Phony Patriotism

The boorish chortling of conservatives over Chicago's loss of the Olympics in 2016 may end up hurting the Republican Party more than ... say, the last eight years hurt them.

Celebrating an American defeat -- reveling in it -- is not only un-American, in the most basic meaning of that term, but just GROSS, in the medical meaning of that term.

Once again, Republicans seem so bankrupt, so morally uncentered, they're quite content to follow Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and little Billy Crystal off the cliff in the interests of personal animus.

Their laughter and applause at an American loss may echo down the halls of history a lot louder than their pious, empty posturing on "patriotism."

Is There Water in Those High Clouds?

At last, signs that the "public option" is far from dead and that President Obama is beginning to work behind the scenes to match his leverage to his election race rhetoric.

Jane Hamsher, however, remains skeptical.

Access to Public Information

We chuckled last week when we came on the story of a local blogger in Portsmouth, Oh., getting cussed out royally by the city's mayor for requesting access to public documents. The mayor wrote an e-mail to the blogger:

If there is anything else that I can do for you, which is required by law, don't hesitate to call my office. If it isn't required by law then don't bother asking, because I think that you're a worthless piece of s**t and I wouldn't p**s on you if you were on fire (my opinion). You're a poor, lonely, jealous, old man with aspirations of being a writer. You write your lies and uneducated opinions on people and issues from behind the safety of your slobber stained keyboard with the hope that somebody will read them that doesn't know you and believe that you're more than the pitiful, broke-down, lizard-looking thing that you are, in my opinion. Get a life old man. On second thought, don't bother..............

Apparently, it felt good to get that off his chest, though the mayor also coughed up the requested documents.

The recent local case of stone-walling public access to governmental documents, as recounted in Deborah Greene's letter to the editor in Friday's Watauga Democrat (scroll down to "Open records should not be expensive") is not as colorful in its language but is in some ways more egregious than the Portsmouth case.

It's one thing if a rattled superintendent of schools came up with those road blocks on the fly. It would be far more troubling if he did so on the advice of School Board counsel.

Oh, Shut Up

Ex-Senate Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist, safely out of office so that he can prevaricate at will about what he would have done, told Karen Tumulty of Time magazine that he would vote for the Democratic health-care reform bill (whatever that ultimately turns out to be): "As leader, I would take heat for it .... That's what leadership is all about."

If you can suppress your gag reflex long enough, recall that this is the same senator who confidently diagnosed Terri Schiavo's condition from hundreds of miles away and led the U.S. Senate on a midnight charge to interfer in a private family's decision, all in the interests of "right-to-life" politics.

If Bill Frist were still in the U.S. Senate, he would be talking daily to the microphones about "Obama's socialized medicine," ululating like a Swiss goat-herder yodeling in the Alps.

City of Concord, A-Feared of Chickens

We just heard about this nonsensical piece of September news. The city of Concord, NC, petitioned by a group of residents who are advocates for "eating locally," refused to amend city ordinances to allow a homeowner to keep up to six laying hens in her backyard for fresh eggs.

The Concord Chicken Club had proposed very strick rules to placate nervous city officials: no breeding of chickens, no chickens raised for meat, no crowing roosters.

The request went first to the Concord Planning and Zoning Commission, which bwak-bwak-bwaked for an hour, split pretty much down the middle, but voted narrowly against allowing laying hens: "The commission expressed concerns about the appearance and structural integrity of the henhouse, permitting enforcement and waste management." A tremendous case, it appears to us, of getting a non-existent piece of grit caught in their craw.

The issue then went to the Concord City Council, which split 2-3 against Henny Penny and her sisters. Only one person spoke against chickens at the public hearing, stating that they "would decrease the quality of life in Concord." One of the three-person majority on the City Council who decided to continue the ban on hens said he didn't think they were best "for the city as a whole."

"This is not just an issue of chickens. The planning and zoning commission gave us a negative recommendation," he said. "It's up to us to say what is best for the 80,000 citizens of Concord."

Beware of homegrown food is now the official doctrine of the Concord City Council. Reminds us of the NC Senate: There will be no wind-generated energy on mountain ridges.

The only (chicken) bone we have to pick with the Concord Chicken Club is the "no roosters allowed" provision in their proposal. What's a sunrise for, if not to give a boastful Rhode Island Red mister-man his opportunity to challenge the sun?

Cary Allred, the GOP Gift Who Keeps on Giving

It's one thing for the likes of me to call Republicans self-righteous hypocrites. It's far more effective for a Republican legislator (make that a "former" Republican legislator) to point out the obvious, even though he did it out of pure self-interest.

But, really, who better to know the inner workings of self-righteous hypocrisy?

Harry Reid Blows Hot

Noted frail reed Sen. Harry Reid, our least favorite Democratic Senate Majority Leader since the last Democratic Senate Majority Leader, put it on the record yesterday that there will be a public option in the final health insurance reform bill that goes to the president's desk.

Reid will be on the reconciliation committee, to meld House and Senate versions of reform. That much is a cinch. So he would be in a position to deliver on that promise. Not that we believe him in the first place, and not that we have any actual hope that the reconciled bill will contain any public option that isn't (a) "triggered" (something Congressional Democrats can later renege on, which they are so good at) or (b) so weak and watered down as to be meaningless (something else Congressional Democrats have shown past talents at accomplishing).

Jane Hamsher's take on the back-stage maneuvering is, once again, invaluable.

Meet the Fockers II

To recap: the five Democrats who voted against the Jay Rock public option amendment to the Baucus health reform bill in the Senate Finance Committee: Max Baucus of Montana, Tom Carper of Delaware, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and Bill Nelson of Florida.

What's the insurance market like in those five senators' states?

NORTH DAKOTA -- 89% controlled by Noridian/Blue Cross Blue Shield North Dakota

ARKANSAS -- 75% controlled by Blue Cross Blue Shield Arkansas

MONTANA -- 75% controlled by Blue Cross Blue Shield Montana

DELAWARE -- 42% controlled by CareFirst/Blue Cross Blue Shield

FLORIDA -- 30% controlled by Blue Cross Blue Shield Florida

NOTE: The U.S. Department of Justice defines a "highly concentrated" market as one where a company controls at least 42% of the market share.

An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics found that those Senate Democrats who opposed the public option amendments got more cash from insurers than those who supported it:

* The Democrats who voted against the Rockefeller amendment have collected $97,472 more on average from insurance companies since 1989 than the Democrats who voted for it -- $325,424 compared to $227,952.

Hat-tip: Chris Kromm & Sue Sturgis of Facing South

[Sigh]

We mentioned a week or so ago that there is no federal shield law for journalists. We were reviewing a movie at the time, a fictional work about a journalist who goes to jail rather than reveal a confidential source that spilled the identity of a CIA spy.

The non-fiction truth of the matter is that since 2001 at least 19 journalists have been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors for information about confidential sources, and four have been imprisoned for refusing to comply, including Judith Miller of the NYTimes who was involved in the outing of Valerie Plame. Prosecutors have also threatened to put two San Francisco Chronicle reporters in jail for reporting leaked grand jury information about steroid use by professional athletes.

Following the Plame affair, legislation began moving in Congress to shield reporters from giving up confidential sources. Former President George W. Bush, that great expander of executive power, naturally opposed the bill, but a strong version has already passed the House and its twin is now pending in the U.S. Senate, introduced by senators Chuck Schumer and Arlen Specter.

Enter the Obama White House, which has sent word to the senators that "it opposes legislation that could protect reporters from being imprisoned if they refuse to disclose confidential sources who leak material about national security." The big problem with that "national security" classification is who gets to decide what it is. Under the expansive definitions of the Bush White House and its g.d. U.S.A. Patriot Act, "national security" can be almost anything. And who's to say when an administration is simply lying about what they're labeling off-limits? Abu Ghraib, anyone?

Instead of breaking with the Bush past, the Obama White House seems content to let the secrecy ride. Boo.

If the American Taliban wants to attack our president on something meaningful, how about this, instead of stoopid stuff like his lobbying for the 2016 Olympics or the complete lie that some religious/civic group is actually praying to Obama rather than to God.

'Course, if the Right Wing did protest the current White House's stance on extending the secrecy prerogatives of The Littlest Bush, we'd probably be forced to point out, once again, their utter hypocrisy.