THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 3/30/12 [Friday Morning Edition]

THE CASE OF THE CENTURY: This week, the Supreme Court heard three days of arguments on the constitutionality of Obamacare (it’s okay to call it that now). On Monday, the Court heard argument on the implications of the Tax Injunction Act, which holds that taxpayers cannot challenge the constitutionality of a tax until they pay it. If the law applied to Obamacare, the Court would not be able to hear the case until the “tax” portion (the penalty for having no insurance) kicks in, in 2014. The Justices seemed to have no trouble getting around the law, and appeared poised to move forward and rule on the law’s constitutionality now. (Dahlia Lithwick’s wrap-up of Day One is here.) On Tuesday, the Court heard the real meat of the argument: whether the individual mandate is constitutional. By all accounts the Government did not have its best day in court. The conservative justices repeatedly pressed Solicitor General Don Verrilli for a “limiting principle” -- i.e., a way to say that, while the government could force you to buy insurance, it couldn’t force you to do other things, like join a gym or buy broccoli. Although there are myriad convincing, simple, and clear limiting principles on hand, Verrilli struggled to articulate any to the Court, leaving court-watchers perplexed, frustrated, and predicting disaster. The bottom line is that the health care market is unlike any other market: In no other market do we allow people to take what they need even when they haven’t or can’t pay for it. When Verrilli brought up this point, saying that we have “obligated ourselves” to caring for the sick and dying when they show up at the hospital, regardless of ability to pay, and that’s why the mandate is both necessary and unlikely to spill to other sectors, Justice Scalia retorted, “Well, don’t obligate yourself!” Let them die! If that seems extreme, Wednesday’s arguments ventured even farther down the rabbit hole, when the Justices contemplated doing away with all of Medicaid. For reals. There were two arguments on Wednesday: First, the Court puzzled over what portions of the law would have to fall if they found the mandate unconstitutional (i.e., whether that provision was severable from the rest of the bill or whether it would take other parts -- or the whole thing -- down with it). Turning the entire idea of judicial restraint upside down, Justice Kennedy suggested it would somehow show more restraint to strike down the entire law than to just cut out the mandate. Huh? (The role that the filibuster plays here is also interesting.) Then it discussed the expanded Medicaid provision. Garrett Epps explains: “The ACA offers states massive new Medicaid funding, but to get it they must expand their eligibility rules for low-income people. Clement argued that this was ‘coercive.’ The precedent for this argument was as follows: nothing.” And yet, the conservatives seemed to be buying it! They seemed to take seriously the idea that Medicaid itself may be unconstitutional. There’s really only one possible reaction: !!!!!!!!!!. Do that -- make 10 exclamation points -- with your face, and you have an image of how every non-radical legal prognosticator looked this whole week. What was perhaps most remarkable was the extent to which the conservatives on the bench had internalized the various right-wing talking points about the law -- talking points that have nothing to do with the constitutionality but focus instead on the politics, the policy, or made-up outrages that don’t exist in the law at all. It’s impossible to say what will happen at this point. But it is certainly true that liberal scholars who took the Court vastly underestimated the politicized, partisan zeal with which the conservative Justices would attack Obama’s singular achievement.

Some more recommended reading: Jon Chait has a great take on the conservative panic that engendered the outrage to Obamacare here. Jonathan Cohn marvels at the idea that the decision not to use the word “tax” could be the entire basis for striking down the law. Read Dahlia Lithwick’s wrap-up of Day Two and Day Three. Matt Yglesias points out that there’s no “limiting principle” on the power to tax, but that doesn’t make taxes unconstitutional. And Mark Tushnet wonders if Scalia has jumped the shark.

GOP LASHES ITSELF TO RYAN BUDGET: Yesterday, the House voted to approve Paul “I’m Extremely Radical But The Media Pretends Not To Know That” Ryan’s budget, which, you’ll recall, essentially ends the federal government by 2050 (excluding defense, Social Security, and Medicare), and spells complete doom for Medicaid (although the Supreme Court might just beat him to the punch on that one!). Oh, and in justifying his budget’s large increases in defense spending even as it eviscerates the rest of government operations, Paul Ryan asserted that the generals who had requested a smaller budget were simply lying. What do you know, the budget passed 228 to 191, with every single Democrat, joined by 10 Republicans, opposing the measure. (It should be noted that most of those GOP no-votes appear to be based on the idea that the bill is not radical enough.) Given the extreme nature of the budget, and its extreme unpopularity, it’s worthwhile to point out, again, that this vote was wholly unnecessary and is thus fairly mystifying. “To tell the truth,” Jon Bernstein writes, “I can’t really think of any good precedent: a vote on something that neither the party’s conservative or moderate wings wants to take on something that has no chance of advancing beyond that chamber.” Ed Kilgore’s explanation: “All in all, it appears House Republicans are so upset that they were backed into a bipartisan agreement last year...that they want to put on a demonstration of what Congress would be like if there were no Democrats in it. Democrats should be very grateful.”

ROMNEY LOVES THE TASTE OF HIS SHOE: This meme is getting a little old, I admit, but sometimes it’s just too good to pass off. After extolling the trees in Michigan, giving shout-outs to his friends who own football and Nascar teams, telling audiences that he enjoys firing people and that his $300,000-plus earnings from public speaking were “not much,” Mitt Romney told a hilarious anecdote this week about his father closing down auto factories in Michigan and moving the jobs to Wisconsin. More substantively, Romney faced perhaps the toughest questions he’s received yet on his opposition to Obamacare from, of all people, Jay Leno. Leno asked him whether he would rescind the coverage guarantees for people with preexisting conditions, and Romney cagily answered that those people would still have coverage if they already have insurance. Leno pressed, asking about those who haven’t been able to get insurance before. What would happen to them? Romney wouldn’t really give an answer, but the implication was clear: What do we do about those people? Nothing. Even more interestingly (and hilariously), Romney’s answer provided an excellent explanation for why a mandate is necessary. Romney told Leno, “Well, if they’re 45 years old, and they show up, and they say, I want insurance, because I’ve got a heart disease, it’s like, `Hey guys, we can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you’re well, and if you get ill, then you’re going to be covered.’” Exactly! You can’t let people wait until they get sick before they try to buy insurance, especially if we have a requirement that insurance companies cannot discriminate against people with preexisting conditions. The anti-discrimination provision necessitates a mandate, so that people don’t game the system and drive up prices for the rest of us. Romney clearly understands this; indeed, he seems to sincerely believe in its veracity. And yet, there he goes, proclaiming that Obamacare is part of a “broader attack on economic freedom unlike anything we have ever seen before.” In the race for who has less intellectual honesty and a lower respect for his voters, no one beats Romney.

GOOD NEWS -- Idaho Drops Ultrasound Bill; Wisconsin Recall Happening: Good News Item #1: “The Republican-controlled Legislature is backing away from a bill requiring women seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound. The legislation stalled after State Representative Thomas F. Loertscher said on Tuesday that he would not schedule a committee hearing, ending the bill’s chances this year.” Item #2: The recall of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is officially on, and is expected to be set for June 5.

Must Read of the Week: The right-wing fringe has taken it upon itself to smear Trayvon Martin. Because we all know that if he ever did anything wrong in his life ever, then he totally deserved to get shot and killed on his way home from the corner store.
Fun Video of the Week: The Daily Show team is absolutely brilliant on Trayvon Martin’s death and its racial meanings.

THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 3/22/12

THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 3/22/12

YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TRAYVON MARTIN: If you haven’t already heard about this case, you need to. Late last month, 17-year-old Trayvon, an African American, was shot and killed in Florida by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old white and/or Hispanic man. Zimmerman, who was armed with a gun, claimed self-defense; Martin was armed with a pack of Skittles and an ice tea. Zimmerman saw Martin walking through a gated community to a friend’s house where he and his parents were visiting, after going to get a snack. Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watchman, saw Martin and called 911, claiming that Martin looked “real suspicious” and that he was “up to no good” and may be on drugs. “These assholes. They always get away,” he told the 911 dispatcher. Zimmerman followed Martin on foot, despite the 911 dispatcher telling him expressly not to. After that, it’s not entirely clear what happened. ABC News reports that Trayvon was on the phone with a friend and told her that a man was following him. She told him to run away, but he thought he had escaped the follower. Suddenly he was there again, and the girl told ABC News she heard Trayvon ask, “What, are you following me for?” before she heard pushing noises and the phone drop to the ground, disconnecting the call. In other 911 calls from neighbors, you can hear someone screaming for help and pleading -- Martin’s parents say it’s his voice -- and then a gun shot go off, silencing the pleas. The shooting itself is tragic enough, but the real horror started when the police arrived. They apparently accepted Zimmerman’s story completely at face value, and failed to administer a drug or alcohol test -- a standard part of normal procedures. And then they let Zimmerman go. He was never arrested, and remains free today. The police say that nothing has disproven Zimmerman’s self-defense claim. Late Monday afternoon, the Department of Justice announced that it would open an investigation into the state police’s handling of the case, a welcome development. The police chief is certainly raising questions into the adequacy of the investigation he ran. He declared that, while he’s sure Zimmerman would change things if he could, so would Martin -- the victim who did nothing wrong. And then he suggested that it was himself, a white man in uniform, who was somehow the victim of racial targeting. (This evening, that police chief temporarily stepped down.)

Ta-Nehsis Coates* has been covering this story beautifully and compellingly. Read his posts here, here, and here; here he highlights what a grand jury investigating Zimmerman will be focusing on, and provides a link to an interview he did on the topic on the Brian Lehrer Show. He also has this essential post highlighting two other cases of “Stand Your Ground” killings. James Fallows urges people (and journalists) not to think of this just as a “race story.” Emily Bazelon has a history of Florida’s self-defense/stand your ground law here, and here she concludes that Zimmerman is almost certainly lying about what happened. Charles Blow covers the story here, and Mother Jones has a comprehensive and thorough run-down of the story (along with lots of very upsetting 911 calls) here. And not-so-liberal-at-all John McWhorter shares a moving and personal perspective.

COURT SHUTS ITS EYES TO GENDER DISCRIMINATION: This week, in a five-to-four split, the Supreme Court held that state employees cannot sue the state (their employer) when the state violates the Family Medical Leave Act, a federal law requiring employers to grant employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to recover from illness or care for a sick family member. A 2003 case allowed suits against state employers for violations of the portion of the law dealing with caring for sick family members; this week’s decision came to the opposite conclusion regarding violations of the self-care component of the law. This is a bit confusing, and it sounds dry, but this has extraordinary bearing on the legality of state-sanctioned gender discrimination, and it’s seriously important. So stick with me!

Because of something called “sovereign immunity,” normal people can’t sue states unless Congress has specifically allowed it. And Congress can only allow such suits pursuant to their power under the Fourteenth Amendment (authorizing Congress to enforce the amendment “by appropriate legislation”). So the question in this week’s case was whether the self-care provision was enacted to combat sex discrimination (and was thus enacted under the Fourteenth Amendment), or rather was passed only through Congress’s interstate commerce power -- a power which cannot abrogate state sovereign immunity. The 2003 case I mentioned above found that the care-for-others provision was a key part of Congress’s effort to break down gender roles: Justice Rehnquist (Rehnquist!), writing for the Court, explained that Congress had authority to remove “the pervasive sex-role stereotype that caring for family members is women’s work.”

But the current Court is far, far to the right of even Justice Rehnquist. Justice Kennedy wrote for the Court to find that the self-care provision was not similarly part of a congressional anti-discrimination project. Since it was not a “congruent and proportional” response to documented sex discrimination, it could not be part of Congress’s Section 5 power and thus could not abrogate sovereign immunity.

This is a really big deal, I promise you. The conservative majority was blind to this argument (or just ignored it), but the people who absolutely reap the most protection from the FMLA self-care provision are pregnant women and new moms. As you know, the United States has no automatic maternity leave; the FMLA is the closest thing we have. As Justice Ginsburg wrote in dissent, “[T]he overarching aim of the FMLA [was] to make it feasible for women to work while sustaining family life.” This decision allows state employers to violate the FMLA -- meaning they can fire women who take maternity leave -- without fear of monetary consequence, since wronged employees cannot sue them for damages. Though states could face injunctive suits, they essentially have immunity to fire pregnant women and new moms. I’m hoping that, day by day, I’ll start getting used to living in 1961...

RYAN EXTREMO BUDGET V.2: Since last year’s right-wing budget was such a hit [Note: It was not a hit], GOP whiz kid Paul Ryan decided to release another right-wing fantasy budget this year, which passed the House budget committee by exactly one vote after two Republicans defected. ThinkProgress lists the five worst parts about the budget, but by far the most troubling has to be its absolutely massive and unprecedented cuts to programs benefitting the poor, especially Medicaid, even as it gives what some estimate to be a $3 trillion tax cut to corporations and the wealthy. “Ryan's budget asks for enormous sacrifice from, say, disabled Medicaid beneficiaries even as it appears to provide enormous tax benefits to wealthier Americans,” Ezra Klein explains. “The Republican Party has backed itself into a fiscal strategy in which this kind of concentrated sacrifice on the part of the poor is the only possible path forward.” Ryan’s projected deficit savings depend entirely on the assumption that, by 2050, everything the federal government does besides Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending will have to cease to exist -- no more air traffic control, Pell grants, scientific research, food safety regulation, highway spending, etc. “Republicans don’t really want to shut down the FDA, the FBI, and the national parks, not to mention patrolling the border and farm programs and roads,” Jonathan Bernstein insists. “And yet that’s the implication of this document. It’s not even remotely realistic — and neither is Ryan’s claim that his budget would cut the deficit way down.” It’s also important to remember that his budget would explode the ranks of the uninsured. “Altogether, the CBO says, spending on Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and subsidies for private insurance would be nearly 75 percent lower in 2050 than projected under current law,” which at least one group says means between 14 and 27 million people would lose their insurance. If you think this represents an extremely extreme -- one might say “severely” extreme -- position, you’d be right. It’s also the position that Mitt Romney enthusiastically and unequivocally embraced this week. Your Republican nominee, folks!

RELUCTANT GOP UPDATE: I don’t know about you, but I am officially sick of covering the GOP primary race. It was fun for a moment there, when it looked like a series of certifiably crazy people may have taken the prize. But now it’s just boring and painful and boring; all we have is Romney’s Uncanny Valley-esque demeanor and his flabbergastingly omnipresent mendacity. So Romney won Illinois by a huge margin this week, and keeps his steady track toward the nomination (though he likely won’t accumulate enough delegates to make it official until mid-June). God knows what Gingrich is still doing in the race. John Dickerson points out that Gingrich’s plan -- to deny Romney the magic number of 1,444 delegates so that it all gets thrown open at the convention, where he will sweep in as the only nominee who can take Obama on in a debate (side note: Has Gingrich ever actually watched his own debate performances? Or Obama’s?) -- has a major flaw (besides the obvious, reality-based reasons): The GOP rules require the eventual nominee to have won a plurality in at least five state primaries. So far, Gingrich has won only 2.

So Romney may be inevitable, but that doesn’t mean he’s at all -- and I mean at all -- good at campaigning. The big story this week was not, it turns out, his double-digit Illinois win but rather a comment one of his advisors made the very next morning. (This isn’t the first time Romney has stepped on his own narrative the day after a big win.) When asked on CNBC whether the drawn-out GOP fight would force Romney to take hard-right positions that could hurt him in the general campaign, Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom replied:

Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.

Unsurprisingly, Romney has been roundly mocked and criticized for this aide’s comment. The image almost perfectly encapsulates both conservatives’ massive discomfort with Mitt “severely conservative” Romney and liberals’ massive disgust over his wholesale abandonment of his governing record. It also reminds me of the essential importance of not letting Mitt let go of the extreme far-right positions he has staked out in this campaign once we get around to the general election. We simply can’t let him erase the comments he’s made.

GOOD NEWS -- Court Holds Defendants Entitled to Effective Assistance of Counsel During Plea Bargaining: For the first time, the Supreme Court held this week that criminal defendants are entitled to the effective assistance of counsel during the plea bargaining stage. Given that 98 percent of criminal matters are resolved through plea deals rather than trials, the decision “‘constitute[s] the single greatest revolution in the criminal justice process since Gideon v. Wainwright provided indigents the right to counsel,’ said Wesley M. Oliver, a law professor at Widener University, referring to the landmark 1963 decision.”

Must-Read of the Week: Three reasons why Republicans are blocking the Violence Against Women Act: Gays, immigrants, and Native Americans.
Must Watch Video of the Week: There are no words to describe how impressive this is.


*Ta-Nehisi Coates will be at Yale next week to participate in an incredible panel discussion on the Civil War. Moderator David Blight is a truly incredible speaker and scholar. If you’re at all interested in the Civil War and you're in the New Haven area, you won’t want to miss this!

Details: Thursday, March 29, 2012. 4:30 p.m. Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High Street, Room 102
To commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War and Emancipation, the GLC will host a roundtable discussion with five major historians and writers, moderated by GLC Director, David W. Blight. The group takes up questions of the changing character and controversies over the memory of the Civil War and Emancipation over the past 150 years. The panel includes: Gary Gallagher, Stephanie McCurry, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Andrew Delbanco, and John Fabian Witt. Books will be available for sale following the event.

THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 3/15/12 [SPRING BREAK EDITION]

ROMNEY’S STILL THE FRONTRUNNER: On Tuesday, Rick Santorum pulled off two surprise victories over Gingrich and Romney, “winning” Mississippi and Alabama’s primaries. I use the scare quotes because Santorum’s beat his two rivals only by a few points in what were essentially three-way races. What’s more, Romney still came out ahead in the delegate race on Tuesday, because of his big wins in Hawaii and American Somoa (which, according to the New York Times, gave 100% of its vote to Romney), emerging with 43 delegates total, 7 more than Santorum and 18 more than Gingrich. In fact, because of the way delegates were apportioned in Mississippi (along district lines), Romney ended up with one more delegate from Mississippi than Santorum, even though he lost the state by 2 points. The point of all this number-speak is to show that, while Romney may be a weak and fairly pathetic frontrunner, he is still the frontrunner, and it will take a miracle for anyone to snag the nomination from his clutches. One such miracle that appears highly unlikely to happen is Gingrich dropping out. As long as he and Santorum split the uber-conservative vote, Romney will continue to rack up delegates on his steady march to the nomination. Although Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond had suggested only a week ago that Gingrich would drop out if he lost Alabama and Mississippi, on Tuesday night he changed his tune: “Whoever said that should be flogged,” he declared, as he insisted Gingrich still had a path to the nomination. But Gingrich’s continuation in the race is the surest thing Romney has to victory. As Chait put it: “Gingrich was the only reason the two southern states were even remotely close. Their sheer bloody-minded determination to nominate a genuine maniac as opposed to a fake one overwhelmed Romney’s Establishment support and massive financial advantage. These people have been told that Romney is all but certain to win and that an extended race will be hurtful, but they do not care.” The next big race is Illinois, which heads to the polls next week. Hilariously enough, the only reason the race there is competitive is because Romney’s campaign, back in January, allowed what appeared to be joke-candidate Santorum to remain on the ballot in 10 districts where Santorum’s amateur campaign failed to qualify. As a ghost of GOP candidates past might say, “Oops!”

STAGGERING FACTOID OF THE DAY: Via the Washington Post: “For each delegate he has earned, his campaign and a pro-Santorum super PAC have spent about $17,500 on TV ads, according to data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group. For Romney, the equivalent figure is about $67,700.”

DOJ SLAPS DOWN TEXAS VOTER ID: On Monday, the DOJ blocked Texas’s voter ID law, under power authorized by the Voting Rights Act. The DOJ found that the law would disproportionately harm Hispanic voters; data suggested that between 7 and 11 percent of Hispanic voters lack government-issued ID. The DOJ noted that Texas had failed to explain why it could not meet its goals regarding voter integrity without such a punishing law. Just days before the DOJ blocked the law, Virginia’s legislature passed its own measure, though it may face less scrutiny from the DOJ because it allows a broader set of identification forms, including utility bills. GOP legislatures in seven states moved to pass these bills immediately after taking power in the 2010 elections. (I guess the electorates that elected them can be trusted...) Pennsylvania is the latest, with the Governor signing the bill just hours after it passed the state House yesterday (with every single Democrat voting against, and every Republican save 3 voting in favor). And in Wisconsin, a second judge in a week blocked that state’s voter ID bill, holding the law violated the state constitution. At its most charitable interpretation, this is a solution in search of a problem; more realistically, it is a craven power-grab by GOP legislators who have made it perfectly clear that certain sorts of people simply shouldn’t be voting.


Romney-Really-Said-That-Moment of the Week: Remember how Romney said he had a lot of friends who are Nascar team owners, so that’s how he related to Nascar fans? Turns out his friends aren’t limited to race-car enthusiasts. When discussing the NFL this week, Romney once again failed wildly at appearing normal while explaining his connection to the sport: “But I’ve got a lot of good friends, the owner Miami Dolphins, and the New York Jets — both owners are friends of mine.”
Definitive Fact-Check of the Week: You know the impetus for the Tea Party was supposedly Obama’s unprecedented, out-of-control spending? Guess what? Really not true.
Absolutely MUST Read of the Week: This week, Doonesbury tackled the war on women’s right in a series of cartoons that were promptly censored in about 40 papers, including the LA Times. The 4 strips that have been released so far are a must (I think the whole series will have six strips, ending on Saturday). Start here, and then keep clicking “next” on the bottom of the strip to read the rest. (And here’s an interview with Gary Trudeau about the controversy caused by his comics.)
Must-Read of the Week: Romney’s Health Care Evasions: A History, by Jonathan Chait
Fun Video of the Week: Obama takes the fight right to...Rutherford B. Hayes.