In The Right Kind Of Gun Rights Jonathan Rauch writes about our central right to defend ourselves. He illustrates this with a story about a gay fellow who successfully defended himself from a gay bashing mob. The Supreme Court is soon to decide a case that deals with the line between self defense and irrational excess. And it appears that the only reasonable option is to impose a standard of “reasonableness” on the Second Amendment. That amendment…may have made sense in 1790, but...

Congress endorses post-Bush tax hikes Both houses of Congress endorsed the idea of tax increases for millions of Americans Thursday as Democrats pressed ahead with budget plans that would allow some or all of President Bush’s reductions to die after he leaves office. Essentially the Democrats are saying that we need to raise revenues to balance the budget without reducing essential services. And that the poor and middle class do not have the resources to have the cost pressed on them. The...

Smart Power Vote Coming Tomorrow in Senate International Affairs, which includes our diplomacy, development and international organization expenses, comprises just over 1.2% of our total federal budget and only 6% of our national security spending along with 83% for military and 11% for Homeland Security. It seems to me that a larger proportion of money for eradicating disease, pumping and purifying water, microloans, infrastructure assistance and things like this would help win more moderates over...

The Common Cause Blog celebrates Ethics: VICTORY. The House voted to have this independent office because of the perception by the public that colleagues may not be very forceful in dealing with ethics issues that they themselves might be abusing. It seems to me to be a good thing because as it becomes harder to rationalize certain behaviors as ethical it becomes easier to simply avoid the appearance of impropriety. This is another step in the right direction of a more trustworthy government. …the...

David Mamet writes in the Village Voice Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’ This remarkable author of soul searching plays about the choices we make when we are under stress reflects on his political beliefs. As a life long liberal he begins to reconcile his experiences with his beliefs and finds a weakness. While the title makes it sound like he switches from liberal to conservative I think it is more accurate that he switches from liberal to independent with a new open mind that...

The Center for Competitive Politics posted a comment entitled Money well spent? that pointed out that the Pew Charitable Trusts wasted a lot of money underwriting efforts to enact restrictive campaign finance laws. A study by the Trust found that there was no relationship between the professional management of the 50 states and the existence of these restrictive campaign finance laws. So I wrote back the following: I looked at the Pew Evaluation on Government Performance and indeed there appears...

Lt. Governor David Paterson is suddenly in line to be only the third black governor since Reconstruction, and the first in New York. This guy sounds terrific.

It’s only a one year moratorium, but it’s a start. Earmarks aren’t a big deal in the larger scale of budget issues, and many of them may even be good investments in the national interest. But while the GOP would like to think that they are seizing this issue to their advantage I would point out that it was under GOP control that earmarks exploded out of reason, and now, under Democratic leadership, it is being contained.

The Hill reports: Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) didn’t back down from his controversial comments about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Saturday night, criticizing Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) campaign for distancing itself from King after he said an Obama presidency would be cause for jubilation among Muslim radicals.” While it is true that some radicals may celebrate the election of someone they assume would be an easier adversary, I think it is far more relevant that a much much larger fraction...

Many people do feel and think this way. I wonder how many constituents of politicians like this Lady understand how they are being represented? I suspect that the one of the reasons for the growing resistance to Republican Candidates is that while they may not personally share these prejudices their election enables intolerant public policy towards minorities.

Foster takes seat from GOP Democrat to succeed Hastert in Republican stronghold In a stunning upset Saturday that could be a sign of trouble for Republicans this fall, a little-known Democratic physicist won the special election for a far west suburban congressional seat long held by former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert. This helps restore my faith in human nature. It appears that voters are starting to realize that President Bush could not have done so much damage without being enabled by GOP...

I think that the Samantha Powers faux pas is insignificant. And I think that gotcha journalism is a waste of time and a reckless distraction from more weighty information. Unless such an outburst is part of an intentional trend to influence I am not interested. I noticed that of all the news reports I watched and listened to yesterday the one that mentioned the Power incident the least was the News Hour on PBS.

The Carpetbagger Report has an interesting summary of positions that Senator McCain has adjusted recently. I don’t have much criticism for a politician altering their positions as information and circumstances change. Sometimes it might be technical issues, or some other contamination, that causes proposed legislation to stray too far from its original intentions. However if the lawmaker is wiggling on the underlying values and philosophy I take much more notice. One responsibility of...

Here is a round-up of progress from the Public Campaign Action Fund.

In Political Entrenchment the Washington Post editorializes about noncompetitive congressional districts. And I agree that along with Campaign Finance Reform this is the central obstacle to a more rational government. “members of Congress are “worried about taking a rational position” because they fear being punished in primaries by challengers questioning their ideological purity. “So you see the tendency is for these congressmen to head to the flanks to fend off the primary...

Jeffrey Birnbaum of the Washington Post writes that these two liberal institutions are considering some kind of merger. Common Cause has a subscriber list that the Washington Monthly might use to build subscribers. And the Washington Monthly is a well regarded liberal institution that can add voice to the mission of Common Cause. I am posting on this because it highlights one of my pet peeves that groups with similar missions don’t merge and take advantage of synergies to expand the leverage...

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sen Obama appears in a campaign ad running in the Chicago area for Democratic House candidate Bill Foster, running for former Republican House Speaker Rep Hastert’s seat. I suspect that a survey of Superdelegates would confirm that Sen. Obama can do more to help Democrats attract swing and cross over voters than can Sen. Clinton. If the Party’s purpose is to expand its donors, base of supporters, and presence in all levels of government then I fail...

In Campaign-Finance Breakdown Mr. Bradley Smith, a former Federal Election Commission commissioner, and now chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics argues for the termination of public financing of campaigns. The essence of the argument is that since the influence of money can’t be controlled, we shouldn’t even try. But while he sees the futility of trying to manage the role of money in politics, I see that we have no choice but to promote the impartiality, pragmatism and open...

Crooks and Liars has a piece today on the advantage Democrats have in raising money, ideological consensus and voter enthusiasm. One commenter suggested that this is why the Democrats should say no to Public Financing. But I have another point of view. Even if Obama accepts the limitations of Campaign finance it is easy enough to redirect the donor enthusiasm to The Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Moveon, SEIU… Meanwhile...

On Tuesday there was a bipartisan debate on the Economy called “Congress Debates” You can go to the DLC site and read news reports about the event and link to a video. The DLC has this to say about it: Spirited political debate always has been — and always should be — essential to the conduct of our nation’s business. But the big ideas that have changed America — from the G.I. Bill to the Voting Rights Act, from Medicare to welfare reform — earned support...

Terry Teachout writes in the Wall Street Journal Five Myths, Direct From Pyongyang about the recent performance of the New York Philharmonic in North Korea. Basically he feels that we enhanced Kim Jong Il’s hometown prestige without meaningfully impacting our image with the average North Koreans. I remember almost 30 years ago I moved from Los Angeles to an almost rural suburb of Houston to open up a business. I hired about a dozen 18-20 year olds. After a few weeks, one of the girls came up...

Gosh, how I still love this movie that came out when I was a kid. It defined for me wisdom, strength, courage and the American idea. There were a bunch of these around that time: Failsafe, Advise and Consent, The Best Man, Seven Days in May… In brief, it is a story of a jury deliberating a murder trial. It starts with all but one convinced the kid did kill his father. But as they discuss the evidence, and have their prejudices revealed, they all come around to having reasonable doubt. Each...

Obama has been criticized as naive for proposing to meet with enemies with little or no advanced preparations or negotiations. The fear is that the visit would be used for propaganda by the bad actors. But what if Obama can leverage his greatest assets by proposing such introductory meetings in exchange for a broadcast to the entire population. What if the citizens of Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba can hear the inspiring words of our young, multi-ethnic, popularly-elected leader. It seems to...

The Sunlight Foundation profiles an example of how special interests trade cash for influence in Republicans Demand Campaign Cash for Votes 1) From the congressional Republican standpoint, it looks like they are getting stiffed in a tough election year by telecom companies even though they are voting to support the bottom line of those same companies. The Republicans expect that their support, by casting votes, should lead to campaign contributions. Conclusion: Voting a certain way gets you money. 2)...

Since Texas is of special interest this week here is an interesting observation by a member of the Editorial Board of the San Antonio Express-News Political Tectonics in Texas Should Worry GOP During a two-decade span that began in the early 1980s, Texas went from being a one-party state dominated by Democrats to a one-party state dominated by Republicans. No Democrat has won a statewide election since 1994. The anecdotal evidence was that Hispanics nationwide abandoned the Republican Party in...