However, while the nation’s attention is refocused to America’s longest war (it recently surpassed Vietnam in length), there’s still one glaring gap in the coverage of the conflict. Namely, there still isn’t any real coverage of actual Afghans in the war.

Watching television coverage of the McChrystal episode today, I saw all sorts of big names — Brooking’s Michael O’Hanlon, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer — dissect the news of McChrystal’s thoughts about Obama and the White House leadership team. Yet who I didn’t see on, and who I never see on the airwaves, is actual Afghans invited on to respond to the day’s news about the war in their country.

When you think about it, that’s a very disturbing absence. International forces have well over a hundred thousand troops fighting in a country with millions of people in it, and those millions of people don’t even seem to be important enough to mention in the debates in our nations’ capitals. This sort of marginalization of the people whose country we have a massive troop presence serves to dehumanize them. We’re always talking about what we’re going to do to them, or winning over their public opinion, or what we want from them. We never ask them to speak for themselves, to explain what they want in the country they were born in. Rather, we seem to obsess over the opinions of generals like McChrystal, foreign transplants who do not have the same organic roots and wisdom that being a native bestows.

Then again, this problem isn’t limited to Afghanistan. It seems that whenever our public figures (media and politicians) talk about the world — even countries we happen to be fighting in or occupying with hundreds of thousands of troops — the natives of those countries are pushed aside, and we’re much more eager to know Sarah Palin’s opinion on the matter than the indigenous person who has lived their whole life in the country.

If we’re serious about becoming a global community in the 21st century, then we need to expand the range of voices we allow in our public debate. And the first place we need to start is by ending the exclusion of the voices of the people who we fight our wars in. After all, the decisions our policymakers make as a result of the conclusions of our public debates matter much more to the natives of these countries than they do to us.

Schumer Says It ‘Makes Sense’ To ‘Strangle [Gaza] Economically’ Until It Votes The Way Israel Wants

This past Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) delivered a wide-ranging speech at an Orthodox Union event in Washington, D.C. The senator’s lecture touched on areas such as Iran’s nuclear program, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and several domestic policy issues.

During one point of his speech, Schumer turned his attention to the situation in Gaza. He told the audience that the “Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution,” and also that “they don’t believe in the Torah, in David.” He went on to say “you have to force them to say Israel is here to stay.”

New York’s senior senator explained that the current Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip — which is causing a humanitarian crisis there — is not only justified because it keeps weapons out of the Palestinian territory, but also because it shows the Palestinians living there that “when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement.” Summing up his feelings, Schumer emphasized the need to “to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go”:

via Think Progress » Schumer Says It ‘Makes Sense’ To ‘Strangle [Gaza] Economically’ Until It Votes The Way Israel Wants.

Imagine if Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) — the nation’s first elect Muslim congressman — appeared at a radical mosque in, let’s say, Dearborn, Michigan. At this radical mosque, Ellison explained that the Israeli government simply didn’t want to accept a Muslim state in Gaza and the West Bank — and let’s suppose this wasn’t actually true — and that this was because, you know, they don’t read the Quran.

Then Ellison would go on to say, “You see, those Israelis elected Netanyahu. And we don’t like Netanyahu, he has committed great crimes against our people. So I think it makes sense to economically strangle the Israelis until they change their minds.” And then Ellison went on to advocate denying them fresh meat, basic medical supplies, and a whole host of humanitarian items.

The congressman would probably be (rightly) lambasted across the political spectrum, made into a wild-eyed extremist in the media, and probably forced to resign (or maybe he’d lose by a 30-point landslide in the next election).

Of course, this hypothetical is just that. Unfortunately, this event basically happened, just replace Keith with Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and the radical mosque with the Orthodox Union. If you click the link above, which leads to my Think Progress post on the matter, you can watch Schumer delivering his remarks, and you can witness the crowd wildly cheering him on.

When I watched this happen, I thought to myself: What have we become as a country when this sort of talk is politically palatable for  a leading politician? How is it that my country not only is providing economic, political, and military cover for a country that is depriving an entire innocent population of the basic needs of survival — and then a public official can justify it by citing religious texts?

We need to look at ourselves as a country if this is what goes for mainstream political discourse. Senator Schumer cites the Torah. When I was a small kid, I used to go to a Baptist school (it was the only decent school in the area). I had the Old Testament read to me on a daily basis. I don’t remember the part about how, if you have enemies, you are supposed to starve their children. I do remember the passages about the importance of making peace between sworn, bitter enemies — about being a better human being by choosing nonviolence and grace over brutality and furor.

I think that’s the Torah our public officials need to be reading, otherwise they’re all complicit in what’s happening to the Palestinians.

Conspiracy theory is a national sport in Pakistan, where the main players — the United States, India and Israel — change positions depending on the ebb and flow of history. Since 2001, the United States has taken center stage, looming so large in Pakistan’s collective imagination that it sometimes seems to be responsible for everything that goes wrong here.

“When the water stops running from the tap, people blame America,” said Shaista Sirajuddin, an English professor in Lahore.

via U.S. Is a Top Villain in Pakistan’s Conspiracy Talk – NYTimes.com.

Pakistani pro-democracy demonstrators

This story about Pakistanis and how their “collective imagination” supposedly blames America for “everything that goes wrong” in their country has been pinging around the blogosphere. I highly recommend you read Glenn Greenwald’s take, who got to the subject before me and did quite a good job.

Stories like these remind me why the U.S. media does such a poor job covering foreign affairs. To start with, your major papers — the New York Times, the USA Today, the Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal — barely cover the topic of Pakistan. And when they do, it usually is along the lines of, “How does this affect America?”

So when you get an article like this — where the author proclaims that Pakistanis have some sort of weird, irrational tendency to blame America with conspiracy theories for their ills — and you see no citations of poll numbers or any scientific analysis of what Pakistanis actually believe and why, you really can’t be surprised. American reporters just don’t know how to cover foreign countries. This particular one seems to have spent a little time on the ground in Pakistan, found some people who think America is really, really, nefarious and bad and have odd reasons for thinking so, and concluded that, well, that’s just Pakistan for you!

Imagine America wasn’t the most famous country on earth, that saturated the media airwaves on every country’s soil and was as unheard of usually as a country like, let’s say, Pakistan. Let’s say a Pakistani journalist came to the States, encountered some Glenn Beck viewers, and maybe one government official like Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) and found that these people believe:

• That President Obama’s plan to for health care reform was actually to control Americans’ lives in the vein of Stalin and Hitler.
• That a small community organizing group called ACORN is one of the most powerful groups in the world, with tentacles in every vestige of the US government.
• The United Nations is actually an organization dedicated to something called the “New World Order” that will eventually take over the world.

It’s true that there are Americans who believe these things. Most don’t, but there are some who do. But what if the Pakistani reporter said that these conspiracy theories formed the fabric of Americans’ “collective imagination” of their political woes, and that they used these facts to deflect from real problems? We’d be outraged — and rightly so.

Yet the New York Times — that august paper that is proud of containing “All The News Fit To Print” soberly printed this article as straight news and painted a picture of Pakistan that has nothing but crazed conspiracy theorists unwilling to look at their own flaws and who are ready to blame the United States for everything from poor weather to the existence of Al Qaeda. And as if that was not enough, the picture accompanying the article is of followers of a fringe Islamist group with signs that say “I HATE AMERICA.”

Not accompanying the aforementioned picture is widely available polling data that shows that only a single-digit number of Pakistanis view violent Islamists as a positive force in Pakistani politics. Also absent from anywhere in the article is that Pakistanis, who supposedly blame foreigners for all their woes, just got finished in the past couple years, successfully toppling a dictator by creating the political will for a democratic election that — shockingly to the  American press! — didn’t revolve around America. I notice that the picture was also taken in Karachi, the mega port city to the south of the country where my parents are from. Karachi is a cosmopolitan city, and Islamists have next to no power there. You’re much more likely to see  a college student in Levis’ jeans than you are to see a bearded fundamentalist condemning Zionist conspiracies. Yet that too didn’t fit the reporter’s narrative nor the paper’s sloppy smearing of the moderate Pakistani majority.

But the average American doesn’t know these facts, and they aren’t going to read any debunking. They’re simply going to read what America’s supposedly most reputable newspaper passed off as the plain truth, and move on with their lives. And an entire people — one that certainly does have some fundamentalist conspiracy mongers, but also brilliant writers, artists, engineers, doctors, and political activists who could teach America a thing or two — will be smeared in the eyes of the Times’ readers. And that’s a complete shame.

Yet to portray Paul as simply a puppet of the tea party movement is wildly off the mark. In my view, he’s something much more — he’s a true grassroots conservative, and certainly not held hostage to an astroturf movement spawned by conservative megamedia at Fox News and corporate front groups like Freedom Works.

I come to this conclusion by flashing back to the winter of 2008. The primaries in full swing, and the Democrats and Republicans are slugging it out. I remember being in college, and amid all the fanfare about Hillary versus Obama and McCain versus Romney, there was one candidate whose supporters I found to be the most engaging and innovative: Ron Paul’s. They organized gigantic money bombs for Rand’s father, spammed internet polls, and worked to get their candidate, who had next to no respect or positive mention from mainstream media or his party’s leadership, up to the point where he outperformed his foe Rudy Giuliani (who the media can’t get enough of, for some reason).

It’s that same passion that’s driving Rand’s supporters. If you converse with them, the main thing you’ll notice that’s totally different about him than any other Senate race is that most of his most passionate volunteers seem to be a generation younger than his competition. They’re mostly young, idealistic Libertarians who are militant in their opposition to social democratic government, violations of civil liberties, and a radical, imperial foreign policy.

Now, I obviously disagree with the first of those three positions that Paul and his supporters have, and during my interactions with Paul supporters it isn’t long before I get the communist/socialist/statist label thrown at me. Yet at the end of the day, I can’t help admiring these people.

Paul, who has never held office before and was mocked, derided, and considered an extreme long shot by the Republican leadership and conservative press, has managed to break through the tight cabal that is American politics simply by offering a message people agree with, and mobilizing the grassroots to take on entrenched power. Whether I agree with him or not, I have to say, I rarely see such pure and meaningful democracy at work.

And no, it doesn’t hurt that I share some of his views. Paul is on the record opposing the Iraq war, worrying about the erosion of civil liberties in the “War on Terror,” wanting to stop federal overreach in policing medical marijuana, and cutting corporate welfare. He’s a true conservative, not one who only attacks the government when it isn’t working against his corporate contributors. Democrats have been waiting for the Republican who will consistently cross over to vote with them on issues they agree, and it looks like a Paul victory may get them one.

So, even as a proud progressive and card carrying member of the vast left wing conspiracy, I say bravo, Rand Paul. His candidacy is an example of democracy working like it should, and may just give progressives reason to cheer when he joins up with them in fighting on a lot of their common issues.

UPDATE: Bloggasm notes that Rand still has achieved nowhere near the notoriety of his father just yet. I could see that changing.

Published on Sunday, May 16, 2010 by Raw Story

‘There is a Narrative that’s Missing’ Laura Flanders Tells Grassroots Radio Gathering

by Gavin Dahl

Television and radio host Laura Flanders ripped into what she called “the all-about the-money media” and encouraged 150 radio enthusiasts to work harder at storytelling in a keynote address to the Grassroots Radio Conference May 14.

She stressed that there is a failure in the media to report on important news from the perspective of the public, and insisted that those stories can be told better at the grassroots level. “There is a narrative that's missing,” Flanders insisted. “Rupert Murdoch bought the narrative when he paid $5 billion for Wall Street Journal… And we are being played and played and played and played.”

Her most recent book Blue Grit looked at an upsurge in grassroots activism during the previous presidential administration. She said Friday night that there was more progressive politics than anything reflected in the Democratic party. On keeping President Obama accountable to those who elected him she said, “We're not doing any better job than the civilians of Afghanistan.”

via ‘There is a Narrative that’s Missing’ Laura Flanders Tells Grassroots Radio Gathering | CommonDreams.org.

Had a narrative.

During the healthcare fight, whenever I’d see a politician up on the TV screen, usually a Democrat, talking about the “cost curve,” I’d groan.

It wasn’t like controlling costs wasn’t important to me — it definitely is, and why I’m an advocate of a Medicare-style program for everyone — but it was the wrong way to talk about health care. We needed to stress the fact that people are dying without health care, and that the government through programs like Medicare provides insurance cheaper and better than a greedy corporation.

That’s what gets me to Laura Flanders’ speech here. Flanders is a wonderful radio host, and I highly recommend her daily GritTV. She often gets to the heart of issues in a way that a lot of the fluff-commentary on TV doesn’t, and that’s what makes her such an illuminating voice.

What she points out here is that progressives have yet to build a “narrative.” Narratives are powerful tools in politics — they allow you to not only campaign on policies, but on an outlook on policies and politics. A narrative is what lets you set yourself in history and say, “This is what I’m about.”

The right certainly has one. Ronald Reagan came to power on demonizing the government — let’s ignore the multiple times he raised taxes or expanded tariffs or drastically overspent — and it was a simple narrative in that it was easy for people to understand and had a very simple premise: the government is bad, so cutting taxes is good. It captured the minds of millions of Americans and is still the defining story of the conservative movement today (even if its leadership, like the most recent Bush, didn’t unhypocritically follow it).

So then what’s the counter-story that progressives have to tell? Usually, when progressives are tasked to tell our narrative, it falls into two categories:

- We Need To Help People: Under this narrative, progressives appeal to emotion: we tell people that it’s their moral duty to help those less fortunate than them. There are often appeals to religious faith or simply having a good heart that accompany this one.

- Our Policies Work Better: Under this narrative, progressives say our policies simply work better for the country. This is usually encompassed in tons of wonk-speak.

Both these have been used to some extent by progressives for years. Individually, they’re an appeal to the heart and to the mind. What we need is a narrative that can tie these together. What we’ve seen so far since the Bush years is essentially separate policy battles have brought together disparate coalitions and where progressives has won, it’s because we’ve managed to make our case based on individual issues, but we don’t have any sort of thread tying together what it is we’re trying to do for Americans and the globe.

If we want to make the same kind of change in the American political psyche that Reagan and the rest of the New Right made, we’re going to have to have a new narrative. My suggestion: We need to build a progressive narrative that says we believe in the public sphere, and we believe in our country. That means giving people decent pay for a decent day’s work, and it means not letting people fall through the cracks when they’re working their butts off. We want to take on big interests, because we want this country to work for everyone who’s willing to work for it — not just a wealthy few.

President Obama so far has not built a story. He’s said we have to move away from dog-eat-dogism, but towards what? He usually throws in some liberalish rhetoric in his speeches, and notes the value of working for the public, but he isn’t the fierce public champion that say, Franklin Roosevelt was when he named Four Freedoms that defined liberalism for decades: Freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Where are our freedoms? What are we, at the end of the day, trying to do for the country?

As a part of the answer to that question, we have a proud legacy to build on: Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting, FDR’s New Deal, and Johnson’s Great Society. If the right wants to attack government, we should bring up the success of Medicare. If labor unions are under attack, we should remind everyone they gave us the 8-hour workday. Really, progressive achievements are so woven into the fabric of American life that we don’t even think about them. By building on a history of success and expanding that legacy, we will have our narrative, and the demonize-the-government shtick pushed by the opposition will pale into comparison to our tried-and-true ideology. The question is, how are we going to get this narrative out to the public? I’m open for suggestions.

I can’t tell you how frustrating it is on visits to rural Pakistan to see fundamentalist Wahabi-funded madrassas as the only game in town. They offer free meals, and the best students are given further scholarships to study abroad at fundamentalist institutions so that they come back as respected “scholars.”

We don’t even compete. Medieval misogynist fundamentalists display greater faith in the power of education than Americans do.

Let’s hope this is changing under the Obama administration. It’s promising that the Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid package provides billions of dollars for long-term civilian programs in Pakistan, although it’s still unclear how it will be implemented. One useful signal would be for Washington to encourage Islamabad to send not only troops to North Waziristan but also teachers.

We continue to be oblivious to trade possibilities. Pro-American Pakistanis fighting against extremism have been pleading for years for the United States to cut tariffs on Pakistani garment exports, to nurture the textile industry and stabilize the country. Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, told me that his top three goals are “market access, market access, market access.” But Washington wants to protect North Carolina textile mills, so we won’t cut tariffs on Pakistani goods. The technical word for that: myopia.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Pakistan and Times Square – NYTimes.com.

I have had disagreements with Nick Kristof before — his defense of sweatshops strikes me as way too black-and-white, for one — but this op-ed, with the possible exception of saying that Pakistan has been at the center of all recent terror attacks (that’s only true if you tend to ignore conflicts that don’t include Muslims) is really great.

Kristof, who’s well known for his world traveling, went to Pakistan and found the school system to be in complete shambles. He explains that the only parts of the Pakistani education system, especially in the north, that is well-funded is the religious fundamentalist one. This is due mostly to the regime of Zia Al-Huq. During the Cold War, the United States thought it could make trouble for the Russians in Afghanistan. So after the Soviets attacked that country, the U.S. began funding Zia, who was a hardcore fundamentalist in a country where serious fundamentalism didn’t really have a root. Zia started funding mostly fundamentalist institutions and building up extremists in nearby Afghanistan, and as a result the system of secular education is pretty much in shambles.

I remember when I went to the country last, I couldn’t really find any publicly financed schools period, let alone quality ones that offer a worldly education. Most schools in Pakistan are private, and the only ones that can be accessed by ordinary folk that are of any sort of quality would be the kinds that disregard womens’ rights and teach intolerance. I don’t know if I agree that this is the main motivating factor for terrorism — general inequality and political grievances have a lot to do with that — but it’s difficult to argue with the premise that the country would be a lot better off with a decent and modern education system.

Today, Pakistani literacy “hovers around 50 percent,” and there’s very little to suggest that’s on it’s way to changing. Kristof points out that there the recent Kerry-shepherded bill will give billions of aid to the country over the next few years, but we’re still a long way off from getting anywhere close to fundamental change in the country.

Our foreign policy relationship with Pakistan has always been very skin-deep. We have brief cooperation with them on an issue like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or nuclear relations with India, or combating extremism in Waziristan, but we never take a deep interest in the country. It’s no wonder then, in poll after poll, Pakistanis, while remaining unabashedly pro-American in their cultural tastes, have a deep distrust in the American government. We simply haven’t invested ourselves seriously in their lives. We ask a lot of them — thousands have died fighting extremists who exist in the country largely due to spillover from our war in Afghanistan — but we don’t give them much.

If we’re really serious about fighting terror in that country, it might be time to not just invest in a military relationship, but a serious civilian one. A dollar can go a long way in Pakistan, and some decent civilian aid invested the right way can buy something much more important than bombs when it comes to combating terror — it can buy hope.

It is surprising that any progressives are naive enough to fall for the insincere claim of conservatives and libertarians that their cheap-labor policies are motivated by altruistic concern for the foreign poor. The same conservatives and libertarians who claim to be defending poor Mexican immigrants and Chinese factory workers against overpaid, privileged American workers also claim that federal prevailing-wage laws for public contractors discriminate against blacks and that poor Americans are enslaved by “the welfare plantation.” The faux-humanitarian arguments of the open-borders, cheap-labor right come as part of a larger policy package that genuine progressives should reject as a whole.

via Open borders or high-wage welfare state – Immigration – Salon.com.

Over at Salon, the New America Foundation’s Michael Lind — who I frequently read, often agree with, and always admire — argues that progressives are falling into a trap of being for increasingly liberal immigration policy at the expense of domestic social priorities (like an expansive welfare state or high wages for American workers).

Ironically, the thing that makes me take issue with Lind here is the same thing that I enjoy about him — his old school 20th century populism. Lind is the sort of populist built in the New Deal brand; he encourages the government to be a powerful arbiter of social and economic justice for the people of the country, taking on mighty corporate power and concentrated private interests. It’s that part of old-school populism that I agree with. The unfortunate part of Lind’s populism comes from his nationalism. While championing the interests of working Americans, he often ends up having less concern for foreigners, and this piece is no different.

Lind essentially sets up a dichotomy that says that if we have more open borders, we’ll have more immigrants coming in, those immigrants will take American jobs, and given that they are willing to work for less, will depress American wages. Essentially, he’s saying that haughty liberals on the coasts are selling out working Americans to satisfy their desire to appear affectionate for foreigners (in this case, undocumented immigrants).

I think this argument has some appeal. I’ve seen urban liberals, think tankers, cocktail party-set liberals time and time again sell working Americans short with a myopic focus on social issues, which, while important, often end up breaking working class coalitions needed to win victories on economic, bread-and-butter issues. But the problem with its usage in this case is that it’s just wrong.

My colleague Matt Yglesias points out, in this post from 2009, Sweden, Australia, and Canada all have huge amounts of immigration and have expansive welfare states. The rejoinder to Matt’s argument would be that this is legal immigration, and thus immigrants are paid legal minimum wages, are part of unions, pay into state pension systems — all of that is true. But then our response should be to work to get immigrants legally into the system, to give them a path to citizenship, and require employers to pay them the same minimum wage and recieve the same benefits as everyone else.

This isn’t an argument for unlimited immigration into the country. On the contrary, as a matter of national security and the integrity of the law we should properly secure our borders while at the same time putting all the undocumented through a legal process at home. There’s no doubt about that. But the fact is, increased immigration doesn’t destroy a country’s prosperity. In fact, as former President Clinton pointed out, it could very well solve our demographic problem with Social Security, and ensure it is well funded. And a joint UCLA/Center for American Progress study finds that legalizing undocumented immigrants could add $1.5 trillion to the economy in just ten years.

I respect Lind greatly, and I see where he is coming from. He doesn’t want niche social issues pushed by effete liberals undermining the policies that help working class Americans. And I don’t either. I want to see the gap in understanding between New York and Washington and the rest of the country closed, and I know that approaching the immigration issue the wrong way can end up alienating a lot of people whose economic livelihoods are not well and see liberals in urban centers championing immigrants’ rights. But the truth is that it’s much better to engage in the hard work to bridge the lack of understanding between the two groups — immigrants’ rights advocates and Middle America — and fight for policies that will improve the lives of all, not throw immigrants overboard in a 20th century protectionism effort.

Huckabee: New Law Will Open Arizona Up To A ‘Lawsuit Bonanza’

A few hours after President Obama called Arizona’s radical immigration bill an “irresponsible” and “misguided” measure that “threatens basic notions of fairness,” Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) signed SB-1070 into law. Brewer claimed that her decision was made with Arizona’s best interest in mind and stated earlier this week that she would “do what I believe is the right thing so that everyone is treated fairly.” On Fox News, as Brewer signed the bill, former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AK) validated racial profiling concerns related to the implementation of the newly signed law and told host Neil Cavuto that it is going to open the state of Arizona up to a “plethora of lawsuits” that will prove “very, very costly”:

Here’s the dilemma: it’s going to open Arizona up to a plethora of lawsuits. You’ll have so many lawsuits that it will be very very costly to the state of Arizona. And here’s the real challenge. [...] This is a federal problem, the feds ought to be fixing this, they ought to be standing guard at the border, they ought to be enforcing the federal laws. When you have a state that is having to jump in and take on federal laws they don’t have the money resources for this, they don’t have the personnel for this, and the legal quandary they’re going to be in is going to be substantial. [...] It’s going to be one lawsuit bonanza.

Later in the interview, Huckabee added that “Hispanic Americans have the right to be unhappy about the fact that they might be pulled over.” “If I were being pulled over because I looked a certain way, I would be highly offended,” stated Huckabee. He also remarked that the “federal government has to do something to stop the hemorrhaging of illegal immigration over the border.”

via Think Progress » Huckabee: New Law Will Open Arizona Up To A ‘Lawsuit Bonanza’.

My colleague Andrea has a great post up over at Think Progress about former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) airing his concerns over the recently passedArizonan immigration law, which basically not only authorizes but requires law enforcement officials to check the legal status of just about anyone they determine could be a likely undocumented immigrant.

The bill is quite radical, and the ACLU has warned that it will likely “exacerbate racial profiling,” because police officers may check the identification of brown-skinned people before all others (how else do you identify an undocumented immigrant without knowing anything else about them)?

This is where Huckabee comes in. Huckabee told Fox’s Neil Cavuto that he is worried about the law in three areas. One, it will open up the state to lawsuits as civil libertarians and those concerned with racial profiling will turn to litigation. Two, it takes immigration enforcement outside of the hands of the federal government, who really is responsible for enforcing our laws on this issue. Lastly, it may lead to the unfair targeting of Hispanics, many of whom are in the country legally and properly, and may even be analogous to past and current racial profiling against African Americans.

I was watching the exchange as it happened, and Fox host Neil Cavuto seemed pretty torn. It was as if he wanted to attack Huckabee, but because he is a major player in the GOP establishment, he held back. That’s precisely what makes Huckabee’s objections so important. No one anywhere near as prominent in the Republican Party has spoken out against this bill. Even John McCain, former immigration moderate and “maverick,” has endorsed this radical new law.

I had many colleagues who were surprised by Huckabee’s reaction. But I wasn’t.

A long time ago, back during the Presidential primaries (it really feels like forever, doesn’t it?), I remember a liberal friend of mine asking me about the race, and I told them that out of all of the people on the GOP side, I thought Huckabee was the most decent.

My friend, an avid feminist, reacted with scorn to my suggestion, and we didn’t see politically eye to eye for a while. I can understand her reaction. On social issues, Huckabee is extremely socially conservative, maybe even radical. Yet there’s something different about the governor compared to a lot of his GOP colleagues, and I think that’s basic compassion.

I remember when Huckabee was attacked and called “Tax Hike Mike” because he raised taxes in his state. When attacked, Huckabee didn’t really disavow the charge. Instead, he defended his tiny tax hikes because they supported programs for children — like health care and school lunch programs for poor kids. He was proud to be a compassionate person and to support the people of his state.

I know it’s not a very impressive bar to set, but it seems that compassion is lacking in the modern GOP, and seeing that from Huckabee, in a way, gives me hope that there is some sort of compassion in the Republicans’ leadership, and I only hope, and I say this with all seriousness, to the chagrin of many of my progressive friends, that if there is to continue to be a Republican Party in our country’s politics, we see a lot more like Mike Huckabee, and a lot less of the Randian, everyone-for-themselves society stuff that is pushed by so many other folks in his party.

HuffPo, unfortunately, uses a pretty inflammatory headline for their article about the letter, claiming that it “slams” the reform bill before the Senate, and makes it seem as if the signatories are simply writing off Senate Banking Committee Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) legislation. The truth is, they see it in many ways a step forward, but feel that it needs to do more to rein in Wall Street.

I’ve heard from some people I know in Democratic circles that this letter is unhelpful, and that it essentially will be used by right-wing Republicans to undermine the case for a financial reform bill, and maybe even eventually lead to its defeat. I’ve been following these Republican efforts very closely — working off of Chris Bowers’ post at Open Left, I wrote a Think Progress post on Mitch McConnell’s Wall Street fundraising that basically went viral, appearing all over the blogosphere and all the way to the DNC’s listserv — and I disagree that left-wing criticism of the bill will make it less likely to pass. In fact, I think it might make the bill even easier.

First let’s review the Republican charges. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) claims that the bill will actually lead to “endless bailouts” of Wall Street, not rein it in. Obviously, if McConnell is allowed to push this line uncriticized and succesfully, it will be devastating. The public hates (for good reason) unfettered financial industry bailouts, and McConnell is smart to try to actually hit at the bill from the left.

So then why do I think it could actually improve the bill’s political support if people like Reich and Baker criticize it? It seems counterintuitive. After all, McConnell could easily point to left-wing critics and say, “See, I’m validated! Even the commies agree with me!” But there’s one difference between the economists and McConnell: The economists are sincere.

Their concerns are not only substantively valid — there are a number of major things lacking in both financial bills (House and Senate), like a permanent firewall between investment and commercial banking — but they’re the same ones the public as large has. The American people have a white-hot anger right now towards Wall Street, and what they really want to see is a government that is going to aggressively go after a financial industry that tanked the global economy with its fraud and greed. If Senate Democrats listen to the progressive economists and bend to the will of Americans who want stronger regulations, then there will be a public image created — a justified public image — that the Democrats have heard from the people, know they want an even tougher bill, and are complying.

The only way to stop people like McConnell who claim the bill is too soft or even favorable to Wall Street is to do everything we can to make sure it isn’t. Call his bluff, and make him look foolis for saying a bill that will break up big banks will actually somehow favor them. Say, “You’re right, we should be tougher, and now we are. Do you support us yet?” The more you do that, the more ridiculous McConnell will look and the more the public will rally to your side. This is an issue that tough-on-bank legislators shouldn’t be able to lose. Heck, a recent poll of tea partiers found that most of them wanted Obama to crack down on Wall Street harder.

The only way I see this strategy not working is if bank-friendly legislators ignore progressives and their concerns, who will continue to protest without making the bill any better. Public support will then collapse, and there won’t be any bill passed. But if that happens, the blame won’t lie on people like Reich or Baker but on members of Congress who have decided that what’s political favorable and what’s morally right simply isn’t as important as what their friends at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs want. To quote Robert Reich, “Wall Street doesn’t want these three major reforms because they’d cut deeply into profits, and it’s using its formidable lobbying clout with both parties to prevent these reforms from even from surfacing. It’s time for Main Street — Tea Partiers, Coffee partiers, and beer drinkers — to be heard. ”

Kucinich: White House Assassination Policy Is Extrajudicial

by Jeremy Scahill

There has been almost universal silence among Congressional Democrats on the Obama administration's recently revealed decision to authorize the assassination of a US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen, has been accused of providing inspiration for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged “underwear bomber,” and Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged Fort Hood shooter. In recent weeks, there has been a dramatic surge in US government chatter about the alleged threat posed by al-Awlaki, with anonymous US officials accusing him of directly participating in terror “plots” (his family passionately disputes this).

Several Democrats refused, through spokespeople, to comment on the assassination plan when contacted by The Nation, including Senator Russ Feingold and Representative Jan Schakowsky, both of whom serve on the Intelligence Committees. Representative Jane Harman, who serves on the Homeland Security Committee, said recently that Awlaki is “probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us.”

One of the few Democrats to publicly address the issue of government-sanctioned assassinations is Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich. “I don't support it–period,” he said in an interview. “I think people in both parties that are concerned about the Constitution should be speaking out on this. I can't account for what anyone else doesn't do.”

via Kucinich: White House Assassination Policy Is Extrajudicial | CommonDreams.org.

Yesterday, the Nation’s always reliably controversial-in-a-good-way Jeremy Scahill reported that, after an exhaustive questioning of  members of Congress there is only a single one who even offered a comment on the Obama administration’s authorization of the assassination Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen who sympathizes with radicals in Yemen.

The member of Congress, it should come as no surprise to anyone, is Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). Kucinich is perhaps Congress’s most steadfast opponent of military adventurism, having voted against authorizing every military intervention of his time in Congress except the Afghan war in response to the 9/11 attacks. He’s the same one who put Republicans through fits on the eve of the war telling Meet the Press that President Bush was being dishonest in his case for war — which seems to have earned Kucinich’s place on some kind of almost-banned-list on shows like that in the future, apparently the cost of being right too early is quite high in America — and who was the chief organizer in the House of Representatives for the three quarters of Democrats who voted against the Iraq War Resolution.

Now Kucinich is the only one willing to go on the record to say that authorizing the killing, without trial, judge or jury, and without being in any arena of combat, of a U.S. citizen is both wrong and possibly extrajudicial and unconstitutional. The 5th amendment is a powerful right that has been bestowed upon American citizens from time immemorial. It guarentees that American citizens will never simply be imprisoned without due process, let alone killed on the spot.

The standard objection to this is that on the battlefield, you can’t stop and read an enemy his rights. Well, that’s true. If this gentleman were to engage US troops or launch an attack against us, we’d be justified in using any force necessary to stop him — just as cops can fire back at criminals shooting at them. But what Obama has authorized is walking up to this man, even if he’s sitting at home alone, and instead of arresting him, simply killing him.

The left (and various disparate libertarian elements) were a massive critic of President Bush’s policies imprisoning Americans without trial indefinitely. Eventually, the Supreme Court, a conservative one, mind you, moved against Bush himself with regard to this policy. And the left and the libertarians were right to be critical of that. But now we have a president who’s authorized the killing of an American citizen without trial, and there’s nary a peep outside of — surprisingly — the National Review, which decided that now that there guy’s not in power, abuses of civil liberties are bad.

Going down this road is a very, very dark legal precedent. At the very least there should be a very heated debate about this question — Rep. John Conyers’  (D-MI) Judiciary Committee is a good place to start. And yet there seems to be only one member of Congress willing to start that debate. It’s not surprising he’s the only one ahead of his time, again. But it is kind of surprising that this is happening in 21st century America, especially as we want to hold on to our claim as the standard-bearers of human rights and democracy.