Last week, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) asked people to “Go Purple” to call attention to the suicides of six teenagers who were victims of homophobic bullying. In response, a myriad of high-profile figures “jumped at the opportunity” to voice their support as part of YouTube’s “It Gets Better” campaign, including 40 Broadway actors, Google, Inc., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and President Barack Obama. Yesterday, Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sent new official guidelines on school-bullying to 15,000 school districts and 5,000 colleges and universities as a message that “bullying is not acceptable” and could violate federal civil rights laws.
Despite a chorus of support, GLAAD’s anti-bullying message is falling on deaf ears in Arkansas. Specifically, the ears of Arkansas District School board member Clint McCance. In response to GLAAD’s appeal to wear purple, McCance, an elected member of the Midland school board, unleashed a tirade of anti-gay bigotry on his facebook page. In a series of posts, McCance actually encourages “fags” and “queers” to kill themselves and says that, if his kids were gay, he’d “run them off“:
McCance wrote the following message on his Facebook page: “Seriously they want me to wear purple because five queers killed themselves. The only way im wearin it for them is if they all commit suicide. I cant believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid. We are honoring the fact that they sinned and killed thereselves because of their sin. REALLY PEOPLE.”
Initially, six people “liked” McCance’s message. He also received supportive comments, though some challenged his statement. A commenter wrote, “Because hatred is always right.” That led McCance to write, “No because being a fag doesn’t give you the right to ruin the rest of our lives. If you get easily offended by being called a fag then dont tell anyone you are a fag. Keep that shit to yourself. I dont care how people decide to live their lives. They dont bother me if they keep it to thereselves. It pisses me off though that we make a special purple fag day for them. I like that fags cant procreate. I also enjoy the fact that they often give each other aids and die. If you arent against it, you might as well be for it.”[...]
“I would disown my kids they were gay. They will not be welcome at my home or in my vicinity. I will absolutely run them off. Of course my kids will know better. My kids will have solid christian beliefs. See it infects everyone.”
While schools across the country are clamping down on this kind of bigotry, it is appalling that McCance, a school official, would champion this extreme level of hatred. Particularly when Arkansas enacted an anti-bullying law in 2003 to “prohibit bullying while on school property, at school-sponsored activities, and on school buses.” Not only does the law require school employees to report bullying to the principal, but it even calls on local school board to provide opportunities to “develop the knowledge and skills to prevent and respond” to acts of bullying. McCance’s comments, however, are the antithesis of knowledge.
Still, as the Daily Kos diarist Michael Hendricks notes, “the man is a disgusting individual but sadly he has the freedom to say what he says. He cannot be fired. He is an elected official. Short of him resigning only the people of the community can fire him the next time he is up for re-election.” But, should efforts like the “Fire Clint McCance” facebook page raise enough awareness, Arkansans may have the last word.
Kentucky GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul has “disassociated” himself from Tim Profitt, his former Bourbon County campaign coordinator who stomped on a progressive activist’s head Monday night, but the Paul campaign is now refusing to return the $1,950 Profitt has contributed to the campaign. Democratic nominee Jack Conway, among others, have called on Paul to return the money, along with another $600 Profitt’s wife contributed. But a campaign spokesperson told the Louisville Courier Journal today that that would not be happening:
“The Paul campaign condemned the incident far before Conway’s camp ever addressed it and decisively severed all ties with the supporter in question,” said Jesse Benton, Paul’s campaign manager. “To suggest otherwise is nothing but a desperate attempt to distract voters from the issues facing Kentucky.”
But Benton said the campaign would not return Profitt’s contributions.
It’s odd that Paul would refuse to return the relatively insignificant $2,000 donation — he raised over $1 million in the last quarter alone — considering that rejecting the money would send a clear signal that the campaign wants nothing to do with Profitt. Moreover, this seems to be a reversal for the Paul campaign. The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent notes that last night Fox reported that the campaign said it would return Profitt’s donation. (HT: Barefoot & Progressive)
The Rachel Maddow show blog reported this week that the Tea Party Nation — founded by Tennessee lawyer Judson Phillips — sent out an email to supporters on Saturday urging them to support the Republican candidate in Minnesota’s 5th congressional district because the incumbent — Rep. Keith Ellison (D) — is too…Muslim. “Ellison is one of the most radical members of congress. … He is the only Muslim member of congress. He supports the Counsel for American Islamic Relations, HAMAS and has helped congress send millions of tax to terrorists in Gaza,” the email said. ThinkProgress noted that Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) is also Muslim. The Daily Caller reports today that Phillips has corrected his false claim that Ellison is the only Muslim member of Congress, but he refused to apologize, saying that he has a problem with Islam:
“I am not going to apologize because I’m bothered by a religion that says kill the infidel, especially when I am the infidel,” Phillips wrote on the Tea Party Nation website Tuesday. “Should we vote out Keith Ellison just because he is a Muslim? No. But his beliefs define his character and his character is a central issue.”
“A majority of Tea Party members, I suspect, are not fans of Islam,” Phillips said. “I, personally have a real problem with Islam. With Islam, you have a religion that says kill the Jews, kill the infidels. It bothers me when a religion says kill the infidels. It bothers me a lot more when I am the infidel.” [...] When asked if he would vote for a Muslim candidate who was a conservative, he replied, “I don’t know.”
Yesterday, ThinkProgress noted the anti-Constitution stance taken by the Republican Senate candidate in Colorado Ken Buck, who said that “I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state.” The story quickly gained mainstream media attention.
Spokespeople for the Buck campaign insist that the comments were “taken out of context,” and Buck gave an interview to CNN yesterday to defend his comments:
BUCK: My problem isn’t with separation of church and state. It is with how far we have gone in that area. I think when you have a soup kitchen for example that is run by the Salvation Army which has religious ties in town and you have another soup kitchen in town which is purely secular. For the federal government to give one organization money but not the other because one has ties with a religious group is wrong. The idea is that we need to have compassionate programs for people. And if religious organizations are performing some of those functions without proselytizing then I think the federal government should include both.
Buck’s comments were not taken out of context. The original post included the entirety of his comments on the separation of church and state. A video of his entire answer — which was not about the First Amendment, but rather the government’s role in preserving culture — can be found here. As Denver Post columnist Mike Littwin observed, noting Buck’s recent attempt to take back comments he made about global warming, the campaign’s “default position” is “that whenever Buck is quoted as saying something he wished he hadn’t said, he must not have actually meant it.” (As the Wonk Room noted, Buck also said he wanted to privatize Social Security, then insisted that he didn’t.)
Moreover, much like the deceit in his original comments, which falsely suggested that Obama renamed the White House Christmas tree, Buck is completely wrong with his Salvation Army example. According to their 2010 Annual Report, the Salvation Army received over $392 million in government funds last year. They are simply not allowed to use that money to proselytize, exactly as Buck recommends should be done, but certainly can use it to provide “compassionate programs” for people.
Buck has consistently said that the government has “gone too far” with the separation between church and state, yet he’s been unable to give a valid example. Perhaps he’s misinformed about current federal policy and would find it satisfactory. Alternately, perhaps he would like the government to get much more actively involved in promoting religion, but is afraid to give real examples of what that would look like.
On Monday night, ThinkProgess hosted a film screening of Astroturf Wars followed by a panel discussion featuring the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, (Astro)Turf Wars filmmaker Taki Oldham, Americans for Prosperity’s Phil Kerpen, the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson, moderator and ThinkProgress editor Faiz Shakir, and myself. Responding to the vitriolic racism openly aired at tea parties and captured in Oldham’s film, an audience member asked Kerpen why he refused to acknowledge the possibility that dangerous propaganda could spur life-threatening violence. Kerpen said he opposed racism and hate in the Tea Parties, but admitted that racists “might find a more receptive audience [at Tea Party rallies] because of all the paranoia and concern out there about government.”
In addition to the problem that Tea Parties are often open forums for neo-Nazis and white supremacists holding racist signs, I pointed out that Americans for Prosperity itself organizes events with proud bigots like Tom Tancredo and Jerome Corsi. Kerpen interjected, calling me a “full time conspiracy theorist,” and claimed that Americans for Prosperity had never held an event with Corsi and has no presence in South Carolina:
KERPEN: There is no problem we have a problem with extremism in this country. We have a problem with racism in our country, it goes back to our founding. Unfortunately, some of these people look at these Tea Party gatherings with all this concern about big government and think, this is where I ought to go to recruit. And perhaps they might find a slightly more receptive audience there because of all the paranoia and concern out there about government. That said, the overwhelming majority of Tea Party folks condemn racism. [...]
FANG: I applaud Kerpen for denouncing racism now, but it’s a problem when Americans for Prosperity funds, organizes rallies and their primary speakers are people like Jerome Corsi, who has written an entire book and has made a career out of accusing Obama of being a Kenyan, or — [Kerpen interrupts] Yes, you did in South Carolina.
KERPEN: We don’t have a chapter in South Carolina.
FANG: We can send this around to anyone who would like to see.
KERPEN: Full time conspiracy theorist here.
FANG: I think it was like April 19th of this year, you had an event with him. But also you’ve invited Tom Tancredo, had him as an official speaker. He says he wants to deport Obama, says he’s an illegal immigrant. A lot of these folks. [...]
Watch it:
According to the Americans for Prosperity website, there is a South Carolina chapter of the group, and it indeed helped sponsor a rally with both Tancredo and Corsi in Greenville, South Carolina on April 17th of this year (view a screenshot here). At this particular Americans for Prosperity rally, Tancredo called Obama a lying, taxing, foreign-born, anti-American socialist, who should be sent back to his “homeland” of Kenya. At the Americans for Prosperity rally, Corsi declared, “we have an undocumented president in the White House.” In fact, Americans for Prosperity has sponsored multiple events with racist figures like Tancredo and Glenn Beck. For example, earlier this year Americans for Prosperity leader Tim Phillips hosted another Tea Party rally with Tancredo in Arizona to support “Americans for Prosperity Hero of the Taxpayer” State Sen. Russell Pearce (R-AZ), the sponsor of the racial profiling law SB1070.
A report, sponsored by the NAACP, chronicles the close relationship between racist hate groups and the Americans for Prosperity-supported Tea Party.
This is the second installment in a three-part series on legislation that may emerge from a GOP-controlled Congress. Click here for part one on ending birthright citizenship.
After their attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005 was met with widespread public outcry, the GOP’s strategy on Social Security has been two-fold. First, Republicans deny they are interested in privatization. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) recently told the Wall Street Journal that “no one has a proposal up to cut Social Security,” (his own book proposes doing so), while conservatives in the media have tried to argue that Republicans don’t actually want to privatize Social Security.
The second tactic has been to obfuscate their privatization plans by sugarcoating them in flowery, palatable language. President Bush’s privatization plan is a prime example. In his 2005 State of the Union, President Bush said we needed to “save” Social Security and give younger workers a “better deal” by having “voluntary personal retirement accounts,” the poll-tested language for privatization. Bush now says his greatest failure was not privatizing Social Security.
However, such rhetoric belies their record. A thorough review of the voting records and statements of Republicans in Congress reveals a critical mass of GOPers who have supported privatizing Social Security. In total, 47 percent of House Republicans and 49 percent of Senate Republicans are on record supporting the privatization of Social Security. Some, including Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), want to go even further and “wean everybody” off of Social Security altogether.
As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, Republicans in Congress have long operated by the “majority of the majority” principle, whereby legislation is only advanced by a GOP Speaker if it is supported by a majority of Republicans. With many prominent GOP candidates in favor of privatizing or eliminating Social Security, including Rand Paul, Ken Buck, Dan Coats, Sharron Angle, Dan Benishek, Ben Quayle, Star Parker, and Jesse Kelly, it’s likely that a GOP-controlled Congress would have the necessary votes to revisit the issue.
Here are the 104 Republicans in Congress who support privatizing Social Security (leadership in bold):
Senate (20)
Jeff Sessions (AL) | Richard Shelby (AL) | Jon Kyl (AZ) |
John McCain (AZ) | Saxby Chambliss (GA) | Chuck Grassley (IA) |
Richard Lugar (IN) | Pat Roberts (KS) | Sam Brownback (KS) |
Mitch McConnell (KY) | Roger Wicker (MS) | Thad Cochran (MS) |
Judd Gregg (NH) | James Inhofe (OK) | Tom Coburn (OK) |
Jim DeMint (SC) | Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) | Bob Bennett (UT) |
Orrin Hatch (UT) | Mike Enzi (WY) |
House of Representatives (84)
Jo Bonner (AL-01) | Spencer Bachus (AL-06) | Trent Franks (AZ-02) |
Wally Herger (CA-02) | Dan Lungren (CA-03) | Devin Nunes (CA-21) |
David Dreier (CA-26) | Jerry Lewis (CA-41) | Ken Calvert (CA-44) |
Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) | John Campbell (CA-48) | Darrell Issa (CA-49) |
Duncan Hunter (CA-52) | Doug Lamborn (CO-05) | Jeff Miller (FL-01) |
Ander Crenshaw (FL-04) | Ginny Brown-Waite (FL-05) | Cliff Stearns (FL-06) |
Adam Putnam (FL-12) | Connie Mack (FL-14) | Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18) |
Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25) | Jack Kingston (GA-01) | Lynn Westmoreland (GA-03) |
Tom Price (GA-06) | John Linder (GA-07) | Phil Gingrey (GA-11) |
Tom Latham (IA-04) | Steve King (IA-05) | Judy Biggert (IL-13) |
John Shimkus (IL-19) | Dan Burton (IN-05) | Mike Pence (IN-06) |
Rodney Alexander (LA-05) | Roscoe Bartlett (MD-06) | Pete Hoekstra (MI-02) |
Vern Ehlers (MI-03) | David Lee Camp (MI-04) | John Kline (MN-02) |
Erik Paulsen* (MN-03) | Todd Akin (MO-02) | Roy Blunt (MO-07) |
Virginia Foxx (NC-05) | Howard Coble (NC-06) | Sue Myrick (NC-09) |
Patrick McHenry (NC-10) | Jeff Fortenberry (NE-01) | Lee Terry (NE-02) |
Scott Garrett (NJ-05) | Peter King (NY-03) | John Boehner (OH-08) |
John Sullivan (OK-01) | Tom Cole (OK-04) | Jim Gerlach* (PA-06) |
Bill Shuster (PA-09) | Joseph Pitts (PA-16) | Joe Wilson (SC-02) |
Gresham Barrett (SC-03) | Bob Inglis (SC-04) | Zach Wamp (TN-03) |
Marsha Blackburn (TN-07) | Louie Gohmert (TX-01) | Sam Johnson (TX-03) |
Jeb Hensarling (TX-05) | Joe Barton (TX-06) | Kevin Brady (TX-08) |
Michael McCaul (TX-10) | Mike Conaway (TX-11) | Mac Thornberry (TX-13) |
Ron Paul (TX-14) | Randy Neugebauer (TX-19) | Kenny Marchant (TX-24) |
Michael Burgess (TX-26) | John Carter (TX-31) | Pete Sessions (TX-32) |
Rob Bishop (UT-01) | Jason Chaffetz (UT-03) | Eric Cantor (VA-07) |
Doc Hastings (WA-04) | Dave Reichert (WA-08) | Paul Ryan (WI-01) |
Tom Petri (WI-06) | Shelley Moore Capito (WV-02) | Cynthia Lummis (WY-AL) |
*- Reps. Gerlach and Paulsen initially co-sponsored bills that would privatize Social Security before withdrawing their co-sponsorships.
Late last week, Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA) and his Republican opponent and retired Marine Nick Popaditch debated a variety of issues at the Imperial Valley Expo. Highlights from the debate include Popaditch’s view that all of the Bush tax cuts should be extended, even those for the wealthiest Americans.
At one point during the debate, a questioner asked Popaditch what he would do to make sure there “no further cuts are made to the food stamp benefits.” The Republican candidate responded by saying that, while he believes “in a safety net,” he certainly doesn’t think “we need to make it too darn comfortable down there on that safety net. I’m not a cruel man, but I think we need to make these systems not as comfortable as they are now”:
QUESTIONER: What would you do to make sure there are no further cuts are made to the food stamp benefits?
POPADITCH: What would I do to make sure no further cuts are made to food stamp benefits? Wow. Once again, I recognize there’s a difference between an entitlement and a promise. Now that would fall under the category of an entitlement. Now I believe in a safety net, but I certainly don’t think we need to make it too darn comfortable down there on that safety net. I’m not a cruel man, but I think we absolutely need to make these systems not as comfortable as they are now.
Watch it:
While food stamp benefits — administered through the federal SNAP program — are distributed on a sliding scale, they generally average out to $3 a day or $21 a week, hardly an amount that most Americans would consider “too comfortable.” It is worth noting that the United States has among the least generous social safety nets in the industrialized world, lagging well behind its neighbors in Western Europe in access to quality health care, child care, jobless benefits, and other welfare state features.
On Monday, Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) held a public campaign event at a local coffee shop in Louisa, VA, described as a “friendly event where voters could meet” the Congressman and Republican leader. Jon Taylor, a member of the Louisa Democratic Committee, and his wife RSVP’d to the event and showed up with a sign for Cantor’s opponent, Rick Waugh. The coffee shop owners asked the couple to leave, and when they protested, Jon Taylor was dragged out and put on the ground by three law enforcement officers. Watch:
Taylor says he feels he was “manhandled” by the arresting officers, and that “[t]he Louisa County police department was basically used by Eric Cantor’s campaign to make a political statement.” For its part, the Cantor campaign accused Taylor of disrupting an event, and blamed Waugh’s campaign. “The voters of Virginia are going to reject this thuggery,” said Ray Allen Jr., a Cantor spokesman.
(HT: TP reader Zooey)
Stephen Broden, a Texas GOP House candidate, has a long history of extremist statements. In a 2009 interview with Fox News, Broden claimed that the Obama Administration supports end-of-life counseling for seniors in order to “depopulate that particular group of people.” Broden also claimed that the present economic crisis was “contrived” by the Obama Administration and he compared the U.S. government to Nazi Germany.
As ThinkProgress noted, Broden asserted in a television interview last week that a violent overthrow of the government “is on the table.” Broden has since tried to distance himself from his statement on violent revolution, but that hasn’t stopped him from spouting absurd conspiracy theories painting his political opponents in a similar moral light to the Nazis.
In a recent interview with a local public radio station, for example, Broden claimed that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wants to exterminate African-Americans.
She said we passed Roe v. Wade in order to control certain people group. The woman is a eugenicist and eugenicists believe that there are certain races that have privileges and are more evolved & developed than others. The African American community and our people, in the eyes of eugenicists, are not as evolved or intelligent as others.
Listen here:
Obviously, Justice Ginsburg does not want to eliminate African-Americans through mass abortions of black babies. This bizarre claim, which has been touted by right-wing extremists such as Glenn Beck, stems from a July New York Times interview where Ginsburg explained that when Roe was decided “some people” thought that Medicaid would be used to coerce women into having abortions because “there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” Far from endorsing the view that African-Americans should be encouraged to have abortions, Ginsburg expressly states that “the government has no business making that choice for a woman.”
And Broden’s toxic mix of slander and extremism is only slightly more extreme than much of his fellow GOP candidates.
In addition to Broden, the slate of candidates this year includes countless GOP lawmakers and candidates — including Republican budget chief Paul Ryan — who want to dismantle America’s social safety net or even declare it unconstitutional. Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is an anti-masturbation activist who “dabbled into witchcraft” and who wants to stop the “whole country from having sex.” Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle shares Broden’s flirtation with armed revolution, infamously suggesting the use of “Second Amendment remedies.”
Tim Profitt, the former Bourbon County campaign coordinator for Kentucky GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul’s campaign, gave the AP a non-apology apology yesterday for stomping on the head of a MoveOn.org activist outside a Senate debate Monday night, saying, “I apologize if it appeared overly forceful.” But apparently his pseudo-remorse was short-lived, as Profitt told local CBS affiliat WKYT today, “I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.” (The Lexington Police think otherwise, issuing Profitt with a criminal summons).
And astonishingly, asked if he planned to apologize directly the activist Lauren Valle whose head he stomped on, Profitt said, “I would like for her to apologize to me to be honest with you.” Watch it:
Profitt has remarkably attempted to blame Valle for the incident in which he and another large man wrestled the 23-year-old woman to the ground, telling WKYT, “she was a professional at what she does and I think when all the facts come out, people will see that she was the one who initiated the whole thing.” Profitt has said he restrained Valle because he feared the petite woman represented “a danger” to Paul, and said he stepped on her because “I couldn’t bend over because I have issues with my back.” Meanwhile, Profitt now says he “fears for his safety.”
On a conference call organized by the campaign for Demoratic nominee Jack Conway today, a 60-year-old Conway supporter named Michael Grossman said he was also assaulted by a Paul supporter at the same event. Grossman — who attended the event “simply as a supporter” of Conway — was carrying a sign with Conway’s name on it. Shortly after Valle was attacked, Grossman said he “felt a heavy hand on my shoulder” and turned around to see a “thug” who “happened to be massive.” Grossman said the man tried to “thrust me to the ground” in order to get to Valle and take part in that melee. When Grossman turned around, he said the man “verbally berated” him, called him a “communist” and a “socialist,” and said “you ought to be back in California or New York with all the rest of the scum.”
In her first TV interview since the incident last night, Valle told MSBC’s Keith Olberman that the incident captured on video was actually only the very end of a lengthy altercation she had with Profitt, tea party activist Mike Pezzano, and several other Rand Paul supporters. “It was premeditated” Valle said, saying that Profitt and his compatriots knew she was a progressive activist and not any kind of “threat” to Paul. Watch it:
Rand Paul has disowned Profitt, despite the fact that the campaign ironically ran a full page ad yesterday touting the endorsement of Profitt, among many others. But apparently not all conservatives are prepared to denounce violence against an innocent woman. Right-wing talk radio host Neal Boortz tweeted today, “Wanted: A Rand Paul supporter with a bad back to stand on a Media Matters staffer’s head for a while.”
Last night on her MSNBC show, host Rachel Maddow was live from Alaska, where she interviewed all three candidates running for the state’s U.S. Senate seat — including Tea Party favorite Joe Miller. Maddow stressed throughout the program that trying to interview Miller was difficult. After weeks of pushing, Maddow said, “Today, I was finally allowed to ask Joe Miller a couple of questions while we moved from a roof, through a lobby, down an escalator, through another lobby, out a door, into an SUV and then it was over.”
During that short and “strange” interview, Maddow noted that one of Miller’s staffers runs a website proclaiming to cure gays of their homosexuality and asked if Miller thinks being gay is a choice. Without answering the question directly, Miller simply said that “it really is a state issue.” After Maddow asked him to clarify, Miller said, “I think that’s up to the individual,” after returning back to his original claim that “it’s a state issue.”
Yet, later in the interview, Miller said he supports the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law stating that marriage is between a man and a women. After Maddow noted this obvious contradiction on whether the government should be involved in these personal issues, Miller tried to weasel his way out, but ultimately said he would vote for a federal constitutional marriage banning gay marriage:
MADDOW: But you do want a federal role in restricting a state’s ability to legalize gay marriage but at the state level –
MILLER: That’s not what I said. I said that there is a federal role. There are obviously federal decisions that are made based on the status of marriage.
MADDOW: Do you think there should be a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage?
MILLER: That’s up to the people. You’ve got a three-quarters vote, ratified, I’d vote for it.
MADDOW: You would vote for it?
MILLER: Yeah, I would. But it would require an amendment to the Constitution.
Watch the interview:
Maddow also asked Miller about his belief that the 17th Amendment — which allows for public election of U.S. senators, rather than state legislatures — should be repealed. But again, Miller dodged. “That wasn’t the discussion,” he said, adding that “the discussion was about the kind of theory behind the 17th Amendment,” right before he got away in his SUV.
Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart recently observed the key component behind the conservative orthodoxy Miller espoused in his position on gay rights. Republicans “always hit the old platitudes of ‘we trust you the people,’ ‘it’s about freedom and liberty,’ ‘it’s about small government,’ and then you get in there, and you expand government,” he said, adding, that it’s a “fallacy that limited government is the principled stand of conservatives. It’s only limited to the shit they want to do.”
Transcript: More »
“Across Washington, lobbyists have been working behind the scenes now for months to prepare for this possible” GOP takeover of Congress. The power shift has “generated excitement” among oil and gas lobbyists, who, along with their colleagues in other industries such as finance and health care, have been donating heavily to would-be GOP committee chairs.
Anticipating the arrival of new Republican members of Congress, the House Republican Study Committee is asking potential job applicants to who want to work in the House to “fill out ideological surveys on the websites of two conservative organizations.” Applicants are then asked to “rate” their level of disagreement with organizations like the Center for American Progress.
The New York Times reports that opponents of ObamaCare have spent $108 million since March to advertise against it, more than six times the amount that supporters have spent.
Television stations in two states have pulled advertisements by the American Action Network, a conservative 501(c)(4) headed by former Senators Norm Coleman and George Allen, because the ads contained flagrant falsehoods: an ad running in Connecticut claimed one would be jailed for not obtaining health insurance under recent health care reform laws, and another in Colorado said the reforms provided Viagra to rapists. The group does not disclose its donors.
A federal appeals court has overturned an Arizona law passed in 2004 that required voters to prove their citizenship at the polls. Governor Jan Brewer (R) slammed the ruling, calling it a “outrage and a slap in the face to all Arizonans.”
According to U.S. military and intelligence officials’ latest assessments, the military campaign “aimed at crippling the Taliban” in Afghanistan has left the Taliban “unscathed.” While escalated airstrikes and special operations raids have disrupted Taliban movements, insurgents have adeptly absorbed the blows and “appear confident that they can outlast” the troop buildup set to subside beginning next July.
This afternoon, President Obama will become the first sitting president to appear on Comedy Central’s “the Daily Show” with “comedian-turned-activist” Jon Stewart. Obama’s appearance, according to White House officials, is an attempt to “seek out young Democratic voters wherever they spend the most time.”
And finally: California GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman has spent about $140 million of her own money on her campaign — enough to send “two medium pizzas, with two toppings each, to every household in California.” The Los Angeles Times’ Steve Lopez offers some other “more worthwhile causes” the money could have gone to, such as a new Toyota Corolla for every resident of Ojai, CA — population 7,800.
ThinkProgress is hiring! Details here.
Yesterday, 24-year-old Canadian citizen Omar Khadr pleaded guilty to terrorism related charges during his military tribunal hearing at Guantanamo Bay. Khadr admitted to throwing a grenade on an Afghanistan battlefield that killed an American soldier in 2002 and planting numerous roadside bombs. Khadr had been reluctant to admit guilt, but his Canadian lawyer, speaking with the CBC’s As It Happens last night, explained the situation Khadr faced:
DENNIS EDNY: He’s agreed to accept this deal because when he looks at the alternatives and the alternatives are that he’s in a military process…that has been condemned by military prosecutors themselves who say that it is designed to make findings of guilt. He faced the potential of life in prison under this system here because the jury is hand picked, the judge is hand picked, the prosecution is hand picked and the military defense is hand picked. And then what I think really capped it all off was, much of the evidence against Omar are statements that he made while being abused and tortured and under duress. So the cards were stacked.
Indeed, Khadr was both mentally and physically abused at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, where he was first interrogated, and at Gitmo. Those statements he made under duress were deemed admissible in court. Moreover, the New York Times notes that Khadr’s prosecution was “unusual” not only because child soldiers are normally not prosecuted (Khadr was 15 years old when the U.S. military apprehended him), but also because the main charge against him was killing a soldier on the battlefield, an action, again, that is not traditionally prosecuted. Thus, the U.S. military took great pains (see the “Jurisdiction” section of Khadr’s Stipulation of Fact) to make the case that Khadr lacked military immunity. One reason the military cited was the fact that Khadr wore no national military uniform. The Times reports the Obama administration’s shocking reaction to this conundrum:
The uniform issue also led to a scramble by the Obama legal team to rewrite commission rules on the eve of a hearing for Mr. Khadr. Because Central Intelligence Agency drone operators also kill while not wearing uniforms, the team rewrote the rules to downgrade “murder in violation of the laws of war” to a domestic law offense from a war crime to avoid seeming to implicitly concede that the C.I.A. is committing war crimes.
During his CBC interview, Edny further explained the bizarre circumstances surrounding Khadr’s plea:
EDNY: In court today, they added two more charges that we’d never heard of and it seems to be that he is responsible for everybody that got injured or killed in that fight in the compound with the Taliban. [...] These charges that Omar faces are unknown under the laws of war. The Americans made them up in order to justify detaining people who didn’t wear a uniform in the battlefields of Afghanistan and I’ve often said over the years, can someone tell me what uniform the Northern Alliance was wearing when it joined the Americans in attacking the Taliban? So it’s all smoke and mirrors here.
Listen to Edny’s interview with the CBC:
Under the terms of the agreement, Khadr will serve one more year in detention in Guantanamo Bay and then be repatriated to Canada to serve the remaining seven years.
A number of legal scholars questioned the legitimacy of Khadr’s proceedings. “The conviction of this child soldier for non-existent war crimes is a disgraceful travesty and a stain on America’s reputation,” said former Gitmo defense lawyer David Frakt, who added that the plea “saved the administration from the unseemly spectacle of a trial” and that the U.S. will “still go down in history as the first civilised nation to prosecute a child soldier as a war criminal.” Stanford Law lecturer Chip Pitts said, “This plea bargain shouldn’t be taken as indication of the legitimacy of the irredeemably tainted military commissions.”
“I don’t know how anyone who cares about the integrity and moral standing of the United States can absorb the full details of this case and not be profoundly ashamed,” writes the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan. “To prosecute a child soldier, already nearly killed in battle, tortured and abused in custody, and to imprison him for this length of time and even now, convict him of charges for which there is next to no proof but his own coerced confessions…well, words fail.”
Our guest blogger is Kenneth Quinnell, a Tallahassee-based political activist who operates a group website, Florida Progressive Coalition.
On Saturday, Sarah Palin spoke at a GOP Victory Rally in Orlando, Fla. Among the topics she talked about was the “mavericky” nature of GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio:
Hearing Marco Rubio, you know, I’m thinking, when we consider this revolution, where it’s been proven now, in this last year, that really anything is possible in these campaigns, where Marco Rubio started and kinda taking on the establishment and mavericky, going rogue, you know, doing it. And I look at him and I think, you know, we kinda started a whole bunch of this stuff. So, very very proud and encouraged by Marco.
But a quick persual of Rubio’s agenda for the U.S. Senate shows that he is anything but a maverick. In fact, his agenda very closely aligns with the proposals of his party’s leadership and it is difficult to find any instances where he bucks the national Republican Party.
As ThinkProgress has noted before, Rubio’s economic agenda consists, almost entirely, of cutting taxes — primarily on corporations and the wealthy. He wants to cut the bureaucracy, reallocate the bailout funds, end the stimulus, end earmarks, and pass a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. Rubio proposed requiring federal tax increases to be approved by two-thirds of Congress. He has, in the past, promoted private accounts for Social Security and wants to freeze all discretionary spending in Washington.
He also has advocated repealing at least a portion of health care reform and replacing it with policies such as allowing Americans to buy insurance across state lines. Rubio has derided “judicial activism” and promotes the idea of “securing our borders” as a solution on the issue of undocumented immigration. He also continues to promote deep water oil drilling as a solution to energy concerns, even after the BP oil spill off his state’s Gulf Coast.
Rubio’s agenda is very much in line with the national Republican Party agenda and he seems rarely, if ever, to “go rogue” against the party.
At a debate in Pennsylvania’s 12th district to fill the seat left by Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA), Republican candidate Tim Burns denied the existence of global warming, a seeming requirement this year for Tea Party support. “I don’t believe in manmade global warming,” Burns told the audience last Friday, as ThinkProgress captured in this exclusive footage:
First of all, I don’t believe in manmade global warming. And if I did, cap-and-trade would not be an appropriate way to address it.
Watch it:
“I find it interesting that politicians continue to ignore the science,” Dr. Steve Hovan, chair of the Geoscience Department at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania in the 12th District, told ThinkProgress. “It’s a big enough problem that if we don’t start now, we may not get a handle on it.”
Read more of Dr. Hovan’s interview at the Wonk Room.
The media firestorm that resulted from NPR’s decision to fire Juan Williams for making a bigoted remark about Muslims included rhetorical bombs lobbed from Williams’ cohorts at Fox News. As Media Matters noted, conservatives have used Williams’ firing as an excuse to continue their war on NPR and to call for its defunding. “Juan Williams was put up against a wall and NPR shot him,” Glenn Beck claimed, who also said that “voices are being silenced” by “jack-booted thugs.” Many Fox Newsers even tried to explain NPR’s decision as some sort of George Soros-linked conspiracy. Today, the Washington Post reports NPR received a bomb threat today, and while the threat didn’t specifically cite the Williams saga, NPR officials said the “tone” suggested it was involved:
NPR received a bomb threat Monday, five days after its decision to fire news analyst Juan Williams sparked a hugely negative reaction.
Sources at the news organization said the threat was received via U.S. mail and was immediately turned over to local police and the FBI. The organization did not publicly disclose the threat or release details, on the advice of law enforcement officials.
The letter didn’t reference the Williams firing specifically, but people at NPR, who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity, said the timing and tone suggested it was sent after Williams’s widely publicized termination.
NPR warned its employees this week to be extra cautious, citing a general “security threat” in a staff memo. “We’re being more aware of who’s entering the building” and generally being more vigilant,” an NPR spokesperson said.
A new study by the progressive Constitutional Accountability Center compares how the Chamber of Commerce fared before the Supreme Court in the early 1980s (the last time that none of the Court’s present members were justices) to their record before the Roberts Court — and the results are quite stark. While the Court’s moderates are about as likely to favor the powerful corporate lobby’s position as conservative Justice William Rehnquist was in the early 1980s, the conservative majority is now significantly more likely to favor corporate interests than the most pro-corporate member of the Court twenty-five years ago (the study did not include the Court’s two newest members because of an insufficiently large data sample):
These numbers are particularly striking in light of the fact that Justice Lewis Powell, the most pro-corporate member of the Burger Court, drafted an influential memo for the Chamber laying out a blueprint for the Chamber to influence American politics and judicial decisions. Powell may be the visionary behind the Chamber’s takeover of the Courts, but the Court’s present majority embraces this takeover far more than even Powell believed acceptable. To read more about the study documenting the corporate takeover of the Supreme Court, visit the Wonk Room.
The man who helped tackle a MoveOn.org activist to the ground and stomped on her head last night has been identified as Tim Profitt, a volunteer campaign coordinator for Kentucky GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul. Profitt apologized for attacking activist Lauren Valle, but told the AP “that the camera angle made the scuffle Monday night appear worse that it was.” “I’m sorry that it came to that, and I apologize if it appeared overly forceful, but I was concerned about Rand’s safety,” Profitt said.
The Paul campaign has cut ties with Profitt, “removing him from his role as Bourbon County campaign coordinator and banning him from campaign events.” Commenting on the campaign’s dissociation from Profitt, Fox News host Shep Smith said, “I suppose if that’s the worse that happens to you after you make a conscious decision to step on a woman, then you’ve probably come out pretty well” Watch it:
The Lexington police report that Profitt is “currently being served with a criminal summons,” though no arrests have been made. And despite the Paul campaign’s claim that Valle was “not injured,” MoveOn reports that she “suffered a concussion and sprains to her shoulder and arm as a result of the stomping.”
Profitt passed some blame onto police, saying “A friend of mine went up to three policeman before Rand got there, and told them about the girl who was standing there with that wig on [Valle] and that she was getting ready to do something.” Indeed, Valle told TPM, “The Rand Paul campaign knows me and they have expressed their distaste for my work before.” She said five men “surrounded” her before the incident, telling Valle and her partner that they were “here to do crowd control and we might have to take someone out.”
Blogger Sandi Behrns tweeted an undated photo of Paul with Profitt (above right). And ironically, as local blog Barefoot & Progressive observed, Profitt was among a group of Republicans who took out a full page ad today in the Lexington Herald Leader showing their support for Paul:
Profitt’s accomplice, who held Valle down while he stepped on her head, has been identified as tea party activist Mike Pezzano. Gawker reports Pezzano “belongs to Lexington’s Rand Paul Meetup group and is an “assistant organizer” for Kentucky Open Carry, a group that wants to make it legal to carry firearms openly and in public.”
Our guest blogger is Elon Green, a freelance writer living in Brooklyn.
Last October, right-wing hate blogger Pamela Geller signed a six-figure book deal with Threshold, Simon & Schuster’s conservative imprint headed by Mary Matalin. Geller, not known for scholastic writing or research, has gained recognition by scoring interviews with John Bolton, pontificating in a bikini, and bashing Muslims. The news that Threshold agreed to publish The Post-American Presidency was ignored, even by her conservative fellow travelers.
In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Geller’s agent predicted his client would justify the advance because “the book will appeal far beyond Threshold’s conservative base.” It hasn’t. The Post-American Presidency has sold approximately 5,000 copies, according to Nielsen — enough to warrant a second printing, but hardly an indication of crossover appeal. Simon & Schuster may have underestimated the demand for a book that refers to the President as ‘Barack Hussein Obama’ 52 times (even if it’s autographed) for the bargain price of $27.
ThinkProgress has now obtained the proposal for Geller’s next book, which has been submitted to a variety of other publishing houses. A review of the proposal for Stop Islamization of America: A Practical Guide for the Resistance suggests that the project is a step too far for Threshold. (A Simon & Schuster rep declined to comment.)
According to the proposal, Stop Islamization of America — to be ghostwritten by frequent collaborator Robert Spencer, apparently — will be:
[A] how-to guide to fight the creeping sharia in our schools, towns, culture, government, and economy. It will elucidate the stealth infiltration of Islamic supremacism into every aspect of American life and show Americans how to fight back.
Read the full proposal here.
The work “lays bare the chilling details of the Muslim Brotherhood’ s strategy of steady subversion and erosion of our freedoms,” the ‘evidence’ for which includes construction of “mega-mosques all over the U.S.,” “expansion of ‘hate crime’ and ‘hate speech’ laws” and “Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the Defense Department, State Department, and other government agencies.” The proposal reveals a few of the section headings and their corresponding chapter titles:
Stealth Jihadist Members of Congress (Chapter Two, “Infiltration”)
Telling the truth = hate speech (Chapter Four, “Silencing the jihad’s foes”)
Why CAIR and other Brotherhood groups need hate crimes (Chapter Five, “Hate crimes as weapons”)
Fashionista jihad (“Chapter Seven: Cultural jihad”)
Even children run the risk of subversion by the Brotherhood, via the “introduction of Islamic observances into public schools under the guise of pedagogical ‘role-playing.’” This may explain the need for “guidelines that are far from politically correct, but are our only option for survival as a free people.” Indeed, Stop Islamization of America will be “a much-needed wake-up call about a sinister, subversive agenda that could do nothing less than destroy the United States.”
This time around, the target audience is relatively narrow. Geller predicts Stop Islamization of America will find favor with “readers of The New York Post, the Washington Times, National Review, the American Spectator, The Weekly Standard, Human Events, American Thinker, Big Government, Newsmax, and publications in that general ideological range.” (It should be noted: this “range” is not vast — roughly from the far right to the far-far right.) Geller promises blurbs from conservative luminaries including John Bolton, James Woolsey, Andrew McCarthy and Geert Wilders.
Despite the limited audience, the optimistic Geller believes that Stop Islamization of America will be successful enough to warrant another book:
Based on the success of Stop Islamization of America, Pamela Geller is planning a book on the recent and ongoing proliferation of honor killings among immigrants to the West from Muslim countries, tentatively entitled Sex, Murder, and Islam: Honor Killing in America.
Contacted by ThinkProgress, Geller declined to comment. Her agent, Scott Mendel, could not be reached.
This is the first installment in a three-part series on legislation that may emerge from a GOP-controlled Congress.
In late July, Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) call to end the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship for everyone born in the United States set off a firestorm in the press. Last week, a coalition of Republican state lawmakers announced a nationwide effort to “develop model state legislation” that will eliminate what they see as a “misapplication” of the 14th Amendment in granting birth citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants. More and more right-wing conservatives have taken this radical position, despite the fact birthright citizenship has long been settled law.
After conducting a thorough review of the voting records of Republicans in Congress over the past 15 years, ThinkProgress has identified a large majority of them have at one point called for hearings and legislation to alter the constitutional guarantee of citizenship for everyone born in the United States. An analysis of past records found that 63 percent of House Republicans, 44 percent of Senate Republicans, and 59 percent of all GOPers in Congress support reconsidering birthright citizenship.
Republicans in Congress have long operated by the “majority of the majority” principle, whereby the GOP Speaker of the House advances legislation only if it is supported by a majority of Republicans. With many prominent GOP Senate candidates favoring an end to birthright citizenship, including Rand Paul, Ken Buck, Mike Lee, Kelly Ayotte, Joe Miller, and Sharron Angle, it’s likely that a GOP-controlled Senate would indeed have a majority who support revisiting the issue.
Ending birthright citizenship is no idle belief in the GOP caucus. Rather, Republicans have been pushing this idea for nearly two decades, introducing 28 separate bills to eliminate birthright citizenship since 1995. Here are the 130 incumbent GOPers who favor reexamining the 14th Amendment (leadership in bold):
Senate
Jeff Sessions (AL) | Richard Shelby (AL) | Jon Kyl (AZ) |
Johnny Isakson (GA) | Saxby Chambliss (GA) | Chuck Grassley (IA) |
Jim Risch (ID) | Mitch McConnell (KY) | David Vitter (LA) |
Roger Wicker (MS) | Richard Burr (NC) | James Inhofe (OK) |
Tom Coburn (OK) | Jim DeMint (SC) | Lindsey Graham (SC) |
John Cornyn (TX) | Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) | Orrin Hatch (UT) |
House of Representatives
Don Young (AK-AL) | Jo Bonner (AL-01) | Mike Rogers (AL-03) |
Robert Aderholt (AL-04) | Parker Griffith (AL-05) | Spencer Bachus (AL-06) |
John Boozman (AR-03) | Trent Franks (AZ-02) | John Shadegg (AZ-03) |
Jeff Flake (AZ-06) | Wally Herger (CA-02) | Dan Lungren (CA-03) |
Tom McClintock (CA-04) | Elton Gallegly (CA-24) | Howard McKeon (CA-25) |
David Dreier (CA-26) | Ed Royce (CA-40) | Gary Miller (CA-42) |
Ken Calvert (CA-44) | Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) | John Campbell (CA-48) |
Darrell Issa (CA-49) | Brian Bilbray (CA-50) | Duncan Hunter (CA-52) |
Doug Lamborn (CO-05) | Mike Coffman (CO-06) | Jeff Miller (FL-01) |
Ginny Brown-Waite (FL-05) | Cliff Stearns (FL-06) | John Mica (FL-07) |
Gus Bilirakis (FL-09) | Bill Young (FL-10) | Bill Posey (FL-15) |
Jack Kingston (GA-01) | Lynn Westmoreland (GA-03) | Tom Price (GA-06) |
John Linder (GA-07) | Tom Graves (GA-09) | Paul Broun (GA-10) |
Phil Gingrey (GA-07) | Tom Latham (IA-04) | Steve King (IA-05) |
Peter Roskam (IL-06) | Donald Manzullo (IL-16) | Dan Burton (IN-05) |
Mike Pence (IN-06) | Jerry Moran (KS-01) | Lynn Jenkins (KS-02) |
Todd Tiahrt (KS-04) | Ed Whitfield (KY-01) | Geoff Davis (KY-04) |
Harold Rogers (KY-05) | Steve Scalise (LA-01) | John Fleming (LA-04) |
Rodney Alexander (LA-05) | Roscoe Bartlett (MD-06) | Peter Hoekstra (MI-02) |
Fred Upton (MI-06) | Candice Miller (MI-10) | Thaddeus McCotter (MI-11) |
John Kline (MN-02) | Todd Akin (MO-02) | Sam Graves (MO-06) |
Roy Blunt (MO-07) | Jo Ann Emerson (MO-08) | Walter Jones (NC-03) |
Virginia Foxx (NC-05) | Howard Coble (NC-06) | Sue Myrick (NC-09) |
Patrick McHenry (NC-10) | Jeff Fortenberry (NE-01) | Adrian Smith (NE-03) |
Frank LoBiondo (NJ-02) | Scott Garrett (NJ-05) | Dean Heller (NV-02) |
Peter King (NY-03) | Jean Schmidt (OH-02) | Jim Jordan (OH-04) |
John Boehner (OH-08) | John Sullivan (OK-01) | Greg Walden (OR-02) |
Bill Shuster (PA-09) | Joseph Pitts (PA-16) | Tim Murphy (PA-18) |
Todd Platts (PA-19) | Henry Brown, Jr. (SC-01) | Joe Wilson (SC-02) |
Gresham Barrett (SC-03) | John Duncan (TN-02) | Zach Wamp (TN-03) |
Louie Gohmert (TX-01) | Ted Poe (TX-02) | Sam Johnson (TX-03) |
Ralph Hall (TX-04) | Jeb Hensarling (TX-05) | Joe Barton (TX-06) |
John Culberson (TX-07) | Kevin Brady (TX-08) | Mike Conaway (TX-11) |
Ron Paul (TX-14) | Randy Neugebauer (TX-19) | Lamar Smith (TX-21) |
Pete Olson (TX-22) | Kenny Marchant (TX-24) | Michael Burgess (TX-26) |
John Carter (TX-31) | Pete Sessions (TX-32) | Jason Chaffetz (UT-03) |
Rob Wittman (VA-01) | Randy Forbes (VA-04) | Bob Goodlatte (VA-06) |
Doc Hastings (WA-04) |
One point to note is that none of the GOP’s minority congressmen – Reps. Djou, Cao, Ros-Lehtinen, and the Diaz-Balart brothers – support ending birthright citizenship. Still, though a few have criticized Graham, including his mentor Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), this report from ThinkProgress makes clear that the GOP congressional caucus has the South Carolina senator’s back. For 130 Republicans in Congress, “Born in the U.S.A.” apparently no longer applies.