Reactions to President Obama’s speech to Congress on Wednesday continue to pour in. A Democratic National Committee internal memo shows that in a focus group, support for Obama’s health reform plan increased by nearly 40 percent among voters who hold a negative or neutral opinion of the president. They responded particularly favorably to his lines about holding insurance companies accountable; the memo encourages Democrats to continue using this language.

After a rough day yesterday, in which his opponent raised more than $400,000, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) saw a return to greener pastures today. He’s now raised more than $200,000 around $700,000 (according to a “Republican source”) since his outburst during Obama’s speech. And his less-than-tactfully-presented charge that illegal immigrants would benefit from the proposed reform has Democratic leaders revisiting the relevant language. However, it does appear increasingly likely that he’ll receive a formal censure.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), the most likely Senate Republican to cross the aisle and forge a health care compromise, has confused some observers with her demands for altering the reform plan. She wants to increase the subsidy threshold from 300 to 400 percent of the poverty line, which would necessarily raise the price tag of the legislation. But she also wants to reduce the cost from $900 billion to $800 billion — evidently an arbitrary figure to create the appearance of concessions from Democrats. And Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) insists he’s still at the table, working toward a bipartisan agreement.

On the other hand, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), who has not signed onto Posey’s bill, has been caught on camera telling an irate birther, who claims President Obama cannot hold office “by our Constitution”: “I agree with you, but the courts don’t.” Telling a voter that the president of the United States (who, er, carried Ohio in 2008) is not legitimate is far beyond what Boustany did, and the Democratic National Committee is hitting Schmidt on this today.

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“I thought it was a good idea,” Steele said. “Don’t sit there and think you’re going to direct a bunch of angry liberals to call the RNC when I know full well what that’s all about. I get the joke. My response was, talk to your own party, because they’re the ones ginning this up.”

Whole email below the fold:

Friend –

There’s been a lot of media coverage about organized mobs intimidating lawmakers, disrupting town halls, and silencing real discussion about the need for real health insurance reform.

The truth is, it’s a sham. These “grassroots protests” are being organized and largely paid for byWashington special interests and insurance companies who are desperate to block reform. They’re trying to use lies and fear to break the President and his agenda for change.

Health insurance reform is about our lives, our jobs, and our families — we can’t let distortions and intimidation get in the way. We need to expose these outrageous tactics, and we’re counting on you to help. Can you read these “5 facts about the anti-reform mobs,” then pass them along to your friends and family?

5 facts about the anti-reform mobs

1. These disruptions are being funded and organized by out-of-district special-interest groups and insurance companies who fear that health insurance reform could help Americans, but hurt their bottom line. A group run by the same folks who made the “Swiftboat” ads against John Kerry is compiling a list of congressional events in August to disrupt. An insurance company coalition has stationed employees in 30 states to track where local lawmakers hold town-hall meetings.

2. People are scared because they are being fed frightening lies. These crowds are being riled up by anti-reform lies being spread by industry front groups that invent smears to tarnish the President’s plan and scare voters. But as the President has repeatedly said, health insurance reform will create more health care choices for the American people, not reduce them. If you like your insurance or your doctor, you can keep them, and there is no “government takeover” in any part of any plan supported by the President or Congress.

3. Their actions are getting more extreme. Texas protesters brought signs displaying a tombstone for Rep. Lloyd Doggett and using the “SS” symbol to compare President Obama’s policies to Nazism. Maryland Rep. Frank Kratovil was hanged in effigy outside his district office. Rep. Tim Bishop of New York had to be escorted to his car by police after an angry few disrupted his town hall meeting — and more examples like this come in every day. And they have gone beyond just trying to derail the President’s health insurance reform plans, they are trying to “break” the President himself and ruin his Presidency.

4. Their goal is to disrupt and shut down legitimate conversation. Protesters have routinely shouted down representatives trying to engage in constructive dialogue with voters, and done everything they can to intimidate and silence regular people who just want more information. One attack group has even published a manual instructing protesters to “stand up and shout” and try to “rattle” lawmakers to prevent them from talking peacefully with their constituents.

5. Republican leadership is irresponsibly cheering on the thuggish crowds. Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner issued a statement applauding and promoting a video of the disruptions and looking forward to “a long, hot August for Democrats in Congress.”

It’s time to expose this charade, before it gets more dangerous. Please send these facts to everyone you know. You can also post them on your website, blog, or Facebook page.

Now, more than ever, we need to stand strong together and defend the truth.

Thanks,

Jen

Jen O’Malley Dillon
Executive Director
Democratic National Committee

Much like we saw at the McCain-Palin rallies last year where crowds were baited with cries of ’socialist,’ ‘communist,’ and where the birthers movement was born – these mobs of extremists are not interested in having a thoughtful discussion about the issues –  but like some Republican leaders have said – they are interested in ‘breaking’ the President and destroying his Presidency.

The NRCC, via spokesman Ken Spain, fired back:

What Democrats call ‘mob rule’ the average American calls “democracy” … These kinds of despicable characterizations of middle class Americans, who oppose trillions in mounting government debt, as elements of the partisan ‘fringe’ smacks of elitism.

This begs the question: if town hall applause-o-meter contests are “democracy,” what are elections for? Undeterred, based on the friendly-fire interviews that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) gave to The Huffington Post, it sounds like Democrats are trying to define the coming wave of made-for-TV town hall outbursts as fringe lunacy along the lines of the Code Pink protests that dogged Republicans in the Bush years.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during his presidential campaign (WDCpix)

In the final months of the 2008 presidential race, Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) campaign learned of a lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania that asked the state to strip Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) of the Democratic nomination on suspicion that he was not an American citizen. The complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief was filed by Phil Berg, a former deputy state attorney general who left government in 1990 for a series of gadfly political campaigns. His last round of notoriety had come when he filed RICO complaints against George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein and multiple members of the Bush administration for “accountability” for the 9/11 attacks. Still, Berg’s complaint had gotten glancing local media attention, and the Democratic National Committee’s counsel had filed a motion to dismiss it. One lawyer who was doing some work for the campaign was tasked with reading Berg’s lawsuit and gauging its chances of success.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“The conversation was along the lines of ‘this is idiotic, but explain to me why,’” said the lawyer, who spoke under condition of anonymity to TWI. “I looked at whether the lawsuit was going to be dismissed. I said yes.”

Berg’s main problem was the one that has bedeviled the small, but growing, number of lawyers and amateur attorneys who have filed frivolous lawsuits against President Obama on the “question” of his American citizenship. He and they have run up against the doctrine of standing, which requires plaintiffs to prove that they have been or will be harmed by the law that they’re challenging. Like the people who challenged McCain’s citizenship in 2008 and 2000, or the people who challenged Dick Cheney’s right to run for vice president because he, like George W. Bush, resided in Texas, “birther” plaintiffs have failed again and again to get their cases heard because they lack standing.

“We monitored the progress of these lawsuits against the Obama campaign,” said Trevor Potter, a Washington attorney who served as general counsel to the 2008 and 2000 McCain presidential campaigns. “The McCain campaign faced a series of lawsuits like this, too, alleging that he could not be president because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Both campaigns took the position that these plaintiffs lacked standing.”

But the flawed conception of the many “birther” lawsuits, coupled with the inexperience and foul-ups of “birther” lawyers, have only fed the frenzy over Obama’s legitimacy to serve as president of the United States. A survey of the lawsuits filed against Obama reveals a reliance on widely debunked rumors, bogus stories sourced back to web sites, affidavits from “experts” who refuse to provide credentials or even their real names, and frequent and blatant misunderstandings of basic constitutional law. The dismissal of “birther” lawsuits has allowed conspiracy theorists to believe that the information in those suits is accurate–a belief that manifests itself in the emails, phone calls, and town hall meeting rants that have pushed the theories into the mainstream media and the halls of Congress.

While they ruled out any chance of the “birther” lawsuits holding up in court, lawyers for the McCain campaign did check into the rumors about Obama’s birth and the assertions made by Berg and others. “To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations,” said Potter. “We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence. There were no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else. On the other side, there was proof that he was born in Hawaii. There was a certificate issued by the state’s Department of Health, and the responsible official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original certificate. There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would be very difficult to invent or plant 47 years in advance.”

“Birther” lawyers and bloggers, who gained an unexpected prominence in the mainstream media, have consistently denied Hawaii’s own records of Obama’s birth. They have also built up a corpus of information which, they argue, would invalidate Obama’s claim on the White House even if he was born in the United States. These rumors, and the inability of “birther” lawyers to test them in court, have proven pervasive enough to fuel the conspiracy theories.

After the DNC requested a dismissal of Berg’s lawsuit, he responded in a Sept. 29, 2008 filing that cited numerous Internet rumors and incorrect citations of American and international law. Berg cited “Wikipedia Italian version” and “Rainbow Edition News Letter” as evidence that Obama had not been clear about which hospital he was born in; he alleged that Obama must have been adopted by Lolo Soetoro, the Indonesian man who married Obama’s mother when the future president was five years old, because he attended elementary school in that country. Because a contemporary school record referred to Obama as “Barry Soetoro” and listed his nationality as “Indonesian,” Berg argued that there was “absolutely no way Obama could have ever regained ‘natural born’ status.”

“That’s just completely wrong,” said Mitzi Torri, an Arizona-based immigration lawyer. Torri pointed to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which sets a high bar for renunciation of American citizenship. According to the INA, an American can only forfeit his citizenship if he commits treason, if he makes a “formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state,” or if he becomes a citizen of another country “upon his own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent.”

“Berg wants to say,” said Torri, “that this document from a school in Indonesia, which has no signature, which has no standing whatsoever, is more important than Obama’s birth certificate or our immigration law.”

Berg’s filings made other claims that have shown up in anti-Obama lawsuits and in the proliferation of “birther” Website. One relies on an audio tape of Obama’s step-grandmother Sarah Obama, who lives in Kenya, being goaded into saying (through a translator) that the future president was born in Kenya before quickly correcting herself. (A doctored version of this tape, which cuts off before the retraction, is posted on YouTube.) Another claim: Obama traveled to Pakistan in 1981, when it was illegal for an American to do so, suggesting that he used a non-American passport. The problem is that there never was any such ban.

“We have no record of any travel ban between America and Pakistan during that period or since,” said Noel Clay, a spokesman for the State Department.

“We got that from someplace,” Berg told TWI on Thursday. In an email, he added his paralegal was “reviewing” his files on Pakistan. Yet the false claim appears in Orly Taitz’s lawsuit on behalf of perennial presidential candidate Alan Keyes, which argues that Obama visited Pakistan “when entrance to Pakistan was banned to Americans, Christians and Jews,” proof that he gave up his American citizenship.

In October 2008, when Berg v. Obama et al was dismissed for lack of standing, the attorney told sympathetic reporters that the DNC had “admitted” the truth about Obama’s citizenship by not rebutting his claims. Joseph Sandler, who filed motions to dismiss Berg’s case and other Obama citizenship lawsuits as general counsel, explained why claims like these are never debunked by lawyers for the president.

“When you file a motion to dismiss, to try to get the case thrown out before any factual inquiry is made, the facts that the plaintiffs put into their complaint are assumed to be true,” said Sandler. “You have to show that even if the facts were true, they don’t have a case.”

As a result of that, extremely questionable theories and “facts” have become linchpins of ‘birther’ theories. ‘Birthers’ who refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth often cite the expertise of “Dr. Ron Polarik,” a self-described “expert in computer graphics” who maintains a blog at Townhall.com and has recorded a video, in which his face and voice are blurred, explaining how the image was “forged” with Adobe Photoshop. “Polarik” submitted an affidavit in support of Orly Taitz’s Keyes case that is signed “XXXXXXXXXXX,” making it inadmissible.

“If it ever comes down to it,” explained Gary Kreep, another lawyer for Keyes, “we’ll use his real name.”

Some anti-Obama claims take the issue entirely out of the hands of the president or Hawaii officials. Carl Swensson, a conservative activist from Georgia, has organized “Citizens’ Grand Juries” that have indicted the president for treason. Mario Apuzzo, a New Jersey attorney, has sued Obama on the grounds that he never was, and never could be, a “natural born” citizen. Both men pass over precedent for “The Law of Nations,” the 1758 treatise by the 18th century French scholar Emerich de Vattel. In one translation, de Vattel writes that “the natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.” That’s enough for some Obama ‘birthers’ to say that Obama might be a citizen of Kenya–as one constituent of Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) put it–but he cannot be a natural born citizen of the United States. “It’s what the founding fathers used,” explained Swensson.

Constitutional scholars consider this a dubious argument at best. “The framers of the 14th Amendment thought about this,” explained Elizabeth Wydra, chief counsel for the Constitutional Accountability Center. “They wanted to make sure that the children of slaves who were brought here illegally, slaves who were brought into this country after the end of the slave trade, would be citizens.”

Apuzzo is not convinced. He argued that the founders wrote the phrase “natural born citizen” for a reason; to make sure that no one with “blood ties” to another country could become president. He speculated what might happen if Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.), whose parents were Indian, became president. “India is a nuclear power. Here comes the president, who says we have to go in and attack Pakistan. Are we doing that because we are defending India’s interests? You just don’t know. You can’t have Constitutional rule if you allow this.”

Because of the dismissal tactics used by lawyers for the president, John McCain, and both political parties, believers in these various theories and readings of the Constitution argue that they have never been proven wrong. Although Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) explained his support of a House bill that would require copies of birth certificates from presidential candidates by saying it would “put all this to rest,” the very frivolity and obscurity of the challenges to Obama suggest the beginning of a conspiracy theory that will never be debunked to the satisfaction of its believers.

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“Terry McAuliffe is slipperier than an eel in olive oil,” Nader said in an interview.

He said McAuliffe, who was the Democratic National Committee chairman at the time, had offered Nader’s campaign an unspecified amount of money, believed to be party funds, to spend in 31 states in exchange for an agreement to withdraw from 19 battleground states where he could potentially hurt Democrat John Kerry.

Perhaps more shockingly, McAuliffe’s not denying it. He’s not exactly admitting it, either — but he’s certainly not calling Nader a liar.

In fact, McAuliffe aides are even attempting to spin this in his favor, basically saying that any effort he made to thwart Nader and prevent the re-election of George W. Bush might actually play well with party loyalists.

In a statement to The Post, spokeswoman Liz Smith said McAuliffe “was concerned that Ralph Nader would cost John Kerry the election as he did Al Gore in 2000 and give us another four years of George W. Bush.” She then jabbed Nader, saying it appears he “misses seeing his name in the press.”

The problem is, Ralph Nader doesn’t need to find a new project to make him relevant these days — with corporate bailouts and credit card reform dominating the public psyche right now, a man who built his reputation on consumer advocacy should be as happy as a pig in mud. And he is busy critiquing everything from the government-led restructuring of General Motors to the handling of swine flu.

The Daily Beast points out that Nader was willing to take cash from wealthy Republicans trying to siphon votes from Democrats in that same election. He told The Post, however, that he turned down McAuliffe’s offer.

So why talk now, five years after the fact? The disclosure of the alleged bribe — which comes less than two weeks before Virginia’s June 9 Democratic gubernatorial primary — will apparently be played up in an upcoming book written by a former Nader campaign manager. Today’s news will likely drive up interest in that project, which is scheduled for release the week after the primary.

He’ll be in good company: Jennifer Hudson, Earth, Wind and Fire and President Obama will also be among the luminati at the event. No word yet if Specter — who recently told Details.com he sings mostly “golden oldies” to his wife — will croon for the crowd too.

Concert tickets range in price from $1,000 to $2,500 — and if you want dinner, it’ll set you back $30,400 per couple.

DNC officials said they don’t like to comment on how much they expect to rake in at fundraisers, but Hotline On Call reported that it will likely take in between $3 million and $4 million tonight.

And as for Specter? He doesn’t get a cut from the evening, it’s just one of the things expected of Democrats in office who hope to eventually get a chunk of campaign cash from the party. He currently has about $6.7 million in cash on hand, according to his most recent campaign finance report from the end of March.

Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.), who told the Philadelphia Inquirer this week he is “leaning very much toward getting in” the Democratic primary race to challenge Specter, has  $3.5 million on hand.

Specter, who spent more than 40 years as a Republican, nabbed the Democratic primary endorsement of Obama, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) when he switched parties last month.

After praising Dean’s “outstanding work,” Obama highlighted Kaine’s “progressive philosophy” that allowed him to build “a model of good and responsible government in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

Kaine, who in February 2007 became one of the first prominent supporters of Obama’s presidential campaign, initially rejected Obama’s efforts to convince to take the helm of the party, but today he told the president-elect, “You are a very persuasive individual.”

He laid out three goals for his tenure as DNC chair: to “promote this president’s agenda,” to “carry the proud banner of this proud party” and to “engage Americans in new ways in politics.”

But he acknowledged the challenges of following in Dean’s footsteps. Under Dean’s four-year watch, the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006 and then made further gains in 2008 while also winning the presidency.

“I’ve got huge shoes to fill,” he admitted.

For the first time at a post-election press conference, Obama did not take questions from reporters.

Kaine must be officially elected by the DNC, but with Obama’s endorsement, it’s a foregone conclusion.

Dean saw the glass as about 9/10 full.

“Clearly we would prefer to do better in the Appalachian regions, but to win in Florida, to win in North Carolina and to win in the West is huge,” he said. “The next state on my list is Texas.”

Oh, right, those maps I promised you:

2008 vs. 2004

2008 vs. 2000