Liberalism has no Intellectual Roots?

In a story about transmitting the intellectual roots of conservatism, Jason DeParle of the Times uncritically passes on this stinker:

Every political movement has its texts. But James W. Ceaser, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, argues that the conservative focus on core thinkers has no exact parallel among liberals.

"It doesn't mean they're not interested in ideas," Professor Ceaser said. "It means their approach to politics doesn't rest on theory in the same way."

Liberalism's main tenets formed earlier, he said, in the Progressives' expansion of government, and are conveyed as assumptions rather than matters requiring theoretical debate.

There's "no exact parallel" between liberals and the "conservative focus on core thinkers?" So all that time I spent reading John Rawls, John Locke, Adam Smith, Martha Nussbaum, the entire corpus of Greek thought and mainstream economists like Keynes was apparently sui generis, I suppose, in creating my worldview as a modern progressive. Conservatives may have their cute little summer boot camps, people, but we have college.

Cruel Misinformation on Min. Wage Hike from NY Times

If you're a Republican lawmaker in a tough election year, beholden to corporate interests but on the wrong side of public opinion when it comes to raising the minimum wage, what do you do? It's easy: allow a vote on a bill to raise the wage from $5.15 to $7.25 over two years, but attach a couple of poison pill amendments to it such that it doesn't have a chance of actually passing. That way, you can get the benefit of friendly headlines in the New York Times like "G.O.P. Nears Vote to Increase U.S. Wage" without having to deal with the headache of actually raising the purchasing power of working families. And the best part is that readers of the Times will have no idea!

Carl Hulse's story asserts that

the momentum had clearly shifted in favor of considering an increase of at least $2 in the $5.15 an hour minimum wage, despite strong resistance from conservative Republicans and the party's allies in the business community.

The only problem with this sentence? It isn't true. Willingness to raise the minimum wage has not increased among Republicans, just a willingness to appear as though it has. Hulse's only acknowledgement of the poison pills is a watered down, tepid paragraph that Democrats

warned that Republicans might try to tie the increase to an unacceptable piece of legislation on taxes or health care as a "poison pill" to drive off Democrats and make certain the increase could not clear the Senate or become law.

With no elaboration on what those "unacceptable piece[s] of legislation" actually are, Hulse makes it sound as though Democrats are merely crying wolf for the hell of it. To learn the real details, you'll have to read the Associated Press' surprisingly clear-headed story (printed here in the Post). Not only is the G.O.P. trying to tie the minimum wage vote to an amendment cutting the inheritance tax on multi-million dollar households, they want to make it more expensive for small businesses to purchase health care for their employees (see Think Progress for more on this issue).

Fun Facts:

• The federal minimum wage has not been raised in ten years.
• Its purchasing power is now the lowest it's been in fifty years.
• A full-time worker with a family earning the minimum wage is below the official poverty line.

Bush's NAACP Speech a Nonsensical Mess

The president finally deigned to address the NAACP on Thursday, delivering one of the most patronizing and misleading addresses on domestic policy ever to slither its way out of the Neocon catastrophe. Reviewed politely by both the Times and the Post, the speech took just thirty-three minutes to deny the existence of institutionalized racism; lie about the supposed benefits to the Black community of an important goal of Bush's economic agenda; tout his enthusiasm for the Voting Rights Act while ignoring his own party's attempt to kill the law; acknowledge the existence of antipathy between African-Americans and the GOP while simultaneously denying responsibility for it; and in opposition to all fact, posit the competence of federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

The most egregious failure of Darryl Fears' (WaPo) and Sheryl Gay Stolberg's (Times) coverage of the speech was to highlight the audience's cheers for Bush's support for the Voting Rights Act but to leave out the fact that it was members of his own party in the House who loudly and angrily tried to halt the bill's renewal, in what the entire punditocracy agreed was a crushing embarrassment for the president, his party, and the South. In a story framed around the Republican Party's attempt to "reconcile" with African-Americans, to omit the fact that a significant proportion of the GOP have declined to hop on the president's make-nice train is just bad journalism.

Other aspects of the speech either ignored or mischaracterized by the Times and the Post include:

• The audience's loudest cheer came in affirmation to Bush's statement that the "GOP has ignored you." It was not an expression of support, as characterized by the Post (and as reported on by Media Matters).
• Contrary to Bush's assertion that eliminating the estate tax is critical to creating an "ownership economy," repealing the tax would benefit an estimated 59 Black individuals in this country. Not 59 percent, mind you, but 59 people.
• Many lines of the speech obviously written as applause-getters were met with silence.
  
• For a president supposedly dedicated to personal responsibility, his statement that "[h]istory has prevented us [the GOP and Black Americans] from working together" is the worst kind of cop out. I wonder now if the way is clear for me to tell the IRS that "history prevented me from paying my taxes."

Attorney General Asks Congress to Defy Supreme Court

To begin understanding what happened today during the Attorney General's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, you need to read both the Times' and WaPo's accounts. Neither of them, however, fully communicate the horror of BushCo's relationship with the rule of law.

David Stout of the Times leads with Gonzales' suggestion that Congress should simply ignore the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Hamdan and approve the Bush administration's rules on military tribunals. As Patrick Leahy asked Gonzales during the hearing:

"The question is very specific. Is it the administration's position, as one of your assistants suggested, that we should simply ratify the military-commission procedures that the president designed and the Supreme Court struck down in Hamdan?"

"That would certainly be one alternative that Congress could consider, Senator Leahy," the attorney general replied.

The nation's chief law enforcement officer has just suggested that the U.S. Congress legislate in clear defiance of the Supreme Court. Am I the only one who's neck hairs are standing on end?

David Stout's story rightly notes that it was Bush who prevented the Justice Department's internal watchdogs from vetting the legality of the domestic wiretap program, but lets Gonzales' justification (that too many clearances would have jeopardized the security of the program) skate without challenge. It's Dan Eggen's story in the Post that points out that many attorneys at Justice were given clearance in order to carry out a criminal investigation of how the program was leaked; it was only those lawyers whose responsibility it was to advise on the program's legality who were blocked from looking at it. A clearer display of this administration's priorities can't be found.

Voting Rights Act Escapes Absurd GOP Rebellion

More than forty years after hundreds of U.S. citizens paid for the Voting Rights Act with their blood in Selma, Montgomery, and Birmingham, thirty-three troglodytes in the House of Representatives still want to kill it. David Stout's story in the Times today gives far too much credit to the sponsors of four would-be poison pills disguised as amendments to the Voting Rights Act. One amendment would have reduced the life cycle of the Act from twenty-five years to ten (making it that much easier to eventually defeat); another would have removed the rule that ballots be printed bilingually when necessary; while the worst of them would have required the Justice Department to annually recertify the applicability of the Act to nine hundred districts across the country, rather than have those districts prove their own electoral fairness, a burden that would have decimated the ability of the Department of Justice to follow through on claims of infractions against the Act elsewhere.

Each was defeated, but not without hours of some of the worst posturing the floor of the House has seen this year. Georgia Republicans demanded, for example, that we "stop the insanity" of requiring local jurisdictions to print bilingual ballots, arguing that removing that portion of the law "would still allow local districts to print their own bilingual ballots if they want to; we just want the heavy hand of the federal government off our backs," while citing districts with low percentages of voters who request bilingual ballots as evidence that such ballots are unnecessary. This is a bit like arguing that we don't need federal laws requiring local police forces by saying "local jurisdictions can still have police forces if they want; we just don't think they should be mandatory."

When it comes to headlines, once again the Post triumphs over the Times. WaPo's "Voting Rights Act Elements Extended Despite GOP Infighting" appropriately highlights the fact that, as the accompanying story says, the Southern GOP "rebellion... threatened to become a political embarrassment." Compare to the Times' benign and nonthreatening "House Approves Renewal of Voting Rights Act."

The final paragraph of Stout's piece notes that,

One section [of the Voting Rights Act] requires a Justice Department review of any proposed changes to voting procedures to determine if they would be discriminatory. Nine states, most of them in the South, and parts of seven others are covered by that "preclearance" requirement.

Southern Republicans have been hopping mad over this rule since it was established; hence the proposed amendment that would shift the burden of proof onto the federal government to prove that local election rules are unfair, rather than the other way around. But what neither Times reporter Stout nor the Southern cavemen masquerading as lawmakers are telling you is that the Voting Rights Act has a "bail out" provision, allowing these states to opt out of the preclearance requirement so long as no complaints are filed against them over a ten year period.

State Dept. Official Compares Democrats to Beleaguered Russian Opposition

In what may be the most bizarre Freudian slip from a Bush flunky to date, Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, compared the Democratic Party to the persecuted, spied upon, and frequently arrested democratic opposition in Russia. Dismissing Vladimir Putin's warnings to western diplomats to not attend a conference of opposition activists held July 11 in Moscow (at which several were arrested), Fried quipped that,

for instance, that if Russian diplomats in the United States wanted to attend a conference organized by the Democratic Party, "we wouldn’t regard it as anything other than just doing their job."

Fried also said of Putin's Russia, which routinely imprisons political opponents, ruthlessly controls all major media, and centralizes wealth and industrial power among Kremlin loyalists, that "[t]his isn't a totalitarian country." Hmmm... Which political dictionary are you using, Daniel?

A Glimpse Into the Mind of Peter Hoekstra

House Intelligence bigshot Peter Hoekstra's May 18, 2006 letter to the president was leaked today, and it affords a valuable peek into the pique of one angry Republican. A most revealing passage is quoted in the Times' story:

I have learned of some alleged intelligence community activities about which our committee has not been briefed. If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of the law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies.

That's right, folks; Peter Hoekstra thinks the president's "violation of the law" is "just as important" as his snubbing of a political ally. So before anyone starts applauding Hoekstra for being one of the few members of Congress willing to remind the president that the Constitution still exists, bear in mind that he clearly did not intend this letter to become public (a fact acknowledged by his office). Hoekstra's reaction is about turf and control, about a player in the intelligence business who knows that power increases with information, and angry that he's lost some. For Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane of the Times to claim that "the assertion that other intelligence activities had been hidden from Congress is particularly surprising coming from Mr. Hoekstra" is either touchingly naive or downright scary, depending on your perspective.

The Post tepidly covers Hoekstra's letter in one all-too brief story, but at least hits the right notes with their lead; "[t]he White House possibly broke the law by keeping intelligence activities a secret from the lawmakers responsible for overseeing them." But a later Post story on the subject oddly deletes the words "just as importantly" from the paragraph excerpted above.

The same Post piece also mentions but papers over a particularly ridiculous dispute Hoekstra is having with the White House and the Defense Department. Remember Ricky Santorum and his claim that a few pre-Gulf War, severely degraded shells found in Iraq were the WMD that supposedly brought us there in the first place? Hoekstra, who had jumped onto that rickety bandwagon, blasted U. S. intelligence chief John Negroponte for publicly shooting down Santorum's delusions, accusing Negroponte of attempting "to downplay the significance of relevant facts." When a White House this desperate for good news turns down a chance to say they found WMD in Iraq, you know there's no story here.

And with that I give you Peter Hoekstra, champion of "truthiness."

Shoot 'Em Up With Our Imaginary Missiles

In the latest of the president's goofy lies to go reported but unchallenged by the New York Times, Dumbya claimed at a press conference in Chicago that North Korea's test missiles, had they actually been operational and had they been aimed at the United States, could have been intercepted. How? By using our missile defense system, of course. Never mind that a working missile defense program doesn't exist.

NY Times to Obrador: "Go Home, You Crazy Leftist!"

The New York Times, the Associated Press and Reuters have been gunning for Felipe Calderon, Mexico's rightist presidential candidate, with all the fervor of people with big interests to protect. Declaring a winner even before Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute has certified the extremely close count (Calderon is said to have won by six-tenths of one percent, within the margin of error for a vote count of more than 41 million), the slurs against his opponent, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, just keep coming and coming. Obrador, who has committed the apparently cardinal sin of promising "to shift government spending toward welfare programs and public works," is calling his supporters to the streets today, in what the media seem intent on characterizing as a threat to democracy and public order:

Mr. Lopez Obrador's decision to hold a rally on Saturday suggested that the leftist candidate would use huge street demonstrations to put public pressure on the court to grant his request. He has a history of using marches to protest what he has considered fraudulent elections that did not go his way. He also used large demonstrations to beat back an attempt to knock him off the ballot with a legal challenge last year.

And another AP story warns that "[t]he protests could mark a turning point in what has so far been a peaceful campaign to succeed Vicente Fox." Obrador is repeatedly described as a "leftist" while Calderon is "already looking presidential." Obrador has "refused to concede defeat," has "came in second," and is said to be using his "trump card" when he "appeals to the massesto help him overturn his narrow defeat."

None of the stories even bother to deny Obrador's claims of widespread election fraud, probably because anyone who knows anything about Mexican politics knows how likely it is, and also elide the fact that it is not to "the masses" to which he is requesting a recount, but the Federal Electoral Institute, which, again, has not declared a winner.

It bears repeating: as far as the government of Mexico is concerned, it does not yet have a new president, a fact deliberately and loudly ignored by the New York Times and the other news organizations hell bent on ensuring that Obrador returns to the bleeding-heart socialist ghetto from which he sprung.

NY Times Calls U.S. Torture Strategy "Bold and Novel"

Judith Miller may have moved on, but her collaborationist spirit is alive and well at the New York Times. In an article on the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision that reads like an obituary for the lost days of unlimited presidential power, Adam Liptak faithfully serves up the administration's talking points as transmitted through Berkeley professor John Yoo. John Yoo, you will remember, was the Justice Department lawyer who crafted this administration's torture policy, the memos which argued that there are no legal barriers to the president's ability to authorize the use of torture, memos that Liptak, in a mind-boggling display of Orwellian doublespeak, characterizes as "bold and novel."

Excuse me? The Times has apparently forgotten that the Bybee/Yoo torture memos were one of the most controversial revelations of presidential legal and military strategy since the Pentagon Papers, memos that fueled a global backlash in public opinion that has only increased in the light of the abuses at Abu Ghraib and possible war crimes committed by Marines. As a debate, this administration's willingness to commit torture goes immediately to America's ability to commit to its core values, raises uncomfortable parallels between Iraq under Saddam and Iraq under America, and has served as the most serious wedge to date between America and its traditional allies. Following their public release, the White House and the Justice Department were both forced to disavow and distance themselves from the memos. And the best the New York Times can do when describing the legal strategy that unleashed this terrible beast is to call it "bold and novel."

Quoting only from neoconservative sources, Liptak's piece reads like something drafted in Karl Rove's office. The word "torture" is never mentioned, only "highly coercive interrogation techniques." Even the story's headline is disingenuous. "The Court Enters the War, Loudly," elides the fact that it was the president and his lackeys who turned up the volume of this debate in the first place, with their remarkable assertions of remarkable power, and that the Court is merely obeying its constitutional mandate by responding.

And in a statement worthy of the wackos at FOX, Yoo calls Hamdan an attempt by the Supreme Court "to suppress creative thinking," and falsely characterizes the Court's decision as demanding that the president hamstrung his warmaking ability by consulting with Congress before he takes any military action whatsoever. "The mood music of this opinion so lacks the traditional deference to the president," another of Liptak's sources pines, a response echoing that of Clarence Thomas, who in his dissent to Hamdan complained that the majority "openly flouts our well-established duty to respect the Executive's judgment in matters of military operations and foreign affairs." But such deference on the part of the courts vis-a-vis the Executive has never existed, should not exist, and if there is any justice in this world, will never exist, and Liptak insults his readers by allowing such statements to pass unchallenged.

There are few issues more important today than presidential authority, an issue that reaches its tragic apotheosis in U.S. torture policy. For the nation's paper of record to insinuate that it is not the president, but the Supreme Court which has overreached by trying to slow the neoconservative juggernaut borders on a kind of moral treason.