Nation-Building

The news just broke an hour or so ago that Supreme Court Justice David Souter will retire. Souter was appointed by George HW Bush and proceeded to drive conservatives insane by refusing to bend to the right-wing agenda. Instead he has been what I consider a moderate voice on the court, though in general he has voted along with the liberal bloc. He was not as unpredictable as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was, for example.

Naturally this gives President Obama an opportunity to leave his mark by appointing a judge early on in his term - and thanks to Sen. Arlen Specter's party switch a few days ago, the Republicans are in a uniquely powerless position to interfere with Obama's selection.

Unfortunately, this golden opportunity is kind of wasted, since Souter was already a member of the liberal bloc on the Court, so any pick Obama is likely to make probably won't vote much differently than Souter would have, on average. A real coup would have been for a conservative justice to be retiring, which would then allow Obama to shift the balance of power, something that President Bush was never able to achieve despite having two opportunities to appoint new justices.

Still, if Obama picks a woman justice (as is being rumoured) then there still will be a shift in perspective in the Court - the decisions that SCOTUS renders are important not just for the end result but also for the opinions and dissents therein, and a female voice in all of that will be a good thing. Since Justice O'Connor was the first woman to serve on the Court, and after her retirement was replaced by another male (Justice Alito), there's an opportunity here to bring some of that balance back. Plus, she was of an earlier generation, so Obama's hypothetical female Justice pick would probably be someone younger for whom the equal rights battles of the Sixties are history rather than experience. So we can assume that the replacement would be more, ahem, militant in some respects when it comes to womens' issues. I think that is fantastic; of course the Republicans are going to freak out accordingly.

Overall, President Obama has a chance to influence the Court in a more subtle, yet nevertheless profound, way. Let's hope he doesn't botch it and pull a Harriet Miers...

 

Labels: President Obama, SCOTUS

Continue reading/discuss The Specter of Souter's replacement ...

Yesterday's nationwide Tea Bagger tax protests seem to have been reasonably successful, with total turnout probably at least a couple of hundred thousand people. Despite dogma by the conservative blogsphere that the media was ignoring them, it seems that coverage was everywhere - including on NPR, which even interviewed Glenn Reynolds.

One of the more fairly written articles about these protests was at The Daily Beast, which pointed out that there was also a substantial Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS) mentality running through them:

But when I saw the giant placard which read “Hussein = Commie,” the time had come for some counseling. The guy holding the sign looked like he could have come over on the subway from Williamsburg, wearing a hoodie, sunglasses, and an iPod. I asked him if the sign was serious. Oh, yes. “Every-time he opens his mouth he spouts textbook Marxism, Communism, Socialism,” said the man who initially gave his name as “Barry Soetoro”—Obama’s name when he lived in Indonesia as a child. After some prodding, it turned out the protester was named Ted Houvouras, a Manhattan real estate executive with a degree in economics from Georgetown. The pedigree didn’t make his analysis any more persuasive, but it hammered home one point clearly. Hating President Obama has already become a cottage industry for a hard-core fringe, as it was for Clinton après-Monica and Bush after the invasion of Iraq.
[...]
The conservatives organizing these events kept studiously repeating the apparently poll-tested line that these rallies were not about Republicans or Democrats, but their appeal is self-evidently partisan. It’s part of the “patriotic resistance” recruitment drives that started popping up online days after the election. It brings to mind loaded old slogans like Nixon’s “silent majority.” And when the president is cast as somehow un-American there is a rank ugliness to the sentiments that are being stirred. It may be good for ratings, but it’s bad for the country.

Given that these people were essentially protesting the expiration of tax cuts that President Bush intended to expire, amounting to a few percentage points for the topmost tax bracket, the stated rationale for the protests comes across as rather selfish, the antithesis of "Country First". Still, there is a real policy difference at the heart of these protests, the belief that government should be smaller, and thus the tax burden should be lower. However the fundamental problem with this philosophy is that "big" government is not the problem, it's bad government that is. The simple truth is that government is not going to get smaller, and rightly so; the challenges of the modern world require it. In a sense these protests are a denial that elections have consequences; to expect a liberal president to pursue a course of government reduction is absurd, and given that he won't (and the American people prefer it that way), then either he raises taxes or he doesn't. Not raising taxes, the fundamental goal of these protestors, would inflate the deficit far, far worse than raising them a minor amount (as Obama is proposing to do). And yet it is deficit spending that these protestors claim to be against.

A simple rebuttal to the tax parties is this: why weren't you worried about deficit spending when you supported the Iraq War? They have no answer other than to point lamely to their signs now accusing Bush alongside of Obama for being "part" of the problem, but again, there were no protests on Tax Day the past eight years.

Related: Dear Conservative Teabaggers at Daily Kos.

Labels: economy, Obama Derangement Syndrome, Republicans

Continue reading/discuss respect, but don't fear, the Tea Parties ...

Eric Berger, science blogger at the Houston Chronicle, points out that NASA remains a headless organization under Obama's administration:

It's clear Obama is unhappy with NASA's plan to rely on Russian support for five (or maybe even six) years while awaiting results from its work-in-progress Constellation program. He also just doesn't seem all that interested in space.

These are hard times for folks at Johnson Space Center. They support manned spaceflight. But the shuttle program is coming to an end in a couple of years and the new boss may not support a robust manned spaceflight program in the future. That's bad for Houston.

Perhaps even worse right now, NASA doesn't even have a new boss and the uncertainty over the future is palpable and damaging. The message to NASA from the President, whether intentional or not, is pretty much: "You're not a high priority."

The comment thread is interesting however, pointing out that NASA's Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake is now represented by a freshman Republican, Pete Olsen, who narrowly defeated incumbent Nick Lampson (D). As a result, NASA lost a huge amount of political capital, to the detriment of the entire Houston region.

As it happens, this hasn't gone unnoticed by the residents of the Clear Lake area, resulting in a grassroots effort to draft/pitch Lampson for the job as NASA's chief. The Bay Area Houston blog has a post on Lampson's qualifications:

Prior to re-redistricting, Nick served the Galveston, Beaumont, area and a small part of Harris County which included NASA/JSC. He has always been an advocate for the space program and during his last term forged bipartisan support for long term funding. Unfortunately, he wasn't a republican, so the voters elected rookie Pete Olson.

NASA/JSC lost a tremendous amount of clout when Olson was elected. With a Democratic Administration and a rookie Congressman, JSC had no voice in the White House. Lampson was in line for the chair of the Space Subcommittee which oversees NASA. Olson, as a rookie, is now the ranking republican on the Committee. The chair, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is a Democrat from Arizona and a good friend of Nick. Gabrielle is married to an astronaut, which just can't hurt.

Nick, as a Congressman, had always been one to reach out to everyone in his district. During his last two years, he had townhall meetings across his district, including a monthly event at a local NASA restaurant to discuss space policy. The crowd was a great mix of young, old, engineers, administrators, republicans, and Democrats. There was never a screening process on attendance, or a screening process for questions and answers.

And notes that Pete Olsen himself is supportive of Lampson taking the post. The Houston establishment is coalescing around Lampson, in fact - a Houston Chronicle story reported that Lampson was a finalist contender for the spot, and the Texas Congressional delegation has already written to Obama in support.

Lampson himself is on-board, as well - a local news station, KFDM News, spoke with Lampson on the phone about it:

KFDM News spoke with Lampson by telephone Thursday morning. He told us he hasn't been contacted by the Obama administration nor spoken with anyone in the administration about the NASA post.

"They are keeping it real close to the vest," said Lampson. I don't know anything about it. I'd be flattered if I were asked. I'd certainly give it consideration. I'd be honored to serve if I'm asked."

Lampson says he's aware that some time ago lawmakers wrote letters supporting him for the position.

There are other candidates, including a former astronaut, but it's clear that NASA needs a politician rather than a technocrat at the top if the agency is going to thrive and make tough choices ahead.

Labels: NASA, Nick Lampson, President Obama

Continue reading/discuss Nick Lampson for NASA Administrator? ...