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Senate Rejects F-22 Boondoggle
By John Nichols
After years of rubberstamping even the most ridiculously expensive and unnecessary allocations to enrich defense contractors -- and in so doing extend the reach of the military-industrial complex about which former President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned -- the US Senate on Tuesday actually rejected a useless military spending scheme.
As part of the broader debate over the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, the Senate voted by a 58-40 margin in favor of Michigan Democrat Carl Levin's proposal to strike $1.75 billion in funding for more F-22 fighter jets.
Designed in response to the fantasy that the US Air Force would be fighting high-tech dogfights with Soviet fighter jets, the F-22 has never been flown in combat or deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.
(79) CommentsJuly 21, 2009
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Cheney, High-Level Wrongdoing Must Be Focus of Inquiries
By John Nichols
Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, the chief critic of executive excess and wrongdoing in the Senate during recent Republican and Democratic administrations, wants Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a prosecutor to investigate the CIA's harsh interrogation program.
But Feingold wants Holder to do it right.
The chair of the Constitution subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee is concerned that the appointment of a prosecutor by Holder -- which now seems increasingly likely -- come with a charge by the attorney general "to focus on holding accountable the architects of the CIA's interrogation program."
(252) CommentsJuly 15, 2009
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Walter Cronkite: Definitional Journalist Saw Big Media's Flaws
By John Nichols
Walter Cronkite was the the most serious of serious journalists.
The former CBS anchorman cared not just about the next story but about the future of reporting in a country where was known for the better part of a half century as "the most trusted name in news."
So it should come as little surprise that what worried Cronkite in the last years of his life was the collapse of journalistic quality and responsibility that came with the increasing dominance of newsgathering by a handful of media corporations.
(116) CommentsJuly 17, 2009
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A Real Win for Single-Payer Advocates
By John Nichols
Canada did not establish its national health care program with a bold, immediate political move by the federal government.
The initial progress came at the provincial level, led by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation's Tommy Douglas when he served from 1941 to 1960 premier of Saskatchewan. The universal, publicly-funded "single-payer" health care system that Douglas and his socialist allies developed in Saskatchewan proved to be so successful and so popular that it was eventually adopted by other provinces and, ultimately, by Canada's federal government.
For his efforts, Douglas would be hailed in a national survey as "The Greatest Canadian" of all time. But Douglas' regional initiative also offers a lesson for Americans.
(358) CommentsJuly 17, 2009
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Republicans Throw in Towel in Sotomayor Fight
By John Nichols
How well did Judge Sonia Sotomayor do at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee?
Well enough to get Senate Republicans to throw in the towel.
The committee's edgiest critic of President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nomination, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, said after Judge Sotomayor finished her testimony Thursday that he would oppose any attempt to block her confirmation with a filibuster.
(154) CommentsJuly 16, 2009
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Klobuchar's Contribution: Talking Law With Sotomayor
By John Nichols
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar brought something rare and valuable to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor: a savvy questioning style that invited the nominee to offer extended and revealing answers regarding her views on the law.
That's what should happen at judicial confirmation hearings. But it rarely does -- and it might not have at Judge Sotomayor's session, had it not been for Klobuchar.
The senior senator from Minnesota got the judge talking, at length, about the extent to which the legal system can address broader societal ills, about the burden of sentencing guidelines that limit the options of judges, about the stark questions that arise when a prosecutor realizes a defendant is innocent and even about Perry Mason -- don't laugh, he popularized the law as a profession to which working-class kids from the Bronx and Plymouth, Minnesota, might aspire.
(84) CommentsJuly 15, 2009
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Sotomayor Says Roe Is "Settled Law," Still Gets GOP Props
By John Nichols
The second day of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearing proceeded as smoothly as the first, even as the judge placed herself firmly in the camp of those who say that the debate about whether women have a legally-defined right to choose has been settled.
Asked by Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl, a ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, to comment on the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that removed key barriers to reproductive rights, Judge Sotomayor said that "settled law" now affirms the right of women to terminate unwanted abortions.
Noting that the high court had upheld the Roe ruling in its 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the judge said: "Casey reaffirmed the holding in Roe. That is the Supreme Court's settled interpretation of what the court holding is and its reaffirmance of it."
(65) CommentsJuly 14, 2009
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GOP Senator Says Attacks on Sotomayor "Mainly About Politics"
By John Nichols
"Unless you have a complete meltdown, you're going to get confirmed," South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
"And I don't think you will (have a complete meltdown)," added the conservative member of the Senate Judiciary Committee as the hearing on President Obama's first high court nominee commenced.
Most members of the committee followed pattern. Democrats were supportive, while most Republicans -- led by Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions -- repeated anti-Sotomayor talking points.
(106) CommentsJuly 13, 2009
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Holder Launches Torture-Inquiry Trial Balloon
By John Nichols
Quick, to the political dictionary.
Look up the phrase "trial balloon."
Next to it you will find a photograph of Attorney General Eric Holder.
(71) CommentsJuly 12, 2009
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CIA's Panetta Owes Pelosi an Admission and an Apology
By John Nichols
Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta owes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi an apology -- or, at the very least, a clarification.
In May, when Republicans claimed she had been briefed in 2002 by the Central Intelligence Agency about the Bush-Cheney administration's torture regimen, Pelosi said: Pelosi accused the CIA of "misleading the Congress of the United States" for years.
CIA Director Leon Panetta denied the charge in blunt language.
(76) CommentsJuly 10, 2009
John Nichols
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