Posts by John Nichols

John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent.

California Dems to Obama: Get Out of Afghanistan
Posted by John Nichols, TheNation.com on November 17, 2009 at 5:00 AM.

The California Democratic Party speaks with an loud voice in national politics.

It is, by any reasonable measure, the biggest party in the biggest state in the nation.

And it is a well-organized, forward-looking organization that since the 1950s has had a tradition of delivering vital messages from the base to national Democratic leaders. Indeed, in the 1960s, California Democrats were among the first and loudest critics of President Lyndon Johnson's decision to expand the war in Vietnam. They were not merely opposed to the war; they were worried, wisely, that committing resources, governing energy and political capital to an unwise and unnecessary war would undermine the ability of an otherwise popular Democratic president to deliver on his ambitious domestic agenda.

With their history and their heft in mind, it is reasonable to say that when California Democrats take a strong stand on a contentious issues, it matters -- both as a signal with regard to popular sentiment within the party and as an indicator of the issues that could cause political headaches for a Democratic president.

So what does the California Democratic Party have to say about the global conflict that many believe could be for Barack Obama's presidency what Vietnam was for Lyndon Johnson's?

"End the U.S. Occupation and Air War in Afghanistan."

That's the title of a resolution endorsed over the weekend by the 300-member executive board of the California party.

The resolution calls for establishing "a timetable for withdrawal of our military personnel" and seeks "an end to the use of mercenary contractors as well as an end to air strikes that cause heavy civilian casualties."

In place of a continuing U.S. military presence, the California Democrats are urging Obama "to oversee a redirection of our funding and resources to include an increase in humanitarian and developmental aid."

That's sound advice for a president who is wrestling with the issue of how to respond to a request from some military commanders for a surge of more troops into what looks to a many savvy observers like a quagmire.

Among those speaking for the resolution was former Marine Corporal Rick Reyes, who described how his experience in Afghanistan led him to the conclusion that the U.S. occupation was illegitimate. "There is no military solution in Afghanistan," said Reyes, a Los Angeles native. "The problems in Afghanistan are social problems that a military cannot fix."

An Afghanistan and Iraq veteran, Reyes was particularly blunt in his criticism of the corrupt regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

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Call Joe Lieberman's Bluff: A Real Fort Hood Inquiry Would Likely Shut Him Up
Posted by John Nichols, TheNation.com on November 10, 2009 at 11:00 AM.

Following the horrific shootings at the Fort Hood army base in Texas, Connecticut Senator Lieberman pulled a thread from the right-wing blogosphere and called for a congressional inquiry into whether the incident was an act of "terrorism."

Not domestic terrorism, but full-blown terrorism that is comparable to what is seen in the most unstable of warzones.

"This was an attack on America troops," Lieberman chirped on Fox New Sunday. "You've got to see it as if 12 American troops were killed in Afghanistan."

But, wait, U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan are fighting a strategically-sophisticated and structurally-coordinated enemy that employs traditional military tactics and terrorist strategies such as suicide bombings in urban areas.

Is Lieberman serious about making a comparison between what happened at Fort Hood and what happens in Kabul?

Not really.

When he's pinned down, Lieberman makes the slightly more precise calim that the Army doctor who killed 13 people and wounded 29 at Fort Hood showed signs of being a "self-radicalized, homegrown terrorist."

Never mind that another way of saying "self-radicalized, homegrown terrorist" might be "completely isolated mental-health case."

Never might that, when he started running the "terrorist" line on Fox New Sunday, host Chris Wallace used a sound line of questioning to make it clear that the senator did not have "any evidence so far (from) what you and your staff have heard in briefings that.. he was exchanging communications either in this country or overseas with other Islamic radicals."

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New York Elections: Are Tea Party Activists the New GOP?
Posted by John Nichols, The Nation on November 4, 2009 at 7:15 AM.

Richard Viguerie, the legendary hard-right activist who spent much of the past decade arguing that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were too liberal, now declares that the days of even the most minimal moderation are now over in the Republican Party.

"Tea Party Activists Are the New GOP," says Viguerie.

There is little reason to argue with the man whose direct-mail campaigning funded the rise of the Republican right in the late 1970s and who grumbled loudly when Newt Gingrich, Bush, Cheney and Republican leaders tried to soften the party's roughest edges.

Viguerie isn't grumbling now.

He's celebrating. And rightly so.

Moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava, the party's nominee in Tuesday's special election for an open New York congressional seat, has suspended her campaign. And with that move, the new "new right" -- which Viguerie describes as "Tea Party activists, town hall protesters, and conservatives across the country" -- can claim a clear victory in its struggle to define the GOP as a far more extreme party than anything envisioned by Bush, Cheney or Gingrich.

Scozzafava, a state legislator, had the Republican ballot line and support from the party apparatus in Washington. But Tea Party and Town Hall activists -- and their mentors and funders such as former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, and the powerful Club for Growth -- threw their support behind Doug Hoffman, a more right-wing contender running on the New York Conservative Party line.

Scozzafava took a beating for her support for gay rights and abortion rights, her alliances with organized labor and her sympathy for the plight of the unemployed.

The attacks were brutal and they dried up financial support for the GOP nominee's campaign -- even though she began as a presumed frontrunner in New York's historically Republican 23rd district, where the seat went vacant after President Obama nominated moderate Republican Congressman John McHugh to serve as Secretary of the Army.

Reactionary Republicans, led by 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, threw their support to Hoffman.

With her poll numbers tanking, Scozzafava finally gave up with just three days to go before Tuesday's election.

Now that the GOP nominee is out of the running, Hoffman is well positioned to compete with Democratic newcomer Bill Owens in a race to fill a seat that has not elected a Democrat in more than a century.

Scozzafava said she would vote in Tuesday's special election for Democrat Owens, issuing a statement that read:

You know me, and throughout my career, I have been always been an independent voice for the people I represent. I have stood for our honest principles, and a truthful discussion of the issues, even when it cost me personally and politically.

It is in this spirit that I am writing to let you know I am supporting Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same," Scozzafava added. "It's not in the cards for me to be your representative, but I strongly believe Bill is the only candidate who can build upon John McHugh's lasting legacy in the U.S. Congress.

No matter what its contours, the Hoffman-Owens result will be a footnote to the Scozzafava-Hoffman saga.

As GOP strategist Paul Erickson told The Washington Post with regard to the latter struggle: "This is entirely a battle over the definition and winning formula for Republican candidates going into the midterm elections of 2010 and beyond."

Erickson's point is well taken.

Republicans who have tried to move party back toward the political mainstream, after a three-year losing streak that has cost the GOP control of the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate and the White House, are frustrated -- and a little bit scared. As Gingrich, who backed the decision of local Republican leaders to nominate Scozzafava, explained: "I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment around the country if suddenly conservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people without regard to local primaries and local choices."

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Pelosi to Go With Not-So-Robust Public Option
Posted by John Nichols, The Nation on October 28, 2009 at 10:35 PM.

The public option was always a compromise for serious supporters of health-care reform, who -- like Barack Obama when he was running for the Senate in 2003 -- knew that a single-payer "Medicare for All" system was what America needed to provide health care to everyone while controlling costs.

But, in the reform legislation that will be debuted Thursday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the compromise will be even more compromised.

According to The New York Times:

Under pressure from moderate-to-conservative members of the House Democratic caucus, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to propose a government-run insurance plan that would negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals, rather than using prices set by the government, aides said Wednesday.

Ms. Pelosi said the public plan, which she prefers to call a "consumer option," would compete with private insurers. But the speaker was apparently unable to muster the votes needed for the "robust" liberal version of a public plan, which she has repeatedly said would save more money for consumers and the government.

Translation: The "public option" Pelosi and her team will not make payments based on Medicare rates. It will, instead, be forced to negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals, as private insurers do. That weakens the flexibility and muscle of the public option.

Pelosi's plan also drops a number of provisions that had been advanced at the committee level to promote consideration of "Medicare for All" models and to allow states to experiment with single-payer plans.

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Obama to Karzai: Thanks for Admitting You're Crooked
Posted by John Nichols, TheNation.com on October 20, 2009 at 4:30 PM.

Barack Obama will have to do some awfully embarrassing things as president. The whole pardoning the turkey thing on the eve of Thanksgiving comes to mind. And then there's the taking John Boehner seriously thing -- an admittedly impossible task that must be undertaken as perhaps the most thankless burden of the republic.

On the scale of exceptionally embarrassing White House duties, however, few moments will rival the point on Tuesday when the president found himself hailing the commitment of accused election-fraudster Hamid Karzai to "ensuring a credible process for the Afghan people which results in a government that reflects their will."

Karzai, the imposed viceroy, er, president of Afghanistan whose supporters engaged in massive fraud in order to "win" the country's recent election, has agreed to participate in a November 7 runoff election with Abdullah Abdullah – the most resilient survivor of the Karzai team's chicanery.

Obama, who is heavily invested in the fantasy that Karzai is a legitimate leader and that the U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan will somehow develop popular support there (or in the United States), knows that the Afghan president is no democrat.

But the American president must pretend that Afghanistan is a functional republic that meets internationally-accepted standards with regard to voting, counting and reporting results.

That's not the case. Independent agencies and analysts have confirmed that fraud was so widespread that it was unreasonable to claim Karzai -- or anyone else -- had one.

Karzai's association with election fraud and corruption has made it harder for U.S. officials to proceed with plans to ramp up the occupation by sending in more troops and transforming a classic military presence into a more permanent project.

So Karzai had to agree to at least go through the motions of participating in a real election.

And when he did, Obama hailed a man who stands accused of orchestrating a massive effort to thwart democracy as someone whose "constructive actions established an important precedent for Afghanistan's new democracy."

Obama's precise statement went like this: "While this election could have remained unresolved to the detriment of the country, President Karzai's constructive actions established an important precedent for Afghanistan's new democracy. The Afghan constitution and laws are strengthened by President Karzai's decision, which is in the best interests of the Afghan people."

The "yuck factor" was high.

But it got higher when Obama praised Karzai for helping to foster "such a vibrant campaign."

It is, of course, true that Obama is not the first American president to have to pretend that a local bad guy who got caught red handed was some kind of statesman.

Still, having to speak well of Karzai is a lot -- arguably too much -- to ask.

And if Obama has any sense of the region -- or of the trouble his Afghanistan initiative is in -- he had to be hoping that Karzai and his henchmen would refrain from obvious lawbreaking in the second round.

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Dept of Justice Eases Off Medical Pot
Posted by John Nichols, TheNation.com on October 19, 2009 at 3:30 PM.

During the 2008 campaign, one of candidate Barack Obama's best applause lines was a promise to restore respect for science when it came to federal policy making.

On Monday, President Obama kept a piece of that promise when his Department of Justice issued a directive ordering agency lawyers not to prosecute individuals who use or prescribe medical marijuana in states that have legalized the drug for that purpose.

"It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana, but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal," explained Attorney General Eric Holder. "This balanced policy formalizes a sensible approach that the Department has been following since January: effectively focus our resources on serious drug traffickers while taking into account state and local laws."

In the overall scheme of the drug-policy debate, this is a relatively small -- and cautious -- step.

But for medical-marijuana advocates, the administration's formal embrace of a more responsible approach represents a major breakthrough.

"This is a huge victory for medical-marijuana patients," says Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access, a medical-marijuana advocacy group. "This indicates that President Obama intends to keep his promise … and represents a significant departure from the policies of the Bush administration."

The jury is in on medical marijuana and the evidence argues for removing barriers -- federal, state and local -- to its use by patients seeking relief from pain and nausea associated with cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis and other debilitating illnesses and conditions.

The Obama administration's move respects that evidence. As such, it represents a clearer embrace of science with regard to drugs and drug policy by a White House than we have seen since the days when Jimmy Carter explored enlightened approaches.

As New York Congressman Maurice Hinchey said Monday, "Today, common sense won out over ideological stubbornness as our nation's law enforcement agency formally adopted a new and well-balanced policy on medical marijuana use. Across the country, individual states have enacted laws that allow individuals who are sick and suffering to use medical marijuana with a doctor's prescription only to have DOJ officials arrest and prosecute them anyway. This was a policy that was misguided and wrong from the start and I'm very pleased that the Obama administration's Justice Department, under the leadership of Attorney General Holder, has put an end to it."

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The Beat G20 Schemes Threaten Democracy, Sustainability
Posted by John Nichols, The Nation on September 23, 2009 at 5:59 PM.

The G20 Summit that opens Thursday is unlikely to achieve much when it comes to restructuring the global economic order. That's good news for workers, farmers, consumers and citizens.

What's good about inaction on the part of the leaders of the world's wealthiest nations? While there is no question that a radical restructuring is needed, it must be the right restructuring.

In the midst of the nastiest economic downturn since the Great Depression, and with so many unaddressed social and environmental challenges weighing on the planet, the necessity of finding new ways of organizing and managing the economic affairs of nation states and global trading and regulatory regimes should be evident to even the most nearsighted neo-liberals.

But multinational bankers and corporatists that contributed so mightily to the current crisis are busy peddling more-of-the-same "solutions" that could actually make matters worse. For instance, one of the great debates going into this week's meeting of leaders from wealthy nations such as the U.S., China, Germany, Japan and Great Britain has been over how to develop an international framework for what the powers that be define as "sustainable development."

The thing to remember is that, in the world of the global economic elites, "sustainable" has a different meaning than in does at a Friends of the Earth rally or the local farmers' market.

The high fliers at the G-20 want to manage international trade and competition in a manner that keeps banks and corporations on steady growth trajectories – no matter what that means for working families, small farmers and the poor of the planet. In other words, they're talking about sustaining status-quo economics.

One of the prime debates going into the summit had to do with a plan to set up a new system to manage trade between countries that would have what the Financial Times describes as "a powerful enforcement mechanism… to fine or punish countries that built up the sort of large trade surpluses or deficits that contributed to global trade imbalances."

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Public Option: Obama Speaks Loudly But Carries a Small Stick
Posted by John Nichols, The Nation on September 10, 2009 at 7:16 AM.

President Obama spoke loudly but carried a small stick Wednesday night, when he outlined what's left of his health-care reform agenda in a rare address to a joint session of the Congress.

Noting that "it has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health-care reform," the president told skeptical legislators from both sides of the political aisle. "I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last."

That was one of several takeaway lines of the night.

Another, delivered to members of the House and Senate who have just returned to Washington after an August of brutal town-hall meetings, was: "The time for bickering has passed. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action. Now is the time when we must bring the best ideas of both parties together... Now is the time to deliver on health care."

The president was equally muscular when it came to addressing "scary stories" and "bogus claims" about "death panels" and threats to Medicare that have been spun up by insurance-industry front groups in order to thwart meaningful reform. Democrats loved it when Obama told the spin doctors -- in the House and Senate Republican caucuses and their media echo chambers -- that: "If you misrepresent what's in the plan, we will call you out."

But for all of its rhetorical flourishes, this was not a to-the-barricades address by a president who was prepared to battle not just the lies about his plan but the compromises that would make universal health care the dream deferred.

When it came to the task of offering the explanations, arguments and details that have been so hard to come by during a frustratingly unfocused debate about how to develop a functional health-care system for a country where tens of millions of Americans have no insurance coverage and tens of millions more are under-insured, Obama remained disturbingly vague.

He restated his determination to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to Americans with preexisting conditions. He proposed portability and flexibility. He pledged to bar corporate caps on the amount of care that is provided the sick. And he decried insurance company abuses that even Republicans seemed to agree--at least if applause is any measure -- are "heartbreaking" and "wrong."

These consumer-protection initiatives could well form the foundation for the legislation that Obama says he is determined to sign this year, since it certainly did not sound Wednesday night like the president was going to fight for the sort of broad reforms that really would provide quality care to all while control costs.

"It makes more sense to build on what works... rather than to build an entirely new system from scratch," Obama said, making all-too-clear his determination to retain the private for-profit system that has failed so miserably to deliver universal care but that has succeeded so monumentally in delivering profits to insurance and pharmaceutical corporation stockholders.

Obama still talked about "options" and "choices." But he suggested that they would be offered mainly by insurance companies that would be enjoy "incentives" -- i.e., new streams of taxpayer dollars--if they agree to abide by consumer-friendly regulations and come up with strategies for covering more of the uninsured.

The government might step in to help, Obama suggested, but he painted such interventions as temporary rather than permanent. When he spoke of a "public option," as he had to in order to keep progressive Democrats on board, the president still said: "I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business."

The "public option" was positioned as something akin to a consumer-protection initiative for "those without insurance," a sort of welfare program that would attract only about five percent of Americans and that would be funded by premiums rather than tax dollars.

Robust? Not hardly.

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Americans Agree: The War In Afghanistan Is Not Worth Fighting
Posted by John Nichols, TheNation.com on August 20, 2009 at 5:00 AM.

With record numbers of U.S. troops being killed in Afghanistan, with Pentagon expenditures for the war skyrocketing and with little or no evidence that the U.S. occupation is making the country more stable, safe, free or humane, a majority of Americans now say the war is not with fighting.

Fifty-one percent of those surveyed for a new Washington Post-ABC News poll now say the human and economic cost of the war is too great.

Forty-seven percent say it is worth its costs.

Perhaps most significantly, passionately opposition to the war now significant outstrips passionate support for it.

Forty-one percent of those surveyed said they were strongly opposed to the occupation.

Just 31 percent say they were strongly supportive.

Barack Obama authorized surging 17,000 additional troops into Afghanistan at the start of his presidency, making a commitment to extent an occupation begun by George Bush and Dick Cheney as a supposed effort to track down those responsible for the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Now, as Afghanistan prepares for presidential elections Thursday, the fighting in many parts of the country is more intense than ever.

There is widespread speculation that General Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, will request more troops in short order.

That escalation is not going to play well with the American people.

A striking 45 percent said they were opposed to dispatching more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

Only 24 percent of those surveyed expressed sympathy for McChrystal's scheme.

What these numbers add up to is an even stronger argument for Congress to check and balance the escalation of a war that should not be extended.

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Obama Must Work to Reframe the Healthcare Debate
Posted by John Nichols, The Nation on July 23, 2009 at 6:03 AM.

Barack Obama's most ardent critics would have us believe that his bumbling of the health-care reform push -- and, yes, he has bumbled it -- will doom his presidency.

The critics would, of course, be wrong.

That does not mean, however, that their claims and charges are being dismissed by the White House.

Republican references to the current health-care fight as Obama's "Waterloo" are ridiculously overblown. But they appear to be having a positive influence on the administration's approach to broader struggles over this particular issue and this particular president's political future.

Indeed, the nasty turn that the debate has taken seems, finally, to have convinced Obama to speak up in a more forceful and -- supporters of real reform hope -- more focused manner.

"Right now, we're losing the messaging war," Senator Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, noted this week, in what would certainly qualify as an understatement.

This is what Obama's hastily-scheduled Wednesday night press conference on the health care debate was all about.

Framing the fight as a struggle to get needed care to working families, the president declared, "This debate is not a game for these Americans, and they cannot afford to wait for reform any longer. They are looking to us for leadership. And we must not let them down."

Obama used the press conference to argue, at length, that his promised reforms would be fiscally responsible. In particular, he pledged to reject any plan "primarily funded through taxing middle-class families."

Again and again, the president returned to the theme that his reforms would be designed to serve working families and the middle class. He even credited them with setting his mid-summer deadline for House and Senate action on reform measures. "I'm rushed because I get letters every day from families that are being clobbered by health care costs, and they ask me can you help," said Obama.

The president's new mantra is: "I want to keep the pressure on."

Actually, Obama is only beginning to turn the pressure on.

The president is beginning to understand something that he should have recognized long ago: There is a consensus on the need for health-care reform. But there is no consensus on the scope and character of that reform.

As the Washington Post notes, "public opinion (is) still waiting to be shaped on health care" and "the legislative (are) details in flux."

Obama, alone, must forge the latter consensus.

He cannot wait for competing House and Senate committees to reconcile their various proposals and then present the White House with a turn-key program for providing health-care to all while controlling costs.

This is not a change that will come from Congress.

It must come from America. And Obama must use his bully pulpit to educate and organize on behalf of that change.

He seemed to recognize that reality Wednesday, when he and his aides arranged the primetime press conference after what could only be described as a series of unfortunate developments.

Central to the process -- and to the progression in the president's way of thinking -- was the emergence of the Republican fantasy that wrecking reform would wreck Obama.

"I can almost guarantee you this thing won't pass before August, and if we can hold it back until we go home for a month's break in August," South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint told backers of the anti-reform group Conservatives for Patients Rights -- a group headed by the former CEO of the scandal-plagued Columbia/HCA Healthcare corporation.

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Get Cheney: Why Any Torture Investigation Must Target the Former VP
Posted by John Nichols, TheNation.com on July 20, 2009 at 1:50 PM.

Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, the chief critic of executive excess and wrongdoing in the Senate during recent Republican and Democratic administrations, wants Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a prosecutor to investigate the CIA's harsh interrogation program.

But Feingold wants Holder to do it right.

The chair of the Constitution subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee is concerned that the appointment of a prosecutor by Holder -- which now seems increasingly likely -- come with a charge by the attorney general "to focus on holding accountable the architects of the CIA's interrogation program."

In a letter to Holder, Feingold, who also sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote:

Dear Attorney General Holder:

Recent news stories indicate that you have reviewed the highly classified 2004 CIA Inspector General report on the CIA's interrogation program, and that as a result you are considering appointing a prosecutor to investigate individuals who may have gone beyond the legal authorization for that program provided by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the Department of Justice. I write to encourage you to do so, but also to urge you to focus on holding accountable the architects of the CIA's interrogation program. While allegations that individuals may have even gone beyond what was justified by those now-public OLC memos are extremely disturbing, we should not lose sight of the fact that the program itself –- as authorized –- was illegal, not to mention immoral and unwise.

As I said in a letter to President Obama in April, the OLC documents make clear that the details of this program were authorized at the highest levels of government, which is where the need for accountability is most acute. Those who developed, authorized and provided legal justification for the interrogations should be held responsible.

I understand this is a difficult decision for you, and I want to assure you that you will have my full support if you take this important step in furtherance of the rule of law.

This is an essential message, and an essential step in the process.

Official Washington does not like accountability.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham to Sotomayor: "Unless You Have a Complete Meltdown, You're Going to Get Confirmed"
Posted by John Nichols, TheNation.com on July 13, 2009 at 12:30 PM.

"Unless you have a complete meltdown, you're going to get confirmed," South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

"And I don't think you will (have a complete meltdown)," added the conservative member of the Senate Judiciary Committee as the hearing on President Obama's first high court nominee commenced.

Most members of the committee followed pattern. Democrats were supportive, while most Republicans -- led by Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions -- repeated anti-Sotomayor talking points.

Graham broke the pattern.

His comments were the most significant of the opening session of the confirmation hearing, as they seemed to lay the groundwork for mainstream Republicans to vote to make Sotomayor the first Latina justice to sit on the Supreme Court.

Democrats have a majority of the seats on the Judiciary Committee and 60 seats in the Senate -- enough to force a confirmation vote, and to win it. So the safest bet has always been that the federal appeals court judge from New York will be confirmed by a Senate where Judiciary Committee member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, says Sotomayor is "uniformly" seen by Republicans and Democrars as "highly qualified."

But the signal from Graham at Monday's session suggested there is a good chance key elements within the "party of no" will say yes to Sotomayor. That should allow her nomination to be sent from the Judiciary Committee to the full Senate with a strong recommendation that it be approved. And it now looks increasingly likely that the vote of approval will be broad and bipartisan -- though Monday's combative statements from Sessions and Senator Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, suggested it will not be unanimous.

What was clear from Graham's comments and from a gentler than expected opening statement by Texas Senator John Cornyn was that the far right's campaign of character assassination that sought to block the nomination seems to have fallen far short of the baseline goal of solidifying Republican opposition to Sotomayor.

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The Supreme Court's Unanimous Attack on the Voting Rights Act
Posted by John Nichols, TheNation.com on June 22, 2009 at 10:00 AM.

Once an election is done, it is hard to undo.

That's true in Iran, and it's also true in the United States.

This is why it is important to get the rules by which elections are held right before elections are held.

For this reason, one of the essential components of the Voting Rights Act -- arguably its most powerful tool for combating discrimination and disenfranchisement -- has long been a requirement that officials get approval from the Department of Justice before they change the way in which elections are conducted.

Allow states, counties, municipalities or school districts in the 16 states that are wholly or partially with historic patterns of discrimination to opt out of the review, and they will be able to organize and hold elections that renew those patterns. That's why the requirement has been referred to by law professors as "one of the crown jewels of the civil rights movement."

Foes of the Voting Rights Act have long focused on weakening Section 5 of the act, the provision that requires election officials in the states covered by the act to obtain federal permission before making changes to voting procedures, moving polling-place locations, requiring so-called "citizenship checks" and redrawing voting district lines. They rightly argued that to do so would remove the teeth from the measure that has long been disdained by southerners pining for the days before what former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott referred to as "all the laws of Washington" changed the way things were done in Dixie.

On Monday, the Supreme Court tarnished the crown jewel, giving state and local officials new flexibility to "opt out" of the requirement that they obtain permission when changing election rules. The court ruling does not invalidate the Voting Rights Act -- as some had feared -- but it does undermine it.

The court, with only one justice (Clarence Thomas) in partial dissent, said that the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 in Austin, Texas, can avoid the advance approval requirement.

The ruling is being interpreted as a signal all local jurisdictions in a Voting Rights Act state can at least apply for what is referred to as "a statutory bailout."

That was a reversal of a lower federal court that had preserved the Voting Rights Act as it was intended to operate.

That's a dangerous move, say civil rights supporters.

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Old Obama Vs. New Obama on Warrantless Wiretapping
Posted by John Nichols, TheNation.com on June 18, 2009 at 8:45 AM.

When Barack Obama was running for the United States Senate in 2004, he said that he saw U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, as his legislative role model.

Obama told me five years ago that he wanted to emulate Feingold as a defender of civil liberties and the Constitution, especially when it came to matters of protecting the right to privacy that was so under assault during the Bush-Cheney interregnum.

After his election as the junior senator from Illinois, Obama did work with Feingold on a number of issues and joined the Wisconsin progressive in boldly and unequivocally asserting that the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program was "illegal".

But now, Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, has asserted in a speech, and restated in a response to a reporter's question, that Bush-Cheney warrantless wiretapping program "wasn't illegal."

Feingold wants to know which side the president is on; that of Senator Obama, who said warrantless wiretapping was "illegal" or that of the Obama administration intelligence director who says it "wasn't illegal."

Here's Feingold's latest letter to the president:

Dear Mr. President,

I am writing to reiterate my request for you to formally and promptly renounce the assertions of executive authority made by the Bush Administration with regard to warrantless wiretapping. As a United States Senator, you stated clearly and correctly that the warrantless wiretapping program was illegal. Your Attorney General expressed the same view, both as a private citizen and at his confirmation hearing.

It is my hope that you will formally confirm this position as president, which is why I sent you a letter on April 29, 2009, urging your administration to withdraw the unclassified and highly flawed January 19, 2006, Department of Justice Legal Authorities Supporting the Activities of the National Security Agency Described by the President ("NSA Legal Authorities White Paper"), as well as to withdraw and declassify any other memoranda providing legal justifications for the program. Particularly in light of two recent events, I am concerned that failure to take these steps may be construed by those who work for you as an indication that these justifications were and remain valid.

On June 8, Director of National Intelligence Blair asserted in a speech and in response to a question from a reporter that the warrantless wiretapping program "wasn't illegal." His office subsequently clarified that he did not intend to make a legal judgment and that he had meant to convey only that the program was authorized by the president and the Department of Justice. Nonetheless, Director Blair's remarks – which directly contravene your earlier position, as well as the position of Attorney General Holder – risk conveying to the Intelligence Community, whose job it is to explore legally available surveillance options, that not complying with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act may be such an option. Moreover, his "clarification" highlights the need to formally renounce the legal justification that the "White Paper" provides.

In addition, I asked your nominee to be General Counsel for the Director of National Intelligence, whether, based on the "White Paper" and other public sources, he believed that the warrantless wiretapping program was legal. His written response to my question, which was presumably vetted by your administration, indicated that, because the program was classified, he could not offer an opinion. Should he be confirmed, this position, too, risks conveying to the Intelligence Community that there may be classified justifications for not complying with FISA. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who has seen all of the legal justifications, classified and unclassified, that were offered in defense of the warrantless wiretapping program, I strongly disagree with this implication.

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GOP Senators Waste Big Bucks Trying to Keep Franken Seat-less
Posted by John Nichols, The Nation on February 17, 2009 at 1:22 PM.

It is now clear that Senate Republicans have a strategy for maintaining their ability to stall -- or, at the least, dramatically alter -- Obama administration initiatives.

Individual GOP senators are paying big bucks to keep the Senate's 100th seat -- representing Minnesota -- vacant for as long as possible.

In effect, key Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are paying $10,000 a piece to maintain their power to obstruct Congress.

Consider it an investment in the short-term future.

The partisan divide in the Senate is currently 58 Democrats (56 party members and two independents who caucus with the Democrats, Connecticut's Joe Lieberman and Vermont's Bernie Sanders) versus 41 Republicans.

That 41 figure is perilously close to the number that Republicans need to threaten filibusters. It takes 60 seats to invoke cloture and force action on legislation and appointments in the tradition-bound Senate.

If Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate Al Franken, who state officials determined weeks ago won the Senate seat by 225 votes, is seated it would be harder to block Senate deliberations. And with Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter -- a moderate, labor-friendly Republican who faces a tough reelection fight in a Democratic state next year showing a willingness to deal -- GOP Senate leaders well understand the vulnerability of their position.

So Republican senators are pouring money into the dead-end recount fight of former Senate Norm Coleman.

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