“Not Even In The Game”: Lawmakers Who Set A Poor Example
It’s been a difficult week for so many Americans. As recently as last weekend — which seems like months ago — many were concerned about a missile test from nuclear-armed North Korea. Since then, we’ve seen the bloodshed in Boston, the deadly explosion in Texas, the ricin letters, Midwestern flooding, and a Senate minority ignoring the will of 90% of Americans.
It can be a bit much, and when people are feeling on edge, they need to see their elected officials operating at their very best. The vast majority of officials, known and unknown, have been exemplary.
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), however, appears to be falling far short of this standard.
It didn’t take long for a lawmaker to pick up the latest right-wing conspiracy theory about the Boston Marathon bombings. Just hours after controversial terrorism expert Steve Emerson reported [Wednesday] night on Sean Hannity’s show that unnamed “sources” told him the government was quietly deporting the Saudi national who was initially suspected in the bombing, South Carolina GOP Rep. Jeff Duncan grilled Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on the rumor at a hearing [Thursday] morning.
Duncan, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee and chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency, presented the conspiracy theory as fact, chastising Napolitano for deporting a terror suspect (who, in reality, isn’t being deported and isn’t a suspect). Napolitano, annoyed, replied, “I don’t know where that rumor came from.”
As it turns out, it came from Hannity’s show, and was pushed very aggressively by Glenn Beck. Drudge and Erick Erickson talked it up, too. All of them were completely wrong.
And while that’s unfortunate, right-wing media personalities aren’t on the House Homeland Security Committee. Duncan is, and he used his official platform to pester the Secretary of Homeland Security, in a public congressional hearing, with bogus information he presented as fact, all because he couldn’t tell the difference between reality and silly conspiracy theories.
Worse, when Napolitano tried to set the record straight, Duncan pressed forward, saying, “He is being deported.” Except, of course, the person in question is not. When the far-right congressman continued to spout nonsense, Napolitano effectively gave up, saying Duncan’s inquiries are “full of misstatements and misapprehensions,” and “not worthy of an answer.”
Wait, it gets even worse.
Aviva Shen noted a separate exchange from the same hearing.
In a House hearing Thursday morning, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano was sidetracked from her testimony on the DHS budget when Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) asked her to respond to an online conspiracy theory about the DHS supposedly stockpiling ammo for an attack on Americans. Duncan argued this was more credible than mere “Internet rumors” because the Drudge Report, a popular conservative aggregator, said it was true.
It’s a difficult time, and Americans need sensible policymakers to keep their heads on straight, serving at the top of their game. In other words, the country needs officials who aren’t acting like Jeff Duncan.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 19, 2013
“Substituting Identity For Motivation”: How To Understand Things When You Don’t Want To Think Too Much
Let’s be honest and admit that everyone had a hope about who the Boston bomber would out to be. Conservatives hoped it would be some swarthy Middle Easterner, which would validate their belief that the existential threat from Islam is ongoing and that their preferred policies are the best way to deal with that threat. Liberals hoped it would be a Timothy McVeigh-like character, some radical right-winger or white supremacist, which would perhaps make us all think more broadly about terrorism and what the threats really are. The truth turned out to be … well, we don’t really know yet. Assuming these two brothers are indeed the bombers, they’re literally Caucasian, but they’re also Muslim. Most importantly, as of yet we know absolutely nothing about what motivated them. Nothing. Keep that in mind.
But for many people, their motivations are of no concern; all that matters is their identity. The sentiment coming from a lot of people on the right today runs to, “See! See! Mooslems!!!” Some of them are using the suspects’ identity as a reason why we shouldn’t pass immigration reform, and the increasingly unhinged Glenn Beck is insisting even today that the government is protecting a Saudi man who was involved in the bombing, I guess because the Obama administration is in league with Al Qaeda or something. Whether this has anything to do with the receiver the CIA implanted in Beck’s brain to exert its mind control over him through satellite transmissions could not be confirmed.
We should note that there are people on the right being restrained and responsible; not everyone is like the repellent Pamela Geller, already referring to the “Boston Jihad Bomber” (and no, I’m not going to link to her oozing pustule of a web site). But here is an editorial from the upcoming issue of the Weekly Standard titled “Civilization and Barbarism,” in which William Kristol labors to remind his readers that in the world there is us, the civilized folk, and our enemies, the barbarians. He casts a wide net (barbarism can apparently be found not only in terrorist attacks but also in Roe v. Wade), but it’s a plea to simplify your thinking, to make sure that in matters of foreign or domestic policy the only question is who is Us and who is Them. Once you’ve established that and you know that Them aren’t human at all but just barbarians, all the solutions become clear. The foreign barbarians must simply be crushed, in the most violent way possible (though it will not be Bill Kristol or his children with their lives at risk; they have people for that). As for the domestic barbarians who reside in the opposite party, well, we don’t want to kill them, but you certainly wouldn’t compromise with a barbarian, would you?
To this way of thinking, when you’re dealing with barbarians, understanding their motivations just muddies your thinking and saps your will. Identity is all that matters. Maybe that’s because it can be so hard to understand other people’s motivations. For instance, I get how someone could become enraged over the death and suffering that have been the collateral consequences of all America’s various foreign adventures. But I can’t understand how a person could decide that blowing up a bunch of innocent people could possibly be a morally defensible or even practically effective response. Does the attacker in these kinds of cases say to themselves, “This is really going to make a difference”? It’s hard to get inside their head in a way that makes any sense.
So it’s easier to say, “They did it because that’s just how those people are.” It’s an answer that means you don’t have to ask any more questions.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, April 19, 2013
“The MarcoPhone”: Marco Rubio’s Life Is About To Get Complicated
Marco Rubio has had a pretty charmed political life. He rose quickly through the ranks in the Florida legislature, won a Senate seat without too much trouble at the tender age of 39, then suddenly found himself the “Republican savior” a mere two years after arriving in Washington. At a time when the GOP is desperate to appeal to Latinos, he’s a young, smart, dynamic Latino who could be their presidential nominee in 2016. What could go wrong?
Immigration reform, that’s what. Many elite Republicans feel, and not without reason, that while supporting comprehensive reform might not win them the votes of Latinos, opposing it will pretty much guarantee that those votes will be lost to them. And Rubio almost has no choice but to be one of the leaders, if not the leader, of the party in that effort. He can’t be the Great Latino Hope if he isn’t. Trouble is, lots and lots of rank-and-file Republicans, particularly the kind who vote in presidential primaries, don’t much like reform the way it’s shaping up. Sure, under the “Gang of 8” plan in the Senate it’ll take 13 years for a current undocumented immigrant to become an American citizen. But for many in the party’s base, that’s about 113 years too quick. Enter the MarcoPhone. Wait, what? Get a load of this:
Conservative bloggers immediately seized on portions of the bill funding expanded cell phone access along the border as evidence Rubio was supplying free phones to undocumented immigrants. Some commentators connected it to the “Obama phone,” a popular meme on the right last year about a program that provides discounts on phone service to the poor. Despite the moniker, it predated the current administration by decades and rose to prominence last year mostly due to a viral video of a female black Obama supporter talking about the program.
Rubio himself was confronted with the claim on Wednesday in an interview with conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham, who quoted from a blog post that read “Move over Obama phone, this is the amnesty phone.”
The provision in question doesn’t give phones to undocumented immigrants, it gives phones to people who live on the border so they can call the Border Patrol if they see people crossing from Mexico. But as Ed Kilgore says, “I’m having trouble feeling bad for Rubio getting a taste of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a Tea Party delusion.” It’ll certainly be an interesting test of Rubio’s and his team’s communication skills to see if they can squash this (they’re already trying).
What folks like Ingraham understand is that when you’re trying to gin up outrage about a big, complex piece of legislation, the way to do it is to find some component of the bill that is weighted with symbolic value and will hit directly on your target audience’s resentments and fears. It doesn’t matter how minor the provision is, or how much you need to distort its actual function and intent. All that matters is that it’ll get people pissed off.
“Death panels” was the prototypical example. It told people who feared increased government power and control that the Affordable Care Act would literally give heartless Washington bureaucrats the power to decide who lives and dies. It was not just a lie but an absurd lie, an insane lie. But it worked, at least well enough. Gun advocates who wanted to defeat the Manchin-Toomey background check proposal went around saying it included a “national gun registry,” despite the fact that the bill prohibited the government from ever making such a registry, because they knew that would play on the most paranoid fears of gun nuts who think that any moment the jackbooted AFT thugs are going to come busting down their door to confiscate their AR-15s. The MarcoPhone can function the same way. What does it tell people in the anti-immigrant portion of the GOP base? That a bunch if illegals aren’t just getting amnesty, they’re going to be getting freebies, paid for with your tax dollars!
If it isn’t nipped in the bud, this could be deadly for Rubio. His Tea Party credentials may be impeccable, but if he starts looking soft on the foreign horde to the south, a lot of Republican primary voters will start getting suspicious of him. It’s possible that now that it has been explained to them, people like Ingraham will back off, especially since the guy they’re attacking is one of their own. As long as they still consider him one of their own.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, April 18, 2013
“How Many Is Enough?”: The Gun Report: April 18, 2013
Yesterday was dispiriting for the vast majority of Americans who, according to recent polling, want to see expanded background checks on gun sales. But another story that may have been overlooked, between the disappointing Senate outcome and the updates coming out of Boston, was this investigative piece from the Times’s National desk about Internet arms sales, dubbed “the gun show that never ends.” Reporters scoured online ads on Armslist, a self-described “firearms marketplace,” and found that several people who buy firearms are convicted felons who fail background checks, and many private Internet dealers simply look the other way. It’s an unregulated swath of the market that’s evaded government oversight, and, in the absence of new gun legislation, will continue to do so.
—Jennifer Mascia
Micki Pickren, 52, was shot in the back of the head, the side of the head and the face by her boyfriend in Auburndale, Fla., Tuesday evening. Randall Scott Miller, 44, a former Marine, has been previously arrested for battery domestic violence and child abuse. The bullet in Pickren’s head was not able to be removed but she is expected to survive. Miller is at large and considered armed and dangerous.
Edith Hardy, 82, was sitting on the sofa inside her Chester, Pa., home Wednesday afternoon when she was shot in the neck by a stray bullet during a barrage of gunfire that also critically wounded a young man. Authorities have no motives or suspects. The critically wounded man was believed to be the intended target; he sustained a gunshot wound to the head and is on life support. Hardy is expected to survive.
—The Delaware County Daily Times
A woman sleeping on a couch in a Hayward, Calif., home suffered head and neck wounds early Wednesday when bullets ripped through a front window. A couple was engaged in a heated argument across the street from the home right before gunshots were heard. The victim, a 24-year-old woman, was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery. Her condition was not known.
—KTVU
A 2-year-old boy is recovering from a gunshot wound after accidentally shooting himself in Gurley, Ala., Tuesday night. Deputies responded to a home on Church Street around 7:20 p.m. and found a child with a gunshot wound to the hand. Deputies said the unsupervised child shot himself. Deputies notified the Department of Human Resources. No charges are expected to be filed.
A crying 5-month old girl was found under a bed at a northwest Houston, Tex., apartment where two people were shot to death Wednesday evening. Police were called at around 6 p.m. after hearing the baby’s cries and found a man dead on the floor and a woman dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Police found a second man inside the bedroom who had also been shot in the head; he is in critical condition.
A student who suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound Tuesday morning at a Temple, Tex., high school is in very critical condition. Officers found the 15-year-old student near the rear of the gym at Temple High School and recovered a handgun. The boy has not been identified, but the school confirmed that he is a member of the school’s ROTC program.
—KWTX
A 19-year-old man was shot twice in the torso by a fellow student at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Elgerondo Williams, 22, pulled out a small-caliber handgun and shot his friend after they argued over money owed on a bet over a video game. The victim is in stable condition. Williams surrendered to a police officer on campus after initially fleeing the scene.
A man was shot by his roommate several times and killed after a dispute north of Nixa, Mo., shortly before noon Wednesday. The victim died where he was shot, at the end of the driveway of the home that the two men shared with two other men. Deputies arrested the alleged gunman as he was trying to flee.
A man in his 20s is in critical condition after an argument ended in a shooting in Waveland, Miss., on Wednesday. Four or five men were fighting at a residence when one of them took out a gun and began shooting. Police questioned two of the men, but no arrests have been made.
Three men were shot in the street in front of a home in Bridge City, La., on Tuesday night. At around 7:20 p.m., the unidentified suspects pulled up in a gold-colored vehicle and opened fire. All three are expected to survive. Police have no suspects.
Two people were injured in a shooting at a San Pablo, Calif., bar on Tuesday night. Police responded to reports of a shooting around 9:10 p.m and found two people who had been shot multiple times. They are expected to survive. No suspects have been arrested.
Shootings in the Heart of Chicago and Grand Crossing neighborhoods in Chicago, Ill., left two men injured Tuesday night and early Wednesday. At 8:40 p.m. Tuesday, a 50-year-old man was shot in the shoulder as he left his home to inspect gunfire outside. At around 1:45 a.m. Wednesday, two people approached a 45-year-old man from behind and opened fire, fleeing on foot.
According to Slate’s gun-death tracker, an estimated 3,514 people have died as a result of gun violence in America since the Newtown massacre on December 14, 2012.
By: Joe Nocera, The New York Times, April 18, 2013
“A Political Price To Pay”: Obstruction Of The Gun Violence Bill Will Further Damage The GOP
On Wednesday, supporters of legislation to limit gun violence failed to muster the sixty votes necessary to stop a Republican filibuster of the Toomey-Manchin compromise that would expand background checks to include all commercial gun sales in the United States.
Polls show that universal background checks are supported by 90% of Americans – including a vast majority of gun owners and Republicans. A clear majority of Senators are fully prepared to pass a background check measure. But no matter – the Republican Leadership decided to obstruct the democratic process in the Senate to prevent an up or down vote on the measure.
Conventional wisdom continues to hold that, while the vast majority of Americans support universal background checks, in many areas it is still smart politics not to antagonize the NRA and their relatively small number of very active – very passionate – supporters. Conventional wisdom is wrong. Here’s why:
1). Wednesday’s Washington Post poll shows that 70% of all voters and nearly half of Republicans already think the GOP is out of touch with the needs and interests of the majority of Americans. By opposing a common sense measure like universal background checks, that is supported by nine of out ten Americans, the GOP leadership threatens to further tarnish the GOP brand by appearing to be way out of the mainstream and not on the side of ordinary voters.
2). It is no longer true that large number of voters who favor measures to limit gun violence are less “passionate” about their views. It is also no longer the case that those views will be less likely to affect their voting than opponents of restrictions on guns.
In a poll released Wednesday by Project New America, over 60% of voters in Arkansas, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Ohio said they strongly support background checks for gun purchasers.
And an overwhelming number of voters said they would be more likely to support candidates for Senate that supported background checks – 70% in Maine, 65% in North Carolina, 64% in Illinois, 64% in New Hampshire, 62% in Nevada, and 56% in Arkansas.
3). The GOP lost women 55% to 44% in the last election. Republican obstruction of gun violence legislation will only make their problem with women voters worse, since they are particularly passionate supporters of legislation to stem gun violence. The same goes for Millennial voters who overwhelmingly support gun violence legislation.
4). Some pundits will say that Democratic Senators contributed to the failure to muster 60 votes to end the Republican filibuster by refusing to vote to cut off debate. Forty-one of forty-five Republican Senators voted against background checks. Over 90% of Democratic Senators voted to support the background check legislation and there would have been no need for 60 votes in the first place if the Republican leadership had not decided to filibuster the bill.
The fact is that everyone in America knows that the President and Democratic Leadership strongly favor background checks, and the Republican Leadership – as well as most Republican Senators – opposed them. That is what will create a lasting impression among voters.
5). Many Republicans and some Democratic Senators have made the judgment that the money and energy of the NRA and weapons industry are more potent politically than the forces who promote legislation to curb gun violence. That may have been true in the past — no longer.
The fact is that in the last election the major NRA PAC had a .083% success rate. And now Mayor Bloomberg, the Giffords/Kelly organizations and many others are amassing substantial resources to target against the enemies of legislation to stop gun violence.
Bloomberg already showed the potency of these efforts by investing $2 million in the Illinois 2nd District Congressional District and virtually sinking pro-NRA candidates who had otherwise been strong contenders in this spring’s special election. There will be more of that to come.
6). On a press conference call Wednesday, Democratic pollster Geoff Garin pointed out that Republican opposition to legislation to limit gun violence, further shrinks the playing field where they will be competitive – both in 2014 and the next Presidential race. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has a list of 27 Republican incumbents who represent swing districts where voters are supportive of anti-gun violence legislation.
Already Republicans have a very narrow, difficult path to 270 electoral votes in the Presidential map. They need to broaden their electoral playing field. But their opposition to gun violence legislation will make their path to victory in states like Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon even more difficult.
What does all of this add up to?
The fact is that Democrats and supporters of strong legislation to curb gun violence have the high moral and political ground in this debate — and the issue is not going away. This is, after all, a 90%-10% issue.
The background check bill would have won by five votes. Instead, Republican abuse of arcane Senate rules required that it receive a super majority of sixty votes to pass. This, by the way, is yet another excellent reason to change those Senate rules to end the misuse of the filibuster.
Over the next weeks, it is up to those who support common sense gun violence legislation to come down on those who voted no like an avalanche.
There is simply no excuse for their failure to pass legislation that is supported by 90% of the American people.
Simply put, we cannot let that stand – and those who opposed the measure must be made to pay the political price.
There continues to be a perceived “passion gap” on the gun issue. Members of Congress still believe that while the majority of Americans support legislation to curb gun violence, they lack the passion of opponents. As we have seen, this is no longer true.
Now it is up to us to demonstrate that it is not true to the Senators who are more concerned about contributions and support from the weapons industry than they are about the lives of the 26 people who died at Newtown – and the thousands of others who have died since.
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post, April 17, 2013
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