The Obama administration has from the start seen Syria as a leading case for engagement. Barack Obama said so during his presidential campaign (announcing he would meet Bashar al Assad without preconditions) and repeated this policy view again last summer:
The earthquake that struck Chile on February 27 was sudden. The ground shuddered without warning. The devastation was immediate. Like all natural calamities it was random, rapid, and beyond human control.
Texas governor Rick Perry’s impressive primary victory over Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is a signal. After the midterm election this November, the field of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 (or later) is going to get bigger and possibly better.
Washington, D.C.'s Metro remains a great manifestation of liberalism today. Although it was created at the zenith of the Great Society, and although its union workforce gains overly generous pensions and maintains ridiculous job security, it is Metro's management of its passengers—its attempt to save passengers from their own idiocy—that earns it this title.
Obamacare supporters thought they may have caught a break when Rep. Dale Kildee of Michigan indicated he would vote for the Senate bill and thinks it adequately bans abortion funding. "Kildee Breaks From Stupak Over Senate Abortion Language," is how Roll Call put it. Kildee was on GOP whip Eric Cantor's list of pro-life Democrats who wouldn't vote for the Senate bill because of abortion, but Kristen Day, the executive director of Democrats for Life of America, tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Kildee "wasn’t on the list of the Stupak 12" in the first place. Day is still hopeful there's a chance that Kildee will stick with Stupak in the end.
Ed Whelan flags a report that trial lawyer John J. McConnell, who was nominated by the president to a district judgeship in Rhode Island, donated nearly $700,000 in the past 20 years to various Democrats. Whelan writes that McConnell's "poor rating" by the ABA "ought to set off alarm bells."
Nancy Pelosi does not have the 216 votes necessary to pass the Senate health care bill. She's planning to go ahead without the votes of the Stupak 12. Today the Senate parliamentarian ruled the Senate bill must become law before "fixes" can be made via the parliamentary tactic known as reconciliation. The GOP Senate caucus will rigorously enforce the Byrd rule, limiting the reconciliation changes to budget matters and nothing more.
What's going on? The final push for Obamacare is about to begin. It starts on Monday, when the House Budget Committee will insert reconciliation instructions into the November House health care bill. By late Monday / early Tuesday, Budget will pass this bill and send it to the House Rules Committee, where Pelosi will change the language so that it matches the Senate bill. This is the final compromise legislation that may come to a vote on the House floor within weeks. "They're creating the shell," says Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
House leaders have concluded they cannot change a divisive abortion provision in President Barack Obama's health care bill and will try to pass the sweeping legislation without the support of ardent anti-abortion Democrats. ...
Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the leadership will press ahead without reworking the abortion provision, which opponents say falls short in restricting taxpayer dollars for abortion coverage. He predicted some of the anti-abortion lawmakers in the party will end up voting for the overhaul anyway.
The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that President Barack Obama must sign Congress’ original health care reform bill before the Senate can act on a companion reconciliation package, senior GOP sources said Thursday.
California's John Campbell explains why he wants the United States out of Afghanistan.
3:39 PM, Mar 11, 2010 · BYMatthew Continetti
It may have been his hardest vote yet. When he walked onto the House floor on March 10, John Campbell, Republican of California, wasn't sure how he'd vote on Dennis Kucinich's resolution to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan. He had agonized over the decision all week. In his view, the language of the resolution was too strict. It tied the president's hands. Campbell had decided the day before that he wouldn't vote No, however. Even so, the temptation remained to simply vote Present. Except there'd be no courage to that vote, he thought. Which is why Campbell ultimately voted Yes.
The vote made Campbell one of five Republicans calling for an immediate withdrawal from the central front of the war on terror. His compatriots -- Ron Paul, Walter Jones, Tim Johnson, and John Duncan -- all opposed George W. Bush's Iraq surge. But Campbell, who won a special election to replace outgoing Chris Cox in December 2005, supported the surge and says "Iraq was winnable and has strategic value." He reluctantly come to the conclusion that the same cannot be said of Afghanistan.
The Virginia House of Delegates passed a law banning a federal mandate for health insurance in the state, should Congress pass a law containing such a requirement.The House of Delegates was the second, and easier, obstacle for the bill after the Democrat-controlled Virginia Senate passed the bill in February:
The arms export debate needs a heavy dose of clarity.
2:36 PM, Mar 11, 2010 · BYJohn Noonan
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, once the largest exporter of arms in the world, there's been a growing international choir of peace-minded activists determined to halt the import/export of weapons. Now that America has taken center stage as the new chief arms dealer, that chorus has grown louder.
In a famous fireside chat, FDR announced that it was in America's best interest to serve as an "arsenal of democracy," the logistical lifeline to friendly powers who lacked our industrial and technological might. Roosevelt's calculus was simple: strong allies, rich in democratic tradition and common values, would help keep the world free, secure, and stable. He was right.
Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz), tells the New York Times that Holder's explanation that he inadvertently failed to disclose the brief in support of Jose Padilla “strained credulity.”
“Are we expected to believe that then-nominee Holder, with only a handful of Supreme Court briefs to his name, forgot about his role in one of this country’s most publicized terrorism cases?” Mr. Kyl asked.
The House just passed a resolution (see full text below the fold) on a 360 to 2 vote to conduct an investigation into Eric Massa's alleged physical sexual harassment of congressional staffers and an intern. The Washington Post reported a Pelosi aide was informed of Massa's misconduct back in October.
The Atlantic reported yesterday that a House Democratic chief of staff was told in 2006 of allegations that Massa attempted to sexually assault others in the Navy:
Massa's behavior in the Navy was not unknown to some in Washington. Around the time of Massa's 2006 race, [Peter] Clarke [one of Massa's Navy shipmates] says he told Christopher Mansour, then chief of staff to Democratic Rep. Dale Kildee of Michigan, and now a senior official in the Interior Department, about Massa's history. Reached by phone yesterday, Monsour told me, "I just don't want to comment about this. I'd rather not be in this story at all." He added, "I've never met [Massa] or had direct interaction with him."
As Iraqi election officials tally the votes from Sunday’s parliamentary elections, the Obama administration faces some difficult choices in the weeks and months ahead. Despite the apparent success of the election and the limited violence associated with it, there is the potential for uncertainty in the coming months as Iraqi parties wrangle for control of a new governing coalition.
New York State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz introduced a bill on Friday that would prohibit the use of salt in making foods at restaurants. Says the bill:
"No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises."
In a scenario with shades of '06, Democrats and Republicans alike are trying to show their mettle on ethics reform after a House Ethics Committee revealed connections between contributions made by defense firms to a group of seven Congressmen (5 Dems, 2 GOP) on a Pentagon subcommittee and the earmarks those contractors got.
The time for talk is over ... until I want to talk again!
11:34 AM, Mar 11, 2010 · BYMatthew Continetti
In health care speech number 37, President Obama told his audience in St. Louis, Missouri, yesterday that "the time for talk is over." He's said this before, of course, and it wasn't any truer then than it is now. The talking won't stop until the bill is passed -- and even then, the talking won't stop, because disagreement is far more common than consensus. And even if the GOP doesn't repeal health care reform, it will seek to change the policy and shift it in a consumer-oriented, free-market direction over time.
The desire to stop talking reflects a deeper antagonism toward politics. Read George Will's column today: "Progressives are forever longing to replace the governance of people by the administration of things. Because they are entirely public-spirited, progressives volunteer to be the administrators, and to be as disinterested as the dickens."
In response to the news that AG Eric Holder failed to disclose a brief he signed in support of detainee Jose Padilla, Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, released this statement:
Pew Research released a new analysis showing increasing concern among Americans about the federal budget deficit in the past six months. Those citing red ink as the “most important problem” reached the highest level in twenty years and nearly doubled, (from 6% in August of 2009 to 11% in January of 2010) in the last six months. According to Pew:
For the first time in many years, public concern over the budget deficit is increasing. In February, 11% cited the deficit or debt as the most important problem facing the nation. That is up from just 6% last August and the highest percentage volunteering the deficit as a top national problem in nearly two decades
In his second health-care rally of the week, at a high school gymnasium on the outskirts of St. Louis, President Obama drew 500 people, not all of them supporters. Far from providing evidence of a great and sudden wellspring of public support for the president's proposed health-care overhaul, this venue and turnout more easily recall the end of the movie This Is Spinal Tap, in which a band that once headlined in arenas is booked at an Air Force Base Officers' Club.
I simply do not believe that we can establish a lasting westernized democracy in a society that has been based on tribal cultural ties for centuries. Furthermore, the mountainous terrain in Afghanistan, as well as the porous and uncontrolled border region with Northern Pakistan, makes control of this area exceedingly difficult. Iraq's terrain and culture were and are much more suited to these types of operations. I still believe that there was much strategic value to establishing a friendly Iraqi government in a critical region of the world that includes Iran, Syria, Israel, and others. While I acknowledge the significance of Pakistan’s possession of, by some estimates, as many as 100 nuclear weapons, I just don't believe that control of Afghanistan has the same strategic value.
I'm hoping to speak to Campbell later today and will report back then.
My specific concern is nothing original: it’s just the national debt. Yawn and turn the page here if you’d like. We talk now of trillions, not yesterday’s hundreds of billions. It’s not Obama’s fault. He did what he had to do. However, Obama is president, and Democrats do control Congress. So it’s their responsibility, even if it’s not their fault. And no one in a position to act has proposed a realistic way out of this debt, not even in theory. The Republicans haven’t. The Obama administration hasn’t. Come to think of it, even Paul Krugman hasn’t. Presidential adviser David Axelrod, writing in The Washington Post, says that Obama has instructed his agency heads to go through the budget “page by page, line by line, to eliminate what we don’t need to help pay for what we do.” So they’ve had more than a year and haven’t yet discovered the line in the budget reading “Stuff We Don’t Need, $3.2 trillion.”
When legislative leaders count votes before a bill comes to the floor they call it a “whip check.” It’s an old English phrase referring to those who kept the dogs in line during a foxhunt.
With all the barking about health care these days, Speaker Pelosi will need some pretty stout lashes to hold Democrats in the pack. But she and President Obama also possess more tools than you think to flog wavering lawmakers.
Sean Penn on Hugo Chavez: "every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it! And accept it. And this is mainstream media, who should – truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies."
The Washington Post reports that the House Ethics committee will close its ethics investigation into Eric Massa:
The committee concluded that Massa's resignation put him outside the reach of any punishment the committee could dole out, and would render any findings of wrongdoing irrelevant. But the move appears likely to set up a political battle with House Republicans, who are already complaining in campaign ads that Congressional Democrats are unwilling to look too deeply into or punish the ethical transgressions of their own.
While the committee traditionally loses jurisdiction over a member when that member resigns, that's not the case when the allegations involve someone else working for Congress. For example, in 2006, Republican Mark Foley resigned on September 28, and the House Ethics committee didn't release its report until December 8.
Paul Ryan's Roadmap for America's Future would drastically overhaul the American welfare state in a free-market direction. The Congressional Budget Office says it would solve the entitlements crisis through a series of changes to Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. The Roadmap also includes a fundamental tax reform -- one that Ryan says, and the CBO assumes, would bring in revenues equivalent to the long-term historical average of 19-percent of GDP. Two new studies dispute that figure, however. I talked to Ryan this evening to get his response.
