Month: October 2013

John Boehner as Johnny Rocco

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

An important point from Kevin Drum on the Tea-Publican hostage taking demands. John Boehner Has Been Cruzified on a Cross of Tea:

By the end of September, the Republican strategy had become crystal
clear: demand unceasing concessions from Democrats at every opportunity
without offering anything in return and without any negotiation. A month
ago, Democrats might have shrugged over the medical device tax. Today, they
know perfectly well what it would mean to let it go. It means that when
the debt ceiling deadline comes up, there will be yet another demand.
When the 6-week CR is up, there will be yet another. If and when
appropriations bills are passed, there will be yet another. We've already seen the list.
There simply won't be any end to the hostage taking. As their price for
not blowing up the country, there will be an unending succession of
short-term CRs and short-term debt limit extensions used as leverage for
picking apart Obamacare—and everything else Democrats care about—piece
by piece.

There's no way that any political party anywhere in the world would
willingly put itself in this position. Does this mean that Democrats are
"jamming" Boehner, leaving him no way to save some face? Yes it does,
and human nature being what it is, that's truly unfortunate. But what
other choice do they have? The newly Cruz-ified Republican Party has
left them with no alternative.

First GOP Gubernatorial Forum a major disappointment

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

It's only 2013, but the first GOP Gubernatorial forum was held last Thursday, sans Governor Jan Brewer who may decide to challenge Arizona's constitutional term limits provision. From this report by the Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required), the field of candidates is a major disappointment. GOP gubernatorial candidates take the stage at first forum:

Secretary of State Ken ["Birther"] Bennett, Sen. [Capn'] Al Melvin, Dr. John Molina, former GoDaddy executive Christine Jones, and former Maricopa County Attorney [Saint] Andrew Thomas took the stage Oct. 3 at a forum hosted by the Maricopa County Republican Party.

Artist's rendition from the forum.

Alice

The candidates were largely on the same page on most issues. All five opposed the education standards known as Common Core, vowed to fight to protect Arizona’s sovereignty from the federal government and pledged to completely follow the Republican Party’s platform. Opposition to Gov. Jan Brewer’s Medicaid expansion plan was nearly universal, and several candidates spoke of the need to bolster Arizona’s economy by lowering taxes.

The only differentiation on issues such as
Medicaid expansion and Common Core were the vehemence with which the
candidates opposed them.

In other words, they are all from the anti-government, Neo-Confederate insurrectionist party of radicals. So where is the mythical moderate Republican that the Arizona Republic's Laurie Roberts keeps promising us with her "De-Kook the Capitol" project? Sounds like her project is a complete bust.

Dr. Word says: “The State” is good, but “The Government” is bad

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by David Safier Dr. Word appreciates the linguistic distinction David Sirota made recently between the terms "The State" and "The Government." In a column about the government shutdown, Sirota commented that in our current political culture, institutions which are part of The State are venerated and have been left open while The Government is lambasted, … Read more

Budget rock, meet debt ceiling hard place

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by David Safier All bets are off. I've read analyses of what's going on with the shutdown and the debt ceiling, and I have yet to find anyone who has come up with a decent prediction of what will happen next. Shutdown? Continuing resolution? Debt ceiling? No debt ceiling? No one seems to know. The … Read more

First Monday in October: SCOTUS preview

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

There are a number of controversial cases already on the U.S. Supreme Court docket for its 2013-2014 term, none more so than "Son of Citizens United," the McCutcheon v. FEC case to be argued tomorrow. Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog.com has a preview:

GavelToday is the first Monday in October, which means that this morning the
Justices will return to the bench for the first time since they issued a
series of historic rulings at the end of June.  In the Los Angeles Times,
David Savage looks ahead at the new Term, which he characterizes as one
that “gives the court’s conservative bloc a clear opportunity to shift
the law to the right on touchstone social issues such as abortion, contraception and religion, as well as the political controversy over campaign funding”; at BuzzFeed, Chris Geidner lists his eleven cases “that could change the U.S. in the coming year.”

The editorial board of The New York Times
weighs in on the new Term as well, emphasizing that, although “[n]o
case yet promises the high-profile splash of rulings on national health
care, voting rights or same-sex marriage, . . . in many of them,
long-established Supreme Court precedents may be at risk.”  And in the ABA Journal,
Erwin Chemerinsky focuses on the Court’s October sitting, concluding
that there is “every reason to believe that October Term 2013 will again
involve decisions that affect not only the law and legal system, but
each of us, often in the most important and intimate aspects of our
lives.”

Tomorrow the Court will hear oral arguments in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, in which it will consider the constitutionality of aggregate limits on campaign contributions.  Lyle previewed the case for us last week, while Carolyn Shapiro has a video preview at ISCOTUSnow.  The case is also the focus of the Room for Debate page of The New York Times, where debaters include Richard Hasen (who also has extensive links to coverage of the case at his Election Law Blog), Ilya Shapiro, Bradley Smith, Ciara Torres-Spellicsy, and Elizabeth Wydra; other coverage comes from Kenneth Jost at Jost on Justice, who observes that the Court in Citizens United “made
clear it has no qualms about setting corporations free to spend freely
on political campaigns,” and contends that “[a]ll signs suggest those
five justices are likely to have no qualms about unleashing McCutcheon
and other well-heeled contributors as well.”  And at the Constitutional
Accountability Center’s Text and History Blog,
Elizabeth Wydra describes McCutcheon as a case that “could make it even
harder for Congress to address one particular issue: the corrupting
influence of money in politics.”  Finally, in anticipation of the oral
argument in McCutcheon, the latest installment in C-SPAN Radio’s series on historic oral arguments looks back at the oral argument in Colorado GOP Federal Campaign Committee v. FEC.