In case you missed (I did), here is an unsmiling, and deadly serious NJ Speaker Sheila Oliver discussing Gov. Chris Christie's ignorant remark about the civil rights movement, made this week.
btw - New Jersey was the last state in the union to abolish slavery. Did you know that? It's part of the history lesson Oliver, Rush Holt, Reed Gusciora, Loretta Weinberg, John Wisniewski, Gordon Johnson, Rep. John Lewis and others have been required to review this week for the benefit of a governor who let a bit too much of his own prejudices show, as he attempted to make his stand against a rising tide of Equality in marriage going on in the New Jersey Legislature.
Inspired by Senator Arlen Specter's recent foray into the world of stand-up comedy, my soon-to-be new Congressman (by virtue of Dunellen's proximity to Plainfield), Rush Holt, was clearly auditioning to be Joey Novick's regular opening act when he scored the loudest laugh line of the evening last night while Howard Dean was speaking at a Montclair fundraiser for Holt.
Dean was talking about all of the different groups of people that Republicans seem to hate as evidenced by their hateful rhetoric towards the African-American, Hispanic-American, and LGBT-American communities, when Holt uncharacteristically piped in and said...
"Now it appears that they hate themselves."
...and the room erupted with laughter. Who needs politics or rocket science when you can make people laugh? Be careful, Joey. Holt and Specter might take their act on the road and leave you behind.
Among the scores of Democratic politicians in today's crowded Marriage Equality press conference was one federal official, Congressman Rush Holt. Holt represented the entire New Jersey congressional delegation - all seven congressmen and both senators - in expressing their support for the Marriage Equality bill, S1. Holt's brief remarks are below; the text of the letter is after the fold.
Just as when Volta in the 18th century used electricity to make a frog's legs twitch and had no idea where it would lead, even esoteric and tentative research like this helps make our world richer and more understandable. - Rep. Rush Holt, PhD, the only physicist in Congress
The internets have been alive the last few hours with news that physicists might have detected the elusive Higgs boson, in theory (because nobody's ever seen it), the means by which everything in the Universe obtains its mass. Basic building block of the universe. Holy grail. God particle.
This is the missing piece - or may be, when it's finally confirmed - of the Standard Model of particle physics, "instruction booklet" of how forces and particles interact. Explainer of, if not everything, then a lot of the home universe.
Chills. Really, even though the mechanics of this elude my liberal arts mind, I have chills. Not just me. A few hours ago, my favorite tweet - from a science reporter in London: Never before in the field of science journalism have so few journalists understood what so many physicists were telling them! #Higgsupdate
Rush Holt, rocket scientist, vanquisher of IBM's Watson supercomputer, and tirelessadvocate of science, and R & D funding is pumped up, even though he's a plasma, not particle, physics guy. And though this news comes from the Large Hadron Collider, biggest particle smasher in the world, buried in a tunnel 500 feet below the Swiss-French border, there are 2 teams of 3,000 physicists each from all over the world that have been working on this for years.
I just looked back at the draft of this diary, loaded with links. This isn't the usual kind of thing we report on, but the only physicist left in Congress lives in NJ (and used to be my boss). Sometimes science is politics.
One of the best things I ever heard my old rocket scientist boss Rush Holt say was that he longed for a Congress that made decisions based on evidence rather than ideology. That goes to the dead center of my interest in him. I want more people in decisive positions who think harder, and with less limitation. Like scientists do. And I want fewer who come to Congress - guns blazing, as it were - determined to remake the rest of us in some image of their own.
Today Holt spoke on the House floor to oppose H.R. 822, the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011, which overrides more sensible gun control laws by allowing anyone who who possesses a concealed carry permit in any state to carry their weapon across state lines. There are 245 sponsors. Yes, some of them are Dems, but none of ours. Garrett and LoBiondo are co-sponsors.
What the bill means in essence is that the standards would be lowered in states with strict requirements for gun permits, as all states would have to accept permits from states with lax standards. It essentially nationalizes the weakest requirements. If your aim is to make sure only very well-qualified people can carry a concealed weapon, this bill does the opposite. From a safety standard, it's just bad policy. But the interpretation of the Second Amendment that many conservatives cleave to, as they imagine themselves a well regulated militia, is deeply ingrained in so many, the lone man takin' care of business. Ideological.
Frank Lautenberg joined Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, whose family life was defined by an act of gun violence, wrote Pres. Obama last week urging him to issue a veto threat to this legislation. Obama's not yet weighed in.
Turn on C-SPAN and you can watch the vote, with pending amendments, now. This sucker will surely pass the House tonight. But while we're waiting, here's Rush Holt on the irony of the very people who hold states' rights so dear taking the bite out of states' decisions on their own gun requirements, a shootout between the 2nd & 10th Amendments.
Unless a miracle takes place this Tuesday and Republicans in LD1, LD3, and LD4 pull off major upsets, South Jersey party boss, George Norcross, will have more than enough votes to replace his primary adversary in the Assembly, Majority Leader Joe Cryan, with his top ally in the legislative body, Louis Greenwald, sending Cryan to the back bench.
What remains to be seen, however, is what Cryan will do once he is sent there. Will he unite with his fellow back bencher in the Senate, Dick Codey, to build an opposition movement that will contend not only for the Governor's office in 2013, but also all 120 legislative seats? As much as I would love to see this, I do not expect that this will happen. It is very possible that Dick Codey will run for Governor in 2013, but it is also possible that Cory Booker, Barbara Buono, and Steve Sweeney will run as well and it is unlikely that any of them will run opposition slates against the party lines that they do not win, which means that regardless of who wins the gubernatorial primary, there will not be much change in the legislative roster or its leadership.
If I am right about this, then Cryan will most likely remain on the back bench for most of the next decade. That is, unless he finds a new office for which to run or that office finds him. There have been times in the past decade when Cryan expressed an interest in running for Congress in the 7th district, but admitted that the current configuration of the district made it extremely difficult for a Democrat to win.
This is very true. Our best chance to win this district came in 2006 when a very popular Assemblywoman, Linda Stender, challenged a very unpopular Congressman Mike Ferguson in a year that Democrats were trending up and Republicans were trending down. However, despite these trends, Stender came a few thousand votes short of victory. Two years later, Stender did not run as strong of a campaign as she did in 2006 and faced a very popular State Senator, Leonard Lance. Despite huge turnout increases inspired by Barack Obama's candidacy, it was not enough for a Democrat to win the 7th and Lance defeated Stender by a much wider margin than Ferguson did two years earlier.
UPDATE: We know a little more now about how this video was compiled. Senator Lautenberg with his staff took the initiative, in recognition of National Bullying Prevention Month, which is October. To accommodate busy schedules, blocks of time over two weeks were reserved at the Capitol Visitor Center Recording Studio, with invitations to members of NJ's congressional delegation to record. There are a few faces missing - it would be even better with Reps. Andrews, Garrett, Frelinghuysen, Pallone and Smith. And we must point out that Lance & LoBiondo voted NO on DADT repeal, as Runyan might have but he wasn't sworn in yet. But the effort, and especially Senator Lautenberg's initiative, are much appreciated.
BTW - I'm told this is the first-ever It Gets Better video that includes elected Republicans.
The New Jersey suicide of Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi and other other young gay people prompted the It Gets Better Project, a labor of love from columnist Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller. The project took off like wildfire; over the last year celebrities, sports teams, and ordinary people have turned their webcams on themselves to give encouragement to teens and kids of a welcoming future for themselves. And those videos, some of them simple and low-tech, made by ordinary people, are bouncing all over the internet.
Last month, an upstate New York 14-year-old named Jamey Rodemeyer killed himself outside his house. A smart kid, with supportive parents, and friends who cared about him. A kid whose NY state senator had led other Republicans to reverse course and help pass marriage equality in New York State, in part after Jamey's hero Lady Gaga had asked her Buffalo audience to ask him to. Jamey's last message was a thank you to Lady Gaga for her message of self-worth to gay kids. And Jamey had himself just months earlier made an 'It Gets Better' video to give confidence to other kids. Jamey himself died last month, after a particularly rough bout of online bullying.
Proof if ever there was any that there's work still to be done. This is the 'It Gets Better' video that's going to the press later today, with our thanks to Senator Frank Lautenberg's office for the advance heads-up:
I like any diary at Blue Jersey where I get to list the following diary tags: Rush Holt, Marie Corfield, Maureen Vella, Albert Einstein. This weekend the congressman was out campaigning with the 16th District Democratic challengers and they stopped by Albert Einstein's house in Princeton, which redistricting added to the LD-16 footprint this year.
Found this 1-minute floor statement by Rep. Rush Holt at the website RH Reality Check (that's RH as in prescription, not for Holt's initials).
Holt reminds us the GOP-majority House is still short on jobs creation and once again indulging themselves in yet another version of their legislative assault on women's health rights, with the Orwellian-titled "Protect Life Act" (H.R. 358).
CREDO Action's pointed out the hypocrisy of the DCCC using H.R. 358 as a fundraising tool (calling it the "Let Women Die" Act, then giving money to 15 Dem candidates, 3 of whom in fact voted to "Let Women Die" - voting for H.R. 358.
Last month, Rush Holt cross-posted at Blue Jersey an in-depth article he did advocating for federal investment in research and development. Read Dueling Visions for Science.
Now, we have video of the scientist congressman talking with Rachel Maddow about what the military has achieved, even in unexpected areas like breast cancer, ovarian and prostate cancer research.
Holt comes in at the 5:17 mark, but it's worth watching Maddow's opening to see the scary-cool thing the Roomba people make for the military, and the difference between what's new in the kind of new car you can get soon vs, the kind of new car the Army gets. And aircraft the size of bugs.
What's new in military whizbang vastly outstrips what private industry has done. You're paying for it; it's public investment. The question is, can we learn anything from the way investment in R & D has fueled the leaps forward in military equipment innovation? And are there jobs in that?
Yeah, there's an ad I can't scrub. Sorry. Calculate digits of pi in your head. Or plan dinner.
Quote of the Day today, from Rush Holt, and stolen from my facebook Home page:
Because students know that I'm a scientist, they sometimes ask what I think is man's greatest invention. I always give the same answer: the U.S. Constitution. It was not a perfect document when it was written but it created a brilliantly self-correcting system of self-government that has adapted and thrived. On this Constitution Day I encourage you to read it again, as I do often.
Special for night owls, this is audio from Minnesota Public Radio a couple days ago; New Jersey's Rush Holt, 5-time Jeopardy winner, physicist, and vanquisher of IBM's supercomputer talking in full paragraphs (which some congressmen never do) about the intersection of science and politics. He's talking to Andrew Hoffman, Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan (yeah, I didn't know what that was, either) and Brian Athey, professor of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at The University of Michigan and co-founder of Scientists and Engineers for America.
On August 1, while John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and their colleagues were threatening to shut down the government, Rush Holt gave a speech describing the budget debate as:
at its heart, a debate between two visions for America. One side envisions rebuilding our country, investing in jobs and education and infrastructure, and rising from the Great Recession as a stronger and more resilient Nation. The other side accepts a pessimistic vision of a weakened America with a shrunken government-a Nation hampered by deep cuts to the safety net and hobbled by a refusal to invest in our future.
I couldn't agree more. And, like the Honorable Representative from the 12th District, I hold with the former.
Here's the full text, after the jump, of his August 1, 2011 speech. It will be in the Congressional Record as soon as it is updated - assuming, of course, that funds will be budgeted for updating and maintaining the Congressional Record.
We had two posts go up at the same time. This one was up top only a few seconds before ellington posted. So, I'm pulling this one up top for its own moment in the sun, or conversely, moon. - Rosi
The normal answer-and-question sequence breaks down because there is only one human on earth who fits this category - Congressman Rush Holt. A five-time winner when he played against humans 35 years ago and a nuclear physicist by training, Holt is one of the smartest, most level-headed members of Congress.
I had a chance to meet the Congressman yesterday at a fundraising event for Marie Corfield. Among other things, we lamented the fact that Holt's colleagues on the other side of the aisle in the House of Representatives are harming the nation with their anti-science rhetoric and are not funding the basic research that has kept the United States in the forefront of job-creating technologies over these past years.
In the video snippet below, Holt points out that we have a lot of work to undo the harm that our Governor has wreaked upon the state, and we need to work to elect progressive Democrats for the good of everyone.
Holt is a welcome antithesis to Christie. While Christie breaks everything down to a simplistic solution, Holt knows that complex problems call for complex solutions that require hard work. While Christie rules through bombastic pronouncements, Holt is methodical and rational.
I love the bumper stickers in his district: "My Congressman Is a Rocket Scientist."
We don't always talk about our ads. And we take ads from all kinds of businesses, campaigns, issue groups, and candidates. (Want to talk advertising?)
But this one is a little different. PCCC - that's Progressive Change Campaign Committee - is run by AdamGreen, a friend of some of ours here, and the former Communications Director of the state Democratic Party. PCCC's pretty alert to what's been going down in New Jersey since the dealmaking that led to the intentional weakening of public worker bargaining, and the fractures this produced in the Democratic Party. And they put their campaign together partly in intel from Blue Jersey.
PCCC's looking down the line at 2013, and looking for your name on a petition seeking support for a better candidate than Sweeney when it comes time for Democrats to choose a candidate for Governor.
CBN, the Christian Broadcasting Network, picked up the story of Gov. Chris Christie's vacillation on the question of evolution v. creationism/"intelligent design." You knew they would; it's pandered right to them, and right to fundamentalist Christians who write checks to GOP candidates with the same vigor they write checks to TV preachers.
At this weekend's Democratic State Conference in Atlantic City, I caught up with 3 men who practice both science and politics - Congressman Rush Holt, Assemblyman Herb Conaway and congressional candidate Ed Potosnak. They all had something to say about Christie's creationist parry. That's below.
We don't generally reprint or link back to sources like CBN, but it's instructive to peep in on what Christie looks like over on their side. What they "heard" in what Christie said is in CBN's headline: Christie: Schools Should Be Able to Teach Creationism, and though their article is cautious in its language, that crap plays very well over there.
Let's face it; there are only a few explanations for Christie's statement. If he was pandering, CBN is here to tell you it worked. But, wait - was he? Is it possible Christie really believes the world began 6,000 years ago? What might he think fossils are? Creationism has been debunked and debunked again. Does he not know?
GOP voters are consistently tugged toward anti-intellectualism by their leaders, the dumbing down of an entire class of voters is in sharp contrast to the intelligent (if wrong) and well-thought out (if wrong) worldview that 30 years ago was outlined by the likes of William F. Buckley and other thinkers now called paleos by post-Reagan Republicans - overcome by a generation of climate change-denyers, creationist mythologizers, and dumb if pretty spokesmodels like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, who is such a low-hanging fruit that a Cherry Hill high-schooler just went national with an invitation to debate her on the Constitution. Christie's statement is also germane because Christie wants to divert education funds to religious schools, a growing movement a lot of money is behind. Is he also unclear that it's science and not pretty religious myth that should be taught in schools?
Rush Holt: Congressman, physicist and the man who beat the Watson supercomputer in Jeopardy (Christie's statement) doesn't reflect well on New Jersey. If New Jersey wants to reclaim its title as the invention state, the innovation state, the source of america's productivity, then it can't be a know-nothing state. What bothers me about creationists - or icreationism-lit known as "intelligent design" is known as, is that it's lazy thinking. We've gotten ahead - as a species and as an American economy - by thinking deliberately and concertively about how the world works - as shown by the evidence we've observed. Creationsim ignores evidence and creationists are choosing not to live in the real world.
If you want kids to be prepareed to get ahead in the real world, you should teach them to observe the hard fact of the real world.
Herb Conaway: Physician and Assemblyman:
Freedom of expression and freedom of thought are sacred in this country. Our birthright. But with respect to teaching, let's make sure we're teaching science in science class - not something else.
Ed Potosnak: Congressional candidate, former chemistry teacher: A mistake we have made in the scientific community is referring to Darwin's theory instead of what it actually is, which is Dawrins law, which is that species evolve over time. While the explanation may change - hence why they call it a theory - the fact remains that our Governor is putting partisan politics and his political career ahead of scientific evidence.
Friday afternoon there's supposed to be a deportation hearing in Newark for a couple some states, many countries, and all of us recognize as legally married. Josh Vandiver is an American, Henry Velandia is from Venezuela. Our country has not recognized the couple, legally married last year in Connecticut, as married enough to keep Velandia in this country with his husband. Henry's visitor visa is expired. And because of DOMA, Josh isn't allowed to sponsor his husband for a green card. It's an outrage that DOMA applies, that the normal route this couple should be able to follow isn't available to them because Josh and Henry are the same gender. Josh and Henry's case has become a lightning rod for change, because no matter what happens in their case, other same-sex couples from different countries will face the same crap as long as DOMA is allowed to stand.
What: Rally to Stop Henry Velandia's Deportation When: Friday, May 6 at 11am
Where: Department of Homeland Security
Newark Immigration Court
Peter Rodino Federal Building
970 Broad St, Newark
Three months ago, President Obama made the decision to stop defending DOMA in federal court, and that makes right now a ripe time for change. Rep. Rush Holt seized that opportunity when he went on record with the Obama administration in a letter to US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano calling on her to "immediately resolve" Josh and Henry's deportation case, and stop all deportations involving married gay and lesbian binational couples. Rush Holt letter, after the jump. US Attorney Eric Holder got into Josh and Henry's case today, and that's good news. But it's not enough. This shouldn't happen to anyone else, and it will as long as DOMA rules.
Backing up Friday's rally are groups both Jersey-based and national, including Garden State Equality, Princeton Equality Project, Courage Campaign, GetEQUAL, Stop the Deportations, All Out, Immigration Equality Action Fund, Marriage Equality USA, Out4Immigration, and Queer Rising.
These hearings go on during the work day, so that's when the rally is. If you can make it to Newark Friday 11am, or show your support any other way, it strikes a blow for equality. Disclosure: I'm a board member of Garden State Equality. I'd be writing about this even if I wasn't.
Our immigration policies must work to unite families, not rip them apart. - Rep. Rush Holt, in letter to Secretary of Homeland Security
Rush Holt has appealed to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano not to apply the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to an immigration case involving constituents of his congressional district. DOMA, which Holt believes is unconstitutional, is jeopardizing the future of Holt's NJ-12 constituent Josh Vandiver and his husband Henry Velandia. They were married last year in Connecticut, a marriage equality state. Velandia is from Venezuela and came to the states on a visitor visa 9 years ago. Because of DOMA, he's not eligible for the same kind of spouse visa that would be available to him in a marriage of opposite gender partners. He will be deported unless either DOMA is ruled unconstitutional or a bill challenging DOMA's constitutional basis passes in Congress. Vandiver is an American citizen, Holt argues, and should receive the full rights granted to all citizens. That would include having his marriage recognized, rather than be singled out based on his sexual orientation. Holt says that's exactly what's happening as Vandiver is not being allowed to sponsor his husband for a visa.
The Obama administration's position on DOMA has shifted; it will no longer defend DOMA. Holt notes the specifics of Attorney General Eric Holder's new position on the much-hated law, and says he wants it repealed. Until that happens, Holt is asking Homeland Security to suspend deportation of all spouses of US citizens in same-sex marriages. Full text of his letter to Secretary Napolitano is after the jump.
Japan is a nation alert to disaster-preparedness; drills, practices, evacuation plans, even a national day of preparedness. But human error is a factor - i.e. back-up diesel generators on low ground - and continues to be a factor in Japan's emerging nuclear crisis. "They were supposed to be rare," but they're now coming in about every decade of so, says Rush Holt. On Rachel Maddow last night, Holt discusses the perilous condition of our energy resources, and the need for a comprehensive plan.
But what else is Rush Holt worried about here? Maybe not what you think.
Holt, physicist and congressman, comes in at the 2:45 mark:
This got posted late-night, so I'm retitling with an Update and pulling it up top again for anybody who missed it.
Update: We're getting a little detail now on Holt v. Watson. Holt reminds us math & science education is key, and research & development is important: "While it was fun to out-do Watson for one night in trivia; it is vital that, as a nation, we out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world for generations to come." Holt lead in categories Presidential Rhyme Time and Also a Laundry Detergent proving his knowledge both historical and practical. And he knew what Hippophobia is the fear of. It's not hippos. - - Rosi
This was an exhibition game hosted by IBM. Watson took on 5 congressmen in the Watson vs. Members tournament: Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Jared Polis (D-CO), Nan Hayworth (R-NY), Jim Himes (D-CT) and Holt.
