Foolish Republican Politicians Are Terrified At The Prospect Of Puerto Rican Statehood

Racist Republican senators warn their racist base that if Democrats win the White House and Congress in November, they will make Puerto Rico a state and the Republicans will never have a Senate majority because, of course, those brown Puerto Ricans will always automatically vote for Democrats. I wish... but it's just a mark of GOP paranoia and racism. Puerto Rico would probably be a swing state and certainly not a Democratic slam dunk. Now, Democrats making Washington DC a state, is probably what Republicans should really be worried about.

Yesterday, Olivia Reingold, writing for Politico Magazine, took a closer look at the idiotic GOP fears about Puerto Rican statehood, pointing out that, as usual, Republicans have it totally backwards. "People in the continental U.S. think that Puerto Ricans are going to vote Democratic, but on the other hand, the conservative values and Latin traditions are more akin to the values of a Republican Party," said José Garriga Picó, a political scientist and former member of the Puerto Rican Legislature. "You can’t really predict what voters are going to do here."

Some of the assumption that Puerto Rico would go blue is based on the fact that Puerto Ricans, when they move to the mainland, are often a reliable Democratic vote. A Politico poll from last spring asked Puerto Rican voters in Florida about their political preferences. It found that 38 percent of respondents identified as Democrats, but 42 percent said they weren’t committed to either party.

Both major islandwide elected officials in Puerto Rico are registered Republicans, as is the sitting governor, who was installed by the island’s Supreme Court. Puerto Rico’s Legislature, which has made a mark in recent years by enacting conservative laws including restrictions on abortion and expressions of gender identity, is led by registered Republicans in both its House and Senate. Seven of the past eight elections for governor or resident commissioner were won by members of the New Progressive Party, the more conservative of the island’s main parties—including the territory’s current nonvoting member of Congress, Jenniffer González-Colón, who is a member of the NPP, the chairwoman of the Puerto Rican Republican Party and a former co-chair of Latinos for Trump.

Meanwhile, as national Democrats flirt with the prospect of a Senate majority in 2021 and agitate for statehood for Puerto Rico, there’s a real political risk: They would add two seats to the Senate, but contrary to Republicans’ vocal fears, it’s no safe bet that those new senators would be Democrats.

Which may well mean that while this year, the path to a Senate majority runs through Denver, Birmingham and Billings, come 2022, San Juan might be the next battleground. Puerto Rico could be a purple state.

In Puerto Rico, statehood is the axis around which all politics revolve.

There are two main political parties-- the New Progressive Party and the Popular Democratic Party. Neither fits neatly into the Democratic-Republican binary, but the NPP is typically seen as the more conservative coalition, and has advocated tax cuts and conservative social policies-- positions which align it more closely to the Republican Party, even as national Republicans generally oppose statehood. But perhaps the most important contrast between the two parties comes on the issue of statehood: The NPP supports it, while the PDP is pro-commonwealth. The NPP advocates closer ties with Washington, whereas the PDP advocates local control.

In recent years, the NPP’s platform has proved successful at the ballot box. The party has two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate, and controls both the governor’s mansion and the island’s nonvoting seat in the U.S. House.

Carmen Yulín Cruz, the high-profile mayor of San Juan who is a member of the opposition PDP, says it would be a mistake to conflate the NPP’s dominance with widespread support for conservatism-- many of its members identify as Democrats, she notes. Even so, she’s not sure whether Puerto Ricans would identify more with the Republican or Democratic Party if statehood were achieved.

“It depends,” she told Politico. “What Puerto Ricans see, and this is wrong for us to see it this way, but what they see is that the pro-statehood party is equivalent to the Republican Party, and that the commonwealth party is equivalent to the Democratic Party.”

Yulín Cruz, who frequently appeared on cable news after Hurricane Maria as a Trump critic, has been embraced by the progressive wing of the national Democratic Party and served as a co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. During her recent gubernatorial primary, she was endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, then lost her race for the party’s nomination by almost 50 points.

...“It’s really tough to argue that we would be a blue state,” said Mayra Vélez Serrano, a political science professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras. “The [2020] primary tells you that. Someone like Carmen Yulín Cruz, who’s very progressive and has a lot of support from the mainland, did horribly locally.”

...In 2011, during an official visit to the island-- the first of any sitting president since John F. Kennedy-- Barack Obama promised to support whatever decision Puerto Ricans made about their status. “When the people of Puerto Rico make a clear decision,” he said to an audience at the Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport, “my administration will stand by you.”

A little more than a year later, Puerto Ricans voted in favor of statehood in a nonbinding referendum. Over 60 percent of voters said they wanted to see the island become a state. But many observers said the results were muddied by confusion about whether the results actually resulted in any sort of mandate. Rather than offer voters a simple up-down vote on statehood, the ballot presented three options for Puerto Rico’s preferred form of government: statehood, sovereign commonwealth or independence. Leading up to the vote, the PDP urged voters to leave the ballot question about statehood blank altogether, in protest of the fact that their preferred option-- "enhanced commonwealth," which would keep the island’s current status but add some of the benefits of independence, like exempting it from some federal laws—wasn’t on the ballot. Ultimately, more than 498,000 ballots-- 26.5 percent of all ballots cast-- were left blank.

When asked about the election results at a news conference in 2012, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the Obama administration declined to endorse the outcome “because of the process itself.” The next day, the Obama administration reversed its position and endorsed the pro-statehood results of the referendum. The Congress, with its Republican-controlled House and Democratic Senate, never ratified the results of Puerto Rico’s statehood vote, and the island was not granted statehood.

...[T]he Democratic Party’s official platform commits to giving Puerto Ricans the opportunity to determine their status. Last week, Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nydia M. Velázquez, both New Yorkers of Puerto Rican ancestry, introduced a bill that would accomplish that-- the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act.

Velázquez, who was born in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, says if her bill passes and Puerto Rico decides to become a state, she’s not sure whether the island will send two Democratic senators to Washington.

“That’s certainly the fear of the Republicans in Congress. They truly believe that for the most part, Puerto Ricans will be in the Democratic Party. I just, I do not know,” Velázquez told Politico. “It will be a different ballgame. People are learning that they need to hear from both parties what are their platforms on the issues that matter most for Puerto Ricans.”

Picó, the former Puerto Rican legislator-turned-political scientist, notes that when Hawaii and Alaska were admitted to the U.S. as states in 1959, the assumption was that Hawaii would be a Republican state and Alaska would be solidly blue. That’s not how either state votes now. Hawaii is solidly blue, and Democratic presidential candidates have carried it in all but two elections since 1960. Alaska is beet red and has voted for a Democratic presidential nominee only once.

“I know that’s the assumption in the states that Puerto Rico would become a Democratic state,” Picó said. “Then again, you never know.”

No? With DC you know though. No? Dependable-- just like secessionist South Carolina. Although...

Trump Says DC Will Never Be A State-- A Majority Of Congress Disagrees With Him

Moscow Mitch and Putin's Bitch say "Nyet" to DC statehood

As of last July, the population of Washington DC was 705,749, about the same as Alaska, North Dakota and Vermont. The population of Wyoming was 578,759. Each of those states has 2 senators-- just like California (pop- 39,512,223), Texas (pop- 28,995,881), Florida (pop- 21,477,737) and New York (pop- 19,453,561). Each of those states also has a member of the House (as do Montana, Delaware and South Dakota). The citizens of Washington, DC have no senators and no member of the House representing their interests in Congress. Next Friday, June 26, the House will vote to grant DC statehood. I do I know? A majority of the House is co-sponsoring it.

It will be the first time that either House has voted to grant Washington, which is still a majority black city, statehood. But no one expects Mitch McConnell-- a notorious racist with a well-known and rarely disguised animus towards black people-- to even allow a vote on the Senate floor. McConnell would never allow any such thing and, according to the Washington Post "the legislation would not get a vote in the Senate as long as he’s in charge." McConnell, always the deceitful cynic who nicknamed himself "the Grim Reaper," called statehood for DC "full-bore socialism."

Not a single Republican has co-sponsored the bill. In fact, ultra-conservative New Jersey Blue Dog Jeff Van Drew signed on as a cosponsor on June 24, the last member to do so, when he was still pretending to be a Democrat. He formally withdrew his sponsorship on February 10 once he was officially a Trumpist Republican. Señor Trumpanzee backs up McConnell and the congressional Republicans in this latest demonstration of their institutionalized racism, saying Republicans would be "very, very stupid" to grant D.C. statehood because the voters there are overwhelmingly Democrats. "District of Columbia, a state? Why? So we can have two more Democratic-- Democrat senators and five more congressmen? No thank you. That’ll never happen." He's right about how there will never be 5 more congressmen. DC is entitled to one congressman, just like Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Delaware, Vermont and Wyoming.

Riverside County's Ken Calvert is one of the lockstep Trump enablers refusing to back statehood for DC. I asked his Democratic opponent, history professor Liam O'Mara, why Calvert is opposing a solution that embraces such a fundamental idea like "no taxation without representation." He told me that "The reason is simple: GOP 'conservatives' do not care about democracy or such founding principles as the one you cite. What they care about is power and serving our neofeudal overlords.Calvert has no problem with systematic disenfranchisement of Americans-- I reckon he would strip the vote from a lot of us if he could. Stopping more people from exercising basic constitutional rights has been a part of GOP orthodoxy for decades. I can think of no better way to respond to BS like this than to challenge Calvert's patriotism, and remind people that he serves the wealthy, not us. 98% of his campaign funds come from corporations and PACs tied to the oligarchy, and they are his only constituents. As far as the taxpayers of DC are concerned-- and those of Puerto Rico, the Marianas, and American Samoa-- Calvert just doesn't give a fuck. He only cares if you can pay him to care. And for myself? I signed the DC statehood pledge last month, and have supported extending it to all territories for decades. Why? Principle matters... at least, it does for those of us who can't be bought."

Like Calvert, Fred Upton now always puts his party before any kind of moral compass he may have once had. So, of course, he is refusing to back fair representation for the hundreds of thousands of Americans living in Washington, DC. The progressive Democrat running for his southwest Michigan seat this cycle, state Rep Jon Hoadley, has a different way of looking at it. This morning, Hoadley told me that "The residents of the District of Columbia are American taxpayers, and deserve to have equal representation on our national stage like the rest of our states. The only reason to vote against statehood for D.C. is if you're more interested in pushing a partisan agenda than fair representation. The population of D.C. is 700,000-- larger than states that already have Congressional representation. It’s past time to end this disenfranchisement and make D.C. our 51st state."

Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK), a super-conservative Democrat from Oklahoma City with no guts at all, is one of the only Dems refusing to co-sponsor the bill. Her progressive opponent, Tom Guild, backs statehood for DC. I asked him what's up with Kendra.

"Washingtonians are people, too," he said. "They pay taxes. They are U.S. citizens. They are disenfranchised by not having voting members to represent them in the U.S. House and Senate. It is past time to stop treating the long suffering Americans who live in the District of Columbia like second class citizens. I favor statehood for Washington, DC which automatically would qualify them for at least one voting member in the house and two senators. As Thomas Jefferson said, 'All men are created equal.' Were Jefferson still alive he would certainly add women to his powerful and moving statement. I would vote for statehood and it would be a simple stroke of the pen to add my name as a co-sponsor for a statehood bill. We do not always do the right thing, but this is a chance to correct centuries of discrimination against our brothers and sisters who live in the district. Since they live so close to so many politicians, you might even be able to make a plausible case for Washingtonians being deserving of extra members in Congress representing DC. Jefferson eloquently stated that Americans are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is past time to deliver happiness to more than 700,000 Washingtonians. Come on Kendra! Your brothers and sisters in the nation’s capital are people and American citizens, too. My fellow Okie, do not forget that it is far better to give to others than to receive!"

I like the way Eva Putzova, the reform candidate in Arizona, summed this up today-- since her opponent Blue Dog Tom O'Halleran is one of the few Democrats who has refused to co-sponsor the bill. "You know what kind of Democrat would vote for voter suppression and against having more representation in Congress? Someone who is a Democrat in name only. Tom O'Halleran was a Republican all his life. When it comes down to important issues, he is still loyal to the Republican Party." BINGO! Please help Eva, Tom, Jon and Liam replace their reactionary opponents in Congress by clicking on the 2020 congressional thermometer above and contributing what you can.

The Standoff at the D.C Venezuelan Embassy and Why It's Bad for the U.S.

Standoff at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, D.C. (Photo Ann Wright)

by Thomas Neuburger

This is US military policy, being carried out unlawfully on US soil. The DC police and Mayor Bowser's administration are siding with the right-wingers, who are acting unlawfully and with excessive force.
     —RJ Eskow via Twitter

UPDATE: The last Embassy Protectors have been arrested and removed. It has begun.

BREAKING NEWS: Police arrested the 4 people remaining in the Venezuela Embassy as part of the #EmbassyProtectionCollective. Total violation of Vienna Conventions. Shameful!!!

— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) May 16, 2019

You may have heard news of something going on at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C, but since none of the usual media outlets are covering it, it may not have made much of an impression and the detail may be a bit of a mystery to most people.

In a nutshell, here's what's happened to date:

• The Trump administration attempted to spark a coup in Venezuela against the corrupt, but legitimately elected president Nicolás Maduro using opposition politician Juan Guaidó as its agent of change.

For more on the background of U.S.-Venezuelan relations and the current crisis, see "Venezuela and Binary Choice" and this timeline via Code Pink. Venezuela has oil, of course, a whole lot of it, and the U.S. has John Bolton in charge of foreign policy.

• The coup failed, however, leaving Maduro still in office and still in charge of the government.

• On April 10, prior to the failed coup, the Maduro government, fearing a takeover of their D.C. embassy by pro-Guaidó opponents and/or agents provocateurs backed by the U.S., invited members of the anti-war group Code Pink into the D.C. embassy as guests. They have been there ever since.

• The U.S. government, which still considers the Maduro government illegitimate, responded by cutting off electricity, food and water to the embassy, creating a standoff and an embassy under siege — in Georgetown.

This is where things stood until May 13, when the D.C. police taped "trespass notices," with no signature or letterhead, to the doors of the embassy and prepared to enter by force. (Consider for a moment what would, could, and will happen to U.S. embassies elsewhere in the world — starting with the embassy in Venezuela — if Bolton, Trump and the U.S. government are allowed to set invasion of foreign embassies as a precedent.)

Police did enter the embassy, but what happened next will surprise you. I'll turn the rest of the narrative over to Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright of Code Pink (emphasis mine). For the outcome, stay tuned.

---

Venezuela Embassy Protection Collective Defies Unlawful “No Trespass” Order

As this saga of the future of the Venezuela Embassy in Georgetown continues to unfold, history will record this as a key turning point in U.S.-Venezuela relations

by Medea Benjamin, Ann Wright

An extraordinary set of events has been unfolding at the Venezuela Embassy in Washington DC, ever since the Embassy Protection Collective began living at the embassy with the permission of the elected government of Venezuela on April 10 to protect it from an illegal takeover by Venezuela’s opposition. The actions of the police on the evening of May 13 added a new level of drama.

Since the cutting off of electricity, food and water inside the embassy has not been enough to force the collective to leave, late Tuesday afternoon, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police handed out a trespassing notice that was printed without letterhead or signature from any U.S. government official.

The notice said that the Trump administration recognizes Venezuela opposition leader Juan Guaido as the head of the government of Venezuela and that the Guaido-appointed ambassador to the United States, Carlos Vecchio, and his appointed ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Gustavo Tarre, were to determine who is allowed into the Embassy. Those not authorized by the ambassadors were to be considered trespassers. Those inside the building were “requested” to depart the building.

The notice appeared to have been written by the Guaido faction, but was posted and read by the DC police as if it were a document from the U.S. government.

The police taped the notice to the doors all around the Embassy and later called in the fire department to cut the lock and chain that had been on the front door of the Embassy since diplomatic relations were broken between Venezuela and the United States on January 23.

Adding to the drama, supporters of both sides began to gather. The pro-Guaido forces, who had erected tents around the perimeter of the embassy and had set up a long-term encampment to oppose the collective inside the building, were ordered to take down their encampment. It seemed as though this was part of moving them from outside the embassy to the inside.

Two hours later, some members of the collective inside the embassy voluntarily left to reduce the load on food and water, and four members refused to obey what they considered an illegal order to vacate the premises. The crowd waited in anticipation of the police going inside and physically removing, and arresting, the remaining collective members. The pro-Guaido forces were jubilant, crying “tic-toc, tic-toc” as they were counting down the minutes before their victory.

In a remarkable turn of events, however, instead of arresting the collective members who remained inside, a lengthy discussions ensued between them, their lawyer Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and the DC police. The discussion focused on the reason collective members were in the Embassy in the first place—trying to stop the Trump administration from violating the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic and Consular Facilities by turning over the diplomatic premises to a coup government.

Collective members reminded police officers that following illegal orders does not protect them from being charged with criminal actions.

BREAKING: authorities just taped this ‘trespassing notice’ onto the Venezuelan embassy. It orders all those inside to leave immediately and threatens arrest to those who refuse to comply with orders.

This is illegal under international law! pic.twitter.com/Xdlgk29Zot

— CODEPINK (@codepink) May 13, 2019

After two hours, instead of arresting the collective, police turned around, locked the door behind them, posted guards and said they would ask their superiors how to handle the situation. The crowd was stunned that the State Department and DC police, after having over a month to organize the eviction, had begun this operation without a full plan to include arrests warrants in case the Collective members did not vacate the building voluntarily.

Kevin Zeese, a Collective member, wrote a statement concerning the status of the Collective and the Embassy:

This is the 34th day of our living in the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC. We are prepared to stay another 34 days, or however long is needed to resolve the embassy dispute in a peaceful way consistent with international law...Before doing so, we reiterate that our collective is one of independent people and organizations not affiliated with any government. While we are all US citizens, we are not agents of the United States. While we are here with permission of the Venezuelan government, we are not their agents or representatives...  The exit from the embassy that best resolves issues to the benefit of the United States and Venezuela is a mutual Protecting Power Agreement. The United States wants a Protecting Power for its embassy in Caracas. Venezuela wants a Protecting Power for its embassy in DC.

The Embassy Protectors will not barricade ourselves, or hide in the embassy in the event of an unlawful entry by police. We will gather together and peacefully assert our rights to remain in the building and uphold international law. Any order to vacate based on a request by coup conspirators that lack governing authority will not be a lawful order. The coup has failed multiple times in Venezuela. The elected government is recognized by the Venezuelan courts under Venezuelan law and by the United Nations under international law. An order by the US-appointed coup plotters would not be legal... Such an entry would put embassies around the world and in the United States at risk. We are concerned about US embassies and personnel around the world if the Vienna Convention is violated at this embassy. It would set a dangerous precedent that would likely be used against US embassies... If an illegal eviction and unlawful arrests are made, we will hold all decision-makers in the chain of command and all officers who enforce unlawful orders accountable... There is no need for the United States and Venezuela to be enemies. Resolving this embassy dispute diplomatically should lead to negotiations over other issues between the nations.

We anticipate that the Trump administration will go to court today, May 14 to request an official U.S.-government order to remove the Collective members from the Venezuelan Embassy.

Members of the National Lawyers Guild wrote a statement challenging the Trump administration’s handing over of diplomatic facilities to unlawful persons:

The undersigned write to condemn the violations of law which are occurring at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D.C. and to demand immediate action be taken. Prior to April 25, 2019, a group of peace activists were invited to the Embassy by the government of Venezuela—recognized as such by the United Nations—and continue to be lawfully on the premises.

Nonetheless, the United States government, through various law enforcement agencies, have condoned and protected violent opponents in support of an attempted siege of the Embassy. In so doing, the U.S. government is creating a dangerous precedent for diplomatic relations with all nations. These actions are not only illegal, but they put embassies around the world at risk. [...]

The contempt shown by the Trump Administration for these principles and for international law puts at risk the entire system of diplomatic relations which could have a reverberating effect in nations throughout the world.

The undersigned demand that the United States immediately cease its ongoing state-sponsored assault and illegal intervention in Venezuela and against its government, which continues to be recognized by the United Nations and the majority of the world. We demand that local and federal law enforcement immediately refrain from exposing the peaceful invitees and their supporters inside and outside the Embassy to harm in violation of their fundamental human rights.

As this saga of the future of the Venezuela Embassy in Georgetown continues to unfold, history will record this as a key turning point in U.S.-Venezuela relations, U.S. violation of a key tenet of international law and most of all, as a heroic example of US citizens doing everything in their power--including going without food, water and electricity and facing daily assaults by the opposition—to try to stop a US-orchestrated coup.
 

That Merrick Garland Nomination-- Yuck!

Despite fulsome praise from the carefully orchestrated Democratic lapdog organizations, progressives are anything but impressed with Merrick Garland... although many progressives are impressed with President Obama's revitalization of his multi-dimensional chess game against the Senate Republicans. The video from Fox News above is important to watch if you want to follow and comprehend this kabuki theater as it unfolds over the next few months. As Fox's "senior judicial analyst," Judge Andrew Napolitano, explained above, "Garland is the consummate Washington, DC insider [and] the most conservative nominee to the Supreme Court by a Democratic president in the modern era." By "modern era," he's talking about in any of our lifetimes.

Now everyone will be-- should be-- asking why Obama backed away from the already bad enough Sri Srinivasan-- who he had, after all, told all his allies he had decided on-- to choose Garland? Perhaps he is figuring (or something) that President Hillary-- or, most certainly President Bernie-- will not re-nominate him after the clumsy and hyper-partisan Republican Senate braggarts stumble awkwardly into rejecting him. Had Obama selected his first choice-- Srinivasan-- after the Republicans killed that nomination, Hillary wouldn't have had much choice other than to re-nominate him if she were elected along with a Democratic Senate. If progressives put up at least a bit of a fight against Garland's conservatism during the debate-- if there is a debate, which there should be-- she can safely pass over him and nominate someone much younger and more-- dare I say-- liberal... although more liberal than Garland covers a lot of ground.

It might be Hillary's inclination to go for, say, California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu, husband of long-time close Hillary crony Ann O'Leary. Some think, in fact, that it is that threat of Liu-- and his 40 liberal years on the Court, that may well lead to Grassley and McConnell changing their tune on the obstructionism dance they've been doing. So far two very at risk Republican senators, Kelly Ayotte (NH) and Mark Kirk (IL) plus Susan Collins (ME), have announced they will be meeting with Garland and giving his nomination due consideration. Republicans aren't obligated to confirm him but they are insane to treat him with any disrespect given his position as the Chief Justice of the DC Circuit Court which makes so many of the important decisions they care most about. McConnell, Hatch (who actually suggested Garland just last week), Flake, Graham, Cornyn and Grassley-- if not vicious ideologues and clods like Cruz, Sessions and Lee-- know better than to piss the guy off for no reason. I had to laugh when I read a statement from the Congressional Record-- albeit an old one-- from Iowa Governor Terry Branstad to Grassley: "I am writing to ask your support and assistance in the confirmation process for a second cousin… Merrick Garland has had a distinguished legal career."

Don't expect DWT to be supportive of Garland-- although, obviously we respect the process. The White House and its lapdogs can fight this battle on their own while we highlight all Garland's horrible conservative decisions that have been so harmful to real people. It's important for progressives-- if not professional Democrats and those Beltway lapdogs of theirs, to make it clear to Hillary and Democratic senators that we expect more in a nominee, a lot more than Merrick Garland. Obama's fine in making the Republicans look like the unreasonable jackasses they are... so long as we don't get stuck with Garland in the process.

Bernie seems to be playing along. This was his statement a couple of hours ago: "Judge Garland is a strong nominee with decades of experience on the bench. My Republican colleagues have called Judge Garland a 'consensus nominee' and said that there is 'no question' he could be confirmed. Refusing to hold hearings on the president's nominee would be unprecedented. President Obama has done his job. It’s time for Republicans to do theirs. I call on Sen. Grassley to hold confirmation hearings immediately and for Leader McConnell to bring the nomination to floor of the Senate if Judge Garland is approved by the Judiciary Committee."

UPDATE: Don't Let Anyone Tell You Garland Is A Progressive

Mark Plotkin isn't high on President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland and points out that a nominee's acceptability to Republicans-- with Garland has aplenty-- shouldn't be what motivates "a president to choose someone in particular. A president who takes that path is denigrating the process and making this most important appointment nothing more than a political deal." But what Plotkin is all worked up over is a case many people have never heard of, Alexander v. Daley.

The basis of the legal argument put forth by American University law professor Jamin Raskin, Assistant D.C. Corporation Counsel Walter Smith and attorneys Charles Miller, Evan Schultz and Tom Williamson of Covington & Burling-- as noted in a law review article co-authored by Raskin in Human Rights Brief-- was that the "denial of the D.C. community's right to be represented in the U.S. Congress violates the rights of Equal Protection, Due Process, a republican form of government, and the privileges and immunities of national citizenship-- all critical democratic guarantees of the U.S. Constitution."

What Garland did, along with another judge, was to rule against the citizens of D.C. In a tortured and simplistic opinion, he said that since D.C. was not a "state," its citizens should not be accorded the same rights as every other U.S. citizen. This opinion was the moral equivalent of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), saying that "separate but equal" was legal.

In my opinion, it was a classic illustration of voter suppression, using a phony legal justification for denying the vote to an entire group of U.S. citizens-- in this case, citizens of the nation's capital. That decision alone should disqualify him from consideration to the highest court in the land.

It is my opinion that Garland did not want to go out on a limb and favor anything so radical as providing the vote to over 600,000 disenfranchised citizens (76 percent of whom are registered as Democrats). You see, this opinion would be viewed as controversial and too liberal, and the last thing Garland wanted was to have those monikers attached to him.

So he carefully positioned himself on the "right" side so he could be viewed as viable if a chance for the Supreme Court ever presented itself. When it came to this decision, Garland, with all his impressive educational and professional credentials, chose to think of his own judicial advancement first.

At the very top of the Supreme Court, emblazoned in stone, are these simple words: "Equal justice under law." Merrick Garland decided to ignore and violate that sacred principle.

Marijuana begins slipping its way into the American mainstream

The dueling pot covers, courtesy of The Cannabist (click to enlarge)

"When American institutions as stolid as Time and National Geographic run cannabis on their covers, without the words 'crackdown' or 'out of control' or 'fear', the ground has truly shifted."

-- Bruce Barcott, author of Weed the People: The
Future of Legal Marijuana in America, in an
e-mail to The Cannabist staffer Ricardo Baca

by Ken

When I opened my mailbox today, there staring out at me was the new National Geographic with the cover you see above, and the giant cover line: "WEED: The New Science of Marijuana." For reasons that some of you may already have guessed, that got my attention.

Marijuana isn't a subject that's ever been of much interest in me. When I was of an age to dabble, and most of the people my age were doing a lot more than dabbling, I was apparently no good at it -- the couple of times I tried to smoke the stuff, all that happened was that I gagged on the smoke, and gagging isn't anything I've ever gone looking for ways to experience. So I've generally taken a pass on heated debates about legalization, suspecting that the fierce opponents are overestimating its downsides and its proponents underestimating them.

Medical marijuana is something else, though, but again it's not something that was an especially personal issue for me. Anecdotal as the evidence for its benefits might be, that evidence seemed to me more than sufficient to outweigh any of the downsides for the sufferers who might benefit from it. This was still pretty abstract, though, until I witnessed at close range -- or as close a range as you can get from 3000 miles away -- the intensity of Howie's sufferings before he finally sought out a trustworthy source and availed himself of it and the kind of relief he has gotten, which he wrote about in a post last week, "How Much Good Can Medical Marijuana Do Patients?"

So I know, first off, how cautiously, how skeptically, he approached it. As he himself has written here, pot once played an important role in his life, and the role it played was something he emphatically didn't want to revisit -- as he told me frequently, he really, really didn't want to get high. What's more, while he was undergoing chemotherapy, his doctor, whom he trusts highly, issued a strict "uh-uh" order. But when he finished those treatments, and was still suffering a host of debilitating side effects starting with really high degrees of neuropathic pain and near-inability to eat or sleep, and he had tried everything else that the medical establishment had to offer, he did find a source who could guide him through the incredibly fraught world of medical marijuana in California, where the overwhelming majority of customers aren't buying for medicinal use and the overwhelming majority of sellers are people you really, really shouldn't want to be doing business with, for any reason, ever, the results were, as again he has written here, both quick and pretty astonishing.

I learned from Howie too that most of what passes for "received opinion" in the medical community, and therefore also what we might call "controlling" medical opinion in the country at this time, comes from older doctors who don't seem to mind that, really, they don't know anything about the actual potential benefits and risks. Perhaps because that "controlling" opinion squares so neatly with the knee-jerk "it's a sin" opinion of our self-appointed guardians of morality, it has been sufficient to all but stifle the kind of research you would figure would normally go into forming some kind of informed opinion on the subject.

So we're in this situation where people who are almost proud to know nothing whatsoever about the subject exercise the power to make it next to impossible for us to learn any more than we know. I suspect that, as with such other matters as abortion and homosexuality which have been held captive by our society's self-appointed moral ignoramuses, a lot more flexibility has come into play when it comes to their own nearest and dearest, which certainly represents a step beyond the categorical "uh-uh, no way." However, from this point it's still generally an arduous process for authorities to connect the dots and begin to lift the curtain for other people.

I should say that I still haven't actually read the National Geographic piece. What I did do right away, though, was to go online and see if I could find a link that would enable you to read the piece. I did, as you'll see, but I found more than that. Above all, I found this piece on the website The Cannabist:

National Geographic, Time both have science-of-pot cover stories this week

By Ricardo Baca, The Cannabist Staff

Have a look at your local bookseller’s magazine rack this week. It might even be worth an Instagram — for history’s sake.

Two of America’s most fabled magazines’ current cover stories are exploring the known and unknown science of marijuana. On National Geographic’s cover: “Weed: The New Science of Marijuana.” On Time magazine’s cover: “The Highly Divisive, Curiously Underfunded and Strangely Promising World of Pot Science.”

That the two magazines, with nearly 210 years of publication shared between them, are coincidentally running these stories simultaneously says something about the ever-shifting national conversation surrounding cannabis.

“Politicians and voters need to wake the fuck up and smell the weed,” wrote Redditor envyxd on a r/trees post about the dueling covers.

Bruce Barcott — author of the book Weed the People and co-author of Time’s piece this week — took notice of the two magazines’ timing in a recent email exchange.

“When American institutions as stolid as Time and National Geographic run cannabis on their covers, without the words ‘crackdown’ or ‘out of control’ or ‘fear’, the ground has truly shifted,” Barcott told me.

So here they are: Hampton Sides’ Science seeks to unlock marijuana’s secrets [you have to be registered for free access, but registration is free -- Ed.], from National Geographic. And [Bruce] Barcott and Michael Scherer’s The great pot experiment, from Time [only a preview is available free to nonsubscribers -- Ed.].

[Time notes: "Portions of (Bruce Barcott's and Michael Scherer's) article were adapted from Barcott’s new book Weed the People, the Future of Legal Marijuana in America, from TIME Books. -- Ed.]

The message I'm getting is that we've reached a milestone in that process of processing the subject of pot based on reality rather than blindly received moral gobbledygook.


WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT --

The Washington Post's Emily Wax-Thibodeaux reports, in "Senate panel backs allowing vets to ask about medical pot for PTSD,":

Veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other chronic pain issues may be able to ask their VA doctors for a new treatment soon: medical marijuana.
This week, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to back the Veterans Equal Access Amendment. Under the measure, Veterans Affairs (VA) would be allowed to recommend medical marijuana to patients for medicinal purposes for everything from back pain to depression to flashbacks.

Veterans who support the proposal say that it is safer and helps more than the addictive and debilitating painkillers that are often prescribed. They say using medical cannabis can help combat PTSD’s insomnia and panic attacks.

The legislation would overturn VA’s policy that forbids doctors from talking to patients about medical pot use.

And note the party of the senator who introduced the bill:

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who introduced the legislation, argued that forbidding VA doctors from talking about the option of medical marijuana is unconstitutional. He said that First Amendment rights include the right of patients to discuss whatever they want with their doctors.

Senator Daines goes on to say, "They can't discuss all the options available to them that they could discuss if they literally walked next door to a non-VA facility. I don't believe we should discriminate against veterans just because they are in the care of the VA."

The legal issue for the VA is that "the federal government classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug, like heroin and LSD," which "means it has no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse." But if I've understood Howie correctly, doctors in California -- which like the District of Columbia allows medical marijuana -- don't seem to be allowed to raise the subject of medical marijuana either, or at least not the ones he's dealt with.

One interesting note in the WaPo piece : "Several studies have shown that states that allow medical marijuana for health purposes also found a decrease in the number of painkiller-related overdoses." Read more onsite.

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Urban Gadabout: It's off to D.C.! ('Cause they're making me go!)

by Ken

Thanks to the miracle of modern blog scheduling technology (which works more or less like that great space-age technological innovation the alarm clock), by the time you read this (or don't), I should be back with NYC limits after my whirlwind descent on Washington, D.C. (POST-TIME UPDATE: A post-time update follows this post, which for reasons I hope will be obvious was written last night, allowing a few hours' sleep before my alarm went off at 4:50am.) That's if all went according to plan, which is not one of those assumptions I like to assume, especially when the first part of the plan puts me on a sidewalk outside a McDonald's on Seventh Avenue at 6:15am.

Now I'll bet that when you first learned I was winging off to Our Nation's Capital today (this would be in the paragraph above), you probably thought I must be going with the express determination to knock some of those wooden Village heads together and maybe knock some sense into them. This is so close to the actual facts as to make the few trivial deviations hardly worth chronicling. However, for the record:

(1) There's no winging. It's such a hassle getting all the way out to the airport, and then getting from the airport into Washington. Who needs that? As we New Yorkers say, fuhgeddaboutit! No, I'm traveling the way people who are really in the know make the trip: by a tourist bus that, according to my best information, I will board outside a McDonald's on Seventh Avenue.

I think this qualifies as "tourist class." It is, at that, a class above the transport I used for my last D.C. outing, some years ago, when Howie had traveled east on People for the American Way business and wangled me an invite to a local soirée, which would give me a chance to see him, and I had the inspiration to do the trip via one of those Chinatown buses with the amazingly low fares. (Okay, yes, and also the not-quite-rock-bottom accident and casualty rates.)

The only thing was, the schedule clearly wasn't designed for day-tripping. After something like 7pm, which was way too early for me, the next New York-bound bus was at something like 2am, if not 3am, a matter of many hours after my function ended and, not knowing anyone in town well enough to seek to impose, I was dumped back into the chilly, drizzly streets of downtown Washington. I must have found enough places open where a person could nurse a cup of coffee long enough before proceeding to the next such place until it seemed reasonable to proceed to the bus stop, or at least what I believed to be the bus stop. Leaving me to hope, as I stood there on the darkened sidewalk, that there really was a bus at the expected hour and that I was waiting for it in the right place. (Let the record show that I made it home in one kind of exhausted piece.)

(2) I don't expect to be seeing any of Those People, those creepy D.C. types you're always reading about here at DWT. I don't know any of them, and I don't want to know any of them. I would have to check the itinerary again, but I'm pretty sure it includes the Capitol, and I suppose there's the remote possibility of incidental contact with some of those Villagers, but I suspect that the highest-ranking Washingtonian I'll be encountering is our tour guide.

And the fact is, the fact that the district is infested by those people is creeping me out, which brings me to this additional circumstance --

(3) I don't really wanna go. Oh, I had planned a trip for the day. Even scheduled a day off from work (which itself has to be done, according to the employee manual, weeks -- if not months -- in advance) for it. It's just that the trip wasn't supposed to be to D.C. It was supposed to be to "Historic Boston," where I haven't been in way longer than it's been since I was last in D.C. And I was really psyched for Beantown!

I had it all planned. I had bought an Amazon Local voucher for the "Historic Boston" tour, and kept checking the calendar for a suitable Friday or Sunday, the days when it's supposed to be offered. Finally, with the voucher's expiration date looming, I figured the crowd would be lighter on a Friday, and also some places that might be closed on Sunday might be open on Friday. So I took a hard look at my schedule, and went through the whole elaborate procedure for clearing a Friday off from work -- namely the one that turned out to be this Friday.


You might think that my trip to Washington has something to do with the subject matter of this tweet from Howie's and my old pal Milt Shook has something to do with my pilgrimage to Washington. Surprisingly, no!

Only, I appear to have overthought this. Earlier in the week I heard from the company that I was apparently the only one who had signed up for that date.

I was offered some options, not just for Boston, but for the company's Philadelphia and Washington tours. But my schedule doesn't allow for much in the way of options. I couldn't do a weekend tour, because Saturday I'm cruising across New York Harbor's Raritan Bay to New Jersey for Fall Fest on an apple farm and Sunday I'm doing Justin Ferate's Wolfe Walkers train trek to Philip Johnson's Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut. All I had to play with was Friday, the day I'd already scheduled to have off from work. The vision of a day off began to dance in my head, but no, it turned out that they have an extra outing of the apparently very popular Washington tour -- normally offered on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday, according to the online schedule -- going on Friday.

Oh well, what the heck, Washington it is, I guess. Assuming that this crack-of-dawn pickup outside McDonald's actually comes (or rather came) off. Which makes for three consecutive days of out-of-state schlepping -- by bus, boat, and train. Not to mention after-work outings Monday (the second part of a two-part Historic Districts Council walking tour of Park Avenue with Justin Ferate) and Tuesday (first I pop in for a few minutes of the Municipal Art Society's members' open house in their new digs, in the landmarked Look Building, en route to Astoria for an evening at the Museum of the Moving Image honoring Marlo Thomas for That Girl, moderated by Gloria Steinem, with Debra Messing also on hand). I already feel exhausted.


POST-TIME UPDATE: Yes, I actually made it home before post time! And everything indeed proceeded according to plan -- no, better. I had a swell time. I made it to the McDonald's early enough to buy myself a large cup of coffee for $1.09 (including tax), and it was extremely drinkable -- better than a lot of cups of coffee I've bought around town recently. Luiz, our Brazilian-born driver and tour guide, who has lived happily in Astoria since (I believe he said) 1984, showed up right on time in our van -- no, not a bus, a van -- and since our whole cozy little group had arrived early, we were all checked in in time to leave early, and, like I said, I had a swell time. We saw am amazing quantity of stuff, even including a swing in the van across to Arlington to see the Iwo Jima Memorial, with a glance at the cemetery proper.

And no, I didn't run into "Ted from Alberta" Cruz or "Sunny John" Boehner or Steve Israel or Nino Scalia or any of the other Village people I've come to hate so without ever having met them. I did, however, spend some time in the sensational Wright Brothers exhibit room at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian. What a great place the Air and Space Museum is! It's not hard to see why it's so popular.

Now on to my Yom Kippur Fall Fest at the apple farm tomorrow.

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The full DC Circuit Court of Appeals pulls back from the brink of health-care loony-tune-itude

It was a good day for judicial sanity, not such a good day for the Great Right-Wing Noise Machine. Cartoon by Joel Pett (March 2013) -- click to enlarge.

"When the full DC Circuit announced they would rehear the case, by contrast, that was an indication that the two Republicans who blocked the subsidies may be outliers who reached an idiosyncratic result in an easy case. The fact that all six of the other judges who have considered the Obamacare subsidies have also upheld them also lends credence to this view."

-- legal eagle Ian Millhiser, today, in "BREAKING: Federal
Appeals Court Withdraws Decision Defunding Obamacare"

by Ken

In late July, I posed the question "Can the ideological perversions of two unapologetic far-right-wing activists on the District Circuit Court of Appeals lead to defunding Obamacare?" At that point, a three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court had decided -- by the vote of the aforementioned pair of right-wing judicial psychopaths -- to ignore normal judicial standards and allow some admittedly fuzzy language in the Affordable Health Care Act, whose intent was almost impossible to mistake in the context of the law, to advance the agenda of a national conspiracy of Obama-loathers.

The Obama-loathers, of course, don't know or care anything about the U.S. health-care system. Presumably they're happy with the access to the system they have, or think they have. (A lot of them are in for rude surprises when they need access. And of course the large number of the supposed mortal foes of government-run health care already rely on Medicare, and are too dim or dishonest to grasp that they are already beneficiaries of, and in many cases only alive because of, "socialized medicine."). Their idea of our health-care "system" is that anybody who doesn't have access can just, as Alan Grayson pointed out so eloquently, drop dead.


THE LEGAL LOONS: CONFUSED OR JUST OPPORTUNISTIC?

No, the battle has never been about health care. These demonic sociopaths who have made Obamacare a defining national issue, all they care about is destroying America, if by "America" we mean a country of decency, reason, and hope. To this end they have rabble-roused an all too gullibly rousable public because, although these people know even less about Barack Obama than they do about health care, except maybe the color of this Obama guy's skin, they have chosen to make him the arch-demon of their deranged mental universe -- and drag the country with them. In the process, they have guaranteed that there is no possibliity of addressing actual human problems. Far-right-wing crazies will fight to the death to make sure that actual human problems are never addressed.

Naturally there are roving cohorts of demagogues in public life who are only too happy to pounce on this cauldron of psychosis for their own demonic purposes, purposes that begin with naked, raw, insatiable self-interest. In the course of their health-care-related crusade against honesty and decency, this gaggle of America-loathers succeeded in hornswoggling the above-referenced pair of ideologically deranged judicial perverts on the DC Circuit Court, traditionally ranked second in U.S. judicial importance only to the Supreme Court itself.

The substance of the issue latched onto by the Obama-loathers and their judicial-pervert supporters concerns use of the word "state," which in one instance in the ACA is used as a term for the government ("the State"), a sense that is utterly clear in context but when maliciously misread can be erroneously taken to refer to a state, as in one of the 50. Here's how ThinkProgress's legal eagle Ian Millhiser explained what he called at the time "a proofreading error" in the statute.

The two Republicans’ decision rests on a glorified typo in the Affordable Care Act itself. Obamacare gives states a choice. They can either run their own health insurance exchange where their residents may buy health insurance, and receive subsidies to help them pay for that insurance if they qualify, or they can allow the federal government to run that exchange for them. Yet the plaintiffs’ in this case uncovered a drafting error in the statute where it appears to limit the subsidies to individuals who obtain insurance through “an Exchange established by the State.” Randolph and Griffith’s opinion concludes that this drafting error is the only thing that matters. In their words, “a federal Exchange is not an ‘Exchange established by the State,’” and that’s it. The upshot of this opinion is that 6.5 million Americans will lose their ability to afford health insurance, according to one estimate.

NOT THE RESULT THE LEAGUE OF LOONS EXPECTED

In that post Ian also gave us a crash course in the judicial history of the two DC Circuit ideological perverts, Raymond Randolph, a GHW Bush appointee, and the reputationally "more moderate" Thomas Griffith, a GW Bush appointee.

Now, you may recall that at almost the same moment a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (Jesse Helms's old court, which under his watchful eye was an all but impregnable fortress of far-right-wing ideology) reached the opposite conclusion about the reading of the ambiguous "the State" -- that it's not judges' job to make it up according to the sawdust shaking around in their heads.

Interestingly, the far-right America-loathers devised a strategy that made the Fourth Circuit panel's incalculably saner and legally sounder ruling work in their favor. The strategy depended on their being now opposite rulings from two different circuits, a condition that generally argues for resolution by the Supreme Court. As Ian explains in his post today, the far-right-wing judicial perverts (my term, I should make clear, not his) obviously reasoned that they stand a much better chance now with the Supreme Court, with its generous supply of far-right-wing legal perverts, than with a hearing ("en banc") by the full DC Circuit Court.

So the League of Far-Right Legal Perverts devoted much of their appellate bravado to arguing that the full DC Circuit should be bypassed in favor of an immediate emergency hearing by the Supreme Court. Ian patiently explains how the argument was framed as well as why it was ridiculous -- and how it was nevertheless trumpeted by the Lying Liars of the Great Right-Wing Noise Machine, like the bloviators of the Wall Street Journal and National Review, who fill in with outright lies where obfuscatons and delusions alone won't do the job.

To be clear, what the full DC Circuit Court did today wasn't to overturn the panel's ruling, but simply to void it, undertaking to hear the case itself and issue its own ruling. It's still possible that the full court will reach the same conclusion as the pair of judicial psychopaths who prevailed in the panel ruling, but that doesn't seem likely. And today's action represented an immediate setback for the legal-pervert strategy of targeting the Supreme Court -- as of now, there are no longer opposite rulings in force from two different circuits.

Ian's explanation takes the matter a step further, and I found it fascinating. Essentially, today's action potentially changes the cast of characters in the eyes of the Supreme Court justices, recasting the two loons on the DC Circuit panel as possible "outliers who reached an idiosyncratic result in an easy case."

[T]he justices typically use the lower courts as a mechanism to screen the few cases raising issues that are difficult enough to warrant Supreme Court review from the vast bulk of cases that do not. This is one reason why the justices tend to hear cases where two courts of appeals disagree — because that disagreement is a sign that the case is sufficiently challenging that it requires a definitive ruling from the nation’s highest Court. When the full DC Circuit announced they would rehear the case, by contrast, that was an indication that the two Republicans who blocked the subsidies may be outliers who reached an idiosyncratic result in an easy case. The fact that all six of the other judges who have considered the Obamacare subsidies have also upheld them also lends credence to this view.

"Now that the DC Circuit has ignored [the right-wing legal loons'] attempts to scare them off with accusations of partisanship," Ian concludes, "this case no longer meets the usual criteria for Supreme Court review."

Not at all the result the League of Legal Loons was expecting today. (Thank goodness.)

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"As leaders, boomers are a bust" (Dana Milbank) -- or, what the world needs now is more Howard Bakers

Is the root of all our political problems that we don't have any modern-day "great compromisers"? You know like that master political fixer the late Howard Baker? (If you're dying to see the master fixer "rendered" in a video minute, you'll find the clip here.)

by Ken

I think this is wrong, or mostly wrong -- the case that Dana Milbank makes in a Washington Post column, "As leaders, boomers are a bust," arguing the all-surpassing virtue of compromise, and arguing that the failure of baby boomers to rightfully esteem compromises explains why boomers have produced such execrable leaders.

As I say, I'm inherently suspicious, first off when it's led into as a tribute to that great American Howard Baker, who died Wednesday at 88. I mean, Howard Baker? Is there much chance I can be persuaded by an argument that says what America needs is more Howard Bakers? Also, I'm not encouraged when we get to the historical analogies and the Civil War turns out to have been caused by a generation that, like the boomers', refused-to-compromise us into cataclysm.

But here's the thing. Dana has built up enough cred in my cred-account book through his diligent reporting on the workings of our gummint, that I'm willing to give him a hearing. And when he talks about boomers producing crappy leaders, and about the paralysis produced by sides uniformly committed to "hell no, we won't compromise" beliefs, then he has given me some stuff to think about.

I don't want to dwell on Howard Baker, because I'm not going to ask anyone to take seriously that what we need is more Howard Bakers -- corrupt stooges eternally prepared to serve the interests of the powers that be, for their usual percentage of the action.

But we can at least enjoy a cheap chuckle when Dana notes the irony of Sen. "Miss Mitch" McConnell shedding crocodile tears for St. Howard.

[E]ulogizing Baker as the Great Conciliator — an echo of Henry Clay’s sobriquet, the Great Compromiser — was a curious choice by McConnell, whose recent actions have given no indication that he views conciliation as a virtue. McConnell’s partisan screeds delivered on the Senate floor and his reluctance to negotiate — traits mirrored by his Democratic counterpart, Harry Reid — and his record quantity of filibusters have set the tone for the current era of dysfunction in U.S. politics.

I'll leave you to check out for yourself Dana's counting and sorting of the various villains in his presentation on his way to his real subject: "the baby boom generation that wrecked our politics over the past 20 years."

Boomers inherited a system based on compromise and sacrifice — and they gave us the current standoff. They received a United States victorious in the Cold War and atop the world economy — and they gave us the Iraq war and the Great Recession. They are the parents of the first generation in U.S. history — the millennials — to have a lower standard of living than previous generations. And, in retirement, they will probably break Social Security and Medicare.

“Boomers are the scorched-earth, values-driven generation,” said Neil Howe, who with William Strauss chronicled the recurring patterns of generations in the United States. “They invented the culture wars and they’re taking it with them as they grow older, which is this complete polarization and gridlock. It’s very hard to compromise over values.” That’s not to malign this entire generation of Americans, which has dominated the culture for decades and expanded the frontiers of civil rights. But “in terms of politics, actually building things, boomers are clueless,” Howe told me.

"Contrast that with Baker’s generation," says Dana, "shaped by suffering and war."

“The politics of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s was informed by ‘we are all in this together’ and . . . at the end of the day we shake hands and find a pragmatic solution,” said the Pew Research Center’s Paul Taylor, author of a new generational study, “The Next America.”

Okay, this isn't the way I remember the '60s, '70s, or '80s, but clearly something has changed. Maybe there is something to these large generational sweep-of-history ideas. Maybe being "values-driven" really is a bad thing. Let's let Dana finish up.

Gen X — my generation — is ill-equipped to fix the boomers’ mess. Alienated and individualistic, we don’t have faith in institutions or in our ability to change them; like Obama, we react to events. Happily, the millennials may have a better shot at fixing things when they get older. Unhappily, history suggests it will require a crisis. It was, Howe notes, “a generation like this (the boomers) that took us into the Civil War, and it was a generation like this that took us into the Great Depression.”

War soon followed the 1852 death of Clay, the Great Compromiser. Let’s pray that the passing of the Great Conciliator’s generation, and the disastrous reign of the boomers, doesn’t end in such misery.

Okay, so one thing we know is that Dana's ideas about the '60s, '70s, and '80s -- and the great career of Howard Baker -- are acquired knowledge, not the sort of thing he gleens as a columnist-reporter by getting out there and observing firsthand.

True, much of our knowledge, and obviously all of our knowledge of history, is "acquired." But when we get back to the Civil War, while yes, it's true that the decades that preceded it were marked by a lot of compromise, was all -- or indeed any -- of that compromise a good thing? Wasn't it all that compromising, all that papering over of fundamental differences of "values," what made the Civil War inevitable?

My gut reaction, as I say, is to suspect that some wildly romantic armchair theorizing about Great Matters has produced some screwy history. (And maybe the Grand Historical-Generational Panorama is just fancy trimmings designed to impress us with the illusion of historical significance in the absence of actual historical substance?)

Still, I do think there are some things here that deserve to be thought about. The ability to compromise is important. And maybe its importance is easier to appreciate for those Greatest Generation types, of which I'm not one. And who knows? We might even come up with some interesting answers or theories. I'd be surprised if they led us to the conclusion that more Howard Bakers is the answer to any of our problems, but then, I'm often surprised.

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Now that Garry Trudeau's "Alpha House" TV show is (sort of) on the air, we're finally getting new "Doonesbury"s

[Click to enlarge (a little)]

by Ken

I don't know why I'm so uncomfortable now that Garry Trudeau's DC TV-fantasy is, well, not on the air, but in the Intertubes (it's Amazon's debut series). As the master of Doonesbury, Trudeau is a veritable god to me, and as a case in point I offer today's strip, from the "recap" series with which GT is apparently weaning us off the summer's and fall's reruns, while he's been playing with his TV show. (I really haven't even been able to complain about the reruns, because Doonesbury reruns are pretty terrific. And there were new Sunday strips.)

To go with today's strip, here are the concluding paragraphs of a newyorker.com "News Desk" post, "The Republican War on Competence," by Jeff Shoals, a onetime speechwriter for President Bill Clinton.

[A]s Obama is finding, it's hard for one party to make government work when the other party is determined to make government fail. Yes, the healthcare.gov debacle is manifestly "on us," as Obama had to concede last week. But it happened in the face of a relentless campaign by the G.O.P. to do everything possible to prevent the law from taking effect, or from working if it did. Congressional oversight, particularly as practiced by Representative Darrell Issa, is just another theatre in the war on efficacy. On occasion, we hear of Republican reforms to the Affordable Care Act, but these are offered in the spirit of the vandal who blithely assures you that your car will run better with two wheels rather than four, so would you please hold his jacket while he removes your rear axle.

If there is any ambiguity left to the G.O.P. reform agenda, let it be put to rest by Michael F. Cannon, the director of health-policy studies at the Cato Institute and a former Republican Hill staffer: "The only way to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in a governmental activity," he testified before a House subcommittee in 2011, "is to eliminate that activity." When you see virtually every governmental function, a priori, as wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive, from disaster relief to early-childhood education, the only way to save the village, to paraphrase a U.S. military officer in Vietnam, is to destroy it. This, one fears, they can do quite competently.

As I understand it, the official rollout of Alpha House happened last Friday, so I do want to be sure that note is taken of it. I guess I'm just nervous about the transferability of Trudeau's genius. I guess I'm also not thrilled about learning a new way to watch TV series with this Amazon offering. If it means that GT has had less mindless interference than would have been the case if the show had been done for an actual TV entity, that's all to the good. And I seem to recall that Amazon is offering the first few episodes free, so I suppose I'll take the plunge at some point.

ABC's This Week's preview of Alpha House


Meanwhile, on the chance that there's somebody who might want to read the NYT's Alessandra Staley on, well, anything at all, here's her review at no click-cost to you. (I only glanced at it and quickly withdrew at sight of an admiring reference to HBO's Veep. I assume there are critics who noticed that Veep is flesh-crawlingly horrible, but I don't care enough to research the subject. I actually stuck out the whole gosh-darned first season, and still feel weighed down by the lingering psychic sludge.)

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Al Kamen offers a returning congressman a "hiker's guide" to Our Nation's Capital

View of the Potomac River from Weverton Cliffs

Over forty miles of the Appalachian Trail travel across Maryland, with most of the AT following the ridgeline of South Mountain.  Many call this stretch of the AT easy compared to other areas, however there are some steep climbs.  The low point in the state along the trail is 261 feet at the Potomac River and the highest point is near High Rock with an elevation of 1905 feet.

This section of the Appalachian Trail takes hikers to its closest point to the nations capital, Washington, DC. While the AT in Maryland is called easy by some, it still offers plenty of challenges and some impressive scenery. For beginning backpackers or those getting in shape for longer trips, and those with just a few days to spend on the AT, the entire length of trail in Maryland can be done in a four to five day backpacking trip. Trail shelters and backpackers' campgrounds are spaced where most can be reached in a day's hike. Camping is only allowed at designated sites along the AT in Maryland.

-- from the CNY Hiking Web page devoted to
"Appalachian Trail Maryland"

"As your Governor, I abused your trust. And as God is my witness, as your congressman, I will abuse it again."

-- Mark Sanford, on his reelection to Congress, quoted in the
Borowitz Report "Sanford's Comeback Gives Hope to Liars"

by Ken

Now that voters in his CD have decided that they are stinking garbage and deserve to be represented by stinking garbage, former SC Gov. Mark "A Disgrace to Humanity" Sanford is going to have to relearn his way around Our Nation's Capital. Fortunately, the Washington Post's Loop-master Al Kamen has put together a customized guide to some of the basics. (Lotsa links onsite.)

A hiker’s guide to D.C.

A very warm Loop welcome to Mark Sanford, the scandal-scarred former South Carolina governor, who will be returning to our fair city as a bona fide member of Congress.

Sanford, who won a special election Tuesday, served in the House from 1995 to 2001. But things have changed since then — for both Sanford and Washington — so we offer him this handy guide to the city.

● Argentine food. Sanford famously jaunted off to Argentina to consort with his mistress (now fiancee) while he was governor, and so we can assume he and his bride-to-be might like to sample the cuisine of her homeland. In D.C. proper, there are few true Argentinian joints, though we have some fine pan-Latin American restaurants, including Ceiba (try the ceviche, Congressman!). And for the real deal, he might head out to the Maryland ’burbs to try El Patio, which is said to serve some of the most authentic grilled steaks around.

● Sports bars. Sanford got into a spot of trouble during his congressional campaign when it came out that his ex-wife had slapped him with a trespassing charge. The irrepressible Sanford claimed that he was only visiting her home to see his son and watch the Super Bowl with him.

But he need not resort to lawbreaking to catch the big game in Washington. There are many local sports bars with big screens and good brews, including the Pour House, a short walk from the House office buildings.

● Pelosi, in the flesh! One of the weirder moments of Sanford’s campaign was when he debated a cardboard cutout of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). But now that he’ll be her colleague, perhaps he can visit her office in the Capitol (second floor, not far from the House floor) and actually converse with her in person.

● Hiking trails. Perhaps Sanford’s most memorable stumble was when he claimed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was, in fact, visiting his Argentine mistress. Since Sanford is a lover of the outdoors, he’s in luck. Our area is rife with lovely hiking trails. Rock Creek Park is a great place to start.

And, hey, we’re not far from . . . the Appalachian Trail.

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Al Kamen clues us in to "Who sits where in the White House"

First Floor

From the Washington Post webpage "Inside the West Wing"

by Ken

Just recently we followed our WaPo pal Al Kamen's tips on realignment in Senate office space following the death of Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye. Now Al is updating us on an even more important D.C. real-estate issue: "Who sits where in the White House." This isn't just a matter of comfort or convenience. We know how frantically White House personnel jockey for position, meaning the position that puts them closest to the actual seat of power in the building.

That's why I wanted to make sure no one missed this important update, which comes with nifty new technology. The actual webpage to which Al directs us, "Inside the West Wing," is interactive -- you can click on any room on either floor and get a pop-up that tells you who hangs out there, and what he/she is doing there, at least officially.

Who sits where in the White House

By Al Kamen / washingtonpost.com

Location, location, location, the real estate folks tell us. And the primo location for an office in Washington is the West Wing of the White House. With that in mind, we’ve updated our interactive map of the first and second floors of the West Wing to show who’s sitting where.

One thing regular readers will notice is that about two-thirds of the people now closest (in terms of proximity) weren’t in those spots when we first launched the map in January 2009.

Some, of course, were at other agencies — Gene Sperling was at Treasury, for example — while others were out of government, such as communications director Jennifer Palmieri, who was at the Center for American Progress.

Other officials are making internal moves. Denis McDonough, having moved up from the White House ground floor (not shown on our chart) to a small office as deputy national security adviser, now gets the relatively spacious chief of staff’s office down the hall from the Oval Office.

Alyssa Mastromonaco, former director of scheduling and advance, was on the ground floor in 2009, but as deputy chief of staff, she’s now moved right next door to the president’s study.
Many jobs — for example, the legislative affairs post — have turned over more than once since Obama moved in.

With the dust pretty much settled since the transition — there’s only one office in the communications area that’s not filled — the team seems pretty much in place for the second term.

You can find the interactive map at wapo.st/west-wing. Simply click on the offices to see who sits where. There are brief bios of all and photos of most of them. (We’re still working on a few.)

Second Floor

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