Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris talk women in politics (VIDEO)

Watch More Than Two Dozen Women to Take Stage on Day One of DNC on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Sen. Lautenberg and Rep. McCarthy write a really dumb-ass column together...

Here is the actual headline in the piece o' crap Huffington Post today. Mind you, not the headline that makes you click on the story, but the actual headline:

Tell President Obama: Stop the NRA From Making Our Laws.

And the gist of the piece is?

The National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act (H.R. 822) would allow gun owners to carry a concealed firearm across state lines even if they weren't issued a permit by that state. That means Texas Governor Rick Perry could decide who can carry a concealed weapon in your state -- even if they have a criminal record that your state would consider a barrier to owning a gun.

This gun industry bill recently passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, with a little bit of Democratic help as well.

Americans of conscience who believe in protecting public safety should join us in asking President Obama to issue a veto threat to this ridiculous bill now, before it goes even further in Congress.

We have a petition, at www.StopHR822.com, to send President Obama a strong message from regular Americans across the nation that we will not let the gun manufacturers make laws that benefit them at the risk of public safety.

Click here immediately to call on President Obama to veto H.R. 822 -- we can't let this bill go any further.

Uhhh, excuse me Senator Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey...and Congresswoman McCarthy, Democrat of New York.

It strikes me you really should be going after to the people who would actually helped pass (and thus stop) said legislation.

Oh yeah...THEY WOULD BE CALLED SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES!!!

Look, these are two of the good guys when it comes to Gun Control. But it strikes me that people who are in a position to actually do something about bad legislation in its tracks have real nerve demanding President Obama do their damn job for them.


McCarthy is outnumbered.  She's got an excuse.  But in case you've forgotten, Senator...this hasn't passed the Senate yet, and there are things you yourself can do to stop this thing from happening.  You work within the single most dysfunctional branch of Government.  A Single Senator has the ability to grind any piece of legislation to a halt.  So how about putting a hold on the legislation?  How about organizing a filibuster?


How about you do your damn job before you go bitching to President Obama.

Bob Shrum explains what happened in the New York 9th Special Election...

Is THIS what it comes down to?  Me agreeing with Bob Shrum??!?  (BOB SHRUM for pity's sake!!!)

The GOP reaction was predictable: This was a referendum on Obama and a portent of doom in 2012. After all, here was the first Republican elected from this district since 1923. (Actually, that's a sloppy factoid, echoed in the media, to make it easy to blame Obama first; it's a fact in the Brooklyn rump of the district, but not in Queens, the district's predominant swath, where Forest Hills and other neighborhoods sent Republican Seymour Halpern to Congress in the 1960s and 1970s.)

Al Smith, the master of the sidewalks of New York, in a characteristic phrase, might have called the Democrat in this special election "a bum." At the least, David Weprin was a bumbler. He confidently offered up a figure on the national debt; he was off by 10 trillion (with a 'T') dollars. He skipped out of a debate, citing the threat of Hurricane Irene; the storm had already passed. He didn't go on the attack until it was too late; he never brought Gov. Andrew Cuomo into a district where he is overwhelmingly popular.

James Carville would have the president play a hasty game of musical chairs that would turn Obama's ship of state into the Titanic.

Weprin fled any identification with the president after former New York Mayor Ed Koch urged voters to retaliate against Obama's Mideast policy by rallying to the Right. Koch, whom I was proud to help defeat for re-election in 1989, has a record of exploiting ethnic tensions and turning on his own party. He race-baited Jesse Jackson in the 1988 presidential primary — and in the past, he's endorsed Rudolph Giuliani, the state's last Republican senator (Alfonse D'Amato), and George W. Bush.

Never mind that Weprin is an Orthodox Jew, an undeviating rubber stamp for Israeli policies, with relatives living in that country. And never mind that Obama's position is the same as Bush's, Bill Clinton's, and the peace deal Israel offered in 2000 and 2001 — a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with agreed land swaps. And never mind that as Israel's self-ordained champion, Koch in reality endangers the increasingly isolated Jewish state with his knee-jerk support of a Netanyahu regime that subordinates the strategic imperatives of national survival to the political survival of his own extremist-infested coalition. To cite Abba Eban's famous phrase, it's now Netanyahu who "never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity" — say, to avert a dangerous break with Turkey — and there are "friends" of Israel like Koch who are there with him every lurch of the way.

Koch undoubtedly hurt Weprin; but there's little doubt that other, stronger Democrats — including former District Attorney and Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman — would have won anyway. But Democratic bosses outsmarted, or more accurately, out-dumbed themselves by ruling out a primary in favor of picking a patsy who would compliantly disappear after redistricting eliminated one of New York City's congressional seats. They got the patsy they wanted, only he inconveniently disappeared 14 months early.

Randi Rhodes said all of this on her show like on...Wednesday.

Lawrence O'Donnell's interview with Sen. Chuck Schumer (VIDEO)

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"We mean what we say..." (VIDEO)

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Busy Night Last Night (Part 3: Anthony Weiner calls bull@#$% on Dennis Kucinich) (VIDEO)

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For the record, I too, have called bull@#$% on Dennis Kucinich before.

TPM: Sorry, this is why I don't like or trust Michael Bloomberg...

Too full of himself, if you ask me.  Now, this:

Two years ago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg had the city's term limits law extended so he could run for a third term, but now he says he supports a ballot measure to set it back to two terms.

After Bloomberg abandoned the idea of running for U.S. president in 2008, he persuaded the City Council to extend the term limits law, arguing the city needed him to stay on to get through the national financial crisis. He promised he'd convene a charter commission to put the question before voters again.

Voters get that chance Nov. 2. The ballot question asks whether to amend the city's charter to two terms; if voters check "yes," the law will be changed back to a limit of two consecutive four-year terms, and if they reject it, the three-term law will stand.

The billionaire mayor, who founded the financial information company Bloomberg LP, was asked Monday which way he would vote.

"I'm voting to restore it," he said.

Bloomberg, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent, didn't explain his reasons, but spokesman Stu Loeser said the mayor always supported three terms just for himself and officeholders at the time because the economic recession was an extraordinary circumstance.

Go ahead, New York. I dare ya.

You ever get to the point where you actually start hoping these wingnut, racist, hypocrite Tea Baggers actually get elected so that they get to inflict their sociopathic selves on the people who voted them in?

Me neither.

D.W.M. (There and back again, Edition)

Maybe cab-attacker Michael Enright was who we thought he was all along.

According to the New York Daily News (via TPM):

When he was arrested Tuesday in midtown, Enright had a personal diary filled with pages of "pretty strong anti-Muslim comments," a police source said.

The source said Enright's journal equated Muslims with "killers, ungrateful for the help they were being offered, filthy murderers without a conscience."

And check out the picture of himself he posted on Facebook.

Yeah, I wanna be his friend...and I take back what I said yesterday.

Let's be honest, posing with a pump-action shotgun, rockin' it like you're playing Guitar Hero doesn't make you're crazy.  But couple this photo after you've tried to throat slash a New York Cabbie???

D.W.M., continued (More weirdness)

According to TPM, the Driving While Muslim story keeps getting weirder and weirder...

Michael Enright is a film student at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and has been working with the Intersection International, an interfaith and multicultural effort which seeks to promote justice and peace. The project's website is strongly supportive of the Cordoba House project in lower Manhattan and videos of its leader, Imam Faisel Rauf, are posted on their website.

The 21-year-old aspiring filmmaker had been to Afghanistan recently, working on a documentary on a Marine unit his high school buddy served with. His earlier efforts to embed with his friend were the subject of a profile in the local paper.

The documentary he was working on was "completely nonpolitical," Enright told the newspaper. "It's just showing the young people who are spearheading our foreign policy. They're doing what I don't have to do."

Enright told police he had been working with an Internet media company and had recently spent time with a combat unit in Afghanistan filming military exercises according to The New York Post.

A former high school classmate of Enright's, speaking to TPMMuckraker on background, expressed shock about the crime and spent the morning eliminating electronic footprints that connected the two. "It's just disgusting, sad, horrific," he said, adding that, like the group Enright was working with, he supports the Cordoba Project.

You gotta figure that something about Enright was chemically amiss. If he really had truck against Muslims (like say an Cordoba House basher), he had ample opportunity to get stabby in Afghanistan (or maybe he was worried about being outnumbered).

Still, at the very least, this is a person skilled in dealing with Muslims on a daily basis on their home turf. What sets him off her? Either strong drink or a chemical inbalance of another kind, which is going to require a Doctor's help.

D.W.M.

As if New York City wasn't dangerous enough...

I got this from TPM. It looks like the Cabbie is alive (enough to make a statement to the press), and New York City Police are treating this as a hate crime. (I'll set aside how ironic that statement is).

Howard Dean, defiantly wrong.

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I'm glad former Governor Howard Dean went on Keith last night. Too many people hide from the cameras when a controversy breaks out, so kudos to him for getting out there.

Still, his position on Park51 remains ridiculous, indefensible, and frankly a little racist.

I hate to be brutal about it, but the in the scheme of things, the pain, the tragedy, the suffering of the 9/11 families, does not matter.  I'm not dismissing their pain, I'm saying that their pain cannot be allowed to trump our Constitution.

More to the point, to maintain a position that says that a Muslim Community Center is disrespectful, you have to believe that Muslims genetically predisposed to being terrorists. Now, Howard Dean says (over and over again) that he doesn't believe that, but then why justify this belief by giving into it?

This is the same damn argument that was dropped on Civil Rights Protesters.  Progress is coming, but you have to be patient.  This is, in effect, Howard Dean's argument to America's Islamic Citizens.  But as Thurgood Marshall said (at the time), "the Emancipation Proclamation was signed 90 years ago, I think Black Americans have been plenty paitent."

Either the First Amendment is going to apply to all of us, or it applies to none of us.

UPDATE: Saturday Aug. 21: Somehow the guy who once wrote a Screenplay about Thurgood Marshall thought the 90 years quote ws said by Martin Luther King. My utter bad.

Howard Dean's lowest moment.

Oh, Jesus (ironically enough).

I've gotta believe there has to be a compromise here. This isn't about the right of Muslims to have a worship center, or Jews or Christians or anybody else to have a place to worship, or any place around Ground Zero. This is something we ought to be able to work out with people of good faith. And we have to understand that it is a real affront to people who've lost their lives -- including Muslims. That site doesn't belong to any particular religion, it belongs to all Americans and all faiths. So I think a good, reasonable compromise could be worked out, without violating the principle that people ought to be able to worship as they see fit.

Yeah, I gotta go with Keith on this one. What has happened to his man since he left the DNC?  First the Bill-Killer crap, now this.

Josh Marshall went on with some points of his own:

I mean, what's so humorous about Dean's sweating the pain of Muslim 9/11 victim families who are going to be offended about a Muslim community center being built is that I really don't get a clear sense that Dean has any idea what's even being discussed. Does he know it's not at Ground Zero? It's almost like he piled on some 'Muslims are Americans too' and 9/11, 9/11 and the rest and just let his mouth run for a minutes.

Late Please Make It Stop It's Too Painful Update: Sam Stein at Huffpo rung up Dean to see if he wanted to revise and extend his remarks and Sam basically ended up giving the good doctor another chance to demonstrate that he apparently doesn't know anything about what's going on. Dean says the Cordoba House proponents are being inflexible. And maybe they are. But he also makes clear that he takes "the congregation at its word that it is a moderate congregation trying to heal the wounds of 9/11." Only there's no congregation. It's a investment group (Soho Properties) and a Muslim non-profit (the Cordoba Initiative) trying put this together. Ahh, never mind. But he does point out that "best way to heal the wounds is not to have a court battle, but to sit down and try to work things out." Good point, only there's no Court battle. It's done. They got the approval. Maybe someone will get Mayor Bloomberg ginned up about Muslim plot to make us all eat Halal food. But there's no court battle.

Doing your homework. What a concept ...

"This is America..." (VIDEO)

From the President's prepared remarks:

As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure.

We must never forget those who we lost so tragically on 9/11, and we must always honor those who led the response to that attack -– from the firefighters who charged up smoke-filled staircases, to our troops who are serving in Afghanistan today. And let us also remember who we’re fighting against, and what we’re fighting for. Our enemies respect no religious freedom. Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam -– it’s a gross distortion of Islam. These are not religious leaders -– they’re terrorists who murder innocent men and women and children. In fact, al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion -– and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.

So that's who we’re fighting against. And the reason that we will win this fight is not simply the strength of our arms -– it is the strength of our values. The democracy that we uphold. The freedoms that we cherish. The laws that we apply without regard to race, or religion, or wealth, or status. Our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect towards those who are different from us –- and that way of life, that quintessentially American creed, stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on that September morning, and who continue to plot against us today.

Greg Sargent:

A few quick thoughts about Obama's forceful speech yesterday expressing strong support for Cordoba House, which will go down as one of the finest moments of his presidency.

Obama didn't just stand up for the legal right of the group to build the Islamic center. He voiced powerful support for their moral right to do so as well, casting it as central to American identity. This is a critical point, and it goes to the the essence of why his speech was so commendable.

Many opponents of the project have been employing a clever little dodge. They say they don't question the group's legal right to build it under the Constitution. Rather, they say, they're merely criticizing the group's decision to do so, on the grounds that it's insensitive to 9/11 families and will undercut the project's goal of reconciliation. The group has the right to build the center, runs this argument, but they are wrong to exercise it. In response, Obama could have merely cast this dispute as a Constitutional issue, talked about how important it is to hew to that hallowed document, and moved on.

But Obama went much further than that. He asserted that we must "welcome" and "respect" those of other faiths, suggesting that the group behind the center deserves the same, and said flat out that anything less is un-American.

Michael Crowley:

One good way to measure Obama's performance as president, I think, is by the degree to which he meets this famous pledge:

The easiest thing in the world for a politician to do is to tell you exactly what you want to hear. But if we want to finally solve the challenges we're facing right now, we need to tell the American people what they need to hear.

Obama certainly hasn't always met that standard. But in declaring his support for allowing the so-called Ground Zero mosque to be opened in New York City, Obama has done something very much in defiance of public opinion and very much in line, it seems, with what is in his heart.

Nate Silver:

Essentially, public opinion on this issue is divided into thirds. About a third of the country thinks that not only do the developers have a right to build the mosque, but that it's a perfectly appropriate thing to do. Another third think that while the development is in poor taste, the developers nevertheless have a right to build it. And the final third think that not only is the development inappropriate, but the developers have no right to build it -- perhaps they think that the government should intervene to stop it in some fashion.

Obama's remarks, while asserting that "Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country," and that the "principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are," simply reflected the view that the developers had a First Amendment right to proceed with the project -- a view that at least 60 percent of Americans share. True, Obama could have hedged a little bit more, by saying something along the lines of "they have every right to build it, but I hope they will consider another location". On the other hand, it is not as though he said "this is a wonderful thing, and I'm going to make sure to take Sasha and Malia there once it's built." Instead, he acknowledged the sensitivity over the Ground Zero site, calling it "hallowed ground", but couched the controversy in terms of the First Amendment.

So it is not really so clear whether Obama has staked out an unpopular position or not. While it is almost certainly riskier than his remaining mum on the issue, the assertion that the developers have a Constitutional right to proceed with the project is not particularly controversial. Palin and Gingirch will scream and shout, but they may be doing little more than preach to the converted.

And back to Greg again:

Republicans are reportedly gleeful that Obama entered this dispute. Maybe they're right to be gleeful: Obama's entry will only further stoke passions and ensure that the battle continues, perhaps to his political detriment. But in another sense, this couldn't have come at a better time for Obama. His core supporters, frustrated, were badly in need of a display of presidential spine. They got one.

Ultimately, though, Obama's speech transcends the politics of the moment, and will go down as a defining and perhaps even a breakthrough performance. Obama recognized that this dispute is a seminal one that goes to the core of our running argument about pluralism and minority rights and to the core of who we are. He understood that the gravity of the moment required an equally large and momentous response. And he delivered.

Charlie Rangel & Maxine Waters (The Idiot Edition)

Three days ago, some idiot wrote:

My only question is, after an Ethics Mechanism that's been gathering dust, why aren't the Democrats getting more credit for going after their own? We have strong majorities in both Houses and we're not papering this crap over.

Well, someone must've listening to me---errr, uhhh, that idiot, because:

On MSNBC just now, DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen made it explicit:

Dems will argue that the ethical travails of Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters prove that Dems are making good on their promise to "drain the swamp" of corruption in Congress. Even if it's their own who are swirling around that drain.

Also: Van Hollen rolled out another line of attack: He contrasted the Dem leadership's response to the Rangel mess favorably with the GOP leadership's proposal in 2004 to change the rules to allow Tom DeLay to remain in a leadership post if he were charged by a grand jury.

Republicans have signaled that they will pound away relentlessly at the Rangel and Waters affairs as proof that Dems failed to clean house. Asked if this is a liability, Van Hollen answered:

"We've actually strengthened the ethics process. The reason people are hearing about the cases of Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters is because we put in place accountability measures to make sure that we have high standards and that people are held accountable to those standards.

"If you recall back when the Republicans are in charge, and Tom DeLay was about to be indicted, the Republicans actually weakened their rules. They changed their rules to say, even after he's indicted, he can still be the Republican leader.

"We were very clear. Charlie Rangel is not the chair of the Ways and Means Committee. He stepped down as a result of allegations. And now we're going through what is a very much strengthened process, with more outside oversight."

All this comes courtesy of Greg Sargent at the Plum Line.

Charlie Rangel & Maxine Waters, continued.

Jamelle Bouie of the American Prospect, backs me up (at puts it a little better):

For my part, I don't think there's anything particularly racial about these ethics investigations; it's just that long-term incumbency breeds this kind of corruption. Indeed, if you take a quick look at each of the congresspeople under investigation, you'll notice that most are long-serving incumbents. Simply put, when you're isolated from credible challengers, you have no electoral incentive to stay clean. In the long-run, the best way to combat corruption is to create as many competitive districts as possible so that incumbents do not become complacent.

For the record, I have yet to meet a white person (male or female) named Jamelle. That's definitely a name my people use.

Charlie Rangel & Maxine Waters

I'm not ignoring the Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters stories, and I think this Joe Klein column provides a decent enough overview, but I think Joe neglects one aspect:

At the end of the day, black districts are poorer districts, and any Congressperson who brings home the bacon to those poorer, black districts is going to be popular, no matter what they do. If those same Congresspeople just happen to be black, there are going to be allegations from those districts that those charges are racially based.

Of course, race doesn't apply here at all.  This is about entitlement and yes, as Joe said, longevity.  I think the Ethics Committee is moving with clean hands and a clear conscience.

 I've been hearing about Maxine for years for having family members on the Congressional Office Payroll. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a Liberal Ethics Watchdog has had her on their most corrupt Congresspeople list for years.  In this case, we're talking about steering Federal Money to a Minority-owned bank.  I still can't explain to you in clear english what Rangel did, but it involved chicanery on his tax returns and some free trips to the Caribbean.  In either case, I think these are cases of low-level corruption.  No one's going to jail in either of these cases.  Lose their jobs?  Maybe, but I'd let the information loose, and let the people of their districts make their choice.  Knowing my people, they'll look after their own.  Calling them crooks, as Joe Klein does, is going a little overboard.  My understanding is that these were clear violations of House Rules, and they deserve some kind of comeupance.

At the same time, any time the media wants to focus this much attention on Sen. John Ensign's actual criminal behavior, be my frickin' guest.

My only question is, after an Ethics Mechanism that's been gathering dust, why aren't the Democrats getting more credit for going after their own?  We have strong majorities in both Houses and we're not papering this crap over.

The President, the Reporter and the Hovercraft (VIDEO)

I know, I know. We're in the middle of two wars, too many people can't get jobs, and the entirety of the Gulf of Mexico is about to be poisoned...

...but stuff like this is fun. It's fun to stop and take a moment, engage in some well-meaning silliness. This is the stuff that makes being President fun, and keeps him from having to "play" Barack Obama.



What do I mean by that? Check out Jonathan Alter's book on May 18th.

The President's busy-busy Sunday... (VIDEO)

Both New York City and the Gulf Coast in one brief statement. I'm sure more is to come...

"Ooh, you really don't want to go here, Mr. Lungren..." (VIDEO)

Today, on the House Floor...