Daily Kos

You can't can't make this stuff up:

Earlier this year, Rhode Island House Minority Leader Robert A. Watson (R) garnered attention when he made insensitive remarks about the General Assembly’s work at a meeting of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. Watson stated, “I suppose if you’re a gay man from Guatemala who gambles and smokes pot, you probably think that we’re onto some good ideas here.” He was quickly forced to apologize.

Yet last Friday Watson’s bigoted comment took an ironic twist. The state lawmaker was pulled over at a routine police checkpoint in East Haven, Connecticut. Police quickly arrested him when he appeared to be driving under the influence and possessing marijuana.

I wonder what shoe will be next to drop. After all, he's already one for four.

Want to pile on the backlash Republicans are feeling at town hall events for their vote to privatize and slash Medicare? MoveOn has created a page where members of the Daily Kos community can search for Republican town hall events near them, and RSVP to attend. The number of events on the list is growing, so keep checking back to see if there are any near you.

* * * *

Remember those town hall events in August of 2009 where tea party activists created extremely hostile atmospheres, scaring the bejesus out of Democratic members of Congress on health reform? Well, after voting to privatize and slash Medicare, there are stirrings of a similar backlash against Republicans in Congress.

Paul Ryan has been booed:

Pennsylvania Freshman Lou Barletta is having a rough time:

At Barletta’s town hall, there were indications that the spending votes could become the defining debate for his first term in Congress. Early in the meeting, a man critical of the tax cuts in Ryan’s plan had to be escorted from the smokey, faded banquet hall by police. A woman interrupted the congressman’s presentation several times to question or criticize him. One retired veteran repeatedly demanded to know why Barletta had voted to cut veteran’s benefits, despite his repeated insistence that he hadn’t taken any such vote.

Charlie Bass in New Hampshire, too:

Rep. Charlie Bass knew he was in for a rough night. The first question out of the gate during his Wednesday town hall in Hillsborough, NH was about his vote for Paul Ryan's budget. And the second. And the third and the fourth, fifth and sixth questions.

And Bob Dold in Illinois:

But Dold couldn’t even get to the end of the presentation before audience members began peppering him with questions about the Ryan budget, named after House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin. It began with audience members telling Dold they don’t believe chopping 10 percentage points off the highest corporate tax rate will create jobs. A handful of people in the audience identified themselves as business owners and accountants who said their effective corporate income tax rate is already lower than the lowest rates proposed in the Ryan plan. They pointed to companies such as GE that pay almost no taxes despite billions in profits as evidence.

In Wisconsin, freshman Sean Duffy got so flustered he told dissenters they could have their own town hall:

CONSTITUENT: This is about fraud and abuse. You see these things happen all over the country. They’re talking about money into Medicare fraud enforcement. 60 minutes did a huge story, billions into Medicare fraud annually.

DUFFY: Let me tell you what. When you have your town hall you can stand up and give your presentation.

Here's the video of Duffy:

Overall, House Republicans are spooked enough that they are regrouping to try and come up with new strategies tomorrow:

Anxiety is rising among some Republicans over the party’s embrace of a plan to overhaul Medicare, with GOP lawmakers already starting to face tough questions on the issue at town hall meetings back in their districts.

House leaders have scheduled a Tuesday conference call in which members are expected in part to discuss strategies for defending the vote they took this month on a budget that would transform the popular entitlement program as part of a plan to cut trillions in federal spending.

As Republicans are trying to regroup, let's pile on. Go check out the page MoveOn created where members of the Daily Kos community can search for Republican town hall events near them, and RSVP to attend. If there are no events near you yet, conduct a search wider than 30 miles and keep checking back in as the list of events grows.

Just announced:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour announced Monday that he will not seek the presidency in 2012, a surprise move sure to send ripples through the evolving Republican field.

In a statement released Monday afternoon, he suggested that he didn’t have “the fire in the belly” to run for the White House, despite having staffing in place in early primary states and a national fundraising network.

"I will not be a candidate for president next year. This has been a difficult, personal decision, and I am very grateful to my family for their total support of my going forward, had that been what I decided,” he said.

Personally, I never saw a path to victory for Barbour, not with his his love for the Confederate flag and his long history as a lobbyist. But for a while, I had imagined that Barbour had conned himself into thinking he could win. I guess reality - namely, the reality that he'd be trading a cushy retirement for the rigors of the campaign trail with a limited chance at winning - won out.

Now speculation will turn to who else in the GOP field Barbour's absence benefits most. Is it Mike Huckabee, who probably has the greatest regional appeal in the South? Tim Pawlenty, who, like Barbour, has managed to fool the Beltway into thinking he's "reasonable"? Someone else entirely? Please share your best guesses in comments.

Mitt Romney actually said this*:

Barack Obama is facing a financial emergency on a grander scale. Yet his approach has been to engage in one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history.

Peacetime? What the hell? Where has he been for the past ten years? I mean, it's one thing to criticize fiscal policies, but to be so out of touch that he doesn't know we're at war is simply mind-blowing.

Perhaps we should be at peace. It certainly would make sense financially. We could save incredible amounts of money by reducing military spending in Afghanistan and Iraq. And just think of all the money we'd have saved if we hadn't spent the last decade fighting those two wars.

But we're not at peace. We're at war. And even though it might not impact Mitt Romney's personal life, it's real. Given that he wants to be commander in chief, it's not too much to ask of him to be aware of that fact.

^{* To be more precise, he wrote it. This wasn't some off-the-cuff slip. It was in an op-ed in the Manchester Union Leader.}

• A drumbeat that every elected Democrat should be pounding:
  

  In a significant escalation of the progressive campaign to make Republicans pay a political price for voting to end Medicare, the progressive advocacy group Americans United for Change will run broadcast TV ads in the districts of Reps. Steve King (R-IA), Sean Duffy (R-WI), Chip Cravaack (R-MN), and Paul Ryan (R-WI).

• Former Senator Rick Santorum apparently thinks that ending health care reform is worth any cost:
  

  SANTORUM: [The health care law] is a program that if the president wants to defend, he should stand up and say the 2012 election is about Obamacare. We’ll put this on hold, and make it a referendum on Obamacare.

  WALLACE: Well ok that’s 2012, but you’re saying you’d let the country go into default on this issue.

  SANTORUM: No I think the president would let this country go into default on this issue.

  WALLACE: But you would make that the condition — you’d make that the price?

  SANTORUM: Absolutely. Absolutely.

• A very serious candidate:
  

  Donald Trump says he's considering running in the primary for the Republican presidential nomination, but the real estate mogul didn't vote in primary elections for more than two decades, according to the New York City Board of Elections.

  The possible GOP candidate voted in a primary election in the 1989 New York City mayor's race - when Rudy Giuliani beat businessman Ronald Lauder - then didn't vote in a primary for 21 years, board spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez said Saturday. The report on Trump's voting record initially appeared on TV station NY1 a day earlier.

• How will Haley Barbour's drawl play in Peoria?
  

  He is not like them. And the breakfast crowd at Chez Vachon knows it the instant Haley Barbour opens his mouth. It’s not that they haven’t met Southern politicians before. Or that they don’t recognize the oddly shaped pin on his lapel as the state of Mississippi. The people of New Hampshire have been courted by politicians of all shapes and sizes over the years. It’s just that very few of them have encountered an accent quite like this.

  “I noticed it, absolutely. You notice it,” said Jim Waddell, a state Representative from Hampton. He’s a one-time jogging partner of President Bill Clinton and recently shared breakfast here with Barbour. “Some people might say, ‘Ah, that’s phony, or that’s not real, or that’s hickish, or that’s redneckish.’ But I don’t feel that way. ... From my own point of view, I love a Southern accent and I love the way they use a lot of expressions in it. It’s lively.”

  It may be lively, but the question is whether Barbour’s profound drawl will hurt his campaign to win over voters in the nation’s first presidential primary. The consensus on the trail this month was that the Mississippi native could be a hard sell in a Northern city set nearly 1,500 miles -— and a world away, culturally — from the governor’s mansion in Jackson.

• Republicans are finding out that slashing education spending is about as popular as ending Medicare:
  

  Angry residents confronted Republican state Sen. Tom Casperson at a town hall last week over his support for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) proposed budget, which — like those of many other GOP governors — would slash funding for education while cutting corporate taxes. Snyder’s budget would cut spending on education by $471 per student and reduce teachers’ pay and benefits. Yet while students and teachers are asked to sacrifice, Snyder’s budget would give huge tax breaks to businesses in the form of a flat 6 percent corporate tax rate.

  At Casperson’s town hall in Marquette, Ishpeming school board member Mike Flynn joined numerous other constituents in speaking out against the cuts. Flynn said his district is already struggling to make ends meet, having shut down its middle school, laid off teachers and staff, and privatized its bus and custodial services. Flynn asked those in attendance to stand if the oppose education cuts. “Nearly everyone in the room jumped to their feet while cheering and clapping,” the Maquette Mining Journal reported.

  Casperson responded that he was trying to minimize the impact on education, but that cuts are necessary. “What about a higher business tax?” one constituent shouted, met with cries of “yes!” from other attendees and a chorus of applause.

• Chuck Norris, trading in on his fading celebrity, has been peddling anti-Muslim talking points that he's plagiarizing from right-wing sources.
• In case you missed this earlier:
  

  The Supreme Court has denied Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s petition to hear Virginia's lawsuit against the health care overhaul immediately. The order was released Monday without explanation.

• Things continue to go swimmingly in Afghanistan:
  

  The Taliban staged an audacious prison break here early Monday, freeing at least 476 political prisoners through a long tunnel, according to the warden, Gen. Ghulam Dastagir Mayar.

  He said that security authorities had discovered in the morning that the prisoners from the political wing of the building were gone, and that the authorities had just found the tunnel. “We do not know if the tunnel was dug from outside or inside the prison,” he said.

• Moron:
  

  Televangelist Franklin Graham suggested he was unsure about whether President Obama was American, saying on ABC’s This Week yesterday that potential presidential candidate Donald Trump “may be right.” Graham went on to praise Trump and implied that he may end up endorsing the real estate mogul.

• Class:

  Sheen said that he and his wife were fighting a lot at the time and that he was several hours late to dinner at Mar-a-Lago, a place he said "looks like a cheap set." He said Trump wanted to cheer him up, so he gave him what he thought was a pair of platinum and diamond Harry Winston cuff links valued at more than $100,000.

  Sheen said Trump kept complimenting his Patek Phillipe watch too, but Sheen pointed out he wasn't going to give his watch to a "billionaire," noting, "He could buy the company!"

  Long story short: A few months later, as Sheen and his wife were divorcing and lawyers were divvying up the wealth, they had the gift cuff links appraised. They weren't Harry Winstons, it turns out. They weren't platinum. They weren't gold either. And those diamonds? Cubic zirconium. He said the cuff links appraised for about 60 bucks.

  And they say Sheen is the crazy one?

Via ThinkPogress, the nation's five biggest oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell—are feeling no pain, despite the ongoing economic doldrums.

Booming crude-oil prices and improved refining profits are poised to put a firecracker under Big Oil's first-quarter earnings and set the stage for a year that could come close to rivaling the industry's record year in 2008.

First-quarter crude prices averaged about $100 a barrel, or about 20% higher than a year ago, pushed upward by oil-supply concerns due to political unrest in the Arab World and a recovering global economy. That spike is expected to lift earnings by about 50% at Exxon Mobil Corp., and about 33% each at Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips, compared with a year earlier.

Just as a reminder, last month the House GOP voted unanimously to protect taxpayer-funded subsidies to big oil. All of the belt tightening, you see, has to be done by Medicaid and Medicare recipients, not by those poor beleaguered oil company execs.

As further reminder, this:

Remember that as you're shelling out $4/gallon.

Tom Coburn, a member of the Senate's Gang of Six, yesterday on Meet the Press:

MR. GREGORY:  Could you support a deal here, out of this Gang of Six, on the budget that includes tax increases?

SEN. COBURN:  Well, we're not talking about it.  I think if you go back and look at the commission's report, what we were talking about is getting significant dynamic effects by taking away tax credits, lowering the tax rate and having an economic increase that will actually increase the revenues to the federal government. We're not talking about raising tax rates at all. So if, if there's a net effect of tax revenue that would be fine with me.  I experienced that during Reagan's period in 1986.

Note that in this exchange, Coburn does not endorse an effective increase in tax rates—he says they aren't even on the table. His argument is that tax reform would generate more revenue because it would increase economic growth, not because it would eliminate special interest tax breaks.

Now that seems like the sort of magical thinking that conservatives should love, but Coburn is actually getting heat from the right because in the same interview he also said this about the Americans for Tax Reform pledge against raising taxes:

MR. GREGORY:  If taxes end up going up in some capacity, would you not be in violation of that pledge?

SEN. COBURN:  Well, I think which pledge is most important, David, is the pledge to, to uphold your oath to the Constitution of the United States or a pledge from a special interest group who, who claims to speak for all of American conservatives when, when in fact they really don't.

That's a heck of a line, but keep in mind that the guy delivering it just said tax increases aren't on the table. Nonetheless, here's how Grover Norquist, head of the group that wrote the pledge Coburn was talking about, responded:

Coburn said on national TV today that he lied his way into office and will vote to raise taxes if he damn well feels like it, never mind what he promised the citizens of Oklahoma. Sen. Coburn knows perfectly well that the pledge is not to any organization but to the citizens of his state. He lied to them, not to Americans for Tax Reform.

Before this recent television comment, Coburn told me personally in a phone call that he would not vote for a tax increase and repeated his commitment in writing in a public letter to me.

I can see why Norquist would want people to think Coburn was more moderate than him on taxes, but the fact is that Norquist was blasting Coburn for an appearance in which Coburn had just said the Gang of Six wasn't even taling about raising taxes.

Maybe Coburn was lying and plans to support tax increases—he's going to have to if he wants to produce a credible plan—but unless he was, Coburn and Norquist are on the same page. They might have their differences about special interest tax breaks, but on the big question of whether net effective tax increases should be on the table, there is no daylight between them, at least for now. And that's a bad sign if you want to see a long-term fiscal plan anytime soon.

That was fast. To recap, the Department of Justice has decided it will no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in the courts. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to keep the social conservatives happy, Speaker John Boehner announced the House would take up the case, and hired former Bush solicitor general Paul Clement to take it on.

Now it appears that he was a bit hasty in agreeing to take on Boehner's defense of bigotry case.

WASHINGTON -- The law firm King & Spalding announced on Monday that it will not continue to represent the U.S. House of Representatives in defending the Defense of Marriage Act, and the partner who had taken the case announced his resignation.

"Today the firm filed a motion to withdraw from its engagement to represent the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the House of Representatives on the constitutional issues regarding Section III of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act," firm chairman Robert D. Hays, Jr. said in a statement. "Last week we worked diligently through the process required for withdrawal."

“In reviewing this assignment further, I determined that the process used for vetting this engagement was inadequate," he continued. "Ultimately I am responsible for any mistakes that occurred and apologize for the challenges this may have created."

Shortly after the firm announced that it would no longer take the case, former Bush solicitor general Paul Clement, the partner charged with leading the firm's defense, submitted his letter of resignation to Hays, which was passed along to The Huffington Post.

The firm faced intense criticism from the LGBT advocacy groups, particularly over a clause in the contract that barred the firm's employees from engaging in any advocacy "alter or amend" DOMA, stating that "partners and employees who do not perform services pursuant to this Agreement will not engage in lobbying or advocacy for or against any legislation...that would alter or amend in any way the Defense of Marriage Act and is pending before either the U.S. House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate or any committee of either body during the term of the Agreement."

Boehner is likely going to have a hard time finding another firm with the reputation of King & Spaulding willing to take this one on, now that the firm dropped the case like a hot potato. John Aravosis has some good thoughts on that. (See update.)

It will be interesting to see what firm now picks up the bigoted, discriminatory case that puts them on a par with segregationist law firms during the 50s and 60s. Whoever it is, they're going to be facing a civil rights community, gay and straight, that now has tasted blood on this issue. I cannot imagine how the firm that eventually takes this case isn't going to face serious protests during their fall recruitment campaigns on law school campuses. Law students wanting to interview with the firm are going to have to pass picket lines of students yelling "hate" and "bigot." Not to mention, students signing up for interviews who are actually plants who will erupt in protest once the interview begins.

Good luck with that, Mr. Speaker.

Update: Clement is going to continue on with the case, saying "having undertaken the representation, I believe there is no honorable course for me but to complete it."

And Boehner's spokesman reacts.

The Speaker is disappointed in the firm’s decision and its careless disregard for its responsibilities to the House in this constitutional matter. At the same time, Mr. Clement has demonstrated legal integrity, and we are grateful for his decision to continue representing the House. This move will ensure the constitutionality of this law is appropriately determined by the courts, rather than by the President unilaterally.

I have to say, I love this idea:

Senate Democratic aides expect Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to force Senate Republicans to vote on the Paul Ryan budget plan.

Reid hasn’t made a formal decision yet, and won’t until he returns from an overseas trip.

The idea is to drive a wedge through the GOP caucus and put vulnerable incumbents such as Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) in a political jam.

I really hope Reid follows through on this plan, because it could cause a lot of pain for Republicans - and not just this cycle, but further down the road as well. As we noted in the Daily Digest this morning (and as The Hill article mentions, too), Sen. Susan Collins has already put her Maine colleague Olympia Snowe in a bind by coming out in opposition to the Ryan plan. Now Snowe has to decide whether to enrage the teabaggers or risk her standing with independents and Democrats. I'm not sure why Collins felt the need to open her mouth in the first place, but if Reid schedules a vote on Paul Ryan's Medicare-killing budget, then there's no way Snowe can dodge the question.

Moreover, it gives Dems a great opportunity to re-affirm their commitment to Medicare in boldface—and it shows the GOP we have every intention of making their lives utterly miserable for the next two years. Harry Reid should not pass up this chance to play some serious hardball. Make them vote!

The Supreme Court will not take up Virginia's challenge to the Affordable Care Act, so the challenge will have to proceed through the normal federal appeals process.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli asked the court to let the state bypass the normal federal appeals process and take the case directly to the justices. While the court's rules allow for this, such a rapid review is granted only very rarely. The Justice Department opposed the request to put the case on a fast track.

The court's decision means the issue will continue working its way through the federal appeals courts. Several cases are pending, including challenges to the law from Virginia, Florida, and 25 other states.

They claim that the centerpiece of the law -- requiring virtually all Americans to buy health insurance -- is unconstitutional. Two federal judges, in Virginia and Florida, have agreed with the states.

Three other judges, also in Virginia and in Michigan and Washington, DC, have found the law constitutional.

According to this report, no justice was recused, so when the case eventually wends its way to the SCOTUS, all nine justices will hear it. Conservative groups have pushed for Justice Kagan to recuse herself, since she was solicitor general when the law was passed and the challenge filed.

Over at the Center for Progressive Reform, Ben Somberg writes:

It's their favorite figure: $1.75 Trillion. Repeated ad nauseam in congressional hearings by members of congress and expert witnesses alike, it is the supposed annual cost of regulations, this according to a study from last year commissioned by the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy. Sponsors of anti-regulatory legislation like the number: Olympia Snowe and Tom Coburn included it in the 'findings' of their bill, while Geoff Davis, chief sponsor of the REINS Act, cites it regularly. It's been used by John Boehner and Eric Cantor, and House committee chairs Fred Upton, Darrell Issa, Lamar Smith, and Sam Graves. Conservative think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation are fond of it. A few Democrats have gotten in on the act, too: Mark Warner, proponent of his own anti-regulatory plan, has cited it, as has Nydia Velazquez, Ranking Member of the House Small Business Committee.

The SBA-commissioner study by Nicole V. Crain and W. Mark Crain was, it seems, a ready-made tool for the crew who would like to take us back to 1925 on everything.

Just one problem. Their work is riddled with methodological errors and omissions, according to CPR's analysis. But if you're not willing to take the word of an organization with "progressive" in its name, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service has released its own report, Analysis of an Estimate of the Total Costs of Federal Regulations [29-page pdf]. Here's a sample from the summary of what CRS found:

...Crain and Crain’s estimate for economic regulations (which comprises more than 70% of the $1.75 trillion estimate) was developed by using an index of “regulatory quality.” One of the authors of the regulatory quality index said that Crain and Crain misinterpreted and misused the index, resulting in an erroneous and overstated cost estimate. ...

Crain and Crain’s estimates for environmental, occupational safety and health, and homeland security regulations were developed by blending together academic studies (some of which are now more than 30 years old) with agencies’ estimates of regulatory costs that were developed before the rules were issued (some of which are now 20 years old). Although the agency estimates were typically presented as low-to-high ranges, Crain and Crain used only the highest cost estimates in their report. The Office of Management and Budget has said that estimates of the costs and benefits of regulations issued more than 10 years earlier are of “questionable relevance.”  ...

Crain and Crain said they did not provide estimates of the benefits of regulations, even when the information was readily available, because the SBA Office of Advocacy did not ask them to do so. OMB’s reports to Congress have generally indicated that regulatory benefits exceed costs. Crain and Crain said their report was not meant to be a decision-making tool for lawmakers or federal regulatory agencies to use in choosing the “right” level of regulation.

They should be happy. Their report isn't being used as a decision-making tool to pick the right level of regulation. It's being used as propaganda by those whose goal, after you peel away all their boilerplate nonsense about unfair competitive advantage and "voluntary compliance," is to dismantle or defund every regulatory effort the government engages in, from food inspections to safety-on-the-job requirements. And you can rest assured that they will ignore the CRS report's debunking.

Reposted from Comics by Tom Tomorrow

(Click for larger version)