Posts by Ari Melber

Ari Melber served as a national staff member of the John Kerry presidential campaign and as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate.

Court Declares "Defund ACORN Act" Unconstitutional
Posted by Ari Melber, TheNation.com on December 14, 2009 at 8:00 AM.

ACORN finally won a round in its battle with Congress and the Obama administration on Friday, as a federal court ruled the United States acted unconstitutionally by targeting the organization in an attempt to withhold funding.

Judge Nina Gershon found that Congress' attempt to limit ACORN funding violated the Constitution's ban against government action that specifically singles out a person or group. That clause, officially known as a ban against "Bills of Attainder," is based on the idea that the legislative branch must not act like a court or jury in punishing individuals.

"The plaintiffs have raised a fundamental issue of separation of powers," writes Judge Gershon in the opinion. "They have been singled out by Congress for punishment that directly and immediately affects their ability to continue to obtain federal funding, in the absence of any judicial, or administrative, process adjudicating guilt."

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Young People Love Obama, Hate His Policies
Posted by Ari Melber, The Nation on December 3, 2009 at 3:45 PM.

A new Harvard poll finds that President Obama is holding on to his strongest supporters, voters under 30, though they overwhelmingly oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan.

About 58 percent of young voters approve of Obama's job performance, while his approval among all voters recently dipped below 50 percent for the first time. About 66 percent of young voters oppose a build-up in Afghanistan, though this survey was in the field before the President's Westpoint speech.

In fact, the most striking part of the new poll is how young voters disapprove of Obama on issues across the board, yet still support his overall job performance. A briefing from Harvard's Institute of Politics (IOP) crunches the numbers:
The IOP's fall poll indicates 18-29 year-olds are now in line with the general population: a majority of young adults approve of [Obama] generally but disapprove of his handling of major issues asked about in the poll... A majority of 18-29 year-olds also disapprove of his handling of every major issue asked about:

Afghanistan (55% disapprove, 41% approve)

health care (52% disapprove, 44% approve)

the economy (52% disapprove, 44% approve)

Iran (53% disapprove, 42% approve)

and the federal budget deficit (58% disapprove, 38% approve) (emphasis added).

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How Congress May Keep Bloggers Out of Jail
Posted by Ari Melber, TheNation.com on November 23, 2009 at 7:30 AM.

It's hard out here for a blogger.

And hard for online journalists, unemployed new media producers, and just about anyone else dabbling in journalism without professional backing.

Beyond the basic financial challenges, there is scant legal help for members of the new media, even though they face the same complex, pricey legal threats as traditional media. Plus extra threats -- like government attempts to out anonymous bloggers, which can cost a lot to fight in court.

On Thursday, however, it just got a little easier out here for a blogger. (h/t Jon Stewart.) The smart folks at Harvard's Citizen Media Law Project are launching a program of free legal services for online and citizen media. And I'm taking the liberty of substituting the word "free" for pro bono in their announcement -- us lawyers have trouble kicking the Latin:

We are [launching the] Online Media Legal Network (OMLN), a new [free] initiative that connects lawyers and law school clinics from across the country with online journalists and digital media creators who need legal help. Lawyers participating in OMLN will provide qualifying online publishers with [free] and reduced fee legal assistance on a broad range of legal issues, including business formation and governance, copyright licensing and fair use, employment and freelancer agreements, access to government information, pre-publication review of content, and representation in litigation.

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Newsweek Taps Bush Aide For Obama Reporting
Posted by Ari Melber, The Nation on November 19, 2009 at 1:00 AM.

See if you can follow this logic.

A recent article in Newsweek states that Democrats could have won a "very significant number of Republican votes in Congress" for the stimulus -- had there only been a "meaningful tax-cut component." Political journalism is often imaginative, but this verges on delusion. After all, Obama labored to add about $280 billion in tax cuts to the stimulus -- over objections from many Democrats -- and still netted zero Republican votes in the House. Then, the piece asserts that Obama has no "coattails," based on 2009 elections, and reports "early signs of Obama fatigue are emerging." (Again, another observer might note that Democrats have won all 5 special congressional elections this year.) The article also predicts that gubernatorial losses in Virginia and New Jersey "will" make some Democrats "very nervous" about health care reform, which is a "political risk" for the party.

"We appear to be witnessing the beginnings of a significant Republican revival," continues the piece, bringing home its quirky counter-narrative. Lucky for struggling Democrats, however, this Newsweek item closes with some free political advice. "Liberals in Washington would do well to let go of the Republican breakdown narrative," notes the final sentence, "and pull back to the center--or suffer the consequences."

It's the kind of article that might leave you wondering if the author simply works for the G.O.P.

Newsweek's byline states that the writer, Yuval Levin, is "editor of National Affairs and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center." It all sounds quite journalistic and non-partisan. But Levin is also a former aide to President George W. Bush. (He served on the White House domestic policy staff as recently as 2006). If anything, this government experience makes Levin's political analysis more interesting. Why keep it from readers?

As it happens, Levin's first piece for Newsweek, back in March, was prominently billed as Obama analysis from "a Bush veteran." So I put the question to Newsweek, and spokesperson Katherine Barna shares their rationale:

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Obama, Democrats Face Liberal Fundraising Boycott
Posted by Ari Melber, The Nation on November 12, 2009 at 9:31 AM.

Politico's lead story today tracks how both progressive and conservative activists are using intramural fundraising threats to challenge the party establishment.

For Democrats, the fight is about accountability for campaign promises. For Republicans, sophisticated grassroots fundraising is a tool in the ideological squabbles over new congressional candidates and party leaders. The story suggests conservative strategists have led the way:

For months, most of the action was on the Republican side, where conservative activists targeted the National Republican Senatorial Committee for its recruitment of moderate candidates and the National Republican Congressional Committee for its role in supporting a liberal GOP nominee in an upstate New York special election. But now Democratic officials are also feeling the lash, with the [DNC] coming under fire for allegedly not working hard enough on a recent Maine ballot initiative to repeal same-sex marriage and the [DCCC] taking flak for supporting incumbents who voted against the health care bill. In each case, activists have dispensed with the pleasantries and gone straight to the committees' wallets--a move guaranteed to raise alarms at party headquarters.

Actually, liberal online activists have been using donor strikes for a long time, around issues ranging from torture to campaign finance reform to health care. (And since Democratic candidates rely more on low dollar online donations than the G.O.P, these efforts can get more traction on the Left.) What's different now, however, is that the current wave of strikes and rumblings on gay rights might turn into an ad-hoc, financially relevant coalition.

Unlike other donor strikes by a single blog or organization, the "Don't Ask, Don't Give" campaign is swiftly attracting allies and attention in the political media -- including that lead Politicoarticle today. (Obama's top aides pay attention to Politico, even though they claim otherwise, as David Plouffe's new bookrevealed.) Some of the allies are explicitly striking for gay rights, like blogger and pundit Jane Hamsher, The Stranger's Dan Savage and blogger Pam Spaulding, while others are pushing strikes against Democratic Party committees based on broader grievances about Democrats voting against core party priorities, such as health care. Daily Kos blogger Markos Moulitsas recently told his readers to "skip any donations to the DCCC," in retaliation for the House Dems who tried to scuttle health care reform. (See more from my colleague Ari Berman on those "Just Say No Democrats.")

In all the progressive debates about the Obama era, from wonky panels to the Sunday shows to local coffee shops, the atavastic question is how to support The President and push for bolder reform. Fundraising activism is only one tool -- not even viable for most citizens -- but it increasingly looks like a way to amplify policy pressure and get Washington's attention between elections.

With research by Shakthi Jothianandan

George HW Bush Calls Maddow & Olbermann "Sick Puppies," Maddow Responds
Posted by Ari Melber, TheNation.com on October 19, 2009 at 6:00 AM.

Rachel Maddow invites Republican officials to appear on her show "every day," the popular MSNBC anchor said Saturday, but only about one out of ten take up her offer.

Those numbers suggest Congressional Republicans are especially wary of a Maddow interrogation, since most politicians jump at the chance to appear on prime time news shows with good ratings. The "incentives" to appear differ for elected officials and operatives, she said, and the show draws more conservative "lobbyists and P.R. guys," who are paid to push their clients anywhere they can. (See Phillips, Tim.)

Maddow's comments came during an appearance at The New Yorker Festival on Saturday, in a sold-out session moderated by staff writer Ariel Levy.

The forum also presented an opportunity for Maddow to respond to an unusual attack from George H.W. Bush.

On Friday, the former President said Maddow and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann were "sick puppies" who dished out "horrible" treatment to their ideological opponents -- and to George W. Bush. "When our son was president, they just hammered him mercilessly and I think obscenely a lot of the time," he told CBS Radio.

Maddow said she was "flattered" by the response. She said that the comments also drew a one-line note from her father, who asked if the barb meant that the former President watched the show.

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Absurd: AP Asks, Is Obama "Obnoxiously Articulate"?
Posted by Ari Melber, TheNation.com on October 16, 2009 at 8:30 AM.

Political reporters have now toggled from worrying that Obama gets "too much" media coverage to asking whether he is "too" good at communicating through the media. Maybe even obnoxiously good. Maybe even -- here comes that loaded word from the primaries -- too articulate.

The A.P.'s Liz Sidoti is on the case. And this is from a news article:

Obama has been a constant presence in the mass media as he expands the bureaucracy's reach into the private sector.... In doing so, he has created a quandary. Put aside for a moment the question of whether government is actually intruding into people's lives more than before. The point is that many people feel like it is -- in part because Obama doesn't stop talking about his goals. If President George W. Bush got slapped around for being inarticulate, is Obama obnoxiously articulate?

What a quandary!

Once you "put aside" the actual facts and policy debate, there's that President talking on the TV about "his goals" -- and talking so articulately -- it just makes you wonder if the government is going to tell you how to mow your lawn. Or something. The article doesn't really try to support its own premise, as blogger Brendan Nyhan explains:

Sidoti is forced to admit later in the piece that she has no empirical support for her claim:

While Obama has been criticized for being too visible, AP-GfK surveys in the spring and summer found that most people say he is on TV about the right amount.

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The Tough New White House Line on FOX News: It's War
Posted by Ari Melber, TheNation.com on October 12, 2009 at 5:00 AM.

The White House's battle with Fox News reached a new high on Sunday, when Communications Director Anita Dunn went on national television to blast Fox as a partisan organization that functions as an appendage to the Republican Party.

"Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party," Dunn told CNN, adding, "let's not pretend [Fox is] a news organization like CNN is." Dunn also took her beef to The New York Times, saying in a Sunday interview that Fox is "undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House [and] we don't need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave."

In the most significant exchange on CNN, Dunn stressed that President Obama now personally views Fox as a partisan opponent, rather than a journalistic organization. "When he goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it as a news network at this point," she explained, "he is going on it to debate the opposition."

That's a big departure from how most of the Democratic establishment engages Fox. It's been a long time coming.

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When Conservatives Attack! David Brooks Takes On Glenn Beck
Posted by Ari Melber, TheNation.com on October 5, 2009 at 7:00 AM.

Perhaps we still do not understand the current Obama backlash.

David Brooks caused a small stir on Friday by arguing that conservative radio hosts are, paradoxically, a lot like well-behaved children. They are seen – splashed across magazine covers and endlessly profiled – but not heard, politically, since they do not swing elections.

"The talk jocks can't even deliver the conservative voters who show up at Republican primaries," Brooks observed, reminiscing about how McCain's media detractors could not stop him in South Carolina last year.

After the summer of townhalls and what's shaping up as the autumn of Glenn Beck, however, it is hard to see things through Brooks' bifocals. Besides, as the top conservative at the Times and an alumnus of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, Brooks is peering out from within the conservative media ecosystem. He is, unavoidably, in direct competition for opinion leadership with the "talk jocks" he knocks. Which makes it especially odd for him to apply an electioneering metric to opinion media.

Even the proudest pundits would shrink from the notion that they swing elections. (Rush Limbaugh is probably the only exception.) Most members of the activist conservative media machine do not define their success by electoral results. And that is one reason they look so successful right now.

It is no accident that the two biggest forces countering the new President do not practice electoral politics. The opposition party may whither, but there is still the movement and the man. Both have the Obama administration's attention.

"We have something new in our political life," Michael Tomasky recounts in an excellent essay in the latest New York Review of Books, a "right-wing street-protest movement." The people who commandeered those August town halls and, feeling the thrill of direct action, gathered to create their own Washington rally in September – they are against something. Obama. Taxes. Government. Socialism. Treason. Nazism. Scan those signs they carried around the National Mall, and you see a bizzaro album of the people they detest and the threats, both real and imagined, that they fear.

There were few signs for alternative policies, let alone the alternative political party. The same is true, naturally, for their leader.

Glenn Beck has a long list of concerns about the country's direction. Yet since Obama's election, his most successful efforts have focused on attacking members of the administration and (putative) allies. He is trying to stop Obama, not jump-start the mid-terms.

Congressional Republicans have not exactly distinguished themselves for an enlightened posture towards the new President, but to be fair, even they do not share all of Beck's obsessions.

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Bill O'Reilly's Burgeoning Rap Career
Posted by Ari Melber, The Nation on September 22, 2009 at 10:38 AM.

Just as hot trends meet their death when discovered by The Times Style Section - see Trucker Hats - emerging cultural themes usually go mainstream after a close-up in the paper's Week in Review. Now, after years of skirmishing below the radar, The Times has taken notice of the nexus between conservative talk radio and hip hop.

In "The Kinship Between Talk Radio and Rap," David Segal celebrates the "uncanny... similarities between talk radio and gangsta rap."

First, pardon his jargon - Segal actually focuses on hip hop at large, not gangsta rap, a subgenre that began in the 80s and is now virtually extinct. The article suggests four shared obsessions of rappers and radio hosts: Ego, haters, intramural feuds and "verbal skills." Surveying America's fractured media culture, Segal argues that these seemingly divergent loudmouths actually serve similar markets. "Rappers and conservative talkers both speak for a demographic that believes its interests and problems have been slighted and both offer stories that have allegedly been ignored."

For conservatives, the Obama era has clearly heightened the appetite for victimization. The Right's new heros tell the same story, from Frank Ricci to Sgt. Crowley to Glenn Beck. It's hard out there for white men. That may sound odd coming from the party of business elites and racial majorities, yet as the critic Leon Wieseltier once observed, American conservatives, and especially the Christian Right, delight in combining "the power of a majority with the pity of a minority." Segal flags this "paradox" of overexposed, under-appreciated radio personalities. He notes that Michael Savage "is forever describing himself as an underdog, marginalized by the media" -- even though his show is carried on over 300 stations.

In hip hop, poverty, struggle and hustle are central to many rappers' personal narratives, even as success turns those experiences to distant memories. "How does Lil Wayne complain in song about the legions who seek his ruin," Segal wonders, "even as he dominates the charts?" To be sure, few other modern musical genres place as much emphasis on whether an artist keeps it real in his personal life. Jadakiss once insulted 50 Cent by noting that the rapper had moved to Connecticut -- a comment that simply doesn't translate for most musicians -- and echoes the bizarro populist narratives of multimillionaires like Bill O'Reilly.

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After Sunday Media Blitz, Obama Goes Golfing With NYT Columnist Thomas Friedman
Posted by Ari Melber, TheNation.com on September 21, 2009 at 7:45 AM.

After his big five television interviews on Sunday, President Obama carved out an even larger slice of time for one print journalist, hitting the links for 18 holes of golf with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.

The only other players, according to a pool report, were Ray Lahood, the Transportation Secretary, and Marvin Nicholson, a White House aide who previously worked on the Obama and Kerry campaigns.

Friedman joins a small, elite list of opinion journalists from traditional outlets who have been granted private -- and largely off the record -- audiences with the President. Back in January, Obama spent about 75 minutes with Friedman's Times colleagues Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, along with National Journal's Ron Brownstein, Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne and Eugene Robinson. That meeting balanced out a longer dinner for conservative opinion journalists from traditional outlets like The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, such as George Will, Bill Kristol, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, Peggy Noonan and Paul Gigot.

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Obama is Courting Disaster With His New Detention Plan
Posted by Ari Melber, The Nation on June 27, 2009 at 1:00 PM.

 The Obama administration is rushing towards a unilateral plan to imprison people without trial, according to a huge, new jointarticle from the Washington Post and ProPublica. The proposal would completely cut Congress out of the process by using an executive order to essentially bring Gitmo stateside:

The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations. Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

That is a terrible idea. For its part, the White House dispatched aides to push back. From the article:

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said there is no executive order and that the administration has not decided whether to issue one. But one administration official suggested that the White House was already trying to build support.

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Demand That Obama Go After BushCo's 'Gravest Crimes'
Posted by Ari Melber, TheNation.com on December 30, 2008 at 6:10 AM.

The Obama transition team is taking questions again at Change.gov, throwing open the site this week for citizen input. The first run of this experiment was a mixed bag. The platform was open and transparent, but the official answers felt more like old boilerplate than new responses. When the submitted questions parrot topics in the traditional media, of course, the exchange can feel like a dated press conference. But here's a vital question that few reporters have ever presented to Obama:

Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor (ideally Patrick Fitzgerald) to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?

That question ranked sixth in voting last time -- out of over 10,000 submissions -- but the transition team only answered the top five questions. Now that Vice President Cheney confessed his support for waterboarding on national television, flouting the rule of law, the issue is even more urgent. Activist Bob Fertik, who has submitted the question twice, explains how you can vote to press this issue on the transition team:

Sign in at http://change.gov/openforquestions

Search for "Fitzgerald" […and] find our question

Look right for the checkbox, mouseover it so it goes from white to dark, then click to cast your vote

While the press has fixated on the criminal allegations against Gov. Blagojevich, for some reason, the (even more serious) allegations of torture by officials in the current administration receive scant attention. I have not heard one question about this during Obama's transition press conferences, and the traveling press corps almost never pressed Obama on the issue during the general election campaign.

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Obama Supporters Organize to Protest Candidate's Stance on Spying
Posted by Ari Melber on June 30, 2008 at 9:39 AM.

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.

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Obama's Race Speech on YouTube Tops Cable News Ratings
Posted by Ari Melber, The Nation on March 26, 2008 at 11:08 AM.

One week later, it's clear that Americans heard The Speech.



About 3.8 million people have now watched Barack Obama's Philadelphia address through the campaign's official YouTube channel, which has over 40,000 subscribers. "It is the highest viewed video ever uploaded by a presidential candidate to YouTube, surpassing Mike Huckabee's Chuck Norris endorsement video," says Steve Grove, who directs News and Politics for YouTube. Aside from the Obama channel, which promotes videos through blogs, news sites and supporter networks, another 520,000 people watched excerpts of the speech uploaded by random YouTube users. Taken together, the total YouTube viewers for Obama's speech over the past week beat all the cable channels combined. Last Tuesday, about four million viewers tuned into one of the three cable channels to watch the speech.


This is not the first time that Obama's YouTube audience has rivaled cable news. His second most popular video ever, a rebuttal to President Bush's final State of the Union, drew 1.3 million views. The President's actual address reached 3.2 million homes through a Fox News broadcast, making it the seventh highest program on cable that week. It is not a direct comparison, since the Presidential address is widely promoted and broadcast on many stations. Yet without the bully pulpit of the White House and its built-in television coverage -- or the high cost of campaign ads -- a candidate can now reach supporters and interested voters with unfiltered, even substantive addresses.



Of course, Obama's most popular YouTube video was itself a response to videos of Jeremiah Wright that had riveted cable news and YouTube. "If it wasn't for the replaying of Wright's remarks on YouTube, Obama wouldn't have been forced to give the speech on race in the first place," contends Slate's John Dickerson, yet "Obama decried the YouTube era of politics that reduces everyone to small, grainy clips endlessly replayed on cable news." But YouTube, just like television, depends on the programming. Salacious clips can always draw viewers. What is remarkable here is the overwhelming public demand for deeper, unfiltered campaign information -- regardless of who voters support. So Obama was not decrying the "YouTube era of politics" in his speech, as Dickerson argues, so much as the way that political brawling and cable bickering become the lowest common denominator of our entire public discourse:

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