I mean it. Please discuss. I’m pretty blue about this, so I may say things I’d regret later on — say in September/October 2008. But maybe that’s the problem. Meanwhile: Military Commissions Act; Iraq supplemental; now this. In or out: Dems cave — White House applauds. Like I say, please discuss, in whatever tone you like.

Some pertinent links:

• “Protect America Act of 2007” (.PDF file) — submitted and passed in 4 days
• Helpful FISA Posts — Marty Lederman (”Balkinization”)
• House roll call: 227-183 (41 Democrats voted “Aye”)
• Senate roll call: 60-28 (15 Democrats voted “Aye”)

• The Party of Fear, the Party Without A Spine, and the National Surveillance State — Jack Balkin (”Balkinization”)
  
• There is something fundamentally wrong here– Kagro X (”Daily Kos”)
• Stop Me if You Think That You’ve Heard This One Before — IOZ (”Who is IOZ?”)
• Yearly KOS, the Anti-War Movement, and the Cooptation of the Netroots — Big Tent Democrat (”TalkLeft”)
• My Two Cents: FISA Myths Continue After New Senate Bill Passes — KathyInBlacksburg (”Raising Kaine”)
• Statements by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) on their “Aye” votes. Feinstein:
  

  “I spoke with Admiral Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, at length this evening. He believes the United States is vulnerable, and that we need to move quickly to change the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

  The intelligence community is deeply concerned that chatter among suspected terrorist networks is up. I am concerned as well. We are living in a period of heightened vulnerability, and must give the intelligence community the tools they need to protect America.

  This legislation is a temporary fix. It is not permanent and it expires in six months. It immediately addresses critical gaps in our intelligence-collection efforts – while preserving a role for FISA court review.

  I voted for both bills because one needed 60 votes to pass. It is vital that we act now. We cannot leave the nation unprotected in this post-9/11 period.”

• Urine stain removal tips
• Statement by Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) on his “Aye” vote
• Nell Lancaster’s rebuttals (1, 2) at “Raising Kaine”

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NOTE: image by Jason Zanon ( “Democracy in Action”). Via Jonathan Schwarz (”A Tiny Revolution”)
UPDATE, 8/7: Lots of very worthwhile discussion! See also posts by discussants about this, including ones by eRobin, altHippo , and the Talking Dog on their blogs, as well as one from last week by Nell Lancaster (nice title — “Profiles in learned helplessness”). See also recent posts by commenter Mick Arran suggesting it’s not cowardice or miscalculation — (some) Democrats want those authoritarian powers for themselves, and are willing to buck contrary election results (where Dems prevailed “despite” voting for civil liberties) to get them. The hypothesis can’t be dismissed out of hand — please re-review the diagram above. Arran’s latter post reanalyzes facts and arguments presented in a couple of posts by Glenn Greenwald — Democrats’ responsibility for Bush Radicalism, and Attention Democrats: GOP fear mongering does not work. Unless you’re in Congress, that is. Elsewhere, fellow Marylander Stephanie Dray is disappointed with Senator Mikulski — “she didn’t have to vote this way.”

The weekend closes with me still processing a couple of articles reporting on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statements on Tuesday about impeachment. As first reported by the Nation’s Ari Berman:

“The question of impeachment is something that would divide the country,” Pelosi said this morning during a wide-ranging discussion in the ornate Speaker’s office.* Her top priorities are ending the war in Iraq, expanding health care, creating jobs and preserving the environment. “I know what our success can be on those issues. I don’t know what our success can be on impeaching the president.” Democratic Party leaders do not have the votes to pass an impeachment resolution. And Democrats could be judged harshly for partisan gridlock, just as the American people turned on Congressional Republicans in the 90s for pursuing the impeachment of President Clinton

Writing for the Washington Post, Harold Meyerson reports:

Pelosi understands the gravity of the damage that the administration has done to the Constitution and why that has impelled some of her colleagues to advocate impeachment. “If I were not the speaker and I were not in Congress,” she said, very quietly, as she concluded her answer, “I would probably be advocating for impeachment.” But the consequences she foresees from stopping the nation’s business for an unwinnable fight outweighs those considerations.

Berman:

She is greatly disturbed by the lawlessness of this Administration and its contempt for checks and balances. “I take an oath to defend and protect the Constitution, so it is a top priority for me and my colleagues to uphold that.” She notes the vigorous oversight hearings held by committee chairman like John Conyers and Henry Waxman.

But Pelosi sees impeaching Gonzales and his superiors as a distraction from the ambitious agenda she has crafted for the House. … “If I can just hold my caucus together,” she says, “I can take them to this progressive place.”

Pelosi’s remarks can be confirmed in the transcript of Pelosi’s remarks and the embedded recording to the upper right*; little about the questions posed or the broader context of Pelosi’s remarks changes what is, at least to my mind, a very strange message. To recap:

1. Pelosi acknowledges she has taken “an oath to defend and protect the Constitution, so it is…
2. …a top priority” for her and her colleagues to uphold that.
3. But because she “doesn’t know what her success on impeachment could be” and because…
4. “the question of impeachment would divide the country” she opposes impeachment even though…
5. …if she were not the Speaker and in Congress she’d probably be advocating for impeachment herself. Meanwhile…
6. …if she can just hold her caucus together she can lead us to “this progressive place.”

In response, I suppose I think

Dear Nancy,

1. I’m glad you acknowledge the oath you took, but…
2. …that oath makes defending the Constitution more than “a priority,” it makes it an inescapable responsibility…
3. …whether or not you know you can succeed, and…
4. …whether or not it would “divide the country.” Here’s a late breaking news flash: everything divides the country. Impeachment is a chance for you to stick up for your side of the debate and do what’s right, all at the same time.
5. But until then, please don’t ever say again that you’d advocate impeachment as a private citizen. You utterly devalue and demean that goal so many of us are working for by saying it’s suddenly out of the question and off the table once you’re in power. You can’t have this cake and eat it, too.
6. Finally, wherever this “progressive place” that you’re talking about is located, if it’s a place where you let the Constitution burn in order to (probably not even) pass an SCHIP bill into law, I think it’s frankly a stupid place to want to be.**

There’s no doubt that Pelosi and other leadership Democrats feel they face a stark choice in the days and weeks and months ahead; do they sacrifice their principles, or do they sacrifice their policy goals?

Let me suggest that things are really simpler than that. It’s clear that Democrats will not achieve more than a very small fraction of their policy goals anyway. The Senate Republicans have gotten away with making everything require a supermajority of 60 votes to pass, and what little gets past that hurdle faces a Bush veto — even if the bill is about insuring uninsured children.

In truth, just like Sophie in the book, Nancy doesn’t really have much of a choice — but it seems a good deal clearer which choice she should make. Given her apparent lack of power in pushing her domestic and Iraq policy agendas, she is a private citizen to all intents and purposes — but one with an oath to uphold and an office to do it from.

If it were me, I’d try to save the Constitution. That is, I’d try to save it for at least a little while, before this president or one down the road finishes it off altogether — no doubt with this Speaker or another one wringing her hands and saying to defend it would divide the country.

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* Available via the “Maria Leavey Breakfast Series” in memory of Maria Leavey.
** And Harold Meyerson is a git for using one of the few soapboxes permitted to liberals and progressives to repeatedly insist otherwise.

Actually, I don’t even have one. And if I did, I hereby officially assume he wouldn’t want to kick it.

But I do know Mr. Berman is the director of the Center for Union Facts (CUF).* And CUF ran a full page ad yesterday in the Washington Post with the screaming headline “Why Do Union Bosses Want To Eliminate Secret Ballot Votes?,” so turnabout seemed fair play — unions don’t want any such thing either.**

While the Employee Free Choice Act did envision a “public petition process“, the bill did not rule out secret ballot votes — it simply added an option promising less stress and fear about supporting union representation. If anyone is guilty of “coercion and intimidation,” it’s unionbusting companies like Wal-Mart and Smithfield, who don’t hesitate to threaten workplace closures or bring in immigration raids to undermine pro-union workforces. Studies indicate workers feel less coerced by co-workers under the so-called “card check” or “majority signup” process than under the secret ballot one.

As I wrote in June, imagine if your mayor could credibly threaten you with shutting down the city if his opponent were elected. Imagine if he could make you come to a meeting — just with him, not his opponent — where he told you that. That’s the kind of “election” workers are routinely faced with in this country.

The ad seems strangely timed at first — corporations and their shills like CUF have won the battle of the Employee Free Choice Act, by virtue of a Republican minority blocking the 60 votes needed to cut off debate in the Senate. But maybe that’s just it — this was a popular bill. There may be a lot of Senators squirming at the thought of defending their quiet assassination of a bill giving working people a fighting chance at union representation. Enter CUF with a lavish media deception campaign, to try to take the pressure off.

It’s also telling that the ad specifically targets the UFCW — one of the most active unions today, with a long-running dispute at Smithfield Tarheel meatpacking plant.*** But if the UFCW doubts there’d be a truly fair secret ballot election at that plant, they’re not alone — no less a group than Human Rights Watch needed a 185-page report to document all the abuses, including labor elections abuses, it found at that plant.

No doubt there are workers who oppose unionization for one reason or another, and the two people quoted in the ad may be among them. But as Nancy Pelosi said recently in a different context, data is not the plural of anecdotes. The card check mechanism of the “Employee Free Choice Act” was and is a good idea for workers who want a real chance at forming a union local — free of anti-union meetings on company time, free of threats of losing their job, free of threats of losing their workplace.

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* NOTE: “director of..” link leads to a fact sheet assembled by American Rights At Work. See also “Worth Reading” on this blog for more on CUF and a link to a very detailed post by Betsy Angert (”Be-Think”) about the organization.
** See, e.g., AFL-CIO’s Ten Key Facts about the Employee Free Choice Act: Workers can still vote under the Employee Free Choice Act. At any time, if 30 percent of the workers want an election, they can have one. And once they have a union, workers also vote to elect their union representatives.
*** I’ve followed the Smithfield Tarheel story on this web site since late 2006. I’m unfamiliar with the Arizona Basha’s grocery chain story — but even judging by CUF’s own blog, the Arizona quote on the ad seems misleading. The UFCW drew attention to substandard products allegedly sold at Basha’s — but there’s no evidence in articles they link to that workers were personally harassed or intimidated, as the ad implies, much less that anything of that sort was directed by the UFCW.

• What’s the Best Way for Everybody to be More Like Us? (eRobin, “Fact-esque”) — Anne Marie Slaughter has come in for repeated criticism of late, and some of it is deserved: her handwringing about partisanship, blog civility etc. But underneath that there’s a foundation of sensible idealism that I think still deserves to be acknowledged, and eRobin did after the first round of Slaughter critiques back in June:

  Anne Marie Slaughter took a beating from Tristero at Hullaballoo, David Reiff at TPM Cafe and, to a lesser extent, from Michael Lind at the Nation’s site. But if you watch this Charlie Rose interview of Slaughter, you’ll hear from an apparently reasonable woman who rejects the idea of American exceptionalism while acknowledging that American ideals are globally inspiring. It would be neat, she argues, if we actually lived up to them.

  At the time, I thought I’d try to do a real post about this; instead, this may have to do. Some quick thoughts: if it were purely a matter of accuracy, I’d revise eRobin’s title: “What’s the Best Way for Everybody Including Us to be More Like What Some of Us Sometimes Say We Want to Be Like?”

  Also — and this speaks more to the “dumbest thing ever written” — I’ve noticed discomfort with the actual process of disagreement and debate among other intellectuals of Slaughter’s caliber and temperament. (I remember calling David Ignatieff on it at a book reading at Politics & Prose once.) It may be an occupational hazard for people more used to academic conferences and blue ribbon panels than actual political free-for-alls out here in the world.

  To that extent (at least), Slaughter has undermined her own point, assuming eRobin’s right about the heart of it. Debate — even angry debate – perhaps especially angry debate — is central to the values system she professes to support. None of this is academic; no one should have to check their hearts and passions at the door before addressing the catastrophes of the Iraq war, torture, indefinite detentions, or the myriad other betrayals of our country and our ideals. If that’s what bipartisanship demands, bipartisanship be damned.

• Electric Light Still Struck Like Arrows (Katherine, “Obsidian Wings”) — A July 4th (well, 5th) essay:
  

  There was never a libretto, never a map, never any guarantees about this country. America will endure—until it doesn’t. America will be a light unto the nations, the last best, hope of mankind—until the light gutters, and dies, and mankind places its best hopes somewhere else. Forced to choose, America will live up to rather than abandon its creation myths—until it chooses the opposite. Maybe that day is coming. Maybe it’s already passed. Who knows? I don’t like prophesies of doom. It will only be clear in retrospect. In the meantime, we have no excuse for abdicating.

  If you’re like me, you’ll also be learning about a Russian socialist by the name of Alexander Herzen for the first time; sounds like a person worth knowing about.

• “A lordly throw” (Sally Jenkins, The Washington Post) — “The Real All Americans” is Sally Jenkins recently published book about Pop Warner, Jim Thorpe, and the groundbreaking Carlisle Indians team. In an excerpt published online. Jenkins describes what happened on the second play of the game between undefeated Carlisle and 4th ranked Pennsylvania, on October 26, 1907:
  

  There are three or four signal moments in the evolution of football, and this was one of them. Imagine the excitement of the crowd that day — and the confusion of the defenders — if all they had ever seen was a densely packed, scrumlike game. Suddenly, the center snapped the ball three yards deep to a man who was a powerful runner, a deadeye passer and a great kicker. The play must have felt like an electric charge.

  “It will be talked of often this year,” the Philadelphia North American said. “No such puny little pass as Penn makes, but a lordly throw, a hurl that went farther than many a kick.”

  It was the sporting equivalent of the Wright brothers taking off at Kitty Hawk. And it utterly baffled the Quakers. From that moment on, the Indians threw all over the field.

  I admire Sally Jenkins, who is generally (but not always) on the sports beat at the Washington Post, and I’m glad she tells this story. I do sometimes wonder about the effect. Does learning about a Jackie Robinson or a Jim Thorpe prevailing against the odds do more to foster a mistaken sense that we’re done now, problems solved — or remind us we never were perfect, and still aren’t?

• Social Realist (Roy Edroso, “alicublog”) — Edroso reviews Michael Moore’s “Sicko.” Edroso has a gift for inserting important observations in his posts, and this may be one of his most important (emphasis added):
  

  But there aren’t a lot of “gotcha” ambush moments. Instead, halfway through the film Moore seems to abandon the litany of despair to go to other countries where we meet people who are well-served by their systems, because their governments acknowledge that health care is a human right. And hearing their stories, and especially observing their lives outside the hospitals and clinics, we come to realize that health care is only part of the difference. What’s remarkable (and sometimes infuriating) about these subjects’ attitudes is that they take their superior care for granted. They expect more from their governments than we do — and, the film implies, that’s why they have it and we don’t.

  Skeptics of the American national security state have been vindicated by events in Iraq, and are right to assail the deterioration of our own commitment to honor human rights and fundamental liberties. But to the extent they simply contribute to a “government as enemy” narrative (to use the fancy word), they undermine their own position, too, by ignoring what people know.

  What people know is that there are public things we need — a modern health care system, safe food and drugs, a clean environment, a world without melting ice caps — that the free market won’t provide for all of us, because there’s (initially) no one with a vested interest in doing so. We must expect more of our government — the reflection of ourselves as a country and a people, rather than as a market or as a fleet of aircraft carriers — or we won’t get those things. People aren’t babies — we pay our bills, we know there will be a bill, and that bill is called “taxes.” All we want is to be paying for much less stuff that doesn’t benefit us, and much more stuff that does.