Medina County Dem News

(Medina County Democratic Action Committee)

Announcement for Young Dems

Young Democratic candidates, volunteers, and Young Dems thinking about running for office or getting involved in campaigns: Ohio Young Democrats RUN2008 Campaign Training, this Saturday, 10-4, at Ohio Democratic Party Hqtrs. in Columbus. Intensive training on being a candidate & running a successful campaign. Sign up at www.ohioyd.org or email Tara at brown@ohioyd.org.

Medina County Holiday Event with Governor Strickland a Success

About 100 Medina County Democrats came out to meet Governor Strickland at the Rustic Hills Country Club. Pam Miller, the Medina County Democratic Chair and organizer of the event, served as master of ceremonies. Among those attending were Medina County Prosecutor Dale Chase, Representative Betty Sutton, Medina County Domestic Relations Judge Mary Kovack, Medina Municipal Court Judge Dale Chase, and Medina County Cornorer Dr. Neil Grabbenstetter. Medina County Common Pleas Judge James Kimbler is recovering from surgery and was not able to attend, but his wife and MCDAC Treasurer Joyce Kimbler was there along with four family members who came as her guests. You can see pictures from the event by clicking here:
http://mcdac.blogspot.com/2007/12/scenes-from-silver-and-blue-holiday.html

L.A. Times: Military Families No Longer Support Bush, Republicans

The L.A. Times had a story dated Friday, December 7, 2007, concerning a poll that it sponsored along with the financial news organization, Bloomberg. The subject of the poll was Bush's support among military families. The poll found out that like the rest of the United States, a clear majority of military families don't support Bush's Iraq policy.

Here is a quote from the article:

Nearly six out of every 10 military families disapprove of Bush's job performance and the way he has run the war, rating him only slightly better than the general population does.

And among those families with soldiers, sailors and Marines who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 60% say that the war in Iraq was not worth the cost, the same result as all adults surveyed.

Not only do military personnel believe that the war was not worth the cost, but 58% of them want the U.S. to withdraw its troops from Iraq within a year. Only 35% are willing to stay until victory, whatever that means in this war.

What's also interesting is that military families believe that Democrats, and not Republicans, will best serve the interests of military personnel. This is from the Times' article about the poll:

Now the disapproval of Bush appears to have transferred to his party. Republican leanings of military families that began with the Vietnam War -- when Democratic protests seemed to be aimed at the troops as much as the fighting -- have shifted, the poll results show.

When military families were asked which party could be trusted to do a better job of handling issues related to them, respondents divided almost evenly: 39% said Democrats and 35% chose Republicans. The general population feels similarly: 39% for Democrats and 31% for Republicans.

Democratic opponents of the war should be trumpeting this poll and its findings at every opportunity. Bush claims the right to define what "support for our troops" means but he is less concerned with the troops and more concerned with his own, narrow agenda. Americans need to know that supporting the troops has little, if anything, to so with supporting Bush and his incompetent administration.

Respected Republican Judge Throws Out GOP Campaign Finance Law

The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that Franklin County Common Pleas Judge John Bender, a Republican who used to be legal counsel to Bob Taft when he was Ohio's Secretary of State, has struck down the campaign finance law the GOP passed in late 2006. The bill was passed after the Republicans had lost five out of six state-wide offices. The bill was aimed at curtailing unions from engaging in politics by helping to fund political campaigns.

This paragraph from the Dispatch article explains why Judge Bender struck down the law:

After the bill passed the legislature, the House clerk's office left out 33 pages of the final bill. It was that incomplete version that was attested to by the House speaker and Senate president, and then signed into law by Gov. Bob Taft.

After the mistake was discovered, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner let the House clerk substitute the first 33 pages of House Bill 694, even though it already had been filed with her office. The missing text dealt with union contributions; at the time, Brunner said the fixing of clerical errors was permitted in years past.

The unions sued earlier this year. Common Pleas Court Judge John F. Bender said late yesterday the General Assembly passed one bill, but the governor technically signed a different bill.

The bottom line for Bender: The governor can't sign a bill not passed by the General Assembly, and lawmakers can't send the governor a bill that they did not pass.

The fact that a Democratic Secretary of State allowed the Republicans to substitute the first 33 pages of the bill's text with her office, but it was then struck down by a Republican judge actually helps any future judicial review of Judge Bender's actions. What also helps is the reputation of John Bender for being a very fair judges and one who carefully considers his decisions.

This doesn't mean that campaign finance is dead in Ohio. What it does mean, if the ruling stands, is that the Republicans controlling the General Assembly won't be able to pass a one-sided bill. Of course, if they can't pass a one-sided bill, maybe they won't want to pass one at all.

Voinovich Votes Against Ending Debate on Energy Bill

So once again, good old moderate Republican George Voinovich, decides to support big business and the Bush Administration over the interests of the American people. Today the House passed energy bill, which would raise fuel efficiency standards, require electric utilities to increase the use of renewable fuels like wind, and tax big oil companies to help pay for costs associated with the bill, came to a vote in the Senate.

Under the new rules laid out by the Republicans, almost every bill has to get 60 votes or face a filibuster. The energy bill's cloture vote failed in the Senate. Fifty three Senators voted to shut down the debate, 42 voted against shutting down debate, and five Senators didn't vote. Guess how Ol' Moderate George voted? Yep, you got it, he voted with the utilities, the oil companies, and George W. Bush. That's a so called moderate Republican for you: You can always count of them to support Bush in the end.

Does Evidence Matter to People Like Bush and Huckabee?

There are two great entries up at Huffington Post about Mike Huckabee's pressuring the Arkansas Parole Board to release a convicted rapist named Wayne Dumond. The first one is here and the second one is here.

Wayne Dumond was released by the Arkansas Board in 1999 and proceeded to rape two other women and murder both of them while living in Missouri in 2001. He later died in prison for the first rape and murder while the State of Arkansas was putting together charges for the second rape and murder.

In the first story linked to above, Murray Waas outlines how Dumond was convicted of raping a distant cousin of Clinton's and a daughter of a Clinton financial supporter. The Christian right in Arkansas argued that Dumond was innocent and that basically he had been railroaded by the Clinton political machine. A right-wing columnist at the New York Post wrote that Clinton had let an innocent man stay in jail for 14 years.

The second story linked to above is by Sam Stein who outlines how anti-Clinton zealots pressured Huckabee to get him to pressure the Parole Board to release this man. The second story contains the following sentence:

"The whole deal about the Dumond case, and it can be overanalyzed, was that this was a bad guy with a proven record of sexual misconduct and violence. This is the last guy you want to set free," Max Brantly, executive editor of the Arkansas Times and one of the chief chroniclers of the Dumond case, told the Huffington Post. "And Huckabee formed the judgment to do this not after consulting anyone but after being sold a story and buying it. It's kind of like Bush and weapons and mass destruction."

Now here's the thing: There was a lot of evidence around that Dumond was guilty of the first rape, the one of the distant Clinton cousin. Other women who had been raped by Dumond, or had relatives who had been raped, wrote letters to Huckabee telling him about these crimes. According to reporters who covered the trial in Arkansas, the evidence about Dumond's guilt was overwhelming. Yet, Huckabee, convinced by political allies that Clinton was corrupt and convinced by his faith that people who capable of profound change, got involved, pressured the Board, and two other women died.

This sounds a lot like Bush and Iraq, which is the point of the quote above. Bush relied on his political allies, the neo-cons, to give him evidence about Iraq. He ignored the evidence of others. He was convinced that Iraq would easily transform itself once Hussein was removed from power. In short, just like Huckabee's actions regarding Dumond were faith-based, so were Bush's regarding Iraq.

Given the diaster that Iraq has turned out to be, can America afford another faith-based presidency that ignores evidence that it doesn't agree with?

Bush's DOJ Throws Out Separation of Powers

Harper's Magazine Online has a very interesting article out which is a speech given by newly elected Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. In this speech, Senator Whitehouse discloses that he has read memos prepared by the Bush Administration's Department of Justice. Here basically is what he says the memos claim:

To give you an example of what I read, I have gotten three legal propositions from these OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note taking could reproduce them from the classified documents. Listen for yourself. I will read all three, and then discuss each one.

An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President's authority under Article II.

The Department of Justice is bound by the President's legal determinations.

Later on in the speech, Senator Whitehouse puts forward in plain English that these propositions mean:

In a nutshell, these three Bush Administration legal propositions boil down to this:

"I don't have to follow my own rules, and I don't have to tell you when I'm breaking them."

"I get to determine what my own powers are."

"The Department of Justice doesn't tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is."

True conservatives are supposed to honor tradition and not seek radical change of governmental institutions. One of the most honored traditions in American jurisprudence is the concept of separation of powers. Senator Whitehouse in his speeech sets forth how that theory is supposed to work:

Our Constitution has as its most elemental provision the separation of governmental powers into three separate branches. When the government feels it necessary to spy on its own citizens, each branch has a role. The executive branch executes the laws, and conducts surveillance. The legislative branch sets the boundaries that protect Americans from improper government surveillance. The judicial branch oversees whether the government has followed the Constitution and the laws that protect U.S. citizens from violations of their privacy and their civil rights.

This concept was set forth in the Constitution as a check on the arbitraty exercise of governmental power. As Chief Justice John Marshall established in the opinion of Marbury v. Madison, it is the province and duty of the judicial branch of government to say what the law is and how, in the final analysis, the Constitution is to be interperted.

Since Bubble-Boy and the Duck Hunter don't like their power limited, however, they get other American institutions to do their dirty work for them. One of them is the Department of Justice. Another is the Pentagon. Another is the CIA. Still another is the Department of State. All of these institutions have been corrupted by this Administration, as, indeed, has the standing of America in the world.

Why Progressives Aren't Lining Up for Ohio Supreme Court Races

Brian Rothenberg, who blogs over at Progress Ohio, has an entry up where he laments the seeming failure of Ohio's progressive movement to recruit candidates for next year's Ohio Supreme Court races. At the present time, there are no Democrats on the Ohio Supreme Court, and, with the possible exception of Justice Paul Pfeifer, no liberals. Rothenberg rightly notes that most of the campaign funds for the Republicans members of the Ohio Supreme Court are coming from big business.

The problem is that, unlike in other election cycles, groups that would normally back challengers to sitting Republican Supreme Court Justices have other places to put their money. Democratic leaning groups such as organized labor and trial lawyers have a Democratic Governor, a Democratic Attorney General, and a Democratic Secretary of State. In addition they have a veto-proof House of Representatives. This means that for at least the next four years, the tendency of the Republican Ohio General Assembly to do whatever it wants can be put in check. A Democratic Attorney General can bring class action lawsuits on behalf of consumers. A Democratic Secretary of State can undo some of the damage done to that office by Ken Blackwell. A Democratic Governor can veto unbalanced legislation.

All of this means that political dollars have some place else to go and that it likely to be into the presidential race and into an attempt to get Democratic control over the Ohio House of Representatives. This means that Democratic leaning groups aren't rushing out to find and, more importantly, fund Ohio Supreme Court Justice candidates.

Rothenberg is right to be concerned about the failure of Ohio's progressive community to line up candidates for these positions. Given the changed political realities since 2006, however, and given that political funding for judicial races is not easy, such a failure is understandable.

Newsletter prepared by:
Medina County Democratic Action Committee
Joyce Kimbler, Treasurer
P.O. Box 1213
Medina, OH 44258
MCDAC Website