Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 33

The don't ask repeal vote | Michael Tomasky

It's a great historic moment, the repeal of the don't ask don't tell law, allowing gay people to serve openly in the military, making the US just about the last advanced country to reach this very normal point.

John McCain, on whose increasingly shabby escutcheon this blot will linger, argued on the Senate floor Saturday that there's no proof that the policy has hurt the armed services. Bollocks. We know that more than 13,000 people, presumably most of them otherwise good to exemplary, have been booted from the military because of their sexuality. And of course it is impossible to know how many talented young people who were eager to lend their talents to their country simply didn't bother. If 13,000 people were kicked out and X number who wanted to couldn't serve, I'd say that's damage.

The vote is interesting in certain respects. The 65-31 Senate tally included six Republicans, as you've probably read, and good for them: Scott Brown, Richard Burr, Susan Collins, John Ensign, Mark Kirk, Lisa Murkowski, Olympia Snowe and George Voinovich.

Burr of North Carolina and Ensign of Nevada are the most interesting. The others are all from blue states and can credibly be called occasional moderates. Burr and Ensign are conservatives, but they represent blue-states-for-now too (in the sense that Obama won them), so we see that some historically conservative states are indeed changing.

On the Democratic side, it's interesting that three Democrats from purple-to-red states who face reelection in 2012 bit the bullet and voted yes: Jim Webb of Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Less courage from Joe Manchin of West Virginia, also a red-stater up in 2012. He ducked the vote. Defensible, politically, considering that he got elected saying he wouldn't go to Washington and turn into some big liberal. Undoubtedly the leadership told him they didn't need his vote so he was off the hook. Let's just hope he grows in office.

As Linda Hirshman notes at the Daily Beast, a moment like Saturday's has a thousand fathers. That is true, and the whole long story makes clear just how hard progressive change is in the US. People have been working hard on this for 15 years, and change in public attitudes over those years are testament to the efficacy of the job they did. But 15 years is a long time. Nothing's easy.

A thousand fathers; and one president. No, Barack Obama didn't do this with the stroke of a pen, as he could have. But he and Robert Gates settled on a strategy that brought many career military people around and that worked. When Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for repeal nearly a year ago, it was a big moment, and an important step in a process for which Gates deserves a lot of credit.

And Obama? Whatever he did and did not do behind the scenes, he's the president under whom it was repealed. He stood for the right thing and he helped get the right thing done. Is it the moral equivalent of civil rights? Probably not, in the sense that the denial of the vote by violent means is so fundamentally noxious to democracy. But it's not all that different when you consider that this will lead, surely, to wider acceptance of gay marriage, a moral destiny for this country that conservatives will be able to stop for only so long now.

And let's not leave out Joe Lieberman, who put heart and soul into this. Let's mention but not dwell on the fact that this never would be happening had his preferred presidential candidate won the White House. But let's also give him great credit for reviving this from the seemingly dead in the last 10 days and making sure that it passed with room to spare.

This will be a landmark moment in this country's history, and it's far better in the long run that it was done legislatively than by a presidential executive order or by the courts. Its supporters can now always say it was the will of the people. And it was. The polls have been clear. The willful little minority can't kill everything.

US politicsUS militaryMichael Tomasky
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Lie of the year | Michael Tomasky

Politifact, the nonpartisan group that fact-checks political ads and statements and whatnot, has chosen its lie of the year. Da-dum:

In the spring of 2009, a Republican strategist settled on a brilliant and powerful attack line for President Barack Obama's ambitious plan to overhaul America's health insurance system. Frank Luntz, a consultant famous for his phraseology, urged GOP leaders to call it a "government takeover."

"Takeovers are like coups," Luntz wrote in a 28-page memo. "They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom."

The line stuck. By the time the health care bill was headed toward passage in early 2010, Obama and congressional Democrats had sanded down their program, dropping the "public option" concept that was derided as too much government intrusion. The law passed in March, with new regulations, but no government-run plan.

But as Republicans smelled serious opportunity in the midterm elections, they didn't let facts get in the way of a great punchline. And few in the press challenged their frequent assertion that under Obama, the government was going to take over the health care industry.

PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen "government takeover of health care" as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats' shellacking in the November elections.

Readers of PolitiFact, the St. Petersburg Times' independent fact-checking website, also chose it as the year's most significant falsehood by an overwhelming margin. (Their second-place choice was Rep. Michele Bachmann's claim that Obama was going to spend $200 million a day on a trip to India, a falsity that still sprouts.)

Gee, you mean the top two lies of the year came from Republicans? Obviously, this is a socialistic group. See how easy that is? Just say it; half the people will believe you.

I seem to think I heard worse lies, but I suppose for ubiquity, that one is up there.

US politicsRepublicansMichael Tomasky
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The latest on Fox | Michael Tomasky

We haven't discussed Fox in a while, so I thought this was kind of interesting:

Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely), most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points), the economy is getting worse (26 points), most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points), the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points), their own income taxes have gone up (14 points), the auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points), when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points) and that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points). The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it--though by a lesser margin than those who voted Republican.

On top of this have been the recent leaks to Media Matters from someone at Fox divulging memos written by "news" executive Bill Sammon, who directed on-air personalities not to mention the public option without saying the word government, and warned them that when discussing global warming they should IMMEDIATELY (his caps) mention that "critics" have cast doubts on the science, which is true, provided you think corporation-funded researchers producing the outcomes corporations are paying them to produce count as "critics."

Finally on the Fox front, there is this reassuring news:

Fox News analyst and former NPR commentator Juan Williams will publish two books with Crown Publishers, an imprint of Random House's Crown Publishing Group.

Earlier this year, NPR fired Williams for comments he made on Fox News' "The O'Reillly Factor." The first book will hit shelves next summer. Executive editor Roger Scholl acquired the titles and Suzanne Gluck and Eric Lupfer of William Morris Endeavor negotiated the deal together.

Here's more about the first untitled book: "[It] will focus on free speech and the growing difficulty in America of speaking out on sensitive topics; in it, Williams will argue that the American public benefits from a vigorous and full-throated debate on hot button issues of political and cultural import. Williams will chronicle his own first-hand experience of the consequences of crossing the line in public expression, as well as the stories of other individuals who have been criticized and retaliated against for expressing views that are deemed politically incorrect."

Thank God for that. I've been frightfully worried lately about living in a country where a reporter who spent a good decade or more making excruciatingly banal political observations on air and finally got fired might have to endure the squalid misery of living on a mere $2 million contract with America's Pravda. Long live the publishing industry!

Fox NewsMichael Tomasky
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A temporary win on tax for Obama | Michael Tomasky

The president will be heartened that most US voters support the tax cut deal now signed into law, but the real fight will be in 2012

The votes to pass the tax deal Barack Obama made with the Republicans ended up being surprisingly lopsided, 81-19 in the Senate and 277-148 in the House of Representatives. But the numbers don't really reflect the drama and intrigue of the past week, or the very strong sense among Democratic legislators that this "victory" is the definition of pyrrhic.

This was a win for Obama, to be sure. But it was a win mostly in the sense that if the tax deal had been voted down by members of his own party, the defeat would have been so humiliating as to raise questions about whether he could even plausibly run again in 2012.

Then, beyond the question of legislators from his own party, there are the American people to keep in mind. Without the agreement, their taxes would have gone up on 1 January. Like any Democrat, Obama had to run on the promise that he would not raise taxes on middle-income people. If he'd broken that one, the Republicans would have howled about it for the next two years, weakening him badly.

So, Obama dodged that bullet, and he got to sign a deal that, polls say, had the support of nearly 70% of Americans. He got to show independent voters, who backed him strongly in 2008 but, in November, stampeded over to the Republican column, that he could compromise with the GOP, lending a whiff of credibility to his oft-made claim that he can revive bipartisanship. And substantively, he got some reasonable concessions from the other side, notably the 13-month extension of unemployment benefits, which Republicans hate because they add to the deficit (unlike tax cuts for the rich … except, oops, they do that too, but never mind).

But the win is temporary. The Bush-era tax rates are extended for two years – meaning, of course, that the president and Congress will have to revisit the question during a presidential election year. In one of the few aggressive and smart moves he's made recently, Obama announced that, next time, the debate won't be simply over the "Bush tax cuts" – a semantic frame that works to the Democrats' disadvantage on a number of levels. He will propose, he says, a comprehensive tax overhaul, so Congress, the president and his Republican nominee opponent will be debating the "Obama comprehensive tax plan". That's a much stronger position to be in.

But can he pass such a thing?

There are certain potential grounds of agreement between Obama and Republicans. They'll all agree to lower rates for middle-income payers. They'll probably agree on reducing the corporate tax rate, which is comparatively high in the US. They'll concur on the closing of certain loopholes. But Obama and the Democrats will want higher rates on the upper brackets. It's hard to imagine Republicans agreeing to that, no matter what else they get. And if he can't pass comprehensive reform, Congress will revert to yet another "temporary" extension of the Bush cuts.

To take control of the issue, Obama will need every Democrat to be with him, and they aren't there now by a long shot. In the House of Representatives, Democrats backed the plan by only 139-112. They felt shut out of the process, and a large number of them believe, as Senator Al Franken of Minnesota so starkly put it, that he "punted on first down" (an American football-ism, meaning he didn't even try to "play offence" in the negotiations).

So, they're disgruntled. But according to the polls, the public is largely, ah, gruntled. Given the rocky year Obama has had, I'd reckon that right now, that's probably more important to him by some distance.

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Friday quiz: you better watch out... | Michael Tomasky

Don't you love holiday music? All right; maybe you detest holiday music. Certainly we hear enough of it. This did not used to be true. By my lights, the change happened in the early-to-mid 1990s, when the compact disc fully and finally replaced vinyl and when record companies began releasing all manner of strange compilations, Christmas collections among them.

Round about then, I remember very well, the HMV store and the Tower Records near where I then lived (Upper West Side, where else?) began putting bins of Christmas CD's in the front every November. Around the same time, some radio stations started switching to all-Christmas-music formats for the month of December.

I know you're groaning, but there were some definite upsides to this. The great Vince Guaraldi Christmas tunes, from the Charlie Brown cartoon, earned their rightful place in the culture. I still get a charge when I walk into a store and they're playing one – his "O Tannenbaum," say. And there's lots of fun rock'n'roll Christmas music. Ever heard Keith Richards' "Run, Rudolph, Run"?

On the downside, I now hear Andy Williams' "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" about 14 times every December. It's all right twice, because it's actually sort of an interesting song in terms of chord structure, especially the boffo ending. But…

Back in my youth, every household had a few Christmas albums. You still see them sometimes in second-hand book and record shops, and they're wonderful artifacts of that hopeful and unironic era: the gauzily photographed album covers, of Der Bingle standing beside a tree in a bright red sweater puffing contentedly on his pipe as Gary and the other little Crosbys scamp about admiring their new toys, or Connie Francis (haven't thought of her in a while, have you?) striking the coquettish pose in a Santa hat; the mostly pop song list laced with the careful inclusion of a couple of "serious" songs, just so the consumer was reassured that Bing and Connie had not lost sight of the true meaning of Christmas. Good times.

I include some secular material below, and even one Hanukah music question. So let's dig in shall we?

1. This Catalan carol, dating perhaps to the 16th century, is among the earliest Christmas carols (as opposed to chants, motets and other forms of early music) and remains popular today:
a. "Fum, Fum, Fum"
b. "La Virgina Bendecida"
c. "O Noche Santo"

2. Another early carol, this one English, describes Herod's order of the Massacre of the Innocents; with performances running from the 16th century right up through Tori Amos, it is best known by the name of this English city, where it was originally performed:
a. Sheffield
b. Coventry
c. Scunthorpe

3. The fourth of six cantatas of this landmark 1734 work was designed to be performed eight days after Christmas and tells the story of the circumcision of Jesus:
a. Saint Saens' Christmas Requiem
b. Scarlatti's Corale Natale
c. Bach's Christmas Oratorio

4. The singing of carols in church on Christmas Eve is a very old custom, but the practice is considered to have become really popular and widespread starting in 1880, with the singing of a piece called The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, in this British house of worship:
a. King's College Chapel, Cambridge
b. Truro Cathedral
c. Westminster Abbey

5. A "Good King Wenceslas" did actually exist, and, as the carol has it, evidently did leave his castle to give alms to the poor "on the feast of Stephen" (December 26, St. Stephen's Day). Where and when did he live?
a. Silesia, 5th century
b. Saxony, 8th century
c. Bohemia, 10th century

6. This composer wrote his famous "A Ceremony of Carols" while on a ship in 1942, sailing from America to Britain, fearful all the while with his fellow passengers of U-boat attacks:
a. Charles Ives
b. Benjamin Britten
c. Jean Sibelius

7. Match the carol to its country of origin.
Silent Night
The First Noel
O Little Town of Bethlehem
O Holy Night
Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming

France
The United States
Germany
Austria
England

8. Match the Jewish-American songwriter or songwriting team to the Christmas song.
Johnny Marks
Irving Berlin
Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn
Joan Javits, Fred Ebb and Philip Springer

White Christmas
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
Santa Baby
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

9. Another talented Jewish-American of the mid-20th century was the comedian Allan Sherman, who recorded a parody version of "The 12 Days of Christmas." Which of the following was not among the gifts his true love gave to him?
a. an automatic vegetable slicer that works when you see it on television
b. a calendar with the name of his insurance man on it
c. a statue of a lady with a clock where her stomach ought to be
d. one of those newfangled telephones with the dial on the handset, and bright yellow no less
e. a pink satin pillow that says "San Diego" with fringe all around it
f. a Japanese transistor radio

10. Long before our era of ubiquitous cross-generational ironic musical pairings, these two singers from different generations shocked fans by teaming up on one's Christmas TV special (US) in 1977 to perform a beloved carol. Who were they, and what was the song?
a. Bing Crosby and David Bowie, "The Little Drummer Boy"
b. Tony Bennett and Steven Tyler, "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen"
c. Ella Fitzgerald and Stevie Nicks, "The Holly and the Ivy"

11. Which of these acts never wrote and recorded a Christmas song?
a. The Pretenders
b. The Flaming Lips
c. The Rolling Stones
d. Prince

12. Who is the unlikely co-composer, with Madeline Stone, of the song The Eight Days of Hanukah?
a. NBA star Shaquile O'Neal
b. Senator Orrin Hatch
c. "Vagina Monologues" creator Eve Ensler

Come on…you liked it. Admit it. Let's have a look then.

Answers:
1-a; 2-b; 3-c; 4-b; 5-c; 6-b; 7: Silent Night = Austria, The First Noel = England, O Little Town = US, O Holy Night = France, Lo How a Rose = Germany; 8: Marks = Rudolph, Berlin = White Christmas, Styne/Cahn = Let It Snow, Javits et al. = Santa Baby; 9-d; 10-a; 11-c; 12-b.

Notes:
1. I bet I fooled some of you with "O Noche Santo," eh?
2. It's "The Coventry Carol" of course. It's the one that goes "Lu-lay, my tiny virgin child, bye bye lu-lee, lu-lay." I'd love to hear "The Scunthorpe Carol"!
3. It had to be Johann Sebastian.
4. This was an interesting one I learned researching this. Probably gettable, because the other venues are so famous, why would I throw Truro in there if it wasn't the answer? Yanks, Truro is in Cornwall, in addition to Cape Cod.
5. Gettable if you figured out that Wenceslas sounds kind of Czech and Bohemia is the place that then makes the most sense.
6. Apparently a rather harrowing voyage.
7. I knew Lo How a Rose and O Holy Night (remember, it's also called "Le Cantique Noel") and O Little Town, which was written by a Philadelphia preacherman. Could've sorted out the other two, since one sometimes sees "Silent Night" rendered as "Stille Nacht."
8. The big three (Berlin, Styne/Cahn and Marks) seem easy to me. Ebb is of Kamber and Ebb fame, and Joan Javits – get this – is the niece of longtime New York Senator Jacob Javits. I am not kidding.
9. I adore Allan Sherman. Adore. Genius. Any other fans out there?
10. I remember watching this when it first aired. Blew my mind. You can still see it, here. It was actually called "Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth," the latter being a counter-melody composed especially for Bowie for the occasion.
11. Pretenders was easy. Prince a good fake. And I just heard the Lips' "Christmas at the Zoo" for the first time as a result of this. Nice tune. Funny about the Stones, eh? You'd think in 40 years...
12. Funny eh? Apparently this was done at the suggestion of the journalist, and my former New York magazine colleague, Jeff Goldberg.

Now tell us how you did, but more than that, what are your most beloved carols? And/or most hated Christmas songs? I was always a sucker for those haunting E minor ones, like "God Rest Ye Merry" and "We Three Kings." There's really something about that key that grabs you (for the non-musical: "Paint It, Black" is in E minor, just so you can imagine the sound). To my ear, it has a depth that even other minor keys don't have, which I know sounds ridiculous to some people, but it's very much something a guitarist rather than a pianist would say, because the guitar is tuned to E so the chord really resonates.

I'll be interested to see on this thread how many of you admit to liking these songs. I was shocked last week that only our Elena admitted she liked shopping. Elena, I've got your back, kid.

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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Video | Tomasky Talk: The seasonal spirit in short supply on Capitol Hill

Michael Tomasky looks forward to New Year fireworks in US politics should Democratic senators try to bust the filibuster, if Michael Steele is re-elected as RNC chair, and more

Michael Tomasky

From LA, a Morse-coded message on DADT | Michael Tomasky

In California, it's balmy – while it's snowing in DC. Better yet, repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell' looks increasingly likely now

I meant to post last night letting you know that today is a travel day. I'm sitting right now in a little coffee shop in Manhattan Beach, Los Angeles, two blocks from the ocean, and it's 70 degrees (that's 20 or so Celsius, right?), and it's snowing in Washington, so life is pretty fine.

This was my first experience with the new TSA scanners. What's the big whoop? I had to take my watch off. That was the only noticeable difference. As I say, life is fine.

I see now that it seems "don't ask, don't tell" repeal may well become law. The last-ditch effort of the forces of reaction, reports TPM, is to attack gay groups for having stolen the symbolism of the rainbow:

"Dr Jennifer Roback Morse is the founder and president of the Ruth Institute, which describes itself as 'a project of the National Organisation for Marriage'. On its site, the group describes its mission statement as "to promote life-long married love to college students by creating an intellectual and social climate favourable to marriage."

Morse continued:

"We can't simply let that go by. Families put rainbows in their children's nurseries. Little Christian preschools will have rainbows … Noah's Ark and all the animals … Those are great Christian symbols, great Jewish symbols."

She also described how she wore a rainbow scarf to the Prop 8 hearings to show that anti-gay marriage activists still own the symbol. I can see that that would be especially galling, since real-life rainbows are made by the Big Guy himself. Ah well.

Bone up for the quiz tomorrow. Morse might even like it, as it will contain certain religious elements.

CaliforniaGay rightsUS CongressUS politicsUnited StatesUS militaryMichael Tomasky
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Don't ask don't tell don't look now | Michael Tomasky

So don't look now, but don't ask don't tell repeal just might pass. It cleared the House today by a surprising margin of 250-175, meaning nearly every Democrat stuck with it. A 75-vote margin can have a psychological effect on senators.

And now, Olympia Snowe says she'd back a stand-alone repeal bill. TPM does the math:

Snowe was among several theoretical supporters of repeal who said she voted against cloture because of procedural issues: Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) objected to the time allotted to debate the underlying bill; and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said that the timing for repeal was, in his view, not quite right.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) said, on the other hand, that she'd missed the vote because of a dental appointment. So, with Snowe's support, repeal supporters are within 1 vote of cloture -- and a repeal of DADT.

Manchin? I doubt it. As our friend fatmackeral said last week, the last thing Manchin needs (he's up in 2012) is to cast a liberal "I'm Obama's and Harry Reid's tool" vote this early. He campaigned exactly on the promise that he would not be that.

Blanche Lincoln seems more likely. Unless, like me, she got a temporary crown and needs to go back to the dentist for a permanent one. In which case I could relate. But short of that, considering she's leaving anyway, she ought to be able to cast her legendary caution to the wind and maybe make this one vote.

I wouldn't say that most liberals would forget the tax deal if this passes. But it would be a huge deal in terms of getting the famous professional left back in Obama's corner to some extent, maybe a big extent.

And if it fails? Pressure will be major on Obama to do an executive order. So take heart, conservatives!

US CongressMichael Tomasky
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Random thoughts on Mitt Romney | Michael Tomasky

Josh Marshall has a brief but insightful little post on Mitt Romney, which goes like this:

In any case, there are two more big liabilities on his ledger: 1st, he changes his ideology about every cycle and his actual policies predilections seem much more moderate than what flies in today's GOP. In other words, it's hard for him to shake the perception that he's a weather vane who doesn't have any real political principles. 2nd, and more devastating, the terror of 'Obamacare' is based on the legislation Mitt pushed through in Massachusetts. It's his signature piece of legislation. And going into 2012, that's a big, big problem.

To overcome those liabilities, Mitt has to do everything in his power to avoid a scenario in which he's the 'moderate guy' in the 2012 primary season against some other person who ends up as the Tea Party / hard right standard bearer, whether that's Palin or maybe Huckabee or whoever else. And so you have him at every point needing to stake out the most hard right position available -- in this case, proposing that we get rid of our system of unemployment insurance since, in his telling, unemployment insurance promotes laziness.

In case you missed it he's referring to Romney's latest notion, that the unemployed should pay for their own unemployment benefits. This would have been thought insane 20 years ago but in today's America who knows.

Anyway, the more I watch Romney, I think Marshall is right. There are three or four standard negative narratives that can development about presidential candidates: that s/he lacks gravitas is one; can't appeal to moderates is another; "lacks an inner core" is a third. I think that's the one that will get Romney. Democrats will sometimes nominate someone without an inner core, because after all Democratic candidates aren't allowed to say they're liberal, i.e., can't say what it is they really stand for. But Republicans are supposed to. And Romney just isn't convincing with these tea-party dalliances.

Romney could prevail if he were the only non-Southern-non-wingnut-I'm-not-crazy candidate. But he probably won't be. Mitch Daniels and Tim Pawlenty and John Thune aren't so nutty and certain don't speak with blackstrap molasses pouring out of their mouths. So I'd guess at this point that it boils down to one of them versus either Huckabee or Palin, probably Palin.

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The latest on Start | Michael Tomasky

Driving home last night, I heard it mentioned rather casually on NPR that the Democrats have the 67 votes in the Senate needed to ratify the Start treaty. This surprised me to put it mildly. If you count all the Democrats (plus Lieberman and Sanders) and throw in Scott Brown, Susan Collins (but not Snowe, who's feel tea-party heat in a big way in Maine), George Voinovich and Dick Lugar, you get to 63. There are four more votes, in that remaining hardened assemblage? And yet it was reported as if it were common knowledge.

But as we know, 63 or even 67 senators agreeing on something is meaningless, because one can ruin all the fun. From The Hill:

Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) will force readings of both a nuclear arms treaty and $1.1 trillion spending bill that could eat up hours of the remaining lame-duck Congress.

DeMint will invoke a senatorial privilege to ask that texts of both the New Start treaty and the 2011 omnibus spending bill be read aloud on the Senate floor.

The readings could take seven to 12 hours to verbalize the Start treaty, while the omnibus could take 40 to 60 hours, according to a spokesman for DeMint.

The readings could eat up a substantial amount of time in the closing days of the lame-duck Congress, in which Senate Democrats are racing against the clock to pass through a number of priorities. Democrats hope to pass a tax-cut bill, on which they'll vote Wednesday afternoon, along with a repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell," the Start treaty and the Dream Act immigration bill.

DADT and Dream are probably more emotionally important to most liberals on some level, but Start is the substantively most important thing. I needn't rehearse again how it's backed by everyone from Obama to Kissinger to George HW Bush, etc. It's about nuclear arsenals and loose nukes. That's fairly important stuff.

But Senator Tea Party can stop the whole works. The idea that the Senate has been "rushed" into this, that there's not time to debate it now, is absurd. Senators have had this matter before them for well more than a year.

If it's actually true that there are 67 votes and DeMint can block this important treaty with a silly move like this, it's a real and horrible shonda, to use a nice Christmas-y word. Looks like taking toys and going home is our theme today.

Obama administrationUS CongressUS foreign policyMichael Tomasky
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