A Constitutional Inconvenience?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Right-wingers love to talk about how much they love the Constitution. But while they may love it, sometimes it seems like they don’t like it very much.

Bring up the protections of the Fourth through Eighth Amendments, and they’ll tell you that “we give too many rights to criminals.” They’re not all that crazy about the 16th Amendment, which establishes the government’s right to levy income taxes.

In fact, the only Amendment they seem to like is the Second, and they treat the first half of that (about the “well-regulated militia”) as if it were an embarrassing relative whom they don’t like to talk about very much.

The latest thing the wingnuts don’t like about the Constitution is the 14th Amendment, which provides that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

That “all persons” provision means that if you’re born here, you’re an American. Period. This Constitutional principle, commonly known as “birthright citizenship,” has become problematic for people who spend most of their waking hours terrified of the tide of Scary Brown People Who’ve Come to Take Our Stuff.

Donald Trump, as the current de facto leader of the Republican Party, brought the issue to the forefront. Following up on his famous “they’re rapists” comment, he laid out his plan for dealing with the estimated 11 million people already here illegally: “They have to go.”

Asked about what happens to those whose children were born here, Trump, a good family man if ever there was one, claimed we’d keep families together, but “they have to go.” When Bill O’Reilly pressed him on the question of deporting actual U.S. citizens, Trump blithely hand-waved away 147 years of 14th Amendment precedent, telling O’Reilly that “very good lawyers” had told him calling them citizens is “not going to hold up in court.”

Yes, folks, you heard right. The 14th Amendment, which clearly states that if you’re born here you’re a citizen won’t survive constitutional scrutiny, according to unidentified “very good lawyers.” In other words, Donald Trump apparently thinks the Constitution itself is unconstitutional.

This is, of course, utter claptrap, and deserving of nothing but scorn and derision. But since the majority of the Republican field are like rudderless sailboats that blow hither and yon in the wind that emanates from Donald Trump’s wherever, they began rushing to assure us that they, too, either didn’t believe in birthright citizenship at all or that they thought it needed to be done away with.

“We need to end birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants,” Gov. Bobby Jindal’s campaign declared on Twitter. Dr. Ben Carson told Breitbart.com that “it doesn’t make any sense to me that people could come in here, have a baby and that baby becomes an American citizen.” Sen. Lindsey Graham took a moment off from gibbering about Islamic terrorists under everyone’s bed to say, “I think it’s a bad practice to give citizenship based on birth.”

Former Sen. Rick Santorum insists that we don’t have to amend the Constitution to do away with birthright citizenship. We “merely have to pass a law.” I guess this is true if by passing a statute we can change the literal meaning of the words “all persons born” to “all white persons born.”

For his part, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker seemed to be vying for the coveted Mitt Romney Ribbon for Campaign Weaselry. Walker told NBC reporter Kasie Hunt in response to a direct question that we should “absolutely” abolish birthright citizenship. Later, however, he said to CNBC he is “not taking a position on it one way or the other.” Still later, he took a third stance with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, answering “no” when asked if we should “repeal or modify” the 14th Amendment—but only after Stephanopoulos had asked him three times.

But remember folks: Only Democrats flip-flop. Republicans “evolve.” Walker’s “evolving” before our eyes like something that came out of an egg in a bad horror film.

I well remember the screaming tantrum the Republicans threw when it was revealed that Barack Obama once called the Constitution as originally written “an imperfect document … that reflects some deep flaws in American culture, the Colonial culture nascent at that time.”

He was, of course, talking about the way the original document embraced slavery as an institution, but from the way Rush Limbaugh and others reacted, you’d have thought the president had proposed using the sacred text to line the White House birdcage before setting it on fire.

Amazing, though, how disposable the beloved Constitution becomes when it comes to getting at the Scary Brown People — and their children. Principles you discard when inconvenient to your prejudices are not principles at all.

Rand Paul Is His Own Worst Enemy

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

So, it looks like another clown has exited the Republican circus car.

This week’s entry is the junior senator from Kentucky, Dr. Rand Paul, son of Ron, who threw his hat into the ring in a rally in Louisville. There he promised, as every presidential candidate who ever took the podium has promised, to “take the country back.”

The campaign then showed its modern-day tech savvy by going live on the day of the announcement with a spiffy new campaign website, where you can peruse the candidate’s views on subjects like “Eductation” (that’s how they spelled it).

You can also buy that all-important Rand Paul merchandise, such as a Rand Paul cornhole game, a campaign poster in the form of an eye chart (Dr. Paul’s an ophthalmologist) for only $20.16 (get it?); a blanket with a picture of the Constitution on it (only $75!); and if you’re still craving some of that Constitution-y goodness after a night’s slumber underneath a representation of our nation’s founding document, you can get the senator’s signature on a copy of the Constitution for only a thousand bucks.

So much for the sizzle. How about the steak? Well, if Sen. Paul hews as a presidential candidate to the same positions he’s espoused in the past, he may end up in a spot of trouble with primary voters.

Oh, sure, he hits some of the talking points beloved of the far right, such as a constitutional amendment to balance the budget and a flat tax. He never, of course, fully explains how both of those things can exist at the same time. But then, the libertarian right is known for its embrace of “magical thinking”: If we just believe hard enough, we can make two plus two equal five.

Paul also likes cutting spending, particularly spending on Those People. You know, the poor (working and otherwise), the sick, and of course, children whose parents can’t afford to send them to private schools. He’s proposed budgets that, among other things, eliminate most of the Earned Income Tax Credit; eliminate Section 8 housing vouchers and K-12 education funding; and slash the budgets of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

But certain other positions of Dr. Paul are going to be, shall we say, problematic with the GOP base. For one thing, those budget proposals we just talked about would eliminate or drastically reduce all foreign aid — including aid to Israel. “I just don’t think you can give other people’s money away when we can’t rebuild bridges in our country,” he said in 2011.

While the right is all for cutting money for starving black or brown people in furrin lands, they’d cut out one of their own kidneys before they’d deprive Bibi Netanyahu of a single F16 or Iron Dome missile.

Which leads us to Sen. Paul’s defense and foreign policies. His proposed budgets included cuts in defense spending of as much as 30 percent, saying he wants “to reduce the size and scope of the military complex … to one that is more in line with a policy of containment.”

This is going to be anathema to neoconservative hawks who never saw a world problem they weren’t chomping at the bit to “bomb back to the Stone Age” before throwing someone else’s children at it, and for whom the word “containment” is the same as “appeasement.”

(Other words they equate with “appeasement” are “treaty,” “agreement,” “dialogue” and “negotiation” — pretty much any word other than “air strike,” “invasion” or “war.”) His perceived dovishness has led some on the right to begin mobilizing against Dr. Paul. “A group calling for a more hawkish U.S. policy on Iran is prepared to launch a $1 million ad campaign casting him as weak on the issue,” says an article in Politico.

On the campaign trail and in the debates, the Honorable Gentleman from Kentucky is going to find that the GOP may flirt with the type of small-government, low-spending libertarianism he claims to embrace.

But when the last dance is called, they’re going to be in the arms of the defense and Israel lobbyists. And, if by some miracle, Paul survives the primaries and gets the nomination, his budget radicalism will doom him in the general election.

Rand Paul is going to be another candidate who flares brightly and makes it to front-runner status for a week or two, then sputters out when people start using that status to actually take a look at him.

Poor sad clown.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Health Itself

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

This past week, in addition to once again trying to repeal health care reform, the Republicans who have recently come to power took aim against a new, even more pervasive foe: health itself.

It started when President Obama, speaking to Savannah Guthrie on “The Today Show,” threw down the gauntlet when asked about vaccination in light of the recent measles outbreak in the U.S.

“The science is pretty indisputable,” the president said. “We’ve looked at this again and again. There is every reason to get vaccinated, but there aren’t reasons to not. …You should get your kids vaccinated.”

Well, the right wing wasn’t going to take that lying down, you betcha. Following the one ironclad principle of the right (“If’n one o’ them Obammy’s is fer it, we’s agin it”), Republican presidential hopefuls took to the airwaves to let us know that liberty includes the freedom to let your kids become tiny little germ weapons.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who, as you remember, tried to lock up a nurse for being in the same country as ebola, suddenly decided that inoculation against measles, a far more contagious disease, should be “optional.”

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul made his bid for the coveted Michele Bachmann Professorship of Unsourced Pseudoscientific Claptrap by telling talk show host Laura Ingraham, “I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.”

Heard from who? Jenny McCarthy? Well, hey, who are a bunch of dumb old scientists to argue with a Playboy Playmate and the former host of MTV’s “Singled Out”?

Not to be outdone, our own Junior Sen. Tom Tillis decried the undue regulatory burden of requiring restaurant employees to wash their hands after using the toilet.

“I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy,” Tillis said, “ as long as they post a sign that says, ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restrooms.’ The market will take care of that.”

Of course, in the unregulated dream world where Sen. Tillis would have us all live, there’d be no one to ensure that the sign is visible, legible, or even in English. But, as the song goes, “Freedom’s just another word for wondering why the waiter’s hands smell funny.”

Later, as usual, both Christie and Paul had to, as they say, “walk back” their statements. The “walkback” is what wingnuts and the people who try to pander to them often find themselves doing when they realize that the codswallop they’ve been spoon-feeding to the rubes, goobers and haters on right-wing talk radio, and Faux News has actually been overheard by the non-insane, and they have to do some damage control before the editorial cartoonists start drawing them with tinfoil hats.

Christie’s office released a statement: “The governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection, and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated.” Rand Paul went even further and had himself photographed getting a booster vaccine for hepatitis A. Guess he figured that for him, the “profound mental disorders” train had already left the station, with him on it.

As for Senator Tillis, as of this writing, he’s still holding the line against the tyranny of mandatory hand-washing. This caused a Republican friend of mine to comment, “I would not shake hands with that man.”

Here’s the thing: Vaccines don’t cause “profound mental disorders.” The one study that showed a link between measles vaccine and autism was conclusively debunked a few years ago when it was revealed that not only did Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor conducting it, misrepresent and change the results of his research, he did so after taking thousands of pounds from lawyers hoping to capitalize on his dodgy “research” in lawsuits.

Wakefield was later stripped of his medical license, and the journal in which the study was published retracted the article.

Yet to this day, you will find people telling you with complete and misplaced confidence that children suffering from autism are “vaccine-injured.” To keep spreading this lie when measles is trying make a comeback is dangerous. For politicians to spread it for political gain is inexcusable.

As for the value of washing your hands after using the restroom: Ask your mom. If you’d rather believe Thom Tillis than your own mama, I don’t know what to tell you.

Wingnut Media Fails Once Again

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

By now, we’ve all heard of the egregiously racist things spouted by L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling to his trophy girlfriend in a recorded phone conversation that was recently released to every media outlet, with the possible exception of the “Sesame Street News Flash.”

Immediately, right-wing media leapt into action, their crack investigative teams digging hard for the answer to the most important question of all: How do we turn this into an attack on the Democrats?

“Racist Clippers Owner Donald Sterling Is a Democrat,” blared a blog post on the National Review website. “Report: Clippers Owner Caught In Racist Rant Is a Democratic Donor,” said Fox Nation. Right-wing icon Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report told us that “NBA Sterling is a Democrat,” while Tucker Carlson’s vanity project The Daily Caller claimed “Race Hate Spewing Clippers Owner Is Democratic Donor.”

All of this, it seems, was based on the fact that, as The Daily Caller put it, “Between 1990 and 1992 Donald Sterling made a $2,000 donation to former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, a $1,000 donation to current Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, as well as a $1,000 donation to the recalled former governor of California, Gray Davis.”

Got that? A multibillionaire makes donations of his pocket change to three Democrats 22 years ago, and suddenly he’s a “Democratic donor,” for purposes of right-wing smear campaigns.

I suppose they were desperate for something to latch onto after the debacle in which rising star Cliven Bundy turned out to be not only a freeloading welfare rancher and domestic terrorist, but a racist nutball as well — but only after he was embraced by the likes of Sean Hannity and Rand Paul.

Now, of course, they’re backpedaling on their support for Bundy faster than Wile E. Coyote when he realizes he’s gone over the edge of the cliff, while the wingnut media scramble desperately to find someone to take the heat off. I guess Donald Sterling looked like the perfect target.

Problem with the Sterling-as-Democrat charge is that, according to California’s voter registration rolls, it turns out that the creepy old dude’s a registered Republican and has been since 1998. Oops. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to make an issue of Sterling’s party affiliation — huh, guys?

Once again, members of the right-wing media have fallen flat on their faces in their desperate attempt to support one of the most absurd Republican tropes: “We’re not racist. Democrats are the real racists, because of Robert Byrd. So there.”

Apparently, the party whose supporters wave signs showing President Obama as an African witch doctor with a bone through his nose, a party that courts the support of a washed-up rock star who calls that president a “subhuman mongrel,” a party that has no problem with its most prominent talk show host referring to the first lady as “uppity” and playing songs about “Barack the Magic Negro,” a party that embraced a candidate who told Iowa primary voters, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money” (even though there are more white than black welfare recipients) — apparently it’s very important to that party to distract from the pervasive racism in its own current ranks by convincing the American people that it’s the Democrats who are the real racists because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, Southern Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act 50 years ago (although most Northern Democrats supported it), and Sen. Robert Byrd was in the KKK before most of us were born.

Forgive me if I don’t find this argument convincing, especially after the years since 1964 — those years that brought us the GOP’s race-baiting “Southern Strategy,” giving us gems like Bush the Elder’s Willie Horton ad (AHHH! SCARY BLACK MAN!) and Jesse Helms’ infamous “White Hands” spot (“You needed that job, but the government said it had to go to a minority”).

I’m not saying that all Republicans are racists or that there are no racists in the Democratic Party. Clearly neither of those is true. I’m saying that an awful lot more racists seem to find a welcoming home in the GOP, and that the first step to solving your problem is to admit that you have one. It’s a simple truth the Raging Republican Right doesn’t seem to have learned.

Donald Sterling is now banned from the NBA for life. It’s a pity that the GOP doesn’t have the same backbone to deal with its virulent racist wing.

Want to Refute The Idea That There's a "War On Women"?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Once again, I am bemused to find myself rising to the defense of Hillary Clinton, not because I’m particularly thrilled about her, but because some of her attackers have made themselves so ridiculous.
It seems that the Republican Party, rent by its own internal civil war, unable to stop themselves from babbling about ideas that alienate women, Latinos and young people, and with their own strongest candidate imploding before the primaries even start, has decided that it’s a winning strategy to tear down Hillary by talking about her husband, former president and White House horndog Bill Clinton.

Kentucky senator and supposed presidential aspirant Rand Paul got the ball rolling when he responded to accusations of a Republican “War on Women” by pointing the finger at the former president.

“One of the work place laws and rules that I think are good is that bosses shouldn’t prey on young interns in their office,” he said. “I think really the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this. He took advantage of a girl that was 20 years old and an intern in his office.”

A pass? Apparently the Honorable Gentleman from Kentucky was in some kind of coma in the late ’90s. You couldn’t turn on the TV without hearing a solemn discussion of when the president got his freak on, where he did it, and what it all meant. Sen. Paul apparently never had to leap to the remote to cut the news off when small children were in the room and the evening news anchors started discussing oral sex.

Paul went on: “Now, it’s not Hillary’s fault. But it is a factor in judging Bill Clinton in history.” So if it’s not the candidate’s fault, why bring it up? A bit disingenuous, no?

Clearly, Sen. Paul has decided that the best way to reach out to young voters is to talk about something that happened when they were infants, and the best way to address a female candidate’s record is by talking about her husband’s infidelity before the turn of this century.

A few days later, RNC Chairman Reince Preibus cited what he called a “truckload of opposition research on Hillary Clinton” to indicate his own willingness to party like it’s 1998. “Some things may be old,” he said, “and some things might be new. But I think everything is at stake when you’re talking about the leader of the free world.”

In an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Preibus described the release of old documents held by a close friend of Clinton’s at the time of the Lewinsky scandal as “significant.” Perhaps the candidate’s theme song for 2016 should be Jethro Tull’s “Living In the Past.”

As I’ve said before in these pages, I’ve never been that huge a Clinton fan. She’s one of those Democrats that I’ve described as Republican Lite. She always seems to go for the safe choice, rather than the bold one. And when it came time in 2008 to pick a campaign song, she picked an awful Céline Dion number over the Temptations.

But then I look at the alternatives in the Republican Party, and I see the biggest bunch of retreads, has-beens, whackaloons, and grifters it’s ever been my misfortune to behold. And they keep flogging the same losing message: “Be afraid! Those People are coming to take your stuff!” — with “Those People” (aka “the 47 percent”) being variously defined as women, immigrants, minorities, gays, the unemployed, and pretty much anyone who’s not rich, white, male, and angry.

Here’s the thing. The way to stop people from thinking your party’s waging a “War on Women” is not to go “Nuh-uh! YOU are! Your candidate’s husband messed around on her with a younger woman 20 years ago!”

The way to stop people thinking you’re waging a “War on Women” is to stop attacking them. Stop trying to take away their reproductive freedom. Stop babbling about concepts like “legitimate rape” and saying pregnancy resulting from rape is “what God intended to happen.” Stop demanding that women face invasive and unnecessary ultrasounds to get an abortion. Stop calling young women “sluts” because they want the insurance they pay or work for to cover contraception, the same way men’s insurance covers ED drugs.

Stop repealing or trying to repeal equal pay provisions, as Republican hero Scott Walker did in Wisconsin. Stop attacking a female politician because her husband fooled around on her. And stop supporting, defending, and coddling those who do.

Dear Rand Paul: Fuck you.

So now that the Iraq War is over, Rand Paul takes the courageous step of actually doing something to repeal the legal authorization for it. *slow sarcastic clap*.

Look here, you preppy asshole, I was against that war when some people regarded it as treason and weren't shy about telling me so. (My favorite was the e-mail warning me that "They hanged Benedict Arnold, you know," which managed to be both vaguely threatening and historically inaccurate). I wrote about what a bad idea it was to invade Iraq when it actually had fucking consequences, like my own father publicly stating in a letter to the local newspaper that people like me and my wife were responsible for 9/11. 

Fuck you, Rand Paul. Fuck you with a rusty fence post wrapped in barbed wire.

Ooooooohhh, SNAP!!!

ThinkProgress » Rand Paul Mocks Newt Gingrich: ‘He Has More War Positions Than He Has Wives’

PAUL: I was happy to see that Newt Gingrich has staked out a position on the war, a position, or two, or maybe three. I don’t know. I think he has more war positions than he’s had wives. [...]

There’s a big debate over there. Fox News can’t decide, what do they love more, bombing the Middle East or bashing the president? It’s like I was over there and there was an anchor going, they were pleading, can’t we do both? Can’t we bomb the Middle East and bash the president at the same time? How are we going to make this work?

Is it a sign of the Apocalypse that I'm agreeing with Rand Paul? It's the same feeling of disorientation I had when I heard someone on talk radio talking about how terrorism was the result of our meddling in Middle Eastern politics, nodding in agreement, and realizing with a start that I was listening to Pat Buchanan.

Strange days indeed....

Rand Paul: On the Palin Track?

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On May 18, Rand Paul stunned the Republican establishment in the Kentucky senatorial primary by smashing Trey Grayson, the hand-picked choice of Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He was roundly cheered by the tea party activists, whose banner he waves whenever he gets the chance.

Then he immediately came down with an epic case of foot-in-mouth disease. When Robert Siegel of National Public Radio discussed Paul's criticisms of the Americans with Disabilities Act (which Paul sees as an infringement on the rights of businesses), Siegel asked if the same criticism would apply to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. You know - the one that says you can't have "Whites Only" restaurants and drinking fountains.

Now, most of us had regarded that sort of thing as pretty well-settled law. But on Planet Paul, no battle, no matter how ancient or ill-conceived, is ever really over. When Siegel asked if the CRA and the ADA were "just overreaches" by the federal government, Rand replied "Right."

Paul had also insisted in a recent interview with The Louisville Courier-Journal that the right to refuse service to people on the basis of race was a right protected by the First Amendment. See, on Planet Paul, it was the people being set upon by police dogs and blasted by firehoses while demanding basic human dignity who were the real oppressors.

By the end of the week, Paul was reduced to earnestly insisting that he really wasn't going to try to get the Civil Rights Act repealed. Well, that's a relief.

Not to be deterred by that controversy, Paul then went on to take up the cause of another oppressed minority: British Petroleum. You know - the people whose oil spill is killing the entire Gulf of Mexico.

Criticism of BP, and of business in general, Paul said, was "really un-American." We shouldn't be playing the "blame game," Paul said, because "sometimes accidents happen."

For good measure, he included the recent Kentucky mine disaster as one of those things that "just happen," with no one accountable, certainly not the company that owned the mine. This should be a real comfort to the people of the Gulf Coast, not to mention the families of the dead miners and oil rig workers.

See, that's the problem with the whole right-wing agenda. You come to the party for the low taxes and limited government, but then you realize that the deal also includes the government just shrugging and looking the other way if a company discriminates against you, kills or maims you, poisons your air or water, or destroys your livelihood. It's nothing personal, it's just business.

Paul also has another congenital defect of the tea partiers: He's against Big Government, unless Big Government puts money in his personal pocket. According to The Wall street Journal, Paul wants to slash government spending - but not Medicare payments to physicians. The fact that Paul himself is a physician (he's an ophthalmologist who says 50 percent of his patients are on Medicare) is, I'm sure, pure coincidence.

The firestorm finally grew to be too hot for Paul. He canceled an appearance on "Meet the Press," and now he's singing the old familiar tune about how the liberal media have it in for him.

Now, it's entirely possible that Rand Paul will not blow his lead and that he can win this one. We are, after all, talking about a state whose state song contained lyrics about "darkies" until 1986.

But if he doesn't win, there's always another career path he can follow, a path which I like to call "the Palin Track." On the Palin Track, you turn possible victory into crushing defeat for your party by saying one nutty thing after another, get roundly mocked along the way, then go on the lecture circuit, taking a hundred grand an appearance to tell everyone it was a liberal media conspiracy that did you in.

Like Sarah Palin, it looks like Rand Paul is going to be another one of those gifts that just keep on giving. And that was just his first week. What's next? Will Rand Paul compare the government's lawsuit against Goldman Sachs to the Holocaust? Will he start arguing in favor of secession?

Well, we live in hope.