A new poll finds John McCain at all of three percent in Iowa. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Morning Roundup.
Okay, sort of thin gruel for Romney-bashing. Today he’s forgetting how many counties there are in the state he was allegedly governor of.
A number of Guantanamo Bay prisoners fear being sent back to their home countries out of a fear of… torture.
In today’s episode of TPMtv we bring you the final chapter in our coverage of Yearly Kos 2007, the last Yearly Kos that will ever be held (beginning next year the convention will go by the name Netroots Nation). We thought it appropriate to conclude with our interview of the Kos himself, Markos Moulitsas, but we’d like to thank everyone who was kind enough to give us a minute and chat with two random dudes wandering around with a video camera. And thanks to Josh for allowing my colleague Andrew and me to partake in such an adventure. Goodnight Chicago, you’ve been wonderful!
I’m always interested to try to tease apart and find the meta-debates operating beneath the surface of campaign debates. As I wrote a few years ago in what I called the bitch-slap theory of GOP electoral politics, the whole swift-boat saga was less about the specifics of Kerry’s injuries forty years ago than whether he could defend himself from the charges today. Someone who can’t defend himself is weak; and if a guy can’t defend himself he can’t defend you.
That’s what that whole song-and-dance was about.
So what is this back and forth about Obama and Pakistan about?
What this has boiled down to — and this became even more clear after Tuesday night’s labor-hosted debate, when Biden and Dodd acted as Hillary’s proxies — is Hillary, in league with the party’s foreign policy establishment, trying to make Obama, implicitly or explicitly, concede an error, that he misspoke.
Precisely what he misspoke about is largely beside the point. The key is that they get him to concede that in the complex and serious world of foreign policy big-think, where words have consequences, he made an error. Of course, it’s almost good enough if most observers decide that Obama screwed up. But once he concedes it himself, if he does, he stipulates from now through the end of the Democratic primary campaign that his inexperience in foreign policy is a basic premise of the campaign upon which the battle between him and Hillary will be waged. He can learn, improve, make progress, whatever, but his inexperience compared to Hillary will continue to be the reference point throughout.
But I think he’s done a pretty good job so far refusing to get put in that box. And the truth is that I think Obama’s actual words are so clearly unobjectionable that this is all Kabuki theater of a particularly strained and disingenuous sort. All Obama said was that if we have actionable intelligence about the whereabouts of high-value al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, and Pakistan won’t act, we will act.
Clearly, no Republican can quibble with this. They’re on the record for invading countries because they might become dangers to us at some point in the future. They’re hardly in a position to disagree with Obama if he says we’ll hunt down people who committed mass casualty terror attacks within our borders. And I’m not sure Democrats are in much of a position to do so either.
The unspoken truth here, I suspect, is that Obama has struck on the central folly of our post-9/11 counter-terrorism defense policy — strike hard where they aren’t and go easy where they are. I think everyone can see this. But Obama got there first. So they need to attack him for saying it.
On Scooter Libby: “Lewis Libby was held accountable.”
On Al Gonzales: “I haven’t seen Congress say he’s done anything wrong … Why would I hold someone accountable who has done nothing wrong?”
Sentimental snark from TPM Reader MD …
Reading about Mitt’s claim that his five sons are serving the nation by driving the Winnebago through Iowa, I was put in mind of the once-famous Sulllivan Brothers, five Iowa boys who were all in the navy during WWII, were all serving on the same ship, and were all killed at the same time. I hadn’t thought of the Sullivan Brothers in years. After their deaths, the military put in a rule that blood relatives could not all serve in the same unit. So the Romney boys should not all be riding around in the same Winnebago.
Academics-turned-political-donors gave most to Barack Obama! That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
Here’s a corruption case that raises an interesting constitutional question. Actually, the ‘question’ seems pretty open and shut to me. But it is apparently being treated as one of some ambiguity. So here goes.
In 2005, rapscallion Congressman Don Young (R) of Alaska snuck in a $10 million earmark for a highway interchange (the “Coconut Road” project) which stood to benefit real estate mini-mogul Daniel Aranoff. The earmark appeared just days after Aranoff raised 40 grand for Young at a fundraiser. Adding to the fun on this little escapade is that this was an earmark for a road building project in Florida, which — unless my spatial reasoning is failing me — must be about as far as you can get in the United States from Alaska, the state Young nominally represents.
Okay, so far, not a particularly surprising story, certainly for the Alaska congressional delegation. But here’s where it gets more interesting.
The ‘Coconut Road’ earmark wasn’t in the bill passed by the House and Senate. I don’t mean it wasn’t in the original bills before they went to conference (where the separate bills from the House and the Senate are reconciled into a single bill). It wasn’t in the final, reconciled piece of legislation passed by both houses of Congress after conference.
But it is there now.
So here’s what happened. Apparently Young added the text after Congress had already passed it but before the president signed it. As Laura McGann explains in this post, this must have occurred during the process called “bill enrollment” when revisions of grammar and technical but not substantive changes are permitted to be made.
The president did sign the bill. But the portion apparently added by Young, if I understand anything about our system of government, was never passed by Congress. So it means nothing.
Based on this — to my mind — neatly fatal insufficiency to the earmark, local officials in Southwest Florida are investigating whether they can ignore the earmark and use the money to widen Interstate 75, which is what the bill had prescribed before Young’s extra-constitutional handiwork.
Now, here’s my question. I know some squirrelly things happen in the legislative process. But this strikes me as in a whole other category. In the previous Congress there was a lot of controversy over the fact that the Republican leadership was basically rewriting bill’s de novo in conference. And while that may make a mockery of the legislative process it doesn’t have narrowly constitutional implications — at least as I read it — since the whole Congress does pass the final law, even if it was just something Tom DeLay wrote out on a gumball wrapper and they’re only given five minutes to read it.
Anyway, to my question: how common is this? Laura got a quote on this from Keith Ashdown from Taxpayers for Common Sense who said, “Iâve seen little gimmicks and little tricks used to make sure somebodyâs friend or contributor is taken care of but this is by far one of the more underhanded, surreptitious examples Iâve seen â ever.”
Is something even similar to this a commonplace occurrence?
So, how common is this — addressed to those of you on the Hill? Is there any question that this never-passed earmark lacks any force of law? And shouldn’t there be some sanction — by the Congress itself if not legally — for his having done it?
Rep. Bill Sali (R-ID): God may destroy America over Hindu prayer in the senate. Muslim congressman probably won’t help any either.