Blog entry

The Rogues In Robes

Isaiah J. Poole — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:49:15 -0400

You may differ on the merits with the supporters of the District of Columbia's gun ban, who were handed a major defeat by the Supreme Court on Thursday. But progressives can't deny this: The conservative bloc on the court is a rogue band of ideological thugs who care less about strict constructionism and all of the other conservative legal buzzwords they use, but are all about furthering a conservative political agenda.

Only when Justice Anthony Kennedy swings in the opposite direction, as he did when the court rebuked the Bush administration's stance on habeas corpus rights for terrorist suspects, is there a remote chance that the march of right-wing and corporatist ideology gets thrown off-stride. The graphic at right, from People for the American Way's SaveTheCourt.org, brings that point home.

Note what E.J. Dionne pointed out in his latest column about the nature of the gun ban ruling:

Conservative justices claim that they defer to local authority. Not in this case. They insist that political questions should be decided by elected officials. Not in this case. They argue that they pay careful attention to the precise words of the Constitution. Not in this case.

His column concludes with that hope that "this decision opens people's eyes to the fact that judicial activism is now a habit of the right, not the left, and that "originalism" is too often a sophisticated cover for ideological decision-making by conservative judges."

It is more proof that elections have serious consequences. The right understands the importance of a compliant judiciary in consolidating their political power, and they have made populating the judiciary with like-minded justices a cornerstone of their agenda. As a result, not only are conservatives on the precipice of having a decades-long hammerlock on the Supreme Court, but they have institutionalized a conservative tilt throughout the federal judiciary, as the chart below prepared by SaveTheCourt.org shows:

Review the top 10 reasons that saving the court in November matters at SaveTheCourt.org and remember that this is part of what's at stake in the coming election.

Who Will Restore the Balance of Power?

Isaiah J. Poole — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:30:06 -0400

The Bush administration's gross abuse of presidential power demands that we insist on the next president reversing the damage done to the constitutional principle of separation of powers.

The reversal of the imperial presidency, a mainstay of the right from Nixon onward, must be a core plank of our agenda if we are to have no more undeclared wars, no more detentions without legal rights, no more signing statements on bills that disregard the congressional intent in signing them—in short, no more presidents operating as if the Constitution is an annoying inconvenience.

It is essential, as Robert Borosage wrote Wednesday, that Congress rein in the abuses by the White House before those abuses become entrenched. The Supreme Court made this clear more than 50 years ago, as Borosage wrote: "What the Court said in Youngstown is that if presidents assert a prerogative, such the power to make war without a congressional declaration — systematically, with unbroken regularity, with the knowledge of the Congress and are never questioned — then that practice becomes a Constitutional power that cannot be infringed upon by the Congress or the Courts."

Right now activists are watching with grave concern Sen. Barack Obama's vow to vote for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act bill now before the Senate that Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said on Wednesday was a "capitulation" to the Bush administration's reach for expansive authority to spy on Americans and disregard our civil liberties.

Obama has pledged to fight immunity for telecommunication companies that broke the law to bend to Bush administration demands for surveillance activity. But this is far from enough to satisfy the larger demand for a democracy in proper balance.

A major speech Obama gave in 2007 on terrorism makes promising statements:

This Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.

That means no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists. The FISA court works. The separation of powers works. Our Constitution works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.

But then again, so does Republican presidential candidate John McCain, whose website says bluntly:

"The President's powers are rightly checked by the other branches of government, and John McCain will not attempt to acquire powers granted to Congress. He will exercise his veto but not subvert legislation through statements. "

We need more than these words. President Bush has so damaged the framework of our democracy and so recklessly abused the powers of his office that if impeachment isn't warranted—and many in the progressive movement vigorously disagree on that point—certainly an inquest into that abuse is essential. It is fair to ask both presidential candidates where they stand on that inquest and on how they would conduct their presidencies so that they, too, would not be liable to face such an inquest from a future Congress.

Time for a Grand Inquest into Bush's High Crimes

Robert Borosage — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:09:41 -0400

One of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's first acts upon taking the gavel was to rule impeachment off the table. She wanted Democrats to focus on challenging the president on the war and on kitchen table concerns — from energy to education to health care. With Democrats now enjoying an increasing margin in generic polls and looking towards gaining seats in both the House and the Senate, the strategy certainly hasn't hurt politically.

But the constitutional implications are far more disturbing. This was dramatized as the Congress debated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reform legislation that will provide retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies for warrantless interception of the conversations of Americans — and by implication, retroactive acceptance of the president's authority to order such wiretaps.

We have witnessed a staggering abuse of power by President Bush. Even former Bush Justice Department officials now charge him with trampling the Constitution. Bush has claimed the prerogative to declare an endless war without congressional approval, to designate someone an enemy without cause, to proceed to wiretap them without warrant, arrest or kidnap them at will, jail them without a hearing, hold them indefinitely, interrogate them intensively (read torture), bring them to trial outside the U.S. court system. He claims that executive privilege exempts his aides — even the aides of his aides and his vice president's aides — from congressional investigation. He claims the right to amend or negate congressional laws with a statement upon signing them. And much more.

Even this Supreme Court, stacked with activist right-wing judges enamored of executive national security powers, has rebuked the president on some of these claims, particularly around the treatment of alleged enemy combatants. But many of Bush's claims will escape judicial determination.

And there is the rub. According to the leading case on presidential powers, if Bush's extreme assertions of power are not challenged by the Congress, they end up not simply creating new law, they could end up rewriting the Constitution itself. Inaction can alter the Constitutional division of powers by establishing the president's claims as authority that the Congress or the courts may not infringe.

The Steel Seizure case — Youngstown Sheet and Tube v Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), remains the leading case on presidential power. In Youngstown, a six-member majority of the Court joined in overturning President Truman's executive order nationalizing the steel plants to end a strike during the Korean War. Justice Black wrote the opinion for the Court, but the historically influential opinions were penned by Justices Robert H. Jackson and Felix Frankfurter, both Democratic appointees. Frankfurter laid out the argument for a sort of common law of constitutional amendment:

Deeply embedded traditional ways of conducting government cannot supplant the Constitution or legislation, but they give meaning to the words of a text or supply them. It is an inadmissibly narrow conception of American constitutional law to confine it to the words of the Constitution and to disregard the gloss which life has written upon them. In short, a systematic, unbroken, executive practice, long pursued to the knowledge of the Congress and never before questioned, engaged in by Presidents who have also sworn to uphold the Constitution, making as it were such exercise of power part [343 U.S. 579, 611] of the structure of our government, may be treated as a gloss on "executive Power" vested in the President by 1 of Art. II.

In Youngstown, Jackson concurred, arguing that the president's powers vary as to whether he acts with congressional authority (his greatest power), in the absence of it, or in opposition to it:

When the president acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain. Therefore, congressional inertia, indifference or quiescence may sometimes, at least as a practical matter, enable, if not invite, measures on independent presidential responsibility. In this area, any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract theories of law.

When a president egregiously abuses his power — particularly in areas relating to the rights of American citizens — remedies are often difficult. The Supreme Court is reluctant to arbitrate a power struggle between two co-equal branches. That is why the Constitution prescribes the specific remedy of impeachment for crimes and abuses of power — "high crimes and misdemeanors" — and empowers the House and Senate to sit in judgment whether the actions are to be accepted or condemned.

What the Court said in Youngstown is that if presidents assert a prerogative, such the power to make war without a congressional declaration — systematically, with unbroken regularity, with the knowledge of the Congress and are never questioned — then that practice becomes a Constitutional power that cannot be infringed upon by the Congress or the Courts.

Thus, Congress must formally object to President Bush's abuses or it risks by "indifference or quiescence" contributing to the powers of our imperial presidency.

When Pelosi took impeachment off the table, impeachment was reduced to being a rhetorical protest vehicle for progressives like Dennis Kucinich or Russ Feingold. But Congress need not convict President Bush to impeach him for high crimes and misdemeanors. And arguably, the House need not even impeach the president to hold a grand inquest into the powers that he has claimed, registering a formal objection to them. The Judiciary Committee in the House should formally convene that inquest, no matter what the decision is on impeachment. For if Pelosi's sensible political judgment results, as it has to date, in a show of congressional "inertia, indifference or quiescence," the Democratic majority in Congress may have gained a dozen seats at the cost of relinquishing its own powers, and putting the rights of Americans at risk.

First Train Out of Nixonland: What Divides the Democrats Now

Sara Robinson — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:58:18 -0400

It's over, at long last. The Democrats have a nominee.

And now the other hard part begins—the part where Democrats try to patch up the party and try to keep a lot of disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters on board.

It's worthwhile to take a moment here and look at the ways we were seduced into this split by our own most cherished ideals. For the past six months, Democratic spirits have been rising high on the historic updraft of nominating either the First Black Candidate or the First Female Candidate. Whichever candidate won, it would be a vindication of 40 years of feminism and 50 years of civil rights; a sign that the world we've been working for was one step closer to reality.

Watching history being made is heady stuff. So it's forgivable that, in all the excitement, we forgot one crucial thing: That triumphal blacks-or-women narrative created a vicious trap for the party as a whole, a trap that is now yawning wide open under our very feet. The hard fact was: One of those sides was going to lose. And, as the months wore on and the primary battles got uglier, the more humiliating that loss was going to be—with the inevitable result that one or the other of the party's two most important constituencies was going to end up nursing massive grudges and hard feelings, and might even stomp off in a snit and withhold their support in the general election as a result.

And the worst part of all is: Thrilling as it all seemed at the time, this wasn't even the core choice that defines the real transformation that's occurring in this election. It never was. What's really happening in 2008 isn't about race or gender—it's about a generational shift that's finally, at long last, about bring an end to our 40 years in Nixonland.

A week ago Saturday, I hosted a Firedoglake book salon featuring Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, authors of Millennial Makeover, which Jerome Armstrong at MyDD has hailed as the best book on elections since The Coming Democratic Majority. The authors—a market researcher and a political scientist, respectively—argue that transformational elections, like the 1932 election that brought in FDR and the New Deal, or the 1968 election that ushered in Nixonland, can be fairly accurately predicted by simply looking at the demographic trends of emerging generations.

1968, say Winograd and Hais, was transformational because that's the year that the Baby Boomers (who started being born around 1944, give or take a year) finally formed a big enough voting bloc to have a real effect on American politics. And, as our own Rick Perlstein documented in Nixonland, the incendiary conflicts both touched off by that generation and taking place within it have defined American politics ever since. The arc of history that connects the radicalism of the 1960s with the radicalism of the Bush Administration runs right through the heart of the Boomer generation.

The primary season's relentless focus on race and gender has distracted us from a far more important fact, which is: Most of America under 50 is sick to tears of the way Boomers (both left and right, but especially right) do politics. The common thread that ties the '60s radicals to the Bushites is the soul-deep conviction that political confrontation is the only way to create any kind of social change. This leads to a political style that is relentlessly ideological and implacably hostile to negotiation, diplomacy, or compromise. Their vision of the future is Utopian (though the utopias vary); but the desire to achieve that all-important glorious end too often justifies means that betray the very principles the group is trying to promote.

To be fair, most liberal Boomers seem to have gotten this out of their systems early, and moved on to find far more wise and nuanced ways of managing power as they aged. But, as they mellowed out and retreated into private life through the 1970s, a second wave of True Believers—the Boomer conservatives—gathered strength for a reactionary ideological showdown of their own. And through the decades that followed, they proved to be far more vicious, more persistent, more organized, and more effective than the Dirty Fucking Hippie stereotype they held up in effigy as their all-purpose excuse for everything they did.

The result, of course, was a culture war that got played out on a battleground that hardly changed between 1968 and 2004. For 10 straight elections, we re-fought the Vietnam War, re-debated women's reproductive rights, and rehashed the meaning of "family," as if these were the most galvanizing problems confronting the nation. While we were wrangling over matters that should have never been politicized in the first place, we never quite got around to discussing why our manufacturing base was going overseas, our debt load was eating the heart out of our common wealth, the environment we depend on was falling into crisis, and our middle class was simply evaporating. America has been run this way for so long now that most of us can't imagine that politics can be done any other way; and the country is suffering mightily under the resulting misrule.

But Winograd and Hais have looked at the demographic data, and they think 2008 will be the turning point where 40 years of Boomer dominance finally begins to fade—the first train out of Nixonland. As of this election year, the vast and rising tide of Millennials (born 1980-2001, give or take a couple years) is arriving in numbers big enough to swamp the Boomers and set the whole American conversation on a whole new heading. The yearning for change is so strong that even the GOP is reaching back to field a pre-Boomer Silent generation candidate, rather than put up another Boomer.

And it is this, it can be argued, is what the Barack-versus-Hillary showdown was really all about. It's not about melanin content or X chromosome status; it's about whether or not we're going to finally get past that eat-shit Nixonland political style that's defined everything for the past 40 years.

Obama won because he looked at those same numbers, and tailored his message to the worldview of the vastly larger X and Millennial generations. These pragmatic voters aren't impressed by high-flying ideology; they just expect their government to work, and are willing to do what it takes to make it work right. Furthermore, they don't have a lot of patience with anyone who lets their personal pursuit of power get in the way of getting the country back on track. The kids don't remember the 1960s and aren't scared by DFH boogeymen. They do know that they're done with Nixon, Reagan, Bushes, and yes, both Clintons, too. They know what we've been doing—confrontation, triangulation, manipulation—isn't getting the real problems solved, and it's time to try something else.

Hillary, on the other hand, was simply perceived by younger voters as the continuation of All That—and the level of support for All That is fading fast as the Boomers age. She staked her campaign on her appeal to a generation that, for the first time in its living memory, is no longer the egg in the demographic snake; and on her experience with a political style that's in very bad odor with younger voters.

As we look across this generational chasm, I have particular sympathy for the over-50 women who have been Hillary's most passionate supporters. You can't blame them for being pissed about her loss. They've been down 40 years of hard road, breaking the first trails of the modern feminist movement. Pioneer life is hard, and you don't always find the paradise you set out for when you were young and full of energy. I've walked enough of this trail myself to be hauling a big handcart of my own baggage, so I viscerally understand the feeling that we're owed some last piece of validation before we exit stage left. (Personally, I console myself with the thought that from abolition forward, important African-American gains were always followed within a decade or two by significant women's rights gains — and often seem to pave the way for them. If that pattern holds, and Obama wins in November, then our turn will come soon enough — as it usually has.)

But, even as we acknowledge these feelings, it's critical to realize that kind of identity (or victim, as you will) politics is a huge part of what the younger voters are trying to move past. They're not only the most racially diverse generation in American history; they were raised to think that gender equality was something much closer to the natural order of things. Beyond that, they're consummate team players, trained from the sandbox onward to focus on what they share rather than what divides them. Arguments that "it's our turn" simply don't make a lot of sense to them: in their world, everybody gets a turn, because that's what's fair. And the girls seem rather confident that their turn will come, so what's the fuss?

Back last fall, Winograd and Hais wrote that the fate of both parties over the next 40 years depends largely on how well the Boomer leadership navigates the generational transition that's coming up in 2008 and 2012 as these younger voters come to dominate American elections. As Democrats, their biggest worry is that the older generation won't yield power gracefully. That concern appears prescient, as we look at the demographics of both candidates' supporters. If Hillary's Boomer core succeeds in making their disappointment the whole party's problem, at least three bad things will come of it.

First: it could leave a very sour taste in the mouths of these new young voters who are coming out in droves. This enormous generation is overwhelmingly progressive in its bones, and should by rights become lifelong Democrats. But, since people's political habits are often formed in early adulthood, alienating them now could push them away from the party, and thus damage progressive prospects for decades to come.

Second: it undermines whatever moral authority the Boomers have accrued within the party over the past 40 years. If Democratic elders want to retain any influence over the younger generation, going back to into confrontation mode and pitching large public fits is going to have the exact opposite of the desired effect. While Boomers consider righteously angry protest as a sort of generational art form, Millennials see it as a tantrum — an attempt to bully your way into something you can't win fair and square according to the rules. They don't understand or respect it.

Third: The Boomers could hold on so tightly that the party will split apart, and thus be in no position to capitalize on the best opportunity for real change we've had since 1968 or will likely have again until 2050. The grueling process of working through this shift could weaken the party to the point where it loses its one shot at the most important political moment in 40 years. We blow this one, we don't get another chance.

We have a stark choice: either empower these kids as smoothly and quickly as possible, and keep the Democrats in power for a long time to come; or thwart them for as long as we can, and in the process also lose our last best shot at the kind of cultural dominance our New Deal grandparents enjoyed for so long. To that end, Hillary and the old girls (and yes, that includes me) need to move over and make way for the new young things.

We need to do this because this moment belongs to them. There are things they get about it that we don't, possibilities that they can seize that are simply beyond us to imagine. As the Prophet said: their souls belong to the house of the future, which we cannot visit, even in our dreams.

We'd do well to listen now, and begin to yield — not least because they're our kids. We raised them to be these amazing activists, to face the future fearlessly, and to look outside the box for better solutions. From here on, our job is to help them grow quickly into leadership, and trust their new and unfamiliar ways of doing things. It will be hard to see it sometimes, but they're out there doing their damnedest to move us out of Nixonland, and on to a place where our fondest Boomer dreams—including presidents, senators, and judges of every color and gender—finally start to come true.

History

Terrance Heath — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:50:28 -0400

Image details: Obama Holds Final Primary Night Event In St. Paul served by picapp.com

I can only think of one moment in my memory that compares to this. It was when I stood in front of my television and watched the Berlin wall come down, live on CNN. I'm not yet sure that another wall has come down now. In fact, I'm more certain that significant portions of it still stand, and some may have been reinforced.

But there's an opening now. It was there before, but it's much, much wider now. Through it, we can just see the other side, and even have more hope of reaching it.

I only wish my father had lived to see this moment. After all he saw and experienced in his lifetime, I'm sure it would have done his heart some good. If I actually get to go to the convention and cover it, now that I'm credentialed along with the rest of the bloggers at Pam's House Blend, I'm sure I'll be thinking about him. And maybe again at inauguration. Maybe I will have the chance to take Parker to downtown D.C., to the inauguration, to witness the moment. He may not grasp the significance then, but he will when he remembers. And he will remember. I know I will.

But tonight, when I get home, I'll take down from the shelf a project Parker and I have been working on for a while now. It started around the time that my son finally started to notice race, and perhaps he even perceived more about the differences made between people based on race than he had words to express. Wanting to pass on to him an idea of his heritage, and what people who look like him have and can accomplish, I decided we would start a photo album.

First, we put in family pictures, and I explained to him who each person in each picture was. Then we moved on to African Americans who are famous for their accomplishments. I tried to pick people whose accomplishments matched his interests — a black race car driver, because at the time Parker was into race cars; a black astronaut, because for a minute he wanted to be an astronaut; a black composer whose songs are among those I sing to him at night, when it's my turn to put him to bed. We paste the pictures into the book, and then a short paragraph about that person, which I would read to him.

It's our little history book, I guess. And tonight we'll put Barack Obama's picture in that book. For both of us, it will be an example of what he can accomplish. I will look my son in the eye and say to him what my parents said to me: "You can do anything, and be anything you want if you work hard at it. You could even be the president."

The difference is that when my parents said it to me, it was a dream — perhaps a belief in what the future and their country could be.

Tonight, when I say those words to my son, it will still be a dream just this side of reality; but a dream within reach, where it has never really been before.

Hard Questions for Clinton and Obama

Al Meyerhoff — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:29:26 -0400

At the upcoming Clinton-Obama presidential debate in Philadelphia, there is only one thing the American public wants to hear less than another wonk discussion about health care. That would be more personal sniping over race, patriotism or honesty. So, instead, here are a few things for Katie, Hillary and Barack to kick around – some now timely, others more timeless. An intelligent discussion might actually help voters understand where either candidate would take the country.

Reining In Big Business

For the past three decades or so, we have been traveling down the deregulation highway, letting business go unfettered and the economy alone. It was while on the "bridge to the 21st century," during the first (and possibly the last) Clinton administration, that we deregulated financial markets.

First, over a presidential veto, the GOP Congress enacted the Private Securities Law Reform Act making it easier for Wall Street to defraud investors. Like night follows day, that brought us Enron, World Com, Tyco and a host of other robber barons. Then, at the urging of Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Congress repealed the Depression Era Glass-Steagall Act, allowing Wall Street banks to become investment firms.

A "shadow" banking system followed, free of regulation; billions of dollars in newly invented hybrid securities were issued, erroneously classified "AAA"; countless home loans were made without due diligence; and massive fees were generated to those very same Wall Street bankers.

Now, banks are overflowing with bad paper and nearly 3 million sub-prime adjustable loans are past due. We are at recession’s door, all from market deregulation. While denying that our economic woes came from this failure to regulate, Treasury Secretary Paulson this week announced banking reform that isn’t. So here are a few questions:

Were Glass and Steagall right – should banks stick to banking and leave investing to stock brokers? Should we re-enact their law? While we’re at it, should we enact the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act, now stalled in Congress? Should securities fraud laws be strengthened, including undoing a recent Supreme Court decision letting "third party" bankers in cahoots with fraudsters off the hook?

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain says that "there is a tendency for liberals to seek big government programs that sock it to American taxpayers while failing to solve the very real problems we face." Is he right? Or has the deregulation pendulum swung too far? Do we need more and bigger government?

The Courts

Not to be outdone, the newly constituted Supreme Court has been rolling back a host of consumer and environmental safeguards, denying the public a right to sue over defective products, imposing obstacles to antitrust enforcement, and generally favoring Wall Street over Main Street. Our civil liberties are also hanging by a thread, as is Roe vs Wade. The lower federal courts have now been refashioned in George Bush’s image, with virtually all Circuit appellate courts having a majority Republican, and often arch-conservative, jurists. Last year, those courts issued 29,913 decisions, the Supreme Court 76.

Bill Clinton picked mostly moderate judges from corporate law firms. Where will you pick yours? On what basis? How would you refashion our courts? Do you favor the Senate judges bringing confirmation of even more Bush judges to an immediate halt?

Making Trade Less Free

In Ohio, NAFTA became a dirty word. Yet much of the "debate" over trade was with broad strokes – each of you accusing the other of selling out U.S. workers – Hillary in the White House, Barack in, of all places, Canada. Largely ignored was the industrialization in China – by far presenting the most serious threat to labor and consumers alike. Even Chevy car engines ("little 409") now are being built in China. Consumer products are flooding our markets – from food to pharmaceuticals to children’s play things –found later to be unsafe.

Is it time to seriously revisit our embrace of the global economy? Would you favor re-imposing strict tariffs on goods from China? On children's' toys? Textiles? Imported steel? Do you favor a warning of imported consumer products manufactured offshore and not inspected for safety? How about through polluting the environment or violating human rights?

The Environment

Another piece of the Antarctica fell off last week. A "dead zone’ with no marine life whatsoever was just found off the Pacific Northwest. Droughts are on the rise in the U.S. and worldwide. What, specifically, are you prepared to do? Do you support the carbon tax proposed by former Vice President Gore? How about explicit limits on CO2 emitters and taxing any excess, creating a "Superfund" for global warming? Or, as the European Union is considering, imposing tariffs on goods (now like ours) from countries not adequately controlling their CO2 emissions?

There are, of course, other such topics given short shrift in past debates. What is to be done about "the pension time bomb," as fewer and fewer Americans are provided defined retirement benefits by their employers? How do we actually end the newly rediscovered "racial divide?" (Despite the Obama candidacy, from schools to prisons, we remain two Americas, one black, one white. Busing? Affirmative action? Or has white backlash from such approaches made things worse?)

Then there is immigration. In past debates, your focus has been on driver's licenses, while the pressures on the border continue to increase. How do we address that reality with something more than a wall? If the North American Free Trade Agreement has been a failure, then how do our adjoined countries work together for our mutual economic and cultural benefit?

All of this is to say that McCain is right; this country does face "very real problems." The candidates and ultimately the voters need to as well. No time better than on April 16 at the Constitution Center.

Al Meyerhoff is a public interest attorney in Los Angeles and a board member of Campaign for America's Future.

What Should the Next President Read?

Isaiah J. Poole — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:13:30 -0500

Our friend Bill Moyers is asking an interesting question: “What’s the one book you wish the winning presidential candidate would take to the White House?”

For the next few hours, Moyers is inviting people to post responses on his blog. He will share the top responses, and well as his own recommendations, on Friday's "Bill Moyers' Journal" on PBS.

I'd like you to also post your suggestions in the comment section here, and we'll have our own lively debate about the next president's January 2009 must-read list.

Iowa Reflections on NPR

Bill Scher — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 15:26:03 -0500

Earlier this morning, I was on NPR's Bryant Park Project discussing the meaning of the Iowa results, along with Erick Erickson of Red State. Erick acknowledged the deep dislike of Huckabee among conservative bloggers, and general disappointment with the GOP field. While I observed the broad agreement on economic populist policy and change in foreign policy among Democrats, independents and some Republican voters shown in the Iowa results.

You can listen to the segment here.

COLUMN: Fear, Loathing & the Crisis of Confidence

David Sirota — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 12:36:25 -0500

In my new nationally syndicated column out today, I explore the root cause of America's anger at our federal government and the growing embrace of conspiracy theories - trends displayed in recent Scripps Howard/Ohio University studies. It is not just a reaction to fear in the age of terrorism, but is a more fundamental crisis of confidence in our public institutions.

Certainly, some of the conspiracy theories out there are offensive, inaccurate and should be ignored. However, the growth of conspiracy theories as a phenomenon should not be ignored, because they represent something deeper - a distrust of a government. This distrust, though it can go in crazy directions, is not crazy unto itself. In fact, it is quite rational. After all, everywhere we look, we see proof that our government actively conspires against the public.

The most pristine example, as I say in the column, was the recent behavior by the Federal Communications Commission.

This week, this obscure commission moved to relax media ownership regulations - the final insult in a kabuki dance in which the public, quite openly, kicked in the teeth. When America sees this kind of thing happen on a daily basis, can we really wonder why so many people are angry, or why so many people believe the government is always conspiring against the public? I think not.

To be sure, many of these specific conspiracy theories are absolutely offensive. For instance, there is absolutely no proof that 9/11 was an "inside job" with government officials actively helping the attack - and those who push this myth without facts should be met with scorn. However, the media is also mislabeling some very clear facts as "conspiracy theories." For instance, it is not a "theory" that government officials knew of Osama bin Laden's growing determination to commit a domestic terrorist attack against the United States nor that terrorists were looking to crash airplanes into buildings. Those are just historical facts - not conspiracy theories.

But, again, more important than a debate about what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't, is the rise of conspiracy theories as a social phenomenon - and the roots of that rise is what should trouble us the most. We have a government that now openly and remorselessly ignores the public - and the public has reacted by losing all confidence in that government.

For the conservative movement, this crisis of confidence is great. Even if they lose an election or two because the Republican candidates of the moment take the blame, the more the public loses confidence in the government, the better chances their harsh anti-government rhetoric and policies could potentially get traction.

On the flip side, this loss of confidence is something awful for progressives (and the country) - and yet it is something I think many progressives fundamentally ignore. We think that all we have to do is point out that the government is corrupt in order to make our case. But that's just the starting point for most Americans these days. The majority of the public already believes that - and we can't win issue campaigns or elections simply by proving something people already know. We have the much more difficult task of 1) showing how conservative leadership is responsible for corrupting the government (not easy when many Democrats are part of the problem), and 2) making people believe that progressive leadership can restore that government and thus give people back some confidence in their public institutions again. This dual task is not going to be easy.

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Heartland Presidential Forum Tomorrow

Bill Scher — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 18:09:16 -0500

As I blogged earlier, tomorrow offers a rare event: The Heartland Presidential Forum, featuring real people asking candidates questions about real issues that affect working families and impoverished Americans.

If you can't be in Des Moines at 1:30 PM CT, you can watch the live webcast at movementvisionlab.org, and cablecast on C-Span.