“Under Seige By Conservatives”: Progressives Must Take Back The Courts
Confronted by record judicial vacancies and unprecedented Senate obstruction in filling our courtrooms, the White House Monday is convening a summit meeting of 150 advocates and community leaders from across the country — to demonstrate that the courts are crucial for our nation.
Regardless of where you live, or what issues you care about, all Americans deserve a judiciary that works.
Why Monday? A short-lived Senate deal to speed the pace of some judicial nominees expires that day. Yet right now, roughly 250 million Americans live in a community without enough judges on the bench. Much more needs to be done.
The White House summit reaffirms that progressives at all levels, and from all corners, are deeply committed to filling our nation’s courtrooms with qualified judges quickly — today and in coming months.
A record number of courtrooms are not functioning because there are not enough judges seated to do the work of the American people. This includes 19 empty federal bench seats in 16 states that could be filled today.
Our nation’s courts — where Americans vindicate their most cherished constitutional rights — are under siege by conservatives. As we have seen over the past few months, Senate Republicans have significantly stalled votes on qualified nominees — including ones with broad bipartisan support — just for the sake of obstruction. Many have later been approved by significant margins.
Conservatives have long made the courts a priority. When in power, they have actively worked to fill the bench with judges who share a conservative ideology — one increasingly out of the mainstream. So it should be no surprise that Senate Republicans are so adamant about blocking any progress on filling our nation’s courts today.
The third branch of government has for too long been neglected in politics — particularly by liberals. Yet it plays a defining role in the American story. And progressives have a huge stake in making sure our courtrooms have a full complement of judges familiar with our issues to make the tough calls.
Every issue progressives care about today ends up in court. From education and immigration to the right to work; from clean air, water and food, to the right of the laws of the land to apply equally to all Americans; from protecting the right of our elected representatives to writing laws that protect consumers and providing for our health.
Fortunately, progressives are rising to the challenge. We need judges confirmed now, to be sure. But what we really need — and what we are doing — is building a long-term foundation among the nation’s progressives, on all issues, to care about the courts. Because they matter for all that we stand for.
It’s a foundation motivated by basic values and interests, not just short-term political tactics. We are engaging new groups of progressives to integrate issues involving the courts into their daily work — in their local communities and online — for the long term.
If you care about your issue, you should care about the courts. Or else our hard-fought gains will be undone by an increasingly conservative judiciary.
We know this strategy works. Consider, in just a few days, a groundswell of support forced the Susan G. Komen Foundation to reverse a politically motivated decision to end its funding relationship with Planned Parenthood. Tens of thousands of progressives organized and made their voices heard — online, with small donations and in communities nationwide — and achieved results.
The same thing happened last fall when Bank of America backed down from imposing a monthly $5 debit card fee after an online change.org petition collected 300,000 signatures. This same energy essentially fuels the Occupy movement.
This is a strategy that works especially well for defending the foundational principles of our democracy that progressives care about — like fully functioning courts.
Voters organizing to make their voices heard is the only thing that can counter the power of money-driven advertising in politics. It’s the very essence of a system that works for all Americans — not just the wealthy few.
By: Andrew Blotky, Opinion Contributor, Politico, May 6, 2012
“Politics Over Common Sense”: Jan Brewer’s Abortion Grenade, Defunding Planned Parenthood
Arizona’s governor threw yet another political volley at Planned Parenthood Friday night, inking a law aimed at preventing thousands of women on state Medicaid rolls from accessing family-planning services—including breast exams and pap smears—from organizations that also offer abortions.
Jan Brewer signed HB 2800 into law at a gathering of the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that claims on its website that its “grassroots activists” are “on the front lines in the battle to defund America’s abortion giant—Planned Parenthood.”
The bill drew swift reaction from former U.S. surgeon general Richard Carmona, Arizona’s Democratic candidate for senator. At an opening of his campaign office in Phoenix on Saturday, Carmona told The Daily Beast that “anything we do to diminish access of health care to women” is bad policy.
A longtime preventive-health-care advocate, Carmona said in a statement released today: “This is an example of how politics and overheated rhetoric get in the way of common sense. Planned Parenthood provides a vast array of women’s health care services, often reaching under-served communities where health and economic disparities make access to quality care difficult.”
Bryan Howard, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona, struck a similar note, telling The Daily Beast that the intent of the law is to “score political points” and “demonize” Planned Parenthood to “appease certain segments of the voting public.”
The law will reduce Planned Parenthood’s clients by about 10 percent. About 4,000 women on Medicaid, out of a total of 40,000-45,000 patients overall, visit the organization’s 14 Arizona offices, Howard said.
But the law will likely also impact thousands more who may seek family-planning services from Planned Parenthood when the Affordable Health Care for America Act takes full effect in 2014.
As late as last month, Medicaid officials were still trying to figure out the economic ramifications of the bill, according to The Arizona Republic. Officials were not available for comment on Saturday.
In a statement released in the wake of the ceremonial bill signing, Brewer said: “This is a common-sense law that tightens existing state regulations and closes loopholes in order to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not used to fund abortions, whether directly or indirectly.”
Asked about the political strategy behind signing the bill alongside the Susan B. Anthony List, the governor’s spokesman, Matthew Benson, wrote in an email: “Susan B. Anthony List is one of the nation’s most prominent supporters of pro-life elected officials, and HB 2800 was a high priority of the group. It only made sense to sign the measure into law in front of this group and its members.”
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Susan B. Anthony List donates mostly to Republicans. It contributed $511,416 to Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign in 2012, and in 2010 donated about $23,000 to attempt to defeat congressional Democratic pro-choice candidates Gabrielle Giffords, Raul Grijalva, and Ann Kirkpatrick. (Kirkpatrick lost; the other two won their bids.)
Brewer held off signing the HB 2800 until Tea Party legislators passed one of her top priorities: a bill that would make it easier for her to fire and discipline state employees.
Planned Parenthood is considering a legal challenge as its next step. It’s not “acceptable,” Howard said, to have the state prohibit women from choosing where they want to get birth control.
By: Terry Greene Sterling, The Daily Beast, May 5, 2012
“Unpatriotic And Treasonous”: The Secretive Group Trying To Swift Boat Barack Obama
A secretive right-wing group, Veterans For A Strong America, is attempting to do to President Obama what the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did to Sen. John Kerry in 2004. And they aren’t shy about it. The group’s leader and sole employee, Joel Arends, told Mother Jones, “Yes, it’s the swift boating of the president.”
Arends said his goal is to take “what’s perceived to be [Obama’s] greatest strength” — the successful raid on Osama Bin Laden’s Pakistani compound — and make it “his greatest weakness.” The effort started this week with a web video attacking Obama for taking too much credit.
In an interview with ThinkProgress, Arends refused to discuss any information regarding how the group was financed or its leadership. Arends also declined to provide legal forms he claims to have filed with the IRS. A representative from the IRS told ThinkProgress that the agency does not have any forms from Arends’ group on file.
Here’s what we do know about Arends and Veterans For A Strong America:
1. In four days, the first ad by Veterans For A Strong America garnered almost 1 million views on Youtube. It has also been played frequently on TV news shows. [YouTube, 5/1/12]
2. Veterans For A Strong America is seeking to recruit Navy SEALS to attack Obama. “In the wake of a warm conservative reception for a web video trashing the president for ‘spiking the football’ on the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death, the conservative group Veterans for a Strong America plans to gather Navy SEALs and Special Forces operators to criticize the White House during the 2012 campaign.” [BuzzFeed, 5/3/12]
3. Arends also tried to Swift Boat Obama in 2008. Arends, under the auspices of a similar group called “Vets for Freedom,” ran an ad accusing Obama of refusing to meet with wounded soldiers from Illinois. [NPR, 7/5/08]
4. Arends worked as a consultant for the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity. “Though he doesn’t list it on his public resume, around 2006 Arends went to work for Craig Dewey, the state director of Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy outfit that’s Astroturfed everything from the tea party and the Wisconsin union fight to public-school segregation.” The Koch Brothers and their allies have pledged to spend $100 million to defeat Obama. [Mother Jones, 5/4/12; HuffingtonPost, 2/3/12]
5. In 2008, Arends — posing as a “journalist” — organized and participated in a taxpayer-subsidized propaganda trip to Iraq. “American taxpayers are paying for politically slanted, pro-McCain, anti-Obama ‘reporters’ embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq. Vets for Freedom – a pro-war organization that buys attack ads against Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama – assembled a team of eight military veterans with dubious journalistic credentials to report ‘objectively’ on what is occurring in Iraq…Joel Arends, another “reporter,” is VFF’s executive director and was on McCain’s campaign payroll between March 2007 and February 2008.” [Charleston Gazette, 8/28/08]
6. Arends is coordinating with key Islamophobic figures on the far right. He regularly appears at events with anti-Islam conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney, who has been condemned by mainstream conservatives for his intolerant views. He is also alligned with William “Jerry” Boykin, who was found to have violated Pentagon rules by expressing his anti-Muslim views in an official capacity. [ThinkProgress, 2/12/12; For The Common Defense; New York Times, 3/4/05]
7. Arends helped promote a documentary advocating war with Iran. Arends appeared on a panel in March 2011 in South Dakota promoting the documentary Iranium, which strongly suggests beginning a war with Iran. [Flier; ThinkProgress, 11/3/11]
8. Veterans for A Strong America is fully endorsed by Karl Rove. The man known as “Bush’s Brain” tweeted his support of their first web ad. [Twitter, 5/3/12]
Veterans For A Strong America is already succeeding in influencing the political discussion. Its web ad was aired nationally, for free, on ABC’s This Week. Many members of the political round-table then echoed Arends talking points on Obama and Bin Laden.
By: Judd Legum and Adam Peck, Think Progress, May 6, 2012
“Standing Up For Democracy”: Bush 4th Circuit Judge Warns Conservative Lawyers Away From The ‘Tea Party Constitution’
Fourth Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, one of President George W. Bush’s five finalists for the Supreme Court seat that eventually went to Chief Justice Roberts, has emerged as one of the most outspoken conservative opponents of efforts to toss out the nearly 200 years of precedent establishing that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. As Wilkinson warned in an op-ed last March, “the prospect of judges’ striking down commercial regulation on ill-defined and subjective bases is a prescription for economic chaosthat the framers, in a simpler time, had the good sense to head off.”
At a recent gathering of one of the nation’s leading conservative lawyers’ groups, Judge Wilkinson offered a similar warning — telling the gathered group of conservatives to back off efforts to constitutionalize Tea Party ideology:
And last month, receiving the Federalist Society’s Lifetime Service Award at Georgetown University, Judge Wilkinson hinted that the high court he nearly joined should think twice before striking down the symbol of everything contemporary conservatives revile—the health care overhaul President Barack Obama signed into law over near-unanimous Republican opposition.
“It may of course seem tempting to press the advantage when one seemingly has a judicial majority at hand. But this wheel shall turn,” Judge Wilkinson said. “Lasting credibility on an issue such as judicial restraint requires us to practice it, as the old saying goes, when the shoe pinches as well as when it comforts.” . . .
“It is also one thing to welcome the Tea Party as a political movement, quite another to embrace a Tea Party Constitution. Political disputation and constitutional debate are simply different things, and it does our democracy no favors to confuse one with the other.”
Wilkinson deserves a lot of credit for standing up for democracy at a time when his fellow conservatives have largely abandoned it in favor of what the judge describes as an effort to “press one’s views into our fundamental charter such that our opponents are left with no quarter and are defeated not in the temporary sense of a political ebb and flow, but in the more absolute tones of constitutional condemnation.”
Moreover, there should be no doubt that Tea Party constitutionalists are calling for a sweeping attack on American democracy. As a Center For American Progress report explained last September, a short list of laws that leading Tea Party lawmakers claim are unconstitutional includes Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, children’s health insurance, and other health care programs, all federal education programs, all federal antipoverty programs, federal disaster relief, federal food safety inspections and other food safety programs, national child labor laws, the minimum wage, overtime, and other federal labor protections and many federal civil rights laws.
By: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, May 4, 2012
“Snob With No Common Sense”: Romney Is Winning Young Voters … For Obama
Why is Barack Obama officially kicking off his presidential campaign this weekend at Virginia Commonwealth University and Ohio State University?
Ohio and Virginia are easy since both are key presidential battleground states. But why start on college campuses? The answer is simple. To win re-election, the president needs the same kind of enthusiasm and support from young people he enjoyed in 2008. The president will have to work very hard to capture the magic of his last campaign. Not coincidentally, the Obama campaign just released a new viral ad called the “The Life of Julia” which depicts the positive impact that Obama policies will have on an American woman as she progresses through her life and career.
Rick Santorum may not recognize the importance of a college degree but most people do. A college degree gives young Americans the chance to compete effectively in a cut throat global economy. Helping young people get a college education is not snobbery, it’s just common sense. Data shows that college grads are less likely to be unemployed and more likely to make good money than people who don’t have degrees.
But the House Republicans want to make it more difficult for young people to compete internationally. Student loan interest rates will double by July 1 unless the GOP gets off its butt. But Republicans in true Darwinian fashion are pitting college students against pregnant women in the struggle for federal aid. But the GOP won’t even consider the idea of eliminating federal tax freebies for their budget buddies, the banksters and billionaires to fund college student loans and preventive healthcare for women. The banksters and billionaires have well-heeled lobbyists and millions of dollars to contribute to GOP campaigns. Pregnant women and college students don’t have anything that matters to Republicans.
I am a part-time college professor and many of the students I taught this semester won’t be back in the fall if House Republicans fail to block the increase in interest rates for college loans. Their absence will be a tragedy for America and our ability to compete in the global economy.
Since Mitt Romney has a degree from Brigham Young University and two degrees from Harvard, he should understand the importance of a college degree. But Mitt Romney doesn’t understand anything that matters to most Americans. Romney advised young people who can’t afford a college education to borrow money from their parents to go to school. Well that’s fine if your dad is as rich as Mitt Romney. But middle class Americans are just barely paying their mortgages and putting food on the table, so lending their kids money for a college education is just a pipe dream and another indication that Richey Romney doesn’t have a clue about the problems of working families.
Romney and other Republicans are doing everything they can to drive the millennial generation of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 back into the Obama fold. When Barack Obama went on Jimmy Kimmel’s TV show, the GOP ran a TV ad which criticized the president for being “cool.” Since young people like “cool,” the Republicans were simply spending their own money to reinforce the Obama message to the millennials.
It’s just not the Republican position on college loans that is hurting the party. GOP positions on social issues are also keeping young people in the Democratic camp. Millennials are overwhelmingly prochoice and pro-gay marriage. Young people believe that there should be an easy path to citizenship for immigrants and they support the president’s efforts to reform the healthcare system. The religious fundamentalists who dominate Mitt Romney and the GOP scare the living hell out of young people who are suspicious of any kind of religious orthodoxy. According to Morley Winograd and Mike Hais in their book Millennial Makeover, the Republicans will pay an even higher price for their right wing social policies when the growing millennial generation becomes the dominate force in American politics over the next decade.
Republicans feel that the president is too cool for school. But the kids in school will vote again for Barack Obama because of his campaign efforts and because of the help he is getting from Republicans.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, May 4, 2012
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