As y’all probably know by now, Dubya — so eager to exploit and enlargen executive power in other arenas — vetoed his first bill in five years yesterday, when he decided to capitulate to the sad remnants of his base, set back medical science a few more years, and nip stem cell research in the bud once again. While Dubya said the bill would have forced “American taxpayers…for the first time in our history…to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos,” he made no argument for criminalizing fertility clinics, where similar embryos get tossed away unused every day. “‘If that’s murder, how come the president allows that to continue?’ asked Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). ‘Where is his outrage?’ Harkin called the veto ‘a shameful display of cruelty, hypocrisy and ignorance.‘”
Category: Democrats
Joementum Stalls.
And is dubious Democrat Joe Lieberman finished as well? (At least in the party, that is.) A new Quinnipac poll shows him trailing challenger Ned Lamont 51-47 for the first time in the Connecticut primary, which takes place August 8. (Although, loath to make the same mistake as his former running mate, Lieberman has the one and only Bill Clinton — a man who knows how to survive an inappropriate kiss or two — coming to town on Monday to campaign for him.) Update: Clinton makes the case.
…and Dubya’s FISA double down.
Meanwhile, in another recent reversal — one likely precipitated by both the Hamdan case and pending lawsuits by the ACLU and others — the Dubya White House agrees to a deal put forth by Arlen “paper tiger” Specter that would put the NSA warrantless wiretaps to a constitutional review by the FISA court. But the trick, as many Dems have pointed out, is under this deal the FISA court would only do a general review of the wiretap program, rather than conduct the individual case-by-case reviews that the law has always demanded: “Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) criticized the agreement, saying he will oppose ‘any bill that would grant blanket approval for warrantless surveillance of Americans, particularly when this administration has never explained why it believes that current law allowing surveillance of terrorist suspects is inadequate.’“
Whence the Joementum?
“If Lamont has been unconventional and smart, Lieberman so far has been conventional and dumb.” Slate‘s John Dickinson reports in from the Connecticut Democratic primary, where Joe Lieberman is finding his pro-war Republicrat schtick isn’t playing too well with the Dem grass roots and amid the blogosphere. “The challenger clearly has the momentum. He’s doing so well that Lieberman has had discussions with political advisers about running in the general election as an independent.”
Blue England Patriots.
“Talking about the national political outlook, Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said, ‘A very heavy anti-Republican wave is building and it’s going to hit against a very stable political structure. And what is unknown is which will be more important in November — the size of the wave or the stability of the structure.’” Salon‘s Walter Shapiro offers up another Election 2006 preview, with a brief breakdown of the electoral math for the Dems and a focus on the quandary of moderate New England Republicans such as Lincoln Chafee and Chris Shays.
Not this time, Karl.
“He’s making a political speech. He’s sitting in his air-conditioned office on his big, fat backside saying, ‘Stay the course.’ That’s not a plan.” As justifiably disgruntled veteran John Murtha lights into bile-spouting chicken-hawk Karl Rove for another gutterball attack on Dems’ patriotism, the Democrats step up to the bar and offer two substantive plans for phased withdrawal from Iraq, to be debated tomorrow. “Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Russell Feingold of Wisconsin…pushed an amendment requiring that U.S. combat troops be out by July 2007…In a statement, Kerry and Feingold said a deadline ‘gives Iraqis the best chance for stability and self-government’ and ‘allows us to begin refocusing on the true threats that face our country.‘”
Hiram to the DLC.
A word of warning from today’s archival research (re: photocopying binge): “The trouble with the Democrats in California is, first, they have no organization, and secondly, they wish, just as apparently as the Democrats in the East wish in this campaign, to be with exactly the same people with whom the Republicans have been sleeping for many years in the past. Apparently they don’t realize that there is no place for them with those who have been directing our politics, but nevertheless they covet the unique and often disgraceful position we occupy.” — Hiram Johnson, in a letter to Harold Ickes, September 1, 1928.
Jefferson, I think we’re lost.
It’s getting mighty strange in Washington of late, as GOP congressional leaders rise in outraged defense of pretty clearly corrupt (and stubborn) Democrat William Jefferson, claiming that an FBI search of his office violated the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution. (Constitutional scholars seem to consider it a toss-up: “‘It’s really a matter of etiquette,’ said Akhil Reed Amar, a professor of constitutional law at Yale University. ‘I don’t see any constitutional principle here.’“) Funny how we can illegally spy on, indefinitely detain, and/or brutally torture people, and Congress barely bats an eye. But someone searches a congressional office and all Hell breaks loose. I wonder why…
ADA or SDS?
As seen on Medley’s Furl, Columbia PhD, Rutgers professor, and Slate “History Lesson” columnist David Greenberg reexamines the current divide between liberal internationalists and anti-imperialists among the Dems — and seems to think more of Peter Beinart’s recent “Cold War Liberal” argument and the protective camouflage DLC-types than I do — in the Boston Globe.
Hayden Right?
“Unlike so many of the hacks placed in charge of important government agencies during the past six years, Hayden possesses powerful qualifications for the job…By the admittedly dismal standards of the Bush administration, then, Hayden is an unusually good appointment.” As former NSA head and probable CIA director-to-be Michael Hayden navigates the confirmation process (leaving all his Snoopgate-related answers for the secret session), he procures an endorsement from an unlikely source: Salon‘s Joe Conason: “[D]espite his military uniform, Hayden is likely to be more independent of the Pentagon and the White House than Goss was. It will help that, unlike Goss, he actually knows what he’s doing.” Hmmm. Update: Hayden is through committee on a 12-3 vote. (Feingold, for his part, voted no: “Our country needs a CIA Director who is committed to fighting terrorism aggressively without breaking the law or infringing on the rights of Americans.”