Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has upped his already harsh rhetoric against outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, claiming that she "got away with murder" in the Benghazi, Libya, attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. "I haven't forgotten about Benghazi. Hillary Clinton got away with murder, in my view," Graham said on Fox News Monday evening, speaking to Greta Van Susteren. "She said they had a clear-eyed view of the threats. How could you have a clear-eyed view of the threats in Benghazi when you didn't know about the ambassador's cable coming back from Libya?"

Labels: assholes, closet cases, double standards, hypocrisy, It's OK if You're a Republican

There's a Mike Huckabee mystery that won't go away.

Send a public records request seeking documents from his 12-year stint as Arkansas governor, as Mother Jones did recently, and an eyebrow-raising reply will come back: The records are unavailable, and the computer hard drives that once contained them were erased and physically destroyed by the Huckabee administration as the governor prepared to leave office and launch a presidential bid.

In 2007, during Huckabee's campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, the issue of the eradicated hard drives surfaced briefly, but it was never fully examined, and key questions remain. Why had Huckabee gone to such great lengths to wipe out his own records? What ever happened to a backup collection that was provided to a Huckabee aide?

Huckabee is now considering another presidential run, and if he does enter the race, he would do so as a frontrunner. Which would make the case of the missing records all the more significant. These records would shed light on Huckabee's governorship—and could provide insight into how a President Huckabee might run the country. Meanwhile, observers of Arkansas' political scene—including one of Huckabee's former GOP allies—say the episode is characteristic of a politician who was distrustful and secretive by nature.

In February, Mother Jones wrote to the office of Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe seeking access to a variety of records concerning his predecessor's tenure, including Huckabee's travel records, calendars, call logs, and emails. Beebe's chief legal counsel, Tim Gauger, replied in a letter that "former Governor Huckabee did not leave behind any hard-copies of the types of documents you seek. Moreover, at that time, all of the computers used by former Governor Huckabee and his staff had already been removed from the office and, as we understand it, the hard-drives in those computers had already been 'cleaned' and physically destroyed."

He added, "In short, our office does not possess, does not have access to, and is not the custodian of any of the records you seek."

"Huckabee just absolutely doesn’t trust anybody," says one former high-ranking Arkansas Republican. "In my experience, if you don't trust people, it's because you're not trustworthy."

According to data from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, at least 27 state-level voter ID bills -- from Alaska and Arizona to Wisconsin and West Virginia -- have been proposed in recent months.

"It's unbelievable, probably half the states in the country have bills in play and more than a dozen are seriously in the pipeline," Tova Wang of the left-leaning think tank Demos told TPM in an interview. "It's really unprecedented in terms of geographic scope. I've never seen anything like it certainly since I've been working on voting rights issues that voter suppression bills would be introduced in so many places at the same time."

"Definitely students are a target here. It's totally clear to me that you saw in 2008 this unprecedented historic turnout among African-Americans, Latinos and young people -- and those happen to be the exact groups of people that are being targeted by these laws to disenfranchise them, and that's really sad," Wang said.

Wang said the most restrictive bills are in Ohio and Wisconsin, which Wang said require identification issued by the DMV. "Perhaps most interestingly, it doesn't even include student ID even from schools that are public universities," she said.

"This apparently concerted effort on the part of Republicans in state legislatures nationwide to effectively suppress voting is as disturbing as it is un-democratic," said Carolyn Fiddler, spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, an arm of the Democratic Party charged with boosting the number of Democrats in state governments. "Additionally, these restrictive measures are often costly and do nothing to balance state budgets and create jobs, which are the top priorities in statehouses across the country right now."

Labels: corruption, It's OK if You're a Republican, Mike Huckabee, Republican brownshirts, vote suppression

"I've had a life which, on occasion, has had problems," Gingrich said. "I believe in a forgiving God, and the American people will have to decide whether that their primary concern. If the primary concern of the American people is my past, my candidacy would be irrelevant. If the primary concern of the American people is the future... that's a debate I'll be happy to have with your candidate or any other candidate if I decide to run."

Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-Ind.) is known as a strong fiscal conservative, a top selling point for a potential presidential run. But before he was governor, Daniels was the first budget director for President Bush during a time when the country went from a budget surplus to a budget deficit, and it's likely that he'll have to explain how that fits with the philosophy he touts should he decide to jump into the Republican field in 2012.

On "Fox News Sunday," host Chris Wallace pressed Daniels on this point. "When you came in, this country had an annual surplus for the first time in 30 years of $236 billion. When you left, two and a half years later, the deficit was $400 billion. You were also there when President Bush launched his Medicaid drug benefit plan that now cost $60 billion a year. I know there was a recession, but do you think it was wise -- at a time when we were fighting two wars -- to have two tax cuts and launch a huge new entitlement?"

Daniels said deficits during that time were inevitable. "It was a recession, two wars and a terrorist attack that led to a whole new category called homeland security," he said. "So nobody was less happy than I to see the surplus go away, but it was going away."

Labels: 2012 election, assholes, hypocrisy, It's OK if You're a Republican, supply-side economics

Labels: hypocrisy, It's OK if You're a Republican, John Boehner, Washington scandals

I know this is a bit early, but I wanted to get some facts out there in advance of the debate. I picked five major bills in the past decade that have significantly increased the national debt: the 2001 tax cut, the 2003 tax cut, the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit, the 2009 stimulus, and the 2010 tax cut. (I left out the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars because it’s hard to pin down Congressional votes specifically authorizing their costs, in part because the famous Senate vote wasn’t actually a vote to go to war, in part because of the peculiar way the costs of the wars were budgeted.)

Then, for each of those bills, I looked up the CBO budget impact estimate made at the time. (Sources are at the bottom of this post.) Their costs, as projected at the time (and hence as knowable by members of Congress), were as follows. The first number is the ten-year cost; the number in parentheses is the portion of that cost through fiscal year 2011. Numbers are in billions.

* 2001 tax cut: $1,346 ($1,346)
* 2003 tax cut: $350 ($354 — the cut has a tiny deficit-reducing impact in its final years)
* Medicare Part D: $395 ($271). Note that I am not including the fact that the cost of this bill was almost immediately reestimated after it passed to be significantly higher, since that was not knowable to members of Congress when they voted.
* 2009 stimulus: $838 ($793)
* 2010 tax cut: $858 ($374)

That’s a total of $3.8 trillion — $3.1 trillion of it hitting the national debt by this year, and hence contributing directly to the need to raise the debt ceiling.

Then I looked up how current senators voted on these bills, whether they were in the Senate or the House at the time. For each senator, I added up how much of the current (2011) debt he could have voted for, and how many he did vote for. So, for example, Daniel Akaka (D-HI) was in the Senate for all five votes, so he was on the floor for $3.1 trillion in budget-busting bills; he voted for the last two, so he voted for $1.2 trillion, or 37 percent of what he could have voted for.

The results are predictable, but I still think worthy of noting, especially with all of the grandstanding that is going to happen.

Overall, current Democratic senators (including Sanders and Lieberman) had the opportunity to vote on $127 trillion of additional debt, and voted for $64 trillion, or 50 percent; current Republican senators had the opportunity to vote on $104 trillion of debt and voted for $70 trillion, or 67 percent.

The difference would have been greater except for trends in the composition of the Senate. Of current senators, the proportion in each party voting for each bill is as follows:

* 2001 tax cut: Democrats 18%, Republicans 93%
* 2003 tax cut: D 3%, R 94%
* Medicare Part D: D 17%, R 88%
* 2009 stimulus: D 100%, R 5%
* 2010 tax cut: D 77%, R 87%

So the typical Democratic vote pattern is N-N-N-Y-Y (I counted “present” and not voting as no votes — there were very few of these, anyway), which would mean voting for 37 percent of the total debt produced by these bills (just like Daniel Akaka). In fact, thirty-four Democrats were able to vote on all five bills, and twenty of them voted that way.

The typical Republican vote pattern is Y-Y-Y-N-Y, which means voting for 75 percent of the total debt. And, of the twenty-seven Republicans around for all five bills, eighteen of them voted that way.

The reason that the Republican-Democratic “debt responsibility” percentages are 67-50 instead of 75-37 is that not all senators have been in Congress for the past decade, and most of the ones who have only been there for a few years are Democrats. So there are many Democrats who were only in Congress for the last two votes, on which they typically voted Y-Y (100%), and a few Republicans who were only there for the last two votes, on which they typically voted N-Y (32%). So the facts that the Democrats’ budget-busting bills came later, and that I’m only looking at current senators, make the Democrats seem more profligate than their party has been as a whole, and vice-versa for Republicans.

The bottom line: As a party, the Republicans who will be railing against fiscal irresponsibility and threatening to block a raise in the debt limit are the irresponsible ones themselves who created the need to raise that debt limit. The Democrats can claim to be somewhat less irresponsible; more to the point, perhaps, insofar as they did vote to raise the debt, at least their current behavior (assuming that most support the administration and vote to raise the debt limit) is at least consistent with their past votes.

Labels: chickenshit weasel Republicans, House Republicans, It's OK if You're a Republican, Republican id-driven two-year-olds

U.S. House Republicans, who swept into power promising to rein in the federal deficit, have proposed policies in their first week that would make the shortfall worse.

Moves to repeal President Barack Obama’s health-care law and promises to extend Bush-era tax cuts and offer other breaks would add more than $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years, based on reports from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation.

In one of their first votes, Republicans changed anti- deficit rules to allow for tax cuts that aren’t paid for by savings elsewhere in the budget. New spending would have to be offset with cuts elsewhere, though tax increases to fund new programs would be prohibited.

“They are willing to increase the deficit if it comes as a result of things they want to do, specifically tax cuts,” said Stan Collender, a former congressional budget aide and now managing director of Qorvis Communications in Washington. “It’s a little disingenuous at best.”

The new Republican exemptions to the so-called pay-go budget rules will be “dead on arrival in the Senate,” Senator Charles Schumer a New York Democrat, told reporters yesterday.

Extending tax cuts for the highest-income Americans for just two years, as Congress did last month, will cost about $81.5 billion, according to a December report by the Joint Committee on Taxation. Extending lower rates on most capital gains and dividends will cost $53.1 billion over two years. A reduced estate tax rate will cost $68.1 billion. Over a period of 10 years, the cuts would add more than $1 trillion to the deficit, combined with a repeal of the health-care law.

Labels: deficits, hypocrisy, It's OK if You're a Republican, wussy-ass Democrats

When President Bill Clinton's relationship with a White House intern erupted a decade ago, Sen. John Ensign called for his resignation.

But the Nevada Republican says that situation is different from one he faces after admitting to an extramarital affair with a former campaign aide. Ensign told The Associated Press that he didn't lie under oath like Clinton did and that he hasn't "done anything legally wrong."

"President Clinton stood right before the American people and he lied to the American people," Ensign said. "You remember that famous day he lied to the American people, plus the fact I thought he suborned perjury. That's why I voted for the articles of impeachment."

Ensign made the remarks Wednesday before speaking at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in rural Fernley.

The event was Ensign's first public appearance in his home state since acknowledging in June that he had an affair with his friend's wife, former campaign aide Cynthia Hampton.

"I think it would be inappropriate to start any other way than to say I'm sorry," Ensign said. "I've said I'm sorry. I can't say I'm sorry enough. I made a big mistake in my life and I apologize once again to all of you."

Labels: assholes, hypocrisy, It's OK if You're a Republican, Republican id-driven two-year-olds

Labels: hypocrisy, It's OK if You're a Republican

The mother of Bristol Palin's boyfriend sent text messages discussing drug transactions less than a month after the young woman's mother, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was nominated as the Republican vice presidential candidate, according to court documents filed this week.

[snip]

Authorities say the case against Sherry Johnston began in the second week of September, when drug investigators intercepted a package containing 179 OxyContin pills. That led to the arrest of the suspects, who agreed to be informants.

According to the affidavit, Johnston sent a text message to one informant Oct. 1, writing: "Hey, my phones are tapped and reporters and god knows who else is always following me and the family so no privacy. I will let u no when I can go for cof."

The trooper's affidavit indicates that Sarah Palin's candidacy factored into the investigation, with state officials delaying execution of a search warrant until this month, when Johnston was "no longer under the protection or surveillance of the Secret Service."

* The president, the vice president, (or other individuals next in order of succession to the Office of the President), the president-elect and vice president-elect
* The immediate families of the above individuals
* Former presidents and their spouses for their lifetimes, except when the spouse remarries. In 1997, Congressional legislation became effective limiting Secret Service protection to former presidents for a period of not more than 10 years from the date the former president leaves office
* Children of former presidents until age 16
* Visiting heads of foreign states or governments and their spouses traveling with them, other distinguished foreign visitors to the United States, and official representatives of the United States performing special missions abroad
* Major presidential and vice presidential candidates, and their spouses within 120 days of a general presidential election
* Other individuals as designated per Executive Order of the President
* National Special Security Events, when designated as such by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security

Labels: It's OK if You're a Republican, Sarah Palin, sleaze