“Mollifying The Extremists”: GOP Back To ‘Impeachment,’ ‘Jail Time’ For Obama
As the 2014 cycle progressed, the number of congressional Republicans talking about impeaching President Obama faded, and there’s no real mystery as to what happened. GOP leaders, fearing a public backlash, told Republican incumbents and candidates to dial it down a notch. Why rile up Democrats, who too often stay home in midterm cycles, when they’re tuning out?
And as a consequence, for months, the “i” word more or less faded. That is, until very recently.
Last week, Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), less than a month into his first term in Congress, announced his belief that President Obama, without a doubt, “deserves impeachment.” He’s not the only one talking like this.
Republican Rep. Tom Marino of Pennsylvania says President Obama is “getting close” to impeachment. “People say, ‘should the president be impeached?’ I say, we’re getting close to that,” Marino said in a video posted on YouTube Wednesday by the local newspaper, the Wellsboro Gazette.
Marino said he was talking about impeachment because “it comes up consistently at town hall meetings.”
Well, that’s a good reason. Marino was a little fuzzy on what, exactly, would be the grounds for presidential impeachment, but for many GOP lawmakers, that’s a minor and inconvenient detail that shouldn’t interfere with reckless rhetoric.
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), meanwhile, has no use for subtlety and is already talking publicly about “jail time” for the president:
In an appearance on “The Steve Malzberg Show” [Tuesday], Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., continued his crusade against President Obama’s executive actions on immigration reform, calling on the federal courts to find that the president’s actions violated the law.
If Obama defies such a ruling, Brooks said, then Congress should pass a contempt citation against the president for his “reckless conduct” and demand that he comply with the court’s decision.
He said that Obama would then drop his executive actions since he, like Richard Nixon, doesn’t want to “incur the wrath that comes with a contempt citation with potential fines and jail time.”
At this point, I still consider it unlikely that GOP leaders will go along with the far-right’s impeachment crusade, but conservative media appears to be on board, and the number of congressional Republican talking up the idea since the elections keeps growing.
Even if party leaders balk, this only means they’ll have to think of something else to mollify the extremists in their midst, and pointless anti-Obama lawsuits probably won’t cut it.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 4, 2015
“Highly Situational Principles”: How The Vaccine Controversy Shows The Limits Of GOP Libertarianism
As a demonstration that anything can become political and you never know what issue is going to take over a campaign, every potential presidential candidate is now thinking very carefully about what they should say on the topic of childhood immunizations. Chris Christie kicked things off when he answered a question about a spreading measles outbreak with some comments about parental choice that he sort-of walked back, but the real news came when Rand Paul — a graduate of Duke University medical school, which I’m fairly certain is a real thing — gave an interview to CNBC in which he said, “I’ve heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.”
Needless to say, this is utterly bogus. What Paul should have noted was that this question has been studied exhaustively, and there is no evidence whatsoever that vaccines cause autism or any other “mental disorder.”
But if you thought that every GOP candidate would be rushing to pander to people’s fears about big government forcing them to stick needles in their kids, you’d be wrong. In fact, the ones we’ve heard from so far have been clearly pro-vaccine. And this shows just where the limits of libertarianism within the Republican Party are.
As the New York Times noted this morning, Mike Huckabee has in the past advocated that vaccines be widely used, and specifically dismissed the debunked connection to autism, while Rick Perry has also touted his administration’s efforts to increase vaccination. You’ll recall that Perry was criticized by his Republican opponents in 2012 for mandating that girls in Texas public schools receive the HPV vaccine (though he eventually reversed himself when he was convinced by other Texas conservatives that giving a 10-year-old girl a shot to prevent her from getting cervical cancer after she becomes an adult would obviously turn her into a sex maniac). Ben Carson also made clear that mandatory vaccination is critical to preventing disease, no matter what religious or philosophical objections people might have. John Boehner too said that every child should be vaccinated.
While there are a few candidates we haven’t yet heard from, it may be surprising that Paul isn’t getting more company; indeed, he’s probably surprised, given how much Republicans have talked about individual liberty in the last few years. Paul doesn’t deny that there are risks to not vaccinating children, but he says that it’s a matter of personal freedom: parents, not the government, should make the choice. However, it turns out that other Republicans don’t agree. In this case they believe that the welfare of the community trumps the individual’s right to decide.
What that tells us is that the broader Republican commitment to libertarian principles is highly situational. Libertarians laud themselves for their philosophical consistency (though Rand Paul is a quasi-libertarian at most), but ordinary conservatives are picking and choosing based on who’s getting what and who’s paying what. In the case of something like guns, where there’s an analogous situation (individuals want to make a choice that potentially endangers others), conservatives see the gun owner getting a benefit, and one many of them enjoy. When they say that companies should be released from environmental regulations, they’re thinking about people and organizations they admire getting the benefit of unconstrained market freedom, and the cost (environmental degradation) is something they’re only marginally concerned about.
But in the case of vaccines, the beneficiaries are a bunch of wackos and conspiracy theorists who are gaining nothing more than the ability to endanger their own children, at the cost of endangering everybody else’s children. And I’m guessing it also matters that a lot of the vaccine truthers who get attention are liberals, the Marin County types who think that because they feed their children organic food that the kids will have super-charged immune systems and therefore can’t become sick. (It should be noted that vaccine trutherism is a non-partisan affliction: liberals are no more likely than conservatives to think vaccines cause autism.)
What’s more, while it’s also true that advocating for vaccines requires conservatives to agree with Science, this issue isn’t like climate change, where many on the right think the entire scientific community is engaged in a vast conspiracy of deception. On climate, people fear that they’ll lose something (like their SUVs) and have to change their lifestyle in order to address the problem; the issue also threatens their traditional allies in the energy industry. There are few such considerations in the vaccine issue.
So the vaccine issue demonstrates that while nearly every Republican agrees with libertarian ideas on some issues, this doesn’t necessarily reflect just an inviolable philosophical commitment to individual liberty. When being a libertarian means getting something they want without having to give up anything they like, they’re happy to wave the anti-government flag. But if it means their kids might get sick because some people are dumb enough to take their medical advice from Jenny McCarthy, the needs of the many begin to look much more pressing than the delusions of the few.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, February 3, 2015
“Using Faith To Discriminate”: Religious Freedom Gives Me The Constitutional Right To Violate Your Constitutional Rights. Right?
Conservatives just love the Constitution. Or at least they say they do. The thing is, they don’t seem to have any idea how it works. At least that’s a more charitable explanation than saying they don’t care how the Constitution works and merely use it as a fig leaf while they undermine the rights it guarantees. And I’m a charitable kind of guy, so I won’t say that.
When the Supreme Court recognizes that marriage equality is a constitutionally guaranteed right, one part of the battle will be over. But conservatives have already begun to fight on another front, namely how to implement (or not) that right. Republican state legislators in Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, and both Carolinas (South Carolina was first!) have this year proposed various bills that would give government officials who perform civil marriage ceremonies and/or issue marriage licenses and other related documents the ability to refuse same-sex couples if it would violate a “sincerely held religious belief.”
Additionally, Oklahoma State Rep. Todd Russ proposed to take civil officials out of the marriage business altogether and force prospective couples to be married by “an ordained or authorized preacher or minister of the Gospel, priest or other ecclesiastical dignitary of any denomination who has been duly ordained or authorized by the church to which he or she belongs to preach the Gospel, or a rabbi.” Not a Christian or a Jew? Out of luck, apparently, although Rep. Russ says anyone else who wants to get married can “fil[e] an affidavit of common law marriage with the court clerk.” Small problem: the state of Oklahoma doesn’t recognize common law marriages, although courts have recognized some on a case-by-case basis. I’m sure Hindu and atheist couples will be just fine with that.
Even if they were adopted, such laws almost certainly would be struck down as unconstitutional. Nevertheless, they are instructive because of what they say about the conservative concept of religious freedom. John J. Kallam is a Baptist minister in North Carolina. He also served for 12 years as a magistrate judge in Rockingham County, in which capacity he officiated at numerous civil marriage ceremonies. Last October he quit after he was told he could not “opt out” of performing same-sex marriages.
“I felt, and still feel, that that is stepping on my right of religious freedom,” said Kallam. He brought up the matter of a Sikh soldier in the U.S. Army who successfully argued that religious freedom gave him the right to wear a turban and grow a beard, as mandated by his faith. Kallam asked why he should not have the freedom to act on the basis of his faith as well.
Let’s take Kallam’s argument seriously for a moment, in order to demonstrate why it is wrong to conflate these two examples as being equally deserving of legal protection under the framework of religious freedom. First, the Sikh-American soldier’s turban and beard are an act of expression that affects only himself, whereas a North Carolina magistrate judge refusing to perform a marriage directly affects other people, specifically by denying them a right that, as of last October 10, they possessed as citizens of that state. The soldier’s turban and beard do not violate anyone else’s rights, therefore they merit protection.
Religious freedom means that Kallam has every right to believe that marriage ought to be restricted to a man and a woman, or, for all I care, three men and a baby (whatever happened to Steve Guttenberg, anyway?). But Kallam cannot act on those beliefs–especially not as an officer of the state–if doing so would deny others their constitutional rights.
And this rejection of the clear distinction between expressing one’s faith and acting on it to discriminate against others is at the heart of the conservative concept of religious freedom. Last October, Gordon Klingenschmitt celebrated John Kallam for having stood up to “tyranny.” Klingenschmidt, by the way, also expressed the belief that LGBT activists “want you to disobey God so that you go to hell with them,” and added that the judges who declared bans against same sex marriage to be unconstitutional are “demonic judges who are imposing the devil’s law upon the people.”
Who is Gordon Klingenschmitt? A few weeks after making those statements on his “Pray in Jesus Name” television program, he won election and became a brand-new Republican state representative in Colorado. It’s a struggle between freedom and tyranny, folks.
In addition to pushing laws that would allow government officials to discriminate in the name of religious freedom, conservatives are also pushing laws that would allow private businesses to do the same thing, mostly in response to bakers, florists, and photographers who refused to provide services to customers putting on a same-sex marriage. According to Jim Campbell of the Alliance Defending Freedom, this is about “religious liberty.” He added, “we believe the Constitution protects the right of all citizens including business owners to live in a way consistent with their faith.” (Judges in Colorado, New Mexico, and Washington have already ruled against business owners in such cases. The business owner in the New Mexico case appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined to intervene.)
Along lines similar to Campbell and Kallam, South Carolina Republican State Sen. Lee Bright argued that laws allowing this kind of discrimination are not only right but constitutional because “we have similar language for folks that work in health care that don’t want to participate in abortions” due to their religious beliefs. At first glance, this might seem a potent argument. However, it’s little more than sleight of hand. Medical professionals are not allowed to say: “I perform abortions, but only for heterosexuals.” That would be discrimination, and that’s exactly what florists, bakers, and county magistrates would be doing if they provided their services to some, but not others.
Here’s the one I’d like to run by conservatives who talk about religious freedom in these terms: Think about someone whose religious beliefs state that women must not work outside the home. Now imagine that person having authority over hiring decisions at his job. Do his religious beliefs allow him to discriminate against a female candidate for a position? Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of both religion and sex. I’d like to see a conservative argue that religious freedom gives the man in this scenario the right to reject, out of hand, all women candidates seeking employment.
This is not about religious freedom. All Americans are guaranteed the right to their religious beliefs, the right to worship (or not) any deity they choose in the manner in which they choose. That is a bedrock principle of this country and progressives would fight tooth and nail to preserve it, should it ever be endangered. The thing is, it’s not in danger, other than from conservatives themselves, from people like Bryan Fischer, who last September said that all immigrants should be forced to convert to Christianity. Fischer remains connected to the American Family Association, an organization closely allied to the Republican National Committee.
It’s real simple. Conservatives think religious freedom gives them the right to discriminate on the basis of their religious beliefs. They’re wrong, because, to paraphrase Zechariah Chafee, their right to practice their religion ends where my nose begins.
By: Ian Reifowitz, The Blog, The Huffington Post, February 2, 2015
“Jeb’s Past vs Jeb’s Future”: A Forgiving Standard For Himself And A Punitive Standard For Everyone Else
There’s nothing in American public life quite like the scrutiny of a presidential campaign. Credible candidates can expect to see their entire lives dissected in granular ways that are often unflattering, and it’s up to voters to decide whether, and to what extent, a presidential hopeful’s life experiences matter.
With this in mind, the Boston Globe ran a lengthy feature over the weekend on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a leading Republican presidential candidate, who apparently had a troubled youth.
He bore little resemblance to his father, a star on many fronts at Andover, and might have been an even worse student than brother George. Classmates said he smoked a notable amount of pot – as many did – and sometimes bullied smaller students. […]
Meanwhile, his grades were so poor that he was in danger of being expelled, which would have been a huge embarrassment to his father, a member of Congress and of the school’s board of trustees.
At this point, I suspect many Republicans are thinking, “He was a dumb teenager and none of this tells us anything important about his character now.” It’s a perfectly legitimate defense – as brutal as a presidential vetting process is, there has to be a limit on how closely we look at candidates’ backgrounds, especially before they were even adults.
I imagine we can all look back at our high-school years and think of things we should have handled differently. Presidential politics can tolerate some statutes of limitations on teen-aged stupidity.
But in this particular case, the Globe’s look at Jeb Bush’s past may have some relevance to contemporary policy disputes.
Sen. Rand Paul says it’s hypocritical for Jeb Bush to oppose legalizing marijuana given that Bush smoked a fair amount at prep school. “You would think he’d have a little more understanding then,” Paul told The Hill while en route to a political event in Texas.
“He was even opposed to medical marijuana,” Paul said of Bush. “This is a guy who now admits he smoked marijuana but he wants to put people in jail who do.”
The Kentucky Republican, a likely Bush rival for the 2016 nomination, went on to say, “I think that’s the real hypocrisy, is that people on our side, which include a lot of people who made mistakes growing up, admit their mistakes but now still want to put people in jail for that…. Had he been caught at Andover, he’d have never been governor, he’d probably never have a chance to run for the presidency.”
I don’t say this often, but Rand Paul raises a good point.
If Jeb Bush said his drug use in high school was a long time ago, it was a teen-aged mistake, and he’d like voters to overlook his youthful indiscretions, the issue would be a non-factor in the campaign.
But that’s not quite the situation we’re confronted with here. Rather, Bush seems to support one forgiving standard for himself and a punitive standard for everyone else.
As a politician, Bush has not embraced marijuana. He spent much of his time as Florida governor championing jail instead of treatment for nonviolent drug offenders, and pushed for mandatory prison sentences for drug offenders – with the exception of his daughter, Noelle, who has struggled with crack cocaine use.
More recently, while acknowledging that states should “have a right” to decide on the legalization of marijuana, Bush publicly opposed an amendment to legalize medical marijuana in Florida.
Overlooking a presidential candidate’s high-school-era mistakes is easy. Overlooking a presidential candidate who punishes those for making the same mistakes he made is far more difficult.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 2, 2015
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