ThinkFast: June 12, 2009
The Obama administration has “all but abandoned plans to allow Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been cleared for release to live in the United States.” Though an administration official told the Washington Post that “there may yet be ‘a few’ candidates for settlement in the United States among the dozens of Guantanamo detainees who have […]
The Obama administration has “all but abandoned plans to allow Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been cleared for release to live in the United States.” Though an administration official told the Washington Post that “there may yet be ‘a few’ candidates for settlement in the United States among the dozens of Guantanamo detainees who have been cleared for release.”
The Defense Intelligence Agency reportedly advised against transferring 25 of the 60 Guantanamo Bay detainees deemed eligible for relocation by the Obama administration. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) claimed that DIA’s concerns show that the White House put political considerations ahead of national security.
Former President Bill Clinton believes that President Obama “has a better chance than he did” to enact health care reform. “He’s got a better Congress, a more receptive climate” and “a better — at least more politically saleable — set of proposals,” said Clinton. “I hope they won’t give up on this public option.”
Health care lobbyists are spending increasing amounts to defeat President Obama’s health care plan. “The five largest private insurers and the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans spent a total of $6.4 million in the first quarter, an increase of more than $1 million from the same quarter last year.”
As Iranians registered an “unprecedented” turnout in today’s elections, some “believe that the unruly democratic energies unleashed over the past few weeks could affect this country’s politics no matter who wins.” Some Iranians believe that Ayatollah Khamenei “may force Mr. Ahmadinejad to steer a more moderate course if he is re-elected.”
President Obama intervened to save the $105.9 billion war spending bill late last night after a conference committee stalled over the potential release of detainee abuse photos. In a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, Obama promised “to take every legal administrative remedy available to me to ensure the DoD detainee photographs are not released.”
The Senate voted yesterday to allow the FDA to “impose potentially strict new controls on the making and marketing” of tobacco products. Not surprisingly, among the 17 senators who voted against the bill are the “top recipients of campaign contributions from the tobacco industry,” including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has raked in $419,025.
Although 55 percent of the American public say they don’t yet know enough about Sonia Sotomayor to have an opinion of her, 54 percent believe the Senate should approve her nomination as Supreme Court justice, according to a new McClatchy-Ipsos poll. Furthermore, a plurality say “they’d feel less favorably toward the Republican Party if Senate Republicans ‘overwhelmingly oppose‘ Sotomayor.”
Paul Krugman writes today that, “[R]ight-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.” He argues, “Fox News and the RNC…have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House.”
And finally: At yesterday’s town hall meeting in Wisconsin, John Corpus stood to ask President Obama a question about health care. However, he also informed Obama that his daughter, Kennedy, was skipping school to be at the event and hopefully wouldn’t get in trouble. “Do you need me to write a note?” Obama said. His note read: “To Kennedy’s teacher: Please excuse Kennedy’s absence. She’s with me. Barack Obama.” Kennedy said that it “was like the best thing ever.”
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Bush DOJ Failed to Enforce Federal Law Protecting Abortion Providers from Anti-Abortion Extremists
In the wake of the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion extremist, the very real problem of extremist violence against abortion providers and clinics has gained a fresh spotlight, even though that violence is not new. After the 1993 murder of an abortion provider, Dr. David Gunn, Congress passed the Freedom of Access […]
In the wake of the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion extremist, the very real problem of extremist violence against abortion providers and clinics has gained a fresh spotlight, even though that violence is not new. After the 1993 murder of an abortion provider, Dr. David Gunn, Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which made any use of “force, threat of force or physical obstruction” against doctors and patients a federal crime. The law was an attempt to put an end to the constant wave of death threats, acts of vandalism, and clinic bombings.
According to the National Abortion Federation, the “FACE law has had a clear impact on the decline in certain types of violence against clinics and providers, specifically clinic blockades.” Under the Bush Administration, however, criminal and civil enforcement of the law by the Department of Justice declined dramatically, the Washington Independent’s Daphne Eviatar reports:
The day after Dr. George Tiller was murdered, TWI obtained data revealing that under the Bush administration, criminal enforcement of the federal law designed to protect abortion providers and clinics had declined by more than 75 percent over the last eight years.
But there’s also a civil component to that federal law, known as the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act. That part of the law allows the attorney general to seek an injunction and compensatory damages for anyone who’s been harmed by any activity that violates the law. And it turns out that the Department of Justice over the last eight years didn’t use that part of the law to protect abortion providers, either.
Eviatar found that, according to DOJ statistics, the Bush Administration “brought only about two criminal prosecutions per year in the entire country under the FACE Act, and never more than four in any single year.” In contrast, under President Clinton the Justice Department “prosecuted 17 defendants for violations of the FACE Act in 1997 alone, and an average of about 10 per year since the law was enacted in 1994.” Evitar reports though that the Bush Justice Department had an even more abysmal record of enforcing the civil component of the FACE Act:
Yet despite these broad powers that Congress granted the attorney general in 1994 to prevent and combat violence against abortion clinics and providers, the Bush administration almost never used them. From 2000 until 2008, during the eight years of the Bush administration, the Justice Department filed only one civil case under the FACE Act. From 1994 until 1999, in contrast, in just five years of the Clinton administration, the Department filed 17 civil cases under the FACE Act — in addition to its much heavier load of criminal cases that we’ve reported before.
Between 2000 and 2008, the National Abortion Federation recorded 3,291 acts of violence against abortion providers and “at least 17 cases of ‘extreme’ violence against abortion providers in the United States, such as arson, stabbing and bomb attacks.” However, the Bush Administration’s Department of Justice “prosecuted only 11 individuals for any acts of violence against abortion clinics or providers.”
– Ben Bergmann
