Please excuse the lack of posts the last couple of days, but I’ve been dealing with a family medical emergency down in Georgia, and juggling various Day Job responsibilities. But my immersion in America, as opposed to Washington, in recent days predisposed me to treat George W. Bush’s press conference remarks on Social Security last night with a certain sense of slack-jawed astonishment. He said what? Tell me if I’m missing something, but having failed for months to sell the country on a free-lunch vision of a privatized pension system in which private accounts would magically guarantee retirement security and pay for itself, Bush suddenly started selling broccoli instead of dessert. He’s now out there peddling benefit cuts for middle and upper income retirees, as though they represent some sort of inherent virtue.Now, you can make a progressive case for what the wonks call “progressive indexing,” but not in isolation from every other issue involving Social Security, tax policy, budget policy, and retirement security generally. Yet that’s how Bush is trying to sell this glass of castor oil. It is very, very unlikely to attact any Democratic support, and is very, very likely to produce a big revolt among conservative Republicans, especially in the House, who are still addicted to the free lunch mirage. I don’t know whether this gambit is just part of an exit strategy where Bush is laying down “responsible” markers for the future (given his chronic inability to admit defeat), or some sort of tactic designed to peel off a few Democrats who have been complaining about the administration’s unwillingness to embrace any policy that would improve rather than weaken Social Security’s solvency. But still, it’s a strange move, and out here in America, it seems to be playing about as well as the Cookie Monster’s recent emergence as an advocate for healthy food.

The most egregious aspect of the Family Research Council’s “Justice Sunday” televised conference supporting the GOP’s “nuclear option” on judicial nominations was the argument that Christians as a faith community are being excluded from the judiciary. Thanks to The Kentucky Democrat, we have an interesting blow-by-blow account of how particular Christian leaders in one community dealt with this argument, in the context of a decision about carrying the FRC self-pity party on a church-backed cable station. Note the relatively passive statements by Southern Baptist spokesmen, who support the “nuclear option” cause but don’t sound that excited about it.

This is an interesting moment in the history of the Republican Party. On the one hand, Republicans have already lost their much-vaunted unity and discipline since last election day (the unity and discipline that some Democrats think we should emulate); they are fighting internally over Social Security, the “nuclear option,” and the budget, which just happen to be their main public priorities right now. But on the other hand, they are clearly being tugged in the same direction: to the Right. DeLay is succeeding in dragging the whole conservative movement into the cesspool of his ethical problems. Frist is clumsily but relentlessly trying to inoculate himself with the Christian Right in preparation for a presidential run. And George W. Bush is defending and abetting his congressional buddies at every turn. Check out today’s New Dem Dispatch for a summary of where this series of development is leading Republicans, Democrats, and the whole country.

The increasingly intense intra-GOP bickering over Social Security tactics, strategy and substance continues, and is rapidly descending into finger-pointing now that the whole campaign appears to be heading south faster than a Purdue student on spring break.I’ll let Josh Marshall chronicle the rich harvest of the anti-privatization campaign he helped rev up, but I did see an interesting example of how nasty the Republican divide on this issue has become. This is from a Bob Cusack piece in today’s edition of the Washington insider tabloid, The Hill, which quotes the chief architect of the House GOP’s incredible free lunch proposal to dump half of all payroll taxes into private accounts with no benefit cuts and no new revenues:

Peter Ferrara, a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) who is credited as the author of the Ryan-Sununu bill, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Times two months ago that mocked the White House for trying to send the president out to sell personal accounts with a message that they don’t really solve the problem. Ferrara wrote, “Is it any wonder then that the more George W. Bush talks about personal accounts the lower they sink in the polls?” Ferrara told The Hill he is trying to help Republicans get on track on Social Security. He accused top Bush administration officials — including Rove and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card — of urging people to tell him to “shut the hell up.”Ferrara, who is scheduled to testify on Social Security before the Senate Finance Committee today, said Rove, Card and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Josh Bolten lack expertise on the entitlement system and mistakenly believe some Democrats are close to embracing the president’s plan.“Rove thinks he’s been beatified by the last election,” Ferrara added.

Even in today’s GOP, is nothing sacred?

There’s been plenty of commentary about the Hysterithon pitched by the Family Research Council and various other Christian Right groups yesterday, dubbed “Justice Sunday” and indecently dignified by the boss of the United States Senate, Bill Frist (R-TN). I’ll limit myself to one simple point, playing off a CNN quote/paraphrase from FRC chief Tony Perkins:

FRC President Tony Perkins said Democrats were using filibusters to exclude religious believers from the bench. Holding up a Bible, he told the audience, “What we are saying tonight is that as American citizens, we should not have to choose between believing what is in this book and serving the public.”

Now think about that observation for a moment. Perkins surely does not actually contend that “religious believers” have been or are being excluded from the judicial branch of government, does he? I’m reasonably certain a majority of judges, like a majority of Americans, a majority of Democrats, and a majority of Democratic elected officials, are in their own view “religious believers.” Is Perkins setting himself up to judge (if you will pardon the expression) what is and is not authentic religious belief? Or is he rather arguing that certain kinds of religious believers are being excluded, and if so, who are they?The “choose between this book and serving the public” bit, which is also featured in the self-pity-soaked ad campaign set up for “Justice Sunday,” makes it clear the “excluded” are those who believe a literal interpretation of Holy Scripture is directly relevant to judicial rulings.At least back when I went to law school, the “public service” rendered by judges, depending on the case and his or her role in the system, was to find facts and interpret and apply laws as set out in the U.S. or state Constitutions, federal or state statutues, or decades if not centuries of common law. “Believing what is in” the Bible, and certainly believing Tony Perkins’ interpretation of what is in the Bible, might have some impact on the character of the judge, but anyone elevating it above actual secular law is generally violating an oath, often sworn on that selfsame Bible. So sounds to me like ol’ Tony is demanding activist judges who will ride roughshod over the law, over precedent, over constitutions and democratically elected legislatures, to do what ol’ Tony believes God has instructed them to do. Just as his buddy Tom DeLay thinks ethics rules don’t apply to “our team,” Perkins seems to think the rule of law doesn’t apply to “our judges.” Amazing, ain’t it?

Over at MyDD, Chris Bowers recently posted an analysis of the extent to which Ds and Rs in the House have voted as a bloc in the early stages of this Congress. It’s sort of interesting, in the way that studies of how baseball players perform in very limited circumstaces (say, with runners in scoring position with two outs, on the road) are sort of interesting, but it also shows the danger of blowing up small distinctions into big implications.Chris’ basic take is that Republican House members are marginally more “loyal” to their party line than Democrats, who have more, if only a handful, of true “heretics.” But even those small potatoes are fluffed up misleadingly by his selection of eight “final passage” votes as “party differentiators.” As Chris knows, “final passage” votes in the House are an unreliable indicator of ideology, since (a) they ignore committee actions and amendments (on those rare occasions GOPers allow them), and (b) they reflect only those bills the Republican leadership has decided to move, generally because they are certain to pass. And they are also not exactly reliable signs of party loyalty, either, since both parties’ leaderships on occasion treat votes as “free” and don’t mind defections among Members in vulnerable districts.Still, the study was a good contribution to the general store of political knowledge. But now Chris has done a second post focusing on House Democrats who are “members of the DLC,” and finds, well, not much of anything.First, I’d like to rise to a point of personal privilege and address this “DLC membership” business, because it’s also been a source of confusion elsewhere in the blogosphere. There is one and only one way to become a “member of the DLC,” and that’s to plunk down 40 bucks and get all our stuff–policy papers, Blueprint Magazine, etc.–in the mail. There is something on our web page called the New Dem Directory (which is apparently what Chris was looking at) which is simply contact information on elected officials–most of them at the state and local levels–who have either joined some related New Dem-identified organization or participated in DLC events. It’s basically an online phone book, and the DLC has never used its contents to market itself or take credit for anybody’s career. There ain’t no membership cards, oaths, whip operations, or litmus tests. Are we straight on that?Now, most of the House Members in this online phone book are there because they are members of the House New Democratic Coalition, a completely independent group that shares a general orientation with the DLC, but neither asks for nor takes orders from anybody at 600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They tend to be from competitive or even dangerously vulnerable districts more than the rest of the Caucus, and thus are given “free votes” more often than their peers.Still with me here? Okay. Having analyzed these 39 Members on those 8 House final passage votes, Chris concludes they are “not dramatically more disloyal” than other Dems, and by at least one measure, are actually less disloyal. In others words, says Chris, “the only pattern here is that there is no pattern.” So, is he ready to bury the myth that the DLC, on secret instructions from Corporate America or Karl Rove or somebody, is leading its (non-)members into perfidy and Republicanism? No–he concludes we don’t have any clout with our(non-) members, and thus have to reason to exist other than to criticize other Democrats!Gee, seems to me that there are a whole hell of a lot of Democratic organizations out there who have had pretty much the same impact as the DLC on the votes of House members on these eight votes, i.e., none. Are they useless, too? Should we all just go out of business, unless we can demonstrate they we either dramatically increase or dramatically decrease the bloc voting of House Democrats on these eight votes? Lord knows, no other political activity, from policy development to political strategy to fundraising to grass-roots organizing, could be worth doing, right?Okay, you see my point by now. I’m not at all hostile to Chris Bowers; he’s a smart guy who is probably trying to be objective here. But he’s like a baseball manager who likes one player and dislikes another, and can always find some marginal, triple-loaded statistic to put the former in the starting lineup and send the latter to the minors. This is not how you build a winning team in baseball, or in politics.

On this, the 35th Earth Day, the environmental movement is undergoing a period of introspection and even self-criticism, as the hard-won progress of the last three decades seem to have stopped. Indeed, thanks to the Bush administration and a precipitous decline of support for environmental goals in the GOP generally, some of those gains are being reversed.Today’s New Dem Dispatch from the DLC offers some good cheer in examples of environmental achievements being made outside Washington, and under the national media radar screen. But the defection of GOPers (at least politicians, if not necessarily rank-and-file voters) from even a pale green version of the cause remains a big political problem, and perhaps, for Democrats, an opportunity as well.This is a fairly recent development. I’m definitely and precisely dating myself here, but on the first Earth Day, in 1970, I was in high school in Cobb County, Georgia, a very conservative suburb of Atlanta, and we devoted much of the day to environmental programming, including a speech by (for some reason) actor Hal Holbrook. Somehow or other, nobody in that community seemed to think we were buying into eco-socialism, opposing the idea of economic growth, or slipping towards paganism, even though the early aims of the environmental movement, which quickly culminated in the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, were in many respects the most ambitious steps of all.Even then, there were wingnuts who tried to make a big deal of the fact that the original Earth Day coincided with Lenin’s Birthday (trust all those ex-communist right-wingers to know that one!). Indeed, I graphically remember a comment in National Review at that time: “Here’s how to celebrate Earth Day (formerly Lenin’s Birthday). Pick up a beer can. Throw it at a pollutocrat.”Some things really haven’t changed.

I’m one of those Americans who just love Canada. I don’t have any big desire to go live in Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal, and don’t think our country is inferior, but do like to go up there when I can, and in particular, enjoy political discourse with Canadians, who, until recently at least, seemed to combine the best traditions of Europe and America, along with their legendary civility and openness to debate. Two Northern Exposures especially impressed me. One was a Q&A session with Deputy Cabinet Ministers (the people who actually run Canada’s national government) in 2000, when I had to explain and defend Al Gore’s policy agenda and how it would affect my country and theirs, in incredible detail. And the second, a year or two earlier, was a Future of the Left conference at Carlton University where an initially hostile audience constructively engaged, and partially accepted, my arguments for the progressive credentials of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.During all my visits to Canada in the late 1990s, I was told that Finance Minister Paul Martin was the real brains of the governing Liberal Party, and would prove that as Prime Minister when Jean Chretien decided to retire. And that is why the current agony of Martin and the Liberals is so sadly ironic.Chretien finally stepped down in 2003, and bequeathed to Martin not only leadership of the Liberals, but an endlessly unfolding series of ethics scandals, the most recent being AdScam, a sleazy tale of insider government contracts to provide illusory p.r. services in connection with efforts to tamp down Quebec separatism.Nobody has implicated Martin in this mess, but he’s the Prime Minister and Liberal leader, and like Gerald Ford after Watergate, he’s fighting an uphill battle to free his party and his leadership from a huge wave of public revulsion. Like Ford, he’s currently being mocked in the media as being a bit of a deer in the headlights. Martin is currently trying to forestall an immediate election. Despite general media assumptions that Liberals are doomed to disaster, maybe he, again like Gerald Ford, will be able to raise serious doubts about the opposition, which is in this case a Conservative Party that has moved well to the right in order to absorb the western-based Reform Party that kicked up a lot of ideological dust in the 90s. If Martin can’t pull a revival off, then Canada, like the United States, may experience the governing philosophy of a true, latter-day conservative movement, and ultimately decide that punishing themselves for Jean Chretien’s failings is an act of national masochism that should not stand,

I followed the crowds to RFK Stadium last night to see Washington’s new obsession, the Nationals, play my Atlanta Braves. It was a good game (and I didn’t really mind the Nats winning), if you like old-fashioned, pre-1990s baseball where a couple of key double plays, rather than six or seven home runs, decide the thing. And RFK, for all its decrepitude, felt right, with a bit less of the constant artificial noise and commercialism that spoiled my last trip to Camden Yards.The seats were great, except for the fact that they landed me in a nest of Young Republican Hill Staffers, who spent most of the evening networking and showing off their new spring wardrobes instead of watching the game. But in the top of the ninth, when the Nats choked off a Braves rally, even the Brats around me joined in the chant of “D.C.! D.C! D.C.!” that shook the old stadium, and for a few minutes, even the old anti-Washington populist in me was seduced.

David Brooks offers up another fine bit of sophistry in today’s New York Times. And yes, it’s another example of what I call the Dover Beach column, wherein the lofty-minded pundit sadly surveys the madness of partisan conflict from a spot high above the fray, and then proceeds to offer a lofty-minded solution that happens to coincide with one party’s agenda.In this case, the subject is abortion, and here is the gist of the Brooksian argument: (1) Roe v. Wade whisked abortion policy from the legislative to the judicial arena, making compromise impossible and empowering extremists on both sides of the issue; (2) legitimately frustrated Republicans who can’t pursue legislative remedies on abortion are now poised to Do the Bad Thing and assault both the judiciary and the essentially conservative traditions of Senate debate; and thus (3) the solution is to give Republicans what they want by overturning Roe. Neat, eh?As is generally the case with Brooks these days, his transition from bipartisan-sounding analysis to endorsement of a partisan position is greased by a big fat planted axiom of extremely dubious quality: the idea that making abortion a legislative issue will facilitate “democratic debate,” compromise, sweet reasonableness, and in general, a de-emphasis of the issue in our political system.Give me a break. Without Roe, abortion politics would be a 24-7 preoccupation of both Congress and many state legislatures, with those determined to eventually outlaw abortion altogether offering an infinite variety of incremental, poll-tested restrictions. How do I know this? Because that’s precisely what’s happened in the limited sphere of legislation allowable under Roe. Look at the last “reasonable compromise” offered by Democrats in Congress, the Daschle Amendment of the late 1990s, which would have banned third-trimester abortions with an exception for the health of the mother. It was not only opposed by some abortion rights advocates, but by right-to-lifers and Republicans generally, who weren’t interested in any “solution” other than their own contrived “partial-birth” ban, which recognized no exceptions.Moroever, look at what’s happening in the U.K., one of those wise jurisdictions where abortion policy is set through “democratic debate.” The Tories have made abortion a big issue in the current parliamentary campaign by proposing an incremental restriction of the period where abortion is allowable, in an overt attempt to peel off Labour-leaning Catholic voters.The truth is that abortion politics are toxic not because the courts have intervened, but because the issue involves very fundamental differences of opinion on matters that are more important to some people than politics itself. It’s possible to make the argument that letting “democratic debate” decide abortion policy is the right thing to do, but Brooks’ idea that it will reduce the passions involved in this issue, or keep right-to-lifers from demonizing judges or seeking to override Senate traditions, is absolutely wrong.We just learned in the Schiavo saga that conservatives are willing to demonize judges if they don’t interpret federal and state statutues to suit them. Accepting, as Brooks does, the thread-bare argument that they are only interested in reasserting the right to “democratic debate” is tantamount to total surrender to the GOP position, which is, of course, where Brooks would have us go.