“The moment a mere numerical superiority by either states or voters in this country proceeds to ignore the needs and desires of the minority, and for their own selfish purpose or advancement, hamper or oppress that minority, or debar them in any way from equal privileges and equal rights -- that moment will mark the failure of our constitutional system.”
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Could it be true? Really? Can we dare hope that this issue will be finally decided?
One year after (100 years, actually, if you're counting from the time Teddy Roosevelt launched his campaign for national health insurance) negotiations started on comprehensive health care reform - we're still talking about it.
Obama has also campaigned across the country, finding his 2008 fiery voice once again and rallying support among grass roots Democrats who had been demoralized by the last few months of looming failure.
Critical to this change in fortune for the health care reform proclaimed dead some time ago, has been the insurance companies themselves, historic and implacable foes of reform.
In an act of hubris or shear stupidity, some insurance companies, like giant insurer Anthem, significantly raised rates on policies a few weeks ago - thereby demonstrating the ongoing risk to national solvency of runaway health care costs and an insurance industry unable to ever act for the common good or even their true self-interest (lesson here: if you're about to torpedo health care reform again, don't flaunt it by raising rates).
Also important, the White House changed the framing of the issue.
Where as the raison d'être of reform had been to cover the uninsured - making anybody with even bad insurance fear change and the unknown - they are now selling the benefits of the reform to the majority of the electorate who already has insurance but is reasonably anxious about the future should they change jobs, get seriously ill or simply if their employer drops coverage because of un-affordable costs.
The change in frame, the insurance companies collective hara-kiri, plus a realpolitik approach from the White House have transformed what could (still be if it does not pass) failure into potential victory.
The next few days and weeks will be decisive both for health care and the fate of the Democrats and the President's ability to implement the rest of his agenda.
Here's the President at one his rallies:
From the White House transcript of the President's speech:
There’s no government takeover, unless you consider reining in insurance companies a government takeover -- and I think that’s the right thing to do. There’s no cutting of Medicare benefits. There’s just cutting out fraud and waste in Medicare to make it stronger. What we’re proposing is a common-sense approach to protecting you from insurance company abuses and saving you money. That’s the proposal, and it is paid for. And I believe that Congress owes the American people a final up or down vote on health care reform. The time for talk is over; it’s time to vote.
ABC News reports on the Democrats' determination to pass the bill:
House Democratic leaders on Thursday worked to rally their rank-and-file members around last-minute agreements on insurance taxes and prescription drug coverage that could move President Barack Obama's overhaul of the nation's health care system a step closer to reality.
Although some issues remained unresolved — including a divisive battle over restricting taxpayer funding of abortion — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said: "We have enough to move forward."
She asked Democrats at a two-hour, closed-door briefing whether they wanted to vote sooner rather than later on the legislation. They responded with a broad shout of "Yes!" according to lawmakers coming out of the session.
White House officials and congressional Democratic leaders met Wednesday evening in Pelosi's office. Aides said they agreed on scaling back a health insurance tax that unions object to, and on gradually closing the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap. They were not far apart on other major issues, including Medicaid funding for states that already provide above-average benefits, and on improving subsidies that would be available under the plan to help individuals and families pay their premiums.
Nancy Pelosi said last night on Charlie Rose that she has the votes to pass the bill:
Torture apologist and Vice Presidential daughter Liz Cheney is on a mission.
First, she has mounted a spirited defense of Dick Cheney's torture policies even as they have been declared illegal - by such radicals as the second Bush Administration and the United States Congress.
Second, Cheney seems to be working on a political campaign. Her ambition to be the next Republican uber leader is obvious and understandable - her father has been at the core of every Republican administration since Nixon's and, well, politics has been very lucrative for the Cheneys, both in terms of raw power and financial opportunities (hello Halliburton).
So Liz Cheney has been an ever more vocal force in the Washington debate since her father left office.
Appearing on FoxNews, the Sunday talkshows and founding the KAS organization, she has raised her profile and positioned herself as kind of Margaret Thatcher with blood lust.
KAS is "Keep America Safe" and it serves as a clearing house for terrorising Americans with apocalyptic warnings that the Obama Administration is just too weak to keep the country safe.
...Amidst the great challenges to America’s security and prosperity, the current administration too often seems uncertain, wishful, irresolute, and unwilling to stand up for America, our allies and our interests...
Led by Dick Cheney and a compliant Bush, the last Administration spread fear and anxiety through the nation. Post the 9/11 attack, an attack that they themselves failed to stop in spite of well documented intelligence briefings, Cheney used psychological terror to keep the country, and its spineless politicians, in check.
Terror warnings were raised and lowered to reflect the political needs of the Administration. Talk of "mushroom clouds" was used to justify an attack against a country that was not at war with the United States (Iraq), even as Osama bin Laden was allowed to escape during the Battle of Tora Bora.
The creation of CIA "black sites", essentially secret prisons where suspected terrorists where sent to be subjected to "enhanced interrogations", i.e., torture, were all justified by a Vice President whose moral compass broke long ago (Nixon's White House?).
The damage to American prestige in the world of this and the many other acts of alleged behavior explicitly banned by international treaties, American law and military rules and tradition, is incalculable.
So here comes Liz Cheney with a fundamentally insane attack of lawyers who have represented and defended suspected terrorists at Guantanamo (itself established on novel, not to say erroneous, legal arguments).
These attorneys, Americans and loyal members of the Justice Department, connecting with the most basic traditions of American justice, were performing their duty in the judicial system - representing clients to ensure the fairness and legitimacy of a trial.
But Cheney launched a vicious attack against them. In a TV spot, Cheney accuses these attorneys of being terrorists - she calls them the "Al-Qaeda 7".
Not surprisingly, the sane and truly patriotic wing of the Republican Party is rejecting Cheney's attempt to vilify these people.
Respected figures in the Conservative movement, people that even Cheney could not try to destroy with attacks on their patriotism, are blasting her.
It would seem that 60 years after Joe McCarthy terrorised the nation with false accusations and terror stories about a "Fifth Column", those kinds of tactics are no longer an acceptable part of the political discourse.
Cheney is a radical with tremendous resources to spread her terrorist message. All Americans should be worried about her plans to take over America. All freedom-loving Americans who believe that the United States Constitution is a sacred document that cannot be abrogated by executive fiat should take notice of Ms. Cheney's actions - and get ready to defend our Democracy.
Here's Liz Cheney's ad accusing the attorneys of being collaborators or, more graphically, "the Al-Qaeda 7":
...[T]he group, which is run by Liz Cheney, the daughter of the former vice president, have also split the tightly knit world of conservative legal scholars. Many conservatives, including members of the Federalist Society, the quarter-century-old policy group devoted to conservative and libertarian legal ideals, have vehemently criticized Ms. Cheney’s video, and say it violates the American legal principle that even unpopular defendants deserve a lawyer.
“There’s something truly bizarre about this,” said Richard A. Epstein, a University of Chicago law professor and a revered figure among many members of the society. “Liz Cheney is a former student of mine — I don’t know what moves her on this thing,” he said.
On Sunday, the Brookings Institution issued a letter criticizing the “shameful series of attacks” on government lawyers, which it said were “unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications.”
The letter was signed by a Who’s Who of former Republican administration officials and conservative legal figures, including Kenneth W. Starr, the former special prosecutor, and Charles D. Stimson, who resigned from the second Bush administration after suggesting that businesses might think twice before hiring law firms that had represented detainees. Other Bush administration figures who signed include Peter D. Keisler, a former acting attorney general, and Larry D. Thompson, a former deputy attorney general.
The letter cited “the American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients,” including the defense by John Adams of British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre, and noted that some detainee advocates, who worked pro bono, have made arguments that swayed the Supreme Court.
...Most recently, lawyers now employed at the Justice Department who, while in private practice, volunteered to represent suspected terrorist detainees, or argued legal positions supporting various rights of such detainees, have been portrayed as in-house counsel to al Qaeda.
This is all of a piece, and what it is a piece of is something both shoddy and dangerous. A lawyer who represents a party in a contested matter has an ethical obligation to make any and all tenable legal arguments that will help that party. A lawyer in public service, particularly one dealing with sensitive matters of national security, has the obligation to authorize any step or practice the law permits in order to keep the nation and its citizens safe. And a lawyer who undertakes to represent someone whom his neighbors—perhaps rightly—revile as a threat to the public welfare is obligated to bring his talents to bear just as forcefully in favor of that client as he would if he were representing Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, the French artillery officer who in 1895 was found guilty of treason and sent to Devil's Island for little more than being Jewish.
Political disagreements with the Bush administration fueled and still fuel much of the intensity underlying attacks on Messrs. Yoo and Bybee. Similarly, I believe the results achieved by lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees have had a good deal to do with the criticism of them...
...But that prudence is not properly exercised by arguing that lawyers who defended drug cases, or worked on defense teams in death-penalty cases, or helped bring legal proceedings in behalf of those detained as terrorists, are automatically to be identified with their former clients and regarded as a fifth column within the Justice Department. The rules of conduct of the District of Columbia bar, for example, direct that representation of a client not be portrayed as endorsement of the client's views or behavior.
If the Department of Justice comes to attract only lawyers who have spent their professional energy principally in avoiding matters of controversy, the quality of lawyers willing to serve at the department will decline, and the department will suffer, as will we all.
In this hyper-partisan age, the bipartisan outrage being expressed over the reprehensible television ad from the fearmongers at Keep America Safe is encouraging. The organization run by Liz Cheney, a state department official under President Bush and the daughter of the former vice president, is attempting to sow seeds of distrust by raising doubts about the loyalties of attorneys who once volunteered to handle the cases of suspected terrorists and are now working in the Justice Department. Wanting to know the identities of the lawyers is one thing. Smearing them as the "the al Qaeda 7" is over the line by a mile.
As The Post editorialized on Saturday, the ad gives the impression the attorneys "had committed a crime or needed to be exposed for subverting national security." And, sadly, it sought to remind folks that part of this nation's grand legal tradition is volunteers taking on cases of suspects who aren't popular or necessarily innocent but who need representation. Despite the Supreme Court ruling that detainees at Guantanemo Bay can challenge their detentions, groups like Keep America Safe is determined to ignore that fact.
Former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger penned a defense for one of the lawyers, Karl Thompson. His work was "not only part of a lawyer's professional obligation but a small act of patriotism as well," Dellinger wrote. He added that all the lawyers targeted by Keep America Safe "deserve our respect and gratitude for fulfilling the professional obligations of lawyers." And Dellinger got some serious back-up today from a group of conservative lawyers and former Bush administration officials, including former independent counsel Kenneth Starr and deputy attorney general Larry Thompson. "To suggest that the Justice Department should not employ talented lawyers who have advocated on behalf of detainees maligns the patriotism of people who have taken honorable positions on contested questions and demands a uniformity of background and view in government service from which no administration would benefit," the signatories noted. I have nothing to add to their persuasive argument. Unfortunately, I'm not too hopeful that it will stop Keep America Safe and its acolytes from trying it again.
Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 11:37AM 
What are you thinking about today's news and commentary?
