Will the Republicans really fight Obama’s Supreme Court pick?

Or in the end, will they just play games to raise money and throw red meat to the base?

Most of the real experts say Sotomayor will most likely be confirmed. But there will always be wrinkles, or rumors of wrinkles…

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge, according to AP.

The talking heads are all a Twitter about this, but is it a lot of hot air about nothing?

Meanwhile, the rumor mill is alive and spewing down Montgomery way with this tidbit.

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Folsom Wants to Solve Difficult Economic Problems

by Glynn Wilson

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. Feb. 6 — Congressman Artur Davis is trying to make history in the Deep South state of Alabama by trying to follow on the coattails of his Harvard cohort Barack Obama, who made history by being elected as the first African-American president of the United States, a country that has wrestled with the issue of race since its founding.

Glynn Wilson

Jim Folsom Jr. talks about Alabama’s economic problems with the Downtown Democratic Club

And nowhere in the country does race play a more prominent role in political life than Alabama, the state famous from the highway in Selma to the jails of Birmingham as the battleground state for Civil Rights.

It must have seemed like interesting political theater for Davis to hold his official announcement for governor first in downtown Birmingham, on the same appointed hour a figure from Alabama’s Old Guard was to address the Downtown Democratic Club.

But there is a problem with this picture. Jim Folsom Jr., the state’s Lt. Governor who served as governor for part of one appointed term in the early 1990s, comes from a long tradition of populists, who fought hard on the race issue all the way back to the 1930s, when poll taxes were used to keep blacks and poor whites from voting. His father, “Big Jim” Folsom, did more for the little man than any governor of Alabama in the 20th century, symbolized by his famous “farm to market” roads.

Folsom is now orchestrating a highway bill of his own through the state legislature, at a time when President Obama is pushing a stimulus package with billions of dollars for roads and bridges and other infrastructure.

Davis is a young Congressman, 41, with an excellent resume for a poor, fatherless son of Montgomery. He has distinguished himself as a student at Harvard and Harvard Law School, as a prosecutor and a Congressman, who publicly led the House Judiciary Committee investigation into the Bush Justice Department’s political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

Since Obama’s election, however, Davis has decided to abandon his duties on the important House Judiciary Committee as a Congressman to run for governor, leaving many of his constituents — and potential voters for a Senate run in the future — wondering why he is leaving them high and dry.

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Birmingham Congressman Artur Davis Will…

by Glynn Wilson

When Alabama’s Lt. Governor Jim Folsom Jr. walks to the podium to speak to the Downtown Birmingham Democratic Club Friday at noon, in the Harbert Center, he will not be announcing his intention to run for governor, sources say.

But in another room in the same building at the same time, other sources say Congressman Artur Davis will fire the starter’s pistol in the race, an unprecedented early announcement with the election still a year and a half off.

Folsom’s campaign has decided to focus attention on the fact that Davis has announced that he is NOT going to do the job he was elected to do — so he can run for governor.

Wayne Madsen is now reporting that Davis, who gave up his position on the House Judiciary Committee several weeks ago and said it was so he could run to be Alabama’s first African-American governor, has decided that it is more important to gain the support of the Business Council of Alabama, headed up by Leura Canary’s husband, Bill Canary, a major Republican official in the state and ally of current Republican Governor Bob Riley, than in getting to the bottom of political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

Folsom, on the other hand, when asked later today if he will run, will take the high road, according to an advance draft of his remarks obtained exclusively by the Locust Fork News-Journal

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by Glynn Wilson

THE BUNKER, Jan. 22 — What’s left of the Newhouse bureau in Washingon, D.C., managed a story today for the Birmingham Snooze on the new book out by Gwen Ifill of Public Television on politics and race, which includes a section on Birmingham Congressman Artur Davis.

A new book about politics and race includes a chapter on Rep. Artur Davis in which he bluntly lays out his strategy for running for governor of Alabama in 2010 and how it is similar to President Barack Obama’s campaign.

“It’s going to require me going into communities that have not typically had black politicians on the ballot,” Davis told the author. “It’s going to require me going into places all around the state and saying, `Look, I’m not that different from you.’”

The book, released Tuesday, is The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. Its title ignited a controversy during the presidential campaign because Ifill, a PBS journalist and moderator of “Washington Week,” was a moderator of the vice presidential debate, and critics questioned whether her forthcoming book signaled a bias toward the Democratic ticket.

The chapter on Davis is partly a political biography of the fourth-term congressman and partly an analysis of how Obama’s historic election affects Davis’ desire to be Alabama’s first black governor.

Ifill declares it a “tall order” for Alabama, where Obama won only 10 percent of the white vote in November.

She calls Davis a “political junkie” who has calculated that he needs 38 percent of the white vote plus a higher-than-normal turnout among black voters to win a general election.

Ifill also quotes Washington, D.C., delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a black Democrat, as being skeptical that Davis will wind up in the governor’s mansion in Montgomery.

“Of all states, that’s the worst state I could think of now to run in. A terrible state,” she told Ifill in an interview before Obama’s nomination.

But the book also discusses how Davis’ moves so far are calculated to improve his chances: He won his congressional seat by breaking with established black political leaders and appealing to white voters; he broke with them again by backing Obama early in the Democratic primary; and he built a more moderate voting record in six years in Congress.

“I have a very strong commitment to expanding opportunities for excluded people, whether they are black or white, whether they live in urban areas or rural areas. Does that make me a new leader?” Davis asked.

“It did, and it does,” Ifill wrote.

Sharpton, Siegelman:

Two other items in the chapter stand out. First, Ifill asked the Rev. Al Sharpton why he went to Alabama in 2002 to tell voters that Davis couldn’t be trusted, and Sharpton said he did it because he had family members in the state who asked him to help the incumbent Rep. Earl Hilliard. Davis won the race.

Second, Ifill writes that Davis said he “had no choice” but to support a congressional inquiry into the criminal case against former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, who claims he was targeted by politically motivated Republican prosecutors.

Davis told Ifill that he worried it would “smell of the old-fashioned partisan politics he claims to eschew,” but he was the only Alabamian on the committee leading the investigation.

“Barely know him, barely know him,” Davis told Ifill. Davis also said he expected most Alabamians to ignore the Siegelman controversy and that he was “counting on it to fade away well before 2010,” Ifill wrote.

The story was immediately sent out all over the state via e-mail over the Net, and generated some strong reactions from liberal and progressive Democrats and Siegelman supporters.

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Intel Court Upholds Executive Warrantless Surveillance Power

by Glynn Wilson

On the very day when the day President Bush made his farewell speech to the nation, a special federal appeals court released a rare declassified opinion from August 22 of last year backing the government’s authority to intercept international phone conversations and e-mails from U.S. soil without a warrant, even those involving Americans, if a significant purpose is to collect foreign intelligence.

Concerned that the directives from the executive branch requiring telecommunications companies to assist the government in warrantless surveillance of customers may constitute a violation of American civil liberties under the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, the American Civil Liberties Union responded.

“The Court of Review was wrong to hold that the warrant requirement doesn’t apply in foreign intelligence investigations. When the government monitors Americans’ phone calls and emails, it should have to justify its actions to a court, and it should have to do so on a case-by-case basis,” Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project, said in a press release. “The government should not be able to nullify Fourth Amendment rights simply by invoking national security.”

The Court of Review was correct, though, to find that probable cause is a key constitutional requirement, he said. “Notably, the FISA Amendments Act, which Congress enacted after the Protect America Act expired, lacks that and other constitutionally significant safeguards.”

Washington Post: Intelligence Court Releases Ruling in Favor of Warrantless Wiretapping

CBS: Federal Court Upholds Wiretap Law

The newly released Court of Review opinion (dated August 22, 2008) is available as a PDF file here.

The January 12, 2009 order directing release of the opinion is posted as a PDF file here.

Readers will recall that Birmingham Congressman Artur Davis voted in favor of Bush’s new FISA bill last summer primarily for political purposes, to get Barack Obama elected president.

Can the Constitution Survive Politics Without Principle?

Davis has now stepped down from his position on the House Judiciary Committee and seems to be continuing his move to run for governor of Alabama in 2010.

Artur Davis Leaves House Judiciary Committee

Business Alabama Monthly: Artur Davis Previews a Pitch for the Statehouse?

It might be instructive for people to know that the U.S. is not classified as the “freest country in the world” as we often hear from politicians in Washington.

According to an analysis by Freedom House, 16 countries have more freedom than people in the U.S. on political pluralism and participation and freedom of expression and belief, which I’m sure will come as a shock to many. Fifteen countries are better off than we are on personal autonomy and individual rights, and 14 have more freedom under the rule of law. Eleven countries rank above the U.S. for freedom in the electoral process, the functioning of government and associational and organizational rights.

Freedom Around the World Declines for 3rd Consecutive Year

by Glynn Wilson

Artur Davis, the soft-spoken and little-known Congressman who represents much of the area from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa, was in town this weekend while Congress takes a break from the August heat in Washington, D.C.

Glynn Wilson

Rep. Artur Davis at the Young Democrats cookout

Dressed casually in gray slacks and a blue buttoned-down shirt, Davis showed up to shake some hands at the Birmingham Young Democrats’ cookout in George Ward Park on Southside.

I was able to catch up with him for a few minutes to press my concerns about the threat to the Fourth Amendment’s protections against “unreasonable” searches and seizures, and to finally get some answers to questions his press staff seem incapable of responding to — electronically or otherwise.

In northeastern Jefferson County, where a concern for the Second Amendment’s protections for gun ownership are paramount politically, very few people have ever even heard of Davis. An unscientific survey of average working people in Clay, Pinson, Center Point, Trussville, and Roebuck shows that he has almost no name recognition in this part of the world.

And since the newspapers and television news stations and radio talk shows in Alabama spend almost no time covering such “trivial” things as the threat to the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution from the Bush administration’s illegal spying operations over the past seven years, the average construction worker here doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned about that either.

But among active Democrats who were in attendance at the cookout, there is an awareness that Davis — along with Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president to run against Republican John McCain — voted for the new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which included a provision exempting telecommunications companies such as ATnT from lawsuits for their admitted role in illegally spying on Americans since 9/11.

The main reason Davis supported the bill, he said, was political.

Since Davis endorsed Obama early on, and since President George W. Bush threatened to veto any FISA bill that did not contain telecom immunity, the moderate Democrats who hold sway in both houses of Congress did not want to give McCain ammunition in the last three months of the presidential election race by allowing the spying law to expire in August.

McCain could have used that as evidence that the Democrats are “weak on terror,” Davis said — as if he wasn’t going to run ads saying that very thing anyway. He has already.

In his defense, Davis did offer a legal answer to the question as well.

Davis is a Harvard-educated lawyer who interned at the Southern Poverty Law Center and clerked for U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson — the federal judge who ordered Judge Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments Monument out of the State Supreme Court building in Montgomery and one of my personal heroes. He also worked as an assistant U.S. attorney before running for Congress, unlike Alabama’s current attorney general Troy King, who had never tried a case in court.

Standing in the George Ward Park pavilion with the aroma of barbecued chicken in the air, Davis made the case that the new FISA bill was an improvement over the old one.

Under the old law, passed in 1978 in response to President Nixon’s abuse of federal resources to spy on opposing political activist groups, there was no provision for protecting American citizens abroad, Davis said. The new law extends those rights overseas beyond the nation’s physical borders “for the first time,” he said. It was a compromise the Democrats would never have gotten out of the Bush administration just a few months ago, he claims.

The new law also strengthens monitoring of the federal government’s spying by the so-called FISA court, he said, although critics have said the court is nothing more than a “rubber stamp” for the executive branch, no matter who is in power.

The new bill also changes the language for obtaining warrants to spy on Americans from “probable cause” to “reasonable suspicion,” he said, although in a country run by an Imperial President who thinks he is a king who derives his power from God and is not beholden to the law, that improvement seems hardly enough to stop the abuses.

Which brings us to the last issue, where Davis makes a good point.

Whether the law is enforced in a way that protects civil liberties “rests on the integrity of the executive,” Davis said.

So he is hoping one of the questioners at this year’s presidential debates makes sure to ask Senator John McCain the question: “Can we count on you to be responsible in enforcing the FISA law?”

Or, in other words, will you abuse the power of the presidency to spy on political opponents, like Nixon and Bush? We might also add: Will you also politicize the Justice Department to jail your enemies?

Whether Davis’s answer will assuage the critics on the left in the Democratic Party is questionable.

According to Ben Mazzara, the local organizer for the Greater Birmingham Democracy for America chapter, a group set up by Howard Dean to help register new voters, Davis’s position is much like a lot of the Democrats in Congress now, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They have so far refused to bring articles of impeachment against Bush-Cheney or to hold Karl Rove in “inherent contempt” for his role in the political prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman.

“They have placed winning elections above the Constitution,” Mazzara said at the cookout.

He said that may pale in comparison to how Bush and the Republicans have “eviscerated” the Constitution. But it certainly contributes to the low public approval ratings of this Congress and may cause problems after the election, he said, even if Obama wins.

According to Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert who often appears on MSNBC to talk about these issues, history and the country may not judge the Democrats kindly. Check out this exchange on Keith Olbermann’s show:

TURLEY: … the most remarkable if not bizarre aspect of all of this [is] that President Bush’s allies in the last seven years have been the Democratic leadership and the Democratic members that have repeatedly stepped in to protect him, not just from impeachment, but serious investigation. And it’s part of a very cynical political strategy. It has succeeded.

The Democrats know that they can retain the Congress if they just let this guy (Bush), you know, sort of ripen on the vine. And that they are afraid that there could be a backlash if they try to impeach. But of course, that’s literally all politics and no principle. They took an oath in the House of Representatives. And the most important thing they have to do as House members is to stand firm in the face of presidential crimes.

And I think history will be very, very severe, not just for Speaker Pelosi, but all of the Democrats, of how they could let this come to pass where they stood silent and did nothing in the face of such compelling criminal record.

We will see if that prediction comes true, along with another one we made awhile back when covering the issue at the time: Will the issue come back to haunt Davis if he decides to run for governor of Alabama in 2010?

Good News, Bad News Friday in Washington

Senate Passes Bush’s Spy Bill With Telecom Immunity

According to Richard Cohen, executive director of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Davis is a fine lawyer with a promising future in politics.

“Two things were obvious about Artur from day one here,” Cohen said. “He was going to be a gifted lawyer and was destined for great things in politics.”

But according to William Crain, a regular commentor on one of the largest and most influential e-mail lists in Alabama, “Davis is DLC (Democratic Leadership Council).”

If you want to examine the nefarious ways and means of the DLC, he said, read this article and others like it on the site.

The key quote from Davis, which makes a lot of sense from a practical political point of view, goes like this.

“If you don’t win, you don’t get to do anything,” he says. “If you don’t figure out a way to translate your message into at least 51 percent of the vote, then you will not do very well.”

True, but is it possible to win elections and remain true to the Constitution at the same time? Some people think so. It just takes work to educate the people and the press.

“The reason that there is much dissention in the Democratic Party ranks today is caused by the leaders of the DLC, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Al Frome, Rahm Emmanuel (and others),” Crain said. “If you don’t like Neo-Conservatives you will certainly not like Neo-Liberals. And the DLC is Neo-Liberal. You don’t want a Neo-Liberal for governor.”

To learn more about Davis’s background and to read about some of the controversies on the sources of his campaign funding, check out this SourceWatch page, which shows he takes a lot of money from New Yorkers. You can also check out this page from OpenSecrets.org, which shows that Davis takes a lot of money from corporations such as Southern Company, one of the worst polluters in the American South.