Month: February 2014

Can kicking or Lucy and the football? (Maybe a little bit of both?)

by digby

I’ve always been something of a believer in kicking the can if there’s no other option, for many of the reasons the Republicans are griping about today:

House Republican leadership unveiled a debt-limit strategy to membership on Monday night, leaving many conservatives wondering what exactly is in the bill for Republicans.

“The bottom line is this: This plan increases spending and raises the debt ceiling. So it makes our financial condition as a country more precarious in the years going forward,” Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama said of the plan, which would add an extra year of mandatory sequestration cuts in order to offset the cost of eliminating reductions to military pensions.

Brooks and others called the additional sequestration cuts, which won’t come until 2024, a gimmick, noting that little Congress might do that far down the line is set in stone. Just look at the original sequestration cuts, which were altered in December’s budget agreement, only nine months after they first took effect.

“Yeah, a decade from now [we’ll get the offset], which to me is no offset at all,” Brooks said. “You have to go through 10 years of Congresses before you have a pay-for for an expenditure that is immediate.”

There is, of course, a real downside to all this. Sequestration sets a budget baseline going far into the future and anyone who tries to raise any spending will have to go to the mattresses every single time to do it. I have very little doubt that the programs progressives care about will be squeezed over and over again while those that have constituencies in the Republican Party will be funded.

That’s what we’re seeing right now. Cutting military retirement benefits were supposed to be the “price” the Republicans had to pay while the Democrats “sacrificed” the federal employee retirement benefits in this latest budget round. The military retirement benefits are being restored. The Federal employees are not. And that’s because only one party believe in retirement benefits for both the military and the Federal workers.

This is how it will go all down the line. We will be paying for that 2011 budget debacle for a very long time. I shouldn’t say “we”. It will be the poor and middle class Americans who need government to help clear a path through our capitalistic jungle. Democratic politicians will undoubtedly be just fine — economically anyway.

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Sobering chart ‘o the day

by digby

Middle class decline:

Here’s Elizabeth Warren from 2009:

Pundits talk about “populist rage” as a way to trivialize the anger and fear coursing through the middle class. But they have it wrong. Families understand with crystalline clarity that the rules they have played by are not the same rules that govern Wall Street. They understand that no American family is “too big to fail.” They recognize that business models have shifted and that big banks are pulling out all the stops to squeeze families and boost revenues. They understand that their economic security is under assault and that leaving consumer debt effectively unregulated does not work…

America today has plenty of rich and super-rich. But it has far more families who did all the right things, but who still have no real security. Going to college and finding a good job no longer guarantee economic safety. Paying for a child’s education and setting aside enough for a decent retirement have become distant dreams. Tens of millions of once-secure middle class families now live paycheck to paycheck, watching as their debts pile up and worrying about whether a pink slip or a bad diagnosis will send them hurtling over an economic cliff.

America without a strong middle class? Unthinkable, but the once-solid foundation is shaking.

Here’s her speech from the 2012 cnvention:

This is the message for the Democratic Party if they would just use it. They need to stop talking about “opportunity” as if it’s something they can create out of thin air start talking about the needs and aspirations of the vast numbers of Americans who have no illusions that they’re going to be Tom Perkins someday and simply would like to feel that they have a chance to be securely middle class. That’s the American Dream. Let the Republicans sell the Randroid nonsense that being rich is everything and anyone who isn’t is a failure to the masses of America. I don’t think anyone’s buying anymore.

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Speaking of not understanding what it means to be human…

by David Atkins

Following up on my post yesterday about conservative lack of appreciation for basic humanity, here’s a particularly insulting new ad from Cadillac. Methinks the jingoistic lady doth protest a bit too much:

For the video-impaired:

Why do we work so hard? For what? For this? For stuff? Other countries, they work, they stroll home, they stop by the cafe, they take August off. Why aren’t you like that? Why aren’t we like that? Because we’re crazy, driven, hard-working believers, that’s why. Those other countries think we’re nuts. Whatever. Were the Wright Brothers insane? Bill Gates? Les Paul? Ali? Were we nuts when we pointed to the moon? That’s right. We went up there. You know what we got? Bored. So we left. Got a car up there, left the keys in it. You know why? Because we’re the only ones going back up there, that’s why.

But I digress. It’s pretty simple. You work hard, you create your own luck, and you gotta believe anything is possible. As for all the stuff, that’s the upside of only taking two weeks off in August.

There’s so much wrong with this morally and factually it’s hard to know where to begin.

Those four weeks vacation are paid vacation. Bill Gates isn’t exactly an innovator, and Muhammad Ali opposed official United States policy on war, race and economics. We did get to the moon first, but we weren’t the first in space, and China will be heading to the moon soon.

American economic mobility is lower than in most of the rest of the industrialized world. If you work hard and create your own luck, you’re likelier to improve your station in France than in America. Heck, the American Dream is more alive in Pakistan than in America.

And no. A slightly better car isn’t worth two fewer weeks of even unpaid vacation, much less paid vacation. I think most Americans would agree with that, too.

That Cadillac would put out an ad like this as a form of “buy American” patriotism smacks less of pride than of cultural desperation, a pathetic attempt to assert a corporate-friendly truthiness long since exposed as a deceitful fraud.

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Good thing they started making Hostess Twinkies again, amirite?

by digby

It’s a job creator!

Hah. If you need to see some correct information about marijuana use, click here.

ICYWW, that silly poster was distributed by a wingnut welfare group called Drug Free American Foundation run by deep pockets conservative activist/donor Mel Sembler’s wife Betty.

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The locker room reflex

by digby

Frank Bruni on the locker room “problem”:

When NFL Network’s Andrea Kremer recently brought up the possibility of an openly gay player with Jonathan Vilma, a New Orleans Saints linebacker, he said: “Imagine if he’s the guy next to me and, you know, I get dressed, naked, taking a shower, the whole nine, and it just so happens he looks at me.”

“How am I supposed to respond?” Vilma added.

Well, a squeal would be unmanly, Mace might not be enough and N.F.L. players tend to use their firearms away from the stadium, so I’d advise him to do what countless females of our species have done with leering males through history. Step away. Move on. Dare I say woman up?

For some reason a lot of these macho heterosexual men just can’t stop thinking about being in the shower with some big, buff, naked,  football player staring at them. (Hey, who can blame them? I certainly enjoy that image…) I think this fellow is probably more worried about what he might think of as an inappropriate response, if you know what I mean. You just never know how that that thing’s going to react to an admiring look. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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The Dirty Tricks strategy in the War on Women. (Emphasis on “dirty”)


by digby

So everyone’s wondering why in the heck the Republicans are dusting off their Lewinsky playbook (perhaps even including a juicy new fairy tale about Barack Obama and Beyonce.)

The reason they are doing this is simple: the War on Women. I think they are hoping to trip Hillary Clinton up in some conservative jiu-jitsu on the current concerns with rape culture, inappropriate workplace intimacy and women’s rights by using Bill Clinton’s scandals to throw liberal women off balance and ensure that the more traditional women have some tools to join the battle  After all, a lot of younger women don’t necessarily know all the details of those scandals and a lot of other people have probably forgotten them.  It may have a different kind of salience today than it did then.

Notice how Rand Paul went after it:

Sen. Rand Paul, who has been in a bit of a tiff recently with the Clintons, says that any Democrat who has raised campaign money with former President Clinton should return the cash to protest his sexual behavior in the White House.

Speaking on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program, in an interview airing Sunday, Mr. Paul said Democrats are being hypocritical by criticizing Republicans as waging a war on women while at the same time embracing Mr. Clinton, who was impeached for lying about a sexual relationship with a White House intern.

“They can’t have it both ways. And so I really think that anybody who wants to take money from Bill Clinton or have a fundraiser has a lot of explaining to do. In fact, I think they should give the money back,” Mr. Paul, Kentucky Republican, said. “If they want to take position on women’s rights, by all means do. But you can’t do it and take it from a guy who was using his position of authority to take advantage of young women in the workplace.”

Mr. Paul recently called Mr. Clinton a “sexual predator” for his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky…

Some Democrats have sprung to the Clintons’ defense, including Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who said it was “infuriating” for Mr. Paul to cite Mr. Clinton as a response to the GOP’s policies toward women. She also said it was unfair to tarnish Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is pondering whether to run for president in 2016, with the actions of her husband.

“I think most women understand that they should not be held accountable for the behaviors of their husbands. And you know, frankly, it was a long time ago, and our country did very well under the leadership of Bill Clinton,” Ms. McCaskill told MSNBC.

Mr. Paul, though, said in his interview this week that Ms. McCaskill, who is supporting Mrs. Clinton in 2016, didn’t always feel that way. In 2008, she supported then-Sen. Barack Obama over Mrs. Clinton and commented that she wouldn’t want her daughter to be near Mr. Clinton.

Mr. Paul said Mr. Clinton’s settlement with Paula Jones in 1999, in which he paid $850,000 to settle Ms. Jones’ claims of sexual harassment, is an admission of guilt by the former president. He also said Mr. Clinton has “convicted” by the public for harassment with Ms. Lewinsky.

I’ll say one thing for Rand Paul. He’s a clever piece of work. This is a smart, if underhanded and thoroughly dishonest, tactic. It remains to be seen if they will literally do a ratfuck (which is specifically defined as “recruiting conservative members to infiltrate opposition groups and/or misrepresent them through false flag activities in order to undermine the effectiveness of such opposition”) but perhaps they don’t even need to do that in these days of social media. All they have to do is “call out” their rivals for hypocrisy on the issue and they could wreak some serious dirty tricks havoc. (And you can certainly be sure they’re going to dredge up every ugly comment any Democrat made about Clinton in 2008 — and the sexual stuff will probably be prominent.)

The War on Women opens the door for Republicans to do what pleasures them the most — talk about other people’s sex lives in detail even as they condemn it. It arouses them.

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Greenwalds and drones

by digby

Glenn Greenwald isn’t the only muckraking, activist Greenwald who makes the US government very unhappy these days. Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films has been doing similar work in documentary film (along with supporting the progressive movement in many different ways) for years. The LA Times featured his latest — and very timely — cause: the drone war:

In an old, whitewashed motel, where folklore has it studio executives once brought their secretaries for “lunch,” Robert Greenwald, a mercurial man trailed by insults and death threats, leads a small band of filmmakers dedicated to unnerving political and corporate powers with righteous anger and quick-cut editing.

Greenwald embodies the populism of George Bailey and the sly delight of a spy handed a secret dossier. His Brave New Films has skewered Wal-Mart, Fox News (Bill O’Reilly despises him) and the conservative politics of billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Greenwald’s narratives have criticized the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and his latest documentary condemns the Obama administration’s drone program for killing civilians in Pakistan and other countries in a misguided strategy to combat terror.

Much of the American public is unaware of what’s going on, “and sadly there’s a bipartisan national security state dedicated to making sure we don’t find out,” said Greenwald. “If you’re losing your house or you don’t have a job or you’re trying to get your kid through school, the global challenges are generally the ones you don’t feel equipped to take on…. That’s one of the pleasures and joys of this work, to get up every day and work on telling these stories.”

Brave New Films is a muckraking voice in a digital age of nano-second consumption. The company produces videos and graphics, time-releasing them on the Internet while also stitching them into full-length documentaries. This guerrilla style is aimed at creating buzz in progressive circles that at times ripples into the mainstream. The trick, said Greenwald, is staying ahead of the political curve to influence national discourse over anxieties as varied as healthcare,Wall Street and prisons for profit.

“Greenwald’s a major advocacy figure on the left,” said Patricia Aufderheide, director of the Center for Media and Social Impact at American University’s School of Communication. “Brave New Films is not pretending to be nuanced, and it’s not pretending to make great art … Greenwald’s intent is to engage people to take some kind of action. He’s relentlessly experimental.”

The article takes some issue with Unmanned for failing to point out that while it does kill numbers of innocent civilians it has also killed some high level Al Qaeda, which strikes me as sort of missing the point, but that’s a small quibble. It’s mostly a positive profile of someone who is doing good work on the anti-war left and that’s rare in the mainstream media.

And speaking of Greenwalds and drones, Glenn and Jeremy Scahill are out with the first exposé, from their new site aptly named The Intercept:

The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.

According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.

The drone operator, who agreed to discuss the top-secret programs on the condition of anonymity, was a member of JSOC’s High Value Targeting task force, which is charged with identifying, capturing or killing terrorist suspects in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

His account is bolstered by top-secret NSA documents previously provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. It is also supported by a former drone sensor operator with the U.S. Air Force, Brandon Bryant, who has become an outspoken critic of the lethal operations in which he was directly involved in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

In one tactic, the NSA “geolocates” the SIM card or handset of a suspected terrorist’s mobile phone, enabling the CIA and U.S. military to conduct night raids and drone strikes to kill or capture the individual in possession of the device.

I think this piece at Privacysos gets to why this is important:

While it’s not news that the NSA provides the CIA and JSOC with electronic surveillance information based off of cell phone metadata for use in drone strike targeting, the Intercept’s story provides us with important new details about what kinds of technologies the spies are using to collect and process this intelligence. The report also shows that, contrary to public officials’ promises, the drone program uses unreliable targeting information, largely derived from algorithmic analysis of large data pools. Contrary to some critics, that information is more useful to Americans than it is to the people the US government calls our enemies, and falls squarely within the public interest.

The backlash against the report began not long after it was published. John Schindler, a professor at the US Naval War College and frequent Greenwald critic, alleges that the revelations published by First Look will “help” The Terrorists.

And how / RT @PrivateSnuffy: Right off the bat, First Look is helping Al Qaeda, Al Shabab, LeT, AFPAK Talibans etc. improve their OPSEC.

— John Schindler (@20committee) February 10, 2014

But as Special Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions and legal scholar Sarah Knuckey pointed out on Twitter this morning, it isn’t news to people in Pakistan that the US government tracks their cell phones, and uses information beaming from them as the basis for conducting drone strikes.

@csoghoian Tracking via sim has been widely known in FATA for years – civilians there often speak of it.

— Sarah Knuckey (@SarahKnuckey) February 10, 2014

Even apart from Knuckey’s uncontroversial assessment, all the information you need to know that Schindler’s claim is without merit is contained in the Scahill/Greenwald piece itself. Their story describes various anti-surveillance strategies and tactics long employed by fighters seeking to evade the US’ omnipotent eyes in the sky. Some of these tactics include changing SIM cards or using multiple phones.

The targets of US drone operations know well that JSOC and the CIA use their cell phones to target them, and long before The Intercept published today’s story, they were making operational adjustments accordingly. Exactly what kinds of technologies the spies use to track their cell phones doesn’t matter at a practical level to the fighters trying to evade US surveillance. Simply knowing their cell phones are tracked and used in targeting is sufficient, and they knew this before First Look Media was a twinkle in Pierre Omidyar’s eye. But this information is extremely important for US citizens to understand.

I suspect that most people don’t give a damn about civilians in foreign countries who have made the unfortunate decision to get in the crosshairs of American technology. I think that many would even sign on to the idea that killing 100 civilians is “worth it” to get to on terrorist who has declared himself an enemy of the United States. (Like the American member of al Qaeda who evidently has the White House tied up in knots trying to decide whether to assassinate him or not.)

But aside from the moral and constitutional implications of all this, which are extremely heavy, let’s ask ourselves why we have the most powerful nation on earth swatting gnats like this in the first place? Does anyone really believe that we can kill them all one by one? And does it not concern anyone that for for every one you kill, if you kill 5 civilians along with them you are just creating more terrorists? This doesn’t really seem to be a hard call to me. Clearly the technology they’re using is not all that precise. And that imprecision is defeating the whole purpose. Is this policy a good idea at all?

I honestly don’t see it, at least from the evidence we have.

Moreover, this technology is very likely to come back to “the homeland” and affect us in ways that are dangerous to all of us:

As we’ve long known, military surveillance technologies almost always migrate back to the domestic space, where they are eagerly applied by law enforcement agencies in the disastrous, decades-long war on drugs, as well as operations against non-violent dissidents. It’s likely that the technologies used to wage the drone war overseas are already in use here at home.

Under GILGAMESH, it appears as if the three letter agencies are using IMSI catchers—devices already marketed to and deployed by domestic law enforcement agencies in the United States. These devices trick cell phones into thinking they are cell phone towers, thereby identifying phones within range and even intercepting their data.

We already know that DHS’ Customs, Border Protection agency (CBP) uses Predator drones equipped with similar cell phone sniffing technology. The FBI has been much more secretive about its use of drones, but we can safely assume the Bureau uses these tools above US airspace, in both drones and its substantial fleet of surveillance planes. The US military also flies drones above US airspace. Presumably the technology Scahill and Greenwald describe is already in relatively widespread use among federal agencies in the United States. It’s only a matter of time before police departments start using them, too, if they don’t already. The same is true with respect to technologies like those used in the SHENANIGANS program, which sucks up Wi-Fi metadata, likely enabling the NSA to track IP addresses to physical locations.

In fact, it’s already here.

Keep in mind that this has all been happening with virtually no real public debate and is being enabled by congressional authoritarians such as Representative Mike Rogers, who seems to believe that there can be no limits on government in these areas at all (not to mention that anyone who reveals what government is doing should be arrested.)

Basically, what we have is a policy of killing individual suspected terrorists which also kills many more innocent civilians thus creating new enemies. Sometimes this means that American citizens will be targeted or inadvertently assassinated on orders of the US Government, which is a very dicey constitutional concept at best. And all of this is done using an unreliable technology that makes more mistakes than it gets right — again, resulting in the creation of more enemies than it kills. Oh, and the unreliable technology — completely untested against the rights of US Citizens through any judicial process — is inevitably migrating to use here in the US to be deployed by law enforcement against US citizens at home.

Is this really the best policy the Unites States can come up with to deal with the threat of Islamic terrorism? Is that even what this bizarre policy is designed to do? It’s almost as if it’s designed around how to use the technology than how to thwart terrorists.

Is the creation of new terrorists simply creating a new “market” for the drone war? You can’t help but wonder.

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They can’t help loving a man who slaps liberals around

by digby

I knew about Christie’s little “deal” described here some time ago, but apparently it’s just now coming to the attention of the Washington press:

As the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey, Chris Christie struck an unusual deal with Bristol-Myers Squibb.

In exchange for not charging the drug-making giant with securities fraud, Christie’s office would require it to fund a professorship at Seton Hall University’s law school — Christie’s alma mater.

The $5 million gift, one component of a larger agreement between the company and prosecutors, was hailed by the South Orange, N.J., school as a cornerstone of its new center on business ethics.

But in Washington, Christie’s superiors in the George W. Bush administration were uneasy about it, worried it could look to the public like a U.S. attorney using his authority to benefit a pet cause.

Christie said the idea was not his, but part of a back-and-forth negotiation between his prosecutors and the firm. In any case, spurred on by the Seton Hall deal and several other out-of-court settlements negotiated by Christie’s office, Justice Department officials ultimately enacted new rules placing limits on prosecutors’ discretion in reaching such agreements.

“It was something you wanted to tamp out before every U.S. attorney in America built a new summer camp,” said one former Justice official involved in reviewing new rules who, like two other senior officials, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. “It needed to be nipped in the bud.”

Obviously, I did not know that the Bush administration had a problem with this. After all, Christie wasn’t a highly qualified career US Attorney but rather one of the GOP political cronies they appointed because he was a big fundraiser. I assumed they approved of his conduct. This just indicates how corrupt Christie has always been — so corrupt that Bush’s thoroughly corrupt DOJ had to rein him in. (I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that his is the sort of thing Romney’s vetting team had on Christie.)

My big question is how in the hell the political press allowed this story to go untold when they were kissing Christie’s ring for the past couple of years? And did the GOP poohbahs and Big Money donors not think to look into Christie a little bit more closely than his appealing (to them) habit of publicly browbeating schoolteachers to see that he had major problems in his past and some serious character flaws that would be disqualifying?

I think it really was another case of the political establishment, including the press, just falling in love with a man they saw as someone who would beat the shit out liberals, which is what they consider to be the essence of leadership. They all would have been so much happier as subjects of an imperial dictator or brutal monarchy.

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The Very Serious Ted Cruz?

by digby

Does this make any sense to you?

When Speaker John Boehner declared in December that conservative groups like Heritage Action for America had “lost all credibility,” Washington was stunned.

For years, the powerful organizations had pushed congressional Republicans further and further to the right, keeping score of every vote — even if a “no” vote meant shutting down the government.

But Heritage Action is now rolling out a less confrontational approach by holding its first-ever Conservative Policy Summit on Monday to celebrate ideas from conservative stars like Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, and Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho on everything from health care to education. It’s a sign that the conservative wing of the party heard Boehner loud and clear. Heritage Action is willing to adapt — but it isn’t going away…

The question: Will a gentler and more proactive Heritage Action pull the same weight on Capitol Hill, where it has often shaped the priorities of House Republicans by trying to block bills, not pass them?

So, according to Politico “celebrating the ideas” of Mike Lee, Ted Cruz and Raul Labrador is “kinder and gentler?” Really? These were the very same congressional members who agitated for the government shutdown.

I don’t know if anyone in the GOP believes that having a Conservative Policy Summit let by the Tea Partiest or the Tea Party can be considered some sort of capitulation to the party establishment, but it would appear that Politico, at least, has decided that these “conservative stars” are legitimate mainstream players with important policy ideas.

The article goes on to explain that Heritage was previously highly valued in the GOP for its policy guidance but since Heritage Action became a right wing grassroots lobbying arm, they are no longer so popular. Which explains why they are back in the “policy” realm. With Cruz, Lee and Labrador leading the way. I guess they’re now officially Very Serious People. With a Very Serious game plan:

Though he doesn’t like incremental change, Needham realizes the limitations of his role in a divided government. He wants House Republican leaders to adopt Heritage’s sweeping brand of conservative legislation in a host of policy areas and pass it with all GOP votes to draw a sharp contrast between the Republican House and Democratic Senate.

Needham argues that will help Republicans retake the Senate, leading to a GOP-controlled Congress that forces Obama to veto conservative legislation. And he thinks that raises the odds that a Republican will win the White House in 2016.

Despite its status as an explicit political arm of the storied Heritage Foundation, Heritage Action does not play in elections or endorse candidates, leaving that to allies like Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and the Senate Conservatives Fund. Needham says Heritage Action is filling a “market niche” that is necessary to eventually enact conservative laws.

“Establishment politicians think about this … as a sequential thing: So, we’re going to win elections, and then, once we win elections, we’re going to do all sorts of stuff to change the status quo in Washington, … and then once we do that we can advance bold policy,” Needham said. “The only way for conservatives to win is, we have to figure out how to do all three at once.”

It occurs to me with all this reminiscing about the 60s going on these days that the one thing these Republicans really have going for them is the fact that they wear suits and ties and look like traditional white leader archetypes. If they looked as radical as they are, they’d put the establishment’s irrational fear of hippies in the grave once and for all. Maybe we could persuade them that they really need some nice spiffy uniforms?

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GOP voter fraud

by digby

Now we know why they are so adamant about it. They’re guilty of it themselves. Here’s Governor Scott Walker:

“I remember, I was a teenager, had just become a teenager and voted for Ronald Reagan — limited government, you know, smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense. You knew what you were getting. You knew how a Reagan administration, a Reagan presidency was going to be better for you.”

Scott Walker was 13 in 1980 and 17 in 1984. If he voted, he did so illegally.

Of course, it’s most likely that he’s just lying. But considering the fact that he’s currently being investigated for cheating during the recall election it’s not completely out of the question that Scott Walker committed voter fraud.

Update: Walker did not say he voted for Reagan

Right Wing News made a transcription error and issued a correction on Monday to an interview published in January. During the interview, Walker discussed “a vote for Reagan,” and did not state that he voted for Reagan as a teenager.

John Hawkins, the writer who interviewed Walker for Right Wing News apologized for the error.

“All I can do at this point is apologize for the error,” he wrote on Monday. “This was our mistake and it was very unfair to Scott Walker who is catching flack because of an honest error on our part.”

Ditto from me. Sorry about that. — digby

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