Animal House

Congressman John Larson (CT-01) has the GOP pegged. Via email:

“The political theater enacted by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle today was akin to Otter and Boone leading the Deltas out of the student body at Faber College. If this issue wasn’t so important to the nation, we would have to consider holding the Republicans in double secret probation.

In article 1, the Constitution lays out the authority of the Congress. For too long, that authority has been ceded to an executive branch that consistently overreaches and ignores our system of checks and balances.

When Republicans left the floor of the House of Representatives, they again abdicated their responsibility as members of this body to oversee the actions of the executive branch. It is both irresponsible and unconstitutional. The Executive Branch must answer questions about the firing of U.S. Attorneys. No one in this country is exempt from a legal subpoena and Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten are not above the law.

The Republican’s stunt on the House floor today is just another example of their rubber stamp of this administration’s disregard for the Constitution and our civil rights in the pursuit of its own political purposes. Let’s remember that the need for new FISA legislation – the legislation that Republicans claimed they were leaving the floor in protest over- became apparent only when the administration’s secret and illegal use of unwarranted eavesdropping was revealed. This is yet another example of the Bush Administration’s dismissal of the Congress as a co-equal branch of government.

Today, Democrats in the House stood up to the Administration, reasserted the power of Congress and held executive branch officials accountable for their actions. Under the leadership of our Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, we have fought to reclaim the power that the Executive Branch tried to steal and House Republicans tried to give away. I am very proud of the actions of the Democratic Caucus today.” [Emphasis added]

Dolchstosslegende: Not Just for Presidential Politics

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The Republican candidate for the Illinois 14th Congressional District (Dennis Hastert’s seat) is running this ad against Democrat Bill Foster. This ad mentions “cut[ting] off funding for our troops” and Foster is accused of wanting to “raise the white flag”. It ends: “I’m Jim Olberweis and I approved this message because I’ll never turn my back on our troops.”

This is their brand. This is all they have. Republicans from John McCain on down will repeat the mantra that Democrats want to surrender, that we aren’t supporting the troops, that we would have won in Iraq if we didn’t stab them in the back.

It is tired, pathetic, and just plain wrong. I hope Democrats push back very forcefully on this sort of breathless Republican attack.

Update:

Markos Moulitsas has more on the IL-14 race in his column in The Hill.

Drama!

I really hope that I’m not the only person who sees the irony of House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner decrying what he thinks is partisan grandstanding and responding by ordering the Republican caucus to walk out of the House on live television and go directly to the steps of the Capitol and a waiting bank of cameras for a press conference.

Think Progress has the video – judge for yourself who’s doing the grandstanding.

Regardless of any assessments about what does and does not count as grandstanding, the House passed contempt citations on Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten while the Republicans were holding their press conference. Jesse Lee at The Gavel writes:

Today, the House has just approved H.Res. 982, which provides for the adoption of H.Res. 979, recommending that the House of Representatives find Harriet Miers, former White House Counsel, and Joshua Bolten, the White House Chief of Staff, in contempt of Congress for refusal to comply with subpoenas issued by the Judiciary Committee. These subpoenas were issued as part of the Committee’s investigation into the firings of a number of United States Attorneys and matters concerning the politicization of the Justice Department. This resolution also provides for adoption of H.Res. 980 – Authorizing the Committee on the Judiciary to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas.

In other words, Congress just stood up for the rule of law. The Bush administration thinks they are above it and have acted accordingly. The House has reasserted that the legislature is a co-equal branch as the executive. Actions have consequences and the law must be followed. This goes whether it’s a Democratic White House or a Republican White House — good government is strengthened by the rule of law and undermined by the rule of men. This sort of principled action has been far too long coming.

Here are a few lines that merit attention.

Rep. Brad Miller:

“The President cannot decide by decree. The President cannot announce with absolute unreviewable authority what information the Administration will provide or withhold. The framers of our Constitution had just fought a war against an autocratic king. It is inconceivable that they intended to create and executive branch with the power the Bush Administration now claims and that the minority now supports.”

Rep. Linda Sánchez:

“Members on both sides of the aisle should recognize the gravity of this vote. If the executive branch is allowed to simply ignore Congressional subpoenas while Congress idly stands by, we will have abdicated our role of oversight of the executive branch and undermined our system of checks and balances.”

Rep. John Yarmuth:

“So when we came here, one of the things we did was to start talking about Article 1. Article 1, which established the Congress of the United States and vested all legislative powers therein. We started wearing these buttons, Article 1 buttons, and we offered them to Members of both parties hoping that this would not be a partisan issue and not be an expression of partisanship, and instead of respect for the integrity of this institution. Unfortunately, most of my colleagues on the other side chose not to wear these buttons. They’ve chosen to make this a partisan issue. In spite of the fact that during the last six years before we took control of the Congress, no subpoenas were issued against this president, no efforts to hold him accountable were made in spite of the fact that in the prior administration, 1,000 subpoenas were offered by the Republican Congress to the Democratic president.”

We need more of this in Congress. More principled leadership to defend the rule of law. More public, vocal dedication to the Constitution. More forceful opposition to the Republican obstructionism and obsequiousness of the Republican caucus to this lawless presidency. Good on the House Dems today – now just keep doing this.

Shays Hammered for Baseball Grandstanding

“Mike and the Mad Dog” is the drive time sports talk radio show on WFAN, in the tri-state area. It has a huge audience and its hosts, Mike Francesa and Chris “Mad Dog” Russo are very respected sports commentators in the New York sports media with their show being simulcast on the YES cable network and Francesa having a TV show during football season on another network that I’m forgetting.

Yesterday Mike and Chris were following the baseball steroid hearings and, not surprisingly, had very strong opinions about the grandstanding they saw House Republicans doing, lead by Chris Shays. They just eviscerated Shays for not knowing what he was talking about and being a complete Roger Clemens fan boy. It got so bad that Russo, who is a registered Republican from New Canaan, CT and one of Shays constituents, decides that he has to support Jim Himes, Shays challenger. “Get Shays out, get Himes in there!” By the end of the show, the hosts were going through Himes background and informing their listeners that a couple could donate up to $4,600 to Himes campaign!

CT Blogger at My Left Nutmeg pulled video from the show. First (and this is probably the least interesting clip), Mike and Chris run through Shays behavior during the House hearings on steroids yesterday:

Then they start taking callers to respond to Shays. In completely bipartisan fashion, listeners to WFAN agree that Shays was a disgrace and that they wanted him out of there.

The best segment, in my mind, is this clip where Mike and Chris first decide that Himes is their guy:

It merits repeating that “Mike and the Mad Dog” are on cable in the tri-state area for about five hours every day of the week. If they decide to make bashing Chris Shays a regular issue, Shays is in serious trouble. Connecticut’s 4th CD, which Shays represents, is completely within the broadcast range of WFAN. There is a huge base of sports fans from CT that listen to WFAN religiously. I grew up in Shays district and used to listen to “Mike and the Mad Dog” every single day after school. Now that I’m back in their broadcast range, I frequently listen to their show.

MLN commenter joejoejoe notes:

From the NY Daily News 4/07: “For nearly 20 years, Francesa and Russo have either been No.1 or No.2 in the market in terms of ratings, among men 25-54, the key demographic.”

From Wikipedia: “During the day, WFAN’s groundwave signal can be heard faintly as far south as Washington, DC and as far north as the I-90 corridor (the New York State Thruway and Massachusetts Turnpike), about 150 miles north of New York City. WFAN can also allegedly be heard clearly on the northern beaches of North Carolina’s Outer Banks during the day. Signal strength varies depending on factors such as weather and elevation. Still, a good car radio can pick up WFAN cleanly in most of eastern Pennsylvania and throughout Connecticut”

This could actually be a big deal in the Himes vs. Shays race. If Russo and Francesa decide they are going to regularly blast Shays and promote Jim Himes, then there’s the potential to give a lot of people who vote in this race a very solid hook to turn them against Shays.

Oh and I hope you caught it at the start of the 3rd video, but the Himes campaign had Jim call the WFAN studio while Mike and Chris were on air. That’s a very impressive response to a timely issue and it looked like it impressed the hosts.

Learn more about Jim Himes at his campaign website, HimesForCongress.com.

PAA Sunset Likely

Yesterday House Republicans blocked a 21 day extension to the Protect America Act. The law is scheduled to sunset this Friday, after having previously received a 15 day extension at the end of January. Don’t worry – the PAA sunset won’t have any impact on the government’s ability to collect intelligence on terrorist threats. Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times reports:

The lapsing of the deadline would have little practical effect on intelligence gathering. Intelligence officials would be able to intercept communications from Qaeda members or other identified terrorist groups for a year after the initial eavesdropping authorization for that particular group.

This echoes the the words of Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday:

On Friday, a surveillance law insisted upon by the President last August will expire. Today, an overwhelming majority of House Democrats voted to extend that law for three weeks so that agreement could be reached with the Senate on a better version of that law. The President and House Republicans refused to support the extension and therefore will bear the responsibility should any adverse national consequences result.

However, even if the Protect America Act expires later this week, the American people can be confident that our country remains safe and strong. Every order entered under the law can remain in effect for 12 months from the date it was issued.

Furthermore, the underlying Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which provides for the surveillance of terrorists and provides that in emergencies surveillance can begin without warrant, remains intact and available to our intelligence agencies. Unlike last August, the FISA court has no backlog of cases, and thus can issue necessary court orders for surveillance immediately.

From a practical standpoint, what this means is that the sunset of the PAA should not create an environment where Democrats are negotiating under political duress.

It seems like the House Democratic leadership, notably Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and House Intelligence Committee chair Silvestre Reyes are all standing firm on passing good legislation. They’ve been vocal in opposition to the Republican talking points. From the Lichtblau piece:

The expiration of the powers “doesn’t mean we are somehow vulnerable again,” said Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
…

“The president’s presentation this morning was, I think, basically dishonest,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader.

This is good. Hopefully these statements by Pelosi, Hoyer, and Reyes are a sign of things to come from the House in the conference committee report. As of now, the membership of the conference committee has not been set and some procedural steps would have to take place before they begin working out the differences between House and Senate version of FISA legislation.

Cross posted at the CREDO Blog.

More, Please

Obama on McCain:

“If you want the same as we’ve had in the last seven years,” Mr. Obama said, “then I think John McCain’s going to be a great choice.”

McCain needs to be consistently and persistently tied to George W. Bush. If you liked a failed war with Iraq, you’ll love a McCain war with Iran. If you liked fear-mongering and accusations of Dolchstosslegende under Bush, McCain will knock your socks off. If you liked youthful Supreme Court judges itching to roll back abortion rights, McCain will happily continue to young arch-conservatives to the highest court in the land.

It’s great to see Senator Obama using this line and I hope he continues to do it, even while the Democratic nomination remains undecided.

Taking The Short View

Josh Marshall points to Clinton pollster, strategist, and alleged smart person, Mark Penn:

“Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn’t won any of the significant states — outside of Illinois? That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”

This is about as short a view as the Clinton campaign can be taking as far as this election goes. It’s almost as if Mark Penn doesn’t know that there’s another thing, determined by people in all fifty states, that takes place after the Democratic Convention that will have some bearing on who the next President is.

Some of Obama’s victories have come from states that have historically gone for the Republican candidate in the general election. But he’s also won a number of swing states, who will likely have a significant role in determining the outcome of the 2008 general election. Of note: Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, and Virginia.

Every state is significant in the Democratic nominating process as every state has delegates that both candidates need. Some of the states are going to be crucial to the prospects of the Democratic nominee. Discounting them now is short-sighted and has the potential to derail Clinton if she succeeds in winning the nomination in spite of Penn’s poor strategic decisions.

No You Can’t

Via Jesse Wendel at Group News Blog, Billionaires for Bush jam on the Obama celebrity video. Here’s the text:

…It was a creed, snuck into the founding documents that denied the destiny of a nation.

No, you can’t.

It was decreed by bankers and landowners as they marched our monopolies westward.

No, you can’t.

No you can’t stop our power and privilege.

No you can’t repeal our tax cuts for the wealthy few.

No you can’t heal this nation.

No you can’t end the war.

No you can’t.

No matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of our power keeping us in power.

Status quo.

Now the hopes of the little girl who goes to a private school in Newport are the same as the dreams of the boy who parties in the clubs of LA.

We are not as divided as our portfolios suggest. We run this nation, and together we will stop this nonsense about writing the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea —

No. You. Can’t.

VOTE GOP?

Genius.