Quote of the Day

Balloon Juice:

"I want a president who breaks down and cries during press conferences. Maybe also one who gets so overwhelmed at times his advisors have to coax him out from under his desk. Fuck this keeping a cool head bullshit. I want someone just as neurotic as me."

Tea Partiers Love the Constitution, Except When They Don't.

Tea Party Hero Rand Paul: "We’re the only country I know of that allows people to come in illegally have a baby and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also."

U.S. Constitution. Amendment 14:

1. 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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Looks like the Civil Rights Act isn't the only thing Rand thinks was wrongly enacted. He doesn't care much for the Constitution, either.

The Real Lessons From Tuesday

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This past Tuesday, a number of states held party primaries or special elections. As usual, pundits and spinmeisters immediately began puffing and pontificating about what it all meant, particularly for the upcoming midterm elections.

The conventional wisdom was that the voters were saying "incumbents are toast." And, of course, the usual gang of idiots is trying to spin the results into a "referendum" on the current administration and a predictor of a massive repudiation of Barack Obama and the Democrats in November.

As to the first claim: There's certainly a lot of discontent, some of it quite noisy, with the current state of politics. But when you look a little closer, there are two races, both in Pennsylvania, thatdemonstrate some equally important forces at work.

Possibly the most watched race in the country was the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, which pitted Rep. Joe Sestak against newly minted Democrat Arlen Specter. Specter, after 30 years in the Senate, got whipped like a rented mule by Sestak. So that must have been a repudiation of all incumbents and all things Washingtonian, right?

Well, maybe. But Sestak is not exactly a Washington outsider. As a Navy rear admiral, he's been in and out of D.C. jobs several times, including a stint at the White House as director for defense policy on the National Security Council under Bill Clinton. And lest we forget, at the time of the primary, he was already a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Most important, though, remember that this was the Democratic primary. Arlen Specter's 2009 defection to the Democratic Party may have briefly created a so-called "veto-proof" majority for Obama and the Democrats, but it was, after all, recent. It certainly wasn't sufficient
to earn the love or loyalty of the Dem rank-and-file in Pennsylvania.

Sestak, for his part, seized on this; one of his more effective campaign ads alleged that the only reason Specter became a Democrat in the first place was because he was facing a primary challenge from right-winger Pat Toomey. "The only job Arlen Specter cares about saving," the ad concluded, "is his." That one drew blood in blue-collar Pennsylvania.

Was Sestak's victory, then, a slap in the face to Obama and to liberals? Well, again - maybe.

True, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden both campaigned for Specter, most likely because they were obliged to do so after helping persuade him to cross the aisle. Clearly, their endorsements didn't help. But when you look at Sestak's record and his positions, he's actually the slightly more liberal of the two candidates. He's pro-choice, pro-gun control and pro-health care reform.

Most important, Sestak, according to recent polls, has already pulled neck-and-neck with Toomey, unlike Specter, who was lagging 7 to 12 points behind (depending on whom you ask).

A more interesting result, to my mind, occurred in Pennsylvania's 12th District, where an actual Republican, Tim Burns, took on an actual Democrat, Mark Critz, to fill the seat of veteran congressman John Murtha, who was ineligible to hold the seat because of being, well, dead.

The Republicans poured over a million dollars into the race, in a district where Obama holds only a 35 percent approval rating. They spent most of it running, not against Mark Critz, but against Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Critz, the guy who actually was running, spent his time talking about local concerns and his own positions. And he ate Burns' lunch. Critz, by the way, was Rep. Murtha's chief of staff, so you can't really call him any kind of "outsider" either.

Just as they did in New York's 23d District last year, the Republicans tried to "nationalize" a local election by pouring money in, then running against national Democratic leaders instead of their actual opponent. It didn't work in 2009, it didn't work in May 2010, and it won't work in November. Fact is, there just aren't enough people who hate Nancy Pelosi to make that a winning strategy.

On the Democratic side, the president and vice president tried to use their national clout to swing a state election, and that didn't work either.

The first real lesson we can take away from Tuesday's -elections is a golden oldie, most famously expressed by the late Tip O'Neill: "All politics is local." The second is, "You've got to run a good campaign." Get out there, talk to the people and connect with them about the things that affect their daily lives.

The politician who forgets that, whether Republican or Democrat, incumbent or newcomer, is headed for a stomping.

We've All Been There, Brother

Parnell Hall sings "Signing In the Waldenbooks" . Can I get an A-MEN?

Demint: Wall Street Reform=Crooked Teeth For Children

No, really. He's serious.

According to this bizarre rant on DiMented's blog, the financial reform bill will make it impossible for American families to get braces for their children, because, he contends, it subjects payment plans for braces to the same regulations that govern "AIG, Freddie Mac and Goldman Sachs."

He provides no logical reason why this should mean you couldn't get such a payment plan, other than some vague idea that "regulating loans is bad". He assumes that regulating loans to protect consumers of those loans will make orthodontists get out of the financing braces business (despite its profitability), but fails to provide a single example of any doctor who says they will. He doesn't even cite a particular regulation that orthos would find so onerous they'd decide to forgo the money.

I mean, I know the guy's a complete whore for the banksters who nearly brought our country's economy down, demanded we bail them out, dined out on the proceeds, and are now fighting tooth and nail for the right to make us go through it all again... but this is the best he can do?

Kagan

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Anytime someone is nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court, it raises serious and important questions.

 These questions are then routinely ignored in favor of ridiculous posturing and idiotic statements.

The recent nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan is no exception, and the hyperbole, hype and hysteria come from both the left and the right.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele led off the clown parade by going after Kagan for quoting a speech by her former boss, legendary Justice Thurgood Marshall. Marshall said, in the speech quoted by Kagan, that the U.S. Constitution, as originally written, was "defective." Considering that the original Constitution regarded people like Marshall (and Steele, for that matter) as property who only counted as three-fifths of a person, one might concede that he had a point. That is, after all, why we have an amendment process.

Steele, however, thought this was cause for suspicion. He sent out a press release saying that senators needed to raise "serious and tough" questions about Kagan's philosophy as a result of the statement. Which leads us to ask questions of our own, such as: When did Michael Steele become such a fan of constitutional provisions that allowed slavery?

Then there were the questions raised about Kagan's lack of judicial experience. It is true, she has never occupied the bench. But then again, neither did some famous justices, including former Chief Justice (and conservative hero) William Rehnquist and the above-referenced Marshall. But ranking Republican Judiciary Committee member Jeff Sessions called Kagan's lack of bench time "troubling."

He didn't see it as a problem, however, for Bush crony Harriet Miers when she was being -considered for SCOTUS. "It is not necessary that she have previous experience as a judge in order to serve on the Supreme Court," Sessions said of Miers.

Speaking of Miers, one of the sillier slams on Kagan came from liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald not only compared Kagan to Miers, but he also insisted that Kagan - the former law clerk to Thurgood Marshall, a woman who worked for Michael Dukakis' campaign, a woman who, along with other law school deans, sent a blistering letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee blasting George Dubbya Bush's expansive view of executive power - would actually move the court to the right. This is, to say the least, overstating matters. It is, to say the most, insane.

But for truly epic silliness, one can always reliably turn to the wingnuts over at The National Review Online. NRO's Ed Whelan slammed Kagan for being, of all things, a bad driver. Kagan, wrote Whelan, is "such a product of New York City that she did not learn to drive until her late 20s. According to her friend John Q. Barrett, a law professor at St. John's University, it is a skill she has not yet mastered."

Perhaps from now on, we can expect the Senate Judiciary Committee to troop out to the parking lot to see if SCOTUS nominees can show their red-blooded American-ness by demonstrating their mastery of the three-point turn.

But, you may say, what do you, Dusty Rhoades, think about Kagan? Well, I've looked her over about as well as you can by reading, and the word from me is: Meh.

OK, she's made the right enemies (see above), and I don't think she's going to turn into Clarence Thomas Jr., as some of my liberal brethren seem to fear. But I don't think she's going to be a real catalyst for change on the court, either.

The thing I've heard most about her is that she's a "consensus builder." That's fine, and it's probably why Obama likes her. But it's really more the talent one would look for in the chief justice, and unless Chief Justice Roberts has a sudden decline in health or gets abducted by aliens, that's not happening.

What the court needs now is a solid and clear liberal voice to balance the increasingly conservative and authoritarian bent it's taken the past few years. I'm always willing to be surprised, but I don't see Kagan doing that. She will almost certainly be confirmed, after the usual confirmation showboating (which Kagan herself once called "a vapid and hollow charade").

I'm not going to rend my garment and sit in the ashes if she does. But President Obama could have done better.