The amended bill still contains controversial limitations to unions' collective bargaining powers, as well as an increase in state employee contributions to pensions and health care....
As the discussion continued, so did the clamor of drums and chants coming from the Capitol rotunda.
"For five seconds, listen to what's going on outside this room," said Rep. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse. "It's the drumbeat of democracy."I read that quote to Meade, who went down to the demonstration yesterday (to get his fair share of video). He laughed and said he'd tried to get video of the dancing to the drumming — and did the exaggerated flailing arms and stomping legs of drumbeat dancing, accompanied by the chant "THIS is WHAT deMOCracy LOOKS like." Putting the mock in democracy.
In a secret diplomatic dispatch, sent on December 30 2008, Margaret Scobey, the US Ambassador to Cairo, recorded that opposition groups had allegedly drawn up secret plans for “regime change” to take place before elections, scheduled for September this year...
Ambassador Scobey questioned whether such an “unrealistic” plot could work, or ever even existed. However, the documents showed that the activist had been approached by US diplomats and received extensive support for his pro-democracy campaign from officials in Washington. The embassy helped the campaigner attend a “summit” for youth activists in New York, which was organised by the US State Department.That's 2008 — pre-Obama. And here's Elliott Abrams in the Washington Post: "Egypt protests show George W. Bush was right about freedom in the Arab world."
[The developments in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen] seem to come as a surprise to the Obama administration, which dismissed Bush's "freedom agenda" as overly ideological and meant essentially to defend the invasion of Iraq. But as Bush's support for the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon and for a democratic Palestinian state showed, he was defending self-government, not the use of force. Consider what Bush said in that 2003 speech, which marked the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, an institution established by President Ronald Reagan precisely to support the expansion of freedom.
"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe - because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty," Bush said. "As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export."
The trouble with lame-duck sessions began in 1801, when the outgoing Federalists used their last days in power to help appoint a bunch of judges. It flared up again in 1922, when President Warren Harding and the lame-duck Republicans tried to ram through unpopular legislation after their defeats.But Congress follows the letter of the law, and the amendment only changed the date of the end of congressional terms. It's a lot earlier than it was under the original Constitution, but it's still far enough from the elections to give a modern Congress plenty of time to work its will on the American people who may have just decisively rejected them.
Opponents said this was un-democratic: These sessions seemed to violate the ever-popular Washington rule that "elections have consequences." Finally, Congress passed - and the states ratified - the 20th Amendment.
Historians say lawmakers thought they were ending lame-duck Congresses forever.
"This amendment will free Congress of the dead hand of the so-called 'lame duck,' " Rep. Wilburn Cartwright (D-Okla.) said as it was debated in 1932.
LAUER: When you left office, President Bush, your popularity numbers were around 30 percent, give or take, depending on the poll. You say it... It didn't bother you?
BUSH: No, it didn't.
LAUER: You know, I try to personalize that. I-- I've been doin' this job for 14 years. And if after 14 years, only 30 percent of people who've watched this show think I did a good job--
BUSH: They'll fire ya.
LAUER: Well, it's gonna hurt like hell.If you chase popularity... you're chasing a poof of air.
BUSH: I don't think it does. No. Because I-- I also was, as you just mentioned, at one time over 90 percent. I didn't take it seriously then. I don't take it-- didn't take it seriously when I left office. Somebody walked up to me the other day and said, "Congratulations. Your popularity is way up since you left office." And my answer was, "So what?" Seriously. I mean if you chase popularity, you're chasing a moment. You're chasing a poof of air.
The left uses issues such as gay marriage as battering rams to wreck the US Constitution and that's what's going on here. ... Well, the Democrats who are cheering this ruling, overturning California's Prop 8, are not really cheering gay marriage. They want gays to believe that they are. They are cheering and they are giving standing ovations to this judge for weakening the US Constitution, for ripping it to shreds, because that is the objective of the American left....
The Constitution was written to deemphasize the power of federal governments. Our Founders had fled tyranny. They certainly didn't set up tyranny when they founded this country with the Constitution. But the left -- the Marxists, socialists, progressives, whatever you want to call them -- want tyranny and they want to be in charge of it. The Constitution stands in their way. So this judge is being cheered ostensibly for recognizing homophobia in the heterosexual community for thousands of years.I like Rush enough to believe that when he got to this part of his monologue, he knew he'd become incoherent. If you don't want the majority's idea of morality imposed on everyone, you need individual rights that courts enforce against the will of the majority. The Constitution limits what can be imposed on individuals. It limits the federal government, and — with the 14th amendment — it limits the state.
Thousands of years of discriminatory homophobia has led to gay people not being allowed to marry, and this judge (finally someone enlightened) has come along and seen it. Wrong. They are cheering the fact that this judge has rammed the Constitution with a battering ram. These are the same Democrats who have either remained silent or openly advocated the building of a mosque where Sharia law is the word of Allah at Ground Zero. Now, Sharia law not only bans gay marriage, it bans gays. Permanently. So why in the world would leftists who are cheering a judge who has just said that Prop 8, voted on by seven million Californians is unconstitutional because of decades -- generations, thousands of years -- of homophobia and discrimination practiced by heterosexuals...?
Liberals worry about constitutional rights getting in the way of legislation, and conservatives have cozied up to the notion of unwritten rights. For that to happen, everyone has to stop focusing on the right of privacy.
"I'm going to plead guilty a hundred times over because until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and stops the drone strikes ... we will be attacking the U.S.," he said. "And I plead guilty to that."...IN THE COMMENTS: Irene says:
"Did you look around to see who they were?" Cedarbaum asked him of his potential victims.
"Well, the people select the government," Shahzad said. "We consider them all the same. ..."
"Including the children?" the judge demanded.
"Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don't see children, they don't see anybody," Shahzad fired back.
"They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It's a war, and in war, they kill people. They're killing all Muslims."
"One has to understand where I'm coming from," Shahzad told the judge. "I consider myself ... a Muslim soldier."
"And it's a war to kill people..."
" 'And it's a war to kill people...' "
The bomber broadcasts a reality that many Americans refuse to acknowledge.
After all, Stevens holds the seat that was previously occupied by William O. Douglas and Louis Brandeis, two of the leading anti-corporate crusaders of the twentieth century....Anti-corporate crusaders? Sure, pick an anti-corporate crusader, Obama, and let's see how the back-and-forth in the Senate Judiciary Committee plays out. I mean, the nominee will still be confirmed, but in the rest of the political arena, leading up to the November elections? That would be brutal for the Democrats.
Yet none of the leading candidates for the Court appears to be an economic populist....The Supreme Court itself stopped its own progressive forward glide when the opportunities for expanding constitutional rights arose in the context of redistribution of wealth (which is what Rosen and his ilk spin as "economic justice").
Why the absence of liberal economic populists from the shortlist?...
Since the 1960s, grassroots progressives have focused on non-economic issues: reproductive choice, for example, or civil liberties in an age of terrorism. That means that the current Supreme Court candidates had their legal sensibilities shaped in a political environment that was less preoccupied with questions of economic justice....
That’s a shame, because the most important issues the Roberts Court will confront over the next decade involve the constitutionality of environmental measures and economic regulations passed in the wake of the crash of 2008.... [I]t will not be enough for liberals simply to champion judicial deference for its own sake. The next justice will, like Brandeis and Douglas, need to make a substantive case for why these regulations are indispensable to protecting American democracy from the narrow interests of a corporate oligarchy....If "environmental measures and economic regulations" are going to be passed, then why is anything more than deference to legislatures needed? Why should a Supreme Court Justice think he could bolster arguments for deference to democracy by expressing enthusiasm for the substance of the choices that legislatures have made?
Although the next justice may not be an economic populist, the confirmation hearings ahead are an opportunity to cast the spotlight on the intersection between economic populism and the law. Leahy and other Senate Democrats should use the hearings to ask the nominee to discuss these questions in depth.Great! A bloodbath. Sounds exciting. I'll watch.
BAIER: You have said at least four times in the past two weeks: "the United States Congress owes the American people a final up or down vote on health care." So do you support the use of this Slaughter rule? The deem and pass rule, so that Democrats avoid a straight up or down vote on the Senate bill?So far, nothing but nonresponsive filler.
OBAMA: Here's what I think is going to happen and what should happen. You now have a proposal from me that will be in legislation, that has the toughest insurance reforms in history, makes sure that people are able to get insurance even if they've got preexisting conditions, makes sure that we are reducing costs for families and small businesses, by allowing them to buy into a pool, the same kind of pool that members of Congress have.
We know that this is going to reduce the deficit by over a trillion dollars. So you've got a good package, in terms of substance. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are in the House or the Senate.I don't care how much time he spends on it or whether the time he spends is spent worrying (or dithering or fretting or musing or calmly analyzing). The question is: Does he support it? If he means to say I have no position on the proposed procedural moves, then that's the answer. Say it!
(CROSS TALK)Let you finish obfuscating? This is all very Anne Elk ("Well, you may well ask what is my theory... you may well ask what it is, this theory of mine, well, this theory, that I have, that is to say, which is mine,... is mine.") So there will be a vote, but what kind of vote? Obama falls back on assertions that the bill will pass. Based on the current whip count, it looks like it won't, but he boldly characterizes those who are predicting failure as the pretenders. (He is The Great Pretender.)
OBAMA: What I can tell you is that the vote that's taken in the House will be a vote for health care reform. And if people vote yes, whatever form that takes, that is going to be a vote for health care reform. And I don't think we should pretend otherwise.
(CROSS TALK)
OBAMA: Bret, let me finish.
If they don't, if they vote against, then they're going to be voting against health care reform and they're going to be voting in favor of the status quo. So Washington gets very concerned about these procedural issues in Congress. This is always an issue that's — whether Republicans are in charge or Democrats in charge — when Republicans are in charge, Democrats constantly complain that the majority was not giving them an opportunity, et cetera.Yeah. Et cetera, indeed. As if procedure is a frivolous sidetrack that only trivial or devious people care about. Barack Obama was a constitutional law professor. Much of constitutional law is about procedural rights and structural safeguards that check power. Justice Felix Frankfurter famously wrote: "The history of American freedom is, in no small measure, the history of procedure." Law professors are seriously engaging with the constitutionality of the "deem and pass," and our erstwhile law professor Barack Obama would imperiously wave procedure aside as a distraction not worthy of his time. Let's concentrate on the end and pay no attention to the means. When the most powerful man in the world says that, we should feel revulsion and alarm.
BAIER: Let me insert this. We asked our viewers to e-mail in suggested questions. More than 18,000 people took time to e-mail us questions. These are regular people from all over the country. Lee Johnson, from Spring Valley, California: "If the bill is so good for all of us, why all the intimidation, arm twisting, seedy deals, and parliamentary trickery necessary to pass a bill, when you have an overwhelming majority in both houses and the presidency?"Ha! He won't answer the people's questions, because there are just so darned many people, and the questions they ask are so annoying. And Bret got 18,000 emails but Obama got 40,000 pieces of mail a day, so Obama's
Sandy Moody in Chesterfield, Missouri: "If the health care bill is so wonderful, why do you have to bribe Congress to pass it?"
OBAMA: Bret, I get 40,000 letters or e-mails a day.
BAIER: I know.Good short jab by Baier.
OBAMA: I could read the exact same e-mail —
BAIER: These are people. It's not just Washington punditry.
OBAMA: I've got the exact same e-mails, that I could show you, that talk about why haven't we done something to make sure that I, a small business person, am getting as good a deal as members of Congress are getting, and don't have my insurance rates jacked up 40 percent? Why is it that I, a mother with a child with a preexisting condition, still can't get insurance?Yes, the question is the procedural device (and why you need it if the bill is as good as you say).
So the issue that I'm concerned about is whether not we're fixing a broken system.
BAIER: OK, back to the original question.
OBAMA: The key is to make sure that we vote — we have a vote on whether or not we're going to maintain the status quo, or whether we're going to reform the system.Why not a straight vote — a normal vote — a transparent vote — a vote people can understand? Why make it seem that you are pulling a fast one? And right now, in this interview, you seem to be pulling a fast one about pulling a fast one.
BAIER: So you support the deem and pass rule?And so Bret Baier never gets an answer to that question. Barack Obama — who acted like he didn't want to waste his time on the deem and pass — wasted our time evading the questions about the deem and pass. His aim is to put us to sleep. We may be asking questions about the procedure now, but eventually we'll let it go and ultimately we will look at the substance what we got and decide whether we like it. So quiet down and wait, the most powerful man in the world tells us. He knows what's good for us. Don't look while he prepares the medicine that will make you very very happy.
OBAMA: I am not —
BAIER: You're saying that's that vote.
OBAMA: What I'm saying is whatever they end up voting on — and I hope it's going to be sometime this week — that it is going to be a vote for or against my health care proposal. That's what matters. That's what ultimately people are going to judge this on.
A constitutional convention is a heady thought for Iowans who see that as a possible way to put the brakes on gay marriage in Iowa.There hasn't been a constitutional convention in Iowa since 1857. What would it be like today to put everything up for grabs?
“I’m inclined to hope they succeed, if that’s their strategy,” said Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, who has saluted Friday’s Iowa Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage. “There’s a lot of good, progressive issues that we could pursue: a woman’s right to choose, guaranteed health care for all Iowa citizens, workers’ rights — so if there are people that want to help us get to a constitutional convention, that’s kind of my dream world.”...
Anything and everything – conservative issues, liberal issues – could eventually come to pass after such a convention, Iowa lawmakers and constitutional scholars pointed out.
“It’s truly a wild card — or a trump card, depending on how you look at it,” said Sen. Merlin Bartz, R-Grafton.
Drake Law School professor Mark Kende said: “Politically, Iowa has moved a little bit left. One concern might be if you’re on the right and you want to get rid of the gay marriage decision, but the state is moving left, what are you opening up? On the other hand, there’s a tradition of more effective campaigns on the right. Even if you’re fewer in number, the right can be more passionate and vocal and organized.”
Conventions were more popular early in the nation’s history, said Todd Pettys, a law professor at the University of Iowa.You may think you'll get the one thing you want, but there will be fights over other things, and who knows where the people will end up when they are asked to inscribe all sorts of new rights into the state's highest law? Do you think the conservative arguments — for cutting out rights that the state courts have found — will do better than the liberal arguments — for giving the courts new texts to expound?
“We’re a lot more cautious about it now,” Pettys said. “People say, 'Who knows what these people are going to cook up and what if it catches fire briefly and we sort of drive ourselves off a cliff?’”
Liberalism... has been reduced to an elitist set of rhetorical formulas, which posit the working class as passive, mindless victims in desperate need of salvation by the state. Individual rights and free expression, which used to be liberal values, are being gradually subsumed to worship of government power...
...Liberalism has gradually sunk into a soft, soggy, white upper-middle-class style that I often find preposterous and repellent. The nut cases on the right are on the uneducated fringe, but on the left they sport Ivy League degrees.... It's a comfortable, urban, messianic liberalism befogged by psychiatric pharmaceuticals. Conservatives these days are more geared to facts than emotions, and as individuals they seem to have a more ethical, perhaps sports-based sense of fair play.
The virtue of a democratic system with a First Amendment is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly. That system is destroyed if the smug assurances of each age are removed from the democratic process and written into the Constitution. So to counterbalance the Court's criticism of our ancestors, let me say a word in their praise: they left us free to change. The same cannot be said of this most illiberal Court, which has embarked on a course of inscribing one after another of the current preferences of the society (and in some cases only the counter majoritarian preferences of the society's law trained elite) into our Basic Law.
