Rachel Maddow's Blog, page 3352

Congress loses an 'evil genius'

Associated Press

With budget talks looming, and congressional Republicans making noises about a government shutdown and another debt-ceiling crisis, House Democrats have a message for the White House: don't forget about us.

"In the House, when you have a core group of hard-right Republicans that oppose any kind of negotiated agreement, that obviously means that House Democrats have to be at the negotiating table," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told The Hill, adding, "Because [Speaker Boehner] cannot control his caucus, that gives House Democrats more leverage."

That certainly makes sense -- the more the House GOP says "no" to everything, the more the House leadership needs to look around to find someone who'll say "yes." In this case, that means Democrats, who'll have a few demands of their own.

But nearly as interesting as who will be at the budget negotiating table is who won't be. Rohit Kumar is a Capitol Hill staffer whose name is probably unfamiliar to most, but he's been at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) side for every major fiscal deal since President Obama took office, and his last day as a congressional staffer was late last week.

Kumar is the guy who came up with a way to sell a $700 billion bank bailout to anxious lawmakers in 2008 when the financial system was collapsing. And he's the guy who figured out how to let conservatives raise the debt limit while voting against it in 2011 when the nation was days away from default.

As Congress braces for a possible government shutdown next month and the fresh danger of default before Thanksgiving, the departure of Kumar, the chief negotiator for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), is a huge loss. [...]

Largely invisible to the public, these are the nuts-and-bolts guys the bosses trust to negotiate critical details with Democrats, draft deals into law and explain them to the GOP rank and file. Losing them now -- weeks before the next fight -- weakens Republicans and leaves Democrats without familiar negotiating partners.

An Obama administration official told the Washington Post, in reference to Kumar, "If you have to do business with the dark side, it's better to negotiate with an evil genius than with someone who only knows how to say no and doesn't understand the details."

I mention this, of course, because we've reached an interesting point in Beltway politics -- Democrats find it so difficult to work constructively with obstructionist, reactionary Republicans who struggle to understand the basics that they're inclined to miss the absence of an "evil genius" who disagrees with them about everything.

Given this, what should we expect from the budget talks next month? Kevin Drum offers this rundown:

* The tea party has gotten tired of constant betrayal by Republican leaders and is more hunkered down than ever.

* Mitch McConnell, who cut several of the most recent deals, is in a tough primary fight and can't afford to be seen as a compromiser this year.

* John Boehner doesn't have even a pretense of control over his caucus anymore.

* The exodus of top aides who actually did the spadework makes negotiations more polarizing than ever.

* An awful lot of Republicans seem dead serious about this business of passing a budget only if it repeals Obamacare.

* House Republicans have already demonstrated an inability to get agreement within their own caucus for even a fairly simple appropriations bill.

My advice: buckle your seatbelt.

McCrory struggles with his own voter-suppression law

Associated Press

Two weeks ago, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) touted the state's sweeping new voting restrictions, though he clearly struggled with the basics. The Republican governor boasted, for example, that the law allows online voter registration, which turned out to be wrong. When McCrory said new measures are intended to prevent fraud, a reporter asked what eliminating pre-registration for North Carolinians under 18 has to do with preventing fraud.

"I don't know enough, I'm sorry, I haven't seen that part of the bill," he replied.

This week, McCrory signed the most severe voter-suppression bill in the nation into law -- dismissing "scare tactics" from the "extreme left" -- but he's still confused about what it does.

Leaving politics aside, McCrory repeated one incorrect turn of phrase at least three times, speaking on WUNC's The State of Things, NPR's Here and Now, and in an interview with WWNC.

In all three interviews, he was asked or talked about the changes to early voting. The law reduces the early voting period from 17 days to 10 days starting in 2014. While talking about these changes, McCrory seemed to say the system would be more fair because each early voting location within a county would have to open for the same days and hours. But he added this:

"We have every political precinct open the week before election," McCrory told WUNC's Frank Stasio. On "Here and Now," McCrory said, "We have two weeks of early voting and we changed some of the rules where every precinct has to be open, where politics are not being played out by either political party on having certain precincts open in certain areas to deny people the proper access."

First, 10 days of early voting isn't the same as "two weeks of early voting." The difference may not sound like much, but when McCrory and North Carolina Republicans cut the early-voting window by 41%, for no reason other than to punish voters they don't like, those lost days matter.

Second, when McCrory says "every" precinct will be open for early voting, he's wrong.

WRAL explained:

Precincts are small units of geography that make up the districts from which city council members, county commissioners, lawmakers and the like are elected. On Election Day, voters go to the polling location for their individual precinct to vote. In Wake County, for example, there are 198 precincts, each of which has a different polling site on Election Day.

By contrast, Wake County has about 15 early voting locations in presidential election years.

So to say that all precincts will be open during the early voting period is both wrong and suggests a level of access that won't really be available to voters.

The governor repeated this claim three times during yesterday's interview.

Look, I don't mean to sound picky, but if a governor is going to impose sweeping new voting restrictions without a good reason, he should at least try to understand what he's done. McCrory has now repeated false claims about this ugly new law several times.

If the governor is making untrue claims in the hopes of making his offensive restrictions look more appealing to North Carolinians, it's not working -- Public Policy Polling released a statewide survey this week that found 39% of N.C. voters support the new voting law, while 50% oppose it.

In the meantime, Sen. Kay Hagan (D), who's up for re-election next year, sent a request to the Justice Department yesterday, asking the attorney general to review the new law's legality. "Protecting the fundamental right of our citizens to vote should be among the federal government's highest priorities. In response to voting restrictions signed into law yesterday, I strongly encourage the Justice Department to immediately review North Carolina House Bill 589 and take all appropriate steps to protect federal civil rights and the fundamental right to vote," Hagan wrote.

While the DOJ takes a look, two other lawsuits challenging the new law have already been filed.

House Republican ready to 'defund the EPA'

Organizing for America has been increasingly engaged on the climate crisis, and yesterday released a video hitting the 135 climate deniers in Congress. It's a 30-second clip, so it can only feature a few brief quotes, but the point is OFA is using the issue for progressive activism.

Watch on YouTube

And when it comes to "calling out" climate deniers, congressional Republicans are certainly giving progressives plenty to work with lately. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), the vice chair of the House Science Committee, argued last week that "global warming is a total fraud" created by those who want "global government to control all of our lives." A few days prior, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) described the entirety of climate science as "more of a religion than a science."

And then there's Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), who made these startling comments at a forum in his local district this week. (Thanks to James Carter for the heads-up.)

Watch on YouTube

In this unnerving clip, Miller argues in a room full of people, "This whole Al Gore thing of climate change unfortunately is not doing this nation any good."

And while you might be thing, "Well, no, of course climate change isn't doing the nation any good," in context, Miller meant worrying about climate change is a bad idea.

Wait, it gets worse.

The right-wing congressman went on to say, "I will defund the EPA." When Miller was asked about warnings from the Navy about the national security threat posed by the climate crisis, one of his constituents shouted, "The admirals are idiots!" The congressman proceeded to explain why he has no use for the Navy's judgment, and says he has his own scientists who tell him what he wants to hear, and just "a few years ago," some wacky scientists warned we'd "all be ice cubes."

Miller concluded, "Our climate will continue to change because of the way God formed the earth."

Miller is a 10-year veteran of Congress who currently serves as the chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Rubio hopes to leverage right's Obama hatred on immigration

Getty Images

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) realizes that his party's base disagrees with him on immigration reform, and is all too aware of the impact this might have on his national ambitions. It's one of the reasons the far-right Floridian has been pushing for a government shutdown and new restrictions on reproductive rights -- Rubio wants to get back in conservatives' good graces.

But the senator hasn't given up on immigration altogether, and yesterday offered the right another defense of his efforts.

Marco Rubio's back in the ring on immigration reform and he's got a new move: Congress needs to fix the problem -- or Barack Obama will.

The line is meant to touch a nerve with conservatives who might dislike the idea of immigration reform, but loathe the idea of Obama taking on any major issue on his own -- let alone immigration. [...]

"It's not an empty threat," said Frank Sharry, a veteran immigration reform proponent at the organization America's Voice. "If Republicans block reform with a path to citizenship, immigration reform activists will look at all their options, including broad executive action."

It's worth pausing to note what angle to the immigration debate Rubio considers most persuasive to the right. Is it the moral, pro-family argument? Or maybe a focus on economic growth? Deficit reduction? Beefing up border security?

No, Rubio believes the only argument that conservatives might find compelling is the one that leverages the right's contempt for the president. We need to pass reform, he says, or that awful Obama will cut out the legs from under us.

"I believe that this president will be tempted, if nothing happens in Congress, he will be tempted to issue an executive order like he did for the DREAM Act kids a year ago, where he basically legalizes 11 million people by the sign of a pen," Rubio told a Florida radio host yesterday. "A year from now we could find ourselves with all 11 million people here legally under an executive order from the president."

And this, of course, leads to the next obvious question: could President Obama really pursue a policy like this?

Benjy Sarlin reported yesterday that Rubio "has a legitimate point."

After Congress failed to pass the DREAM Act, Obama issued an executive order in 2011 halting deportations for young undocumented immigrants as a stopgap measure. While the White House lacked the authority to grant full legal status or create a path to citizenship for those affected, the program -- known as DACA -- gave undocumented youth dramatic new freedom to live and work in the country without fear of removal.

Republicans cried foul, saying Obama had overstepped his authority. As recently as June, the overwhelming majority of the House GOP voted for an amendment by Congressman Steve King that would defund the deferral program. But if the president can exercise discretion in choosing not to prosecute DREAMers, he could in theory extend it to a wide swath of the undocumented population.

All available evidence suggests this is not the White House's preferred approach -- Obama has downplayed such talk and instead invested his energies in pushing Congress to do the right thing.

But if House Republicans kill bipartisan reform efforts, Obama will have a few options: wait and see if Democrats can take back the House after the 2014 midterms; hope his successor in the Oval Office is a Democrat after the 2016 elections; or expand DACA (which stands for "Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals"). Reform proponents will certainly be pushing for Door #3.

There's some disagreement about what DACA expansion might look like -- it's a real stretch to think the president could extend citizenship opportunities to millions of undocumented immigrants without congressional action -- but Obama could certainly suspend deportations. He wouldn't have the authority to go nearly as far as the pending comprehensive legislation, but he could take some steps in that direction.

And while the president seems focused on congressional action, note that there's some recent precedent for executive action -- Obama was reluctant to adopt DACA in the first place, wanting Congress to instead pass the Dream Act. But when it became clear opposition from far-right Republicans was intractable, the president acted, grudgingly, on his own.

Rubio occasionally makes stuff up to advance bad arguments, but in this case, his warnings to the right are at least based in reality.

Congress isn't 'exempt' from Obamacare

Associated Press

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)

If you've been following the health care debate lately, you've probably heard quite a bit of talk about Congress being "exempt" from the Affordable Care Act. It's a talking point the right has pushed quite aggressively, but is it true?

Republicans certainly want us to think so. Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) complained about an "outrageous exemption for Congress." The far-right editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint touted a similar line last week. Over the weekend, Republican media figures, including Bill Kristol and Ana Navaro, repeated the talking point on the Sunday shows, and no one thought to correct them. This morning, in an unusually hysterical piece, a Washington Times columnist suggested the policy might constitute "treason." (No, seriously, that's what it said.)

The policy certainly sounds awful, doesn't it? If "Obamacare" is so great, why are members of Congress eager to exempt themselves from the new federal system? No wonder Fox is so worked up over this.

The problem, as you might have guessed, is that the argument is so wildly misleading, it bears no meaningful connection to reality.

The trouble started in 2009 with a cheap stunt orchestrated by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). While lawmakers already get insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan, just like other federal employees, the Iowa Republican pushed a proposal to force members of Congress out of the federal system and into exchanges.

The point wasn't to shape policy, but to create a talking point for Republicans. Grassley desperately wanted to say, "Those darn Democrats think the exchanges are good enough for millions of Americans, but not good enough for themselves," and he assumed Dems would balk at his "plan" because they'd be unwilling to give up the generous Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan.

But Democrats called Grassley's bluff, embraced his idea, and added it to the Affordable Care Act.

And that's where the story gets a little tricky -- Grassley's partisan-stunt-gone-wrong sent members and their aides to get coverage through exchange marketplaces, but never created a mechanism to make that happen.

As Jonathan Cohn explained yesterday:

The federal government, like most large employers, not only provides the opportunity for its workers to get insurance. It also pays a large portion of the premium. Now that lawmakers and their advisers were going into the exchanges, what would happen to that contribution? Would they just lose the money?

The answer, the administration decided last week, is no. Lawmakers and their staffs could keep their employer contributions, and apply that money towards the cost of whatever insurance they buy in the exchanges.

The policy has nothing to do with "exempting" Congress from the health care law, and everything to do with creating a mechanism through which lawmakers will kick themselves off their own insurance plan and into exchanges without a major premium hike.

For Republicans and their allies to whine incessantly about this is ridiculous, even by contemporary conservative standards. We are, after all, talking about an idea pushed by a Republican senator and quietly celebrated away from the cameras by Republican offices.

Jon Chait added that the manufactured outrage over an "exemption" for Congress represents "the toxic combination of ignorance and bad faith that has characterized the right's approach to Obamacare."

So Grassley's amendment created a situation for government workers that Republicans claimed, falsely, the law would create for everybody else: forcing them off their employer insurance and on to the exchanges. Grassley's amendment didn't even attempt to design a coherent way of changing health-care worker benefits, because, again, it wasn't an attempt to reform health care for Congress and its staff -- it was an attempt to furnish a talking point for Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. It yanked away the subsidized health insurance Congress and its staff get, essentially imposing a massive pay cut on those workers.

It was up to the Obama administration to figure out a resolution to this, and last week, to the relief of lawmakers and their staffers, it did -- offering the patch to a problem a Republican senator inadvertently imposed on lawmakers.

Bottom line: has Congress exempted itself from Obamacare? No. Members of the House and Senate, as well as their aides, will be kicked out of the federal system -- all because Grassley played a stupid game -- and will get coverage through exchanges.

The exchanges were, of course, designed for Americans who can't get coverage through their employer, but this pool of consumers will have a very notable exception: Congress.

Anyone who tells you there's a congressional "exemption" from the law either doesn't know what they're talking about, or assumes you're easily fooled into believing nonsense.

Links for the 8/12 TRMS

Citations for Monday night's show are listed after the jump.

NC's McCrory approves sweeping voter-suppression measures

Voting bill signed; legal challenges start

North Carolina Republicans Push Harsh New Voter ID Law

Citizens Awareness Month

North Carolina's Sweeping Voter Suppression Law Is Challenged in Court

Congress weighs fixes to Voting Rights Act

Supreme Court Invalidates Key Part of Voting Rights Act

Eric Holder: Despite ruling, DOJ 'will not hesitate' to protect voters

Durbin Cocaine Bill Passes Senate: Would Reduce Disparity In Crack And Powder Sentences

Congress passes bill to reduce disparity in crack, powder cocaine sentencing

Sentencing Reform Starts to Pay Off

Justice Dept. Seeks to Curtail Stiff Drug Sentences

Holder Mandatory Drug Minimums Memo

DOJ to Stop Packing Prisons With Minor Drug Offenders (Full Transcript)

Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell to tour state amid scandal

Va. doctor who lent governor's firm $50,000 was offered medical board appointment

Time for McDonnell to do the right thing

Star Scientific Files Second-Quarter Financials for 2013

Donor Jonnie Williams, Star Scientific are cooperating in probe of Gov. Robert McDonnell

McDonnell spokesman says feds cut deal with donor

Skillful Shots, and One Pants Pocket, Help a Swede Charge Into Contention

Blixt's great approach on 18th for 66 in Rnd. 3

Gunmen attack oil site in eastern Yemen in two simultaneous operations, 1 attacker killed

Yemen, on Alert for Terrorism, Says It Foiled a Qaeda Plot

Yemen says it foiled al Qaeda plot

Suspected al-Qaida militants kill 5 Yemeni soldiers at checkpoint as US posts reopen in region

Yemen LNG Denies Attack on Balhaf Terminal

US to reopen 18 of 19 embassies and consulates closed due to Yemen-based terror threat

U.S. Reopening 18 Diplomatic Posts, State Department Says

Embassies Open, but Yemen Stays on Terror Watch

Oregon Republican Party Chairwoman steps down ahead of recall vote

Oregon GOP picks Art Robinson as new chairman

Art Robinson didn't really mean those things. Did he?

Donald Trump: 'It's not my issue'

'They can mingle in'

Ahead on the 8/12 Maddow show

Tonight's guests:

Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and professor at the New York University School of Law
Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent

And here's executive producer Bill Wolff with a look at what we're covering: 

Monday's Mini-Report

Today's edition of quick hits:

* DOJ: "Attorney General Eric Holder directed federal prosecutors on Monday to change the way they file charges for some drug crimes, to reduce the number of convictions for offenses that carry inflexible, mandatory minimum sentences. The nation's top law enforcement official called for a 'fundamentally new approach' to enforcing drug laws in order to help alleviate prison overcrowding and reduce race-based disparities in drug prosecutions."

* More on this from Dylan Matthews, Aliyah Frumin, and Greg Sargent.

* Stop and frisk: "The New York Police Department's 'stop and frisk' tactic, under which millions of mostly black and Hispanic people have been questioned by police over the past decade, has violated constitutional rights, a federal judge ruled Monday."

* Adam Serwer's piece on this included a nice catch: "The judge who ruled that New York's 'stop-and-frisk' practice violated the Constitutional rights of the city's citizens seemed to have had Trayvon Martin on her mind."

* Guilty: "Whitey Bulger was convicted Monday of racketeering and conspiracy by a Boston jury that found he was involved in 11 murders and a raft of other crimes during his long reign as a blood thirsty crime boss in bed with rogue FBI agents."

* Everywhere but Yemen: "Eighteen of the 19 U.S. embassies and consulates closed this month due to worries about potential terrorist attacks will reopen on Sunday, the U.S. State Department said on Friday."

* NLRB: "For the first time in a decade, there are five Senate-confirmed members on the National Labor Relations Board."

* Presidential road trip: "President Obama will hit the road after his vacation for a two-day bus tour on the economy, the White House said Monday."

* I suppose we're supposed to think he's cured now? "San Diego Mayor Bob Filner's chief of staff confirmed to 10News that the mayor began his therapy a week early and has already completed the program, but a statement from his attorneys said he will finish his therapy Saturday."

* And though the right remains hostile to alternative energy innovation, the wind industry in the United States has made some pretty remarkable strides.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

NC's McCrory approves sweeping voter-suppression measures

Watch on YouTube

That this outcome was inevitable doesn't make it any less offensive.

Gov. Pat McCrory Monday signed into law a bill requiring voters to produce a photo ID when they go to the polls, a measure that was hailed by Republicans as a means for heightening ballot security but which was criticized by Democrats as a thinly disguised effort at voter suppression.

The bill was passed along partisan lines by the Republican majority in the legislature, over strong opposition of Democrats.

The Republican governor released a video this afternoon, explaining his reasoning over the course of 96 seconds, arguing that he approved the "common sense" state legislation in the interest of the "integrity of our election process."

McCrory added that the "extreme left" has relied on "scare tactics."

Unfortunately for North Carolinians, the governor has no idea what he's talking about. (In fact, as of two weeks ago, he literally didn't know -- McCrory was praising the legislation despite not having read it, and couldn't answer basic questions about proposals he'd already publicly endorsed.)

The governor kept using the phrase "common sense," but when it comes to voting rights, I don't think that means what he thinks it means.

As we discussed a few weeks ago, we've seen plenty of "war on voting" measures over the last few years, but North Carolina Republicans pushed the envelope in new and offensive directions. Barbara Arnwine, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said during the legislative fight, "This is the single worst bill we have seen introduced since voter suppression bills began sweeping the country."

The scope is simply breathtaking -- the new state law imposes voter-ID restrictions never needed before in North Carolina, narrows the early-voting window, places new restrictions on voter-registration drives, makes it harder for students to vote, ends same-day registration during the early voting period, and makes it easier for vigilante poll-watchers to challenge eligible voters.

And why on earth would Republicans consider all of this necessary? Was there a widespread outbreak of voter fraud that necessitated the most sweeping new voter-suppression tactics seen anywhere in the nation? Of course not. For one thing, since 2000, there are exactly two incidents -- not two percent, literally two individuals -- involving suspected voter impersonation in North Carolina, out of several million votes cast. You're far more likely to find someone struck by lightning in the state than find an improperly-cast ballot.

For another, many of the measures signed into law today -- including narrowing the early-voting window -- have nothing to do with improving the integrity of the process or preventing fraud, and everything to do with making it more difficult for people to participate in their own democracy.

These are not "scare tactics" from the "extreme left"; these are simply facts.

Up until fairly recently, there's no way North Carolina's new voter-suppression campaign would be approved by the Justice Department, but after five Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, the DOJ did not have an opportunity to consider the proposal before it was signed into law.

Attorney General Eric Holder has already challenged new measures in Texas under the remaining elements of the VRA; we'll know soon enough whether North Carolina is added to the mix.

Dana Rohrabacher, vice chair of the Science Committee

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) took some time at an event in his home district this weekend to pontificate on the climate crisis. To put it mildly, his remarks were not at all encouraging.

Watch on YouTube

The Nation provided a partial transcript, highlighting the most striking portion of his remarks:

"Just so you know, global warming is a total fraud and it is being designed by -- what you've got is you've got liberals who get elected at the local level want state government to do the work and let them make the decisions. Then, at the state level, they want the federal government to do it. And at the federal government, they want to create global government to control all of our lives. That's what the game plan is.

"It's step by step by step, more and bigger control over our lives by higher levels of government. And global warming is that strategy in spades.... Our freedom to make our choices on transportation and everything else? No, that's gotta be done by a government official who, by the way, probably comes from Nigeria because he's a UN government official, not a US government official."

If Rohrabacher's name sounds familiar, it's because he's suggested global warming may be the result of dinosaur flatulence. Now he's sharing some related theories on the subject.

Did I mention that congressional Republicans made Rohrabacher the vice chair of the House Science Committee?

The efforts within the GOP to persuade climate deniers have a long way to go.