Last Call

Not sure how I feel about this new bill from Rand Paul and Patrick Leahy.

Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced a bill Wednesday designed to give relief to the nation's bloated prison system by offering judges leeway to consider sentences below the mandatory minimum for all federal crimes.

The bill, named the Justice Safety Valve Act, would expand a current provision in sentencing law, authorizing judges to hand down less harsh sentences if they determine doing so would not jeopardize public safety. Under current law, only certain nonviolent, low-level, first-time drug offenses are subject to sentencing below the federal mandatory minimum.

On the one hand, the travesty of mandatory minimum sentencing is absolutely one of the major reasons the US is the nation with the most people in prison, and an overwhelming majority of prisoners are minorities.  The prison pipeline in this country is arguably the single biggest fully preventable social injustice around.

On the other hand, I'm automatically suspect of anything that both Rand Paul and Grover Norquist think is a great idea.  I want to see the details.  I fully expect the crimes where judges are given leeway to be ones with mostly white convicts, like tax fraud or something.  I don't know.  What I do know is I don't trust either of these guys for a reason, and that reason is they are both soulless bastards.

In an op-ed in The Hill on Wednesday, Julie Stewart, founder and president of the Families Against Mandatory Minimums Foundation, and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, both hailed the Justice Safety Valve Act as a "common sense" measure that would save money and help ensure that the "time fits the crime in every criminal case." Their column offered some data on prison capacity and overcrowding:

According to a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, the number of inmates under the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) jurisdiction has increased from approximately 25,000 in FY1980 to nearly 219,000 in FY2012. BOP prisons are operating at 38 percent over capacity, endangering the safety of guards and inmates alike. Last week, the Inspector General for the Department of Justice testified that it’s only going to get worse: the BOP projects system-wide crowding to exceed 45 percent over rated capacity through 2018.

On the gripping hand, the only way anything was ever going to get done about mandatory minimum sentencing in this country was through a bipartisan effort. It was always going to take a combination of fiscal conservatives horrified at the costs of incarceration to state budgets, and social liberals horrified at the costs of incarceration to people, communities, and families.

If it takes Rand Effing Paul to get the ball rolling on getting rid of minimum sentencing, great.  He's still an awful person, despite the one time he mathematically comes up with doing the right thing.  I don't trust him, I won't vote for him, I won't praise him.   But if this bill passes, I'll take it in spite of him.

Ashley, Alison, And The Turtle, Part 2

Yesterday I posted a Politico report that here in Kentucky, the Clintons were backing Alison Lundergan Grimes with the hope she would take on Mitch McConnell.  I said that I would take the Clintons offer of help to rid the Senate of Turtle Boy, and that the Kentucky coal industry would do everything they can to bury Ashley Judd anyway.  Lundergan Grimes, being the daughter of long-time Clinton friend and Kentucky Democratic Party chair Jerry Lundergan, would have the party machine necessary to beat Mitch.

Over at 3ChicsPolitico however, Ametia reminds us that the DSCC and the Clintons aren't exactly friends of progressive Kentuckians like myself.

You can do it, Ashley. Don’t fall for the old, “you’re not a resident of Kentucky” BS. Hillary Clinton moved to NY, established residency, ran for the senate, and she won. Don’t fall for you’re an actress and you have too much baggage. Ronald Reagan was an actor, he ran for POTUS, and he won. And don’t even get me started on coming in with “BAGGAGE.”

You’ve got something mighty special for McTurtle and nem to come after you, before you’ve even announced your bid for senate. And for the Clinton’s attempts to THROW YOU UNDER THE BUS for their hand-picked choice, I’d say RUN ASHLEY, RUN. Just like Barack Hussein Obama, Don’t be threatened by the Clinton MACHINE supposed power & $$, Or do they owe Grimes a favor?

I’ll wait for Ashley to announce, even with the rumors of her annoucing at the Kentucky Derby event in May.

Give it up, Bill and Hillary Clinton. We’re not voting for Hillary in 2016; at least, not me.

Yeah, they owe Grimes a favor because of her dad.  Ol' Jerry Lundergan was a huge Hillary backer here in 2008 and used his connections to help win the state for Hillary.  I said then that if the price for getting rid of Mitch was being nice to the Clintons, I'd be willing to pay it.  As much as Lundergan chafes my chaps, his daughter's still better than Mitch as my senator.

Yeah, I'd rather see Ashley Judd run and win, and as I said yesterday, Grimes hasn't committed to a Senate run and could take on a House or Governor candidacy.  She'd win, too.

Ideally, I'm hoping that's what happens.  Realistically, I just want Mitch's ass gone.  I live here, folks.  I'm casting my vote for whoever has the best chance of beating Mitch, and I stand by that.

What's The Penalty Here?

As Steven D over at BooMan's place points out, Michele Bachmann is an inveterate liar, a hack, and a lunatic.  Yet she still serves in Congress and will continue to serve, even when she tells ridiculous lies like "70% of all food stamp money goes to government bureaucrats."  It's more like 0.3%, but who cares?  What real penalty does she face?

Of the $82 Billion budgeted for federal food and nutrition assistance relief under the USDA for 2013, less than 6% (5.8%) is allocated to all administrative costs, which includes, by the way, state administrative costs that represent 81% of all administrative costs for the Food Stamp Program.

If, in fact, "Washington bureaucrats" received 70% of that $82 Billion pie each year, they would all be multi-millionaires. Hey, if that were true I'd sign up to work for the USDA in a heartbeat. However, the truth is that working for the USDA will not make you wealthy. As of 2011:

As of September 30, 2011, there were 1,325 full-time permanent employees in the agencies. There were 529 employees in the Washington headquarters office; and 796 elsewhere, including in seven regional offices; 55 field offices; four SNAP compliance offices in Illinois, California, New Jersey, and Tennessee; and a computer support center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

That number includes the 166 government employees who work for SNAP. The average salary for USDA Food and Nutrition Service employes is around $61,000. The highest paid position is at the level of a GS 13, with salaries ranging from a little over $72,000 per year to a high of a little under $94,000 per year depending on various factors including geographic location. Nothing to sneeze at, but hardly a job that will move you into the top 10 percent of income.

Sadly, far too many people will believe Bachmann's absurd claim that food stamp recipients receive only 30% of the money budgeted for SNAP. The truth, that SNAP is on of the most efficient government programs in terms of the ratio of benefits provided to administrative costs (942:6) incurred will be ignored by most of the media, and the conservative talking point zombie lie that SNAP is a wasteful program that should be cut severely will be the default position of all "serious people" inside the Beltway, despite the reality.

Best part is Bachman's lie will be repeated in campaign ads, on Sunday shows, and on FOX News time and again.  It will rarely be challenged on air, in real time, if at all.  So it will become "conventional wisdom" and eventually will be the reason why SNAP will be discontinued by Republicans.

She knows exactly what she's doing and she knows there's zero penalty for her doing it.

StupidiNews!

• China is denying South Korean accusations that a major hacking attack Wednesday on several South Korean media and financial companies came from Beijing.
• Nine House lawmakers are leading a bipartisan effort to prohibit the trademarking of the term "Redskins" in order to put pressure on Washington's NFL franchise to change its name.
• The Senate bill to prevent a government shutdown at the end of this month makes sequestration cuts permanent, but gives the government more flexibility in administering them.
• As Cypriot banks remained closed after this week's rejection of bank levies by parliament, the ECB is warning that the country's banks will be cut off March 25 without a bailout plan.
• Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is reporting his undersea exploration company has successfully raised from the Atlantic a number of F-1 rocket engines used 40 years ago for Apollo 11.

Last Call

Seems our old friend Col. Mustard has a couple mountain ranges worth of umbrage to unload on that big 108-page GOP "why we lost in 2012" report, and he wants to know why he wasn't consulted.

No, really.

I would not be surprised if the RNC spoke with some of the salaried conservative media class who share the Washington professional circuit.  But did they reach out to the Army of Davids who are the anti-thesis of the consultant model because we mostly don’t get paid or make much money blogging, we do this in our “spare” time, and we are outside D.C.?

Did the RNC get any input from the great unwashed conservative blogosphere?  You wouldn’t know it from the report if it did...

Oh, considering how badly they lost, I'm pretty sure they were letting the "great unwashed blogosphere" run things, and that's exactly why they're avoiding you now, Bill.  Your advice was to run somebody even loonier than Romney, who would have managed to lose by double digits.  I would have been fine with that, but let's not pretend you have this deep well of wisdom just waiting to be tapped when you can't admit the GOP lost due to awful policies.  I'm a blogger too, man.  Don't play a player.

For the RNC to produce a 100-page report and not have a single mention of the need to interact with and support the conservative blogosphere tells me that the RNC simply has rearranged the deck chairs on the HMS Consultant.

We may not be all that, but it’s clear that the RNC doesn’t want us to be any part of that.

Can't possibly imagine why not, man.  Maybe it was your screaming hatred of Liz Warren?  How's that working out for you?

Mea Iraq-ima Culpa

Ezra Klein takes to Bloomberg News to admit his guilt in supporting the unconscionable Iraq War ten years ago, which in this business takes some guts.  It's also a reminder that A) it's been ten years, and B) a hell of a lot of liberals supported Iraq and believed the nonsense spun by Bush and Cheney.

I supported the Iraq War, and I’m sorry.

I have my excuses, of course. I was a college student, young and dumb. I thought that if U.S. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell and former President Bill Clinton and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair all thought it was necessary, then that was because they had intelligence proving as much. I thought there was no way the Bush administration would neglect to plan for the obvious challenges of the aftermath. I turned on the war quickly when I saw how poorly and arrogantly it was being managed. 

Back in 2002 I was out of college and had lost my job in the dot-com collapse,  so I had some time on my hands.  I didn't buy the intelligence then, and I'm glad I didn't.  I didn't see the reason to go in to Iraq at all, considering as a high school student I watched the first Iraq War on TV and saw how thoroughly flattened the place was.  If Saddam was a cruel despot and he still didn't use his "WMD" against us then with tanks rolling up entire divisions of his troops, why would he have waited years?

By 2004 it was clear Iraq was a huge mistake.  I was told to shut up and support our troops.  The anti-war movement was shouted down, ridiculed, and persecuted at every turn.  Now, a vast majority of Americans believe it was a horrible, bloody error in judgment.

It's a lesson all of us should remember.

Ashley, Alison, And The Turtle

It's yet another "Kentucky Democrats are quietly trying to get rid of Ashley Judd for current SecState Alison Lundergan Grimes to take on Mitch" story, this time from Politico, and featuring Big Dog.

Democratic heavy hitters — including Bill Clinton — are quietly trying to woo a new candidate to jump into the race to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, even as actress Ashley Judd is taking steps toward launching a star-studded campaign of her own.

With fears growing in some Democratic quarters over Judd’s potential candidacy, some prominent Democrats in the Bluegrass State are beginning to set their sights on 34-year-old Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky secretary of state. Among Grimes’s attributes: She lacks political baggage since she’s served barely a year in office, and she hails from a well-connected family influential in Kentucky Democratic politics. But it’s not at all certain if she’ll jump into the race.

Grimes does have the Clintons in her corner. Earlier this month, the former president — a longtime friend of Grimes’s father — privately urged the young secretary of state to mount a Senate bid while assuring Grimes that both he and his wife, Hillary, would get behind her should she decide to take on the powerful Senate GOP leader, according to several sources familiar with the matter.

Attending an event for former Kentucky Sen. Wendell Ford in Owensboro earlier this month, Clinton privately met with Grimes for about 35 minutes, where they discussed her political future. Sources said Clinton made the case that the Senate bid would offer a bigger platform than the governor’s mansion or the U.S. House race in the 6th Congressional District, covering Frankfort and Lexington, which the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had hoped she would pursue.

Grimes has also met with officials from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, according to Kentucky Democratic sources. Both the DSCC and Clinton’s office declined to comment.

Now Grimes would have her own set of major problems, mainly the lack of experience and the fact she'd at best be another Joe Manchin/Heidi Heitkamp, a Red State Dem who would certainly not have the best progressive record on things, especially on the environment.  King Coal still rules here in the Bluegrass State, and nobody is getting into office without their blessing.  That includes Ashley Judd, folks, so pay attention.

Grimes might roll things back and go after Ben Chandler's old House seat in KY-6 too.  I don't know.  She could decide to walk away from Washington totally and stake out her claim for Governor, lord knows we need somebody in the D column to follow Dinosaur Steve Beshear.

What I do know is this:  I want Mitch McConnell gone, and if the price is I have to be nice to the Clintons long enough for them to use their pull here to actually help somebody other than themselves, I'll take it.

StupidiNews!

• Voters in South Carolina will see Stephen Colbert's sister Elizabeth as the Democratic candidate for the vacated House seat of now Senator Tim Scott, with former Gov. Mark Sanford in the GOP runoff.
• On the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, filmmaker and activist Michael Moore is calling former Bush Pentagon head Donald Rumsfeld "a war criminal as far as I'm concerned".
• The House Ethics Committee is investigating Alaska Republican Don Young for allegedly taking improper gifts and using campaign funds for personal use.
• The EU and the President of Cyprus are scrambling to come up with an alternative bailout plan as Cypriot lawmakers have rejected a levy on bank deposits.
• San Francisco's new stadium for the defending NFC champion 49ers will include the most powerful Wi-Fi network ever devised for a sports venue.

Last Call

As widely expected, Sen. Dianne Feinstein's assault weapons ban legislation is officially toast.  Majority leader Harry Reid is taking it out of the Dems' gun violence package and will be putting it forward as an amendment, where it will meet an ignominious demise.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on Monday that a controversial assault weapons ban will not be part of a Democratic gun bill that was expected to reach the Senate floor next month.

After a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday, a frustrated Feinstein said she learned that the bill she sponsored — which bans 157 different models of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines — wouldn’t be part of a Democratic gun bill to be offered on the Senate floor. Instead, it can be offered as an amendment. But its exclusion from the package makes what was already an uphill battle an almost certain defeat.

The smarter folks long predicted this, as I pointed out in January.  But with the assault weapons ban gone, Dems can now get to the real meat of the bill:  firearms trafficking penalties and universal background checks.

There are two likely paths: Reid could advance a gun trafficking bill with a school safety provision; some form of background checks and the assault weapons ban would then be offered as amendments. In the other scenario, Reid might offer a background checks bill that includes the gun trafficking and school safety provisions, with assault weapons again offered as an amendment.

The Judiciary panel also approved a bipartisan gun trafficking bill backed by Leahy, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), among others, that dramatically boosts penalties for “straw purchases”of weapons, in which a person buys firearms on behalf of an individual barred by law from possessing them. Thanks to its support from Republicans, Reid and Leahy want to see this bill as a foundation for the Democratic gun package on the floor.

But Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) are continuing to seek conservative GOP partners for their universal background checks bill. The two Democrats negotiated with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on the issue for weeks, but in the end that deal fell apart. Schumer and Manchin are meeting with other Republicans to seek their backing, yet they have not been able to find a partner. Kirk, a moderate, is likely to be part of whatever legislation Schumer and Manchin introduce. 

All this vote wrangling is nice.  Nothing will pass the House.  It would cost Boehner his job as Speaker.  It probably won't get a vote, or worse, we'll have the House pass some crackpot NRA bill and then nothing happens.  Here's the sad part:  an assault weapons ban has no chance because our Congress is bought and paid for by the NRA, and there's not a gorram thing you can do about it. We had an assault weapons ban.  It died.

Just like the tens of thousands killed in firearms violence by these weapons.

We're still paying for 2010, folks.  It's a big, big bill.  But not as big as the butcher's bill for firearm violence in America.

Rand Paul's Path To Oblivion

And Rand Paul's reign as the "true conservative" GOP 2016 hopeful ends today, apparently.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is endorsing a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants.

In a speech to be delivered Tuesday morning to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the potential 2016 presidential candidate declares, “If you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you.” A copy of the speech was obtained in advance by The Associated Press.

Paul’s path to citizenship would come with conditions that could make it long and difficult for illegal immigrants. Chief among these, Congress would have to agree first that progress was being made on border security.

Nonetheless, Paul’s endorsement of allowing illegal immigrants an eventual way to become citizens puts him in line with a growing number of Republicans who are embracing action on immigration as a way to broaden the GOP’s appeal to Latinos. On Monday, a Republican National Committee report called on the GOP to support comprehensive reform, though without specifying whether it should include a pathway to citizenship, which is decried by some conservatives as amnesty.

If you've been keeping track, that actually puts Jeb Bush on the far right, Paul in the middle, and Rubio on the left on this issue as the guy actually working with Democrats.  It will be interesting to see if the SHAMNESTY crew turns on Paul now....

...oh but wait.  The Rand Paul crew is now completely denying the report.

Rand Paul’s advisers claim the Associated Press report is false, and the senator does not back a path to citizenship. His office said in a statement, “He does not mention ‘path to citizenship’ in his speech at all.” An adviser told the Washington Post, “What his plan is extending to them is a quicker path to normalization, not citizenship, and being able to stay, work and pay taxes legally.” The headline has been updated.

So which is it?  Well, we're not sure.  Actually taking a position is deadly if you're a Republican.

Both Sides Are To Blame, Right?

So if you're still wondering after the Steubenville trial "Well why don't more teenage girls report rape and sexual assault" and take the cases all the way to court, it's because FOX News will "accidentally" out you for retribution.

During correspondent Mike Tobin’s report about the guilty verdicts in the Steubenville rape case on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, the girl’s first name was broadcast without being censored.

“We have not known, really, how the victim is doing, Mike,” host Martha MacCallum told Tobin. “Is there any information on that today?”

“Well, a relative tells me that she spends a lot of time in her room,” Tobin explained. “She has been back out playing sports, and through it all — you’ll be surprised to learn — she made the honor roll one more time.”

“A family representative says the remorse coming from the football players came too late,” the correspondent added. “We saw their reaction yesterday.”

At that point, the report cut to footage of one of the rapists, 17-year-old Trent Mays, apologizing to the victim in court on Sunday.

“I would truly like to apologize to [redacted], her family, my family and the community,” Mays said. “No picture [of the rape] should have been sent around, let alone even taken.”

Raw Story has redacted the victim’s first name from this report and the video below, but Fox News did not.

A Fox News editor’s note added to an Associated Press report published on Sunday insisted that the conservative network would not name the minors charged in the case.

“Editors’ Note: The Associated Press named the minors charged due to the fact they have been identified in other news coverage and their names were used in open court,” the note said. “FoxNews.com will not name the defendants.”

So hey, plausible deniability from the crew at FOX.  Because shaming the victim is really what it's all about.  "Oops, it would be awful if we accidentally let your name slip on national TV like that if you went to trial, dear."

Ahh, but FOX News isn't alone.  Not by far, you see, both CNN and MSNBC were guilty of the same awful act as well.

All three cable news networks aired a clip of one of the defendants, Trent Mays, apologizing to the victim in the courtroom. Mays had addressed the victim by name, which was not censored during CNN and MSNBC's broadcasts on Sunday and Fox News' broadcast on Monday. Local CBS affiliate WTRF also aired the clip without editing the victim's name out.  

Gosh, MSBNC AND CNN did it first.  Before FOX.

That's a hell of a message to send, yes?

Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said two 16 year old girls are facing charges after allegedly making threats against the rape victim in Steubenville.

Abdalla said one teen turned herself in and the other one was arrested.

They are being held in the Jefferson County Juvenile Detention Center and will appear before Judge  Samuel Kerr Tuesday.

Death threats.  From other girls.

This is where we are in America.  Feel the pride.

StupidiNews!

• Pakistani officials say they have made an arrest in connection with the 11-year old beheading murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
• The US Supreme Court upheld without comment the $220,000 illegal song-downloading verdict against Jammie Thomas-Rasser.
• Within hours of President Obama's nomination of DoJ civil rights division lawyer Thomas Perez as Secretary of Labor, Senate Republicans promised a brutal confirmation fight.
• European austerity and ten-year mortgage deferment plans have triggered another wave of housing price collapses, this time in relatively stagnant Denmark.
• Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello is stepping down at the end of the month after the video gaming company's disastrous SimCity launch.

Last Call

It's looking like America has reached a critical mass on same-sex marriage:  in less than ten years, support for same-sex marriage in the US has jumped 26 points in ABC News/Washington Post polling.

Most Americans, moreover, say the U.S. Constitution should trump state laws on gay marriage, a question now before the U.S. Supreme Court. And – in another fundamental shift – just 24 percent now see homosexuality as a choice, down from 40 percent nearly 20 years ago. It’s a view that closely relates to opinions on the legality of same-sex marriage.

That's actually a pretty big jump since just last August, after the President made his views clear and the repeal of DADT happened.  It certainly didn't hurt the President's re-election chances, now did it?

Intensity of sentiment about gay marriage also shows considerable change in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates. In 2004, strong opponents outnumbered strong supporters by a broad 34 percentage points. Today strong supporters are ascendant, outnumbering strong opponents by 11 points.

Full PDF of the poll here.

At this point, I'm confident to say that same-sex marriage will be fully legal in all 50 states within ten years.  It may be five.  It may even be less.

Oh, and support of same-sex marriage by minorities now is 61% as opposed to 57% of whites.  Just throwing that out there.