And surely, what is helping to make this primary season so hellish are all the attempts to close it down.

In case you haven’t heard, and assuming I get this up before anyone else posts on it, a superdelegate Bill Clinton once chose to head the DNC and was up-to-now a declared Hillary-supporter, has just announced today that he is switching his support to Obama, and urging all Hoosier voters to do likewise in order to end the primary process in its tracks after next Tuesday. As part of this strategy, he is also urging his fellow superdelegates to wait no longer to declare their preferences, so we can all unite behind Barack and begin to do battle with McSame.

Joe Andrew may not be a household name, but he is from Indiana and he made his statement in the state, and in a letter published on the Huffington Post.  Read more 

No, I’m not talking about the Klan, or even the Republicans “southern strategy.”

But I do want to place this post in the context of much of the back and forth that is going on here at Corrente and through-out the liberal blogisphere about race and racism, what is it, when is it, and who is playing with it.

Mary-Beth at Wampum reminds us of an even wider perspective that liberals have as much difficulty even remembering exists as do right-wingers.

For anyone who doesn’t understand why the national discussion of race needs to address more than just African-American concerns, here’s exhibit one, from today’s LA Times editorial page:

Are the Tibetans doomed to go the way of the American Indians? Will they be reduced to being little more than a tourist attraction, peddling cheap mementos of what was once a great culture? In Tibet itself, that sad fate is looking more and more likely.

What makes it all the more remarkable is that aside from its placement in a major American newspaper, the piece in question is by Ian Buruma, a regular contributer at the NYRB, and as Mary-Beth points out, “the Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College.”

Here’s a question I’d like to ask our readers. Have you already been able to spot what it is in this quote that deserves to be considered within our discussions of American racism?

For those of you who might be distracted by Buruma’s tip of the hat to the “once great culture” of native Americans, which, in fact, was actually multi-cultural and multi-lingual, Mary-Beth has a second post up today that will help you see through these apparently innocent bows to a conception of Native American past greatness.

You see, it seems there was another writer/journalist back in the 19th century who bemoaned the tragedy of exactly that past greatness, in terms remarkably similar to Buruma’s take today.  Read more 

What follows is a post I wrote some time ago, shortly after Bush’s 2nd Inaugural. I thought it might be worth reposting on this particular day, since it includes a comparison of both Lincoln and Truman to Bush, and seeks to discuss political rhetoric and its discontents. I also thought it might be a pleasant respite from our current obsession with the Democratic Presidential primary, as well as offering a frame for contemplating the ruin Bush’s second terms has wrecked not only on the country, but on his own likely historical reputation.

Dubya’s Dubious Second Inaugural:The Bad Faith Of George W. Bush

Four years ago, at the time of Bush’s 1st Inaugural Address, despite the bitterness left behind by the manner in which the 2000 presidential election was decided, despite the “winner’s” inability to find a graceful way to acknowledge the extraordinary circumstances that had brought him to the Presidency, or even an ungraceful way, swept up in the grandeur of that peaceful transfer of power without which no democratic republic can long endure, I was able to acknowledge the surprising power of some of Bush’s rhetoric, and to feel some hope that he actually meant some tiny fraction of what he was saying.

Nunca mas, as they have had occasion to say in Argentina.

Bush made it easy last Thursday; everything about his second inaugural address, its grandiosity, its simple-minded diction and biblical intimations, the insistent refusal to acknowledge complexity, its wildly overstated and pitifully under-defined ambitions, its ahistorical smugness, struck me as downright preposterous, which will explain my amazement at the credulity with which the speech was received; yes, there were some reservations expressed at the practical implications and applicability of such a pure statement of American idealism, but rather less comment willing to point out that the speech’s efficacy as a statement of policy could be measured in inverse proportion to its almost demented insistence that ideas exist in some ethereal space untouched by anything as gritty and unpleasant as a fact.

Instead, once again we were asked to wonder at the poetic eloquence of Michael Gerson’s prose, and if we happened to be liberals, admonished not to get too picky about the fathoms-deep divide between Bush’s rhetoric and the reality of his policies, lest we peg ourselves, once again, as outside the great and grand ideas upon which our republic stands.

Chris Suellentrop, for instance, writing in Slate, parses the speech to bolster his own praise for it as a wonderful piece of oratory, credits it with announcing a second Bush doctrine, (the first, preemptive war, this second, the peaceful pursuit of democracy everywhere, and nary a hint the two doctrines might contradict one another), then proceeds to question the validity of the speech’s central thesis, which strikes Chris as being as simple-minded as the formulation by “some” on the left, that 9/11 was caused by poverty, and then finishes by warning liberals — well, unlike Mr. Suellentrop, I shall let him speak for himself:  Read more 

The joke in that title belongs entirely to Professor Bérubé whose endorsement of Barack Obama at TPMCafe you should read as much for its wit as its wisdom, even though I don’t quite share his Clinton fatigue.

Let me start by discussing all the talked-about reasons for choosing Obama over Clinton that did not, I repeat, did not influence my decision.

I do not believe that Hillary, or her ex-president husband, have run a Rovian smear campaign against Obama.

I do not believe they played the race card.

I do not believe that either Hillary or Bill will say anything or do anything to get elected.

I don’t believe that what either or both Clintons’ careers in politics and governance have always been about is themselves.

I don’t believe Bill Clinton has a pathological need to hog the political spotlight, nor do I believe Hillary’s would be a co-presidency, nor that “Bill” would be rattling around the White House with nothing to do. Clearly, he would resume the work he has been doing with his foundation, his Presidential library and the graduate school of public service he has founded at the U of Arkansas, that is also part of the library.

I do not believe, as William Greider, a writer whose work I have admired and probably will again, would have it in The Nation, that “…the Clintons play dirty when they feel threatened. But we knew that, didn’t we?”

No, some of us didn’t and we still don’t.

Greider continues:

The recent roughing-up of Barack Obama was in the trademark style of the Clinton years in the White House. High-minded and self-important on the surface, smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package.”

The thought of the Clintons back in the White House makes Greider “queasy.” :

The one-two style of Clintons, however, is as informative as low-life street fighters. Mr. Bill punches Obama in the kidney and from the rear. When Obama whirls around to strike back, there stands Mrs. Clinton, looking like a prim Sunday School teacher and citing goody-goody lessons she learned from her 135 years in government.

edit

The style is very familiar to official Washington, not just among the Clintons’ partisan adversaries, but among their supporters. The man lied to his friends. All the time. They got used to it. They came to expect it. I observe a good many old hands among the Senate Democrats are getting behind Obama. It would be good to know more about why they declined to make the more obvious choice of endorsing the power couple.

Reading Mr. Geider’s unsourced assertions made me queasy, and not about the Clintons.  Read more 

[Welcome, Digby readers!]

Nothing became John Edward’s campaign for the Presidency more than the manner of his leaving it.

As noted by Lambert, that was some damn speech.

Let me note, in response to some of the comments in that thread, I don’t think his talk of “one America” was any kind of sop to Obama.

More likely it was meant to make clear that one of his central campaign themes, the fight for economic justice, is a unifying one for all liberal/progressives, (sorry, but I refuse to stop calling myself a liberal), the middle class, the working class, the working poor, and those too poor and marginalized to find employment, as well as being a reference to Michael Harrington’s formulation of “the other America,” which JFK made part of his campaign in 1960, especially in those visits to West Virginia, where grinding poverty was on such conspicuous display.

It wasn’t just the speech, though, the theatrics were perfect in their multiple meanings - NOLA, the Ninth Ward, Habitat For Humanity, Elizabeth at his side, surrounded by family and friends, new ones and old ones, and the meaningful symbolism of their commitment as a family, right after the speech, to join in with a community dedicated to raising up housing out of the watery ruins of New Orleans, a gesture that said, yes a candidacy was ending but not the movement whose values and ideas that candidacy was meant to embody.

All that said, and swallowing the lump in my throat, what are we to make of Edwards’ campaign and its failure to get sufficient traction to take him through Super Tuesday; what can we learn from its strengths and its weaknesses, what worked, what didn’t, and why?  Read more 

On this day of celebration that we were gifted with the life of Martin Luther King, tragically short as it was, I thought it might be apropos to look back at one of his pre-“I have a dream” speeches. It wasn’t one that he orated. He couldn’t. He was in jail, the only place to be for a patriot like Dr. King in the Birmingham GA of April, 1963.

It was a written communication, but when you read it you can hear his voice, his early voice, which turns out to be not so different from his later voice, although it is also true that Dr. King grew and changed, became bigger, bolder, as did his view of what issues required the attention of true American patriots determined “to rise up and live out the true meaning…” of our American creeds, even in the face of criticism, of isolation, of backlashes, and of continuing, and even worsening, inequalities.

His “Letter From A Birmingham Jail,” was written in response to an open letter to Dr. King signed by a group of white clergyman, mostly Christian and Protestant, although one Rabbi signed his name to it, criticizing the civil rights movement and Dr. King’s role in it. Here is how he begins his reply:  Read more 

Okay, maybe it’s only one cheer.

A provisional cheer at that, although I’m inclined to make that two provisional cheers.

What I’d like to suggest, no doubt to the consternation of most readers, is that Reid’s decision to pull the FISA bill Monday evening was pretty much what Reid had in mind the whole time.

What I’m sure of is that the many comments I’ve read that characterize what happened on the Senate floor on Monday as Reid having been forced to pull the bill by Chris Dodd’s threat of a filibuster simply don’t match what I saw, via C-Span’s live streaming.

Before I proceed, let me make clear that I wish to take nothing from Chris Dodd’s role here. He deserves all of the praise he’s getting and then some.

His speeches on the Senate floor were magisterial. I’ve been watching him for more years than most of you and I have never seen him so compelling. And yes, it counts that he left his campaign in Idaho to come back and lead the opposition to a version of the Senate bill that was inadequate to the task of restoring the good sense, the respect for civil liberties and constitutional government, that had fueled the passage of the first FISA legislation in the late 1970s.

As Dodd graciously acknowledges in the video Lambert has posted here, many Democrats contributed to the sense I had, watching the debate on Monday, that I was not looking at a dispirited, disunited, frightened caucus, without a clue about how to oppose the policy of obdurate obstructionism employed so successfully in the past six months by the Bush administration and its enablers in the Republican Senate caucus.

Democrats were on the attack, making compelling, easy-to-understand arguments that have wide-spread appeal among a majority of Americans, and they were ready and able to shoot down the lies and prevarications employed by key Republicans, like Orrin Hatch. Most important, the list of Democratic contributors to this success was long and varied, and included Harry Reid.  Read more 

CD updating the update to reflect the latest news: Reid has pulled the bill.

Well, we’re into it - a full-throated Senate debate on many of the dearest, in all senses of that word, fundamentals of constitutional government,

The opening, as Lambert has suggested, was a bit confusing.

Dodd gave a passionate analysis of the many strands of this new FISA legislation, meant, mainly on the Democratic side, to correct the excesses of last August’s Protect America Act, which more or less gutted the FISA court as a check on the power of the executive branch to secretly ignore the civil liberties of Americans not to be spied upon by their own government.

To talk process for a moment, the thrust of Dodd’s first speech was in support of the many and profound reasons why the Senate should not proceed on the matter at hand as long as the Intelligence Committee’s version is the basis of the debate and the subsequent voting on the entire issue. In other words, he was arguing against the imposition of cloture, so that the Senate might spend time debating the merits of substituting the Judiciary Bill as the basis for debate and amendment.

It didn’t look or sound to me like this was Dodd’s attempt to get a genuine filibuster going, and indeed, the vote was lopsided in favor of cloture, all Republicans voting yes, only ten Democrats voting no.

This is not the end of the debate by any means, though, and from what I’ve seen thus far, do not despair that passage of the Intelligence Committee’s version of this new FISA bill is a done deal, including the extending of amnesty to those Telecoms which choose to go along with the administration. Here’s why:  Read more 

You have no doubt heard of the Democrats’ imminent collapse on the budget, apparently willing to entertain negotiations with Republicans on a no-strings budget supplemental for our double wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, (gosh, are we still at war both places, ’cause I thought we’d won those wars, or do we need to introduce a new concept for Republican led wars - the non-victory victory), in exchange for more domestic spending.

Well, I am happy and gratified to announce that those negotiations appear to have collapsed. And you’ll never guess why. Or maybe you just might be able to figure it out on your own.  Read more 

Campaigned for him even though not old enough to vote for him, she hastens to add.

Well, Mitt Romney gave his “Kennedy” speech on the place of religion in American life and the one thing it wasn’t was Kennedy-esque.

How have our mighty constitution and the great founding documents of our democratic republic fallen? Let us count the ways.

ROMNEY: “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.”

That will be the headline of all media discussions of Romney’s speech this morning. But what does it mean?

ROMNEY: “Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”

Yes, that’s right, almost nothing, except, of course, that it implies that freedom and being a religious church or synagogue attendee are inextricably linked.

Romney rightly declined to discuss or defend the tenets of the Mormon church, and he allowed that there should be no religious tests for office holders. As did John Kennedy. What a difference though. Here’s Romney.

ROMNEY: There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation’s founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the Creator. And further, they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom. In John Adam’s words: ’We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion… Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.’

Here’s how John Kennedy began his famous speech:  Read more 

I’m with Kevin Drum and Jim Henley in their befuddlement that this story, reported over the weekend, has kicked up so little dust.

Kevin brought it to my attention with a short post to that effect, one of the reasons he is invaluable. Others, like Jim, are beginning to pick up on it, and Mr. Henley supplies some fascinating background. With a story like this, the more the merrier; we need to get it noticed by the village, and the name, “Hagazy,” as well known as “Hamden.”

One reason it hasn’t broken big, a small blogger reported it, and yes, reported is the operative word, just like a real journalist. The “small” describes only the probable stats of the blog, “Psychsound,” not the blogger, Steve Bergstein, a lawyer with two blogs, both of them involved in this story. The other reason is that the village elders are quite uninterested in pursuing evidence that Bush & co is running one of the most corrupt and unlawful administrations in our history.

In fact, Bergstein, whose other blog, “Wait A Second,” tracks and analyzes the civil rights decisions that come out of the the Second Circuit Federal Appeals Court located in Manhattan, became involved in the story itself, by catching while it was happening, an act of censorship being practiced on the written decision itself, a redaction of a large portion in the name of protecting our national security.

Yeah, I suppose that could be said to compute, if you think that every dumb thing any part of your government does, like, for instance, how the FBI got a false confession from a visiting Egyptian, that he was part of the 9/11 conspiracy, who was ultimately proven to be innocent of owning the suspicious device found in the closet of his hotel room, needs to be shielded from scrutiny because otherwise the terrorists will win. Hint: They didn’t get the confession with a decoder ring, knowledge of which could allow Al Queda to profit from our technology.  Read more 

In a way, Russert’s deliberate distortion in Wednesday’s debate made Hillary look better to most of us, and not only because of her blanket rejection of torture as some kind of acceptable post-9/11 American norm; when Russert sprang his trap, announcing that the scenario she’d just rejected had been offered up by her husband and our former President, Bill Clinton, her quick witted response - “He isn’t the one standing here” - was her best moment of the evening.

So far, though, not many people seem to have realized that Russert’s characterization of Clinton’s Meet The Press comments, circa, Sept of 2006, was essentially a lie.  Read more 

Two of the seven Non-Commissioned Officers who authored that brilliant New York Times op ed of several weeks ago have died in Iraq.

From Editor & Publisher:

Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance T. Gray died Monday in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad, two of seven U.S. troops killed in the incident which was reported just as Gen. David Petraeus was about to report to Congress on progress in the “surge.” The names have just been released.

edit

Mora, 28, hailed from Texas City, Texas, and was a native of Ecuador, who had just become a U.S. citizen. He was due to leave Iraq in November and leaves behind a wife and daughter. Gray, 26, had lived in Ismay, Montana, and is also survived by a wife and infant daughter.

The accident in Iraq occurred when a cargo truck the men were riding in overturned.

As Greg Mitchell reminds us, the op ed was quoted around the world, and General Patraeus was asked about during his testimony. And rightly so.

The op ed was clear, precise, and filled with truth. It managed to explain the strategic incoherence of our occupation of Iraq.

The only impressive aspect of the entire Bush Iraq policy has been the quality of the men and women who are serving there. The lives of how many of them do our toxic leaders think we can afford to sacrifice at the alter of Bush’s megalomania?

In another P & E article we learn more about how the op ed came to be, like the fact that it was submitted “unsolicited” to the Times for publication.

Rosenthal said Deputy Editorial Page Editor David Shipley handled arrangements with the soldiers, including making sure they were comfortable with the likely negative reaction.

“They said from the get-go they did not want to be paid for this,” Shipley said, declining to reveal his payment scale, but said most freelance columnists are paid several hundred dollars. “It was a definite statement from them.”

“It was a really wonderful piece, we thought. I am proud of them. I thought it was great and what the Op Ed page is for,” Rosenthal said. “We had heard they got some grief from bosses about writing about this. But this is the 21st Century and people communicate with each other. Not every soldier in Iraq buys this Potemkin war that they are selling.”

Rosenthal added that their deaths drive home the impact the war continues to have on individuals, even with talk of later pullouts and drawn downs: “How many American lives, how many Iraqi lives are enough?”

The military had responded to the Op Ed: “It is important to note that as individuals voice their opinions on matters, that those viewpoints are representative of their personal perspective,” the Pentagon statement said at the time. “With approximately 160,000 Americans serving in uniform here in Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, you’ll probably get that many different perspectives if you ask each of them.”

Below the fold, you will find the entire op ed reproduced. If you haven’t read it, do so. If you have, do so again. The solders who wrote it did so with a full measure of devotion to what this country is supposed to be about.  Read more 

On August 6th, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, President Roosevelt spoke of a day of infamy, and promised the total defeat of the Empire of Japan.

Looking back, that August 6th in 1945 was surely made possible by Roosevelt’s understandable pledge.

After Hiroshima, it has become difficult to speak of infamy with any assurance that we know what it is. The empire of Japan deserved defeat. Did the people of Hiroshima deserve what the Enola Gay brought them on that August 6th morning?

I have no ready answer.

One virtue of George Bush’s simple-minded binary, us vs. them, good vs evil outlook is the greater ease it provides for locating his infamies.

One of his biggest happened on this date, six years ago, when a CIA officer visited Bush, spending August on vacation at his Texas ranch, to deliver in person the message that “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.”  Read more 

To be this dumb.

Ruth Marcus has at it regarding the on-going saga of our Attorney-General, and if I tell you that she carves out a idiosyncratic place for herself from the rocky heights of beltway profundity, (using a tooth pick because this is the only experience of tool-using folks like Marcus ever get), you could probably come pretty close to sketching out the column without ever reading it.

Here’s her opening:

I find myself in an unaccustomed and unexpected position: defending Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Gonzales fans, if there are Gonzales fans left, except for the only fan who counts: Don’t take any comfort from my assessment.

Unaccustomed and unexpected only because she doesn’t remember any of her previous columns; that’s part of the curriculum in that secret class, “How to Become A Consumate Media Asshole,” I am now convinced has to exist out there somewhere.

Her caution to Gonzales fans is given because Marcus is willing to concede the undeniable; that Gonzales is a fool and a knave, a deceiver and a dissembler in his sworn testimony before the Senate, and he deserved the brutal treatment he got from both sides of the aisle.

However, ah, yes, the inevitable “however,” the inescapable “but,”…you knew it was coming, but can you guess what “the but” is?  Read more 

The Order of the Higher Weaselality
{Dirty Hippies and Lefty Bloggers Need Not Apply}

Does it really matter whether or not there is an actual emerging consensus about how to bring our adventure in Iraq to a less-than catastrophic conclusion as long as so many dues-paying members of that most exalted beltway Club of The Higher Weaselality insist there is one?

Find the correct answer below the fold:  Read more 

One of those moments Molly should be here for.

[Welcome National Review readers. The password is still “specimen jar.” Oh, you won’t be returning here to apologize? That’s okay, we didn’t expect you to.]

So, it turns out, according to billing records from the lobby shop he worked for, Fred Thompson did do lobbying work for that pro-choice organization in the early nineties, just as Judith DeSarno claimed he had, complete with minutes of an executive board meeting discussing his work, and her memeories of a lunch at which “Fred” amusingly acted out a death scene from his latest film, which DeSarno remembered having involved cowboys.  Read more 

Burt Lahr in “Waiting for Godot” (Explained after the jump)

So what’s David Ignatius’ excuse? He may be stupid, but “criminally insane” is a reach, as it is not for Bush/Cheney and all who have drunk of the cool-aid.

The singular purpose of Ignatius’ latest column, out today in the welcoming pages of the Wa Po opinion section, is to make sure that Democrats get a good portion of the blame for all the bad things to come in Iraq.

Getting into Iraq was President Bush’s decision, and history will judge his administration harshly for its mistakes in the postwar occupation. But getting out of Iraq is now partly in the hands of the Democrats who control both houses of Congress. History will be equally unforgiving if their agitation for withdrawal results in a pell-mell retreat that causes lasting damage.

Well, at least he makes it explicit.

So what the hell is it that Ignatius is cautioning Democrats they’d better be on board for?  Read more 

Some friends of mine used to play a game which consisted of being asked this question: When you leave a room, what would you most like people to say about you?

Mine was easy: “She’s too thin,” although there was a close second: “She’s a bitch, but talented!.”

An actor friend, noted for his humor and bonhomie and his pleasantly goofy look, hoped to hear something like, “well, he’s got no personality, but he’s gorgeous.”

You get the picture.

The personalty log-line that brought down the house came from that actor’s wife, also an actress, an extremely witty and beautiful earth mother bringing up two children, who wished to hear, “That woman’s a saint.”

Which brings me to Peggy Noonan and her latest apparently unconscious satire of Republican anti-immigration tropes.

I know, I know. Not her again. Why bother?

Trust me, this one is special. Here’s the setup.  Read more 

If you don’t recognize that name, or that of his blog, “The Rittenhouse Review”, you probably weren’t reading much in the liberal blogosphere back toward the beginning, around 2002.

James Capozzola was one of the giants then, a blogger whom everybody read and linked to.  Read more