This Week's Links For True Blue Patriots

This Week's Links For True Blue Patriots

Good News: Gilberton Police Chief  and Neo-Confederate Conservative Mark Kessler Suspended Indefinitely

 GOP’s destructive grifter: Super Conservative America Hater Jim DeMint peddles political poison - Republicans are starting to realize that Jim DeMint's “Defund Obamacare” campaign is all about funding his empire

National Right to Kill Children member and draft dodging America hater Ted Nugent: Great Society "Responsible For More Destruction To Black America" Than Slavery, KKK

In fact, the President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society initiative -- which included Medicare, Medicaid and a variety of other anti-poverty programs -- was responsible for significant and lasting reductions in poverty. As Washington Post reporter Dylan Matthews noted, "the best evidence indicates that the War on Poverty made a real and lasting difference"

Health Insurance "Coverage Gap" Coming to a Red State Near You

Roughly 260 million Americans (roughly 85 percent) already have health insurance provided by their employers, the government or through individual policies they purchased. In places like Oregon, Colorado, New York, California and other, mostly Democratic states, governors and state legislators accepted the expansion of Medicaid to provide free health insurance for those earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty (FPL). For those earning between 138 and 400 percent of the FPL, the Affordable Care Act's subsidies will help them purchase insurance in the private market. But in the states where Republicans said "no" to the expansion of Medicaid, the picture is much different. As the AP explained the coverage gap:

    Nearly 2 in 3 uninsured people who would qualify for health coverage under an expansion of Medicaid live in states which won't broaden the program or have not yet decided on expansion.

The resulting Republican body count is staggering. Thanks to the GOP's rejection of Medicaid expansion, 1.3 million people in Texas, 1 million in Florida, 534,000 in Georgia and 267,000 in Missouri will be ensnared in the coverage gap.

How can this be, the conservative movement claims to be pro-life. It truns out they mean they only care about clumps of cells.

National Public Radio, which the wacky conservative movement claims has a pro-American liberal bias, Pushes Myth That Raising Minimum Wage Would Kill Jobs. These large corporations are making historic profits and paying their executives historically high wages and bonuses. They could pay themselves something reasonable for not doing much except seating at a desk and going to meetings, take the money saved and pay it to the people who do the actual work that makes these companies have a profit.

In Effort To Woo Female Voters, The UnAmerican plastic patriot from Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell(R) Touts Women’s Law He Voted Against

Conservative Legislators and Courts Are Making Criminal Conduct Legal For Corporations

Conservative Legislators and Courts Are Making Criminal Conduct Legal For Corporations

At least 71 bills introduced in 2013 that make it harder for average Americans to access the civil justice system resemble "models" from the American Legislative Exchange Council, or "ALEC," according to an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, publishers of ALECexposed.org [3].

ALEC Agenda Tips the Scales of Justice to Help Corporations Win

For decades, ALEC has been a conduit for the oil, tobacco, and pharmaceutical industries to push legislation that changes the rules to limit accountability when a corporation’s products or actions cause injury or death -- such as when a Koch Industries pipeline explodes and kills teenagers [4], or when the tobacco or pharmaceutical industries withhold evidence that their products are dangerous. In just the first six months of 2013, seventy-one ALEC bills that advance these "tort reform" goals have been introduced in thirty states (see chart below).

“Each of these bills would weaken the legal rights of everyday people who are wrongfully harmed by a corporation or health care provider,” says Joanne Doroshow, Executive Director of the Center for Justice & Democracy, a group that works to protect the civil justice system and fight tort reform. “[The bills] are carefully crafted to provide relief and protections for the industries who wrote them."

A long-standing principle of American law gives a person injured (or whose family member is killed) by the fault of another the right to pursue justice and seek fair compensation in front of a judge and jury. An injury for which a person can sue is known as a "tort." Tort lawsuits are one of the few instances where an average American can stand on equal footing with a global corporation, make their case in front of a citizen jury, and demand justice. On a level playing field, consumers often win -- which is why corporate interests want to rig this centuries-old system to their benefit.

Tort cases are relatively rare -- they make up only six percent of the entire civil court caseload, and are declining -- but they are effective. Tort liability is why U.S. companies have stopped selling dangerous cribs that strangle infants and children's pajamas that catch fire.

The ALEC “tort reform” bills fundamentally alter the tort liability system by making it harder to bring a lawsuit or by limiting a jury's ability to award damages. The bills provide a way for ALEC corporations to escape responsibility for wrongdoing, help ALEC insurance companies limit payouts (and increase profits), and prevent Americans wrongfully injured or killed from receiving just compensation.

ALEC Bills Limit Corporate Accountability, Change Liability Rules

Some ALEC bills limit how much a corporation might have to pay for causing injury.

    The ALEC “Noneconomic Damage Awards Act” (versions of which were introduced in five states in 2013) limits the amount a jury can award to compensate a person for their diminished quality of life as the result of an injury.

    The misleadingly-named "Full and Fair Noneconomic Damages Act" (introduced in two states) limits the amount a corporation might have to pay to compensate a person for their pain and suffering.

    The “Phantom Damages Elimination Act” (introduced in two states) changes the rules so a person who paid health insurance premiums for years would recover less for their medical bills than a person who had no insurance: rather than placing the full cost of paying for medical bills on the wrongdoer, the bill would reduce the amount they must pay if a person's insurance company negotiated a discount.

Other ALEC bills change how liability is apportioned when more than one individual or corporation is at fault.

    Three states introduced versions of the “Comparative Fault Act,” which changes the rules so that “if a company is 49% responsible, they are completely off the hook,” Doroshow says.

    Two states introduced the misleadingly-named “Joint and Several Liability Act,” which actually eliminates the Joint and Several rule that has worked for many years and protects victims in situations where it is difficult to pinpoint which defendant is at fault -- such as when multiple companies may have manufactured lead paint -- or where one of the defendants is insolvent. The bill eliminates the rule that had established that after a jury finds a defendant substantially responsible, they can be required to fully reimburse a person for their injury.

Other ALEC "model legislation" would provide immunity for certain forms of lawsuits.

    Five states introduced the "Emergency Care Immunity Act," which provides immunity to emergency personnel who provide assistance, without compensation, at the scene of an emergency. Providing some legal protections for volunteers in emergency situations may be important, but Doroshow suspects the bill is primarily advanced "for PR purposes" to promote the notion that the tort system is broken.

    Ten states introduced the “Trespasser Responsibility Act,” which would largely absolve landowners from a responsibility to maintain safe premises, and tends to benefit large landowners like railroads, utility companies, and big agriculture. These large corporations would be absolved from their duty to act responsibly, and would be immune if a person accidentally wanders onto their property and are injured by poorly-maintained electrical boxes, dangerous chemicals or farm implements.

ALEC Corporations Reap the Rewards

The Trespasser Responsibility Act was brought to ALEC [5] by Matt Fullenbaum of the American Tort Reform Association and Mark Behrens of Shook Hardy & Bacon, a law firm that has long represented tobacco companies and other industries seeking to avoid tort liability. Behrens is an "advisor" to the ALEC Civil Justice Task Force, as are other Shook Hardy & Bacon attorneys. The head of Shook Hardy & Bacon is Victor Schwartz, the so-called "undisputed king of tort reform [6]" who for many years has chaired the ALEC Civil Justice Task Force.

Others involved with the Civil Justice Task Force include a variety of corporate trade groups that have worked closely with Schwartz and his law firm, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business, as well as the American Insurance Industry and others.

“Industries like the tobacco, insurance, oil and chemical industries are pretty detested,” Doroshow says, “and trade groups provide a way for these corporations to hide behind a more neutral-sounding entity that will push their agenda. This makes it harder for the public to learn how these detested industries would benefit from tort reform.”

[1] http://www.prwatch.org/
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/brendan-fischer
[3] http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed
[4] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-02/koch-brothers-flout-law-getting-richer-with-secret-iran-sales.html
[5] http://www.commoncause.org/atf/cf/%7BFB3C17E2-CDD1-4DF6-92BE-BD4429893665%7D/civil_justice_35-day_mailing%20San%20Diego.pdf

Conservatives and libertarians don't just think corporations are human beings, they think they're super privileged human beings. As we all know, if most of us hurt someone or take something from them, we can be prosecuted. Hurting people and stealing are considered immoral acts when done by humans, though conservatives and libertarians don't think that applies when corporations hurt people and steal. This is the tyranny of feudal lords, not freedom. That is why anyone who objects to what ALEC, the Kochs and various conservative-libertarians are doing, is quickly labeled a commie or radical liberal. The people who oppose ALEC and this massive erosion of freedom by the conservative movement, are patriots.

Billionaire Charles Koch on helping the poor: Eliminate minimum wages

Today's Links For Patriots

The IRS "Scandal" Was A Scam

Monday's revelation that progressive as well as conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status had been singled out for review by the Internal Revenue Service left one pressing question: Why [[then]] did the inspector general's report detailing improper scrutiny only mention conservative groups?

Last night we got the answer: The IG only reported on conservative groups because that's what Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the notoriously partisan chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told him to do.

The Pay of Corporate Executives and Financial Professionals is Evidence of Rent Seeking in Top 1 Percent Incomes. Rent seeking is a kind of modern conservative form of feudalism.

This decision didn't make the headlines, Conservatives on Supreme Court Serve A Legal Blow to Sustainable Development

Conservatives On Supreme Court Steal Voting Rights From Millions of Americans

Wendy Davis Showed Texas' GOP Boys How to Respect Women

Conservative Ohio Thugs Are Using Their State Budget To Try To Restrict Abortion And Redefine Pregnancy. As soon as Ohio governor Kasich grows a uterus he can have dictatorial control of women's bodies.

Why Does Florida’s Criminal Governor Rick Scott (R) Hate America and American Workers

Why Does Florida’s Criminal Governor Rick Scott (R) Hate America and American Workers

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed a bill on Friday that blocks local governments from implementing paid sick leave legislation, the Orlando Sentinel reports. He made his decision quickly, only taking four of the 15 days he legally had to review the bill before he signed it.

In signing the bill, Scott sided with big business interests including Disney World, Darden Restaurants (owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster), and the Florida Chamber of Commerce. The bill is part of a national effort to pass so-called “preemption bills” that would block paid sick leave legislation that is backed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing group that coordinates conservative laws across states. The state’s House Majority Leader, Steve Precourt (R), who was instrumental in putting forward the preemption bill, is an active ALEC member.

The bill has made moot a 2014 referendum in Orange County that would have decided whether to require paid sick leave. More than 50,000 voters had tried to get the measure on the November 6 ballot but the County Commission voted it off. It made it on the ballot in 2014 thanks to a three-judge panel.

Florida follows a rash of preemption bills in the states, which cropped up in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Mississippi. These bills are part of ALEC’s efforts to weaken wage and labor standards: Since 2011, 67 such ALEC-affiliated bills have been introduced in state legislatures, 11 of which had been signed into law before Scott signed this bill.

Big business stood in opposition to the Orange County effort on paid sick leave because it claimed such a bill would drive up costs. Yet a study of San Francisco, which enacted a paid sick leave policy in 2007, showed that a majority of businesses saw either no impact or a positive one on profitability. Other research has shown such policies to be good for business and job growth.

Like the a majority of conservatives Rick Scott believes that evil is a positive value. He thinks it is a good to steal billions, yet wrong to have paid sick leave - a benefit that workers earn by making lazy millionaires like him very wealthy. Scott's policies are not new, they are the policies of feudal lords and fascists.

What Patriots Should Know About The IRS "Scandal"

What Patriots Should Know About The IRS "Scandal"

Conservative Groups Were Not “Targeted,” “Singled Out” Or Anything Else

You are hearing that conservative groups were “targeted.” What you are not hearing is that progressive groups were also “targeted.” So were groups that are not progressive or conservative.

All that happened here is that groups applying to the IRS for special tax status were checked to see if they were engaged in political activity. They were checked, not targeted. Only 1/3 of the groups checked were conservative groups.

Once again: Only 1/3 of the groups checked were conservative groups.

Conservative groups were not “singled out,” were not “targeted” and in the end none were denied special tax status — even though many obviously should have been.

From last week’s House hearings on this:

Rep. Peter Roskam, R-IL: “How come only conservative groups got snagged?”

Outgoing acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller: “They didn’t sir. Organizations of all walks and all persuasions were pulled in. That’s shown by the fact that only 70 of the 300 organizations were tea party organizations, of the ones that were looked at by TIGTA [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration].”

Bet you didn’t see that blasted all over your TV news that night.


And from Bloomberg reporting: IRS Sent Same Letter to Democrats That Fed Tea Party Row, (emphasis added, for emphasis)

    One of those groups, Emerge America, saw its tax-exempt status denied, forcing it to disclose its donors and pay some taxes. None of the Republican groups have said their applications were rejected. Progress Texas … faced the same lines of questioning as the Tea Party groups from the same IRS office that issued letters to the Republican-friendly applicants. A third group, Clean Elections Texas, which supports public funding of campaigns, also received IRS inquiries.

    In a statement late yesterday, the tax agency said it had pooled together the politically active nonpartisan applicants — including a “minority” that were identified because of their names. “It is also important to understand that the group of centralized cases included organizations of all political views,” the IRS said in its statement.

Again, for emphasis: “It is also important to understand that the group of centralized cases included organizations of all political views,” the IRS said in its statement.”

.....A Few Facts

Fact: The IRS is required to determine whether organizations applying for special tax status are “social welfare” groups or are instead engaged in political activity. Political groups cannot get the special tax status these groups were applying for.

Fact: Only 1/3 of the groups that were passed to specialists for a closer look were “conservative.” Lots of other organizations were also checked, including progressive organizations.

Fact: No groups were audited or harassed or “targeted” or “singled out”. This was about applications for special tax status being forwarded to specialists for a closer look to see if they were engaged in political activity that would disqualify them for the special tax status. This closer look is the kind of review all organization should get, but the IRS was swamped because of the flood of groups applying for a status that let them mask their donors, after Citizens United.

Fact: No groups were harmed. There were delays while the groups were checked to see if they should have special tax status. That’s it. But the rules are that they are allowed to operate as if they had that status while they waited for official approval.

Fact: The only groups actually denied special tax status were progressive groups, not conservative groups. In 2011, during the period that “conservative groups were targeted” the NY Times carried the story, 3 Groups Denied Break by I.R.S. Are Named . The three groups? Drum roll … “The I.R.S. denied tax exemption to the groups — Emerge Nevada, Emerge Maine and Emerge Massachusetts — because, the agency wrote in denial letters, they were set up specifically to cultivate Democratic candidates.”

Fact: The IRS commissioner in charge at the IRS at the time this happened was appointed President George W. Bush.

Fact: According to the IG Report (p. 10) in the “majority of cases, we agreed that the applications submitted included indications of significant political campaign intervention.” 

The pdf of the Inspector's report is here. There is no real scandal, certainly not a scandal that justifies all the whining and victim playing we are hearing from conservatives. Conservatives see themselves as poor little victims because the sun comes up and shines on them. As we all know, zombies prefer the night.

When Discussing Leaks, Freedom of the Press and The Obama Administration, Shameless Hypocrisy is Synonymous With Conservative Republican

When Discussing Leaks, Freedom of the Press and The Obama Administration, Shameless Hypocrisy is Synonymous With Conservative Republican.

On the heels of reports that the Justice Department had subpoenaed e-mails from a James Rosen, a reporter with Fox News, Rubio came out with a statement accusing the Obama administration of harassing journalists “they deem unfriendly” to the White House. Now, never mind that Rubio seems to be saying that Fox reports are unfriendly to Obama (that’s a no-no that contradicts the “Fair and Balanced” meme). The worst thing is pretending that this was a targeted attack on a reporter who had undertaken a mission against the White House. Rosen did his job and did it well; sweeping him up into partisan hackery is a disservice to his role as a journalist.

The real story is contained in the F.B.I.’s affidavit in support of the search warrant, filed in May 2010 at Federal Court for the District of Columbia. Reading the document makes clear that this was no targeting of a reporter who was after the administration but a legitimate national-security investigation.

I’ll get into the details in a minute. First, a side trip.

Yes, I think it’s wrong for the government to subpoena records from journalists involved in national-security reporting (particularly since I do it myself). I do believe it has a chilling effect on the ability to gather news about potential abuses masked by inappropriate classification. And most reporters don’t disclose things that should remain secret—like the names of undercover C.I.A. agents (see Bush administration: Valerie Plame), war plans, or locations of troops. And I know for a fact that if government officials ask that a story not run on national-security grounds, good news organizations always hear them out and sometimes agree.

And I was delighted to see that, finally, Republicans are starting to agree with me. Take Rubio’s own statement on the Fox controversy, where he states:

    National security leaks are criminal and put American lives on the line, and federal prosecutors should, of course, vigorously investigate. But we expect that they do so within the bounds of the law, and that the investigations focus on the leakers within the government—not on media organizations that have First Amendment protections and serve vital function in our democracy.

Thank you, Marco! And welcome to the side of the journalists! I promise, now that there is a high-level government official proclaiming that, yes, media organizations should not be the focus of such investigations because of Constitutional protections, Rubio’s statement is going to be used from now until forever in every case involving investigations of journalists that print leaked information.

Too bad that Republicans don’t sing the praises of the First Amendment when the White House is held by the G.O.P. In fact, they do the exact opposite. In fact, they did the exact opposite when the Republican administration does the exact same thing that is now at the center of the Obama scandal involving the Associated Press—that is, seizing phone records of reporters. (Please note: The issue here isn’t whether they are right or wrong. What I’m talking about is the utter hypocrisy of the G.O.P. on this matter.)

Let’s take the most important disclosure of a classified program that occurred in my lifetime: the 2005 article in The New York Times that revealed the existence of the program to allow the government to wiretap Americans and others in the United States without a warrant if it was part of a national-security investigation. Somehow, I don’t remember Republicans banging the First Amendment drum when that story came out— instead, they were calling for reporters to be charged with treason, which could have led to them being executed.

But let’s look in more detail at how the Bushies handled that situation by reviewing an affidavit filed in 2011 by James Risen, one of the two Times reporters who broke the warrantless-wiretapping story.

    The Bush Administration was embarrassed by the disclosures I made and eventually singled me out as a target for political harassment. That administration speculated publicly about prosecuting me under the Espionage Act . . . I was told by a reliable source that Vice President Dick Cheney pressured the Justice Department to personally target me because he was unhappy with my reporting and wanted to see me in jail. After he left office in 2009, Cheney publicly admitted that the fact that I won a Pulitzer Prize for the NSA story “always aggravated me.”

I take it now, with their new celebration of the First Amendment and their recognition of the importance of journalists in a democracy, conservatives like Rubio are outraged by what happened to Risen. But that wasn’t all. Right-wingers, now clamoring for impeachment because of the use of subpoenas on reporters by the Obama administration, back in the Bush days were joining in the calls for charges, Risen says in his sworn statement.

    . . . an organized campaign of hate mail from right wing groups with close ties to the White House was launched, inundating me with personal threats. Meanwhile, protesters supporting the Bush Administration picketed my office, calling for me to be prosecuted. Right wing pundits and bloggers supporting the Bush Administration took to television and the Internet to call for the White House and the Justice Department to prosecute me for espionage. Failing that, they called for the Justice Department to subpoena me in a leak investigation, which right wing pundits said would have the same effect as prosecution, since it could force me to go to jail if I refused to testify about the identity of my confidential source(s) . . . In mid-March, after Attorney General Gonzales raised publicly the possibility of prosecuting journalists, the Director of the CIA, Porter Goss, suggested that it was his “hope” and “aim” that the leak investigations would lead to subpoenas requiring me to testify about the identity of my confidential source(s). Only two months into the investigation, Goss explained: “It is my aim and it is my hope that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information.”

Administration. Umm . . . huh. Can’t hear that Right Wing First Amendment Marching Band that seems to be out in force now that Obama is using subpoenas against reporters. But you know, at least Bush wasn’t doing what just happened—that is, getting hold of phone records of reporters to see who they were calling and who was calling them, which is the current Obama scandal involving the Justice Department and the Associated Press. Oh, wait . . . just read more of the Risen affidavit:

    Brian Ross and Richard Esposito of ABC News reported on May 15, 2006, that senior federal law enforcement officials had informed them that the government was tracking the phone numbers of journalists without the journalists’ knowledge as part of an effort to root out the journalists’ confidential sources . . . the journalists’ phones were not being “tapped,” but the government was tracking the in-coming and outgoing numbers called and received on the journalists’ phones. The story stated that the government was examining the phone calls and contacts of journalists from ABC News, The New York Times, and the Washington Post (as) part of a “widespread CIA leak investigation.” . . . I have learned from an individual who testified before a grand jury in this District that was examining my reporting about the domestic wiretapping program that the Government had shown this individual copies of telephone records relating to calls made to and from me.

Where were the G.O.P. legislators and right-wing punditocracy when Bush was doing the same thing as Obama? Why, they were cheering! The hypocrisy is astonishing. How do they justify being in favor of the government obtaining the phone records of reporters during the Bush administration, while calling it a scandal under Obama? I don’t know . . . maybe they think the First Amendment applies only to the Associated Press and Fox News or something.

Which brings us back to the Fox situation and to Rubio’s claim that this was targeting enemies of the White House. The similarities with the reactions to the warrantless-wiretapping case are astonishing (even the reporters’ names are off by just one letter: James Risen at the Times, James Rosen at Fox).

The Fox case involved a report by Rosen in June 2009 that American intelligence officials had issued warnings that, should the United Nations adopt sanctions that were under consideration, North Korea would begin conducting new nuclear tests. According to the F.B.I. affidavit in the case, the information was top secret and was contained in an intelligence document disseminated to a small number of government officials that same morning. The report was marked top secret.

One of the people who accessed the report that morning was Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a man of Korean descent who is a naturalized citizen (just mentioning that to say, hmm . . . where are the G.O.P. conspiracy theories about that?) and a nuclear specialist who was detailed at the time to the State Department. Kim worked in the same building where Rosen maintained a desk in a section for reporters. According to the affidavit, between the time the intelligence analysis was issued and the report on Fox News, the electronic user identification and password for Kim were used to access the classified document three times. And Kim’s phone records show that he called Rosen several times that morning. Moreover, about the same time that Kim’s user profile was viewing the classified document, two calls were place from his desk phone to Rosen. From there, the F.B.I. obtained security-badge access records that the F.B.I. says shows the two men left the building at the same time; the affidavit suggests that this involved a meeting between the two men. Within an hour, Fox News made its report.

An analysis of Kim’s desk and mobile phones showed dozens of calls between him and Rosen. During a September interview with the F.B.I., Kim told the agents that the best e-mail to use to reach him was a Yahoo! account. The next day, he called and said he was getting rid of the Yahoo! account and the F.B.I. should instead use a Google account he had set up. A forensic analysis of Kim’s hard drive, the affidavit says, found an e-mail from Rosen; the affidavit suggests that the e-mail had been deleted. Moreover, electronic records showed that after his interview with the F.B.I., Kim’s user profile accessed his Yahoo! account—which he told the F.B.I. he was getting rid of the next day—and viewed e-mails that had been sent from Rosen’s account.

At that point, the F.B.I. obtains subpoenas for the Yahoo! accounts of both Kim and Rosen. There, they find communications between the two of them in which they are using aliases—Kim is “Leo” and Rosen is “Alex.”

So, here is the scenario: Kim is one of a few officials who sees classified information about possible nuclear tests by North Korea. He speaks to Rosen of Fox. And shortly thereafter, Fox runs the story about the classified information. The F.B.I. questions Kim and then comes to believe that he is deleting information from his computer. So, knowing already that Kim is in communication with Rosen, it subpoenas both Kim’s and Rosen’s e-mail accounts.

Again, I don’t like this, but I also know it is the risk reporters take when they are covering national-security issues. But what I do find appalling is that the G.O.P.-ers who would never stand for this if the leaks came out of the Bush administration think it’s all hunky dory if classified information goes out from the Obama administration.

So Fox News reveals national security information to the world, including North Korea. Conservatives leap to the defense of Fox News, because if Fox News blew snot on their food, conservatives will always eat it and say thank you very much. There is a vital difference between the press leaks during the BushCo years and now. The leaks during the Bush years showed that Bush-Cheney-Rice et al, were breaking the law. Now it appears that if Fox News James Rosen maliciously compromised national security as a pure act of spite against the Obama administration. That Rosen acted in the interest of North Korea instead of being a patriot is no surprise, just look who he works for, anti-American Fox News. The home of perverts, weirdos, nationalistic ideologues, homophobes, overpaid millionaires with bad haircuts, sleazy pundits and conspiracy theorists. Those that do not like what the Obama administration did, well that fine. But they got subpenas from the courts and did not break the law. So until we change the laws, there is no scandal.

The NRA or National Right to Murder Association has already blocked Boston Marathon Investigation

The NRA or National Right to Murder and Get Away With It Association has already blocked Boston Marathon Investigation

One avenue of investigation is already closed off to forensic officials working the Boston Marathon bombing case due to efforts dating back decades by the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers.

The FBI said Tuesday that gunpowder, along with pieces of metal and ball bearings, were packed into at least one pressure cooker and another device to make the crude bombs that killed three people—including an 8-year-old boy—and wounded more than 170 more during the Boston Marathon Monday.

But a crucial piece of evidence called a taggant that could be used to trace the gunpowder used in the bombs to a buyer at a point of sale is not available to investigators.

“If you had a good taggant this would be a good thing for this kind of crime. It could help identify the point of manufacturer, and chain of custody,” Bob Morhard, an explosives consultant and chief executive officer of  Zukovich, Morhard & Wade, LLC., in Pennsylvania, who has traced explosives and detonators in use in the United States and Saudi Arabia, told MSNBC.com. “The problem is nobody wants to know what the material is.”

Explosives manufacturers are required to place tracing elements known as identification taggants only in plastic explosives but not in gunpowder, thanks to lobbying efforts by the NRA and large gun manufacturing groups.

NRA officials at the group’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia declined to respond to calls and emails from MSNBC.com requesting comment.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation and the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute, Inc., share a cross-membership of dozens of firearms manufacturers based out of their joint offices in Newtown, Connecticut. Foundation spokesman Bill Brassard, Jr. told MSNBC.com that no one from either group was available for comment.

“They are concerned about tort liability,” Morhard added to MSNBC.com, referring to manufacturers worried about being sued over the improper use of their ammunition or explosives.

Has American noticed that the NRA - worried that gov'mint will take away their right to be part of a well "regulated" militia does done nothing to fight for the civil liberties that conservatives regularly take away from Americans in the form of the Patriot Act and other surveillance state activity. The NRA does nothing to keep the gov'mint from entangling itself with religious fanatics. The NRA does nothing to protect the right of individuals to have autonomy over their own body. I could go on, but the point is easily made, the gov'mint that they say they need their guns to protect themselves against, takes away rights that the NRA supports being taken away. I'm not anit-gun ownership, but I am anti-fanatics.

Related to chart above, Conservative Republicans want America to follow European economic austerity

If Republicans Really Love America, Hey, How About a Refund, Iraq War Cost U.S. $2.2 Trillion, Claimed Nearly 200,000 Lives

If Republicans Really Love America, Hey, How About a Refund, Iraq War Cost U.S. $2.2 Trillion, Claimed Nearly 200,000 Lives

A new report by the “Costs of War” project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies finds that nearly 200,000 people, including soldiers and civilians, were killed in the war in Iraq President George W. Bush launched 10 years ago.

The report also found that American taxpayers will ultimately spend roughly $2.2 trillion on the war, but because the U.S. government borrowed to finance the conflict, interest payments through the year 2053 means that the total bill could reach nearly $4 trillion.

“Nearly every government that goes to war underestimates its duration, neglects to tally all the costs, and overestimates the political objectives that will be accomplished by war’s violence,” said Boston University professor of political science and project co-director Neta C. Crawford.

Indeed, the war devastated the Iraqi health care system and allowed militants to hone their skills and export them to neighboring conflicts:

    Terrorism in Iraq increased dramatically as a result of the invasion and tactics and fighters were exported to Syria and other neighboring countries.

    Iraq’s health care infrastructure remains devastated from sanctions and war. More than half of Iraq’s medical doctors left the country during the 2000s, and tens of thousands of Iraqi patients are forced to seek health care outside the country.

The Watson Institute project — which involves “30 economists, anthropologists, lawyers, humanitarian personnel, and political scientists from 15 universities, the United Nations, and other organizations” — comes on the heals of the Special Inspector-General for Iraq Reconstruction’s final report released last week finding that the U.S. spent $60 billion on reconstruction efforts in Iraq and that $10 billion of it was wasted on fraud and abuse.

Reuters reported that Steven Bucci, the military assistant to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the run-up to the war and today a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, didn’t dispute the report’s findings but said the U.S.’s post-invasion battles with al-Qaeda in Iraq — a group that did not exist prior to March 19, 2003 — made the war worth it.

“It was really in Iraq that ‘al Qaeda central’ died,” Bucci said. “They got waxed.”

Meanwhile, the AP reported this afternoon that “a string of explosions tore through central Baghdad within minutes of each other on Thursday, followed by what appeared to be a coordinated assault by gunmen who battled security forces in the Iraqi capital.” The AP said the attack — which reportedly killed 12 people — “bore the hallmarks of Al Qaeda’s Iraq arm.”

We probably will not be getting a refund because conservatives are spending it on lobbyist to get more tax cuts for millionaires, make sure that women do not make medical decisions about their own bodies and further deregulating banks so they can continue to steal from working class Americans.

Why Does Glenn Beck Hate American Values and Want To Force All Cable Subscribers To Pay For His Conspiracy Theory Channel

Why Does Glenn Beck Hate American Values and Want To Force All Cable Subscribers To Pay For His Conspiracy Theory Channel

Since Glenn Beck left Fox News in 2011 and founded his own web channel, TheBlaze, the former right-wing sensation has been less prevalent in the mainstream political conversation. Still, Beck has cultivated a substantial audience for his subscription-only programming, and is now using that following to pressure cable networks into carrying his channel.

Beck started promoting GetTheBlaze.com on Monday, asking fans to demonstrate to their television provider that there is wider demand for the libertarian channel. If his channel does get picked up by cable television providers, anyone who pays for cable will subsidize Beck’s channel, regardless of whether or not they watch it. As The New York Times explains, TV channels get small per-subscriber fees, whether or not the subscribers ever watch.

Beck argues that carrying TheBlaze would be no different from supposedly ideological cable channels like MSNBC and Al Jazeera America. But since leaving Fox, Beck’s radical libertarianism has gone even further fringe. In the past few months, Beck has promoted multiple conspiracy theories via the channel he is now trying to push on cable subscribers:

    1. Cop killer Chris Dorner was supported by liberals. As Los Angeles was turned upside down in the manhunt for Chris Dorner in February, the former police officer who killed 4 people, Beck claimed “the American left” was supporting Chris Dorner. His evidence was a Facebook page with “thousands of likes.”

    2. Obama secretly tried to release the “blind sheikh” bomber. Relying on a single anonymous source “close to the Obama administration,” TheBlaze accused President Obama of plotting to secretly release a 1993 World Trade Center bomber. The conspiracy theory quickly took hold in Tea Party circles, even prompting top House Republicans to parrot the false theory.

    3. The Muslim Brotherhood infiltrated the US government. Beck hosted Rep. Michele Backmann (R-MN) to defend her widely denounced anti-Muslim witch hunt. On Beck’s show, Bachmann once again accused Hillary Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, of being a Muslim Brotherhood spy, a ludicrous charge vehemently condemned by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Scott Brown (R-MA).

    4. The Petraeus scandal was orchestrated by the White House. Like most of the right-wing blogosphere, Beck was obsessed with a purported cover-up of the Benghazi consulate attack. When CIA Director David Petraeus was caught in an affair with his biographer, Beck claimed the White House deliberately orchestrated the scandal in order to discredit the military and distract from the Benghazi attacks. In Beck’s mind, the White House was also behind last year’s Secret Service prostitution scandal, another supposed attempt to undermine trust in law enforcement.

Beck and his anti-American friends are so self obsessed they really think all cable subscribers should be forced to swallow their cancerous lunacy. If Beck has such a great product why not do the capitalistic thing and make it a premium channel that people can pay for by subscription, like HBO.

New Immoral Anti-American Republican Idea: Punishing Rape Victims With Jail Time

New Immoral Anti-American Republican Idea: Punishing Rape Victims With Jail Time

If you’re looking for evidence that the differences between men and women are greatly exaggerated, the fact that women are equally capable as men of mind-blowing misogyny should erase all doubt. New Mexico state Rep. Cathrynn Brown(R) proved that this week by introducing a bill aimed at throwing rape victims in jail if they refuse to honor their rapist’s right to control their body

Of course, the entire idea that having a rapist’s baby would somehow be treated as proof of a rape is beyond silly. After all, the defense against the charge of rape is rarely to claim that the penis didn’t go into the vagina, but to accuse the victim of consenting and then, due to the unique viciousness of women, claiming it was rape for the laughs. Or to conceal her epic sluttiness by having the police grill her about her sex life, the defense attorney question her about it for the public record, and the entire community gossip about what a big slut she must be to press rape charges. I suspect Brown knows this, coming from the same anti-choice circles as Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, where the belief is that women are  deceitful creatures who will lie and kill to conceal how much fun sex they’re having.

To understand what’s going on here, you have to understand that anti-choicers primarily understand abortion as an attempt by women to hide how naughty they are. Never mind that most women getting abortions are in their 20s and are mothers already; the myth that abortion patients are young girls having all this sexy fun they’re not supposed to have and then hiding the “evidence” with abortion is so erotic and enticing for anti-choicers that they’re not letting it go. That’s why hanging out in front of abortion clinics and yelling at patients is so crucial to the movement: They believe you’re trying to hide your shameful non-virgin status, and by gum, they’re going to be there to make sure they get a chance to see your face and cast judgment. You will not get to hide your non-virginity from them! They are entitled to pass judgment, and if they don’t get to do it by shaming you for being a single mother, they’ll show up and yell at you at the abortion clinic. And probably masturbate about it later. You laugh, but when you see behavior like this enough, you begin to realize that this anti-choice obsession with abortion is so profound that “sexual fetish, no matter how sublimated” is the likeliest explanation.

The narratives of sexual transgression and concealment that dictate how anti-choicers view abortion make this bill all the easier to understand. The possibility that women have abortions to reduce suffering in their lives, prevent economic catastrophe, or regain control over their lives are dismissed in favor of believing that an abortion means someone is hiding a sexy secret. It reduces rape to a “sexy secret” and, of course, reinforces the narrative that women are to blame for their rapes, because they are being so dirty and naughty and now that men have no choice but to put them in their place with some raping. (Implicit anti-choice narratives and really foul porn plots have a lot in common, which doesn’t strike me as a coincidence.) That’s why you get terms like “legitimate rape”. That’s why, I suspect, Republicans killed the Violence Against Women Act. The narrative that women bring violence on themselves by breaking the lady mandate to be quiet, chaste, and submissive seems to be gaining strength on the right, not that it ever really went away. Being raped is apparently a crime in and of itself, and if you won’t be punished by forced childbirth for being so rapeable, then jail time for you, in the eyes of Rep. Brown(R).

Brown proudly represents the political and moral ideals of the totalitarian state of  North Korea. How she was elected to office would be a mystery, but a combination of voter ignorance and apathy combined with enough deceptive advertising by conservatives who wrap their sick twisted beliefs in the flag and the Bible and you get fascists like Brown making decisions about how much the government can control your body.

Radical Anti-American Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) Proposes Regressive Tax Cut Even Republicans Say The State Can’t Afford

While The North-East Waits For Sandy Relief, Wacky Freedom Hating Republicans Reintroduce Obamacare Repeal

While The North-East Waits For Sandy Relief, Wacky Freedom Hating Republicans Reintroduce Obamacare Repeal

The 112th Congress gaveled to a close on Thursday afternoon without passing a relief package for victims of Hurricane Sandy or reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, but Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) isn’t too concerned about finishing what Republicans had left undone. Instead, at 12:00 PM she introduced the very first piece of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which states are now busily implementing.

House Republicans have unsuccessfully voted 33 times in the last two years to eliminate health care reform and wasted at least 88 hours and $50 million, while failing to pass a single piece of job creation legislation in the last session of Congress.

Dozens of Republicans, including 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, ran against Obamacare, yet the party suffered losses every step along the way. The Supreme Court upheld the law, House repeal efforts went nowhere in the Democratically-controlled Senate, and President Obama has pledged to veto any effort to rescind the measure. Even newly reelected Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was compelled to admit in November that Obamacare is now the law of the land (though he later backed away from his own comments and pledged to do everything in his power to undermine it).

But House Republicans are apparently not quite ready to give up the fight. At this rate, they could be on track to becoming even less productive than the least productive Congress in U.S. history.

Michele bachmann and her husband are welfare queens who have probably defrauded the public by failing for Medicare payments for practicing dubious medicare care. They and the family have also sucked down as much in subsidies as they can. Bachmann enjoys government health care benefits along with other House Republicans who make about $179,000 a year. This is the same Michele Bachmann who hoped that the unemployment rate would remain high and said that workers who do not pay federal income tax have no vested interests in the well being of the country. Why hasn't the deeply unAmerican Bachmann and her conman husband been deported to Russia? 

Wackos start trying to use their hate filled trigger happy minds to rationalize not having sensible gun laws, ,New NRA Talking Point: Banning Assault Weapons Is Just Like Racial Discrimination

Why food-stamp bans are perpetuating risky behaviors among America’s most vulnerable

Why food-stamp bans are perpetuating risky behaviors among America’s most vulnerable

Carla walked into my office with despair in her eyes. I was surprised. Carla has been doing well in her four months out of prison; she got off drugs, regained custody of her kids, and even enrolled in a local community college.

Without much prodding she admitted to me that she had retuned to prostitution: “I am putting myself at risk for HIV to get my kids a f---ing happy meal.”

Despite looking high and low for a job, Carla explained, she was still unemployed. Most entry-level jobs felt out of reach with her drug record, but what’s worse, even the state wasn’t willing to throw her a temporary life preserver.

You see, Carla is from one of the 32 states in the country that ban anyone convicted of a drug felony from collecting food stamps. With the release of the Global Burden of Disease Study last week, it bears looking at how we are perpetuating burdens among the most vulnerable Americans with our outdated laws.

If she’d committed rape or murder, Carla could have gotten assistance to feed herself and her children, but because the crime she committed was a drug felony, Carla joined the hundreds of thousands of drug felons who are not eligible. ......Women with children are especially affected. It’s estimated that 70,000 women and their children are banned from obtaining food stamps. This means mothers who are simply trying to feed themselves and their children, and who are trying to get back on their feet after serving their time, are banned from receiving the money to pay for the basics necessary to survive.  Meanwhile, 46 million others, including college graduates and PhDs with far more resources, can receive food aid.

 This is a cultural legacy of America's Puritanical and hypocritical history. White men can get away with stealing millions, beating their wives and still have a relatively comfortable life.

Few of our fellow Americans are scholars, but basic reading comprehension is not too much to ask, Radical Anti-America "news casters" at Fox New - Self-Congratulation Over Benghazi Report Undermined By Report Itself. Conservatives are so desperate and deeply immoral they have to make up scandals when there are none.
The Craziest UnAmerican Republican Legislative Proposals Of 2012. I don't know why Republicans hate America and freedom. They're certainly free to leave if they hate living in a democratic republic so much.

Gov. Nikki Haley Appoints Radical Anti-American Proto-Fascist Tim Scott, to Replace Wacko Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)

Gov. Nikki Haley Appoints Radical Anti-American Proto-Fascist Tim Scott, to Replace Wacko Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)

Tim Scott is America’s newest senator today after getting tapped by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) to fill the vacancy left by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). DeMint announced this month that he was leaving the Senate to head up the Heritage Foundation, an arch-conservative think tank in Washington DC.

Though DeMint left big, controversial shoes to fill for Republicans, few conservatives will be disappointed with Scott’s record. Elected to Congress just two years ago in the Tea Party wave, Scott has already garnered headlines for his plan to impeach President Obama, his legislation to cut off union members’ children from food stamps, and his defense of Big Oil.

Here’s a quick look at Scott’s record:

    Floated impeaching Obama over the debt ceiling. As the debt ceiling debate raged in the summer of 2011 because of the intransigence of Tea Party freshmen like Scott, the nation inched perilously close to defaulting on its obligations. One option discussed by some officials to avoid that scenario was for the president to assert that the debt ceiling itself was an unconstitutional infringement on the 14th Amendment. However, Tim Scott told a South Carolina Tea Party group that if Obama were to go this route, it would be an “impeachable act.”
   
    Proposed a bill to cut off food stamps for entire families if one member went on strike. One of the most anti-union members of Congress, Scott proposed a bill two months after entering Congress in 2011 to kick families off food stamps if one adult were participating in a strike. Scott’s legislation made no exception for children or other dependents.
   
    Wanted to spend an unlimited amount of money to display Ten Commandments outside county building. When Scott was on the Charleston County Council, one of his primary issues was displaying the Ten Commandments outside the Council building. According to the Augusta Chronicle, Scott said the display “would remind council members and speakers the moral absolutes they should follow.” When he was sued for violating the Constitution and a Circuit Judge’s orders, Scott was nonplussed: “Whatever it costs in the pursuit of this goal (of displaying the Commandments) is worth it.”
   
    Defended fairness of giving billions in subsidies to Big Oil. Scott and his Republican allies in Congress voted repeatedly last year to protect more than $50 billion in taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil corporations. When ThinkProgress asked Scott whether it was fair to do that, especially at a time when oil companies are earning tens of billions in profit every quarter, the Tea Party freshman defended the industry: “fair is a relative word,” said Scott.
   
    Helped slash South Carolina’s HIV/AIDS budget. As a state representative, Scott backed a proposal to cut the state’s entire HIV/AIDS budget, despite the fact that South Carolina ranks in the top-third of reported AIDS cases. The cuts were ultimately included in the state’s budget, impacting more than 2,000 HIV-positive South Carolinians who needed help paying for their medication.

 So Scott is against every ideal America stands for: Scott is part of the conservative Taliban and is against separation of church and state, like the European fascists of the 1930s Scott is a social-Darwinist, he likes the ten commandments but hates the teachings of Jesus and the virtue of charity preached by Founders like Benjamin Franklin, Scott hates people simply because they are ill and is happy to withhold medical care. Yep, he is just a Jim Demint clone, an America hating zealot.

5 Lies The Gun Lobby Tells You

MYTH #2: The Second Amendment prohibits strict gun control.  While the Supreme Court ruled in  D.C. v. Heller  that bans on handgun ownership were unconstitutional, the ruling gives the state and federal governments a great deal of latitude to regulate that gun ownership as they choose. As the U.S. Second Court of Appeals  put it in a recent ruling  upholding a New York regulation, “The state’s ability to regulate firearms and, for that matter, conduct, is qualitatively different in public than in the home. Heller reinforces this view. In striking D.C.’s handgun ban, the Court stressed that banning usable handguns in the home is a ‘policy choice‘ that is ‘off the table,’ but that a variety of other regulatory options remain available, including categorical bans on firearm possession in certain public locations.”

 Amazingly people can support the 2nd amendment and some reasonable gun control at the same time.

America Hating Conservative Pundit Matt Drudge And Fox News Push False Attack Against Disaster Relief Bill In Wake Of Hurricane Sandy

Union Man Stands His Ground When Attacked by Fox News Anti-American Thug Steven Crowder

Union Man Stands His Ground When Attacked by Fox News Anti-American Thug Steven Crowder

A video of Fox News contributor Steven Crowder getting punched by a Michigan union protester was selectively edited, and that editing was revealed during Crowder’s appearance on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News.

The original video shows Crowder getting punched by a protester on Tuesday while Crowder was trying to stop an Americans For Prosperity tent from being torn down. The video, which is approaching a million views on YouTube, was picked up by the right as evidence of “union thuggery”:

 Katie approaching@KatiePavlich
Note to union thugs: don't punch new media people or threaten to kill them. Smile, you're on camera! ow.ly/g19uC
11 Dec 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
 Monica Crowley@MonicaCrowley
My pal @scrowder survives attempted union beatdown in MI. This is the Left. Violent & outrageous, but not a big mystery. It's who they are.
11 Dec 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
 Michelle Malkin
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@michellemalkin
Oh dear Lord. Did you see vid of @scrowder assaulted by bloodlusting union mob as he tried to protect AFP tent? youtu.be/u_F3oev06i0
11 Dec 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
But on Wednesday, Eclectablog’s Chris Savage argued that Crowder’s video “actually a composite of things that happened over the course of the day, many of them hours apart.”
Crowder defended himself on Twitter:
 Steven Crowder
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@scrowder
All editing is selective by definition. Try the hours of raw footage all over the net. RT @aus_cull: @scrowder SELECTIVE EDITING. #dirtbag
12 Dec 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
He added that the full footage was shown on Sean Hannity’s show the night before.
As Robert Mackey of the New York Times’ Lede Blog points out:
Unfortunately for Mr. Crowder, a look at the video broadcast on the Sean Hannity show appears to show quite clearly that he left out an important section of the footage when he put together his edit. A section of the Fox News broadcast preserved by the Web site Mediaite shows that Mr. Hannity’s producers at Fox News started the clip five seconds earlier than Mr. Crowder did. What the extra footage reveals is the man who punched Mr. Crowder being knocked to the ground seconds before and then getting up and taking a swing at the comedian.
Mackey adds that there’s another problem: “The still frame he used for the clip’s title image on YouTube, which offers a much clearer image of the man punching him, was obviously shot by a second camera, from an entirely different angle than the rest of the footage he presented of the man hitting him.”

There is video at the link. Anti-American conservatives really love stand your ground laws. Well, this union guy and others felt threatened, they stood their ground. Don't want to get punched, then don't get up in someone's face and act threatening. More here, Fox News' Conservative Anti-American Thug Steve Crowder Absurdly Challenges MI Protester To Duel In The Octagon

Notice how he uses the word "provoke"? Guys like Crowder have been with us forever. They rooted for the strikebreakers in the 1920s and '30s, and they delighted in going to civil-rights protests in the South in the '60s and pouring sugar on lunch-counter protesters. They aided and abetted the worst of American politics then, and now, with their provocations.

Gov. Snyder lied to the voters of Michigan when he said he would not get involved in the right-to-work debate because it was too divisive. He passed it in a blink of an eye in a lame-duck session. This is going to have a ripple effect on the lives of these working-class people -- people that guys like Crowder and his pal Sean Hannnity hold in contempt. The absurdity continues when he issued an idiotic ultimate challenge to his would be attacker on F&F and then repeated it to Hannity.

Violence is not a good way to handle things, but if you preach violence like conservatives do. If you act violently towards someone and engage in a form of baiting, than generally such people are aware of the possible consequences. The police in Lansing said that protesters were generally well behaved for such a large and sometimes angry crowd. Michigan Republicans just stole some basic human rights from workers like the Taliban does to average citizens in Afghanistan. That is how conservatives define freedom. Anti-American Conservative Media Like Steve Doocy and Fox News Are Wrong About Worker Contributions For Unions' Political Spending