MSNBC's Keith Olbermann does deserve some credit for standing up against a sexist remark made by one of his rivals, Fox News' Glenn Beck. After Beck repeatedly referred to Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., as a prostitute, Olbermann called him out on his show Tuesday night, naming Beck "Worst Person in the World" and saying, "Where are the conservative feminists? A woman politician is called a prostitute and you're OK with that. It's OK if I call Sarah Palin that? The hell it is."
Olbermann's anger would have seemed a whole lot more sincere, though, if it weren't so transparently hypocritical.
Earlier in the same show, Olbermann had interviewed Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who got some unwanted attention late last month for an appearance he'd made on a conspiracist radio show, during which he'd called a former lobbyist a "K Street whore." Of course, Grayson wasn't on "Countdown" to talk about that -- he was there for a friendly, even fawning interview about his proposal to change the number of senators needed to overcome a filibuster to 55. He never got the "Worst Person in the World" award for his comments, either.
This wasn't the first time in November that Grayson had been on "Countdown." His comment hit the news on Oct. 27; that night, Olbermann hosted his show, but didn't criticize the congressman. Then the host went on vacation for a few nights; his first night back, Nov. 2, he had Grayson on. Again, it wasn't to talk about his having called a political opponent a whore, but for another friendly interview.
To paraphrase Olbermann himself: A woman was called a prostitute, and -- apparently because the man doing the namecalling was on his side -- he's OK with that.
President Obama's first trip to Copenhagen, the one he made as part of an effort to lobby for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, didn't go so well. But just two months after that, he's got another chance.
Obama will be heading to Copenhagen next month to take part in a summit meeting on global warming. The conference is unlikely to produce the treaty supporters were hoping for, but Obama's presence there will at least signal that the administration is more committed on the issue than its predecessor was.
Besides, Obama was scheduled to be in the neighborhood anyway: The day after he goes to Copenhagen, he's off to Oslo to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize.
If you're going to hold something you're billing as the "First National Tea Party Convention," there are a couple things you really have to do. The first is to invite former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin; the second is to invite Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.
That's what Tea Party Nation, which is organizing this convention, did. And according to CNN's Political Ticker blog, the group has announced that both women will be speaking, and that Palin will be giving the keynote.
Now, Palin's people haven't yet confirmed her appearance, which -- given her history with announced speaking appearances -- may be a sign that she won't end up going. But we can hope.
John McCain really can't go anywhere these days without the subject of his old running mate, Sarah Palin, coming up. That's especially true when he's giving an interview with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, who's been a favorite of Palin's for some time now.
So on Tuesday night, at the conclusion of his appearance on her show, Van Susteren asked McCain, "I've got to ask you a Governor Palin question .... We went on the road with her; she's drawing thousands for book signings. What do you make of this sort of Palin mania so to speak?"
McCain's response was interesting:
I think it's fantastic. I think, you know, I'm so proud of her and can I say I'm entertained and sometimes a little angry when I see this constant, vicious attacks by people on the left that, you know, tell them to calm down. I've never seen anything like it in all the years that I've been in politics, the viciousness and the personalization of the attacks on Sarah Palin.
But I'm very proud of her. I'm proud of the job she's doing. And I believe that she will play a major role in the politics in America. Americans like her, whether The New York Times and others happen to like that or not.
There's certainly plenty of criticism of Palin coming from the left, but the most potent fuel has often been provided by McCain's own staff, from his presidential campaign. And last week, he was defending some of the staff members who'd come in for the harshest treatment from Palin -- in some cases, though, those aides have given as good as they've gotten.
Come on, people: Did you really think Lou Dobbs was going to run for president immediately after quitting CNN? I mean, he'd have to have a super-inflated ego and be immensely self-righteous to do that, right? So don't worry: Dobbs might just run for the Senate -- then he'll run for president.
At least, that's the latest from the New York Times, which has been hearing talk that Dobbs is considering a challenge to Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. A spokesman for the former anchor told the paper, referencing the possibility of a presidential run, "I think Lou is realistically saying, that’s a long way off, but if he did run for office there’d have to be an intermediary step, such as the Menendez seat."
For the record, the idea that Dobbs could mount a successful campaign for Senate is almost as far-fetched as the idea that he could become president. (Then again, stranger things have happened.) But the real problem with his making a run for the Senate, if he does indeed harbor White House dreams, is that Menendez isn't up for re-election until 2012. That means Dobbs couldn't run for president until 2016 at the earliest. By then he'd be 71.
Liberals are frustrated these days, and they have reason to be. They helped Democrats win a theoretically filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and now the part of the reform bill they prize most highly faces death at the hands of members of the Democratic caucus.
A healthcare reform bill that includes a version of the so-called public option -- a new insurance provider run by the government -- passed its first test in the Senate this weekend. It was a bittersweet moment, though, as at the same time, it was becoming increasingly evident that Democrats won't have the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster if the final legislation still includes a public option. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., had already declared his intention to support a filibuster if it came to that, and he's been digging himself in further; Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska could well join Lieberman.
Some liberals, though, have a solution in mind, a silver bullet to save the public option. Led principally by the blog Firedoglake, with encouragement from DailyKos and even former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, they're calling on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to use a heretofore obscure procedure known as budget reconciliation that forecloses the possibility of a filibuster and would theoretically allow him to pass a bill that includes a public option with only 51 votes.
But as with so much in politics, especially when it comes to Senate procedure, things are not nearly so simple. In fact, if Reid did try using reconciliation, he could end up having to remove key parts of the legislation, not to mention hurting his party politically and losing an extra couple of votes in the Senate -- and, having done all that, he might well find out that he still needed 60 votes in order to get a public option approved.
Reid has ruled out the idea for now, saying last week, "I'm not using reconciliation." And other senators, like Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, agree with their leader, believing the procedure would end up doing more harm than good. An aide to a senior Democrat, who asked for anonymity in order to discuss the issue more freely, told Salon, "This isn't like a two-week delay, or a three-week delay. This fundamentally changes what we have promised to the American people, and it's risky, and I'm not talking about a little bit of fucking risk, I'm talking about a lot of risk ... It puts universal coverage at risk ... [and] risks allowing insurance companies to discriminate against those with preexisting conditions."
And of those pushing for the use of reconciliation, the aide concluded, "A bunch of people that watched 'Schoolhouse Rock' growing up think that they understand how the Senate works, and they don’t."
The problem is that budget reconciliation isn't really supposed to be used to make policy. Instead, as the Congressional Research Service's Robert Keith said in a 2008 report, reconciliation "is a procedure ... by which Congress implements budget resolution policies affecting mainly permanent spending and revenue programs." In the procedure's early years, however, it was used to circumvent the filibuster on provisions unrelated to that purpose. So in the 1980s, then-Minority Leader Robert Byrd led the Senate in a crackdown. What resulted was the Byrd Rule, which prohibits the Senate "from considering extraneous matter as part of a reconciliation bill."
The definition of "extraneous matter" is fairly broad, and subject to interpretation -- during the Bush administration, Republicans passed tax cuts using reconciliation -- but it generally includes any provision that fails one of these six criteria, as listed in Keith's CRS report:
Even if a provision violates one of these rules, it won't automatically be stricken from a bill. In order for that to happen, a senator has to take action, generally by raising a point of order. Then, the chair (the majority leader or a designee) rules on whether to sustain that point of order and remove the offending part of the bill. That may seem like an easy victory in the making -- Reid rules that the public option passes the Byrd Rule's tests, and that's that -- but that's not necessarily the case.
Liberals argue that the public option could survive the Byrd Rule, pointing to tax cuts that Republicans passed using reconciliation during the Bush administration as precedent, and arguing that the public option would pass the tests anyway because it would theoretically decrease the federal deficit.
They may have a point, but it doesn't much matter -- the only thing that does is the opinion of Alan Frumin, the Senate parliamentarian. Technically, Reid isn't required to abide by Frumin's judgment, but according to Robert Dove, who served twice as Senate parliamentarian, he will anyway. "It's not that they have to [listen to the parliamentarian]," Dove told Salon, "but absolutely they do ... The past history is that the view of the parliamentarian becomes the ruling of the chair."
If Reid did rule the public option out of order under the Byrd Rule, the whole point of using reconciliation would be rendered moot. The only way to overturn the chair's ruling in such a case would be with a three-fifths vote of the Senate -- that is, with the same 60 votes the majority leader would need to round up in order to defeat a filibuster. In that eventuality, there's no way Reid could get the supermajority; Lieberman would certainly abandon him, and moderate Democrats might too. Plus, Byrd has already expressed his distaste for the idea of using reconciliation for health reform, and could be expected to vote to support the rule that bears his name.
Dove wouldn't speculate on what Frumin might decide, or give his own view on the matter, but aides from both parties have met with him, and Reid's office made "preliminary inquiries" about the public option, the aide to a senior Democrat told Salon. No one's offering much detail about what Frumin said, but the fact that Reid has taken reconciliation off the table could well have something to do with those meetings.
The public option might not be the only thing dropped from a bill that's pushed through the Senate using the procedure. Republicans would almost certainly object as often as possible to elements in the legislation, and they'd win many of those battles -- maybe even the war. "If you're a Republican, your job in reconciliation is to do two things: One, to put Democrats in an untenable position to have to vote for or against things that are going to bite them in the ass when they run for re-election; but more importantly, your thing is to find provisions where if you snip that out, it's going to bring down the entire bill," the aide to the senior Democrat said.
Ultimately, passing a reform bill with reconciliation is "feasible," Dove says, but the resulting legislation "would not be pretty, and it couldn't contain a lot of things that people want to be in it."
War Room is written and edited by Alex Koppelman, with contributions from Salon reporters around the country.
After 40 years, the Washington Blade closes down
Destroying the So-Called "Unit Cohesion" Argument
On Finding the Source Code of Republican Talking Points