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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

In the News: Benghaziiiiiii!!!!

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A series of tubes filled with reruns

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Benghazi Select Committee Will Have 7 Republicans, 5 Democrats

The soon-to-be-formed select committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks will have 7 Republican members and 5 Democratic members, a senior GOP leadership aide confirmed to TPM on Tuesday afternoon.

That means Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will reject a request by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that the panel be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats in order to be “fair.”

HAHAHAHAHA!!! “Fair” definitely belongs in quotes.

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Congressman Warns New Benghazi Committee Could Cost ‘Tens Of Millions’

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has been an outspoken critic of the Republican-led effort investigate the Obama administration’s response to the attack on a diplomatic outpost in eastern Libya. When asked how much the new special committee would cost taxpayers, Schiff was not optimistic about it being cheap. “I think unquestionably it will be in the millions,” Schiff said in a phone interview with ThinkProgress. “And it depends on how long they stay at it. They seem to have an insatiable appetite for this subject, so clearly in the millions. Whether it will go beyond that into the tens of millions may depend on just how crazy they are.”

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Joan Walsh: Democrats should boycott latest Benghazi charade

Five House committees have already investigated the Benghazi tragedy and issued biased reports; there have been two Senate committee reports plus the Accountability Review Board’s findings. The bipartisan reports found errors on the part of State Department personnel and recommended staffing and other changes. But because none of the investigations were able to charge then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with incompetence, or prove that President Obama tried to cover up the truth to get re-elected, Republicans won’t believe them, and insist there’s more to “investigate.”

Thus we have the latest House Benghazi stunt – and Democrats should stay away from it. […]

Gowdy’s committee is best understood as as a base-energizing fundraising tool for the GOP, part of what Politico’s Michael Hirsch calls “the Benghazi industrial complex,” engineered to damage Clinton so much she either can’t run for president or decides it’s not worth the pain. Of course, Benghazi fever hasn’t spread beyond the fever swamps of Obama hatred that afflict the GOP’s far-right base. But that’s enough to keep it alive, and potentially make it a potent midterm-election organizing tool. House Democrats should make that role clear by boycotting it.

Norman Ornstein, speaking to Greg Sargent (WaPo) asked: “The question is, does it make more sense to be in there, participating in the process and pointing out Republican overkill again and again, or does it make more sense to further destroy the image of the committee by staying out of it?”

Short answer: after 2 years there is literally NOTHING that a Democrat can point out that would make a whit of difference. They are there as fig leafs. Period.  

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More …

In Other News …

Failing to expand Medicaid: A top cause of preventable death?

A 2012 Urban Institute report estimated that 15.1 million uninsured adults could gain coverage if every state expanded Medicaid. Using the 830 figure from the Massachusetts study, and acknowledging that the state’s coverage wasn’t exactly equivalent to Medicaid, that would translate to 18,193 deaths prevented per year.

For a sense of comparison-that would make the Medicaid coverage gap the number five leading cause of preventable death in the United States:


The author points out that these are likely low estimates. More here.

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Ban Ki-moon: Climate change affects us all. So what’s stopping us joining forces to act on it?

Three decades from now the world is going to be a very different place. How it looks will depend on actions we take today. We have big decisions to make and little time to make them if we are to provide stability and greater prosperity to the world’s growing population. Top of the priority list is climate change.

All around the world it is plain that climate change is happening and that human activities are the principal cause. Last month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirmed that the effects of climate change are already widespread, costly and consequential – from the tropics to the poles, from small islands to large continents, and from the poorest countries to the wealthiest. The world’s top scientists are clear. Climate change is affecting agriculture, water resources, human health, and ecosystems on land and in the oceans. It poses sweeping risks for economic stability and the security of nations.

We can avert these risks if we take bold, decisive action now.

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GOP Establishment Favorite Thom Tillis Wins Senate Nod in N.C.

In an expensive and crowded Republican primary that pitted three distinct wings of the GOP against each other, Tillis was the best-funded candidate. He carried the backing of the business and donor class; Mitt Romney and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush both announced their support for his campaign.

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Supreme Court Unanimously Slaps Conservative Appeals Court For Botching Police Shooting Case

Last year, an unusually conservative panel of the conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an opinion dismissing a black shooting victim’s lawsuit against a white police officer. On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed this decision in a rare order handed down without oral argument or full briefing from the parties. The order is even more rare because the conservative Roberts Court unanimously reversed a lower court from the left.

This case arose out of an incident on New Years Eve in 2008, when a Texas police sergeant named Jeffrey Cotton shot Robbie Tolan. […]

After Tolan sued Cotton, his case wound up in front of a very conservative panel of the Fifth Circuit. Judges Edith Jones and Rhesa Barksdale once voted to allow a man to be executed despite the fact that his lawyer slept through much of his trial. Judge Leslie Southwick once joined a court decision upholding the reinstatement of a white state worker who was fired for calling a black colleague a “good ole n*igger.” These three judges ruled in favor of Cotton.

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Editor’s Note: Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.

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/ 13 Comments

13 comments

  1. JanF

    Rep. Elijah Cummings (D)

       Over the past year, House Republicans have conducted their Benghazi investigation in a completely partisan matter by denying access to hearing witnesses, leaking cherry-picked excerpts to create a false narrative, issuing unilateral subpoenas without Committee votes, releasing multiple partisan staff reports, excluding Democratic Members from fact-finding delegations to Libya in violation of the Speaker’s own rules, and launching unsubstantiated accusations that turn out to be completely false. So I do not have much faith that a new select committee will be any different.

       This new select committee appears to be nothing more than a reaction to internal Republican bickering rather than a responsible effort to obtain the facts, especially since the new committee will not have any powers that Chairman Issa doesn’t already have – including the ability to issue unilateral subpoenas for any document or witness, which he just used to subpoena the Secretary of State.

  2. JanF

    If This Is What The ‘Establishment’ GOP Looks Like, Bring On November

    For “Establishment” Republicans, the good news is that their Senate candidate in North Carolina, House Speaker Thom Tillis, won yesterday’s GOP primary without a runoff, easing comfortably past the 40% victory threshold. Fiery “constitutional conservative” Greg Brannon was second with 29% of the vote, and Christian Right candidate Rev. Mark Harris trailing with 16%.

    The bad news is that the victor emerges from the contest hard to distinguish from the extremists he defeated.

    It’s not as though there was ever a great ideological distance between the candidates. Yes, Brannon is one of those conservatives who thinks the federal government should be confined to its original minimalist role; he was supported by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY), both of whom campaigned for him in North Carolina. But Tillis boasted of his support for Jim DeMint’s “Cut, Cap, Balance” constitutional amendment that would permanently pare back federal spending and tie it to a fixed percentage of GDP.

    He mentions the baggage that Tillis will now have to carry around because of the “divide and conquer” video that came to light this past week:

    The video, which is sort of a nastier version of the Mitt Romney “47 percent” video, has the air of an instant classic, thanks to its unmistakable class and racial undertones. Unless some other conservative politician outdoes Tillis, the video will remain nationally and locally notorious for a long time to come, thanks to the especially devilish, manipulative nature of Tillis’ analysis of how to demonize public assistance recipients, a strategy he said he would pursue even if it killed him politically.

    Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC) will, I am sure, remind people of his statements and encourage North Carolinians to accelerate the demise of his political ambitions.

  3. JanF

    Sheila Bapat: Why Raising The Minimum Wage Is A Thoroughly Feminist Issue

    The Ms. Foundation for Women held a star-studded gala last week heralding its 40 years of activism, and celebrating feminist icon Gloria Steinem’s 80th birthday. Founded in 1974, the Ms. Foundation has been devoted to eradicating economic inequality for women — and Steinem in particular been a thought leader in the many ways in which women’s labor is valued less than men’s.[…]

    [The Senate vote to filibuster the minimum wage increase] — and Congress’s overall lack of will to raise wages for U.S. workers — disproportionately affects women. According to last month’s analysis by National Women’s Law Center, some two-thirds of all minimum wage positions are held by women. In at least four states (Nebraska, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Vermont), more than 70 percent of all minimum wage workers are women. In at least 20 states (including Texas, Oregon, Georgia, and Alabama), 60 percent of all minimum wage workers are women.

  4. JanF

    The GOP Confronts An Obamacare Dilemma While Replacing Sebelius

    Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), a member of both of the committees that Burwell will face, seemed more concerned in an interview with Politico with how she planned to handle public health issues than re-litigating Obamacare. But then a GOP spokeswoman told Reuters the hearings would “focus on all of the Obamacare-related disasters.”

    It’s a dichotomy that has threaded all of the lead-up to Thursday’s hearing. Burwell is certain to be confirmed in a post-nuclear Senate; the only question is how uncomfortable will Republicans make it. And internally, the GOP seems to be a little uncertain how loudly it should bellow as Obamacare enjoys a string of positive headlines that started last month.

    It is unavoidable that there will be nastiness, they are Republicans after all. Will they use it as a way to bash Sebelius, bash the president, bash the ACA, add bash points to their 2016 creds, or all of the above?

  5. JanF

    Stanford University Will Purge Coal Investments From Its $18.7 Billion Endowment

    Stanford University announced Tuesday it would divest from the coal industry, making it the first major university to do so.

    The university’s internal guidelines allow the Board of Trustees to consider whether the “policies or practices” of companies they invest in “create substantial social injury.” Following a five-month review process, an advisory panel that included students, faculty, staff and alumni recommended that stocks from companies “whose principal business is coal” be sold off and excluded from any future investments. On Tuesday, the Board voted to follow through on that conclusion.

    Good for them!

    The process was kicked off when a student-led protest group, Fossil Free Stanford, asked the university to divest from the 200 largest fossil-fuel companies. The group is Stanford’s branch of a nationwide effort to encourage major institutions to drop their investments in sources of energy that result in humanity’s carbon emissions and thus drive climate change. Other major universities such as Harvard and Brown have resisted the pressure. But 11 smaller universities including Pitzer College and San Francisco State have agreed to divest, as have a number of other foundations with total investments of $1.8 billion, as well as some cities and religious organizations.

    Stanford declined to divest from oil and natural gas companies, making the victory for Fossil Free Stanford only partial. But Deborah DeCotis, the chairwoman of the board’s special committee on investment responsibility, also told the New York Times this may not be the end of the matter.

    You have to start somewhere.

  6. JanF

    Grifters gotta grift

    … the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) sent out a fundraising email using Gowdy and his committee as the hook. “You’re now a Benghazi Watchdog. Let’s go after Obama and Hillary Clinton,” it says, offering readers an opportunity to donate.

  7. JanF

    This guy from South Carolina?

    Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who deploys courtroom theatrics on the House floor and in committee hearings, often wears his gray hair long and slicked back and has gained attention for wild-eyed, high-volume bursts of pious indignation.

    Kinda like this guy from South Carolina?

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