Sadly, Yet Another Opportunity



Responding to the shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin which left six people dead at a Sikh temple, President Obama noted "we are reminded how much our country has been enriched by Sikhs, who are a part of our broader American family."

It was a fine statement, and superior to the President's words at a bill-signing ceremony on Monday, when the President remarked "These kinds of terrible and tragic events are happening with too much regularity for us not do some soul-searching and examine additional ways that we can prevent."

The problem is not our soul.    Ask the average American how many such incidents have occurred in the past 30 years, and he or she will reply a dozen, give or take a few.  President Obama, cognizant of this understandable ignorance, refers to "too much regularity" as a sterile means of avoiding specificity  The conscience would be shocked of learning there have been (according to Mother Jones) at least 58 mass murders carried out by firearm in the Land of Exceptionalism, the U.S.A., in the past 30 years.   Decent folks must be allowed to sleep easy o'nights, mustn't they?

Farcically, pro-gun people will continue to claim no further gun control is needed, that existing laws merely must be enforced.   Yet, as a chart from Mother Jones indicates, in 46 of the 58 crimes the firearm was obtained legally.

While President Obama and Mitt Romney remain intimidated by the pro-crime National Rifle Association, New York Mayor Bloomberg stated what most Americans believe, but few politicians will admit:   "The fact that criminals, terrorists and other mentally ill people have access to guns is a national crisis."   But Obama (and Bloomberg) can put into action the Mayor's goal, as Eliot Spitzer explains:

The Defense Department and the city of New York are among the largest purchasers of guns. If the president and the mayor truly believe that semi-automatic weapons should not be available to private purchasers, and that magazines with more than 10 bullets should not be sold over the counter, they should simply say that, from now on, the federal government and the city of New York, as a matter of public safety, will not buy any weapons or ammunition from companies that do not agree to pull semi-automatics from their stock and refuse to produce magazines with more than 10 rounds other than for sale to the government. President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg should announce that semiautomatic handguns with high-capacity magazines—the kind used in Oak Creek; Aurora, Colo.; Tucson, Ariz.; and Virginia Tech—can no longer be sold to private citizens by any company that wants to do business with the federal government and the city of New York.

The major gun manufacturers will agree to the limits imposed by their major customers.

Use the power of the government as a purchaser, as a consumer, to get the companies marketing these products to change their behavior. And do it now. Stop blaming the legislature and act, immediately.

It is a modest proposal, one which will save lives, and one which Barack Obama will ignore.



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Invitation To Assumption



Delhi Charter School in Delhi, Louisiana has announced in its handbook a policy requiring students who are suspected of being pregnant to take a pregnancy test.   If the results are positive, the young woman no longer will be permitted to attend classes on campus and instead "will be offered home study opportunities."

A blog of the American Civil Liberties Union argues the new policy is "in blatant violation of the law and the U.S. Constitution" and its Louisiana chapter, as well as the ACLU Women's Rights Project have sent a letter to the charter school asking it to suspend its policy because it violates the due process clause, the equal protection clause, and Title IX.

Public funding, private policies designed to reflect the profit motive- it's a great gig charter schools have, though hopefully the Delhi Charter School will reverse its policy or, failing that, will be ordered to do so.    It is only realistic, however, given that a positive reading results in removal from the school, that Delhi treats refusal to submit to the test as proof of pregnancy.

The same principle increasingly is in effect in questions of driving while intoxicated (or driving under the influence, depending upon the state), in which refusal to take a test is considered tantamount to an admission of guilt.   In 2010, we read here, "U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced a national 'no refusal' initiative, offering to provide stateshelp to implement the policy.  He noted 'About one in four DWI suspects refuses a breathalyzer test in order to avoid prosecution.  It's a persistent, ongoing problem.'"

If Delhi Charter School or law enforcement authorities permitted individuals to avoid a penalty based on the refusal to submit to a test everyone else under suspicion takes,  cooperative individuals would be disproportionately disadvantaged.    (And ultimately, droves of people would "just say no.")    By the same token, one cannot ride the subway twice- nor can Mitt Romney continue to be given a free pass.

A free pass, that is, by the media and virtually everyone not named "Harry Reid."   (The numerous Republicans, who, to their credit, have urged Romney to release tax returns are concerned about perception and never suggest that he might actually have something worth hiding.)  

After Majority Leader Reid stated that a Bain investor (and others) told him that Romney had in ten separate years paid no income taxes, Macho Man Mitt told him to "put up or shut up." Reid then rebutted the former governor's rebuttal, noting

When it comes to answering the legitimate questions the American people have about whether he avoided paying his fair share in taxes or why he opened a Swiss bank account, Romney has shut up. But as a presidential candidate, it’s his obligation to put up, and release several years’ worth of tax returns just like nominees of both parties have done for decades.

Writing on Juan Cole's Informed Consent website, Democrat and Indianapolis attorney John Sullivan (not this John Sullivan) explains

Obviously, Romney will not produce his tax returns because he knows what’s in them is more damaging that the static he will take for not releasing them. At law, if a person is control of evidence refuses to produce the evidence, then the jury is instructed that there is a presumption that the evidence would be against the party failing to produce. It is called the “Missing Evidence” instruction.

Barack Obama has released twelve years of tax returns; Vice-President Biden, fourteen; Mitt Romney- worth at least a quarter of a billion dollars- two.      The latter could release a lot more, expose Harry Reid (or his contact/s) as a liar, and get the last laugh.   Or he could sink his presidential campaign.   He is choosing opaqueness over transparency.  

You read blogs more interesting than this, and probably more informative.   Where, however, will you find anything drawing a parallel between teenage pregnancy and a presidential nominee's tax returns?





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Mitt Keeps It Hidden


Roughly one month earlier, Majority Leader Harry Reid recently told The Huffington Post, a Bain Capital investor called him about Mitt Romney and maintained "Harry, he didn't pay any taxes for ten years."   Reid continued

He didn't pay taxes for 10 years!  Now, do I know that that's true?  Well, I'm not certain.  But obviously he can't release those tax returns.  How would it look?  You guys have said his wealth is $250 million.  Not a chance in the world.  It's a lot more than that.  I mean, you do pretty well if you don't pay taxes for 10 years when you're making millions and millions of dollars."

Romney has, at first glance, denied Reid's charge, noting he has "paid taxes every year- and a lot of taxes."

No doubt he has done so- the property taxes on the six homes Romney owns must be enormous, especially because they are hardly shacks in the low-rent districts.   To be fair, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee may have been referring to federal income taxes, though without release of his returns we probably will never know for sure.  

As the chart (below) from Citizens for Tax Justice indicates, in 2011 (as in most years) "the share of total taxes paid by each income group is similar to that group's share of income."   In a slap to poor and lower middle class citizens, conservatives exuberantly shout "we are the 53 per cent!"    Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no taxes, they claim; the claim pertains to federal income taxes, they sometimes acknowledge.   But that 53%, generally, includes the lowest 20%, which pay 2.1% of all taxes; the next 20%, which pays 5.3% of all taxes taxes; and a fair chunk of the next 20%, which pay 10.3% of all taxes.     (As a whole, they pay 17.7% of all taxes in the U.S.A. while pulling down 21.7% of the total income; not much of a discrepancy, and not very progressive.)    These are the freeloaders to many Republicans; to the rest of us, they're Americans, most of them hard-working, unable to find a job, or elderly.

The total effective tax rates for the middle class also do not differ dramatically than those for the middle class, as the table below from the CTJ demonstrates.

Without disclosure of those tax records, we'll never know for sure but presumably, the former governor probably was honest when implying that he has had a net tax burden every year.   The Alternet's Joshua Holland suggests nine other reasons, arguably each more likely than paying no taxes, for Romney's stubborness.    One such motive may be the disconnect between documents filed with the SEC and, later, with the FEC.

The Boston Globe found that Bain Capital filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission public documents maintaining Romney was the firm's sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president from 1999-2002.   Additionally,  "a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 1000 percent of Bain Capital in 2002.   and Romney's state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,00 as a Bain 'executive' in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings."

But according to Ryan Grim and Jason Cherkis at The Huffington Post

In August 2011, Romney told federal authorities, as part of the financial disclosure process, that he "retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake Organizing Committee [for the 2002 Winter Olympics]. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way."

The two filings, obviously, are contradictory.  But there is not much left of the Federal Election Commission and the former governor (who in the SEC filing maintained that he attended board-related meetings for companies owned by Bain) probably lied to it rather than to the SEC.   If true, that would place Romney front and center at Bain Capital when it was Offshoring Central- and when it acquired $75 million of shares in Stericycle, a large medical waste disposal firm.     David Corn notes in a filing on 11/30/99, Romney is named "as an individual who holds 'voting and dispositive power' with respect to the stock owned by Bain."    And it has not gone unnoticed that one of the activities of Stericycle included the disposal of the, er, products of abortions.

Good luck explaining that one to the base, Governor.      And good luck explaining to the American public why you have at least $20 million in an Individual Retirement Account, when mere mortals are prohibited by law from contributing more than $17,000 per year (employers, $30,000 additional) to their IRA.

But Mitt Romney may not have to explain his IRA, or why he was with Bain when he swore that he wasn't, or paid 5% or 10% of his income in taxes, or the numerous, questionable offshore accounts he set up for himself or others, or his generous contribution to the same Planned Parenthood he has vowed to "get rid of," or any of the other peculiarities of the uber-wealthy.    He will not have to explain anything if he does not release relevant tax returns, and it's going to take a lot more than Harry Reid or 21 Republicans to get him to do it.




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Talk Is Cheap- And Overrated



Perhaps it's something in the air.  Or in the water.   Or the food supply.

In mid-July, Chick-fil-a president and chief operating officer Dan Cathy stated in a radio interview

I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,  I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we would have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is all about.  

Asked three days later about the company's support of traditional, rather than same-sex, marriage, Cathy replied "guilty as charged."

Fighting words, those- at least judging from the firestorm of criticism from supporters of gay rights, including the mayors of Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco.     Suggestions of discrimination or discriminatory intent were made by partisans, although little hard evidence has been proven by individuals who, hitherto, apparently had been unconcerned about possible discrimination by the fast food chain- or by its competitors.    However, an offending remark had been made, and that cannot be allowed.

It may be of equal parts fitting and reprehensible, then, that a Tucson-area man has been fired after visiting a Chick-fil-a drive thru, ordering water, and giving a hard time to the young woman at the window.   CFO/Treasurer Adam Smith of Vante Co. videotaped himself and, after the video went viral, his company announced in a statement "the actions of Mr. Smith do not reflect our corporate values in any manner."

Given that Smith acted on his own time without any reference to his employer, he likely was dismissed because said employer was concerned about the impact of his sentiments upon the firm's reputation, an outcome cheered by many on the right.   He now reportedly has received numerous calls and death threats, perhaps by some of the same conservatives who had complained that Dan Cathy's free speech had been violated, and has fled with his family from his home.

Neither the criticism of the CEO for his remarks about traditional marriage nor the dismissal of the CFO for obnoxiously expressing his contrary view ran afoul of the speech clause of the First Amendment, given that clearly neither involved government.   But a third instance in which free expression of political values is being vigorously discouraged involves the report of the working group of the University of California's Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture, and Inclusion which, as Ken White of Salon describes, was

tasked to explore how the UC could be made more inclusive and welcoming for Jewish students (and) found that many were distressed by the rhetoric emerging from campus debates about Israel and its policies. Organized events like “Israeli Apartheid Week” have become increasingly contentious and fraught with incendiary language, particularly at UC Irvine and UC Berkeley, where such protests led to a lawsuit asserting that the university failed to protect Jewish students from assaults by violent anti-Israel protesters.

Anti-Israel protests, the Jewish Student Campus Climate Fact-Finding Team Report & Recommendations notes

routinely include “Apartheid Walls”– a depiction of the barrier/wall constructed by Israel along its border with the West Bank; “die ins” in which students portraying Palestinians spontaneously fall down as though they have been subject to mass killings by Israelis; mock “checkpoints” which are intended to mimic Israel checkpoints on the West Bank in which students coming through the “check point” are supposed to experience what Palestinians are allegedly subjected to. These “check points” include students re-enacting scenes in which Israeli soldiers are portrayed as engaging in indiscriminate acts of violence and degradation of Palestinians; and the dissemination of literature and information which accuse Israel of “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and the imposition of an “apartheid state.” These protests describe alleged atrocities committed by Israelis devoid of context with the unmistakable message that Israelis/Jews are carrying out a unilateral campaign of violence directed against innocent Palestinians. Most outrageously for Jewish students, the protests routinely analogize Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews.

The council's working group recommends the university “push its current harassment and nondiscrimination provisions further, clearly define hate speech in its guidelines, and seek opportunities to prohibit hate speech on campus.”

Equating Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories to the treatment of blacks in South Africa is a radical distortion of the concept of apartheid, as explained by Richard A. Goldstone (hardly an ardent Zionist), who explains that in the territories

there is no intent to maintain “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group.” This is a critical distinction, even if Israel acts oppressively toward Palestinians there. South Africa’s enforced racial separation was intended to permanently benefit the white minority, to the detriment of other races. By contrast, Israel has agreed in concept to the existence of a Palestinian state in Gaza and almost all of the West Bank, and is calling for the Palestinians to negotiate the parameters.

But until there is a two-state peace, or at least as long as Israel’s citizens remain under threat of attacks from the West Bank and Gaza, Israel will see roadblocks and similar measures as necessary for self-defense, even as Palestinians feel oppressed. As things stand, attacks from one side are met by counterattacks from the other. And the deep disputes, claims and counterclaims are only hardened when the offensive analogy of “apartheid” is invoked.

Those seeking to promote the myth of Israeli apartheid often point to clashes between heavily armed Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing Palestinians in the West Bank, or the building of what they call an “apartheid wall” and disparate treatment on West Bank roads. While such images may appear to invite a superficial comparison, it is disingenuous to use them to distort the reality. The security barrier was built to stop unrelenting terrorist attacks; while it has inflicted great hardship in places, the Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the state in many cases to reroute it to minimize unreasonable hardship. Road restrictions get more intrusive after violent attacks and are ameliorated when the threat is reduced.

But this should not be about historical or demographic distortion or minimizing, by analogy with Palestine, the atrocities committed against South African blacks by the white minority before apartheid was ended.   As White argues, "The best response to 'hate speech' is more speech, not unconstitutional regulation that will lead to expensive litigation. Speech can be painful. But censorship is not the right balm for that pain. Vigorous rebuttal is."

Similarly, the answer to Chick-fil-a is not to ridicule or attack "homophobia." Nor should the vow of public officials to block establishment of stores in their cities replace "kiss-ins," lobbying of franchise operators, or other tools of a democratic republic.

It's happening a lot in this country, a formal or informal assertion of speech codes.   Talk is mistaken for behavior, speech with action, and the results are not pretty.


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Strategically Vague


Rush Limbaugh must think Mitt Romney is a liberal Democrat.   Limbaugh on Friday complained

You're asking something impossible.  You're asking for liberals to engage in the debate literally.  They're never going to do that.  They're never going to get specific and attach numbers to whatever argument, because it's not about what they're saying.  It's all misdirection.  It's all code.  So when you hear them say the rich aren't paying their fair share, you're saying, "Well, what is?"  They're not thinking of a number.  They're thinking of a way to relate to most people who aren't rich and trying to get them to support them, or to let them know that they're on their side or what have you.  The biggest mistake people make is listening to liberals and wanting to engage them literally.   That's not at all what they're talking about when they say these things.

Limbaugh, himself, of course makes a thrives on rarely being specific, notwithstanding his periodic, brazen displays of racial animosity or bigotry.  If Rush is paying attention, he knows liberals make a fetish of being specific, the tax code being a prime example.    The portion of the Bush-era tax cuts, since extended by President Obama, applicable to incomes above $200,000 (for individuals) and $250,000 (for couples) needs to expire, as is constantly repeated by the left, the center-left, and President Obama.    That would take us back to rates of the Clinton era of job creation, increased prosperity, and a balanced budget, before George W. Bush came along, making an obsession out of income tax cuts, blowing up the budget, and doing his part to help bring about the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.

Making $50 million a year, however, Rush never will run for President, let alone be elected to anything.   Mitt Romney, however, will be the GOP standard-bearer this fall and clearly is attempting to run the clock out, to limp across the finish line while offering few details about almost everything.

That is clear on foreign policy, in which Romney criticizes President Obama continuously while offering few, if any, alternatives.   It applies also to trade, which Romney, remarkably, claims Obama isn't pursuing aggressively.   And now, it applies to tax policy.

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee has produced a tax plan with few specifics.     The Tax Policy Center, a collaboration of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, concluded "any revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers" (report, here).  Steve Benen at maddowblog illustrated this:

The Romney camp might have trotted out conservative economists to contest the findings of the Tax Policy Center.   Presumably, they couldn't find any.  Or they could have put meat on those bones, specifying what deductions make the plan revenue-neutral, as they claim it would.   Unfortunately, most of those deductions are ones which benefit primarily the middle class and, hey, there is an election coming up.

But that would have been dealing in facts, or at least details, the sort of thing Rush Limbaugh imagines liberals avoid.     Instead, the Romney people rely on dynamic scoring, claiming that the tax cuts would bring rising revenues.     (We have heard that before, in the Reagan and Bush 43 Administrations, and burgeoning deficits ensued.)   They've called it a "liberal study" and "a joke" because, as explained here, "it was co-authored by a former Obama advisor - even though the Tax Policy Center's director, Donald Marron, worked in George W. Bush's White House and the Romney campaign has praised the center's work in the past."

The most entertaining defense, however, was that of the candidate himself, when interviewed by Sean Hannity.   Responding to President Obama's criticism of Romney's plan, the former governor claimed "He has a way of putting out a false statement and then attacking it and making it sound like it's mine which of course it's not. He knows better than that. It really is a matter of a president doing almost anything to try and avoid talking about his own record."     My plan is not my plan. You just can't make up things like that.

Far from setting out to destroy Mitt Romney, the Tax Policy Center bent over backwards to give the Republican every break it could.   Paul Krugman explains

Here’s what they did. They took Romney at his word that he plans to offset his cuts in income tax rates by broadening the base, that is, limiting exemptions and other loopholes. They also assumed, however, that Romney would not be willing to tax dividends and capital gains as ordinary income, since he has made it clear that he opposes any rise in taxes on investment income. As they point out, this leaves a relatively small pool of loopholes to close – big enough that the Romney tax cuts could, in principle, be paid for by base broadening, but not with a lot of room to spare.

So which loopholes are closed? TPC made the most Romney-friendly assumption they could – namely, that base broadening is concentrated on top incomes as much as possible. First you eliminate all deductions that benefit those with more than $1 million in income; then all that benefit those with between $500,000 and $1 million; and so on.

The key point is then that even if you do this, the tax cuts Romney gives high-income Americans are bigger than the loopholes he could conceivably close...

This means that even on the most favorable assumption, the Romney plan would give the rich big tax cuts on net – which means that to be revenue-neutral, it must raise taxes on Americans making less than $200,000 a year.

So they’re actually giving Romney every possible benefit of the doubt – and still his plan is a redistribution from the middle class to the rich. In practice it would surely be much worse.

If pressed, the Romney campaign probably would argue that its candidate has been specific about the Affordable Care Act, inasmuch as he has pledged to rescind it.   But while may want to end something the incumbent has done, that's a far cry from making a proposal to reform a health care system any serious person concedes is deeply flawed.     Mitt Romney is a politician resembling Rush Limbaugh's warped view of liberals:   people who want voters "to let them know they're on their side" while managing to be wrong about almost everything.

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Trust Me, McCain Says



Senator John McCain has confirmed it: Mitt Romney is over 35, was born in the United States, and has lived here for at least fourteen years.

Newsweek/Daily Beast contributor Howie Kurtz recently speculated as to why the Republican party's nominee for President in 2008  has not been requested to campaign for its presumptive 2012 nominee, nor invited to speak at the party's national convention.    Unfortunately, Kurtz erroneously reported that McCain went on vacation to Tahiti following his loss in 2008, rather than after his defeat for the nomination in 2000, as indicated in this corrected version of Kurtz's piece.     McCain also labeled as "foolishness" and "left-wing trash" the contention there are "deep and personal wounds" between McCain and Romney left over from their contentious battle for the 2008 nomination.

These controversial statements, however, probably have served McCain well, encouraging attention to be diverted from a far more serious issue.    The GOP has moved significantly to McCain's right.   Further, the two are not in complete agreement on foreign policy, which is McCain's primary interest.    Kurtz quotes McCain's 2008 campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, arguing Romney's campaign, of necessity, "is about the future" while "John McCain is very much a figure of the immediate past."   Additionally, Kurtz, whom McCain vigorously attacks, cites his subject's "tendency to commit candor," as reflected in the Senator's statement that he bypassed Romney for Sarah Palin for the V.P. slot because "she was the better candidate."

Though it proved to be a product of faulty judgement, that should have been an uncontroversial assertion.  A presidential candidate always selects whom he believes, for whatever reason, is "the better candidate" and Romney was not the only qualified Republican rejected in favor of the Alaskan governor.    Indications are that Palin was selected as a hail Mary pass, with the McCain team mistakenly thinking that it needed a "game-changer" to defeat the charismatic Obama (who was more vulnerable that the campaign realized).

Kurtz was overly generous to McCain, not only by accusing him of committing candor but also for not reminding his readers that John McCain in 2008 asked for, and received, 23 years of Mitt Romney's tax returns.      As of July 17 there were, according to the Center for American Progress, twenty "prominent Republicans" who had called upon the former Massachusetts governor to release substantially more tax returns than he has.    Conspicuously absent from that list is the Man of Candor, John McCain.   Only Mitt Romney, Ann Romney, the Romney accountant(s), and the McCain campaign have seen records filed by the presumptive GOP presidential nominee with the I.R.S.    And John McCain has not suggested his party's choice to take over the Oval office reveal anything.

The Huffington Post reported that on July 17

When pressed about whether Romney might be shielding his returns because he paid no taxes, McCain refused to discuss such specifics.

"Please, I am not going to get into that kind of conversation," he said. "All I can tell you, and I can tell you again, is there was nothing disqualifying in his tax returns. And that is a fact."

And that is reassuring, given that we thought Romney may have been abroad, slipped unnoticed into this country a few years ago, and is awaiting his 35th birthday.     The United States Constitution is clear:  a President need only be a natural-born citizen, have lived in the U.S.A. for at least 14 years, and be at least 35 years of age.      Senator McCain is not lying about Willard Mitt Romney.   No doubt  he "can personally vouch for the fact that there was nothing in his tax returns that would in any way be disqualifying for him to be a candidate."

Mitt Romney is no prostitute.   (Odd that would be written but then, McCain assures us Romney is an American  over 35 years old.)   Nevertheless applicable is the old saying: "we know what you are.   We're merely haggling about he price."    We know Romney is hiding something, or things, on one or more of his returns.   We just don't know what it is.






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No Trip To Charlotte



Senator Joe Lieberman hasn't been invited to the Democratic (or Republican) National Convention this year and a few people are offended.

The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports

Some Democrats think keeping Lieberman away is a mistake. After all, he served as Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, becoming the first Jewish American to run atop a major party’s ticket.He also presided for several years as chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, which helped transform the ideology of the Democratic Party and laid the groundwork for Bill Clinton’s election in 1992.

“Even though he’s no longer a member of the Democratic Party, he caucuses with the Senate Democrats and provides a vote for their majority. It would be a good thing to invite him,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who served as a senior adviser to Gore’s campaign. “He doesn’t have to be invited to give a speech. He doesn’t have to have Clinton’s time slot."...

“Joe Lieberman is a victim of polarization. He’s another person cast aside by people who aren’t interested in centrist views,” said Professor Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, who has worked as a scholar in residence in the Senate.

Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, said Lieberman’s approach is out of step with the times.

“Given how polarized the political process has become, my guess is that Joe Lieberman is taking this, appropriately, as a tremendous compliment,” said Schnur. “If there were a convention being held in the days between Tampa and Charlotte that was devoted to bridging partisan gaps and moving forward on the country’s challenges, Joe Lieberman would probably be the keynote speaker.”

In response, Hullabaloo's David Atkins (with a deserved swipe at Bill Clinton) explains

Holding contradictory partisan views doesn't make one a "centrist." Supporting lower taxes on the wealthy while supporting action on climate change isn't "centrist." A hypothetical candidate who wanted to ban abortion entirely while supporting single-payer healthcare wouldn't be a "centrist," either. A centrist is someone who supports milquetoast, inoffensive positions on a variety of issues: say, simplifying the the tax code while raising taxes slightly on just the richest incomes. Or advocating toothless carbon exchanges as a "solution" to climate change. Or decrying abortion but wanting to make it "safe, legal and rare." Or converting welfare programs into work programs.

You know, the mainstream positions of the modern Democratic Party. That's centrism. It's not the voters' fault if centrism has been wholly adopted by one political party while the other sits squarely in crazyville. That's just the breaks.

Like Baker and Schnur, Bolton is perturbed that such a deserving, open-minded guy like the Democratic-turned-Independent senator from Connecticut is being being denied what he appears to believe is a constitutional right of being invited to a party convention.   He writes

Lieberman made a memorable attempt to bridge party divides in 2008 when he endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), a move that infuriated many Democrats and nearly cost him a top committee slot.

“I am here tonight because John McCain’s whole life testifies to a great truth: Being a Democrat or Republican is important, but it is nowhere near as important as being an American,” he said in the 2008 speech.

He went on to praise McCain for taking on “corrupt Republican lobbyists” to reform campaign finance law and for trying to reform the nation’s immigration laws and “actually do something about global warming.”

In 2000, Joe Lieberman pulled the rug out from under Al Gore and did his part to make George W. Bush president.    Not content with helping one Republican enter the Oval Office, in 2008 he didn't merely endorse the G.O.P. candidate for president.  He spoke at the party's convention, slamming both the Democratic nominee for allegedly being unwilling "to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party" and by implication, those very "interest groups." That would be those selfish minorities, women, public employees, members of unions.

Lieberman didn't only endorse the GOP presidential nominee, he campaigned for him.   And in so doing, he implied the Democratic nominee was unfaithful to American soldiers, accusing him of "voting to cut off funding for our troops on the ground."   Not a mention from the paragon of bipartisanship and independence, however, that, as Media Matters noted in 2008, John McCain "voted against legislation to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or that Obama has voted in the past to provide funds for troops stationed there."

Joe Lieberman is entitled to support actively anyone he wants for any office and to advocate for what he believes in.  But when those views are antithetical to the causes central to the Democratic Party and he works strenuously to defeat a Democratic nominee for president, it would be political malpractice to invite him to the gathering which will renominate that individual he found so repugnant in 2008.




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