Ann Davidow

Republicans aren't just the party of "no" they are a one-note party. Like a dog with a bone they find an issue, sometimes just a word, and chew on it until it fits the contours of their ideological mindset. So it is with the word "empathy", and a Sotomayor statement about the judgment of a "wise Latina woman" vs. a white male. Partisans think they have hit the mother-lode of ways to thwart her confirmation, calling her a racist and discounting the mostly non-controversial nature of her rulings after decades on the bench.

The pretense that Republicans appoint Supreme Court justices based on outstanding qualifications and commitment to the rule of law is absurd on its face. Jennifer Rubin of Commentary Magazine maintained recently that when George H. W. Bush used the word empathy in describing Clarence Thomas it was just a parenthetical remark that added another dimension to his distinguished record as a jurist, while President Obama used it as his main reason for choosing Judge Sotomayor. In reality, Thomas was only modestly qualified, hardly top-of-the-line, chosen mainly because he was a black man with conservative credentials - - pro-life, anti-affirmative action and a willing disciple of Antonin Scalia; he hasn't disappointed supporters.

In Sotomayor's case "empathy" is a talking point for right-wing pundits and politicians who choose to ignore her exceptional educational background, her long service on the bench and in law enforcement. As Obama has said, if cases were clear-cut and easily resolved they wouldn't come before the Supreme Court so "the law" is constantly being reviewed by the courts. Let's be honest, Roberts and Alito, in addition to their pro-life positions, are known to be pro-business, an important consideration for the Bush White House. Bias isn't always about black, white or brown but is often about the haves who represent institutionalized power and the have-nots whose access to power is limited.

When Sotomayor commented about the judgment of "a wise Latina woman" she should perhaps have been mindful about how that phrase would resonate in the years to come. However, in the body of her work at the time, she was careful to say that, while one brings one's own experience to bear in making judgments, one has to be careful not to let it become the overriding factor in formulating decisions that must in the final analysis rely on the law and precedent. But how does one measure corporate influence vis-a-vis regular folks, influence that doesn't get the same hot-button attention that race does?

Conservatives are rarely forthcoming about their allegiance to Wall Street, their resistance to environmental protections and their lapses of judgment at critical moments - - e.g. the fact that Scalia's daughter was a Bush presidential campaign worker might have been a reason for him to recuse himself during the Bush v. Gore litigation. Water under the dam, but still it rankles, especially when current party wags engage in what they insist is principled opposition to far less compromised individuals.

In a stunningly revelatory moment that poses the question, how low can they go, G. Gordon Liddy, (you remember him right? - - one of the Watergate plumbers during the Nixon administration) on his radio talk show wondered how Judge Sotomayor might rule if she were menstruating when she had to render a decision as a Supreme Court jurist. That has been familiar ground for men who raise this issue every time a woman is thought to be a serious candidate for the presidency or other high office.

From a different vantage point others may reflect on the possibility that erectile dysfunction could be a factor in some of the overwrought rants emanating from certain right-wing men. Surely a woman's menstrual cycle is unlike the ego-threatening male phenomenon of anatomical failures that necessitate the use of prescription drugs - - but who really knows? However, if men choose to add that layer of lunacy to discussions about the viability of female Supreme Court nominees they may invite questions about whether some form of masculine insecurity clouds their judgment.

Appointments to the Supreme Court need to be taken seriously not made the subject of vicious, trumped-up charges that demean nominees and impede a proper confirmation process. A blindfolded Lady Justice is meant to symbolize an impartial judicial system that guarantees equal protection for all under the law. Empathy is just an expression of the hope that our courts tap the widest possible range of experience when they interpret the Constitution and our laws and that, in the end, justice is served.

There was little doubt from the moment it was learned Justice Souter would be stepping down, that whoever the president chose to succeed him would become a target for Republicans wanting to make political points regarding the nominee, no matter who it turned out to be. All their favorite arguments were at the ready - - Democrats want to appoint "activist" judges, Republicans insist on strict constructionists of the Constitution, who will interpret not make law. The Senate minority claims it will act to protect the sanctity of The Court and ensure the probity of its decision-making process.

In reality decisions by The Court haven't always served the cause of justice, as one might hope our body of laws would dictate, and The Constitution itself has evolved over time. As the large number of amendments to it suggest, it hasn't been a static document after all. In fact in some of its more infamous renderings it is clear that constitutional principles were whatever a majority of justices said they were - - decisions that had less to do with principle than personal predilections and prevailing public opinion.

The Dred Scott decision stands as one of the Court's most infamous and shameful rulings. Scott, a black slave, wasn't considered a citizen with standing to bring his case before the court; in essence he was deemed property. A lower court decision freeing Scott was overturned by Missouri's Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court agreed, adding that "the Missouri compromise of 1820 legislation which restricted slavery in certain territories was unconstitutional." (PBS.org - - "Dred Scott's Fight for Freedom) 

In 1896 a dispute arose over the use of segregated railroad cars in the Plessey v. Ferguson case. In that instance The Court ruled that a Louisiana law mandating "separate but equal" accommodations for blacks and whites was constitutional. As everyone in the segregated south knew only too well, of course, if an occasion arose in which white cars were over-crowded, whites could make their way into cars designated for blacks, while no such option existed for black riders. In any case it wasn't until Brown v. the Board of Education in 1954 that the concept of "separate but equal" was revisited and declared unconstitutional, opening the door for school desegregation.

In today's conservative-dominated court the Lilly Ledbetter case illustrated how its business-friendly majority saw things in the case of a woman who had been consistently underpaid compared to male counterparts. A lower court had awarded her damages, but when the case came before the Supreme Court, a five-four decision stated that since she hadn't filed her grievance within the stipulated 180 days of the original infraction, some twenty years prior, she wasn't entitled to compensation. Now, it seems entirely legitimate to have said that each paycheck through the years represented a new 180-day time period, or that it applied from the point at which she discovered the pay discrepancy, but the majority chose not to take that view and ruled against Ledbetter and for Goodyear.

And what could be more compelling evidence that The Court often acts in strange and capricious ways than its decision in the 2000 election. Deciding a presidential election by a five-four majority is one of the most outrageous rulings in the history of jurisprudence. As a sign that the justices themselves knew they were on shaky ground they stated at the time that their decision should not be considered precedent-setting. They gave as their rationale that the recount method requested by Gore violated the "equal protection" clause of the 14^th amendment, saying it would have caused "irreparable harm to petitioner Bush and the country by casting a cloud upon ...the legitimacy of his election."

Well, the truth is that decision did cast a cloud not only on the legitimacy of the election but on The Court itself. A fairer resolution would have been to recount the entire state which would have obviated the 14^th amendment premise. The partisan nature of the decision sullied The Court's reputation and those who turned an election into a bloodless coup. Some of the earlier cases had faded from memory. But the 2000 election and more recently the Ledbetter ruling are reminders that The Supreme Court may be the highest court in the land, but it isn't always just and it doesn't always deserve our respect.

So as Republicans agonize their way towards the inevitable confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor they should cut the, uh, pretense, of wanting only to preserve the Constitution and stop talking about activist judges. We already experienced the worst kind of activism in 2000. Nothing will ever match it.

The dictionary defines the word "huckster" as "a person who employs showy methods to effect a sale, win votes etc. ..." and notes "the crass methods of political hucksters." Today the Republican Party is trying to sell a story rejected in several election cycles, yet the media is providing it with endless opportunities to intone its effete message.

One of the sillier issues that animates some discussions is the so-called "defense-of-marriage" stand by people who feel "opposite marriage" is endangered by marriage-minded gays, although why this should be so is puzzling. To be drawn into this debate is to deflect attention from matters of far greater import. At some point, the disrupters should be made to understand they are free to think as they will, but if marital partners feel threatened they should seek out the offices of a good marriage counselor and leave serious problems to serious problem solvers.

Although this issue seems to be losing steam among younger, more progressive voters who tend to ignore extreme ideological positions, many conservatives refuse to accept any challenge to their partisan set of 'values.' When party leaders say they understand the needs and hopes of 'the people' but are unwilling or unable to come up with anything more than excuses for eight years of policies that have brought the country to its current state of disrepair, who can trust them?

But as the Republican leadership addresses what it regards as critical elements that will propel it back into power, what does it come up with - - an attack on Nancy Pelosi for comments about what the CIA told members of Congress, though others have complaints similar to hers. Utah's Republican Representative Bishop wants a 4-person bi-partisan panel to get to the bottom of Pelosi's charges. But be careful what you wish for Mr. Bishop, because if callers to the Washington Journal are any indication of how the country feels, people of all political persuasions would like to know a lot more about how our intelligence agency operates including how we ended up invading Iraq, for starters.

As for one of its "new" approaches the party has begun airing a remake of the infamous "daisy commercial" from the sixties to assail President Obama's decision to close the prison at Guantanomo. His decision has become a cause celebre for people on the right who think they have found a way to revisit what they see as Obama's Achilles heel and their favorite wedge issue - - national security. Recent polls show, however, that Republicans are losing ground on that front as well.

And exactly what have we done to deserve the onslaught of misinformation and self-serving detritus being delivered by former vice president Cheney and his daughter, Liz? They are absolutely everywhere. He has appeared on almost every major network with Liz following close behind. She has her father's back and is no doubt grateful for the job he provided for her in the Bush State Department, to say nothing of husband Philip Perry's various government appointments. Neither of these fatherly examples of largesse are particularly pleasant reminders of the way the Bush White House operated.

Especially disturbing, as Joe Conason wrote in a February 2007 Salon.com article, was Perry's position as "General Counsel to the Department of Homeland Security." As Conason points out, "...the true scandal of Perry's career in government ...is less about blatant cronyism and more about corporate cronyism." At DHS, Perry spent his time "obstructing federal and state regulation of the nation's chemical industry" allowing the industry, under his protection, "to decide whether and how to improve the notoriously lax security at their plants" which made them vulnerable to infiltration and attack - - so much for national security when corporate interests are at stake.

This is not a proud heritage and it is a sad commentary on our media that they are willing to include Liz as a panelist on Meet the Press, This Week, and for a long segment on Morning Joe. It's bad enough that her father is still huckstering the same tired propaganda without hearing it from Liz too. In some catalogues tee shirts are shown with an arrow pointing sideways and the words "I'm with stupid." There should be a special one for Liz that says simply "I'm with Daddy."

There's some serious Cheney fatigue out here. One can only hope cable networks and columnists will come to realize that and leave the Cheneys to communicate with the only people who still believe what they're selling - - the ever-faithful, gullible right-wing base.

The president said in his speech Thursday that security should not be a "wedge issue", yet Republicans are intent on making it just that. Typically enough, the former vice president, sarcastic and mean-spirited as ever, opened his remarks by saying that obviously the president had served in the Senate not the House where a five-minute rule is observed. Apparently Mr. Cheney had grown impatient waiting for the president to finish before beginning his standard defense of the previous administration's murky performance as our protector.

We've heard it all before and it doesn't bear repeating that the Bush-Cheney team kept us safe, and waterboarding was only used on three suspects. The multiple times it was used on the same suspects and other forms of extreme interrogation methods are usually ignored. Cheney's constant repetition of facts in question, for example, that "thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives were saved" due to their efforts is ludicrous and unprovable. And his claim that the Trade Center attack in '93 was treated only as a criminal matter, "case closed" is an absurdity that insults the intelligence of anyone who delves even slightly beyond gossipy, political rhetoric.

In fact, in the early days of the Bush administration, some insiders said Clinton was "obsessing about terrorism" and disregarded his warnings about the need for vigilance and strategies to combat the terrorist threat. It is a popular gambit employed by the conservative media and people like Cheney to suggest that little was known about Al Qaeda until, under their brilliant tutelage and the efforts of the CIA on their watch, a whole new world opened up to inform their approach to the nation's security interests.

In reality Al Qaeda was formed in the late 1980s and was in full blush during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. If anyone cared enough to look, its designs were clearly articulated in those early years. In a New Yorker article (6/2/08) Lawrence Wright wrote: "After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan ... most members of Al Jihad relocated to Sudan where bin Laden, who had fled Saudi Arabia after falling out with the royal family, had set up operations." Once it was clear how deeply involved Al Qaeda was in the Middle East some serious homework on the part of the new administration could have alerted the caretakers of our security to the dangers lurking there.

Never over-imbued with facts, however, columnist Charles Krauthammer claims 'we knew nothing about Al Qaeda' before 9/11, and intellectual lightweight Joe Scarborough, castigating Nancy Pelosi for comments about what members of Congress were told by the CIA, said 'I know more about this stuff (intelligence agency work) than most people.' Similarly, MSNBC anchor, Contessa Brewer, angrily told a guest she knew "all about" some topic because she used to work on The Hill. Honestly, some of these people seem to be in a contest to find a place at Fox News alongside Krauthammer.

An example of just how silly but also how callous some of today's conservative voices are, Ronald Kessler, chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com, on a recent Washington Journal, defended the Bush position that, because combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't wear uniforms, they weren't protected by the Geneva Conventions. It is remarkable that just being a member of the human race isn't an important consideration for people like Kessler. And, in one of the right's seemingly endless supply of idiotic flights into bizarroland he generalized that the reckless behavior of New Jersey's Democratic Governor Corzine for riding at high speed on the New Jersey Turnpike, without wearing a seat belt, typified Democratic Party recklessness across the board. This guy actually writes books too.

Republican Party Chair Michael Steele says his is the party of "ideals and ideas," although the accuracy of that statement isn't readily apparent. Mr. Cheney proved as much in his speech Thursday, reentering the capricious world he and his minions cooked up during the Bush years. His regurgitation of the familiar inflammatory rhetoric to scare Americans with the prospect of attacks by "nuclear-armed terrorists" on our homeland marked an ongoing commitment to the perverse tactics of our not-so-distant past.

The question of the day may be why Mr. Cheney keeps being provided a platform for positions that have so recently failed the smell test and why he appears to be considered an equivalent and acceptable counterforce to the current president.

Some years back cartoonist Walt Kelly's character Pogo announced "we have met the enemy and he is us." Kelly's particular focus at the time was the environment, but he could have been talking just as well about today's political juggernaut as factions thrash about trying to justify positions based on partisan wish fulfillment rather than fact.

For Nancy Pelosi haters, now is the perfect moment to scapegoat her over intelligence matters, especially for saying she wasn't properly informed by the CIA about the use of interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. Her legion of enemies on the right say she should step down although that demand seems strangely out of sync in the context of the torture debate since it was neither her policy nor within her purview to openly challenge the administration's secret intelligence data after 9/11.

But, beyond the matter of whether or not waterboarding, intense or 'mild', qualified as torture, clearly other interrogation methods caused serious physical injury and threatened the lives of subjects, conditions defined as torture by Bush attorneys. Somehow, though, the death thing doesn't fit what most people think of as torture since trying to extract information from a prisoner post mortem is pretty much an exercise in futility. Oh well...

For those who offer uncritical support of our intelligence apparatus it should be noted that some of the CIA's Machiavellian schemes were about furthering political goals, not protecting the country from imminent foreign threats. The CIA-supported overthrow of Chile's democratically elected leader, Salvador Allende during the Nixon presidency comes to mind. The ensuing upheaval is depicted in the movie Missing starring Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon - - the true story of an American journalist in Chile who was arrested and executed for knowing too much about US involvement in the coup. In its concern about leftist influences in South America our government helped destabilize Chile and along came infamous dictator Augusto Pinochet, no leftist he. What a relief.

The point is there are serious questions about what we the people and our representatives are told and through what filter information passes. Before invading Iraq, the Bush administration relied on sources that reinforced its agenda. Thus it turned to Ahmed Chalibi who had been out of the country for many years and to a man known as "Curveball" whose name alone should have given them pause. Had they not been so anxious to depose Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq, the Bush people might have heeded some of the warnings that were issuing from other more reliable sources.

Most disturbing of all is that early on, waterboarding is believed to have been used in an attempt to force Iraqi prisoners to say there was an Al Qaeda-Hussein connection, in order to verify claims the Bush administration had made about their rationale for attacking Iraq. And so, despite the fact that they believed Abu Zubaydah, for example, had already provided whatever credible information he had, interrogators were told, presumably by Cheney's 'alternate intelligence agency,' to waterboard him ( 83 times in fact) to see if they could get him to agree there was an Iraq-Al Qaeda link.

It doesn't dishonor the work of diligent intelligence operatives in the CIA network to point out that our government has at times manipulated intelligence to make political points. President Bush was told by the agency not to include the questionable contention that nuclear materials were finding their way to Iraq in his State-of-the-Union speech, but he included it anyway. Later he would cite unreliable intelligence to explain the absence of WMD and the lack of evidence indicating an Iraqi nuclear program.

In any case, he presented CIA Director George Tenet, Iraqi administrator Paul Bremer and General Tommy Franks with Medals of Freedom. In Tenet's case, either he didn't have a clue or Bush chose not to take his advice. And Bremer couldn't have done a worse job for the people of Iraq or for our position there, and he had no good explanation for the disappearance of millions of dollars other than to say he had to do things in a hurry. As for crediting Franks with having "won two wars" what wars was Bush talking about?

We have been our own worst enemy, blinded for too long by a mixture of fear and complacency and badly served by leaders who stage-managed intelligence instead of interpreting it. Going forward we mustn't be bullied into believing that Cheney and the rest were motivated by national-security concerns rather than personal agendas. Had their intentions been pure, or their conclusions intellectually sound they wouldn't have had to invent reasons for digging a deep hole for us in the Middle East.

How is it that false prophets and self-proclaimed 'authorities' receive respectful attention when they regularly distort history and claim knowledge of past and future events so irresponsibly? By what definition of patriotism do a former vice president and media pundits suggest that the country is less safe because after a few months in office, a new administration declares that torture is torture and that we shouldn't do it anymore?

Are we really supposed to believe that President Obama has doomed us to a precarious future simply by stating principles that are considered the norm by most rational people? More importantly, should we accept what Mr. Cheney tells us after his sinister, unilateral involvement in everything from energy policy to the war in Iraq? Disturbingly, a fair number of Americans willingly suspend disbelief about the previous administration's decision to invade Iraq based on constantly revised pretexts, depending on what version seemed most likely to elicit an emotional and favorable response at any given moment.

In the end, however, the net result was domestic policies that not only failed to move the economy forward but left it perilously close to collapse, along with costly foreign involvements that made us more vulnerable than anything a new president could effect so soon after taking office. The contempt Cheney shows for ordinary Americans is breathtaking. That he would choose Limbaugh over Colin Powell to represent the Republican Party is the opinion of someone who lacks a sense of decency and proportion or maybe just some cerebral lapse that prevents him from exercising sound judgment.

In an angry response on the Rachel Maddow show, Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, asked the question many of us keep asking: "Why does the media give him [Cheney] so much airtime" a man who insisted and often does to this day that there was "no question" Saddam Hussein had WMD and an active nuclear-arms program. About Powell, Wilkerson added, "Two tours in Vietnam, 35 plus years in service to his country" compared to "5 deferments for Dick Cheney who never served a day in the military; said he had other priorities..." As the old line goes "A cat may look at a king," but it's not an equal - - With respect to Cheney, Powell is way out of his league.

Yet Cheney continues to pontificate at every opportunity. He "knows" the methods he endorsed saved lives, as opposed to what agents on the ground accomplish in their dangerous information-gathering operations. Of course Cheney was only too willing to expose an intelligence operative in the furtherance of his political agenda. His current verbal gymnastics are just more of the same, unpatriotic, ego-centered jingoism that turned justice on its head and undercut our nation's commitment to the rule of law.

In a further insult to our already bruised sensibilities, Liz Cheney, no doubt brainwashed at birth, appeared with her father to accuse Obama of "siding with terrorists." One would have thought the Palin campaign refrain of "palling around with terrorists" would have run its course by now. But apparently no 'inspiration' is ever too old or worn out to be excluded from the daily propaganda diet served up by the Republican right wing, which is pretty much true about most of its standard bearers as well.

It's a funny thing, though many Republicans insist that waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" aren't torture they say in the next breath that Nancy Pelosi is at fault for going along with something that wasn't wrong in the first place according to them. In any case, whatever Pelosi knew or didn't know she wasn't free to go public at the time; the attempt to sidetrack the basic issue is farcical.

Speaking of humor, perhaps Wanda Sykes shouldn't have used 9/11 as a subtext to joke about Rush Limbaugh, but outrage from the right is a bit disingenuous. There was no similar outcry when President Bush looked for WMD under tables and behind the lectern at a press dinner. Some of those present actually laughed despite the travesty that was claiming so many lives, creating enormous debt and tarnishing our good name.

Still the shameless affront to rational discourse continues. Joe Scarborough said on Morning Joe, regarding the new administration, "I knew by the second day that America was less safe" while sidekick Mika spoke of substantial public support for using torture in the cause of national security. But to be swayed by dissemblers on the right and superficial media rants is to succumb once again to the politics of fear and intimidation that destabilize the country and betray our founding principles.

In recent years there has been an explosion of opinion throughout the country about "values" and our democracy. In our current financial distress and with the prospect of a new Supreme Court justice the debate rages ever more furiously about what our pledge of "liberty and justice for all" really means. What some call values turns out to be merely a statement of partisan or religious dogma. And our politics are often driven by arcane testimonials that bear no relationship to either truth or logic.

People say that the loss of jobs to India or wherever is just what happens in a global economy as a result of Big Labor's demands, not bad decisions and big salaries made by corporate leaders. And it is the illegals that get lambasted by pundits and laid-off workers, not the people who hire undocumented laborers to avoid paying a fair wage and benefits in a disturbing, greed-induced race to the bottom for many ordinary Americans.

In one eye-popping documentary trainees in India are instructed to act 'American' in their dress, speech, and general demeanor, as they are groomed for outsourced jobs in India or emigration to the United States. Asked by the instructor who the class thinks are great leaders, one trainee replies, Hitler. The instructor tells him his entire family was wiped out in the Holocaust and that, in any case, glorifying Hitler wouldn't be popular in America. Apparently, copies of Hitler's autobiographical Mien Kampf are flying off the shelves in India, our most favored partner in the export of American jobs.

Meanwhile President Obama is trying to reform a badly distorted system that passes in some quarters for the "free market." Commercial interests and tax mavens who like things the way they are prepare to fight reform with the oddest arguments. How else could an effort to clamp down on tax cheats and corporate tax havens be referred to as the biggest "tax increase" ever? Corporate taxes may be higher on paper here than in other countries, but phony headquarters in the Caymans and elsewhere offset tax obligations to a point where they are only a small fraction of what a 35% tax bracket would suggest. Conservatives tend to ignore the lost revenue that results from concealed earnings; would they support closing loopholes even if the tax rate were reduced?

And as the president prepares to name a successor for retiring Supreme Court Justice Souter, the right wing stands ready to savage anyone suggested. One caller to Washington Journal said the choice should be a White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant male like the founders of the country, people who best understand the Constitution and 'the law.' As outlandish as that may sound, it isn't far from what many on the right espouse. Jeff Sessions, R. from Alabama, whose racist views are well-documented, sits on the Judiciary Committee that will vote on whether or not to send a proposed candidate to the floor of the Senate. And in his best sneering, self-righteous mode, CNN's Lou Dobbs responded to a guest's list of possible female, Hispanic, and scholarly candidates by saying he guessed Supreme Court choices would no longer be based on "meritocracy."

Imagine that; was he thinking of merit appointments like Bush appointee Clarence Thomas whose credentials were slightly underwhelming. Or did he have in mind Justices Alito and Roberts, whose main appeal for George Bush seemed to have been their conservative, anti-choice, pro-business approach to judicial oversight. Their denial of Lilly Ledbetter's appeal regarding her long employment during which she was grossly underpaid in comparison to her male peers was a stunning example of a return to the concept of separate and unequal under the guiding principle that business decisions, no matter how unfair, should be left in the hands of the unjust.

Justice Souter had the good grace to be ashamed of the Court's decision to hand the 2000 election to George Bush and almost resigned as a result. Obviously the courts haven't always distinguished themselves with decisions that embodied the high principles upon which our country was founded. And what passed for a just system during the Bush years sullied our good name and insulted our collective intelligence.

Hopefully, this administration will work to protect the interests of our workforce and forge a more honorable course for our institutions, most especially our system of justice, and that the word "values" will once again come to represent something more than a glib partisan talking point.

The political scene just got a little more tumultuous with Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party. How much this will actually change things in the Senate is unclear, but his decision does crystallize what has been happening to the Republican Party.  

President Obama may face a faltering economy, foreign uncertainties and a possible health emergency. Nevertheless, despite some misgivings, a majority of Americans are responding favorably to his energy and determination. Republicans have tried to block every initiative with phony claims that Democrats haven't pursued a bi-partisan effort to engage the minority. But what they really seem to be saying is that, although rejected in successive election cycles, bi-partisanship for them means staying their course.

Specter and others say the party isn't the one they joined years ago, having shifted too far to the right and become less of a big-tent party. Conservatives with the loudest voices and the narrowest vision are in charge. They supported questionable Bush policies and their insistence on a social agenda that is less important to most people has further eroded the party's general appeal. Specter may not champion every Democratic cause, but at least, he will mitigate the sixty-vote filibuster threshold Republicans held with their belligerent "no" tactics. And when Al Franken is finally seated, Democrats will have a solid sixty-seat majority in the Senate.

In the delirium that sets in from denying reality for so long South Carolina's Senator DeMint downplayed Specter's defection as a sign of Republican weakness saying "the people" are on his party's side. Perhaps he misreads the frustration people feel over job losses, bank bailouts and corporate greed because their outrage is directed at the very capitalist adventurism Republicans so admire. Putting two and two together doesn't invigorate the mental processes of the tea-bag crowd. Likewise critics of national health-care ignore the fact that business-provided employee health benefits make companies less competitive with countries that have government plans. And their rationing argument doesn't address the reality that insurance companies do exactly that in our present system.

In an interview on Wednesday's Washington Journal Representative Paul Broun, R-GA, made some odd remarks about health care, especially considering he is also a physician. Echoing President Bush he tried to debunk the claim that health care isn't available for many Americans. After all, he said, emergency rooms everywhere are obliged to treat anyone who comes to their door. That's the kind of mindset that keeps the GOP so out of step with the nation's problems and so ineffective at framing solutions for them.

Senate Majority Leader McConnell is using the fear approach that worked so well for Republicans in the past, declaring Specter's new affiliation "a threat to the country." Do "people want the majority to have whatever it wants without restraint..." he queried. Still the usual suspects manage to capture media attention. Karl Rove keeps up the self-preservation rant about how, if we investigate who maneuvered us into torture mode, we'd be like a banana republic. And Fred Thompson, one of the country's most inane political voices, has branded Obama "inept, naïve and arrogant," as opposed, apparently, to the fatuous group of ideologues who relentlessly hammered the country into its current failed state.

There remains real concern about how the matters of job outsourcing and the influx of illegal workers will be addressed, and undercurrents of social division still exist. People can, for example, express bias without making overtly racist remarks. In the midst of his overblown critique, when Fred Thompson called Obama "arrogant", one wonders if he really meant to say "uppity." And a caller to Monday's Washington Journal conveyed what seemed to be her residual store of feelings about people of color when she said there must be "white people" who could do the jobs illegals are doing in her state of Alabama.

The Republican Party's "southern strategy" still seems to have a certain appeal for some voters which is probably why many of the states John McCain carried were in the Deep South. It may also help to explain why someone like Senator Specter began to feel uncomfortable under his party's banner - - along with his perception that he would be unlikely to make his way past a Republican primary challenger from the far right.

Seriously folks, they must have been kidding. Remember, they said we'd won the war in Afghanistan, gotten rid of the Taliban and that we could move on to Iraq? There we were victorious as well, especially after "the surge"; security could be left in the hands of those crack military teams we trained for years. And President Bush repeatedly assured us, "we don't torture." The supply of hilarious claims is endless. Is anybody laughing?

The more earnest denials from the former administration are, the more ludicrous they appear. Claims of triumphant strategies and ignorance about Bin Laden and Al Qaeda when President Bush took office do not comport with the evidence at hand both then and now. In a recent interview with Sean Hannity at Fox Vice President Cheney was still claiming that little was known about Al Qaeda prior to 9/11 despite the explicit warnings set forth in the Hart-Rudman report. Along with proponent-in-chief Cheney, other defenders of Bush policies include former Attorney General Mukasy and former CIA Director Hayden both of whom seem less concerned with confirming their national security bona fides than protecting themselves from scrutiny and public censure

Perhaps because it was commissioned by President Clinton, the report was set aside - - ‘I'll have Cheney take a look at it when he has time,' the president said. But to suggest there was no information about the threat Al Qaeda posed is to bathe in the murky waters of the former vice president's fanciful reminiscences. Similarly, Condoleezza Rice testified before Congress that no-one imagined terrorists would fly planes into buildings. But author Tom Clancy seemed to have realized that possibility when he wrote The Sum of All Fears, some years before. Simply put, nobody was paying attention.

Today the Taliban is spreading its influence across Afghanistan; Pakistani armed forces don't much want to engage them along the Afghan border; they control an area just sixty or so miles from Kabul, the capital. And Afghanistan's democratically elected president, whose sphere of influence is limited to Kabul, is considered an American stooge, his administration distinguished by its tolerance for corruption. In Iraq, where security forces seem unable to cope, suicide bombers kill civilians, police trainees and whoever's handy.

Having pretty much lost the national-security debate Republicans try to change the subject by changing the names of things - - "cap-and-tax", "death tax" and so on. They are even trying to rename the Democratic Party the "Democrat Socialist Party." Amusingly, though, polls and election results seem to indicate a rejection of what Republicans are selling, often by small margins, but negative territory nonetheless.

In Minnesota, Norm Coleman hangs on despite repeated rulings that Al Franken won the senatorial election. Less dogged in defeat, Republican Jim Tedesco conceded to Scott Murphy in the special election to fill Kirsten Gillibrand's House seat from upstate New York, a district where Republicans outnumber Democrats by sizeable numbers. There may be some disagreements about where President Obama is taking the country, but there is even less enthusiasm for where we've been and where Republicans might lead us. If it weren't for the relentless right-wing rant that consumes so much air time it might be possible to engage in rational debate and forgo the jingoistic maneuvering that has no purpose other than to delay and obstruct.

There aren't always two sides to a question, just right and wrong, truth and lies, or as Bill Maher put it "sane and insane." After all it just isn't possible to reach agreement with people who deny the influence of human factors on climate change or insist that torture isn't torture if it doesn't include maiming or end in death. Rush Limbaugh slapped himself on air the other day, joking about whether slaps should be considered torture. Well slapping Rush around may not fit the current definition of torture, but there might be a few folks who wouldn't mind participating in an experiment to find out for sure.

During a discussion by a TV panel of mental health professionals about murder suspects, their motives and the mindset that allows them to commit acts of violence, one psychiatrist observed that it was possible they simply had no conscience. It may be that a similar character flaw exists among some of our politicians and their media advocates - - a disturbing but very real possibility that could explain why lying comes so easily to some of them and how they can defend making terrible decisions that cause death and destruction with such righteous indignation.