One of the greatest obstacles to passing progressive legislation in Congress has been the use of the filibuster in the Senate. With upwards of “40 cloture votes since the start of the 111th Congress in January, this Senate is on pace to record the second-largest number of filibuster roll calls,” transforming what was intended to be a seldom-used procedural tactic into an all-out tool for obstructionism. Now, a new CBS/New York Times poll finds that more Americans support ending the filibuster and requiring legislation to pass by a simple majority:
As you may know, the Senate operates under procedures that effectively require 60 votes, out of 100, for most legislation to pass, allowing a minority of as few as 41 senators to block a majority. Do you think this procedure should remain in place, or do you think it should be changed so that legislation is passed with a simple majority?
Should remain 44
Should be changed 50
[Don't Know] 6
Changing the filibuster would not be without precedent. In 1975, the filibuster threshold was lowered from 67 to 60. Sens. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) have introduced legislation that would “change Senate procedure to create a four-step process that would eventually allow a majority of 51 votes, rather than 60, for cloture — ending debate and moving to a final vote on passage of a bill.” Yet Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has “dismissed the effort” as unlikely to succeed. OpenLeft’s Chris Bowers has an ongoing whip count for the effort to pass Harkin’s reforms here.
On Thursday, a Washington Post-ABC News poll had some bad news for Sarah Palin: 71 percent of the American public — including 52 percent of Republicans — don’t think the former Alaska governor is qualified to be president. This week, far-right radio host Michael Savage voiced some of these GOP complaints, saying that the Party would essentially be committing “suicide” if it made Palin its 2012 nominee:
If you want Obama for a second term, just make sure that Sarah Palin is the Republican nominee. … And I am telling you, that if they make that idiotic mistake of pushing her as their lead candidate, it’s over; Obama will get a second term, no matter how bad his presidency has been. That’s my opinion. It’s one man’s opinion. It doesn’t mean I don’t agree with her politically. It doesn’t mean I think she’s a bad person.
She’s not electable as president. She doesn’t have…the gravitas. He doesn’t either. That doesn’t mean — She’s not the right person. We need a businessman. We need someone with guts, preferably someone who’s served in the military. That means we have nobody. And please don’t tell me about Mr. Brown. God! Please! I warned you! Don’t Obama-size these guys.
It’s ironic that Savage criticizes Palin for not being a “businessman,” considering that that line is a frequent attack she throws at Democrats. In her recent speech to the National Tea Party convention, she cited her experience with Todd’s “commercial fishing business” as evidence that she knows how to “tighten our belts” and “cut back budgets” — unlike the politicians in Washington.
Savage also went after Palin’s arrangement with Fox News, saying that it was unethical and disingenuous:
You know what disturbs me? This is the part that worries me a little bit. She went to work for Fox News, and at the same time, she’s fundamentally running for the presidency. At the same time. I mean, the last I checked, you can’t do that. The last I checked is that you have to leave a media job in order to announce your candidacy. What is this? You can’t have it both ways. Either you’re running, or you’re not. Don’t play a game with the American people. We’re not stupid.
Listen here:
Savage’s alternatives for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination? Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) or James Inhofe (R-OK). (HT: Andrew Sullivan)
Man-made global warming has “affected Kenyan coffee production through unpredictable rainfall patterns and excessive droughts, making crop management and disease control a nightmare.” Joseph Kimemia, director of research at Kenya’s Coffee Research Foundation (CRF), told reporters that hotter temperatures and unpredictable rainfall are damaging his nation’s ability to grow coffee:
We have seen climate change in intermittent rainfall patterns, extended drought and very high temperatures. Coffee operates within a very narrow temperature range of 19-25 degrees (Celsius). When you start getting temperatures above that, it affects photosynthesis and in some cases, trees wilt and dry up. We have see trees drying up in some marginal coffee areas.
Global warming-related droughts, heat waves, and climate change are also damaging coffee production in top exporters such as Uganda, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Nicaragua, as growers are “being forced uphill to higher altitudes, at a rate of three to four meters a year on average, as temperatures rise.”
Record warmth is forcing the organizers of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia to helicopter in snow to cover mountains. The planet’s changing climate is threatening the start of the Olympics, as “sloppy, foggy weather” has canceled training runs on both Whistler and Cypress Mountains. In Vancouver, the “average temperature in January was 44.9 degrees, besting the previous warm record of 43.3 in 2006 and well above the historic average of 37.9 degrees”:
After the warmest January in Vancouver history, organizers moved more than 5,000 cubic meters of snow onto Cypress by helicopter and truck from nearby mountains. Some 750 workers are bringing in snow and building courses before competition starts on Saturday.
Vancouver’s troubles are part of a broader trend of warmer winters across the Northern Hemisphere. Increased warmth and changing weather patterns have led to glacial retreat and unreliable snowfall across the globe, putting the future of alpine sports in jeopardy. Globally, we are in the warmest winter on record. Locally, the weather forecast for the Olympics “calls for more rain and warm temperatures for the next five days.”
Latina Lista is reporting that Ana Mateo, a bilingual school secretary, has filed a lawsuit against her former employer, Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, claiming that her civil rights were violated after she was allegedly fired for continuing to speak Spanish to parents. Local Charlotte station WSOC broke the news:
The lawsuit against Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools is now in federal court because a former employee said the CMS violated her civil rights because she spoke Spanish to parents even though she was hired to be the school’s bilingual secretary…
She claims in September of 2008, when a new principal came to the school, a new rule was given to all staff members to not speak Spanish to parents. The lawsuit claims Mateo, a bilingual secretary, continued to speak Spanish to many parents, after all, the school is more than a third Hispanic, well above the district average…Within a month of the alleged new rule, Mateo was told the school accepted her resignation, even though she says she never offered to resign.
Mateo filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which issued a response indicating that there is evidence that supports her allegations. While the school district claims it does not have an official English-only policy, WSOC also found that school staff members were telling parents that they could not even speak Spanish to one another on school grounds.
In the past, the National Education Association (NEA) has slammed English-only initiatives in schools as “government-sanctioned bigotry” that only makes it more “difficult for schools to prepare students for jobs of the future.” A study posted on NEA’s website states that school administrators “must have skills and the means for communicating with Latino parents and enlisting them as allies.” “There is a critical role for teachers and schools in helping parents to support their children’s schooling,” concludes Patricia Gándara of the University of California–Los Angeles.
Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
The Baucus/Grassley bill was roundly panned by the rest of the Democratic caucus. “It looks more like a tax bill than a jobs bill to me,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH). So Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) scrapped it in favor of a $15 billion bill with four pieces: a payroll tax break, and one-year extension of highway funding, an extension of the Build America bond program, and a business tax break for equipment expensing.
Republicans, who were keen on many of the tax provisions in the Baucus/Grassley bill, immediately cried foul, complaining that Reid was undermining economic recovery with his actions. Grassley spokeswoman Jill Kozeny said that Reid “pulled the rug out from work to build broad-based support for tax relief and other efforts to help the private sector recover from the economic crisis.”
But it’s funny that the GOP suddenly feels that the legislation is must-pass to boost an economic recovery considering that earlier in the week they said that it wouldn’t create a single job:
Kyl, a member of Finance, said he most definitely “would not call it a ‘jobs bill’,” though…“No, I dont call that a jobs bill,” Kyl said emphatically…”All of that has to be done, but it does not create one job.”
And even though they readily admitted that the bill was full of stuff “that has to be done,” Republicans were placing all sorts of conditions on their support, including unanimous consent to vote on a huge cut in the estate tax that would give billions in tax breaks to the heirs of wealthy families.
So Reid was wise to pitch the Baucus/Grassley bill overboard and to say that he’d revisit the tax extenders later. Even before it came out, economic analysts and members of the administration were saying that it would “only work on the margins” in terms of boosting employment. The New York Times’ editorial board noted that “it was not even in the same league as the modest House-passed $154 billion jobs bill.” There was no reason to allow the GOP to wring out concessions in order to pass a bill that wouldn’t have done anything.
Which isn’t to say that Reid’s $15 billion effort will do all that much either. With the administration’s Council of Economic Advisers estimating that unemployment is still going to be above eight percent in 2012, a much more concerted effort is necessary, including aid to states and some sort of direct job creation.
Cross-posted on the Wonk Room.
In Captain America issue 602, the patriotic hero is investigating a right-wing anti-government militia group called “the Watchdogs.” Hoping to infiltrate the group, Captain America and his African-American sidekick, The Falcon, observe an all-white anti-tax protest from a rooftop. The Falcon tells Captain America, “I don’t exactly see a black man from Harlem fitting in with a bunch of angry white folks.” Captain America explains “that his plan entails sending The Falcon in among the group posing as an IRS agent under the thinking that a black government official will most certainly spark their anger.” The signs the protesters are carrying are “almost identical to those seen today in Tea Party rallies”:
After a “minor uproar ensued,” Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Joe Quesada apologized for what he called a “series of stupid mistakes.” He explained that under time pressure, they “looked on the net and started pulling slogans” from Tea Party signs that led to “accidentally identifying” one of the members of the protest group “as being a part of the Tea Party instead of a generic protest group.” But Tea Party Nation profiteer Judson Phillips was not satisfied, saying that “sounds less like a genuine ‘we’re sorry’ than it does a ‘we’re sorry we got caught‘ statement.” Crooks and Liars’ Logan Muphy comments, “I’m not sure why they apologized, as Captain America has always fought against the enemies of the United States.”
Last night on Fox News, Bill O’Reilly was incensed about a recent Gallup poll finding that 36 percent of Americans have a positive image of “socialism.” The poll result is “simply incredible,” O’Reilly declared, adding, “Can you say ‘Fidel Castro’? … It’s hard to believe.”
O’Reilly then said that he has seen “no evidence” that President Obama is a socialist, but that his viewers should be afraid of some Democrats in Congress who want to “impose social justice on the nation” and “seize” your house:
O’REILLY: Some Obama critics contend that he himself is a socialist, but we can find no evidence of that. Mr. Obama likes his property, and I don’t believe he wants to seize my house.
However, there are people like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont who do. And those people are stalwarts inside the Democratic Party. It is long past time for Americans to wake up. The far left in this country wants to diminish personal power and impose social justice on the nation. They want to erode our personal freedoms in order to right what they consider wrongs brought about by capitalism.
Watch it:
But just last week, in a portion of his interview with Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart that was cut from his broadcast, O’Reilly was himself one of the “Obama critics” contending the President is a socialist. He said Obama “believes” in “tyranny and socialism“:
STEWART: All I hear on this network is “tryanny and socialism.”
O’REILLY: That’s that [Obama] believes! … I don’t think he’s a socialist, but he does believe in a redistribution of income, Barack Obama, and that is a socialist tenant.
Moreover, O’Reilly once claimed that discussions of public option as part of health care reform — which President Obama supports — is “really about socialism.” And earlier this month, O’Reilly peddled the notion that “there are a lot of people” who believe that Obama “is a socialist who wants to impose a different system on the United States of America.” “Shouldn’t they have a voice?” he asked.
Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, a 21-year-old Army cook, refused to deploy to Afghanistan in November because she had no one to take care of her 10-month-old son. Hutchinson said when she brought her situation to her superiors’ attention, they told her that she would have to deploy anyway and place the child in foster care. After skipping her unit’s flight out of Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, GA, military police arrested her, and the Army eventually filed charges. However, today, the New York Times reports that the Hutchinson won’t be facing a court-martial, which could have resulted in jail time if she had been convicted:
On Thursday, Specialist Hutchinson received an other-than-honorable discharge, ending an impasse that had surprised many legal experts and spurred lively debate in military circles.
In a news release, the Third Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., said Specialist Hutchinson’s rank had been reduced to private and that she would lose some Army and veterans’ benefits.
Last year, there were more than “10,000 single parents on active military duty deployed overseas,” and legal experts speculated that commanders may have been using Hutchinson’s case to “send a message to other single-parent soldiers in the brigade.”
This morning, Fox & Friends covered President Bill Clinton’s hospitalization by asking if the President would have been treated for his heart problems “if the health care reform had gone through.” “Would he have gotten those stents?” host Brian Kilmeade asked in-house health reform expert Peter J. Johnson Jr.
Johnson admitted that “under a lot of protocols he would have gotten those stents,” but suggested that if the government adopted best practice methods using comparative effectiveness research, “perhaps hundreds of thousands of people like the president” would receive a cheaper, less effective, treatment:
JOHNSON: If the government decides to adopt the Peter Orszag, budget director, architect of health care, method and put in regulations that say there is a gold standard, there is a best practice based on the literature, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people like the president, I’m not going to make a determination…if the new standard is save money, best practices, does President Clinton or you or I who needs it get the stent under the new regimen of health care effectiveness?
Watch it:
Conservatives have long used comparative effectiveness research (CER) to further their claim that health care reform would ration treatments based on cost, impose a one-size-fits-all standard for medicine, and keep doctors from prescribing more expensive and effective procedures. But this line of thinking misunderstands the purpose of CER and ignores legislative language that specifically prohibits the government from applying research findings to coverage decisions. CER is a recommendation, not a mandate. (See pg. 1652 of the Senate bill or pg. 769 of the House bill).
Rather than making arbitrary decisions based on cost, CER — which compares clinical outcomes of alternative therapies used to manage the same condition — would provide doctors with unbiased information about the most effective treatments, help doctors and patients make better informed decisions, and improve the quality of care. Properly conducted CER will actually promote faster adoption of personalized care, not one-size-fits all medicine.
As Alan Garber of Stanford and Sean Tunis of the Center for Medical Technology Policy point out, “far from impeding personalized medicine, CER offers a way to hasten the discovery of the best approaches to personalization, providing more and better information with which to craft a management strategy for each individual patient.”
Indeed, CER could have actually improved treatment for heart disease by exposing harmful procedures and informing health care providers about best practices. The course of treatment, however, will always be left to the patient and his or her doctor.
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
Fox News contributor Sarah Palin will make two high-profile appearances in Central Florida next month, but the press will not be welcomed. Palin’s camp has barred the media from recording or photographing the former governor’s speeches, so if reporters want to attend, they’ll have to buy a ticket like anyone else. (Prices are between $150 and “at least” $250.) The Orlando Sentinel reports that the unusual decision was made by Palin’s handlers, not local organizers:
“These are the terms of the contract that were presented to us,” said Orange County Republican Party Chairman Lew Oliver, who said he is ecstatic that the GOP “rock star” will headline his group’s annual major fundraising event.
Oliver acknowledged that previous Lincoln Day dinner speakers — mostly elected officials and political hopefuls — have sought media coverage. However, he said, “this is an unusual circumstance.”
Palin’s speaking fees are also not being disclosed, but she was paid a reported $100,000 for speaking at the National Tea Party Convention last week. Palin has consistently tried to limit media access at her recent events, even discouraging “attempts at citizen journalism” by barring attendees at her book-signings from carrying cell phones or cameras, and refusing to “talk about politics with them.” Several local Alaska bloggers were put on a black list and banned from Palin’s Wasilla book-signing, and at a December event at the Mall of America, officials initially said that “only English speaking press” would be let in.
As ThinkProgress noted earlier this week, GOP Senate candidate Curtis Coleman (R-AR), who is running against Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), compared embryonic stem cell research to “what the Nazis did to the Jews.“ Yesterday, progressive radio host Thom Hartmann invited Coleman onto his show and offered him a chance to apologize to survivors of the Holocaust for his statement. Coleman flatly refused to apologize and went on to say that it is “not at all” a horrific comparison:
HARTMANN: I wanted to give you an opportunity to apologize to the Holocaust survivors of Arkansas for that comparison and that remark.
COLEMAN: I’m not sure an apology is needed. [...]
HARTMANN: What I am saying is to compare eight cells in a petri dish to a human being in a death camp or even an experimentation camp in Germany during World War II is a horrific comparison.
COLEMAN: Well, not at all. It’s life at a different stage, but it’s still human life. That’s the point, it is still a human being, it is still a human life. It hasn’t fully developed, but it’s still that human being, and it’s unique –
HARTMANN: It is not experiencing pain, it is not experiencing the horrors of what the Nazis did. You know, I’m telling you there are Holocaust survivors listening right now Curtis Coleman who just have to be in shock to hear you say this.
Watch it:
Responding to Coleman’s comments, Progressive Puppy writes, “No, Mr. Coleman. What the Nazis did was round up living, breathing human beings, strip them of their freedom and dignity, and exterminate them in various ways. They also performed grotesque medical experiments on those same living, breathing human beings. Remarks like yours are not only incredibly stupid, they’re demeaning to Jewish people whose ancestors suffered terribly in Nazi concentration camps.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) “dismissed” efforts to limit filibusters proposed by Sens. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Tom Udall (D-NM). Reid said the “chamber’s procedures were designed to prevent the majority party from unilaterally changing the rules.” Harkin’s plan would create a “four-step process that would eventually allow a majority of 51 votes” to achieve cloture, while Udall’s would have the Senate change its filibuster requirement at the beginning of the next session.
Reid introduced a scaled-back jobs bill, complaining that the draft bipartisan proposal had been “watered down” with extraneous provisions. “The jobs bill emerging in the Senate is pathetic, both as a response to joblessness and as an example of legislation deemed capable of winning bipartisan support,” the New York Times writes.
A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds “three-quarters of Americans say that they support openly gay people serving in the U.S. military.” The level of public support far exceeds the 44 percent who supported allowing gays to serve in 1993.
President Clinton left New York-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital today after undergoing a successful procedure to clear a blocked artery. Doctors inserted two stents into one of Clinton’s coronary arteries “after a bypass graft from an operation nearly six years ago became obstructed.” “President Clinton is in good spirits,” an adviser to the former president said.
A new survey commissioned by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America and Credo Action finds that a majority of Minnesotans — 56 percent — are embarrassed by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). Only 29 percent answered that they were “proud” of her, and 15 percent were “not sure.”
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.”
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