“When Expedience Feels Like Wisdom”: What, Exactly, Is It We’re Fighting To Defend?
“Let’s stop worrying about people’s rights.”
Sadly there are dozens of junctures in American history from which that shameful quote might spring.
It could date as far back as 1798 when President Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, making it illegal to criticize the U.S. government.
It could come from the 1870s when Southern Democrats used violence to bar black voters from the polls and Northern Republicans looked the other way.
It could have been said in the 1940s when Americans put Americans in concentration camps, or in the 1950s when Joe McCarthy saw red everywhere he looked, or in the 1960s when J. Edgar Hoover sat listening to Martin Luther King’s phone calls, or, also in the ’60s, when the Supreme Court gave police the power to stop and frisk (and harass and intimidate) without warrants or probable cause.
It could have been said on any number of occasions, but it was actually said just last week on Fox “News,” where Sean Hannity convened a panel to discuss the terrorist attacks in Paris. Fox is the First Church of the Perpetual Indignation, so you can guess how that went.
A Dr. Gina Loudon, identified as a “psychology expert,” claimed “80 percent” of the mosques in America advocate violence. Coincidentally, about the same percentage of facts spewed by Fox “experts” turn out to be pure equine excreta.
Hannity, meantime, worried that a Syrian refugee might go into a crowded theater and start shooting people at random. Right. Like we need Syrian refugees for that.
But it was left to Bo Dietl, a former New York City cop, to cross the line from the simply stupid to the downright chilling, as he called for mass surveillance of mosques. Unconstitutional, you say? “Let’s stop worrying about people’s rights,” he said.
It is a seductive invitation. When you are scared — and Americans seem to live in a state of permanent terror — you run toward anything that promises a quick resolution of whatever has you frightened. In such an atmosphere, “rights” can seem a frivolous abstraction and expedience can feel like wisdom.
The irony is, that’s precisely when expedience is most dangerous — and rights most important. In light of all the overreactions that stain American history, all the lives ruined and lost because we disregarded guarantees that supposedly define us, Dietl’s words should make thinking people cringe. Especially given how often acts of expedience and the abridgment of rights have proven needless and wrong.
We supposedly hold sacred the values inscribed in this nation’s founding documents. Yet every time the world says “Boo!” some of us are pathetically eager to toss those values aside as if they were suddenly a burden too heavy to bear. But if the things that make America America are so easily sloughed off — if they are that unimportant — then what, exactly, is it we’re fighting to defend?
Why does “America” even matter?
Sept. 11 damaged and destroyed iconic buildings and took thousands of lives. But it also shredded the Constitution and made America unrecognizable to itself. The government tortured. It disappeared people. It snooped through innocent lives. It created a secret “no-fly list” of supposed terrorists that included many people with zero connection to terrorism, at least one of them a U. S. senator; you could never find out how you got on the list and there was no effective procedure for getting off. It also gave the president unilateral power to execute American citizens suspected of terrorism without trial or even judicial oversight.
And after all that, here comes Bo Dietl. “Let’s stop worrying about people’s rights,” he says.
Here’s a better idea. Let’s start.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist for The Miami Herald,; Featured Post, The National Memo, November 22, 2015
“Koch Spy Agency Led By Voter Fraud Huckster”: Clandestine Surveillance Operation Focused On Perceived Political Enemies
The Kochs have been complaining about a “lack of civility in politics” as they seek to boost their public image–but one of their top operatives helped propel perhaps the most egregious case of race-baiting voter fraud hucksterism in recent years.
At the same time that the Kochs have been on a PR blitz, publicly spinning an image of themselves as well-intentioned patriots trying to make the world a better place and decrying “character assasination,” they’ve been quietly ramping up a clandestine surveillance and intelligence gathering operation focused on their perceived political enemies, Ken Vogel reports at Politico.
At the helm of this “competitive intelligence” operation is a man named Mike Roman, Vice President of Research for Kochs’ Freedom Partners and who was paid $265,000 last year, according to Freedom Partners’ recent tax filing.
But who is Mike Roman? He’s been described generally as a longtime GOP operative. However, he’s also the guy who was behind the release of the 2008 “New Black Panthers scaring old white ladies at the polls” video. The clip dominated Fox News for months and went on to fuel unfounded allegations that the Obama administration’s Department of Justice was biased against white people.
Roman made a name for himself by releasing the video, which showed a New Black Panther Party (NBPP) member holding a billy club outside a Philadelphia polling place, on his voter fraud-peddling “Election Journal” website. He then worked with Republican vote fraud conspiracist J. Christian Adams to try uncovering evidence that voters were intimidated–which they could not find. But that didn’t stop Roman, along with Fox News and the conservative echo chamber, from conjuring up a vast racist conspiracy inside the Obama administration, a theme that continues today.
As the conspiracy theories grew, Roman was given a column at Breitbart.com, where he continued to push a “scandal” narrative and to suggest a wide-ranging conspiracy involving ACORN, NBPP, and the Obama administration to steal elections. (Roman even launched a voter fraud app.)
In 2010, another vote fraud conspiracy theorist, the Wall Street Journal‘s John Fund, put right-wing video hitman James O’Keefe in touch with Roman for intel about a purported SEIU voter fraud scheme in Boston, which turned out to be bunk.
During this same period, the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was similarly targeting ACORN and pushing a model “Voter ID Act” to combat the nonexistent scourge of voter fraud–but which had the documented impact of disenfranchising potentially millions of students and voters of color who do not have the limited forms of IDs required under the law.
In 2010, Roman was named chief of staff to Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-IL) when he was elected to Congress for one term. Koch Industries and John Fund were among Schilling’s top donors.
It is not clear when Roman was formally folded-in to the Koch network. Freedom Partners’ new tax filing for 2014 is the first where he appeared as Vice President of Research. But tax filings as far back as 2012 describe Roman as the trustee of the mysterious “Public Engagement Group Trust,” which has the same address and suite number as another Koch group, the Center for Shared Services Trust.
Apparently Roman’s years of stoking unfounded paranoia about stolen elections prepared him for a high-ranking position in the Koch operation.
In his role as the Kochs’ top spy, Vogel reported, Roman has “worked to keep himself and his activity low-profile even within the discreet Koch operation.”
“They act all cloak and dagger–like the CIA,” one source told Vogel. “There was a joke about how hardly anyone ever met Mike Roman. It was like, if you wanted to find him, he’d be in a trench coat on the National Mall.”
Roman’s GoodReads profile fits his carefully-cultivated cloak-and-dagger persona.
His favorite reads include books like “Data Mining and Analysis” and “Intelligence Analysis: a Target-Centric Approach,” as well as Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the left-wing organizer’s manual that has gained traction on the right in recent years.
Mike Roman’s favorite author? Charles Koch.
By: Brendan Fisher, Center for Media and Democracy; CMD Executive Director Lisa Graves contributed research to this article; November 19, 2015
“Free Stuff!”: Jeb’s Outreach To Black Voters; It Isn’t ‘We’ll Take Care Of You With Free Stuff’
Man, Republicans just can’t help themselves, can they? Here’s Jebbie in South Carolina talking about reaching out to African-American voters, per a report from WaPo’s Sean Sullivan:
“Look around this room,” a man told Bush, who spoke to a mostly white crowd. “How many black faces do you see? How are you going to include them and get them to vote for you?” asked the man, who was white.
Bush pointed to his record on school choice and said that if Republicans could double their share of the black vote, they would win the swing states of Ohio and Virginia.
And if they had some ham, they could make a ham sandwich, if they had some bread. But I digress.
“Our message is one of hope and aspiration,” he said at the East Cooper Republican Women’s Club annual Shrimp Dinner. “It isn’t one of division and get in line and we’ll take care of you with free stuff. Our message is one that is uplifting — that says you can achieve earned success.”
The “free stuff” reference sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
According to a pool report, [Mitt] Romney, who struggled badly with minority voters in the 2012 election, said during a Montana fundraiser that year: “I want people to know what I stand for and if I don’t stand for what they want, go vote for someone else, that’s just fine. But I hope people understand this, your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this, if they want more stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff.” Romney was explaining his remarks that day at the NAACP’s national convention, where he was booed.
Now in commenting on this latest Bush gaffe, the ever-fair Greg Sargent notes that Jeb’s not attacking po’ folks for taking “free stuff:”
Bush was not criticizing recipients of government help as self-designated victims. Rather, he was implicitly criticizing the Democratic vision of government, suggesting that Dems want to use government handouts (“free stuff”) to destructively trap people in dependency (“take care of you”) in order to capture and hold their votes.
As applied to African-Americans, this is the old “Plantation” meme, according to which Democrats have ensnared people by the diabolical means of helping them stay alive and make ends meet, as opposed to “empowering” them with benign neglect.
This sort of rap coming from the scion of a rich and powerful family might go over better if he were preceded by some commitments to letting African-Americans vote and abandoning mass incarceration as a social control mechanism and taking seriously complaints about police misconduct. As it is, it’s just free rhetoric.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, September 25, 2015
“Beyond Denali”: Native Americans Are So Often The Invisible Minority In Our Political Discussions
A lot of the buzz about President Obama’s trip to Alaska has centered around his decision to revert to the original name of Mt. McKinley – Mt. Denali (the name that it was given by Native Alaskans long ago). But it’s worth noting that this is not the first time this President has addressed the needs of Native Americans. There is a reason why Cherokee Nation Chief Bill John Baker called President Obama the “best president ever for American Indians” and Chief James Allan, Coeur dAlene tribal chairman, said that he has “done more for [Native American] tribes than the last five presidents combined.”
Because Native Americans are so often the invisible minority in our political discussions, you may not have heard about the actions this administration has taken that led to those quotes. So perhaps it’s time to provide a brief overview.
Since his first year in office, President Obama has hosted an annual White House Tribal Nations Conference and issued a progress report.
In 2010, President Obama signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The United States was the last major country to do so.
Also in 2010, the President signed the Tribal Law and Order Act.
Last week, Congress took another important step to improve the lives of Native American women by passing the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010. The Act includes a strong emphasis on decreasing violence against women in Native communities, and is one of many steps this Administration strongly supports to address the challenges faced by Native women.
In 2012, the Departments of Justice and Interior announced the settlement of 41 long-standing disputes with Indian tribal governments over the federal mismanagement of trust funds and resources for a total of $1.023 billion.
The Department of Justice has also been at the forefront of pushing for legislation that supports Native American voting rights.
The visit by the President and First Lady to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Nation in June of 2013 obviously had a profound impact. During their time there, they met with six young people “who spoke of lives affected by homelessness, alcoholism, poverty and suicide.”
“I love these young people,” Obama said shortly after meeting them. “I only spent an hour with them. They feel like my own.”
The Obamas emerged from the private conversation at a school in Cannon Ball, N.D., “shaken because some of these kids were carrying burdens no young person should ever have to carry. And it was heartbreaking,” Obama said.
The meeting spurred Obama to tell his administration to aggressively build on efforts to overhaul the Indian educational system and focus on improving conditions for Native American youths.
“It’s not very often where I tear up in the Oval Office,” Obama, speaking at the conference, said about speaking to his staff about the plight of the children he met. “I deal with a lot of bad stuff in this job. It is not very often where I get choked up, so they knew I was serious about this.”
Just one of the products of that meeting was the first ever White House Tribal Youth Gathering where the administration announced the launch of Generation Indigenous. That all comes in addition to things like the announcement this week that the Department of Education has awarded more than $50.4 million in grants to support American Indian tribally controlled colleges and universities.
And so, it should come as no surprise that one of the first items on President Obama’s agenda when he landed in Alaska was a meeting with Native leaders.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, September 3, 2015
”Your Vote Is Your Weapon”: Honor Julian Bond’s Legacy By Protecting Voting Rights
The fight for voting rights was always a key cause for Julian Bond over his distinguished life.
In 1965, as communications director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Bond coordinated the group’s media response from Atlanta after SNCC Chairman John Lewis nearly died marching for voting rights on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. Bond made sure the country knew about the atrocities in Selma and finally did something about it.
Later that year, Bond won election to the Georgia House of Representatives, at twenty-five, illustrating the power of the new Voting Rights Act (VRA). After the legislature refused to seat him, for saying he agreed with a SNCC letter denouncing the Vietnam War, Bond appealed to the Supreme Court and won two more elections before the Court unanimously ruled that Bond deserved his seat.
He became one of the most well known politicians in America, but that didn’t stop Bond from continuing the painstaking, unglamorous work of democratizing the South. In the 1970s, he traveled extensively with Lewis on behalf of the Voter Education Project, registering black voters and encouraging them to run for office in forgotten places like Waterproof, Louisiana and Belzoni, Mississippi.
I wrote a lot about Bond’s work on voting rights and trips with Lewis in my new book Give Us the Ballot:
Their stops included civil rights battlegrounds like Belzoni, where fifteen years earlier George Lee, the first black to register in Humphreys County, was shot to death in his car after leading a group of blacks to register at the county courthouse. As Lewis and Bond spoke during an evening rally at a small black church, Belzoni’s mayor, Henry H. Gantz, a well-dressed middle-aged white man, unexpectedly burst through the door and walked down the center of the aisle. In the past, Gantz might’ve arrested everyone in the church for unlawful assembly. Instead, he clasped Bond and Lewis by the hand and told them: “Welcome to Belzoni. You two are doing wonderful work. You’re fighting bigotry and injustice. You’re a credit to your race.”
“He didn’t come down to the church to hear us speak,” an amused Bond said to the stunned crowd afterward. “He came down to be seen hearing us speak. He likes being mayor of Belzoni. He wants to go on being mayor of Belzoni. The reason he came to that church was that the black people have a weapon. It’s not a two-by-four; it’s not a gun or a brick. This weapon is the vote. You go down to the mayor’s office and hit him with a two-by-four, and he’ll remember it the next day. But if you hit him with the vote, he’ll remember it for the rest of his natural-born life.”
Bond and Lewis shockingly ran for Congress against each other during a special election for Atlanta’s 5th Congressional District—the hub of the city’s civil rights movement—in 1987. The fact that best friends competed for the same seat showed how few opportunities there were for black politicians in the South even decades after passage of the VRA. There were only two black members of Congress in the South at the time, “so it was this seat or none,” Bond told me. That began to change after Lewis’s upset victory, and there are twenty black members of Congress representing the South today.
Bond remained committed to the power of the vote when he became chairman of the NAACP, attending the signing ceremony where George W. Bush signed the VRA’s reauthorization in 2006. But seven years later, Bond watched in disbelief as the Supreme Court gutted the centerpiece of the VRA.
“This is a bad, bad day for civil rights,” Bond said. “There’s a proven record of discrimination in many states in this country. We can see during the last election these attempts at voter suppression nationwide in states both North and South. To imagine that this problem has been solved—or even more, to imagine that Congress, which is so dysfunctional, could deal with correcting this, is a myth.”
Chief Justice John Roberts “has done all he can do to frustrate the right of black people to vote, and it’s a sad commentary on him and on our judicial system that he’s allowed to do so,” Bond said during a speech at Dartmouth.
I asked Bond, for a 2013 profile of Lewis, if the attack on voting rights in states like Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin following the 2010 election surprised him. “I was naïve to think voting rights were untouchable,” Bond responded. “I didn’t dream that Republicans would be as bold and as racist as they are.”
On August 6, 2015, the 50th anniversary of the VRA, Bond urged the Congress to restore the landmark civil rights law. He tweeted, “Thanks to the Roberts Supreme Court and Congress we are celebrating the anniversary of the VRA without the VRA. Commit to its restoration!”
Protecting voting rights today would be a fitting way to honor Bond’s remarkable civil rights legacy.
By: Ari Berman, The Nation, August 17, 2015
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