March 1, 2015

It’s worse than Scott Walker and Ted Cruz: Secrets of conservatives’ decades-long war on truth

The right knows that facts and reason have a liberal bent. That's why their decades-long strategy is to lie

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Deep on page 546 of his 1,839-page budget, Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker tucked in a crucial idea. He proposed to strip a principle from the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin, a school that attracts students from all over the nation and from 131 foreign countries. From the core philosophy that has driven the university since the turn of the last century Walker wanted to hack out the words: “Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.” Rather than serving the people of the state by developing intellectual, cultural and humane sensitivities, expertise, and “a sense of purpose,” Walker prefers that the state university simply “meet the state’s workforce needs.” In the face of scathing criticism, the governor backtracked and, despite a trail of emails that led to his office, tried to claim the new language was a “drafting error.”

But Walker’s attempt to replace the search for truth with workforce training was no error. Since the earliest days of Movement Conservatism in the 1950s, its leaders have understood that the movement’s success depends on destroying Americans’ faith in the academic search for truth. For two generations, Movement Conservatives have subverted American politics, with increasing success, by explicitly rejecting the principle of open debate based in reasoned argument. They have refused to engage with facts and instead simply demonized anyone who disagrees with their ideology. This is an astonishing position. It is an attack on the Enlightenment principles that gave rise to Western civilization.

Make no mistake: the attack is deliberate.

The Enlightenment blossomed in the wake of the religiously-inspired Thirty Years War of the seventeenth century, when thinkers horrified by the war’s carnage set out to break the fetters of superstition and tradition that had prompted the strife. Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Jefferson and other thinkers advanced the idea that if people could listen to reasoned arguments, weigh them against evidence and choose the soundest ones, progress would follow. The Enlightenment revolutionized science, culture and politics, and gave rise to the modern world.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/03/01/its_worse_than_scott_walker_and_ted_cruz_secrets_of_conservatives_decades_long_war_on_truth/

March 1, 2015

Obama Threatens To Veto Bill That Lets Congress Review Iran Deal

Source: TPM/The Hill

President Obama on Saturday threatened to veto an Iran bill proposed by a bipartisan group of senators on Friday.

The bill would require the White House to submit the nuclear agreement with Iran within five days of reaching the deal. It would also keep Obama from lifting sanctions on Iran for 60 days after the deal is reached.

"The President has been clear that now is not the time for Congress to pass additional legislation on Iran," National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said on Saturday in a statement to The Hill. "If this bill is sent to the President, he will veto it. We are in the final weeks of an international negotiation. We should give our negotiators the best chance of success, rather than complicating their efforts."

The United States, Russia, China, France, Germany, Britain and Iran must reach a deal on Iran's nuclear program by March 24.

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obama-veto-congress-iran-bill

March 1, 2015

Westboro Baptist Church Plans To Picket Leonard Nimoy’s Funeral

Never able to let a high profile opportunity go by without latching on to it, the Westboro Baptist Church – and I use the word “church” only because it is how they identify themselves – is tweeting their plans to picket the funeral of Leonard Nimoy.

In their usual fashion, the Westboro lunatics are spewing their message of hatred all over the Twittersphere.

-snip-

If Nimoy’s family decides to hold a public service, it is doubtful that fans will allow the members of the hate group to upset the proceedings. In past efforts to wreak havoc at a Newtown, CT memorial, a biker gang kept the so-called religious group from interrupting the service. Likewise, Santa Monica residents chased away the church members when they attempted to picket Santa Monica High School in Los Angeles for being too tolerant of gay students.

Among the many vile tweets on their Twitter page, they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to bag on the president as well, Obama having made the terrible mistake of paying tribute to Mr. Nimoy.

Westboro Baptist @WBCSaysRepent
Follow
Watch for this new WBC sign at an upcoming funeral picket near you:

#FAGTREK!
7:42 AM - 28 Feb 2015

Westboro Baptist @WBCSaysRepent
Follow
Fag birds of a feather! @BBCWorld: "I loved Spock" - President Obama pays tribute to Leonard Nimoy pic.twitter.com/a11NxJd3MK #fagtrek! #picket
7:31 AM - 28 Feb 2015

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http://samuel-warde.com/2015/02/westboro-baptist-church-plans-to-picket-leonard-nimoys-funeral/

March 1, 2015

Chris Christie: Watercolor Memories Of A Candidacy That 'Peaked Too Soon'

Jason Linkins

As New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was still settling into his swivel chair at this week's Conservative Political Action Conference, his interlocutor for the Q&A session, conservative talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, began by asking about his "rough couple of months ... in the media."

"They just want to kill ya," Christie said, "but I'm still standing." Christie was, at the time, referring semi-explicitly to The New York Times. "I don't subscribe, by the way," Christie said, to a smattering of applause. Moments later, he had another quip for the Grey Lady. "I went to my parish priest and said I’m giving up The New York Times for Lent,” Christie joked. “Bad news: He said you have to give up something you’ll actually miss.”

Pro tip for anyone who wants to demonstrate that the media isn't living rent-free in your head: Maybe just pick one funny story about how you gave up reading The New York Times.

But Ingraham couldn't have been more right about Christie's recent woes. In the last two weeks especially, it seems as if the political press has decided en masse to start spading the graveyard soil over Christie's once-lush aspirations for higher office. There is varying enthusiasm for the duty.

NBC News' Perry Bacon has discussed the "growing skepticism from influential Republicans about his likely presidential run." Politico's "caucus" of Iowa insiders couldn't find a place for Christie in their deliberations. FiveThirtyEight's Harry Enten, after examining the ratio of name recognition and net favorability among the potential GOP candidates, offered up this 16-word coffin nail: "Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, is well known, but not particularly well liked."

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/01/chris-christie-2016_n_6772928.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics

March 1, 2015

Uganda's 'Kill the Gays' Bill Is Back

Janson Wu

As Anti-Homosexuality Act is set to be reintroduced, local activists have built a broad coalition that links the bill with other social issues.

David Bahati, the sponsor of Uganda’s notorious Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA), announced this weekend that he intends to reintroduce the bill in parliament, after a court found it invalid for procedural reasons last August.

But this time will be different. President Yoweri Museveni is under heavy pressure not to once again invite international condemnation by supporting it. More importantly, the Ugandan coalition opposing it is broad-based and deep. In fact, American activists could learn a lot from their Ugandan counterparts.

On a recent trip to Uganda, I met with local LGBT activists – and one lesson consistently emerged as key to their strategy: the fight for LGBT rights must be situated within a broader campaign for human rights and civil liberties.

For example, I met with Adrian Jjuuko, Executive Director of Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum. He’s a young, energetic attorney whose office is lined with case binders from major LGBT rights cases he has helped win. That includes the successful lawsuit against Rollingstone Magazine for publishing a front-cover headline advocating that key LGBT activists be hung, and the most recent case that led to the nullifying of the AHA. Jjuuko has been on the front lines of the fight since graduating law school only six years ago.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/01/uganda-s-kill-the-gays-bill-is-back.html

March 1, 2015

House chaos on DHS funding leaves GOP senators fuming

Senate Republicans are fuming over the House GOP’s decision to extend the standoff over the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a move that they say uses up political oxygen and burns precious time on the legislative calendar.

GOP senators say it’s time to move on to other issues, such as the budget, trade legislation, and regulatory and tax reform.

They must defend 24 seats in the 2016 election and worry that voters could soon start to question their ability to govern unless they can move forward with a more substantive agenda.

The fight over President Obama’s executive actions on immigration brought that agenda to a standstill in February, as the threat of a homeland security shutdown thwarted other priorities.

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http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/234212-house-chaos-leaves-gop-senators-fuming

March 1, 2015

Hillary and the Machine - By Ross Douthat

WITH Jeb Bush committed and Hillary Clinton all but crowned, the easiest story to tell about 2016 is a tale of two dynasties, a Bush-Clinton grudge match, a fated collision between the first families of American politics.

But only one party is actively cooperating with that narrative. Clinton’s inevitability may inspire as much resignation as enthusiasm, but she’s currently so far ahead of her “rivals” that she looks like she could win the Democratic nomination with a William McKinleyesque front porch campaign — if her Georgetown mansion had one, that is.

On the Republican side, though, Bush’s alleged front-runner status doesn’t show up in any polls. He’s locking up money and talent, but his actual numbers are bobbing along in the teens, and his approval ratings are not the kind you associate with a man of destiny. He may win the nomination, but it will be a near-run thing, and nothing like the looming Democratic coronation.

Given the stereotypes about our parties, this is a notable reversal. The Republicans are supposed to be the party of primogeniture, the Democrats of fratricide. The now-ancient Will Rogers joke — “I belong to no organized political party; I’m a Democrat” — has been recycled for decades for a reason.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/opinion/sunday/hillary-and-the-machine.html?ref=opinion

March 1, 2015

Gov. Bobby Jindal says GOP leaders in Congress fear repealing Obama's health care law

Article by: THOMAS BEAUMONT , Associated Press

PALM BEACH, Florida — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Saturday called congressional Republican leaders "fearful" of acting to fully repeal President Barack Obama's health care law.

Jindal, a second-term Republican governor weighing a 2016 presidential candidacy, said the GOP had failed to act on their signature issue in the 2014 midterm elections. Republicans overtook Democrats in the Senate and broadened their majority in the House.

"It's leadership and other members who, I think, are fearful of being criticized for putting anything out there that could be attacked. If not, why wouldn't we have had a vote by now?" he told reporters at the anti-tax Club for Growth's winter meeting. "I would hope, though, that we're honest enough to say, we campaigned on getting rid of Obamacare."

Jindal is one of six Republican presidential prospects speaking to the roughly 200 fiscal conservatives attending the meeting that ends Saturday. The others were former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

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http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/294528321.html

March 1, 2015

Martin O’Malley, in Veiled Jab at Hillary Clinton, Derides Politics of ‘Triangulation’

Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor who is likely to seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, took a veiled shot at a potential rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a speech in South Carolina on Saturday, criticizing the politics of “triangulation” that have historically been associated with the Clintons.

“The most fundamental power of our party and our country is the power of our moral principles,” Mr. O’Malley said, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by an aide.

In words that echoed those of Senator Barack Obama when he battled Mrs. Clinton in 2007 for the Democratic nomination, Mr. O’Malley added: “Triangulation is not a strategy that will move America forward. History celebrates profiles in courage, not profiles in convenience.”

Mr. O’Malley’s comments came at the Democratic Party’s John Spratt Issues Conference in Myrtle Beach, and South Carolina is a crucial early primary state that Mrs. Clinton lost to Mr. Obama. Mr. O’Malley has in the past declined to contrast himself with Mrs. Clinton.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/us/politics/martin-omalley-in-veiled-jab-at-hillary-clinton-derides-politics-of-triangulation.html

March 1, 2015

Fear envelopes Russia after killing of Putin critic

Andrew E. Kramer The New York Times
February 28, 2015

MOSCOW -- About two weeks before he was shot and killed in the highest-profile political assassination in Russia in a decade, Boris Y. Nemtsov met with an old friend to discuss his latest research into what he said was dissembling and misdeeds in the Kremlin.

He was pugilistic and excited, saying he wanted to publish the research in a pamphlet to be called “Putin and the War,” about President Vladimir Putin and Russian involvement in the Ukraine conflict, recalled Yevgenia Albats, the editor of the New Times magazine. Both knew the stakes.

Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, knew his work was dangerous but tried to convince her that, as a former high official in the Kremlin, he enjoyed immunity, Albats said.

“He was afraid of being killed,” Albats said. “And he was trying to convince himself, and me, they wouldn’t touch him because he was a member of the Russian government, a vice premier, and they wouldn’t want to create a precedent. Because, as he said, one time the power will change hands in Russia again, and those who served Putin wouldn’t want to create this precedent.”

As supporters of Nemtsov laid flowers on the sidewalk where he was shot and killed late Friday, a shiver of fear moved through the political opposition in Moscow.

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http://www.adn.com/article/20150228/fear-envelopes-russia-after-killing-putin-critic