The Next Hurrah

Thank You For a Great First Year

By DHinMI

We just passed a milestone at The Next Hurrah, and we almost missed it. Yesterday I noticed it had been exactly one year since Kagro X posted “David Corn Stands the First Amendment on its Head,” our first substantive post.  In the year since, we've had plenty of good pieces, some even audacious in their ambition and desired effect. For instance, Meteor Blades garnered tremendous attention for his proposal to rebuild an Eco New Orleans. DemFromCT has pushed Bird Flu into the consciousness of so many people that he's become a recognized expert and a founder of the Flu Wiki, where experts from the WHO and other entities exchange news and ideas to track this potentially pandemic-generating virus.  And Plutonium Page has repeatedly demonstrated the evidence for and implications of global warming. 

But we've also had our eyes on American politics.  RonK broke the story that Dick Gephardt now regrets his support of Bush's Iraq policy, a mea culpa that was quickly echoed by several other Democrats, including John Kerry and John Edwards. Before just about anyone in the MSM was writing about it, Trapper John was describing the deep rifts in organized labor that resulted in several major unions splitting from the AFL-CIO.  Mimikatz has examined the effects of tax and budgetary policy and ruminated on political ethics and responsibility. 

Two of our contributors so dominated blog reportage and analysis of major stories that we had to create new categories for them.  Kagro X showed that process could be both fun and deadly serious in his pieces on the Nuclear Option, and now he's examining the justifications for and procedures to generate impeachment proceedings against the Bush administration.  And with an assist by the Bush administration (for providing her so much raw material), emptywheel's pieces required us to add a new category for Bush/Administration Scandals. 

And finally, we have what I believe is the best piece written at The Next Hurrah, James' post on the death and legacy of Ismail Merchant, and how the media still doesn't know how to talk about couples who've shared a life of love and devotion with partners of the same sex. 

Now, on the year anniversary of our founding, we're adding a new contributor, emptypockets, who among other subjects will be tracking the days of our president in his series BushWatch. 

But without our readers, none of us would have continued posting here.  So, thank you all for reading our stuffr, thank you for commenting and sharing your thoughts and impressions, and thank you for becoming our friends. 

Announcement: Going Over the Wall

By RonK, Seattle

I'll be taking leave of  The Next Hurrah (as a Contributor, anyway) to focus on exploits of a more eclectic and independent nature. Works in progress will see daylight in due time. Meanwhile: "think globally, act blogally".

TNH remains the sophisticate's go-to site for thoughtful reality-based political analysis and comment from a variety of obsessive-progressive perspectives.

For now, dear ones, bon soir, prosit, auf wiedersehen, au revoir, adios, aloha.

 ("How do you like that? He didn't even say 'goodbye'.")

The Next Open Thread: Super Bowl Special

It's Super Bowl Sunday (size XL), and we look to TNH's remarkable, intelligent readers for the very best in game commentary and recyclable trash talk.

Bring on your predictions, your recipes, your socio-political analyses. Will Diebold affect the outcome? Is NSA listening in on the coach's wireless? Will Condi Rice ever become NFL Commissioner? Can a 3-syllable QB beat a 4-syllable QB?

From my city of true blue Democrats, four-season greenery and perpetual pewter skies, a humble prediction:

The Seattle Seahawks arrived quietly. They will play their quiet game, and leave quietly ... with the Lombardi Trophy. 

This inaugurates an era of Reality-Based Football, whose broader cultural implications -- with emphasis on preparation, performance and consequences -- will doom the neocon hegemony.

I showed you mine ... now you show me yours.

Abramoff Intermission: Bloomberg and Prospect

by RonK, Seattle

[Obligatory Disclaimer: None of this makes anybody guilty if it's true. None of this makes anybody guilty if it's not. Osama bin Laden is a bad, bad man. Jack Abramoff is a bad man.]

Sometimes the trained eye is drawn to numbers that just don't look right on the page. And sometimes the numbers are not right.

Bloomberg filed a quick & dirty rundown on Abramoff-influenced tribal campaign contributions in December. This would have been quickly forgotten except that it said the Saginaw Chippewa tribe gave $277,210 to Dem's in 2001-2004, versus $279,000 in 1997-2000. Last week the report made a stellar (lunar?) comeback, as a coven of blog-harpies dragged it out of the morgue for a second dance in the spolight

What's the big deal? I argued that Abramoff directed his tribal clients to increase campaign contributions to both parties. ("Invariably".) The Bloomberg report offered one lone published exception, albeit to the tune of less than $2K. Blogstorm ensued.

I based my comparisons on the 2000 and 2002 cycles (data-rich, adjacent in time, and consistent in governing law). Pre-Jack history is sparse, and an eccentric $220K push to the DCCC in the 1998 cycle swamped the Saginaw baseline (which consists of about a dozen transactions). Is it a pattern? Or just a history? [More on that in future posts.]

But something else didn't add up. Literally.

Abramoff Directed Tribal Donations to Democrats

by RonK, Seattle

Yesterday's post brought out a lively crowd gunning for the messenger, complaining "numbers don't mean anything". (Numbers meant something a few hours earlier, when it was assumed the numbers were different.) Now it's "prove he directed those (Democratic) contributions".

Another day, I'll lay out the "born yesterday" logic of denial ... and all the auxiliary premises you'd have to accept in order to believe Jack Abramoff did not direct tribal contributions to both Republicans and Democrats.

But my time is scarce and so's yours, so today we'll serve up a sampler of horse's mouth testimony.

Abramoff Clients Increased Donations to Democrats

by RonK, Seattle

In the howl over a flat-out false assertion (that Jack Abramoff donated to both parties), WaPo ombudsman Deborah Howell amended her position, granting that Abramoff was a GOP player, that his scandal is a GOP scandal, and that he contributed exclusively to Republicans.

She then asserts that donations were "were directed to lawmakers of both parties". The left blogosphere went beserk -- insisting that Abramoff directed his clients to reduce their established levels of donation to Democrats.

In this instance, Howell is correct. Her critics are flat-out wrong, and calling for Howell's head on this account may reflect badly on the blogs. (The MSM has both "ink by the barrel" and "the facts".)

It's true (in aggregate, and just barely [1]) that tribes under Abramoff's influence allocated a larger percentage of their dollars to Republicans. It's NOT TRUE that they reduced their donations to Democrats. Total dollars to Democrats from "Abramoff tribes" INVARIABLY INCREASED in the "Abramoff years".

How can this be? Dollars to D's increased. Dollars to R's increased even more, swinging the contribution ratio in the R's favor -- at least in some cases. Details (below) vary from tribe to tribe.

Nontraditional Holiday Fun: Senate Solstice Fireworks!

by RonK, Seattle

"My, you folks are in early today!" said the cafeteria lady to the congresscritter. The House pulled an all-nighter Sunday, escaping for holiday break after 6 a.m. the next morning and leaving a sleighload of take-it-or-leave-it legislative presents for their friends in the Senate.

Defense Appropriations became a must-pass Christmas tree -- festooned with ANWR drilling, Katrina relief, LIHEAP funding, and pharma product liability protection. Most of this language was inserted after both bodies had signed the conference report -- an occasional expedient in case of bicameral, bipartisan agreement, but a major affront to parliamentary process (and the trust that sustains it).

And then things got interesting. [UPDATE: And 8 hrs later, more interesting. See below, and running comments.]

Publius SHOUTS (Part 3: Politics)

by RonK, Seattle

Unsurprisingly, impeachment fever is on the rise, but the hottest hothead bill of particulars is D.O.A. in today's Congress. Here, we take a more practical tack.

Parts 1 and 2 drew the radical originalist case for impeaching and convicting minor figures, even after they leave office, and nullifying presidential pardons.

Today's argument could tempt tomorrow's majority to rationalize great mischief, but we have the immediate problem of an imperious character in the Oval Office and a dangerous loophole in Article II.

What to do? Fire a shot across the Administration's bow. Warn them -- all of them -- that there's no safe harbor in partisan loyalty, stonewalling and Presidential pardons.

To launch this flash-bang -- and constrict a few sphincters along with that loophole -- we propose a sequence of test cases. But even a minor impeachment demands a House majority and a Senate supermajority (2/3). As a minority party, how can we hope to win?

Publius SHOUTS (Part 2: Practice)

by RonK, Seattle

Should the Constitution enable a President's "public men" to conspire to disregard the law, shield each other from justice, and rely on his last official act to absolve them of penalties? We think not, and we think the Framers said so -- emphatically. Publius SHOUTS, Part 1 advanced the following propositions:

• That "all civil Officers" can be impeached, convicted, removed and barred from future service. Noncontroversial in principle, but with boundaries untested in practice.
• That impeachment may proceed after the defendant has left office. Precedented, but reconsidered and susceptible to controversy.
• That impeachment (and conviction) nullifies a presidential pardon. Our "radical originalist" reading is that conviction in the Senate exposes the defendant to the jaws of ordinary criminal justice in spite of a pardon. The standard reading is much narrower -- merely that the President may not use a pardon to derail an impeachment.

Now, therefore, under present circumstances, and with these tools in our kit, how might we proceed?

Publius SHOUTS (Part 1: Theory)

by RonK, Seattle

"The power of the President, in respect to pardons, would extend to all cases, EXCEPT THOSE OF IMPEACHMENT."

That's Alexander Hamilton, as Publius in Federalist No. 69, SHOUTING across the centuries. Whenever he pens this phrase or its variants, he SHOUTS, i.e., capitalizes for emphasis. What is he trying to tell us?

Steeped in traditions of English and Colonial law, the powers of Pardon and Impeachment were indispensable to the Framers' scheme for economizing virtue in public men. Indispensable powers -- but where to vest them?

Hamilton and his contemporaries plumbed many extant models for strengths and vulnerabilities.

...the executive ... is to be vested in a single magistrate ... if, in this particular, there be a resemblance to the king of Great Britain, there is not less a resemblance to the Grand Seignior, to the khan of Tartary, to the Man of the Seven Mountains, or to the governor of New York.

And they fretted over problems of tyranny, faction, conspiracy, insurrection, betrayal and bargaining.

The governor of New York may pardon in all cases ... If a governor of New York, therefore, should be at the head of any such conspiracy ... he could insure his accomplices and adherents an entire impunity.

In the end, they settled on particulars of language and logic whose intended application may be broader than commonly understood. Maybe this is why Publius is SHOUTING at us.