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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDR0W9SVi48[/youtube]

At the town hall meeting in Centralia on Wednesday night, Rep. Brian Baird turned the tables on a city of Centralia candidate for mayor named Matthew Trent. The Columbian included an account of the exchange in an article this morning:

One of the more contentious exchanges of the evening came when Centralia City Council candidate Matthew Trent approached the microphone.

Trent read quotes from a number of founding fathers, among them Declaration of Independence author and third president Thomas Jefferson.

Trent, who is opposing Centralia Mayor Tim Browning in the November general election, said that he had no doubt Jefferson would consider Baird “an enemy of God and the Republic” for his record on spending and supporting government controls.

Baird responded strongly, refuting the notion that Jefferson would frown upon his record.

“It’s not just my ilk, my friend,” Baird said, noting that there was no budget deficit when former President Bill Clinton left office.

As Chris notes at his blog, Trent is the beneficiary of a public education, attended a public community college and actually works for Lewis County, according to a blog created by Trent.

It’s great that Baird responded forcefully, but with great dignity, and one can hope the lesson he will take back to D.C. to share with leadership is that there is no negotiating with people like this. They’ve concocted a fantasy world of black and white in which they are the sole arbiters of the meaning of the Constitution, and of what the Founders actually intended.

They can puff up their chests and say stuff like this until the cows come home, but until and unless the U.S. Supreme Court agrees with them, they’re simply delusional fringe characters who deserve to be rhetorically smacked down with a vengeance.

It would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic. Good luck with your campaign, there, Mr. Trent.

Obama will speak to a joint session of Congress, yeah okay. But what’s the end game?

“It’s so important to get a deal,” a White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid about strategy. “He will do almost anything it takes to get one.”

Remind me not to take Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama car shopping, because they’d probably take me to Billy Tauzin’s used car lot.

Fool me once…

State Sen. Ed Murray will be stopping by Drinking Liberally tonight (8PM onwards at the Montlake Ale House), and I suppose one of the topics of conversation will likely be this:

“While I am deeply concerned for the future of our city and Michael and I are honored to have been approached by so many people and organizations we admire and respect, I am also a realist: write-in campaigns are extremely difficult, and time is short.  Also, the recognition yesterday that Referendum 71 will appear on the fall ballot galvanized my decision.

I considered a write in campaign because I was concerned that one candidate wanted to reopen a fight with the state when we need to work together. The other candidate who seeks to become our civic leader has failed to engage in civic activities including on the most basic level, voting, something Americans in the south have died for in our lifetime .

I considered running because I believe Seattle is greater than the selfish conversation in the Mayor’s race. Missing are issues and leadership on social justice. Issues of poverty and civil rights.  This campaign to date has been about one bridge and one neighborhood. Issues such as our schools, neighborhoods and diversity are missing from this debate .

I urge the candidates to broaden their messages and address the critical issues facing our city and look forward to working with one of them as our next mayor. “

Ah well. A Murray write-in campaign would have at the very least made the mayoral race a helluva lot more interesting. Now I guess I’ll have to either do the pragmatic thing and get behind one candidate or the other… or, you know, maybe just drop out for a while.

Is the Yelling Marine, David Hedrick, going to run for Congress against incumbent Democratic Brian Baird in WA-03?

There appears to be a place-holder web site up for Hedrick.

Wonder if he’ll show up in Olympia tonight?

Meanwhile, 3rd District Rep. Brian Baird has moved tonight’s town hall to a new location: Washington Center for the Performing Arts, 512 Washington St. SE in Olympia. It will run from 7 to 9 p.m.

Personally I hope Hedrick does run for Congress, and appears at forums and debates. Hard to say what the reaction might be from the two announced Republican candidates, David Castillo and Jon Russell. What’s also not known is what party Hedrick might ultimately decide to list, as his place-holder site doesn’t specify.

If Hedrick has the right stuff, he’ll do well. If not, he’ll quickly find out it’s not quite as easy as yelling into a microphone for three minutes and having someone put up a YouTube video so the right wing noise machine can fluff it.

People will want to know all sorts of stuff about the views a candidate holds. Fifteen minutes only lasts, well, about fifteen minutes.

UPDATE 8:48 PM– A friend of mine at the town hall tonight in Olympia reports that Hedrick did indeed show up, and apparently asked Baird to read the 10th Amendment from the Constitution. Hedrick wanted to know where in the Constitution it says Congress can oversee health care reform, or words to that effect.

Baird’s response, according to my friend, was to read the amendment for the crowd and point out different people (ed note-like perhaps the Supreme Court?) interpret it differently, and pointed out to Hedrick the Constitution also says nothing about veteran’s health care.

My friend reports Hedrick’s face “went dead” and he had nothing else to say, and that Hedrick left a short while later.

My friend is not a reporter, nor a blogger, so I’ll be interested to see how the traditional media reports this exchange.

Still no word, official or otherwise, if Hedrick really intends to run for Congress.

UPDATE TWO–9:21 PM–Brad Shannon of The Olympian has this initial nugget in a breaking news post.

One man who said he is a U.S. Marine from Camas insisted that reforms such as House Resolution 3200 are unconstitutional. He said, when quizzed by Baird, that he also believes Medicare is unconstitutional.

Well, okay. As one commenter at The Olympian put it, you’d think that if Medicare is actually unconstitutional, someone would have proven it in a court of law by now.

UPDATE THREE–9:57 PM– A fuller account comes from Brad Shannon of The Olympian, via the News-Tribune:

Baird took a more conciliatory approach in his evening event, and although a few critics got heated in their remarks, Baird urged the audience not to interrupt and to let speakers have their say – including David William Hedrick, who questioned the legality of the reforms.

Hedrick, who said he was a U.S. Marine from Camas, said members of Congress “have no right” to mandate coverage, and he challenged Baird to pull out his pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution, then read from Article 10, which Baird did.

“I presume you are saying Medicare is not constitutional,” Baird said. “Correct,” Hedrick replied.

Baird said there is much debate but many scholars believe Medicare and similar programs are within the scope of the Congress’ powers. “You are not the only person who gets to interpret the Constitution, sir,’’ Baird added.

Wonder if Baird’s rejoinder will be on Fox Noise? Yeah, right.

Isn’t it at least a little ironic that while Dave Reichert may have won a third term in Congress, Darcy Burner is actually having a greater impact on the all important health care reform debate?

An organizer for liberal House Democrats says the bloc “isn’t bluffing” as it prepares to take a reputation-defining stand to protect a public insurance option in the health care overhaul.

Darcy Burner, executive director of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation, said the health care debate has rallied traditionally disparate Congressional liberals to hang together, while galvanizing support for their position from an array of left-leaning outside groups. The result, she said, is that Democratic leaders will not be able to clear a package through the House if it does not include the public plan.

“We have never had the Progressive Caucus organized the way it is right now,” Burner said during a Friday roundtable with Roll Call. “This is not the normal scenario. And Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi [D-Calif.] knows it.”

Not that you’re likely to read anything about Darcy’s efforts in a local press that made up its mind about her early on, and is about as likely to reevaluate her as it is to admit the truth that Reichert did not really catch the Green River Killer.

One of the best eulogies for Sen. Ted Kennedy was actually one given a year before he died, by Sarah Vowell in the New York Times:

ON Monday night at the Democratic National Convention, Caroline Kennedy introduced a tribute to her uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, by pointing out, “If your child is getting an early boost in life through Head Start or attending a better school or can go to college because a Pell Grant has made it more affordable, Teddy is your senator, too.”

To my surprise, I started to cry. Started to cry like I was watching the last 10 minutes of “Brokeback Mountain” instead of C-SPAN. This was whimpering brought on by simple, spontaneous gratitude.

I paid my way through Montana State University with student loans, a minimum-wage job making sandwiches at a joint called the Pickle Barrel, and — here come the waterworks — Pell Grants. Thanks to Pell Grants, I had to work only 30 hours a week up to my elbows in ham instead of 40.

Ten extra hours a week might sound negligible, but do you know what a determined, junior-Hillary type of hick with a full course load and onion-scented hands can do with the gift of 10 whole hours per week? Not flunk geology, that’s what. Take German every day at 8 a.m. — for fun! Wander into the office of the school paper on a whim and find a calling. I’m convinced that those 10 extra hours a week are the reason I graduated magna cum laude, which I think is Latin for “worst girlfriend in town.”

Twenty years after my first financial aid package came through, I have paid off my college and graduate school loans and I have paid back the federal government in income taxes what it doled out to me in Pell Grants so many, many, many, many times over it’s a wonder I’m not a Republican.

[…] I am a registered Democrat. That first night’s convention speech by Senator Kennedy about his life’s work reminded me what being a Democrat means. I have spent the last eight years so disgusted with the incompetent yahoos of the executive branch that I had forgotten that I believe in one of the core principles of the Democratic Party — that government can be a useful, meaningful and worthwhile force for good in this republic instead of just an embarrassing, torturing, Book of Revelation starter kit.

The emphasis is mine, and it pretty much sums up what I believe to be the major ideological difference between the two parties today: Democrats fundamentally believe in government, while Republicans don’t. And based on the historical evidence, that’s why I’m a Democrat.

It’s a great piece.  Read the whole thing.

Correction: Think Progress has issued an update:

The Minneapolis Star Tribune quoted more of Schaffer’s words and it turns out he was defending Social Security. “I’m on Social Security and I’ve got Medicare,” said Schaffer, 70, before entering the auditorium. “I have socialized medicine. I wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world.”

UPDATE–Here is the fuller passage from the Star-Tribune:

Among more than 100 people who waited in line for over an hour to get into the event was St. Francis City Council Member LeRoy Schaffer, who was decked out in a tuxedo with a black top hat. Schaffer, who has become controversial for comments that led his fellow council members to censure him, dismissed the claim of some Republicans that the Democratic plans amount to socialized medicine.

“I’m on Social Security and I’ve got Medicare,” said Schaffer, 70, before entering the auditorium. “I have socialized medicine. I wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world.”

UPDATE 2–The original Roll Call article that Think Progress linked to does not appear to have been updated as of about 3:15 PM PDT. It’s a very different quote (see my original post below.)

Here is the original post I wrote:

Roll Call reports on a town hall meeting held in the district of Michelle Bachmann, R-MN-06.

LeRoy Schaffer, a St. Francis city council member, dressed in a tuxedo and top hat for the occasion. Shaffer got visibly emotional asking Bachmann about the future of health care and the role of special interests in Washington.

“I’ll be danged if I am going to give up my Social Security because of socialism,” Schaffer said, before being booed by the crowd.

As the saying goes, it burns, it really burns.

This isWe all know what the insurance industry wanted: a debate so off the rails that you can’t even begin to reason with ignorant fools, so widespread and hysterical are the lies streaming down the right wing puke funnel. I suppose we can forgive the ignorant, who are luckily just a vocal minority, but we can’t forgive nor back down from the cynical corporate royalists who pay for the noise machine.

Now that August is nearly over, and what an August it has been, it would be entirely appropriate for the left to stage a series of peaceful political actions this fall and winter aimed directly at certain for-profit insurance companies and their astro-turfing operations that are known to be bad actors in all this. I’m not arguing for any specific tactic, and I’m not sure that the old “hey hey, ho ho” thing works any more, so some thought and creativity would have to go into it.

One lesson from this month, though, is that obnoxious, uncouth behavior combined with unprincipled distortions seems to work, at least in the short term. It’s actually an old lesson the right has demonstrated time and again in the last decade, from the Brooks Brothers riots in Florida through the lie-up to war and now the Guns of August health care “debate.”

Lesson duly noted, although we can make our case without the unprincipled distortions. But I’m all for uncouth, and I say we go into insurance executive’s offices and eat with our mouths open and blow our noses into our sleeves, it’s an appropriate and fitting response to this month. It would also be at the same intellectual level as the health baggers, so it seems appropriate. (And you know they would then start complaining that we’re not addressing the issues!)

The left has more than a few assets in Hollywood and elsewhere who could be quite effective at shaming the health care robber barons. Crackers the Corporate Crime Fighting Chicken should go on a nationwide tour. Hell, there should be an army of Crackers the Corporate Crime Fighting Chickens.

And maybe I’m dreaming here, but that big personality whose name also start with “O” might want to think about helping out again. That would pretty much pass the public option right there, because nobody can stop her, Rosie is awesome.

Yeah, I’m just one little blogger at a state blog, so we’ll see, it’s just an idea. I don’t exactly have a direct line to well, much of anyone.

As always the right wants a bare-knuckle fight, so if people actually want health care reform they’re going to need to be willing to wrestle with pigs. Who have human knuckles. You know what I mean.

Get the chicken suits dry-cleaned.

(Props to Think Progress on the Bachmann article above.)

The Spokesman-Review reports that prosecutors allege a Spokane man threatened a Colorado doctor’s family not long after the murder of Dr. George Tiller.

A man said people from Utah were going to travel to Colorado to kill the family of William Hern, founder of the clinic and one of the few doctors in the country known to perform late-term abortions.

Authorities traced the June 23 phone call to Spokane.

Two days earlier, The Spokesman-Review had published a front-page story detailing Hern’s practice, Boulder Abortion Clinic, and the increase in business he’d seen since Tiller’s murder.

Prosecutors say Donald Hertz, 70, made the threat after he read that story, said Hertz’s lawyer in Spokane, Russell Van Camp.

And before anyone excuses this as just the rash bluster of some old coot, let’s remember that the asshole who walked into the Holocaust Museum with guns blazing was 88 years old.

What we are witnessing in this country is the sad end result of decades of right-wing lunacy. Here’s a little factoid from the S-R story that leaves you shaking your head. (emphasis mine)

A retired real estate developer and insurance salesman with no criminal record, Hertz was taken into federal custody Wednesday morning and appeared in U.S. District Court in Spokane that afternoon.

He’s not in custody now but is scheduled to appear in federal court in Denver next month. Van Camp said he’ll try to move the case to Spokane.

Good thing he wasn’t wearing a pro-Constitution t-shirt at a Republican rally, they might have locked him up while he awaits further legal proceedings. I mean, did this guy even have to post bail? Wouldn’t want to trouble the old gent too much.

From The Plum Line:

In case you missed it, the RNC sent a mailing, obtained by a local paper in Washington State and now rocketing around the political world, that contained the following loaded question:

“It has been suggested that the government could use voter registration to determine a person’s political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system. Does this possibility concern you?”

RNC spokesperson Katie Wright concedes to me that the question was a foul-up, though she says there are still legit reasons for Americans to worry about privacy.

And they sent the mailer to Washington state, where we don’t have political parties voter registration by party.

UPDATE (Goldy):
The Washington Independent has obtained a copy of the survey from 64-year-old Raymond Denny of La Center.

You can view the whole survey here.

Paul Krugman’s column about how President Barack Obama has lost the trust of progressives is justifiably being widely noted this morning. Definitely worth a read if you have a moment to click through.

It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.

As Krugman notes, the coddling of the financial industry and hanging progressives (and many members of Congress, it should be noted) out to dry this August have created a very bad situation. As always seems to happen, Democrats will take your money, your time and your energy, and then sit down and give everything away before any real bargaining has even taken place.

It seems to be some kind of congenital disease in the party. The only thing saving Obama right now is House progressives, who are refusing to be taken hostage by the petty clown shows around the country.

Now, there is a lot to be said for party unity and being team players. But the players need confidence that the coaches aren’t secretly making deals with the other team (cough Billy Tauzin cough,) or they won’t play hard, if at all.

You can’t negotiate with lying asshole scumbags whose only goal is to ratfuck you, this is pretty basic stuff. And all across this land, the lying scumbag Republicans are busy ratfucking. You have to admit, it’s a skill they learned long ago, and from Nixon’s time to ours, it’s the one consistent thing about them. If only ratfucking cured people, we’d be in Paradise.

And while I don’t usually begrudge politicians some well earned rest and relaxation, the president going on vacation now when millions of Americans are taking “staycations” is incredibly tone deaf. Sorry, but politics isn’t always fair, and the righties are going to do everything they can to exploit it. Send the wife and kids, and get back to the White House or go out to some districts and help some of these Congress-critters.

Facts don’t matter in America any more, so I’m not down with the counter- argument that Bush took 80 gazillion days of vacation, nobody cares. We’re in a post-reality twilight where it’s okay to bring guns to political events and spread lies about how health care reform would be just like Nazi euthanasia programs and otherwise behave like uncivilized fools. The traditional media tends to lap it up like dogs, never noticing that the ones actually holding the needle are eyeing them as well, with a gleam in their eye. If the lunatics take over the pound, the dogs will be the first to go.

And yes, please tell me how awful it would be if Republicans win big in 2010 or 2012, I know, I know. We might wind up with two quagmires abroad, a massive deficit, a hollowed out manufacturing sector, a financial system that amounts to a kleptocracy, no gains in civil rights for gays, or of all things, no meaningful health care reform.

That would be terrible.

As Bob Dylan (the real one) used to sing, “How does it feel?”

Public Policy Polling (PDF:)

One poll question indicative of how difficult it is to gain public understanding on a complicated issue asked if respondents thought the government should ‘stay out of Medicare,’ something inherently impossible. 39% said yes.

Sometimes I really think we should just repeal Medicare, look over at the Republicans and go “there.” We won’t, of course, because it would be inhumane to millions of our fellow citizens, but still…

(Props to Think Progress.)

So even while town halls are being held, contentious but not violent tonight in the case of Brian Baird, the political situation has bypassed the right wingers earnestly stamping their feet and holding their breath about “socialism” and “death panels” and such. From The New York Times:

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed.

“The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.”

So in their zeal to, well, be wienies, the righties have managed to convince even Rahm Emanuel that there’s no sense in playing ball with them. They just keep moving the goal posts.

My, oh my, isn’t this all so interesting?

I’m sure this will turn out to be good news for Republicans, somehow.

From Pacific County blogger/writer Arthur Ruger, who makes a lot of good points. Worth checking out, here’s a taste:

After the last two election cycles, I backed away from lots of writing. At 63, I want to retire as soon as possible from my full-time job at the local welfare office in South Bend.

That’s right, the welfare office – where a day doesn’t go by without older American residents of our county coming in seeking any kind of relief from medical expenses that take larger and larger bites out of their fixed income.

It’s also the office where younger Americans come in – not asking for a welfare check – but to find out if there’s any kind of help with medical expenses. They don’t want a government hand out. They seek a way to keep their families safe. And they are not seeing or hearing any constructive ideas from reform opponents, especially the current minority party, it’s willfully propagandistic leadership and its public broadcast shills who are all talk and no solution.

I may not be the county expert on health care reform, but I’m willing to bet that short of medical professionals, I see the problem more closely and with more clarity than most citizens nationwide who have gone to town meetings scared, worried and nervous. They seem to feel that way because they are driven by outrage and fear inspired by the disinformation and outright lying that has come out of desperate Republican political organizing, coaching and talking point tactics.

After all the shouting, real people still need real solutions. That’s why this fight is worth it, and good on Ruger for reminding us.

Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, WA-05, has condemned the crazy disruptors:

“I certainly don’t condone violence, I don’t condone calling President Obama Hitler and painting swastikas on signs at town halls,” continued McMorris Rodgers, vice chairwoman of the GOP conference.

McMorris Rodgers is the first member of the House Republican leadership to decry the Nazi comparisons. It follows a week of attacks by the House Democrats’ campaign arm on House Republican leaders, who Democrats say should speak out against Rush Limbaugh’s remarks comparing Democrats to Nazis in the healthcare debate.

As Think Progress noted, she didn’t mention Limbaugh by name, so it’s not clear whether the big fat idiot will require an apology.

So good on McMorris Rodgers anyhow.

I was able to attend the media presser this morning following Jay Inslee’s meeting with Office of National Drug Control Policy head (and former Seattle police chief) Gil Kerlikowske. The meeting was about legislation being pushed by Inslee to promote the safe disposal of prescription drugs, an initiative that I support. During the Q&A, I was able to ask our “Drug Czar” about the situation in Mexico:

Lee: President Obama is going to Mexico this weekend to meet with Mexican officials – and they’re dealing with an enormous organized crime problem fueled in big part by American consumption for marijuana. I’m wondering why is the equation for dealing with the problem different than it was in the early 30s when dealing with alcohol? Why isn’t setting up a regulated market the right way to go?

GK: Well, because they’re criminals and they’re terrorists. And they are creating huge amounts of havoc.

Lee: What I’m saying is…

GK: Let me finish. [One part is that anyone looking] at prohibition doesn’t realize the crime suddenly ended or changed drastically before or after. The other part is, we see with these criminal narco-terrorists and the violence that they’ve done that suddenly they’re not going to change and say “you know what? I think I’ll get a job out in the field growing potatoes”. They’re going to continue to be criminals and terrorists.

Lee: But how are they going to, can I follow up to this? How are they still going to still make money if we’re not buying marijuana from them?

GK: Extortion. Kidnapping. Theft of auto parts. Etc.

I was relying on my MP3 recorder, so I missed a few words of Gil’s second answer, so the part in brackets is a paraphrase from memory, but there were a number of video cameras there, so I’ll try to update as soon as I can. The general point he’s making here is clear though. And he’s making an invalid assertion. Crime rates did change drastically as a result of alcohol prohibition. Homicide rates steadily increased throughout the 1920s to much higher levels than before, and then began decreasing again within a few years after prohibition was repealed in the early 1930s. What makes these statistics even more extraordinary is that you’d think that the Great Depression would have had the opposite effect on those numbers.

Kerlikowske is right that the criminal organizations in Mexico aren’t going to just give up. But neither did the other criminal organizations that once benefited from alcohol prohibition. During the 1920s, they used their position in charge of Chicago’s thousands of speakeasies to control city government:

Chicago was a “wide-open” town. Police and judicial corruption were so widespread that the Better Government Association petitioned the United States Congress to intervene in the internal affairs of the City, stating that its leaders were in league with gangsters and that the city was overrun with protected vice (Woody, 1974:136). The alliance between corrupt government and organized crime was made clear by Big Bill Thomspson’s return to City government. Promising that he “was as wet as the Atlantic Ocean”, Thompson was returned to the Mayor’s Office in 1927 with strong support from Chicago’s criminal element (Nelli 1970:232). In fact, a number of Capone gangsters reportedly worked in Thompson’s campaign headquarters (Wendt and Kogan, 1953:269). It is also said that Capone, himself, donated $260,000 to Thompson’s reelection fund (Hoffman, 1989:2). With the advent of Thompson, Capone returned to the Levee, setting up headquarters in the Metropole Hotel at 2300 S. Michigan and in 1928 one block north at the Lexington Hotel. Speakeasies and vice again flourished in the First Ward, but they were not under the control of Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John Coughlin (Wendt and Kogan, 1974:351). Vice remained strictly in the hands of the Capone syndicate. In fact, the Aldermen were called into Capone’s office and told that their future would depend on their usefulness to the Capone organization (Nelli, 1976:191). To this Coughlin was said to have replied, “We’re lucky to get as good a break as we did.”

After alcohol prohibition ended, these groups didn’t just disappear either. But without the ability to control a commodity as popular as alcohol, they had to resort to prostitution, racketeering, and other narcotics, trying to maintain this level of influence they had during the prohibition era. I’ve never encountered anyone who believes that ending alcohol prohibition didn’t allow for law enforcement to have more success in fighting these groups and to weaken their grip on our government.

Well, maybe I just did. Kerlikowske seems to think that ending marijuana prohibition won’t help in our effort to defeat Mexico’s drug cartels. And he appears to justify it by saying that ending alcohol prohibition didn’t help in our efforts to fight organized crime syndicates. It certainly did, even if it took a number of years for the power of those groups to diminish. Mexico’s drug gangs make billions of dollars per year from American marijuana consumption. There’s simply no way they can recoup that level of income through extortion or stealing car parts. Setting up a regulated, legal market for marijuana will be a major blow to these groups, and it’s time that the Obama Administration start to seriously consider it.