Colorado Luis

12 Senators

Is it really possible that a compromise could be reached on judicial filibusters?  I'm in the camp that says no -- Frist and his backers have made it clear that to them "compromise" means agreeing to a rule change that would replace the filibuster with some "100 hours" debate limit or something like that, which would be the end of the filibuster.  And Democrats are having none of that.  But there are still a group of 12 senators, 6 R and 6 D, including our own Ken Salazar and led by outspoken filibuster defender Republican John McCain of Arizona.  Aren't they just wasting their time?  Maybe, but reading this article gave me a clearer idea of why the twelve think they can get something done, and more importantly how it would work.

Basically, the twelve senators would sign a pact agreeing to vote as a bloc on various nominations and on the nuclear option.  The Republicans would agree to vote against the nuclear option and the Dems would agree to support some number of nominees.  And this is really the key:  There could be a compromise and you wouldn't know it because it would look based on the vote that one side or the other had won completely.  That's because it is Bill Frist, who obviously is not part of the compromise negotiations, who gets to decide what order to put up the nominees.  And he put two of the worst of the worst -- Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown -- to be voted on first.

At first, I thought that was a stupid move.  There are other nominees that would have an easier chance of beating cloture.  But then I realized the point is to provoke a nuclear confrontation, not to get nominees through.  What this does is it makes the Republicans in the compromise group go first.  Unless the group of 12 agrees to support Owen and Brown, then what will happen on Tuesday if there is a compromise is that Frist will go nuclear and find out there aren't even 50 votes there to force through the overriding of the filibuster rule (with Cheney breaking any tie).  That would look like a Democratic victory (and it would be) but under the compromise other nominees would get the votes of the 6 Dems in the group and be able to beat cloture.  We might not even know that happened for some time.

So my guess is the holdup is that the Republicans want to at least get a split between Rogers and Brown, so when the cloture vote happens one of them gets through.  But that would put the Democratic compromisers in the position of showing their hand first (by having to vote in favor of cutting off debate, thus forestalling the nuclear option at the cost of allowing one of the nominees through).  Then they would be waiting to see if the R's made good on their promise to vote against the nuclear option on the other nominee.  The other problem, of course, is all or some of the R's changing their minds and voting in favor of the nuclear option at some later time.

My prediction, for what it is worth:  The compromise efforts will fail, several Republicans (including McCain) will vote against the nuclear option, but Frist will succeed, all of the controversial nominees will get confirmed, and we will see Harry Reid trot out his plans for surviving the Senate's nuclear winter.

More Friday afternoon fun

I am one of the proud recipients of NewMexiKen's challenge to respond to this musical blog chain letter thing.  So here we go!

The last CD I bought was:  Ozomatli, Street Signs

Song playing right now:  Cracker, Loser.  Yeah, I sit around listening to covers of Jerry Garcia Band songs.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:  Macy Gray, It Ain't The Money.  This would fall into the "listen to a lot category" because I really need to get some new CDs in my car.

Los Lobos, A Matter of Time.  All Chicanos get this.  Elvis Costello too.

José Alfredo Jimenez, Camino de Guanajuato.  I was in Dolores Hidalgo, Gto. on a tourist bus trip that stopped at José Alfredo Jimenez' grave while the guide explained the lyrics of this song in relation to the events of Jimenez' life.  I definitely appreciate it now.

Joan Armatrading, Moondance.  I saw her do an awesome version of this at Red Rocks.

Public Enemy, Brothers Gonna Work It Out.  We gonna work it out one day/Till we all get paid/The right way, in full . . .

I'm going to unilaterally change the rules on this and say I only have to pass this on to three other people instead of five.  And I'm not as polite as Ken, who e-mails and asks first.  I hereby pass this on to George, Elena Mary, and Louis with an "o".

Beer Lawsuits

I know it's only Friday, but here is some real beer news.  Way back during the election I speculated that Pete Coors might find himself dealing with some lawsuits over that Molson merger deal -- quite a distraction for a sitting Senator if he had won.  Well, here they come:

    At least four class-action lawsuits have been filed against Molson Coors Brewing Co., accusing management of knowing about potential financial problems before the February 9 merger of Molson Inc. and Adolph Coors Co.

    Adolph Coors became the parent of the merged company and adopted its current name. On April 28, one day after the Golden, Colorado-based brewer reported disappointing financial results, the newly formed company's share price plunged more than 19 percent.

    In a press release, law firm Schatz & Nobel accused the company of violating federal securities laws by making materially false or misleading public statements. According to the release, the law firm alleged that "Coors failed to disclose that it was not operating according to plan in the first quarter of 2005 in order to safeguard its planned merger with Molson."

I don't know whether Pete Coors is actually a defendant in any of these cases, but even if he is not dealing with them would have been a distraction if he had been elected our senator.  Of course, it isn't like he would have been spending time looking for a compromise on judicial filibusters or something.  In any event, this isn't going to help him maintain his "successful businessman" persona in the unlikely event he ever tries to run for office again.

No Nukes

This morning's Post reports that Ken Salazar was willing to go so far as to allow a vote on all seven previously rejected Bush nominees in exchange for a binding commitment from the Republicans not to break the Senate rule that allows filibusters of judicial nominees.  And even that compromise position wasn't acceptable to the Republicans.

I'm sure Salazar loves the fact that his offer got him headlines in Colorado that portrayed him as the leader of efforts to defuse the Senate's nuclear crisis.  And his offer must have had Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid's blessing, because Reid invited Salazar to speak at a Democratic unity rally after the offer was made -- at which time Salazar accused the GOP of trying to install a "dictatorship."  I say no harm no foul on Salazar's compromise offer, which never had a chance of being accepted.  I'm glad we have a Colorado vote to keep the filibuster rule in place.

And if you had any question as to who is calling the shots in the nuclear battle, just see who responded to Salazar's remarks:

    "There's no guarantee in Sen. Salazar's so-called compromise that the Democrats won't use the filibuster again against well-qualified nominees," said Amanda Banks, spokeswoman for Focus on the Family Action, the political arm of the Colorado Springs-based ministry.

Alcaldes

It shouldn't be big news that El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reyna de los Angeles de Porciuncula has elected Antonio Villaraigosa as mayor.  But it was the 1870s when L.A. last had a mayor of Latino ancestry, so Villaraigosa's win has the feeling of breaking a racial barrier.  I remember how we Denver Latinos (well actually, I lived in Littleton at the time) felt about Federico Peña's win back in 1983 -- it was as if we had finally arrived as a political force to be reckoned with.  I'm sure lots of people are feeling that way In L.A. today.

Of course, it is one thing for a person of color to win a mayoral election by racial bloc voting when the candidate's racial bloc dominates the city.  It is another thing -- and a better thing if you ask me -- for the candidate to win by getting support from across racial lines.  That's how Peña won, and that's how Villaraigosa won too -- earning the label "post-ethnic candidate" by running a campaign that recognized the diversity of his city without making his own race the major voting issue.  By that standard, you could call John Hickenlooper a "post-ethnic candidate" too, although I think "multi-ethnic" is a better word -- in a city with more than two racial/ethnic groups, race can matter less if a candidate tries to work with all of the different communities in the city.

On the other coast, it looks like New York Latinos are going to be waiting a few more years before getting their first Latino mayor.  Fernando Ferrer's candidacy is going down to a well-deserved defeat based on his idiotic remarks about the police shooting of Amadou Diallo.  Ferrer's campaign is a lesson in how not to do multi-ethnic urban politics.

Friday Random Ten

Inspired by Ms. Lauren's regular feature.  I probably won't do this every week, but why not let you see at least this time what comes up when you hit shuffle on my iPod:

1. Los Super Seven: Campesino

2. k.d. lang: Trail of Broken Hearts

3. X: Los Angeles

4. Bad Manners: Lip Up Fatty

5. Stevie Ray Vaughn: Lenny

6. Tom Tom Club: Happiness Can’t Buy Money

7. New Order: Working Overtime

8. Clash: Death or Glory

9: Clash: Clampdown

10. Dr. Loco’s Rockin’ Jalapeño Band: Pa’ Lo Que Vale

OK, so not only two songs from the same artist, but two in a row from the same album.  Random indeed.

This Year's Denver Water Rules

In what has become an annual rite of spring, the Denver Water Board has announced this year's summer watering rules.  They're pretty lax, a sign that the Board believes the drought has eased up (and that they won't mind the extra revenue from increased usage).  The only mandatory ban is on watering between 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., the time of maximum evaporation loss.  Beyond that, the Board is asking people to voluntarily restrict watering to every other day (using the odd and even street address calendar) and limit watering to 20 minutes per "zone" for people who have sprinkler systems.

This year's rules seem too lax for me.  Antero Reservoir is still practically empty, yet the message from Denver Water seems to be that the drought is over:  their manager of conservation describes this year's plan as part of a transition from the drought to a "long term aggressive conservation program."  (The complete survey of reservoir capacity can be viewed here.)  I don't see how Denver Water could be any less aggressive than they are being this year without going to no restrictions whatsoever.

I don't think the current pattern of water use on the Front Range is sustainable, and the culprit is the Kentucky Bluegrass lawns people want (and some homeowners' associations require).  What I would call an aggressive long term program would involve weaning homeowners and the lawn maintenance industry off of bluegrass and toward drought resistant strains like fescue.  They are doing some of that but it should be something that gets highlighted every time a Denver Water representative gets in front of the media.

Drug Peace

The same people who have sponsored pro-marijuana legalization petitions at CU and CSU are bringing their drive to Denver, where they plan to get a measure to legalize possession of less than one ounce of marijuana on the November ballot. No, if the thing passes it doesn't mean we're going to turn into another Amsterdam -- as people are rushing to point out, possession and distribution will still be illegal under state and federal law. (In fact, I'm not sure Denver even has its own laws criminalizing marijuana.) I'm sure there will be the usual combination of scare tactics and ridicule directed at this measure. I'd like to see it pass. As people repeatedly pointed out during the new jail debate, marijuana prohibition is a failed policy. Both major parties have been guilty of using macho tough-on-crime posturing instead of actual thinking on the drug issue. It has taken non-political leaders, like Colorado's U.S. District Judge John Kane, to vocally oppose our current drug policy. Local measures like this, by passing or even doing better than expected, can help make it clear that questioning the "war on drugs" need not be political suicide. (Heck, if the Dems embraced marijuana decriminalization the Libertarian Party would probably lose half its voters overnight.) It will be really interesting to see how Hickenlooper handles this. He has governed with a refreshing absence of transparent pandering. Will he put his credibility on the line by trotting out the same old anti-drug rhetoric? My guess is that he will choose to ignore the measure, which is about as good a position as proponents could hope for.

Not So Immutable Characteristics

This is something that really deserves book length instead of blog post length treatment, but I do want to throw in a few thoughts based on this very interesting article about people of African ancestry in Argentina that I saw on Negrophile:

    Their disappearance is one of Argentina's most enduring mysteries. In 1810, black residents accounted for about 30 percent of the population of Buenos Aires. By 1887, however, their numbers had plummeted to 1.8 percent.

    So where did they go? The answer, it turns out, is nowhere.

    . . .

    But two new studies are challenging those old notions, using distinct methods: a door-to-door census to determine how many Argentines consider themselves black, and an analysis of DNA samples to detect traces of African ancestry in those who consider themselves white.

    The results are only partially compiled, but they suggest that many of the black Argentines did not vanish; they just faded into the mixed-race populace and became lost to demography.

Something similar happened in this country, where lots of people who were considered Black in their hometowns moved to other parts of the country and "passed" in some other territory.  Probably a scientific study would show lots of people who think of themselves as "white" Americans actually have some African ancestry, the so called "one drop rule" to the contrary.

That isn't to say that such people "are" Black.  It is to point out yet again that race is a social construct, not a biological reality, although obviously some people have less opportunity than others to construct their own racial identity.

And, to get to just one of the many points you could get to from this starting place, this calls into question the whole distinction between "mutable" and "immutable" characteristics and the idea that while it is wrong to discriminate based on "immutable" characteristics, it is fine to discriminate based on "mutable" ones.  So some people get really invested in the idea, for example, that homosexuality is an "immutable" characteristic.  Undoubtedly that's true for some people, but does that make it OK for the government to exert pressure for people to choose heterosexuality if they have a choice?  Would it be OK for the government to say that those who are capable of "passing" as white must do so?  Seems to me the better argument is that whether a characteristic is "immutable" does not matter -- what matters is that certain personal choices are not legitimate subjects of government intervention at all.

It's worth pointing out that we don't have a problem making religion a protected category in antidiscrimination laws, even though obviously people choose their religion.  That's a personal choice that the rest of society has no business in, and it is not the only one.

Denver Convention

Kari at Western Democrat reports that Howard Dean has been asked to hold a midterm convention of the Democratic Party either in St. Louis or Denver (on the theory that Missouri and Colorado are both swing states).

That's nice, but I say why settle for a midterm convention.  We should go all out and have the 2008 Democratic National Convention here.  I know ex-Mayor Wellington Webb made a push for the 2004 convention, and our current mayor is pretty certain to either be a second-term Democratic star mayor in 2008, or the Governor of Colorado.

Webb was probably just one election cycle ahead of his time.  (And isn't he still tight with Dean after dropping out and endorsing the doctor for DNC Chair?)  Now the idea that the mountain West is where the Democrats have their best chance of improving their fortunes has become conventional wisdom.  The best thing would be to put someone from the mountain states on the presidential ticket (which I don't think the Dems have ever done) but holding the convention in Denver would be a good second choice to that.