Satire: Sarah Palin, r*tard with handometer - Colbert Report

February 8, 2010 www.colbertreport.com

Tom Geoghan on our dysfunctional Senate and government

"There's no way the country can go Left  because of the Senate", says Tom Geoghan, labor lawyer, writer, and political gadfly.  In an audio interview with George Kenney at Electric Politics, Geoghan lays out the structural obstacles to change which are the product of the Senate's super-majority rules  - commonly (if inadequately) known as the filibuster.  The 60 vote rule - as Richard Shelby is demonstrating - empowers every Senator to obstruct even the most elementary processes - such as confirmation of presidential nominees.  In another manifestation it permits 41 Senators to obstruct any legislation.    HERE is the audio. And HERE is an editorial by Geoghan and the editors of The Nation.

Jon Stewart on Bill O'Reilly's show aims his wit at Fox "News"

Jon Stewart is becoming Edward R. Murrow: the most serious independent television journalist of the moment.  He is armed with a comic persona, razor sharp wit, and the analytic skills of a top flight political commentator.  


If the PBS News Hour wants to come out of its torpor they should replace Mark Shields with Jon Stewart, and David Brooks with Andrew Sullivan.

At risk: my right to be a KSM juror

Images: U.S. Courthouse, Foley Square, below left; Governor's Island, right

I want to be a juror in the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.  Like all New Yorkers I think I am  tough on terror.  I watched the twin towers burn with fright that my son might have gone to work early that day.  


But now the professional toughs on terror want to take that opportunity away from me.  South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has announced he will introduce legislation to bar civilian trials for the accused 9/11 planners.  Disparagement of our civilian justice system - which people like Rudy Giuliani used to celebrate when the 1993 WTC bombers were convicted - has now become de rigeur among those like him who pose as toughs on terror for Rupert Murdoch's outlets.

The Constitution says that people like me should judge those who violated the peace of our City:

Amendment VI, Constitution of the United States of America

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

"Obama blinked" the New York Daily News said today of the Administration's decision to abandon the plan to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other accused 9/11 planners in downtown Manhattan.  After the police Commissioner Raymond Kelly described security plans that would have disrupted life in lower Manhattan for months, Mayor Michael Bloomberg reversed his stance and opposed the Foley Square venue.  

Don't do me any favors.  I don't mind giving up lunch at my favorite places in Chinatown.  I'll go to Governor's Island or even out of district to Fort Hamilton.  But I will very much mind if I, a citizen of the "state and district wherein the crime (was) committed",  am deprived (by statute or  failure of political nerve) of the chance to judge those who are accused of sending suicide commandos to destroy the towers and the thousands who were there that dreadful morning.  I want to make sure they have got the right guys.  And if the defendants are guilty I want the privilege of passing judgment on them.

Obama with the Republicans

Amazing event.  It is the Obama equivalent of the Prime Minister's Q&A at Westminster - but here he meets only with the the opposition.
The link to CSPAN for the whole event is HERE and HERE at Whitehouse.gov
Best line: "The way you guys went after this you would think this was some sort of Bolshevik plot...We have got to close the gap between rhetoric and reality."

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Rhetoric: James Fallows annotates the SOTU address

James Fallows
James Fallows, the prolific journalist and National Book Award winner (for National Defense - 1981) is an acute student of  Presidential rhetoric.  He was Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter - at the age of 26 - like Jon Favreau, the Holy Cross grad who is Barack Obama's chief speechwriter.


Fallows has published his annotated version of President Barack Obama's 2010 State of the Union address.  The full annotated text is HERE.  An excerpt follows:

One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by a severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. Experts from across the political spectrum warned that if we did not act, we might face a second depression. So we acted -- immediately and aggressively. And one year later, the worst of the storm has passed.  

But the devastation remains. One in 10 Americans still cannot find work. Many businesses have shuttered. Home values have declined. Small towns and rural communities have been hit especially hard. And for those who'd already known poverty, life has become that much harder.

Obama's shout out to the Supreme Court

My favourite moment in the bloom is off the rose State of the Union address was when President Obama departed from the conventional veneration of Supreme Court Justices as if they were vestal virgins guarding the Republic.  Umpires calling balls and strikes John Roberts claimed in his confirmation hearings - denying the obvious ideological divides that often determine outcomes.


Every first year law student in America is steeped in the contrary idea.  The dominant perspective - Legal Realism -  takes its cue from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who in his famous 1881 lectures The Common Law wrote

The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed.

I don't think any President has confronted the Justices this way.  Of course Al Gore did not get the chance.  Obama, face to face, bluntly if impotently said:

It's time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office. Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that's why I'm urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong. 

Impotent, because, as I wrote last week, Justice Kennedy warned the Congress that the Court majority would not be reticent about overturning legislation its majority felt incompatible with its view of the Constitution.  Their view was simple: artificial persons (corporations) are like real people.  They have rights including the right to speak anytime anyplace about whatever they want (constrained minimally by the duty not to waste corporate assets).   Justice Kennedy declared for the 5-4 majority:

Legislatures may have enacted bans on corporate expenditures believing that those bans were constitutional. This is not a compelling interest for stare decisis. If it were, legislative acts could prevent us from overruling our own precedents, thereby interfer-ing with our duty “to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803).

 As Rutgers-Camden law professor Robert Williams said of legislation - one day it's the law of the land, the next moment it's waste paper.