Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011). I admired him and loathed him, and for no other major political commentator did I have such mixed feelings. When he wrote about the lies of organized religion and the crimes of Henry Kissinger and others, I applauded. When he promoted American militarism, I recoiled in rage and disgust. Suffice it to say, he left his mark. And he will be missed.

No More Mister Nice Blog: Contra Hitchens. (Check out Driftglass, too.) And Outside the Beltway: Hitchens, R.I.P. -- provides a conservative, yet well-written, blog context.

Booman Tribune: Climate change lemmings.

Beggars Can Be Choosers: Republican truth-denial.

Round-up by Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction. I'll be here through Sunday.

Send tips to mbru@crooksandliars.com.

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Credit: Netroots Nation

Tonight until midnight you can get Netroots Nation Registration for $195.00 early bird pricing. This is the lowest it will be for next year's conference in Providence, June 7-10.

And our sister site Newstalgia remembers Christopher Hitchens, who died today.

Open Thread below....

I'll admit that there aren't a lot of Christmas songs that I like much. But this one? I could listen to it all year long.

What are your favorite versions of your favorite holiday songs?

What a Wonderful Christmas
	Artist: Louis Armstrong Price: $5.89 (As of 12/17/11 12:21 am details)

Look. Let's talk. I'm worried about your marriage.

It's a mess. As an institution, it's a muddled mess, and you're screwing it up just terribly.

Luckily, there's hope! There's someone out there who's willing to save this august tradition from weirdos and pervs who would make it all strange and unholy. To the rescue!

Remember: don't trust your marriage with just any old pol. A lot of these dudes don't have much experience-seriously, I hear some of them have only done this stuff once.

Yes, 24-hours of talking to benefit Occupations across the country.

Radio Or Not presents Occuthon 2011 – A 24 hour nonstop broadcast in support of the Occupy Wall Street and 99 percent movement. Occuthon will highlight local Occupy camps and charities around the nation and provide all the information on how to give support directly to the movement.

This event will proudly feature special guests, OWS occupy interviews, news, surprises, and the voice of the 99 percent- you! Occuthon will take your calls toll free nationwide, and host the webcast with a live chat room.

The Radio Or Not Network is the home of Nicole Sandler, former Air America Radio host, and the evening line up: Filter Free Radio with Jacob Dean, Turn Up The Night with Kenny Pick, Left In Dixie with Danielle the Left Neck Chick, and Funked In The Head with Shane-O.

They're not raising money themselves, they're (smartly) featuring different Occupy groups each hour and encouraging people to donate to support the movement. And did I mention it's from 7pm (tonight) Friday December 16th until Saturday December 17th? I will be on at midnight eastern. Our lovely Nicole Belle will be on at 1am Pacific after me. There are a couple of other notable guests: Sam Seder, John Fugelsang and Stephanie Miller.

Make sure to tune in!

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Christmas came early for the law-abiding residents of Arizona's Maricopa County yesterday:

PHOENIX — In a strongly worded critique of the country’s best-known sheriff, the Justice Department on Thursday accused Sheriff Joe Arpaio of engaging in “unconstitutional policing” by unfairly targeting Latinos for detention and arrest and retaliating against those who complain.

After an investigation that lasted more than three years, the civil rights division of the Justice Department said in a 22-page report that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which Mr. Arpaio leads, had “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos” that “reaches the highest levels of the agency.” The department interfered with the inquiry, the government said, prompting a lawsuit that eventually led Sheriff Arpaio and his deputies to cooperate.

“We have peeled the onion to its core,” said Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, noting during a conference call with reporters on Thursday morning that more than 400 inmates, deputies and others had been interviewed as part of the review, including Sheriff Arpaio and his command staff. Mr. Perez said the inquiry, which included jail visits and reviews of thousands of pages of internal documents, raised the question of whether Latinos were receiving “second-class policing services” in Maricopa County.

Mr. Perez said he hoped Sheriff Arpaio would cooperate with the federal government in turning the department around. Should he refuse to enter into a court-approved settlement agreement, Mr. Perez said, the government will file a lawsuit and the department could lose millions of dollars in federal money.

A separate federal grand jury investigation of Sheriff Arpaio’s office is continuing, focusing on accusations of abuse of power by the department’s public corruption squad.

That investigation -- unlike this probe, which involved civil law -- is a criminal matter. The other shoe has yet to drop on that score.

Arpaio, of course, claims that this is all politically motivated:

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"Don't come here and use me as a whipping boy for a national, international problem," said Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The DOJ warned Arpaio to stop racially profiling Hispanic members of the community, or face the consequences. But Arpaio vowed to continue his controversial immigration sweeps.

"I took an oath of office. I'm enforcing the state and federal laws," Arpaio said.. "It's as simple as that, and I will continue to enforce those state laws."

The normally media friendly sheriff stayed away from the cameras for most of the day today. And when he did speak, it was during a late-afternoon news conference with his attorneys at his side.

"I'm going to say it again, I will continue to enforce all the laws," Arpaio said during the 40-minute news conference.

...

"President Obama and his band of his merry men might as well erect their own pink neon sign on the Arizona-Mexico border saying welcome to your United States," Arpaio said. "Our home is your home."

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The way you know a movement is starting to have an impact is when the powers that be start to respond to it. This has been happening for quite a while now with the 99er Movement (it’s Occupy but a lot more than Occupy). Republican politicians have been lashing out, and corporate and Republican insiders have been starting to worry and plotting strategy to respond. Democrats have been responding cautiously but more positively than not, and have sure been noticing and watching with a lot of interest.

Now, though, even more tangible — and more positive — responses are starting to pop up. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) leadership has introduced a bill this week that is about as direct a response to the flowering 99er movement as a piece of legislation could be, from its name to its messaging to its content: the Restore the American Dream for the 99 Percent Act.

Check out the materials and messaging from the press conference: this is all-99 percent, all the time. The content flows from the movement as well: it taxes Wall Street and the 1 percent to pay for more than 5 million jobs for the 99 percent. The 99 Percent Act includes every economic provision from The Contract for the American Dream, which was crowd sourced from hundreds of thousands of Americans. Tonight, the leaders of the CPC will be talking about what the bill does on this webcast that is worth checking out as well.

This legislation could turn into a big deal. The conventional wisdom will be that a bill introduced by progressives in the minority party in the House doesn’t matter because it can’t pass, and of course as long as the Republicans control the House it won’t. But the 99er Movement is rising, and I think there will be a lot of interest in this bill by the movement — groups like Rebuild the Dream, MoveOn.org, and the AFL-CIO are pretty excited about this bill. If there is a push by those groups, I think it could easily pick up enough co-sponsors over the next few months to have a solid majority of Democratic House members, and a majority of the candidates challenging Republicans endorsing it as well. If the Democrats retake the House (which is not at all out of the question), a solid majority of the new House caucus is supporting this bill, and the Democrats have won sounding as populist as they are sounding today, the 99 Percent Act will be at the center of the economic debate at the start of 2013. That would be a pretty impressive achievement for this movement given where the political and legislative dialogue the first 11 months of this year has been.

There are a lot of important rumblings going on in American politics right now. People have taken to the street, bank lobbyists and Republican operatives are nervously trying to figure out how to respond to the 99er message, and a lot more Democrats are even beginning to sound like Democrats again. On issues I am working on like the bank settlement talks, I am seeing policymakers far more nervous than they have ever been before about looking they are cutting sweetheart deals with Wall Street. And can I just say something? It’s about freakin’ time. Census numbers came out today showing that half the country is now considered poor or low-income. The middle class in this country is being crushed, and God help any young or poor person trying to climb their way into it.

Politicians who just operate on the business-as-usual model are making a huge mistake. The ones who are bold and respond positively to the 99 percent are making a good bet. Now is the time to respond to the tide that is rising.

This just in via:

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged six former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with securities fraud on Friday for misrepresenting their holdings of high-risk mortgage loans.

The SEC is targeting three former executives of Freddie Mac, including chief executive officer Daniel Mudd, chief risk officer Enrico Dallavecchia and executive vice president of single-family mortgage business Thomas Lund.

The agency is also going after three former executives of Fannie Mae: CEO Richard Syron, executive vice president and chief business officer Patricia Cook and executive vice president for the single family guarantee business Donald Bisenius.

The SEC is seeking financial penalties against them, but did not specify an amount.

The headline for this really caught my eye, but there it is "financial penalties," big, freaking deal. They'll pretend to be ashamed, then pay their fines with federal TARP funds that came from our tax dollars.

There have been 5610 protesters arrested worldwide as of today.

Protesters: 5,610 Bankers: 0.

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John Aravosis with a great story about how Mitt Romney's lower-middle-class home in Paris was actually a palace, and until recently was the home of the embassy for the United Arab Emirates:

To hear Mitt Romney tell it, his two and a half years as a Mormon missionary in France in the late 1960s were tough times. The places he was staying often had no working toilet, and certainly no baths or showers, he said just this past Sunday (in an effort to divert attention from the $10,000 bet he made Rick Perry). He lived, he said, just like lower-middle income Frenchmen lived.

The truth is slightly different. According to the Telegraph, for nearly a year during his time in France, Romney lived in a "palace" in Paris' richest neighborhood, known as "the 16th."

Although he spent time in other French cities, for most of 1968, Mr Romney lived in the Mission Home, a 19th century neoclassical building in the French capital’s chic 16th arrondissement. “It was a house built by and for rich people,” said Richard Anderson, the son of the mission president at the time of Mr Romney’s stay. “I would describe it as a palace”.

It had chandeliers, stained glass windows, its own art collection and servants. I found a photo of one of the windows, via the Mormon Paris mission's Web site:

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Until just recently the building housed the embassy of the United Arab Emirates, a government known for its impoverished lower-middle class lifestyle.

[...]Oh, but the Telegraph has more:

In his remarks this week, Mr Romney said of his French lodgings: “I don’t recall any of them having a refrigerator. We shopped before every meal”. Mr Anderson said that as well as a refrigerator, the mansion had “a Spanish chef called Pardo and a house boy, who prepared lunch and supper five days a week”.

The home in fact had several baths and showers.

You get the picture.

Listen to an mp3 recording of Thursday's press event

Polling released Thursday shows that 67 percent of California voters support the initiative that will be on the ballot in November 2012 that would require millionaires to pay more progressive tax rates in order to restore funding for education and other essential pograms. Tulchin Research, which conducted the poll said this was the highest positive response they had ever seen for a revenue-related initiative since they've been conducting polls.

The group behind the initiative, Restoring California, hired Tulchin to conduct the poll, which was done, in conjunction with focus groups, after May 2011. Other key findings include:

75% of California voters likely to vote in the November 2012 general election agree the rich have gotten richer over the past several years while middle class families have struggled.

73% of voters indicate they are open to raising taxes on the wealthy to restore funding to essential services.

If the November 2012 elections were held today, 67% of voters would vote YES to support the Millionaires Tax to Restore Funding to Essential Services, a ballot measure that raises taxes on those making more than $1 million a year to restore funding to education and other essential services.

Specifically, 84% of Democrats, and 68% of independent voters are supporting the measure, and Republicans are evenly split as 45% would vote YES on it if the election were held today.

Every region of the state supports the measure, with the strongest support coming from the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Voters of all races and ethnicities would vote YES on the Millionaires Tax if the election were held today, including 88% of African Americans, 81% of Asians, 78% of Latinos, and 64% of white voters.

Strongest support comes from those voters under 40 years of age (80% YES), though even a solid majority of voters 65 and older, who are traditionally more conservative, support it in solid numbers (59% YES).

Voters of all income levels are backing the Millionaires Tax

The highest level of support comes from voters making less than $35,000 a year in household income (83% YES);

Voters making more than $250,000 a year in household income (the top 1% of households in the country) are also voting YES on the measure (59%).

There are several other revenue-producing ideas on the table in California, but the poll shows that the Millionaires Tax is the most likely of the proposals to pass. If this proposal passed, it would raise $6 billion.

“The additional reductions to education we are now facing with the trigger cuts will have devastating affects on our children in K-12 and make higher education even less accessible for working and middle class families after years of tuition increases,” said Joshua Pechthalt, a public school teacher and parent who serves as president of the California Federation of Teachers. “The Millionaires Tax would begin to move the tax responsibility for funding services and education back where it belongs, toward the Californians who have the most ability to pay, who have benefited the most over the past twenty years, while not placing any additional burden on the 99% who are already hurting from years of recession.”

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