Flashback: George Washington in 1790 — The U.S. government ‘gives to bigotry no sanction.’
Flashback: George Washington in 1790 — The U.S. government ‘gives to bigotry no sanction.’
In 1790, President George Washington wrote a letter to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island, affirming the values of tolerance and religious freedom that he saw as the bedrock of the country that he had had helped found, and done so much to secure. “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy,” Washington wrote, “a policy worthy of imitation.” He continued:
All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens. [...]
May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.
The debate over the Ground Zero Mosque is, in fact, a debate over American values. Newt Gingrich has been trying to claim that the construction of the mosque is “explicitly at odds with core American and Western values,” while Mayor Bloomberg correctly noted yesterday that “we would betray our values if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else.” If the conservatives who have been attacking the mosque think that George Washington was wrong about American tolerance and religious freedom, let them say so explicitly.
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Rep. Steve King: Democrats Are Like Pontius Pilate
Rep. Steve King: Democrats Are Like Pontius Pilate
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is no stranger to hyperbole. In the past, King has accused President Obama of having “a default mechanism in him” that “favors the black person,” said that Rep. Raúl Grijalva’s (D-AZ) district may have been “ceded…to Mexico,” and described immigration as a “slow-motion Holocaust.”
Today, King outdid himself in an op-ed entitled “The American Left Finds Religion!” In it, King argued that, because of Democrats’ support for comprehensive immigration reform, they are like Pontius Pilate — the ancient Roman official who sentenced Jesus to be crucified:
For instance, do the Democrats really relish the idea of being cast as Pontius Pilate? In seeking to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants at a time when unemployment rates are already unacceptably high, can’t the Democrats be said to be “washing their hands” of the negative consequences their economic policies have wrought? I think so.
King contended that if Democratic policies been enacted in ancient Egypt, they would have prevented the Israelites from escaping slavery under the Pharaoh and instead kept Moses and his people “in Egypt in order to build Pharaoh’s temples at below market wages”:
Can you imagine what the Democrats at this hearing would have done had they gotten around to analyzing the Exodus story? Moses would have gone from demanding that Pharaoh free Moses’ people so that they could return to the Promised Land, to demanding that Pharaoh grant a “path to citizenship” that would continue to allow Moses’ people to stay in Egypt in order to build Pharaoh’s temples at below market wages.
King’s comments are particularly rich, given that 86 percent of Americans favor a comprehensive immigration policy with a pathway to citizenship, including 86 percent of mainline Protestants, 89 percent of white Evangelicals, and 92 percent of Catholics.
Religious figures and groups — including the National Association of Evangelicals, Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and the United States Catholic Bishops Conference — are also uniting behind the push for comprehensive immigration reform. Just yesterday, Rev. Rich Nathan, of Columbus, Ohio’s Vineyard Church, stated in a press conference that immigration reform is “about the only public policy issue upon which there is great unanimity across the Christian spectrum. Abortion divides us, gay rights divide us, war and peace divides us — comprehensive immigration reform unites us.” Steve King wants to ensure, however, that comprehensive immigration is politically polarizing issue.
Coburn And McCain Troubled By Stimulus Debt, Which Is 488 Times Smaller Than Debt Impact Of Bush Tax Cuts
Coburn And McCain Troubled By Stimulus Debt, Which Is 488 Times Smaller Than Debt Impact Of Bush Tax Cuts
Yesterday, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) released a report that highlights 100 supposedly “questionable stimulus projects that are wasteful, mismanaged, and overall unsuccessful in creating jobs.” “The only thing getting a boost is our national debt,” the report complains. The “American people have awakened to the incompetency of Washington,” said Coburn. “The rest of the federal government is filled with stuff just like this.”
Coburn went on Fox News today to promote the report and criticized White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ claim yesterday that the report is not credible:
COBURN: Mr. Gibbs knows I don’t mess around when it comes to stealing money from our kids and grandkids. And if he wants to defend this kind of stuff — this isn’t political. It’s too serious to be political no guys. We’re $13.4 trillion in debt and growing and this is the kind of waste that people are sick and tired of.
Watch it:
If Coburn doesn’t “mess around” with “stealing money” from the American youth, then why are he and McCain fierce advocates for extending President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy? The ten-year cost of extending those tax cuts amounts to $830 billion. But how much of this alleged “wasteful” stimulus spending are the senators now concerned about? A mere $1.7 billion:
Moreover, CNN noted that “the report’s use of selected information from hundreds of footnoted sources left it unclear if the brief summaries of each project told the whole story.” For example, the report attacked a grant to replace windows at a vacant Forest Service visitors’ center in Washington, claiming there are “no current plans to use the empty space.” However, as CNN noted, the Forest Service said it “is now reviewing several proposals for how the facility could be used in the future through a variety of public-private partnerships, including a science facility, education camp, or an overnight lodge.”
But maybe Coburn is more concerned about the $1.7 billion in alleged “wasteful” stimulus spending as opposed to $830 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy because the believes the tax cuts are free.
Virginia GOP Candidates Agree To Closed-Door, No-Media-Allowed Meeting With Tea Partiers
Virginia GOP Candidates Agree To Closed-Door, No-Media-Allowed Meeting With Tea Partiers
On Monday, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) went on MSNBC and hit Democrats for going into “hiding” this summer, implying that they weren’t planning to peak with their constituents during the August recess:
CANTOR: [Y]ou look at the difference now of what we’re about as Republicans and what Democrats are about the course of this August recess. I would venture to say that Democrats have gone into hiding, whereas John Boehner and I and the rest of our conference are out there, taking our message to the people, talking about the specific things that they can expect if we’re a majority. And we’re frankly shocked — we’re listening to people, and I think the Democrats have demonstrated they’re unwilling to do that, and their agenda reflects that.
Today, however, two Virginia newspapers have editorials criticizing two GOP congressional candidates for banning the media from their closed-door events with Tea Party activists. Both state Sen. Robert Hurt (running for Virginia’s 5th district) and incumbent Rep. Bob Goodlatte (Virginia’s 6th district) have agreed to speak to the Lynchburg Tea Party’s Aug. 5 meeting, even though the media will be shut out. Tea Party Chairman Mark Lloyd said that the members wanted to have a “one-on-one type of setting without the lights and microphones” and claimed that at a May meeting — where there were two tv stations and a newspaper reporter — “nobody could see anything because of the cameras and all that.”
Today, two local papers have taken the two men to task for this arrangement. From the News & Advance:
Both [Goodlatte and Hurt] are public servants and both are running for public positions that deserve public scrutiny. Yet, neither candidate objected to excluding the media from the meeting.
What exactly is the tea party’s problem with allowing the media to sit in on the proceedings at the Monte Carlo restaurant? Are there some secrets that Hurt and Goodlatte want to share with the members — or that the members want to share with the Republican candidates? Who knows? [...]
Democracy gets a little messy at times, especially the way it’s conducted in the United States. The media often take seriously their responsibility to report to the public what public officials are saying and doing. And those cameras and lights do create distractions on occasion. Anyone who has attended a presidential campaign event knows all about that.
But do those distractions mean the public should be excluded from proceedings on the campaign trail? Certainly not. It is one of the ways the public learns about where the candidates stand on the various issues that surround the current campaigns for Congress.
By excluding the media from Thursday’s meeting, the Lynchburg Tea Party is serving only itself. But maybe that’s what this third party political movement is all about.
The Danville Register & Bee contrasts what Goodlatte and Hurt are doing with Rep. Tom Periello (R-VA), who “held town hall meetings in every city and county in the Fifth District last year and will do the same again this year. Perriello has no fear of meeting with people who disagree with him and having his answers recorded. Even people who strongly disagree with his votes give Perriello high marks for standing up and taking the heat.”
Ironically, Goodlatte has also stressed that he would like to make Congress more transparent, and earlier this year, he criticized Democrats for not letting the media (C-SPAN) cover the health care negotiations. Hurt’s campaign posted a letter to the editor to its website that praised the state senator for his “transparent voting record.”
California Judge: Prop. 8 Is Unconstitutional, Has No ‘Rational Basis’ For Singling Out Same-Sex Couples
California Judge: Prop. 8 Is Unconstitutional, Has No ‘Rational Basis’ For Singling Out Same-Sex Couples
U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker
Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite- sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.
Last night, anticipating Judge Walker’s decision, lawyers for the Proposition 8 defense team asked Walker to “for a stay of his ruling if the outcome is to declare the law unconstitutional.” Walker issued an emergency stay of the judgment and will decide later if an indefinite stay is in order.
The ruling is now expected to be appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and then up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
GOP.com lists passage of the 14th amendment as a major Republican ‘accomplishment.’
GOP.com lists passage of the 14th amendment as a major Republican ‘accomplishment.’
Each day, more and more high-profile Republicans are speaking out in support of repealing part of 14th amendment to prevent anyone who is born in the U.S. from automatically becoming a U.S. citizen. Sens. Lindsey Graham (SC), Jon Kyl (AZ), John McCain (AZ), Mitch McConnell (KY), Chuck Grassley (IA) and Jeff Sessions (AL) have all said they back hearings on the issue. However, Media Matters’ Jamison Foser noticed that on GOP.com, the website of the Republican National Committee, the Party brags about the passage of the 14th amendment in its “accomplishments” section:
Keyes Hits Graham For Politicizing The 14th Amendment: This ‘Is Not Something That One Should Play With Lightly’
Keyes Hits Graham For Politicizing The 14th Amendment: This ‘Is Not Something That One Should Play With Lightly’
In recent days, several leading Republicans have launched a movement to review or revoke parts of the 14th amendment, which guarantees birthright citizenship. While revoking the 14th Amendment has long been a right-wing fringe favorite, conservatives’ current obsession with undocumented immigration has pushed the issue into the mainstream, with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John McCain (R-AZ), and even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), among others, endorsing a review of the amendment.
Today, at a Tea Party Express gathering of African-American conservative leaders in Washington, ThinkProgress asked for their thoughts on the matter, considering the fact that the 14th Amendment was enacted after the Civil War to extend constitutional rights to African-Americans. Perennial GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes responded by warning that “the 14th Amendment is not something one should play with lightly,” before singling out Graham for speaking “carelessly” on the topic:
KEYES: The 14th Amendment is not something that one should play with lightly. I noticed, finally, that Linsey Graham, used the term — as people have carelessly done over the years — referring to the 14th Amendment as something that has to do with birthright citizenship, and that we should get rid of birthright citizenship. Now let me see, if birthright citizenship is not a birthright, then it must be a grant of the government. And if it is a grant of the government, then it could be curtailed in all the ways that fascists and totalitarians always want to.
I think we ought to be real careful before we adopt a view we want to say that citizenship is not a reflection of our unalienable rights. It is not a grant of government, but arises from a set of actual conditions, starting with the rule of God, that constrain government to respect the rights of the people, and therefore the rights that involve the claim of citizenship. Those are really deep, serious issues, and when the amendment was written, and when it was first referred to in the Slaughterhouse cases, the Supreme Court declared that they knew they were touching on something that was absolutely fundamental. And I think before we play games with it in any way, we need to remember that ourselves.
Watch it:
Keyes is a far-right conservative — a birther who has called President Obama “a radical communist” who “is going to destroy this country” — yet he is calling out the Senate Republican leadership for taking things too far. In Keyes’ view — which he explains on his website — taking away birthright citizenship could actually help a tyrannical government take away rights, “the way that fascists and totalitarians always want to.”
Even notorious immigration hawk Lou Dobbs disagrees with Graham and McConnell on this issue, telling Fox News recently, “If you are going to insist on the rule of law and order — and I do — I have to insist that we recognize those anchor babies as citizens of this country.”
38 Senate Republicans vote to filibuster a deficit-reducing jobs bill.
38 Senate Republicans vote to filibuster a deficit-reducing jobs bill.
Today, the Senate invoked cloture on a bill that provides states with $26 billion in funding for Medicaid and to prevent mass layoffs of teachers. These two streams of funding have been added to — and then cut from — bill after bill, because conservatives objected to their cost. Initially, the bill that was voted on today added $5 billion to the deficit, but it was tweaked to include larger spending offsets. And according to the Congressional Budget Office, it now decreases the deficit by $1.3 billion over ten years through cuts to food stamps and closing corporate tax loopholes. Two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — voted to invoke cloture and end the ongoing filibuster. The rest of the Republican caucus, however, voted no. That’s 38 Republican senators who voted against a deficit reducing jobs bill. (Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) didn’t vote.) The Wonk Room explains how this vote clearly puts the lie to the notion that Republicans really want small spending measures to pass, but only if they’re “paid for.”
GOP Candidate Declared ‘Outside The Republican Mainstream’ For Refusing To Sign Anti-Tax Pledge
GOP Candidate Declared ‘Outside The Republican Mainstream’ For Refusing To Sign Anti-Tax Pledge
One of the most influential special interest groups on the right is Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), which advocates for lower taxes and downsizing the government. ATR’s “flagship project” is the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” which conservative candidates for legislative office use to promise to never, under any circumstances, support any sort of tax increase. ATR brags that more than 1,100 officeholders have signed the pledge, in addition to countless candidates for public office.
Yet in the Republican primary runoff in the race to replace the Rep. John Linder (R-GA), who announced his retirement earlier this year, the front-runner Rob Woodall has refused to sign the ATR pledge. In his refusal to sign on, Woodall explained that if he signed the pledge, his “ability to eliminate destructive and wasteful tax policy is…hindered.” He cited a “dumb” 2009 “$6,500 golf cart tax credit” that was paid for by “borrowed the dollars from China and Japan.”
Woodall’s willingness to challenge ATR’s far-right anti-tax orthodoxy to challenge poor tax policy like the golf cart tax credit set off Norquist. In an angry statement, ATR’s founder yesterday accused Woodall of being “outside the Republican mainstream” and aligning himself to “political left of 95% of the Republicans in the U.S. House, and 4 of its Democrats”:
On August 10th, Taxpayer Protection Pledge signer Jody Hice faces Rob Woodall in a run off for the Republican nomination in Georgia’s 7th Congressional District. Woodall recently refused to sign the Pledge leaving the door wide-open to tax hikes. His decision puts him outside the Republican mainstream in the U.S. House as over 95% of Republicans have signed the Pledge. [...]
Republican candidate Rob Woodall (GA-07) has refused to sign the Taxpayer Protection Pledge sponsored by Americans for Tax Reform. The Pledge, signed by 95% of House Republicans, commits signers to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses…and oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.” In refusing to sign, Woodall aligns himself to the political left of 95% of the Republicans in the U.S. House, and 4 of its Democrats.
It is important to note that Woodall is far from progressive. He wants to eliminate the national income tax and replace it with a sales tax, backs revoking birthright citizenship, and is strongly committed to expanding gun rights. He even proudly co-authored a book with hate radio host Neal Boortz.
Yet in a Republican Party beholden to far-right ideology and special interest groups like ATR, it appears that power brokers in the Republican Party no longer tolerate dissent. For his part, Woodall has pushed back against this extremism. When his opponent Jody Hice, who has signed ATR’s pledge, started campaigning with billboards comparing Obama to a Soviet leader, Woodall condemned the billboard and explained, “I think that’s going to hurt him, in terms of being taken seriously in the halls of Congress.”
Pawlenty: MN should consider ‘helpful’ English-only law to address ‘diversity of languages in the country.’
Pawlenty: MN should consider ‘helpful’ English-only law to address ‘diversity of languages in the country.’
Inspired by national anti-immigrant advocates, a small Minnesota town last week banned the use of languages besides English in its official business. At a press conference yesterday, Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty (R) expressed support for considering a similar “English-only” bill on a statewide level, saying such a law “may be helpful” since “we have more diversity of languages in this country”:
Similar bills have been introduced at the Capitol. Pawlenty said it may be a good idea.
“As we have more diversity of languages in the country and there may be some question about how are official documents going to be created … I think it may be helpful to make it clear that that will be English,” he said.
Dozens of states have measures on the books designating English as the official language.
The state’s legislature won’t convene again until after Pawlenty leaves office, so while he wouldn’t be able to sign any English-only measure into law, gubernatorial candidate and state representative Tom Emmer (R) has previously “said he supports making English the state’s official language.” A professor and immigration expert quoted in the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s story on Pawlenty’s comment explained her concern “that with English-only legislation, the state wouldn’t print emergency information, which could create dangerous or even life-threatening situations.” Pawlenty, now a budding presidential candidate, has a habit of trying to look “tough” on immigration issues during election years, such as in 2008 when he hoped to be the GOP’s nominee for vice president and in 2006 when he ran for re-election.
After being called out for adding a white nationalist tweet to his favorites, Beck deletes his entire list.
After being called out for adding a white nationalist tweet to his favorites, Beck deletes his entire list.
The site StopBeck.com noticed that, recently, Fox News host Glenn Beck added a tweet by @MalevoFreedom to his list of favorites on Twitter. Others included one by @owillis (which was retweeted by @jaketapper) wishing his mother a happy father’s day, and another by @agentrevolt about how President Obama is paying more attention to baseball than “ACORN atrocities.” The @MalevoFreedom one was troubling, however, because the user writes in its bio, “White Nationalist News And Forum.” The tweet that Beck added as a favorite promoted white pride:
Stop Beck writes, “Now, to be clear, in order for the tweet to appear in Glenn Beck’s favorites either Glenn Beck or the operator of Glenn’s twitter account would have needed to mark the tweet as a ‘favorite.’” Additionally, sometime since his attachment to @MalevoFreedom was made public, Beck has deleted all of his favorite tweets.
CO Tea Party candidate: Bike-sharing is a ‘well-disguised’ effort to turn Denver into a ‘United Nations community.’
CO Tea Party candidate: Bike-sharing is a ‘well-disguised’ effort to turn Denver into a ‘United Nations community.’
Three months ago, Denver Mayor and Colorado gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper (D) helped start an ambitious bike share program that has already attracted 14,000 memberships and been a big success. But one of Hickenlooper’s opponents in the Governor’s race sees something sinister lurking behind the mayor’s policies:
Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are “converting Denver into a United Nations community.”
“This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed,” Maes told about 50 supporters who showed up at a campaign rally last week in Centennial.
Maes said in a later interview that he once thought the mayor’s efforts to promote cycling and other environmental initiatives were harmless and well-meaning. Now he realizes “that’s exactly the attitude they want you to have.”
Maes, a Tea Party favorite, said that he was referring to “Denver’s membership in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, an international association that promotes sustainable development and has attracted the membership of more than 1,200 communities, 600 of which are in the United States.” Denver has been a member of the group since 1992, 11 years before Hickenlooper became Mayor. Just last week, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood — a former Republican member of Congress — visited Denver, strapped on a helmet to take a bike ride through town, and called the bicycle-sharing program “a model for America.” (HT: Atrios)
Cox Becomes Third Health Care Plaintiff To Lose Gubernatorial Bid
Cox Becomes Third Health Care Plaintiff To Lose Gubernatorial Bid
Less than 10 minutes after President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, 13 conservative attorneys general filed a lawsuit to overturn the new legislation. In addition, multiple Republican governors bypassed their Democratic state attorneys general in order to join the suit.
At the time they filed the lawsuit, five of the plaintiffs were running for governor of their state. All five cited their lawsuit against health care reform as a central selling point in their campaigns. In South Carolina, Attorney General Henry McMaster (R) touted in multiple ads how “when President Obama and the Washington radicals pushed their unconstitutional takeover of health care, I pushed back.” Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox sounded the same tune, declaring in a commercial that he “led the fight against Obamacare.”
Last night, Cox became the third of these five Republicans to lose in his state’s gubernatorial primary. With a fourth is on track to lose later this month, only Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett, who faced nominal opposition, will have successfully won his primary after suing health care reform. The others have found that their frivolous lawsuits won them little favor among Republican primary voters:
- On August 3, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox lost his bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, finishing a distant third place.
- On June 8, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster tanked in his gubernatorial bid and came in third with just 17 percent of the vote.
- Also on June 8, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, who went so far as to usurp the state attorney general and enlist an all-volunteer cadre of lawyers in order to sue the federal government, was swamped in his re-election bid, garnering just 27 percent.
- Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who was so eager to be the first attorney general to sue the federal government over health care that he filed suit seven minutes after the bill was signed into law, finds himself wallowing in the polls and faces an uphill battle in Florida’s August 24 primary.
Though many conservatives believe that opposing health care reform is a political winner, primary election results continue to tell a different story.
In campaign mailer, Ben Quayle discusses raising a ‘family’ by posing with girls who aren’t his.
In campaign mailer, Ben Quayle discusses raising a ‘family’ by posing with girls who aren’t his.
Ben Quayle, 33-year old lawyer and son of former Vice President Dan Quayle, is running for the Republican nomination for House candidate in Arizona’s third Congressional District. Given his family name and fundraising prowess, he is widely considered a “top tier” candidate by the local press and is expected by many to have a good chance of winning the nomination. As a part of his campaign strategy, Quayle has started to send out mailers emblazened with his slogan, “A New Generation.” In one of these mailers, Quayle poses with two young girls — one seated in his lap and another holding his hand. Below the picture of Quayle and the children is a quotation by the candidate: “My roots in Arizona run deep. My grandparents and great grandparents lived in this district. My parents and all of my siblings live in this district. Tiffany [his wife] and I live in this district and are going to raise our family here.” View a copy of the mailer:
It’s easy to draw the conclusion that the two girls Quayle is posing with are his daughters. Yet, as the Arizona Capitol Times points out, “that’s not the case.” The recently-married Quayle doesn’t have kids. “I think you guys have got a lot of time on your hands,” said Quayle campaign spokesman Damon Moley in response to the paper’s fact-checking. “They’re just terribly cute kids.” RedState’s Erick Erickson isn’t amused. He writes this morning, “I see this frequently from young candidates. I can’t believe mail designers still pull this trick. It is silly.”
ThinkFast: August 4, 2010
ThinkFast: August 4, 2010
Missouri voters “overwhelmingly” voted in favor of Proposition C yesterday, which “seeks to exempt Missouri from the insurance mandate in the new health care law.” Legal scholars “question whether the vote will be binding.” Politico points out that Missouri had “more competitive Republican primaries than Democratic ones, likely skewing support.” Arizona, Florida, and Oklahoma will hold similar votes in November.
Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-MI) was defeated last night in her Democratic primary race by state senator Hansen Clarke, losing 41-47. “This is for the laid-off auto executive facing foreclosure, the single parent struggling all the time when others prosper, and the military vet who eats his meals out of a garbage dumpster,” Clarke, who “made curbing foreclosures the center of his campaign,” said in his victory speech.
Haitian-American superstar hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean announced that he will launch a “very serious” campaign to become president of his native country. “If I can’t take five years out to serve my country as President,” he argued, “then everything I’ve been singing about, like equal rights, doesn’t mean anything.”
RNC Chairman Michael Steele has been trying to set up meetings with foreign ambassadors, a courtship that is puzzling “diplomats as well as fellow Republicans.” “They can’t give any money and they can’t vote,” said former RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson of the ambassadors. “I don’t know why you’d take time to do it.”
Stymied by oil-fueled opposition, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has dropped an oil industry reform package. “We tried jujitsu, we tried yoga, we tried everything we can with Republicans to come along with us and be reasonable,” said Reid. The EPA will now begin regulating greenhouse gases in the absence of congressional action.
Kyl’s Same Old Bag Of Tricks: Accuses Kagan Of Lying, Just Like He Did With Sotomayor
Kyl’s Same Old Bag Of Tricks: Accuses Kagan Of Lying, Just Like He Did With Sotomayor
In a desperate, last-minute ploy to scuttle Justice Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) falsely accused her of perjuring herself before the Senate Judicary Committee:
Later in her hearing, Judge Sotomayor gave the following testimony: “I will not use foreign law to interpret the Constitution or American statues. I will use American law, constitutional law to interpret those laws except in the situations where American law directs the court.” While this kind of declarative statement would normally provide some measure of comfort, it is belied by words Judge Sotomayor uttered less than three months ago, that judges were “commanded” to look to “persuasive” sources, including foreign law, in interpreting our own law. [...]
It gives me great pause that Judge Sotomayor could say one thing at a public speech earlier this year and say the opposite while under oath before the Judiciary Committee, especially since she never repudiated her speech.
Now, as Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is just as certain to be confirmed, Kyl is apparently just as desperate. In what will likely be his final floor speech on Kagan’s nomination, Kyl once again falsely accused a Supreme Court nominee of lying:
In explaining why I could not vote for now-Justice Sotomayor, I said I thought she was disingenuous with the Judiciary Committee. Obviously reaching such a conclusion precludes support notwithstanding other qualifications for the position. Reluctantly, after analysis of her testimony, weighed with her past writings, statements and actions, I have reached the same conclusion regarding Elena Kagan.
Watch it:
Kyl then proceededd to recite a long list of mythical claims about Kagan, and argue that she must have been lying at her confirmation hearing because her testimony does not square with the right’s mythology. “Exhibit A” of his case against Kagan, for example is that she claims to be in favor of gay rights, but she really has no objections to a anti-gay tenets of “Shariah law.” “Exhibit B” is that she claims to not be a judicial activist, even though she had the audacity to praise legal legend and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. And so forth.
This tactic did not work when Sotomayor was up for a vote, and it will not work now. Kyl needs to learn that there is nothing “disingenuous” about refusing to confess to an absurd list of trumped up charges again you.
Claiming He Doesn’t Want To ‘Scoop’ Himself, McConnell Refuses To Detail GOP Agenda
Claiming He Doesn’t Want To ‘Scoop’ Himself, McConnell Refuses To Detail GOP Agenda
After spending months using gimmicks and “flimsy” websites attempting to convince voters they have fresh and substantive policy ideas, Republicans have all but conceded they don’t have any. Last month, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said that Republicans shouldn’t “lay out a complete agenda” because it could become a “campaign issue.” Just days later, the heads of the Republican congressional campaign committees — Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Pete Sessions (R-TX) — failed to name a single specific policy they support on NBC’s Meet The Press, instead suggesting that Americans intuitively “understand what Republicans stand for.”
This morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) appeared on Bloomberg to discuss policy and the GOP agenda. But he didn’t have much to say either:
HOST: Do Republicans need to articulate what you would do in power, as opposed to simply campaigning against what the President’s done?
MCCONNELL: I think we clearly do need to make sure Americans know what we would do and we’re gonna make that announcement in late September so the voters will have an opp…
HOST: But you have an opportunity right here to spell it out.
MCCONNELL: Yeah but I think I won’t scoop myself. We’ll be making that announcement in late September.
Watch it:
It’s unclear why the GOP needs to wait months to announce their policies when it has been working on overcoming its branding as the “Party of No” since last year. In fact, the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), suggested that his committee be eliminated because other “solutions groups” were duplicating its work. Yet the GOP still has no coherent policy agenda – last month, RedState founder and staunch conservative Erick Erickson even told the party to “stop lying” and admit that it’s the “Party of No.”
But it’s not like the GOP has no ideas whatsoever. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) thinks that “all [Republicans] should do is issue subpoenas” if they win the House this fall. And House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who “doesn’t need to see GDP numbers or talk to economists” to determine policy, instead had lobbyists help him come up with a “new policy agenda.” More recently, the House Republican Study Committee issued a jobs plan that is a “huge doubling down on the Bush agenda” and “won’t effectively create jobs.”
Considering the total lack of smart, new ideas in the Republican party, it’s not a surprise that they need a lot more time to announce their agenda while their members are trying to duck scrutiny.
Cornyn Attacks Activist Judges, Then Attacks Kagan As Insufficently Activist
Cornyn Attacks Activist Judges, Then Attacks Kagan As Insufficently Activist
In a floor speech explaining his opposition to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) attacked her for refusing the endorse the frivolous argument that unelected judges should strike down the health care law enacted by elected representatives:
I was also troubled by a couple of other areas . . . One has to do with the power of the federal government and I had mentioned a moment ago. Under the commerce clause of the United States Constitution, the Supreme Court has previously basically given the federal government almost limitless powers and we’ve seen that play here in the debate over the individual mandate in the health insurance bill . . . But Solicitor General Kagan did not seem to recognize that the federal government’s powers are one of enumerated powers delegated by — delegated by the states and by the people.
Just a few minutes earlier, however, Cornyn ranted against judges who have the audacity to substitute their views for those of elected Members of Congress:
If we don’t like the way Congress – the law congress makes, well, congress, of course, is free to change it. And if we the people still don’t like the way Congress writes the law when they refuse to respond to the will of the people, we have a right to replace Members of Congress. That’s the way a democracy runs, not by a judge dictating to us what he or she thinks is good for us.
Watch it:
This is not the first time Cornyn set the landspeed record for self-contradiction. During Kagan’s confirmation hearing, Cornyn insisted that precedents he approves of are sacred, while precedents he disagrees with are a blasphemy that must be overruled. Moreover, Cornyn’s view that the law and the Constitution mean whatever he wants it to mean is all too common among conservatives. Most famously, Chief Justice Roberts promised “to have the humility to recognize that [judges] operate within a system of precedent” when he was up for confirmation, only to spend his entire time as Chief Justice ignoring precedents that conservatives don’t like.
In other words, Cornyn and Roberts are taking a page out of Henry Ford’s playbook. The American people can have whatever kind of laws they want — so long as they’re conservative.
Tea Party candidate Ken Buck on abortion: ‘I don’t believe in the exceptions of rape or incest.’
Tea Party candidate Ken Buck on abortion: ‘I don’t believe in the exceptions of rape or incest.’
Ken Buck, who is running in the Colorado Republican Senate primary, has surged in recent polls due in large part to tea party support. In a video obtained by the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, Buck stakes out an extreme position on abortion that is likely to appeal to his far-right base, saying that even in the cases of rape and incest, abortions should not be allowed:
QUESTION: How do you feel about abortion? Are you for abortion, against abortion, are you for it? In what instances would you allow for abortion?
BUCK: I am pro-life, and I’ll answer the next question. I don’t believe in the exceptions of rape or incest. I believe that the only exception, I guess, is life of the mother. And that is only if it’s truly life of the mother.
To me, you can’t say you’re pro-life and say — if there is, and it’s a very rare situation where one life would have to cease for the other life to exist. But in that very rare situation, we may have to take the life of the child to save the life of the mother.
In that rare situation, I am in favor of that exception. But other than that I have no exceptions in my position.
Watch it:
Sargent notes that Buck’s position is similar to that of Nevada GOP Senate nominee Sharron Angle, “who recently said she also opposes abortion in cases of rape or incest, suggesting rather colorfully that one could instead make ‘lemons’ into ‘lemonade.’” Buck’s extremist stance may help him regain favor with his far-right supporters, some of whom he recently got into trouble with when he chided “dumbass” birthers.
Contradicting His Earlier Denial, Rubio Admits ‘Tax Cuts Don’t Pay For Themselves’
Contradicting His Earlier Denial, Rubio Admits ‘Tax Cuts Don’t Pay For Themselves’
Republicans have spent the last two weeks trying to create a fantasy world in which — despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary — tax cuts inevitably pay for themselves through economic growth. This absurd claim supports their demand that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans be extended beyond their January First end date, and that the $830 billion in lost revenue they represent doesn’t need to be offset.
Marco Rubio, who is running for the Senate in Florida on the GOP ticket, has also been a proponent of this alternate reality. When pressed on MSNBC last month about how he would offset the cots of extending the tax cuts for the wealthy, Rubio suggested there’s no need to, saying, “they will be paid for because they create economic growth.”
But at a recent campaign stop in Fort Lauderdale with House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), Rubio seemed to be suddenly struck with a dose of reality, admitting that “tax cuts don’t pay for themselves“:
With the Bush tax cuts set to expire in January and debate in Congress heating up, Rubio has been staking out his position at recent campaign events. [...]
“The tax cuts don’t pay for themselves, but they certainly lead to [economic] growth,” Rubio said. “Combined with the kind of measures we’ve proposed to hold down spending . . . put us in the place we want to be.”
Asked how he would pay for the tax cuts, Rubio pointed to his support for a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget and his 12-point plan to spur economic growth. His proposals include repealing the new healthcare legislation, freezing nonmilitary spending and banning so-called earmarks for members’ pet projects.
This acknowledgement is in stark contrast with the message of the congressional Republican leadership, in addition to Rubio’s own prior statements.
Perhaps Cantor’s presence contributed to Rubio’s off-message reversal. Cantor recently admitted — very reluctantly — that extending the Bush tax cuts would indeed “dig the hole deeper” on the deficit. Of course, Cantor and the new Rubio are correct — the Bush tax cuts did not pay for themselves, and extending them on the wealthy will only increase the deficit.
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