Cynthia Tucker

Gentle Readers:

I’m taking a much-needed week of vacation, so I’ll talk to you next week. Have a great Thanksgiving and remember: No running with scissors.

Continue reading Gone turkey hunting »

Success in any long-running campaign breeds complacency; first euphoria, then relief, later forgetfulness. Whether the campaign for universal suffrage or the crusade to curb childhood disease through immunizations, success leads to historical amnesia.

That’s certainly true of the decades-long battle for reproductive rights, another chapter in women’s never-ending struggle to achieve full personhood. Because the U.S. Supreme Court granted women the right to control their own reproduction in a 1973 ruling, Roe v Wade, forty-something Americans have no first-hand knowledge of back alley abortions. It’s likely they haven’t even heard second-hand stories of women who died from infections caused by coat-hanger terminations.

That helps explain why advocates for reproductive rights weren’t prepared for an all-out battle just to allow women to retain their health insurance coverage. It also helps explain why pro-choice Democrats found themselves outmaneuvered by U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak …

Continue reading Let women keep their abortion coverage »

It seems that Democrats are finally beginning to understand that a crippling recession will threaten their chances in next year’s mid-term elections. But they haven’t figured out an effective response, yet.
Instead, according to Politico, they’re turning their wrath on Obama and his Cabinet.

The wave of Democratic grief had been building privately for months, but Hill Democrats had held back on publicly criticizing the Obama presidency. But now Democrats who see that their economic agenda seems to be flailing and fear getting wiped out in the 2010 congressional elections are going public with a burst of criticism, and much of it has poured out in the past 48 hours.
It’s coming from some of the most liberal supporters of the president, like John Conyers, who said Thursday on the Bill Press radio show that Obama was “bowing down” to the right.
“I’m getting tired of saving Obama’s can in the White House,” Conyers said. “I mean, he only won by five votes in the House, and …

Continue reading Democrats need a job-creation bill »

I’ve always believed that those prone to cause mischief should be distracted with recreational activities that keep them from causing harm. So I’m a firm believer in Midnight Basketball, toddlers’ play groups and the Bohemian Grove gathering for rich guys.

Given that, I can’t help but applaud the creation of a new online game for paranoid, Tri-Lateral-Commission-fearing, Obama-stole-the-election-believing wingnuts. It will give them something to do rather than clean their weapons for the next townhall meeting.

It’s January 2011. The GOP is about to assume control of both houses of Congress—having been voted in by a public deeply suspicious of Democrats after President Barack Obama conducted clandestine talks with President Felipe Calderon of Mexico and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada. But two days before the new conservative majority is to be sworn in, Obama announces that this Congress will not be seated, that the United States (a creation of “racists and …

Continue reading Recreation for wingnuts »

Nicholas Kristof has a great column today on the critics of health care reform and how their criticisms about the dire consequences — socialism! government takeover! — are wrong. How does he know? It’s all been said before. Read his column or just go straight to an audio tape of Ronald Reagan blasting the proposed  Medicare plan in 1961.

Reagan was wrong, too.

If you don’t (oppose it), this program I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country until one day as Normal Thomas said we will wake to find that we have socialism, and if you don’t do this and I don’t do this, one of these days we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.

Medicare is now so popular that no politician dares talk about trying to change it. That …

Continue reading They were wrong about Medicare, too »

It’s time for the Senate to hold a straight-up vote on its health care bill. The Congressional Budget Office has come back with its estimate, which puts the total cost at $849 billion, meeting President Obama’s requirement that the legislation not “add one dime” to the deficit.

It would ensure up to 94 percent of Americans. It would prevent insurance companies  from barring people because of pre-existing conditions. It’s not a perfect bill but it’s a step in the right direction.

The Senate measure is similar in scope to legislation the House approved earlier this month. It would require most people to buy insurance, and if their employers did not offer affordable coverage, they would be able to shop for policies on new state-based “exchanges” that would function as marketplaces for individual coverage. Insurance companies would have to abide by broad new rules that would ban practices such as denying coverage based on preexisting conditions.

But the bills diverge on other key …

Continue reading Health care foes fear up-or-down vote? »

Testifying before the Senate today, Attorney General Eric Holder declared, ““I’m not scared of what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will have to say at trial — and no one else needs to be either.”

He’s right, of course. It’s a position that former prosecutor Rudy Giuliani used to hold about trying terrorists in civilian courts. Back in 2006, he spoke highly of the decision to prosecute Zacarias Moussaoui in Virginia, even when the jury refused to sentence Moussaoui to death. Here’s what Giuliani had to say on Chris Matthews’ Hardball:

I testified in the penalty phase of the trial.  And it was much more difficult than I thought it would be, reviewing all that, going over it, seeing the films of it.

And, you know, obviously I‘m personally involved in this, but I would have preferred a different verdict.  But it does show that we have a legal system, that we follow it, that we respect it.  And it is exactly what is missing in the parts of the world or a lot of the parts of the …

Continue reading Giuliani isn’t hobbled by consistency on terrorists »

The last time the United States government offered amnesty to wealthy tax dodgers with hidden overseas  accounts was 2003, and the amnesty program didn’t do very well. Only 1500 or so lawbreakers came forward to admit they hadn’t paid their taxes.

This time, the amnesty program is doing much better. So far, according to the Internal Revenue Service, more than 14,700 tax dodgers have come forward to admit their failure to pay taxes. The IRS credits the widespread publicity about the decision of the Swiss banking giant UBS to pay $780 million and admit criminal wrongdoing in setting up hidden bank accounts. In addition to the fine, UBS agreed to turn over the names of more than 4,000 of its American clients.

According to the I.R.S. documents, UBS will generally disclose American clients who had unreported accounts of at least a million Swiss francs (about $988,000). UBS will also disclose Americans who were the owners of secret offshore sham company accounts with that total. …

Continue reading Rich tax dodgers ‘fess up, just ahead of the posse »

Last week, three well-known conservatives, including Georgia’s Bob Barr, released a letter urging politicians to stop “fearmongering” over the issue of bringing terror suspects to the continental United States and trying them in federal courts. Alas, they were ignored. The fearmongering continues.

Actually, it has gotten much worse, reaching new heights (or nadirs) of faux hysteria as Republicans repeatedly outbid each other in claims of imminent Armageddon if Khalid Sheik Mohammed is tried in New York. Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) has already had to apologize for a tasteless harangue on the floor of the House in which he suggested that Mayor Bloomberg’s daughter might be kidnapped if the trial is held in NYC.

Yesterday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) went on Fox News to hype his proposed legislation to prevent KSM from being tried in New York City.

Gohmert first claimed that “millions of New Yorkers who will be put at risk” by such a trial, where “you’ve got weak links all along …

Continue reading The fearmongering over terror trial gets worse »

Here is a concept that’s difficult for many Americans to grasp: More healthcare doesn’t necessarily add up to better healthcare, especially if the “more” comes in the form of procedures and tests. No, I’m not contradicting myself.

It’s important for those without any health insurance to have access to doctors, but those of us with health insurance sometimes overuse procedures. And that can do real harm. This is one of those issues without an easy right or wrong. There is a lot of gray area here. It’s complicated, and there is disagreement even among the scientists.

After years in which the medical establishment urged all women over 40 to get regular mammograms, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has issued new guidelines saying that women between 40 and 50 don’t need yearly screenings. They may, in fact, do more harm than good.

The risk that a 40-year-old woman will die of breast cancer in the next 10 years is very small — just 0.19%, according to data from the National …

Continue reading Sometimes, healthcare “rationing” makes sense »