GBP: Health Care Reform

As I mentioned in the announcement right before this post, there’ll be many changes coming in the next several days.  I hope to make the process as seamless as possible, but I also like getting down and dirty with the code and also somehow doing things the hard way.  Anyway, this is most likely the last post on The New Age of Politics version 1.  You’ll still come back to the same place for my new posts, lovingly crafted at odd hours of the day for you, but things will look much different around here starting later today.  In fact, you might be looking at the change in motion right now!

Who knows?  Anyway, oh yes, tonight is a continuation of my new series, “The Good, the Bad, and the Presidential”, in which I highlight one of President Obama’s achievements and analyze it with the gift of hindsight!  Tonight, the random achievement picker happened to come up with one that I’ve already written more than enough about.  Aside from reading the title of this post, which one do you think it is?

Don’t Forget To Check Your Liberties Along With Your Luggage

Image via Wikipedia

When will it end?  The Transportation Security Administration, the organization that mans the airport security checkpoints, appears to be just throwing new regulations and procedures at us, the American public, with the usual national security excuse.  Seriously, the conduct that the TSA now considers Standard Operating Procedure is so offensive, it was difficult to think of a title for this post that wasn’t equally outrageous.  Remember those new enhanced scanners that I wrote about several months ago?  They’re rolling out nationwide, and contrary to what I thought would happen back in January, the controversy just seems to be spreading.

In fact, I think we’re at the point where the snowball effect is starting to kick in; when I was originally trying to write this earlier this week, the outcry was largely limited to the blogosphere and other internet communities.  Now, however, it’s hit the mainstream media, and it doesn’t show any sign of slowing down any time soon.  Given that they are subjected to the scanners much more frequently than you or I, the airline pilots have a slightly different, and perhaps slightly stronger, argument than the general public.  However, the peoples’ argument is just as strong, and just as insidious.  Just how big?  Read on, my friend, read on…

GBP: The Credit CARD Act

Well, as the first salvo in a burst of blog posts over the next few days, here’s the second installment of my new series of posts called “The Good, The Bad, and the Presidential”.  This regularly-appearing series takes a look back at the various accomplishments made by President Obama in the first half of his term, and provides the same level of analysis longtime readers have come to expect from me.  Without further ado, here’s tonight’s accomplishment:

Welcome to the Corporate States of America?

Sorry for the long absence from writing; I’ve had too much work so far this semester, and as always, I care about the quality of these posts.  I do not just randomly throw whatever up here; I take time to research these posts.  As a result, yes, I am starting to write this on a Saturday night; this issue is too important to not write about.  Remember the Citizens United ruling?  We’re now seeing its full effects, and they are disturbing.  Several weeks ago, Target was called out for donating to a Minnesota candidate’s campaign based on his economic platform; this same candidate, it turns out, is against gay marriage.  Though the grassroots campaign against Target was successful, it turns out we were barely scratching the surface with the issue of corporate funding of campaigns.

Much larger than Target’s six-figure donation to MN Forward is the $10 million that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has spent this past week trying to elect Republicans in recent weeks.  Now, the idea of the Chamber funding political attack ads is nothing new, and is even, albeit tacitly, accepted in American politics.  I don’t think special interest groups on either side of the political spectrum should be involved in politics, but that’s another post for another day.  What is really getting at me is the question of whether the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is spending foreign money on campaign ads, which is a violation of Federal law.

The Pop Star and the Politician

For those of you who know me, I don’t listen to pop music, hip hop/R&B, or anything really mainstream for that matter; I prefer classical music and classic rock, with some very obscure sub-genres thrown in there and whatnot.  Therefore, I’m not sure what’s more surprising: me discussing Lady Gaga, or the fact that she actually made the (serious) headlines for an exchange she happened to have with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Twitter this week.

Apparently, the senior Senator from Nevada and the world-famous singer had a Twitter conversation about the effort to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the policy barring gays and lesbians from serving in the military, unless they keep their sexual orientation a secret.  According to Mediaite, after Lady Gaga tweeted her followers to “Repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  Call Harry Reid to Schedule Senate Vote”, Senator Reid responded, announcing that there would, indeed, be a Senate vote on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell next week.  Mediaite then goes on to speculate whether this is Senator Reid’s attempt to portray himself as in tune with my generation in an election year, but I think that while there might be something to that, it’s not the only reason for the exchange.

Having spoken to a few of my friends who are more in tune with pop culture, it seems Lady Gaga is a fairly vocal advocate on LGBT issues.  The beauty of Twitter, of course, is that anyone can talk to a given celebrity or important public figure, and anything can happen to strike a chord and enter the cultural zeitgeist at any given time.  That seems to have happened to Lady Gaga’s exchange with the Majority Leader; in the days since, other Senators have been in contact with Lady Gaga and the issue seems to be gaining steam ahead of the vote.

The Casualties of the “Beltway Bubble”

For what it’s worth, the Republicans don’t seem to be in favor of much of anything these days that actually makes sense.  On the one hand, I can understand their fixation on reducing the deficit; that is something this country needs to tackle before it gets much worse.  Then they say they are in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts; if they really wanted to cut the deficit, they’d let the tax cuts expire.  But of course, that doesn’t fit the “lower taxes for everybody and to hell with the consequences!” plank of their policies.  We’ve seen time and again this session that great ideas, (see: the public option, the climate bill),  go to the Senate to die.  Now, another program has fallen to the Senate obstructionism.  This time is a bit different, and a bit more worrisome too.

In Defense of the Constitution, Part II

I was originally going to write this in as part of the last “In Defense of the Constitution” post, but after I realized that, once again, my writing on the First Amendment was getting to be long and detailed enough on its own, I decided to split it up.  Originally, this post was supposed to go up about a week earlier than it has, as well; once again, life got in my way.  Anyway, back when I had intended to write this, several prominent members of the Republican Party called for an Amendment to the Constitution to essentially remove Section 1 from the Fourteenth Amendment.  Again, according to the National Archives, the section in question is:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” -Section 1, Amendment XIV, United States Constitution

In short, this section guarantees that if you were born on American soil, you are automatically a citizen.  Certain members of the GOP want to remove this section in order to combat the perceived anchor baby problem, which allegedly allows illegal immigrants to cross the border, have a baby, and get in the fast lane for citizenship.  This argument is so completely flawed that it is difficult to decide where to even begin, but I’ll start by pointing out one minor detail.

In Defense of The Constitution

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of the Cordoba House, the name of the proposed mosque and community center near Ground Zero.  What began as a simple local zoning matter became the latest flash point in our post-9/11 society almost overnight.  What’s striking to me isn’t the fact that some religious organization wants to build a house of worship near the site of the greatest tragedy in recent American history, but rather I’m shocked by the nationwide reaction to the proposal.  Then again, I suppose I should have seen this coming.  Ever since 9/11, American Muslims have been demonized to the point where we’ve alienated the very community that could prove instrumental in stopping the next 9/11.  This point has been hammered by many more-influential voices than mine over the years, but it just keeps getting worse.

Now, we’re at the point where we are compromising our own core values as Americans just out of fear of something different.  What really strikes me as hypocritical is that most of the inflamed rhetoric is coming from the conservatives – people who, at least in theory, should be supporting the mosque as a defense of the Constitution.  After all, anyone who knows even one fact about the Constitution knows about the First Amendment.  Culturally, we have come to view the First Amendment solely in terms of freedom to say whatever the heck we want to say.  However, there’s another piece to it; here’s the complete text of the First Amendment from the National Archives (emphasis mine):

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – Amendment I, United States Constitution

Technically, yes, the text of the Amendment refers to Congress, however nearly 220 years of legal decisions and Congressional legislation have extended the protection of religion to apply to all parts of American society.  That fact alone makes this even more surprising: according to the New York Times, New York State Governor David Patterson has offered to pay the institute behind this controversial cultural center to move to state-owned land.  Not only is this a cowardly move by Gov. Patterson, but it is also blatantly unconstitutional!

What You Should Know About Missouri’s Proposition C (And Others Like It)

Well here we go: as Congress goes to its month-long August recess, we have a full slate of primaries and other developments in the midterm election races to keep us engaged in politics.  This Tuesday, the August primaries began in earnest with three states choosing their general election matches.  Now, I could just give you another long and detailed roundup of the results as I have for, well, just about every other primary this year, but Missouri gives us the first challenge to the health care law at the ballot box, so I thought I’d look at that instead.  Not to mention the fact that I go to college in Missouri, meaning I care about the results of this contest a bit more than just political curiosity.  Of course, because I know just how much you guys love to find out who won what, here’s what happened in Missouri, in a nutshell.

Food for Democracy: Transparency Versus National Security

If Afghanistan is our generation’s Vietnam, this is our generation’s Pentagon Papers; oh wait, just about every political observer out there has called it that already.  Anyway, if you haven’t heard about it yet, the website Wikileaks.org is causing quite a stir in government circles this summer.  Most notably, the organization became notorious due to a video from a U.S. military helicopter apparently shooting civilians in Iraq, and that has resulted in the individual accused of providing the sensitive video to Wikileaks- and the global news media- being slapped with a lawsuit from the Federal government.  So far, that incident has been the most famous revelation by this organization.  Until now.  On Sunday afternoon, Wikileaks published an extensive archive of some 90,000+ documents relating to the war in Afghanistan.  You can guess the reaction from senior officials in our government.

More troublesome from a government standpoint, however, is the fact that three of the world’s leading newspapers, the New York Times, the UK’s The Guardian, and Germany’s Der Spiegel, have all received prior access to the archive and published their findings in their Monday editions.  I love investigative journalism and all, but there are so many reports emerging from this archive already, with more certain to be forthcoming this week, that it’s hard to keep up, and I find I can read faster than normal.  Though the development is troubling on all fronts in terms of government secrecy and national security, if I were President Obama, or his National Security Adviser, or anyone else involved in national security, I’d be more worried about the media reports than the archive being public; that brings us to the core of this controversy.