Rushin’ To Destruction, Part 11-- Selected Braindead Borats Of The Republican Party

-by Noah

When we think of lunatic, severely mentally unbalanced Republicans, it’s easy to start at the top. Sure there’s Trump and his whole damn family, there’s the ever-obsequious Lindsey Graham, there are has-been stars like Newtie Gingrich who desperately cling to Trump’s dangling red tie and still grab some small exposure from time to time, there are republican media luminaries like Sean Hannity and Alex Jones, there’s most definitely Louis Gohmert and Bug-Eyed Drooling Rudy Giuliani who looks more like Nosferatu with each passing day… but these cretins aren’t getting any younger, so what about the future? Well, rest assured! For every demented Graham or Giuliani, there’s a hundred up and comers of all ages in the republican minor league pipeline. Below are just a few who are awaiting their chance at republican stardom. The auditions are endless. Just keep in mind, we may laugh at these people but they are a clear and present danger to what’s left of civilization.

1. Rep. Barry Hovis: Since so much republican “thought” revolves around matters related to sex and sexuality when it comes to other people’s lives, I thought why not start with a Missouri Republican state representative named Barry Hovis. Remember the “If it’s a legitimate rape” guy, Rep. Todd Akin, also of Missouri? Well, this year, Hovis took republican thought on rape up a notch. Republicans will always consider Hovis their hero for coming up with the concept of... wait for it…consensual rape! You can decide for yourself what Hovis’s flash of brilliance means about his own dating history. If I was a Republican, I might dwell on it longer, much longer, but, on to the next loon!

2. Rep. Moe Brooks: Moe Brooks, who hails from Alabama (Say no more!) is the latest republican in the House of Representatives to declare himself an entrant into the Who Wants To Be The Next Louie Gohmert contest. Yes, he’s that dumb. Brooks has a novel explanation for rising sea levels. It’s an explanation that has nothing to do with ice melting in places like Antarctica or Greenland. It doesn’t even involve a massive increase in over-sized cruise ships or dead polar bear carcasses displacing water. Brooks says sea levels are rising due to rocks falling in the water. Never mind that rocks have always fallen into the water, he’s sticking to his brilliant observation: “Eureka! It’s the rocks!” And not the rocks in his head. Put this assclown in concussion protocol, pronto!

3. Daryl Metcalfe: Pennsylvania State Representative Daryl Metcalfe has no time for that “crazy talk” about things like pollution and climate change. He just knows, I mean knows that if we do something about excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, well, his vegetable garden will suffer bigly. Hey, Daryl, what happens when we’re all dead due to a lack of air to breathe? Who’s gonna eat your vegetables? Certainly not you!

4. Mark Taylor: Taylor is best known as a right-wing conspiracy theorist (nut) who makes a living appearing on any Republican radio show that will have him; in other words, just about all of them. Taylor may be best known for his claim that Sen. John McCain did not die from brain cancer but was executed by a military tribunal. More recently, Taylor has been urging President Trump to start making some arrests of high profile democrats or run the risk of Trump-supporting militia groups acting first. Taylor predicts that these arrests will happen soon and that Trump will put “thousands of high-level cannibalistic satanic pedophiles” on trial. Taylor has a suggested list that includes President Obama and, of course, Hillary Clinton, who, as all republicans know, runs a child sex ring out of the basement of a suburban Maryland pizza parlor. Note: The claims of pedophilia, cannibalism, and Satan worship are a very current thing among Republicans. You can add to that human sacrifice. Such things are an obsession with Republicans these days. Self-styled Republican “journalist, “Liz Crokin has stuffed her YouTube channel with similar tales of pedos ands Satanism and agrees with Taylor that arrests are in order. She seems to be losing her faith in republican favorite QAnon. It’s something to do with the republican mind and why one becomes a Republican in the first place. Read on!

5. Rep. Phil Roe and broadcaster Chris McDonald: I’m presenting these two kooks as a pair because, well, they a dedicated brothers in kookdom. Phil Roe is the kook that several thousand fellow Tennessee wackos chose to represent them in Washington. Roe has been a guest on McDonald’s McFiles radio show many times in the past year and has reciprocated by having McDonald pay him visits in his office in the Capitol Building. He calls McDonald a true “patriot and friend.” It’s always great to know how Republicans define patriotism.

Like most Republicans these days, Chris McDonald is a conspiracy theorist who shares Roe’s world view and claims that to oppose Trump is to oppose God himself.

Interestingly, McDonald’s special obsession seems to be accusing political enemies of being pedophiles. In that sense, he shares a lot with Mark Taylor. McDonald, whose physical appearance strongly resembles something out of the dark corners of “Blue Velvet” or a Roger Corman film, says that President Obama speaks in pedophile code (I guess being “from Kenya” just wasn’t enough). More recently, McDonald has told his devoted Republican listeners that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff is a pedophile.

In a way, Schiff gets off easy. To McDonald, actor Tom Hanks is not just a pedophile but a “high-level Satanist” who partakes in “human sacrifice.” I’m not sure what, if anything, Hanks did in McDonalds’s mind to deserver the accusations. I guess he just considers Hanks to be one o’ those “Hollywood liberals. But wait, there’s more; McDonald says that Rep. Ilhan Omar should be removed from her elected office and should not be allowed in the House Of Representatives because she is a potential suicide bomber.

My research has not turned up any feelings that McDonald or his congressional pal might hold for the rabidly pro-Trump and pro-FOX “News” pipe bomber who sent pipe bombs to high profile media people and leading Democratic Party figures. Draw your own conclusions.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

And do these rocks come from, the heads of Republicans?

First of all, just look at this goon. Look at those eyes! By Republican "reasoning" such as the "reasoning" suggested by Rep. Mo Brooks (KKK-AL), one would also have to assume that fish being fruitful and multiplying and growing larger and larger would displace enough water to raise the levels of the seas. For instance, a 4400 pound Great White (Republicans love that name) was recently caught in the Mediterranean and sold in a fish market. In the Republican Hive Mind, that is, no doubt a good thing for the Italian city of Venice since less of the Mediterranean's waters will now be flowing into the Adriatic. And, growing fish and an ever-growing fish population maybe the reasons that Republicans come up with policies and strategies designed to kill all of the flora and fauna in the oceans. Is that, in their heads, their ingenious and diabolical way of trying to keep sea levels where they are?

Thinking he has had a "eureka moment," Brooks cites erosion and rocks falling into the seas as the culprit in causing our rising seas, not man-induced climate change accelerating the melting of glaciers and ice caps. Archimedes he is not, and I don't even want to think of Mo Brooks playing in his tub with rubber duckies or whatever he plays with. In the non-Republican reality, however, science, yes the dreaded science, tells us that it would take the top 5 inches of all land surface of the United States falling into the oceans to raise the world's sea levels 3.3 millimeters in a year's time. Damn, there's that math thing again! Brooks has probably already asked one of his born again nutball staffers to calculate how much of a sea level rise there has been in the entire 6000 years of the existence of humankind, or mankind, as a Republican would say.

Where will this Republican "reasoning" and "logic" end? Remember that goofball $enator who brought a snowball into U.S. Senate Show And Tell as "proof" that there's no global warming? Will some other wacko congresscretin now suggest that no one can go for a swim at the beach this summer, for fear of millions of people splashing in the world's waters raising sea levels? What will Chris Christie, especially Chris Christie, do?

Climate Change-- Are There Any Democrats Who Would Sell Out To The Koch Brothers?

Pelosi is serious when she appoints members to the House Science Committee. Ryan and Boehner always thought it was a time for humor. Imagine the laughs when Ryan appointed Scientologist and Big Oil puppet Lamar Smith chairman. How about Orange County crackpot, stoner Dana Rohrabacher? Webster (FL), Loudermilk (GA), Biggs (AZ)... all laughingstocks. Ryan just put another Arizonan on the committee last week, newly elected crazy person Debbie Lesko (AZ). "She's another nutter. We can't put her on a serious committee; put her on Science, where she can rant and rave." But the biggest lunatic on the Science Committee has got to be Alabama freak show Mo Brooks. Brooks was just the star of his own article in ultra prestigious Science magazine this week, Republican lawmaker: Rocks tumbling into ocean causing sea level rise. Embarrassing? Not to Brooks; just to America.

The Earth is not warming. The White Cliffs of Dover are tumbling into the sea and causing sea levels to rise. Global warming is helping grow the Antarctic ice sheet.

Those are some of the skeptical assertions echoed by Republicans on the U.S. House of Representatives Science, Space and Technology Committee yesterday. The lawmakers at times embraced research that questions mainstream climate science during a hearing on how technology can be used to address global warming.

A leading climate scientist testifying before the panel spent much of the two hours correcting misstatements.

The purpose of the hearing was to focus on how technology could be deployed for climate change adaptation. But the hearing frequently turned to the basics of climate science. Many of the questions by Republicans and Democrats alike were directed to Philip Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts and former senior adviser to the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said he was bothered that established climate science has not been questioned more by the committee, which has accused federal climate scientists of fraudulently manipulating climate data and subpoenaed their records.

"I'm a little bit disturbed by, No. 1, over and over again, I hear, 'Don't ever talk about whether mankind is the main cause of the temperature changing and the climate changing,'" he said. "That's a little disturbing to hear constantly beaten into our heads in a Science Committee meeting, when basically we should all be open to different points of view."

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the committee, entered into the record an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that claimed sea levels are not rising because of climate change, a view that rejects thousands of scientific studies. The piece was written by Fred Singer, who is affiliated with the Heartland Institute in Chicago, Illinois, which promotes the rejection of mainstream climate science.

"To solve climate change challenges, we first need to acknowledge the uncertainties that exist," Smith said in his opening remarks. "Then we can have confidence that innovations and technology will enable us to mitigate any adverse consequences of climate change."

At one point, Smith showed a slide of two charts that he said demonstrated how the rate of sea-level rise does not equal the sharp spike in the consumption of fossil fuels. When Smith pointed out that rates of sea-level rise have only increased slightly compared with the rate of fossil fuel use, Duffy pointed out that his chart was from a single tide gauge station, near San Francisco, and that sea levels rise at different rates around the world. Smith did not show rising atmospheric CO2 levels or temperatures, both of which have climbed steadily in recent decades as emissions have increased.

"The rate of global sea-level rise has accelerated and is now four times faster than it was 100 years ago," Duffy told Smith in response to the charts.

"Is this chart inaccurate, then?" Smith asked.

"It's accurate, but it doesn't represent what's happening globally; it represents what's happening in San Francisco," Duffy said.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) questioned Duffy on the factors that contribute to sea-level rise, pointing out that land subsidence plays a role, as well as human activity.

Brooks then said that erosion plays a significant role in sea-level rise, which is not an idea embraced by mainstream climate researchers. He said the California coastline and the White Cliffs of Dover tumble into the sea every year, and that contributes to sea-level rise. He also said that silt washing into the ocean from the world's major rivers, including the Mississippi, the Amazon and the Nile, is contributing to sea-level rise.

"Every time you have that soil or rock or whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise, because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up," Brooks said.

Duffy responded: "I'm pretty sure that on human time scales, those are minuscule effects."

Brooks added that Antarctic ice is growing. That was true a few years ago, and scientists say it does not disprove the theory of global warming because different factors affect the Arctic and Antarctic rates of melting.

"We have satellite records clearly documenting a shrinkage of the Antarctic ice sheet and an acceleration of that shrinkage," Duffy said.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know where you're getting your information, but the data I have seen suggests... " Brooks said.

Duffy answered: "The National Snow and Ice Data Center and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration."

"Well, I've got a NASA base in my district, and apparently, they're telling you one thing and me a different thing," Brooks said. "But there are plenty of studies that have come that show with respect to Antarctica that the total ice sheet, particularly that above land, is increasing, not decreasing. Now, you could make a different argument if you want to talk about Greenland or the Arctic."

Earlier this year, NASA researchers determined that Antarctica's ice loss has accelerated in the last decade. More broadly, sea ice extent at both poles set a record low last year. Scientists are racing to better understand the changes occurring in Antarctica because much of its ice is land-based, meaning it could drive sea-level rise around the world as it melts.

Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) said scientists said in the 1970s that the Earth was cooling, a popular talking point of climate skeptics and the subject of a fake Time magazine cover that has become a meme. Duffy corrected him and said that was essentially an outlier position at the time and that scientists long ago determined that humans were warming the planet.

Posey also asked how carbon dioxide could be captured in permafrost in the periods before humans existed. Duffy told him that it was from non-decayed organic matter. Human activity is now causing the Arctic to warm and thaw the ground, releasing the carbon into the atmosphere, Duffy said.

Posey then asked about theories related to warming being beneficial for habitats and to people.

"What do you say to people who theorize that the Earth as it continues to warm is returning to its normal temperature?" Posey asked.

"Look, if you want to characterize a temperature above today's temperature as normal, you're free to do that, but that doesn't mean that's a planet we want to live on," Duffy said.

"I don't want to get philosophical; I'm trying to stay on science here," Posey said.

"I'm not getting philosophical; I'm getting extremely practical," Duffy said. "I'm being extremely practical-- if we let the planet warm 2 or 3 degrees, we will have tens of meters of sea-level rise, and the community where I live will essentially cease to exist."

Posey responded: "I don't think anybody disputes that the Earth is getting warmer; I think what's not clear is the exact amount of who caused what, and getting to that is, I think, where we're trying to go with this committee."

And speaking about climate deniers, the leaders of that movement in the U.S. are the Koch brothers. They've funneled millions of dollars to right-wing Republicans who support their reactionary program. But, as NPR reported early Thursday morning "in the era of Trump, what it means to be on the 'right' is changing, and the Koch network's tactics are changing to reflect new realities... The Koch brothers are going rogue." They're singling out some notorious corrupt conservative Democrats to bribe: so far Ben Ray Luján (NM), Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM), Raul Ruiz (CA) Pete Aguilar (CA) and Chris Coons (DE). They're paying them off under the guise of the Koch' s efforts backing immigration, which they support to keep wages low. Below is an expensive mailer they sent out to more than 100,000 of Luján's constituents in northern New Mexico:

Every candidate Blue America has endorsed will be a fighter for action on climate change. Few are campaigning on it as hard as Paul Clements in southwest Michigan (MI-06). It's very personal for him. This morning he sent us this way of looking at it:

When I was a little kid and knocked over a glass of milk, I remember saying, “The milk spilled.” But it’s pretty easy to clean up milk. And I couldn’t very well deny that there was milk all over the table.

I get it that some people don’t want to take responsibility for climate change. It has a terrible momentum. Ninety percent of the heat that our carbon pollution has captured is in the oceans, and some of that heat will come back to the atmosphere. The economic life of the world’s infrastructure already takes us past two degrees Celsius of warming. In a best case scenario the storm devastation in Puerto Rico, the fires in California, are only a pale foretaste of what is to come. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for droughts and floods driving hundreds of millions of people to become refugees either.

But closing your eyes doesn’t help. We are in danger of becoming desensitized to Trump’s lies (what, he lied again!) and to Republican climate science denial. We must not. America has contributed more to cumulative global carbon dioxide emissions than any other country. The death and destruction from unchecked global warming make climate science denial criminal. When the Republican Party packs the House Science Committee with deniers it is blocking responsible action that actually could save civilization. We are responsible and responsible behavior is extraordinarily urgent.

Tom Guild is a different kind of Democrat than Ben Ray Luján. Guild is not on the take, has nothing to do with the Koch brothers, and he is a firm believer in the proposition that as a nation-- and a species-- we have to get to work on remediating climate damage... and fast. "I remember," he told us, "early in my academic career there were studies that said people weren’t harmed by secondhand smoke. Later, it was revealed that those studies were funded by the tobacco industry. Now, it is clear to anyone who thrives on anything short of 'alternative facts,' that secondhand smoke is dangerous to anyone in its direct path and that millions have become sick and lost their lives because of exposure to secondhand smoke. Pregnant mothers and parents of small children have become particularly sensitized to and keenly aware of the dangers their nicotine habits pose to those they love. Now, come the science and climate deniers, claiming that humans as a significant and major cause of climate change is in dispute. Some scientists have concluded that we have about 100-150 years to turn things around or planet earth with go into an irreversible process that will eventually render our planet uninhabitable in the not to distant future. Climate deniers rely on 'quack' science, often funded by Big Oil and the fossil fuels industry, to make close cousin arguments to those made in the secondhand smoke debate a few decades ago. The stakes then were losing friends, family members, and loved ones to cancer, emphysema, and other dreadful diseases causing painful and agonizing death. The stakes surrounding the climate change debate today include losing the only inhabitable planet to which we have access. The best and brightest members of the US House, should be placed on important committees like the House Science Committee. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance undeterred can lead to the extinction of humankind in fairly short order. Can you say Dodo bird?"

Alabama Voters Have To Pick Between 3 Truly Horrible Candidates-- The Worst Anywhere

Alabama is hopelessly red at this point. Trump beat Hillary there 1,318,255 (62%) to 729,547 (34%). Even the one "Democrat" in the congressional delegation, Terri Sewell, is a conservative New Dem with an "F" rating from ProgressivePunch. There'll be a special election December 12 to fill Jeff Sessions' seat but what's important in beet red Alabama is the primary, specifically the Republican primary. Primary day is in 3 days, Tuesday (August 15) and if there's a need for a run-off (almost certain) that will be September 26.

There is a plausible Democrat running, former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones (who's been endorsed by Joe Biden, Terri Sewell and John Lewis) but he'll probably be beaten by a silly candidate with a famous name, Robert Kennedy, Jr. (who was likely put up to it by the GOP). It probably doesn't matter. Like I said, the GOP primary is what matters. Of the 9 Republicans running, 3 are polling in double digits, appointed incumbent Luther Strange, crackpot ex-state Supreme Court chief judge Roy Moore and Congressman Mo Brooks. There is no good choice, no moderate, no mainstreamer... just three far right-extremists, although I suppose a case could be made that Moore is the worst. So, naturally, he's ahead in the polling.

A Cygnal and L2 poll this week shows Moore with 30.7%, Strange with 22.6% and Brooks with 18%. (The same poll shows Moore winning a runoff against Strange with a double-digit lead.) The new Fox News poll has Moore at 35%, Strange at 29% and Brooks at 19%. And the third poll released this week, from JMC Analytics has Moore with 30%, Strange with 22% and Brooks with 19%. It also shows Moore with the highest favorables and lowest unfavorables. 74% of voters say they are conservative (46% very conservative) and 70% identify as evangelical Christians.

By the end of July Strange has raised $3,220,749 and already spent $2,286,479. Brooks had spent $937,132 and Moore had raised $459,807 and spent just $286,421-- two million less than Strange! McConnell has been pumping money into Strange's flailing campaign-- $569,896 on positive ads about Strange and a massive $1,337,634 in a vicious smear campaign against Brooks, claiming he isn't Trumpy enough. Another PAC-- the Swamp Drainers Foundation, which doesn't disclose its sources of cash-- spent $85,178 against Strange and the NRA spent $126,792 running pro-Strange radio ads. Strange's biggest hope to turn things around was a tweeted endorsement by Señor Trumpanzee of Bedminster the other day.

Moore downplayed the endorsement during an interview with a neo-Nazi website while pointing out that crackpot Chuck Norris had endorsed him (so did the lunatic from Duck Dynasty). "I don’t know if there’s anything I’d say about Trump’s endorsement. Trump’s got every right to endorse who he wants. I don’t know what kind of deals are made behind the scenes in Washington, DC. I don’t know. He doesn’t know me and I don’t know what he’s been told about me and probably if he’s been told about me what they’ve been saying-- I don’t know. I don’t know why he did what he did or what he said... Chuck Norris isn’t running. They’re not voting for Chuck Norris. He’s a recognizable figure, but they wouldn’t vote for me because of Chuck Norris. They’re going to vote for me because of who I am and what I’ve done... We’ve been out campaigning and they know what we stand for and not only what we say we’ll do, they know what we’ve done. That’s very important for all of us." People outside of Alabama may not be aware of what the radical right appears to be ready to elect to the U.S. Senate.

Moore was first elected Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2001 and was removed from his position 2 years later for refusing to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments despite orders to do so by a federal court. Alabamans elected him Chief Judge again in 2013 and he was suspended in 2016 for directing probate judges to continue to enforce an unconstitutional ban on same-sex marriage, after the ban had had been overturned. Moore appealed and lost and finally resigned 4 months ago. In the middle of all that, in 2010, he ran for governor and came in 4th in the Republican primary with 19%. When Moore was suspended from the Alabama Supreme Court there were 6 charges:

• Violation of the Alabama Canon of Judicial Ethics, for disregarding a federal injunction.
•Violation of the Alabama Canon of Judicial Ethics, for demonstrated unwillingness to follow clear law.
•Violation of the Alabama Canon of Judicial Ethics, for abuse of administrative authority.
•Violation of the Alabama Canon of Judicial Ethics, for substituting his judgement for the judgement of the entire Alabama Supreme Court, including failure to abstain from public comment about a pending proceeding in his own court.
•Violation of the Alabama Canon of Judicial Ethics, for interference with legal process and remedies in the United States District Court and/or Alabama Supreme Court related to proceedings in which Alabama probate judges were involved.
•Violation of the Alabama Canon of Judicial Ethics, for failure to recuse himself from pending proceedings in the Alabama Supreme Court after making public comment and placing his impartiality into question.

He was found guilty of all six charges. He writes a pro-faacist column for right-wing propaganda website WorldNetDaily where he writes things like a demand that Keith Ellison (D-MN) shouldn't be allowed to sit in Congress because he practices the Muslim faith. Moore has an imbecile son named Caleb who works at the family business, a scam operation to separate dull-witted evangelicals from their money, the Foundation for Moral Law. Recently Caleb was arrested for selling marijuana and prescription drugs and was convicted-- his 4th conviction for peddling drugs. He's been arrested 8 times in all and blames everyone but himself, having told the family's cult followers that "the media and crooked police officers and critics of my dad try to not only destroy his career for what he stands for but will go as far as trying to destroy his family." A few months ago he was arrested again, this time on weapons charges. Perfect family to represent Alabama Republicans!

This week, ole moral pillar Roy Moore indicated he thinks "the focus of evil in the modern world" is not, as Reagan was quoted as saying, Russia, but is the U.S. Like many on the extreme fringe of right-wing politics, Moore is pro-Putin and an outspoken America-hater. He does like Trump though and said "it was the providential hand of God" that gave Trump the election (rather than Putin's interference and Wasserman Schultz's cheating).

Thursday Seung Min Kim, writing for Politico reported that "none of the three main candidates in the increasingly nasty Senate GOP primary in [Alabama] are taking the majority leader’s side." Brooks, who's been demonized in McConnell's ad campaign told the press that of McConnell that "if he's not gonna get the job done, needs to resign so someone else can try to get the job done."

Even Strange, a member of McConnell’s rank and file, noted that he himself has also said, “Mitch, get back to work.”

“We all need to get back to work,” Strange told reporters after a county GOP meeting here Thursday night. “I was part of the group of Republican senators who said we shouldn’t even take a vacation. I don’t know why we’re taking a vacation. We should be working to pass the president’s agenda and deal with the problems we failed to address last time.”

When pressed about Trump’s apparent lack of confidence in the majority leader, Strange noted that “he’s frustrated like I am, and this is no secret.” The incumbent senator added, however, that he didn’t believe the Senate GOP conference needed new leadership.

“We all talked about it,” Strange said. “Said, if we failed to do what’s promised, we’re going to look silly and rightfully be criticized. And so I have no problem with the president saying that at all.”

...In an interview, Moore declined to comment on Trump’s Twitter attacks on McConnell, saying the spat is “between them.” But the former justice made it clear he is no fan of the Kentucky Republican.

“I’m not going to say anything good about Mitch McConnell, who’s running the fund that’s attacking me with ads. Now, I won’t do that,” Moore said. “But I won’t say anything bad out him... I won’t judge that. That’s between them.”

The Will Of The Voters Be Damned-- Republicans Still Aren't Done Trying To Kill The Affordable Care Act

Republicans are hoping voters already forgot this

Kansas has mostly been a one-party state in contemporary politics. Their entire congressional delegation is Republican. All 6 statewide elected officers are Republicans and the state legislature-- blood red. Of the 125 House members, only 40 are Democrats and in the state Senate-- 40 members and just 9 lonely Democrats. And yet... Monday's Kansas City Star reported that the legislature is moving towards expanding Medicaid along Affordable Care Act lines. This is Sam Brownback and Kris Kobach's state. The legislature is ignoring Brownback in this battle. Tuesday morning he state Senate voted for expansion of KanCare-- 25-14 (two votes shy of a veto override if Brownback blocks the bill).

“I can’t believe it took this long to do it,” said Sen. John Doll, a Garden City Republican... “This is something that’s long overdue.”

House Bill 2044 would expand health care coverage to an estimated 150,000 people in Kansas. Moderate Republicans and Democrats helped push the bill through the Legislature this session in a stark contrast from past years where expansion efforts failed to gain much traction in either chamber.

David Jordan, the executive director of the Alliance for a Healthy Kansas, one of the main advocacy groups pushing the bill, said he thinks the “level of support in both chambers reflects the fact that a majority of Kansans support expanding KanCare… They understand what this means for keeping their local hospital open.”

Conservative Republicans tried repeatedly to change the Senate legislation before it came to a vote. All of those efforts failed, however, with moderate Republicans frequently siding with Senate Democrats in opposition to the changes.

“It’s very gratifying that people had the sense to see that we needed to not be distracted by the political games that are being played in Washington, D.C., and we needed to try to help our own people,” said Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat.

Opponents of the bill have spent much of the 2017 session downplaying the legislation’s chances because of uncertainty over how health care would change under President Donald Trump’s administration.

“We’re standing at an amusement park ride that’s closed,” said Sen. Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican who voted against expansion. “It’s broken. And we’re saying we want to go ahead and get on the ride. There’s a reason there’s nobody in line behind us.”

But the opponents’ argument faded slightly after U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, canceled a vote on a bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act and effectively barred states from expanding Medicaid beyond March 1, due to a lack of GOP support.

The Affordable Care Act enabled states to expand Medicaid, which provides health coverage to the disabled and low-income families, to cover people who earn too little to buy insurance through the federal health care exchange but also earn too much to otherwise qualify for Medicaid.

...If Brownback vetoes the bill, it would take 84 votes in the House and 27 in the Senate to override his opposition.

Once he gets the bill, the governor has 10 days to either sign the bill, veto it, or let it become law without his signature.

Conservative lawmakers have said they hope that Brownback vetoes the bill, while moderates and Democrats fear he’ll do just that.

Kansas is one of only 19 states that haven't expanded Medicaid to benefit their citizens. What's interesting about what happened in Kansas yesterday is that the NY Times was reporting at the same time that Trump and Ryan are being pressured by the hard right of the party to go for a Obamacare repeal (with no replacement). Ryan won't tell anyone what's in the new iteration of the repeal he has in mind-- presumably more than the one-sentence bill Alabama crackpot Mo Brooks already introduced. "Just days after President Trump said he was moving on to other issues, senior White House officials are now saying they have hope that they can still score the kind of big legislative victory that has so far eluded Mr. Trump. Vice President Mike Pence was dispatched to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for lunchtime talks."

Brooks' bill: "Effective as of Dec. 31, 2017, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted."

The new talks, which have been going on quietly this week, involve Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, and members of the two Republican factions that helped sink the bill last week, the hard-right Freedom Caucus and the more centrist Tuesday Group.

Any deal would require overcoming significant differences about how to rework a law that covers about one-fifth of the American economy, differences that were so sharp they led Mr. Trump and Mr. Ryan to pull the bill from consideration just as the House was scheduled to vote on Friday.

Still, Republican members of Congress said they hoped that revisiting the issue would lead this time to a solution and a vote in the House.

“I think everyone wants to get to yes and support President Trump,” said Representative Dave Brat, Republican of Virginia and a Freedom Caucus member. “There is a package in there that is a win-win.”

Representative Raúl Labrador of Idaho, another Freedom Caucus member, said he hoped the discussions would yield a compromise that brings the party together after a divisive debate that revealed deep fissures. “I think we will have a better, stronger product that will unify the conference,” Mr. Labrador said.

Mr. Trump has sent mixed signals in recent days, at times blaming the Freedom Caucus, outside groups and even, it appeared, Mr. Ryan. On Monday, for instance, he said in a late-night Twitter post that the Freedom Caucus was able to “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory” over the health care repeal. “After so many bad years they were ready for a win!”

But then he suggested that he could also cut a deal with Democrats, a move that would almost certainly make more conservative members of the House balk. “Don’t worry,” he tweeted later Monday night, “we are in very good shape!”

Mr. Ryan said House Republicans were determined to use the next version of the repeal bill, like the first version, as a vehicle to cut off federal funds for Planned Parenthood clinics.

So, this is already headed in the same dumpster fire direction as the first two failed attempts.

Crowds Are Packing Democrats' Town Hall Meetings Too-- Take Ro Khanna... Very Different From Mo Brooks

Buried in the new PPP poll about Trump's fights with the media was a question about town halls. PPP's conclusion is that "Members of Congress who dodge open town hall meetings may be opening themselves up to trouble with their constituents. 81% of voters think they ought to hold town halls, to only 5% who think their members of Congress should avoid them. That includes overwhelming majorities of Democrats (88/2), independents (81/2), and Republicans (73/11) who think members of Congress should make themselves available to the public in that way. Mitch McConnell (25/45 approval) and Paul Ryan (37/43 approval) are both unpopular, and Democrats hold a 46/43 lead on the generic Congressional ballot."

Crackpot and right wing extremist Mo Brooks (R-AL) is worried that some congressional Republicans are cowards and now getting cold feet after their encounters with angry constituents. He's freaking out that some of them won't help him kicking millions of Americans off healthcare. He was on the WBHP morning show Thursday and told the hosts that "there are a significant number of congressmen who are being impacted by these kinds of protests and their spine is a little bit weak. And I don’t know if we’re going to be able to repeal Obamacare now because these folks who support Obamacare are very active, they’re putting pressure on congressman and there’s not a counter-effort to steel the spine of some of these congressmen in tossup districts around the country." He called his colleagues' constituents all kinds of names. But speaking of cowards with weak spines, Crazy Mo, is too scared to meet with Alabama voters and adamantly refuses to have any town halls. He says he's worried someone may shoot him or his supporters or that Muslim terrorists will get them. Brooks, who represents a horribly backward Alabama district-- a hell-on-earth of poor white trash-- primarily in Huntsville, Florence, Scottsboro and Decatur across the northern 6th of the state, is in one of the safest seats in the country. Trump won it in November with 64.7% and ole Mo did even better.



Thursday the Blue America crew sat down with Ro Khanna and Ted Lieu for a few hours to talk policy. At one point, though, Ro told us about the town hall he had just had at Ohlone College in Fremont. He was only expecting around 250 people based on RSVPs. But when 900 showed up, they had to start opening overflow rooms. Although his constituents had very serious questions, the town hall didn't have much in common with the contentious town halls you've been seeing on TV with Republicans. What Ro had to say to voters primarily from Fremont, Newark and down the Nimitz from Milpitas and Santa Clara who packed the auditorium must have been music to their ears. The Democratic Party, he told them, needs it move in a more progressive direction.

In the 2016 Democrat vs Democrat general election, his long-time liberal opponent, Mike Honda, was a pledged Hillary delegate; Ro was a Bernie supporter. CA-17 isn't Trump country. Obama had beaten Romney there 71.9% to 25.5%. Hillary improved on that, eviscerating Trump 73.9-20.5%. Ro said where Hillary went wrong-- at least in the Midwest if not in California-- was when she started talking too much about Trump and stopped talking about how she was going to make people's lives better. "She was up when she was talking about making people’s lives better and unrigging the economy," he reminded the audience. The East Bay Times reported the next day that he "acknowledged the need to hold President Donald Trump accountable, and in response to a question from a member of the audience, he said he would support impeachment of Trump if an open and thorough investigation found evidence of violations. However, he said that right now, there are bigger fish to fry for Democrats, alluding to the 2018 mid-term elections."

“We are not going to win the next election, nor do we deserve to win the next election, by just focusing on Donald Trump’s missteps,” he said, adding that Trump voters were upset at leaders across the country, and felt the economy is rigged to favor a select few. He said Democrats cannot ignore those voters in their messaging.

“Shame on us if we don’t hear them,” he said, adding that his party must offer Trump voters a positive vision, with recognition of the “profound demographic changes” the country has seen.

“A vision that says, your life can still be good. Your kids’ life will still be good. We will help get your kids the skills to compete in a new economy. We’ll make sure that you don’t have to worry about retirement and health care,” he said.

Many in the auditorium seats flashed bright green signs that read “Agree,” and offered rounds of applause as Khanna said he believes the Democratic Party needs to be “far more bold, far more populist.”

The congressman said “it’s better in my judgement to have a slightly smaller party even, but a morally consistent party, than a party that doesn’t stand for anything,” a point he said the Republicans understand.

After Khanna said he supports a $15 minimum wage in response to a question, he doubled down on his idea that Democrats must be more bold in their actions.

He said he will be proposing a bill that would massively expand the earned-income tax credit to the tune of $1 trillion to help low- and moderate-income families, something he described as in contrast with “conventional” Democratic ideas, which would only offer a $60 billion expansion.

He chastised Republicans for claiming to want to help working-class families and the working poor, while pushing to give tax breaks to the wealthy.

When asked how his constituents can help create change, he said it’s important that they don’t underestimate the influence the average person can have, especially in the age of the Internet, when a viral blog post could get many more views than anything he says on the floor of Congress.

After spending about an hour in the main auditorium, Khanna traversed the campus to speak to another packed room, and reiterated many of the same points to that crowd.

Khanna told the crowds that he plans to hold monthly town hall meetings going forward to allow more people to engage, especially those who were locked out of Wednesday night’s gathering.

Ted Lieu and Ro Khanna are both avid supporters of Keith Ellison in today's DNC election, though neither has a vote. They both like Tom Perez but are certain that Ellison represents the progressive, grassroots vision of a more populist vision for the Democratic Party. I'm not certain when this document was released by Ellison of his first 100 days plan but it certainly in in synch with the messages we heard from both Lieu and Khanna Thursday, neither of whom shied away from the term "The Resistance."

Over the last several years Democrats have lost more than 940 state legislative seats, hundreds of congressional, senate and statewide seats and countless local races.

The job of the next DNC Chair is going to be incredibly challenging. It will require: juggling raising tens of millions of dollars; unifying Democrats; holding Trump, his cabinet and Republican-controlled states accountable; protecting the right to vote and creating opportunities to expand voting access; laying the foundation for redistricting; and recruiting, training and supporting candidates up and down the ballot.

This document lays out a framework for the first 100 days for the next DNC Chair.

ORGANIZING SESSIONS

All across America Democrats are mobilizing, energized and ready to take back our country. We need to harness this energy by holding organizing sessions in every single state so Democrats know what we are going to do to fight back the Trump administration and Republicans on a state and local level.

These organizing sessions will be collaborative and involve state and local party leaders, elected officials, labor, constituency groups and rank and file Democrats who want an active and meaningful role and voice in the party. We will work with state parties to hold organizing sessions in all 57 states and territories with the Chair and other senior DNC officials personally attending as many as possible.

We will pick locations across the country of strategic importance focusing on counties or locations where candidates did particularly well or poorly last election, and locations that are municipal or legislative priorities going into 2017.

ORGANIZING THE OPPOSITION

The DNC-- working hand in hand with state and local Democratic parties-- will seek to organize and channel the immense groundswell of opposition to President Trump and his policies.

The Democratic Party and its partners will support these activities and will create new opportunities to stand up against not only the dangerous policies of the Trump Administration but any Republican on a state or local level that makes it harder for Americans to achieve prosperity and inclusion.

These organizing rallies must involve unifying not only all Democrats, but Americans who are committed to building a world that promotes an economy that works for all Americans, not just the wealthy and corporations, and an agenda where we have liberty and justice for all.

INCLUSION AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Our party is at its best when it reflects the regional, racial, ethnic and overall diversity of the Americans we represent. We build an inclusive and accountable party by making sure that people have a seat at the table.

A 3,143-county strategy means that we bring everyone to the table. We will work to ensure that constituency caucuses are fully staffed and we have regular briefings and programmatic updates from the Chair and Department Directors to the DNC Executive Committee and state party chairs.

We will call a meeting of all of the caucus and council chairs to set metrics for evaluating the work that we are doing to ensure we are moving our party in a consistently inclusive and accountable direction.

...MESSAGING

We have already been holding Trump accountable on social media, via email and substantial research into his nominees. Our goal over the coming years is to hold every single Republican in the country accountable to the people they represent. Having two way communication from the DNC to partners across the country helps nationalize local fights and localize national fights.

We also need to aggressively remind voters for the Democratic Party and our candidates stand for. That means establishing an accessible and easily digestible version of our platform and disseminating it to county and state parties.

The DNC can help candidates get their message out by looking at bulk purchasing options, reducing any remaining barriers between the voter file and digital platforms and template pieces for down ballot candidates.

Here's A Bizarre Mix Of Hyper-Partisan Gun Nonsense From Alabama, Mississippi And The Part-Time Governor Of New Jersey

Outside of Mississippi, not many people know who GOP backbencher Steven Palazzo is. He beat the odious Blue Dog Gene Taylor in southeast Mississippi's deep red district (R+21) and then faded away, except for one ugly incident. His district-- which includes Biloxi, Pascagoula and Gulfport, his hometown-- was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Over 200 people died and dozens are still listed as missing. Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties looked like war zones and the economic consequences are still barely calculable, tens of billions of dollars just in Palazzo's district. And the federal government stepped up with billions in recovery aid. That's the way it should be. People in New York and California and Illinois pitched in through the federal government to help our brothers and sisters in Mississippi. A year after Palazzo took office Hurricane Sandy hit. It caused over $70 billion in damage and over 70 deaths. New York and New Jersey were hit particularly hard. Palazzo was one of the small handful of radical right hateful confederates to tell the northerns to go screw off. He voted against aid for Sandy victims.

Yesterday Palazzo was back in the news-- this time offering a resolution to censure president Obama for his executive order on guns. Palazzo, who has taken $12,051 from gun groups in his short time in Congress and boasts an "A" from the NRA. "His actions this week to take away the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens is just the latest, if not most egregious, violation of the separation of powers found in the United States Constitution." Perhaps Palazzo never read the Second Amendment but there's nothing President Obama ordered that has anything to do with the Second Amendment. Although Congress attempted to censure Nixon and Clinton, I'm pretty sure the only president ever censured was Andrew Jackson.

Above is a piece of an interview Chris Hayes did with a somewhat more extremist colleague of Palazzo's, Alabama's Mo Brooks who works very hard trying to sound like a moron but is no dummy. A crackpot? Yes, but he graduated from Duke in 3 years with a double major and later earned a law degree from the University of Alabama. Sure, Mo's a hate-filled racist throw-back and a Know Nothing xenophobe and he's always saying nutty things-- like Obama is waging a war on whites-- but he's always been an articulate defender of the Second Amendment. The NRA graded him a 93% and the more extremist Gun Owners of America gave him a 100% rating. Conversely, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence named him an NRA lap dog and gave him a ZERO rating. He speaks with some authority about Second Amendment issues. And, while Palazzo worked as a bookkeeper or accountant, Brooks is an actual attorney... with a degree from an accredited law school.

Assuming Hayes didn't get him high in the MSNBC green room before the interview, he made some news Wednesday night when he responded to Hayes' simple question about whether or not he'd favor allowing guns in his work place (which happens to be the U.S. House of Represenatives). Now, recall, that when former Congressman and Gambino crime family thug Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm-- now serving prison time-- proposed the congressmembers be allowed to pack heat on the House floor, John Boehner instructed his staff to make sure he was never left alone with Grimm again under any circumstances. Early in 2011, Grimm told a district newspaper that if congressmen "feel comfortable with that responsibility, then I support them. It could put you in a situation where you can protect yourself... If somebody pulls out a knife to attack you and you draw a gun, they’re likely going to drop it. But you have to be prepared to kill; it’s not for everyone."

It was definitely for him though. He loved playing Mr. Macho man and waving his gun around in crowded places screaming and threatening people. What a guy! What a Republicano! Mo Brooks, who has a concealed carry permit, has a different attitude though. Hayes asked him "Should citizens and Members of Congress be allowed to carry [guns] inside the U.S. Capitol?" Mo, said no. "I do not want citizens coming onto Capitol grounds inside the United States Capitol, into the gallery of the United States Capitol with guns, given the risks that are associated with that..." Watch for yourself up top.

Now Brooks isn't-- and likely never will-- run for president, at least not of this country. But, Chris Christie is. With a campaign weeks away from disintegrating-- the latest CBS poll of Iowa Republicans shows him tied for 9th place with 1% and that same CBS poll has him behind Trumpf (32%), Cruz (14%) and Rubio (13%) for 4th place in New Hampshire, the basket all his eggs are in. If he loses there in a month, it's back to New Jersey, where his approval rating is an astounding 31%. One of the reasons New Jersey independents and even some confused Democrats liked him is because he seemed independent enough to buck the GOP and back an assault weapons ban in 1995, going so far as to point out that the Republicans opposing the ban were "dangerous," "crazy" and "radical." He campaigned against a concealed carry law in 2009. Now that he's trying to win votes in a GOP national primary, he wants to be included in that list of the dangerous, crazy and radical. Christie was on Fox with Sean Hannity Wednesday to say he's changed his mind, claiming he was just a child-- a 460 pound, 32 year old child.

Obama didn't propose anything remotely confiscatory. The right-wing Chicago Tribune noted this week that Obama was unable to get Congress to pass background checks-- despite 91% approval from the public.

If you can't get Congress to change the laws, you can do nothing-- or you can look for how to apply those laws in ways that are more sensible but within the letter and spirit of their text. Obama has elected to do the latter.

...Federal law requires a dealer's license for anyone "who devotes time, attention and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms." The idea behind that language was to exempt individuals who make only occasional sales, as many ordinary gun owners do.

But some people use the exclusion to evade the clear intent of the law. A study by Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that "high-volume sellers posted 29 percent of the gun ads listed by private sellers." On one popular online site, it found, 1 out of every 30 potential purchasers had criminal records.

...The change would fall short of the universal requirement Obama urged Congress to enact, but it would expand the number of sales triggering background checks, creating a new hurdle for felons seeking guns. It would also curb a clear abuse of the law by unscrupulous or careless sellers.

Republican presidential candidates accuse the president of overstepping his legal authority. "This is going to be another illegal executive action, which I'm sure will be rejected by the courts," said Chris Christie. Jeb Bush said Obama would be using "executive powers that he doesn't have."

But the charge doesn't stick. This step appears to be a reasonable adjustment of regulations in order to fulfill the purpose of an existing statute. In November, a group of 23 law professors signed a letter saying, "Executive action to ensure robust enforcement of the law-- including issuing clarifying guidance and directing comprehensive enforcement of federal gun laws-- is entirely compatible with the will of Congress and the president's constitutional authority."

It's not a cure-all-- just a rational attempt to make it harder for people who are barred from owning guns to buy guns. And it's long overdue.

But that isn't how hyper-partisan sociopaths like Steve Palazzo see it. He and his confederates just want to tear the nation apart and could care less how many families are devastated in the process. The NRA was too scared to go on prime time TV with the president for a discussion about his actions. Instead they're busy raising money by lying to the fools who take them seriously that Obama is grabbing their guns. Sick people, with a lot of blood on their hands-- and in Paul Ryan's case, a lot of blood money in his bank account. Ryan has taken more money from the NRA and other gun groups than anyone else currently in the House of Representatives.

You probably already read President Obama's OpEd in last night's NY Times. There was a paragraph that especially piqued my interest:

Even as I continue to take every action possible as president, I will also take every action I can as a citizen. I will not campaign for, vote for or support any candidate, even in my own party, who does not support common-sense gun reform. And if the 90 percent of Americans who do support common-sense gun reforms join me, we will elect the leadership we deserve.

President Obama has raised an awful lot of money for the DCCC, which continues spending it to recruit and elect NRA-loving candidates. Last cycle, for example, Minnesota Blue Dog Collin Peterson would have been a goner for sure had not his buddy Steve Israel wasted $4,000,000 in DCCC money to reelect someone who votes with the GOP on nearly everything-- this week Peterson was the only Democrat to vote to repeal Obamacare and to defund Planned Parenthood-- and is a 100% NRA fanatic and opposes exactly what President Obama is arguing for. Now that Israel is heading towards the trash heap of history, will the DCCC finally stop wasting money on Peterson and others like him, incumbents who play footsie with the NRA like Henry Cuellar, and recruits who still back the NRA or who have suddenly "converted" after years of NRA fealty, like Darren Soto in Florida, John Oceguera in Nevada and Ted "NRA A+" Strickland, who wants to retire as a U.S. Senator from Ohio. Strickland's opponent is Cincinnati City Councilman PG Sittenfeld, who has been hammering both Strickland and the incumbent Republican, Rob Portman, another NRA shill, about the same themes Obama is talking about. If President Obama wants to send a message he's serious about this stuff, he can drop a couple of grand into P.G.'s Blue America account. I'll let you know if he does.

What Do The Liberty Caucus Extremists Want? Are We Certain They're All Nihilists? Justin Amash For Speaker!

The 40 or so far right-extremists and libertarians who topped Boehner and denied McCarthy the speakership and are now deciding Paul Ryan's fate, are easy targets because they are generally misogynistic, homophobic racists. Some are neo-Nazis and even more are Confederates. But does that mean they're always wrong about everything? And, more to the point, what does that say about the bottom-up congressional rebellion they're leading against the House leadership rules now? Forget for a moment ,if you can, that Mo Brooks (R-AL) is a crackpot racist who's basically never right on any policies. In the clip above, though, Lawrence O'Donnell talked with him about what the Liberty Caucus is getting at from their own perspective. (Hint: he didn't say it was seceding from the Union again.)

Probably the least objections member of the Liberty Caucus is Just Amash, a Michigan libertarian-- and the only Republican Blue America ever found preferable to a Democratic opponent, rancid conservaDem Steve Pestka, who Amash beat. Amash would make a much better Speaker than Ryan but no one has been tossing his name around. Yesterday, though, Politico's Jake Sherman featured him a big way in a major piece about the Liberty Caucus, which he referred to as the Freedom Caucus (although maybe they're separate groups with the same members and goals). Sherman marveled that Amash wanted to talk about process (rules) at a Grand Rapids town hall.

How he believes John Boehner didn't follow them, and how the chamber’s next leader needs to. Amash and his crew want a robust committee process. They would like more amendments and no more end runs to fast-track legislation to the House floor. If the next leader does those things, he or she might not have to constantly worry about the Freedom Caucus. Return to “regular order,” and the Republican Conference just might be able to return to normal.

“The problem isn’t that he isn’t conservative enough,” Amash told about 40 people here during a town hall meeting Wednesday evening, referring to John Boehner, who announced his resignation amid growing pressure from Amash’s group. “The problem is he doesn’t follow the process. He operated a top-down system, and still operates a top-down system because he hasn’t stepped down yet. Which means that he figures out what outcome he wants, and he goes to the individual members and attempts to compel and coerce us to vote for that outcome.”

Amash, a 35-year-old libertarian-minded Republican first elected in the tea party wave of 2010, is at the heart of a new power center in the House Republican Conference. With roughly 40 members, the Freedom Caucus has an outsized role in selecting the next speaker of the House. If its members vote as a bloc, which they say they intend to do, it essentially gives them veto power over the next speaker of the House.

Republican leaders see Freedom Caucus members as a bunch of bomb-throwing ideologues with little interest in finding solutions that can pass a divided government.

But that's a false reading of the group, Amash told his constituents. Their mission isn't to drag Republican leadership to the right, though many of them would certainly favor more conservative outcomes. It's simply to force them to follow the institution's procedures, Amash argued.

That means allowing legislation and amendments to flow through committees in a deliberative way, and giving individual members a chance to offer amendments and to have their ideas voted on on the House floor. Instead of waiting until right before the latest legislative crisis erupts, then twisting members’ arms for votes, they argue, leadership must empower the rank and file on the front end and let the process work its will.

“In some cases, conservative outcomes will succeed. In other cases, liberal outcomes will succeed. And that’s OK,” said Amash, who was reelected overwhelmingly last year after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce backed his Republican primary rival. “We can have a House where different coalitions get together on different bills and pass legislation. And then we present that to the Senate and we present it to the White House.

“The worst scenario,” Amash continued, “is where you have one person or a small group of people dictate to everyone else what the outcome is going to be in advance.”

And that reminded me of an amendment-- which started as a bill be co-wrote with progressive Democrat John Conyers in 2013 in an attempt to rein in the unconstitutional surveillance of Americans by NASA, the LIBERT-E Act. The bill attracted awesome progressive Democrats like Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Judy Chu (D-CA) as Libertarian-leaning Republicans like Amash, Thomas Massie (R-KY), Walter Jones (R-NC) and Tom McClintock, as well as crackpots from both parties, like Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Paul Broun (R-GA) and Ted Yoho (R-FL). It didn't attract anyone from Boehner's circle.

In the end it was introduced as an amendment to a Defense Appropriations bill and was narrowly defeated 205-217 by Obama and Boehner. 111 Democrats and 94 Republicans voted in favor and they were edged out by 134 Republicans and 83 Democrats (mostly wretched Blue Dogs and New Dems like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jim Himes, Steve Israel, the same Kyrsten Sinema who claimed to be a co-sponsor, John Delaney, Jim Cooper, Ann Kuster, Sean Patrick Maloney, Lipinski, Hoyer, Cuellar, Costa... all the dreck) voting against.

Thinking about that amendment took me back to Michael Gurnow's 2014 book, The Edward Snowden Affair: Exposing the Politics and Media Behind the NSA Scandal, which talked about how Amash attempted to address the unconstitutional spying on Americans in the face of an unsympathetic Speaker (Boehner).

The LIBERT-E Act had over 50 sponsors. It was the product of two Michigan politicians. Amash, a Republican with Libertarian leanings and the sixth-youngest representative, had been joined by Conyers, a Democrat born in 1929 who was the second-longest serving incumbent on Capitol Hill now in his 48th year in Congress. But the two politicians knew the controversial law would not pass on its own. They judiciously took another approach. The decision wound up testing the moral fabric of democracy.

Unlike the Senate, where all members can force a vote, the House Speaker reigns supreme. If the speaker doesn’t deem a topic worthy of consideration, it isn’t put on the docket. Amash walked gingerly around Speaker Boehner, who had already decreed Snowden a traitor. He made his bill into an amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014. Any lawmaker can propose an amendment to a bill so long as it can be proven to relate to the legislation it is trying to piggyback. The amendment’s relevance was obvious and irrefutable. It dealt with defense spending. Amash was calling to cancel the NSA’s authority to conduct blanket surveillance. There were two sides to the legislative coin. In theory, Amash’s proposal should have been agreeable to the fiscally conservative Republican-led House because it would cut costs. In reality, House Republicans strongly supported national defense, which the bill sought to limit. It was nonetheless Amash’s best bet for getting the law passed.

It was also a prime example of why politicians hate amend ment riders. Piggybacked legislation frequently puts them in a difficult position with their party, campaign donors and constituency. In the case of Amash’s proposal, a lose-lose scenario ensued. If the amendment was attached, a House member would be simultaneously voting for and against national defense, and the press and public rarely issued benefit of the doubt after final votes were cast. Because of this, leaders of the House started humoring the unthinkable. The amendment process was a liberty which assured all voices were heard. Talk about limiting the number of amendments to a bill began to circulate. Democracy remained intact for one reason. If an actual move toward blocking a vote on the amendment ensued, Amash’s legislation had enough support for the entire Defense bill to be held up. Republicans reluctantly consented. The amendment was ruled to be in order on Monday, July 22. It was then scheduled to be debated on Wednesday evening, July 24, before going up for a tentative vote the next day.

The White House was so nervous, it broke character. Carney publicly denounced the pending legislation during a press conference on Tuesday, “[ ... ] we [the White House] oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our intelligence community’s counterterrorism tools. This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open or deliberative process. We urge the House to reject the Amash Amendment, and instead move forward with an approach that appropriately takes into account the need for a reasoned review of what tools can best secure the nation.” The White House chose to ignore the irony of the statement being made moments after another closed-door briefing had come to an end.

The Republicans had a right to be worried. After 15 minutes of debate the day before, Amash’s amendment was narrowly defeated 205-217 on Thursday. Ninety-four Republicans and 111 Democrats voted in favor, 134 Republicans and 83 Democrats had been against the legislation. Surprisingly, the author of the PATRIOT Act, James Sensenbrenner, voted has come to stop it.” Since a majority of Democrats supported the amendment, it would have likely passed in the Democrat-led Senate. Aside from what might have been said by Alexander, a look behind the campaign contribution curtain suggests Lon Snowden was right. The 217 “nay” voices received 122 percent more money from the intelligence and defense industries than the 205 “yea” voters.

The $594 billion Defense bill was passed with over 60 amendments by a vote of 315 to 109. The tab was five billion dollars below current spending and the White House threatened to veto it in order to continue to fund the Pentagon. Its emotional appeal was that the reduced budget would force compensatory cuts to other programs such as health research and education.

However, one of the amendments that did pass relates to U.S. government surveillance. It was put forth by Mike Pompeo of Kansas and declares that the NSA cannot use its budget to “acquire, monitor, or store the contents [ ... ] of any electronic communication” of a U.S. citizen. It passed by a vote of 409-12. The reason Pompeo’s law was met with little fanfare and passed by an overwhelming margin is because it is essentially flaccid. It prohibits what the NSA stated it was not doing and currently steering around. Pompeo’s legislation does not ban the bulk collection of metadata.

Boehner has something in his eye-- Justin Amash