Article 1 of the United States Constitution recognizes Congress as the first branch of US democracy, with the executive and judiciary following behind. Bicameralism was a central concept of the 1787 constitutional pact. It was seen as a republican “remedy” against potential abuses of legislative despotism. If the House was conceived to express the direct mood of the people, James Madison envisioned the Senate as a high chamber of “enlightened individuals” that would operate with “more coolness, with more system and with more wisdom, than the popular branch”.

But a conspicuous gap has emerged between the founders’ design and the reality of some of today’s Senators. Poll after poll shows that the public holds Congress in low esteem. In the view of many Americans, some Senators not only reflect a polarized public but also contribute to making the system dysfunctional by abusing procedures, such as the unanimous consent rule, in pursuit of personal or parochial gains or to settle personal vendettas, rather than to defend national interests.

The Cuban community's representation in US politics has been remarkable over the last decade. No place is this more evident than in the Senate. Although the 1.8 million Cubans living in the US only represent 4 % of the Hispanics and less than 0.6 % of the US general population, they have managed to elect three Senators since 2004. The first was Mel Martinez, a moderate republican from Tampa who served as HUD secretary during the first term of George W. Bush. Second was Robert Menendez, a congressman from New Jersey who was appointed by the state governor and successfully ran for reelection in 2006. After Martinez’s retirement in 2010, Florida elected Marco Rubio, a former speaker of the state House.

Writing in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Steven Kurlander comes to Senator Marco Rubio’s defense, accusing The Washington Post of publishing a hatchet piece against the senator who has merely confused the “circumstances and timing of his parent's flight from communist Cuba.” 

“No one really cares how or when his parents got here,” Kurlander writes. Only, that just isn’t so, and Kurlander proves it by making his case with this opener:

“I am the child of a refugee, a Holocaust survivor's son.” 

And then with this:

“Maybe because I am the son of a Holocaust survivor, I understand the confusion Sen. Rubio may have surrounding his parent's story . . .  it may be just that his parents did not really talk much about their flight to Florida at all.

Rubio is instead the latest victim of a debilitating ethos of character assassination rampant in our press and blogosphere that wrongfully dissects a politician's rendition of his personal history, taking facts out of context to destroy his or her credibility. From a child of the Holocaust's perspective, this assault on Rubio's story was totally unfair.”

Kurlander returns to this, his own personal narrative, throughout the op-ed, because apparently it gives him authority on the matter.  No, really, it does.  Our personal narratives help each of us relate to those around us and in turn for others to relate to us.  And these narratives especially help us relate to public figures whom we haven’t even met but who ask us for our trust.  The more we identify ourselves within the framework of our chosen narrative, the more we need to preserve it.  These narratives are frameworks we construct based on our experiences (real or perceived), what we want to be, and to what we think others will relate.  Kurlander surely knows that his “son of a Holocaust survivor” narrative will encourage people to listen to him, at least on the subject of suffering.  And, speaking as someone of Jewish heritage (you know I had to do that), it most certainly does get my attention.

Why are revelations about one of the Republican Party’s brightest rising stars necessarily a character assassination?  If memory serves, this is a basic lesson in college level journalism class: public figures put themselves out there- and Rubio has repeatedly put his family's Cuba story out in front (though not always the same version of it), like in his Senate campaign ads, for instance.  Marco Rubio has benefited from repeating this narrative that his parents fled Castro's Cuba.  It’s his badge of honor.  Why else would he utter a statement like this: “Nothing against immigrants, but my parents are exiles.”

Late Friday afternoon, Senator Marco Rubio revised the biography that appears on his office website.  He had no choice.  Throughout his political career, he has deceived Floridians, adoring Republican audiences and donors, journalists, fellow officeholders and others by claiming that his parents fled the Cuba of Fidel Castro.  This is a lie exposed by hard journalism in the Washington Post.

Every Cuban American knows the precise time and purpose of his family’s departure from Cuba.  The idea that Rubio never knew the facts until this moment – and that no family member ever bothered to correct the error before now –is absurd. While Rubio’s parents, Mario and Oriales, did adopt the anti-Castro position of many exiles who are opposed to the communist course taken by the Cuban revolution, the date of their emigration was not 1959 and the cause of their departure was not the current Cuban government.   They left Cuba in 1956 as exiles from a tyrannical regime; that of Fulgencio Batista Zaldivar, the right-wing dictatorship that Fidel Castro overthrew.

Edited by Dawn Gable. 

The political battle over the designation of Jonathan Farrar as US ambassador to Nicaragua is a test of whether the Obama Administration lacks any genuine conviction about its foreign policy. Farrar is a professional diplomat with an impeccable thirty years diplomatic career who served a recent term as the Chief of the US Interest Section in Cuba. As a result he became the perfect target of Cuban American hardliners for one, and only one, reason: he implemented Obama’s policy in Havana. Unfortunately for Farrar, the president’s policy is anathema to two Cuban-American Senators: Robert Menendez and Marco Rubio.

The Interests Sections in Havana and Washington are not formal embassies or consulates. Diplomats' movements are restricted and their access to government officials and citizens in both countries is limited. When these entities were created in 1977, under the Carter and Fidel Castro Administrations (Yes, there is a new administration in Havana), they were part of a process of détente and their final purpose was to facilitate negotiations between the two governments and pave the way to a better understanding between the people of Cuba and the United States. This is the source of their legitimacy. They exist with the consent of both governments.

With a thirty year career in the Foreign Service, including having served as the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and having just completed a 'hardship' post as Chief of Mission at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana (which doesn't carry the title of Ambassador), Jonathan Farrar might reasonably have expected to now take an ambassador posting, even if the one he got was to another politically-charged post, in Managua,Nicargua. 

Unfortunately for Farrar, Newly-minted Cuban American Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Western Hemisphere Subcommittee seems pretty likely to hold up his nomination, despite having never met with Farrar to discuss his grievances before last week's nomination hearing. (You can view Rubio's criticism of Farrar and Farrar's response here.)

It figures that just as I get ready to take an extended leave for the next two months (during which I'll be unable to blog here as much as I'd like), U.S.-Cuban affairs would get to their most interesting - and critical - point in some time. 

In recent days we've learned that April's Communist Party Congress in Cuba may not just clarify and embrace the ongoing economic overhaul, but now it will include election of new leadership - which offers the prospect that Fidel Castro will step down as party head, Raul Castro will presumably take his place, and someone else will step into the number 2 spot.  Any readers want to take a gander at that one in the comments section?

And then there's what fate awaits Alan Gross, the American contractor the Wall Street Journal editorial board today suggests went on trial in Cuba for "bringing computer equipment to the island to help Cuban Jews communicate with the disapora"?  It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is, even, and especially perhaps, for the media to ignore the parts of reality it cares to.  Gross was allegedly delivering highly advanced and unregulated satellite communications equipment (added emphasis is mine) on behalf of a foreign, and let's face it, hostile, power.  That's a big difference, particularly when we know that droves of American Jews visit the island every year to connect and make generous donations, resulting in community amenities like a computer lab.

The WSJ may in fact be absolutely right that the Cuban government is "terrified of the internet," but questioning the motives behind the application of a law in another country doesn't give you the right to expect that law to be disregarded because you believe your motives to be on a higher order.

As our readers no doubt noticed, the Rubio - Menendez amendment intended to curb U.S. travel to Cuba (via restricting the flights that may go there) went nowhere.  And as one Cuban blogger and recent immigrant to the United States, Ernesto Morales Licea, writes at the Huffington Post via Yoani Sanchez: " . . . fortunately, when there is great nonsense there will always be great common sense to contain it. . . . "

I'm not so confident as Morales that good sense always contains the nonsense, but I am heartened to hear what Morales has to say in defense of our great democracy:

"When governments or state officials forget their limits and begin to decide what kind of religion its people should practice, or what television they should watch (in Cuba today they broadcast a nightly program called "The Best of Telesur," where they select, with tweezers, what Cubans should see even within this "friendly" channel), when the government begins to regulate, for example, where its citizens can or cannot travel, the foundations of democracy, by definition, are cracking."

Morales isn't interested in whether Rubio and Menendez's oft-repeated justifications for curtailing the rights of Americans and Cuban Americans to travel freely to Cuba -  to avoid enriching the Cuban government - actually hold water (they don't, he says).  He argues that what makes our democracy pure is that we protect the civil liberties of our citizenry above whatever interests might possibly (or even definitely) be served in exchange.

You have to wonder if anyone on newly minted Senator Marco Rubio's staff discussed with him the pros and cons of having his very first filed amendment in the Senate be Cuba-focused?  Perhaps they thought no one would notice, since the word Cuba doesn't appear in the amendment to the Senate's FAA reauthorization bill under consideration this week, but the Tampa Tribune's The Buzz wasn't fooled, and sees in it an attempt to block the Obama administration's new regulations allowing any U.S. airport with sufficient resources to handle such flights to offer flights to Cuba. 

Until the new regulations were issued, Miami more than dominated the market with several flights in and out of Cuba daily (Los Angeles and New York offer weekly flights).  But Tampa also has a significant Cuban American population, and both the airport and Tampa Congresswoman Kathy Castor fought to expand rights to more airports around the country.

So, what would the Rubio amendment do?  (Read here for yourself - h/t to the ever vigilant folks at Cuba Central.) It would prohibit any U.S. airports from adding any more flights than there were in the previous fiscal year to countries identified by the State Department as state sponsors of terrorism.  (Cuba, Sudan, Syria and Iran are now the only countries on that list, after the Bush administration removed North Korea, Libya and Iraq.) Sounds a little complicated right?  Why wouldn't Rubio just offer an amendment to ban all flights to such countries, particularly given how strongly he seems to feel about the issue:

“Instead of doing business with regimes that undermine America’s security and routinely violate the basic norms of human dignity, we should be bolstering our democratic allies through deeper economic ties."

Boy, he seems to mean business (no pun intended), no?  So, why the half-measure?  Because leaving the flights as they were last year means Rubio's amendment won't technically ground the hundreds of thousands of Cuban Americans who were already traveling home regularly.  As much as Rubio might wish these Cuban Americans would just stay stateside and act like exiles, putting the genie back in the bottle now would endanger his standing with this sizable block of voters.

Oddly enough, freshman GOP Senator (and Tea Party darling) Marco Rubio is counting on Democrat Bob Menendez to hold the line on Cuba policy reforms in the Senate this year.  But, he told two hard-line Miami radio show hosts, he does plan to educate his fellow colleagues from agriculture states about political prisoners in Cuba (afterall, they’re “not communists” – they just don’t know any better).

Rubio disagreed with the Obama administration’s decision to ease restrictions on family travel in 2009 (see here for why), and tells the Miami-based Radio Mambi show that he thinks the administration may be looking to do more.  (H/T to Politico's Ben Smith for posting the interview.) My informal translation follows:

 “It’s important that this community and especially our elected officials, especially those holding federal office, express clearly that our position hasn’t changed and won’t change.  If there’s something that has to change here, it’s in Cuba, there needs to be a change in government there.  And if U.S. policy should change toward Cuba, then it should become even more tough.”

Does that refrain sound hopelessly familiar to anyone?   I’m sure an hour on the internet could turn up numerous such statements from Florida politicians and Bush administration officials in the last decade alone.

Rubio, and anyone following Cuba news last year, knows well that the inter-agency approved new regulations for Cuba travel last summer.  But perhaps he’s worried about any progress this week at the next round of twice-yearly bilateral talks on the 1994-95 migration accords.

Last week I read with interest Juan Tamayo’s article in the Miami Herald and the Cuban Triangle’s analysis about a new policy to further expedite Cuban immigrants joining nuclear family in the United States, by offering them immediate permanent residency (a green card on arrival).  That’s pretty darn good treatment, wouldn’t you say?

But Florida's Director of the Department of Children and Families found something to worry about in this fast track arrangement.  According to the Herald , the Director wrote a letter making the following points:

"The shift would deny those Cubans the right to health screenings and immunizations, Medicaid and Refugee Medical Assistance as well as employment services, English language, vocational training and help with child care, according to the letter.

Cubans affected will then have to turn to financially strapped public hospitals and clinics for care, it added, and to overburdened state programs for employment and language assistance."

In case you didn't know it, Cubans who arrive in the United States are afforded full refugee treatment, even if they aren’t actually fleeing a war zone or life-threatening persecution.  (As Phil Peters points out, the idea of refugee resettlement benefits is to help people who arrive with literally the clothes on their backs, with no real support network to lean on.)  But these days, most Cubans who arrive in the United States are economic migrants – they’re fleeing a stagnant economic model and joining family already resettled in Miami or elsewhere around the country. 

But once a government benefit is conferred to a group, particularly one perceived to be influential to the political fortunes of Florida and national politicians alike, there's no taking it away.