Happy Hour Roundup: Dems Blast Hoekstra’s Iran Tweet
* Dems think they’ve caught GOP Rep Pete Hoekstra in a damaging Twitter-gaffe after he tweeted that the plight of the Iranian opposition is comparable to that of the House GOP under iron-fisted Dem rule. The DCCC emails:
“When it comes to Twitter, Pete Hoekstra just can’t help himself. Earlier this year Hoekstra compromised the security of US troops while twittering oversees during a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan and now he is minimizing the serious situation in Iran over the country’s recent election. Maybe Pete Hoekstra needs to stop focusing on Twitter, and start paying attention to the economic crisis that is devastating Michigan.”
I, for one, don’t want Hoekstra — or anyone else — to stop focusing on Twitter.
* A nice catch by Sam Stein: Lindsey Graham said today that Rahm Emanuel privately assured him that Obama is fully opposed to ever letting the detainee pics see the light of day — and that he wants Congress to take the lead.
* Senator Russ Feingold took a hard shot at Attorney General Eric Holder for refusing to say at a hearing today that the Bush warrantless wiretapping program was “illegal.”
* Jake Tapper presses White house press sec Robert Gibbs on whether Obama stands by that Justice Department legal brief comparing same-sex unions to incestuous ones.
* But the Obama administration keeps trying to refocus the conversation on Obama’s broader support for gay rights.
* John Edwards is still not prepared to concede that running for President, despite his affair, was a bad idea.
* Dan Froomkin argues persuasively that Obama shouldn’t let the CIA bamboozle him into keeping that big 2004 report on torture and its effectiveness under wraps. I’m telling you, this one could be a big deal.
* Over at his new WaPo blog, Ezra Klein has much more on an important but overlooked aspect of that health care poll finding more public confidence in insurance companies than in GOP leaders.
* Joan McCarter wonders why such poll numbers don’t stiffen Dem spines a bit more.
* And here’s today’s installment in the Michele Bachmann chronicles.
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And I suppose I’ll say again, being a minority opposition party who just lost control of the executive branch 6 months ago is hardly anything comparable to the plight of the Iranian people.
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Like I said on my blog, is “there anything sadder than seeing the people who want to Constitutionally enforce marriage inequality and removing a woman’s right to privacy, wallow themselves in such self-pity?
“A nice catch by Sam Stein: Lindsey Graham said today that Rahm Emanuel private assured him that Obama is fully opposed to ever letting the detainee pics see the light of day.”
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Greg – I don’t believe this is news at all. In order to get the supplemental passed Obama has already promised that he would do everything in his power as president to prevent the release of those photos. This obviously means that he will block the photos by executive order if all else fails.
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“White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel ‘rushed’ to Capitol Hill and prevailed upon Senate Democrats to remove the torture photo measure in exchange for an explicit White House promise that it would use all means at its disposal to block the photos’ release. Obama also issued a letter to Congress assuring it he would support separate legislation to suppress the photos.”
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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/warf-j15.shtml
sbj, the key there is the vehemence of Rahm’s private assurances to a GOP Senator I think…
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also Chris, pls feel free to drop links to your blog in here, I’m hoping to get more readers to do that with their own blogs…
@Greg: Well sheesh he already PROMISED to do everything in his means. I’m assuming that Obama will stick to his promise, use executive order if he has to, and this will ABSOLUTELY insure that they won’t be seen. I’m sure he wouldn’t break a promise . . .
Thanks Greg.
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@SBJ, seems to me if it weren’t for the Bushies and the GOP, there wouldn’t be any pictures in the first place. Sticking to a promise to hide Bush atrocities seems like the easy part.
@Chris: Well, with piercing insight like that I’ll be visiting your blog regularly! I don’t believe there has ever been an American war in which our own troops did not engage in brutality and abuse. Are you pleased that Obama will be doing everything in his means to hide these fotos, or do you merely reflexively defend his actions no matter what he does?
@sbj, it’s so convenient to be able to just forget history and pretend the last 8 years never happened. Of course nothing Bush ever did matters today. What’s important now is that Obama keeps promises. I’m glad you agree without the Bushies those pictures wouldn’t even be around to hide or not hide. Tell me, do we have pictures of our troops engaging in brutality and abuse from other wars or just Bush’s? Should Obama hide those too?
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I disagree with the president plenty. The good thing about being a Dem is I don’t have to march lock step.
on reflection, I think the key point is that Rahm is supposedly signaling to Graham that Obama wants Congress — meaning, presumably, Graham — to act to prevent their release.
Why do Democrats keep talking privately to Graham about those pictures? First, Sec. Clinton, now Emanuel? Don’t they know he’s got a big mouth by now?
Yes, but again, Rahm also previously expressed this and, in fact, the admin promised in writing to support separate legislation.
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“Obama also issued a letter to Congress assuring it he would support separate legislation to suppress the photos, if necessary.”
Lindsey Graham has lied to the Supreme Court before.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20060705.html
If you are the type of person that will lie to the Supreme Court, you are the type of person that will lie to anyone.
Why would anyone believe anything he says about anything, much less his secret conversations with Emmanuel?
Picking up on another link from the roundup, I’m curious what people who were Edwards supporters think of the article about him. It seemed fair to me, but I’m not sure I would feel that way if he’d been my guy. There’s an implication that his poverty work and focus on healthcare were, in part, window dressing. And this might be a little provocative: “Some Democrats still argue that he pushed Obama and Clinton to the left. But others say his outspoken progressive platform was flawed from the outset — it was better, they say, to frame a progressive agenda in the way Obama did, with broad themes of societal uplift, instead of an explicit appeal on behalf of the poor. These critics say the sincerity of all of Edwards’s rhetoric is in question now, potentially undermining future attempts by politicians to try to focus on poverty.”
I recall seeing on TV and reading about psychological studies where people who had absolute control over other people were likely to become abusive if supervision and oversight were inadequate. In addition to providing proper training, it would seem that CCTV and other devices should be employed as a means to immediately detect and correct the behavior of those who violate the rules. Or as evidence to punish violaters. Now I suppose someone will object because to do so would violate prisoner privacy rights.
Great articles & a well presented site
Thanks much, Sean…