Month: February 2010

Rep. Bill Delahunt (D, MA): why did you put Amy Bishop back on the street?

Amy Bishop, of course, is the woman who murdered those people down at the University of Alabama… and, apparently, she was ‘taken into custody’ for the murder of her brother in 1986.  And that’s where it gets interesting.

Amy Bishop was released before she was booked, however, and she was never charged in the incident. All police records of the case have since gone missing, with the exception of an entry in the police log noting an accidental shooting, Frazier said.

[snip]

Braintree officers who remember the 1986 shooting said that former police Chief John Polio dismissed detectives from the case and ordered the department to release Amy Bishop after a telephone conversation with former district attorney William Delahunt.

Polio was not forthcoming about why then-DA Delahunt decided not to press charges, or why the documents in the case are apparently not available. Given the circumstances, perhaps the Congressman from MA-10 would like to fill in the blanks, as it were? Assuming that he’s done deciding whether he’s going to go through the process, of course.

Moe Lane

PS:Oh, this just gets murkier.

Braintree Police Chief Paul Frazier confirmed today at a news conference that Amy Bishop had fatally shot her brother in 1986. But Frazier offered a different account of the shooting, saying Bishop had shot her brother during an argument and was being booked by police when the police chief at the time ordered the booking process stopped and Bishop released to her mother.

[snip]

“I don’t want to use the word ‘coverup’ … but this does not look good,” he said.

No. No, it does not.

Crossposted to RedState.

Durbin (D, D Majority) vs. Durbin (D, R Majority) on filibusters.

You have undoubtedly seen by now that Senator Dick Durbin is now ready to try to kill the filibuster, not five years after praising the practice to the skies.  You are also undoubtedly not surprised.  But this particular bit below from Durbin is really quite interesting as an example of defiance against the tyranny of the majority: it’s an absolute pity that the senior Senator from Illinois has just demonstrated that he never actually meant a word of it.

I don’t believe I was elected to the Senate to be a rubber stamp. I believe I was elected and took the oath of office to uphold this Constitution, to stand up for the precedents and values of Congress and our Nation. We need to have, in our judiciary, independence and fairness. We need to have men and women on the bench who will work to protect our individual rights, despite the intimidation of special interest groups, despite the intimidation of Members of Congress. They need to have the courage to stand up for what they believe, in good conscience, to be the rights and freedoms of Americans.

I speak, as a Senator on the Democratic side, and tell you that our 45 Members will not be intimidated. We will stand together. We understand these lifetime appointments to the bench should be subject to close scrutiny, to evaluation, and to a decision as to why they are prepared to serve and serve in a way to protect the rights and aspirations of ordinary Americans.

The filibuster, which requires that 60 Senators come together to resolve the most controversial issues, that rule in the Senate, forces compromise. It forces the Republicans to reach across the aisle and bring in some Democrats when they have very controversial legislation or controversial nominees. It forces bipartisanship–something that tells us, at the end of the day, we will have more moderate men and women who will serve us in the judiciary. Those who would attack and destroy the institution of the filibuster are attacking the very force within the Senate that creates compromise and bipartisanship.

Those who are forcing this nuclear option on the Senate are not just breaking the rules to win, but they want to break the rules to win every time.

Mind you, Durbin’s hypocrisy on the filibuster is mostly about trying to look good – for given values of ‘good’ – when it comes time to pick the next Senate Majority Leader.  The odds of Harry Reid holding that position in 2011 are currently not so much ‘slim’ as they are ‘withered.’

Moe Lane Continue reading Durbin (D, D Majority) vs. Durbin (D, R Majority) on filibusters.

I can only hope that my foes decide to fight and die on the Stolen Valor hill. #rsrh

(Via @stoo11) Please, my foes: please decide that fighting the Stolen Valor Act on First Amendment grounds is a necessary thing.

Please.

The federal courts are wrestling with a question of both liberty and patriotism: Does the First Amendment right to free speech protect people who lie about being war heroes?

At issue is a three-year-old federal law called the Stolen Valor Act that makes it a crime punishable by up to a year in jail to falsely claim to have received a medal from the U.S. military. It is a crime even if the liar makes no effort to profit from his stolen glory.

Attorneys in Colorado and California are challenging the law on behalf of two men charged, saying the First Amendment protects almost all speech that doesn’t hurt someone else.

And be sure to reflexively mention your political affiliation when you do.

Moe Lane

PS: If anyone cares: in my opinion the right to free speech does include the right to lie, but it doesn’t stretch to cover the right to commit fraud.  Even if there’s no direct monetary consideration involved.

Gov. Chris Christie (R, NJ) plants one right between the eyes.

I grew up in New Jersey, and I can assure you this: all over the state, suddenly-embattled Democratic legislators and apparatchiks are now routinely referring to Gov. Christie as “that fat [insert expletive here]” – with a wide range of choices for the expletive. Why?

Because that fat [insert expletive here] just told the unions that elections have consequences, and he’s one of them.

Governor Christie tells legislature NJ is in financial crisis

Continue reading Gov. Chris Christie (R, NJ) plants one right between the eyes.

West Virginia’s Coal Civil War?

It’s kind of quiet, but there may be one actually brewing.  Compare this:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., seems to have become a convert. Last week he signaled strongly that promises from the White House are not enough. During a Senate hearing on Obama’s proposal for the [2010]* budget, Rockefeller lashed out.

According to one published report, Rockefeller made it clear “he isn’t sure he trusts the president’s commitments to coal. …” Referring to Obama’s pledges to support coal, the senator complained that, “He says it in his speeches, but he doesn’t say it in (his budget proposal). He doesn’t say it in the actions of (EPA Administrator) Lisa Jackson. And he doesn’t say it in the minds of my own people. And he’s beginning to not be believable to me.”

…with this (by Senator Byrd, D-WV):

To be part of any solution, one must first acknowledge a problem. To deny the mounting science of climate change is to stick our heads in the sand and say “deal me out.” West Virginia would be much smarter to stay at the table.

The 20 coal-producing states together hold some powerful political cards. We can have a part in shaping energy policy, but we must be honest brokers if we have any prayer of influencing coal policy on looming issues important to the future of coal like hazardous air pollutants, climate change, and federal dollars for investments in clean coal technology.

Most people understand that America cannot meet its current energy needs without coal, but there is strong bi-partisan opposition in Congress to the mountaintop removal method of mining it. We have our work cut out for us in finding a prudent and profitable middle ground – but we will not reach it by using fear mongering, grandstanding and outrage as a strategy.

So we seem to have a difference of opinion between Senators Rockefeller and Byrd about whether one can trust the President on coal policy as far as one can throw him.  It would be unkind to suggest that the reason for this is that the former is still in a position to run at least once more for elected office, while the latter… let us just say (without any ill-wish) that it is rather low-probability that Senator Byrd will be still in the Senate in 2013.  It is thus in the best interests of Senator Rockefeller to speak in terms that recognizes one elementary truth (that this administration hates coal production with the fury of a thousand burning suns**), while Senator Byrd speaks in terms that recognizes another elementary truth (that his staff is probably going to need to find new jobs in the Democratic establishment in the not-too-distant future).

One hopes that this hasn’t caused a break between the two.  They’ve been Senators together for so long that their professional relationship is old enough to serve in the House of Representatives****.

Moe Lane Continue reading West Virginia’s Coal Civil War?

PPP: Only artificial 3rd party promotions can save Democrats now.

Let me preface this by noting that I am not criticizing Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling for suggesting the below. Tom is an open Democrat, and his polling firm is openly Democratic-leaning; he wants the GOP to lose and the Democrats to win. That’s his right, and he doesn’t try to hide it. Tom also doesn’t try to hide what turns out to be bad news for his side: PPP was reporting on the GOP pickups in NJ & MA while more ostensibly neutral polling firms were massaging the data to make the results look more ambiguous.  So I’m not offended by this:

Here’s the big question: should Democrats be giving financial assistance to these ‘Tea Party’ candidates to get on the ballot as independents? It may seem like an odd concept but Republicans certainly did it with Ralph Nader and that paid off for them. There are going to be a lot of races decided by 4 points or less this fall and right wing independents pulling 5% could get some Democrats reelected this year even if they can only pull 48% of the vote. I’d love to see a Democratic group formed that raises money to do mail and media for Tea Party candidates portraying them as the only ‘real conservative’ in the race- unconventional means might be necessary to save some seats this year.

I just know that it won’t work… and maybe Tom Jensen knows it, too.  He himself is scrupulous about calling Tea Party folks ‘Tea Party’ folks: he’s so scrupulous about doing it, in fact, that it’s clear that he knows how offensive the more common alternative is to Tea Party folks.  Fortunately, Tom’s fellow-Democrats have been a lot less scrupulous about avoiding offense… and the Tea Party folks are well aware of that.  To put it simply, while they may not like the Republicans’ leadership overmuch, they absolutely despise the Democrats’.  The Democrats and their cheerleaders call them nasty names every day, right to their face: which makes the Democrats’ openly supporting a third party candidate a kiss of death for that candidate.

And it makes quietly supporting a third party candidate something much, much worse: it makes it a conspiracy.

But, again, I can’t blame Tom.  What else does his party have, right now?

Moe Lane

So when the first reports of space zombies come out of Mexico…

…blame the Russians:

A LOUD explosion and ball of fire that people in central Mexico reported seeing in the sky was actually a Russian satellite plunging back to earth, experts said.

“We think it was the space wreckage of a Russian satellite that was catalogued by the Department of Defense of the United States and which we knew could pass over Mexican territory,” engineer Fernando de la Peno said.

Mr De la Peno is also a chief proponent of establishing a Mexican space agency[*].

Anyway. Russian military ‘recon’ satellite, disappearing crater, fragmented re-entry… yeah. Zombies. What’s Spanish for ‘space zombies,’ anyway? The colloquial one, at least? ‘Llllllooooooosssssssss cerebrrrrrooooooosssssss’ I more or less already worked out on my own.

Moe Lane

*Hey, remember the days when the American response to the last sentence quoted there would be an indulgent, patronizing chuckle, and not a rueful “I remember having one of those”?

PS: There are not just Mexican zombie flicks.

There are Mexican masked wrestling zombie flicks. Because God loves you, and wishes for you to be happy.

Hey, who wants to be the last Democrat in the House… #rsrh

…to die for Harry Reid’s mistake?

Senate Democrats may go into the bipartisan health care reform summit later this month holding a legislative gun to Republicans’ heads.

Some Democrats are readying a health care reform “Plan B” in case negotiations at the half-day televised forum on Feb. 25 go nowhere. The plan would involve passing part of the imperiled health care bill using reconciliation, a controversial procedural maneuver that would allow the package to pass with 51 votes, as opposed to the usual 60 required to overcome a filibuster.

“I think a decision has just been made — we’re just going to go ahead,” Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, told reporters.

(Via @baseballcrank) Because there’s a whole bunch of supposedly ‘socially conservative’ Democrats who will then have to repudiate their pro-life stance for the greater glory of the Senate Majority Leader – who is, by the way, almost assured to be the former Senate Majority Leader by this time next year.  And the rest of them don’t have to worry about being neglected, either: as Megan McArdle notes (in lieu of banging her head against a wall, no doubt), Republicans are looking forward to running on a platform of opposition to what the Democrats themselves described as a ‘trick.’

Fascinating.

Moe Lane