So GOP candidate Joni Ernst (R. IA) is back in the press today:
http://www.salon.com/...
Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst has returned from two weeks of training with the Iowa National Guard to a midterm election race against Democrat Bruce Braley that has become a competitive contest in the battle for Senate control.
The seat has been occupied for 30 years by U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat who announced last year that he would not seek another term. Now it is one of the closest races in the country, hotly contested by allied groups from outside Iowa as Republicans drive for the six-seat gain they need to grab the Senate majority.
On Monday, Ernst, a Republican state senator, spoke with veterans at a restaurant in the Des Moines suburbs.
“Once our veterans in Iowa are getting into the system, they are being cared for. I wish I could say that for every state out there,” said Ernst, 44, referring to the scandals surrounding veterans’ health care. “We need to address these issues head on.”
For Ernst, the appearance was a reintroduction after a two-week reminder of her service. She is a lieutenant colonel and a battalion commander in the National Guard — leadership positions that could serve as a counter to Braley’s experience in government. - Salon, 7/28/14
But as soon as she returned she reminded all of us how out of touch she really is:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/...
Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) argued that Congress should not be passing laws "that the states would consider nullifying."
Ernst, the Republican nominee for Senate in Iowa, made the comments at a forum at the 2013 Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition and were flagged by The Daily Beast on Monday.
"You know we have talked about this at the state legislature before, nullification. But, bottom line is, as U.S. Senator, why should we pass laws that the states are considering nullifying? Bottom line: our legislators at the federal level should not be passing those laws," Ernst said. "We're right…we've gone 200-plus years of federal legislators going against the Tenth Amendment's states' rights. We are way overstepping bounds as federal legislators. So, bottom line, no we should not be passing laws as federal legislators —as senators or congressmen— that the states would even consider nullifying. Bottom line." - TPM, 7/28/14
Now I'll let the Daily Beast explain what's wrong with Ernst's remarks:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/...
States cannot nullify federal laws, of course.
In embracing the concept of nullification, Ernst harkens back to a discredited theory that the Constitution is a compact and states are free to void federal laws that they dislike. This view was widely promoted by John Calhoun, the great Southern advocate of slavery prior to the Civil War and was touted by segregationists in the 1950s and 1960s. In recent years, the idea was purged of its most racist overtones and fringe elements of the right adopted it as an argument against Obamacare, gun control, and other federal regulations.
As Erwin Chemerinsky, a noted constitutional law scholar and Dean of the University of California, Irvine Law School, told The Daily Beast, nullification is expressly forbidden under Article VI of the Constitution. “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof… shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” Chemerinsky also noted that the Supreme Court had dealt with this issue as recently as 1958, when in Cooper v. Aaron, a unanimous decision signed by every justice on the court, it was made clear that states could not nullify federal laws or Supreme Court decisions.
Chemerinsky did point out that while “constitutional law doesn’t back up her rhetoric about the tenth amendment” in his opinion, it is something on which “people can have different views” and generally within the realm of acceptable discourse.
Historically, the Tenth Amendment has been viewed as simply a basic statement of fact rather than something explicitly grants power to the states. The best-known description of this comes from a unanimous Supreme Court decision in 1941 by Justice Harlan Stone in United States v. Darby Lumber where Stone wrote:
The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers” - Daily Beast, 7/28/14
Welcome back to the campaign trail! Now this race has started to look like a tight one and the Koch Brothers are spending big to try and defeat Rep. Bruce Braley (D. IA):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Concerned Veterans for America, a organization that is part of the of the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers' political network, is hitting Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) for missing Veterans Affairs Committee meetings.
"When our veterans needed him, Bruce Braley was AWOL," says the narrator of a new TV ad. The commercial opens by mentioning the VA scandal that exploded into the public's view this year involving false record-keeping and long wait times for treatment.
The Des Moines Register reported this week that Braley missed 15 of the 20 Veterans' Affairs Committee meetings in 2011 and 2012. - Washington Post, 7/25/14
Here's some info you need to know:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/...
Democrats who back Braley, a trial lawyer and seven-year congressman who is now running for U.S. Senate, say he has been an outspoken voice for veterans and it's wrong for his GOP rival, Joni Ernst, to "try to inject partisan politics into veterans issues." He missed the veterans affairs meeting on the day of the three fundraisers because he went to another congressional hearing, his aides said.
At 10:19 a.m. on Sept. 20, 2012, the committee held a hearing on a backlog of disability claims and reports of problems with mental health care and stewardship of VA funding, congressional records show. The roll call shows Braley didn't attend.
Braley's aides said he skipped it to attend a 9:36 a.m. Oversight and Government Reform Committee meeting on the "Fast and Furious" gun trafficking scandal. The congressional record marked Braley "present," but reveals that he offered no testimony during the three-hour hearing, which ran until 12:45 p.m.
Video caught no sight of Braley. His seat isn't always visible, but the multiple times it's within camera view during the window the Veterans Affairs committee was in session (10:19 a.m. to 11:54 a.m.), Braley wasn't seated, a Register review of C-SPAN 3 and committee footage found.
Members of Congress can check in as "present" at a hearing, stay for a brief time – sometimes to ask a question – and then leave. Braley didn't ask a question, the transcript shows.
On the same day, Braley had three fundraisers on his schedule for his re-election to the U.S. House, records from the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation show. He attended all three, campaign aides confirmed to The Des Moines Register.
The one from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. was a $2,500 breakfast at Johnny's Half Shell, which serves seafood fresh from the Chesapeake Bay and has a view of the Capitol dome.
At noon, Braley went to the D.C. law firm of DLA Piper for a $1,000 per person fundraiser.
The third event, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. was a $2,500 per person reception on K Street, the epicenter of the lobbying industry.
Ron Healey, a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War from Dubuque County and a member of Veterans for Braley, responded in a statement released by the Braley campaign: "To suggest that Bruce has done anything but fight for Iowa veterans is misleading and dishonest."
Healey said Braley "fought the Pentagon to get back-pay that was denied to hundreds of Iowa National Guard members, fought across party lines to improve veterans' disability benefits, and passed tax cuts for small businesses to hire veterans."
Braley campaign spokesman Jeff Giertz said fundraisers Braley scheduled on Sept. 20 didn't conflict with the VA hearings.
In fact, at 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 20, a subcommittee on economic opportunities for veterans met and Braley attended most of the hearing. He left early to attend a 3 p.m. classified briefing for U.S. House members with then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi. - Des Moines Register, 7/23/14
So yeah, no dice there. Even Ernst isn't full on board with the Koch Brothers' latest line of attacks against Braley:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/...
"I'm not going to respond to whether he was MIA or AWOL. I think that's up to him to refute," Ernst told reporters after a campaign event highlighting veterans issues. "But I think those are important issues and we need to focus on those. We've made a lot of promises to our veterans and we need to make sure we are taking care of our veterans."
A political action committee is running an ad accusing Braley of being AWOL, which stands for "absent without leave" from House veterans affairs committee meetings, including hearings on delayed care at VA hospitals.
Ernst demurred when asked if the attacks were appropriate. "I'm not going to say whether it's appropriate or not," she said. "People who have made those attacks, they'll have to -- he can refute them if he wants to refute them."
Ernst did, however, say she believed Braley should have attended the committee hearings. "But that's up for him. He'll have to justify why he wasn't there at a time when the VA was failing our veterans." - Des Moines Register, 7/28/14
Democrats are hammering Ernst's connections to the Koch Brothers:
http://thehill.com/...
The Democratic Senate Majority PAC is tying Iowa Senate candidate Joni Ernst (R) to Charles and David Koch in a new ad, the group's latest attempt to get voters to distrust her campaign.
"Out-of-state oil billionaires, the Koch brothers, are spending millions supporting Joni Ernst's campaign. Why? Because Joni Ernst shares their priorities: A scheme privatizing Social Security and a plan cutting Medicare's guaranteed benefit all to pay for more tax breaks for oil billionaires," the ad's narrator says. "If Joni Ernst's got their back, we can't trust her to protect ours." - The Hill, 7/28/14
It might be a tight race but it's one we can win. Click here to donate and get involved with Braley's campaign:
http://www.brucebraley.com/