Political Landscape: July 2009 Archives

Here the Senate Judiciary Committee voices its votes for Sonia Sotomayor. The "ayes" range from matter-of-fact to joyful, while the "nays" strike me as just a little bit derisive -- at least among those who could trouble themselves to be present for the vote.

Human rights advocate and Russian journalist Natalia Estemirova was murdered almost two weeks ago under mysterious circumstances. Her fearless criticism of the prosecution of the Chechnyan wars is believed to have something to do with her disappearance and tragic death. Fellow human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who had spent the last days of their respective earthly existences critically examining the the Kremlin and its policy toward Chechnya, both died under similarly mysterious circumstances. Coincidence? From The Economist:

It was the kind of scene she had described many times. On July 15th at 8.30am, as she left her flat in Grozny, Natalia Estemirova was forced into a white Lada. She shouted that she was being kidnapped, but those who heard were too scared to report it. By the time her colleagues had found out, she was dead, murdered by three bullets in her chest and a control shot in the head.

There was a mark from a man's hand on her shoulder, where she was grabbed, and a bruise on her face, where she had been hit. Her wrists bore the marks of bindings. Ramzan Kadyrov, the authoritarian Chechen president, considered her an enemy. And she died as one. She documented hundreds of similar cases in Chechnya, supplying witness statements and photographs, forcing prosecutors to investigate and the media to write about kidnappings, torture and killings, often conducted by people in official uniforms. Much of what the world knew about Chechnya came from her and her colleagues at Memorial, a heroic group which started by documenting Stalinist crimes but continued to trace their modern-day consequences, especially in the Caucasus.

Her murder made few headlines in Russia, which has long been deaf to her findings or deaths such as hers.

We will not be silent. It seems sadly inevitable in retrospect that against the repugnant thuggishness of the Chechnyan wars the earnest call for humanitarianism by Ms. Estemirova and people like her would be met, continually, with gunfire, then -- even more resoundingly -- with silence. Has the West lost its will to stand up to Russia on a non-essential issue like a breakaway republic in the face of nuclear proliferation? Chechnya is clearly not as sexy as "Jon & Kate Plus 8." But it is by the courage of her convictions and the purity of her ideals, however, that we remember Natalia Estemirova as a committed journalist and advocate for human rights. Estemirova was 51 and leaves behind a 15-year-old daughter. May she rest in peace.

Happy Birthday American feminists! Our movement is 161 years old this week and what did our leaders get us? The Equal Rights Amendment! Is this regifting at its highest form? Alice Paul wrote the ERA in 1923, almost 100 years ago. It passed the Congress in the 1970s and fell three states short of ratification in the 1980s (thanks in part to my home state of Illinois. Grrr...)

New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney has reintroduced the Equal Rights Amendment with a good number of co-sponsors. With the Congress in the hands of Democrats, it very well may pass. But as my partner in punditry, PunditMom says, can it pass the states?

My question is do we need this ERA or a revised one? The classic ERA is simple, plain and easy to explain to people. [PDF link] But it also seems to have many flaws including using the word "sex" instead of "gender" and thus perhaps leaving out the LGBT community.

So while organizations and Congress people gathered to hail the introduction earlier this week, I have to ask why?

I'm no Ainsley Hayes, but I do take the criticisms of the classic ERA to heart. If we are going to put in a lot of money, sweat and tears to pass an ERA, it had better cover all women and our issues. I'll be waiting to hear from my lawyer friends on the pros and cons of this move and what it means if we do get it passed.

Paul Kagame [PDF], Rwanda's pro-business President, is in the midst of a political renaissance. Fifteen years after the Rwandan genocide, the tiny African nation had 11.2% growth last year, up from 6% in 2007. And Rwanda -- along with Botswana and Ghana -- is often mentioned as a superlative examples of African success. Curiously, Kagame embraces Dambisa Moyo's increasingly influential thesis that Africa no longer needs aid (he is influenced, to be sure, by the West's ambivalence at that sanguinary genocide). Emmy nominated Fareed Zakaria asks hard questions of President Kagame this week on CNN's GPS.

This morning, during the confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor, Senator John Cornyn asked if judges were permitted to change the law.

I listened to her answer carefully.

Sotomayor hedged her response, knowing that her political opponents were waiting to pounce on any misstep. Senator John Cornyn appeared to be asking a heavier question -- would you, as a judge, change the law? His implication was clear: judges should not be in the business of "activism" because the law is the law.

But as a citizen, I would certainly hope that the Supreme Court doesn't hold all laws as sacred.

As Dr. King once said, "An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law."

Mahatma Gandhi noted, "An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so."

Unfortunately, the law is created by humans, who occasionally create unjust laws. Here in the United States, there were laws segregating the races, laws prohibiting women from owning property, and laws against certain sexual acts between consenting adults.

These laws were wrong because they denied rights to citizens of this nation for no reason. People in power were allowed to manipulate the law to reflect their own prejudices. And at times, the court has ruled to uphold these prejudices. We can now see that was wrong. Rulings like Plessy v. Ferguson, where the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation was fine as long as the facilities were "separate but equal" were eventually revisited and struck down as unconstitutional. (The Plessy decision was overturned by the landmark Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka which stated "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.")

While Sotomayor is playing a delicate political game during her confirmation hearings, I would hope she understands and believes that allowing unjust laws to stand, simply because they are laws, is a foolish proposition.

If your political conversations are anything like mine, you've probably had a discussion at one time or another about Hilary Clinton, and how she hasn't been in the press much. Perhaps you've even discussed how Barack Obama seems to be doing everyone else's job in addition his own -- cutting ribbons, improving foreign relations, and of course, giving a great many speeches on behalf of virtually every member of his cabinet.

Indeed, according to a CNN poll, 55% of Americans believe he's trying to do too much.

On Monday, Tina Brown wrote on her site, The Daily Beast, that President Obama had confined Clinton to a kind of "wifehood of the Saudi variety" and that it is "time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa."

Cool your jets, Tina. According to Politico, that will change on Wednesday, when Ms. Clinton will give a thorough speech to the Council on Foreign Relations detailing what she has done in the past six months, and also what she intends to do for the next three years.

I highly doubt that Clinton's speech is a reaction to Ms. Brown's blog -- it was just a coincidence. But the fact that I, too, wondered as recently as last weekend just where in the world Hilary Clinton was makes the speech seem spookily well-timed.

[Image: Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama]

Last week one women threw Illinois politics for a spin —Lisa Madigan.

The current Illinois Attorney General was being recruited by the White House to run for the U.S. Senate (as they say, Barack Obama's seat) as well as considering a run to be the Governor. In the end, she decided to run for re-election.

As a Monday morning political pundit, I have to say that I think she made the right choice. She never seemed to have given any hint that she wanted anything to do with the U.S. Senate -- Illinois is where she wants to leave her mark. When former Governor Blagojevich was first under fire for allegedly trying to sell the Senate seat, Madigan's name was tossed around. She made it fairly clear that she didn't want to be the next senator from Illinois. And for some reason that I can't put my finger on, I believe her. Despite her father, I think she's a fairly honest politician.

As for governor... I think she's been gunning for this position for many years. But given the almost anemic powers of any governor, even the Governator seems strapped with kryptonite, has in the country and the horrible economic times, why would anyone with a bright political future want to trade up at this time?

But what is getting a lot of play in the media is Madigan's use of "family" in her decision:

"I made a decision about what was best for my family and what I ultimately thought was best for the state at this point,'' she said.

She said her role as mother to two young daughters "factored in" to her decision to run for re-election, though she wouldn't say it was the deciding factor.

"We have two wonderful little daughters and I want to be around to see them," she said.

Irrepressible media personality Ivy Supersonic -- nee Ivy Silberstein -- crashed the Bernie Madoff verdict by sneaking in through a side stairway. I don't condone that act (which is illegal), but she felt strongly about the pain Madoff caused to so many people and wanted to be there to see his face as the verdict was read, consequences be damned. Ivy, for the record, has a heart as big as her impulsiveness. She also happened to tape the incident -- also illegal -- before her recording device was confiscated. The whole sordid story is recounted here on my blog. Here's an excerpt from her text message on how the recording device was found out:

At 11am I was famished and weak I nodded out for a brief second from exaction hunger and boredom while madoff lawyer spoke he Was unconvincing and dull..is the word droll?? I would think there would b a pitbull in the room not roosters Ladybodycourtguard said "shut off ur phone." I am mechanical boob I couldn't shut off ...

That's where her cell -- originally gifted to Robin Quivers of the Howard Stern show -- was confiscated. District Judge Denny Chin issued a summons on the spot. In the court documents Judge Chin wrote: "The FPS shall make a copy of the recording before the recording is deleted from Ms. Silberstein's device, and the FPS shall retain the recording in the event Ms. Silberstein wants to assert any rights thereto, in which case further proceedings will be required." Ivy texted me a couple of days ago saying that she was strongly considering mounting a legal challenge for the tape, adding, "If I was (Judge Chin) I'd release it to the entire world." You can't keep a good woman down.

[Image: BusinessWeek]

The Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, Robert S. McNamara, died early Monday morning at the age of 93. McNamara was one of several promising men whom President Kennedy plucked from the private sector at the beginning of his time in office to help run the country. The idea was to populate the White House with the best and the brightest in the United States, figuring that brilliance could only steer the country in a more positive direction.

He was right and he was wrong. As Errol Morris's phenomenal, Oscar-winning 2003 documentary about McNamara, The Fog of War, shows, brilliance can also produce a remarkable ability to rationalize and defend terrible choices. The documentary provides a chilling insight into McNamara's psyche, at once razor-sharp, ambivalent and charming. He can say he was wrong in one sentence, only to counter the claim with a thoroughly convincing reason for why it was still the right decision in the next.

In this clip, McNamara discusses his reasons for going to war with the North Vietnamese from a 40-year vantage point, as well as his 1995 meeting with the former foreign minister of Vietnam, who accused McNamara of having "never read a history book."

Apparently for some, it's for the honor of meeting First Lady Michelle Obama:

San Francisco Supervisor Sophie Maxwell and other African American leaders in the Bayview are not at all happy about how this week's visit by first lady Michelle Obama was handled.

"One look at the picture on the front of The Chronicle says it all," Maxwell said. "The people in the neighborhood had to climb fences to even get a look at what was going on.

"The people I have talked with felt very disengaged and somewhat offended," Maxwell said.

But hold up!

Not so, said Jackie Williams a longtime Bayview gardening and youth program activist who worked at the event.

Williams, who learned only Sunday that Obama was coming, said the call went out weeks ago for volunteers to help with the playground construction. That's when she signed up.

"They knew about it, honey," Williams said. "They just didn't know the president's wife was going to be the there."

Thanks to Michelle Obama Watch for the low-down on how volunteering can lead to sharing tools with FLOTUS and being too busy to help out can lead to a big case of the grumbles. They even have some amazing photos from the event too!

Now everyone should be on high alert! You never know where FLOTUS will show up next. The food bank? The playground? Beach clean-up? And if she doesn't show up, try to have solace in the fact that you helped your community out.

Has Facebook jumped the shark? Most people I know use Facebook dramatically less than they did a year ago. I haven't been on in about a week. But if I am off Twitter for more than a day I suffer acute Tweet withdrawal. Is Facebook going the way of MySpace?

When the Iranian protests exploded it was Twitter's moment. Yes, there were Facebook accounts registering protest. But the 140-character nature of Tweets was the perfect medium for protesters to place busts of information, for watchers to post notes of solidarity and for serious link love. It didn't help that cable news inexplicably took the weekend off, delivering canned programming as Tehran burned. Clearly Twitter is at the zenith of its influence, but does that entail that Facebook is in decline? P.S. You can follow us at @awearnessblog.