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Obama's Reminder: This is a Country, Not a
Courtroom

post from TPMCafe on 25 July 2009 07:11:00 AM. © TPMCafe

Barack Obama's invitations to Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley to visit with him at the White House vindicate his election many times over by reminding us, as perhaps only he could, that ultimately this is a country, not a courtroom.

Law is indispensable and decisive in framing, prodding, and enforcing our reckonings on race. But law and those who execute it are not the only or sometimes even the best framers or deciders.

It's often necessary to remind lawyers of this, especially in racial matters -- and precisely because, in those matters, law has sometimes offered the only hope for justice. With his phone call to Crowley, especially, Obama -- a black man who is a former professor of constitutional law, activist, and legislator -- is reminding all of us that law is a vitally necessary but not a sufficient condition of justice.

Most white readers of TPM are aware of what black men put up with from white police officers. Not all or even most white officers abuse black citizens, but documented and/or highly credible accounts of abuse are unambiguous and damning.

So what was the problem with Gates' reaction? As I wrote here yesterday, there wasn't a problem that warranted his arrest. But that's not the end of the matter, which requires a discussion (like this one) that is not litigation but a process of civic reckoning without whose constant renewal law shrivels and dies.

In trying to advance that reckoning a little bit here, not as a judge or lawyer but as a writer and journalist who has seen many incidents like this -- I was involved in one thirty years ago -- I'm saying that it's likely and understandable that Gates' fatigue after a long flight from China, his irritation at having had trouble opening his front door, his knowledge of the black experience I've mentioned, and his all-too human and richly endowed penchant for dramatizing that history and himself, which many have written about I have witnessed, all came together upon seeing a white cop at his door, producing a reaction Sgt. James Crowley didn't deserve.

But if Gates' understandable reaction wasn't justified or appropriate, neither was Sgt. Crowley's in arresting him. If Crowley is the honest, by-the-book cop he seems to be, then his own reaction, too, was understandable, although inappropriate and unjustified legally. Crowley is an officer of the law, after all. But he's also a human being operating under his own quotient of job stress, long and nuanced experience, and more.

The biggest non-surprise of this incident is that the President of the United States had a human reaction, too, not only an official one! Recognizing that he made a mistake by using the word "stupidly," Obama has invited Crowley and Gates to the White House.

Just imagine: Three all-too-human beings will sit down and talk their way to common ground with the whole nation following, rather than sue or assail one another.

Obama's "teachable moment" clarifies something I wish certain of my dear lawyer- and activist-friends would acknowledge more often: Laws work best when they're passed on the cusp of a public consensus that's been nourished by a politics of persuasion through democratic, civic dialogue (and moral witness, and sometimes exemplary civil disobedience).

That includes the dialogue we're having right here and that I hope will happen at the White House. It is no frill. It's not just "talk." It requires a discipline that's necessary to freedom. Free citizens need to be socialized and trained for it. That civic-republican truth makes this country strong, or doesn't. People who short-circuit or distort and degrade it to reach for "higher" truths or selfish ends are dangerous - even if they're lawyers on a mission.

We can all easily over-legalize and/or over-moralize situations whose protagonists are basically decent people operating under stress and sometimes consciously bearing burdens of history. Obama is reminding us that good law grows from and depends on a civil society whose members learn to extend trust in ways that elicit trust from others, outside the law, even when they disagree furiously over ends and means.

If a critical mass of citizens don't learn how to generate these self-fulfilling prophecies of civic trust much while they're growing up, the society becomes a slippery web of legal contracts and rights and enforcers that is weak as a spider's web. The proliferation of shows featuring Judge Judy or Judge Jingles is testimony to such a society's confusion and growing desperation. Soon enough, it turns to other, more dangerous bases of order, collapsing into something illegal, immoral, and unsustainable.

The perverse illogic of mistrust and fear that generates more mistrust and fear is fed daily by Fox News and by what too much of the Republican Party and conservative movement have let themselves become.

Obama's leadership In slowing and perhaps even turning this tide toward a logic of trust that begets trust reinforces civic-republican leadership and methods I could only dream of and call for -- to the annoyance and disdain of certain lawyers and activists --- as I was writing and defending The Closest of Strangers and Liberal Racism.

Lawyers and activists have indispensable roles to play, but Obama has other roles to play, as well. And so does everyone who's writing, reading, and commenting here.

Sponsored Topics: Barack Obama - Henry Louis Gates - White House - United States - Politics

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What Happened Yesterday

post from Talking Points Memo on 25 July 2009 07:00:00 AM. © Talking Points Memo

Yesterday in 100 Seconds: A Teachable Moment[...]

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Weekend Open Thread

post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 25 July 2009 07:00:00 AM. © My Left Wing - Front Page

Eric Hoffer

Born July 25, 1903
Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.

I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.

It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.

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Saturday Open Thread

post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 25 July 2009 07:00:00 AM. © My Left Wing - Front Page

Eric Hoffer

Born July 25, 1903
Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.

I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.

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Doyle Names Drug NAZI as Judge Finalist

post from MAL Contends . . . on 25 July 2009 06:57:00 AM. © MAL Contends . . .

Amy Smith for Dane County Judge? You have got to be kidding me?

The nicest thing I have heard about Amy Smith is that she is a lying, overzealous drug NAZI, most of it done within the ethics of the bar if not simple decency.

What, Gov. Doyle figured this demographic is underrepresented on the bench?

The state DOJ did not rescue Smith from her past deeds at the DA's office (for which she has not apologized to the people of Wisconsin), no matter how much money she gives Governor Doyle's campaign.

From WKOW:

MADISON (WKOW) -- A spokesperson for Governor Doyle told 27 News, Doyle added the name of Amy Smith as a finalist for Dane County Judge after an advisory committee failed to include her in a recommended list of finalists. ...

Madison attorney Michelle Behnke, a member of the advisory committee, declined any comment about Doyle's insertion of Smith into the final process.

?We take our work seriously,? Behnke told 27 News. ?We were comfortable with the list of seven (original) recommended finalists.?

A review of campaign finance records shows Smith's $1,750 in campaign
contributions to Doyle since 2005 were the highest of any of 28 applicants for the judge positions.

?The public is going to look at that and say it has less to do with judicial qualifications and more to do with campaign contributions,? said Mike McCabe, executive director of the government watchdog group, Wisconsin Democracy campaign. ...

?A judge should be more than a lawyer who knows the governor.?Sensenbrenner said Doyle selected Smith because she was highly qualified. Sensenbrenner said Doyle took Smith's two public rebukes into account, but felt on balance, her legal career merited selection.

In 1992, an appeals court judge said Smith made a serious misrepresentation to a trial court about a potential witness in a drug case. In 1995, an appeals court stated Smith falsely denied making statements about a witness in another drug case.

Smith has declined comment to 27 News. In addition to her job as deputy secretary, Smith served under Doyle when Doyle was Wisconsin's attorney general.

If Doyle is that corrupt as to appoint Smith to the bench, I'm voting for Neumann or Walker.

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Nesting in Izukogen

post from The Washington Note on 25 July 2009 06:47:00 AM. © The Washington Note

birds in izukogen.jpg Two months ago, I spent some time in Japan and visited a terrific ryokan in Izu, Japan.

A number of us went on the trip, but a couple there who were camera fanatics just sent news this week to me that they eloped and got married in Japan.

They took this quite interesting pic of baby swallows in a nest just outside a little convenience store door in the Izukogen train station. I was there and asked them to take the shot -- while the mama swallow kept diving at us.

What is it with birds and where they choose to build their nests?

Congrats to my friends on their marriage and thanks for this great picture.

For Japan watchers, I will be back in Tokyo from August 17 - August 20.

-- Steve Clemons

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How Cheney tried really really hard to pardon
Scooter

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 25 July 2009 06:35:00 AM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

From TIME:

Hours before they were to leave office after eight troubled years, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney had one final and painful piece of business to conclude. For over a month Cheney had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush to pardon the Vice President's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. Libby had been convicted nearly two years earlier of obstructing an investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity by senior White House officials. The Libby pardon, aides reported, had become something of a crusade for Cheney, who seemed prepared to push his nine-year-old relationship with Bush to the breaking point ? and perhaps past it ? over the fate of his former aide. "We don't want to leave anyone on the battlefield," Cheney argued.

Bush had already decided the week before that Libby was undeserving and told Cheney so, only to see the question raised again. A top adviser to Bush says he had never seen the Vice President focused so single-mindedly on anything over two terms. And so, on his last full day in office, Jan. 19, 2009, Bush would give Cheney his final decision.

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"There isn't a health care crisis" -- and
"Comedian" Rush and Nutso Ginny would know

"There isn't global warming, and there isn't a health care crisis."
-- "Comedian" Rush Limbaugh

"There are no Americans who don't have health care."
-- DWT "Inner Circle Loon" NC Rep. Virginia Foxx

by Ken

I have to start by apologizing. I really should open with a photo of an image that's been etched in my brain for a month now, but alas, since I don't travel with one of those nifty digital cameras, I have no photo to offer you of my own personally encountered "right-wing clown" -- yes, a real, live clown spouting wingnut gibberish. Instead we will have to make do with this audio clip of the ultimate right-wing clown, "Comedian" Rush Limbaugh,(as Keith Olbermann habitually refers to him.

Stop, "Comedian" Rush, you're killing me! Well, maybe not me, but you're sure doing your best to kill a lot of people, including many of your listeners. (Doesn't it occur to you that you'll have to keep replacing them as they die off in order to keep your ratings up?)

Checking a calendar, I see it's five weeks now since I took my frenzied two-day trip to Florida to help celebrate my mother's 90th birthday in the little assisted-living facility where she will probably live out her days -- and where she is being taken care of as if she were family, or better, since I couldn't take care of her anywhere near as well. In that time, I've scratched out any number of preliminary drafts, or draftlets, relating in one way or another to the experience, but to my best recollection I haven't actually pursued any of them to completion. While it was a good trip in a lot of ways (at any rate, I'm glad I went), judging from outward signs like this, I'm reckoning that part of me still hasn't processed it.

The image I would most like to share, however, has nothing to do with me personally, except perhaps that it's from one of those moments at which, as I suggested above, I wish I had one of them little digital cameras everybody else seems to be toting, to preserve -- for you right now, for instance. Of course I'm not sure it would have done me any good to have such a camera, since I am prepared to stand against any competition as the world's most inept photographer.* (This is a notable difference between Howie and me. He's a passionate, accomplished lifelong photographer, whereas I -- as I wrote here some time ago -- have never failed to disappoint anyone who was foolhardy enough to thrust a camera into my hands and say, "You just press this button.")

*I TOLD THE TALE OF MY LEGENDARY
PHOTOGRAPHIC INCOMPETENCE . . .

. . . two years ago in my DWT account ("DWT pays a morning call on Bill O, and learns that the incarnation of evil looks pretty scary when he fetches his morning paper--oh, those red shorts!") of my journey to the wilds of Long Island in support of activist Mike Stark's mission to stage an accountability moment outside the home of Bill O'Reilly, including the fateful moment when Mike put his excellent camcorder in my photographically hopeless hands with a similar expression of how easy the thing was to operate. Scroll down, down, down to the sidebar --

ANYONE WHO PUTS A CAMERA IN MY HANDS DESERVES
WHAT HE GETS -- JUST ASK MY (EX-) FRIEND BOB

The scheduling of the little party that Ana, the owner of my mother's ALF (and an authentic saint; with her I think I've exhausted my lifetime's quotient of good luck), was having for her was complicated by the schedule demands I imposed. Originally the party was going to be on Sunday, when I would be there all day, but for various reasons -- not least that that Sunday happened to be Fathers' Day -- we pushed it back to Monday, but since I had a mid-afternoon return flight to catch, it had to be scheduled for lunchtime, and an early lunch at that. Perhaps as a consequence, the clown was late.

Ah yes, the clown. Ana has a clown she hires for occasions like this, whose specialty is doing balloon animals, which gives great pleasure to the residents. Unfortunately, the clown arrived just as we were leaving. (Ana was driving me to the airport.) He wasn't in costume yet, but he had his clown makeup on, and he got out of his car babbling about something that turned out to be the health care reform issue.

"Socialized medicine!" the clown shouted, and this of course is the moment for which I wish I'd had a camera, or better still a video recorder. "Do you watch Rush Limbaugh?" quoth the clown. And on he went, babbling his semi-digested version of what Rush Limbaugh had had to say about socialized medicine.

Now there is, of course, a perfectly good reason why Rush is able to spout, with a straight face, an insultingly blatant lie like: "There really isn't a crisis in health care in this country." MediaMatters had a great report the other day: "Wealthy conservative media figures deny crisis in health care" (from which the above audio clip was, er, "borrowed"), which noted:

Limbaugh, the highest paid talk radio host in the country, reportedly signed an eight-year, $400 million contract with Clear Channel Communications and its syndication subsidiary, Premiere Radio Networks, in July 2008. According to The New York Times, Limbaugh's "$50 million a year paycheck represents a raise of about $14.4 million a year over his current contract, which was paying him $285 million over eight years and was set to expire in 2009."

Similarly, there's a good reason why crazed NC Rep. Virginia Foxx, was able to say, as noted above, "There are no Americans who don't have health care," as ThinkProgress's Matt Corley reported yesterday:

Earlier today, several female Republican House members held a press conference today to attack President Obama?s push for health insurance reform. ?The Democrat way is not reforming healthcare, it?s destroying it,? announced Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).

They've even got an audio clip of our Ginny! So why would our Ginny say such a thing? She certainly isn't being paid Rushbucks. But the real question is why our Ginny would say any of ">the loony things she does. And the only possible explanation is that she really is out of her mind.

Now to return briefly to my certified-professional right-wing clown, one reason I'm sorry not to have a picture is to show you that he was a youngish and -- even if you paid no attention to the gibberish coming out of his mouth -- an unmistakably sad-looking fellow. Talk about reinforcing the image of clowns as sad, even tragic, characters.

The image of my clown is imprinted in my imagination. And it keeps me thinking: I don't expect that, unlike "Comedian" Rush, he works for an elite, high-paying clown company. I assume, rather, that he ekes out a free-lance living, and that if he has health insurance, he pays for it himself. Which in turn leads me to guess that he probably doesn't have health insurance, and is still young enough to sustain the illusion that he doesn't need health insurance. For his sake, I hope his inevitable rude awakening is delayed as long as possible.

And I have to wonder, when that dread phrase socialized medicine tumbles out of his mouth, what does he understand by it? I do remember in his Rush-born babblings he stressed, with great alarm, the involvement of "the government." And so perhaps his image, formed by all that Rush-babbling, is the Right-Wing Noise Machine's permanent refrain, tracing back of course to the saintliest liar-imbecile of them all, Ronald "Sure, I Eat Shit but All Those Hideous Shit-Suicking Peasants Eat It Up" Reagan, that government can't do anything right.

The other day I had a disagreement with a friend about the continuing power of the old-time bogeyman phrase "socialized medicine." He was arguing that it's lost at least a certain amount of its once-paralyzing power over the American public. I wasn't so sure. I mean, I see those clips of Master Rush snarling "socialized medicine," and then I see and hear the words coming out of the mouth of my clown . . .

This notion of government incompetence touches something deep in a lot of Americans, and is held especially dear by the Far Right. And it's true, as the Bush regime demonstrated so triumphantly, that a government built on Movement Conservative principles, is incompetent. Of course, as Paul Krugman diagnosed early in the regime, governing incompetence not only comes easily and naturally to right-wingers but actually serves their basic premise about government incompetence.

The choice of "Heckuva Job Brownie" to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had nothing to do with the natural incompetence of government. Emergency preparedness and disaster management can be done competently, as the Clinton-era FEMA demonstrated. The catastrophe that was the Bush regime FEMA was entirely manmade, starting with the staffing of the agency with useless cronies (and, in the case of the ultimate right-wing incompetent, FEMA director Michael Brown, cronies-of-cronies). Call it a coincidence if you like, but to right-wing plutocrats, it's unacceptable to allow the public to expect competence from their government even in the field of disaster management. We have gone beyond Queen Marie Antoinette's infamous "Let them eat cake" to Movement Conservatism's "Let them drown."

And you can always find hucksters like "Comedian" Rush who are able to hornswoggle the public into signing on to their program. Yesterday our VetVoice colleague Brandon Friedman tipped us off to this bit of testimony on what he describes as "a conservative milblog," This Ain't Hell, which he wouldn't link and I won't either. It's a gloves-off assault on health care reform from the site's chief blogger, Jonn Lilyea, which Brandon noted "highlights the level of brain damage prevalent in many conservative bloggers engaged on the topic" and he hoped might be good for a laugh:

This is an issue that?s near and dear to my heart. Military Health Care has been the foundation of my financial planning since I decided to reenlist back in 1977. I knew that I?d have meager paychecks for the rest of my career, but I?d tolerate that for quality, dependable health care for me and my family. A lot of folks complain about military care, but I?ve never had a problem with it and I?d hate to be thrown out of military care for some kind of social program.

Lilyea whines that nobody else seems to be standing up for military care, blissfully unaware that (a) not only is nobody genuinely interested in meaningful health care reform trying to get people off military care (or whatever care they have at present, if they're satisfied with it), but the veterans' system in particular has been held up throughout the discussion by the likes of Paul Krugman as a model for what a revamped system of health care provision might look like.

OUR COMMENTER STRIKES TO THE HEART
OF THE HEALTH CARE REFORM DEBATE

Which brings me to what set me off on this merry chase. In response to our tribute yesterday to the incoherent twittering of Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, as it happens on the subject of health care, a regrettably anonymous commenter left these elegant words of wisdom:

Let's keep private sector bureaucrats in charge of health care that's worked out well for us and even better for them and their congressional shills.

#

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Obama Weekly Address: Health Insurance Reform
Will Strengthen Small Businesses

WEEKLY ADDRESS: President Obama: Health Insurance Reform Will Strengthen Small Businesses

WASHINGTON – In his weekly address, President Barack Obama cited a report released this morning by the Council of Economic Advisors in explaining how health insurance reform will strengthen small businesses in America. With small businesses paying up to 18 percent more for health insurance than large businesses, too many small businesses are forced to cut benefits, law off workers, or close down entirely. Health insurance reform will support small businesses by allowing them purchase plans through an insurance exchange and by providing tax credits to help them provide benefits.

video details and more

Full text after the jump.

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
Saturday, July 25th, 2009

I recently heard from a small business owner from New Jersey who wrote that he employs eight people and provides health insurance for all of them. But his policy goes up at least 20 percent each year, and today, it costs almost $1,400 per family per month – his highest business expense besides his employees’ salaries. He’s already had to let two of them go, and he may be forced to eliminate health insurance altogether.

He wrote, simply: “I am not looking for free health care, I would just like to get my premiums reduced enough to be able to afford it.”

Day after day, I hear from people just like him. Workers worried they may lose their coverage if they become too sick, or lose their job, or change jobs. Families who fear they may not be able to get insurance, or change insurance, if someone in their family has a pre-existing condition. And small business owners trying to make a living and do right by the people they employ.

These are the mom and pop stores and restaurants, beauty shops and construction companies that support families and sustain communities. They’re the tiny startups with big ideas, hoping to become the next Google or Apple or HP. And, as shown in a new report released today by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, right now they are getting crushed by skyrocketing health care costs.

Because they lack the bargaining power that large businesses have and face higher administrative costs per person, small businesses pay up to 18 percent more for the very same health insurance plans – costs that eat into their profits and get passed on to their employees.

As a result, small businesses are much less likely to offer health insurance. Those that do tend to have less generous plans. In a recent survey, one third of small businesses reported cutting benefits. Many have dropped coverage altogether. And many have shed jobs, or shut their doors entirely.

This is unsustainable, it’s unacceptable, and it’s going to change when I sign health insurance reform into law.

Under the reform plans in Congress, small businesses will be able to purchase health insurance through an “insurance exchange,” a marketplace where they can compare the price, quality and services of a wide variety of plans, many of which will provide better coverage at lower costs than the plans they have now. They can then pick the one that works best for them and their employees.

Small businesses that choose to insure their employees will also receive a tax credit to help them pay for it. If a small business chooses not to provide coverage, its employees can purchase high quality, affordable coverage through the insurance exchange on their own. Low-income workers – folks who are more likely to be working at small businesses – will qualify for a subsidy to help them cover the costs.

And no matter how you get your insurance, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition. They won’t be able to drop your coverage if you get too sick or lose your job or change jobs. And we’ll limit the amount your insurance company can force you to pay out of your own pocket.

To view the new report and learn more about how health insurance reform will help small businesses, go to WhiteHouse.gov, and send us your questions and comments – we’ll answer as many of them as we can later this week.

Over the past few months, I’ve been pushing hard to make sure we finally address the need for health insurance reform, which has been deferred year after year, decade after decade. And today, after a lot of hard work in Congress, we are closer than ever before to finally passing reform that will reduce costs, expand coverage, and provide more choices for our families and businesses.

It has taken months to reach this point, and once this legislation passes, we’ll need to move thoughtfully and deliberately to implement these reforms over a period of several years. That is why I feel such a sense of urgency about moving this process forward.

Now I know there are those who are urging us to delay reform. And some of them have actually admitted that this is a tactic designed to stop any reform at all. Some have even suggested that, regardless of its merits, health care reform should be stopped as a way to inflict political damage on my Administration. I’ll leave it to them to explain that to the American people.

What I’m concerned about is the damage that’s being done right now to the health of our families, the success of our businesses, and the long-term fiscal stability of our government. I’m concerned about hard working folks who want nothing more than the security that comes with knowing they can get the care they need, when they need it. I’m concerned about the small business owners who are asking for nothing more than a chance to seize their piece of the American Dream. I’m concerned about our children and grandchildren who will be saddled with deficits that will continue piling up year after year unless we pass reform.

This debate is not a political game for these Americans, and they cannot afford to keep waiting for reform. We owe it to them to finally get it done – and to get it done this year. Thank you.