Think Progress » WH communications director: Fox News operates as ‘a wing of the Republican Party.’ 

This morning on CNN’s Reliable Sources, White House communications director Anita Dunn defended her recent comment to Time magazine that Fox News is “opinion journalism masquerading as news.” Noting the inordinate amount of attention Fox devotes to stirring fake controversies like Bill Ayers and ACORN, Dunn explained:

The reality of it is that Fox News often operates as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. And it’s not ideological. I mean, obviously there are many commentators who are conservative, liberal, centrist, and everybody understands that. What I think is fair to say about Fox is — and certainly the way we view it — is that it really is more of a wing of the Republican Party. […]

They’re widely viewed as, you know, a part of the Republican Party — take their talking points, put them on the air, take their opposition research, put them on the air, and that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network they way CNN is.

Think Progress » WH communications director: Fox News operates as ‘a wing of the Republican Party.’

The Back Forty » Nobel Laureate Obama 

The DNC’s Brad Woodhouse sent around this statement in response to Republican sniping, which I’m not going to quote.  If you want to find their snark, it won’t be hard.  Here’s the DNC’s response:

The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists — the Taliban and Hamas this morning — in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize. Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize — an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride — unless of course you are the Republican Party. The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore – it’s an embarrassing label to claim.

Now the RNC is crying foul, as if they never tried to link Obama to terrorists, communists, socialists, the anti-Christ, and god-knows-what all else. What a bunch of crybabies.

The Back Forty » Nobel Laureate Obama

Think Progress » Citing ‘Fascism, Socialism, Obamaism,’ Republican Strategist Launches Impeachment Campaign 

While the international community is heralding President Obama for his leadership, right-wing activists here in America are clamoring to impeach him. Republican operative Floyd Brown, “one of the nation’s dirtiest political strategists” and the architect of the racially-charged Willie Horton ad against Michael Dukakis, has launched a campaign to impeach Obama. Brown, who registered his impeachment website in August, worked closely with congressional Republicans to push a similar crusade against Clinton, starting in 1994. During the 2008 campaign, Floyd ran commercials claiming Obama is Muslim.

Rather than cite any specific crime, Brown is demanding Obama’s removal for pursuing progressive agenda items like health and clean energy reform. His website blares: “Are you willing to let [Obama] construct a totalitarian regime… fascism, socialism, Obamaism… take your pick?”

Brown, a proud “birther,” explained to radio host Alan Colmes yesterday that he is also outraged because he doesn’t believe Obama was born in America

Think Progress » Citing ‘Fascism, Socialism, Obamaism,’ Republican Strategist Launches Impeachment Campaign

Fox News Coverage (or Lack Thereof) of Obama’s Nobel Prize – Tuned In – TIME.com 

Finally, at 9:39, Fox anchor Megyn Kelly mentioned the prize award for (I timed it with a stopwatch) 11.1 seconds. After which Bill Hemmer segued: "Hey, meet the guys who built a pumpkin cannon!"

To be fair, it was a really awesome pumpkin cannon.

Fox News Coverage (or Lack Thereof) of Obama’s Nobel Prize – Tuned In – TIME.com

 Think Progress » Broun calls Pelosi a ‘domestic enemy of the Constitution.’

At a town hall last week, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) continued his campaign to inject over the top, paranoid rhetoric into America’s political discourse. “I’m chairman of the Second Amendment Task Force fighting for Second Amendment rights. Those gun rights are actually critical to prevent treason in America,” said Broun, [mjh: How, by shooting guys like Broun?] according to Athens Banner-Herald reporter Blake Aued, who provided a transcript of Broun’s remarks to TPM. Broun then said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is one of the “domestic enemies of the Constitution” that he says he swore to defend against:

I’ve gotten to be good friends with Justice Antonin Scalia, who he and Justice Clarence Thomas are the only ones who have any concept of what the Constitution is supposed to be and, and do what they’re supposed to do as justices by upholding the Constitution. But, in fact every, when I was sworn into the Marine Corp, I was sworn to uphold the Constitution against every enemy, foreign and domestic. We’ve got a lot of domestic enemies of the Constitution (applause) and one of those sits in the speaker’s chair of the United States Congress, Nancy Pelosi.

Previously, Broun has said that President Obama wants to go “down the road” of Hitler and has the pieces in place to “establish an authoritarian government.” He has also said that Obama, Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) are part of a “socialist elite” that wants to declare martial law in America.

Think Progress » Broun calls Pelosi a ‘domestic enemy of the Constitution.’

Read that again. This guy was a marine and claims his duty to protect the Constitution. How? By armed insurrection against duly elected representatives. INSANE! Again: Idiots like Broun will deny any culpability at the first bloodshed. That blood will be on his hands and his compatriots.

This was a particularly horrific and despicable crime against all humanity. We need to figure out how to prevent such monsters from growing and how to punish them in any effective way. (Each of the rapists should tearfully apologize to the whole world moments before ending his own life as painfully as possible. One can only hope Hell is real and ever-lasting.) Al Franken has proven that the Republican who called him a clown is himself a jackass.

In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and “warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.” (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.” Speaking on the Senate floor yesterday, Franken said:

The constitution gives everybody the right to due process of law … And today, defense contractors are using fine print in their contracts do deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court. … The victims of rape and discrimination deserve their day in court [and] Congress plainly has the constitutional power to make that happen.

On the Senate floor, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) spoke against the amendment, calling it “a political attack directed at Halliburton.” [mjh: And the Dark Lord, Dick Cheney.] Franken responded, “This amendment does not single out a single contractor. This amendment would defund any contractor that refuses to give a victim of rape their day in court.”

In the end, Franken won the debate. His amendment passed by a 68-30 vote, earning the support of 10 Republican senators including that of newly-minted Florida Sen. George LeMieux. “He did what a senator should do, which was he was working it,” LeMieux said in praise of Franken. “He was working for his amendment.”

Appearing with Franken after the vote, an elated Jones expressed her deep appreciation. “It means the world to me,” she said of the amendment’s passage. “It means that every tear shed to go public and repeat my story over and over again to make a difference for other women was worth it.”

Update 30 Republican senators voted against the amendment, including Sen. David Vitter (R-LA).

Think Progress » Franken Wins Bipartisan Support For Legislation Reining In KBR’s Treatment Of Rape

NAYs —30

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ) [mjh: the maverick? hardly.]
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

Not Voting – 2

Byrd (D-WV)
Specter (D-PA)

Vote Summary
By Senator Name
By Vote Position
By Home State

U.S. Senate: Legislation & Records Home > Votes > Roll Call Vote

Op-Ed Columnist – The Politics of Spite – NYTimes.com 

How did one of our great political parties become so ruthless, so willing to embrace scorched-earth tactics even if so doing undermines the ability of any future administration to govern?

The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern.

Anyone surprised by the venomous, over-the-top opposition to Mr. Obama must have forgotten the Clinton years. Remember when Rush Limbaugh suggested that Hillary Clinton was a party to murder? When Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those Medicare cuts? And let’s not even talk about the impeachment saga.

The only difference now is that the G.O.P. is in a weaker position, having lost control not just of Congress but, to a large extent, of the terms of debate. The public no longer buys conservative ideology the way it used to; the old attacks on Big Government and paeans to the magic of the marketplace have lost their resonance. Yet conservatives retain their belief that they, and only they, should govern.

The result has been a cynical, ends-justify-the-means approach. Hastening the day when the rightful governing party returns to power is all that matters, so the G.O.P. will seize any club at hand with which to beat the current administration.

It’s an ugly picture. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth anyone trying to find solutions to America’s real problems has to understand.

Op-Ed Columnist – The Politics of Spite – NYTimes.com

Think Progress » Kristol Compares Obama’s Olympics Pitch To ‘George W. Bush-Like’ Bullying 

Brazil, Spain, and Japan — the other three 2016 finalists — all sent their country’s leaders to Copenhagen, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pointed out on NBC’s Meet the Press today. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks said that he was proud Obama had “put his country ahead of his own personal prestige”:

MADDOW: In 2012, London got the Olympics after Blair tried for them. In 2014, Russia got them after Putin tried for them, and in 2016, all four finalists sent their head of government or head of state to make the argument. Obama did nothing unreasonable, and it would have been a shock if Chicago won. For them to be cheering America’s loss here on the right, I think is sort of disgusting. […]

BROOKS: Nonetheless, I have to say, I’m with Obama on this. He took a risk, he comes away somewhat humiliated, but he took a risk for his town, he took a risk for his country, he put his country ahead of his own personal prestige, and he lost one. I actually don’t mind it. I think he was all right on this.

E.J. Dionne added that Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential slogan was “Country First,” but “in this case, it was Obama-hatred first on the right, not the country.”

Think Progress » Kristol Compares Obama’s Olympics Pitch To ‘George W. Bush-Like’ Bullying

Think Progress » Bachmann’s agenda: ‘After we defund the left, we pass repealer bill after repealer bill after repealer bill.’ 

BACHMANN: We have to defund the left. And this is great. Gallup came out with a poll, I think last week or the week before, that said the American people believe that Congress wastes 50 percent — 50 cents or 50 percent of every dollar it spends. God love the American people. They get it. They understand the truth that actually there’s huge waste. So we defund that but then the third thing that we do, which you’re getting into with economic development, is we have to after we defund the left, we pass repealer bill after repealer bill after repealler bill. Because there’s a huge machinery that’s been built up in this town. And we have to just repeal it. And we have to campaign on that to the American people. That is a hugely winning message right now with the American people.

Bachmann isn’t the first conservative member of Congress to express a desire to “repeal” legislation passed under Obama if Republicans take back control of Congress again. In August, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) said “we’ll repeal” health care reform if it passes. Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) said at the Values Voter Summit last month that he dreams of telling President Obama in 2010, “we need to repeal the disaster and the tyranny that you passed last session.”

Think Progress » Bachmann’s agenda: ‘After we defund the left, we pass repealer bill after repealer bill after repealer bill.’

There’s a winning agenda: Reverse, undo, remove, repeal. With such a clear platform, Republicans may never get elected again.

 Protection Or Peril? Gun Possession Of Questionable Value In An Assault, Study Finds

In a first-of its-kind study, epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that, on average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. The study estimated that people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.

The study was released online this month in the American Journal of Public Health, in advance of print publication in November 2009.

“This study helps resolve [mjh: yeah, I’ll bet] the long-standing debate about whether guns are protective or perilous,” notes study author Charles C. Branas, PhD, Associate Professor of Epidemiology. “Will possessing a firearm always safeguard against harm or will it promote a false sense of security?”

What Penn researchers found was alarming – almost five Philadelphians were shot every day over the course of the study and about 1 of these 5 people died. The research team concluded that, although successful defensive gun uses are possible and do occur each year, the chances of success are low. People should rethink their possession of guns or, at least, understand that regular possession necessitates careful safety countermeasures, write the authors. Suggestions to the contrary, especially for urban residents who may see gun possession as a defense against a dangerous environment should be discussed and thoughtfully reconsidered.

Protection Or Peril? Gun Possession Of Questionable Value In An Assault, Study Finds