“GOP Lawmakers Are Violating The Logan Act”: Playing With Fire; Senate GOP Tries To Sabotage Nuclear Talks
In a practical sense, when congressional Republicans invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deliver a joint-session address, it was part of a larger sabotage campaign. GOP lawmakers, without so much as a hint of embarrassment, are openly trying to derail international diplomatic talks with Iran, and Republicans had no qualms about partnering with a foreign government to undermine American foreign policy.
The GOP gambit arguably marked a new low. But after hitting the bottom of the barrel, Republicans dug a hole and fell just a little further.
A group of 47 Republican senators has written an open letter to Iran’s leaders warning them that any nuclear deal they sign with President Barack Obama’s administration won’t last after Obama leaves office. […]
“It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system…. Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
Josh Rogin’s report makes clear that the signatories “hope that by pointing out the long-term fragility of a deal with no congressional approval … the Iranian regime might be convinced to think twice” about striking a deal with Americans and our negotiating partners.
The letter was organized by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a right-wing freshman who has spent months bragging about his hopes of destroying any diplomatic agreement intended to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The list of the 47 GOP senators who signed on to the letter is online here. Note, that list features several presidential hopefuls, including Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio. (Only seven Senate Republicans decided not to endorse the letter: Lamar Alexander, Dan Coats, Thad Cochran, Susan Collins, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and Lisa Murkowski.)
Norm Ornstein noted this morning that he’s “flabbergasted” by the “astonishing breach of conduct.” That’s clearly the appropriate response. But I’m also struck by how dangerous the Republicans’ conduct is.
As we discussed back in January, when the broader sabotage campaign came into focus, there is no real precedent for this in the American tradition. The U.S. system just isn’t supposed to work this way – because it can’t. Max Fisher explained that we’re looking at “a very real problem for American foreign policy.”
The Supreme Court has codified into law the idea that only the president is allowed to make foreign policy, and not Congress, because if there are two branches of government setting foreign policy then America effectively has two foreign policies.
The idea is that the US government needs to be a single unified entity on the world stage in order to conduct effective foreign policy. Letting the president and Congress independently set their own foreign policies would lead to chaos. It would be extremely confusing for foreign leaders, and foreign publics, who don’t always understand how domestic American politics work, and could very easily misread which of the two branches is actually setting the agenda.
The United States and our allies have reached a delicate stage of diplomacy on a key issue, but as far as congressional Republicans are concerned, the United States isn’t really at the negotiating table at all – the Obama administration is. Republican lawmakers not only disapprove of the process, they also feel justified conducting their own parallel, freelance foreign policy, which includes partnering with foreign governments and sending a message to the very rival the United States and our allies are negotiating with.
In other words, for the first time anyone can remember, we’re watching American elected officials brazenly trying to sabotage American foreign policy.
Under the circumstances, it’s no longer ridiculous to wonder whether GOP lawmakers are violating the Logan Act.
As for the GOP’s legal argument to Tehran, Jack Goldsmith added, “It appears from the letter that the Senators do not understand our constitutional system or the power to make binding agreements.”
Unfortunately, that’s not the only thing they fail to understand. They seem equally confused about propriety, U.S. protocols, and how American foreign policy is supposed to work.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 9, 2015
“New Voting Laws Show That The Struggle Continues”: Pointing To A Growing Lack Of Respect For Individual Voting Rights
Growing up in Mississippi more than 50 years ago, Sammie Louise Bates had to help her grandmother count the money needed to pay poll taxes. Living under Jim Crow laws angered Bates — and inspired her to become a lifelong voter.
Bates was 25 when the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, abolishing poll taxes and other discriminatory voting practices. For most of her life she did not face hurdles to the ballot box like her grandmother did.
But in 2013, that changed. Bates was no longer able to vote because her home state of Texas passed a new restrictive voter ID law. To get an acceptable photo ID, she first needed to pay $42 for a birth certificate. The cost was too much: “We couldn’t eat the birth certificate,” she testified in a lawsuit, “and we couldn’t pay rent with the birth certificate.”
Bates is an example of the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of Americans who now face difficulties voting because of new state laws restricting the right to vote. On the 50th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march, which galvanized support for the VRA, these Americans remind us that the struggle is not over.
After decades of progress, the past five years has seen the most extensive attack on voting rights since the VRA was signed into law. Since 2011, every state but one has considered legislation that would make it harder for many eligible citizens to vote, and half the states passed new voting restrictions. By the 2014 election, after lawsuits and repeal efforts, voters in 21 states faced tougher voting rules than they did in 2010.
These new voting restrictions — which go beyond Texas-style photo ID laws and include things like early voting cutbacks and voter registration restrictions — apply to everyone. But they are not neutral in their impact. While most people do have a driver’s license or a similar state-issued photo ID, for example, the 11 percent of Americans who do not are disproportionately African-American and Latino.
And while most people still vote on Election Day, minorities make up a disproportionate number of those who voted on the weekend and other early voting days cut in states like North Carolina and Ohio. The net effect of these changes is a voting system that is less accessible to minorities, especially those with modest incomes.
A federal court found last year that Texas’s photo ID law was passed for the purpose of discriminating against the state’s minority voters.
In at least some states, this effect is not an accident. A federal court found last year that Texas’s photo ID law was passed for the purpose of discriminating against the state’s minority voters. (That case is now on appeal.)
Race has played a significant role elsewhere as well. The push to restrict voting came after a surge in participation among African-Americans and certain other groups in 2008. Recent studies found that the more a state experienced increases in minority and low-income voter turnout, the more likely it was to push and pass laws cutting back on voting rights. The Brennan Center similarly found that of the 11 states with the highest black turnout in 2008, seven passed laws making it harder to vote. Of the 12 states with the largest Hispanic population growth in the 2010 Census, nine states did so. And of the 15 states that used to face special monitoring under the VRA because of a history of racial discrimination in elections, nine states passed laws that make it more difficult to vote.
Unfortunately, efforts to restrict voting show no signs of abating. In the first few weeks of this year, legislation was introduced in 17 states and already progressed in two.
All this points to an urgent and continuing need for strong legal protections for voting rights — protections sought and won by the brave marchers 50 years ago in Selma. But here’s the rub: in the midst of a controversial and racially-charged battle over voting rights, the US Supreme Court gutted a core provision of the VRA. The net result has been not only a loss of voter protections in the courts but also a marked increase in discriminatory voting changes in states that used to be covered by the law. This contributes to a growing lack of respect for voting rights — arguably the defining feature of American democracy.
So what can we do? For starters, urge Congress to update and restore the Voting Rights Act. Urge your state not to pass retrograde voting restrictions, and instead to modernize the voter registration system and adopt other sensible improvements like those recommended by a recent bipartisan presidential commission. And join the tens of thousands of Americans flocking to Selma this week in honoring one of our nation’s greatest accomplishments — the recognition of the equal right to vote for every eligible American.
We have come a long way, but we still have farther to go.
By: Wendy Weiser, Director, The Democracy Program at The Brennan Center for Justice: Bill Moyers Blog, Moyers and Copany, March 6, 2015
“Straight To ‘Hell No'”: The Rapid Radicalization Of The Republican Party By The Hard Right
This is a blog, not a history lesson. But I can’t resist trying to make some sense of the current Republican desire for self-immolation.
Where has this so-called “Hell No Caucus” come from? Whether it is refusing to pass bills to fund the government, approve increases in the debt ceiling or provide money for the Department of Homeland Security, the Republican Party has an increasingly apparent and growing antagonism to pragmatic solutions. It has drifted so far right that it is truly in danger of self-destruction. As New York Republican Rep. Peter King, put it on CBS’ “This Week,” “[T]here’s a wing within the Congress which is absolutely irresponsible – they have no concept of reality.” Speaking with MSNBC’s Luke Russert on Friday, he added, “I’ve had it with this self-righteous, delusional wing of the party.”
The GOP has become more and more extreme, to a point where it is barely recognizable from what it was in the 20th century. Even Ronald Reagan, and certainly Barry Goldwater, would not understand their party today.
I remember producing a pamphlet on the rise of the “New Right” in the early 1980s with an analysis of groups like the National Conservative Political Action Committee, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, the Conservative Victory Fund and many others. We argued how destructive the extreme right wing views were at the time but little did we realize how nihilistic they would become.
Here is the history lesson.
A very conservative group formed in 1973 called the Republican Study Committee. They were small, but they were opposed to both Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford as too liberal and decided to organize against their policies. Then-Rep. Phil Crane of Illinois and congressional staffers Paul Weyrich, who went on to found the Heritage Foundation, and Ed Feulner, who later headed Heritage, were driving forces, along with several other members of Congress. When Newt Gingrich became House speaker in 1995, he didn’t want a separate group on his flank causing trouble, despite the fact that his conservative views were not too far from theirs. So he abolished it; but it came back.
A National Journal article last year discussed in detail the evolution and rapid growth of this far right caucus.The growth of the Republican Study Committee since 1995 has been truly dramatic – 15 members out of 218 in 1995, up to 72 members out of 220 in 2001 and skyrocketing to 171 members in 2013. The percentage of Republicans who joined this very conservative group went from 7 percent in 1995 to over 70 percent last year.
It is not too difficult to understand why House Speaker John Boehner, or any speaker, might have trouble with his or her Republican caucus.
Of course, there are other groups. Michele Bachmann helped organize the Tea Party Caucus several years ago, a group more extreme than the Study Committee. And, now, an initial nine members of the Study Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, have begun to assemble the House Freedom Caucus. More trouble is afoot than Republicans may realize.
The vote last Friday where 52 Republicans bucked the speaker on his effort to move forward on funding for DHS says a lot about the GOP’s direction. The numbers don’t add up for Boehner to move much of anything forward, and the Senate won’t buy what the Study Committee or the Freedom Caucus are selling.
The rapid radicalization of the Republican Party is playing out in the presidential sweepstakes as well. The Conservative Political Action Conference has gone from a fringe gathering to a primary litmus test for most candidates.
There is no such thing as a moderate voice in the leadership of the Republican Party any longer; there is barely a Main Street conservative voice that will get traction within the party that now finds itself in control of the House and Senate. Even the John Boehners and the Mitch McConnells live in fear of the new suicide caucus.
The problem, as many Republicans know, is that this crowd is ungovernable and ultimately, nationally, unelectable.
By: Peter Fenn, U.S. News and World Report, March 3, 2015
“Netanyahu’s Missed Opportunity”: And If Bibi Is Correct, The Real Solution Is … What Exactly?
All eyes were on Capitol Hill this morning, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress, hoping to undermine nuclear diplomacy with Iran. Everyone involved in the debate, regardless of their position, had a pretty good idea as to what the Israeli leader was going to say, and he met expectations.
A senior administration official told Jake Tapper there was “literally not one new idea” in Netanyahu’s speech, and “not one single concrete alternative” to the ongoing P5+1 talks. The official added that the prime minister’s speech was “all rhetoric, no action.”
The complaints have the benefit of being true.
Putting aside the fear-mongering and the Cheney-esque rhetoric, what Netanyahu’s remarks boiled down to was a straightforward message: Iran is bad and the deal that’s coming together with Iran won’t work. What Netanyahu’s speech was supposed to do was offer policymakers and critics of the talks a viable alternative solution, and on this front, the prime minister blew it. As Jon Chait noted:
Netanyahu’s panicked plea for what he called ”the survival of our country” is hardly a figment of his imagination. His recitation of the evils of Iran’s regime was largely correct. He might conceivably be correct that the Obama administration could have secured a stronger deal with Iran than the one it is negotiating, though that conclusion is hard to vouchsafe without detailed knowledge of the negotiations. […]
But Netanyahu did not make even the barest case for a better alternative.
It’s a familiar problem for President Obama’s critics: there’s an obvious problem in need of a solution; there’s a proposal preferred by the White House; and there are Obama’s critics, insisting they hate the president’s solution without offering a credible alternative of their own.
It’s not that Netanyahu critique is necessarily unpersuasive. Iran does not have a trustworthy track record, and no one in the Western world thinks it’d be a positive development for Tehran to have nuclear weapons. In fact, Obama has already said all of this; it’s an accepted consensus.
But it’s the case the Israeli leader builds on this foundation that’s problematic. For Netanyahu, no deal with Iran will work. No system of inspections will work. No verification process will work. No promises from Iran can be trusted.
And if Netanyahu is correct, the real solution is … what exactly? The prime minister had the platform to present a more effective vision, but he chose not to present one.
Perhaps the message was implicit and unstated. Maybe the audience was supposed to simply understand that Netanyahu prefers a military solution, disrupting an Iranian nuclear program through airstrikes. But (a) if that is the prime minister’s solution he should say so; and (b) there’s no reason to assume that a military campaign against a possible Iranian threat will permanently derail the country’s nuclear ambitions. On the contrary, it might even do the opposite.
“The alternative to this bad deal is a much better deal,” he told American lawmakers today. In theory, that sounds great – better deals are always, by definition, superior to bad deals. But where is this elusive better deal? What are its details? How would it receive international support? How would it be implemented?
Netanyahu didn’t, and wouldn’t, say. What a missed opportunity.
Postscript: At one point, the prime minister said, “I can only urge the leaders of the world not to repeat the mistakes of the past.” This isn’t what Netanyahu meant, one of the mistakes of our recent past was listening to him when he said invading Iraq was a great idea. If we’re going to avoid repeating mistakes, maybe we can start here.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 4, 2015
“Interpreting A Statute Requires Reading All Of It”: Challenge To Affordable Care Act Hinges On 4 Words In Isolation, Not The Full Law
When the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in King vs. Burwell, all eyes will be on Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., to try to figure out which way he’s leaning. After all, this case is the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act, and the last time the law was before the high court, Roberts was the deciding vote in favor of the government. There’s one very good reason to think the chief justice will rule for the government again: He’s too good a lawyer to do otherwise.
King is all about the meaning of the Affordable Care Act, specifically, whether the law makes tax credits to low- and middle-income Americans available to all individuals who qualify based on income, or only to those who live in states with state-run healthcare exchanges. The plaintiffs argue that tax credits aren’t available to individuals who purchase their insurance on exchanges run by the federal government. But it’s difficult to imagine a legal mind like Roberts’ agreeing with an argument as weak as the one the plaintiffs have offered.
Interpreting a statute requires reading it carefully — all of it. You can’t just look at a few words in isolation. As Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in 2006 (in an opinion that Roberts joined), “Interpretation of a word or phrase depends upon reading the whole statutory text, considering the purpose and context of the statute, and consulting any precedents or authorities that inform the analysis.”
When you look at the entire law, it’s clear that tax credits should be available on all exchanges, both state and federal. The statute defines who qualifies for a tax credit based on income level (not state of residence), and it also makes clear that federal exchanges are the functional equivalent of state-run exchanges by requiring that states set up exchanges, but allowing the federal government to set up “such exchange(s)” in their stead if they elect not to.
To now argue otherwise, the plaintiffs in this case rely on just four words in the law — “established by the State” — that appear in the formula for calculating the amount of the credit (not in the provision defining which individuals qualify for it). But a careful reading of the statute shows that those four words are there to make clear that the relevant exchange for calculating the amount of the credit is the exchange in the state where the individual purchased his or her insurance (state-run or not).
This problem is fatal to the plaintiffs’ argument, as the chief justice should surely recognize. But there are many other problems with their argument, as has become increasingly clear in the run-up to oral argument. Most significant, the plaintiffs have long maintained that Congress intentionally limited tax credits to encourage states to set up their own exchanges. The members of Congress who led the passage of the law have always said otherwise. As a number of the chairs of the committees that crafted the Affordable Care Act wrote last year, “None of us contemplated that the bill as enacted could be misconstrued to limit financial help only to people in states opting to directly run health insurance marketplaces.”
Indeed, the evidence against the plaintiffs’ case on this point is so strong that in their most recent filing with the Supreme Court, they argue that it is “irrelevant whether Congress subjectively intended” to limit the tax credits. The plaintiffs may hope that these holes in their legal argument don’t matter. But these points should matter to the chief justice and the rest of the court.
There’s already been a great deal of speculation about why Roberts might rule for the government. Some pundits and court watchers have pointed out that a ruling for the plaintiffs in this patently partisan attempt to gut the Affordable Care Act might impair the legitimacy of the court. Others in the legal and business communities have noted that a ruling against the government would result in significant chaos and disruption to insurance markets in the affected states because the tax credits are necessary for the law’s other market reforms to work properly.
These points are both right. But if the chief justice votes for the government, as he should, the reason may be far simpler: He’s too good a lawyer to do otherwise.
By: Brianne J. Gorod, Appellate Counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, was an author of the brief filed on behalf of some members of Congress and state legislators in King vs. Burwell. She wrote this for the Los Angeles Times; The National Memo, March 2, 2015
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 