, but do not kill, children. This time, conservatives lost, but again McCain and Obama were on the same side, blasting the liberals' decision striking down laws that allowed the death penalty for child rape.

You'd expect McCain to take those positions. He has, after all, promised to nominate justices like Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas. But on two of the biggest social controversies to reach the Court this year, Obama, too, sided with conservatives -- rejecting opinions by the liberal justices who, presumably, are of the kind he would appoint if elected President.

But that's nothing compared to Obama's most recent comments about the most controversial social issue of them all: abortion.

In a recent interview, Obama appears to back away from his long-stated positions on abortion (and a proposed federal abortion rights law he had co-sponsored), repudiate 35 years of accepted Supreme Court rulings on the issue and embrace a view on abortion restrictions that has been expressed on the Court only by Justices Thomas and Scalia.

Obama's remarks are printed verbatim in the interview, published yesterday in Relevant Magazine. Read them — there's no mistaking that Obama says he no longer will support what's long been a cornerstone of the abortion rights debate: The Court's insistence that laws banning abortions after the fetus is viable (now about 22 weeks) contain an exception to allow doctors to perform them if necessary to protect a pregnant woman's mental health.

'I have repeatedly said that I think it's entirely appropriate for states to restrict or even prohibit late-term abortions as long as there is a strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother. Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother," Obama said. "I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term. Otherwise, as long as there is such a medical exception in place, I think we can prohibit late-term abortions."

Wow.

This has been a central battleground issue in the Supreme Court going back 35 years, to Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, when the Court ruled a woman had a constitutional right to abortion. The decisions said state's can ban all abortions after the fetus is viable -- but that any restrictions must include exceptions to protect a woman's physical and emotional health.

In the years since, anti-abortion groups have fought hard against mental health exceptions, arguing that they create giant loopholes that make abortion bans meaningless. Doctors, they argue, can always find a "mental health" exception. But abortion rights groups just as strongly argue the mental health exception is critical to preserving a woman's right to an abortion—and that the woman and her doctor must be allowed to make those decisions about her health without government interference.

In 1973, when the Court issued Roe and Doe — on the same day — it sided with the abortion rights groups and said states could not interfere with a doctor's medical judgment on whether an abortion was necessary.

"[M]edical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors--physical, emotional , psychological, familial, and the woman's age--relevant to the well- being of the patient," said the Supreme Court in Doe, which was a companion case to Roe. "All these factors may relate to health . This allows the attending physician the room he needs to make his best medical judgment."

Obama's comments that he does not support mental health exceptions in so-called post-viability abortions (after 22 weeks) is squarely at odds with that holding, which remains the law of the land today.

Current Supreme Court jurisprudence is understood by lower courts to prohibit those flat-out bans unless the laws provide exceptions for a woman's mental health. Lower courts repeatedly have struck down laws that only provide an exception for serious physical issues as being contrary to Supreme Court precedent.

As an Ohio-based federal appeals court recently put it, "States must provide a maternal health exception to an abortion ban that encompasses situations where a woman would suffer severe mental or emotional harm if she were unable to obtain an abortion."

Indeed, only Thomas and Scalia have expressly supported the position that a mental health exception is not necessary. They penned a dissent to that effect in 1998, when the Court refused to take up the Ohio case that struck down a state law because it did not include an exception to protect a woman's mental health.

And last year's case upholding a federal law that banned a specific type of abortion procedure — so called "partial birth" abortion — doesn't change the analysis. It was the first to allow the government to ban a specific type of abortion procedure. And it was the first to allow that ban without an exception for a woman's mental health.

But that case focused only on one type of abortion procedure -- not an outright ban of all abortions after viability. And even there, the Court refused to rule out "partial birth" abortions in specific cases where a woman can show her mental or physical health requires it.

That case was immediately and harshly criticized by abortion rights groups across the spectrum — as well as by Obama, himself. He said last year that the decision "dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women."

Here's how Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards explained it:

"The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling yesterday in this case represents a seismic shift for the Supreme Court and the nation. With new Bush appointees, this court has unraveled more than 30 years of precedent protecting women's health," Richards said. "For the first time, the court told women that, when their health is at risk during pregnancy, deciding what to do is no longer up to them and their doctors, it is instead up to politicians. The future of legal access to abortion in this country is grim."

Richards made her remarks the same day Congress introduced federal legislation to preserve a broad right to an abortion -- including where necessary to protect a woman's mental health.

Said Richards at the time: "It's time for Congress to stand up for women's health, women's safety, and a woman's right to make her own medical decisions. American women deserve the protection of federal law to preserve their right to make personal health care decisions free of government intrusion. We call on Congress to pass the Freedom of Choice Act."

The Freedom of Choice Act specifically allows abortions after viability where necessary to protect a woman's health, and the legislation refers repeatedly to the guarantees of Roe and Doe, which protect the right to an abortion where necessary for a woman's physical and mental health.

One of its co-sponsors? Barack Obama.

So here are some questions for the Obama campaign: Does Obama still support the Freedom of Choice Act? Would he appoint justices like Ginsburg — or like Thomas, Scalia, etc.? Would he direct his Solicitor General to file a brief supporting state abortion bans that did not include a mental health exception?

And questions for the McCain campaign: How can you criticize Obama for allegedly shifting positions when McCain himself is reportedly considering as a running mate Mitt Romney -- a man whose shifting views (from pro-choice to pro-life!) — make Obama seem fixed in concrete?

I've asked both campaigns for answers, so I'll update when I hear back. In the meantime, Happy 4th!"

Obama's New Statement on His Support of FISA Bill

2008-07-04T17:51:00.002-05:00

From Glenn Greenwald in utdocuments.blogspot.com on July 3, 2008: "Barack Obama has issued a new statement on FISA in response to the growing number of his supporters objecting to his position. Genuine credit to him for being responsive this way and for having his site be a forum for disagreement among his supporters and himself. Providing a forum for those sorts of debates is a sign of a secure and healthy campaign.

Despite that, the statement contains many dubious claims and, in a couple cases, outright misleading statements. Worse, Obama's statement only addressed the objections to the telecom immunity provisions of the bill, while ignoring the objections to the (at least) equally pernicious new warrantless eavesdropping powers the bill authorizes. Taking Obama's claims in order:

It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. That's why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate.
Obama says he will vote to remove immunity from the bill, but he knows full well that this effort will fail and that the final bill will have telecom immunity in it. The bottom line is that he will nonetheless end up voting for this bill with immunity in it even though he previously vowed to support a filibuster of "any bill" that contains retroactive immunity. Put another way, Obama claims he opposes telecom immunity but will vote for a bill that grants it.

But I also believe that the compromise bill is far better than the Protect America Act that I voted against last year.
Whether it's better than the Protect America Act (PAA) is irrelevant. The PAA already expired last February. If the new FISA bill is rejected, we don't revert back to the Protect America Act. We just continue to live under the same FISA law that we've lived under for 30 years (with numerous post-9/11 modernizing amendments). So whether this bill is a mild improvement over the atrocious, expired PAA is not even a coherent reason to support it, let alone a persuasive one.

The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any president or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court.
The current FISA law -- as a federal court ruled just yesterday -- already has the same exclusivity provision, and it did nothing to stop the President and the telecoms from breaking the law anyway. The fact that Obama is now going to vote to end the telecom lawsuits and immunize the lawbreakers means that there will be no consequences for their having broken the law. How can Obama possibly claim that the "exclusivity" provision in the new FISA bill has value when the current law that they broke already has the same provision?

As I wrote today:

They're presenting as a "gift" something you already have, and telling you that you should give up critical protections in exchange for receiving something that you already have -- namely, a requirement that the President comply with eavesdropping laws. What they're doing is tantamount to someone who steals your wallet, takes all the money out, gives the empty wallet back to you, and then tells you that you should be grateful to them because you have your wallet.

Exclusivity is obviously no reason to change the current FISA law since it already has exclusivity in it. Obama:

In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people.
The government already has "the authority to collect the intelligence it needs to protect the American people." That authority is called FISA, which already allows the Government extremely broad authority to spy on any suspected terrorists. The current law results in virtually no denials of any spying requests. So how can Obama -- echoing the Bush administration -- claim a new law is needed to provide "the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people" when the current FISA law already provides that?

But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited. As I've said many times, an independent monitor must watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people. This compromise law assures that the FISA court has that responsibility.
This is just false. The new FISA bill that Obama supports vests new categories of warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President (.pdf), and allows the Government, for the first time, to tap physically into U.S. telecommunications networks inside our country with no individual warrant requirement. To claim that this new bill creates "an independent monitor [to] watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people" is truly misleading, since the new FISA bill actually does the opposite -- it frees the Government from exactly that monitoring in all sorts of broad categories.

Why else would Bush and Cheney be so eager to have this bill if it didn't substantially expand the Government's ability to eavesdrop without warrants?

The Inspectors General report also provides a real mechanism for accountability and should not be discounted. It will allow a close look at past misconduct without hurdles that would exist in federal court because of classification issues. The recent investigation (PDF) uncovering the illegal politicization of Justice Department hiring sets a strong example of the accountability that can come from a tough and thorough IG report.
Having the Executive Branch investigate itself for alleged lawbreaking is not "oversight." In our system of Government, government officials and corporations which are accused of breaking the law are subjected to courts of law -- just like everyone else -- not to "investigations" by agencies within their own branches of government with very limited powers. Marcy Wheeler has more on the extremely limited capacity of Inspectors General to investigate lawbreaking at high levels of government.

The ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States is a vital counter-terrorism tool, and I'm persuaded that it is necessary to keep the American people safe -- particularly since certain electronic surveillance orders will begin to expire later this summer. Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise.
This is the most misleading part of Obama's statement. The "certain surveillance orders [which] will begin to expire later this summer" -- that Obama claims we must maintain -- are warrantless eavesdropping orders that were authorized by the PAA, which Obama voted against last August. As I asked the other day:

Had Obama had his way, there never would have been any PAA in the first place, and therefore, there never would have been any PAA orders possible. Having voted against the PAA last August, how can Obama now claim that he considers it important that the PAA orders not expire? How can he be eager to avoid the expiration of surveillance orders which he opposed authorizing in the first place?
Moreover, the Government already has "the ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States" under the current FISA law. Citing the need for such monitoring in order to justify this new FISA bill is just pure fear-mongering ("you better let us eliminate FISA protections if you want us to keep you safe from the Terrorists"). Obama has always said in the past that "the FISA court works." When did he change his mind and why?

I do so with the firm intention -- once I'm sworn in as president -- to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.
This expression of Obama's "intention" has so many equivocations and vague claims as to be worthless. In a society that lives under the rule of law, government officials and corporations which break our laws are held accountable by courts of law, not by vague promises from politicians of some future "review" and "recommendation" process grounded in claims that we can trust the Leader to do the right thing, whatever he decides in his sole discretion and infinite wisdom that might be. That is no consolation for blocking courts from adjudicating whether laws were broken here, which is what the bill that Obama supports will do."

More on Obama's Embrace of Bush's Faith-Based Charities

2008-07-04T17:41:00.002-05:00

From shakespearessister.blogspot.com on July 2, 2008: "As if I haven't yapped enough about Obama's embracing of Bush's Faith Based Organization (FBO) plan, if you'll excuse me, I think I saw this dead horse twitch. I just wanted to rant a little more about a few things I noticed while putting together my earlier post.

First, as I stated in that post, the AP updated the original article discussing Obama's expansion of FBOs. When I went back to take a look at it this morning, I was struck by the opening three paragraphs:

ZANESVILLE, Ohio - Taking a page from President Bush, Democrat Barack Obama said Tuesday he wants to expand White House efforts to steer social service dollars to religious groups, risking protests in his own party with his latest aggressive reach for voters who usually vote Republican.

Obama contended he is merely stating long-held positions — surprising to some, he said, after a primary campaign in which he was "tagged as being on the left."

In recent days, with the Democratic nomination in hand and the general election battle with Republican John McCain ahead, Obama has been sounding centrist themes with comments on guns, government surveillance and capital punishment. He's even quoted Ronald Reagan.

Forget that "taking a page from President Bush" makes my skin crawl. Forget the "aggressive reach" for Republicans. Forget the "centrist themes" in regards to guns, spying on Americans (I refuse to call it "government surveillance") and capital punishment. Forget the use of Reagan. All of this give me hives, but riddle me this, Batman:

Why the hell should I be excited and agog about a Democratic Presidential candidate who is so goddamned eager to distance himself from "the left," progressives, and everything I value?

Part the Second - From Obama's site, where the speech in which he outlines his plan for FBOs is posted:

With these principles as a guide, my Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will strengthen faith-based groups by making sure they know the opportunities open to them to build on their good works. Too often, faith-based groups – especially smaller congregations and those that aren't well connected – don't know how to apply for federal dollars, or how to navigate a government website to see what grants are available, or how to comply with federal laws and regulations. We rely too much on conferences in Washington, instead of getting technical assistance to the people who need it on the ground. What this means is that what's stopping many faith-based groups from helping struggling families is simply a lack of knowledge about how the system works.

Well, that will change when I'm President. I will empower the nonprofit religious and community groups that do understand how this process works to train the thousands of groups that don't. We'll "train the trainers" by giving larger faith-based partners like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Services and secular nonprofits like Public/Private Ventures the support they need to help other groups build and run effective programs. Every house of worship that wants to run an effective program and that's willing to abide by our constitution – from the largest mega-churches and synagogues to the smallest store-front churches and mosques – can and will have access to the information and support they need to run that program.
So.

Obama recognizes the fact that many FBOs, as opposed to social services organizations, secular or otherwise, that are trained and experienced in providing services that have had their budgets gutted by the Bush administration, may not be equipped to provide best services. Instead of returning that money to the organizations that were already doing good work, he's going to give more money to the organizations that may or may not know what they're doing.

Then, his big plan for training these FBO's is to take already overworked organizations that are struggling to provide services for their clients with minuscule budgets and staff, and have them train these FBO's to do their jobs. Isn't that just a brilliant bit of outsourcing?

In addition, is "training the trainers" optional? If so, then there will be some FBO's that will be paid to provide services they're not trained to provide, or if not, they will be told by the government how to provide their services. How does that work with the separation of church and state? And how is that fair to FBO's?"

Why Obama's Idea of Expanding Faith-Based Funding is a Bad Idea

2008-07-04T17:36:00.003-05:00

From shakespearessister.blogspot.com on July 2, 2008: "I'm just shaking my head at the things I'm reading today. Kind of like yesterday. Remember yesterday? I got my knickers in a twist over Obama's expansion of Bush's Faith-Based Initiatives, and his embracing of welfare reform. Well, the welfare reform story died with a whimper, both in comments on that post and in the left blogosphere, much to my chagrin. But everyone was all a-twitter over the faith-based organization (hereafter shortened to FBO) story, for the most part because the AP got it wrong. They originally wrote:

CHICAGO - Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.
People were quick to point out that Obama did not technically say this; what he is saying is this:

Now, make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don't believe this partnership will endanger that idea – so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we'll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work.
Now, that's pleasing to the ear, so why am I not pleased? Well, it seems to me there's a pretty large loophole in that sentence. I can't use grant money to proselytize, and I can't use grant money to discriminate. If you can manage to do these without spending a dime, well, I suppose you're okay. I think we can all agree that there are evangelicals out there that will exploit this loophole. After all, the root of that word is "evangelize," or, convert to Christianity.

My argument in comments in my post yesterday was that this is completely pointless unless there is a way to police this discrimination. It would be time consuming, expensive, and next to impossible to do this on an individual basis. In addition, should discrimination charges come up, I have next to no faith, pardon the word choice, that it will be effectively prosecuted. How many churches with national exposure have lost their tax-exempt status for playing politics, after all?

But, to be fair, this is a speech, and isn't written policy. So we'll see what happens. Also, to be fair, I'm glad to hear that federal dollars will only go to secular programs, and that there will be some kind of accountability for successful programs, just like traditional social service organizations. Again, it would be nice to hear how this actually will be done, but I'll try to be a little patient.

Anyway, this post isn't about religious discrimination.

Part of the reason I'm so upset is because of the reaction of many on the left to Obama's speech. Apparently, once Obama stated he was going to "hold up the Constitution," everything was A-OK, and we could go on about our lives. At Salon:

There's simply nothing wrong with this. If Obama honors church-state separation and keeps the safeguards in place, as he clearly said he would, there's no reason the government can't partner with ministries willing to provide a secular social service.

That said, that AP feed really got me nervous there for a minute...
Well, actually, there's plenty wrong with this, but I'll get to that in a minute. I'm just gobsmacked by that final sentence. "Phew! I thought I might actually have to think critically about Obama for a minute, but now that I'm assured everything's OK, I can get back to cheering HOPE and CHANGE!" It's that outright dismissal without thought once one is assured that Obama couldn't possibly be in the wrong that really sticks in my craw.

At Pandagon:

It always struck me that the problem with Bush’s approach to faith-based initiatives was that he viewed their purpose as paying churches to proselytize, rather than viewing them as partners in government-led action. Obama’s plan actually follows the more moderate path that Ohio’s FBCI took after years of Taft’s office funnelling money who knows where - looking at faith-based organizations (note: organizations, not just churches) as potential partners the same way you would other nonprofit organizations, rather than looking to simply pay churches for being churches.

The critical part is also the fact that agencies which accept federal funds must abide by federal hiring guidelines in the use of said funds - a necessary compromise unless the government wants to step into the process of hiring denominational clergy . The other benefit is that the lack of ability to discriminate using federal funds will likely push out many of the fundamentalist organizations that made the initial faith-based initiatives so problematic.

Ah, well, I know this probably isn’t the most popular position. Fire away.
Actually, looking at the comments, this appears to be a pretty popular position. I'm not saying that Jesse is wrong about how he feels, but as I remember it, the discrimination was not the problem when Bush initially began his FBO push.

The problem most on the left had concerned money being directed from traditional, non-religious social service organizations to FBO's. The problem was with the separation of church and state. The ability to discriminate wasn't a huge concern until people did some digging and began reporting.

So, needless to say, I find it a little distressing that people are so willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt as long as he's "upholding the constitution," when there is a very big problem with FBO's. As I said; there's plenty wrong. They are intrinsically discriminatory against LGBTQ people.*

Now, I'm not saying that all FBO's are homophobic. Many FBO's and churches are tolerant of, supportive of, or even openly embrace LGBTQ folks. (And many of these FBO's provide good services.) But that does not change the fact that by their very nature, they are creating a barrier to help for LGBTQ people.

I speak from several years experience working in LGBTQ service organizations, and LGBTQ-friendly FBO's. Due to a, shall we say, less than amicable history between LGBTQ people and religion, the majority of LGBTQ people are simply not comfortable with receiving services from a FBO. Therefore, they will travel incredible distances to receive their services from a non-religious, LGBTQ-friendly organization to ensure they are in a safe space; in a worst-case scenario, they simply go without services and suffer.

Some examples, just from my experience:

• When I was working in the LGBTQ health center pharmacy, trans people would travel for hours to come there to meet with their doctor, and receive their hormones from the pharmacy. Hostile reactions in their home pharmacies caused them to seek out a safe space, regardless of cost or inconvenience (can you imagine traveling three hours to pick up a prescription?). In general, the trans people traveling this far were coming from rural areas, where most, if not all, services were FBOs. These were, to them, not a safe space.

• Nearly 100% of the trans people coming to this health center for mental health services, particularly the youth, were receiving services there due to hostile reactions from other mental health providers, or fear of hostile reactions. Again, many of these people were traveling great distances in order to escape the FBOs in their areas and receive non-judgemental mental health services from a safe space. Imagine driving five hours to see your therapist every week. One client did this.

• I worked at a FB residential home for homeless people with HIV. This particular residence had a large population of gay men. The reason for this is that the senior staff was made up of gay men, and they were not receiving the same discriminatory, homophobic (and in some cases, violent) treatment that they experienced at other residential homes. They all stated that, should the senior staff change, they wouldn't hesitate to find other places to live that were not FB. (Interestingly, the gay men's support group at this house originally met in the chapel. They eventually moved to the only other available room in the house, a cramped conference room much too small for this large group, because they were extremely uncomfortable in the chapel.)

• Nearly every person I met for assessment or individual therapy had some sort of negative relationship with religion. One client, for example, had grown up gay in a rural area. He had been raised in a very religious family, where he would hear every week in church that he was evil, corrupt, and was going straight to Hell. He was consumed with self-hatred and internalized homophobia as a result, not to mention a severe substance abuse problem that he was having difficulty controlling, due to his extreme negative reaction to "religious" twelve-step programs. Fortunately, he lived in a city with an LBGTQ mental health center that he could use (and that would accept him without any medical insurance), but if a FBO was his only choice, what would he do?

I could go on and on; I'm sure you get my point. The fact of the matter is that the majority of LGBTQ persons would rather go without help than go to a FBO. When Obama states that he is going to pour more money into these organizations, but does not plan to increase funds to non FBO social services, he is doing a disservice to LGBTQ persons. As Melissa said yesterday:

Not every faith-based program is explicitly (or at all) anti-gay or anti-birth control, but that's a pretty big question mark when you're seeking services. This is particularly problematic for trans women and men, especially those who don't easily "pass." LGBTQs risk facing real hostility at faith-based service centers, especially in faith-based programs that service men and women separately.

In other words, one of the most at-risk populations for addiction, depression, homelessness, and suicide face significant deterrents to seeking help from faith-based programs.

That's not going to change under Obama, nor would it under anyone else. It's an inherent problem with faith-based programs, which is why the government's involvement with them is crap. Period.
This is why people that call themselves progressives/liberals should not simply accept Obama's plan as long as he's "upholding the constitution." This will cause harm. You will note that, in comments at Pandagon and in the comments thread in my post from yesterday, the discrimination of LGBTQ persons by FBO's was brought up by Pam Spaulding and Melissa. And they received no response. This cannot be ignored or forgotten, especially by progressives; this is not simply a case of being discriminated against due to religious beliefs. This is, once again, the neglecting of LGBTQ Americans. And there's simply everything wrong with that.

Barack Obama expanding Bush's Faith-Based Program is not something we should be cheering.

*(This could, of course, apply also to women seeking to control reproduction, or to Athiests, Pagans, Wiccans, etc. If a FBO is your only choice, what will you do? And Obama specifies that he will (somehow) ensure that no one is discriminated against on the basis of their religion. Discrimination against women and LGBTQ folks appears to still be acceptable. Or, at the very least, they'll look the other way.)"

NYT: New & Not Improved Obama

2008-07-04T17:12:00.001-05:00

From NYT on July 4, 2008: "Senator Barack Obama stirred his legions of supporters, and raised our hopes, promising to change the old order of things. He spoke with passion about breaking out of the partisan mold of bickering and catering to special pleaders, promised to end President Bush’s abuses of power and subverting of the Constitution and disowned the big-money power brokers who have corrupted Washington politics.

Now there seems to be a new Barack Obama on the hustings. First, he broke his promise to try to keep both major parties within public-financing limits for the general election. His team explained that, saying he had a grass-roots-based model and that while he was forgoing public money, he also was eschewing gold-plated fund-raisers. These days he’s on a high-roller hunt.

Even his own chief money collector, Penny Pritzker, suggests that the magic of $20 donations from the Web was less a matter of principle than of scheduling. “We have not been able to have much of the senator’s time during the primaries, so we have had to rely more on the Internet,” she explained as she and her team busily scheduled more than a dozen big-ticket events over the next few weeks at which the target price for quality time with the candidate is more than $30,000 per person.

The new Barack Obama has abandoned his vow to filibuster an electronic wiretapping bill if it includes an immunity clause for telecommunications companies that amounts to a sanctioned cover-up of Mr. Bush’s unlawful eavesdropping after 9/11.

In January, when he was battling for Super Tuesday votes, Mr. Obama said that the 1978 law requiring warrants for wiretapping, and the special court it created, worked. “We can trace, track down and take out terrorists while ensuring that our actions are subject to vigorous oversight and do not undermine the very laws and freedom that we are fighting to defend,” he declared.

Now, he supports the immunity clause as part of what he calls a compromise but actually is a classic, cynical Washington deal that erodes the power of the special court, virtually eliminates “vigorous oversight” and allows more warrantless eavesdropping than ever.

The Barack Obama of the primary season used to brag that he would stand before interest groups and tell them tough truths. The new Mr. Obama tells evangelical Christians that he wants to expand President Bush’s policy of funneling public money for social spending to religious-based organizations — a policy that violates the separation of church and state and turns a government function into a charitable donation.

He says he would not allow those groups to discriminate in employment, as Mr. Bush did, which is nice. But the Constitution exists to protect democracy, no matter who is president and how good his intentions may be.

On top of these perplexing shifts in position, we find ourselves disagreeing powerfully with Mr. Obama on two other issues: the death penalty and gun control.

Mr. Obama endorsed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. We knew he ascribed to the anti-gun-control groups’ misreading of the Constitution as implying an individual right to bear arms. But it was distressing to see him declare that the court provided a guide to “reasonable regulations enacted by local communities to keep their streets safe.”

What could be more reasonable than a city restricting handguns, or requiring that firearms be stored in ways that do not present a mortal threat to children?

We were equally distressed by Mr. Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court’s barring the death penalty for crimes that do not involve murder.

We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.

There are still vital differences between Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain on issues like the war in Iraq, taxes, health care and Supreme Court nominations. We don’t want any “redefining” on these big questions. This country needs change it can believe in. "

The Final Flip-Flop: Obama May "Refine" His Iraq Withdrawal Plan

2008-07-03T20:08:00.001-05:00

From RealClearPolitics.com: "That's the headline over at The Caucus, where Jeff Zeleny reports Barack Obama dropped a not so subtle hint today in North Dakota that his fixed, 16-month timetable for pulling US troops out of Iraq beginning in January 2009 may in fact not be so fixed:

"I've always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed," he said. "And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I'm sure I'll have more information and will continue to refine my policies." [snip]
"My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything that I've said, was always premised on making sure that our troops were safe," he said. "I said that based on the information that we had received from our commanders that one to two brigades a month could be pulled out safely, from a logistical perspective. My guiding approach continues to be that we've got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable."

He added, "I'm going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold."

This may not be a flip-flop by the technical definition of the term, but it certainly is a substantial walk back on perhaps the defining issue of the election that will draw fire from both the right and the left.

Indeed, the RNC has already reacted with a statement from Alex Conant:

"There appears to be no issue that Barack Obama is not willing to reverse himself on for the sake of political expedience. Obama's Iraq problem undermines the central premise of his candidacy and shows him to be a typical politician."
Nothing yet from the progressives in the blogosphere, but rest assured there will a great gnashing of teeth.

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer's new column, which will appear in tomorrow's paper, is more prescient than even he realized:

In last week's column, I thought I had thoroughly chronicled Obama's brazen reversals of position and abandonment of principles -- on public financing of campaigns, on NAFTA, on telecom immunity for post-9/11 wiretaps, on unconditional talks with Ahmadinejad -- as he moved to the center for the general election campaign. I misjudged him. He was just getting started. [snip]
Obama's seasonally adjusted principles are beginning to pile up: NAFTA, campaign finance reform, warrantless wiretaps, flag pins, gun control. What's left?

Iraq. The reversal is coming, and soon.

Two weeks ago, I predicted that by Election Day Obama will have erased all meaningful differences with McCain on withdrawal from Iraq. I underestimated Obama's cynicism. I suspect he will make the move much sooner -- using his upcoming Iraq trip to finally acknowledge the remarkable improvements on the ground and formally abandon his primary-season commitment to a fixed 16-month timetable for removal of all combat troops.

The shift has already begun. Last Friday, he said: "It's time to be in a responsible, gradual withdrawal from Iraq." The next step is clear: simply define "responsible, gradual" as meaning "flexible." It won't be hard. Obama will say he remains pledged to a withdrawal, that the 16-month time frame remains his goal, but that as president he will necessarily take into account the situation on the ground and the recommendation of his generals in deciding whether the withdrawal is to occur later or even sooner.

Done. And with that, the Obama of the primaries, the Obama with last year's most liberal voting record in the Senate, will have disappeared into the collective memory hole.

UPDATE: Mike Allen has more from David Axelrod on Wolf Blitzer's show this afternoon:

David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, went even further during remarks Wednesday on CNN's "Situation Room," telling guest host John Roberts that Obama has actually advocated "a phased withdrawal, with benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet, that called for strategic pauses, based on the progress on these benchmarks, and advice on the commanders on the ground."
"He's always said that he would listen to the advice of commanders on the ground, that that would factor into his thinking," Axelrod said. "He's also always said that we had to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. So he's been very consistent on this point...

"I think he will take the advice, not just the advice of the commanders on the ground, but his general assessment of conditions on the ground in calibrating that withdrawal. He said he thought we could get one to two brigades out a month. But he's not wedded to that in the face of events. No president would be. And he's always said that he's never said that this withdrawal would be without any possibility of alteration based on events on the ground. That would not be a prudent thing to do for any president.â€

The phrase "he's not wedded to that in the face of events" would seem to be a direct contradiction to Claire McCaskill's comment the other day.

UPDATE II: Obama held a second "hastily" arranged press conference to clarify his previous answer in which he stated that he is still committed to withdrawing one or two brigades a month upon taking office. Bascially, he made a complete hash of things this evening heading into the holiday weekend. We'll see if it matters at all in the end."

Obama advisor Greg Craig: Adding insult to injury

2008-07-03T01:32:00.001-05:00

From Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com: "In today's New York Times, James Risen -- who won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing Bush's illegal NSA spying program -- has an article reporting on Obama supporters who are criticizing Obama for his FISA reversal and who are attempting to defeat the bill which Obama supports. The article quotes Jane Hamsher, Markos Moulitsas and myself and features the very innovative effort by Obama supporters to use his campaign's social networking tools to urge Obama to oppose the FISA bill (more on that campaign here). For his article, Risen spoke with Obama adviser Greg Craig, a partner at the Washington law firm Williams & Connolly, and this is what Craig told Risen:

Greg Craig, a Washington lawyer who advises the Obama campaign, said Tuesday in an interview that Mr. Obama had decided to support the compromise FISA legislation only after concluding it was the best deal possible.

"This was a deliberative process, and not something that was shooting from the hip," Mr. Craig said. "Obviously, there was an element of what’s possible here. But he concluded that with FISA expiring, that it was better to get a compromise than letting the law expire."

Craig's statement is flat-out false. FISA -- enacted in 1978 and amended many times to accommodate modern communications technology -- has no expiration date. The Protect America Act, which Congress enacted last August to legalize warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, had a 6-month sunset provision and thus already expired back in February, restoring FISA as the governing law. Thus, if Congress does nothing now, FISA will continue indefinitely to govern the Government's power to spy on the communications of Americans. It doesn't expire. What Craig said in defense of Obama is just wrong.

I emailed Craig this morning about his comments (here) and when I received no reply, I called him, left a message, and he called me this afternoon. After I read him his quote, explained that FISA won't expire, and pointed out that his comment in the NYT therefore made no sense, Craig paused for awhile and then said that he meant that the "warrants under FISA would expire in August," and Obama supported the FISA "compromise" to prevent that from happening. When I asked Craig if he was referring to the surveillance orders authorized by the Protect America Act that allow the Government to spy with no individual warrants (which have a one-year duration and do expire in August), Craig said that this is what he meant, and that Obama wanted to avoid having those surveillance orders expire.

While that last version at least generally comports with reality, it makes no sense whatsoever as an explanation for Obama's FISA position. Back in August, when he was seeking the Democratic nomination, Obama voted against the Protect America Act. Therefore, had Obama had his way, there never would have been any PAA in the first place, and therefore, there never would have been any PAA orders possible. Having voted against the PAA last August, how can Obama now claim that he considers it important that the PAA orders not expire? How can he be eager to avoid the expiration of surveillance orders which he opposed authorizing in the first place?

I asked Craig that question several times and received completely incoherent replies, after which he started insisting that he already answered me and had nothing else to add (he then changed the subject to talk about the "improvements" the current bill achieves over the Rockefeller Senate bill). The fact is that there is no answer. In the past, Obama has opposed the type of warrantless eavesdropping which those PAA orders authorize. He's repeatedly said that the FISA court works and there's no need to authorize eavesdropping without individual warrants. None of that can be reconciled with his current claim that he supports this FISA "compromise" because National Security requires that those PAA orders not expire and that there be massive changes to FISA. It's just as simple as that.

It's bad enough that Obama is supporting a new warrantless eavesdropping scheme. They should just candidly admit that he changed his position rather than feeding incoherent and insultingly false rationalizations to the public -- whereby they throw around the terms "National Security" and "balance" enough times and hope that nobody notices or cares that what they're saying makes no sense. One of the strengths of the Obama campaign has been a willingness to have adult discussions about complex political issues, assume a fair amount of rationality and intelligence on the part of the voting public, and avoid manipulative, obfuscating sloganeering like this. It's just adding insult to injury to resort to nonsensical justifications of the type Craig put into the New York Times today.

Just to get a flavor for how fundamental a reversal is Obama's FISA position, here is what Obama said back in February when accepting Chris Dodd's endorsement:

We know it's time to time to restore our Constitution and the rule of law. This is an issue that was at the heart of Senator Dodd's candidacy, and I share his passion for restoring the balance between the security we demand and the civil liberties that we cherish.

The American people must be able to trust that their president values principle over politics, and justice over unchecked power. I've been proud to stand with Senator Dodd in his fight against retroactive immunity for the telecommunications industry. Secrecy and special interests must not trump accountability. We must show our citizens -- and set an example to the world -- that laws cannot be ignored when it is inconvenient. Because in America –- no one is above the law.

Here is what he said back in January:
Ever since 9/11, this Administration has put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand.

The FISA court works. The separation of power works. We can trace, track down and take out terrorists while ensuring that our actions are subject to vigorous oversight, and do not undermine the very laws and freedom that we are fighting to defend.

No one should get a free pass to violate the basic civil liberties of the American people -- not the President of the United States, and not the telecommunications companies that fell in line with his warrantless surveillance program. We have to make clear the lines that cannot be crossed. . . .

A grassroots movement of Americans has pushed this issue to the forefront. You have come together across this country. You have called upon our leaders to adhere to the Constitution. You have sent a message to the halls of power that the American people will not permit the abuse of power -- and demanded that we reclaim our core values by restoring the rule of law.

It's time for Washington to hear your voices, and to act. I share your commitment to this cause, and will stand with you in the fights to come.

And obviously, his vow last October to "support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies" can't be reconciled with his vow to "support" such a bill now.

The issue is not -- as one extremely confused Obama-cheering blogger put it -- that Obama has done "something contrary to what conventional wisdom as dictated by a small coterie of prominent bloggers agrees with," nor is it -- as an equally confused, Obama-cheering Ed Kilgore put it -- that Obama is "stray[ing] from Democratic Party orthodoxy or from strict down-the-line partisanship" by "expressing heretical thoughts on FISA" (incidentally, it's amazing how the rule of law, the Fourth Amendment and accountability for Bush lawbreaking have now -- in service of defending Obama -- all been instantaneously reduced to nothing more than quirky, self-absorbed, petty blogger "dictates," and Obama's disregarding of those core political values is a bold demonstration that he won't be held hostage to anyone's narrow partisan demands).

The issue is that Obama has repeatedly, over the course of the last year, made emphatic commitments and clear statements about his own core political values that are completely irreconcilable with his support for the FISA bill. It's possible to recognize that someone is just a "politician" and still trust that they're essentially telling you the truth about what they think and what they'll do. One hard-core Obama supporter explains that here.

As I said, it's bad enough that this is being done. Eventually, the sting of what Obama and Democrats generally have done will diminish somewhat for many people. But for those who have sat by watching the Bush administration and its followers exploit complexities over spying issues in order to issue one false claim after the next to justify Bush's lawbreaking, having the Obama campaign issue factually false and/or incoherent explanations to justify Obama's conduct only makes matters worse, not better.

* * * * *

Blue America has created -- and today unveils -- a superb new tool for contacting key Senators to urge them to vote against the FISA bill and/or to vote for pending amendments to improve the bill (if any of those amendments pass, a key benefit will be that the bill then must return to the House or be reconciled, rather than going straight to the White House for signing):

This first tool allows you to directly contact Senators to tell them to stand up for the rule of law and vote in favor of the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment. (That's S.A.5064 to H.R. 6304 which will come up for a vote on July 8th, 2008.) Not only will this tool help you phone your Senators -- including connecting your call -- but it also gives us the ability to track positions on FISA given your input on what you ascertain during your conversations.
You can read about how to use it here.

On two related notes, we will describe details of the next stages of our ad campaign and the imminent "money bomb" campaign very shortly. Those wishing to help fund that campaign can do so here.

Finally, Darcy Burner -- the Democratic challenger to GOP Rep. Dave Reichert in Washington State -- experienced a tragic event yesterday where her home was completely destroyed by a fire, causing the loss of most of her family's possessions and their family cat. Darcy is one of the most impressive Democratic candidates anywhere in the country -- and has been as outspoken on warrantless eavesdropping and the NSA scandal as anyone, despite being in a very close race in a split GOP/Democratic district. Those wanting to help her and the campaign in this difficult time can find out how to do so here and here.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan praises this satirical post by Andy Borowitz at Huffington Post which begins this way: "The liberal blogosphere was aflame today with new accusations that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) is trying to win the 2008 presidential election." The same joke is repeated over and over in each paragraph.

If anyone has any evidence at all that: (a) Obama would be less likely to win if he continued to oppose telecom amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping; (b) his chances to win increase by being perceived as someone who flagrantly changes positions for political gain; and/or (c) he is more likely to win by embracing Bush/Cheney policies, please alert me to such evidence. I would really like to see it, because I don't believe any such evidence exists.

How did those tactics work out for John Kerry in 2004? How did it work out for the Democrats in 2002 when they were sure that, by agreeing to Bush's demand for authorization to attack Iraq, they would be able to avoid being called "weak on national security" and then win the election on domestic issues? Ask Max Cleland -- who voted for the AUMF and then had ads run against him with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein -- how well that approach works. If, tomorrow, Obama comes out and says that he's open to the use of waterboarding, is Andrew going to cheer for that as a shrewd, pragmatic move to take the issue "off the table" and move to the Center so he can win?

Repudiating their own base and moving to the so-called Center isn't some sleek, exotic strategy that the Obama campaign invented this year. It's what Democrats are always told to do and what they always do (other than in 2006, when the perception was that -- finally -- there was a real difference between them and the GOP because of the Iraq War). How has that advice worked out historically for Democrats?"

Obama Voters Protest His Switch on Telecom Immunity

2008-07-02T13:48:00.002-05:00

From the NYT on July 2, 2008 By JAMES RISEN:
"WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama’s decision to support legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants has led to an intense backlash among some of his most ardent supporters.

Thousands of them are now using the same grass-roots organizing tools previously mastered by the Obama campaign to organize a protest against his decision.

In recent days, more than 7,000 Obama supporters have organized on a social networking site on Mr. Obama’s own campaign Web site. They are calling on Mr. Obama to reverse his decision to endorse legislation supported by President Bush to expand the government’s domestic spying powers while also providing legal protection to the telecommunication companies that worked with the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program after the Sept. 11 attacks.

During the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama vowed to fight such legislation to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. But he has switched positions, and now supports a compromise hammered out between the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership. The bill is expected to come to a vote on the Senate floor next Tuesday. That decision, one of a number made by Mr. Obama in recent weeks intended to position him toward the political center as the general election campaign heats up, has brought him into serious conflict for the first time with liberal bloggers and commentators and his young supporters.

Many of them have seen the issue of granting immunity to the telecommunications companies as a test of principle in their opposition to Mr. Bush’s surveillance program.

“I don’t think there has been another instance where, in meaningful numbers, his supporters have opposed him like this,” said Glenn Greenwald, a Salon.com writer who opposes Mr. Obama’s new position. “For him to suddenly turn around and endorse this proposal is really a betrayal of what so many of his supporters believed he believed in.”

Jane Hamsher, a liberal blogger who also opposes immunity for the phone companies, said she had been flooded with messages from Obama supporters frustrated with his new stance.

“The opposition to Obama’s position among his supporters is very widespread,” said Ms. Hamsher, founder of the Web site firedoglake.com. “His promise to filibuster earlier in the year, and the decision to switch on that is seen as a real character problem. I know people who are really very big Obama supporters are very disillusioned.”

One supporter, Robert Arellano, expressed his anger on the Obama site.

“I have watched your campaign with genuine enthusiasm,” Mr. Arellano wrote, “and I have given you money. For the first time in my life, I have sensed the presence of a presidential candidate who might actually bring some meaningful change to the corrupt cesspool of national politics. But your about-face on the FISA bill genuinely angers and alarms me.”

For now, the campaign is trying to put a positive spin on the new FISA fight among its supporters.

“The fact that there is an open forum on BarackObama.com where supporters can say whether they agree or disagree speaks to a strength of our campaign,” said Bill Burton, a campaign spokesman.

Several activists and bloggers predicted that Mr. Obama’s move toward the center on some issues could sharply reduce the intensity of support he has enjoyed from liberal activists. Such enthusiasm helped power his effort to secure the Democratic nomination, and it has been one of his campaign’s most important tools for fund-raising and organizing around the country.

Markos Moulitsas, a liberal blogger and founder of the Daily Kos Web site, said he had decided to cut back on the amount of money he would contribute to the Obama campaign because of the FISA reversal.

“I will continue to support him,” Mr. Moulitsas said in an interview. “But I was going to write him a check, and I decided I would rather put that money with Democrats who will uphold the Constitution.”

Greg Craig, a Washington lawyer who advises the Obama campaign, said Tuesday in an interview that Mr. Obama had decided to support the compromise FISA legislation only after concluding it was the best deal possible.

“This was a deliberative process, and not something that was shooting from the hip,” Mr. Craig said. “Obviously, there was an element of what’s possible here. But he concluded that with FISA expiring, that it was better to get a compromise than letting the law expire.”

Obama Got Special Deal on Home Loan

2008-07-02T13:24:00.002-05:00

From the Washington Post By Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 2, 2008; A03
"Shortly after joining the U.S. Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured a $1.32 million loan from Northern Trust in Illinois.

The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a "super super jumbo." Obama paid no origination fee or discount points, as some consumers do to reduce their interest rates.

Compared with the average terms offered at the time in Chicago, Obama's rate could have saved him more than $300 per month.

Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the rate was adjusted to account for a competing offer from another lender and other factors. "The Obamas have since had as much as $3 million invested through Northern Trust," he said in a statement.

Modest adjustments in mortgage rates are common among financial institutions as they compete for business or develop relationships with wealthy families. But amid a national housing crisis, news of discounts offered to Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the banking committee, and Kent Conrad (D-N.D) by another lender, Countrywide Financial, has brought new scrutiny to the practice and has resulted in a preliminary Senate ethics committee inquiry into the Dodd and Conrad loans.

Within Obama's presidential campaign organization, former Fannie Mae chief executive James A. Johnson resigned abruptly as head of the vice presidential search committee after his favorable Countrywide loan became public.

Driving the recent debate is concern that public officials, knowingly or unknowingly, may receive special treatment from lenders and that the discounts could constitute gifts that are prohibited by law.

"The real question is: Were congressmen getting unique treatment that others weren't getting?" associate law professor Adam J. Levitin, a credit specialist at Georgetown University Law Center, said about the Countrywide loans. "Do they do business like that for people who are not congressmen? If they don't, that's a problem."

Under financial disclosure rules, members of Congress are not obliged to disclose debts owed to financial institutions for personal residences. Names of lenders and rates paid on mortgages sometimes can be determined by scrutinizing property transaction records. In March, in response to media questions, Obama posted on his campaign Web site records related to his house purchase.

Last week, during debate on a bill to help homeowners caught in the foreclosure crisis, some members of the Senate ethics committee proposed an amendment to require that lawmakers disclose their mortgage lenders and loan terms in annual financial forms starting next year.

In Obama's case, he received a lower rate than the average offered at the time in Chicago for similarly structured jumbo loans. He secured his final mortgage commitment on June 8, 2005, and during that week, rates on similar loans for which information is available averaged 5.93 percent, according to HSH Associates, which surveys lenders. Another survey firm, Bankrate.com, placed the average at 6 percent.

"It's certainly safe to say that this borrower did better than average," said Keith Gumbinger, an HSH vice president, noting that consumer rates vary widely. "It's a good deal."

The Obama campaign called the rate "consistent with Northern Trust policies, and it reflected the base rate set for that period discounted to address the competition for the account and other opportunities, such as personal financial services, that the relationship would bring to Northern Trust."

When the Obamas secured the loan, their income had risen dramatically. Obama assumed his Senate seat in January 2005, with an annual salary of $162,100. That same month, Random House agreed to reissue an Obama memoir, for which it originally paid $40,000, as part of a $2.27 million deal that included two future nonfiction books and a children's book.

Around the same time, the University of Chicago Hospitals promoted Michelle Obama to a vice president and more than doubled her pay, to $317,000.

The couple wanted to step up from their $415,000 condo. They chose a house with six bedrooms, four fireplaces, a four-car garage and 5 1/2 baths, including a double steam shower and a marble powder room. It had a wine cellar, a music room, a library, a solarium, beveled glass doors and a granite-floored kitchen.

The Obamas had no prior relationship with Northern Trust when they applied for the loan. They received an oral commitment on Feb. 4, 2005, and locked in the rate of 5.625 percent, the campaign said. On that date, HSH data show, the average rate in Chicago for a 30-year fixed-rate jumbo loan with no points was about 5.94 percent.

Jumbo loans are for amounts up to $650,000, but the Obamas' $1.32 million loan was so large that few comparables are available. Mortgage specialists say that many high-end buyers pay cash.

Obama's Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, has no mortgages on properties he owns with his wife, Cindy, who is a multimillionaire.

Unlike Countrywide, where leaked internal e-mails documented a special discount program for friends of chief executive Angelo Mozilo, Northern Trust says it has no formal program to provide discounts to public officials. Loan officers may consider a borrower's occupation when establishing an interest rate, the bank said.

"A person's occupation and salary are two factors; I would expect those are two things we would take into consideration," said Northern Trust Vice President John O'Connell. "That would apply to anyone seeking to get a mortgage at Northern Trust." He added that the rates offered to Obama were "consistent with internal Northern Trust rates at that time."

"The bottom line is, this was a business proposition for us," he said. "Our business model is to service and pursue successful individuals, families and institutions."

O'Connell referred additional questions to the campaign.

Since 1990, Northern Trust employees have donated more than $739,000 to federal campaigns, including $71,000 to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Obama's house purchase has been a source of controversy. In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that on the day of the closing, the wife of Obama's longtime friend and fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko closed on an adjoining lot that had been the estate's side yard.

The Obamas bought the house for $300,000 less than the asking price of $1.95 million, while Rezko's wife, Rita, bought the neighboring lot for the full asking price of $625,000. Rita Rezko later sold a portion of the undeveloped lot to the Obamas, enlarging the senator's yard.

Tony Rezko already had been linked to a grand jury investigation involving public corruption. Last month, he was convicted of 16 counts in an influence-peddling scheme that reached the highest levels of Illinois state government."

Obama's Two Weeks of Pandering

2008-07-01T17:33:00.001-05:00

Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com writes about Obama's last two weeks:

"* announced his support for Bush's FISA bill, reversing himself completely on this issue;

* sided with the Scalia/Thomas faction in two highly charged Supreme Court decisions;

* repudiated Wesley Clark and embraced the patently false media narrative that Clark had "dishonored McCain's service" (and for the best commentary I've seen, by far, on the Clark matter, see this appropriately indignant piece by Iraq veteran Brandon Friedman);

* condemned MoveOn.org for its newspaper advertisement criticizing Gen. Petraeus;

* defended his own patriotism by impugning the patriotism of others, specifically those in what he described as the "the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties" for "attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself" and -- echoing Jeanne Kirkpatrick's 1984 RNC speech -- "blaming America for all that was wrong with the world";

* unveiled plans "to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and -- in a move sure to cause controversy . . . letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions," a move that could "invite a storm of protest from those who view such faith requirements as discrimination" -- something not even the Bush faith programs allowed.

ABc News: Obama Panders on Welfare Reform

2008-07-01T17:16:00.003-05:00

ABC News on July 1, 2008: "ABC News' Teddy Davis and Gregory Wallace Report: Barack Obama aligned himself with welfare reform on Monday, launching a television ad which touts the way the overhaul "slashed the rolls by 80 percent." Obama leaves out, however, that he was against the 1996 federal legislation which precipitated the caseload reduction.

"I am not a defender of the status quo with respect to welfare," Obama said on the floor of the Illinois state Senate on May 31, 1997. "Having said that, I probably would not have supported the federal legislation, because I think it had some problems."

Obama's transformation from critic to champion of welfare reform is the latest in a series of moves to the center. Since capturing the Democratic nomination, the Obama campaign has altered its stances on Social Security taxes, meeting with rogue leaders without preconditions, and the constitutionality of Washington, D.C.'s, sweeping gun ban.

The shift in Obama's rhetoric on welfare reform has proceeded in stages. When former President Bill Clinton was poised to sign welfare reform while running for re-election in 1996, Obama called it "disturbing." A decade later, as an underdog running for president against Clinton's wife, he spent 2007 avoiding the subject. By the time Obama emerged as the Democratic frontrunner in the spring of 2008, he began leaving the impression that he was for it all along.

During a 1996 interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Obama could not conceal his disappointment in his fellow Democrat. "Bill Clinton? Well, his campaign’s fascinating to a student of politics. It's disturbing to someone who cares about certain issues. But politically, it seems to be working," said Obama.

Calling himself a believer in "making lemonade out of lemons," Obama co-sponsored a 1997 bill approved by the Illinois legislature and signed by the governor which made changes to state programs to help move people from welfare to work.

He made clear at the time, however, that he probably would have opposed the federal welfare overhaul. Speaking on the floor of the Illinois state senate, Obama described his on-going concerns as including a lack of job training, insufficient oversight, and provisions blocking legal immigrants from receiving benefits.

While the states played an important role in helping people make the transition from welfare to work, the truly controversial decision which sparked the dramatic reduction in the welfare rolls was the one made by Clinton at the federal level.

The bill passed by a Republican Congress and signed by Clinton included work requirements and time limits. It included fewer supports for people moving from welfare-to-work than Clinton had originally envisioned. Though later restored at the federal level, it also included an end to benefits for legal immigrants which both Clinton and Obama found objectionable.

Clinton said it was far from perfect legislation. But unlike Obama who looked at its flaws and said he probably would not have supported it, Clinton signed it.

"Today, we are taking an historic chance to make welfare what it was meant to be, a second chance, not a way of life," said Clinton at the 1996 bill signing.

While campaigning for president in 2007, Obama refused on two occasions to say if he would have signed the same welfare-reform bill approved by the husband of his top rival.

After addressing the International Association of Firefighters on March 14, 2007, Obama told ABC News, "I tend not to look back to what would have been done 10 years ago. We’re talking about what I’m going to be doing for the next 10 years."

When ABC News posed the same question four months later, Obama again refused to answer.

"I’m not going to re-litigate what happened back in the 90s," said Obama at a July 17, 2007, press conference in Washington, D.C. "I'm talking about what's going to be happening going forward."

"Bill Clinton isn't on the ballot," he added.

Once he had become the Democratic frontrunner in the spring of 2008, Obama signaled that he had always backed the 1996 welfare reform.

Asked if he would have vetoed the reform measure, Obama told The New York Times in a story published on April 11, "I won’t second guess President Clinton for signing."

Now, with the Democratic nomination firmly in hand, Obama is going one step further. In an ad airing in 18 states, including 14 carried by President Bush in 2004, Obama is celebrating a reduction in the welfare caseload made possible by legislation he originally opposed."

Obama Promises to Exand Bush's faith-based programs & Allow faith-based firing

2008-07-01T14:52:00.003-05:00

From RawStory.com on July 1, 2008: " Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support some ability to hire and fire based on faith...Obama's support for letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions could invite a storm of protest from those who view such faith requirements as discrimination...Obama proposes to elevate the program to a "moral center" of his administration, by renaming it the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and changing training from occasional huge conferences to empowering larger religious charities to mentor smaller ones in their communities."

Some Obama Supporters Outraged Over FISA

2008-07-01T14:08:00.001-05:00

From The Nation: "Barack Obama tapped his sizeable grassroots network on Saturday, coordinating over 4,000 "Unite for Change" meetups across the country through the campaign's social networking portal, MyBo. At the same time, however, other supporters worked furiously over the weekend to organize a new MyBo campaign to protest and pressure Obama. Many activists are outraged by the Senator's recent announcement that he will back a controversial bill to grant the Executive more spying powers and immunize telephone companies accused of illegal surveillance. Both efforts demonstrate how Obama's national network, which broke fundraising records and turned the first term Senator into an unlikely presidential nominee, can respond to top-down edicts and spring into action for self-organized protests.

Since launching last week, the protest group, "Senator Obama Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right," swelled to one of the ten largest campaign groups on Sunday. (FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which the Democratic Congress is poised to amend under White House pressure.) It is the largest group of its kind on MyBo, which focuses on local networking, official campaign events, and constituency groups like "Women for Obama." It looks like the group grew through the Obama network, with a few web mentions on liberal sites such as OpenLeft and TPM, and it urges Obama to reject the "politics of fear" and lead Democrats to oppose the White House bill. Blogger Mike Stark says the effort demonstrates the kind of civic engagement and "open government" that Obama espouses, even if it delivers the "sting of social networking" pushback during a tight campaign.

One Democratic Internet consultant predicted that Obama's reaction could reveal his commitment to meaningful engagement with supporters. "How Obama responds will tell us a great deal about both his willingness to listen to input from his supporters and what influence the MyBarackObama community has on the campaign itself," said the operative, who wished to remain anonymous while working on another campaign. "In the meantime, this is a huge opportunity for Obama's supporters to organize around an issue, not just the candidate, and take action beyond using their credit card."

There's no way to know whether the criticism resonates with the hardcore activists who gathered at Saturday's official events. The 4,000 meetups, which drew guests from MyBo and local networks offline, generated overwhelming interest. Though barely covered by the mainstream media, the gatherings suggest another edge for Obama's Internet organizing."

Memo to Obama: Moving to the Middle is for Losers

2008-07-01T13:45:00.001-05:00

By Arianna Huffington

"Last Friday afternoon, the guests taking part in Sunday's roundtable discussion on This Week had a pre-show call with George Stephanopoulos. One of the topics he raised was Obama's perceived move to the center, and what it means. Thus began my weekend obsession. If you were within shouting distance of me, odds are we talked about it. I talked about it over lunch with HuffPost's DC team, over dinner with friends, with the doorman at the hotel, and the driver on the way to the airport.

As part of this process, I looked at the Obama campaign not through the prism of my own progressive views and beliefs but through the prism of a cold-eyed campaign strategist who has no principles except winning. From that point of view, and taking nothing else into consideration, I can unequivocally say: the Obama campaign is making a very serious mistake. Tacking to the center is a losing strategy. And don't let the latest head-to-head poll numbers lull you the way they lulled Hillary Clinton in December.

Running to the middle in an attempt to attract undecided swing voters didn't work for Al Gore in 2000. It didn't work for John Kerry in 2004. And it didn't work when Mark Penn (obsessed with his "microtrends" and missing the megatrend) convinced Hillary Clinton to do it in 2008.

Fixating on -- and pandering to -- this fickle crowd is all about messaging tailored to avoid offending rather than to inspire and galvanize. And isn't galvanizing the electorate to demand fundamental change the raison d'etre of the Obama campaign in the first place? This is how David Axelrod put it at the end of February, contrasting the tired Washington model of "I'll do these things for you" with Obama's "Let's do these things together":

"This has been the premise of Barack's politics all his life, going back to his days as a community organizer," Axelrod told me. "He has really lived and breathed it, which is why it comes across so authentically. Of course, the time also has to be right for the man and the moment to come together. And, after all the country has been through over the last seven years, the times are definitely right for the message that the only way to get real change is to activate the American people to demand it."

Watering down that brand is the political equivalent of New Coke. Call it Obama Zero.

In 2004, the Kerry campaign's obsession with undecided voters -- voters so easily swayed that 46 percent of them found credible the Swift Boaters' charges that Kerry might have faked his war wounds to earn a Purple Heart -- allowed the race to devolve from a referendum on the future of the country into a petty squabble over whether Kerry had bled enough to warrant his medals.

Throughout the primary, Obama referred to himself as an "unlikely candidate." Which he certainly was -- and still is. And one of the things that turned him from "unlikely" upstart to presidential frontrunner is his ability to expand the electorate by convincing unlikely voters -- some of the 83 million eligible voters who didn't turn out in 2004 -- to engage in the system.

So why start playing to the political fence sitters -- staking out newly nuanced positions on FISA, gun control laws, expansion of the death penalty, and NAFTA?

In an interview with Nina Easton in Fortune Magazine, Obama was asked about having called NAFTA "a big mistake" and "devastating." Obama's reply: "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified."

Overheated? So when he was campaigning in the Midwest, many parts of which have been, yes, devastated by economic changes since the passage of NAFTA, and he pledged to make use of a six-month opt-out clause in the trade agreement, that was "overheated?" Or was that one "amplified?"

Because if that's the case, it would be helpful going forward if Obama would let us know which of his powerful rhetoric is "overheated" and/or "amplified," so voters will know not to get their hopes too high.

When Obama kneecaps his own rhetoric and dilutes his positioning as a different kind of politician, he is also giving his opponent a huge opening to reassert the McCain as Maverick brand. We know that McCain has completely abandoned any legitimate claim on his maverick image, but the echoes of that reputation are still very much with us -- especially among many in the media who would love nothing more than to be able to once again portray McCain as the real leader they fell in love with in 2000. And the new Straight Talk Express plane has been modeled on its namesake bus, decked out to better recreate the seduction.

The transition between the primaries and the general election -- and from insurgent to frontrunner -- is tricky. Even a confident campaign can be knocked off course. So this is when Obama most needs to remember what got him to this point -- and stick with it.

In a Los Angeles Times article detailing Obama's attempts at "shifting toward the center," Matt Bennett of the centrist think tank Third Way says that Obama is a "good politician. He's doing all he can to make sure people know he would govern as a post-partisan moderate."

But isn't being a "good politician" as it's meant here exactly what Obama defined himself as being against? Instead of Third Way think tankers, Obama should listen to this guy:

"What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics -- the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.... The time for that politics is over. It's time to turn the page."

That was Barack Obama in February of 2007, announcing his run for the White House. "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington," he said that day, "but I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."

Was that just "overheated and amplified" rhetoric?

The Obama brand has always been about inspiration, a new kind of politics, the audacity of hope, and "change we can believe in." I like that brand. More importantly, voters -- especially unlikely voters -- like that brand.

Pulling it off the shelf and replacing it with a political product geared to pleasing America's vacillating swing voters -- the ones who will be most susceptible to the fear-mongering avalanche that has already begun -- would be a fatal blunder.

Realpolitik is one thing. Realstupidpolitik is quite another."

Obama Can't Win the South

2008-07-01T13:43:00.002-05:00

From the NYT on July 1, 2008 By THOMAS F. SCHALLER:

"THE interim between the primaries and the parties’ nominating conventions is, according to ancient writ, a fertile period for presidential campaigns to talk about how they plan to expand the political map in the fall. This year is no different. Barack Obama’s strategists are suggesting that the first African-American presidential nominee of a major political party can parlay increased turnout among black voters into a string of victories in the South.

Given that roughly half of all African-Americans live in the 11 former Confederate states, the idea seems intuitive enough. It’s also wrong. Prying Southern electoral votes away from the Republicans is not so simple.

Two pervasive and persistent myths about racial voting in the modern South are behind the notion that Mr. Obama might win in places like Georgia, North Carolina and Mississippi.

The first myth is that African-American turnout in the South is low. Black voters are actually well represented in the Southern electorate: In the 11 states of the former Confederacy, African-Americans were 17.9 percent of the age-eligible population and 17.9 percent of actual voters in 2004, analysis of Census Bureau data shows.

And when socioeconomic status is held constant, black voters go to the polls at higher rates than white voters in the South. In other words, a 40-year-old African-American plumber making $60,000 a year is, on average, more likely to vote than a white man of similar background.

The second myth is that Democratic presidential candidates fare better in Southern states that have large numbers of African-Americans. In fact, the reverse is true, because the more blacks there are in a Southern state, the more likely the white voters are to vote Republican.

Mississippi, the state with the nation’s highest percentage of African-Americans in its population, illustrates how difficult Mr. Obama’s task will be in the South. Four years ago, President Bush beat John Kerry there by 20 points. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Mr. Obama could increase black turnout in Mississippi to 39 percent of the statewide electorate, up from 34 percent in 2004, according to exit polls. And let’s assume that Mr. Obama will win 95 percent of those voters, up from the 90 percent who voted for Mr. Kerry four years ago.

If that happened, the black vote would yield Mr. Obama 37 percent of Mississippi’s statewide votes. To get the last 13 percent he needs for a majority, Mr. Obama would need to persuade a mere 21 percent of white voters in Mississippi to support him. Sounds easy, right?

But only 14 percent of white voters in the state supported Mr. Kerry. Mr. Obama would need to increase that number by 7 percentage points — a 50 percent increase. Mr. Obama struggled to attract white Democrats in states like Ohio and South Dakota. It strains credulity to believe that he will attract three white voters in Mississippi for every two that Mr. Kerry did.

Keep in mind that this analysis (and the speculation that Mr. Obama will generate unprecedented black turnout in the South) does not consider the possibility that white voter turnout will rise, too. Passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act led to an upsurge in black voting in the South, but it also caused many white Southerners to register and vote as well — for the Republicans.

Granted, Mr. Obama’s campaign isn’t counting on Mississippi. What about Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, the three states that are routinely cited as new possibilities for the Democratic column this fall?

Mr. Obama can write off Georgia and North Carolina for the same reasons that Mississippi is beyond his reach — although the math in those two states is slightly less daunting. Virginia, however, is the one Southern state that Mr. Obama has a reasonable chance of winning. And it’s precisely because the home of Robert E. Lee, as NBC News’s political director, Chuck Todd, has suggested, is seceding from the Confederacy.

The demographic makeup of the electorate in Virginia is unlike that of any other state in the South. The black population in Virginia is, as a percentage, among the lowest in the region. And during the last two decades, the state has also experienced a huge influx of upscale non-Southerners, who have taken over the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia. (Florida is a perennial target for similar reasons. With a relatively small black population, a big Hispanic voting bloc and a large contingent of relocated retirees from the North, it is the least Southern of the Southern states.)

In the rest of the South, Mr. Obama cannot overcome reality. Even if unprecedented numbers of black voters turn out to vote for him, the white vote will serve as a formidable counterbalance. Mr. Obama should not hope to capture states in the country’s most racially polarized region."

Obama Tries to Explain Another Broken Promise

2008-06-25T23:51:00.001-05:00

Factcheck.org: Obama Polishes His Resume with Misleading Ad

2008-06-25T13:16:00.002-05:00

From Factcheck.org on June 21, 2008: "Obama has released his first post-primary ad, a 60-second spot that's airing in 18 battleground states. In effect, "Country I Love" is Obama's first ad of the general election campaign, and as such it invites scrutiny. (FactCheck will address McCain's first general election ads in a separate article.) We don't find this ad egregiously misleading, but it paints a picture of Obama's accomplishments that could leave viewers with a misimpression or two.

His description of his upbringing and work history are accurate. He describes the "strong values" he says he learned from his mother and her parents. But when Obama discusses his legislative accomplishments, he leaves out some important context.

The ad talks about laws that Obama "passed," but in fact, he sponsored only one of the three bills mentioned and cosponsored another. The third included provisions from some bills he'd sponsored earlier, but his name wasn't attached to the one that passed. And two of the three laws were accomplishments of the Illinois Legislature, not the U.S. Senate.

Analysis
Presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama's first ad of the general election aims to play up his Midwestern roots, his patriotism and his concern for working families.
The basic details that Obama provides about his family are correct. His books and various news reports confirm that Obama was raised in Hawaii by his mother and grandparents, who were transplants from Kansas. They weren't rich, though young Obama did attend an elite private school. Obama worked at least one job during college, a construction job that he mentions in "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," and he took out loans to pay for his undergraduate and law school education. After law school, Obama worked for church-based community action groups and tenants' rights organizations in poor Chicago neighborhoods.

Obama also says he passed up "Wall Street jobs" to "go to Chicago instead, helping neighborhoods devastated when steel plants closed." Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post points out that "Obama may have turned down Wall Street jobs after graduating from Columbia University in 1983, but he spent a year working for Business International Corp. in New York before becoming a community organizer in Chicago." But Obama's work at Business International Corporation, despite the fancy name, was by no means an investment banking job. The New York Times reports that the company was "a small newsletter-publishing and research firm, with about 250 employees worldwide, that helped companies with foreign operations ... understand overseas markets." Obama was a researcher and writer for the firm for about a year, after which he moved on to the New York Public Interest Research Group, a consumer protection and environmental reform organization.

So far, so good. But Obama goes on to tout his legislative accomplishments, and those claims don't stand up as well under scrutiny. In order to establish his bona fides as a politician who cares about working families, Obama cites his success with three relevant bills. But he doesn't mention that two of the three pieces of legislation were actually passed by the Illinois Senate, not the U.S. Senate. Obama's campaign tells us that when he says, "I passed laws moving people from welfare to work," he is referring to the bill that created Illinois’ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in 1997. Obama was one of five original sponsors of the bill, which set limits on public assistance and required welfare recipients to outline plans for moving into the workforce. The law that "cut taxes for working families" is a 2000 bill, on which Obama and 35 others were later added as cosponsors, instituting an earned income-tax credit for the state. Both bills affected only Illinois residents.

The only national law in Obama's ad is the one that "extended health care for wounded troops," and it's dubious whether he can claim full responsibility for that one. H.R. 4986, which became public law 110-181 in 2008, includes provisions from several Obama-sponsored bills. His ideas made it into law, but Obama was not a sponsor or cosponsor of H.R. 4986 itself.

Finally, it has always been our position that it's misleading when a member of a legislative body says that he or she "passed a law," "cut taxes" or makes any similar claim to single-handed lawmaking. It takes more than one legislator to get these things done. In addition to the sponsors and the cosponsors, sometimes dozens of them, the bill needs the support of a majority in both houses. Usually, a governor or president needs to then sign a bill into law, unless the legislature comes up with a veto-proof majority.

So for Obama to say that he "passed a law" casts him as a legislative Lone Ranger, hogging credit that properly belongs to other parties as well."

Obama Lies in First National Ad

2008-06-23T14:33:00.001-05:00

From the National Review: "Padding Obama [Yuval Levin]

"Barack Obama released his first general election ad on Friday, which seems aimed above all to answer some early concerns about his biography and experience. It’s a well made ad, but it also offers an example of the kind of brazen padding of the resume that Obama will inevitably need to engage in, and which will carry serious risks for him.

About 46 seconds into the ad, we are told that Obama “passed laws” that “extended healthcare for wounded troops who’d been neglected,” and in the usual manner of these political commercials we are given a little citation at the bottom. The citation reads “Public Law 110-181 1/28/08”. That law is the only federal legislation cited in the ad — the other two items mentioned were from the Illinois legislature and referred to other issues raised in the ad.

Public Law 110-181 was the 2008 defense authorization bill. It passed the Senate by 91 to 3 in January, with six Senators not voting. Among those six absentees was Barack Obama. So he cites a bill he didn’t even vote for. Did he contribute to it in some way that might be reasonably referred to as extending healthcare for wounded troops who’d been neglected? It certainly doesn’t seem that way, as even Obama supporters at the Daily Kos discovered when they tried to answer some of the bloggers who pointed to Obama’s citation of the bill. They found that Obama had tried to insert an amendment that had to do with screenings for service members returning from deployments, and one that would ease the discharge of service members found to have personality disorders, but neither amendment passed. Another part of the bill, calling for inspector general reports about hospital facilities, had come from a different bill Obama had sponsored.

Even under the most generous reading imaginable could any of that count as passing legislation that extended health care for wounded troops? The Chicago Tribune noted the problem on its blog last week but defended Obama by pointing out that John McCain didn’t vote for the bill either. That would be an interesting piece of information if John McCain had cited this bill as among his chief legislative accomplishments.

The Obama team’s desire to pad the resume is understandable — it’s awfully slim after all. But this kind of dishonesty will catch up with them…or at least it should."

Obama Supports FISA Giveaway to Bush

2008-06-21T15:04:00.001-05:00

From Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com: "In the past 24 hours, specifically beginning with the moment Barack Obama announced that he now supports the Cheney/Rockefeller/Hoyer House bill, there have magically arisen -- in places where one would never have expected to find them -- all sorts of claims about why this FISA "compromise" isn't really so bad after all. People who spent the week railing against Steny Hoyer as an evil, craven enabler of the Bush administration -- or who spent the last several months identically railing against Jay Rockefeller -- suddenly changed their minds completely when Barack Obama announced that he would do the same thing as they did. What had been a vicious assault on our Constitution, and corrupt complicity to conceal Bush lawbreaking, magically and instantaneously transformed into a perfectly understandable position, even a shrewd and commendable decision, that we should not only accept, but be grateful for as undertaken by Obama for our Own Good.

Accompanying those claims are a whole array of factually false statements about the bill, deployed in service of defending Obama's indefensible -- and deeply unprincipled -- support for this "compromise." Numerous individuals stepped forward to assure us that there was only one small bad part of this bill -- the part which immunizes lawbreaking telecoms -- and since Obama says that he opposes that part, there is no basis for criticizing him for what he did. Besides, even if Obama decided to support an imperfect bill, it's our duty to refrain from voicing any criticism of him, because the Only Thing That Matters is that Barack Obama be put in the Oval Office, and we must do anything and everything -- including remain silent when he embraces a full-scale assault on the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law -- because every goal is now subordinate to electing Barack Obama our new Leader.

It is absolutely false that the only unconstitutional and destructive provision of this "compromise" bill is the telecom amnesty part. It's true that most people working to defeat the Cheney/Rockefeller bill viewed opposition to telecom amnesty as the most politically potent way to defeat the bill, but the bill's expansion of warrantless eavesdropping powers vested in the President, and its evisceration of safeguards against abuses of those powers, is at least as long-lasting and destructive as the telecom amnesty provisions. The bill legalizes many of the warrantless eavesdropping activities George Bush secretly and illegally ordered in 2001. Those warrantless eavesdropping powers violate core Fourth Amendment protections. And Barack Obama now supports all of it, and will vote it into law. Those are just facts.

The ACLU specifically identifies the ways in which this bill destroys meaningful limits on the President's power to spy on our international calls and emails. Sen. Russ Feingold condemned the bill on the ground that it "fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home" because "the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power." Rep. Rush Holt -- who was actually denied time to speak by bill-supporter Silvestre Reyes only to be given time by bill-opponent John Conyers -- condemned the bill because it vests the power to decide who are the "bad guys" in the very people who do the spying.

This bill doesn't legalize every part of Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program but it takes a large step beyond FISA towards what Bush did. There was absolutely no reason to destroy the FISA framework, which is already an extraordinarily pro-Executive instrument that vests vast eavesdropping powers in the President, in order to empower the President to spy on large parts of our international communications with no warrants at all. This was all done by invoking the scary spectre of Terrorism -- "you must give up your privacy and constitutional rights to us if you want us to keep you safe" -- and it is Obama's willingness to embrace that rancid framework, the defining mindset of the Bush years, that is most deserving of intense criticism here.

* * * * *

Last night, Greg Sargent wrote that the most infuriating aspect of what Obama did here "is that since the outset of the campaign he's seemed absolutely dead serious about changing the way foreign policy is discussed and argued about in this country"; that Obama's "candidacy has long seemed to embody a conviction that Democrats can win arguments with Republicans about national security -- that if Dems stick to a set of core principles, and forcefully argue for them without blinking, they can and will persuade people that, simply put, they are right and Republicans are wrong"; and that "this time, he abandoned that premise," even though:

if there were ever anything that would have tested his operating premise throughout this campaign -- that you can win arguments with Republicans about national security -- it was this legislation. If ever there were anything that deserved to test this premise, it was this legislation.
This superb piece from The Technology Liberation Front makes the same argument:
We are, in other words, right back to the narrative where being "strong" on national security means trashing the constitution. . . . . This is doubly disappointing because until now Obama has been a master at re-framing national security debates to get out of this box. Unlike John Kerry, he has refused to shy away from a confrontational posture on foreign policy issues. He's shown a willingness to say he has a better foreign policy vision, rather than simply insisting he can be just as tough on the terrorists as the Republicans are. He could and should have done the same with FISA, taking the opportunity to explain why warrantless surveillance isn't necessary to protect us from the terrorists. But it seems he, along with Steny Hoyer and Harry Reid, chickened out. So it's back to Republicans being tough on national security and Democrats defensively insisting that they, too, hate terrorists more than they love the constitution.
It's either that he "chickened out" or -- as Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin asserts and Digby wonders -- Obama believes he will be President and wants these extreme powers for himself, no doubt, he believes, because he'll exercise them magnanimously, for our Own Good. Whatever the motives -- and I don't know (or much care) what they are -- Obama has embraced a bill that is not only redolent of many of the excesses of Bush's executive power theories and surveillance state expansions, but worse, has done so by embracing the underlying rationale of "Be-scared-and-give-up-your-rights." Note that the very first line of Obama's statement warns us that we face what he calls "grave threats," and that therefore, we must accept that our Leader needs more unlimited power, and the best we can do is trust that he will use it for our Good.

Making matters worse still, what Obama did yesterday is in clear tension with an emphatic promise that he made just months ago. As the extremely pro-Obama MoveOn.org notes today, Obama's spokesman, Bill Burton, back in in September, vowed that Obama would "support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." MoveOn believes Obama should be held to his word and is thus conducting a campaign urging Obama to do what he promised -- support a filibuster to stop the enactment of telecom amnesty. You can email Burton here to demand that Obama comply with his commitment not just to vote against, but to filibuster, telecom amnesty:

bburton@barackobama.com
Incidentally, Chris Dodd made an identical promise when he was running for President, prompting the support of hundreds of thousands of new contributors, and he ought to be held to his promise as well.

* * * * *

The excuse that Obama's support for this bill is politically shrewd is -- even if accurate -- neither a defense of what he did nor a reason to refrain from loudly criticizing him for it. Actually, it's the opposite. It's precisely because Obama is calculating that he can -- without real consequence -- trample upon the political values of those who believe in the Constitution and the rule of law that it's necessary to do what one can to change that calculus. Telling Obama that you'll cheer for him no matter what he does, that you'll vest in him Blind Faith that anything he does is done with the purest of motives, ensures that he will continue to ignore you and your political interests.

Beyond that, this attitude that we should uncritically support Obama in everything he does and refrain from criticizing him is unhealthy in the extreme. No political leader merits uncritical devotion -- neither when they are running for office nor when they occupy it -- and there are few things more dangerous than announcing that you so deeply believe in the Core Goodness of a political leader, or that we face such extreme political crises that you trust and support whatever your Leader does, even when you don't understand it or think that it's wrong. That's precisely the warped authoritarian mindset that defined the Bush Movement and led to the insanity of the post-9/11 Era, and that uncritical reverence is no more attractive or healthy when it's shifted to a new Leader.

What Barack Obama did here was wrong and destructive. He's supporting a bill that is a full-scale assault on our Constitution and an endorsement of the premise that our laws can be broken by the political and corporate elite whenever the scary specter of The Terrorists can be invoked to justify it. What's more, as a Constitutional Law Professor, he knows full well what a radical perversion of our Constitution this bill is, and yet he's supporting it anyway. Anyone who sugarcoats or justifies that is doing a real disservice to their claimed political values and to the truth.

The excuse that we must sit by quietly and allow him to do these things with no opposition so that he can win is itself a corrupted and self-destructive mentality. That mindset has no end. Once he's elected, it will transform into: "It's vital that Obama keeps his majority in Congress so you have to keep quiet until after the 2010 midterms," after which it will be: "It's vital that Obama is re-elected so you have to keep quiet until after 2012," at which point the process will repeat itself from the first step. Quite plainly, those are excuses to justify mindless devotion, not genuine political strategies.

Having said all of that, the other extreme -- declaring that Obama is now Evil Incarnate, no better than John McCain, etc. etc. -- is no better. Obama is a politician running for political office, driven by all the standard, pedestrian impulses of most other people who seek and crave political power. It's nothing more or less than that, and it is just as imperative today as it was yesterday that the sickly right-wing faction be permanently removed from power and that there is never any such thing as the John McCain Administration (as one commenter ironically noted yesterday, at the very least, Obama is far more likely to appoint Supreme Court Justices who will rule that the bill Obama supports is patently unconstitutional). The commenter sysprog described perfectly the irrational excesses of both extremes the other day:

Argh

Why are so many four-year-olds and fourteen-year-olds making comments on blogs?

Four-year-olds see their preferred politicians as god-like fathers (or mothers) whose virtuous character will guarantee good judgment. If a judgment looks questionable to you, then it's because you don't know all the facts that mommy and daddy know, or it's because you aren't as wise as them.

Fourteen-year-olds have had their illusions shattered about those devilish politicians so now they perceive the TRUTH - - that mommy and daddy make bad judgments because mommy and daddy are utterly corrupt.

Personally, I can empathize with the impulses behind the latter far more than the former, even while recognizing that they both must be diligently avoided. It's understandable that there is a substantial sense of anger and betrayal towards Obama as a result of what he did yesterday, particularly among those who previously viewed him as something transcendent and "different." Quoting Shakespeare is always slightly pompous (at least) but -- with apologies in advance -- his observation in Sonnet 94 is too apropos here to refrain:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

If there is one good thing that can come from this week's horrific embrace by Obama and our bipartisan political establishment of warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, perhaps it will be that the illusions of "lily-ness" about Barack Obama can finally fade away and be replaced by a more realistic perception of what he is, what his limits are, and the reasons why he merits real scrutiny, criticism and checks -- like everyone else pursuing political power does. Recall that the very first thing that he did upon securing the nomination was run to AIPAC to prostrate himself before them and swear undying fealty to their militant pieties. There will be plenty more of these sorts of ugly rituals to come. Whether you think he is engaging in them out of justifiable political calculation or some barren quest for power doesn't much matter.

Either way, no good comes from lending uncritical support to a political leader, or cheering them on when they do bad and destructive things, or using twisted rationalizations to justify their full-scale assault on your core political values. The overriding lesson of the last seven years is that political figures, more than they need anything else, need checks and limits. That is just as important to keep in mind -- probably more so -- when you love or revere a political leader as it is when you detest one.

* * * * *

The campaign against politicians who are enabling this assault on our Constitutional framework, core civil liberties and the rule of law has now raised close to $300,000. My explanation about the current plans for these funds, in response to a commenter's inquiries, can be read here. Contributions to that campaign can be made here.

UPDATE: In comments, Hume's Ghost wrote:

What really rubbed me the wrong way was how Obama in his statement says essentially trust me with these powers, I'll use them responsibly.

Nope.

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." - John Adams [1772].

In 1799, Thomas Jefferson echoed that: "Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence . . . . Let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitutions." Between (a) relying on the limitations imposed by the Constitution or (b) placing faith in the promises of a political leader not to abuse his unchecked power, it isn't really a difficult choice -- at least it ought not to be, no matter who the political leader in question happens to be."

Obama Endorses Bush Supporting Georgia Democrat

2008-06-21T14:15:00.002-05:00

From SavannahNow.com: "In an unusual move, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is backing U.S. Rep. John Barrow in a contested primary election.

On July 15, Barrow, who is white, faces state Sen. Regina Thomas, who is black, in a Democratic primary likely to attract overwhelmingly black turnout.

The Savannah congressman supports policies such as the war in Iraq and President Bush's tax cuts, which Obama and Thomas oppose.

His campaign is airing radio ads featuring Obama in his 12th Congressional District. "We're going to need John Barrow back in Congress to help change Washington and get our country back on track," Obama says. "He's ... standing up to the ... Republicans who go right down the line with George Bush."

Obama said Barrow will help lower fuel prices and provide access to affordable health care and good-paying jobs.

"It's kind of surprising," said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock. "Party leaders usually don't want to get involved in a contested primary, thinking they don't have anything to gain."

Bullock said the endorsement likely will sway at least some black voters who are inclined to vote for Thomas.

Thomas, a Savannah lawmaker, disputed that. "People have their own minds," she said. "I'll win whether Obama, Bush or Clinton endorses him. My record speaks for itself. So does John's. He votes the Bush agenda."

Ed Feiler, a local Barrow supporter, said the endorsement speaks well of Barrow.

"This shows that he does a very balanced job of representing a district with very different kinds of people," the Savannah businessman said. "It shows he can talk to everybody and that he works hard to deal their concerns."

But Mary Osborne, who was Obama's Chatham County coordinator in Georgia's Feb. 5 Democratic presidential primary, said she is disappointed.

Osborne, a Savannah alderman, said Obama might not be familiar with Barrow's voting record.

Kevin Clark, another local Obama supporter and a leader in the gay rights community, said he was "sorely, sorely disappointed."

Clark said Barrow failed to stand behind the pro-gay-rights positions he took in his 2004 Democratic primary campaign.

Osborne and others suggested the endorsement was a reward for Barrow's support of Obama for president. Barrow backed Obama as he rounded up support from so-called "superdelegates" such as Barrow. Thomas did not back Obama until around the time he locked up the nomination.

"I'm sure there's a matter of trade-offs," Osborne said. "That's how things are done in politics."

But others noted that Barrow also is helping Obama with a major voter registration drive.

"Absolutely not," Barrow responded when asked about payback speculation.

He acknowledged that he differs with Obama on some issues. "But he's trying to make the economy work for the middle class, and so am I," Barrow said. "It doesn't mean he agrees with me 100 percent, or that I agree with him 100 percent."

Obama campaign spokeswoman Amy Brundage made a similar point.

"Sen. Obama believes that Congressman Barrow has worked hard to bring change that families in his district deserve," Brundage said."

Ever-Changing "Change"

2008-06-21T13:43:00.001-05:00

From NYPost.com: "June 21, 2008 -- Awash in campaign cash, Barack Obama this week announced that he's opting out of the public-financing system for presidential campaigns. He'll be the first general-election candidate to do that since the system was set up.

This gives new meaning to the notion of "politics of change."

"In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public-financing system in the 2008 election," he wrote in November. "My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fund-raising truce, return excess money from donors and stay within the public-financing system for the general election."

So much for that.

This isn't the first time Obama has, um, "changed" political lanes:

* He ripped Hillary Clinton for months for voting to list Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Days after Clinton conceded, Obama flipped and said he supported the definition.

* Obama repeatedly vowed to meet with various heads of terror states - most notably Ahmadinejad of Iran - "without preconditions." Then, with the nomination in sight, he zigzagged: "There's no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad. He's not the most powerful person in Iran."

* In October, he supported NAFTA expansion. In March, campaigning in the Ohio primary, he called for a "reopening" of the trade pact's terms. This week, he called his own primary rhetoric "overheated" and said NAFTA has had a positive effect on the US economy.

* Yesterday, after signaling opposition to nuclear power, he told Democratic governors he's open to expanding it.

Change, yes.

But "change we can believe in"?

That remains to be seen."

Obama - Just Another Politican

2008-06-19T15:31:00.002-05:00

From Salon.com by Glenn Greenwald:
"Thursday June 19, 2008 05:39 EDT
Obama, telecoms and the Beltway system
(updated below - Update II)

As noted yesterday, Blue Dog Rep. John Barrow of Georgia has been one of the most enthusiastic enablers of the radical and lawless policies of the Bush administration. When running for re-election, he ran ads accusing his own party of wanting to "cut and run in Iraq," and was one of the 21 Blue Dogs to send a letter to Nancy Pelosi demanding that they be allowed to vote for the Rockefeller/Cheney Senate bill to give warrantless eavesdropping powers to the President and amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms.

As a result of all of that, Barrow faces a serious primary challenge in July from State Senator Regina Thomas, who decided to run against Barrow due to -- as she told Howie Klein when she announced -- "Barrow's failure to support his constituents against the encroachments of powerful Big Business interests." As Klein noted yesterday, Thomas' positions on both foreign and domestic policy are firmly in line with Barack Obama's views and with the Democratic base in that district, while Barrow has continuously supported the most extremist Bush policies, as he himself proudly boasts.

In contrast to Barrow's demands for warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, here is the statement Regina Thomas issued yesterday (via email):

After reading the FISA bill -- Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- I thought "This can not be good for Americans. That the Bush Administration wants unlimited powers for spying on not only terrorists, but on any American citizen. This is against and violates the Constitutional Fourth Amendment [right of] privacy. This also allows warrant-less monitoring of any form of communication in the United States." I was disappointed and dismayed with my Congressman John Barrow supporting this Bush Republican initiative against Americans. Too often Congressman Barrow from the 12th district in Georgia has voted with Bush and the Republicans on key issues.
Despite all of this, The Atlanta Constitution-Journal reported yesterday that Barack Obama -- who has been claiming to be so emphatically opposed to warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, to say nothing of the Iraq War -- taped a radio endorsement this week for Rep. Barrow, with the specific intent to help him defeat Regina Thomas in the Democratic primary (h/t sysprog):
Obama cuts an ad to help John Barrow in his primary fight

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has taped a radio commercial on behalf of U.S. Rep. John Barrow of Savannah, who faces a July 15 primary challenge.

It's the first case of Obama involving himself in a local race in Georgia. . . But the Obama campaign made clear to my colleague Aaron Sheinin that it sees Barrow, a two-term Democrat, as an important ally. . . .

"Senator Obama believes that Congressman Barrow has worked hard to bring change that families in his district deserve, and we'll work hard to help John Barrow win in November," Obama spokeswoman Amy Brundage said.

In the ad, Obama asks voters to join him in supporting Barrow. "We're going to need John Barrow back in Congress to help change Washington and get our country back on track," Obama says in the 60-second ad.

The article highlighted the reason Barrow was so eager to have Obama record an ad endorsing him and why it's so potentially important in helping Barrow win his primary:
Barrow beat a Republican incumbent in 2004 and had tough GOP opposition in 2006. But this April, Barrow picked up unexpected opposition from Regina Thomas, a well-known African-American state senator based in Savannah. Barrow is white, and in past primaries in the 12th District, black voters have cast nearly 70 percent of the ballots.
What makes this even more amazing is that, as the article notes, Barrow cynically waited until after Obama's sweeping primary victory in Georgia to endorse him. He did so only once he saw that Obama would likely be the nominee and obviously with the hope of having Obama encourage Barrow's sizable African-American constituency to support him. And now Obama turns around and intervenes in a Democratic primary on behalf of one of the worst Bush enablers in Congress -- not in order to help Barrow defeat an even-worse Republican, but to defeat a far better and plainly credible Democratic challenger.

For all of Obama's talk about the wicked ways of Washington, these incumbent protection schemes -- whereby Beltway power factions all help each other stay in power no matter their ideology or positions -- are among the most vital instruments for perpetuating how Washington works. Democratic leaders pretend that they are forced continuously to capitulate to the Bush administration due to their "conservative" members, yet continuously work to keep those same members in power, even when it comes to supporting them against far better Democratic primary challengers.

Obama has made himself a central part of that rancid scheme. Recall that in 2006, Obama -- who now touts his commitment to ending the war -- endorsed Joe Lieberman in his Connecticut primary race over war opponent Ned Lamont, appearing with Lieberman to say: "Joe Lieberman's a man with a good heart, with a keen intellect, who cares about the working families of America . . . . I am absolutely certain that Connecticut's going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman back to the United States Senate."

* * * * *

Making matters much worse here, Obama -- who has removed himself almost completely from the pending eavesdropping and telecom amnesty debate -- recorded this ad for Barrow on the eve of that bill's passage, all in order to keep in power a key Democratic supporter of this FISA/amnesty bill. Yet telecom amnesty is not merely a side issue but is one of the purest expressions of what Obama claims so vigorously to oppose in Washington.

Just consider this Reuters article from yesterday in which anonymous officials decree to us that it's now a fait accompli that the Democratic Congress will enact the FISA/amnesty bill -- an article which the commenter pow wow describes as "carefully-planted PR in the government-mouthpiece media -- anonymously reminding the peons that resistance is futile; the game is up":

U.S. phone companies would be shielded from potentially billions of dollars in lawsuits under an anti-terror spy measure that appears headed toward approval, congressional sources said on Wednesday. . . . .

Democratic and Republican aides and a lobbyist familiar with negotiations said the House would likely approve the measure overwhelmingly. Despite opposition from its top two Democrats, the Senate would then likely give it final approval, clearing the way for President George W. Bush to sign it into law. . . ..

The proposed compromise would allow a federal district court to dismiss a suit if the company was provided written assurances that Bush authorized their participation in the spy program and that it was legal, sources said.

The telecom amnesty bill is something that has been engineered by telecom lobbyists from start to finish, while Bush officials engineer the part of the bill to provide full-scale warrantless eavesdropping powers. While the ACLU and other grass-roots groups have been shut out of the negotiation over this bill almost completely -- it's been conducted, like most important government processes, totally in the dark -- telecom lobbyists are not only fully informed about what is going on but have been participating directly in the negotiations. Along with Bush officials, it's the telecoms' lobbyists who are "negotiating" with Congress over how to write the law providing for their own amnesty from breaking the laws passed by Congress.

This is everything Obama claims so vehemently to oppose, claims he wants to end. And yet the Congress under the control of his party is about to enact a radical bill to legalize vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and immunize telecoms who broke our country's laws for years. And not only is Obama doing nothing about any of that, but far more, he's actively intervening in a Democratic primary to help one of the worst enablers of all of this stay in power, while helping to defeat an insurgent, community-based challenger.

None of that is enjoyable to write or accept, but those are just facts. There is a disturbing tendency on all sides to view Obama through a reductive Manichean lens -- either he's the embodiment of pure transformative Good who is going magically to cleanse our polity the minute he takes office, or he's nothing other than a mindless, passive tool of the establishment whose pretty rhetoric masks a barren ambition for power and who is no better than McCain. Neither of those caricatures is remotely accurate, and a John McCain presidency would be an unmitigated disaster on every level.

But it's critical to keep in mind that Obama is a politician and, like all people, is plagued by significant imperfections. He has largely entrenched himself in, and is dependent upon, the power structure he says he wants to undermine. Uncritical devotion to political leaders, including him, is destructive. Obama needs pressure, criticism, checks, and real scrutiny just like anyone else in power in order to keep him accountable, responsive, and faithful to the principles he claims are the ones driving him.

Pressure of that sort should include demanding that he take meaningful action against this Draconian and lawlessness-enabling bill. This is, after all, a bill which his own party is seeking to pass and justifying their behavior, in part, by claiming that they're doing it to protect Obama politically from being attacked as Weak on Terrorism. If this bill passes and Obama does nothing to stop it, he'll bear significant responsibility for its enactment. Here's his campaign's phone number: (866) 675-2008 [Dial 6, then 0, on the menu]. I'll post other contact information as people leave it in comments.

* * * * *

A few quick updates about the FISA/telecom campaign: The amount raised in the last 1 1/2 days is now an amazing $115,000 -- brining the total for this campaign to $195,000. By any measure, that is an extraordinary amount to raise for a campaign like this, through a handful of blogs, in such a short time. It attests to the intensity and depth of the constituency for defending our constitutional framework and the rule of law, and it will only grow.

New ads are being prepared right now to run ASAP in the districts of Hoyer, Carney and Barrow, and they will continue even if the vote occurs Friday.

Simon Owens interviewed several of the members of the "Strange Bedfellows" alliance and wrote an excellent article about the campaign. Bloggers, activists and organizations that want to join that alliance can do so here. The ACLU Press Release announcing this coalition, as well as a tool for embedding the amount raised for this campaign, can be found here at the Strange Bedfellows site.

As indicated yesterday, this will be an ongoing campaign for all matters relating to constitutional protections, civil liberties, unchecked government power, and the rule of law -- particularly devoted to removing from power those who enable the assault on our constitutional liberties and to put into power those devoted to their preservation. The massive money bomb being coordinated now by the Ron Paul faction will enable many more deserving political figures -- both good and bad -- to be targeted.

UPDATE: Here's the newly elected Rep. Donna Edwards, who defeated Bush-enabling Democratic incumbent Al Wynn, speaking on telecom immunity after she defeated Wynn in the primary:

Wynn was not only heavily supported by the entire telecom industry, but by Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership as well, who tried to keep Donna Edwards out of Congress and keep the Bush-supporting Al Wynn in power. As Matt Stoller wrote today: "I don't know what kind of game Obama is playing, but using his remarkable brand to protect conservative Democrats is a move reminiscent of Nancy Pelosi endorsing Al Wynn."

Democratic leaders expect that you're going to be understanding when they tell you that Bush gets everything he wants from Congress because -- oh-so-unfortunately -- there are so many members of their caucus who support those radical policies, the "Blue Dogs" and the like. But when it's those very Democratic leaders doing everything possible to keep those pro-Bush Democrats in power, even when it means defeating far better Democratic candidates, then they bear the full responsibility for the consequences.

More Obama Lies - He is For NAFTA (he was against it in the primaries)

2008-06-18T17:15:00.003-05:00

From Fortune Magazine By Nina Easton, Washington editor
Last Updated: June 18, 2008: 3:00 PM EDT:
"WASHINGTON (Fortune) -- The general campaign is on, independent voters are up for grabs, and Barack Obama is toning down his populist rhetoric - at least when it comes to free trade.

In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine's upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn't want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA.

"Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.

Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? "Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself," he answered.

Obama says he believes in "opening up a dialogue" with trading partners Canada and Mexico "and figuring to how we can make this work for all people."

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said that Obama-as the candidate noted in Fortune's interview-has not changed his core position on NAFTA, and that he has always said he would talk to the leaders of Canada and Mexico in an effort to include enforceable labor and environmental standards in the pact.

Nevertheless, Obama's tone stands in marked contrast to his primary campaign's anti-NAFTA fusillades. The pact creating a North American free-trade zone was President Bill Clinton's signature accomplishment; but NAFTA is also the bugaboo of union leaders, grassroots activists and Midwesterners who blame free trade for the factory closings they see in their hometowns.

The Democratic candidates fought hard to win over those factions of their party, with Obama generally following Hillary Clinton's lead in setting a protectionist tone.

In February, as the campaign moved into the Rust Belt, both candidates vowed to invoke a six-month opt-out clause ("as a hammer," in Obama's words) to pressure Canada and Mexico to make concessions.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper called that threat a mistake, and other leaders abroad expressed worries about their trade deals. Leading House Democrats, including Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel, distanced themselves from the candidates.

Now, however, Obama says he doesn't believe in unilaterally reopening NAFTA. On the afternoon that I sat down with him to discuss the economy, Obama said he had just spoken with Harper, who had called to congratulate him on winning the nomination.

"I'm not a big believer in doing things unilaterally," Obama said. "I'm a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make this work for all people."

Obama has repeatedly described himself as a free-trade proponent who wants to be a "better bargainer" on behalf of U.S. interests and wants agreements to include labor and environmental standards.

In May 2007, congressional Democrats and the Bush administration agreed to a plan to include environmental and international labor standards in upcoming trade agreements. Still, later that year Obama supported one agreement (Peru) and opposed three others (Panama, Colombia, South Korea). Labor leaders - many of whom backed Obama in the primary - were the chief opponents of those pacts.

Obama jumped into the anti-trade waters with Clinton even though his top economics adviser, the University of Chicago's Austan Goolsbee, has written that America's wage gap is primarily the result of a globalized information economy - not free trade.

On Feb. 8, Goolsbee met with the Canadian consul general in Chicago and offered assurances that Obama's rhetoric was "more reflective of political maneuvering than policy," according to a Canadian memo summarizing the meeting that was obtained by Fortune. "In fact," the Canadian memo said, Goolsbee "mentioned that going forward the Obama camp was going to be careful to send the appropriate message without coming off as too protectionist."

In the Fortune interview, Obama noted that despite his support for opening markets, "there are costs to free trade" that must be recognized. He noted that under NAFTA, a more efficient U.S. agricultural industry displaced Mexican farmers, adding to the problem of illegal immigration.

We "can't pretend that those costs aren't real," Obama added. Otherwise, he added, it feeds "the protectionist sentiment and the anti-immigration sentiment that is out there in both parties."

Obama also reiterated his determination to be a tougher trade bargainer. "The Chinese love free trade," he said, "but they are tough as nails when it comes to a bargain, right? They will resist any calls to stop manipulating their currency. It's no secret they have consistently encroached on our intellectual property and our copyright laws. ...We should make sure in our trade negotiations that our interests and our values are adequately reflected."

Republican nominee John McCain, for his part, is emphasizing his consistent position as a free-trader. In a press conference in Boston this week, he attacked Obama as protectionist: "Senator Obama said that he would unilaterally - unilaterally! - renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, where 33 percent of our trade exists. And you know what message that sends? That no agreement is sacred if someone declares that as president of the United States they would unilaterally renegotiate it. I stand for free trade, and with all the difficulties and economic troubles we're in today, there's a real bright spot and that's our exports. Protectionism does not work."

Obama's Accomplishments

2008-06-15T21:08:00.000-05:00

Obama Has Never Marched in Pride Parade

2008-06-14T11:15:00.002-05:00

from Hillbuzz.blogspot.com:
"Is Barack Obama Going to March in Chicago's Gay Pride Parade?

Chicago holds its Pride Parade on Sunday June 29th on Halsted in Boystown. It's the biggest Pride Parade in the Midwest. It's also, coincidentally, the weekend of the DLC Conference, also held in Chicago. Since Obama's relocated the DNC, largely, to Chicago to be closer to himself and his campaign's operations, and the DLC will also be in Chicago this weekend, we're surprised Obama has not made plans to show his commitment to the LGBT community by marching in Chicago's Pride Parade.

Hillary Clinton was the first First Lady to ever march in a Pride Parade -- and she marches every year in NYC. She also has promised to be the first sitting President of the United States to march in a Gay Pride Parade.

Obama showed us last weekend he's got a pair of pretty comfy-looking sneakers, when he went out on his Chicago bike ride.

Those sneaks would be extra comfy (and would look fabulous, we're sure), marching down Halsted in support of the LGBT community.

If not in Chicago, then where?

If not at the Pride Parade, then when?

If he's not supporting the LGBT community, then why should the LGBT community support Barack Obama?"

Obama Says No to Town Hall Meetings with McCain

2008-06-13T17:43:00.002-05:00

From Roll Call By Mort Kondracke:

"Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) got an answer from Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) Tuesday on his proposal for 10 town hall-style debates: Not going to happen. That's too bad - and, the fewer there are, the more Obama should suffer for it politically.

The town halls not only would give ordinary citizens a chance to ask the candidates some pointed questions (see suggestions below), but - because they would be nationally televised - they would let voters nationwide see how the candidates handle challenges from across the political spectrum.

When Obama was debating Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and - in the distant past - when McCain debated his GOP rivals, the Democrats rarely got tough questions premised from the right, or the Republicans, from the left.

McCain has challenged Obama to 10 joint appearances to take place before the national conventions. Obviously, McCain thinks they're to his advantage because Obama is such a better orator and McCain performs well in informal settings.

Moreover, McCain - with less money to spend than Obama - wants the free national exposure that the town halls would provide. Obama is ahead in the polls and probably doesn't want to risk his advantage on possibly risky joint appearances.

So, on Tuesday, Obama told reporters, "You know what we've said is we are happy to do more than the three typical presidential debates in the fall ... We hope to have negotiations soon."

He added, "It's not realistic for us to do 10 ... It will probably be somewhat fewer than 10 but more than the three that have been already agreed to, and we'll probably propose a mix of formats."

That's a far cry from the ideal - 10 or more free-wheeling, longish (say, 90 minutes) exchanges centered on a specific topic area but with time left for random (say, political) inquiries. The questioners could be a mix of ordinary citizens and policy experts, maybe with a media person occasionally thrown in.

The ideal would be an exchange very soon on Topic A - gasoline prices, energy policy and environmental policy. Sample question: Senators, you both complain about high gasoline prices but also favor a cap-and-trade system to control global warming. That surely will raise energy prices - in fact, it's meant to. How does that square?

Also, you both oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off-shore, yet you talk about making the U.S. less dependent on foreign sources. How can you do that - and don't talk about 'alternatives' like wind and solar, which can't replace oil for decades?

If gas prices are Topic A, then the economy and jobs are Topic A1/2 and deserve the second exchange - also soon. McCain needs to be asked: You favor extending all the Bush tax cuts - but they haven't raised incomes for the average American. Why do you think they would in the next four years?

And, Sen. Obama, all your promises - middle-class tax cuts, infrastructure, education, health care and energy investment - will cost how much? Three trillion dollars over 10 years, as Sen. McCain charges? How are you going to pay for that with just tax increases on the wealthy, estimated to raise $1.5 trillion?

Both candidates also need to be asked: Just what are you going to do to prevent meltdowns in the housing and financial markets - and why are your solutions better than his?

There ought to be two or more debates on foreign policy - one on Iraq, one or more on the rest of the world. Question for Obama: Suppose the U.S. had followed your policy and hadn't done the surge in Iraq - wouldn't al-Qaida now be in charge of Sunni areas, radical militias of Shiite areas and wouldn't the U.S. have suffered a strategic defeat it might now avoid? That is, wasn't Sen. McCain right?

To both candidates: If diplomacy can't stop Iran's nuclear program, are you going to bomb?

There ought to be separate town halls on entitlements, education, health care and trade. So, some more questions: Sen. Obama, even AARP advocates some shaving back of retirement benefits to prevent Social Security and Medicare from going broke. Why don't you?

Sen. McCain, independent analysts say that your health care proposal - detaching insurance from the workplace - will make insurance unaffordable for older and sicker workers, and those whose kids may have pre-existing conditions. What about that?

Both of you: A third of ninth graders won't finish high school - 50 percent for minority kids. Where is the dropout crisis on your priority list? Come to think of it, both of you have put a lot of proposals out there - what will you tackle first, second and third?

So many questions, so little time. If Obama really means to change the political landscape, he ought to agree to lots of open exchanges with McCain. And if he won't, the media should ask, why not? "

Friends of Barack

2008-06-11T14:53:00.001-05:00

From WSJ.com June 11, 2008; Page A22
"Barack Obama may have come up with a creative way to solve the housing recession: Let everyone buy property at a discount the way he did from Tony Rezko, and give everyone in America a discount mortgage the way Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide did for Fannie Mae's Jim Johnson. Team Obama's real estate and mortgage transactions are certainly a change from business as usual. They suggest old-fashioned back-scratching below even current Beltway standards.

A former CEO of mortgage financing giant Fannie Mae, Mr. Johnson is now vetting Vice Presidential candidates for Mr. Obama. But he is also a textbook case for poor disclosure as regulators sifted through the wreckage of Fannie's $10 billion accounting scandal. Despite an exhaustive federal inquiry, Mr. Johnson managed to avoid disclosing one very special perk: below-market interest-rate mortgages from Countrywide Financial, arranged by Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. Journal reporters Glenn Simpson and James Hagerty broke the story this weekend.

Fannie Mae tells us that Mr. Johnson did not inform the company's board of these sweetheart mortgage deals, nor did his CEO successor Franklin Raines, who also received such loans. We can understand why. Fannie bought mortgages from loan originator Countrywide, and then packaged them into securities for sale or kept the loans and profited from the interest. Mr. Mozilo told Dow Jones in 1995 that he was "working very closely . . . with Jim Johnson of Fannie Mae to come up with a rational method of making the process more efficient by the use of credit scoring."

Since Fannie was buying Countrywide's loans, under terms set by Mr. Johnson and later Mr. Raines – or by people in their employ – the fact that Fannie's CEO had a separate personal financial relationship with Countrywide was an obvious conflict of interest. The company's code of conduct required prior approval of such arrangements. Neither Mr. Johnson nor Mr. Raines sought such approval, according to Fannie.

Even if they had received waivers from the board to enjoy these perks, conscientious board members would then have wanted to disclose the waivers to investors. Post-Enron, the Sarbanes-Oxley law requires such disclosures. But even in the late-1990s, when the Friends of Angelo loans began, board members would likely have raised red flags.

Former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt tells us that "the best way to deal with issues like this is not to have these kinds of relationships. From both the Countrywide and the Fannie perspective, it is simply bad policy to permit loans to 'friends' on more favorable terms than others similarly situated would be able to get."

One question is whether Messrs. Johnson and Raines were using their position to pad their own incomes that were already fabulous thanks to an implicit taxpayer subsidy. (See the table nearby.) But the bigger issue is whether they steered Fannie policy into giving Mr. Mozilo and Countrywide favorable pricing, which means they helped to facilitate the mortgage boom and bust that Countrywide did so much to promote. A further federal probe would seem to be warranted, and we assume Barney Frank and his fellow mortgage moralists will want to dig into this palm-greasing from Capitol Hill.

The irony here is that Mr. Obama has denounced Mr. Mozilo as part of his populist case against corporate excess, calling Mr. Mozilo and a colleague in March "the folks who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis." Obama campaign manager David Plouffe also said in March that "If we're really going to crack down on the practices that caused the credit and housing crises, we're going to need a leader who doesn't owe these industries any favors." But now this protector of the working class has entrusted his first big task as Presidential nominee to the very man who received "favors" in return for enriching Mr. Mozilo.

Yesterday, ABC News asked Mr. Obama whether he should have more carefully vetted Mr. Johnson and Eric Holder, who is working with Mr. Johnson on veep vetting. Correspondent Sunlen Miller noted Mr. Johnson's loans from Countrywide and Mr. Holder's involvement as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration in the pardon of fugitive Marc Rich. Said Mr. Obama: "Everybody, you know, who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships – I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters."

Vetting Mr. Johnson's finances would have been time well spent, judging by a May 2006 report from Fannie Mae's regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (Ofheo). Even if Mr. Obama considers the advisers helping him select a running mate "tangentially related" to his campaign, he might have thought twice about any relationship with Mr. Johnson.

Addressing the company's too smooth (and fraudulent) reported earnings growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ofheo reported: "Those achievements were illusions deliberately and systematically created by the Enterprise's senior management with the aid of inappropriate accounting and improper earnings management . . . By deliberately and intentionally manipulating accounting to hit earnings targets, senior management maximized the bonuses and other executive compensation they received, at the expense of shareholders."

* * *
The regulator described how, despite an internal Fannie analysis that valued Mr. Johnson's 1998 compensation at almost $21 million, the summary compensation table in the firm's 1999 proxy suggested his pay was no more than $7 million. Ofheo found that Fannie had actually drafted talking points to deflect such media questions as: "He's trying to hide how much he's made, isn't he?" and "Gimme a break. He's hiding his compensation."

To this list we would add one more, directed at Mr. Obama: Is this what you mean by bringing change to Washington?
"

Obama's Johnson Test

2008-06-11T14:41:00.001-05:00

From Slate.com:
"Will Obama show us the instruction manual for his new kind of politics?
By John Dickerson
Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2008, at 1:48 PM ET Jim Johnson, the man Barack Obama has picked to lead his vice-presidential vetting team, has gotten preferential treatment for personal loans from Countrywide Financial, a company Sen. Obama and others have blamed for helping to create the subprime mortgage mess. How big a deal is this for the Democratic nominee? The Republican National Committee, as you might expect, is diving for the fainting couches. Here is an assessment, based on three different standards:

The Obama Standard
Barack Obama called out Countrywide by name on the campaign trail during the primaries. He particularly criticized the company's CEO for his excessive compensation and more generally "infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis," which he linked not only to the 2 million who lost their houses but to school districts that couldn't purchase supplies and pay teachers. This is the same CEO who gave Johnson his sweetheart deal. Obama's aides also criticized Clinton's then-campaign strategist, Mark Penn, for giving PR advice to the company.

Now the man Obama has entrusted with what he has called the most important decision of his campaign is wrapped up in Countrywide and tied to the CEO. There are lots of unanswered questions about the Johnson deal, though no evidence as yet that he did anything wrong. But the Obama standard isn't wrongdoing. It's mere connection to the company. By that standard, this is bad news.
Since Obama has just held a national seminar for 16 months on changing politics and shedding the old insider way of doing things, you might expect that he'd take these disclosures seriously, if for no other reason than to show that even when it might hurt him, he's committed to letting the light shine on his associates. Nope—his campaign has called the issue irrelevant. Double bad.

The McCain Standard
Jim Johnson is a powerful insider who has friends in high places. The Countrywide deal is evidence that they can get things done quickly and extra-smoothly for him. John McCain has lots of similarly connected friends like Johnson. Many of them raise money for him. Some of them work these kinds of connections professionally, are called lobbyists, and McCain hangs out with them. A former lobbyist is vetting his vice-presidential picks. He also has former lobbyists on his staff, some of whom worked for free while being paid their regular salary by their lobbying firms. This amounts to a subsidy (it's also legal, and Obama volunteers do it, too).

None of this should stop McCain from pointing out Obama's hypocrisy about Johnson. It makes sense for McCain to balance out the hit he's been taking for his special-interest ties by pointing out Obama's difficulty here. But because of his own operations, he can make only so much of this. If McCain gets too self-righteous, he'll open himself up to the same charges of hypocrisy Obama now faces.

The Objective Standard
There are lobbyists, and then there are friends. Both can influence the president. The latter can actually influence him more then any paid lobbyist. Far more, because influence peddling is a lot subtler than people think. Obama has called Johnson a "friend," and if he helps the young senator navigate this crucial decision (including the sticky Hillary Clinton issue), they're going to be good friends, or at the very least, Johnson will become a fixer.

Presidents, like the rest of us, rely on friends to give them trusted advice about their areas of expertise. Friends can also get their calls returned by presidents or the men and women who work for them. The advice-givers never show up on a lobbying disclosure form, but they can deeply influence a president's thinking because they come to issues with an outside-the-bubble perspective and the credibility, often, of having been right before.

This is part of the Washington system, which as a whole Barack Obama is running against and promising to change. It's also part of the Chicago system he comes from. But it's not a factor of political life that Barack Obama talks about very much. He rails against lobbyists at length, but where does he draw the boundaries for himself on these other kinds of relationships? And where should the boundaries be? How does Obama, who says his mistakes with his friend Tony Rezko represent a lapse in judgment, show us he's grown?

I'm not suggesting we have to vet every friend. But it would be great if Obama could show us the instructions for how his new kind of politics works on this front. He has a chance now. And he could see this as a political opportunity, too, to outdo McCain, who has sometimes responded to questions about his ties to lobbyists by saying that we should trust that he's never done anything that would harm the public interest. The Johnson business is hardly the national crisis the Republican National Committee claims it is. But it's worse than the brushoff Obama is giving it."

Obama Defense of Johnson Raises More Questions

2008-06-11T14:20:00.002-05:00

From Washington Post's The Trail By Dan Balz on June 11, 2008:
"The most important decision Barack Obama will make between now and the November election is the selection of a vice presidential running mate. That makes all the more remarkable his effort Tuesday to suggest that the people he has put in charge of helping make the decision are somehow not really part of his campaign.

Obama is on the defensive over his selection of James A. Johnson, the former CEO of Fannie Mae, to help lead the vice presidential search process, a role he played for John F. Kerry four years ago.

Johnson is drawing fire over his jumbo home loans from Countrywide Financial, a major actor in the subprime mortgage mess, that may have been below market rates. The loans were first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Johnson also has drawn criticism in the past for his role in generous compensation packages to executives of companies on whose boards he served.

At a news conference in St. Louis yesterday, Obama was asked about Johnson and the fact that the candidate has often criticized the activities of Countrywide. Rather than defend his choice, he sought to suggest that the role Johnson is playing is only tangential to his campaign and that it is impossible for the campaign to vet the vetters.

"Jim Johnson has a very discrete task, as does Eric Holder [another member of the VP search team], and that is simply to gather up information about potential vice presidential candidates," Obama responded. "They're performing the job well. It's a volunteer, unpaid position and they're giving me information, and I will then exercise judgment in terms of who I'll want to select as a vice presidential candidate. So these are folks who are working for me, not people who I have assigned to a particular job in the future administration, and ultimately, my assumption is, is that this is a discrete task they'll be performing over the next two months."

The distinctions Obama tried to draw raise other questions. Is he suggesting that Johnson, who is not paid, is exempt from campaign strictures that might apply to the lowliest paid staffers? Is he suggesting that Johnson, while overseeing some of the most sensitive work underway in the campaign, will act merely as a transmission belt for information scooped up from any and all available sources? Is he suggesting he would not select Johnson for a role in his administration? Or that different rules would apply to those he might select than those who play central roles in the campaign?

Johnson can certainly defend himself, if he needs defending. He is a skilled and discreet Washington insider and veteran political powerbroker whose advice and judgment are valued by people like Obama and Kerry and scores of other powerful politicians and business executives. Nor are all the details of the Countrywide transactions known, although the Journal story said Johnson received a favorable interest rate. A lawyer for Johnson told the Journal that the loans were within standard practice in the industry, given someone "of Mr. Johnson's background."

All of this will be sorted out in the days ahead. But in the meantime, for Obama to suggest that Johnson is floating in some outer orbit of his campaign raises questions about the candidate's willingness to deal forthrightly with controversy. Presidential candidates long have turned to trusted and loyal advisers and potential administration officials to help run vice presidential search operations. Is there any reason to think Obama has not done the same?

The last two presidents tapped the advisers who oversaw the vice presidential selection process to play enormously important roles in their administration. Warren Christopher ran Bill Clinton's search process in 1992 and ended up as secretary of state. Dick Cheney ran the process for George W. Bush and in a remarkable twist ended up as the vice president -- perhaps the most powerful ever. It is not unreasonable to think that Johnson could end up playing a significant role in an Obama administration.

There are many ways Obama and his team could be responding to this, but they are doing what they've done in the past when turbulence hits, which is to hunker down, stick to their talking points and wait for the storm to pass, which it often has.

David Axelrod, Obama's senior strategist, echoed the candidate during a Wednesday morning interview on MSNBC. "He's a volunteer and the job is just to gather information, period," he said of Johnson. He went on to say, "He's not leading the vetting. There's a committee that's vetting these candidates. He's part of that committee."

It isn't clear whether the uproar over Johnson is a passing storm or a more serious problem for the Obama campaign. For now, the campaign has decided to treat it as a minor annoyance that will soon disappear. But the candidate's response has raised questions about the candidate himself that could well linger past the moment."

Obama's Stumbling Response to Countrywide-VP Search Controversy

2008-06-10T16:31:00.002-05:00

From abcnews Political Punch by Jake Tapper: "June 10, 2008 11:42 AM

ABC News' Sunlen Miller today asked Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, how he could "rail against Countrywide Financial Corp as an example of insiders and today's economy while your VP search is headed by someone who got questionable loans from Countrywide?" (This is an issue we wrote about earlier today.)

"And in addition," Miller continued, "another person on that same VP search team – Eric Holder -- has also been involved in the Marc Rich scandal."

"Well, look," Obama said, "the, the, I mean - first of all I am not vetting my VP search committee for their mortgages, so you’re gong to have to direct -- "

"But shouldn’t you?" asked Miller.

"Well, no," Obama said. "It becomes sort of a, um, I mean, this is a game that can be played - everybody, you know, who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships -- I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters. I mean, at some point, you know, we just asked people to do their assignments.

"Jim Johnson has a very discrete task," Obama continued, "as does Eric Holder, and that is simply to gather up information about potential vice presidential candidates. They are performing that job well, it’s a volunteer, unpaid position. And they are giving me information and I will then exercise judgment in terms of who I want to select as a vice presidential candidate.

"So this – you know, these aren’t folks who are working for me," Obama said. "They're not people you know who I have assigned to a job in a future administration and, you know, ultimately my assumption is that, you know, this is a discreet task that they're going to performing for me over the next two months."

You can watch some of this press conference HERE.

Did I read that correctly? Did Obama claim that Johnson and Holder -- two of the three people heading up his VP search committee -- aren't "work"ing for him?

I suppose that's because they're unpaid, but my stars, that's a lot of high-level, time-consuming sensitive effort to not be considered "working" for Sen. Obama.

- jpt

UPDATE: Sen. John McCain presidential campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds just pounced on this, saying “It’s preposterous for Senator Obama to claim that the leader of his VP selection committee isn’t working for him. Barack Obama has castigated Countrywide Financial, but now that Jim Johnson has been exposed for taking sweetheart deals from Countrywide’s CEO - Obama is in a state of denial. It’s that brand of weak leadership and hypocrisy that shows why Barack Obama has no record of taking courageous stands or making change in Washington.”

Obama's VP Screener has Ties to Controversial CountryWide Financial

2008-06-10T16:28:00.001-05:00

From abcnews Political Punch by Jake Tapper: June 10, 2008 9:36 AM

"That's the problem with bringing a Washington, DC, insider on board. They're sometimes covered with the goop from the insides of Washington.

What's the big deal about Obama campaign fundraiser/Vice President selection committee member Jim Johnson getting $7 million in loans from Countrywide Financial Corp.? (As the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday and the New York Sun's Josh Gerstein followed up on.).

Mortgages with rates below market averages, including "a $5 million home equity line of credit against a house in Ketchum, Idaho, a 5.25% loan of $1.3 million for a home in Palm Desert, Calif., and a 3.875% loan of $971,650 for a home in Washington, D.C." Mortgages set up through an informal program for friends of the company's CEO, Angelo Mozilo.

The problem is, Obama critics say, perception and hypocrisy. Obama had railed against Countrywide and Mozilo, and his campaign had impugned Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, for taking money from Countrywide lobbyists and for allowing a senior campaign adviser to simultaneously do work for Countrywide.

**

Campaigning in Pennsylvania in March, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, assailed mortgage giant Countrywide Financial Corp., for embodying the economic and political culture dominated by corporate lobbyists and insiders.

"Countrywide Financial," Obama said. (Watch HERE.) "This is a company that is as responsible as any firm in the country for the housing crisis we're facing today. When Countrywide Financial was sold a few months ago, its top two executives got a combined $19 million. These are the folks who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis….They get a $19 million bonus while people are at risk of losing their home. What's wrong with this picture?"

("They" are Mozilo and the president of Countrywide, David Sambol.)

Around that time the Obama campaign also criticized Clinton for affiliations with Countrywide.

In the Washington Post: "Obama aides also said Clinton is in no position to stiffen oversight after taking contributions from mortgage industry lobbyists, including funds from representatives of Countrywide, which has been at the center of the mortgage meltdown. 'If we're really going to crack down on the practices that caused the credit and housing crises, we're going to need a leader who doesn't owe these industries any favors,' campaign manager David Plouffe said."

On MSNBC, senior Obama strategist David Axelrod criticized how senior Clinton strategist Mark Penn had consulted for Countrywide. "She's stuck him with him through the revelation that his firm was working for Blackwater and working for Countrywide," Ax said (watch HERE.) "And, you know, so, it’s kind of stunning. Remember that the embassy said they weren't sure whether he was there as a representative of his firm or a representative of Senator Clinton. I mean, I think there are issues associated with this. I'm not - you (Keith Olbermann) can use the word hypocrisy, but there are certainly questions that arise from this."

**

Yesterday McCain told Fox News that the presence of Johnson on the Obama campaign "suggests a bit of a contradiction talking about how his campaign is going to be not associated with people like that. Clearly he is very much associated with that."

Shot back the Obama campaign, through spox Tommy Vietor, "It’s the height of hypocrisy for the McCain campaign to try and make this an issue when John Green, one of John McCain’s top advisors, lobbied for Ameriquest, which was one of the nation’s largest subprime lenders and a key player in the mortgage crisis. As President, Senator Obama will crack down on fraudulent lenders and bring real relief to Americans struggling in the grip of the housing crisis—the kind of change that works for the American people.”

The Obama campaign through talking points first reported at Mark Halperin's The Page call this story "overblown and irrelevant...This an overblown story about what appear to be completely above-board transactions. The Wall Street Journal even admits that they don’t have a story-noting that it’s 'impossible' to know the factors that went into these arrangements."

(Note: the Wall Street Journal admits no such thing.)

Continue the talking points: "Americans know that we face a critical choice in this race-and isn’t about the terms of an outside advisor’s loans. This race is about leadership, and which candidate will crack down on fraudulent lenders and bring real relief to Americans struggling in the grip of the housing crisis. Barack Obama has offered a real solution to the housing crisis-John McCain hasn’t."

Obama needs to Ask for Your Vote

2008-06-05T13:24:00.002-05:00

From RealClearPolitics.com By Marie Cocco on June 3, 2008:

"WASHINGTON -- Now that Barack Obama has secured the Democratic presidential nomination, I am thinking a lot about Bob Dole. Admittedly, this is one heck of a free association.

It seems impossible for the mind's eye to conjure up the image of the stodgy, former Senate Republican leader and consummate Washington insider while watching the young, charismatic outsider Obama bring his audiences to an emotional frenzy, as he did on Tuesday night when he clinched the 2008 nomination.

My thoughts turn to Dole not because he and Obama have much in common, though both served in the U.S. Senate, and both have Kansas roots. My mind wanders because one of Dole's most likable qualities was his habit on the campaign trail of closing each and every speech the same way: "I ask for your vote." This was the punch line to a story Dole would tell about a woman he'd known for years who revealed in a casual conversation that she'd not cast her ballot for him in one of his early campaigns. And why not? Because, the woman told Dole, he didn't ask.

The question for Obama now is not whether he will ask for the votes of Democrats who failed to support him in the primaries -- that is, roughly half the 35 million people who cast ballots. I am assuming he will. The puzzlement is whether he understands that one reason these voters remain so cool to his candidacy is that as yet, he has never really asked for their votes -- and at times has been downright dismissive of them.

Since the Iowa caucuses and more strikingly, since the New Hampshire primary, the clarity of Obama's problem attracting white, working-class voters has been apparent. It glared out from the exit polls before anyone had ever accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of playing racial politics; before the media narrative had taken hold that whites who voted for Clinton did so because of race; before Americans had ever heard about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The pattern was evident long before Obama was caught describing these voters as "bitter," and therefore clinging to guns, religion and an antipathy to people unlike themselves.

The contours of Obama's coalition even as the primaries closed -- indeed, the foundation of his strategy for securing the nomination -- was to stitch together the votes of enough college students and upscale, liberal activists with those of African-Americans to win the prize without the lunch-bucket crowd. This is why caucuses were crucial to building Obama's delegate tally and why Clinton's victories in big swing states, particularly in the Rust Belt, would not be enough.

But now Obama confronts this problem: These voters will have the final word on who will be elected president in November. "If you track blue-collar whites basically since 1980, they bounce all over the place," says Mike Lux, a longtime Democratic strategist who supports Obama. "They're the biggest swing group in the electorate."

It is true in congressional elections as well as in presidential years. When voters who lack a college degree -- a rough definition of the working class -- vote Democratic, Democrats tend to win. When they don't do so in great enough numbers, Democrats lose.

Obama still does not seem to speak their language, nor, toward the tail end of the primary season, did he seek to speak with them at all. His campaign plane barely touched down in West Virginia and Kentucky, where he ceded both states to Clinton. Why the snub? On Tuesday night, Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, was touting the emergence of a changing Democratic Party chock-full of new voters. But why convey, even inadvertently, such dismissiveness toward the old?

This is the sort of slight Clinton may have had in mind when she riffed on Tuesday night about "what does Hillary want?" One of the items on her list: "I want the nearly 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected, to be heard and no longer to be invisible."

Obama's own election-night speech was beautiful in its cadence, mesmerizing as political theater. Bob Dole, you can be certain, could never have delivered it. Still, the blue-collar and middle-class voters Obama needs to lift him to the White House aren't much interested in joining a movement. They want their meat-and-potatoes concerns to be met.

Obama now must earn their votes. He also needs to steal Dole's best line -- and finally ask for them."

Obama's Mentor Found Guilty of 16 Counts

2008-06-04T16:06:00.002-05:00

From Chicago Sun-Times on June 4, 2008: "Tony Rezko — the high-flying developer and fast-food magnate who was once a major campaign fund-raiser for Gov. Blagojevich and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and one of the governor’s closest advisers — is now a convicted felon.

A federal jury in Chicago convicted Rezko this afternoon on 16 of 24 charges he faced in a political corruption trial that cast a harsh light on the Blagojevich administration.
The verdict, reached after deliberations that spanned 12 days, could give federal authorities new ammunition in their probe of the governor’s campaign and his administration. They already have subpoenaed Blagojevich’s campaign fund, scrutinized his donors, looked into his wife’s real estate dealings and questioned potential witnesses about whether they were promised anything in return for campaign contributions, sources told the Sun-Times.

Now, facing the prospect of prison time in the corruption case, as well as two additional criminal trials on unrelated charges, Rezko is under pressure to cooperate with the continuing investigations.

Among those in the crowded courtoom as the verdict was read were Rezko’s family, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and Robert Grant, the agent-in-charge of the Chicago FBI office.

Rezko wore a crisp, taupe-colored suit and a red tie to court. It was the same tie he wore the first day of the trial. His two sons entered the courtroom with him, sporting new crewcuts.

Rezko’s two-month trial began March 3. Rezko, 52, of Wilmette, was charged with 24 counts that included taking kickbacks tied to state business, money-laundering, attempted extortion, mail fraud and wire fraud. Prosecutors aid he schemed with co-defendant Stuart Levine to get and split kickbacks from projects tied to two boards on which Levine sat.

Levine pleaded guilty and was the prosecution’s star witness. He testified for 15 days.

The jury began its deliberations three weeks ago, but met 12 times, and broke early for half days on three of those occasions.

Rezko lawyer Joseph Duffy had urged jurors in his closing argument not to convict Rezko based on Levine’s words, portraying him as an admitted “liar and thief and a drug user and a con-man.”

Levine testified that, in one case, he and Rezko agreed to split a $1.5 million kickback from a disputed $81 million proposal for a new hospital in Crystal Lake. The project needed a nod from a state hospital planning board that numbered Levine among its members. Levine also testified that, in another case, he promised to divert $3.9 million in kickbacks from business related to the state Teachers’ Retirement System, which handles teacher pensions. Levine also was a member of that state board.

Rezko still faces trial in a $10 million business-loan fraud case in Chicago federal court, as well as Las Vegas charges that he didn’t pay $450,000 in casino-gambling debts."

Obama's Friend of 20 Years, Father Pfleger Removed from Post

2008-06-03T17:30:00.003-05:00

From Chicago Sun-Times on June 3, 2008: "The firebrand pastor of St. Sabina parish was removed from his duties there Tuesday, according to a statement released by the Archdiocese of Chicago.

In the statement, Cardinal Francis George says he asked the Rev. Michael Pfleger, 59, to "take leave for a couple of weeks from his pastoral duties." The statement said Pfleger "does not believe this to be the right step at this time." "While respecting his disagreement, I have nevertheless asked him to use this opportunity to reflect on his recent statements and actions in the light of the Church's regulations for all Catholic priests," George said.

The recent statements in question were video clips broadcast on You Tube where Pfleger mocked Hillary Clinton for crying on the campaign trail. He suggested her tears were due to "white entitlement" leading Clinton to believe the Democratic nomination should go to her, not Barack Obama.

Pfleger has been a priest for 33 years, serving nearly all that time at St.

Sabina's in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood.

Fr. William Vanecko, Pastor of St. Kilian's parish, will be temporary administrator of St. Sabina's, the statement said.

"I ask the members of St. Sabina's parish to cooperate with him and to keep him and Fr. Pfleger in their prayers," the statement reads. "They are in mine."

Obama's Pastor Problems and Bombshell Michelle Tape

2008-06-03T13:32:00.002-05:00

From Wall Street Journal Political Diary
June 3, 2008
Pastor Problems
by John Fund
"The Rev. Michael Pfleger was a busy preacher on Sunday, May 25. In addition to his mocking criticism of Hillary Clinton in a sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ – which yesterday Barack Obama severed his ties with – he gave another sermon at his own church in which he issued the following healing statement: "Racism is still America's greatest addiction. I also believe that America is the greatest sin against God."

Mr. Pfleger had earlier apologized for his Clinton comments. It's unclear how he will react now that his second sermon has been made public. While the 59-year-old radical preacher is no longer affiliated with the Obama campaign, many are bound to ask why he was involved at all. Mr. Obama had frequently appeared at public events with Mr. Pfleger over the years and counted him as an adviser. Team Obama brought Mr. Pfleger to Iowa last year to host several interfaith forums on behalf of the campaign. As an Illinois state senator, Mr. Obama steered over $225,000 in taxpayer funding to Mr. Pfleger's church.

Now Team Obama is responding to the latest Pfleger outburst by once again saying the candidate is "deeply disappointed" in what was said.

The problem here is that voters may begin to detect a pattern in Mr. Obama's increasingly odd set of advisers and allies. Jeremiah Wright. William Ayers. Michael Pfleger. As the political blogger Jerry Fuhrman notes: "Traveling in this circle, is it any wonder that Obama's wife Michelle never found a reason to be proud of her country?"

Indeed, rumors are swirling on the campaign trail that a new video will soon surface featuring Mrs. Obama appearing on a panel with radical speakers during which she makes more controversial statements.
Mr. Obama has performed brilliantly in all but wrapping up the Democratic nomination. But he clearly has lost control of the storyline surrounding his Chicago advisers. If he doesn't move to address these problems more forthrightly, they will continue to haunt his campaign.
"

Obama's Irrelevant Apology

2008-06-03T13:08:00.001-05:00

From RealClearPolitics.com by Thomas Sowel: "It is amazing how seriously the media are taking Senator Barack Obama's latest statement about the latest racist rant from the pulpit of the church he has attended for 20 years. But neither that statement nor the apology for his rant by Father Michael Pfleger really matters, one way or the other. Nor does Senator Obama's belated resignation from that church.

For any politician, what matters is not his election year rhetoric, or an election year resignation from a church, but the track record of that politician in the years before the election.

Yet so many people are so fascinated by Barack Obama's rhetorical skills that they don't care about his voting record in the U.S. Senate, in the Illinois state senate, the causes that he has chosen to promote over the years, or the candidate's personal character and values, as revealed by his actions and associations.

Despite clever spin from Obama's supporters about avoiding "guilt by association," much more is involved than casual association with people like Jeremiah Wright and Father Pfleger.

In addition to giving $20,000 of his own money to Jeremiah Wright, as a state senator Obama directed $225,000 of the Illinois taxpayers' money for programs run by Father Pfleger. In the U.S. Senate, Obama earmarked $100,000 in federal tax money for Father Pfleger's work. Giving someone more than 300 grand is not just some tenuous, coincidental association.

Are Barack Obama's views shown by what he says during an election year or by what he has been doing for decades before?

The complete contrast between Obama's election year image as a healer of divisions and his whole career of promoting far-left grievance politics, in association with America-haters like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, are brushed aside by his supporters who talk about getting back to "the real issues."

There is nothing more real than a man's character and values. The track record of what he has actually done is far more real than anything he says, however elegantly he says it.

There is no office where the character and values of the person in that office matter more than the office of President of the United States. He holds the destiny of 300 million Americans in his hands and the fate of generations yet unborn.

That was never more true than today, with Iran moving ever closer to a nuclear bomb, while the United Nations wrings its hands and Congress fritters away its time on everything from steroids in sports to earmarks for pet projects back home.

Does anyone seriously consider what it would mean for Iran to have nuclear weapons? They are already supplying terrorists with the means of killing people in other countries, including killing American troops in Iraq.

Senator Obama has been downplaying the Iran threat, saying that they are just "a small country," not like the Soviet Union. The people who flew planes into the World Trade Center were an even smaller group than the Iranian government.

Half a dozen terrorists like that with nuclear weapons would be a bigger danger than the Soviet Union ever was, because the Soviet leaders were not suicide bombers. They could be deterred by the threat of what we would do to Moscow if they attacked New York.

You cannot deter suicidal fanatics. They are not going to stop unless they get stopped. Rhetoric is not going to do it.

Not only Senator Obama, but too many other Americans, seem to have no concept of the seething hatred that can lead people to destroy their own lives in order to lash out at others.

But terrorists have been doing this repeatedly, not only in Iraq and in Israel, but in other countries around the world-- including the United States on 9/11.

Have we already forgotten how the Palestinians were cheering in the streets over the news of the attack on the World Trade Center? How videotapes of sadistic beheadings of innocent people by terrorists have found an eager audience in the Middle East?

Are we going to leave our children hostages to hate-filled sadists with nuclear weapons? Are we to rely on Barack Obama's rhetoric to protect them?

Senator Obama's foreign policy seems to be somewhere between Rodney King's "Can't we just get along?" and Alfred E. Neuman's "What, me worry?"
"

White Women Take of Gloves on Obama

2008-06-03T12:54:00.001-05:00

From RealClearPolitics.com by Froma Harrop :"The woman who shouted "McCain in '08" at the Democratic rules committee was speaking for a multitude. After mounting for months, female anger over the choreographed dumping on Hillary Clinton and her supporters has exploded -- and party loyalty be damned. That the women are beginning to have a good time is an especially bad sign for Barack Obama's campaign.

"Obama will NOT get my vote, and one step more," Ellen Thorp, a 59-year-old flight attendant from Houston told me. "I have been a Democrat for 38 years. As of today, I am registering as an independent. Yee Haw!"

A new Pew Research Center poll points to a surging tide of fury, especially among white women. As recently as April, this group preferred Obama over the presumptive Republican John McCain by three percentage points. By May, McCain enjoyed an eight-point lead among white women.

What's dangerous for the Democratic Party is that, for many women, the eye of the storm has moved beyond Hillary or anything she does at this point. The offense has turned personal.

They are now in their own orbit, having abandoned popular Democratic Websites that reveled in crude anti-Hillary outpourings -- and established new ones on which they trade stories of the Obama people's nastiness.

But worse than the online malice has been the affronts to their faces.

Tara Wooters, a 39-year-old mother from Portland, Ore., told me that wearing a Hillary sticker around town has become an act of defiance. She recalls one young man telling her, "I'd rather vote for a black man than a menopausal woman."

"We don't hurl insulting, berating remarks at Obama supporters, or at Obama himself or his family," Debbie Head, a 40-year-old from Austin, Texas, complained to me.

Remember Peggy Agar? The women do. They can't stop talking about the Detroit TV reporter who asked Obama a serious question at a Chrysler factory -- "How are you going to help American autoworkers?" -- to which he answered, "Hold on a second, sweetie."

The women are angry at the ludicrous charges of racism leveled against Clinton by the Obama camp -- amplified in the supposedly respectable media -- and projected onto themselves.

Jean B. Grillo, an "over 50" writer in lower Manhattan, was pretty straightforward: "I am so tired as a white, ultra-liberal, McGovern-voting, civil-rights marching, anti-war fighting highly educated professional woman who totally supports Hillary Clinton to be attacked and vilified as racist and or dumb."

Shauna Morris, a 44-year-old lawyer from Largo, Fla., told me, "I am upper-middle class, and I still can't stand him -- and it has nothing to do with race, believe me."

The women talk of being taken for granted by a party leadership that never spoke out on some of the outrageous Hillary bashing -- and despite the close race, joined the early rush to crown Obama.

"Many of us feel slighted," said Lynn Eyrich Harvey, 76, from Los Gatos, Calif. "We feel that years of supporting the party is unimportant, that we are to sit down and shut up -- but be sure to vote Democratic in November."

Passions can change, one supposes, but the women I hear from do not see the rampant sexism, particularly toward older women, as isolated gaffes but as a systemic dismissal of them -- an enormous voting bloc that has been reliably Democratic.

"How Obama's campaign has treated Hillary will not be forgotten," Janet Rogers, 55, who runs a Bed and Breakfast in Medina, Ohio, wrote me. "I will vote for McCain if Hillary is not the nominee. My husband and friends all feel the same way."

Indeed. McCain in '08 has suddenly become a more likely prospect."

CNN Finally Does a Little Reporting on Obama's Chicago Past

2008-06-02T00:05:00.003-05:00

Democratic Party Changes the Rules After The Game

2008-06-01T23:46:00.002-05:00

Turkana writes in TheLeftCoaster.com: "The DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee has made its decision about the Florida and Michigan delegates. I'm not going to bother with the details, because the vast majority of those who have been screaming about the roooooolz have no actual understanding of them, anyway. So, I'm going to keep this simple and straightforward: those of you who have been screaming about the rules, please show me where the rules provide for the DNC to simply allocate pledged delegates to a candidate who was not by any of the absurd allocation rules voted those pledged delegates. I don't care about what you think was fair, or what you want people to believe someone once said about the two states and their alleged rules violations, or who you think has won or is more electable or is nicer or more honest or whatever some of you love to rant about, no matter whether or not it relates to the actual posted topic. I want you to show me the rule that says a candidate who was not voted pledged delegates from a state can simply be awarded pledged delegates by the DNC. Because the rules were changed, today, in the middle of the game, but not by Hillary Clinton or her supporters.

Anyone who truly believes that our nominating process is honest and democratic has no idea what they're talking about. That doesn't mean that we won't have a legitimate nominee, because when the party is run by adherents of Calvinball, there is no such thing as legitimacy or illegitimacy. But legitimate does not mean democratic. Which the Democratic Party is not."

Fears grow that Obama can't win

2008-06-01T11:32:00.000-05:00

Analysts believe white working class Democrats will defect to McCain if Clinton is not the nominee
Paul Harris in New York
The Observer, Sunday June 1 2008: "With senator Barack Obama poised this week to clinch his party's nomination for President, there are growing fears in some quarters that the Democratic party may not be choosing its strongest candidate to beat Republican John McCain.

Senator Hillary Clinton has been making that argument for weeks. Now some recent polls and analysis, looking particularly at vital battleground states and support among white voters, have bolstered her case - even as Obama looks certain to become the nominee.

Obama supporters reject this argument and point to his record of boosting Democratic voter turnout, especially among the young. But sceptics in the party, already nervous about nominating Obama after the furore over outspoken pastor Jeremiah Wright, are growing increasingly concerned. 'There is an element of buyer's remorse in some areas. The question is whether it gets really strong now or in September - or even after the election is over, if he loses,' said Steve Mitchell, head of political consultancy Mitchell Research.

Another boost to Clinton's case came late last week after a pro-Obama preacher gave a race-tinged rant against her at Obama's church in Chicago. In a recent sermon Michael Pfleger - a long-term Obama backer who is white - mocked Clinton as an entitled white person angry at a black man having beaten her. His angry, red-faced speech, in which he mimicked Clinton weeping, was played repeatedly across American cable channels and the internet.

The news sent shock waves through Democratic circles; many had hoped Obama had put 'pastor problems' behind him. 'It is more of the same problem as Wright. It reinforces the image among some voters that Obama does not share their values,' said Mitchell.

The uproar also lent a disturbingly antagonistic tone to scenes in Washington DC where Clinton and Obama supporters gathered yesterday outside a party rules meeting called to resolve the problem of the disputed Michigan and Florida primaries, which Clinton claims as victories. Clinton supporters chanted 'Count our votes!' and waved placards and banners. Clinton wants those states' delegations seated at the Denver convention, even though they broke party rules by holding early contests.

Obama is now to some extent limping to the finishing line. Clinton's refusal to bow out even though her odds of victory have become almost impossible has seen her win several of the most recent contests. In fact, since 4 March, Clinton has won around half a million more votes than Obama. That run of victories should easily continue today when Puerto Rico goes to the polls, and could even extend to the final primaries - South Dakota and Montana - which vote on Tuesday. Obama had been expected to win there, but Clinton has been campaigning furiously and it could be close.

Clinton has been making the case for several months, as her support has grown stronger among white working class voters, that those voters will not support Obama in a general election. By contrast, experts believe Obama's core - educated Democrats and blacks - will remain loyal to the party no matter who the nominee is. There is strong data to back that up, especially from recent votes in West Virginia and Kentucky where large proportions of Clinton voters said they would not back Obama in November.

There is also a growing fear that many of the women backing Clinton are turning against Obama. Clinton and her supporters have controversially accused their rival, and the media, of being misogynistic in the last few weeks of the race. A recent Pew Poll showed Obama's support among white women collapsing from 56 per cent to 43 per cent.

But the electoral fact remains the same. The dramatic Obama vs Clinton contest is now down to a few hundred uncommitted party 'superdelegates', who are under huge pressure to make their decisions in the next few days. Senior party figures, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have been working privately to convince them to make that decision as soon as possible, ideally this week. With Obama's delegate lead unassailable, the vast majority are almost certain to come over to his side.

Republican analysts, meanwhile, are surprised about how healthy their party's prospects look in a year when almost all indicators suggested they should lose. McCain remains competitive against Obama. He even leads in some key states. Indeed, some research predicts he could romp home against Obama.

It is that prospect, Clinton supporters say, that leads them to keep fighting. They point to Obama's performance in North Carolina as a bellwether: it was his strong win there earlier this month that dealt an almost fatal blow to Clinton's chances. Yet, two weeks after that win, polls showed Clinton easily outperformed Obama there when measured against McCain. 'Clinton has a very strong argument that she is a stronger candidate against McCain. It is just that it has fallen on deaf ears,' said Mitchell.

About this articleClose This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday June 01 2008 on p37 of the World news section. It was last updated at 00:00 on June 01 2008."

The Untold Story of How the GOP Rigged Florida and Michigan

2008-05-29T11:01:00.001-05:00

»
by: Wayne Barrett, The Huffington Post

Monday 31 March 2008

"Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean came out of hiding last week to announce that there is no reason to rush to resolve the fate of Florida and Michigan. He said he was confident that these delegations, disqualified in 2007 by Dean's own Rules Committee, would be seated at the August convention - but, apparently, only after a nominee is chosen, which he predicted would occur by July 1. This modern-day Metternich, whose two-fisted handling of this two-state controversy has already had more impact on the 2008 race than his candidacy did on the race in 2004, is promising to mediate the dispute once it's already settled.

The Dean plan is that these two swing states - big enough to decide the nomination or general election - will eventually be granted "virtual" seats at the convention because, as Dean imaginatively put it in an AP interview, "the campaigns believe that kind of deal is premature right now." Since one campaign (Hillary Clinton's) was amenable to redoes, even financing Michigan's, and the other campaign (Barack Obama's) opposed every feasible proposition, it is, in a strange way, true that the two sides weren't collectively ready for a deal.

In all the buzz about the media's pro-Obama tilt, its indifference to his resistance to including these states in the "actual" nominating process is its most disturbing favor, especially since this brand of "conventional politics," as Obama would put it, flies in the face of his contention that "the people" should pick the nominee. Obama's only proposal so far has been to split the delegates evenly, just like he and Michelle parcel out Christmas presents to their two daughters.

Of course, the column inches and moments of air time spent on how and why these two states and their 366 delegates have been banished adds up to less than the attention devoted to, say, the Wyoming caucus, where a 2,066-vote Obama margin gave him a big enough delegate boost to virtually cancel out Hillary Clinton's 329,000-vote margin in the five March races.

The body count that the mainstream media has regurgitated out of Florida and Michigan is that 2.3 million Democrats voted in primaries that broke the rules, leaving the DNC with no choice but to level both villages, even if the collateral damage might include the party's prospects of carrying those disenfranchised states in November. The DNC and the MSM appear to have simultaneously concluded that even Clinton's 300,000-vote win in Florida, where both candidates competed on a level playing field, shouldn't be counted in the popular vote tally, a calculation that appears nowhere in DNC rules and turns 1.7 million Democratic voters into ghosts.

The irony is that the drumbeat for Clinton's withdrawal - coming on the heels of her recent wins and right before what may be her biggest in Pennsylvania - is rooted in the collapse of the effort to redo Michigan and Florida. The theory is that she should quit because there is no way she can win, and that there is no way she can win because two states she could win, at least one of which she actually did win, will not be counted until she gets out. Barack Obama would thus become the nominee - not because of an honestly earned if precariously narrow lead in the final national vote, but because of two elections he would not let happen.

If that sounds like a curious way to end a nominating contest that 30 million to 33 million voters will participate in before it's done, even stranger is that the DNC is following only some of its rules - and that the real culprits who caused this debacle are Republicans, who are now relishing the catfight they provoked.

Dems Take the Hit for the GOP

The Republican role is not some irrelevant anecdote. The DNC is charged, under its rules, to determine whether the Democrats in a noncompliant state made a "good faith" effort to abide by the party's electoral calendar, and to impose the full weight of its available penalties, namely a 100 percent takedown of a state's delegation, only if Democratic leaders in that state misbehaved. So the fact that it was Republicans who fomented the move-up of primaries in both these states to dates out-of-line with the DNC calendar is at the heart of the matter.

The rules also demand that the DNC's 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee conduct "an investigation, including hearings if necessary" into these matters. The purpose of such a probe is to figure out if Democratic leaders in a state that did move up "took all provable, positive steps and acted in good faith" to either "achieve legislative changes" to bring a state into compliance or to "prevent legislative changes" that took a state out of compliance. A DNC spokesman could not point to any real "investigation" the party conducted of the actions of "relevant Democratic party leaders or elected officials," as the rules put it. All that happened with Florida, for example, was that two representatives of the state party made a pitch for leniency immediately before the Rules Committee voted for sanctions.

What a probe might have discovered was a rationale for doing, at worst, what the RNC did to its own overeager primary schedulers in the same two states - cutting the delegations by half. That's precisely the penalty specified in DNC rules, but the committee, exercising powers it certainly had the legal discretion to exercise, upped the ante as far as it could. In a bizarre reversal of public policy, the RNC, surely aware that the principal miscreants in both states were Republicans, applied a sane yet severe sanction. The Democrats opted for decapitation.

The presumption of much of the national coverage about Michigan, to start with, has been that the Dems did this one to themselves - a presumption based, in large part, on Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm's endorsement of a January 15 vote, a date far ahead of the anticipated February 9 primary. All Clinton-backer Granholm did, however, was a sign a bill. The bill originated in a Republican-controlled Senate and passed by a 21-to-17 straight party-line vote - with every Democrat casting a no vote.

Florida's Republican governor, Charlie Crist, is, like Granholm, seen as a prime player behind the state's acceleration of the primary calendar. But Crist isn't half the Florida story; Marco Rubio, a Jeb Bush protégé who runs the nearly 2-to-1 Republican Florida House, drove that bill through the legislature like it was a tax cut limited by law to top GOP donors.

Indeed, the tracks under this train wreck trace back, in each case, to Republican maneuvers in state legislatures, political no- man's-lands for all who've blithely dismissed the disenfranchisement of the millions of registered Florida and Michigan Democrats.

Michigan: Republicans on the Bench and in the Statehouse

Let's start with Michigan, whose Democratic chair Mark Brewer is a member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the national party and in that capacity voted to sanction Florida - a pretty good indication that he wasn't a great champion of challenging the DNC calendar in his own state. Brewer in fact declared the Republican-sponsored move-up bill unacceptable from the start.

When it weaved its way through the divided Michigan legislature last August, only 29 of the state's 75 Democratic legislators (in the House and Senate) supported it. A week after the bill cleared the Senate over unified Democratic objections, these 29 Democrats in the House voted for it, precisely the same number that voted against it or abstained (22 and seven). It was 38 Republican yes votes in the House that made it law. While Democrats like the governor, U.S. Senator Carl Levin, and DNC committeewoman Debbie Dingell favored moving the primary date up, it was a Republican state senator, Cameron Brown, who proposed the January 15 date. Levin and Dingell only supported that date when they concluded that the DNC was allowing other states, like New Hampshire, to defy the party's prescribed schedule while threatening Michigan with sanctions if it shifted its date.

And Levin and Dingell certainly weren't calling the shots for the Democrats in the legislature. Andy Dillon, the Democratic House speaker who'd voted for the move-up initially, walked away from the early primary in November, almost a month before the DNC voted to strip the state of its delegation. When two court rulings found the move-up bill unconstitutional for technical reasons, giving Democratic state legislators who initially voted for it a chance to reconsider, they took it. Dillon and his House Democrats refused to support a bill that would've protected the January 15 date from threatened judicial cancellation by correcting the technical deficiency. The Senate, again voting along party lines, quickly adjusted the bill to the court decisions, but Dillon refused to allow a vote in the House. All of this suggests a "good faith" effort to block an early primary - as required by DNC rules.

Had not the state's highest court overturned the earlier decisions by a 4-to-3 vote just days before absentee ballots had to be mailed out, the early primary would not have been held. Significantly, all four of the judges who voted to allow the election were Republicans, and two of the judges who voted against it were Democrats.

In fact, it was a Democratic political consultant who brought the lawsuit that almost killed the primary. While the Republican state party filed an amicus brief in support of the bill, the Democrats took a barrage of editorial potshots in the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit News, the Flint Journal, and other papers for refusing to stand up for the state's interest. Salivating over all the attention and revenue that would come with an early primary, the papers accused Democrats of "withering," "carrying water for presidential candidates," and "blocking a bill to rescue the election." State GOP chair Saul Anuzis declared: "The Michigan Democrats and the House Democrats in particular appear willing to blow up the primary for petty, political, selfish, self-preservationist motives, to protect their hides."

Even before the court rulings, 19 Democrats in the House co-sponsored an October bill to repeal the one that authorized the election, including eight members who'd initially voted for the January 15 date. That bill was doomed from the outset since the Senate would never agree, but it was a measure of how fiercely Democrats had come to oppose the early primary. The ultimate result in Michigan, with a triumphant Clinton the only major candidate on the ballot, is, without a doubt, a Republican result.

In Florida, Crushed by a Republican Supermajority

The Republicans don't just control both houses of the Florida legislature. Their combined 103-to-57 majority allowed them to dictate the terms of the bill that moved the primary to January 29. It is true that all but one of the state's Democratic legislators supported the bill. But a closer look reveals that vote to be more an indication of a realistic and productive compromise with the ruling Republicans than any intent to breach Democratic rules.

Florida's leading news outlets, just like Michigan's, converted an early primary into a matter of state patriotism, and that point of view, coupled with the mathematical inability to even slow the Republican push, forced Democrats to roll over.

Another factor attracting Democratic votes in the legislature for the bill was one the DNC should certainly appreciate. Governor Crist threw a reform long sought by Florida Democrats into the bill: a mandatory paper trail for all votes cast in future elections. "The Democrats have been fighting for a paper trail bill since 2000," said State Senator Nan Rich, "and Governor Bush never would support it. So finally we got a governor who was willing to support it and it ended up connected to the early primary bill. That was unfortunate. If the paper trail hadn't been there, I believe we Democrats would've all voted no. Still, if all the Republicans had voted one way and all the Democrats had voted another way, the bill would've passed." (This Christmas tree bill - whose title alone was 154 lines long - had something special for everyone. It would even enable Crist to run as John McCain's vice presidential candidate, revoking a ban against state officials running for federal office.)

But "the driving force behind the move," as the Tampa Tribune put it, was 36-year-old House speaker Marco Rubio, who announced that pushing the primary up was a top goal before he took over the House at the start of 2006. Branded a "Jeb acolyte" by the Florida press, Rubio, a Cuban from West Miami married to a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader, was given a gold samurai sword by Bush in a passing-of-the-conservative-mantle gesture in 2005. Rubio is a member of a wired Florida law firm whose chairman is so close to Bush that he rushed down to the county jail when the governor's daughter Noelle was arrested on a drug-related charge. When Rubio's term as speaker ends later this year, he is slated to go to work for a think tank headed by a Jeb Bush business associate. The primary bill originated with Rubio and ultimately passed the House unanimously - but only after Democrats made what they knew would be a losing effort to alter it.

Martin Kiar and Mary Brandenburg, House Democrats who were cosponsors of the bill, tried to amend it. "We offered an amendment on the floor shifting the date to one within the Democratic party rules," said Brandenburg. "The Democrats all voted for it, and Republicans all voted against it." Actually, the Kiar/Brandenburg proposal did not completely comply with DNC directives, but it was a signal of the concerns Florida Dems had about the move-up legislation. Said Kiar: "No matter what, whether we supported it or cosponsored it, the Republican majority was going to push it through."

When the DNC sanctioned Florida, it critiqued the efforts of the Democratic leaders in both houses, suggesting that they'd merely gone through the motions of feigned opposition. But the House cosponsor of the bill, David Rivera, literally laughed on the floor at the Democratic amendment, according to the House Democrats. Going through the motions was all the outgunned Democrats could do. A DNC critic of Florida Democrats was reduced in a recent New York Times op-ed to citing remarks supporting the early primary made by state leaders after it was a fait accompli, likely because she couldn't make a case about their conduct before the Republican legislature set the date.

Some Democrats Are More Equal Than Others

The Democratic national committeeman who introduced the motion on the party's Rules Committee to deprive Florida of all its delegates - a precursor to the Michigan decision a few months later - was Ralph Dawson, a New York lawyer who was Howard Dean's Yale roommate and an advisor to Dean's 2004 campaign. Dawson's role was seen as a signal of Dean's appetite for a kick-ass rebuke.

As much as the DNC tries to pretend otherwise, it had choices. In fact, it later showed understandable leniency to three other states who changed their primary dates-New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina - seating all their delegates. The tough love treatment was reserved for Michigan and Florida.

The national party had tried - before New Hampshire's case wound up on its docket - to leave the impression that zero tolerance was automatic once violations of the schedule occur. Back in June, a DNC spokeswoman, for example, told the Associated Press that neither Dean nor the Rules Committee "has the power to waive the rules for any state," explaining that "these rules can be changed only by the full DNC." Yet a few months later, on the same day that the Rules Committee stripped Michigan of its delegates, it waived the rules for New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina, each of which had also moved up their primaries.

Though Dawson and others on Rules now say, as they did in recent interviews, that states whose contests were always scheduled before February 5 were free to shift dates without sanction, that's not what the delegate selection rules adopted in 2006 say. Those rules provided an automatic 50 percent loss of delegates for any state party that moved its contest to any day "prior to or after the dates" spelled out by the DNC.

That's why Rules powerhouse Donna Brazile said she would "grudgingly support the waiver," warning New Hampshire shortly before the December committee vote that "the days of 'privilege' may end soon."

Not only did "first-primary-or-die" New Hampshire switch from January 22 to January 8, it moved ahead of Nevada, whose January 19 caucus had been deliberately scheduled by the DNC to precede New Hampshire's. But New Hampshire's Democrats got a DNC waiver because their back was up against the wall, due to a decision by the South Carolina Republican Party to move its primary up to January 19. That unilateral decision - which the Carolina Democrats declined to join in - forced New Hampshire's hand. The waiver was, in other words, a reasonable response to a Republican provocation. What's unclear is why one Republican provocation is more equal than another. (Once New Hampshire moved, Iowa had to adjust as well. South Carolina Democrats ultimately made a minor switch for other reasons.)

While the DNC implicitly challenged the "good faith" of the Democratic opposition to the Republican moves in Florida and Michigan, it seemed far less interested in gauging what New Hampshire Democrats were doing. The head of the South Carolina GOP actually traveled to Concord, New Hampshire, to announce the decision to move his state's primary up. He stood in the Executive Council chambers of the statehouse with Secretary of State William Gardner and Representative James Splaine, a Democrat who led the legislative efforts to protect the state's first-primary tradition.

Democratic governor John Lynch was at a funeral when the press conference occurred, but his spokesman said Lynch "has faith in Bill Gardner" and "supports whatever Bill decides." And Lynch, who had already derided the DNC decision to put Nevada ahead of New Hampshire, was clearly pleased that the acceleration of the South Carolina Republican primary date was giving Gardner all the justification he needed to squeeze back ahead of Nevada. New Hampshire officials even called the maneuver an "alliance" with South Carolina Republicans. Gardner promptly chose a new date 11 days before Nevada, defying the schedule that the DNC had issued.

The RNC, a veritable model of consistency in these matters, stripped New Hampshire of half its delegates over the date change, even though it was unmistakably prompted by the Republican maneuver in South Carolina. But Howard Dean and company held their fire this time, examining extenuating circumstances with an understanding they refused to extend to Michigan and Florida. In the end, they changed the rules in the middle of the game, throwing the book at some states and discarding it altogether for others.

The inconsistency on New Hampshire aside, DNC officials have come up with one other argument for why they were so tough on Michigan and Florida. Dean's spokesman Damien LaVera said in an email to Huffington Post that, despite the unmistakable references in the rules to testing the "good faith" of a state's "elected officials" and examining a state's "legislative" efforts, the DNC's rules "apply to a state party plan, not state legislatures or elected officials." LaVera insisted that the only standard their Rules Committee judges compliance by is what state parties do, and that the parties in Michigan and Florida had options other than the state-designated primaries. A DNC official claimed that the Michigan party had sponsored so-called "firehouse caucuses" in the past and could have set their own date and done them again, ignoring the state-run January 15 primary. The Florida party, the DNC source added, was "offered $880,000" by the DNC to host their own caucus on a date in compliance with the DNC schedule and chose to participate, instead, in the state-financed primary, a "bad faith" decision.

But Florida party officials said the $880,000 would've only covered the cost of 150 caucus sites, with the capacity to draw a maximum of 150,000 voters out of the state's 4 million Democrats. "It wasn't a real offer," a spokesman said. Michigan's party would have had to self-finance caucuses, which, even with added Internet and mail voting, drew only 165,000 voters in 2004, a fraction of the 600,000 who voted in 2008. Stripping both states of their full delegations because the state parties in each refused to run these limited-participation caucuses-which would have occurred a couple of weeks after an official, state-financed primary - is a bit like punishing Democrats because they like democracy.

Obama's Backers - and the Road to the Nomination

The DNC critique of Florida's noncompliance included a reference to the fact that a Democratic state senator was the initial sponsor of the move-up bill in that house, which was seen as a sign of eagerness on the part of some Democratic leaders to break the rules. That senator was Jeremy Ring, an Obama supporter. Obama even named Ring's 2006 campaign manager to run his statewide Florida effort. Ring was such a champion of the early primary that when Obama, like all the other candidates, supported the sanctions and agreed not to campaign in the state, Ring withdrew his endorsement.

When Governor Crist signed the bill at a ceremony in West Palm Beach, the man at his side was Bob Wexler, the chair of Obama's Florida campaign. Wexler wasn't there because he wanted to defy Howard Dean. He was there for the same reason that almost all the Democrats in the legislature voted for the bill. He is the state's leading foe of paperless voting systems and filed two suits against them. He saw the bill as the governor's fulfillment of a campaign pledge "to make Florida a model state for the nation in terms of our election system."

Similarly, all three of the House Democrats who endorsed Obama - Coleman Young II, Bert Johnson, and Aldo Vagnozzi - voted in favor of the bill to push the Michigan date forward. When Obama later took his name off the Michigan ballot, Young and Johnson became sponsors of the bill to cancel the election they had just voted to authorize.

The support of Obama's principal backers in both states for the move-up bills was hardly consequential, but it does raise questions about his current opposition to any counting or recounting of these states. If bad faith is the DNC's standard, Obama doesn't have to look too far to find alleged examples of it, and to recognize that the national party might be unfairly characterizing what the leaders in these states did.

Imagining a convention without delegations from these large and politically volatile states has become the nightmare of every thinking Democrat. Polls indicate that a nominee who refuses to count the 1.7 million Floridians who voted in a level-playing field primary, or to find a way for them to vote again, will wind up wasting whatever time and money he or she spends there in the general election campaign. As close as the general election vote in Michigan has been in recent years, even a small margin of voters disgruntled by the state's Democratic lockout could push it into the GOP column. Obama's stonewalling about both states may offer short-term advantages, but two delegations denied seating because of his maneuvers may well be seen as contrary to his populist rationale now - and crippling to his candidacy in November.

Ed Pozzuoli, the Republican chair of Broward County, recalls the Florida showdown of 2000, when he says Democrats taunted Republicans, insisting that they should "let every vote count." He gloats now: "I guess that's changed in eight years." He's hardly the only one chortling over the likely consequence of what he calls the "draconian" Democratic spiking of his state's delegation.

What started out years ago as Howard Dean's 50-state organizing strategy for the national party now looks like a 48-state electoral one. Michigan and Florida could become the Ralph Nader of 2000, the great regret that delivers the country once again to four years of darkness.

--------

Research assistance by: Kimberly Chin, Shaunna Murphy, Shea O'Rourke, Marguerite A. Suozzi, Adam Weinstein and John Wilwol.

Research support for this article was provided by the Nation "

Florida and Michigan and Obama's Corrupt Campaign

2008-05-28T16:02:00.001-05:00

From Tylormarsh.com on may 28, 2008 by Marc Rubin: "Nothing is more detrimental to the country as a whole than political corruption in any guise. So the statement issued by Barack Obama the other day regarding Florida and Michigan should be seen for what it is: a politician willing to engage in whatever undermining of the democratic process it takes to achieve his political ambition.

In his statement, Obama said that he would support a solution regarding the seating of the Florida and Michigan delegates "as long as it was fair to both sides". This is Obama intentionally ignoring the fact that the elections and the results they produced were already fair to both sides.

The fairness of those elections and their results are not and never have been in dispute.The validity of those elections have never been in doubt. And both have been certified by their respective secretaries of state.

The only issue surrounding those elections, is whether the delegates won by each candidate as a result of those primaries will be seated and allowed to participate in the nomination process. The entire controversy is an internal DNC dispute involving a scheduling conflict that had nothing to do with Barack Obama. No one was put at any disadvantage because of either state's decision to move their primaries up.

The decision as to whether to allow them to be seated relates only to the threatened punishment by the DNC against the state parties for moving the primaries to an earlier date. It had nothing to do with validity of those elections and Obama has no argument regarding the validity of the results. He was at no disadvantage, the results are valid and accurate and everyone including Obama knows it.

The DNC threat to ban the delegates was simply stupid from day one. And for journalists who have been in the tank for Obama and the Obama campaign itself, to say Florida and Michigan broke the rules so they should not count, is simply all of them sticking their noses into DNC business. None of them work for the DNC. it's an interna party matter about scheduling and whether any of them think the DNC rules are good or bad is irrelevant to what the DNC decides to do. Yet Obama and these journalists continue to say that these states broke the rules. As if they have anything to say about the DNC rules with regards to anything.

If the DNC rules were that candidates had to hop on one leg 10 times in that state without losing their balance or they lose their delegates and Clinton didn't do it what would Obama and these journalists say? She should lose her delegates because she broke the rules?

What the DNC threatened is just as stupid and the Obama camp and journalists who insist on talking about "the rules" are just as stupid when they try and justify not seating Florida and Michigan because they broke "the rules".

If the DNC decides on a punishment that is more in keeping with a petty scheduling conflict instead of one that completely subverts the nominating process for President of the United States, there is no reason for both elections not to stand exactly as they are. Its all or nothing. There is no compromise that makes any sense.As soon as you start to compromise the very democratic process itself everyone loses.

So when Obama says he wants a "fair" resolution what he really means in his patented passive aggressive style is that he wants an unfair resolution. Unfair to Clinton, since the only fair resolution is to seat all the delegates as per the results of the elections. The elections were fair. The only additional fairness needed is to count them.

Every decision and statement coming out of a presidential campaign is the product of people sitting in a room discussing and dissecting every possible angle, going through every possible scenario, and parsing every word used in a statement. So, when Obama issues a statement about wanting a resolution to Florida and Michigan "as long as its fair" , we know this is not the wail in the wilderness of a lost and wronged soul staggering through the forest of an unfair world, pleading for fairness as rain pelts his face and tears stream down his cheeks. It's a well thought out deviously political calculation designed, not to be fair but to be unfair to Clinton under the guise of fairness, since the only really fair resolution is as is obvious, to seat all the delegates exactly as dictated by the results of the election.

If the DNC wants to punish anyone let them punish the party leaders and ban them from the convention not delegates representing the 2.7 million who voted.

When it comes to Michigan, Obama still tries to brazenly argue that his name wasn't on the ballot. He tries to get away with this dishonesty only because he knows the news media he has in pocket will let him get away with it.

Here is what happened in Michigan as reported in the Des Moines Register in October of 2007.

Obama's internal polling showed he was going to get get landslided by Clinton in Michigan. His own polling had him behind by 20 points. So as a political calculation and to pander to Iowa voters in the upcoming caucus he made a gratuitous public gesture of taking his name off the ballot in Michigan, both because he knew he was going to lose big and to curry favor with Iowans and their first in the nation status. But at the same time he was making a deal with the Michigan Democratic Party for his name to be represented in the primary by the line "Uncommitted" and to have that publicized.

John Edwards joined the uncommitted line and every single voter in Michigan knew long before election day that to vote for Obama or Edwards you voted the "uncommitted line. It was well publicized and everyone knew it. And the proof that they knew it is that "uncommitted" received 40.7% of the vote, the second highest total, while Clinton received 56%. The rest went to the other candidates on the ballot (uninformed journalists and Obama supporters have often said Clinton was the only name on the ballot. Not so).

But Obama topped that display about six weeks ago when he floated the idea that he and Clinton split the delegate count in Florida and Michigan 50-50 as a way of resolving the problem. In other words he wanted delegates that didn't belong to him. This was an attempt at a political mugging. He wanted delegates that weren't his, delegates the voters clearly said were meant for Clinton and delegates they clearly didn't want him to have. It was about as brazen an attempt to to corrupt the political process by a candidate for high office as has been seen in recent memory.

If Clinton had made such a proposal the likes of Andrew Sullivan, Betsy Reed, Roger Simon, the ethically and racially challenged Richard Kim, Olbermann, Arianna Huffington and every other journalist who has corrupted every journalistic principle in existence in supporting Obama, perhaps as a way of somehow absolving themselves of their own racial issues, would have accused Clinton of the lowest form of political bottom scraping.

Yet Obama was ready willing and able to do just that, to take delegates he didn't deserve which is nothing short of stealing the voices of the people he pretends to champion except when those voices interfere with his personal ambition. And this coming from the side that has accused Clinton of doing anything to win.

Given everything that has gone on, the cheap shots of the Obama campaign from his hit and run tactics with his foreign policy advisor calling Clinton " a monster" and then quickly resigning ( as if that was a spontaneous outburst), Richardson and Leahy's pathetically transparent and orchestrated good cop/bad cop routine where they call for Clinton to get out of the race and then have Obama come along, knight in shining armor that he is, and proclaim that she "should stay in the race as long as she wants", ( as if he had to anything to say about it), and then playing the race card in South Carolina, there is a case to be made that Barack Obama is the most politically dishonest, corrupt and underhanded politician since Richard Nixon. He even has his own Helen Gahagan Douglas in the person of Alice Palmer.

The joke pinned on Richard Nixon in the Fifties and Sixties for his political underhandedness and dishonesty was "Would you buy a used car from this man"? Well, would you buy a used car from Barack Obama? Not if you lived in Florida or Michigan. Maybe not if you live anywhere.
"

More Obama Gaffes

2008-05-28T15:45:00.000-05:00

Obama's Lobbyist Connections

2008-05-28T15:29:00.000-05:00

Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 11:06 AM ET May 24, 2008
"When Illinois utility Commonwealth Edison wanted state lawmakers to back a hefty rate hike two years ago, it took a creative lobbying approach, concocting a new outfit that seemed devoted to the public interest: Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity, or CORE. CORE ran TV ads warning of a "California-style energy crisis" if the rate increase wasn't approved—but without disclosing the commercials were funded by Commonwealth Edison. The ad campaign provoked a brief uproar when its ties to the utility, which is owned by Exelon Corp., became known. "It's corporate money trying to hoodwink the public," the state's Democratic Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn said. What got scant notice then—but may soon get more scrutiny—is that CORE was the brainchild of ASK Public Strategies, a consulting firm whose senior partner is David Axelrod, now chief strategist for Barack Obama.

Last week, Obama hit John McCain for hiring "some of the biggest lobbyists in Washington" to run his campaign; Obama's aides say their candidate, as a foe of "special interests," has refused to take money from lobbyists or employ them. Neither Axelrod nor his partners at ASK ever registered as lobbyists for Commonwealth Edison—and under Illinois's loose disclosure laws, they were not required to. "I've never lobbied anybody in my life," Axelrod tells NEWSWEEK. "I've never talked to any public official on behalf of a corporate client." (He also says "no one ever denied" that Edison was the "principal funder" of his firm's ad campaign.)

But the activities of ASK (located in the same office as Axelrod's political firm) illustrate the difficulties in defining exactly who a lobbyist is. In 2004, Cablevision hired ASK to set up a group similar to CORE to block a new stadium for the New York Jets in Manhattan. Unlike Illinois, New York disclosure laws do cover such work, and ASK's $1.1 million fee was listed as the "largest lobbying contract" of the year in the annual report of the state's lobbying commission. ASK last year proposed a similar "political campaign style approach" to help Illinois hospitals block a state proposal that would have forced them to provide more medical care to the indigent. One part of its plan: create a "grassroots" group of medical experts "capable of contacting policymakers to advocate for our position," according to a copy of the proposal. (ASK didn't get the contract.) Public-interest watchdogs say these grassroots campaigns are state of the art in the lobbying world. "There's no way with a straight face to say that's not lobbying," says Ellen Miller, director of the Sunlight Foundation, which promotes government transparency.

Axelrod says there are still huge differences between him and top McCain advisers, including the fact that he doesn't work in D.C. But his corporate clients do have business in the capital. One of them, Exelon, lobbied Obama two years ago on a nuclear bill; the firm's executives and employees have also been a top source of cash for Obama's campaign, contributing $236,211. Axelrod says he's never talked to Obama about Exelon matters. "I'm not going to public officials with bundles of money on behalf of a corporate client," Axelrod says."

Obama Campaign's New Low in Clinton Bashing

2008-05-28T01:05:00.002-05:00

From Joan Walsh in Salon.com on May 27, 2008: "The world is divided between people who consider Bill and Hillary Clinton monsters, and people who don't. It used to be that the monster faction was limited to Republicans and certain mainstream media fixtures like Maureen Dowd and much of the MSNBC lineup. Now, increasingly, it involves too many Obama-supporting Democrats -- and the Clinton-hate is in danger of damaging the Democratic Party.

I took the weekend off, really and truly off, because my daughter graduated from high school Saturday (yay!) and events got under way Thursday night. I did check e-mail briefly on Friday, and I learned then about Clinton's unfortunate reference to Robert F. Kennedy's assassination -- from an Obama campaign e-mail from spokesman Bill Burton. I took some time to look around at the coverage, and I followed a link to Clinton's actual interview with the Argus-Leader, and I had to say: Wow. I couldn't believe this became the weekend's hottest political issue. I couldn't believe Keith Olbermann did a special comment on it (which I really couldn't believe was also widely circulated via e-mail by the Obama campaign). I couldn't believe that only George Stephanopoulos took the time to scrutinize and question the judgment behind the Obama campaign's political use of what was at worst bad phrasing on Clinton's part.

Thanks to my long weekend, I could probably get away without addressing the controversy over Clinton's RFK remarks, which is finally dying down. But I think this is an important and disturbing issue for Democrats. Criticize Clinton's vote to authorize the Iraq war, her pandering on the gas tax holiday, her lame remarks about "hardworking Americans, white Americans," her response to Obama's "bitter" remarks, her lackluster campaign strategy coming into 2008. I've criticized all of that, and more. But to argue that she was suggesting she's staying in the race because Obama might be assassinated -- even after both Clinton, and the journalists who interviewed her, said her reference was to RFK's June campaign, not to his heartbreaking murder -- requires either a special kind of paranoia or venal political opportunism.

I understand the fears many people have about Obama's safety; given our country's tragic history, they are real and understandable. Suggesting Clinton was trying to play on such fears is different. Throughout this long campaign the Clintons have been turned into a vile caricature: amoral, power-mad narcissists who are not beyond using racism and even worries about Obama's safety to press their political cause. I've criticized both Clintons repeatedly in the pages of Salon for over 10 years, but it's really time to say: Enough.

For several months I've found myself bothered by a double standard in both the behavior and the media coverage of the Obama campaign, as supposedly representing a new kind of clean, post-partisan politics, by contrast with the dirty old win-at-any-cost Clintons. Hardball Obama campaign tactics -- David Axelrod partly blaming Clinton for Benazir Bhutto's death; the intimidation of Clinton voters by a pro-Obama union in Nevada (to be fair, some Obama supporters claimed intimidation by Clinton forces, too); the campaign's infamous South Carolina race memo (prepared before Bill Clinton made his dumb Jesse Jackson remark); the multiple "Harry and Louise" mailers distorting Clinton's healthcare proposal; not to mention ties between Obama, Axelrod and the Exelon Corp., even as Obama is touting his lobbyist-free campaign. Nothing seems to stick to Obama; he's Teflon.

This episode was worse than many but not entirely atypical: After his staff helped whip up a frenzy about Clinton's remarks, Obama himself said he accepted Clinton's statement that she had been misunderstood, and Axelrod tried to act gracious and insist that it's time to move on. But the damage had been done. Obama has run a better campaign than Clinton, there's no doubt about it, but he's had a lot of help from a fawning media. (Here's a great piece making a point I made months ago about how such coverage may ultimately hurt Obama.)

I'll be on MSNBC's "Hardball With Chris Matthews" today, debating this issue with talk show host and Obama supporter Joe Madison. "