“A Lesson From The Inauguration”: When Everything Is Partisan, Just Do What’s Right
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when Republicans started complaining that President Obama’s second inaugural address was too “partisan” and lacked “outreach” across the aisle. But who was left out? What did they find “partisan”? The acknowledgement of climate science? The idea that women should receive equal pay for equal work? The nod to civil rights struggles of our past and present? The hope that no American will have to wait in hours-long lines to vote? The defense of the existence of a social safety net? The determination to offer support to the victims of a historic storm and to find real answers to the epidemic of mass shootings? In the not-too-distant past, none of these would have raised eyebrows except on the very, very far right. But I guess that’s the point: what was once the radical fringe is now in control of the Grand Old Party.
In many ways, Monday’s inauguration ceremony was a Tea Party Republican’s nightmare-come-true. The openly gay poet. The Spanish sprinkled into the benediction. The one-two-three punch of “Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall.” It was the embodiment of all that the far right has tried to wall itself off from as the country begins to include more and more of the real America in its democracy.
What would have pleased this faction, short of winning the presidential election? I imagine they would have preferred a paean to the America of their imaginations — where the founders were flawless and prescient about the right to bear assault weapons and the Constitution was delivered, amendments included, directly from God; where there are no gay people or only silent ones, where the world is not getting warmer; where there have been no struggles in the process of forging a more perfect union. This, of course, would have been its very own kind of political statement — and one that was just rejected by the majority of American voters.
If embracing America as it is rather than as a shimmery vision of what it never was constitutes partisanship, and if it turns off people who cling to that dishonest vision, let’s have more of it.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post, January 24, 2013
“Complete Ignorance”: Does Rush Limbaugh Think Civil Rights Activists Should Have Shot Cops?
Under the guidance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the practice of nonviolence was an historic cornerstone of the American civil rights movement. Writing in 1966, Dr. King affirmed, “I am convinced that for practical as well as moral reasons, nonviolence offers the only road to freedom for my people.”
But last week, spinning on behalf of gun advocates and continuing the far-right’s convoluted attempt to equate Second Amendment supporters to modern-day civil rights protesters, Rush Limbaugh suggested that if civil rights activists had brandished guns maybe the movement could have better protected itself from segregationist foes [emphasis added]:
LIMBAUGH: If a lot of African-Americans back in the ’60s had guns and the legal right to use them for self-defense, you think they would have needed Selma? I don’t know. I’m just asking. If (Rep) John Lewis, who says he was beat upside the head, if John Lewis had had a gun, would he have been beat upside the head on the bridge?
Basically Limbaugh, stretching to make an absurd point about guns in America, suggested it would have been better if Dr. King’s non-violent crusade had embraced firearms as a way to advance its cause.
Specifically, the right-wing talker wondered if civil rights icon John Lewis had been carrying a gun on March 7, 1965, would Lewis still have been beaten when he led 600 unarmed activists across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL. (aka “Bloody Sunday.”)
Not only is the gun suggestion an insult to the non-violent philosophy that Dr. King preached in the name of social justice, but it also highlights Limbaugh’s complete ignorance about the civil rights movement and who was handing out the beatings at the time. As Lewis noted while responding to Limbaugh’s comments last week, “Violence begets violence, and we believed the only way to achieve peaceful ends was through peaceful means.”
Fact: The people attacking black activists that day in Selma were Alabama state troopers. If, as Limbaugh suggested, Lewis had a gun and was willing to use it against his aggressors, if he had fired in “self-defense” after troopers charged into the crowd of peaceful protesters, that would have meant Lewis spraying bullets into a crowd of white policemen.
One can only imagine what the repercussions would have been in segregated Alabama, in 1965, and what that would have done to the cause of civil rights in the South.
Limbaugh and others are going so far around the bend trying to argue the benefits of guns and how virtually all Americans should be armed, that they’re producing historic scenarios that most people (and especially Limbaugh) would have treated as radical and revolutionary. Like civil rights marchers opening fire on policemen in 1965. (Or the idea that gun-toting African-Americans could have eradicated slavery centuries ago.)
Also, note that by telling listeners Lewis “says he was beat upside the head” during the Selma protest (emphasis on his use of “says”), Limbaugh seemed to indicate the point was open to debate or interpretation. However, this famous news photograph showing Lewis knocked to the ground in Selma and being beaten by an Alabama state trooper leaves no doubt as to what happened that day.
By: Eric Boehlert, The Huffington Post, January 22, 2013
“A New Awareness”: How The NRA Undermined Congress’ Last Push For Gun Control
Last week, President Obama unveiled sweeping proposals on gun control, including a ban on military-style assault weapons, a reduction of ammunition magazine capacity and stiffer background checks on gun buyers.
National Rifle Association president David Keene quickly accused the Obama administration of being opportunistic. The president is “using our children to pursue an ideological anti-gun agenda,” he said.
The NRA has already begun to lobby on Capitol Hill to counter the administration’s effort.
To get a sense of what the NRA might do, it’s helpful to look at how it scored a victory during the last major federal initiative to tighten gun control.
After a Virginia Tech student killed 32 students and faculty in April 2007, the Bush administration proposed legislation that would require all states to share the names of residents involuntarily committed to mental health facilities. The information would be provided to a Federal Bureau of Investigation database.
The idea, in part, was to help gun dealers get important information about whether potential customers were mentally ill.
In order to get the support of the NRA, Congress agreed to two concessions that had long been on the agenda of gun-rights advocates — concessions that later proved to hamstring the database.
The NRA wanted the government to change the way it deemed someone “mentally defective,” excluding people, for example, who were no longer under any psychiatric supervision or monitoring. The group also pushed for a way for the mentally ill to regain gun rights if they could prove in court that they’d been rehabilitated.
The NRA found allies on both sides of the aisle to champion the concessions.
Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) reportedly pushed the provisions, ultimately with the support of the bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), whose husband was killed and her son wounded in a 1993 shooting on the Long Island Railroad.
The NRA agreed to support the bill, in exchange for provisions pushing states to create gun rights restoration programs.
Here’s how it worked. It would cost money for states to share their data: A state agency would have to monitor the courts, collect the names of people who had been institutionalized, and then send that information to the FBI on a regular basis.
So, to help pay for data-sharing, Congress created $375 million in annual federal grants and incentives. But to be eligible for the federal money, the states would have to set up a gun restoration program approved by the Justice Department. No gun rights restoration program, no money to help pay for sharing data.
A spokesman for Dingell’s office did not respond to calls for comment on this story. A McCarthy spokesman, Shams Tarek, said the congresswoman is now working on new legislation to “provide more incentives and stiffen penalties for states to put names in the database.”
“We definitely think there’s a lot of room for improvement,” said Tarek.
The NRA supported Dingell and McCarthy’s version of the bill, but the group won further concessions when the legislation reached the Senate.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) who once joked he’d like to bring a gun with him to the Senate floor, blocked the legislation, citing concerns about privacy and spending.
He negotiated language that, among other things, would allow a person’s application for gun rights restoration to be granted automatically if an agency didn’t respond within 365 days of the application and allowed people to have their attorney’s fees reimbursed if they were forced to go to court to restore their rights.
The final bill was sent to President Bush for his signature in January, 2008.
The NRA praised Coburn and released a statement calling the law a victory for gun owners: “After months of careful negotiation, pro-gun legislation was passed through Congress today.” (The NRA didn’t respond to calls for comment.)
In an email, a Coburn spokesman told ProPublica that the senator “does not operate as an agent of the NRA when considering legislation regarding gun rights” and pointed to a recent statement on the president’s gun proposals. (In the statement, Coburn said he supports improving the mental health database, but said overall, “we first must ensure our Constitutional rights and individual liberties.”)
Since the bill’s passage, two analyses have shown that National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database has significant gaps, partly because of the way the NRA managed to tweak the legislation. Many states aren’t sharing all of their mental health records.
A July 2012 report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that while the overall number of records increased exponentially since the law passed, the rise is largely due to cooperation from just 12 states.
The nonprofit group Mayors Against Illegal Guns also released a report in 2011 showing that many states have failed to fulfill their obligations to report data on the mentally ill to the federal government. While Virginia and a few others have disclosed tens of thousands of records, 23 others and the District of Columbia reported fewer than 100 records. Seventeen states reported fewer than 10 records and four submitted no data at all.
“Millions of records identifying seriously mentally ill people and drug abusers as prohibited purchasers are missing from the federal background check database because of lax reporting by state agencies,” the report said.
According to the report, the reasons for such uneven compliance vary by state. Some states don’t turn over data because their privacy laws prevent them from doing so. Some states have a different interpretation on what kind of data needs to be provided, or what, exactly, constitutes “mentally ill” or “involuntarily committed.”
Still others simply can’t afford the expense of gleaning the data from the courts, providing it to the relevant state agency and then passing it on to the federal government.
The NRA-backed language creates problems for these states.
As a New York Times investigation found, many states haven’t qualified for federal funding to share their data because they haven’t established gun rights restoration programs.
In 2012, only 12 states received federal grants, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
A Coburn spokesman pointed out that some states have had trouble setting up restoration programs because gun control advocates in those states have protested them.
While mental health data has remained sparse, some states have made it easier for the mentally ill to restore their gun rights. As the Times noted, in Virginia some people have regained rights to guns by simply writing a letter to the state. Other Virginians got their rights back just weeks or months after being hospitalized for psychiatric care.
It’s difficult to know just how many people in Virginia have had their gun rights restored because no agency is responsible for keeping track.
Despite the limitations of the mental health database, some gun control advocates still see it as better than nothing.
“The fact that so many states have been able to get so many records into the database does demonstrate a willingness on the part of certain groups to work on this issue and that’s a good sign. The others really need to step up,” said Lindsay Nichols, a staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
The group, then known as the Legal Community Against Violence, was one of several gun control organizations that opposed the legislation when it was first signed into law.
Nichols is optimistic that the NRA won’t succeed in commandeering the gun control debate the way the group did after Virginia Tech.
“I think there’s new awareness among the public and legislators that we need to take this issue seriously and it’s not an issue where the public is going to accept political wrangling.”
By: Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica, January 25, 2013
“Already In The Line Of Fire”: Predictable Republican Response To Women’s Roles In The Military
The conservative reaction to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s announcement that the military would abolish its arbitrary restriction against women serving in positions defined as “combat roles” is predictable but a bit behind the times. As Adam Serwer at Mojo quickly pointed out, a lot of women are already placing themselves in the line of fire without technically being in a combat role. Check out Serwer’s response to the Daily Caller‘s Tucker Carlson, who has been prominent among opponents of the rule change:
Carlson is a political journalist, so he might be expected to know that there is a woman US Army veteran amputee named Tammy Duckworth currently serving in Congress. Duckworth, who represents Illinois’ 8th congressional district, lost her legs after an attack brought down the helicopter she was piloting in Baghdad.
But this development is actually a bit older than you might think. Back in 2002, on the brink of the second Iraq War, in a Washington Monthly article, Phillip Carter predicted thousands of women would serve in de facto combat roles in Iraq, based on earlier experience:
Since the Gulf victory in 1991, a series of largely unnoticed policy changes have opened new opportunities for women to fight alongside, and even to lead, front-line troops. The Navy and Air Force, with some fanfare, allowed women into the cockpits of fighters and bombers. But less well known is how vastly the Army has expanded the role of women in ground-combat operations. Today, women command combat military police companies, fly Apache helicopters, work as tactical intelligence analysts, and even serve in certain artillery units–jobs that would have been unthinkable for them a decade ago. In any war in Iraq, these changes could put thousands of women in the midst of battle, far more than at any time in American history.
Carter, like Serwer, notes that having combat roles officially opened will be extremely helpful to women who want a professional career in the armed services, since combat experience is often crucial to promotion opportunities. And in any event, elimination of the gender barrier does not mean women unqualified for combat roles will assume them, any more than unqualified men, a point Serwer makes:
Most men cannot meet the necessary mental and physical requirements for service in combat. Any woman who can meet those standards should not be denied the opportunity because of an arbitrary gender restriction. Moreover, removing the restriction is not about celebrating militarism. The military has long been a path for historically disfavored groups to claim the full benefits of citizenship. Justifying discrimination against blacks, gays and lesbians, or women becomes much more difficult when they’re giving their lives for their country.
Perhaps that’s an underlying motive for conservatives deploring the change: it helps give discrimination a bad name!
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 24, 2013
“The Ignorant Inquisitors”: Capitol Hill’s Angry Little Men Keep Making Hillary Clinton Bigger
Anyone truly concerned about the safety of U.S. diplomatic personnel abroad – and that should include every American – has fresh reason for fury over last September’s disaster in Benghazi and its aftermath. But the target of public anger should not be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose conduct has been exemplary ever since the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three of his brave colleagues lost their lives last September. Far more deserving of scorn are the likes of Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and all the other grandstanding, conspiracy-mongering, ill-informed politicians who questioned her Wednesday on Capitol Hill.
Four months after the tragedy occurred, Republicans on both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee still seem to be obsessed with the talking points provided to UN Ambassador Susan Rice before she appeared on television to discuss the incident. According to Republican folklore, unsupported by facts, the Obama White House engaged in a conspiracy to conceal the true nature of the terrorist attack by mischaracterizing it as a “demonstration.” The continuing focus on that trivial issue – long since explained by Rice herself, as well as retired General David Petraeus and others, under oath – understandably provoked an exasperated Clinton to scold Johnson, one of the dimmer idols of the Tea Party.
When the Wisconsin Republican began to harp on this topic yet again – interrupting her answer, after stupidly asserting that Clinton could have resolved any questions about the attack with “a very simple phone call” to the burned-out Benghazi compound – she responded sharply:
With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because there was a protest or was it because there were guys who went out for a walk one night who decided they would kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and to do everything we can to make sure it never happens again.
No doubt Clinton’s utterly sane retort will undergo dishonest editing, in the style of James O’Keefe, to make her sound cavalier or arrogant. But it is the Republicans in Congress whose attitude toward the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and his fallen comrades has seemed cynical and false, ever since they first sought to exploit the incident politically during the presidential campaign. Meanwhile, having historically supported reductions in federal spending on diplomatic security, they have done nothing useful so far to enhance the safety of Americans serving abroad. Worse still, their questions to Clinton indicate that very few of them, even at this late date, have bothered to learn the basic facts surrounding the Benghazi incident.
By contrast, Clinton has assumed responsibility in a meaningful way ever since September 11 – which is to say that she has taken action to ensure a serious response. As required by law, she empowered an independent investigation, which resulted in dozens of recommendations for improved security and held several high-ranking State Department officials to account for the lapses in Libya. It is worth noting that Thomas Pickering, the distinguished former diplomat who led the probe, fixed culpability for the security flaws at Benghazi at “the assistant secretary level,” rather than with Clinton herself. Nobody in Washington understands the workings of the U.S. foreign service better than Pickering, who served in top positions under both presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Certainly not Johnson or Paul, who rather comically asserted that “if [he] were president,” he would have fired Clinton. Always hard to imagine, a Paul presidency seemed even more remote when he quizzed her about obscure right-wing conspiracy theories involving Syria, Turkey, and Libya.
As Joan Walsh observed in Salon, those irate and ignorant inquisitors on Capitol Hill appeared small and peevish in their confrontation with Clinton, a woman whose serious, diligent, tireless approach to public service has armed her with an enduring popularity at least three times greater than her Republican adversaries in Congress. Their feeble attempts to cut her down, echoed by the usual loudmouths on radio and cable television, only make her bigger.
If they persist, she probably will be president someday.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, January 24, 2013
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