kpete
kpete's JournalAl Franken surfaces! -Big news on our push to stop Citizens United
Al Franken Just Emailed Me
To:All Nov-15 528743.1
"Dear shambert,
Big news on our push to stop Citizens United from handing our democracy over to big corporations and special interests. A group of Senators and House members are teaming up and renewing our push to overturn the effects of Citizens United as we hit this important election year!
There’s me and Sherrod Brown, of course, plus other pro-democracy Democratic Senators like Mark Begich, Kay Hagan, and Tom Udall -- and a couple of awesome challengers, Bruce Braley from Iowa and Gary Peters from Michigan.
I don’t need to tell you why Citizens United belongs in the Dumpster of Bad Ideas. Unlimited outside special interest spending? Giving big corporations a pass to buy our elections? No disclosure at all? It’s a mess. My colleagues and I are teaming up, like some sort of anti-special-interest Justice League. But we can’t do it if we don’t each bring our most passionate supporters to this new effort.
Please join me and other Democrats to fight against Citizens United in 2014! We’ll be in touch with more on our new effort soon. And thanks for being part of this.
Al"
http://www.forums.mlb.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=messages&webtag=ml-yankees&tid=528743
Maher: If Palin thinks the Pope is too liberal, ‘wait until she sees what Jesus has been saying’
Earlier this week, Palin attacked the Pope, saying “he’s had some statements that sound to me kind of liberal. He’s taken me aback.”
“Well,” Maher continued, “if she thinks Pope Francis is liberal, wait until she sees what Jesus has been saying.”
He then presented a series of tweets he claimed each had sent in the past week, beginning with one from Palin:
MORE:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/16/maher-if-palin-thinks-the-pope-is-too-liberal-wait-until-she-sees-what-jesus-has-been-saying/
edited to add toon:
Oh good. Freedom of the press is sort of, for the moment, maybe, safe
by digby
This is really a question?
“Unless information that has not come to my attention is presented to me, what I have indicated in my testimony before Congress is that any journalist who’s engaged in true journalistic activities is not going to be prosecuted by this Justice Department,” Holder said.
“I certainly don’t agree with what Greenwald has done,” Holder said. “In some ways, he blurs the line between advocate and journalist. But on the basis of what I know now, I’m not sure there is a basis for prosecution of Greenwald.”
That's big of him. I wonder if he thinks Lara Logan blurs the line between advocate and journalist? Or Brit Hume? Or Melissa Harris Perry? Or Rachel Maddow?
..................
Glenn responded to the generous announcement by the Attorney General that the first Amendment still exists:
“That this question is even on people’s minds is a rather grim reflection of the Obama administration’s record on press freedoms,” he said in an e-mail. “It is a positive step that the Attorney General expressly recognizes that journalism is not and should not be a crime in the United States, but given this administration’s poor record on press freedoms, I’ll consult with my counsel on whether one can or should rely on such caveat-riddled oral assertions about the government’s intentions.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-reviewing-criminal-cases-that-used-evidence-gathered-under-fisa-act/2013/11/15/0aea6420-4e0d-11e3-9890-a1e0997fb0c0_story_1.html
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/oh-good-freedom-of-press-is-sort-of-for.html
HOWEVER:
Here is what Holder Said:
“I certainly don’t agree with what Greenwald has done,” Holder said. “In some ways, he blurs the line between advocate and journalist. But on the basis of what I know now, I’m not sure there is a basis for prosecution of Greenwald.” [my emphasis]
In this passage, which is admittedly not a transcript, Holder seems to distinguish between “true journalistic activities” and “advocate.”
If that is, in fact, fair syntax, then it suggests something troubling. Not just that Holder remains open to be persuaded that journalist Glenn Greenwald might be prosecutable. But that the “line” is drawn where “journalism” turns to “advocacy.”
- See more at: http://www.emptywheel.net/#sthash.Gz9SHsCU.dpuf
Suck on this, GOP. From The Hill-----Official: HealthCare.gov errors below 1 percent
A key official in the repair effort for HealthCare.gov said the site's error rate is now lower than 1 percent thanks to weeks' worth of special improvements were made.
Former White House budget director Jeff Zients, who was enlisted to triage the website, touted the development as a sign of progress.
...
He noted that there were no unscheduled outages on the site in the past week, a positive sign, and that more than 60 bugs were recently fixed.
.................
MORE:
http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/190430-official-healthcaregov-error-rate-below-1
via:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/15/1255909/-Healthcare-gov-Errors-Now-BELOW-1
Speaker John Boehner Hosts Supporters Of Russia’s Anti-Gay Law In House Office Building
Speaker John Boehner Hosts Supporters Of Russia’s Anti-Gay Law In House Office Building, Organizers Say“At least in the House of Representatives, people have not succumbed to the great fear” of LGBT activists, said World Congress of Families president Allan Carlson.
WASHINGTON — The office of House Speaker John Boehner secured meeting space for the World Congress of Families after their original sponsor, Illinois Senator Mark Kirk, canceled their space in a Senate office building following an outcry from LGBT activists, the group’s leader said.
World Congress of Families president Allan Carlson praised Boehner’s intervention at in opening remarks at the event, which is focusing on what “pro-family legislators” can learn from foreign laws like Russia’s ban on “promoting non-traditional sexual relationships to minors.”
“At least in the House of Representatives people have not succumbed to the great fear” of LGBT activists, Carlson said, likening the situation to developments in Germany, France, and Italy as fascism took hold of Europe. “A great fear seems to be descending over what has been called the world’s greatest deliberative body … ideas are being suppressed, debate is being shut off, and minds are being closed.”
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said that providing space for the event did not suggest the speaker is necessarily in support of their views in a statement to BuzzFeed.
...........
MORE:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/speaker-john-boehner-hosts-supporters-of-russias-anti-gay-la
Is it really appropriate for Roll Call to comment on Fed nominee Janet Yellen’s clothing?
Is it really appropriate for Roll Call to comment on Fed nominee Janet Yellen’s clothing?11/15/2013 9:00am by John Aravosis
Roll Call, a DC publication that covers the US Congress, ran a column yesterday in its gossip section, “Heard on the Hill,” that criticized Federal Reserve chair nominee Janet Yellen for wearing the same outfit to her nomination announcement with the President as she did yesterday to her nomination hearing in the Senate.
Here’s Roll Call, noting that Yellen wore the same black outfit to both events:
Janet Yellen with President Obama in the infamous black outfit.
Whether Janet Yellen, President Barack Obama’s latest pick to head the Federal Reserve, proves to be the financial genius our sputtering economy so desperately needs, remains to be seen.
At least we know her mind won’t be preoccupied with haute couture….
Mind you, nobody has ever accused (Heard on the Hill) of being particularly stylish. But we do manage to switch up outfits on the reg.
http://hoh.rollcall.com/somebody-spot-janet-yellen-some-new-threads/?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008
More (plus amazing comments):
http://americablog.com/2013/11/really-appropriate-comment-fed-nominee-janet-yellens-clothing.html
OUCH: Charles Pierce on GOP (and their media buddies) comparing #Obamacare to Katrina
Charles Pierce on GOP (and their media buddies) comparing #Obamacare to Katrina:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Things_That_Are_Not_Like_Each_Other?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1456_30718266 …
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/statuses/401383211890012161
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Things_That_Are_Not_Like_Each_Other?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1456_30718266
via: https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/statuses/401383211890012161
The spinelessness leads to everything else...
But the spinelessness leads to everything else, IMHO.
If Obama had just stood there and told everyone, the whole point of the new law is so that insurance companies can't rip you off anymore, they have minimum standards they have to meet, and if your plan didn't meet those standards, they were just stealing from you -- and if every Democrat in Congress echoed the same talking points -- instead of this turning into, "ooh, the president lied to us" and him backpedaling furiously and looking weak and confused, it could be spun -- honestly -- as "the Democrats are protecting us from sleazy, predatory insurance companies."
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2013/11/okay.html#comment-1124590369
Charles Pierce:If our politicians are not responsive to our needs-then it's time for new politicians
The Abandonment Of Self Government
By Charles P. Pierce at 9:15am
.......................
..........is the country ungovernable right now because the Republicans have made it so, or are the Republicans merely taking advantage of the fact that, through its creaky institutional structures and through an unforgivable lassitude towards the obligations of self-government on the part of the American people, the country has become ungovernable in and of itself. The apparent lack of oversight and preparation in the implementation of the ACA is unforgivable, and the president and the Democratic party will (and should) pay something of a political price for it. But the fact is that the country wanted its massively fractured health-care system fixed, and it had wanted that system fixed since before Bill Clinton tried it back in the early 1990's. A completely ludicrous percentage of the country also wants criminal background checks on gun purchases. Right now, if you believe the polls, it is massively in favor of raising the minimum wage. And, actually, if you go below the surface of the polling on the ACA and health-care reform, you find a substantial portion of the country that doesn't like the embattled law because it doesn't go far enough toward health-care's being a right, not a privilege and, in any case, the country repeatedly stated throughout the last 20 years that the status quo ante was an unacceptable combination of corporate avarice and personal tragedy. And yet, that is where the debate is right now, no matter how much Fred Upton says otherwise from deep in the pockets of the people who make money off human misery.
It has become remarkable how the people of this country, an ostensibly self-governing republic, fail to get what an overwhelming percentage of them say they want from their government, over and over again. You can argue, and I have, about the power of money, increased by an order of magnitude through the egregious Citizens United decision. You can argue, and I have, about the unforgivable vandalism practiced by the Republican party and the modern conservative movement that has been the prion disease in the party's higher functions that has driven it mad. But the fact remains that, dammit, there has to be a political price to pay for actively opposing something 66 percent -- or, in the case of the background checks, 91 percent -- of the people say they want. And the electorate is the only body of citizens empowered to exact these penalties, and it has been shamefully lax in doing so. Parts of the country have contented themselves with electing morons and crazy people. (How in the name of god does a buffoon like Louie Gohmert ever run unopposed?) Great portions of the country can be duped, or frightened, into voting against their own economic interests. And the great undifferentiated apathy that attends most of our elections is a deadweight on the democratic process that grows heavier by the year. If our politicians are not responsive to our needs, then it's time for new politicians, and we're the only ones who can bring that about. And yet, it's easier to complain about an inconvenient website, or a scary letter from an insurance company, or bullshit anecdotes that fall apart under the barest scrutiny. The country is ungovernable because we, The People, have decided not to govern it any more. That, to borrow a phrase from the president, is on us.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Abandonment_Of_Self_Government
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