On Monday, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) told the Georgia Public Broadcasting News that although he opposes a single-payer system, he would support a system where there is competition between public and private health care programs:
ISAKSON: Having private competition, facilities like Emory that are private, public like Grady competing with one another is a good system. What we have got to guard against is becoming a single-payer government system. You take competition out of health care and you’ll have less quality and a higher cost.
Listen here:
Indeed, President Obama outlined Monday that he too opposes single-payer and would prefer a system where “the private insurance companies have to compete with a public option” because “it will keep them honest and it will keep — help keep their prices down.” Is Isakson prepared to vote for Obama’s health care plan?
Pressure has been building on Tennessee State Sen. Diane Black (R) to fire her aide, Sherri Goforth, who sent an e-mail with a racist image of President Obama. Today on CNN, for example, former Cheney aide Ron Christie said that “I think the appropriate course of action would be for this staffer to be dismissed.”
However, Black has dug in her heels. Yesterday, she told CNN that that although the e-mail “does not represent the beliefs or opinions of my office,” she decided to keep Goforth on:
When I did find out about the communication that was sent out, I immediately called the H.R. department and through their advice did what they told me needed to be done when there was a violation of an e-mail policy by the state. And so, therefore, as you have already stated, Miss Goforth did get a verbal reprimand as well as a very strongly worded reprimand written and it was put in her file that if this should ever occur again, that she should be immediately terminated.
As the Knoxville News Sentinel reports, the Tennessee Democratic Party has obtained a copy of this “strongly worded reprimand,” which is barely a slap on the wrist. Black advises Goforth not to send communications that are “derogatory regarding any minority” and adds, “I look forward to working together in the future within these guidelines.” The letter:
Goforth initially refused to apologize for the racist imagery, saying only that she sent it to the wrong list. (She eventually apologized for the “offensive nature” of her e-mail.)
Black has repeatedly insisted that Goforth’s e-mail did not “reflect any of my beliefs.” As proof she has cited her time as a nurse, “working with people with black skin who needed medical help” around the world.
This morning, Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) slammed the Justice Department’s release of Bush-era memos authorizing the use of torture on terrorist suspects, telling Holder that his “predecessor, Judge Mukasey, and Mr. Hayden,” the former Director of National Intelligence, “didn’t approve of that at all.” Holder reminded Sessions that Mukasey and Hayden were no longer in charge:
SESSIONS: Well it was disapproved by your predecessor, Judge Mukasey, and Mr. Hayden, the CIA, um, DIA [sic] director. They didn’t approve of that at all. … You were willing to release matters that the DNI and the Attorney General believe were damaging to our national security.
HOLDER: Well, one attorney general thought that. I am the Attorney General of the United States, and it is this attorney general’s view that the release of that information was appropriate, as well as the president of the United States. I respect their opinion, but I had to make the decision, holding the office that I now hold.
Watch it:
Today, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee began marking up Sen. Ted Kennedy’s (D-MA) Affordable Health Care Act. Republicans, who pushed for the incomplete HELP legislation to be studied by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and then pretended that the agency scored the entire bill, tried to obstruct the effort by complaining that the CBO had not yet scored the full proposal. During the hearing, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) argued that the hearing be postponed until a full cost-analysis is available. Watch it:
The GOP then maneuvered to introduce a host of amendments simply as a delaying tactic. Rather than offering constructive improvements that could lower costs and expand coverage, a good number of the GOP’s proposed amendments do nothing to solve the health care crisis. The Wonk Room has the run-down.
Last April, Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended capping production of the F-22 Raptor at 187 planes. Gates said the move was part of a series of changes in defense spending that he called “no-brainers.” (The F-22 has never seen action in either Iraq or Afghanistan.) Yesterday, the House Armed Services Committee “threw a wrench in the Obama administration’s plans to end” the F-22 program, voting 31-30 on a measure marking up the Defense Department spending bill that would “add $369 million in extra funding to keep production of the Air Force’s most advanced jet alive.” Six Democrats — Reps. Jim Marshall (GA), Joe Courtney (CT), Gabrielle Giffords (AZ), Eric Massa (NY), Bobby Bright (AL), and Mike McIntyre (NC) — joined 25 Republicans in voting for the amendment. The Wall Street Journal reports that “the extra money would be a boost for Lockheed [Martin's] Marietta, Ga., production facility” which is in Marshall’s home state.
Yesterday, President Obama explained his relative public silence with regard to the situation in Iran, saying, “It’s not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling, the U.S. president meddling in Iranian elections.” Later in the day, on Radio America’s Dateline Washington, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) responded to Obama’s measured statements on Iran by calling him a “cream puff” and predicting that under Obama’s leadership “things” will get “very bad, very quickly”:
DATELINE: What is the best way to approach this? … President Obama though says that we don’t want to take sides too publicly because then the ruling regime there could use us as the straw man to beat back this public uprising. How do you read this?
ROHRABACHER: Well I think that Mr. Obama, if he continues to have these types of attitudes, we’re going to see things get very bad, very quickly. Already the North Koreans have challenged him and realized that he’s a cream puff, if that is what he is indeed going to be as a President.… [N]ow if the Mullahs in Iran are permitted to just roll over opposition something like Tienanmen square, we will have missed a great opportunity.
Later in the interview, Rohrabacher said that he had distributed a video to the people of Iran that declared “we’re with them, be courageous, don’t let this moment go by” and that Ronald Reagan “always knew that — at the very least — we should be vocally supportive of all those people who are oppressed.” Listen here:
Rohrabacher’s view of Obama’s actions on Iran is not shared by some of his Republican colleagues in Congress or even some conservative commentators. Indeed, as Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) said on CBS’s Early Show yesterday, “I think for the moment our position is to allow the Iranians to work out their situation.” Likewise, Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) told Politico that Obama should “absolutely not” be more forceful on Iran. Pat Buchanan wrote on the conservative TownHall.com that “[t]he Obama policy of extending an open hand to Iran is working and ought not be abandoned because of the grim events in Tehran.”
But perhaps the most compelling endorsement of the Obama administration’s reaction to the election crisis in Iran came from Morehead Kennedy, who was held hostage for 444 days by Iranian revolutions while serving as acting head of the U.S. Embassy’s economic section in Tehran in 1979. In an interview with the Daily Beast, Kennedy “praised Joe Biden’s reaction to the protesters Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, in which the vice president cast doubt on the election results but shied away from a more pronounced condemnation.” “It’s very counterproductive to interfere in someone else’s election. I think the best thing the U.S. can do is shut up,” he said.
Today, House Republicans offered a substance-less alternative to the Democrats’ health care plan. The GOP “plan” comes on the same day that Gallup releases new numbers showing the GOP ranks last when it comes to who the public thinks would get health care reform right. Only 34% of Americans are confident that Republicans in Congress will make the correct decisions, which is less than the insurance companies (35%) and the pharmaceutical companies (40%). The public’s faith in President Obama comes in at 58%, while confidence in Democratic leaders in Congress is at 42%:
Yesterday, Tennessee state senator Diane Black (R) continued to resist calls to fire a staffer who sent out a racist image of President Obama. “This is, believe me, not at all anything having to do with being derogatory toward someone in a minority,” said Black, adding that the e-mail by aide Sherri Goforth “does not reflect any of my beliefs.” As proof, Black said that she spent time as a nurse in Haiti working with “people with black skin.” This morning on CNN, former Cheney aide Ron Christie said that it was unacceptable that Black wasn’t firing Goforth:
Racism cannot be tolerated for those who have the public trust. This individual said, “I simply had the wrong person.” Well, she needs to be looking for a new job, she needs to be fired. It’s a poor reflection on her institution that she works in in the state Senate in Tennessee, and a poor reflection on her member. … Racism has to be stamped out, that’s why I said this staffer has to go. I think the appropriate course of action would be for this staffer to be dismissed.
Watch it:
Transcript: More »
Trying to take political advantage of the Iranian protests, Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) declared that there was “more freedom” in Iran than in the U.S. Congress, after House ended debate last night:
“I wonder if there isn’t more freedom on the streets of Tehran right now than we are seeing here,” ripped Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), the ranking Republican on the Rules Committee, to Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) at the raucous hearing.
Dreier’s not alone in making such absurd comparisons. Nico Pitney, blogging on the Iranian protests at the Huffington Post, points to a tweet from Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), comparing Iranian bloggers and Twitter-users to the House Republicans’ Twittering last summer, when they protested rising gas prices:
Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) joined Hoekstra, claiming that House Republicans are just like the Iranians because they are an “oppressed minority”:
In comparing themselves to the Iranian dissidents, Dreier, Culberson, and Hoekstra offensively discount the great personal risk many Iranians are taking by continuing to blog, Twitter, and protest. The Iranian National Guard told bloggers to take down any material that might “create tension,” or face legal action. One Iranian provincial prosecutor warned that the “few elements” behind the protests “could face the death penalty under Islamic law.”
The worst Hoekstra and Culberson faced during their so-called Twitter revolution? Inadequate lighting.
Earlier today, Politico reported that it was “far from certain” that Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) would hold on to his Senate leadership position in the wake of his admitted affair with a former campaign staffer. Now, MSNBC reports that Ensign is stepping down from his role as the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee:
Next year, the 2010 Census will be sent to every American household, as required by the U.S. Constitution. The far right has issued dire warnings of the Census; on a May 29th episode of Bill Bennett’s radio show, RNC Chairman Michael Steele intoned, “Certainly the collection of this information is going to be part of an ongoing political campaign by this administration.”
In an interview with the Washington Time’s right-wing radio show this morning, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) declared that she would break the law and refuse to answer the Census questions, beyond noting the number of people in her household:
BACHMANN: The motherload of all data information will be from the Census. … Unfortunately, the Census data has become very intricate, very personal, a lot of the questions that are asked. I know for my family, the only question we will be answering is how many people are in our home. We won’t be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn’t require any information beyond that.
Listen to it:
Bachmann explained that her fears over the Census were in large part due to the fact that her Number-One Enemy, ACORN, could possibly be involved. (The group might help recruit some of the 1.4 million people needed to go door-to-door to count every American.) She insinuated that former senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) had lost his reelection bid because of “fraudulent votes” perpetrated by ACORN:
BACHMANN: This is what ACORN will do. They will get multiple fraudulent voter registration forms, stuff the registrar’s office with them, in hopes that maybe not all fraudulent registrations will find people at the polls voting. But there may be some people who get through. And sometimes you don’t often need many in order to sway an election one way or another. I come from Minnesota. We’re still in a recount with our U.S. Senate race between Sen. Norm Coleman and the challenger Al Franken. Sen. Coleman won the race on election day, but that was challenged repeatedly, over and over, with what we feel may be fraudulent vote [sic], and we’re very concerned about what comes forward.
At the end of the interview, Bachmann declares it to be a “badge of honor” to be a “target” of the press.
A week ago, the American Medical Association declared its opposition to a public health insurance option, a key plank of President Obama’s health reform plan. Obama subsequently addressed the AMA membership directly, explaining his proposal and telling them that “the public option is not your enemy, it is your friend.” It appears that Obama’s argument may have compelled the AMA to rethink its position. The organization is now concerned that media reports are portraying them as “opposed to reform” and too favorable towards the insurance industry:
On Tuesday, the American Medical Association considered a resolution that would have opposed any new public plan that would “risk the elimination of a healthy competitive market for private health insurance.”
Before its delegates moved toward final passage, AMA president Nancy H. Nielsen intervened and asked delegates to focus on what they could support. […]
“I do not believe it’s the position of this House of Delegates of the American Medical Association to protect the health insurance industry,” Nielsen said, prompting loud applause from the members.
“I think the health insurance industry pays a lot of money to people who can protect them.”
“That was about creating an impression that we are not part of the problem, we are part of the solution,” said Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
The stars of Iran’s soccer team wore green wristbands in support of the anti-government protesters, during a game broadcast live on Iranian state TV yesterday. “State television, which has been broadcasting Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s competing rallies, has steered clear of images of Mr Moussavi’s protests,” the Financial Times notes. “But given the popularity of football in Iran, keeping the match off the air would not have been an option.” Twitter user mehdi115 posted this photo:
After half-time, only one player kept his green wristband on. Iranian bloggers speculated that “Ali Abadi, chairman of the Iranian Football Federation (FFI), who is close to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had telephoned Seoul during half time and instructed the players to remove the green wristbands immediately.”
On May 1, Congress passed President Obama’s budget, which included language allowing for the use of the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform with a simple majority in the Senate. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) said any use of budget reconciliation by Obama would be “regarded as an act of violence” against Republicans, and likened it to “running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River.” Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) made similar remarks, while Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) called reconciliation a “purely partisan exercise.”
But at least one Republican recognizes that the use of reconciliation — while rare — is not unprecedented or unethical, let alone “an act of violence.” On Bill Bennett’s radio show yesterday morning, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said of budget reconciliation: “It’s legal, it’s ethical, you can do it.” Further, Frist said that he believed Obama would be able to get a health care package passed this year:
BENNET: We just had Bill Kristol on. He said he’s got real doubts that [Obama] will be able to pull [health care reform] off. Bottom line, Do you think they can?
FRIST: Nah, I think Bill’s wrong. I think they’ll pull it off. … You can drive things through a fifty vote threshold, instead of that sixty vote threshold. And you don’t do it maybe one out of a thousand bills do you do it on. But it’s legal, it’s ethical, you can do it. And it has been suggested and accepted by the administration, pretty directly that if it came down to it, they’re going to drive this thing through a fifty-vote door. And if they do that…they can pass whatever they want to. I hope that they don’t do that.
Listen here:
Frist’s “hope” that the budget reconciliation process is not used is actually fairly close to what the Hill characterizes as “the mainstream Democratic view: a bipartisan agreement [on health care] is preferable, but they’re willing to revert to reconciliation if necessary.” Indeed, as Howard Dean explained at the America’s Future Now conference earlier this month, “Democrats should have ‘no intention’ of working with Republicans if it’s not the strongest possible legislation that could be passed with a simple majority.” More bluntly, Dean remarked, “If Republicans want to shill for insurance companies, then we should do it with 51 votes.”
Similarly, former President Bill Clinton explained in a meeting with a group of progressive bloggers yesterday that the priority should not be garnering Republican support at the expensive of effective universal coverage:
If he can’t get a bill that’s genuine universal coverage, that genuinely is going to cut costs and make health insurers give up some of these unbelievable administrative burdens that they’ve put on people, and that really gets to the guts of the delivery system and does more primary preventive care and actually measures things that work, then I would go for the 51.
The New York Times reports today that members of Congress are increasingly concerned about the extent of the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, particularly the overcollection of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans. An anonymous former intelligence analyst tells reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau that during much of the Bush years, the NSA “tolerated significant collection and examination of domestic e-mail messages without warrants.” Reportedly, one of the accessed domestic e-mail accounts belonged to former President Bill Clinton:
He said he and other analysts were trained to use a secret database, code-named Pinwale, in 2005 that archived foreign and domestic e-mail messages. He said Pinwale allowed N.S.A. analysts to read large volumes of e-mail messages to and from Americans as long as they fell within certain limits — no more than 30 percent of any database search, he recalled being told — and Americans were not explicitly singled out in the searches.
The former analyst added that his instructors had warned against committing any abuses, telling his class that another analyst had been investigated because he had improperly accessed the personal e-mail of former President Bill Clinton.
During an interview with President Obama that aired on CNBC yesterday, chief Washington correspondent John Harwood said, “When you and I spoke in January, you said — I observed that you hadn’t gotten much bad press. You said it’s coming.” Harwood added that since then, Obama still hasn’t received much critical press and wondered if his administration isn’t being “sufficiently held accountable.” Obama, however, disagreed:
OBAMA: It’s very hard for me to swallow that one. First of all, I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration. I mean, you know, that’s a pretty…
HARWOOD: I assume you’re talking about Fox.
OBAMA: Well, that’s a pretty big megaphone. And you’d be hard pressed if you watched the entire day to find a positive story about me on that front.
Watch it:
Seeming to undermine the premise of his question, Harwood said after the interview that Obama has “gotten slapped around pretty good on our network for a while” too.
In an interview with Bloomberg, President Obama predicted that the unemployment rate would reach 10 percent by the end of the year. He also defended his regulatory reforms for Wall Street. “Wall Street seems to maybe have a shorter memory about how close we were to the abyss than I would have expected,” Obama said, referring to criticism of the government’s growing role in the economy and markets.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard “has warned online media of a crackdown over their coverage of the country’s election crisis.” It “said through the state news service that Iranian Web sites and bloggers must remove any materials that ‘create tension’ or face legal action.” “Iranian authorities appear to have successfully blocked all access to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter Wednesday morning.”
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) chided President Obama yesterday for not following the correct protocol in firing the inspector general of AmeriCorps. “The White House has failed to follow the proper procedure in notifying Congress as to the removal,” said McCaskill. The White House responded by releasing a letter offering more detailed reasons for the dismissal.
“The number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people killed in bias-motivated incidents increased by 28 percent in 2008 compared to a year ago,” according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. Last year’s 29 killings was also the highest number recorded since 1999, with the debates over LGBT issues being “possible flash points” that are sparking a “backlash.”
In a 2003 lecture at the Indiana University law school, Judge Sonia Sotomayor expressed skepticism about “the expanded government surveillance powers in the USA Patriot Act. In particular, Sotomayor cited “what she referred to as its broader authority ‘to impose nationwide wiretaps with little judicial supervision‘ and to monitor Internet use in search of terrorists.”
A new report by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund shows a close correlation between the increasingly volatile immigration debate and a growing number of hate crimes against Latinos and “perceived immigrants.” The report, “Confronting the New Faces of Hate,” calls out a number of restrictionist groups that consistently invoke anti-immigrant rhetoric as they try to make the case against immigration:
“In one of the most disturbing developments of recent years, some groups opposing immigration reform, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA, have inflamed the immigration debate by invoking the dehumanizing, racist stereotypes and bigotry of hate groups.”
According to the Washington Post, hate crimes against Latinos have been going up for four consecutive years, jumping from 426 to 595 incidents in the last year alone with a 40 percent overall increase between 2003 and 2007.
Right now, the committed partners of gay employees in the federal government are excluded from receiving benefits afforded to spouses. This evening, the White House said that Obama will be making an announcement on this subject tomorrow, and media reports are saying he will extend benefits to same-sex partners of some of these employees. From the White House daily schedule:
In the evening, the President will deliver brief remarks and sign a Presidential Memorandum regarding federal benefits and non-discrimination in the Oval Office.
Kerry Eleved reports that the signing is scheduled for 5:45 p.m. Last month, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) pulled a provision from the Foreign Relations Authorization Act that would have given such benefits to foreign service officers, because the Obama administration had reportedly assured him that it would be moving forward on the issue. Last month, ThinkProgress spoke with Amb. Michael Guest, who said that his partner was excluded from receiving services such as medical treatment and effectiveness training while abroad.
In 2007, Eric and Sandy Ehlers Mongerson divorced, and a Georgia trial judge awarded custody of their four children to Sandy and visitation rights to Eric. Inexplicably, the judge also held that Eric was “prohibited from exposing the children to his homosexual partners and friends.” Yesterday, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously threw out the trial judge’s ban:
There is no evidence in the record before us that any member of the excluded community has engaged in inappropriate conduct in the presence of the children or that the children would be adversely affected by exposure to any member of that community. The prohibition against contact with any gay or lesbian person acquainted with Husband assumes, without evidentiary support, that the children will suffer harm from any such contact. Such an arbitrary classification based on sexual orientation flies in the face of our public policy that encourages divorced parents to participate in the raising of their children…and constitutes an abuse of discretion.
Georgia law permits a family court judge to prohibit a non-custodial parent from exposing their child to an individual who could have an “adverse effect on the best interests of the children,” but only if there is actual evidence suggesting such an adverse effect. Yesterday’s decision reaffirms the simple truth that there is no evidence that children are harmed in any way whatsoever by interacting with gay men and lesbians.
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