I'll be the first to admit, I think that David Brooks deserves a special spot in the @$$clowns of Journalism Hall of Shame. The man has been so wrong on so many issues for so long ... Iraq, the economy, elections. I'm always stunned that somebody continues to pay this myopic oaf.
Anyhoo ...
I was prepared to get myself all worked up into high dudgeon when I saw that he'd written a piece on Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) on Politablog. But ... as strange and as philosophically painful as this may seem ... I ackchoo ... I accrue ... I .. gasp ... agree ... gasp ... with David Brooks (there ... I said it) on this particular subject.
Franken has been in office for almost a year now and it has become clear over the past month that he has become a vocal and qualified leader and will continue to be for many more years. Everything started with the Joe Lieberman (Lie-berman) incident.
Thie Lie-berman Incident is when Al wouldn't allow Joe an extra 30 seconds or so when Harry Reid had given him the gavel and the instruction that "nobody" goes over their time today.
Brooks goes on to bring up the incident that Politico hyperventilated over last week in which Al expressed his concern over the White House's leadership of healthcare reform. But Brooks frames it in terms of Al being one of the few Democrats in the Senate with any cajones.
Then he seems shocked that Al has proposed actual legislation that would do some good. This time it's Al's bill to prevent cadmium in children's jewelry. The only thing Brooks fails to take into account is this isn't the only bill Al has proposed.
Apparently there are two David Brooks in the world. Funny that I would agree with the one that isn't the clueless, lying, egomaniacal blowhard. So I guess I still retain my low opinion of the NYT Brooks.
But, go get'em MN Brooks. There are a whole lot of good Brooks from MN ... like the late Herb ...
As far as public statements are concerned, Al Franken's on-tape shutdown of Joe Lieberman's bloviation was simply a matter of keeping to a tight schedule. Fair'nuff. Of course, it led their colleague (and 2008 Republican presidential candidate) John McCain to remark that in 20 years in the Senate, he'd never seen anything like that.
Can you imagine what this exchange would have been like if it were Norm Coleman presiding over the U.S Senate at the time?
Guess that whole recount thing was worth it, to get a Senator willing to hold people like John Thune and Joe Lieberman accountable in the World's Most Exclusive Club.
But in the same way that the White House is coming down hard on former DNC Chair Howard Dean for saying the health care bill should not be passed because it is too weak -- and NOT coming down on Ben Nelson of Nebraska for withholding his cloture vote because it doesn't go far enough in restricting women's health care...I have to wonder if such a routine request for more speaking time might have been met more favorably if it were, say, Russ Feingold, Maria Cantwell, or Bernie Sanders asking.
Saying "it was nothing personal" is one thing. What we saw on that video was far more excellent, however.
I sat in on a conference call with firedoglake contributor Jon Walker yesterday. I learned quite a bit I didn't know. I haven't been paying quite as close attention once it passed the House. Furthermore, I'm now confident that Senators Klobuchar and Franken will vote for a public option if it's in the bill so from a MN angle, this isn't really a story for MPP.
However.
What does pass could have a huge impact on our lives here in Minnesota.
If you have specific questions about what's going on, please say something in the comments and I will get an answer for you.
For those of you following the healthcare reform efforts in Congress, we are getting really close. The problem now is getting past the Republican filibuster in the Senate and four Democrats who have indicated they might or would stand with the Republicans and with the insurance companies and against us.
Now that the sausage-making process is in the Senate and our Senators, Franken and Klobuchar, are on board, I usually can only watch with a mix of powerlessness, fear and disgust. But SEIU has created a way to make a difference.
The Senate is introduced its health care reform bill yesterday, and only four fricking members of the Democratic Senator caucus are standing in the way of passage. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana are the only four remaining "Democratic" Senators who have not ruled out joining with a Republican filibuster of health care reform.
What the #%@*!?!
What's worse, these four don't really give a rat's a$$ what you think, even though their vote affects you. Unless you are a resident of Arkansas, Connecticut, Louisiana or Nebraska, as far as they are concerned, you might as well live on Pluto.
Fortunately, Open Left is teaming up with SEIU to do something about it. Even if you do not live in Arkansas, Connecticut, Louisiana or Nebraska, SEIU has developed activist tools that allow you to contact voters in those four states, and tell those voters to tell their Senators to get on board with health care reform. Fight back and make a difference--sign up and tell one, or all four, of these "Democratic" Senators to pass health care reform with a public option:
Sen. Joe Lieberman announced that he has left the Connecticut for Lieberman Party. He feels the party's long time grip on his senate seat has caused it to listen more to special interests than constituents. The senator said:
It's sad what has become of the party, yet look at the political tin ear shown even by the name "Connecticut for Lieberman". It's as if the state should be devoted to the senator, not the senator to the state. What were they thinking, and why would I want to be part of that?
Supporters of Sen. Lieberman have formed a new party at a convention held last weekend in a corner of the senator's office. Both supporters said the name "Lieberman for Connecticut" was considered but wasn't quite right. They named the new party "Lieberman, Who Is From Connecticut, But Don't Read Too Much Into That".
Sen. Lieberman stressed that he would assert his independence from the new party whenever he saw necessary. When the new party chairman turned his back to sign the papers to register the party with the state, Lieberman picked up a paperweight off the desk and clocked him over the head.
A Democratic spokesman, asked to comment on the paperweight incident, did a very poor job of feigning surprise.
author's note: I'm reasonably sure I made this up.
Senators Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) are determined. They want to pass a bill to prevent any photo of prisoners or detainees capture overseas from ever becoming public. They want to give President Obama a level secrecy that Bush never even asked for. After their Graham-Lieberman amendment was removed from the war supplemental bill, they went so far as to promise to attach it to every piece of legislation they could.
Roll Call:
Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) threatened to hold up any and all legislation in the Senate until Congress passes its legislation to prohibit the release of photos showing detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We're not going to do any more business in the Senate," Graham said. "Nothing's going forward until we get this right."
Both Senators said they were alarmed that a House-Senate conference committee on the supplemental war spending bill appears poised to eliminate language - inserted by the two Senators - that would block public disclosure of detainee abuse photos. The $90-billion-plus bill has been held up, in part, because House Democratic leaders have said they do not have the votes to pass it with the detainee photo provision included, because many liberal lawmakers have balked at the language.
So now the Senate has added it to a bill that would allow the FDA to regulate tobacco products, too. [my emphasis]
(firedoglake)
I would like to note that this kind of bull**** is only possible because the pusillanimous Harry Reid is Senate Majority Leader.
Congress is currently considering supplemental funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Senators Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) have introduced a pernicious amendment that would grant the Obama Administration powers of secrecy that the Bush Administration didn't even ask for.
The amendment would allow the Obama Administration to make any photo of detainees or prisoners captured in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere outside of the US taken between 9/11/01 and 1/19/09 completely secret.
It was one thing when President Obama reversed himself last month by announcing that he would appeal the Second Circuit's ruling that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) compelled disclosure of various photographs of detainee abuse sought by the ACLU. Agree or disagree with Obama's decision, at least the basic legal framework of transparency was being respected, since Obama's actions amounted to nothing more than a request that the Supreme Court review whether the mandates of FOIA actually required disclosure in this case. But now -- obviously anticipating that the Government is likely to lose in court again (.pdf) -- Obama wants Congress to change FOIA by retroactively narrowing its disclosure requirements, prevent a legal ruling by the courts, and vest himself with brand new secrecy powers under the law which, just as a factual matter, not even George Bush sought for himself.
The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 -- that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States." As long as the Defense Secretary certifies -- with no review possible -- that disclosure would "endanger" American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure. The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely. The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week.
(Glenn Greenwald)
Please call your Senator and all the DFL Representatives about this. Please tell them to vote against the war supplemental as long as it contains the Graham-Lieberman amendment.
With the recent announcement that Joe Lieberman will have a prime-time speaking gig at the Republican National Convention next month (and Ash Madia's rock-solid response -- National Democrats, are you listening? This is the guy you need giving your national radio address this week), I started thinking about the RNC's recent speakers who started life as Democrats:
Why do they seem to hold a strange, persistent resemblance to Senator/Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars?
