The Copenhagen Disaccord

The Nation

We have entered the post-Copenhagen era of climate politics--but just what that means is still very much undecided. The summit was widely regarded as humanity's last good chance to prevent catastrophic climate change. It plainly fell short of that goal, but giving up is not an option, not for anyone who cares about preserving a livable planet for our children. Instead, we need the most unfettered, open-minded discussion possible of the terrain confronting us post-Copenhagen and how best to traverse it. Which actions and strategies make sense now? What should governments be pressed to do, and what role should activists, media and civil society play?

Unfortunate as Copenhagen's outcome was, all is not lost. Bear in mind, the goal was to reach an agreement to take effect in 2012, when key provisions of the Kyoto Protocol expire; that timetable might still be met if governments make sufficient progress at meetings this June in Germany and this December in Mexico.

One clear sign of hope was the emergence of a mass movement on behalf of climate action. Of course, this movement did not achieve all it wanted at the summit--mass movements rarely succeed right away--but its massive presence signaled to power brokers that civil society was watching and would not be satisfied with a weak agreement. Indeed, one important achievement of civil society, including the news media, at Copenhagen was that it prevented governments from spinning the summit's outcome as a success. Witness, for example, the about-face by President Obama. On the summit's closing night, he labeled the side deal he brokered with China and other large greenhouse gas emitters an "unprecedented breakthrough." A few days later, after activists and journalists had made clear the so-called Copenhagen Accord's sharp limitations, the president acknowledged in a PBS interview that people "are justified in being disappointed" about Copenhagen.

As civil society decides what to do next, it's important to recognize how much it has already accomplished. US activists have brought about a de facto moratorium on building new coal-fired power plants, notes Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute. Brown argues that such grassroots pressure, both here and around the world, may prove more important to halting climate change than international negotiations like Copenhagen, with their glacial pace and lowest-common-denominator results. Hundreds of local and regional governments have also implemented ambitious green energy programs ahead of federal policy. A pioneer of this effort, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced in Copenhagen the formation of the R-20 Group--twenty regions around the world that will "set high standards for cutting carbon and creating green economies, then invite others to join them," in the words of Terry Tamminen, the governor's former environment adviser. Tamminen argues that the work of the R-20, along with improvements in national government policies, will end up putting a price on carbon by 2012. That would be transformational, leading corporations, governments and citizens to shift their economic behavior in climate-friendly ways.

But there is no getting around the central role the governments of China and the United States, the two climate superpowers, play in the drama. Differences between the two appear to be the main reason for the outcome in Copenhagen, though again it is crucial to remember how far both nations moved in the lead-up to the summit. At their November Beijing meeting, Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao broke decisively from the past by pledging for the first time that each nation would limit its future greenhouse gas emissions. Although the emissions cuts announced a few days later fell well short of what science says is necessary, the shift in direction was profound. Now the task is to get the superpowers to extend and honor their promises of better climate behavior.

In this regard, one of the most fascinating post-Copenhagen commentaries came from Mark Lynas, a British writer and activist who has written one of the essential books on climate change, Six Degrees. Lynas serves as an unpaid science adviser to the Maldives, the Indian Ocean island nation that led the fight in Copenhagen to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million. Writing in the Guardian, Lynas charged that it was above all China that wrecked the summit. Lynas was in the room during the final hours of negotiations between Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and other world leaders--talks that, he argued, could have produced an agreement that would have had environmentalists "popping champagne corks." But China repeatedly blocked progress, according to Lynas, including by demanding the removal of all specific targets for emissions reductions, even the 80 percent reductions by 2050 that the United States and other rich industrial nations were proposing for themselves.

Such accusations are "totally unjust and irresponsible," responded Yunliang Zhou, chief of the political and press office at the Chinese consulate in San Francisco. Referring to China's pledge before Copenhagen to reduce its economy's carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, Zhou added, "Our voluntary target has no conditions attached, nor [is] it linked to any other country's goals. Given the performance of some countries at the conference and their long failed commitments, they have no right or qualification to blame China and other developing countries." Zhou declined to address China's alleged veto of the 80 percent emissions cuts by 2050 by developed countries.

But the United States cannot easily stand in judgment of such foot-dragging. Citing domestic constraints, the Obama administration has pledged to cut US emissions by a mere 4 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, well short of the 25 to 40 percent cuts the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says are required to (perhaps) limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. China offers its own domestic justifications: with 150 million Chinese living in poverty, economic development must be the top priority, and that for now means more fossil fuels. Some independent experts also refute Lynas's claim that China's commitment to reduce its carbon intensity is a mere PR move. "[That commitment] is a very big deal," says Mark Levine of the China Energy Group at the University of California, Berkeley, who has collaborated with China for the past twenty years to improve energy efficiency. "If other emerging economies were to do likewise, it would cut projected global emissions by 2050 in half."

One root of the US-China disagreement concerns the historical responsibility for climate change. Developing countries have long argued that it is not fair to expect them to slash their emissions when millions of their people live in poverty. After all, it is the historic emissions of rich industrial nations that caused global warming in the first place. The planet has only so much "atmospheric space"--the capacity to absorb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. With global temperatures having risen 0.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and with another 0.6 "in the pipeline" because of the long life span of carbon dioxide, much of the atmospheric space has already been occupied.

This distribution of atmospheric space is the apparent basis of China's objection to the 80 percent target for developed countries and to a related proposal for 50 percent reductions in global emissions by 2050. "If you agree to 2C and a global 50 percent reduction and then accept [the developed countries' 80 percent reductions by 2050], it has the effect of locking in your own future emissions," says a China expert who requested anonymity for fear of jeopardizing professional relationships. "That would allow China much lower per capita emissions than those of the US and other developed countries."

Lynas rejects such arguments as a recipe for disaster. "The historical responsibility argument makes sense in one way only: as an argument for adaptation financing," he wrote in an e-mail. (One of the few bright spots in the Copenhagen Accord was a pledge to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with climate change, though it is unclear whether the money will materialize.) But such historical responsibility, insists Lynas, "is not an argument for others to pollute just as much....That is the logic of 'mutually assured destruction'--where human concepts of equity triumph over the necessity for planetary survival."

The world's leverage over China would doubtless increase if the other climate superpower was moving more aggressively. The Obama administration, Congressional Democrats and many mainstream environmental groups are pinning their hopes on the climate legislation that passed the House last summer and, in somewhat different form, awaits Senate action this spring. More radical environmental groups, such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, have criticized the bill as woefully weak--not just on its emissions targets but because it would cancel the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gases. Instead, the bill would rely on a cap-and-trade system, which critics complain is fatally compromised by its giveaways of the vast majority of pollution permits.

The most persuasive defense of the climate bill comes from Joe Romm, an assistant secretary of energy in the Clinton administration who blogs at ClimateProgress.org. Romm points out that the legislation's "lame" 2020 targets get much tougher after 2020 and hit 80 percent by 2050. "If you put in place a shrinking cap on emissions, that will inevitably raise the price of carbon, and that will be transformational," says Romm. He sees legislation as superior to EPA regulation, in part because he suspects that industry lawsuits would cripple EPA action, at least regarding existing power plants and other pollution sources. "I would love to keep EPA authority," Romm says, "but it makes no sense for progressives to take down this bill [on those grounds]. Once you've set up the economy-wide shrinking cap, the only thing you get from EPA authority is easy regulation of new--though not existing--coal-fired plants. But if the climate bill passes, no one is going to build those plants anyway."

"Contrary to what we keep hearing, Obama's hands are not tied by the tragically weak cap-and-trade bills," says Kassie Siegel, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity, whose report "Yes, He Can" outlines the case for unleashing the EPA. "Extremely deep emissions reductions are feasible with today's on-the-shelf technology.... Moreover, the Clean Air Act is a 'technology forcing' statute, so the EPA is supposed to do what's necessary to protect the public health, even if [that] appears impossible with current technology." As for potential lawsuits thwarting the EPA's effectiveness, Siegel replies, "Sure, industry can bring lawsuits, but that doesn't mean they will win, and there is nothing to stop them from suing over a cap and trade system either. Of course we want climate legislation too. But that legislation must build on the foundation of highly successful environmental law we already have, not roll it back."

Romm responds that canceling EPA authority is the price Republicans and wavering Democrats demand for backing climate legislation. "That's a price I'm willing to pay," he adds.

So, tough choices, tough challenges, tough timetables. As we grapple with them, we must above all reject the temptation of despair, which only warps thought and paralyzes action. The fight against climate change has reached a decisive moment. We must seize it with all our hearts.

Obama's First Year: A Success

Despite the rhetoric that many are hearing in the mainstream media, I would strongly say that President Obama had a wonderful first year. Let's examine some of the highlights of his nascent administration.

The first piece of legislation President Obama signed into law was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. This authorized equal pay for women in the workplace. It's a bit of a shame that it took until 2009 to enact such legislation, but it was much needed nonetheless.

The next was expansion of SCHIP to cover an additional four million American children. As many of you may remember, this was one piece of legislation that passed both houses back during the end of the Bush Administration, but was sadly vetoed by the last President. Its a shame that the previous leader of this nation decided that helping sick children was not worth the additional $32 billion, but spending over a $12 billion a week in a war we were lied into, was more important.

Then came President Obama's first big victory, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or more commonly known as the stimulus package. Surprisingly, this recieved bi-partisan support in the Senate, and has created or saved roughly 640,000 jobs, while providing this nation with much-needed infrastructure improvements and helping to offset many of the loses to state budgets.

President Obama also nominated the first Hispanic-American to the United State Supreme Court, once again recieving bi-partisan support in the Senate. On August 17, 2009 Justice Sonia Sotomayor cast her first vote as an associate justice on the US Supreme Court.

One of the grievances I hear is from the LGBT community and about Obama's inaction for their causes. In my opinion, President Obama has done two great things for that community, both occurring in the month of October. On October 28, Obama signed into law the The Matthew Shephard and James Byrd Jr Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which finally extended federal hate crimes law to include sexual orientation. A mere two days latter, Obama signed an extention of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Act, an afflication that unfortunately affects a misproportionate amount of members of the gay community.

President Obama also had the political courage to stand up for what is right in relation to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, calling on December 1st for an additional 30,000 troops to that conflict. He showed that he is taking a hardline stance against terrorism and understands the investment we've already made in that conflict and the need to stabalize before withdrawal.

Finally, to end the first year off right, the Senate managed to muster a filibuster-proof 60 votes passing a landmark comprehensive health care reform bill. This is the largest piece of social legislation since the New Deal during the Roosevelt Adminstration. He has done something Democratic administrations for years have tried to do, and in his first year.

Despite what many people would like to say about the first year of the Obama Administration, I would applaud the President for a highly successful first year. Hopefully President Obama can add 2010 as another successful year. I think many, especially those on the left, want to see change quickly, but must also realize that change doesn't come overnight. We can quickly get disillusioned when we don't get exactly what we want, when we want it, but remember folks, we still get three more years (maybe seven) and there is still plenty left to change. I trust President Obama to make the right decisions.....let's just hope that Congress keeps delivering good bills for him to sign. One thing the left does not have to worry about with this President, is the threat of a veto on any of their issues, and that's something we can all be proud of.

Best Albums of 2009

1. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix


I discovered this band a few years ago off a compilation CD I bought in Spain. The song then was "If I Ever Feel Better," little did I realize that a few years later, they would become a Grammy nominated band here stateside. I love this album, with songs like "1901" "Lizstomania" and "Armistice" this album would have to be my favorite of the year.

2. La Roux - La Roux


If Phoenix wasn't so awesome, La Roux would have easily won this contest. I first heard this while at the club on Indie night, it got stuck in my head and didn't know what it was called. A few weeks later I heard it again at XXI in the mall and my friend knew what it was. I went home and heard the album all the way through and fell in love. Some of my favorites include "Bulletproof", "In It For the Kill" and "Quicksand."

3. Passion Pit - Manners
I first heard this band when the DJ at the Wave played it in a set, at the time, I didn't know much about the band. A few weeks later a friend added this whole album to my iPod and I loved it. There are plenty of great dance tunes on this one. My favorites include "Sleepyhead", "Little Secrets" and "Make Light".

4. Wilco - Wilco
I have to thank my dear friend Katrina for introducing me to Wilco. They are a fantastic band to listen to when you're cleaning, driving, or doing work. They help pass the time, plus, who can deny how great the voice of lead singer Jeff Tweedy. Fav's include "Wilco," "Bull Black Nova" and "You Never Know."

5. Peaches - I Feel Cream
If you love to dance, then you probably already know Peaches. This is probably the least vulgar of all of her albums, and my personal favorite. You can dance to every song on this album, there are a large variety of great beats and rhythms on this one, a must listen. Fav's include "Talk to Me", "Trick or Treat," and "Mud".

6. Röyksopp - Junior
Credit for introducing me to this album goes to my best friend Justin. He essentially brought this album back from Germany with him. These Norwegian boys really know how to toss together some great beats. You probably can't dance to all the songs on this album, but that doesn't take away from the fact that this album is great. My fav's include "The Girl and the Robot," "Happy Up Here" and "You Don't Have a Clue."

7. Miike Snow - Miike Snow
Bill Trina gets credit for this album. I only got introduced to Miike Snow towards the end of the year, but quickly became attached. There are plenty of dancy grooves and more slower R&B sounding stuff here. I love "Plastic Jungle," "In Search of Main" and "Animal".

8. Matt & Kim - Grand
This fantastic duo from New York has really produced a good number with this one. These songs are really catchy and it totally deserves a spot in the top ten. "Lessoned Learned" "Good Ol' Fashion Nightmare" and "Daylight" are the best.

9. Calvin Harris - Ready for the Weekend
This Scottish hottie really produced a great album with "Ready for the Weekend". Although this is pretty mainstream electronica if you live in Europe, hardly anyone here in the States has heard of Calvin Harris, but they should. Gotta love these tracks "Ready for the Weekend," "You Used to Hold Me" and "Flashback".

10. Lady Gaga - The Fame Monster
No matter how much you hate her, you got to admit, her songs sure are catchy, and everywhere. I wanted to not include this, but I still haven't learned to hate songs like "Bad Romance," "Telephone," and my namesake "Alejandro". If you're going to a mainstream club where Flo-Rida and T-Pain dominate, this is a Godsent.

Climate Change: Copenhagen Jobs Summit – by Krystal Ball

I was born and raised in an area of Virginia surrounded by the Chesapeake Bay. The bay is a priceless treasure and the largest estuary in the United States. It is second only to New Orleans in its vulnerability to climate-change induced flooding. I believe that man-made climate change is a scientific fact and confronting the reality of greenhouse gas emissions a critical moral and environmental imperative. Our failure to rise to this challenge would be a betrayal of our children and future generations. Right now, the world’s attention is focused on the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. My attention is also focused on Copenhagen. But not because I am an environmentalist, rather it is my patriotism, my experience as a small business owner and my study of economics that focus me on Copenhagen.

Eliminating our dependence on imported oil is a national security imperative. Our consumption of foreign oil bought from petro-dictators is the financial engine of worldwide terrorism. When I think about our men and women in uniform killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by improvised explosive devices and road-side bombs, as I marvel at their heroism, I can’t help but think about where the money came from to buy the explosives and the nails and ball bearings launched at them by jihadi cowards. Our purchase of foreign oil funds the regimes who fund the terrorists. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t matter whether you want to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels because of global warming or because you want to cut off funds to the terrorists…the patriotic thing to do and the environmental thing to do are the same. The US has 3% of the world’s proven oil reserves. Osama Bin Laden’s birthplace of Saudi Arabia has 25%. “Drill baby drill” may be the Saudi energy strategy, but it is no strategy for the US.

Cutting out our reliance on fossil fuels isn’t just about national security, it’s also about jobs. That’s why I think about the Copenhagen Summit as the jobs summit. Our car companies went bankrupt because we ignored world-wide demand for more fuel efficient cars and focused on higher short-term profits from SUVs and trucks. China leads the world in manufacturing, not just in the manufacture of the household goods that used to be made in America, but in solar power production and electric vehicle production. Our universities, our scientists, our venture capitalists are the best in the world by far. We have the largest consumer market in the world and are the world’s largest consumers of energy. The US is the natural choice to lead the world in energy-efficient, green technology and alternative and renewable energy. India, China, Japan and Europe are all aggressively promoting green technology as part of their economic growth strategy.

We work longer hours and have more productive workers than India or China. We are the best positioned in the world to lead in green technology and if we invest in that leadership, the entire world will buy green technology produced in America by American workers.

In the US, a fierce political debate rages about whether climate change is real. In the rest of the world, there is no such debate. The rest of the world accepts the reality of climate change and they are gearing up industry, research investment and regulation to make their economies more energy efficient, less reliant on fossil fuels, to turn their buildings green, to develop electric cars and affordable solar power in order to confront the reality of climate change. Those focused on events in Copenhagen are derided by “global warming skeptics” as tree-hugging internationalists who care more about world opinion than the economic reality of job creation in the United States. They deride climate change legislation as “Cap and Tax” and sound alarm bells about the economic consequences of higher energy costs that come with controlling greenhouse gas emissions. I say, for the cleanliness of our air, the purity of our water, the diversity of our wildlife, the national security of our homeland and the job creation of the 21st century, we need to heed the warning of Copenhagen and take the lead in the world-wide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. And in the process, if we just happen to avoid a civilization ending climatic catastrophe, we can call that a bonus.

How to Save Journalism

THE NATION
by: John Nichols

We will give you the good news first: the politicians and regulators who have it in their power to do something about the decline of American journalism are finally paying attention.

Already this year, House and Senate hearings have investigated the crisis. And even as Congress focuses this fall on healthcare reform and rising unemployment, all signs suggest that media matters will be back on the front burner in 2010, one hopes with less focus on what's gone awry and more on proposals to set things right. Encouragingly, federal agencies are taking tentative steps that could produce those proposals.

In early December the Federal Trade Commission will hold an unprecedented hearing to assess the radical downsizing and outright elimination of newspaper newsrooms and to consider public-policy measures that might arrest a precipitous collapse in reporting and editing of the news. The FTC staffers who have organized this hearing give the distinct impression of being seriously concerned about the crisis and seriously interested in responding to it. The Federal Communications Commission is also launching an extraordinary review of the state of journalism. The work was spearheaded initially by FCC commissioner Michael Copps, who has as firm a grasp of the problem as any player in Washington. The FCC review likely will emphasize the disintegration of local journalism. Its findings could also lead to sweeping changes in fundamental regulations.

Now for the bad news: the way the challenges facing journalism are being discussed, indeed the way the crisis itself is being framed, will make it tough for even the most sincere policy-makers to offer a viable answer to it.

The FTC's conference is titled "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?" FCC chair Julius Genachowski explains the crisis as the result of "game-changing new technologies as well as the economic downturn." The assumption is clear: it's the Internet that's the problem. But just as MTV's debut pronouncement that "Video Killed the Radio Star" proved to be dramatically overstated, so is the notion that journalism's disintegration can be attributed to a brand-new digital revolution or even an old-fashioned economic meltdown.

The decline of commercial journalism predates the web. Newsrooms began to give up on maintaining staffs sufficient to cover their communities--effectively reducing the number of reporters relative to the overall population--in the 1980s. Real cuts came in the 1990s and have accelerated since then. All the pathologies blamed on the rise of the Internet--declines in science reporting, the disappearance of serious business and labor coverage, cutbacks in investigations and the shuttering of statehouse, Washington and international bureaus--began before anyone knew what it meant to Google.

These trends went largely unnoticed because the dominant news-media firms continued to rake in colossal profits. By downsizing reporting staffs and ramping up less expensive journalism based on trivia, sensationalism and press releases, they were able for years to maintain boomtime profits. But the party was destined to come to an end, as readers and viewers gave up on "products" that no longer contained much in the way of news.

Don't get us wrong. The Internet has shaken up the commercial model of journalism. People don't pay for what they can get free online. Advertisers that subsidized journalism for more than a century now bypass news media to reach consumers directly (most devastating for the dailies has been the loss of classifieds, which have gone to Craigslist). They aren't coming back. But the primary impact of the Internet has been to accelerate and make irreversible a process that began before the digital age.

The market has voted journalism off the island. This necessary nutrient of democracy will be washed away unless we recognize that commercial values are no longer going to provide us with sufficient quality journalism. It's a waste of valuable time attempting to cook up new schemes to make the process of news gathering and distribution as profitable as it once was.

Policy-makers need to take a page from American history. The framers understood that the government must not simply assure that a free and independent press may exist; it must set policies and expend resources with an eye toward guaranteeing that an independent free press will exist. No one in the first generations of the Republic thought the market would suffice; as a result, the American independent press was built on extraordinary and massive postal and printing subsidies that lasted well into the nineteenth century, remnants of which remain with us to this day. Similar subsidies--for instance, a massive increase in funding for public and community broadcasting outlets, which have never enjoyed the advantages bestowed by regulators upon commercial broadcasters--could foster the vibrant independent journalism of the twenty-first century.

Today, as in the early Republic, our system of government cannot succeed and our individual freedoms cannot survive without an informed, participating citizenry, and that requires competitive, independent news media. For that to happen, however, the FTC, the FCC and Congress must stop blaming the Internet and start thinking about how enlightened subsidies could revitalize the very necessary public good that is journalism.

Leaving the Right

THE ATLANTIC

by: Andrew Sullivan

It's an odd formulation in some ways as "the right" is not really a single entity. But in so far as it means the dominant mode of discourse among the institutions and blogs and magazines and newspapers and journals that support the GOP, Charles Johnson is absolutely right in my view to get off that wagon for the reasons has has stated. Read his testament. It is full of emotion, but also of honesty.

The relationship of a writer to a party or movement is, of course, open to discussion. I understand the point that Jonah Goldberg makes that politics is not about pure intellectual individualism; it requires understanding power, its organization and the actual choices that real politics demands. You can hold certain principles inviolate and yet also be prepared to back politicians or administrations that violate them because it's better than the actual alternatives at hand. I also understand the emotional need to have a default party position, other things being equal. But there has to come a point at which a movement or party so abandons core principles or degenerates into such a rhetorical septic system that you have to take a stand. It seems to me that now is a critical time for more people whose principles lie broadly on the center-right to do so - against the conservative degeneracy in front of us. Those who have taken such a stand - to one degree or other - demand respect. And this blog, while maintaining its resistance to cliquishness, has been glad to link to writers as varied as Bruce Bartlett or David Frum or David Brooks or Steve Chapman or Kathleen Parker or Conor Friedersdorf or Jim Manzi or Jeffrey Hart or Daniel Larison who have broken ranks in some way or other.

I can't claim the same courage as these folks because I've always been fickle in partisan terms. To have supported Reagan and Bush and Clinton and Dole and Bush and Kerry and Obama suggests I never had a party to quit. I think that may be because I wasn't born here. I have no deep loyalty to either American party in my bones or family or background, and admire presidents from both parties. My partisanship remains solely British - I'm a loyal Tory. But my attachment to the Anglo-American conservative political tradition, as I understand it, is real and deep and the result of sincere reflection on the world as I see it. And I want that tradition to survive because I believe it is a vital complement to liberalism in sustaining the genius and wonder of the modern West.

For these reasons, I found it intolerable after 2003 to support the movement that goes by the name "conservative" in America. I still do, even though I am much more of a limited government type than almost any Democrat and cannot bring myself to call myself a liberal (because I'm not). My reasons were not dissimilar to Charles Johnson, who, like me, was horrified by 9/11, loathes Jihadism, and wants to defeat it as effectively as possible. And his little manifesto prompts me to write my own (the full version is in "The Conservative Soul"). Here goes:

I cannot support a movement that claims to believe in limited government but backed an unlimited domestic and foreign policy presidency that assumed illegal, extra-constitutional dictatorial powers until forced by the system to return to the rule of law.

I cannot support a movement that exploded spending and borrowing and blames its successor for the debt.

I cannot support a movement that so abandoned government's minimal and vital role to police markets and address natural disasters that it gave us Katrina and the financial meltdown of 2008.

I cannot support a movement that holds torture as a core value.

I cannot support a movement that holds that purely religious doctrine should govern civil political decisions and that uses the sacredness of religious faith for the pursuit of worldly power.

I cannot support a movement that is deeply homophobic, cynically deploys fear of homosexuals to win votes, and gives off such a racist vibe that its share of the minority vote remains pitiful.

I cannot support a movement which has no real respect for the institutions of government and is prepared to use any tactic and any means to fight political warfare rather than conduct a political conversation.

I cannot support a movement that sees permanent war as compatible with liberal democratic norms and limited government.

I cannot support a movement that criminalizes private behavior in the war on drugs.

I cannot support a movement that would back a vice-presidential candidate manifestly unqualified and duplicitous because of identity politics and electoral cynicism.

I cannot support a movement that regards gay people as threats to their own families.

I cannot support a movement that does not accept evolution as a fact.

I cannot support a movement that sees climate change as a hoax and offers domestic oil exploration as the core plank of an energy policy.

I cannot support a movement that refuses ever to raise taxes, while proposing no meaningful reductions in government spending.

I cannot support a movement that refuses to distance itself from a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh or a nutjob like Glenn Beck.

I cannot support a movement that believes that the United States should be the sole global power, should sustain a permanent war machine to police the entire planet, and sees violence as the core tool for international relations.

Does this make me a "radical leftist" as Michelle Malkin would say? Emphatically not. But it sure disqualifies me from the current American right.

To paraphrase Reagan, I didn't leave the conservative movement. It left me.

And increasingly, I'm not alone.

Snowe Rejoins Dems at Public Option Negotiating Table

THE HUFFINGTON POST
By: Ryan Grim

In a breakthough in Senate negotiations around a public health insurance option, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) sat down with centrist conservative Democrats for the first time Saturday since the bipartisan Gang of Six broke up shortly after returning from the August recess.

Since then, Snowe, the most likely Republican to cross the aisle on health care reform, has been meeting individually with Democrats, but had yet to rejoin negotiations in a formal way.

Snowe, emerging from a meeting on the first floor of the Capitol, Saturday afternoon, told a few reporters hovering outside the room that she had been approached earlier that morning about attending.

She said that no agreement had yet been reached, but that the group was considering "another option," aside from those already under discussion. An agreement had been reached that it would not be publicly discussed, she said, until more details were worked out. Earlier Saturday, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) also mentioned the new option being kicked around but said he couldn't discuss it.

Kerry said that Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) was one of the leading intellectual fathers of this new approach, an assertion Snowe confirmed, adding that Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) were also closely involved.

Sens. Mark Udall (D-Colorado), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) also attended the meeting.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) was not at the meeting and has vowed to filibuster any bill that has any version of a public option. If Lieberman holds to his threat, Democrats would need Snowe to break a GOP-Lieberman filibuster.

Snowe said she was still pushing her "trigger" proposal and met yesterday with Kerry to discuss it. Kerry, she said, has long been open to such a plan. Under her trigger, the public option would only be available in states where private insurance is deemed unaffordable to a certain percentage of residents. Advocates of the public option say a trigger is as good as no public option at all, because it will be gamed by insurance companies so that it never "triggers."

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Snowe said Kerry's been in discussions with her about her proposal for months. "[She and Kerry] have, even prior to this, [had discussions] on the Finance Committee about the possibility of a trigger and how it would work and so on," she said.

As the conservative meeting was breaking up, a separate meeting on the Hill began, where liberal Democrats met to discuss their own strategy around the public option.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was also in the Capitol Saturday, but didn't attend either meeting.

"I've talked to a lot of senators and encouraged the good work that's gone on," she said as she left the building and was met by a driving snow. "I know that lots of very positive conversations are underway with lots of members of the Senate and that's just what needs to happen."

President Obama plans to address the Senate caucus on Sunday afternoon, a meeting she said she planned to attend, as well.

HuffPost asked what she thought Obama would tell his party.

"Pass health care," she said.

UPDATE: Conservative Arkansas Democrats Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor joined the liberals on the second floor of the Capitol following the centrist meeting earlier. Snowe didn't join, but said she'd continue talking.

Following the meeting, Pryor declined to get too specific, but did say that a leading proposal involves increasing the ability of the Office of Personnel Management -- which oversees the federal employee health plans -- to negotiate on behalf of individuals and small businesses. Pryor told a HuffPost and an AP reporter that it was unclear how exactly it would be set up, but that it would take the place of the public option managed by the Health and Human Services Secretary.

Lincoln, also interviewed after the meeting, said that the OPM plan would not need additional seed money and would be similar to a proposal she introduced earlier this year called the SHOP Act. She said that she continues to oppose a "government-run plan," but that this proposal would meet the twin goals of keeping down costs and increasing competition. Snowe and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) are cosponsors of the SHOP Act.

The Lincoln proposal appears to be the alternative option that the conservatives and centrists discussed at the earlier meeting. Snowe had said the proposal was both old and new and Lincoln's measure answers that riddle.

It does little, however, to answer liberals' demands for a nationwide public option. Pryor said, however, that the progressive senators they met with were willing to continue discussions and cautioned that it would be several days before a deal was reached.

They plan to meet again Sunday evening after Obama departs.