Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Media Know-Nothings

by dday

It happened the Friday before Memorial Day and went almost unnoticed, but this small bit at the end of Hardball fairly well sums up the Village approach to government.

CILLIZZA: Here’s the problem. She, she holds a press conference, she brings the leadership with her to show that everyone is behind her.

MATTHEWS: Yeah, but Steny was acting like her defender, he’s her biggest rival…

CILLIZZA: I agree. She talks for, they talk for twenty-five minutes about essentially nothing. Everyone knows she has a plane to catch…

MATTHEWS: It’s called policy, by the way, Chris. (LAUGHTER) Something only a political reporter would say.

CILLIZZA: That gets me. Well-played.

SIMON: Stuff we don’t care about…

MATTHEWS: All this stuff, health care, cap and trade, all this stuff.

Political reporters are often derided as being sportswriters. But sportswriters actually bother to watch the game. Cillizza’s comment is akin to saying that the Lakers and the Nuggets for four quarters did “essentially nothing” to run out the clock on the postgame press conference so reporters couldn’t ask Kobe about his relationship with Phil Jackson. I’ve never seen a group of journalists so openly dismissive about a subject they ostensibly exist to cover.

Because every report of this press conference focuses on the attempted extension of the Pelosi-CIA dust-up, you cannot actually find a record of what the House leadership talked about in those first 25 minutes. I assume it tracks closely to this statement about legislation passed in the last week and since the beginning of the new Congress. Here’s an excerpt:

SIGNED INTO LAW THIS WEEK

CREDIT CARDHOLDERS’ BILL OF RIGHTS, to provide tough new protections for consumers by banning unfair rate increases, abusive fees, and penalties—such as retroactive rate hikes on existing balances and double-cycle billing — giving consumers clear information, and strengthening enforcement.

MILITARY PROCUREMENT REFORM, to crack down on Pentagon waste and cost overruns, which GAO says amount to $296 billion just for the 96 largest weapons systems, by dramatically beefing up oversight of weapons acquisition, promoting greater use of competition, and curbing conflicts of interest.

HELPING FAMILIES SAVE THEIR HOMES ACT, building on the President’s housing initiative, to provide significant incentives to lenders, servicers, and homeowners to work together to modify loans and to avoid foreclosures, which cost families their homes every 13 seconds in America.

FIGHTING MORTGAGE AND CORPORATE FRAUD & CREATING COMMISSION ON CAUSES OF CRISIS, to provide tools for prosecuting the mortgage scams and corporate frauds that contributed to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression; and to create an outside commission to examine its causes.

The housing bill had the guts ripped from it with the loss of cram-down, and the credit card bill mirrors closely rules already put in place by the Federal Reserve; this legislation will just accelerate their effective start date. But it would be nice for Americans to actually know what their Congress manages to pass, instead of having those statements of passage ridiculed as “essentially nothing” by the reporters employed, presumably, to inform the public. In fact, reporters could even detail the legislation and separate the facts from the spin, separate from dart-at-a-board predictions of political consequences or positioning. It’s a novel idea, I know.

I’d like to pinpoint the moment at which reporters stopped covering policy and began to cover “politics,” which they defined as mini-controversies and gossip and what each side of the political divide says about the other (news flash: they’re critical!). I have a sense the consequences haven’t been all that stellar.

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Heroes

by digby

Throughout the WOT and the invasion of Iraq, there have been military heroes, some of whom showed great physical bravery in the face of terrible danger. But, in my mind, some of the greatest military heroes since 9/11 have been those who showed great moral bravery in standing up for what was right in the confusing legal and moral morass that’s characterized this period. Many of the JAG lawyers like Lt. Commander Charles Swift and lowly grunts like Joseph Darby who blew the whistle on Abu Ghraib went up against powerful forces within the government to do what they thought was right. And there have been quite a few of them.

Indeed, if there hadn’t been such people it’s hard to imagine that things wouldn’t be far worse today. So, these military heroes deserve a thanks today, right along with those who’ve laid down their lives on behalf of their country.

Today’s NY Times features one such person, a Captain in Afghanistan named Kirk Black. He isn’t a bleeding heart, childish DFH who supposedly doesn’t understand how the world works. In civilian life he’s a member of the Baltimore Police SWAT team. But he doesn’t believe in knowingly holding innocent people in prison:

Capt. Kirk Black, who trains the Afghan police in this impoverished province, developed a practiced skepticism about claims of innocence during a decade as a Baltimore police officer.

But last January, when relatives of an Afghan imprisoned at the Bagram military detention center begged him to look into the case, he agreed to listen. Eventually he became convinced that the detention was a case of mistaken identity and put the family in touch with a lawyer.

Soon, Captain Black was facing a potential legal battle of his own. One of his senior commanders ordered him not to discuss the case, and the military sent an officer to investigate him. He retained military defense counsel.

The Bagram prison — where about 600 people, mostly Afghans, are being held indefinitely and without charges — is a delicate issue for the Obama administration at a time when it is struggling to come up with a plan for detainees in the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which it intends to close.

The administration has argued that military detainees in Afghanistan may not challenge their detentions in American courts. A federal judge ruled last month that some Bagram detainees captured outside Afghanistan had the constitutional right of habeas corpus, citing a Supreme Court ruling. But the new administration has appealed.

Captain Black’s involvement in the Bagram detainee’s case began in January, while the American officer was attending a meeting of village elders and leaders. He was approached by relatives of an Afghan named Gul Khan, who they said had been snatched by American troops in September and imprisoned at Bagram Air Field, north of Kabul. The military apparently believed Mr. Khan was a Taliban leader named Qari Idris. But local Afghan officials told Captain Black it was a case of mistaken identity. Captain Black, believing that he was fulfilling a policy of the American counterinsurgency by trying to hear out locals with grievances, applied his police training to the evidence he heard.

“Upon speaking to multiple village elders, family members, the police chief and the subgovernor, I am convinced that the individual in question is not the person that the government claims,” he wrote in January to Clive Stafford Smith, a human rights lawyer he had met three years earlier during a posting to Guantánamo. “I am a police officer in the United States, and there is a mass of evidence that this individual does not need to be held.”

[…]

Captain Black, 36, who grew up in the Detroit suburbs and attended college in Michigan, joined the Baltimore police force in 1999. He eventually became a member of its SWAT team.

In 2006 he was deployed to Guantánamo as an Army National Guard officer. “When I got there, I’ll admit I basically believed everyone there was a terrorist and we had every right to be holding them,” he said. “But as I learned more about the system, I learned that quite a few of them were just swept up in the initial invasion.” He also said he and some fellow officers grew to fear that harmless or innocent detainees were locked away alongside hard-core jihadists and were vulnerable to conversion.

Late last year, Captain Black was sent to Ghazni Province. He and his fellow officers said they soon ran into limits on how much they could accomplish. The biggest frustration: provincial government and police officials so steeped in corruption that they seemed to knock the Americans back every time they tried to take a step forward.

Hearing out Mr. Khan’s family, which had the support of police and other village leaders, struck Captain Black as a way to build trust and show that the military would look into complaints of wrongful incarceration.

[…]

In March, Captain Black said, he was ordered by a commander several rungs above him to “toe the party line” and not discuss Mr. Khan’s guilt or innocence. He was also ordered not to allow two journalists who visited his base to accompany him on routine trips to Waghez.

A few days later, as part of an official military investigation, a more senior officer unexpectedly arrived at Captain Black’s base to question him about conversations with Mr. Khan’s family and with this reporter. The investigating officer also sought a sworn statement from this reporter, who declined.

A military spokesman in Kabul did not respond to questions about why the decision was made to investigate the captain — or whether he would be punished. American military officials in Afghanistan and Washington also declined to comment about evidence against Mr. Khan. One official would say only that all Bagram prisoners were classified as “an imminent danger to the lives of U.S. service members.”

Citing his orders, Captain Black declined to comment about specifics of Mr. Khan’s case. But in an interview before those orders were issued, he said he was mindful of the danger of incarcerating someone who might be innocent. “Lock a guy down for 22 hours a day,” he said, “and you are creating a criminal.”

U.S. service members are in far more danger from the continuing lack of accountability by their own government than they are of anything else. A global superpower cannot hope to prevail in a place like Afghanistan with tough talk and military prowess even if they are willing to take the gloves completely off as the Soviets did. The U.S. should have learned that lesson in Vietnam.

Many thanks to Captain Black for speaking out.

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More Please

by digby

Think Progress has the transcript of Dick Durbin pwning Newtie this week-end. If only more Democrats were so well prepared:

DURBIN: I’d just say that I’m afraid Mr. Gingrich is suffering from a little political amnesia here. He’s forgotten that in year 2007, he criticized the National Intelligence estimate in regard to the capability of Iran to develop nuclear weapons and said that — if I remember the quote correctly, I’m looking down here — that what they did damaged our national security and misled the American people. Mr. Gingrich, would you like to make an apology to our intelligence agency for what you said in 2007? GINGRICH: I said that particular report was intellectually dishonest. It was a public, non-classified report, and we were debating it. I said it was intellectually dishonest. I never said the CIA lied to the Congress, which would be illegal. It would be a felony. DURBIN: Well, what would you say about Republican congressman Hoekstra, who did in fact say that the intelligence community had lied and misled the American people when it came to the killing of an individual in Peru. Should he apologize? GINGRICH: Chairman Hoekstra, as he was at the time, was engaged in a specific incident. The Inspector General of the CIA actually did the right job. The investigating board of the CIA did the right job. There was a specific case. They reported that it was wrong, and the CIA actually insisted on telling Congress the truth. And if you check with Chairman Hoekstra, he’ll tell you he agrees with me on this particular issue.

One of Newt’s biggest problems as a politician is all the stupid things he’s said in his career. He makes Biden look like Abraham Lincoln by comparison. That’s why I hope he runs for president.

More from Christy on Newtie’s re-emergence from the slime…

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Feingold Tries To Stop Obama From Crossing The Rubicon

by dday

The only good news out of this Marc Ambinder post is that the White House reads a lot of Glenn Greenwald. That’s of course fine, but the main point here is that the White House will, at some point, endorse and implement a policy of indefinite detention. We don’t know how many people will be held under this policy, but basically the idea here is to allow the President to determine, at essentially his discretion, although there may be certain safeguards, that a prisoner cannot be either charged with a crime or released from prison, and must be kept in a holding cell “until the terrorists disappear”. This prisoner will have not been proven to have committed a crime, but will simply be thought likely to commit crimes against the United States in the future, based not on actual proof (otherwise they could be charged) but the supposition of a few in the executive branch.

There’s more here and here, and I don’t think I could add much. I’m just completely disgusted by the prospect of indefinite preventive detention.

At least we have some American lawmakers left who understand the magnitude of this decision.

My primary concern, however, relates to your reference to the possibility of indefinite detention without trial for certain detainees. While I appreciate your good faith desire to at least enact a statutory basis for such a regime, any system that permits the government to indefinitely detain individuals without charge or without a meaningful opportunity to have accusations against them adjudicated by an impartial arbiter violates basic American values and is likely unconstitutional. While I recognize that your administration inherited detainees who, because of torture, other forms of coercive interrogations, or other problems related to their detention or the evidence against them, pose considerable challenges to prosecution, holding them indefinitely without trial is inconsistent with the respect for the rule of law that the rest of your speech so eloquently invoked. Indeed, such detention is a hallmark of abusive systems that we have historically criticized around the world. It is hard to imagine that our country would regard as acceptable a system in another country where an individual other than a prisoner of war is held indefinitely without charge or trial.

You have discussed this possibility only in the context of the current detainees at Guantanamo Bay, yet we must be aware of the precedent that such a system would establish. While the handling of these detainees by the Bush Administration was particularly egregious, from a legal as well as human rights perspective, these are unlikely to be the last suspected terrorists captured by the United States. Once a system of indefinite detention without trial is established, the temptation to use it in the future would be powerful. And, while your administration may resist such a temptation, future administrations may not […]

I appreciate your efforts to reach out to Congress on this important issue. In that spirit, I intend to hold a hearing in the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee in June and ask that you make a top official or officials from the Department of Justice available to testify. I recognize that your plans are not yet fully formed, but it is important to begin this
discussion immediately, before you reach a final decision. I will be sending formal invitations in the coming weeks and look forward to hearing the testimony of your administration.

Sadly, Feingold appears to be alone in this opinion. But one Senator can do a lot, especially with help from the outside. It’s absolutely crucial that we provide him all the muscle he needs to push the Administration back on this horrific decision.

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Fiscal Scolds Hoping For Catastrophe
by digby
Here’s the latest from the catfood lobby:

When the trustees of Social Security and Medicare recently reported on the economic outlook for these programs, the news coverage was universally glum. The recession had made everything worse. Social Security, Medicare face insolvency sooner, headlined The Wall Street Journal. Actually, these reports were good news. Better would have been Social Security, Medicare risk bankruptcy in 2010.It’s increasingly obvious that Congress and the president (regardless of which party is in power) will deal with the political stink bomb of an aging society only if forced. And the most plausible means of compulsion would be for Social Security and Medicare to go bankrupt: trust funds run dry; promised benefits exceed dedicated payroll taxes. The sooner this happens, the better.That the programs will ultimately go bankrupt is clear from the trustees’ reports. On pages 201 and 202 of the Medicare report, you will find the conclusive arithmetic: over the next 75 years, Social Security and Medicare will cost an estimated $103.2 trillion, while dedicated taxes and premiums will total only $57.4 trillion. The gap is $45.8 trillion. (All figures are expressed in “present value,” a fancy term for “today’s dollars.”)The Medicare actuaries then dryly note what would happen once the trust funds for Social Security and Medicare’s hospital insurance program are depleted: “No provision exists under current law to address the projected [Medicare] and [Social Security] financial imbalances. Once assets are exhausted, expenditures cannot be made except to the extent covered by ongoing tax receipts.” Translation: benefits would fall. Social Security checks would shrink; some Medicare bills wouldn’t be paid in full—and the shortfalls would progressively worsen. Retirees would scream. Hospitals might shut. No president or Congress would abide the outcry; even the threat of imminent bankruptcy would rouse them to action. But restoring the programs’ solvency would confront Congress and the White House with fundamental questions.

My God, the sky is falling. Right now the social security trust fund isn’t going to run out of the surplus we’ve all been paying into it since 1983 until 2037, which is a real shame. If only we could make it go bankrupt now and use all that money for tax cuts and wars.
Just a little reminder — here’s Ronald Reagan raising the same alarm over 45 years ago:

But we’re against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who depend on them for a livelihood. They’ve called it “insurance” to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the term “insurance” to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they’re doing just that.

A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary — his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he’s 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can’t put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they’re due — that the cupboard isn’t bare?

These people have been saying the same thing for over half a century and they’ll keep saying it until the program is gone. I don’t know why anyone still listens to them.
If only these people cared as much about the future of the planet as they do about the projected SS revenues a century out, we might start to make some rational policies. They simply want to break the generational bond between the young and old and are always looking for a good moment of impending crisis (or “opportunity” like a rising stock market) to put an end to the program. Whatever works. As for Medicare — there’s no fixing it without health care. But they know that too — which is one of the reasons they will block reform.
These people are zealots. And anyone who engages them with any earnest intention to make a deal will be thwarted. They know exactly what they want and it isn’t “solvency.” It’s the opposite — as that column makes crystal clear.
h/t to RA

Capital Punishment For Trespassing

by digby

A man believed to have been trespassing at a Salem apartment complex died Saturday night after he was shot with a Taser as Salem police officers tried to arrest him. Gregory Rold, 37, died at Salem Hospital shortly before 9:30 p.m., Lt. Dave Okada of the Salem Police said today. Officers were called to an apartment in the 1200 block of Royvonne Avenue Southeast in Salem about 7:38 p.m. following a report of a man who was trespassing. They encountered Rold, who Okada said “violently” resisted arrest. That prompted officers to shoot him with a Taser and strike him with their batons. After he was handcuffed, officers realized Rold was unconscious. According to Okada, they immediately called for medical help and gave emergency aid to Rold. Rold was then taken to Salem Hospital where he died.

Tasers are only supposed to be used in cases where lethal force would otherwise be employed, so one assumes that back in the day they would have just shot this man in the head. So this is much better. Less mess.

h/t to dt
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Burning The Strawman

by digby

I set out this morning to write a piece rebutting Helene Cooper’s silly NYT article accusing Obama of attacking strawmen in his speeches (just like Junior!), but got tired and depressed about half way through and just gave up. The villagers are so in love with their new “Obama is just like Bush” meme that they aren’t even trying to make sense with it. Luckily for you, Publius at Obsidian Wings took the time to rebut the ridiculous thing in detail, so you can see just how idiotic her thesis really is.

I have no problem legitimately criticizing Obama for positions he’s taken that are consistent with the Bush administration, but when the press starts this kind of puerile foolishness, you know the honeymoon is over and we’re back to politics for dummies. It’s not a good sign. Conservatives tend to be the ones setting the agenda when that happens.

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Anti-Torture Christians

by digby

One would think that being against torture would be a defining issue for most religions, but especially for followers of Jesus Christ. So, I have been wondering where the religious leaders were on the torture issue. One would certainly think they would be leading the charge what with the Jesus torture precedent and all. On the other hand, some churches have a pretty ugly history, even a very recent history with torture, so perhaps that’s not a place to look for support on this:

Tens of thousands of Irish children were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by nuns, priests and others over 60 years in a network of church-run residential schools meant to care for the poor, the vulnerable and the unwanted, according to a report released in Dublin on Wednesday.

The 2,600-page report paints a picture of institutions run more like Dickensian orphanages than 20th-century schools, characterized by privation and cruelty that could be both casual and choreographed.

“A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions,” the report says. In the boys’ schools, it says, sexual abuse was “endemic.”

The report, by a state-appointed commission, took nine years to produce and was meant to help Ireland face and move on from one of the ugliest aspects of its recent history. But it has infuriated many victims’ groups because it does not name any of the hundreds of individuals accused of abuse and thus cannot be used as a basis for prosecutions.

They don’t want to play the blame game.

It was delayed because of a lawsuit brought by the Christian Brothers, the religious order that ran many of the boys’ schools and that fought, ultimately successfully, to have the abusers’ names omitted. In 2003, the commission’s first chairwoman resigned, saying that Ireland’s Department of Education had refused to release crucial documents. The report covers a period from the 1930s to the 1990s, when the last of the institutions closed.

It exposes for the first time the scope of the problem in Ireland, as well as how the government and the church colluded in perpetuating an abusive system. The revelations have also had the effect of stripping the Catholic Church, which once set the agenda in Ireland, of much of its moral authority and political power.

The report singles out Ireland’s Department of Education, meant to regulate the schools, for running “toothless” inspections that overlooked glaring problems and deferred to church authority.

The report is based in part on old church records of unreported abuse cases and in part on the anonymous testimony of 1,060 former students from a variety of 216 mostly church-run institutions, including reformatories and so-called industrial schools, set up to tend to neglected, orphaned or abandoned children.

Most of the former students are now 50 to 80 years old.

Some 30,000 children were sent to such places over six decades, the report says, often against their families’ wishes and because of pressure from powerful local priests. They were sent because their families could not afford to care for them, because their mothers had committed adultery or given birth out of wedlock, or because one or both of their parents was ill, drunken or abusive. They were also sent because of petty crime, like stealing food, or because they had missed school.

Many of the former students said that they had not learned their own identities until decades later. They also said that their parents had unsuccessfully tried to reclaim them from the state.

It’s just a shame these people feel the need to look in the rear view mirror. Everyone needs to move past this and look to the future. What possible good can come of people knowing about this:

In a litany that sounds as if it comes from the records of a P.O.W. camp, the report chronicles some of the forms of physical abuse suffered in the boys’ schools:

“Punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, made to sleep outside overnight, being forced into cold or excessively hot baths and showers, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them.”

Well, at least they weren’t tortured.

The good news is that some religious organizations have organized around this issue:

Since January 2006, the more than 250 religious organizations comprising the National Religious Campaign Against Torture have worked together to end U.S.-sponsored torture. During 2008, the religious community advocated for a Presidential Executive Order ending torture. It happened. On January 22, President Obama issued an Executive Order halting torture.

Now the task is to make sure that U.S.-sponsored torture never happens again. To accomplish this goal, our nation needs to put safeguards in place to prevent its recurrence. We will better understand what safeguards are needed if we have a comprehensive understanding of what happened – who was tortured, why they were tortured, and who ordered the torture. As a nation we need the answers to those questions. Therefore, NRCAT is calling for a Commission of Inquiry to investigate U.S. torture policies and practices. To bolster this call, we are asking you and other people of faith to endorse the statement “U.S.-Sponsored Torture: A Call for a Commission of Inquiry.” Endorse the call
for a
Commission of Inquiry
Urge your
congregation/organization
to endorse As the religious community made a difference in encouraging the President to halt torture, we now must urge our leaders to create a Commission of Inquiry to help ensure that U.S.-sponsored torture never happens again.

Click here for more information about this initiative, including other ways you and your congregation can help to secure a Commission of Inquiry.

I can’t believe that this is even necessary in the United Sates, but June is apparently Torture Awareness Month. If you or members of your congregation want to get involved with this group, which seems to have a whole lot of activities and initiatives, you should go to their web site, The National Religious Campaign Against Torture and look at what they’ve got going on.

Update: I should be surprised by this, but I’m not. Here’s a Red State comment, via John Cole:

It’s likely even Jesus would have OK’d water boarding if it would have saved his Mom. He would’ve done the same to save his Dad, or any one of His disciples. For that matter, He even died to save all humans. It’s obvious He would not be happy with those who voted for the candidate who kills because it’s above his “pay grade” to know if they’re alive. Checking the Commandments, killing innocents is against the 5th. Because pro-aborts don’t know for sure life does not exist at conception, they are still willing to risk that it’s not killing.

I wonder where Jesus stood on crucifixion? Was he for it in the case of a ticking time bomb?

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Liberals’ Values

by digby

It’s been great watching liberals on TV this morning standing up for American values. It’s a great relief. Here is a typical exchange from CNN’s “State Of The Union”:

John King: are you ok with indefinite detentions and would that be here in the United States?

Barbara Boxer: I’ll tell you what I’m ok with. I’m ok that the president of the United States says that our security comes first and foremost. I agree with that. But he went on to say, which you didn’t show, that he’s going to figure out a way to do this under the rule of law. So he is going to make sure that nobody is released into the United States who will be a threat to us and that these indefinite detentions will be somehow under the rule of law. And I want to give this president the credit for this. His wife said, one thing about my husband, he’s not going to be afraid to change his mind or to nuance an issue. I applaud that frankly.

In other news, Obama announced that since the security of the country comes first, he was repealing the Bill of Rights but that he would make sure it “will somehow be under the rule of law.” Liberals applauded his willingness to be flexible and change his mind.

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Before You Laugh, Don’t Forget: They Beat Harvard At Debates

by tristero

Liberty University bans Democratic student club:

Liberty University’s Democrat students club received notice last week that it would no longer be able to associate the University’s name with any of its activities. According to a Lynchburg VA paper, the club’s leadership was told “we are unable to lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the moral principles held by” the school. “The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the “LGBT” agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.),” Liberty’s Vice President of Student Affairs, Mark Hine, apparently told the group via email

That’s how bizarre and extreme the Repbulican right has become. Become? Nonsense! They’ve always been this crazy and they still – still! – are far more influential in American governance than, say, people like Jessica Tuchman Mathews of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Oh, and, by the way, I wasn’t kidding.