Obsidian Wings

"No Legal Process"

by Katherine

Oh, this isn't cool:

A vow to give the boot to criminal aliens has become an almost daily part of the New York senator's presidential campaign spiel on overhauling the immigration system.

"Anybody who committed a crime in this country or in the country they came from has to be deported immediately, with no legal process. They are immediately gone," Mrs. Clinton told a town hall meeting in Anderson, S.C., Thursday. On Wednesday, she told a crowd in North Bergen, N.J., that such criminals "absolutely" need to be deported. A day earlier, she told a rally in Salinas, Calif., that aliens with criminal records "should be deported, no questions asked."

Mrs. Clinton does not raise the subject in every speech, but her tough talk on the issue dates back at least to the Iowa caucuses last month, where she told the mother of a woman killed by a foreigner in a car accident that illegal aliens who have committed crimes need to be sent home "immediately."

"No legal process," the New York senator said at a forum in Tipton, Iowa, according to a political news outlet, the Politico. "You put them on a plane to wherever they came from."

If you read the full article, she does not, in fact, seem to be suggesting summary deportation in violation of the 14th 5th amendment of any immigrant with a criminal conviction. This is just an applause line. But it reflects EXACTLY what I fear about the Clintons: the voters are anti-immigrant this year? Throw in an applause line about putting people on a plane without legal process. The 1992 voters are pro-death penalty? Well, then you'll make sure everyone sees you at the Rector execution. 1996 voters are anti-immigrant? Well, you better sign that mean anti-immigration law that Congress passed. Anti-crime? Well, you better sign those limits on habeas appeals. Voters in 2002 want vengeance for September 11 on whichever Muslim country is convenient? Well, you better vote for the war. Voters loves 24? Well, you better not take a clear stand against torture.  Voters in 2004 are anti-gay? Well, John Kerry should obviously endorse some states' anti-gay-marriage amendments. And you certainly shouldn't  say anything about the racial disparity in drug sentencing; what if they call you pro drug dealer? You can't vote for a law to help refugee victims of terrorism; what if they call you pro terrorist?

Most of those examples are Bill Clinton, & I try to convince myself that Hillary Clinton's more scrupulous--but you know, the people she's listening to are Mark Penn & Bill Clinton. And she uses "no legal process" as an applause line during the Democratic primaries. Say what you will about Obama making vague appeals to bipartisanship and  being soft on Ronald Reagan--you will not catch him doing that. And you won't ever find Clinton talking like this.

Oh, it's just words, but Presidential campaigns are almost nothing but words, and photo-ops. And there's a clear enough link to their records in office.

(edited for typos)

Random Links, Open Thread

by hilzoy

(1) As has already been noted in comments, Ted Kennedy will endorse Obama on Monday. Backstory here. Marc Ambinder is reporting that Kathleen Sebelius will endorse him on Tuesday.

[UPDATE: Missed this, earlier: "The disclosure also comes the same weekend that the House's highest-ranking Latino, California Rep. Xavier Becerra, also announced that he is backing Obama." Also:

"Kennedy plans to campaign actively for Obama, an aide said, and will focus particularly among Hispanics and labor union members, who are important voting blocks in several Feb. 5 states, including California, New York, New Jersey, Arizona and New Mexico."

That last is, imho, as significant as the endorsement. END UPDATE]

(2) I have been remiss in not writing about the horrible FISA bill, with retroactive immunity for telecoms. I wrote about the horrible retroactive immunity provision here; the short version of why it's wrong is: the telecoms broke the law, and just because the President told them to does not make that OK. It's about the rule of law.

There's more, along with a useful list of Senators and their contact information, at FireDogLake. I urge everyone to get in touch with his or her Senator to oppose retroactive immunity.

(3) On a more local level: a bill legalizing same-sex marriage has been introduced in Maryland. If any of you here in Maryland feel like writing your Delegates and State Senators about this bill, here's a nifty site (courtesy of Pam's House Blend) that will help you find their contact info.

(4) I thought this was good (on the Clintons. More reflective than partisan.)

(5) Had a good weekend? :)

Meanwhile, On Another Planet...

by hilzoy

There's a peculiar post up at Bizarro World, cleverly called: Democrats: The Party Of The Klan?, which pretty conclusively demonstrates that Erick, who wrote it, actually does live in an alternate universe:

"They are always claiming that Republicans are racist, but it is looking more and more like the Democratic Party, to its core foundation, is racist.

In New Hampshire, white Democrats turned out overwhelming to reject the uppity black man who dared to challenge the Democratic establishment.

In South Carolina tonight, Democratic voters would rather vote for the rich, Southern, white man than either the black man or the female yankee."

Huh? What?

As of the 2000 census, all of 0.7% of New Hampshire's population was black. We can probably just use the NH Democratic primary results as if they were the results for white New Hampshire Democratic voters, since, well, 96% of all the people in New Hampshire are white. So here's the result that leads Erick to say that "white Democrats turned out overwhelming to reject the uppity black man":

Clinton: 39%
Obama: 37%
Edwards: 17%
Everyone else: 7%

A 2 point margin: sure sounds overwhelming to me! Definitely a sign that New Hampshire democrats are racist!

But that's not nearly as odd as the claim that "In South Carolina tonight, Democratic voters would rather vote for the rich, Southern, white man than either the black man or the female yankee." I mean, did Edwards win the SC primary? I think not. Did he even come close? Nope.

What on earth could Erick have had in mind? Could he possibly have mistaken white Democratic voters for all Democratic voters? Could he have simply forgotten that South Carolina's black voters exist?

That's the best explanation I can think of. It doesn't really do much to establish his anti-racist cred, though.

The Enemy of Their Enemy

by publius

From a purely rational perspective, it’s odd that so many conservative pundits (commenters, etc.) find Obama so much preferable to Clinton. On everything from national security to trade to domestic economics, I suspect a Clinton administration would be far more to their liking than an Obama one.

Clinton contempt, however, is not exactly a cold rational phenomenon. Irrational, gut-level hostility plays – and has always played – a huge role. In my expert psychological opinion, a lot of this hostility stems from the Clintons’ political success -- and, more precisely, from conservatives’ fear of losing to them again. You hate what you fear – and the Clintons (with a notable exception in 1994) pretty much cleaned the Republicans’ clocks in every major political battle. And while losing in 2008 is bad enough, the mere thought of losing to them – again – is just driving them a little insane.

But for these reasons, I think Clinton Derangement Syndrome could actually help Obama in a general election to pick up Republicans and conservative indies. I wish it weren’t so, but gut-level impressions of a candidate are very important in national presidential elections. Likeability does matter, even if it shouldn’t.

Here’s the point (and I'd welcome conservatives' thoughts on this) – Obama seems to be steadily gaining likeability points on the other side just because he happens to be fighting the Clintons. Any enemy of the Clintons can’t be that bad, the argument seems to go. Even on this blog alone, it’s been startling to see the number of conservative-leaning comments expressing how happy they are to see Obama – and his campaign’s progressive supporters – increasingly turning on the Clintons. Some of this support is of course rational – many conservatives are receptive to Obama’s post-partisan schtick. But there’s more than a little Clinton Schadenfreude too. (The Corner tonight illustrates both sentiments nicely).

All that said, whatever likeability points he’s gaining now may not matter as people fall back into party lines for the election. But then again, it doesn’t take all that much peeling off of modern coalitions to create a landslide win.

I'll Take a Stab

by publius

Josh Marshall poses a challenge: "try to explain this":

Seems pretty clear to me -- Clinton is implying that Obama won because he's black, just like Jackson did. And, his larger implication is that this victory doesn't matter for that reason. Now, he seems to catch himself halfway through, but the implication seems clear.

By the way, Marshall articulates the problem with Bill's role in the race as well as anyone I've seen. Check it out.

UPDATE: Classy, particularly from the first black First Family (via Mike P and TPM):

Clinton campaign strategists denied any intentional effort to stir the racial debate. But they said they believe the fallout has had the effect of branding Obama as "the black candidate," a tag that could hurt him outside the South.

South Carolina Open Thread

by hilzoy

The major networks have called the South Carolina primary for Obama. I don't know what the final margins are, though I just heard it described as a "rout" on MSNBC. Given the exit polls and a bit of quick math, Obama has to have gotten over 50% of the vote, while Clinton and Edwards split the rest. I'll update when hard numbers come in.

Discuss away.

Changing The Rules

by hilzoy

I'm with Josh Marshall on Hillary Clinton's attempt to get the Michigan and Florida delegates seated:

"The Clinton camp really needs to be shut down on this new gambit of theirs to muscle the party and the other candidates into seating the Michigan and Florida delegate slates.

And let me be very clear about what I mean. It was very debatable decision whether the DNC should have punished Florida and Michigan with the loss of their delegates slates because they broke the rules the party had set down for scheduling their primaries. By 'debatable' I don't mean it was right or wrong, only that it was a pretty draconian move and I know there was a lot of discussion about whether or not it was the right thing to do.

But that was the decision -- one that each of the candidates at least implicitly agreed to. Indeed, each agreed not to campaign in either of these states, again implicitly agreeing to the decision not to seat the delegates.

The Clinton camp is just pushing to seat these delegates now because the contingencies of the moment mean that the decision would favor Hillary. She was the only one whose name was on the ballot in Michigan, thus insuring her win. She has a wide lead in every Florida poll taken this month."

Allies of the Clinton campaign have already tried to disenfranchise people it thought would vote the wrong way. Now they are trying to seat delegates they think will vote for them, despite the fact that existing rules, to which all the candidates signed on, said they would not be seated. Everyone has played by those rules so far, which is why Clinton and Dodd were the only major candidates on the ballot in Michigan, and why no one has campaigned in Florida. But now that Clinton has won the Michigan primary against her closest rival, "Uncommitted", and seems likely to pull in Florida, she wants to change the rules.

What's next? An argument that the Iowa delegates should not be seated, because Iowa is just too darned flat? An attempt to unseat the South Carolina delegates on the grounds that South Carolinians' minds have been addled by excessive heat?

I also agree with Ezra:

"This is the sort of decision that has the potential to tear the party apart. (...) [I]f this pushes her over the edge, the Obama camp, and their supporters, really will feel that she stole her victory. They didn't contest those states because they weren't going to count, not because they were so committed to the DNC's procedural arguments that they were willing to sacrifice dozens of delegates to support it. It's as hard as hardball gets, and the end could be unimaginably acrimonious."

To be clear: I don't think that the argument about whether or not to seat the delegates has the potential to tear the party apart. We somehow managed to survive the Nevada lawsuit, and I have no doubt we'll survive this. But, as Ezra says, if the Michigan and Florida delegates actually determine the outcome of the nominating process, then I think a lot of people will feel that she stole the nomination. It will be like 2000 all over again, only this time it will be people who are allegedly on our side who did us in.

Personally, I don't think it will come to that. I think this is an attempt both to raise Florida's profile in the media, thereby distracting attention from what seems likely to be Obama's victory in South Carolina, while simultaneously ingratiating herself with Florida voters. But I also think that it shows that Hilary Clinton cares more about winning than she does about her party, let alone such basic principles of fairness as: you don't change the rules in the middle of the game.

***

PS: Taylor Marsh has, as far as I'm concerned, long since forfeited any reputation for fairness she might ever have had. But yesterday, as far as I'm concerned, she gave up whatever claim she might have had to being a feminist:

"And now some bloggers seem to want to paint Clinton as they bad guy, er, girl. So to Josh I say, yes way. But of course, as usual, it's all Hillary Clinton's fault! Your daily whine brought to you by the Obamabots and the sanctimonious side of the Always Eager to Lose Wing of the Democratic Party."

News Flash: when someone comes up with the idea of changing the rules out of the blue, that person is responsible for his or her actions. If those actions are bad, we say that they are his or her fault, even if that person is Hillary Clinton. The alternative is to say that that person is not a responsible moral agent -- that she didn't know what she was doing, or is too weak or mentally unstable to be held responsible for her actions, or was forced to do what she did by something too strong for her to resist, or for some similar reason is just not accountable for what she does. When one of these conditions is met, of course the person in question is not responsible for what she does. Moreover, in some circumstances -- e.g., the rape of a young adult woman while she was intoxicated -- feminists ought to protest when there is too great a focus on the woman's responsibility for being drunk, as opposed to the man's responsibility for raping her.

But nothing like that is the case here. No one came close to forcing Hillary Clinton to do what she did. She is a grownup, and a pretty powerful one at that, and she is solely responsible for this decision. And feminists, of all people, should recognize that the idea that women are not responsible for their actions in a case like this is just a way of saying that we are not autonomous agents at all.

No Soup for Dulles

by publius

Though non-DC people may not care about this, I noticed in the Post that the FTA has abruptly reversed course on running the Metro (subway) line out to Dulles. This extension would, of course, help on a number of fronts. Not only would it make traveling to Dulles easier (which is miserable via car), but it would urbanize and "green" places along the way like Tyson's Corner.

I'll wager a virtual beer that when all the dust settles, we'll learn that the abrupt, baseless reversal stemmed from political pressure. The idea is to prevent the Kaine administration of taking credit for it (transportation issues are killing the GOP is fast-growing Northern Virginia). Just a prediction at this point though. But there should be hearings on why exactly the FTA reversed course on a dime and suddenly (after years of approval) "declared the project unfit for federal funding."

Maybe the great John Warner could get to the bottom of this.

UPDATE: Helpful timeline here. Note that contracts had already been signed in 2007. The contractor issue is something else to keep an eye on. More generally, something just smells here. I mean, I know that Bush's agencies have been stewards of efficient government spending and all...

UPDATE 2: KCinDC links to a post that provides more background. I understand that there was a long-runing fight about this (e.g., tunnel v. above-ground). But this debate has been going for some time. The precise question is why now, particularly in light of recent approvals, contracts, etc.

"Bandits Move About From Town to Town, Pillaging Whatever They Can Find"

by hilzoy

This is too perfect not to share. Via Steve Benen, Tim Noah at Slate, quoting a forthcoming book by Jacob Weisberg:

"In an April 1995 memo, Bush invited his staff to come to his office to look at a painting. … The picture is a Western scene of a cowboy riding up a craggy hill, with two other riders following behind him. Bush told visitors—who often noted his resemblance to the rider in front—that it was called A Charge To Keep and that it was based on his favorite Methodist hymn of that title, written in the eighteenth century by Charles Wesley. As Bush noted in the memo, which he quoted in his autobiography of the same title: "I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves." Bush identified with the lead rider, whom he took to be a kind of Christian cowboy, an embodiment of indomitable vigor, courage, and moral clarity. (...)

He came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled "The Slipper Tongue," published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: "Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.""

Noah adds:

"The painting was subsequently recycled by the Saturday Evening Post to illustrate a nonfiction story. The caption that time was, "Bandits Move About From Town to Town, Pillaging Whatever They Can Find." Koerner published the illustration a third and final time in a magazine called the Country Gentleman. On this go-round, it was indeed used to illustrate a short story that related to Wesley's hymn. But the story's moral was a little off-message. According to Weisberg, it was "about a son who receives a legacy from his father—a beautiful forest in the Northeast and a plea to protect it from rapacious timber barons." Apparently nobody ever got around to notifying Bush's Interior Department."

For what it's worth: it's not even a good picture.

Somebody Please Ask Hillary Clinton This Question

by Katherine

"What is your view of the first Clinton administration's practice of "extraordinary rendition"?

Anyone reading the comments knows I support Obama in the primaries. But this isn't a cheap "gotcha" question. I honestly don't know the answer. As far as I can tell, Clinton has been asked about rendition exactly once during this campaign, and she replied:

The Bush administration's policy of rendition is a moral and national security failure, and Senator Clinton strongly opposes it. Senator Clinton opposes sending anyone to places for interrogation where they will be tortured or where their basic human rights will not be protected.

She's quite right about the Bush administration's rendition policies, but that answer tells me nothing about what she thinks about the first Clinton administration's rendition policies. The second sentence doesn't reassure me: after all, George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales also say they oppose sending anyone to be tortured. And former Clinton administration officials have recently been making factually false claims about rendition during the 1990s in an apparent effort to rehabilitate the program. Saying that she opposes sending someone "for interrogation" to countries that practice torture also worries me, because one of the common defenses of the Clinton-era rendition program is that they made sure to get a foreign conviction or extradition request before transferring someone. But you know, getting an in absentia conviction before you send someone to a dungeon in Egypt really doesn't help very much.

Hillary Clinton, of course, played no role in her husband's rendition policies. She can't have; she didn't have a security clearance. But several people who did play a role are advising her & campaigning for her--and she's made a conscious decision to run on her husband's record. It's a fair & relevant question, and I would really like to know the answer.

I understand that he's her husband. I certainly don't expect her to accuse him of "outsourcing torture" or anything of the sort. And there were real differences between rendition under Bush & under Clinton: it's at least possible that they really didn't understand, back then, how worthless that Egypt's assurances that they wouldn't torture prisoners were. I'd be 100% ok with Hillary Clinton saying: "I think they made a good faith mistake, but it's now clear that it was a mistake, and I don't intend to continue it as President". Actually, more than ok: I recognize that it's much harder for her to say that than for Obama or Edwards to denounce rendition.

I might as well open this up: what hard-but-substantive questions would you like someone to ask a presidential candidate?