MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: October 14, 2007

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October 20, 2007

Family Research Council Straw Poll Results: Romney and Huckabee Tie for First Place

This is big. Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's tie for first place here at the Family Research Council's Washington Briefing (aka the "Voters Value Summit") should mark his emergence. It's not clear he's a first tier candidate just yet, but he has the heart of the Christian evangelicals, and that's a great base if you're seeking the GOP nod. Here are the results in full:

Mitt Romney: 1,595 (27.6%)
Mike Huckabee: 1,565 (27.1%)
Ron Paul: 865 (15.0%)
Fred Thompson: 564 (9.8%)
Sam Brownback: 297 (5.1%)
Duncan Hunter: 140 (2.4%)
Tom Tancredo: 133 (2.3%)
Rudy Giuliani: 107 (1.85%)
John McCain: 81 (1.4%)

Total votes: 5,776

Other notes, some quite stunning:

- Mike Huckabee crushed all other contenders amongst those voters who submitted their votes on-site. (FRC members have been able to vote online since August.) A whopping 51.3 percent of on-site voters pulled the lever for Huckabee, which reflects the enthusiasm that greeted his speech earlier today. Romney only got 10.4 percent of on-site votes. Fred Thompson placed third, with 8.1 percent.

- Ron Paul's third place finish puts him ahead of frontrunners Thompson, Giuliani, and McCain, but it is a product of his strength on the internet. Paul's speech had a lot of content (on the economy, on foreign policy) that was out of style during a weekend filled almost exclusively with talk of abortion, family issues, and gay rights. He took just 25 votes from on-site voters; that's 2.6 percent. The rest of his votes came online.

- The poll also asked respondents who would be "least acceptable" as president. Hillary Clinton ran away with that one. She took 71.7 percent of all votes. Second, amazingly, was Rudy Giuliani, with 9.2 percent.

- John McCain and Rudy Giuliani couldn't break two percent, which is pretty pathetic. Giuliani has a reason: he's pro-choice and multiple evangelical leaders, including Tony Perkins, president of FRC, have said they refuse to vote for a pro-choice candidate. John McCain, on the other hand, has no excuse for becoming persona non grata. Miserable weekend for the Arizona senator.

You can find MoJoBlog's summary of Huckabee's speech here; the summary of Romney's is here. Sam Brownback would have been a strong contender in this straw poll had he not dropped out; my Brownback experience from yesterday is here.

Huckabee Fever: Catch It!

Mike Huckabee is the closest thing to a rock star here at the FRC's WB. He is the only candidate who actually comes from the evangelical community. (That's actually a Huckabee talking point, but it's true. He's a former Baptist minister, after all.) As I've mentioned before, Huckabee is making a strong pitch for the Brownback votes. His main competitor, Mitt Romney, spoke yesterday.

Huckabee's speech today had an anger and ferocity to it that is well outside the conventional wisdom on Huckabee. The guy who is commonly described as easygoing, warm, and funny seemed seriously pissed that the "holy word of God" is being violated, according to Huckabee, on abortion and on gay marriage. He emphasized that America needs to "make it constitutionally clear that life begins at conception" in order to end the "holocaust of liberalized abortion." Yikes.

He also railed against candidates who "lip sync" the hymnals of the evangelical Right. You listening, Rudy? And he raged against candidates who have more positions on the core issues than "Elvis had waist sizes." You listening, Romney?

After a sea of biblical stories, Huckabee had this core point to make: "I do not spell G-O-D as G-O-P. Our party may be important, but not as important as our principles." He urged the attendees not to conflate their loyalty to their Christian values with their loyalty to the party that most frequently represents them. If the Republican Party doesn't speak for the Christian Right, said Huckabee, stand up, do something, stay true. (When I heard that, all I could think was, "Let's go third party!")

The crowd ate it up. Can Giuliani win this nomination without the evangelical vote? Can Huckabee win it without anything else?

Photo courtesy of mikehuckabeeismyhomeboy.com.

Latino Head of RNC Resigns in Frustration

Hispanics were supposed to be a key part of Karl Rove's permanent Republican majority. The comprehensive immigration reform plan pushed by President Bush was both the product of the president's immigrant-friendly views and Karl Rove's belief that allowing Hispanic immigrants a path to citizenship would lead thousands of those immigrants (and their kids) into the arms of the GOP. Instead, the issue of immigration has been so bungled by the GOP (and so captured by the rabid anti-immigrant portion of the party's base) that Mel Martinez, the Cuban-born senator from Florida, is resigning his post as head of the RNC.

The Republican Party's highest-ranking Latino official abruptly resigned Friday, marking the latest casualty in the GOP's bitter internal fight over immigration and dealing another setback to President Bush's years-long effort to court Latino voters.

The announcement by Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida that he was quitting as general chairman of the Republican National Committee came after he had expressed frustration over the tenor of the immigration debate within his party. Martinez will remain in his Senate post.

"Mel Martinez was a symbol of the party's outreach to Latinos, and that seems to be disappearing," said Lionel Sosa, a longtime Republican strategist and advisor to GOP presidents since Ronald Reagan. "It is not a good day for Latino Republicans, that's for sure."

The White House had engineered the ascent of the Cuban-born Martinez over the objections of many conservatives as part of an effort to repair the GOP's image among Latinos. That image suffered when Republican congressional leaders and conservative activists stymied administration-backed measures that would have created a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.

Rudy Giuliani's Appearance Before the Value Voters: A Mixed Bag

Rudy Giuliani just faced his toughest crowd of the campaign to date. After some waffling early in the campaign, Giuliani has been honest about his pro-choice and pro-gay rights beliefs. In so doing, he's written off the folks who are likely to attend the Family Research Council's Washington Briefing (aka the Value Voters Summit).

So how did Rudy handle the situation? Unimpressively. He spent as much time apologizing for not pandering to the crowd on abortion and gay rights as he did making the case for why he ought to be the next president of the United States. Let's dig in.

Rudy started by saying, "I've come here to speak to you about our shared values and our shared goals. What unites us is far greater than what divides us." Any suspicion that he would ignore the tension between his positions and the crowd's by raving about "Islamic fascism" went out the window immediately.

Early in the speech, he said, "Christians and Christianity are all about inclusiveness." He went on to explain the early Christians drew people to the faith by accepting doubters, sinners, and outcasts. There are two reasons why this is a dicey line of rhetoric. First, Rudy explaining Christian history to some of America's most devout Christians is kind of insane. In addition to sounding unauthentic, he had no room for error. Second, it's unclear if he was trying to say that the crowd here ought to accept him (as a candidate that doesn't "check their boxes"), or that the crowd here ought to accept gays, immigrants, and other folks that these Christians don't like so much. Either way, he's telling these folks how to improve themselves, which is a bit presumptuous, no?

Giuliani explained that because he too often finds himself failing his moral and religious beliefs, he is reluctant to hold himself up as a model of faith. And that he comes from a background that keeps religion out of public life. Despite that, he said, "You have nothing to fear from me." That's a pretty stunning statement for any presidential candidate to make.

Few campaigns are won on the defensive, but that's where Rudy found himself. "Isn't it better that I tell you what I really believe," he said, "than to change all my positions to fit the prevailing wind?" It isn't leadership in any meaningful sense to pander, he explained, and so, if you'll forgive him, he's not going to pander to you. But don't write him off as a result. "Ronald Reagan said, 'My 80 percent friend is not my 100 percent enemy,'" Rudy pointed out. To rephrase that: "I know we don't agree 20 percent of the time, but please don't hate me as a result." The unspoken but universally acknowledged truth here is that the 20 percent on which Rudy and the crowd disagree are the 20 percent that are most important to the crowd.

Giuliani can talk about his support for increasing adoptions, for decreasing abortions, for appointing strict constructionist judges, he can say things like, "My belief in God and reliance on his guidance is at the core of who I am," and he can talk on and on about how he will always be honest if not perfect on the issues, but in the end none of that is going to be good enough. Running for president doesn't mean convincing the American voting public to vote for you. It means convincing the dozens, if not hundreds, of single-issue groups that make up the American voting public to vote for you. And this is one Rudy's just not going to get.

The folks here have been voting in a straw poll all weekend. They'll announce the winner after the presumptive favorite, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, speaks this afternoon. I, of course, will be here.

Do I get combat pay for this?

Update: The good news: no phone call.

October 19, 2007

Bear Stearns Traders Deserve Rogue Tag

In the competitive world of hedge funds, it's all about numbers, games, and strategy. But most recently, hedge funds seem to be about crisis. The risky investing by Bear Stearns rogue traders, which skirted established practices and hid true intent from investors, precipitated the global credit crisis and subprime mortgage collapse of late. It has affected families across America whose dream of buying a home came crashing down—entire blocks of towns and suburbs have emptied out.

But the scandal is hitting home for Bear Stearns executives as well. Co-Chief Operating Officer Warren Spector has been fired, and the reputation of the bank may never recover. Yet Ralph Cioffi, the trader who set up these funds, is still on the payroll as an adviser.

Cioffi was able to set up two hedge funds on an extremely shaky foundation because they were getting results. It was a structure that was doomed to crash in any minor downturn in the market, as it was leveraged to the hilt with almost eight times as much money borrowed against what was invested, including $275 million in capital from Barclays. This meant that Barclays had the power to pull its capital from the funds at any time, which would collapse the structure. On top of that, only one percent of the total investment was kept as reserve cash, compared to the usual ten percent that hedge funds keep around for emergencies.

The devastating results of rogue traders are compounded when they are not recognized as such. When they hide under the legitimacy of a major investment bank, the stakes are higher because they are seen as trustworthy and they have more resources at their disposal. If this crash is going to teach traders anything, it should be that their actions resonate beyond the world of the market, their bank, and themselves.

—Andre Sternberg

That's Why It's Called the Nobel, Not the Noble

James Watson, a geneticist who won the Nobel Prize in 1962 for discovering the structure of DNA, was suspended this week from his position at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York state, after being quoted in the Times of London saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa," because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really."

Even if Watson, who seems believably mortified by his own words, is in fact a horrible bigot, he’s far from the only award-winner to have a less-than-illustrious record. Consider Menachem Begin, who won the Peace Prize in 1978 for helping to negotiate the Camp David Accords and who went on, in the 1980s, to authorize Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. And then there is the notorious Henry Kissinger, who received the prize in 1973 for his work on the Vietnam Peace Accords, and yet also orchestrated the secret carpet-bombing of Cambodia.

Perhaps this is all fitting somehow, considering that Alfred Nobel was the inventor of dynamite.

Romney Makes His Pitch for the Values Voters: Family! Family! Family!

It's Romney Time! The former Massachusetts governor takes the stage to a standing ovation here at the Washington Briefing. Let's go with a quasi-liveblog, shall we?

He starts hammering the family values message right from the beginning. With little prelude, he says, "I think those that know me would say that I am pro-family on every level, from the personal to the political." He then mentions his 45 children and 8,000 grandkids. Wait, it's more like five and 11. But it's high.

Romney is Mike Huckabee's top competitor for the free-floating Brownback votes. His gameplan for winning them: family, family, family. He's been speaking for fifteen minutes already, and it's been nothing but extolling the virtues of family. Apparently, the strength of America's families will determine our place in the "family of nations." (I could have sworn that had something to do with the military-industrial complex. But what do I know? I don't have 45 kids.) Also, "it really is time to make out-of-wedlock birth out of fashion again." So don't buy illegitimate kids for your fall wardrobe.

I will say this about Romney—though he doesn't seem concerned with anything but families, he is speaking in concretes. He wants to revise the tax code to encourage marriage. He'll use the bully pulpit to lower the number of out-of-wedlock births (presumably by raising the stigma with being a single mother or father). He isn't going to find time to mention health care or Iraq, but at least he's not just BSing his way through this speech.

Okay, more specifics. He's slamming the Massachusetts court decision that "got the ball rolling" on gay marriage. Now he's attacking stem cell research. Now he's promising to raise adoption rates. Now he's confirming the "culture of life" and condemning abortion. Now he's promising to "fight the modern plague, internet pornography." Now he's promising not to give child molesters who use the internet to prey on kids more than one chance. Do we do that currently?

School choice! Charter schools! Homeschooling! Reform the tax code! Affirm the place of faith in our public discourse!

Oh, wait, he might be confronting the religious right's discomfort with his Mormon faith. "I understand that some people believe they couldn't support someone of my faith," he says. "I'm so happy so many people of faith have come to endorse my campaign."

Oops, now we're off again. He's not going to get into the Mormon thing. He mentions the three-legged stool of Ronald Reagan—I think we've got a culprit on the anonymous flier.

And we're back full circle. More on the family, and how it's necessary to strengthen America. The crowd loves it. Romney gets a standing ovation on the way out, just like he did on the way in. Hey Rudy, you are so screwed.

Speeches of the Living Dead: Santorum, Blackwell, and Gingrich

It's a real horror show here at FRC's WB. Former senator Rick Santorum came out to slam Hillary Clinton on abortion, former Ohio secretary of state Kenneth Blackwell came out to jabber about civilization or ideas or something, and former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich came out to talk about how Americans support certain things in massive majorities (prayer in schools, the pledge of allegiance, etc.) only be see their near-consensus on these issues overruled by the courts and the elites in Washington. Newt also selectively chose a bunch of historical facts to make it appear the Founders were strong supporters of faith in government. That's been debunked, fortunately.

Newt also thinks we're going to have a sea change in this country, because large swaths of the country can obviously see we're heading to hell in handbasket. I can't warn you about this conservative revolution because my brain is fried. Completely fried. I can hardly type.

And I still have Romney in two hours. Jesus.

Rudy Falls Off Ronald Reagan's Stool

Anonymous flier being handed out here at the super-Christian Family Research Council's Washington Briefing:

The American Stool
Designed by Ronald Reagan

INSTRUCTIONS

Step 1. Attach stool leg labeled: "Strong Economy"

Step 2. Attach stool leg labeled: "Strong Military"

Step 3. Attach stool leg labeled: "Strong Family"
DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP!

Someone make sure that Rudy gets a copy of this! He lost his!

The back? Completely blank. No one wants to take credit. What is this, South Carolina?

Only Three Shopping Days Left 'Til the War on Xmas

The phony war against the "War on Christmas" seems to come earlier every year. Via ThinkProgress, we learn that WorldNetDaily is already pushing its "Christmas-defense kit" to help "ward off the evil spirits of the ACLU grinches." Having just recovered from the War on Columbus Day, I figured I still had a few weeks before I should start dropping the H-bomb (Happy Holidays!). But while secular America sleeps, WND's been busy: It's even reclaimed Turkey Day too.

Duncan Hunter is a Scary Man

I'll just say this about Duncan Hunter— the man could not more be hawkish. At one point in his speech here at FRC's Washington Briefing, he promised more preemptive wars without even bothering to explain why or with whom, saying only that they might be necessary. And almost completely out of the blue, he said, "That little country, that little postage stamp called Israel, has stood by the United States on every major security issue in the Middle East. They should not give back an inch of their land." The room absolutely erupted in cheers—one woman literally jumped up and down. I guess I was unaware of how important Israel is to this community. I wonder why no other candidate has mentioned it.

Tort Reform Brings More Doctors to Texas, But Only for Rich People

In 2003, Texas voters approved a ballot initiative known as Proposition 12 that helped radically restrict state residents' ability to sue doctors or nursing homes that killed or injured them. Insurance company lobbyists had claimed doctors were fleeing the state because of lawsuits and high malpractice insurance premiums, threatening access to care. Proposition 12 was supposed to fix all that. Not only would doctors rush to Texas for its friendly legal climate, but, supporters claimed, obstetricians would move en masse to the 152 poor, rural Texas counties that had no ob/gyn to deliver local babies.

The New York Times recently declared Prop 12 a huge success because doctors (ob/gyns in particular) are supposedly flocking to Texas now that they don't have to worry about getting sued. One thing the Times didn't point out, though, was that the number of those new ob/gyns who've moved to rural, underserved Texas is exactly zero.

The Texas Observer this month crunched the numbers, and came to the not-so-startling conclusion that while there may be more doctors in Texas thanks to tort reform, virtually all of them moved into the state's richest suburbs, which were already well-stocked with highly paid specialists. As it turns out, doctors don't shun the Texas sticks because of lawsuits but because they'd just rather live closer to Starbucks and their golfing buddies.

Thompson Speaks With Substance. What?

In the speech he just gave to the assembled Christian politicos, Fred Thompson bucked the trend by actually laying out some positions and issue ideas. Revolutionary idea for a presidential candidate...

Mixed with a certain degree of pablum (Examples: "We live in the greatest country in the history of the world. Our obligation is to do everything we can to keep it that way." "We must pass good laws. We must stop bad laws."), Thompson took strong positions on the following issues: (1) Unborn babies. (2) Courts. (3) Gays. (4) National debt. (5) "Global conflict with radical Islam."

Those positions were: (1) Save 'em. When Fred Thompson saw the sonogram of his youngest daughter, he knew he could never be anything but pro-life.

(2) Stop 'em. "Too often, it is our judicial branch of government that violates our approved law." (I thought that was called a check and/or balance?) Courts make our social and cultural rules, Thompson argues, and that's just wrong. We need more judges like Chief Justice John Roberts.

(3) Don't let 'em marry. No elaboration needed.

(4) Fight it. We're leaving near-fatal levels of national debt to future generations, who are too young to have a seat at the table during this discussion.

(5) Win it. Duh.

I'll add three things. Because I like numbering, apparently.

(1) Thompson is a clumsy panderer. Witness how he closed his speech: "I don't really know what I would do in my first 100 days... I know what I would do the first hour that I was president. I would go into the Oval Office and close the door and pray for the wisdom to know what was right [cheers] and I would pray for the strength to do what is right."

That could have been phrased better.

(2) There was little excitement during Thompson's speech. Tancredo easily showed more fire and charisma than Thompson.

(3) There was a lot of talk of staying the course, from Thompson and the other candidates. "We will win, if we are persistent," said Thompson. He was referring to reforming the courts, but he could have been referring to inculcating the conservative ideology in American culture, or to the permanent Republican majority. It seems the Republicans here know their short-term prospects are dim. They're taking the long view. What else can they do?

Oh, and one other thing: this place is overflowing with Thompson volunteers. And while Thompson didn't strike out at his opponents, his staffers are handing out a flier that absolutely shreds Giuliani and Romney on their positions on abortion and gay rights. When I get back to the office, I'll try to scan it and post it as a pdf.

For coverage of Sam Brownback and Tom Tancredo, follow the links.

More On How The Weak Dollar Jacks Up the Price of Oil

Yesterday I blogged on how the weak dollar is responsible for roughly $30 of the $90 a barrel of crude has (so far) topped out at. And I'm being doubted by some in our comment section and on Digg. Today, more confirmation from the folks at Bloomberg:

Crude oil breached $90 a barrel in New York for the first time as the dollar traded near a record low against the euro, enhancing the appeal of commodities as an investment....

"The weak dollar is pushing the price higher,'' said Simon Wardell, energy research manager with Global Insight Inc. in London. ``It's hard to see how this is going to turn around quickly.''...

The U.S. currency fell to $1.4302, from $1.4279 yesterday, and traded at a record low of $1.4319 earlier in the day.

A lower dollar makes oil cheaper in countries that use other currencies. In U.S. dollars, West Texas Intermediate, the New York-traded crude-oil benchmark, is up 46 percent so far this year. Oil is up 35 percent in euros, 40 percent in British pounds and 42 percent in yen.

I rest my case.

And for you yahoos who can't understand how this can be possible when they've always heard that the price of gasoline is so much higher in Europe...We're talking about CRUDE OIL, people. A raw commodity. Refined gasoline is indeed more expensive in Europe, because, largely, European governments choose to tax it to pay for roads and schools and health care and to discourage people from buying ridiculously big cars. Now you can argue about whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, but at least argue over the same issue.

Does Barbie Eat Fries?

Back in June, under fire for marketing junk food to children, McDonalds pledged to become more socially responsible. The company insisted that it didn't need to be regulated by the government. It would do its part to fight the childhood obesity epidemic by producing new advertising that included "healthy lifestyle messages" for kids.

Well, here's what they've come up with: A Barbie on rollerblades in every Happy Meal. The plastic sex-kittens are part of a new promotion to get little girls to consume the 700 calories and 28 grams of fat that are the average Happy Meal. But hey, Barbie is rollerblading!

Tom Tancredo and the Plight of the Second Tier

Tom Tancredo has a tough sell here today. He is trying to pitch himself to a crowd that is salivating at the chance to hear McCain, Thompson, Huckabee, and Giuliani speak. In fact, in the lobby of the Hilton Washington earlier this morning, I overheard a girl in her twenties says to her friends, "I keep taking these quizzes on 'Who is your favorite candidate?' And it keeps coming up Tancredo. And I'm like, 'Who are you??'"

Tancredo takes this in stride. He opens his speech with a joke about being a second-tier candidate and by telling a story that goes something like this:

"I went to speak to the NAACP in Detroit recently, and when I got into the cab at the airport, I was wearing jeans, I didn't have an entourage, and I was still eating the sandwich I was eating on the plane. The cab driver asked me, 'What are you doing here?' I said, 'I'm speaking to the NAACP."

He said, 'Why?'

I said, 'Because they asked me to.'

He said, 'Why?'

I said, 'Because I'm running for president of the United States of America.'

And he turned back and looked at me. He paused and said, 'Nah.'"

That joke may not translate onto a blog, but it was pretty funny at the time. Sorry.

Tancredo's speech can be summed up by this line: "When conservatives run on principle, they win. When conservatives run away from principle, they lose." He goes on to criticize the Republican Party for hyphenating their message (neo-conservative or compassionate-conservative, for example) and for straying from the ideals of "John Adams, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan."

That is to say, he doesn't talk policy. And this get to the heart of what is happening today: the candidates are taking every chance to throw red meat to this crowd, but offer almost nothing by way of substantive and concrete ideas for America and for their presidency.

Actually, Tancredo does have one idea. Paraphrased, it's this: "Don't hold your nose and vote for the better of two lousy choices. Vote for someone you actually believe in. That's me." And that's the message of a second-tier candidate.

Update: Sorry, didn't mean to confuse anyone. Tancredo also discussed immigration, immigration, immigration.

Live, From the Most Religious Place in America, It's FRC!

gal.brownback.jpg

I'm at the Family Research Council's Washington Briefing, an annual meeting billed on the FRC website as "THE PREMIER VALUES VOTER EVENT OF 2007." It's a collection of America's most politically-savvy evangelical Christians. That means if the rapture occurs today, it's just going to be me and a bench of media members in bad sportscoats.

The day was kicked off with a Sam Brownback book signing. The senator from Kansas is a long-time defender of pro-life and anti-gay positions, and this ought to be his crowd. But yesterday, it was announced that Brownback will likely drop out of the presidential race today. Brownback, tucked amongst booths for groups like Exodus International ("Freedom for a World Impacted by Homosexuality") and PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays), was immediately mobbed by members of the media seeking information on the rumor.

"I'm here for a book signing, folks," he said, taking an exasperated look at the half dozen video cameras and scores of reporters toting laptop bags and notebooks. "I'm making an announcement later today."

Squeezed between members of the media were thirty or so people who actually wanted to get their copies of "From Power to Purpose" signed. A small boy with wire glasses and a buzz cut tired to take a picture of the senator with a digital camera. A convention staffer stopped him, saying "No unauthorized photos. You need a media credential." The kid, a bit shocked, mumbled an apology and began putting his camera back in his pocket when a reporter standing nearby intervened.

"I'll take the picture," he said, reaching for the kid's camera. As the boy got his book signed, the reporter jostled his way to the front of the table to get a picture. Maybe the rapture will take him, too.

Brownback fans were disappointed by the news of the senator's impending withdrawal, but not too disappointed. "God has him where he wants him," said a teenager standing in line. "We need strong Christians in the senate," chimed in a woman standing nearby.

A man in his twenties named Vinny said he was a Romney supporter. He still gave me his opinions eagerly—attendees here are not only media-savvy, they are almost media-hungry. "People are disappointed Brownback is dropping out because he is keeping pro-life issues front and center," said Vinny. "But the buzz I hear is that people are hoping he gets the VP nod."

The convention is afloat in political maneuvering, politicians, and everyday folks with opinions on politics. A stocky gentleman in a suit leaving the Brownback area with a signed book denied vehemently that he is a Brownback supporter. "Actually, I'm the leading independent candidate for president of the United States," he said. His name was Daniel Imperato, and he said he was running because he "wants to bring back one nation under God." He asked for my card. I think I'm on a mailing list now.

On my way out of the Brownback signing, I ran into three Brownback supporters who said they were transferring their support to Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist minister who has strong appeal to Christian voters. Huckabee is the "strongest social values candidate" said Allen Parker, an attendee from Texas. There is a "long-standing consensus that Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback were splitting our vote" he said. If you combine the Iowa straw poll results for Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee, pointed out Parker and his friend, you've got a frontrunner on your hands.

The frontrunners will be the focus for the next few days: they are all slated to speak in the "International Ballroom" today and tomorrow. I'll bring it to you as it happens.

October 18, 2007

Senator Chris Dodd Takes Stand on FISA, Takes On TeleComs

From Senator Chris Dodd's site (via Wired News, Via Digg, courtesy of Paul Ward, aka dssstrkl—how hip am I?):

The Military Commissions Act. Warrantless wiretapping. Shredding of Habeas Corpus. Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Secret Prisons.

No more.

I have decided to place a "hold" on the latest FISA bill that would have included amnesty for telecommunications companies that enabled the President's assault on the Constitution by illegally providing personal information on their customers without judicial authorization.

I said that I would do everything I could to stop this bill from passing, and I have.

It's about delivering results -- and as I've said before, the FIRST thing I will do after being sworn into office is restore the Constitution. But we shouldn't have to wait until then to prevent the further erosion of our country's most treasured document. That's why I am stopping this bill today.

Indicate your support for my hold as well as your thoughts on this issue in the comment section below.

Now unfortunately, it seems as though the "comments" section is really just a way for Dodd's campaign to capture email addresses. And this hold is surely a good way to get publicity when you're stuck in the second or third tier. But let's put cynicism aside for the moment. Well done, Senator!

Update: Correntewire suggests a plan of action for Senator Rockefeller, who authored the bill to give them amnesty...

The Great German Immigrant Panic (aka John Derbyshire Is Just Too Aggravating To Ignore)

Jonathan has a righteous bit of outrage about National Review columnist John Derbyshire's latest inanity (heavens to murgatroid! there are Hispanics in Iowa!) that I can't resist piling on to. About a century ago the Derbyshires of the day were tearing their hair out about the way German immigrants were taking over Upper Midwest towns. In Minnesota, there was much hand-wringing over "Stearns County Syndrome," which consisted of Mueller and Schmidt kids graduating from 8th grade without having learned English.

When I was reporting on Latino immigration in a small town not so far from Storm Lake (10 years ago, by the way--and the town was about 50 percent Latino then, so what's Derbyshire's big news here anyway?), a local church lady told me about how her Norwegian parents used to warn the kids not to hang out with the riffraff from across town. "Back then it was Swedes, today it's the Spanish people," she said. Then she went off to root for the new boys' high school soccer team, 50 percent Mexican kids plus a few Bosnians and Somalis. They made the state tournament that year.

Airport Screeners Fail to Find Fake Bombs; The Onion Reports Stolen Headline

The Transportation Security Administration said today that during tests last year, screeners in major airports across the country allowed dummy bomb components to sail through security up to 75 percent of the time. San Francisco airport, which uses privately contracted screeners, did the best of all the test sites with only a 20% failure rate.

Due to last year's poor performance, TSA now runs drills continuously at every airport in the country, planting fake bomb parts sometimes no larger than a pen cap (next week: no pens on planes!). Screeners who fail must undergo remedial training. Personally, I'd prefer it if they just trained them right the first time. In the meantime, can I have my damn shoes back?

—Casey Miner

FCC Targets Media-Ownership Rules Yet Again

Kevin Martin, the head of the FCC, has announced that he wants to decide on new media ownership rules by the end of the year. In particular, he's considering lifting a longtime ban on cross-ownership—that is, letting a single company own print and broadcast media outlets in the same market. As Eric Klinenberg explained in Mother Jones earlier this year, repealing the ban would be bad news for the news, especially the embattled newspapers and TV stations that—love 'em or hate 'em—remain Americans' main sources of local news.

This isn't the first time the FCC has taken a swing at the cross-ownership ban: Former commission head Michael Powell managed to strike it down in 2003. (A federal court blocked the move.) That time, the FCC rushed the decision through with minimal public input; this time, Martin says he'll take the "unusual step" of letting the public comment on the proposed rule changes... for one whole month.

Dennis Kucinich's Deep Pockets

Last week, Stephen Colbert revealed that pocket-sized Democrat Dennis Kucinich carries a lot of stuff in his pockets—a copy of the Constitution, a union card, a green tea bag, and—courtesy of a 2003 Mother Jones profile by Charles Bowden—a baseball card of Cleveland Indian Rocky Colavito and a quotation from Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno. This week, Kucinich made a good-natured appearance on the Colbert Report, emptying his overtsuffed pockets, and even getting in a nice comeback:

Colbert: "This is the famous pocket Constitution. Did you shrink this down yourself?"

Kucinich: "No, no, no. George Bush already did that."

Raped by the Law Again

I'm kicking myself for not having remembered to add the following to yesterday's post on the Philadelphia judge who ruled that it's ok to rape prostitutes, or rather that it's impossible to rape a prostitute, just as it's impossible to steal from a thief:

Last fall, [Judge] Cheuvront granted a motion by defense attorneys barring the use of the words rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant, and sexual assault kit from the trial of Pamir Safi—accused of raping Tory Bowen in October 2004. Safi's first trial resulted in a hung jury last November when jurors deadlocked 7-5. Responding to Cheuvront's initial language ban—which will be in force again when Safi is retried in July—prosecutors upped the ante last month by seeking to have words like sex and intercourse barred from the courtroom as well. The judge denied that motion, evidently on the theory that there would be no words left to describe the sex act at all. The result is that the defense and the prosecution are both left to use the same word—sex—to describe either forcible sexual assault, or benign consensual intercourse. As for the jurors, they'll just have to read the witnesses' eyebrows to sort out the difference.

Here's what happened at the retrial in July, pretty much what happened when the Philadelphia perp raped, er, "stole the services" of another prostitute four days later: a travesty of justice.

Preteens on the Pill?

A student health center at a middle school in Portland, Maine, recently voted to make birth control pills and patches available to students treated at the center. For those of you who don't remember, middle schoolers range in age from 11 to 13. While making contraceptives more widely available is a noble goal, doesn't an 11-year-old girl seeking birth control pills cry out for a visit from social services? After all, girls that young rarely have 12-year-old partners.

Obviously it's better to have preteens on the pill than pregnant, but still, the news that five kids told the middle-school nurse in Portland that they were having sex last year seems worth more intervention that just a pack of Ortho-Novum....

Organic Milk Continues To Go Sour

Yesterday, the Wisconsin-based farm policy group, the Cornucopia Institute, announced the filing of class action lawsuits against the nation's largest organic dairy outfit—Aurora Organic Dairy. The company, which sells its organic milk to big-box retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco, has been under investigation by the USDA for the past two years. According to their April findings, the company is guilty of labeling and representing its milk as organic when it was "not produced and handled in accordance with the National Organic Program regulations." Cornucopia's own investigation found animals were confined to pens and sheds, another violation of federal law. In August, Aurora and the USDA established a consent agreement: Aurora can continue to operate as an organic outfit, but the company is on notice with a one-year probation.

The Cornucopia Institute went further. The class-action lawsuit filed yesterday (a second one is being filed today) demands redress for consumers who purchased milk from Aurora, and requests the U.S. District Court halt the ongoing sale of Aurora's organic milk until the company can demonstrate compliance with federal regulations.

Mother Jones has had its eye on Aurora for a few years now. Read this piece on the corporatization of organic milk. The organic dairy business is estimated to value at $3.5 billion by 2010 and industrial operations like Aurora, who already make a killing off organic milk, will be set to rake in a big chunk of that. By flooding the market with a surplus of cheap milk, companies like Aurora have slashed market prices, pushing many smaller operations out of the business. Many large corporations have gobbled up organic operations, check out this chart provided by Cornucopia to see whose in bed with who. Far from a democratization of the market, industrial scale outfits threaten the entire organic movement. More accountability for these corporate producers is a must.

—Michelle Chandra

Bush Wins Battle Over S-CHIP; Will He Lose the War?

I got a little worked up about the Derbyshire thing. Sorry. Here's something a little more straightforward. The Democrats' attempt to override the president's veto of S-CHIP failed today, but Time reports the GOP's troubles won't end. The Democratic leadership in Congress plans on passing other popular legislation that President Bush has threatened to veto—including bills on education and veterans—so as to ruin to GOP's fall. Every time the Republicans block a popular bill, or the president vetoes one, it hands the Democrats a 30-second attack ad come 2008.

John Derbyshire Disgusts Me

I don't normally troll conservative blogs to find and comment on the most outrageous things I find. But when it comes to immigration, National Review writer John Derbyshire really gets under my skin. Maybe it's the thinly veiled argument that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, or maybe its the insistence that maintaining "ethnic balance" is a justification for limiting immigration, legal and illegal. (Or maybe it's a leftover sense of nausea from when Derbyshire blamed the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting for their own deaths.)

No matter what the reason, Derbyshire isn't in Coulter territory. He may be shrill, and there may be a sly knowingness in his inflammatory statements, but he writes for one of the leading intellectual journals of the right and must be taken seriously. So I had to point this blog post from The Corner:

Incidentally, while hobnobbing with those Midwesterners at Storm Lake, Iowa—their surnames mostly taken from the Stockholm, Oslo, and Berlin phone books—I heard a couple of times the remark that in this little corner of rural Iowa, the student body in the schools is half Hispanic. The remark was passed in a polite, diffident and non-condemnatory way—of course! this is Iowa—and when I tried to probe, people just retreated into niceness ("These Mexican restaurants are really great!")

Still, I found it hard to believe, surrounded as I was by Lundqvists and Muellers. In an idle moment, however, I looked up the stats on GreatSchools.net. Sure enough, the "Student Stats" on GreatSchools for Storm Lake show percentages Hispanic as:

High school: 32
Middle School: 43
Elementary schools: 53, 66, 63, 53.

Say what you like, that is truly an invasion. Why on earth are we letting this happen?

Why are we letting WHAT happen? Why are we letting the racial demographics of the nation change, as they have for hundreds of years? There is no indication that the Hispanic students Derbyshire references are in this country illegally, though I'd bet Derbyshire assumes they are. He is, in essence, objecting to the presence of people of a different national origin (or a different race) in high numbers. That's it.

This shouldn't have to be said: As a nation we have agreed to let this happen. Through our laws, our attitudes, and the inscriptions we allow to be placed on our most famous national symbols, we have decided that we are a free nation that allows people from elsewhere to come and share in our success. That's what makes America America, not the fact that a majority of our residents look like John Derbyshire.

But that's not all.

What really gets me are three things:

(1) Derbyshire assumes that the Iowans he's spoken with are hiding their distaste with the situation, when in reality, there's no evidence to suggest this. He pushed them—repeatedly, from his description—to express some unhappiness with the high number of Hispanic students, and they never did. They obviously aren't quite as anti-immigrant as Derbyshire.

(2) Derbyshire is himself an immigrant! He moved here from England and became a U.S. citizen in 2002. By his own admission, he was once an illegal immigrant! He, better than most, knows the opportunity life in America can afford, even when it is ill-begotten. Yet, he objects when that opportunity is given to anyone other than him (or anyone who doesn't look like him), whether they are here legally or illegally.

(3) I went to a high school that was a majority-minority school. In his post, Derbyshire calls the Iowa schools "Aztlan North." If you wanted (because you were a xenophobe), you could have called my high school "Beijing West." The statistics on this site say that my high school was 72 percent Asian the year before I graduated, which sounds about right. And you know what? It was awesome. My experience was richer as a result. The presence of immigrants and the children of immigrants gave students of every race perspective and cultural understanding, and imbued the whole school with the work ethic that immigrants, grateful for the opportunity I mentioned above, often bring with them to this country.

So as a graduate from a school that mirrors the ones John Derbyshire is so horrified by, I'll be the first to say I'm glad that, as a country, we let "this" happen.