Roll Call reports that Senator Feingold’s resolution to censure the President for his domestic wiretapping program has its first co-sponsor, Senator Tom Harkin.
It’s good to see that another Democrat has the courage to stand with Feingold. But is the censure resolution such a hot idea? The New York Times has an article detailing the energizing effect the resolution is having among the Republican Party’s base
With the Republican base demoralized by continued growth in government spending, undiminished violence in Iraq and intramural disputes over immigration, some conservative leaders had already begun rallying their supporters with speculation about a Democratic rebuke to the president even before Mr. Feingold made his proposal.
Brian Jones, a Republican spokesman, said the e-mail messages generated a higher response than anything the party had sent in several months, including bulletins about the Supreme Court confirmations.
Having won on the Dubai ports issue and with Bush’s approval on national security issues plummeting, it may seem ill advised to turn the national debate toward censure on a program that Republicans claim has widespread support. Yet, a Gallop poll has a slim majority of Americans saying that the domestic surveillance program was wrong, and Zogby reports that
Just 28% are willing to allow their telephone conversations to be monitored, and 25% favor allowing random searches of mail.
Just as Bush’s numbers have eroded on terror and National Security, so can they decline on wire tapping. But Democrats need to keep the debate on the resolution focused on the program and not the punitive nature of the resolution itself. That way, the censure resolution can keep Bush’s unconstitutional program in the media and on voters’ minds. Domestic surveillance and the Patriot Act can fit into a much broader narrative of Republican contempt for Civil liberties, and that’s more and more a winning issue with the American public. It’s a good thing we have Senators like Feingold and Harkin. But where’s the party leadership on this?
Today the Register reports that (surprise surprise) Iowa House Republicans neglected to pass an education bill that would increase teacher salaries or funding for preschools. Republican House Speaker Rants:
“We have a revenue estimate that we have to abide by, by law,” he added. “I wish we had more to give, but that’s the amount of money we have available to spend.”
Can you blame them? Allocating tight funds sure is hard, ain’t it? Sure we all want teacher salary increases, but where will the money come from? Certainly not a cigarette tax.
Democrats failed to get a cigarette tax increase approved Wednesday in the Iowa House.
Rants, a Sioux City Republican, is against a tobacco tax increase and says the revenue it would raise would set the budget up for trouble in the future as cigarette sales declined.
Would revenue really fall significantly from a tax? New Yorkers pay 7.50 for a pack of cigarettes and yet the percentage of smokers is just under the national average. What gives?
Sure, there’s evidence that cigarette tax increases lower smoking, but the decline in use is most significant among children. And with ballooning state medical costs (the proposed tax was designed to pay for health care in the first place), reducing smoking can save money in the long term by cutting out a major source of health care woes- cigarettes.
Maybe Iowa Republicans should put that in their pipe and smoke it.
The DNC has this post to its “blog” about its 50-state strategy. I know I’ve heard people talking about how great it is (and perhaps it really is a novel approach), but I wonder how far down it really goes. That is, will they be helping random campaigns for State Representative, or just high-profile campaigns like Governors, US Congressmen, etc.?
I guess we’ll find out how “grassroots” the plan really is this summer, which is also when we’ll find out how many states the DNC is really going to be pressing in. I know Iowa’s on the list somewhere, but is it really a top priority?
Bruce Braley is running for the Democratic nomination for US Congressman from Iowa’s 1st district, and Congressional Quarterly recently gave him a softball interview (via Drew):
CQ: Looking at your primary election, how do you feel about your position in this three-person field?
Braley: I feel very good about my position. It’s a very significant challenge — as a first-time candidate, I’ve had to work very hard to develop the resources and the name identification and the positions that will set me out from the other two candidates in the race. And I feel like over the last year we’ve made great inroads in doing that. . . .
Another news item we missed has to do with Iowa’s newer, tougher voter identity restrictions. The Register cites a NYU study to explain why up to 20% of new voters might not be able to vote on election day this year because of a law that was passed because of HAVA (The Helping America Vote Act of 2002). Here’s what the NYU study found:
Iowa’s new voter registration system is among the nation’s most restrictive and could keep as many as 20 percent of new voters from casting ballots in November, according to a national study released today.
Iowa’s requirement that new voters’ identification match exactly with government records — or be barred from voting — puts the state in league with six other states, the report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law said.
As someone whose middle name is misspelled on the voter rolls even after mailing the county the requisite correction postcard, I really hope something gets done about this before it’s too late. Especially since records “are sometimes wrong through no fault of the voter, the study’s co-author Justin Levitt said. Clerical mistakes can leave incorrect numbers in the system, or a person’s name can appear one way on a driver’s license, but differently on an application for registration after someone gets married, for instance.”
The real fun will begin when I get turned away from the polls.
We missed this column from the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier last Saturday, but then we found it. In it, Matthew Wilde (who is a staff writer, but who writes columns?) says he agrees with a bill that would impose penalties on individuals who file false environmental complaints against farms, but not before quoting opponents of the bill:
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a Des Moines-based group opposed to livestock confinements, calls the bill reprehensible and believes it puts the well being of large, corporate farmers ahead of citizens.
“The point of this legislation is obvious; it’s designed to intimidate rural Iowans who report factory farm environmental problems into silence,” said ICCI member Kurt Kesley of Iowa Falls. “… We need to start addressing the real issue — the problems factory farms are creating in our countryside.”
How does he counter this Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement organization? By attacking their unrelated beliefs:
I’ve talked with ICCI officials enough to know the group is not just out to stop large corporations like Smithfield Foods or Iowa Select Farms that raise hogs, but the use of confinements period.
So because they’re against confinements, they must not genuinely be against a law designed to discourage complaints? Such a law can’t raise pretty serious concerns?
It’s like how all of my opinions are wrong because I picked UF and Iowa to be in the Final Four this year. And let’s not pretend that Des Moines’s agriculture policy is designed to help the family farmer and not agribusiness.
The Advocate’s site features an AP story on the Iowa Senate’s debate on a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and it produced this fun little quote:
“It saddens me that Republicans have resorted to playing partisan politics with hot-button social issues rather than work to find common ground solutions to move this state forward,” said Senate Democratic Leader Michael Gronstal, of Council Bluffs. Senator David Miller, R-Fairfield, countered by saying Democrats are “stonewalling” debate on same-sex marriages.
I love it when homophobes use the word “Stonewall.” Really, it suits them. Either way, the article says that the Senate is deadlocked, and that if nothing happens now the issue won’t come up again until 2010. I’m not entirely sure why that is, but that sounds good to me. Maybe in 2010 we’ll have flying cars and everyone will be accepting of others’ differences! Maybe…
Well, this issue isn’t new (blogs have discussed it in the past, and Fallon mentioned it when he came to Grinnell last week), but the New York Times has an article today about the flaws in Iowa’s “can’t live within 2,000 feet of a school” law for sex offenders convicted of crimes involving children:
While some of the Iowa’s largest cities, like Des Moines, have become virtually off limits for those convicted of sex crimes involving children, the new rules have pushed many to live in groups away from their families, in places like the Ced-Rel, or the Red Carpet Inn in nearby Bouton, where nine offenders rent rooms.
Michele Costigan, whose driveway is right across Highway 30 from the Ced-Rel in this rural stretch just outside Cedar Rapids, said she had stopped leaving any of her four children at home alone, had told them to dial 911 if anyone they did not recognize pulled into the family driveway, and was considering moving.
“If the point of his law was to make us safer, we are not,” Ms. Costigan said.
Even more worrisome to law enforcement officials in Iowa, the restrictions appear to be leading some offenders to slip out of sight.
Of the more than 6,000 people on Iowa’s registry of sex offenders, 400 are now listed as “whereabouts unconfirmed” or living in “non-structure locations” (like tents, parking lots or rest areas). Last summer, the number was 140.
But a UPI piece (which I’m linking to through DailyIndia.com just because the fact that we get so much coverage in India is funny) has this to say:
… [S]tudies by the Colorado Department of Public Safety and the Minnesota Department of Corrections found no correlation between a predator and their living close to children.
“The bill gets sent down to my office and as I indicated I was going to sign whatever the Legislature passed,” Vilsack said from Hyderabad, India, during a telephone call with Iowa reporters.
In the interview he also explains that he’s not concerned about lawsuits from those who are hurt by the removal. Something tells me there might be a few anyway…
I don’t know why an Irish person would come to Iowa to celebrate St. Patrick’s day, but apparently it’s common for Irish people to go abroad on the holiday. (Maybe they think it’s funny to watch people like us pretend to be Irish for a day while we pinch each other?) Either way, a member of Irish Parliament addressed the Iowa Legislature this morning on behalf of what he estimates to be 50,000 illegal Irish immigrants in the United States, according to Radio Iowa:
“Experts estimate there are as many as 11 million people are living illegally in the U.S., and Finucane says the plight of those 50-thousand Irish citizens likely cannot be considered separately from the rest. “I do recognize you have problems in relation to immigrants because possibly cannot adopt an ala carte approach in treating the Irish exclusively no matter how much you respect what we have done for America in the past,” Finucane says.
But then it looks like he kind of does ask for special treatment. It isn’t obvious, but it’s a little suspicious, given the previous quote:
Finucane hails the “close links” between Ireland and America. “America was kind to Ireland in difficult times with immigration in the 18th century, with immigration in the 19th century and with immigration in the 20th century,” Finucane says. There are now about 100-thousand U.S. citizens living in Ireland and Finucane describes Ireland’s immigration policy as an “open door.”
