No Primary Challengers? Obama's 2012 View Looks Clear From the Left - Fox News

With all the talk of problems the tax extension deal creates for President Obama from his left, at least one would-be 2012 presidential contender doesn't seem interested in rising to the primary challenge.

Former presidential candidate Howard Dean, who served as the Democratic National Committee chairman after his failed 2004 White House bid, had been named as a potential taker in challenging the president from within the party. But Dean said Sunday he doesn't expect Obama to have to endure a primary challenger.

"I don't think he's going to face an opponent in the Democratic primary. I think that would be a bad thing for the country and I think it would be a bad thing for the Democratic Party. The history of people running against presidents in their own party is the challenger loses and then the president is weakened and loses," Dean said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod, who's leaving the White House soon to crank up the president's re-election effort, said he, too, isn't worried about a primary challenge.

"No, I don't worry about that at all," Axelrod said on the same program, "because I think he's done good things for the country. He's fighting for the American people and for progress. And that progress is going to show. The thing that would be worrisome to me if we made a bunch of decisions based on short-term political calculations."

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., agreed that Obama won't face a challenge despite all the anger about the backroom deal he negotiated last week with Republicans and absent Democratic input.

"No. There's no challenge. Look, everybody's on the same page. Everyone supports the same agenda," he told "Fox News Sunday," though he noted that some members of the Democratic Caucus will "never go along with any compromise" on tax rates.

But the anger on the left over the president's deal-making, seen by many as an acknowledgement of the "shellacking" Democrats took in the midterm election, gave rise to talk of a challenger somewhere.

One report said liberals in the House were dropping F-bombs on the president during the week. McClatchy reported Saturday a new poll of 1,029 adults that showed the president's approval rating among liberals dropping from 78 to 69 percent, while his disapproval rating in that group jumped from 14 to 22 percent. Obama's approval rating is 42 percent overall, according to the poll.

Dean's name came up as a possible challenger, as did those of defeated Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin or would-be filibustering independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

But since then, some on the left, while angry about compromise, have tempered their outbursts. That cooling-off may have been the result of former President Bill Clinton's encore turn Friday at the White House briefing room, which left some to concede that if it's good enough for the ever-popular Clinton, it's good enough for them.

For others, it may have been the dire warnings from editorialists like The Washington Post's Colbert King, who said a primary challenge would leave the Democratic Party paying "a steep price" for years to come. 

So far, the only potential candidate reportedly willing to go on record about stepping up to a primary challenge is former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel.

That's not to say that liberal Democrats aren't livid at the president. Progressive organizers and Internet campaigners who joined the "Rootscamp" event in Washington, D.C., this weekend did not disguise their disgust about the White House decision to cooperate with Republicans.

"After President Obama's victory, there was a promise that his vast grassroots network would help push the popular progressive change he campaigned on into law -- things like the public option and ending tax cuts for the rich. Unfortunately, as the White House cut backroom deals that undercut those promises, they also demobilized their grassroots troops," said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Campaign Committee. Green said his and other liberal groups "are now picking up the ball that this White House dropped."

But with a resounding silence among viable candidates who could challenge the previously adored president, angry liberals have few places to turn.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the second-in-command in the U.S. Senate and among the first lawmakers to encourage Obama to make a bid for the White House said the "harsh reality" is that any president will have to "accommodate the demands" of Republicans whether they want to or not. 

"If we want to change Washington and continue to move in the right direction, we need to stand together. And sometimes the accommodations that we make, the compromises that we make may be painful, but we've got to eat the spinach and keep moving on," he said on CNN.

Axelrod acknowledged that in 2012 Obama will have to face the politics of newly scheduled-to-expire tax rates, but he will have the American people on his side when he defends his refusal to make current tax rates permanent.

"Right now, we face a situation where everyone's taxes would go up on January 1. I think we're going to be in a fundamentally different position in 2012. The economy will be stronger. We'll have gone through a big debate on -- on how we have to -- what we have to cut and give up. I don't think people are going to make that tradeoff in 2012," he said.

And if it's a 2012 challenge from the right, Axelrod is best off to prepare now. The McClatchy poll out over the weekend showed Republican Mitt Romney defeating Obama in a hypothetical 2012 matchup. That's attributed to Obama's apparent drop in popularity among independent voters, who prefer Romney to the president 47-39 percent.

View the original article here

Civil unions clear Illinois legislature - CNN

The bill that passed Wednesday in Illinois will give same-sex couples many of the same rights as married couples.The bill is expected to be signed by the governorIt gives heterosexual and same-sex couples many of the same rights as married couplesThe measure addresses wills, financial assets and end-of-life decisions

(CNN) -- Illinois' state Senate approved legislation Wednesday that will give same-sex couples many of the same rights as married couples.

The Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act defines "civil union" as a legal relationship between two people of either the same or opposite sex.

According to the language of the bill, it will provide "adequate procedures for the certification and registration of a civil union and provide persons entering into a civil union with the obligations, responsibilities, protections, and benefits afforded or recognized by the law of Illinois to spouses."

Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, pledged in his recent re-election campaign to sign the bill.

The state House approved the measure Tuesday.

The legislation deals with the rights of couples regarding wills, shared financial assets, end-of-life decisions and visitation of a critically ill partner.

CNN's Kara Devlin and Bill Mears contributed to this report.

View the original article here

Family's Effort to Clear Name Frames Debate on Executions - New York Times

Members of Mr. Willingham’s family, working with lawyers who oppose the death penalty, had asked for the rare and controversial hearing, held here on Thursday, to investigate whether Mr. Willingham was wrongfully convicted. They argue that the proceeding, known as a court of inquiry, could restore Mr. Willingham’s reputation, a right guaranteed under Texas law, even to the dead.

But they also say that the hearing is more than symbolic — it could cast in a new light the Lone Star State’s record on executions. And more broadly, they argue, it is a cautionary tale about the power of flawed science to sway a courtroom, and a glaring injustice that could affect debates over the fairness of the death penalty.

That debate has been framed, in part, by a 2006 opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court, in which he said that the dissent in a case had not cited “a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit.”

Many who oppose the death penalty have taken Justice Scalia’s statement as a challenge, and argue that the Willingham case is their proof.

To those favoring the death penalty, Mr. Willingham is guilty, and the efforts to posthumously exonerate him are an abolitionist farce.

Critics of the hearing have said the proceeding is illegal, and have tried to derail it. The district attorney of Navarro County, R. Lowell Thompson, whose office originally convicted Mr. Willingham, filed a motion last week demanding that Judge Charlie Baird recuse himself, arguing a judge cannot appoint himself to lead a court of inquiry, and must instead refer the matter to a higher court for an appointment. At the beginning of the hearing on Thursday, Judge Baird ruled that he would allow the hearing to go forward.

At the end of the day, however, as testimony was closing down, the Texas Third Court of Appeals in Austin issued a stay at Mr. Thompson’s request, ordering Judge Baird not to hold further proceedings or to issue rulings until next Friday, and asked the Willingham team to explain why the case should be allowed to go forward.

The focus of lawyers for Mr. Willingham’s family was on evidence presented by fire marshals at Mr. Willingham’s original trial — evidence that nine experts have said included “many critical errors,” as one report put it. Several of the experts were working at the request of the Innocence Project, an organization that seeks the acquittal of wrongfully convicted people.

The expert who wrote that critical report, Gerald Hurst, argued that evidence suggested the fire was accidental, not arson. His report was sent to Gov. Rick Perry shortly before the execution, but Mr. Perry declined to halt or delay the procedure.

The evidence presented at trial that Mr. Willingham committed arson “amounts to junk science,” Gerald H. Goldstein, a San Antonio lawyer arguing on behalf of the Willingham family, said in the courtroom.

Judge Baird asked Dr. Hurst at the hearing whether his review of the case could rule out arson “within a reasonable degree of scientific certainty.”

Dr. Hurst demurred. “I never had a case where I could exclude arson,” he said. “It’s not possible to do that.”

The judge then asked if “there’s nothing in the evidence you’ve seen here that suggests arson.”

“That’s correct,” Dr. Hurst said.

John Lentini, a fire expert who has studied flawed arson investigations, hammered at the evidence and analysis from fire marshals at the Willingham trial.

Under questioning by Barry Scheck, a founder of the Innocence Project, Mr. Lentini ridiculed critical testimony at the trial that 20 factors, including burn patterns on the floor and cracks in the windows, proved that Mr. Willingham spread accelerants to fuel the fire.

No such chemicals were found in the house, Mr. Lentini said. Much of the analysis of Manuel Vasquez, the state fire marshal in the Willingham trial, “didn’t even meet the standards of 1991,” a time that Mr. Lentini characterized as having “a wretched state of the art.”

The current fire marshal, Paul Maldonado, stands by the work of the original marshals in the Willingham case, which Mr. Lentini said he found mystifying.

Mr. Lentini said that the flaws in the science required the state to go back and take a new look at other arson convictions. “I can understand why the fire marshal doesn’t want to go back and review hundreds of cases,” he said. “But that’s probably his duty.”

Governor Perry has fought the review of the case, and declined to participate in the hearing. Katherine Cesinger, his spokeswoman, said, “Nothing the Austin court does can change the fact that Todd Willingham was convicted in a trial court with the appropriate jurisdiction, and sentenced to death by a jury of his peers for murdering his three young daughters.”

The case, she noted, had worked its way through the appeals process and even reached the Supreme Court over the course of more than a decade. The governor has described Mr. Willingham as “an absolute monster who killed his own kids.”

Closing the hearing, former Gov. Mark White said that “the frailty of the system has been demonstrated clearly and overwhelmingly by the testimony brought forth in this court today.”

In an interview, Mr. Scheck said, “What we’ve proven is there was no crime” in the Willingham case.

“I would expect that at the end of the day, what we’ll get is an opinion that an innocent man was executed in Texas,” he added.

Even if that should happen, its impact will be minimal, said Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a group that supports the death penalty.

“It’ll be trumpeted on the Death Penalty Information Center site,” he said, referring to a group that opposes capital punishment. “Nobody on the other side of the aisle is going to give it any credence.”

To one person attending the hearing, however, it was anything but meaningless. Eugenia Willingham, Mr. Willingham’s stepmother, said during a break in the proceedings that it was an important day.

“This is what he wanted us to do,” she said of her stepson. “He wanted us to stand up for him.”

View the original article here