Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Nowhere To Hide

by digby

One of the more refreshing developments in the last year or so has been the total immolation of the phony concept of “principled conservatism.” With the Bush meltdown, the corruption, the incompetence and the continuing support among the leadership and the base for all of it, we no longer have to endure the stupid fiction that Republicans stand for anything other than their shared hatred for liberals and their desire to steal the taxpayers blind. Our long national nightmare of listening to them drone on and on about how liberals will say and do anything to win, how they have no ethics, morals and principles, how they flip-flop in the wind is over.

Observe how Pat Buchanan, Mike Barnicle and Chris Matthews demonstrate that conservatism is a fraud on today’s “Hardball”:

CM: …But let’s take a look at two different clips, perhaps two different Romney’s floating around YouTube right now. The first was posted by opponents of Mitt Romney, the second is Romney’s YouTube response:

Video of Romney: I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I feel that all people should be allowed to participate in the boy scouts regardless of their sexual orientation.

Video of Romney: I was wrong on issues back then. I’m embarrassed to admit that. I think most of us learn with experience. I know I certainly have..

CM: The phrase that’s a problem here Pat Buchanan and Mike Barnicle is “back then,” back then in 2004.

MB: Yeah, not only was it in 2004, thre’s all sorts of fodder for Romney and he’s going to have to explain his ideological journey from 1994 not just 2004, but again, as you can see on those clips he is capable of doing it. It would be think for evangelicals and the Christian Conservatives and the Republican side to decide no matter whether it’s Romney or Rudy Giuliani, do you what hardline doctrinaire ideology or do you want to win? Do you want the aforementioned Hillary Clinton? Can Romney do it?

CM: You’re treating him like he’s a trade from the Patriots to somebody out west, to the Utah Jazz or something, — a cross reference there — I mean do you think it’s that easy to just change uniforms and the other side’s glad to have you?

MB: No. no. It’s not that easy.

CM: Alan Iverson is going to go play for Colorado and they’ll be glad to have him, but can you do that in politics?

MB: Well we’re gonna see if Romney can dribble behyind his back, huh?

PB: And Chris, if Iverson joined the priesthood, that would be a similar change. Look, I think this, look, clearly Romney’s position is 180 degress from what it was. If I were him I wouldn’t say “I evolved,” I would say “I changed my mind.” What he has going for him is that there’s an enormous vacuum on the Reagan right. Reagan was a believer in these things and Giuliani and McCain and Romney are all suspect. But they’re the three front runners and they’re running into that vacuum — and some lower conservatives are trying to get up into it — so that’s what gives Romney the possibility of winning some of those votes.

CM: But what does it mean Pat, you’re an ideologue, what does it mean he’s just denying … he’s got an anullment of his past beliefs, I mean, is it like Rudy dumping three wives fromk history? How can you dump from your past your entire ideological rap sheet and just say that doesn’t matter, never mind. How do you do that

PB: Very simple. These are not conviction politicians. They are politicians trying for the nomination of a party which is conservative and traditionalist which is [against] a lot of what they believe … argued and said, so they are accomodating themselves to the party. Is it sincere? I don’t know but everybody knows what’s going on.

CM: You’re being generous. This is like th kind of conversion you have in
Spain in the old bad days where if you were Jewish you were Christian the next day or you were burned alive, I mean, what kind of conversion are we talking about here Mike?

PB: (laughing) We don’t do that in the Republican Party anymore.

CM: …what kind of conversion are we talking about whereby a person can simply say “I swear to God I never believed what I believe.”

PB: Do I believe that these are sincere honest conversion of Rudy or, uuh,
Romney, in my judgment, probably not. They’re changing their positions for political reasons and you’ve got to accept that or you’ve got to take the alternative which may be Hillary Rodham Clinton.

CM: Wow. Pretty rough stuff here.

MB: You cross your fingers if you’re Mitt Romney and you fib or you lie, depending on your point of view. From 1994 he stood next to Ted Kennedy in a debate for the US Senate in Massachusetts and said at one point he felt he could do more for the gay community than Ted Kennedy could. So what do you do about that with the evangelicals? I don’t know. You lie.

CM: I don’t know what to make of this. It seems to me that you could change religions on this spot. You could go from Mormanism to Baptist. To use your favorite phrase from the past, if we’re all engaged in cross dressing how do you believe what anybody’s costume really is?

PB: I’ll say this about Romney. He hasn’t denied he took those positions. We’ve seen them all. He’s taken a new position now. You know George Bush Sr was pro-choice in 79 or 80. He came and ran and said I will be pro-life and if you look at the positions he took from 89 to 93 he was totally faithful to the prolife position…

CM: .. yeah

PB: …even though in his heart I don’t think he really believed it. I think that’s the situation you’ve got. Rudy says, I’ll give you Scalia and judges like that and we know how they’ll vote on abortion.

CM: So is Senator Allen now able to reclaim his senate seat by saying “I never said macaca?”

PB: No he’s gone…

CM: That’s all you have to do is deny, right?

PB: Well he can’t deny it. YouTube’s got it.

CM: We’ll be right back. This sounds hilarious, but it’s not. Pat, you
are a man of principle not necessarily good principles, but thanks you, Pat
Buchaqnan, Mike Barnicle…

Matthews seems to be truly surprised that Buchanan has completely thrown in he towel on any kind of ideological integrity. But c’mon. It’s been like this since at least Nixon. And Buchanan, Nixon’s creature, like modern conservatism as a whole, is a product of the Watergate white house. (Don’t take my word for it. Read this, by Rick Perlstein.) It’s just that they’ve made such a fetish of their allegedly religious and ideological purity the last few years that now their machinations look particularly hypocritical to anyone but their hardcore supporters. But that’s who they are fighting for right now, after all; they know just how to (dog) whistle that tune.

For instance, Mitt pulled a Reagan today and gave his announcement speech at a venue that honors one of the most notorious anti-semites in American history. Jewish organizations protested, he went ahead anyway and the NY Times didn’t even mention the flap. (Maybe if he’d blogged about it they would have found it worthy of a story.) But you can bet that the mouth-breathing racist neanderthals of the GOP base got the message. Ole Mitt knows what signals to send and that’s all that matters.Ain’t no libruls gonna push him around.

I have no doubt that the GOP faithful will eventually enthusiastically vote for Rudy, Mitt or St. John, even if all three appear at the debates in feather tutus and french kiss each other on the stage. All that matters is which one will beat the dirty hippies. Good old Pat let the cat out of the bag today and just as Felix Allen can’t take back his macaca moment, neither can Buchanan. He said it: “everybody knows what’s going on.”

Well, everyone but Chris Matthews who was shocked today by what he heard. But he’ll get over it:

CM: So Pat Buchanan, what do you make of Mitt Romney’s personality? Because he’s a real unknown in this race?

PB: Everything I know about Romney speaks very well of that. I’ve got a lot of friends who say he lights up a room when he comes in. He’s got a fine personality, he’s friendly, he’s an extremely handsome man as his father was. And he’s always got a big smile. I think in the personality contest, he’s all over Hillary.

CM: He’s got a great chin, I’ve noticed. Does that mean he might not have
a glass jaw?

Notice how throughout the discussion of the flip-flopping Republican candidates lying as easily as they breathe to the dipshit phonies who make up the Republican base, not one person used the word “calculating” to describe any of them.

It’s still going to be a long campaign.

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Where’s Waldo?

by digby

Atrios mentioned this recently and I had noticed the same thing. For some reason the Republican primary doesn’t seem to be getting the same kind of coverage the Democratic primary is. I think that’s probably a good thing on balance, but it does make for some odd media errors and omissions. Here’s a reporter from MSNBC earlier today talking about Mitt Romney:

What was interesting today is that he took some not so veiled swipes at his potential competitors. He talked about his experience in running a state. He said and there are some occasions when you simply can’t afford to have someone who’s never run so much as a corner store let alone the largest enterprise in the world. That seemed to be a jab at Barack Obama, someone who is obviously lacking in national experience. And perhaps even a veiled swipe at Hillary Clinton who though she has been a sitting Senator has obviously never been a chief executive.

Isn’t it just a little bit strange that Romney’s more immediate rivals aren’t mentioned? John McCain’s been a prima donna Senator whose biggest organizational task is figuring out his speaking schedule while Rudy Giuliani has exactly zero national experience.

The press seems to have taken Ronald Reagan’s old advice to heart — thou shalt not speak ill of a Republican.All of politics are now filtered through a prism made up of Clinton’s cold, calculating bitchiness and Obama’s callow, empty phoniness. Republicans? They’re the alternative.

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A Must Read

by tristero

[Update: Link Fixed]

In the post below, Digby mentions this exceedingly important article about the preparations, plans, and deployments for war against Iran perhaps as soon as next month. I can’t urge you enough to read it and to pass it on to your friends. Let me be brief: it is one of the most alarming things I’ve read in the past six years.

I believe that up until the moment the missiles begin dropping in Iran, war can be prevented, provided this country’s elected representatives do their job and the press refuses to let Bush get away with a surprise attack -which is clearly the plan, ie, no congressional resolutions, no UN, no inspectors, no pretense of a coalition, and no negotiations. And no warning, perhaps even no casus belli declared until after the attacks begin.

I realize the chances of this country’s governing and media elite acting in time are small, but the stakes are enormous. Folks, it’s very simple: Read the article, pass it on, call your Congress, call the press. What will you tell your kids, your grand-kids if Bush starts this insane war and you did nothing?

Now go read.

Clean Break

by digby

Tristero's post from earlier today about General Peter Pace's divergence from the administration's talking points may illuminate some of the backchannel infighting going on in the Bush administration over Iran.  Here's the nut:

A top U.S. general said Tuesday there was no evidence the Iranian government was supplying Iraqi insurgents with highly lethal roadside bombs, apparently contradicting claims by other U.S. military and administration officials.

Now, we don't know what this really means.  It could be that they are playing some sort of elaborate good cop/bad cop routine. (God help us — these people are not very good at complicated tasks.)  Or it could be a real revolt of the generals.  We can't know for sure. But we do know that as much as a year ago, the administration has been actively planning to attack Iran and the generals have been resisting.  Here's Seymour Hersh from April 2006:

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

I have believed for some time that the Bush administration is intent upon attacking Iran because they believe that their unpopularity will be redeemed by history for having taken great, bold steps to transform the middle east. The more Iraq looks like a cock-up of epic proportions that results in nothing more than chaos and death, the less likely it is that their "vision" will come to pass. And so they rely more and more on the "big" thinkers who set us on this path many years ago:  the neoconservatives who cooked up a document for Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu years ago.  A document called "A Clean Break", which many people, including Ambassador Joseph Wilson, have pointed to as the guiding document that took us first into Iraq — and now maybe Iran.

For those of you who may be foggy on the details, I would highly recommend that you read this very interesting neocon primer by Craig Unger in this month's Vanity Fair.  It was, at one time, considered to be crazed moonbat conspiracy mongering to talk about "Clean Break."  Today those of us who were writing about it prior to the Iraq invasion have been vidicated by events.  We were not being hysterical then and we are not hysterical now:

The neoconservatives have had Iran in their sights for more than a decade. On July 8, 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's newly elected prime minister and the leader of its right-wing Likud Party, paid a visit to the neoconservative luminary Richard Perle in Washington, D.C. The subject of their meeting was a policy paper that Perle and other analysts had written for an Israeli-American think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic Political Studies. Titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," the paper contained the kernel of a breathtakingly radical vision for a new Middle East. By waging wars against Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, the paper asserted, Israel and the U.S. could stabilize the region. Later, the neoconservatives argued that this policy could democratize the Middle East.

"It was the beginning of thought," says Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli-American policy expert, who co-signed the paper with her husband, David Wurmser, now a top Middle East adviser to Dick Cheney. Other signers included Perle and Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy during George W. Bush's first term. "It was the seeds of a new vision."

Netanyahu certainly seemed to think so. Two days after meeting with Perle, the prime minister addressed a joint session of Congress with a speech that borrowed from "A Clean Break." He called for the "democratization" of terrorist states in the Middle East and warned that peaceful means might not be sufficient. War might be unavoidable.

Netanyahu also made one significant addition to "A Clean Break." The paper's authors were concerned primarily with Syria and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but Netanyahu saw a greater threat elsewhere. "The most dangerous of these regimes is Iran," he said.

Ten years later, "A Clean Break" looks like nothing less than a playbook for U.S.-Israeli foreign policy during the Bush-Cheney era. Many of the initiatives outlined in the paper have been implemented-removing Saddam from power, setting aside the "land for peace" formula to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon-all with disastrous results.

Nevertheless, neoconservatives still advocate continuing on the path Netanyahu staked out in his speech and taking the fight to Iran. As they see it, the Iraqi debacle is not the product of their failed policies. Rather, it is the result of America's failure to think big. "It's a mess, isn't it?" says Meyrav Wurmser, who now serves as director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute. "My argument has always been that this war is senseless if you don't give it a regional context."

That is the argument that's clearly driving Bush and Cheney today.  They have nothing else. Cheney is melting down on national television.  Bush in his bubble is as detached and oblivious as ever. I believe that we are  at a point where the only things standing between us and the order to attack Iran are the generals. (Forget congress — they can't even pass a toothless resolution against the "surge" in less than a couple of months. The "surge" will have already failed by the time they even stage a uselss protest.)  And that is about the scariest thing, out of many scary things, I've contemplated since the beginning of the Bush administration. We are now in a Strangelovian bizarroworld where we must count on General Buck Turgidson to refuse to follow orders. Holy Moly.

X-posted at FDL.

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General Throws Wrench at Bush’s Iran Propaganda Machine

by tristero

Looks like someone won’t get a Christmas card from Fearless Leader next year. Pity:

A top U.S. general said Tuesday there was no evidence the Iranian government was supplying Iraqi insurgents with highly lethal roadside bombs, apparently contradicting claims by other U.S. military and administration officials.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces hunting down militant networks that produced roadside bombs had arrested Iranians and that some of the material used in the devices were made in Iran.

“That does not translate that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this,” Pace told reporters in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. “What it does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers.”

Now, this didn’t just happen. Something’s afoot and it sounds like the generals are doing everything they possibly can to avoid Bush starting an utterly catastrophic war with Iran.

To say the least, the Bush presidency has provided an occasion for strange bedfellows. An American right wing lunatic, Dinesh D’Sousa, all but comes out and says that bin Laden had the right idea to attack the corrupt, materialistic, America. And the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs may be marching with the rest of us in the reality-based community at the next protest rally.

On second thought, these bedfellows aren’t so strange after all. The kind of fanatical Islamism that bin Laden’s all about is at its heart a totalitarian doctrine, so it stands to reason it would appeal to America’s anti-liberal fascists. And it also stands to reason that a truly professional military commander knows better than to go marching off to war for no fucking reason at all.

War Tax

by digby

This is blasphemy hereabouts, but I have to agree with BC over at Cliff Schecter’s place: I support Joe Lieberman. Yes, I know this is a shock, and many of you must be thinking I’ve lost my mind. But when Holy Joe is right about something(a most unusual event), he’s right. Even if he doesn’t know it:

I want him to propose his “war tax” on the floor of the Senate.

I wrote a few days ago that Democrats need to make Republicans take tough votes, and none would be tougher than a vote on a war tax. Republicans would either have to vote to increase taxes (you might not have heard this, but Republicans generally don’t like to raise taxes) or they would have to vote against funding for the troops. They would have to choose between their so-called ethos or their b.s., Hannityesque flag waving rhetoric. Basically, a damned if you do (unless you’re Ted Haggard) or damned if you don’t scenario for the Repubs.

I would take it even further than BC recommends. I’d say:

“The working people of America have done all that was asked of them to support the troops. While struggling to keep up financially they sent their sons and daughters overseas when the president called. The wealthy, however, have not stepped up. They have benefitted from massive Republican tax cuts during a time that our troops have made do with inferior body armor and their families have had to apply for food stamps. It’s time to ask them to finally do their part to help pay for the war. It’s the patriotic thing to do.”

Make the Republicans defend their tax cuts for the wealthy as opposed to funding the troops. (Of course that requires that Democrats be willing to offend their rich contributors too…)

The truth is that we have no idea how much money has been thrown into the Iraq moneypit and there has been virtually no discussion of how this country is expected to pay for it. Politicians and pundits act as if this is some sort of taboo subject. We can have debates about torture but we can’t talk about the fact that this war is creating a massive debt while Paris Hilton and her friends party like it’s 1999. At dinner tables all over the country this topic is being discussed. It’s only in the halls of government that mentioning the cost of this endeavor is considered politically incorrect.

Obviously, it’s a fantasy that Joe Lieberman would actually take such as resolution to the floor. He’s much too beholden to his neocon brethren to take such a stand now. But it would be delicious if someone did it and used his speech as the basis for his or her argument.

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Rules For Scandal

by digby

Matt Yglesias writes:

But insofar as we’re talking about ideology, we should be clear. Clinton, like her husband, is both hated by the right and treated unfairly by the press and a not very liberal politician, coming from the party’s more centrist wing and flanked by advisors from the same. In a general election, she’d clearly be the progressive choice against Giuliani, McCain, Romney, etc. but is clearly the less progressive choice vis-a-vis Edwards and Obama. I don’t think the fact that she’s mistreated by the press should distract people from this basic point.

That’s true and I can’t argue with it. And his analysis about the liberal positioning of the candidates seems right to me too, a fact which we must keep in mind as we begin to engage the substance of the primary race.

But neither should we ever forget that Clinton Rules apply to all Democrats if they become a threat and, therefore, they should be fought wherever we find it. Nobody can say that the Clinton Rules weren’t in effect against Gore and Kerry too. (Hint: it’s the trivial tabloid smearing and breathless psycho-sexual armchair analysis that’s the tip-off.)

The Rules are named for the Clintons because they were the first successful, high profile baby boomer Democratic leaders to hold high office and so were the first to be subject to it. But if it hadn’t been them it would have been someone else because they developed less because of the politicians than because of changes in the media landscape. Although the Democratic narrative was cooked up a long time ago it was during the Clinton years the right wing noise machine learned how to feed a new generation of ratings hungry, 24/7 news media the nasty little tid-bits that allow them to cover politics like celebrity gossip.

Primary season is always a test for Democrats who are tempted to take advantage when the media uses it against a primary opponent. You can certainly understand that — it’s human nature and people are in it to win. But I think it’s a big mistake. That is not to say that they shouldn’t fight hard for the nomination. But there is a difference between using the media to regurgitate patented rightwing cant and employing legitimate tough politics.

Democrats should hang together on this one issue. They’ll all benefit in the long run. As a blogger, I’m going to continue to call out the media when they do this regardless of my personal feelings about the candidate. Until this cycle is broken all Democrats are going to be subject to the trivialization, character smears and biased coverage that comes with a shallow, sophomoric political press in a Republican establishment town.

Update: I should make clear that I’m not chastising Yglesias here. He was making a separate point, which is eminently reasonable.

Update II: Here’s Eric Boehlert with an anatomy of a patented Clinton Rules smear job.

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Lincoln Update

The old daguerreotype didn’t sell, so it would appear the smart money doesn’t believe its subject can be adequately authenticated. For those interested, there were nice discussions at Amanda’s place, and Melissa’s too.

I still believe the photo is Lincoln. Many agreed, but many also believed the opposite, some of them declaring with certainty that it is not him. To them I would say that with the known information, it is just as impossible to definitively prove it isn’t Lincoln as it is to prove that it is. Maybe someday more information will surface to tip the evidence one way or the other.

UPDATE: Check out roberto’s latest effort with regard to the alignment of Lincoln’s eyes and the overlay of one image on top of the other.

Says he:

“I wasn’t sure how valuable that would be — the two sets of eyes being very similar to one another. But it proved to be a fairly interesting exercise.

In order to exactly align the pupils, I had to scale the “fake” Lincoln head and rotate it 4.5% counter clockwise. When the image was overlaid on the body of the real Lincoln, the head appeared as being too small for the body. This disproportion was even more apparent when a Difference blending mode was applied.

So, using the eyes as a rather good comparative measure, I believe Lincoln’s had a rather large head, and certainly a much larger one than that of the fake Lincoln.“

Click on the image to enlarge it.
The results of the experiment can also be seen at roberto’s studio.

Are there other artisan’s out there who can comment on whether the technique roberto used is properly taking into account left-right camera angle, height of camera compared to subject, image distance from camera, head tilt left-right, forward-back, and so forth? What roberto has done seems reasonable to me, but you know how easily I can be snowed. Also, am I getting it wrong that once the head size is adjusted to be the same, and the eyes aligned, the ears line up almost exactly with the authenticated Lincoln?

Scum and Dumber

by poputonian

In January, digby linked to a question Charles Schumer asked: “What are the eight words that will save the Democratic Party?”

In the comments, I said, “Here’s eight words and a number: “Burton was absent for all 19 votes this week,” and linked to this article:

WASHINGTON — Rep. Dan Burton missed all U.S. House action this week, and his office declined to say where the Indianapolis Republican is.

Burton did not participate in any of the 19 floor votes in the House, including votes on measures to cut the interest rate for some student loans and repeal a tax break for oil and gas companies.The House Foreign Relations Committee, on which Burton is a top Republican, held hearings on Iraq and North Korea.

The question of Burton’s whereabouts was answered last evening (scroll down), and for those who asked, Ray Romano was his partner.

Being a U.S. Congressmen isn’t easy. You put your reputation on the line, day after day. You sometimes have to spend as many as three days a week doing your job. You have to live off a paltry salary of just $165,000 a year (not counting bribes).
…
According to IndyStar.com, Burton skipped 19 House votes, including measures to reduce college costs and cut oil industry tax breaks, so he could play in a golf tournament last month in Palm Springs, Calif. Burton also missed hearings on Iraq and North Korea so he could play in the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic with big-time celebrities like Ray Romano.

At the risk of sounding absolutely disgusting, I have to say that Burton is SCUM.

But, really, Burton’s almost nothing compared to the dumber Representative who got left behind, Eric Cantor (R-Nutball-VA):

MATTHEWS: How many wars are we going to have to fight in our lifetime? You want to go to war with Iran now?

CANTOR: I’m not saying we should take anything off the table.

MATTHEWS: Do you think we should go to war with Iran?

CANTOR: I don’t think that’s responsible for to us take that option off the table right now.

MATTHEWS: I’m asking you, do you think we should go to war? Yes or no?

CANTOR: I think all options including the military option should be left on the table.

MATTHEWS: This isn’t an option question. This isn’t multiple choice.

Right now, February 8, 2007, do you believe we should go to war with Iran?

CANTOR: I’ll leave that decision up to the commanders on the ground and those in our military …

Matthews is visibly taken aback.

MATTHEWS [straining]: Commanders on the ground … whether we go to war with another country?

CANTOR: I will leave the decisions in the military arena to — this is exactly the point.

MATTHEWS: This is Barry Goldwater talking. He used to say that.

Regional commanders can decide whether we want it use nuclear weapons. You’re obviously saying soldiers should decide which country to go to war with.

CANTOR: I’m here to say the military experts are those which might come up with the recommendation to the commander in chief that makes the decision. It is silly for us to expect.

MATTHEWS: I’m not talking – I just asked you a very simple question.

CANTOR: We’re going 535 commanders in chief –

Matthews is incredulous … Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) tries to spoon-feed the answer to Cantor:

MATTHEWS: I’ve never heard of anything like this in my life. Never in my life.

ISRAEL: Congress has a constitutional responsibility to decide whether we’re going to war or not. That’s what we’re elected to do. Those are the debates we should have.

CANTOR: Every president since –

MATTHEWS: The idea of declaring war as a soldier is unimaginable.

We’ll be right back to talk HARDBALL with the two congressmen.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. We’re back with Republican Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia and Democratic Congressman Steve Israel of New York.

Let me ask you Congressman Cantor, very clearly, to clear up our discussion, if the U.S. Congress were to discuss tomorrow morning whether to declare war on Iran, would you vote yay?

CANTOR: This congress is not going to do that because it’s the commander in chief’s role, Chris, and Steve knows that as well. It’s not Congress that will ask for that. It is the commander in chief that will make that decision. Every president whether republican or Republican or Democrat since the War Powers Act was in place has interpreted it as being the commander in chief’s role to do that.

MATTHEWS: Would you support the president if he declared war in Iran tomorrow morning? As things are right now.

CANTOR: I will support what is in the best interest of securing this homeland and providing our troops with what they need and if there is a threat on the ground in Iraq and in the region that our troops need us, I will support them and that’s exactly the point on this Iraqi resolution because the Democrats want to have their cake and eat it, too. This is a nonbinding resolution. It’s a sense of Congress. It doesn’t mean anything. In fact it pollutes the message and sends the wrong message to our troops.

MATTHEWS: Congressman Israel, what’s the role of Congress in war and peace?

ISRAEL: Congress under the Constitution of the United States authorizes war. The War Powers Act requires Congress to vote on whether we should insert troops into hostile situations. The law is clear.

CANTOR: Absolutely not.

ISRAEL: Come on, Eric.

CANTOR: As a commander in chief the constitution gives –

MATTHEWS: Congressman Cantor, why did the president ask for approval of Congress before he went to Iraq?

CANTOR: I certainly think his counsel gave him guidance why he need to do that but the Constitution gives the commander in chief the right to send our troops into battle.

MATTHEWS: Maybe when it comes to war we don’t need a Congress according to that.

$165k each year, and for life after they retire. I can’t wait to hear how pooter2x4 rationalizes on behalf of this pair of Republican nutballs.UPDATE: C & L has the dumber episode on video.

Tort Reform Fever

by digby

K-Drum writes about a colleague’s new book regarding the conservative tort reform crusade. Conservative hostility to liability laws has always been around, but “tort reform” as we know it was evidently one of those Grover Norquist specials where he rightly observed that trial lawyers tended to be Democratic contributors so going after them hard was a neat political two-fer.

But I’ve noticed for several election cycles now that Republican crowds go completely nuts whenever a candidate says the words “tort reform.” It’s always struck me as completely bizarre that they would have such an emotional reaction to such a dry issue. Does anyone know if it’s got some dogwhistle quality that I’m missing? Or is it just a recognizable applause line that mindless Republican robots get hysterical over without having a clue as to what it really means?

edited for clarity
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