As The Song Is Entitled...

In 1981 Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner was murdered by Mumia Abu-Jamal. The following year, he was convicted, then sentenced to death by Judge Alfred Sabo. The conviction and the sentence were affirmed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1989.and in 1995 Sabo denied the defendant's motion for post-conviction relief.

Requests for post-conviction relief were rejected also in 1996 and 1997. The defense appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which in 1999 declined to review the appeal.

In 2001, U.S. District Judge William Yohn upheld the murder conviction but ordered a new sentencing hearing based on what he believed were flawed instructions to the jury.  Seven years later, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Judge Yohn's ruling.  In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court refused a request to consider overturning Yohn's ruling, despite an amicus curiae brief filed by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, of which Adgbile was then associate director-counsel/director of litigation.

In 2010, the Court ordered the 3rd Circuit to review its order for a new sentencing hearing in light of its ruling on Smith v. Spisak pertaining to jury instructions.  In April, 2011, the 3rd Circuit Court affirmed its ruling granting a new defense hearing

Debo Adegbile, who has been rejected by the Senate after being nominated by President Obama to head the Justice Department's civil rights division, became associate director-counsel director of litigation of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 2011.  In April, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a new death-sentence hearing and five months later Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, after conferring with the police officer's widow, decided to let the matter drop, relegating Abu-Jamal to life in prison.

But according to The New York Times

Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said the organization did not become involved in the Abu-Jamal case until it filed a friend of the court brief on the removal of African-Americans from the jury in 2006. Mr. Adegbile’s name did not appear on a brief until 2008, and the fund did not become directly involved in the Abu-Jamal defense until 2011. Even then, Mr. Adegbile was not on the legal team.

Whatever. Most of the Republicans, and some of the Democrats, were no more concerned with Adegbile's work on behalf of a convicted murderer than they were with the work of the individual who helped defend (pro bono) John Ferguson, who in two separate incidents murdered not one, but eight, people. That individual is now known as Chief Justice John Roberts. Perhaps it was only one John defending another.

Philadelphia D.A. Williams opposed the nomination, as did the National Fraternal Order of Police, which no doubt played a role in the "nay" vote of Democrats Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and of Chris Coons, who represents the adjacent state of Delaware, home to many Philadelphia police officers.  But emotions in the Abu-Jamal case never ran nearly as high in the states- Indiana, North Dakota, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Montana- from which hail the other five Democrats constituting the Shameful Seven. And there is not a snowball's chance in Miami that the criminal case significantly motivated many Republicans, who voted in lockstep against the nomination.  Instead, as Adam Serwer, brilliantly explains

... Adegbile’s failed nomination wasn’t really just about Abu-Jamal, but a larger conservative attack on the civil rights division – the part of the Justice Department dedicated to enforcing the nation’s civil rights laws. Convinced that anti-black racism is a thing of the past and that federal intervention to secure minority rights does more harm than good, conservatives have waged a years long campaign to dominate, dismantle or discredit the civil rights division and the laws it is designed to enforce.

Adegbile is a celebrated Supreme Court litigator who has devoted his life to protecting laws conservatives want to see repealed, overturned or interpreted so narrowly as to be toothless, and that was reason enough for Republicans to oppose him. But absent the spectre of a revival of Willie Horton-style race baiting politics, it would not have been sufficient to bring skittish Democrats along for the ride. 

Unlike with Republicans, the Shameful Seven did not oppose Adegbile because he has twice in oral arguments defended Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court has allowed the GOP to gut. But the Justice Department can- with more difficulty-  enforce the VRA with Section 2. The decision as to which jurisdictions to sue under that provision would, as Chris Hayes explains here, be made by the Justice Department's Civil Rights division, which the nominee would have headed.Hayes observes "Those laws" (in five southern states) restricting voting, that's what Republicans appear to be trying to protect" as the latest iteration of  "an attack on the civil rights division going back into the Clinton administration."

No doubt, as NAACP Director Ben Jealous explains in the same video, some of them owe their presence in the United States Senate to civil rights movement and the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP.  Their assistance to Republicans whose goal is to restrict voting to their kind of people therefore renders them evocative of the following 1972 song from The Main Ingredient:






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Or Putin Invaded Ukraine Because Of Obamacare

The last week has brought some bizarre statements.  According to The New York Times' Peter Baker, German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday told President Obama by telephone that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "in another world" and (in Baker's words) possibly not "In touch with reality."  (If he were in another world and in touch with reality, he would be quite impressive.)

Gossip author Mark Halperin on Morning Joe remarked "It’s almost like dealing with the North Koreans.  It’s Russian roulette with a guy who is just unstable and isn’t going to play by the right rules.”  And the inaptly named former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright termed Putin "delusional."

Former Secretary of State Bob Gates responded "I’m kind of amused by the — some of the headlines that I’m seeing on TV and elsewhere that he’s lost touch with reality or that he doesn’t understand that this is a new world or whatever.  He knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s trying to re-establish Russian influence and a measure of control over the former states of the Soviet Union,”

But writing off the Russian strongman as one brick short of a load probably is merely wrongheaded or foolish.  What Paul Ryan is trying to pass off is more dangerous. Interviewing the House Budget Committee chairperson on Wednesday, CNN anchor Kate

Bolduan pressed Ryan on what Congress could do in response to international crisis.

"Well, I think we should move forward on natural gas exports very quickly," the former GOP vice presidential nominee insisted. "I think we should approve an LNG terminal in the east coast to go to Europe. I think we should approve the Keystone Pipeline. And I think we should show that the U.S. is going to be moving forward on becoming energy independent."

Fortunately, Bolduan realized

 "That development would take years, though, to actually make that happen."

Ryan argued that the controversial pipeline would be a "signal" to Russia.

"The signal is very, very important," he declared. "And I think showing that this [invasion] is going to make us move in that direction helps give our allies the kind of resources they need, and reduces Russia's grip on this."

Only if that "ally" which needs those resources is a big, big country in Asia.  Three years ago, Jane Kleeb, noting mainland China's incomparable demand for cheap energy, blogged on "Bold Nebraska"

... there’s no pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to Canada’s Pacific coast, which is the logical gateway for shipping Canadian oil to China.  Opposition to such a pipeline is fierce in Canada. Not so coincidentally, PetroChina and Enbridge, the spill-prone pipeline company, agreed in 2005 to build a pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat, British Columbia, to move tar sands oil into China-bound oil tankers.  Canadian opposition to the pipeline was so intense PetroChina pulled out of the deal two years later.

In late December a Canadian government panel concluded that the environmental impact of oil shale production in Canada is simply unknown and there are significant shortcomings in the monitoring system.  It is one of a series of Canadian reports criticizing the environmental oversight of tar sands oil production.

All of this means there’s no way for China to leverage their investment in Canadian tar sands oil unless -- unless -- they ship it through the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, across America’s heartland to Houston and then move it by tanker to China.  If you forget U.S. refineries and the declining U.S. need for tar sands oil and think in terms of servicing China’s energy needs, the Keystone XL pipeline begins to make sense.

Think of Keystone XL as the Obama Administration’s one-way gift to Communist China. 

A few months later Eleanor Clift wrote

At a congressional hearing in December, Markey asked the president of TransCanada if he would agree to allowing Keystone XL oil and its refined products to stay in the U.S. He said no. So Markey then proposed an amendment to that effect, and Republicans said no—that it couldn’t be done, because the market for oil is not just domestic; it’s global. What Canada wants to do, says Markey, “is create a connection between Alberta and Asia and use the United States as the place where the pipeline gets constructed. And so if that’s all we are is a middleman in this transaction, then the American people should know that."

Ironically, Ryan speaks of sending a "signal" to Russia, when the signal sent by approval of Keystone XL would be very different, indeed.   As Representative Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) put it recently

Well, the Chinese have figured it out. They’re going to get their energy from Canada, a stable country, and pass it through the United States, another stable country. They will pay the Canadians the world price for oil. They will pay us nothing, or next to nothing. So Uncle Sam is Uncle Sucker.

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Madame Sarah Sees All

By now, almost everyone knows that Sarah Palin has bragged on Facebook

Yes, I could see this one from Alaska. I'm usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did, despite my accurate prediction being derided as “an extremely far-fetched scenario” by the “high-brow” Foreign Policy magazine. Here’s what this “stupid” “insipid woman” predicted back in 2008: "After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next."

Thanks to media outlets like CNN, whose political unit writes "Sarah Palin may be having a bragging rights moment," people may actually believe the ex-governor of Alaska.

Even Foreign Policy is is insufficiently instructive, offering an unnecessarily weak defense, with one of its contributors arguing (subscription required)

Foreign Policy's Blake Hounshell called that hypothetical "an extremely far-fetched scenario," "Given how Russia has been able to unsettle Ukraine's pro-western government without firing a shot, I don't see why violence would be necessary to bring Kiev to heel."

Well, this week Russia did in fact invade Ukraine...

So we have to hand it to her: Six years after the publication oa a 156-word blog post, points to Palin. Sort of. Foreign policy wasn't Palin's strong suit when the campaign began so the McCain team assigned two Republican foreign operatives- Randy Scheunemann and Steve Blegun- to tutor her. And while Palin took to her studies with gusto, the campaign made a horrifying discovery in September 2008. "Palin couldn't expalin why North and South Korea were separate nations. She didn't know what the Fed did," John Heilemann and Mark Halperin write in their book 'Game Change.' "Asked who attacked America on 9/11. she suggested several times that it was Saddam Hussein. Asked to identify the enemy that her son (in the National Guard) would be fighting in Iraq, she drew a blank..." 

So... did Palin sit down one day in October, soberly consider the facts ,and conclude that, yes, Russia would probably invade Ukraine if Obama were elected?

It's easier to see the comments in the context of the GOP's 2008 narrative, which was the same as most Republican campaigns since World War I. Democrats are weak on national defense and that weakness will invite aggression, endangering us. And Obama would do things like "sit down with the world's worst dictators," Palin said, referring to Iran, while depriving our troops in Iraq of the tools they needed to win. In short, there are powerful enemies in the world: I am strong,; my opponent is not; I'll keep you safe.

It's a psychologically powerful message, which is why conservatives use it over and over again. America is always under threat, Democrats are always naive, the GOP is always strong. So for the purposes of riling up the crowd in Reno- which Palin did quite effectively- about any scenario would have done.

Admittedly, Palin's thoughts were less her own than those of her tutors.  But she made statements and is responsible for them, the apparently prescient as well as the silly.  And she was, almost proudly, ignorant. But a prediction made by someone unaware of the international situation is even more impressive if borne out, and is certainly more damning of the President of the United States.

Or it would be if it had been accurate.  Steve M. of No More Mister Nice (see blogroll on right) explains

Or, um, her speechwriters could. Or, to put it more precisely, they could see an imminent crisis that, as it turned out, wasn't so imminent. And in the same speech, the words they put in Palin's mouth condemned in advance what's turned out to be the greatest foreign policy triumph of the Obama presidency, the raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed. 

Let's start at the beginning. In a speech on October 19, 2008, Joe Biden predicted an early foreign policy crisis in an Obama presidency:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you – not financially to help him – we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we’re right."

Two days later, in what The Weekly Standard called "prepared remarks" -- translation: Palin wasn't the author -- the Alaska governor did a riff on possible foreign policy crises that might result from Obama policies. Now, please note two things: 

First, Palin's speechwriters were predicting a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine "next," presumably in (to use Biden's words) the first "six months" of an Obama presidency. It's more than six months since Barack Obama became president, according to my calendar. 

And second, Palin's speechwriters were condemning an invasion of Pakistan without the country's assent -- which is precisely how Osama bin Laden was killed.

(Transcript of Palin remarks via the Standard -- emphasis mine. Video is at the end of the post.)



Did you hear what Senator Biden said at a fundraiser on Sunday? He guaranteed that if Barack Obama is elected, we'll face an international crisis within the first six months of their administration. He told Democrat donors to mark his words - that there were "at least four or five scenarios" that would place our country at risk in an Obama administration. Thanks for the warning, Joe!

He didn't specify what all those four or five scenarios will be, but for clues, let's review the Obama foreign policy agenda.

Our opponent wants to sit down with the world's worst dictators. With no preconditions, he proposes to meet with a regime in Teheran that vows to "wipe Israel off the map." Let's call that crisis scenario number one.

Senator Obama has also advocated sending our U.S. military into Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government. Invading the sovereign territory of a troubled partner in the war against terrorism. We'll call that scenario number two.

He opposed the surge strategy that has finally brought victory in Iraq within sight. He's voted to cut off funding for our troops, leaving our young men and women at grave risk. He wants to pull out, leaving some 25 million Iraqis at the mercy of Iranian-supported Shiite extremists and al Qaeda in Iraq. By his own admission, this could mean our troops would have to go back to Iraq. Crisis scenario number three.

After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence - the kind of response that would only encourage Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine next. That would be crisis scenario number four.

But I guess the looming crisis that most worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden's next speaking engagement. Let's call that crisis scenario number five.



(Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that Palin also criticized Obama's plan to withdraw from Iraq in that speech. Hey, Sarah, are you going to call for us to send troops back in now?)

So Sarah Palin knew that an invasion of Ukraine in 2014 would occur in 2009.  More remarkably, though maintaining it would be because a President Obama would signal weakness to the Soviet Union, she just knew Victor Yanukovych would become Prime Minister of Ukraine in 2010, reject an Association Agreement with the European Union and instead turn toward Russia.  She foresaw that helping spur an overthrow of Yanukovych and replacement with an individual friendlier toward the West would result in ethnic strife in the western portion of the nation, offering Putin an excuse for invasion. A world-class psychic.

That would be the same Putin (video below from YouTube; video here from Fox Nation) whom Palin says chooses "to exert huge power and dominance."   But applying the description of "huge power and dominance" might not be a negative to the self-proclaimed "mama grizzlie," who told Sean Hannity "Look, the perception of Obama, of him and his potency across the world is one of such weakness. People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil. They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates.”  See those hormones rage!







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