On Friday the IRS issued an apology after admitting the agency unfairly targeted conservative agencies in 2011. Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich had some strong words:
[Obama] owes every Tea Party in America, every group called patriot, every group that wants to study the Constitution an apology. How can you have an American government profile against the word “patriot”? I mean, there’s something culturally sick if the American government says “Boy, you put that word constitution in your name, we’re going to come after you.”
Come after you? Did they force the groups to undergo multiple audits, or investigated them for criminal activity on baseless accusations? Senior IRS official Lois Lerner issued an apology for her department’s actions:
Instead of referring to the cases as advocacy cases, they actually used case names on this list. They used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases simply because the applications had those names in the title. … also, in some cases, cases sat around for a while. They also sent some letters out that were far too broad, asking questions of these organizations that weren’t really necessary for the type of application. In some cases you probably read that they asked for contributor names.
Welp. That’s … unethical. But the way Gingrich exclaimed you’d think that the Obama administration was holding Republican babies at gunpoint.
Today on #TWiBRadio the Tea Party demands more than an apology, a Mother’s Day mass shooting or usual urban violence, and can a bad Whitney Houston cover be considered terrorism? Listen here:
Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe On Stitcher| Direct Download | RSS
And on #amTWiB, political strategist L. Joy Williams and the morning crew discuss changes to the Bangladeshi garment industry in the wake of tragedy, director of Disney’s Brave lashes out after a character redesign, and Tea Partiers boycott Fox News … for being too Leftist?
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srv
Make all the appeals to nuance that you want, but it’s pretty clear now that the Republicans have a Deep Throat in the Justice Department or the FBI.
Bugging the entire AP, the President of Transparency is in for a whole other level of outrage.
The honeymoon is over.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Republicans are on board with racial profiling but political profiling is a no-no? Whatever happened to their ‘you don’t have anything to worry about if you are innocent’ schtick?
Oh, right… they play by Calvinball rules.
The Dangerman
@srv:
Those rats aren’t going to fuck themselves.
Joel
@srv: lolwut?
pokeyblow
Patriotism isn’t exactly the last refuge of well-behaved citizens.
Hungry Joe
It’s worse than Watergate. It’s worse than Iran-Contra. It’s worse than the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s. It’s worse than the time my brother said he’d play catch with me, but then one of his friends came over and he didn’t.
Suffern ACE
@srv: ummm. You see dear, if they had bugged the entire AP, they wouldn’t be looking at all the phone records. They would kind of already know who had outed their source.
SatanicPanic
@srv: But what does Glenn Greenwald have to say? I’m waiting to hear from him before I pass judgement.
Davis X. Machina
Deep Throat, or stay-behind teams?
lamh35
@srv: Except there was NO BUGGING! It was a supeona for records, NOT WIRETAPPING, NOT BUGGING. It has to do with a investigation into leaks of alleged classified info.
AP had it’s own agenda by calling this a “secret” subpeona. It was not.
So explain something to me, but is the press immune to being a part of investigations?
I know, I know, I’m just a Obot, but please tell me how this is not just Ron Fournier and the AP and now the MSM who all are too close to this whole process to be objective of any kind.
The narrative as begun and set by Joe Klein this weekend and now aided and abetted by AP is that Obama admin is not like Bush, but instead like Nixon. So of course the angle of the story from AP is such that now not just IRS, but DOJ is also Nixonian.
srv
@SatanicPanic: We can only be sure that it is his fault.
Charles II
Examples of left-wing groups unjustly audited or denied tax benefits:
1. Emerge America.
2. Greenpeace
3. The NAACP
4. United Church of Christ
5. Mother Jones magazine was almost put out of business by the IRS.
6. All Saints Episcopal Church almost lost its tax exempt status over preaching an anti-war sermon from the pulpit.
So, yes, using the IRS for political investigations is wrong! Why haven’t there been congressional hearings about these cases?
Ruckus
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Actually I see this as being right in line with their views.
They are after all major hypocrites. I would expect nothing less of them than to complain when what ever they scream about is used against them.
Political profiling is nothing like racial profiling! They are totally different. One is against us the other is against those dirty un-white non-humans. /wingnut
Roger Moore
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
That’s because racial profiling happens to other people and this happened to them.
Baud
I’m shocked that Newt would use this as an opportunity to stoke white resentment.
srv
@lamh35:
Now you know the rest of the story.
Calouste
@lamh35:
Daily Kos is going bonkers over this (well, even more than usual), and hardly anyone steps back to think that this is 1) the AP reporting on something that concerns the AP, and 2) anything that the AP reports should be taken with a grain of salt, based on what they have done over the last few years.
SiubhanDuinne
Téting to sê ưhether that Vietnamese keyboard í still happening.
Án … I tuế it í.
Just Some Fuckhead
FirstamendmentGate is going to make BenghaziGate look as piddly as Teapot Dome, Watergate, Iran-Contra and Whitewater combined. It has the potential to be as big as the Monica Lewinsky Affair. You heard it here first.
This is why you should never become emotionally invested in your Presidents, Obots.
Suffern ACE
@lamh35:
Yep. For a decade almost the left has complained about the Valerie Plame affair and knows that it is against the law to out a CIA agent.
That said, I am waiting for Benghazzi and this AP story to run together. Because otherwise we have the odd situation of the administration trying to stop a whistleblower who was actually leaking a story of a successful mission.
lamh35
@Suffern ACE: shoot, between Benghazi, IRS, AP, I fully expect to hear a Rev Wright tale to pop up next. It’s just a smorgasbord of stupid GOP-led/MSM&”liberal” media aided pseudo-“gates”… jeez
Suffern ACE
So to summarize, the administration actually hasn’t tried to cover up a story that made it look bad in the war on terror and is mad about a story that made it look good in the war on terror. This is just like bombing Laos.
Hill Dweller
@Suffern ACE: Again, the administration was going to announce the foiling of the AQ plot. The AP beating them to the punch wasn’t the issue.
The DOJ is conducting a criminal investigation into the leaking of classified info, which the AP reported, putting a CIA operation in jeopardy and exposing their mole in AQAR.
MikeJ
I like the hed at the Plum Line:
lumpkin
If the Admin ever sacks up just a bit they would respond by saying that they can’t respond because the republicans have blocked the nominee for the head of the IRS.
Sorry, nobody home here to accept responsibility.
gogol's wife
My television only has two stations: TCM and PBS. So I don’t know — are any of these scandals really important? No one I’ve run into is talking about any of them. It’s only here on Balloon Juice that I even hear about this stuff.
ETA: And my PBS only turns on for Masterpiece and Inspector Morse.
lumpkin
@Hungry Joe:
>>> It’s worse than the time my brother said he’d play catch with me, but then one of his friends came over and he didn’t<<<
i had totally forgot that until now. thanks for harshing my middle age, dude.
Suffern ACE
@Hill Dweller: I know. I know. Also, no one was audited by the IRS. The jack booted thugs didn’t show up.
Our proposed EPA chief actually responded to 1,100 questions asked to her by republican senators who now won’t vote on her because she won’t give them access to all of her personal emails…
And it’s almost summer, when the high hair dems leave town and allow the conservatives to rule the airwaves. Gaak!!!
Mike in NC
Noot needs to blow his outrage out his you-know-what. His personal scams deserve serious IRS scrutiny.
dewzke
Fook this guy…may I piss in his cheerios? Why is he on any show?
srv
@Hill Dweller:
The leak was from John Brennan, you know, the current DCIA.
So Plan B was to blame the AP for it.
@lamh35:
You might not want to assume there was a subpeona (Hint: National Security Letter)
PUMA Firebagger Nazi Emptywheel can help you out.
Hill Dweller
@Suffern ACE:
There is actually some semi-good news on that front.
The Dems have convinced Sen. Lautenberg to come back to DC, so they will have all their committee members present. When all the majority’s members are present, they don’t need to have any minority members there to vote. In other words, Republicans’ refusal to attend the vote will not matter now.
She’ll get past committee, but the Senate wingnuts will likely filibuster.
joes527
@gogol’s wife: PBS regular (and village idiot) David fucking Brooks is even dissing the “Bengaazzii is worse than Hitler” meme.
When your right wing talking point has lost David fucking Brooks, you are pretty much talking to yourself.
g
@Just Some Fuckhead: Truth in labeling.
Hill Dweller
@srv: Why wouldn’t the AP just say it was Brennan, especially now that the DOJ is accessing their phone records?
dance around in your bones
@gogol’s wife:
Wow, lucky you! I’ve pretty much given up on any kind of TV news/bloviating/pundit shows. They just make me too agitated.
This double-fisted GOP clenching on purported scandals is just too stupid for words. Sure, keep on trying…maybe one day it will work out for you fools!
In other words, typical GOP scandal mongering. I’d like to say ‘keep on truckin” but that would be dissing the Dead. Or Robert Crumb.
lamh35
@Hill Dweller:
@srv: John Brennan has already said he did NOT leak to AP.
Elie
@Davis X. Machina:
Stay behinds… definitely the IRS thing
lamh35
pokeyblow
You know the screen shot can’t be good when the chryon (?) says “Up Next: Tom Brokaw Joins the Discussion.”
srv
@Hill Dweller: See her story, uhm, a year ago.
lamh35
Question: what is the point of the Consitituional seperation of powers? And have we gotten so used to political vendettas, that it is something we “believe” in, but in practice totally don’t buy into.
Also, isn’t the AP reporting on an investigation involving the AP the definition of “conflict of interest”, or is “conflic of interest just another “belief” that in practice we all don’t really believe in.
srv
@lamh35:
Oh, well then, whatever he said must be true.
And DCIA Petraeus redirecting the loss of his CIA Station in Benghazi on the State Dept, I guess I should just lap that up too?
lamh35
@srv: so then AP reporting on an investigation it is involved in does NOT have an agenda and is therofore no invested and the agenda of the outcome?
Look, you made the statement that Brennan was the leak (with not link or evidence I might add) and all I did was link to actualy testimony that Brennan gave saying he was NOT the leak.
So you respond by inferring that I’m naive I guess…
mouse tolliver
Nancy’s making lemonade out of lemons on Chris Hayes. Says IRS scandal is why we need to overturn Citizens United and give greater scrutiny to the political activity of 501(c)s.
MikeJ
@srv:
I see no reason to take Ron Fournier’s word for it.
lamh35
@mouse tolliver:
Suffern ACE
I honestly don’t care who the ap leaker was. I’m really getting tired of the needs of the CIA intruding all the time. Yes, it is perfectly legal for the justice department to obtain phone records and inform someone after the fact. But we’re now dealing with two media fires related to the needs of the CIA and GWOT. I do have a problem with that.
srv
@lamh35: I’m sorry you can’t keep up with all the links above, but this is all very old news. You’ll have to read Emptywheel for yourself.
The leak had to spun into blaming someone else, lest it hurt a Very, Very Serious Persons career. Actions were taken. NSL’s were generated. Expect much more.
Not being the brightest bunch (Brennan is quite the idiot by any measure), they’ve now got Blowback on their hands.
Enjoy the next scandal you weren’t paying attention to.
Joel
@gogol’s wife: slow news year, which is (sadly) good for republicans. Some part of me thinks republicans are just trying to bore Americans into not turning out. After all, they don’t want gun control to be an issue in 2014.
OzoneR
I’m old enough to remember when liberal bloggers called for Obama to target SuperPACs, et al, with the IRS to intimidate Republicans so that they’ll “respect him.”
HOOCOODANODE they’d wouldn’t be so pleased when that happened.
Hill Dweller
@srv: So your contention, or the person you farm your opinions out to, is the DOJ is going through all of this to cover for Brennan?
Baud
@OzoneR:
I think that sort of thing happens a lot.
David Koch
@srv: if brennan is so bad then why did Elizabeth Warren vote for him?
Tom Jackson
Why do retired newscasters/outed politicians get so much
credence on TV and the blogs. Newt lied when his was an in
and has lied continuously since he was ousted. The retired newscasters and Military Generals should shut f— up and
go fishing or play golf. Get the hell off the airwaves,
they have taken up our viewing space and seldom have given
us the straight story, what makes you think they are doing
so now.
tj
Suffern ACE
@Hill Dweller: if they are, I can think of a few thousand better ways to cover it up. If this is revenge for embarrassing Brennan rather than a cover up, I can think of a few thousand ways that I’d try first. For fuck sake, he’s the CIA director.
Mnemosyne
@srv:
I guess you’re getting into mclaren’s habit of not reading your own links, so you have no idea they contradict your claims:
So much for your Brennan totally disclosed classified information claim. Turns that was debunked a year ago.
srv
@Hill Dweller:
This is an administration that’s still trying to save him after he wrote the Susan Rice Benghazi Comedy Tour. How many fails does it take?
Do I need to go back and search BJ archives for affirmation of Petraeus being a great DCIA choice?
@David Koch: Ha! You are always insightful.
Baud
@Mnemosyne:
I recall listening to some wingnut or fundamentalist speech once, and they were trying to peddle some bullshit as legitimate research, and one of the things they said to give it credibility was that it was “footnoted.” It had footnotes, therefore it was real!
On the Internet, the analogue is embedding a lot of links in one’s comments.
David Koch
How do we know Brennan isn’t a Friend of Hamas, a paid agent of Kim Jong-un, and Adam Sandler’s ghost writer?
lamh35
Wow ok, we haven’t even hit 24hours on this AP story and it’s already come to this.
David Koch
@srv: I knew it. Liberal Messiah Elizabeth Warren can not fail, she can only be failed.
Clap louder.
SatanicPanic
@Calouste: Even the liberal Daily Kos?
Gravenstone
@lamh35: Firebagger’s gonna bag. Ignore the moron and move on. You’ll never get an honest engagement from a Calvinball playing piece of shit like srv.
lamh35
Hmm, now I’m thinking this is all about AG Holder.
Like I said, GOP-led, Liberal Media-aided.
And you know if Holder were to leave, then how soon before you see Holder/Van Jones/Shirley Sherrod comparisons?
David Koch
@lamh35:
fixed.
srv
@Mnemosyne: And you keep cherrypicking your paragraphs…
I know in your world if the WH claims it, it is “debunked”
It must be so simple for you.
Bruce S
The methods used to investigate these groups were lazy and dubious at best, but the truth is that there is tremendous abuse of the non-profit status by political groups and the whole category needs house-cleaning. The Tea Party groups are likely some of the worst offenders. I wouldn’t necessarily defend the methodology, but the intent and the concern is totally justified.
GOVCHRIS1988
Here we go with the bipartisan scandalfishing of President Obama’s second term. We have the maniacal right wing, defeated twice in recent Presidential elections trying to throw everything that sticks from trying to impeach him for using the wrong semantics to a Bush appointed IRS Commissioner resigning due to revelations of IRS looking into tea party groups, never mind that this happened with Liberal groups, to the media accusing the White House of illegally wiretapping them without evidence.
This of course brings out our fairweather friends on the left who instead question why these supposed “scandals” are coming through our media like this in rapid succession, similar to the ones that appeared during the Clinton years, indirectly concede the suspicions on the right and then chastise true supporters saying this is why we shouldn’t be emotionally attached to the President and that we should be devoted to the opinions of people like Glenn Greenwald and Emptywheel who while they may make good points once in a blue moon, generally end up coming to the wrong conclusions more often than not or just throw up a torrent of outrage with no solutions whatsoever in the case of Greenwald. These same folks, who want me to trust the GOP and the media, the same institutions of power who told me that there were WMD’s in Iraq, that Barack Obama wouldn’t win re-election because of the lackluster 1st debate, that ACA would be overturned by the Supreme Court, that the president is aloof and distant because he doesn’t do asskissing house parties for the media and the Washington elite. I could go on and on and on.
But what do I know, I’m just an overly emotionally invested Obot worshiper.
Cacti
As the first comment shows, the fringe left and fringe right will always be united in their hatred of a sitting Democratic President.
Baud
FWIW: Smith v. Maryland (1979)
Gravenstone
@GOVCHRIS1988:
The commissioner resigned because his 5 year term was up. He was gone long before this little Tempest in a Teapot Dome broke last week.
David Koch
Brennan was round when jesus christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Brennan stuck around st. petersburg
When he saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
Brennan rode a tank
Held a generals rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank
I shouted out,
Who killed the kennedys?
When after all
It was Brennan
Bruce S
Why the fuck is the cynical grifter Newt Gingrich, who uses fake “patriotism” to grease his own fat ass, on my TeeVee?
Oh yeah – Scarborough! Another rancid left-over from Gingrich’s godawful congress. How do these frauds keep it going?
Cacti
@Bruce S:
Rupert Murdoch employee Dennis Kucinich was there on Faux to give his co-workers support from the left.
lamh35
@Gravenstone: but it was initiated and going on while the Bush appointee was in charge. The IRS has since been under an Interim-commisioner. From what I’ve read as soon as the new Commish was made aware, the service was stopped, but it was going on during the Bush appointee’s “leadership”.
That’s what I think GOVCHRIS is saying
Baud
The silver lining with all these “scandals” is that the GOP might not want to distract from them by crashing the economy. #11Dchess
GOVCHRIS1988
@lamh35: Isn’t it funny how these scandals are being compared with Republican scandals as either the equivalent of or worse than. I mean just above Gravenstone just compared it to the Teapot Dome Scandal, which happened under Republican President Warren Harding. For years, Republicans have been trying to get Democrats into scandal so they can either say we did it worse or both sides do it. Its sad when supposed Liberals cosign it.
Cacti
@Baud:
The economy may well have a lot to do with the concerted and coordinated poo flinging on the right.
In the past few weeks:
New jobless claims dropped to a 5-year low
Unemployment rate dropped to a 4-year low
Dow hit 15,000
Contrast that with Eurozone austerity being an unmitigated failure, and any conversation about the economy becomes one about how the austerians were objectively wrong.
Heliopause
One of the Juicers needs to start the Articles of Impeachment Contest. Date, number of articles, grounds, etc. Date with John Cole for the winner.
Baud
@Cacti:
Agree, and all of that would go away in an instant if the GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling…
Ripley
By quoting Emptywheel?
Cacti
@GOVCHRIS1988:
FTW.
Every imaginary Democratic scandal is supposed to be the analogue of a real-world Republican one. Clinton lying about a blow job was supposed to be the Dem equivalent of Nixon running a burglary ring out of the Oval Office.
David Koch
“it’s brennan’s fault” is the new
“it’s obama’s fault”blackSuffern ACE
@Ripley: I got to the comment on the linked article that indicated that ambassador Stephens was in Benghazi because it was a great place to arrange dates and I threw in the towel.
@Cacti: yeah. Have to remember that there are a lot of ideologues on the left who haven’t met a president who shouldn’t be impeached.
Cacti
@Suffern ACE:
If we just heighten the contradictions maaaaaan, eventually the proletariat will see the light and we’ll have the long awaited people’s revolution.
I’ve little doubt that in 2016, they’ll be helping some odious Republican get elected, like they did with Nixon, Reagan, and Bush the lesser.
Bruce S
@Cacti:
Sorry, but Dennis Kucinich on FOX isn’t high on my list of cable news horrors. I know you hate anyone who ever has criticized the Obama administration – “Firebaggers!” and all of that – so I’ll let you stew over this one. I could care less. And I think folks who have to stoop to this kind of lame characterization are pretty pathetic. Does Stephanie Cutter get the same treatment from you as a shameless cable whore when she takes her crap new job on the update of that piece of shit show, “Crossfire”? My guess is not. Kucinich is an irrelevant little joke – who probably happens to be right far more than he’s wrong in his concerns, as well as a guy who clearly craves attention more than political impact – but he’s never sabotaged the Democratic party by going outside of the Democratic primary contests to a third party national campaign, like Nader. That’s my “red line” for the difference between a potentially constructive critic from the left and a spoiler. So I can’t get a bug up my butt about Dennis. Attempting to draw some parallel between Dennis Kucinich and Newt Gingrich or even Joe Scarborough is nonsense and evidence of some deep-seated resentment that defies rational analysis IMHO.
Cacti
@Bruce S:
Whatever you tell yourself to help get over Rupert signing St. Dennis’s paychecks.
Mike in NC
@GOVCHRIS1988: One of the more memorable books of the many written about Bill Clinton was called “Bloodsport: The Hunting of a President”. Says a lot about the Village and the GOP.
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t think they’re saying it’s unlawful. They’re saying it’s too broad and therefore wrong, not illegal.
Baud
@Kay:
Rachel was questioning its legality on tonight’s show.
Mnemosyne
@srv:
Dude. It’s the same call. Re-read your quote again — there is nothing in it that says Brennan disclosed classified information, just that he discussed the situation. The paragraphs I quoted are later in the story and say that Brennan, the White House, and the rest of the people on the call all say that Brennan did not disclose classified information during the call, which is your claim.
Read your own links once in a goddamned while, or at least learn how the inverted pyramid style of newswriting works.
Cacti
@Mike in NC:
Blinded by the Right from David Brock, of Media Matters fame, is also a fairly chilling read of what it’s like to be a point man in the employ the GOP/1 percenter slime machine.
Suffern ACE
@srv: ok. This is confusing. The call with the TV reporters happened after the AP ran with their story. Your original claim was that Brennan was the source for the AP disclosure. Once the AP ran with its story, I guess that Brennan could have denied that what was in the AP story was true. but The AP wasn’t on that call.
Look I’m receptive to the idea that doj is being over zealous here. But I don’t think the story that they are protecting Brennan from embarrassment holds up.
Bruce S
@Cacti:
Grow the fuck up…I don’t have anything to get over. It’s your “big fucking deal.” Not a blip on my radar because I’m not obsessed with “the left” as the enemy that always undermines Democrats. When an organized left has actually been strong in this country, it’s always helped Democrats disposed to doing the right thing. Johnson’s problem with “the left” undermining his re-election was that he was, in foreign policy, doing the wrong thing and upping the ante on Vietnam. When he was working to enforce civil rights, it was the activist left that gave him the juice he needed to get it passed. There’s real history and serious political engagement and then there’s politics as a spectator sport for cable addicts. You’re, unfortunately, hung up on the latter. And the notion that I’m promoting a “St Dennis” if you actually read my comment is more evidence you can’t argue from evidence so much as puerile BS.
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne: ok. Now I’m confused.
Is it worth un confusing over this issue?
JWL
I hope the address below provides an easy link; if not, my apology.
Still, if not, by all means highlight and google/yahoo/seek it out. It’s American history worth knowing.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/zenger/zenger.html
Kay
@Baud:
Okay, but Congress people are using all the “narrowly drawn” language, at least Boehner and Leahy are.
They’re questioning the scope, and that’s the language of the DOJ response, too. “We have to strike a balance, ever mindful, blah, blah”
Mnemosyne
@Suffern ACE:
You can read the story if you want. The quotes here are basically the Pulp Fiction version since srv chose to quote the first paragraphs of the story and I quoted paragraphs from further into the story that explained the timeline.
Baud
@Kay:
That’s fair, if that’s what the debate will be focused on. But it hardly screams “scandal” if that’s all it is.
Kay
@Baud:
Oh, I think they’ll go bananas, as I said. It IS really broad.
They could always pass a law. Crazy, I know, but they are lawmakers.
Cacti
@Bruce S:
Yes, how much better it turned out to be that Nixon beat Humphrey, because 4-years later a true lefty like McGovern…
Got his head kicked in and Tricky Dick won another 4-years.
Suffern ACE
@Kay: of be fine with them passing a law.
@Mnemosyne: I did read the story. It seems really that Richard Clark might have been a speculating on TV and been right and given who he is…
But the whole thing needs sequencing. I guess I’ll go back to the original AP story if I can find it.
Yatsuno
@Kay:
That’s adorable! You expect Congress to actually do WORK? Especially since it means THAT ONE might get the credit for doing something? BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Bruce S
@Cacti:
Of course, Nixon getting elected is on the folks who protested the war, not the indefensible policies of Johnson and Humphrey who refused to break with him? It’s the fault of “the left” that Johnson blew up his own presidency with a war even he knew was doomed to failure. That’s pathetic. Let’s blame the dirty fucking hippies, not the Cold War establishment that was fucking this country – not to mention Vietnam – in the ass and sending tens of thousands of young Americans to needless death. You’re a deep thinker. My guess is that you wouldn’t have had the balls to join people like John Lewis in the civil rights movement because they might embarrass Kennedy-Johnson.
Mnemosyne
@Suffern ACE:
The claim that srv is promulgating is that John Brennan, current head of the CIA, was the source of the leak, and that the examination of the AP’s phone records is an attempt to cover up for Brennan. I don’t see anything to support that in the linked story.
@Yatsuno:
Not to mention that passing a new law would prevent future Republican presidents from playing Audit My Enemies, and the Republicans aren’t going to do anything to prevent that from happening.
Kay
@Suffern ACE:
Yeah, Leahy says they may not have met the burden. It’s twofold. It has to be narrowly drawn and if it isn’t disclosed they need a reason for nondisclosure, like it would ruin their investigation.
Obviously they believe they met the burden, but that still leaves “is it WRONG”.
In any event, I think it’s a big deal.
For one thing it means they can’t find the leaker looking only one way, to the government source. They have to.look at the person the leaked is speaking to. That’s probably not good for them all by itself.
becca
At this point, Obama would have to murder kittens on live TV before I’d give aid and comfort to the GOP impeachment trap strategy. And I curse this prez more than I praise him.
I don’t give Obama or the Democratic Party high marks for much of anything, but, at the risk of sounding shrill, the alternative is too, too horrid to imagine. Everything the GOP has done for the last forty years has eroded our government and our democracy. And the GOP pols just get weirder and more bizarre, and, scariest of all, so fearless when they lie.
So I will ignore the boys who cry wolverines! every time Obama takes a dump.
Suffern ACE
@Bruce S: both of youse guys can it. It’s over. Done. Kerist. It was 50 years ago. The hippies shouldn’t have made drugs the center of their revolt and stuck to anti-war and sex. And the establishment shouldn’t have gone all crazy fighting the drugs and commies. But it’s done.
The republicans did more to ensure that they would take power and built an vast network to maintain power. Arguing about the sixties denies the agency of the right wing.
becca
@becca: and don’t even get me started on the GOP scorched earth environmental strategy.
Cacti
@Bruce S:
Meanwhile, in the real world, Johnson was already negotiating terms for the end of the war, which Nixon scuttled so he could drag it on for another 5-years. The GOP holds the White House for the next 8-years, and Nixon operates a burglary ring from the Oval Office.
But by god, Humphrey had to pay!
Has there ever been a time that the left didn’t step on their own dick with the purity uber alles crap?
JWL
I dig Charles Pierce.
And his condemnation of the AP eavesdropping is righteous.
But only to a point. At which point, he just looks worse than silly. He looks naive.
Surely, the name Admiral Poindexter will ring a bell with him.
The Admiral was fired prior to 9/11 for speaking the truth. Anyone who is shocked and outraged that the U.S. Government has been collecting/eavesdropping on any and all communications is a fool.
Cacti
@Suffern ACE:
It’s done?
We’ll see if that’s the case in 2016.
1968, 1980, and 2000 thus far where “attack the Dem POTUS/candidate from the left” has helped to give us Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and Bush.
Purity trolling has a depressing/impressive record of causing 100% opposite of the intended effect.
Suffern ACE
@JWL: I love you, you should know. But if the government is eavesdropping, then it doesn’t need the phone records to find a leaker. The government may not be listening in as much as we thought. That is not a bad thing.
JWL
@Suffern ACE: The USA is a big country. That’s the deal. It stands to reason that a continent’s worth of communications cannot possibly be distilled. Which is not to say it cannot be recorded.
Bruce S
@Suffern ACE:
I’m not arguing “about the Sixties” – I was making a broad historical point about demonizing “the left.” I was refuting the idiocy that “the left” is what undermines reforms initiated by Democratic presidents. When Democrats have actually done serious reform – i.e. labor rights, the beginnings of social welfare, civil rights, etc. – a strong left has been essential to the success. That’s hardly diminishing the “agency of the right” – it’s pointing out that Democrats who don’t have a clue about the necessity for our own “agency” at the activist level are useless wimps and weasels, looking for a way to ‘splain their impotence and tendency to be losers. And your talking points about the anti-war movement are straight out of Spiro Agnew, so you are more than welcome to go fuck yourself.
Bruce S
@Cacti:
Yeah – it was a fucking scandal that people were still protesting a war that had been insanely escalated by Lyndon Johnson in 1968. The bastards! Nixon was all their fault. RFK and Gene McCarthy were Firebaggers!
You’re a fucking joke!
Bruce S
“Has there ever been a time that the left didn’t step on their own dick with the purity uber alles crap?”
Johnson stepped on his own dick – along with a lot of other peoples. A tragic presidency, but to blame his failure and fall on the anti-war movement is pathological. Even Robert MacNamara now knows better. And it’s particularly deranged to wrench this terrible moment from the broader history of Democrats who succeeded in essential reforms – any honest reading of which shows that “the left” was a key element on the ground (even some really ideologically shitty leftists like the CPUSA during the Great Depression.)
Cacti
@Bruce S:
Humphrey lost, they got their wish.
Carter lost, they got their wish.
Gore lost, they got their wish.
The people’s revolution should be coming any day now.
Bruce S
@Cacti:
That’s a great bit of attacking delusional straw men and engaging in totally dishonest argumentation.
Why do I not give a shit about Dems like you and consider you less than useless to our building a coalition that can actually win elections AND get worthwhile shit done. Go back to monitoring FOX News and Dennis Kucinich sitings from the vantage point of your couch.
Cacti
@Bruce S:
Purity Uber Alles
The Republicans thank you.
Bruce S
@Cacti:
What’s pathetic is that anyone with your perspective would have told A Phillip Randolph to stay in his place in 1940 and not embarrass or threaten FDR, or that another March on Washington in 1963 was too much in confronting a “liberal” administration, or that Johnson shouldn’t push for a civil rights bill in response to radical activism in 1964 because it would break up a historic “winning coalition” for the national Democrat and give the GOP inroads to control the South for several generations. Because, you know, the “purity trolls” like Randolph and John Lewis always “step on their own dicks.” That’s your logic – own it! It’s cheap and easy to slam the Dirty Fucking Hippies, but that’s just a small slice of the history that I was putting on the table. With Democrats such as yourself, we really don’t need Republicans. Nothing changes.
Cacti
@Bruce S:
The civil rights and voting rights acts passed with 80% Republican support and were broadly popular outside of the ex-confederate states.
Must have been because of the hippies.
Bruce S
@Cacti:
And it had no impact on the Democrat’s electoral perspective moving forward. Nixon didn’t leverage that – never helped Reagan win elections. Nada. Zip. No issue there.
You’re an idiot and a waste of time. If you want to believe that the reason black folks won civil rights is because of the Republican support and “broad popularity” in Northern states, you barely rise to the level of a waste of my time.
You’ve never addressed a single point, except with dishonest bullshit. And, yes, a log of “dirty fucking hippies” – like Mickey Schwerner – were instrumental in helping build the civil rights movement.
You’re on your own…go at it. I’m sure folks here are impressed with your depth and reasoning powers.
Cacti
@Bruce S:
It’s not as though people like Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin and the NAACP were knocking out the legal underpinnings for segregation a during the decade when hippies were in elementary school.
Or that Truman and Eisenhower had already started the work of desegregating the armed forces and public schools in the 1940s and 1950s…
Or that both candidates for POTUS in 1960 supported civil rights reforms, disagreeing on the details rather than the principle, and that civil rights had years of momentum behind it by the time Johnson took office…
It was the hippies who were instrumental in making it all happen in 1964.
smh
Bruce S
Good lord – you can’t help yourself constructing totally false straw man arguments – unbelievable. You are a total fraud
jc
Oh yeah, I’m sure the astroturf-roots tea party groups’ taxes are all ship-shape and above board. What was that about Koch money funding a range of transportation and materials costs for certain favored political action groups? It sure wasn’t liberals who were being bused to those ‘Take America Back’ (to the Gilded Age) rallies. Who could suspect that simple tea folk and billionaire tax cheats have a lot of shared interests?