Tea Party Goes To Washington, Yesterday

IRS targeting Tea Party groups, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is now using that scandal to try to bring down President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. During a rally in Washington Thursday morning, Bachmann spoke to the press, asking, in light of what happened with the IRS, “could there be potential political implications of access to healthcare, denial of healthcare?”

After outline the “extremely troubling” details of the IRS targeting story, Bachmann made an effort to tie the scandal to her consistent opposition to the president’s health care law. “Knowing it’s the IRS who will be the enforcing mechanism for this new entitlement program of Obamacare,” Bachmann stated, “it is very important to ask — and now it is reasonable to ask — could there be potential political implications of access to healthcare, denial of healthcare? Will that happen based upon a person’s political beliefs, or their religiously held beliefs?”

“Those questions would have been considered out of bounds a week ago,” she continued. “Today these questions are considered more than reasonable, and more than fair for the American people.”

Bachmann was joined at the rally by other like-minded members of Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY), along with members of Tea Party groups from across the country.

 

Republicans Are Refusing To Appoint Members To Obamacare’s Most Notorious Panel(death panels)

Boehner, McConnell refuse to appoint members to ‘death panel’ to Obamacare… 

Business Insider reports …

One of the most politically intense fights over the Affordable Care Act was over the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, infamously dubbed a “death panel” by Republicans during the 2010 elections.

On Thursday, Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled that they would keep working to keep opposition alive by doing everything they can to impede the board’s implementation.

The two leaders wrote a letter to President Barack Obama, notifying him that they would not be submitting any recommendations to the panel because of their opposition to it and to the law in general.

 

 

McConnell, Conservatives Preparing to Push Back on Gun Background Check Bill

Everybody knows it’s a sham gun registration Bill wihich would have done exactly nothing to stop sandy Hook or Aura theater style shootings. The only way to stop suicide bent anything is meet them with force which neutralizes the threat when the threat appears.

And no background check is going to do that. Hey even if you have to steal the weapon, or kill your mother in the process, no background check is going to do anything. And the fact that everybody knows it, is damning on it’s face.  What it will do is further burden the system with needless paperwork, and add a gun registry,

NewsMax reports — Apparently this has not escaped Sen McConnell.

Who Bugged The GOP: Mitch McConnell Seeks FBI Investigation

‘Nixonian tactics’ decried…
FBI asked to investigate…

Politico writes:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s reelection campaign asked the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office on Tuesday to investigate how Mother Jones magazine obtained a recording of a February strategy session.

“Senator McConnell’s campaign is working with the FBI and has notified the local U.S. Attorney in Louisville, per FBI request, about these recordings,” McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton said in a statement. “Obviously a recording device of some kind was placed in Senator McConnell’s campaign office without consent. By whom and how that was accomplished presumably will be the subject of a criminal investigation.”

Added a source close to the campaign: “We’re going on the assumption that a crime has been committed. No one at the meeting leaked this.”

Now who would bug the Senate minority leader? Who do you think? Who might want to know what his plans are? Isn’t Sen McConnell the new man in Obama’s sights?

Mitch McConnell To Filibuster Gun Control

 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised to filibuster new gun control legislation, putting up a significant roadblock to Democratic efforts to move forward on the measure this week.

…

McConnell is now the 15th Senator to sign on to the Republican gun control filibuster, an effort that has been spearheaded by conservative Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Mike Lee (R-Utah).

As the top Senate Republican, McConnell’s support gives the filibuster a much higher chance of success, imperiling the already-delicate bipartisan negotiations on new gun control measures.

McConnell’s promise to filibuster also deflates criticism from the more moderate wing of the GOP. During an appearance on CBS’s Face The Nation Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) seemed bewildered by the idea of the filibuster, and called on Republicans to allow debate over the bill.

I assume the bill is Schumer gun registration bill, deguised as sorm sort of background check bill, but since no mere mortals have seen it, I don’t really know.

Is this what the “Obama propalosa” is all about? Ever seen any president needs so many prop-people to do his song and dance act. The show must go on, you never know when the low information voters will tune in.

So grab that 32 oz soda, take a comfy seat, it should be a doozie. No word on the planned “show times” for your area.

 

Obama-care is Heeeeere …

Rememeber Pelosi saying “we have to pass the bill to find what’s in it” … so now we know.

McConnell spoke on the floor of the Senate today about the “higher costs and broken promises” associated with the president’s healthcare overhaul, saying:

“Part of the reason costs are set to increase so dramatically is because Obamacare levies so many new taxes and fees. But that’s only half the story. It’s also because the law imposes so many onerous regulations.

“Just take a look at this giant stack I have here in front of me: one day’s worth of Obamacare regulations. 828 pages in one day. Overall, there are nearly 20,000 pages – with many, many more to come. This is the owner’s manual for the health care law that’s supposed to make things better.

“Are you kidding?  This law is a disaster waiting to happen.

“Imagine the burden we’re placing on the single mom who wants to open her own store. Or the young entrepreneur who wants to sell some new idea. Or the business owners we all know from back home – the folks who employ so many of our constituents.

“Instead of encouraging them to create jobs and grow the economy, we’re hitting them with a brick of regulations.”  [Emphasis added]

A press release on McConnell’s website also has the stunning photo.

Here’s video of McConnell’s entire speech:

So Which Is It

Is the Senate a hostage or NOT, well that depends … On what you are talking about, and whether the Washington Post likes what you are talking about or not?

Dizzy yet, are or you just going down to get your “Feinstein Human hunting license”? Remember you need a 30 round magazine to hunt humans with.

And here you probably thought murder was against the law. Silly you ….

The Washington Post editorial board, Jan. 16, 2013: The editorial is entitled, “Progress in the Senate,” and praises tweaks made to Senate filibuster rules by Sens. Reid and McConnell while also noting the need for further reform. Among reform options, making senators who wish to filibuster actually perform a traditional, talking filibuster:

The Senate’s leaders deserve praise not only for what they did but for how they did it. Instead of jamming more ambitious reforms through on a partisan, simple-majority vote, Mr. Reid hashed them out with Mr. McConnell. In so doing, he offered a rare example of bipartisan accord, dodged the threat of partisan blowback hobbling the Senate and avoided setting a dangerous precedent for minority rights in his chamber. Rules changes typically require 67 votes, an arrangement that Mr. Reid’s Democrats will cherish when they find themselves once again in the minority.

Yes, the filibuster has been abused in recent years, and we would like to see more reform. Forcing lawmakers who would filibuster legislation to speak out on the Senate floor isn’t a bad idea. But these incremental changes are welcome.

The Washington Post editorial board today:

AFTER SEN. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) held the Senate hostage Wednesday in order to warn that American citizens could be targeted by drone strikes on U.S. soil, he was rightly taken to task for gross and irresponsible mischaracterizations of the Obama administration’s policy. We’ve got another complaint: Mr. Paul and his followers are distracting attention from the real issues raised by the administration’s secret warfare.

So, a talking filibuster is either “not a bad idea” in the universe of reform options for what the Washington Post deems an abused Senate rule, or it’s a method for “[holding] the Senate hostage,” depending on the month. Maybe the Washington Post thinks it’s “not a bad idea” to “hold the Senate hostage?”

While Republicans Filibustered Democrats Did … To Protect Your BOR.

They are our servants, not our masters …

As Senator Rand Paul took a stand on the floor of the Senate, mounting a 12 hour and 54 minute filibuster of President Obama’s CIA nominee while demanding answers to questions about drone assassination, Democrats were for the most part nowhere to be found:

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans took the floor on Wednesday, launching an historic filibuster in an attempt to extract an answer from the White House to a simple question: Does the administration believe it has the legal authority to kill an American citizen on American soil with a drone strike?

It’s a question that seems fairly nonpartisan on its face, but a second one occurred to those watching the C-SPAN broadcast late into the morning: Where are all the Democrats?

Republicans, from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) to filibuster-leader Rand Paul (Ky.), spoke for more than 12 hours. But only one Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, spoke in support of Paul during that time. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) tweeted support, but otherwise progressives who might have assumed to have been supportive were absent, leaving members of the GOP as the sole defenders of civil liberties. The White House was equally silent.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) even joked that Paul’s filibuster was “background noise.”

Meanwhile, in the White House press room, Press Secretary Jay Carney was busy dodging questions like, “Why can’t the government at least admit that civilians have been killed?”

Rand Paul’s Drone Filibuster Sparks GOP Civil War

On Paul’s side is the right-wing apparatus and their darlings in Congress — notably Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), who joined the filibuster. They were delighted by Paul’s highly public confrontation with the White House and cheered him on until the very end.

One the other side are the GOP neoconservatives, led by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who are Washington’s chief guardians of broad executive power when it comes to dealing with the country’s enemies.

They were furious with Paul’s attacks on President Obama’s drone policy.

“To somehow allege or infer that the President of the United States is going to kill somebody like Jane Fonda, or somebody who disagrees with the policies, is a stretch of imagination which is, frankly, ridiculous,” McCain said Thursday morning on the Senate floor.

He read from a scathing Wall Street Journal editorial declaring that “if Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms. He needs to know what he’s talking about.”

That angered the wealthy conservative activist group FreedomWorks, which called McCain’s remarks “rude and out of line,” and slammed him for “schmoozing with President Obama over dinner” while Paul was mounting his “courageous filibuster.”

FreedomWorks was among the biggest cheerleaders of Paul’s filibuster and, along with the Heritage Foundation, helped light up news and social media with their passionate support. The intensity of the push was noticed by Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who urged all Republican senators to “please go to the floor and help out” Paul. Fourteen of them went, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Infurated by McCain’s remarks the following morning, FreedomWorks proceeded to issue an action alert calling on its members to demand an apology from McCain. It encouraged its proclaimed 4 million members to send a letter to McCain.

“Your criticism of Sen. Paul’s brave filibuster is shameful,” the draft letter read. “No American statesman would support the assassination of an American without proper due process. The President can’t just suspend the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Our founding fathers would not approve of President Obama’s unprecedented authority grab and neither should you.”

Who Did And Who Didn’t

The Republican senators who participated in the filibuster with Paul include, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Pat Toomey (R-Penn.), John Thune (R-S.D.), John Barrasso (R-Wy.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.).

It should be noted that Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) was in attendance and supported Paul’s filibuster by bringing the senator a thermos and an apple, a likely reference to “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” However, Kirk, who recently returned to the Senate after suffering a stroke, did not speak during the filibuster.

There are a total of 47 Republican members of the U.S. Senate, meaning 32 other GOP senators sat out the filibuster protesting the federal government’s controversial drone program. To find out who those senators are, comb through the full list here.