The Los Angeles Times reports this morning that the shootings at Virgina Tech have "sparked a largely one-sided response in the long-running debate over guns" in which gun control advocates renewed their call for tougher laws while "supporters of gun rights generally kept their heads down."
Generally.
In a story in the Hill today, Gun Owners of America spokesman Erich Pratt complains that it's hard for guys like him to find a presidential candidate who's sufficiently pro-gun. "I think there's a lot of disappointment out there," Pratt says. "There's a lot of angst."
The problem, as the Hill explains it, is that "first tier" GOP candidates Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain have all been "inconsistent" on the issue of gun rights. Although Giuliani has said that what works for New York might not work for other parts of the country, gun-rights supporters are wary of him because he did back some gun-control measures during his term as New York's mayor. Romney has been a rather complete embarrassment as he's tried to prove his ballistic bona fides; his campaign has had to back away from his claims of being a lifelong National Rifle Association member and a lifelong hunter when neither turned out to be true.
McCain infuriated the NRA with his support of the McCain-Feingold Finance Reform Act, but he's actually been pretty solid on gun rights -- a point he rushed to make Monday even as families were learning that their loved ones had been shot to death. "We have to look at what happened here, but it doesn't change my views on the Second Amendment, except to make sure that these kinds of weapons don't fall into the hands of bad people," McCain said during a campaign stop in Texas Monday. "I do believe in the constitutional right that everyone has, in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, to carry a weapon. Obviously we have to keep guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens."
As we've reported, Dana Perino waded right into the gun-control debate at the White House Monday, but even she didn't go so far as declaring that we "have to keep guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens." Perino merely reaffirmed George W. Bush's support for gun owners' rights to bear arms. We suspect that Bush himself will have the good sense to steer clear of the issue -- or any questions about it -- when he heads to Blacksburg for a convocation at Virginia Tech today. But the Politico's Roger Simon remembers what candidate Bush said when asked about gun control in the wake of a 1999 shooting at the Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas: "I don't know of a law -- a governmental law -- that will put love in people's hearts. There seems to be a wave of evil passing through America now ... but our hopes and our prayers have got to be that there is a more love in society."
Nearly six months ago, Al Franken was sworn in as the junior senator from Minnesota. For his defeated opponent, former Sen. Norm Coleman, it was the end of a long, hard road -- a road full of legal challenges, ballot challenges, financial challenges and, one can only assume, profound personal challenges.
That’s not enough to stop Coleman, though. The current rumor, reported by Politico, is that he’s thinking of making a run for governor. This is an office he’s always wanted: Dick Cheney had to talk him into running for Senate instead in 2002. And with incumbent Gov. Tim Pawlenty leaving, apparently to run for president, it’s Coleman’s chance.
So the former senator is giving it some thought. However, one of his top operatives, Jeff Larson, is throwing some cold water on the rumor, saying, "I don’t think it’s something he really needs to do or really wants to do. I think he’d make a spectacular governor. I really do. I just don’t think he’s going to run." Another advisor, though, says that Coleman sees a gubernatorial race as a chance to "to put aside some of the partisan rancor."
And the almost-two-term senator himself? "It’s really nice waking up in the morning and reading the paper and realizing that nobody is trying to kill you politically today. I’m a public servant at heart, but I haven’t made a final decision on whether being the governor is the best way to do that,” he said.
A few people in my letters thread today claim to see "sour grapes" and "I told you so" in my post saying progressives have only themselves to blame for feeling betrayed by President Obama. Ain't no sour grapes -- I voted for him, of course -- but there is a helping of "I told you so," I admit, left over from the 2008 primary battle. And Tom Hayden's bleat of betrayal in the Nation today – Alex Koppelman writes about it here -- forces me to confess it.
Hayden's delusional Obama endorsement in March 2008 made such an impression on me, I can quote whole sentences from memory. Well, one whole sentence, the first: "All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama." Oh, and I remember that he said Obama's "very biography" and his campaign's "very existence" would cure cancer, make my hair silky smooth, and cause pretty, pretty unicorns to dance in my backyard, too.
OK, that last part isn't true.
But I felt like I was in some kind of Maoist reeducation camp, being urged to struggle mightily and cheerfully for Chairman Obama.
So yeah, that old "I told you so" demon drove me back to reread Hayden's Nation piece -- co-signed by Danny Glover, Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr. (but redolent of Hayden's manifesto-writing style) -- and boy, it's even worse than I remember. For those of you saying it's not fair to blame progressives for deluding themselves about Obama, please read this, and then try to make the same argument. Some of my favorite lines below:
"All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama. We descend from the proud tradition of independent social movements that have made America a more just and democratic country. We believe that the movement today supporting Barack Obama continues this great tradition of grassroots participation, drawing millions of people out of apathy and into participation in the decisions that affect all our lives. We believe that Barack Obama's very biography reflects the positive potential of the globalization process that also contains such grave threats to our democracy when shaped only by the narrow interests of private corporations in an unregulated global marketplace. We should instead be globalizing the values of equality, a living wage and environmental sustainability in the new world order, not hoping our deepest concerns will be protected by trickle-down economics or charitable billionaires. By its very existence, the Obama campaign will stimulate a vision of globalization from below….
"We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama's unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined…. We have the proven online capacity to reach millions of swing voters in the primary and general election. We can and will defend Obama against negative attacks from any quarter….
"We take very seriously the argument that Americans should elect a first woman President, and we abhor the surfacing of sexism in this supposedly post-feminist era. But none of us would vote for Condoleezza Rice as either the first woman or first African-American President. We regret that the choice divides so many progressive friends and allies, but believe that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be a Clinton presidency all over again, not a triumph of feminism but a restoration of the aging, power-driven Wall Street Democratic hawks at a moment when so much more fresh imagination is possible and needed. A Clinton victory could only be achieved by the dashing of hope among millions of young people on whom a better future depends. The style of the Clintons' attacks on Obama, which are likely to escalate as her chances of winning decline, already risks losing too many Democratic and independent voters in November. We believe that the Hillary Clinton of 1968 would be an Obama volunteer today, just as she once marched in the snows of New Hampshire for Eugene McCarthy against the Democratic establishment."
Oh, and I searched the whole thing: Not one word about Afghanistan. Not even the word "Afghanistan."
I want to be clear here. I am not saying, and I never said, that Clinton was more progressive than Obama on any of these issues. But Hayden, Michael Moore and too many progressives claimed, with zero evidence, that Obama would be more progressive than Clinton. He wasn't, and he isn't. There were many reasons to choose Obama over Clinton, but that he was the better progressive was never one of them. Certainly his Cabinet choices -- including Clinton herself -- are no more progressive than hers would be. Claiming a President Clinton would preside over "a restoration of the aging, power-driven Wall Street Democratic hawks at a moment when so much more fresh imagination is possible and needed" seems particularly silly today (and using "aging" as a pejorative was a poor choice from Hayden's particular demographic, but old habits die hard).
Struggle mightily and cheerfully to forgive yourself for your self-delusion, Tom Hayden and friends. OK, my "I told you so" moment is officially over.
ACORN is rigging our elections, and undoing the basic principles of the American Revolution. Also, the community group is stealing from the poor. But that’s not surprising, because for all intents and purposes, it’s a mafia-type organization. Oh, and its tentacles are everywhere in the federal government, extending all the way to the president himself, and he in turn is shielding the group from prosecution.
This was the substance of a hearing that eight Republican members of Congress -- or, as they styled themselves, the “Joint Forum on ACORN ” -- held Tuesday. Over the course of the hearing, representatives and witnesses actually leveled all the above charges at ACORN, declaring the issue to be one “of importance to the American people,” as Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Tex., put it. (If he restricts the definition of "the American people" to members of his own party, he's probably right.)
Since its employees were caught on tape in the prostitution-tax evasion sting, ACORN hasn’t had a lot of defenders. But if you thought the subsequent halt of federal funding for the group was the end of the story as a political issue, then you don’t know the modern GOP. Despite the grievous damage to the group’s reputation, Republican officials aren’t content just to damn ACORN with evidence of its clear failings. Instead, at the hearing they insisted on citing an array of unconvincing, vastly overblown allegations -- with a bit of racial panic thrown in -- as evidence that ACORN is destroying America and must be prosecuted.
Probably the top charge against ACORN is that it tampers with elections. The rhetoric surrounding this argument continues to be out of line with the substance. Said Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., “Our forefathers fought for, I don’t know, what, eight years to defeat the British because they didn’t want taxation without representation. And now we’re watching all these things being taken away, just frittered away, because we won’t enforce the law? It’s just criminal.”
As ever, there have been no instances cited of actual fraudulent voting, despite the implication that the entire electoral apparatus of the country is tainted. Nobody thinks voter registration fraud is a good thing, but the kind of fraud in which ACORN employees have been involved is extremely unlikely to affect the outcome of an election. The fraudulent registrations aren't intended to be used -- they're a way for the employee to squeeze some additional money out of the group by serving as proof they worked more than they actually did.
At the hearing, there was a new wrinkle to the argument about registration fraud, an idea that by dumping a stack of inaccurate registrations on local election boards shortly before the deadline, ACORN somehow disenfranchises legitimate voters because the boards can't handle the workload. Again, however, there was no evidence provided for the claim.
Still, there's no stopping these guys. Iowa Rep. Steve King took the crusade to bizarre new heights, saying he carries an acorn and a copy of the Constitution around all the time, to remind himself of the threat the one poses to the other. Then there was witness Hans von Spakovsky, a conservative election lawyer, who thinks that the failure to prosecute ACORN implicates the entire law enforcement apparatus of the federal government. Said Spakovsky:
Congress should not only hold direct hearings on ACORN and its activities, but also oversight hearings of the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Internal Revenue Service to obtain information on any investigations they are conducting into ACORN. If those agencies are not conducting any investigations, they should be required to explain why they are not carrying out their enforcement duties.
That would be, of course, almost exactly the argument that spurred some of the Bush administration's infamous firings of U.S. attorneys. The judgment of the fired prosecutors that there was no criminal case against ACORN for election fraud, in this line of thinking, didn’t exonerate ACORN -- it showed that the U.S. attorneys were incompetent at best.
And who could disagree, considering the almost superhuman way in which ACORN can apparently throw its weight around? After all, as several speakers at the hearing suggested, the group is just one huge criminal front. And, as Rep. Smith pointed out, ACORN’s got a guy in government. “President Obama previously served as ACORN’s lawyer, participated in ACORN training sessions in Chicago, presided on the board of two organizations that funded ACORN’s Chicago chapter.”
There are two separate points that need clearing up here. First, the president was never an employee of ACORN. He worked for Project Vote, which is now affiliated with ACORN but was not at the time, though the two groups were close. He also represented ACORN, alongside two other lawyers, in one case. Also on ACORN’s side in that case was the Department of Justice. Second, it could be literally true that Obama was an employee of the group back in the early ‘90s, and it wouldn’t really be that damning a charge. That’s because, despite Glenn Beck's fantasies, ACORN is not a vast criminal conspiracy. What it is, instead, is an often horrifically incompetent and sometimes corrupt but frequently helpful organization.
It’s easy to focus on the horror stories about ACORN (and important to condemn its various bad acts), but accounts of its role in bringing political power and useful advice to poor people go largely unheard. It should be possible, in other words, to work on a vast, successful and widely lauded voter registration drive without being smeared as a big-city gangster. Granted, ACORN isn't helping itself when it fails, many years running, to clean up its act. But it's also clear that at this point, that doesn't really even matter -- for many on the right, including members of Congress, the myth of the omnipotent, evil group is all that matters now.
I may be the only person in the United States who was trying to wait for President Obama's Afghanistan speech to make up my mind about his war plans. Of course, I mostly failed at that. Sure, all of Obama's options are bad, but still, few decisions seem as clear-cut as this one. Escalation is hard to see as an exit strategy. Obama has no clear path to "victory." We are likely to waste more lives than we save. I thought that was true before Obama's big speech, and I still think it now, afterward.
At the moment he needed all of his persuasive powers, Obama gave the worst major speech of his presidency. I admit: I expected to be, even wanted to be, carried away a bit by Obama's trademark rhetorical magic. But I wasn't, not even a little. I found the speech rushed, sing-songy and perfunctory, delivered by rote. I despise the right-wing Obama-Teleprompter taunts, but even I wanted to say, Look at your audience, not the damn Teleprompter, Mr. President. Obama looked haggard, his eyes deeper set, and I believe this decision pained him. But I'm not sure even he believes it's the right decision. Neocon Danielle Pletka tweeted happily mid-speech: "So far, could be Bush speaking," and later, approvingly: "count me gobsmacked." That makes two of us. Rep. Maxine Waters spoke for me on "Countdown" tonight when she opened her remarks by telling Keith Olbermann: "I'm very saddened."
On specifics: Obama lost me early by rehashing the history of our decision to invade Afghanistan, using mawkish and tired 9/11 imagery. We all know why we went in, and most Democrats supported it: to topple the Taliban government that harbored and supported al-Qaida as it plotted to kill almost 3,000 people in 2001. The question is why are we escalating now? I didn't hear a compelling reason. Obama sugarcoated the problems with the corrupt Karzai administration, and this year's disputed election, with a dismissive "although it was marred by fraud" it was "consistent with the constitution." Wow, that's inspiring. He told Karzai "the days of the blank check are over," but barely defined what that means. The most chilling story I read today was Juan Cole's, on the way Afghanistan's parliament is MIA, and the country's various governmental agencies, from ministries of public works to agriculture, have spent a fraction of the limited funds they have available. It made me hugely pessimistic that Obama's promise of a "civilian surge" had a prayer of making a difference. He needed to address the dysfunction within the Afghan government more specifically to convince me that he could find a way out.
The president also fudged by calling the Afghanistan/Pakistan border "the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda" -- yet it seems to me it actually matters to our strategy which side of the admittedly blurry border is the bigger problem. Finally, maybe most disputably, Obama insisted "we are not facing a broad-based insurgency." It may not be country-wide, but we are certainly facing a broad-based Pashtun insurgency, one that only seems to grow the more troops we send. Obama invoked Iraq -- mistakenly, in my opinion, many times -- but to the extent that the "surge" there was a limited if likely temporary success, it was because it met up with the "Sunni awakening," a homegrown rebellion against al-Qaida and a weariness with war among formerly insurgent Sunnis. Obama needs a "Pashtun awakening," but so far the only one on the horizon features Pashtuns waking up to fight the U.S. Some liberals might be encouraged by his promise to begin withdrawing troops by the summer of 2011, but given the uncertainty of the strategy, who can trust that?
So what's an increasingly disappointed Democrat and Obama supporter to do?
First of all, it would help to admit that in this case, Obama is keeping a campaign promise, not breaking one. Most liberal Obama backers probably either disagreed with his stance on Afghanistan, or didn't take it seriously. Still, many sold him as the only progressive candidate in the race, in stark contrast with the hawkish Hillary Clinton. That was never true, and Obama proved it last year when he made Clinton his secretary of state and kept Robert Gates as defense secretary. The howls of betrayal by progressives I respect like Michael Moore, Arianna Huffington and Keith Olbermann are at least partly a measure of their own misunderstanding of Obama's candidacy. The American left needs to smarten up, and toughen up, if it wants to make deep, lasting change in this country.
I'm deeply disappointed, saddened even, but I don't feel betrayed. Obama has governed like the centrist he told us and showed us he is, from his early flip-flops on FISA to his Goldman Sachs-friendly bailout policies to compromising on the job-creation parts of his economic stimulus to his tepid backing of a healthcare reform public option. It's going to take hard work by activists on all of those fronts to push him to better solutions.
Still, I'd be remiss if I didn't stress, once again, that the president faced only bad choices in making this decision, thanks to the incompetence of the Bush-Cheney administration. Every day Dick Cheney becomes more despicable, most recently allowing his handmaidens John Harris and Jim Vandehei from Politico to transcribe his raspy, hateful utterances trashing the president on the eve of this crucial national security announcement. "Here's a guy, without much experience, who travels around the world apologizing," Cheney told his stenographers. He even accused Obama of giving "aid and comfort" to al-Qaida, which is, I believe, the definition of treason. Classy. The former vice-president is as deranged as the Birthers who used monkey imagery in a Washington Times ad to label Obama a "usurper." But he's Obama's best friend, because he reminds the left that as disappointing as this president is, on so many, many fronts, he's not Cheney. Small comfort tonight, but it's something.
Gail Collins started her new book, "When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present," before the historic year of the woman, 2008, when female politicians like Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin rose and fell and (in both cases, in different ways) rose again. Authors never know if the topics they choose will still be fascinating and important months or years later, when their books are published, but in Collins' case, the Gods of Publishing Relevance smiled on her.
I got to talk to Collins as part of my debut on Bloggingheads.tv, and you can see most clips of it here. The book opens on the eve of 1960, with the story of Lois Rabinowitz, a secretary who happened to wear slacks to pay a ticket for her boss, and found herself chided by the judge for disrespect. "When Everything Changed" grabs your almost certainly pantsed self right there, and makes you promise to give the book to all the young women in your life this holiday season. It closes with the so-called Year of the Woman, 2008, when Clinton and Palin cracked part of the glass ceiling for women in politics, but left plenty more for women to come, if they dare.
Looking over Collins' dizzying panorama, it's hard to believe women moved so far so fast, and still remain so far from full equality. I talked to Collins about why she thought she started the book the same year the terrific writers of "Mad Men" began their series. Short answer: the pill. Longer answer: Well, watch it.
We talked about how rare it is to see the struggles, and different priorities, of black, working-class and other non-white women depicted in a mainstream book on the women's movement:
I asked whether Collins felt like history was repeating itself in the 2008 Clinton vs. Obama Democratic Primary, in terms of feminists fighting with advocates of racial equality over who got to go first, black men or (mostly white) women:
Finally, in the lightning round: Is Sarah Palin a feminist? Which was more influential, "The Feminine Mystique" or "Sex and the Single Girl"? The biggest feminist legislative defeat: ERA or Comprehensive Child Development Act? And why Billie Jean King is an underappreciated feminist hero:
If clemency for Maurice Clemmons were the only fatal error committed by Mike Huckabee as governor of Arkansas, he might be able to shift blame to the state's law enforcement system and even run for president again in 2012. Yet the Clemmons commutation that he granted nine years ago is only one among several cases that raise serious questions about Huckabee's judgment.
Clemmons, the fugitive suspect in the shooting deaths of four police officers, was hit in the torso by return fire from one of the cops who later died, he escaped.
Having accumulated five felony convictions in Arkansas and at least eight felony charges in Washington, according to the Seattle Times, Clemmons was undoubtedly a danger to the community who ought to have been returned to prison long ago by law enforcement authorities. Only days before the police shooting, he was released on $150,000 bail from a jail in Pierce County, Wash., where he was incarcerated on charges of raping a child.
As Huckabee suggested in a statement released on Monday, courts and law enforcement agencies in Washington should probably share the blame for Sunday's carnage. "Should he be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy, " the statement said, referring to Clemmons, "it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State."
In short, Huckabee was arguing, the killings attributed to Clemmons were not Huckabee's fault. Certainly they were not his fault alone. But this incident has revived memories of other decisions he made that later led to terrible consequences. The damage to his political future will hinge on how deeply news organizations now delve into those cases -- and the bizarre faith-based rationale behind his use of the clemency and pardon powers of the governor.
Huckabee has proudly declared on many occasions that he disdains the separation of church and state, insisting that his strict Baptist piety should serve as the bedrock of public policy. Nowhere in his record as governor was the influence of religious zeal felt more heavily than in the distribution of pardons and commutations, as his own explanations have indicated. During those years he granted more commutations and pardons than any governor during the previous four decades, many of them surely justified as a response to excessive penalties under the state's draconian narcotics laws. But others were deeply controversial, especially because so many of his acts of mercy appeared to depend on interventions by fellow Baptist preachers and by inmate professions of renewed Christian faith.
No doubt word spread among the prison population that the affable governor was vulnerable to appeals from convicts who claimed to be born again. Clemmons too was among those who benefited from Huckabee's tendency to believe such pious testimonials. "I come from a very good Christian family and I was raised much better than my actions speak," he explained in his clemency application in 2000. "I'm still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought upon my family's name ... I have never done anything good for God, but I've prayed for him to grant me in his compassion the grace to make a start. Now, I'm humbly appealing to you for a brand new start."
Surely the most notorious instance of misplaced mercy involved Wayne Dumond, a rapist and murderer now deceased, who was originally sent to prison in Arkansas for raping a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. During Clinton's presidency the Dumond case became an obsession among certain right-wing pundits and politicians, who insisted that Dumond had been framed and brutalized by the "Clinton machine." When Huckabee became governor, he supported a parole for Dumond, winning applause from the Republican right -- until the former prisoner raped and killed a young woman in Missouri. Dumond later died in prison, under suspicion that he had murdered at least one other woman after his Arkansas release -- a tragic outcome for which Huckabee has repeatedly tried to blame others, including his two Democratic predecessors in the statehouse.
The real engine behind Dumond's release, however, was a Baptist minister and ultra-conservative ideologue named Jay Cole, who also happened to be a friend of Huckabee. Cole would tell the governor about his visits with the supposedly innocent Dumond, when the minister and the prisoner would read the Bible and pray together.
Perhaps the worst instance of that same syndrome, chronicled in detail by Arkansas journalists, concerned an Air Force sergeant named Glen Green, who was sentenced to prison for life after confessing that he had raped and killed a teenage girl. After beating the woman with nunchucks, he violated her almost lifeless body, ran over her with his car and buried her in a swamp. But yet another preacher friend of Huckabee's named Rev. Johnny Jackson somehow persuaded the governor that this incredibly brutal killing had been an "accident" -- and that Green had repented, come to Jesus and therefore should be freed.
Two years ago, I noted that Huckabee knew almost nothing about the Green case beyond what his preacher pal had told him. He consulted neither the prosecutor nor the victim's family, and overruled the dissent of his own parole board. After he announced that Green would be released, the furious public reaction forced him to reverse the decision. Yet he continued to release murderers and other violent criminals despite angry dissent from local prosecutors.
Huckabee granted mercy to prisoners whom he chanced to meet, to prisoners who had personal connections to him or his family, and especially to prisoners who were vouchsafed to him by the pastors he had befriended during his years as a Baptist minister and denominational leader. Among the thugs who benefited from his mercy was a robber who beat an old man to death with a lead pipe.
During the 2008 campaign, Huckabee's arrogance and stupidity mostly escaped the full scrutiny of the national press corps, in part because his stint as a contender was so brief. But next time, if there is a next time, he should get no such free pass -- and his claims to divine guidance ought to be thoroughly debunked.
Note: This story was updated after publication with news of Clemmons' reported death.
Worlds Apart
Giuliani out, and maybe in, in 2010.
The Honeymoon's over.... But not the Marriage
Yabba Dabba, Dont Worry About It.
McCain Looks to Block Net Neutrality, Appease Telecom Donors