The Indian government has put a hold, pending further study, on approving genetically modified eggplants. Government scientists approved the new crop last year, but this new move from Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh comes in response to public concerns, according to the BBC:

The minister said "independent scientific studies" were needed to establish "the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment".

Mr Ramesh said it was "a difficult decision to make" since he had to "balance science and society".

"The decision is responsible to science and responsive to society," he said.

This is the kind of thing that makes Denialism author and New Yorker writer Michael Specter crazy, but I never understood why he was so on the GM foods bandwagon. The problem of world hunger isn't necessarily going to be solved by growing more foods more efficiently than we already do, because those foods still aren't going to find their way to the world's poorest.

There are also plenty of products we thought of as safe raising concerns. While I understand the frustration over fears -- like those over vaccines -- that continue to be held long after they're proven irrational, holding a new crop up for further study seems like the kind of caution that could only help.

-- Monica Potts

Republicans have been arguing that failed underwear bomber Umar Abdulmutallab should have been put in military detention rather than being charged through the criminal justice system. Yesterday, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, responded to John Brennan's revelation that Republicans had been informed failed Abdulmutallab was in FBI custody and hadn't objected until after the fact by saying that ... he didn't know what that meant.

Hoekstra didn't dispute Brennan's account that he was one of four Republicans who was briefed by Brennan shortly after Abdulmutallab's arrest. But Hoekstra maintained that they were only told that Abdulmutallab was in FBI custody.

"We weren't told that he was going to be read his Miranda rights," Hoekstra said.

-- A. Serwer

Paul Waldman argues that we're only doing al-Qaeda recruiters a favor by casting its young men as invincible warriors:

When you notice that the typical terrorist is a man in his 20s, it's tempting to put it down to the fact that young men are the source of much of the world's problems, responsible for most of society's crime and mayhem wherever you go. But there's something else at work there, a force we would do well to recognize. But the age of new adulthood is also when you begin to understand that the dreams and expectations of your youth existed in a different reality. Nobody says to a kid, "Someday, if you play your cards right, you can have a reasonably remunerative job and a mortgage with a good interest rate, then steadily build your 401(k) until you settle into a not-unpleasant retirement." Kids watch sports stars and musicians, read about presidents and kings, and hope that one day their lives will be world-changing.

But then they grow up, and the future doesn't seem so grand for most. The week before last, The New York Times Magazine ran a story about a young man named Omar Hammami, the son of a Syrian immigrant father and a white Christian mother, who grew up in a small Alabama town and wanted a dramatic existence. Smart and charismatic, Hammami could have led a successful American life, but a variety of twists and turns over the course of his adolescence culminated with him winding up in Somalia, where he is now a key figure in an al-Qaeda-backed insurgent group. What was remarkable isn't that this promising young American wound up devoting his life to terrorism -- what's remarkable is that it doesn't happen more often.

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Conservatives like Andy McCarthy have been challenging Justice Department numbers indicating that more than 300 convicted terrorists reside in American prisons, convicted by the criminal justice system. The numbers undermine the conservative case against using courts instead of military commissions to handle terrorism cases: 

Quite clearly, the 300 figure is a gross exaggeration if our focus is the number of international terrorists convicted since 9/11. As I show in my column, the Human Rights First report had to include all sorts of non-terrorism crimes just to get to 195. DOJ can't conceivably get anywhere close to 300.

Mark Hosenball reports that the numbers come from ... the 2009 Justice Department budget summary prepared by the Bush administration. Oops.

Human rights groups have been giving a smaller number, closer to 200, which McCarthy touts as inflated by the term "terrorism related" or because the suspects weren't necessarily convicted of "terrorism" charges even if the government suspected that they were convicted of being connected to terrorist groups. As I've written before, this is like complaining that the criminal justice system doesn't work because Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion. McCarthy's problem with the criminal justice system is that it's incapable of ensuring a conviction if the government is unable to prove its case. Which is to say, he has a problem with due process, period.

But let's accept for a moment that the number of terrorism cases is inflated. During the same period, the military commissions prosecuted three. McCarthy complains that Ali Saleh al-Marri got a "sweetheart deal" from the government when he received another five years in addition to the seven he already served without trial. Out of the three defendants tried by military commission, only one is still in custody, Ali al-Bahlul. The other two are free, having received five- and nine-month sentences, respectively.

McCarthy can play the numbers game all he wants, the facts still don't go his way. 

-- A. Serwer

The New York Times has a story on what the Republicans hope to offer as a new health-care bill, if the Democrats and President Obama scrap the current legislation, which they are unlikely to do. In their plans, Republicans emphasize a free market -- their bill would provide tax credits to individuals and small businesses, expand high-risk pools, reform medical malpractice law, and allow insurance companies to sell plans across state lines.

That these ideas alone are unlikely to bring down health-care costs considerably doesn't seem to concern Republicans. They also don't seem too troubled that their bill would not come close to covering 30 million uninsured Americans, as the bills that passed the House and Senate would. And they don't seem to care that many of their ideas are already in the bills. No, what they're really focused on is making sure that health reform happens in small steps:

But Republicans say they can make incremental progress without the economic costs they contend the Democratic plans pose to the nation.

What costs are those? Not those posed by the Democratic bills. As Tim pointed out yesterday, the nonpartisan CBO has the bills reducing the deficit in the long term. It would be nice if the Times would point that out the next time it quotes Republicans about controlling "costs."

Moreover, what's the point of a bill with such small goals? Even if those reforms help, they would only delay the need for the kinds of reforms the Democrats are looking to make now. The next time I see a story like this, I'd like to know that the reporter asked more about why.

-- Monica Potts

To follow up on yesterday's discussion between Paul and I on the president's new health-care summit, it seems Republicans in Congress have responded to the invitation with a barrage of questions and criticism.

Scrapping the House and Senate health care bills would help end the uncertainty they are creating for workers and businesses and thus strengthen our shared commitment to focusing on creating jobs. ... Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward on health care in a bipartisan way, does that mean he will agree to start over so that we can develop a bill that is truly worthy of the support and confidence of the American people?

... Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward in a bipartisan way, does that mean he has taken off the table the idea of relying solely on Democratic votes and jamming through health care reform by way of reconciliation? ... Eliminating the possibility of reconciliation would represent an important show of good faith to Republicans and the American people.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs response was anemic, repeating the president's willingness to listen to Republican ideas and his dedication to reform. It's exactly what I worried about: Republicans are going to keep pushing their narrative (if they want bipartisanship, why won't they start over?) and Democrats will do, well, nothing. Republicans are never going to admit that they've had their say, and the president's public relations event -- which no one thinks will result in substantive policy changes -- won't convince the press otherwise. The only way to change this narrative is, to borrow a phrase, by changing the facts on the ground. And the only way to do that is by passing the bill.

To conclude: Reconciliation is a commonly used congressional procedure, and Senate Democrats have already all voted for this health-care bill and will be criticized for it. Why not actually get what you're paying for?

-- TIm Fernholz

White House Counterterrorism Adviser John Brennan appears to have become the point man for the administration's pushback against GOP criticism on national security.  Following his criticism of Republicans on the Sunday shows this weekend, Brennan writes an op-ed for USA Today in which the former CIA official launches a number of critiques that almost sound like they come from civil libertarians and human rights activists.

Brennan reiterates several key facts: Failed underwear bomber Umar Abdulmutallab was mirandized after he stopped talking; mirandizing does not interfere with intelligence collection; Jose Padilla and Saleh al-Mari did not cooperate while they were held in military custody; suspects in military custody are still provided with lawyers; and shoe bomber Richard Reid was mirandized moments after being apprehended. The handling of the failed underwear bombing was in accordance with standard practice going back to the prior administration.

Brennan also hits the GOP for acting as an unofficial branch of al-Qaeda's PR operation, minimizing their failures and inflating their successes:

Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda. Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill. They will, however, be dismantled and destroyed, by our military, our intelligence services and our law enforcement community. And the notion that America's counterterrorism professionals and America's system of justice are unable to handle these murderous miscreants is absurd.

The point of trying terrorists in civilian courts instead of military commissions is that civilian courts diminish the political symbolism of their actions -- treating them as criminals highlights the hypocrisy of murderers posing as the devout. Treating terrorists not captured on the battlefield like "enemy combatants" elevates them to the level of soldiers. It implies a parity with American servicemembers, and a right to the use of force against innocent people where there is none. Treating terrorists like warriors gives them power, while treating them like criminals takes it away. The reasons for trying terrorism cases in civilian court should be obvious.

Which is what makes this point from Brennan so remarkable:

Cries to try terrorists only in military courts lack foundation. There have been three convictions of terrorists in the military tribunal system since 9/11, and hundreds in the criminal justice system — including high-profile terrorists such as Reid and 9/11 plotter Zacarius Moussaoui.

The public discourse on terrorism has been so distorted though, that the White House can rely on the mainstream press to avoid even questioning the underlying premise of trying suspected terrorists in military courts. It's just taken as a given, even though it's a radical departure from precedent that even former Bush lawyers have warned may be unconstitutional. How is it not "serving the goals of al-Qaeda" to abandon the Constitution and the rule of law in the name of national security?

So maybe Brennan should ask his boss, "Why are we using these again?"

-- A. Serwer

Gawker tells us that in addition to being far ahead of their Democratic counterparts in the donning of tri-corner hats, GOP members of Congress are leading the way on Twitter:

According to a newly released survey, Republican politicians dominate the congressional Twitter-verse. Meanwhile, Barack Obama just sent his first "Tweet" last month. Twitter Gap!

A Congressional Research Service report released last week (and published by Secrecy News) found that 60% of the members of Congress with Twitter accounts are Republicans, and that fully half of all congressional Twitterers are House GOP members. The study, which was conducted in August of last year is limited to U.S. senators and House members, shows GOP pols out-Twittering Democrats in virtually every category: A whopping 67% of all congressional "Tweets" are written by Republicans.

To this, I offer a resounding, "Meh."

Is there anything less valuable than the tweets of a member of Congress? Just how meaningless is your time if you are willing to pass even an instant of it getting up-to-the-minute updates from the likes of John Boehner and Eric Cantor? But wait, you say -- they might be offering fascinating missives! Really? If you're lucky enough to get Cantor's feed, you'll receive pearls of wisdom like, "I don't think the President's plan to raise taxes will get our economy back on track. What do you think?" and "We are doing everything we can to defeat the Democrats' flawed healthcare takeover bill. It isn't over yet." Boehner chimes in, "Sen. Brown’s seating today confirms: Even in the bluest states, Americans are tired of the Democrats’ job-killing agenda."

Wow! I didn't just need to hear that -- I needed to hear it right now.

And lest you think I'm just picking on Republicans, let's hear what some Democrats are tweeting. How about Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill: "Just arrived back in DC. Huge trucks hauling away snow around the Capitol. No place to push it all." There's been some snow in Washington? You don't say. My favorite may be New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, whose 2,374 followers have been treated to exactly one tweet, posted back in November. "Just joined Twitter!" it reads. So true.

Whatever you think of Twitter, I'm guessing you've never heard anyone say, "Man, I am so psyched to read Congressman Knucklehead's Twitter feed!" Many of them consist of little apart from links to their speeches and press releases. And if there's anything more boring than reading Ben Nelson's wisdom in 140-character chunks, it's reading Ben Nelson's wisdom in 1000-word chunks.

You can tell by my tone that I'm something of a Twitter skeptic (I have a running joke with one of the TAP editors that someday I'll write a piece entitled "Hell Is Other People, and Their Stupid F***ing Tweets"). There are valuable Twitter feeds out there (like those of TAP and its personnel, of course), and many, many more that no sane person would waste their time on. Every new social medium that comes along isn't necessarily something every politician should thrust themselves into.

It's possible that the experience of being behind in most kinds of Internet organizing for the last few years made Republicans particularly eager to jump on board the latest Web 2.0 thing. So when that young staffer says, "Hey, we should totally get the Congressman on Twitter!", the Congressman himself says, "Yes, I should be on this Twooter you speak of. Make it so!"

So I don't think Democrats should get too concerned about trailing the Republicans on Twitter. If politicians can use it as an organizing tool for their campaigns, that's great. But while they're trying to do the people's business, it's probably more important that they spend their time doing things like passing the health-care bill.

-- Paul Waldman

• It strikes me that rather than being an educational moment to teach the public about obstructionism, continued "outreach" to Republicans on policy issues they are constitutionally opposed to is playing a game only Republicans can win. Democrats and the president will say they extended an olive branch, only to have it swatted away, and Republicans will claim that their ideas were never taken seriously by the opposition. The public sees partisan bickering and legislative gridlock, and Republicans double down on anti-incumbency sentiment and bad economic conditions to sweep them back into office. I agree that Republicans are overconfident if they think their chances of taking back Congress are strong, but what have they got to lose?
  
• "House Democrats," The Hill reports, "say leadership has their work cut out in convincing the public to support a tax increase on those making more than $250,000." The reason for this, we're told, is that concerns about the deficit makes raising taxes risky. Short of the fact that raising taxes on people earning over $250,000 is one -- but by no means the only -- way of reducing the deficit, what are these Democrats afraid of? A fraction of the population going Galt? Other no-brainer policy proposals meeting serious resistance include reforming federal student loans and the president encouraging healthy eating.
• Steve Clemons has become the latest leftish political commentator to diagnose the path to failure for the Barack Obama presidency, relying on the reporting of Edward Luce noted here by Mark Schmitt on Friday. What stands out for Clemons is that the theory of management embraced by this president -- relying on a tight inner circle of trusted advisers -- has corrupted the promise of the administration. This has the luxury of being both impossible to prove or disprove, which is to say it's more useful at this point to look at what has and has not been accomplished, and focus on the more tangible institutional barriers that affect the shape of the president's agenda.
  
• Pollster Scott Rasmussen has a theory about the American public: "Americans don't want to be governed from the left, the right or the center. They want to govern themselves." I don't know what this means in practice (direct democracy?) but I assume Mr. Rasmussen has data to bolster this claim, data that probably reaches a different conclusion than this Rasmussen poll, subtitled "Republicans Still Trusted More on Most Key Issues." Emphasis mine, as in "the Republican position is still the default for our center-right nation."
• Howard Kurtz would like to inform you that the White House press corps is feeling neglected by the president, who has been spending all his time in the unaccountability zone of YouTube, instead of taking questions from professional reporters. Meanwhile, we learn that the editors at Kurtz's newspaper went out of their way to solicit a piece on why liberals are condescending. Perhaps someone in the White House press corps could ask Mr. Obama this very question next time there's a press conference and get some answers for the American people.
• Weekend Remainders: Harold Ford Jr. wants to shake up the liberal establishment and we should not stand in his way; a debate between Ford and Michael Steele predictably results in astute observations about being in touch with the bulk of the American people; Annie Lowrey take you on an adventure in alternative Senate seat disbursement; Zbigniew Brzezinski appreciates that even though the president has primacy in foreign policy, he is still very much constrained by domestic politics; Republicans discuss the superiority of last year's GOP budget proposal, ignore their current proposal; and opposition to climate change legislation becomes easier to understand when viewed in its most unhinged form.
  

--Mori Dinauer

The alliance of Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha, perhaps the last archetypal old-style pol in the House, who died this afternoon of complications from gall-bladder surgery, always struck some observers as more than a bit bewildering. Pelosi, after all, hailed from the most post-industrial metropolis in the nation, while Murtha represented an old steel-and-mining district near Pittsburgh. Pelosi was ever proper; Murtha was a gruff old bull who would have fit right into a hard-drinking, spittoon-spraying meeting of the Tammany chiefs. Pelosi came from anti-war, culturally vanguardish San Francico; Murtha was a hawkish Viet vet who reveled in doling out defense dollars from his post on the House Appropriations Committee.

But when the Democrats retook the House in 2006, Pelosi backed Murtha in his challenge to Steny Hoyer for the post of majority leader, just as Murtha had provided key support to Pelosi all throughout her rise to the party’s top leadership position in the House. He was one of several no-nonsense senior members -- Appropriations Chair David Obey was another -- who’d been impressed by the speaker-to-be’s performance while a member of the Appropriations Committee -- more specifically, by her ability to deal with the boys and to understand who needed what to get a bill passed. Beyond that, she clearly had an affinity for the old pols in the House, which likely stemmed from her childhood as the daughter of Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro, who, like The Last Hurrah’s Frank Skeffington, met with constituents at his home, as Nancy and her brothers scurried around.

Not all of Pelosi’s fellow liberals took a shine to Murtha, and a number of her closest allies -- Henry Waxman, for one – stuck with Hoyer during Murtha’s challenge. But it’s a mark of Pelosi’s skills that she could almost always count on having both Waxman and Murtha in her column. No intra-party relationship better symbolized the link between old and new politics than that between Murtha and Pelosi, in which the party of Harry Truman met the party of Gavin Newsom. And just now, as Pelosi surely realizes, the party could use an in to the Truman Democrats who still inhabit districts such as that represented by John Murtha.

--Harold Meyerson

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

It's not surprising that the response to the Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad was a collective, "All that fuss for that?" The spot mostly features his mom, Pam Tebow gushing about her miracle baby, only to be tackled by the son who grew up to be a Heisman Trophy winner. Both had big smiles for the camera.

Of course, the spot directed you to the Web site for Focus on the Family, the conservative, anti-abortion group that funded the spot. There you can watch an interview with Pam Tebow and her husband, Bob, who elaborate a little on the back story. The Tebows were in the Philippines as missionaries when she became pregnant with Tim, their fifth child, and the pregnancy was complicated from the start. We know from other sources how likely it was that Pam Tebow's condition could have killed her, and why her doctors would have recommended an abortion to save her life.

At the end, Bob Tebow makes a tearful plea to the camera: "Don't kill your baby." Drats! Feminists' nefarious baby-killing plans foiled again! This, right after Pam Tebow encourages women to seek help and recognize they have options. Again, it seems like the Tebows think women only have one real choice, and it's hard to respect their message when that one choice could kill a lot of women.

The ad could have seemed so innocuous just so anti-abortion groups could decry unwarranted feminist hysteria, which they were already doing. But as Amanda Marcotte points out on Double X, it's really not so innocuous when you know the back story. Tim plowing into his mother carries double symbolic weight when you think he nearly killed her in utero and that the image of a man plowing over a woman is exactly the kind of misogynistic symbol you would expect from an anti-abortion group.

-- Monica Potts

Greg Anrig says that in some states, progressive leadership and grass-roots activism have turned crisis into opportunity for long-deferred tax reform:

In October 2007, two months before the onset of the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression, Maryland's Democratic governor, Martin O'Malley, convened a special session of his state's Democrat-controlled General Assembly in a high-stakes effort to close an unexpectedly large $1.7 billion budgetary shortfall. A central component of O'Malley's proposal was converting the state's flat income tax of 4.75 percent to a progressive system with higher brackets of 6 percent and 6.5 percent for upper-income households. At the same time, he advocated a combination of tax hikes on corporate income, sales, tobacco, and vehicle titles, along with reductions in taxes on property and the incomes of lower earners.

The progressivity of O'Malley's plan was somewhat weakened as the negotiating process unfolded, largely through the interventions of legislators representing Montgomery County and its influential minority of multimillionaires. Nonetheless, the final budget reduced income taxes for lower- and middle-income taxpayers while adding three new rates ranging from 5 percent to 5.5 percent on incomes from $150,000 to $1 million for single individuals and $200,000 to $1 million for married couples.

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Rep. John Murtha, Pennsylvania's longest-serving member of Congress, has died at age 77. As chair of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, he was critical of the Bush administration's approach to fighting terrorism and argued for withdrawal from Iraq. Recently, he had signed on to the "Share the Sacrifice" Act, which would impose a surtax to help pay for the war in Afghanistan.

--The Editors

(Flickr/Center for American Progress Action Fund)

Contrary to Tim, I'm not totally skeptical of the news that Obama has invited Republicans to have a half-day conference -- at which they'd tell him why his health-care bill is awful, and he'd tell them why they're wrong. This is, of course, a media event in the strictest sense -- it has no legislative purpose but is something created so that it can be viewed. It's something to get us from the limbo we're in now to some actual voting.

Here, Obama has put Republicans in a bit of a bind: If they refuse his invitation, they confirm that they're just "the party of no." If they accept, on the other hand, they'll probably end up being taken to school by the president the way they were when he came to the House Republicans' meeting a couple of weeks ago. As many of us have been explaining at absurd lengths over the past year, nearly all of their objections to health-care reform are bogus. And this meeting promises a kind of exchange we don't actually get that often at a high level: one in which ridiculous claims can be refuted directly and immediately.

Despite all the cable chatter, this back-and-forth doesn't actually happen that much in places most people notice. When people watch the news, they tend to get a claim by one side followed by a claim from the other side wherein no claim is ever definitively shot down. Contrast that with, say, the exchange at the Baltimore meeting, in which Rep. Jeb Hensarling made the assertion that the yearly deficits under President Bush have become the monthly deficits under President Obama. Obama shot him down by noting that what he was saying was simply false, and Hensarling looked a little ridiculous.

If this next meeting takes place, we're likely to see some repeats of that moment. Republicans are unlikely to score too many points against health-care reform because the most politically effective arguments they have made on the topic have been the most dishonest and simplistic ones. It may have had an impact for Sarah Palin to tweet about "death panels," but that was partly because there was no one right there to call her out for the lie. In a situation where there are people from the other side sitting right there, these kinds of distortions become much more risky, with each potentially producing a humiliating moment that ends up leading the 6:30 news. And of course, the White House will be prepared for every argument Republicans will make (because there aren't that many of them), and will no doubt make sure Obama has compelling, sound-bite-ready answers.

At the end of it, Democrats can say, "All right -- you've had your say, we've listened to your ideas, such as they are, and now it's time to move forward with the bill." Perhaps more important than anything, the meeting could give tremulous congressional Democrats the shove they need to finally pass the damn thing.

-- Paul Waldman

Washington Monthly has a fantastic feature detailing the efforts of ultra-conservatives to rewrite textbooks for Texas schools. Since Texas is such a big market, it will affect what's in textbooks around the country. The effort had been reported on before, but Mariah Blake adds some history, noting that the involvement of conservatives grew after efforts in the 1960s to teach a more inclusive history:

This shift spurred a fierce backlash from social conservatives, and some began hunting for ways to fight back. In the 1960s, Norma and Mel Gabler, a homemaker and an oil-company clerk, discovered that Texas had a little-known citizen-review process that allowed the public to weigh in on textbook content. From their kitchen table in the tiny town of Hawkins, the couple launched a crusade to purge textbooks of what they saw as a liberal, secular, pro-evolution bias.

Among the changes? History books, for example, would emphasize the Christianity of America's founders and the role of conservatives in recent decades, leaving out liberals -- a sad coda to the death of Howard Zinn, the people's historian who showed the course of events from the perspective of the oppressed. Zinn, of course, undeniably had a point of view when he did so. The idea that history is colored by the lens of those who view it is, surely, nothing new. What's so depressing here is the anti-intellectualism and exclusionary tactics of those in charge in Texas. They seem to have mistaken the idea that there might be multiple readings of any historical event to mean almost anything you want to believe is true.

-- Monica Potts

On a news-slow, snowed-in Monday (TAP's Washington-based staff is corresponding from various neighborhood bureaus today) the most interesting topic -- barring The New York Times deciding to bring the thunder -- is the White House's decision to host a big, televised, bipartisan family meeting on health-care reform next week. On the subject, here's Ezra Klein, here's Jon Cohn.

Just about everybody figures that Obama is trying to capitalize on the success of his last televised interaction with the GOP to disarm the argument that Republicans have been left by the wayside on health-care reform, giving cover for Democrats to push ahead with the bill. It's not the worst idea in the world if he can't privately convince Senate leaders to use reconciliation to modify their bill and induce the House to pass it. Indeed, this may be what is needed to get reluctant Dems over the line. But I'm a little concerned because, as Kevin Drum observes, this effort is "largely going to succeed or fail based on how well Democrats and Republicans are able to make their case in the media." We've had these summits before (for health care, above, and for energy, and for the jobs bill as recently as December), and they haven't moved the debate.

Thus far, Republicans have been very effective in making this bill out to be a grand social experiment in Marxist horror, even though it actually incorporates many of their ideas. The legislation's component parts also remain individually popular. Republicans are going to come out of this meeting just as they are going into it -- complaining and demanding that Obama follow their advice. However brilliant the president's performance may be, it won't change the Republican-promoted narrative that the GOP was left out of making this bill, that it is is too complex to understand, and that it represents the end of the world. I mean, the media isn't even willing to challenge Republican claims that the bill "spends money we don't have" when the nonpartisan CBO has scored it as deficit-neutral in the short run and a deficit-reducer over the long term.

What might change that narrative would be if Democrats demonstrated their belief in the quality of their proposals by passing them. Show, don't tell, Dems.

-- Tim Fernholz

Dayo Olopade profiles Attorney General Eric Holder:

Hours before dawn on one of the last days of October 2009, the deadliest month for American troops in Afghanistan since 2001, Eric Holder, attorney general of the United States, strode out of a C-17 cargo plane parked at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. President Barack Obama, having reversed the ban on media coverage of the arrival of war dead at Dover, trailed just behind. During the official military ceremony, the two friends stood in dark suits, silently saluting 18 servicemen, including three Drug Enforcement Agency officials claimed by the Afghan War days prior. The aggrieved expressions on their faces were identical.

Holder's presence was surprising. The attorney general has played only a minor role in the public debate over issues of war and peace. But as the president contemplates the legal and logistical puzzles bequeathed to him by George W. Bush -- chiefly the management of what the administration no longer calls a "war on terror" -- Holder has provided crucial, if understated, counsel and support.

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It was encouraging to see the Domestic Policy Council's Heather Higginbottom say in a White House chat last week that the Obama administration is supportive of a federal law restoring ex-felons' voting rights. The messy patchwork of laws we currently have for the once-incarcerated is one of the least appealing aspects of the modern American practice of democracy. It doesn't have to be this way.

Elections are, of course, largely state affairs in the U.S., by history and by the fact that people would freak if we threatened that. But the way that the ex-felons are treated on Election Day isn't right -- all the more so because it varies so wildly from state to state. Take Maine. There, you can vote from your prison cell. But if you sold the same amount of marijuana in Florida, you'll most likely never vote again. Even after you've formally repaid what society has said is the debt incurred by your crime. According to the Sentencing Project, 35 states prohibit the once-incarcerated from voting while they are on parole. All but five of them also prevent felons from voting while on probation.

We end up with broken places like Providence, Rhode Island, where 1 in 5 black men there can't vote, according to a 2004 report. We incarcerate so many people that in the U.S. as a whole, 13 percent of black men can't vote. That's a problem for everything from representative democracy to the damage it does to how these men and women (and others like them) think about themselves, their communities, and their country.

Now, the political optics of restoring the right to vote to former felons through a federal law are obviously, well, pretty challenging. But I do think that a supremely talented politician could convincingly lay out the case and come away with a historic civil-rights win. Anyone know of one?

-- Nancy Scola

(Photo credit: iandavid)

Many state school systems are facing a "funding cliff" next year when their federal stimulus money runs out, which was the kind of dramatic budget shortfall the stimulus money was meant to prevent in the first place. Most states spent the bulk of the funds last year and this year, and are left with little. But a few states spent everything, leaving nothing for the coming academic year, according to the New York Times.

The leaders of some of these struggling states, like South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, were among the most vocal opponents of the stimulus and feigned reluctance when the federal money was dispersed. And since many states used those federal funds to bolster the program that helps poor and disabled children, it's hard to imagine where those children would be if it weren't for the stimulus money. Now, those kids could be poised to suffer most since the budget pain was merely postponed, not averted. And don't look for Republicans and centrist Democrats in Congress to vote for the second stimulus package their states could use. 

Of course, this disconnect is part of a larger problem. Many of the reddest states, whose citizens espouse the loudest anti-tax rhetoric, benefit the most from federal money, and have for a long time. That was part of the reason the video of Obama schooling the G.O.P. over their hypocrisy on the stimulus was so satisfying. We could use more of that from the Democratic leadership.

-- Monica Potts

Mark Schmitt argues that the real concern after Citizens United should be that small donors will stop giving:

Discussions of money in politics are usually steeped in watery metaphors: The Supreme Court's recent Citizens United decision will "open the floodgates" of corporate money, we're told, which will "drown" or "swamp" the voice of ordinary citizens. Skeptics of campaign finance regulation warn that, like damming a river, it will only divert the flow to other channels.

Permit me to extend the soggy simile for just a few lines more: In the case of water, floods and dambreaks make headlines, but far more human suffering and strife is caused by too little water than by an excess of it. And the same is true of political money. While political reformers still sometimes lapse into slogans like, "Get money out of politics," or bemoan the total amount spent, in fact, a scarcity of money for campaigns is a source of far more trouble than an excess is.

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Via David Schorr, former Bill Clinton- and George W. Bush-era counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke accuses the GOP of positioning themselves in order to take advantage of a terrorist attack. Noting that the Obama administration's approach to handling the failed underwear bomber was consistent with that of prior administrations, Clarke writes:

It has been hard to escape the conclusion that the goal of these critics is to discredit the President's handling of terrorism for political advantage, whether or not the administration is actually doing a good job. Indeed, they seem to be posturing themselves simply so that if there is a successful terrorist attack on America, they can say "I told you Obama doesn't know how to fight Al Qaeda."

[...]

There may well be another successful terrorist attack in the U.S. someday soon. No system can stop all of the attempts all of the time; ask Israel. When and if that attack does come, let us hope the American people will reject any attempt to make it a partisan issue. It is not conduct worthy of real patriots.

Naked political interest would certainly explain the irrational discrepancy between the rather sudden Republican opposition to Bush-era policies now that the Obama administration is implementing them.

At any rate, remember when criticizing the president on national security was giving "aid and comfort to the enemy," the definition of treason as described in the U.S. Constitution? Now apparently it's giving aid and comfort to the enemy for the president to respond. Perhaps if the GOP retakes Congress, they can rewrite the statutory definition of treason to mean "disagreeing with Republicans."

-- A. Serwer

All for the best, in my view. The move also doesn't eliminate the possibility of a bipartisan bill; if anything, it makes the chances of a bipartisan bill even stronger. Republicans would be happy to pull a Gang of Six and spend months weakening a regulatory reform bill, publicly dragging it through the mud and then, ultimately, not voting for it. By moving forward on an aggressive bill, Dodd and the Democrats can harness anti-bank sentiment by staking out a clear position and daring Republicans to oppose it. Despite the Frank Luntz memo's newspeak, I just don't think this is a winning issue for Republican opposition if Democrats demonstrate that they are pushing for serious restrictions on the banks. 

The worry, though, is whether the rest of the Democrats on the committee can hold together. While Jack Reed and Chuck Schumer (despite his Wall Street fundraising prowess) are both solid on these issues, others -- like Mark Warner, Evan Bayh, and especially Tim Johnson -- are not known as reformers. The question now is whether they calculate that the political incentives of restricting banks outweigh the financial incentives of cosmetic reform. In that effort, some clear lines in the sand from the president would be helpful.

-- Tim Fernholz

Last night's NFL Championship game provided many instructional moments for politics. For one, President Barack Obama could learn strategy from Saints' Coach Sean Payton, who turned the game around with his bold play-calling, particularly an on-sides kick to start the second half.

Unfortunately, the political ads were not so enlightening. The controversial anti-choice ad from Tim Tebow and his mother didn't seem as pernicious as we all expected due to vague language and the weird decision to have Tebow fake-tackle his mom. But another ad, run by one of Rick Berman's astroturf shops, the Employment Policies Institute, was a classic debt-scare, featuring children reciting an altered pledge of allegiance: "I pledge allegiance to America's debt, and to the Chinese government that lends us money. And to the interest, for which we pay, compoundable, with higher taxes and lower pay until the day we die."

Oh noes! Except that this is way over-hyped, especially the pledging allegiance to the Chinese government. Shall we go to the chart?

The chart is from this excellent Brad Setser post which explains why we relied more heavily on China in 2006 and 2007 than we did last summer -- basically, because of the recession's effect on trade and the fact that many U.S. bondholders are private. Even though that data is a bit older, right now, the Chinese only own 22 percent of America's public debt. True, China owns the most of any single country, but that also makes sense given they're the third largest national economy in the world (Japan, for instance, holds comparably high U.S. reserves). And as I've written before, China can't do much to hurt us with that debt unless they are willing to hurt themselves.

The deficits needed to get us out of the this recession are pretty easy to finance thanks to low interest rates and the fact that the vast majority of the current deficit was inherited by the current administration. But you didn't hear Rick Berman and the rest of the debt-scare crew complaining about China taking over the country when we were even more in hock three or four years ago.

-- Tim Fernholz

White House Counterterrorism Adviser John Brennan said Sunday that Republicans had been briefed that underwear bomber Umar Abdulmutallab had been placed in FBI custody shortly after the failed attack. At the time, they had raised no objections, and only criticized the administration's approach later. 

This isn't exactly surprising. Even though the policy continuity between the Obama and Bush administrations has been so flush that it's disturbing, Republicans have nevertheless vehemently objected to policies that they found acceptable when their party controlled the White House.

Brennan said that on Christmas night he had briefed four senior House and Senate Republicans about Abdulmutallab, who was "in FBI custody" and at that point "talking" and "cooperating." He said that at no point did any of the four -- Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate Republican minority leader; Sen. Christopher S. Bond (Mo.), ranking GOP member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), the House minority leader; and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), ranking minority member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence -- raise concerns about Abdulmutallab being placed in military custody or being Mirandized.

Bond and spokespeople for McConnell and Hoekstra have subsequently said that they didn't know Abdulmutallab was being "mirandized," but that's precisely what being in FBI custody would entail -- they are a federal law enforcement agency. That response doesn't excuse the subsequent Republican overreaction. In fact, it makes it worse. It suggests those among the GOP who are now complaining about how Abdulmutallab is being handled are incompetent rather than uninformed.

The GOP seems mostly disappointed that Abdulmutallab is providing useful intelligence without being tortured or otherwise mistreated. Had Obama heeded the GOP's calls for Abdulmutallab to be put in military custody (and it's not clear that's legal; the past two administrations have deliberately dodged SCOTUS cases on the assumption that it likely isn't), it's unlikely the key cooperation of Abdulmutallab's family could have been secured -- or for that matter, that of other Muslims in future terrorism cases. Meanwhile, Republicans seem to have settled on two lines of attack, with the first being to disparage the FBI like McConnell did last week. The second is to argue that while Republicans are allowed to attack the administration for being weak on national security, correcting the faulty assumptions at the heart of those criticisms is unfair.

Brennan, a career CIA man whose controversial record in support of some Bush-era policies got him in trouble with the left early last year, seemed particularly fed up with the GOP criticism of those intelligence and law enforcement professionals whose job it is to protect the country:

I think those counterterrorism professionals deserve the support of our Congress. ... And rather than second-guessing what they are doing on the ground with a 500-mile screwdriver from Washington to Detroit, I think they have to have confidence in the knowledge and the experience of these counterterrorism professionals.

I think this approach, trashing counterterrorism professionals, has substantial political risk for the GOP. Or it would, if the Democratic Party were interested in something other than playing defense. While the Center for American Progress' John Podesta called on McConnell to apologize for trashing the FBI Sunday, you're not likely to see very much aggressive pushback from members of Congress while the administration appears to want Republican cooperation on the health-care bill.

What's that definition of insanity again? Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different response ...

-- A. Serwer

• Barack Obama continues to display a trait guaranteed to annoy his supporters: clearly articulating the nature of a problem, and then refusing to throw his weight behind a solution. The president's remarks last night won't put liberals at ease. To look at the big picture, House Democrats want the Senate to act first on a reconciliation bill before they vote for the final Senate bill and its amendments, Senate Democrats want the House to make the first move and are waiting for leadership from the president, and Obama wants the Senate to move before he gets behind the effort. No wonder people are frustrated.
• Lawrence Lessig on what ails the country: a corrupt "Fundraising Congress" that is trapped in a cycle of dependency on lobbyist and corporate money. It's a familiar argument for anyone who has followed Lessig's political advocacy career, and his diagnosis, I think, is spot-on. Less convincing is his belief that Barack Obama, perhaps uniquely, squandered an opportunity to do something about it. It's impossible to assess whether coming out strongly in favor of changing Congress would have been enough to fix the problem, although some of the specific reform ideas he throws out -- particularly changing campaign finance law -- are sound. Read the whole thing.
• From the better-late-than-never file, Dana Milbank has finally gotten off the tire swing and declared that he misses the old John McCain from a decade ago. The Maverick was always a myth, of course, but compared to the vindictive warmonger that is the John McCain running for re-election in a hostile conservative environment, I'd take the figment-of-the-imagination John McCain any day.
• Freshly inaugurated Sen. Scott Brown, in claiming that the stimulus did not create a single job, has more or less proven the Larison Theory of Tea Party Support -- allegiance aligns with acceptance or rejection of the stimulus. Bonus circumstantial evidence: dead man walking Gov. Mark Sanford flying to Washington, hat in hand, after spending the better part of last year decrying the stimulus and promising to reject it.
  
• The Internet is hardly novel, so I am surprised to read discussions about who has the "edge" on the Internet, politically. In 2003 or thereabouts when all this stuff was new, the question of how technology would affect media and politics was legitimate. But it's clear now that technology is a tool, and who has leveraged Twitter the best is not a particularly interesting question. Look at it this way: if Michael Steele had rolled out an awesome GOP.com Web site instead of the joke du jour of the blogosphere, would we be saying right now that the awesomeness of the new GOP.com Web site is a major factor in the Republican comeback?
  
• Remainders: In light of this whole Shelby brouhaha, I'd like to endorse Steve Benen's "bring on the recess appointments" approach to filling government posts; Gallup discovers that most Americans have opinions on political systems that they define with their own imaginations; Newsweek notices that people earning over a quarter million dollars aren't exactly struggling; Tom Tancredo has the courage of his convictions to let everyone know that he is a bigot; and while this post examining the 2010 Obama legislative strategy is worth reading for the analysis, the LBJ quote alone is worth the price of admission.
  

--Mori Dinauer

The latest breakdown in the operations of the world's most farcical legislative body that Paul mentions below should serve as a reminder that the Senate's crazy anti-democratic rules go well beyond the filibuster. As Mark Tushnet recently noted, getting rid of the filibuster in itself probably wouldn't accomplish very much:

Changing the rule over the objections of a cohesive minority that's big enough -- as the Republican minority is -- would immobilize the Senate because an enormous amount of the Senate's work gets done by unanimous consent to the waiver of otherwise applicable rules. (Remember the contretemps over reading Senator Sanders's substitute amendment for the health care reform bill? The rules require reading such amendments, which almost never happens because the proposer seeks and obtains unanimous consent to waive that rule.) By denying unanimous consent to such waivers, a minority can stall legislation almost as effectively as it can through the modern form of the filibuster.

The problems posed by non-filibuster obstructions can also be seen in Republican threats to derail a Senate reconciliation vote on health care.  But this brings us the other issue Paul discusses, the asymmetry in how the two parties approach minority obstruction.  (As an example of how shameless the GOP has become, take Jim DeMint's assertion that using the majority voting rules that prevail in pretty much every other legislative body in the world would be "tyrannical"; tyranny of minorities of one, apparently, doesn't count.)

I think Paul identifies the critical fact here: Until Senate Democrats realize that the Republican minority is simply no longer willing to adhere to norms that allowed the institution to function despite its stupid rules, basic governance will be enormously difficult.  Dems need to realize that the party in power will be held responsible by the electorate for these failures either way, so they need to do what they can to move the Senate toward majority rule.

--Scott Lemieux

Rosa Parks sits for a booking photo following her arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, on Dec. 1, 1955. She would have turned 97 this week.

Previous Little Pictures in honor of Black History Month:
The P-51 Mustang Group of the 15th Army Air Force
The Little Rock Nine
Jack Johnson
Jitterbugging in Clarksdale, Mississippi

Robert Kuttner argues for more deficit spending on public investment and jobs:

The economy is still very fragile, yet Washington seems more fixated on deficits than on recovery. Fiscal conservatives in Congress hope to hold recovery spending hostage for long-term caps on social outlay, and they have some company in the White House. Groups like the billion-dollar Peter G. Peterson Foundation are leading the charge.

For a quarter-century, Peterson has been exaggerating long-term costs of Social Security and Medicare. In truth, Social Security is close to balance -- its 75-year projected deficit is just one-half of 1 percent of gross domestic product. Medicare is seriously in deficit, but reform of Medicare consistent with high-quality health care depends on tackling the deeper drivers of medical inflation.

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Adam Serwer reviews Born to Use Mics, a new anthology edited by Michael Eric Dyson:

Illmatic, the first album by hip-hop elder statesman Nas, is a masterpiece. Released in 1994, its tales of scowling corner boys, prowling drug addicts, undercover cops, treacherous lovers, and remorseful gangsters are so vivid that you can almost feel your nostrils being singed as Nas brushes the marijuana ash from his clothes. From out the gate, Nas identifies himself as a writer's writer ("see with the pen I'm extreme") and proceeds to prove himself right, offering lines that are poetic ("with more kicks/than a baby in a mother's stomach"), bleak ("straight-up shit is real/and any day could be your last in the jungle"), and cautiously hopeful ("that buck that bought a bottle/could have struck the lotto").

As the legend goes, the frenetic pace of Nas' flow, his complex internal rhyme schemes, and his dense lyricism had people wearing out their cassette tapes, rewinding them over and over again in disbelief. It's the one album in all of hip-hop whose artistic value, regardless of the critic's personal taste, is unassailable. Even Nas' longtime nemesis, Jay-Z, frankly confesses that the first time he heard the album, "the shit was so ahead/thought we was all dead."

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Ten American missionaries accused of kidnapping 33 Haitian children were formally charged with abduction and conspiracy by a Haitian court yesterday. Haiti's ambassador to the United States, Raymond Joseph, says he hopes the move sends the message that Haiti's government is alive and well after the earthquake. From the Christian Science Monitor:

'By this action, I think the Haitian government is sending a clear message to the world that there is a government in place, and that nobody can just take it upon himself or herself to come and do in Haitii whatever they think is good,' Mr. Joseph said by telephone Thursday from Washington, D.C.

Joseph noted that the motives of the group, who were from Idaho and Kansas, will likely be taken into account at a later point in the prosecution. I have no doubt the missionaries believed they were helping. And we now know many of the children have living parents who gave them to the Americans because they were told they would be taken to a school in the Dominican Republic.

But what's bothered me about the case is what can only be the Americans' arrogance, even if it was well-meaning. It's beyond me why they felt they knew how best to help the children -- because they're Americans? because they're Christians? -- without checking with the Haitian government that their actions were legal or better than anything else already in place. And it's just another symbol of the problematic relationship we have with Haiti, that the U.S. feels that whatever it does to Haiti, it must be helping and never hurting.

--Monica Potts

We're accepting applications for the Prospect writing fellowship.

--The Editors

My crack yesterday, denigrating Ramesh Ponnuru's integrity and intelligence was admittedly mean-spirited, and he has justifiably responded to me in kind. But in the course of responding to my substantive claims, he has essentially acknowledged that economic forces drive anti-incumbency sentiment, but without addressing why any discussion of these forces is absent in his original essay.

To review, Ponnuru begins with a comparison between 1994 and 2010, stating baldly that the former was "first and foremost a referendum on the first two years of Bill Clinton’s presidency" and that the original Contract with America, while not entirely on the public's radar, nevertheless provided "the party with an image of being forward-looking problem-solvers rather than merely anti-Clintonites." Fair enough, and as Rep. Jeff Flake recently remarked, "In 1994, nobody had any memory of Republicans in power. Now they do, and it wasn’t pretty. And so we have something to overcome that we really didn’t in 1994." Ponnuru acknowledges the differences between 1994 and 2010, but it's after his review of this history that he goes astray.

Ponnuru chastises me for omitting his contention that 2010 will "primarily" (why not "first and foremost?") be a referendum on Obama and the Democrats. Fine. But what is the nature of this referendum? I think it's undeniable that 10 percent (now 9.7) unemployment would drag down any president, a point Ponnuru himself makes in his response. But this fact is not mentioned anywhere in his original essay. In fact, I searched the text for the terms "job," "employ," and "econ" to ensure I didn't miss some discussion of the economic conditions facing the country. Of "job" I found an unrelated reference ("That will be the job of Rep. Kevin McCarthy"), "employ" a hit against government workers ("Pay for government employees has been booming at a time of private-sector layoffs") and "econ" an attack against the supposedly dire consequences of cap-and-trade ("...economic damage that cap-and-trade legislation would entail").

The balance of the essay is devoted to describing how Republicans ought to harness public anger and incorporate it into a new Contract. He offers the usual boilerplate Republican solutions ("new energy technologies," "tax policies that are pro-growth and pro-family," "no new bailouts," repealing "Obamacare," fighting corruption, etc.) but does not offer even a vague proposal for dealing with unemployment. I presume that the tax policies he has in mind are across-the-board tax cuts that will somehow produce growth and hence create jobs. But therein lies the problem. As always with conservatives, a tax cut is the appropriate response to any economic situation. And viewed that way, such a tax policy is less a demonstration of competent conservative governance, and more a demonstration of rigid and thoughtless ideology. Ponnuru is taking it as axiomatic that a tax cut will lead to hiring and hence doesn't need to explicitly talk about unemployment. But from outside the bubble, the conservative response would seem to be let it burn.

This is why Ponnuru equates middle-class tax cuts with electoral success. He would like to believe that the public responded in 2006 and 2008 not to endless war and economic ruin but "in part" because Republicans didn't promise to cut taxes. He is recasting an ideological position (tax cuts are a permanent prescription) as a bread-and-butter issue, and assuming that the public will punish Democrats come November not just for being poor stewards of the state but being ideologically incompatible as well. As I keep saying, this is an article of faith in the conservative movement: the public, unchanging, ideologically conservative, is a permanent silent majority that occasionally takes leave of its senses and foolishly elects Democrats because Republicans lost their way and were not conservative enough. Ponnuru's essay doesn't say this explicitly, but his focus on a Republican strategy that exploits public anger without even acknowledging the source of the anger is quite telling.

--Mori Dinauer

“This macho bravado—that’s the kind of thing that leads you into wars that should not be fought, that history is not kind to. The quest for justice, despite what your contemporaries might think, that’s toughness. ... This is something that can get a rise out of me, the notion that somehow Eric Holder and Barack Obama, this Administration, is not tough. We have the welfare of the American people in our minds all the time. We’ll fight our enemies, and we’ll do that which is necessary, and we won’t turn our backs on the values and traditions that have made this country great. That is what is tough.”  -- Attorney General Eric Holder speaking to The New Yorker's Jane Mayer about trying suspected terrorists in civilian courts.

As I've said before, killing is just a means to an end with terrorism. In this case, the end is the self-destruction of American society in a vortex of hysteria. What's remarkable now is that Republicans are agitating for that self-destruction in the aftermath of a terrorist attack that utterly failed. They don't even need to kill us any more. Al-Qaeda screams "boo" and half the country is ready to throw the Constitution in the toilet. That's not "toughness." That's what an al-Qaeda victory looks like.

-- A. Serwer

Sen. Chris Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chair, scolded Wall Street representatives at a hearing Thursday for sending “an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the commonsense financial reforms” needed by the public.

“The fact is,” Dodd said, “I am frustrated, and so are the American people.” He charged that Wall Street’s intransigence was the reason for Congress’ failure to pass any bill to regulate the Street. “The refusal of large financial firms to work constructively with Congress on this effort borders on insulting to the American people who have lost so much in this crisis.”

In other words, it isn’t Congress’s fault. It isn’t the Senate Banking Committee’s fault. It certainly isn’t Dodd’s fault. The reason more than a year has passed since the biggest bailout in the history of the world and nothing has been done to prevent a repeat performance -- even as the biggest banks are doling out more than $30 billion of bonuses, even as Goldman Sachs is awarding its big traders $16 billion in bonuses (more than the $13 billion Goldman collected from taxpayers via the bailout of AIG), even as AIG itself is handing out bonuses -- the reason is … what, exactly, Senator? Because the Street has sent an army of lobbyists to Capitol Hill?

Call me old fashioned, but I thought Congress was in charge of passing legislation, not Wall Street.

Dodd left out the most telling detail, of course. Wall Street is where the campaign money is. Dodd of all people knows that. He’s been on the receiving end of lots of it over the years.

More after the jump.

--Robert Reich

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