More On Altmire's Constitutional Mistake

Remember when Jason Altmire made nice with Joe Lieberman on citizenship?

The P-G Editorial Board has this to say about it this morning:

In criminal proceedings, citizens of the United States are guaranteed their rights by the Constitution. Any chipping away of this bedrock principle should invite alarm -- and never mind any high-minded excuse offered by the government, even if it involves national security.

And ends with:

In arguing for the change, Sen. Lieberman said, "We're fighting an enemy who doesn't wear the uniform of a conventional army or follow the law of war." True enough, but a murky situation is not helped by disrespecting the rights of citizenship.

Rep. Altmire said, "Individuals who actively support terrorist organizations dedicated to harming our nation do not deserve to enjoy the privileges of American citizenship." And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, head of the department that would judge Americans according to the overly broad words of this bill, said: "United States citizenship is a privilege -- it is not a right."

Memo to both: A driver's license is a privilege. Citizenship, whether attained by birth or naturalization, is sanctioned by the Constitution, the guarantor of the rights of citizens. That document does not have an asterisk on the people's rights saying, "Not applicable to alleged enemy combatants." This constitutionally dubious legislation promotes fear, not security.

The fact that, according to Talkingpointsmemo, no one is supporting this bill (not even the conservatives) shows how mistaken it was.

It's probably a safe bet that if House Republican Leader John Boehner backs away from a conservative, terrorism-related bill called "TEA," the legislation both goes too far, and isn't going anywhere.

And how much of a mistake it was for Altmire to support it.

Jason Altmire News

News of our favorite conservative Democrat, Congressman Jason Altmire, gurgled up (like an acid reflux) into the news today - attached to a story about our favorite conservative former Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman.

From the Plum Line:

By now you've heard that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is proposing a new law that could potentially strip Americans of their citizenship if they're involved with foreign terrorist organizations.

Two things you should know about this: First, it isn't just some paranoid liberal nightmare. It's actually moving forward. Lieberman is going to hold a presser tomorrow to introduce the bill, I'm told, along with Rep. Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania. [emphasis added.]

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley writes of Lieberman's bill:

The law reportedly would allow the State Department to treat citizenship like an administrative matter — deciding whether you have associated with terrorist organizations. Agency procedures are widely condemned for their lack of due process protections and the heavy deference given to agency decision-making. We have seen abuses of this system in the designation of organizations under a similar process.

And:

While the burden would be on the State Department and you would have access to court review, the agency process could make it difficult to contest such findings — particularly with the use of secret evidence (and barring the use of evidence by the defendant on national security grounds).

Stripping citizens of their citizenship could also create stateless persons — a problem in international law. Moreover, this process could occur at the same time that a person is fighting criminal charges — adding to the practical and financial burden.

That's what Jason Altmire's reportedly has signed onto.

Yay.

You're soaking in it!

Oh hell! Let's just wallow in all the recent bad news from this gloomy day:

Rahm To Reid: Give Lieberman What He Wants (Talking Points Memo)

"The fundamental failing of the newest Senate proposal is that it requires individuals to purchase health insurance, but does nothing to rein in what insurance companies charge. There is nothing to stop spiraling health costs from eating up an ever-increasing percentage of our national productivity." (OpenLeft)

Rep. Capuano Tells Fellow Dems: 'You're Screwed' (HuffPo)

Calls to lower the minimum wage (WAPO) and reduce unemployment benefits (ThinkProgress)

Krugman: "[I]f politicians refuse to learn from the history of the recent financial crisis, they will condemn all of us to repeat it" (NYT)

Death penalty to remain in Ugandan anti-gay bill (DallasVoice)

A blogger finds success after pulling a Bronte and publishing under a male pseudonym (Salon)

.

Joe Lieberman threatens filibuster on HCR

From TPM:

In a move that senior leadership aides say has left them stunned, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that he will filibuster a tentative public option compromise unless it's stripped of its key component: a measure that would allow people aged 55-64 to buy insurance through Medicare

...because he is a complete piece of shit who has received close to a half million dollars from the insurance industry throughout his career and he'd rather that people literally die than risk upsetting his corporate masters. (My apologies to shit.)


.

Things That Make You Go Ewwww

Philadelphia Inquirer hires John "Torture Architect" Yoo as a columnist

Arlen Specter hires Joe Lieberman's fundraiser

Gay soldier forced to beg Obama not to fire him
.

Unacceptable

We all know the story of Joe Lieberman (I-CT). He'd been a democrat for a long time but then in the 2006 election cycle he lost the democratic nomination to an anti-war candidate named Ned Lamont. Instead of doing the noble thing and dropping out, he ran as an independent.

He won the election and promised to caucus with the democrats in the Senate.

But then his friend John McCain ran for president and he went campaigning for the republican and against the winner, Barack Obama.

During the past couple of years the Senate leadership couldn't punish ole Joe. They only had a one vote margin for a majority. If they pushed him, he'd walk and the democrats would lose their majority.

But now the dems in the senate have way more than that (56 without ole Joe). So how will they punish him?

Looks like a slap on the wrist. The dems will be proposing a compromise: Joe will keep his Homeland Security committee and be relieved of a lesser sub-committee.

I'm with kos on this one. This is unacceptable:

Um, what idiot would think that taking away a subcommittee from Lieberman would be seen as a "stinging rebuke"? In whose DC-Beltway-addled mind is that even remotely punishment?

Let Lieberman keep that subcommittee. No one gives a shit about it. The only thing that matters, the only thing that Lieberman wants, and the only thing we don't want him to have -- is the chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee.

If this is the "starting point", and given the Senate Democrats' history of capitulations, expect Lieberman to come out of that meeting as majority leader.

Yea, I'm with kos here.

Hey YOU GUYS WON! Why don't you start acting like it and show Joe Lieberman the door.

The AP gets one right

A major Associated Press dispatch on possible veep picks which was published overnight Monday contained this paragraph mentioning Joe Lieberman:

Catch the unintended truth typo?

How about now?

According to Editor & Publisher it was "still up at such sites as the Houston Chronicle, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Cleveland's Plain Dealer and many more" as of Tuesday morning.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy!


.

Fun with video and audio!

Joe Lieberman does interview on john! (And, we don't mean McCain.)


But, speaking of johns, Paris strikes back! (Sorry, John, not all very blond, very rich heiresses will put up with your crap.)


Now, if only she had called him a cunt...
.

Senator McCain's BFF Senator Joe Lieberman

The former Democrat can't keep his promises straight. From Talkingpointsmemo, we learn two things that mainstream media seems to have forgotten:

The first is that during the 2006 campaign against Ned Lamont, Lieberman and his aides vowed multiple times that he would continue caucusing with the Democrats. The second is that Lieberman also vowed to help elect a Democrat to the White House in 2008.

These days, as everyone knows by now, Joe's stumping for John McCain.

So Good To Be A Republican These Days! (An Update)

Remember this?

There's an update of sorts in the news today (oh boy). Via TalkingPointsMemo, we find this:

Sen. John Ensign of Nevada has one of the least enviable jobs this year. As chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he’s in charge of defending the 23 Senate Republican seats up for re-election (versus 12 for Democrats) in a chilly political environment for his party.

Democrats are poised to increase their majority in both chambers of Congress, but while House Republican leaders still make optimistic—but unlikely—claims to have a shot at winning back a majority, Ensign is more pragmatic. “The chances of [Republicans] getting back in to the majority, obviously, it would be fairly miraculous,” he told reporters Thursday during a lunch meeting hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Of the 10 most competitive Senate races this year, nine are for seats now held by Republicans. Only one Democrat, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, faces a serious challenge in November. Ensign said his best-case scenario would be a three-seat loss on Election Day. “That would be a terrific night for us, absolutely,” he said. “I don’t want to slip below the four-seat loss. That’s kind of where we’ve set our absolute worst goal is to be down to 45 seats.”

So a few days ago, they set their worst case scenario at 41 seats. Now it looks like they're shifting the expectations up to 45 seats. Later in the piece we find:

Ensign identified the 10 most competitive races in the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Alaska, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia. Two — Virginia and New Mexico — are heavily favored at this point to flip to Democratic control. Asked if the NRSC was mulling walking away from these two races to focus resources elsewhere, Ensign was non-committal, but added, “You don’t waste money on races that don’t need it or you can’t win.”

So they're writing off two Senate seats and Ensign thinks it would be "terrific" if they only lost one more seat. Worst case for them would be to loose just one more after that.

In any event, if they lose only two (or even three) seats, the Democrats would FINALLY be able to cut whatever ties they have left to the odious Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT).

Bush Meets The Pope...

...and makes a fool out of himself right away.

From the New York Times:

The pope welcomed Mr. Bush — who had his first meeting with Benedict at the Vatican in June 2007 — and the first lady, Laura Bush, near St. John’s Tower in the Vatican Gardens.

“Your eminence, you’re looking good," Mr. Bush said, the A.P. reported.

Bush must've been channeling his inner Freddie Prinze (and not the one who married Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

BTW, if you get the reference you're old. Old. Like. Me.

Back to Bush. I wonder if they discussed how one of Bush's more fervent supporters used to refer to the Catholic Church as the "Whore of Babylon."

Wait wait, I know what you're gonna say. Isn't Hagee a Senator McCain story?

Yes, he was. But according to Scott McClellan, he was a big bush booster as well. According to the American Prospect:

When preparing to run for president, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush knew that the San Antonio televangelist had a large television audience, which Bush family evangelical adviser Doug Wead estimated at seven million strong. Wead had ghostwritten Hagee's 1997 conspiracy-theory book, Day of Deception, which claims to take "a probing look inside the United States government and expose blatant acts of deception designed to destroy democracy in America." Those "acts of deception," according to the book, were carried out by the Antichrist in his effort to install a "one-world order." Evidence of the one-world order, according to Hagee, includes "the Eastern Establishment," the United Nations, the National Education Association (NEA), the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Illuminati, the imaginary, shadowy group of international financiers that has long been fodder for conspiracy theorists. Hagee didn't mention that many Illuminati theorists believe in a connection between the Illuminati and the Yale secret society Skull and Bones, to which both Bushes belong. Nor did Hagee, who bills himself as a friend of the Jews, note that Illuminati conspiracies have often included anti-Semitic narratives about Jewish bankers.

In his 1988 campaign biography of Bush Sr., Wead sought to dispel conspiracies that the Bush family was behind the supposed one-world order. But as a ghostwriter, Wead blamed his old boss for trying to bring about what Hagee believes is a satanic, demonic "new world order." Just one year after penning Hagee's conspiracy-laden screed, Wead was pushing Governor Bush and Karl Rove to arrange meetings between the governor and the pastor, and the governor enlisted Hagee to recruit other pastors to sign on to the Bush campaign effort.

And after the "election" of 2000, Hagee had some special relationship with dubya and co. This is a partial transcript of McClellan's recent interview with Terry Gross at NPR:

GROSS: My guest is Scott McClellan. He was the White House press secretary from July '03 to May of '06. And his new memoir about those years is called "What Happened."

I've got a John Hagee question for you. You devote some of your memoir "What Happened" to social conservatives and their influence on policy in the Bush administration. And I know when John Hagee, who's been so much in the news lately, ever since his endorsement of McCain, which that's a bond that's been broken.

Mr. McCLELLAN: Yes.

GROSS: When he had his first summit for the Christian Zionist group that he founded, Christians United for Israel, President Bush sent a recorded greeting to Hagee and to the conference. Did Hagee have much sway within the Bush administration?

Mr. McCLELLAN: Well, he was one of a number of evangelical pastors, social conservative ones that were certainly part of our outreach at the White House. We had a person and a public liaison that was specifically tasked with reaching out to social conservative leaders. And so those leaders, yes, had a heavy influence on some of the White House policies. And I think that was one of the things that also hurt the president was that, at times it looked like his emphasis was on some of these issues that were important to social conservatives, like Terry Schiavo, like the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, and stem cell research. I think a lot of people were wondering, `Why are you spending so much time focusing on these issues when, you know, there are issues on energy and health care and the economy that need to be addressed?'

GROSS: So Pastor Hagee was influential within the Bush administration?

Mr. McCLELLAN: I'd say he was one of a number that certainly had some influence and was able to quickly get someone on the phone at the White House. So yes.

And Doug Wead? He recently recommended that McCain pick Joe Lieberman for VP.
Joe Lieberman.

Three reasons he gives:

First, the appointment would hasten the Jewish switch to the Republican Party. It is no secret that there is growing nervousness over Barack Obama within the Jewish community. The Lieberman appointment would add to their comfort level with John McCain.

Second, the appointment would clearly separate him from the sinking ship of George W. Bush. After all, Joe Lieberman was Al Gore’s running mate in 2000.

Third, the media would be absolutely floored. They would see that this election would guarantee history in the making. A Black, a Jew, and possibly a woman could be president or vice president.

Wead is one of those guys who call it the "Democrat Party" by the way.

On Melissa Hart's Charge

As I posted here, Melissa Hart has gone on record saying that Senator Obama has given $10,000 to the campaign of Congressman Jason Altmire. And that's why he wasn't endorsing Senator Clinton.

There's even a webpage to prove it (many thanks to that long-haired hippie freak Bill Toland for sending me the link).

For the record, as of this writing, Congressman Altmire hasn't endorsed anyone.

I took a look at the page and a couple of things hit me. First was this:

These current and former elected officials received campaign contributions from either Obama or Clinton in the 2006 and/or 2008 election cycles.

It's right at the top of the page. But wait a second. I thought that the money was supposed to be some sort of recent payoff to a superdelegate in exchange for an endorsement NOW. How could either campaign know in 2006 that an endorsement might be needed?

Then I went hunting in here. As far as I could tell, nothing said "Obama" on it.

So how did Capitaleye get to the $10,000?

A little more digging got me to this page. Which got me to this one. At that page, we read:

Obama, who narrowly leads in the count of pledged, "non-super" delegates, has doled out more than $698,200 to superdelegates from his political action committee, Hope Fund, or campaign committee since 2005.

Now we're getting somewhere. It's called the "Hope Fund." And, indeed, there are three contributions worth a total of $10,000 to Congressman Altmire from the Hope Fund.

• The first, for $2500, was made just before the 2006 election and dated November 1 of 2006.
• The second, for $5000 was dated from the middle of last year, on June 15, 2007
• The third, for $2500 was dated from last September 25, 2007.

Ms Hart's implication is that there's a quid pro quo in play here. An issue I would think she'd shy away from, considering she took $15,000 from Tom Delay's PAC before being installed on the House Ethics Committee that should have been investigating The Hammer. But that's just me. Can someone explain how in September of 2007 where USA/Gallop poll said they were trailing 47% to 25% the Obama PAC would know that they'd need to shell out some cash for an superdelegate endorsement fight in April of 2008? Or June of '07 when they were down 39% to 26%? Or November of 2006 before Jason Altmire was even elected?

Geez, they must be real smart. Either that or this whole line of reasoning is real dumb.

Hey, do you know who else got some Hope Fund cash?

That's right, Senator Hillary Clinton - way back in 2005. As they say, Early Money Is Like Yeast. Senator Clinton got $2100 in February, 2005, and another $2100 the following March. How much do you think that $4200 would go if Senator Obama were to call her to ask her to get out of the race?

Something more. On those same dates (2/28/05 and 3/29/05), the Hope Fund also gave the same amounts to Connecticut's favorite Senator, Joe Lieberman.

Maybe Obama should call and ask him to stop helping Senator McCain's campaign so much.

I mean a quid pro quo is a quid pro quo.