In an era saturated with absurd moments of anti-Muslim fear-mongering, mosques have become a touchstone for Islamophobia. Even unbuilt mosques have set off a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment in Tennessee, Texas, California, and most notably, New York. Not to be outdone, the people of Pheonix, AZ were quick to call foul over the appearance of a dome-like structure along an interstate. But in the clamor over the impending Muslim takeover, these Arizonans missed one small detail — the building is not a Mosque, it’s a church:
A new dome-like structure near 19th Avenue along Interstate 10 in Phoenix is the Light of the World church, a nondenominational Christian church hoping to modernize traditional worship services, a church spokesman said
Since the distinctive dome shape went up, church leaders said they have received phone calls from concerned neighbors who’ve mistaken the building for an Islamic mosque.
On Wednesday, church officials hung a sign reminding people they’re Christian congregation. “We’re trying to let people know that we’re Christian and our churches are modern,” said Uzieo Martinez.
Watch a report from KPNX-TV:
“It is unfortunate that people are so intolerant to differences that they aren’t willing to see that the place of worship is not a mosque,” said Tayyibah Amatullah of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Arizona chapter. But with so many high-profile figures selling unfounded, anti-Muslim fear to the public, is it any wonder that all many Americans can see in Islam is a phantom menace?
As ThinkProgress and The Progress Report have documented, there is a growing coalition of both Tea Party-backed conservatives and stalwart progressives who are coming together to call for reining in the bloated defense budget.
On Saturday, during an interview with Fox News, former Arkansas Gov. and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee joined this coalition by advocating for sensible cuts to the defense budget where they are warranted. When asked by host Dave Briggs about “some of the defense cuts” proposed in a recently-released report from President Obama’s deficit reduction commission, Huckabee responded by saying, “we’re still designing a lot of military hardware for a war that we don’t plan to fight.” He went on to say that our military “priorities don’t have to be bloated with a lot of stuff that really is not about keeping us safe and protecting and caring for veterans. So yes, there are areas of the defense budget that need to be looked at honestly”:
DAVE BRIGGS: I was surprised, though, that the right wasn’t as outspoken about some of the defense cuts that we need to make. A hundred billion dollars slashed out of that beast of a defense budget. It’s unpatriotic to come out and talk about the defense budget, but the Pentagon is accepting airplanes that they don’t even need.
HUCKABEE: They don’t need and that they don’t want. And what happens is, we’re still designing a lot of military hardware for a war that we don’t plan to fight. And, Robert Gates the Defense Department secretary, who I think has done an excellent job, and he has been one of those willing to grind sacred cows into hamburger and serve it rare, has really helped to identify ways in which we can keep ourselves strong, not cutting the military strength and not hurting veterans. There are two things Americans don’t want to do, number one, get weak and, number two, hurt the veterans who kept us free. But those priorities don’t have to be bloated with a lot of stuff that really is not about keeping us safe and protecting and caring for veterans. So yes, there are areas of the defense budget that need to be looked at honestly.
Watch it:
If Huckabee is really serious about reining in the defense budget, he can look to the Sustainable Defense Task Force (SDTF) report released earlier this year. The SDTF — which was chaired by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and staffed by some of the nation’s leading defense and budget experts — identified nearly $1 trillion in waste that can be cut from the defense budget over the next ten years simply by eliminating outdated Cold War-era programs. He could also reference a recent report by Center for American Progress experts Lawrence Korb and Laura Conley that lays out $108 billion in defense cuts in the current 2015 budget forecast.
By admitting that the Department of Defense is “bloated” and that the defense budget needs to be “looked at honestly,” Huckabee is joining a wide-ranging Tea Party-progressive coalition that includes major conservatives like Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Bob Corker (R-TN), along with proud progressives like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Jeff Merkely (D-OR).
However, this coalition will face resistance from establishment Republicans. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), speaking at today’s Foreign Policy Initiative conference “Restoring America’s Leadership of a Democratic World,” appeared to address this growing coalition. “Rand Paul, he’s already talked about withdrawals, cuts in defense,” said McCain. “I worry a lot about rise of protectionism and isolationism in the Republican Party.”
Yesterday, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) argued that he opposed repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and disagreed with the Pentagon’s study of the issue because “this study was directed at how to implement the repeal, not whether the repeal should take place or not.” “I wanted a study to determine the effects of the repeal on battle effectiveness and morale. What this study is, is designed to do is, is to find out how the repeal could be implemented,” he said. This afternoon, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) distanced himself from McCain — his “best friend in the Senate” whom he endorsed over President Obama in 2008 — telling MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, “in this case I disagree strongly with my friend John McCain”:
LIEBERMAN: I was so encouraged by the first indications of the study that’s been done, thousands and thousands of our military personnel and their families question, more than 70% apparently said, no problem, because, in the classic situation, when you’re in battle, you don’t care what anybody’s sexual orientation or race or gender or nationality or religion is. You care about whether they’re going to fight well. [...]
I’m not giving up on us doing a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t tell during the lame duck session. To make that possible, I hope that the Defense Department can find a way to issue this report that they’ve got pretty much done, but going through clearance now, as quickly as possible and certainly before December 1st. We’ve got time to do this, and it’s the right thing to do.
Watch it:
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has encouraged the Congress to pass repeal during the lame duck session but has refused to move up the release of the study. “The full report will be made public for all to review early next month,” DoD spokesman Geoff Morrell insisted on Friday.
Today, Congress welcomes for orientation a new class of fresh-faced Republicans to Washington, DC. These newcomers also usher in a whole new brand of congressional leadership because, with the new House majority, the GOP’s veteran extremists are set to become Committee chairmen.
But not all Republicans are thrilled by this right-wing swing. Last week, a GOP Latino group — Somos Republicans — wrote an open letter to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and current House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) requesting that they reconsider entrusting Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) with House subcommittee on immigration and the House judiciary Committee chairmanships, respectively. Due to both King and Smith’s “defamatory” anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, the group warned that their leadership would insult Latinos and wreck the GOP’s chances in 2012:
As we are already looking toward the 2012 Presidential Elections, we respectfully ask you to take heed to our request out of concern for our nation. Congressmen Smith and King have repeatedly engaged in rhetoric that is aimed negatively toward Hispanics. Steve King has used defamatory language that is extremely offensive to Hispanics, which is found in numerous congressional records. We believe Steve King’s behavior is not appropriate for a high-level elected Republican who might be in charge of a committee that handles immigration rules. Steve King and Lamar Smith have adopted extreme positions on birthright citizenship, and promise legislation that would undermine the 14th amendment of the constitution, which both swore an oath to uphold.
While it is indeed the duty of the Judiciary and Immigration committees to oversee and enforce existing immigration laws, Representatives Smith and King have engaged in an ill-advised platform and rhetoric that has been perceived as insensitive with their inflammatory “immigration statements,” and this has caused an exodus of Hispanic voters to the Democratic party. We ask that you review Mr. King’s and Mr. Smith’s congressional statements desiring to “pass a bill out of the House to end the Constitution’s birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants,” or what Steve King has made reference to “anchor babies.” We find both this rhetoric and this un-constitutional conduct reprehensible, insulting and a poor reflection upon Republicans because we don’t want our Party to be viewed as the Party of changing the United States Constitution.
Failing to receive a response last week, the Somos Republicans sent an “urgent letter” Friday regrading King’s continued use of “defamatory language that is extremely offensive to Hispanics,” referring to another instance in which King used the term “anchor baby” when asked a question pertaining to Harry Reid and the DREAM Act on FOX News. King said that children qualifying for a path to citizenship under the DREAM Act “are illegal. They aren’t anchor babies that were born here and that received this practice of birthright citizenship. They came here illegally.”
The Somos Republicans are right to be worried. King has become “the right’s biggest anti-immigration flamethrower” by comparing “border-crossers to livestock,” describing illegal immigration as a “slow-motion terrorist attack,” and defending racial profiling because “looking illegal” is “common sense.” Earlier this month, King even announced his plans to advance legislation to “put an end to the anchor babies in this country.” In a quick look at Smith’s anti-immigration efforts, including ending birthright citizenship and preventing non-existent “de-facto amnesties,” the Wonk Room’s Andrea Nill notes that Smith will similarly “use his leadership position to push through his anti-immigrant agenda.”
Despite the seniority of these two bosom buddies, the GOP should heed the Somos Republicans warning. As Nill points out, the “GOP is quickly losing the few Latino leaders it once had.” And with at least a third of the incoming class champing at the bit to end birthright citizenship and thus reduce legal immigration, Republicans are giving Latinos more incentive to abandon the Party. (HT: Iowa Independent)
One of the most bizarre developments of the last several months is the growing right-wing calls to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, the provision of the Constitution that empowers voters — as opposed to state legislatures — to elect their senators. On Friday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia joined Senator-elect Mike Lee (R-UT) and Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) in opposing the century-old amendment:
Scalia called the writing of the Constitution “providential,” and the birth of political science.
“There’s very little that I would change,” he said. “I would change it back to what they wrote, in some respects. The 17th Amendment has changed things enormously.”
That amendment allowed for U.S. Senators to be elected by the people, rather than by individual state legislatures.
“We changed that in a burst of progressivism in 1913, and you can trace the decline of so-called states’ rights throughout the rest of the 20th century. So, don’t mess with the Constitution.“
Justice Scalia’s use of extremist “states’ rights” rhetoric is an ominous sign. Although Scalia has a well-deserved reputation as an ultra-conservative, his record on federal/state power issues is surprisingly sensible. Indeed, his concurring opinion in Gonzales v. Raich could have been written as a blueprint for why President Obama’s Affordable Care Act is constitutional.
It’s puzzling why Scalia, or anyone else for that matter, would suddenly take a swipe at this entirely uncontroversial amendment — although the Wonk Room offers one possible explanation. Before the Seventeenth Amendment was enacted, corporate interest groups were able to lean on state lawmakers and thus effectively buy U.S. Senate seats. In other words, repealing the Seventeenth Amendment “would be like Citizens United on steroids.”
There are few members of the teaching profession who more symbolize the sacrifices that exemplary instructors make for their students than New Jersey teacher Alissa Ploshnick. In 1997, Ploshnick, upon seeing a runaway van about to strike a group of students, threw herself in front of the vehicle to save the students, landing herself in the hospital “with broken ribs, a fractured wrist, a badly bruised pelvis and glass cuts in her eyes.” Following the accident, President Bill Clinton sent her a letter thanking her for her act of courage, writing, “You are an example for all of us, and I applaud you for your sense of duty.”
Yet as the Shirley Sherrod scandal showed earlier this year, even exemplary public servants can fall prey to the antics of smear artists. Late last month, right-wing video activist James O’Keefe released a set of YouTube videos titled “Teachers Unions Gone Wild.” The videos feature various New Jersey teachers opining about Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), using crude language, and criticizing the state’s teachers unions.
In one segment, Ploshnick is recorded explaining an incident she witnessed as a teacher. She explained that she saw another teacher refer a student as the n-word, and that the teacher was demoted, but was allowed to continue to teach. O’Keefe’s video crew then showed up at Ploshnick’s personal residence and tried to get her to repeat her story on video tape. She refused, understanding the repercussions that would come to a teacher who used that language on video. Watch it:
Following the release of the video, Ploshnick was suspended for seven days and denied a pay raise for being recorded using the n-word. Passaic Superintendent Robert Holster defended the decision to suspend her, explaining that they were “getting hammered” by local reaction to the video. “Politically correct is the theme of the day,’’ he went on to say, well aware that the teacher did not use the language to describe anyone else but rather to explain what another teacher had said.
Yet the truth is that Ploshnick never intended to use crude language in a public setting where she was being recorded. O’Keefe’s staff obtained the audio not by requesting an interview with her but by secretly recording a private conversation. The O’Keefe operative “hit on” Ploshnick at a local bar, buying her drinks and engaging in casual conversation. At one point, the conversation turned to Ploshnick’s job, which is when she relayed the anecdote about a fellow teacher using the n-word. At no point did she know the conversation was being recorded, so she did not see the need to truncate the use of the n-word in her anecdote. Yet the secret recording without Ploshnick’s consent is not presented as such — it appears that the teacher is using the crude language in a public way, well aware that it will be broadcast to thousands of people and will likely reach the ears of her students and their parents.
Unfortunately, O’Keefe’s video — despite completely disregarding basic journalistic standards — has been having a real impact in New Jersey politics. “If you need an example of what I’ve been talking about for the last nine months — about how the teacher’s union leadership is out of touch with the people and out of control — go watch this video,” Christie said at a town hall in South Brunswick last month, referring to O’Keefe’s work. For her part, Ploshnick has hired Alan Zegas, one of the state’s top trial lawyers, to investigate the behavior O’Keefe and his staff took in recording her. Zegas calls O’Keefe’s behavior “deeply disturbing.” But the New Jersey teacher’s greatest priority isn’t taking O’Keefe to court, it’s returning to her work. “I just wanted to get back to my kids,” she said.
Late last month, President Obama’s commission investigating this summer’s devastating Gulf oil spill found that BP and its contractor Haliburton “knew weeks before the fatal explosion…that the cement mixture they planned to use to seal the bottom of the well was unstable but still went ahead with the job.” “There is no indication that Halliburton highlighted to BP the significance of the foam stability data or that BP personnel raised any questions about it,” the panel’s lead investigator wrote. Despite this finding, when asked about the spill on CBS’s Face the Nation yesterday, Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-KY) came to BP’s defense, saying the Obama administration’s strong language towards BP “sends the wrong signal”:
PAUL: But I don’t think an American president should be talking about putting the boot heel on the throat of a corporation because it sends the wrong signal that the government is the enemy somehow of business. And we need to always recognize that one in 10 businesses succeeds. We need to do everything we can to encourage business because that’s where the jobs are created.
Watch it:
As host Bob Schieffer noted, this is not the first time that Paul has stuck up for the oil giant. This summer, he called the administration’s pressure on BP — a foreign company — to clean up the spill “un-American.” (In the Face the Nation interview, Paul admitted this was a “poor choice of words.”) Paul’s comments exemplify tea party Republicans’ blind hatred for government regulation of dangerous businesses like mining and oil drilling. In August, Paul suggested that mine safety regulations were uncessary because the free market would take care of the problem — “no one will apply” for jobs at dangerous mines, he naively explained. Of course, those comments followed a disaster at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia — which had been cited with thousands of safety violations — where 29 workers were killed in April.
As the new class of GOP lawmakers prepare to assume office, congressional Republicans are increasingly divided over earmarks. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and others are fighting to preserve the practice. On the other hand, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is leading a group of Republicans deeply opposed to earmarks of any kind. Over the weekend DeMint released an updated list of senators standing behind him and his cause. Sen.-elect Mike Lee (R-UT), one of DeMint’s most stalwart lieutenants in his earmark battle, clarified the GOP’s opposition to earmarks, defining them to include any specific grant money authorized by larger legislative items. Referring to the earmarking process, Lee told libertarian radio host Eric Dondero that he is fed up with lawmakers playing “Santa Claus” by doling out money from grant programs in laws like President Obama’s health care reform and economic stimulus package.
However, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), one of DeMint’s supporters, appears to have been playing “Santa Claus” by Lee’s definition, demanding money from the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s health care reform law enacted early this year. Over the summer, Ensign sent a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius requesting grant money authorized by the law for the University of Nevada School of Medicine for “Primary Care Residency Expansion.” This grant program is one of many included in the health law to increase the number of doctors in America. In the letter, Ensign explained that “Nevada continues to have an extremely low number of physicians per capita,” and that the grant would help alleviate the “growing challenges Nevada continues to face with providing access to much-needed health care.”
ThinkProgress obtained a copy of the letter using a Freedom of Information Act request. Below is a screen shot of Ensign’s health reform request letter, and a copy may be downloaded here:
According to HHS, Ensign was successful with his request. The HHS website notes that the agency has awarded $960,000 in health reform money to the University of Nevada for a Primary Care Residency Expansion program.
This is not the first time prominent Republicans have played “Santa Claus” with laws they have opposed. In 2009, Republicans like Ensign smeared Obama’s stimulus as a waste and a failure. However, Ensign (and even DeMint) privately requested stimulus money for their states.
Ensign’s letter to HHS serves as a stark reminder that while Republicans have ludicrously smeared the health reform law with lies and demagoguery, in private they realize its benefits to their constituents. Like every other GOP lawmaker, Ensign voted against the Affordable Care Act and like nearly every other GOP lawmaker, has pledged to repeal the entire law — including the grant program from which he requested money for his own state. Similarly, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has taken credit for Medicare improvements made possible by the Affordable Care Act, even though he too opposed the law. As the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky has reported, Republican governors posturing as staunch opponents of health reform have quietly worked to quickly implement the law.
The GOP seems committed to playing politics with the nation’s health care crisis. The earmark debate, and the attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, are nothing more than political theater designed to distract from the reality that Republicans have proposed no substantial solutions to the nation’s most critical problems. There are tens of thousands of Americans dying because of lack of proper health insurance, and as Ensign’s letter shows, many states are already suffering from a broken, unregulated system of care. But rather than fix any serious problems, Ensign and his cohorts are focused solely on breaking Obama’s agenda so that he is a “a one-term president.”
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the U.S. “must reduce the visibility and intensity of its military operations, especially night raids that fuel anti-American sentiment.” “The time has come to reduce military operations,” said Karzai in an interview with the Washington Post.
Later this week, the U.S. will present NATO allies with a plan that would end the American combat mission in Afghanistan by 2014. The plan, which the New York Times calls “the most concrete vision for transition in Afghanistan” since President Obama took office, calls for the transfer of security duties to the Afghans over the next 18 to 24 months.
President Obama won’t support a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts for top earners, senior White House adviser David Axelrod said yesterday, though he wouldn’t say if the White House would agree to a temporary extension. Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) offered a compromise proposal to let the tax cuts expire for those making more than $1 million.
CEO paychecks continue to rise, despite a sluggish economic recovery. Over the past year, compensation for CEOs of the country’s largest publicly traded companies rose 3 percent to a median of $7.23 million. Meanwhile, compensation for all officers of the 65 biggest companies rose even more, jumping by 13.4 percent.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s $600 billion plan to spark inflation in the U.S. economy “is already showing signs of succeeding.” Despite being maligned by conservatives, the Fed’s “quantitative easing” plan is appears to working in the the market for bond options, which are associated with inflation.
Gov. Rick Perry’s (R-TX) plan to opt out of Medicaid is alarming Texas healthcare providers who say “the potential loss of billions of federal dollars could drastically undercut efforts to provide healthcare for the poor.” The Texas Medical Association said that unless the state comes up with a better plan for Texas’s 3.1 million beneficiaries, the opt out “will ultimately end up backfiring and costing more in the long run.”
The Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc returned to the Iraqi parliament Saturday, two days after walking out on the session that named Iraq’s top three leaders. Garnering the most seats in the elections, the Iraqiya could’ve jeopardized the political deal by walking out but Iraqiya not only returned but agreed to “participate in a government led by Shiite incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.”
The U.S. has offered 20 F-35 fighter planes and various security guarantees to the Israeli government in return for a 90-day extension of its settlement freeze in the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently presenting the proposal to his cabinet.
And finally: Former President Clinton will make a cameo appearance as himself in the movie Hangover II. Clinton was “spotted on the set in Thailand yesterday,” TMZ reports, and, “we’ve now confirmed he did indeed shoot a cameo.”
This week, Cindy McCain caused a stir when she seemingly broke with her husband, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), on the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy when she appeared in an ad calling for repealing the ban on gays serving openly. As the ranking GOP member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. McCain has led Republican opposition to repealing DADT, so his wife’s high-profile call for repeal was noteworthy, especially considering that the Senate may take up the policy during the lame duck session of Congress, which begins tomorrow.
Cindy McCain later walked back her stance, saying she actually supports her husband’s position on DADT, which has for years been that he will “defer to our military commanders.” McCain has always said he will reconsider his stance on DADT “the day that the leadership of the military comes to [me]” and says it should be overturned. Yet, when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates came to McCain in February announcing they were in favor of repealing DADT, McCain invented a new condition — the completion of a study the Pentagon is conducting looking into the repercussions of repealing DADT.
Last month, reports surfaced that the study had found that a majority of American servicemembers would not object to serving alongside openly gay troops. Then this week, sources familiar with the study, which is to be released in December, told the Washington Post that the study had concluded that repealing DADT will not disrupt the military during a time of war. But appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press today, McCain yet again moved the goal posts, deploying his latest stumbling block to repeal. The problem? The study McCain demanded is now not good enough:
MR. GREGORY: That said, seven in 10 members of the military think it would be just fine to have it lifted.
SEN. McCAIN: Yeah. You and I have not seen that study. And this study was directed at how to implement the repeal, not whether the repeal should take place or not. But, very importantly, we have people like the commandant of the Marine Corps, the three other–all four service chiefs are saying we need a thorough and complete study of the effects–not how to implement a repeal, but the effects on morale and battle effectiveness. That’s what I want. And once we get this study, we need to have hearings, and we need to examine it, and we need to look at whether it’s the kind of study that we wanted. It isn’t, in my view, because I wanted a study to determine the effects of the repeal on battle effectiveness and morale. What this study is, is designed to do is, is to find out how the repeal could be implemented. Those are two very different aspects of this issue.
Watch it:
“McCain seems to be saying he wants a do-over because he doesn’t like the findings and recommendations in the Pentagon report going to Secretary Gates,” the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a gay rights legal group which works to end DADT, said in a statement responding to McCain today. “In other words, McCain is telling the Pentagon: Keep working until you produce the outcome I’m looking for.”
Despite what McCain might think, the military has confidence in the quality of its study. Even the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James Amos, to whom McCain refers during the Meet the Press interview, disagrees with McCain on the study. In September, during Amos’ confirmation hearings, McCain tried to get Amos to cast doubt on the study. But Amos rebuffed McCain, saying he was confident in it. And despite the fact that he personally opposes repealing DADT, Amos expressed no reservations about enforcing a new policy, saying, “If this policy is changed. The last thing you’re going to see your Marine Corps do is try to step in and push it aside. That will simply not be the case.”
President Obama has made ratification of the New START nuclear arms treaty with Russia a top priority for the upcoming lame duck session of Congress, saying the treaty is “essential to the country’s national security.” An extension of the original treaty negotiatied by President Ronald Reagan, the START treaty responsibly reduces U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals by one-fourth. It has secured the “unanimous support of America’s military leadership,” thirty former Republican and Democratic national security officials, and almost all of the 67 votes needed for ratification in the Senate.
Despite the overwhelming support, a “tiny fringe” of right-wing “experts” are ginning up myths about the treaty. One such mouthpiece is Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Claiming to be “open-minded” on the treaty, Graham told host Christine Amanpour on ABC’s This Week today that he could not support the treaty “in its current condition” because of “two obstacles” — nuclear modernization and missile defense:
AMANPOUR: Do you believe it will be voted on and ratified in the lame duck session?
GRAHAM: I don’t know, I’m very open-minded about the treaty as Secretary Albright indicated….You’ve got two impediments. Modernization, not only do we need a START treaty but we need to modernize our nuclear force, the weapons left, to make sure they continue to be a deterrent and make sure we can deploy missile defense systems apart from START. So you got two stumbling blocks, the modernization program and how missile defense works apart from the treaty.
AMANPOUR: Would you vote for it?
GRAHAM: In its current condition, no, but [Sen.] Jon Kyl is working with the administration to get better modernization to make sure missile defense is not connected with START. If you could get those two things together, I’d vote for the treaty. I’d rather have a treaty than not have a treaty but modernization, missile defense have to be better dealt with before we get there.
Watch it:
The only problem with Graham’s “stumbling blocks” is that they don’t actually exist. While “security experts” like Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and former Bush administration Ambassador John Bolton insist that Obama is “risking our security” by supposedly not focusing on modernization of America’s nuclear arsenal, the actual rocket scientists of an independent defense advisory panel determined that not only are the weapons completely reliable, but that our current “nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in effectiveness.” To make sure this remains the case, the Obama administration devoted $7 billion to maintain the nuclear-weapons stockpile — $600 million more than Congress approved last year and 10 percent more than what the Bush administration spent.
As for START’s impact on missile defense, Director of the Missile Defense Agency Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly made it clear that the new treaty “has no constraints on current and future components of the Ballistic Missile Defense System,” and that it actually “reduces” several limitations on cost-effective testing. Thus, given Graham’s criteria for support, treaty proponents should expect his vote.
But regardless of the actual facts, Graham and his Republican comrades seem intent on lobbing unfounded myths to obstruct the treaty’s passage. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has made a career on obstruction, certainly is comfortable bucking any cooperation to oppose Obama. But “given the new spotlight on the GOP,” the Wonkroom’s Max Bergmann notes that blocking START “could be a politically dubious stance” since “the treaty is seen as something that is just basic commonsense.” And with two-thirds of Americans supporting ratification of the new START treaty, the by killing the treaty, Senate Republicans will provide clear evidence that they champions the delusional interests of a few over the will and security of the American people.
Back in October, potential House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) chided the financial services industry for donating to Democrats, since the Democratic Congress had passed the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill. “It is hard to believe, he told the crowd, that some in their industry were still giving more to Democrats than Republicans after, he said, Democrats hammered them with over-reaching Wall Street reform legislation,” Politico reported.
The banks responded to the regulatory reform effort by giving heavily to Republicans. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, “Republican candidates received 34 million dollars in donations from the finance, insurance and real estate sector since January compared to 23 million dollars given to Democrats.” And now the banking industry is expecting to get what it paid for:
“We had been disappointed with a number of legislative outcomes with the past Congress, and so we look forward to better outcomes with this Congress,” said Peter Garuccio, a spokesman for the American Bankers Association in Washington. Garuccio said banks expect a corrections bill to peel back some of the financial regulations passed into law this year.
The American Bankers Association — which is the banking industry’s largest trade group — lobbied heavily on the Dodd-Frank law, claiming that consumers were happy with the predatory practices and exorbitant fees that banks charged for services.
House Republicans have their eye on numerous changes to the Dodd-Frank law, including weakening the Volcker Rule (which prevents banks from engaging in risky trading with taxpayer dollars) and subjecting the independent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to the annual appropriations process. Bachus himself has also suggested watering down the law’s provisions reforming the derivatives market.
Of course, working with hordes of lobbyists from the financial services industry is nothing new for House Republicans. Last December, incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) huddled with more than 100 bank lobbyists to brainstorm ways of defeating financial reform entirely.
Boehner also urged the American Bankers Association — the same organization that is now crafting its wish-list for the GOP-led House — to fight regulatory reform tooth and nail. “Don’t let those little punk [Congressional] staffers take advantage of you and stand up for yourselves,” Boehner told the ABA.
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
Yesterday, members of the Neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement gathered in front of the Sandra Day O’Connor Federal Court Building in Phoenix, AZ to protest a federal judge’s decision to block several provisions of the state’s controversial immigration law, SB-1070. Pollice had to interfere with tear gas and pepper spray when a group of counter-protesters clashed with the neo-Nazi march. Watch ABC15′s coverage:
Yesterday’s march is yet another example of the increasing participation of white supremacist groups in the SB-1070 immigration debate. This past summer, the East Valley Tribune reported that that “[w]hite supremacist activity is on the rise in Arizona.” Bill Straus of the Anti-Defamation League said of SB-1070, “It does seem like the distance between what most of us would consider the extreme fringes of political thought and the mainstream of political thought, it seems like that distance has shrunk.”
It’s not surprising that SB-1070 has attracted extremism. The lawyers who are credited with authoring it are employed by an organization that has reportedly accepted $1.2 million in donations from the Pioneer Fund, “a foundation established to promote the genes of white colonials.” The law’s sponsor, state Rep. Russell Pearce (R-AZ), has faced criticism in the past for cozying up to local neo-Nazis. He even endorsed one of “Arizona’s leading neo-Nazis,” J.T. Ready, when the he ran for City Council in the spring of 2006.
Meanwhile, a recent poll revealed that many Arizonans think the immigration debate has “exposed a deeper sense of racism in our community.”
FreedomWorks is a pay-to-play corporate front group that has historically served as a service for corporate lobbyists to generate “grassroots” support for narrow special interest legislation. Dick Armey, after taking over the group, routinely used FreedomWorks to serve his corporate clients at his lobbying firm, DLA Piper. As the Washington Post noted, after ThinkProgress highlighted Armey’s use of FreedomWorks “organizing” to his own benefit, he resigned from DLA Piper. However, other corporate lobbyists, like Gray & Schmitz chief lobbyist C. Boyden Gray and Venable lobbyist James Burnley continue to oversee FreedomWorks (and continue to lobby for right-wing corporate interests). In the last two years, FreedomWorks has become known for its key role in organizing Tea Party opposition to President Obama and to reforms designed to help reign in corporate abuses.
On Thursday and Friday, FreedomWorks hosted a retreat for freshmen Republican lawmakers. Sen.-elect Mike Lee (R-UT), according to the New York Times, recalled almost breaking out in tears over the vast resources FreedomWorks dedicated to helping him get elected. However, the retreat occurred amidst new reports claiming that Republican insiders and GOP operatives are using events during the upcoming lame duck session of Congress to co-opt new “Tea Party” lawmakers.
ThinkProgress traveled to Baltimore for the retreat, and asked Lee if he was worried about the appearance of attending a retreat run by a former lobbyist for banking other corporate interests:
TP: I know Tea Party groups have actually raised concerns about a lot of quote unquote insider trainings and conferences during this break period. Are you worried that some of this freshmen class are going to be co-opted by lobbyists? I know Dick Armey used to lobby for AIG and some of the big banks and some of the pharmaceutical companies. Are you worried about some of the lobbyists co-opting the Tea Party movement?
LEE: Not at all. To the supporters of the Tea Party movement, and to its antagonists, I have one thing to say: Watch what’s next.
Watch it:
In addition to Lee, other GOP freshmen, including Reps. Todd Young (R-IN), Renee Ellmers (R-NC), Tim Scott (R-SC), Reid Ribble (R-WI), Steve Pearce (R-NM), and Andy Harris (R-MD), attended the event. Shortly after the retreat, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Lee appointed one of “Utah’s most prominent lobbyists” to be his chief of staff.
Armey, who presided over the event in Baltimore, has personally lobbied for multinational alcohol company Diego, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Medicines Co, Raytheon, Carmax, and many other corporations. Although Armey and his “Tea Party” cohorts have assailed President Obama’s economic stimulus, which helped create 3 million jobs for the middle class, as wasteful taxpayer “bailouts,” his lobbying firm helped engineer the bank bailouts of 2008. As the Wonk Room reported, while Armey worked for DLA Piper, the firm assisted AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch during President Bush’s bank bailouts.
FreedomWorks is not a genuine grassroots group serving the public interest. Even the conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal has exposed Armey building “amateur-looking” websites — under the FreedomWorks brand — to promote Armey’s corporate clients.
In a interview with the Dallas Morning News published yesterday, former President Bush touted his authorization of waterboarding as a key accomplishment to “leav[ing] behind a firmer foundation for my successors.” “[W]e passed laws that Congress endorsed and embraced, like the Terrorist Surveillance Program, military tribunals and enhanced interrogation techniques. The enhanced interrogation techniques are available to presidents if they so choose to use them.” Bush’s comments come on the heels of the revelation, published in his memoir released this week, that he personally authorized the waterboarding of 9/11 suspects.
Bush has adamantly defended his use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” over the years, saying the practices saved lives, were completely legal, and were not torture — but many rightly disagree. On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union “joined a growing chorus in the human rights community calling for a special prosecutor to investigate” Bush’s use of waterboading to determine whether his administration “violated federal statutes prohibiting torture.” “[T]he former President’s acknowledgment that he authorized torture is absolutely without parallel in American history,” the ACLU wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.
And yesterday, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez — who was himself tortured by the Argentinean junta in the 1970s — firmly stated that waterboarding is torture — “immoral and illegal.” In a radio interview with Mark Colvin of ABC News in Australia, Mendez said the legal memos authorizing waterboaring that Bush “hides behind” were “completely flawed,” and that there isn’t “any question” under international law that what Bush authorized was torture:
JUAN MENDEZ: Mr Bush hides behind the fact that he is not a lawyer and he has this folksy you know kind of cute way of saying, well the lawyers told me it was legal, as if he didn’t know that it’s immoral. You know? Immoral and illegal. I mean he can’t really hide behind his lawyers.
I mean he was very hypocritical of him to say something like that. I mean it’s been so clearly established that those memos were, they don’t even deserve the name of legal memos because they are completely flawed from the legal reasoning. But even worse they are morally flawed as well.
MARK COLVIN: There’s no question that in international law waterboarding is torture?
JUAN MENDEZ: I don’t think there is any question, any serious question. I mean it’s a question of severity. If you think that waterboarding is not severe mistreatment you don’t really know what waterboarding is. … I mean if you then redefine upwards the severity standard to say that it’s only severe if it’s organ failure or death, then you know you’re really very clearly distorting the sense of the words and you know words have to be interpreted in treaty language, they have to be interpreted in their plain meaning and their plain meaning couldn’t be more clear in the case of waterboarding.
Listen here:
This not the first time that someone with Mendez’ job has called out Bush’s use of torture. Former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Manfred Nowak, agreed that waterboarding is torture. He even warned the Obama administration that it may be violating international law by failing to adequately investigate the Bush administration on the matter. As a party to the UN Convention Against Torture, the U.S. is obligated to investigate and prosecute U.S. citizens that are believed to have engaged in torture, he noted.
On Wednesday, the co-chairs of President Obama’s debt reduction commission released their report outlining their recommendations to reduce the budget deficit. While many of the recommendations were met with criticism from leading progressives — like raising the Social Security retirement age — the commission also had some positive proposals, like recommending nearly $100 billion in cuts to the defense budget.
Yesterday, Rep. Howard McKeon (R-CA), the likely incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, responded to the proposed defense cuts in an interview with Bloomberg News. McKeon told Bloomberg that he is opposed to “cutting defense in the midst of two wars” and that he thinks the Department of Defense is not “in a position to absorb cuts“:
Representative Howard McKeon, a California Republican who is likely the next chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he opposes “cutting defense in the midst of two wars.”
“The commission mistakenly assumes that years of war funding have put the Department of Defense in a position to absorb cuts; this is simply not the case,” he said. “The department faces a train wreck in procurement and maintenance accounts.”
McKeon is wrong on the merits of his case. Defense spending has accounted for 65 percent of the discretionary spending increase since 2001, making it a major factor in the growth of the U.S. budget deficit. Without even accounting for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the defense budget for FY2010 is a whopping $533.8 billion, larger than the 2008 GDP of 116 countries. It is a very difficult to argue that the Department of Defense is not in a “position to absorb cuts.”
But McKeon has other reasons to oppose cuts in defense spending. Defense contractors are the most generous contributors to his election campaigns. Using data from the Federal Election Commission, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (CPR) notes that he received at least $274,200 from the defense industry during the 2010 election cycle, the bulk of it from Political Action Committees — which are explicitly designed to influence members of Congress. CPR has illustrated this through a campaign spending graph:
Here is a short list of some of the defense contractor PACs who funded McKeon’s 2010 re-election campaign, compiled using CPR data:
- Aerojet & GenCorp Inc: The California-based conglomerate is a major armaments producer. Its PAC donated $10,000 to back McKeon’s re-election.
- BAE Systems: BAE Systems is the world’s second largest defense company. Its PAC donated $10,000 to McKeon’s 2010 campaign.
- Boeing: Boeing’s Defense, Space, and Security division is an industry leader in producing defense equipment. The company’s PAC also donated $10,000 to McKeon during the last election cycle.
- General Dynamics: General Dynamics is a “market leader” in producing combat vehicles, munitions, and systems. Its PAC gave $5,000 to McKeon over the last election cycle.
- General Electric: General Electric is a leader in producing nuclear weapons technology. Its PAC gave $5,000 to McKeon for the last cycle.
- Lockheed Martin: Lockheed Martin, the defense giant which was formed in the 1990s merger between Lockheed and Martin Marietta, boasts that they “never forget who we’re working for.” They apparently want the same promise from McKeon, donating $10,000 to him for his most recent campaign.
- Raytheon: Raytheon, a defense tech company that boasted $25 billion in sales worldwide in 2009, donated $6,000 through its PAC to McKeon’s campaign committe for the last election.
This money is just a small snippet of the funding McKeon received from the defense industry. For example, if donations from industry employees are included, the congressman has recieved over the “past two election cycles…$40,000 from General Atomics, $34,000 from Lockheed Martin, and $32,500 from Northrop Grumman.”
But even beyond the donations he has received, McKeon has gone above and beyond to court the favor of the defense industry. He is one of the co-founders of the Congressional Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Caucus, “which is interested in…[an] aircraft Northrop Grumman manufactures in his district.” Meanwhile, his former legislative assistant Hanz Heinrichs has “lobbied on behalf of Alcoa, Boeing, and Ashbury International Group.”
On Wednesday night, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) successfully claimed the chairmanship of the House Republican Conference after his challenger, tea party favorite Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), dropped out of the running. But just hours after his big win, Hensarling, ran into this familiar buzz saw for Republican deficit frauds when on CNN’s Parker/Spitzer he was completely unable to name any significant spending cuts he wants to enact.
Host Elliott Spitzer astutely laid out the hollowness of Hensarling’s proposal to cut $900 billion dollars of annual government spending through a Constitutional amendment by noting that Hensarling’s plans leaves massive portions of the federal budget untouched, making it almost impossible to find nearly a trillion dollars in savings. Hensarling tried to fight back, but offered only feeble talking points and assertions that he didn’t understand Spitzer’s math, prompting Spitzer to remind Hensarling, “Sir, you have a degree in economics.”
Hensarling only ran into more trouble when he spoke of a different plan he has endorsed — Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Roadmap for America’s Future. While proudly saying he has endorsed the Roadmap, Hensarling claims the plan would not “cut one penny” from Social Security or Medicare:
SPITZER: I want to go through category by category so the public can understand where we are. $2.3 trillion of this $3.8 trillion is in couple of areas, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt and defense spending, right? We can agree on that, I presume, right? That’s straight out of the federal budget. Now, are you willing to cut Social Security 25 percent this year?
HENSARLING: Oh, absolutely not. And again, Eliot, you know that you don’t have to cut one penny out of these programs. What you do have to do is ensure they don’t grow faster than the economy’s ability to pay for them. We can’t have Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid grow at 5, 6 and 7 percent and the economy grow at 1.5 percent. … You have to bend the growth curve so they don’t grow as fast. I have co-sponsored Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future.” Not one penny of these programs is cut.
Watch it:
Hensarling — who does indeed have an economics degree from Texas A & M University — is either gravely misinformed about the plan he is endorsing, or willingly misleading the American people. As the Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo noted, “the Roadmap is an explicit attempt to balance the federal budget via severe cuts to Medicare and Social Security.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains, the “Ryan plan proposes large cuts in Social Security benefits — roughly 16 percent for the average new retiree in 2050 and 28 percent in 2080 from price indexing alone.” Meanwhile, “By 2080, Medicare would be cut 76 percent below its projected size under current policies.”
And after all that, Ryan’s Roadmap still won’t balance the budget. As the New York Times’ Paul Krugman noted, “the Ryan plan would reduce revenue by almost $4 trillion over the next decade. If you add these revenue losses to the numbers The Post cites, you get a much larger deficit in 2020, roughly $1.3 trillion.”
Today on his radio show, right-wing host Mike Gallagher spoke with Fox News’ Chris Wallace to promote this weekend’s edition of Fox News Sunday — however, the topic of discussion quickly veered off course. Gallagher told Wallace that he sometimes gets lonely and that he’s an “emotional guy” who sometimes cries “at the drop of a hat.” Wallace shot back, saying that he never cries. “I’m a man,” Wallace said. Gallagher then wondered how Wallace’s wife puts up with him. “Maybe the secret is I know how to satisfy a woman. Has that ever occurred to you?” Wallace said. “What is wrong with you?” asked Gallagher. Later in the interview, Wallace then joked that in order to cure his loneliness, Gallagher should be “a man” and hire an escort or go to a strip club:
WALLACE: Why are you lonely in New York? Don’t you see those numbers on the tops of cabs and things? Call them up! You’re a single guy you got nothing to lose.
GALLAGHER: What does that mean? So I get in a cab and I’m not lonely anymore and then I’m driving around New York in a cab!
WALLACE: On the top of the cabs they have advertisements for like gentlemen’s clubs and escort services.
GALLAGHER: I’m not going to a gentleman’s club. Are you crazy? I would not walk into one of those sordid…
WALLACE: Because you’re not a man!
GALLAGHER: I’m a moral man. … I do not darken the doors of gentlemen’s club. I have standards. I’m a moral guy in an immoral society pal.
Media Matters has the clip:
In the war on Democrats this year, Republicans united behind the pitch for a universal “spending freeze” and “across the board” budget cuts in their promise to reign in the deficit. Falling in line, Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey (GA) assured Americans that he is “committed to finding ways to reduce” government programs that are “bloated” and “riddled with waste.” “With each new appropriations bill Congress considers, I have to ask myself, ‘Is this a good way to spend tax payer dollars,’” he says.
Given his rhetoric, it would be reasonable to assume that Gingrey also opposes unnecessary defense spending. The F-22 stealth fighter jet, for example, is a weapon designed to address threats last faced during the Cold War. It “has not performed a single mission” in Iraq or Afghanistan, and comes with a $120 million price tag per plane. Coupled with the $8 billion it would cost the Pentagon to upgrade the 100 F-22s already in use, the F-22 landed on Defense Secretary Gates’s chopping block last year. After consulting with other Defense officials, Gates concluded, “there is no military requirement” for creating more F-22s.
Yet despite that, and the overwhelming bipartisan agreement that the plane qualifies as taxpayer waste, and in spite of own his commitment to cutting spending, Gingrey now thinks he knows better than the Pentagon and is calling for resuming production of more F-22s. Not only is Gingrey willing to waste taxpayer dollars on an unnecessary and unwanted weapon, he’s willing to fight his own party to do it, because the planes are built in his state:
“The takeover of the U.S. House by Republicans could prompt a revival of the fight for additional funding for the Marietta-built F-22 stealth fighter, U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey said Friday. This isn’t just for the sake of home-cooking, but also for the sake of the country,” Gingrey said in a telephone interview.
But Gingrey conceded that concerns over spending and the federal deficit could make the funding battle a difficult one. The planes have a price tag of $120 million each. “We would have to look at it with a very, very sharp pencil,” he said. “It would take some negotiating.”[...]
Gringrey says he has not consulted yet with Chambliss on the issue of reviving the F-22. Right now, Gingrey said, he and the rest of the Georgia delegation were focusing their efforts on getting Republican Austin Scott of Tifton, who beat Democrat Jim Marshall of Macon, a seat on the House Armed Services Committee.
Scott, as the only Georgia Republican on the committee, would become the point man for any discussion of the F-22, Gingrey said.
Gingrey’s soft-spot for this boondoggle may have to do with the fact that he owns tens of thousands of dollars worth of stock in Boeing — Lockheed Martin’s partner in building the F-22. And if he hopes to slip funding for the fighter into this year’s defense authorization bill, he’s making a shrewd move in recruiting Scott for the House Armed Services Committee. Scott represents Georgia’s 8th District, which “has a strong military presence and includes the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, a testing and repair site for the F-22 Raptor.”
But Gingrey is not alone in falling out of step with the GOP’s posturing on spending cuts. Along with the current battle over earmarks, there is an internal “civil war” between “hard-core deficit hawks” like Senators-elect Pat Toomey (R-PA), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mark Kirk (R-IL), and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) who want to cut military spending, and members like Gingrey and Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) “who view military spending as sacrosanct.” Even GOP leadership seems to be sacrificing the principle for pet projects. Both presumptive-House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and former GOP House Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN) are also ignoring Gates’s advice to cut the “costly and unnecessary” extra engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in the name of “parochial interests.”
Earlier this week, Rep. Michele Bachmann announced her new Tea Party Caucus would host classes on the Constitution for Members of Congress taught by leading right-wingers. Yet, while Bachmann initially floated Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas as possible faculty, she now appears to be setting her sights a whole lot lower:
If tea party darling Michele Bachmann gets her way, conservative broadcaster Sean Hannity, Fox legal analyst Andrew Napolitano and David Barton, a Christian evangelist who has said church-state separation is “a myth,” will make up the faculty roster when the first classes of her new constitutional conservative caucus convene in the next Congress. . . .
“Professor Barton” is a regular lecturer at [Glenn] Beck’s “university.” He has a bachelor’s degree in Christian education from Oral Roberts University and is best known for his conservative group WallBuilders, which teaches that America was founded as a Christian nation.
“Scholars such as David Barton, members of the media who cherish [the founding] principles such as Sean Hannity, honorable commentators such as Judge Napolitano, honorable judges and justices, and leading legal minds will and have been invited to speak,” Brooke Bialke, Bachmann’s deputy chief of staff, said in an e-mail. “Topics ranging from the commerce clause to the intersection of constitutional principles with daily concerns such as Medicare will be covered.”
Of the three “scholars” named, only Napolitano, a former New Jersey judge who hosts “Freedom Watch” on Fox Business News, is a lawyer. Hannity is a college dropout.
Bachmann’s endorsement of Sean Hannity as a constitutional scholar is self-evidently ridiculous, but the sad truth is that Hannity may be the least radical of Bachmann’s three proposed instructors.
Napolitano is Fox News’ in house tenther, and he is a radical even by the tenther movement’s standards. Among other things, Napolitano believes that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a “swindler” who created an unconstitutional program called Social Security. He also believes that the United States Census is unconstitutional, and he even once claimed that “the 17th Amendment is the only part of the Constitution that is unconstitutional.”
Barton is an even bigger crank. Although Barton is best known as one of the right-wing “experts” behind the effort to replace Texas’ textbook standards with conservative propaganda, he is also a leading proponent of tentherism who once claimed that the entire federal highway system is unconstitutional. Barton called for states to place more “controls” on the press. He supported an Iowa gubernatorial candidate who promised to defy the Iowa Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision. And he once advised preachers to violate their tax exempt status, falsely claiming that the Constitution would protect them if they did so.
So it’s clear that Bachmann has no interest whatsoever in teaching lawmakers about what’s actually in the Constitution. Napolitano and Barton are firm believers in the notion that the Constitution means whatever they want it to mean, but they clearly have no genuine expertise on the document. It’s unclear if Bachmann will be able to follow through on her plan, now that she has lost her bid for a spot on the GOP leadership.
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