Is BP allowing the leak to continue to protect profits?

What do former President Bill Clinton and Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Georgia) have in common?

Both Clinton and Gingrey are now on record as suggesting that the navy should take over the operation from BP and blow up the well.

The basic idea seems to be that they could drill one or more shafts parallel to the well shaft and about ten feet away and then fill them with high explosive which when detonated would collapse the actual well shaft inward, sealing itself. These parallel shafts would be only about ten feet deep (in contrast to the 10,000 feet that the relief well is being drilled into the rock as we speak.)

I HOPE the reason this was not done is because whatever Clinton and Gingrey may have said, there are technical problems that make it as daunting or as risky as the methods that have been tried (which is possible, because politicians sometimes have been known to make suggestions about things they really don't understand very well.)

However, a disturbing couple of lines pops up if you read today's article (the one on Clinton endorsing the plan.)

There has been some pressure for BP to simply blow up the well, with critics suggesting the company is forgoing that option out of a desire to get as much oil as possible from the rig.

"If we demolish the well using explosives, the investment's gone," former nuclear submarine officer and a visiting scholar on nuclear policy at Columbia University Christopher Brownfield said in a Fox News interview in May. "They lose hundreds of millions of dollars from the drilling of the well, plus no lawmaker in his right mind would allow BP to drill again in that same spot. So basically, it's an all-or-nothing thing with BP: They either keep the well alive, or they lose their whole investment and all the oil that they could potentially get from that well."

IF that is the reason why this has not been done but in fact explosives could have sealed this well much earlier then we should all be disturbed. Disturbed and outraged. I've assumed that the reason BP hasn't yet stopped the leak is because they tried and failed. But if they could have stopped it and instead failed to do so intentionally purely for the purpose of protecting their 'investment' (at whatever cost to those onshore) then that decision would qualify as a crime and they should be made to pay for it.

GOP recruiting class just the same old retreads

It seems as though Republicans are recruiting some candidates for Congress-- many of whom are the same old retreads who were part of the problem before.

Not anything new, but a bunch of former members of Congress who they claim are supposed to be something new. Mostly the same ones who were in Congress during the 1990's and early 2000's and helped put the roots of the present crisis in place.

Epitomatically they are trumpeting former Senator Dan Coats of Indiana, who will challenge his successor, Sen. Evan Bayh. Recall that Senator Coats is the Senator who said the day after Bill Clinton launched missile strikes in an attempt to get Osama bin Laden on August 18, 1998 (eleven days after the African embassy bombings and a day when we had some intelligence about where bin Laden was holding a meeting,)

"I think we fear that we may have a President that is desperately seeking to hold onto his job in the face of a firestorm of criticism and calls for him to step down.”

Senator Dan Coats, R-IN August 19, 1998.

The full context of the statement is that also on August 18, 1998 Monica Lewinsky was giving a deposition in Manhattan and Coats and other Republicans were apparently upset that the all-important Monica scandal didn't get the headline for that day (though taking a headline from the Monica scandal would have been what would happen if Bill Clinton launched the missile strike against bin Laden on pretty much any day during 1998.)

I'm sure that Coats' statement calling on the President to resign for attacking Osama bin Laden must have been received with comfort and great mirth by bin Laden.

I'm sure that there are some opportunities out there for Republicans, especially given Democrats' failure to pass health care legislation and other items on their agenda that have caused a lot of voters to decide that not much has changed. But the idea that running candidates against them who themselves were part of the last crop of failures, even up to and including a candidate who once said the President should resign for attacking Osama bin Laden, is hardly a recruiting class designed to benefit from voter discontent.

Time for America to Come Together in our Best Effort

Let's forget about Rush and Pat and focus instead on what we can do right. This is a time when the United States can come together and show real leadership in the world, and do it for the right reasons.

The pictures we've all seen coming out of Haiti the past few days have been heart-rending, terrifying, gruesome, horrible, painful, and evoke so many other emotions, so diverse but all terrible.

President Obama showed real leadership in moving quickly to help the people of Haiti. He and Secretary Napolitano also showed compassion in suspending deportations to Haiti for eighteen months by granting TPS (temporary protected status) to Haitians currently in the United States; dumping a bunch more people into the current scene of devastation would be unhelpful at best and disastrous at worst. Yes, they are getting some heat from Nativist groups but the real test of leadership is the ability to make tough decisions because they are right.

Right now there is no functioning government there but American relief workers are working shoulder to shoulder with those from many other countries and with those Haitians who are able to help to treat the wounded, bury the dead and rescue the survivors. But that is only this week. Rebuilding Haiti will be a long term project. And the fact is, Haiti was in terrible shape even last Monday, the day before the earthquake. Rebuilding it won't just mean patching together the same concrete buildings that collapsed and killed tens of thousands on Tuesday. It will mean rebuilding it better. Certainly that begins with constructing buildings that will stand up the next time there is an earthquake, but it will mean more than that. It will mean creating a vibrant, dynamic economy, one where people can hope for a future for themselves and their kids in Haiti, instead of only dreaming of escaping in a small boat trying to sneak into the United States.

President Obama also turned to the source that many other Presidents have turned to when they need someone to coordinate efforts like this: former Presidents. He asked former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to help lead this. Not only does this show that this will be a non-partisan effort but he is showing that he trusts ex-presidents to show real leadership on behalf of the United States, as they have in the past (the Gerry Ford spend-your-retirement-on-the-golf-course model is now officially obsolete; even Republicans have to admit that when Jimmy Carter raised the bar for ex-Presidents it was a good thing.)

President Clinton has done things like this before (remember the Tsunami relief effort he headed with the elder President Bush.) He's also been involved in other international efforts, such as last year's retrieval from North Korea of two American journalists.

President George W. Bush has kept a low profile since leaving office (unlike his former Vice President.) So in a sense this is his 'rookie' assignment as an ex-President. And I wish him success. I certainly was very critical of 'Dubya' the whole time he was in office (and there are still things left over from his administration that we need to get to the bottom of,) but I'm willing to give him a clean slate as an ex-president (remember that even Richard Nixon had evolved into somewhat of a senior statesman by the time he died.) This is a good start, and to be honest even while he was President, and for all his warts, Bush Jr. did give significant non-military aid to very poor countries (including Haiti.)

This is a time for America to step forward and do what we can together.

Ensign won't resign but he deserves to be called a hypocrite

After admitting an affair yesterday, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) resigned his leadership position as Chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee (the number four spot in the house GOP leadership) but declined to resign from the Senate.

As a matter of fact, I will say that I support his decision not to resign. That's because it is up to the voters of Nevada to decide whether they feel that whatever he may have done in his personal life disqualifies him from serving. I'm not endorsing his affair, but let's be honest here-- if all the adulterers in Congress were caught and resigned, it would be sort of like baseball without steroid users; the number of faces that'd be missing would likely be massive. However, I've never felt that what people do in their personal life has, or should have, any affect on how well they do their job. I disagree with almost everything that Senator Ensign stands for but that's a completely separate issue from his personal life.

However, where he does deserve a box on the ears for this is in the personal hypocrisy department. In fact, (as Nate Silver points out) Ensign has in the past called for Bill Clinton and Larry Craig to resign after they got in trouble for their sexual exploits.

Not that Ensign is the first Republican to engage in this kind of hypocrisy of course. Remember that the impeachment charge against Bill Clinton was led in the House by Speaker Newt Gingrich and pit-bull hatchet man Dan Burton. As we now know, both Gingrich and Burton were covering up their own affairs at the same time they were moralizing about Bill Clinton's. And let's not forget Republicans like Larry Craig and David Vitter who got where they were precisely by preaching about morality.

Yes, Democrat Eliot Spitzer became Governor of New York the same way, but he got what he had coming-- Spitzer could have ridden out getting caught doing a one-night stand with a prostitute but the hypocrisy of a guy who had run on his record as a prosecutor of sending other people to prison for the same thing pretty much guaranteed that he had no other option than to resign.

Ensign hasn't sent anyone to prison but he has certainly preached about morality and for that he deserves to be branded as a hypocrite.

Say what you will about Bill Clinton, but at least he never criticized anyone else's sex life.

Sort of like the Energizer bunny.

Socks, formerly the Clintons' cat, died today. When the Clintons moved out of the White House, they gave Socks to press secretary Betty Curry, who has kept him for the past eight years.

Socks, it seems, had only one life.

But the Clintons do have nine lives.

Once again, Bill Clinton says something that will boomerang against Hillary

It's been noted that Bill Clinton keeps giving the Hillary Clinton campaign headaches, and at times he's been more of a net negative than a positive. Most notably, it was Bill Clinton who first played the race card, suggesting in South Carolina that African-American voters were only voting for Obama because he was black and comparing him to 'Jesse Jackson,' thereby earning Clinton the mass defection of the previously sizeable number of African-American voters who had been supporting her in that state and elsewhere.

Well, he said something that will give her campaign heartburn again Sunday while campaigning in West Virginia. In that state, polls have been suggesting that she will win big, maybe even by more than forty percent (which would be a 70-30 percent pasting.) Of course that won't matter because well over 90% of the pledged delegates have already been chosen for the convention and West Virginia's puny delegate total of 28 delegates wouldn't do much, even if Clinton won three quarters of them (21-7 which would be a margin of +14, insufficient to change the delegate reality in which Obama has increased his margin just of superdelegates by more than fourteen just since last Tuesday.) But rather than setting her up to bask in the glow of a big win, he inexplicably raised the bar to an impossibly high level. According to ABC News he said about West Virginia:

You have to realize that if you show up in enough numbers, and your neighbors in Kentucky do, and we have a good run through the rest of these states," asserted Clinton, "We gotta have your help and get the largest number of people to show up on election day. See all this stuff you are hearing about is an attempt to discourage you. That's what this is, pure and simple, hoping, well, Hillary can get eighty percent of the vote in West Virginia, and if only 100,000 people show up it is not enough. But if 600,000 people show up, and you say we want a president than you will see the earth move.

Let's look at what he said in terms of what Bill is saying defines an 'earth-shaking' Clinton victory: 1. He is suggesting that 600,000 people need to show up to vote in the Democratic primary. Even in this year of record high turnout in primary elections, that would be extraordinary. In fact that would be nearly every registered Democrat in the state. 2. He is saying that Hillary can get 80 percent of the vote. That would be a sixty point blowout. Impressive for sure. But virtually impossible, even for Hillary Clinton in the West Virginia primary.

So now, thanks to Bill, no matter how badly things go in West Virginia on Tuesday, all the Obama campaign has to do is quote back Bill Clinton and suggest that Hillary didn't win as impressively as she was supposed to. Bill Clinton has just turned what should be a blowout win by any standard for Hillary Clinton into what can be described as 'underperforming expectations.' Conversely, by setting the bar so low for Obama (20%), Bill Clinton has in effect given him a way to say he has some momentum, even in a state in which over 90% of the voters are white.

Once again, Hillary's worst enemy isn't the media, the anti-war movement, the vast right-wing conspiracy or any other active candidate. Her worst enemy is, well we know who it is.

Clinton campaign's obsession with Bill Richardson is not helping them.

A couple of weeks ago I put up a post on Bill Richardson's endorsement of Barack Obama in which I described some of the angry reactions that came from Clinton supporters, especially James Carville's comment comparing Richardson to Judas Iscariot.

Things haven't died down either. This week it was reported that Bill Clinton, while meeting with a group of Super Delegates in California and being asked about Carville's comments, blew up, got red in the face and according to one participant 'went off like a grenade.' He was quoted as getting red in the face, shaking his finger and saying about Richardson, "He promised me five times to my face he wouldn't do that." Richardson has since denied that he ever promised Bill Clinton (or anyone else) that he wouldn't endorse Obama.

Well, in this game of he said/he said, one thing is clear-- at least one part of what Bill Clinton said is demonstrably false. While running for President himself, Richardson was clear that he was running to try and win the nomination on his own. He withdrew on January 10. CNN reported Tuesday that they had compared the two men's schedules since that time and found that the two men were in the same place only once since then-- on February 3 when they watched the Super Bowl together. So at most, Richardson COULD have only made such a promise one time, not five (since Bill Clinton clearly said "to my face," which to me pretty clearly indicates in person, not by phone, email or other messaging device.) Whether he made the promise on that occasion is an unprovable, but given that at least one part of Clinton's statement has already been shown to be less than truthful by the CNN sleuths, all other things being equal Richardson has more credibility on this than the former President.

More to the point though, the longer this goes on the worse it hurts Hillary Clinton. She is running against Barack Obama right now, not Bill Richardson. So no matter how bad her campaign and supporters make him look, they are taking their eye off the ball. Maybe it's little wonder that her lead in Pennsylvania, which just a week or two ago was polling as high as twenty points, is now less than half that much. Yeah, keep on campaigning against Bill Richardson. I can see the Obama campaign thinking, 'heh-heh-heh,' the longer this goes on.

It is true that the Richardson endorsement broke through a couple of weeks of static and has since led to a steady trickle of other super-delegates and influential party leaders endorsing Obama (including Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Minnesota Senator Amy Kobluchar, Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal and former Indiana Congressman and 9/11 commission co-chair Lee Hamilton, in addition to a comment not quite rising to the level of an official endorsement by former President Jimmy Carter who strongly hinted that he will vote for Obama at the party convention.) But beating up on Richardson some more still won't turn off the tap on superdelegates declaring their intention to vote for Obama giving him some substitute for momentum during a six week stretch between primaries. So it's hard to see what the Clinton campaign has to gain from this.

Richardson endorses Obama.

Thursday, Bill Richardson, who I supported for President until he dropped out, endorsed Barack Obama, who I switched to and who I actually voted for.

You'd think this post would therefore be completely laudatory. But it's not. In good faith I can't just jump up and down and yell about how happy I am about it. I'd love to but I have just a few nagging reservations, and they are best addressed by looking at some of the political angles.

It is true that I am very happy to see Richardson, who was criticized during the campaign for being indecisive (i.e. 'Yankees or Red Sox?') firmly committing himself to endorsing a candidate. It is true that I still respect Richardson (who I first met over twenty years ago when he was my congressman) and believe that he would do a fine job in any cabinet position, especially any that involved diplomacy, at which he has excelled. And it is true that I am glad that when he finally made a decision about choosing a candidate he chose Obama. That isn't easy to do. Bill Clinton reportedly got in his face and berated Richardson earlier in the campaign (not sure if it is the day the two of them pointedly watched the Super Bowl together) for not endorsing his wife then (asking whether two cabinet positions Richardson was appointed to during the Clinton administration was not enough to warrant an endorsement,) and the conversation that Richardson had with Hillary Clinton before he endorsed Obama was (according to Richardson, but reflecting what others have said about similar phone conversations), 'painful' and difficult. The sense of anger, frustration and resentment from the Clinton campaign is palpable, with Clinton friend and confidante James Carville noting that it happened just before Easter and comparing Richardson to Judas Iscariot and claiming that his 'betrayal' was for 'thirty pieces of silver.' It is clear that if Hillary beats the odds and ends up as President, Richardson won't be nominated for dogcatcher.

However I have to say that the quote by Richardson that he made his decision after hearing Obama's speech on race last week just doesn't feel right. It may well be that Richardson, after doing the delegate math and figuring out that Obama will most likely win, may have used the speech on race as the first major event that came along that he could reasonably cite as a reason to endorse Obama and hitch his wagon to the winning train. However, Richardson has always struck me as a good hard calculator and not one to get carried away with the emotion of the moment (one of the characteristics which has made him a good diplomat,) and as such I would much rather see him just go ahead and say so. Say he believes that Obama is going to be the nominee and that he is supporting him.

Richardson is rumored to want to be the Vice Presidential nominee, or if not that then Secretary of State.

He won't be the Vice Presidential nominee. Obama, assuming he wins the nomination, will need to unify the party. As such there will be a lot of pressure for him to accept Hillary Clinton as number two. If that doesn't happen (either because he resists the pressure or she refuses the job) then there are two somewhat contradictory schools of thought on how he could unify the party. One is to choose a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton if she doesn't want it herself, especially one who would help with the electoral math. Two men who are known to be on her short list, Senator (and former Governor) Evan Bayh of Indiana and Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio-- both of whom also have the executive experience that Obama lacks, would likely be at the top of that list. The other train of thought in terms of getting Hillary supporters to accept Obama is that many women have waited for a long time to have a female President. To obviously reach and choose a woman (as Walter Mondale did when he chose congresswoman-- yes, Geraldine Ferraro-- in 1984) would seem to be a pander and would likely turn off a lot of voters who see Obama as being above that kind of thing. However he could without reaching look for and choose a highly qualified female candidate, especially a Governor who has proven she can do the job as an executive and would therefore make a good running mate for Obama. That may be easier said than done though. Three of the four Democratic Governors whose names come up first, Janet Napolitano of Arizona, Christine Gregoire of Washington and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, endorsed Obama much earlier in the campaign, and might not help with hard-core Clinton supporters who support Clinton for her positions rather than her gender (and there are many of them, in fact.) The fourth, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm is a strong supporter of Clinton but runs afoul of the Constitutional requirement that if she became President she would have to be native-born (Granholm was born in Canada.) Uniting the party in the event that Hillary Clinton refuses to join the ticket or Obama feels that he can't accept her would be a problem for Obama, but it's not a problem the solution to which puts Bill Richardson on the radar screen in any way. For that matter, if Clinton-- after finishing a very strong second, were passed over in favor of the candidate who finished a very distant fourth and withdrew the day after the New Hampshire primary, that would probably be seen by Hillary and her supporters as the equivalent of a slap in the face, and with some justification. So the bottom line is that Richardson certainly won't be nominated to run for Vice President.

A much stronger likelihood is that Richardson is angling for the position of Secretary of State. He'd likely be very good at it too, based on his numerous diplomatic successes in all kinds of negotiations in the past. Richardson, in his position as a freelancing diplomat as well as U.N. ambassador during the Clinton administration, has successfully negotiated treaties with everyone from the dictatorship of North Korea to bands of thugs who have taken American hostages in remote and war-torn regions. Last year he negotiated a cease-fire in Darfur. Frankly, even if he had not endorsed Obama, Obama would be foolish not to pick Richardson for Secretary of State. Politically, Richardson may have the inside track on that job, especially if the other top contender is another former Presidential candidate, Joe Biden. Biden has been even more cautious about issuing an endorsement than Richardson, and while he has been the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, he has never personally gotten his hands dirty with the business of negotiating tough treaties in tough circumstances as Richardson has. Given Obama's inexperience in foreign policy, he needs the best Secretary of State he can get and that would be Bill Richardson.

So it's clear that Obama can give Richardson the position he wants. What Richardson brings is an appeal to Hispanic voters, a group that Obama has underperformed with. Further, by the timing of his annoucement, coming on virtually the same day as the 'passportgate' scandal which cast Obama in a role in which he was both the victimized party and able to forcefully but calmly demand an investigation, Richardson was able to give Obama two major news stories favorable to Obama within the same news cycle and blow Jeremiah Wright's sermons off the front page despite the best efforts of the right-wing media to keep them there. And in the news business, once news is old and replaced by new news, it doesn't tend to return unless there is something new to pull it back to top billing.

Clinton campaign manager Mark Penn said that Richardson's endorsement comes too late to really help Obama with Hispanic voters. Rarely do I agree with Mark Penn, but I think he has a point there. Nevada, New Mexico, California, Arizona and Texas have already voted (and all for Clinton). There is a small but possibly significant Hispanic concentration, oddly enough, in North Carolina (a state Obama is expected to win anyway) and some in Oregon, and then there is Puerto Rico's last-in-the-nation primary, but the truth is that the vast majority of Hispanic voters have already voted. Very likely, given the small margins by which Clinton won in both states, a Richardson endorsement and campaign on behalf of Obama in New Mexico and Texas would have swung both states to Obama but Richardson was too cautious and did not issue an endorsement in time for either state. However, Richardson could be a strong help to Obama if he does campaign in Puerto Rico, and in a general election may be just the antidote that Obama needs if he is willing to barnstorm for Obama, especially in his own state but also in other swing states.

But Richardson, in taking as long as he did to make the bold move, and appearing to worry too much about trying to please both sides (or perhaps it might be better said, trying to displease neither) until so late in the campaign, brought into sharp focus some of the weaknesses he had that probably hurt him during his own Presidential run.

The scarlet "H"

Well, you know what kind of week it's been when the names I hear most on the news after New York Democratic Governor Elliott Spitzer are Larry Craig, Bill Clinton and Jim McGreevey.

It also is a great opportunity to answer critics on the right who claim that somehow the media judges a Larry Craig or a Tom Foley more harshly when they are involved in sexual pecadillos than they judge a Bill Clinton or a Ted Kennedy.

The issue is not about sex. It's about hypocrisy.

Bill Clinton left office with a 60% plus approval rating, and that was after the impeachment trial. Voters in Massachusetts have returned Ted Kennedy to the Senate seven times since Chappaquiddick. Why is that?

The answer is quite simple. Whatever their faults (and I'm not defending them) neither Bill Clinton nor Ted Kennedy has told anyone how to live their personal life. They don't go out and preach what they don't practice.

Elliott Spitzer, in contrast, has practically no support in this case, and the reason is because he made his career by being tough on criminals (including prostitution rings) and being 'Mr. Clean' himself. Well, if you claim to be Mr. Clean then you better be exactly that.

Which leads to why Republicans like Larry Craig have gotten such a harsh rebuke from the public as well as from the media. They ran on 'family values' platforms, preaching (among other things) about the sanctity of marriage. And it probably earns them some votes. But when voters find that those votes were earned under false pretenses they feel far more betrayed than they would by say, yet another sex scandal involving Bill Clinton. There is a reason why the media doesn't report on any more Clinton sex scandals. It's because pretty much everybody knows by now that Bill has a zipper problem, and reporting details of another dalliance would be about as interesting to most people as it will be if the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Pittsburgh Pirates swap a couple of minor league prospects (yawwwn.) When a sinner is caught sinning, it's not exactly earth-shattering news. But when they bust the preacher who has been out railing against it, then it is.

For that matter, speaking of preachers, this pattern holds beyond politics. There is a reason why Hugh Grant is still making movies but Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard have mostly lost their careers after all three of them were caught consorting with prostitutes. That reason is because Hugh Grant never got out there and judged others for their personal failings. So both society at large and those who work with him are much more willing to forgive Hugh Grant and let him get on with things than they are willing to let those who engaged in a 'hang 'em high' brand of moralisitic judgement escape justice according to the same gallows that they have erected themselves.

But it isn't about the media not reporting scandals involving Democrats. Republicans are in fact more vulnerable to the fallout from sexual scandal precisely because they have cast themselves as the guardians of societies standards, of morality and decency. When preachy, judgemental Democrats like Spitzer or Gary Condit (who once called on Bill Clinton to step aside during the Lewinsky scandal) get caught with their pants down (in both senses of the word) then they face the same wrath from the public as Larry Craig and Mark Foley did.

Which leads us right back to what the Bible says about hypocrisy: If you live in a glass house then don't throw stones.

The reason why I'm not voting for Hillary Clinton in the primary.

Let me quote from a comment I just put up on a post on Althouse in response to a post she put up in which Bill Clinton is bemoaning the fact perception that people are voting for Obama because he is younger than Hillary Clinton.

I wrote,

She doesn't get it. Doesn't get it at all. Neither does he.

Age has nothing to do with why so many Democratic primary voters don't want her. Neither does gender.

As a typical Democratic primary voter, let me spell it out:

Seven years ago, I was excited that Hillary Clinton became a Senator. I'd read some of her books, and I felt that she would be a progressive voice for moving things forward in the United States Senate.

Then came her voting record. She voted a lot like Joe Lieberman. NCLB, Patriot I and Patriot II, the Bankruptcy bill, and most importantly the Iraq war resolution. Then this year, she had a chance she'd learned her lesson about voting for the Iraq war when a resolution came up that appears to grease the skids for a war with Iran. She also voted for that.

Now, I am left with two possibilities.

1. She believes in this stuff. In that case, she is too conservative for me, and maybe she should move to the Republican party (since she's voted with them when it mattered.)

2. She voted that way because she a) was looking at how to run to the center, thinking about the general election of 2008 all along, b) took primary voters like me for granted, thinking we'd all just vote for her automatically, and c) we can assume more of the same when she takes office, that she will keep placating the right so she can appear centrist for the election of 2012.

Either way, I want someone who will stand up and fight for the things I believe in. Now granted, Obama isn't perfectm for example Clinton is right when she attacks him for having shifted to supporting the Patriot II Act (for the record I started out supporting Bill Richardson, and having endorsed him will still vote and work for him unless he drops out before my state votes on Feb. 5) but I feel that Obama much more reflects my passionately felt positions that does Hillary Clinton.

Isn't that what a Democratic primary is for anyway? I assume that the Republicans will pick someone who reflects what they want, not just someone who some pollster or focus group tells them might pick off a few votes from indecisive Democrats.

In other words, my vote was Hillary's to lose. Seven years ago she's had it. But during the past seven years, she's lost it.

new scandal has GOP whining that the media goes softer on Democrats-- only that's hogwash

It seems that a lot of Republicans and talk show hosts are now angry about the latest scandal involving Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) who wants to withdraw a guilty plea he made following an arrest for allegedly soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in a bathroom stall at the Minneapolis airport.

Many (though not all) Republicans in Washington are calling on Craig to resign from the Senate (though behind it seems to be a barely voiced but frequently alluded to fear that they may lose a Senate seat, even in Idaho, if Craig remains and runs for re-election next year) but then they always ask why the media (I guess meaning the corporate media) go 'softer' on Democrats accused of sex scandals.

I'd like to respond that that on several levels.

First, it hasn't been true. Start with the most obvious Democrat accused in sex scandals: Bill Clinton. The press reported until most people were nauseated on Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky. During 1998, the Lewinsky scandal made headlines pretty much from January through the conclusion of the impeachment trial the following January. The problem for the GOP is that they took what could have been a minor 'gotcha' story and turned it into a story which in the end benefitted Clinton and Democrats by carrying it way too far and trying to impeach the President. And yeah, I know-- there are stories about Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broderick and probably some more, but I suspect the reason the media hasn't reported much about those is because most people have gotten the idea by now that Bill Clinton is a wandering husband with a zipper problem, and yet another story about it, especially after the impeachment trial would be like watching re-runs of a syndicated black and white TV show for the ninth time. (Yawwwwn.)

Beyond Clinton, it hasn't been true that the press brushes over Democratic sex scandals. Ask Gary Hart and Gary Condit about that. It's just recently, the guys involved in sex scandals have mostly been Republicans. The talk show hosts like to cite former Congressman Gerry Studds (D-MA), who in 1983 was censured for having sex with a male page. OK, fair enough. But did you know that on the very same day (July 20, 1983) that the house censured Studds, they also censured a Republican congressman for exactly the same thing (except that, as Indy Voter points out in the comments, the page was female)? Do you know his name? Probably not, if you listen to right wing talk radio. It was Daniel Crane, Republican of Illinois. But somehow the fact that this 1983 scandal is no longer making headlines (at least in terms of Studds, who incidentally left Congress a decade ago and died last year) is supposed to show media bias in terms of the current story involving Sen. Craig.

They also like to compare Studds to former congressman Mark Foley, who resigned last year after having sent sexually suggestive emails to male pages. But the fact is, Foley resigned the same day the story broke so we don't even know what if any action Dennis Hastert's Congress would have taken.

They also like to cite current Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, who was reprimanded by the house for his relationship with an adult male prostitute. This was in fact reported on in 1990. So I'm not sure what their beef is. They like to point out that the prostitute, Steve Gobie, ran a gay escort ring for awhile out of Frank's apartment. But Frank himself reported that to the House Ethics Committee when he found out about it and the Ethics Committee concluded that Frank had no knowledge of it until he reported it. And, if they think that having a gay escort service running out of Franks' apartment was such a serious crime that didn't get enough press, all I have to say to that are two words: JEFF GANNON.

But beyond all of this, there is the issue of hypocrisy. Neither Bill Clinton nor Gerry Studds nor Barney Frank ever tried to lecture anyone else about how they should run their sex lives. But the whole 'family values' platform is practically mandatory for a Republican running for office anymore. So they spout it. And when one of them is caught, well it is more interesting to see what happens to people who live in glass houses when they throw stones. There are many sinners in the world, and when a sinner is caught sinning it is less of a story than when the modern-day Pharisee, who claims to be the defender and upholder of high moral values, is caught sinning. That is human nature-- to want to hold the hypocrite up to the highest level of public ridicule and scorn.

Today right wing jock Sean Hannity tried to address the hypocrisy issue by saying, that 'Democrats SHOULD preach family values.' Hmmmm. Personally, I think I have 'family values,' but the problem is his emphasis on 'preach.' I'm perfectly willing to share my faith and my lifestyle with anyone who is interested, and I've always been up front about them, but I don't 'preach' to people about how they should live, judge them for their lifestyles (it was ironic that Craig's bizarre news conference seemed to be more focused on denying that he was gay than on denying that he was soliciting sex,) or frankly care what their sex life is. But apparently Hannity thinks (apparently because the hypocrisy angle almost exclusively cuts against Republicans) that therefore Democrats should become more like Republicans. Hint: If we thought that we had to 'preach' (and more to the point, legislate) moral values, well then we'd be Republicans.

To be honest, I don't care one iota whether Larry Craig is gay or not. His family, especially his wife, might care but the Craig family sex life isn't my business. Playing footsie under the stall partition in a bathroom is a bit weird, but weirdness isn't a crime. Soliciting sex is a crime, and pleading guilty to a crime without even consulting a lawyer shows a profound lack of judgement that the voters of Idaho might want to consider. Ultimately though, that is up to the voters in Idaho, and I don't live in Idaho.

But yeah, he might want to resign. Because I don't think he will find much support from other Republicans, especially those (like current and former Congressmen Dan Burton and Newt Gingrich who criticized Clinton's affair even while having affairs of their own) who may be trying to overcompensate for their own little secrets by beating the morality drums louder than ever.

Do we always want a lame duck?

Every now and then I post on a topic that I hope everyone will catch their partisan breath, step back for a moment and consider whether we should do it.

And so it is today. I believe that we should repeal the Twenty-second amendment, which prevents the President from serving for more than two terms.

What?!? Do I, a confirmed Bush-basher, want more of Bush?

Absolutely not. But if that was your reaction then you are guilty of the myopic view that I am trying to get you to see past, and you can go to the end of the line. For one thing, Jeb Bush was quietly assembling a campaign staff last year as he considered a bid to become the next link in the Bush dynasty, and wisely backed out of the race recognizing that America would dearly have loved to slap down George W. Bush at the polls (as happened by proxy last November), and if Jeb ran then he would certainly have been punished for the sins of his brother.

I know there are conservatives who occasionally stop by here. Is this some trick to bring back Bill Clinton?

Also no, and now you can go to the back of the line. It is true that Clinton, who left office with 60% plus approval ratings, would probably be a more viable candidate for a third term than George W. Bush, whose approval ratings can't seem to break out of the low to mid 30% range. However, I was never that big of a fan of Clinton or of the DLC, and frankly if people want to go back to the Clinton era then they already have a way to get there, by voting for Hillary.

My concern has more to do with the effect of a lame duck Presidency on the country. Traditionally, Presidents never served more than two terms (a Vice President who became President and served more than half of a term as President was considered to have served for a term.)

That tradition of not running again changed with Roosevelt. No, not Franklin, but Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt was considered to have served two terms, acceding to the Presidency after an assassin shot William McKinley in 1901, then being elected in his own right in 1904. So after the election of 1908, Theodore Roosevelt left office on schedule and was succeeded by William Howard Taft.

In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt became unhappy with the return of the establishment leaders of the Republican party (he had been chosen VP in 1900 primarily as the hero of San Juan Hill, in an age when Vice Presidents were considered to be nearly useless, except to win votes for a ticket.) So being relatively young (he turned 54 that year) he unsuccessfully challenged Taft for the nomination, and then put together his own party to challenge both the Republicans and the Democrats. He lost, but he got 28% of the vote and actually beat Taft-- the only time in post-Civil war history that a third party candidate has finished ahead of the nominee of either of the two major parties. Clearly, while many voters did not want Roosevelt back, millions did and the 'third term' issue did not affect them.

Then in 1940, Franklin Roosevelt decided to run for a third term. Unlike his distant cousin he was successful. In 1940, Hitler's armies were marching unchecked all over Europe and the future looked bleak. Even people who may not have liked him voted for Roosevelt to serve a third term, prefering proven leadership to an inexperienced candidate like Wendell Wilkie as America and the world seemed headed, willingly or not, into one of its darkest hours. Roosevelt, his health failing but determined to see the war through, was also re-elected to a fourth term but died just weeks after his inauguration and approximately the same amount of time before the war ended.

In 1947 (with ratification occuring by 1951), Republicans pushed through the twenty-second amendment. As Roosevelt ally Elmer Davis said, the amendment was 'an act of retroactive vindictiveness.' Davis went on to say that 'they couldn't beat Roosevelt while he was alive, so they kick him when he's dead.'

At the very least, the amendment says that the voters are too stupid to vote out of office a President who hasn't been terribly effective (ask Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush about that). No one wants a 'dictator for life' in the White House, and I believe that the voters of America would not stand for it. As I mentioned earlier, 1940 was an extraordinarily dark time in history, so people voted for the leader they knew could lead.

What has the effect been? The first President who would have been eligible to run for a third term would have been Eisenhower. But in 1960, his health was already starting to fail him (though he lived until 1969) and he had been a somewhat reluctant President to begin with, so it is likely that he would not have run, Nixon would still have lost to Kennedy and history would not be significantly different.

The next time the amendment barred a President from seeking a third term, it was Ronald Reagan in 1988. And Reagan did make some comments to the effect that he would like to run again and was supported by conservative GOP representative Guy Vander Jagt of Michigan, who proposed legislation to repeal the amendment. But the legislation got nowhere. In any case, Vice President George H.W. Bush was seen as the heir to Reagan, and it seems likely that either man could have defeated Dukakis. History might not have been hugely different, though then again it might have since Reagan might not have turned his back on the Shiite insurgency and the Iraqi army officers who considered deposing Saddam Hussein in 1991 after the Gulf War. Another thought is that Muammar Khadafy's regime, which timed the Lockerbie attack for when Reagan was on his way out of office (revenge for Reagan's bombing of Tripoli) might not have done it at all-- to be blunt, Khadafy was more afraid of Reagan than he was of Bush (I know that some of my readers won't want to hear that, but a fact is a fact.)

The third President who the amendment applied to was Bill Clinton. It seems likely that after twelve years of Republicans the charismatic Clinton would have beaten the Republican nominee in 1992 (likely Bob Dole, four years early) even if Reagan did have a third term. By 1992 his health was deteriorating and he would certainly not have sought a fourth term. So history to that point would not have been appreciably different.

In 2000, it is true that Clinton had promised Al Gore that he would support him in a Presidential run after eight years, and while Clinton's approval ratings were very high, much of that was in reaction to disgust with the GOP overreaching and trying to impeach the President, ultimately for lying about sex. Clinton very well might, if he ran again in 2000, have been a stronger candidate than Gore and won a third term, but let's assume for the sake of argument that he did not and let Gore seek the Presidency in 2000. No historical difference, right? Wrong.

In the late 1990's, Clinton was the classic lame duck. The GOP Congress was launching investigation after investigation, and tying his ability to get anything done. He would not be on the ballot again (since he was legally prohibited from it) so they had no reason to hold back (except perhaps if they had read the real mood of the voters over the impeachment saga). More to the point, in 1998, Saddam Hussein saw how bogged down Clinton was and ordered the U.N. weapons inspectors to leave. Clinton spent four days bombing Iraq after that, but even that reaction was excoriated by Republicans as an attempt to divert attention from the Lewinsky scandal. Note that it was Iraq's failure to comply with U.N. sanctions, especially his kicking out the inspectors, which George W. Bush later used to push through the AUMF and justify his ill-planned and ill-conceived war in Iraq. Also in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal, on August 7, 1998, bombs blew up two U.S. embassies in Africa and killed hundreds. This fairly screamed for a response, and there was one-- an attempt to get bin Laden eleven days after the African embassy bombings. Unfortunately, bin Laden, who was notoriously late to meetings, started and ended on schedule that day and had departed before cruise missiles arrived at the camp where the meeting was held. And what was the reaction of the right? It was that the whole bin Laden threat was overblown and the bombing was an attempt to steal a headline from Monica (which would have been the case most days in 1998).

“"I think we fear that we may have a President that is desperately seeking to hold onto his job in the face of a firestorm of criticism and calls for him to step down.”

Senator Dan Coats, R-IN August 19, 1998.

This comment, the day after bin Laden was saved only by virtue of his finishing his meeting ahead of schedule, must have been very comforting to him.

In other words, the lame duck status of the President had become not only a hindrance to his domestic agenda (which I have no problem with, then or now-- I've always felt that a strong Congress was preferable to a strong executive), but had also been a hindrance to his ability to conduct foreign policy-- and to the detriment of the United States.

What about the present? Well, there are a lot of congressional probes going on, about everything from pre-war intelligence to the firing of the U.S. attorneys. And I think that is great, we should delve in and find out what has been going on in this administration behind closed doors. Some of what we are learning about the disdain with which this White House has treated the law and the Constitution is downright scary, and it is time to reign it in. And such domestic priorities that the President pushed when he entered his second term in office in 2005 as Social Security privatization and making the Bush tax cuts permanent are either dead or on life support, just not a priority of this Congress.

Good.

But then look at the fact that the Iranians, knowing that we are overextended in Iraq, have been pulling the west's tail, doing things like openly flouting U.N. sanctions, pushing ahead with their nuclear program, not even trying that hard to cover up their involvement in Iraq, and now the incident involving the British sailors (note that Tony Blair is also on his way out), seem to similarly be taking advantage of a lame duck President.

Not so good.

I've made proposals about what we should do about Iran before (and it is not a military solution) but the fact is, I believe that in giving our enemies (and we do have some) four years of a President who they know for sure won't be on the ballot again we are making a mistake, because they know that they can pull exactly this kind of garbage late in the term and not get called on it (or at least get called by a guy whose power is waning). And if you are a foreign adversary, or even a trading partner and don't like who we have sitting at the negotiating table, well as it stands now you can just let the clock run out and start over with a new (and likely inexperienced) President. You know you can, because the U.S. law says so. It is an intrinsic weakness of democracy that it is at its weakest during the transition between leaders (maybe another reason for the timing of Lockerbie, as well as the timing of the pre-election October 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole), but at least on an international scene is it wise to extend this period to virtually half the time a President is in office?

And if you want, then write the amendment in a way that 'grandfathers' it in-- just as the original 22nd amendment (passed in 1947 and ratified in 1951) exempted President Truman. Playing to the paranoia on both sides word it similarly to the original 22nd amendment and prevent Bill Clinton and George W. Bush from running again.

Before Haggard, there was this Newt guy.

Ever wonder what Newt Gingrich was doing in 1998 after a long day of Clinton-bashing at the office, over the Lewinsky scandal?

Well, now we know. Newt was having a little extramarital affair of his own.

His excuse? He says that:

as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury in your highest officials."

Just wondering if that at least includes Scooter Libby, or if he will find some other reality-bending excuse to be able to excuse Republicans for the same thing he is grilling a Democrat for.