State of Change

Obama Likely to Pick Woman to Replace Souter

By John Nichols

Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who has reportedly informed the White House that he plans to retire, is a relative youngster in high court terms.

Five of the current justices are older than the appointee of former President George Bush who turned out to be more liberal on a number of issues than the appointees of former President Bill Clinton. So, at 69, Souter could easily be looking forward to another two decades on the bench. (After all, Justice John Paul Stevens, another Republican appointee gone liberal, is 89 and going strong; most court watchers think Stevens is aiming to surpass the record of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who retired -- just shy of age 91 -- as the oldest justice in the high court's history.)

But Souter has been quietly telling his circle of friends and legal compatriots – the former attorneys general who he got to know when he served as New Hampshire's chief law enforcement officer – that he wants to retire. Though fit and energetic, Souter has never made any secret of his distaste for Washington and his long-term desire to return to his native New England.

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April 30, 2009

Obama Stands Firm on Torture, Goes Weak on Accountability

By John Nichols

Returning again and again to the theme that allowing torture would "undermine who we are," President Obama used an otherwise tepid press conference marking the 100th day of his presidency to aggressively reject the argument that waterboarding or other "enhanced interrogation techniques" should be used by the United States.

But he avoided questions about holding members of the Bush-Cheney administration to account for sanctioning the use of those techniques.

The dialogue about torture came early in an otherwise easygoing press conference that saw Obama express concern about the swine flu outbreak but reject closing the border with Mexico, celebrate the decision of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter to switch parties while dismissing the notion that he now has absolute power, espress hope for the renewal of the domestic auto industry and muse on the challenges of managing two wars, a broken economy and all the other demands of the presidency.

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April 29, 2009

100 Days of Obama-Bashing on Fox (Must-See Video)

By Ari Melber

This fast recap of Fox News' Obama coverage is actually rather effective. Media Matters runs through one quote a day from the first 100 days, revealing Fox's early and abiding interest in tarring the new President as a socialist sell-out presiding over an "Obama bear market." There are also reports of a "Blame America vibe."

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April 29, 2009

A Liberal Democrat Returns to the Fold

By John Nichols

Arlen Specter started his political life as a liberal Democrat.

And now the senior senator from Pennsylvania is returning to the fold.

Specter, who has served five terms in the Senate as the last of the old-school Rockefeller Republicans, has finally given up on his long, fruitless quest to revive the spirit of east-coast liberalism within what has become a hard-right party.

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April 28, 2009

House Members Arrested in Darfur Protest Say Obama Must Act

By John Nichols

One of the initiatives of the anti-apartheid struggle of the 1980s was the decision by members of Congress and other prominent figures to be arrested in protests organized by TransAfrica at the South African Embassy in Washington.

The arrests focused public attention on the movement to free Nelson Mandela and other members of the African National Congress, and on the need to change U.S. policies that propped up the white-minority government of South Africa.

Now, in an effort to focus attention on concerns about the decision of the Sudanese government to expel 16 aid agencies from Darfur, five progressive members of the House, including veteran civil rights campaigner John Edwards, have been arrested on civil disobedience charges outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington.

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April 27, 2009

Cheney's Right: Release Everything

By John Nichols

Dick Cheney and I have had our differences.

I wrote a book suggesting that he was perhaps not the worthiest vice president in our nation's history. I wrote another book suggesting that he was perhaps the worthiest of targets for an impeachment inquiry.

I do not frequently suggest that the former vice president is right. But he is right to call for further disclosure of documents regarding interrogation policy under the Bush administration.

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April 22, 2009

Hillary's Debt (to Mark Penn)

By Ari Berman

Yesterday the Democratic National Committee sent out an email urging Obama supporters to help pay off Hillary Clinton's outstanding campaign debt. DNC exec director Jen O'Malley Dillon wrote:

When she ran for President, Hillary Clinton showed America just what kind of party we are -- one that believes in breaking new ground, with opportunities for everyone to reach our highest office. She blazed a trail for women across the country and represented the values and ideals of all Democrats.

Now she needs our help. When Hillary agreed to join President Obama's administration, she made the decision to continue her lifelong commitment to serving our country. But with that commitment came the reality that she could no longer be personally involved in paying down the debt from her historic campaign.

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April 21, 2009

Cheney Urges Transparency for Obama at 100 Days

By Ari Melber

It's not too soon anymore. As President Obama nears his 100th day in office, the political and media assessments of his administration are piling up, including this Nation event in Washington on Wednesday.

Now sure, many people say the "100 days" frame is a bit tired. But it's also useful. We can step back from the crush of hourly stories -- the pirates and puppies, the budgets and bonuses -- to consider the larger policies and priorities of this administration.

The American Prospect recently took this tack in reviewing Obama's record on transparency -- a big campaign promise. There is impressive change, in reforming freedom of information policies and releasing the torture memos. There is also more of the same, however, with the administration deploying a radical reading of the "state secrets privilege" to deny torture victims their day in court. In fact, Obama's transparency record is drawing new fire from a very unlikely source.

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April 21, 2009

Obama Goes to Summit, Gets a Galeano Book... and Detente

By John Nichols

It turns out that Barack Obama was right when he said during last year's presidential debates that talking to foreign leaders might actually ease international tensions.

After Obama used an address at the Summit of the Americas to reject U.S. "heavy-handedness" toward Latin America and exchanged greetings with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Chavez has responded by voicing hopes for a "new era" in relations and moved to immediately renew diplomatic relations between his country and the U.S.

Venezuela withdrew its ambassador to the U.S. in solidarity with Bolivia, which had expelled a U.S. ambassador appointed by former President Bush, Patrick Duddy, who stood accused of meddling in local affairs. The U.S. responded by expelling the ambassadors from Venezuela and Bolivia.

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April 19, 2009

Judiciary Committee "Alarmed" At Systematic Spying

By John Nichols

The hasty decision of the Obama administration to organize high-profile release of memos on the use of torture diverted the attention of most of official Washington and the chattering class from the story that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on Americans in what the New York Times describes as a "significant and systemic" manner -- and that intercepting of emails and phone calls continues despite the change of administrations.

From a public-relations standpoint, a day that could have been a tough one for the president and his aides turned out better than could have been expected.

Attention is focused on the wrongs of the Bush administration -- and the question of whether something should be done to address them -- rather than the fact that the Constitutionally-defined privacy rights of Americans have been and continue to be abused.

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April 17, 2009