One of my pet peeves is when interest groups release rank legislators according to how they have voted on a few key bills. These scorecards can be helpful as a general guideline, but some lawmakers game the system by voting the "right" way on a scorecard issue but voting with the other side on procedural measures. A classic example was when some pro-choice and environmental groups gave Senator Joe Lieberman credit for voting against confirming Justice Samuel Alito, even though Lieberman had voted against the filibuster that was the only realistic way to keep Alito off the Supreme Court.

Progressive Punch has a search engine that lets you view how individual members of Congress have voted in certain issue categories. Even more useful, Progressive Punch has incorporated a "crucial vote" score that includes bills and procedural measures that passed or failed by narrow margins. You'd be surprised by how many Democrats have high Progressive Punch ratings overall but much lower crucial vote scores, indicating that "when the chips were down," these people were not reliable allies.

But even the Progressive Punch rating system doesn't tell the whole story, because committee and floor votes aren't the only way for legislators to exercise their power.

Yesterday Environment Iowa reminded me of the problems with scorecards when the group announced its rating of Iowa's members of Congress. The scores were based on "seven votes in the Senate ranging from an economic recovery bill with investments in public transit and energy efficiency to legislation saving the nation's coasts from offshore drilling," and 15 votes in the House "including funding to make schools more energy efficient and legislation protecting the Great Lakes." Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Leonard Boswell (IA-03) received 100 percent scores, while Representative Dave Loebsack (IA-02) scored 93 percent and Representative Bruce Braley (IA-01) scored 80 percent. Environment Iowa commented, "These numbers include a few absences from key votes that occurred during the floods of 2008."

A few things are very wrong with this picture.

Here is the Friday, January 1st, 2010 edition of what's making news and interesting reads from around the world.

Iceland Votes to Repay Billions
Iceland's parliament narrowly approved by 33 to 30 vote a repayment scheme to pay back 3.4 billion pounds ($5 billion USD) to Britain and the Netherlands after the Icesave bank collapsed in late 2008 in the wake of the global financial crisis. The money will reimburse the British and Dutch governments which stepped in to compensate depositors with Icesave after its parent bank Landsbanki failed last year. The bank's collapse affected more than 320,000 savers. There has been strong opposition to the measure in Iceland, amid fears the country would not be able to afford repayments. But the leftist government of Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir hopes the move will help boost the country's bid to join the European Union and repair its battered economy.

Charges Against Five Black Employees Dismissed
A federal judge has dismissed all charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards charged in a deadly Baghdad shooting. More from the New York Times. In Iraq, the news was received with disbelief, anger and bitter resignation.

US Drone Strike in North Waziristan

The second US drone strike in as many days has killed three militants in North Waziristan, part of the Tribal areas of Pakistan. The unmanned US predator drone fired two missiles against a suspected militant hideout in Ghundikala village, 15 kilometres east of Miramshah, the main town of North Waziristan and close to the Afghan border. The story in Pakistan's Dawn newspaper.

Israeli Settlement Construction Continues Unabated
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that despite a temporary ban on construction in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, hundreds of housing units remain under construction in isolated settlements.

Germany Inc. - A Radical Restructuring Needed
The German news magazine Der Spiegel finds that German economy performed "astonishingly well" against the backdrop of the global financial crisis in 2009. Still the staff writers of Der Spiegel believe that Germany "will need to lay the foundations for a radical restructuring" in 2010 if the country is to " fend off powerful new competitors from China and India." They ask if Germany needs a new business model. It's a question we might ask here in the United States.

 

DPRK Calls for an End to "The Hostile Relationship"
The New York Times reports that  North Korea called for an end to “the hostile relationship” with the United States, issuing a New Year’s message that highlighted the reclusive country’s attempt to readjust the focus of six-party nuclear disarmament talks.

In an editorial carried by its major state media outlets, North Korea said that its consistent stand was “to establish a lasting peace system on the Korean peninsula and make it nuclear-free through dialogue and negotiations.” The editorial added that “the fundamental task for ensuring peace and stability” was “to put an end to the hostile relationship” with the United States.

The sequence of easing tension with Washington, establishing a peace regime and then denuclearizing the Korean peninsula has been shaping up as the North’s policy approach before it re-engages in talks about giving up its nuclear weapons, according to officials and analysts in Seoul.

However, the Korea Times reports that a South Korean think tank published a paper arguing that North Korea may detonate a third nuclear device and provoke border clashes to escalate tension on the Korean Peninsula next year. The Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA) reported that through a third nuclear test, Pyongyang could show the world that it has no plans to scrap its atomic weapons program. On Thursday, President Lee Myung-bak noted that although there was little progress in inter-Korean relations in 2009, he believe that his government has laid the groundwork for developing relations in a positive direction.

 

This seems like a significant change of rules for the DNC nominating process. If adopted, the superdelegates would remain with the status of being a delegate (there is not a decrease in number), but they would no longer be able to decide who to vote for based on their own, but instead rely upon the contests in their states.

The reform would increase the amount of delegates to the winning candidate in the contest. This is much needed. It was not a good system that produced results like the NV caucus, where the candidate who had the most popular votes did not also lead in the delegates. It's also a fault of the nominating system, that a candidate can win a contest by a good margin 5-10% margin, but not gain much in the way of delegate advantage from winning.

The winner-take-all system, as was California in the disaster of '72 for Democrats, and still is that way in many Republican states (they await their disaster in '12 imo), gave way to the proportional system, but adding back the superdelegates from their states to a winner-take-all scenario strikes a nice balance.

The only question I have about it though is the preponderance of superdelegates from nearby DC states (MD & VA) and DC itself. I don't know the exact numbers, but its a lot. Is DC going to become a megastate because of its bulk of superdelegates?

I don't expect the Rules committee to take this recomendation without some resistence. Its a committee that's packed with people that like to exert influence, and this will take away their being able to play phone tag with the Presidential candidates in the future. Hopefully, that's a mute point because Kaine & Obama are on board.

This is a much needed reform that is very much welcome.

 

The recommendations include pushing back the window of time during which primaries and caucuses may be held; converting unpledged delegates (DNC members, Democratic Members of the House and Senate, Democratic Governors and Distinguished Former Party Leaders) to a new category of pledged delegate called the National Pledged Party Leader and Elected Official (NPLEO) delegates, which will be allocated to Presidential candidates based on the state wide primary or caucus results; and establishing a “best practices” program for caucus states to improve and strengthen their caucuses. Under the Commission's recommendations - the pre-primary window could not begin until February 1st or thereafter, and the primary window could not begin until the second Tuesday in March or thereafter.

 

 

The commission had 3 orders:

 

1. Changing the window of time during which primaries and caucuses may be held

2. Reducing the number of super delegates

3. Improving the caucus system.

 

They fell short on all three imo.

I don't think much of caucuses (other than Iowa's great tradition), and "best practices" are what the NV caucus gave us in 2008-- a fiasco.

The calendar direction is probably not going to have much power I predict, to states like NH & IA-- they'll decide what they want to decide and the parties will follow. The only way it might work is if its in concert with Republicans, but there's been no indication of that happening to date.

And there was not a decrease in the amount of superdelegates.

Still, they came up with a very good reform measure that was able to gather near-total support in the committee, and one which makes a not-so-great system somewhat-better than it was before.

We are bringing in 2010, the new decade, with a new platform or MyDD. First things first, a lot of things need changed, but the switch flipped on and it's all here :)

This MyDD is the 5th. First, there was MyDD the dark ages, of the end of the 90's, when I first bought the domain (I actually wrote a paper on the site name for a linguistics class-- will have to see if thats around somewhere on a CD). Basically, MyDD HTML-sytle. I learned how to cut and paste and found script to make three columns, and post thoughts and push them onto the site. Things like FTP that brought me back to the mid-80s', when I gave up programming with BASIC and PASCAL.

Second, Gray Matter, at somepoint mid-2001 through mid-2002. TPM and PW also ran on GM back then, but the difference was that we opened up comments here on MyDD, and invented community blogging with things like open threads and guest blogging. Third, was Movable Type, which happened with Markos coming into blogging mid-2002, and his doing a site redo for me (including the graphic)-- which launched the idea in my head that we could do this for candidates... like Howard Dean. MyDD took a haitus a in early 2003, when I went to work on Dean's campaign, until early 2004, when it returned running on Scoop. For nearly 5 years! 

MyDD5 is built with Ruby on Rails. Its a blogging component of the new WSG Netroots platform. I put off launch a new platform earlier this year, because it was too crowded a platform to innovate off of, and the developers basically re-did the Netroots platform (Netroots2) over the past few months (and the next three months), of which this is a part.

As for features, one of the biggest changes is that we are integrating BreakingBlue.com with the site, and Facebook/Twitter/Google. BB now has a bookmarklet and sync's up its content with MyDD, and will be adding those other social networking sites too soon.Another big change is how Mojo works-- off of personal verification and then contribution of content to the site. I am in the process of re-doing the FAQ/Usage pages and getting user permissions updated, so will come back to these in another post.

UPDATE: We are experiencing technical difficulties. It appears to be a cache issue-- pretty expected that we'd run into scaling issues right away though. But what this means in the next couple of days, is that we don't get to the minor fixes until we figure out how to make the data bottlenecks go out of the way. I'm putting in the extended entry things we have tickets for already.

 

She's spent $5 million so far and she's prepared to spend another $25 million of her own money on the object of her desire - a seat in the United States Senate representing Connecticut. She's Linda McMahon, the wife of wrestling kingpin Vince McMahon. From the New York Times:

She is a political novice seeking to unseat one of the most powerful Democrats in the United States Senate. But Linda McMahon does possess one big weapon: a vast personal fortune that she is already wielding to shake up the race.

Ms. McMahon has been saturating residents with television advertisements, pouring money into the campaigns of local elected officials and building a campaign organization that dwarfs its rivals.

The spending, roughly $5 million, more than 10 months before the election, has transformed Ms. McMahon, the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, into a potent political force as she seeks the Republican nomination to challenge Senator Christopher J. Dodd.

The campaign of Ms. McMahon's main rival in the Republican primary, former Representative Rob Simmons, has responded with a wave of attacks as he suddenly finds himself contending with a formidable opponent.

Even Democrats close to the Dodd campaign acknowledge concerns about facing Ms. McMahon in a general election, given the huge sums of money she has been willing to spend in the first few months of the race. Her campaign says she is prepared to spend at least $30 million to win the seat.

Thirty million is quite the tidy sum considering that in the 2008 cycle the most expensive Senate race in the country was the contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman up in Minnesota. To win the seat, the challenger Franken raised and spent $22.5 million and the incumbent Norm Coleman raised and spent $19.3 million. But of that $41.8 million, a combined $15 million was spent by both candidates in the legal challenges that arose from the close contest that led to a recount and its ensuing six month long court battle. In other words before election day, Franken and Coleman spent $26.8 million combined. McMahon may exceed that amount on her own.

Still, a bruising primary fight may be what the doctor ordered for flailing Chris Dodd who has spent $1.8 million on the race as of September. As for the other Republican in the race, Rob Simmons, he has spent $900,000 so far. Still he's being outspent 5 to 1. While the race in Connecticut has seen a grand total of $11,034,712 spent so far according to Open Secrets, that's only good enough for second place right now. In Arizona, $11,813,091 has been spent.

Just for the record, after Minnesota the two next most expensive Senate races in the 2008 cycle were in Kentucky with a combined $32.1 million spent (McConnell spent $21 million to defend his seat) and in Texas with a combined $23.0 million spent (Corynn spend $19 million to defend his seat). In the 2008 cycle, the average winner of a Senate seat spent $8,531,267. And the overall record belongs to Jon Corzine who spent $62 million to win a Senate seat from New Jersey in 2000. Combined with his winning and losing runs for governor in 2005 and 2009, Jon Corzine spent an estimated $131 million of his own money in his three runs for office.

Bumped, any others?

This article about Senate Roll Call Vote Number 392 as the Most Significant Vote of the Decade got me thinking, what are the other most significant votes (or bills passed) in the 2000's, and also the most significant campaigns of the 2000's. Lets gather a list here. First, define "significant" as noteworthy for whatever reason-- it stood out. Of course, those contests which played an important role in the development of the netroots/internet should be weighed more significantly than those which did not.

Nominate in the comments, as I will, for the most significant votes and campaigns, and we will tally them up and make the MyDD list for the 2000's.

With three weeks to go before voters in the Bay State vote to elect the successor to Ted Kennedy, the GOP candidate in the race, State Senator Scott Brown, is invoking another Kennedy in his first ad of the campaign. The 30-second spot begins with a black and white video of President John F. Kennedy giving a speech calling for tax cuts and merges into a video of Brown completing Kennedy's speech. The ad, entitled Different People, Same Message is running statewide on both cable and network television.

Watch it:

 

The ad references the Kennedy tax cuts but it doesn't note that the top marginal tax rate at the time was 91 percent and that Kennedy was proposing a top rate of 70 percent in an era of budget surpluses. It's a far cry from the situation we face today. If anything, irresponsible tax cuts that have only served to enrich the already fabulously wealthy while bleeding the US Treasury dry.

While Congressional Quarterly continues to rate the general election contest Safe Democratic, the GOP is devoting more resources in the hopes of stealing the seat. The Brown campaign is also circulating a fundraising letter written by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney who is now living in La Jolla, California. In the letter, Romney touts Brown's credentials as a fiscal conservative while also noting, in bold, that he would become the critical 41st Republican vote against the health care bill when it comes back to the Senate for final passage.

While Brown ran unopposed in the GOP primary, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley had to fend off challenges from three other candidates to win the Democratic nomination. Coakley did win the primary race handily, posting a nearly 20-point victory over her closest challenger, Congressman Michael Capuano. Here is her Act Blue fundraising link. This is not a seat we can afford to lose even if the possibility of such remains remotely distant.

Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA-19, Fresno) announced today that he will not run for re-election, due to his wife's ovarian cancer. It is a sad situation no one wants to face or wish upon their nastiest rivals, and so we wish and pray for emotional stability for the whole Radanovich family and for a full recovery for Ethie.

According to the Hill, Radanovich is the first House Republican this cycle to leave the House without looking for another office (and the 13th overall to retire). Like the four Democrats who have also done so, I believe that his retirement creates a potentially competitive seat - good news for progressives.

Radanovich's district could also be competitive. Like many California districts, it swung strongly toward the Democratic side in the 2008 presidential election. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) still won 52-46, but the district appears much more accessible to Democrats now than it was earlier this decade.

Former Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson threatened to challenge Radanovich in a primary and appears to be a good bet to enter the race the succeed him.

Radanovich, who was elected in 1994, is just 54 years old.

The Swing State Project isn't quite so rosy about the Democrats' chances this time around, looking ahead instead to 2012:

Radanovich's seat isn't prime territory for a pick-up. However, although its PVI is R+9, Barack Obama dramatically improved upon the old Democratic baseline in the district, losing the CD by only 52-46 to John McCain. Compare that to John Kerry's flattening here by a 61-38 margin four years earlier. A good deal of that shift can be attributed to the demographic changes occurring within the district, which has seen a marked increase in its minority population since 2000. Those demographic gains haven't reached the tipping point here yet, but this district could be susceptible to a bit of nipping and tucking in the next round of redistricting in order to hasten that process.

I'm more inclined to agree with The Hill than I am Swing State. While the district may be a red one now, Radanovich's predecessor was a six-term progressive Democrat. McCain may have won 52% of the vote, but this came after Bush won with 58% in 2000 and 62% in 2004. Dianne Feinstein also carried the district in 2000 (though she failed to do so in 2006). Remember also that the Democrats are likely to win the races at the top of the California ballot, retaking the Governorship and re-electing a Senator. A bloody primary could also further help Democratic chances (see NY-23); the Republican primary field will be a crowded one.  You already read about Patterson, a number of state representatives may also run, Hotline's Reid Wilson says former Rep. Richard Pombo is looking at the race, and Radanovich is himself backing Sen. Jeff Denham (not to be confused with hilarious ventriloquist Jeff Dunham). With a nasty GOP primary, some gubernatorial coattails, the right local candidate, and some committed organizing, this newly open district is winnable.

2010 is going to be a rough year for House Democrats - more so Blue Dogs than progressives, but the whole party is vulnerable. That said, given the country's equally high dissatisfaction with Republicans, the slowly recovering economy, and the poll numbers of past presidents after one year in office, I don't think it's going to be anything close to the watershed year some pundits predict. There will be rays of hope penetrating the darkness, something Republicans were unable to claim in 2006 and even 2008. CA-19 may well wind up as one such ray. A Google search for "California 19th Radanovich Democrat" brings up nothing - so progressives, start recruiting.

Community favorites this week, so far.  Enjoy.

• The latest from BENAWU: Texas candidate filing closes soon.
• Can we turn a bad bill into a good start?  Strummerson asks What Next on HCR?
• Dear Mr. President... (btchakir)
• BorderJumpers suggests ways we can get Beyond Band-Aids for Hunger.
• By allowing ourselves to become terrorized, writes pravin, The terrorist from Nigeria won.

John Yoo, who worked from 2001 to 2003 in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and who wrote a series of legal opinions that provided cover for the Bush Administration's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and "domestic wiretapping" certainly does have a sense of humor. As part of the coverage for his new book Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush, Deborah Solomon of the New York Times sat down with the now Professor of Law at Boalt on the Berkeley campus for a Q&A session.

Seeking to portray himself as a lowly apparatchik doing work for a client and giving that client what he wanted to hear but not necessarily sound legal advice,  Yoo was quizzed by Ms. Solomon thusly:

Solomon: Do you regret writing the so-called torture memos, which claimed that President Bush was legally entitled to ignore laws prohibiting torture?
Yoo: No, I had to write them. It was my job. As a lawyer, I had a client. The client needed a legal question answered.

Solomon: When you say you had "a client," do you mean President Bush?
Yoo: Yes, I mean the president, but also the U.S. government as a whole.

Solomon: But isn't a lawyer in the Department of Justice there to serve the people of this country?
Yoo: Yes, I think you are quite right, when the government is executing the laws, but if there's a conflict between the president and the Congress, then you have to pick one or the other.

Solomon: Were you close to George Bush?
Yoo: No, I've never met him. I don't know Cheney either. I have not gone hunting with him, which is probably a good thing for me.

Solomon: Weren't you invited to the White House Christmas party during your two years at the Department of Justice?
Yoo: I don't think so. That's the way the government works. There's the attorney general, then the deputy attorney general and then an associate attorney general. Then there's the assistant attorney general, who was the head of my office.

Solomon: So you're saying you were just one notch above an intern, you and Monica Lewinsky?
Yoo: She was much closer to the president than I ever was.

Funny stuff. What's not so funny is the torture that John Yoo abetted.

I'll echo Glenn Greenwald of Salon who in April 2008 wrote:

"It depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that." Yoo wasn't just a law professor theorizing about the legalization of torture. He was a government official who, in concert with other government officials, set out to enable a brutal and systematic torture regime, and did so. If this level of depraved criminality doesn't remove one from the realm of respectability and mainstream seriousness -- if not result in war crimes prosecution -- then nothing does.

That John Yoo is a full professor at one of the country's most prestigious law schools, and a welcomed expert on our newspaper's Op-Ed pages and television news programs, speaks volumes about what our country has become.

Indeed.

A noted scion of Rhode Island politics, Lincoln Chafee is set to announce a run for the Governorship in the Ocean State. The former United States Senator who defected from the GOP after his failed 2006 reelection bid that ended in a loss to Sheldon Whitehouse and who endorsed Barack Obama during the primaries now hopes to become Rhode Island's first governor without a major-party backing in more than 150 years. The last minor party candidate to win a state wide election in the Ocean State was Byron Diman in 1846 of the Law and Order Party, a short-lived party that developed in response to the famed Dorr Rebellion of 1841-42.

There's little doubt that Chafee is still bitter after surviving a bitter primary against conservative Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey in 2006 and less than sanguine about the GOP's electoral chances in New England. In early December after Rory Smith, the state's only Republican candidate for governor, dropped out, Chafee confided to the Providence Journal that "the big base of the party here in Rhode Island said good riddance to Chafee."

"Now they live with the results," added Chafee referring to the GOP's difficulty attracting and keeping candidates. Chafee went on to say that "the Moderate Party was formed in response to the ineffectiveness of the Republican Party. Certainly the wolves are at the door. They drove me out of the party."

The state GOP, Chafee said, is suffering from the "dark cloud" of the national party's agenda.

"The agenda that the national party is bent on pursuing, frankly, for me, is an erratic agenda," he continued. "We saw the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush years, unprecedented spending. And then their agenda on the environment -- that doesn't sell well here in Rhode Island. Using social issues to divide the people -- gay marriage and abortion -- at a time when people just want to get to work."

The outlook for the state and national party has never been this low, Chafee said.

"The years after Watergate, those were tough years. I think this is bleaker than ever."

The last governor in Rhode Island who wasn't either a Democrat or a Republican was William Hoppin, a Whig who served from 1854 to 1857. The current incumbent, Republican Donald Carcieri, is term-limited and can't run again next year.

An alert Bleeding Heartland reader got a recorded phone call around dinnertime Monday, featuring former Republican Governor Terry Branstad.

Apparently there were a couple of questions about how Governor Chet Culver is doing and his handling of spending and the budget. Branstad's recorded voice touted his own record on economic policy.

The call also asked if the listener would support a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to between one man and one woman, and if the listener would vote for Branstad in the upcoming Republican primary.

According to my e-mail tipster, the call said it was paid for by the Branstad for Governor comittee, and gave a phone number as well as the address for Branstad's campaign website.

This particular household has two registered Democrats and no registered Republicans, and the homeowner has had the same phone number for more than 15 years. So I figured either the calling firm was using a bad list, or Branstad's campaign is reaching out to find Democrats who aren't happy with Culver.

Since I posted about this robocall at Bleeding Heartland, a bunch of other Iowa Democrats in households with no Republicans have reported receiving the same call, including State Representative Tyler Olson of Cedar Rapids. It seems clear that the target universe for this call was active Democratic voters.

If Branstad's campaign is trying to identify Democrats willing to cross over to vote for him in the Republican primary, it makes me wonder what his internal polling says about the GOP race. I've been assuming that Bob Vander Plaats has virtually no chance of overcoming Branstad's financial and institutional advantages during the primary, but if Marco Rubio can catch up to Charlie Crist in Florida, maybe Vander Plaats can win by running to Branstad's right.

Several polls have shown Branstad leading Culver by a substantial margin, although the latest Iowa poll for the Des Moines Register undercut Branstad's electability argument somewhat by showing Vander Plaats leading Culver as well. Perhaps Republican voters will come to believe they can beat Culver with the man favored by social conservative activists as opposed to Branstad, who was drafted by elite Republican donors.

Today, December 29th, marks the bicentennial of the birth of William Ewart Gladstone arguably the greatest British Prime Minister ever and the founder of modern liberal state. Between 1833 and 1894 with brief exceptions, Gladstone served as a member of Parliament. In a career that spanned over sixty years Gladstone held the office of the Prime Minister four times in addition to serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer for seven years during the ministry of Lord Palmerston.

One of my favorite historical anecdotes is attributed to Gladstone's long time rival the Conservative leader Benjamin Disraeli who was once asked the difference between a disaster and a calamity. His response, using Gladstone as a foil, is one of the greatest quips in political history. Disraeli, in a typical dry British wit, responded wryly that a disaster would be if Gladstone were to fall into the Thames and a calamity would be if someone were to pull him out. Rarely have two men marked an age as Disraeli and Gladstone did theirs. Between 1868 and 1885, one or the other served as British Prime Minister. Gladstone would serve two additional terms as Prime Minister before definitively retiring on March 2, 1894 at the age of 84.

Among his greatest legacies are the expansion of the suffrage (though universal male suffrage would not come until 1918), free compulsory universal education, the first anti-corruption legislation and the professionalization of the British Civil Service still to this day the world's most meritorious bureaucracy. Gladstone was born of Scottish descent into a world of privilege in Liverpool, he attended Eton and Oxford and entered politics as a young man as a Tory becoming an MP for the constituency in Newark in 1833. He entered politics as a defender of the slavery who opposed the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 (his family wealth was owed to the West Indian sugar trade) and would leave it 61 years later as the one of the most transformative figures of the 19th century. His conversion to liberalism came in the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1848 that swept Europe (and Latin America) and over the issue of free trade.

Classy.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), the top GOPer on the House Intelligence Committee, is using the Christmas Day terror attack on a Detroit-bound airliner to raise money for his MI GOV race.

In a letter to potential donors, Hoekstra uses the incident -- in which a Nigerian man tried to light explosives concealed in his pants in order to bring down the plane -- to bash "weak-kneed liberals" he says threaten national security.

Whether it's playing politics by blocking President Obama's nominees for key security posts in the administration or attempting to fundraise of off an apparent attempted terrorist attack, the GOP is plainly showing the country that it simply is not serious about the issue of national security. While Republicans continue to play for headlines like the one today in Politico -- GOP seizes on terror issue (in other words, dog chases mailman) -- when it comes to actual security rather than scoring political points, the GOP is clearly deficient.

Since few media outlets have a reporter assigned to the labor beat anymore, we've heard little this year about one of President Obama's best cabinet appointments: Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.

Tracy Kurowski wrote a good post at Blog for Iowa about the Department of Labor's annual Statement of Regulatory and Deregulatory Priorities, released three weeks ago (full report here). The gist is that Solis is getting her department "back to the business of looking out for labor rather than commerce." Here are some highlights, but you should go read Kurowski's whole post for more details and background:

   * Companies would be required to file financial disclosures on their union-busting activity. [...]

   * A rule change to allow third parties to report Wage and Hour violations. This is huge. As the DOL themselves put it, "because workers are fearful of losing their jobs in this economy and therefore less likely to file complaints when they are cheated," a third party which has sufficient information to indicate a probable violation may report the abuse. It's as easy as calling 866-4US-WAGE.

   * Companies would be required to document a separate ergonomic job injury log in their Occupational Safety and Health Administration reports. No more dismissing carpel-tunnel and other repetitive motion injuries.

   * [...]the Wage and Hour Division will hire 250 new investigators - not nearly enough, but a major departure from a decade of attrition and a fox-watching-the-henhouse regulatory culture. The division will focus on industries with high violation rates including agriculture, restaurants, janitorial, construction and car washes.

   * Advancing safety standards to protect workers from combustible dust - diacetyl, the artificial butter flavoring used in microwave popcorn and the source of  the potentially deadly disease [bronchiolitis obliterans] [...].

   * Also better regulation of exposure to crystalline silica dust which causes debilitating respiratory disease which ultimately may be fatal.

   * Requiring pay stubs to break down how pay is computed to guard against wage theft.

   * [...]Now all government contractors are required to post notices of their workers' rights under federal labor laws -- a move that will better inform a fifth of the private sector workforce of their rights. [...]

   * Strengthening the restrictions of how much coal dust workers are allowed to inhale.

I've been critical of the corporate-friendly Obama administration, but at least the Department of Labor is taking steps to protect workers' rights. Now if only we could get Congress to move on the Employee Free Choice Act...

In a 1955 essay entitled The Role of Government in Education, Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winning economist and a leading member of the neoliberal Mount Pelerin Society, argued that universal vouchers for elementary and secondary schools would usher in an age of educational innovation and experimentation, not only widening the range of options for students and parents but increasing all sorts of positive outcomes. Thankfully this idea hasn't been widely adopted though it is being tested in Florida with less than stellar results so far. In his essay, Friedman also touched on the role of government in higher education arguing that government should play no role in subsiding education but rather a free market should govern the sector. He envisioned human capital contracts - an "equity-like" financial instruments - which individuals would use to finance their own higher education. In his conclusion, he wrote that:

The result of these measures would be a sizable reduction in the direct activities of government, yet a great widening in the educational opportunities open to our children. They would bring a healthy increase in the variety of educational institutions available and in competition among them. Private initiative and enterprise would quicken the pace of progress in this area as it has in so many others. Government would serve its proper function of improving the operation of the invisible hand without substituting the dead hand of bureaucracy.

Whereas Milton Friedman's vision for elementary and secondary education has been mercifully been kept at bay, his free market ideas have come to increasingly define higher education in the United States as the GOP successfully cut federal subsidies to education and as state governments also curtailed their sponsorship of public and land grant colleges. For example, since 1986 the purchasing power of the federal Pell Grant program, the nation's largest need-based financial aid program for college students, has decreased by 57 percent. Since 1980, federal financial aid has been transformed-with little explicit policy debate-from a system characterized mainly by need-based grants to one dominated by loans. In 1981, loans accounted for 45 percent and grants for 52 percent of federal student financial aid. In 2000, loans represented 58 percent of federal student financial aid, and grants represented 41 percent. The results have been an unmitigated disaster for the American middle class.

Since the early 1980's, the cost of an education at American universities has been rising steadily, at two to three times the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Since 1980, through 2005, after adjusting for inflation, the average cost of tuition plus room and board at a four year public university has increased by over 120 percent. For the private 4-year institutions, tuition prices have increased by over 140 percent. The College Board reports that private college tuition rose most sharply in the early and mid 1980's, while public tuition increased the most in the late 1980's and early 1990's. If a gallon of milk in 1980 had sustained this level of increase, it would now run just over $15.00; if a gallon of gas in 1980 had sustained this level of increase, it would now run over $9.50. While the cost of a college education has more than doubled, median income in the United States has risen by 18 percent.

This is what Milton Friedman has wrought:

Most American families have lost ground in college affordability. Over the last two decades, the cost of attending two- and four-year public and private colleges (including tuition and other education-related expenses) has grown more rapidly than inflation, and faster than family income as well. As a result, the share of family income that is needed to pay for tuition and other college expenses has increased.

The principal driver of the increased cost of attending college is higher tuition, and only the wealthiest families have seen their incomes keep pace with increases in tuition. The lowest-income families have lost the most ground, and this is a major factor in their lower rates of college attendance. For example, for the lowest-income families in 1980, tuition at public two-year colleges represented 6% of their family income. For the lowest-income families in 2000, tuition at these colleges represented 12% of their income. Likewise, tuition at public four-year colleges and universities represented 13% of income for the lowest-income families in 1980. In 2000, tuition at these colleges and universities equaled 25% of their income.

Today the Washington Post has a story on the impact of all this. I can normally write with an academic detachment on free market disasters but on the subject of education, how does one one quantify the damage inflicted? Milton Friedman wasn't just wrong; he was spectacularly wrong and thanks to his nefarious and frankly crackpot ideas millions are paying the price with dreams deferred and freedoms curtailed.

The implications are actually severe. Because the costs of attending college have risen so fast, students are choosing majors and careers that are remunerative since they are coming out with higher debt loads. So whereas Milton Friedman predicted this flourishing of ideas with positive benefits for society, in fact the very opposite has occurred. English accounted for almost 8 percent of degrees in 1971, but had sunk to 4 percent by 2002; history had 5 percent back then but now gets 2 percent. The number of degrees in foreign languages and literatures has been cut in half, from 2.4 percent to 1.2 percent. Meanwhile, business degrees accounted for 13.6 percent of the nation's bachelor's degrees in 1971, by 2002 they accounted for almost a quarter of all degrees. The outcome has been anything but positive.

Northwestern University's Medill News Service in partnership with the Tribune Newspapers Washington Bureau and the Center for Responsive Politics have released their analysis of the revolving door in the healthcare debate. OpenSecrets' Revolving Door database tracks anyone whose résumé includes positions of influence in both the private and public sectors and tracks the shuffle of individuals who were former federal employees and then take jobs as lobbyists, corporate consultants and legislative strategists as well as hired guns who then return to work in government helping to craft legislation.

The fact is that a stint on Capitol Hill as a legislative aide often leads to a more lucrative perch in the land of tasseled loafers known as K Street. For example, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has 14 of his former employees now working for the US Chamber of Commerce, Pharmaceutical Research and the National Association of Manufacturers, and Verizon while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has 13 former staffers who now lobby for clients including the US Chamber of Commerce and Pharmaceutical Research. In the healthcare debate, at least 14 former aides to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and at least 13 former aides to Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee served as registered lobbyists lobbying their former bosses and their colleagues.

At least 166 former aides from the nine congressional leadership offices and five committees involved in shaping health overhaul legislation -- along with at least 13 former lawmakers -- registered to represent at least 338 health care clients since the beginning of last year, according to the analysis.

Their health care clients spent $635 million on lobbying over the past two years, the study shows.

The total of insider lobbyists jumps to 278 when non-health-care firms that reported lobbying on health issues are added in, the analysis found.

Part of the lobbying pressure on current members of Congress and staffers comes from the powerful lure of post-congressional job possibilities.

"There's always a worry they may be thinking about their future employment opportunities when dealing with these issues, particularly with health care, because the stakes are so high and the breadth of the issues -- pharmacies, hospitals, doctors," said Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz.

Lobbyists' earnings can dwarf congressional salaries, which currently top out at $174,000 annually for lawmakers and $156,000 for aides, though committee staff members can earn slightly more.

In the health care showdown, insider lobbying influence has magnified the clout of corporate interests and helped steer the debate away from a public insurance option, despite many polls indicating majority support from Americans, according to Rutgers University political scientist Ross Baker.

"It imposes a kind of conservative bias on the discussion," said Baker, himself a former Senate staffer.

Breaking it down by Senate or House Committee, the numbers are eye-opening. Forty-five former staffers of the members of the Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) are now lobbying. Their clients include the Chamber of Commerce, Exxon Mobil, AARP, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers, General Electric, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Verizon, AT&T, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. Thirty-six current lobbyists are veterans of the Senate Finance Committee. They now represent the Chamber of Commerce, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturesrs, General Electric, and Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

Over in the House of Representatives, the House Energy and Commerce Committee has 45 former staffers now working as lobbyists, the Ways and Means Committee 23, and House Education and Labor trails with just 18.

Ben Smith reports:

As Republicans seek to put the blame for the widespread perception of ineptness at the Transportation Security Administration on the Obama administration, Democrats are arguing that Republican legislators bear part of the blame, and that they're politically vulnerable on the subject.

Perhaps the largest impediment to change at the agency: South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint has a hold on the appointment of a TSA chief, over his concern that the new administration could allow security screeners to unionize.

Republicans may carp about poor administration of the TSA, but it's hard to place blame on the President or even Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano considering that the GOP is not even allowing a vote on a new head of the agency. What's more, as Smith notes, more than 100 Republicans in Congress voted against legislation funding the TSA this year.

This all highlights a larger problem: Republicans' unwillingness to allow the government of the United States to function properly. As The New York Times detailed this weekend, fully 75 administration nominees who have already been approved by the relevant committees have not received votes in front of the full Senate -- a sorry situation that quantifies the destructive tack taken by the GOP.

The government isn't supposed to work like this. While it is acceptable and even proper for the minority to provide meaningful opposition to the administration, it is deleterious to our nation for Republicans to inhibit the government from even functioning. And although this is the type of issue that the Beltway generally pays more attention to than does the rest of the country, Americans might actually take notice when an administrative snafu arises directly implicating the GOP's tactic of blocking the confirmation of agency officials.

Kadima, led by former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, declined the offer to form a national unity government made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling the offer "cynical and unrealistic." Last week, PM Netanyahu surprised Livni with an offer to form a broad-based coalition government that would have given Kadima, the largest party in the Israeli Knesset with 28 seats, four unspecified cabinets posts. Netanyahu cited existential threats to the state of Israel in making the offer but most Israeli political observers suggested that the offer was a ploy to hasten the fracture of the centrist Kadima party, the largest opposition party.

More from Al Jazeera:

Kadima, Israel's main opposition party, has voted against joining the ruling coalition after an offer from Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, last week.

Yohanan Plasner, a Kadima MP, said that the offer had been unanimously rejected on Monday by the party's parliamentary group.

"The prime minister's proposal as relayed to the Kadima chairman does not express an honest desire for such partnership," Plasner said.

"A unity government has many advantages, but a national unity should not be an empty expression, but a commitment for a real partnership with a joint vision and principles and an agreed way to materialise these principles," he said.

Tzipi Livni, the Kadima leader, said that Netanyahu's offer was "cynical and unrealistic".

She said that the offer was an attempt to use Israel's international relations issues for "small-time politics", adding such behaviour was "unworthy of the prime minister".

I should note that Livni has been facing an internal party challenge from Shaul Mofaz, the former Transportation Minister in the Olmert government. According to Ha'aretz, Mofaz is backing Livni on the rejection saying that "Netanyahu's offer, as it appears today, is arrogant and unrealistic. This arrogance is not a good quality for a leader; I tell Netanyahu today what I told Livni a few days ago: Arrogance is not a substitute for leadership."

Meanwhile poor Bibi is playing the role of a jilted lover. The Prime Minister's office released a short statement: "Netanyahu was saddened to hear that the Kadima faction, headed by Tzipi Livni, refused his offer and refused to broaden the national unity government. In light of the challenges Israel is currently facing, the prime minister had hoped that Kadima's stance would be different."

Kadima, led by former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, declined the offer to form a national unity government made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling the offer "cynical and unrealistic." Last week, PM Netanyahu surprised Livni with an offer to form a broad-based coalition government that would have given Kadima, the largest party in the Israeli Knesset with 28 seats, four unspecified cabinets posts. Netanyahu cited existential threats to the state of Israel in making the offer but most Israeli political observers suggested that the offer was a ploy to hasten the fracture of the centrist Kadima party, the largest opposition party.

More from Al Jazeera:

Kadima, Israel's main opposition party, has voted against joining the ruling coalition after an offer from Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, last week.

Yohanan Plasner, a Kadima MP, said that the offer had been unanimously rejected on Monday by the party's parliamentary group.

"The prime minister's proposal as relayed to the Kadima chairman does not express an honest desire for such partnership," Plasner said.

"A unity government has many advantages, but a national unity should not be an empty expression, but a commitment for a real partnership with a joint vision and principles and an agreed way to materialise these principles," he said.

Tzipi Livni, the Kadima leader, said that Netanyahu's offer was "cynical and unrealistic".

She said that the offer was an attempt to use Israel's international relations issues for "small-time politics", adding such behaviour was "unworthy of the prime minister".