Radio Silence--Last Blog until July 4

Since I'll be overseas, I'll not be blogging while away. It's just as well because I was reviewing some of the statements coming from the most extreme elements in our society and could not tell the difference between them and the Republican candidates for President. There were more diasterous positions said in the GOP debate than I care to write about and they just keep showing up as people comb through the debris. So it's best to be silent now.

We are entering the months which always seem to thwart President Obama. Everything negative always seems to happen to him during the summer months--the BP oil spill, the cancelling of his first trip to Asia, and the teabagger rallies. And below the surface were the plot to blow up Grand Central Station on the anniversary of 9/11, a plot that was rolled up in the summer. The guy has even had to postpone his vacations. So I'm not expecting much from this summer.

But it may be a hot summer. Wisconsin's Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Walker's anti-union bill by a 4-3 vote, the deciding vote by the newly elected judge Presser, who won with the slightest of margins after a very dodgy recount. Wisconsin is calling for an emergency session to ram through all the agenda items on Walker's wish list before the August Recall elections. Massive demonstrations are scheduled and platoons of police have been called to monitor the situation. Union organizers have warned demonstrators that the governor expects violence and indeed might even provoke it.

Florida's police have had it with Medicare Fraud Governor Rick Scott and are holding Leave the Party Parties as they renounce the Republican Party because of the governor and legislature's draconian budget cuts in every area. Floridians are also worried about Scott abandoning the pro-environmental policies of past Governors, who thought it was vital to attract tourists and preserve some of the last wilderness spots in the Southeast.

When Jan "Show Me the Documents" Brewer calls the Arizona legislature back in session to tweek a state law that would enable some 45,000 people to keep getting unemployment benefits and her Republican colleagues block the bill, you know something nasty is going on in the country. The same thing is happening in Pennsylvania, which would affect another 100,000 people.

While House Republicans are busy cutting Medicare benefits for working women and children, Republican governors are challenging the White House to change the way Medicare and Medicaid are handled by the states. In some instances, Republican governors want the federal payments to be used to cover budget gaps.

Voter IDs

Many bloggers have written about the GOP's pre-emptive voter suppression efforts. Justin Levitt, a law professor, writes today in Politico that voter ID laws do not prevent voter fraud and that real voter fraud is very rare in the United States anyway. As he writes, impersonating another person in the United States is not a great way to rig an election. The action percentage of voter fraud in the United States is a miniscule fraction of 1%.

But tightening up requirements for voter ID's will actually jeopardize the right to vote. Which I humbly suggest is the purpose of the exercise. Levitt argues that the voter ID laws make sense to whites because they generally have government-issued IDs. So it seems to be a no-brainer. Levitt argues that at least 11% of eligible voters do not have government-issued IDs and it takes paper and money to get them.

To date, five states have already passed new ID laws and others like Maine have curtailed same day voting and other recent efforts to increase voting. Roughly 11% of eligible voters lack government issued IDs. This may affect anywhere from 1-12% of the vote, depending on the state. And it will be especially relevant in swing states in 2012. The conservative element is that this will affect 1.6 million votes nationwide.

Interestingly, 18% of Seniors lack government issued IDs. Only 5% of the total white population lacks IDs, while 10% of African Americans and some 11% of Hispanics lack IDs. So far in all the states contemplating passing these laws, there are no provisions to provide free government IDs to those lacking them.

The Republican field will have a few new faces by the time I return. We know Jon Huntsman will launch his campaign next week. David Plouffe always said that Huntsman as a competitor to Barack Obama makes him "queasy". But that depended on Huntsman running as himself, which is unlikely in a field of the extreme right. My guess is that Huntsman is positioning himself for 2016 on the Republican theory you have to run and lose first before you are allowed to be nominated.

Rick Perry of Texas has branched out and is appearing at various venues across the country. He spoke at a Lincoln Day event in New York City and blasted President Obama for being against "profit" and wanting to "redistribute wealth", which might not be a bad idea as we are reaching Third World dimensions in the disparity of wealth in this country. In attendance at this dinner were the defecting Newt aides who had run Perry's campaign before. And it seems Rudy Guiliani is meeting with Perry privately. In 2008, Perry backed Rudy.

And I'll miss Michelle Bachmann's anouncement in Waterloo, Iowa, her childhood home. Will Bachmann's candidacy goad Sister Sarah into the race? After all Sarah wants desparately to see Willard Mitt Romney defeated. Remember when I wrote that Boehner appointed Bachmann to the Intelligence Committee to shut her up. Well, that failed and now she's using it as her national security credential during the campaign.

Speaking of Willard, I guess the GOP now has someone to coach candidates to make absolutely outrageous statements to out the marker down so far right of field they can blackmail everyone. I was stunned to hear Willard say that providing federal disaster assistance to devastated areas of the country was "immoral." Here we have had several months of everything from killer tornedoes, massive flooding and America's largest forest fire in Arizona and you say that. I would cut an ad on this and run it in every state devastated by disaster and say,"Romney hates you."

But I first heard such statements from Ron Paul appearing on the Diane Riehm Show. Paul argued that the federal government should not bail out communities hit by weather disasters because homeowners could afford their own insurance to cover these things. He cited the hurrcanes that have destroyed Galveston in his own district as examples of Americans living where they shouldn't. Now we know Paul is in his dotage and reverting to the meanness in his past. But we also saw this with Eric Cantor and House members not willing to fill up FEMA's coffers to meet future needs. Now this sentiment is expressed by half a billionaire Mitt Romney?

This is cruel stuff. Think of the American responses in the recent past to cataclysmic disasters abroad--the Tsunami for instance. Our aid to Iranian earthquake victims. All these actions have built goodwill. Now we can't even do it for our own people? That's small.

Meanwhile Mitt is bragging to people in New Hampshire that the next tme they'll see him he will be surrounded by Secret Service. He was alluding to his most certain triumph in the 2012 election. Romney's hubris will be on display throughout the year and the average voter will get to know why conservatives and Republican operatives despise the man. That is why they are running around to find an alternative. You might think his problem is that he is Multiple Choice Romney but it's the Richie Rich syndrome. People close to him know how he made his money off the failures of companies and although that is tolerated as a business practice they distrust him and his instincts.

Rachel Maddow had Freddie Krueger, the first openly gay presidential candidate on her show last night. Freddie is committed to bringing Romney down and he is in the company of almost all the right, far right and conservatives. Freddie filed voter fraud papers in Massachusetts against Romney because he voted in the last two elections when Ann, Romney's wife, admitted they lived in California. Romney claims that he lived in the basement apartment of his son's home in Belmont, Massachusetts, even though the Romney's owned palatial estates in La Jolla, Utah and New Hampshire. While nothing will be done about this, it raises the old controversy about how Romney got to un for Governor of Massachusetts even though he did not fulfill the state requirements of living for 7 consecutive years in the state. There was bad blood in the state at the time. But these little incidents demonstrate a noblesse oblige that will become more apparent as the campaign progresses.

Our vaunted media gave scant attention to President Obama's official visit to Puerto Rico because they said it was an attempt to shore up the Hispanic vote in 2012. Almost anything the President does from now on will be seen that way. But there was actually substance to the trip in that Obama's task force on Puerto Rico's status has recommended a two-tier referendum on whether the Commonwealth will remain as one or become a state or an independent country. This referendum has been long overdue and should be treated like Obama resolving the black farmers' claims against the federal government or the decades old Indian Trust case. It's part of cleaning up the country's neglected business. I'll bet that the House will not appropriate the funds to conduct the referenda.

A federal judge ruled against the Prop 8 lawyers saying that Judge Vernon Walker did not have a conflict of interest because he was gay and living with a long-term companion. The judge lit into the assumption saying that would lead to mayhem in the courts like women judges not being able to make rulings if women wanted justice. Anyway the opinion was far better written than I can poniticate on. The 9th Circuit still had to rule on it. Remember they can reconsider everything about the case but they do have to stick to Walker's Findings of Fact, which I wrote about at the time of the case.

The Catholic Church is putting on a full court press to stop the equal marriage law in New York State. It seems three and maybe four state senators have shifted their vote to being in favor.

More stark contrasts in America came when a California Bankruptcy Court ruled that DOMA was unconstitutional, something a Massachusetts court already did. Meanwhile CREW has filed an ethics complaint against John Boehner for his expenditure of funds to a private law firm to defend the DOMA Act.

Senator Mitch McConnell is all bothered that two Iraqis, who were linked to Al Qaeda, were arrested his state and are being tried in criminal courts. He has demanded that they be sent to Gitmo so his state will be protected. Like there has been escape from a Super Max prison.

Republican's newfound squeamishness about foreign affairs has started to alarm neocons. There was an intense reaction to Romney saying he wanted to get out of Afghanistan and the United States can help anyone else win "their war for independence"--whatever that means. AEI accused him of channelling Ron Paul. Expect more neo-isolationism as the campiagn continues. But expect an increase of defense spending even though the Pentagon doesn't want it.

California Congressman Brad Sherman (Democrat), from the Sherman of Sherman Oaks (for you trivia fans) managed to get a throughly bipartisan bill limited President Obama's use of funds in the Libya operation until he asks Congress to pass authorization for the operation under the War Powers Act. John Boehner, who poo-poohed the idea that Obama was in violation of the War Powers Act, has changed his mind and is challenging the President on this.

Karl Rove has been pounding the theme that President Obama has been acting unconstitutionally in Libya (like George W never did) and on an obscure law concerning Medicare that Bush had to pass to get the Republicans to approve Medicare D. Karl's emergence as a constitutional scholar should make one have doubts.

House Republicans are preventing Democrats from sending constituent mail hom saying they want to end Medicare. You know how bad things are when Senate Democrats have taken a pledge to protect Medicare.

Tom Donoghue of the Chamber of Commerce says that Boehner has his "man pants"on and will be dealing with the debt ceiling issue in an adult way. He says that anyone who opposes raising the debt ceiling will be gone next election. Isn't it nice to know Washington is a company town?

Surprise! Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson of the Wisconsin Supreme Court has just fired away, accusing her fellow justices of giving the union case short shift and she accused recently elected Prosser of having a partisan bias. She went further saying that the Court owed the public a reasoned opinion based on legal analysis. So we have not heard the last of this one.