Debatable

A GOP candidate for governor of Alabama wants to give drivers' license tests only in English. "This is Alabama; we speak English," Tim James says in a new ad.

That, of course, is a debatable assertion.

Give it back

I didn't see the Senate hearings where Goldman Sachs executives got grilled for sending the financial system into a ditch, but from what I've seen and heard about it, something was missing.

At one point, Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO, was asked how much of a bonus he got last year. $9 million was the answer.

And that was where one of the Senators should have told him to give it back. Indeed, all of the 2009 bonuses at G-S--which were "earned" directly or indirectly thanks to the willingness of the American people to clean up the mess the bankers made--should be given back.

Now I know that G-S did not get bailout money, at least not directly. And no part of it is owned by the government; whether the reverse is the case is an open question. But its bankers could return some of the largesse they received by contributing their bonuses to the Treasury. That's legal. Indeed, every year, the Treasury receives gifts from grateful citizens. The bankers could even earmark (yes!) their contributions to reduce the deficit, to which they contributed so mightily.

So, why didn't any of the Senators say, "Give it back!"

Just a thought

The conventional wisdom is that the greatest contribution to resolving the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be a peace between Israel and the Palestinians. While that would be a development of tremendous importance, wouldn't a peace between India and Pakistan be of even more value?

And while we're talking about the sub-continent, isn't the obvious solution to more than sixty years of war and tension to re-unite the two parts of what was India before the partition of 1947?

Is he a Senator or a 4-year old?

The Constitution says you have to be 30 to serve in the Senate. But that doesn't mean that you have to act like an adult.

Exhibit A: Lindsay Graham (R. SC), who has withdrawn support for climate change legislation, because he's in a snit over Harry Reid's decision to advance immigration on the Senate agenda.

Graham charges that Reid is playing politics over immigration. Well, duh. What game does Graham think he's in?

What I've been up to

Well, one thing: Three of my friends in the plaintiffs' civil rights bar and I went to today's Tea Party rally in Boston to distribute free copies of the Constitution.

In case you can't read the sign, it says: Unconstitutional?

Read the actual Constitution of the United States

Free!

We gave away our entire supply (approximately 300 copies) of Constitutions in 40 minutes. At which point I left. So, no, I did not have to listen to Sarah Palin's maunderings.

President Hu is coming to Washington

Chinese President Hu Jintao will attend a summit conference on nuclear security later this month. Which, inevitably--given a sophomoric sense of humor--inspired the following (with obeisances to Bud Abbott and Lou Costello):

President Hu is coming to Washington!

Who did you say?

Yes.

Who?

That's right!

What?

I just told you, President Hu is coming.

He is?

Yes.

Who is he?

Yes, that's it.

Ok, let's try it this way. What is he president of?

China.

Who is?

you've got it. He is!

That's what I'm trying to find out. Who is he?

He's the President.

Who is?

Haven't you been listening to me?

Yes. And I'm still waiting for you to tell me who is the President of China.

I've BEEN telling you that.

The challenge to the Pope--and the Papacy

The headline on yesterday's Boston Herald echoed a question I have been asking since last week: "Can the Pope Survive?"

As the lovely Diane pointed out when I expressed that, short of murder there is no way for the Church hierarchy to remove a Pope, and despite a number of popular novels positing plots for papal homicide, we surely don't expect that.

On the other hand, there are levels of survival. Given the burgeoning sexual abuse scandal across Europe, the present occupant of St. Peter's throne might conceivably be "forgotten but not gone," if the Vatican does not do much more to address what has happened, and the responsibility of high officials in the church for allowing it to continue for so long after the pattern became clear. Today's New York Times has an account of Palm Sunday reactions to the scandal from several cities in Europe and the United States. Including this telling comment from an Austrian woman in her '60s:

To think of Jesus Christ is one thing. To think of the pope is another.

Coming from an older woman from one of the most Catholic countries on Earth, that is exactly what the Church hierarchy should fear: the separation of the Church from Jesus, and Jesus from the Church.

(You might wonder why I, a non-Catholic, comment on this issue. Coming from the most Catholic large city in the United States, the Church has always had a presence in my life. And the Church is a very important institution, for good, ill or neither, and thus of significance to all of us.)

A crock

So there was Sara Palin campaigning for former running mate John McCain (R.AZ) on Friday, and NPR had a clip of her saying, "I'm a commercial fisherman, and we know that only dead fish go with the flow," followed by predictable cheers from the crowd.

You've probably heard that phrase before, but have you ever stopped to think about it?

It's a crock. In truth, all fish spend most of their lives going with the flow, and I daresay that many of them never go against it. Why do sharks and whales appear in northern water in the summer, but not the winter? Because they go with ocean currents, that's why. Even the salmon--the fish that we think of as going against the flow--goes with the flow on its way down rivers to the sea. And when it mounts that fight back upstream--impelled not by courage but by atavistic biological imperative--remember that it's going to spawn and die.

Yesterday, Palin and allies gathered in Searchlight, Nevada, hometown of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.NV). Strikes me that pretty much all of the countries where they could do that without getting hit with water cannon, tear gas or police batons are governed by the kind of social democratic governments that the Tea Partiers disdain. Maybe they should think about that.

The best gift Democrats could wish for

Have you heard about the new Harris poll of 2230 Republicans that found that:

57 percent of them believe that President Obama is a Muslim

45 percent believe that the President was not born in the United States

38 percent believe that Obama "is doing many of the things Hitler did"

24 percent believe that Obama "may be the Antichrist"

(Presumably Jewish Republicans--of which, I regret to say, there are some--were not among the last group.)

As Jim Farley said of FDR, "We love him for the enemies he's made." Or, to turn an old saying on its head, "With enemies like these..."

Maybe I was wrong

Regular readers may recall that I have taken Democrats to task for not reaching out to elements of the Tea Party crowd who are justifiably angry with a system that--even a year into Barack Obama's presidency--seems stacked against the "ordinary" American.

After seeing the disgraceful, racist, homophobic behavior of the Tea Party crowd in D.C. this past weekend--using the ultimate racist slur against the great John Lewis, a hero of 20th Century America, and insults at my congressman, the inimitable Barney Frank--maybe I was mistaken. Perhaps the Tea Partiers really do represent all that is evil about American populism.

Still, I have hopes that there are responsible citizens who were attracted by the Tea Party movement but will now be repelled by the antics of the demonstrators in Washington, and propelled into a more serious effort to change our politics to reflect the interests of the great mass of our people. If there are such citizens, Democrats should reach out to them.

The heat of the matter

The Indian Army weaponizes chili.

One more down

According to AP, Mit Romney told a book-signing in San Diego that the health-care reform package is unconstitutional, because it interferes with interstate commerce.

That view ought to disqualify the Mittster from running for President again. You'd think that it should be a basic requirement for wanting to be the person who takes an oath to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution that he or she would actually have some understanding of the document that established our Republic. Clearly, Mitt does not.

The Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution, part of Section 8 of Article I, defining the power of Congress, states, that "The Congress shall have the power...To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states..." Regulation necessarily implies interference. Commerce that is not regulated is, by its nature, not interfered with--at least not by the government. (As no less an authority than Adam Smith knew, government regulation is in some cases preferable to the interference in the market of unchecked private interests, but that is another matter.)

So Mitt turns the Constitution on its head.

Romney was at one time a serious figure. He has become--like most Republicans on the national scene--a buffoon.

(Josh Marshall is of the view that if health-care is still an issue in 2012, that will put paid to Romney's chances for the GOP nomination, because he would be too ripe a target for Democrats pointing to his sponsorship of health-care reform in Massachusetts that is strikingly similar to the plan passed by the House on Sunday night. Hypocrisy has not stood in the Mittster's way in the past, however; viz. 2008. Yet there are those who still think him a serious candidate for the nomination next time. The GOPher party has become such a rodomontade that anything is possible, even likely.)

Wages

The New Testament tells us that the wages of sin are death. What are the wages of ignorance? National decline, perhaps?

Consider this: Last month, the South Dakota House of Representatives passed a resolution declaring that astrology is a factor in global warming. Not only that, but the South Dakota solons also ruled that thermology is also a contributor to climate change. Not familiar with thermology? It is the analysis of detailed infrared images of the human body. Who knew? Apparently, only South Dakota's political elite.

(In fairness, the South Dakota Senate later passed a measure--but only by a razor-thin majority--to delete references to astrology and thermology. But the rest of the measure questioning global warming remained intact.)

This story would be merely an amusing instance of Churchill being right, if it were not one more example of the march of militant ignorance upon our society. Down in Texas this week, a bunch of right-wing zealots proud of their anti-intellectualism ordered the state to adopt a social studies curriculum that enshrines their simplistically-Christian, politically "conservative" view of the world; that decision will control the state's study of history and civics for a decade (likely long after the people of the Lone Star State have come to their senses and thrown these yahoos out of office) and, because Texas buys more textbooks than just about anyone, will spill over to the studies of millions of students in other states, many of which are markedly less hostile to actual knowledge.

As Prof. Steven Salzberg of the University of Maryland whose blog post discusses the South Dakota inanity in detail, points out, the tactic of the anti-intellectuals is familiar by now: challenge scientific knowledge with religion or, lacking support in someone's version of the Bible, the views of some minority of scientists (who have probably been bought off by industries with an interest in obscuring the truth), then demand that schools teach the controversy.

Americans like to think of themselves as fair-minded, so the idea of giving all sides equal time has strong appeal. Who could object? But what if one side is clearly right (the world is round) and the other is clearly wrong (the world is flat)? Then we are wasting time and energy by presenting both sides.

Oh, and those who argue for teaching the controversy don't really mean it. They want to teach both sides where they have the weak side of the argument. Evolution is the most common example these days. (When I was growing up, we thought the Scopes Monkey Trial had consigned literal belief in the Bible's creation story to the far, far boondocks. Apparently, ignorance is like kudzu.) But the proponents of giving both sides equal weight falter when that would mean giving equal time to those whose ideas they reject. Thus, the board that controls teaching in Texas rejected a book by a well known young-adult author, because (ignorance strikes again) they confused him with an author of Marxist bent. You won't find equal time for socialist ideas in the Texas social studies curriculum.

Meanwhile, the United States faces challenges from nations that take education seriously and use it to make themselves stronger in the challenge for world markets.

The NEA, I think it was, put out a bumper sticker a few years ago, that read, "IF YOU THINK EDUCATION IS EXPENSIVE, TRY IGNORANCE."

Ignorance is no bargain at any price. attributing global warming, in part, to "astrological dynamics." That's astrology to you and me. Yep. Not only that, the legislators declared that there are also thermological constituents to climate change. Not familiar with thermology, like the members of the South Dakota House (well, a majority of them; let's not tar the rest by association)? It's the study of

Miah

We are sorry to report that our beloved Miah passed away on Saturday February 20th. She seemed to be entirely healthy until this week, when she became listless and seemingly in some distress. A visit to the vet was inconclusive and we took her to Angell Memorial Hospital to see if she might have eaten something that had got caught in her digestive system. A doctor there noticed fluid around her lungs and suspected a heart problem. An echocardiogram revealed dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition that is always fatal in cats unless brought on by a deficiency in taurine, an amino acid. As all commercial cat food has taurine, that was not a realistic possibility. We hoped that Miah's condition might improve and that she would be able to come home for at least a short time, but it was not to be. Despite medication and a heated and oxygen enriched cage, her blood pressure stayed very low and she became increasingly sluggish. Further medication might have been tried, but it was clear that that would extend her life by, at most, only a few days. So we decided to save her further distress and to let her go.

This was all a shock to us, especially as Miah was the athlete in the family, always running and jumping and investigating new things. The photo above was taken just last week, as Miah checked out the wrapping paper from Diane's Valentine's Day present.

She did not have a long life--she was about two months short of her third birthday when she died--but we think it was a happy one. She had no pain and no distress until the last few days of her life. She certainly got lots of love. We'll always remember her with a smile.

Now her sister, Sassy, rules the house, although we have pointed out to her that she is going to have to put up with a lot more loving.

One of those amazing stories

Sometimes, truth really is stranger than fiction. Take the story of Joseph R. Beyrle, who jumped into Normandy with the 101st Airborne, and wound up fighting with the Soviets less than a year later.

And to top it off, his son is now the US ambassador to Russia.

An exhibit on Beyrle's life has now opened in a museum in St. Petersburg, and will move to Moscow in May. It is called, "Joseph R. Beyrle--a Hero of Two Nations," but his son said that his father maintained that the real heroes were the ones who never came back from the war.

He's a regular Nostradamus

Dick "The War Criminal" Cheney predicted to a group of conservative activists that Barack Obama will be a one-term president.

Didn't he also predict that Iraqis would welcome American troops as liberators?

(In fairness to the former VP, Obama is only serving one term. At a time.)

"Th' Supreme Court follows th' illiction returns"

No matter whether th' Constitution follows th' flag or not, th' Supreme Court follows th' illiction returns.

Finley Peter Dunne

Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley said that more than a hundred years ago, and it's been received political wisdom ever since. If Mr. Dooley was, indeed, right, the court is soon to undergo a huge shake-up. Seems that 80 percent of Americans think that the recent decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which opened up the floodgates of corporate money in political campaigns, was misguided. (TONE thinks it was worse than that.) Almost three-quarters of respondents think Congress should take action to reinstate limits on spending, with a majority feeling strongly about the issue.

In the past--viz. the 1930's--one justice (the "swing" justice) shifted his position. In 1937. it was Owen Roberts. Today, given the hard-right orientation of four of the justices, it would have to be Anthony Kennedy. Or, the retirement of one of those who were in the majority in Citizens United, although that does not seem likely. Still, in the end, justices of the Supreme Court are political persons. They know that the court can only get so far ahead (or behind) the people before it damages itself as an institution; some of us would say that Citizens United, especially following as it does the discredited Bush v. Gore has done so.

Time to follow the electorate.

Barney Frank on health care reform

My Congressman, Barney Frank, sent a lengthy message to those who wrote to him about health care reform. (My email included the phrase PASS THE SENATE BILL three times.) He is not only a Washington insider, but an extremely thoughtful and intelligent man. His words are, I suggest, worth pondering even if you don't necessarily agree with everything he has to say--as I don't, or at least didn't before I read what he has to say. Here are some of his thoughts:

Substantively, I support legislation to provide universal coverage. My own preference would be a single-payer system. I believe that the Medicare system - in which I am now enrolled and have been for several years - works better than the private insurance systems, although it is obviously not perfect and needs some changes. But I also recognize that we are not close to having the support in the country that I wish we had for a single-payer system, and therefore we should do what we can achieve. I believe that the Massachusetts system has worked, on the whole, better than what existed before, and one of the things in favor of the federal bill, in my mind, is that it does somewhat approach the Massachusetts system. I am troubled, I should add, in general, by the notion of a mandate on people to buy healthcare plans, and I would have preferred something that avoided this, but I believe that something of this sort is necessary because a great number of the reforms that are very desirable - and broadly supported - cannot go forward unless we are able to broaden the base of those who are being insured.

Having voted my approval of the concept of the general healthcare bill, I also want to express my differences with some aspects of what both houses passed, but particularly with the Senate bill. I disagree with the notion of taxing healthcare plans as taxable benefits. In an ideal world starting from scratch, that might make sense. In the world in which we live, where people have traded off higher wages for healthcare benefits and there are economic interests built in, I think it would be a mistake. I preferred the House proposal of raising revenues that were needed by increasing taxes on incomes above a certain level - I thought above $350,000 was appropriate, although in the end the House was only able to get support for a figure of $1 million.

I also prefer the House position of having a national exchange rather than a number of individualized exchanges, because I think the more that you broaden things here, the better off we all are. I was therefore hoping that there would be a conference between the House and the Senate to merge the bills and particularly retain those parts of the House bill where I prefer it to the Senate bill.

Until the election of Senator Brown, it seemed clear that the best way to proceed, in my judgment, was to negotiate a compromise between the bills and have it pass both the House and the Senate, with the Senate, of course, requiring the 60 votes that the filibuster rule, unfortunately but for now firmly, required. Then came the election of Senator Brown and the procedural questions that I referred to arose. I was troubled, to be honest, to hear some of my colleagues suggest that there might be some procedural shortcuts that would allow us to proceed after the election of Senator Brown, as if his election had not occurred. I do not believe that there was ever any realistic proposal to delay seating him solely for the purpose of allowing a compromise bill to be rammed through, but because it had been raised, I did speak out very harshly against it. I must say that I think it was more being forwarded by extreme conservative media than any realistic plan, but nonetheless I did want to repudiate it. I also spoke out against what I thought were some ideas about bending the Senate rules on the arcane procedure of reconciliation, so as to be able to do more with only 51 votes than is currently possible with 60. I want to be clear that I think the filibuster rule is a grave error, and I was for changing it back when the Democrats were in the minority and were using it as long as it was changed, not just for judicial nominations, but for all issues. But I do not think you should force changes in a particular procedure solely for one issue, and that is why on the Tuesday night of Senator Brown's election, I spoke out against what I thought were some proposals by some Democrats to manipulate the rules to get the bill through.

Several people who share my support for the substance of the bill have been critical of my objecting to certain procedures that they felt would work to pass the bill. My response is two-fold. First of all, it was clear by the day of Brown's election that if he were elected, there would be no way they'd simply get the House to accept the Senate bill. Some Members of the House were opposed to it because it did not sufficiently ban abortion. Of course, I was on the other side of that, but that did not mean that their votes would change. Beyond that, there were serious principal objections, which I shared, to several of the corkscrew provisions of the Senate bill, which were bad policy and bad procedure. Given this, I believe it would have been a great mistake to have tried to force things, because it would not have resulted in a bill being passed, and it would have added to the sense that we didn't feel that things are being done fairly. Increased anger and alienation from the government, and frankly from those of us now in the majority, are not in my judgment in the interest of either the country as a whole or trying to get a healthcare bill.

That leads us to the present situation. I have told the House leadership that I support an effort to pass as much of the healthcare bill as we can - and I refer here to the substantive bill without some of the Senate's obnoxious deals in it. Many have argued that it would be relatively easy to take those provisions reforming insurance - protecting people with pre-existing conditions, opposing any lifetime cap on reimbursements etc. - and passing them into law. But they would require either a sharply higher degree of regulation of insurance companies for which the support does not now exist, or an expansion of the pool of the insured, or a sharp increase in premiums. None of the three seem to me acceptable and so the question is, how can we find a way to continue with our efforts to expand the pool of those getting insurance so that we can get these other benefits. We can do some things with regard to the anti-trust exemptions that the insurance industry enjoys, and as I compose this letter, we are planning next week in the House to pass legislation that would take away the anti-trust exemptions. I think those are clearly in the interest of controlling healthcare costs and providing better choices for consumers.

Finally, I should add that I am not the best source of what exactly the current state of the negotiations is. As Chair of the Financial Services Committee, my main job for the last year and a half has been to put tough new financial reform regulations in place. I am now awaiting the Senate action, and I am concerned that some of what is going on in the Senate may weaken the bill in ways that are unwise. I did stand with President Obama and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker two weeks ago to support the proposals Mr. Volcker had made, and in fact as he acknowledged, elements of the bill that passed the House under my chairmanship set the groundwork for those. But because I have been as focused on these, I have not been a participant in the healthcare discussions. I have made it clear to the Speaker that my vote will be there to adopt the most elements that we can of a comprehensive bill and of course the problem will be figuring out what can be done in the Senate. There is a legitimate role for the reconciliation process, which requires only 51 votes - 50 Senators and the Vice President if necessary - but the problem here is that only some subjects are allowed to be considered under this procedure and not others.

Time to fold the big tent?

Democrats have suffered from the problems of a coalition party, especially when faced with a united opposition. Republican party discipline, coupled with the rules of the Senate, empowered each member of the Democratic/Independent majority: on issues such as health care, each Democrat and Independent had a veto over the bill. Which led to spectacles like the deals made to get the votes of Ben Nelson (D.NB) and Mary Landrieu (D.LA) and the demise of even a weak public option at the hands of the infamous Joe Lieberman (I.CT).

The cost of trying to govern this way has been scorn and derision, not merely from the Republican attack machine, but from those who have fueled the Tea Party movement, liberals and even some pundits who are not known for ideological purity. The 24-hour news cycle, combined with the usual myopia of day-to-day analysis did not help, either.

Another cost--and, I suggest, a greater one--is a loss of message: What do Democrats stand for?

So, should Democrats narrow their big tent and read out some who may seem all but indistinguishable from Republicans? Without Evan Bayh (who has taken himself out of the picture with spectacular bad timing), Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln (D.AR), the party would have a lot more intellectual coherence and heft. And if we sent Joe Lieberman to Senatorial Siberia, we'd feel a lot better about ourselves.

While it would be satisfying to have a more coherent party, the genius of American politics was, for many decades, the absence of ideological purity. The broad-based parties of 1950-1980 allowed a huge amount of important legislation to pass; Republican support was crucial to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Can we recapture that? Not with Republicans intent on being the Party of No, but would narrowing the range of the Democrats contribute to opening the other party to a more flexible stance? Hard to see how it could.

Still, the most potent forces for changing the present political dynamic are likely to be public pressure--will Republicans be forced to contribute to the nation's governance?--and the self-interest of individual GOP lawmakers; the latter depends on the ability of Democrats to present those across the aisle with opportunities they cannot dismiss and challenges they cannot refuse.

Rather than narrowing the Democratic Party, we need to refine what we are about. We need to do a better job of declaring what it means to be a Democrat (hostility to huge Wall Street banks would be one part). Will that mean that some now members of the party leave? Perhaps, but not necessarily. (What is Olympia Snowe doing in the same party with Jim DeMint and Mitch McConnell?)

Democrats, being a party that makes a virtue of openness and tolerance for differing views, should naturally have a broader membership than Republicans. The challenge is to keep from being so wide-open that we lose all meaning except to win elections, which is a formula for losing them.

Biathlon

I saw a little of the women's and men's biathlon over the weekend. For those who are not familiar, this sport is a combination of cross-country skiing and target shooting, and was clearly derived from the need for such skills among ski troops; indeed, according to Wikipedia, the event at the 1924 Winter Olympics dubbed military patrol was the direct ancestor of today's biathlon.

The US has done better at the biathlon in the last few Olympics, but we hardly dominate; indeed, I believe we have never won a medal, although an American man was leading the World Cup standings in biathlon this season. I want to know why Americans aren't the leading power in this sport. In particular, with our passion for guns and shooting, why doesn't the US rule the medal field? Where is the NRA when we need it? Why aren't the solons of that organization encouraging American youth to go skimming over the snowfields, rifles on their backs, taking time off to whale away at tiny targets? Great preparation for the day the black helicopters descend.

(Seriously, great respect is due to biathletes; their event may be the most demanding of all winter sports. To race over the snow, then stop and get your heart rate down enough to hit a target is terribly hard. And they labor in obscurity.)