Is Rep. Virginia Foxx crazy? I don’t know, but she certainly says some crazy things. Consider a couple of things she said yesterday: – “Actually, the GOP has been the leader in starting good environmental programs in this country.” Maybe, if you go all the way back to the days of Teddy Roosevelt. More recently, the GOP is the party of global warming denialism and opposition to environmental legislation generally. – “Just as we were the people who passed the civil...

I’m not sure if it’ll accomplish anything, but I think Obama’s efforts to engage the totalitarian military junta that rules Burma* and brutalizes the Burmese people are admirable, yet more evidence of the dramatic shift away from the military-oriented, unilateralist approach that characterized Bush’s foreign policy. “Despite years of good intentions,” said the president, “neither sanctions by the United States nor engagement by others succeeded in improving...

Washington voted for domestic partnerships, but Maine, a similarly blue state (despite having two Republican senators), voted against same-sex marriage. There is no denying that the vote in Maine is a setback for gay rights. Simply put, the anti-gay forces of the right mobilize well, as they showed in California last year, playing to lingering bigotry and fear, and they did again here. Furthermore, there was little support for the same-sex marriage law in rural, more conservative parts of the state....

President Obama may think he’s getting a bill to sign soon, or at least this year, but it looks like Congress will postpone legislation until the new year: Senior Congressional Democrats told ABC News [yesterday] it is highly unlikely that a health care reform bill will be completed this year, just a week after President Barack Obama declared he was “absolutely confident” he’ll be able to sign one by then. “Getting this done by the by the end of the year is a no-go,”...

As most of you who follow this sort of thing have surely heard by now, Dierdre “Dede” Scozzafava, the Republican who dropped out of the House race in NY-23 on Saturday, has endorsed not the Conservative (and new Republican) candidate, Doug Hoffman, but the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens. Given that Scozzafava is a moderate who supports abortion rights and gay rights, and that Owens is the flavour of the day of the far right, and that the Republican Party, Scozzafava’s party, is...

I highly recommend that you not read Bono’s op-ed in Saturday’s Times on Obama and “Rebranding America.” Actually, no, it’s not that bad. It’s hard to stomach Bono, I know, but his activism is admirable, particularly with respect to poverty, and he shows a welcome modesty here (false or not, I leave it to you to judge). So go check it out, if you haven’t already. Here are some of the better passages: So here’s why I think the virtual Obama is the real...

Check out this CBS News article. House Republican Leader John Boehner opposes a bill that would expand hate crime legislation to include gender, sexual orientation, and disability. Currently, the legislation includes race, color, religion, and national origin. His rationale is that hate crimes legislation should only cover “immutable characteristics.” Apparently, sexual orientation is not immutable. And yet, the very idea of immutability is stupid. What is immutable? Is gender immutable?...

Along with Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT), Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) has introduced an amendment that would, according to USA Today, “exclude illegal immigrants from the population count used to allocate congressional seats after the 2010 Census. It also would require the Census to ask people whether they are citizens.” Well, I like the first part, not the second. I generally favour amnesty for illegal immigrants, with a path to eventual citizenship, but it doesn’t make sense to include...

I think Ed Morrissey is right, more or less, that a “Left-Right consensus” is “building on Polanski.” I say “more or less” because I think that formulation oversimplifies the situation somewhat. It isn’t so much that both liberals and conservatives are coming out against Polanski and his apologists, it’s that pretty much everyone with a modicum of common decency and respect for the rule of law thinks that Polanski ought to get what he deserves, which...

Sen. Tom Harkin: “We will have a bill on the president’s desk before Christmas, a health-reform bill. It will have a lot of good stuff in it. It will have a lot of prevention and wellness programs in there that I’ve been fighting for. And it will have a public option… The question of if it doesn’t isn’t even an option.” Plus, Republicans won’t be involved in putting a bill together: “This will be a proposal by the Democrats to bring a bill on...

Yesterday, I posted on the truth about Roman Polanski, and this was my conclusion: Whatever you think of the cinema and celebrity of Roman Polanski, it is the truth that should matter most, including the truth about what happened over three decades ago. What is that truth? That he drugged and raped a minor, a 13-year old girl (read the sordid details here). That is disturbing — and criminal — but what is also disturbing is how so many in Hollywood have rushed to his defence since his...

As you may know, famed Polish-French director Roman Polanski was recently arrested in Switzerland. In 1977, he was convicted in the U.S. of “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor” (a disturbing euphemism). He has been on the run ever since, avoiding extradition in Europe while continuing with his career. Polanski has many fans and admirers, of course. I especially like Chinatown and The Pianist, though I generally find him grossly overrated. (Knife in the Water, his early “masterpiece,”...

William Safire — Nixon speechwriter, New York Times columnist, and conservative intellectual — has died at the age of 79. I’ll admit, I never much cared for him — or, rather, for his work: Unlike most Washington columnists who offer judgments with Olympian detachment, Mr. Safire was a pugnacious contrarian who did much of his own reporting, called people liars in print and laced his opinions with outrageous wordplay. Critics initially dismissed him as an apologist for the...

Four years ago, I wrote a six-part series at The Reaction — “Democracy in Deutschland” — on the German federal election. It was a fascinating election and a fascinating time in German politics, culminating in the creation of a so-called “Grand Coalition” between Angela Merkel’s center-right CDU (along with its Bavarian sister party, the right-wing CSU) and the incumbent center-left SPD, with Merkel the new chancellor. Surprisingly, perhaps, the coalition...

With McChrystal et al. pushing for a significant troop increase — an irresponsible one, in my view, given that it’s not clear anymore what the purpose of the war is — this comes as something of a pleasant development: President Obama is exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces and focus more on rooting out Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan, officials said Tuesday. The...

According to Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), if you’re sick (even seriously sick, like with cancer) and don’t have insurance, you should either look for “an existing government program” or beg for charity. This is what passes for Republican “compassion” these days. You’re sick? Tough luck. ********** “No one in this country, given who we are, should be sitting without an option to be addressed,” he added. Yes, but existing government programs and “charitable...

Greenwald: Advocates of escalation in Afghanistan chose Bob Woodward to “reprise his role as warmonger hagiographer” by publishing Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s “confidential” memo to the President arguing for increased troops. As Digby notes, the vague case for continuing to occupy that country is virtually identical to every instance where America’s war-loving Foreign Policy Community advocates the need for new and continued wars. It’s nothing more than America’s...

I think it’s quite hilarious that Michael Barone, never a stranger to hyperbole, claims that liberals are anti-dissent: It is an interesting phenomenon that the response of the left half of our political spectrum to criticism and argument is often to try to shut it down. It’s also hilarious that he writes this without a trace of irony. It is true, of course, that the Democratic Party seeks loyalty. What political party doesn’t? Even here, though, it is nothing like the Republican...

Over at TPM, Brian Beutler has an excellent post up on why Democrats likely won’t use the reconciliation process to pass health-care reform with a simple majority in the Senate. Aside from the fact that the process could actually result in a less-than-desirable bill, given that non-budgetary matters could be thrown out by the parliamentarian (with Republicans pushing to have as much thrown out as possible), according to reconciliation skeptics, “there probably aren’t 51 votes in...

Can you blame President Obama for “snubbing” Fox News yesterday? Steve Benen: “Fox News spent months promoting last weekend’s right-wing protests in Washington, encouraging viewers to go register their outrage. And during the event itself, the Republican news network went a step further, encouraging the crowd to get louder once the cameras were on.” (HuffPo has more.) This is a network that wants Obama to fail, that wants health-care reform to fail, and that is actively...

Irving Kristol, father of Bill and one of the founders of neoconservatism, died on Friday at the age of 89. You can find obituaries, among other places, at the Times and the Post, as well as from Robert Kagan (a close friend of Bill and a leading neocon) and John Podhoretz (son of Norman, another founding neocon, at Commentary, one of the key neocon publications). I usually find myself in opposition to neoconservatism, and hence I usually found myself in opposition to almost everything Kristol stood...

From Sunday’s op-ed: In the meantime, a certain damage has been done — to Obama and to the country. The inmates took over the asylum, trivializing and poisoning the national discourse while the president bided his time. The lies that Obama called out so strongly in his speech — from “death panels” to “government takeover” — ran amok. So did all the other incendiary faux controversies, culminating with the ludicrous outcry over the prospect that the president...

That’s right, what’s the point of Sen. Max Baucus’s health-care reform proposal? Is it to win bipartisan support? Yes, probably, given that Baucus all along has been trying to work with the few Republicans who have shown a slight (if hollow) interest in reform — namely, the GOP members of the Gang of Six. Not surprisingly, though, the Republicans in question, notably Sens. Charles Grassley and Mike Enzi, have already come out against Baucus’s proposal. And it’s...

It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear, but it was close… close enough, I suppose. Alas, President Obama left open the possibility that his preferred public option — which, in my view, should be non-negotiable (see also Krugman on this) — could be replaced with some other alternative to private insurance, such as a non-profit co-op system or a “trigger” (which would kick in a public option were insurance companies unable or unwilling to provide adequate coverage),...

The truth is that he has no interest in reform. In fact, for all his Gang of Six efforts, he’s pretty much against it. I delved into Republican opposition to reform, including Grassley’s, yesterday. Here is Grassley himself, who has been emphasizing his opposition to reform in his recent fundraising efforts, speaking on a conference call with Iowa reporters: There’s a feeling that the only way to get a bipartisan agreement is to defeat a Democratic proposal on the first hand and...