Adding to speculation of a 2012 presidential run, Mississippi Republican Gov. Haley Barbour criticized the Obama administration and recommended the state build a civil rights museum in his State of the State speech Tuesday.
In recent months, Barbour has sparked speculation he might run for president in 2012. Barbour's speech Tuesday supported that possibility. In the speech, Barbour criticized the Obama administration on its healthcare, financial regulation and energy policies.
"We still have federal policies that stifle economic growth: If the Obama administration's healthcare mandates actually go into effect, employers don't know what their costs and responsibilities will be, so it impedes hiring; uncertainty about the Dodd-Frank financial services law and its implementation stymies investment; and the gigantic deficits and resulting purchases of trillions in U.S. treasures by the Fed mean that money can't go into private sector projects."
Barbour also criticized the Obama administration's cap-and-trade policies.
"Sunday's Clarion Ledger includes a column by Dr. Shughart at Ole Miss that catalogues example after example of the Environmental Protection Agency's anti-energy efforts, all of which drive up energy costs," Barbour said.
Barbour called for the construction of a civil rights museum, a project that had stalled. The announcement comes a few weeks after he was quoted in The Weekly Standard magazine as saying that the White Citizens Council in his hometown of Yazoo City, Miss., was just group of "town leaders." Barbour was criticized for underplaying the council's segregationist goals and the importance of the civil rights movement.
"I urge you to move this museum forward as an appropriate way to do justice to the civil rights movement and to stand as a monument of remembrance and reconciliation," Barbour said.
Congressional Black Caucus chairwoman Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) called the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "an example of...the racism that continues to exist" in America.
Gates, an influential African-American intellectual, was arrested on Monday after a neighbor mistakenly called in a break-in attempt at Gates' home. The professor was trying to force entry into his own home.
"What we have witnessed is an example of the unfinished business of America and the inequalities and the racism thatcontinues to exist," Lee said when asked about the arrest at a press conference on Thursday.
At Wednesday night's primetime news conference, President Barack Obama said that Cambridge police officers acted "stupidly" when taking Gates into custody.
Lee said the president was "right on target" with his remarks.
Jim Pasco, a top ranking official with the Fraternal Order of Police, criticized Obama's comments saying "he wasn't there, and he doesn't know what happened."
The AP reports that the Pentagon "has no plans" to repeal the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy that prevents gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military:
"I do not believe there are any plans under way in this building for some expected, but not articulated, anticipation that don't ask-don't tell will be repealed," Morrell told reporters at the Pentagon.
[snip]
Morrell said Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen both have discussed the issue with Obama.
"They're aware of where the president wants to go on this issue, but I don't think that there is any sense of any immediate developments in the offing on efforts to repeal don't ask-don't tell," Morrell said.
But I wouldn't go as far as Jillian Bandes at Townhall, who cites this as evidence that "there will be no revoking of the 'don't ask don't tell' policy in the U.S. military."
Marc Ambinder has more on the Obama administration's cautious policy in repealing the policy, a goal he insists they're committed to:
You can see the outline of the strategy in the administration's decision to let stand an appeals court ruling requiring the military to explain why being gay is, in itself, a reason to have fired a highly regarded lesbian Air Force major. The effect of not appealing the ruling will put the burden on the government to explain to skeptical judges why being gay is inherently incompatible with military service, something the administration (and many in the military) believe is very hard to prove, let alone justify. The hope here is that by allowing the military to make its best case--and then seeing that case be torn apart by the courts, a critical mass of opposition to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, will build.
This strikes me as exactly the opposite technique Bill Clinton used to (clumsily) address the issue early in his term. Rather than picking a fight with the military and facing the backlash--both within the Pentagon and the general public--the Obama administration is putting the ball in the military's court.
Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American journalist convicted in Tehran on charges of espionage will be released today, her lawyers said.
According to the Washington Post, authorities have suspended the rest of her eight year prison sentence:
"We are at the prison now, and hopefully she will be released in one or two hours," Khorramshai [Saberi's lawyer] said during a phone interview. He said he had received a message from Iranian judicial authorities at 2 p.m. local time that Saberi's sentence had been reduced from eight years to a two-year suspended sentence.
"As I understood it, she is free to leave Iran," Khorramshai said. "They explained me that the two years were conditional and would not be carried out if she would not commit any crimes in the coming five years."Saberi has been banned from working as a reporter in Iran for five years, Khorramshai added.
Saberi was convicted in April of epsionage after a short, closed-door trial. Iranian leaders, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asked for a re-trial. A verdict was expected sometime this week.
UPDATE: Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) released the following statement on the news of Saberi's release--which is now final. (Saberi's family is from North Dakota).
"This is the news we've all been waiting for. Roxana has been released from prison and she is safe with her father. The entire North Dakota family shares the Saberi family's sense of joy and relief that Roxana has been freed. We anxiously await her safe return to the United States.
"I commend all those who fought tirelessly for Roxana's release and her countless supporters in North Dakota, across the nation, and around the world who never gave up hope."
If there's any merit in following the day-to-day speculation on who Obama's SCOTUS pick will be, then Sonia Sotomayor had a bad couple days.
First, conservative bloggers dug up this exchange from 2005, in which Sotomayor contends that "court of appeals is where policy is made." Sotomayor quickly backtracks, somewhat uncomfortably:
All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people with court of appeals experience. Because, it is, court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know, I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don't make law, I know. Um, ok. I know. I'm not promoting it, I'm not advocating it. I'm, you know...
Republicans have already accused Obama of looking for a justice who will "legislate from the bench," and these statements from Sotomayor won't boost her reputation among moderate GOP senators.
Then, TNR's Jeffrey Rosen penned a pretty harsh indictment of Sotomayor's qualifications for the nation's highest court. Quoting (anonymously) several of Sotomayor's former clerks and colleagues, Rosen concludes that, well, Sotomayor isn't smart enough for the job.
But despite the praise from some of her former clerks, and warm words from some of her Second Circuit colleagues, there are also many reservations about Sotomayor. Over the past few weeks, I've been talking to a range of people who have worked with her, nearly all of them former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York. Most are Democrats and all of them want President Obama to appoint a judicial star of the highest intellectual caliber who has the potential to change the direction of the court. Nearly all of them acknowledged that Sotomayor is a presumptive front-runner, but nearly none of them raved about her. They expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative.
Grammy-winning rocker and lesbian activist Melissa Etheridge says she's talked with Rev. Rick Warren and that he's not the "hate spouting, money grabbing, bad hair televangelist" she expected him to be. In fact, Etheridge says, gays should welcome Warren when he arrives in Washington, D.C. to deliver the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration Jan. 20.
Etheridge spoke with Warren Sunday before they both appeared at an event hosted by the civil rights oriented Muslim Public Affairs Council, Etheride wrote in an entry on The Huffington Post last night, telling readers that the conversation dissolved her previous, second-hand conceptions of the reverend.
Etheridge says she reached out to Warren "in the spirit of unity" after being informed that he would speak at the event Sunday night. The singer said she considered canceling her appearance in light of Warren's support of California's Proposition 8 and his opposition to gay marriage--the political stances that have brought a maelstrom of complaints against Obama for giving him a prominent role in the coming inauguration.
Warren spoke passionately in support of Prop 8 in a video message to his congregation, calling gay marriage "not even a Christian issue--it's a humanitarian, a human issue that God created marriage for the purpose of family, love, and procreation." Warren has also said that approving gay marriage is equivalent approving incestuous, pedophilic, and polygamous marriages.
Etheridge writes:
I told my manager to reach out to Pastor Warren and say "In the spirit of unity I would like to talk to him." They gave him my phone number. On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick, and before I could say anything, he told me what a fan he was. He had most of my albums from the very first one. What? This didn't sound like a gay hater, much less a preacher. He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn't want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. He invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids. He told me of his wife's struggle with breast cancer just a year before mine.
When we met later that night, he entered the room with open arms and an open heart. We agreed to build bridges to the future.
Etheridge called on fellow gays and lesbians to keep an open mind on Warren. She suggested that, instead of marching on his California church, they should consider volunteering for one of his charitable organizations that works to fight HIV/AIDS. She also said that, after speaking with Warren, she decided to attend (and not protest) Obama's inauguration.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is blasting the Chinese government for arresting Chinese citizens who have applied for permits to protest at the Beijing Olympics.
"Instead of living up to their commitments it made to be allowed to host the Olympic Games, the Chinese government is using the Olympics as a justification to crackdown on peaceful human rights activists, censor foreign and domestic journalists, and displace Chinese individuals and families who have no legal recourse to protest the seizure of their homes or their land," Pelosi said in a statement released by her office last night.
"From media reports, we are now learning that the Chinese government-designated
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In the Supreme Court's decision against D.C.'s handgun ban today, the court also ruled that trigger-lock requirements are unconstitutional.
"The requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the opinion of the court.
D.C. law allows citizens to own shotguns and hunting rifles but requires they be kept either disassembled or with a lock attached to the trigger.
Self defense was a cornerstone of the court's decision.
The court ruled that owning guns for self-defense "unconnected with service in a militia" is protected by the second amendment. The amendment's prefatory clause states that a "well-regulated militia" is "necessary to the security of a free State"; today the court interpreted that clause as giving a purpose for, but not limiting the scope of, citizens' right to bear arms.
Congress will receive testimony tomorrow from a former Army ranger who says the Library of Congress turned her down for a job after learning of her gender transition.
Diane Schroer, a former Airborne ranger, will testify tomorrow in the House Education and Labor Committee when it examines transgender discrimination in the workplace.
Schroer says she accepted a job as a terrorism research analyst for the Library of Congress, but when she told her would-be employers that she was in the process of a male-to-female gender transition, the offer was rescinded. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is representing Schroer in a discrimination lawsuit against the Library of Congress.
The ACLU is calling the hearing Congress's first on transgender issues, though hearings on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act last year dealt with transgender discrimination.
The committee decided to hold the hearing earlier this year expecting that it would assist one of its subcommittees in drafting legislation to address transgender discrimination, the ACLU told The Hill.
National Center for Lesbian Rights Legal Director Shannon Minter will also testify at tomorrow's hearing.
John McCain today called the Supreme Court's ruling to grand habeas corpus right to Guantanamo Bay detainees "one of the worst decisions in the history of the country," The Boston Globe's Political Intelligence blog is reporting.
The Arizona senator blasted the ruling at a town hall forum in Pemberton, N.J. today, saying it will "hurt our ability" to protect the U.S. from terrorists.
A proponent of closing the Guantanamo prison, McCain reacted more mildly to the ruling when asked about it yesterday.
"These are unlawful combatants, they are not American citizens and I think we should pay attention to Justice Roberts' [dissenting] opinion in this decision," McCain said yesterday. "But it is a decision that the Supreme Court has made. Now we need to move forward. As you know I always favored closing Guantanamo Bay and I still think we ought to do that."
See The Trail's report on McCain's initial reaction here.
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