Last Call

And Sen. Rand Paul shows his true colors as he tries to fundraise off his filibuster attempt, loading his letters full of lies.  David Corn catches him red-handed.

Though foes of drones on the right and left cheered Sen. Rand Paul's filibuster this week, with the tea partier delaying confirmation of CIA director John Brennan for a day, Paul's rant targeted a nonexistent dispute: whether or not Obama administration officials believed they could use drones (or other weapons) to kill American citizens within the borders of the United States without due process. Take away all Paul's hyped-up hysteria—watch out, Jane Fonda!—and he didn't truly disagree with the administration's position that in an extraordinary circumstance, such as an ongoing terrorist attack, the US government can deploy lethal force against evildoers who happen to be American citizens. So why did Paul go ballistic? Here's a clue: The day after he ended one of the longest filibusters in US history, he tried to cash in on his stunt by zapping out a fundamentally inaccurate fundraising email for his 2016 reelection campaign.

How bad was it?  Pretty awful:

So I stood for thirteen-straight hours to send a message to the Obama administration, I will do everything in my power to fight their attempts to ignore the Constitution!

Millions of Americans chose to stand with me and put President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and Congress in the spotlight...

And the good news is, it worked!

Just hours ago, I received a letter from Attorney General Holder declaring the President DOES NOT have the authority to use drones to kill Americans on U.S. soil.

Patriot, this shows what we can do when stand together and fight.

You got it.  Rand Paul is now taking credit for the Obama administration's position. Only one problem:  As Corn points out, Rand Paul agrees with the Obama administration that under an imminent threat situation, the President can indeed do that.

Paul thoroughly mischaracterized Holder's statement for his money-shaking email. The attorney general limited his no-drones declaration to Americans "not engaged in combat." An American participating in a terrorist attack that constitutes an extraordinary circumstance could still end up on the wrong end of a Hellfire missile (with Paul supporting such a development).

Paul did not force a change in Obama administration policy or even a clarification of policy. What Holder said in the second letter was a reiteration of what he said in the first letter that Paul essentially endorsed while filibustering.

But I had to put up with all kinds of "progressive" people this week telling me how principled Rand Paul is.  Maybe it will make them feel better to be suckered into being props for his fundraising for 2016, but I'm pretty sure they don't care because they hate President Obama more than they dislike Rand Paul.

Got news for you:  that doesn't make you a principled progressive, it makes you a stooge.

Oh, and if you need final confirmation you're being played like idiots, behold John Podhoretz:

The lesson: Do interesting, unexpected things and you can highlight issues important to you, advance policy goals you think are critical for the future of the country and elevate your own standing to the level of a national figure.

Be the shiny object for our idiot village media to chase, and you get to be a "serious national leadership figure".  Thanks for playing along, suckers.

Ashley To Ashley, Dust To Dust

Apparently the DSCC has decided that Ashley Judd is a liability in Kentucky, and Michael Bennet and the powers that be on Capitol Hill are moving to get current KY Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes into the race ASAP to face Mitch The Turtle.  Joe Sonka:

The change of heart came after a recent poll the DSCC conducted, but not because it showed Judd was incapable of competing with McConnell, rather that Grimes performed better than Judd and gave Democrats the best chance at victory.

As late as last week, the wheels were already very much in motion at the DSCC in planning a Judd Senate candidacy. While those plans have not been scrapped, there is definitely a re-evaluation happening. Our sources tell LEO that while the DSCC felt that Judd could compete with McConnell, one of Judd’s strongest assets would be her ability to raise money on par with McConnell and tie up Republican campaign spending (both McConnell’s and the NRSC’s) in that race. However, their recent polling suggests the 2014 race is very much winnable, with McConnell so vulnerable that Democrats need to make their priority finding the candidate with the best chance of winning.

Then again, they are not entirely sure at this point that Grimes would even entertain a run against McConnell, as she has plenty of other races in the next three years that she could choose to run in, most of which would not be nearly as difficult as the 2014 Senate race.

As I've said before, this is an empirical opportunity to test the "Better Dems vs More Dems" theory of taking back over Congress.  If Grimes can beat McConnell, even though Judd is far more liberal, is it worth backing Grimes to get rid of Mitch McConnell?

On the other hand, a Democrat who can win a statewide race and still be a viable candidate for Congress is a rare opportunity.  On the gripping hand, Grimes may simply run for Dinosaur Steve's seat as Governor, something in the long run I would much rather have as a Kentucky voter.

We'll see how this shakes out.  If Grimes turns the DSCC down, getting behind Judd may be the way forward.

Big Dog Bites Back On DOMA

In 1996, President Clinton signed the Defense Of Marriage Act into law, preventing the federal government from recognizing any aspect of a same-sex marriage.  Some 17 years later, Big Dog says he did it to prevent an even worse law from going into effect, but he admits that discriminatory DOMA needs to go in a new op-ed for the Washington Post.

When I signed the bill, I included a statement with the admonition that “enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination.” Reading those words today, I know now that, even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law is itself discriminatory. It should be overturned.

We are still a young country, and many of our landmark civil rights decisions are fresh enough that the voices of their champions still echo, even as the world that preceded them becomes less and less familiar. We have yet to celebrate the centennial of the 19th Amendment, but a society that denied women the vote would seem to us now not unusual or old-fashioned but alien. I believe that in 2013 DOMA and opposition to marriage equality are vestiges of just such an unfamiliar society.

Americans have been at this sort of a crossroads often enough to recognize the right path. We understand that, while our laws may at times lag behind our best natures, in the end they catch up to our core values. One hundred fifty years ago, in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln concluded a message to Congress by posing the very question we face today: “It is not ‘Can any of us imagine better?’ but ‘Can we all do better?’ ”

The answer is of course and always yes. In that spirit, I join with the Obama administration, the petitioner Edith Windsor, and the many other dedicated men and women who have engaged in this struggle for decades in urging the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act.

Clinton signed the bill anyway.  I'm glad he's admitting the bill enshrines discrimination into the United States Code, but it's not like he wasn't in a position to veto the damn thing.  I'm not giving him a pass on that, there are a ton of Gingrich-era GOP bills Clinton signed into law that have had long-lasting and painful effects on America (and yes, I'm fully aware that 17 years from now, I'll probably be saying the same thing about Barack Obama.)

Hopefully the Supremes will do the right thing here and fix Clinton's mistake.  But the blame remains at least partially on a Democratic President who should have known better.

StupidiNews!

• North Korea has now vowed to end all its non-aggression pacts with neighboring South Korea in response to a new round of UN sanctions over its recent nuclear test.
• A new study finds as much as a fifth of Canada's glaciers could be gone completely by the end of the century due to global warming.
• A health plan survey by a California firm finds only two percent of health insurance plans are in compliance ahead of 2014 Obamacare regulations.
• The tiny Falkland Islands vote on a referendum this week to remain a self-governing UK territory, as Argentina increasingly believes the islands should belong to them.
• PC game developer InXile has set a new Kickstarter funding record with its spiritual successor to Plansecape: Torment, with the game raising a million dollars in under 8 hours.

Last Call

Democratic Sen. Carl Levin is out in Michigan for 2014.

Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called it an "extremely difficult" decision and stated that he'll better serve his Michigan constituents in the next two years of his term by not being distracted by a campaign.

"This decision was extremely difficult because I love representing the people of Michigan in the U.S. Senate and fighting for the things that I believe are important to them," he said in a statement.

During the remainder of his time in Washington, Levin said he plans to focus on his continued push for stricter rules against tax avoidance, saying tax loopholes that allow off-shore accounts are "a major drain on our treasury." He also wants to fight to boost manufacturing and address what he sees as serious flaws in campaign finance laws.

Further, Levin expressed concern about the government's fiscal problems on the military and showed a strong desire to ensure a "rapid transfer of responsibility for Afghan security to the Afghans." 

If anyone knows who will be a good egg to replace Levin, it's Chris Savage at EclectaBlog.  We'll see what he has to say on Levin.

Personally, I say the Dems will keep the seat, but the GOP has got to be salivating over it.  Going to be a tough battle...

Punish The Poor, Carolina Style

The GOP takeover of North Carolina continues, and the latest bit of wacky fun will cost every one of the people who voted for Republicans dearly in extra taxes.

With the Senate's final approval Wednesday, a measure to let a modest state tax credit for low- and moderate-income taxpayers expire in 2013 is headed to Gov. Pat McCrory.

The measure sunsets the earned income tax credit (EITC) -- after a one-year extension -- drew the scorn of Democrats, who unsuccessfully sought to extend it. The legislation lowers the state's tax break slightly for the 2013 tax year because the federal tax credit increased.

Republicans said the bill is standard fixes to "decouple" the state from federal tax policy. But Democrats link it with efforts this session to curtail unemployment benefits and prevent Medicaid expansion to show the majority party is disregarding the poor.

Yep, in addition to having the lowest unemployment benefits in the entire country, and mass purging the state's regulators, Gov. McCrory refuses Medicaid expansion, and will now almost certainly add to the tax burden of the state's poor.

It's pretty clear what McCrory is trying to do:  drive off the state's poor people to other states and make them Virginia, South Carolina, or Tennessee's problem.  Congrats, folks back home.  You get the government you vote for, every single time. 

Enjoy your austerity regime!

Read more here: http://projects.newsobserver.com/under_the_dome/senate_sends_mccrory_a_bill_that_would_repeal_the_states_earned_income_tax_credit#storylink=cpy

Spiking The Earth's Punchbowl

Meanwhile, all this talk of sequestration and political combat pales in comparison to some nasty news about climate change and carbon today:  it's getting worse, and it's getting worse faster.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere underwent one of its biggest single-year jumps ever in 2012, according to researchers at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. Between the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2013, carbon dioxide levels increased by 2.67 parts per million — a rise topped only by the spike in 1998.

By comparison, global carbon levels averaged a yearly rise of just under 2 parts per million from 2000 to 2010, and increased by less than 1 part per million in the 1960s. The 2012 rise makes it that much more unlikely that global warming can be limited to the 2 degree Celsius threshold most scientist agree is the bare minimum necessary to avoid truly catastrophic levels of climate change. The Associated Press has the report :

Carbon dioxide levels jumped by 2.67 parts per million since 2011 to total just under 395 parts per million, says Pieter Tans, who leads the greenhouse gas measurement team for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That’s the second highest rise in carbon emissions since record-keeping began in 1959. The measurements are taken from air samples captured away from civilization near a volcano in Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

More coal-burning power plants, especially in the developing world, are the main reason emissions keep going up – even as they have declined in the U.S. and other places, in part through conservation and cleaner energy.

At the same time, plants and the world’s oceans which normally absorb some carbon dioxide, last year took in less than they do on average, says John Reilly, co-director of Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Plant and ocean absorption of carbon varies naturally year to year.

Needless to say, climate change, and the Republican efforts to block any efforts to do anything about it, will haunt America for generations.  I'm more sure of that than ever.  My own Congressman, MIT-educated inventor and businessman, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie?

Today’s Science Committee Hearing on Global Warming canceled due to snow. #TrueStory
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 7, 2013

I know he's not a moron when it comes to science.  The guy won the Lemelson prize, MIT's yearly award for inventors, and he founded his own tech company in 1995.

And yet he's cracking lame ass jokes about snow and global warming.  Just to be with the cool kids.  I'll tell you what, this guy is a piece of work, and it's only been a couple of months. If there's any Republican who should be championing science, it's the MIT inventor.

Alas, he's also a Republican businessman who thinks Rand Paul is just ultra cool.  Jesus wept.

StupidiNews!

• Overriding Gov. Mike Bebee's veto, Republicans in Arkansas' House joined the state Senate to impose the nation's toughest abortion restrictions, banning all abortions after just 12 weeks.
• After 13 hours, Sen. Rand Paul has ended his talking filibuster of CIA Director John Brennan, who will now receive a confirmation vote Thursday.
• The House has passed a measure to fund the government through Sept. 30 that locks in place the sequestration cuts from last week.
• At least one sector of Europe's economy is booming right now:  outlet malls selling Europe's biggest brands are drawing international tourists.
• A bipartisan effort to strengthen mobile and email privacy laws will be introduced this week as a new bill would mean that cops would need a warrant to search your email.

Last Call

Rand Paul is filibustering the nomination of CIA head John Brennan over drones.  And I mean an active, talking filibuster.

Republican Rand Paul stiff-armed President Barack Obama’s CIA nomination Wednesday, drawing support from fellow senators concerned about the administration’s refusal to rule out drone strikes on US soil.

With the blocking tactic stretching into it’s sixth hour, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to bring Paul’s filibuster to a close, but the freshman from Kentucky refused, continuing his hold on any Senate action as he railed against US policy on targeted killings.

Paul said he would be happy to yield “if the president or the attorney general will clarify that they are not going to kill non-combatants in America.”

The drone issue gained fresh currency on Capitol Hill with senators from both parties pressing US Attorney General Eric Holder on whether the administration believes such drone attacks could be justified.

Paul began by saying he will “speak until I can no longer speak,” and demanding answers from President Barack Obama on the secret unmanned aerial drone program that has emerged as the most contentious element of John Brennan’s nomination to head the spy agency.

Paul has drafted a number of Republicans to assist him in this tactic, and they're happy to keep blocking Senate business until they get what they want, or Brennan resigns from the nomination, or both.   But given Rand Paul's curious position on civil liberties when it comes to voting rights, civil rights, women's rights, LGBT rights, and the rights of the poor, hearing him prattle on about a theoretical death by fiat when the prison culture and the gun culture and the rape culture and the corporate greed culture in this country condemn thousands upon thousands to death daily without due process...

Well I don't particularly care for the man.

Perspective is needed, and I don't see a lot of it out there.  Let's remember that in addition to his "heroic" position on drones, Rand Paul happily voted against VAWA, the Paycheck Fairness Act, Hurricane Sandy aid, the fiscal cliff deal, and against using funds to transfer detainees so we could eventually close Gitmo.  He's actively spoken out against the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.  He's against any form of gun violence prevention legislation.

But Rand Paul is an okay guy because drones?

No.  He's not.  He's a Republican playing the game, and it seems the regular suspects are falling for it again, those "liberals" who think Barack Obama is a bigger threat than, well, Rand Paul.

The Next Fight In The Eternal Combat

With the sequestration detonation firmly ruining the economy, the GOP is moving on to the government shutdown fight at the end of the month, and they're playing their cards early.

A group of House Republicans said Tuesday that a bill to fund the federal government should include provisions targeting the contraception mandate in President Obama's healthcare law.

GOP lawmakers reintroduced a bill Tuesday to repeal the contraception mandate. They also pressed their party's leaders to roll back the provision as part of a continuing resolution later this month to keep the federal government operating.

"This attack on religious freedom demands immediate congressional action," the 14 lawmakers wrote. "Nothing short of a full exemption for both nonprofit and for-profit entities will satisfy the demands of the Constitution and common sense."

And nothing short of a repeal of the entire Obama administration and the resignation of all Democrats everywhere will satisfy the demands of the Tea Party nutjobs.   I expect Orange Julius will sweep this under the rug, but the pile he's already got under said rug (fiscal cliff deal, VAWA) may be too high for him to do so.

Besides, Sen. Ted Cruz appears to be willing to shut down the country in order to defund Obamacare anyway, so Boehner may be off the hook.

On the other hand, if the GOP really, reeeeeeeally wants to shut down the government over birth control (because the War on Women worked so very well for them in 2012) then go right ahead, gentlemen.

We could really use that Democratic House in 2014.

We Come Not To Praise Hugo Chavez...

...but to bury him, as Zack Beauchamp reminds us.  Deep, deep underground preferably, because the guy really was a despot and a tyrant, not to mention an actual anti-Semite.  I know that term gets thrown around a lot, but he really did go after Venezuelan Jews as political and social enemies of the state and did nothing to stop the rise of that awful garbage in his populist bullying wake.

While even Chavez’s critics admit that he did attempt to address the plight of Venezuela’s poorest, the decline in economic inequality in Venezuela reflected a broader egalitarian trend in Latin America, and can’t be fully credited to Chavez’s policies. However, Chavez’ policies harmed Venezuela’s poorest in other ways: the value of the Venezuelan currency dropped while prices soared, making it harder for people to buy basic necessities, and crime skyrocketed.

Moreover, Chavez hurt the vulnerable in Venezuela in other ways. Chavez’s state-run media hounded Venezuela’s small, beleaguered Jewish population — he himself once said “Don’t let yourselves be poisoned by those wandering Jews.” A study released by the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University found that Chavez’s rule “witnessed a rise in antisemitic manifestations, including vandalism, media attacks, caricatures, and physical attacks on Venezuelan Jewish institutions.” Indeed, roughly half of Venezuelan Jews fled the country because of “the social and economic chaos that the president has unleashed and from the uncomfortable feeling that they were being specifically targeted by the regime.”

Chavez also attacked Venezuela’s democratic political system. Human Rights Watch reported in 2012 that “the accumulation of power in the executive and the erosion of human rights protections have allowed the Chávez government to intimidate, censor, and prosecute critics and perceived opponents in a wide range of cases involving the judiciary, the media, and civil society.” Contra Serrano, Venezuela’s elections were not certified as “free and fair” by international monitors of late: Chavez had not allowed international election monitors to observe Venezuelan elections since 2006.

Absolute best case, Chavez was a terrible leader whose reign caused untold damage among the Venezuelan people.  Worst case?  Glad the guy's in the ground.

He won't be missed.

StupidiNews!

• With the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the country will hold elections in 30 days to choose his successor.
• Tuesday marked an all-time high for the Dow, closing at a record 14,254.
• The TSA will allow passengers to carry small pocketknives, baseball bats, golf clubs, and other formerly prohibited "weapons" on flights starting this week.
• The European Union has fined Microsoft almost $750 million for uncompetitive practices involving its Internet Explorer browser.
• Nearly 25,000 LED lights will be strung into a colorful show along the northern side of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in a public art project called The Bay Lights.

Last Call

Between immigration and Obamacare, Florida is shaping up to be a different kind of "battleground" state:  the kind where Republican-on-Republican attacks are tearing the state's GOP supermajority apart.

Florida Governor Rick Scott's plan to expand Medicaid coverage to cover about 1 million more poor people suffered a setback on Monday when the proposal failed to make it out of a key state legislative committee hearing.

On the eve of convening of the 2013 session, the House Select Committee on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act rejected the expansion. A Senate counterpart committee postponed consideration of the issue, which is sure to be one of the biggest controversies of the session.

Scott, a Republican who bitterly fought President Barack Obama's national healthcare plan as a candidate and in his first two years as governor, stunned conservative supporters on Feb. 20 when he endorsed a three-year expansion of Medicaid, provided the federal government picks up the full cost for the first three years as promised.

"There's definitely a fight between the governor and the (state) legislature over this. The Republicans in the legislature are much more fiscally conservative than his actions have shown him to be," said Susan MacManus, a Tampa-based political scientist at the University of South Florida.

Republican legislative leaders have been openly hostile toward the plan, emphasizing that state lawmakers will make the final decision in drawing up a budget for next fiscal year.

"Openly hostile" doesn't begin to describe it.  Florida GOP lawmakers believe Scott has betrayed them, and they'll expand Medicare over their dead bodies.

Or more correctly, the dead bodies of Florida's poor, who will continue to die from lack of affordable health insurance.  This is a major feature of Republican rule at the state level.  The GOP is A-OK with millions of uninsured Americans.  They don't have a problem with that.

I'm betting the rest of Florida does, however.

Thirteen Words, Possible Fewer IQ Points

In his quixotic quest to somehow assure that President Obama goes down in history as Worse Than Bush And Worst Ever, John Hinderaker over at Power Line decides that Obama's SOTU comments on climate change are even more of a lie than Bush's SOTU comments a decade ago on Saddam Hussein's WMD.

Yep, apparently climate change is worse than the Iraq War.

Remember George W. Bush’s famous “16 words”? They came from Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech, where Bush said: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” That was a true statement, but it caused immense controversy, for reasons that are now hard to remember.

Sure, hard to remember.  Like the faces of the thousands of US troops and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis that resulted from us going over there to stop those non-existent piles of phantom WMDs that never existed.  Oh well, why would that ever be considered controversial?

Fast forward to 2013, and President Obama’s State of the Union, where he said, talking about global warming: “Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense.” 

It's false, Hinderaker says, because the DUST BOWL, LIBTARDS and NYC had hurricanes in the 19th century!

No, that's his entire argument.  Convinced he's won, he plows on through the stars...

What are the chances that Obama’s false 13 words will become as controversial as Bush’s true 16 words? Slim and none, obviously. Of course, there were so many other untrue statements in Obama’s SOTU that it is understandable that the 13 words on global warming got lost in the shuffle.

What are the chances that this guy has a working soul?  Zero.

Romney With Glasses

And approximately 12 hours after flipping on immigration reform and saying there's no path to citizenship for undocumented citizens, Jeb Bush has flopped back saying there needs to be a path to citizenship for undocumented citizens.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday that he would support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants “if you can craft that in law where you can have a path to citizenship where there isn’t an incentive for people to come illegally” — a position that puts him at odds with his new book, out today from Simon & Schuster.

In Immigration Wars, co-authored with immigration lawyer Clint Bolick, Bush agues that denying a path to citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrations is “absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions have consequences.” Those who enter the country illegally, Bush contends, should “start the process to earn permanent legal residency” after pleading guilty to breaking the law and paying “applicable fines or perform community service.” But they should not have access to “the cherished fruits of citizenship”.

Not only does it contradict his book, it contradicts what he said yesterday.

“There has to be some difference between people who come here legally and illegally. It’s just a matter of common sense and a matter of the rule of law,” he said. “If we’re not going to apply the law fairly and consistently, then we’re going to have another wave of illegal immigrants coming into the country.”

But today, a path to citizenship is okay.  Yesterday, it wasn't.  Six weeks ago in an op-ed for the WSJ, it was okay.

The only alternatives to increased immigration are mounting debts or reduced social services. A practicable system of work-based immigration for both high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants—a system that will include a path to citizenship—will help us meet workforce needs, prevent exportation of jobs to foreign countries and protect against the exploitation of workers. 

At this point Jeb's 2016 run is over about 3 years before it begins.  This clown is all over the map...just like his brother.  Please tell me we're not stupid enough to elect another Bush...and please tell me the GOP will nominate his dumb ass anyway.