(Part One is over here.)
1) This CNN story tells us the following…
(CNN) – A leader of a national Tea Party organization said Monday that her organization has no patience for racists.
"In Tea Party Patriots, we have no place for that," Jenny Beth Martin said on CNN's American Morning. "If we see somebody who's doing something racist, we tell them to leave our events. We're there for our core values. We want to reclaim our founding principles in this country."
Ummm, OK. The problem, as noted here, is that there are other “teabaggers” out there besides the “Tea Party Patriots.”
As Wikipedia tells us…
The Tea Party movement is still without formal organization. Though several groups have emerged to try to capture the agenda, a majority agree on principles without formally aligning themselves with one or the other. The groups that have emerged to date each have slightly different approaches to their advocacy, and include:[66]
· The Tea Party Patriots are a national organization that claims to have over 1000 local chapters, run with the help of Freedomworks, a conservative nonprofit led by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey.[67][68][69][70][71]
· The Tea Party Express is a national bus tour run by Our Country Deserves Better PAC, a conservative Political Action Committee created by Sacramento-based GOP consulting firm Russo, Marsh, and Associates.[69][72][73][74]
· Tea Party Nation held a National Convention February 4–6, 2010. The event featured Sarah Palin as keynote speaker, but was criticized for charging $549 per ticket,[75][76][77][78] as well as the fact that Palin was apparently paid $100,000 USD for her appearance.[79] In the face of criticism by Tea Party activists, Palin has said she plans to donate the fee to unspecified conservative causes.[80] Former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo at the Tea Party convention in Nashville stated to applause, "People who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House..his name is Barack Hussein Obama."[81]
· A new National Tea Party Federation was formed on April 8, 2010 by several players in the Tea Party movement to help spread its message and to respond to critics with a quick, unified response.[82]
The Tea Party movement has also attracted some followers of fringe organizations such as the LaRouche Movement, the white separatist Council of Conservative Citizens, and the John Birch Society.[83]
And as Mother Jones notes here…
"The gun lobby is once again embracing—and, equally important, validating—the anti-government rhetoric being offered by activists that range from Tea Party members, through pro-gun advocates, to members of the militia movement. And as was the case with Timothy McVeigh, the risk lies not so much with the organized members of these groups, but with the "lone wolves" who not only embrace their rhetoric, but are willing to act on it with violence."
I was wondering why the NRA, supposedly an organization committed to gun safety, has remained silent while these teabaggin’ wingnuts have, at least, hinted at armed insurrection (and let us hope and pray that it never materializes). I think I now have my answer.
And I’ll take Martin at her word that the “Tea Party Patriots” have moved beyond racism and intimidation. If so, then moments like this one with the Chicago chapter last November will never be repeated.
2) Turning to the “Old Gray Lady,” Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Charlie Savage told us the following last Saturday (here – our “hopey, changey” president decided to lecture us again; I support the guy, but I wish he would stop peddling this crap)…
WASHINGTON — In a seeming rejection of liberal orthodoxy, President Obama has spoken disparagingly about liberal victories before the Supreme Court in the 1960s and 1970s — suggesting that justices made the “error” of overstepping their bounds and trampling on the role of elected officials.
Mr. Obama made his remarks Wednesday night against a backdrop of recent Supreme Court rulings in which conservative justices have struck down laws favored by liberals, most notably a January ruling that nullified restrictions on corporate spending to influence elections.
“It used to be that the notion of an activist judge was somebody who ignored the will of Congress, ignored democratic processes, and tried to impose judicial solutions on problems instead of letting the process work itself through politically,” Mr. Obama said.
“And in the ’60s and ’70s, the feeling was — is that liberals were guilty of that kind of approach. What you’re now seeing, I think, is a conservative jurisprudence that oftentimes makes the same error.”
He added, “The concept of judicial restraint cuts both ways.”
Thank you for unnecessarily validating a right-wing talking point, Mr. President.
And this gives Stolberg/Savage an excuse to inflict the following…
The White House declined to identify rulings that Mr. Obama believes relied on judicial activism. It also argued that his recent remarks were consistent with his history of separating himself from liberals in the Warren court mold. In his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” for example, Mr. Obama suggested that “in our reliance on the courts to vindicate not only our rights but also our values, progressives had lost too much faith in democracy.”
The writers are correct, actually; that is a quote from the book. However, as you may expect, they leave out the following context (pgs. 82-84 in paperback, during a period when the “nuclear option” on judicial filibusters was being discussed)…
To me, the threat to eliminate the filibuster on judicial nominations was just one more example of Republicans changing the rules in the middle of the game. Moreover, a good argument could be made that a vote on judicial nominations was precisely the situation where the filibuster’s supermajority requirement made sense: Because federal judges receive lifetime appointments and often serve through the terms of multiple presidents, it behooves a president—and benefits our democracy—to find moderate nominees who can garner some measure of bipartisan support. Few of the Bush nominees in question fell into the “moderate” category; rather, they showed a pattern of hostility toward civil rights, privacy, and checks on executive power that put them to the right of even most Republican judges (one particularly troubling nominee had derisively called Social Security and other New Deal programs “the triumph of our own socialist revolution”).
Still, I remember muffling a laugh the first time I heard the term “nuclear option.” It seemed to perfectly capture the loss of perspective that had come to characterize judicial confirmations, part of the spin-fest that permitted groups on the left to run ads featuring scenes of Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington without any mention that Strom Thurmond and Jim Eastland had played Mr. Smith in real life; the shameless mythologizing that allowed Southern Republicans to rise on the Senate floor and somberly intone about the impropriety of filibusters, without even a peep of acknowledgment that it was the politicians from their states—their direct political forebears—who had perfected the art for a malicious cause.
Not many of my fellow Democrats appreciated the irony. As the judicial confirmation process began heating up, I had a conversation with a friend in which I admitted concern with some of the strategies we were using to discredit and block nominees. I had no doubt of the damage that some of Bush’s judicial nominees might do; I would support the filibuster of some of these judges, if only to signal to the White House the need to moderate its next selections. But elections ultimately meant something, I told my friend. Instead of relying on Senate procedures, there was one way to ensure that judges on the bench reflected our values, and that was to win at the polls.
My friend shook her head vehemently. “Do you really think that if the situations were reversed, Republicans would have any qualms about using the filibuster?” she asked.
I didn’t. And yet I doubted that our use of the filibuster would dispel the image of Democrats always being on the defensive—a perception that we used the courts and lawyers and procedural tricks to avoid having to win over popular opinion. The perception wasn’t entirely fair: Republicans no less than Democrats often asked the courts to overturn democratic decisions (like campaign finance laws) that they didn’t like. Still, I wondered if, in our reliance on the courts to vindicate not only our rights but also our values, progressives had lost too much faith in democracy.
Just as conservatives appeared to have lost any sense that democracy must be more than what the majority insists upon. I thought back to an afternoon several years earlier, when as a member of the Illinois legislature I had argued for an amendment to include a mother’s health exception in a Republican bill to ban partial-birth abortion. The amendment failed on a party line vote, and afterward, I stepped out into the hallway with one of my Republican colleagues. Without the amendment, I said, the law would be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. He turned to me and said it didn’t matter what amendment was attached—judges would do whatever they wanted to do anyway.
“It’s all politics,” he had said, turning to leave. “And right now we’ve got the votes.”
So, as you can see, the larger discussion had to do with how both political parties tried to achieve what they wanted in the courts with their congressional majorities. It really didn’t have anything to do with criticizing liberals alone (which, as you can see, was a relatively mild chastisement compared to what Obama was saying about the Repugs).
Also, on the matter of conservatives believing that the prior Supreme Courts noted in the story might have “overstepp(ed) their bounds,” it should be noted that Chief Justice Earl Warren was nominated by a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Warren Burger was nominated by another Republican president, Richard Nixon.
Sounds like it’s not only Democrats that fail to “appreciate the irony.”
3) Also, concerning the spill in the Gulf, Dem Senator Bill “Spaceman” Nelson of Florida recently said the following (here)…
"What we see, going back two decades, is an oil industry that has had way too much sway with federal regulations. We are seeing our worst nightmare coming true."
This tells us about the shenanigans in the Minerals Management Service under Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History, but this tells us the following under President Clinton, including the following…
Management of the Outer Continental Shelf play a significant role in the nation's energy picture. Revenues collected by the Minerals Management Service (MMS) from royalties derived from the federal offshore oil and gas program supports President Clinton's Lands Legacy Initiative. The MMS Royalty Management Program collects over $4 billion annually. These funds are distributed to 38 states, 41 Indian tribes, 20,000 Indian mineral royalty owners, and to U.S. Treasury accounts.
The FY 2000 budget for managing the nation's offshore mineral resources is $240.2 million, about $16.2 million above the 1999 level. The majority of the increases ($10 million) will go to updating the Service's computerized royalty management program to ensure continued effective royalty collections.
"As we prepare to be stewards in the next millennium, this budget will enable the Department to develop new approaches and innovative solutions for managing, restoring and protecting America's natural resources," Babbitt said.
The Department's FY 2000 budget request, subject to annual appropriations by the Congress, represents an increase of $832 million, or 10.6 percent over the 1999 appropriations.
Based on what I’ve read and what I can recall during the 1990s, Bruce Babbitt was a great Secretary of the Interior (MMS fell under Babbitt’s purview). If Nelson has a gripe with anything during the Clinton years, he’ll have to make a better case than that.
4) Finally, Brian Stelter of the Times tells us here that Bill Moyers recently concluded his program “Bill Moyers’ Journal”…
Mr. Moyers has long been a controversial figure. In a column in the May 10 issue of The Nation, the media columnist Eric Alterman called Mr. Moyers the “last unapologetic liberal anywhere in broadcast television.” Conservative critics have long accused Mr. Moyers and his programs of being one-sided.
“To our critics,” he said on Friday’s finale, “I’m glad you paid attention; the second most important thing to journalists is to know we’re not being ignored.” (The only thing more important, he said, is independence.)
And Stelter offers no proof to support the charge that Moyers is “controversial” and “one-sided” in his column.
None.
Which, to me, validates exactly why independent journalists, particularly Bill Moyers, are so important.
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