Who cares about the innocent

Shades of 2000, a Republican governor is trying to purge voters lists (via here):

Broward was following the direction of the state Division of Elections, which initially identified roughly 180,000 potential noncitizens by searching a computer database from the state’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. But the drivers’ license list doesn’t automatically update when someone becomes a citizen.

The state whittled that list to more than 2,600 voters and forwarded those names to counties. A Times/Herald analysis of the list found it was dominated by Democrats, independents and Hispanics. The largest number were from Miami-Dade, home to the state’s highest foreign-born population.

There have been a few errors, such as:

Bill Internicola was born in Brooklyn 91 years ago and received a Bronze Star for fighting in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, but, according to the state of Florida, he may not be a U.S. citizen.

Internicola received a letter in May from the Broward supervisor of elections stating that it received “information from the State of Florida that you are not a United States citizen; however you are registered to vote.”

Well, that’s embarrassing. They’ll just have to put up with statements like:

“Providing a list of names of questionable validity — created with absolutely no oversight — to county supervisors and asking that they purge their rolls will create chaotic results and further undermine Floridians’ confidence in the integrity of our elections,” stated the letter also signed by Florida Democratic Rep.’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Frederica Wilson, Corrine Brown and Kathy Castor. They asked Scott to “immediately suspend the purge of voter registration lists” in order to “ensure not one Floridian finds his or her legitimate voting rights callously stripped away.”

…

Also complaining to Scott was Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat, Sen. Bill Nelson. “Attempts to purge the voter roll so soon after signing one of the nation’s most controversial voting laws raises concern, especially among young and minority voters,” Nelson wrote in a letter to Scott.

Who am I kidding, these are Republicans:

Chris Cate, a spokesman for the state Division of Elections, defended the state’s actions. “It’s very important we make sure ineligible voters can’t cast a ballot,” he said in an email to the Herald on Tuesday.

He said the state continues to identify ineligible voters, saying the state Division of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has agreed to update information using a federal database that the elections division couldn’t access directly.

“We won’t be sending any new names to supervisors until the information we have is updated, because we always want to make sure we are using the best information available,” Cate wrote. “I don’t have a timetable on when the next list of names will be sent to supervisors, but there will be more names.”

…

Republican Party of Florida chairman Lenny Curry slammed Nelson for practicing the “worst kind of politics.”

“Sen. Nelson not only asks our public servants to ignore the threat to electoral integrity, but he implies those who meet their legal obligation to ensure honest elections are being discriminatory,” he said in a statement. “Nelson’s distortions and willingness to pit people against each other based on race demonstrates the worst kind of politics.”

Taking a 91 year old WWII war hero off the voter rolls is just not that important. Republicans seem to care much more about theoretical voter fraud than real life people. And the fact that the list was dominated by Democrats, Independents and Hispanics is all just a coincidence I’m sure.

Romney: we should cut the social safety net

This is an interesting statement by Romney:

‘‘We have two courses we can follow: One is to follow in the pathway of Europe, to shrink our military smaller and smaller to pay for our social needs,’’ Romney said outside the city’s Veterans Memorial Center and Museum. ‘‘The other is to commit to preserve America as the strongest military in the world, second to none, with no comparable power anywhere in the world.’’

He doesn’t say this explicitly but, since he says he wants to cut taxes and lower the deficit, he is implicitly saying he wants to cut payments for ‘social needs’, that would be welfare, schools, healthcare–the whole safety net. Of course, he’s not going to come right out and say that–he doesn’t have any political courage.

Mars and SpaceX

The commercial SpaceX Dragon capsule has been captured by the space station. Here’s a picture of it as it approached the space station (Credit: NASA):

In unrelated news, the Mar’s Rover Opportunity is still around and still taking pictures (this is a false color image, credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.):

Law of the Sea Treaty

A President is trying to pass the Law of the Sea Treaty again (Bill Clinton and George W Bush both failed):

In a joint appearance before Congress, Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey, made the case for the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which has been in force since 1994.

Republican opposition has stalled the pact for years and was on bold display at the hearing. The United States is the only major nation that has refused to sign the treaty, which has been endorsed by 161 countries and the European Union.

“We need to get off the sidelines and start taking advantage of the great deal that the convention offers the United States and our business community,’’ Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In an impassioned plea, she dismissed opposition to the pact as based on “ideology and mythology’’ and pointed out that the treaty has the backing of Republican and Democratic presidents, including President George W. Bush; businesses, the energy and shipping industry, and environmental groups.

Hmm, so who opposes it:

The treaty has languished for years because of opposition from those who argue it would undermine US sovereignty, and in recent months challenges from Tea Party Republicans.

…

Conservative Republicans expressed the strongest opposition, arguing the pact would force the United States to redistribute wealth through royalties from offshore drilling and impose regulations on greenhouse gases.

“This treaty would subordinate American sovereignty to the United Nations, impose an international tax on US energy production that would raise costs for American families, and act as a backdoor Kyoto Protocol that could allow foreign nations to regulate US energy emissions,’’ Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, said in a statement.

An international tax on business, then businesses must be against it. Right?. Well, no:

At that point, Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the Senate panel, jumped in to say that U.S. business supports ratification because it cannot establish claims to seabed mines beyond the 200-mile territorial limit if the U.S. isn’t part of the convention. No bilateral treaty can cover these areas of the seabed, Kerry said.

“You’re here protecting companies from paying a royalty that they want to pay,” Kerry told Inhofe. “They’d rather have 93 percent of something” than get nothing.

Hillary Clinton has heard these type of conspiracy theories for ages and even she has trouble believing they exist:

The top American diplomat said some of the arguments against the treaty “cannot even be taken with a straight face.” These, she said, include claims that the U.S. would have to pay a “UN tax,” that it would give the UN power over the U.S. Navy and that it would erode U.S. sovereignty.

“Honestly, I don’t know where these people make these things up,” Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. She chided critics who object to the U.S. joining any UN treaty saying, “Of course, that means the black helicopters are on their way,” a reference to conspiracy theories about a world government.

Some Republicans are, of course, proud of their theories:

“I hope you weren’t scoffing at us,” Idaho Senator Jim Risch told Clinton.“There’s some good stuff in here, but if we give up one scintilla of sovereignty that this country has fought for, bled for, have given up our treasure and the best that America has, I can’t vote for it,” Risch said.

I imagine he would also have been against the forming of the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions. I’m surpised this hasn’t been linked to Agenda 21 by any prominent Republicans yet. After all, it’s a pretty widespread belief among some.

Charles Pierce comments here.

Forcing religion on us

This is an interesting comment (pay site):

Notre Dame’s president, the Rev. John Jenkins, said in a statement that the school decided to sue “after much deliberation, discussion and efforts to find a solution acceptable to the various parties.’’ The university said that the mandate violates religious freedom by requiring many religiously affiliated hospitals, schools, and charities to comply.

“We do not seek to impose our religious beliefs on others,’’ Jenkins said. “We simply ask that the government not impose its values on the university when those values conflict with our religious teachings.’

Given that they don’t want to impose their beliefs on others, I assume that these universities and churches will now pay property taxes. And the Catholic Church has pursued a strong campaign against abortion, gay marriage, and the use of contraception, so they are trying to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us.

The new entitlement society

I’m confused (via here):

Federal budget and Census data show that, in 2010, 91  percent of the benefit dollars from entitlement and other mandatory programs went to the elderly (people 65 and over), the seriously disabled, and members of working households. 

…

 The data show that the middle class receives approximately its proportionate share of benefits:  in 2010, the middle 60 percent of the population received 58 percent of the entitlement benefits.  (The top 20 percent of the population received 10 percent of the benefits; the bottom 20 percent received 32 percent of the benefits.

but don’t many Republicans claim that we’re on our way (or already in) an entitlement society? Chris Christie certainly does:

“It’s because government’s now telling (Americans) to stop dreaming, stop striving, we’ll take care of you. We’re turning into a paternalistic entitlement society. That will not just bankrupt us financially, it will bankrupt us morally,” Christie said at the Bush Institute Conference on taxes and economic growth.

“When the American people no longer believe that this is a place where only their willingness to work hard and to act with honor and integrity and ingenuity determines their success in life, then we’ll have a bunch of people sitting on a couch waiting for their next government check.”

All those 70+ year olds need to get off their duff, as do the seriously disabled? And those who are working poor, must not be working hard enough I guess. 

I’m not sure I know this Scott Brown

Today, the Boston Globe has an article (pay site) about Scott Brown. It’s one of those usual puff articles that newspapers like to write about politicians every once in a while to show they can be nice. Here’s the main thrust of the article:

Brown arrived as a superstar after roaring into office in a special election to replace the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy. But even as he soaked up waves of media attention, Brown and his pickup truck revolution ran headlong into reality – getting things done in Washington, especially as a freshman of the minority party, is maddeningly hard.

He has discovered in his first two years in office that his considerable political charms and carefully cultivated everyman image – the ingredients for his electoral success in the Bay State – have not always helped him navigate a clubby Senate chamber that is riven by partisan divides, stocked with outsized egos, and operates under Byzantine rules and traditions.

“He’s impatient, because he wants to get things done,’’ said Maine’s Olympia Snowe, one of the few Republican moderates in the Senate who, like Brown, often votes with Democrats. “He walked into this spotlight almost immediately.’’

Shunning labels, Brown arrived in the capital promising to be a “Scott Brown Republican,’’ someone guided by his own star, and he has, in fact, demonstrated ideological flexibility on some issues.

I know it’s hard to remember, it was more than two years ago, but when he was running for the seat Scott Brown said very little about what he was going to do if elected. His campaign basically came down to: I wear a brown coat, I drive a pickup truck, and I’ll filibuster against Obama’s healthcare proposal. He didn’t go to get things done, he went to filibuster and he even made sure he was sworn in early so that he could filibuster against Scott Becker (you can’t have a union man on the National Labor Relations Board after all). If now he’s frustrated by the difficulty in getting things done, then he could look himself in the mirror.

Win one, lose one in civil liberties

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed last year expanded the authority of the President to indefinitely detain anyone who ‘supports’ terrorism. A few days ago, a judge declared part of it unconstitutional:

A federal district judge today, the newly-appointed Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York, issued an amazing ruling: one which preliminarily enjoins enforcement of the highly controversial indefinite provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act, enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Obama last December. This afternoon’s ruling came as part of a lawsuit brought by seven dissident plaintiffs — including Chris Hedges, Dan Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, and Birgitta Jonsdottir — alleging that the NDAA violates ”both their free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the First Amendment as well as due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

…

Significantly, the court here repeatedly told the DOJ that it could preclude standing for the plaintiffs if they were willing to state clearly that none of the journalistic and free speech conduct that the plaintiffs engage in could subject them to indefinite detention. But the Government refused to make any such representation. Thus, concluded the court, “plaintiffs have stated a more than plausible claim that the statute inappropriately encroaches on their rights under the First Amendment.”

It’s pretty amazing that the court had to rule that people arrested in the US have a right to a trial, but it’s nice that they did.

On the other hand (via here), most Republicans in the US House think that constitional right is bad for the US:

In two votes Friday morning, the House backed the president’s powers to indefinitely detain terror suspects captured on U.S. soil.

Lawmakers rejected an amendment that would have barred military detention for terror suspects captured in the United States on a 182-231 vote, beating back the proposal from a coalition of liberal Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans led by Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.).

…

supporters of indefinite detention suggested that the Smith-Amash amendment would incentivize terrorists to come to the United States, because they would receive more rights on U.S. soil than outside the country.

Gohmert suggested at one point that terrorists “supported”Smith’s amendment.

“We cannot look to guarantee those who seek to harm the U.S. the constitutional rights granted to Americans,” said Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.).“If we extend that to them, this war on terror, now it’s a criminal action.”

Yes, Allen, it would be a criminal action as the Constitution says it should be.

I should note that one of the sponsors of the amendment was a Republican (Justin Amash), but only 18 other Republicans voted for it (including Ron Paul) while 163 out of the 190 Democrats voted for it.

Space stuff

The initial launch for SpaceX is now set for tomorrow morning:

Mission plans call for an extensive set of tests in space requiring the Dragon spacecraft to show that it can move precisely in orbit and approach the space station carefully. Only after these tests are successful will the spacecraft be allowed to approach the orbiting laboratory close enough to be grappled and berthed by the station’s robotic arm.

And since I’m talking about space, here’s s picture of the Andromeda Galaxy (Credit: GALEX, JPL-Caltech, NASA):

Update: The SpaceX launch was aborted this morning, they might try again as early as Tuesday.

A swan

Here’s a picture of the star forming region of the constellation Cygnus (Credit: ESA/PACS/SPIRE/Martin Hennemann & Frederique Motte, Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay, CEA/Irfu — CNRS/INSU — Univ. Paris Diderot, France–now that’s a long credit–as always, click on it to see a larger image):

Sebelius, contraception, and Georgetown

The Catholic Church is strongly protesting having Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius speak during graduation:

Since Sebelius was announced earlier this month as one of the speakers for this week’s Georgetown graduation ceremonies, about 27,000 people have signed a petition, circulated by a conservative Catholic think tank, urging the university to withdraw the invitation. Sebelius was a key architect of the 2010 health-care law, and she authored the requirement that employers, including most religious ones, provide their employees with contraception coverage.

and  is really laying it on thick (bold added):

On Tuesday, the archdiocese of Washington, led by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, criticized Georgetown President John J. DeGioia for remarks he issued a day earlier — apparently to address the controversy — saying DeGioia had mischaracterized the issue as being about birth control. As the region’s top Catholic official, Wuerl is responsible for making sure Catholic institutions, including Georgetown, follow church teachings.

DeGioia “does not address the real issue for concern — the selection of a featured speaker whose actions as a public official present the most direct challenge to religious liberty in recent history,” reads the statement from the archdiocese, which covers the District and suburban Maryland.

and:

In a statement Tuesday, the Archdiocese of Washington called the decision unfortunate and even charged that the Public Policy Institute was supporting a “radical redefining of ministry.”

“Given the dramatic impact this mandate will have on Georgetown and all Catholic institutions, it is understandable that Catholics across the country would find shocking the choice of Secretary Sebelius, the architect of the mandate, to receive such special recognition at a Catholic university,” reads the statement. “It is also understandable that Catholics would view this as a challenge to the bishops.”

Just for fun they throw in a silly bit:

“Contrary to what is indicated in the Georgetown University President’s statement, the fundamental issue with the HHS mandate is not about contraception. As the United States Bishops have repeatedly pointed out, the issue is religious freedom,” its statement said.

Religious freedom to not allow contraception–it’s like how the Civil War was not about slavery, it was about states’ rights, mainly the states’ right to allow slavery.

This is all part of the growing conservatism in the Catholic Church based on statements such as:

Thus, in his address to the visiting American bishops, the pope stressed that Catholic universities are supposed to be helping the church defend its teachings, in an age in which they are constantly under attack.

The goal, said Benedict, is for Catholic schools to provide a “bulwark against the alienation and fragmentation which occurs when the use of reason is detached from the pursuit of truth and virtue. …

“Catholic institutions have a specific role to play in helping to overcome the crisis of universities today. Firmly grounded in this vision of the intrinsic interplay of faith, reason and the pursuit of human excellence, every Christian intellectual and all the church’s educational institutions must be convinced, and desirous of convincing others, that no aspect of reality remains alien to, or untouched by, the mystery of the redemption and the Risen Lord’s dominion over all creation.”

In case you think the Catholic Church is strict in all aspects, Georgetown does have a ROTC chapter which would seem to go against Church beliefs

Cut the program designed to cut costs to cut costs?

Via Kevin Drum (and here), it seems that Republicans are trying to cut the American Community Survey (Daniel Webster seems to be pushing it):

On May 9 the House voted to kill the American Community Survey, which collects data on some 3 million households each year and is the largest survey next to the decennial census. The ACS—which has a long bipartisan history, including its funding in the mid-1990s and full implementation in 2005—provides data that help determine how more than $400 billion in federal and state funds are spent annually. Businesses also rely heavily on it to do such things as decide where to build new stores, hire new employees, and get valuable insights on consumer spending habits. Check out this video of Target (TGT) executives talking about how much they use ACS data.

Here’s Webster’s reasons:

Last night, U.S. Representative Daniel Webster delivered on his promise to streamline government and stop wasteful spending by offering an amendment to prohibit taxpayer dollars from being used to conduct the American Community Survey, a program that could cost taxpayers upwards of $2.5 billion over the next decade.

Clearly outside the scope of what is intended or required by the Constitution, which calls only for an “enumeration” every ten years, the survey tramples on personal privacy. The 28 page survey includes questions requiring respondents to:

• Describe their emotional condition;
• Detail what time they left for work and how long it took them to get home; and
• Declare whether they had difficulty dressing or needed help to go shopping.

Failure to answer these questions is punishable by fines up to $5,000.

and here’s the response from the Census Bureau:

Detailed information on the demographic, social, economic and housing characteristics of the nation have been collected since the first census. For many decades, these questions were asked of every person and household. Starting in 1940, the development of statistical sampling theory at the Census Bureau allowed the collection of these detailed data for only a sample of the population. From the 1940 Census through Census 2000 most households were asked to provide responses to a short set of questions (the so-called “short form”), while a small sample were asked a longer set of questions (the so-called “long form”). In Census 2000 about 15 percent of the addresses were given the long form.
After the 1990 Census, Congress raised concerns about falling census participation and rising costs. Congress and Government Accountability Office supported the Census Bureau’s efforts to explore alternatives to the long form, with the goals of simplifying the census, containing costs, and producing more timely information to inform policy
decisions and legislative actions; were kept informed of the research results and detailed plans; and ultimately appropriated funds to fully implement the survey beginning in 2005. When the ACS was developed, the Census Bureau was challenged to give the nation more timely information that was cheaper to produce and less burdensome on potential respondents.
Demands for current, nationally consistent statistics from a wide variety of users led federal government policymakers to consider the feasibility of collecting social,
economic, and housing data continuously throughout the decade. The benefits of providing current statistics, along with the possible reduced costs to the census, led the Census Bureau to plan the implementation of continuous measurement, what is now known as the ACS.

So, extra questions on the Census, and now the ACS, are ‘clearly outside the scope of what is intended or required by the Constitution’ despite the fact that they have been around since the first Census in 1790 when, everyone except Webster would agree, the people who wrote the Constitution were still around. Also, the ACS was designed to reduce the length of the decennial Census and so reduce its cost. Here and later, the reasons for some of the extra questions are given and later it’s noted that these extra questions were deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court and the questions need to be approved by the Congress. Webster wonders why anyone should know ‘what time they left for work and how long it took them to get home’. The Census Bureau has an answer:

Transportation planners at all levels of government use ACS commuting statistics to guide transportation improvement strategies, predict future travel demand, and gauge the amount of pressure placed on transportation infrastructure. Transportation policy issues often operate at small geographic levels, in some cases involving a single neighborhood, or the interconnection of several non-adjacent neighborhoods. While standard ACS data products provide basic information on means of travel to work, travel time to work, place of work, and departure time at relatively large geographic summary levels, transportation planners require demographic and commuting information for smaller areas. Further, information that captures the “two-sided” nature of the residence-to-workplace commute is crucial for making transportation investment decisions. That is, a more complex and useful story about commuting patterns emerges when residence location is coupled with workplace location generating a commuting “flow.”

Why, it’s almost as if the Census Bureau has good reasons for asking the questions it asks.

In summary, Webster wants to get rid of the ACS to save money even though it was instituted to save money, because it’s unconstitutional even though the Supreme Court has declared it is constitutional, and the questions asked shouldn’t be asked even though the answers are used to help people and make the government and businesses more efficient.

Sharia and abortion

A bill aimed at stopping Sharia law from being used in courts passed in Kansas:

The Senate passed a bill dubbed “American law for American courts” Friday that would prevent any court in the state from making a ruling based on foreign or religious laws that run counter to the U.S. or Kansas Constitutions.

Since that’s the way things are now, I’m not sure how that changes anything. Anyway, here’s one of the main sponsors:

“I feel like this is going to help women know the rights they have in America,” Mast said Friday. “When the word gets out, women will come into courts in Kansas and the U.S. and seek equal protection.”

Let’s see where she stands on abortion. Yes, she is a strong opponent so I guess she wants women to know they do not have a right to get a referral for an abortion or get insurance that covers it.

Ok, let’s look at more arguments for the bill:

“To me, this is a women’s rights issue,” said Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita. “They stone women to death in countries that have sharia law. They have no rights in court. Female children are treated brutally.”

Sen. Jean Schodorf, R-Wichita, said she had confirmed that criminal actions, such as stoning, are prosecuted in Kansas regardless of the offender’s religion, even without the bill.

Sen. John Vratil, R-Leawood, said he quizzed the bill’s supporters on when a Kansas court had ever based a decision on sharia law and had yet to be provided with an example.

“Ladies and gentleman, this is a solution in search of a problem,” Vratil said.

Wagle cited a divorce in Wichita that was highlighted by Mast earlier in the week in which the husband has entered a Muslim marriage gift, or Sadaq, as evidence in the financial negotiations. That case, which began in 2010, is still pending. The court-appointed guardian ad litem said earlier this week that religion hasn’t been a factor in deciding custody of the couple’s child.

So, all the arguments for the bill are based on misinformation. The obvious intent is to show they don’t like Islam and they’ve gotten that across very well.

Back from Berlin

I’ve been in Berlin for a week, hence the lack of new posts. I also went to Potsdam where all the Hohenzollern palaces are. First, there’s Sanssouci (the main palace used by Frederick the Great, built from 1745-7):

with its intimate garden:

Of course, you can’t have just the one palace on the grounds so there’s also the Orangery Palace (built for Frederick IV in 1851):

and the Charlottenhof Palace (built for Frederick IV in 1826 when he was crown prince):

and the New Palace (built for showing off from 1763-9):

Then there were trifles such as the Chinese House (built from 1755-64):

There were also palaces in nearby Berlin–one can’t have too many palaces.

Space stuff

A few nice pictures for today. The first is an outburst from a black hole (Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Curtin University/R. Soria et al., Optical: NASA/STScI/ Middlebury College/F. Winkler et al.):

The next two look at SpaceX, the private company that is in line to take over cargo transport into space (Credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann):

and a more recent picture (Credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann April 26, 2012):

The launch is scheduled for the near future, but there is no firm date yet. You can look here for more information.

Romney and bank regulation

Mitt Romney has the typical Republican stance on regulation of banks (pay link) and regulations in general:

Republican Mitt Romney is pledging, if he is elected president, to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, a position favored by donors on Wall Street who have sent millions the candidate’s way. But he is nearly silent on how – without the regulation – he would prevent Wall Street from once again engaging in the risky practices that helped cause the 2008 financial crisis.

…

The industry objects to the new rules and restrictions, and Romney said in May 2011 that the law “scared the dickens out of the financial sector and caused banks to pull back from lending.’’ He has joined his Republican presidential rivals in calling for an outright repeal of the legislation.

Romney has criticized both the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is designed to monitor things like credit card applications and home mortgages, and the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is supposed to monitor for systemic risks in the markets. Romney says both are too powerful and run by unelected bureaucrats.

Republicans would like to get rid of almost all these regulations without replacing them. The problem is that the financial industry crashed the world economy and so people don’t much like it. Therefore they pretend that they’ll replace it with something–of course it has to be generic, because anything specific will cause problems with the financial industry which gives them so much money (they also give Democrats a lot of money which is why the regulations were watered down). If you believe that the financial industry will now be responsible then Romney’s your guy. If you think they’ll do most anything to make a bigger profit, then … ok neither candidate is really for you, but Obama is a bit better.

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This has been getting a lot of attention. I wonder why?

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

Yes that would do it. The old newspaper adage to give both sides has been very ably used by Republicans over the years (it’s why climate change is reported as if it’s controversial among scientists). They say it better:

Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?

Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.

Look ahead to the likely consequences of voters’ choices in the November elections. How would the candidates govern? What could they accomplish? What differences can people expect from a unified Republican or Democratic government, or one divided between the parties?

Of course that would take effort on the part of the reporters, it’s so much easier to just be a scribe.