Nothing focuses the mind of an elected representative like the prospect of their vacations being cut short, and Congress has been busy in the days leading up to the Christmas holiday. The big news today:
- “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is being repealed. DADT was the ugly political compromise that allowed gay and lesbian soldiers to serve in the military, as long as they stayed in the closet. It was opposed by the military, most Americans, and even most members of Congress. Repeal was only difficult because of the bizarre filibuster rule that allows 40% of the U.S. Senate to gang together to block legislation they oppose on the basis of fundamental principles, such as the principle that homosexuals should be discriminated against. Oh, and the energetic opposition of Crazy John McCain, who was a longtime opponent of DADT until he decided it was politically expedient to switch sides. (“There will be high-fives all over the liberal bastions of America,” he said, taking the nonpartisan high road.) The legislative strategy for repeal is a hard-won victory for Obama, who could have overturned the policy by executive order, but argued that passing a law would yield a much more solid and lasting result.
- The DREAM Act has failed. Again, not because it couldn’t get a majority, but because it couldn’t muster the votes to overcome a filibuster. (A handful of Democrats joined with the Republicans on this one.) In this case, the principled objection was to a bill that allowed non-citizens who were brought to this country illegally as children (when they were younger than 16) to attain citizenship if they graduated from high school and either completely two years of college or joined the military. Obviously we wouldn’t want people like that in our country.
Sorry to be snarky, truly. I much prefer having polite discussions about honest disagreements. But these aren’t examples of that; opposition to these measures arises from combinations of craven political posturing and straightforward bigotry. Nothing principled about it; just politicians preying on people’s fears. And I honestly believe that we have a more healthy political dialogue by admitting that outright, rather than pretending that opposition to bills like this is in any way honorable.
DADT repeal is a big deal. Congratulations to all the servicemen and -women who no longer have to live a lie (at least not because of official government policy; informal discrimination is harder to eradicate). High fives all over!
I hate whining about the filibuster. Ours is a two party system. If we had three or more parties, even a simple majority would require a coalition. The filibuster is a minority party’s last opportunity to block abuses by an easily achieved simple majority vote. And it exhausts large amounts of political capital to obstruct business in the Senate. If the people didn’t like it, Republicans wouldn’t have GAINED seats this cycle.
Rather than sniping at Republicans for filibustering. Ask yourself why a party with 59 votes has such a hard time breaking a filibuster?
@Brian:
the public doesn’t care one way or another about a filibuster. Polling bears this out. And yes, the Democrats have no party disicipline, and the Republicans have a ton of party disicpline. There is no Democratic equivalent to the Club For Growth, and groups like EMILY’s list and NARAL will just endorse all incumbents, even some Republicans.
So yes, right-wing Republicans dominate the Republican party, while very, very moderate Democrats hold all the leadership positions in the Democratic party (could you even imagine a pro-choice Republican heading the Republican Senate coalition? Harry Reid is pro-life).
And as an aside, yes, it is shocking that not one Republican was willing to vote on the nationalization of the policy that was the centerpiece of Mitt Romney’s run for the Republican Nomination. Kinda strange, really.
The US has been the technological, scientific, economic and military preeminent nation of the past 100 years due to its ability to absorb wave after wave of immigrants (each of the waves started as ‘illegal’ in one way or another). People that come to the U. S. from abroad tend to be the hardest working and the most entrepenurial of their original countries–it takes a lot for someone to leave their families and cultures for a more secure economic condition. After a couple of generations, these immigrants integrate fully and contribute to society significantly. The U. S. rejects the DREAM ACT at their peril.
Think about the following: what is the percentage of graduate students in the top universities who are American citizens? I am a faculty at one of them and we find it increasingly difficult to attract American students who are as qualified as our international applicants.
The beneficiaries of the DREAM ACT are essentially high achievers (not only of Hispanic origin) that will enlarge the potential pool of recruits into our engineering and science programs.
To Engineering Dad:
‘1. Hispanic’ is not an ethnic group (go and see people from Latin America and you will see all kinds of ethnicities represented within the ‘Hispanic’ population)
2. Differences between ehtnic groups have to be controlled for socioeconomic background. Population geneticists have already discarded ethnic background as the DOMINANT factor for academic performance or intelligence metric (look at the continuous upward trend in average I. Q. over the years).
3. There is no such thing as a pure ethnic group.
4. About PISA scores:
It turns out that the U. S. (whites, blacks, hispanics included) scores rather badly (bottom half, third and fifth in reading, math and science) when compared to other oecd countries. Are American whites intrinsically (i. e. genetically) inferior to Fins or Koreans?
Yes, Mexico places last in all of the rankings but Mexico has suffered from significant social inequalities for most of its history (I am originally from Mexico). In Mexico, asking a child to do well in school when he/she is only thinking on whether he/she will eat that day is a bit unrealistic. Now, we have only to blame ourselves as a country for our failure to improve our condition but our ethnicity does not have anything to do with our problems. Afterall, we are perhaps the most ethnically-mixed country in Latin America.
Ask yourself why a party with 59 votes has such a hard time breaking a filibuster?
snarky response: It could be because it only takes one Kyl, Corker, DeMint, Cornyn, etc. to hold up all legislation, and the supermajority rule is not a filibuster (technically and practically). But that wasn’t your point, was it?
@ 25 The AstroDyke: Cool story! 🙂
But I’m not clear on the moral. Does that mean that DADT is good? Or that you’re glad you didn’t have to deal with it?
Edit: Just to clarify, I’m not being sarcastic. I’m glad you’re happy with the path you took.
On the intertubes, sometimes we tend to assume sarcasm. And I’m certainly guilty of authoring multi-paragraph sarcastic screeds myself.
Representative democracy is based on the principle that, for things which must be decided, the majority decides, exceptions being for stuff like changing the constitution when a 2/3 majority or whatever might be required. But the filibuster rule allows the opposition to up the required majority to 60% on any issue. This, together with the two-party system, puts the US way behind most non-dictatorial countries. Ask a typical citizen on the street in the States, though, and he’ll say that no country in the world is more democratic than the good old U S of A.
This is really as clear-cut as, say, homeopathy being bogus. It would be nice to have the sceptical community in the States be a bit more forthcoming regarding basic political shortcomings (not the issues themselves). It’s not just a “matter of opinion”, just like it’s not a matter of opinion whether homeopathy works or GRT is correct. After all, what point is there in convincing the majority when this majority can’t even pass a law?
@28 RA said, “After a couple of generations, these immigrants integrate fully and contribute to society significantly.”
But you should have added, “… with the glaring exception of Mexican Americans.”
Telles and Ortiz, two Mexican American UCLA sociologists have performed an impressive multi-generational study of Mexican-American assimilation.
They write:
“Despite sixty years of political and legal battles to improve the education of Mexican Americans, they continue to have the lowest average education levels and the highest high school dropout rates among major ethnic and racial groups in the United States. …
Telles and Ortiz statistical models show that the low education levels of Mexican Americans have impeded most other types of assimilation, thus reinforcing a range of ethnic boundaries between them and white Americans.”
Telles and Ortiz report, the third and fourth generations of Mexican Americans do not continue to close the gap relative to non-Hispanic whites: “In education, which best determines life chances in the United States, assimilation is interrupted by the second generation and stagnates thereafter.”
It is awfully convenient to be able to label anyone who disagrees with you a bigot.
THE FACTS ( which I had previously thought scientists relied upon ) are poor enforcement and even prosecution of local enforcement of immigration laws. The federal government is not trying to find a solution to the problems that illegal immigration is causing, they are seeking to benefit from those problems.
To call people looking for substance in their solutions bigot is the highest form intellectual slight of mind and political masturbation. Your ‘side’ is lucky the press are nothing but willing voyeurs for this type of spectacle. But in case you haven’t noticed, as Carl Sagan once said: ” The old appeals to racial sexual religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work.”
I for one thank Sean for calling a bigot a bigot.
Repeal is a big deal. And today it’s official. Obama and the Democratic Congress, for all their faults, deserve the gratitude of the Progressive base for it. Well done.
Bradley Manning in soul destroying remand will be so glad to hear this. Does it still stand to reason that homosexuals are weak and untrustworthy ? or could he possibly have thought that it was wrong – wrong wrong – to conduct warfare in a cruel and debasing way.
Sean: “Sorry to be snarky, truly. I much prefer having polite discussions about honest disagreements…”
BS.
You don’t afford the same “polite” considerations to non-liberals, Independents, conservatives, or Republicans.
’34. Anon’ doesn’t know a bigot even with a mirror.
Funny how that works.