Friday, May 20, 2005

The Senate Fight Begins; New Poll Supports "Assertive" Senate Role. According to the New York Times, the Democratic response to the nuclear option has already begun, and the atmosphere is turning increasingly poisonous even in the absence of poorly structured Democrats-are-like-Hitler references: "Our friends on the other side of the aisle are shutting down the business of the Senate by making it impossible for committees to do the work of the American people on everything from intelligence matters to passing an energy bill when gas prices are at record highs," said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the No. 2 Republican. [...] There is significant legislation at stake. Besides energy and asbestos measures whose legislative reviews were cut short on Thursday, Congress is trying to pass a major transportation bill and an air quality bill, as well as all of its spending measures. Democrats have said they will not block spending bills, to avoid a full-blown government shutdown. No kidding. One would indeed think the Senate would have bigger things to worry about then whether a handful of already-rejected judges get shoved through the system in violation of Senate rules. A win on this front is going to make future legislative accomplishments very few and far between. (As Steve Clemons and others have pointed out, the Bolton nomination is also going to get ground up and spit out by this, unless the Republicans chose to further extend the rule violations to encompass all nominations.) Reid has been blunt about the position the Democrats will take if the rules are violated; they will simply start ignoring the traditional role of the majority party, and introduce their own legislative agenda. They will also begin consistently denying unanimous consent for procedural motions that bring Republican legislation to the floor or allow committee work to take place -- thus grinding the Bush agenda to a screeching halt for the remainder of the Congress. Far from being a "shut down" of the Senate, however, this plan would simply enforce remaining rules in a way that fully demonstrates how the traditional sense of negotiation and sometimes-enforced goodwill in the Senate has served America for the last two centuries. If the minority party is to be afforded none of the traditional legitimacy that has permeated the last two hundred years of Senate history, after all, there seems little point in returning comity in exchange. It should also be noted that this Republican pander to their base, and to Bush's own political immaturity, could prove costly. With Republican numbers looking increasingly similar to those recorded during the Schiavo fiasco, polls show the public is clearly against the nuclear option. On the other hand, public is overwhelmingly for an active Senate role in the nomination process, with a whopping 78% agreeing, in a May 17-19 AP/Ipsos poll, that the Senate should "take an assertive role in examining each nominee." Negotiations between various Republican and Democratic Senators are going to continue over the weekend, but in an already hostile climate that will be explosive by Tuesday morning. [Daily Kos] 10:43:36 PM     Bash, Break and Borrow.... It is the strong version of the Copernican thesis - where ever you are is, by definition, unimportant. As far as I can tell there is exactly one person who has agreed with the reverse of that thesis all along,... [j a c k *] 7:29:33 AM     Damn You, Newsweek!  This story, in today's NYT must somehow be the fault of Newsweek: Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him. The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days. Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face. "Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!" At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling. "Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying. Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. Now anything bad that happens in Afghanistan or Iraq over the coming days will be the fault of the New York Times; anything good that happens will be due to the Newsweek retraction, and the Bush administration's leveraging thereof. It's perfect. AB - Angry Bear [Angry Bear] 7:28:35 AM     It's Only Crazy From The Outside. There should be no confusion out there about Sen. Voinovich's "I'll vote Bolton out of committee, but he sucks, and I won't vote for him in the full Senate" position. It's all about the judges. See, although the Republican "It's unprecedented! Up or down vote!" talking points on the Republican Extremist judicial nominations fall to pieces in view of the actual facts of history, the Republicans are counting on simplicity, mendacity, and ignorance to carry the day. (Anyone surprised by this has not been paying attention for the last 20 years.) It would, however, be very hard to sustain that... [Paperwight's Fair Shot] 7:26:46 AM     Ken Rogoff Is Unhappy with the Bush Administration. Yet another unhappy camper: Ken Rogoff: FT.com / Comment - A healthy global economy begins at home  In its biannual foreign exchange report to Congress, [the Treasury] declared that while China is not yet guilty of exchange rate manipulation, it will soon become guilty unless it changes its policy.... Too many lawyers must have worked on this phrasing.... To be fair, the Treasury report is... aimed at mollifying trade protectionists in Congress.... The report... focus[es] on the way that China's current dollar peg blocks an important price mechanism from helping to unwind today's massive global trade and current account imbalances. Of course, what the Treasury report does not say is that 'global imbalances' is a euphemism for 'US borrowing binge'. After all, America is now absorbing 75 per cent of the current account surpluses of the world's surplus countries, not just China. Nor does the report mention [that]... US... policies... played a far bigger role than China's peg in exacerbating the problem.... The report spews the official line... reducing its own fiscal deficit. But the official target... 50 per cent deficit reduction by 2009 is [not] ambitious enough, even if it were... credible.... [I]t is hard to see any... [Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal] 7:25:29 AM     Equal Suffrage in the Senate. We have a long-term problem here: MyDD: In the 100 elections that determined the current make-up of the Senate, 200,723,923 votes were cast. The Democratic candidates in these elections received a combined 96,307,088 votes.... The Republican candidates received 94,994,293... To the extent that heavily-populated states that pay federal taxes swing more Democratic, and lightly-populated states that receive lots of giveaways (military bases, agricultural subsidies, cut-price access to national resources) swing more Republican, senate votes will become less and less legitimate. Time, I think, to reapportion the senate: combine the Great Plains states and divide up California, New York, and Texas for purposes of senate representation.... [Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal] 7:24:17 AM     A New Attack on the Rule of Law. Guest: cntodd The always great Doug Ireland brings us a chilling report on the Christian Right's agenda to destroy the separation of powers:  the creation of an Inspector General for the judiciary. As Ireland writes, this new crusade, led... [Majikthise] 6:25:34 AM     Unnaturally Geographic: At the Pretoria Zoo. Who's said anything about racism? When it comes to visual coverage of the Third World and non-Western cultures, there are enough questions about what is gratuitous, voyeuristic or patronizing without having to get ugly about it. This photo...  [BAGnewsNotes] 6:23:27 AM     Pro-life judges. In 1993, a fourteen-year-old boy, Willie Searcy, was in a car accident that left him a "ventilator-dependent quadriplegic." For the rest of his life he was going to need machines and constant nursing to keep him alive. His parents' insurance... [Body and Soul] 6:20:40 AM     Sexpense Report.... In short, the sex tax does not work as a marginal disincentive, and one should be able to calculate the "crime tax" that results from this failure. That is, on average, what is the cost in crime? End the Sex... [j a c k *] 6:19:10 AM

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