Blue Mass. Group has MOVED!!

Quote of the day

I just love this.  From Jim Bouton (ex-Yankee pitcher and now author) on whether a gay baseball player would be accepted by his fans and teammates:

I would say that the better a player you are, the more gay you would be allowed to be.

Follow-up on the coming GOP implosion

Several comments on my recent "GOP about to implode" post, both here and in my Kos diary, noted that internal GOP tensions are not enough for Republicans to lose elections - the Democrats need to come up with a coherent vision of what they want to do.

To those comments, I say this: ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.  By only talking about what I see as a serious problem inside the GOP, I certainly didn't intend to absolve the Dems of the need to explain where they want this country to go (we've been pushing that idea on this blog for some time, as our readers know).  There's just so much one can do in one post. 

Thanks to all for your thoughtful commentary.

But what a pretty view...

According to the American Lung Association's new report, the Cape still has the worst ozone levels in the state. Maybe they could use some better traffic signals there, too.

Or, instead of pumping out crud from the Mirant plant in Sandwich, make a bold move to wind power!

Patrick packs Rindge and Latin

As promised, here's my run-down of Deval Patrick's speech for the Cambridge Town Democratic Committee at the Rindge & Latin High School lunchroom last night. (Incidentally, at the same event, before Patrick spoke, State Sen. Jarrett Barrios announced his intention to run for Middlesex County DA, citing the desire to work on public safety issues at the ground level. As they say, "Developing"...)

Patrick was given a nice introduction by former Cambridge mayor and now councilman Ken Reeves, who knows Patrick through a mutual friend: attesting to Patrick's personal qualities, Reeves quipped that Patrick offers "Hope and a Hug" -- and indeed before the event you could see Patrick enthusiastically and gratefully greeting several old friends who showed up. (I don't want to get all Peggy Noonan on you all, I'm just trying to give a flavor of the event.)

I suppose that David has adequately covered Patrick's basic stump speech, although I don't recall him speaking much about "No needless taxes", or his ideological label, or lack thereof. He's probably modifying his speech somewhat for his audience -- there's no question about where Cambridge Democrats lie on the ideological spectrum. I concur with David that he is a very effective speaker: comfortable, sincere, passionate but composed, very easy to listen to. (No charisma boot camp necessary for him.) It is nice to hear someone talk about the principles of community, by which we all look out for each other's best interests; and to point out the false choices that our current conventional wisdom holds: You can't have a strong economy and social justice, or excellent and universal health care. A stump speech needs to highlight the candidate's temperament more than a laundry list of positions, and Patrick does that with uncommon grace.

Just to sum up some of the rest of his speech:

• Education: pre-K through college should be "second to none" in the nation. Why not?
• Universal health care now. Consumers, employers, HMOs, hospitals are all unhappy with our current system. We're past due reform on this issue. (Cf. our commentary on this.)
• Job creation: Romney was right when he said in 2002 that the Governor must be a salesman for the Commonwealth. Trouble is, Mitt can't be a credible salesman when he clearly doesn't believe in MA.

Now for the good/tough part: the questions. There were a couple of tough and pointed questions, especially regarding his tenure as Coca-Cola Company's general counsel. As you might expect from a Cambridge crowd, some of the questions were long and somewhat rambling -- I've tried to distill them to their essence. In many cases, as you'll see, I was scribbling so furiously that I missed something. Folks who were there can feel free to fill in the gaps in the comments.

1. Concerning universal health care: What's different this time from the Clinton plan years?
      
   Patrick mentioned the complexity of the Clinton plan, but more to the point is that all the other players in health care, not just consumers, are dissatisfied. And even if you have insurance, it's a hassle. Patrick spoke of his recently deceased mother's difficulties with getting reimbursed for care. Single payer care is unrealistic in the short-term, but he said he's willing to spend political capital on major health care reform: "If I don't get it done in my first term, throw me out."   
    
2. Question regarding violence against union members at a Coke plant in Colombia, and pollution of water in India.
      
   Patrick responded that the lawsuit against Coke in Miami was brought by a Colombian union which lost out to another union for the right to represent those workers at the plant. He believes that the allegations against Coke in the suit are not true, but he broke with the CEO of Coke over how to respond: Patrick wanted to settle the case to protect the brand.
    
3. Big Dig: What are you going to do?
      
   Patrick asked rhetorically: How did we know things were wrong for so long, and yet not do anything? He worked with Bechtel on building a Coke plant in Ireland, where Bechtel tried to go over budget by 75%.
      
   
4. Would you sign a bill to ban soft drinks in schools?
      
   Answer: I'll consider anything that comes to my desk. He knows obesity is a problem, but it's not just about soda and junk food: kids need to get outside. He acknowledged that whatever he said, "You will think I'm a soft drink shill. I'm not."   
    
5. Should MA be a leader in the fair-trade movement, vis-a-vis treating labor fairly in the US as well?
      
   Patrick answered with a general comment about how little regard the business community has for Mitt Romney, and his "governing by press conference". The governor can do things to call attention to and encourage good business practice.
      
   
6. Long and rambling question regarding foreign debt from a young Larouchite woman. (I freely admit that I did not understand the question.)
      
   Patrick seem unfazed by the (multi-part) question, and offered to discuss it with the woman afterwards. Points for poise, anyway.
    
7. Education?
      
   "Early childhood education is huge." Fewer kids in the classroom. Though teenagers may disavow it, they are hungry for contact with adults. It's not just about money -- the best teachers are involved in the whole child. We have to create opportunities for that to happen.
    
8. What role do community colleges have in his education plan?
      
   "I don't know." Recognizes that they play an important role, but wouldn't state their relative importance in the educational system.
    
9. Environment in general, and wind power?
      
   He's been talking to advocates about what's at play. Enforcement has been decimated, as has maintenance of resources and parks. Re: Cape Wind: "Conceptually, it seems so right", but there are many sides to the issue. Eventually the various sides must be brought to compromise, but in the absence of strong leadership that won't happen. "You'll have to wait 18 months for that."
    
10. Crime and gangs?
       
    We need to restore money for law enforcement. Make school days longer -- many crimes committed between 3pm and 5pm. But, respectfully, "I'm not running for mayor." The mayors want a partner, not someone to solve their problems for them.

Well, I hope this is useful. (Taking notes on the fly and transcribing them gives me new respect for print reporters.)

GOP: The gathering storm

The NYT's Paul Krugman recently wrote a column called "The Oblivious Right" in which he argues that Republicans have found themselves on the wrong side of public opinion on numerous issues lately - judges, Schiavo, social security, you name it - because they talk only to their base, namely, "corporate interests and the religious right."  And, according to those guys, everything's fine.

It's an insightful column, as Krugman's usually are.  But I think there's a bigger lesson to be learned here from the dual nature of the Republican base and the party's recent miscalculations.  I think we are witnessing the beginning of a major implosion in the Republican party.  And here's why.

Republicans could not have won as many elections as they have won lately if they were just the party of the religious right, nor if they were just the party of the corporate elite (i.e., the rich).  They have to be both.  And the genius of what they've been able to do recently is appeal to both of these groups without really upsetting either - even though in many cases these two groups don't have a lot in common, and in fact should be on opposite sides of a lot of issues.

I would venture to say, for example, that many Christian conservatives are not wealthy people, that they probably don't benefit from the Bush tax cuts, and that they in fact are harmed by the Bush economic policies.  Similarly, I would venture to say that many rich Wall Street types couldn't care less whether women get abortions or gay people get married, that they probably know and work with (and may even themselves be) people who are pro-choice and pro-gay rights, and that they think government's most important job is to keep the wheels of commerce running smoothly and never mind all this "cultural" stuff which they see as a big distraction.

And yet both these sorts of people tend to vote Republican.  Why?  Because in both cases the Republican party has figured out how to appeal to what is really important to them.  The corporate crowd would probably prefer, on balance, to have a government that leaves abortions etc. alone, but it's much more important to them to have what they see as a favorable tax structure, favorable regulatory climate, and so on.  Similarly, the religious right crowd would probably prefer, on balance, that the government not screw them economically, but it's much more important to them that the government try to restore what they see as a moral compass - get rid of abortions, make life harder for gay people, more religion in public life, and so on.  This is why the central mystery of "What's the Matter With Kansas" - why do people keep voting for a party that is making them poorer - is really not that mysterious.  You can rationally support a party that does not act in your immediate economic self-interest if you think what the party is doing elsewhere is more important.  The abortion, etc. issues are so important to the religious right that nothing else matters much.  Same with the corporate elite, but in reverse.  (You can see variants of this on the left as well - e.g., there are lots of well-off lefties who don't vote Republican even though Republican policies would put lots more money in their pockets, presumably because they define their own self-interest more broadly than just having a larger balance in their checking account.)

The real beauty of the Republican strategy is that the two appeals don't have to interfere with each other.  The party can be all for tax cuts for the rich, a lax regulatory environment, etc., and still be pro-restrictions on abortion, anti-gay marriage, pro-funnelling money to religious organizations, and the rest of the "cultural conservative" agenda.  It's worked brilliantly.

UNTIL NOW.  Because now what's happening is that the agendas are starting to converge - and in a very uncomfortable way.  The newly-emboldened religious right wing, no longer satisfied with making abortions and gay marriages incrementally harder to obtain, has started an all-out assault on the federal judiciary.  And in so doing, they are scaring the crap out of the corporate elite, who need stable, well-functioning, independent federal courts.  Remember, the corporate elite really like the federal courts - that's why they want to move as many state law tort claims into federal court as they can.  A weakened federal judiciary is the corporate elite's worst nightmare.  Similarly, the Bushies' assault on social security seems to be scaring the crap out of even people who ordinarily don't pay a lot of attention to economic issues - that is, people who have supported Republicans because of their stand on the culture wars, not the class wars.  The Bush administration's failure to appreciate how attached the American people (particularly the non-wealthy American people) are to social security has got to be one of the most colossal political blunders of recent years, and it is threatening to turn a lot of previously-reliable Republican "cultural issue" voters into persuadables for the Democrats.  No one, cultural conservative or otherwise, wants to see their grandma in the poor house, and while rich folks don't have to worry about that, a lot of other folks do.

Terri Schiavo figures into this too.  The Republicans' behavior in that extraordinary case of course scared the crap out of corporate elite Republicans (who really hate the idea of government telling them how to care for their sick family members).  But it also may have freaked out even some of the cultural conservatives, who while probably in sympathy with the anti-euthanasia position, were justifiably horrified by the Republican overreaching and hypocrisy.

The delicate balancing act, in other words, is starting to fail.  The natural enmity of the Republican corporate elite and the Republican cultural conservatives, for so long deftly managed by the national Republican party, is starting to take on a life of its own, and the party has no idea how to stop it.  Just look at poor Bill Frist - he's completely trapped in this nucular option business.  I'm guessing that no one regrets more than he does the fact that he is really going to have to do it - because he knows that when he does, he will have lost any shot he ever had at becoming President.  To win, you have to have more than just the cultural conservatives, and going nucular will freak the corporate elite.

Remember those old Star Trek episodes where Scotty radios up to the bridge and says something like "this thing is goin' ta blow up, and there's nothin' in the universe can stop it"?  It's kinda like that for the Republicans right now.  Scotty, of course, always found a way to avert disaster at the last possible millisecond.  We will know, and I think sooner rather than later, whether the Republicans have someone as good as Scotty who can defuse the coming internecine blowout.

Stay tuned...

I went to hear and meet Deval Patrick last night at Rindge Latin School in Cambridge. Pretty good stuff, and I'll have a rundown this afternoon. He made his brief but quite effective stump speech, and took some tough questions about his work for Coke, and handled the Larouchies with grace and aplomb -- more than I'm capable of, that's for sure.

More later.

I dunno - you tell me

I am not making this up.  We report, you decide.  (Click image to enlarge.)

Nucular, Because They Can.

Dear folks: After last night's Nuclear Hootenanny, Senators really need to hear some phone calls on this issue, especially (but not only) if you live in NH, ME, and RI. And don't get complacent: The Dems need to hear from you, too. In his conference call last week, Senator Kennedy said it really makes a difference: “People (on the Judiciary Committee) are jittery. You’re making them jittery.”

Well, abuse of power comes as no surprise. And since the Republicans have their majorities, however slim, perhaps it's not surprising that they would imagine themselves to transcend all accountability. Actual governance seems to be farthest from the mind of the folks in power right now. As the expression goes: "Why does a dog lick its balls? Because it can."

Last night was "Justice Sunday", Bill Frist's and the Family Research Council's simulcast attacking the independence of the judiciary, which the filibuster helps to protect. Although the Republican majorities are actually quite slim, the religious right has claimed their mandate within the party as the majority-makers. And Frist is egging them on.

But as Ted Kennedy made clear in our conference call, people aren't going to put up with a change to the old Senate rules if all they get is a gaggle of radical judges. You really have to ask the question: Aren't there any better judges out there than these? Couldn't Bush just give up, find ten more garden-variety conservatives, and call it a day? Apparently not. Doing something simply "because you can" may be fun, but rarely ends up being a wise decision.

Well, federal judges matter. As Sen. Kennedy recalled, the 5th circuit court was extremely significant in the civil rights era. For better or for worse, we all saw the significance of federal judges in the Terri Schiavo case. I think we all felt a bit of "There but for the grace of God go I" while the controversy raged. And I think the general reaction was a mix of horror at the reality of the case, and horror at the hysterical political gamesmanship: Would you want a bunch of strangers to treat your family that way?

So let's boil it down: For whom are Sen. Frist and Pres. Bush willing to "go nucular" to put on the Federal bench? How does it matter to us?

The first two are Priscilla Owen, a Texas Supreme Court judge who's been nominated to the aforementioned 5th Circuit, and Janice Rodgers Brown, a California Supreme Court judge nominated to the Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit.

Owen first:

• If you want control over your own body, forget about it. And if you lose a limb at work, or have a corporate neighbor that pollutes, tough. She's not interested. From Alliance for Justice's fact sheet: "Justice Owen has taken campaign contributions from law firms and corporations, including Enron and Halliburton, and then, without recusing herself, ruled in their favor when their cases came before her."

(Ha. Maybe if you wrote her a check, too, she'd decide the case on the merits. Why so many folks seem to be unclear on the concept of "conflict of interest" these days is beyond me.)

• You know who thinks Owens is over the edge? That wacko lefty Alberto Gonzales, our Attorney General who thinks the Geneva convention is quaint because torture is hot. You see, she had a habit of making up new restrictions on abortions by minors that simply were not in the law. He said that following her logic would be an unconscionable act of judicial activism".
  (Really! Read it yourself!)

Now for Brown: Just read this passage, and see if you think this sounds like a sober-minded judge (you know, as in the expression, "sober as a judge"):

“Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates, and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible...

I have argued that collectivism was (and is) fundamentally incompatible with the vision that undergirded this country's founding. The New Deal, however, inoculated the federal Constitution with a kind of underground collectivist mentality.”

She really, really hates the New Deal. Most people think it was kind of necessary, and that the alternative that she might have proposed was a heck of a lot closer to slavery. You like Social Security? Brown is bad news for you. In fact, lifting a damn finger for anyone seems to be a little too much for her to bear. Does "conservative" really have to mean "misanthropic"?

I heartily invite you to read the whole speech. That will give you an idea of the kind of temperament we're talking about here... that is to say, the total lack of temperament.

Also see this open letter from the Society of American Law Teachers. Very thorough.

The crime lab really is underfunded!

A week or so ago I ranted about how outrageous it is that the State Police Crime Lab took many months to analyze the DNA sample provided by the guy who has now been arrested for the murder of Truro resident Christa Worthington.  I urged that this should be unacceptable, and rashly said that the only way to solve the problem was to spend more money on the crime lab (which routinely takes six to eight months to analyze samples).  Several comments took me to task for ignoring the role that good old fashioned incompetence seems to have played in the Worthington matter, and I agreed that I shouldn't have jumped straight to spending more money without considering what we could do by way of eliminating stupidity.

However, the AP is now reporting that the crime lab really is grossly underfunded.  According to the article, the lab can handle 300 samples per year - one sixth of the demand, hence the nine-month backlog (the national standard is 30 days).  Each of the state's DAs can only submit four samples per month, and the head of the Mass. DAs association describes DAs as "ludicrously handicapped" in the number of samples they can submit.  The article reports that the legislature and Governor Romney have pledged to double the lab's resources in the wake of the Worthington fiasco.

Good!  They should be devoting more resources to valuable institutions like the crime lab (and, of course, they should also be rooting out incompetence).  And so I ask again, Governor: how can you responsibly push for yet another tax cut, while simultaneously pushing to double the State Police Crime Lab's resources?  First, tell us what you want the government to do, then tell us how you're going to pay for it, and then let's talk about a tax cut.  Republicans have turned this debate completely on its head, and until Democrats are able to alter the discourse, they will keep losing.

DeLay, in a nutshell

The NY Times very helpfully printed out the House ethics rules today, along with more on DeLay's latest Abramoff bombshells. (It's a carpet-bombing, at this point.)

Let's just put two and two together, and agree that it makes four:

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that it had obtained travel receipts showing that [lobbyist Jack] Abramoff's personal credit card had been used to pay $6,938 for Mr. DeLay's airfare to and from Britain, suggesting a possible violation of House ethics rules, which bar lobbyists from paying for a lawmaker's travels. It had been previously disclosed that Mr. Abramoff had paid part of Mr. DeLay's hotel bill. Mr. DeLay's lawyer denied impropriety.

And now for the rule:

A member, officer or employee may accept necessary expenses from a private source for travel in connection with official duties - including, for example, to give a speech or engage in fact-finding - subject to the following restrictions.

¶ The source of the travel expenses may not be either a registered lobbyist or a registered foreign agent, and the source must have a direct and immediate relationship with the event or location being visited.

The prosecution rests, Your Honor.

 

"Novak lied" theory apparently gathering strength

For some time, the big mystery in the Novak-Plame-gate scandal has been why douchebag of liberty Robert Novak has not been forced to reveal his source.  Novak, as you'll recall, is the heroic journalist who first publicly disclosed Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative in order to further a Bush administration vendetta against Plame's husband.  Yet it is not even clear whether Novak has actually spoken to investigators (although most observers think he has), while reporters Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller (who had the same info but who either wrote about it later (Cooper) or didn't write about it at all (Miller)) are now facing jail time for refusing to name the leaker unless the Supreme Court bails them out.

One possible explanation, which I floated here a few months back, goes roughly like this: Novak testified voluntarily about his source; he lied; the special prosecutor knows he lied; and therefore the special prosecutor needs Miller and Cooper's testimony to nail Novak for perjury as well as to accurately assess whether he can file criminal charges against the real leaker.  I still haven't seen any other theory that successfully explains why the prosecutor is so desperate for Miller's and Cooper's testimony while simultaneously not seeming to care much about Novak.  And let us remember that a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously agreed that the special prosecutor had made a sufficient showing to overcome any privilege that the reporters might have the right to invoke - clearly, the prosecutor convinced the court that he isn't just pursuing these reporters for the sake of being nasty.

Now, according to the excellent reporting of Murray Waas (for whom well-placed sources in the Plame affair seem to sing like little birdies), the "Novak lied" theory seems to be gaining traction.  Waas says that "federal investigators have for some time believed that columnist Novak has very likely lied to shield his sources from potential criminal culpability."  Waas also reports that there was, indeed, a campaign within the Bush administration to discredit Plame's husband, and that the Plame leak was part of it.  Fascinating.  Waas's new blog has quickly become a must-read for those interested in what's really going on in this story.

I really, really hope that Miller and Cooper choose to testify rather than go to jail to protect their sources (although they've stated publicly that they won't).  Simply put, this is a stupid case for them to martyr themselves on principle.  The source that they are protecting is not worthy of protection - whether or not the leak was technically illegal, it was a profoundly unpatriotic act.  The leaker did not disclose any information that furthers the public interest (in Judge Tatel's words (see p. 40 of his opinion), the leak "lacked significant news value"), but did manage to undermine America's ability to defend itself against terrorists.  Nice work, jerk.  Miller and Cooper may misguidedly believe that their going to jail protects America.  It doesn't.  It protects a leaker who did a really bad thing and should be punished for it (at least by losing his or her job), and it protects Bob Novak.  Why they want to rot in jail for folks like that is beyond me.

UPDATE: Susan Gardner, an excellent diarist at Kos, has this interesting interview with Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame's husband, which is in part a response to Waas's story.

Boston: We're just a pathetic backwater now.

This ... thing ... in the NY Times today was flat-out garbage. "Boston's inferiority complex"? Because we lost a magazine? Riiiight. Not since October, baby.

And besides, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (full disclosure: my wife is a grad) provides a sort of shadow government, anyway. The hacks always make it back up here. Hell, we got Larry Summers! Cool, huh?

A bad transit day on Earth Day

I waited 45 minutes for a #1 bus in the middle of the day today. Not cool. Then, of course, three line up right behind one another. Not a shiny happy people crowd on that first bus, let me tell you. Maybe it was the blizzard, I don't know.

There has simply got to be a better way of keeping track of buses. MBTA should have GPS tracking of all buses. And they should be able to run express, pass one another, and so forth. And the Charlie card (great name, wrong spelling) can't come soon enough -- it takes an absurd amount of time to get people on and off the bus. And all the traffic lights should be timed properly.

Today is Earth Day. I take public transit because 1. It's usually faster than walking, 2. I don't have to park, 3. I don't like to drive in Boston more than I have to, 4. I don't create the pollution that I  would if I drove.

Regarding #4: Yes, that actually matters to me. That doesn't make me some weirdo hippie. It means I'm sentient, and have some idea what kinds of choices affect the environment. Like a fair number of people, I've organized my life around trying to be a decent (though decidedly not perfect) environmental citizen. That has less to do with my personal sense of virtue (pace Dick Cheney), and everything to do with an awareness the real effects that personal decisions, taken in the aggregate, have on the world at large.

It would behoove the powers that be to make such decisions easier for people, by fully supporting and vigorously overseeing public transit. Our public transit should be efficient, smart, innovative, wide-ranging, effective and affordable. Why should we settle for what we get now? I refuse to believe Newt Gingrich's despair in public institutions: that government can't get anything right, and therefore we shouldn't bother expecting anything from it. Nonsense. The politicians work for us, our institutions work for them, and I shouldn't have to wait 45 minutes for a bus. Period.

If we want to revive the environmental movement in the US, we could stand to hold our institutions to high standards. Environmentalists need to cluster their issues and look for ways to gain the cooperation of folks who have concurrent interests.  Michael Shellenberger, co-author of the essay "The Death of Environmentalism," mentions in this story that environmentalists have concentrated on "their issues" at the expense of engaging the public about issues great and small. Well, I've got a partnership idea for the Sierra Club, et al: For starters, they should insist on public transit getting people to work on time.

Here is Bad Transit. And here, on the other hand, is Good Transit: Especially see stomv's terrific suggestions.

I am a public transit voter. Hear me roar.

Mmmmm....beer....

From BlogBeat via the Fray comes this breaking news.  No sooner did the white smoke start wafting up from the Vatican than the brewers of Pope Benedict XVI's hometown in Bavaria set to work.  And now, God be praised, we have:

Papstbier!  (Literally, "Pope beer," in case your German is rusty.)

                     

We trust that Americans will give Papstbier a hearty welcome when it becomes available over here.

Breathe in the sweet smell...

... of idling traffic:

Poorly maintained and badly timed traffic signals are needlessly compounding gridlock and air pollution in American cities, according to a new national report...

The report, issued by a coalition of transportation agencies including the Federal Highway Administration, blames bad light timing for as much as 10 percent of all traffic delays nationally.

That adds up to about 50 wasted hours a year for people who drive two hours a day, according to the National Traffic Signal Report Card.

This is obvious to anyone who drives on Mass. Ave in Cambridge or Boston, Broadway in Cambridge, etc. etc. etc. As if driving around the maze of Boston streets weren't bad enough, you are thwarted by haphazardly timed lights. And we all have to breathe it in. It affects work productivity, too, in terms of timeliness.

It's an environmental issue, and a quality of life issue. It's also not brain surgery, just a matter of some decent civil engineering. (Ack, maybe that is too much to ask.)

(It's amazing how much the little things matter to the environment: California is now considering actions to encourage folks to use fully inflated tires, which would save immense amounts of pollution and $.)

Civil unions become law in Connecticut

Connecticut's Republican Governor, Jodi Rell, has signed a civil unions bill that guarantees full marriage-like rights for gay couples, while defining "marriage" as between a man and a woman.  I think that this link gives a summary of the bill as finally enacted into law, and that this link is the bill itself.  It's always hard to be sure with legislative websites that you've got the most up-to-date version, so I apologize if I linked to an incorrect version.

As I've noted before, I think that this is tremendously important news, because Connecticut is the first state to have granted full marriage-like benefits to gay couples without a court telling it to.  Some will complain that the bill writes discrimination into law by defining marriage as between a man and a woman.  My own preference would be that the bill not contain that language.  But really, given the choice of full marriage benefits under a different name voluntarily adopted by the legislature and signed by the Governor, or nothing, isn't the former the right choice?  In this case, the people's elected representatives have spoken, and they have spoken loudly and well.

Novak-Plame-gate reporters head to the Supremes

Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper, the reporters facing jail time for their refusal disclose confidential sources in the Valerie Plame affair, have lost their bid for en banc review in the D.C. Circuit.  The Court's order, with a concurring statement by Judge Tatel, is here.  No judge wrote a dissenting opinion (which of course does not mean that no judge dissented).

The next and last stop, of course, is the Supreme Court - although the immediate question is whether Miller and Cooper will be successful in obtaining yet another stay of the District Court's contempt order, or whether they will instead have to head to the hoosegow while the Supremes consider their case.  Editor & Publisher has some interesting comments from lawyers and others involved in the case.

So: will four Justices vote to grant certiorari in this case?  Tough call.  It does not seem terribly likely to me that the First Amendment issue is important enough, unless the Court is seriously considering overruling Branzburg v. Hayes outright - IMHO, the Branzburgian system we have now (whereby prosecutors sorta have to prove that they've exhausted all other leads before going after reporters) generally works pretty well, although it can go awry in individual cases (like any flexible standard).  An absolute privilege would, in my view, be a mistake, and I doubt a majority of the Court would go that route.  And the existence or non-existence of a "federal common law" privilege is important, but the problem there is that, as Judge Tatel's concurrence in the denial of en banc review points out, the issue was not squarely decided in the D.C. Circuit's original opinion.  The narrowest of the four (!) opinions in the original case, Judge Henderson's, simply concluded that any privilege that might exist was qualified (rather than absolute), and any qualified privilege would have been overcome by the special prosecutor's showing in this case.  So the D.C. Circuit really didn't decide the issue, and the Supremes usually don't like to decide issues that were passed on by the court below (of course, there are exceptions).  So my guess: cert. denied.  We'll see if they prove me wrong.

Sen. Kennedy reaches out to the netroots

It was pretty cool, really.  There were Charley on the MTA and I, your humble Blue Mass. Groupers, on a conference call with about eight other blogger types (including real fancy ones like MyDD's Chris Bowers, Mr. Liberal Oasis, and Mr. Daou report).  And then on comes Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) himself!  Kennedy spoke for about ten minutes on what he sees as the Republicans' abuse of power in the Senate, total lack of accountability, and general arrogance, focusing in particular on the nucular option.  Then he took about twenty minutes of questions from us.  Charley and I are comparing notes and will try to get a more detailed summary of the call up shortly.

Part of the reason for reaching out to the netroots is that Senator Kennedy's office has set up a new website called TedKennedy.com.  Kennedy hopes to use the site (which includes a blog) as, among other things, the internet clearinghouse for opposition to Bush's more extreme judicial nominations - at present, the site features a petition to oppose anti-environmentalist, tool-of-corporate-interests, and no-relevant-experience nominee William Myers (who has been nominated for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals).  If you, like me, are still on John Kerry's email list, you probably just got an email urging you to sign the petition at the TedKennedy website.

After the conference call ended, I emailed this follow-up question:

One risk that I can see is that the public will perceive the filibuster rule as "inside baseball," and they will perceive shutting down the Senate as an overreaction, like Gingrich shutting down the government a decade ago.  So there is a risk of backlash against the Democrats - the "party of obstruction," etc.  Is there a Democratic strategy to explain to the public why the filibuster is important enough to risk bringing the Senate's business to a halt?

Senator Kennedy responded as follows:

It is possible the message has not come across as clear as it should.  The truth of the matter is that Republicans will have shut down the Senate.  If they move forward with the nuclear option, they will have breached the basic premise that the Senate was established with.  They will have violated the trust of Americans by rewriting the rules to fit their current needs – and if Republicans continue that way, it will lead to the shutting down of the Senate.

Sounds to me like the Dems are serious.  Good.  Give 'em hell, Ted.

More candidates for Shannon's seat; election may not be until late summer

The Somerville News is reporting that Somerville Alderman Sean O'Donovan and Sean Fitzgerald, Sen. Shannon's chief of staff, are both in the race to fill the seat vacated by Sen. Shannon's death.  The same News story reports that state Rep. Paul Donato (D-Medford) will not run.  The two Seans join already-declared candidate Pat Jehlen (D-Somerville) in what looks certain to be a very crowded field.

The News also quotes an anonymous Beacon Hill source as saying that the dates for the special election to fill the seat will likely be August 30 for the primary and September 27 for the general election, although another source apparently said that the elections might be sooner.

Did Someone Ask for a Subway?

HONG KONG – There have in the past been occasional murmers of complaint about the quality of service on our MBTA. Those looking for models for improvement should consider the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway:

Corporate Organization. The government paid for the initial construction of the system in 1972. After it became fully operational, the company was listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2000. The business has a 50-year exclusive franchise on operation of rail mass transit in Hong Kong. Its principle activities are transit, real estate development connected with its stations, and operation of its smart card payments system. The government owns about 76% of the company. The MTR made a profit of over US$500 million in 2004.

Fares. Fares vary depending on the distance traveled and range in price from US$0.50 to about $1.75. All payments are made using electronic fare cards. The wireless "Octopus" payments card technology allows debiting from a stored value card simply by waving the card over a reader. The card does not need to be removed from a purse or wallet. Numerous local businesses, from Starbucks to the separate bus company, have adopted this convenient payments technology, which provides revenue to the MTR.

Service. Over 2.5 million people use the system each weekday. Travel times are extremely reliable and can be calculated in advance.

Cleanliness. The stations and trains are spotless. Automatic climate control doorways separate train tunnels from platforms; this increases safety, and allows stations to be more efficiently heated and cooled.

Displays. Electronic displays in every carriage show the direction of travel and progress of the train from station to station.

Mobile telephones. Work throughout the system.

McClellan: A raving loony is EXACTLY what we need at the UN.

In which the order in which information is presented makes all the difference:

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee set no new date for a vote, but a delay of at least two weeks seems likely while the committee looks into new allegations, including those of a Dallas businesswoman who says an irate Bolton chased her through a hotel and threw things at her at an international conference a decade ago.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Bush stood by Bolton unequivocally. "John Bolton is exactly the person we need at the United Nations at this time," he said.

We NEED someone to chase subordinates down the hall into their rooms. (Maybe he's just a real stickler for curfew.) We NEED someone to force folks to say that black is white. Unequivocally.

Yup, what the United States really needs to represents its interests right now is a complete, raving, unmedicated loony. Good choice, George!

Newt speaks at Harvard, 4/19

Newt Gingrich spoke at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government tonight. Of course, I was half-expecting him to fulminate furiously on various right-wing talking points, but that's not really his bag anymore. No, he was there to flog his book, and to talk about The Future.

Now, Newt's a pretty interesting guy to talk about the future, because as David Ellwood said in his introduction, he was envisioning a Republican majority from the moment he was elected to the House as a 35-year-old in 1978. His ideas have always been powerfully and clearly stated. So say what we like about his brand of politics, he accomplished a big *something*. Democrats could learn from that -- and indeed the re-envisioning of the Democratic Party has begun in earnest, and I'm frankly excited and optimistic about it. We're still enchained in the back of the cave, but we've got an inkling of daylight.

My two strongest impressions of Gingrich:

1. To Newt, bureaucracy is the enemy, which stifles innovation, wastes money, and entrenches mediocrity. Now, it goes without saying that Newt feels that "bureaucracy" and "government" are virtually synonymous. (He's obviously never worked in the Montgomery Ward corporate offices and tried to get a pair of scissors from the office supply czar -- but I digress.)

2. Newt believes the United States Government is incapable of creating ideas. According to Newt, all major transformative movements have come from outside Washington. (Now, since all of Congress and the President originally come from outside DC, this is kind of a tautology.) He spoke of the "Tyranny of the Present", the gossipy, day-to-day nature of politics in DC. "Only the past has lobbyists", not the future.

Now ... for those of us trying to effect change in our national and state parties, do these things sound familiar? Is our party bureaucratic and inefficient, stifling creativity, and rewarding mediocrity?

Other than that, it was actually kind of nice to hear an old politician who doesn't feel the need to adhere to any particular party talking points (although he was certainly on-message in response to a question regarding DeLay: "Nothing's been proven yet", etc.). His ideas are technocratic, glib, snappy, and often wildly impractical, like a kid playing in the sand ("I'd give the widdle poor people money for math and science ... And then I'd CWUSH Amtwak under my feet ha ha ha haaaa"), but that's kind of refreshing --  now that he's not in power anymore. He is untroubled by any need to be specific or offer real trade-offs; maybe he hasn't changed much.

But we've got terrific policy wonks on our side -- dammit, we're the Reality-Based Community, after all! I don't think that liberals lack public-policy know-how. Like Newt, I think our side needs to let itself daydream a little bit. What kind of world do you want to live in? What ideas/ideals will we ride to DC? If we know the endpoint, the way to get there will be a lot clearer. We gotta dream BIG.

The "no new taxes" battle is joined

The Globe is reporting that Tom Reilly has pledged that he is "not going to raise taxes" if he becomes Governor.  This is in contrast to Deval Patrick's position, which is a "no needless taxes" pledge. [UPDATE: The two Democrats may not really be in disagreement on this, at least not yet - see the comments for a report from someone who was there.]

The problem with the "no new taxes" pledge is that it's a big fat lie, at least as it's usually understood, which is in terms of the state income tax.  As Patrick has quite accurately pointed out, property taxes are perpetually on the rise - Prop. 2½ overrides have become routine as communities look for ways to pay for schools and other essential services in the face of static or declining aid from the state.  It's also worth noting that property tax can be more regressive than the income tax - it hits seniors who have been in the same house for many years particularly hard, because the value of their homes keeps rising even though their income often stays steady or even declines over time.  So in my view, Patrick is quite right to bring property taxes into this discussion, as well as to try to shift the debate to what we want government to do, and away from a mindless focus on 5.3% versus 5%.

Do you think any candidate would take a real no new taxes pledge?  That is, would any candidate agree not only to no income tax, sales tax, or other statewide tax increases, but also to push hard for legislation that would prohibit communities from overriding Prop. 2½?  That's the only kind of "no new taxes" pledge that would have any real likelihood of giving people more disposable income.  I'm not saying I think it'd be such a great idea, but at least it would be honest.

The Grassroots Demand Better Hacks, part ARRGGHH

I often feel a little self-conscious linking our little blog to a heavy hitter, but just go read Josh Marshall's latest on our feckless House Democrats, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Don't come back here until you read it!

For about 40 years, the Democrats played the game of doing what it took to stay in power, and that meant messy compromise and mushy principle. Well, that's never ideal, but it's at least understandable.

Beltway Democrats: WAKE. UP. You are not in power anymore. The only thing that's going to get you out of the hole is if you have the vision to stop digging. That means you punish Republicans for taking a position that would harm Americans. That means you can't always play the nice guy, the conciliatory conflict-avoider. I don't doubt that the focus groups don't like the idea of Democrats playing tough -- people have a natural distaste for the rough-and-tumble of politics. They always have. It doesn't matter. Democracy is necessarily adversarial and often antagonistic. You've got to know your principles in order to know when to compromise, or walk away from the table entirely.

Any parent knows that you've got to lay down the law at some point or another. You can only triangulate your kids for so long before they're playing in traffic.

Senator Schumer tells it like it is

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called Tony Perkins, head of the so-called Family Research Council, "un-American" for his outrageous claim that the current debate over judicial nominations should be cast as people of faith vs. Democrats.

You tell 'em, Chuck.  These people hate America and all that America is supposed to be.  They want to destroy it.  Never forget that.

First candidate for Shannon's Senate seat enters race

State rep. Pat Jehlen (D-Somerville) has said that she is a candidate to fill the state Senate seat of the late Charlie Shannon (D-Winchester).  She appears to be the first to publicly declare her candidacy.  The date for the special election to fill Shannon's seat has not yet been set.

There has already been lots of speculation as to who Shannon's successor will be - several possibilities are mentioned in the linked articles.  I don't know much about any of them (including Jehlen).  The best known (at least to me) seems to be ex-Governor's Councillor and ex-Somerville Mayor Dorothy Kelly Gay, about whom I have mixed feelings [update: as has been noted in the comments, Kelly Gay is not running].  Anyone have any thoughts?

Tax cuts? Or a functioning State Police Crime Lab? You decide.

So it turns out that the guy who has been arrested for the long-unsolved murder of fashion writer and Truro resident Christa Worthington has a substantial criminal record and several restraining orders against him in domestic cases.  And, because he worked for a trash hauler that serviced Worthington's residence, he knew where she lived.  He was, in other words, an obvious suspect - indeed, he was identified early on in the investigation as a "person of interest." 

The suspect, Christopher McCowen, volunteered to give police a sample of his DNA in April 2002, just three months after the murder.  Yet no sample was collected from McCowen until March 2004, nearly two years later, supposedly because of McCowen's "frequent moves."  Perhaps even more appalling is the fact that McCowen's DNA sample, once collected, was not analyzed by the State Police Crime Lab until this week - over a year later - which is what led to his arrest.  There is apparently some dispute as to whether the Crime Lab sat on the sample for 8 months or 13 months, but in either case it's way too long.

And it gets worse!  A few months ago, the police and the DA's office were so desperate for new leads in the case that they asked every male resident of Truro to supply DNA samples.  The ACLU objected, seeing it as a form of coercion, and the tactic split the community and sowed suspicion among neighbors.  Yet it now seems clear that at the very moment the authorities undertook this last-ditch measure because they couldn't think of anything else to do, the DNA sample they were looking for was sitting on a shelf in the State Police Crime Lab waiting to be analyzed. 

There are lots of lessons to be drawn from this story.  One of them, I think, is that months-long delays at the State Police Crime Lab in analyzing DNA samples from likely suspects in brutal murders should be absolutely unacceptable.  And guess what, folks?  The only way to clear the backlog is to spend more money on the Crime Lab.  And the only source of revenue available is your taxes.

This is exactly what Deval Patrick has been talking about.  It's stupid to just talk about how great tax cuts are as an abstract proposition.  We first have to agree on what we want government to do, and then we have to come up with a responsible way to pay for it.  So to Governor Romney, who yesterday attacked Patrick's position on taxes by saying that "Government will always spend what people give to it," I say this: one of things I want government to do is to solve crimes quickly.  I want you to explain to me, and to Christa Worthington's friends and family, how you will give the State Police Crime Lab the money it needs to do that while simultaneously cutting the income tax.  If you can do that, great, I'm for a tax cut.  But if not, then stop being foolish.  Everyone is for tax cuts, other things being equal.  But "other things being equal" is always the rub.

Outside the Bubble

HONG KONG – I stepped out of The Bubble as soon as I stepped on to Korean Airlines 7854 from New York to Inchon Korea. The Bubble is the current pre-Copernican ideology advanced by our leaders and echoed by our media that the world revolves around the U.S.: the richest, strongest, most advanced country. In fact, we are the most heavily indebted country in the world, more dependent on foreigners than at any previous time in our history, and  unchallenged only in our military strength. Because almost no in-depth foreign news is heard inside The Bubble most in the U.S. are unaware how exposed our position has become.

'U.S. calls for immediate flexibility on renminbi' blared the headline on the Financial Times the steward handed me. Remember that? Our trade deficits are unsustainable. The dollar will fall dramatically, or U.S. interest rates will spike, if nothing is done. You wouldn't know this was an issue from the New York Times, which concentrated yesterday on domestic environmental issues, the domestic stock market, prisons in Oklahoma, and the Iraqi insurgency; or CNN, which led with Michael Jackson.

'China passes Japan to become world's #3 exporter' another newspaper here reported today. How about that story: the rise of China? Another issue one is unlikely to see placed in global context in the U.S. media. (The U.S. is the world's #1 exporter, although it imports even more, followed by Germany; France is #5).

Foreign media are almost silent about Iraq. As soon as one leaves the U.S. one is reminded that the war is a cost born overwhelmingly by the U.S.

These abstract issues have real-world consequences. JFK, for example, used to be one of the world's best airports. It is now mediocre relative to its competitors. The much vaunted new AirTrain, for example, finished this year at a cost of $1.9 billion, extends only to subway stops close to the airport - not all the way into Manhattan - costs a hefty $5, and is littered with non-functioning walkways and dead escalators. At the other end of a trans-Pacific flight one emerges at Inchon into a brand-new airport completed just a few years ago - and continues, if headed to Hong Kong, to another sparkling new facility. The U.S. has built just one major new airport in the last 10 years: Denver's. Advancing Asia, by contrast, boasts massive new facilities from Korea to China to Hong Kong to Malaysia.

Keep transferring $1.75 billion every day to foreigners, and this is the result.

A post about Justice Scalia that has nothing to do with sodomy

As you may have heard, Justice Scalia recently spoke at NYU Law School, where a student asked him whether he sodomizes his wife. 

I have nothing to add to the voluminous commentary that the incident has generated.  But this seems to be as good a time as any to offer my long-promised comments on the lengthy profile of Scalia that was published in the March 28 New Yorker (and is apparently not available online available online here - thanks to Howard Bashman for the link).

First, it's a very good article.  Well worth reading despite its considerable length.  A lot of journalism on legal topics, even by people who have done it for a long time, is unreliable and makes important mistakes.  But I didn't catch any errors in this article.  Several things, however, did catch my eye (these are in the order in which they appear in the article). 

Early on in the article, we come upon this:

Another audience member asked, "There are those who think the 2000 election was stolen.  Could you explain why that's wrong?"  Scalia growled, "I am inclined to say, four years and another election later, 'Get over it!'"  He waited for the boos and the applause to die down.  "The only issue was whether we should put an end to it, after three weeks of looking like a fool in the eyes of the world," he said.  Besides, he asked, how could the Court have declined to hear the case?  "On what grounds?" he asked.  "That it's not important enough for us to trouble ourselves with?"  The prestige of the Court is "not something you put up on the mantel and admire," he said with pride.  "It's there for use in battle."

Even putting aside Scalia's flip "get over it" comment, I find this entire paragraph shocking.  First, it's surprising indeed to hear that Scalia gives a damn about whether we "look like a fool in the eyes of the world" - this is the guy who routinely chastises his colleagues for making any reference to international law, yet he's willing to precipitate a near-constitutional crisis because a couple of Europeans might be having a chuckle at our expense?  Second, "the only issue was whether we should put an end to it"??  Insanity!  The only issue should have been whether there was a substantial federal question to be answered - and everyone I have spoken to about Bush v. Gore, including a number of conservative lawyers and law profs who undoubtedly voted for Bush twice, agree that the "federal question" at stake in Bush v. Gore was modest at best.  And then Scalia asks "on what grounds" the Court might have declined to hear the case!  How about this, Nino: there was no substantial federal question to be answered - there's your grounds for declining the case, just like you decline every other case that presents no substantial federal question, however important the case may otherwise be.  You made one up so you could decide the election.  Third, for a judge to think that his role in the 2000 recount was to "put an end to it," when "it" is the process laid out in the Constitution and laws of the United States for deciding a presidential election, seems to me as good a definition of "judicial activism" as any I have ever heard.  So there it is, from his own lips: Antonin Scalia is a judicial activist, and don't you forget it.

From the earth-shatteringly important to the absurd: I couldn't resist quoting this passage:

Scalia was ... an enthusiastic actor.  (He played the lead in "Macbeth" and the angel Gabriel in "The Green Pastures," which a school publication described as "a humorous characterization of the Negro interpretation of the Bible."  Another student was "De Lawd.")

The school in question is Xavier High School in Manhattan, "a Jesuit military academy."  No further comment seems necessary.

Then comes this story about Scalia's first day in the Nixon Justice Department:

he was given the task of deciding who owned Nixon's tapes and papers - the American public or Nixon.  Scalia drafted a memo supporting Nixon.  "To conclude that such materials are not the property of former President Nixon would be to reverse what has apparently been the almost unvaried understanding of all three branches of the government since the beginning of the republic," he wrote.  Congress rejected Scalia's argument ....

I find this interesting not so much because Scalia supported Nixon and was overruled by Congress, but because of the way in which Scalia makes his case.  Listen to his hyperbolic language: a decision other than the one he recommends would undo the "almost unvaried understanding of all three branches of the government since the beginning of the republic."  Sound familiar?  If you've ever read any of Scalia's opinions, it should - he's a big fan of this kind of "sky is falling" language, and it shows up in his writing (especially his dissents) all the time.  ("Today's opinion is without antecedent."  "This proposition is so out of accord with our jurisprudence - indeed, with the jurisprudence of any society we know - that it requires little discussion."  "[T]o extend to the entire run of Compensation Clause cases the rationale supporting today’s judgment ... would be disastrous.  The Court’s judgment ... has no basis in law."  "To achieve that desired result, it rejects (contrary to our established practice) the factual findings of two courts below, sweeps aside the precedents of this Court, and ignores the history of our people."  There's plenty more - you get the idea.)  It's an effective rhetorical device, but when you consider how often Scalia employs it, you do start to wonder whether he keeps using it precisely because it's effective, rather than because it's really accurate.  Maybe Scalia's colleagues really are routinely disregarding the history of American law up to the point the decision in question is being written - but frankly, I doubt it.

Along similar lines, we read that "[w]hile [Scalia's] dissents often nimbly dismantle the dodgy logic of the majority opinion, they do so in a tone of such bitter disappointment that it's hard to imagine his arguments winning over any Justice who voted against him."  And, a couple of pages later, we learn that "Scalia's fervency has undermined his ability to form coalitions on the Court," that he is a "failure as a politician," and that "[f]or all his brilliance, Scalia has repeatedly failed at the art of persuasion."  I've already written about this phenomenon of Scalia's tenure on the Court in the context of whether Bush will name him to be the next Chief Justice, and whether that would be such a bad thing.  I wrote before, and I still think, that precisely because of Scalia's self-inflicted isolation, Bush won't elevate Scalia (despite Scalia's alleged "charm offensive"), and if he does, liberals should smile quietly to themselves.

Finally, though this post is already too long, I cannot close without noting the article's reference to Scalia's now-famous comment during the oral argument of this term's Ten Commandments cases:

The commandments, he said later, are "a symbol of the fact that government derives its authority from God."  This was a startling assertion, but of a piece with earlier Scalia statements, such as his claim, in the First Things essay, that the American people's "un-European" religiosity helps explain why we "are more inclined to understand, as St. Paul did, that government carries the sword as 'minister of God' to 'execute wrath' upon the evildoer."

Startling indeed.  I should think it would startle the founders of this country, to whom Scalia claims such allegiance. The founders wrote as they declared independence from Great Britain that it was "self-evident" that "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."  That's right, Nino, "the consent of the governed."  The founders indeed viewed those "rights" as coming from the "Creator," but they assuredly saw the legitimacy of government - whose job it is to "secure" those rights - as coming from the consent of the governed, not from God above.

So there you have it.  A brilliant judge who cannot persuade a majority of his colleagues on many of the issues that are most important to him.  A self-styled "originalist" who seems to have missed one of the principles that the founders thought most important.  A judge who undoubtedly would take umbrage at being called a "judicial activist," yet who was willing to halt a recount process in its tracks, even though that process was being carried out according to laws enacted by the people's duly elected representatives.  Antonin Scalia's legacy will be curious indeed.

UPDATE: I ran across this over at Volokh: "one shouldn't confuse flip aphorisms with legal acumen."  The author was writing about Oliver Wendell Holmes, but it seems to me that the comment applies with perhaps greater force to Antonin Scalia.  As discussed above, Scalia is second-to-none with the nifty rhetorical devices, but in many cases, that's all they are.