April 14, 2009

4/14: The Ball's In Norm's Court

Now that a MN court has ruled that Al Franken (D) won the most votes in the 2008 Senate race against ex-Sen. Norm Coleman (R), liberal bloggers are speculating about what Coleman will do next. The consensus view among the netroots is that Coleman knows it's over but that he will continue to appeal in order to prevent the Senate from seating Franken. Meanwhile, several liberal bloggers are urging one of the MN Supreme Court justices to recuse himself if Coleman appeals, since this justice has donated money to Coleman in the past.

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Conservative bloggers (Gordon, Malkin, Huston, Morrissey) are complaining about a leaked DHS document entitled, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Environment Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." Righty bloggers see this document as evidence that Janet Napolitano's DHS is targeting conservatives.
• Conservative bloggers (Hewitt, Hanna, Reynolds) are buzzing about the 4/15 "tea party" protests, in which conservatives will protest Pres. Obama's economic policies. Liberal bloggers (Hamsher, Gavin M., digby) argue that the "tea party" movement is a creation of corporate lobbyists rather than a spontaneous grassroots uprising, but conservative bloggers (Glover, Henke) disagree.
• Liberal bloggers (Black, Sudbay, Benen) are praising Obama for abandoning restrictions on the ability of Cuban-Americans to visit and send money to family members on the island. Others (Yglesias, Fernholz) are urging Obama to go further and lift the embargo.
• Liberal bloggers (Klein, Benen, Yglesias, Dayen) are angry that the private student lending industry and its congressional allies are gearing up to fight Obama's plan to "end a subsidized loan program and redirect billions of dollars in bank profits to scholarships for needy students."
• Liberal bloggers (Lewison, Waldman, Benen, Drum) are blasting conservative pundits who criticized Obama's handling of the Somali pirate hostage situation while the crisis was still unfolding.

MN SEN: Sometimes You Gotta Know When To Fold 'Em

Now that a MN court has ruled that Franken won more votes than Coleman in the 2008 Senate election, liberal bloggers are speculating about what Coleman will do next:

• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "We know that this decision will be appealed to the state Supreme Court. Will the Supremes issue an injunction to block the issuance of the certificate of election? Will [Gov. Tim] Pawlenty refuse to sign it? And what role will the federal courts play after Coleman inevitably runs out of appeal courts in Minnesota?"
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "[H]ere's something to watch for: how long will it take Coleman to file his appeal? He's known this decision was coming for a long time. His legal team almost certainly knew the grounds on which he was going to lose. They've had plenty of time to prepare their argument. They could probably file it tomorrow if they wanted to. But do they want to? If they're genuinely trying to win a Senate seat, they'll file quickly. After all, the faster they file, the faster Coleman can win the case and return in triumph to Washington. But if they don't think they can win -- if they're merely trying to stretch out a losing argument as long as possible in order to deny Franken his seat -- then they'll wait the ten full days. Which do you think it will be?"
• dday: "In most countries, this pruling] would mean that Franken would receive that certificate and actually enter the Senate. But as long as Norm Coleman has a few wealthy benefactors willing to bankroll him, he can appeal. Again and again. Now, the Supreme Court might not have anyone available to hear that appeal, since two justices served on the state canvassing board, and one has donated money to Norm Coleman in the past. But of course, the Minnesota Supreme Court is just a stepping stone to a federal district court of appeals. Which is just a stepping stone to the US Supreme Court. Which is just a stepping stone to some other judicial body Coleman can find. Which is just a stepping stone to the 2014 rematch. Franken will only have been an incumbent for a few months by then."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "It's worth remarking a bit on the incredible solidarity the Minnesota GOP is showing with their colleagues' broader interest in obstructing the inevitable here. Representatives John Kline, Erik Paulsen, and Michele Bachmann, along with Governor Tim Pawlenty, are all seeing their quest to get Minnesota's fair share of pork and other parochial interests undermined by the fact that their state only has one Senator. Normally, I would expect politicians in that kind of situation to put the interests of themselves and their state ahead of the interests of their political party."

Liberal bloggers are also urging MN Supreme Court Justice Christopher J. Dietzen to recuse himself if Coleman appeals, since Dietzen has donated money to Coleman on two previous occasions:

• Senate Guru: "[O]ne of the remaining Justices that will decide Norm Coleman's electoral fate is a two-time Norm Coleman donor! Heck, one of the two contributions occurred in the six years leading up to Coleman's 2008 re-election bid -- in other words, it was put toward this very election whose result Coleman is preparing to appeal. This is a crystal clear conflict of interest. Justice Dietzen should recuse himself from any Coleman appeals to the state Supreme Court in order to prevent the (rather obvious) appearance of bias."
• Benen: "I can appreciate the fact that judges are Americans, too, and they may want to participate in the electoral process, just like everyone else. That might mean voting for a candidate, and it might include financial support. When Judge Dietzen backed Coleman in 2004, it probably never occurred to him that he'd be asked to weigh in on Coleman's election-related lawsuit in 2009. But here we are, and Dietzen's support for Coleman's campaign raises legitimate questions about whether he's a neutral, objective arbiter on Coleman's political future."

DHS: Targeting Conservatives?

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about a DHS document (which the Washington Times describes here) entitled, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Environment Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." Righty bloggers believe that this document implies that every American with conservative views is a potential terrorism suspect:

• The Liberty Papers' Stephen Gordon: "According to this new Homeland Security report, all it takes to fit the terrorist profile is to have general anti-government feelings or prefer local/state government to federal control over everything. [...] Also targeted in the report are veterans, folks anticipating additional restrictions to their Second Amendment rights, and those concerned about the loss of U.S. sovereignty."
• Michelle Malkin: "The 'report' (PDF file here) was one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I'd ever read out of DHS. I couldn't believe it was real. [...] Well, the [DHS] press office got back to me and verified that the document is indeed for real. [...] In Obama land, there are no coincidences. It is no coincidence that this report echoes Tea Party-bashing left-wing blogs (check this one out comparing the Tea Party movement to the Weather Underground!) and demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party."
• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "This is almost unbelievable. The message is simple: If you are a conservative, you might be dangerous..."
• RedState's Warner Todd Huston: "In a world where Islamist terror is appearing in every corner of the earth, Obama and his policemen are trying to gin up fear about Ron Paul followers, conservatives, Republicans, constitutionalists, and Second Amendment supporters. Apparently to the lefties under Obama, other Americans are far more worrisome than Islamic terrorists. [...] Why are we paying millions for our intelligence services to focus on patriotic Americans for holding average right of center ideas when we have Islamist terrorism all across the globe? Why is Obama, like [Bill] Clinton, more interested in attacking his own political enemies than in attacking actual enemies to this country?"
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Imagine, if you will, what the Left would say if we took this entire document and replaced all references to 'military veterans' with 'Muslims', and all references to 'abortion' with 'universal health care', and then predated this DHS report to 2008, during the Bush administration. They'd be screaming about being smeared as traitors for their political beliefs, and they'd be right to do so. That's exactly what the Obama administration and Janet Napolitano has done here. This is a disgrace. Congress should demand Napolitano's resignation immediately, and the White House should apologize for this attack on normal political dissent."

Robert Stacy McCain thinks the DHS is wasting its time: "People are saying that Mexico is teetering on the verge of becoming a 'failed state,' and already the U.S.-Mexico border is plagued by narco-terror violence. What does DHS have to say about that? Why this apparent assumption that we are due for something like a Timothy McVeigh/Eric Rudolph scenario? They're 'fighting the last war,' so to speak, expecting the immediate future to resemble the immediate past. Well, history repeats itself, but not usually in such a direct manner. I'd hate to think DHS was spending so much time checking out every fringe kook in Idaho that they ignored the continuing Al-Qaeda threat."

CUBA: A Step In The Right Direction

Liberal bloggers are praising Obama for ending "longstanding restrictions on the ability of Cuban-Americans to visit and send money to family members on the island":

• Atrios: "[Our] Cuba policy is dumb all around, so any easing is good."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Good move. And, it is a big step in the right direction."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "This is a great development and one wonders if with it, President Obama single-handedly turned Florida forever blue."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "The hardline restrictions imposed by the Bush administration, which only followed in the footsteps of restrictions imposed by every other modern president, moved U.S. policy in precisely the wrong direction. The result, not surprisingly, was more of the same. Obama's break with the past is far more likely to pay dividends."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "Hopefully this is the right thing to do. It can't be worse than the status quo, which seems to me to have been pointless."

Many liberal bloggers want Obama to go further and lift the embargo:

• TAPPED's Tim Fernholz: "Each bullet point is in and of itself a good move, but is certainly not enough -- there's no reason our policy in Cuba to be any different than our policy in China, for instance, where trade and travel are taken for granted."
• Yglesias: "What they've done here, pretty clearly, is tightly target those measures where a clear case can be made that relaxing restrictions does much more to weaken the regime than anything else. That's clever politics and probably a smart start. But the plain fact of the matter is that the whole embargo is based on faulty logic. Making the Cuban population as poor as possible isn't going to bring democracy to the island, and the idea that a more prosperous Cuba could somehow become so prosperous as to pose a security threat to the United States is ridiculous. A Communist economy running without subsidies from the USSR is bound to be pretty poor no matter what, but there's no reason for us to contribute to the situation."

The Washington Note's Steve Clemons is concerned about the precedent Obama is setting: "Our President and our Congress should be crafting foreign policies with other sovereign states that fit the preferences and interests of most Americans, not a sub-class of them. But today, remarkably, our nation's first African-American President has just issued executive orders that create preferences and opportunities for a specific class of ethnic Americans. Even if a good step on one level, at a macro level, this sort of cynical gaming of domestic politics at the expense of broader national interests is fundamentally wrong. [...] So, applause for the Cuban-American oriented efforts. Better than nothing -- but not nearly enough. And the precedent is worrisome and disconcerting."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: A Gayer GOP?

The Next Right's Kristen Soltis:

"In [Monday]'s Daily Beast the daughter of Sen. John McCain, Meghan McCain, wrote about the need for 'a gayer GOP' in order to expand the Republican Party's hopes of winning back a majority coalition and in particular in order to appeal to young voters. I recently completed research on the topic of young voters and the GOP: where the Republican Party is losing young voters, how serious the threat is to the party, and how the Republican Party should respond. And on this point, Ms. McCain has it right -- the issue of gay marriage is one on which young voters and the Republican Party diverge significantly. [...]

[W]hether the Republican Party amends its actual policy stance on gay marriage or whether it simply makes efforts be more tolerant and inclusive of homosexuals generally, the Republican Party cannot ignore the vast differences in public opinion between young and old voters on the issue. This difference certainly presents a serious challenge to the party's long-term ability to swell its ranks among young voters."

LEST WE FORGET: Michael Bay Signs $50M Deal To Fuck Up 'Thundercats'

From The Onion:

"LOS ANGELES -- In the largest deal ever made to shit out a movie, Warner Bros. and director Michael Bay announced a landmark $50 million agreement this week to monumentally fuck up ThunderCats.

'I couldn't be more excited to completely fuck this up,' said Bay, who plans to begin production single-handedly destroying a live-action version of the 1980s-era cartoon series next month. 'ThunderCats has a great story, endearing characters, action, adventure, space-travel, and fantasy. It will be an honor to run it into the ground.'[...]

According to executives, Warner Bros. settled on Bay after a 12-month search of Hollywood's most reviled directors, including Joel Schumacher, Roland Emmerich, and Brett Ratner. In the end, the studio decided only Bay could be relied upon to deliver a 220-minute cinematic clusterfuck with enough tedious performances, overblown cinematography, and CGI explosions to make even the most casual fan want to scratch their eyes out."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at April 14, 2009 12:35 PM