[ Posted Friday, June 5th, 2009 – 16:36 UTC ]
Although this is long, it merely hits the highlights of Obama's speech. I encourage everyone to take ten minutes and read the entire transcript for yourself. Obama, it should be pointed out, did not have to give this speech -- he chose to. He ran the risk of criticism here at home, and the benefits to him personally and politically in America were slight compared to the risk of actual political damage.
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 – 16:21 UTC ]
In all the hoopla over Judge Sonia Sotomayor being nominated to the Supreme Court, there is one interesting side story that the media is largely ignoring. His name is Senator Jeff Sessions, and he is now (after Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic side of the aisle) the ranking minority member on the Senate Judiciary Committee (that's "minority" in the sense of Sessions being a Republican in a Democratic Senate, and not... you know, "minority"... since Sessions is a white male). And Sessions, as well as having a long enough term on the committee to be the ranking Republican, also has his own history with confirmation hearings before the same committee. Because he was the first of Ronald Reagan's judicial nominees to be rejected (before Bork, in other words), and he was rejected for perceived racial insensitivity. So it will be very interesting to see how he acts on Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation.
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[ Posted Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 – 18:13 UTC ]
Senator Dianne Feinstein finally said what I've been waiting for someone to say about the whole "reverse racism" charge now being levied by Republicans against President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court pick, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. From this weekend's Face The Nation, Feinstein summed the entire controversy up in her first response to moderator Bob [...]
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[ Posted Monday, June 1st, 2009 – 15:42 UTC ]
As a new month dawns, it is time once again to take a look at President Barack Obama's poll numbers. We kicked off this column series last month, and will be returning at the beginning of every month throughout Obama's term as president to take a snapshot of his approval ratings in the polls. This month, as an added feature, we will also be looking at Obama's poll numbers as compared to Bill Clinton's poll numbers from his first term.
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[ Posted Friday, May 29th, 2009 – 16:38 UTC ]
"Judicial activism" (or, alternatively, "legislating from the bench") is defined -- no matter what your political beliefs -- as "judges not ruling the way I want them to." It's an inherently partisan statement to make, even if it doesn't sound like it. If you are a Republican, using the term means courts ruling for things you don't like. Same for Democrats. The irony is that while the charge is leveled in order to prove some sort of bias or prejudice in a judicial candidate or judge, the only thing it usually winds up proving is the bias of the accuser -- and not the accused. Because it almost always boils down to the accuser wanting the judge or justice in question to rule in a certain partisan way -- before even hearing the facts of any particular case.
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[ Posted Thursday, May 28th, 2009 – 17:30 UTC ]
Debates about national security always fascinate me, because almost without exception nobody bothers to define the term itself. This, to me, is a key feature of any debate about national security versus the people's right to know what their government is doing in their name -- such as the one currently raging over whether to publicly release thousands of photographs of detainee abuse. But the definition of "national security" is always conspicuous in its absence in the debate. Which allows the government to get away with using two definitions of the term interchangeably, when only one should be legally allowed.
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 – 16:26 UTC ]
It seems these days, Republicans just can't attempt to do anything right without landing themselves in hot water as a result. As a result, they now face a no-win situation politically and racially. The forces of moderation (drastically diminished in the party though they may be) are up against the hardline conservatives. Add racial politics to this mix, and it's easy to see how Republicans have wound up between a rock and a hard place. And although it may sound like it, I'm not talking about Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court.
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[ Posted Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 – 16:07 UTC ]
Which, in the roundest of possible ways, brings us to President Obama's first nominee for the Supreme Court. But before we actually get there, we must detour 400 years to William Shakespeare, for the original quote. Macbeth, just after hearing his wife is dead (and just before his world's foundations crumble by being told that Birnam wood was indeed coming to Dunsinane), utters the following:
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[ Posted Friday, May 22nd, 2009 – 17:38 UTC ]
President Obama and the congressional Democrats just had their first spat. While others have more-than-adequately delved into the fracas of Obama's national security speech and Harry Reid stripping out funding to close Guantanamo, what I was struck by this week was how Obama is better defining his character as president. This is going to be important later this year, when energy plans and health care reform legislation become protracted fights in Congress.
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[ Posted Thursday, May 21st, 2009 – 16:27 UTC ]
While President Obama's speech on national security today is getting most of the attention, another important foreign policy issue awaits, which Obama has so far been untested on as president. On the campaign trail, Obama's statements on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were inconsistent, to say the least. He spoke against it in battleground states like Ohio, but he also reportedly sent an aide to reassure the Canadians that when Obama said he would "renegotiate NAFTA," he really didn't mean it. So it's always been somewhat of an open question what Obama would do on free trade issues as president. We may be about to find out.
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