Justin's Political Corner
WASHINGTON, DC – Following months of threats and pressure by some Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced today he is withholding amendments to the immigration bill that would end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) immigrant families. In recent weeks, GOP Senators Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, Marco Rubio, and John McCain have sought to scapegoat LGBT families, promising to abandon immigration reform entirely if it was amended to include LGBT protections.
“Despite the leadership of Chairman Leahy, Judiciary Committee Democrats have caved to bullying by their Republican colleagues,” said Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality Action Fund. “There should be shame on both sides of the political aisle today for lawmakers who worked to deny LGBT immigrant families a vote. Despite widespread support from business, labor, faith, Latino and Asian-American advocates, Senators abandoned LGBT families without a vote.”
Senator Chuck Schumer, an architect of the immigration bill, had long promised LGBT constituents that the package would include their families. “From the beginning we told Senator Schumer that it would only get harder to add LGBT families to the bill,” said Tiven. “We are disappointed that Senator Schumer and his ‘Gang of 8’ colleagues accepted a false choice between LGBT families and immigration reform, when the truth is that including LGBT families from the outset would have strengthened the bill.”
Republican senators looking for a reason to walk away from the bill scapegoated LGBT families. “Republicans came after LGBT families, and Democrats didn’t stand up,” Tiven said. “Who will be in the GOP’s sights next?”
“Senators have lined up in recent months to proclaim their support for marriage equality and LGBT rights,” Tiven added. “Yet, given the first opportunity to put their vote where their talking point is, they failed. Our families need deeds, not words.”
An estimated 36,000 couples who are raising more than 25,000 children within the United States (and countless others already living in exile) are impacted by the inability to sponsor their spouse or partner for residency under current immigration law. Senator Leahy’s proposed amendments would have allowed all of those families an opportunity to remain permanently together in the United States.
As former Republican Congressman Jim Kolbe of Arizona noted in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, “Including this provision would place virtually no additional burden on our immigration system. For those families and their children, however, UAFA’s inclusion in the…bill would make all the difference in the world.”
For more information, visit ImmigrationEquality.org and ImEqActionFund.org
(via recall-all-republicans)
Senate Republicans today chose to uphold a filibuster against Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel, despite many of them previously pledging that they would be willing to allow him to be confirmed.
Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and John Cornyn (R-TX) all voted against cloture, despite their pleas during the Bush administration that a president’s Cabinet nominees should receive an up-or-down vote.
Four Republicans, Sens. Thad Cochran (R-MS), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Mike Johanns (R-NE), voted to break the filibuster. The final vote was 58-40, with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) voting present, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) not voting at all, and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) voting “no” as a procedural move so that he can bring another vote to the floor at a later date.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had originally scheduled the cloture vote for tomorrow morning, but surprised many by pushing it up to this afternoon. Earlier today, Reid took to the Senate floor to lambaste his Republican colleagues for delaying an up-or-down vote on Hagel, the first filibuster of a Secretary of Defense nominee.
Prior to the roll call’s beginning, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) attempted to explain that the vote that was set to take place was the vote “to confirm Chuck Hagel,” rather than merely being a procedural vote. Inhofe also claimed that a 60-vote margin was common practice, rendering the actions of the Republicans not a filibuster. However, the motion was still filed by Reid as cloture — the ending of debate — rather than the actual confirmation of Hagel, as laid out be Levin before voting. This leaves the door open for Hagel’s nomination to remain on the Senate floor and renders the GOP’s actions a filibuster under the Senate’s rules.
While Senate Republicans are opposed to voting on Hagel today, they seem to believe that they’ll change their minds after the Senate returns from its President’s Day recess in 10 days. This morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that he expected to be willing to move Hagel forward at that time, “unless there’s some bombshell that he likes blood sucking vampires.” Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and John McCain (R-AZ) said roughly the same thing today, leaving their votes against Hagel today confusing.
Senators sent a rare bipartisan — and bilingual — message on Monday, urging the White House and Congress to join them in enacting comprehensive immigration reform that would legalize many of the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), one of eight Senators announcing a new legislative framework, confidently set a goal of passing a bill by late spring or early summer.
“We still have a long way to go but this bipartisan blueprint is a major breakthrough,” Schumer said. “We do not want immigration as a wedge issue, we want a bipartisan bill that solves the problem.”
Or as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) put it: “En Espanol: ‘¡Vámonos!’”
No one better embodied the shifting politics on this issue than McCain, who led the 2007 immigration push with the late Ted Kennedy only to follow his party to the right and oppose even a bill granting a path to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants, the DREAM Act, in 2010. Now he’s on the side of reform once again, and publicly welcoming support from former opponent President Obama, who will deliver his own remarks on immigration reform Tuesday in Nevada.
Asked why he felt he had a better chance of success this time, McCain offered a blunt response.
“Elections,” he said. “Elections. The Republican Party is losing the support of our Hispanic citizens.”
Schumer and McCain were joined by Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (IL) and Robert Menendez (NJ), as well as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the latter of whom is considered a critical ambassador on the right in selling the plan. Menendez and Rubio spoke at significant length in Spanish at the event, directly addressing the many Hispanic media outlets present for their remarks.
“We are dealing with 11 million human beings who are here undocumented, the vast and enormous majority of whom have come here here in pursuit of what all of us would recognize as the American dream,” Rubio said.
Major questions remain as negotiations continue to fill out a fuller bill. There are still limited details as to how easily undocumented immigrants would be able to eventually apply for a green card and then citizenship. Experts warn the existing legal immigration system’s quotas and backlogs would make it impossible to naturalize the undocumented population. Menendez told TPM afterwards that issues like whether to expand the number of green cards available to help move the process along would be left to future negotiations.
Filibuster reform is in trouble, proponents warn, at the hands of a scaled-back proposal they say would enhance rather than diminish the Senate minority’s power to obstruct.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) says his proposal to force filibustering senators to occupy the floor and speak ceaselessly could be in jeopardy, thanks to a newbipartisan filibuster package that he and his ally Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) argue would do more harm than good to the cause.
“Normally the majority party has a right to determine the agenda of the Senate. They don’t have the right to pass bills. That’s up to the majority of the Senate,” Udall said on the floor Wednesday. “But then the majority leader should have the right to bring a bill to the floor of the Senate. And that has been denied over and over again by the minority party. That’s wrong.”
The dueling proposal, spearheaded by longtime Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Carl Levin (D-MI), would make it somewhat tougher for the minority to block debate on legislation but also guarantee them two amendments on bills — regardless of relevancy — which proponents of a weaker filibuster say defeats the purpose.
“It’s a step backward rather than a step forward,” a Merkley aide said. “It doesn’t attack the core of the matter. It doesn’t include a talking filibuster. And it allows the minority to kill legislation with poison pill amendments. It keeps all the tools minority has to obstruct and then gives them another tool.”
Early in December, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said filibuster reform will happen with or without Republican support, and Merkley-Udall was the plan on the table. But the unveiling of the McCain-Levin late December — and the optics of a partisan versus bipartisan solution — scrambled the game for reformers.
If Reid decides to pursue McCain-Levin instead of the talking filibuster plan, “Senator Merkley will encourage others to vote against the bill,” his aide said. It’s not yet clear that proposal has the super-majority of votes required to pass, but multiple Democratic senators have said there are at least 51 votes for reform.
h/t: Sahil Kapur at TPM
On Tuesday afternoon, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) read a letter from former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) imploring Senate Republicans to ratify a United Nations treaty affirming equal rights for disabled individuals. Dole, who was hospitalized on Tuesday, was a World War II veteran who suffered lasting disabilities after his service.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced Monday that he plans to bring the treaty up for a vote in the Senate — but, despite widespread support for the measure, Republicans seem bent on killing it again this time around after blocking Democrats’ last attempt to ratify the treaty in August.
Former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum is leading the charge against the treaty. Santorum, whose daughter was born with a rare genetic disorder, takes issue with protectionsthat allow the state to separate a child from a parent if “such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child,” such as in cases of emotional or physical abuse. At a press conference with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Santorum called this “a direct assault on us and our family.”
The treaty, which bans discrimination against people with disabilities, was originally signed in 2006 under George W. Bush’s administration and re-signed in 2009 by President Obama. More than 150 nations have signed it and 126 have already ratified it, and it is backed by a range of disabilities and veterans groups as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
In fact, as Dana Milbank points out, the treaty requires other nations to model their laws on the Americans With Disabilities Act, which already forbids discrimination based on disability.
The ADA ensures that Santorum’s daughter, Bella, cannot be blocked from going to school or from receiving the medical treatment and accommodations she needs. In opposing the treaty, Santorum is actually opposing those same protections for other disabled people all around the world.
After two disappointing election cycles, Republican leaders demanded that conservative groups end their war on electable primary candidates or risk handing the Senate to the Democrats in 2014. This week, the groups delivered their reply: “Nuts!”
Activists on the right launched a volley of criticism at 2014’s first major Senate hopeful on Monday, Rep. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV). Capito is considered a strong contender for the seat held by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), especially if he decides to retire, but her conservative detractors are demanding a purer candidate.
It’s all very reminiscent of the kind of primary fight a lot of Republicans are desperate to avoid after 2012’s Senate shellacking. But the groups who helped get candidates like Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin on the ballot this year say they’re ready to fight it out with the establishment again in 2014. West Virginia is just the first battlefield of what could be many.
“Congresswoman Capito has a long record of support of bailouts, pork, and bigger government,” Club For Growth president Chris Chocola wrote in a press release. “She voted to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for massive expansions of government-run health insurance, giveaways to big labor, and repeatedly voted to continue funding for wasteful earmarks like an Exploratorium in San Francisco and an Aquarium in South Carolina. That’s not the formula for GOP success in U.S. Senate races.”
Chocola made clear that he would ignore Republican whining about his previous primary interventions in states like like Indiana, where Club-backed Richard Mourdock defeated incumbent Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) only to collapse in the general election. He noted that more mainstream candidates “the Republican establishment cheered” like Denny Rehberg in Montana, Rick Berg in North Dakota, and Heather Wilson in New Mexico, also lost in 2012.
The same day, Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund announced it wouldn’t endorse the “too liberal” Capito. DeMint threw his weight behind a number of candidates in the 2010 primaries that made national GOP strategists uncomfortable. While some, like Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, ended up becoming stars, others, like Christine O’Donnell, were embarrassing losers who helped tarnish the party’s national brand.
The West Virginia race is exactly the kind of juicy pickup opportunity that Republicans blew in recent cycles by nominating subpar candidates. Already some in the party are feeling deja vu.
Tea Party Express has a history of upsetting the Republican establishment. The group backedO’Donnell’s Delaware Senate run in 2010 and got behind Mourdock’s primary challenge against Lugar this year. Kremer said it was “way too early to make any decisions on what races we will be involved in during the 2014 cycle,” and declined to weigh in on Capito other than to say she was “aware” Capito had launched her campaign.
Social conservatives say they’re ready to fight Republican attempts to ostracize them after the 2012 cycle as well. Over the weekend, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) became the latest top Republican to express concerns over the social issue debate, saying the GOP should “leave the issue alone” when it comes to abortion rights.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, told TPM her side isn’t going to take talk like McCain’s sitting down. If social conservatives need to fight off the Republican establishment in a brutal primary, so be it. Dannenfelser blames the problems the GOP had with its social message on fear among Republican candidates when it came to talking about abortion and other topics. Had Republicans been more proactive on social issues, they never would have been stuck “on the defensive,” she said. Dannenfelser said her group will go to war with Republicans who try to back candidates unwilling to engage on social issues.
h/t: Benjy Sarlin at TPM
President Obama has not yet even made a final determination on whom he will appoint to serve as his administration’s secretary of state during his second term, but Congressional Republicans are already severely concerned about one possible nominee: Susan Rice, who currently serves as ambassador to the United Nations. Even though the House of Representatives has no role whatsoever in the appointment or confirmation of cabinet-level appointments, 97 House Republicans have signed a letter to President Obama opposing the possible nomination of Ambassador Rice to head the Department of State, presumably because House Republicans have never had anything better to do since their 2010 ascension besides attack the president for things he hasn’t even done yet.
The opposition to the potential nomination of Ambassador Rice is rooted in Republican desperation to turn the tragedy in Benghazi into a scandal for the Obama administration. The Romney campaign was licking its chops at the prospect of attacking President Obama on Benghazi until facts stubbornly got in the way. Joe Scarborough decided to interrupt an entire broadcast and repeated the word “Benghazi” no fewer than 23 times on air. And now, Republicans have it in for Susan Rice, who, according to the previously mentioned letter, is too incompetent to head up the state department:
“Though Ambassador Rice has been our Representative to the U.N., we believe her misleading statements over the days and weeks following the attack on our embassy in Libya that led to the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans caused irreparable damage to her credibility both at home and around the world,” the letter reads, later adding: “Ambassador Rice is widely viewed as having either willfully or incompetently misled the American public in the Benghazi affair.”The accusations of incompetence leveled against Rice derive from her appearance on Sunday morning talk shows, in which she attributed the incident at Benghazi to protests against a sacrilegious anti-Islam movie, rather than a premeditated attack. Rice, of course, was simply repeating the most current intelligence assessments available at the time, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans in the House, as well as Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, from trying to stop any potential nomination of her in its tracks before it even gets started.
And yet, on January 26, 2005, Condoleezza Rice was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 85-13. Voting in favor? Lindsey Graham, as well as John McCain. Why? Because they, like so many of their Republican colleagues, are nothing more than hypocrites who believe that their past actions and statements can simply slip down the memory hole without anyone remembering.
Legendary civil rights leader and current Congressman James Clyburn (D-S.C.) felt that the accusations against Rice smacked of racial dog whistles—and given the way Republicans have acted since President Obama was first elected, that argument certainly holds weight. However, I feel it is preferable to compare this situation to the last time a black woman with the last name of Rice was considered for an appointment as secretary of state.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has not hesitated to voice his distaste towards U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, who may be nominated to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. On Face the Nation Sunday morning, McCain went even further than simply opposing Rice’s nomination and said that, “until we find out all the information” on the Benghazi consulate attacks, he would not support any Secretary of State nominee.
McCain at first said it “might be a beginning” if Rice could come on the program to explain her position. But when pressed by host Bob Schieffer, the Arizona senator dug in and refused to support any nominee “under the present circumstances”:
SCHIEFFER: Until then, you will remain opposed to her nomination?
MCCAIN: Under the present circumstances, until we find out all the information as to what happened, I don’t think you would want to support any nominee right now. Because this is very very serious and it has even larger implications than the deaths of 4 Americans. It really goes to the heart of this whole light foot print policy that this administration is pursuing.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has rejected Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) request to establish a Select Committee to investigate the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11. In a strongly worded letter delivered to the former GOP presidential hopeful on Friday, Reid rebuked Republicans for politicizing the killings and baselessly claiming that the Obama administration is engaged in a cover-up of the incident. “I refuse to allow the Senate to be used as a venue for baseless partisan attacks,” Reid wrote, noting that several committees in the House and Senate are already investigating the tragedy.
Earlier this week, McCain, along with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), held around the clock press conferences and media appearances insisting that U.N. Ambassador misled the public when she described, five days after the attacks, the incident as a “spontaneous attack” inspired by an anti-Islam video. McCain and Graham promised to block Rice should she be nominated to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State; Ayotte said she would consider the nomination.
In his letter, Reid reminded McCain that “elections are over; it is time to put an end to the partisan politicization of national security and begin working together to strengthen our efforts to dismantle and destroy the terrorist networks that threaten us.” He also rebuked the Arizona senator for skipping a closed-doors committee hearing on Benghazi in order to hold a press conference demanding more information about the attacks.
Indeed, the GOP’s accusations of an administration cover-up seemed to fall apart after testimony from former CIA chief Gen. David Petraeus on Friday revealed that the CIA approvedthe declassified talking points used by Rice during her television appearances. The hearings also confirmed that the agency had received conflicting intelligence reports in real time during the attacks.
While one stream of intelligence “from multiple sources, including video at the scene, indicated the group was behind the attack,” other reports “emerged at the same time indicating the violence at the consulate was inspired by protests in Egypt over an ostensibly anti-Islam film that was privately produced in the United States.” Twenty intelligence reports “indicated that anger about the film may be to blame.”
With your Benghazi rants and your threats against Susan Rice, you have become a pathetic spectacle, Sen. McCain.
You have morphed into what you once abhorred: a mindless partisan.
Once upon a time, back in the days of the Straight Talk Express, you were an inspiring figure. You were the rare politician who actually spoke his mind, and much of what you said made sense.
You helped normalize relations with Vietnam, the country that held you captive for eight grueling years. You were an advocate for campaign finance reform. You were moderate on immigration.
You even teamed up with Sen. Ted Kennedy from time to time.
During that 2002 campaign, you were a very appealing alternative to George W. Bush, the spoiled preppie upon whom corporate America had placed multi-million-dollar political bets.
With the establishment lined up behind the scion of big oil and big politics, you never really stood a chance. But you gave him a good fight — and it was always refreshing to hear you speak your mind.
As a reporter for the Knight-Ridder Washington bureau, I spent hours on the Straight Talk Express, watching you charm the socks off the reporters who were supposed to bring skepticism to their coverage of your quixotic quest.
For all your appeal, however, it was always terrifying to hear you expound on foreign policy. Your shoot-first, ask-questions-later mindset scared the hell out of me, and the prospect of you with your finger on the nuclear button made my skin crawl.
You still believe our one mistake in Vietnam was a failure to drop enough bombs.
Now you have drawn equally tortured conclusions about the situation in Benghazi, where you see some sort of conspiracy by the Obama administration to whitewash the attack that claimed the life of our ambassador to Libya.
You and your pals at Fox News have stirred up a scandal where none exists. And now you want to blame this fictional mess on Susan Rice, whom President Obama might appoint as his next Secretary of State.
You and your pipsqueak partisan pal, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have vowed to do everything you can to block her nomination, should it come to pass.
But Susan Rice bears no responsibility for what happened in Benghazi.
The President is correct, Senator. Your efforts to besmirch her reputation are outrageous.
As some folks have been doing around the web today, let’s flip it: Let’s imagine that President Obama had a grown son who said in 2008 that he’d like to “take a swing at” John McCain.
Or wait. I can’t imagine that. Because it wouldn’t have happened. In no small part because if it had happened, Barack Obama would not be President today.
Before the nation even learned the full extent of an attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, Republicans raced to politicize this tragedy. GOP presidential candidate Romney released a much maligned — and entirely discredited — statement claiming President Obama “sympathize[d] with those who waged the attacks.” A month later, Romney received an embarrassing live fact check during the second presidential debate after he falsely claimed that the president did not label the attack an “act of terror” the day after it occurred.
On CBS’ Face the Nation, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) took this effort to politicize the attacks to a new level, claiming it was “either cover-up or the worst kind of incompetence”, worse even than the scandal that forced President Nixon to resign:
MCCAIN: Also, by the way, he said he immediately ordered action to be taken, no action was taken over seven hours. Now we find out the Secretary of Defense decided not to take any action. You know what, somebody the other day said to me that this is as bad as Watergate. Well, nobody died in Watergate. But this is either a massive cover-up or an incompetence that is not acceptable service to the American people.
Similar statements were made by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on other shows, all focused on the Defense Department’s supposed inaction.
The new GOP claims of cover-up are part of a long-line of attempts to label the shifting narrative as a policy failure. These latest claims build on a Fox News ‘exclusive’ that the CIA was denied a request to aid in countering the assault, while watching the attack in “real-time.” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday that intelligence on the ground during the assault in Benghazi was not clear enough to warrant sending U.S. forces potentially into harms way.
Yet this new line of attack is unlikely to prove any more grounded in reality than previous ones. Indeed, even former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice tried to hit the brakes on the idea that the Obama Administration reacted improperly to the attack, telling Fox News earlier this week that “it’s probably better to let the relevant bodies do their work” rather than “jump to conclusions about what might have happened here.”
Think Progress: On CNBC’s Closing Bell, Maria Bartiromo Accuses Obama Of Manipulating Libya Facts To Cut Military Spending
It’s no secret that the American right believes that President Obama refused to call the Benghazi attack “terrorism” for political purposes even after Candy Crowley debunked the meme on national TV during the presidential debate. But CNBC host Maria Bartiromo took the meme to a whole new level today, accusing the President of attempting to drum up support for cuts to military spending at home — an assertion which her guest, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), pivoted off of rather than challenged:
BARTIROMO: Senator, I don’t understand. This whole Benghazi story boggles the mind. I mean, It was September 11th. The embassies were burned, our ambassador was murdered. The Wall Street Journal reported that the CIA told the President for ten days in his daily briefings that we could see an attack on the U.S. consulate and there was [sic] the result of protests. Why would the President not call it out for what it was on day one? Why wait so long to tell the American people that it was a terrorist attack? Is it to justify defense cuts? To make everybody believe since bin Laden is dead, everything’s quiet on the home front? I don’t even understand why the President of the United States would not call it what it was from day one.
MCCAIN: I think primarily it was this narrative that the President has been saying for so long that he got bin Laden, which we all appreciate, but then that al-Qaeda is on the run.
Republicans have argued that President Obama botched the response to, and preparation for, the attack. But when asked whether Reid’s statement that the incident was being politicized, McCain politicized it further, saying that Reid “doesn’t care” about it:
CROWLEY: Senator Reid put out a statement yesterday where he called it sad and disappointing that some people seem more focused on trying this score cheap political points off when this intelligence information came than mourning the loss of the ambassador and the other three.
MCCAIN: Maybe Senator Reid doesn’t care about Christopher Stevens. Maybe he doesn’t care about those three other brave Americans.
CROWLEY: You know he does, though?
MCCAIN: Well, to make a statement like that. Well, to make a statement like that, of course, politicizes an issue that all Americans should be concerned about what information there was. No matter whether Democrat or Republican. He is the one that’s taking the cheap political shot.
by Rubio Dispatch:
Mittens running against minority voters.
Mittens is way behind in the polls when it comes to communities of color supporting his campaign. National Review this weekend came up with a magic number of 61%. That’s the percentage of white voters Mittens needs to win election without “other.”
Not even their beloved Reagan got that amount.
Bob Herbert, former columnist at New York Times: “Mitt Romney is allowing to identify himself with social issues he doesn’t know how to talk about. Now he’s being identified as an extremist.”
(via barrybecause)
