Voter ID: solving a non-existent problem *update*

Floor Pass:

The main argument put forth will be that the only problem Republicans are solving by requiring photo identification in order to vote is the problem of citizens casting legitimate votes for Democrats. The people least likely to have photo identification—such as the elderly, the disabled and the poor—all belong to groups that vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

“The burden should be on the state to prove that there’s a real problem, that there’s no other way to deal with this problem, and that the state will not be precluding people from voting before it enacts this sort of legislation,” said Sen. Kirk Watson.

The only type of voter fraud that Voter ID prevents is voter impersonation. The Democrats will point out, as they did today, that one is more likely to be struck by lightning or see a UFO than they are to come across an act of voter impersonation.

Campaign Legal Center executive director Gerald Hebert said, “There is no widespread, organized, or even significant voter impersonation in Texas. Not a single case has been prosecuted in over 20 years. And I know, because I brought a lawsuit against [Texas Attorney General] Greg Abbott to prove that fact and he acknowledged that it was so.”

Greg Abbott sent agents from the OAG to peek in a little old lady's bathroom window, and he STILL couldn't find any evidence of voter fraud.

Many, many more Texans will be denied their vote because a volunteer poll worker would have the unquestioned authority to decide whether or not someone looks "correct". Think this an exaggeration? Well, it used to be the case during both the Jm Crow period, as well as the time prior to the suffrage movement in the US:

In Texas this week, debate opens on a proposal that places extraordinary identification requirements on citizens who wish to vote. The proposed law's ambiguous language appears to grant part-time, amateur polling place officials the absolute power to accept or reject a would-be voter based solely on that citizen's appearance or other subjective judgments. For the first time since women and blacks were granted the vote, appearance alone may disqualify a would-be voter.

But since this is the greatest single issue facing Texas today, the Republicans are going to make certain it passes.

Update:

"This hearing is a sham, just like your redistricting hearings were a sham," (civil rights attorney Gerald) Hebert said.

Hebert said the voter identification legislation is the "latest in a long series of attacks on minority voters in this state" and is part of a "long dark history of keeping people on the reservation through voting."

Hebert, who works out of the nation's capital, said there is no widespread "or even occasional" cases of voter impersonation in Texas.

He called the bill "raw partisan politics" by Republicans "to harm voters in their own state." Hebert said the bill will cost taxpayers millions of dollars to implement.

Follow the live action here and here. And more summary assembled at Off the Kuff. Still more play-by-play from Patricia Kilday Hart at Burkablog.

The Weekly Wrangle

In the wake of Texas Independence Day (March 2) and the anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo (March 6), with the pending fight over voter identification legislation set to open tomorrow in the Texas Senate, take a moment to click on the links below that feature past discussions of the skirmish.

Following is the round-up of some of those posts, along with the rest of the best from the Texas left last week.

jobsanger knows that more money needs to be raised to pay for needed improvements and repairs to America's infrastructure, but he remains convinced that the Mileage Tax Is A Terrible Idea.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson gets readers ready for the upcoming Voter ID debate, or as the the Texas GOP calls it The single most important issue facing Texas today.

The new video at Texas Liberal is called Reading About The Panic Of 1873 In Front Of The Enron Building.

Over at McBlogger, Captain Kroc posts an interesting piece about seemingly unrelated issues, Rush Limbaugh and Child Molestation.

The Texas Cloverleaf gives a brief on Equality Texas Lobby Day this past Monday.

Off the Kuff looks at the case against voter ID, also known as the single most important issue facing Texas today, as advanced by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

Dos Centavos posts about the latest on the Voter ID. Can national Latino political and economic muscle be flexed effectively, as it was for Obama?

Obama sent the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to see what our military can do to stop drug cartel activities. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme thinks John Cornyn is shopping border violence as a theme for his 2012 presidential run.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is frustrated at the regression, into childhood, of those who claim to be Republicans. They are NOT Republicans. They are the Neo-Republicans who have hi-jacked the party name to deceive ordinary conservative Americans. They have stolen the GOP cloak to hide their real agenda. Read more in Neo-Republicans Are Not The Grand Old Party, scatological analogies.

Xanthippas at Three Wise Men rounds up opinion on the newly released OLC memos. We knew they'd be bad... but still.

John at Bay Area Houston says the Harris County GOP's "Give a Mexican a Bike" program is probably against federal law and smothered with hypocrisy.

As the head of FreeRepublic.com gets visited by the Secret Service, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs finds several pre-post-mortems on the GOP.

TXsharon joined other blogs in areas effected by unconventional natural gas drilling in asking readers to TAKE ACTION and let The View know they were irresponsible to give T. Boone Pickens free advertising for his plan without investigating the full implications. The same drilling practices Pickens promotes recently contaminated water wells in the Marcellus Shale causing one to explode: Manhattan borough president called for drilling moratorium.

Lord of the Freepers gets visit from Secret Service

Let's allow Mr. Robinson to explain:

Unfortunately, we are saddled with a communist sympathizer in the White House. I don't know whether or not he's an actual card carrying commie, but he's definitely an America-hating, anti-capitalist Marxist leftist who thinks communism is the way to go. Now I remember when America used to fight against communism. It wasn't that long ago. Many of us on FR are veterans of wars against communism and some of us believe that American citizens who are communists are the enemy within, ie, the domestic enemy we've sworn to defend against. American citizen? hmmmm... that may be a loophole for Obama.

At any rate, the oath is to defend our constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. I can imagine that this places an enormous strain on our Secret Service agents. It's obvious to anyone with a brain that Obama is an enemy of the constitution. So should the SS defend the constitution or defend the anti-constitution commie?

So now comes the problem. If you feel it's your duty to call Obama a traitor and use salty language in your proposed resolution, ie, suggest the commie be keelhauled, walked off the plank, run up the yardarm, tarred and feathered and run out of Dodge, etc, etc, etc, you may be facing a visit from your friendly Secret Service. And even though your visiting agent may agree politically, and may take his oath to the constitution seriously, he's still sworn to protect the officeholder and it's his duty to take all threats seriously. And that may include serving me with a subpoena to turn over your IP address. Now I'm duty bound to protect your privacy to the best of my ability, but I cannot defend against stupidity.

Best advice I can give is to keep it to yourself. Don't post anything that may embarrass you later, or end you up in the slammer.

Without an ability to understand the distinction between an Iraq war protest and a Tea Party; unable to discern the difference between "Bush is a moron" and "Obama ain't gettin' my guns without a fight"; without the common sense to comprehend why one cannot threaten the life of the President of the United States as casually as one flicks a booger, the rightest of the Right are in for a long and difficult eight years.

What we are seeing is the spasms and convulsions of a political party's sudden yet inevitable demise. The end could have been avoided to no greater success than the dinosaurs or the newspapers. But don't take my word for it; ask David Frum:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of "responsibility," and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence -- exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word -- we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

It's not just about Limbaugh though, as everyone except most people still voting Republican already know:

Even before the November 2008 defeat—even before the financial crisis and the congressional elections of November 2006—it was already apparent that the Republican Party and the conservative movement were in deep trouble. And not just because of Iraq, either (although Iraq obviously did not help).

At the peak of the Bush boom in 2007, the typical American worker was earning barely more after inflation than the typical American worker had earned in 2000. Out of those flat earnings, that worker was paying more for food, energy and out-of-pocket costs of health care. Political parties that do not deliver economic improvement for the typical person do not get reelected. We Republicans and conservatives were not delivering. The reasons for our failure are complex and controversial, but the consequences are not.

We lost the presidency in 2008. In 2006 and 2008, together, we lost 51 seats in the House and 14 in the Senate. Even in 2004, President Bush won reelection by the narrowest margin of any reelected president in American history.

The trends below those vote totals were even more alarming. Republicans have never done well among the poor and the nonwhite—and as the country's Hispanic population grows, so, too, do those groups. More ominously, Republicans are losing their appeal to voters with whom they've historically done well.

In 1988 George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis among college graduates by 25 points. Nothing unusual there: Republicans have owned the college-graduate vote. But in 1992 Ross Perot led an exodus of the college-educated out of the GOP, and they never fully returned. In 2008 Obama beat John McCain among college graduates by 8 points, the first Democratic win among B.A. holders since exit polling began.

And did you remember that Republicans won California in every presidential election from 1952 through 1988 -- except for LBJ in 1964? Thirty-six years, or two consecutive political generations. Democrats have owned California in the five consecutive ones since 1988. Florida was lost in 2008 (and in 2000, but who's counting any longer?) and Texas is slowly slipping away. Too slowly, but the trend is irreversible, especially as the GOP continues to demonize Latinos. A voter ID bill to be considered next week in the Texas Legislature only slows the trend a few more years. More from Frum on the current problem for conservatives:

Every day, Rush Limbaugh reassures millions of core Republican voters that no change is needed: if people don't appreciate what we are saying, then say it louder. Isn't that what happened in 1994? Certainly this is a good approach for Rush himself. He claims 20 million listeners per week, and that suffices to make him a very wealthy man. And if another 100 million people cannot stand him, what does he care? What can they do to him other than … not listen? It's not as if they can vote against him.

But they can vote against Republican candidates for Congress. They can vote against Republican nominees for president. And if we allow ourselves to be overidentified with somebody who earns his fortune by giving offense, they will vote against us. Two months into 2009, President Obama and the Democratic Congress have already enacted into law the most ambitious liberal program since the mid-1960s. More, much more is to come. Through this burst of activism, the Republican Party has been flat on its back.

He's got some ideas about how his party can make a comeback at the link. I just don't think anyone over there is capable of making the necessary changes in time to save themselves.

And that's not a bad thing. If the GOP splinters into opposing factions of social conservatives, economic conservatives and Libertarians, then that would perhaps open the Democratic Party up to a little more balancing of the intra-party lefts and rights. Hopefully.

Have to hope that happens no matter what the Republicks manage.

The Rock Obama defenestrates Kay Bailey

Suffer through the 30-second ad for last night's SNL parody (hat tip to Poli-Tex):

Sunday Funnies (Not-Getting-It Edition)

Failure is not an option *update*

For the Republicans, it has become a requirement.

And the absurdity just gets more comical by the day. David Sirota:

On the same day a new Wall Street Journal poll reveals that Americans trust in President Obama and congressional Democrats on economic issues is skyrocketing (and in the same month Fox’s own polls show the same), I debated Bill Kristol in a Fox News debate that the network’s moderator prefaced by asking why Obama’s economic actions were “forcing Americans to lose trust in the administration?” Watch it here - I kid you not (notice the graphic underneath asserting unequivocally that “Confidence In Obama’s Economic Team [Is] Lost” and that “Disappointment Grows Over Obama’s Economic Team”).

As you’ll see, Kristol has exactly one talking point: He says that the Dow Jones has lost 15 percent, or 1,355 points, since Obama took office, and he then effectively claims that Wall Street speculators’ day-to-day gyrations mean the vast majority of Americans do not trust Obama, irrespective of polls showing exactly the opposite.

Of course, Obama has been in office for 44 days - so just for a comparison, let’s remember that in the 44-day period between 8/28/08 and 10/11/08, the Dow Jones lost 27 percent, or 3,264 points. But Kristol doesn’t mention that little detail, because Republicans were controlling economic policy then (and you’ll notice Fox promptly ends the segment when I start bringing this up).

The point, of course, is to say that judging economic policy by 44-day periods in the market is absurd, and it is especially absurd to blame a 44-day-old presidency on market forces that three decades of conservative policies (that Kristol aggressively advocated) created. But that’s the extent of the GOP’s talking points today.

Earlier this week Jon Stewart tore into CNBC's Rick Santelli and Jiim Cramer, the elite's latest Goliaths of the class war, for the rants they have been spouting and the Tea Parties they have spawned. Watch it:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

None of this revisionist, delusional, own-facts-entitlement BS is going to fly any more. Progressives have their own infrastructure to push it back, and besides, the voters understand who's spinning the lies.

-- Update:

Despite the tumbling economy, Barack Obama continues to enjoy a honeymoon with the American public in the face of the most trying crisis any newly inaugurated president has encountered since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The GOP, meanwhile, is viewed by a majority of Americans as the party of "no," without a plan of its own to fix the economy, and even rank-and-file Republicans are concerned about the party's direction, according to the first NEWSWEEK Poll taken since Obama assumed office.

"People give Obama credit for reaching out to Republicans, but they don't see Republicans reciprocating," says pollster Larry Hugick, whose firm conducted the survey. "A surprising number said bipartisanship is more important than getting things done."

GOP's TP for the Limbaugh mess

I watched the Lizard Fleischer and his faux scorn -- mentioned in the following -- for myself yesterday. To imagine that a guy sat with Karl Rove for years and plotted strategy ("Americans should be careful what they say") strikes me as a new pinnacle in disingenuousness:

It took them awhile, but the GOP has come up with their official talking point on Rush Limbaugh. Here's John Boehner, from an article that went up on Politico at 4:46 (EST):

"It's a huge distraction created by the White House" to avoid talking about components of the budget, Boehner complained. "You would think the White House would have more important things to do."

And about 20 minutes later, Pat Buchanan was on Hardball, sighing over the White House creating this controversy when they should be worried about saving the economy.

And then on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, former Bush mouthpiece Ari Fleischer complained that he was very disappointed in the President for starting a childish fight when the economy is in such terrible shape.

So there you have it.

Never mind the Chairman of the Republican National Committee crawling to beg forgiveness for daring to criticize Limbaugh. Ignore the fact that no Republican has been willing to say that Limbaugh was wrong for not only hoping that President Obama fails, but for claiming that every Republican feels the same way but is too afraid to say so. It's all the White House's fault.

Watch for this in the coming days.

Wonkette: 'GOP just comically walking into every trap'

How do you get what’s left of the Republican Party to destroy itself? It sure helps to have some self-obsessed drug-addicted sociopath like Rush Limbaugh as “leader” of the doomed wingnuts! At some point in January, the same Obama strategists who outmaneuvered the Clinton Machine and American Racism noticed that an AM radio jackass beloved by angry white guys in service trucks — who else listens to AM radio, during the workday? — was publicly wishing failure upon both the new Obama Administration and the U.S. Economy. Maybe this bloated oil bag could bring down the entire GOP!

Two months later, the plan seems to be working flawlessly. The Obama team says something like, “Hey, Republicans, do you agree with your party leader, Rush Limbaugh, this smarmy sex creep, that America should fail?” And then whatever hapless GOP factotum, such as party chairman Michael Steele, says something reasonable like, “Uh, hell no, and Limbaugh’s an ugly sack of rat shit,” and then Limbaugh bellows on the AM, and then the hapless GOP factotum immediately kisses Rush’s tacky pinky ring ...

*stopping to catch my breath from laughing too hard*

Finally, the very image of Limbaugh — a monstrous, sweating, greedy, fat-fingered Viagra-gobbling sex-tourist Jabba the Hutt figure of vulgarity and revulsion — is, officially, the image of the Republican party. The late-night network comedy talk shows are just loving it:



And now the Democrats have this hilarious “apologize to Rush” form letter. Democrats doing something hilarious? Change really has come to America ...

Comedy Gold.

Operation Pigbaugh

Top Democrats believe they have struck political gold by depicting Rush Limbaugh as the new face of the Republican Party, a full-scale effort first hatched by some of the most familiar names in politics and now being guided in part from inside the White House.

The strategy took shape after Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville included Limbaugh’s name in an October poll and learned their longtime tormentor was deeply unpopular with many Americans, especially younger voters. Then the conservative talk-radio host emerged as an unapologetic critic of Barack Obama shortly before his inauguration, when even many Republicans were showering him with praise.

Soon it clicked: Democrats realized they could roll out a new GOP bogeyman for the post-Bush era by turning to an old one in Limbaugh, a polarizing figure since he rose to prominence in the 1990s.

Limbaugh is embracing the line of attack, suggesting a certain symbiosis between him and his political adversaries.

"The administration is enabling me,” he wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO. “They are expanding my profile, expanding my audience and expanding my influence. An ever larger number of people are now being exposed to the antidote to Obamaism: conservatism, as articulated by me. An ever larger number of people are now exposed to substantive warnings, analysis and criticism of Obama's policies and intentions, a ‘story’ I own because the [mainstream media] is largely the Obama Press Office.”

The bigger, the better, agreed Carville. “It’s great for us, great for him, great for the press,” he said of Limbaugh. “The only people he’s not good for are the actual Republicans in Congress.”

Independent voters hate the guy as much as we do. Independents, of course, are the reason Obama is working at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and why Republicans in Congress have been hosed in the past two election cycles.

They still aren't getting it, though. As Obama's popularity numbers go up, the GOP's go further into the toilet. But because their worst instincts are completely out of control -- like an OxyContin habit -- what is at risk is the very relevance of the Republican party nationally, in the strictest electoral sense of the word.

Paul Begala, a close friend of Carville, Greenberg and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, said they found Limbaugh’s overall ratings were even lower than the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s controversial former pastor, and William Ayers, the domestic terrorist and Chicago resident who Republicans sought to tie to Obama during the campaign.

Then came what Begala called “the tripwire.”

“I hope he fails,” Limbaugh said of Obama on his show four days before the president was sworn in. It was a time when Obama’s approval ratings were soaring, but more than that, polls showed even people who didn’t vote for him badly wanted him to succeed, coming to office at a time of economic meltdown.

No amount of Tea Parties, CNBC rants, or even the incoherent mutterings of the Vulgar Pigboy himself can stop this slide. They can either re-acquire some semblance of decency, conciliation, and bi-partisanship, or they can't.

Got popcorn?

Update: Chuck Todd...

To paraphrase Dickens, the last six weeks have been the best of times for Obama and the Democrats, and the worst of times for the Republicans. Just consider the latest findings from our NBC/WSJ poll: Obama’s favorability rating is at 68% (an all-time high in our survey), 67% say they feel more hopeful about his leadership, 60% approve of his job in the White House, and 49% have a positive view of the Democratic Party (which is also near a high). On the other hand, just 26% view the GOP positively (an all-time low in the poll), respondents blame Bush and congressional Republicans for most of the partisanship in DC, 56% think the GOP’s opposition to Obama is based on politics, and Republicans lose by nearly 30 percentage points on the question about which party would do a better job of leading the country out of recession.

While we have covered all the new administration’s ups and downs, it is absolutely clear which party has suffered the most in public opinion these first six weeks: the GOP. NBC/WSJ co-pollster Peter Hart (D) says Republicans “have been tone deaf to the results of the 2008 election… They never heard the message. They continue to preach the old-time religion.” Adds co-pollster Bill McInturff (R), “These are difficult and problematic numbers.”

More of Yoo

... and less of our constitutional rights (though that's getting rolled back a little now). Scott Horton at Harper's:

John Yoo’s Constitution is unlike any other I have ever seen. It seems to consist of one clause: appointing the President as commander-in-chief. The rest of the Constitution was apparently printed in disappearing ink. ...

We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution. What we know now is likely the least of it.

Glenn Greenwald (bold emphasis his):

Let's just look at one of those documents (.pdf) -- entitled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the U.S." It was sent to (and requested by) Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes and authored by Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and DOJ Special Counsel Robert Delahunty. But it's not a "Yoo memo." Rather, it was the official and formal position of the U.S. Government -- at least of the omnipotent Executive Branch -- from the time it was issued until just several months George Bush before left office (October, 2008), when OLC Chief Stephen Bradbury abruptly issued a memo withdrawing, denouncing and repudiating both its reasoning and conclusions.

The essence of this document was to declare that George Bush had the authority (a) to deploy the U.S. military inside the U.S., (b) directed at foreign nationals and U.S. citizens alike; (c) unconstrained by any Constitutional limits, including those of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments. It was nothing less than an explicit decree that, when it comes to Presidential power, the Bill of Rights was suspended, even on U.S. soil and as applied to U.S. citizens. And it wasn't only a decree that existed in theory; this secret proclamation that the Fourth Amendment was inapplicable to what the document calls "domestic military operations" was, among other things, the basis on which Bush ordered the NSA, an arm of the U.S. military, to turn inwards and begin spying -- in secret and with no oversight -- on the electronic communications (telephone calls and emails) of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.

Law professor Jack Balkin, from Balkinization (bold below is mine):

These (now-) disowned claims lie at the heart of the Cheney/Addington/Yoo theory of presidential power-- namely, that when the president acts as commander in chief Congress may not restrict in any way his military decisionmaking, including decisions about detention, interrogation, and surveillance. The President, because he is President, may do whatever he thinks is necessary, even in the domestic context, if he acts for military and national security reasons in his capacity as Commander in Chief. This theory of presidential power argues, in essence, that when the President acts in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, he may make his own rules and cannot be bound by Congressional laws to the contrary. This is a theory of presidential dictatorship.

These views are outrageous and inconsistent with basic principles of the Constitution as well as with two centuries of legal precedents. Yet they were the basic assumptions of key players in the Bush Administration in the days following 9/11.

Zachary Roth at TPM Muckraker with a summary of legal opinions, all of which happen to conflict with Yoo's:

Walter Dellinger, who ran OLC during the Clinton administration tells the New York Times that the Bradbury memo "disclaiming the opinions of earlier Bush lawyers sets out in blunt detail how irresponsible those earlier opinions were."

Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch speaking to the Washington Post, singles out the memo that allowed the administration to send detainees to countries that commit human rights abuses. "That is [the Office of Legal Counsel] telling people how to get away with sending someone to a nation to be tortured," Daskal said. "The idea that the legal counsel's office would be essentially telling the president how to violate the law is completely contrary to the purpose and the role of what a legal adviser is supposed to do."

Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington, focuses on the memo that gave the administration the power to conduct warrantless wiretapping. Writing on the blog The Volokh Conspiracy, Kerr calls the argument that FISA doesn't apply to national security issues -- which appears to be the memo's argument -- "an extremely lame analysis." He continues: "Much of the point of FISA was to regulate that."

And lastly, Yoo himself:

I think the job of a lawyer is to give a straight answer to a client. One thing I sometimes worry about is that lawyers in the future in the government are going to start worrying about, "What are people going to think of me?" Your client the president, or your client the justice on the Supreme Court, or your client this senator, needs to know what's legal and not legal. And sometimes, what's legal and not legal is not the same thing as what you can do or what you should do.