Rachel Maddow's Blog, page 3405

Tuesday's Mini-Report

Today's edition of quick hits:

* President Obama returned to New Jersey today, took in some sights, toured the boardwalk with Gov. Chris Christie (R), and declared the Jersey Shore "back in business."

* Rachel will have more on developments in Syria on tonight's show: "The European Union's decision to lift its arms embargo on Syria, after a bitter, 13-hour debate in Brussels, is intended to put pressure on Russia and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria before peace talks scheduled in Geneva next month, with a message that the West will not allow the rebels to be defeated, senior European diplomats said Tuesday."

* A terrifying scene in Maryland: "A CSX cargo train crashed into a trash truck and derailed Tuesday in a Baltimore suburb and the explosion that followed rattled homes at least a half-mile away and collapsed nearby buildings, setting them on fire, officials and witnesses said."

* Pakistan: "Two health workers giving polio vaccines to children were shot dead in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, prompting the World Health Organisation to suspend its operations in the area."

* It looks like Jason Furman is poised to lead the White House Council on Economic Advisors, and that strikes me as good news.

* Trayvon Martin case: "A Florida judge ruled Tuesday that George Zimmerman's defense team cannot mention Trayvon Martin's suspension from school, prior marijuana use, text messages or past fighting during opening statements at next month's trial."

* Watching Darrell Issa become Dan Burton: "House Republicans accused the Obama administration of withholding information about its initial response to last year's terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, and issued a subpoena on Tuesday seeking additional information."

* More on this on tonight's show, too: "Federal prosecutors have shut down Liberty Reserve, an alternative payment network that they say was a $6 billion scam 'designed to help criminals conduct illegal transactions and launder the proceeds of their crimes.'"

* Another gang: "Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday proposed a new bipartisan 'Gang of Eight' to draft a bill to create guidelines for future investigations of media leaks by the government."

* Independent Counsels were a very bad idea in the 1990s. The idea hasn't improved with age.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

Heller, Ayotte, Flake slammed for 'deception'

Getty Images

We talked last week about Republican Sens. Dean Heller (Nev.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), and Jeff Flake (Ariz.), who have something important in common. They were each among the 45 senators who killed a bipartisan bill on expanded background checks, but these are the only three of those 45 who seem eager to pretend they didn't kill the proposal.

Over the weekend, the New York Times editorial board blasted their collective "deception."

This kind of dissembling by gun control opponents has been rampant for years, but rarely have the National Rifle Association's most captive lawmakers been so nakedly deceptive as in the weeks since public rage grew over the gun vote. [...]

Rather than admit that they fearfully follow the dictates of the N.R.A., these senators are instead seeking to fool voters by supporting measures with fancy titles and hollow cores.

The point here isn't just to criticize poor policy judgment, though that certainly matters. Rather, the point is that these three -- and only these three -- feel compelled to mislead their constituents in a coordinated way, cynically hoping that public ignorance will allow them to get away with their vote. It's about putting a smoke screen -- emphasizing support for "strengthening" background checks through half-measures that won't pass, instead of "expanding" background checks in real legislation -- that confuses voters just enough to let these three senators off the hook.

If Heller, Ayotte, and Flake believe they did the right thing on the merits -- if they think the right call was to filibuster a popular, bipartisan measure that might have saved Americans' lives -- they should say so. There's ample room for a spirited debate about the underlying policy, and it's an argument worth having. These three senators took their time, listened to the pros and cons, and cast the vote the NRA told them to cast. They must take responsibility and be prepared to defend their best judgment.

But they're not. Instead of saying, "Here's why I opposed the bipartisan measure on background checks," they're effectively arguing, "I love background checks so pay no attention to those pesky facts."

The rhetorical games are tiresome and unnecessary,

Ohio GOP backing off bill to curb college vote

Click for bigger image. (The "letter" in blue is from my searching.)

Ohio Senate Republicans appear to have given the heave-ho to the plan to curb student voting. The measure, as passed in the regular budget this spring by the Ohio House, would have required colleges that vouch for students living on campus to give those students the lower in-state tuition, even if the students don't qualify for that. 

The bill would have cost Ohio colleges and universities as much as $370 million a year. Along the way, Ohio Republicans figured out that their bill to discourage the college vote might have led to more college voting, as students figured out they could get much cheaper tuition for the price of exercising their constitutional rights. 

Just now, Ohio reporter Marc Kovac tweeted from the new version of the budget released by the Ohio Senate:

Looks like college student tuition/voter registration language has been removed.

And it's true. If you dial up the comparison of the two budget versions -- old House and new Senate -- you'll see that where the House had the part about tuition and voting, the Senate has "no provision." It's on numbered page 554 482, the seventh mention of "letter."  (P.S. Last week Ohio Republicans said they're still interested in curbing the student vote, just not in the budget.)

Thanks for the news, Marc Kovac. Below, from his OhioCapitalBlog, kids love the White Stripes.

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Snowe says GOP should 'rethink their approach as a political party'

We talked earlier about former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and his recent criticisms of his Republican Party. On MSNBC this morning, former Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) was asked whether she agrees with Dole's concerns.

"Well, I certainly do agree with the former Majority Leader Bob Dole with whom I worked when I first entered the Senate and who was a consensus builder and understood what was essential and what was important for the Republican Party and what was important for America. And that unfortunately has been lost today, on Capitol Hill.

"And yes, Republicans do bear responsible, as do the Democrats. You have to work together. And obviously, the Republican Party is undergoing some significant and serious changes and they're going to have to rethink their approach as a political party, and how they're going to regroup and become a governing majority party that appeals to a broader group of Americans than they do today."

That's a sensible assessment, which Republican officials will deliberately ignore. Indeed, they feel like they have no choice -- if GOP leaders "rethink their approach as a political party," becomes a "governing" party, and "appeals to a broader group of Americans," they will face primary opponents and lose.

It's why Republicans have no use for the policy ideas embraced by the GOP during the Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan eras, and it's also why Republicans have even less use for officials like Lugar, Bennett, Specter, Inglis, and Crist, who prioritized governing so much, they lost their jobs, lost their role in the GOP, or both.

The nature of Obamacare 'opposition'

A new CNN poll on the Affordable Care Act is generating quite a bit of attention, but if you only look at the headlines, you're missing the real story.

The top-line results aren't especially surprising: 54% of the country opposes the health care law, according to the new figures, while 43% support it. But the CNN poll, to its credit, takes the next step and asked folks opposed to the law why they don't like it. And that's the point at which the poll gets interesting.

I put together this chart to help drive the point home -- 43% support "Obamacare," which isn't that bad, all things considered. But while a majority of the country opposes the law, there's a major disagreement among them -- 35% of opponents believe it's too liberal and prefer a more conservative law, but 16% of opponents believe the Affordable Care Act is too conservative and wish it had gone further.

A quick glance at the top lines, in other words, gives the wrong impression. Indeed, it's rather misleading to lump together those 16% of Americans who want a more liberal health care reform law with the law's conservative critics.

Kevin Drum summarized the results in an accurate way, which is largely the opposite of what you'll see in most of the published reports: "According to a recent poll, 59 percent of Americans support Obamacare, while 35 percent oppose it. Among supporters, 43 percent support the law as is, while 16 percent think it doesn't go far enough."

'95 percent of the time I vote Republican, but I've got to vote my conscience and got to be able to look at myself in the mirror when I shave in the morning.'

-- Mississippi State Senator Billy Hudson on his support for expanding Medicaid. Hudson says that leaving people without health insurance will hurt hospitals in his district when they have to pick up the cost for caring for the uninsured.

Virginia GOP continues its sprint from the mainstream

Associated Press

E.W. Jackson, the Republicans' candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia this year, is on record saying quite a few nutty things. Late last week, however, Jackson effectively said his bizarre rhetorical excesses shouldn't be held against him.

The comments, he said, "were spoken in my role as a minister, not as a candidate."

I don't mean to sound picky, but when someone seeks elected office, the things he or she did before becoming a candidate still count.

Meanwhile, Bob FitzSimmonds, a former aide to gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli and a top official in the Republican Party of Virginia, said last week, "I'm not a big fan of contraception, frankly. I think there are some issues, we're giving morning-after pills to 12-year-olds, and pretty soon I guess we'll hand them out to babies, I don't know."

Why would anyone give emergency contraception to a baby? I don't know, but apparently this GOP official and close Cuccinelli ally is concerned about it. (FitzSimmonds also made headlines last fall for talking about his belief that President Obama is going "to hell.")

So, let's take stock. Virginia's Republican gubernatorial candidate is a fierce culture warrior; Virginia's Republican candidate for lieutenant governor is an unusually strange right-wing activist; Virginia's Republican candidate for state attorney general once sponsored a bill that would have required women to report their miscarriages to the state; and Virginia's Republican Party is led in part by someone who still opposes contraception.

Oh, and Virginia's current Republican governor is embroiled in a scandal.

All of this is important when considering which party will have greater success reaching out to independents, moderates, and swing voters with no real party allegiance, but there's also the matter of waking up the Democratic base. It's an off-year cycle, and Democratic Party leaders have long wondered how they'll generate sufficient levels of excitement among progressive voters to show up.

It appears GOP activists in the commonwealth are taking care of that problem.

Tuesday's campaign round-up

Associated Press

Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes

Today's installment of campaign-related news items that won't necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) has not yet said whether she intends to run for federal office, but a new Public Policy Polling survey finds her tied with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) in a hypothetical match-up, 45% each.

* In Massachusetts' U.S. Senate special election, Rep. Ed Markey (D) is poised to receive some outside help for his campaign, prompting the National Republican Senatorial Committee to complain, "Ed Markey is the first to violate the 'People's Pledge.'" That doesn't make any sense -- the pledge is not effect because his Republican opponent, Gabriel Gomez, refused to sign it.

* On a related note, Markey released his tax returns last week, but he waited until late on a Friday afternoon -- on a holiday weekend, no less -- to make the disclosure.

* In a big surprise, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman (R) announced over the weekend that he will not seek his state's open U.S. Senate seat. Attention will now turn to Nebraska's three Republican members of Congress: Jeff Fortenberry, Lee Terry, and Adrian Smith.

* In Colorado, where state policymakers recently approved new measures intended to reduce gun violence, conservative activists are organizing recall campaigns targeting four Democratic state senators, including state Senate President John Morse.

* In 2016, will Sen. Rand Paul (R) run for re-election in Kentucky or for his party's presidential nomination? In all likelihood, he'll do both.

* And in Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton's (D) approval rating have slipped in the latest PPP poll, but he nevertheless enjoys double-digit leads over each of his likely Republican challengers.

Memorial Day 2013

In honor of Memorial Day, Maddow Blog will likely be pretty quiet today, but will be back to normal tomorrow.

In the meantime, there are a couple of Memorial Day items to share. First, President Obama urged Americans to remember fallen U.S. soldiers and their families in his weekly address.

Watch on YouTube

Second, Time published an interesting piece from Alison Buckholtz late last week, urging the public to "remember the sequester" this Memorial Day (thanks to my colleague Kathleen Osborn for the heads-up). Against the backdrop of the national holiday, Buckholtz highlighted some of the effects military families have felt as a consequence of needless sequestration budget cuts.

* Some military families have to maintain two homes they can't afford, because a work transfer was delayed after the next house was already bought.

* Civilian teachers in the 194 Department of Defense-run schools worldwide will be furloughed, which affects the number of school days in the year and the school's accreditation (with potentially dire consequences for a high-schooler's admission to college).

* A carrier deployment was called off, and with it the planned for "at-sea" pay subsidies that some families depend on.

* The timing of the adoption of a child must be re-negotiated.

Buckholtz added, "Suddenly, it's personal.... So on Memorial Day -- when we remember those who sacrificed the most -- let's remember the sequester, too. It's swiftly becoming our shared sacrifice as Americans."

Week in Geek: Dance of the planets edition

Stardate.org

If you have clear skies and a view of the western horizon, you are in for a celestial treat this week. Starting tonight, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury will be having a "star party" in the west just after sunset. Jupiter is actually setting while Mercury is rising (due to how our point of view is changing as we all go around the Sun), but all three will appear together in the sky over the next week or so. Planetary conjunctions of three planets are not all that rare, happening approximately every few years with a varying roster of planets, but they are still a treat to see. Space.com has a nice viewing guide, including a video of what configuration you can expect to see each night. And Stardate.org has a free podcast on what they call the upcoming "evening [planet] traffic jam." Here's hoping you get to see the fun. Me? I'll be searching for a place where Jersey doesn't block my view...

More geek for your week:

Speaking of dances, the crazy dance of the cicadas is captured BEAUTIFULLY in this documentary trailer by Samuel Orr, who's also done some other really wonderful videos.
More beautiful imagery captured by photographer Joshua Lambus in his "Blackwater" series of luminous creatures of the ocean.
Amazing photos and video of the Oklahoma tornado as seen from space. [VIDEO]
Someone built a flight simulator based on Battlestar Galactica's Vipers. I want to go to there. [VIDEO]
What do you get when you combine facial recognition software and Google Earth? This.
If Darth Vader has been a good dad from the point of view of both Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia.
X-rays from 1908 reveal the extent to which women's corsets squeezed their lower rib cage, and most likely displaced organs. Beauty is pain?
Scientists deduce mysterious deaths in a valley in India discovered in 1942 were from a freak hailstorm in 850 AD.
Watch the last three years of activity on the Sun in three minutes. [VIDEO]
DNA tests on seized ivory may enable the identification of elephant poaching hot spots.
New studies of the ring nebula reveal it is much less like a ring and more like a jelly bean, or according to some: a space jelly donut. [VIDEO]
Who defines time best: Ray Bradbury, Star Trek, or The Doctor? Neil Tyson give his two cents. [VIDEO]

Keep on geekin' on. @Summer_Ash