Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s secretary of state, is trailing in polls behind physician Rand Paul (Ron Paul’s son) in the Bluegrass State’s GOP Senate primary. To try and generate some momentum, Grayson is putting his chips on national security, noting that such a strategy was “effective” for Sen. Scott Brown (R., Ma.) earlier this year. “This is the issue in Republican primaries,” he says.

This week, Grayson released a new web video calling Paul’s foreign policy ideas “strange.” He then followed up with this website: RandPaulStrangeIdeas.com. “Rand is a lot slicker than his dad,” Grayson says. “He tries to avoid talking about national security, but it’s a weak issue for him. He lies about his views.” Grayson points to Paul’s stances on Gitmo, Iraq, and Afghanistan as examples.

While ready to hammer Paul the younger on national security, Grayson says he’s not entirely against the Paul-family brand of libertarian politics. Paul’s father, a Texas congressman and former presidential candidate, “is pretty accurate on economic stuff,” he says. Nonetheless, he still calls Rand “a radical.”

Rand decided to go on the air claiming he was in fact in favor of leaving Gitmo open and for trying terrorists in military tribunals off U.S. soil (also funny: “Rand Paul, the son of a veteran…”), although he definitely seems to prefer using the “strong national defense” construction when explaining his foreign policy views, which strikes me as a bit wiggly, but that might be my own preconceptions (in that I’m for “strong national defense”, my definition of that is just very different than, say, some people’s.

The downside, however, is President Obama suddenly has the headache of trying to placate Hispanic Democrats in Congress, who are today vowing to vote against the health care reform package if it contains that exclusionary language.

The Senate language would prohibit illegal immigrants’ buying healthcare coverage from the proposed health exchanges. The House-passed bill isn’t as restrictive, but it does — like the Senate bill — bar illegal immigrants from receiving federal subsidies to buy health insurance.

Hispanic Democrats say they haven’t moved from their stance that they will not vote for a healthcare bill containing the Senate’s prohibitions.

They claim that while it may be politically popular in some parts of the country to ban illegal immigrants from using their own money to buy coverage, it is not good policy. Illegal immigrants will, one way or another, need medical attention in the United States, and it would be cheaper and more humane to provide them coverage if they pay for it. Otherwise, they will seek treatments in the nation’s emergency rooms, effectively increasing medical costs.

Considering how fragile passage of the health care legislation looks to be, this is one sidebar political battle the White House and congressional Democrats do not need. If I were a Democrat, I’d be mighty pissed at the Hispanic caucus for risking the biggest expansion of health care in the last 50 years, which would suddenly insure another 40 million Americans and make a giant leap towards universal health care, to make a point about illegal aliens.

However, it might be that they’re just looking to secure some sort of promise for an immigration reform package down the road in exchange for their votes on health care (although some are standing firm on their threat to vote no). Which President Obama is doing. However, can the Hispanics abide having illegal immigrants explicitly written out of our nation’s health care system? And can liberals abide congressional Hispanic no votes over the matter? Stay tuned.

Former Rep. Eric Massa’s description of tickle fights in his office reminded me of my own brush with powerful men and their wandering hands. When I was a cub reporter for the Harvard Crimson, I attended a 1999 Democratic primary debate between Al Gore and Bill Bradley. The then-Vice President had asked several cabinet secretaries to attend the event as his surrogates. After the debate ended, I approached the Secretary of Education, a genial man named Richard Riley, and asked for his impressions.

After I had identified myself, Riley reached out his right arm and proceeded to tickle me in the Pillsbury dough boy-style. Then, he answered my question. A few moments later, I walked up to the Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson. Same scenario. I identified myself as a reporter with the Crimson. Richardson proceeded to put me in a headlock. Then he answered my question.

Reaction is mixed among long-time proponents of eliminating the sentencing disparity. Since pretty much all the Senators, including Sessions, agreed that the disparity is, well, terribly racist—essentially just a way to screw black men—it then seems weird to go ahead and explicitly continue it at all. The ACLU is worried that this might be the one chance to just strike the whole mess down, and if we blow it on a watered-down compromise measure, who knows when we can next address the matter? And, as the American Prospect puts it:

The Judiciary Committee passed the bill, which will go to the full Senate for a floor vote. Instead of eliminating the crack/powder disparity, which practically everyone in the committee acknowledged disproportionately affects black Americans, the senators opted to make the law one-fifth as racist as it used to be.

The senators on the committee spent the rest of the markup complimenting each other on all they had achieved with their bipartisanship.

So, a good news / bad news kind of day.

The Ten Best from the first year here.

JERUSALEM — US Vice President Joe Biden said after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday that Washington’s commitment to Israel’s security is “absolute, total, unvarnished.”

“The cornerstone of the relationship is our absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security,” said Biden, who was in the region to encourage indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and discuss international efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear drive.

“Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel.”

Item 2:

JERUSALEM — Hours after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed unyielding American support for Israel’s security here on Tuesday, Israel’s Interior Ministry announced 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem. Mr. Biden condemned the move as “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.”[...]

He began the day on a note of support, asserting the Obama administration’s “absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.”

But by the end of the day, Mr. Biden’s tone had a very different quality. He issued a statement condemning “the substance and timing of the announcement” of the housing, and added, “Unilateral action taken by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of negotiations on permanent status issues.”

He said the announcement “runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel.”

The bill explicitly codifies into law a procedure which, based on any justification “the President deems appropriate”, allows the Attorney General and Secretary of Defense, within 48 hours of a person’s apprehension, to declare anybody an “unprivileged enemy belligerent”, a designation that means, once a person is so labeled, they become sent down a legal black hole and will be held indefinitely “without criminal charge and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners”, i.e. forever. Even if the President deigns to give a high value detainee a military tribunal, in other words, he can’t.

The burden of proof? It is if a person “is suspected” or “may be” an “unprivileged enemy belligerent.”

At that point, it’s not just that the President might not or probably won’t grant them appeal or a civilian trial, which is the present situation—it is that he will be legally barred from doing so. He cannot grant that person any rights even if he wanted to. Once it is so declared that a person is suspected of being an “unprivileged enemy belligerent” (itself a bone-chillingly Orwellian term—remember when they used to have to be “combatants”?), every scintilla of rights, of any kind, are forfeit.

xpostfactoid concludes:

It is unimaginable that Obama would sign such a law. At present this is an act of pure legislative aggression, an attempt to score political points, put forward by two politicians who have not a scrap of integrity left between them. But it’s also a shot across the bow for all of us. A President Palin, or Giuliani, or “Double Guantanamo” Romney, or doubtless a pandering Pawlenty, would sign it in a heartbeat. Give one of that crew a Supreme Court appointment or two, and the High Court would concur.

I have no doubt on the latter points. And I totally take Rojas’ point, which I think is aging very well, that Obama might be a net loss to civil liberties in that he’s proving as bad as Bush (he didn’;t start nothin’, but he ain’t endin’ nothing’), but with the negative side effect of turning liberals off to the issue and making everybody to the left of Bush disinclined to bring it up. Although that this is the bipartisan legislation coming from McCain and Lieberman (ugh) is a powerful counterpoint, and of course, xpost is not wrong at all that not only would a Palin, Romney, or Pawlenty sign such a bill, they would surely champion it.

As to the first point, “It is unimaginable that Obama would sign such a law”…you sure about that?

A movement has started to get Pete Seeger nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. You can view it here (http://www.nobelprize4pete.org/), and sign the petition if you feel so inclined.

Pete Seeger is one of my heroes (I have very few), and has probably done more good with less actual power than just about any American in the last 100 years, and certainly more than any American musician, Woody Guthrie being his only real competition for the title. An unrepentant hippy who predates the hippy movement (and, it must be said, a pretty hardcore socialist), he has been a powerful force for labor, civil rights, peace, multiculturalism, and environmentalism, all while basically just playing the banjo. I think it’s easy to underestimate his impact—the guy who made “We Shall Overcome”, the guy who nearly single-handedly cleaned up the Hudson, the guy who popularized the protest song and the socially-conscious folk movement—because at the end of the day he never did anything but perform songs for people. But I think American culture, politics, and social consciousness would look very, very different today without Pete Seeger.

Pete Seeger is an ambassador for Peace and Social Justice and has been over the course of his 88-year lifetime. Using his prowess as a musician he worked to engage other people, from all walks of life and across generations, in causes to build a better and more civilized world: His work shows up wherever you look in the history of labor solidarity, growth of mass effort to end the Vietnam war, ban of nuclear weapons, work for international diplomacy, support of the Civil Rights Movement, for cleaning up the Hudson River and for environmental responsibility in general. Pete knit the world together with songs from China, the Soviet Union, Israel, Cuba, South Africa and Republican Spain. We learned that Crispus Attucks, born a slave, was the first man to die at the opening of the Revolutionary War, that the Farmer-Labor party in the mid-west had a socialist philosophy that lasted well into the 20th century, we learned that anti-slavery movements were often inspired by songs that indicated a map of escape, such as “Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd,” he popularized many of the IWW songs that helped in CIO organizing, and spread the Civil Rights Movement through promoting the SNCC Freedom Singers and making songs such as “We Shall Overcome,” known all over the world.

When subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee in August of 1955, at the height of the McCarthy period, Pete defended himself on the basis of the First Amendment, the right of an American citizen to free association, not the Fifth Amendment, protection against self incrimination. When he was boycotted from earning a living and practicing his craft on a national scale Pete appeared at union meetings, summer camps, Jr. High Schools, High Schools, and Colleges. His pay at times was as little as $5, but his value was priceless.

Pete Seeger is truly a Great American, a national treasure, and if any cultural figure ever deserved a Peace Prize, it’s him.