Proposals

November 20th, 2008

We’ve got the makings of a powerhouse going on in the Obama cabinet selections — high rollers, insiders, powerful people who know where the bodies are buried. Once again we ponder Obama’s skill at controlling what has been uncontrollable; clearly, it is to his benefit to get the movers and shakers on line — working for him, not against him. Progressives are guarded in their enthusiasm

I think there’s something we should factor into our worries; sufferers of Bushian PTSD, we think those who are high-powered will go off to do their own thing, as the Bushy appointments did. But Obama is not Bush, delegating and forgetting who, what or where … he will send his generals out to promote HIS agenda, not their own. And I have no doubt he will micro-manage their progress.

It’s a cheat that we all think he’s surrounding himself with experienced players because the GOP, the press, the pundits say he’s inexperienced; HA! Don’t bet your boots.

The selection of Daschle for HHS is canny plus; it’s going to be a huge coup to get any health care reform through Congress. Daschel knows the ins and outs, the back doors and trap doors. If anyone can do it, he can.

Emanuel will keep the gates good and tight; his recent warning to Wall Street shows how powerful his voice will be. I doubt that he’ll go off the Bama reservation with his own agenda.

Eric Holder has been proposed as AG and Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security [and PU-LEEEEEZ can't we change that name, now that the brown-shirts are running out the back door??]

Hillary for State is already bringing in so many problems, I’m sure Bama is perplexed with the possibilities; there has been enough hesitation from Hil’s camp to allow that to fall through without serious ramifications. I have a hunch it may; but accept or not, it was a brilliant offer that poured soothing oil over any lingering campaign wounds.

In other news, DO listen to this snip of farewell speech from convicted and “unelected” Ted Stevens, longest serving GOP Senator — defiant to the end, but … if you listen carefully you can hear the end of a political paradigm, the old way of doing things and pretended pride in them. Poignant … historial. Worth taking a moment to wave goodbye.

Congressionally speaking, there’s a lot of shifting going around; Mitch McConnell, GOP minority leader, is refusing to play nice with DEM speaker, Harry Reid. The old way is his way … I guess the Pubs are going to learn this the hard way; they’ve always struggled with this ‘reality thing.’ Also, happy news about our friend Henry Waxman, last piece.

Review the proposed, below. Progress — it’s here.

Jude

Why Would Obama Proffer State Gig to Clinton?
Says Steven Clemons: ‘She Will Deliver Palestinian State, Gold-Plated’
Jason Horowitz, New York Observer
November 18, 2008

This article was published in the November 24, 2008, edition of The New York Observer.

Hillary Clinton.

Why, if you’re Barack Obama, would you choose Hillary Clinton to be your secretary of state?

Yes, since it was first reported last week that the two had met to discuss the possibility, there has been no shortage of theories in the press: He wants her out of the Senate and into a pliant administration post; he’s paying her back for conceding graciously and then campaigning for him; he wants to score points with women voters.

But if you ask some of the most prominent members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, the consensus about her appeal as a potential secretary of state is much simpler: She’ll deliver.

“She is tough,” said Will Marshall, president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, a Democratic think tank that advocates a muscular foreign policy.

“Lingering doubts about Democratic resolve on national security questions are put to rest with Hillary in the job. She has a demonstrable quotient of backbone.”

More dovish experts are also excited about the prospect of Secretary Clinton, albeit for slightly different reasons.

“Her top, top, top advisers told me, ‘Steve, she will animate things in the Middle East—she will deliver a Palestinian state. Gold-plated,’” said Steven Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington. Mr. Clemons also noted the irony that Mrs. Clinton potentially would be tasked with preparing the road for the direct negotiations with antagonistic foreign leaders that she excoriated Mr. Obama over during the primary. “She criticized him so much for going to meet foreign leaders without preconditions; now she is the one who is going to have to go and get all the preconditions sorted out.”

The idea, essentially, is that Mrs. Clinton, by virtue of her worldview and independent public profile, would be able to expand the purview of the office and become an unusually powerful surrogate for Mr. Obama’s foreign policy ideas.

“He’s got to concentrate the first couple of years on the economy, and he needs a very high-profile secretary of state to handle the stuff abroad,” said Les Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

If her rhetoric on the campaign trail this year was anything to go by, her strong views about the rest of the world would almost certainly precede her. (Obviously exaggerated claims about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia and bringing peace to Northern Ireland notwithstanding.)

On the Middle East, for example, she criticized the Bush administration for allowing peace negotiations to falter. On Iran, though, she excoriated Mr. Obama as “naïve” for declaring that he would meet unconditionally with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And on the administration’s dealings with Russia, she said, “This is the president that looked in the soul of Putin, and I could have told him, he was a K.G.B. agent. By definition, he doesn’t have a soul.”

“I think she combines new security and old security, by which I mean she is not afraid of the use of force, and she understands great-power politics and will be plenty prepared to be tough where necessary, either on nonstate issues or on states like Russia if need be,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and an often-mentioned candidate for secretary of state during the primaries. “But at the same time, she really gets the transnational issues. I think she is much less about democracy per se than she is about human rights. In that sense she was influenced by the Clinton Global Initiative.

“The promise of her being secretary of state,” added Ms. Slaughter, “would be to unite those two worlds.”

Or as Representative Pete King, a Republican hawk, admiringly put it: “She is from the very realistic wing of the Democratic Party. I don’t think she is going to have any delusions about trusting her enemies.”

The question now is whether it will actually happen and, if a firm offer was made, whether Mrs. Clinton would give up her unassailable hold on a U.S. Senate seat to take the post.

Certainly, to the extent that she still aspires to the presidency, secretary of state hasn’t exactly been a good way to get there for a while. (The last secretary of state to be elected president was James Buchanan.)

At press time, things were still in the air.

A source familiar with Mrs. Clinton’s thinking said that Mr. Obama did indeed offer the job to her and that she was weighing the decision with her husband, who returned home on Nov. 17 from a speaking engagement in Kuwait. But, the source said, reports that she had decided to accept the position were premature and wrong. (The Obama transition would not comment as to whether any position was or was not offered. Mrs. Clinton’s referred questions, once again, to the Obama transition team.)

According to the Democratic source with knowledge of the Clinton’s thinking, the Obama transition team and Clinton team were, as of the afternoon of Nov. 18, still “working through” the parameters of Bill Clinton’s charitable activities to check for real or perceived conflicts of interest, and that the process was going “smoothly.”

“She is still weighing it,” said another source, a close associate of Hillary Clinton, who added that the sticking point of the negotiations was not Mr. Clinton’s willingness to be vetted, which the source said had been overblown in importance, but rather “a question of whether she wants to give up her Senate seat.”

The associate said that at this point, there was some concern among Clinton’s supporters that all the talk about the job has forced her hand, because declining it would create suspicion about her husband’s finances. But “that is no reason to take the job,” the associate said.

One Obama foreign policy adviser on the transition team, who is not involved in the negotiations, said on background: “Obviously, she has tremendous skills and it would be up to Senator Obama to make that decision in the end on how he feels comfortable with integrating her in. I’m totally confident that he is going to be able to manage his team to get done what he thinks needs to be accomplished.”

Ms. Slaughter said that if Mrs. Clinton did end up becoming secretary of state, it would be only natural that Mr. Clinton give up some of his activities.

“He’s going to operate within more constraints,” she said. “They will find a solution, but there is no question he will be less free to do the kinds of things ex-presidents can do in terms of boards and speeches and businesses deals. It’s a fair exchange.”

For Mr. King, who, though a Republican, is fond of telling people about his good personal relationship with the Clintons, it would make sense for the former first lady to move back into the executive branch.

“From where is she is sitting right now, it looks like Obama is going to be there for at least the next four years, maybe the next eight,” he said. “He is going to be the dominant force in the political scene for the next eight years. She in the Senate is not the chair of any committee or any major subcommittee. She will be less of a political force in a day-to-day sense, but she will be much more of a national force in an international sense. I think she is making the decision to go for history. Also waking up in the morning as secretary of state in the world in which we live is more exciting than being the junior senator from New York.”

Ms. Slaughter said that plucking a secretary of state from among the ranks of elected officials was a tradition that went back almost to the founding of the republic.

“But honestly,” said Ms. Slaughter, “if ever there were a time to do it, that time is now.” ++

Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security Secretary?
Huffington Post
November 19, 2008

CNN is reporting Wednesday night that Obama has chosen Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano to become secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

President-elect Barack Obama’s top choice for secretary of homeland security is Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, multiple Democratic sources close to the transition told CNN on condition of anonymity.

One source said he believed the final decision depends on the vetting of the Democratic governor, much like the selection of Eric Holder for attorney general.

Politico has more details on the Napolitano pick:

Napolitano (na-pawl-i-TAW-noh) brings law-and-order experience from her stint as the Grand Canyon State’s first female attorney general. One of the nation’s most prominent female elected officials, she made frequent appearances on behalf of Barack Obama during the campaign. She was re-elected to a second four-year term in 2006.

Transition insiders have long expected she would be offered a Cabinet slot, although she had also been mentioned for other posts, including attorney general.

++

Tom Daschle: Health And Human Services Secretary?
The Huffington Post
November 19, 2008

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has accepted President-elect Barack Obama’s offer to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, Democratic officials said Wednesday.

The appointment has not been announced, but these officials said the job is Daschle’s barring an unforeseen problem as Obama’s team reviews the background of the South Dakota Democrat. One area of review will include the lobbying connections of his wife, Linda Hall Daschle, who has done representation mostly on behalf of airline-related companies over the years. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorize to discuss the matter publicly.

Daschle was a close adviser to Obama throughout the former Illinois senator’s White House campaign. He recently wrote a book on his proposals to improve health care, and he is working with former Senate leaders on recommendations to improve the system.

Organizations seeking to expand health coverage were quick to praise the selection.

“Sen. Daschle has a deep commitment to securing high-quality, affordable health care for everyone in our nation,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA. “His new leadership position confirms that the incoming Obama administration has made health care reform a top and early priority for action in 2009.”

Obama also announced several transition working group leaders, including Daschle, who will oversee the health policy working group. They include former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol Browner on energy and environment and former Clinton White House adviser Jim Steinberg and Obama campaign senior foreign policy adviser Susan Rice on national security.
* * * * *

Health policy wonks and universal health care advocates celebrated the move. The American Prospect’s Ezra Klein called Daschle’s appointment “huge news, and the clearest evidence yet that Obama means to pursue comprehensive health reform.”

You don’t tap the former Senate Majority Leader to run your health care bureaucracy. That’s not his skill set. You tap him to get your health care plan through Congress. You tap him because he understands the parliamentary tricks and has a deep knowledge of the ideologies and incentives of the relevant players. You tap him because you understand that health care reform runs through the Senate. And he accepts because he has been assured that you mean to attempt health care reform.

Compare the choice of Daschle to Clinton’s decision to task Hillary Clinton and Ira Magaziner with health care reform. Neither Clinton nor Magaziner had any relevant experience in Washington, either with the health care bureaucracy or with the legislative branch. [...] The choice of Daschle suggests that the Obama team has learned those lessons well.

++

VIDEO: HHS Chief Daschle Says States Will Play Major Role In Health Care Reform
David Sirota, HuffPo
11/19/08

There’s been something of a debate about whether a universal health care system will come only from Washington, D.C., or whether it will involve state governments.

Now that Tom Daschle is slated to become the head of Barack Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services as well as the administration’s universal health care czar, I’d say we know where the new administration comes down: decidedly with those who say a health care solution must come from both the federal government AND the states. That’s the really big news about Daschle’s appointment.

Watch Daschle’s keynote speech at the Progressive States Network meeting just a few months ago - he’s very explicit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IefWxzy0Pdg

As the founder of the Progressive States Network, I’m obviously a fan of Daschle on health care - he’s ready to be a major leader on the issue, and PSN is ready to work with him. And I hope you go over to PSN’s website and sign up for the Stateside Dispatch, and if you can, make a donation.
http://www.progressivestates.org/

Though as a former Senate Majority Leader Daschle seems like a conventional cabinet pick, his deep understanding of the integral role that states must play sets him apart from much of the Washington-centric Establishment and makes him something of an out-of-the-box appointment - and that’s a good thing.

As I wrote in a column a while back, states are making a lot of progress on health care, and are uniquely situated to play a major role in national reform. Resisting the Beltway’s conceited urge to ignore states, and resisting our media culture’s affinity for single centralized silver-bullet solutions is going to be a major challenge for the Obama administration - but clearly, the Daschle pick shows the new White House is ready for that challenge.

This isn’t an either/or choice - it’s not either we do health care at the federal level or we do it at the state level, and it’s not either we do health care at the federal level, or we don’t do it at all. It is an “and” situation - we must work to expand health care at the federal level AND at the state level. Daschle gets that important truism. ++

Holder Seen as Obama Choice for Justice Post
ERIC LICHTBLAU and JOHN M. BRODER, New York Times
November 18, 2008

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has signaled to Eric H. Holder Jr., a senior official in the Justice Department in the Clinton administration, that he will be chosen as attorney general, but no final decision has been made, people involved in the process said Tuesday.

Eric H. Holder Jr., a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, was a legal adviser to the Obama campaign.

Mr. Holder would be the first African-American to serve as the nation’s top law enforcement official.

As a top adviser to Mr. Obama, he has long been considered the front-runner for the job of attorney general because of his extensive record as a prosecutor and a judge and a well-honed reputation inside Washington. Mr. Obama’s advisers appear to have overcome concerns that Mr. Holder’s involvement in a presidential pardon scandal as President Bill Clinton left office in 2001 might cloud his nomination for the job.

Word that Mr. Holder was likely to be nominated as attorney general leaked out as Mr. Obama also began settling on other members of his team and signaling his policy priorities upon taking office.

Mr. Obama is set to hire Peter R. Orszag, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, as the White House budget director, people involved in the transition said. They said the leading candidate at this point for another top post on the economic team, director of the National Economic Council, is Jacob Lew, who was Mr. Clinton’s budget director.

While Mr. Obama has yet to name any of his cabinet secretaries, his early choices for White House staff positions and the names currently at the top of the list for staff and cabinet jobs suggest that his administration could be heavily stocked with Democrats who served under Mr. Clinton. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, under consideration to be secretary of state, was said by an adviser to be torn about giving up her Senate seat.

In his only public appearance on Tuesday, Mr. Obama indicated that he intended to move rapidly on one of the most ambitious items on his agenda, tackling climate change. Speaking to a bipartisan group of governors by video, the president-elect said that despite the weakening economy, he had no intention of softening or delaying his ambitious goals for reducing emissions that cause the warming of the planet.

“Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all,” Mr. Obama said. “Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response.”

He repeated his campaign promise to reduce climate-altering carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2050 and invest $150 billion in new energy-saving technologies.

Some industry leaders and members of Congress have suggested that Mr. Obama’s climate proposal would impose too great a cost on an already-stressed economy — having the same effects as a tax on coal, oil and natural gas — and should await the end of the current downturn. A bill similar to Mr. Obama’s plan failed to clear the Senate this year, largely because of concerns about its impact on the economy.

Mr. Obama rejected that view, saying that his plan would reduce oil imports, create jobs in energy conservation and renewable sources of energy, and reverse the warming of the atmosphere.

“My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process,” he said.

Mr. Obama said that although he would not attend a meeting on climate change sponsored next month by the United Nations, he had asked members of Congress who would be attending to report back to him on what the United States could do to reassert leadership on global climate policy.

Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who has been a consistent skeptic on global warming science and legislation, said Tuesday that Mr. Obama might be getting out ahead of his own party on climate change. Mr. Inhofe noted that nearly a third of Senate Democrats had opposed the similar climate change bill that came to a vote this year.
“President-elect Obama will face an even tougher sell in the years ahead, with economic concerns remaining front and center,” Mr. Inhofe said.

In Washington, Michelle Obama and her two daughters, Malia and Sasha, visited the White House on Tuesday, the final day of a two-day trip devoted to scouting out private schools for the young girls. Katie McCormick Lelyveld, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Obama, said Laura Bush had invited Mrs. Obama for her second visit to the White House — she and Mr. Obama visited last week — so the girls could get a feel for their new home-to-be.

During their trip to Washington, Mrs. Obama and her daughters also toured Sidwell Friends School and Georgetown Day School, two private schools they are considering.

Members of Mr. Obama’s transition team said Tuesday that no decision had been made on the attorney general spot and denied reports that Mr. Holder, 57, had already been selected.

People involved in the transition process said, however, that the decision appeared all but certain once the process of vetting of Mr. Holder was completed. If Mr. Holder is selected as attorney general and confirmed by the Senate, his biggest challenge, legal observers agree, will be to restore the credibility of a department that was badly battered by political scandal during the Bush administration. The dismissal of eight United States attorneys in 2007 and other controversies opened up the Justice Department to accusations that it had routinely let politics trump legal considerations.

Mr. Holder first met Mr. Obama at a small dinner party in 2004 welcoming him to Washington. The two lawyers, each the son of immigrant fathers, were seated next to each other at the dinner, and Mr. Holder said he was immediately impressed by the new senator.

Mr. Holder went on to serve as an adviser to Mr. Obama’s campaign on legal issues and served on the two-member vice-presidential selection team that led to the choice of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. as Mr. Obama’s running mate.

Now in private practice as a partner at the Washington law firm of Covington & Burling, Mr. Holder served as a federal prosecutor, a trial court judge, and United States attorney for the District of Columbia before becoming the top-ranking aide to Attorney General Janet Reno in 1997. He was regarded as a strong ally for federal prosecutors and helped shape Mr. Clinton’s program to put 100,000 police officers on the street.

His last days at the Justice Department in 2001 were marred by his peripheral involvement in Mr. Clinton’s pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich, as Republicans sharply criticized Mr. Holder as failing to oppose the pardon and allowing the White House to bypass the normal pardon review process at the Justice Department.

Mr. Holder told the Clinton White House at the time that he was “neutral, leaning toward favorable” on the idea of pardoning Mr. Rich, whose former wife, Denise Rich, had contributed heavily to Mr. Clinton’s presidential library.

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, which reviews nominees for attorney general, told reporters on Tuesday that while he had not taken any position on the prospect of Mr. Holder as attorney general, his role in the pardon of Mr. Rich should be “a factor to consider” in any confirmation.

With the battered economy the most immediate problem facing him when he takes office in January, Mr. Obama interviewed Mr. Orszag in Chicago last week for the cabinet-level job of director of the Office of Management and Budget, people familiar with the transition said.

Mr. Obama’s budget director will have to scramble to draft a proposed budget to be ready soon after the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration, and to help with the economic stimulus proposals that Mr. Obama has said he will offer after taking office.

Like several other candidates for top posts, Mr. Orszag is a protégé of Robert E. Rubin, former Treasury secretary to Mr. Clinton, and shares Mr. Rubin’s centrist approach to fiscal policies and concern about big deficits.

Mr. Orszag was also considered for the job of director of the White House National Economic Council, which coordinates the work of the president’s principal economic and fiscal advisers. That post is expected to go to Mr. Lew, another Clinton White House veteran who is now chief operating officer of Citi Alternative Investments, a unit of Citigroup, where Mr. Rubin is a director.

While the economic crisis has forced Mr. Orszag to focus on the $700 billion bailout program and various stimulus proposals before Congress, his emphasis has otherwise been on health policies. He has sought to draw attention to the growing costs for Medicare and other federal programs that are driving the projections of unsustainable budget deficits. Recently, for example, he gave a speech highlighting studies on potential cost savings from preventive medicine and more cost-efficient treatments. ++

Reporting was contributed by Jackie Calmes, Rachel L. Swarns, Helene Cooper, Jeff Zeleny and Peter Baker.

Waxman Ousts Dingell From Energy Chair In Bruising Dem Fight
ANDREW TAYLOR, HuffPo
November 20, 2008

WASHINGTON — Rep. Henry Waxman - a liberal ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi - has wrested the chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee from veteran Rep. John Dingell when the new Congress convenes in January.

Waxman, a California liberal and avid environmentalist and booster of health care programs, toppled Dingell Thursday on a vote of 137-122 in the Democratic Party caucus, capping a bitter fight within party ranks.

Dingell has been the top Democrat on the panel for 28 years and is an old-school supporter of the auto industry. Waxman has complained that the committee has been too slow to address environmental issues like global warming.

“The argument we made was that we needed a change for the committee to have the leadership that will work with this administration and members in both the House and the Senate in order to get important issues passed in health care, environmental protection, in energy policy,” Waxman said after the vote.

“The next two years are critical,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., who spoke on Waxman’s behalf in the closed-door caucus. “It’s not personal. It’s about the American people demanding that we embrace change and work with the president on critical issues of climate change and energy and health care.”

Waxman, 69, is an accomplished legislator. He had chaired the Energy and Commerce health and environment subcommittee for 16 years and won a series of piecemeal expansions of the Medicaid health care program for the poor that added many children to the program. He’s also taken on the tobacco companies.

The Energy and Commerce panel is one of the most important House committees, with sweeping jurisdiction over energy, the environment, consumer protection, telecommunications and health care programs such as Medicaid and the popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Waxman has been the top Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee for the last 12 years. Since Waxman became chairman of that panel two years ago, it has taken the Bush administration to task over global warming and allegations that it muzzled government scientists. It also has investigated the White House’s political operation, the use of steroids in sports and, most recently, abuses behind the financial collapse.

Dingell, 82, has been the committee’s top Democrat for 28 years and is an important ally of automakers and electric utilities. He’s considered one of the House’s premier legislators, with a lengthy track record on health, consumer issues and the environment, among other things.

Dingell’s defenders said he had done nothing to deserve being dumped, pointing to the panel’s busy workload over the last two years, including successfully enacting an energy bill that raised automobile fuel economy standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

“I think it was highly inappropriate,” said Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va. “There was no obvious reason for it other than the desire for another person to chair the committee.

“Seniority is important,” Waxman told reporters. “But it should not grant the priority rights to hold a chairmanship for three decades.”

Driving Waxman’s bid was the issue of global warming, a pet cause of President-elect Barack Obama. Waxman is expected to more aggressively attack this problem and is expected to move legislation with tougher emissions standards than Dingell would have.

Environmentalists say Dingell has acted too slowly on global warming, despite releasing a bill last month. The measure was a poke in the eye to Waxman and Pelosi, D-Calif., since it would prevent states like California from setting tougher auto emissions standards than the federal government.

“Waxman’s victory is a breath of fresh air - of clean air. It was a stunning defeat for the corporate lobbyists on K Street,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. “It shows that a majority of the House Democrats are ready to work with the incoming Obama administration on effective global warming legislation.”

In a statement congratulating Waxman, Dingell acknowledged that it is a “year of change.” He renewed his commitment “to protecting and creating jobs, to providing health care for all Americans, to working to getting our state and nation’s economy back on track.”

Waxman’s coup now puts Californians in charge of the committees that will spearhead the regulation of the gases blamed for global warming in both the House and Senate. California has taken the lead on addressing the problem and is suing the Bush administration for rejecting its request to reduce greenhouse gases from motor vehicle tailpipes.

As Waxman took over the helm of the Energy and Commerce committee, his counterpart in the Senate - Sen. Barbara Boxer - vowed to take quick action on a bill capping greenhouse gases.

Pelosi is a home state ally of Waxman and has tangled with Dingell in the past, but she has not publicly taken sides in the battle and did not pressure members privately to back Waxman. But her support of Waxman was well known and played a role in the strong tally. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves