Only a day after Senate Majority Leader stuck his neck out by announcing that he'd push for a healthcare reform bill that includes a public option, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., came out and all but threatened to cut Reid's head off by voting with the Republicans to filibuster the legislation. But at his weekly press conference on Tuesday, the majority leader wasn't angry; indeed, he called Lieberman a "friend."
"I don't have anyone that I have worked harder with, have more respect for in the Senate than Joe Lieberman. As you know, he's my friend. There are a lot of senators, Democrat and Republicans, who don't like part of what's in this bill that we went over to CBO. We're going to see what the final product is. We're not there yet. Sen. Lieberman will let us get on the bill, and he'll be involved in the amendment process," Reid said.
"Some of you will recall one reason that we were able to solve the problem with the nuclear option -- I write about it in my book -- is I called Joe Lieberman to my office and said, 'Joe, I want you to join -- I want you to join the enemy and get us out of this deal.' And he did. I have the greatest confidence in Joe Lieberman's ability as a legislator. And he will work with us when this gets on the floor, and I'm sure he'll have some interesting things to do in the way of an amendment. But Joe Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid's problems."
One explanation for Reid's position: He at least has Lieberman with him on the first procedural vote for the bill, the one that brings it to the floor for debate and amendments. It's not clear Reid has the 60 votes that will be needed to do that, so he has to hold on to Lieberman's there. The majority leader alluded to that during the press conference. Asked, given the Connecticut senator's stance, "how realistic is it to expect that an opt-out plan will actually survive in [the bill's] final form," Reid responded:
Folks, why don't we wait? Take this one step at a time. Yesterday, you were all concerned about, "You can't get this on the floor." Let's take it one step at a time. We'll get it on the floor. We'll have an amendment process -- and that's what we do.
Just as Senator Dodd said, "that's what we do." We haven't been doing a lot of it because we've got 81 objections so far this year by the Republicans; 54 filibusters and whatever it is to take us to 81 -- objections are going to bills. So we're moving forward just as quickly as we can.
Another reason for Reid not to go on the warpath against his erstwhile ally: Democrats are still hoping that Lieberman is posturing right now in order to gain some leverage and some profile from his stance, and that he can be persuaded to come around when it counts. If that's the case, antagonizing him now wouldn't make much sense.
Radio host Rush Limbaugh was rushed to a Hawaii hospital Wednesday afternoon after suffering from chest pains, KITV, a local television station, reports.
Paramedics reportedly responded to a call from the hotel where Limbaugh is staying, and transported him by ambulance to the hospital. He's said to be in serious condition.
During the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, a previously-unknown group was suddenly all anyone in politics could talk about. The superdelegates -- a group of elected Democrats and Democratic National Committee officials -- held the votes that would decide the party's nominee. Though practically no one even knew they existed before the race began, by the end, the undeclared superdelegates' every cough was carefully studied.
Next time around, though, things are likely to be different. The Democratic Change Commission, a group created by the DNC to study the primary process, said Wednesday that it was recommending what amounts to the elimination of superdelegates.
If the commission's recommendation is approved by the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee, superdelegates would still have a vote; they just wouldn't have a choice about whom it went to. They'd be bound to go along with the state they represent.
Something like this has been coming for a while -- really, since around the time that Barack Obama officially became his party's nominee. Just before the Democratic convention, the campaign announced that it would ask the DNC to form the commission, and a reduction in the number of superdelegates was to be its primary focus. As is traditional, now that he's president, Obama and his people control the DNC, so it's no surprise the outcome of the commission's study would be something like this.
That said, though, it's unlikely that this change will have any impact for Obama himself. It's very rare for a sitting president to face real opposition in a party primary. But 2016 is going to be a whole different ballgame.
Even by his standards, former Vice President Cheney was particularly harsh on Wednesday in his criticism of President Obama and his administration's handling of terrorism and the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253. Now, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer has responded in kind.
"I think we all agree that there should be honest debate about these issues, but it is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the Administration than condemning the attackers. Unfortunately too many are engaged in the typical Washington game of pointing fingers and making political hay, instead of working together to find solutions to make our country safer," Pfeiffer wrote in a post on the White House blog.
"To put it simply: this President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action. Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President."
Pfeiffer also specifically addressed Cheney's claim that Obama has been pretending we aren't at war, and won't admit that we are.
"The difference is this: President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic (“terrorism”), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered," he said.
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., is apparently in more than a little hot water over his reluctant support of Democrats' healthcare reform legislation. A recent Rasmussen poll showed him trailing one potential challenger by almost 30 percentage points.
Fortunately for him, Nelson's not up for reelection until 2012. But he seems fairly nervous anyway, enough so that he's bought airtime during the Nebraska-Arizona bowl game Wednesday night for an ad in which he explains his position. According to the Associated Press, the spot will be airing statewide for a few days to come, as well.
Sometimes, while reading through the blogosphere, I find things written by intelligent people that are so at odds with that intelligence that, dumbfounded, I can only think of that famous quote from "Shawshank Redemption," "How can you be so obtuse? ... Is it deliberate?"
Today, an example of that was provided on the Corner, one of the National Review's blogs. The guilty party was one Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson — who is, swear to God, a former professor — wrote, in a post titled "Adverbs Can Tell Us a Lot":
When we do know for a fact that Mutallab tried to blow up a plane, we get a presidential "allegedly" ("a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body, setting off a fire"), and yet when we don't know all the facts, as in the Professor Gates mess, we get instantaneous certainty ("the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.")
I won't get into the Gates saga, except to say that by the time Obama spoke it was well-known that Gates had shown his identification to the police. so the "already" Hanson emphasizes was simply a statement of fact.
Besides, it's the "allegedly" part that left me slack-jawed.
I had thought that most people, especially ones smart enough to have won the National Humanities Medal, as Hanson has, knew that in the American system of justice, even terrorists are considered innocent until proven guilty. ("Fox and Friends" hosts are obviously excluded from "most people" here.) Indeed, unless someone changed this without telling me, the Supreme Court has said the presumption of innocence "is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law."
So why does Obama use the word "allegedly," especially in a case where so many witnesses saw Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt to set off a bomb? Well, hopefully it's at least in part because it's nice for the president to show that someone still believes in the principles outlined in the Constitution. But it's also because the word "allegedly" is standard language for prosecutors and for people like the president; Obama's pronouncement of guilt could, in some instances, lead to legal hassles for the prosecution over the question of whether he'd tainted the jury pool.
Following on the news that the man who attempted to bomb Northwest Flight 253 came by way of Yemen, and that an al-Qaida group based there has claimed responsibility, three senators had a request for President Obama. Sens. Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman and John McCain wrote to the president to express their concerns about the impending transfer of six Yemeni detainees from Guantánamo Bay.
"Given the security situation in Yemen and the failure of the Yemeni government to secure high-value prisoners in the past, we believe that any such transfers would be highly unwise and ill-considered. Recent events underscore why this is so," the three wrote.
"[W]e request an immediate halt to the transfer of all detainees to Yemen until the American people and the Congress can be assured of the security situation in that country. We must do everything in our power to ensure that these detainees do not pose a future threat to the United States. Until we are certain that released detainees will not return to the battlefield, all detainee transfers to Yemen should cease."
Now, I'll leave it to the reader to determine whether this is a good point on the part of Graham, Lieberman and McCain or whether it's a politically motivated call to close the barn door after the horses are miles away.
There is one piece of information that seems relevant to that determination, though: Turns out that the six detainees were actually repatriated about 10 days before the senators sent their letter to Obama. Apparently, no one on their staffs bothered to check on these sorts of details, much less talk to anyone in the administration, before trying to get some press for the request.
War Room is written and edited by Alex Koppelman, with contributions from Salon reporters around the country.
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