Then came social issues and ‘morality’…
The Tea Party’s November victories and the ensuing Republican drive for spending cuts are in large part the result of a political strategy that focuses tightly on fiscal and economic matters, while minimizing rhetoric on moral questions and social topics. But for how much longer can Republicans keep a lid on the culture war?
The 2012 presidential race, though lacking in declared GOP candidates, may be about to pry open a Pandora’s box bearing the name of social issues that have long divided Republican and independent ranks. And such an occurrence could work against the interests of fiscal conservatives, just as the GOP girds itself for a showdown with Democrats over spending cuts and the debt ceiling later this spring.
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, one of those Republicans who are running for president without actually running for president, tells NBC’s Today show that social conservatism is what built America and made it strong.
And if a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows 65 percent of GOP primary voters preferring candidates who focus more on the economy and the deficit, and less on social issues? ”I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time,” he replies.
Even the battle of the budget shows signs of becoming a Republican morality fight.
Here’s Santorum speaking to social conservatives in Iowa: “…if what we’re doing to the next generation of America, this entitlement attitude, if that is not a moral issue, I don’t know what is…”
And Newt Gingrich: “…balancing the budget is an essentially moral, not economic question…”
U.S. illegal immigrant tally drops by 1 million on poor economy
The number of illegal immigrants living and working in the shadows in the United States dropped to 10.8 million in January last year, from a high of 11.8 million two years earlier, as the U.S. economy faltered, according to a U.S. government report.
The study by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which was released earlier this month, found that the “number of unauthorized residents declined by 1.0 million between 2007 and 2009, coincident with the U.S. economic downturn.”
The report, which drew on DHS and Census Bureau figures, found that unauthorized immigrants from Mexico accounted for 6.7 million of the total, followed by 530,000 migrants from El Salvador, 480,000 from Guatemala and 320,000 from Honduras.
Illegal immigration is a divisive issue in the United States, where Hispanics are also the largest legal immigrant group and are an increasingly weighty voting bloc.
President Barack Obama, who was backed overwhelmingly by Hispanics in his election in 2008, supports an overhaul of immigration laws that would legalize millions of undocumented immigrants in good standing, while cracking down on employers who hire undocumented workers as well as hardening the porous border with Mexico.
Congressional Democrats introduced a bill seeking comprehensive reform late last year, although analysts say a crowded agenda and a struggling economy may sink hopes for an overhaul in 2010. Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush tried and failed to get reforms passed.
Why would anyone believe a US government report….they lie to us every day!
The complicated question of Haiti’s orphans
The devastation caused by Haiti’s earthquake has extended to some of its youngest and most powerless victims: orphans awaiting clearance to join adoptive families in the United States.
The U.S. government has already said it will allow orphaned children from Haiti to come to the United States temporarily for needed medical treatment, and on Wednesday expanded its effort.
Now three departments — State, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services — say they’ll join together to deal with what is a complicated question, according to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
“It is something that needs to be handled very carefully, because there are many issues involved in terms of making sure that … children that come to us are indeed orphans, until all the search and rescue is done, or other families are located,” Napolitano told a Senate hearing.
She was responding to a direct plea for help from Senator Jon Tester of Montana. Tester said five of his constituents “have completed all the paperwork to get the children from Haiti … and yet, they’re being held up.”
“I need to get a commitment from you that the Citizenship and Immigration Service, an agency within your department, will work with my office to help expedite our ability to get those kids out,” Tester asked Napolitano. She immediately agreed, and then described a complex situation.
She said the problem of Haitian orphans was tragic and was likely to grow as the days pass and the number of casualties rises. But beyond that, she said, there are questions about whether adoptive parents in the United States are legally qualified for adoption. Napolitano added that many children brought to the United States need to be immediately put in the care of the federal health department and checked before they can be moved.
News fora are overflowing with people who are simply giddy at the prospect of snagging the latest cultural fashion accessory.
Obama admits security “screw up,” but some wonder who’ll pay
President Barack Obama may have hoped to limit the political fallout from last month’s attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner by admitting there was a “screw up.” Will firings follow? Some think Obama’s unusually sharp rhetoric raises the odds that heads will roll.
One such observer is U.S. Rep. Peter King, an influential New York Republican. “If the situation is as bad as the president says it was, as far as so many dots not being connected, so many obvious mistakes being made … I would think once the president set that stage, that to show that he’s serious, someone will have to go now,” King told ABC’s Good Morning America.
But the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee says he can’t tell which official should pay because the Obama administration hasn’t let Congress know who did (or didn’t) do what, when.
“There are so many moving parts here,” King said. “The president has not disclosed anything.”
According to King, that means the ax could fall on anybody at the top of the U.S. national security leadership: the secretary of homeland security; the directors of national intelligence, CIA, NSA, NCTC; or various White House advisers.
Whatever happens on the firing front, Obama won’t see the real political fallout until November when the congressional elections decide who controls Congress in 2011 and 2012 — a period that runs straight through the next presidential election.
Republicans are already using the attempted bombing to make voters think the president and Democrats are soft on security.
The First Draft: Will U.S. Ban Air Passengers with Swine Flu?
The answer is a resolute ‘no.’
Instead, the Obama administration hopes to combat infection aboard U.S. flights by encouraging hand-washing in the air. Dealing with sick passengers will be left to individual airlines, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in an interview with NBC’s “Today” show.
“They have that question with other people who show up and look like they’re sick and had it even before the swine flu was spoken about,” Napolitano said.
“What we’ve been meeting with the airlines about is making sure that hand-washing is easily accessible and that those kinds of things are available on planes for travelers.”
H1N1 infection is expected to balloon in the Northern Hemisphere as cooler weather sets in this autumn, raising the danger of major disruptions for businesses and governments as large numbers of workers call in sick.
That alone could pose national security problems, given that the U.S. government won’t have vaccines available until after infection begins to take hold.
Worst-case predictions suggest that between 30,000 and 90,000 people could die from the swine flu in the United States while up to 1.8 million flu patients could crowd U.S. hospital wards.
I noticed a new article today about the Airline employees being most likely to infect the public. In the article it talked about how most likely low paid employees like the outsourced cleaning staff will be the highest threat because they cant afford to take sick time. At Some of the major airlines it will be the flight attendants for sure. The airline I work for has sick time for their flight attendants, but although most work 110 hrs to 120hrs a month, the company only pays 83 hrs max if you call in sick. Very few flight attendants I know will be staying home if they feel a little under the weather. Swine flu or not in this economy no one is going to voluntarily take a 30-40% pay cut if at all possible. I’ve seen some very sick flight attendants show up and go to work even though they have hundreds of hours of sick bank, because if they do call in sick, the company will just not pay them for the time and they wont be able to tap into their sick bank. If they are deathly ill of coarse nobody is going to go to work, but they might have worked many trips infecting the public before they get that sick. I’m positive that it’s much more likely that a sick flight attendant is going to be a big threat this year with the Swine flu just getting ready to hit us this year.
The First Draft: mixing politics and national security?
Mixing politics with national security? Maybe under Obama, but not under Bush. Well, not exactly.
That summarizes Tom Ridge in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Former President George W. Bush’s first homeland security secretary took on the Obama administration’s controversial review of Bush-era interrogations and his own published worries about politics and the threat of terrorism.
Ridge was asked what he made of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s public assault against the decision by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to name a special prosecutor to look deeper into harsh Bush-era interrogations of captured terrorism suspects including accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times.
“I think he’s right, pure and simple,” Ridge told ABC.
In fact, the former Republican governor of Pennsylvania suggested the Justice Department investigation should itself be outlawed.
“To go back and investigate — criminally investigate — what these men were asked to do believing at the time that they were empowered to do it and it was consistent with the law, I think it’s wrong. It’s chilling and it’s inappropriate,” he said.
“To suggest four or five years later that what they did was criminal, I think that’s criminal,” Ridge said.
Ridge says he was pushed to raise terror alert before election
The nation’s first Homeland Security secretary is airing some dirty laundry from the Bush administration: He says he was pushed to raise the terror alert level on the eve of the 2004 presidential election.
The level was never raised but Tom Ridge reveals how threats of terrorism were used to influence voters in his upcoming book ”The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege … and How We Can Be Safe Again”.
According to the promotion material released by the book’s publisher, Ridge said the DHS was pressured to connect homeland security to the international “war on terror”. He also said he effectively thwarted a plan to raise the alert level before the 2004 election, which Bush won.
Several other Bush administration officials disagree with Ridge’s characterization. Former Homeland Security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend called it “way off base”. She said there was a debate about raising the alert level at that time but politics were never discussed at that meeting.
Politico quotes former White House chief of staff Andy Card saying the Bush administration was very disciplined in its efforts to make sure politics did not influence national security decisions.
So were politics involved? What do you think?
eric h ,the impression that i have, when it comes to full disclosure,the democrats just want to cherry pick what should be disclosed. Cheney has not tried to object to any files only that the total story is revealed including the ones that justified their successes. The latest witch hunt, will cover material that has already been involved in a full investigation on a none partisan basis.Not good enough for the democrats they what to use some one who is sympathetic to them. What happened to the case against the armed black panthers stopping people being able to vote? something else you want to over look?
The First Draft: Green shoots and budget talk
After the Obama team’s big announcement on health care and an even bigger deficit, now comes the hard part — actually sitting down and figuring out how much it’s going to cost, and how to make it cost less. President Barack Obama’s first public appearance today is a round-table discussion with business leaders on cutting employer health care costs.
Later, behind closed doors at the White House, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden meet with Commanding General Raymond Odierno, the head of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill. Then the president meets with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, one day after Gates replaced the top U.S. Afghanistan commander.
In congressional action, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano faces questions about her department’s 2010 budget from both sides of Capitol Hill. Lisa Jackson, who heads the Environmental Protection Agency, also faces budget questioning from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Despite talk of early signs of economic recovery, a U.S. Federal Reserve official sounded a note of caution. Things are better than they were, but the crisis isn’t over yet, Atlanta Federal Reserve President Dennis Lockhart said: “I believe that conditions are now calmer but it is too soon to breathe easy.”
As if to confirm this, the U.S. trade gap widened in March for the first time in seven months — but not as much as some analysts had feared. So though the news isn’t good, it isn’t as bad as it could be.
Perhaps this counts as one of those “green shoots” of economic recovery we keep hearing about? You tell us: is this a sign the economy is turning?
Photo credit: REUTERS/Jim Young (President Obama in the White House Rose Garden, April 28, 2009)
Red team, blue team? Bush, Obama officials hold security drill
Officials from the Bush and Obama administrations crossed paths at the White House Tuesday to participate in a homeland security exercise.
The scary hypothetical scenario was how the federal government should respond to a terrorist attack using improvised explosive devices on the transportation infrastructure and other economic targets in major U.S. cities.
They also looked at responses to other disasters like pandemic flu and hurricanes during briefings, including time spent in the White House basement “Situation Room” where national security crises are handled.
“As Republicans and Democrats, we disagree on a lot of policy issues, but we agree completely that we want this new team to be as successful as they possibly can be, especially in the areas of national and homeland security,” Josh Bolten, Bush’s chief of staff , said before the exercise began. “And this morning’s activities, I think, will be an important contributor to that. ”
Both sides were definitely playing nice.
“I’ve now been over with Josh one way or another four separate times. I’m going miss you,” Rahm Emanuel, who will be Obama’s chief of staff, said standing next to Bolten before reporters at the White House.
Reporters were assured that the security drill did not involve any kind of competition between the Bush and Obama teams.
This is worrying because they tested the 9/11 situations before September 11th.
Is a new “terrorist” (inside job) attack being planned?
If you listen to Republicans, you’ll hear plenty of proud boasts about how their priorities reflect the will of the American electorate.
And if you listen to the American electorate, you’ll hear something else entirely.