2013 in Review -- A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy,* Part 2: Remember when Reagan cut funds for insane asylums?

Storms, guns, bombs, free stuff, and the secret gay life of Obama: Some top Republican lies of 2013

[*TO MEET THE JANITOR OF LUNACY, SEE PART 1]


Plum loco, stone stoopid, or pathologically dishonest? You be the judge.

by Noah

I'm calling this "Some top Republican lies" because everyone else does "Top 10s" or "Top 20s," but I see no reason to come up with some arbitrary round number. Besides, with the Crackpot Party there's always another lie, and chances are very good that the corporate media will be all too willing to repeat them all without examining their veracity. That said, here are a few. I hold these lies to be self-evident.


1. The Boston Marathon bombing was a false flag (government) job

Wingnut Alex Jones (see above), Natural News, New Hampshire Republican State Sen.Stella Trembley, and others had the "scoop" on this one almost immediately after the tragic bombing on April 15th. It's straight out of Marvel Comics or some wacko Twilight Zone. Just like 9/11 truthers, there are a lot of wingnuts out there that are so determined to hate the government for something, anything, especially if that Obama dude is in charge, that their sick minds will concoct and believe anything. For some, the idea of the government taking their guns away or evilly giving you the opportunity to purchase healthcare for your family just isn't enough.


2. A Saudi national or nationals were responsible for the bombing

Shall I speculate as to why it is that, in the twisted minds of Republicans, terrorists must be nonwhite or Muslim? Immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing, the same people were proclaiming that Muslim terrorists from the Middle East were the bombers. That one turned out to be white folks. Oooops! And white folks that were a lot closer to Republicans than Republicans would like to publicly admit, right down to Newt Gingrich, as House speaker, having radical Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth as a liaison to the militia groups of the Northwest. In this case, the bombers were Muslim, but it became obvious that, to Republicans, the glass was only half full.


3. The Saudi government warned the U.S. about the Boston Marathon bombing



Nope. Turns out the Russians did communicate some info about the actual bombers, but a few days after the bombing Glenn Beck said he knew the truth about a Saudi national who had been questioned and let go. It wasn't even the same guys that Rupert Murdoch's New York Post had falsely claimed right on his front page were the perps.

Beck claimed the White House knew who did it and was covering up, and he claimed he would lay out all the evidence the following Monday if the government didn't come clean. There was even some sort of Benghazi connection. So what happened? Well, in the meantime the real bombers were identified and one was killed and one was caught. They weren't Saudis. They even (oh, the disappointment!) weren't of a darkish hue. The whole thing had gotten started on Hannity's show. Bill O'Reilly had Beck on to lay it all out. Thanks, Fox. Where would this country be without you?


4. The White House is full of Muslim Brotherhood

It seems that as soon as Egypt's government fell, and Americans became aware of the Muslim Brotherhood's position of influence and power in that nation, it just somehow sounded perfect to those in the Crackpot Party that there must be some nefarious connection to the Kenyan-born, secret-Muslim, socialist black man in the White House. (Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the Obama administration, even "letting Muslim Brotherhood run anti-terror ops," is just one of the Impeachable Offenses "documented" by crackpot "authors" Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott. If you shopped on the right wingnut website, you could get not just a less-than-half-price copy of the book, autographed, but also a "a FREE Impeach Obama bumper sticker.")

Yes, I can see it all clearly now, the unseen hand of . . . yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Guilt by association when there's no association -- I get it. Next!


5. Bush kept us safe


Giuliani on Hannity again! He did? I coulda sworn that Bush, not Clinton, was at least pretending to be prez on 9/11. It's amazing how anyone can still put Rudy Julieandrews in front of a camera and let him prattle on. It's 2013, for Christ's sake! The man was a failure as a mayor who made himself Mr. 9/11. The guy was so lame, it took him umpteen numbers of trials to nail John Gotti. He spent $50 million running for his party's nomination for president and got one delegate and that delegate was from Florida. But there he was again, in Sean Insanity's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest studio uttering those famous four words, in the wake of the Boston bombing.

One of the sick Republican memes, post-tragedy, was to somehow make the Boston bombing Obama's fault. Hey, Repugs! People were maimed. People died. Families were destroyed! And you, you just see it as an opportunity.


6. Superstorm Sandy was caused by Obama seeding of clouds

Okay, I know this was from late in the previous year, but it still has life in at least some Republican minds. The rest seem to be more fixated on blaming Gov. Blowhard Christie for turning the 2012 election in Obama's favor when he took a romantic walk on the beach with the president. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFvmguc56YA


The first minute and a half is just a Fox News report on the progressing storm. But listen for the eerie voice of insanity that comes in at 1:29 and then shows us "why this Frankenstorm may be changing its trajectory." Can you guess whodunnit? (Hint: "Obama is falling behind in the polls. Is this the October surprise we have been expecting.") The poster, PEREXUSREX, followed up with this reply to doubting commenters: "Watch the news - Obama has been able to look presidential and Mitt Romney has had to slow his campaign. This hurricane has definitely helped Obama who was definitely behind - he is not behind anymore since the hurricane."


7. Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi

[Click to enlarge]

Repugs don't even seem to realize that their very own lies about what happened in Libya may have cost Romney the White House when he repeated a portion of their Libya lie in a the second presidential debate and got caught. In Republikook world, President Obama supposedly either let the storming of the embassy happen or encouraged it, maybe with his supersecret Muslim underground decoder ring, or something.

One thing Republicans won't tell you is that it was they who voted in Congress to withdraw security funding for our embassies. Nice goin', a-holes. Since then we've had madman Rep. Darrell Issa, doing his best Joe McCarthy imitation, running hearing after hearing after hearing, wasting mountains of our taxpayer dollars on some insane attempt to build an impeachment-worthy case against the president.  Again, people died, so let's exploit it! Ain't that the Republican way?




8. Romney lost because of "free stuff"


Watch the Lawrence O'Donnell Last Word segment here.

Sooo much chest-beating and recrimination in the wake of Romney losing. So many accusations: Christie, the storm, and, most of all, "free stuff." Obama won by giving out "free stuff" to you know whom.

Just keep telling yourselves that, Repugs. But if Romney had won, people like Sheldon Adelson stood to get a whole lotta free stuff; free stuff in the form of a return of an estimated $700 million in tax breaks in return for his $100 million in campaign contributions. $600 million? Now that's what I call free stuff! Sorry, Mittens, you lost because enough Americans of all backgrounds saw you for what you are.


9. Guns don't kill people

Neither do 30-shot magazines, right? Well, 11 kids escaped death in Newtown, Connecticut, while the shooter in their school had to switch to a new magazine. Suppose he only had 10-shot mags. How much death and human misery would have been avoided?

Yet there are the Republicans, the party that pushes human misery, demanding the right to their 30-shot mags. And if you want to look at the face of insanity --




10. Background checks bad; straw purchases good

Terrorists don't have to try to smuggle their guns into the country. So what's the easiest way for a terrorist to get a gun here in these United States? Well, if you enter a gun emporium and you look like ya just might not be quite white enough and ya might have some sort of one o' them un-'merican accents, they might not sell you a gun. What to do? There's already no background-check thing. That's good for would be evil-doers, but still, there's that accent and skin-tone thing.

Ah, easy! Pay someone to go buy you whatever you need! Street gangs do it all the time. It's called a straw purchase, and Republicans like that just fine. Of course, in the case of the gang gunplay in Chicago, that's all Obama's fault, not the permissiveness of the Republican gun kooks.


11. The Government is buying all the ammo in order to kill us all

No one likes this lie more than the companies that make bullets. It inspires more purchases and hording of ammo. Republicans spend a lot of energy telling each other that Obama is going to take away their guns. They campaigned on it. They shrieked that he'd be coming for our guns as soon as January came along. So it follows that when he couldn't get Congress to pass saner gun laws, he would, naturally, buy up all the bullets!

"We just denied everything that this president and the vice president are trying to do. So what are they going to want to, if they want to violate our Second Amendment rights? Do it with ammo."

-- Sen. Jim Inhofe (Republikook-OK)

Or maybe Iraq, Afghanistan, and the creation of a huge Department of Homeland Security have something to do with the so-called ammo shortage. Look, bozos, if Newtown shooter Adam Lanza can get all those bullets, and all the shooters we hear about every damn day can get all the bullets they need, maybe you ought to rethink this. Please, oh Janitor of Lunacy, make it stop!


12. Obama is still a secret Muslim

Yes. Well, that explains everything. Scientists may still be looking for their Unified Field Theory that explains all the physical workings of the universe, but until then, this works fine for those in the Crackpot Party. Behold, all is explained! I saw it on Fox!


13. Obama is deliberately tanking the stock market in order to destroy capitalism

Hey, let's not let the reality that the market has gone over the 16,000 mark get in the way of this "theory." Wingnut chatterboxes and more reputable authorities like Forbes say a crash is coming. Some say everyone should sell their stocks and cash out. Repug media like Newsmax issue weekly warnings about an imminent crash as if they want it to happen, just so they can blame Obama.

Hey, it might happen. The fall of 2008 wasn't pretty, and not much has been done, and the Wall Street criminals run free, but hmmm, now if everyone were to listen to these Chicken Littles and pull their stocks at once, wouldn't that crash the market and destroy the economy to the likes of which has not been seen since 1929? So just who is trying to deliberately destroy capitalism?


14. Obama is gay and has even been "married" to a man



So says World Net Daily's Jerome Corsi, the Swiftboat guy, so it must be true. Can Issa investigations and Hannity breathlessly speculating about gay orgies in the White House be far behind?

This gay Obama thing refuses to die in Repug circles. It's even used as the reason that there are so many of those wicked LGBTs working in the White House. Maybe the saddest thing is that such a thing would matter to Republicans. Ah, but no wonder Obama is pushing that "gay marriage" thing. Say no more!

NOAH'S 2013 IN REVIEW --
A PRAYER TO THE JANITOR OF LUNACY*

Part 1: Take a bow, Repugs! (*including Nico's "Janitor of Lunacy") [Monday]

Part 2: Remember when Reagan cut funds for insane asylums? (Storms, guns, bombs, free stuff, and the secret gay life of Obma: Some top Republican lies of 2013) [Tuesday]

Part 3: No Cruz control (Rafael "Ted" Cruz in his own words) [Wednesday]

Part 4: A great anniversary approaches! (Nixon's resignation) (plus more "Quote of the Year nominees") [Thursday]

Part 5: Everyone's a critic, including me -- Some people really try my patience (Bill-O, Howie Kurtz, E. W. Jackson, et al.) [Friday]

Part 6 (and last): In the words of Dan Quayle, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind" (Exploiting tragedy for a buck; Miss America's not American?; "Quote of the Year" winner) [Saturday]

And don't forget Noah's recent --
"Need a last-minute Christmas gift suggestion?" [12/22]
"50 Years Ago Today: The Beatles" [12/26]
"A Tale of Two Popes -- the one in the Vatican and the one in North Carolina" [12/27]

#

Conspiracy Theory Lunatics Are Now Part of The Republican Party's Shrinking Tent

Wednesday evening Rachel Maddow introduced her listeners to the false flag mania that has swept first late night radio, then the extreme right and has now seeped into the Republican mainstream. The seepage, of course, is inevitable because so many freaks and nuts from the fringes are now in the heart of the Republican Party power structure. Rachel starts with Glenn Beck admirer/New Hampshire state Rep. Stella Tremblay (R-Rockingham). Even New Hampshire Republicans are worried that Tremblay, who has been publicly claiming the U.S. government staged the Boston marathon bombings as part of a false flag operation, is making the party look weirder than it already looks.

"It is hard to believe that just days after the cowardly acts of terror took place in our backyard that Rep. Tremblay would thoroughly discredit herself with her bizarre, embarrassing and unfounded comments," said Matthew Slater, executive director, N.H. Republican State Committee. "New Hampshire Republicans strongly reject her outlandish views and believe that anybody who holds such bizarre beliefs should not be taken seriously."

New Hampshire Democratic Party Communications Director Harrell Kirstein quickly pounced on Rep. Tremblay's post as the latest in a string of Republican outrages.

"How long will it take Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, Senate Republican Leader Jeb Bradley, and House Republican Leader Gene Chandler to condemn Representative Tremblay's vile and chilling comments?" he asked.

"Tremblay's post is further proof of what can only be called an epidemic of disgusting and shockingly inappropriate behavior by members of the N.H. Republican Party. Yet even for the N.H. Republican Party, which has become synonymous with the Tea Party and radical extremism, Representative Tremblay's claims are a new low. She is an embarrassment to the N.H. House of Representatives, to her constituents, and to the entire state of New Hampshire."

Chandler said Tremblay's comments are so offensive that he was "at a loss for words." They in no way reflect the House leadership or the Republican caucus, he said.

Despite the condemnation, Tremblay was unapologetic. People should question things, she asserted.

"There are too many things going on in this country and nobody questions it," she said.

Tremblay said when the bombings first happened, a Saudi Arabian national, who was wounded in the incident, was named a "person of interest" by the FBI. Investigators obtained a search warrant for his residence and, she said, reporters gathered at a Boston courthouse because they believed the man was going to be arraigned on charges.

But then, she said, the man was released and deported. Tremblay maintains that happened after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama met with high-placed Saudi officials.

"We are supposed to boldly question what our government does," she said.

And, Tremblay pointed out, everyone has freedom of speech.

"We can say whatever we want, am I correct in this premise or not?" she asked.

Tremblay also made news in March when at a legislative committee hearing she said she believes President Woodrow Wilson agreed with Adolf Hitler's view on race.

"This stuff," Rachel explained, "is also sloshing into the U.S. Congress." Texas Congressman Michael McCaul, the wealthiest Member of Congress (married into Clear Channel money) is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee... and he's batshitinsane. He wouldn't even be in Congress except that Tom DeLay created a district for him by dividing up Austin in three to dilute Democratic votes there. He and three of his colleagues want to investigate groundless and absurd charges made by Alex Jones and Glenn Beck-- pulled out of their asses to bring them attention and cash. Rachel:

The right has always had this to contend with... the Alex Joneses of the world and the Glenn Becks of the world have always been out there on the fringe right, eager to decode anything that seems complex or upsetting in the world to make it very simple for you. To make it very simple so that every story in the world has the same implication, which is that all of your suspicions and prejudices are true; that the world is in fact a very simple place; that people really are out to get you; and that you do understand all of it. And that you can trust no other sources of information about the world other than these gentlemen, who would please like you to send another $19.95 for another month's subscription, since they are the only people who will tell you the real truth."

I'm sure the New Hampshire Republican Party and the voters in the Granite State will figure out how to deal with a deranged Tea Party freak like Stella Tremblay. There isn't much harm she can do anyway-- unless she has some black gunpowder and a bomb-making manual. But what about highly placed nutcases like Mike McCaul in the U.S. Congress? Boehner appointed him chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. He actually has real power. And he's either as crazy as Stella, on his way to being as crazy as Stella, or faking it for the teabaggers back home. And McCaul is considered vaguely mainstream among Texas Republicans especially when you compare him to colleagues like Louie Gohmert and Steve Stockman, both of whom are even more out of their minds than Stella in New Hampshire!

Yesterday former GOP operative, David Frum, sent out this tweet about the fringe right-wing party in Britain, the UKIP, something like a combination of the Tea Party, the KKK and some crackpot neo-Nazis:

A UKIP candidate has sparked outrage by reportedly claiming that Jews deliberately murdered each other in the Holocaust as part of a masterplan to create Israel.

The extreme racist views were posted in Mrs Anna-Marie Crampton’s name on a conspiracy theory website called 'Secrets of The Fed.'

Crampton, 57, is allegedly quoted as saying: “Holocaust means a sacrifice by fire. Only the Zionists could sacrifice their own in the gas chambers.

“The Second World Wide War was engineered by the Zionist jews and financed by the banksters to make the general public all over the world to feel so guilty and outraged by the Holocaust that a treaty would be signed to create the State of Israel as we know it today.”

Mrs Crampton posed with UKIP leader Nigel Farrage at a rally in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, two weeks ago-- and proudly posted a photo on her Facebook page.

A further outrageous comment, posted two months ago, added: “The Rothschilds are Zionists..there is a difference between Jews and Zionists. These Psychopaths hide behind and use the Jews.

“It was thanks to them that 6 million Jews were murdered in the War (along with 26 million Russians!).”

Another comment says: “I am anti Zionist, not antisemit (sic). I love the true Israel and the Jews.”

Mrs Crampton is standing for UKIP in next week’s county council elections in the traditionally Conservative ward of Crowborough in East Sussex.

Even the UKIP, essentially a neo-Nazi outfit, is on the verge on expelling Crampton. The Republican Party takes psychopaths like her and push them up the ladder. They're on the verge on giving Senate nominations to two congressional crackpots just as bigoted and insane-- if not more so-- than she is, Steve King of Iowa and Paul Broun of Georgia. And, don't forget, John Boehner put Michele Bachmann on the House Intelligence Committee and filled the House Science Committee Climate Change deniers and conspiracy theory lunatics like McCaul and Broun as well as equally crazy and uninformed fringe loons in need of mental health treatment like Stockman, Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Randy Weber (R-TX), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Steve Palazzo (R-MS), Bill Posey (R-FL), Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), David Schweikert (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL) and Kevin Cramer (R-ND). America has some real problems... and the GOP deals with them by screaming about Benghazi, another crackpot conspiracy theory woven into the warp and woof of the Republican Party mindset. I was in Germany once and heard this band play this song and I signed them to Reprise. The band is BiGod 20 and the song is called America:

Capitalizing On Tragedy

Chuck'n'Steve, Iowa statesmen/immigration experts

The other day we saw how fringe right-wing talk show hosts like Glenn Beck and Bryan Fischer are using the Boston Marathon tragedy to boost their ad revenues and insert themselves and their bizarre agendas into the conversation. Ever so-slightly more mainstream conservatives-- Congressman Steve King and Senator Chuck Grassley, both of Iowa, come right to mind-- have been trying to fundraise for themselves and push their anti-immigrant hatred by pointing to the Tsarnaev brothers (legal immigrants). Dzhokhar is an American citizen.

We already knew that opponents of immigration reform had no good arguments in favor of preserving the status quo. Now we know they have no shame.

Some of them are deliberately mixing apples and oranges and trying to use the tragedy of the Boston Marathon bombing to scuttle efforts in Washington to achieve immigration reform.

...Earlier this week, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa-- a vocal foe of immigration reform who has suggested the answer to securing the border is electrified fencing because, as he once said on the House floor, "we do this with livestock all the time"-- suggested that the congressional debate on the immigration bill should go slow because the suspects in the Boston bombing might turn out to be foreign nationals.

...On Friday, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa jumped into the fray during a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"Given the events of this week, it's important for us to understand the gaps and loopholes in our immigration system," he said. "How can we beef up security checks on people who wish to enter the United States? How do we ensure that people who wish to do us harm are not eligible for benefits under the immigration laws, including this new bill?"

Also piling on was conservative columnist Ann Coulter, who has made clear over the last few months that she opposes immigration reform because she thinks it would lead to the "end of America" since Latinos are busy "having illegitimate children and going on welfare." She marked the shootout in Boston, and took a poke at the Florida senator who is leading immigration reform efforts, by mischievously tweeting:

"It's too bad Suspect No. 1 won't be able to be legalized by Marco Rubio, now."

Again, the Tsarnaev brothers were immigrants, but they didn't need to be "legalized." They were already in the country legally. But, hey, why let facts in the way of a good screed?

And, of course, fake charities-- a tragedy of another kind-- were quick to spring up to take advantage of all the maimed and wounded victims in Boston. The FTC is warning people to be careful who they contribute to. Right-wing religious charlatans have become fabulously wealthy be tricking frightened and dull-minded simpletons into sending them money. For them the Boston Marathon tragedy is just another opportunity for their business model.

The consumer protection agency said scam artists might be posing as charity groups to profit off of the outpour of support after the terror attack.

“Urgent appeals for aid that you get in person, by phone or mail, by e-mail, on websites, or on social networking sites may not be on the up-and-up,” FTC consumer education specialist Colleen Tressler wrote in a blog post this week. “Unfortunately, legitimate charities face competition from fraudsters who either solicit for bogus charities or aren't entirely honest about how a so-called charity will use your contribution.”

In the wake of tragic incidents, scammers posing as charities may often emerge to take advantage of the public's goodwill.

...State officials have also warned about potential scams. On Wednesday, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley issued a statement advising "people to do their homework on the charity before giving to ensure their money will go to the purpose they intend.”

...According to the state's Undersecretary for Consumer Affairs Barbara Anthony, within four hours of the attack more than 125 online domain names were registered claiming to collect money for victims.

“It is unspeakable that anyone would sink to capitalize on Boston’s sorrow as we recover from this tragedy," she said in a statement. “We remind consumers to exercise caution and do their homework before reaching out to help.”

How The NRA Prevents Law Enforcement From Catching Violent Terrorists

As voting patterns started emerging among the freshman class in the new Congress, I saw a lot of new Members who tried appealing to progressives during the election, voting regularly against progressive initiatives. Although Matt Cartwright (D-PA) and Mark Pocan (D-WI) have 100% ProgressivePunch crucial vote scores, many more have abysmal scores. Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-CA), for example, has a dismal 52.63% score. Although she represents a solid blue district (CA-35- Pomona, Ontario, Chino, Fontana, where Obama crushed Romney 67.4- 30.6%), her conservative record in the state legislature predicted a conservative voting record in Congress. I asked one of her exasperated colleagues about her tendency to vote with Boehner and Cantor so often. He said she's old and feeble and probably wouldn't be around long. Small consolation! Mike Bloomberg, eager to rid Congress of one of the NRA's most dedicated shills, Joe Baca, financed the independent campaign against Baca that swept McLeod into office. Baca spent $1,162,457 in his failed reelection campaign, while McLeod spent $294,428. Bloomberg's Independence USA PAC spent $3,296,583 boosting McLeod and slamming Baca-- $3,036,181 in the last week. The NRA independent expenditure on behalf of Baca was $1,370. (The NRA also contributed $2,500 directly to Baca's campaign.) Baca wound up with a mere 44% of the votes.

What was odd about it, though, was that McLeod wasn't exactly an NRA enemy. In fact, she wrecked the plans of the Democrats in the state legislature to tag every bullet fired from an assault weapon so that they would be traceable (AB 352, Microstamping of Bullets) and earned a B- from the NRA that year. Tagging bullets makes a lot of sense. But did you know that there is also a way to tag the kinds of bombs that terrorists use-- and that the NRA has prevented that as well? Take a look at the Lawrence O'Donnell explanation in the video above. David Cay Johnston explained how the NRA hampered the police investigation in Boston last week.

The inability to quickly track the gunpowders in the Boston bombs is due to government policy designed and promoted by the NRA, which has found a way to transform every massacre associated with weapons into an opportunity for the munitions companies that sustain it to sell more guns, gunpowder and bullets.

The price for such delays was put on terrible display Friday morning when the two brothers, who had been caught on video placing the bombs, killed one police officer, wounded another and carjacked a motorist, creating conditions so unsafe that the 7th largest population center in America spent Friday on lockdown.

But for the NRA-backed policy of not putting identifiers known as taggants in gunpowder, law enforcement could have quickly identified the explosives used to make the bombs, tracking them from manufacture to retail sale. That could well have saved the life of Sean Collier, the 26-year-old MIT police officer who was gunned down Thursday night by the fleeing bomb suspects.

...Had the Boston bombers used a plastic explosive, it would have included identifiers that would have allowed a quick trace. Those taggants exist because the NRA does not oppose them.

Why is that? Why this breach in the NRA’s Maginot Line of defense against reasonable regulation of guns and ammunition?

The answer appears to lie in who makes plastic explosives like Semtx, which was used to bring down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The world’s main supplier was not a company that finances the NRA, but Libya under Moammar Khadafy.

That this one breach in NRA policy traces directly to the economic interests of the American munitions industry provides powerful evidence of what motivates the NRA-- profits.

That the gun makers have managed to turn each massacre into a spike in sales of both expensive rapid-fire weapons and ammunition adds to the evidence that the NRA should be viewed as the mass-murder lobby.

...Hobbling law enforcement, and attacking it, has long been an NRA strategy.

After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, federal agents had a tough time tracing the fertilizer used to make the bomb that killed 168 people and injured 680 more because the NRA had fought using identifiers for explosives.

...Let’s not forget what Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s CEO, said shortly after that terrorist act in Oklahoma City. LaPierre went on the attack against law enforcement, comparing federal agents to the Nazis and calling them “jack-booted thugs.”

Former president George H.W. Bush then resigned from the NRA in protest, but LaPierre kept his job, which speaks volumes.

As for taggants, the “study” the NRA cites to show that good science found taggants would make gunpowder less reliable and would not work was in fact only a review of the literature.

Anyone who actually reads the 1980 report, “Taggants in Explosives,” will find this revealing line by the Office of Technology Assessment: “Due to severe time constraints, OTA did little original research.”

Technology has advanced since that report, which is so old that it was prepared on a typewriter.

We can get identifiers put in gunpowders because of technological advances, just as reports get prepared these days on computers.  And if “good science” says existing taggants fall short, then Congress can fund research to develop taggants that work without degrading the quality of the explosive charge in bullets.

But as the votes in the Senate killing modest gun regulation and controls on gun trafficking showed this week, what stands firmly in the way of reducing mass murders and bombings is one organization and its backers.

We can change that, once the public understands that the NRA is not so much a defender of Second Amendment rights as a lobby for enabling mass murder.

Lindsey Graham... Not Courageous

Lindsey Graham was the first of the Republican panderers to declare 19 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev an enemy combatant, unworthy of the trial that this country guarantees people accused of crimes. I'm sure he thought that kind of unconstitutional raving would play well in the upcountry where he's so very, very unpopular. And he certainly knows South Carolina better than I do. I mean the fact that a flamboyant, superficially closeted homosexual like Lindsey Graham can cultivate a political career in a stridently anti-gay state like South Carolina, certainly shows ole Lindsey has some political skills and a knack for effectively deceiving the rubes. So... shred the Constitution (except the Second Amendment, of course).

Not everyone agrees with Graham. Even a hawkish conservative like Adam Schiff D-CA) understands the importance of not throwing out the Constitution in a fit of fearfulness and politics.

Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, reiterated the importance of upholding due process for Tsarnaev. “This is not a foreign national caught on an enemy battlefield, but an American citizen arrested on American soil,” he said in a statement Saturday. “The Justice Department has demonstrated a far greater ability to successfully prosecute suspected terrorists in federal courts than the military commissions have thus far been able to show.  Nothing must be done to compromise the public safety, the ability of prosecutors to seek justice for the victims or our constitutional  principles.”

There were 7 amendments the Senate voted on last week, amendments to a gun safety bill since withdrawn. Graham, whose approval ratings back home are plummeting and who faces both primary challenges and a serious Democratic challenger, knew perfectly that none of those amendments were in any way related to the Second Amendment. By NRA propaganda on behalf of the weapons and ammo manufacturers has been so effective in permeating the politics of South Carolina that Graham dared not even join his normally joined at the hip compadre, John McCain, in supporting the bipartisan background check amendment (Manchin-Toomey) backed by 91% of Americans and healthy majorities of South Carolinians, NRA members and Republicans. Graham was one of the 42 Republicans and 4 ConservaDems who refused to even allow it to come up for a vote, joining the right-wing extremists in a filibuster. If you didn't watch the Maddow video clip up top, now would be a good time to do so.

As Rachel says, "Federal law says that if you are a felon you are not supposed to be able to buy a gun. If you have a severe mental illness... if a judge has declared you to be 'mentally defective,' you are not supposed to be able to buy a gun in the United States of America. That's the law. Of course you can't tell by looking at someone if a judge has declared that person to be mentally defective. You cannot tell by looking at a person if that person is a convicted felon. But if you are either of those things, the law says you cannot buy a gun." After that... you have to watch the clip to see what she's getting at.

What she was getting at, though, would come as no surprise to Lindsey Graham. He's not a stupid man. He knows the need for background checks and he knows the need for background checks is not any kind of impingement on the Second Amendment.

But what Lindsey Graham-- and many of his Republican colleagues-- are counting on is that Republican voters won't allow a vote like that stand in the way of reelection. Being tough on-- well, tough on... liberals, I guess... certainly not tough on crime, since every crime fighting organization in America backed the background checks amendment-- never hurts a conservative sniffing around for votes, especially not upcountry. Obama won Charleston last November. He beat Romney 81,027 to 77,248. People in Charleston overwhelmingly favor background checks. They may even favor background checks up in Anderson, where Romney beat Obama 48,493 to 22,315 and in Aiken, where Romney beat Obama 41,157 to 23,953. But it's in places like Anderson and Aiken counties where Graham is most vulnerable, where people don't like him, don't trust him and sense he "isn't one of us." Having the NRA seal of approval destroyed the political career of ConservaDem Debbie Halvorson on the southside of Chicago; that's not how it works in South Carolina.

Jay Stamper, the Democrat running for the Senate seat Lindsey Graham is occupyig, said he was "stunned" that Graham voted against Manchin-Toomey's background check amendment, "He can't possibly have opposed it on grounds of unconstitutionality; the amendment simply expanded background checks to private sales at gun shows and on the internet-- a common sense measure to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. In any event, having just called for the suspension of the Constitution itself, Senator Graham makes an unlikely constitutionalist."

Surprised That Freaks And Kooks Like Glenn Beck Are Selling Conspiracy Theories About The Boston Tragedy?

Most of my blogger friends told me that the whole mess around the Boston Marathon was driving traffic in a big way. We don't sell ads and I couldn't see what I could possibly add to the tsunami of information-- and misinformation-- about the bombing and subsequent manhunt, resulting in the death of Tamerlane and the eventual capture of Dzhokhar. Yesterday, when looking at the shredding of the Constitution Lindsey Graham was hysterically screeching about, we had our first mention of the Boston tragedy. And there's even worse out there than Lindsey.

All week long I watched the bloodthirsty tweets from dedicated satanist Bryan Fischer, who decided to turn the tragedy into one of his Islamophobic jihads, whipping up sentiment among his followers against Muslims in general. The man is a danger to public safety. And then there's Glenn Beck-- another desperate right-wing freak show looking for relevance in intolerance.

Near the end of today's radio broadcast, Glenn Beck declared that the cover-up of the Saudi link to the Boston Marathon bombing makes this the second most important thing (behind 9/11) that he has ever covered in his broadcasting career.  And depending on how the media and the government responds in the coming days, it just might be the most important thing he's ever covered because the response "will either save our country or we will be done."

Beck then went on to send a semi-coded message to those in the upper level of the government warning that they had better come clean about this Saudi national because The Blaze has information that reveals that he "is a very bad, bad, bad man" which will be revealed on Monday.

"I don't bluff," Beck stated, "I make promises. The truth matters. I've had enough of what you've done to our country. I thought I had heard and seen it all.  I thought I didn't trust my government.  Oh no, no, no.  There is no depth that these people will not stoop to.  They have until Monday and then The Blaze will expose it."

If you haven't been paying attention, you might not realize that sociopaths like Fischer and Beck were blaming a 20 year old Saudi student for the bombing, even though he was a victim of it, hospitalized as a result of the bombing. Law enforcement officials tried pointing out that Beck's hysteria was baseless. The Saudi student was never in custody and was not deported. It was just another sickening display of the far right's mad rush to blame Muslims-- any Muslims-- and to generate interest in themselves (and sell ad time).

Lindsey Graham, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Drones, Constitutional Guarantees

Lindsey Graham seems to think the U.S. Constitution begins and ends with a very crimped interpretation of the Second Amendment. In his view it mandates that anyone can, willy-nilly buy any weapon he wants without any kind of government regulation. Most people not in thrall to the NRA do not interpret the Second Amendment that way. And to Graham, the rest of the Constitution just doesn't seem all that important. Friday, for example, he let loose with the above tweet. If the authorities fail to read the suspect, no matter how heinous the crimes he's accused of, his Miranda Rights-- the right to remain silent until he can consult an attorney-- it violates the 5th and 6th Amendments, two apparently not in the same league as the 2nd-- and could jeopardize the whole case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Graham is an attorney and he should know better.

No sense in getting all flustered and working up into a tizzy and violating the constitutional rights of an American citizen, as Tsarnaev is, on American soil, even if it appears he is a criminal. Worse yet, Graham was commiserating with the Washington Post's sniveling right-wing hack Jennifer Rubin yesterday that there should be more drones spying on American citizens. “This is Exhibit A of why the homeland is the battlefield," he told Rubin on the phone... before launching into an attack on Rand Paul.

Recalling Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster, Graham noted that he took to the Senate floor specifically to object to Rand’s notion that “America is not the battlefield.” Graham said to me, “It’s a battlefield because the terrorists think it is.” Referring to Boston, he observed, “Here is what we’re up against,” and added, “It sure would be nice to have a drone up there [to track the suspect.]” He also slammed the president’s policy of “leading from behind and criminalizing war.”

Apparently, the Obama Administration decided to go with Graham's interpretation of the Constitution and the FBI did not read the kid his Miranda Rights, invoking a bogus, extra-Constitutional public safety exception that, according to the FBI website "permits law enforcement to engage in a limited and focused unwarned interrogation and allows the government to introduce the statement as direct evidence... Police officers confronting situations that create a danger to themselves or others may ask questions designed to neutralize the threat without first providing a warning of rights."

Last night, writing for Slate, Emily Bazelon explained why we should all be outraged Tsamaev wasn't read his Miranda rights. As she says, "When the law gets bent out of shape for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, it’s easier to bend out of shape for the rest of us."

Who gets to make this determination? The FBI, in consultation with DoJ, if possible. In other words, the police and the prosecutors, with no one to check their power.

The New York Times published the Justice Department’s memo in March 2011. The Supreme Court has yet to consider this hole the Obama administration has torn in Miranda. In fact, no court has, as far as I can tell.

And so the FBI will surely ask 19-year-old Tsarnaev anything it sees fit. Not just what law enforcement needs to know to prevent a terrorist threat and keep the public safe but anything else it deemed related to “valuable and timely intelligence.” Couldn’t that be just about anything about Tsarnaev’s life, or his family, given that his alleged accomplice was his older brother (killed in a shootout with police)? There won’t be a public uproar. Whatever the FBI learns will be secret: We won’t know how far the interrogation went. And besides, no one is crying over the rights of the young man who is accused of killing innocent people, helping his brother set off bombs that were loaded to maim, and terrorizing Boston Thursday night and Friday. But the next time you read about an abusive interrogation, or a wrongful conviction that resulted from a false confession, think about why we have Miranda in the first place. It’s to stop law enforcement authorities from committing abuses. Because when they can make their own rules, sometime, somewhere, they inevitably will.

This morning, while 3 Stooges Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte and John McCain were loudly calling for Tsarnaev to not be afforded a trial, Glenn Greenwald asked much the same question at The Guardian that Bazelon had. And answered-- and castigated both Lindsey Graham and the Obama Administration for trampling on constitutional guarantees.

Graham's tweets quickly created a firestorm of outrage among various Democrats, progressives, liberals and the like. They insisted that such actions would be radical and menacing, a serious threat to core Constitutional protections. I certainly shared those sentiments: the general concept that long-standing rights should be eroded in the name of Terrorism is indeed odious, and the specific attempt to abridge core constitutional liberties on US soil under that banner is self-evidently dangerous.

...[T]he Obama administration has already rolled back Miranda rights for terrorism suspects captured on US soil. It did so two years ago with almost no controversy or even notice, including from many of those who so vocally condemned Graham's Miranda tweets yesterday. In May, 2010, the New York Times' Charlie Savage-- under the headline "Holder Backs a Miranda Limit for Terror Suspects"-- reported that "the Obama administration said Sunday it would seek a law allowing investigators to interrogate terrorism suspects without informing them of their rights." Instead of going to Congress, the Obama DOJ, in March 2011, simply adopted their own rules that vested themselves with this power.

...Democrats reacted with horror and outrage to Graham's suggestion that "the last thing we may want to do is read Boston suspect Miranda Rights telling him to 'remain silent.'" But that's already Obama DOJ policy, enacted with little controversy. And last night's announcement makes clear that the Obama DOJ intends, as Bazelon says, to question him about a wide range of topics far beyond matters of imminent threats to public safety without first Mirandizing him.

But there's another reason why I found Democratic outrage over Graham's statements to be confounding. The theory on which Graham's arguments are based is one that the Obama administration has vigorously embraced with the full-throated endorsement of most of its supporters: namely, that the US is "at war", and that anyone who takes up arms against the country or tries to kill Americans is not entitled to basic rights-- even if they're American citizens. As Graham told the Washington Post, his view that Tsarnaev is not entitled to these rights is grounded in his belief that the US is fighting a global war and those who fight in it against the US are "enemy combatants."

It is bizarre indeed to watch Democrats act as though Graham's theories are exotic or repellent. This is, after all, the same faction that insists that Obama has the power to target even US citizens for execution without charges, lawyers, or any due process, on the ground that anyone the president accuses of Terrorism forfeits those rights. The only way one can believe this is by embracing the same theory that Lindsey Graham is espousing: namely, that accused Terrorists are enemy combatants, not criminals, and thus entitled to no due process and other guarantees in the Bill of Rights. Once you adopt this "entire-globe-is-a-battlefield" war paradigm-- as supporters of Obama's assassination powers must do and have explicitly done-- then it's impossible to scorn Graham's views about what should be done with Tsarnaev. Indeed, one is necessarily endorsing the theory in which Graham's beliefs are grounded.

...[A]s extremist as Graham's tweets may have seemed to some, it was already done in the US with little backlash. That demonstrates how easily and insidiously extremist rights assaults become normalized if they are not vehemently resisted in the first instance, regardless of one's views of the individual target.

Haters need to hate-- Good morning, America!

And Constitutional slippery slopes don't just happen in Washington and they're not the sole domain of right-wing Republicans. Right-wing Democrats, like California freshman Assemblyman Steve Fox, can he just as dangerous to the Constitution as Lindsey Graham. Fox represents the Antelope Valley in Buck McKeon's congressional district. McKeon, who has worked harder than anyone in Congress to guarantee that tens of thousands of domestic spy drones would have access to American skies, has been working the federal angles. Fox is handling it from Sacramento.

Assemblyman Steve Fox (D-Palmdale) achieved a significant legislative victory with the passage in the state Assembly of AB737, which would take steps to designate California as a test site for unmanned aviation systems, or drones.

By a wide margin, members of the state Assembly voted this week to approve the bill that would require California to apply to the FAA for designation as a site for drone testing. Fox was the sponsor of the bill. The bill now goes to the state Senate for consideration.

According to the wording of the bill, the FAA has already announced the designation of six national drone test sites. Since California is home to much of the aerospace industry and defense industry, a federal test site would ensure the continued growth of the industry and its importance to the state economy.