One month ago, U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land hit Birther attorney Orly Taitz with a hefty penalty for having played her games in his courtroom: a $20,000 sanction. At the time, Taitz called the fine "a sign of a dictatorial regime, of tyranny ... [that] shows how corrupt this regime is, how many in federal judiciary are aiding and abetting this massive fraud perpetrated on each and every member of US military and each and every citizen of this country."
As you might imagine, she hasn't exactly rushed to pay up.
Now, the 30 days Taitz was given to pay the sanction have elapsed, and Land has directed the U.S. Attorney's office to collect. But she's remaining as stubborn as ever. Asked by the Ledger-Enquirer, a paper in Georgia -- where Land sits -- whether she intended to pay, Taitz said, "Absolutely not," and added, "If judges start punishing attorneys, then we end up in a totalitarian regime. This can’t go on.”
Republicans may have been working to co-opt the Tea Parties that have been so popular on the right, but fundamentally the movement always had soem anti-GOP feeling at its core. And while the protests may still end up helping Republicans next year, in part by getting conservative voters, to borrow a phrase, fired up and ready to go, there are some signs that the whole thing could still end up badly for the party.
One of those signs is contained in a poll out Monday from Rasmussen. The pollster asked respondents to imagine that "the Tea party organized itself as a political party," then had them choose between generic Democratic, Republican and Tea Party candidates in their district. Not too surprisingly, the Democratic candidate ended up benefitting from the split, with 36 percent of respondents -- a plurality -- saying they'd vote that way. But in a somewhat shocking result, 23 percent said they'd vote for the Tea Party candidate compared to 18 percent who chose the Republican and 22 percent who said they weren't sure.
When just unaffiliated voters are counted, things are worse for the Republicans: 33 percent chose the Tea Party candidate, 25 percent opted for the Democrat and only 12 percent picked the Republican.
Still, things probably aren't nearly as bad for the Republican Party as this poll would indicate. For one thing, it's hard -- impossible, really -- to imagine the Tea Parties organizing into a single political party in time for next year's midterms. (They can't even keep the protest movement from fracturing.) And polls that ask about third parties always find more support for the third party candidate than he or she ends up with come Election Day.
This is, however, another demonstration of how powerful the Tea Party movement could be in a situation where a moderate Republican's running in a swing district. Call it the Doug Hoffman effect, after the conservative candidate who ended up forcing out the GOP's choice in a Congressional special election held in upstate New York earlier this year.
For a new ad opposing Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and his position on the public option, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is reaching back to some recent history.
Specifically, the spot is a reference to the 2006 election, when Lieberman formed the "Connecticut for Lieberman" party after losing the Democratic primary. Once the party's usefulness was at an end, he gave it up and his opponents took it over in order to have a little fun at his expense. This new ad takes the joke a little further, using the "Connecticut for Lieberman" name to argue that the senator's positions are more about him than about his constituents.
If you worried, even for a second, that the Republican presidential primary might turn boring come 2012, you can rest easy. If nothing else, the possibility that former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., will be jumping into the race should make things interesting.
Santorum has certainly been acting as if he at least wants to keep the door open. He's been visiting early primary states and stumping for other Republicans there, building up a list of favors he could potentially call in down the line. And in an interview with ABC News on Monday, he said he's "absolutely taking a look" at running.
For now, though, Santorum says he's more interested in the short-term future of his party. "I'm doing it in the context that right now, there's, you know, there's very important matters and I want to weigh into those matters as to what the Republican Party stands for in 2010," the former senator said. "I think I've been very clear that, you know, we need to stand foursquare on the traditional values. When I say traditional values people think, ‘Oh that means, you know, social conservatism and the family.' It also means the free enterprise system and that government shouldn't be large and controlling things."
Santorum seems like a long shot to capture the nomination, at best. And were he to get that far, he doesn't seem like much of a general election candidate -- he's just too far to the right for that, especially on social issues. But anything can happen.
From the moment it was announced, the jobs summit that President Obama held last week drew heavy criticism from the right. The mere fact that the White House was holding such a summit in the first place seemed to be offensive to many conservatives. After all, they say, almost nobody in the Obama administration has any background in business.
Last week, Glenn Beck trumpeted the news that less than 10 percent of Obama’s cabinet appointees have actually "had jobs in the private sector." Thursday, in an interview with Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich put that number at 8 percent. A similar statistic has appeared on numerous conservative websites, typically to suggest that Obama’s jobs summit is an absurd conference of government bureaucrats and university eggheads who’ve never created a job in their lives.
Unfortunately for Beck, Gingrich and all the others, their new favorite statistic appears to have little basis in fact.
The claim can be traced back to a Forbes.com column by Michael Cembalest entitled "Obama’s Business Blind Spot." In the article, Cembalest, the chief operating officer of J.P. Morgan Private Bank, presents his findings about the private-sector experience of certain Cabinet appointees -- those he thought most likely to weigh in on the job debate -- for every president since Theodore Roosevelt. The post happened to include a chart, which initially indicated that less than 10 percent of Obama’s appointees had business experience. Forbes.com subsequently altered the graph to show that more than 20 percent of Obama’s Cabinet members have a private-sector background -- but not before it had been gleefully reproduced, in it is original form, all over the right.
To the chagrin of Obama’s conservative opponents, even the adjusted figures are dubious. Excluding lawyers and consultants (as Cembalest did), three of the nine members of Obama’s Cabinet included in the study -- fully 33 percent -- do have private-sector experience. Energy Secretary Steven Chu worked at AT & T Bell Laboratories for nine years, ultimately as the head of their Quantum Electronics Research Department. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, was a managing director at Prudential Mortgage Capital, where he directed the corporation’s $1.5 billion of investments in affordable housing loans. Finally, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar -- on top of his work as Colorado attorney general and a U.S. senator -- was a partner in his family’s farm for over thirty years. Salazar and his wife have also owned and operated a number of small businesses, including a Dairy Queen and several radio stations.
Another three of Obama’s appointees -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke -- all spent part of their careers working as lawyers. And Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner worked as a consultant at Kissinger Associates, a firm that advises international companies on economic and political conditions abroad.
By this count, seven out of these nine Obama appointees (or 78 percent) do have private-sector experience. Gingrich was only off by about 70 percentage points.
Even the original source of the claim is appalled by what it's become, and has been chastising himself for it. Cembalest told PolitiFact.com that his study was based on "some kind of completely, 100 percent subjective assessment of whether or not a person had had enough control of payroll, dealing with shareholders, hiring, firing and risk-taking that they’d be in a position to have had a meaningful seat at the table when the issue being discussed is job creation."
Senate Republicans had what seemed like a pretty good idea when it comes to the fight over healthcare reform: Propose an amendment that would force all members of Congress to enroll in whatever form of public option is included in the final bill. That plan backfired, though, when their Democratic counterparts decided to actually support the amendment. So now the GOP's going further.
The latest version of the amendment is broader; beyond members of Congress, it also includes staff members, something that had been a sticking point for Democrats before. More than that, though, it would force President Obama and his cabinet into the public option.
"The White House and cabinet secretaries are working very hard for this massive overhaul of America's health care system," Grassley said in a statement reported by the Huffington Post's Ryan Grim. "It's only fair that if this bill becomes law, these individuals should themselves be subject to the reforms. The same is true for congressional staff. Quietly carving out leadership staff and committee staff behind closed doors is unacceptable. If the reforms are as good as their supporters say, the reforms should be good enough for everybody."
At the town halls this summer, people who came to protest against healthcare reform had a few different messages and complaints. One ended up turning into a refrain: If the public option is so great, the protesters would ask their senators and representatives, then why won't Congress be using it?
Now, as the Senate's debate over its version of reform legislation kicks into gear, two Republicans -- Sens. Tom Coburn and David Vitter -- have picked up that theme and are running with it. The two authored an amendment they want attached to the bill; it would require members of Congress to enroll in whatever version of the public option the final legislation creates, if it includes one.
Both Coburn and Vitter are vehement opponents of the public option, and they're hoping to prove themselves right by showing that no senator who's in his or her right mind would want their healthcare covered by it. They've gotten a surprise, though: Genuine support for their amendment from someone on the other side of the aisle -- and a proponent of the public option, at that -- Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.
Brown doesn't have any illusions about why Coburn and Vitter decided to introduce the amendment. "It's clear they just want to score political points. They hate the public option… they want to introduce [the amendment] and have it lose," the senator said in an interview with Salon on Friday.
But Brown's a strong supporter of the public option, and he's actually been taking a stand like this one since he was first elected to the House nearly 17 years ago, keeping a campaign promise to pay for his own coverage until Congress passed health insurance for everyone. For most of that time, he paid out of pocket; now, he's on his wife's plan, which costs him a fair amount than just using the coverage he's entitled to as a senator would. So he decided he wanted to co-sponsor Coburn and Vitter's amendment.
Senators are usually eager to collect co-sponsors for their bills and amendments, especially ones from the other party, for the simple reason that this helps the bill pass. It turns out their attitude is a bit different when the amendment in question is actually a political ploy, however. Brown's office contacted Coburn's about co-sponsorship of the amendment nine times last week, to no avail.
"We did get an email back saying they would check with their boss," Brown says, but that was the extent of the response.
So on Friday, Brown took matters into his own hands, going to the Senate floor and asking to be added as a co-sponsor to the amendment by unanimous consent. Since objecting under these circumstances is pretty much unheard of, Brown was finally added as a co-sponsor, along with fellow Democrats Chris Dodd and Barbara Mikulski.
Afterwards, Coburn spokesman John Hart claimed that his boss is "happy to have [Brown] on." He did note, however, that Brown had opposed a similar amendment when a reform bill was in the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
Asked by Salon about his earlier vote, Brown said, "The one I voted against was to include all of the congressional staff. And the public option is an option. And one of the beauties of the public option is that people have a choice. I don't want to tell the people … in my office what their families should do."
War Room is written and edited by Alex Koppelman, with contributions from Salon reporters around the country.
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