One Click to Reach Your Elected Officials

Want to demand your House representative or Senators take action, but don't know how to get an email address for them quickly? Rejoice! The Nation brings you the one-click Congress.

Just fill in your zip code, and the site immediately reveals your President, Senators and House Representative, with links to each one's email. You can click on one of The Nation's suggested email topics, like Hold War Criminals Responsible, or compose your own.

Use it tonight to tell Congress to pass the stimulus bill President Obama needs to save the country and the world.

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If We Had a Real Congress

Things are past bad when it takes a republican former congressman to tell a Democratic majority Congress to do its Constitutional duty.

Long-time former GOP Congressman Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma testified before a Senate hearing today on the rule of law and said this:

There are a great many salient questions facing the American people and those of you who are charged with the responsibility of enacting the nation's laws: access to affordable health care; repair of an aging infrastructure; reducing energy dependence; ensuring the national security. But not one of those issues – and not all of them combined – is as important now or for the future as securing our position as a nation governed by the rule of law. . . .

(More after the jump.)

Let me be both candid and clear: the current greatest threat to our system of separated powers and the protections it affords stems not just from executive overreaching but equally from the Congress. America's founders envisioned a system in which each of the branches of government would guard its prerogatives and meet its obligations, each acting to serve the nation through the empowerment the Constitution grants and to protect our liberties through the constraints the Constitution imposes.

For most of the past eight years, and for many years before that, the Congress has failed to lived up to its assigned role as the principal representative of the people. . . .

Here is the challenge, stated as candidly as I can state it. Each year the presidency grows farther beyond the bounds the Constitution permits; each year the Congress fades farther into irrelevance. As it does, the voice of the people is silenced. This cannot be permitted to stand. The Congress is not without power. It can refuse to confirm people the President suggests for important offices; it can refuse to provide money for the carrying out of Executive Branch activities; it can use its subpoena power and its power to hold hearings and above all, it can use its power to write the laws of the country. . . .

Do not let it be said that what the Founders created, you have destroyed. Do not let it be said that on your watch, the Constitution of the United States became not the law of the land but a suggestion. You are not a parliament; you are a Congress -- separate, independent, and equal. And because of that you are the principal means by which the people maintain control of their government. Defend that right, and that obligation, or you lose all purpose in holding these high offices. That is how you preserve and defend the rule of law in the United States.

Cross-posted at They Gave us A Republic ....

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Does the government want blacks to smoke more?

It sure looks that way. Menthol, found most prominently in “urban-friendly” brands such as Kool and Newport, is getting kid-glove treatment?

A Congressional bill to give the Food and Drug Administration power to regulate cigarettes bans most flavored cigarettes, including clove and cinnamon ones.

Menthol?

Not a peep. (Nearly 75 percent of black smokers use menthol brands, compared with only about one in four white smokers.)

As the Times notes:

The reason menthol is seen as politically off limits, despite those concerns, is that mentholated brands are so crucial to the American cigarette industry. They make up more than one-fourth of the $70 billion American cigarette market and are becoming increasingly important to the industry leader, Philip Morris USA, without whose lobbying support the legislation might have no chance of passage.

Whenever Congress is in bed with Philip Morris, you know bad things are bound to happen.

Here’s the fallout that will happen. Many blacks will rightly think whites care less about them. Some will even raise the old conspiracy theory flag.

Supporters of the bill, even African-Americans, argue there’s no other way to pass it:

“I would have been in favor of banning menthol,” said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, who supports the bill. “But as a practical matter that simply wasn’t doable.”

Even the head of the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network, a nonprofit group that has been adamantly against menthol, acknowledges that the ingredient needed to be off the bargaining table — for now — because he does not want to imperil the bill’s chances.

“The bottom line is we want the legislation,” said William S. Robinson, the group’s executive director. “But we want to reserve the right to address this issue at some critical point because of the percentage of people of African descent who use mentholated products.”

Fine. Pull the bill. Don’t postpone “someday” into an undefined future.

And, there’s other fallout. First, Philip Morris is lying about menthol. Congress, do you really want to go down the road of partnering with a brazen liar on this issue?

And, there’s other issues. Beyond the fact that menthol does make it easier to smoke, there’s concerns about menthol in cigs as a health issue:

Concerns about menthol have circulated since at least 1998, when the C.D.C. reported that menthol “may increase the absorption of harmful smoking constituents.”

Also, the taste of menthol may increase psychological dependence.

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On the coffee table – ‘Taking the Hill’

This story of Patrick Murphy, the first Iraq War vet to get elected to Congress is informative and sobering. It’s also a pretty good read. But, it’s not a great read.

The book is more informative when Murphy discusses his run for Congress than in his analysis of how and where Bush went wrong in launching the Iraq War in the first place, or how Bush, Cheney, Bremer, Rumfeld et al screwed up after the invasion.

Throw in the fact that Murphy felt compelled to join the Blue Dog Coalition and renew funding for the School of the Americas, with the larger position that, as a freshman in Congress who got elected on one issue, and this is not a five-star book.

I wound up giving it three stars on Amazon. If I were the first rater, I might give it four stars. But, in light of the five-star fluff of several earlier raters, it had to get knocked down to three stars as a counterweight.

Since there’s nothing new on Iraq here, I focus my critique on the Congressman Murphy latter part of the book.

First, the amount of work involved with getting elected is huge. Especially for a first-time office-seeker with not a lot of name recognition, it can be grueling. Murphy spells that out in detail, both for the Democratic primary and the general election. He then details attack-dog Republican tactics against him in the general election, including a possible Hatch Act violation by the chief of staff of his opponent, incumbent Republican Mike Fitzpatrick.

Next, he discusses the hypocrisy of some endorsements, though he’s either too kind or too soft to use the word “hypocrisy.”

That includes the Veterans of Foreign Wars endorsing Fitzpatrick, a non-veteran. That includes unions endorsing Fitzpatrick because “he returns our phone calls.” (It’s all about access, isn’t it?)

Murphy then explains his decision to join the Blue Dogs because they stand for “balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility.”

But, uhh, Pat … “paygo” on budget issues is an official position of your party as a whole in both houses of Congress. No need to join the Blue Dogs for that, unless you think Pelosi and Reid are giving lip service.

As for SOAR, especially in light of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, you’re naïve at best if you really think that under this administration, all its days of training human rights thugs are in the past. You should have voted to kill it.

In short, a good book but not a great one. While it is interesting to read about the shoe leather of a Congressional campaign, one doesn’t have to be an Iraq vet to do that, either.

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Stealing the sunshine (hypothesis) from climate change deniers

[x-posted on The 2 Dollar Bill]

The bulk of scientists have been suggesting for at least a few months that solar output has not been the responsible factor in climate change... much to the dismay of climate change deniers and skeptics.

Today, a more notable report came to light (no pun intended) from the University of Lancaster (UK) which says scientists found there has been

no significant link between [changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth determine cloudiness and temperature] in the last 20 years.

And

Over the course of one of the Sun's natural 11-year cycles, there was a weak correlation between cosmic ray intensity and cloud cover - but cosmic ray variability could at the very most explain only a quarter of the changes in cloudiness.

And for the following cycle, no correlation was found.

"This work is important as it provides an upper limit on the cosmic ray-cloud effect in global satellite cloud data," commented Dr Giles Harrison from Reading University, a leading researcher in the physics of clouds.

His own research, looking at the UK only, has also suggested that cosmic rays make only a very weak contribution to cloud formation.

The Svensmark hypothesis has also been attacked in recent months by Mike Lockwood from the UK's Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory. He showed that over the last 20 years, solar activity has been rising, which should have led to a drop in global temperatures if the theory was correct.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its vast assessment of climate science last year, concluded that since temperatures began rising rapidly in the 1970s, the contribution of humankind's greenhouse gas emissions has outweighed that of the Sun by a factor of about 13 to one.

Meanwhile, it's not just Iraq that's got folks up in arms. They're tired of the immovable position of the Bush Administration on Climate Change.

The question is: Is Carbon Dioxide (CO²) dangerous to humankind?

Obviously, we exhale it. But on the platform of climate change, is CO² dangerous? Some state's attorneys general believe so. They AG's from 18 states, two cities and 11 environmental groups stated

in a court filing Wednesday that the EPA has not issued a decision on regulation. Their court filing seeks to compel the EPA to act within 60 days.

“The EPA’s failure to act in the face of these incontestable dangers is a shameful dereliction of duty,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley.

The Sierra Club, which is also part of the lawsuit, accused the Bush administration of favoring industry. "While this administration has done everything possible to make a mockery of the rule of law in this country, it’s still stunning that they refuse to yield even to the high court," said Sierra Club legal counsel David Bookbinder.

EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar said the Supreme Court required the agency to evaluate how it would regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and other vehicles, but set no deadline.

The plaintiffs argue that there's enough data and information to make an informed decision now.

The Supreme Court ruling requires the agency to regulate carbon dioxide if it determines it is a danger to public health and welfare....

...Senior EPA employees have told congressional investigators in the House about a tentative finding from early December that CO2 posed a danger because of its climate impact. They said a draft regulation was distributed to the Transportation Department and the White House.

The EPA officials, in interviews with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said those findings were put on hold abruptly.

Surprise, surprise.

So if Congress won't act, perhaps the States will. It's beginning to sound like a full court press in the finals days of the Administration. Perhaps by next January the United States will have some respectable (or nearly respectable) environmental and climate change policy that will help us move toward more sustainable levels of emissions.

This will be very interesting to watch.

For a great writeup on the history of the climate change "debate" which appeared in Newsweek a few months ago, read this. It should be required reading for anyone running for office, to say the least.

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Good Intentions or Better Methods?

So when this GAO report on VA and DOD joint projects landed in my inbox (thanks BG!), I was expecting some serious inside baseball type stuff, the bureaucratic healthcare version of when to use a left handed pitcher who has a really good cut fastball but whose curve ball occasionally hangs over the plate. Now that I’ve managed to scare away everyone but some bemused Orioles fans and die hard healthcare geeks, let me say that this report did not live up to my expectations. It was surprisingly light on minutia, almost disappointingly so. But there were some interesting and broad points to be gleaned from it (there go the Oriole fans).

VA Health Care: Additional Efforts to Better Assess Joint Ventures Needed. GAO-08-399, March 28
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-399
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08399high.pdf

Basically Congress has tasked the VA and the DOD with identifying and cooperating on joint projects that will reduce costs and improve healthcare for veterans and soldiers. Like most such mandates this is one sounds relatively benign and unobjectionable, and like most mandates, this tells us pretty much nothing about what it’s supposed to do or why it’s being done.

Obviously improving care for veterans and soldiers sounds good to me, but I’m skeptical that joint ventures between the DOD and the VA are the best way to improve care. At the macro-level I’ve got concerns about mixing the two cultures, and nothing illustrates those concerns better than the contretemps around the interactions and miscommunications between the Army and the VA at Ft. Drum back in February (link):

The document summarizes a meeting at Fort Drum between VA workers and members of what the Army calls a "Tiger Team" — an ad-hoc group assigned to investigate, in this case, medical-disability benefits.

According to the memo, one member of the Tiger Team told the VA not to counsel soldiers on their disability benefits because "there exists a conflict of interest."

Conflict of interest? That’s my Army, always looking out for us soldiers. And that’s the nature of the problem: the Army (and by extension the DOD) have way more pull than the VA. Not to say the people in the VA aren’t going to fight the good fight for veterans, but they’ve got less levers to pull and theirs are way smaller. So commingling the cultures has some drawbacks as the report itself details (p.24):

VA officials stated that DOD’s readiness mission may be incompatible in certain situations with VA’s mission to provide quality and timely care to veterans. Similarly, VA officials noted that VA and its academic affiliates have different missions and, at times, competing priorities, which has raised concerns among veterans that they may not always receive appropriate access to equipment and services.

And as the report also states, it is possible to manage through these sorts of incompatibilities with careful planning. But then what’s the benefit? In terms of cost reduction, the report describes it this way (p.10):

Joint ventures are intended to avoid costs by maximizing available resources by jointly using a medical facility. According to VA, joint ventures involve a multi-entity, collaborative and strategic arrangement of at least 5 years in duration and a level of magnitude and scale comparable to VA’s current major capital threshold ($10 million). Joint ventures are complex in that they require an integrated approach because two separate health care systems must develop multiple sharing agreements that allow them to operate as one system at one location. VA currently has eight joint ventures with DOD...

So we’ve got complex projects that have to net at least $10 million in savings; what kind of a track record do we have to date? It seems to be mixed and here’s the kicker: not particularly well understood. Although various VA locations say that they’re able to realize cost savings from collaboration with the DOD, they don’t have a lot of hard data to back these “hunches” up with (p. 26):

VA and DOD officials told us that they do not use performance measures to assess the extent to which the joint ventures produce the identified benefits, such as improved care or lower costs.

Officials give a number of reasons for not routinely or comprehensively documenting cost savings from these joint ventures, including [emphasis added]:

• VA officials noted that they are not required to conduct assessments.

• Officials at the VA-DOD sites said that differences in their computer systems and business processes can limit their ability to conduct such assessments.

• The VA-DOD sites have competing priorities for the limited resources that would be required to conduct such assessments, according to officials from several sites.

• …several VA and DOD officials said they intuitively knew they were saving money as a result of the joint venture, but they were unable to provide data to support this belief. Without comprehensive, supporting evidence, the extent to which the cited outcomes have been achieved at joint venture sites is largely unknown.

Now I don’t mean to pick on the good people doing the good work that these people are doing, and I think it’s important to pay attention to your hunches when doing analysis (which I do for a living), but you always want to gut-check your hunches with some facts. Unless you aspire to be Paul Wolfowitz or Douglas Feith. But how to put all this ambivalence into context? I mean why is anyone bothering with this? Here’s why I think they’re doing it:

VA officials said that since all of the existing joint ventures with DOD have been congressionally directed, there is little incentive to document or measure the results of the joint ventures.

Never underestimate the negative impact of top down, hierarchical decrees. One doesn’t have to be particularly skilled at reading between the bureaucratic lines to get a handle on this one: they’re doing it cause they were told to do it. So obviously this raises a whole slew of questions about how this mandate came down from Congress and why it didn’t have some language built in about collecting data to verify results. But that’s a whole ‘nother post. My take away is this:

Since the VA needs to do cost savings to get veterans the care they need, it’s pretty obvious to me that the VA isn’t fully funded. I’m not saying they should be able to spend without oversight, but if they’re being asked to cost save without oversight, how much sense does that make? And how much of priority is this cost savings anyway? Looks like someone got to check off a box without knowing if anything worthwhile was accomplished. So while we have the very real risk of muddying the VA’s mission by forcing it to join with the DOD on various projects, we don’t have a sense of the real benefits in dollars and cents.

But everything about this isn’t negative. This venture has some potential real benefits apart from cost savings. One of the best outcomes (setting aside the issue of adequate care) is making the transition from soldier to veteran a seamless one. As the report states, “Some VA and DOD officials noted that joint ventures support the Presidential Task Force objective for VA and DOD to collaborate at all levels to ensure a seamless transition for eligible military personnel from active duty to veteran status.” This is the best news in the report from my perspective as a veteran. The military generally does a piss poor job preparing their people for life as veterans. And I do mean veterans, not civilians. We’re going to have a lot of people coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with issues and needs that are specific to people trying to readjust after combat tours. But again, the way to figure out if any of these mandates and the joint ventures that support them are doing any good is to collect data, and that is exactly what isn’t going on. So the question uppermost in mind is why was this mandate sent down without any instructions for follow-up and verification that the joint ventures are actually helping our veterans and service people? I can’t say for sure, but the cynic in me sees a bunch of veterans issues under a rug that Congress is holding the corner of.

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Don’t Cry For The Telcos - Bush & Cheney Are The Only Ones That Are Dying For Immunity

[Cross Posted from Emptywheel]

The issues surrounding the FISA legislation are still roiling in Congress, thanks to the sudden appearance of a spine and principle by the Democrats in the House of Representatives (and correspondingly, with no thanks to the spineless and craven counterparts in the Senate, especially Jello Jay Rockefeller, the SSCI, and Harry Reid for bringing the horrid Intel committee bill to the floor instead of the far superior Judiciary bill). The most contentious issue has been, and continues to be, the proposed retroactive immunity for telco companies. Since the ugly head of the issue was first raised last summer with the railroaded passage of the Protect America Act, I have been arguing vehemently that the telcos are not in any grave danger financially from the civil suits currently pending. If their conduct is as has been described to date, they are already protected from liability for the actions that have been described, both by existing statutory immunity and by a right to indemnification from the government. The full court press for immunity by the Administration is entirely about cover for the lawless Bush Administration, and not about the impending financial demise of the telcos.

This post will go back over some of the basis for my argument that has been laid out previously, both here at Emptywheel and, earlier, at The Next Hurrah. I will also try to relate a few basics on what the general concept of indemnification is, and how it relates to contracts, in this case the agreements between the telcos and the Bush Administration. I have been making this argument for quite some time now, since last August, and have yet to have anybody put a significant dent in it; but it is no good if it cannot hold up to scrutiny. In that regard, I have posited my theory to several other lawyers expert in the field of governmental/Fourth Amendment litigation, including some extremely knowledgeable on the very civil suits at issue here, and all have agreed with the validity of my premise.

[Keep Reading...]



The Argument: The Bush Administration, with the help of telco providers (telelphone, cellphone, internet and other communication providers) engaged in massive wiretapping and datamining efforts, ostensibly to protect the United States from attack by terrorists. The legality of much of these programs has been questioned in many fora, but the germane ones for the immunity demand by the Administration are the civil suits that have been filed against both

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In A Show Of True Bipartisanship Congress Has Given Itself A Pay Raise Without Anybody Casting A Vote

Well, Congressmen know how to take care of themselves. It seems they will all receive $4000.00 raises this year. According to the AP the raises were quietly accomplished via a complicated COLA process linked on raises given to senior civil servants.

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, a leading critic of the COLA process, said in an interview that he's not proposing that members of Congress never get a pay raise. But he said that, in a time of budget deficits when many people are undergoing economic hardships, "at least we ought to have an up-and-down vote on it. The whole process appears so secretive."

Barack Obama is right. A spirit of true bipartisanship exists on issues of real importance. On a related topic will you receive a raise this year?

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Holocaust Survivor Stepping Down

The only Holocaust survivor elected to Congress is retiring.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rep. Tom Lantos, who chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and is the only Holocaust survivor elected to the Congress, on Wednesday said he has been diagnosed with cancer and will not seek re-election in November.

The 79-year-old California Democrat, who was born in Hungary and twice escaped Nazi labor camps, said he will serve the remainder of his 14th term, which ends in January 2009.

In announcing he has been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus and would end his House career at the end of his term, Lantos reflected on his life.

"It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress," Lantos said.

Shortly after Lantos came to Congress in 1981, he pushed for legislation granting honorary U.S. citizenship to Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. That came nearly four decades after Wallenberg protected Lantos and other occupants of an apartment building from Nazi arrest.

Throughout his congressional career, Lantos was an outspoken critic of international human rights abuses.

Lantos helped win passage in 2002 of a congressional resolution authorizing the U.S. attack on Iraq that unfolded the following year. More recently, Lantos has been critical of the "U.S. involvement in the civil war in Iraq."

When Democrats gained majority control of the House a year ago, Lantos used his new position as chairman of the foreign affairs panel to conduct oversight of the Iraq war, including a high-profile hearing last September on progress from the U.S. troop increase.

Of course, Bradley Smith, David Duke, and Hutton Gibson all deny the existence of of Rep. Lantos, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary.

[cross-posted at Lost Chord]

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CIA destroys possible waterboarding tapes; where was Congress? Where will Congress be?

The story about how the CIA destroyed videotapes of two al-Qaeda suspects being waterboarded is of course a huge hot potato.

There’s plenty of people commenting on the possible obstruction of justice angle.

What I want to know is, how much did Members of Congress know or not know about these tapes before they were destroyed, and what Congress is going to do now?

As for the first question:

General Hayden said in a statement that leaders of Congressional oversight committees were fully briefed on the matter, but some Congressional officials said notification to Congress had not been adequate.

OK, how sharp of a difference do we have between “fully briefed” and “not adequate,” at least for chairpersons and ranking minority members of House and Senate intelligence committees?

Related to that, how much of a public hashing out of this are we going to get?

If the two top Democrats on the committees had something close to full briefing, where were Jane Harman and Jay Rockefeller? Can’t a Democratic Congressman or Senator leak?

Well, I guess this is, what, chance No. 172 for Congress to actually grow a pair?

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Kay Bailey Cheerleader speaks in Dallas

This comes from a story from my newspaper editor’s day job. Four southern Dallas County cities, all covered by my suburban weekly newspaper group, have a join umbrella chamber of commerce. That chamber holds a quarterly luncheon with a keynote speaker. Today, it was Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison,

I had a few minutes of media time with her after her luncheon speech. I didn’t extremely grill her, given the situation, but I did ask questions on some things she said on major topics, and I otherwise “backgrounded” other statements she made.

Iraq, taxes, immigration and health care — U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison hit all the primary political notes in her Best Southwest Chamber of Commerce speech Nov. 29.

Senatorial harmony
“The atmosphere in Washington is not so good right now and I don’t like that. There are beginning to be deep divisions in so many areas,” she said.

She referred to the process of filibustering in the Senate as one concern, specifically citing a largely-Democratic threat of filibuster blocking attempts to open a portion of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Under Senate rules, 60 of 100 Senators, not a bare majority of 51, are required to end debate on a bill in the Senate, unless the bill has already been brought to the floor on a unanimous consent device. Speaking against cloture, the ending of debate, is a filibuster. It has been used at times in the past, but now — especially among Republicans — the mere threat of a filibuster, by an advance announcement of intent to vote against cloture, has slowed the progress of many bills in the Senate.

Hutchison later addressed filibustering and filibustering threats by both parties in the Senate.

“It’s so important for us to do away with the toxic atmosphere; everything seems to be a political issue,” she said, mentioning she had been in the minority party in the Senate in the past, as well as the current Senate, and had not seen things hit this level before.
“I would very much like to see us move forward. It’s not a healthy atmosphere where everything takes 60 votes.

“But I can’t give you the right formula, because we’ve tried a lot.”

More below the fold.


Taxes
Hutchison then talked about taxes in general and the estate tax in particular. The estate tax, a federal tax, with a standard deduction as in federal income taxes, is the tax the government assesses on an estate when it is inherited from a parent or other deceased person. Because of the nature of when the tax is assessed, Hutchison and other Republicans have taken to calling it the “death tax” in recent years.

She mentioned 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, sought by President George W. Bush and passed by Congress, as a factor in economic growth earlier this decade. She said that worries about how the current, Democratically-controlled, Congress would change various tax rates, were hurting the economy, and if passed, would hurt small business. She mentioned the estate tax as part of this and indicated she wanted its deduction raised.

Under the current law, the federal estate tax deduction is supposed to rise to $3.5 million by 2009, then the estate tax disappears entirely — but for just one year — in 2010. It would then reappear in 2011, with its 2001 deduction level of $1 million.

Hutchison later said she did not have an exact dollar amount in mind for the increase, but did say, due to a Democratic Senate filibuster threat, she was not, at this time, trying to get the estate tax eliminated.

A more likely scenario than permanently eliminating the estate tax deduction would be making permanent the 2009 deduction of $3.5 million, even though two of America’s richest people, investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, are on record as against raising the deduction too high, let alone repealing it.

On how the estate tax affects farms, and the ever-shrinking number of traditional family farms, current law allows farmers to leave up to $4 million per couple in nominal farm assets to their heirs without the heirs having to pay any estate taxes. With provisions that let farms be valued at less than full market value, some farmers can pass farms whose actual value is almost $6 million without the heirs paying estate taxes.

Energy
Hutchison then moved to energy issues, including the ANWR filibuster threat she mentioned earlier.

“The energy issue is not looking very good,” she said.

She called for America to become more self-sufficient in oil, pointing out the fact that America now imports 60 percent of its oil. She added that many people may be unaware that Venezuela, led by socialist President Hugo Chavez, who has been in the news recently for actions that got him called a “lunatic” by Hutchison, is a bigger importer of oil to the U.S. than any of the Arab oil states of the Persian Gulf.

For alternative energy sources, she said America needed more ethanol, but needed to look at other sources besides corn, which she said simply will not be able to meet a mandated major increase in alternative fuels that Congress is considering. The current standard of 7.5 billion gallons per year, met largely by ethanol and biodiesel, could be raised as high as 30 billion gallons a year.

Hutchison said the country simply couldn’t get that much more ethanol out of corn without eliminating corn as a food source. She called for increasing efforts into getting ethanol from cellulosic sources, such as wood, leaves, weeds and other plant “waste.”
But, Hutchison also called for more domestic oil drilling.

She decried potential Democratic tax changes she said would eliminate tax relief for companies building oil refineries, including one in Port Arthur.

She also called for an end to Democrats blocking oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which she noted was about as big as the state of South Carolina. She said the area that would be the focus of exploratory oil drilling was only about the size of Love Field, the Dallas airport.

As for environmental issues, she said the refuge didn’t have a single tree.

Specifically, the 1002 Area within the refuge that the Bush Administration wants to open for oil drilling is about 8 percent the size of the whole refuge, at 1.5 million acres. Environmentally, though it doesn’t have any trees, it is the heart of summer calving grounds for the 128,000 strong Porcupine Caribou herd. And, while a majority of Alaskans are on record as favoring drilling there, American Indians on the south side of the refuge remain opposed; Inuit on the north side are of mixed views.

Environmentalists also say that at maximum production, it would probably meet just 2 percent of American oil demand. Government estimates of oil reserves in the area increased greatly from the administration of President Bill Clinton to President Bush.
After the luncheon, Hutchinson was asked what her stance was on energy conservation issues, most notably, a bill currently in Congress to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, the average gas mileage for all its makes of automobiles each car manufacturer must meet, from its current 27.5mpg for cars to 35mpg by 2020. Light trucks have a current standard of 20.7mpg; some versions of the CAFÉ standards bill would make them meet the same standard as cars. Currently, cars and trucks combined, sold in 2004, had a fuel economy average of 24.6mpg.

Hutchison said she was in favor of looking at CAFE standards in general, but did not want to adopt any specific standard that would hurt American automakers.

Immigration
She next tackled illegal immigration, and politely signaled her differences with President Bush’s recent series of raids on employers, such as meat-packing plants.

“We have many jobs that need to be filled that aren’t being filled by Americans,” she said. “We need a guest worker program.

“I’m annoyed when we say, ‘We need to crack down on employees who hire illegals.’ We can’t lay that burden on our employers.”

Iraq/national security
The final topic on her agenda was Iraq and national security issues.

“Terrorists are trying to take away our freedom and our diversity more than anybody ever did before,” she said.

Without naming any senators or party affiliations, she then said she was concerned by what she called an attitude of “cutting and running” on Iraq.

Hutchison was later asked if she was worried about the Iraq government not appearing to step up its efforts at better governance, and how she would respond to other people who had the same concerns.

“I worry about that myself,” she said. “I think we need to bring in the surrounding Arab countries (for regional talks on Iraq’s future and stability), and that has not yet happened. There have been some regional summits, but I think the Arab states need to do more.”

As for the current Iraqi government, led by Nouri al-Maliki, she said, “We can’t dictate who the Iraq leaders are.”

On other national security issues, she said she liked what she called the change in European attitude by new French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She decried the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and member states for not getting involved in Iraq, even though non-U.S. NATO countries immediately got involved in Afghanistan and now supply the majority of troops there.

Endnote: It was a pretty partisan speech, especially given her opening cries for a more bipartisan Congress. (That said, Hutchison isn’t John Cornyn, who is a right-wing hack.) She has the right answers on some things, definitely on not relying on corn-based ethanol, and is trying to find some sort of middle on illegal immigration. She also clearly conflated Iraq and Afghanistan on trying to guilt-trip NATO about not being in Iraq, showing she’s still drinking a full share of winger Kool-Aid on Iraq. On Iraq, I could have asked half a dozen questions, but there wasn’t time, and given the nature of the engagement, didn’t want to harsh up too much on the questioning.

And, she’s supposed to be a more sensible, more moderate conservative than many GOPers. Other than on reproductive choice, you look at her, look for moderate, and just have to shake your head, because it ain’t there, except in style compared to an attack dog like Cornyn.

There's more: "Kay Bailey Cheerleader speaks in Dallas" >>

Congress should approve new war powers bill

I agree with George Will, surprisingly, on a major Congressional bill.

Will says the best way to prevent war with Iran is for Congress to approve Rep. Walter Jones’ Congressional War Powers Resolution. Yes, it’s shocking to agree with Will, but he’s got some very good points

Congress can, however, put the Constitution's bridle back on the presidency. Congress can end unfettered executive war-making by deciding to. That might not require, but would be facilitated by, enacting the Constitutional War Powers Resolution. Introduced last week by Rep. Walter B. Jones, a North Carolina Republican, it technically amends but essentially would supplant the existing War Powers Resolution, which has been a nullity ever since it was passed in 1973 over President Richard Nixon's veto.

Mr. Jones' measure is designed to ensure that deciding to go to war is, as the Founders insisted it be, a "collective judgment." It would prohibit presidents from initiating military actions except to repel or retaliate for sudden attacks on America or American troops abroad, or to protect and evacuate U.S. citizens abroad. It would provide for expedited judicial review to enforce compliance with the resolution and would permit the use of federal funds only for military actions taken in compliance with the resolution.

It reflects conclusions reached by the War Powers Initiative of the Constitution Project. That nonpartisan organization's 2005 study notes that Congress' appropriation power enables Congress to stop the use of force by cutting off its funding. That check is augmented by the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits any expenditure or obligation of funds not appropriated by Congress, and by legislation that criminalizes violations of the act.

At the same time, he says a Congressional failure to act would “merit its own marginalization.’ If this bill is being pushed by a Republican, and can be sold as a claim-back of legislative powers from the executive, maybe it has an outside shot of getting a veto-proof majority. I won’t hold my breath over that, but, it’s worth a shot.

Problem is, though, this goes back to my takeoff on an old cliché.

That cliché says that Congress contains 535 Secretaries of State. True, but it often contains zero Secretaries of Defense when push comes to shove.

What Will doesn’t mention is that the original War Powers Act is a nullity in part because Congress has never invoked it, and has rarely passed even lesser control resolutions about specific conflicts. If Jones’ new legislation has a similar enabling mechanism, it will become just as much a nullity until and unless Congress is willing to take full legislative responsibility for war-making decisions: both in restraining, or supporting, executive decisions, and accepting its part in responsibility for the results.

Update, per Tom’s comment: Tom, the original War Powers Resolution has similar, if less explicit, language, regarding troops under threat:

(c) The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." (My emphasis.)

The "evacuation of U.S. Citizens" is added in Jones' bill.

At the same time, it has a "funding limitation" paragraph not in the original:

(c) Funding Limitation- Unless one of the numbered paragraphs of subsection (b) applies, after the expiration of the period specified in that subsection (including any extension of that period in accordance with that subsection), funds appropriated or otherwise made available under any law may not be obligated or expended to continue the involvement of the Armed Forces in the hostilities. This subsection does not, however, prohibit the use of funds to remove the Armed Forces from hostilities.

So, that's actually a strengthening of the original WPA.

Rather than a one-shot Petraeus "surge" report, in the absence of a declared war, we'd have the requirement for regular executive updates in exchange for continued funding.

Here’s Jones’ bill; here’s the original War Powers Resolution.

There's more: "Congress should approve new war powers bill" >>

Some Questions for General Petraeus

Ever since the Surge™ plans rolled off the presses at the American Enterprise Institute and the escalation got underway, any time anyone has brought up withdrawal of troops and drawing down in Iraq, Resident Evil™ and his slavering lackeys have engaged in a stall tactic. “Wait for September.” is the rote refrain. “Wait to hear what General Petraeus has to say.” Well, it's September.

(As if we could count on receiving the unvarnished truth about success on the ground! Ha! I inwardly roll my eyes. I’ve read that op-ed before – right before the last presidential selection, in fact.)

Well, we know he is going to spin and mince and parse and do a soft-soap routine extraordinaire. None the less, when he is in front of the congressional committees, I would dearly love to see him asked to answer the following questions – and for the committees to make him answer them in a forthright manner.

Start at the beginning.

General Petraeus, could you start by defining the mission of the U.S. military in Iraq? How does that correspond with the original grounds for the invasion?

What was the population of Iraq in March 2003? What was the unemployment rate? GNP?

What is the population now? Unemployment rate? GNP?

How many Iraqis have fled the country as refugees? How many people have fled violence in their neighborhoods and home districts, but remain in the country as internally displaced persons? How many internal refugee camps have sprung up in recent months?

Of the population remaining in Iraq, how many would you estimate are actively involved with violence toward other Iraqis? Toward American troops?

Would you provide the names of and background on groups which the U.S. maintains have engaged in violence against Americans?

al Qaeda in Iraq

Of the jihadist/resistance fighters in Iraq, how many claim an affiliation with al Qaeda? How many are members of the main al Qaeda organization, and would take direct orders from ObL? Of those claiming membership in AQI, how many are Iraqis? How many are foreign nationals? Of the foreign nationals, where do they come from? How many jihadist fighters do you estimate come from each of these other nations? How many were loyal to al Qaeda before the United States invaded Iraq? Can you provide names and background information on those claiming to be AQI leadership? Are any of the professed leaders Iraqi? How many? How many people in Iraq professed membership in or allegiance to al Qaeda in March 2003.

The Insurgency

Can you provide the statistics on insurgents by sect? Can you give us this information for each province? Of the insurgents in Iraq today, how many have been active since the invasion? How many have taken up arms since the bombing of the al-Askiri Shrine in February 2006? What provinces have seen attacks committed against American forces since the “Surge™” achieved >50% of the troop buildup. What provinces have been violence free in this time period?

Iraqi Casualties

How does the U.S. count Iraqis killed by gunshots? How are Iraqis killed by explosions counted? How are Iraqis killed by American air strikes counted? Do you feel the slightest pang of conscience when you parse death statistics by whether a victim died execution style, or facing their killer? Do you think that matters to the decedent or their family?

Iraqi Perceptions

How many Iraqis oppose continuing the American military presence in that country? Of Iraqis not engaged in violence against Americans, how many nonetheless do not object to attacks against American forces?

The Missing Millions

How much cash was airlifted to Iraq after the invasion of 2003? We know that at least $110 million went missing from your command in Mosul. What happened to that money, General? How much of that missing money has been used to fund the insurgency, either directly or indirectly?

The Missing Weapons

We know that fully half of American casualties in Iraq are the result of the failure to secure munitions (al Qua Qua) in the early days of the invasion. Were you in any way responsible for the decisions that led to that failure? Who was? Have they faced any accountability?

The GAO estimates that approximately half of all light weapons supplied by American forces to Iraqi military and police forces – 190,000 AK-47’s and handguns – have gone missing. Who got those weapons? Have they been turned against American forces? Used against other Iraqis in sectarian attacks? Used in criminal acts?

Infrastructure

How many bridges have been attacked since the troop buildup got underway?

How many hours of electricity does the average Iraqi experience in a day? What was the average before the invasion in March 2003? What was the average temperature in Iraq this August? How do Iraqis cool their homes? How many times has the electrical grid been attacked by insurgents since the start of the escalation? Who is responsible for the security of the grid? How many hours of electricity does your headquarters enjoy per day?

How many Iraqi homes, on average went without water for more than 24 hours during the month of August? What is the status of the water delivery system? How safe is the water to drink, when it is available? Hypothetically: If your family came to visit you in Iraq, would you feel comfortable with them drinking the water?

***

And then, after a brief restroom break, I would start asking even tougher questions about the status of the Iraqi security forces. And I would segue into the ten and twenty year occupation predictions and projections. But that is me – and I am not a lily-livered poltroon afraid of being perceived as being mean to a poor little helpless four-star general.

(Hat tip to one of the commenters at Political Animal for posting many of these same questions, and many more. Reading that comment, I was able to pull all the disparate strands of outrage together and write a post that passes for cogent.)

There's more: "Some Questions for General Petraeus" >>

You weren't really sucked in, were you?

About that Petraeus “Report” that he assured all he would be writing himself after it leaked out that the report would be coming from the White House?

Yeah, scratch the indignant “I'll be writing my own report” bullshit – and by the way, I will remind you here and now that anyone familiar with the mans body of work knew he was blowing smoke.

Today we learned that the only hard-copy Petraeus will be working from will be his opening statement. He will bring a stack of PowerPoint graphs and charts – the sort of thing that sucked in the lame-brained Brian Baird – but Petraeus won’t be writing, nor will he be presenting, a “Petraeus Report” because no such animal exists.

Yes, I realize full well that the text of PL 110-28 says:

“the President, having consulted with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Commander, Multi-National Forces-Iraq, the United States Ambassador to Iraq, and the Commander of U.S. Central Command, will prepare the report and submit the report to Congress.”

“[T]he United States Ambassador to Iraq and the Commander, Multi-National Forces Iraq will be made available to testify in open and closed sessions before the relevant committees of the Congress.”

…so save the slavering wingnuttery. Especially since you probably didn't know yourself until some right-tard fatassed-fascist chickenhawk war-blogger with no skin in the game gave you the petticoat to crawl under within the last 72 hours. For the record, I read the text of the law in May, have known what it said for months and I've been waiting for the wingnuts to crawl out of the woodwork. I have my can of Raid at the ready for the vermin.

In other words, I am in no mood to tolerate having my leg pissed on and being told it’s raining.

Now, riddle me this, Batman (nice cowl, by the way) : What do you think got through to more people: The actual text of the law? Or the lawmakers talking on the TeeVee? (I’m going with the TeeVee, because there is no possibility of a boob-shot if you are reading the text of the legislation that rules our lives, and Galileo knows that Americans will always go for boobs over substance.) I am guessing that MAYBE .5% of Americans who consider themselves well informed read the text.

(h/t John Amato @ Crooks & Liars for the rundown)

Senate Minority Leader McConnell:

Let me remind the Senate of what we agreed to…We voted, and put into law, that General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker would report in September on progress. The benchmarks report and the timeline we set in May was clear. It gave us, the troops, and our allies, clarity on what was expected.

Senator McCain:

The war will be discussed in September again—we all know that—when General Petraeus is ready to report to the Senate…General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will come to Washington in September to report on the status of their efforts and those of the Iraqis.

Senator Sessions:

To press the point further, I strongly believe that whatever the inclinations of Senators on the conduct of the war in Iraq, to change our strategy now before we even hear from General Petraeus in September would be a colossal blunder for a host of reasons. To do so would be unthinkable…I am anxious to hear General Petraeus’s report.

Senator Coleman:

Fifty-four days ago we sent a message to General Petraeus: Go forth with the surge, and then come back and report to us.

Senator Chambliss:

I have never been more convinced that waiting for General Petraeus’s report in September was more right than yesterday afternoon…

Senator Craig:

That’s why when we confirmed General Petraeus unanimously in the Senate, we said to him very clearly, you go to Iraq in relation to a surge that is being implemented and you come back to us and give us your honest and fair assesement in September.

Senator Cornyn:

But the fact is, Gen. David Petraeus…will come back and report to us in September.

Senator DeMint:

The Democrats agreed on that funding, but they requested that we have a report from General Petraeus in the middle of September to find out what progress we were making. We all agreed to that.

Senator Bunning

I promised in person, in my office, to General Petraeus, that I would wait to hear his report this fall.

And of course I couldn’t leave out everyone’s favorite Republican:

Senator Lieberman

In fact, this amendment should not even be considered now…Because in that bill we required General Petraeus, along with our Ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, to come back in September and report to us…I made a personal pledge to him. I am going to give him and the troops a fair chance, which this amendment would deprive him of, and I am going to give him until September to come back and tell me how it is going.
[All emphasis mine]

So lets do a rundown, shall we? Refresh our memories on the high- (and low-) lights of the past 12 weeks:

First, Resident Evil™ and his minions in the Senate systematically set out on a disinformation campaign designed to pin all hopes on a “Petraeus Report” that every last mother-fucking one of them knew was actually going to be written by the White House. (This is called lying. It ought to be called Treason when it involves a war and the lives of other peoples children.)

When the citizenry began to grumble about being lied to, wingnut congresscritter from Virginia ,Tom Davis tried to tamp down the controversy by explaining that the report would be Petraeus’ but the White House would probably “tweak” it, but, he insisted, it would be Petraeus’ report.

(Another lie from a wingnut Republican. Surprise, surprise, surprise! They always fall back to their default position, don’t they?)

There will be no written report from the Surgin’ General. His statements to Congress will be made public, but there will be no public record of what information he provides to aWol. This obscuring process doesn’t go very far toward discrediting the reports we got this week that pull the masks off the bandits, does it?

I am left with one conclusion: Petraeus did such a good job of producing Kabuki this summer, they are extending the run into the fall!

(H/T to the bloggers at Think Progress. Their archives were relied on heavily for this post.)

There's more: "You weren't really sucked in, were you?" >>

Better Late Than Never

Josh Marshall, Founder of the Talking Points Memo Empire, and one of the most eloquent progressive skeptics on impeachment, appears to finally be coming around.

"Without going into all the specifics, I think we are now moving into a situation where the White House, on various fronts, is openly ignoring the constitution, acting as though not just the law but the constitution itself, which is the fundamental law from which all the statutes gain their force and legitimacy, doesn't apply to them.

If that is allowed to continue, the defiance will congeal into precedent. And the whole structure of our system of government will be permanently changed.

Whether because of prudence and pragmatism or mere intellectual inertia, I still have the same opinion on the big question: impeachment. But I think we're moving on to dangerous ground right now, more so than some of us realize. And I'm less sure now under these circumstances that operating by rules of 'normal politics' is justifiable or acquits us of our duty to our country."

I've been a loyal TPM fan since 2001, when it was a one-man, bare-bones blog, just a few months old. TPM Cafe, Election Central, Horse's Mouth, Muckraker, TPMTv and the staff that keep TPM at the top of the blogging game were not even gleams in Josh's eye.

Yeah, he's always been a little too fond of the DLC line for my taste, but I was thrilled by the reporter's sensibility he brought to his posts - a sensibility now grown into the major-story-breaking hard news of TPMMuckraker.

And for all his DLC apologia, liberals and progressives owe Josh Marshall a permanent debt of gratitude for putting a stop, virtually single-handedly, to The Usurper's 2005 attempt to destroy Social Security.

I thought Josh was wrong when he expressed doubts about the wisdom of impeaching Bush and Cheney, but I respected his logic.

I respect him even more for his ability to consider changing his mind based on new evidence and circumstances.

Nevertheless, I think he's missing one of the strongest arguments in favor of impeachment: Nixon.

Josh is 38, which means he was in kindergarten during Watergate. I was only in high school, but I remember the extreme shock felt by people of all political persuasions when the full extent of Nixon's crimes was laid bare.

I remember the heart-swelling pride in the strength of our political system when Congressional Republicans and Democrats banded together to expose those crimes and demand the president be held accountable.

I remember my father - a third-generation Republican - and my mother, a sixth-generation Democrat - both emphasizing to me that the true lesson of Watergate was that the U.S. Constitution was stronger than any politican, stronger than any president, stronger than any crime perpetrated against it.

And I remember how all that shock, all that pride, all that faith in the Constitution was swept away by Gerald Ford's pardon.

Nixon skated. The man shat on the Constitution, came within a whisker of establishing a police state that put the East German Stasi to shame, and he skated.

The precedent for The Usurper's treason was established.

Reagan and Bush I used it to escape punishment for Iran-Contra (Presidents are above the law.) And the republican freakazoids of the '90s turned it inside-out to impeach Clinton for telling a lie told by thousands of married people every single day (Impeachment isn't a serious Constitutional mechanism; it's a political tool.)

If Nixon had been impeached, or indicted and convicted for his crimes after his resignation, it would have been much harder for Reagan and Bush I to resist Congressional investigation through secrecy and perjury. It would have been much harder for '90s republicans to justify using the Constitutional majesty of impeachment for a fib about sex.

And it would have been damn-near impossible for George W. Bush and Richard Cheney to continue to trample the Constitution for more than five years after a pre-Nixon Congress would have kicked their asses into the dustbin of history.

If Congress doesn't impeach Bush and Cheney - or given the time constraints, indict and convict them after they leave office - it won't matter who's elected president in 2008. It won't matter if Democrats take the Senate and House with 80-percent majorities. It won't matter if the republican party is shut out of every national, state and local election for the next three generations.

If Bush and Cheney skate, an even more dangerous precedent than Nixon's will be set in stone:

The president is King; Congress is a debating club; the judiciary is a joke; the Constitution is as dead as Ozymandias, and The American Experiment is a historical fluke that failed.

There's more: "Better Late Than Never" >>

John Edwards Has A New Anti-War Ad

John Edwards has just put up a very strong anti-war ad calling on congress to send the president the same Iraq appropriations bill over and over again until he signs it. If I knew how to post it I would. The link is to YouTube.

At your service, CJ...Here it is. Give it a look. --BG

There's more: "John Edwards Has A New Anti-War Ad" >>

DIY Congress

Tired of waiting to find out how your Congress Critters voted on the vital issues of our day, not to mention the non-binding resolutions declaring this Potato Peelers Appreciation Week?

Now you can Do It Yourself!

A new site called Open Congress makes it even easier than Thomas.

It's organized by bill, by representative, by senator, by committee, by issue and even by industry. Each lawmaker page lists background information, sponsored and co-sponsored legislation, and votes on recent legislation.

It's a gold mine.

(Full disclosure: I found this today while catching up on my blog reading - Josh Marshall had this on Talking Points Memo February 26.)

Don't worry - we'll still be comin' atcha with all the vote-related praise and snark you expect.

There's more: "DIY Congress" >>

Circumventing the Electoral College

People like to bitch a lot about the Electoral College, and whether or not they do tends to hinge on whether or not that institutional arrangement benefits their preferred candidate. After the 2000 Presidential Election, Democrats railed against the thwarting of the national will. In 2004, John Kerry came reasonably close to winning the Presidency had Ohio swung the other way - he too would have won the Presidency while losing the popular vote. Had we enjoyed a Kerry/Edwards victory in 2004 you'd better believe Republicans would have protested en masse. It's no secret (or at least, it shouldn't be a secret) that our constitution was deliberately designed to mitigate the will of the majority. Madison and other Federalists feared factions - both minority and majority - would damage the institutionalization of the liberal values on which they hoped the United States would be founded. Majority-thwarting institutions were established to help maintain stability and individual rights; the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the Electoral College are undemocratic by design. I think there's a great deal of value in this line of thinking. Majority rule is not right by virtue of it's majority support. Just because 50 percent plus one of the population wants to strip racial minorities or their rights, or seize the property of the middle class does not make such actions right, normatively speaking. The Senate over-represents rural populations to ensure, in part, that states will large populations would not push through policies which might adversely affect numerical, rural, minorities. This makes a lot of sense, as our governing institutions emphasize consensus over the tyranny of the majority, and the emphasis on republican government (separation of powers, checks and balances, civic-minded citizens) works toward that end.

That said, I still think the electoral college is a damned ridiculous - and antiquated - body.

I would say that the Senate, Supreme Court, and our Federal arrangement mitigate the strength of numerical majorities well enough. The Electoral College was intended to give numerically smaller states a greater stake in Presidential elections, and to limit the strength of the mob. During the 19th century, state and local governments had much greater policy portfolios, and the Federal government was largely side-lined when it came to issues that affected local populations. You could say that there was a greater deal of (potential) local democracy during this time, as the lines between the local and federal spheres were pretty distinct, and accordingly, state governments were held more accountable for favorable and unfavorable policies. As the portfolio of the Federal government increased during the Second Industrial Revolution (late 19th, early 20th century) individuals found it much harder to affect change locally. Local policies were increasingly shaped by Federal laws, funding, and guidelines, while the disconnect between the individual and the Federal government remained. The popular elections of Senators changed this dynamic to some extent, but did nothing to increase the connection between voters and the Executive Branch.

During the late 20th century, people managed to develop alternatives to effect change in the executive branch. Participation in politically active civil-society and single-issue organizations gave citizens an effort to shape executive policies by way of lobbying. However, we all know the problems that can arise with this arrangement. Today, the will of individuals has very little effect on executive politics. By removing the barrier of the Electoral College, I think it would increase the 'level of democracy' (for lack of a better phrase) in our country; a level of democracy which is lacking.

I'm certainly not the first person to make these arguments. People seem to be generally opposed to electoral college (except when it benefits their particular cause at particular points in time) as it's overtly undemocratic. In fact, it seems fairly insulting. The Senate's majority-will-thwarting role in the legislature makes sense, I think, to people, as does that of the Supreme Court. However, the Electoral College essentially represents those elitist tendencies that many of the Federalists had toward the masses. These fears were probably legitimate at the time, but the demographics have changed quite a bit over the last two-and-a-half centuries. But there's not much that can be done short of a constitutional amendment to change the current situation...

... or is there?

Electoral arrangements are largely left up to the states to decide. The Constitution only requires that each state be given a number of electors equal to the number of Representatives and Senators that they have in Congress. It is up to the state legislatures to determine how these electors are to cast their ballots. Most states have a winner-take-all arrangement. In Washington State, we have 11 electors (9 Reps + 2 Senators), and they are determined by the party committee which wins the state. If the majority of Washingtonians vote Democrat (as has been the case since 1992), then the State Democratic Committee picks the electors. There's nothing in Washington State law which dictates that the electors have to vote a certain way, but you can bet that the parties pick the most loyal of loyalists to cast those votes. Some states have laws which require electors to vote in such a way as to reflect the will of the majority, while one or two states split their votes proportionately (Reps win 60 percent, they get 60 percent of electors). There has been a movement afoot to use state laws as a way to circumvent the electoral college.

The Associated Press reports* on some efforts to reshape the way electoral votes are allocated on the state level. Apparently, some state legislatures have voted to require that their respective electors cast ballots according to the will of the national majority. This would, of course, do away with the election night newscasts in which states are colored-coded according to whom their electoral votes are pledged when the polls closed. Those votes would only be allocated when the all the polls were closed, and the popular votes were tabulated. This would ensure that whoever wins the popular vote would also win the electoral, and would (hopefully) remove certain regional wedge issues from the national dialogue.

Of course, any institutional arrangement can be used to over-represent one group or another, and if these changes were adopted nation wide, some states would find themselves as the new foci of political activity, while other states would fall from prominence. This doesn't really change anything. However, it would make the election of our President more democratic, which is, I think, a good thing given the other, undemocratic arrangements that we have which limit the strength of majority factions.

Check out the link and let me know what you all think.

*I was unable to find a direct link to the AP, so here's a link to the story by an AP reporter via the Seattle Times

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