Congressman Cotton was excellent on drones and Benghazi on "Fox News Sunday."

(Transcript. Video.) I had never heard of the guy, but he impressed the hell out of me, in part because the host Chris Wallace, introduced Cotton — a Republican from Arkansas — this way:

Congressman Cotton, for people who don't know you, you are kind of an interesting figure. You went to Harvard, you went to Harvard Law School, and then you spent five years on active duty, on the front lines, in Iraq and Afghanistan, so you have got a lot of credibility on this issue on both sides of the equation.

I'm not a complete pushover for credentials, but this made me want to pay attention when Wallace invited him to respond to Senator Dianne Feinstein's idea that we need, as Wallace put it, "a secret drone court, where the president would have to go to get approval before putting terror suspects on his kill list.... How do you feel about this idea? Before the president could target someone for assassination, especially an American citizen, he'd have to go get approval from a judge?"

COTTON: We don't need federal judges involved in sensitive and urgent national security matters, and it would be an unconstitutional infringement on the president's rights to keep America safe. So, if you take up arms against America and you fight in a terrorist training camp or on the front lines in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Yemen, you shouldn't be surprised if America reaches out and exacts justice against you.

A while later, there was a discussion of Leon Panetta's testimony about Benghazi. Co-panelist Bill Kristol went first and laid out the criticism of Obama pithily:

KRISTOL: I think it is genuinely shocking. The president -- Leon Panetta walked out of the Oval Office at 5:30 that night, after a previously scheduled meeting. The president never called -- he knew -- he briefed the president on what was happening in Benghazi and that the American ambassador was missing, and it was clear there could well be sustained and ongoing attacks, and the president never spoke to the secretary of defense or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the rest of that night, and, interestingly, Secretary Panetta said he never spoke to the White House later this night. So it's not as if he spoke to the national security adviser, Tom Donilon, or the chief of staff, Jack Lew, and said, and conveyed a message to or from the president.

So basically, the president seems to have checked out. He spent an hour that evening on the phone with the Israeli prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, because there has been that flap about Israel at the Democratic Convention the week before, and I think he wanted for political reasons to show that he was in touch with the Israelis. They did a readout of that call, the National Security Council spokesman did. So they're busy talking to the Israeli prime minister, doing the readout of the call for the press, and he is not talking to Panetta and, insofar as we -- and Donilon, apparently, is not talking to Panetta. And it is really, I think, a dereliction of duty on the part of the president and his senior staff, and I think they should be asked about it. I think Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, and Jack Lew, the White House chief of staff, should -- the president did not talk to anyone. Did they even talk to the secretary of defense, or did they just say, do what you can and then totally checked out for that evening, and then the next morning the president goes off to Las Vegas for a fund-raiser?

Cotton followed on, bringing in his military expertise:

COTTON: It is not just shocking, I would say it is outrageous as well, and it shows he has lack of preparation to be the commander in chief and lead troops when they are in combat. You know, you mentioned I was in the Army. At Fort Benning, where I spent a year, you learn the eight-step troop leading procedures. Step eight, the final step, is not issue an order. Step seven is issue the order. Step eight, which is the most important step, is supervise. He said in September that I issued a directive to take whatever steps are necessary to protect our troops and our assets. And then as Bill said, he never again followed up, he never asked, is my directive being executed? That is the essence of leadership, and this is a complete failure of leadership.

WALLACE: What about the argument, Congressman, and I don't know, and Bill raises a legitimate question, maybe he was doing this through his national security adviser.

COTTON: What General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta said, indicates there was no further contact from the White House, and the president showed no curiosity at all. He had a conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu that was in the middle of [the] political season when he was receiving criticism for not being engaged with the prime minister, and then probably preparing to fly off to Las Vegas the next day for a fundraiser.

When you have troops in contact -- when I was in Afghanistan, we had troops in contact. I was right next to the radio, monitoring that at all times. When the president has troops in contact in an embassy that he knows is insecure, that has to be the very first priority.

Cotton also got my attention earlier in the show when Wallace asked whether the decision to have Marco Rubio deliver the GOP response to the SOTU makes him "the new face of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill."

COTTON: I wouldn't say that decision makes him. I think he has been an emerging leader on Capitol Hill for Republicans, and across the country for two years now. He's a generation of new leaders, not just Marco, but Paul Ryan and Scott Walker and so forth, who are emerging and who I think are going to be the leaders of our party going forward.

So, wanting to portray Rubio as not The One but part of "a generation of new leaders" and needing to name some names, Cotton comes up with Paul Ryan — the erstwhile VP nominee — and — of all the others — Scott Walker. I read that out loud and Meade deemed it time to play the Governor Walker anthem one more time:

What's Happening to Hillary? Only a clod would say the clot is a plot!

Here are Senators Lindsey Graham and Dianne Feinstein, interviewed by Chris Wallace (yesterday, on "Fox News Sunday"):

WALLACE: Senator Graham, how important is it for Secretary of State Clinton to testify under oath before she leaves office about the Benghazi terror attack?...

GRAHAM: Absolutely essential that she'd testify....

WALLACE: Some of your Republican colleagues say they are prepared to hold off the confirmation of John Kerry as secretary of state, until Secretary Clinton testifies as secretary, before she leaves office.

GRAHAM: That's going to happen. I've been told by Senator Kerry he wants that approach also. He needs to hear what she says so he can make comments about, I agree with her/I don't agree with her. It makes sense to have her go first.

WALLACE: Do you agree with that, Senator Feinstein, that she needs to testify first, as an -- and have you been assured she will testify, though it has been 3 1/2 months since Benghazi and she still has never really answered questions, about Benghazi, her role before, during, after the attack? Do you have reason to believe she'll testify as secretary?

FEINSTEIN: She has said she will and I believe she will. You know, she's had a very real accident and she's recovering from it, and, she will be back. I gather, her first day, of work may well be next week. So, I think that's good news.

With all that assurance that Hillary Clinton would testify, later that day, we heard the news that Hillary Clinton had entered the hospital with a blood clot. We weren't told the site of said blood clot. Was it her brain (recently concussed)? Was it her leg (where she had a blood clot back in 1998)? The former is a big deal, the latter, not so much. Why not specify the site, since it make such a big difference, medically? Oh, but we're told we must not display any skepticism, any hint of suspicion that the SOS is trying to avoid having to testify about Benghazi. The woman is ill. Only a clod would say a clot was a plot.

Here's medical expert Kent Sepkowitz:

Unlike the relatively bland “concussion after fainting” pronouncement from earlier this month, this terse press release from her spokesman smells a little fishy. First it is odd that we are not told where the clot is—usually the clot, referred to as thrombophlebitis, occurs in the leg, a condition suffered by former president Richard Nixon after leaving the White House. 

Maybe you can remember — if not, guess! — how sensitive we were to Nixon's phlebitis, which conveniently flared up in the midst of Watergate. Ha! That bastard thinks he can get our sympathy. Pathetic! (That's what I said at the time.)

The clot [in the leg] can be uncomfortable but is only dangerous and even life threatening if it breaks free and travels downstream into the lung—a pulmonary embolus, in medical parlance.... Given that Clinton already has had this condition and those who have had one episode have a predilection to recurrence, the lack of a reminder of the 1998 clot from her press people seems a strange oversight.

Another problem with the “concussion then clot” story is this—the concussion, if indeed it came after a faint, should not directly predispose Clinton to a clot....

Alternatively, is it possible that the clot in question is one in the lining of the brain that can form after head trauma.... But anticoagulation is never given to persons with clots around the brain. They are either watched without intervention or surgically evacuated. So this possible explanation is out.

We are left with a story that is not easy to connect up with sparse information from the inside crowd, who could easily deflate speculation with two or three more measly facts. The National Enquirer has already declared Clinton to be suffering from a brain tumor, linking her observed weight gain, possibly from treatment for the putative cancer, and not-exactly-explained need to leave Obama’s Cabinet to the grim diagnosis. Such a story no longer seems to me as implausible as it did after the faint and concussion reports.

The suppression of information — the site of the clot — suggests 2 radically different theories: 1. fakery/exaggeration to evade testimony, or 2. something horribly serious. I read Sepkowitz to exclude the middle ground.

UPDATE: Email from CNN says: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a blood clot between her brain and skull behind her right ear, her doctors said." This seems to be the option that Sepkowitz excluded because "anticoagulation is never given to persons with clots around the brain." If that's correct, then something is still, to use Sepkowitz's word, fishy.

UPDATE 2: Here's the Washington Post, on January 1st, noting the site of the clot and saying "The conventional treatment is an anticoagulant drug for at least six months." So that directly contradictions Sepkowitz's statement that "anticoagulation is never given to persons with clots around the brain."

AND: I've got a bit more to say here. 

Obama seems amenable to the NRA idea of armed guards in schools.

On today's "Meet the Press": David Gregory asked him what he thought of having "armed guards at every school in the country," adding "That's what the NRA believes. They told me last week that could work." Obama said:

You know, I am not going to prejudge the recommendations that are given to me. I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools. And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem. 

Of course, we are also skeptical that gun control is going to solve our problem. My only point here is that Obama didn't denounce the idea and treat it as crazy, which seemed to be the left/liberal spin last week after NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre made the proposal. Obama is saying that the idea deserves consideration. And to say you doubt that it's the "only answer" is to imply that it may belong in a package of items that together are the answer. In fact, later, he said: "I'm going to be putting forward a package..."



Obama went on to say that he was going to follow "the old adage of Abraham Lincoln's":

That with public opinion there's nothing you can't do and without public opinion there's very little you can get done in this town. 

That's a paraphrase. What Lincoln actually said was: "In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed." I'll leave it to you to decide who's the better wordsmith.

By the way, when did Washington folk acquire the habit of tacking "in this town" onto every other sentence? And don't you think there's an interesting difference between "opinion" and "sentiment"?

Further evidence that liberals have given up on demonizing LaPierre came from Dianne Feinstein on "Fox News Sunday" today. She's going to introduce a bill banning assault weapons and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, and moderator Chris Wallace asked her "Why is that more effective than the NRA proposal to put armed guards in every school?" She said:

Well, in the first place, 1/3 of America's public schools does have armed guards. 

Ha! No wonder the spin has shifted. You can't call it sheer lunacy if it's happening in 1/3 of the schools already. Too bad the liberal sentiment molders didn't check the facts first. Too bad they had a hair trigger.

Joe Lieberman on censoring pop culture and reporting "troublesome" young people.

On "Fox News Sunday," Chris Wallace got Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman talking about the Sandy Hook massacre, specifically the question of violence in video games, movies and TV. Lieberman said violence in popular culture "does cause vulnerable young men, particularly, to be more violent," and "We’ve got to ask the entertainment industry, what are you going to do to try to tone that down."

Wallace asked whether this would be voluntary, and Lieberman said:

In our society we try to do it voluntarily. But I think we’ve come to a point where we have to say, if not, maybe there are some things we can do to tone it down.

So, in other words, not voluntary! Having let his authoritarian side show, Lieberman shifts to talking about "the mental health system" and says:

I think we really have got to ask ourselves, first, off, this is like the slogan that we use in Homeland Security -- see something, say something.

See something... like what?

We’ve got to ask parents, friends, school officials, if you see a child, a young person, that really looks like they are potentially... real troublesome, get them mental health help and we have to ask ourselves, as a society, is there enough mental health help available for these kids?

Troublesome! He should have said troubled, if he meant to talk about mental illness, and he paused before he said the word. A fascinating slip. Troubling!

When Chris Wallace raises the topic of Libya, David Axelrod laughs.

On Fox News Sunday just now:



ADDED: Here's the transcript.

6 highlights from Chris Wallace's great interview with Justice Scalia.

From the transcript of this morning's Fox News Sunday (and video).

1. Obamacare. Since Scalia is on the show to promote his new book, Wallace duly begins with a quote from the book: "A statute should be interpreted in a way that avoids placing its constitutionality in doubt." Now, doesn't that undercut Scalia's criticism of Chief Justice Roberts's decision in the Obamacare case? Roberts found that what was called a "penalty" (for failure to acquire health insurance) was actually a tax, and reading the statute that way avoided the constitutional problem. Scalia responded that his principle of interpretation only allows the judge "to find a meaning that the language will bear":

You don't interpret a penalty to be a pig. It can't be a pig. And what my dissent said in the... Affordable Care Act was simply that there is no way to regard this penalty as a tax. It simply doesn't bear that meaning. You cannot give -- in order to save the constitutionality, you cannot give the text a meaning it will not bear.

How does one know what the language will bear and will not bear? Yes, it's not a pig, but why isn't it a tax? There wasn't any pursuit of that line of inquiry, but later in the interview, Wallace came back to the case, that time to ask about the new reports that said Roberts changed his mind in the middle of working on the Obamacare opinion. Wallace introduced the topic by asking if Scalia himself had ever changed his mind after voting in conference. Scalia said:

I have not only done that, I have changed my mind after have been assigned to write the majority opinion. I've written the opinion the other way, it just wouldn't write.... There is... nothing wrong with that.

Wallace then asked "Did Chief Justice Roberts change his mind in the ObamaCare case?" Scalia says he doesn't know — "You'll have to ask him." And Wallace tries again, asking whether at some point Scalia had a majority. Again, Scalia refuses: "I don't talk about internal court proceedings." Wallace resorts to the cutesy: "Just this once?" And Scalia responds in a similarly childish form: "No, never ever. Never ever." But when Wallace accepts the pushback and just says "OK," Scalia opens up:

And, listen, those who do, you shouldn't believe what you read about internal court proceedings, because the reporter who reports that is either: A, lying, which can be done with impunity, because as you know, we don't respond. It's the tradition of common law judges to lay back and take it. You don't respond in the press. Or B, that reporter had the information from some who was [sic] breaking the oath of confidentiality, which means that's an unreliable person. So, either way, you should not -- you should not put any stock in reports about what was going on in the secrecy of the court.

Take that Jan Crawford!

2. Second Amendment. Wallace asked about the scope of the right protected by the Second Amendment (which the Supreme Court did not detail in Heller). Scalia says:

What the opinion Heller said is that it will have to be decided in future cases. What limitations upon the right to bear arms are permissible. Some undoubtedly are, because there were some that were acknowledged at the time. For example, there was a tort called affrighting, which if you carried around a really horrible weapon just to scare people, like a head ax or something, that was I believe a misdemeanor.... My starting point and ending point probably will be what limitations are within the understood limitations that the society had at the time. They had some limitation on the nature of arms that could be born. So, we'll see what those limitations are as applied to modern weapons. 

It's clear, he says, as a matter of textualism, that the Second Amendment doesn't "apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried." But that doesn't mean it does apply to everything that can be hand-carried, for example, "handheld rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes." These are matters yet to be decided.

3. "How political is the court?" Scalia — unsurprisingly — says the Court isn't political at all, even though these days, the conservative/liberal split aligns with Republican appointees and Democratic appointees:

That... shows that they had been selected because of their judicial philosophy. The Republicans have been looking for, you know, originalist and textualist and restrained judges for 50 years. And the Democrats have been looking for the opposite, for people who believe in Roe versus Wade. Why should it be a surprise that after, you know, assiduously trying to get people with these philosophies, they end up with th[ese] philosophies?

4. Obama and the Court. Wallace invited Scalia to comment on Obama's criticizing the Supreme Court, first with video of 2010 State of the Union speech with Obama calling out the Justices who were sitting right in front of him. Scalia said that's why he doesn't attend. Second, Wallace showed video of Obama "jawboning" the Court while the Obamacare case was pending. Scalia called it "unusual" — "But as I say, I don't criticize the president publicly and he normally doesn't criticize me."

WALLACE: Did you feel any pressure as a result of that to vote a certain way?

SCALIA: Yes. What can he do to me? Or to any of us? We have life tenure and we have it precisely so that we will not be influenced by politics, by threats from anybody.

The "yes" didn't mean "yes" other than yes, I get what you're asking. It was absolutely clear in the video that he didn't feel at all threatened.

WALLACE: Did you view that as a threat?

SCALIA: I didn't view it as a threat. I'm not even sure I heard it.

WALLACE: Well, you heard it now.

SCALIA: You brought it to my attention.

Ha ha. That was a little theater, acting out his attitude that the President is over there in his branch, doing whatever it is he does, and I'm here in mine, fully insulated.

5. Dissing Judge Posner. Wallace quoted Posner's saying that part of Scalia's dissenting opinion in the Arizona immigration case had "the air of a campaign speech." Scalia went comically snobby:

SCALIA: He is a court of the appeals judge, isn't he?

WALLACE: Yes.

SCALIA: He doesn't sit in judgment of my opinions as far as I'm concerned.

WALLACE: You sit in judgment of his opinion?

SCALIA: That's what happens.

Wallace commented that Scalia knew how to "push people's buttons," and Scalia said "It's fun to push the buttons." Wallace pursued him — "Is it?... Why" — and Scalia basically says Posner started it: "When Richard Posner comes out with a statement like that, I should fire back a statement equally provocative."

6. He's 76, but is he a fool?

WALLACE: You are 76 years old. Will you time your retirement so that a more conservative president can appoint a like-minded justice?

SCALIA: I don't know. I haven't decided when to retire.

WALLACE: But I mean, does it go through your mind, if I retire, I'd like to see, since you talk about Republicans appointing one kind of justice and Democrats another, that you would want somebody who would adhere to your view...?

SCALIA: No, of course, I would not like to be replaced by someone who immediately sets about undoing everything that I've tried to do for 25 years, 26 years, sure. I mean, I shouldn't have to tell you that. Unless you think I'm a fool.

See how cagey Wallace was? Scalia didn't want to answer the question about timing his retirement to give the appointment to a conservative President, but then Wallace asked the question a different way, referring to the earlier discussion about why it seems — wrongly! — that the Court is political, and that caused Scalia to give the answer, which is of course he's going to time it. It amused me that he tacked on the ending "Unless you think I'm a fool," because Wallace actually did fool him into answering the question he didn't want to answer and because Wallace extracted that answer — which makes Scalia look political — by referring to the earlier discussion of why the Court looks political — but isn't!

Chris Wallace asks John McCain about "Game Change."

On Fox News Sunday today:

WALLACE: What one of the things it says is that for all of your talk about putting country first, that your decision to pick Sarah Palin was pure politics. And here is a clip from the show.

WOODY HARRELSON (as Steve Schmidt): We desperately need a game changing pick. None much these middle aged white guys are game changers.

ED HARRIS (as John McCain): So find me a woman.

WALLACE: "So find me a woman." Simple question, Senator, did that ever happen?

MCCAIN: Of course not.... I thought that she was best qualified person. I thought she had the ability to excite our party and the kind of person that I wanted to see succeed in the political arena. She is very effective and successful governor of a state....

I get the feeling that neither the movie nor John McCain was perfectly accurate.

Gov. Corbett suggests that Second Mile groomed children for Jerry Sandusky.

Chris Wallace, on Fox News Sunday, did an excellent job of drawing out Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, who, bound by ethical restraints, was trying to be circumspect. Here's a key moment in the colloquy. Wallace has just asked Corbett about the Second Mile charity "that Jerry Sandusky helped form for disadvantaged kids that quite frankly gave him access to these young boys."

WALLACE: Should actions be taken against the charity or the CEO who allegedly was told about some of these abuses as far back 2002?

CORBETT: ... I'm going to be very careful here....  If you talk to people who have worked with Second Mile, it has done great work.... But in this case, as the allegations indicate, some of it was used to pick on some children and the term was used, grooming, groom those children for Mr. Sandusky's purposes.

Did Corbett just reveal that there were other individuals within Second Mile who functioned in grooming children for Sandusky?

Corbett also appeared on "Meet the Press" this morning, and I thought David Gregory was much less successful in breaking through Corbett's controlled facade. It was interesting to compare these 2 interviews. Gregory expressed outrage on behalf of the children. ("You have to understand people, those of us who are parents, including myself, I have a nine-year-old boy at home....") Wallace, by contrast, came off at first — to my ear — as a Paterno fanboy. ("But, Governor, let me point out -- these are just allegations. Joe Paterno, who had spent half a century at Penn State, did not have an opportunity to offer a full defense. Why not let him finish his season and retire as he offered to do?")

I don't know whether Gregory and Wallace were showing how they really felt or using a strategy to lure Corbett into making revelations, but the Wallace interview was more revealing.

ADDED: Wallace also interviewed Franco Harris, a football star who came out of Penn State, and he seemed very much in service of the pro-Paterno attitude that I thought I detected in Wallace. It got a little odd when Wallace grilled Harris about the distinction — a vitally important distinction — between criminal law and morality.

WALLACE: Franco, Joe Paterno may have followed the letter of the law, or complied with it by informing his superior. But on a moral basis in the end, he was fired because of his failure not any kind of legal breach. Shouldn't he have called the cops when he heard about this abuse, or at least followed up with the person he tell the athletic director to find out where this investigation stood?

FRANCO HARRIS...: Hey, Chris, let me go back for a minute. As you know there was a grand jury investigation, and at the end of that investigation, they found that Joe Paterno cooperated fully with them and had good testimony and there was no charges against Joe Paterno.

And then, all of the sudden, something came out about a moral obligation, and everybody jumped on that. And everybody said it should be a moral procedure. It should be a moral procedure. And like that is subject to people's own train of thought with that.

So, I thought that was unfair and I think it is unfair how people were treating Joe with this issue, because Joe is highly moral person and great moral character. And so, it's very disturbing to me when somebody said this, everybody else jumped on this.

Harris's perspective, which looks benighted today, is exactly the way the NYT presented it in one its earliest reports, as I discussed here ("NYT says Joe Paterno "not implicated of wrongdoing in a grand jury report.") Later, Maureen Dowd — in the NYT — focused on the moral requirements that transcend law.

On "Meet the Press," David Gregory, talking to E.J. Dionne and David Brooks, brought up the Maureen Dowd piece, which, he said "helped to really sort of bring it home to me." Brooks took the opportunity to generalize:

I don't think it was just a Penn State problem. You know, you spend 30 or 40 years muddying the moral waters here. We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is; and so, when people see things like that, they don't have categories to put it into. They vaguely know it's wrong, but they've been raised in a morality that says, "If it feels all right for you, it's probably OK."... If you're alert to the sense of what evil is, what the evil is within yourself and what evil is in society, you have a script to follow. It's not a vague sense.  You have a script to follow.  And this is necessary because people do not intervene. 

We don't know what sin is anymore. That's vaguely crazy when we're talking about raping a 10-year-old child, but Brooks seems to be working on some larger, brooding meditation about what's wrong with all of us these days.

Chris Wallace throws a softball question at Michelle Bachmann, then is bullied into apologizing...

... and Bachmann won't even accept the apology!

When did people become so humorless? Wallace — who seems like a sweetheart — asked "Are you a flake?" Obviously, he was saying, in a cute and pithy way A lot of people would like to portray you as some kind of flake: What do you have to say to them?

It was an easy set up for her to attack those people who say things like that. Why pillory Wallace?

Here's the video of him apologizing. Bachmann's response (at the link above) was: "I think that it's insulting to insinuate that a candidate for president is less than serious." Is it insulting to insinuate that a candidate for President is too serious. Lighten up, Michelle.

UPDATE: Bachmann later accepts the apology, explaining that initially she had not heard from him personally. There was just that video. Later, he called and she was "happy to accept" the apology.

A nicely intense exchange between Jon Stewart and Chris Wallace.

Say what you will, I loved this balance of hostility and respect... and facts and emotion.

(Via Memeorandum.)

Justice Breyer on the right way for a Supreme Court Justice to: 1. interpret the Constitution, and 2. deal with the President of the United States criticizing him in the State of the Union Address.

Back to that interview Chris Wallace did with Justice Breyer. The earlier post got overlong dealing with the Second Amendment. Now, having taken a break to deal with the new federal court decision invalidating the individual mandate, let's get back to the Breyer interview, beginning here, where he is talking (yesterday) about the as-yet-unreleased case. How can the Supreme Court resolve such a politically hot matter without losing the public's confidence in the legitimacy of the Court?

BREYER: The way not to do it -- hold your finger up to the political winds. That's not the job of the judge. The judges are not politicians... [W]hat we do is we look to the text, the history, the traditions, the precedent, the values that underlie the particular constitutional phrase, and consequences that if you decide this way, does it further the values or does it undermine the values.

There, that's his theory of interpretation, summarized.  The key is identifying values underlying the text and the real-world consequences of the decisions. That may seem to give the judge a lot of leeway, but Breyer's effort is to convince people that this is real judging, even though the stricter textualists say it isn't. If people accept this argument, then they see that the liberal Justices — like the conservative Justices — are doing something that isn't some sort of covert politics and they'll have confidence in the courts.

This brings up the topic of the Justices at the State of the Union address. Wallace shows the video clip of Obama scolding the Justices — who were sitting right in front of him — about the decision in Citizens United. There's also a clip of Chief Justice Roberts saying that he's troubled by the "image... of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering, while the court, according to the requirements of protocol, has to sit there expressionless." Breyer disagrees. It's good for the Justices to hear from people who think different things: "It doesn't bother me and part of me says, 'Good.'"

Justice Stephen Breyer on "Fox News Sunday."

Watch here. Chris Wallace does a great job of needling him about things Breyer's written about constitutional interpretation and, Breyer, as I'd expect, rises to the occasion. Breyer literally waves the Constitution around, in tiny booklet form, and figuratively waves around a bigger book, his book "Making Our Democracy Work."

Now, let's rummage through the transcript. Chris Wallace questions him about "just applying the law as written," and Breyer plugs in the expected elementary lesson about the concision of the phrases in the Constitution and the need to apply them in the changed circumstances of the modern world (airplanes! the internet!), and then Wallace displays the text of the 2d Amendment:

WALLACE: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms" -- the right of the people to keep and bear arms -- "shall not be infringed." Now, Justice, I understand why, as a matter of policy, in a world with a lot of urban violence and big cities, that some people would say we need gun control, particularly in a big city like Washington, as they have here, and in Chicago. You ruled in both of those cases. And in both cases the court voted twice over your dissent that the founders meant what they said, people have a right to bear arms.

Breyer, of course, is ready for this:

BREYER: Yes. Yes. That's a wonderful example because, of course, it's not a matter of policy. It is a matter of what those framers intended. And you saw that first phrase, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  What does that mean, the militia? Historians told us, and the dissenters thought they were right, that what that meant was that James Madison, thinking, "I've got to get this document ratified," was worried about opponents who would think Congress would call up state militias and nationalize them. "That can't happen," said Madison. And therefore, he wrote the Second Amendment to prove it. Now, if that was his motive historically, the dissenters were right.

There's some talk about judges acting like judges and how history can't answer some of the details. How do the old words and the old intent apply to new things? Breyer lists machine guns and torpedoes, and then, deviously, handguns. Wallace responds:

WALLACE: I understand. But it certainly didn't provide for a ban, at least that's what the court's decision was, your court's -- it didn't provide for a ban on all handguns as they have here in Washington, D.C.

BREYER: Are you a sportsman? Do you like to shoot pistols at targets? Well, get on the subway and go to Maryland. There is no problem, I don't think, for anyone who really wants to have...

WALLACE: But -- but it's...

BREYER: ... a gun.

WALLACE: ... but that's a policy issue. That's not a constitutional issue.

Breyer chooses not to jump on this point, perhaps because he'd have to say things that conservatives say. He'd have to promote federalism. Let me sketch it out.

If there isn't a right covering this particular subject, then state and local government will be able to legislate the policies that they, as a community, think are best. Yes, it's a policy issue, and — Breyer would say, if he'd gone on — that's why it's appropriate for legislative bodies to make decisions about it. If you don't like those decisions, the great thing about the United States is that you can move around and go to places that have policy preferences that suit your tastes. You have a right to travel and a right to change your residence to another state. And you also have the right to participate in politics, so there's also the alternative of trying to get the law in your state or city changed, so that handguns are not banned. Breyer's approach to the Second Amendment lets the people make the gun control laws what they want them to be and, when they do, they won't get caught up in litigation over the choices they make.

This is what conservatives say all the time about abortion and the separation of church and state (to cite the 2 most glaring examples). But here's Right Wing News — Chris Wysocki — excoriating Breyer for saying "get on the subway and go to Maryland."

Mind-boggling really, isn't it? Gee little black girl, do you want to go to the same school as white girls? Well, get on the subway and go to Maryland!

Well, no. There is a federal constitutional right covering that point, so you don't get the state-to-state variation. And that's the question: Is it a federal constitutional right or not? When you're arguing that there isn't a right, you're saying the law can vary from state to state. When is that intolerable and when isn't it? We all agree (now) to the uniform resolution of the school segregation problem that excluded decentralized decisionmaking. There is an Equal Protection right.

But there was, recently, a disagreement about the Second Amendment, and Breyer was on the side that thought there was no individual right. Put another way, Breyer's side of the Court thought that decentralized policymaking could govern. Do you think that's terrible? If you believe that there's a right, then, yes, of course, you do. But think of something else, where you think the Court is wrong about saying there's a right — perhaps, for you, abortion — and then, don't you remember all the times you made the argument that it wouldn't be so terrible because individual states could make their own decisions and people could move (or travel) to the states that gave them what they wanted?


Wysocki continues:

So mister, what if you are in a wheelchair? This doctor's office has stairs. If you want to see an accessible doctor, get on the subway and go to Maryland!

Whoa! You think the Constitution obliges private citizens, like doctors, to make their buildings wheelchair accessible?! That's so left-wing! Check your blog's name! What's the "Right Wing News" today, that righties have gone all lefty? That would be news!

***

(I have some more things to say about the Breyer interview, but I'll start a new post for that.)

CORRECTION: Sorry, I had "Chris Matthews" in the first sentence of this post. It's Chris Wallace.

Axelrod on Fox News Sunday.

Man, was he evasive. I'll put up the transcript later and show you what I mean. Meanwhile, Jim DeMint is on after the break. An excellent opportunity to look brilliant simply by answering the questions asked in a reasonably specific and concise manner. Axelrod seemed robotic and anesthetized. His mustache was cut shorter on one side than the other. Asked whether Obama would accept any of what the deficit commission came up with, Axelrod droned emptiness until he latched onto the topic of Nancy Pelosi, which he blathered about until Chris Wallace cut him off.

ADDED: Transcript. [Analysis coming soon!]

ACTUALLY: It's too boring to pick apart. I've got to give Axelrod that. After the break, you can read the interchange about the deficit commission that annoyed me so much.

WALLACE: ... The co-chairs of the deficit commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, both of whom the president appointed, came out with a plan this week to cut our debt by $4 trillion over the next decade.

Will the president include some of those proposals in his budget in February?

AXELROD: Well, we're obviously very, very interested. The president empaneled this commission for purposes of looking at this very difficult problem, and we're eager to look at all the recommendations once the commission reports. And his commitment to the chairman was to not -- was to refrain from commenting on their work until after December 1st.

But obviously, we're looking for all good ideas to help deal with our long-term debt problem. This is something that is going to affect our economy. It affects our kids. And we need to deal with it.

WALLACE: You say refrain from commenting. Nancy Pelosi didn't refrain from commenting. She immediately rejected the package as, quote, "simply unacceptable." Does the president agree or disagree that this package is simply unacceptable?

AXELROD: Well, I've seen comments from the left and the right on this, Chris, in fairness.

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Well, I'm asking about Nancy Pelosi.

AXELROD: ... on the -- on the -- I understand. But I'm telling you that there were comments on both sides about this. And of course, this is something that we have to confront as we move forward.

One thing I know, Nancy Pelosi had concerns that -- and I understand those concerns and I respect those concerns. The truth is that as we move forward, if one side says we can't raise any taxes on anybody or any interest, and the other side says we can't cut anything, we're obviously not going to make progress on this. And our interest is in making progress on this.

Within that, we're going to protect important equities, for sure. I mean, we shouldn't cut without sensitivity to the impact of those cuts, and certainly Social Security, which is something she's concerned about, is a great concern to us.

But we should move forward in the spirit of cooperation, because we're not going to solve this, one party or the other, alone. We have to...

WALLACE: All right.

AXELROD: ... do it together.

WALLACE: All right. I want...

AXELROD: And that's what we want to do.

"Would you like your right to free speech... put up to a vote and say well, if five states approved it, let’s wait till the other 45 states do?"

"Would you like Fox’s right to free press...? These are fundamental constitutional rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees Fox News and you, Chris Wallace, the right to speak. It’s in the constitution." 

Said Ted Olson.

Here's something Rush Limbaugh said in the middle of his monologue about the Prop 8 opinion:

The left uses issues such as gay marriage as battering rams to wreck the US Constitution and that's what's going on here. ...  Well, the Democrats who are cheering this ruling, overturning California's Prop 8, are not really cheering gay marriage.  They want gays to believe that they are.  They are cheering and they are giving standing ovations to this judge for weakening the US Constitution, for ripping it to shreds, because that is the objective of the American left....

The Constitution was written to deemphasize the power of federal governments.  Our Founders had fled tyranny.  They certainly didn't set up tyranny when they founded this country with the Constitution. But the left -- the Marxists, socialists, progressives, whatever you want to call them -- want tyranny and they want to be in charge of it.  The Constitution stands in their way.  So this judge is being cheered ostensibly for recognizing homophobia in the heterosexual community for thousands of years.

Thousands of years of discriminatory homophobia has led to gay people not being allowed to marry, and this judge (finally someone enlightened) has come along and seen it. Wrong.  They are cheering the fact that this judge has rammed the Constitution with a battering ram.  These are the same Democrats who have either remained silent or openly advocated the building of a mosque where Sharia law is the word of Allah at Ground Zero.  Now, Sharia law not only bans gay marriage, it bans gays. Permanently.  So why in the world would leftists who are cheering a judge who has just said that Prop 8, voted on by seven million Californians is unconstitutional because of decades -- generations, thousands of years -- of homophobia and discrimination practiced by heterosexuals...?

I like Rush enough to believe that when he got to this part of his monologue, he knew he'd become incoherent. If you don't want the majority's idea of morality imposed on everyone, you need individual rights that courts enforce against the will of the majority. The Constitution limits what can be imposed on individuals. It limits the federal government, and — with the 14th amendment — it limits the state.

Rush Limbaugh says Obama is a "man-child" and Sarah Palin is ready to be President.

Video and transcript here. I'll just do 2 excerpts for you:

WALLACE: You have now taken to calling Mr. Obama "the man-child president."

RUSH: Right.

WALLACE: What does that mean?

RUSH: Just -- he's (inaudible) he's a child. I think he's -- he's got a -- a five-minute career. He was in the Senate for 150 days. He was a community organizer in Chicago for however number of years. He really has no experience running anything. He's very young. I think he's got an out-of-this-world ego. He's very narcissistic. And he's able to focus all attention on him all the time. That -- that description is simply a way to cut through the noise and say he's immature, inexperienced, in over his head.

***

WALLACE: Sarah Palin -- you say that you admire her backbone. Do you really think she's ready to be president?

RUSH: Well, yes, I do. See, I am a -- one thing I do not do is follow conventional wisdom, and the conventional wisdom of Sarah Palin is she's not smart enough, she needs to bone up on the issues, she's a little unsophisticated, she -- Alaska, where's that? -- doesn't have the pedigree. I've seen -- she's the only thing that provided any kind of a spark for the Republican Party. This is not an endorsement, but I do have profound respect for Sarah Palin. There are not very many politicians who have been through what she's through -- been put through and still able to smile and be ebullient and upbeat. I mean, this woman, I think, is pretty tough.

Any contradiction detected?

"They are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington."

Chris Wallace on the White House, after Obama went on all the Sunday shows but his.

ADDED: Video [not the same quote as above, but the same idea]:



(Thanks to Loafing Oaf.)

"Does Senator Clinton understand how tasteless — even how ghoulish — it is to use the word 'assassination'?"

Chris Wallace confronts Terry McAuliffe. Video.

Another debate? Let's watch.

Things are getting exciting these last few days. I'm up for another debate — or forum (whatever). Giuliani looks happy. Thompson grumpy. Huckabee piercing. Romney dashing. McCain — excited and happy as all get-out.

UPDATE #1: I'm a little distracted by these new polls on the Democratic side. CNN has Obama at 39% in New Hampshire, with Clinton a 29%. USA Today has Obama at 41% and Clinton at 28%. Clinton is crashing! What is going on? My theory: I think people want to fall for Obama and want to be free of Hillary Clinton. Iowa has given them permission to do what they already wanted to do. Okay, now, let's concentrate on these Republicans.

UPDATE #2: "You're going to get rid of death?" Fred Thompson says the funniest thing I've ever heard in a debate (after Huckabee says "We oughta get rid of taxes on dividends, capital gains... and death"). Huckabee has the wit to say "I'd like to get rid of death," and Fred is all "Put 'er there," and the 2 men shake hands. Huckabee adds: "In my previous profession, I got rid of death..." [CORRECTION: That last quote should be "In my previous profession, I dealt with getting rid of death..."]

UPDATE #3: Sorry for the lack of updates. I listened — and looked a little. (I was editing photographs, contemplating how much to clarify the fog that filled the 100+ photographs I took on my little walk today.) I thought all 5 men did well, mostly repeating things I've heard before. I'll just cite 2 things that stood out for me (which I'll supplement later with quotes from the transcript): 1. I liked what Rudy Giuliani said about how he dealt with poverty in New York City. 2. I liked when Mitt Romney objected to Mike Huckabee's anti-corporate rhetoric.

UPDATE #4: After the debate, we get Frank Luntz with his focus group, and these people are very favorable to Romney and highly critical of Huckabee, especially his response to the first question. This is strong enough to make me go back and review that part of the debate. Ah, this was when he was asked to respond to Romney's criticism about his raising taxes in Arkansas. Romney, who's sitting right next to him, takes over cross-examining him about the facts (and bragging about the surpluses he produced in his state): "Did you raise taxes in your state by half a billion dollars?" Answer: "We raised jobs. We built our roads." Romney breaks in: "You know, that's political-speak." Huckabee just changes the subject and asks if Romney opposed the 2002 tax cuts. Romney gives a clear no. Romney repeats the question that he's refused to answer "3 times." Huckabee talks about a court order relating to education and attempts, again, to turn it back on Romney: "Maybe you don't have to obey the court in Massachusetts." Kids are important, education is important, blah blah blah. And Chris Wallace breaks in and move the discussion over to Giuliani. Luntz goes on to ask the focus group if they were affected by what happened in Iowa, and this becomes another occasion to trash Huckabee: You might be able to get votes with religion in Iowa, but that's not the way we do things here. Finally, the group says it thinks Obama will be the Democratic nominee and that Mitt Romney can beat him. Frankly, I agree. I think Obama will be the Democratic nominee, and I don't know if the Republicans can win this go-round. (I think we need the presidency needs to shift sides periodically.) But if I had to bet on one Republican to beat the Democrat, I'd bet on Romney.

UPDATE #5: Here's the video of that Frank Luntz focus group:



UPDATE #6: Here are the two things I said I'd add from the transcript. First, Giuliani on poverty:

I took over a city that had 1.1 million people on welfare. I left behind a city with 670,000 fewer people on welfare. I took over a city that had 10.5 percent unemployment. I left behind a city with less than five percent unemployment and I instituted a work fair [sic] program. As Republicans, we don’t do well, including me, all of us. We do not explain to the poor that our programs, our policies are the ladders out of poverty, that they are being denied, by a lot of the Democratic programs, a good job, a good education, the work ethic. So what I did with welfare immediately upon coming into office is I tied welfare to work for anybody who can work. It was called work fair [sic]. It was very controversial. People were very angry at me. The ACLU, I think, sued me, I don’t remember. They sued me a lot. I can’t remember all the times they sued me.

But I stood up and we fought the battle and we ended up with 670,000 fewer people on welfare, hundreds of thousands of people on welfare working, by allowing the basic principles that work in America of work, good education operate in the lives of poor people. And as Republicans, we need to go into the neighborhoods where there’s poverty and explain how our programs work. I would go into the neighborhoods where I was being castigated for work fair and I would say to them, “I’m doing work fair [sic] because I love you more. I care about you more. I care about you more than just being a statistic. I believe that if I can get you a job, I will keep you out of poverty and I will keep you with the dignity to be able to take care of your family.”

(Can somebody tell Fox it's "workfare," not "work fair"?)

Second, Mitt Romney on corporations:

You’re not going to help the wage earner in America by attacking the wage payer in America. It’s an old saying. The truth of the matter is, it really is kind of offensive, I think, when I watch our Democrats, or anybody else, for that matter, attacking corporations that are creating jobs. I’ve spent 30 years in the private sector. I spent my time learning how to build a small business. I built a small business and grew it. I helped go back and turn around a company that was in trouble. I’m proud of the fact that some of the companies we invested in created a lot of jobs. I had some failures, too. I know what it’s like to have to make a tough decision. I’ve seen businesses go under. But I can tell you, I’ve been in the economy, I’ve been there in the real world, and we need a president who knows how the economy works, knows why jobs come and go, understands what the competition from China really means and how to stand up to it. We also need a president who knows how to shrink the federal government, and I know how to take out people that aren’t needed and how to take out programs that aren’t needed, and we need some of that in Washington.

Watching the Iowa caucuses.

Are you watching? I'm hanging out with CNN, where Wolf Blitzer is talking about entrance polls. (Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in a tight race, with Edwards trailing.) They've got a camera at a 53-person caucus that's taking place in someone's living room in Persia, Iowa. It's folksy and boring. And every single person is white.

UPDATE #1: Now, we're wandering the hallways of a middle school, where there are are caucuses in the gym, the cafeteria, the library, and the auditorium. CNN is doing some terrific camera work with a journalist in the hallway, swaying about under a curved ceiling with a lighted trophy case in the background. They've got a nice Americana vibe going. White Americana.

UPDATE #2: It's a Norman Rockwell illustration. Don't you love these people? From that middle school hallway, we're hearing a description of the human drama of having to abandon the sticker of your first choice and stick on the second choice. Now, we're being told there are lots of women, older women. And 60% of the Republicans are evangelical Christians.

UPDATE #3: Bill Bennett offers commentary "as a former philosophy professor": "We've been watching pictures out of Kenya, of people with machetes killing each other, watching pictures from Pakistan, the Bhutto thing. People like to make fun of Iowa, but there they are, in their homes, you know, welcoming each other and talking. There's no violence. There's no killing. There's no imposition of will. It's a great country. It's a great system. An incredible thing."

UPDATE #4: "It's a clash of generations of epic proportions." 17 to 29 year olds are 57% for Obama, 11% for Clinton. With the over 65 voters, Clinton is at 45% and Obama at 17%.

UPDATE #5: CNN projects Huckabee as the winner of the Republican caucuses. "A dramatic, dramatic development... A huge win... " says Blitzer.

UPDATE #6: Maybe I should be watching Fox. I see from the NYT blog that Romney just conceded on Fox.

UPDATE #7: "Did you want to knock his teeth out?" Chris Wallace asks Huckabee's campaign chairman Ed Rollins, referring to this story. Wallace also asked him about this Town Hall blog that reports an evil conversation of his that was overheard. Rollins admits it all but says it was a private conversation with his wife. Rollins has an insanely nasty edge that's totally at odds with Huckabee's image. This is how he acts when he's just won a big victory? The hell? From that Town Hall blog: "He distinctly talked about going negative in South Carolina and told someone on the phone to 'put some good in there if you have to, with the bad. Do what you gotta do.'"

UPDATE #8: Fox declares Obama the winner of the Democratic caucuses.

UPDATE #9: CNN declares Obama the victor too.

UPDATE #10: Juan Williams: "For a black man to win... astounding... historic... a 95% white state..."

UPDATE #11: I'm leaning toward Fox now. Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes, and Juan Williams are better commentators than the group over on CNN (led by Bill Bennett).

UPDATE #12: Giuliani on Fox, talking to Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes. How to not seem irrelevant? The words "Tested. Ready. Now." appear on the backdrop screen behind Giuliani's glistening pate. Colmes is badgering him about various policies and scandals. Not enough about the amazing Huckabee.

UPDATE #13: It's John Edwards. "The status quo lost, and change won. And now, we move on..." He's almost claiming Obama's victory as his own.

UPDATE #14: Hillary speaks. Thanks for voting ... for a Democrat....

UPDATE #15: Dodd drops out. Do we even care if he endorses someone?

UPDATE #16: Huckabee speaks. With Chuck Norris at his shoulder. "A new day in American politics." The banner behind him reads: "I like Mike." We need to be more concerned "about going up" — he says, pointing heavenward — and not just to the left or right.

UPDATE: #17: Finally, Barack Obama. "To end the political strategy that's been all about division, and instead make it about addition. To build a coalition...."

UPDATE #18: Biden drops out.

UPDATE #19: What a night! It feels historic, doesn't it? Not just for the reason stated by Juan Williams (see update #10), but because the old, predictable candidates were upset, upset by 2 fresh, new individuals who, it seems, invented themselves and succeeded by revealing what they were to us.

Blogging the presidential campaign — month by month, 2007.

January: Analyzing the text of Hillary Clinton's announcement.

February: "Wearing an overcoat but gloveless on a frigid morning, Mr. Obama invoked a speech Lincoln gave here..."

March: "And people are going to have to take better care of themselves. We cannot afford all the illness that folks are bringing on themselves."

April: Is Obama a gasbag?

May: Chris Wallace asks Giuliani about his statement that it's "okay" if Roe is overruled and "okay" if it's not — but doesn't push him on his answer.

June: Let's take a closer look at Bill's carrot and Hillary's onion ring.

July: Giuliani and race.

August: You people are soooo invisible. And you will always be invisible. Without me.

September: The world, tired of hating America, wants Hillary to win.

October: Like George Bush, Hillary Clinton "presides over an office of intense and focused workaholics, protective of their patron and wary of outsiders."

November: "Hnh, Biden stomps some dirt on Robert Bork's grave."

December: "It said my house is pink. I would not have a pink house, I assure you."