The apparent contradictions of North Dakota politics

By Richard K. Barry 

According to Politico, a poll done by the North Dakota Democratic Party gives Democrat Heidi Heitkamp a 5-point lead over Republican Rick Berg in the state's Senate race.

Heitkamp sits at 49 per cent, Berg at 44, which is a small change in the gap from December, when the two were just one point apart.

I don't profess to know anything about politics in North Dakota, but it does amaze me that polls show voters in the state have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Democratic Party despite their apparent support for the party's standard bearer in the Senate election. Specifically, 48 per cent of those surveyed have an unfavourable view of the Democrats, compared to 34 per cent who approve.

As for the Republicans, 53 per cent view them favourably, while 31 view them unfavourably.

On top of that, it doesn't look like President Obama will even have a glimmer of hope in North Dakota, polling behind Romney by a 51-32 per cent margin. 62 per cent say the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Clearly, I have some work to do to understand how things are done in North Dakota, and it wouldn't be the first time I saw local dynamics that were different from national dynamics, but it still requires a bit of an explanation when it happens.

Last time I looked, incumbent Democratic Senator Kent Conrad had decided not to run again and the Republicans were basically already putting this in the win column as one they could steal from the Democrats.

I guess things are a bit more complicated than that in the Peace Garden State. 

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Police use Predator drones for surveillance in North Dakota

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So you really don't think the U.S. is becoming more and more of a police state?

Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.

Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

He also called in a Predator B drone.

As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.

But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.

No big deal, you say? Police should use whatever means necessary to apprehend criminals? Please. Are you not paying attention as your privacy -- and indeed your freedom -- is being taken away from you without you even knowing it?

As John Cole writes: "[T]o those of you poo-pooing this and saying "how is this any different than a helicopter," in five to ten years when unmanned drones are flying all over your neighborhood surveilling and storing info at random, you can think back to mocking us privacy hysterics. I'm sure very similar arguments were made in years past about police needing armored vehicles and .50 cals and every locale needing a SWAT team armed to the teeth."

It's one thing, and then another thing, and then another thing, and each time you say, "oh, so what?" Well, it all adds up to something, doesn't it? It's bad enough that your phone is allowing you to be tracked, that you can't make any sort of transaction without being identified on the grid. Do you really want to live with drones flying overhead?

As Libby Spencer writes: "A police state doesn't happen overnight. Big changes happen in just such tiny incremental infringements. If we wait to express our concern until, like the Geneva Conventions, Posse Comitatus is rendered quaint, it will be too late."

Actually, it's probably too late already. And not just in North Dakota.

(photo)

Photo of the Day: Flooding in North Dakota

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This can't be good.

Photo from The Globe and Mail: "A home breaks apart as it is engulfed by Missouri River flood waters, Wednesday, June, 22, 2011 in the Hoge Island area of Bismarck, N.D."

For more on the flooding, and on this home in particular, see The Bismarck Tribune. The USGS also has useful information here.

This photo is making the rounds. See, for example, The Washington Post's report on the flooding here.

Sen. Byron Dorgan announces retirement

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) has announced that he will not stand for re-election this year, "creating a major pickup opportunity for Republicans," as Chris Cillizza puts it.

North Dakota is a solidly red state, after all -- despite Dorgan's solid hold on the seat since '92 -- and whoever the Republican nominee is (probably Gov. John Hoeven) will be a heavy favourite to be Dorgan's successor.

So is this "un-spinnably bad news for the Democrats," as Nate Silver puts it? It's hard to think otherwise at this point.

And with a loss likely, Democrats will just have to look elsewhere to pick up a seat to maintain the status quo.

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Dorgan isn't the only Democrat stepping down this year. As Cillizza is reporting, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd is "expected to announce he will not seek re-election" at a press conference later today.

The difference here is that the Democrats should hold the seat, with State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal Dodd's likely successor. (Given Dodd's deep unpopularity in his home state, Blumenthal should be a stronger Democratic candidate anyway.)

**********

But back to Dorgan. Through my connections at the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, I published two guest posts by him this past fall, and I encourage you to check them out:

-- Inspector General to investigate Army's response to exposure of U.S. troops to deadly chemicals in Iraq; and

-- Senators answer video questions on health insurance reform.

He was at times too centrist and Republican-friendly for my liking, but he was solidly liberal on many of the issues that really matter, and his retirement will be a loss both for the Senate and for the Democratic Party.

It's alive

By Mustang Bobby

Following up on Michael's post below...

The North Dakota House of Representatives has passed a bill that grants a fertilized egg all the rights of any person:

That means a fetus could not be legally aborted without the procedure being considered murder.

Minot Republican Dan Ruby has sponsored other bills banning abortion in previous legislative sessions - all of which failed.

He also sponsored today's bill and says it is compatable [sic] with Roe versus Wade - the Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion.

(Rep. Dan Ruby, -R- Minot) "This is the exact language that's required by Roe vs. Wade. It stipulated that before a challenge can be made, we have to identify when life begins, and that's what this does."

I suppose you could marvel at the determination of people like Mr. Ruby who are so dedicated to their cause, but you also have to notice that he clearly didn't think this through. There are a lot of questions that a sweeping declaration like this leave unanswered. For instance, if life begins at conception -- which is debatable, since viability doesn't become possible until the egg attaches to the uterus, which occurs some time after fertilization -- how do we know the exact time when that happens? Does a bell go off or something so a doctor or the mother knows when the microscopic speck suddenly becomes a person? (Misty at Shakesville has several other questions.)

That's just one of many practical questions that would have to be addressed if this law actually passes legal muster. A lot of state and federal laws would have to be re-written to accommodate this law, and the United States Constitution would have to be amended, since it states that citizenship is obtained when someone is born or naturalized, not conceived. And since the egg obtains full rights in the uterus, that means that its rights supersede those of the woman who is carrying it, since she would no longer have the right of self-determination about her own body. Further, if the egg grows and is born and we find out later on that the person is gay, he or she will lose rights, such as that of the right to get married or visit their loved one in the hospital. In other words, a fertilized egg in North Dakota has more rights than many other citizens who happen to be unfortunate enough to be born there.

Of course, the point of this law is not to resolve a legal question, it's meant to challenge one; in this case Roe v. Wade. This isn't an uncommon legal tactic; advocates on both sides of the political spectrum have used it before to either call a standing law into question in the courts or just point out the extremism of a law. But the paradox here is that this law is being put forth by an advocate for a group that lives by the philosophy that all of our questions can be answered with a simple bumper-sticker solution: Abortion Is Murder. That's not meant to provoke a debate, it's meant to end it. It's the equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting, "Neener, neener, I can't hear you!"

So they pass this law knowing that it will attract a lawsuit -- they're counting on it -- so that they can go all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States chanting their mantra and assuming that they will prevail. They will spend a great deal of the North Dakota's citizens' taxes on this quixotic quest with the high probability that it will be knocked down, and they'll come back from another direction and keep trying and trying. This is a strange paradox for a political party that on everything else -- guns, taxes, property rights, health care, education, and the airwaves -- advocates for smaller and limited government. That is, apparently, until it comes to a woman's uterus. Then all bets are off.

There may be a medical debate as to when an egg is alive, but there is little doubt that the folks who think that the only lives worth saving or ensuring the rights for are the ones that are in utero are still out there stalking the streets.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

North Dakota bans abortion

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, not really. Or, not yet.

The state's House of Representatives has, by a margin of 51-41, voted "to declare that a fertilized egg has all the rights of any person," according to local KXNet. In other words, the House has effectively voted to ban abortion, given that abortion would be murder. The bill now moves to the Senate.

Bill sponsor Dan Ruby -- a Republican, of course -- claims that the legislation is compatible with Roe v. Wade, in that it contains "the exact language that's required by Roe," specifically by "[identifying] when life begins."

Ruby, apparently, is insane. Even if the bill passes the Senate, even if it is eventually signed into law, there will be extensive litigation. Anything is possible with a right-leaning SCOTUS, of course, but, based on Roe (which, lest we forget, grants abortion rights and is not, and is not meant to be, some existential determination of when exactly life begins), the law would be struck down.

Because -- if I may offer my own politico-existential take on the matter -- a fertilized egg is simply not a human life. It may have the potential for human life, but it is hardly a being that deserves, and requires, the same rights as any living person, or that needs to be protected like a late-term fetus.

(For more on the North Dakota bill, see my friend and colleague Jazz Shaw over at TMV.)