Marcy Wheeler has two excellent stories up today at her new home which I highly recommend to you if you want to understand Dianne Feinstein's evolving position on FISA and retroactive immunity for the telecoms. We know that, several weeks ago, Feinstein was wholly in support of immunity, having happily voted for it in the Intelligence Committee. During yesterday's floor debate, she offered a couple amendments, both with the goal of putting the warrantless wiretapping program and all questions about it, now and forever, under the authority of the FISA court. In Marcy's first piece, she notes the conservative reaction to Feinstein's amendment asking that the question of immunity be decided by the FISA court instead of the Congress.
A big step forward in the opportunity to finally regulate the air we breathe and the emissions we create in California. Today a US District Court judge threw out a lawsuit by the automakers that challenged the state's ability to regulate greenhouse gases.
Automakers sued the state over the tailpipe standards it approved in 2004, which would force automakers to build cars and light trucks that produce about 30 percent fewer greenhouse gases by 2016 [...]
In its lawsuit against the state, the auto industry argued that California did not have the authority to set its own standards because it would force manufacturers to produce vehicles using too many different fuel efficiency standards.
But Ishii rejected that claim, saying Congress gave California and the EPA the authority to regulate vehicle emissions, even if those rules are more strict than those imposed by the federal government.
This is a big victory. However, the state still needs a waiver from the EPA to allow it to implement the tailpipe emissions law. So far the EPA has dragged its feet, and the state sued them back in November. There is now a voluminous amount of case law arguing in favor of the EPA granting the waiver, so they almost can't deny the state at this point. But the biggest impediment to this now is the Bush Administration trying to subvert their authority through changes in the latest federal energy bill.
The White House has raised last-minute concerns over regulation of automobile emissions and fuel economy that aides said could lead to a presidential veto of the energy bill now before Congress.
The bill, which passed the House and is now pending in the Senate, requires auto makers to meet a fleet average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, but does not specify which government agency should enforce the new rule.
Primary regulation of mileage standards has historically fallen to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an arm of the Transportation Department. But vehicle tailpipe emissions are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, and a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year affirmed the E.P.A.'s authority to regulate emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from passenger vehicles, which basically would mean regulating their fuel use.
The White House, echoing a position taken by auto manufacturers and a coalition of industry groups, is asking that the energy legislation be changed to specify the highway safety administration as the primary enforcer of fuel efficiency standards, with the E.P.A. in only an advisory role. Democratic leaders in Congress rejected that position as a "nonstarter" and indicated their intent to move the bill with the current language intact.
If the EPA is stripped of their authority to enforce mileage standards and regulating emissions, California (and the other states who want to copy their law) would essentially have to restart the process, and may not be able to be granted the waiver. I'm confident that Nancy Pelosi would do nothing to subvert the state's ability to regulate emissions, but Congress must hold firm. This is a dirty trick designed to undermine current law and forestall any meaningful action on climate change.
A famous US patriot once said "These are the times that try men's souls." At the time, he spoke of the events and circumstances surrounding the birth of a nation destined to be defined by the rights and freedoms of the people; a nation led by government of the People, by the People and for the People, where leaders could inspire the People to stand united in spite of differing opinions or particular religious influence.
The advent of the twenty-first century has marked the most severe departure from our founding principles than ever before. We stand on the brink of self-immolation, leaderless and adrift, while selfish, arrogant hypocrites steer our ship of state toward the shoals.
Should we fail now to grow resolute and united in our determination to right this ship, we fail not only ourselves but our children, and their children's children.
It is time to look to those children for inspiration and a reminder of what we, as adults, are tasked with as parents and guardians: to create and foster an environment where children can grow to adulthood, secure in the knowledge that we have passed along the best models for ethical leadership and responsible stewardship of this nation that we know how.
Here's something to make your eyes bleed next time you think about our great victory in 2006. One of those winners was Dianne Feinstein (D-Establishment). And here's what she had to say about the President after sharing a plane with him to California to survey wildfire damage, apparently a reward for shepherding through the confirmation of Leslie Southwick to the federal bench.
With a 7:40 a.m. Thursday departure from Andrews Air Force Base, Feinstein found herself seated in the rear of the plane with a handful of Southern California congressional representatives. After a breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage and French toast, Bush popped back for what the senator described as a frank two-hour conversation, mostly about foreign policy [...]
"I found the discussion extraordinarily positive," Feinstein said. "I came away with a very different view about him." [...]
As for the president's performance on the ground?
"It was a wonderful thing to see, to be candid," Feinstein said. "I saw a warm, caring human being."
As the link above shows, during the 2006 election Feinstein was talking about removing all US forces from Iraq and serious Constitutional crises. But when allowing a far-right loon to serve on the federal bench gets you all the Presidential mints and fluffy pillows you want, why bother being anything but gracious? After all, everyone in Washington is so nice and personable!
Water-boarding is term that describes strapping an individual to a board, with a towel pulled tightly across his face, and pouring water on him or her to cut off air and simulate drowning.
When asked directly last week whether he thought waterboarding is constitutional, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey was evasive. As noted by NPR, Mukasey "danced around the issue of whether waterboarding actually is torture and stopped short of saying that it is." "If it amounts to torture," Mukasey said carefully, "then it is not constitutional."
Waterboarding is torture, and anyone who is unwilling to identify it as such is not qualified to be the chief legal officer of the United States of America. If I were in the U.S. Senate, I would vote against Mukasey unless he denounces such specific forms of torture.
What about the Democrats in the U.S. Senate and other Democratic Presidential candidates? Will they oppose Mukasey unless he denounces the use of torture by our government?
Why? Well, for starters because we are approaching 4,000 dead U.S. Soldiers and have wasted over a trillion of the tax payers dollars. If it there's anything worse than those considerations it's the outrageous losses in Iraq: estimates of over a million Iraqi deaths and over 3 million displaced refugees.
Another thing the Governor is missing while jetting to China is the major showdown over S-CHIP, with California signed on to an 8-state lawsuit against the federal government.
Several states said Monday they would challenge the Bush administration in federal court over its new rules that block the expansion of a health insurance program for children from low-income families.
Arizona, California, Illinois, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Washington are joining in the litigation, either as plaintiffs or by filing supporting briefs.
The states object to rules issued by the Bush administration in August that make it harder for them to provide coverage to children in middle-income families by limiting the total income of families who participate.
The states accuse the administration of overstepping the federal government's authority to set income limits for participants in the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
It's amazing that, in this day and age, states have to sue the government so they can provide health insurance to needy children. But this case puts extra pressure on the Bush Administration to pass the bipartisan bill expanding S-CHIP, which is politically popular. It also puts pressure on Republican House members, who are all that's standing in the way from this bill becoming law through a veto override. Smart Democratic challengers are already making this a defining issue in next year's elections. The DCCC is targeting House members with radio ads, and today CA-26's Russ Warner will hold a rally at David Dreier's San Dimas office, to protest his vote against S-CHIP. 850,000 children in California alone will be negatively impacted by this vote, so it's a huge issue here. Details for the rally on the flip.
I've said a number of times that if the Governor was serious about health care reform, he needed to follow the lead of other Governors and demand that the President reverse his decision to both veto S-CHIP expansion and make it nearly impossible for states to help provide health care to as many children as possible by putting onerous new eligibility requirements on the states. I'm pleased to say that he has followed through on one of these goals, and today Schwarzenegger and Gov. Spitzer of New York write to the President.
The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing new rules that will set Medicaid and state programs back forty years. These rules, which are being promulgated without proper review, impose eligibility standards that would both deny health care to vulnerable children and pregnant women and greatly restrict the flexibility of states to reach your administration's stated goals of efficiently providing coverage. The rules must be withdrawn [...]
California and New York cover more than 1.4 million children and pregnant women using State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) funds - nearly one out of every four SCHIP recipients in the country. We have a long and productive relationship with CMS in leveraging SCHIP to innovatively provide maximum benefit with minimum resources.
We agree with your push for states to be a force for change in the delivery of health care to tens of millions of our fellow Americans who remain without meaningful coverage. But as you rally governors to do more to help fix our broken health care system, your administration has repeatedly modified existing Medicaid and SCHIP rules, harming states' capacity to help you achieve our shared objectives.
The recently proposed SCHIP rules will reverse longstanding agreements with the states and reduce the number of children who receive health care. We strongly urge you to reconsider these recent policy changes, which simply diminish state flexibility.
Caring for children really isn't a Democratic or Republican issue. The Bush Administration wants to have it both ways, shirking the responsibility for health care onto the states while making it impossible for the states to carry out such a mission. The White House has an ideological obsession with not allowing this successful program to be expanded; then people might think they can actually receive health care from a government program they pay for in taxes. The horrors! Good for the Governor on this one.
The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children's Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families.
Administration officials outlined the new standards in a letter sent to state health officials on Friday evening, in the middle of a month-long Congressional recess. In interviews, they said the changes were aimed at returning the Children's Health Insurance Program to its original focus on low-income children and to make sure the program did not become a substitute for private health coverage.
The S-CHIP program works, states want more of their kids to be covered, and in the long run it's far more affordable than allowing the uninsured to use the emergency room as their primary care physician.
Doesn't matter to this President. Wouldn't want people to get the idea that they can get decent health care. (over)
Everyone else is doing such a great job on the budget that I don't have much to say on that issue except what Mark Leno said. But I will note that this issue of budgetary intransigence by radical Republicans is about to go national, and how we're dealing with it in California should be a lesson for the nation. I hope the Democrats are paying attention.
In his exit interview yesterday, Karl Rove tipped the hand the Republican strategy to resuscitate the President's approval ratings.
Mr. Rove also said he expects the president's approval rating to rise again, and that conditions in Iraq will improve as the U.S. military surge continues. He said he expects Democrats to be divided this fall in the battle over warrantless wiretapping, while the budget battle -- and a series of presidential vetoes -- should help Republicans gain an edge on spending restraint and taxes.
In fact, the President has been signaling this for a while, saying that he will veto any appropriations bill that doesn't fall in line with his spending targets. Never mind that Presidents don't set budget policy, or that Bush allowed massive spending increases when the Republicans were in charge of Congress. This is a play-to-the-base strategy to fire up conservatives by picking a massive fight with the Democrats over spending priorities. And it will essentially force the budget items to be decided by overriding the veto, with a... wait for it... 2/3 vote.
I'm frankly frightened. The California Senators I relied on to protect my civil liberties caved. Is ducking the vote any better or worse than voting against your constituents' liberties? What rights do we lose next?
Under the assertion that "We need to protect ourselves from attack", the US Congress granted to George Bush a pardon for his ILLEGAL acts. This Congress, the Democratic Congress with the new ideas and the vow to stop the illegal acts of this President, cowed to the old rhetoric and made it legal for the Bush Administration to deny the citizens of this country the right to privacy, pardoned the Administration's illegal intrusions into citizens private electronic conversations, and permitted the abrogation of the rule of law, and the right to due process. And then, in a capping move that added insult to injury, they put Alberto Gonzales, George Bush and one other hand picked Bush flunky in charge of overseeing it. Yes, the same Gonzales who has defied a Congressional subpoena, the same Gonzales who believes it is perfectly ok to defy the Geneva Convention and torture citizens and non-citizens who he, in his infinite wisdom, designates as enemy combatants.The same Gonzales who refused to allow the US Surgeon General from reporting to the American people the results of life saving research on health and sexual practices and the same Gonzales who fired nine Federal prosecutors because they did not follow the party line--the Republican party that is. Indeed, our new Democratic Congress gave to George Bush their blessing in his bid to overthrow the Constitutional gifts and freedoms for which our forefathers, and all our brave men and women in uniform, fought and died, the right to due process under the law, the right to hold a private conversation beyond the prying eyes of the government, and the requirement that intrusions into these freedoms would only occur in extreme circumstances as determined by a duly appointed and unbiased court order.
What battle cry then will draw the American people to fight our enemies when the cry "Let Freedom Ring" can no longer be spoken?
It seems the budget deal in the Assembly has been reached. Some cynics might say that the Assembly reached this deal out of a hope to help pass the term limits measure. At least that's what some cynics might say. But, here's what I have to say: Removing tax credits from teachers and redistributing them is some seriously f*d up VooDoo Supply-Side Economics. Go to the 3:50 mark in this video, although you'll enjoy the whole thing if you are a Ferris Bueller fan. The words of the GOP in the Assembly are eerily reminiscint of days we should be wary of returning to:
"This package is designed to stimulate the economy in the state," said Assemblyman Rick Keene, R-Chico. "We have the data showing that it will actually increase revenues." (SacBee 7/20/07)
Well, you know what, I have a different theory of economics. And it worked for us for over 50 Years, and it made John Maynard Keynes a pretty famous guy. And, oh yeah, it lifted us out of the Great Depression. So, the Republicans have asked for, and received from Democratic Legislators, about a Billion of tax credits for Hollywood studios and multinational corporations with secret data that will show that these will result in higher revenues. Everybody knows this is bull, but apparently nobody in the Assembly is willing to say it.
...who just signed on to a letter to the President vowing not to appropriate any more money to the Iraq debacle for anything other than a fully funded withdrawal. Kudos to these 12:
Lynn Woolsey
Barbara Lee
Maxine Waters
Ellen Tauscher
Diane Watson
Bob Filner
Hilda Solis
Grace Napolitano
Linda Sanchez
Mike Honda
Pete Stark
Lois Capps
Is from George W. Bush, who caved to his basic criminal instincts of obstructing justice and commuted the sentence of a convicted felon. Here's Speaker Pelosi's statement:
The President’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence does not serve justice, condones criminal conduct, and is a betrayal of trust of the American people.
The President said he would hold accountable anyone involved in the Valerie Plame leak case. By his action today, the President shows his word is not to be believed. He has abandoned all sense of fairness when it comes to justice, he has failed to uphold the rule of law, and he has failed to hold his Administration accountable.
Wonder if that means a certain Constitutional remedy is back on the table.
The one, and perhaps only, hard piece of accountability that has come out of the widening US Attorney scandal is that the Congress passed legislation striking out the provision in the PATRIOT Act that allowed the Justice Department to appoint replacement federal prosecutors without seeking Senate confirmation. The new law passed in both Houses with expansive, veto-proof majorities (94-2 in the Senate, 306-114 in the House). Any veto would be overridden, so the President has no choice but to sign the bill.
Except he hasn't yet, and the hip-pocket veto has enabled Abu G to strike again - right in our own backyard of Los Angeles.
This morning, I was looking through The Register. And suddenly, I had to stop in my tracks once I saw this:
UC Irvine has collected an additional $3.9 million for the study of human embryonic stem cells, raising its backing from the state to about $17.5 million and making the campus among the most heavily funded in the world in this nascent area of biomedical research.
Wow, so it looks like our decision to invest in stem cell research is starting to pay off! Thanks to Prop 71, UC Irvine can continue its groundbreaking research that may one day lead to real cures for nasty diseases. Follow me after the flip for more on what UCI will be doing with that additional $3.9 million...
Hello again, and Happy Memorial Day! How's the barbeque coming along? Have any of the kids jumped into the pool yet? Or wait, is that YOU in the pool with the white t-shirt? ; )
How many of you get the "Capitol Connection"? It's Gary Miller's weekly newsletter. You can sign up to have it delivered in your email inbox every Friday at Gary Miller's official Congressional web site.
After more than a hundred days of delay, the House on Thursday finally passed a responsible troop funding bill to meet the needs of our men and women in uniform. The measure funds ongoing combat operations in the War on Terror and protects members of our military from harm by providing added funds for body armor and mine resistant vehicles. Congressman Miller was proud to support this bill because, unlike previous legislation, it does not tie the hands of our commanders on the ground or set a date for surrender. Following passage by the Senate, the bill now heads to the President's desk where it is expected to be signed into law shortly.
Follow me after the flip to see why Gary Miller is wrong...
