Tag: Politics

From Politico

NBC’s David Gregory said Sunday that not a single pro-gun-rights senator accepted a “Meet The Press” invitation to appear on the show.

“A note here this morning: We reached out to all 31 pro-gun rights senators in the new congress to invite them on the program to share their views on the subject this morning,” he said. “We had no takers.”

One did appear on right wing morning show proffering the inane argument that if the principal had a M4 carbine, an assault rifle designed by the U.S. military for urban warfare, this tragedy could have been prevented. Apparently, he missed the  fact that even well trained law enforcement officers can’t shoot straight under stress often shooting one of their own or innocent civilians and that is only part of the problem with that ridiculous idea. Arming teachers is not a solution but gun rights advocates will still put it out as a solution to avoid discussing better regulation of all fire arms in this country.

Mr. Gregory’s guests were NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Sen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) who said she would introduce gun assault weapons ban legislation on the first day of Congress.

She should also add a provision for mandatory background checks and waiting periods at gun shows; tighter background checks in general and reporting all gun purchases to Department of Homeland Security or the FBI.

Will this be enough to prevent another tragedy like Sandy Hook? Probably not. It won’t take the assault rifles away from their current owners but it will make it harder to get one.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Chris Hayes: Joining Chris will be: Goldie Taylor (@GoldieTaylor), MSNBC contributor; Ezra Klein (@ezraklein), MSNBC Policy Analyst and Washington Post columnist; David Sirota (@davidsirota), Author, “Back to the Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now” and host of KHOW-AM’s “The Rundown with Sirota and Brown;” Jane McAlevey, author of “Building the Labor Movement in Obama’s Second Term;” Sarah Deer, assistant professor at William Mitchell College of Law and Citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma; Akhil Amar, a Yale Law School Sterling Professor of law; and Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore City police officer and assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: “This Week”‘s guests are Gov. Dan Malloy, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Sen.-Elect Chris Murphy, Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra, ABC News Chief Health and Medical Editor Dr. Richard Besser.

Joining the roundtable discussion are  Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), TIME Magazine political columnist Joe Klein, ABC News’ George Will, and Democratic strategist and ABC News contributor Donna Brazile.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Guests are Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), a gun control advocate, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, (R-TX) discuss whether now is the time for a gun control debate on the Hill.

The panel guests are the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence President Dan Gross, LeHigh University’s James Peterson, The Daily Beast‘s David Frum and The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg.

The Chris Matthews Show: The guest schedule was not available for this week.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Appearing on  MTP is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

On the roundtable are Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA); NY Times columnist David Brooks; President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten; Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge; Former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett; and Sociologist Michael Eric Dyson.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: This Sunday Candy Crowley will anchor “State of the Union” from Connecticut.

MSNBC host Chris Hayes and guest discuss what they know since last week began.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial: Death in Connecticut

Each slaughter of innocents seems to get more appalling. A high school. A college campus. A movie theater. People meeting their congresswoman. A shopping mall in Oregon, just this Tuesday. On Friday, an elementary school classroom.  [..]

Mr. Obama said Friday that “we have been through this too many times” and that “we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

When will that day come? It did not come after the 1999 Columbine shooting, or the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, or the murders in Aurora last summer.

The more that we hear about gun control and nothing happens, the less we can believe it will ever come. Certainly, it will not unless Mr. Obama and Congressional leaders show the courage to make it happen.

Joshua Holland: Yes, We Can Have Sane Gun Control Without Trampling Gun Owners’ Rights

The NRA is a problem for sane gun enthusiasts.

The United States is not the only country to experience the horrors of mass shootings. We are, however, the only society in which a serious discussion of tighter gun controls doesn’t follow incidents like the massacres we’ve seen at a Connecticut elementary school on Friday. In fact, in most countries these kinds of tragedies result in some kind of concrete legislative action.

The reason we can’t have a sane, adult discussion of how to cut down on random gun violence is simple: the NRA has hoodwinked a lot of reasonable gun owners into believing that there’s a debate in this country over banning firearms altogether. We’ll never be able to have a serious discussion about how to cut down on gun violence until that group accepts the actual terms of the debate. And the NRA has a vested interest in making sure they remain obscure because the organization represents gun manufacturers and a small, highly ideological minority of gun-nuts, rather than (typically responsible) gun  owners.

The country and the news media was frozen in its tracks yesterday by the tragic murder of 20 very young children and 6 of their teachers at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, CT. However, the world does not stop. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow paused to report just a couple of the top news stories we might have missed.

Obama Notifies Congress He Does Not Know ‘Precise Scope’ or ‘Duration’ of War on Terror Troop Deployments

by Hunter Walker, Politicker

This afternoon, the White House Press Office released a report sent from President Barack Obama to the Speaker of the House and President Pro Tempore of the Senate notifying them “about deployments of U.S. Armed Forces equipped for combat.” In his report, the president said he “will direct additional measures against al-Qa’ida, the Taliban and associated forces,” but said, “it is not possible to know at this time the precise scope or the duration of the deployments of U.S. Armed forces to counter this terrorist threat to the United States.”

This report indicates the White House may not be ready to make any solid commitments about withdrawing the troops that are still fighting Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan. On the campaign trail, President Obama had suggested American forces would depart Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

U.S. to Send 2 Missile Units to Turkey to Deter Syrians

by by Eric Schmitt and Michael R. Gordon, New York Times

WASHINGTON – The United States plans to send two Patriot missile batteries and about 400 military personnel to Turkey to defend against a possible Syrian missile attack, two allied officials said Thursday.

The American batteries will be part of a broader push to beef up Turkey’s defenses that will also include the deployment of four other Patriot batteries – two from Germany and two from the Netherlands.

All six batteries will be under NATO’s command and control, scheduled to be operational by the end of January.

Turkey, which has been supporting the Syrian opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, has been worried it is vulnerable to Syrian missiles, including Scuds that might be tipped with chemical weapons. Those concerns were heightened by reports of increased activity at some of Syria’s chemical sites, though Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said this week that intelligence about chemical weapons activity in Syria had “leveled off.”

CIA Torture Report Approved By Senate Intelligence Committee

by Matt Sledge and Michael McAuliff, Huffington Post

The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 9-6 on Thursday to approve a report on the CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation program that could shed light on the debate over torture. But for now, even as the new movie “Zero Dark Thirty” stirs up public debate about the use of harsh interrogation tactics, declassifying the report to prepare for its release to the public could take months, if not longer.

“The report uncovers startling details about the CIA detention and interrogation program and raises critical questions about intelligence operations and oversight,” Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a statement after the vote. “I strongly believe that the creation of long-term, clandestine ‘black sites’ and the use of so-called ‘enhanced-interrogation techniques’ were terrible mistakes. The majority of the Committee agrees.”

The 6,000-page report, which has been in the works since 2009, focuses on 6 million pages of documents about the CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation tactics, including so-called enhanced interrogation, like waterboarding, which is torture. Republicans on Senate panel boycotted participation in the report’s preparation because, they said, it is based on CIA documents instead of interviews conducted directly with agents.

As negotiations continue between the White House and House Speaker John Boehner, leading economist Dean Baker joins us to discuss the myths about the so-called fiscal cliff. With little more than two weeks before the deadline, President Obama insists on an immediate increase in the top two income-tax rates as a condition for further negotiations on changes to spending and entitlement programs. But Boehner said Washington’s “spending problem” is the biggest roadblock to reaching a deal and has urged the White House to identify more spending cuts. “This idea that, somehow, if we don’t get a deal by the end of the year we’re going to see the economy collapse, go into a recession, really that’s just totally dishonest,” says Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “The basis for this is that we don’t have a deal all year. And the fact that you don’t have a deal December 31st does not mean you don’t get a deal by December 31st, 2013.”

Transcript can be read here.

This past election cycle was made more interesting, not so much for the main event between Pres. Barack Obama and presidential wannabe Mitt Romney but, by the ballot initiatives in Washington and Colorado that legalized the recreational use of marijuana in those states. There are eighteen states and the District of Columbia that have legalized its use for medical purposes and several others in the process of doing the same.

Currently under federal law, marijuana is classified under the Controlled Substances Act as a Schedule I narcotic whose cultivation, distribution, possession and use are criminal acts. Besides the legal ramifications there are the social and economic impacts. Both states are looking into controlling marijuana sales and use the same as they do alcohol, which makes a great deal of sense. In a recent national poll taking by Quinnipaic found that across the entire country 51 percent of American voters think marijuana should be legal and 44 think it should be illegal.

In an interview with ABC News’ Barbara Walters, President Obama said that at this time he does not support legalization of marijuana but needed to find a middle ground on punishing use of the drug. He then punted to congress for the solution:

“This is a tough problem, because Congress has not yet changed the law,” Obama said. “I head up the executive branch; we’re supposed to be carrying out laws. And so what we’re going to need to have is a conversation about, How do you reconcile a federal law that still says marijuana is a federal offense and state laws that say that it’s legal?”

Either the president is unaware or just trying to avoid the responsibility but blaming congress for not changing the law is false, as FDL‘s  Jon Walker at its Just Say Now blog points out, the president has does not need congress to change marijuana status:

With 99 percent of federal laws this would be the case, but the Controlled Substance Act is fairly unique. The law explicitly gives the executive branch the right to change the legal status of any drug without Congressional involvement. If the administration, after examining the latest scientific research, determines that cannabis shouldn’t be Schedule I it has the power to move it to a lower schedule, which would make medical marijuana legal under federal law, or even unschedule it all together, which would effectively legalize it.

Several sitting governors in states with medical marijuana have petitioned Obama asking him to reschedule marijuana, and currently the Obama administration is actually fighting an effort in federal court to get the executive branch to provide a legitimate review of marijuana. There is no reason Obama can’t simply stop fighting the case and reschedule marijuana without needing to involve Congress.

MSNBC host Chris Hayes and his panel guests on his December 2 Up with Chris Hayes talked about how Washington and Colorado are dealing with the result of the ballot measures that legalized marijuana in those states:

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: The G.O.P.’s Existential Crisis

We are not having a debt crisis.

It’s important to make this point, because I keep seeing articles about the “fiscal cliff” that do, in fact, describe it – often in the headline – as a debt crisis. But it isn’t. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its deficit. In fact, its borrowing costs are near historic lows. And even the confrontation over the debt ceiling that looms a few months from now if we do somehow manage to avoid going over the fiscal cliff isn’t really about debt.

No, what we’re having is a political crisis, born of the fact that one of our two great political parties has reached the end of a 30-year road. The modern Republican Party’s grand, radical agenda lies in ruins – but the party doesn’t know how to deal with that failure, and it retains enough power to do immense damage as it strikes out in frustration.

Margaret Kimberley: Susan Rice and American Evil

Why does it matter if Susan Rice serves as secretary of state? That is a trick question, because in fact, it doesn’t matter at all. American foreign policy will be unchanged regardless of who the next secretary may be. The full force of imperialism will be brought to bear against the people of the world under the Obama administration. The democratic president has made real the goals of the neo-con ,Project for a New American Century a 21st century version of Manifest Destiny, the belief that the United States should rule the world and do so with a vengeance.

Rice’s nomination is a non-issue but is treated as an important one for many black people because of the words of right wing racists. The sight of the embittered sore loser John McCain calling Rice “unqualified” and “not very smart” reminds black people of the slights they are personally subjected to in their lives every day. It is especially galling for the insult to come from McCain, the quintessential entitlement baby. He was admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy because his father and grandfather were admirals. The legacy leg up didn’t help much because the mediocre young McCain still graduated at the bottom of his class. McCain’s insistence that the obviously sub-par Sarah Palin was a qualified vice presidential candidate makes the racist slaps at Rice all the more offensive.

This afternoon, United States UN Ambassador Susan Rice withdrew her name from consideration for Secretary of State. Under pressure from GOP Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) over the handling of the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya and deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Amb. Rice, in her letter to Pres. Barack Obama, said that  “the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly – to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities. The tradeoff is simply not worth it to our country.”

The Republicans are pushing for Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to replace Secretary Hillary Clinton when she leaves in January. There has been speculation that the GOP’s opposition to Rice and their support of Kerry, was to facilitate an opening for Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), who was defeated for reelection by Elizabeth Warren, to run for the remaining two years of Kerry’s seat. Who the Democrats would run has not been mentioned. Scott Browns’ problem is that the negative campaign he ran against Ms. Warren is still very fresh in voters minds.

Ms. Rice would hace faced tough questioning from Republican members over, not just Benghazi, but her investments in the Keystone Pipeline and her close relationship with Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame. But what’s not for them to love? She is a bit of a war hawk, pressing the case for military intervention in Libya.

Amb. Rice isn’t exactly going away as she will remain in her position at the UN and in the Obama cabinet.

The Obama administration’s Federal Communications Commission is on the verge of handing media mogul Rupert Murdoch a very nice Christmas present. Murdoch, who already owns Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Fox News Channel, Fox movie studios, 27 local TV stations and more, now wants to purchase the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, that are currently owned by the bankrupt Tribune Company, and a controlling stake in the Yes Network. Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, is about to ease the rules to let him.

We were down this road before during the Bush administration and it was roundly rejected, not only by the public, but by Congress and the courts:

Genachowski’s proposal is essentially indistinguishable from the failed Bush administration policies that millions rallied against in 2003 and 2007. Ninety-nine percent of the public comments received by the FCC opposed lifting these rules when the Republicans tried to do it.

Genachowski’s proposal is nearly identical to the one the Senate voted to overturn with a bipartisan “resolution of disapproval” back in 2008. Among the senators who co-sponsored that rebuke to runaway media concentration were Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

At the time, Obama blasted the FCC for having “failed to further the goals of diversity in the media and promote localism,” saying the agency was in “no position to justify allowing for increased consolidation.” Nothing has changed — except which party controls the White House.

The federal courts have repeatedly — and as recently as 2011 — struck down these same rules, noting the FCC’s failure to “consider the effect of its rules on minority and female ownership.” The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the FCC to study the impact of any rule changes before changing the rules. The FCC has done nothing of the kind.

Yet, the Obama FCC now wants to hand control of the news in a media outlet to one man.

Bill Moyers addressed this issue with Sen. Bernie Sanders on why big media shouldn’t get bigger.

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled a majority of American media. Now that number is six. And Big Media may get even bigger, thanks to the FCC’s consideration of ending a rule preventing companies from owning a newspaper and radio and TV stations in the same big city. Such a move – which they’ve tried in 2003 and 2007 as well -would give these massive media companies free rein to devour more of the competition, control the public message, and also limit diversity across the media landscape. On this week’s Moyers & Company (check local listings), Senator Bernie Sanders, one of several Senators who have written FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski asking him to suspend the plan, joins Bill to discuss why Big Media is a threat to democracy and what citizens can do to fight back.

Sanders also expresses his dismay that such a move would come from an Obama appointee. “Why the Obama Administration is doing something that the Bush Administration failed to do is beyond my understanding,” Sanders tells Bill. “And we’re gonna do everything we can to prevent it from happening.”

FCC May Give Murdoch a Very Merry Christmas

by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Until now, this hasn’t been the best year for media mogul Rupert Murdoch. For one, none of the Republicans who’d been on the payroll of his Fox News Channel – not Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum or Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin – became this year’s GOP nominee for president. [..]

But Murdoch’s luck may be changing. Despite Fox News’ moonlighting as the propaganda ministry of the Republican Party, President Obama’s team may be making it possible for Sir Rupert to increase his power, perversely rewarding the man who did his best to make sure Barack Obama didn’t have a second term. The Federal Communications Commission could be preparing him one big Christmas present, the kind of gift that keeps on giving – unless we all get together and do something about it. [..]

In prior years, the FCC has granted waivers to the rules, but this latest move on their part would be more permanent, allowing a monolithic corporation like News Corp or Disney, Comcast, Viacom, CBS or Time Warner – in any of the top twenty markets – to own newspapers, two TV stations, eight radio stations and even the local Internet provider. [..]

Make your voices heard – write or call Genachowski and the other commissioners – you can find their names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers at the website fcc.gov, or on the “Take Action” page at our website, BillMoyers.com. Write your senators and representatives, too, tell them the FCC must delay this decision and give the public a chance to have its opposition known. We’ve done it before.

Just ask the FCC this basic question: What part of “no” don’t you understand?