Indemnify This

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The Bush Administration is frantic to protect the telecom industry from lawsuits because of its participation in FISA-less federal wiretapping. The telecoms themselves don’t seem to be fighting as hard, however. Kevin Drum speculates why —

… the telcos don’t care all that much about the lawsuits being pursued against them is because they almost certainly signed indemnification agreements with the feds back in 2001. Such agreements would force the federal government to pay any legal judgments awarded in suits against the telcos. …

… In the Washington Post today, Dan Eggen and Ellen Nakashima talk to some of the people behind the telco suits, and they don’t seem to think that potential payouts are the issue either — which is why the telcos are remaining fairly low key about the whole thing. Rather, it’s the Bush administration that wants immunity, and they want it because they’re trying to keep the scope of their wiretapping programs secret.

Makes sense to me. Bush wouldn’t be working this hard except to save himself. And if the Dems cave on this one, they are making one more huge mistake.

Update: Read Glenn Greenwald’s latest on the telecoms and Dems in Congress.

Speak for Yourself, Charlotte

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WaPo’s Charlotte Allen actually wrote a whole article about how women are stupid. It’s like she’s living through 1962 again, and second-wave feminism hasn’t happened yet.

There is, um, robust commentary on the blogosphere today regarding this article. Best comment so far is from Atrios:

It turns out the Post did have someone on the “other side” of the “are women stupid” debate. It turns out the conflict was not between whether women are stupid or not, it’s between whether they’re stupid or fickle. …

… Hopefully Camille Paglia will be along next week to tell us that the answer is, of course, both! Then we can put all this behind us and move on to more important issues. I suggest the inscrutability of Asians, or perhaps the brain/penis size tradeoff men face, but others may have some better ideas.

Find links to other observations here. I just want to answer one line:

What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental?

I have two answers to that. First, if it weren’t for our lapses in judgment, the species would have died out a long time ago. Second, do we want to spell out what it is that men always fall for? And that makes them smarter, somehow?

While We Were Campaigning

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Although he’s still in the White House, George W. Bush has already faded from out national attention. It’s more fun to think about what shiny new President we might get in January than to have to deal with the clunker in the garage.

Turns out the rest of the world feels the same way. Glenn Kessler writes in today’s Washington Post that heads of state in the Middle East are pretty much tuning out the Bushies.

When Palestinians broke through the barrier dividing the Gaza Strip and Egypt in January and streamed across the border by the tens of thousands, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak faced a moment of crisis. His phone soon rang, but the world leader offering help on the other end was not President Bush — it was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mubarak took the call, resulting in the first such contact between leaders of the two nations since relations were severed nearly three decades ago.

The conversation signaled a growing rapprochement between Egypt, which receives nearly $2 billion in annual aid from Washington, and Iran, a country that the Bush administration has tried to isolate as a possible threat to U.S. interests in the region.

Way to go, Bushies.

As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads back to the Middle East this week, three months after Bush hosted a peace conference bringing together Israelis and Arabs in Annapolis, prospects for peace have shifted dramatically. There has been little clear movement in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, while the Iranian-backed militant group Hamas has shown increasingly that it can set the region’s agenda.

Hamas rockets have continued to rain down on Israeli towns, prompting deadly counterattacks by Israel amid increasing speculation that Israel will invade the narrow coastal strip housing 1.5 million Palestinians that it abandoned just two years ago.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, said that key players in the region are moving beyond the Bush administration.

Get this:

“The feeling is that if you keep the flash points on a lower or somewhat higher flame, it will give you more cards when a new administration comes in,” he said, speaking in a phone interview from Israel. “Everyone is sucking up to the Iranians,” he added.

This would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

Pablo Bachelet writes for McClatchy Newspapers:

President Bush has increased aid to Latin America by record amounts and visited Latin America more than any of his predecessors, but his legacy may be the biggest loss of U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere in recent memory.

He remains unpopular and unable to pass initiatives that Latin Americans want, such as immigration reform and free-trade pacts. Trade between South America and China is booming. Governments from Canada to Iran are cutting deals in the region, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has made challenging U.S. interests his foreign-policy mission, through everything from sweet oil deals to a TV news channel that rivals CNN.

”Requiem for the Monroe Doctrine” is how academic Daniel Erikson put it in an article for Current History, referring to the 1823 declaration by President James Monroe that put the Western Hemisphere off-limits to outside powers.

Meanwhile, as Dan Froomkin reports, the POTUS from Hell remains clueless but happy. “Does Bush not recognize what a mess he has created for his party?” Froomkin asks. I’m betting he doesn’t.

More on Oopsgate

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Following up the last post …

I also agree with Avedon —

One of the main problems with Hillary’s entire “experience” thing, which is the basis of her whole campaign against Obama, is that it works even better as an ad for John McCain. “Experience” also translates as “old” and “been in Washington for a long time” – both negatives for substantial parts of the voting public. Another problem is that we already know she was in Washington for the last 15 years – but so what? A lot of ghastly people who shouldn’t be there at all have been there even longer. So why spend millions of dollars telling people something they already know? Hillary does have some positives that are special to Hillary Clinton, but she isn’t really concentrating on them – and that’s been a big mistake all along.

In fact, yesterday I found a few commenters who said they thought the “3 a.m.” ad was a McCain ad, and were surprised at the end to learn it was a Clinton ad. Makes me wonder if a Clinton-McCain general election contest would end up being something like the SNL “Who’s More Grizzled?” skit with Robert Duvall from a few years back.

Colbert King writes in today’s Washington Post that “Clinton sets a standard for political opponents that she wouldn’t think of applying to herself.” I’m not going to quote it here, but it’s worth reading.

Todd Beeton says of the “3 a.m.” ad,

What this ad does do though is give Barack Obama the opportunity to show how deft he is at hitting back against this sort of campaign tactic, which no doubt John McCain intends to use this year no matter who the nominee is. I’m actually glad we’re seeing this argument play out now, maybe we’ll be spared it later on once it is proven to be ineffective as I expect it will. Barack Obama likes to say “I look forward to having that argument.” Now we get to see what he means.

Todd presents the Obama campaign’s responses so far; you can judge them for yourself.

Update: See also “Gun Toting Liberal.”

Oops!

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John Dickerson:

… the ad also raises a new question the Clinton campaign has been stressing over the last few days: Who has been tested? The ad asks which candidate has faced the extended pressure of a crisis that might prepare him or her for the far larger pressures and crises he or she will face as president.

I love this question and am glad the Clinton team raised it. The problem is that they’re not so great at answering. When I asked campaign staffers for examples of Clinton being tested by a foreign-policy challenge, their response was pretty weak. As Patrick Healy reported in the New York Times, Hillary Clinton did not have a security clearance during her husband’s administration, so she wasn’t in the room for the brutal moments he faced. Her aides named the slew of uniformed retired military officials who have endorsed her, including several four-star generals. That’s nice, but it’s not proof of her mettle. When you make an ad like this, your case for your woman should be stronger than a list of endorsements.

Mark Penn pointed me to Clinton’s 1995 speech in Beijing, in which she declared that women’s rights were human rights. A fine speech and a great message, and boy, I bet her hosts didn’t like it one bit, but that doesn’t really constitute the testing that this powerful ad brings to mind. Also, if we’re talking about speeches, then I think Obama has that covered. He has been arguing for some time that he made a speech in 2002 about why the Iraq war was a bad idea. And hasn’t the Clinton team been knocking that back as just a speech?

A Clinton spokesperson on Hardball tonight claimed that Senator Clinton had proved her mettle under fire by attending the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing. I’m serious.

Update: See also Matt Yglesias.

Boo!

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I’ve been working at the other blog (you guys might like this; also this), where I’m getting into as much trouble with readers (see comments to this) as I do elsewhere. I must be an awful person.

Anyway, I leave the spiritual world to come back to the political one, and what do I find but this:

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., debuted a campaign ad on Friday with ominous undertones.

“It’s 3:00am and your children are asleep,” a voice over says in the ad entitled “Children”. “There’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing. Something is happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call.”

“Whether someone knows the world’s leaders, knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead. It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?” the ad concludes.

I’d vote for the Dalai Lama, but he’s not running for president.

I don’t have much to say about the ad that Pam of the House Blend and DHinMI haven’t said. I also agree with Steve Benen:

Maybe I’ve become desensitized a bit, but this one didn’t really faze me that much. It feels like a regular ol’ Republican ad, except a) this is from a Dem; and b) the ad doesn’t show any brown people we’re supposed to be afraid of.

Paddy at Cliff Schecter’s place has Obama’s response ad, if you’re interested.

Reactions on the Left Blogosphere are divided between “How pathetic is this?” (Obama supporters) and “Obama is mean, too” (Clinton supporters). Oh, and also Gavin’s take.

So if we end up with a Clinton-McCain general election, is the contest going to come down to which one can scare us the most? And won’t that be jolly?

Elsewhere are stories that the Clinton campaign may sue somebody because the Texas primary/caucus rules are so convoluted. Other stories say the Clinton campaign is putting out advanced spin on the next round of primaries — if Obama doesn’t win states in which Clinton is currently favored, then it’s because people are having second thoughts about him. Ezra Klein explains that this is dumb.

Well, all’s fair in politics. Either these tricks will work, or they won’t. We’ll see.

Which brings me to E.J. Dionne’s column. Dionne compares what is happening in the Democratic Party now with what happened in the Republican Party in 1980 —

The Reagan metaphor explains why Hillary Clinton was in trouble from the moment she failed to knock Obama out of the race in Iowa. During the past two months, Democrats in large numbers have reached the same conclusion that so many Republicans did in 1980: Now is the time to go for broke, to challenge not only the ruling party but also the governing ideas of the previous political era and the political coalition that allowed them to dominate public life.

“This is our time,” Obama says in a short sentence full of meaning. The conservative age is as dead now as the liberal age was in 1980. Jimmy Carter, in many ways not a liberal at all, became the whipping boy for the end of liberalism. George W. Bush, no pure conservative, has come to symbolize the collapse of conservatism. “It is time to turn the page and write a new chapter in American history,” Obama says — exactly the sentiment of the Ronald Reagan who invoked Tom Paine.

The frustration of the Clinton campaign is understandable. Like George H.W. Bush, whom Reagan defeated for the presidential nomination in 1980, Hillary Clinton has worked very hard, knows government from the inside out and would clearly provide the country with a safe set of hands. The Clintonites argue, fairly, that there is no way to know if Obama can live up to The Promise of Obama.

That’s right; we do not know. But will the scare tactics chase voters to Clinton, or will they reinforce the sense that’s it’s way time for something completely different?

IRS Investigates Obama’s Church

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At the Washington Post‘s “On Faith” site, The Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite writes,

The Internal Revenue Service has notified the United Church of Christ that the IRS has opened an investigation into Senator Barack Obama’s address at the UCC’s 2007 General Synod. The IRS is accusing the UCC of engaging in “political activities.”

I believe the “political activities” are on the other foot. The UCC General Synod was in June of 2007, celebrating that denomination’s 50th Anniversary. It is only now fully nine months later, when Senator Obama has become the front-runner in the race for President, that this investigation is launched. Further, the IRS did not contact the UCC or communicate with them while coming to this decision.

I was present when Senator Obama gave this speech at General Synod (along with 10,000 of my closest church friends and neighbors). There were no campaign buttons, signs, electioneering or other such politically related activities. Indeed, the UCC leadership took care to instruct the assembled about the fact that this was a faith event and we were welcoming a member of our church to talk to us about his personal faith in the public square.

John Wilson writes at Huffington Post:

The national United Church of Christ is under attack from the IRS, the AP reports, because the church invited one of its members, Barack Obama, to speak at the church’s national conference last summer. The invitation came before Obama had decided to run for president. What’s at stake here is not just religious freedom, but the freedom of speech of all nonprofit groups. The danger is that when nonprofit groups are silenced, corporate America will be able to dominate even more thoroughly the public debate.

The IRS letter to the United Church of Christ is particularly disturbing, threatening to revoke the church’s tax-exempt status. The sole basis for the letter is that Obama gave a June 23, 2007 speech to the church’s members (he was invited before he decided to run for president), and Obama campaign staffers had tables outside the building promoting him. Inside the building, the church actually banned all Obama signs and literature, and announced that it was not a campaign speech.

If this rule is taken literally, it might ban all politicians from speaking at any nonprofit location.

He wasn’t even officially running for President yet. Please. This is nothing but political harassment.

Unity at Last!

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I’ve been reviewing the reviews of last night’s debate, and I’m happy to report the Left Blogosphere has come to a consensus:

Tim Russert is a jerk.

This is not a new consensus, but it’s nice to see everyone coming together on something.

Kevin Drum:

Seriously, though, can someone please put a sock in Tim Russert? I didn’t even see the entire exchange, but his badgering of Obama on the Louis Farrakhan issue was pretty wretched. It was maybe legitimate to bring it up in the first place, but to keep at it well after Obama had made his position crystal clear was beyond the pale.

Mustang Bobby:

Tim Russert asks a lot of questions he thinks everybody in the world wants to know the answers to, but in fact they are high-school forensics exercises in gotchas. The one about Louis Farrakhan to Senator Obama was just lame. What did he expect Mr. Obama to say, that he’s doing his own version of “I’m F***ing Matt Damon” with Mr. Farrakhan?

Digby:

From tax returns to Farrakhan to footage shown by “mistake” to the endless, trivial, gotcha bullshit, this debate spectacle tonight was a classic demonstration of what people really hate about politics. It isn’t actually the candidates who can at least on occasion be substantive and serious. The problem is Tim Russert and all his petty, shallow acolytes who spend all their time reading Drudge and breathlessly reporting every tabloid tidbit and sexy rumor and seeking out minor inconsistencies from years past in lieu of doing any real work.

Judging by their silly questions tonight, Russert and Williams obviously know nothing about health care policy, Iraq, Islamic terrorism, economics, global trade or any other subject that requires more than five minutes study to come up with some gotcha question or a stupid Jack Bauer fantasy. It’s embarrassing.

As for the candidates, opinions seem to be highly colored by the commenters’ preferences — Clinton supporters believe Clinton won; Obama supporters believe Obama won. Even those commenters who thought the debate was a draw are split between those who think both candidates were sharp and those who think both candidates needed a nap, followed by a long vacation and possibly retirement.

My opinion is that I hope this was the last Clinton-Obama debate. By now what few substantive differences these two have on policy have been discussed. The only reason to continue debating is in the hope that one of them really screws up and makes a total fool of him- or herself. You know that’s what Russert et al. want.

Is it me, or does it seem we’ve gone overboard with debating? I think some debates are grand, because it forces the candidates to come out from behind their packaging and marketing strategies. But at some point this year we’ve crossed the line from informing the voters to reality television — who’s going to screw up and be sent home?

Enough, I say.

Reviews

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On Tuesday nights I go to rehearsals of the community chorale I belong to. So I miss political events that take place on Tuesday nights. I did not watch tonight’s debates, and between bloggers and the television bobbleheads, I’m not getting a clear picture of how it went down. If you watched, you are welcome to leave your impressions here.

Dodd Endorses Obama

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Chris Dodd, who over the past few months earned much respect if not the nomination, has endorsed Barack Obama.

“It’s now the hour to come together,” Dodd said, in an appearance with Obama at a news conference in Cleveland. “This is the moment for Democrats and independents and others to come together, to get behind this candidacy.”

Dodd also made it clear he’d rather serve in the Senate than be Veep. May he long serve in the Senate.

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Cliff Schecter crunches numbers so I don’t have to. Be grateful.

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Right-wing bloggers and some leftie pro-Clinton bloggers are flogging a story that suggests Obama was involved in a shady land deal, as described in this somewhat turgid news story (I love the way Antoin “Tony” Rezko is referred to as “Mr Obama’s bagman” — biased, much?). The story implies that Rezko got Obama a hefty price reduction for a house, but the sellers say that was not so; Obama’s was the best offer. I suspect we’ll hear more about this.

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The shriek you hear is coming from Little Green Footballs: Obama says that pro-Israel doesn’t mean pro-Likud.

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I hope Andrew Sullivan is right:

I’m struck at how many of my fellow pundits still haven’t grasped what is going on out there. They keep using their old devices and tropes to describe something actually new. Last night, I watched Hannity say the word “black” pejoratively about half a dozen times in expressing his fear and loathing of the Obama phenomenon. It was like listening to Lou Dobbs talk about Hispanics. You could see he thinks this is going to work. When Kristol is reduced to actually saying “the politics of fear” rather than simply exploiting it, you realize that the Obama campaign has not just discombobulated Clinton. It has discombobulated the pundit class elsewhere. You even hear long-time defenders of the Bush Republicans talk darkly about big government – as if they didn’t love it for the past seven years, as if they give a shit about the size of government outside election campaigns.

They didn’t see it coming. They still have no clue what they’re grappling with. By the time they do, it may well be over.

We’ve got a long way to go, so I’m trying not to go all gushy yet, but so far I’ve been impressed with the way Obama has handled the smears (see John Aravosis on this).

What Sullivan says reminds me so much of the Dems and Reagan in 1980, and 1984, and the rest of the 1980s, for that matter. Whatever you think of Reagan as president, the man had a native genius for politics, and he pulled the whole GOP along with him. Even in 1988 I don’t think the Dems realized what they were grappling with. Bill Clinton, another political genius, knew how to finesse the game and stymie the Right, but for all his charm and appeal he couldn’t help his party.

I’m not saying Obama is unstoppable, as we’ve got a long way to go. But if Sullivan is right, we could be on the edge of something bigger than one election.