Midterm Report: The Best and the Worst Democratic Freshmen

Time to grade the Democratic freshmen-- or at least to pick out the 10 best and the 10 worst. Which ones lived up to what Alan Grayson laid out in his little monologue above? And which served the interest of careerism and corporate special interests above the interests of their own constituents? Short version-- for people in a hurry-- here are two lists (alphabetized), the 10 best, followed b the 10 worst:

THE BEST:

• Tony Cardenas (D-CA)
• Matt Cartwright (D-PA)
• Alan Grayson (D-FL)
• Jared Huffman (D-CA)
• Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)
• Joe Kennedy (D-MA)
• Alan Lowenthal (D-CA)
• Grace Meng (D-NY)
• Rick Nolan (D-MN)
• Mark Pocan (D-WI)

THE WORST:

• Cheri Bustos (D-IL)
• Pete Gallego (Blue Dog-TX)
• Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL)
• Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ)
• Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Raul Ruiz (D-CA)
• Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ)

The other day, Obama seemed to help justify the Egyptian military coup by declaring that democracy is about more than just elections. Eric Cantor liked that. The Washington Post didn't. You decide. Meanwhile, though, figuring out which congressmen did best and did worst is about more than just raw voting. Voting on bills that come to the floor is very, very important, of course, but there are other factors as well, like courageousness, leadership, behavior on committees, integrity. Example: freshmen who voted in the House Financial Services Committee-- so somewhat privately-- to gut Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms and then piled onto a plane with Democratic corruptionist Joe Crowley to celebrate with Wall Street banksters, are never going to get on a 10 Best list. Freshmen with the guts and smarts to sign the Grayson-Takano No Cuts letter, however, have a leg up on any 10 Best list.

The 10 freshmen who signed that letter are a mixed bag though, including really excellent Members like Grayson himself, as well as Matt Cartwright and Rick Nolan and really awful sellouts looking for another way to bash Obama, like Ann Kirkpatrick, or for a cheap way to burnish progressive credentials for the folks back home, like Juan Vargas. These are the freshman signers (in order of date signed):

• Alan Grayson (D-FL)
• Mark Takano (D-CA)
• Rick Nolan (D-MN)
• Matt Cartwright (D-PA)
• Joyce Beatty (D-OH)
• Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ)
• Tony Cardenas (D-CA)
• Donald Payne (D-NJ)
• Dan Kildee (D-MI)
• Juan Vargas (D-CA)

The best freshman and the worst freshman each comes from Florida. Overall best is Alan Grayson, more than just a good voter-- a real leader and organizer. And please do watch that video up top. Ironically, the worst freshman, Patrick Murphy, is also a leader and an organizer-- he's leading other freshmen, really dumb ones, astray and organizing to help push through Boehner's toxic agenda. But let's get to the roll calls that we counted in assessing each freshman. We're listing them in chronological order, starting with a typical cheap trick by the GOP threatening that Members wouldn't get paid 'til a budget was passed. H.R. 325 passed on January 23, 285-144 with 86 Democrats joining most of the Republicans to pass it. It was the first big bill showing that most of the conservative New Dem freshmen would side with the GOP on their agenda. The freshmen who crossed the aisle: Ami Bera (CA), Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Joaquin Castro (TX), John Delaney (MD), Suzan DelBene (WA), Tammy Duckworth (IL), Bill Enyart (IL), Elizabeth Esty (CT), Bill Foster (IL), Pete Gallego (TX), Denny Heck (WA), Steven Horsford (NV), Derek Kilmer (WA), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), Alan Lowenthal (CA), Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Grace Meng (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Rick Nolan (MN), Beto O'Rourke (TX), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Mark Takano (CA), Dina Titus (NV), and Filemon Vela (TX). Chief New Dem Ron Kind and DCCC chair Steve Israel also voted with the Republicans on this and strongly urged the freshmen to do likewise. It helped established a very bad pattern, a pattern that some have since seen through and have broken free of-- like Lowenthal, Nolan, and Takano-- but one that has ensnared too many freshmen in the quicksand of false bipartisanship. Every one of the 10 worst freshmen voted with the GOP on this early bill.

H.R. 444 passed on February 6 and it was another gimmicky GOP balanced budget bill. 26 Democrats joined 227 Republicans to pass it 253-167. The freshmen aisle crossers were Ami Bera (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), and Dina Titus (NV). So here we were in February and the lines between the good freshmen and the bad freshmen were already starting to become very clear. Most of these would go on to back Boehner and Cantor from then right up until now.

H.R. 273 is intended to freeze the pay of federal employees. It passed 261-154, on February 15, Boehner and Cantor able to claim a bipartisan victory because of these largely worthless freshmen: Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Suzan DelBene (WA), Bill Enyart (IL), Bill Foster (IL), Pete Gallego (TX), Joe Garcia (FL), Ann Kuster (NH), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Filemon Vela (TX). You should be starting to recognize the repeat offenders now.

H.R. 933 passed 267-151 on March 6 and the intention was to soften the blow of the sequester for the Pentagon while leaving all the other victims in the lurch. 53 bad Democrats went along with the GOP, including 28 freshmen, these freshmen: Ami Bera (CA), Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Joaquin Castro (TX), Suzan DelBene (WA), Bill Enyart (IL), Elizabeth Esty (CT), Bill Foster (IL), Tulsi Gabbard (HI), Pete Gallego (TX), Joe Garcia (FL), Steven Horsford (NV), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), Alan Lowenthal (CA), Michelle Grisham Lujan (NM), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Gloria Negrete McLeod (CA), Beto O'Rourke (TX), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Mark Takano (CA), Dina Titus and Marc Veasy (TX).

H.R. 890, meant to prevent the federal government from giving states greater flexibility when complying with a welfare program’s work requirements, passed 246-181 on March 13. Only 18 Democrats crossed the aisle on this one, including 8 freshmen: Ami Bera (CA), Joe Garcia (FL), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Scott Peters (CA), and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), the ones Boehner and Cantor were coming to depend on pretty consistently to make their awful bills "bipartisan."

H Con Res 25 on March 20 was the budget bill. There were a lot of alternatives, starting with a proposal to pass the budget the Senate had already passed, not a great budget, but not nearly as bad as the Ryan budget the House was about to vote on. The Senate budget was defeated in the House 154-261 with 35 Democratic defectors including the 17 worst freshmen: Ami Bera (CA), Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), John Delaney (MD), Bill Enyart (IL), Bill Foster (IL), Pete Gallego (TX), Joe Garcia (FL), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ).

When Raul Grijalva introduced the Progressive Caucus budget alternative-- the only budget that would have solved the problems plaguing America-- it lost 84-327. Only 13 freshmen voted FOR it, the better freshmen: Joyce Beatty (OH), Tony Cardenas (CA), Matt Cartwright (PA), Alan Grayson (FL), Jared Huffman (CA), Hakeem Jeffries (NY), Alan Lowenthal (CA), Rick Nolan (MN), Don Payne (NJ), Mark Pocan (WI), Mark Takano (CA), Juan Vargas (CA), and Marc Veasy (TX).

The House Democratic Caucus budget wasn't as good as the one Grijalva proposed but it was still way better than Ryan's. It lost 165-253 and really did encompass a vision for what the House Democrats would like to accomplish. 28 bad Democrats voted against it including 17 freshmen: Ami Bera (CA), Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Suzan DelBene (WA), Bill Enyart (IL), Bill Foster (IL), Pete Gallego (TX), Joe Garcia (FL), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ)-- all the worst garbage in the caucus.

H.R. 624, CISPA, was a domestic spying bill that passed 288-127 on April 18. The Democratic caucus was very split-- 98 against and 92 for. The bad freshmen should be very predictable for you by now, although a few weak links among usually not-as-bad-Democrats went along with it as well: Joyce Beatty (OH), Ami Bera (CA), Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Tony Cardenas (CA), Tammy Duckworth (IL), Bill Enyart (IL), Bill Foster (IL), Loius Frankel (FL), Pete Gallego (TX), Joe Garcia (FL), Denny Heck (WA), Steven Horsford (NV), Hazeem Jeffries (NY), Robin Kelly (IL), Derek Kilmer (WA), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Grace Meng (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Don Payne (NJ), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Eric Swalwell (CA), Dina Titus (NV), Juan Vargas (CA), Marc Veasey (TX) and Filemon Vela (TX).

H.R. 1062 was another conservative initiative to weaken regulations on Wall Street. It passed 235-161 on May 17 with 17 Democrats voting with the Republicans, including 9 freshmen-- Ami Bera (CA), Tony Cardenas (CA), Pete Gallego (TX), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Brad Schneider (IL) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ).

H.R. 3 was a big one-- the Keystone XL Pipeline bill on May 22. It passed 241-175 with 19 Democrats going along for the ride, including 5 anti-environment freshmen: Cheri Bustos (IL), Bill Enyart (IL), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL) and Filemon Vela (TX).

H.R. 1911 was also a big one-- the GOP bill to double the rate on student loans. Only 4 Democrats were stupid enough to vote for that one and 3 are New Dem freshmen with terrible records: Joe Garcia (FL), Dan Maffei (NY) and Scott Peters (CA).

H.R. 1947 was the failed Farm Bill that shredded food stamps for the most needy Americans. Only 24 Democrats voted for it, including 8 freshmen: Ami Bera (CA), Julia Brownley (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Bill Enyart (IL), Joe Garcia (FL), Patrick Murphy (FL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), and Filemon Vela (TX). There were a ton of amendments that showed how bad some of these freshmen are including one to defund farmers markets by Tom McClintock that drew exactly one "Democratic" vote: New Dem Patrick Murphy (FL). 8 Democrats voted against Jim McGovern's amendment to reinstate the SNAP food stamp funding and 2 of them were freshmen-- Cheri Bustos (IL) and Sean Patrick Maloney (NY).

H.R. 1613 and H.R. 2231 passed June 27 and 28, the two most recent Republican travesties. Both bills, written by Oil and Gas lobbyists, were big giveaways for offshore drilling businesses. The only Democratic freshmen to go along with either or both of them were Ami Bera (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), John Delaney (MD), Pete Gallego (TX), Joe Garcia (FL), Patrick Murphy (FL), Scott Peters (CA), Raul Ruiz (CA), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) Marc Veasey (TX) and Filemon Vela (TX).

Don't forget, this report card is only for freshmen. We didn't count Ron Barber (New Dem-AZ) as a freshman and he's literally worse than any of the freshmen. So are 4 other more senior Democrats, the worst of their party in the House, by far. From bad to worse (with their ProgressivePunch scores):

• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 40.00
• Bill Owens (New Dem)-NY)- 33.33
• John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA)- 28.33
• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)- 26.67

This year, six Republicans have voted more frequently with the Democrats on crucial roll calls than Matheson and Barrow. The DCCC will spend an estimated $4 million in a desperate and pointless attempt to reelect both of them.

Watch the Grayson video up top again-- and keep it in your mind the next time the DCCC asks you for money. Virtually all of it that doesn't wind up their cronies' pockets, goes to reelect these Democrats who vote most frequently with the GOP. In the clip, Grayson reminds Democratic candidates running for office that "If you have two Republicans running against each other, one with an 'R-e-p' next to his name and one with a 'D-e-m' next to his name, it's a tremendous disservice to the public. The public can't choose that way. And if you run as a Democrat, then there are certain things you should stand for. You should stand for Justice. You should stand for Equality. You should stand for Peace... We need more Democrats who are Democrats... You can't beat a Republican by BEING a Republican."

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Alan Grayson's 4th of July Message To Blue America

Blue America has had a long relationship with Alan Grayson, going back to his very first campaign when all the insiders said he had no chance to win the primary and then, after he won it, no chance to win the general election. He was too plainspoken and he wore his heart on his sleeve. Right up out alley. He's become the conscience of the progressive movement inside Congress and he's not afraid to speak truth to power, whether that's to John Boehner, Darrell Issa, Steve Israel or Barack Obama.

Today Blue America measures new candidates against Alan. Are they honest? Are they courageous? Are they dedicated to ordinary working families even above their own careers? If they're anything less, they need to look for help from the DCCC, not from Blue America. On this 4th of July weekend, we'll all be asked to remember the men and women who fought for our independence. We're also asking you to consider chipping in for the campaigns of the men and women who will help keep it.

This is the letter Grayson sent out last night:

Dear Friend,

There was a tremendous outpouring of support for our campaign last week. Not only from our individual donors (thanks, everyone!), but also from grassroots and "netroots" progressive organizations, like Blue America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. They sent out notes encouraging their members to contribute.

We were particularly grateful to Blue America for its effort, because Blue America reported on our pitched battle with the right-wing Republican House majority last week, over offshore drilling. The right-wingers introduced two "drill, baby, drill" bills in the House last week. I fought back with two identical pro-environment amendments. Even though Republicans outnumber Democrats by 33 Members in the House, we fought Republicans to a draw - an amazing tie vote on the Thursday amendment (213-213), followed by a one-vote lead for us on the Friday amendment (210-209) when time for the vote expired. The Republican Leadership ignored the big clock that said 0:00 on the wall, and badgered and begged one Republican who had voted "yes" to switch to "no." As soon as that happened, down came the Speaker's gavel, and a very battered Republican majority slinked away with its ill-gotten victory. In rhw JBoz on the right is the play-by-play from Blue America.

Thank you for those kind words, Blue America, and thank you for sharing with your audience exactly why you support our campaign. I get by with a little help from my friends. Don't we all?

Courage,
Rep. Alan Grayson

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FEC Quarter Ends Today; Should You Care?

Today's the end of the FEC fundraising quarter and I want to refer you to a post yesterday you may have missed about real bipartisanship, bipartisanship based on compromising that genuinely works for both sides, not compromise based on a combination of opportunism, bribery and one side betraying core values.

Some Members of Congress-- virtually all the Republicans, all the New Dems and every single Blue Dog for example-- finance their political careers by taking legalistic bribes from special interests like Wall Street banks, armaments makers and/or Big Oil. Blue America has been encouraging a new model, one based on congressmen and senators who represent actual citizens and citizens who in turn chip in to help with those Members' campaigns. Our primary avatars for this model has always been Alan Grayson in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate.

Like I said, this weekend is another quarterly FEC deadline. You probably got dozens of e-mails from all kinds of phony-baloney Democrats begging for help, primarily ones like Patrick Murphy, Sean Patrick Maloney and Ann Kuster who have worked for the bad guys all year and have only earned your scorn. Instead we'd like to ask you to consider making a contribution to Alan Grayson's campaign. He continues to super-serve ordinary working families, not big, wealthy corporations and their lobbyists.

This week he offered an amendment to an offshore drilling bill that would have guaranteed each state the right to make the ultimate decision about drilling. He put together a coalition of environmentally concerned Democrats and states rights-oriented Republicans, including some of the most right-wing Members of Congress. Big Oil panicked and put pressure of the GOP House leadership to get some of the Republicans to change their votes. Some did-- but not enough. But Big Oil had an ace in the hole: Blue Dog John Barrow (GA), the House Democrat they gave the most money to last year. He and fellow Blue Dog Jim Matheson (UT) were the only Democrats to vote against Grayson's amendment Friday. The amendment lost by one vote... by one vote in a House where Republicans have a 33 vote margin. No Democrat has been able to do anything like that... except Alan Grayson.

Big Oil, Big Finance, the Military Industrial Establishment have every Republican and a good solid chunk of Democrats. We have Alan Grayson. Let's make sure we keep him in Congress. The other names on that page have been vetted with Grayson in mind. We want to find him a team who will be there fighting for the same values and principles, instead of more like John Barrow and Jim Matheson.

UPDATE From Congressman Grayson

To whom does Haliburton give money?

Not me.

Here's how Congress works for most of the Members: they sit in their offices, they cross the street to the Floor of the House to vote every once in a while, and, while in their offices, corporate lobbyist after corporate lobbyist comes to kiss their rings. They kiss that ring with their lips, and, with their hands, they hand over the language that they want inserted into a bill that will help their cause.

Then, after the Members of Congress do the bidding of their corporate masters, they walk across the street to the party HQ, pick up the phone, and ask those same corporations to raise tens of thousands of dollars for their campaigns.

These corporations aren't bankrolling my campaign, because I don't do their bidding. I rely on you. If you want me to keep fighting and keep legislating in the public interest, I need your support before the important June 30th deadline.

Even $5 and $10 contributions, if enough people make them, can determine a race. You can help Alan here.

We ran this amazing video of Grayson already but I want to run it again... it's that good:

And here's another clip that should blow minds-- especially inside the DC Democratic Establishment. "We need more Democrats who are Democrats... As Howard Dean said years and years ago, 'You can't beat a Republican by being a Republican.' Nobody's fooled by that. If the public has a choice between a real Republican and a fake Republican running as a Democrat, they'll choose the real Republican every time. So it's actually self-defeating." He just devastated Steve Israel's entire DCCC strategy:

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Bipartisanship... The Good Kind

Yesterday we talked about how cowardly New Dem freshmen Patrick Murphy and Kyrsten Sinema, who Boehner and Cantor know they can count on to almost always betray progressive Democratic ideals and vote with the GOP in a way that allows them to claim their toxic agenda is "bipartisan," have a phony-baloney bipartisan caucus that helps round up naive Democratic freshman to vote with the GOP. That isn't bipartisan-- that's self-loathing surrender-monkey opportunism. And Murphy and Sinema are probably the two worst mistakes of 2012.

This week Alan Grayson (D-FL) showed the way real bipartisanship actually works, something people like Murphy and Sinema will never understand even if they manage to survive in 2014. For Grayson, it comes natural and reminds people of how he was able to work with Ron Paul and bring along enough Democrats to pass Audit the Fed legislation that neither corrupt party establishment wanted to see happen.

This week Grayson's amendment to H.R. 1613 (the Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreements Authorization Act) was suddenly reported out of the House Rules Committee and was voted on Thursday. The amendment is simple: "Nothing in this Act, and the amendments made by this Act, affects the right and power of each State to prohibit management, leasing, developing, and use of lands beneath navigable waters, and the natural resources within such lands, within its boundaries." His amendment makes sure that States can do what they wish within their own boundaries. If Florida or New Jersey want to ban offshore oil drilling off their own coasts, they should be guaranteed the right to. In fact, Grayson rallied nearly the entire Florida delegation-- Democrats and Republicans-- in a way that left the entire House in shock. The Thursday go failed-- primarily because Henry Waxman, who supports it, was out of the room when it was time to vote and no one could find him. It was an unprecedented 213-213 tie. Only 5 rotgut Blue Dogs-- John Barrow (GA), Jim Matheson (UT), Jim Cooper (TN), Collin Peterson (MN) and Jim Costa (CA), among the most corrupt Members in the history of a very corrupt institution-- voted against the bill on the Democratic side.

Meanwhile, Grayson was able to personally persuade state's rights-supporting Republicans, that this bill fit into their worldview. The Florida Republicans who went along with him:

• Gus Bilirakis
• Vern Buchanan
• Ron De Santis
• Mario Diaz-Balart
• John Mica
• Jeff Miller
• Richard Nugent
• Bill Posey
• Trey Radel
• Tom Rooney
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
• Dennis Ross
• Daniel Webster
• Ted Yoho

Doddering and incompetent imbecile Lois Frankel voted NO, but Pelosi woke her up and read her the riot act and she was quickly back on board. Today it was Hoyer, Israel and Pelosi that were corralling reluctant Democrats when Grayson introduced the same amendment for H.R. 2231, Doc Hastings' heinous Offshore Energy Act, It failed by one vote, 209-210 because the only two Democrats who wouldn't vote for it were the two biggest oil whores in the Democratic caucus, John Barrow and Jim Matheson. Barrow, especially-- coming from a state with a long coastline-- was happy to screw his own constituents and Georgians traditional preference for state's rights because Barrow takes more in bribes from Big Oil than any other Democrat in the House. Matheson, by the way, is #2.

Hastings freaked out that so many Republicans voted for the amendment Thursday and he got the GOP leadership to lean on Members. Doug LaMalfa voted against it yesterday but voted for it today-- until Hastings made him switch back to a NO voted again! Florida Republicans who voted for the amendment Thursday but were unable to resist leadership pressure Friday and switched to NO votes were:

• Ron De Santis
• John Mica
• Richard Nugent
• Tom Rooney
• Dennis Ross
• Daniel Webster

I wonder if GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy reminded Webster that it was Grayson's team who gave him the nickname "Taliban Dan." But the real culprit in this was clearly John Barrow, who had every reason in the world to vote for it-- and whose vote would have changed the outcome-- but who delivered for the oil companies that gave him $106,900 last year alone. Grayson doesn't get paid off by Big Oil the way Barrow and Matheson do and he works for us, not them. He's asking for contributions this weekend for his end-of-the-quarter FEC deadline. Give him a hand here.

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Your Supreme Court at work and play -- as same-sex marriage slips through the portals of privilege

-- from NYTimes.com's "Afternoon Update"

"Today's Supreme Court decision is a victory for all Americans, and brings our nation one step closer to the promise of equality and justice for all. The DOMA decision ensures that married gay and lesbian couples are recognized by the federal government, and that their families receive equal treatment in the eyes of the law. There should be no more discrimination based on where you're from, what you look like, or who you love. Today's DOMA decision is a historic step in the fight for equality. The federal government must ensure that no one is degraded or demeaned by the law, and that all couples receive the legal recognition and respect that they deserve."

-- Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, in a statement today

"Today's rulings are a major step forward for the country, but for Floridians they fall short of justice and are more than anything a call to action. For those of us who live in states like Florida where our marriages are still not recognized, today's decisions are a reminder that we cannot wait for justice to be handed to us, we are going to have to get engaged and fight. . . .

"While Florida couples who marry elsewhere will receive some federal benefits, unfortunately many federal protections related to marriage are based solely on whether the marriage is recognized by the state in which the couple lives. Today our rights as Americans are not based on our shared citizenship, but upon our geographic location. . . ."

-- Equality Florida Executive Director Nadine Smith, in
a statement today (Nadine issued a video "call to action")

by Ken

A historic day, yes, but when you break it down, and fit together the pieces of the other decisions the Supreme Court has announced in its end-of-term festivities, it's all recognizably our hard-right-wing Roberts Court at work, dragging the law back into the Dickensian heyday of the Industrial Revolution, if not the glory days of the Spanish Inquisition.

Earlier today Howie wrote about yesterday's ghastly Supreme Court voting-rights debacle at the Supreme Court's end-of-term festivities, and homed in on the five bozos I described on Tuesday as far-right-wing-stooge (FRWS) justices -- and specifically how they slithered their way onto the High Court, with often-inconsequential opposition. Crikey, these are life forms that have no business sitting on any bench that isn't bolted down in a park.

I would never say that I could have predicted how the major decisions would come down. The way I argue it is that once they do, we can usually see the theatrical hand orchestrating it all. So, for example, on Monday we got the seemingly moderate decision on affirmative action -- "moderate" in that contrary to the expectation of many of us, the majority didn't shitcan affirmative action altogether. Justice Scalia left no doubt that he would have been happy to do so, and my assumption is that there would have been four votes to do so. I'm guessing, though, that try as FRWS justices might, they couldn't get a fifth vote for that. What we got instead was a seeming "unity" ruling, a 7-1 remand, sending the case back to the lower court for a closer look, to make absolutely sure that there wasn't any unallowable racial-preference funny business going on. Naturally, those judges have been put on alert to look really, really hard -- would anyone care to bet what they're going to find?

The message was pretty clear to the state of Texas, which immediately announced that for the next election it's putting into effect the election revamp it passed in 2011 designed to screw voters the right-wing establishment doesn't like out of their right to vote. Let's assume that the Supremes' FRWS Five aren't total morons (I'm not entirely sure in a couple of cases, but let's give them all the benefit of the doubt), and know that for all the right-wing screeching about "voter fraud," there has been no indication of any such thing happening, whereas dating back at least to the stolen presidential election of 2000, Republicans have been devoting more and more resources and time to election-stealing, and seizing control of the voter rolls has been a principal tool. Most of its strategies to date have been anywhere from probably to flagrantly illegal, but look here now, we control the law!

Which is where Justice Scalia's ruling in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona takes a turn for the comical. The issue, you'll recall was the illegality, according to the 7-1 majority, of Arizona adding a requirement while using a federal form. Uh-uh, said our Nino, you can't do that. And "if a reader of the Scalia opinion stopped at the top of page 13," wrote ScotusBlog's Lyle Denniston, "the impression would be very clear that Congress had won hands down in the field of regulating federal elections."

But from that point on, there is abundant encouragement for what is essentially a states' rights argument: that is, that the states have very wide authority to define who gets to vote, in both state and federal elections.

On the particular point at issue in this case -- Arizona's requirement of proof of citizenship before one may register to vote or actually vote -- the Scalia opinion said that a state was free to ask the federal government for permission to add that requirement. And, Scalia said, if that doesn't work — either because the federal agency that would deal with such a request is either not functioning or says no -- then a state would be free to go to court and make an argument that it has a constitutional right to insist on proof of citizenship as an absolute qualification for voting, in all elections.

The opinion seemed to leave little doubt that, if Arizona or another state went to court to try to establish such a constitutional power, it might well get a very sympathetic hearing, because that part of the Scalia opinion laid a very heavy stress on the power of states under the Constitution to decide who gets to vote.

And again, since Justice Nino isn't a moron, he surely knows full well that the agency to which Arizona would make this request is completely crippled by virtue of having no members, thanks to the Republican philosophy of non-governing: blind obstruction. So Arizona would get no answer to such a request, would go back to court, and . . . well, you get the idea. Ha ha ha!

What's more, in the process we get to see Justice Nino being, it appears, unpredictable. Mmm, no, that's just an illusion. But I think a not entirely accidental one. The FRWS Five seem to have become a lot more sensitive to the optics of their shredding of the Constitution and constitutional precedent, which for a number of frightening years has been unapologetic. Note, for example, that in the voting-rights decision, Chief Justice Roberts essentially blamed Congress for screwing up, failing to come up with constitutionally acceptable criteria for subjecting states and localities to Justice Dept. scrutiny of their voting procedures. Of course in the decades that the Voting Rights Act has been in force, and in all the times it has been reauthorized by Congress, nobody ever told them that the existing criteria were unconstitutional. (To which I assume the Chief would answer, "Well, nobody asked me!") And once again, the Chief, not being a moron, knows full well that at present there isn't the slightest possibility that Congress could rise to the occasion, because the House is effectively controlled by the kind of people who love the idea of being able to exclude people they don't like from the voting rolls.

Once again, the message to the states is: Discriminate, baby, we've got your back!

Note too how the voting-rights case, Shelby County v. Holder, was neatly sandwiched between the "moderate" non-eradication of affirmative action and today's decisions in the two same-sex-marriage cases. I am prepared to give the Court credit for coming right out and declaring Section 3 of DOMA unconstituional. That's the one that has prevented any federal agency from extending any marital benefits to same-sex couples, and it was nice to have a relatively unequivocal declaration that this is an unconstitutional form of discrimination.

That was all that was needed to decide the case, and traditionally the Supreme Court doesn't rule any more broadly than is needed to decide a case. Of course this is a tradition that the Roberts Court has regularly trashed, since going beyond what's needed to decide a case has been one of its favorite hobbies. In fact, the opportunity to do so has frequently seemed part of its reason for taking certain cases. In this case, though, it means that while the federal government is going to have a hard time going foward treating parties to a same-sex marriage differently from parties to an opposite-sex one, it doesn't mean that same-sex couples have been found to have any inherent right to the institution of marriage. If they're legally married, the ruling says, they have to be treated the same as any other couple that's legally married. In addition, neither the case nor the ruling required the justices to deal with the right of states to refuse to recognize other states' same-sex marriages -- that's protected in Section 2 of DOMA, which hasn't yet been touched.

But even in the matter of the DOMA rejection, as those NYT article blurbs up top suggest, the Court has more than anything followed the trend taking hold in the country. Remember that when same-sex marriage was finally authorized in New York State, a lot of important support, financial and otherwise came from Republican businesspersons. The business community has indeed been grasping that homophobia is increasingly "bad for business." It makes it harder to recruit qualified LGBT candidates, and it makes it hard to sell to LGBT consumers and straight consumers who understand the issue at stake. Go back to Rep. Alan Grayson's statement at the top of the post: "Today's Supreme Court decision is a victory for all Americans." There's someone who gets it, and getting this has been spreading to more and more of the country's mainstream.

So again, give the Supremes credit, but not that much. And in the Prop 8 decision, while the result will be to reinstate the District Court ruling that Prop 8 is just plain unconstitutional (and not merely at odds with the California state constitution, as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had argued, since it took away a right -- one that had been established by the courts -- for no reason except to discriminate against LGBT folk), and same-sex marriage is clearly going to be legal in California again, but the ruling is unlikely to have any impact outside California. It's conceivable that the District Court ruling could be cited in other jurisdictions, but federal District Court rulings have no automatic application anywhere else.

And so the Roberts Court may have bent a little in its mission to uphold the rights of the privileged and white, but it didn't really bend all that much. It certainly didn't break.

I don't suppose this is terribly diplomatic, but then, it's aimed at people who have never had any impulse toward diplomacy in dealing with us. Like Michele "Mighty Mouth" Bachmann, who sent out a tweet saying, "No man, not even a Supreme Court, can undo what a holy God has instituted."


MEANWHILE, NOTHING CAN SHAKE JUSTICE NINO FROM
HIS DIVINELY ORDAINED MISSION TO HATE THE HOMOS

JUNE 26, 2013

SCALIA ARRESTED TRYING TO BURN DOWN SUPREME COURT

POSTED BY ANDY BOROWITZ

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) -- In a shocking end to an illustrious legal career, police arrested Justice Antonin Scalia today as he attempted to set the Supreme Court building ablaze.

Justice Scalia, who had seemed calm and composed during the announcement of two major rulings this morning, was spotted by police minutes later outside the building, carrying a book of matches and a gallon of kerosene.

After police nabbed Justice Scalia and placed him in handcuffs, the [Justice] appeared "at peace and resigned to his fate," a police spokesman said.

"He went quietly," the spokesman said. "He just muttered something like, 'I don't want to live in a world like this.' "

Back at the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia's colleagues said they hoped he would get the help he needed, except for Justice Clarence Thomas, who said nothing.

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Ed Markey Won The Senate Seat-- Now Let's Make Sure Carl Sciortino Wins Ed's Old House Seat

Carl and Ed, Massachusetts progressives

Only weak minded and self-deluded Republicans were surprised by Ed Markey's healthy win yesterday in the Massachusetts special election to fill John Kerry's old Senate seat. Markey has been the foremost champion of climate change amelioration of any elected official in the entire federal government. And the Republicans put up some wealthy, crooked, right wing businessman to oppose him. Gomez spent his last days of the campaign blaming his defeat on the Republican Party. "They're wrong on too many issues. I mean, you know, you gotta realize, they gotta realize we’re in the 21st century." That helped Markey run away with a 10 point lead yesterday, despite the last minute flood of money from rich rightists and hatemongers from around the country.

As Alan Grayson, Markey's colleague in the House, put it last weeked, "Who cares about climate change? Ed Markey does." Grayson explained what thay means for the country.

Ed Markey served as the one and only Chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, during its four years of existence. Let me explain to you what an utterly thankless job that is. If you are the Chair of a committee on global warming, you've got Big Oil against you. You've got the electrical utilities against you. You've got the auto manufacturers against you. You've got the pipeline and tanker and drilling companies against you. What kind of person would want all of those headaches, just for a shot at saving Planet Earth?

Ed Markey. That kind of person.

After the Democrats took over the House in 2007, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted action on climate change, so she chartered a new House Committee, and put Ed Markey in charge of it. The Republicans named Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) as their Ranking Member. Sensenbrenner has said that the science of climate change is a "global conspiracy." Sensenbrenner has said that labeling carbon dioxide as a pollutant is "propaganda." Mocking concerns over climate change, Sensenbrenner once suggested that we "put catalytic converters on all our noses." Ignoring the havoc that climate change and extreme weather have wrought, Sensenbrenner suggested that climate change might help "crop yields go up." When Nobel Prizewinner Paul Krugman called climate denial "treason against the planet," Sensenbrenner boasted, "I plead guilty as charged."

For almost four years, Markey and Sensenbrenner battled it out, through 80 committee hearings and briefings. Markey gamely publicized clean energy technology, and the risks caused by climate change. Markey pushed forward legislation like H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (which passed the House, and then Republicans filibustered it to death in the Senate). Markey's Committee educated the nation about global warming facts both horrifying (according to the World Health Organization, climate change already causes 150,000 deaths each year) and ironic (by 2030, there will be no glaciers in Glacier National Park). Markey faced down Big Oil, and ignored the steady drumbeat of nonsense and distraction from the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-evil Republican tools and zealots on the Committee.

With enemies like that, Ed Markey needs friends. And deserves them.

When the Republicans took over the House of Representatives after the 2010 election, they shut down Ed Markey's Committee. But Ed Markey remains the leading environmentalist in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Who speaks for the trees? Ed Markey does.

No one thinks Markey's win yesterday means it's time to relax. In fact, the very next thing we need to do is fill Markey's own House seat. It's a deep blue district and a Democrat will certainly win there. While Obama was winning the state of Massachusetts last November with 61% of the vote, he was winning Markey's district (MA-05) with 65%-- while Markey was being reelected with a stunning 77%! There are 24 counties in the district and Markey won every one of them. His "weakest" performance was a healthy 58% win in Southborough. There are a number of Democrats running for the seat, even progressives, but only one, state Rep. Carl Sciortino, is of a leadership caliber worthy of Ed Markey and the kind of people who elected Ed Markey. Grayson is meeting Carl today to give him some advice about how to win his race. And Blue America endorsed him a couple of months ago.

"Ed Markey’s win today," Carl told us last night, "is not just a victory for the people of Massachusetts, but a victory for the progressive movement. As Americans, we are fortunate to have his voice in the Senate-- but it comes at the cost of losing a true progressive leader in the House. There are real differences in the race to replace Senator-Elect Markey and we, as a movement, need to come together and make sure his legacy as a progressive leader in the House continues." Amen! And there's no one running quite like Carl, one of the organizers of the Massachusetts legislature's progressive caucus.

He reminded me that "in 2004, I was told by my Democratic state representative that 'we’ve done enough for ‘you people,’ when I asked him why he wouldn’t support marriage equality. Then and there, I decided to run against him in the Democratic primary-- and I beat him by 93 votes. When I got to the Massachusetts House, I was told by liberal members that the state wasn’t yet ready for a Transgender Equal Rights bill, but I filed the bill, organized a coalition, and now Massachusetts has protections for its transgender citizens. When the Democratic leadership decided to slash the retirement funds public sector employees had been promised when they signed up for their jobs, I stood up to the Democratic leadership and fought and voted for middle class workers."

Yes, so maybe you can see why Blue America-- and why House progressives-- are so enthusiastic about Carl taking over Markey's seat. I just got off the phone with him and I hope I wrote this down right:

"In Washington, there’s no question we need more strong progressives-- not just working on issues of civil rights, but on issues of economic justice. Never in American history has the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us been so great. Families are working hard, but only just able to afford the bare necessities. I will sign onto the bill to raise the minimum wage and index it to the cost of inflation. I will join the fight to close corporate tax loopholes at the federal level, just as I did in Massachusetts. And as a citizen signer of the Grayson-Takano letter, I will fight to protect Social Security, as well as fight to keep protections for those living in poverty that are so often left out of the public debate. Please help me keep Ed Markey’s seat progressive by supporting my campaign."

Monday, Carl was one of the first Democrats to react to he misguided 5-4 Supreme Court decision against women's health. On the campaign stump for Markey at the time, he told supporters that “I was proud to author and pass the Buffer Zone Bill after witnessing patients and their loved ones force their way through protestors to get to a health clinic. I always respect the right to free speech-- but there is no right to harassment and brutal intimidation, which is exactly what was going on before the bill’s passage. This law is important to ensure women’s access to reproductive health, and this challenge is just another attack from the right in the war on women-- something I will continue to aggressively fight against as a member of Congress.” If that's the kind of congressmember you want to see working in DC, please consider giving him a hand here.



Carl's statement today after the Supreme Court ruling:

“When I first ran for State Representative in 2004, I couldn’t have imagined how much progress we would make on marriage equality in nine short years. We are headed to the day to all couples have the right to marry whoever they love in any state in the country. But we are not there yet. Today is a great step forward for the thousands of couples living in states with marriage equality, and I’m so proud of Massachusetts for being a leader for equal rights. We must keep working until there is true marriage equality in every state.”

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Progressives Break With The Clinton-Bush-Obama Trade Policy Nightmare

Great minds think alike but, alas, we don't have many of those in Congress. Thank God we do have Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the Senate and Alan Grayson in the House. All three are skeptical-- very skeptical-- about the latest and most atrocious trade bill Corporate America is trying to shove down our throats, with the help of many of their colleagues and... el Presidente. Thursday all those Republicans who obstruct every Obama nomination were stumbling all over each other to vote to confirm the conservative American jobs killer Obama named as U.S. Trade Rep, Michael Froman. Corporate America was popping the champagne bottles. The nomination passed 93-4-1, only Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Joe Manchin and Carl Levin voting against one of Obama's worst picks for anything ever. (Barbara Boxer voted "present.")

Senator Warren spoke at the Constitution Society for Law and Policy this week and told the convention that the far right business lobby, the Chamber of Commerce now owns the Supreme Court. "Take a look at the win rate of the Chamber of Commerce. According to the Constitution Accountability Center, the Chamber moved from a 43 percent win rate during the very conservative Berger Court to a 56 percent win rate under the very conservative Rehnquist court. And now they are at a 70 percent win rate under the Roberts Court. Follow this pro-business trend to its obvious conclusion and you will end up with a Supreme Court that’s a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chamber of Commerce."

Not more than a few minutes after the vote Thursday, Bernie Sanders tweeted "Today, virtually no piece of legislation can get passed unless it has the ok from corporate America" and posted this video:


Bernie Sanders on the Independent in Politics from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.


The Obama Administration has been very secretive about the newest corporate trade bill it's burdening America with, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. They don't want anyone seeing the bill because it's more evidence that corporate America-- the guys who finance the cushy careers of our political elite-- no longer has any allegiance to America whatsoever, nor to American values or even American prosperity. They don't even see themselves as American but as cosmopolitan transnational citizens of the corporate world. They are international entities committed to the lowest international norms they can find for the sole purpose of maximizing corporate profits and the wealth of the top 1%. These are the traitors to this country, not Edward Snowden, and they should be identified as the secretive, bipartisan, slimy criminals they really are-- along with their Republican and Democratic political handmaidens, be it Boehner, McConnell or Obama. In a letter to his supporters, Congressman Alan Grayson explains how he came to read the toxic treaty... and what it means to 99% of us.

Last month, 10,000 of us submitted comments to the United States Trade Representative (USTR), in which we objected to new so-called free trade agreements. We asked that the government not sell out our democracy to corporate interests.

Because of this pressure, the USTR finally let a member of Congress-- little ole me, Alan Grayson-- actually see the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP is a large, secret trade agreement that is being negotiated with many countries in East Asia and South America.

The TPP is nicknamed “NAFTA on steroids.”  Now that I’ve read it, I can see why. I can’t tell you what’s in the agreement, because the U.S. Trade Representative calls it classified. But I can tell you two things about it.

1)    There is no national security purpose in keeping this text secret.

2)    This agreement hands the sovereignty of our country over to corporate interests.

3)    What they can’t afford to tell the American public is that [the rest of this sentence is classified].

(Well, I did promise to tell you only two things about it.)

I will be fighting this agreement with everything I’ve got. And I know you’ll be there every step of the way.

In other words, an anti-American power grab by corporations with no affinity with this country and no concerns whatsoever about the people who live in this country. “It is easy to understand why this NAFTA-style agreement has been kept secret," said Grayson. The TPP is a disturbing attack on American democracy and sovereignty. It puts corporate interests ahead of American interests.” Grayson has called on the USTR to release the full draft text of the agreement to the public, as it did under the Bush administration in 2001 with the draft text of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americans, the most recent major plurilateral agreement that the U.S. negotiated. “Each and every U.S. citizen should have the opportunity to read this agreement because if it is signed, the TPP will have a dramatic impact on our rights and our freedom,” Grayson added. The treaty will make it possible for corporations to file lawsuits to prevent government actions that they just don’t like, such as health and safety regulations. Similar trade agreements have allowed the World Trade Organization to strike down country-of-origin meat labels, dolphin-safe tuna labels and limits on candy-flavored cigarettes marketed to kids. The TPP is reported to include the same terms. Hope and Change!

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Iran, Syria, Obama-Bush and... Alan Grayson

If you read Ken's preview of the Iranian presidential election Friday night, you probably got the impression Hasan Rowhani was the guy we should be rooting for. By this morning he seemed to have a wide lead in the vote count, 51% against the 15% of his closest rival (hardliner Tehran Mayor Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, the Iranian equivalent of Ted Cruz or Louie Gohmert)-- enough to avoid a run-off next week. USA Today's coverage was even more upbeat about Rowhani than Ken was.

The man poised to take the Iranian presidency is a moderate-conservative known for his negotiating skill over the country's nuclear weapons program and a reformist some hardliners in Iran previously saw as too liberal and conciliatory, analysts say.

As a result, analysts predict Hasan Rowhani, who took a wide lead in early returns from Friday's election, might take the country's top political post and bring hope to the country's liberal classes but not wield any real power, especially on the nuclear issue.

"A president Rowhani would probably try to persuade the supreme leader that a deal on the nuclear issue would be in the interest of the Islamic Republic, especially if Rowhani believes that it is the only way to avoid a war," said Bruno Tertrais, a senior researcher at Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique (Foundation for Strategic Research) in Paris. "But (Supreme Leader) Khamenei will remain the ultimate decision-maker."

...In a sea of hardliners, a victory for Rowhani would be a win for reformist sentiment in Iran, observers say. During his candidacy, he attracted thousands to his rallies over his calls for an end to the repressive atmosphere prevailing in Iran-- including the lifting of economic sanctions that have crippled the economy and led to a spike in food and fuel prices-- and his pledge to open the door to more individual liberties and better relations with the West.

"We won't let the past eight years go on," Rowhani told crowds attending a pre-election rally. "(President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration) brought sanctions for the country and they are proud of it. I'll pursue a policy of reconciliation and peace, we will also reconcile with the world."

Still, even as his words lean liberal, Rowhani's background is firmly based in the political establishment of Iran.

A cleric, Rowhani first studied religion before graduating with a law degree in 1972, eventually earning a master's degree in law at Caledonian University in Glasgow, Scotland. He was swept up in the 1979 Iran's Islamic Revolution as a firm opponent to the shah and became an ally and part of the inner circle of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, serving in various roles in the government following Khomeini's ascension to power.

Regardless, some Iranians hold out hope that he will fulfill his promises due to his background as a skilled negotiator and conciliator. Rowhani served as head of the Supreme National Security Council during the presidency of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from 1989 to 1997. Following that, he was the country's top nuclear negotiator with the West from 2003 to 2005 during the administration of reformist leader Mohammad Khatami as the U.S. and other European allies grew concerned over Iran's nuclear program. He negotiated a temporary suspension in Iran's uranium enrichment activities.

When hardliner Ahmadinejad-- who is barred from seeking a third term-- took office in 2005, Rowhani resigned after arguments with the new leader.

Since then, Rowhani has remained in the background of reformist causes until earlier this year when the Guardian Council approved his candidacy and he earned the backing of Khatami and Rafsanjani who represent the liberal strain of Iranian politics.

Some Iranians remain hopeful that a Rowhani win could sway Iran to become more open and liberal.

A hopeful sign? Not everyone agrees. Alireza Nourizadeh is an Iranian scholar based in London. He warns that Rowhani "has always pretended to be a moderate, played the game really well and convinced voters he is a reformist by promising a different kind of conversation and behavior in the future. But I know this man-- he's the same man that served in the Supreme National Military Council for 24 years and called for the execution of student protesters (during the 1999 protests)." If the Supreme Leader allows Rowhani to become president-- and he did allow him to run-- then his first big test is sitting on his doorstep already: Syria... with a deadly little note from Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Hussein Obama.

I'm not going to start hyperventilating or speculating about Obama's motives or ambivalence. According to the Washington Post, though, the decision to involve the U.S. in a war to topple Assad, Iran's ally in Syria, was made some time ago, and the "evidence"-- probably trumped up evidence-- was just the kind of bullshit excuse they were waiting for, like the nonsense the Bush Regime presented to the American people to justify toppling Saddam Hussein and invading and occupying Iraq.

President Obama’s decision to begin arming the Syrian rebels followed more than a year of internal debate over whether it was worth the dual risks of involving the United States in another war and seeing U.S. weapons fall into the hands of extremist groups among the rebels.

The White House said the final push came this week after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded with “high certainty” that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons against the rebels.

But U.S. officials said that the determination to send weapons had been made weeks ago and that the chemical weapons finding provided fresh justification to act.

As Syrian government forces, with the help of Hezbollah and Iranian militias, began to turn the war in Assad’s favor after rebel gains during the winter, Obama ordered officials in late April to begin planning what weaponry to send and how to deliver it.

That decision effectively ended the lengthy disagreement among those in the White House-- primarily Obama’s political advisers-- who argued that providing arms would be a slippery slope to greater involvement, military leaders who said it would be too risky and expensive, and State Department officials who insisted that Syria and the region would collapse in chaos if action were not taken, officials said.

If you're wondering why many people who are not the Three Stooges (John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Amy Klobuchar) argue that Obama's excuses about starting a new war are pure bullshit, keep in mind that when Bush was pulling the same magic trick, it was McClatchy-- not the cheerleaders at the NY Times and Washington Post-- who saw through them and called them out. And McClatchy is reporting the distinct smell of another rat.

Chemical weapons experts voiced skepticism Friday about U.S. claims that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad had used the nerve agent sarin against rebels on at least four occasions this spring, saying that while the use of such a weapon is always possible, they’ve yet to see the telltale signs of a sarin gas attack, despite months of scrutiny.

“It’s not unlike Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn’t bark,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, a leading expert on chemical weapons who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies. “It’s not just that we can’t prove a sarin attack, it’s that we’re not seeing what we would expect to see from a sarin attack.”

Foremost among those missing items, Zanders said, are cellphone photos and videos of the attacks or the immediate aftermath.

“In a world where even the secret execution of Saddam Hussein was  taped by someone, it doesn’t make sense that we don’t see videos, that we don’t see photos, showing bodies of the dead, and the reddened faces and the bluish extremities of the affected,” he said.

Other experts said that while they were willing to give the U.S. intelligence community the benefit of the doubt, the Obama administration has yet to offer details of what evidence it has and how it obtained it.

White House foreign policy adviser Benjamin Rhodes gave dates and places for the alleged attacks-- March 19 in the Aleppo suburb of Khan al-Assal; April 13 in the Aleppo neighborhood of Shaykh Maqsud; May 14 in Qasr Abu Samrah in Homs province, and May 23 in Adra, east of Damascus. But he provided no details of the fighting that was taking place or the number of dead in each incident. He said the United States estimated that 100 to 150 had died in all.

“Ultimately, without more information, we are left with the need to trust the integrity of the U.S. intelligence community in arriving at its ‘high confidence’ judgment,” Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said in an email. While he said that “my guess is they have it right,” he also noted that the White House statement was “carefully and prudentially worded” and acknowledged the lack of a “continuous chain of custody for the physiological samples from those exposed to sarin.”

“It does not eliminate all doubt in my mind,” he said.

Philip Coyle, a senior scientist at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, said that without hard, public evidence, it’s difficult for experts to assess the validity of the administration’s statement. He added that from what is known, what happened doesn’t look like a series of sarin attacks to him.

“Without blood samples, it’s hard to know,” he said. “But I admit I hope there isn’t a blood sample, because I’m still hopeful that sarin has not been used.”

Even a proponent of the United States providing military assistance to the rebels raised doubts about the possible motive for announcing the chemical weapons conclusion.

In a passionate argument for U.S. involvement in Syria, Anthony Cordesman, a security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote Friday that “the ‘discovery’ that Syria used chemical weapons might be a political ploy.” The phrase was in an article that described strong strategic and humanitarian reasons for involvement in the crisis, particularly the recent involvement of the Lebanese group Hezbollah on the side of Assad.

I know I promised to not hyperventilate but I just want to say one more thing about this catastrophic blunder Obama is making. The folks making the case that we need to provide arms to help prevent more deaths are virtually all bloodthirsty warmongers who would like nothing more than to see every Syrian dead. Likud-backers like Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Eliot Engel. and if you think you can ignore what President Eisenhower said about how the Military Industrial Complex would take over the country if we weren't vigilant (which we haven't been), I want to beg you to watch this video of Alan Grayson on the floor of Congress Friday afternoon. Big Brother flipped out. (By the way, most Members of Congress have NOT read the reports exposed by Glenn Greenwald and are virtually clueless about what the NSA has been up to-- yes most members of our watchdog Congress we're counting on to keep 'em on the straight and narrow.)

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The Benign Sounding Trans-Pacific Partnership Is NAFTA On Steroids

Obamabots sometimes waste their time sending me letters asking me to stop exposing negative crap about Obama. Why don't they just write to Obama and ask him to stop generating so much negative crap? When I was deciding the reasons why I wouldn't be voting for Obama in 2012-- which was a big deal to me since it was the first presidential election in my life in which I didn't vote for the Democrat-- one of the many bullet points was his anti-working family trade policies. There were at least a dozen other reasons on the list, but Obama's catastrophic trade policies-- basically the same as Clinton's and both Bushs'-- was enough of a reason to vote against him alone. Megan Wilson interviewed Alan Grayson this week for The Hill about one aspect of Obama's latest folly on trade. Obama's Wall Street allies kicked down $6,376,619 for 2012 (and $16,924,110 in 2008), so about $23 million towards his presidential campaigns. This newest proposal he's making is a big fat wet kiss to these special interests.

The proposed U.S.-EU trade deal includes an investor-state dispute resolution that would enable companies to directly sue foreign governments involved in a treaty. It has been standard fare in trade deals for decades and is intended to hold governments accountable for reneging on contracts or agreements and changing regulations.

“This is one of the tools you could use... to get bad governments to do what they've committed to do,” said William Reinsch, the president of the National Foreign Trade Council, a business trade group dedicated to trade and investment issues that boasts members such as Boeing and Caterpillar.

Opponents have long railed against the trade courts, arguing that giving multinational corporations the ability to directly challenge a foreign government in an international tribunal threatens public and environmental safeguards.

Laws and regulations “reflect the actions of democratic government,” Grayson told The Hill, calling the provision “an organized assault against middle-class Americans and against democracy.”

The cases in the tribunals created by these investor-state disagreements are decided by three attorneys, who public interest groups say shuffle from acting as judges and representing corporations.

Corporations should not “get the right to sue in front of a rigged system where the outcome is preordained,” Grayson said.

...In the letter, Grayson says the investor-state negotiation provisions “undermine sovereignty without significantly increasing trade.”

“These kinds of provisions have been used to undermine country-of-origin meat labels, dolphin-safe tuna labeling requirements, regulation of hydraulic fracking,” he said. “These are not fundamentally questions of trade; why are they governed by so-called ‘trade agreements?’”

...“The issues [Congress] addresses falls into two categories: High-profile issues and low-profile issues,” Grayson said. “Lobbyists are very effective at influencing lawmakers on low-profile issues, like isolating one provision out of a 600-page bill.”

He said he wants to “change the category” of the investor-state dispute resolution by sharing his views.

“If not for this kind of effort, members would be able to support a bill like this because the public wouldn't know about it. ... Lawmakers will know that people will be judging them on this issue.”

Yesterday Grayson wasn't the only one talking about our elite's economy-destroying trade policies. Curtis Ellis explained the significance of the U.S. selling off productive parts of our economy to China in return for cheap manufactured goods and 21st Century trinkets. Curtis used Smithfield's sale to China's Shuanghui Group as the example and he asserts it's even worse than just finding antifreeze and other toxins in our Christmas hams from now on.

Smithfield's sale to Shuanghui is a direct result of our trade deficit with China, which was $295 billion in 2011. We send boatloads of money to China every day in return for the cheap consumer merchandise filling our store shelves and shopping malls. Apologists say we should send China a thank you note for 'everyday low prices,' but we don't need to-- we send them the money they use to buy our productive enterprises.

As long as we continue to run persistent trade deficits with China we'll see more deals like Smithfield and Nexteer, the one-time GM and Delphi steering operation controlled by China's biggest aerospace company. And while the doctrine of shareholder value pretty much shredded the social contract between corporations and the communities in which they operate, the rise of absentee landlords like Shuanghui takes it to the next level, with even less commitment to an American workforce being paid a living wage.

Smithfield does more than pack meat-- it's a vertically integrated operation that raises 15 million pigs a year in industrial hog operations that feed its slaughterhouses. If, as analysts say, the Smithfield sale is about supplying pork to China, we can expect a hundred factory farms to bloom and a further crackdown on efforts to regulate them and the toxic waste they produce. Industrial ag sponsors gag laws to criminalize documenting what goes on inside its operations. Now, the hands holding the gag and paying the lobbyists will be Chinese, if that makes any difference.

We don't know if China's abysmal record in food safety will become the benchmark for Smithfield. But it's safe to say that top management is not steeped in a culture of high standards-- just two years ago, Shuanghui was accused of feeding a dangerous additive to pigs destined for human consumption. Don't expect Smithfield's new owners to champion higher standards in the industrial food chain.

The FDA and food safety regulators have been captured by industrial agribusiness (a complex which includes Big Pharma, since factory farms are the largest customers for antibiotics made in China). U.S. government regulators will now be getting their marching orders from Chinese bosses. You could argue this will make little difference considering the lack of patriotic identity in the corporate suites of American-in-name-only companies. But if there's a choice between supplying more hog carcasses to China or preserving the health of Americans, you can be sure the decision will be made in a Shanghai minute.

When government regulators answer to those they are tasked to oversee and those in control are of foreign agency, the situation bears more than a passing resemblance to a banana republic.

The pliant governments of the original banana republics served foreign corporations. Today, our elected representatives prostitute themselves to those who can finance their campaigns and provide lucrative employment upon retirement from public office.

We've been accustomed to the paymasters having American monikers. No more. Now, they could be a state-owned enterprise from Henan, China as well as a private equity firm from Manhattan (or both at the same time).

In this late stage of globalization, stateless corporations with no loyalty to any country call the shots the world over, all nations reduced to virtual banana republics. Arrangements such as the TransPacific Partnership make this understanding explicit as they seek to bring national representative governments to heel under global corporatist rule.

We may not be able to do anything about Smithfield, but to preserve the promise of representative self-government in the USA, we must stop the TransPacific Partnership.

So who in Congress is backing Obama's disastrous TransPacific Partnership scheme that will be so destructive to ordinary working families? Well, basically all the Republicans and the entire Republican wing of the Democratic Party (the New Dems). Actual Democrats-- not the "New," corrupt right-wing iteration-- are opposing the latest corporate bag of tricks.

Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) pointed out last week that "[a]t a time when our efforts should be focused on putting people back to work, the Trans-Pacific Partnership will send American resources and jobs overseas, forcing working families already hurt by the Great Recession to get by on less and less. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a free trade agreement of unprecedented size and scope, easily dwarfing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Since the passage of NAFTA in 1994, U.S trade policy has relied almost exclusively on free-trade agreements to gain foreign access for American businesses. The result has devastated the wages of working Americans, as corporations flee the United States to employ low wage workers abroad. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is NAFTA on steroids. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5 million Americans have lost manufacturing jobs since the passage of NAFTA. Americans who are unable to go to college lose $3,300 of income every year due to NAFTA-induced trade and offshoring. TPP does not reverse this trend. It will export NAFTA’s failures across the Pacific and put more Americans out of work. There is a reason Washington wants to keep the Trans-Pacific Partnership secret from the American people. This agreement could be the biggest destroyer of American jobs coming out of Washington this year. We should encourage real fair trade, not the destruction of American jobs and communities.”

And last week, Jim McDermott, one of the clearest and strongest progressive voices advocating Fair Trade policies penned an OpEd for Roll Call on the subject of how Big Pharma and it's lobbyists have captured captured the Trans-Pacific Partnership for its own purposes. Those purposes don't bode well for... anyone else, and especially not for poor sick in need of medical care.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being negotiated right now. It includes 10 countries of the Pacific Rim, including developing countries such as Peru, Malaysia and Vietnam. If the TPP agreement is done right, it will encourage and support American exports and create needed jobs in the United States. The critical intellectual property provisions of the pact should protect inventors and developers of breakthrough innovations, but they cannot be so restrictive that they cost millions of lives in less developed countries.

At the beginning of TPP negotiations two years ago, for reasons that are unclear, the U.S. asked the other 10 countries to accept new and very rigid intellectual property measures that would greatly limit availability of the affordable generic medicines that the success of U.S.-supported global health programs require. For example, more than 98 percent of HIV/AIDS medicines used to fight AIDS in Africa are generics, mostly made in Asia.

The United States is currently party to many international agreements that include strong intellectual property protections. These agreements protect innovation, including 20-year patents on new drugs, but they also allow enough flexibility for poorer countries to respond to public health needs with accessible, low-cost drugs. We worked hard to get these rules in place and they are working well.

But the U.S.’ current TPP proposal on medicines upends the present well-structured balance by extending monopoly protections much further. It would force people in developing countries to wait longer for affordable medicines, if they can access them at all. It would extend patents beyond the current 20-year norm and block national regulators from using existing clinical trial data to approve the production of generic or “bio-similar” drugs.

Alarmingly, the proposal also outlaws “pre-grant opposition” that allows doctors and patients to provide information to their governments about patents they believe do not meet national rules, an important democratic safeguard. The proposal also requires the patenting of new versions of old medicines, even when the new versions offer no additional therapeutic benefits. It even requires patenting of surgical, therapeutic and diagnostic methods, which not only is unethical but also could increase medical liability and the cost of practice.

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