Rand Paul: On the Palin Track?

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On May 18, Rand Paul stunned the Republican establishment in the Kentucky senatorial primary by smashing Trey Grayson, the hand-picked choice of Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He was roundly cheered by the tea party activists, whose banner he waves whenever he gets the chance.

Then he immediately came down with an epic case of foot-in-mouth disease. When Robert Siegel of National Public Radio discussed Paul's criticisms of the Americans with Disabilities Act (which Paul sees as an infringement on the rights of businesses), Siegel asked if the same criticism would apply to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. You know - the one that says you can't have "Whites Only" restaurants and drinking fountains.

Now, most of us had regarded that sort of thing as pretty well-settled law. But on Planet Paul, no battle, no matter how ancient or ill-conceived, is ever really over. When Siegel asked if the CRA and the ADA were "just overreaches" by the federal government, Rand replied "Right."

Paul had also insisted in a recent interview with The Louisville Courier-Journal that the right to refuse service to people on the basis of race was a right protected by the First Amendment. See, on Planet Paul, it was the people being set upon by police dogs and blasted by firehoses while demanding basic human dignity who were the real oppressors.

By the end of the week, Paul was reduced to earnestly insisting that he really wasn't going to try to get the Civil Rights Act repealed. Well, that's a relief.

Not to be deterred by that controversy, Paul then went on to take up the cause of another oppressed minority: British Petroleum. You know - the people whose oil spill is killing the entire Gulf of Mexico.

Criticism of BP, and of business in general, Paul said, was "really un-American." We shouldn't be playing the "blame game," Paul said, because "sometimes accidents happen."

For good measure, he included the recent Kentucky mine disaster as one of those things that "just happen," with no one accountable, certainly not the company that owned the mine. This should be a real comfort to the people of the Gulf Coast, not to mention the families of the dead miners and oil rig workers.

See, that's the problem with the whole right-wing agenda. You come to the party for the low taxes and limited government, but then you realize that the deal also includes the government just shrugging and looking the other way if a company discriminates against you, kills or maims you, poisons your air or water, or destroys your livelihood. It's nothing personal, it's just business.

Paul also has another congenital defect of the tea partiers: He's against Big Government, unless Big Government puts money in his personal pocket. According to The Wall street Journal, Paul wants to slash government spending - but not Medicare payments to physicians. The fact that Paul himself is a physician (he's an ophthalmologist who says 50 percent of his patients are on Medicare) is, I'm sure, pure coincidence.

The firestorm finally grew to be too hot for Paul. He canceled an appearance on "Meet the Press," and now he's singing the old familiar tune about how the liberal media have it in for him.

Now, it's entirely possible that Rand Paul will not blow his lead and that he can win this one. We are, after all, talking about a state whose state song contained lyrics about "darkies" until 1986.

But if he doesn't win, there's always another career path he can follow, a path which I like to call "the Palin Track." On the Palin Track, you turn possible victory into crushing defeat for your party by saying one nutty thing after another, get roundly mocked along the way, then go on the lecture circuit, taking a hundred grand an appearance to tell everyone it was a liberal media conspiracy that did you in.

Like Sarah Palin, it looks like Rand Paul is going to be another one of those gifts that just keep on giving. And that was just his first week. What's next? Will Rand Paul compare the government's lawsuit against Goldman Sachs to the Holocaust? Will he start arguing in favor of secession?

Well, we live in hope.

Quote of the Day

Balloon Juice:

"I want a president who breaks down and cries during press conferences. Maybe also one who gets so overwhelmed at times his advisors have to coax him out from under his desk. Fuck this keeping a cool head bullshit. I want someone just as neurotic as me."

Tea Partiers Love the Constitution, Except When They Don't.

Tea Party Hero Rand Paul: "We’re the only country I know of that allows people to come in illegally have a baby and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also."

U.S. Constitution. Amendment 14:

1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Looks like the Civil Rights Act isn't the only thing Rand thinks was wrongly enacted. He doesn't care much for the Constitution, either.

The Real Lessons From Tuesday

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This past Tuesday, a number of states held party primaries or special elections. As usual, pundits and spinmeisters immediately began puffing and pontificating about what it all meant, particularly for the upcoming midterm elections.

The conventional wisdom was that the voters were saying "incumbents are toast." And, of course, the usual gang of idiots is trying to spin the results into a "referendum" on the current administration and a predictor of a massive repudiation of Barack Obama and the Democrats in November.

As to the first claim: There's certainly a lot of discontent, some of it quite noisy, with the current state of politics. But when you look a little closer, there are two races, both in Pennsylvania, thatdemonstrate some equally important forces at work.

Possibly the most watched race in the country was the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, which pitted Rep. Joe Sestak against newly minted Democrat Arlen Specter. Specter, after 30 years in the Senate, got whipped like a rented mule by Sestak. So that must have been a repudiation of all incumbents and all things Washingtonian, right?

Well, maybe. But Sestak is not exactly a Washington outsider. As a Navy rear admiral, he's been in and out of D.C. jobs several times, including a stint at the White House as director for defense policy on the National Security Council under Bill Clinton. And lest we forget, at the time of the primary, he was already a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Most important, though, remember that this was the Democratic primary. Arlen Specter's 2009 defection to the Democratic Party may have briefly created a so-called "veto-proof" majority for Obama and the Democrats, but it was, after all, recent. It certainly wasn't sufficient
to earn the love or loyalty of the Dem rank-and-file in Pennsylvania.

Sestak, for his part, seized on this; one of his more effective campaign ads alleged that the only reason Specter became a Democrat in the first place was because he was facing a primary challenge from right-winger Pat Toomey. "The only job Arlen Specter cares about saving," the ad concluded, "is his." That one drew blood in blue-collar Pennsylvania.

Was Sestak's victory, then, a slap in the face to Obama and to liberals? Well, again - maybe.

True, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden both campaigned for Specter, most likely because they were obliged to do so after helping persuade him to cross the aisle. Clearly, their endorsements didn't help. But when you look at Sestak's record and his positions, he's actually the slightly more liberal of the two candidates. He's pro-choice, pro-gun control and pro-health care reform.

Most important, Sestak, according to recent polls, has already pulled neck-and-neck with Toomey, unlike Specter, who was lagging 7 to 12 points behind (depending on whom you ask).

A more interesting result, to my mind, occurred in Pennsylvania's 12th District, where an actual Republican, Tim Burns, took on an actual Democrat, Mark Critz, to fill the seat of veteran congressman John Murtha, who was ineligible to hold the seat because of being, well, dead.

The Republicans poured over a million dollars into the race, in a district where Obama holds only a 35 percent approval rating. They spent most of it running, not against Mark Critz, but against Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Critz, the guy who actually was running, spent his time talking about local concerns and his own positions. And he ate Burns' lunch. Critz, by the way, was Rep. Murtha's chief of staff, so you can't really call him any kind of "outsider" either.

Just as they did in New York's 23d District last year, the Republicans tried to "nationalize" a local election by pouring money in, then running against national Democratic leaders instead of their actual opponent. It didn't work in 2009, it didn't work in May 2010, and it won't work in November. Fact is, there just aren't enough people who hate Nancy Pelosi to make that a winning strategy.

On the Democratic side, the president and vice president tried to use their national clout to swing a state election, and that didn't work either.

The first real lesson we can take away from Tuesday's -elections is a golden oldie, most famously expressed by the late Tip O'Neill: "All politics is local." The second is, "You've got to run a good campaign." Get out there, talk to the people and connect with them about the things that affect their daily lives.

The politician who forgets that, whether Republican or Democrat, incumbent or newcomer, is headed for a stomping.

We've All Been There, Brother

Parnell Hall sings "Signing In the Waldenbooks" . Can I get an A-MEN?

Demint: Wall Street Reform=Crooked Teeth For Children

No, really. He's serious.

According to this bizarre rant on DiMented's blog, the financial reform bill will make it impossible for American families to get braces for their children, because, he contends, it subjects payment plans for braces to the same regulations that govern "AIG, Freddie Mac and Goldman Sachs."

He provides no logical reason why this should mean you couldn't get such a payment plan, other than some vague idea that "regulating loans is bad". He assumes that regulating loans to protect consumers of those loans will make orthodontists get out of the financing braces business (despite its profitability), but fails to provide a single example of any doctor who says they will. He doesn't even cite a particular regulation that orthos would find so onerous they'd decide to forgo the money.

I mean, I know the guy's a complete whore for the banksters who nearly brought our country's economy down, demanded we bail them out, dined out on the proceeds, and are now fighting tooth and nail for the right to make us go through it all again... but this is the best he can do?

Kagan

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Anytime someone is nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court, it raises serious and important questions.

 These questions are then routinely ignored in favor of ridiculous posturing and idiotic statements.

The recent nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan is no exception, and the hyperbole, hype and hysteria come from both the left and the right.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele led off the clown parade by going after Kagan for quoting a speech by her former boss, legendary Justice Thurgood Marshall. Marshall said, in the speech quoted by Kagan, that the U.S. Constitution, as originally written, was "defective." Considering that the original Constitution regarded people like Marshall (and Steele, for that matter) as property who only counted as three-fifths of a person, one might concede that he had a point. That is, after all, why we have an amendment process.

Steele, however, thought this was cause for suspicion. He sent out a press release saying that senators needed to raise "serious and tough" questions about Kagan's philosophy as a result of the statement. Which leads us to ask questions of our own, such as: When did Michael Steele become such a fan of constitutional provisions that allowed slavery?

Then there were the questions raised about Kagan's lack of judicial experience. It is true, she has never occupied the bench. But then again, neither did some famous justices, including former Chief Justice (and conservative hero) William Rehnquist and the above-referenced Marshall. But ranking Republican Judiciary Committee member Jeff Sessions called Kagan's lack of bench time "troubling."

He didn't see it as a problem, however, for Bush crony Harriet Miers when she was being -considered for SCOTUS. "It is not necessary that she have previous experience as a judge in order to serve on the Supreme Court," Sessions said of Miers.

Speaking of Miers, one of the sillier slams on Kagan came from liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald not only compared Kagan to Miers, but he also insisted that Kagan - the former law clerk to Thurgood Marshall, a woman who worked for Michael Dukakis' campaign, a woman who, along with other law school deans, sent a blistering letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee blasting George Dubbya Bush's expansive view of executive power - would actually move the court to the right. This is, to say the least, overstating matters. It is, to say the most, insane.

But for truly epic silliness, one can always reliably turn to the wingnuts over at The National Review Online. NRO's Ed Whelan slammed Kagan for being, of all things, a bad driver. Kagan, wrote Whelan, is "such a product of New York City that she did not learn to drive until her late 20s. According to her friend John Q. Barrett, a law professor at St. John's University, it is a skill she has not yet mastered."

Perhaps from now on, we can expect the Senate Judiciary Committee to troop out to the parking lot to see if SCOTUS nominees can show their red-blooded American-ness by demonstrating their mastery of the three-point turn.

But, you may say, what do you, Dusty Rhoades, think about Kagan? Well, I've looked her over about as well as you can by reading, and the word from me is: Meh.

OK, she's made the right enemies (see above), and I don't think she's going to turn into Clarence Thomas Jr., as some of my liberal brethren seem to fear. But I don't think she's going to be a real catalyst for change on the court, either.

The thing I've heard most about her is that she's a "consensus builder." That's fine, and it's probably why Obama likes her. But it's really more the talent one would look for in the chief justice, and unless Chief Justice Roberts has a sudden decline in health or gets abducted by aliens, that's not happening.

What the court needs now is a solid and clear liberal voice to balance the increasingly conservative and authoritarian bent it's taken the past few years. I'm always willing to be surprised, but I don't see Kagan doing that. She will almost certainly be confirmed, after the usual confirmation showboating (which Kagan herself once called "a vapid and hollow charade").

I'm not going to rend my garment and sit in the ashes if she does. But President Obama could have done better.

The World's Dumbest Terrorists

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I've got to tell you, folks, terrorist attacks ain't what they used to be. I remember the days when Al-Qaeda and their fellow travelers in the Islamic lunatic fringe were putting together complex, coordinated, multiple-target attacks with highly trained, well-drilled operatives like Mohammed Atta. Remember him? I mean, the dude even looked scary. And they brought down entire skyscrapers and put holes in the nerve center of America's military command.

And now? We've got a dumb teenager carrying around explosives in his undershorts that he doesn't know how to set off. In the latest botched effort, we've got a guy who looks like a cell-phone salesman loading up an SUV with fertilizer and propane tanks and trying to detonate it with firecrackers.

Except the fertilizer he used wasn't the kind that explodes, anyone who watches the show "Mythbusters" knows how hard it is to blow up a propane tank, and this doofus walked off and left his "cleverly disguised" bomb with the motor running, the hazard lights blinking and the keys in it - on a key ring that included his freakin' house key.

I'm not trying to minimize the threat from terrorism. Even an idiot can put together an attack that kills people, and one innocent person dead is too many. But let's be real: We are not looking at the first-string here, people, and haven't been since that "shoe bomber" guy.

In a sane world, these guys would be the lead stories on one of those "World's Dumbest Criminals" shows. But this is not, as we know, a sane world, especially where there are people whose political fortunes, and whose TV ratings, depend on keeping everyone in a constant state of panic.

Just like clockwork, the usual gang of hysterics began shrieking about how we're all doomed, doomed I tell you. And why? Because not only did the cops not whisk Faisal Shahzad off to Gitmo for a lengthy waterboarding, he was - horror of horrors - read his Miranda rights (as if, after 11 years in the U.S., he'd never seen a TV cop show and didn't know them already).

Honorable John McCain worried that reading Shahzad his Miranda rights would be a "serious mistake," while Rep. Peter King fretted, "I know he's an American citizen, but still," thus invoking the well-known "but still" exception to the Constitution. (King, it should be noted, was a staunch supporter of the bomb-happy Irish Republican Army, so I guess he doesn't mind terrorists if they speak with a charming brogue.)

Only problem with all this hand-wringing is that, even after being informed of his right to remain silent and without benefit of torture, Shahzad has been talking to the FBI since he got yanked off a Dubai-bound plane. He's giving up people right and left. Seven co-conspirators have already been arrested in Pakistan, and it looks like there are more to come.

Ah, the panic-mongers say, but Shahzad was allowed to get on a plane. He almost got away. Doesn't this mean the Obama administration has botched the War on Terror?

Really? Well if "almost" is going to count, then someone needs to call up the coach of Butler University. Because, you know, they almost beat Duke, and by wingnut logic, that makes them National Champions.

But an "almost" attack by someone who "almost" got away is apparently enough for the wingnuts' best friend, Joe "Man O' God" Lieberman, to propose new legislation to allow the State Department to, without a hearing, revoke the citizenship of American citizens suspected of terrorism.

Yes, you heard that right. Holy Joe wants to give Hillary Clinton the right to revoke people's citizenship, without a hearing, to make it easier for Evil Obama's Tyrannical Government to lock them up. You'd think the tea partiers would be unhappy about this, but they apparently can only get really mad if you cut their taxes or try to get everyone health care.

Hey, here's a wild idea: How about we fight terrorism by not letting fear drive us into giving up our values and creating a society where the government can, with the stroke of a pen, declare you a noncitizen without a trial, all because some disgruntled loser failed to set off a bomb?

Why don't we fight terrorism by not being terrified all the time?

He Who Would Speak the Truth Should Keep One Foot in the Stirrup

Elena Kagan: Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings 'Vapid and Hollow Charade'

If potential Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan ever makes it to the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation hearings, she might have to explain comments she once made that modern day confirmation hearings have become a "vapid and hollow charade."

***
In 1995, after spending time as a staff lawyer on the judiciary committee during the nomination of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Kagan made clear her frustrations: "When the Senate ceases to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues, the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce."


I confess, I really haven't been following the guesswork and crystal-ball gazing over who Stephens' replacement is going to be on the SCOTUS. I rarely do, actually, until there's a nominee.

But this Kagan lady just made my short list of who I'd like to see get the nod. The fact is, the confirmation process has indeed become a farce, a shameful exhibition of grandstanding and bloviation by Senators on both sides of the aisle, a tale told by a hundred idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Of course, making this truthful observation has probably doomed Kagan's chances, more's the pity.

They Have Not Thought This Through.

Lieberman's Citizenship-Revoking Law Slammed As 'Draconian'

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) has yet to formally introduce legislation that would strip Americans involved in terrorism of their citizenship and already legal experts, including a former Bush administration official, are calling it "draconian."

The Connecticut Independent is planning to unveil on Thursday a proposal that will supposedly free up law enforcement in their efforts to try terrorist suspects, by giving the State Department the right to revoke the citizenship of those suspects who are American.

Let me get this straight. Holy Joe and his buddies in Greater Wingnuttistan want to give Hillary Clinton the right to revoke people's citizenship, without a hearing and with the stroke of a pen, to make it easier for the Evil Obama's Tyrannical Government to lock them up.

We are truly through the looking glass, y'all.

Look How Wrong You Can Be

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I’m writing the first draft of this column, as I often do, using a Web-based tool called Google Documents, which is a simplified word processor built into a website.

The advantage of Google Docs is that, using your password, you can access and edit your document from any computer. When the column is done, I’m going to e-mail it to Steve Bouser. Then, when it comes out on Sunday, the first time I read it will be on The Pilot website.

I’m mentioning all of this to show the pervasive effect the Internet has on my life and the lives of others. It’s hard to believe that, as recently as 15 years ago, a famous and respected scientist was predicting that the Internet was going to fail.

His name was Clifford Stoll, and he was no crackpot technophobe. He was a Ph.D. scientist who’d helped track down a KGB computer hacker who was stealing secrets from American computers. Yet Stoll wrote a book in 1995 called “Silicon Snake Oil,” in which he confidently predicted: “The truth is, no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher, and no computer network will change the way government works.”

Well, as Rod Stewart once sang, “Look how wrong you can be.”

Newspapers are scrambling to survive in a world where people get their news from the ’net, students go to college online, while political campaigns raise millions and communicate with supporters via the World Wide Web.

Reading the account of Stoll’s blown prophecy reminded me of how sometimes even very bright people can be dead wrong when ­trying to predict the future. Like a computer magazine editor named Erik Sandberg-Diment who, back in 1985, predicted that no one would want a portable computer. “Somehow,” he wrote, “the microcomputer industry has assumed that everyone would love to have a ­keyboard grafted on as an extension of their fingers. It just is not so.”

Now people have laptops, netbooks, iPhones, smartphones, iPads, etc. etc. “grafted to their fingers,” and the dumbest of them has more computing power than you could buy in 1985.

It’s not just computer geeks who can be very experienced, very confident and very wrong when they try to play Nostradamus. The CEO of a major record company once told a band’s manager that the band had “no future in show business,” and that “guitar music is on its way out.” The year was 1962, and the band was the Beatles. You may have heard of them.

Political predictions are a cavalcade of errors that seem laughable in hindsight. In January 2007, The Wall Street Journal wrote that Barack Obama was “unelectable” because of his name and his race.

In 2008, Time Magazine reporter Mark Halperin predicted that an ad talking about John McCain’s gaffe in which he forgot how many houses he owned would actually “end up being one of the worst moments in the entire campaign for one of the candidates — but it’s Barack Obama.” Halperin said bringing up the gaffe “opened the door to not just Tony Rezko ... but to bring up Reverend Wright, to bring up his relationship with Bill Ayers.”

As it turned out, Barack Obama was elected by a decisive margin and no one but a few hard-core right-wing dead-enders even remembers who Wright, Rezko or Ayers are.

The good news is that being wrong, even on a massive scale, is no barrier to later success. Halperin’s book about the 2008 ­election is on the best-seller list. The Wall Street Journal still seems to be doing well. The guy who turned the Beatles down later signed the Rolling Stones. Sandberg-Diment’s still writing.

And so is Dr. Stoll, the guy who said the Internet would fail, and who now looks back good-humoredly and says: “Of my many mistakes, flubs, and howlers, few have been as ­public as my 1995 howler. … Now, whenever I think I know what’s ­happening, I temper my thoughts: Might be wrong, Cliff.”

Words to live by — and to remember the next time some pundit or writer confidently predicts who will rise, who will fall and who’ll be on their feet when the smoke clears. As another musical philosopher, Chuck Berry, once put it, “It goes to show you never can tell.”