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Trump Is Who He’s Always Been, And Trump Is the Epitome of the GOP; They Have To Own Him

October 8, 2016/59 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Republicans /by bmaz

The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold has come up with another scoop. While scraping for video clips does not seem to be Fahrenthold’s strength, like the KFile boys who bolted Buzzfeed in the middle of the night for the apparently greener pastures of CNN, this clip posted by the Washington Post is bigger than anything that has come before. It doesn’t matter if it is by weight, timing, or the clear combination of the two, it is simply huge. Game changing.

The most striking thing, however, is not that this video exists, nor that it has emerged to public view, it is that the Republican party worthies and press seem to think it is shocking. Seriously, this information, and the Donald Trump it reflects, is exactly who Donald Trump is, and has been, for decades.

Donald Trump is a once and forever informationally ignorant, self serving jackass extreme narcissist. But he has been that for decades to anybody paying attention. Trump was the leader from the start in the Republican primary, and was the easy winner of their nomination. Why? Because the votes on the ground count, much to the consternation of supposed “sane party elders”, and the votes on the ground made Trump an easy winner. He is exactly what the current Republican GOP party embodies at its heart.

Watching holier than though instant moral compasses (well oiled craven weathervanes?) like Jason Chaffetz, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Orrin Hatch and Paul Ryan squirm and proclaim their shock, like grubby kids with their hand stuck in the cookie jar, is hilarious. What convenient souls they are to suddenly have the inclination of what they have all sowed and reaped for years. They doth protest too much; Trump is them, and they are Trump.

I came home late, but still managed to hear at least two tellings of the story of how John Rhodes, Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott went down the Hill and gave the hook to Nixon when it was time, with the ideation that such a similar scene could end the Trump moment now. Those are the crazy fever dreams of people like Chris Matthews, David Gergen, Mark Halperin and the rest of the Beltway cocktail weiner gobblers.

Not gonna happen. Rhodes, Goldwater and Scott were men of a different time and more stout character. There are no analogues today. Jason Chaffetz and Mike Lee can conveniently preen and bluster all they want. It is bullshit, as it is with almost all of the rest of today’s Republican party. They do NOT get to suddenly walk away from the monster their party has spent decades creating. They own Trump, Hannity, Roger Ailes, Fox News, Breitbart and Limbaugh. It is who they are, and nobody should forget it.

The Republican party of today has relentlessly stood against women’s rights and ability to control their own bodies, equal rights and protections for LGBT citizens, fair treatment for minorities and immigrants, and the right to vote for anybody other than middle aged fat white men. The current Republican party think that they are the only “suspect class” due “equal protection”, and not the minorities, races, genders, sexual identities and other endangered classes the civil rights laws were designed to protect.

This is exactly what makes the instant kvetching in the GOP aisle over Trump last night so fatuous. It is a boatload of opportunistic self serving fraud. Not for one second should anybody accept that Trump is the sudden exception, he is unequivocally what the GOP has been growing into for years. The modern Republican party has long championed racism, bigotry and misogyny; Donald Trump is just the point of their spear. To the extent there are any “honest brokers” left in the GOP, they are still guilty of benign neglect that allowed the ugliness that is the Trumpian GOP to fester.

The GOP cannot run from Donald Trump, he is who they are now. The last minute panicked contrition of the very women blaming and shaming, racists, bigots and oligarchs that claim to speak for the GOP cannot shed the snake skin of who they are, and what they have created.

Oh, and by the way, the fever dreams of the Chris Matthews and Mark Halperins of the pearl clutching Beltway set are not going to get their wish. It is too late for Trump to be replaced on the ballot by the grand poohbahs of the GOP. As election litigator extraordinaire Marc Elias points out, the ballots for the military and overseas voters have already been sent out pursuant to the UOCAVA, i.e. the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Locally, the Arizona ballots are putatively at the printers and being mailed out within five days. Many other states are either on that timetable or ahead of it. In short, the voting has begun. The die is cast.

Also, via Philip Bump and Dave Weigel of the Washington Post:

More than 34,000 Republican voters have already cast their ballots for the 2016 general election according to the U.S. Election Project, 8,000 of them in the battleground state of North Carolina and another 5,000 in Florida. Not all of those ballots were cast for Donald Trump, it’s safe to assume, but it’s more than likely that most of them were. And that, in a nutshell, is why it’s far too late for the Republican Party to dump Donald Trump from their ticket.

Some Legislative Responses to Clinton’s Email Scandal

July 7, 2016/3 Comments/in Leak Investigations /by emptywheel

The Republicans have reverted to their natural “Benghazi witchhunt” form in the wake of Jim Comey’s announcement Tuesday that Hillary Clinton and her aides should not be charged, with Comey scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee at 10 AM.

Paul Ryan wrote a letter asking James Clapper to withhold classified briefings from Hillary. And the House Intelligence Committee is even considering a bill to prevent people who have mishandled classified information from getting clearances.

In light of the FBI’s findings, a congressional staffer told The Daily Beast that the House Intelligence Committee is considering legislation that could block security clearances for people who have been found to have mishandled classified information in the past.

It’s not clear how many of Clinton’s aides still have their government security clearances, but such a measure could make it more difficult for them to be renewed, should they come back to serve in a Clinton administration.

“The idea would be to make sure that these rules apply to a very wide range of people in the executive branch,” the staffer said. (Clinton herself would not need a clearance were she to become president.)

It’s nice to see the same Republicans who didn’t make a peep when David Petraeus kept — and still has — his clearance for doing worse than Hillary has finally getting religion on security clearances.

But this circus isn’t really going to make us better governed or safer.

So here are some fixes Congress should consider:

Add some teeth to the Federal/Presidential Records Acts

As I noted on Pacifica, Hillary’s real crime was trying to retain maximal control over her records as Secretary of State — probably best understood as an understandable effort to withhold anything potentially personal combined with a disinterest in full transparency. That effort backfired spectacularly, though, because as a result all of her emails have been released.

Still, every single Administration has had at least a minor email scandal going back to Poppy Bush destroying PROFS notes pertaining to Iran-Contra.

And yet none of those email scandals has ever amounted to anything, and many of them have led to the loss of records that would otherwise be subject to archiving and (for agency employees) FOIA.

So let’s add some teeth to these laws — and lets mandate and fund more rational archiving of covered records. And while we’re at it, let’s ensure that encrypted smart phone apps, like Signal, which diplomats in the field should be using to solve some of the communication problems identified in this Clinton scandal, will actually get archived.

Fix the Espionage Act (and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act)

Steve Vladeck makes the case for this:

Congress has only amended the Espionage Act in detail on a handful of occasions and not significantly since 1950. All the while, critics have emerged from all corners—the academy, the courts, and within the government—urging Congress to clarify the myriad questions raised by the statute’s vague and overlapping terms, or to simply scrap it and start over. As the CIA’s general counsel told Congress in 1979, the uncertainty surrounding the Espionage Act presented “the worst of both worlds”:

On the one hand the laws stand idle and are not enforced at least in part because their meaning is so obscure, and on the other hand it is likely that the very obscurity of these laws serves to deter perfectly legitimate expression and debate by persons who must be as unsure of their liabilities as I am unsure of their obligations.

In other words, the Espionage Act is at once too broad and not broad enough—and gives the government too much and too little discretion in cases in which individuals mishandle national security secrets, maliciously or otherwise.

To underscore this point, the provision that the government has used to go after those who shared classified information with individuals not entitled to receive it (including Petraeus, Drake, and Manning), codified at 18 U.S.C. § 793(d), makes it a crime if:

Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted … to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it …

This provision is stunningly broad, and it’s easy to see how, at least as a matter of statutory interpretation, it covers leaking—when government employees (“lawfully having possession” of classified information) share that information with “any person not entitled to receive it.” But note how this doesn’t easily apply to Clinton’s case, as her communications, however unsecured, were generally with staffers who were“entitled to receive” classified information.

Instead, the provision folks have pointed to in her case is the even more strangely worded § 793(f), which makes it a crime for:

Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of [any of the items mentioned in § 793(d)], (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed … fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer …

Obviously, it’s easy to equate Clinton’s “extreme carelessness” with the statute’s “gross negligence.” But look closer: Did Clinton’s carelessness, however extreme, “[permit] … [classified information] to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of [her] trust”? What does that even mean in the context of intangible information discussed over email? The short answer is nobody knows: This provision has virtually never been used at least partly because no one is really sure what it prohibits. It certainly appears to be focused on government employees who dispossess the government of classified material (like a courier who leaves a satchel full of secret documents in a public place). But how much further does it go?

There’s an easy answer here, and it’s to not use Clinton as a test case for an unprecedented prosecution pursuant to an underutilized criminal provision, even if some of us think what she did was a greater sin than the conduct of some who have been charged under the statute. The better way forward is for Congress to do something it’s refused to do for more than 60 years: carefully and comprehensively modernize the Espionage Act, and clarify exactly when it is, and is not, a crime to mishandle classified national security secrets.

Sadly, if Congress were to legislate the Espionage Act now, they might codify the attacks on whistleblowers. But they should not. They should distinguish between selling information to our adversaries and making information public. They should also make it clear that intent matters — because in the key circuit, covering the CIA, the Pentagon, and many contractors, intent hasn’t mattered since the John Kiriakou case.

Eliminate the arbitrariness of the clearance system

But part of that should also involve eliminating the arbitrary nature of the classification system.

I’ve often pointed to how, in the Jeffrey Sterling case, the only evidence he would mishandle classified information was his retention of 30-year old instructions on how to dial a rotary phone, something far less dangerous than what Hillary did.

Equally outrageous, though, is that four of the witnesses who may have testified against Sterling, probably including Bob S who was the key witness, have also mishandled classified information in the past. Those people not only didn’t get prosecuted, but they were permitted to serve as witnesses against Sterling without their own indiscretions being submitted as evidence. As far as we know, none lost their security clearance. Similarly, David Petraeus hasn’t lost his security clearance. But Ashkan Soltani was denied one and therefore can’t work at the White House countering cyberattacks.

Look, the classification system is broken, both because information is over-classified and because maintaining the boundaries between classified and unclassified is too unwieldy. That broken system is then magnified as people’s access to high-paying jobs are subjected to arbitrary review of security clearances. That’s only getting worse as the Intelligence Community ratchets up the Insider Threat program (rather than, say, technical means) to forestall another Manning or Snowden.

The IC has made some progress in recent years in shrinking the universe of people who have security clearances, and the IC is even making moves toward fixing classification. But the clearance system needs to be more transparent to those within it and more just.

Limit the President’s arbitrary authority over classification

Finally, Congress should try to put bounds to the currently arbitrary and unlimited authority Presidents claim over classified information.

As a reminder, the Executive Branch routinely cites the Navy v. Egan precedent to claim unlimited authority over the classified system. They did so when someone (it’s still unclear whether it was Bush or Cheney) authorized Scooter Libby to leak classified information — probably including Valerie Plame’s identity — to Judy Miller. And they did so when telling Vaughn Walker could not require the government to give al Haramain’s lawyers clearance to review the illegal wiretap log they had already seen before handing it over to the court.

And these claims affect Congress’ ability to do their job. The White House used CIA as cover to withhold a great deal of documents implicating the Bush White House in authorizing torture. Then, the White House backed CIA’s efforts to hide unclassified information, like the already-published identities of its torture-approving lawyers, with the release of the Torture Report summary. In his very last congressional speech, Carl Levin complained that he was never able to declassify a document on the Iraq War claims that Mohammed Atta met with a top Iraqi intelligence official in Prague.

This issue will resurface when Hillary, who I presume will still win this election, nominates some of the people involved in this scandal to serve in her White House. While she can nominate implicated aides — Jake Sullivan, Huma Abedin, and Cheryl Mills — for White House positions that require no confirmation (which is what Obama did with John Brennan, who was at that point still tainted by his role in torture), as soon as she names Sullivan to be National Security Advisor, as expected, Congress will complain that he should not have clearance.

She can do so — George Bush did the equivalent (remember he appointed John Poindexter, whose prosecution in relation to the Iran-Contra scandal was overturned on a technicality, to run the Total Information Awareness program).

There’s a very good question whether she should be permitted to do so. Even ignoring the question of whether Sullivan would appropriately treat classified information, it sets a horrible example for clearance holders who would lose their clearances.

But as far as things stand, she could. And that’s a problem.

To be fair, legislating on this issue is dicey, precisely because it will set off a constitutional challenge. But it should happen, if only because the Executive’s claims about Navy v. Egan go beyond what SCOTUS actually said.

Mandate and fund improved communication system

Update, after I posted MK reminded me I meant to include this.

If Congress is serious about this, then they will mandate and fund State to fix their decades-long communications problems.

But they won’t do that. Even 4 years after the Benghazi attack they’ve done little to improve security at State facilities.

Update: One thing that came up in today’s Comey hearing is that the FBI does not routinely tape non-custodial interviews (and fudges even with custodial interviews, even though DOJ passed a policy requiring it). That’s one more thing Congress could legislate! They could pass a simple law requiring FBI to start taping interviews.

In One of His First Major Legislative Acts, Paul Ryan Trying to Deputize Comcast to Narc You Out to the Feds

December 7, 2015/11 Comments/in Cybersecurity /by emptywheel

As the Hill reports, Speaker Paul Ryan is preparing to add a worsened version of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act to the omnibus budget bill, bypassing the jurisdictional interests of Homeland Security Chair Mike McCaul in order to push through the most privacy-invasive version of the bill.

But several people tracking the negotiations believe McCaul is under significant pressure from House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and other congressional leaders to not oppose the compromise text.

They said lawmakers are aiming to vote on the final cyber bill as part of an omnibus budget deal that is expected before the end of the year.

As I laid out in October, it appears CISA — even in the form that got voted out of the Senate — would serve as a domestic “upstream” spying authority, providing the government a way to spy domestically without a warrant.

CISA permits the telecoms to do the kinds of scans they currently do for foreign intelligence purposes for cybersecurity purposes in ways that (unlike the upstream 702 usage we know about) would not be required to have a foreign nexus. CISA permits the people currently scanning the backbone to continue to do so, only it can be turned over to and used by the government without consideration of whether the signature has a foreign tie or not. Unlike FISA, CISA permits the government to collect entirely domestic data.

We recently got an idea of how this might work. Comcast is basically hacking its own users to find out if they’re downloading copyrighted material.

[Comcast] has been accused of tapping into unencrypted browser sessions and displaying warnings that accuse the user of infringing copyrighted material — such as sharing movies or downloading from a file-sharing site.

That could put users at risk, says the developer who discovered it.

Jarred Sumner, a San Francisco, Calif.-based developer who published the alert banner’s code on his GitHub page, told ZDNet in an email that this could cause major privacy problems.

Sumner explained that Comcast injects the code into a user’s browser as they are browsing the web, performing a so-called “man-in-the-middle” attack. (Comcast has been known to alert users when they have surpassed their data caps.) This means Comcast intercepts the traffic between a user’s computer and their servers, instead of installing software on the user’s computer.

[snip]

“This probably means that Comcast is using [deep packet inspection] on subscriber’s internet and/or proxying subscriber internet when they want to send messages to subscribers,” he said. “That would let Comcast modify unencrypted traffic in both directions.”

In other words, Comcast is already doing the same kind of deep packet inspection of its users’ unencrypted activity as the telecoms use in upstream collection for the NSA. Under CISA, they’d be permitted — and Comcast sure seems willing — to do such searches for the Feds.

Some methods of downloading copyrighted content might already be considered a cyberthreat indicator that Comcast could report directly to the Federal government (and possibly, under this latest version, directly to the FBI). And there are reports that the new version will adopt an expanded list of crimes, to include the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

In other words, it’s really easy to see how under this version of CISA, the government would ask Comcast to hack you to find out if you’re doing one of the long list of things considered hacking — a CFAA violation — by the Feds.

How’s that for Paul Ryan’s idea of conservatism, putting the government right inside your Internet router as one of his first major legislative acts?

As One of First Acts as Speaker, Paul Ryan Retains Devin Nunes on HPSCI

October 30, 2015/4 Comments/in Intelligence /by emptywheel

A few weeks ago, I noted that the new Speaker — officially yesterday, Paul Ryan — had an opportunity to name Chairmen of Select committees, most notably Devin Nunes on the House Intelligence Chair. I argued the new Speaker should do just that, with the aim of having more rigorous oversight of the nation’s Intelligence Community.

[I]t seems fair to suggest that Nunes should go too. While Nunes was actually better on Benghazi than his predecessor (raising questions about the CIA’s involvement in gun-running), he has otherwise been a typical rubber stamp for the intelligence community, rushing to pass info-sharing with Department of Energy even while commenting on their shitty security practices, and pitching partisan briefings to give the IC one more opportunity to explain why the phone dragnet was more useful than all the independent reviews say it was.
The Intelligence Community has lost credibility since 9/11, and having a series of rubber stamp oversight Chairs (excepting Silvestre Reyes, who was actually reasonably good) has only exacerbated that credibility problem. So why not call for the appointment of someone like former state judge Ted Poe, who has experience with intelligence related issues on both the Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees, but who has also been a staunch defender of the Constitution.

[snip]

[N]o place in Congress needs to be reformed more than our intelligence oversight. And while picking a more independent Chair won’t revamp the legal structure of intelligence oversight, it might initiate a process of bringing more rigorous oversight to our nation’s intelligence agencies.

Apparently, Speaker Ryan disagrees. He issued this statement today (I guess Ryan is just a few years too young to remember that the world actually used to be a more dangerous place, but whatev).

The world has gotten only more dangerous, and serious times call for serious leaders. That’s why I’ve asked Rep. Devin Nunes to stay on as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Devin and Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry have done great work holding the administration accountable for its national-security failures, and I want them to continue their strong partnership. Though Congressman Nunes has been a terrific ally and staunch defender of conservative principles on the Ways and Means Committee, I am grateful for his continued leadership of the Intelligence Committee.

It’s unclear whether this was an affirmative choice, or a bid to make the contest to replace Ryan as Chair of Ways and Means easier.

In accepting Ryan’s request, however, Nunes — apparently also too young to remember the Cold War in his assessment of global threats — pointed to cybersecurity (AKA domestic Internet spying) legislation as one of his priorities.

I am honored to have been asked by the new Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, to continue serving as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Our nation faces unprecedented global threats ranging from the growing risk of deadly terrorism to debilitating cyber-attacks, and the Intelligence Community’s response to these threats requires diligent Congressional oversight. After careful reflection and in light of the Speaker’s wish for me to continue this important role, I have decided to remain Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. As we move forward under the leadership of Speaker Ryan, it will be important to complete the good work we have done on an intelligence authorization bill and to get cybersecurity legislation passed to the President’s desk.

Ah well. When Ryan runs for President I guess we can point to this as an indication of his desire to let the intelligence community continue to run roughshod.

Congratulations to James Clapper and the rest of the lot. You still run the joint!

Another Veep Loser Planning to Quit?

November 19, 2012/6 Comments/in 2016 Election /by emptywheel

Back when the 2016 GOP nomination kicked off (a good 5 days before Mitt got around to losing officially), here’s one way Paul Ryan’s anonymous advisors envisioned insulating his Presidential ambitions from any damaging votes: quitting.

They say that if he fails, Ryan’s instincts will be to return to the House — he is running for re-election to his House seat at the same time he’s Romney’s running mate — and resume his role as Budget Committee chairman.

Some senior Republicans caution it might not be that easy.

If Romney loses, Ryan will be seen as a leading White House contender in 2016. He will be a national party figure even without being a top member of the House leadership. That could breed resentment among current Republican leaders and perhaps splinter coalitions within the already fractured GOP alliances at the top of the House.

A return also would make Ryan a leading target for Democrats. For the next few years, Democrats would lay traps in legislation, forcing him to take sides on measures that could come back to haunt him during a presidential bid.

That is why some of Ryan’s biggest boosters are considering whether it wouldn’t be better for Ryan to resign from the House.

Never mind the delusion that suggests Ryan would be that enticing a target for Democrats. It gave Ryan’s advisors an excuse to advocate he quit before he has to cast anymore unpopular votes.

As DDay noted, anonymous sources are floating the idea of Ryan quitting again, this time in context of being forced to cast an unpopular vote on the fiscal cliff.

Speaker John A. Boehner has tapped Mr. Ryan, who has returned to his post as the House Budget Committee chairman after an unsuccessful run for vice president, to help strike a deal to avoid big tax increases and spending cuts by the end of the year, and to bring along fellow Republicans.

“He helps us toward creating a product,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, “and he helps sell the product.”

The test will be whether Mr. Ryan — who declined last year to sit on another Congressional committee charged with taming the deficit, in large part because doing so might have hurt his prospects for national office — can make the transition from House budget philosopher to governing heavyweight who can help negotiate a bipartisan deal and sell it to his colleagues.

[snip]

With his new muscle and increased respect from his colleagues, Mr. Ryan could conceivably scuttle any deal if he loudly opposes a solution that the speaker and the top Republican leaders embrace. But his conservative base might rebel against him if he were to endorse any deal seen as awarding too much to Mr. Obama and the Democrats, particularly on tax rates. Some Republicans think the pitfalls are dangerous enough that Mr. Ryan might consider leaving Congress altogether to work on his policy agenda without the inherent headaches of the Hill.

“He has to think about what he wants his role to be,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma. “Is he going to run in 2016, or run for something else in Wisconsin, or play a bigger role in the House? He’s going to play an outsize role here because of the national profile he now has, but on the other hand, this conference is quite happy to act independently.” [my emphasis]

The implication being that if he plans to run in 2016, Ryan can’t stick around and–with a vote in favor of a “Grand Bargain”–compromise his governing ideology by admitting does not support a functioning government. Elsewhere, the article notes how much fun he and his wife had visting her grandmother’s home in Iowa.

In other words, he clearly plans to run.

Which leaves the question whether he truly agrees with these anonymous and on-the-record sources advising him to quit if he plans to run for President.

I guess he plans to follow the successful path of President Palin, then, even if he can’t run a marathon as fast as she can.

I just wonder what his Hollywood reality show will be called.

And They’re Off! 4 GOPers Make Bid for 2016 Over Mitt’s Still-Warm Body

November 1, 2012/13 Comments/in 2012 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

I’m not really sure why the pundits are wasting time deciding whether Nate Silver is a wizard or a washed out baseball junky. There’s another fairly clear sign that insiders believe Obama will win this election: the number of 2016 GOP contenders who are shifting into campaign mode.

Chris Christie can be forgiven for boosting up Obama’s image as President the last week of the campaign. After all it makes him look Presidential. More importantly, it’ll ensure NJ gets lots of quick federal attention. (Though it did remind me that Christie used his coming out party at Mitt’s RNC to talk about Chris Christie.)

Jeb! was a bit more circumspect, spending a Mitt campaign appearance bitching that Obama blames his brother for … things his brother did.

“His entire strategy is to blame others — starting with my brother, of course,” Bush said during a campaign rally for Mitt Romney in Coral Gables, Fla. “Basically, he blames every possible thing rather than having the humility to be able to reach out and to find common ground.”

But the most amusing bid for the 2016 front-runner position comes from Paul Ryan’s unnamed backers (though Governor Kasich is quoted by name) inventing reasons why Ryan wouldn’t fulfill the other position he’s running for (Congressman)–including that his newfound popularity would fracture the Republican caucus or that Democrats would make him cast difficult votes. So, these anonymous advisors say, Ryan should instead write a book or become a Professor or lobby or think tank.

Anything for an opportunity to make public use of PowerPoint.

That is why some of Ryan’s biggest boosters are considering whether it wouldn’t be better for Ryan to resign from the House. He could write a book — “saving America” is a theme often bandied about — or teach at a university.

After all, on the campaign trail, Ryan is as much lecturer as campaigner. Aides routinely set up giant video screens so Ryan can use visual aids to walk audiences through the minutiae of budget politics. Graphs and charts are as common as yard signs and American flags at some events, with Ryan settling into his role as explainer in chief.

Yet curiously, those aides mention a 2016 Presidential bid at least 4 [Update–oops! 5] times in the article.

…future President Ryan?

…biding his time until a presidential run of his own.

a leading White House contender in 2016…

…forcing him to take sides on measures that could come back to haunt him during a presidential bid.

Ryan’s allies aren’t ruling out a bid for the top spot for their friend.

5 mentions of the next Presidential cycle, about a guy who’s on the ticket for this cycle.

And finally there’s this “accidental” email sent by Newt’s people:

“The truth is, the next election has already been decided. Obama is going to win. It’s nearly impossible to beat an incumbent president,” advertiser Porter Stansberry wrote in the email to Gingrich supporters. “What’s actually at stake right now is whether or not he will have a third-term.”

You gotta get an early start, I guess, if you’ll be 73 when you run again.

It’s all rather ghoulish, this campaigning to take over Mitt’s position as the party’s standard bearer before the race has even been called.

I don’t feel all that bad for Mitt, though. After all, he has participated in the weird custom of posthumously baptizing people, basically converting people after they’re dead. Republicans, apparently, follow the opposite strategy, burying you while you’re still technically alive.

Provide For the Common Defense or Go Galt?

October 30, 2012/11 Comments/in Domestic Policy /by Jim White

We awake to a changed and battered country this morning. CNN’s headline at CNN.com currently blares “Millions wake to devastation”, while AP gives us a state-by-state rundown of the effects of Hurricane (and then Superstorm) Sandy. At a time, though, when the natural American response is to help one another, we have perhaps the strongest example of what is at stake next Tuesday as we go to the polls for a Presidential election. Here is Mitt Romney in the Republican debate hosted by CNN:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTSHxR_4rc8[/youtube]

The idea that an “immoral” FEMA should be disbanded in favor of private sector disaster response did not go over well with the editorial staff of the New York Times. From this morning’s editorial:

Over the last two years, Congressional Republicans have forced a 43 percent reduction in the primary FEMA grants that pay for disaster preparedness. Representatives Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and other House Republicans have repeatedly tried to refuse FEMA’s budget requests when disasters are more expensive than predicted, or have demanded that other valuable programs be cut to pay for them. The Ryan budget, which Mr. Romney praised as “an excellent piece of work,” would result in severe cutbacks to the agency, as would the Republican-instigated sequester, which would cut disaster relief by 8.2 percent on top of earlier reductions.

Does Mr. Romney really believe that financially strapped states would do a better job than a properly functioning federal agency? Who would make decisions about where to send federal aid? Or perhaps there would be no federal aid, and every state would bear the burden of billions of dollars in damages. After Mr. Romney’s 2011 remarks recirculated on Monday, his nervous campaign announced that he does not want to abolish FEMA, though he still believes states should be in charge of emergency management. Those in Hurricane Sandy’s path are fortunate that, for now, that ideology has not replaced sound policy.

A common refrain for the Galt crew is that they want to go back to the basics of the Constitution. And yet, here is the Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The simple truth is that if we wish to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare in the face of such a huge storm, then a Federal agency coordinating the preparations before the storm and the response afterwards is the most efficient plan. Putting disaster capitalists in charge instead would only lead to many more deaths and huge delays in response times.

As the country responds to this terrible blow from the storm, it is worth considering whether we wish to go back to the ineptitude of the Katrina response (or worse) or if we want to work together for the common defense through a properly funded FEMA.

Nun on the Bus Tells Paul Ryan to Turn Off the Camera

October 17, 2012/5 Comments/in 2012 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

[youtube]UgzQ5tjV_Fo[/youtube]

As I noted the other day, Paul Ryan’s fake soup kitchen photo op was important not just because it shows him to be a big-footing asshole, but because he may have endangered the funding of a charity serving the Catholic social justice mission–a mission Ryan’s entire political career has harmed.

Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks Ryan should be a better Catholic. Actual, still-practicing Catholics think so too!

Catholics United just sent out a press release calling Ryan out for such big-footing. Among others, it quotes Sister Simone Campbell (the Nun on the Bus who spoke at the DNC) preaching the Gospel to Paul Ryan.

“Representative Ryan tried to use the poor, and those who serve them, as a political prop,” said James Salt, executive director of Catholics United. “From a man who has done so much to undermine the work of public-private partnerships and faith-based groups, this is an incredibly cynical move.”

Sr. Simone Campbell, the executive director of NETWORK Lobby and “Nuns on the Bus” leader, has repeatedly invited Rep. Ryan to meet and experience first-hand how his budget proposals will affect charities similar to the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Youngstown.

“If Paul Ryan is serious about serving the Gospel mission of Jesus Christ, I’d encourage him to read Matthew 6, which instructs us to serve when no one is looking,” said Salt. “You can learn a lot about a man by what he does and says when the cameras aren’t rolling. I suggest Rep. Ryan take a day off from campaigning to meet and get to know those who would be affected by the budget cuts he’s proposed.”

I guess if Ryan showed up before the cooking pots were cleaned up, he might have to talk to such people. And given his response to Campbell, he’s apparently afraid to do so.

Will Paul Ryan’s Photo Op Hurt a Catholic Charity’s Efforts to Feed the Poor?

October 15, 2012/11 Comments/in Economics /by emptywheel

The Nuns on the Bus have been saying for months that Paul Ryan’s miserly budgetary approach betrays his Catholic values. The Bishops agree. Joe Biden even called Ryan out for “taking issue” with the Church’s social teachings.

Just days after being called out by a fellow Catholic for being stingy with the poor, Ryan commandeered a soup kitchen so he could stage a photo op.

It turns out the soup kitchen is run by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul–a Catholic lay organization.

And the local president of the society suggests Ryan’s photo op might hurt their donations.

Brian J. Antag, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, said that he was not contacted by the Romney campaign ahead of the Saturday morning visit by Ryan, whostopped by the soup kitchen after a town hall at Youngstown State University.

“We’re a faith-based organization; we are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” Antag said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.”

[snip]

“I can’t afford to lose funding from these private individuals,” he said. “For us to even appear like we’re backing somebody, it’s suicide. … If this was the Democrats, I’d have the same exact problem. It doesn’t matter who it was.”

He added that the incident had caused him “all kind of grief” and that regardless of whether Ryan had intended to serve food to patrons or wash dishes, he would not have allowed the visit to take place.

Ryan has made a concerted effort to make it harder for the Federal government to help the poor.

And now, with his selfish big-footing, he may have made it harder for Catholics serving the poor to do so.

Corporations Are People, and Beans Are People, But Healthy Women Are Not People

October 12, 2012/10 Comments/in Culture /by emptywheel

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Contrary to just about everyone, I liked the way Martha Raddatz asked the abortion question in last night’s debate, because it gave Joe Biden an opportunity to point out how Paul Ryan ignores the entire social justice aspect of Catholicism. [Note, this was not included in the official transcript, but it appears after Ryan says he takes issue with the Church.]

You have, on the issue of Catholic social doctrine, taken issue.

Moreover, it elicited a really weird effort from Ryan to pretend that his anti-choice stance stems from both science and dogmatic Catholicism. He did so by recalling the ultrasound where he first saw his now-daughter in the form of a bean.

RYAN: Now, you want to ask basically why I’m pro-life? It’s not simply because of my Catholic faith. That’s a factor, of course. But it’s also because of reason and science.

You know, I think about 10 1/2 years ago, my wife Janna and I went to Mercy Hospital in Janesville where I was born, for our seven week ultrasound for our firstborn child, and we saw that heartbeat. A little baby was in the shape of a bean. And to this day, we have nicknamed our firstborn child Liza, “Bean.” Now I believe that life begins at conception.

Ryan saw what he himself implies was a bean with a heartbeat, and called it human life. That’s his basis in “science” for the belief that beans should have almost the same legal status as women who carry them in utero.

Ryan went on to claim he respects people who disagree that life begins at bean-hood and invoked the Romney current stated policy of retaining exceptions for rape, incest, and the life (but not health) of the mother.

That’s why – those are the reasons why I’m pro-life. Now I understand this is a difficult issue, and I respect people who don’t agree with me on this, but the policy of a Romney administration will be to oppose abortions with the exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.

Biden responded by saying he accepts the Church’s teaching, but would not impose that teaching on women who may believe something else.

Life begins at conception in the church’s judgment. I accept it in my personal life.

But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews, and I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the – the congressman. I – I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that – women they can’t control their body. It’s a decision between them and their doctor.

He then went onto call Ryan on his own stated belief that abortion should be illegal even in the case of rape, showing that Ryan does not, in fact, “respect those who disagree” with him on abortion.

Now with regard to the way in which the – we differ, my friend says that he – well I guess he accepts Governor Romney’s position now, because in the past he has argued that there was – there’s rape and forcible rape. He’s argued that in the case of rape or incest, it was still – it would be a crime to engage in having an abortion. I just fundamentally disagree with my friend.

And this boy wonder, this guy who believes that life begins at bean-hood, this guy who the pundits claim is so smart, responded to Biden’s provocation, admitting that he does indeed believe it’s a crime for a woman to remove a bean a criminal implanted in her uterus.

All I’m saying is, if you believe that life begins at conception, that, therefore, doesn’t change the definition of life. That’s a principle.

You see, with the Romney-Ryan ticket, it’s not just corporations that should enjoy the same legal status women do. It’s beans too.

That’s a principle, you see.