Filed under: Environment, Media, Mother Jones | Tags: climate change, climate deniers, Daily Mail, IPCC, Mojib Latiff
Climate change deniers pop up all over the place. But they’re rarely part of the Nobel-winning International Panel on Climate Change. So when Professor Mojib Latiff of the IPCC was quoted in Britain’s Daily Mail as a convert to the “global cooling” hypothesis, it raised eyebrows. Well it turns out that’s not what he said at all. I wrote a summary of the controversy that got picked up on the front page of the Huffington Post and the lead of HuffPost’s Green page. Here’s an excerpt:
But speaking to the Guardian yesterday, Latif pushed back hard against the Mail, saying that the tabloid took his comments out of context to make an editorial statement. “It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming. I believe in manmade global warming. I have said that if my name was not Mojib Latif it would be global warming,” he said. “There is no doubt within the scientific community that we are affecting the climate, that the climate is changing and responding to our emissions of greenhouse gases.”
This is a predictable misstep for the Mail, which has a conservative streak and recently published a set of denialist stories, including Sunday’s David Rose report “The Mini Ice Age Starts Here,” and a special investigation on the Climategate emails last December.
Filed under: 2010 and 2012, General Politics, Mother Jones | Tags: Michael Bennet, Bill Ritter, Colorado, John Hickenlooper, Andrew Romanoff
2010 started off rough for Democrats, due to a stream of high profile Democratic retirements in important districts. When CO Gov. Bill Ritter added his name to the list of Dem retirements, it set off a flurry of speculation about who would run to take his spot. I compiled a run down of the most likely Democratic candidates:
So let’s take a look at the state’s in-house candidates. The top contender seems to be Andrew Romanoff, the state Rep. who has already launched a 2010 Senate primary campaign against Sen. Michael Bennet. Bennet was appointed to complete Salazar’s term last year, but he must win the seat for himself this November.
Some have suggested that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper would be a good fit. Hickenlooper has long been rumored to be a potential Gubernatorial candidate, but declined to run against Ritter in 2006 to replace the term-limited Republican governor Bill Owens, saying “I would not be unraveling the fabric of collaboration.” Asked on the phone by a local reporter if he would run this year, Hickenlooper responded that his cell phone was running out of batteries.
Former Rep. Scott McInnis, the leading Republican in the field, was ecstatic. “We beat the varsity team a little earlier than we thought we would,” said a McInnis spokesman. ”They’ve got to go to plan B, or the b-team.”
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 2010, Chris Dodd, Connecticut, Merrick Alpert, Senate
As it became increasingly clear that Conn. Senator Chris Dodd was not a viable candidate to hold on to his seat in 2010, speculation began to swirl about which Democrats would rise to pick up the banner. The media discussed Dick Blumental and Ned Lamont, but continually left out Merrick Alpert, who launched his primary challenge to Dodd long before Dodd tanked in the polls. I called Alpert to talk about his realistic chances, immoral politicians, and of course, former WWE CEO Linda McMahon, one of the leading Republican candidates. Here’s an excerpt of the interview:
MJ: Which Republican candidate would you most like to face in 2010?
MA: I’d be happy to go after any of them. They’re taking turns seeing who can be further right. They stand up saying Afghanistan is a good idea and health care reform is a bad idea. As far as I’m concerned, you can pair them all together and I’ll run against them all.
I would have told you 2 months ago that former congressman Rob Simmons would be the nominee, but Linda McMahon is spending such an obscene amount of money. Whether you’re trying to buy an election with your own money or with money from special interests, you’re trying to buy an election. Whoever wins that cage match, I’m happy to take on.
After Dodd decided to resign, I spoke with Alpert again about how this changed the race. I half-expected him to go after Blumenthal, who already showed a huge advantage over all other candidates. But here’s an excerpt of what he said:
But instead of going after Blumenthal, Alpert, a lifelong Democrat who worked for Bill Clinton and Al Gore, was eager to add to his list of McMahon criticisms, saying “she’s bad medicine for Connecticut.” In between brief exchanges with supporters during his 5-day, 90-mile walk through Connecticut, he said over the sound of car honks that McMahon “is as phony as the place that she made her money. In none of her ads does she ever mention world wrestling. You would think that she and her husband owned a deli when in fact they made a fortune on lingerie wrestling matches. I’m not looking to explain that to my kids.”
Filed under: 2010 and 2012, Congress, General Politics, Mother Jones | Tags: 2010, Linda McMahon, Connecticut, Chris Dodd, Dick Blumenthal, Rob Simmons
It’s been a crappy year for embattled Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd. Toward the end of 2009, it became increasingly clear just how dire his reelection chances were. In mid-December, the respected elections predictor the Cook Political Report called Dodd “as unelectable as unindicted incumbents get.” That was a pretty safe prediction considering that, at the time, Dodd trailed former GOP congressman Rob Simmons and former WWE CEO Linda McMahon by 13 and 6 points respectively. On the MoJo blog, I predicted that Dodd’s retirement was imminent and rounded up the field of potential Conn. Dems to replace him. Looks like I was right about one of them:
As Connecticut Attorney General for the past 20 years, Dick Blumenthal has made ripples most recently for his harsh words about financial badboy AIG, which has offices in the state. Back in March, Blumenthal called the legal justification for AIG bonuses “a joke of a justification for squandering scarce taxpayer resources.”
Filed under: General Politics, Mother Jones | Tags: Filibuster, Alan Grayson, Florida
Alan Grayson continually cracks me up. His basic strategy is to serve as the liberal antidote to firebrand Republicans like Michele Bachmann and Steve King, who never fail to say crazy things. Grayson doesn’t disappoint. But the freshman congressman from Florida has also introduced his fair share of smart, important legislative suggestions. Back in November, for example, he circulated a petition to reduce the Senate super majority to overcome a filibuster from 60 votes to 55 votes. As I wrote in MoJo:
Whether you agree with Grayson’s proposal or not, it is clear that something needs to change. Kevin Drum writes today that “full-blown unanimous obstruction is something new under the sun…Dems, for better or worse, never tried to make every single bill a destruction test of the opposing party’s governance.” The filibuster was not consistently abused until the Dems reclaimed control of Congress in 2007. During the Reagan administration, for example, there were as few as 20 cloture votes per congressional term, compared to more than 100 in the 2007-2008 term, twice what was necessary in the preceding six years.
As the debate about the filibuster continues, it’s increasingly likely that congress will come up with some sort of reform. But I wouldn’t expect that reform to garner broad bipartisan support if it’s introduced by Alan Grayson.
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Mother Jones, Race | Tags: cocaine, drug policy, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, FAMM, Len Bias, mandatory minimums, Obama
Mandatory minimum laws apply to an array of crimes, the most controversial of which is drug sentencing. Essentially, thanks to mandatory minimum laws, which were implemented in 1986 after basketball star Len Bias overdosed on crack cocaine, require judges to determine a defendant’s sentence without considering outside mitigating factors. In the most controversial example, crack cocaine users (who are predominantly black) receive a punishment 100 times more harsh than powder cocaine users (typically white). Back in October, the Obama administration asked the US Sentencing Commission to review the minimums. I called the leadership of Families Against Mandatory Minimums about the story:
Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) argues that the requirements have not achieved their intended purpose of reducing crime and scaring minor criminals into giving information about the most flagrant offenders in return for lighter sentences. As any self-respecting fan of The Wire knows, those at the bottom of the drug pyramid don’t get details about what goes on up top. So while the drug kingpins have an avenue through which to reduce their sentences, says Jennifer Seltzer-Stitt, FAMM’s federal legislative affairs director, “[minor users] who don’t have anyone to trade get longer sentences.”
Filed under: Environment, Mother Jones | Tags: 350, Day of Action, Environment, San Francisco
I’m all for saving the world. In fact, I think we need to do more of it. But the San Francisco 350 Day of Action, a worldwide event meant to influence the global debate on climate change, focused more on novelty than substantive change. I checked it out with some MoJoers and we put together this video to sum it up:
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Economy, Mother Jones | Tags: capital punishment, death penalty, executions, Rick Perry, Texas
For Texas, the nation’s leader in legal killing, abolishing the death penalty would be an economic slam dunk. Perry, who once suggested that his state should secede from the Union, showed he was a fiscal conservative when he refused to take bailout funds for unemployment benefits. Of course, barely a month later, he had to ask the government for a $170 million loan to cover (you guessed it) unemployment. The Death Penalty Information Center released a report in October that found that Texas could save a bundle by scaling back its execution program. Perry missed the memo:
But the swashbuckling politician—who in April suggested that Texas could secede from the Union—has only reaffirmed his embrace of the death penalty. “Our process works, and I don’t see anything out there that would merit calling for a moratorium on the Texas death penalty,” he said on Tuesday. As Zack Roth notes, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry’s top challenger for governor in 2010 and a strong supporter of the death penalty, has criticized Perry on the issue. Still, she hasn’t commented on the death penalty’s economic or ethical dimensions, instead charging that Perry’s handling of the Willingham case is “giving liberals an argument to discredit the death penalty.”
Filed under: Civil Rights, Crime and Justice, Mother Jones | Tags: Alabama, Arizona, George Wallace, Immigration, Joe Arpaio
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio continues to show the US government who’s boss. In October, the justice department tried, however ineffectively, to rein in the controversial law enforcer by barring his office from making immigration arrests in the field. Of course, Arpaio vowed to disobey. This reminds me of another American hooligan George Wallace, the governor who famously blocked African American students from entering a school in Alabama. Arpaio certainly seems to fit that mold:
The statute currently in question is section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which enables local officials to enforce immigration laws with the approval of the Department of Homeland Security. Jennifer Allen of the Tucson-based Border Action Network explains that either party can opt out of the agreement, as DHS did partially earlier this week. So, she said, it is now illegal for Arpaio to continue his immigration raids without the approval of DHS. “There are no state-level laws that say you can set up a check point in a predominantly low-income Latino neighborhood and start pulling people over left and right for insignificant pretenses.”
