At the beginning of this week, the Senate was sitting on 63 of President Obama’s nominees because of holds placed on them by one or more senators. In a bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders on Tuesday, Obama warned Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that he would be forced to make a large number of recess appointments if Republicans didn’t stop their politicking and help break the “unprecedented” logjam before the Senate’s Presidents’ Day recess. Today, the Senate finally confirmed 27 of these nominees. However, in his statement, Obama held out the possibility of using recess appointments in the future if Republicans continue to block his nominees:
While this is a good first step, there are still dozens of nominees on hold who deserve a similar vote, and I will be looking for action from the Senate when it returns from recess. If they do not act, I reserve the right to use my recess appointment authority in the future.
Politico has a full list of the confirmations here. One person still outstanding is Marisa Demeo to serve on the D.C. Superior Court. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has been blocking this openly gay Latina from receiving an up or down vote because of concerns over her “leftist activism.” Republicans are insisting that Obama didn’t win this “showdown” because they “blinked,” but rather that this large number of confirmations is just “what happens before a recess.”
Last year, the right-wing Christian Action Network and PRB films produced a “documentary” called “Homegrown Jihad: The Terrorist Camps Around U.S.” It claims to expose 35 “Islamic terrorist training compounds” devoted to “radical Pakistani cleric, Sheikh Mubarak Gilani.” (Watch the trailer here.) In February 2009, CBS News reviewed the film and dismissed it as nothing more than “sensationalistic” fear-mongering:
Officials describe the film to CBS News as “sensationalistic” and without any real foundation. According to one official, it is strictly designed to upset and inflame people and does not present a true picture of any so-called “homegrown Jihad” danger. No current intelligence exists to suggest any threat connected with this group, which officials describe as “wannabes” and not terrorists.
Nevertheless, a year later, the Nashville CBS affiliate (Channel 5) decided to give the film legitimacy by conducting an “EXCLUSIVE” investigation into a Muslim community in rural Tennessee called Islamville, which is featured in the movie. “Some believe it is a secret Islamic terrorist training camp,” reads the Channel 5 article. “Others have said that’s simply not true. In a NewsChannel 5 Exclusive Special Report, Nick Beres went looking for the truth.”
What Beres found was a quiet community that willingly allowed him onto their property, although he made sure to point out that it’s built in “a clearing of trees” and is “very remote.” One person even joined Beres and Stewart County Sheriff John Vinson — who has said that there is no terrorist activity going on in Islamville — to show them around. What Channel 5 found:
Frankly, there was not much to see. … There are single and double-wide trailers along with a few houses and a tent for the 40 or so people who live there. … We saw children out playing. Driving, we saw a couple more youngsters walking home, and two women running. Others, we learned, were off working jobs in Dover and even Nashville. There is a mosque in the middle of the village, and they allowed us inside for a look around. It’s a place of prayer, five times of day, and Sheriff Vinson believes that is the focus of what they do: pray, not train terrorists.
Beres added that he didn’t go in every building, but they saw every corner of the community from the ground and the air and saw no evidence of terrorist activities. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop the station from airing a two-part report and lending credibility to the dangerous claims of “Homegrown Jihad.” Watch Part II of Channel 5’s report:
Just a week after Channel 5’s reports aired, the Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Nashville has been vandalized with anti-Muslim graffiti:
The Nashville City Paper also reports that members of the mostly Somali congregation found a handwritten note “taped to the outside of their youth training building a few blocks away,” with the words “The Enemy Is Islam” underlined at the top. The note “was filled with statements tying Muslims to Satan and the downfall of Western nations.” Salaad Nur, a spokesman for the mosque, pointed to the recent Channel 5 report as a possible catalyst for the hate crime:
“It’s unexpected,” he adds. “The only thing I can think of is the sensationalized reporting [by Channel 5] over Sunday and Monday. That’s the only thing I can think of. Even after 9/11 we have never had any vandalism.“
Since the vandalism yesterday, Channel 5 has mentioned the crime several times, but only briefly as part of its news round-ups. Where’s the two-part series on this incident? (HT: @agolis)
Debra Medina
BECK: Do you believe the government was any way involved with the bringing down of the World Trade Centers on 9/11?
MEDINA: I don’t, I don’t have all of the evidence there, Glenn. So I don’t I’m not in a place, I have not been out publicly questioning that. I think some very good questions have been raised in that regard. There are some very good arguments, and I think the American people have not seen all of the evidence there. So I’ve not taken a position on that.
Listen here:
Beck immediately tried to distance himself from Medina. As soon as she hung up, he said, “I think I can write her off the list.” On his website, Beck said the “shocker” was “not good.” Medina herself walked back from the comments, writing on her website that she was “surprised” by the question and that “there is no doubt in my mind that Muslim terrorists flew planes into those buildings.” She added that the “real underlying question here, though, is whether or not people have the right to question our government.”
Yesterday, ThinkProgress noted how Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) are calling for President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to either resign or be fired after he aggressively pushed back against the GOP politicization of the attempted Christmas Day bombing. As TPMmuckraker’s Justin Elliott has pointed out, Republican leaders like Bond and Hoekstra didn’t complain about would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab being given Miranda rights for two weeks after he was criminally charged in a civilian court — an act which guaranteed he would be made aware of his Miranda rights. Bond, Hoekstra and other Republican critics didn’t start making noise about Mirandizing Abdulmuttalab until after former Vice President Dick Cheney pioneered the critique.
But on Fox News today, host Gregg Jarrett claimed it was Brennan’s pushback that first politicized the issue. “Wasn’t it Brennan who first politicized this when he blamed you Republicans for quote, ‘politically motivated’ ‘fearmongering’ and ‘aiding al Qaeda?‘” Jarrett asked Bond in an interview. Watch it:
Jarrett is either unaware or simply disregarding the numerous political attacks that Bond has launched at the White House over the handing of the Christmas Day incident, even claiming that the Obama administration has a “pre-9/11 mentality”:
– The Obama “administration [should] change course from their pre-9/11 mentality of treating terrorists like common criminals,” said Bond. [Politico, 1/22/10]
– “If the Administration is serious about putting American safety over terrorist rights, they will stop treating these enemy combatants like common criminals,” said Bond. [Bond Press Release, 1/21/10]
Additionally, on Feb. 4, Bond sent President Obama a letter accusing the administration of jeopardizing “sensitive information” to “further political arguments” when it disclosed to reporters that Abdulmuttalab was cooperating. Bond claimed that the FBI told “the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee” not to disclose that he was cooperating, but Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein told Fox News that “at no time in the briefing did [FBI Director Robert] Mueller say that Abdulmutallab’s cooperation was not to be revealed” and two law enforcement officials told Fox that when Bond spoke to Mueller on the phone, Mueller was only warning “that new information about Abdulmutallab could become public.”
For the past week, Fox News’ Sean Hannity has been using the snow storms that have wreaked havoc on the Northeast to bolster his belief that climate change is not real. They “seem to contradict Al Gore’s hysterical global warming theories,” Hannity said on Monday.
Last night, Hannity continued with the meme during a telephone interview with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), claiming that the New York Times “tomorrow is going to blame global warming on the record snows” (the Times merely reported on the “debate heating up“). Hannity then asked sarcastically, “Do you agree with that analysis?” But McCain — who has long been a fierce advocate of addressing climate change, including co-sponsoring cap-and-trade legislaton — laughed and played along. And instead of challenging Hannity’s global warming denial, the Arizona senator quickly changed the subject:
HANNITY: I was just looking at my notes apparently, the New York Times tomorrow is going to blame global warming on the record snows in D.C. and Philly. Do you agree with that analysis?
MCCAIN: Absolutely! I think they made some movie that showed that the earth was going to freeze over as a result of global warming. I never quite understood that but you know I didn’t stand real high in my Naval Academy class. By the way, back to the [counterterrorism] people around the president.
Watch it:
McCain is confusing a Hollywood disaster movie with science. He has previously said that fossil fuel emissions “threaten disastrous changes in climate.”
While McCain was unwilling to challenge Hannity, he has done it before. During the last presidential campaign, he refuted a global warming denier:
So why did McCain back down to Hannity? The Times noted yesterday that McCain “once led the global warming debate,” but he “is likely to keep his distance even more over the next six months due to a primary challenge” from conservative former Republican congressman and global warming denier, J.D. Hayworth. “I believe his famous quote is, ‘I don’t see how you can be a conservative and not support cap and trade,’” Hayworth said, adding, “Well, I sure can. And most Arizonans can.”
Missouri State Senator Gary Nodler
Nodler said that “being openly gay in the military ‘in and of itself‘ could be grounds for a sexual harassment complaint by another serviceman, and characterized Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as a way to accommodate gays’ service ‘in a way that doesn’t create a hostile workplace.’” Then, Nodler suggested that allowing openly gay soldiers in the military “could represent a ‘cultural affront‘” to terrorists intent on killing American troops.
“So you would create specific geopolitical strategic dilemmas for the U.S. military — specifically in the war in Afghanistan, ” Nodler said. “There are real-world implications. This is a policy that would directly threaten the lives of soldiers today.” St. Louis Post Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger summed up Nodler’s argument this way:
The Muslim nations of Iraq and Afghanistan, where America is fighting two wars, are opposed to homosexuality. Changing “Don’t ask, don’t tell” would offend the terrorists in such a way that could put soldiers — and America — at risk of further terrorist attacks.
Nodler’s logic is simple: adopt a new nondiscrimination policy and the terrorists win. So, therefore, we should re-segregate the military along sex and racial lines to appease the terrorists?
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
I never said that this would be a cultural affront to terrorists. I don’t care what they think. I said it would be a cultuaral affront to the Muslims in who’s country we are operating. We can not win the hearts and minds of the people by insulting them and ignoring the standards of their culture. This is about the people who live there and the armies we are serving with. Your comment makes the common mistake that all Muslims are terrorists.Still, Nodler is comfortable allowing foreign nations and cultures to dictate U.S. policy.
Sen. Nodler is as clueless as he is offensive. We have women serving in uniform, in theater, every day, despite many people in the region believing women should play no such role. It has posed no problems for our Armed Forces. What is a problem is that we’ve lost hundreds of translators, and thousands overall, under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, so our troops are fighting shorthanded. Sen. Nodler should be a lot more concerned about that.
Senate Republicans have abused the filibuster in an unprecedented way, crippling the Senate from enacting needed reforms and preventing the majority from carrying out their electoral mandate.
Appearing on CNN’s Larry King Live yesterday, Vice President Biden — who serves as the constitutional President of the Senate — called out the Republican abuse of the filibuster:
I was a senator for 36 years. I got there when I was 29 years old. So I’ve been through seven presidents — eight now. And I’ve never seen a time when the operating norm to get anything passed was a super majority of 60 votes. No matter what — no matter what the bill is, it’s filibustered. It’s required to get 60 votes.
You can’t rule by a super majority. You can’t govern if you require a super majority. And I think it’s getting to the point where it’s been abused, this idea of the filibuster or the threat of extended debate.
And I think the public is taking it out — the — the Congress as a whole, Republicans and Democrats, are — are extremely low on the polls, in the Congress.
Watch it:
Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made a rare public plea to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), urging him to use the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform. Noting that a “constitutional majority is 51 votes,” Pelosi said the need for 60 “isn’t legitimate in terms of passing legislation”:
“Yes, the filibuster has its place, it may even have its place in health care — it’s a very big issue. But does it have its place on every appointment and every piece of legislation? We have over 200 bills over there that haven’t been taken up. Most of them, 70 percent of them, were passed with over 50 Republican votes in the House.
The GOP’s abuse of the filibuster is unusual. There are now double the number of cloture votes as there were a decade ago, and triple the numbers of 20 years ago. The filibuster does not appear in the Constitution and many believe it would be ruled unconstitutional were the Supreme Court not “extremely shy of challenging the internal workings of Congress.”
Yesterday, in a meeting with President Obama at the White House, top civil rights leaders said Republican obstructionism had hurt African-American communities. National Urban League President Marc Morial told reporters, “Whether you agree with the filibuster or not, it was desgined as an extraordinary measure.” Benjamin Jealous, President of the NAACP, said Democrats “should be trying to do more in the reconciliation process.”
Even Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), a traditionalist who has defended the Senate’s arcane procedures, said Tuesday that the Republicans’ consistent use of the filibuster is “abusive” and “evidence of a dysfunctional institution.”
In the past two weeks, Republican lawmakers have revived the prospect of privatizing Social Security and Medicare, starting with a push from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), whose budget proposal radically slashes and privatizes the entitlement programs. On Tuesday night, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) went on Fox Business to lend his voice to the campaign. Kingston said to “cut…programs that are expanding the entitlement mentality,” we should privatize both Social Security and Medicare:
KINGSTON: We need to go in, and we need to cut duplicate programs, programs that are inefficient, programs that are expanding the entitlement mentality. I think we should go back to Social Security, take it off budget, dedicate the funds, put personal accounts on it. On Medicare, I think something like vouchers, where people actually have an incentive to save money.
Watch it:
If President Bush had been successful privatizing Social Security, an October 2008 retiree would have lost $26,000 in the market plunge. Indeed, as a Center for American Progress report has found, if the U.S. stock market had behaved like the Japanese market during the duration of that retiree’s work life, “a private account would have experienced sharp negative returns, losing $70,000 — an effective — 3.3 percent net annual rate of return.” And a Wonk Room analysis of the recent Medicare privatization plan by Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) found that such an arrangement would shift the cost of insurance from the government to the individual, particularly lower-income beneficiaries. Nevertheless, Republicans, along with their Wall Street allies, are pressing forward to fight again to dismember popular, effective entitlement programs.
In today’s Washington Post, David Broder has a prominent column titled, “Palin’s populism: It just might work,” which is devoted to extolling her appeal. He praised her recent Fox News Sunday interview, saying that she struck “a pitch-perfect recital of the populist message that has worked in campaigns past.” Some other highlights:
The snows that obliterated Washington in the past week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously. [...]
But in the present mood of the country, Palin is by all odds a threat to the more uptight Republican aspirants such as Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty — and potentially, to Obama as well. [...]
Those who want to stop her will need more ammunition than deriding her habit of writing on her hand. The lady is good.
Palin may have won Broder’s heart, but he is significantly off the mark on her appeal to the rest of America. Also in today’s Washington Post, on page A3, is a report showing that Palin’s unfavorability ratings are at an all-time high. From the Washington Post/ABC News poll:
In a new Time article today, Joe Klein writes on the “brilliance of Sarah Palin,” asserting that she is “the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination and therefore someone to be taken absolutely seriously.” If he’s right, the Republican Party is in a sad state. According to the new poll, 71 percent of Americans say that Palin is “not qualified to serve as president.” That figure includes 52 percent of Republicans. Ironically, on Sunday, the Washington Post story about Palin’s speech at the Party convention read, “With her remarks, greeted with wild enthusiasm here and carried live by all three major cable news networks, Palin moved firmly to reestablish herself as a politician capable of national office.”
Moreover, the Tea Party movement that commentators have held up as one of the most significant forces in American politics, really isn’t all that popular with the public. Not only do most Americans not identify with the right-wing activists, but 64 percent say they know “some/little/nothing” about the Tea Party movement stands for.
On his radio show yesterday, Fox News host Glenn Beck argued that the world’s climate scientists should commit suicide because they “have so dishonored themselves.” After repeating exaggerated and false smears about the work of the United Nations Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the international scientific and governmental body tasked with assessing the threat of global warming, Beck said “there’s not enough knives on planet Earth for hara-kiri that should have occured,” referring to the form of ritual suicide used by Japanese samurai:
There’s not enough knives. If this, if the IPCC had been done by Japanese scientists, there’s not enough knives on planet Earth for hara-kiri that should have occurred. I mean, these guys have so dishonored themselves, so dishonored scientists.
Listen here:
Beck’s hateful attack is part of a larger campaign to demonize the thousands of climate scientists involved in the IPCC and discredit their consensus that manmade pollution is destabilizing the global climate. Their latest effort paints a wild picture of a global conspiracy to defraud the public, based on a handful of inaccurate or poorly sourced but valid claims buried in the 3,000-page report. Unfortunately, Beck is not the first to tell climate realists to commit suicide. Last year, hate-talk host Rush Limbaugh told New York Times climate reporter Andrew Revkin to “just go kill yourself.”
Fox News contributor Sarah Palin has claimed that studies showing polar bears are threatened by global warming are “snake oil science.” Speaking in Redding, CA, at the Sierra-Cascade Logging Conference, Palin argued that the science of climate change is really just a plot to hurt oil companies. “Those promoting polar bear listing really want to shut down oil and gas leasing in Arctic coastal waters off Alaska,” Palin argued:
We knew the bottom line . . . was ultimately to shut down a lot of our development. And it didn’t make any sense because it was based on these global warming studies that now we’re seeing (is) a bunch of snake oil science.
In reality, the 2006 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a “product of research by 300 scientists from northern countries, warned that the Arctic is warming at a rate much faster than the rest of the Earth.” Arctic ice is now at historically low levels. In 2008, George Bush’s Fish and Wildlife Service director Dale Hall testified that there was no significant scientific uncertainty in the endangerment posed by global warming to polar bears, based on numerous scientific studies. In contrast, when Palin petitioned to overturn the endangerment finding, she cited a paper funded by Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and Koch Industries. Now that’s snake oil science.
Local news outlets are reporting that last week, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio disseminated a stinging letter urging Republican primary voters to support right-wing shock jock and former Congressman J.D. Hayworth over Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in his bid for Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat. Arpaio wrote:
Senator McCain has served this country admirably but it’s time to replace his moderate or even liberal positions on taxes, the border, social causes and big bank bailouts with a consistent conservative like J.D...I just wish Senator McCain had run as hard against Barack Obama as he is against a conservative like J.D. That could have prevented the harmful, liberal agenda we are all now suffering through…[W]e must stop Senator McCain’s policies to open up our borders.
Ironically, when it comes to immigration, neither Hayworth nor Arpaio have been the “consistent conservatives” they like to portray themselves as. During the 2006 and 2007 immigration debates, Hayworth dedicated a lot of time to lambasting immigration reform, particularly proposals for a temporary worker program. However, the website of NumbersUSA — the sort of immigration restrictionist group Hayworth is pandering to — shows that he repeatedly voted in favor of expanding temporary worker programs throughout the 1990s. Republican columnist and commentator Linda Chavez points out that Hayworth’s anti-immigrant flip flop in the proceeding decade likely cost him his House seat. Chavez writes that Hayworth switched positions as soon as he “sensed bashing immigrants was a surer ticket to re-election.” However, voters “wanted no part” in Hayworth’s hardline policies and voted him out of office in 2006.
Arpaio also is no steadfast conservative either. In 2005, Arpaio held that “being illegal is not a serious crime. You can’t go to jail for being an illegal alien.” At the time, Arpaio told the Arizona Republic’s Michael Kiefer, “I want the authority to lock up smugglers, but I am not going to lock up illegals hanging around street corners.” These days, Arpaio brags about locking up 32,000 “diseased” immigrants for smuggling themselves across the border, even though it created a $1.3 million deficit in just three months. However, polls show that Arpaio’s popularity may be waning partly due to the controversies surrounding his harsh immigration enforcement tactics.
For the past several years, McCain has been a conservative voice of reason in the immigration debate. Many speculate that he actually lost the critical support of the Latino community when he backed away from his immigration position during the 2008 presidential election. With Latinos comprising 11.7% of Arizona voters, McCain would be wise to resist the temptation of getting pushed farther to the right by a right-wing has-been and a mud-slinging Sheriff mired in controversy.
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
When Democrats decided against televising health care reconciliation negotiations last month, they were blasted by congressional Republicans. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), for example, wrote:
There’s no good reason to keep the negotiations of the health-care bill secret – unless, of course, the President and congressional Democrats know that Americans wouldn’t like what they see and the only way they can get this bill is to write it in secret and pass it quickly, before the American people know what’s in it.
The major reason Republicans joined the media in calling for televised negotiations was that they saw a political opportunity to attack Democrats and claim that they — and the American people — needed to be part of the process. However, Republicans are far less concerned about transparency for the public on the Senate’s jobs bill, since some of the closed-door negotiations involve the GOP. Fox News reports that Kyl in particular is perfectly happy with backroom deals this time:
While much has been made of “backroom deals” over healthcare reform, no such outcry has come on the jobs bill. One reason? A handful of Republicans have been in the back room this time. Kyl, who loudly decried the closed door sausage-making on healthcare legislation, had a softer tone on the jobs bill.
“The truth of the matter is, a lot of things here are done by staff behind closed doors, and it’s not always the wrong way to put something together, as long as you have plenty of time for that product to get out to members so they can evaluate it, have the public take a look at it. … If you’re going to forgo the committee process, then you at least have to get it out to members so they can reflect on it. And that’s why you can’t vote on it by Thursday or Friday,” Kyl said.
To be sure, there are thoughtful, legitimate cases to be made both for and against letting cameras into typically closed-door proceedings. CAP President and CEO John Podesta argued that “corruption in government begins at the moment when officials in power believe no one is paying attention,” whereas the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky pointed out that in front of the cameras during the health care debate, lawmakers spent most of their time “[g]randstanding” and “launching unnecessary rhetorical attacks” while the real work went on behind the scenes. However, abandoning calls for transparency just because you get a chance to be in the back room and want to make deals in private is hardly a legitimate reason.
In March 2009, President Obama issued an executive order that removed President Bush’s limitations on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, ending the tragic politicization of the issue that existed under the former president. GOP Senate candidate Curtis Coleman (R-AR), who is running against Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), blasted Obama’s decision in an interview yesterday, comparing embryonic stem cell research to “what the Nazis did to the Jews“:
On March 9, 2009, President Barack Obama issued an executive order, removing barriers to responsible research involving human stem cells.
Coleman, however, has different view on things.
“Embryonic stem cell research is taking the concept of taking a life and using it to conduct experiments so we can temporarily extend somebody else’s life. Let me tell you what I just described. I just described what the Nazis did to the Jews in the death camps of WWII,” says Coleman.
Almost immediately after Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab failed to detonate a bomb on an airplane on Christmas Day, conservatives rushed to politicize the attempted terrorist attack. “People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration,” Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) said before he’d even been briefed on the incident. Karl Rove and Rep. Peter King (R-NY) criticized President Obama for issuing a statement on the failed bombing 72 hours after the event, even though President Bush waited longer to comment on “shoe-bomber” Richard Reid’s failed attempt to bring down an airliner in Dec. 2001.
The drumbeat of political criticism from conservatives since then has been unrelenting, especially focusing on the fact that Abdumuttalab was read his Miranda rights after he awoke from surgery. Recently, the Obama administration has begun pushing back at the GOP’s political onslaught. On Meet The Press this past Sunday, Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan, a 25-year veteran of the CIA, pointed out that he had kept key Congressional Republicans informed of Abdulmuttalab detainment by the FBI:
On Christmas night, I called a number of senior members of Congress. I spoke to Senators McConnell and Bond, I spoke to Representative Boehner and Hoekstra. I explained to them that he was in FBI custody, that Mr. Abdulmutallab was, in fact, talking, that he was cooperating at that point. They knew that “in FBI custody” means that there’s a process then you follow as far as Mirandizing and presenting him in front of a magistrate. None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point.
Brennan followed up his critique with a USA Today op-ed arguing that “too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points.” Brennan’s op-ed included the highly-charged assertion that “politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.”
Republicans have responded to Brennan’s pushback with incredulity. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, citing former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen’s misunderstanding of the facts, called Brennan “troubling” on Fox News yesterday. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) called Brennan an “egomaniac.” Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) declared Brennan “needs to go,” and is no longer “credible.” On Fox News today, Hoekstra, who repeatedly referred to Brennan as a “White House staffer” as opposed to an intelligence “professional,” said Obama should “fire” him. Watch it:
On MSNBC today, Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie grilled Bond about whether the “Republican Party deserve[s] some blame” for terrorism becoming “too politicized.” Bond responded in denial, saying, “give me a break.” “They’re the ones who went out and called politics and they played politics,” said Bond of the White House. In an ironic twist, however, he then claimed that criticisms of the Bush administration’s terrorism policy during the past eight years had been “political attacks.” The White House said today that Bond’s call for Brennan to resign was “pathetic.”
Unintentionally, Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade summed up the situation perfectly this morning when he said that Bond and Hoekstra had told him on the radio yesterday that “they’re just astounded and befuddled that” Brennan “continues to dig like this and act so political in condemning everybody else for acting political.”
Newt Gingrich has helped lead the conservative effort to politicize the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas day. Since the failed attack, he has called for “profiling” and asserted that Republican political campaigns should get a “boost” from the incident.
Last night, in an interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, Gingrich tried to skewer the Obama administration for reading Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged Christmas day terrorist, his Miranda rights. Stewart noted that the Bush administration had also informed the shoe bomber Richard Reid of his Miranda rights. Gingrich justified his double standard by claiming that the circumstance was different because Reid was “an American citizen.” Stewart took the extra step of returning after commercial break to correct Gingrich — Reid was a British citizen:
GINGRICH: The American people doesn’t understand reading Miranda rights to terrorists in Detroit when its fairly obvious they’re terrorists. […]
STEWART: Didn’t they [the Bush administration] do the same with Richard Reid, the shoe bomber.
GINGRICH: Richard Reid was an American citizen.
Watch it:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Newt Gingrich | ||||
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Gingrich has a long history of twisting national security to fit his political agenda. For instance, as the Wonk Room has noted, Gingrich has based much of his fearmongering against Iran and other countries on a fictional thriller novel he read. And while he prides himself as a historical expert, Gingrich constantly gets his history wrong. Last year, he falsely claimed that U.S. Presidents don’t “smile and greet” Russian leaders. Photographic evidence suggests otherwise.
Listening to Gingrich lambaste the Obama administration over and over again as “radical,” Stewart noted that Gingrich seemed to inject great emotion into his arguments. Gingrich quickly agreed, “It’s part of my job, to reach out to the emotions of the American public.” Stewart then responded wryly, “I think that’s wise, and don’t let reality get in the way.”
Yesterday, the Senate rejected President Obama’s nominee to the National Labor Relations Board, Craig Becker, even though he received a majority 52 votes. Because Becker’s nomination was subject to a filibuster by Republicans and a few Democrats, Obama was thwarted in his effort to staff the U.S. government with his nominee. Becker also was the target of intense lobbying by business groups.
Senate Republicans have used parliamentary tactics to hold up the confirmation of critical administration nominees to an unprecedented degree. Yesterday, Obama warned that “if the Senate does not act,” he would be forced to make recess appointments to fill critical jobs, because “we cannot allow politics to stand in the way of a well-functioning government.”
Calling the holds “unfair,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) took to the Senate floor last night to give a withering attack of Republican obstructionism and urge Obama to recess appoint “all” of his blocked nominees:
REID: I mean it’s disgraceful. The Republicans are holding these people up for reasons that have nothing to do with their background, morality [or] competency of these people. … I think, frankly, the President should recess [appoint] all of them. All of them. He has been given very little recognition for the importance of the job that he has trying to find the best people in America to fill this position. No one can say Democrats did this when we were in the minority — we didn’t do this. There were people that were held up, but this something that is beyond the pale.
Watch a complication of Reid and Obama’s comments:
Indeed, one year into Obama’s term, 177 nominees remained unconfirmed — thanks to an “unusual number of holds” — including “dozens” of national security appointments. One year into President Bush’s term, there were only 70 appointees awaiting confirmation. Much of this obstructionism has been for political gain, such as Sen. Richard Shelby’s (R-AL) recent attempt to hold 70 nominees hostage for billions of dollars in pork for his state.
While the Senate is given the right to “advise and consent” on nominees, as Catholic University Law Professor Victor Williams notes on the Huffington Post, the president’s right to make recess appointments is “textually based, historically supported, and has been upheld by numerous court opinions.” The Founders gave the president the ability to make recess appointments recognizing that “the president must keep the government fully staffed,” regardless of partisan posturing.
John McCain is locked in a tough battle to retain Republican support for his U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, facing a challenge from far-right former congressman J.D. Hayworth. Conservative talk show host Mark Levin, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), controversial Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and numerous conservative websites have backed Hayworth over McCain, who has generally been rejected by the Tea Party movement.
But on Monday, the New York Times broke the news that FreedomWorks Chairman and Tea Party profiteer Dick Armey has bucked his beloved movement and endorsed McCain. Buried near the bottom of the New York Times’ story:
Even within the fractured Tea Party movement, Mr. McCain is not without support. He is endorsed by Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the populist movement’s darling, and Sarah Palin, his running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign. And Dick Armey, whose FreedomWorks organization has become front and center in the movement, says he is throwing his support behind Mr. McCain.
Yesterday in a blog post, however, FreedomWorks shot back at the New York Times, disputing the paper’s story:
The New York Times reported recently that FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey has endorsed Sen. John McCain in the GOP primary in Arizona. This is not the case, although this story has been picked up and repeated by countless media personalities and reporters around the country.
This seems to be a good case study in how false information can make its way around the internet and the airwaves before it can be corrected. But we wanted to post a quick statement for all of you who have asked us about this.
Armey’s refusal to endorse McCain seems like pandering to the Tea Party movement. After all, Armey — formerly the Republican House Majority Leader — told the Arizona Republic recently that McCain has had a distinguished career, unlike Hayworth:
“We’re a small organization with a limited budget. There’s an awful lot of places where our presence would be needed and can really make a difference. We don’t see this Arizona race as one where we need to be actively involved. It’s hard for us to believe that J.D. Hayworth could mount a credible challenge to John McCain. Obviously, we’ll watch the race. But J.D. had a fairly short, undistinguished congressional career with virtually no initiative on his part. I just don’t see any reason why we should be concerned about that race.” [...]
“There’s nobody who can match McCain’s record on fiscal responsibility,” he said.
“As I recall, J.D. was on the Ways and Means Committee and I didn’t really see him make any distinguished effort, for example, like people like (Arizona GOP Reps.) Jeff Flake and John Shadegg in terms of creative ideas and legislative initiative,” Armey said. “Certainly nothing on the cost-control front. But John McCain was the first guy to understand the need to get earmarks under control. He took a real leadership role, as did Jeff Flake.“
Armey may be trying to avoid the backlash that Palin received when she announced her support for her former running mate. Fox News host Glenn Beck said, “This Sarah Palin thing really bothers me,” and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin wrote that Tea Party activists were “rightly outraged by Sarah Palin’s decision to campaign for McCain.” Even Paul Streitz, co-founder of the 2012 Draft Sarah Committee, lamented, “What should this be called, the Rinoization of Sarah Palin.”
Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns a 7 percent stake in News Corp — the parent company of Fox News — making him the largest shareholder outside the family of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch. Alwaleed has grown close with the Murdoch enterprise, recently endorsing James Murdoch to succeed his father and creating a content-sharing agreement with Fox News for his own media conglomerate, Rotana.
Last weekend, at the right-wing Constitutional Coalition’s annual conference in St. Louis, Joseph Farah, publisher of the far right WorldNetDaily, blasted Fox News for its relationship with Alwaleed. Farah noted correctly that Alwaleed had boasted in the past about forcing Fox News to change its content relating to its coverage of riots in Paris, and warned that such foreign ownership of American media is “really dangerous.” ThinkProgress was at the speech and observed attendees of the conference murmuring and shaking their heads in disapproval:
FARAH: There’s a flaw, a real compromise in Fox that you need to understand. And if you care about national security, you especially need to be attentive to it. And that is that Fox News parent company is News Corp has a significant ownership by a Saudi prince that many of you will be familiar with because right after 9/11 this prince very famously offered Rudolph Giuliani a big multi-million dollar check to rebuild and Giuliani told him to stick the check where the sun don’t shine because this guy was basically blaming America for what happened on 9/11. Well this guy owns a very significant percentage of the News Corp and has let the world know that he can get things taken off Fox News when he finds them objectionable and has in the past. And I really believe this is really dangerous for America.
Listen here:
ThinkProgess spoke to right-wing author Brigitte Gabriel, another speaker at the conference, who said that Alwaleed was recently interviewed by Fox News’ Neil Cavuto. Gabriel angrily denounced the interview as a “darling high school reunion”: “All of the sudden, Neil Cavuto is interviewing him like a buddy-buddy because he is the boss.” Indeed, in the “rare” interview Alwaleed gave last month, he reaffirmed his “alliance” with the Murdoch family and told Cavuto why he has a personal stake in influencing American politics:
– On continuing America’s dependence on fossil fuels, Saudia Arabian oil: “Saudi Arabia’s strategic alliance with the United States will continue and as a derivative of that, the link with the oil between oil and dollars is there. The bulk of our GDP, the bulk of budget comes from oil and oil is still a dollar based commodity.” As Media Matters has documented, Fox News is a reliable source of misinformation on clean energy, and has aggressively attacked efforts to move America away from a fossil fuel dependent economy.
– On opposing financial reforms, bank responsibility fee: “In a way I’m conflicted because I’m invested in Citigroup but at the more global picture, I’m a big supporter of the United States. I believe taxing the banks right now is not the right thing at all. It’s like you have a patient coming out of an ICU.” Alwaleed owns a $4.3 billion dollars stake in Citigroup, a massive bank that spent millions lobbying against financial reform last year.
With the Citizens United Supreme Court decision essentially freeing corporations to spend unlimited amounts in campaigns, theoretically Alwaleed can pressure the American corporations he owns stock in to spend millions — or even billions — of dollars attacking candidates he opposes. In addition to his powerful Fox News outlet, Alwaleed and other foreign investors have potentially unprecedented power to impact American elections.
Last night on his Fox News show, Sean Hannity claimed that the recent spate of winter snow storms in the Washington, D.C. region clearly means that the planet isn’t warming. He then attacked Vice President Gore, calling his anti-global warming advocacy “hysterical”:
HANNITY: And tonight’s “Meltdown” is brought to you by the D.C. snow storm, you know, the storm that dumped about two feet of snow on the Washington area over the weekend causing thousands of power outages and keeping many people home from work today. And it’s the most severe winter storm in years, which would seem to contradict Al Gore’s hysterical global warming theories. [...]
Pretty unbelievable. I bet the snow even kept Al Gore’s jet from taking off.
Watch it:
Because of the recent snow storms in the Northeast, many conservatives like Hannity have taken the opportunity to take cheap shots at Gore. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and his family mocked the former Vice President by building an igloo on the National Mall and calling it “Al Gore’s new home.” And Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) joined in as well, tweeting today that, “It’s going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries ‘uncle.’”
As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has explained, “winter snows do not invalidate the reality that the planet just experienced the hottest decade on record. Scientists have been warning for decades that global warming would increase the severity of winter storms.” And a recent National Wildlife Federation report has found that winter storms are getting fiercer even as the season gets warmer.
Climate expert Dr. Jeff Masters notes, “It’s not hard at all to get temperatures cold enough for snow in a world experiencing global warming. … Global warming theory predicts that global precipitation will increase, and that heavy precipitation events…will also increase,” he said, adding that this “occurs because as the climate warms, evaporation of moisture from the oceans increases, resulting in more water vapor in the air.” Indeed, the IPCC has said that atmospheric moisture has increased 5 percent over the last century.
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