Rachel Maddow's Blog, page 3376

A cowardly move from the new Gov. Ultrasound

Associated Press

Every conceivable element of this story is offensive.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed into law on Friday new abortion restrictions that opponents said could lead to the closing of two of the state's four abortion clinics. [...]

The law requires women to undergo an ultrasound before they get an abortion and doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinics.

So, in addition to forcing two of the state's four abortion providers to shut down, Walker will now require women undergo a medically unnecessary procedure before exercising their constitutional rights. What if a woman doesn't want the ultrasound? Too bad; her governor is imposing one on her anyway. What if her physician says there's no need for an ultrasound? It doesn't matter; Republican politicians in Wisconsin have decided to put themselves between patients and their doctors.

This, we're told, is the result of sensible policymaking from advocates of limited government.

But the way in which the Wisconsin governor signed this legislation into law adds insult to injury (in this case, almost literally). Scott Walker could have approved the measure in any number of ways, but he chose to do so privately, over the course of a holiday weekend, when the governor apparently thought it'd generate less attention.

There is, in other words, a degree of cowardice here -- if Walker thought he was doing the right thing, signing a measure with broad support into law, he wouldn't have been reduced to hiding.

The new state law takes effect today. Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed suit in federal court. "The purpose and effect of the requirement, which is wholly unnecessary and unreasonable, is to impose a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking abortion prior to viability, in violation of their constitutional right to privacy," lawyers for the groups said in the complaint.

The Voting Rights Act was gutted, but it's not yet dead

Associated Press

With lightning speed, state Republican policymakers responded to the Supreme Court's ruling on the Voting Rights Act by moving on a series of new voting restrictions, primarily targeting minority groups, students, and the poor. Before two weeks ago, many states would have needed Justice Department approval for these changes -- approval they would not have received -- but it is now "open season" on Americans' access to their own democracy.

There is, however, a possible hurdle for those waging the "war on voting." The Supreme Court undermined the Voting Rights Act by targeting Section 5 of the law -- the provision related to pre-clearance -- ordering Congress to come up with new standards and leaving this area of the law unenforceable. But Section 2 of the VRA -- described by Chief Justice John Roberts in his ruling as "permanent" and applicable "nationwide" -- remains intact.

One side effect of the Supreme Court's decision to stop enforcement of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is clear: a flood of new lawsuits that have already begun.

The ruling all but guarantees that voting rights advocates will pivot toward filing lawsuits relying on a separate piece of the law, Section 2, to challenge procedures which might impede voters. [...]

Section 2 ... bans voting procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups.... To win a Section 2 case, the Justice Department or a plaintiff doesn't need to prove that a voting procedure had an invidious intent -- only that it had the result of denying a racial or language minority an opportunity to take part in the political process.

Given the discriminatory nature of so many of the Republican voting restrictions, these are cases that can be won. There's ample evidence, for example, that voter-ID laws have an inherently discriminatory effect. The same can be said for GOP efforts to eliminate early voting opportunities and scrapping Sunday voting altogether.

This isn't to say voting-rights advocates have a silver bullet. On the contrary, the litigation will be costly, time-consuming, and difficult -- the burden will be on the plaintiffs to prove that the laws are discriminatory, not on the state to prove that they're not. For that matter, legal outcomes are uncertain -- Republican-appointed judges may be less sympathetic to litigants fighting for equal voting rights.

But it's nevertheless an angle to the fight worth watching, and may well be the saving grace for those who hope to see equal access for all.

Senator Cheney?

Associated Press

If we were to make a list of competitive Senate races to watch in 2014, Wyoming wouldn't make the cut. Sen. Mike Enzi is a popular Republican incumbent in a deep-red state -- he won re-election in 2008 with more than 75% of the vote -- and at age 69, the senator is not yet in a position where he needs to think about retirement. Enzi's fourth term looks like one of the cycle's safest bets.

At least, it did. In an era in which even conservative Republican incumbents have to worry about fierce primary challenges, Enzi will apparently have a high-profile foe next year.

A young Dick Cheney began his first campaign for the House in this tiny village [Lusk, Wyoming] -- population 1,600 -- after the state's sole Congressional seat finally opened up. But nowadays, his daughter Liz does not seem inclined to wait patiently for such an opening.

Ms. Cheney, 46, is showing up everywhere in the state, from chicken dinners to cattle growers' meetings, sometimes with her parents in tow. She has made it clear that she wants to run for the Senate seat now held by Michael B. Enzi, a soft-spoken Republican and onetime fly-fishing partner of her father.

It's not just idle speculation. Liz Cheney, despite having no meaningful background in the state whatsoever, moved with her family to Wyoming just last year and quickly became a ubiquitous political player. Indeed, the right-wing media personality even called Enzi directly, letting him know she's likely to run against him in a GOP primary.

The result would probably be an ugly fight within the state Republican Party, pitting a popular three-term incumbent against a powerful family with deep roots in the state.

It's not altogether clear why Cheney would bother. Her brief tenure in public office -- she worked in the Bush/Cheney State Department -- didn't go well, but she remains a fixture in political media, routinely publishing "stark raving mad" pieces and making Sunday show appearances. Cheney's megaphone is formidable, even if she uses it towards ridiculous ends.

But whatever her motivations, this will probably be one of the cycle's more noteworthy primary fights. Enzi, assuming he doesn't retire, would almost certainly have the edge, though he has not yet faced a rival as fierce and unburdened by propriety as Cheney.

On Twitter, ‏@pourmecoffee added, "If 'Liz Cheney' is the answer, the question must be 'How could the U.S. Senate possibly get any worse?'"

Postscript: The NYT piece noted that the former vice president, eager to help his daughter, has also begun traveling more regularly to the state he used to represent. That said, Liz Cheney "has told associates that if she runs, she wants to do so in her own right."

It was the only sentence in the article that literally made me laugh. Cheney wants to run against a popular incumbent from her own party in a state she's lived in for a year, and she thinks her candidacy should be unrelated to her last name? C'mon.

'Overregulation' for me, not for thee

It's been a couple of weeks since Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) took on his chief Democratic rival, state Sen. Wendy Davis, commenting on her teenaged pregnancy during a speech at the National Right To Life conference. The governor's comments generated criticism from his own allies, and yesterday on Fox, Perry still struggled to explain what he was thinking.

Watch on YouTube

For those who can't watch clips online, here's how the governor explained himself:

"Actually, those comments were meant to be a compliment to her for what she had accomplished in her life, and you think about where she came from, what she's accomplished. And as a matter of fact, I would think that she's very proud of that as well.

"My point was that saving a life and letting that life come to its fulfillment and all the good things that happened, you never know when who's going to be considered to be an extraordinary individual who's going to make that real impact and life. And that was our point that we were making, and nothing else, nothing more."

You can watch Perry's original comments and see for yourself whether this makes any sense -- it sounded to me like Perry has looked at Davis' life, and has taken it upon himself to decide what lessons she should have drawn from it. What's more, listening to the governor yesterday, it sounded like he might also have been making an argument against birth control, because after all, if people use methods to prevent conception, "you never know" what kind of life they're preventing.

In the meantime, though the subject did not come up during Perry's "Fox News Sunday" appearance, perhaps now would be a good time to consider why the governor and his party are preoccupied with reproductive rights, but have done nothing to address exploding fertilizer plants.

Tim Murphy reported on Friday:

In the two and a half months since an explosion at a West, Texas, fertilizer storage facility left 12 first responders dead and at least 200 people injured, two things have become clear. The disaster could have been avoided if the proper regulations had been in place and enforced -- and state and federal agencies don't appear to be in a hurry to put those regulations in place or enforce them.

Texas, whose lax regulatory climate has come in for scrutiny in the aftermath of the West explosion, went into a special session of its state legislature on Monday to push through an omnibus abortion bill designed to regulate 37 abortion clinics out of existence. But the 2013 session will come to a close without any significant action to impose safeguards on the 74 facilities in the state that contain at least 10,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate.

Lawmakers in Austin have a handy excuse for punting on new fertilizer regulations: That would be intrusive.

That may sound amusing given the circumstances, but Murphy isn't kidding. State Sen. Donna Campbell (R-Texas), who helped shut down Wendy Davis' filibuster, said Texas should reject new monitoring of chemical plants, even when public safety is at stake, because there's "a point at which you can overregulate."

Got that? When the issue is exploding fertilizer plants, which recently leveled part of a town and killed 15 people, state Republican policymakers are concerned with "overregulation." When the issue is uteruses, state Republican policymakers believe there is no point at which you can overregulate.

Note, the Mother Jones piece makes clear that it'd be fairly easy for the state to improve its safeguards and prevent catastrophes like the one in West, Texas, but Republicans, at least for now, refuse. Murphy concluded, "Maybe if pro-choice activists really want to stop Texas from regulating clinics they should just start calling them 'fertilizer plants.'"

Morning Maddow: July 8

There will be a public hearing on the new abortion bill in a Texas Senate committee today. Gov. Rick Perry vows the bill will pass.

WI Gov. Scott Walker is now officially Gov. Ultrasound.

In Iowa, abortion opponents try to persuade regulators to end telemedicine abortions.

Meet the birther who is spearheading the "fetal heartbeat" abortion bans.

MO Gov. Jay Nixon vetoes a bill that would have nullified federal gun laws.

Edward Snowden is offered asylum in three Central and South American countries.

Buzzfeed profiles the chief judge of the secret FISA Court, while the Wall Street Journal looks at what that court considers "relevant".

The pilot of the jet that crashed in San Francisco over the weekend was training on the aircraft.

Conflicting stories about the killings of dozens of Morsi supporters in Egypt.

This Week in God

First up from the God Machine this week is a story out of Florida, where a monument to atheism was unveiled on government property for the first time in American history.

Watch on YouTube

Local Christians were permitted to erect a Ten Commandments monument at the Bradford County courthouse in Starke, Florida, prompting a lengthy legal dispute over the separation of church and state. Officials eventually struck a deal -- if atheists dropped the lawsuit, which they were likely to win, they could erect their own monument on the property.

And so, this week, American Atheists did exactly that, unveiling a privately-funded, 1,500-pound granite bench, honoring church-state separation, secularism, and atheism. Because of the prevalence of Ten Commandments displays at courthouses, especially throughout the South, the group says it has plans to erect 50 more monuments just like this one.

The strategy is based on a simple principle: in an open forum, the government can't play favorites. If Christians can have a monument to the tenets of their beliefs, so can atheists. Indeed, so can literally every other group with a distinct set of beliefs about religion -- it's not hard to imagine courthouses needing to reserve space for monuments for Baptists, Buddhists, and the Baha'i; as well as Sikhs, Scientologists, and Satanists.

There are, after all, no second-class Americans citizens when it comes to the First Amendment. If one group has the right to erect a monument, so does everyone else.

The alternative is the government remaining neutral, and leaving these monuments for private property, but Ten Commandments activists said that's not what they want. They opened the door, and it's going to get crowded as others walk through it.

Also from the God Machine this week:

* Remember that case we've been following about the religious right activists trying to block yoga classes in San Diego? They lost -- a local court ruled this week that yoga does not constitute religious instruction. Of particular interest, the judge said the plaintiffs seemed to be relying on inaccurate information they found online. "It's almost like a trial by Wikipedia, which isn't what this court does," the judge said (thanks to reader R.P. for the tip).

* It's hard to believe, but Hobby Lobby's argument that corporations have religious liberties appears to be winning in court: "In a health care decision giving hope to opponents of the federal birth-control coverage mandate, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Hobby Lobby stores won't have to start paying millions of dollars in fines next week for not complying with the requirement."

* A stunning development in the Roman Catholic Church's sexual-abuse scandal: "Tragic as the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church has been, it is shocking to discover that Cardinal Timothy Dolan, while archbishop of Milwaukee, moved $57 million off the archdiocesan books into a cemetery trust fund six years ago in order to protect the money from damage suits by victims of abuse by priests."

* The right-wing Family Research Council, a leading organization in the religious right movement, is planning an event to honor what it's calling "Ex-Gay Pride Month," a new celebration "to recognize former homosexuals." The announcement comes on the heels of the collapse of Exodus International, a so-called "ex-gay" ministry.

* And in Skiatook, Okla., a sermon from Baptist preacher Jim Standridge has generated quite a bit of attention in religious circles over the last couple of weeks. A video from the weekly services shows Standridge insulting members of his congregation, which is generally considered unusual.

Watch on YouTube

Friday's Mini-Report

Today's extra-early edition of quick hits:

* An unpredictable crisis continues to unfold in Egypt.

* On a related note: "The top human rights official at the United Nations, Navi Pillay, expressed concern on Friday at the reported detention of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt and called on military authorities there to make clear the basis on which they are being held or release them."

* Was Egypt a coup or a popular uprising? The answer may be expensive: "By all accounts, the generals removed the democratically elected president, put him in detention, arrested his allies and suspended the Constitution. Army vehicles and soldiers in riot gear roamed the streets, while jet fighters roared overhead. But was it a military coup d'etat? For the White House and the new Egyptian government, that is the $1.5 billion question."

* A simmering Latin American diplomatic crisis: "South America's leftist leaders rallied to support Bolivian President Evo Morales after his plane was rerouted amid suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board and demanded an apology from France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The presidents of Argentina, Ecuador, Suriname, Venezuela and Uruguay joined Morales in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba late Thursday to address the diplomatic row."

* San Francisco's commuter-train strike ends: "BART trains will be running again beginning Friday afternoon after the transit district and its striking unions agreed to a 30-day extension of the current contract."

* Four U.S. senators -- John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) -- made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan yesterday, and met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, before also visiting with U.S. troops.

* Rupert Murdoch's troubles haven't gone away; they've gotten worse. We'll have more on this on Monday.

* Let's say you live in Maryland and you may your same-sex partner. Let's also say you live in Virginia, where marriage equality doesn't exist. What happens? The AP takes a closer look.

* Warren Mosler fights the fight for a Keynesian "modern monetary theory."

* And Paul Krugman at the intersection of July 4th and contemporary conservative hypocrisy: "The wealthy may defend their privileges, but given the temper of America, they have to pretend that they're doing no such thing. The block-the-vote people know what they're doing, but they also know that they mustn't say it in so many words. In effect, both groups know that the nation will view them as un-American unless they pay at least lip service to democratic ideals -- and in that fact lies the hope of redemption. So, yes, we are still, in a deep sense, the nation that declared independence and, more important, declared that all men have rights. Let's all raise our hot dogs in salute."

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

The IRS 'scandal' evaporates into nothing

Associated Press

I'm afraid I have some good news and some bad news for conservatives who've been so heavily invested in the IRS "scandal." The good news is, there are some important new revelations about how the tax agency responded to groups seeking tax-exempt status. The bad news, the details reinforce the fact that literally all of the right's allegations have been discredited.

The controversy that erupted in May has focused on an ideological question: Were conservative groups singled out for special treatment based on their politics, or did the I.R.S. equally target liberal groups? But a closer look at the I.R.S. operation suggests that the problem was less about ideology and more about how a process instructing reviewers to "be on the lookout" for selected terms was applied to any group that mentioned certain words in its application.

Organizations approached by The New York Times based on specific "lookout list" warnings, like advocates for people in "occupied territories" and "open source software developers," told similar stories of long waits, intrusive inquiries and bureaucratic hassles that pointed to no particular bias but rather to a process that became too rigid and too broad. The lists often did point to legitimate issues: partisan political campaign organizations seeking tax-exempt status, or commercial businesses hoping to cloak themselves as nonprofit groups.

If the IRS's critics want to argue that the so-called BOLO alerts were mishandled, I don't think they'll get much of an argument from anyone. The tax agency has already conceded the process was, at best, clumsy, and was the result of ambiguous legal standards being applied by officials who were acting with insufficient guidance.

What's more, if the right wants to point to this as proof that reforms are needed, there's certainly room for a serious conversation.

But the political controversy that was already deteriorating quickly is now over. Every single political player -- congressional Republicans, pundits, activists, et al -- who said conservatives were targeted for partisan/ideological mistreatment was wrong. That's simply not what happened.

GOP officials and commentators said conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status were singled out for excessive IRS scrutiny. That's wrong. Republicans said conservative groups faced delays that liberal groups didn't have to endure. That's wrong. Republicans said President Obama's critics were unfairly targeted. As the NYT reports today, that's wrong, too.

So where are the political world's apologies for having spent six weeks manufacturing a scandal for the public based on nothing?

For what it's worth, GOP lawmakers appear to be giving up

“We haven’t proved political motivation,” said Representative Charles Boustany Jr., a Louisiana Republican who, as the chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, is leading one inquiry.

Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said that in retrospect, suggestions that Mr. Obama had orchestrated an I.R.S. attack on his political enemies were unwarranted.

“Presidents have always been very careful about maintaining the appearance of keeping hands off the I.R.S.,” he said. “I don’t have any reason to believe there wasn’t targeting of conservatives, but it might well have been a lot more than that as well.”

I guess we'll be hearing more about Benghazi again, then?

 

France's spying complaints suddenly appear 'somewhat hollow'

Associated Press

The timing could certainly be better. French President Francois Hollande has complained bitterly in recent days about U.S. international surveillance programs, concerns that were echoed as recently as yesterday by France's Interior Minister at a Fourth of July event hosted by the U.S. ambassador in Paris.

And yet, he were are.

Days after President François Hollande sternly told the United States to stop spying on its allies, the newspaper Le Monde disclosed on Thursday that France has its own large program of data collection, which sweeps up nearly all the data transmissions, including telephone calls, e-mails and social media activity, that come in and out of France.

Le Monde reported that the General Directorate for External Security does the same kind of data collection as the American National Security Agency and the British GCHQ, but does so without clear legal authority.

The French government records data, stores it for an indeterminate period of time, and is intended to help government officials trace who talks to whom using French telecommunications systems. The French surveillance programs include collection from American systems such as Google and Facebook

The New York Times report added that the revelations "appeared to make some of the French outrage about the revelations [about NSA spying] appear somewhat hollow."

You think?

U.S. job growth improves, exceeds expectations

Going into this morning, most economists projected job growth from June to be about 155,000 new jobs. With this in mind, the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows not only good news, but unexpectedly good news.

The U.S. economy added a better-than-expected 195,000 jobs in June and employment gains for May and April were revised sharply higher, the U.S. government said Friday. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 7.6%, but the size of the labor force increased by 177,000, according to the Labor Department said.

As is usually the case, there was a gap between the two major sectors -- America's private sector added 202,000 jobs last month, while spending cuts caused the public sector shed 7,000 jobs.

Perhaps the most important -- and most heartening -- detail in this new report is the upward revisions for the previous two months. In April, the economy added 199,000 jobs (up from a previous estimate of 149,000), while May revisions point to 195,000 jobs (up from 175,000). Taken together, that's 70,000 previously unreported jobs, on top of the new totals from June.

Given these figures, the three-month stretch -- April through June -- is the best we've seen since early 2012. To be sure, if the economic recovery were more robust, we'd see even stronger numbers, but given where we've been, and the steps taken to undermine growth (sequestration cuts), this is an awfully encouraging jobs report.

All told, for the first half of calendar year 2013, the economy has added 1.21 jobs overall, and 1.23 million in the private sector. Not too shabby.

Above you'll find the chart I run on the first Friday of every month, showing monthly job losses since the start of the Great Recession. The image makes a distinction -- red columns point to monthly job totals under the Bush administration, while blue columns point to job totals under the Obama administration.

Update: Here's another chart, this one showing monthly job losses/gains in just the private sector since the start of the Great Recession.