Republicans Love Pat Toomey! Kind of. Maybe.

Kind of a funny story in Politico today about Pat Toomey, the presumptive GOP nominee for Arlen Specter’s Senate seat next year. Alex Isenstadt reports that Republicans used to be pretty tepid about backing Toomey — because what chance did he have, really? Now, however, their enthusiasm has skyrocketed to lukewarm levels — because what choice do they have, really?

Today, however, the party is gradually falling in line behind his bid, setting aside reservations about his electability and getting accustomed to the idea of the former Club for Growth president as the GOP Senate nominee.

It’s something of a shotgun marriage, but it’s an idea that the party is growing increasingly comfortable with.

“I haven’t heard that anybody else is running,” said Bob Asher, the influential Pennsylvania Republican National Committeeman who chaired John McCain’s presidential campaign in the state. “I fully expect to support the endorsed Republican candidate, and I fully expect that to be former Congressman Pat Toomey.”

That’s a stirring endorsement, isn’t it? But here’s a question: If Pennsylvania Republicans hate Arlen Specter so much he had to jump ship, but they’re only meh about Toomey, who the heck would they love to see as their nominee? Or are they hope-wishing for a Club for Growth-type candidate who is also electable in a general election? Sorry, GOP, I don’t see that one happening.

Even Dick Cheney thinks the Bush Administration was wildly misguided in Iraq

OK, I’m being cute. But Cheney has emerged yet again to criticize the Obama Administration:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday said he is concerned about U.S. forces withdrawing from Iraqi cities within 24 hours.

Mr. Cheney told The Washington Times’ “America’s Morning News” radio show that he is a strong believer in Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and that the general is doing what needs to be done.

“But what he says concerns me: That there is still a continuing problem. One might speculate that insurgents are waiting as soon as they get an opportunity to launch more attacks.

“I hope Iraqis can deal with it. At some point they have to stand on their own. But I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point.”

Which might be understandable criticism except for this: It was the Bush Administration that signed the Status of Forces Agreement that mandated the removal of U.S. forces from Iraqi cities by June 30. This is not some wild peacenik move the Obama Administration is making. This is actually honoring the commitments made by the Bush Administration itself.

The New York Times censors the news

I tried to work up a good rant last week about how the New York Times had kept the kidnapping of reporter David Rohde under wraps — with the collusion of other major media — but I couldn’t quite get up the right passion for the project. Sure, if a public figure from any other walk of life had disappeared into the hands of the Taliban, the Times probably would’ve reported the news. So it was certainly hypocritical. But sometimes hypocrisy happens when lives are on the line. I didn’t agree with their decision, but I did understand it.

Then I read this this morning and got mad:

A dozen times, user-editors posted word of the kidnapping on Wikipedia’s page on Mr. Rohde, only to have it erased. Several times the page was frozen, preventing further editing — a convoluted game of cat-and-mouse that clearly angered the people who were trying to spread the information of the kidnapping.

Even so, details of his capture cropped up time and again, however briefly, showing how difficult it is to keep anything off the Internet — even a sentence or two about a person who is not especially famous.

The sanitizing was a team effort, led by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, along with Wikipedia administrators and people at The Times. In an interview, Mr. Wales said that Wikipedia’s cooperation was not a given.

“We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,” he said. “I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.”

I’m not the biggest Wikipedia fan in the world. When I use it, it’s a starting point for my research on a given topic, not the ending. (Going to the source links is very helpful.) But this is frankly outrageous.

It’s one thing for the Times to choose not to report the disappearance of Rhode. It’s understandable that media outlets would go along. But when the Times devotes a team of reporters to actively censoring truthful and accurate information on the Internet because it’s inconvenient — and using the fact that major media outlets had not reported the true news as a way to undermine Wikipedia’s credibility — that’s about as far as a news organization can get from fulfilling its First Amendment mission.

And it pisses me off. The Times is a very good, often great newspaper. But when it reveals the secrets of government and does so because those secrets are newsworthy, it’s going to have a real credibility problem from now on.  The Times news reporters and editors are clearly willing to go to great length to keep the secrets they choose to keep.

Obama to give a nice speech about Stonewall

Daily Beast:

The White House will commemorate the Stonewall riots for the first time on Monday, but is it too little too late? Some gay-rights groups are boycotting the ceremony because, as GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios (who is attending) puts it in Monday’s Washington Post, “as President Obama, he has presided over an administration that has stumbled—sometimes symbolically, sometimes substantially—in its commitment to include us on the agenda.”

Unless the president announces plans to repeal — or at least neuter — Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, I’m not all that interested in what he has to say today. Republicans during the campaign often criticized the president for being all talk, no substance; I’m not really willing to concede the point, because that’s what politicians do. But on gay rights, certainly, the president is going to have to do more than say nice words about events 40 years to earn back my trust. He’s going to have to do something, and he’s even going to have to risk becoming unpopular because of it.

Arlen Specter really is acting like a Democrat now!

Sure, it’s pandering. But I’ll take it:

Sen. Arlen Specter told a boisterous crowd of union activists today that he backs a public health insurance option as part of the health care overhaul Congress is debating.

“I know you are very interested in the public component and I think Senator Schumer has the right idea about having a public component,” Specter said at a rally held at the Capitol City Brewery near Union Station.

The shift — Specter opposed a public option only months ago — comes as Specter faces a potential primary opponent next spring in U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak and as a new poll shows his favorability rating at a 17-year low.

The public option, as it happens, is the subject of my Scripps Howard column this week with Ben Boychuk. My take:

Competition is good, right? The fiercest defenders of the free market — mostly the same people who oppose health care reform — endlessly sing the praises of competition and its benefits for consumers. Well, that’s what a “public option” health plan would do: Provide competition for the bloated and costly health insurance bureaucracy that leaves many Americans without any coverage.

A government-run insurance plan would have advantages over its private competition. There would be lower administrative costs, no profit pressures and a ton of leverage to negotiate lower costs from health care providers. Not only would that lower the cost of health care to more affordable levels for the government’s customers, private insurers might follow suit and provide cheaper service for their customers — a ripple effect that would benefit everybody who pays for health care.

Sure, there are dangers. The government might be so stingy with its payments that some hospitals would be forced out of business. The government might be too good a competitor and drive private insurers into bankruptcy. Or a public option plan might end up with only the very sick and very oldest Americans — the most expensive customers — that private insurers would like to drop from their balance sheets. That wouldn’t be so great for taxpayers who would end up footing the bill.

So there’s no guarantee a public option would be a cure-all for the health system. But a public plan is an excellent way to leave private insurers in place — no socialism here — while still extending insurance to the millions of Americans who currently cannot afford proper care. That’s the reason our health system needs reform. Until the Republicans — or the free market — come up with something better, a public option appears to be the best way forward.

Ben, on the other hand, sees only doom ahead.

Steven Wells’ contrarianism wasn’t just an act

My colleague Steven Wells has passed away. I won’t presume to write a heartfelt eulogy for him, because I didn’t know him that long, but I can say I will honestly miss him. And I can say that his acerbic and contrary nature wasn’t an act he played out on the pages of Philly Weekly, NME and elsewhere — what you saw on the page was really Steven.

We talked politics a lot, when we talked. He hated that I had Republican and conservative friends, saw it as a betrayal of the anti-torture, anti-imperialism and anti-warmongering feelings we both shared — but that he was so much louder and better at expressing. More than a few times we had a political conversation in which he would get the last word, a few days later, by submitting a column that (as an aside) would describe how people who held my views were, essentially, twats. (Steven was a fierce feminist, from what I could tell, but still somehow not averse to vaginally based put-downs. I think that as he marinated in his own brand of punk Englishness, he really didn’t see the contradiction.)

That’s Steven.

And this was Steven. Shortly after I arrived at PW, an editor here sent down a directive that we really shouldn’t use the word “fuck” in our copy anymore. I duly relayed the directive to Steven. This was his next column:

F-bomb you, liberal media, you f-bombing p-bombs. And while we’re at it, what’s with all this f-bombing?

F-bomb me but this is an f-bombing strange f-bombing country. (Or should that be c-bombry?) You flood the planet with gruesomely graphic hard-core pornography–and then p-bomb yourselves in terror every time someone uses, well, the f-bomb.

Earlier this year the language-loving comedian George Carlin died. And he died in vain. All over the liberal media his fans rushed to exalt his greatest monologue in which he ranted wittily about the absurdity of banning certain words.

And in every single broadcast not one of those words was spoken.

There is a puritan death grip on English as it spoken and written in America. In Australia and Britain politicians, priests and pop stars regularly f-through-z-bomb the living f-bomb out of each other. In the U.S. D-bomb Cheney drops an f-bomb in the Senate and the entire country runs around with its skirt over its head, shrieking girlishly. Sheesh, guys, it’s not like he flashed a nipple for 9/16ths of a second during the Super Bowl. Calm the f-bomb down.

Like I said: That was Steven. Tell him he couldn’t or shouldn’t do something and he’d race to do it with a righteously angry (and hilarious) glee. I can honestly say I’ve never known another writer like him. And I will miss him greatly.

The Wall Street Journal apparently thinks NOT torturing is illegal

Here’s the opening of their editorial:

Here’s a political thought experiment: Imagine that terrorists stage an attack on U.S. soil in the next four years. In the recriminations afterward, Administration officials are sued by families of the victims for having advised in legal memos that Guantanamo be closed and that interrogations of al Qaeda detainees be limited.

Should those officials be personally liable for the advice they gave President Obama?

Cute.

For the “thought experiment” to really work, though, NOT torturing terror suspects would have to be illegal under domestic and international law, as well as treaties the United States had signed long before the attack. In order to honor all those laws, the United States would be compelled to torture possible terrorists.

Oh. Wait. That’s kind of ridiculous, isn’t it?

Reading the rest of the editorial, and it’s clear the Wall Street Journal doesn’t get it. The editorial board apparently thinks that torture opponents are motivated by politics instead of principle and, oh yeah, the clear intent of the law against torture.

New tape proves again that Nixon was Nixonian

In the NYT, new tapes reveal Richard Nixon’s ambivalence about abortion. Still, there were some times when he thought it appropriate:

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”

Swell guy, that Nixon.

What do Republicans want?

Joan Walsh in Salon, about continuing GOP criticisms that President Obama hasn’t spoken more forcefully against the vote-stealing and violence by the Iranian government:

Sen. John McCain in particular should be ashamed of himself; he really knows better. The callow Eric Cantor may in fact not know better; he’s a camera hog and an opportunist. The Republicans calling Obama “weak” and “passive” have no formula for an effective U.S. reply to the protests. We have no diplomatic relationship with Iran, so we can’t call home our ambassador and staff there. On “Hardball” today, GOP Rep. Mike Coffman said Obama should be demanding a “recount,” as though Iran’s Guardian Council would listen. Even the recount the council completed, which showed that in 50 cities there were irregularities — more people voted than live there — only led the Council to reaffirm the election’s validity.

As it happened, I saw this piece just as Barack Obama began his press conference with another statement criticizing Iran’s leaders:

First, I’d like to say a few words about the situation in Iran. The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days. I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost.

Seems clear enough, right? Wrong. A conservative friend of mine Tweeted an angry response:

“appalled,” “outraged.” … “Islamic Republic of Iran.” Way to confirm that the mullahs, not the people, run that country, Obama

At some point, I don’t know if Republicans are genuinely outraged about what’s going on Iran or if they’re using any issue they can as a cudgel against the president. It’s hard not to suspect the latter.

So if Obama says he’s angry, Republicans wail and gnash their teeth that he’s not angrier. If he were to beat Ayatollah Khameni senseless with his bare hands, the GOP would complain he didn’t use a baseball bat. If he said the sky is blue, Republicans would be outraged he didn’t sufficiently express his love of the color blue. Or something.

This is politics, and that’s the way it goes, I suppose. But it makes it hard for an observer to know when the GOP and its minions are offering substantive criticisms of Obama, and when they’re just making noise.

Crazy question of the day: Why is Hawaii a U.S. state?

I mean no disrespect to my fellow citizens in Hawaii. It just seems to me a historical oddity that one part of our nation is so far from the rest of our nation. Alaska has this same problem, but at least it’s on the same continent as the rest of the 48 states.

Anyway, I bring it up because of this story in the New York Times:

Now the Obama administration says North Korea could launch a ballistic missile in the state’s direction — possibly around the Fourth of July, according to the Japanese news media — prompting the United States military to strengthen defenses here.

Vulnerability, and a certain fatalism about it, are part of the fabric of life in this archipelago, 2,500 miles from the mainland and, as many residents seem to have memorized since the Obama administration raised the alarm last week, 4,500 miles from North Korea.

Don’t get me wrong: Even if Hawaii wasn’t a U.S. state, I imagine that America would have military bases there — as it long has — in order to project the country’s power deep into the Pacific and into Asia. And given that, it’s right and proper that Hawaiians thus have a say in their nation’s governance instead of being a mere colony of the U.S. It’s still kind of weird, though.