Ways of Getting the 1st Amendment Right

I've liked Emily Bazelon's work against bullying and for rape victims' rights in the past, so I'm not surprised that she gets the religious freedom question right, as well. If only her wisdom were guaranteed to be heard when Roberts et al get down to it.

Bazelon, of Slate magazine fame, introduced her position in a kind of back-and-forth column/blog-post debate with NY Times' Ross Douthat, who does deserve the moniker of a conservative who is thoughtful and actually mostly uncrazy, which is refreshing, especially for a devout Catholic trying to work among a religiously obsessed political tribe. Douthat deserves the cred, even if you disagree with his principles.

Where Bazelon gets it right, naturally in my view, Douthat gets it wrong. If I read Bazelon right, Douthat wants to protect religious liberty to protect dissent. That's not a crazy way to combine the notion of free speech and religious freedom, which the founding fathers managed to squeeze into the same Amendment. I'd put Douthat's position, though, in a sort of overwrought category, meaning it's a stretch. If Hobby Lobby gets to prevent the vast majority of its child-bearing-age employees from contraceptive services because it's allowed to dissent from the more secular views of the nation, than Douthat's over the top. Here's Bazelon's view, basically:

My conservative critics will surely say I’ve revealed myself as irredeemably smug here [in Bazelon's smug belief in the ascendency of the secular view], but honestly my conception of religious liberty doesn’t rest on who is right or who is wrong. If I thought the IUD caused abortions, I’d still argue for balancing religious freedom against other values rather than deploying it as a trump card. God bless our tradition of religious pluralism. But crucial to it, always, has been the understanding that the views of one religious group can’t trample all over the rights of another religious group or the rights of nonbelievers. That’s why the Constitution bars the establishment of one religion. We all get to live here. [boldface mine]

Exactly so. If only we could count on Anthony Kennedy getting that part, we might feel hopeful that we won't see, written into Supreme Court precedent, American law bent such that a few private citizens get to ignore a federal statute at the great expense of the many women in Hobby Lobby's religious grip.

Hobby Lobby's two owners get to impose a terrific burden on thousands of employees in spite of the fact that the prevented behavior -- using legal contraceptives -- is, as I just said, already legal and thus, presumably, protected behavior by law.

Bazelon has it right and Douthat has it wrong. It's a pity that, if Bazelon's view doesn't prevail, then women, many, many of them, will needlessly suffer.

And the rate of abortions will, ironically, increase. But that's another, quite connected, argument. In this case, read Bazelon and Douthat's back-and-forth in the Slate article.

Joe Biden Gaffe-Prone? I'd Say Laugh-Prone

Joe Biden: raising the level of debate, one gaffe at a time.

Sometimes you have to marvel at Joe Biden. First, let me say I never bought into the "gaffe-prone" business. Joe says stuff, some of it smart, some of it not so much. Usually no harm done, even politically. What it does do his reaffirm his humanity, something some politicians can't buy with a million-dollar ad campaign.

So when he remarked about his sleeping habits in front of a room full of educators, hilarity ensued:

In his remarks, the vice president praised teachers as "the best kept secret in America."

"Jill is probably right," he added, according to CNN. "I think I'd have the same attitude...did I not sleep with a community college professor every night."

As laughter erupted across the 2,000 gathered faculty, staff and administrators, Biden attempted to clarify.

"Oh, the same one, the same one," he said, waving his hands around. "The same one."

Keep it up, Joe. We all need some comic relief these days.

Kathleen Parker Defends the Kochs Because They're Wonderful Americans?

Sheldon Adelson and wife: These people are popular
because, uh, they're beautiful people? Is that it?

Kathleen Parker is my least unfavorite conservative writer. She's glib without being nasty. She's always a little outraged, but only a little. There's a touch of wry humor, and she isn't as lazy as David Brooks. She doesn't set out to make grandiose, unsupported statements. I'm not saying she has a remarkable command of the facts, just that her points don't require much.

Case in point: Parker's latest op-ed seems to feel that the problem with the Koch brothers is not that they support lying and misleading as a viable approach to political strategy, it's that they're the face of being humungously rich. Sorry Kathleen, that may be part of it, but spending gobs of cash on propaganda campaigns based on pure nonsense is the reason people like Harry Reid (and me) dislike them so much.

Many of us in the 99% are surprisingly neutral about the amount of wealth someone might have. We tend to admire a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffett because they use their money as a force for good. I'm sure they spend a little of their fortunes on political figures or causes, but I for one don't hear much if anything about it. It's a quiet affair.

But your Kochs and Adelsons, they're a different matter. Adelson calls leading GOP candidates for president in 2016 to Las Vegas, and, bing!, here they all come to genuflect. Amazing. For his money, they're going to have to adopt a number of Adelson's views. I wonder if they will?

The Kochs are a different matter. They've constructed a view of American life where we're supposed to be free, free, free to live the most unregulated lives, and anything we do together will destroy the fabric of our precious American culture because if we do something collectively, we wouldn't be free, free, free. Instead, we'd be collectivists, by which Charles Koch clearly means communists. Amazing, huh?

Now, Kathleen, Charles Koch is allowed by our precious American culture to believe as well as state openly that those with liberal views are bad for our country. And, because of recent Supreme Court decisions, the Koch brothers are free to spend bigger and bigger gobs of money on their political causes. We might not like it -- Harry Reid doesn't like it -- but that's not why we don't like them. It's because they're lying bastards who use their gobs of money targeting Democrats with lies.

And, Kathleen, it's widely established. It's not my opinion. Fact-checkers far and wide give their ad campaigns low marks for honesty.

Okay, I get that a rhetorical technique is at play here and is pretty obvious in your column. It's the whole "straw dog" thing. You can't defend the honesty and integrity of the Kochs because even your Washington Post, which has a fairly high regard for the Kochs' positions on things, has had to report that lying is an established Koch brothers' political strategy. So you say we don't like them because they're so rich, then you say, well, we shouldn't. There's your straw dog. Fine, go ahead, knock it down. Well done. Another column finished. Check. Now that wasn't so hard, was it?

To be fair, Parker had another complaint, and she's got a right to voice it. It's not a straw dog, either:

One needn’t support the brothers’ preference for unfettered markets or their willingness to fund positions that might favor them. Plenty of conservatives disagree with their support for tea party insurgents and their climate-change skepticism.

Allowing the super-wealthy to disproportionately influence political outcomes may indeed be bad for the democratic process — and that’s of legitimate concern to all. But one’s eyes should be wide open when people are singled out as un-American. What’s next? A Senate committee investigating such un-American activities as advocating free-market principles or pursuing capitalist endeavors?

Of course, I’m kidding. That could never happen here, except it sort of already has. When Reid called the Kochs un-American, a powerful government official fired a shot across the bow of two private citizens who have acted within the law while contributing wealth to the economy through employment.

Good point, Ms. Parker. The Kochs are job creators! We should be nice to them and shouldn't call them un-American. Fine, that is a little nasty of Harry Reid, and maybe a little untrue. It's very American these days for rich people to spend gobs of money on completely dishonest attack ads.

Politics needs well-framed messages, a craft the GOP excelled at for years before the Democrats learned what they were missing. So Harry Reid doesn't emphasize that the Kochs are lying bastards and you should watch this ad and this ad and this ad. That's my job. Reid's job is to find the well-framed message. The Kochs are un-American. Fine, that works, just like your straw dog technique works on a certain number of people.

Reid's point is somewhat well-founded. It is a bit un-American to work against so many people's best interests while fostering a libertarian view. A libertarian view requires a outright let-them-eat-cake view toward money, resources, and power. Marie Antoinette doesn't represent our American life, does she? Even the French didn't like her. They chopped off her head to prove it. So Reid's right. If the Kochs are going to act like French aristocrats, they risk being called un-American. Message delivered, message received.

WaPo's Jonathan Capehart disagrees with Ms. Parker. Here's a link to Michael Tomasky's take on the real Republican agenda that Capehart cites. It's stunning in its directness.

"Will the Republicans keep trying to lower our taxes?
Of course they will, Mortimer, of course they will."

The Washington Post Shows Its Colors, Again

How dare the Senate Intelligence Committee criticize our torture program by saying it didn't work! The Washington Post shows its outrage by publishing an op-ed by Jose Rodriguez, an ex-CIA officer that came to prominence as the man who illegally destroyed the videotapes of CIA torture. After a lengthy process, the Obama Dept. of Justice decided against charging Rodriquez. It's only torture. Bygones! (as Atrios would say...)

Read this piece of crap if you wish. I'll summarize it for you:

We did too get good information from guys we tortured. I won't state that it was a result of torture, I'll just imply it. So, you see, we're right. Also, I will make a few statements of outrage at the dumb old Senate committee, though I won't offer any evidence of pretty much anything at all. I'll say "So there, Senate meanies!" and then act like we did what we had to do because 9/11! You're all weenies who don't understand the real world, you know the one where we do stuff, break the law, get away with it, and then get totally outraged because we're so misunderstood, but we won't offer any actual proof of what I'm saying. I won't mention I was the guy who destroyed the torture tapes because what relevance does that have?

Thank you, Washington Post, for giving voice to a torture asshole (really a double-torture asshole in that he did it and covered it up). Remember this guy, he's what makes America so exceptional!

Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., charter member of the Torture Asshole Hall of Shame.

For fun, read the comments on the op-ed. By and large, they don't fall for this guy's crap, but where they do, they're pretty hilarious.

The Hard Truth About Stand Your Ground: A License to Shoot More People

Is this standing your ground? (That's nine shots, by my count.)

Let's go back to before the concept of stand-your-ground. I don't know the dates or the whens or wheres, but let's just look at the larger picture:

• The basic premise in the past, when confronted by violence, was "a duty to retreat."
• This didn't abrogate the longstanding "Castle" doctrine, which is the idea that inside your home you have a larger right to self-defense, though your rights were still wrapped in a "try not to kill somebody" sensibility.
• Stand-your-ground essentially does two things: one, it doesn't require you to retreat, and, two, it doesn't require you to be in your home.

Which leads to what we see today: a former cop feels he has the right to shoot someone in a movie theater during an incident that started with texting; a man in a parked car pumps two shots into an SUV full of black teenagers with rap music blasting, then empties his gun into the SUV as it speeds away; a man talks on 911 for eight minutes while watching two men break into a neighbor's house, and despite the 911 operator's entreaty to stay inside, the man takes his shotgun and kills both suspects, seconds before the police arrive at the scene. Both burglars were shot in the back.

That man was never charged. The man who emptied his clip into the teens' SUV got life for shooting and missing, but the jury hung on the murder charge for the one boy he managed to kill. We await the trial for the movie/texting case. Of course, I don't even need to cite George Zimmerman or the fact that he was acquitted.

The larger point is: What have we gained? Is it a net plus or minus to have a right to plug someone anywhere, anytime, if we can establish a reasonable fear of bodily harm? Or is it a road down which we'll find only more violence and death?

Clearly, my point of view is that it's a net loss. A duty to retreat when it is possible to do so makes ultimate sense to me. Stand your ground only makes sense if you've watched too many "Die Hard" movies. And I'm only being slightly facetious.

On a more serious note, I feel that stand-your-ground is a direct reaction to the isolation whites, especially, white males, are feeling as minorities surge in this country. This endangered group, whites who feel marginalized, are making a stand. And since crime statistics have been falling steadily for decades, the stand these white folks are taking is against a rather nebulous foe. It's a pity.

It's worth mentioning that stand-your-ground empowers black people, as well, to fire at will. But it's white legislatures in Republican states that are driving stand-your-ground, concealed-carry-everywhere, and other gun-rights-expanding laws.

We may be left to have this stand-your-ground, my-gun-is-bigger-than-your-gun, my-religious-rights-trump-yours effect ripple and flail its way through our society. It's quite retrograde, but we're stuck there for now. Like I said, it's a pity.

A final thought: I suppose a case for stand-your-ground is that once the new normal sets in, violence will go down, in a kind of "once the fuckers know I mean business" sense. But I can hardly imagine it. More likely a " fuck you no fuck you" conversation will end up in death by gunshot instead of the usual busted lip, especially since-concealed-carry-anywhere-you-want is also making its way through the legislatures in the several Bible- and Sun-belt states. Best of luck with that.

The movie-theater-texting shooter: Doesn't look like Bruce Willis to me.

Obamacare Has Significantly More Signups Than We Thought

I'm not perfect, and Lord knows I'm black -- which might have lost
me a few fans -- but my long game just might be better than yours.

This really shouldn't be that surprising, but I suppose after the disastrous rollout of the HealthCare.gov website no one was ready to predict that Obamacare would be a success. And we still need to wait until this fall, I imagine, to see where premiums land after the insurance companies get a look at the new risk pool. Still, this is an impressive feat indeed.

I'm not just talking about the 7.1 million who have signed up on the health exchanges. What isn't covered well by the media (what is?) is what should be the headline number, and that's the total of all Obamacare signups. That would include the exchange signups, the new Medicaid signups, the new CHIP signups, and the off-exchange signups under the new Obamacare regulations. Oh, and I forgot all the under-26-year-olds who are on their parents' plan because of the law.

That figure, the real headline figure, is as much as 25.8 million and counting. This is according to a non-affiliated website tracking these things, ACASignups.net.

Read it and weep, conservatives. Things might change as the rollout of Obamacare continues. But for now, you'd better find a way to get on the right side of this thing. It just might roll over you.

You see, what we meant was we love Obamacare. It was actually
a conservative idea all along. We just were fighting to preserve it!

Paul Ryan Deserves a Thumping -- and Gets One. So What?

"I've got the dog whistles for my district and party. I'm a lock. The shit I can pull now!"

Paul Ryan's latest "Path to Prosperity" federal budget is always a fun sign post on the road to slashing and burning the welfare state -- the actual agenda of the "help the poor by denying them money" set. There's nothing like the annual unveiling to remind people that whatever Ryan might whistle in the wind, he's humming the same tune past the graveyard.

If Paul Ryan had his way, we'd all be on our own with no safety net, no "hammock." This puts him deep in the pocket of the Koch brothers and other admirers of the unfettered road to wealth acquisition and expansion, through inheritance or, in Ryan's case, a Social Security-funded education. (But that wasn't a safety net!) And really, what would Ryan want to find in the pockets of the Koch brothers? Could it be what all politicians are constantly hustling?

I'll let Michael Tomasky give Paul Ryan the thumping he deserves for his brazen attempt to be for poor people before he was against them:

Remember how last year Ryan was reinventing himself as the true friend of “the poors,” as we ironically say in liberal blogland? Aside from being stunned that all those skewed polls turned out to be exactly on the money and he and Mitt Romney lost, he was also, we were told, chagrined and maddened that he came away from the 2012 campaign with a reputation as a pitiless Randian with a hole where his heart used to be.

So he set out last year to prove us all wrong. He hired a disaffected ex-Democratic wonk as his top social-policy guy. He was getting the great press you’d expect out of Politico, which loves Republicans Who Confound Liberals (“The new Paul Ryan,” last December 10; “Is Paul Ryan the GOP’s Next Jack Kemp?”, December 12; someone was asleep at the wheel on December 11 I guess). America would soon see the revealed truth: Government keeps poor people poor, bleeds them of the pluck and spunk needed to liberate oneself from the dependent-American community. St. Paul would save them.

Then came the CPAC conference a month ago, and he tells one little story, about the kid who didn’t want a free lunch, just a normal brown bag like the other kids, and he gets it wrong, and the real and true version of the story doesn’t remotely prove the point he wants it to prove in his retelling, and he gets hammered over it for days, and boom, he throws in the poverty towel. To blazes with those poors. Kicking them was pretty fun after all.

Funny thing is that Paul Ryan's dog whistle -- poor people are lazy blacks -- plays well in his bailiwick, so he'll keep blowing it. Stupid as it might sound, can you say Speaker Ryan? I bet the House can. Hope not, but it's not like they have a deep bench.

Note. Could someone please tell me something Paul Ryan HAS ACTUALLY DONE? Didn't think so.

Update. Yahoo! features an AP story of the House Budget Committee's passage of the Ryan budget, pointing out that the GOP can use it to "polish their budget-cutting credentials." Neat trick, and I do emphasize trick:

Ryan's plan would wrestle the government's chronic deficits under control after a decade, relying on deep cuts to Medicaid, highway construction, federal employee pension benefits, food and heating aid to the poor, and Pell Grants for college students from low-income families. It would eliminate health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act while assuming the government keeps $1 trillion worth of Obamacare's tax increases, and retains a 10-year, $700 billion cut to Medicare that Democrats drove through in 2010 when passing the health care law.

See that there? Ryan slashes aid to the poor -- whom he spent weeks pretending to care about -- and repeals all of Obamacare except for the tax increases and Medicare cuts contained in the law. So he "polishes [the GOP's] budget-cutting credentials" with pure smoke and mirrors. It's like he's not even trying to be honest. Oh wait. When has he actually been honest?

To his credit, he's probably being honest about his contempt for the poor, so let's let him have that. But other than that, WHAT HAS HE EVER ACTUALLY DONE? And don't tell me get the nomination for vice-president. I'm a retired high-school teacher who could easily figure out a way to run for something and lose. I suppose, though, it takes talent to run for something really big and lose, but I'm just saying it's not an accomplishment. Being a high mucky-muck is one thing, doing something with it is another. God, is he annoying...