Sonia Sotomayor

Obviously this is a very exciting and historic day, as President Obama is poised to name Sonia Sotomayor as his pick to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court. Sotomayor is by all accounts a brilliant jurist who has displayed a sterling sense of how the law works throughout her long and diverse career. Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog makes a point that will surely help in confirmation:

Objectively, her qualifications are overwhelming from the perspective of ordinary Americans.  She has been a prosecutor, private litigator, trial judge, and appellate judge.  No one currently on the Court has that complete package of experience.

These qualifications, paired with the historic importance of her being the first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the court, make it seem incredibly dangerous politically for Republicans to forcefully oppose her nomination. What makes it even harder is that they spent the last eight years screaming from the top of their lungs against any and all filibusters of judicial nominations. Media Matters has launched DemocracyOrHypocrisy.org, a site that has compiled clips of Republican senators speaking out against filibusters of President Bush’s nominees.

Glenn Greenwald makes a very important point about the importance of President Obama’s decision to nominate Sotomayor in the face of a vicious and cowardly smear campaign against her, her intelligence, and stereotypical racial demeanors targeting Latin women. Greenwald writes:

It is very encouraging that Obama ignored the ugly, vindictive, and anonymous smear campaign led by The New Republic‘s Jeffrey Rosen and his secret cast of cowardly Eminent Liberal Legal Scholars of the Respectable Intellectual Center.  People like that, engaging in tactics of that sort, have exerted far too much influence on our political culture for far too long, and Obama’s selection of one of their most recent targets both reflects and advances the erosion of their odious influence.  And Obama’s choice is also a repudiation of the Jeffrey-Rosen/Ben-Wittes/Stuart–Taylor grievance on behalf of white males that, as Dahlia Lithwick put it, “a diverse bench must inevitably be a second-rate bench.”

From an ideological and court-balance question, while Sotomayor does not seem to be moving towards the far left of the court’s make-up, she does preserve the court’s balance by being quite similar to Justice Souter. Jack Balkin writes:

Obama’s pick of Sotomayor gives him a liberal replacement to David Souter who is likely to form part of the liberal coalition of Justices currently on the Court. Sotomayor has a fairly long track record as a judge. As a result, Obama knows pretty much what he is getting, which suggests that Sotomayor is unlikely to disappoint Obama repeatedly on the issues he cares about, at least while Obama is President.

Hopefully Sotomayor becomes a forceful advocate for the rule of law on the court. But above all else, I think that how the Obama administration handled this search and selection of Sotomayor is one of the most heartening events in his young presidency. This is what change looks like and America will be better for it.

Good Dodd News

Yesterday Chris Dodd’s Credit CARD Act passed overwhelmingly. It’s a victory for regulation of an industry run amok and will provide a great deal of protection for consumers from predatory lending practices and usurious rates. The Hartford Courant calls it a “big win for Dodd.” Former Ned Lamont campaign manager, Tom Swam, has a great bit of analysis in the Courant piece:

 “This is the first real significant step by Congress to protect [consumers from] some of the more abusive practices,” said Tom Swan, executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group. “Sen. Dodd has had a tough couple of months, and a victory like this reminds people of his ability to get things done. …[It] is this exact type of thing he needs between now and next November.”

Beyond Dodd’s Credit CARD legislation, Dodd also received high praise today from President Obama for his work on housing legislation.

Present at Obama’s bill signing Wednesday afternoon were two Democrats headed for high-profile Senate races in 2010.

One was embattled Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, who Obama credited with passing a key housing measure.

“We wouldn’t be here without my good friend Chris Dodd,” he said.

One of the ways Dodd can solidify his numbers in Connecticut is by continuing to be the effective, progressive legislator he’s been for the last 30 plus years for the citizens of Connecticut. When he leads, he gets strong recognition from key influentials both in Connecticut and at the national level. It’s this sort of success that makes me confident Dodd will be able to weather the storm and win reelection in 2010.

More Clarity

I’ve never been a fan of Jesse Ventura, but he really owns rightwing hack Elizabeth Hasselbeck on The View. What makes Ventura so powerful in this clip is that he is absolutely clear about what he believes and does not waiver from his absolute rejection of torture. Hasselbeck looks like the fool that she is arguing against Ventura in favor of torture.

Making Sense

Alan Grayson is probably the freshman Congressman who has most impressed me. The man works his ass off and takes his position seriously. He’s conducted some of the most grueling examinations of the administrators bailouts at Treasury and recipients of bailout money. Now, in an interview in Vanity Fair, Grayson is making sense on Iraq. He had previously made a statement to the New York Times about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that raised eyebrows:

“There is no need in the 21st century to do this, to make us safe. This is a 19th-century strategy being played out at great expense in both money and blood in the 21st century, in the wrong time at the wrong place.”

Vanity Fair started their interview on this subject.

Alan Grayson: The reason why I said what I said is because the fundamental goal of our endeavors in Iraq and Afghanistan is supposed to be to protect us. That’s why we call the Defense Department the Defense Department, because it’s supposed to defend America. And whatever the perceived threat may be, whether it’s al-Qaeda or the Taliban or otherwise, only by the most incredibly convoluted Bushian logic could you possibly get to the point where you conclude that as a result of that threat we should spend $100 billion a year and send over 100,000 of our young men and women abroad, 8,000 miles away, and that that is an effective way to accomplish that goal. It doesn’t make any sense.

Life does not consist of a Risk board game, where you try to occupy every space on the planet. There’s no other country that does this, there’s no other country that seeks to occupy foreign countries 8,000 miles from their own border, and believe that that somehow accomplishes anything useful. It doesn’t. If in fact it’s important to our national security to keep al-Qaeda or the Taliban under control, there are far more effective ways of accomplishing that goal, if that is in fact the goal, than to extend this kind of money and this kind of blood.

This is something that Democrats said when they were in the opposition repeatedly, and that truth hasn’t changed at all just because we elected a president. You can always find some kind of excuse to do what you want to do anyway, but I have to wonder why a new Democratic president wants to do something like this. This is a president who has recognized the immorality of torture, and I’m waiting for him to recognize the immorality of war and foreign occupation.

It’s clear that two things Grayson possess in spades is moral clarity and the courage of his convictions. These are bold words for a Congressman who’s part of a caucus that has consistently voted to continue to fund both wars. Grayson is seriously trying to move the Overton Window on both Iraq and Afghanistan. Even in this interview, though, you can see the journalist from Vanity Fair, Christopher Bateman, taking a confrontational position against Grayson, lobbying repeated pieces of the Beltway’s ever-evolving Conventional Wisdom on the whys and hows of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Grayson’s rebuttals to Bateman’s premises are truly powerful and worthy of a detailed reading.

Attacking Dodd From the Right

TParty at My Left Nutmeg has a great post on the newly-announced challenge to Senator Chris Dodd from a Democrat named Merrick Alpert, a former Enron and PG&E employee, who is running against Dodd from the right and without any stated agenda besides personal attacks.TParty writes:

Unfortunately, from all initial appearances, Merrick Alpert’s just-announced campaign for Senate falls clearly in the second category [of damaging primaries driven by attacks and personal ambition]. He is already attacking Senator Dodd using right-wing talking points, and is poised to continue running at Senator Dodd from the right.

It seems Alpert has been looking for a chance to run and try to move the Connecticut Democratic party to the right for at least a half-decade now. As far back as February 2004, the Greenwich Time reported on his travels across the state attempting to “create a potent voting bloc” that he – in his own words – hoped would become a “centrist, pro-jobs, pro-business coalition.”  Alpert was at that point a resident of Greenwich and member of the Greenwich DTC (there is apparently some election law of which I am unaware that requires all primary challengers in Connecticut to have lived in Greenwich).

His seemingly-complete website and introductory video are both almost completely bereft of any policy distinctions with Dodd – or really any mention of any issues at all (the word “economy” does not appear there anywhere as far as I can tell). Instead, his campaign has emerged as a full-bore ad hominem assault, attacking Dodd both overtly and obliquely – but always in pitch-perfect right-wing consultant-speak: for being part of a “culture of corruption”, for not telling the “truth” about the AIG bonuses, for moving to Iowa during his presidential run, and apparently – while emotionally describing watching his mother reading the losses on her 401(k) statement and blaming Chris Dodd for letting it happen – even for allowing the entire economic crisis.

If you wanted to, you wouldn’t have to go far to find the many ironies: an ex-Enron employee attacking someone for being part of a “culture of corruption”, a recent resident of Florida attacking someone for not being around Connecticut enough, a big donor who maxed out to Dodd as recently as 2006 and who has been looking to run for something big for half a decade suddenly – by his own account – dropping that support and realizing the error of his ways the very day Dodd stepped in it on CNN and it was clear he was headed for a free-fall in the polls.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that Alpert’s mentor in Connecticut politics, John Pelto, doesn’t even approve of what he’s doing and how he’s doing it. Pelto says:

“I’m surprised, even a bit stunned, that my former intern Merrick Albert is interested in running against Chris Dodd, let alone that he believes he is prepared to serve as Connecticut’s United States Senator.

“I’ve known Merrick for more than 20 years.  He worked as my legislative intern when he was a student at Trinity College and later helped with various political campaigns.  Always eager and ambitious, everyone who has ever worked with Merrick knows that he’s always wanted to run for political office.  Hopefully, he’ll reconsider this strange decision and focus instead on getting his political career underway by running for a position that he is more qualified for like state representative or state senator.”

Alpert is making his formal announcement today, but it’s hard to look at this as anything other than a self-serving campaign that will only serve to solidify the narratives the CT GOP and Rob Simmons are trying to tell Connecticut voters. Alpert may not want Dodd to represent Connecticut in the Senate any more, but he had better recognize that he won’t be in the Senate come 2011 either. He can only serve as a catalyst that will accelerate the chances of Simmons to defeat Dodd. This is not a good thing.

Update:

Rick Green of the Hartford Courant puts it well: “Somewhere, Glenn Beck and Rob Simmons are smiling.”

More On Cheney

Following a previous post, it’s worth highlighting Jonathan Landay’s remarkable investigative reporting for McClatchy that confirms that Bush-Cheney ordered torture for political purposes.

Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of Iraq, asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn’t true.

Cheney’s 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely overlooked at the time. However, they appear to substantiate recent reports that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship.

The head of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo from 2002-2005 confirmed to McClatchy that in late 2002 and early 2003, intelligence officials were tasked to find, among other things, Iraq-al Qaida ties, which were a central pillar of the Bush administration’s case for its March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“I’m aware of the fact that in late 2002, early 2003, that (the alleged al Qaida-Iraq link) was an interest on the intelligence side,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Brittain Mallow, a former military criminal investigator. “That was something they were tasked to look at.”

This goes back to David Waldman’s points on CNN regarding the use of torture for purely political purposes. What makes this so remarkable isn’t that there was torture in itself, but that it was ordered to advance the political prospects of the Republican Party and leadership that had lied the country into a preventive war of choice.

Spoiler Alert

Not that I’m particularly concerned that the readers of the New York Times op-ed page will be upset about Russ Douthat spoiling the endings of two major books turned movies, but hot dang, what a wanky thing to do. And for what it’s worth, Dan Brown was a teach at my high school. I knew him as such, though it was at that time that he authored Digital Fortress. The idea that he’s setting himself up as a prophet akin to Jesus, as Douthat postulates, is simply absurd.

I know it must be scary for a young conservative like Douthat to see religious stories become massively successful pop culture items, but I wish Douthat reveled in the irony and not the fear he clearly instead responds with. Religion is popular culture. That Dan Brown found a way to cast a mostly secular, fictional spin on it is no more remarkable than the authors of the Left Behind series of books and video games casting a successful fundamentalist fictional take on religion in the modern age.

Investigation

Via Eric Martin, The Editors really do have the quote of the day:

 Now that important figures in Washington have admitted to directly ordering more and worse, however, the question of even investigating whether some sort of crime may perhaps have taken place is fraught with all sort of beard-tugging brain-twisters which no man can untangle, even with the help of modern computer technology.  How can we investigate if we don’t know all the facts?  How dare we enforce laws against things which might possibly be permissible in some highly artificial thought experiment?  What if ‘24′ is FOR REALS?!?  These are the sorts of questions which need to be shrugged at for 50 billion news cycles before we can even think about OH MY GOD A SHARK ATE A WHITE LADY AT HER WEDDING!!!!!  We’ve got what amounts to a reverse Nuremberg defense, where Bush administration officials are let off the hook because they were only giving orders.  I’m not sure that’s such a great idea. [Emphasis added]

Sometimes dramatic sarcasm does a better job encapsulating the Beltway media culture than anything else. This is obviously one of those times, because hyperbole isn’t possible when the simulacrum is actually no different from reality.