Dorgan and Dodd Will Not Seek Re-election, Nader Ponders Entering Senate Race

Democratic Senators are dropping like flies over the last few days. Both Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) are retiring from the Senate and will not seek re-election bids in 2010. In an election year that is already said to be tight for Democrats, these announcements put a big question mark on if these Senate seats will be able to remain blue.

So who are so-called "winners" and "losers" of these decisions? Glenn Thrush of Politico has some ideas:

Winners:

1. Joe Lieberman. Let's see, we started the year with a posse of Dems looking to pants the Connecticut Independent for demeaning Barack Obama from the podium of the Republican National Convention. Then Harry Reid and Obama intervened to save his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee -- and he rewarded them by single-handedly scuttling the public option and expansion of Medicare.

Now a new gift for the independent who already has everything. Dodd's departure removes Connecticut AG Dick Blumenthal from the 2012 race, removing the gravest threat to Lieberman yet -- and explaining, perhaps, why Lieberman's Cheshire grin is especially wide these days.

3. Wall Street, Ben Bernanke and Barney Frank. Still a huge open question, but Dodd's exit throws the fast-evolving bipartisan -- yes, bipartisan -- Wall Street regulation effort into semi-disarray. It would be going too far to say that Dodd's bill will be derailed, but financial industry lobbyists and their defenders on the Hill now have an excuse to slow walk the entire process. On the other hand, voters are demanding some payback for the financial crisis and bailouts -- and want some kind of reg reform, Dodd or no Dodd.

On to the details... Dodd's bill would strip bank oversight from the Fed. Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, favors vesting that power with Fed boss Ben Bernanke, despite the Fed's poor oversight in the years leading up to the meltdown. Having Dodd on the way out might strengthen the Frank/Bernanke hand.

Losers.

3. Rob Simmons and Linda McMahon. Alas, it was too good too last. Blumenthal is as popular as any Democrat in Connecticut right now, with sky-high name recognition and a decades-long rep as a corruption fighter. The NRSC and the state party had been pulling their punches for weeks in hopes that Dodd would retain enough of a pulse to stay, wounded and ripe, in the race. That's over. While Dodd and GOP Gov. Jodi Rell tanked over the summer with below-40 percent approval ratings, Blumenthal happy number was hovering around 80 (!) percent.

That's unsustainable. But Democrats are heaving a huge sigh of relief this morning that Blumenthal is now their candidate instead of Dodd -- regardless of all the "Black Tuesday" headlines.

7. Liberals. This time next year, the Senate will have lost its two leading veteran progressives -- Ted Kennedy and Dodd. Moreover, Dodd's perceived crony relationship with Wall Street -- Angelo's List, AIG, etc. -- turned him into something of a populist crusader on credit cards and other financial regulatory matters over the last 12 months. Blumenthal has similar liberal/populist views -- even though he opposes same-sex marriage -- but he's far less connected, forceful or charismatic a liberal standard-bearer than Dodd.

The news about Chris Dodd is also interesting because the Green Party of Connecticut is strongly pushing consumer advocate and former Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader to run for a Senate seat out of Connecticut later this year. There is a Facebook Group created to this affect that has over 2,100 members that is also encouraging citizens from all over the country to call his offices and encourage him to run.

Nader has thus-far been non-committal saying that he wants to gauge the level of grassroots support before making an announcement and it is unclear how Dodd's retirement will affect Nader's decision.

2010 election buzz is heating up, so I am sure this will only get more interesting as we go along.

Old Debates Resurface in Lieu of Foiled Terror Attack

After the foiled terrorist attack on a Christmas Day inbound flight to Detroit, familiar conversations are popping up on the news networks and on blogs. There are renewed debates on racial profiling and people like Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) have floated the idea of preemptive action against Yemen.

Spencer Ackerman was on MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning debating Pat Buchanan who advanced many of the same arguments that we see made after an incident like this:



Buchanan's calls for torture and for trading judicial procedure for shadowy, behind-the-scenes tactics really seems crazy when you consider events of the last decade. It sure doesn't take long for figures like Buchanan to forget what we have learned when a situation allows for a reactionary response.

Lieberman Torpedoes Health Care Legislation, Progressives Split on the Way Forward

Under the threats from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and at the insistence of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, the Senate has dropped the Medicare buy-in provision from the health care legislation.

Lieberman's reversal on his support for such a buy-in has been all over the blogosphere and has cast a shadow on whether he has been acting in good faith or if he is simply trying to stick it to liberals.

It so happens that the New York Times put up an interesting piece that included this (emphasis mine):

Mr. Lieberman had supported the Medicare buy-in proposal in the past — both as the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2000 and in more recent discussions about the health care system. In an interview this year, he reiterated his support for the concept.

But in the interview, Mr. Lieberman said that he grew apprehensive when a formal proposal began to take shape. He said he worried that the program would lead to financial trouble and contribute to the instability of the existing Medicare program.

And he said he was particularly troubled by the overly enthusiastic reaction to the proposal by some liberals, including Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, who champions a fully government-run health care system.

“Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare-buy in is better than a public option, it’s the beginning of a road to single-payer,” Mr. Lieberman said. “Jacob Hacker, who’s a Yale professor who is actually the man who created the public option, said, ‘This is a dream. This is better than a public option. This is a giant step.’”

So by Lieberman's own admission, he opposed (at least in part) this piece of the health care legislation because liberals were enthusiastic about it. Did Lieberman not think that liberals would be enthusiastic about such a proposal when he supported it just three months ago? It is ludicrous to think that Lieberman is objecting to this on principled grounds. It is much more likely that his love affair with the insurance industry combined with his vehement disgust toward liberals, has led him to take pause.

The White House, which is more concerned with passing any version of health care legislation regardless of the strength of the public option, naturally urged the Senate Dems to capitulate in order to move the process forward. All of these developments have made the prospect of robust health care reform a bad joke and progressives are expressing their rage not only at Lieberman, but at Emanuel as well. Check out this new ad by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee:



With these recent developments, progressives are split on their support for this bill. Howard Dean has come out and voiced his support for killing the Senate version of the bill and going back to the House for reconciliation. Others, like Chris Bowers at OpenLeft, are questioning if progressive support for "killing the bill" will actually backfire and end up helping the Senate legislation pass.

What Lieberman has done with placing himself in a pivotal opposing position on this piece of legislation, is force the hand of the White House to give in to his demands in order to move this process forward. It matters not to the White House how robust the reforms are in this legislation, as long as some kind of reforms get to the President's desk.

There is much talk among progressives over who is going to suffer politically for watering down this legislation in the midterm and 2012 elections. While political consequences have their place in these discussions it should not obscure the fact that the real suffering is going to take place with the ordinary citizen who will continue to get denied health care coverage by their insurance company, who will continue to see premiums rise, and who will continue to incur debt in the absence of affordable coverage. There is something wrong when thousands of people regularly show up for free health care clinics in the so-called "greatest country on Earth" because it is their only affordable option.

Shame on this incessant capitulation to the status quo.



This piece is also posted here.

Lieberman Reverses Self On Medicare Buy-in, Insurance Stocks Soar

In case you were looking for something to make your stomach turn at the start of your week, I want to point to the recent comments made by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT).

Over the weekend, Lieberman told Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that he would vote against any health care legislation that would include the Medicare buy-in compromise and that would contain a public option.

This is interesting consider that Lieberman supported a Medicare buy-in in 2000:

He said during the interview that the fastest growing group of
uninsured are those 55 to 65. For that reason, the ticket proposes
an expansion of Medicare to allow those and older to buy into the
public program. There would still be a buy-in price but it would be
less than buying private insurance, he said.

and from an interview with the Connecticut Post in September of this year:

Lieberman added that he supports mandating that no one can be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions and that everyone be required to have health insurance.

As to how 47 million uninsured will afford coverage, Lieberman said only 12 million don't have insurance because they cannot afford it.

By allowing citizens who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid to buy in for a rate below the private market, the government can extend coverage to more of those who are currently uninsured, he said.

Why the sudden change? Ezra Klein has some ideas:

Incoherence is no crime, of course. But it is telling. Lieberman could have simply opposed the public option because it implied too much government involvement in the marketplace. Instead, he opposed it based on things that wouldn't happen, or weren't happening, and never softened his position as those statements were successively exposed as fraudulent. That, again, suggests something more fundamental than a policy argument.

Or take Lieberman's procedural decisions. The Medicare buy-in compromise was developed by the so-called "Team of Ten": the five liberals and five moderates that Harry Reid asked to meet and develop a path forward. Lieberman was asked to join the original group. He skipped the meetings, eventually being replaced by Tom Carper. That puts his opposition in a different category than Nelson and Snowe, both of whom dug deep into the process, working on issues and in groups and signaling clearly what they could and could not support.

[...]

If you had attempted to forecast Lieberman's behavior based on his past positions, you would have failed. His support for Medicare buy-in, and for various other health-care bills, would quickly have misled you. If you had attempted to forecast his behavior based on the attitudes of his constituents, you would also have failed. They support the public option and oppose health-care reform, while Lieberman professes to believe the opposite. But if you had attempted to forecast Lieberman's positions based on his ongoing grudge match with the liberals who defeated him in the 2006 primary, you'd have nailed it perfectly. He has, at every point, taken aim at the policies that liberals support, even when they are policies that Lieberman himself has supported.

Lieberman's obstructionism certainly points more toward his seemingly insatiable appetite for sticking it to liberals rather than a principled objection to the current legislation. How does the White House respond? By telling Sen. Reid to compromise with Lieberman:

The White House is encouraging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to cut a deal with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), which would mean eliminating the proposed Medicare expansion in the health reform bill, according to an official close to the negotiations.

But Reid is described as so frustrated with Lieberman that he is not ready to sacrifice a key element of the health care bill, and first wants to see the Congressional Budget Office cost analysis of the Medicare buy-in. The analysis is expected early this week.

The White House is denying the report but as Jane Hamsher observes:

It’s quite convenient that what Joe Lieberman is demanding — no public option, no Medicare buy-in — happens to look just like the Senate Finance Committee bill that the White House wrote with Baucus...Joe gets his way by giving Obama what he wanted anyway. Sweet.

Wall Street thinks it is sweet too:

Wells Fargo Securities analyst Matthew Perry said Lieberman’s comments are good news for managed-care stocks as anything that delays health-care reform is a positive for the group.

“Every time the reform seems less likely that it will happen, the entire group trades higher,” said Perry, who has advised his clients to buy shares of Wellcare Health Plans Inc. (WCG), recently up 1.3% to $36.74, and Humana Inc. (HUM), up 1% to $42.26.

Among the other recent gainers in the sector, Aetna rose 2.7% to $32.65, Cigna Corp. (CI) added 2.3% to $36.41 and Well Point Inc. (WLP) gained 2.7% to $58.07. Meanwhile, UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) added 1.6% to $30.99.

UPDATE: Video of Lieberman supporting a Medicare buy-in just three months ago:

Obama Finds Allies in Graham, Lieberman, and O'Reilly on Suppression of Detainee Photos

President Obama has some interesting supporters who agree with his decision to block the release additional photos of detainee abuse by U.S. forces.

Last night on The O'Reilly Factor , host Bill O'Reilly and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) praised Obama for his commitment to keep these photos under lock and key. Graham and Lieberman are trying to push through the Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 that would ban the release of any photo between 9/11/01 and 1/22/09 that would "endanger the troops". The Senators and O'Reilly also took the time to chide those on the "far-left" for not caring about the lives of U.S. troops because of their advocacy for the release of these photos. Watch:





If we are going to ban photos, then Glenn Greenwald questions why we don't just suppress evidence of civlian deaths in Afghanistan when they occur. After all, information that the United States kills and maims civilians could be used as a recruiting tool that would "endanger the troops" right? Greenwald:

Using the standard that is now so accepted across the political spectrum in Washington -- information that will inflame anti-American sentiment should be suppressed rather than disclosed so at to not endanger our troops -- isn't it better if we just cover-up, rather than learn the truth about, the civilian deaths we caused in Afghanistan? After all, news reports of dead Afghan women and children at the hands of American bombs obviously inflame anti-American sentiment and Endanger Our Troops at least as much as the disclosure of some additional torture photos would. By the prevailing reasoning of Washington, shouldn't we want our government to hide the truth about what we did -- lest anti-American anger and the risk of attack on Our Troops increase? Isn't that the noble anti-transparency principle we're now endorsing?

The people who are killed by the airstrikes are just as dead. Thus, there's no value in transparency for its own sake. What's the point of our knowing as citizens the truth about what happened and learning the evidence that proves it? All that would do is put our Troops in danger.

Who cares about actual accountability, let's just suppress evidence of all mistakes made by the U.S. in the name of national security and call it a day. Out of sight, out of mind.

Barney Frank Indicates that House Dems May Stand Their Ground on Supplemental Bill that Includes Photo Protection Act

Jane Hamsher contacted Barney Frank's office to ask why he is now supporting the supplemental appropriations bill that will continue fund the war in Afghanistan after he had initially voted against its passage. Barney Frank called Hamsher back himself and oddly enough, the conversation quickly turned to the "Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009" which is actually an amendment to the supplemental. Here is Hamsher's account:

I contacted Frank's office to ask why he switched his vote. He called me back himself, and immediately started talking before I had a chance to say "hello."

"The IMF bill is a much better bill," he said. "The Republicans are taking advantage of the fact that the original vote was very lopsided in order to defeat the IMF. The dilemma is that the supplemental would pass anyway, and if enough of us don't stand up for it now the IMF provisions will fail."

I asked him if he was basically saying that the IMF was a worthwhile trade-off for the supplemental. He shifted gears quickly, read me like a dirty book and said that it was also the only chance to get the Lieberman FOIA amendment out of there.

Huh?

"You can have the war and the IMF, or the war and the pictures," he said.

I admit I didn't realize that when the Senate passed Joe Lieberman's Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 that it was attached to the supplemental. The amendment, supported by Obama, allows the government to suppress photographs of detainee abuse even if FOIA requires disclosure. It passed on a voice vote, and as Chairman Frank was quick to point out, the Republicans and ConservaDems who were hinky about funding the IMF would have no trouble with Lieberman's FOIA travesty.

"I told them [the administration] that they have no chance of passing this if the pictures are in it," said Frank. "There are many Democrats who are very upset about that."

"So are the photos still in there?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said.

"Well, you say that the bill won't pass until the pictures are out -- are they in the conference report?"

"This isn't a quiz!" he snapped. "There is no conference report. I believe it will come out. I let them know that if it doesn't come out, it won't pass. If they insist on the photos, they won't get the IMF."

I called the Speaker's office after we spoke and found out that despite the fact that the vote was scheduled for Friday, no conferees had yet been assigned. Which means that this whole thing is a mess.

And they know it.

Obama Continues to Expand on Bush-era Secrecy

With much of the country's focus on Obama's trip to Egypt, his Supreme Court nominee, and the murder of George Tiller, there is one important item that seems to be flying under the radar.

Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) have jointly sponsored a bill entitled "The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009". This bill is aimed at suppressing any photograph between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 that relates to the treatment and/or capture of detainees by U.S. Armed Forces should the Secretary of Defense certify that they would endanger U.S. troops or American citizens. The decision by the Secretary of Defense would last for three years, is renewable for an indefinite period of time, and trumps any decision under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Glenn Greenwald reacts:

Just imagine if any other country did this. Imagine if a foreign government were accused of systematically torturing and otherwise brutally abusing detainees in its custody for years, and there was ample photographic evidence proving the extent and brutality of the abuse. Further imagine that the country's judiciary -- applying decades-old transparency laws -- ruled that the government was legally required to make that evidence public. But in response, that country's President demanded that those transparency laws be retroactively changed for no reason other than to explicitly empower him to keep the photographic evidence suppressed, and a compliant Congress then immediately passed a new law empowering the President to suppress that evidence. What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people? Read the language of the bill; it doesn't even hide the fact that its only objective is to empower the President to conceal evidence of war crimes.

[...]

The debate over whether there is value in disclosing these specific photographs is entirely misplaced. That isn't how open government works. The burden isn't on citizens to prove that there is value in disclosure. Everything that government does is supposed to be transparent to the public unless there is a compelling reason for secrecy -- and the whole point of FOIA always has been that mere embarrassment, the mere fact that information reflects poorly on our government, isn't a legitimate ground for concealment. That's a critical principle for open government. This new law explicitly guts that principle. It institutionalizes the pernicious notion that secrecy is justified where disclosure would reflect badly on the Government and thus "endanger" American citizens and/or our troops.

Barack Obama ran a campaign that was highly critical of the secrecy of the last eight years under the Bush Administration and promised greater transparency. This bill, which Obama supports, seeks to implement a greater level of secrecy and executive power that goes a level beyond even that of President Bush. The Senate has unanimously passed this bill but it appears that it may have trouble getting through the House.

Greenwald again:

But passage of Graham-Lieberman now appears much less certain because of what appears to be the refusal of some key liberal House Democrats -- including Barney Frank -- to support it. The votes of liberal House Democrats actually matter (for once) because most House Republicans are refusing to support the overall supplemental bill due to their objections to a provision for $5 billion in funding to increase the IMF's lending capacity. To pass the supplemental spending bill, House leaders need the votes of numerous House Democrats who are currently refusing to vote for anything that contains the photo suppression amendment. If Congressional Democrats succeed in blocking enactment of this amendment, that would be a critical assertion for the first time of Congressional checks on Obama's desired powers and would, independently, prevent a truly odious new secrecy power from being enacted.

[...]

If, as Obama claims, there are legitimate reasons to suppress these photos under FOIA's exemptions (including its very broad national security exemptions), then the Supreme Court can reverse the two lower court rulings ordering disclosure -- as Obama is asking it to do. But there is no good reason to vest the Obama administration with the unilateral power to simply waive FOIA requirements simply because it loses in court and decides it doesn't want to comply with court rulings and with current transparency laws.

FOIA was enacted by Congress in 1966 -- more than 40 years ago -- and, in 1974, Congress overrode a presidential veto of amendments that expanded its disclosure requirements in the wake of Nixonian secrecy abuses. Congress should defend and insist on presidential compliance with the important transparency law it passed and repeatedly strengthened -- not allow the White House and Republicans to jointly render it illusory by retroactively narrowing its provisions, all because the Obama White House wants to suppress evidence of Bush's war crimes in the face of clear FOIA requirements compelling disclosure.

Obama to Try and Block the Release of Photographs that Depict Abuse

It had been expected that the Obama Administration was going to comply with a court order stemming from a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and release photographs which depict abuse of detainees that were held in U.S. custody. The ACLU wanted the release of these photographs to counter the arguments of the Bush Administration that the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident and not part of government policy.

Ever since the Obama Administration announced that they would comply with the court order, there has been an outcry from both lawmakers and commentators on the Right claiming that the release of these photos would make those serving in the United States military less safe. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) even wrote a letter to President Obama in which they asked for the photographs not to be released because they would serve "no public good" and "endanger our men and women in uniform".

It is now being reported that the Obama Administration has reversed itself and that President Obama has now directly decided to oppose the release of these additional photos citing a concern for the safety of U.S. troops. Speaking to the New York Times, one anonymous administration official stated:

"The president strongly believes that the release of these photos, particularly at this time, would only serve the purpose of inflaming the theaters of war, jeopardizing US forces and making our job more difficult in places like Iraq and Afghanistan."

and another senior administration official stated:

"The president would be the last to excuse the actions depicted in these photos. That is why the Department of Defense investigated these cases, and why individuals have been punished through prison sentences, discharges, and a range of other punitive measures."

Aside from this last interesting quote (Obama is apparently in favor of prosecutions and investigations for some who carried out torture, but not for those who ordered it), the outcry over the release of these photos takes on an interesting dynamic.

On one hand you have people like Sean Hannity, Liz Cheney, Joe Lieberman, and others claiming that the release of these photos will depict American troops in a "negative light" and would cause us national harm, while on the other hand you have this same group of people actively defending the use of torture as necessary to our safety. Here is a compilation put together by ThinkProgress:



Note how in the video clip the acts in the photos are denounced by many as something that happened "in the past" and they speak of these actions as if they are obviously wrong. This does two things, first this deflects from the obvious point that the appalling act is not the release of the photos, but that these acts of torture were occurring in the first place and authorized by the last Administration. Secondly, it deflects from the aforementioned point that these same people who are so against the release of these awful photos are the exact same people who are advocating and justifying the use of torture over the last eight years.

It is situations like these which allow for Liz Cheney to state in one breath that by releasing these photos Obama is in fact "siding with the terrorists" and claim in another breath that the United States never engaged in torture and that techniques like waterboarding are vital to saving American lives.




This entry is crossposted here