The Atlantic Politics Channel: May 2009 Archives

May 31 2009, 9:59PM

The Government On The New GM

Newly born from its embargoed womb, here's what the government says about The New General Motors, as it's calling the new General Motors:

The newly organized GM will purchase substantially all of the assets of the old GM needed to implement its business plan out of a chapter 11 in exchange for the U.S. Government relinquishing the majority of its loans to GM.
·         This new GM will establish an independent trust (VEBA) that will provide health care benefits for GM's retirees. The VEBA will be funded by a note of $2.5 billion payable in three installments ending in 2017 and $6.5 billion in 9% perpetual preferred stock. The VEBA will also receive 17.5% of the equity of New GM and warrants to purchase an additional 2.5% of the company. The VEBA will have the right to select one independent director and will have no right to vote its shares or other governance rights.
·         The GM qualified pension plans for both hourly and salaried employees will be transferred to the New GM as part of the purchase process.
·         The U.S. Treasury is prepared to provide approximately $30.1 billion of debtor in possession financing to support GM through an expedited chapter 11 proceeding and transition the new GM through its restructuring plan. The U.S. Treasury does not anticipate providing any additional assistance to GM beyond this commitment. In exchange for funds already committed by the U.S. Treasury and the new injection of $30.1 billion, the U.S. government will receive approximately $8.8 billion in debt and preferred stock in the new GM and approximately 60% of the equity of the new GM. The U.S. Treasury will also have the right to appoint the initial directors other than those that will be selected by the VEBA and the Canadian government.
·         The Governments of Canada and Ontario will participate alongside the U.S. Treasury by lending $9.5 billion to GM and New GM. The Canadian and Ontario governments will receive approximately $1.7 billion in debt and preferred stock, and approximately 12% of the equity of the new GM. Based on its substantial financial contribution, the Canadian government will also have the right to select one initial director.
·         The new GM will pursue a commitment to build a new small car in an idled UAW factory, which when in place will increase the share of U.S. production for U.S. sale from its current level of about 66% to over 70%.

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May 30 2009, 8:38AM

Sotomayor And Race: Read Her Opinions

by Marc Ambinder

Is she or isn't she? Wouldn't it be great if Judge Sonia Sotomayor had a decades-long paper trail detailing, in minute detail, her views on race, affirmative action, fairness and discrimination? If we did -- if we knew how she acted on her beliefs in past, we might be able to predict how she'd act on them in the future. Right?

Well......

Turns out that race comes up fairly frequently in legal proceedings adjudicated by United States courts of appeals. Sotomayor participated in 100 such cases.

Tom Goldstein decided to read them all to see whether Sotomayor was likely to be sympathetic to claims of racial discrimination. After 50 cases, here's his interim report:

In those 50 cases, the panel accepted the claim of race discrimination only three times. In all three cases, the panel was unanimous; in all three, it included a Republican appointee. In roughly 45, the claim was rejected. (Two were procedural dispositions.)
On the other hand, she twice was on panels reversing district court decisions agreeing with race-related claims - i.e., reversing a finding of impermissible race-based decisions. Both were criminal cases involving jury selection.

In other words: her decisions -- her actions -- are fairly convincing evidence that she does not have a penchant for ... well, it's not clear what the accusation is -- penchant for racially-based decisions? -- I'm not sure. Her views -- as expressed through her actions and writings -- are conventional.

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May 29 2009, 8:09PM

A "Personal Visit" To New York City

by Marc Ambinder

A late addition to the White House schedule: it seems that the President and the First Lady will make a "personal trip" to New York City tomorrow. No more details or guidance from the White House have been forthcoming. So-called "off-the-record" trips inside the Beltway are common, but the President doesn't usually make a "personal" trip on such short notice. Perhaps he is attending to a sick friend....someone's funeral....maybe he's attending a Broadway show?

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May 29 2009, 7:48PM

Obama Opposes Supreme Court Review For Uighurs

by Marc Ambinder

In a late Friday filing, the Obama administration urged the Supreme Court (see
Kiyemba.Opp.pdf ) not to take up a case brought by 14 Chinese Uighurs who contend that the U.S. is unlawfully detaining them at Guantanamo Bay even though they're not classified as enemy combatants. The question at hand is very important: do federal courts have the authority to order the executive branch to release detainees into the United States? The Uighurs say yes -- no other country will take them, and they fear repression if they're returned to their native country. The U.S. government agrees, but it contends that "the Political branches" bear the burden of deciding whether to let them into the country because they are aliens, not citizens.

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May 29 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/29

by Staff

Today, we learned that Organizing for America hopes to rally support for Sotomayor; GOP insiders say it's a bad idea to oppose her; Sen. Chris Dodd's first 2010 reelection ad features footage of President Obama congratulating him on the credit card bill; Obama is outpacing Clinton and both Bushes in approval; young conservatives attempted rap; cookies may have yielded crucial intelligence; and Democrats see an upside to attacks on Sotomayor.

We also considered Obama's new brand of capitalism; the intellectual honesty of discussing Sotomayor's race and gender; whether the government will influence auto design; what you need to know about cyber security; Sen. John Cornyn's pragmatism; and what happened in '08 and how things are lining up for 2010.

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May 29 2009, 6:50PM

The Invisible Primary, 5/29

by Chris Good

Tracking the GOP race to 2012

Newt Gingrich will keynote the biggest annual fundraiser for the Florida GOP June 4; and he was criticized by NRSC Chairman John Cornyn for accusing Sonia Sotomayor of racism; Mitt Romney said Republicans shouldn't dismiss the possibility of filibustering Sotomayor; and Tim Pawlenty said it would be an uphill battle to win reelection.

May 29 2009, 6:44PM

Quote Of The Day: Cornyn On Sotomayor Attacks

by Chris Good

I think it's terrible.

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May 29 2009, 6:32PM

Analyzing '08, And A Big Picture On 2010

by Chris Good

In the latest issue of Political Science Quarterly, Gary C. Jacobson analyzes what happened in '08--finding Democrats' party-identification advantage had much to do with it, and gives a big picture on 2010, warning that conditions might not be so favorable to Democrats next time around for some macro reasons.

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May 29 2009, 4:08PM

Not-So-Harsh Interrogation

by Chris Good

According to Time's Bobby Ghosh, sugar-free cookies were what elicited crucial information from Abu Jandal, a fearsome bodyguard to Osama bin Laden.

Multimedia

May 29 2009, 3:42PM

Young Cons Rap

Young Conservatives rap about being a young and conservative in the Obama era: "I debate any poser who don't shoot straight/government spending needs to deflate" ... "We need more women with intellectual integrity/I'm talkin, Megyn Kelly not Nancy Pelosi" ... "Superman that socialism, waterboard that terrorism"

Needless to say, political rap has historically been liberally aligned. What would KRS-One and Young Jeezy say?

h/t TPM

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May 29 2009, 12:09PM

GOP Insiders: Opposing Sotomayor A Bad Idea

by Chris Good

According to National Journal's latest Political Insiders Poll, a majority of GOP insiders say it's a bad idea for Republicans to oppose Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation as the next Supreme Court justice. When asked "Would it be politically smart for Republicans to try to block the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor?", 64 percent of the ~~120~~ 89 GOP insiders polled said no; 24 percent said yes, and 12 percent said it depends.

(Democratic insiders, for their part, had the same reaction, by a margin of 89 percent to 8 percent.)

A few telling responses, collected by NJ, reflect the fear that opposing Sotomayor would alienate Hispanics:

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May 29 2009, 11:25AM

Six Things You Need To Know About Cyber

by Marc Ambinder

1. The White House's cyber security strategy, unveiled today, is the first step in a years-long process to figure out how to contain the major, mind-bending series of problems associated with Internet security. One of the reasons for the vagueness is that the Obama administration isn't quite ready to settle the turf wars that are already being fought. Scott Charbo, a former top government IT security official who works for Accenture, says that a comprehensive approach "will require wholesale change [of] management efforts across the entire federal government at virtually every level of the various agencies and departments to be effective." A side note: as of today, the White House owns this problem.

2. The National Security Agency will play a significant role in domestic cyber security policy, which will probably necessitate a change in their charter and debated, controversial Congressional legislation. (The director of the National Security Agency, Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander is absent from today's roll-out; he will become the head of the Pentagon's new cyber command when it is unveiled later this summer.) The roll-out today does not provide guidance about the NSA's role. We don't know how much the Department of Homeland Security will do. (Obama promised that the government won't monitor corporate or individual e-mail traffic.)

3. The federal government will talk about defensive capabilities, but hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of people will be thinking about how to use cyberspace against U.S. enemies, be they terrorist networks or countries. The government will create -- and probably already has created -- a dedicated, offensive cyberwar activity within the intelligence community. The morality of offense in cyber space is open to debate; it's not clear whether the Obama administration will sanction that debate publicly.

4. There is, and will be, a fundamental tension between the transparency of protocols needed to secure the homeland cyber space (individuals, corporations, local governments) and the intelligence community / military fetish for discipline, compartmented security, need-to-know rationales, etc.

5. Contractors will take a lead role in designing and implementing this strategy; oversight of the billions of dollars has to be considered a priority.

6. Already, stakeholders worry that the White House is starting off with a mistake by not giving the cyber security czar a better title, a bigger office and more direct authority. (Obama promised that his cyber security director "would have regular access to" him. (Reportedly, several potential czar candidates have taken themselves out of consideration because they worry they'll be hamstrung.) What stakeholders like? The White House acknowledges the economic dimension of the problem.

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May 29 2009, 10:25AM

U.S. Government As Auto Engineers

by Chris Good

As GM gets ready to file for bankruptcy next week and the Obama administration gets ready to take a 72.5 percent equity stake in the company, Richard Posner foresees a heavy government hand in the design and production of GM's future fleet. The administration wants an efficient, hybrid fleet--so how could it not influence the actual design of cars? Posner writes:

The government says that it's not going to interfere in management decisions. I don't believe that. Quite apart from the political pressures that the United Auto Workers, and other entities that have a financial stake in General Motors, can be expected to exert on members of Congress and on the President, the Administration seems determined to preserve General Motors in order to (1) affirm the nation's commitment to remaining a major manufacturer of motor vehicles and (2) advance the Administration's goal of reducing oil consumption and (relatedly) carbon emissions. Achieving these goals will require the Administration to intervene, directly or indirectly, in the design and production and even marketing decisions of GM's management.

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May 29 2009, 10:05AM

SotoSkirmish: Kinsley: Her Race and Gender Are Assets

by Marc Ambinder

A provocation of the day, courtesy of Michael Kinsley, who contends that liberals and conservatives aren't being intellectually honest -- nor are they being honest with themselves -- about race, gender and Sonia Sotomayor.

Listening, via the media, to the debate inside the Republican Party, you also have to wonder about the party's commitment to a colorblind society. The Democrats' too, but Democrats don't carry on about colorblindness the way Republicans do. It's clear that the one paralyzing fact about Sonia Sotomayor, to Republicans, is the color of her skin. If she weren't Latino, they would be in full revenge-for-Clarence-Thomas mode. Instead, they are in an agony of indecision, with GOP strategists openly warning: Support the Latina or die. If the 40 remaining Republican senators end up voting for Sotomayor, her race will be the reason. Democrats, meanwhile, can enjoy supporting her for her impressive intellectual qualifications. They don't even need to mention the obvious: that these qualifications aren't the main reason President Obama picked her.
Yes, of course, ethnicity in politics is different from ethnic job quotas, and a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court is a special kind of job. Nowhere is a bit of diversity more obviously desirable. Nowhere is the case stronger for taking race, ethnicity and gender into account. And conservatives apparently agree. If only they could bring themselves to say so.

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May 29 2009, 9:56AM

Obama's New Capitalism

by Marc Ambinder

Bondholders are kicking and screaming, but it appears as if General Motors Corp. is headed for an orderly bankruptcy, and the Obama administration is about to be handed the keys to a venerable corporate institution. Again.

And again, the administration seems to be rewriting the rules of capitalism to fashion a deal to its liking.

Purists -- and virtually every academic economist one happens to encounter -- wonder what happened to the once inviolate principle of rewarding risk-takers. Unsecured creditors will get less of a stake in the new GM than its employees, and you can forget about poor unadorned stockholders. (The administration promises some unspecified protections for creditors; we shall see.)

As in the deal with Chyrsler's bondholders, the administration muscled its way through the negotiations and used its considerable leverage to convince secured debtholders -- the highest class of investors -- to accept a fixed return that was significantly less than many of those investors had expected when they put money into the falling company. Who benefits? The question isn't very apt, because everyone is losing something. But, on balance, the unions are getting a better deal.

The unions, who support Democrats -- and whose work rules arguably hastened the collapse of the American auto industry.

Asked whether the Chrysler and GM bailouts were sops to unions at the expense of secured creditors, administration officials answer the subject of the question. That may be the case, they respond, but the other choices were untenable. As to the charge that the Obama economic team is redefining capitalism, erasing incentives for investors and acting like a gangster, I would wager an hour's worth of UAW productivity that officials, in private moments, would concede that these things are so. But they'd argue that, where critics see a contempt for capitalism, what's actually taking place is a revision of the informal rules that governed capitalism into the ground. A cultural revolution, if you will.

It is absolutely true that there are exigent circumstances; that the domino effect of two major auto company failures would cascade into a catastrophe even greater than the one we've experienced. The government's $15 billion stake in GM gives it actual leverage. At the same time, though, the Obama team is pushing a policy outcome that will advance Mr. Obama's economic worldview, one that treats the era of money capitalism, and all of its rules, as suspect.

The pattern is clear: threats from the government to abrogate employment contracts...public repudiation of the Wall Street bonus structure...proposals to change tax rates for corporations doing business overseas...the equating of hedge fund managers with "speculators," a term rife with history -- and a word that came out of the president's mouth during the frenzied Chrysler negotiations.

Note that, aside from threats and suasion, the administration hasn't done anything. The bondholders (with notable exceptions) agreed to these two deals. No laws have been broken. Everyone has sacrificed. And the unions have already given up a great deal -- and, in doing so, put their trust in the administration. Here's the Obama perspective on these deals, in six bullet points.

1. Secured debtholders were the blood cells of the money economy, and they're very important now. But employees ought to be valued by the market system, even if there is no way to measure their contribution. The Obama administration supports the union movement. Mr. Obama ran on a platform of empowering unions. This move empowers unions.

2. The administration believed that, absent tough talk, hedge funds and debt holders would have driven GM into bankruptcy; they'd get paid by, say, stripping down and melting the metal beams from the factories, and everyone else would get screwed. Incentives, in this case, would not have saved GM.

3. Chrysler, a much smaller company, might well have been left to die. But its failure at the time when the decision needed to be made -- its failure, in other words, in the context of a collapsing economy -- would have been much more catastrophic. The administration believes that its intervention will buy Chrysler a few more years. If it fails in a few years, that's bad -- but not destructive.

4. Unions aren't getting off scot free. They've got to reorganize the company. They're going to have to meet aggressive profit goals. They're now responsible for the legacy benefits. And investors aren't necessarily going to be willing to put money in GM now, especially given the precedents set by the government. The UAW may be on its own.

5. Here's a version of this argument, by private equity manager Scott Sperling:

"Far from harming capitalism, the Obama administration's policies concerning GM and Chrysler are very much in line with the process of "creative destruction" that the economist Joseph Schumpeter described as the active heart of capitalism's success. The government has been willing to support an important industry -- but only on the condition that all stakeholders make the tough choices necessary for the companies to succeed in the long term. This is capitalism at work."

This argument may not buy Obama good will on Wall Street, but it faithfully represents what he's thinking.

Editor's note: A version of this column appeared on CBSNews.com

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May 28 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/28

by Staff

Today we learned that President Obama will travel to Landstuhl Regional Medical Facility in Gernamy next week, thereby visiting the center of an '08 controversy; Mitt Romney participated in a roundtable discussion in Arlington, VA; the public likes Sonia Sotomayor; Obama urged grassroots support for healthcare reform via phone from Air Force One; Arnold Schwarzenegger joked about Rush Limbaugh's weight; the NRCC cut a Pelosi/CIA ad; and a federal judge has given the government some classification guidance in the case of Waleed Said Bn Said Zaid.

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May 28 2009, 5:30PM

The Invisible Primary, 5/28

by Chris Good

Today, Mitt Romney announced he'll deliver a speech on defense policy at the U.S. Navy Memorial Monday; he also participated in a roundtable discussion on the Employee Free Choice Act in Arlington, VA; and campaigned for a GOP candidate in New Jersey; Tim Pawlenty said he'll announce this summer whether he plans to seek reelection as Minnesota's governor; and Eric Cantor endorsed former eBay CEO Meg Whitman in California's 2010 gubernatorial race.

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May 28 2009, 2:51PM

Schwarzenegger Makes A Crack About Limbaugh's Weight

by Chris Good

Appearing on CNN today, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was asked what has become a popular question, and a Democratic talking point, about his party: is Rush Limbaugh your leader?

Schwarzenegger, a former Mr. Universe and a moderate, responded thusly: "I think that they say that Rush Limbaugh is the 800 lb. gorilla in the Republican Party, but I think that's mean spirited to say that because I think he's down to 650 lbs., so I think one should be fair to him about this whole thing."

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May 28 2009, 12:13PM

An Intelligence Turf War Or Just Unfinished Business

by Marc Ambinder

The Associated Press's Pamela Hess reports that the nation's top intelligence officials, Director of National Intelligence Denny Blair and CIA director Leon Panetta are "locked in a turf battle" over whether non-CIA personnel should be the DNI's formal representative in a country, or whether the CIA's station chiefs -- traditionally the senior intelligence officer at any embassy -- should retain their supervisory role. "Turf battle" is one way to describe it, but don't draw from that the notion that Blair and Panetta are at daggers drawn. They've simply asked the White House to resolve a question that Congress dropped in their laps when it created the DNI structure and took away the CIA chief's power to direct the activities of the nation's other 15 intelligence agencies.

In 2004, as part of its major post-9/11 reform bill, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act, Congress created a new intelligence bureaucracy to oversee the activities of the entire community. The CIA director -- who had also been the director of central intelligence -- would now be, in essence, the chief human intelligence collector and analyzer, and the CIA would no longer be, at least in a symbolic sense, the hub of the community. When the CIA director was also the DCI, CIA station chiefs had dual authority, too. They managed the activities of CIA personnel and assets in a station and they signed off on any intelligence activity by any other agency in that country.

Congress changed the system, but it didn't offer any guidance. The DNI was given less budget authority than he needed and few tools to fight through the bureaucratic tangles. The two DNIs before Admiral Blair tried to consolidate their power. Blair simply inherited his grandmother's furniture.

The reality is that this dispute needs to be resolved. If a National Security Agency signals intelligence officer travels to [REDACTED] to visit a special collection facility, does he or she need the approval of the station chief to visit or liaise with other agencies? If the US intelligence presence in, say, the former Soviet Republic of [REDACTED] is primarily a technical one and not a repository of spies and their human sources, does it make more sense for the NSA chief, who might have a better relationship with the country in question -- and we're primarily talking about countries with whom the US has intelligence relationships -- to serve as the de facto chief of station? Also: who does the chief of station report to? The CIA Director? The DNI? Questions about the line of authority run from the mundane to the serious -- if the DNI orders a station chief to go do something, does the station chief first ask his or her supervisor at the CIA's National Clandestine Service?

The CIA and NSA, through a still-classified entity called the Special Collection Service, jointly run large codebreaking and signals intelligence collection facilities at dozens of embassies across the world. The NSA's presence at smaller embassies is limited to code rooms; NSA officers don't run spies. But as the NSA's external footprint has grown, its liaison arrangements with other countries have blossomed. In certain very friendly countries, NSA operates joint collection facilities with the host government. The result is that there are far more NSA employees in a number of countries than there are CIA employees.

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May 28 2009, 11:51AM

Obama To Visit Landstuhl

by Chris Good

President Obama will visit the military hospital at Landstuhl, Germany on June 5, the White House announced today. Landstuhl became the center of a campaign controversy last summer when Obama canceled a stop there to visit wounded soldiers (Landstuhl receives wounded U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan). A military official at the hospital said he "didn't know why" the stop had been canceled, and John McCain aired a TV ad alleging Obama was more concerned with publicity than U.S. soldiers and canceled the stop because the Pentagon wouldn't let him bring cameras. Some critics questioned Obama's patriotism.

The Obama campaign ~~later~~ said the visit would have violated Pentagon rules against campaigning at military facilities, given the presence of Obama's campaign staff and the use of his campaign plane.

The June 5 trip will be Obama's first visit to the facility.

May 28 2009, 10:22AM

2012: Romney At VA Roundtable

by Chris Good

Mitt Romney is in Arlington, VA today, participating in a roundtable discussion held by the Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI), a business-funded issue advocacy group. The topic: the Employee Free Choice Act, labor-backed legislation that would allow workers to form unions with sign-up cards.

Romney has worked with WFI on the Employee Free Choice Act before, denouncing it on conference calls with media. In doing so, he has kept up his profile on the issue, which remains a top legislative priority for business this year. Romney is making a swing through Virginia this week, attending fundraising events to aid GOP candidates running in the state's election this year.

May 28 2009, 9:18AM

The Democratic-Industrial Complex

by Scott Bland and Ronald Brownstein

Over the past few weeks, President Obama and Congressional Democrats have reached a series of high-profile agreements with key industries that have usually aligned with the GOP. Automobile manufacturers, the health insurance industry, medical professionals, pharmaceutical executives, and electric utilities - not traditional Democratic allies - all have joined, to varying extent, in the big policy initiatives of Obama's second hundred days.

Most of the attention on these agreements has understandably focused on their near-term legislative impacts. But the cooperation between Democrats and traditionally skeptical industries could have far-reaching campaign implications as well. These industries already started shifting their dollars towards the Democrats after they regained the House and Senate majorities in 2007. Now, these nascent policy alliances offer Democrats the prospect of a more solidified financial commitment, creating yet another potential roadblock for a scrambling Republican Party. As Democratic lobbyist Steve Elmendorf put it, a closer alliance between Democrats and these industries "means potentially that [the Republicans'] time in the wilderness will be longer because these groups will not help them to get back into the majority."

Each of the Democratic policy agreements with these industries turned heads. After years of opposing federal mandates to improve vehicle mileage, a phalanx of auto executives joined President Obama at his announcement of new fuel economy standards last week. A week earlier, representatives of insurance, pharmaceutical and other health care companies flanked Obama as he announced an aggressive deal to reduce the increase in health care spending. And, to the frustration of Republican opponents, the cap-and-trade climate bill steered through the House Energy and Commerce Committee by Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts won praise from leading electric utilities.

While automakers are relatively modest donors, energy and health care concerns are big financial players. Democrats, in power at every level of the federal government, were always likely to fundraise well for the next two to four years. The question is whether they can parlay their warming relationships with these industries into the kind of cash advantage that Republicans enjoyed from them during their decade in the majority.

In 2004, when Congressional Democrats were still in the minority, they only captured about 40 percent of $88.3 million total campaign donations from health care industries, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Republican candidates received more donations across the board: from medical professionals, hospitals, insurance companies, and especially from the pharmaceutical industry, which gave Republicans $8.7 million and Democrats just $4.4 million. But by 2008, with the Democrats in the majority, the overall numbers reversed: Congressional Democrats captured almost 60 percent of a larger pot of health care money ($124.7 million). Democrats even bested Republicans in pharmaceutical donations, $11.3 million to $10.2 million.

Comparable fundraising shifts occurred in the automotive and energy fields. Among automakers, Republican Congressional candidates enjoyed a nearly three-to-one advantage ($1.4 million to about $550,000) over Democrats in 2004; in 2008, from the same group, Democrats collected over $1 million to about $950,000 for Republicans. Republicans still held a commanding lead in donations from the overall energy sector in 2008, raising $33.5 million while Democrats attracted $19.8 million. But even that was over $10 million more than Congressional Democrats raised from energy interests in 2004; the Democratic share of energy contributions increased from 26 percent in 2004 to 37 percent in 2008. Democrats still found little support from the mining and the oil and gas industries (which respectively directed 69 per cent and 75 per cent of their contributions toward Republicans). But Democrats have made big gains elsewhere, particularly among utilities. Utilities gave almost exactly two-thirds of their $13.3 million in political donations to Republicans in 2004. By 2008, Democrats and Republicans split $16.9 million of utility money almost 50-50.

A similar trajectory is evident at the presidential level. In 2004, Democratic nominee John Kerry received less than 40 percent of the health care industry's contributions to the party nominees; in 2008, Barack Obama collected 72 percent of the industry's donations. Kerry took in less than a quarter of the auto manufacturers' donations; Obama received 62 percent. And Kerry's campaign received only 17 percent of contributions from electric utilities; Obama captured 56 percent of their donations last year.

Though they have started to neutralize the GOP's financial advantage among these groups, Democrats may still have room to grow. The yardstick might be highs that Republican fundraisers enjoyed during their time in the majority. In 1996, the Republicans' first election with House and Senate majorities since 1954, they collected almost 63 percent of health care's total donations. Pharmaceutical interests directed more than two-thirds of their contributions to Republicans that year. The same story played out in the auto and energy sectors. Auto manufacturers gave 68 percent of their money to the GOP in 1996. And Republicans received 69 percent of utilities' donations en route to collecting 76 percent of the energy sector's total contributions.

Early numbers from 2010 election fundraising posted by the Center suggest that Congressional Democrats are approaching and even exceeding the donation shares that Republicans once experienced. So far in this cycle, Democrats are receiving about 66 percent of both the $3.5 million donated by health care companies and the $1.1 million donated by utilities. (Automakers have made negligible contributions to the 2010 race.) Democrats have even pulled ahead of Republican candidates in donations from the overall energy sector, defying conventional wisdom by raising $1.2 million from big energy so far, compared to $850,000 for Republicans. Even the oil and gas industry is hedging its bets, directing 43 per cent of its contributions so far toward Democrats.

With industry, Democrats are making the argument that they are better off working with the majority to shape legislation than joining Republicans in adamant opposition to Obama's plans. The message to business from Congressional Democrats, Elmendorf says, is that if they don't work with the party "it is going to be a vastly different bill; if you stay in the tent, we are going to get a more moderate bill."

So far, Obama and Congressional Democrats have strengthened their ties to these industries without inciting a backlash from the traditional party interests-environmentalists, consumer groups, labor-dubious of them. That challenge will grow more complex as cap-and-trade legislation continues its advance through Congress and both chambers begin seriously considering health care reform, which will directly pit traditional Democratic interests like labor against the medical industry on questions such as establishing a public competitor to private insurance companies.

If Obama and Congressional Democrats can continue to balance those interests as effectively as they have so far, the legislative, political and financial rewards could be substantial. For the moment, at least, key components of big business seem happy to stay in the Democratic tent, and the Democrats' campaign coffers are showing it.--

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May 28 2009, 8:31AM

Obama Orders Classification Review

by Marc Ambinder

The White House ordered a bow-to-stern review of the government's policies for controlling classified and so-called "sensitive, but unclassified" information yesterday, a step that's likely to end the Bush-era preference for keeping thusly designated data private.

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May 28 2009, 6:00AM

2012's Crisis

by Staff

Depending on the intentions of North Korea, their saber-rattling this week will result in a full-scale conflagration that President Obama will have to douse now -- or postpone the inevitable (a collapse of the regime) for a few more years. Either way, American policy will be the subject of intense debates among politicians. Will North Korea be a campaign issue in 2012?

May 27 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/27

by Staff

Today, we learned that Bush v. Gore lawyers have teamed up to challenge Proposition 8; a liberal coalition has launched the first Sonia Sotomayor ad; Jeb Bush, Jr. (not the former governor) endorsed Marco Rubio in Florida's Senate race; Mike Huckabee sought to raise money on Sotomayor's nomination; former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) said Sotomayor "appears to be racist"; Newt Gingrich said almost the same; Vice President Joe Biden cracked a Teleprompter joke; and two liberal groups declared America "a center-left nation."

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May 27 2009, 6:15PM

The Invisible Primary, 5/27

by Chris Good

Tracking the GOP race to 2012

Today, Mike Huckabee has decided to endorse conservative Marco Rubio in Florida's Senate race over fellow 2012 potential Charlie Crist; Newt Gingrich accused Sonia Sotomayor of being a racist; Haley Barbour said he's considered running for president but "won't think about it again until after 2010"; Sarah Palin is ending Alaska's four-month hiring freeze; and Mike Pence continued his energy group's tour with a stop in Indianapolis.

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May 27 2009, 3:02PM

Does The Right Need a Center for American Progress?

by Conor Clarke

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the McCain campaign's top economics adviser and a former head of the Congressional Budget Office, has got it into his head that what conservatives need is a new think tank:

"I think there is now pretty widespread recognition that the Republican Party needs to become demographically broader, more welcoming of different ideas," said Holtz-Eakin, who ran the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 to 2005. "And it's time to think strategically about how to appeal more broadly outside the South."

That diagnosis is pretty appealing to me, and I would have thought it would be appealing to liberals like Matt Yglesias and Paul Krugman. But it isn't. Why?

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May 27 2009, 2:21PM

Jay Carney, Call Your Office

by Marc Ambinder

Vice President Joe Biden gives as good as he gets.

"What am I going to tell the president? I'll tell him his Teleprompter is broken. What will he do then?"

His response to a malfunctioning teleprompter at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation in Colorado Springs, Colorado

May 27 2009, 1:25PM

SotoSkirmish: Newt Joins The 'Racist' Bandwagon

by Chris Good

Newt Gingrich echoed the accusation that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist (made most forcefully by former Rep. Tom Tancredo) on Twitter today:

@newtgingrich White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.

@newtgingrich Imagine a judicial nominee said "my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman" new racism is no better than old racism

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May 27 2009, 12:30PM

SotoSkirmish: Tancredo Says Sotomayor 'Appears To Be Racist'

by Chris Good

Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) says Sonia Sotomayor "appears to be a racist." At issue is Sotomayor's 2001 comment that she "would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that live."

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May 27 2009, 10:41AM

Obama's Supreme Choice

National Journal columnist Stuart Taylor, Jr. and TheAtlantic.com Editorial Director Bob Cohn talk about the Sotomayor pick.

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May 27 2009, 10:33AM

Sotomayor E-Mail Wars

by Chris Good

After President Obama sent an e-mail and video to supporters yesterday introducing Sonia Sotomayor, Mike Huckabee is using the nomination to raise money for his PAC: the former governor sent an e-mail to Huck PAC supporters this morning asking them to "Please make a contribution today in support of our efforts to elect Republicans to the Senate. While we may not be able to block liberal Judge Sotomayor, we must be prepared for future nominations. Electing more Republicans to the Senate then is critical." Huckabee won inroads with social conservatives in the '08 campaign, and criticized Sotomayor's nomination soon after it was announced yesterday, warning that she would lead to an "Extreme Court."

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May 27 2009, 10:13AM

2010: The Friskier Jeb Bush Endorses Marco Rubio

by Marc Ambinder

I admit it. It took me a second to realize that the Jeb Bush who endorsed Marco Rubio today wasn't the former governor of Florida, who remains very popular with Republican primary voters and who has access to a cachet of top-dollar donors. It's his son, John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, Jr.

Jeb The Senior considered running for Senate and opted out; Gov. Charlie Crist remains the frontrunner; Rubio trails him and is running proudly to the right (and building his own political machine for the future at the same time). Jeb The Governor doesn't have much respect for Charlie Crist. I can write this without attribution from having spent enough time talking to Florida Republicans who know both men. BTW: Crist still has no opinion on Sonia Sotomayor, and won't, until the Senate confirmation hearings. Jeb Jr. may or may not be a stand-in for his father, who will probably endorse Rubio closer to the primary, if he endorses at all.

May 27 2009, 9:53AM

If North Korea Falls...

by Marc Ambinder

Robert Kaplan, writing in the 2006 Atlantic, sketched out a scary scenario. But this paragraph seems prescient:

What should concentrate the minds of American strategists is not Kim's missiles per se but rather what his decision to launch them says about the stability of his regime. Middle- and upper-middle-level U.S. officers based in South Korea and Japan are planning for a meltdown of North Korea that, within days or even hours of its occurrence, could present the world--meaning, really, the American military--with the greatest stabilization operation since the end of World War II. "It could be the mother of all humanitarian relief operations," Army Special Forces Colonel David Maxwell told me. On one day, a semi-starving population of 23 million people would be Kim Jong Il's responsibility; on the next, it would be the U.S. military's, which would have to work out an arrangement with the Chinese People's Liberation Army (among others) about how to manage the crisis.

The Obama administration seems to be adopting the Bush administration's tactic of essentially ignoring the Kim Family Regime's latest (threatening theatrics) which, on the one hand, could serve to provoke North Korea into something more than gestural warfighting. As Kaplan points out in a new dispatch, tough sanctions -- realistically (sorry, John Bolton) the only option on the table now -- would hasten the collapse of the country. Tough call...

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May 27 2009, 8:45AM

A "Cloud Nine" Pick

by Marc Ambinder

As he introduced Sonia Sotomayor and her family at the White House yesterday, President Obama seemed to his staff to be on "cloud nine," a senior advisor said.

And no wonder: he had found in Sotomayor a jurist whose sensibilities and outlook were very much like his own. "He's a constitutional nerd. A bit of a nerd. He reads cases all of the time," one of his top aides said.

The President had been smitten with Soyomayor for quite a while. He had never met her, but he kept up with gossip from his friends in the legal profession; he knew of her compassion for her clerks; her vim and vigor.

Her credentials were unimpeachable but only the point of departure for Obama.

From the start, say his aides, he intended to pick a justice who could shake up the court, who could -- and would -- change the minds of the other justices, who would represent, at the court and to America, a story about the law that, Obama believed, had yet to be told.

The meeting on Thursday sealed it; after just two minutes with Sotomayor, a White House aide says, "you are just bowled over by her personality." Still, perhaps wary of the perils of relying on gut instinct -- he took the weekend to think about the choice.

In 2006, George W. Bush issued an appeal to conservatives who balked at his nomination of White House counsel Harriett Miers: "I know what's in her heart," he said. That was code for -- she shares my values, my faith, my way of making decisions. Miers was manifestly unqualified for the modern court, but Bush's rationale in choosing her is strikingly similar to Obama's. Where Bush looked into his heart and saw Harriett Miers, Obama, similarly introspected, saw Sonia Sotomayor.

Obama often says that the White House is a bubble and very insular and that one of the things he hopes to do (and does by reading letters from the public) is to break out of the bubble.

Compared to the White House, the Supreme Court is a lagoon in the middle of nowhere. So was one of the reasons Obama picked Sotomayor that she would bring an outsider's perspective to this ivory tower edifice? I think the answer is yes. Obama often mentions empathy to signal this idea, but maybe this is an easier way to understand his thought process.

The Court's veterans are supposedly skittish about newcomers to assert themselves, so perhaps Obama has picked someone who might make the other justices uneasy. From the perspective of the White House, though, this will work to Sotomayor's advantage. Obama's vetting team sent him reports from Republican colleagues who had changed their minds because of what Sotomayor argued in camera.

"What's magical about the Supreme Court is that no one makes a decision in isolation. I think we will get better decisions by someone who represents different perspectives at the table engaging in that conversation," the senior aide said. The hope is that the intrapersonal dynamics of the clubby club will be changed.

What's this bit about Sotomayor not being "brilliant?"

I think Obama believes that the legal world is manifestly out of touch with modern society -- that the judgment about Sotomayor's intelligence stems more from the unwillingness of academics to believe intelligence consists of something other than how an opinion reads. Obama seems to be sensitive to classism in the elite. Perhaps an outspoken Puerto Rican New Yorker seems foreign and makes an academic a little queasy, which translates, in public, to complaints about her intellectual heft. It would be interesting to see if Justice Sandra Day O'Connor faced similar concerns when Ronald Reagan nominated her in 1981, she of humble western roots and a lack of ivory polish, who nevertheless also graduated from a top law school.

On MSNBC yesterday, a law professor (liberal Jonathan Turley) said that he and his academic friends were disappointed with the pick because he believed she wasn't brilliant enough (compared to him presumably) and that she was more like "Thurgood Marshall."

I think this underlines the same idea: Sotomayor and Marshall are/were from different classes and had different life experiences from most academics, who even if they come from humble roots became very insular, cerebral and theoretical once they become academics.

Stotomayor didn't take this academic track, and as a result, is seen as different.

A former law student of Obama's told me that "Obama is challenging this assumption and, in some sense, wants to undermine it."

That's the sense that White House officials convey. "It isn't just that she's the first Latina woman, though that is historically significant. It isn't just that. Coupled with her extraordinary life story, her intellect and her drive, she succeeded, and despite all odds, overachieved."

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May 27 2009, 7:00AM

Bush v. Gore Opponents Team To Fight Prop 8

by Marc Ambinder

Combatants in the first politico-cultural drama of the 21st century, lawyers Ted Olson and David Boies are now allies in another: today, they're filing a federal court challenge to California's Proposition 8, hoping that a federal judge will issue an injunction against the same-sex marriage ban and immediately reinstate marriage rights for gay couples. The California Supreme Court upheld the proposition yesterday. Funding for the case is provided by the Equal Rights Foundation.

Olson, who has argued Bush v. Gore and 54 other cases before SCOTUS, was solicitor general from 2001 to 2004, and Boies, a corporate law expert who served as Al Gore's lead co-counsel in 2000, famously helped the Justice Department prosecute Microsoft's anti-trust case.

May 26 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/26

by Staff

Today, we learned that President Obama has nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court--who was his favorite all along; conservatives hit Sotomayor for saying appeals courts are "where policy is made"; the White House has issued talking points to sell her; Arlen Specter likes the pick; Judicial Confirmation Network does not; neither does Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC); Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and RNC Chairman Michael Steele pledged a fair confirmation process; so did Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Jeff Sessions; Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) congratulated Sotomayor but promised scrutiny; the Chamber of Commerce will decide whether to endorse her; California's Supreme Court upheld the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is okay with Guantanamo detainees in U.S. prisons; and October 2009 will be a time to reflect on Obama campaign artwork.

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May 26 2009, 6:34PM

McCain Nudges Obama On North Korea

by Marc Ambinder

If not for Sonia Sotomayor, the political elite would be debating North Korea. Here, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, Sen. John McCain weighs in:

What has North Korea done since Obama came to office? And we were going to have a new dialogue with them. God Almighty! You know? Two journalists are now in prison. They announced they're reprocessing, proceeding with the fissile material. They were threatening or did shut down that town that the South Koreans funded for them. I mean, I think reality's going to hit the Obama Administration.

Fighting old battles, yes.... but a preview of what Obama will hear from Republicans and provocative, none the less. Note that the country had not conducted its nuclear test when McCain spoke.

Speaking of interviews and Jeffrey Goldberg.... Fareed Zakaria, what gives?...

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May 26 2009, 6:09PM

Debating Sotomayor: Stu Taylor And Bob Cohn

by Marc Ambinder

In our wood-paneled, chamber-like library today, the Atlantic Media empire's resident law guru, Stuart Taylor, Jr., debated the meaning of the Sotomayor pick with Atlantic editorial director Bob Cohn. Taylor is a columnist for National Journal and has been quite critical of Sotomayor, who he called a "devotee of identity politics." Check out our latest podcast here.

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May 26 2009, 5:10PM

The Invisible Primary, 5/26

by Chris Good

Mike Huckabee got out in front of the pack in condemning President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to SCOTUS, but got her name wrong ("Maria Sotomayor"); Mitt Romney called the nomination "troubling"; John Ensign called for diligent examination of her views and intellect; Charlie Crist doesn't have a reaction yet; Tim Pawlenty saw criticism from Reason for vetoing a medical marijuana provision; Mike Pence held an event in Pittsburgh with the House GOP's American Energy Solutions Group, which he chairs (more events in other states to come); and Eric Cantor called Nancy Pelosi's CIA claims "outrageous."

May 26 2009, 4:18PM

The 2008 Campaign, In Posters

by Chris Good

Roughly a year after President Obama defeated John McCain, the visual elements of his victory will be rehashed: in October 2009, the same month that Shepard Fairey is scheduled to release his book Art for Obama: Designing the Campaign for Change, Kansas City Art Institute professor Hal Elliott Wert will release a chronicle of Obama campaign posters entitled Hope: A Collection of Obama Posters and Prints. Wert's book will include a replication of Fairey's "Hope" poster.

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May 26 2009, 3:15PM

A Modest Gitmo Proposal

by Chris Good

At his Atlantic Correspondents blog, Alex Gibney discusses the political viability of eating Guantanamo detainees:

Now, unfortunately, some prissy card-carrying members of the US Constitution have made us all look bad by pointing out that many of the Gitmo detainees weren't guilty of anything. Whoops! However, even more problematic for President Obama, it appears that many of these previously "innocent" men have become radicalized and pissed off after being held for seven years in Supermax prisons in southeastern Cuba. We can't possibly let them go now because they don't like us anymore. As we know from our own experience with American prisons, being locked up with hardened criminals (or terrorists) doesn't turn prisoners away from crime; it educates them on how to commit bigger and better crimes.

So now that we've turned nice Afghan farmers into hardened jihadis, what do we do: apologize and turn them loose to grow wheat in Idaho? No way.

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May 26 2009, 2:53PM

Leahy On Sotomayor In 1998

From the C-SPAN video library: in what might be a preview of the confirmation process to come, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), now chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, speaks on the Senate floor in 1998 to support Sonia Sotomayor's nomination as a U.S. Appeals Court judge.

In the video, Leahy suggests Republicans had opposed Sotomayor for fear that President Clinton would appoint her to the U.S. Supreme Court if a vacancy arose.

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May 26 2009, 1:37PM

White House Merges National Security, Homeland Security Staffs

by Marc Ambinder

Brennan's Role Formalized; Has Walk-In Privileges, No Longer His Own Staff

So far as breaking news goes, this ain't all that broken. But in government, structure often dictates function, which, in turn, heavily influences policy. Who reports directly to the president? Who reports to an assistant? Are staff in one bucket allowed to communicate with staff in another? Today, the Obama administration announced the consolidation of the Homeland Security staff and National Security Council staff at the White House, completing a process that began in the latter years of the Bush administration. A newly-named "national security staff" will serve the president as his principal staff coordinators for all homeland security, counterterorrism, transnational and international policy. The announcement today makes plain that Obama has come to value the services of his chief homeland security adviser, John Brennan, who has direct walk-in privileges. Obama writes that he will retain Brennan's position, which -- and this is important -- DOES NOT report to the national security adviser, but reports directly to the President. Brennan, "as my principal White House advisor on these issues, with direct and immediate access to me. The security of our homeland is of paramount importance to me, and I will not allow organizational impediments to stand in the way of timely action that ensures the safety of our citizens."

Still, the staff merger effectively takes away Brennan's own staff.

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May 26 2009, 1:02PM

Chamber Weighs Sotomayor Endorsement

by Chris Good

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which endorsed retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter when he was nominated to the court in 1990, says it will follow its formal protocols and examine Sonia Sotomayor's credentials to determine whether it will endorse her as a nominee.

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May 26 2009, 12:47PM

Hatch Congratulates Sotomayor

by Chris Good

Sen. Orrin Hatch, the second-most-senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, congratulated Sonia Sotomayor as the first person of Puerto Rican heritage to be nominated to the Supreme Court, but said he would carefully examine Sotomayor's "understanding of the power and role of judges in our system." See his statement below:

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May 26 2009, 12:33PM

Sotomayor & Abortion

by Chris Good

David Brody of Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) News breaks down Sonia Sotomayor's most notable abortion-related decision, in which she ruled in favor of the "Mexico City Policy," finding that the U.S. government is free to ban aid to foreign groups that support or perform abortions. (As The Hill notes, this decision won her praise from at least one Republican.) Brody's prediction: that since Sotomayor has never ruled directly on the legality of abortion, she will be pressed even harder on the issue during her confirmation process.

May 26 2009, 12:20PM

Sessions: Sotomayor Will Get A Fair Examination

by Chris Good

Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee and thus a central figure in the upcoming confirmation process for President Obama's new Supreme Court nominee, said this morning that Sonia Sotomayor will get a "fair and thorough" examination from the committee.

Obama's goal of seating a new justice before the start of the next term is a reasonable one, Sessions said, though he cautioned that the Senate confirmation process is the only chance to review Sotomayor before a potential lifetime appointment to the court.

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May 26 2009, 12:02PM

DeMint: Sotomayor's Writings Raise 'Serious Questions'

by Chris Good

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), said he will withhold judgment on Sonia Sotomayor until she appears before the Senate but that some of her writings "seem to raise serious questions about her approach to the Constitution and the role of the federal judiciary." See DeMint's full statement, released this morning by his office, below:

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May 26 2009, 11:26AM

Obama's Pick, From The Start

by Marc Ambinder

The process ended where the President started.

In November, a few days after he was elected President, Barack Obama convened some of his most trusted advisers in a private meeting for an even more closely-held topic. He wanted to talk about the Supreme Court. Obama arrived, armed with a list of judges and academics he wanted his team to consider. At the top of the list, according to someone with direct knowledge of the meeting, was Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Precisely how Obama came to admire Sotoamayor is still unknown at this point. A senior administration official said this morning that Obama had not met the judge until this past Thursday, when he interviewed her in the Oval Office.

"He has certainly known her by reputation for a long time," said Valerie Jarrett, a senior Obama adviser.

When David Souter informed the White House on May 1 that he would retire, Soyomayor remained at the top of the list. About a dozen White House officials were privy to Obama's thinking on the subject, and they were sworn to secrecy.

In meetings with Hispanic groups, White House counsel Gregory Craig hinted that Obama knew he wanted Sotomayor to take the job but did not yet know whether he would pick her. If Sotomayor did not survive the vetting process, or if, during the pre-decision period, he might decide to pick someone else. Obama had also told White House officials that he could be talked out of picking Sotomayor if they convinced him that she wasn't the right person for this moment in time.

It turns out, though, that Obama's advisers loved the idea of picking Sotoamyor just as much as Obama did. The pick, they believed, would tell a story about justice in the 21st century. Her hard-scrabble upbringing, combined with her tough-as-nails realism, combined with her respect for the rule of law, combined with her academic achievements, combined with her -- yes -- identity as an Hispanic female -- provides a walking, talking counterpoint to the clubby formalism of the modern Supreme Court.

When, at the start of the process, Sotomayor was subjected to some bad press, White House officials were caught in a dilemma: they did not want Hispanic groups to defend her as an Hispanic -- that would make it seem too obvious that the President had chosen her in no small part because she was an Hispanic -- but they did not like to see her intellect and temperament go unquestioned. They hoped that Sotomayor allies, like former clerks, would rise to her defense. A White House official privy to the internal discussions about the pick e-mailed this article to several leading judicial activists as if to say -- we can't defend her, but you can.

As a constitutional law professor, senator, candidate and President, Obama had come to view the Supreme Court as Mount Olympus, with many of its denizens too unconnected from real life to think through the consequences of their decisions. He had never subscribed to an "originalist" or "textualist" view of interpretation, finding the intellectual and moral underpinnings of those philosophies to be bankrupt. He also came to see the Roberts Court as activist and more conservative.

Liberals had played 30 years worth of defense after the Warren Court era ended, and they did not know how to articulate a judicial vision for the 21st century. Sotomayor is, in many ways, the antidote, a post-modern progressive justice for an age where the president of the United States is black.

A pragmatist, Obama hopes Sotomayor's mode of decision making will influence the key swing vote on the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy. The President told several officials that he looked to the examples of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justice William Brennan -- the first, a moderate incrementalist who became the swing vote quickly, and the second, a charming liberal who was able to pull the court to his side at key moments.

For the consumption of the political elite, talking points provided to allies emphasize that Sotomayor is known as a "moderate on the court," agreeing with conservatives more frequently than she disagrees with them. This is a bit of a red (or blue) herring -- circuit court judges often agree with similarly empaneled jurists.

In reality, Obama is sending a few different messages to a few different audiences. To liberals, the pick sells itself -- a progressive superstar with fantastic academic credentials. Obama is addressing conservatives only because he wants to get his judge confirmed by a wide margin. To the rest of the country, the Sotomayor pick will embody Obama's judicial philosophy -- going beyond theory to, as the talking points say, "ensure consistent, fair, common-sense application of the law to real-world facts."

"I strive never to forget he real world consequences of my decisions," Sotomayor said today.

On Thursday, Obama was in a jaunty mood after he interviewed Sotomayor. A few groups of reporters were meeting in the West Wing with senior officials, and the President decided to stop by. He was an in expansive mood and riffed about the direction of the court. He did not tip his hand about the interview or the identity of his pick, and he asked that his musings be shared off the record. But it was clear that he was excited about how his pick would energize the court.

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May 26 2009, 11:07AM

Judicial Confirmation Network: Sotomayor Is A Discriminatory Activist

by Chris Good

Judicial Confirmation Network (JCN), the conservative group that last week launched a campaign against three of what it perceived to be President Obama's "favorites" for the Supreme Court, this morning condemned Obama's nomination of appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor. As it did in a web ad against Sotomayor last week, JCN characterized her as racially discriminatory (a reference to her rejection of Ricci vs. Destefano); the group also accused her of being a judicial activist who thinks courts should make law (perhaps a reference to Sotomayor's comment that the court of appeals is "where policy is made.")

From JCN Counsel Wendy E. Long:

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May 26 2009, 10:48AM

Republicans Pledge Fairness

by Chris Good

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele both signaled this morning that their party will listen openly to Sonia Sotomayor during her Senate confirmation process--though both have indicated that a thorough discussion lies ahead.

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May 26 2009, 10:34AM

Specter Applauds Sotomayor Pick

by Chris Good

Judge Sonia Sotomayor enters her confirmation process with support from the former top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter. Specter applauded Sotomayor's nomination in a statement released by his office this morning:

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May 24 2009, 5:04PM

Judge Affirms Obama's Detention Authority, Again

by Marc Ambinder

A second federal judge has affirmed the Obama administration's right to detain Guantanamo detainees associated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In a little noticed ruling late last week, judge Royce Lamberth endorsed the scope of authority delineated by another judge, Judge John Bates, who ruled that Obama may order the detention of anyone suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda -- with the definition of membership construed very broadly. Like Bates, Lamberth rejected the administration's desire to hold people who had provided "substnatial support" to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but he, like Bates again, noted that the executive branch has the power to decide what constitutes membership.

"However, the Court will still consider support of Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated enemy forces in determining whether a detainee should be considered "part of" those forces.

Like Bates, Lamberth implicitly endorsed the administration's contention that the source of its detention power was Congress's Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Afghanistan and not in Article II of the Constitution.

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May 23 2009, 1:25PM

Frank Luntz Bingo

by Chris Good

In response to GOP pollster Frank Luntz's memo to Republicans on how they should talk about health care, the liberal Media Matters has released a bingo game of Luntz-esque words and phrases to play when listening to the GOP's health care statements:

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May 22 2009, 6:10PM

The Invisible Primary, 5/22

by Chris Good

Tracking the GOP race to 2012

Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour will visit Iowa and New Hampshire June 23 and 24 to raise money for the state parties; Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty earns praise on the Wall Street Journal opinion page for taking the lead in his state's budget debate; and Mitt Romney will tour Virginia next week to campaign for state candidates.

May 22 2009, 5:23PM

Feingold Plans Hearing On Obama's Detention Policy

by Marc Ambinder

Sen. Russ Feingold plans a hearing in June about President Obama's plan to seek "prolonged detention" without trial for some of the Guantanamo detainees. In a letter to Obama, Feingold writes that while he appreciates Obama's "good faith desire to at least enact a statutory basis for such a regime, any system that permits the government to indefinitely detain individuals without charge or without a meaningful opportunity to have accusations against them adjudicated by an impartial arbiter violates basic American values and is likely unconstitutional."

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May 22 2009, 3:24PM

The Rubicon Of Indefinite Detention

by Marc Ambinder

Has the Obama administration really endorsed the reality of preventative detention -- an American gulag, indefinite imprisonment without trial for battlefield enemies? It depends on who you ask. Administration officials acknowledge that the question is tricky; even as they insist that the decisions they're making about Guantanamo Bay prisoners will only apply to Guantanamo Bay prisoners, they concede that those dispositions will set a precedent that will likely result in some sort of ... well, indefinite detention system for future detainees. That Rubicon has been crossed; there exist human beings in this world who could be indefinitely held without trial under the authority of the president of the United States.

When Obama met Wednesday with leading human rights activists, he was pressed about this very issue as regards to the precedents that his actions would set and what they would say about American justice. (Participants were armed with good questions and some of them, knowing Obama personally, knew that he always pays attention to the larger narrative his decisions will create.)

According to participants and to administration officials, the President acknowledged the gravity of the question but chose not to answer it directly. (That's probably because, with the swirl of court cases, he doesn't know just yet what Article II powers will be available to him.) Obama then asked those assembled to help his administration draft guidelines for military commissions -- lasting guidelines, guidelines that would outlive his administration.

He was blunt; the MCs are a fait accompli, so the civil libertarians can either help Congress and the White House figure out the best way to protect the rights of the accused within the framework of that decision, or they can remain on the outside, as agitators. That's not meant to be pejorative; whereas the White House does not give a scintilla of attention to its right-wing critics, it does read, and will read, everything Glenn Greenwald writes. Obama, according to an administration official, finds this outside pressure healthy and useful.

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May 22 2009, 1:51PM

A Sad Day For Some 5-Year-Olds

by Chris Good

A bus full of kindergarteners got turned away from the White House Thursday, 10 minutes late for a tour. (An event with the Pittsburgh Steelers prevented White House staff from letting them in.) An irate parent: "Here we have President Obama and his administration saying, 'Here we are for the common, middle class people,' and here he is not letting 150 5- and 6-year-olds into the White House because he's throwing a lunch for a bunch of grown millionaires."

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May 22 2009, 1:31PM

A Lesson In Civility From Michael Steele

by Marc Ambinder

STEELE: The problem that we have with this president is that we don't know [Obama]. He was not vetted, folks. ... He was not vetted, because the press fell in love with the black man running for the office. "Oh gee, wouldn't it be neat to do that? Gee, wouldn't it make all of our liberal guilt just go away? We can continue to ride around in our limousines and feel so lucky to live in an America with a black president." Okay that's wonderful, great scenario, nice backdrop. But what does he stand for? What does he believe? ... So we don't know. We just don't know.

Criticizing the Democrats with civility, we can all learn how.

The point aside, I still know a few Clinton advisers who would, in their heart of hearts, agree with this.

The real point is, and you can forget Steele for a moment. Where's the evidence that Obama The President is pursuing more liberal policies than Obama The Campaigner proposed? (There's evidence to the contrary in some circles...)

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May 22 2009, 12:49PM

Pelosi Vs. Panetta

by Chris Good

As Nancy Pelosi refused to answer questions today about her allegations that the CIA lied to her in 2002, she sought to offer the same rebuff that CIA Director Leon Panetta gave in his message to CIA employees last week--that the controversy is an outside distraction that's taking away from important day-to-day business:

"What we are doing is staying on our course and not be distracted from it in this distractive--we're going forward in a bipartisan way for jobs, health care, energy for our country, and on the subject that you asked I've made the statement I'm going to make," Pelosi said.

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May 22 2009, 11:54AM

McCain's Week

by Chris Good

It's been a good week for John McCain: Congress passed and President Obama signed legislation to reform Defense procurement (an issue McCain has worked on for a significant portion of his Senate career), and his son Jack graduates from the U.S. Naval Academy today, where President Obama spoke. And as the New York Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg notes, Obama's urging of "country over self" sounded a lot like John McCain's campaign slogan--"Country First."

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May 22 2009, 11:26AM

Steele On Getting Kicked Out Of School

by Chris Good

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele tells high school students about getting kicked out of Johns Hopkins after his freshman year. Steele spoke at Woodson Senior High School as part of C-SPAN's "Students & Leaders" program.

May 22 2009, 11:03AM

Quote Of The Day: Bush On Post-Presidential Life

by Chris Good

And there I was, former president of the United States, with a plastic bag on my hand...Life is returning back to normal.

May 22 2009, 10:01AM

Top Ten iPhone Apps For Washington Insiders

by Marc Ambinder

Geography is destiny. And there are some iPhone apps that Washington insiders just gotta have.

I should say that I do not intend to endorse the iPhone above all mobile devices; I carry a Blackberry for work-related e-mails because my stubby fingers can't negotiate the iPhone's ridiculous vertical keyboard. (The next software update will supposedly help me with that problem.)

There are about 3,000 aps for RIM devices, but there are so many more -- and so many more useful apps -- for the iPhone.

In random order, here are ten iPhone apps that folks who work in the politics and policy arena must have. If you've got other favorite apps, e-mail me, and I'll update the list.

Open Table -- In DC, a great app for quickly scheduling -- or canceling -- fancy lunches and dinners with sources, spies, contacts or consultants. Price: free.

WikiMobile -- I don't know why you have to pay for this app, but it does have the benefit of organizing Wikipedia's data in a much more Iphone-friendly way. Price: $1.99

WSJ Online -- Annoy Rupert Murdoch. Download this app and read the Wall Street Journal for free.

Vlingo -- Lots of voice dial apps out there; this one incorporates voice search and voice address mapping, too. Very easy to use, and pretty accurate in interpreting what I'm trying to say. Price: free.

Bloomberg News -- The best way to follow the markets. Price: free.

WunderRadio -- Not just for work, but for fun too: use this app to listen to hundreds of radio stations worldwide. Your favorite talk radio host's programs are easily accessible; if you've got a jonesing for Michael Savage at 4 in the afternoon -- and really, who hasn't? -- chances are you can easily find a station he's on. WunderRadio also manages to archive recent shows. The app also links you to live Air Traffic Control radio, police and fire scanners and hundreds of stations in foreign countries. Price: $6.99

VR+ I've tried virtually every Iphone voice recording app, and VR+ is the most reliable. The interface is clean and helpful; no need to log the time and date of the recording, because VR+ does it for you. You can upload the recording to a central VR site, e-mail it to yourself, or share it with someone else. The sound quality is great, and there's a special voice activated function that works quite well. Price: free/$2.99

iBlogger -- This expensive app ($10.00) is worth the price for journo-bloggers. You can update blogs on almost any platform with ease. I use it to correct typos I notice -- or YOU notice -- after I post. It's easier -- and quicker -- than finding a place to sit down, pulling out the netbook, waiting for the thing to boot up, etc.

Tweetie -- There are several good Twitter clients for iPhones; I've tried most of them, and I find Tweetie to be the best, the easiest to use and the one least prone to crashing. It's very functional. Price: free.

Evernote: this extremely useful and simple program allows you to effortless transfer notes taken on one device or computer to another. Evernote's free version allows you to store your work on their servers, which does presume some risk, so I wouldn't recommend this for sensitive information. With password protection, though, you can safely synch your files, photos and audio recordings with a single click. No more printing out docs from work -- I just upload them to Evernote and they're there, waiting for me. Evernote also installs an icon in web browsers; if I see an article I want to read or a passage from an article I want to re-read, I can save it to the Evernote file in seconds. Evernote's capacity for organizing these notes could be better, but I haven't found a better, more versatile data sharing program. Ive got Evernote installed on four devices now: my work computer, my netbook, my home computer, and my iPhone -- and I can send additions to the file from my Blackberry. Price: free.

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May 22 2009, 9:00AM

The Southern Party

by Chris Good

In the cover story of today's National Journal, Ron Brownstein outlines the GOP's increasing reliance on the South. In fact, by Electoral College votes and congressional districts, the Republican Party is more dependent on the South than at any point in its history, Brownstein finds. With a Southern base representing the conservative wing of the party, it may be difficult for the GOP to balance the interests of its Southern stronghold with those of voters elsewhere, Brownstein suggests--as it tries to avoid becoming a regional party and compete nationally in the next elections. Brownstein analyzed data all the way back to 1856, so for the sake of appreciating his hard work, read the piece!

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May 21 2009, 7:30PM

Question For The Day, Answered

by Staff

Our question for the day--whether Obama's security speech would satisfy his base, receives a split decision: some liberal bloggers liked it; civil liberties and human rights groups did not.

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May 21 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/21

by Staff

Today, President Obama laid out his national security doctrine, which was panned by civil-liberties and human-rights groups and saw split reactions from bloggers; John McCain won a round in his long fight to overhaul the military's procurement process; Mitch McConnell said Obama should show "flexibility" on Guantanamo; and we learned that the FCC can search your house without a warrant.

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May 21 2009, 6:30PM

The Invisible Primary, 5/21

by Staff

Tracking the GOP race to 2012

Today, a Public Policy Polling survey finds that President Obama, in potential 2012 matchups, leads Newt Gingrich 53-36, Mike Huckabee 52-39, Sarah Palin 56-37, and Mitt Romney 53-35; Politics Daily profiles Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour as a potential candidate; a Bobby Jindal-backed bill to make gubernatorial records more transparent has passed the Louisiana Senate; Rep. Mike Pence will host three forums in three states to talk about GOP energy policy, along with other members of the House GOP American Energy Solutions Group he chairs.

May 21 2009, 5:35PM

Obama And Cheney: No Love Lost

by Chris Good

James Warren, at his Atlantic Correspondents blog, points out the sharp elbows of today's Obama vs. Cheney national security duel:

Obama, who was giving the speech largely because he'd convinced the American public the Iraq war was a mistake and he should lead them, disputed virtual every Cheney premise. Not only were our means not effective, they made us less secure, tarnished our image, and involved rigging the record.

That last point might need its own spotlight. When a president accuses a predecessor of having "trimmed fact and evidence" to support an ideologically-driven cause, that's rough. Obama thus called Cheney & Co. liars and cheats in this national security grudge match.

May 21 2009, 4:45PM

The Value Of Robopolls

by Chris Good

In response to Washington Post polling director Jon Cohen's arguments against automated polling, pollster Mark Blumenthal takes issue with the notion that robopolls aren't as accurate: according to some reliable studies, Blumenthal says, robopolls perform about as well as those in which people ask the questions. (He cites analyses by the National Council on Public Polls, the American Association for Public Opinion Research's Ad Hoc Committee on Presidential Primary Polling for 2008, and others).

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May 21 2009, 4:00PM

An Acronym Agency Can Search Your House Without A Warrent

by Marc Ambinder

Not the FBI. Or DHS. Or CPB.... It's the Federal Communications Commission.

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May 21 2009, 2:14PM

A Headline That Tells Half The Story

by Marc Ambinder

From the Huffington Post: Obama's New Electorate: Poll Shows GOP Deteriorating

True.... But....actually, as Tom Edsall's write-up makes clear, the Pew survey also finds evidence of a center-leaning ideological drift that suggests that President Obama may soon be reaching the limits of what the public might tolerate. Still, the Democrats probably wouldn't want to trade places!

While Democrats have made substantial gains in the partisan identification of voters, the party does not have a clear mandate to move to the left across the board, the survey found. Although the Pew findings represent good news for Democrats, there are some costs to their gains. Many of the new Democratic voters are not as liberal as traditional party loyalists, so that support for such initiatives as expanded health care, progressive taxation, and a stronger safety net may face opposition from within party ranks.
On the basic issues of the liberal-conservative divide, the Pew study found a level of polarization "never before seen" between Democrats and Republicans over the fundamental role of government on such questions as whether the government "should help more needy people, even if it means debt," "guarantee everybody enough to eat and a place to sleep," and should "care for those who can't care for selves." On each of these issues, Pew found, there is more than a 30 percentage point difference in the views of Democrats and Republicans.
Independent voters, many of whom have become Democratic "leaners" providing crucial margins on election day, fall right between the two partisan camps. More worrisome for the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders is the Pew finding that "the overall balance of public opinion on the government's responsibility to provide for the needy has shifted to the right" despite the onset of a severe recession.
The survey found that "the share of Americans overall who favor helping more needy people even if it means greater debt has fallen from 54 percent in 2007 to 48 percent today, and there is a comparable drop in the share who say the government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep (from 69 percent in 2007 to 62 percent today). This rightward shift is starkest among independents. Today, just 43 percent of independents say the government should help more needy people even if it means going deeper into debt, down 14 points since 2007. And over this period the number of independents who favor guaranteeing food and shelter for all has fallen 13 points from 71 to 58 percent."
These numbers amount to a warning for the Obama administration, which so far has been able to maintain strikingly high favorability ratings while pursuing an agenda calling for a major expansion of the safety net, especially in health care.

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May 21 2009, 12:58PM

Obama's Speech: Blogger Reactions

by Chris Good

President Obama's national security speech was panned by conservatives (many of whom preferred Dick Cheney's speech at AEI) and largely supported by liberals, with some criticism mixed in. Here are some reactions:

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May 21 2009, 11:51AM

Obama Security Speech: Highlights

by Chris Good

President Obama made several points in his national security speech at the National Archives this morning:

-that he will not release any Guantanamo detainees into the U.S. if they pose a threat--but that some will be transferred to U.S. prisons

-that the problem of Guantanamo started before he took office

-that he opposes a truth commission to investigate the Bush administration but trusts Congress and the Department of Justice to look into issues like harsh interrogations

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May 21 2009, 10:28AM

McConnell: An Opportunity For (More) Flexibility

by Chris Good

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell casts President Obama's speech this morning as an opportunity for flexibility on Guantanamo--noting that Obama has moved on other national-security-related issues of late. From Senate floor remarks this morning:

If he isn't able to provide specifics about his plan for terrorist detainees at Guantanamo, he could still provide this assurance by simply revising his policy. The President has shown adaptability on military commissions, prisoner photos, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Here's an opportunity to show more of that flexibility on Guantanamo.

May 21 2009, 9:26AM

Cheney's Arguing With....George W. Bush

by Marc Ambinder

Jack Goldsmith, the onetime head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, calls it the "Cheney fallacy." In his comprehensive article about Barack Obama's national security doctrine, Goldsmith writes that the main difference between the Obama and Bush administrations

concern[s] not the substance of terrorism policy, but rather its packaging. The Bush administration shot itself in the foot time and time again, to the detriment of the legitimacy and efficacy of its policies, by indifference to process and presentation. The Obama administration, by contrast, is intensely focused on these issues.

I doubt that many White House officials disagree, although they point out that many of the institutionalized decisions that Goldsmith sees are works in progress, and that the executive is inherently limited in his ability to quickly reverse course on many aspects of national security policy. The critique embedded in Goldsmith's essay, which is probably the best account to date on the subject, is that Dick Cheney's approach to policy and his mastery of the national security apparatus of the government led the administration to ignore avenues that would have led them to the same policies, albeit with fewer obstacles.

Indeed, it is hard to find a Bush administration official who disagrees with Goldsmith at this point, save for friends and allies of Mr. Cheney's. That's because, from the middle of the President's second term until the end, the Bush administration began the process of legitimation. In some cases, their hands were forced, like when the New York Times revealed details of the National Security Agency's domestic collection program. But in many cases, especially as regards detainee policy and diplomacy, key administration principles decided to change course. Donald Rumsfeld was belatedly fired; Condoleezza Rice aggressively worked to repair America's working relationship with its allies; enhanced interrogation techniques were abandoned; the U.S. government sat down with Iran, and so on . Don't take my word for it.

"I think what's interesting is that, in some way, Dick Cheney actually lost these arguments inside the Bush administration. And so he may won early with Colin Powell and Condi Rice, but over the last two or three years....I think there was a recognition that these enhanced interrogation techniques that were being applied -- that they had applied early on -- were potentially counterproductive, that a posture of never talking to our enemies, of unilateral action, of framing national security only in terms of the application of force, often unilateral -- that that wasn't producing."

I quote here President Obama, speaking to Newsweek's Jon Meacham. Obama continued: "I think a lot of these arguments were settled even before we took over the White House."

So why is Dick Cheney targeting President Obama? It's hard to find a Republican who believes that Obama is fundamentally making the country less safe with his national security decisions, even as individual choices -- the vow to close Guantanamo, the decision to release memos about interrogation -- have come in for criticism.

The disatisfaction with Obama by the broad civil libertarian left -- and it's not the hard left, but a broad cross-section of liberal elites -- is one indication of this. Obama spent an hour and a half yesterday trying to contextualize his actions for an audience of civil libertarians. He was not successful.

Cheney seems to be arguing with himself; or, rather, with the decisions that his President, George W. Bush, made after the thumping of the 2006 elections. He is arguing with Republican Party elites, most of whom are willing to criticize individual decisions Obama has made but who can't find fault with his general approach to terrorism.

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May 21 2009, 9:07AM

Obama's Speech: A Preview

by Marc Ambinder

In his speech, President Obama decries what he'll call an "ad hoc" legal approach to terrorism taken by the last administration, one that was "neither effective nor sustainable - a framework that failed to trust in our institutions, and that failed to use our values as a compass."

He promises to honor his commitment to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, a place that "rather than keep us safer," has "weakened American national security." Obama will caution that he does not have "the luxury of starting from scratch" -- cleaning up something that is "a mess that has left in its wake a flood of legal challenges that we are forced to deal with on a constant basis and that consume the time of government officials whose time would be better spent protecting the country." Obama will outline a tripartite process for disposing of the remaining 240 prisoners at Gitmo:

*        when feasible, try those who have violated American criminal laws in federal courts.

*        when necessary, try those who violate the rules of war through Military Commission

*        when possible, transfer to third countries those detainees who can be safely transferred.

Obama will discuss the 24 detainees have been ordered released by the U.S. courts. He'll note that the court orders don't have anything to do with the decision to close with Guantanamo. "It has to do with the rule of law. The United States is a nation of laws, and we must abide by those laws."

According to administration official, Obama will discuss the ways he'll reform the state secrets privilege, which recognizing that there are legitimate uses of that privilege and promising to protect critical national security information.

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May 21 2009, 6:58AM

John McCain Wins A Round

by Marc Ambinder

Hard to focus on this amid the terrorism talk, CIA chatter and everything else, but John McCain, working in concert with Robert Gates and the Obama administration, has won a major, decades-old battle: the Senate voted overwhelmingly to overhaul the military's procurement processes. This was McCain's hobbyhorse as chairman of the Armed Services Committee when Republicans were in the majority, and his investigations, as much as anything else, led to a sea change in opinions. The House will approve this legislation soon, and President Obama will sign it shortly thereafter.

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May 20 2009, 10:52PM

Terrorism Arrests In New York

by Marc Ambinder

On the eve of his first major speech about national security policy, the first new major terrorist case of Barack Obama's administration is foiled. The arrested men claim to have a connection to Jaish-e-Mohammed, the Pakistani terror group that has focused mainly on attacks against India and operates mainly in Kashmir. The FBI has been on the case for a year; the suspects seem like serious bad guys. Read the criminal complaint here:
Arrests.pdf

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May 20 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/20

by Staff

Today we learned that, according to a federal judge, the government can't use "substantial support" to justify detention; President Obama broadcasted a White House meeting live; a hard drive containing sensitive information has gone missing from the National Archives; a new TV ad compares Obama to JFK; Newt Gingrich says Democrats should oust Nancy Pelosi; and Obama has rebuked his predecessor's doctrine of preempting state laws.

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May 20 2009, 6:20PM

The Invisible Primary, 5/20

by Staff

The day in 2012 news: "GOP Kingmaker" / top finance guy Fred Malek insists he's not leaning towards an endorsement of anyone right now, and that sounds about right; 59 percent of Minnesotans say its somewhat likely he'll run for president in 2012--according to Rasmussen; The New Republic's Zvika Krieger profiles Jon Huntsman and says he'll be biding his time in China; Bristol Palin and her son, Tripp, will appear on the cover of PEOPLE magazine, keeping the Palins in the public eye and promoting abstinence in her interview.

Tomorrow, Winthrop/ETV will release polling results of southerners on the short list of potential GOP presidential candidates.

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May 20 2009, 2:43PM

A Setback Of His Own

by Marc Ambinder

There are no friends in politics, just interests. Some in the White House relearned that dictum this week, as their party dissolved into factions, and largely knelt down in front ofRepublican political priorities.

As usual, administration officials won't concede that the overwhelming Senate vote against funding to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay was a defeat for the president's agenda. In Obama World, every short-term defeat is a long-term opportunity. No doubt, as press secretary Robert Gibbs repeated today, that Obama inherited a gooey situation from his predecessor, and that court rulings handed down daily force the administration to modify its position in tiny but precedent-setting increments.

But the President, and his senior advisers, bear at least some responsibility for the grand gesture of promising to shut down Guantanamo Bay within a year well before the administration had begun to review the casebooks and intelligence reports about the 240 odd detainees in United States custody. The shrewdness of Obama's executive order on day two cannot be denied, nor can its targeted audience - European and Arab governments, and the broader world - be ignored in the current debate. Gitmo was a "rallying cry" for Al Qaeda - that line's for public consumption - and for anti-Americanism abroad, for European smugness, for exasperation with America by Moslems everywhere.

The political imperative preceded the functional imperative, which, in the case of disposing of the detainees, means statutory changes to American law, which means that Congress must have a central say in what happens.

Already, the facts on the ground have forced Obama to change his assumptions about how the detainees will be tried. It had been the hope of administration legal advisers that a majority of the 240 - perhaps a large majority - would be tried in federal courts. Then they discovered that the evidentiary thresholds for doing so were too high given the quality of information the Bush government had collected about the detainees, and they subsequently concluded that Article III trials wouldn't be as swift as an option that they wanted to reserve for only a couple dozen high-value detainees: the military commissions. But by the time it became clear to the administration that most of the detainees would have to have their day in military court, Republicans had already dug a moat around the Democrats, pressing them to severely limit the President's hand. That's one reason why Harry Reid was eager to get today's vote out of the way; it prevents even more damaging amendments from reaching the floor, amendments which might have forced the administration to give up entirely on its goal of closing Guantanamo Bay.

The plain truth is that the administration fully expects to hold a number of detainees in indefinite custody within the United States. (Ironically, had Guantanamo not become a lightning rod for the world, it might have been the perfect place to build long-term detention facilities.) European governments won't take dangerous detainees; a plan to transfer many of them to rehabilitation camps in Yemen foundered once U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Yemeni rehabbed-prisoners had a recidivism rate as high as Lindsay Lohan's. Saudi Arabia might take some prisoners, but it won't be able to torture them, and the U.S. remains privately skeptical that they can work out a transparent enough deal. There are no good options, as many Republicans acknowledge, including Sen. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and the politics of Guantanamo will get tougher for Democrats and Obama before they get any easier.

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May 20 2009, 2:19PM

Gingrich: Dems Should Get A New Speaker

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) says Nancy Pelosi has disqualified herself as speaker by accusing the CIA of lying to Congress.

May 20 2009, 1:25PM

Obama, Energy, And JFK

by Chris Good

That's the comparison Americans United for Change draws in a new TV ad, supporting energy reform and investments in green energy sources: JFK sent a man to the moon, and President Obama wants to start a green revolution. This is how green energy was posed on the campaign trail--as a new NASA or Manhattan Project. We haven't heard as much of this rhetoric since Obama took office (with his focus held on health care and the economy), but now it's back, as cap-and-trade legislation is actually being crafted in the House. The ad paints energy breakthroughs as progress, and Republicans as only standing in the way--but it is also a reminder, to anyone who may have forgotten, of the vast ambition that has been promised on energy and the stated goals of a sweeping, national effort to reinvent it.

May 20 2009, 12:16PM

Staging: Obama At The National Archives

by Marc Ambinder

When President Obama delivers a speech outlining his national security policy doctrine tomorrow, he will do so in an auspicious location: the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom at the National Archives in Washington. That's where the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and other foundational American texts are on display. We can expect the speech to present a policy vision that defends Obama's actions to date, justifies his view of executive power, and reiterates his committment to civil liberties. Whether the speech will be satisfying is unclear, given the events of the week. More on this subject a bit later....

May 20 2009, 12:10PM

Obama's Top-Heavy Management Structure

by Chris Good

On his Atlantic Correspondents blog, Judge Richard A. Posner makes the case that President Obama has centralized power and created a top-heavy government through his numerous high-level appointments, generating extra layers of management--a case in point being Lawrence Summers and the National Economic Council "prowling the corridors of the Treasury building and distracting the denizens with demands and commands."

The effect on the economy, Posner says, could be disastrous:

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May 20 2009, 9:44AM

President's Economic Board Meeting, Live

by Marc Ambinder

Is this the first live broadcast from a "private" White House meeting in the cabinet room?

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May 20 2009, 5:32AM

Obama's Detainee Definition Is Revised By Court

by Marc Ambinder

A federal judge has ruled that the Obama administration cannot use a captured person's "substantial support" for the Taliban or al Qaeda as a reason to justify their detainment. At the same time, Judge John Bates, in an order that has ramifications for the upcoming trials of many detainees, held that the government was well within its rights to indefinitely detain several classes of belligerents, including under Congress's 2002 Authorization for Using Military Force in Afghanistan resolution.

Detaining an individual who "substantially supports" such an organization, but is not part of it, is simply not authorized by the AUMF itself or by the law of war. Hence, the government's reliance on "substantial support" as a basis for detention independent of membership in the Taliban, al Qaeda or an associated force is rejected

It is not entirely clear how many of the 240 Guantanamo detainees fall into this category. Bates, according to an analyst who has reviewed the decision, gave the government an out by noting that direct evidence that a person helped the Taliban means that the person is "functionally" part of the Taliban, and thus would be covered by the AUMF.

Importantly, Bates accepted the Obama administration's reliance on Congress as the arbiter of how the detainees are disposed, which suggests that future cases involving the procedures for their dispositions will also give weight to Congress's grappling with changes to the military commissions statutes.

There are now two rulings by two federal judges on the subject of whether the Obama administration's definition of the scope of its detention authority is valid.

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May 20 2009, 5:26AM

Celebrating Kick-*(@ Journalism: C.J. Chivers

by Marc Ambinder

Would anyone but an ex-Marine keep detailed archival notes on ammunition markings?

Access to Taliban equipment is unusual. But after the ambush, the company allowed the items to be examined by this reporter.
Photographs were taken of the weapons' serial numbers and markings on the bottoms of the cartridge casings, known as headstamps, which can reveal where and when ammunition was manufactured. The headstamps were then compared with ammunition in government circulation, and with this reporter's records of ammunition sampled in Afghan magazines and bunkers in multiple provinces in recent years.
The type of ammunition in question, 7.62x39 millimeter, colloquially known as "7.62 short," is one of the world's most abundant classes of military small-arms cartridges, and can come from dozens of potential suppliers.
It is used in Kalashnikov rifles and their knockoffs, and has been made in many countries, including Russia, China, Ukraine, North Korea, Cuba, India, Pakistan, the United States, the former Warsaw Pact nations and several countries in Africa. Several countries have multiple factories, each associated with distinct markings.
The examination of the Taliban's cartridges found telling signs of diversion: 17 of the magazines contained ammunition bearing either of two stamps: the word "WOLF" in uppercase letters, or the lowercase arrangement "bxn."
"WOLF" stamps mark ammunition from Wolf Performance Ammunition, a company in California that sells Russian-made cartridges to American gun owners. The company has also provided cartridges for Afghan soldiers and police officers, typically through middlemen. Its munitions can be found in Afghan government bunkers.
The "bxn" marking was formerly used at a Czech factory during the cold war. Since 2004, the Czech government has donated surplus ammunition and equipment to Afghanistan. A.E.Y. Inc., a former Pentagon supplier, also shipped surplus Czech ammunition to Afghanistan, according to the United States Army, including cartridges bearing "bxn" stamps.

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May 19 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/19

by Staff

Today we learned the details of the administration's CAFE announcement; two University of Chicago law profs think President Obama's SCOTUS pick will be center-left, not traditionally liberal; the CIA has hundreds of pages of records describing its destroyed interrogation tapes; faith groups have launched a health reform campaign, including radio ads; and Donald Rumsfeld says he had nothing to do with biblical references in classified briefings.

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May 19 2009, 5:58PM

A Response From Donald Rumsfeld

by Marc Ambinder

Keith Urbahn, a spokesman for former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, e-mails a statement denying that Rumsfeld had anything to do with the Christianization of those World Intelligence Update cover slides.

The slides in the "World Intelligence Update" were prepared on a daily basis by military personnel serving on the Joint Staff, which reported to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, not the Secretary of Defense. The report was briefed regularly to senior military officials in the Pentagon - only occasionally to the Secretary of Defense and not to the President of the United States.
Rumsfeld was fully aware that words and actions could be harmful and counterproductive to the war effort. It's safe to say that some of these cover slides could be considered in that category. The suggestion that Rumsfeld would have composed, approved of, or personally shown the slides to President Bush is flat wrong. It did not happen.
Given that Draper used anonymous sources for this charge as well as for the rest of the innuendo in his piece, one would think he might have at least done a cursory review of the facts. He might then have avoided being taken by people with an axe to grind. When Draper goes back and checks reality against his reporting, he might also check whether GQ is in need of a new gossip columnist.

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May 19 2009, 3:45PM

Faith Groups Get Involved In Health Care

by Chris Good

As a wide array of businesses, interest groups, and unions speak up on health care with reform efforts moving forward, so too are faith groups: a coalition of progressive and community-organizing-oriented religious groups will run ads on Christian radio starting Thursday (running through next week) in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri and Nebraska and will hold events with congregations nationwide. They won't push a specific policy, rather the broad goals of universal access, affordability, help for lower-income families, and sustainable financing.

May 19 2009, 12:35PM

CIA Document Of The Day: Records of Mass Destruction

by Marc Ambinder

Because it seems like the CIA is releasing interesting new documents daily.... here's a submission to the federal judge who's adjudicating the ACLU's lawsuit against the Company for destroying the videotapes made of interrogators interacting with detainees in Iraq. Apparently, the CIA has hundreds of pages of records describing the content of the videotapes, including TOP SECRET cables from the field and internal e-mails.
2009 05 18 list.pdf

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May 19 2009, 11:30AM

Steele Tries The Reset Button

by Marc Ambinder

RNC chairman Michael Steele's speech at the Republican National Committee meeting in Maryland today may seal his fate; if he manages to persuade the members of the committee, many of whom are very skeptical about his leadership, that he's still the best steward of the party during these uncertain times, he can emerge from the cloud with credibility and then get to work on his campaign promises. If not, he is probably doomed to be the weakest chairman in memory.

It's actually been a pretty good week for Steele. On Meet the Press, he generally got the better of the DNC chairman, Gov. Tim Kaine, who doesn't have the temperament for those type of he-said, he-said encounters. Steele's speech to the National Rifle Association convention was very well recieved. And the RNC announced another banner fundraising month.

Still, about half of the RNC membership seems to have their daggers drawn for the guy. A good number of long-time members can't accept the fact that Steele controls the party. They don't like the people he's put in place, but they can't find any egregious internal missteps, aside from perhaps the faux pas of paying some of his aides a generous salary. Steele has opened up many RNC contracts to competitive bidding, even though he has been criticized for smaller financial decisions.

Plainly, Steele's biggest hurdle has been his inability to figure out his place in the universe. He is no longer a spokesman for the party; he's the spokesman for the party, and that responsibility carries with it a series of internal checks on what he should say. And despite intense counseling from his aides, Steele is the type of guy who warms to his audience and then goes white-hot, telling people in front of them what he thinks they want to hear. It's a great quality for a back-slapping CEO, but it's a potentially fatal fault for a guy in charge of a party that hasn't figured out what its core problem is.

In his speech, excerpts of which were distributed by the RNC in advance, Steele proclaims that "the era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over. It is done... We have turned the page, we have turned the corner." At the same time, the President's honeymoon, he says, is over. "We are going to take this President on with class, we are going to take this President on with dignity. This will be a very sharp and marked contrast to the shabby and classless way that the Democrats and the far left spoke of the last President." The Republican resurgence, Steele says, is already underway. "Our comeback is well underway out in the states, I can assure you of that... The folks inside the beltway don't know it yet, but the people are beginning to rally, the comeback has begun. Those of you who live outside of Washington know what I'm talking about." And then there's the paeon to Ronald Reagan:

"But the thing we need to remember is this: Ronald Reagan never lived in the past. Ronald Reagan was all about the future. If President Reagan were here today he would have no patience for Americans who looked backward. Ronald Reagan always insisted that our party must move aggressively to seize the moment, he insisted that our party recognize the truth of the times and establish our first principles in both word and deed. As conservatives we must stop acting like we don't really believe in our principles. Too often we act as if we are scared to apply our timeless principles to today's problems and challenges... For Reagan's conservatism to take root in the next generation we must offer genuine solutions that are relevant to THIS age."

Readers will know that I am skeptical of this approach, and although it doesn't really matter what I think, it is striking that no significant internal movement has arisen within the party to oppose Steele's version of what went wrong. There is absolutely no evidence that the party has begun to turn the corner. Quite the opposite, in fact. A month's work of work on national security has failed to move the numbers. Etc.

Let's take ideas seriously. What are the first principles? Why is he so sure they are relevant today? What about Ronald Reagan, aside from his popularity and ability to make conservatives feel good about themselves, sheds light on how Republicans can connect with the middle class? Fix health care? Take on spending? Unite around a set of new principles?

The departure of Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. to China tells me something about the nature of the 2012 primary. I'd been doubtful that Huntsman could have figured out a way to win the nomination, but he certainly would have hastened a debate within the party about its approach to the future. Without Huntsman, and assuming that a high-profile future-oriented Republican does not run, the primary is destined to be a Project Runway-style competition to see which GOPer can be redress the same model.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is trying to unilaterally close his state's budget gap, Sen. John Ensign, who is more savvy an operator than he's given credit for, and Gov. Bobby Jindal can all bring something new to the primary if they so choose, but Jindal is not preparing to run in 2012 -- his advisers (some of whom overlap with Steele's orbit) are looking ahead to 2016.

Mitt Romney has the background to say something interesting about the party, but he hasn't, yet, even though he is (arguably) doing the most to win the invisible primary. I'm not sure he's going to run yet, though. Gov. Mike Huckabee, uniquely positioned to exploit populist rage, has instead decided to shore up his social conservative credentials, something that he did not need to do.

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May 19 2009, 10:31AM

The Rumsfeld Briefings: Decoding The Classification Phrases

by Marc Ambinder

Robert Draper's fascinating story about Donald Rumsfeld in GQ is the worth the luxurious read. The highlight is his discovery that Rumsfeld, not particularly a pious man, interspersed biblical references with classified daily briefings in order to prompt a more friendly contextualization of the war from the perspective of those who were commanding it.

The briefings are replete with bodacious classification markings, like TOP SECRET//HCS-COMINT-GAMMA//ORCON, NOFORN//EXDIS/X1, X6.

Let's unpack:

TOP SECRET -- well, you know what that means. It's the formal "classification" of the document.

HCS-COMINT-GAMMA -- This is the SCI control system phrase, with "SCI" being the catch-all term for a variety of Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence.

HCS refers to the "Humint Control System," which is a special classified information distribution channel for intelligence received from human sources or obtained by covert HUMan INTelligence case officers working around the globe. Because of the sensitivity of the sourcing, all info marked HCS must be laundered through this special security channel. COMINT -- information derived from signals intelligence collection platforms. GAMMA is a subcompartment of COMINT.

ORCON -- Stands for "Originator Control," which gives the office which has classified the briefing the control over its dissemination.

NOFORN -- Don't show this to foreign governments!!!

EXDIS -- The distribution is limited to an "EXclusive" number of people. Note that the briefing slide contains a marking that shows there to be only ten copies of the briefing in existence.

X1, X6 -- These are exemption codes; generally, classified information is releasable or declassifiable after 10 years; this coding system gives the military and government a series of exemptions to extend that period. X1 refers to information about collection platforms, like secret spy satellites, hidden bugs or other sensitive programs. X6 refers to information that might damage the relationship between the U.S. and other governments.

Several of the GQ slides have blacked out some portion of the classification line. That's because the classifications themselves remain a secret, probably because they refer to sub-channels of classified information that are specific to ongoing operations.

May 19 2009, 10:22AM

U Of Chicago Profs On Obama's SCOTUS Pick

by Chris Good

On his Atlantic Correspondents blog, James Warren asks two University of Chicago law profs--where Obama used to lecture--what they think will factor into the president's Supreme Court decision. Both say his pick will be more center-left than traditional-liberal:

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May 19 2009, 6:58AM

The New Standard: Fleshing Out The Details

by Marc Ambinder

The administration's comprehensive climate change announcement today is being cast in bold, efficacious terms: through 2016, new CAFE standards will take the equivalent of 177 million cars off the road -- or shut down 194 coal plants.

Mindful of the economy, administration officials point to a change in the way standards are measured. No longer will they be corporation-wide; reductions will be expected in each type of automobile, which the White House believes will preserve an element of consumer choice.

Vehicles will cost about $600 more, on average, to ratchet up the standards.

As for California, its waiver request is still percolating through the federal bureaucracy. But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will reportedly defer to the new federal standard. Auto companies are also on board with this -- they'll issue a statement supporting the federal standard today. ("Chrysler welcomes the President's announcement of a framework for a single national approach for fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards. We thank the Administration for their leadership.")

The administration and stakeholders have been meeting about this for weeks, although they say it is not a direct offspring of similar talks between environmental activists and auto companies brought together by the Aspen Institute.

Why did the auto makers gave in to this? It's easy to understate the pressure; 17% of all C02 emissions in America come out of auto tailpipes. According to a fact sheet prepared by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the new standards -- or, "harmonized NHTSA and EPA standards" would be "attribute-based," which allows the automakers flexibility in designing fleets. Most importantly, it provides "certainty" for long-term planning and gives automakers sufficient lead time to take advantage of existing technology. And then there's the "compliance flexibility measures," which include a variety of different credits for other technologies that use CO2.

May 18 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/18

by Staff

Today we learned that President Obama will announce his SCOTUS nominee next week, according to administration officials; the House GOP continues its campaign against closing Guantanamo; the government is still resting on the state-secrets privilege in al-Haramain; Wolfram|Alpha doesn't know who Obama will nominate to SCOTUS; Judicial Confirmation Network is taking aim at three SCOTUS possibles; the Supreme Court refused to hear challenges to California's medical marijuana law; and that the ACLU is tired of the governent's "faux consultation."

May 18 2009, 1:10PM

Group Goes After SCOTUS 'Favorites'

by Chris Good

While the rest of the nation speculates at who's on President Obama's short list for the Supreme Court, Judicial Confirmation Network (JCN) seems to have whittled down a list of favorites worth attacking. The group, run by former Bush/Cheney campaigner Gary Marx, launched a website this morning called "Obama's Frontrunners," dedicated to attacking Elena Kagan, Diane Wood, and Sonia Sotomayor. The site hosts three web ads, one attacking the record of each candidate.

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May 18 2009, 12:38PM

One CAFE For All

by Marc Ambinder

Props to Mike Allen, who's getting this story first. Details are still, as they say in local TV news, sketchy, but the White House plans a major public relations event tomorrow with governors, auto industry executives and environmentalists. There, Obama will propose to harmonize fuel efficiency standards nationwide. According to an environmental policy official who consults with the White House, the standard "will be very much like California's."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) will attend the announcement in Washington. California's standards are very touch, which is one of the reason why auto makers had been fighting them in court. Now, there'll be one standard, nationwide, which provides that all important certainty for automakers....even as they face the task of reaching CA's Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, which would see auto emissions decline by 33% in seven years, well ahead of the current national standard, which would achieve such a reduction by 2020. On average, cars sold in California would have to run 35 miles on every gallon of fuel.

Nationwide, that means a 40% increase in the efficiency of automobiles. A spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency referred requests for details to the White House; a spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment. The Department of Transportation regulates CAFE standards.

The bargaining power of the automakers is very weak these days, and one could argue that the administration, essentially owning a substantial part of the auto industry, is imposing these changes by fiat, and that the participation of automakers in tomorrow's event is not voluntary. The White House, and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, seem taken with the idea of grand policy gestures where all stakeholders come together and promise to act.

Earlier this year, Obama ordered regulators to allow states more leeway to set their own standards until the federal government adopted a uniform policy. It's not clear whether this order will supersede those instructions, and it's not clear how long it will take for the Transportation Department to implement the rule.

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May 18 2009, 12:22PM

Wolfram|Alpha And The SCOTUS Pick

by Marc Ambinder

This search engine -- sorry, computational knowledge engine -- is apparently the future of everything, so I queried it about the identity of President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick. Answer: "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input." Ok, I'll make it easier. I typed in "Barack Obama Supreme Court." Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input. How about "Barack Obama?" Ah, it returns this: "Barack Hussein Obama II." I think I'll stick with Google....

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May 18 2009, 11:23AM

SCOTUS Slightly Limits Immunity Claims For Top Bush Officials

by Marc Ambinder

An important naitonal-security related Supreme Court decision out this morning, Ashcroft, et al., v. Iqbal, et al., is being interpreted in various ways.

The topline is that the Court refused to sanction a class-action lawsuit against then-Attorney General John Aschroft filed by Muslim and people of Arab descent who were taken into custody after 9/11, allegedly roughed up and deported. But the decision does not grant Ashcroft or any official an immunity from such suits in the future. In a 5 to 4 ruling, the court held that the plaintiffs didn't establish a chain of evidence that linked the attorney general or other government official to the specific actions that caused them harm. The court did not say whether the 2nd circuit court of appeals, which was sympathetic to the deportees, could allow the plaintiffs to reargue the case and produce more evidence that meets the criteria.

The case will make it harder for plaintiffs to establish jurisdiction, as the court held that "conculsory allegations" -- those based on speculation and legal arguments, rather than esablished facts, are not sufficient in and of themselves to trigger a precedental threshold for prosecuting government officials. Under Bivens, government officials have "qualified immunity" for acts of government committed in their name if they can demonstrate that a reasonable person would have believed that their actions were constitutional at the time.

Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion. He was joined by Justices Roberts, Scalia, Alito and Thomas.

May 18 2009, 11:20AM

Boehner Op-Ed: Keep Detainees Off U.S. Soil

by Chris Good

House Minority Leader John Boehner continued to push the House GOP's latest policy/messaging effort in a USA Today op-ed this morning, urging opposition to the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison. With the GOP working to find its way forward, this is something that at least more Republicans than not can agree on: according to a Jan. 22 Washington Post/ABC News poll, 69 percent of Republicans said suspected terrorist should remain at Guantanamo.

May 18 2009, 10:28AM

Quote Of The Day: Obama At Notre Dame

by Chris Good

Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.

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May 15 2009, 7:42PM

The Final Word On The Pelosi v. Langley Smackdown?

by Marc Ambinder

Let's hope not, for the sake of fascination. Here's a statement from the Speaker's office:

"We all share great respect for the dedicated men and women of the intelligence community who are deeply committed to the safety and security of the American people. My criticism of the manner in which the Bush Administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe. What is important now is to be united in our commitment to ensuring the security of our country; that, and how Congress exercises its oversight responsibilities, will continue to be my focus as we move forward."

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May 15 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/15

by Staff

Today we learned that President Obama wants to keep military commissions for detainees but expand detainee rights, saying commissions are "appropriate" and "legitimate"; Amnesty International and the ACLU are irate at the decision; Lakhdar Boumediene is on his way to France, where he'll face terrorism charges; 2,083 FISA court wiretaps were approved in 2008; the White House is trying to sell its tribunals policy to allies; CIA Director Leon Panetta told his employees that Pelosi got the truth and they should "ignore the noise" of the controversy; the Chamber of Commerce says it supports climate change legislation--but hasn't changed its stance that much; and what Mark Blumenthal has learned at the annual pollsters' convention in Hollywood, Florida.

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May 15 2009, 6:30PM

Romney At NRA

by Chris Good

Mitt Romney gave a speech at the NRA's annual convention today in Phoenix, promoting personal freedom and accusing President Obama of attempting "the greatest federal power-grab in American history" through his budget.

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May 15 2009, 5:35PM

When Pollsters Convene: 2009

by Marc Ambinder

Pollster.com's Mark Blumenthal has spent the week at the American Association of Public Opinion Research annual convention in Hollywood, Florida. He's summarizing the highlights -- and we've summarized his highlights.

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May 15 2009, 4:50PM

The Chamber Watches Itself On Climate Change

by Jeannette Lee

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, under fire from key members for its opposition to Democratic climate-change legislation, distributed a letter Congress-wide "highlighting our support for comprehensive, sensible legislation to address global climate change."

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May 15 2009, 4:13PM

Panetta: Tune Out The Noise

by Chris Good

CIA Director Leon Panetta does not want the CIA's he-said/she-said fight with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to get in the way of day-to-day business. Continuing to cement his role as the agency's public advocate in a difficult political climate, he told his employees this morning to "ignore the noise," sending this message:

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May 15 2009, 2:00PM

2,083 FISA Court Wiretaps Approved In 2008

by Marc Ambinder

According to the Department of Justice, 2,083 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court-approved wiretaps were put into service in 2008. Only one government application was denied, and two requests were modified. In 2008, the FISC approved more than 2,300 wiretaps but insisted on modifications to 86 requests. More info is here.

May 15 2009, 1:31PM

Amnesty International Is Irate At Obama; So Is ACLU

by Marc Ambinder

Here's their criticism from a press release:

President Obama is reinstating the same deeply-flawed military commissions that in June 2008 he called an 'enormous failure.' In one swift move, Obama both backtracks on a major campaign promise to change the way the United States fights terrorism and undermines the nation's core respect for the rule of law by sacrificing due process for political expediency.

The American Civil Liberties Union calls the commissions "inherently illegitimate." More, after the jump.

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May 15 2009, 1:22PM

Obama: Military Commissions "Appropriate," "Legitimate"

by Marc Ambinder

The President's paper words today on the Department of Defense's new military commissions:

Military commissions have a long tradition in the United States. They are appropriate for trying enemies who violate the laws of war, provided that they are properly structured and administered. In the past, I have supported the use of military commissions as one avenue to try detainees, in addition to prosecution in Article III courts. In 2006, I voted in favor of the use of military commissions. But I objected strongly to the Military Commissions Act that was drafted by the Bush Administration and passed by Congress because it failed to establish a legitimate legal framework and undermined our capability to ensure swift and certain justice against those detainees that we were holding at the time. Indeed, the system of Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay had only succeeded in prosecuting three suspected terrorists in more than seven years.

Today, the Department of Defense will be seeking additional continuances in several pending military commission proceedings. We will seek more time to allow us time to reform the military commission process. The Secretary of Defense will notify the Congress of several changes to the rules governing the commissions. The rule changes will ensure that: First, statements that have been obtained from detainees using cruel, inhuman and degrading interrogation methods will no longer be admitted as evidence at trial. Second, the use of hearsay will be limited, so that the burden will no longer be on the party who objects to hearsay to disprove its reliability. Third, the accused will have greater latitude in selecting their counsel. Fourth, basic protections will be provided for those who refuse to testify. And fifth, military commission judges may establish the jurisdiction of their own courts.

These reforms will begin to restore the Commissions as a legitimate forum for prosecution, while bringing them in line with the rule of law. In addition, we will work with the Congress on additional reforms that will permit commissions to prosecute terrorists effectively and be an avenue, along with federal prosecutions in Article III courts, for administering justice. This is the best way to protect our country, while upholding our deeply held values.

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May 15 2009, 12:04PM

Five Questions About The Administration's New Tribunal Policy

by Marc Ambinder

I've spent the morning canvassing some experts and analysts on both sides of the Military Commissions debate; in this too-simple dichotomy, one side believes that tribunals are inherently unconstitutional when used in this context; the other believes that tribunals can facilitate justice if they're set up properly.

1. What's the status of hearsay evidence? Expert say that they're hearing that the hearsay rules in Obama's proposal will differ slightly from those used by regular military trials and Article III trials. The devil is in the "slightly" -- as in, under what circumstances can hearsay evidence be relied upon? One of the reasons why the Supreme Court looked askance at the 2006 tribunal effort (the Military Commissions Act, which set up a two-stage process), was that prosecutors were given the green light to use hearsay evidence even in cases where direct evidence was available.

2. How sensitive are these tribunals to military trial precedents? Are they de novo? Do they exist as if the country ratified the Constitution in 2009?

3. Is it still the administration's preference to try the 9/11 co-conspirators in regular trial courts? Or will all of the high-value detainees be kept in military custody?

4. Can Congress and the administration agree to a uniform set of rules before Guantanamo is closed? How quickly can the trials begin?

5.The criminality, so to speak, of the Gitmo detainees ranges from innocent to murderous. Where does the administration draw the lines -- release, Article III trial, commission -- and in doing so, do the lines appear capricious enough to provoke the ire of the regular judicial system and Congress?

Bonus sixth question: Will the administration sanction efforts by Congress to set up special national security courts? And if so, how will the lines be drawn across the four different trial categories? And will the Supreme Court be troubled by four separate avenues of justice?

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May 15 2009, 12:00AM

Tribunal Decision Expected Today

by Marc Ambinder

The New York Times reports that President Obama will announce today that he's decided to largely keep in place the military commission mechanism set up by his predecessor, but he'll also ask Congress's permission to significantly expand the rights available to detainees. White House officials point to legislation introduced by Sens. John McCain, John Warner and Lindsey Graham in 2006 as a "starting point." That legislation includes a ban on evidence obtained through torture, tough criteria for admitting heresay evidence; giving the detainees some right to protect themselves against self-incrimination, and more. On a technical note -- but one that's vitally important to the legal end of the process -- the CSRT -- a review tribunal that the military used to figure out whether the detainees could be afforded a trial -- will be eliminated. Except in extraordinary circumstances, detainees should expect a military commission.

May 14 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/14

by Staff

Today we learned that the RNC is mocking Obama's efforts at credit card reform; Nancy Pelosi hit back at the CIA and her critics; Rahm Emanuel's Secret Service codename is Black Hawk; the Senate voted against two credit card reform measures; the CIA rejected Vice President Dick Cheney's request to release memos allegedly showing the fruits of harsh interrogation; the House Energy and Commerce Committee has drafted an outline of health reform legislation; and Obama's new drug czar wants to abolish the "war on drugs."

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May 14 2009, 6:00PM

Americans Feeling Good

by Chris Good

More Americans say they are "thriving" (50 percent) than "struggling" (47 percent), according to a Gallup survey released today--the first time that's been the case since February 2008. Economic data seem to indicate the nation is still struggling, but at least people are feeling better than they were the last time Gallup asked them.

May 14 2009, 4:54PM

Ten Reasons Why A Torture Probe Is More Likely

by Marc Ambinder

Even as the Obama Administration remains resolutely opposed to a Truth Commission or major criminal investigation into TortureKampf, the wagon may have already been unhitched. Given the ten developments below, how likely is it that some sort of investigation, chartered with some sort of formal power, isn't launched?

1. Congress is in self-protective mode, with Democrats on both sides of the aisle defending themselves from charges (and some evidence) that they knew everything.

2. The Republican Party now has two buy-ins. One: that "torture" worked (c.f. Dick Cheney's legacy, etc.) Two: that Democratic leaders sanctioned the techniques that were used, or appeared to, and are now trying to cover this up.

3. A raft of upcoming/ongoing court cases involving as yet undisclosed evidence about torture and rendition. The administration knows that they'll lose some of these cases, and more evidence will come out.

4. The war in Afghanistan and the question of what to do with Guantanamo detainees is vexing the Democrats now; a torture investigation can help them move those debates into more comfortable territory by relitigating the past.

5. The appointment of former JSOC commander in chief Stanley McChrystal to serve as the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The guy knows where all the bodies are buried. Literally.

6. The Wilkerson/Duelfer revelations/allegations about Dick Cheney's involvement and the pressure that many "angel"-sided former Bushies face to put the blame squarely on the VP's office.

7. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's book comes out soon.

8. Calls by respected members of the GOP establishment, like Phillip Zeilkow, who want the historical record clarified.

9. Tension between the Democratic Party and the CIA, exacerbated by the Obama administration's release of the OLC memoranda and extended by the debate over the briefings.

10. Legitimate questions about the adequacy of Congressional oversight and about whether the CIA needs to reform its own contributions to the process, too.

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May 14 2009, 2:20PM

CIA Rejects Cheney Request For Torture Results Memos

by Marc Ambinder

The Central Intelligence Agency won't release memorandum that former Vice President Dick Cheney claims prove that the torture techniques applied by CIA interrogators provided valuable intelligence. The reason, according to an agency spokesman, is that the memos are the subject of pending litigation -- the litigation itself is unspecified -- and therefore, by statute, can't be disclosed until the litigation process is completed. Interesting note: the CIA doesn't say that they're not declassifying the memos because of national security reasons. They're giving themselves a technical out here. Cheney can ask President Obama to override the CIA's decision.

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May 14 2009, 2:04PM

Pelosi: CIA Lied

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the CIA did not brief her on the use of waterboarding, despite its claim to the contrary, and suggests that the CIA should release details of the briefing she received in 2002.

May 14 2009, 12:49PM

Message Confusion On Credit Industry Regulation

by Marc Ambinder

The day before President Obama touted his commitment to serious reform of the credit industry ("There's no time for delay; enough's enough," he said today), the Democratic Senate doesn't muster up the votes for push forward the only meaningful reform proposals out there, one which would have capped credit card interest rates at 15% and another which would have expanded the government's regulatory power over the industry. The Senate's final vote on reform comes next week. Can 17 Democratic arms be twisted?

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May 14 2009, 10:28AM

RNC Mocks Obama For Credit Card Reform

by Chris Good

As President Obama travels to New Mexico for a town hall meeting today, the Republican National Committee is mocking his efforts at credit card reform (the idea being that he's spending the nation into debt). Most notably, the controversial aerial photo-op over New York City has officially surfaced as a GOP point of mockery, making its way into the web ad.

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May 14 2009, 8:05AM

His Crowd

by Ronald Brownstein

All the controversy about President Obama's upcoming appearance at Notre Dame is overshadowing a larger point about the university commencement tour he began Wednesday night in Arizona: Obama is presenting Democrats an opportunity to establish a lasting and potentially crushing advantage with the Millennial Generation, the largest in American history.

Young voters are not as reflexively Democratic or liberal as many people might think. Since 18-year-olds were granted the vote in 1972, younger voters have often tracked fairly close to the national trend in presidential elections: Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush carried them in 1984 and 1988, and they split almost evenly between Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000.

But over the past three elections, voters under 30 have moved steadily toward the Democrats. In the 2004 presidential race, John Kerry carried 54% of them, compared to only 48% of the country overall. In 2006, Democrats won 60% of voters under 30 in the mid-term House elections, according to the national exit poll. Then in 2008, the bottom fell out for Republicans: against John McCain, Obama won a stunning 66% of voters 18-29. Partially Obama ran so well among young people because so many of them are non-white, and he dominated among non-whites at every age. But the exit polls found Obama also won 54% of white voters under 29; even the younger Bush carried 55% of whites under 30 in each of his two elections.

If anything, Obama's position with the Millennial generation appears even stronger today. Apart from African-Americans, these young people have been Obama's most enthusiastic and consistent supporters in office. In the Gallup tracking polling that's been conducted since January, Obama's approval rating among voters younger than 30 has never fallen below 66%. His approval rating among young voters consistently runs somewhere between six and nine points higher than his overall showing: today, Obama receives positive approval ratings from a dizzying 75% of voters under 30, compared to 66% from the country overall.

Another set of numbers Gallup released earlier this month shows how Obama's strength can bolster his party. Gallup cumulated all of its 123,000 interviews this year to examine party identification in the electorate. Among the Millennial generation, it found that just 21% identify as Republicans, compared to 36% as Democrats and 34% as independents. "Republicans, for all practical purposes, aren't even on the radar screen with them," says Michael D. Hais, a fellow at the Democratic advocacy group NDN, and co-author of Millennial Makeover, a recent book on the generation.

The enormous advantage among young people for Obama in particular and Democrats in general matters for two reasons. The more immediate is that this generation, which is generally defined as the 93 million people born between 1983 and 2002, will comprise a rapidly increasing share of voters through the next decade. Hais and his co-author, Morley Winograd, also an NDN fellow, have calculated that in 2008, 41% of Millennials were eligible to vote, and they constituted 17% of the electorate. They project that by 2012, 61% of the Millennials will be eligible, and they'll comprise 24% of the electorate; by 2016, the numbers will reach 80% and 30%. By 2020, virtually all of them will be eligible and they could constitute as much as 36% of all voters. If Obama maintains anything near his current strength among Millennials, they will produce a substantially larger vote surplus for him in 2012 than they did in 2008-leaving Republicans a larger deficit to overcome with older voters.

Obama's strength among young people has a second, even more significant, implication: if Republicans cannot reverse it reasonably soon, it could harden into a lasting preference for Democrats in this huge generation. Political scientists and political strategists generally divide into two camps over how partisan allegiances are formed. The lifecycle camp argues that people's views change at different points in their life, with many voters, for instance, becoming more averse to taxes as they acquire families and mortgages. Surely some of that occurs; few people's political preferences are entirely static or so deeply held they cannot be disrupted, at least temporarily, by events.

But probably the dominant camp believes partisan allegiances are forged mostly by the social, economic and political experiences that shape a generation's upbringing. As Winograd and Hais wrote, "Members of the electorate are most easily persuaded when they are young, before their beliefs harden into attitudes they will retain throughout their lives." Kristen Soltis, director of policy research at the Winston Group, a Republican polling firm, has studied young people and politics, and she largely agrees. "I fall into the camp that see it as more generational-that there are period effects that come into play when someone becomes [politically] active, and that colors the way you look at politics throughout your life," she said.

Other numbers from the Gallup polls conducted this year point toward that interpretation. Gallup provided me with their figures breaking out party identification by age on a year-by-year basis. It found unmistakable patterns of allegiance to the two parties that track the most consequential presidencies of recent times.

Democrats did best among voters who turned 18 since George W. Bush took office in 2001 (those now aged 18 through 25). Among those voters, the Democratic Party identification advantage ranged from 14 to 18 percentage points. Democrats also did well, but not quite as well, among those who turned 18 while Bill Clinton was President (those who are now 26 to 33). Among this group, the Democratic Party identification advantage stood at 9 to 12 percentage points. The story was very different in the generation that turned 18 during Ronald Reagan's eight years as president. Those voters (who are now 38 to 45) preferred Democrats over Republicans by only three to nine percentage points. "Those are the Reagan babies," said Winograd.

These striking patterns in attitude underscore the stakes for the two sides through the remainder of Obama's presidency. Soltis says the durability of generational preferences should inspire more urgency among Republicans about the possibility of Obama locking down this cohort for Democrats. She wants the party to emphasize themes of opportunity and to criticize Obama for saddling young people with exploding federal debts. Mostly she wants the party to focus on all the dimensions of its challenge with young people. "We've still got a chance, but it's something that needs to be acted upon quickly," she says.

Winograd and Hais believe Republicans can't do much to detach young voters from Obama if the president is seen as succeeding. In Millennial Makeover, they argue that many of this generation's formative experiences-their diversity, their tolerance of difference, and the patterns of parenting that inclined them to find collective "win-win" solutions-already inclined them toward Democratic beliefs. The perception that Bush failed in the White House reinforced the Millennials' tilt toward Democrats; now Obama, they maintain, has the chance to cement those ties. "They already know that Republicans messed up a la Bush; the question is will Obama turn out to be the successful president they all expect him to be?" Winograd said. The analogy, Winograd and Hais maintain, could be the way Franklin Roosevelt's success built upon Herbert Hoover's failure and created a generation of FDR Democrats that bolstered his party for decades. In the same way, they argue, if Obama succeeds, he "could be the final piece" bonding this generation to Democrats. Of course, if he fails, those bonds could be severely strained, especially since young people have invested so much hope in him.

Either way, it is the lasting loyalty of this mammoth young generation, far more than the dust-up over abortion, that is the real prize at play as Obama begins his first campus tour as president.

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May 13 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/13

by Staff

Today we learned that the Department of Transportation will cancel a Bush-administration plan to auction off runway time at New York City airports; AIG CEO Edward Liddy says AIG needs more money...unless the economy gets really bad; former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan told the Senate Judiciary Committee that harsh interrogation techniques don't work as well as regular ones; Condoleezza Rice's former top aide said the same; liberals in Minnesota set up a billboard calling on Gov. Tim Pawlenty ro certify Al Franken as a senator; and Carlos Moreno might be on Obama's short list for the Supreme Court.

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May 13 2009, 6:00PM

Bloggers React to Detainee Photos Decision

by Chris Good

Reactions to President Obama's detainee-photos decision were mixed: Republican lawmakers uniformly praised the decision, and, on the web, conservatives alternately praised Obama for making the right call and accused him of political expediency, promise-breaking, and taking an unrealistic stance in the first place. On the left, bloggers said it's more important to break with Bush policies than to keep the photos hidden from view, while the tone of some critics was bitter and disappointed.

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May 13 2009, 5:16PM

Marc Ambinder's SCOTUS Wrap, 5/13

by Marc Ambinder

A word on timing: it won't be this week. It won't be early next week. It probably won't be late next week. Most likely: the week after Memorial Day, when Obama is in town, and free -- he's traveling or meeting foreign leaders through Friday, the 29th. Members of Congress will be out of town; that makes it easier to direct the message, makes it tougher for Republicans to come up with a unified response, but also prevents Congressional Democrats from becoming validators.

If you put a gun to my head and asked me who I really thought was on the short list, I would swear to you that I don't know, and I would profess my fear that Howie Kurtz would call me out if I named names. On the other hand, if you applied Ali Soufan's interrogation techniques to me, I would probably say that Sotomayor, Woods, Kagan and Moreno were some of the names on that list.

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May 13 2009, 1:28PM

And The Nominee Is....

by Marc Ambinder

If you can answer these questions to your satisfaction, you can produce your own short list. Forget speculation and leaks, forget the flavor of the week. Put yourself in President Obama's mind -- his curious, strategic, long-term-thinking mind -- and ask the questions he'll be asking himself.

1. When did Obama start to think about this?

As early as November, he met with leading advisers about his first pick. That's when dossiers were first compiled. Right after he was elected, and before he experienced the brain-changing duties of being president, Obama had some specific candidates in mind...

2. How many other Supreme Court appointments does Obama believe he will get to make? 1? 2?

Why this matters: if Obama knows that he'll have another pick, or has strong reason to believe that he will, he'll face less immediate pressure about using gender and race as criteria when choosing his first nominee.

3. Does Obama want a confirmation fight with Republicans?

My guess is: no.

4. Will there be a tug between who Obama wants to nominate on the one hand and the obvious person he should nominate on the other?

The Obama legacy, politics, precedent -- all will factor into Obama's final decision. My sense is that he does have a favorite candidate, but he is not convinced that he should nominate that person.

5. If Obama narrows his short list to two people -- a white guy and an Hispanic female -- are gender and ethnicity going to play a role?

Not sure.

6. Who is the most brilliant, confirmable, center-left jurist alive today who is younger than 60?

Why this matters: Obama advisers expect Obama to pick the person he considers the most brilliant, confirmable, center-left jurist alive today. And young enough to make an indelible imprint on constitutional jurisprudence.

7. Who is the most brilliant, conformable, center-left jurist alive today who practices west of the Mississippi?

Just a hunch about the short list.

8. Of sitting judges and practicing lawyers, who would be most able to persuade Anthony Kennedy by sheer force of argument?

This one is obvious, but crucial: the person must be able to help liberals win cases; Kennedy is a persuadable vote; a progressive, pragmatic justice is the type of person who could win Kennedy's favor.

9. Does Obama have a history of rewarding his friends? Will he be inclined to pick someone he already knows?

10. Think about the first picture of Obama and the nominee. What will it look like? What will Obama want that picture to project?

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May 13 2009, 11:45AM

Billboard: Certify Franken

by Chris Good

A coalition of labor unions and progressive groups has put up a billboard along I-94 between Minneapolis and St. Paul calling on Gov. Tim Pawlenty to certify Al Franken as a U.S. senator. Photo below:

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May 13 2009, 10:21AM

The Cost Of Backing Crist

by Chris Good

Throwing national-level support behind Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's Senate bid had its upside for the GOP: it signaled to the country, to its ranks, and to anyone thinking about running for office as a Republican that things weren't as bad as they had been a week ago. The GOP now has a top-tier candidate who can carry a race in a big swing state like Florida, and all hope was not lost. But Crist is a moderate who backed Obama's stimulus, and it's costing the GOP some support from some prominent conservative bloggers.

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May 13 2009, 9:41AM

AIG: We Don't Need Your Help (For Now)

by Conor Clarke

Does anyone still care about AIG? Probably not. But on the offchance someone out there is still sharpening a pitchfork: CEO Edward Liddy will be back on the hill later today to testify before the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform. I've put his full testimony is at the end of this post.

It's been just about universally reported that Liddy will say AIG doesn't need any more government money (AP, AIG's Liddy: We don't need more government money; ABC, CEO Liddy: No More Bailouts Needed For AIG). That's kind of true, but comes with a pretty big caveat. From Liddy:

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May 12 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/12

by Staff

Today in politics, we learned that Charlie Crist has the backing of his party's campaign arm, and that he's popular among GOP voters in his state; the Philadelphia Inquirer has hired John Yoo as a columnist; Liz Cheney thinks her father is right to speak out; new TV ads will pressure centrist senators on health care; President Obama plans to cut taxes for the rich; Pew and the Sunlight Foundation have mapped TARP's geographical influence; Arlen Specter receieved a warm--but not ecstatic--welcome from Philadelphia Democrats; and protesters interrupted a Senate hearing on health care reform.

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May 12 2009, 6:30PM

Revealed: The Agency That Dissented

by Marc Ambinder

Let's solve a mystery: which government agency warned the Environmental Protection Agency that its rule-making process on greenhouse gas emissions could have "serious economic consequences?"

According to an administration official, the comments, which were collected by the Office of Management and Budget and sent to the EPA, came from staff at the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy.

If you think the Office of Advocacy's job is to be an advocate for small businesses, you'd be right. In fact, the OOA is a Congressional chartered, independent agency within the SBA. Its director is a political appointee, and its staff are not career members of the civil service. Many of them have been at the job for years, and it would not be uncharitable to assume that they're familiar with the language used by corporate America.

The previous "chief advocate" left before President Bush's term expired, and Bush installed a temporary chief to manage the transition. That chief -- Shawne McGibbon -- remains in charge of the OOA and its staff. According to this directory, regulatory reviews are handled by someone named Joseph M. Johnson. Johnson once served as a research fellow at the Mercatus Institute at George Mason University, an organization that is well respected and takes a skeptical view of government regulation.

A spokesman for the agency did not immediately return an e-mail seeking comment.

To sum: a small independent agency chartered to help small businesses was responsible for a single dissenting warning transmitted to the EPA by the Obama administration. No other government agency shared the same concerns.

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May 12 2009, 4:30PM

The White House Didn't Warn the EPA On Emissions

by Marc Ambinder

Time for some rumor-patrolling.

Headline:EPA's greenhouse gas ruling defies economic warning and White House memo challenges EPA finding on warming

The latter comes from the Associated Press. But it conveys a meaning that isn't accurate.

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May 12 2009, 3:50PM

Protesters Interrupt Health Reform Hearing

by Chris Good

As Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, readied to make his opening remarks at a hearing on health reform today, he was preempted by a succession of five protesters who stood up, one after another, led out successively by the Capitol Police as Chairman Max Baucus banged his gavel and implored them to leave be the committee and its guest panelists--mostly professors and think-tank people, with one representative from labor and one from business.

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May 12 2009, 12:35PM

U.S. Threatens Independent British Judicial System

by Marc Ambinder

These two paragraphs demonstrate apparent thuggishness, wrapped in the language of diplomacy.

They're from a court brief submitted by the U.S. government to Britain's top court.

It has come to the United States Government's attention that on 22 April 2009 your High Court heard argument on a motion of Mr. Mohamed for reconsideration of the Court's decision to withhold seven paragraphs from its open decision of 21 August 2008. The Court withheld those seven paragraphs at the request of your Foreign Secretary, based on a Public Interest Immunity Certificate that explained the damage to the United Kingdom's intelligence relationship with the United States--and as a consequence the United Kingdom's own national security--if the paragraphs were disclosed. Mr. Mohamed argued during the 22 April hearing that given the change in administration in the United States, HMG should be ordered to ask the Obama administration for its views on the disclosure of the information contained in the seven paragraphs.

Days prior to the 22 April hearing, the Obama administration released four memoranda issued by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC of the U.S. Department of Justice that describe interrogation techniques that the CIA employed during interrogations of certain high-value detainees. I understand that during the hearing, the High Court placed great import on President Obama's decision to release the OLC memoranda as an indication that the United States Government would not object to disclosure of the seven paragraphs. The Court made clear, nevertheless, that it would entertain further clarification of the United States Government's position, and the potential damage to the U.K.-U.S. intelligence sharing relationship that would be caused by public disclosure of the seven paragraphs.

Is this a real threat? Or are the United States and Britain colluding on behalf of keeping the information about Binyam Mohamed's detention and rendition a secret? I agree with Glenn Greenwald. It seems transparently clear that both governments don't want to reveal the info because both governments (especially the Brits) would be embarrassed by what was in them, and that the best way to pressure the independent judiciary in Britain into keeping those facts a secret is to convince it that a ruling in favor of disclosure could tear apart the entire U.S.-Britain relationship.

May 12 2009, 12:12PM

Obama To Cut Taxes For the Rich

by Conor Clarke

Nice little scoop from Bob Williams of the Tax Policy Center, who wades into the weeds of the Obama administration's tax plans and returns alive, bearing news that the administration actually cutting taxes for some high-income earners:

The administration's tax proposals call for hiking the top two tax rates from 33 and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent and raising the threshold to get into the new 36 percent bracket. For couples, that bracket would start at $231,300 in 2009, up from $208,850; the starting point for singles would climb from $171,550 to $190,650.

The rate hike we've known about for a while. But the change in threshold is, I believe, new. Of course, Williams quite sensibly complains that changing the threshold (1) makes the original proposal less progressive and (2) will result in raising less revenue. All sensible. But it will surely help insulate the president from the criticism that he is only using the tax code to plunder.

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May 12 2009, 11:36AM

Ads Push Centrist Sens On Health Care

by Chris Good

Health Care for America Now!, a coalition of progressive groups including Center for American Progress, Americans United for Change, AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME, ACORN, and MoveOn.org, is targeting six senators with TV ads pushing them to support a public-option health care plan. The ads will run in the home states of centrist senators who, as we saw in the stimulus debate, control much of the decision-making power in Congress as potentially the last lawmakers on board with major pieces of the Democratic agenda. They are: Arlen Specter (D-PA), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mike Johanns (R-NE), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Richard Lugar (R-IN), and Ron Wyden (D-OR), who has previously led bipartisan efforts at health reform. See one of the ads below:

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May 12 2009, 10:51AM

Crist Is Popular Among Florida Republicans, Too

by Marc Ambinder

The knock on Gov. Charlie Crist (R-FL), who today announced that he's running for Senate in 2010, is that he's governing like a Democrat and is therefore unpopular with Republican primary voters. CW is just wrong in this case; the best Florida polling shows that Republicans approve of Crist's job performance, they like him, and they'd support him for Senate. Crist does have a problem with the conservative establishment in Florida, which shows that you can't conflate the establishment with the base, a crime of which journalists are frequently guilty. So far, Crist is showing no signs that he will pander to the right in his Senate run, hoping that outside pressure on Speaker Marco Rubio will prevent Rubio from becoming a serious challenger to Crist. That said, there are plenty of Florida Republican powerbrokers who dislike Crist, including the former governor, Jeb Bush. If Bush campaigns for Rubio, that'll raise eyebrows. He's more likely to do so privately, though, not wanting to alienate or forstall the inevitable.

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May 12 2009, 10:30AM

Liz Cheney Defends Her Father

Liz Cheney defends former Vice President Dick Cheney for speaking out against the Obama administration's national security policies.

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May 12 2009, 10:27AM

Philadelphia Inquirer Hires John Yoo As Columnist

by Conor Clarke

Yoo has written columns for the Inquirer on a freelance basis, but the arrangement now seems to have become more formal.

May 11 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/11

by Staff

Today we learned that health care industry leaders are pledging to work toward President Obama's goals; Iran has freed journalist Roxana Saberi; Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari thinks the U.S. deserves some blame for the Taliban threat; an overhaul of the corporate tax code likely isn't on the way; embryonic stem cell research funding could impact the national electoral map; the Defense Department named a new top commander in Afghanistan; "socialism" is everywhere; and Rep. Pete Hoekstra wants the CIA to release more information about when and who it briefed in Congress on interrogations (that, or he wants more trouble for Democrats).

We deliberated on the meaning of all of this, plus whether it's okay to laugh at the jokes told at the White House Correspondents Association dinner; Obama's SCOTUS short list; what message Republicans will run on in 2010; and claims of a health reform renaissance.

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May 11 2009, 5:39PM

Hoekstra: Release CIA Notes On Congressional Briefing

by Chris Good

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (MI), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, is calling for the CIA to release its notes from the meeting in which, according to a report released last week, it briefed members of Congress including Nancy Pelosi on harsh interrogation techniques.

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May 11 2009, 5:00PM

These Days, Everything Is About 'Socialism'

by Chris Good

Atlantic Correspondent Hua Hsu unpacks reactions to the term "socialism" in America today:

[O]ne thing that seems somewhat exceptional about America nowadays is our tendency to lose our marbles at the mere mention of "socialism."

Even this seemingly innocuous NYT tech column on new LED-based light sources turned into a referendum on American socialism. From the Comments section:

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May 11 2009, 12:24PM

Stem Cell Funding And Electoral Polarization

by Chris Good

Peter Dizikes argues that stem cell research will polarize the national electoral map, the idea being that by funding embryonic stem cell research, states will attract more scientists and thus more Democratic voters. In state-level fights over whether to supply funding, Republicans are fighting off a growing trend of national support for embryonic stem cell research, and apparently an invasion of Democratic-voting scientists. Dizikes says stem-cell funding creates biotech jobs, and more employment springs up around the biotech industry through a multiplier effect. One question this raises: can and will Democrats tie stem cell funding to the economy, and, in a recession, do jobs trump even metaphysics?

May 11 2009, 10:44AM

Don't Hold Your Breath For Corporate Tax Reform

by Conor Clarke

Later this morning the White House is releasing new details on the budget, which will include new details on its plan to reform the manner in which foreign corporate income is taxed. I got the sense last week that the proposed changes were party of a larger scheme to overhaul the corporate tax. Deputy National Economics Council Director Jason Furman wrote that the "administration's plan is intended as a major, first step" in addressing problems with the tax, and Obama himself said these changes were a "down payment on the larger tax reform we need" to make our tax system fairer and more efficient.

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May 11 2009, 8:44AM

Quote of the Day: Biden on Obama's Dog

by Chris Good

My dog is smarter than Bo, his dog.

May 11 2009, 8:42AM

A New Beginning For Health Care Reform?

by Marc Ambinder

There will be plenty of posts about the details of the cost-cutting proposals today, and plenty of posts about the immediate political intermingling. But let's step back and look at the broader political implications of the staged event at the White House. "Voluntarily," Obama will say today, he's brought together the major health care stakeholders -- or most of them -- to promise cost cuts, yes, but actualy, let's end the sense at "stakeholders." The President of the United States was able to get the major union associated with health care and the major lobby associated with health insurance companies to come together, under his aegis, at an event that White House hopes will be the public kick off of the president's engagement with Congress as its committees write the health care bill. "This fundamentally allies these groups with the President's goal of getting health care reform this year and that's a game changer, in our opinion," a senior administration official told reporters last night. "And it makes clearer than ever that health care reform is going to happen this year in Congress."

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May 11 2009, 7:31AM

Don't Worry.....It's OK To Laugh*

by Marc Ambinder

No single event marks our political culture more self-involved as the endless, circular, circuitive yearly debate about the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, a.k.a. Nerd Prom, a.k.a, the one night a year when journalists toast the president, a.k.a. the Hollywoodization of Washington, a.k.a, Tammy Haddad's Garden Party.

The event itself , I think, is less controversial than all of the peripheral interest. It's a long dinner, followed by journalism awards, followed by 15 minutes of comedy from the President, followed by an entertainer who tends to be accomplished enough in life not to care about the ego concerns of the White House Correspondents Association, which hosts the dinner.

Those of us who've been to the dinner before have gotten use to the wrote rhetoric about its appropriateness. This year, in case we needed to be reminded, the New York University journalism scold Jay Rosen lobbed acerbic tweets at journalists all day. I can claim innocence - I was about more than 1,000 miles away from Washington, D.C. when Wanda Sykes called Rush Limbaugh the 20^th hijacker and wished that he was dying of kidney disease. I watched, of course, on C-SPAN. And I thought she was funny, despite that one unfunny, ill-advised, quite contrived construction.

That wasn't the most dangerous joke of the night, actually. The distinction for that honor goes to Jay Leno's writers, who cooked up a monolog for Barack Obama. He noted that he knew most of the people in the room were people who had covered him on the campaign. Then he said that he knew that all of them voted for him. White House correspondents are touchy about the bias thing.

Sykes' Limbaugh clip wasn't dangerous, despite the "oooos" it provoked in the crowd - and more on that in the minute. It was dumb. No one in the audience - especially that audience - would ever compare the speech acts of a conservative radio talk show host to the terrorists who killed many thousands of Americans. It's little appreciated, most of these journalists were in New York and Washington on 9/11, most of them were directly affected by the destruction in some way, and most are keen enough to draw the moral distinction between an over-the-top but unremarkable pop-off by Limbaugh ("I hope the President fails") and the presence of evil incarnate on American soil. Even as humor, Sykes' construction just didn't work. Her punchline was about Limbaugh's use of Oxycontin - ha, ha, he overslept on 9/11, but that was lost the absurdity of the set-up.

I thought the rest of Sykes' routine was quite funny and well thought-out, a mixture of her own modern Carlin-esque form and enough insider references to show us that she did her homework and took her assignment seriously.

Recapitulating all of this is necessary because the post-mortems inevitably become part of our partisan heritage.

Outrageous liberal journalists chose an outrageous liberal who shared their views and who CLEARLY LAUGHED at her libelous joke about Rush Limbaugh... and see, see, see the President smirking? See how coarse Obama has made our political culture? Etc. Etc.

Come now. It has always been the central insight of the WHCA dinner that democracy often needs to be displayed, that sometimes, we need to step back and recognize that we are playing civil and social roles, and that humor is a great leveler. British politics has traditions like this; what other Western democracy, even, is capable?

Self-congratulation is warranted, but beside the point: these insider moments can be quite teachable.

Sometimes, the participants demonstrate revealing things when they change perspective. We knew that President Bush took his hunt for weapons of mass destruction seriously, even as he joked about the search for them in 2003, but it was unbelievable that the White House communications establishment did not take seriously - did not even think about - the larger ramifications of having the Commander in Chief peering under Oval Office couches (to laughter) while troops were dying by the bushel trying to find the real thing.

President Clinton was a fairly good sport, though, truth be told, he hated the dinners. He gamely listened as Don Imus made rough remarks about his sexual proclivities, and by the end of his presidency, he was angry enough to turn his own speech into an extended broadside against the journalism professions.

Obama decided to throw his chips all in, poking fun at the administration in the same way that late night comics do. His raunchiness was limited to a sly eyebrow and some nicely-chosen euphemisms when he discussed how he and David Axelrod were circling each other. (Don't forget, Dick Cheney made a Brokeback Mountain joke, too. This wasn't the first gay joke in the oeuvre!). Saturday night, Obama's Tim Geithner was precious. Larry Summers was old and nappy. Rahm Emanuel was a cuss word machine. Michael Steele was a poser who wanted more attention from brother Obama. John Boehner looks Orange. Obama himself was a little pompous. Hillary Clinton really wants to be President.

Pretty funny, but safe.

And safety is an important value here. It's OK to laugh at what it's OK to laugh at. Washington has an officially approved roster of punch lines, and Obama hit them all. We didn't learn that much about Obama from the dinner, which is fine. We can settle on the second other pleasures of the night, or even the criticisms, if you're inclined to dislike the coziness and the parties and the hype.

In private, Obama can be more caustic. He can be a little more blue and a little more sarcastic.

Here's hoping that he incorporates more of that into his future routines.

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May 10 2009, 9:00PM

Obama On Health Care

by Marc Ambinder

The White House is trying to get reporters to think that its health care event tomorrow is significant. I think it is, and i'll explain that tomorrow. For now, here's some of what Obama plans to say:

"We cannot continue down the same dangerous road we⿿ve been traveling for so many years, with costs that are out of control, because reform is not a luxury that can be postponed, but a necessity that cannot wait.

"It is a recognition that the fictional television couple, Harry and Louise, who became the iconic faces of those who opposed health care reform in the ⿿90s, desperately need health care reform in 2009. And so does America.

"That is why these groups are voluntarily coming together to make an unprecedented commitment. Over the next ten years - from 2010 to 2019 - they are pledging to cut the growth rate of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year - an amount that⿿s equal to over $2 trillion."

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May 10 2009, 6:23PM

A Self-Sabotage Plan If Edwards Won The Nomination?

by Marc Ambinder

Writes George Stephanopoulos:

I've talked to a lot of former Edwards staffers about this. Up until December of 2007, most on Edwards' staff didn't believe rumors about the affair.

But by late December, early January of last year, several people in his inner circle began to think the rumors were true.
Several of them had gotten together and devised a "doomsday" strategy of sorts.
Basically, if it looked like Edwards was going to win the Democratic Party nomination, they were going to sabotage his campaign, several former Edwards' staffers have told me.
They said they were Democrats first, and if it looked like Edwards was going to become the nominee, they were going to bring down the campaign.

This was the first I've heard about a self-sabotage campaign, which would be unprecedented in American history, although not terribly surprising. A few of Edwards's more senior aides were recruited to the 2008 campaign by Elizabeth Edwards, one of which was Joe Trippi, who was always a bit closer to her than he was to him. I haven't talked to Joe about this subject in ages, so I don't know whether he was among those who began to come up with contingency plans.

I do know that plenty of aides were not convinced that the stories were true and therefore did not participate in plans -- if, indeed, there were plans.

I also know that plenty of aides to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton believed the National Enquirer immediately, and that associates of the Clintons were very aggressive, in particular, about making sure that reporters didn't give up the chase. Whether this was sanctioned by Clinton herself I do not know and tend to doubt, but there was plenty of angst in the Democratic Party from the moment the story broke, and then died, in December of 2007.

In reality, as sexy as sabotage sounds, all these campaign aides would have done is to resign, and tell the world that Edwards, while a great man, was too greatly flawed and did not deserve the nomination.

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May 8 2009, 5:07PM

Sessions On A Gay Nominee

Sen. Jeff Sessions, the new top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, says Republicans "don't believe in identity politics" and a gay Supreme Court nominee should be evaluated equally, though it's a "concern" that Americans might feel uneasy about a gay Supreme Court justice.

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May 8 2009, 4:18PM

Photo-Op Blunder: Official Resigns, Blames E-mail And A Bad Back

by Marc Ambinder

The Friday before the White House Correspondents Association dinner is as good a time to bury news like this...even as the resignation of White House Military Office director Louis Caldera was expected. Here's the White House's internal review of the incident. Report to DCOS re AF1 FINAL.pdf Basic conclusion: the colonel in charge of the photo-op says he recommended that the WHMO deputy director inform the White House's deputy chief of staff. The WHMO deputy director doesn't remember that conversation. Also, the WHMO director, Louis Caldera, told the White House that he did not know about the photo op until after it took place even though he had been sent an e-mail about it beforehand. Why? He has two e-mail accounts -- one that goes through White House office servers, and another that the military controls.

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May 8 2009, 2:00PM

Sign Of The Times: Duke Drops NAM

by Marc Ambinder

This story from Bloomberg News speaks for itself:

Duke Energy Corp., the owner of utilities in the U.S. Southeast and Midwest, won't renew its membership in the National Association of Manufacturers partly because of differences over climate policy.

"We are not renewing our membership in the NAM because in tough times, we want to invest in associations that are pulling in the same direction we are," Duke Chief Executive Officer Jim Rogers said last month in an interview. The association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Republicans "ought to roll up their sleeves and get to work on a climate bill, but quite frankly, I don't see them changing."

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Duke is a founding member of the United States Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of business and environmental groups that seeks to influence legislation on greenhouse gases linked to global warming. The National Association of Manufacturers has opposed mandatory controls, arguing they will harm the economy.

Duke's been courting Democrats -- and the administration -- on everything from climate change to health care, so this move doesn't come as a surprise. But it is an example of how many corporations are adapting to the reality of government in 2009 instead of fighting it.

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May 8 2009, 1:18PM

What Rebranding? Part XVIII

by Marc Ambinder

Appearing on the Sunday shows on behalf of the Great Opposition Party: John McCain (This Week), Newt Gingrich (Fox News Sunday), Dick Cheney (Face The Nation.) All will be asked if the Republican Party needs to rebrand itself. All will give some version of the same answer: if we just lived up to our values, the American people would pay attention to us. Actually, that's not fair to Gingrich, who seems to understand that the third leg of the GOP stool can only be attached if Republicans figure out a way to offer a meaningful alternative route to universal health care and solutions for the alienated middle class. Still... kind of dovetails with the Democratic message du jour, which is that Republicans can't find new faces to put on TV.

May 8 2009, 12:25PM

Obama On Job Numbers: A Hand Up, Not A Hand Out

by Chris Good

It strikes me that President Obama's response to today's rise in national unemployment (from 8.5 percent to 8.9 percent), in which he proposed to allow recipients of unemployment benefits to enter college, community college, and job-training, is a left-of-center version of the conservative/centrist line, "a hand up, not a hand out."

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May 8 2009, 11:21AM

National Security: The Government Prepares A Move In Al-Haramain

by Marc Ambinder

Today, we were supposed to learn whether the administration was easing its absolutist stance on sharing classified information in civil cases. May 8 had been the deadline for the Justice Department to respond to a protective order drawn up by attorneys representing the Al-Haramain charity in Seattle. The charity alleges that the government used the National Security Agency to illegally spy on its activities; the government believed that the charity had terrorist connections. Complex legal arguments ensued, but the court seems to be of a mind to press the government to fight the case on the grounds that the law allegedly broken -- the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- preempts any claim of state secrets privilege.

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May 8 2009, 11:08AM

Kerry Encouraged By Karzai/Zardari Luncheon

by Chris Good

Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said he was encouraged by a luncheon yesterday with Presidents Karzai and Zardari of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Perhaps a good sign, considering Kerry has been skeptical of America's progress on the problems in those countries. On the other hand, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said Karzai and Zardari probably lost support during the meeting.

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May 8 2009, 11:00AM

What Pelosi Knew

by Marc Ambinder

Responses among the cognoscenti to the CIA's contention that it briefed Nancy Pelosi on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques are fairly typical. Those inclined to defend Democrats point to the CIA's history of misleading Congress and the incomplete record the CIA's notes sketch out; those inclined to indict Pelosi are throwing out terms like "hypocrite" and worse. The document itself is an interesting artifact of our intelligence culture and its relationship to the oversight committees. The White House might have been reluctant to share details of certain programs; it's hard to know what the CIA's motives were. By statute, they're required to provide Congress with information that holds themselves accountable, and Congress's ability to independently verify these facts is very limited. Pelosi and Porter Goss were the two ranking members of the House Intelligence Committee. That they were the only two so early briefed shows how highly classified and sensitive the program was at the time. It was probably an "Unacknowledged SAP" -- a "special access program," meaning that it was not only classified, dissemination of information about the program had to be communicated through highly classified channels.

2009-05-06 EIT ENCLOSURE0001.pdf

Let's peel back a layer or two about these briefings. Goss, a former CIA case officer, was in a much better position to process the information contained within the briefing than Pelosi. There is no evidence that either Goss or Pelosi objected to the "EITs" -- as the CIA still calls them. Pelosi last week said she had no idea that EITs were even being used and insisted that the subject of waterboarding never came up. That's hard to swallow, even if you believe the claim about waterboarding. Why would the CIA even brief Pelosi about EITs if it had no intention of using them?

CIA officials and intelligence committee staff members will tell you that members rarely, if ever, object to anything in these briefings. Imagine the multiplier effect of 9/11, when most Democrats were intimidated by the muscle-flexing of the Bush Administration. Let's assume, for the sake of a hypothetical, that Pelosi had wanted to object. What she could have done -- and this does happen, occasionally -- is to walk out of the briefing, telling those CIA officials who came that what she just heard did not constitute a formal briefing, and that she would record, for her own records, that the CIA did not brief her on the subject. The CIA briefers would then return to Langley and inform their supervisors that Pelosi walked out of the briefing, mid-stream. Since CIA felt it was required to brief her -- and since Pelosi declared herself not briefed -- the CIA would then be compelled to try to re-brief her -- and would probably send a high-ranking official who could better explain the program.

In general, the CIA briefers tend not to be the same people who execute the programs; they tend not to be the supervisors who oversee them; they tend not to be the senior officials who set policy. That's why Pelosi couldn't simply -- or wouldn't simply -- voice an objection during the original briefing. Her briefers were middlemen.

There's no evidence from the CIA records that Pelosi did anything but passively accept the briefings -- at which point the CIA could content itself with the knowledge that the ONLY outside source of accountability was sufficiently read in to the program and did not object to it.

One can't help but conclude that while Pelosi might not have known everything, she knew enough. And in today's political climate, that's kind of tough. But back in 2002, when more Americans (probably) supported those techniques than they do now (and most Americans support at least some of the EITs), and when Pelosi herself did not have the means or the legal knowledge to perform her own analysis of the legality of the techniques, and when the climate of dissent was quashed -- her reaction is understandable... maybe not, from our current perspective, excusable, although there is a range of opinion on that question.

Based on several years' worth of distance, it's easy to conclude that Congress failed to police the CIA. But Congressional oversight of these matters has never been forward-looking. Congress is ill-equipped to monitor CIA operations in real-time; it cannot look over the shoulder of every National Security Agency analyst who picks up someone on a wiretap. And -- in an environment where the threat of terrorism was real -- we might wonder whether the type of Congressional oversight we seem to want would be more harmful than productive. We want the CIA to think twice before doing something naughty, but we don't want Congress to preemptively prevent the CIA from bribing, say, a source with a prostitute. We really don't. That's why our casting about for blame ought to end with political leaders who make policy decisions -- which is, in fact, where the blame for this program does reside.

Especially now, the briefing culture provides the opportunity for intense public jostling. Remember the story, from a month ago, about how the NSA was having trouble meshing its collection technologies with laws against domestic surveillance? As soon as it "broke," members of the intelligence committees were quick to express their outrage and vowed to investigate. Well. The sources for the story had come from Congress. How did Congress know? The NSA had briefed them privately, well before the story came out. The "outrage" here -- the "surprise" -- was manufactured. I wager, however, that the reason why the story became a story in the first place was because Congressional officials -- staffers, members, I don't know who -- believed that the problem wasn't being solved. Nothing kills bacteria more quickly than the harsh disinfectant of public exposure.

My ahems and caveats don't obviate the need for some reform. Congress can change the law and custom to require CIA to brief entire committees, not just chairs; we can allow more staff in the room -- staff with experience in these matters. There are plenty of quasi-governmental intelligence oversight mechanisms, like the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. Perhaps it can be the repository of complaints and questions -- and it can adjudicate disputes. (Maybe Congress can appoint some positions to that board).

Who knew what, when, and why are more complicated questions than they appear to be. And it would be helpful if Congress were to channel this discussion into something more productive.

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May 7 2009, 6:07PM

Marc Ambinder's SCOTUS Wrap, 5/7

by Marc Ambinder

A little bit of insider Obama administration trivia: when Obama uses words that are supposed to prick the ears of an interest group but remain undetected, or be noticed, but not taken in the same way, but the public, the White House calls this "dog whistling." They don't mean it pejoratively.

So when someone outside the White House uses the same phrase to describe the same thing, I'm thinking... that guy has some insider knowledge. Chris Weigant wonders whether Barack Obama's use of the word "empathy" to describe an ideal characteristic of his Supreme Court nominee is a way of making sure his base knows that he will weigh their concerns... rather than being an isolated personality trait he's going to tick off of list.

More Sotomayor ink from one of the newspapers that the Obama Administration courts the most. (Paraphrasing a Clinton administration official, they campaigned on TV and are governing in the New York Times and the Washington Post.)

Jeffrey Rosen explains his Case Against Sotomayor.

Edwin Chen of Bloomberg talked to all the right people -- Ab Mikva, Chris Edley -- and he's getting the same short list names we're getting.

Are we too obsessed with appellate judges?

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May 7 2009, 5:01PM

The List. Of Banks. That Need. Cushions. And Those Cushions.

by Marc Ambinder

The skinny: According to the Department of the Treasury and Federal Reserve the Big Banks below need a total of $75 billion worth of capital cushions. Existing TARP funds should cover whatever the government is forced to contribute if and when these banks can't raise the money privately. In order of size:

Bank of America -- $33.9 billion
Wells Fargo: $13.7 billion
GMAC: $11.5 billion
Citigroup: $5.5 billion
Regions Financial: $2.5 billion
Suntrust: $2.2 billion
Morgan Stanley: $1.8 billion
Keycorp: $.1.8 billion
5th Third Bancorp: $1.1 billion
PNC Bank: $0.6 billion

Smaller regional banks aren't included here. If a bank's name isn't on this list, it has sufficient capital cushion to survive adverse conditions. The rest of the banks have six months to find more money. They'll probably also have to meet other conditions, and you'll see some CEO flux too.

May 7 2009, 4:00PM

The Political Rathole In The Near East

by Marc Ambinder

We've seen the Obama administration go to great lengths to persuade the American people that whatever is happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan is very serious, that it is in the interests of the United States to spend money and lives dealing with "it," and that, despite news reports to the contrary, progress is being made.

When I was interviewing administration officials for some posts and an article about the first and second one hundred days, I would always ask about the biggest known unknown, and the answer was always the same: Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The worry was threefold; one, that something horrible and unpredictable would happen -- an unknown unknown -- and completely blow up the new Richard Holbrooke-led "strategy" upon which Barack Obama's credibility rests.

Two -- that the American people would not see our intervention in the region as a national security priority; this was why, I was told, that Obama would be returning to the subject, as he did this week.

Three -- that Democrats in Congress would face significant pressure from liberal constituents and begin to hamstring the administration.

Not ten days into the second one hundred days, the trifecta has occurred: Pakistani militants are united more than ever before and fighting battles with a weakened Pakistani government a day's walk from Islamabad; American people are weary; Key appropriators like David Obey have already given up; Obey's giving the administration a year before he closes the purse.

Here's a case where public communication strategy will drive policy. And yet, unlike the invasion of Iraq, there's no two-sentence encapsulation that fits, there's no compliant press corps that will report whatever the administration wants, and there's no conviction, even within the administration, that the current strategy has achievable endpoints.

The Taliban and Al Qaeda are our number one enemies. But they're kind of mysterious by this point, and the Bush-era line that "if we don't fight 'em over there, they'll come here" rings a little hollow now, even if it happens to be a reasonable assumption. Much of what our military and intelligence forces are doing over there remains classified, but it clearly includes a lot of hardware, a lot of secret special forces raids, a lot of counterintelligence and strategic trickery, radio jamming and the like. The collateral damage from our Predator strikes is apparently one of the many ways we're further alienating civilians.

There are weapons of mass destruction to worry about, but they are supposedly safe from theft or use -- especially by that country's own military, which is corrupt, which colludes with the terrorists who are supposedly enemy number one, and has towered over and threatened the civilian government for over 50 years. U.S. technology keeps these nukes safe, and U.S. special forces are probably billeted in some secret base near Islamabad ready to parachute in, steal the nukes, and keep them safe, if the Pakistan government were to fall.

Russia and China: Why does the U.S. have to flex its muscles like an impressionable bodybuilder? Russia and China take a keen interest in the affairs of the region. China's relationship with Pakistan is rooted in history and in finance. Russia is more worried about geopolitics and basing, as its barely three-decades-old invasion of Afghanistan will attest. In this way, the U.S.'s ability to exert influence over both countries is limited by China and Russia; at the same time, because China and Russia are hovering, the U.S. must hover too. (Remember, the Northern Alliance was supported by Russia (and Iran and India) during the 90s when America's support was small.) Do Russia and China care more about extremism and instability than they do about checking America's power? I don't know.

Pakistan's aspirations: We tend to lose sight of what Pakistani people aspire to; the country has seen itself as a haven for Muslims, and it is now a principle goal of our foreign policy to convince the Muslim world that American values are not incompatible with that religion, or, at the very least, do not threaten it. Deradicalization of Pakistan's existing radical Islamic community is impossible, but preventing the further radicalization of said community -- at least for a while -- is achievable with the right type of U.S. intervention. At this juncture, it's important to note that polls of Pakistanis make it pretty clear that most Pakistanis aren't radical and that they dislike radicalism more than they dislike the U.S. When it comes to Afghanistan, Pakistanis generally don't respect the boundary that international officials place between the two countries. Given the threat of an invasion from India, Pakistanis want the living space that Afghanistan affords.

Afghanistan's aspirations: I'm kind of lost here, but stability is certainly something that beleaguered Afghans want -- along with an ability to make some money, export their wares, and not be killed by their government, the Taliban, and the United States.

Congress has agreed to provide a few billion dollars, here and there, for Pakistan and Afghanistan. Cynics believe that America is simply trying to bribe both governments out of corruption -- or bribe them in such a generous way that they begin to depend more on American money -- and therefore adopt American principles -- more than indigenous ones. A few billion dollars isn't going to be enough, as it took about $10 billion dollars worth of secret aid to down a few Russian helicopters and convince the Soviets to withdraw from just one country.

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May 7 2009, 3:25PM

Dobson Disappointed In Obama

by Chris Good

Add the National Day of Prayer to the list of religious conservatives' complaints with President Obama.

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May 7 2009, 12:50PM

Specter Lands...Well, On Something

by Chris Good

As chairman of the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, according to this AP report. This could put to rest some of the tension between Sen. Specter and his new party~~, though the deal is not final:~~ Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) just issued a statement that he is "consulting with Senator Sessions, our Republican Ranking Member, in light of our recently revised Committee membership to consider any necessary adjustments to Judiciary Committee subcommittees. I hope to have a decision by early next week." A quick side note: Tom Ridge popped the PA trial balloon quickly. He's not going to run for Senate.

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May 7 2009, 12:37PM

Why Peter Orszag Reminds Me of John McCain

by Conor Clarke

I just got off a conference call with Budget Director Peter Orszag in which he talked about the newly released details on the Obama budget. Most of what was under discussion was the $17 billion in new cuts, which has been gently mocked as a drop in the $3.4 trillion ocean of a budget. Orszag's defense was this: "We can no longer afford broken window budgeting." Which meant: Even if the program cuts are small, perpetuating small, crappy programs sends the wrong signal -- namely, the signal that we are willing to perpetuate small, crappy programs.

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May 7 2009, 11:45AM

Douthatian Watch: McHenry On Taxes

by Marc Ambinder

One of the more interesting quotations from Michael Grunwald's Time cover story on the woes of the Republican Party:

Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, a conservative who keeps a bust of Reagan on his desk, surprised me by declaring that the Reagan era is over. "Marginal tax rates are the lowest they've been in generations, and all we can talk about is tax cuts," he said. "The people's desires have changed, but we're still stuck in our old issue set.

May 7 2009, 10:43AM

Treasury To Banks: "Please Fire Everybody"

by Conor Clarke

This statement from the Federal Reserve seems to have the most stress-test preview details. The full, non-leaked results will be posted at 5pm tonight. The banks that needs more capital will have until June 8 to come up with plan, and until November 9 to implement that plan. But I thought this paragraph, tucked into the middle of the release, had a charmingly euphemistic way of suggesting that the banks might also consider firing a bunch of their managers:

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May 6 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 5/6

by Staff

Today we learned that Maine had legalized gay marriage (though the federal government won't recognize them); Bristol Palin campaigned for abstinence; Levi Johnston disagreed; one of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's former clerks said the left shouldn't look for a Scalia antidote; John McCain said detainees are war criminals, and can be held during war; the NRCC advertised its opposition's unchecked power; Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks it's time to have the marijuana debate; Gen. James Jones surfaced; Congress will hold its first hearing on the Bush interrogation memos; Nancy Pelosi is more concerned with jobs than gay marriage; and Eric Cantor claims his group is not on a listening tour.

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May 6 2009, 5:18PM

What's The Chrysler Bailout Really All About? Two Views

by Marc Ambinder

I asked Megan McArdle, and here she responds.

The administration isn't kowtowing to the unions; it's trying to prevent massive job loss. Chrysler employs about 60,000 people. This is a rounding error in the number of jobs that have been lost since this recession began.

To put it another way, we could have taken the $8 billion or so we gave to Chrysler and given every one of the company's employees $133,000 to start their own War on Poverty, while still providing much of their pensions through the PBGC. Of cours, the new Chrysler is going to cut many of those jobs, so the cost of actual jobs saved will probably top $200K per. For as long as the company lasts. Which most analysts do not expect to be long, given that their super secret surprise scheme for turning everything around is to have Chrysler sell retooled Fiats to a country with one-seventh the population density and almost twice the birthrate of Italy.

They're bailing out Chrysler because the company is systemically important. Really? When Lehman failed, huge other portions of the financial system quite unexpectedly quit working. Yet when I look out on the streets, I see no noticeable dimunition of the number of cars there. When I turn the ignition key in my car, it still starts.

My best sense of the administration's argument is that of a very sick patient who needs, among other things, his gall bladder removed. Better to let that patient recover before the surgery, as it's never a good thing to operate on a guy whose immune system is challenged. Translated: Chrysler's probably gonna fail at some point. But if it were to fail during a perfect storm of adverse economic conditions, it could take the entire economy down with it. Better to prop up the company for a few years until the economic recovers... let it fail when the economy can sustain a blow like that.

Whose argument do you believe? Megan's? Or the White House's?

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May 6 2009, 5:08PM

A Listening Tour?

by Chris Good

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) says he and his group are not on a listening tour. His National Council for a New America is said to be "re-launching the GOP"--it held an event last weekend at a pizza place in Arlington, VA where Cantor, Mitt Romney, and Jeb Bush exchanged ideas with a conservative crowd--and now Rush Limbaugh has mocked the idea of such a "listening tour" on his radio show, saying what the GOP and the conservative movement need instead is a "teaching tour."

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May 6 2009, 4:23PM

Marc Ambinder's SCOTUS Wrap, 5/6

by Marc Ambinder

Hard to imagine that President Obama will name his SCOTUS choice anytime soon (i.e., this week) unless he pre-decided and pre-vetted. Sources close to Judges Sonia Sotomayor and Professor Pamela Karlin, as well as solicitor general Elena Kagan, say that, as of Tuesday, none of them had received proffers from the White House. There are other candidates, surely... but if none of these three have begun to be vetted, this pick is still in its infancy.

New White House communications director Anita Dunn will together a task force that'll war-room the nominee from the White House. Expect a similar operation at the Democratic National Committee.

A handful of senior Obama aides, including Valerie Jarrett and Michael Strautmanis, are working with Cassandra Butts from the White House counsel's office and with counsel Greg Craig; they're regularly consulting with Vice President's Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, who knows more about these judges and this process than anyone else in government. In fact, Klain is good friends with most of the most-mentioned names.

Is this what it seems? After some White House love, Sen. Jeff Sessions convinced a lot of journalists to write headlines suggesting that he's disinclined to filibuster Obama's nominee, especially since Obama promised that this person wouldn't be, in Session's words channeling Obama, a "bomb-thrower." Of course, as Sessions knows, he and Obama probably disagree on the meaning of "bomb-thrower."

Oppo Du Jour: Michael Goldfarb obtained Elena Kagan's senior thesis, where she seems to profess an admiration for unity among radical socialists.

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May 6 2009, 3:59PM

Pelosi To Gays: Not Now

by Chris Good

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when asked today about granting federal marriage benefits to same-sex married couples, said House Democrats' agenda right now is: "jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, and as we move on that front, concurrently, we have to make some decisions about what is possible in our values based initiatives as well."

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May 6 2009, 1:46PM

Kennedy's Children Convinced Her To Drop?

by Chris Good

Edward Klein--the same who authored The Truth about Hillary to some not so friendly reviews--reports that Caroline Kennedy's children convinced her to drop her Senate bid, citing an unnamed family adviser in his upcoming biography of Ted Kennedy

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May 6 2009, 12:30PM

A Justice Who Is Gay

by Marc Ambinder

Two of the most qualified center-left jurists in the country are gay, and they've got friends in high places.

Channeling our inner Joy Behars: "Who cares?"

Sexual orientation won't matter to President Obama -- this I do believe, based on several years of reporting on the guy. Unless he's influenced by subconscious patter, he's not going to choose someone because she's gay, and he's not going to remove someone from a list because she's gay.

That does not mean, in any way, that he won't want to think through the ramifications of what the appointment of the first openly gay jurists would entail. Obama likes to ask his counsels about precedent and history and second-order effects. He will leave the deliberations to the constellation of officials who are participating in the selection process, including his voracious chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and Michael Strautmanis, a long-time Obama counselor who works for Valerie Jarrett.

You don't have to be Rep. Steve King -- who here implies that gay people wouldn't be bashed so long as they don't tell people about their sexual orientation -- to have a vague sense of that sexuality shouldn't matter at all, that sexual orientation should be irrelevant as a way of judging someone for any job, anywhere. Most Americans either live in this mental framework or are moving here.

But if Obama makes the choice, what ought to happen will yield to the reality of politics, the structural bias of the news media and the sociology of Congress.

'
Absent another storyline -- the FIRST HISPANIC, a MAJOR ideological shift on the court -- if Obama selects a gay person, the gay thing becomes the second thing that most people will know about the nominee. (The first, as pointed out by a White House official, is that this person has Obama's imprimatur. This didn't work for an unpopular President Bush, but it might work with Obama.)

The Obama White House has studiously avoided engaging with Republicans on culture war tropes. Believe it or not, it's one of the main reasons why the White House hasn't done more in public for Dawn Johnsen. Given that Rahm Emanuel is running the vetting process, I can't imagine that the White House won't include the upside/downside potential for this type of a rhetorical battle in their calculations and recommendations.

Obama might ignore this, but the White House won't. From their lips to the ears of anyone who asks: Rahm and David Axelrod don't want the GOP base riled up in 2010.

In the end, the nomination of a gay Supreme Court Justice might be the perfect way to engage the public, and I think the upside potential is greater than the downside risk. What better way to advance the cause of the public normalization of homosexuality than to appoint a gay justice to the court without referencing her sexuality?

If, on the other hand, the White House nominates a gay justice and makes a big deal about it and then becomes defensive when social conservatives object, they've undermined their underlying social engineering.

Journalists will cover the issue reductively, interest groups on all sides won't be able to resist; opponents may well use her sexuality as a weapon against her, and proponents will see every attack against her as motivated by antipathy to homosexuality.

In any event, almost every political actor involved in this decision will have to confront the question of gays and society.

Not too long ago, being (openly) gay was enough to disqualify a Clinton appointee, James Hormel, from clearing Congress to be the ambassador to Luxembourg. Clinton used a recess appointment. George Bush's openly gay appointee was given the AIDS portfolio -- not insignificant, but not outside the gay Republican ghetto either.

A side note, as pointed out by someone smart: single, accomplished, older women are automatically assumed to be lesbians -- witness the demonization of Janet Reno, Janet Napolitano and others -- while openly gay female professionals deal with stigma directly. Is society ready to be gay blind?

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May 6 2009, 11:48AM

NRCC: Dems Have Complete Power, No Accountability

by Chris Good

The National Republican Congressional Committee is hitting five Blue Dog democrats with radio ads that, in addition to featuring sampled dog barks and accuse them of being "lap dogs" to President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, charge that the country is being run by "one party, with complete power, and no accountability"--seeking to turn Democrats' electoral successes and unchecked (pending Al Franken) majorities against them.

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May 6 2009, 10:40AM

McCain, Graham: Congress Must Help Craft Detainee Policy

by Chris Good

Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) give their take on how to handle suspected terrorist detainees in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Critical points: let civilian judges hear habeas motions in a designated national security court and take into account the notion that some detainees still pose a threat, meaning they don't need to be either tried or released.

Congress, they say, should play a role in crafting detainee policy. At present, the Department of Justice is reviewing detainee policy and is expected to come up with a set of proposals, as mandated by the president on the day he announced the pending closure of Guantanamo. And so far, there has been no major push in Congress to lay out a comprehensive detainee policy, one that gets into the weeds, policy-wise, of how the military and the executive should handle detainees. If there's a question as to whether it's Congress's place to assert that control over the executive, McCain and Graham have given their answer.

It's worth noting that If McCain and Graham's point is taken, some of the onus would be removed from President Obama. The previous administration crafted detainee policy unilaterally in the executive branch; while Obama is an electoral answer to Bush on this and other issues, he and Attorney General Eric Holder may not have to come up with the answers on their own.

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May 6 2009, 8:42AM

Remember Obama's Campaign Promise To Gays?

by Marc Ambinder

Re: the news today that the Maine House of Representatives voted in favor of gay marriage. And the Washington, D.C. city council now recognizes marriages performed elsewhere, which is big news to some in our Atlantic household.

A tipping point of sorts has been reached, and there soon will be plenty of -- hundreds of thousands of, perhaps millions of -- gay couples who are living in unions sanctioned by their state and who will receive the state benefits afforded to married couples.

They'll be entirely unrecognized by the federal government, however, and the thousand or so privileges accorded to married couples by the United States will remain unavailable to them. This can either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending upon your point of view, but for the campaign version of Barack Obama, it is unfair. He promised, as a candidate, to push for federal recognition of same-sex couples even as he personally reiterated his opposition to gay marriage.

To my knowledge, aside from some work on partnership benefits for federal employees who have such unions, Obama hasn't given this subject much of a thought since becoming President. He's disinclined to wade into culture war stuff now, had other things on his mind, of course, but it seems as if the subject itself is climbing its way onto his agenda. The gay lobby in Washington is powerful and it has been patient.... so far.

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May 5 2009, 7:54PM

Justice Department's Internal Memo Inquiry Reaches Pivotal Stage

by Marc Ambinder

A draft version of the Justice Department's internal investigation of Bush Administration lawyers who wrote memos authorizing torture has concluded that at least two of them are guilty of significant misconduct, two sources with direct knowledge of the draft said.

The Associated Press reported tonight that the draft version of the report does not recommend criminal charges against lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee. But the sources said that the report lays out, in exquisite detail, a significant number of exchanges between the lawyers and the White House as several of the memos were being crafted. The report includes excerpts from internal memoranda and e-mail messages.

Ostensibly, Yoo, an attorney for the Office of Legal Counsel and Bybee, that section's chief, were tasked by Attorney General John Ashcroft with determining whether so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" violated U.S. law and treaty obligations. But a draft report, prepared by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Review, suggests that, at the direction of the White House, the OLC worked to justify a policy that had already been determined and did not begin their inquiry from a neutral position.

It is not clear -- and sources would not say -- who in the White House communicated with the two lawyers about the memos, and it is not clear whether Yoo or Bybee felt unduly pressured to provide a legal framework for a decision already made by senior administration officials.

The AP reported that an early version of the draft recommended that the California State Bar Association seek the disbarment of Yoo, now a Berkeley law professor, and Bybee, an appellate judge. A Justice Department official said that the final decision had not been made.

Comments by Yoo, Bybee and OLC attorney Steven Bradbury, an author of a later memo, were due on Monday. Yoo, in particular, submitted an extensive document disputing some of the review's main contentions. These responses will be incorporated into the final draft, although the conclusions of the examiners will likely not change.

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May 5 2009, 4:00PM

John Weaver Advising Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. On 2012

by Marc Ambinder

Among the informal strategic advisers to potential 2012 presidential aspirant Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. (R-UT): John Weaver, formerly the chief strategist to Sen. John McCain.

This is a sign that Huntsman is thinking seriously about his future. It's also a testament to loyalty: Huntsman was one of the first governors to endorse McCain and refused to withdraw his endorsement during the dark period of the Republican nominee's campaign.

Weaver, who was putting together McCain's pre-campaign campaign, helped recruit Huntsman.

Weaver declined to talk about his work for Huntsman now.

The native Texan, 50, has a long history in politics. He worked for Phil Gramm's presidential campaign in 1996, for Republicans as diverse as Jeff Sessions and Tommy Thompson, and was McCain's political director in 2000.

He grew disillusioned with the Republican Party after the 2000 election, briefly became a Democrat, survived a bout of aggressive cancer, and got to work advising McCain on a 2008 bid.

Following a now well-chronicled dispute over budget and the direction of the campaign in the middle of 2007, Weaver resigned. He reconciled with McCain but was kept out of the campaign; still, he helped where he could, brokering the critical endorsement of Charlie Crist, Florida's governor, ahead of that state's primary.

May 5 2009, 3:24PM

All Webby In Here Today; Atlantic Correspondents Launch

by Marc Ambinder

A bit of a surprise greeted us citizens of the Atlantic Media universe today. Not that we won the Webby for Best Magazine website -- we kinda knew we'd get that one.*

But we were also awarded the "People's Choice" Webby in the same category, even though we didn't organize any formal campaign to build support. So we owe our readers some gratitude, and our thanks.

Speaking of gratitude: it is quite humbling to work for a company that is adding money and resources to its online operations during the worst recession since the Depression. The Atlantic is growing, and we'll be adding more features and content soon -- in no small part because of, yet again, our faithful and new readers.

It's entirely a coincidence that news of the award comes on the heels of the launch of another Atlantic expansion. We've convinced 12 fantastic thought leaders to become Atlantic correspondents and blog for us weekly. They include Academy Award winning documentarian Alex Gibney (an Oscar is still a lot cooler than a Webby), adventurist Lane Wallace, tech and culture historian Edward Tenner, my personal favorite appeals court judge -- the incomparable Richard Posner -- and one of the funniest humorists of our time, Harry Shearer. And then, if that weren't enough -- Richard Florida, Hua Hsu, Daniel Akst, Lisa Margonelli, William Haseltine and James Warren. They'll be writing on topics as diverse as medicine, the Army Corps of Engineers, the outdoors and the future of capitalism.

Please patronize our Atlantic Correspondents. And patronize them, too -- or comment, or criticize or cajole.

May 5 2009, 2:27PM

Open Source Cyber Security

by Marc Ambinder

I'm relatively new to the cyber security problem -- and it is a problem, even though the United States government was calm enough to spend only $5 million [not a typo!] on Internet infrastructure in 2008, and I'm still trying to ask the right questions.

Acronymed government agencies want control over the terrain, and their client contractors are waging PR wars on their behalf. It's a sight to behold.

But the real debate -- or, rather, the key to at least getting the questions right -- might be found in the nature of the Net itself.

Rob Beckstrom is the former chief U.S. cyber security official who resigned in March because, he said, the National Security Agency was muscling into his operation too aggressively, and that the culture of intelligence differs profoundly from the culture need to build and operate a cyber security infrastructure.

Via e-mail, he sent some thoughts about what the U.S. government must do -- and by implication -- what it should not do.

"'Who's in charge' has been a topic of political debate in DC since Dick Clarke first raised the cybersecurity issue in the late 1990's," he said via e-mail. "No matter how and where the boxes are drawn, let's get to work on re-architecting and evolving the Internet for the benefit of all."

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May 5 2009, 2:05PM

Ridge Vs. Specter Vs. Toomey: What We Can Learn

by Chris Good

A new Susquehanna poll shows former Gov. and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge (R) beating newly Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter in a general-election matchup, reinforcing Quinnipiac's finding that Ridge would have a better shot at winning the seat for the GOP than would the more conservative Pat Toomey, whose gigantic primary lead over Specter, some say, forced the Senate veteran out of the GOP's ranks.

Quinnipiac found that Specter would beat Ridge 46-43 percent; Susquehanna has Ridge up 39-38 percent. Of course, these numbers could shift significantly between now and 2010.

Perhaps a more relevant question is how Ridge would fare against Toomey in a primary matchup, and no one appears to have measured that. Ridge will have to beat Toomey for us to see a Ridge vs. Specter general election. (Though, presumably, Ridge's advantage in general election viability could help him gain votes in a GOP primary.)

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May 5 2009, 1:10PM

Sotomayor's Public Image At Risk, Early

by Marc Ambinder

If the White House and Democrats have gained political insight from the experience of the first 100 days, Barack Obama's first nomination to the Supreme Court will put these skills to the test.

The White House might want to brief those liberal activists pushing Obama to nominate 2nd Circuit judge Sonia Sotomayor on one lesson in particular: the predecisional period -- the period before the White House engages on a particular issue -- is much more important than it seems. (Just ask anyone at the Department of the Treasury about this.)

Few outside the White House know whether the Sotomayor chatter is based on anything other than her popularity among center-left jurists, although her name has been the subject of conversation among some top officials recently. Sotomayor is seen as a compassionate voice for the underprivileged, and she has a solid, if unspectacular, record of jurisprudence. (For that reason alone, I don't know if she'll make the short list; Obama seems to go for the superlatives.)

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May 5 2009, 11:59AM

Correction: Kenneth Baer Never On Bill Maher

by Chris Good

In a post yesterday on interrogation policy, I referenced a Bill Maher interview with former CIA agent Kenneth Baer. Kenneth Baer is actually the communications director for the Office of Management and Budget, not a former CIA agent, and was not on Bill Maher's show. It was Bob Baer, an actual former intelligence officer, who discussed interrogations with Maher in April.

May 5 2009, 11:51AM

McConnell Attacks Obama's Judicial Philosophy

by Chris Good

McConnell foreshadows the fight to replace Souter, accusing President Obama of slanted views on how to pick a judge. From a floor statement by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell yesterday:

Over the years, there has been a growing tendency among some on the Left to pick or promote judges based on policy and political preferences, and President Obama's past statements on judicial appointments strongly suggest that he shares this view.

As a candidate for President, he said that his criteria for a judicial nominee would be someone who would empathize with particular parties or particular groups. This viewpoint was evident again last week when, in describing a good nominee, the President seemed to stress his or her ability to connect with a particular person or group over and above a judge's traditional role of applying the law without prejudice.

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May 5 2009, 9:48AM

Cyber Security And That New Czar Smell

by Marc Ambinder

The White House has postponed the rollout of Michelle Hathaway's national cyber security review for scheduling conflicts, we were told last week. As of this morning, the administration offered no guidance about the announcement, or whether any concrete policy recommendations will accompany it.

Judging from Hathaway's remarks last week, administration officials aren't ready to make the key decisions, including budget size, procurement procedure, operational authority, scope and even how best to sell the new entity to the public. Major defense and IT contractors may be frustrated with the lack of detail.

From press reports and some of my own reporting, it does appear that the governing authority for cyber security will rest within the White House, that he Department of Homeland Security will be tasked with creating, from the existing National Cyber Security Center, a large operational entity, and that NSA will play a significant support role.

Various cyber security elements from across the government, with the notable exception of the Department of Defense, will be pulled into this new entity.

If this assemblage -- a new White House chief overseeing patched-together government agencies not directly under his or her control -- sounds familiar, it's because it reminds may in the national security community of the process through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created.

Struggles with Congress, the Defense Department, the CIA and other members of the intelligence community made the office much less bureaucratically relevant than it used to be. In theory, Dennis Blair is the President's chief adviser on all intelligence matters and supervises operations and analysis and some fusion centers. Blair has more authority than President Bush's first DNI, John Negroponte, but there remains duplication and inefficiency. (When John Brennan was advising Obama on intelligence matters during the campaign, he regularly pitched the idea of significant ODNI reform.)

So -- the fears, to put them more concretely, are: Congress will never give the cyber security person the authority she or he will need won't fund the agency properly, and various other government entities, like DoD's cyber command and NSA, not to mention the various cyber security elements of Commerce, OSTP, etc. - will not play along. And since time is of the essence, the Defense Department (and the NSA) will simply assume much of the responsibility over time because they're funded and equipped to handle it.

May 4 2009, 5:33PM

Justice Souter's Dream

by Jeannette Lee

A day after announcing his retirement, Justice David Souter hinted at the approach to jurisprudence he might want to see in his replacement. Souter gamely showed up to an Oxford University alumni luncheon at the Willard Hotel on a Saturday, along with Justice Stephen Breyer. Harvard Law professor (and former Souter clerk) Noah Feldman moderated the talk.

Here is Souter advocating what can be described as a philosophy of many philosophies. Feldman has just asked whether judges should have philosophies (Souter says it can't be helped) and whether the public should know what they are:

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May 4 2009, 5:24PM

Rice Answers 4th Grader On Interrogations

by Chris Good

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice answers a question from a 4th grader about Bush administration interrogation tactics on Sunday at the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation's Capital.

May 4 2009, 5:03PM

Potential Crises For Obama

by Chris Good

As the political media get done evaluating President Obama at his 100-days mark, Robert D. Kaplan says: ignore it. Obama has yet to face a real crisis to assay his true character and lay it bare for the nation, and the world to see, he says--but there are some looming.

Getting bogged down in Afghanistan, the unraveling of Pakistan, and Vladimir Putin becoming a dictator in Russia are all potential crisis Obama could face, Kaplan says.

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May 4 2009, 3:23PM

DLC 2.0: Help People Move Houses

by Chris Good

The Democratic Leadership Council, the group of centrist/conservative Democrats formerly chaired by then-Gov. Bill Clinton, is under new leadership as CEO Bruce Reed has taken the reins. Today it released its first major policy proposal/report: the expansion of the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit in the stimulus package to include people who own other real estate.

Much of the rhetoric surrounding homeowner aid has centered on the idea that if people are looking to make a profit, they shouldn't get taxpayer money to do it. The new DLC says just the opposite: a key to ending the recession is to spur the real estate market, and it doesn't matter so much why people are getting into it, just that they are. It's an interesting angle for Demcoratic advocates of private-sector growth, and an interesting time to be one...

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May 4 2009, 11:51AM

The GOP's Future: Let The Discussion Begin

by Derek Thompson

On Saturday morning, in a packed pizza joint in northern Virginia, I watched as three Republican superstars -- Rep. Eric Cantor, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush - kicked off a "national conversation" with Americans to find out what happened to their party, where it's going, and what platform it will run on. The answers from Saturday were, in short: they're not entirely sure, they don't really know, and they're open to suggestions.

Since the defection by Sen. Arlen Specter pushed Republicans to the brink of irrelevance in DC, the GOP decided that if it's going to get back in the game, it should get out of the city. But what struck me was the tension between the party's eagerness to hear new ideas and the conviction that the ideas they have are really fine, already. After all, following a question from the restaurant's manager about how to help small businesses, a friend leaned over a whispered, "Do you think he'll say cut taxes?" A couple minutes later, Romney intoned: "The right thing to do is lower taxes.

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May 4 2009, 11:11AM

Quote of the Day: Steele Courts Moderates in WI

by Chris Good

All you moderates out there, y'all come. I mean, that's the message.

May 4 2009, 11:02AM

Edwards Faces Probe

by Chris Good

The Edwards saga continues to be a dark spot in an otherwise bright era for North Carolina Democrats, who saw an Obama victory in their state and have a new Democratic senator in Kay Hagan.

May 4 2009, 10:33AM

Steele And The Broadening Of Tents

by Chris Good

As the Republican Party struggles to find its footing as a broader coalition of voices and interests, so too does its chairman, Michael Steele. On a diplomatic mission to the political middle on Friday in Wisconsin, Steele said this to reporters at a news conference at the Wisconsin GOP's annual convention in La Crosse, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

"All you moderates out there, y'all come. I mean, that's the message," Steele said at a news conference. "The message of this party is this is a big table for everyone to have a seat. I have a place setting with your name on the front.

"Understand that when you come into someone's house, you're not looking to change it. You come in because that's the place you want to be."

The New York Times documented the GOP's crisis last week as a debate between a broader party or a purer one, and those are the two strains that run through Republican deliberations on the party's future: 1)a welcoming of new voices and 2)a return to conservative principles. Ronald Reagan is used as an example in both arguments.

May 1 2009, 5:00PM

Historians: Obama Borrows From JFK, LBJ, Lincoln, Reagan

by Chris Good

With so many comparisons to FDR in President Obama's first 100 days in office, we asked four presidential historians who else Obama reminds them of. In an online discussion forum at TheAtlantic.com today, we got some good responses.

The coolness of John Kennedy, the sweeping agenda of Lyndon Johnson, Lincoln's team of rivals, and Reagan's ability to communicate a vision all came up as historical parallels for the new commander in chief.

Here are some of our panelist's comparisons:

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May 1 2009, 2:00PM

Britain Ends Its Iraq Mission: A Clearer Path To Afghanistan?

by Chris Good

Britain's six-year presence in Iraq officially came to an end yesterday, as British forces took down their flag at a base in Basra, handing it over to U.S. forces (Pentagon video here). Prime Minister Gordon Brown held a meeting in London with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki; afterwards, he declared Iraq a "success story" at a news conference.

The Iraq war was deeply unpopular in Britain, and it drew massive protests, especially during Britain's initial involvement. Indeed, the size of protests abroad sometimes dwarfed those in America: on a worldwide day of protesting in February 2003, a London protest drew 750,000; Barcelona, 650,000; and Rome, 1.3 million, all according to police estimates, as it became apparent to the world that American forces would invade. We all remember the international tension felt during those days, despite the coalition of nations that supported America as it toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. For a reminder of America's strained relationships in 2003, and the wildly varying strains of foreign policy that ran through our culture, one needs only to remember Freedom Fries.

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May 1 2009, 1:41PM

White House On MySpace, Facebook, Twitter

by Chris Good

As of today, the White House has an official MySpace page... and an official Facebook page... and a Twitter feed.

The White House, in a post to its Whitehouse.gov blog, said this new media rollout is an attempt to enact Obama's vision "to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative," as expressed in his last weekly address to the nation. It's using the rollout as an opportunity to disseminate information about swine flu (officially known as the H1N1 virus.

This makes Obama the first president on MySpace and~~, I believe,~~ Facebook: *major presidential candidates used the online networking sites in 2008, but President Obama is the first sitting president to use them.

The White House will update its MySpace page and Facebook wall with information to stay connected with the public online. Its latest post on Facebook, added at 12:51 p.m. today, contains a link to the Centers for Disease Control page on swine flu (officially called the H1N1 virus), encouraging readers to follow the link and stay informed. A similar entry has been posted to the White House Twitter feed. The White House's MySpace page features content directly fed from the Whitehouse.gov blog.

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May 1 2009, 11:31AM

SCOTUS Notes

by Marc Ambinder

I'll be updating our David Souter feature story all day as news and informed speculation (! -- take that, Howie K!) comes in. I'm also twittering. Other political news will be posted in this space here.

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May 1 2009, 11:03AM

The Stealth Green Revolution

by Joshua Green

A hundred years from now, Barack Obama's first hundred days may be remembered more for his energy policy than for his bank bailouts-at least if things go according to plan. Without a great deal of fanfare or attention, Obama has made significant progress toward overhauling our national energy policy on a scale that's never before been attempted.

For the last century or so, the government's approach to energy, especially electricity, has been to encourage its production as plentifully and cheaply as possible. This has been achieved mainly by burning fossil fuels, which, as we all now know, has created a wee problem in the form of massive carbon emissions that are heating up the planet and threatening catastrophe. On the campaign trail, Obama pledged to move the United States to a greener economy (thereby vastly reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions), and in so doing, serve as an example to developing countries like China and India which, along with the United States, are the world's major carbon emitters.

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