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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cautious_Optimist who wrote (88667)	6/8/2012 12:19:59 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 89467

Zimmerman prosecutor has history of going after critics Posted by William A. Jacobson Friday, June 8, 2012 at 8:10am Yesterday I posted about how Alan Dershowitz alleged that Zimmerman prosecutor Angela Corey called up Harvard Law School complaining about Dershowitz and treatening to sue for libel based on Dershowitz’s criticisms of her handling of the case. The whole incident seemed strange, and reflected conduct that should be off limits for any prosecutor and certainly for a senior prosecutor on a high profile case. It appears, however, that the Dershowitz incident was no isolated incident. According to Ron Littlepage, a columnist for the (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union, Corey has done this several times before: Last December when I wrote a column critical of how she handled the Cristian Fernandez case, she fired off a two-page, single-spaced letter on official state attorney letterhead hinting at lawsuits for libel. In the letter, she called me out for my “lack of knowledge and objectivity about the workings of the criminal justice system.” Ouch. I think she called me stupid…. Then there’s Corey’s spat with Sandy D’Alemberte. D’Alemberte is a former president of the American Bar Association, a former president of Florida State University and a law professor — not too shabby in the legal credentials department. When Corey was appointed to head up the investigation into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, D’Alemberte had this to say: “I cannot imagine a worse choice for a prosecutor to serve in the Sanford case. There is nothing in Angela Corey’s background that suits her for the task, and she cannot command the respect of people who care about justice.” Earlier, D’Alemberte had criticized Corey in the Fernandez case. The reaction then: A public records request from her office to FSU seeking all emails, text messages and phone messages involving D’Alemberte related to Fernandez. Then there was this: When David Utter of the Southern Poverty Law Center was on Melissa Ross’s radio program and had the audacity to say that Fernandez should be in the juvenile system instead of adult court, that prompted a 20-minute scream-fest from Corey in a call to the center’s director. Similar criticism from Jeff Goldhagen, a professor and chief of the division of community pediatrics at Shands Jacksonville, elicited a similar response from Corey. Something appears to be rotten in the state of Zimmerman prosecution. legalinsurrection.com

To: Cautious_Optimist who wrote (88667)	6/8/2012 1:23:06 PM
From: joseffy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

HALPERIN: DEMS NOW BELIEVE OBAMA COULD LOSE Between the Lines: By Mark Halperin Monday, June 18, 2012 time.com President Barack Obama and Democrats awoke Wednesday to the cruel reality of June, the political blows from the bitter loss in Wisconsin's gubernatorial recall election and the abysmal jobs numbers could multiply before the month is out. With five months until Election Day, Barack Obama faces a grim new reality: Republicans now believe Mitt Romney can win, and Democrats believe Obama can lose ... Last week's anemic job-creation and economic-growth data was sandwiched between two Bill Clinton specials: in one television interview, the 42nd President lauded Romney's business record as "sterling"; in another, he veered from the Obama line on the extension of Bush-era tax cuts ... The failure to unseat Wisconsin's Republican governor Scott Walker in a recall election was another bad sign for Democrats since it will rev up conservatives nationwide, including the kind of millionaires who gave big bucks to Walker's effort ... Veteran Democratic strategists from previous presidential bids and on Capitol Hill now wonder if the Obama re-election crew is working with the right message ... The White House remains on a rough political trajectory, with a potentially adverse Supreme Court decision on the Obama health care law looming, additional bad economic news from Europe coming and more worrisome polling pending ... Another danger for the President: the media freak show. Stalking that circus' center ring is Matt Drudge, whose caustic website continues to help drive the news cycle with an emphasis on negative, mocking items about Obama and Vice President Joe Biden and their wives. The latest sign of Drudge's potency: Ed Klein, the author of the virulently anti-Obama book The Amateur, was barred from major TV appearances and mostly ignored by the mainstream media, but the book's prominence on Drudge's website propelled it to the No. 1 slot on the New York Times nonfiction list. Read more: time.com

To: Cautious_Optimist who wrote (88667)	6/8/2012 3:08:56 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Obama Admin. Says Corey Booker “Dead To Us” On a day dedicated to preserving free speech rights, Corey Booker learned an important message: don’t you dare speak out against the Obama administration (Obama and his people are major league assholes) ( NY Post) It’s bye-bye, Beltway for Cory Booker. Newark’s mayor, who was gunning for a spot in President Obama’s Cabinet, lost the chance after he shot his mouth off during a blunderingly honest TV appearance last month, sources told The Post. “He’s dead to us,” one ranking administration official said of the prevailing feelings at the White House and Obama headquarters in Chicago. (snip) “Cory and Barack Obama have never been besties, but that was the final nail. It’s like, ‘You’re dead and done.’ The firing squad is out,” said a Democratic source in contact with both sides. “It’s not just that he messed up, it was that he compounded it and didn’t have their back when they gave him a national stage to talk.” But…. “Mayor Booker’s comments are behind us and we are working together to re-elect the president in November,” said Patrick Gaspard, head of the Democratic National Committee. Other campaign insiders insist that Booker is not persona non grata, although he is in the doghouse and knows it. “What he did was undermine a leading argument for the campaign. It was a serious distraction. Not a minor screw-up; a major screw-up,” a Democratic source said. “He is trying to figure out how to work his way back in the fold.” Bill Clinton saw the same thing happen to him when he opened his mouth and spoke the truth. How dare he do that! There were ginned up talking points to defend! What’s the reality? Good question. Is it simply doghouse or “dead to us”? Speaking of free speech, Team Obama isn’t really all that fond of it. They’ve seen fit to block Jammie Wearing Fool from viewing tweets from the official Obama 2012 Twitter account.

To: Cautious_Optimist who wrote (88667)	6/13/2012 10:32:51 AM
From: PROLIFE	2 Recommendations Respond to of 89467

[genuine patriotic Americans who respect this remarkable, honorable, classy, duly elected Commander and Chief who has restored honor to America] BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA back off the crack pipe homer, maybe a detox is in order for you. as for the rest of your post . nothing more than democrat parrothead talking points so there is nothing there to answer Say , how about that Holder....what a pack of lies.....wonder when obama will throw him under the bus?

To: Cautious_Optimist who wrote (88667)	6/13/2012 11:11:10 AM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

wow, you drank all the kool aid

To: Cautious_Optimist who wrote (88667)	6/13/2012 11:18:01 AM
From: Hawkmoon	1 Recommendation Respond to of 89467

Restored honor? Really now. He's nearly doubled the national debt, and household networth has declined by 40%. He tells us the "private sector is doing fine" despite the fact that we have at least 17% direct, functional unemployment and over 41 million Americans are humiliated into receiving food stamps. He has enraged the black and white divisions in Florida by directly injecting his opinion into the Trayvon Martin case, yet does very little to defend the other races in this country from crimes by blacks against them. And more information is coming out about his past experiences with drugs, and getting wasted in school, as well as his fabricated experiences with other people in his past, including his bio where he purposefully casts doubt upon his citizenship. The guy barely showed up for the 3 years he was a Senator from Illinois, but then he got fast tracked by the liberals into a Presidential campaign.. Then his White House leaked national secrets.. And we find out that his own CIA director and Sec State had to perform an "end run" around his waffling over killing Osama Bin Ladin.. I don't much like Hillary, but she has more balls than Obama does.. Hawk

To: Cautious_Optimist who wrote (88667)	6/13/2012 11:40:06 AM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Respond to of 89467

1/3 of US welfare recipients in California? Wow. California: America’s Welfare Queen Disregard for federal standards has inflated the state’s program. By Nash Keune California is the nation’s welfare queen: The state accounts for one-third of America’s welfare recipients, though it only contains one-eighth of the population, and there’s no good reason for it. Some of California’s welfare problem can be attributed to its particularly severe economic slump (California’s unemployment rate is 2.7 percentage points above the national average). But states in similar situations have significantly smaller caseloads; for example, Nevada, with the nation’s highest unemployment, at 11.7 percent, has a welfare-participation rate about one-quarter of California’s. In California, 3.8 percent of the population receives monthly welfare checks. In no other state is more than 3 percent of the population on the dole. Some may assume that the illegal-immigrant population in California expands its welfare rolls. But in Texas, which also has a large illegal-immigrant population, less than one half of one percent of the population receives welfare. The main reason that California is so dependent on welfare is its uniquely lax enforcement of the provisions of the 1996 welfare reforms. As part of the creation of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, the federal government put in place a set of regulations on welfare payments to help or encourage recipients to return to work, such as the five-year lifetime limit on benefits. California, however, is one of nine states that don’t unconditionally enforce this supposedly nationwide provision. Even when adults do exhaust their welfare payments in California, under the Safety Net Program, the minors in their families continue to receive checks. Only three other states have similar policies. Unsurprisingly, three-fourths of California’s welfare recipients are 18 years old and younger. A 2009 Public Policy Institute study showed that strengthening the enforcement mechanism by moving from “California’s current grant-reducing sanction to a policy of gradual or immediate grant elimination” for recipients who fail to comply with welfare’s work-participation requirements “would reduce California’s welfare caseload, substantially increase its work participation rate, and slightly reduce poverty among children with single mothers.” The effects of decreasing the time limit itself are harder to predict, but the study indicated that doing so would, at least, not harm welfare recipients to a measurable degree. Efforts to reduce the size of monthly checks in order to cut costs have been, at best, a temporary solution for California. Work-participation rates continued to lag behind the rest of the country. By 2010, only 22 percent of welfare recipients met the minimum federal work requirements. In this case, the cost of the program is a cosmetic concern, concealing persistent structural problems. It wasn’t until his 2007, 2008, and 2009 state budgets that then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed reforms to the most important provisions, regarding overall time limits and sanctions for not meeting requirements. At the end of his term, Schwarzenegger was successful in cutting the time limit to four years and imposing stricter sanctions, effective July 1, 2011. This year, Governor Jerry Brown has proposed to cut the time limit to two years. It remains to be seen whether or not Brown’s plan will pass, or whether it’s enforced even if it does become law. The mere fact that a Democratic governor proposed such reforms shows that his state’s economic reality is finally stark enough that it’s affecting political realities. Brown’s plan will inevitably be called heartless, draconian Social Darwinism, even though the state technically passed a two-year time limit back in 1997 (lack of enforcement rendered it meaningless). If Brown’s proposal passes, the state will still need another round of reforms (such as the elimination of the Safety Net Program) for it to fall in line with the rest of the nation. Reforming a program as thorny as welfare can be difficult, but California need only follow existing federal standards to alleviate its problems. nationalreview.com

To: Cautious_Optimist who wrote (88667)	6/13/2012 11:45:33 AM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Respond to of 89467

Artur Davis On Leaving His Job, Home, And Party June 5, 2012 Listen to the Story text size A A A June 5, 2012 In 2008, Alabama Congressman Artur Davis spoke at the Democratic National Convention in support of then-Senator Barack Obama. Since then, he's left congress, Alabama, and the Democratic Party. Now, the newly-minted Republican and Virginia resident speaks with host Michel Martin, and says Democrats are governing too far from the left. Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required. MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin. Coming up, a picture of military moms breastfeeding their children has gone viral and it's raising questions about what's appropriate for women in uniform. We'll speak with one of the women in the picture about why she did it and the reaction to it. That's in just a few minutes. But first, voters are casting ballots in several states today and many political observers will look to the results for clues about the battle for the White House. But now there's been a head-turning switch by an early supporter of President Barack Obama. In 2008, when then-Senator Obama went to the Democratic National Convention to become the Democratic presidential nominee, this man took to the stage to endorse his nomination. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) ARTUR DAVIS: I am honored to second the nomination of the man whose victory tonight takes us closer to becoming what we know America can be, ladies and gentlemen, a place where who you are now, a place where, where you come from, a place where all of the things that may hold you back pose no permanent barriers, where our destiny is what our god and our dreams determine it to be. MARTIN: That was former Congressman Artur Davis from Alabama. That was then. Artur Davis left the Congress and ran for the governor of Alabama. He was hoping to become the first African-American to win a statewide office in his home state. He didn't. Now he's moved to Virginia and he hasn't just left his old job and his old home, he's also left his political party. Artur Davis has switched parties. He says he is now a Republican and he's also renouncing his support for President Obama as well. And he's with us now in our studios in Washington, D.C. Thank you so much for joining us once again. DAVIS: Thank you, Michel. Good to talk to you. Good to talk to your audience. MARTIN: You know, I think we should just - it just goes without saying that party switchers are always the heroes to the people they're joining. They are the... DAVIS: Sure, sure. MARTIN: ...goats to the people they left behind. They are not - that's just the way it is. I did want to sort of ask you what the reaction has been so far. I note that you've been warmly embraced, of course, by the conservative media, who say, well, it's about time. And good on you. DAVIS: Well, let me say a couple of things. I think that there's a way to do it and a way not to do it. I've seen people in the past win offices and a few weeks later switch parties. I don't think that's the way to do it. I've seen the opposite of that, people who've got qualifying deadlines coming up and decide, you know what? I don't think I'm going to win if I stay in this party so let me switch. Arlen Specter, Parker Griffith a few years ago in Alabama. I'm out of office. I'm a private citizen. I've been a private citizen for two years. I've gotten to listen to what both sides are saying and I've gotten to hear the arguments and, you know, to make a long story short, I came to the position that on the issues that people are debating today and the issues that matter to me, that my views are closer to Republicans than Democrats. Second quick point, this is not about renouncing my support of Barack Obama four years ago. That happened and you can't change the script on that. And I very much believe and still believe in the America that you heard me describe in that line from the very forgettable nominating speech four years ago. But I no longer think that the Democratic Party is the best way to deliver that kind of America. What was it that I talked about? I talked about a country where there were no limitations based on your race. I talked about a country where aspiration was the driving force in America. Unfortunately, I see the Democratic Party taking a step backward on both those fronts. I see more of an embrace of identity politics and group politics, which makes us more fractured than united, and candidly, I see the Republican Party talking more effectively about growth. Because growth is the key to mobility and aspiration. MARTIN: I want to dig into that and I want to hear a little bit more about that, but before I do, I did want to ask you about an interview that you recently gave for Fox News with Neil Cavuto, where you talked less about the Democratic Party and more about the president. You said that I may be a minority in this regard, but I'm one of the people who supported Barack Obama because I thought that he was in the center. I thought that he was someone who might be running to the left in the primaries to win the nomination. I got that. I believed him when he said he wanted to turn the page. I thought that he was going to be a pro-growth president. And so you go on to say - so is your primary disappointment with the president per se or is it with the Democratic Party in general? DAVIS: Well, the president I think pretty articulately represents what the Democratic Party is today. MARTIN: Well, I think a lot of people would disagree with that, as evidenced by the fact that there are a number of progressives in the Democratic Party who have expressed a lot of disappointment with him because they don't feel that he speaks enough about race. They think that he has not been aggressive enough about addressing issues affecting the poor, and they also believe that he has embraced a much more aggressive, militaristic foreign policy than they thought that he would. This from a person who won the Nobel Peace Prize very early in his term. You see my point. So there are a lot of Democrats who just don't agree with you. DAVIS: Well, there's no question that there's a far left in the Democratic Party just as there's a far right in the Republican Party, but one of the things that I'm trying to do is to make the point that there's a vibrant center right in this country, people who understand that government can't be thrown to the ground and can't be discarded. But the way that we're doing things and the idea that exists on the left that more is always better, that being more aggressive in terms of engaging the private economic sector is always better, that perspective I think is not only wrong, I think it's being proven wrong the deeper we move into the economic doldrums we have. What we're doing is not working because we've just finished a decade that was the least growth that we've had in the post-war era, with the possible exception of the slow growth 1970s. We finished a period where after passing the most comprehensive education reform that we've had in this country, No Child Left Behind, we've lost ground in educational performance in many areas. So what we're doing is not working. I align myself with the center right. There is no center right in the Democratic Party; there is one in the Republican Party. MARTIN: I'm speaking with Artur Davis. He's a former Democratic congressman from Alabama. I say former because he says he's now left the Democratic Party and his state. He's now a Republican; he's living in Virginia. I want to address this question about where the center of gravity in American politics is and I want to read you a quote from a piece that appeared in the Washington Post. It's part of a book by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein. These are two respected political observers. Norman Ornstein is with the American Enterprise Institute, which is a conservative think tank - center right, if you will. Thomas Mann is with the Brookings Institution - center left, if you will. I'll just read you a quote. It says: We've been studying Washington politics in Congress for more than 40 years and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings we've 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. The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics; it's ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. And as I've said, these are two respected individuals, one of them with a conservative think tank, a venerable conservative think tank. And your response to that is? DAVIS: Well, my response to it is they're both smart, thoughtful D.C. pundits, and what do smart, thoughtful D.C. pundits do? Echo the conventional wisdom five times a day and hope that they get it right at least once. I know that's the conventional wisdom. I know that everybody in this town of Washington, D.C. thinks that, oh, the Republicans have gone off the deep end. The reality is both political parties have moved more toward their bases. Let's take one issue that's a subject of debate today - the Affordable Care Act. Imagine if a Democratic elected official stood up today and said I hope the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act. Any Democratic candidate in this country who stood up and said that would be attacked to no end, and if you doubt that, look at what happened to Cory Booker for having the temerity to deviate on a tactical question, which is whether the administration ought to be going after Bain Capital. MARTIN: Wait. Just going back to the you part of this, I mean the argument has been made, how could you not know what the president's point of view was on this health care issue? It's what he campaigned on. This was not a secret. So the argument then becomes how could you then claim now to be disillusioned when this was a core issue in his campaign and you supported him from the beginning? DAVIS: You don't leave a party because of any one thing. You do it because, over a period of time, you look at the issues and you decided, you know what, I feel more comfortable over here. Now, what I do think is interesting is there seem to be some Democrats and liberals whose opinion is, we don't want you in our party. We don't want you in the other party either, you know. So I mean, I think what some people mean is we don't like you and we wish you were silent and you were buried somewhere politically. (LAUGHTER) MARTIN: Well, I think the question - I take your point on that, and there is that third option. I mean, like former Republican Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont did choose to become an independent while he was serving in the Senate. Others have done so. I wondered if you had considered that option. DAVIS: You know, I'm not a candidate for office, so I didn't have to think about the question of how you register, how you run for office as a candidate. But going back to you point about health care, again, that's not why I left the Democratic Party, but I cite that to answer your question. Your premise was that the Republican Party was the place that was intolerant. The Democratic Party was the big tent. There is no diversity of opinion in the leadership of the Democratic Party on a wide range of issues in this country right now. MARTIN: But you find there is more diversity in the Republican side? I mean, I take note of the fact that you're pro-choice, for example. DAVIS: I think there is. I think there is... MARTIN: And the Republican Party platform has not offered any concession to your perspective on this and - if you're still pro-choice. DAVIS: Well, I'm someone who doesn't think that we need to send women and doctors to prison. What I see in the Republican Party are a lot of very smart pragmatic people who are thinking about how to pare down government in a way that makes it work more effectively, how to liberate markets and make them work more effectively. I don't see that intellectual diversity of opinion on the Democratic side. MARTIN: What are you hoping to accomplish by switching parties and by talking about it? DAVIS: You know, I don't have any agenda. I write a column and I write a blog and I write in what I hope is a constructive, civil way about the issues that we're debating in this country. I try to do it in a way that respects opinions on both sides. MARTIN: Are you trying to run for office? There was a suggestion made that you are contemplating a run for the Congress in your new home state, Virginia. Is that true? DAVIS: I've had a few people encourage me to get involved in politics, either running for Congress or legislature. I'm nowhere near making a decision to do that. This is still a new community for me. I've been here since December 2010. I know that Washington likes to put people in a box. And Washington is a town where there's a tendency to think, OK, if you're in this party, you've got to think this, if you're in this party, you've got to think this. That's not what I bring to the discourse. There's no question. I pointed out in the essay I wrote last week kind of declaring my intentions to kind of join up with the Republicans. I wrote that I am not lockstep with the Republicans on immigration. I don't think that every tax break in the tax code is defensible. So given that there are places where I don't line up with what is seen as being the right of the Republican Party. But again, I'm not a candidate. MARTIN: Artur Davis is a former member of Congress from Alabama as a Democrat. He has now switched parties. He is now a Republican. As he said, a private citizen living in Virginia, and he was nice enough to join us in our studios in Washington, D.C. Artur Davis, thank you so much for speaking with us. DAVIS: Good to talk to you again. Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.