O'Connor, Scalia Say Kagan Doesn't Need Judicial Experience

I find the process by which we pick our Supreme Court nominees somewhat strange.  In what is likely the most important decision which any President might make (Supreme Court judges serve for life and, more often than not, their term far outlives the term of the President which selected them) and one which should not be a politically based decision but based on merits, we now see a process turned on its head.

One point of contention for Elena Kagan has been whether judicial service is necessary.  Hopefully these latest remarks quell that issue.

Former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor says that lack of judicial experience should not derail Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court.


O'Connor tells ABC's "Good Morning America" that historically more than a third of the justices came to the court without first serving as judges, adding "I think it's fine. Just fine."

The first woman to serve on the Supreme Court says that Kagan seems "very well qualified academically." She says that going through the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings, however, is a "difficult, unpleasant experience" for a nominee, no matter who that is.

Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court's most notorious conservative, likewise says he likes that Kagan hasn't served on the bench, ABC News reports.

"When I first came to the Supreme Court, three of my colleagues had never been a federal judge," said Scalia, who joined the Court in 1986 after being nominated by President Reagan. "William Rehnquist came to the Bench from the Office of Legal Counsel. Byron White was Deputy Attorney General. And Lewis Powell who was a private lawyer in Richmond and had been president of the American Bar Association."

"Currently, there is nobody on the Court who has not served as a judge --indeed, as a federal judge -- all nine of us," he continued. ". . . I am happy to see that this latest nominee is not a federal judge - and not a judge at all."

Scalia's remarks came during a lecture he gave at Catholic University's law school, held at the U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C.'s ceremonial courtroom.

Kagan returns to Capitol Hill Thursday to meet privately with a half dozen senators. Her nomination hearings could begin as early as late June.

Gay Soldier on DADT: "I Will Risk My Life; I Ask to Be Treated Simply Like Anyone Else in the Service."

The following is a story by Chris Mattews posted on http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.  It speaks for itself.

Let me finish tonight with a letter from a soldier fighting in Afghanistan.


"I found out this soldier under my command was gay. I learned about it after he died, when his longtime partner wrote to me, not knowing my orientation, to tell me how much this staff sergeant had loved the army; how we were the only family he'd ever known.

In my own life, my partner has none of the privileges of a spouse. We have weathered three long deployments like any other couple might. My partner and I have happily accepted my various assignments because we're truly committed to the army, its soldiers and their families. But after our ten years together, my partner has earned the right to be told first about my death. He has earned the right to be recognized for his sacrifices just as any other spouse.

I deeply believe that America is fighting the right fight in Afghanistan. I believe in this battle against our enemies. And, I believe that the US Army is the single greatest force for good the world has ever known.

But I want to tell the guys I eat lunch with every day about my partner. After all, these are the guys I risk my life with -- the guys who think they know me. I can tell you every detail of how each of them met their wives; how one of them still feels guilty about an affair he never had, but thought about; how one of them cried so hard the day his son was born.

Yet they don't know much about my life. Over the years, I have become good at evading and changing subjects artfully. To slip up -- using the wrong pronoun when describing whom I was with during R&R, or mentioning who I talked to on Skype last night -- is no longer something I worry about. I have become so good at this lying game it eats at my soul.

A week ago, two of my friends were killed in a bombing. The days since then have bled into each other. It is usually not until the evening that I allow myself to think about these things. I will risk my life; I ask to be treated simply like anyone else in the service -- nothing more and nothing less."

That's from a serviceman fighting for his country.

I'd like to tell you his name so you could send him a note of support. You might want to call instead a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee which votes tomorrow on "Don't ask; don't tell." Here's the phone number for the US Senate: 202-224-3121.

This post originally appeared on Hardblogger.

Kentucky Libertarians: Rand Paul Betrayed Our Values

It seems I am not alone in my questioning whether or not Rand Paul was expressing truly Libertarian ideas. 

In an article in Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/26/kentucky-libertarians-may_n_590387.html) they report:

The Libertarian Party is considering running a candidate in Kentucky's U.S. Senate race, saying GOP nominee Rand Paul – the son of a former Libertarian presidential candidate – has betrayed the party's values.

Party Vice Chairman Joshua Koch said Wednesday that Paul has been a black eye for Libertarians because of stands he's taken on issues, including his criticism of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Koch said Paul is not a Libertarian. He called Paul and his Democratic opponent, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, "faces of the same bad coin."

And what are the issues which they believe cause Rand Paul to differ from a Libertarian?  According to the report:

Koch said Paul's views on a variety of subjects differ from the Libertarian Party, including his promised support for any measures to ban abortion and his opposition to same-sex marriage.

"Trying to impose a national standard for that would throw the whole system out of balance, and that's definitely not Libertarian," Koch said.

Koch also said Paul is out of step with Libertarians in his unwillingness to call for U.S. troops to leave Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The reason why we would even consider running somebody in this race is because we're not going to let Rand determine what a Libertarian stands for," he said. "I'm here to say Rand does not have the Libertarian ideology."

Libertarians typically side with Democrats on social issues and Republicans on fiscal issues.

So it begs the question, what is Rand Paul?  Personally I don't care what he calls himself as long as he takes consistent viewpoints.  My issues with Rand Paul relate to his inconsistent stances regarding governmental involvement - eespecially as it relates to protection of minorities and the disenfranchised.

Study Finds Supplements Contain Contaminants

I am constantly amazed as we find out things that are suppose to help us may actually be doing more harm than good.   Much like the post yesterday regarding sun-screens, today we learn that nearly all of the herbal dietary supplements tested in a Congressional investigation contained trace amounts of lead and other contaminants.

From the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/health/policy/26herbal.html?hp):

The levels of heavy metals — including mercury, cadmium and arsenic — did not exceed thresholds considered dangerous, the investigators found. However, 16 of the 40 supplements tested contained pesticide residues that appeared to exceed legal limits, the investigators found. In some cases, the government has not set allowable levels of these pesticides because of a paucity of scientific research.


Investigators found at least nine products that made apparently illegal health claims, including a product containing ginkgo biloba that was labeled as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and a product containing ginseng labeled as a treatment to prevent diabetes and cancer. They also described a salesperson at a supplement specialty store who claimed that a garlic supplement could be taken instead of blood pressure medication.

Any product that claims to treat, cure, prevent or mitigate a disease is considered a drug and must go through strict regulatory reviews.

Travis T. Tygart, chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, wrote a letter to the committee saying that some athletes have been rendered ineligible for international competitions because they took supplements that contained steroids not listed on the products’ labels. There are thousands of supplements available for sale that contain steroids or other harmful ingredients, he wrote.

Frightening New Development - Oil Spill Clean-Up Workers Getting Sick

From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/:

Many of the fishermen who signed up to work for BP cleaning up the oil signed contracts that forbid them from talking to the press. Perhaps for that reason, reports of illnesses have been somewhat slow to emerge. Last week, the wives of some of the fishermen spoke out publicly about the symptoms their husbands were experiencing. This week, some fishermen are starting to come forward. In this WDSU TV interview, one of the fishermen reports feeling drugged, disoriented, tingling, fatigued, and also reporting shortness of breath and cough. These are symptoms that are consistent with what one might expect from exposure to hydrocarbons in oil.

There are also disturbing photos that have been posted on the internet and in the LA Times, showing clean-up workers on beaches in regular street clothes without even the benefit of gloves. These people are in contact with the weathered oil (as opposed to fresh oil bubbling up from the continuing leak). Weathered oil is considered less dangerous than fresh oil because the toxic vapors have dissipated, but it is not benign. Skin contact with even the weathered oil is very damaging, so gloves should be required. In addition, the oil can contaminate shoes and clothing, and could then be worn home where it could pose a risk to young children. The oil needs to be cleaned up, but it should be done right.

This coming week, fishermen from Alaska who were involved in the clean-up after the Exxon Valdez oil spill are coming down to the Gulf Coast to meet with local fishermen. The goal is to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. I blogged previously about scientific studies of health effects in clean-up workers from prior oil spills. So it's encouraging to see that the workers are sharing stories. The only way to keep people safe is to learn from history, and to force BP to act responsibly (or is that an oxymoron at this point?) One of my NRDC colleagues will be at the meeting this week, and she will be gathering information on what's happening out there. Stay tuned for updates in the effort to protect the clean-up workers.

This post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard blog.

James Carville To Obama On Oil Spill - 'Get Down Here And Take Control - We're About To Die'

In his most pointed criticism yet, Democratic strategist and New Orleans resident James Carville, cried out, "Man, you got to get down here and take control of this! Put somebody in charge of this thing and get this moving! We're about to die down here!"

"The President of the United States could've come down here, he could've been involved with the families of these 11 people" who died on the rig after an explosion, Carville said on ABC's Good Morning America. "He could be commandeering tankers and making BP bring tankers in and clean this up. They could be deploying people to the coast right now. He could be with the Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard...doing something about these regulations. These people are crying, they're begging for something down here, and it just looks like he's not involved in this."

Previously Carville, who was a chief political aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton, told CNN's Anderson Cooper that the administration's response to the spill has been "lackadaisical" and that Obama was "naive" to trust BP to manage the massive clean-up effort.

Libertarianism + Rand Paul = Corporate Welfare?

With Rand Paul taking center stage, I wanted to better understand Libertarianism (Notice I said "center" stage and avoided the use of the term left or right stage, because, as you will soon see, left is right and right is left. Confused? Me too.) 

So, I did a little research and found that defining libertarianism can be difficult and that the very principal of libertarianism as espoused by Rand Paul may not be so libertarian after all. 

In an article by Sheldon Richman http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0706b.asp he asks:

Is libertarianism of the Left or of the Right? We often avoid this question with a resounding “Neither!”

Ok so we are off to a good start - its not left or right. Got it?

Karl Hess, in his Dear America said:

My own notion of politics is that it follows a straight line rather than a circle. The straight line stretches from the far right where (historically) we find monarchy, absolute dictatorships, and other forms of absolutely authoritarian rule. On the far right, law and order means the law of the ruler and the order that serves the interest of that ruler, usually the orderliness of drone workers, submissive students, elders either totally cowed into loyalty or totally indoctrinated and trained into that loyalty. Both Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler operated right-wing regimes, politically, despite the trappings of socialism with which both adorned their regimes....

The far left, as far as you can get away from the right, would logically represent the opposite tendency and, in fact, has done just that throughout history. The left has been the side of politics and economics that opposes the concentration of power and wealth and, instead, advocates and works toward the distribution of power into the maximum number of hands.

Interesting. So under that definition being on the right is great only if you are a monarchy or a dictator. But that doesn't seem entirely fair. Joe the Plumber (clearly not a Duke, Prince, Count or Dictator) has to fit in somehow. Right? (or left, it does get confusing)

So what the heck is Libertarianism?  From his article Sheldon Richman states:

The terms were apparently first used in the French Legislative Assembly after the revolution of 1789. In that context those who sat on the right side of the assembly were steadfast supporters of the dethroned monarchy and aristocracy — the ancien régime — (and hence were conservatives) while those who sat on the left opposed its reinstatement (and hence were radicals). It should follow from this that libertarians, or classical liberals, would sit on the left.

Thus the Left was identified with the liberation of workers (broadly defined). Today we don’t associate libertarians with such a notion, but it was at the heart of the libertarian vision.

Well what about capitalism?  And what of socialism (Obama gets called that all the time)?  Richam points out that:

... the word “socialism” also has undergone change from earlier days. Tucker, who proudly accepted the description “consistent Manchester man” (Manchesterism denoted the laissez-faire philosophy of the English free-traders Cobden and Bright), called himself a socialist. [laissez-faire, freeing competition and maximizing workers’ bargaining power]  “Capitalism” was identified with state privileges for owners of capital to the detriment of workers, and hence was despised as an exploitative system.

Capitalism doesn't sound so great there. Isn't America a capitalist society (exploitative)?  And socialism was laissez-faire.  Don't we often refer to the American system as laissez-faire capitalism?  So we have socialist capitalism? 

Richam attempts to clarify this by saying:

Libertarians of the present day are accustomed to think of socialism as the polar opposite of the libertarian creed. But this is a grave mistake, responsible for a severe ideological disorientation of libertarians in the present world. As we have seen, Conservatism was the polar opposite of liberty; and socialism, while to the “left” of conservatism, was essentially a confused, middle-of-the-road movement. It was, and still is, middle-of-the-road because it tries to achieve Liberal ends by the use of Conservative means.

Well it is good to know that I am not alone at being confused.

So how does our buddy Rand Paul fit in?  According to an article by Jonathan Weiler, Professor of International Studies at UNC Chapel Hill at Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-weiler):

Rand Paul's comments last week about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and his subsequent back-track) have prompted some discussion of his philosophy of government. But leaving aside a broader discussion of libertarianism or so-called small-government conservatism or however Paul chooses to label himself, one fundamental problem with that discussion is that it's built on a false premise - that Paul and people like him actually oppose an active government role in the economy.

... Paul's supposed fealty to the principles of limited government and personal responsibility are incoherent at best and blatantly hypocritical at worst. Like all too many who espouse his philosophy, what Paul believes most fervently is that those at the bottom should fend for themselves in a free society while those at the top are entitled to free-ride on everybody else.

That is a pretty scathing indictment.  But he is not alone in his criticism of so-called modern libertarians.  As Richam states:

To be sure, libertarians protest taxes, regulation, and even business subsidies, but they too often defend particular actions by particular businesses (oil companies, for example), forgetting that business today is the product of years of corporatism.

The impression is reinforced by the disproportionate amount of effort given to denouncing welfare for poor people and the relatively scant time devoted to opposing corporate welfare.

Corporate Welfare!  Now we see why these modern libertarians are an outgrowth (a fungal infection?, just kidding) of republican/conservative beliefs - Corporate Welfare.
In his must-read book, The Conservative Nanny State (http://www.conservativenannystate.org/), here's how Dean Baker frames the issue:

Political debates in the United States are routinely framed as a battle between conservatives who favor market outcomes, whatever they may be, against liberals who prefer government intervention to ensure that families have decent standards-of-living. This description of the two poles is inaccurate; both conservatives and liberals want government intervention. The difference between them is the goal of government intervention, and the fact that conservatives are smart enough to conceal their dependence on the government.

Conservatives want to use the government to distribute income upward to higher paid workers, business owners, and investors. They support the establishment of rules and structures that have this effect. First and foremost, conservatives support nanny state policies that have the effect of increasing the supply of less-skilled workers (thereby lowering their wages), while at the same time restricting the supply of more highly educated professional employees (thereby raising their wages).

Baker details a range of policy areas - from licensing requirements to rules of incorporation - that entail fundamental government intervention in the market in ways that massively benefit well-connected economic interests at the expense of the vast majority of Americans.

To give one example relevant to Rand Paul, since Paul is a doctor - in the mid-1990s, the AMA succeeded in pushing through significant limitations on the supply of doctors in the United States. As Baker points out, no one denies that doctors need to pass competency exams before they can be licensed to practice. But these Congressionally-imposed restrictions, especially on foreign-born and trained doctors doing residencies in the United States, have no relationship to their competency. They serve one purpose - to restrict the supply of doctors, thereby increasing the cost of purchasing medical services (and, therefore, doctors' salaries). The cost to the typical consumer of this clear restraint on trade and free movement of labor is enormous and a significant factor in our astronomical national health care bill (as are various other government interventions in the market, like our increasingly out-of-whack patent laws, a key reason why we pay higher drug prices than any other rich country).

Focusing only on government intervention in the supply of doctors, Baker argues:

If free trade in physicians brought doctors' salaries down to European levels, the savings would be close to $100,000 per doctor, approximately $80 billion a year. This is 10 times as large as standard estimates of the gains from NAFTA.

Wow, that is a very generous welfare handout to those poor, struggling doctors.  Notice also that Paul, unsurprisingly, does not oppose Medicare.  Opthamologists see lots of seniors.  And Medicare is a huge government program.

It is very much like my earlier post that Senator James Inhofe (R-Okl.) is Against Big Government Except When He is For It!  (http://suspiciouspackaging.blogspot.com/2010/05/senator-james-inhofe-r-okl-is-against.html).  Rand Paul wants government out of our business except when it helps his business.  But it is not just his business (he likes business).  Remember Rand's recent comments about poor BP?  Richman notes:

... BP isn't fully on the hook for the spill. Under current law, the company is obliged to pay direct cleanup costs, but its liability for indirect damages to wildlife or fisheries or beaches is limited to $75 million--and with the crude slick now lapping at the coastal wetlands of Louisiana and possibly spreading up through Florida, the total costs are surely going to be much higher than that. In essence, the government has socialized the risk BPiged to pay direct cleanup costs, but its liability for indirect damages to wildlife or fisheries or beaches is limited to $75 million--and with the crude slick now lapping at the coastal wetlands of Louisiana and possibly spreading up through Florida, the total costs are surely going to be much higher than that. In essence, the government has socialized the risk BP and other drilling companies face. Surely that would bother a staunch libertarian like Paul, right? And yet Senate Republicans have been blocking attempts to raise the liability cap to $10 billion, and Paul hasn't said a word on the subject. Odd, that.

As I said when I started out, left is right and right is left.  You oppose big government except when you are for it.  And you oppose government intervention in individuals lives except when you are for it helping businesses.

It is not wonder Rand Paul is so confused (or is just plain hypocritical).  I am not opposed to libertarian ideology.  I am opposed to hypocrisy.  As Richam pointed out, these modern day conservatives/libertarians/tea-partiers spend a disproportionate amount of effort denouncing welfare for poor people and relatively scant time devoted to opposing corporate welfare.

And don't get me started on religion.  How is it that they don't want government involvement in protecting minorities from discrimination yet they want religion (their particular religious beliefs) infused in all aspects of our government and crammed down our throats?
 
When Rand Paul announces that he is opposed to Medicare I will believe he is a true libertarian.  By the way, I am not holding my breath.