In a special election yesterday, Colorado voters approved an initiative relaxing the requirements of TABOR (short for “Tax Payers’ Bill of Rights”), a robo-system of fiscal restraints imposed by an earlier ballot initiative.Over at TPMCafe, I’ve already posted an analysis of the greater meaning of this partial rollback of TABOR, which represents an important rollback of the national conservative effort to force states into a fiscal straightjacket protecting high-income and corporate tax breaks at the expense of public investments.But I’d like to add a personal note.]A few years ago I went to Denver to speak at a Democratic legislative retreat, and thanks to TABOR, it was like travelling to a foreign country.Everyone there carried around little books detailing TABOR provisions. Every policy discussion began and ended with extensive comments about “TABOR compliance.” TABOR had clearly accomplished the main goal of its Washington advocates: radically constraining state legislative powers and priorities, not just in terms of overall spending and revenue figures, but in terms of the basic ability to conduct long-term planning and make long-term investments.In a very real sense, TABOR made the very bright state of Colorado “stupid country,” and its advocates hoped to spread the gospel of fiscal idiocy elsewhere.So yesterday’s vote, whatever else it meant, represented one proud state’s declaration of independence from a scheme that made legislative policymaking impossible, and made the normal process of budgeting irrelevant. And TABOR’s defeated proponents got one more important warning that limiting government without making open and rational choices about what government should do is ultimately a self-destructive and ant-democratic exercise.Hats off to Colorado voters, and for those who worked for the passage of this new initiative. Reforming government is one thing; getting smarter and more effective government for the lowest possible tax levels is always a good idea.But arbitrarily and mindlessly promoting arbitrary and automatic spending cuts, with no real attention to setting priorities for what taxpayers should support, is what TABOR was about. And changing that situation is critical all across the country for Democrats, and democracy.

There’s a big push all over the left-of-center blogosphere and elsewhere (from so many sources that I won’t bother to link to any of them) to capitalize on last week’s indictments and the underlying issues to focus like a laser beam on the administration’s manipulation of the evidence supporting their case for the invasion of Iraq.I understand and agree with the argument that the White House behavior exposed in connection with the Libby indictments helps show the extent to which the administration was willing to say anything and do anything to stampede the country and the Congress to war in 2003.But I don’t understand, and don’t agree with, a strategy that limits the indictment of the administration’s dishonest and manipulative habits to Iraq policy.The Fitzgerald indictments, and all the evidence that’s come out before and after the special prosecutor’s actions, reinforce a vast pattern of administration misbehavior on a vast array of issues, including, but not limited to, the effort to rally the country to launch the Iraq adventure.Democrats have two simple options here:We can insist on obsessively limiting our critique to Iraq.Or we can argue that the behavior of Libby, Rove, Cheney, and Bush himself in this case illustrates the mendacity, incompetence, arrogance, and intimidation strategies of this administration on Iraq, on the War on Terrorism, on the federal budget, on taxes, on Katrina recovery, on health care policy, on the economy, on government ethics, on corporate responsibility, on science policy, on No Child Left Behind, on voting rights, on civil rights–well, on so many issues I can barely list them.Unless you believe that the original decision to invade Iraq is the alpha and omega of American politics–recognizing, of course, that this was a decision on which Republicans were united and Democrats were divided–I really can’t imagine why Democrats would want to pursue the single-issue implications of one more example of the administration’s betrayal of public trust, instead of connecting the dots to every other betrayal.I’ve generally assumed that the one thing that unites all Democrats today is the overriding desire to drive the corrupt and incompetent and ideologically bent GOP from power. That’s why I implore Democrats to keep their eyes on the big prize, and not get dragged off into the self-defeating blind alley of making future elections nothing more than a retroactive referendum on why the country, and many Democrats, supported the decision to invade Iraq.We have a more compelling case to take to the country, which includes, but is hardly limited to, the administration’s failures in Iraq, and we need to make it.

One of the historical oddities of George W. Bush’s decision to nominate Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court is that if confirmed, he will establish a majority on the court of Roman Catholics. This fact hasn’t gotten a lot of comment so far, in part because it is and should be irrelevant to his qualifications, and in part because hardly anyone noticed that Clarence Thomas reverted to his Catholic upbringing in recent years, joining Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Chief Justice Roberts as Catholic members of SCOTUS. Given the brief but intense campaign by some conservative evangelicals to tout Alito’s unsuccessful predecessor, Harriet Miers, as establishing an “evangelical seat” on the Court, you have to wonder how they privately feel about yet another Catholic nomination. My friend Amy Sullivan, that intrepid interpreter of all things religio-political, has been calling around to some of them to see if they’ll open up on the subject, but has so far been met with the usual conservative Talking Points about how great it is to have a SCOTUS nominee who rejects judicial activism and respects Original Intent, etc., etc.Now to be sure, most evangelical Protestants this side of Bob Jones University have discarded most of the hard-line Reformation view of the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon, the Scarlet Woman of the Book of Revelations, and of the Vatican as the most likely address of the Antichrist. And indeed, the detente between evangelicals and Catholics (at least outside Latin America), partly theological, and partly the result of tactical alliances over social and political issues like abortion, has led to one major book with the provocative title: “Is the Reformation Over?”Still, we are not that far away from centuries of bitter hostility between Catholics and evangelicals (including, of course, the heavy involvement of evangelical clergy in the effort to oppose John F. Kennedy’s election on religious grounds), and there remain a host of theological divisions, especially between the conservatives in both communions who are most likely to agree on political issues. There are a sizable number of evangelicals, for instance, (e.g., those in Harriet Miers’ church) who think infant baptism is meaningless, and that even adult baptism is insufficient for salvation unless it involves full immersion. Even though many evangelicals deeply admired Pope John Paul II for his anti-communism and cultural traditionalism, the intensity of his Marian devotion probably troubled them a lot if they thought about it. And deep divisions remain between evangelicals and Catholics on a whole host of liturgical and ecclesiastical issues.None of this, of course, means politicized conservative evangelicals wouldn’t be happy with a Justice like Alito, who on the key constitutional issues they care about, has nearly perfect views. But beneath the surface, you do have to wonder what they think about the heavy representation of their ancient enemy, as contrasted with their own invisibility, on an institution that they regard as one of the commanding heights of American society.Maybe one of them will confess to Amy, and we’ll find out the truth.

The initial reaction to the nomination of Samuel Alito from “The Groups” on the left and right was exactly what you’d expect. Both sides are emphasizing “Scalito’s” right-wing credentials, partly because they are real, but partly because this nomination offers the Judicial Armageddon that the Right in particular wants almost as badly as it wants a seat on the Court.But before we got locked completely into Kabuki Theater, it’s useful to seek out and find a reasonably objective Democratic voice, as representing the likely reaction of Democratic (and perhaps a couple of Republican) senators who voted for John Roberts’ confirmation.As some of you may recall, George Washington University professor Jeffrey Rosen penned an article right after the presidential election analyzing possible Bush SCOTUS picks, and separating them into two camps: “Conservative Activists” (bad), and “Principled Conservatives” (not so bad), with the key dividing line being the jurist’s willingness to defer to legislative decisions and to respect precedents. John Roberts was listed as a “Principled Conservative.” Samuel Alito headed the list of “Conservative Activists.” Here’s what Rosen had to say about him:

Known as “Scalito,” or little Scalia, he is considered less blustering than the big guy, but liberals will undoubtedly balk at his abortion record. In 1991, he dissented from a decision to strike down Pennsylvania’s spousal notification provision–a decision the Supreme Court later upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the decision that reaffirmed Roe v. Wade.What should be far more troubling to Senate Democrats, however, is Alito’s 1996 dissent from a decision upholding the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting the possession of machine guns. Applying the logic of the Constitution in Exile for all it’s worth, Alito insisted that the private possession of machine guns was not an economic activity, and there was no empirical evidence that private gun possession increased violent crime in a way that substantially affected commerce–therefore, Congress has no right to regulate it. Alito’s colleagues criticized him for requiring “Congress or the Executive to play Show and Tell with the federal courts at the peril of invalidation of a Congressional statute.” His lack of deference to Congress is unsettling.

Based on his typology, Rosen was outspoken in urging Democrats to support Roberts. I’d be very surprised if he advises Democrats to accept Alito.Obviously Jeffrey Rosen does not have a vote in the Senate, but his views on this nomination are likely to reflect those of pro-Roberts Democrats unless Alito disappoints his supporters with a major de-fanging exercise during his confirmation hearings.Even if Democrats unanimously line up against Alito, they must make a separate strategic decision about how to handle it (especially in terms of deploying a filibuster that could trigger the “nuclear option” and eliminate this tactic for a future that could include yet another Bush SCOTUS nomination, directly endangering huge precedents like Roe v. Wade.)Certainly The Groups on both sides have ulterior motives for the loud expressions of delight and horror they are undertaking today. But boil off the overheated rhetoric, and there’s a real fight brewing over real principles of judicial philosophy with real consequences–a fight George W. Bush seems to have launched with malice aforethought.NOTE: When I published this post this morning, I didn’t know that Michael Crowley, on The New Republic’s blog, The Plank, had beaten me to the punch by quoting the same passage from Rosen’s typology (not surprising, since Rosen’s piece was itself published by TNR). But I wasn’t ripping off Crowley without attribution. Having recently been on a televised panel with Professor Rosen during which we disagreed about Roberts, I had my own reasons for consulting his typology.

George W. Bush is going to name his latest SCOTUS choice at some point today, but in the interim, I wanted to make sure to crow a bit about the increasingly strong possibility that Jerry (No Relation Whatsoever) Kilgore may have blown the 2005 gubernatorial election by going harshly negative against Tim Kaine.The Washington Post released a new poll yesterday that showed Kaine up 47-44 among likely voters, with the internals indicating a strong reaction against the tone of Kilgore’s death penalty ads attacking Kaine, and a strong rejection of Kilgore’s argument that Kaine can’t be trusted to faithfully administer Virginia’s death penalty laws.I’ve blogged over at TPMCafe.com about the Post poll and the Virginia race in general, and won’t repeat my analysis here. But I do find the immediate and semi-hysterical reaction of the Kilgore campaign to the poll quite interesting.As you might expect, ol’ Jerry’s flacks claim the godless liberal WaPo is trying to boost a Democratic candidate with a deliberately slanted poll. Kilgore’s site features a bar graph illustrating WaPo’s underestimation of the GOP vote in Virginia races going back twelve years.There’s only one problem with this claim. Most recently, WaPo’s polling unit has been famous for diverging from other polls in the opposite, and pro-GOP direction, mainly due to an unusually strong screen for likelihood to vote. In fact, the previous Post poll on the Virginia race, back in early September, showed Kilgore up seven points at a time when virtually every other survey showed a dead heat.Jerry’s flacks also argue that unpublished regional breakdowns in the Post poll discredit it, because they show Kilgore struggling in southwest Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley, where everyone concedes he will win. But they don’t tell you the Post’s sample, while big enough to show statewide trends, is too small for full regional breakdowns, which is why the paper didn’t publish them (I’m reasonably sure the one regional result they did publish, for Northern Virginia, was created by an oversample, since it’s in their prime circulation area).But here’s my favorite argument from the Kilgore camp about why we should all discount the WaPo poll:

The poll was conducted on Sunday through Wednesday of this past week. A quick glance back reveals that on early Sunday afternoon when the poll began, the Washington Redskins were playing a home game televised across the entire Commonwealth, the Martinsville NASCAR race was being televised and many families were still in church. The poll concluded its interviews on Wednesday night, another big night for church attendance in rural Virginia.

So, the argument goes, WaPo deliberately undersampled fans of football, NASCAR and Jesus Christ. Now obviously, you can’t do a five-day poll that does not coincide with some sporting or religious event, and the planted axiom that anybody who watches the Skins or Martinsville or goes to church is a sure Jerry voter is insulting to say the least. You might as well argue that liberal secularist Democrats were undersampled because last weekend’s fine weather drew them into the countryside for pagan harvest festivals, or because the poll coincided with a rash of NPR fundraising campaigns.Ol’ Jerry’s campaign cannot credibly deny they’ve lost momentum, thanks to their own hubristic addiction to nastiness. And their nasty reaction to evidence of their folly is a good illustration of the GOP candidate’s perilous state.

While perusing today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution in order to wallow in the misery of Georgia’s close loss to Florida, I ran across some interesting polling data, thanks to Tom Baxter and Jim Galloway’s Political Insider column.According to a Republican-commissioned poll conducted on October 18, Ralph Reed, candidate for Lieutentant Governor (the first step towards an intended gubernatorial and perhaps presidential run) is viewed favorably by 11 percent of Georgians, and unfavorably by 16 percent. His name I.D. is 42 percent. Here’s what Baxter and Galloway say about that last number:

If 42 percent know who Reed is, and only 27 percent offer an opinion of him — whether good or bad — then 15 percent are purposely keeping their mouths shut.GOP analysts think Reed may be generating hidden negatives — that Reed supporters who have stuck with their charismatic leader in the past are beginning to have second thoughts. But they aren’t yet ready to voice them.

Interesting theory, eh? But more to the point, there’s the simple fact that Reed is about 39 percentage points away from convincing a majority of the electorate to think favorably of him, after two decades as a big wheel in national GOP circles, and a very successful tenure as state party chief. He’s been an announced candidate for statewide office for several months now, frenetically touring the state with big names ranging from Democratic apostate Zell Miller to Atlanta Braves pitcher John Schmoltz. Yet here he is with a favorable/unfavorable ratio of 11/16 (an earlier poll pegged it at 15/17). Ralph’s 42 percent name I.D. is also a cautionary sign about the extent to which voters pay attention to the obsessions of us political junkies. In addition to all the above attention-getting activities of Reed over the years, there’s the Casino Jack Abramoff scandal, in which Ralph has played a conscpicuous and unsavory role again and again. The Atlanta newspapers and several local television stations have been following the story quite diligently. Ralph’s Republican primary opponent, state Sen. Casey Cagle, and his large network of legislative supporters, have been regularly piling on, suggesting that Reed’s troubles could blow up the whole state ticket next year. Yet 58 percent of Georgians have apparently never heard of the guy.This will obviously change as we get closer to the 2006 elections, but if Ralph Reed hasn’t earned the loyalty of Georgia Republicans–much less the general electorate–by now, he’s got a long, long way to go. And his vast dossier of political skullduggery will continue to serve as a goldmine for opposition researchers in both parties.

Well, Fitzmas is past. Miers is history. Bush’s next SCOTUS pick won’t be known til next week. For the first time in ages, I don’t have a big day-job or moonlighting weekend project. My wife’s out of town on business. My kid’s away at college. Fall has finally arrived. The day is cool, crisp and windy, what I used to think of in my student days as Nietzsche Weather, when you want to go find an abyss to laugh over.In sum, it is, as Chris Schenkel used to always say, a Fine Day for Football. So in a few hours, I’ll try to find something red and black to wear, and mosey over to the local sports bar to watch the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, Georgia versus Florida. Now to yankees and other outsiders, this rivalry probably sounds like the Bud Bowl or something–a drinking contest between two party schools.But it’s a serious thing down there, made more vicious, oddly enough, by the rivalry’s recent pattern of total domination by one team or the other.Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Georgia routinely won, often coming from behind to rout the Gators in the second half. At one point in early 80s, I watched the game with a work colleague who had gone to Florida. As the third quarter ended, Florida had a small lead, but Georgia had begun one of those soul-crushing long ball-control drives that were the hallmark of the Vince Dooley era, and my friend got up and turned off the television. “Don’t you want to watch the fourth quarter?” I asked. “I’ve been watching this fourth quarter for fifteen years,” he wearily replied. Sure enough, Georgia won. In the 90s, with the return to Gainesville of The Evil Genius (a.k.a., the Ball Coach, Steve Spurrier), Florida dominated the series, especially during the tenure in Athens of Spurrier’s polar opposite, the honorable but less-than-cerebral good-ol-boy Ray Goff (“If Georgia had to hire a Danny-Ford-type coach, they should have hired Danny Ford,” quoth one Dawg Fanatic friend of mine). With both universities beginning to establish themselves as regional academic powers, the intellectual gap on the football field was painful for Georgia fans.Now both teams have Genius coaches. Georgia is undefeated, but its quarterback and moral leader, D.J. Shockley, will miss the game with a sprained knee. If Georgia wins, the post-game assessments will write themselves, because Shockley’s replacement is a third-generation Dawg named Joe Tereshinski III, whose major role in his two previous years in Athens was as long snapper on punts. Either way, it ought to be fun. For once, Georgia is playing in the day’s marquee game. I won’t have to beg Mike the Bartender to find an obscure screen on which to watch my team. I can make barking noises on kickoffs without pretending to undergo a coughing fit. Yes, it’s a fine day for football.

Having just watched, along with the whole hep political world, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s press conference, I think you can boil off the legalese and go with his baseball metaphor for what he was saying about the strange decision to prosecute someone for lying about a crime for which no one has been indicted.”Scooter” Libby (nicknamed, ironically, after baseball great Phil “Scooter” Rizutto) is, according to Fitzgerald, the guy who threw sand in the umpire’s face when the dark-robed arbiter was trying to figure out why the pitcher threw at the batter’s head.This implies that (1) the investigation may have in fact determined who leaked Valerie Plame’s name, even though key issues like the “pitcher’s” motives and knowledge about Plame’s undercover status have been so far obscured, making an indictment impossible; (2) Libby’s real crime was to throw the investigation off course until the Grand Jury commission expired; and most importantly (3) the underlying crime is still under investigation, and could be exposed by new information or by disclosures Libby now makes at trial, or in order to cop a plea.If that’s right, and especially if Fitzgerald is implying that Libby deliberately lied to protect somebody else, then another big shoe could later drop, even if it occurs after Fitzgerald’s investigation is concluded.So much for my analysis as a non-practicing attorney, which is free advice and worth it.As for the broader issues raised by this case and by the withdrawal of the Harriet Miers nomination, I recommend you check out the DLC’s take today, which among other things, suggests that Karl Rove has no business working in the White House whether or not he someday winds up in the hoosegow:

As for today’s news from the special prosecutor, the fact that the indictment of the vice president’s chief of staff was not accompanied by the indictment of the president’s de facto chief of staff is apparently being greeted in some quarters as a victory for George W. Bush. That’s a perfect example of a dangerously low standard of public service.We care too much about the office of the Presidency to wish indictments upon anyone. For the same reason, we believe that for the sake of that office, President Bush should not wait for Patrick Fitzgerald to tell Karl Rove to go.Whether or not he was criminally involved in the Valerie Plame leak case, there’s no doubt Rove is openly and notoriously involved in an ongoing effort to create a politics of maximum partisan polarization, infecting every institution of our democracy.From that perspective, it’s beside the point that Rove may well escape a long vacation in one of our fine federal correctional institutions. If he truly wants to clear the air, the president should direct Rove to take a permanent vacation from the White House. Let him practice his dark arts at the Republican National Committee or some other venue far from official policymaking circles, and let him be accompanied by the other permanent-campaign warriors who have infested the people’s institutions.

Those Democrats who are disappointed that on “Fitzmas” they got coal in their stockings from “Fitzy Klaus” need to keep focused on the larger story of this administration’s overall abuses of power.

Wow, that was fast.And that’s about all that needs to be said about the White House’s decision to pull this doomed nomination before it tore up the shaky coalition that is today’s GOP. The timing was almost certainly affected by the anticipated landfall of Hurricane Patrick today; at the very least, the announcement of his findings will make the Miers withdrawal a one-day story (at least until her replacement is named), and some folks think it was a hasty gesture of surrender to conservatives whose support will soon be needed on other fronts.As Miers’ agony ends, I’m glad Senate Democrats were spared the agony of deciding whether to administer the coup de grace to this nomination, knowing that the next name on Bush’s list could be a howler.

As you may have heard, the White House has decided to put W. out there to promote his alleged successes, in order to distract attention from his rather conspicuous failures of late. The first installment of this happy talk offensive occurred in Washington today, when the president delivered pithy remarks about his economic and fiscal policies.Much as I generally avoid extended exposure to Bush rhetoric, I really encourage you to read this speech in its entirety, to get a grip on the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the current administration’s economic policies.The economy is peachy keen, he says, thanks to his tax cuts, which need to be made permanent.Fiscal problems? This president, who has yet to veto a single spending bill (or any bill, for that matter), is “working with congressional leaders” to get spending under control, apparently by cutting Medicaid, food stamps, child support enforcement, and other programs benefitting unimporant political constituencies.Energy costs going crazy? Time to suspend environmental regulations, beef up–or pork up–subsidies for oil and gas producters, and then definitely begin oil drilling in the Alaska Natural Wilderness Reserve.Health care costs bandrupting businesses and decimating families? Let’s trot out HSAs, AHPs, and every other marginal right-wing idea for undermining broad risk pools and larger coverage.Boomer retirement crisis? Bush trots out his weariest rhetoric for Social Security privatization.Personally, what bugged me most about Bush’s speech was its casual failture to announce, explain or embrace any sort of basic macroeconomic strategy for the country.Pardon me for being nostalgic, but I believe every advanced industrial nation ought to have such a strategy. We certainly had one during the Clinton administration.Why not announce one now?Because they (1) can’t admit mistakes; (2) consider revenue and spending commitments to “our team” as sacred; and (3) basically don’t think Americans are capable of basic math–these guys are incapable of a coherent, consistent budget or economic strategy.And it continues today.