The Senate is set this week to take up a measure that Democrats rammed through the House in a display that can be characterized as nothing short of payback to the labor unions. Hyperbolic rhetoric from the Right Side? I think not.

The “Employee Free Choice Act,” as it is dubiously called, promises to do just the opposite of offering any worker a free choice. Under current law, unions may organize through either a federally supervised private ballot election or a “card-check” system. The Democratic bill, however, would kill private voting rights altogether and make workers’ votes public through a mandatory card check, in which union bosses gather authorization cards purportedly signed by workers expressing their desire for a union to represent them. Yeah, right. If someone named “Louie” comes to me in the lunch room and asks me to sign a card for him, and his two big friends are gonna "help" me find my pen, what do you think my answer is? If I don’t want any trouble, then I’m taking the easy road and signing that card.   Read more...

This past weekend I had the privilege of being a part of the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy program retreat in Los Angeles. It coincided with the meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in L.A.

The Brookings project is a revolutionary effort to "bubble up" the innovation that is coming from our ever-expanding metropolitan areas — from our mayors and local governments, from our cities, suburbs and exurbs.

At a time when public confidence in Washington, this president and this Congress, is close to an all-time low (together they can't seem to total 50 percent approval), meeting with the mayors was a true breath of fresh air.  Read more...

Bad timing continues to infect the campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). As the former front-runner braces for another quarter of disappointing fundraising and all the inevitable political metaphors of life-support and death vigils that accompany bad news for him these days, he was blindsided by the Supreme Court. Besides an immigration signing ceremony, the last thing the McCain campaign needed this week was another spotlight on the campaign finance reform law that he championed and that is anathema to the very people he now so badly needs.

The ruling, which will once again permit last-minute advertising by interest groups that use names of candidates, isn't good news for any candidate but hits McCain twice. Read more...

Vice President Cheney is not the only one. In fact, rare is the official, particularly the elected one, who embraces unfettered media access to the way he or she conducts the public's business. Not so rare is the official who holds the media and its reporters in contempt.

It's not hard to understand. Having one's foot held to the fire by brilliant reporting like the current Washington Post series on Cheney or the Walter Reed exposés is an altogether unpleasant experience, and the knee-jerk reaction to such stories is to blame the messengers, meaning the media, for such exceptional journalism.  Read more...

Gen. David Petraeus was recently quoted as saying that it may take “ten years” to eliminate the insurgency in Iraq. Too bad President Bush didn’t tell him that he has more like six months TOPS to help put the Iraqi government on some sort of foundation. When Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) speaks of winding down our commitment, people tend to listen. Despite what bloggers or some neocons say, most members, Republicans and Democrats, are moving toward an agreement to refocus, but not eliminate, the American commitment in that country in the next year or so.

To be sure, the parties will do this for different reasons. Democrats are under enormous pressure from their activist (i.e., left-wing) base to end American involvement. Republicans saw what happened in the 2006 elections and are determined not to enter another election where Iraq policy is the dominant issue. This has not yet become apparent as Republican senators and congressmen have loyally defended their president against political attacks, many of which are over the top, but the time is coming when, for reasons of sheer self-preservation, Republican members will begin to openly support some sort of orderly American withdrawl from active combat operations.  Read more...

It may be wishful thinking, but the increasing evidence that the U.S. military does not think highly of the way the Iraqi leadership has used the extra time afforded by the surge in American troop strength raises the possibility that Bush could begin to order a draw-down of U.S. forces in Iraq by the end of the year.

While he could not claim victory, he certainly could lay the blame (with justification) on the Iraqi regime for failing to bring about a genuine coalition with the Sunnis and for not dividing up the oil revenue. He could begin to pull out American troops based on Hillary's rationale that American troops have done their share but the Iraqi government has not done its.

Would such a move work politically? You bet it would! Nixon, forewarned by Republican losses in Congress in 1970, accelerated troop withdrawal from Vietnam and even had Kissinger announce that "peace is at hand" in the days before the 1972 general election. It worked like a charm and propelled him to an easy reelection victory.

Bush could still do a lot to save his party by beginning to pull out.

Ouch, it just keeps coming at Rudy Giuliani. Turns out June is really not his month. Today's dose of news he doesn't want you to use: Giuliani refuses to fire his friend Alan Palca, a Catholic priest accused of molesting students, despite a call from an abuse survivors network; a piece appears in the New York Times about his abortion problems, including a detail about how he was spotted leaving a church service in Washington without taking communion; and former New Jersey Gov. Christine Whitman now says that after Sept. 11, 2001, Giuliani refused to allow EPA workers to wear hazmat suits and refused her request that workers at the World Trade Center wear respirators. "They didn't want this image of a city falling apart. I said, 'Well, that's not acceptable.'"

This last bit is probably the hardest to swallow for Mr. 911 himself because it echoes criticism from the firefighters and their families who still protest Giuliani whenever he is in New York, claiming he failed to keep them safe. Rudy-watchers believe he may not take the eucharist because his second marriage was never annulled. And Giuliani insists Palca has been "unjustly accused." I doubt any of it falls lightly on the ears of conservative primary voters.  Read more...

The woman with the sippy cup and the small child is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Transportation Security Administration released a video showing a TSA guard harassing a poor mother as she tried to go through the security line at the airport, child in one hand, sippy cup in the other.

The TSA was trying to make an example of the mother. Instead, it made an example of itself. They are a bunch of complete idiots.

Earlier this month, they let a guy — who had a rare form of highly contagious tuberculosis — go through aiport security and fly to Europe (this guy was on the watch list, by the way) because he didn’t seem to be sick.

And they routinely frisk and harass young mothers, great-grandfathers, senators and assorted other completely innocent people, all in the name of great security. Common sense is routinely sacrificed in the name of CYA at TSA.  Read more...

That is one creative legal argument Vice President Cheney advances, arguing he does not have to comply with the order requiring members of the executive branch, the Bush administration, to account for the way they handle classified material.

Why? Because the vice president of the United States, under the Constitution, is president of the Senate and casts tie-breaking votes.

Since the Constitution also specifies that only Congress can determine how it operates, Cheney is not bound by the executive order.

In effect, he is claiming that he is eligible for both executive and legislative privilege. Hybrid privilege, as it were.  Read more...