Ted Cruz’s plan for ISIS is disastrously inhumane

Paul Waldman | The Week | December 13, 2014

Ted Cruz never says anything good just once — when he finds a line or a joke that gets applause, he repeats it over and over. And one of his big crowd-pleasers at the moment is this little ditty about the Islamic State: “We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out!”

In front of audiences that want to know who’s going to be most ruthless in fighting those terrible terrorists that are terrifying us, it never fails. And it reflects prevailing Republican sentiment, which says that ISIS hasn’t been defeated only because Barack Obama is weak, and with the application of enough force, this problem can be solved.

Just last week, I praised Cruz for being nearly alone among the Republican candidates (Rand Paul joins him in this) in realizing the pitfalls of nation-building. He has said repeatedly that it’s a bad idea for us to go in and occupy a place like Syria in the hopes that we can create a thriving and peaceful democracy there, and that if we were to depose Bashar al-Assad, the vacuum created by his departure would likely be filled by a theocratic regime. But Cruz’s apparent willingness to entertain the idea of unintended consequences obviously has its limits.

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Republicans vs. the Constitution: Would-be Presidents Endorse Kim Davis’ Brazen Illegality

Simon Maloy | Salon | AlterNet | September 4, 2015

 

Which 2016 GOP candidates are lining up behind a Kentucky clerk’s illegal and discriminatory behavior?

Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis will appear in federal court today to explain why she believes that God and her personal convictions empower her to break the law and deny gay people their constitutionally protected rights. Ever since this summer’s Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, Davis has been refusing to issue marriage licenses – to any couple, gay or straight – citing her religious beliefs. She was ordered by the governor to do her job, but she refused. She was ordered by a federal judge to do her job, but she refused. This week, the Supreme Court rejected her appeal of the federal judge’s decision, which should have been the final word on the matter, but she’s still refusing to the job she was elected by the people of Kentucky to do. And so now she’s being hauled before a judge to determine whether she’s in contempt of court.

There is no debate on that question: Davis is flagrantly in contempt and should be punished for what she’s done. After the Supreme Court rejected her appeal, a gay couple confronted Davis and asked her to explain what authority she had to continue denying them their rights. “God’s authority,” she shot back, which is the absolute wrong answer for a government employee to provide. The Constitution is the governing power in Kim Davis’ office, and she is bound by oath to adhere to the law. She is breaking that oath, defying the Constitution, abusing her authority, and insisting that she suffer no consequences for her behavior.

Davis’ illegal and morally dubious stand against gay marriage does appeal, however, to the slice of the conservative movement that is hell bent on restoring the good old days of godly virtue when you had the state’s blessing to discriminate against gay people. It just so happens that there are a number of Republican presidential candidates who are trying to motivate that highly politically active segment of the population to get behind their campaigns, and that’s led us to a situation in which people running for the nation’s highest elected office are cheering on a rogue government employee’s defiance of the Constitution.

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Jeb Bush: The Republican to Vote For (If You Wish His Brother Were Still in Office)

Rich Koele / Shutterstock

 

 

 

Eugene Robinson | Truthdig | August 15, 2015

Jeb Bush has firmly established himself as the Republican to vote for if you wish his brother were still president. Best of luck with that.

In what was billed as a major foreign policy speech Tuesday, Bush proposed inching back into Iraq, wading into the Syrian civil war and engaging in much the same kind of geopolitical engineering and nation-building that George W. Bush attempted. So much for the whole “I am my own man” routine.

READ: Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Other GOP Candidates Attack Obama’s Plan to Curb Climate Change

He finally understands that to have any credibility, even amid a field of uber-hawks (minus Rand Paul), he has to say the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. But judging from his actions, that’s not what he seems to believe. Why would someone who thinks the war was wrong include Paul Wolfowitz, one of its architects, among his top foreign policy advisers? Why would someone who sees the Middle East as an unholy mess reveal that he consults his brother, the chief mess-maker, on what to do next?

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From Trump on Down, the Republicans Can’t Be Serious

Paul Krugman. (photo: NYT)

 

Paul Krugman | The New York Times | August 9, 2015

This was, according to many commentators, going to be the election cycle Republicans got to show off their “deep bench.” The race for the nomination would include experienced governors like Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, fresh thinkers like Rand Paul, and attractive new players like Marco Rubio. Instead, however, Donald Trump leads the field by a wide margin. What happened?

The answer, according to many of those who didn’t see it coming, is gullibility: People can’t tell the difference between someone who sounds as if he knows what he’s talking about and someone who is actually serious about the issues. And for sure there’s a lot of gullibility out there. But if you ask me, the pundits have been at least as gullible as the public, and still are.

For while it’s true that Mr. Trump is, fundamentally, an absurd figure, so are his rivals. If you pay attention to what any one of them is actually saying, as opposed to how he says it, you discover incoherence and extremism every bit as bad as anything Mr. Trump has to offer. And that’s not an accident: Talking nonsense is what you have to do to get anywhere in today’s Republican Party.

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Senate Blocks Attack on Planned Parenthood, But the Political Assault Continues

Anti-abortion activists rally on the steps of the Texas Capitol to condemn the use in medical research of tissue samples from aborted fetuses. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

John Nichols | The Nation | August 4, 2015

Instead of a serious debate about the facts, for GOP candidates who sit in the Senate this is “all about politics.”

The first Republican presidential debate is officially on August 6 in Cleveland. But the contenders for the party’s nomination were already scrambling on Monday to outflank one another as the party’s most ardent foe of reproductive rights. In advance of a Senate vote on a proposal to defund Planned Parenthood, Republican candidates who sit in the Senate made moves that seemed at every turn to confirm Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards’ observation that the effort to cut federal support for clinics across the country was “all about politics.”

Republican contenders Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida were leading the charge against continued funding of the health-care provider. Paul highlighted his decision to be in DC rather than New Hampshire or Iowa with a message to Twitter followers that read: “Voting to defund Planned Parenthood now, please chip in to help me continue fighting Washington Machine.” The message steered recipients toward a secure fund-raising sight that reminded the faithful that, “Each individual may contribute up to $2,700 per election ($5,400 total).”

A fourth Republican contender, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, got grief for missing the vote in order to appear in person at a New Hampshire forum — despite Graham’s accurate but poorly-received attempt to explain that the vote was meaningless because President Obama would surely veto the measure.

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Here’s Who Is Bankrolling the Top Presidential Candidates

Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. (photo: ABC News)

 

Rick Newman and Emma Peters | Yahoo Finance | Reader Supported News | July 21, 2015

 

ALSO SEE: RNC Posts Record June Haul, Outraises DNC by $4 million

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/video/heres-bankrolling-top-presidential-candidates-171017722.html?format=embed

 

ernie Sanders is far behind Hillary Clinton in the polls, but the liberal curmudgeon is tied with Clinton in one interesting contest: the number of Google (GOOGL) employees donating to the campaign. Each candidate has received money from 26 Googlers, according to the latest federal fundraising records.

The 2016 presidential election is still 16 months away, but the fundraising push is in high gear, given that the winner may need $1 billion or more to win the White House. Candidates and groups supporting them are likely to spend the most money ever in a presidential campaign, partly because the Faustian innovation known as super PACs allows rich donors to give unlimited amounts to groups affiliated with candidates they support.

Two super PACs supporting Jeb Bush, the presumed Republican front-runner, have raised a whopping $108 million so far, according to the Bush campaign. They could pull in several multiples of that by Election Day. Super PACs supporting Hillary Clinton, Bush’s Democratic counterpart, have raised just $24 million so far, though Clinton’s campaign proper has outraised Bush’s by more than 4 to 1.

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Activist linked to Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul calls for death to gays and their Christian supporters

 

Anti-LGBT activist Theodore Shoebat (Screen capture)

 

Travis Gettys | Raw Story | July 2, 2015

A fringe activist with ties to Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul has called for the execution of LGBT people and their Christian supporters.

Theodore Shoebat, who appears along with the Republican presidential candidates in a recently released anti-LGBT film, cited scripture and Catholic doctrine to call for death to those who engage in or accept homosexuality, reported Right Wing Watch.

“Opinions expressed in favor for homosexuality and other deviancies (such as cannibalism), are worthy of capital punishment,” Shoebat wrote. “This purely illustrates that Christianity is so much against the license to do evil — even if it is done in private — that it prohibits any approval of it.”

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‘I’m Going to Call a Drone and…Kill You’ and 9 Other Insane Things Lindsey Graham Has Said

Sen. Lindsey Graham questions Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan during her confirmation hearing. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Zoë Carpenter | The Nation | May 20, 2015

The field of Republican presidential contenders does not want for hawks. Marco Rubio is already talking about attacking Iran. Jeb Bush has stacked his foreign policy team with his brother’s neoconservative advisers, including Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz. Scott Walker wants to be “a leader that is willing to take a fight to them before they take the fight to us.” Even Rand Paul has proposed to increase defense spending. (As for the other side, Hillary Clinton has plenty of questions to answer about her support for military intervention.)

Now the flock is about to get a candidate to out-hawk all the others: South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who is expected to announce his bid for the White House on June 1. “I’m running because I think the world is falling apart; I’ve been more right than wrong on foreign policy,” he said Monday on CBS This Morning.

Graham’s foreign policy is essentially a philosophy that force can solve most problems. He pushed aggressively for the invasion of Iraq, for putting boots on the ground in Libya, and for military intervention in Syria. Graham isn’t unique for trying to peddle violence—it’s the fear he uses to market military action that makes him stand out. From his claims that Saddam Hussein was “flat-out lying” about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that “chemical weapons in Syria today means nuclear weapons in the US tomorrow,” to his assertion that ISIS “will open the gates of hell to spill out on the world,” Graham’s track record is a long, terrifying trail of hyperbole.

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Rand Paul calls for ‘tent revivals’ to resolve the ‘moral crisis’ of gay marriage

Rand Paul (Fox screenshot)

Tom Boggioni | Raw Story | March 27, 2015

In a video clip carried by the Christian Broadcasting Network, potential 2016 GOP presidential nominee and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R) took up what he called the “moral crisis’ afflicting the country, suggesting that the U.S. needs a series of “tent revivals” to get back on the proper path.

In the video, uploaded by Right Wing Watch, Paul dismissed the idea of the federal government’s involvement in the same-sex marriage debate, saying, “Don’t look to Washington to solve anything.”

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Lawmakers Introduce First-Ever Senate Measure Authorizing Medical Marijuana

NORML | March 13, 2015

“Today we join together to say enough is enough”

Washington, DC: Members of the US Senate for the first time have introduced legislation to amend the classification and regulation of cannabis for therapeutic purposes.

On Tuesday, Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced The Compassionate Access, Research Expansion, and Respect States (CARERS) Act, which permits qualified patients, doctors, and businesses to engage in state-sanctioned behavior involving the production, sale, and use of medical cannabis without fear of federal prosecution. It states, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the provisions of this title relating to marihuana shall not apply to any person acting in compliance with State law relating to the production, possession, distribution, dispensation, administration, laboratory testing, or delivery of medical marihuana.”

Although Congress enacted spending legislation in December seeking to similarly halt the Justice Department from interfering in state-sanctioned medical marijuana operations, that appropriation measure is set to expire in September.

Separate provisions in the Senate proposal reschedule marijuana at the federal level and remove the compound cannabidiol (CBD) from the Controlled Substances Act altogether. Additional provisions in the bill allow for financial institutions to legally provide services to medical marijuana businesses, permit VA doctors to authorize medical cannabis, and remove existing bureaucratic barriers that limit investigators from clinically studying the plant’s safety and therapeutic efficacy.

“Our federal government has long overstepped the boundaries of common sense, fiscal prudence, and compassion” in regard to its marijuana policies, Sen. Booker stated at a press conference. “Today we join together to say enough is enough.”

While numerous House measures have previously been introduced to amend federal marijuana policy, members of the US Senate have never before considered such reforms.

Commenting on the new measure, NORML Communications Director Erik Altieri said: “It is indicative of how far the movement to reform our nation’s failed marijuana policies has come when a Republican presidential hopeful partners with two high profile Democrats to undo the war on cannabis consumers. While we ultimately believe marijuana should be descheduled from the Controlled Substances Act entirely, this legislation provides an excellent opportunity for Senate leaders to begin engaging in this broader discussion.”

For more information about this measure, please visit NORML’s ‘Take Action Center’ here: http://www.norml.org/act or contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500(202) 483-5500.

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