GOP Cave on DHS: One Week Funding Approved

President Obama is head of the executive branch of the Federal government. He has, like it or not, pretty expansive powers to direct or change the enforcement priorities of the executive branch. Arguably he has exceeded those powers in his latest executive immigration policy. The courts will end up making that decision. However the legislative branch, has, like it or not, the authority to determine what the budget is and on what it may be spent. In its own way this power is just as awesome as that of the President. Reckless or not, Congress has the ability to defund executive actions that it does not like. Ultimately this is what happened with the Vietnam War. However for either the President or Congress to effectively wield those powers which they possess they must be willing to say "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" and ignore objections to valid use of those powers. For all the criticism which President Obama has received, some valid, some not, for being a weak vacillating mouse of a man who is too eager to find common ground where there isn't any, on this executive action on illegal immigration, it turns out that at least to this point he's the one with the intestinal fortitude. Faced with the reality of what a DHS shutdown would mean to the country, DHS employees, and to their poll numbers Senate and House Republicans blinked, approving a one week DHS funding bill. President Obama signed the legislation last night.

UPDATE: HOUSE GOP SURRENDERS!!

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted today to fund the Department of Homeland Security through the end of the budget year — without any restrictions on immigration. The vote is a victory for President Obama as Republicans had wanted to strip funding for the president's executive actions on immigration from the bill.

The measure now heads to President Obama, who is expected to sign it.

Two hours before a midnight deadline, Congress has narrowly averted a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security for one week, setting up another funding showdown for next Friday.

Hours before a midnight deadline, the House easily approved a one-week extension of the funding. The vote was 357-60. It required two-thirds of members' support to pass.

President Barack Obama later signed the bill.
The move means that DHS will not experience a shutdown at midnight, but it also fails to resolve the impasse created when the House initially lashed together the agency's budget and so-called "riders" that would gut the president's immigration proposals. Some House conservatives said that Obama's actions are unconstitutional and must be stopped - even at the cost of a DHS funding lapse.
LINK

This raises the question of what is going to change in one week? So are the Republicans going to throw another temper tantrum and then cave again? Wash, Rinse and Repeat? Another one week extension? What happened to the so-called tough guys who were going to stop the "Kenyan usurper" in his tracks? I'm joking but there are some conservative activists who are asking that very question. Erick Erickson had a bizarre and amusing full gay panic meltdown over at Redstate over the approaching Republican cave-in. The fact that when it came down to it the President was not bluffing while many Republicans were is useful information for future negotiations. There is no reason to take Republican threats seriously because they've shown again and again that they lack follow through. This is basic game theory stuff. If you don't or won't do what you threatened you were going to do your power is much diminished. And by power here I mean masculinity as so much of this fight was understood by all concerned as a brutal test of willpower and manhood. It is of course possible that in one week the Republicans will find a spinal column but if I were the President I would be betting otherwise. Time will tell. Perhaps the Republicans will be so ashamed of their approval of the one week clean bill that they will feel cornered and not back down next time. But again all we know right now is that the Republicans are just like a dull knife that just ain't cutting. They're just talking loud and saying nothing as Soul Brother Number One might have pointed out.

What are your thoughts?

Senate Intelligence Committee Releases CIA Torture Report

The Senate Intelligence Committee just recently released a declassified (by the White House) report on torture engaged in by the CIA and other agencies under the Bush Administration post 9-11. There's not too much here which is surprising or that was unknown to anyone who was paying attention to some of the leaks and other allegations that have come out over the past decade. And certainly it's not unknown to the people who were tortured or the governments which assisted the US in activities which are illegal under both national and international laws. No, the only people who might be surprised are American citizens who don't pay a tremendous amount of attention to what their government is doing. Because the Obama Administration whiffed on bringing these perpetrators to justice immediately after the inauguration it's unlikely that any of these folks will ever be identified and held to account under the American criminal justice system. Prosecutorial discretion is a wonderful thing sometimes, eh? But that aside as others have said in a democracy, in a constitutional republic, in America, theoretically the citizens are still the boss. And the boss always has the right and for that matter the obligation to know what his employees are doing. It is amusing to me that some of the conservatives who were against this release claim to be more concerned about the possible negative impact on US interests or citizens overseas than they are about the rights of US citizens to know the crimes the government has committed in their name. 

I think that secrecy in government, even where needed or legitimate, tends to corrode trust. But in this case, unlike say diplomacy, there is no need or right for the government to commit crimes and then claim that we have no right to know what they did. It's important to point out that the torture techniques were harsher and more expansive than we were first given to believe. They also didn't work. Although this report release is only a very small step in doing the right thing, I think it's a good start. Let justice be done though the heavens fall.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA used sexual threats, waterboarding and other harsh methods to interrogate terrorism suspects and all were ineffective at eliciting critical information, according to a U.S. Senate report released on Tuesday. Senator Angus King, an independent, told CNN releasing the report was important because it could persuade a future president not to use these techniques.

Besides the now-well-known practice of waterboarding, tactics included weeks of sleep deprivation, slapping and slamming of detainees against walls, confining them to small boxes, keeping them isolated for prolonged periods and threatening them with death.

Three detainees faced waterboarding, the simulated drowning technique. Some were left broken by the treatment, pleading and whimpering, one described as assuming a "compliant" position on the waterboarding table at the snap of an interrogator's fingers.

"We did things that we tried Japanese soldiers for war crimes for after World War Two. This is not America. This is not who we are. What was done has diminished our stature and inflamed terrorists around the world."

• Rectal feeding
• Interrogators with histories of sexual assault
• Russian Roulette
• Kidnapping mentally challenged people to use as hostages
• Stress Positions
• Threats to kill and rape the children or mothers of prisoners

Executive summary of Senate Report

Is President Obama a lame duck?

Good morning. Unfortunately this is another day when it looks like the overseer at my salt mine employment wants to know in exact detail how much salt I've mined over the past month, where are the records and why didn't I mine more salt. So as a result this will be a short post but it is something that has been on my mind lately. Is President Obama a lame duck? Usually, lame duck status only accrues to a President in the final two years or less remaining of his term, after the November midterms, when his party has usually lost seats in the House or Senate or even if they haven't done so are looking forward, often for reasons of self-preservation, to the next political cycle, which by definition won't include the current President. Much like the lag period between a corporate boss announcing that they're retiring and the time at which they actually do so, people who used to toady to the boss or at least grudgingly offer respect to the position, may suddenly discover heretofore unknown independence of thought and action. The boss' requests may be ignored or slow-walked. If the boss was never much liked in the first place, open insubordination is not out of the realm of possibility. This is particularly true when the boss was not well plugged into the power structures of the company. Other power brokers can even subtly or not so subtly encourage such behavior, especially if your workplace is a real dog-eat-dog kind of environment. I've heard that Washington D.C. is such a place where the weak are killed and eaten, politically speaking.

Now as far as some more right-wing citizens were concerned of course the President lacked legitimacy in the first place so they saw him as a lame duck from the start despite being elected twice by comfortable margins. But some recent events and data should give the President and his supporters, if not fits, cause for serious concern.

President Obama hit a new low in support, according to an NBC/WSJ poll. President Obama’s job approval rating sank to a new low of 41 percent in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Tuesday, forecasting political headwinds for the Democratic Party in the months leading up to November’s midterm elections.

Forty-eight percent of respondents in the survey said that they are less likely to vote for a candidate who is a solid supporter of of Obama, versus 26 percent who said they are more likely to support a candidate that supports the president. More than a third of respondents remained neutral, with 41 percent saying that their vote will have nothing to do with the president.

LINK

Now from a purely selfish standpoint this may not matter too much to the President. We don't have a parliamentary system with votes of confidence or party leaders being removed by their party. Short of impeachment and conviction President Obama will serve out his term. But this matters a great deal to Senate and House Democrats, who are starting to see less of a downside to opposing the President. This was made clear in the successful (and shameful) disposal of the nomination of Debo Adegbile to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the similar ominous storm clouds gathering around the nomination of Vivek Murthy to be the Surgeon General. Now regardless of whether you think that either man would have been good at his job the point remains that it is Senate Democrats who either wavered or led the charge against both men. Those aren't the actions of people who think that President Obama is popular or that they need to worry about opposing the President. There is no price to pay for opposing President Obama. He talks tough but seems to be at a loss how to deal with determined opposition. Again, it is a little early to be having these sorts of problems with your own party. Part of this may be coming from a long held belief among some Democrats that President Obama has short coattails and so they have to look out for themselves, politically speaking. 

WASHINGTON — Democrats are becoming increasingly alarmed about their midterm election fortunes amid President Obama’s sinking approval ratings, a loss in a special House election in Florida last week, and millions of dollars spent by Republican-aligned groups attacking the new health law. The combination has led to uncharacteristic criticism of Mr. Obama and bitter complaints that his vaunted political organization has done little to help the party’s vulnerable congressional candidates. Interviews with more than two dozen Democratic members of Congress, state party officials and strategists revealed a new urgency about the need to address the party’s prospects. One Democratic lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, said Mr. Obama was becoming “poisonous” to the party’s candidates. 

At the same time, Democrats are pressing senior aides to Mr. Obama for help from the political network. When two senior White House officials — Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director, and Phil Schiliro, the health care adviser — went to the Capitol late last month to address Senate Democrats about the Affordable Care Act, they were met with angry questions about why Mr. Obama’s well-funded advocacy group, Organizing for Action, was not airing commercials offering them cover on the health law....

Surprise, surprise the PPACA has been driving some of the Democratic problems. Well I can't see the future but you may remember that I predicted that it would not work as designed, which is apparently why the President has been making so many changes to it. Time will tell if I'm wrong or not but if it was such a great plan there wouldn't have to be so many unilateral changes to it. Similar past changes to the REAL ID act and some deep discussions with our very own The Janitor have grudgingly convinced me that the President is probably still within his legal rights though he may be pushing up against the extreme limits. Different topic, different day. But anyway I don't think that pro-PPACA voters will be a serious factor in the midterm elections. Democrats know this which is why they are about two minutes away from hitting the abandon ship button. Still, as we've seen in the past, oftentimes the evil overlord plans don't work out. President Obama wasn't supposed to win in 2008 or 2012. But he did. Every time his rivals cackle that they've got him now he seems to thrive and win. So Democratic panic may be real but it also may be overstated. I can't call it. Well I could but I'd rather know what you think.

Is President Obama a premature lame duck?

Are some Democrats correct to distance themselves from the President?

Do you think Republicans can retake the Senate?

How can the President keep Senate Democrats moving in his direction?

Harry Reid Invokes Nuclear Option: No Filibuster for you!!!

As Vito Corleone realized, sometimes you have to deal with people who simply aren't reasonable. When such people persist in their foolishness, even after you have swallowed insult after insult, turned every cheek you have, and steadfastly tried to point out to them the error of their ways by using unimpeachable logic, further discussion is useless. You just have to call in Clemenza and Luca and let them do what they do. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid finally came to a similar realization today when he oversaw a Senate alteration of the filibuster rules, due to what was widely seen as irrational Republican intransigence concerning Presidential nominations for judges or even high ranking executive positions. There is of course the chance that Republicans will return the favor if they ever regain the majority in the Senate but the Democrats could not continue to accept such behavior.

I'm not a huge Obama or Democratic Party fan (look out for upcoming post on that) but there are times and situations in which you have to, figuratively speaking, hit your opponent right in his mouth. And this was one of those times in my view. The Republicans suffer under the delusion that they can stop the President's entire agenda and/or prevent him from making his preferred appointments. As Tywin Lannister might have mused, it was time to show the Republicans a sharp lesson. Although there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth, the Republicans have a simple way to stop nominations they don't like. Win the Senate back and win the Presidency in 2016. Until then they need to learn that like him or not, President Obama remains the President and will make nominations as he sees fit. Republicans are quite free to vote against his nominations and tell everyone what bad choices they are. But since they lack the votes, they can't stop the nominations. It was also hard to avoid noticing that many of the stalled Presidential nominations were of racial minorities and white women-people who have been previously prevented from reaching judicial and executive positions of serious authority. This change ultimately might be a good thing for the Republicans as it will FORCE them to recognize that they are a minority party in the Senate and have lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. If they can address those issues they can retake the Senate. Until then though, they will have to dance to the tune that Senator Reid calls.  



WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pulled the trigger Thursday, deploying a parliamentary procedure dubbed the "nuclear option" to change Senate rules to pass most executive and judicial nominees by a simple majority vote.

The Senate voted 52 to 48 for the move, with just three Democrats declining to go along with the rarely used maneuver.

From now until the Senate passes a new rule, executive branch nominees and judges nominated for all courts except the Supreme Court will be able to pass off the floor and take their seats on the bench with the approval of a simple majority of senators. They will no longer have to jump the traditional hurdle of 60 votes, which has increasingly proven a barrier to confirmation during the Obama administration.

Reid opened debate in the morning by saying that it has become "so, so very obvious" that the Senate is broken and in need of rules reform. He rolled through a series of statistics intended to demonstrate that the level of obstruction under President Barack Obama outpaced any historical precedent.

Half the nominees filibustered in the history of the United States were blocked by Republicans during the Obama administration; of 23 district court nominees filibustered in U.S. history, 20 were Obama's nominees; and even judges that have broad bipartisan support have had to wait nearly 100 days longer, on average, than President George W. Bush's nominees.

LINK

The US Senate -It's a Man's World

The US Senate has often been described as a club, a boy's club.  There are 17 women in the Senate. Some people wish to increase that number and are deeply worried about the coming elections. For some activists, political analysts and female Senators, the prospect of having a US Senate with fewer women is just horrible. Worse it's bad for democracy.

Ok. I have no issue with stating that representative institutions should try to be, well representative. That's fine. However as usually is the case when these kinds of discussions pop up the people agitating for more women in the US Senate fall back on hyperbolic claims that the US Senate or democracy itself would somehow be transformed for the better because women somehow have special insights or are just more moral than men.

"When women are part of the negotiation and are part of decision-making, the outcomes are just better," said Gillibrand. "When we have our dinners with the women in the Senate -- the Democrats and Republicans -- we have so much common ground. We agree on so many basic principles and values. I think if there were more women at the decision-making table, we would get more things done."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) echoed that sentiment at Fortune magazine's "Most Powerful Women" dinner in April 2010.

When asked about progress on regulatory reform legislation, Feinstein replied, "Well, I actually think that if we had all women [in the Senate],we would solve the problem."

 Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who was sitting in the front row at the event, enthusiastically clapped in response.

"There was a moment there at the end of the debt ceiling [debate] that some of the women, on a bipartisan basis, were talking about, 'We need to take this over and get this done,'" said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who is running for her second term in 2012. "I think we are, by our nature, nurturers and negotiators. We want people to get along, we want to find a solution, we want to move forward. I think sometimes there is a tendency to like the fight for the fight's sake every once in awhile with some of the guys. So I think having more women involved will help."

Huffington Post Article

Horsefeathers! 

Senator Feinstein's comment stood out to me, not only because of its obvious chauvinism but also because Feinstein was and is in my opinion one of the more ethically challenged people in the US Senate. She is exactly the sort of person that both the Tea Party and the 99% movement would likely agree on as an example of the odious nexus between big money, big government, war profiteering and private enrichment at the public trough. If we had more women like Dianne Feinstein in the US Senate this country would be in even worse condition than it is.

I've been in the world a while now and although there are obvious deep differences both physically and socially/emotionally between men and women I think these are dwarfed by the similarities. And whatever differences I have noticed between men and women certainly haven't been MORAL ones.

I've worked with women bosses or co-workers that: 

• were racist or bigoted
• were bullies
• used sex appeal or sex to get ahead
• used seeming weakness to manipulate people
• were greedy and shortsighted
• were lazy
• were unqualified for their position
• were unable to work well with others or admit mistakes
• were emotionally crippled
• were more dedicated to their job than anyone else
• were gracious and kind
• went above and beyond to help me and others succeed
• were extremely smart
• were incredibly talented hardworking people

In short the women I work(ed) with ran the entire gamut of humanity, just like men did. HOW they expressed themselves might differ a bit from men on average but WHAT they expressed did not. Not at all.

Now Senator Feinstein's and Senator McCaskill's comments, much like Justice Sotomayor's "Wise Latina" crack may not be noticed or may be excused as understandable hyperbole-coming from women that is. It's a minor bigotry as such things go.

But what if say Rick Santorum or Rick Perry stood up and said 

"I agree with Senators Feinstein and McCaskill. Women are more nurturing and that is exactly why we need fewer of them in the Senate. The Senate is not a place for nurturing. It is a place for sober reflection, cold logic and deliberate hardball negotiation. And men are by our very nature, tacticians and philosophers."

Obviously that would be a career limiting move to say the least. But that is one logical outcome of the statements about nurturing.

My fundamental belief is that people are generally the same, morally. I don't believe that women are better than men, that whites are better than blacks or whatever. If the Knesset and Hamas and the PA were made up of all women there would still be rockets and bombs flying back and forth between the West Bank, Gaza and Israel. The only difference is the bombs might have pink ribbons attached.

For whatever reason, whether it be biological or sociological there are more men that want to run for office. So more men get elected. As long as their voters are satisfied with the outcomes I don't think their gender is relevant. And the idea that because a slight majority of the population is women means that the Senate representation should be 50-50 or close to it makes no sense to me. Because so many of the people who state that or imply it are not concerned about the increasing decline of men in college or the workplace. It's as if where women are less than 50% of a given population there must be changes made to bring women in but where women are more than 50% of a given population , well that's wonderful progress. Heads I win, tails you lose.

There are some nations in the world which have legally required or informal quotas for female representation in their legislative bodies. I don't think that's going to happen here, fortunately. I think that over time we will see more women in the House and Senate. But I don't think that's something that is going to be imposed from above. And I also don't think it will make a tremendous amount of difference in how the system is run. Again, as Feinstein shows, it's money that makes the world go round..

QUESTIONS

1) What's your take? Do you think the US Senate needs more women?

2) Would a Senate made up of all women be better for the US?

3) Why don't more women run for office?