Later On

Spencer Ackerman has a good article:

It’s really, really, really difficult to be optimistic about cutting Pentagon waste. There is a massive amount of entrenched interests — in the services, on the Hill, among the hordes of defense firms just across the Potomac — that exist to ensure the safe delivery of defense contracts to well-heeled and politically connected companies, with the protection of national security a secondary interest. Then there’s the demagoguery and jingoism that comes along with attempts to cut through that waste. So even before President Obama started saying he would “eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use,” it was probably inevitable that people would start floating the meme that his defense budget is irresponsible.

But Obama might have actually taken a significant step today to take on that entrenched apparatus.

Obama today issued a memorandum to the heads of all the executive departments agencies directing them to restrict no-bid contracts; to rein in outsourcing of “inherently governmental activities”; and to, if necessary, cancel wasteful contracts outright. The crucial paragraph, even if it’s written in bureaucratese, particularly calls out the Defense Department: …

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Not nearly enough, Yoo. Daphne Eviatar has the story in the Washington Independent:

In an interview yesterday with the Orange County Register, picked up by Jason Leopold at The Public Record, John Yoo says he doesn’t regret the substance of any of his memos written at the Office of Legal Counsel –  you know, the ones that allowed the administration to conclude that waterboarding wasn’t torture, that the Bill of Rights did not apply to military actions inside the United States, and that it’s okay to suspend free speech in wartime.

No, he just regrets that he wasn’t a little more “polished”.

“These memos I wrote were not for public consumption,” said Yoo, who’s now a visiting professor at Chapman University School of Law in Orange County — I guess things got a little hot at Berkeley, where students are calling for his dismissal and prosecution. “They lack a certain polish, I think – would have been better to explain government policy rather than try to give unvarnished, straight-talk legal advice. I certainly would have done that differently.”

It’s  heartening to hear that even government officials learn from their mistakes.  Sort of.

“I think the job of a lawyer is to give a straight answer to a client,” Yoo went on to say. “One thing I sometimes worry about is that lawyers in the future in the government are going to start worrying about, ‘What are people going to think of me?’ Your client the president, or your client the justice on the Supreme Court, or your client this senator, needs to know what’s legal and not legal. And sometimes, what’s legal and not legal is not the same thing as what you can do or what you should do.”

Oddly, Yoo’s idea of a “straight answer” was a legal argument that reached back centuries to justify conduct that no reputable legal scholar, including Republicans who ended up in the Bush administration, would consider legal today.  Even Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) just slammed Yoo’s opinions, without mentioning his name, at this morning’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Maybe it’s not such a bad thing for a lawyer to worry about what people in the future will think of him.

Kevin Drum has a good post on Menendez titled "Cuba Lunacy," and Matt Yglesias does as well. Matt:

Someone was telling me about this yesterday and I didn’t quite get what I was being told, but Senator Robert Menendez is holding up two of Barack Obama’s key climate/science appointees, John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco, over an unrelated Cuba policy dispute:

The delay — which could end quickly if Menendez dropped his objection or Senate leaders pushed for a floor vote that would require 60 votes to pass — has alarmed environmentalists and scientific experts who strongly back Holdren and Lubchenco.

“Climate change damages our oceans more every day we fail to act,” said Michael Hirshfield, chief scientist for the advocacy group Oceana. “We need these two supremely qualified individuals on the job yesterday.”

Kate Sheppard notes that just last year Menendez thought climate change was “incredibly important.” But apparently not as important as defending America’s insane Cuba policy status quo.

Meanwhile, I would note that even more than the filibuster, the “hold” process in the Senate is an absurd procedural bottleneck that could and should be done away with. People sometimes wonder what the hold rule is, and nobody even really knows. When I was an intern in Chuck Schumer’s office the idea of putting a hold on someone came up, and the office had to scramble to figure out what it means. Turns out that it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just an insane convention that Senate leaders agree to uphold and that Senators as a whole conspire to put in place. But it’s ridiculous. Irrespective of the details of one’s views on Holdren or Cuba it clearly does not serve the general interest to let random appointees be held up by random Senators for no real reason. All it does, ultimately, is feed the egomania and power-lust that seems to afflict every single senator. But it’s time for some members of the body to put their substantive policy commitments ahead of their wacky perks of office and start pushing for the kind of substantial procedural reforms that will make it possible for the Senate to tackle major issues in a serious way.

Relatedly, it’s annoying to read things about how it “would require 60 votes to pass” a resolution confirming these nominees. If you look through United States history, plenty of bills and plenty of nominees have been passed with more than 49 but fewer than 60 votes. Similarly, in the pre-seventies era of the 67-person cloture vote plenty of bills passed with fewer than 67 votes. Throughout the nineteenth century it required unanimity to break a filibuster, but that didn’t mean that bills all passes unanimously. It also “requires” 60 votes to pass things if we accept the premise that the filibuster should be used routinely. That has not, however, been the historical understanding of the filibuster. The speed with which Washington has accepted the idea of a routine supermajority requirement is a little bit frightening as it was just a few years ago that this started to be put into place.

Another reason I support single-payer health insurance. This graphic is from an interesting post by Ezra Klein, , well worth reading.

Interesting post by Matt Yglesias:

At the CEOs for Cities blog they’re observing that last year the United States saw a dramatic decline in the volume of traffic congestion driven by a modest decline in total vehicle-miles traveled:

New data show that in 2008 the amount of traffic congestion in the nation’s cities declined by 30 percent, and that congestion was lower in every hour of every day in 2008 than it had been the year previously. How did we make these big gains? Not by adding more highway lanes or transit—the physical infrastructure barely changed—we did it with a very modest decline in car travel. On urban interstate highways, total vehicle miles traveled in the US declined by about 3 percent in 2008.

Part of what’s notable about this is that the decline in congestion is gigantic relative to the decline in driving. This is because: …

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Daphne Eviatar in the Washington Independent:

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s “Getting to the Truth Through a Nonpartisan Commission of Inquiry” convened this morning to consider Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) proposal for a sort of “truth and reconciliation” commission.

The hearing was full of all the predictable, lofty statements from illustrious supporters about why a commission would further the American people’s understanding of our nation’s past and true values, and also demonstrate to the world our commitment to truth and justice — most of which I agree with. But what was most surprising was that the Senate Republicans and their witnesses, in the process of ripping apart the idea, made the strongest case I’ve heard yet for why the Department of Justice should prosecute former senior officials of the Bush administration.

Sen. Arlen Specter, the ranking committee Republican, after noting his previous support for judicial review of the Bush administration’s terrorist surveillance program, referred to the recent disclosures of Office of Legal Counsel memos as potentially supporting the case for prosecutions.

“You’ve had some rather startling disclosures, with the publicity in recent days about unusual—to put it mildly—legal opinions” to justify broad executive actions, including homicide. “They’re all being exposed now,” he said, and noted that a forthcoming report from the Office of Professional Responsibility in the Justice Department will likely expose even more.  They’re “starting to tread on what may disclose criminal conduct,” he said.

Rather than going off  “helter-skelter” and conducting a “fishing expedition,” said Specter, “it seems to me that we ought to follow a regular order here … If there’s reason to believe that these justice department officials have given approval for things that they know not to be lawful and sound, go after them.”

The witnesses called to present the Republican opposition to Leahy’s proposal made the same point.

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That might explain why we keep dumping money into AIG without any idea of what they do with it (beyond the usual bonuses and parties, of course). And now this:

President Obama’s White House made crystal clear this week: a Canadian-style, Medicare-for-all, single payer health insurance system is off the table.

Obama doesn’t even want to discuss it.

Take the case of Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan).

Conyers is the leading advocate for single payer health insurance in Congress.

Last week, Conyers attended a Congressional Black Caucus meeting with President Obama at the White House.

During the meeting, Congressman Conyers, sponsor of the single payer bill in the House (HR 676), asked President Obama for an invite to the President’s March 5 health care summit at the White House.

Conyers said he would bring along with him two doctors – Dr. Marcia Angell and Dr. Quentin Young – to represent the majority of physicians in the United States who favor single payer.

Obama would have none of it.

This week, by e-mail, Conyers heard back from the White House – no invite.

Why not?

Well, believe it or not, the Obama White House is under the thumb of the health insurance industry.

Obama has become the industry’s chief enforcer of its key demand: single payer health insurance is off the table.

Earlier this week, Obama named his health reform leadership team – Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Nancy-Ann DeParle.

Single payer advocates were not happy.

Since leaving Medicare, DeParle cashed in as a director at major for profit health care corporations, including Medco Health Solutions, Cerner, Boston Scientific, DaVita, and Triad Hospitals.

Now, what does the health insurance industry make of the Sebelius/DeParle team?

Here is Karen Ignagni, president of the lead health insurance lobbying group, America’s Health Insurance Plans: …

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Read the article:

The stars of the ocean – bluefin tuna, salmon, whales and seabirds – suffer from dwindling food supplies as a result of heavy fishing driven by the demands of fish farms and climate change, according to a study released Monday.

Seven of the world’s 10 largest commercial fisheries include small fish such as herring, anchovy, pollock, mackerel and whiting, which support the vast ocean web of big fish, marine mammals and birds, said the study by Oceana, a worldwide environmental group.

The loss of food at the bottom of the ocean food chain harms a range of species, resulting in malnutrition, death of offspring or disruption in migration and breeding patterns, Margot Stiles, lead author and Oceana marine biologist, said Monday.

"These fish may be small. They’re not glamorous. But they do all of the work in the ocean," Stiles said. "They’re the foundation of the food web. Without them, we would lose the things we really care about – the seabirds, whales, tuna and salmon."

Most small prey, or forage fish, are being caught at maximum levels or are currently overexploited, the study said.

Oceana and another group, Ocean Conservancy, are asking for catch limits that would protect existing fisheries. They also want prohibitions on starting new fisheries of prey species…

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Susie Madrak at Crooks & Liars:

"They make you feel like a criminal. They try scare tactics, harassment and everything. And you take a look and ask, ‘Seriously, is the attorney general of Florida after me for a $14 bounced check?’ "

- Michael O’Neil, who wrote two bad checks while living in Florida.

Amazing story. Basically, these District Attorney offices are renting out their name to deceptive bill collectors for bounced checks under $100. Think about it: You’re so tight for money that you bounce a check under $100, you still have to pay all the bank fees AND you get slammed for $200+ in charges from this rent-a-cop collection agency? Nice, huh.

I always question the legal premise of anything like this I get in the mail, and you should, too:

DETROIT, Michigan (CNN) — Michelle O’Neil and her husband Michael are young, scrambling to stay afloat financially and, by their own admission, not the best money managers.

Both acknowledge they wrote two bad checks, totaling about $200, as they were moving from Florida to Michigan in late 2007. The bad checks, they say, were mistakes. But nearly a year after they settled in a Detroit suburb, letters and phone calls followed from Florida.

"They told me they were part of the attorney general’s office," Michelle O’Neil told CNN. "And that was scary in the sense that I’ve never had any legal problems. I’m a teacher."

But the calls weren’t coming from a state agency. They were coming from a company hired by a Florida county prosecutor’s office to collect on bounced checks...

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Emptywheel provides a useful correction:

I’ve gotten so many links to really confused reporting on what happened in the al-Haramain case on Friday (see here, here, and here, for starters), that I’m going to take the trouble of trying to correct it.

But before I do that, to those perpetuating these confused reports, let me say this:

You guys have all totally missed the plot!!

You have gotten completely distracted by utterly predictable squabbling about how this will move forward.

You have missed the fact that DOJ just admitted that Bush lied provided "inaccurate" information to the Courts, and that DOJ has just submitted new material that presumably corrects that lie "inaccurate" information.

Shew. Sorry about that.

Now the confusion in question stems from the way Judge Walker wrote his January 5 order, which basically said two things. It:

1. Ruled that he–Judge Walker–would read the secret material in question and decide whether al-Haramain was an aggrieved party (and therefore whether Bush broke the law).
2. Ruled that the government should take the first steps (doing a classification review and getting al-Haramain’s lawyers a security clearance) of addressing how to move forward with this case given the classified nature of the information involved.

I wish Walker hadn’t written his ruling like that, because it caused the opportunity for this confusion, but since I’m not a federal judge, I can’t do much about that.

But note: Walker did not rule that the government had to give al-Haramain any classified information.

Unfortunately, the two sides focused their briefing on the confusing, second, aspect of Walker’s ruling. Al-Haramain, for some very good tactical reasons, said, …

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Here’s his post:

The term "Establishment Media" can seem a little nebulous – what does it mean, and why is it losing so much audience share to alternative media?

Definitionally, "Establishment Media" means media organs that front the patina of objectivity and "moderation" while aggressively pushing a extremist ideological agenda – that agenda being the reverence, support and worship of the bipartisan political Establishment in Washington, D.C.

Let’s take a couple of typical if nauseating stories today to flesh out what that actually looks like.

The high priest of the Establishment Media is David Brooks – a man who oozes the term "Establishment" out of every pore of his pudgy little body. His column today should be in every journalism text book in the country, as it perfectly exhibits the definition of "Establishment Media."

Portraying himself as the fierce defender of so-called "moderation" and "centrism" (i.e., conservative extremism and ideological devotion to the status quo) he bewails the Democratic Party’s advocacy of budget policies that, according to polls, the vast majority of our moderate and centrist nation supports. Brooks repeats what sounds like a campaign speech circa Richard Nixon’s 1972 reelection race, insisting that after 30 years of extreme right-wing policies, the most important and pressing challenge facing America is to "block the excesses of unchecked liberalism."

Then there is Jeanne Cummings story today in the Politico – the in-house newsletter of the Establishment. Cummings piece is written like a press release from the Mortgage Bankers Association, replete with a headline: "Tough Talk to Banks Could Backfire." She begins by stating unequivocally – and, of course, without offering any factual support – that the government "has a long history" of "overreacting to [economic crises] once they’re in the headlines." This "overreacting" is later defined as "fury fuel[ing]…draconian regulations" which "could prompt global investors to move their money elsewhere."

As I noted before, politicians bankrolled by the financial industry like Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL) push this same line in the same way – i.e., without any actual factual evidence of such "overreaction." Indeed, while we have endless examples of the government continuing to aggressively deregulate the economy in the wake of economic scandals, I’m still waiting for someone to offer up one single example in the last 3 decades of the government "overreacting" to an economic crisis with so-called "draconian regulations." The strongest non-deregulatory reaction I can recall was the Sarbanes-Oxley bill after Enron shredded the economy – and Sarbanes-Oxley was weak to the point of laughable. And yet, the Establishment Media states as unequivocal, assumed, and unquestioned fact that the government "has a long history" of "overreacting" to economic crises with "draconian regulation."

Finally, and perhaps most Orwellian, is the penchant of the Establishment Media to insist that …

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Dahlia Lithwick in Slate, discussing a situation that is, almost exactly, the plot device of John Grisham’s recent novel The Appeal:

"Justice" (brought to you by Debit MasterCard):

● Jury award for putting your coal-mining competitor out of business: $50 million.
● New state Supreme Court justice more amenable to your views: $3 million.
● Black judicial robe: $349.90.
● Power to determine legal outcomes for many years to come: priceless.

In 2002, a West Virginia jury determined that the A.T. Massey Coal Co. had fraudulently forced competitor Hugh Caperton into bankruptcy. Massey’s CEO, Don Blankenship, promptly appealed, having warned Caperton: "We spend a million dollars a month on lawyers, and we’ll tie you up for years." West Virginia has only one appellate court—its Supreme Court. Concerned about his odds on appeal, Blankenship spent $3 million of his own money to take out sitting Justice Warren McGraw by backing his opponent in a 2004 judicial election.

Blankenship’s $3 million represented 60 percent of the total funding of a 527 group called (what else?) "And for the Sake of the Kids." The group ran creepy election ads accusing McGraw of (what else?) setting a pedophile loose in the schools. McGraw lost his seat on the state high court to an unknown lawyer called Brent Benjamin. And in a Disney-like rotation of the circle of life, the newly elected Chief Justice Benjamin then voted 3-2 to reverse the verdict against Massey. Asked to recuse himself from hearing the case, Benjamin refused. Twice.

Who says you can’t get good help anymore?

The Supreme Court is in a tough spot in Caperton v. A.T. Massey. The legal claim here is that Americans have a due-process right to a judicial system untainted by the appearance or likelihood of bias. And appearances alone are sometimes enough. Indeed, the facts here are so completely grotesque, they cause the usually mild-mannered John Paul Stevens to proclaim: "We have never confronted a case as extreme as this before. This fits the standard that Potter Stewart articulated when he said, ‘I know it when I see it.’ "

But the extravagant weaselliness of Chief Justice Benjamin sits uneasily beside an almost complete absence of law that might curb it. The advocates struggle to scrape together a handful of precedents, along with bits of the Constitution’s due-process clause, in what rapidly starts to look like a constitutional comb-over…

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This story in the Washington Post states that more of the Bush DoJ memos and documents will be released, but doesn’t say when. From the story:

Word that more documents are to be released comes as Senate Democrats prepare to hold a hearing today on a proposal by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) to establish a "truth commission" to get to the bottom of contentious Bush-era national security practices. Leahy has called the Office of Legal Counsel under Bush a "rubber stamp for some of the administration’s worst abuses of power."

Two other members of the committee, Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), have demanded that Justice Department leaders produce a report prepared by internal ethics watchdogs on the work of three former OLC lawyers including Yoo. The inquiry, which has been underway for more than 4 1/2 years, focuses on whether Yoo and former OLC chief Jay S. Bybee violated professional standards in preparing the national security opinions. The review also examined the work of another former OLC chief, Steven G. Bradbury, but did not make disciplinary recommendations about him, a former Bush lawyer said.

Emptywheel wants the memos now:

As we’ve been discussing, DOJ released nine previously unreleased OLC memos yesterday, two of which were Steven Bradbury memos basically saying, "oops, no harm no foul!!"

But they’ve still just released 5 of the 41 memos that the ACLU has requested in FOIA proceedings (as well as two that were not on that list, plus Bradbury’s two "no harm no foul" opinions). Where are the other memos? Why weren’t they released yesterday? Is it because they’re still active (and supporting torture and illegal wiretapping and whatnot??)

The question is especially pertinent given a few things Bradbury said in his January 15, 2008 "no harm no foul" opinion.

The Commander in Chief Is Only Sort Of Bound By the Law

To dismiss several opinions authorizing torture, Steven Bradbury quotes at length responses he made to Teddy Kennedy in 2005 when he still had hopes of becoming OLC head.

The federal prohibition on torture … is constitutional, and I believe it does apply as a general matter to the subject of detention and interrogation conducted pursuant to the President’s Commander in Chief authority.

[snip]

The President, like all officers of the Government, is not above the law. 

He goes on from there. But then, in a passage not included in his responses to Kennedy (that is, a passage unique to this memo) he says, 

We recognize that a law that is constitutional in general may still raise serious constitutional issues if applied in particular circumstances to frustrate the President’s ability to fulfill his essential responsibilities under Article II.

To Teddy Kennedy: The torture ban is constitutional and the President is not above the law.

To the file earlier this year: … unless "applied in particular circumstances to frustrate the President’s ability to fulfill his essential responsibilities under Article II."

Psych!! …

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Perverting the goals of Federal agencies was a Bush Administration specialty: Put in charge of regulatory agencies people opposed to the agency mission with (apparently) orders to stymie any effective action by the agency and put the agency to work defending and aiding the industry groups that the agency was supposed to watch and regulate. An example, by Daphne Eviatar in the Washington Independent:

For anyone who’s heard about the controversy over renegade Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who parades undocumented immigrants in pink underwear and houses them in tents where temperatures reach 150 degrees, it will come as little surprise to hear that a Government Accountability Office report today concludes that a controversial program to have border patrol agents work hand-in-hand with local law enforcement hasn’t worked out exactly as planned.

Apparently the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, didn’t clearly explain to local police that they were supposed to use their newfound authority to focus on serious criminals — drug dealers, gang leaders, murderers and the like.

Instead, the report finds, according to The Associated Press, which obtained advance copies (the GAO report was not available this morning — we’ll post as soon as it is) local law enforcement used racial profiling pick up people for speeding, carrying an open container and urinating in public.

The law in question authorizes ICE to train local and state law enforcement to use its databases to determine legal status and take the first steps in deportation proceedings, but it does not specify which kinds of illegal immigrants to focus on. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has ordered a review of the so-called 287(g) program, named after the law that authorizes it. It grants authority to ICE to train local and state law enforcement to use its databases to determine the legal status of a suspect and take the first steps in deportation proceedings.

As of last October, 67 local and state law enforcement agencies in 23 states had signed agreements to participate in the program. Participation accelerated beginning in 2007, after Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Advocates, of course,  have been complaining about the problems with the 287(g) program for quite a while now.  In addition to hollering about Arpaio’s much-publicized abuses, which have led Democrats in Congress to call for a federal investigation, a report released last week by Justice Strategies finds that “Poor training and lack of oversight means that local authorities are not equipped to deal with the complexities associated with civil immigration law,” and often violate undocumented immigrants’ basic rights.  That’s not surprising, given that the immigration law allows for arrest without probable cause, indefinite detention, and provides no right to legal counsel.  The criminal justice system, on the other hand, isn’t supposed to tolerate that.

Put the two together, say many immigrants’ rights advocates, and you have a disaster on your hands.

This afternoon the House Committee on Homeland Security will hold a hearing on the 287(g) program and its failures.  I’ll report back after the hearing.

Yesterday I suggested (as strongly as I politely could) that you read these posts:

The newly released secret laws of the Bush administration

DOJ Releases OLC Memos: Why Hide Bradbury’s Legal Smackdown?

Who watched the torture tapes?

The posts not only contain good information, but also further links, as to this post by Scott Horton:

Yesterday the Obama Administration released a series of nine previously secret legal opinions crafted by the Office of Legal Counsel to enhance the presidential powers of George W. Bush. Perhaps the most astonishing of these memos was one crafted by University of California at Berkeley law professor John Yoo. He concluded that in wartime, the President was freed from the constraints of the Bill of Rights with respect to anything he chose to label as a counterterrorism operations inside the United States.

Here’s Neil Lewis’s summary in the New York Times:

“The law has recognized that force (including deadly force) may be legitimately used in self-defense,” Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty wrote to Mr. Gonzales. Therefore any objections based on the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches are swept away, they said, since any possible privacy offense resulting from such a search is a lesser matter than any injury from deadly force. The Oct. 23 memorandum also said that “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” It added that “the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”

John Yoo’s Constitution is unlike any other I have ever seen. It seems to consist of one clause: appointing the President as commander-in-chief. The rest of the Constitution was apparently printed in disappearing ink.

We need to know how the memo was used. Bradbury suggests it was not much relied upon; I don’t believe that for a second. Moreover Bradbury’s decision to wait to the very end before repealing it suggests that someone in the Bush hierarchy was keen on having it.

It’s pretty clear that it served several purposes. Clearly it was designed to …

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How Teresa Nielsen Hayden was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This via this post in Crooked Timber:

From the Chronicle of Higher Education

Brigham Young University has rejected an appeal from a student who had completed all the requirements for a degree but saw his diploma withheld last year after he published Men on a Mission, a calendar of buff Mormon missionaries without shirts, the Associated Press reported.

The student, Chad Henry, was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns the university, over the calendar last July. In September he was told that, to receive his degree, he would need to be reinstated as a member of the Mormon church.

Ezra Klein has an excellent post:

If I were a Republican, I’d be ready to slit my wrists at the prospect of former Columbia/HCA Healthcare CEO Rick Scott heading the conservative response to Obama’s health reform effort. This is like liberals getting Franklin Raines to run their economic messaging or Bush tasking Donald Rumsfeld with a comprehensive defense of his administration’s legacy.

In the 90s, HCA was the largest for-profit hospital company in America. As Forbes wrote, "it bought hospitals by the bucketful and promised to squeeze blood from each one." More than any other single company, it was responsible for the cruelty that turned the public against managed care. Indeed, remember when audiences began spontaneously clapping for Helen Hunt’s anti-HMO rant in As Good As It Gets? That was the sort of ruthless cost-cutting pioneered by HCA they were shouting down. If Scott didn’t exist, health reformers would have to invent him.

But it turned out that HCA’s wild profitability wasn’t all efficiencies. A seven-year federal investigation uncovered …

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ThinkProgress:

In 2004, frustrated by successful efforts by Senate Democrats to block 10 of President Bush’s judicial nominees, Senate Republicans threatened use the “nuclear option” to remove the minority’s right to filibuster judicial nominations. “One way or another, the filibuster of judicial nominees must end,” said then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) in a speech to the Federalist Society.

But now that they are out of power and President Obama has the ability to appoint judges, Republicans are threatening a filibuster of judges if Obama doesn’t appease them. In a letter to the White House yesterday, all 41 Senate Republicans “requested that Obama respect the Senate’s constitutional role in reviewing judicial nominees by seeking their consultation about potential nominees from their respective states.” Politico explains their obstructionist threat:

“Regretfully, if we are not consulted on, and approve of, a nominee from our states, the Republican Conference will be unable to support moving forward on that nominee,” the letter warns. “And we will act to preserve this principle and the rights of our colleagues if it is not.”

In other words, Republicans are threatening a filibuster of judges if they’re not happy.

As RightWingWatch notes, this letter represents the GOP’s “evolving definition” of the Senate’s “advice and consent” role. For instance, in 2005, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) — who signed the GOP letter — wrote:

Focusing on President Clinton’s judicial nominations in 1999, I described what has been the Senate’s historical standard for judicial nominations: “Let’s make our case if we have disagreement, and then vote.” Democrats’ new filibusters abandons this tradition and is unfair to senators who must provide the “advice and consent” the Constitution requires of them through a final up or down vote. It is also unfair to nominees who have agreed, often at personal and financial sacrifice, to judicial service only to face scurrilous attacks, trumped up charges, character assassination, and smear campaigns. They should not also be held in permanent filibuster limbo. Senators can vote for or against any judicial nominee for any reason, but senators should vote.

As RightWingWatch points out, it’s “amazing” how soon after trying to “blow up the Senate with the ‘nuclear option’ in order to get rid of the filibuster, the Republicans in the Senate are now demanding a veto over the President’s nominees and threatening to filibuster if they don’t get their way.”

But the Senate GOP’s filibuster flip-flop should come as no surprise. In fact, their opposition to judicial filibusters during the Bush years was itself a change from their previous position, which supported filibustering Democratic-appointed judges.

I think it’s probably time to remove the filibuster from the Senate. Its use over the years has been overwhelmingly against social progress.

From the LA Times:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a $6.7 million jury award to a musician who lost her arm because of a botched injection of an anti-nausea medication. The court brushed away a plea for limiting lawsuits against drug makers.

In a 6-3 decision, the court rejected Wyeth Pharmaceuticals’ claim that federal approval of its Phenergan anti-nausea drug should have shielded the company from lawsuits like the one filed by Diana Levine of Vermont.

Levine, 63, struggled with her emotions when told of the ruling in a phone call from an Associated Press reporter Wednesday: "Oh, my God. I’m so, so happy. I can’t believe this phone call," she said. "I’ve been waiting for so long, and I had no idea of what the chances were. I’m just ecstatic. I’m going to have to sit down."

Wyeth had no immediate comment on the ruling. The company is in the process of being bought by rival Pfizer, Inc., in a $68 billion deal that is expected to close later this year.

The decision is the second this term to reject business groups’ arguments that federal regulation effectively pre-empts consumer complaints under state law.

A Vermont jury agreed with Levine’s claim that …

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Yet more rain and overcast. Yesterday I decided to postpone errands for a day, and this morning as Megs basked in sunshine, sprawled in her scratch lounge, I was feeling good about the decision. That was a brief moment: rain is coming down, skies are grey, and I do have to go out later.