March 2, 2015

Netanyahu Assails Iran Deal, Touts US-Israel Ties

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — Mar 2, 2015, 4:12 PM ET
By JULIE PACE and ARON HELLER Associated Press

Seeking to lower tensions, Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. officials cast their dispute over Iran as a family squabble on Monday, but the Israeli leader still claimed that President Barack Obama did not — and could not — understand his nation's vital security concerns.

"American leaders worry about the security of their country," Netanyahu said as he opened a controversial trip to Washington. "Israeli leaders worry about the survival of their country."

Netanyahu's remarks to a friendly crowd at a pro-Israel lobby's annual conference amounted to a warm-up act for his address to Congress Tuesday, an appearance orchestrated by Obama's political opponents and aimed squarely at undermining the White House's high-stakes bid for a nuclear deal with Iran.

Netanyahu tried to paper over his personal differences with Obama, insisting he was not in Washington to "disrespect" the president and saying that any reports of the demise of U.S.-Israel ties were "not only premature, they're just wrong."

-snip-

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/netanyahu-us-officials-face-off-iran-29322069

March 2, 2015

BIBI WATCH: Sen. Whitehouse Won't Attend Netanyahu Speech

Source: TPM

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) on Monday said that he will not attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress on Tuesday, becoming the sixth Democratic senator to boycott the joint meeting.

"I’m concerned that behind it was a mischievous effort to manipulate domestic politics in both countries, which should not be the terms of engagement between friendly allies," Whitehouse said in a statement to Rhode Island television station WPRI.

Despite his decision to skip the speech, the senator said he is still "committed to a strong and lasting relationship between the United States and Israel, a country which represents our values in a very dangerous neighborhood."

More than 40 House and Senate Democrats plan on skipping the Tuesday speech, which House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) invited Netanyahu to deliver without consulting the White House.

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/whitehouse-skip-netanyahu-speech

March 2, 2015

5-time-married Texas lawmaker scrawls complaint against judge who allowed same-sex marriage

A Texas lawmaker, currently in his fifth marriage, has submitted a hand-written complaint against a Texas judge — the wrong judge as it turns out — over a recent ruling allowing two women to get married after 30 years.

In an op-ed, in the Star-Telegram, Bud Kennedy explains that recently elected Texas House Rep. Tony Tinderholt’s complaint against District Judge David Wahlberg is not only misdirected, but may not have a legal foot to stand on.

Tinderholt, 44, a former member of the U.S. Air Force and Army, wrote out a " target="_blank">two-paragraph complaint to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct stating that Judge Wahlberg failed to give notice to the State Attorney General’s office when lifting a stay on the two women’s marriage.

“This judge deliberately violated statutory law, and this is unacceptable,” Tinderholt wrote.

However it was Probate Judge Guy Herman, not Wahlberg, who ruled the same-sex marriage ban was unconstitutional. Additionally, the State Attorney General’s office did receive notice of the ruling on Jan. 23 and chose to “not to seek direct involvement.”

more
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/5-time-married-texas-lawmaker-scrawls-complaint-against-judge-who-allowed-same-sex-marriage/

March 2, 2015

California lawyer files papers for ‘Sodomite Suppression Act’ to save state from ‘God’s just wrath’

Acting on a tip from a reader, the editors at Wonkette have uncovered papers filed with the California Attorney General’s Office by a Huntington Beach attorney, calling for a proposed ballot initiative called “The Sodomite Suppression Act,” which he hopes will save the Golden State from “God’s just wrath.”

The filing, along with a check for $200, will allow attorney Matthew McLaughlin to begin the process of collecting the approximately 365,000 signatures needed to put the measure before California voters on an upcoming ballot.

According to McLaughlin’s filing, “The abominable crime against nature known as buggery, called also sodomy, is a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha.”

Saying that it is better if offenders (“sodomites”) be put to death rather than “all of us should be killed by God’s just wrath against us for tolerating wickedness in our midst,” the attorney proposes that “any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.”

While a federal judge struck down California’s death penalty as unconstitutional in 2014, McLaughlin has that covered.

more
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/california-lawyer-files-papers-for-sodomite-suppression-act-to-save-state-from-gods-just-wrath/

March 2, 2015

Radio host: Black lawmakers should be ‘hanging from a noose’ for boycotting Netanyahu’s speech

Tea Party radio host Andrea Shea King argued recently that Democratic lawmakers — and specifically members of the Congressional Black Caucus — should be put to death by hanging if they boycotted Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Tuesday speech to Congress

“Obama doesn’t have to run for reelection again, a lot of these guys do,” King said in a clip of her radio show that was published by Right Wing Watch on Monday. “Listen, I would like to think that these guys could pay with their lives, hanging from a noose in front of the U.S. Capitol Building.”

“Because what they are doing is they are putting their own interests above that of America,” she continued. “And to me, that is criminal. Criminal!”

King noted that “most of those members who are opting out of attending the speech are members of the Congressional Black Caucus.”

more
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/radio-host-black-lawmakers-should-be-hanging-from-a-noose-for-boycotting-netanyahus-speech/

March 2, 2015

California GOP Formally Welcomes Gays to Party

“In a historic break with its past, the California Republican Party voted overwhelmingly Sunday to formally recognize a gay GOP group,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

“The move, which drew the condemnation of some socially conservative GOP members, grants a charter to the Log Cabin Republicans’ California chapter, making it an official volunteer arm of the state party. It is among the first gay groups in the nation to be officially sanctioned by a state Republican party.”

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http://politicalwire.com/2015/03/02/california-gop-formally-welcomes-gays-to-party/

March 2, 2015

Supreme Court Hears an Obamacare Fairytale

Steven Brill: “Congress knew exactly what it wanted to do when it passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and contrary to the plaintiffs’ claim, that included wanting subsidies for buying health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges to be available to all citizens, even those residing in the 36 states that did not set up their own exchanges, instead relying on the exchange set up by the federal government.”

“I’m a reporter. I hate to take sides… But this is one of those issues where reporters err if they write an ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ story that creates patently false equivalency.”

“I know what the legislators intended because in researching my book, I interviewed pretty much everyone involved in the conception and writing of the law. Moreover, I did that long before King v. Burwell had become the Obamacare opponents’ favorite new weapon, which means that those opponents had no reason to spin the fairytale that Congress did not intend for those subsidies to go to the millions of Americans signing up on the federally run exchange. At the time, no one had a dog in a fight over congressional intent, because there was no fight.”

Think Progress gives odds on how each Justice will vote.

more
http://politicalwire.com/2015/03/02/supreme-court-hears-an-obamacare-fairytale/

March 2, 2015

Pelosi Fills GOP Leadership Vacuum

Pelosi Fills GOP Leadership Vacuum

“If anyone was in control of the House floor Friday, it was San Francisco Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, not the Republicans who won full control of Congress in November,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

“Less than two months into Republican governance, House GOP leaders suffered their most humiliating defeat yet on the House floor in the battle over funding the Department of Homeland Security, thanks in large part to Pelosi’s ability to marshal her shrunken Democratic minority when it counts. The Republican leadership team, including Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, demonstrated a stunning inability to do the same.”

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http://politicalwire.com/2015/03/02/pelosi-fills-gop-leadership-vacuum/

March 2, 2015

Boehner’s worst failure yet: Incompetence, near-shutdown & sorry state of GOP “governance”

Speaker gets bailed out by Dems (again) after GOP rebukes him on DHS funding. Here's the bad news going forward

SIMON MALOY

On Friday afternoon, just a few short hours before the Department Homeland Security was set to shut down, the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives scheduled a vote to grant DHS three more weeks of funding. The idea was to buy John Boehner some time to do… something. The legislative impasse that led us to the precipice of the shutdown was created by Boehner, who passed a bill tying DHS appropriations to the rollback of President Obama’s immigration executive actions. He spent several weeks insisting that the House had “done its job” and would not pass any new legislation funding DHS. But Senate Republicans and Democrats came together to pass a clean DHS funding bill, which forced Boehner to once again act. Rather than bow to political reality and take the only route available to him to actually fund the agency, Boehner opted to prolong the agony and punt.

And he couldn’t even do that. The three-week continuing resolution failed when over 50 conservative Republicans voted against it, rebuking Boehner and the leadership and sending the entire process into utter chaos with less than half a day remaining until the shutdown.

As has happened so many times over the last four years, the rest of the Congressional leadership was impelled to overcome Boehner’s incompetence and cobble together a last-minute solution. Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid pushed a one-week CR through the Senate late Friday night, and Nancy Pelosi instructed House Democrats to support its passage, with the promise from Boehner that the House would pass a clean, long-term DHS funding bill this week. The one-week bill passed with the overwhelming support of Democrats, and Obama signed it.

So, for all intents and purposes, the House minority leader was calling the shots last Friday, determining which legislation would pass and mapping out future votes. Boehner was along for the ride, keeping a low profile with the rest of the Republican leadership while the Democrats held press briefings sketching out the way forward. It’d be embarrassing enough of this had never happened before, but it’s getting difficult to keep track of how many times Pelosi has had to bail out Boehner. That it is still happening despite the fact that Boehner is now sitting on one of the largest Congressional majorities in decades is about as damning an indictment of his speakership as one could ask for.

more
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/02/boehners_worst_failure_yet_incompetence_near_shutdown_sorry_state_of_gop_governance/

March 2, 2015

Most Want President to Have a College Degree

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that 62% of voters think it’s important for the President to have a degree, compared to only 31% who think it doesn’t matter.

Interesting: “There’s a large partisan divide on the issue: Democrats by an 81%-14% spread think it’s important while Republicans are evenly divided on the matter at 45%-45%.”

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http://politicalwire.com/2015/03/02/most-want-president-to-have-a-college-degree/