Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 892
January 15, 2016
Ted Cruz has a huge birther problem — and it is much bigger than Donald Trump
Lawrence Tribe has said the issue of Senator Ted Cruz's eligibility for the presidency, with respect to being born not in the United States, but in Canada, is not "settled." His recent comment is being taken among pols and partisans as a political attack, as if Harvard University's preeminent legal scholar were trying to derail Cruz's presidential bid. Maybe because Tribe played a senior advisory role in Senator Joe Biden's 1987 defeat of Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court nominee, the arch-conservative jurist Robert Bork. I don't know. But Tribe's comment is at least legally precise. "Precise" from a liberal view. "Charitable," perhaps, from a conservative one. The Supreme Court has never decided a case on the eligibility of a candidate. No one has challenged the meaning of "natural-born citizen," a phrase in the Constitution that can be read to privilege one's place of birth over one's citizenship. The issue, then, is not "settled." Federal law says that any human being born to an American parent here or abroad shall enjoy the rights, privileges, and blessings of American citizenship despite the circumstances of one's birth. That means, according to congressional statute, that the senator from Texas would appear to meet the nominal the criteria for the presidency. His mom was American. This was the same statutory ground on which stood Senator Barack Obama in 2008 and Senator John McCain in 2000. Actually, Obama's birth was a twofer: He was born on American soil, in Hawaii, to an American mother. McCain, on the other hand, was born on a U.S. military base in Panama to an American mom and dad. (Though one could argue that a U.S. military base is legally American soil; in that sense, McCain's birth was also a twofer.) Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University, takes a narrower view, and, therefore, more conservative view. She wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday that Trump is right -- Cruz is not eligible for the presidency. The issue isn't whether he's a U.S. citizen, she wrote. By federal law, he is. The issue is where he was born, she wrote, a detail pivotal to James Madison's and the framers' intent in "natural-born citizen." "I am not a so-called birther," McManamon wrote. "I am a legal historian. President Obama is without question eligible for the office he serves. The distinction between the president and Cruz is simple: The president was born within the United States, and the senator was born outside of it. That is a distinction with a difference." Conclusion? Cruz is disqualified. There's law, then there's politics. Trump is exploiting the ambiguity of "unsettled law" to attack Cruz where he is most vulnerable: among nativist voters hugely swayed by appeals to their fears and suspicions. Many, it should be recalled, still harbor doubts about Obama. Like Reagan, Trump is adept at simplifying complexities to the point of distortion. He now says there are "questions" about Cruz's eligibility, which is sufficient to fomenting doubt. Legally, his assertions are nebulous. Politically, they are brilliant. Trump leads by two points in Iowa, according to RealClear Politics. Iowa's evangelical caucus-goers comprise the state's largest conservative voting bloc, and it tends to look askance at Trump's clearly fabricated commitments to a Judeo-Christian God. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is the son of a Bible-believing evangelical preacher. He's the only candidate to have launched his bid on the campus of an evangelical university. He's their man. Indeed, of the three early states in the GOP's nomination, Trump faces a higher threshold in Iowa, thanks to evangelical voters, than he does in New Hampshire and South Carolina. So Trump is meeting one kind of suspicion -- the dearth of his religious sincerity -- with another kind suspicion -- a suspicion that maybe, just maybe, Cruz isn't a "natural-born citizen." Can Cruz overcome this? Maybe. According to the latest survey by Public Policy Polling, most Iowa Republicans don't yet know Cruz was born in Canada. But among those who do, says PPP pollster Tom Jensen, "Trump is crushing Cruz 40/14." Count on Trump to educate them. Cruz rode the wave of anti-Obama hysteria to the US Senate in 2010, a fear fueled by the conspiracy theory that Obama was not a "natural-born citizen." No matter how many times reasonable people argued to the contrary, no matter how much reasonable people used evidence to ease fears -- nothing worked. Trump showed reality isn't the point. It's fear. We will know in a few days whether Cruz can weather Trump's "birther" attacks. One thing we already know: Once he finds something that works, Trump won't stop. 
Lawrence Tribe has said the issue of Senator Ted Cruz's eligibility for the presidency, with respect to being born not in the United States, but in Canada, is not "settled." His recent comment is being taken among pols and partisans as a political attack, as if Harvard University's preeminent legal scholar were trying to derail Cruz's presidential bid. Maybe because Tribe played a senior advisory role in Senator Joe Biden's 1987 defeat of Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court nominee, the arch-conservative jurist Robert Bork. I don't know. But Tribe's comment is at least legally precise. "Precise" from a liberal view. "Charitable," perhaps, from a conservative one. The Supreme Court has never decided a case on the eligibility of a candidate. No one has challenged the meaning of "natural-born citizen," a phrase in the Constitution that can be read to privilege one's place of birth over one's citizenship. The issue, then, is not "settled." Federal law says that any human being born to an American parent here or abroad shall enjoy the rights, privileges, and blessings of American citizenship despite the circumstances of one's birth. That means, according to congressional statute, that the senator from Texas would appear to meet the nominal the criteria for the presidency. His mom was American. This was the same statutory ground on which stood Senator Barack Obama in 2008 and Senator John McCain in 2000. Actually, Obama's birth was a twofer: He was born on American soil, in Hawaii, to an American mother. McCain, on the other hand, was born on a U.S. military base in Panama to an American mom and dad. (Though one could argue that a U.S. military base is legally American soil; in that sense, McCain's birth was also a twofer.) Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University, takes a narrower view, and, therefore, more conservative view. She wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday that Trump is right -- Cruz is not eligible for the presidency. The issue isn't whether he's a U.S. citizen, she wrote. By federal law, he is. The issue is where he was born, she wrote, a detail pivotal to James Madison's and the framers' intent in "natural-born citizen." "I am not a so-called birther," McManamon wrote. "I am a legal historian. President Obama is without question eligible for the office he serves. The distinction between the president and Cruz is simple: The president was born within the United States, and the senator was born outside of it. That is a distinction with a difference." Conclusion? Cruz is disqualified. There's law, then there's politics. Trump is exploiting the ambiguity of "unsettled law" to attack Cruz where he is most vulnerable: among nativist voters hugely swayed by appeals to their fears and suspicions. Many, it should be recalled, still harbor doubts about Obama. Like Reagan, Trump is adept at simplifying complexities to the point of distortion. He now says there are "questions" about Cruz's eligibility, which is sufficient to fomenting doubt. Legally, his assertions are nebulous. Politically, they are brilliant. Trump leads by two points in Iowa, according to RealClear Politics. Iowa's evangelical caucus-goers comprise the state's largest conservative voting bloc, and it tends to look askance at Trump's clearly fabricated commitments to a Judeo-Christian God. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is the son of a Bible-believing evangelical preacher. He's the only candidate to have launched his bid on the campus of an evangelical university. He's their man. Indeed, of the three early states in the GOP's nomination, Trump faces a higher threshold in Iowa, thanks to evangelical voters, than he does in New Hampshire and South Carolina. So Trump is meeting one kind of suspicion -- the dearth of his religious sincerity -- with another kind suspicion -- a suspicion that maybe, just maybe, Cruz isn't a "natural-born citizen." Can Cruz overcome this? Maybe. According to the latest survey by Public Policy Polling, most Iowa Republicans don't yet know Cruz was born in Canada. But among those who do, says PPP pollster Tom Jensen, "Trump is crushing Cruz 40/14." Count on Trump to educate them. Cruz rode the wave of anti-Obama hysteria to the US Senate in 2010, a fear fueled by the conspiracy theory that Obama was not a "natural-born citizen." No matter how many times reasonable people argued to the contrary, no matter how much reasonable people used evidence to ease fears -- nothing worked. Trump showed reality isn't the point. It's fear. We will know in a few days whether Cruz can weather Trump's "birther" attacks. One thing we already know: Once he finds something that works, Trump won't stop. Lawrence Tribe has said the issue of Senator Ted Cruz's eligibility for the presidency, with respect to being born not in the United States, but in Canada, is not "settled." His recent comment is being taken among pols and partisans as a political attack, as if Harvard University's preeminent legal scholar were trying to derail Cruz's presidential bid. Maybe because Tribe played a senior advisory role in Senator Joe Biden's 1987 defeat of Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court nominee, the arch-conservative jurist Robert Bork. I don't know. But Tribe's comment is at least legally precise. "Precise" from a liberal view. "Charitable," perhaps, from a conservative one. The Supreme Court has never decided a case on the eligibility of a candidate. No one has challenged the meaning of "natural-born citizen," a phrase in the Constitution that can be read to privilege one's place of birth over one's citizenship. The issue, then, is not "settled." Federal law says that any human being born to an American parent here or abroad shall enjoy the rights, privileges, and blessings of American citizenship despite the circumstances of one's birth. That means, according to congressional statute, that the senator from Texas would appear to meet the nominal the criteria for the presidency. His mom was American. This was the same statutory ground on which stood Senator Barack Obama in 2008 and Senator John McCain in 2000. Actually, Obama's birth was a twofer: He was born on American soil, in Hawaii, to an American mother. McCain, on the other hand, was born on a U.S. military base in Panama to an American mom and dad. (Though one could argue that a U.S. military base is legally American soil; in that sense, McCain's birth was also a twofer.) Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University, takes a narrower view, and, therefore, more conservative view. She wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday that Trump is right -- Cruz is not eligible for the presidency. The issue isn't whether he's a U.S. citizen, she wrote. By federal law, he is. The issue is where he was born, she wrote, a detail pivotal to James Madison's and the framers' intent in "natural-born citizen." "I am not a so-called birther," McManamon wrote. "I am a legal historian. President Obama is without question eligible for the office he serves. The distinction between the president and Cruz is simple: The president was born within the United States, and the senator was born outside of it. That is a distinction with a difference." Conclusion? Cruz is disqualified. There's law, then there's politics. Trump is exploiting the ambiguity of "unsettled law" to attack Cruz where he is most vulnerable: among nativist voters hugely swayed by appeals to their fears and suspicions. Many, it should be recalled, still harbor doubts about Obama. Like Reagan, Trump is adept at simplifying complexities to the point of distortion. He now says there are "questions" about Cruz's eligibility, which is sufficient to fomenting doubt. Legally, his assertions are nebulous. Politically, they are brilliant. Trump leads by two points in Iowa, according to RealClear Politics. Iowa's evangelical caucus-goers comprise the state's largest conservative voting bloc, and it tends to look askance at Trump's clearly fabricated commitments to a Judeo-Christian God. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is the son of a Bible-believing evangelical preacher. He's the only candidate to have launched his bid on the campus of an evangelical university. He's their man. Indeed, of the three early states in the GOP's nomination, Trump faces a higher threshold in Iowa, thanks to evangelical voters, than he does in New Hampshire and South Carolina. So Trump is meeting one kind of suspicion -- the dearth of his religious sincerity -- with another kind suspicion -- a suspicion that maybe, just maybe, Cruz isn't a "natural-born citizen." Can Cruz overcome this? Maybe. According to the latest survey by Public Policy Polling, most Iowa Republicans don't yet know Cruz was born in Canada. But among those who do, says PPP pollster Tom Jensen, "Trump is crushing Cruz 40/14." Count on Trump to educate them. Cruz rode the wave of anti-Obama hysteria to the US Senate in 2010, a fear fueled by the conspiracy theory that Obama was not a "natural-born citizen." No matter how many times reasonable people argued to the contrary, no matter how much reasonable people used evidence to ease fears -- nothing worked. Trump showed reality isn't the point. It's fear. We will know in a few days whether Cruz can weather Trump's "birther" attacks. One thing we already know: Once he finds something that works, Trump won't stop. Lawrence Tribe has said the issue of Senator Ted Cruz's eligibility for the presidency, with respect to being born not in the United States, but in Canada, is not "settled." His recent comment is being taken among pols and partisans as a political attack, as if Harvard University's preeminent legal scholar were trying to derail Cruz's presidential bid. Maybe because Tribe played a senior advisory role in Senator Joe Biden's 1987 defeat of Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court nominee, the arch-conservative jurist Robert Bork. I don't know. But Tribe's comment is at least legally precise. "Precise" from a liberal view. "Charitable," perhaps, from a conservative one. The Supreme Court has never decided a case on the eligibility of a candidate. No one has challenged the meaning of "natural-born citizen," a phrase in the Constitution that can be read to privilege one's place of birth over one's citizenship. The issue, then, is not "settled." Federal law says that any human being born to an American parent here or abroad shall enjoy the rights, privileges, and blessings of American citizenship despite the circumstances of one's birth. That means, according to congressional statute, that the senator from Texas would appear to meet the nominal the criteria for the presidency. His mom was American. This was the same statutory ground on which stood Senator Barack Obama in 2008 and Senator John McCain in 2000. Actually, Obama's birth was a twofer: He was born on American soil, in Hawaii, to an American mother. McCain, on the other hand, was born on a U.S. military base in Panama to an American mom and dad. (Though one could argue that a U.S. military base is legally American soil; in that sense, McCain's birth was also a twofer.) Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University, takes a narrower view, and, therefore, more conservative view. She wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday that Trump is right -- Cruz is not eligible for the presidency. The issue isn't whether he's a U.S. citizen, she wrote. By federal law, he is. The issue is where he was born, she wrote, a detail pivotal to James Madison's and the framers' intent in "natural-born citizen." "I am not a so-called birther," McManamon wrote. "I am a legal historian. President Obama is without question eligible for the office he serves. The distinction between the president and Cruz is simple: The president was born within the United States, and the senator was born outside of it. That is a distinction with a difference." Conclusion? Cruz is disqualified. There's law, then there's politics. Trump is exploiting the ambiguity of "unsettled law" to attack Cruz where he is most vulnerable: among nativist voters hugely swayed by appeals to their fears and suspicions. Many, it should be recalled, still harbor doubts about Obama. Like Reagan, Trump is adept at simplifying complexities to the point of distortion. He now says there are "questions" about Cruz's eligibility, which is sufficient to fomenting doubt. Legally, his assertions are nebulous. Politically, they are brilliant. Trump leads by two points in Iowa, according to RealClear Politics. Iowa's evangelical caucus-goers comprise the state's largest conservative voting bloc, and it tends to look askance at Trump's clearly fabricated commitments to a Judeo-Christian God. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is the son of a Bible-believing evangelical preacher. He's the only candidate to have launched his bid on the campus of an evangelical university. He's their man. Indeed, of the three early states in the GOP's nomination, Trump faces a higher threshold in Iowa, thanks to evangelical voters, than he does in New Hampshire and South Carolina. So Trump is meeting one kind of suspicion -- the dearth of his religious sincerity -- with another kind suspicion -- a suspicion that maybe, just maybe, Cruz isn't a "natural-born citizen." Can Cruz overcome this? Maybe. According to the latest survey by Public Policy Polling, most Iowa Republicans don't yet know Cruz was born in Canada. But among those who do, says PPP pollster Tom Jensen, "Trump is crushing Cruz 40/14." Count on Trump to educate them. Cruz rode the wave of anti-Obama hysteria to the US Senate in 2010, a fear fueled by the conspiracy theory that Obama was not a "natural-born citizen." No matter how many times reasonable people argued to the contrary, no matter how much reasonable people used evidence to ease fears -- nothing worked. Trump showed reality isn't the point. It's fear. We will know in a few days whether Cruz can weather Trump's "birther" attacks. One thing we already know: Once he finds something that works, Trump won't stop. Lawrence Tribe has said the issue of Senator Ted Cruz's eligibility for the presidency, with respect to being born not in the United States, but in Canada, is not "settled." His recent comment is being taken among pols and partisans as a political attack, as if Harvard University's preeminent legal scholar were trying to derail Cruz's presidential bid. Maybe because Tribe played a senior advisory role in Senator Joe Biden's 1987 defeat of Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court nominee, the arch-conservative jurist Robert Bork. I don't know. But Tribe's comment is at least legally precise. "Precise" from a liberal view. "Charitable," perhaps, from a conservative one. The Supreme Court has never decided a case on the eligibility of a candidate. No one has challenged the meaning of "natural-born citizen," a phrase in the Constitution that can be read to privilege one's place of birth over one's citizenship. The issue, then, is not "settled." Federal law says that any human being born to an American parent here or abroad shall enjoy the rights, privileges, and blessings of American citizenship despite the circumstances of one's birth. That means, according to congressional statute, that the senator from Texas would appear to meet the nominal the criteria for the presidency. His mom was American. This was the same statutory ground on which stood Senator Barack Obama in 2008 and Senator John McCain in 2000. Actually, Obama's birth was a twofer: He was born on American soil, in Hawaii, to an American mother. McCain, on the other hand, was born on a U.S. military base in Panama to an American mom and dad. (Though one could argue that a U.S. military base is legally American soil; in that sense, McCain's birth was also a twofer.) Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University, takes a narrower view, and, therefore, more conservative view. She wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday that Trump is right -- Cruz is not eligible for the presidency. The issue isn't whether he's a U.S. citizen, she wrote. By federal law, he is. The issue is where he was born, she wrote, a detail pivotal to James Madison's and the framers' intent in "natural-born citizen." "I am not a so-called birther," McManamon wrote. "I am a legal historian. President Obama is without question eligible for the office he serves. The distinction between the president and Cruz is simple: The president was born within the United States, and the senator was born outside of it. That is a distinction with a difference." Conclusion? Cruz is disqualified. There's law, then there's politics. Trump is exploiting the ambiguity of "unsettled law" to attack Cruz where he is most vulnerable: among nativist voters hugely swayed by appeals to their fears and suspicions. Many, it should be recalled, still harbor doubts about Obama. Like Reagan, Trump is adept at simplifying complexities to the point of distortion. He now says there are "questions" about Cruz's eligibility, which is sufficient to fomenting doubt. Legally, his assertions are nebulous. Politically, they are brilliant. Trump leads by two points in Iowa, according to RealClear Politics. Iowa's evangelical caucus-goers comprise the state's largest conservative voting bloc, and it tends to look askance at Trump's clearly fabricated commitments to a Judeo-Christian God. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is the son of a Bible-believing evangelical preacher. He's the only candidate to have launched his bid on the campus of an evangelical university. He's their man. Indeed, of the three early states in the GOP's nomination, Trump faces a higher threshold in Iowa, thanks to evangelical voters, than he does in New Hampshire and South Carolina. So Trump is meeting one kind of suspicion -- the dearth of his religious sincerity -- with another kind suspicion -- a suspicion that maybe, just maybe, Cruz isn't a "natural-born citizen." Can Cruz overcome this? Maybe. According to the latest survey by Public Policy Polling, most Iowa Republicans don't yet know Cruz was born in Canada. But among those who do, says PPP pollster Tom Jensen, "Trump is crushing Cruz 40/14." Count on Trump to educate them. Cruz rode the wave of anti-Obama hysteria to the US Senate in 2010, a fear fueled by the conspiracy theory that Obama was not a "natural-born citizen." No matter how many times reasonable people argued to the contrary, no matter how much reasonable people used evidence to ease fears -- nothing worked. Trump showed reality isn't the point. It's fear. We will know in a few days whether Cruz can weather Trump's "birther" attacks. One thing we already know: Once he finds something that works, Trump won't stop.
Lawrence Tribe has said the issue of Senator Ted Cruz's eligibility for the presidency, with respect to being born not in the United States, but in Canada, is not "settled." His recent comment is being taken among pols and partisans as a political attack, as if Harvard University's preeminent legal scholar were trying to derail Cruz's presidential bid. Maybe because Tribe played a senior advisory role in Senator Joe Biden's 1987 defeat of Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court nominee, the arch-conservative jurist Robert Bork. I don't know. But Tribe's comment is at least legally precise. "Precise" from a liberal view. "Charitable," perhaps, from a conservative one. The Supreme Court has never decided a case on the eligibility of a candidate. No one has challenged the meaning of "natural-born citizen," a phrase in the Constitution that can be read to privilege one's place of birth over one's citizenship. The issue, then, is not "settled." Federal law says that any human being born to an American parent here or abroad shall enjoy the rights, privileges, and blessings of American citizenship despite the circumstances of one's birth. That means, according to congressional statute, that the senator from Texas would appear to meet the nominal the criteria for the presidency. His mom was American. This was the same statutory ground on which stood Senator Barack Obama in 2008 and Senator John McCain in 2000. Actually, Obama's birth was a twofer: He was born on American soil, in Hawaii, to an American mother. McCain, on the other hand, was born on a U.S. military base in Panama to an American mom and dad. (Though one could argue that a U.S. military base is legally American soil; in that sense, McCain's birth was also a twofer.) Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University, takes a narrower view, and, therefore, more conservative view. She wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday that Trump is right -- Cruz is not eligible for the presidency. The issue isn't whether he's a U.S. citizen, she wrote. By federal law, he is. The issue is where he was born, she wrote, a detail pivotal to James Madison's and the framers' intent in "natural-born citizen." "I am not a so-called birther," McManamon wrote. "I am a legal historian. President Obama is without question eligible for the office he serves. The distinction between the president and Cruz is simple: The president was born within the United States, and the senator was born outside of it. That is a distinction with a difference." Conclusion? Cruz is disqualified. There's law, then there's politics. Trump is exploiting the ambiguity of "unsettled law" to attack Cruz where he is most vulnerable: among nativist voters hugely swayed by appeals to their fears and suspicions. Many, it should be recalled, still harbor doubts about Obama. Like Reagan, Trump is adept at simplifying complexities to the point of distortion. He now says there are "questions" about Cruz's eligibility, which is sufficient to fomenting doubt. Legally, his assertions are nebulous. Politically, they are brilliant. Trump leads by two points in Iowa, according to RealClear Politics. Iowa's evangelical caucus-goers comprise the state's largest conservative voting bloc, and it tends to look askance at Trump's clearly fabricated commitments to a Judeo-Christian God. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is the son of a Bible-believing evangelical preacher. He's the only candidate to have launched his bid on the campus of an evangelical university. He's their man. Indeed, of the three early states in the GOP's nomination, Trump faces a higher threshold in Iowa, thanks to evangelical voters, than he does in New Hampshire and South Carolina. So Trump is meeting one kind of suspicion -- the dearth of his religious sincerity -- with another kind suspicion -- a suspicion that maybe, just maybe, Cruz isn't a "natural-born citizen." Can Cruz overcome this? Maybe. According to the latest survey by Public Policy Polling, most Iowa Republicans don't yet know Cruz was born in Canada. But among those who do, says PPP pollster Tom Jensen, "Trump is crushing Cruz 40/14." Count on Trump to educate them. Cruz rode the wave of anti-Obama hysteria to the US Senate in 2010, a fear fueled by the conspiracy theory that Obama was not a "natural-born citizen." No matter how many times reasonable people argued to the contrary, no matter how much reasonable people used evidence to ease fears -- nothing worked. Trump showed reality isn't the point. It's fear. We will know in a few days whether Cruz can weather Trump's "birther" attacks. One thing we already know: Once he finds something that works, Trump won't stop. Lawrence Tribe has said the issue of Senator Ted Cruz's eligibility for the presidency, with respect to being born not in the United States, but in Canada, is not "settled." His recent comment is being taken among pols and partisans as a political attack, as if Harvard University's preeminent legal scholar were trying to derail Cruz's presidential bid. Maybe because Tribe played a senior advisory role in Senator Joe Biden's 1987 defeat of Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court nominee, the arch-conservative jurist Robert Bork. I don't know. But Tribe's comment is at least legally precise. "Precise" from a liberal view. "Charitable," perhaps, from a conservative one. The Supreme Court has never decided a case on the eligibility of a candidate. No one has challenged the meaning of "natural-born citizen," a phrase in the Constitution that can be read to privilege one's place of birth over one's citizenship. The issue, then, is not "settled." Federal law says that any human being born to an American parent here or abroad shall enjoy the rights, privileges, and blessings of American citizenship despite the circumstances of one's birth. That means, according to congressional statute, that the senator from Texas would appear to meet the nominal the criteria for the presidency. His mom was American. This was the same statutory ground on which stood Senator Barack Obama in 2008 and Senator John McCain in 2000. Actually, Obama's birth was a twofer: He was born on American soil, in Hawaii, to an American mother. McCain, on the other hand, was born on a U.S. military base in Panama to an American mom and dad. (Though one could argue that a U.S. military base is legally American soil; in that sense, McCain's birth was also a twofer.) Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University, takes a narrower view, and, therefore, more conservative view. She wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday that Trump is right -- Cruz is not eligible for the presidency. The issue isn't whether he's a U.S. citizen, she wrote. By federal law, he is. The issue is where he was born, she wrote, a detail pivotal to James Madison's and the framers' intent in "natural-born citizen." "I am not a so-called birther," McManamon wrote. "I am a legal historian. President Obama is without question eligible for the office he serves. The distinction between the president and Cruz is simple: The president was born within the United States, and the senator was born outside of it. That is a distinction with a difference." Conclusion? Cruz is disqualified. There's law, then there's politics. Trump is exploiting the ambiguity of "unsettled law" to attack Cruz where he is most vulnerable: among nativist voters hugely swayed by appeals to their fears and suspicions. Many, it should be recalled, still harbor doubts about Obama. Like Reagan, Trump is adept at simplifying complexities to the point of distortion. He now says there are "questions" about Cruz's eligibility, which is sufficient to fomenting doubt. Legally, his assertions are nebulous. Politically, they are brilliant. Trump leads by two points in Iowa, according to RealClear Politics. Iowa's evangelical caucus-goers comprise the state's largest conservative voting bloc, and it tends to look askance at Trump's clearly fabricated commitments to a Judeo-Christian God. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is the son of a Bible-believing evangelical preacher. He's the only candidate to have launched his bid on the campus of an evangelical university. He's their man. Indeed, of the three early states in the GOP's nomination, Trump faces a higher threshold in Iowa, thanks to evangelical voters, than he does in New Hampshire and South Carolina. So Trump is meeting one kind of suspicion -- the dearth of his religious sincerity -- with another kind suspicion -- a suspicion that maybe, just maybe, Cruz isn't a "natural-born citizen." Can Cruz overcome this? Maybe. According to the latest survey by Public Policy Polling, most Iowa Republicans don't yet know Cruz was born in Canada. But among those who do, says PPP pollster Tom Jensen, "Trump is crushing Cruz 40/14." Count on Trump to educate them. Cruz rode the wave of anti-Obama hysteria to the US Senate in 2010, a fear fueled by the conspiracy theory that Obama was not a "natural-born citizen." No matter how many times reasonable people argued to the contrary, no matter how much reasonable people used evidence to ease fears -- nothing worked. Trump showed reality isn't the point. It's fear. We will know in a few days whether Cruz can weather Trump's "birther" attacks. One thing we already know: Once he finds something that works, Trump won't stop. Lawrence Tribe has said the issue of Senator Ted Cruz's eligibility for the presidency, with respect to being born not in the United States, but in Canada, is not "settled." His recent comment is being taken among pols and partisans as a political attack, as if Harvard University's preeminent legal scholar were trying to derail Cruz's presidential bid. Maybe because Tribe played a senior advisory role in Senator Joe Biden's 1987 defeat of Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court nominee, the arch-conservative jurist Robert Bork. I don't know. But Tribe's comment is at least legally precise. "Precise" from a liberal view. "Charitable," perhaps, from a conservative one. The Supreme Court has never decided a case on the eligibility of a candidate. No one has challenged the meaning of "natural-born citizen," a phrase in the Constitution that can be read to privilege one's place of birth over one's citizenship. The issue, then, is not "settled." Federal law says that any human being born to an American parent here or abroad shall enjoy the rights, privileges, and blessings of American citizenship despite the circumstances of one's birth. That means, according to congressional statute, that the senator from Texas would appear to meet the nominal the criteria for the presidency. His mom was American. This was the same statutory ground on which stood Senator Barack Obama in 2008 and Senator John McCain in 2000. Actually, Obama's birth was a twofer: He was born on American soil, in Hawaii, to an American mother. McCain, on the other hand, was born on a U.S. military base in Panama to an American mom and dad. (Though one could argue that a U.S. military base is legally American soil; in that sense, McCain's birth was also a twofer.) Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University, takes a narrower view, and, therefore, more conservative view. She wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday that Trump is right -- Cruz is not eligible for the presidency. The issue isn't whether he's a U.S. citizen, she wrote. By federal law, he is. The issue is where he was born, she wrote, a detail pivotal to James Madison's and the framers' intent in "natural-born citizen." "I am not a so-called birther," McManamon wrote. "I am a legal historian. President Obama is without question eligible for the office he serves. The distinction between the president and Cruz is simple: The president was born within the United States, and the senator was born outside of it. That is a distinction with a difference." Conclusion? Cruz is disqualified. There's law, then there's politics. Trump is exploiting the ambiguity of "unsettled law" to attack Cruz where he is most vulnerable: among nativist voters hugely swayed by appeals to their fears and suspicions. Many, it should be recalled, still harbor doubts about Obama. Like Reagan, Trump is adept at simplifying complexities to the point of distortion. He now says there are "questions" about Cruz's eligibility, which is sufficient to fomenting doubt. Legally, his assertions are nebulous. Politically, they are brilliant. Trump leads by two points in Iowa, according to RealClear Politics. Iowa's evangelical caucus-goers comprise the state's largest conservative voting bloc, and it tends to look askance at Trump's clearly fabricated commitments to a Judeo-Christian God. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is the son of a Bible-believing evangelical preacher. He's the only candidate to have launched his bid on the campus of an evangelical university. He's their man. Indeed, of the three early states in the GOP's nomination, Trump faces a higher threshold in Iowa, thanks to evangelical voters, than he does in New Hampshire and South Carolina. So Trump is meeting one kind of suspicion -- the dearth of his religious sincerity -- with another kind suspicion -- a suspicion that maybe, just maybe, Cruz isn't a "natural-born citizen." Can Cruz overcome this? Maybe. According to the latest survey by Public Policy Polling, most Iowa Republicans don't yet know Cruz was born in Canada. But among those who do, says PPP pollster Tom Jensen, "Trump is crushing Cruz 40/14." Count on Trump to educate them. Cruz rode the wave of anti-Obama hysteria to the US Senate in 2010, a fear fueled by the conspiracy theory that Obama was not a "natural-born citizen." No matter how many times reasonable people argued to the contrary, no matter how much reasonable people used evidence to ease fears -- nothing worked. Trump showed reality isn't the point. It's fear. We will know in a few days whether Cruz can weather Trump's "birther" attacks. One thing we already know: Once he finds something that works, Trump won't stop. Lawrence Tribe has said the issue of Senator Ted Cruz's eligibility for the presidency, with respect to being born not in the United States, but in Canada, is not "settled." His recent comment is being taken among pols and partisans as a political attack, as if Harvard University's preeminent legal scholar were trying to derail Cruz's presidential bid. Maybe because Tribe played a senior advisory role in Senator Joe Biden's 1987 defeat of Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court nominee, the arch-conservative jurist Robert Bork. I don't know. But Tribe's comment is at least legally precise. "Precise" from a liberal view. "Charitable," perhaps, from a conservative one. The Supreme Court has never decided a case on the eligibility of a candidate. No one has challenged the meaning of "natural-born citizen," a phrase in the Constitution that can be read to privilege one's place of birth over one's citizenship. The issue, then, is not "settled." Federal law says that any human being born to an American parent here or abroad shall enjoy the rights, privileges, and blessings of American citizenship despite the circumstances of one's birth. That means, according to congressional statute, that the senator from Texas would appear to meet the nominal the criteria for the presidency. His mom was American. This was the same statutory ground on which stood Senator Barack Obama in 2008 and Senator John McCain in 2000. Actually, Obama's birth was a twofer: He was born on American soil, in Hawaii, to an American mother. McCain, on the other hand, was born on a U.S. military base in Panama to an American mom and dad. (Though one could argue that a U.S. military base is legally American soil; in that sense, McCain's birth was also a twofer.) Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University, takes a narrower view, and, therefore, more conservative view. She wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday that Trump is right -- Cruz is not eligible for the presidency. The issue isn't whether he's a U.S. citizen, she wrote. By federal law, he is. The issue is where he was born, she wrote, a detail pivotal to James Madison's and the framers' intent in "natural-born citizen." "I am not a so-called birther," McManamon wrote. "I am a legal historian. President Obama is without question eligible for the office he serves. The distinction between the president and Cruz is simple: The president was born within the United States, and the senator was born outside of it. That is a distinction with a difference." Conclusion? Cruz is disqualified. There's law, then there's politics. Trump is exploiting the ambiguity of "unsettled law" to attack Cruz where he is most vulnerable: among nativist voters hugely swayed by appeals to their fears and suspicions. Many, it should be recalled, still harbor doubts about Obama. Like Reagan, Trump is adept at simplifying complexities to the point of distortion. He now says there are "questions" about Cruz's eligibility, which is sufficient to fomenting doubt. Legally, his assertions are nebulous. Politically, they are brilliant. Trump leads by two points in Iowa, according to RealClear Politics. Iowa's evangelical caucus-goers comprise the state's largest conservative voting bloc, and it tends to look askance at Trump's clearly fabricated commitments to a Judeo-Christian God. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is the son of a Bible-believing evangelical preacher. He's the only candidate to have launched his bid on the campus of an evangelical university. He's their man. Indeed, of the three early states in the GOP's nomination, Trump faces a higher threshold in Iowa, thanks to evangelical voters, than he does in New Hampshire and South Carolina. So Trump is meeting one kind of suspicion -- the dearth of his religious sincerity -- with another kind suspicion -- a suspicion that maybe, just maybe, Cruz isn't a "natural-born citizen." Can Cruz overcome this? Maybe. According to the latest survey by Public Policy Polling, most Iowa Republicans don't yet know Cruz was born in Canada. But among those who do, says PPP pollster Tom Jensen, "Trump is crushing Cruz 40/14." Count on Trump to educate them. Cruz rode the wave of anti-Obama hysteria to the US Senate in 2010, a fear fueled by the conspiracy theory that Obama was not a "natural-born citizen." No matter how many times reasonable people argued to the contrary, no matter how much reasonable people used evidence to ease fears -- nothing worked. Trump showed reality isn't the point. It's fear. We will know in a few days whether Cruz can weather Trump's "birther" attacks. One thing we already know: Once he finds something that works, Trump won't stop.
Air Force forced to yank ad for Martin Luther King Jr. Day “fun shoot” target practice
Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Georgia was forced to apologize for a controversial ad promoting a Martin Luther King Jr. Day "fun shoot" on Thursday. King, of course, was shot dead by an assassin in Memphis in 1968. The flyer, which prominently featured King's likeness, advertised a noon gathering on January 18 -- a national holiday in observance of the late civil rights icon -- for the Robins Air Force Base Trap and Skeet Club. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, an official at the military base’s Outdoor Recreation office said the flyer was created by a marketing team. The 78th Force Support Squadron at Robins scheduled the trap, reported the Air Force Times. For $20, the poster promised, attendees would get "two rounds and lunch." "We didn’t make the flyer,” explained Leroy Minus, the Air Force official. “We squared it away. We got rid of the picture.” Robins spokesman Roland Leach later released a full statement of apology:
We’re deeply sorry for any offense or harm caused by our insensitivity and failure to provide appropriate oversight of our marketing process. The flyer does not represent the values, opinions or views of the Department of Defense, the Air Force or Robins Air Force Base leadership and its employees. We realized the inappropriateness of the advertisement several days ago and immediately began removing the flyer. There was no malice of forethought in the flyer’s creation and it was never the base’s intention to portray Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in a negative light. It was an honest mistake, to which we’ve personally counseled the parties involved and will provide them with remedial training and appropriate oversight to prevent this sort of inattention from occurring in the future. Again, we offer our heartfelt apology to those affected by our thoughtlessness. We hold the legacy of Dr. King in the highest regard.Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Georgia was forced to apologize for a controversial ad promoting a Martin Luther King Jr. Day "fun shoot" on Thursday. King, of course, was shot dead by an assassin in Memphis in 1968. The flyer, which prominently featured King's likeness, advertised a noon gathering on January 18 -- a national holiday in observance of the late civil rights icon -- for the Robins Air Force Base Trap and Skeet Club. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, an official at the military base’s Outdoor Recreation office said the flyer was created by a marketing team. The 78th Force Support Squadron at Robins scheduled the trap, reported the Air Force Times. For $20, the poster promised, attendees would get "two rounds and lunch." "We didn’t make the flyer,” explained Leroy Minus, the Air Force official. “We squared it away. We got rid of the picture.” Robins spokesman Roland Leach later released a full statement of apology:
We’re deeply sorry for any offense or harm caused by our insensitivity and failure to provide appropriate oversight of our marketing process. The flyer does not represent the values, opinions or views of the Department of Defense, the Air Force or Robins Air Force Base leadership and its employees. We realized the inappropriateness of the advertisement several days ago and immediately began removing the flyer. There was no malice of forethought in the flyer’s creation and it was never the base’s intention to portray Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in a negative light. It was an honest mistake, to which we’ve personally counseled the parties involved and will provide them with remedial training and appropriate oversight to prevent this sort of inattention from occurring in the future. Again, we offer our heartfelt apology to those affected by our thoughtlessness. We hold the legacy of Dr. King in the highest regard.Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Georgia was forced to apologize for a controversial ad promoting a Martin Luther King Jr. Day "fun shoot" on Thursday. King, of course, was shot dead by an assassin in Memphis in 1968. The flyer, which prominently featured King's likeness, advertised a noon gathering on January 18 -- a national holiday in observance of the late civil rights icon -- for the Robins Air Force Base Trap and Skeet Club. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, an official at the military base’s Outdoor Recreation office said the flyer was created by a marketing team. The 78th Force Support Squadron at Robins scheduled the trap, reported the Air Force Times. For $20, the poster promised, attendees would get "two rounds and lunch." "We didn’t make the flyer,” explained Leroy Minus, the Air Force official. “We squared it away. We got rid of the picture.” Robins spokesman Roland Leach later released a full statement of apology:
We’re deeply sorry for any offense or harm caused by our insensitivity and failure to provide appropriate oversight of our marketing process. The flyer does not represent the values, opinions or views of the Department of Defense, the Air Force or Robins Air Force Base leadership and its employees. We realized the inappropriateness of the advertisement several days ago and immediately began removing the flyer. There was no malice of forethought in the flyer’s creation and it was never the base’s intention to portray Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in a negative light. It was an honest mistake, to which we’ve personally counseled the parties involved and will provide them with remedial training and appropriate oversight to prevent this sort of inattention from occurring in the future. Again, we offer our heartfelt apology to those affected by our thoughtlessness. We hold the legacy of Dr. King in the highest regard.
“Hillary’s look is a practical one”: Can we stop talking about Clinton’s clothes now?
In what may go down as the apex of #SlatePitches, on Friday, writer Vanessa Vitiello Urquhart investigated a Democratic presidential contender in a story that declares that "Hillary Clinton Isn’t a Lesbian — but She Dresses Like One." You know what, fine, let's take the bait. Because by my calculation we will be having these discussions until at least November. After Vitiello Urquhart establishes that this isn't about sexual identity per se, she commends Clinton by explaining, "If Clinton were a lesbian, I’d be proud to claim her fashion sense. Clinton embodies something many lesbians accomplish effortlessly: She dresses in a way that does not cater to, or even consider, the male gaze." The author understands that of course there isn't one typical lesbian style, but what she admires about Clinton is her career-long commitment to not pandering. "Hillary’s look is a practical one. She chooses outfits that are variations on a relatively narrow theme. Her clothing and hair are neat and well suited to her face and frame," she writes, noting, "It’s simply not possible for straight women to dress practically and simply without judgment, reflection, or comment the way men do. Hence the rumors about Hillary’s sexuality." And she adds that "The expectation that women must worry about being pretty first, and everything else second, can feel constrictive to all kinds of women, not just to lesbians." The point, if you read past the provocative headline, isn't that Hillary dresses like a lesbian because lesbians presumably love low shoes and pants, it's that Hillary dresses like a lesbian because she apparently dresses like she doesn't give a toss what men think. Dammit, on behalf of the hetero lady delegation, are we really all expected to be pushing 70 and trying to look like Helen Mirren? Vitiello Urquhart, a self-described "sweater vest wearing lesbian," has explored the themes of fashion and identity before, and how dressing in a way that feels natural and comfortable can also have unintended attention-getting consequences. On her blog, "featuring Tiny Butch Adventures," she's explored gender and image, cheering for "girls who look like girls, and boys who look like girls, and girls who look like boys, and everyone who likes the way they look, and everyone who’d never make them change it." But is her take on Hillary an accurate one? It's fair to say that the 68 year-old Clinton marches to her own sartorial drummer. She doesn't go for the steely business chic of Carly Fiorina, or wear her hair tousled like Sarah Palin. And she never, even while she was First Lady, aspired to Michelle Obama's status as a trend-setter — a role Obama has taken in stride right up to that flawless marigold Narcisco Rodriguez number she wore for this week's State of the Union. In contrast, even in her famous 1993 Donna Karan "cold shoulder" dress, Clinton bore the demeanor of a lady eager to slip into something a lot more comfortable. Speaking to Lena Dunham late last year, she admitted that while "I do like to fool around with fashion and have some fun with it… I’m hardly a fashion icon… I absolutely admit that." Instead, along with her partner in the sisterhood of traveling pantsuits, Angela Merkel, Clinton has forged a different identity, one that has evolved over her lengthy public life but remained eternally unfussy. She is now not young nor not whippet thin; she has not chosen to have the flesh on her face pulled somewhere to the back of her head. She furthermore has a career and an identity distinct from her spouse — a transgressive stance in and of itself. Note how, for example, at the recent Republican debate just this week, Carly Fiorina snarled, "Unlike another woman in this race, I actually love spending time with my husband." Yup, that's the lonely road that Hillary Clinton, presidential candidate, former Secretary of State, one of the most powerful individuals in American politics, travels. More than 20 years after getting flack for declaring that "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life," she is still being assessed by watchers both straight and gay on where she falls on the oh so confining spectrum of expected hetero female demeanor. So as a straight woman who aspires to one day be a successful, self-assured senior citizen in relaxed slacks, can I say that I'd be proud to claim her fashion sense too?In what may go down as the apex of #SlatePitches, on Friday, writer Vanessa Vitiello Urquhart investigated a Democratic presidential contender in a story that declares that "Hillary Clinton Isn’t a Lesbian — but She Dresses Like One." You know what, fine, let's take the bait. Because by my calculation we will be having these discussions until at least November. After Vitiello Urquhart establishes that this isn't about sexual identity per se, she commends Clinton by explaining, "If Clinton were a lesbian, I’d be proud to claim her fashion sense. Clinton embodies something many lesbians accomplish effortlessly: She dresses in a way that does not cater to, or even consider, the male gaze." The author understands that of course there isn't one typical lesbian style, but what she admires about Clinton is her career-long commitment to not pandering. "Hillary’s look is a practical one. She chooses outfits that are variations on a relatively narrow theme. Her clothing and hair are neat and well suited to her face and frame," she writes, noting, "It’s simply not possible for straight women to dress practically and simply without judgment, reflection, or comment the way men do. Hence the rumors about Hillary’s sexuality." And she adds that "The expectation that women must worry about being pretty first, and everything else second, can feel constrictive to all kinds of women, not just to lesbians." The point, if you read past the provocative headline, isn't that Hillary dresses like a lesbian because lesbians presumably love low shoes and pants, it's that Hillary dresses like a lesbian because she apparently dresses like she doesn't give a toss what men think. Dammit, on behalf of the hetero lady delegation, are we really all expected to be pushing 70 and trying to look like Helen Mirren? Vitiello Urquhart, a self-described "sweater vest wearing lesbian," has explored the themes of fashion and identity before, and how dressing in a way that feels natural and comfortable can also have unintended attention-getting consequences. On her blog, "featuring Tiny Butch Adventures," she's explored gender and image, cheering for "girls who look like girls, and boys who look like girls, and girls who look like boys, and everyone who likes the way they look, and everyone who’d never make them change it." But is her take on Hillary an accurate one? It's fair to say that the 68 year-old Clinton marches to her own sartorial drummer. She doesn't go for the steely business chic of Carly Fiorina, or wear her hair tousled like Sarah Palin. And she never, even while she was First Lady, aspired to Michelle Obama's status as a trend-setter — a role Obama has taken in stride right up to that flawless marigold Narcisco Rodriguez number she wore for this week's State of the Union. In contrast, even in her famous 1993 Donna Karan "cold shoulder" dress, Clinton bore the demeanor of a lady eager to slip into something a lot more comfortable. Speaking to Lena Dunham late last year, she admitted that while "I do like to fool around with fashion and have some fun with it… I’m hardly a fashion icon… I absolutely admit that." Instead, along with her partner in the sisterhood of traveling pantsuits, Angela Merkel, Clinton has forged a different identity, one that has evolved over her lengthy public life but remained eternally unfussy. She is now not young nor not whippet thin; she has not chosen to have the flesh on her face pulled somewhere to the back of her head. She furthermore has a career and an identity distinct from her spouse — a transgressive stance in and of itself. Note how, for example, at the recent Republican debate just this week, Carly Fiorina snarled, "Unlike another woman in this race, I actually love spending time with my husband." Yup, that's the lonely road that Hillary Clinton, presidential candidate, former Secretary of State, one of the most powerful individuals in American politics, travels. More than 20 years after getting flack for declaring that "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life," she is still being assessed by watchers both straight and gay on where she falls on the oh so confining spectrum of expected hetero female demeanor. So as a straight woman who aspires to one day be a successful, self-assured senior citizen in relaxed slacks, can I say that I'd be proud to claim her fashion sense too?
Hillary Clinton’s abortion game-changer: Why her call for abandoning the Hyde Amendment is so important
On the campaign trail this week, Hillary Clinton referenced her support of reproductive rights and mentioned a little-known federal policy that makes it very difficult for low-income women to get an abortion: The Hyde Amendment. The Hyde Amendment makes its way into law each year since 1976 as an amendment to the federal budget. It prohibits federal funding to cover abortion care. Women on Medicaid in all but 14 states can’t use their coverage to pay for an abortion -- meaning that those women, who we’ve determined as low income enough to qualify for Medicaid -- are somehow supposed to pay hundreds of dollars out of pocket for the procedure. At a campaign rally in New Hampshire last weekend, Clinton called for getting rid of the policy, calling it a law that makes it “harder for low-income women to exercise their full rights.” She continued, “Any right that requires you to take extraordinary measures to access it is no right at all.” Then again on Monday evening, at the Brown & Black Presidential Forum at Drake University, Clinton confirmed that she believes Congress should repeal the Hyde Amendment, calling the right to an abortion “a fundamental human right.” What is the political significance of the Democratic frontrunner for the Presidency calling abortion a human right, and specifically focusing on the Hyde Amendment? Yamani Hernandez, Executive Director of the National Network of Abortion Funds told Salon,
“In an election that is shaping up to focus heavily on income inequality in an America with more people struggling than ever before, it’s important that we see candidates understand and make the case the reproductive rights and abortion access are inextricably tied to economic freedom.”(Full disclosure: I sit on the board of the National Network of Abortion Funds.) This is a crucial connection to make at time when many ostensibly pro-choice legislators won’t advocate for ensuring that abortion access isn’t treated differently than other health care services. The refusal to allow taxpayer funding for abortion was a political concession that Democratic Party made decades ago. It has had far-reaching effects. Since 1976, the Hyde Amendment has spawned many similar restrictions, banning abortion coverage for federal employees, incarcerated women, military personnel, Native American women and Peace Corps volunteers -- anyone who gets their health care through the federal government.The battle to include fair access to abortion in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was not able to clear this entrenched political hurdle, one that makes it acceptable to offer poor women different, lesser health care access than their wealthier counterparts. Through the ACA, abortion coverage is prohibited from being required as part of the federally-established essential benefits package; states can prohibit coverage for any abortions by all plans in their state marketplace. This week, the Guttmacher Institute released data showing that the past five years have seen an exponential increase in abortion restrictions, the most in all the years since Roe v. Wade was decided. Given this trend, the stakes are very high for low-income women. Jessica Gonzalez Rojas, Executive Director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health makes the connection, telling Salon:
“These new laws -- 288 in 5 years -- make our work to repeal Hyde even more urgent. These laws force women to delay care, make multiple appointments, and travel hundreds of miles. All of which makes abortion even less affordable and thus harder to get for low income women. Now more than ever, we need to repeal Hyde because these new laws multiply its impact in a devastating way.”Reproductive justice advocates, led by women of color, have long sought to make repealing the Hyde Amendment an issue on the national level, in particular by illuminating the devastating double standard for poor people. Monica Raye Simpson, Executive Director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective makes the connection between race, class and gender explicit, saying:
“We are a country where the lives of the most marginalized communities are constantly under attack and where our human right to self determine what is best for our bodies, families and lives is constantly blocked or denied. This is why we have to bring attention to Hyde which overwhelmingly impact the lives of poor women and women of color in this country.”With the recent introduction of the Each Woman Act, these activists are fighting for a proactive vision for abortion access that doesn’t discriminate based on income. The polls are also telling an interesting story. One poll in particular, recently conducted by Hart Research, shows that 86 percent of voters agree that “politicians should not be allowed to deny a woman’s health coverage for abortion because she is poor.” This is notable at a time when abortion care often finds itself in the media crosshairs, as when Republican legislators pushed to defund Planned Parenthood. Notably, Clinton’s remarks on the Hyde Amendment come just a few days after her endorsement by Planned Parenthood, which plans to spend at least $20 million during this election cycle. Although Hillary Clinton has vocally opposed the Hyde Amendment in the past, these recent remarks seem to be a significant shift for her as a candidate. As she prepared for a Senate run in 2000, Clinton called abortion a "sad, even tragic choice,” and said that she looked forward to the day when abortions take place "only in very rare circumstances." Loretta Ross, a longtime reproductive justice movement leader and co-founder of SisterSong, discusses Clinton’s evolution, telling Salon:
“I remember having to speak after HRC at a conference organized by Family Planning Advocates of New York in the mid-1990s in which I had to criticize her conservative approach to abortion rights. HRC is markedly improving her understanding about abortion from the 'safe, legal and rare' framing of the 1990s to 'abortion as a human right.'"Ross credits the unrelenting pressure from reproductive justice activists as responsible for at least some of this shift, saying:
“Our radical pressure moved her beyond the limited constitutional interpretations of liberty into firmly grasping the inherent and inalienable right we have to make decisions about our bodies, and receive government support in order to implement these decisions. This is what makes human rights real and this is what reproductive justice demands.”If the Hyde Amendment were finally repealed, it would allow reproductive rights activists to turn their attention to a whole host of issues, Yamani Hernandez points out. The movement could focus on those states where the attacks on reproductive health care are the most devastating, and fight for other state and federal protections against such laws and restrictions. Hernandez also points out the often untold impact of this kind of policy. “Without the Hyde Amendment, people on public insurance can maintain a sense of dignity that comes with not having to ask around for money and make public a medical decision that can remain between a patient and their doctor.” Eesha Pandit is a writer and activist based in Houston, TX. You can follow her on twitter at @EeshaP , and find out more about her work at eeshapandit.com .On the campaign trail this week, Hillary Clinton referenced her support of reproductive rights and mentioned a little-known federal policy that makes it very difficult for low-income women to get an abortion: The Hyde Amendment. The Hyde Amendment makes its way into law each year since 1976 as an amendment to the federal budget. It prohibits federal funding to cover abortion care. Women on Medicaid in all but 14 states can’t use their coverage to pay for an abortion -- meaning that those women, who we’ve determined as low income enough to qualify for Medicaid -- are somehow supposed to pay hundreds of dollars out of pocket for the procedure. At a campaign rally in New Hampshire last weekend, Clinton called for getting rid of the policy, calling it a law that makes it “harder for low-income women to exercise their full rights.” She continued, “Any right that requires you to take extraordinary measures to access it is no right at all.” Then again on Monday evening, at the Brown & Black Presidential Forum at Drake University, Clinton confirmed that she believes Congress should repeal the Hyde Amendment, calling the right to an abortion “a fundamental human right.” What is the political significance of the Democratic frontrunner for the Presidency calling abortion a human right, and specifically focusing on the Hyde Amendment? Yamani Hernandez, Executive Director of the National Network of Abortion Funds told Salon,
“In an election that is shaping up to focus heavily on income inequality in an America with more people struggling than ever before, it’s important that we see candidates understand and make the case the reproductive rights and abortion access are inextricably tied to economic freedom.”(Full disclosure: I sit on the board of the National Network of Abortion Funds.) This is a crucial connection to make at time when many ostensibly pro-choice legislators won’t advocate for ensuring that abortion access isn’t treated differently than other health care services. The refusal to allow taxpayer funding for abortion was a political concession that Democratic Party made decades ago. It has had far-reaching effects. Since 1976, the Hyde Amendment has spawned many similar restrictions, banning abortion coverage for federal employees, incarcerated women, military personnel, Native American women and Peace Corps volunteers -- anyone who gets their health care through the federal government.The battle to include fair access to abortion in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was not able to clear this entrenched political hurdle, one that makes it acceptable to offer poor women different, lesser health care access than their wealthier counterparts. Through the ACA, abortion coverage is prohibited from being required as part of the federally-established essential benefits package; states can prohibit coverage for any abortions by all plans in their state marketplace. This week, the Guttmacher Institute released data showing that the past five years have seen an exponential increase in abortion restrictions, the most in all the years since Roe v. Wade was decided. Given this trend, the stakes are very high for low-income women. Jessica Gonzalez Rojas, Executive Director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health makes the connection, telling Salon:
“These new laws -- 288 in 5 years -- make our work to repeal Hyde even more urgent. These laws force women to delay care, make multiple appointments, and travel hundreds of miles. All of which makes abortion even less affordable and thus harder to get for low income women. Now more than ever, we need to repeal Hyde because these new laws multiply its impact in a devastating way.”Reproductive justice advocates, led by women of color, have long sought to make repealing the Hyde Amendment an issue on the national level, in particular by illuminating the devastating double standard for poor people. Monica Raye Simpson, Executive Director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective makes the connection between race, class and gender explicit, saying:
“We are a country where the lives of the most marginalized communities are constantly under attack and where our human right to self determine what is best for our bodies, families and lives is constantly blocked or denied. This is why we have to bring attention to Hyde which overwhelmingly impact the lives of poor women and women of color in this country.”With the recent introduction of the Each Woman Act, these activists are fighting for a proactive vision for abortion access that doesn’t discriminate based on income. The polls are also telling an interesting story. One poll in particular, recently conducted by Hart Research, shows that 86 percent of voters agree that “politicians should not be allowed to deny a woman’s health coverage for abortion because she is poor.” This is notable at a time when abortion care often finds itself in the media crosshairs, as when Republican legislators pushed to defund Planned Parenthood. Notably, Clinton’s remarks on the Hyde Amendment come just a few days after her endorsement by Planned Parenthood, which plans to spend at least $20 million during this election cycle. Although Hillary Clinton has vocally opposed the Hyde Amendment in the past, these recent remarks seem to be a significant shift for her as a candidate. As she prepared for a Senate run in 2000, Clinton called abortion a "sad, even tragic choice,” and said that she looked forward to the day when abortions take place "only in very rare circumstances." Loretta Ross, a longtime reproductive justice movement leader and co-founder of SisterSong, discusses Clinton’s evolution, telling Salon:
“I remember having to speak after HRC at a conference organized by Family Planning Advocates of New York in the mid-1990s in which I had to criticize her conservative approach to abortion rights. HRC is markedly improving her understanding about abortion from the 'safe, legal and rare' framing of the 1990s to 'abortion as a human right.'"Ross credits the unrelenting pressure from reproductive justice activists as responsible for at least some of this shift, saying:
“Our radical pressure moved her beyond the limited constitutional interpretations of liberty into firmly grasping the inherent and inalienable right we have to make decisions about our bodies, and receive government support in order to implement these decisions. This is what makes human rights real and this is what reproductive justice demands.”If the Hyde Amendment were finally repealed, it would allow reproductive rights activists to turn their attention to a whole host of issues, Yamani Hernandez points out. The movement could focus on those states where the attacks on reproductive health care are the most devastating, and fight for other state and federal protections against such laws and restrictions. Hernandez also points out the often untold impact of this kind of policy. “Without the Hyde Amendment, people on public insurance can maintain a sense of dignity that comes with not having to ask around for money and make public a medical decision that can remain between a patient and their doctor.” Eesha Pandit is a writer and activist based in Houston, TX. You can follow her on twitter at @EeshaP , and find out more about her work at eeshapandit.com .
Donald Trump isn’t going away: Why his performance in Thursday night’s debate should terrify Republicans
With every debate, Donald Trump gets a little more polished, a little more professional. However terrified Republicans are by Trump's dominance, some of that fear has been assuaged by the fact that Trump is comically unprepared for this level of politics. He's a great rabble-rouser, and he knows how to control the news cycle, but he's still a clown. The hope – among Republican insiders at least – was that Trump would eventually discredit himself and fall out of the race. That's not happening. Thursday night was easily the Donald's strongest debate performance. Trump was still Trump, of course. The anger, the aggression, the bullying, the fear-mongering – it was all there to be seen. He even continued his tradition of emasculating Jeb Bush right in front of his face. But the performance was different, more measured. Trump comported himself differently, almost like a serious candidate. Take the moment when Trump was asked about Nikki Haley's recent critique of his tone. Haley implored conservatives to resist “the siren call of the angriest voices.” This criticism cuts to the heart of Trump's greatest vulnerability: his tendency towards excess. His positions are odious, but there's nothing unique about that. The difference is that skilled politicians know how to package those odious views for mass consumption. It's both a strength and weakness of Trump that he can't do this. His over-the-top rhetoric has served him well in the primaries, but it would tank his candidacy in a general election. Thursday night, however, Trump handled the question about Haley remarkably well. He managed to double down without sounding offensive or unreasonable. Here's his reponse:
“First of all, Nikki this afternoon said I'm a friend of hers. Actually a close friend. And wherever you are sitting Nikki, I'm a friend...But she did say there was anger. I'm very angry because our country is being run horribly and I will gladly accept the mantle of anger. Our military is a disaster. Our health care is a horror show. Obamacare, we're going to repeal it and replace it. We have no borders. Our vets are being treated horribly. Illegal immigration is beyond belief. Our country is being run by incompetent people. And yes, I am angry. And I won't be angry when we fix it, but until we fix it, I'm very angry. And I say that to Nikki. So when Nikki said that, I wasn't offended. She said the truth.”Whatever you think of Trump, you have to admit that this is a great retort. First, he owned his anger, but he grounded it in righteous indignation. More importantly, he understands the mood of the base and he appealed to it masterfully. Republican voters are pissed off, and they're flocking to Trump because he's articulating their rage with perfect clarity. Trump could've handled this in a hundred different ways, and perhaps a month ago he would've botched it, but last night he didn't. There was another moment in the debate in which Trump could've said something stupid or remained silent, but instead he inserted himself into the conversation and arguably won the night. Ted Cruz, being Ted Cruz, blithely insulted New Yorkers by suggesting they're not real Americans. Trump, to his credit, pounced on Cruz and seized the moral high ground in the process:
“And just so – if I could, because he [Cruz] insulted a lot of people. I've had more calls on that statement that Ted made – New York is a great place. It's got great people, it's got loving people, wonderful people. When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on Earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York...And the people in New York fought and fought and fought, and we saw more death, and even the smell of death – nobody understood it. And it was with us for months, the smell, the air. And we rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.”I cringe when candidates invoke 9/11 for political gain, but this was pitch-perfect and it completely neutralized Cruz. A more amateurish version of Trump would not have managed this moment as well he did Thursday night. All of this was a sign that Trump is settling into this race and becoming a better candidate. And it appears the Republican Party is gradually accepting that fact. As Jonathan Chait noted, “Repubicans have decided to start treating him [Trump] as a regular candidate and a member of their party in good standing, rather than an imposter who has hijacked it on a lark.” This is another way of saying Repubicans are becoming resigned to Trump's inevitability.With every debate, Donald Trump gets a little more polished, a little more professional. However terrified Republicans are by Trump's dominance, some of that fear has been assuaged by the fact that Trump is comically unprepared for this level of politics. He's a great rabble-rouser, and he knows how to control the news cycle, but he's still a clown. The hope – among Republican insiders at least – was that Trump would eventually discredit himself and fall out of the race. That's not happening. Thursday night was easily the Donald's strongest debate performance. Trump was still Trump, of course. The anger, the aggression, the bullying, the fear-mongering – it was all there to be seen. He even continued his tradition of emasculating Jeb Bush right in front of his face. But the performance was different, more measured. Trump comported himself differently, almost like a serious candidate. Take the moment when Trump was asked about Nikki Haley's recent critique of his tone. Haley implored conservatives to resist “the siren call of the angriest voices.” This criticism cuts to the heart of Trump's greatest vulnerability: his tendency towards excess. His positions are odious, but there's nothing unique about that. The difference is that skilled politicians know how to package those odious views for mass consumption. It's both a strength and weakness of Trump that he can't do this. His over-the-top rhetoric has served him well in the primaries, but it would tank his candidacy in a general election. Thursday night, however, Trump handled the question about Haley remarkably well. He managed to double down without sounding offensive or unreasonable. Here's his reponse:
“First of all, Nikki this afternoon said I'm a friend of hers. Actually a close friend. And wherever you are sitting Nikki, I'm a friend...But she did say there was anger. I'm very angry because our country is being run horribly and I will gladly accept the mantle of anger. Our military is a disaster. Our health care is a horror show. Obamacare, we're going to repeal it and replace it. We have no borders. Our vets are being treated horribly. Illegal immigration is beyond belief. Our country is being run by incompetent people. And yes, I am angry. And I won't be angry when we fix it, but until we fix it, I'm very angry. And I say that to Nikki. So when Nikki said that, I wasn't offended. She said the truth.”Whatever you think of Trump, you have to admit that this is a great retort. First, he owned his anger, but he grounded it in righteous indignation. More importantly, he understands the mood of the base and he appealed to it masterfully. Republican voters are pissed off, and they're flocking to Trump because he's articulating their rage with perfect clarity. Trump could've handled this in a hundred different ways, and perhaps a month ago he would've botched it, but last night he didn't. There was another moment in the debate in which Trump could've said something stupid or remained silent, but instead he inserted himself into the conversation and arguably won the night. Ted Cruz, being Ted Cruz, blithely insulted New Yorkers by suggesting they're not real Americans. Trump, to his credit, pounced on Cruz and seized the moral high ground in the process:
“And just so – if I could, because he [Cruz] insulted a lot of people. I've had more calls on that statement that Ted made – New York is a great place. It's got great people, it's got loving people, wonderful people. When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on Earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York...And the people in New York fought and fought and fought, and we saw more death, and even the smell of death – nobody understood it. And it was with us for months, the smell, the air. And we rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.”I cringe when candidates invoke 9/11 for political gain, but this was pitch-perfect and it completely neutralized Cruz. A more amateurish version of Trump would not have managed this moment as well he did Thursday night. All of this was a sign that Trump is settling into this race and becoming a better candidate. And it appears the Republican Party is gradually accepting that fact. As Jonathan Chait noted, “Repubicans have decided to start treating him [Trump] as a regular candidate and a member of their party in good standing, rather than an imposter who has hijacked it on a lark.” This is another way of saying Repubicans are becoming resigned to Trump's inevitability.
What Cruz really meant by “New York values”: Trump is a symbol of “a decadent, elite, money-grubbing, morally lax metropolis”
Ted Cruz has recently accused Donald Trump of “New York values.” Last night at the Republican debate, Trump hit back hard with a patriotic reference to September 11, and Cruz seemed to eat crow for a moment. (The fact that Cruz took an enormous loan from New York’s Goldman Sachs has not been great for him either.) The term has been raging on social media today on both sides of the political aisle. Does the term make sense as an insult? And what does a phrase referring to a city of millions of people really mean? Is there something pernicious behind it? Salon spoke to Columbia University linguist John McWhorter – a New Yorker, as it happens – about the layers built into the term. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. So John, how does the phrase resonate for you? Is it a loaded term? I’ll start out by saying that I don’t read it as a racially coded comment – that’s not what you’d throw at Donald Trump. Trump is not exactly someone we’d think of as being especially sensitive about race. And he’s insulted black people with Black Lives Matter, insulted Latino people over immigration… It wouldn’t be coherent to associate Trump with “all those dirty brown people in New York.” So I think what it meant is the grand, old accusation – a good 125 year old now – that New York is a cesspool of depravity. It’s blue American, and Cruz is clearly lining the Republican party against this decadent, elite, money-grubbing, morally lax metropolis. So what he’s saying is that Trump, though a Republican, doesn’t fit into the party because he’ll allied with something fundamentally un-American, which according to [Cruz] is urban, morally progressive… and you get the dig in of money. It’s one thing to say that New Yorkers are all about money because Wall Street and Trump Towers are here… But how would Cruz feel about oil barons in Texas? New York has this air of depravity, and you can put the money-making as one part of the puzzle. It’s kind of deft in a way. But of course, our primaries begin in distinctly un-New York places. It’s almost as if Trump watched “The Good Wife” last week, where they have Peter Florrick as this Democratic candidate. They go to Iowa, and Peter is an urbanite who doesn’t like eating the loose meat sandwich, and is caught on camera spitting it out. And his wife is caught on camera making a disparaging comment about Iowa. They idea is they are urbanites. And the heartland of America is incompatible with them. Peter comes in fourth place. Cruz is trying to paint Trump as a Peter Florrick in that way. Not bad! I think if I were Ted Cruz I would have said that. It’s an interesting way of painting the Republican party, since 50 years ago they were quite identified with urbanity, it was possible to be a progressive person and be a Republican. A very long time ago to be a Republican was to be an abolitionist. An abolitionist was somebody who was morally ahead of the curve and repulsive even to even many educated people in the 19th century. That’s how Republicans began; it’s interesting to see how these things evolve. You don’t hear anti-semitism in the term? There’s no doubt that that characterization of New York generally is also an anti-Jewish jab. I don’t think Cruz was going there. There’s [sometimes] that in it. We remember [Jesse Jackson’s] “Hymietown” comment. There could be a smell of that in there. May not be intended but could resonate that way with some people? If I were Jewish, I would hear that. If I were black – and I am – I don’t hear [a racist subtext] in it. We found out last night that the echoes of 9/11 are still alive when someone insults New York. For a while America identified with New York City. I don’t think that lasted very long. Nine-eleven is now 15 years ago. There’s a new building on the spot. It’s been so long that you can criticize New York. [Despite Trump’s rebuttal] New York can be criticized again as a filthy, morally decadent place. It can be identified with Upper West Side and Upper East Side values – of people like Donald Trump and the financial meltdown of 2008. Rather than, as it was for a while, the doughty firemen working to save as many people as possible, and the working man. Because there’s a whole other New York that Cruz is not referring to or pretending not to understand: New York, to me walking around it all the time, is about people of color working very hard at jobs they probably don’t like very much. That is a New York that we all saw after 9/11 as well. The other word that’s part of this phrase is “values,” a word that’s typically used by the religious right. That’s true. One of the reasons Cruz’s comments is deft is that he’s almost using the term as an oxymoron. “New York… values.” Your child, making a lot of money, stepping on the little man. In general, this being a place that the real America is not – broken families and the like. It’s a very deft use of the term “values.” It implies that the world “values” is set inconveniently against New York. Not “family values,” but New York values. I’m sure that he didn’t come up with that phrase himself. His team worked that out. It has a real debate-team thrust.Ted Cruz has recently accused Donald Trump of “New York values.” Last night at the Republican debate, Trump hit back hard with a patriotic reference to September 11, and Cruz seemed to eat crow for a moment. (The fact that Cruz took an enormous loan from New York’s Goldman Sachs has not been great for him either.) The term has been raging on social media today on both sides of the political aisle. Does the term make sense as an insult? And what does a phrase referring to a city of millions of people really mean? Is there something pernicious behind it? Salon spoke to Columbia University linguist John McWhorter – a New Yorker, as it happens – about the layers built into the term. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. So John, how does the phrase resonate for you? Is it a loaded term? I’ll start out by saying that I don’t read it as a racially coded comment – that’s not what you’d throw at Donald Trump. Trump is not exactly someone we’d think of as being especially sensitive about race. And he’s insulted black people with Black Lives Matter, insulted Latino people over immigration… It wouldn’t be coherent to associate Trump with “all those dirty brown people in New York.” So I think what it meant is the grand, old accusation – a good 125 year old now – that New York is a cesspool of depravity. It’s blue American, and Cruz is clearly lining the Republican party against this decadent, elite, money-grubbing, morally lax metropolis. So what he’s saying is that Trump, though a Republican, doesn’t fit into the party because he’ll allied with something fundamentally un-American, which according to [Cruz] is urban, morally progressive… and you get the dig in of money. It’s one thing to say that New Yorkers are all about money because Wall Street and Trump Towers are here… But how would Cruz feel about oil barons in Texas? New York has this air of depravity, and you can put the money-making as one part of the puzzle. It’s kind of deft in a way. But of course, our primaries begin in distinctly un-New York places. It’s almost as if Trump watched “The Good Wife” last week, where they have Peter Florrick as this Democratic candidate. They go to Iowa, and Peter is an urbanite who doesn’t like eating the loose meat sandwich, and is caught on camera spitting it out. And his wife is caught on camera making a disparaging comment about Iowa. They idea is they are urbanites. And the heartland of America is incompatible with them. Peter comes in fourth place. Cruz is trying to paint Trump as a Peter Florrick in that way. Not bad! I think if I were Ted Cruz I would have said that. It’s an interesting way of painting the Republican party, since 50 years ago they were quite identified with urbanity, it was possible to be a progressive person and be a Republican. A very long time ago to be a Republican was to be an abolitionist. An abolitionist was somebody who was morally ahead of the curve and repulsive even to even many educated people in the 19th century. That’s how Republicans began; it’s interesting to see how these things evolve. You don’t hear anti-semitism in the term? There’s no doubt that that characterization of New York generally is also an anti-Jewish jab. I don’t think Cruz was going there. There’s [sometimes] that in it. We remember [Jesse Jackson’s] “Hymietown” comment. There could be a smell of that in there. May not be intended but could resonate that way with some people? If I were Jewish, I would hear that. If I were black – and I am – I don’t hear [a racist subtext] in it. We found out last night that the echoes of 9/11 are still alive when someone insults New York. For a while America identified with New York City. I don’t think that lasted very long. Nine-eleven is now 15 years ago. There’s a new building on the spot. It’s been so long that you can criticize New York. [Despite Trump’s rebuttal] New York can be criticized again as a filthy, morally decadent place. It can be identified with Upper West Side and Upper East Side values – of people like Donald Trump and the financial meltdown of 2008. Rather than, as it was for a while, the doughty firemen working to save as many people as possible, and the working man. Because there’s a whole other New York that Cruz is not referring to or pretending not to understand: New York, to me walking around it all the time, is about people of color working very hard at jobs they probably don’t like very much. That is a New York that we all saw after 9/11 as well. The other word that’s part of this phrase is “values,” a word that’s typically used by the religious right. That’s true. One of the reasons Cruz’s comments is deft is that he’s almost using the term as an oxymoron. “New York… values.” Your child, making a lot of money, stepping on the little man. In general, this being a place that the real America is not – broken families and the like. It’s a very deft use of the term “values.” It implies that the world “values” is set inconveniently against New York. Not “family values,” but New York values. I’m sure that he didn’t come up with that phrase himself. His team worked that out. It has a real debate-team thrust.Ted Cruz has recently accused Donald Trump of “New York values.” Last night at the Republican debate, Trump hit back hard with a patriotic reference to September 11, and Cruz seemed to eat crow for a moment. (The fact that Cruz took an enormous loan from New York’s Goldman Sachs has not been great for him either.) The term has been raging on social media today on both sides of the political aisle. Does the term make sense as an insult? And what does a phrase referring to a city of millions of people really mean? Is there something pernicious behind it? Salon spoke to Columbia University linguist John McWhorter – a New Yorker, as it happens – about the layers built into the term. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. So John, how does the phrase resonate for you? Is it a loaded term? I’ll start out by saying that I don’t read it as a racially coded comment – that’s not what you’d throw at Donald Trump. Trump is not exactly someone we’d think of as being especially sensitive about race. And he’s insulted black people with Black Lives Matter, insulted Latino people over immigration… It wouldn’t be coherent to associate Trump with “all those dirty brown people in New York.” So I think what it meant is the grand, old accusation – a good 125 year old now – that New York is a cesspool of depravity. It’s blue American, and Cruz is clearly lining the Republican party against this decadent, elite, money-grubbing, morally lax metropolis. So what he’s saying is that Trump, though a Republican, doesn’t fit into the party because he’ll allied with something fundamentally un-American, which according to [Cruz] is urban, morally progressive… and you get the dig in of money. It’s one thing to say that New Yorkers are all about money because Wall Street and Trump Towers are here… But how would Cruz feel about oil barons in Texas? New York has this air of depravity, and you can put the money-making as one part of the puzzle. It’s kind of deft in a way. But of course, our primaries begin in distinctly un-New York places. It’s almost as if Trump watched “The Good Wife” last week, where they have Peter Florrick as this Democratic candidate. They go to Iowa, and Peter is an urbanite who doesn’t like eating the loose meat sandwich, and is caught on camera spitting it out. And his wife is caught on camera making a disparaging comment about Iowa. They idea is they are urbanites. And the heartland of America is incompatible with them. Peter comes in fourth place. Cruz is trying to paint Trump as a Peter Florrick in that way. Not bad! I think if I were Ted Cruz I would have said that. It’s an interesting way of painting the Republican party, since 50 years ago they were quite identified with urbanity, it was possible to be a progressive person and be a Republican. A very long time ago to be a Republican was to be an abolitionist. An abolitionist was somebody who was morally ahead of the curve and repulsive even to even many educated people in the 19th century. That’s how Republicans began; it’s interesting to see how these things evolve. You don’t hear anti-semitism in the term? There’s no doubt that that characterization of New York generally is also an anti-Jewish jab. I don’t think Cruz was going there. There’s [sometimes] that in it. We remember [Jesse Jackson’s] “Hymietown” comment. There could be a smell of that in there. May not be intended but could resonate that way with some people? If I were Jewish, I would hear that. If I were black – and I am – I don’t hear [a racist subtext] in it. We found out last night that the echoes of 9/11 are still alive when someone insults New York. For a while America identified with New York City. I don’t think that lasted very long. Nine-eleven is now 15 years ago. There’s a new building on the spot. It’s been so long that you can criticize New York. [Despite Trump’s rebuttal] New York can be criticized again as a filthy, morally decadent place. It can be identified with Upper West Side and Upper East Side values – of people like Donald Trump and the financial meltdown of 2008. Rather than, as it was for a while, the doughty firemen working to save as many people as possible, and the working man. Because there’s a whole other New York that Cruz is not referring to or pretending not to understand: New York, to me walking around it all the time, is about people of color working very hard at jobs they probably don’t like very much. That is a New York that we all saw after 9/11 as well. The other word that’s part of this phrase is “values,” a word that’s typically used by the religious right. That’s true. One of the reasons Cruz’s comments is deft is that he’s almost using the term as an oxymoron. “New York… values.” Your child, making a lot of money, stepping on the little man. In general, this being a place that the real America is not – broken families and the like. It’s a very deft use of the term “values.” It implies that the world “values” is set inconveniently against New York. Not “family values,” but New York values. I’m sure that he didn’t come up with that phrase himself. His team worked that out. It has a real debate-team thrust.
Carly’s sexist strategy: Fiorina mistakes election for a Best Wife Ever contest and attacks Hillary Clinton’s marriage
Carly Fiorina's poll numbers have plunged so low that she got booted to the undercard debate Thursday night, and in her last, grasping attempt at relevance, she is trying to trick voters into thinking she's running for the Wife of the Year contest, instead of the presidency. Fiorina kicked off the debate with standard issue bragging about being "blessed" and not being a "political insider" before pivoting to an embarrassing bit of naked pandering. "And unlike another woman in this race, I actually love spending time with my husband," she crowed. It is also worth noting that this can also be said of all her Republican competitors, as well. Not a one of them enjoys spending time with his husband. If only this contest really were for Wife of the Year! She'd have it in the bag. Alas, the contest is not who loves her hubby the most. Chris Matthews was clearly disgusted by Fiorina's attempt to drag something as deeply personal as someone's marriage into all this, and asked Fiorina, after the debate, if she believes the Clintons have a "real marriage." Fiorina, who is clearly committed to making this best-wife-ever strategy into a real campaign move categorically refused to answer, even when Matthews asked her repeatedly to answer the question.
"They’ve been married for a long time," Fiorina kept repeating with a smirk, clearly mistaking smarminess for cleverness. Then, in a move that really drives home Fiorina's magical combination of a massive ego and an utter lack of self-awareness, she complained that Matthews wasn't asking about the "many other things," said in a sing-song voice, that people supposedly want to talk about. At what point, in a magical moment, she brought up something that may be even less relevant than how often the Clintons bang boots, which is the endless number of bizarre conspiracy theories of criminal behavior Republicans keep generating, undeterred by the fact that you need evidence in order to prosecute such things. This big of self-righteous posturing is silly, of course, because, as Matthews pointed out, she brought this up herself. Why isn't even much of a mystery. It's naked pandering to the prurient interest that right wingers have had in the Clintons, their marriage, and their sex lives since Bill first stepped on the national stage. Or even longer than that, as.@CarlyFiorina and @hardball_chris get into a testy exchange over @HillaryClinton. https://t.co/NsOHREczLI
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) January 15, 2016
The search for alien life: How close we really are to solving one of the universe’s great mysteries
Physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked the question "Where are they?" to express his surprise over the absence of any signs for the existence of other intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. Although many potential resolutions to this so-called “Fermi paradox” have been suggested over the years, there is still no consensus on which one, if any, is correct. The question of whether we are alone in the Milky Way (or in the universe at large) remains, however, one of the most intriguing questions in science in general, and in astronomy in particular. Given the enormous uncertainties involved with the emergence, evolution,and survivability of any extrasolar life (if it exists), we shall attempt to briefly identify the most generic, remotely-detectable signatures of alien life (both simple and intelligent), and to examine the expected effectiveness of various search strategies. This topic has become particularly timely, because observations (primarily with the Kepler space telescope) have shown that the Milky Way contains no fewer than a billion Earth-size planets orbiting Sun-like (or smaller) stars in the “Goldilocks” region that allows for liquid water to exist on the planet’s surface (the so-called habitable zone). Furthermore, the search for extraterrestrialintelligent life has recently received a significant boost in the form of “Breakthrough Listen”—a $100-million decade-long project aimed at searching for non-natural transmissions in the electromagnetic bandwidth from 100 megahertz to 50 gigahertz. Simple life appeared on Earth almost as soon as the planet cooled sufficiently to support water-based organisms. To be detectable from a distance, however, life has to evolve to the point where it dominates the planetary surface chemistry and has significantly changed the atmosphere, creating chemical “biosignatures” that can in principle be detected remotely. For instance, Earth itself would probably not have been detected as a life-bearing planet during the first two billion years of its existence. Concerning the evolution of intelligent life, the main open questions include: —What are the geochemical constraints on the evolution of complex life? —What are the timescales that those constraints dictate? —Are there evolutionary "filters" or bottlenecks that make it extremely hard to make the transition to intelligence? On Earth, for example, it took about three billion years for the most basic multi-cellular life forms to appear. It took four and a half billion years (and a series of contingencies such as plate tectonics and asteroid impacts) to reach even the most rudimentary capability of interstellar communication (That is, via radio reception and transmission). These considerations demonstrate that it is important to first establish whether planetary systems that are older than the solar system are common in the Milky Way. The current age of the solar system is about half that of the our galaxy's disk and also half of the sun’s predicted lifetime. We therefore expect that roughly one half of the stars in our galactic disk are older than the sun. A recent study that examined planet formation history concluded that the solar system formed close to the median epoch for giant planet formation, and that about 80 percent of currently existing Earth-like planets may already had been formed (pdf) at the time of Earth’s formation. This gives us great leverage for probing extrasolar intelligent life. Which detectable biosignature may be considered the most reliable for the existence of simple life (on a sufficiently old, rocky planet, in the habitable zone)? Even though no single biosignature would be absolutely compelling, an atmosphere that is very rich in oxygen (say 20 percent or more) would probably be the most promising target initially. Wheras non-biological processes (such as the splitting of carbon dioxide by intense ultraviolet radiation) can produce oxygen in a planetary atmosphere, only under rare circumstances would these create such high levels of enrichment. Only in combination with other potential biosignatures, however, such as methane, would the credibility of a life-based origin for the oxygen be significantly strengthened. Consequently, an excellent first step in the quest for signatures of simple extrasolar life in the relatively near future would be to: search for oxygen, but try to back it up with other biosignatures. This can (in principle) be achieved with large, ground-based arrays of relatively low-cost flux collector telescopes (such as a next-generation European Extremely Large Telescope; with a collecting area the size of a few football fields), if these are equipped with very-high-dispersion spectrographs. The oxygen lines from the exoplanet’s spectrum would be slightly Doppler-shifted relative to oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere, making it relatively straightforward (although definitely not easy) to detect them. The more difficult detection of methane in the infrared would have to follow. 
A NEW ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPT DRAWING OF ESO’S PLANNED EUROPEAN EXTREMELY LARGE TELESCOPE (E-ELT) SHOWS THE TELESCOPE AT WORK, WITH ITS DOME OPEN AND ITS RECORD-SETTING 42-METRE PRIMARY MIRROR POINTED TO THE SKY. CREDIT: ESO/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, CC BY 4.0What would be the requirements from a space mission? We would want to be able to at least place a meaningful constraint on the rarity of extrasolar life, if such a mission happens to not detect any biosignatures. Simulations show that in the case of non-detection, to be able to make a statement such as: “remotely detectable life occurs in less than about 10 percent of Earth-like planets around sun-like stars,” would require the ability to image and characterize the atmospheres of at least three-dozen or so exoEarths. Such a yield, in turn, would necessitate a space telescope aperture exceeding about 8.5 meters in diameter. The proposed Habitable-Exoplanet Imaging Mission (HabEx), under discussion for the next decadal survey, would have to be designed at the upper limit of its currently conceived aperture to meet this particular requirement. The more ambitious nine- to 12-meter Large UV/Optical/IR (LUVOIR) type space telescope such as the proposed High Definition Space Telescope would be a natural mission candidate for the 2030s. One would ideally like to go beyond biosignatures and seek the clearest sign of an alien technological civilization. This could be the unambiguous detection of an intelligent, non-natural signal, most notably via radio transmission, the aim of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program. Yet there is a distinct possibility that radio communication might be considered archaic to an advanced life form. Its use might have been short-lived in most civilizations, and hence rare over large volumes of the universe. What might then be a generic signature? Energy consumption is a hallmark of an advanced civilization that appears to be virtually impossible to conceal. The two most plausible, long-term energy sources available to an advanced technology are through commanding stellar luminosity with a construction known as a “Dyson sphere”, possibly including harvesting the starlight from many stars, not just one, or even from an entire galaxy; the other is by controlled fusion of hydrogen into heavier nuclei. In both cases, waste heat would be an inevitable outcome, producing a detectable mid-infrared (MIR) signature. Other potential signatures of advanced civilizations that have also been suggested, such as various forms of atmospheric industrial pollution, or short-lived radioactive products, are necessarily transitory. (Basically those aliens either clean up their act ordestroy themselves). Infrared emission, on the other hand, seems almost unavoidable. A recent large survey by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite did identify five red spiral galaxies whose combination of high MIR and low near-ultraviolet luminosities are inconsistent with simple expectations from high rates of star formation. A conventional explanation for these observations, such as the presence of large amounts of internal dust, has not been ruled out, however. Such peculiar objects deserve follow-up observations before we explore whether they might represent the signatures of galaxy-dominating species. 
AN ILLUSTRATION OF AN ENERGY-TRAPPING DYSON RING AROUND A STAR, CONSTRUCTED BY AN ADVANCED CIVILIZATION. A DYSON SPHERE WOULD ENCLOSE THE ENTIRE STAR. CREDIT: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/VEDEXENT, CC BY 2.5More pessimistically, biologically-based intelligence may constitute only a very brief phase in the evolution of complexity, followed by what futurists have dubbed the “singularity”—the dominance of artificial, inorganic intelligence. If this is indeed the case, most advanced species are likely not to be found on a planet's surface (where gravity is helpful for the emergence of biological life, but is otherwise a liability). But they probably must still be near a fuel supply, namely a star, because of energy considerations. Even if such intelligent machines were to transmit a signal, it would probably be unrecognizable and non-decodable to our relatively primitive organic brains. This could perhaps explain the Fermi paradox. If this scenario holds true, our chances of detecting simple life via biosignatures may be far greater than those of discovering intelligent ET’s. Still, the ultimate goal of detecting the signature of an advanced intelligence, whether biological or nonbiological, remains the most intriguing option. All power to proposed projects for the 2020s such as Japan's Space Infrared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA) and NASA’s Far Infrared Surveyor. The key point is that for the first time in human history, we are only two or three decades away from being able to actually answer the “Are we alone?” question. Because the answer may affect nothing less than our last claim for being special in the cosmos, its importance cannot be overemphasized. In any case, echoing what Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison said at the end of their seminal 1960 Nature article on searching for extraterrestrials (pdf), we shall never know unless we search!
“Minority Report” is coming true: We now have threat scores to match our credit scores
Police have found a new way to legally incorporate surveillance and profiling into everyday life. Just when you thought we were making progress raising awareness surrounding police brutality, we have something new to contend with. The Police Threat Score isn't calculated by a racist police officer or a barrel-rolling cop who thinks he's on a TV drama; it's a computer algorithm that steals your data and calculates your likelihood of risk and threat for the fuzz. Beware is the new stats-bank that helps officers analyze "billions of data points, including arrest reports, property records, commercial databases, deep Web searches and...social-media postings" to ultimately come up with a score that indicates a person's potential for violence, according to a Washington Post story. No word yet on whether this meta data includes photos and facial recognition software. For example would an ordinary person, yet to commit a crime, be flagged when seen wearing a hoodie in a gated Florida community? The company tries to paint itself as a savior to first responders, claiming they want to help them "understand the nature of the environment they may encounter during the window of a 911 event." Think of it like someone pulling your credit score when you apply for a job. Except, in this instance you never applied for the job and they're pulling your credit score anyway because they knew you might apply. It's that level of creepiness. Remember the 2002 Tom Cruise movie Minority Report? It's set in 2054, a futuristic world where the "pre-crime" unit arrests people based on a group of psychics who can see crimes before they happen. Only, it's 2016 and we're not using psychics, we're using computers that mine data. According to the Post piece, law enforcement in Oregon are under federal investigation for using software to monitor Black Lives Matter hashtags after uprisings in Baltimore and Ferguson. How is this new software any different? In fact, this is the same kind of technology the NSA has been using since 9/11 to monitor online activities of suspected terrorists—they're just bringing it down to the local level. According to FatalEncounters.org, a site that tracks deaths by cop, there were only 14 days in 2015 in which a law enforcement officer did not kill someone. So, leaving judgment up to the individual hasn't been all that effective in policing. But is letting a machine do it any better? Using these factors to calculate a color-coded threat level doesn't seem entirely practical. Suppose a person doesn't use social media or own a house but was once arrested when he was 17 for possession of marijuana. The absence of data might lend itself to a high threat level. The same can be said for online meta data that might filter in extracurricular interests. Could a person who is interested in kinky activity in the bedroom be tagged as having a tendency toward violence? The Fresno, Calif. police department is taking on the daunting task of being the first to test the software in the field. Understandably, the city council and citizens voiced their skepticism at a meeting. "One council member referred to a local media report saying that a woman’s threat level was elevated because she was tweeting about a card game titled 'Rage,' which could be a keyword in Beware’s assessment of social media," the Post reported. While you might now be rethinking playing that Mafia game on Facebook, it isn't just your personal name that can raise a flag. Fresno Councilman Clinton Olivier, a libertarian-leaning Republican, asked for his name to be run through the system. He came up as a "green" which indicates he's safe. When they ran his address, however, it popped up as "yellow" meaning the officer should beware and be prepared for a potentially dangerous situation. How could this be? Well, the councilman didn't always live in this house; someone else lived there before him and that person was likely responsible for raising the threat score. Think what a disastrous situation that could be. A mother of a toddler could move into a new home with her family, not knowing that the house was once the location of an abusive patriarch. The American Medical Association has calculated that as many as 1 in 3 women will be impacted by domestic violence in their lifetimes, so it isn't an unreasonable hypothetical. One day the child eats one of those detergent pods and suddenly the toddler isn't breathing. Hysterial, the mother calls 911, screaming. She can't articulate what has happened, only that her baby is hurt. Dispatch sends an ambulance, but the address is flagged as "red" for its prior decade of domestic violence calls. First responders don't know someone new has moved in. The woman is giving CPR while her husband waits at the door for the ambulance. What happens when the police arrive? It's a scenario that can be applied to just about any family and any situation. Moving into an apartment that previously was a marijuana grow-house; buying a house that once belonged to a woman who shot her husband when she found him with his mistress in the pool. Domestic violence calls are among the most dangerous for police officers. Giving police additional suspicion that may not be entirely accurate probably won't reduce the incidents of of accidental shootings or police brutality. The worst part, however, is that none of these questions and concerns can be answered, because Intrado, the company that makes Beware, doesn't reveal how its algorithm works. Chances are slim that they ever will, since it would also be revealed to its competitors. There's no way of knowing the accuracy level of the data set given in the search. Police are given red, yellow or green to help them make a life-changing or life-ending decision. It seems a little primitive, not to mention intrusive. "It is deeply disturbing that local law enforcement agencies are unleashing the sophisticated tools of a surveillance state on the public with little, if any, oversight or accountability," Ryan Kiesel of the Oklahoma ACLU told me. "We are in the middle of a consequential moment in which the government is unilaterally changing the power dynamic between themselves and the people they serve. If we are going to preserve the fundamental right of privacy, it is imperative that we demand these decisions are made as the result of a transparent and informed public debate." While mass shootings are on the rise, violent crime and homicides have fallen to historic lows. You wouldn't know that watching the evening news, however. Is now really the time to increase the chances of violent actions at the hands of the police, all while intruding on our civil liberties under the guise of safety?
Police have found a new way to legally incorporate surveillance and profiling into everyday life. Just when you thought we were making progress raising awareness surrounding police brutality, we have something new to contend with. The Police Threat Score isn't calculated by a racist police officer or a barrel-rolling cop who thinks he's on a TV drama; it's a computer algorithm that steals your data and calculates your likelihood of risk and threat for the fuzz. Beware is the new stats-bank that helps officers analyze "billions of data points, including arrest reports, property records, commercial databases, deep Web searches and...social-media postings" to ultimately come up with a score that indicates a person's potential for violence, according to a Washington Post story. No word yet on whether this meta data includes photos and facial recognition software. For example would an ordinary person, yet to commit a crime, be flagged when seen wearing a hoodie in a gated Florida community? The company tries to paint itself as a savior to first responders, claiming they want to help them "understand the nature of the environment they may encounter during the window of a 911 event." Think of it like someone pulling your credit score when you apply for a job. Except, in this instance you never applied for the job and they're pulling your credit score anyway because they knew you might apply. It's that level of creepiness. Remember the 2002 Tom Cruise movie Minority Report? It's set in 2054, a futuristic world where the "pre-crime" unit arrests people based on a group of psychics who can see crimes before they happen. Only, it's 2016 and we're not using psychics, we're using computers that mine data. According to the Post piece, law enforcement in Oregon are under federal investigation for using software to monitor Black Lives Matter hashtags after uprisings in Baltimore and Ferguson. How is this new software any different? In fact, this is the same kind of technology the NSA has been using since 9/11 to monitor online activities of suspected terrorists—they're just bringing it down to the local level. According to FatalEncounters.org, a site that tracks deaths by cop, there were only 14 days in 2015 in which a law enforcement officer did not kill someone. So, leaving judgment up to the individual hasn't been all that effective in policing. But is letting a machine do it any better? Using these factors to calculate a color-coded threat level doesn't seem entirely practical. Suppose a person doesn't use social media or own a house but was once arrested when he was 17 for possession of marijuana. The absence of data might lend itself to a high threat level. The same can be said for online meta data that might filter in extracurricular interests. Could a person who is interested in kinky activity in the bedroom be tagged as having a tendency toward violence? The Fresno, Calif. police department is taking on the daunting task of being the first to test the software in the field. Understandably, the city council and citizens voiced their skepticism at a meeting. "One council member referred to a local media report saying that a woman’s threat level was elevated because she was tweeting about a card game titled 'Rage,' which could be a keyword in Beware’s assessment of social media," the Post reported. While you might now be rethinking playing that Mafia game on Facebook, it isn't just your personal name that can raise a flag. Fresno Councilman Clinton Olivier, a libertarian-leaning Republican, asked for his name to be run through the system. He came up as a "green" which indicates he's safe. When they ran his address, however, it popped up as "yellow" meaning the officer should beware and be prepared for a potentially dangerous situation. How could this be? Well, the councilman didn't always live in this house; someone else lived there before him and that person was likely responsible for raising the threat score. Think what a disastrous situation that could be. A mother of a toddler could move into a new home with her family, not knowing that the house was once the location of an abusive patriarch. The American Medical Association has calculated that as many as 1 in 3 women will be impacted by domestic violence in their lifetimes, so it isn't an unreasonable hypothetical. One day the child eats one of those detergent pods and suddenly the toddler isn't breathing. Hysterial, the mother calls 911, screaming. She can't articulate what has happened, only that her baby is hurt. Dispatch sends an ambulance, but the address is flagged as "red" for its prior decade of domestic violence calls. First responders don't know someone new has moved in. The woman is giving CPR while her husband waits at the door for the ambulance. What happens when the police arrive? It's a scenario that can be applied to just about any family and any situation. Moving into an apartment that previously was a marijuana grow-house; buying a house that once belonged to a woman who shot her husband when she found him with his mistress in the pool. Domestic violence calls are among the most dangerous for police officers. Giving police additional suspicion that may not be entirely accurate probably won't reduce the incidents of of accidental shootings or police brutality. The worst part, however, is that none of these questions and concerns can be answered, because Intrado, the company that makes Beware, doesn't reveal how its algorithm works. Chances are slim that they ever will, since it would also be revealed to its competitors. There's no way of knowing the accuracy level of the data set given in the search. Police are given red, yellow or green to help them make a life-changing or life-ending decision. It seems a little primitive, not to mention intrusive. "It is deeply disturbing that local law enforcement agencies are unleashing the sophisticated tools of a surveillance state on the public with little, if any, oversight or accountability," Ryan Kiesel of the Oklahoma ACLU told me. "We are in the middle of a consequential moment in which the government is unilaterally changing the power dynamic between themselves and the people they serve. If we are going to preserve the fundamental right of privacy, it is imperative that we demand these decisions are made as the result of a transparent and informed public debate." While mass shootings are on the rise, violent crime and homicides have fallen to historic lows. You wouldn't know that watching the evening news, however. Is now really the time to increase the chances of violent actions at the hands of the police, all while intruding on our civil liberties under the guise of safety?
The Pentagon is out of ideas: America’s ISIS strategy is doomed from the start
Amid the distractions of the holiday season, the New York Times revealed that the Obama administration is considering a Pentagon proposal to create a “new” and “enduring” system of military bases around the Middle East. Though this is being presented as a response to the rise of the Islamic State and other militant groups, there's remarkably little that’s new about the Pentagon plan. For more than 36 years, the U.S. military has been building an unprecedented constellation of bases that stretches from Southern Europe and the Middle East to Africa and Southwest Asia. The record of these bases is disastrous. They have cost tens of billions of dollars and provided support for a long list of undemocratic host regimes, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and Djibouti. They have enabled a series of U.S. wars and military interventions, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which have helped make the Greater Middle East a cauldron of sectarian-tinged power struggles, failed states, and humanitarian catastrophe. And the bases have fueled radicalism, anti-Americanism, and the growth of the very terrorist organizations now targeted by the supposedly new strategy. If there is much of anything new about the plan, it’s the public acknowledgement of what some (including
TomDispatch
) have long suspected: despite years of denials about the existence of any “permanent bases” in the Greater Middle East or desire for the same, the military intends to maintain a collection of bases in the region for decades, if not generations, to come. Thirty-Six Years of Base Building According to the
Times
, the Pentagon wants to build up a string of bases, the largest of which would permanently host 500 to 5,000 U.S. personnel. The system would include four "hubs" -- existing bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Djibouti, and Spain -- and smaller "spokes" in locations like Niger and Cameroon. These bases would, in turn, feature Special Operations forces ready to move into action quickly for what Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has called “unilateral crisis response” anywhere in the Greater Middle East or Africa. According to unnamed Pentagon officials quoted by theTimes, this proposed expansion would cost a mere pittance, just "several million dollars a year." Far from new, however, this strategy predates both the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. In fact, it goes back to 1980 and the Carter Doctrine. That was the moment when President Jimmy Carter first asserted that the United States would secure Middle Eastern oil and natural gas by “any means necessary, including military force.” Designed to prevent Soviet intervention in the Persian Gulf, the Pentagon build-up under Presidents Carter and Ronald Reagan included the creation of installations in Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. During the first Gulf War of 1991, the Pentagon deployed hundreds of thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries. After that war, despite the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the U.S. military didn't go home. Thousands of U.S. troops and a significantly expanded base infrastructure remained in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Bahrain became home to the Navy’s Fifth Fleet. The Pentagon built large air installations in Qatar and expanded operations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman. Following the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon spent tens of billions of dollars building and expanding yet more bases. At the height of those U.S.-led wars, there were more than 1,000 installations, large and small, in Afghanistan and Iraq alone. Despite the closing of most U.S. bases in the two countries, the Pentagon still has access to at least nine major bases in Afghanistan through 2024. After leaving Iraq in 2011, the military returned in 2014 to reoccupy at least six installations. Across the Persian Gulf today, there are still U.S. bases in every country save Iran and Yemen. Even in Saudi Arabia, where widespread anger at the U.S. presence led to an official withdrawal in 2003, there are still small U.S. military contingents and a secret drone base. There are secret bases in Israel, four installations in Egypt, and at least one in Jordan near the Iraqi border.Turkey hosts 17 bases, according to the Pentagon. In the wider region, the military has operated drones from at least five bases in Pakistan in recent years and there are nine new installations in Bulgaria and Romania, along with a Clinton administration-era base still operating in Kosovo. In Africa, Djibouti’s Camp Lemonnier, just miles across the Red Sea from the Arabian Peninsula, has expanded dramatically since U.S. forces moved in after 2001. There are now upwards of 4,000 troops on the 600-acre base. Elsewhere, the military has quietly built a collection of small bases and sites for drones, surveillance flights, and Special Operations forces from Ethiopia and Kenya to Burkina Faso and Senegal. Large bases in Spain and Italysupport what are now thousands of U.S. troops regularly deploying to Africa. A Disastrous Record After 36 years, the results of this vast base build-up have been, to put it mildly, counterproductive. As Saudi Arabia illustrates, U.S. bases have often helped generate the radical militancy that they are now being designed to defeat. The presence of U.S. bases and troops in Muslim holy lands was, in fact, a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and part of Osama bin Laden’s professed motivation for the 9/11 attacks. Across the Middle East, there’s a correlation between a U.S. basing presence and al-Qaeda’s recruitment success. According to former West Point professor Bradley Bowman, U.S. bases and troops in the Middle East have been a “major catalyst for anti-Americanism and radicalization” since a suicide bomber killed 241 Marines in Lebanon in 1983. In Africa, a growing U.S. base and troop presence has “backfired,” serving as a boon for insurgents, according to research published by the Army’s
Military Review
and the Oxford Research Group. A recent U.N. report suggests that the U.S. air campaign against IS has led foreign militants to join the movement on “an unprecedented scale.” Part of the anti-American anger that such bases stoke comes from the support they offer to repressive, undemocratic hosts. For example, the Obama administration offered only tepid criticism of the Bahraini government, crucial for U.S. naval basing, in 2011 when its leaders violently cracked down on pro-democracy protesters with the help of troops from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Elsewhere, U.S. bases offer legitimacy to hosts the Economist Democracy Index considers “authoritarian regimes,” effectively helping to block the spread of democracy in countries including Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Low-Balling The Pentagon’s basing strategy has not only been counterproductive in encouraging people to take up arms against the United States and its allies, it has also been extraordinarily expensive. Military bases across the Greater Middle East cost the United States tens of billions of dollars every year, as part of an estimated $150 billion in annual spending to maintain bases and troops abroad. Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti alone has an annual rent of $70 million and at least $1.4 billion in ongoing expansion costs. With the Pentagon now proposing an enlarged basing structure of hubs and spokes from Burkina Faso to Afghanistan, cost estimates reported in the New York Times in the “low millions” are laughable, if not intentionally misleading. (One hopes the Government Accountability Office is already investigating the true costs.) The only plausible explanation for such low-ball figures is that officials are taking for granted -- and thus excluding from their estimates -- the continuation of present wartime funding levels for those bases. In reality, further entrenching the Pentagon’s base infrastructure in the region will commit U.S. taxpayers to billions more in annual construction, maintenance, and personnel costs (while civilian infrastructure in the U.S. continues to be underfunded and neglected). The idea that the military needs any additional money to bring, as the
Times
put it, "an ad hoc series of existing bases into one coherent system" should shock American taxpayers. After all, the Pentagon has already spent so many billions on them. If military planners haven't linked these bases into a coherent system by now, what exactly have they been doing? In fact, the Pentagon is undoubtedly resorting to an all-too-familiar funding strategy -- using low-ball cost estimates to secure more cash from Congress on a commit-now, pay-the-true-costs-later basis. Experience shows that once the military gets such new budget lines, costs and bases tend to expand, often quite dramatically. Especially in places like Africa that have had a relatively small U.S. presence until now, the Pentagon plan is a template for unchecked growth. As Nick Turse has shown at TomDispatch, the military has already built up “more than 60 outposts and access points.... in at least 34 countries” across the continent while insisting for years that it had only one base in Africa, Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. With Congress finally passing the 2016 federal budget, including billions in increased military spending, the Pentagon’s base plan looks like an opening gambit in a bid to get even more money in fiscal year 2017. Perpetuating Failure Above all, the base structure the Pentagon has built since 1980 has enabled military interventions and wars of choice in 13 countries in the Greater Middle East. In the absence of a superpower competitor, these bases made each military action -- worst of all the disastrous invasion of Iraq -- all too easy to contemplate, launch, and carry out. Today, it seems beyond irony that the target of the Pentagon’s “new” base strategy is the Islamic State, whose very existence and growth we owe to the Iraq War and the chaos it created. If the White House and Congress approve the Pentagon’s plan and the military succeeds in further entrenching and expanding its bases in the region, we need only ask: What violence will this next round of base expansion bring? Thirty-six years into the U.S. base build-up in the Greater Middle East, military force has failed as a strategy for controlling the region, no less defeating terrorist organizations. Sadly, this infrastructure of war has been in place for so long and is now so taken for granted that most Americans seldom think about it. Members of Congress rarely question the usefulness of the bases or the billions they have appropriated to build and maintain them. Journalists, too, almost never report on the subject -- except when news outlets publish material strategically leaked by the Pentagon, as appears to be the case with the “new” base plan highlighted by the New York Times. Expanding the base infrastructure in the Greater Middle East will only perpetuate a militarized foreign policy premised on assumptions about the efficacy of war that should have been discredited long ago. Investing in “enduring” bases rather than diplomatic, political, and humanitarian efforts to reduce conflict across the region is likely to do little more than ensure enduring war.
