Support for Friday’s flight delay vote was the latest White House move on sequester that’s left Democrats on Capitol Hill grumbling. Meanwhile, the White House says Democrats in Congress don’t have the spine to take a political risk.

Via: Elaine Thompson / AP

WASHINGTON — When White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that President Obama would be open to fixing flight delays caused by the sequestration, Capitol Hill Democrats were caught of guard.

After all, they'd been fighting with Republicans for months to replace the across-the-board cuts, with the hope that the President would only agree to a broad package to undo the sequester, the mandatory set of across-the-board cuts that had affected the Federal Aviation Administration, and virtually every other federal agency. Picking and choosing what gets fixed and what doesn't would send the wrong message and wipe out the line Democrats had been struggling to hold.

That seems to be just what happened: On Friday, after Carney sounded the retreat, the House moved quickly to pass a fix to eliminate furloughs for the country's air traffic controllers in a sweeping 361-41 vote.

The Administration's stance is that Obama had nothing to do with the lopsided vote. An official noted that the sequestration fix passed with big numbers of Democratic votes, a sign that Democrats on Capitol Hill weren't ready to take the political risk of letting flight delays persist in order to drive the GOP to the negotiating table.

But Democrats say their hands were tied — in part by the president. And the breach is the latest sign that the party has lost control of its message on what the White House and its allies viewed as a clear, if slow and painful, path to political victory, in which Republicans would be punished next fall for insisting on the cuts.

"It's a bad vote and almost all of us voted for it because we don't want people hurt or inconvenience at the airport. But the precedent is that you are identifying priorities: 'I don't want passengers inconvenienced' is to some extent a greater priority than Pell grants, Meals on Wheels, Head Start," said Rep. Raul Grijalva, who voted for the fix. "It's a precedent that speaks more to the priorities of Congress and the Administration in terms of who is getting hurt by the sequester."

This week was not the first time Democrats on the Hill have been bewildered by White House moves on the sequester. A month ago, while all the talk about sequestration was about the canceled White House tours — another fight Republicans viewed as a triumph — a top Democratic Senate aide joked, "Have they been messaging on the sequester?"

"I like to think they have some master plan they just haven't told us about yet," one House Democratic aide told BuzzFeed Friday.

This week, while the White House's dire sequestration predictions appeared finally to be coming true, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Obama was open to legislation that only solved the flight delays caused by the budget cuts. While he also said the plan was not the White House preference, Carney's signal that the White House was ready to go for the plan to fix flight delays caused faces to hit palms on Capitol Hill.

"It was the wrong move," said a Democratic member of Congress. "It kind baffled us."

Other members were fretting that passing the quick fix would mean other cuts would be soon forgotten and the administration was not doing enough to fight the sequester.
.
"My worry is by doing this, it makes it more difficult to fix everything else. I hope I'm wrong on that," said Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, who voted against the bill. "I think sequestration is so outrageous, it represents an all time high in recklessness and stupidity and I think it's worth a fight. Are we going to let the Republicans cherry pick what they are going to fix and not going to fix? I mean these guys don't give a damn about the poor."

Republicans claimed victory before the vote even occurred, with a note to members from Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Friday morning, after the Senate passed the fix by unanimous consent Thursday night.

"Consider that the Democrats' opening position was they would only replace the sequester with tax increases. By the first of this week Senator Reid proposed replacing the whole sequester with phony war savings," he wrote. "And by last night, Senate Democrats were adopting our targeted "cut this, not that" approach. This victory is in large part a result of our standing together under the banner of #Obamaflightdelays."

However a Democratic aide said there was a bright side to voting on a sequester fix, giving the party the opportunity to shine a light on how cuts are hurting the poor, seniors, and children. It would give them another opening to call on Republicans to go to a budget conference to fix the sequester entirely.

That was evidenced on the House floor earlier Friday, when Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer gave an impassioned speech as to why he would oppose the bill.

"Education, Head Start, 70,000 children will be kicked out of Head Start," he said. "Nothing in this bill deals with them. Furloughs to cause delays in processing retirement for disability claims, nothing in this bill deals with them."

In the briefing room, Carney was peppered with questions about the bill and why the White House would accept fixing flight delays without restoring funding to Head Start. Carney said they'd like to see that kind of funding restored too, and blamed the GOP for why that wasn't happening.

"We call on Congress to show as much concern for others who are being harmed. Other Americans, hard-working, middle-class families who are being hurt by this. Hard- working communities that depend on defense industries and should not have been dealt this blow of arbitrary cuts that cause furloughs and layoffs and job terminations because Congress decided — the Republicans decided and they said it publicly, 'You know what? Everything we said about how terrible the sequester's going to be? Never mind. It's a victory. It's a tea party victory.'"

But Carney said Obama is not prepared to hold fliers "hostage" in the hopes of forcing Republicans to act.

House Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman Joe Crowley, one of the few 'no' votes on the change, said he understood the concerns of passengers (noting his flight last weekend was also delayed) but this was taking the easy way out.

"I think when you begin to take away some of the chokehold pieces of it that are publically difficult, you start whittling away at this and sequestration itself becomes less onerous," he said. "You never address the parts that aren't seen like the head start kids that can't go to school anymore, Meals on Wheels that aren't delivered to Seniors."

Crowley said that there would be more trouble down the road that would "politically difficult to swallow" but Congress needed to approach the sequester in a "holistic" way.

"Today it's FAA, tomorrow it'll be something else that my Republican colleagues don't like...I felt myself the effects sequestration on my way back to Washington, but that was the consequence of us not being able to make a deal," he added. "I do think there will be other things that will come up that people are going to want to approach in a piecemeal way, and that's just not how we should be dealing with this.

Rep. Underwood was hoarding WHCD tickets.

Source: youtube.com

The fallen general rallies the troops, and Washington society, on the path to rehabilitation. Bob Barnett is his Paul Wolfowitz.

Petraeus worked out on Venice Beach with veterans last month.

Via: @TeamRubicon

There is a quiet and conventional path from shame to redemption for American political figures brought down by personal sins, and David Petraeus has, just six months after resigning as director of the CIA, followed it with his signature focus on strategy and on his own image.

The former Iraq and Afghanistan commander, who resigned after an indiscreet extramarital affair, has mounted a two-pronged campaign on Washington, D.C. From the outside, he has chosen a safe and important charitable cause, the reintegration of veterans into American life. Meanwhile, on the inside, there are signs of just the right sort of Washington insurgency: Petraeus has not attempted the kind of brash, frontal, and unapologetic return former Rep. Anthony Weiner is trying in New York. Instead, he's barely visible, working with the ubiquitous Beltway fixer Bob Barnett, though he has no book project or paid speaking tour in the works. He has been quietly, formally welcomed back to the town's high society, arriving as the guest of honor one recent evening at the home of Atlantic publisher David Bradley with such eminences as Walter Isaacson, Andrea Mitchell, and Alan Greenspan; at the dinner, a person familiar with the conversation said, the sex scandal was mentioned only obliquely. Crucially, his wife Holly — who was present at the Bradley dinner — appears to be on board for his rehabilitation.

"The rollout is devised like the invasion of Iraq," said one person who spoke recently to Petraeus.

Petraeus is, of course, hardly the only person for whom Bradley, a leading Washington host, has thrown a dinner party, and an aide to Bradley, Linda Douglass, downplayed the party.

"David did have a private dinner party for the Petraeuses, but it was not characterized as a 'welcome back' dinner," she said in an email. "It was just a dinner with some of his friends. They have known each other for several years."

But people around Petraeus say he's been thinking hard about how to manage his comeback, his image, and his new role outside the national security apparatus in which he's been a key player for a decade, and in which he's spent his entire adult life. Petraeus has always been famous both for his intelligence and for his ability to manage the press, and he has signaled that he has thought hard about his predicament.

"Needless to say, I join you keenly aware that I am regarded in a different light now than I was a year ago," he said in a speech at the University of Southern California last month, where he apologized to those he'd hurt with his affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.

And while this sort of comeback is hardly his most complex campaign, his very reputation for dexterity does have one particular pitfall: lingering doubts about his motives. When Petraeus met with Kaj Larsen, a former Navy Seal and advocate for returning veterans, an hour before the USC speech, Larsen had his suspicions. He was aware that Petraeus has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, and he worried about being used in some sort of choreographed political comeback.

"I'd never met him and I was skeptical because of the scandal and because of the way in which he resigned — I just didn't know what his purpose was, I had no idea what his agenda was," said Larsen, whose organization, The Mission Continues, provides fellowships for veterans to do public service.

But after a conversation, and after a "hellacious" dash down the beach in Venice at 6:00 the next morning — Petraeus, 60, insisted on engaging in a pull-up contest against the much younger former Seal — Larsen was persuaded.

"He's a strategic guy, and he's a smart guy, and he's certainly trying to rehabilitate his public image — but I didn't get the sense of being used," he said. "I got the sense he would give his name to veterans' causes whether or not there was a scandal."

Indeed, instead of a cynical pol, Larsen he said, he saw in Petraeus a more familiar figure.

"He's a little lonely and trying to figure it out like other returning veterans," he said. "I met with him and it just dawned on me that he's looking for a new mission and a new sense of purpose, and he went back to something that he was comfortable with."

Petraeus has also begun to work with Team Rubicon, which aims to engage veterans in responding to natural disasters.

"He said when he first walked in, 'I'm excited to get to know what I've been told is the best veteran blue-collar organization out there,' and we don't mind being called blue collar and certainly appreciate that," said Jake Wood, the group's president. "There's no doubt that veterans hold a special place in his heart; I have no doubt regardless of what manner he left public service, he would have elected to serve veterans."

And Petraeus is carefully raising his profile in other ways. He has told associates he'll be going to London this summer to receive the prestigious Chesney Gold Medal from London's Royal United Services, a presentation that was postponed last fall amid the scandal. He accepted a visiting professorship at the City University of New York.

But he is also dealing with the lingering investigation into whether he inappropriately shared secret documents with Broadwell; FBI agents reportedly visited his home earlier this month.

The question now is where Petraeus' comeback will stop. Does he aim merely to be readmitted to polite society and to the top tier of America's political and media elite? Or does the former general, relatively young and extremely hale, see for himself a career in public life? Atop a university or think tank or defense company?

Petraeus has not been giving interviews, and Barnett didn't respond to a request to speak to his client. (Slate's Fred Kaplan first reported on Barnett's role as the retired general's "consigliere.") But one close friend told BuzzFeed he expects the former general to keep his public focus on veterans and education and to offer military advice behind the scenes.

"You will not see him write a tell-all book, and he's very respectful of the people who are serving above or below, whether in uniform or elected office," the friend said. "I can imagine them calling on his advice as a subject-matter expert in certain areas, but I doubt we would hear anything of those from him. It's just not his style."

Jason Collins and now-Rep. Joe Kennedy III were roommates at Stanford.

Jason Collins and Rep. Joe Kennedy

Via: facebook.com

WASHINGTON — With Monday's announcement by the NBA's Jason Collins that he is gay, the sports world exploded. On the sidelines was the important part that politics — or at least one politician — played in the decision.

From his piece in Sports Illustrated:

I realized I needed to go public when Joe Kennedy, my old roommate at Stanford and now a Massachusetts congressman, told me he had just marched in Boston's 2012 Gay Pride Parade. I'm seldom jealous of others, but hearing what Joe had done filled me with envy. I was proud of him for participating but angry that as a closeted gay man I couldn't even cheer my straight friend on as a spectator. If I'd been questioned, I would have concocted half truths. What a shame to have to lie at a celebration of pride. I want to do the right thing and not hide anymore. I want to march for tolerance, acceptance and understanding. I want to take a stand and say, "Me, too."

The recent Boston Marathon bombing reinforced the notion that I shouldn't wait for the circumstances of my coming out to be perfect. Things can change in an instant, so why not live truthfully? When I told Joe a few weeks ago that I was gay, he was grateful that I trusted him. He asked me to join him in 2013. We'll be marching on June 8.

Following Monday's report, Kennedy said in a statement, "For as long as I've known Jason Collins he has been defined by three things: his passion for the sport he loves, his unwavering integrity, and the biggest heart you will ever find. Without question or hesitation, he gives everything he's got to those of us lucky enough to be in his life. I'm proud to stand with him today and proud to call him a friend."

And, he tweeted:

Barry Diller, the chairman of Newsweek parent company IAC, told Bloomberg News Monday he didn't have “great expectations for Newsweek ” and that he wishes he had not decided to buy the struggling newsweekly that recently cut its print edition.

Jason Collins, a 34-year-old center who has been in the NBA for 12 years, came out as gay in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated. Democratic members of Congress were quick to send Collins messages of support calling him “brave” and “courageous.”

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Planned changes to student financial aid forms will mean income from both parents in a same-sex couple will be counted in deciding students' family contribution for college. The change could mean less student aid for some children of same-sex couples.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

Via: CBS News, Chris Usher / AP

WASHINGTON — The federal government plans to start counting income from both parents in a same-sex couple when making federal student aid decisions beginning in 2014, the Department of Education announced Monday, a change that could result in students of same-sex couples receiving less federal aid.

"All students should be able to apply for federal student aid in a way that considers their unique family dynamics. These changes will allow us to calculate aid eligibility based on what a student's whole family is able to contribute and ensures our limited taxpayer resources are better targeted toward those students and families who have the most need. And, very importantly, these changes allow us to provide an inclusive form that reflects the great diversity of American families," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a conference call with reporters Monday afternoon.

Duncan also noted the catch: "For the vast majority of applicants, these changes will actually have no impact. It's important to note, though, that collecting information from both parents and considering the income of the whole family also might result in less need-based federal student aid for those applicants who are affected because of the recognition of the complete financial resources of the family."

The change could mean less aid for the children of same-sex couples, as well as the children of opposite-sex couples who are not married, Duncan said.

The planned changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid will include adding an option to describe parents' marital status as "unmarried and both parents living together." It also will include using "terms like 'Parent 1 (father/mother/stepparent)' and 'Parent 2 (father/mother/stepparent)' instead of gender-specific terms like 'mother' and 'father.'"

The department is slated to publish the changes this week in the Federal Register for public comment.

The decision to count information from "a dependent student's legal parents regardless of the parents' marital status or gender, if those parents live together" does not conflict with the Defense of Marriage Act's prohibition on recognition of same-sex couples' marriages, the department states because the law in question, the Higher Education Act, refers to "parent," not "spouse," in the relevant portions of the law.

The planned FAFSA change comes even as benefits of federal recognition of same-sex couples' relationships in other areas of federal law remain barred by DOMA's federal definition of marriage. The constitutionality of that definition, found in Section 3 of DOMA, is pending before the Supreme Court now.

Duncan said cost-savings were not the aim of the changes, saying, "We don't know whether it will cost more or cost less. We just think it is more accurate, it is more inclusive, it is more fair."

Asked why the change was made even as same-sex couples are limited from benefits in other areas of the law by DOMA, Duncan told BuzzFeed, "We just want to have the most accurate picture possible of students' family situation and the most accurate picture possible of parents' ability to contribute to their child's education."

In a news release announcing the changes to the FAFSA, the department states:

The FAFSA has long been constructed to collect information about a student's parents only if the parents are married. As a result, the FAFSA has excluded income and other information from one of the student's legal parents (biological or adoptive) when the parents are unmarried, even if those parents are living together. Gender-specific terms also fail to capture income and other information from one parent when a student's parents are in a same-sex marriage under state law but not federally recognized under the Defense of Marriage Act.

The reason for the change, according to the department is because "[c]ollecting parental information from both of a dependent student's legal parents will result in fair treatment of all families by eliminating longstanding inequities based on parents' relationship with each other rather than on their relationship with their child."

Regarding the news, Human Rights Campaign spokesman Michael Cole-Schwartz told BuzzFeed Monday afternoon, "There is no reason to treat families headed by same-sex couples any differently than those headed by opposite sex couples and this is a positive step toward putting all families on a level playing field."

The Family Equality Council's director of public policy, Emily Hecht-McGowan, told BuzzFeed, "Federal forms that are inclusive of all families are important tools to help LGBT parents ensure their children receive the legal and financial protections they need and the opportunities in life that they deserve."

She added that the Department of Education worked with the Family Equality Council and others — including the Center for American Progress, the Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals and the National Center for Transgender Equality — on the planned changes.

[UPDATE: This post was updated to include comments made by Education Sec. Arne Duncan in a call with reporters. 4/29/13.]

Some Democrats say the White House should draw the line after fixing flight delays. White House keeps its options open.

Via: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

WASHINGTON — The White House is leaving the door open to using a piecemeal approach to dealing with potentially disruptive across-the-board cuts in spending despite demands from some Democrats that the president renounce the strategy.

Obama's embrace of a GOP-backed fix to FAA spending may have put an end to flight disruptions across the country, but Democrats insist it's no way to fight their war with Republicans over the sequester. But for now, the White House isn't willing to take future narrow fixes off the table.

While repeatedly saying patching up sequestration cuts with specific legislation was not the way President Obama would like to see the sequester permanently dealt with, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney wouldn't rule out a presidential signature on new laws like the one that eliminated cuts to air traffic controllers.

"You're asking me to speculate on bills that don't even exist," Carney said in response to a question from BuzzFeed. "I think that we've made clear that this is not the right way to go about it. It doesn't solve the overall problem."

There are signs that more piecemeal legislation dealing with sequestration cuts could be on the way. Groups like the American Cancer Society are urging Congress to fix the cuts to the federal funds they care about. Rep. Renee Ellmers, a conservative Republican from North Carolina, has introduced a bill that would do as the ACS asks.

Meanwhile, Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, is calling on his party to stop voting for bills that fix painful sequestration cuts. He warns that if Democrats keep fixing parts of the sequester, they'll run out of leverage to force Republicans to the bargaining table to hash out a permanent fix. Democrats and the White House would like to restore the sequestration cuts with a mixture of revenue increases and spending cuts. Republicans are opposed to raising revenue.

"We have certainly made it more difficult to stand firm going forward," Van Hollen told the Washington Post Monday, referring to the FAA fix. "But we're going to have to reclaim some lost ground here. We cannot have a situation where people just cherry-pick the sequester."

A large number of Democrats voted for the FAA fix in both houses of Congress last week, sending the bill to the president's desk with a veto-proof majority. On Capitol HIll, some Democrats grumbled that White House signals that Obama would sign the fix made it harder for them to rally Democrats to oppose it. The White House pointed to the majorities as an indication Democrats didn't want to oppose it.

Republicans viewed the FAA fix as a signal the White House and Democrats are caving on sequestration by agreeing to specific remedies for specific problems while leaving most of the cuts in place. Some critics said the focus on flight delays showed air travelers were a higher priority than the poor or other less advantaged people facing sequestration cuts.

"I think it's fair to say that about Congress," Carney said when asked about the criticism. "We do not have, independently, the power to eliminate the sequester either in piece meal fashion or in its entirety."

At the briefing Carney didn't say exactly what the White House will do if more fixes come its way — but he didn't draw a line opposing them either.

Well played, Mitch.

Source: @Team_Mitch

Obama's joke...

Without the science that helped the North win the civil war, “certainly I would not be here,” Obama jokes. From the president's address to to the National Academy of Sciences Monday celebrating the group's 150th anniversary.

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Since I did not do well enough in chemistry or physics to impress you much on those topics, let me instead tell a story.

One hundred and fifty years ago, the nation, as all of you know, was in the midst of the Civil War, and the Union had recently suffered a devastating defeat at Fredericksburg. The road ahead seemed long and uncertain. Confederate advances in weapons technology cast a dark shadow on the Union.

The previous spring, in the waters outside of Hampton Roads, the ironclad Confederate battleship Virginia had sunk two wooden Union ships and advanced on a third, and this endangered the Union blockade of Virginia and threatening Union forces along the Potomac River. And then, overnight, the USS Monitor, an ironclad herself, arrived and fought the Virginia to a draw in the world's first battle between iron-sided ships.

There was no victor, but the era of ironclad warfare had begun. And it brought unexpected challenges for President Lincoln and his Navy as they expanded this fleet in early 1863, because aboard their new iron-side battleships, sailors found that the iron siding made the ships' compasses unpredictable, so it skewed navigation, and they were bumping into things and going the wrong way. (laughter) So the basic physics of magnetism undermined the usefulness of the ironclad vessels, even as the Confederates were stocking up on them.

And that's where your predecessors came in. Because in March of 1983 —1863, rather — President Lincoln and Congress established the National Academy of Sciences as an independent and nonprofit institution charged with the mission to provide the government with the scientific advice that it needed. And this was advice that was particularly useful in the thick of battle.

The National Academy soon counted the nation's top scientists as members. They quickly got to work. By the next year, they were inspecting the Union's ironclads and installing an array of bar magnets around the compasses to correct their navigation. So right off the bat, you guys were really useful. (laughter) In fact, it's fair to say we might not be here had you not — (laughter) — certainly I would not be here. (laughter and applause)

Support for NBA's first openly gay active player from a White House that's championed LGBT rights. Update: Obama called Collins Monday.

Source: images.newscred.com

WASHINGTON — The White House gave words of encouragement Monday to Jason Collins after he came out in a Sports Illustrated essay.

"I can certainly tell you that here at the White House we view that as another example of the progress that has been made and the evolution that has been taking place in this country, and commend him for his courage, and support him in his -- in this effort and hope that his fans and his team support him going forward," Jay Carney, White House press secretary, said during the daily briefing Monday afternoon.

Update: A White House aide confirmed to BuzzFeed that Obama called Collins "to express his support." The president "was impressed by his courage," the aide said.

Michelle Obama tweeted support for Collins Monday. Her official @FLOTUS twitter handle tweeted out support for Collins with the signature "-mo" indicating that the tweet was from Obama.

Elizabeth Colbert Busch seeks to distance herself from national Democrats “It’s cutting into Medicare benefits and it’s having companies lay off their employees because they are worried about the cost of it,” she said at a debate.

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Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch sought to distance herself from the national party, calling Obamacare "extremely problematic."

Colbert Busch, who is running in a special election against former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford for South Carolina's 1st congressional district, noted while there are some good parts of the health care law, she was troubled by it's cost and the burden it could put on employers.

"Obamacare is extremely problematic, it is expensive, it is a $500 billion cost than we originally anticipated, it's cutting into Medicare benefits and it's having companies lay off their employees because they are worried about the cost of it. That is extremely problematic, it needs an enormous fix," she said during a debate Monday night.

It's no surprise Colbert Busch would be critical of the law: the 1st district was until recently represented by conservative Sen. Tim Scott and was won overwhelmingly by Mitt Romney in November.

During the debate, Sanford repeatedly tried to tie Colbert Busch to Congressional Democrats and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

"The Washington fundraiser that was done for you was hosted by 37 members of the Congress," he said. "Every single one of them supported and voted for Obamacare."

But it's Sanford's own baggage, from his time as Governor when he disappeared to Argentina for an extra-marital affair, that give Democrats hope they'll be able to take the seat.

When Sanford's ex-wife accused him of trespassing at her house, the National Republican Campaign Committee announced they would no longer spend money on the race.

In 2007, Republicans waged culture war on undocumented immigrants — and they've been paying for it at the ballot box ever since. Back in the bunker.

Minutemen demonstrate in Los Angeles in May 2007.

For the Republicans in Washington who hoped a new bipartisan push for immigration reform would give their party a fresh start, a new face, and a second chance with Latino voters, 2013 is instead reviving some of their worst memories.

The legislation currently winding through the Senate with the help of party superstar Sen. Marco Rubio is still very much in play, and could well become the first law in a generation to address the country's immigration morass. But as conservative criticism of the reform effort grows louder, many Republican operatives, donors, and consultants are bracing for an outcome that would be even worse, politically, than the demise of the bill: a fierce, national, right-wing backlash that drowns out the GOP's friendlier voices, dominates Telemundo and Univision, and dashes any hopes the party had of making inroads to the Hispanic electorate by 2016.

"We are really balanced here on a little precipice, and if this, pardon the pun, goes south, we could be in very serious trouble," said Republican media strategist Paul Wilson, citing the increasingly intense attacks on the immigration bill coming from the right. "If [the legislation] stalls or is killed off by conservatives, we could take the Hispanic community and turn them into the African-American community, where we get 4% on a good day... We could be a lost party for generations."

Establishment Republicans don't have to reach too far back in recent history to find precedent for this political nightmare scenario: It would look a lot like the last time Congress pursued comprehensive immigration legislation.

In 2007, the conservative war on immigration reform — an issue that had, until not long before, been relegated to the second tier of American politics — was being waged on two fronts.

In Washington, George W. Bush's administration was working feverishly alongside Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to get what was then known as comprehensive immigration reform through the Senate. While objections to the plan to offer undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship came from both sides of the aisle, it was the conservative gadflies like Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo — who called for an indefinite moratorium on all immigration to the U.S. and championing a Constitutional amendment to make English the national language — who got most of the attention.

And as the battle on Capitol Hill wore on, the mood among reform advocates grew grim. Grover Norquist, a conservative leader and longtime immigration advocate, recalled attending strategy meetings with Barry Jackson, then a senior Bush advisor, where attendees tried to keep spirits up by means of delusion.

"It was like Hitler's bunker, where you know you're losing but you're still like, 'Here's our counterattack!'" Norquist told BuzzFeed. "We tried to pretend like we could still win, but we knew it wasn't going to happen."

The impending defeat was all the more frustrating for Norquist and his Republican allies because they could see how the battle was hurting their party's image among Latinos. Norquist blamed Democrats for deliberately sinking the immigration effort in 2007 and said the GOP got unfairly saddled with the blame — but he allowed that conservatives in his party didn't help their case.

"Tancredo was out there screaming every day, and if you were watching Univision, it would say the Republicans appear to be killing the bill," he said. "That remains the danger this time."

Meanwhile, in city council meetings, town halls, and border towns across the country, the grassroots fight over immigration was reaching a fever pitch.

A group of self-appointed border guardians who called themselves the Minutemen had evolved from a strange object of curiosity in the mainstream media to a symbol of the right's perceived anti-immigrant fervor. B-roll of shotgun-wielding militia men camped out in the southern desert was played on a constant loop on Spanish-language networks. In August 2007, a group of San Diego Minutemen drew national attention when they posted to YouTube a video shot from the perspective of a night-vision gun scope that depicted an illegal border-crosser being murdered. The men who made the video eventually said it was staged and that it was intended as a protest against Bush's "Amnesty Bill."

Elsewhere, local politicians tried to take advantage of the new wedge issue by passing hard-line ordinances. In Farmer's Branch, Texas, for example, the city council passed a measure that made it illegal for landlords to rent to undocumented immigrants. When residents petitioned to put the measure to a vote, it became the subject of a heated special election in the summer of 2007, with the two sides occasionally clashing physically as they canvassed the same working-class neighborhoods. In the final days of the campaign, the mayor, who opposed the measure, got a brick thrown through his window, and federal authorities reportedly advised him to leave town.

In Hazleton, Pennsylvania, Mayor Lou Barletta helped pass the controversial Illegal Immigration Relief Act, which penalized employers for hiring undocumented immigrants and cracked down on landlords renting to them. The city council also passed an act to make English the official language of Hazleton.

"Enough was enough," Barletta, now a congressman, said recently as he recalled the period. "I realized that illegal aliens were getting more rights than you as a United States citizen could have. And I began my crusade. If a small town like Hazleton could be affected, there were others around the country."

The conservative backlash provoked a new militancy among immigrants as well: Advocates for the undocumented began holding massive counterprotests in Los Angeles, Dallas, and other cities with large Latino populations.

But the conservative campaign to kill the immigration bill in Washington ultimately succeeded — at a high electoral cost. Whereas exit polls in 2004 showed Bush receiving upwards of 40% of the Latino vote, that figure plummeted to about 31% for John McCain in 2008, and 27% for Mitt Romney last year. The reasons for the Hispanic exodus are complex and varied, but few Republican strategists these days will argue with the notion that the 2007 culture war on immigration reform stained the party's brand.

Six years later, as a new bipartisan immigration bill makes its way through the Senate, anxious Republicans are worried that the cycle is beginning to repeat itself.

"Go to sites like RedState or Breitbart and search headlines about immigration and Rubio, and then look at the comments. Some of them are really, really nasty," said one prominent Republican strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity. "That's the thing that I worry about a little bit. That kind of tells me that the harsh xenophobic thing from 2007 could be coming back."

The strategist added that a large-scale conservative campaign against immigration reform would be particularly disastrous if the bill actually passes, creating millions of new Latino voters over the next decade who would be tasked with choosing between the party whose president signed the reform measure and the party whose members fought to keep them out.

And there are signs that the immigration hard-liners are waking up. Rubio has been fending off increasingly sharp attacks by the conservative media, and many Republicans in Congress are becoming more vocal in their skepticism of the bill.

"We've held our powder dry and have decided to come forward now because ... we are concerned about having this wash over us and not having the opportunity to have constitutional conservatives in this country and in this congress have their voice heard," Rep. Steve King told reporters earlier this month. "We don't have a moral obligation to legalize people who are here illegally."

But there is also evidence that the political climate has fundamentally changed since 2007. Conservative religious organizations are actively lobbying in favor of immigration reform this time around. Key conservative opinion-makers like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly have transformed themselves into immigration advocates. And, perhaps most strikingly, those on the right who tried this month to tie the Boston Marathon bombings to immigration policy have been relatively muted.

"If this were 2007, you can imagine how the talk radio people might have reacted," said Norquist. "They might have gone, 'These people are bad, and they're squirrely looking, and they're immigrants!'"

Norquist, one of his party's most successful organizers of the last 20 years, said he recently hosted a meeting with conservative immigration hard-liners who believed "they could put the old band back together" and revive the culture war of 2007. Rather than lecture them on how their crusade would adversely impact the GOP, he presented polling data to show just how fruitless their efforts would be.

"Guys, the world has moved from beneath you," Norquist said he told them. "If you guys think you can just jump out and yell 'amnesty!' like a magician saying a magic word and everyone freezes, it's just not true anymore. Everyone just looks at you and says, 'What are you talking about?'"

Kate Nocera contributed to this report from Washington.

Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch brought up former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's extra-marital affair during a debate. Sanford says he couldn't hear her.

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When Elizabeth Colbert Busch criticized former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford for his well-publicized extra-marital affair, he wasn't hearing it.

Literally.

"When we talk about fiscal spending and we talk about protecting taxpayers it doesn't mean you take that money we saved and leave the country for personal purpose," Colbert Busch said during the first and only debate for the special election in South Carolina's 1st congressional district.

Sanford, of course, famously disappeared for six days when he was governor, with his staff claiming he was walking the Appalachian Trail. It was later revealed that he had traveled to Argentina to visit his lover.

In response, Sanford awkwardly pretended to not hear Colbert Busch.

"She went there Governor Sanford," the moderator said.

"I couldn't hear what she said, repeat it I'm sorry," he said, and then pivoted to talking about the sequester.

After a tense standoff with his former allies on Monday, Omar Hammami is tweeting again. A fatwa may have saved him.

Via: Farah Abdi Warsameh, File / AP

WASHINGTON — Omar Hammami, the Alabama-born jihadi in Somalia who achieved Internet fame through his raps, appears to be safe for now after a series of increasingly desperate tweets yesterday about his standoff with Somali militants.

Hammami, also known as Abu Mansour al-Amriki, began tweeting at @abumamerican around the time of his falling-out with al-Shabaab, the militant group he moved to Somalia to join. His tweets on Monday were a string of dispatches from an increasingly tense standoff with al-Shabaab fighters, with whom he has fallen out. "I think he's in a lot of trouble, although the fact he's managed to stay alive this long is already surprising," said J.M. Berger, a terrorism expert who is one of Hammami's most frequent interlocutors on Twitter, on Monday afternoon.

His last tweet on Monday suggested he might be close to death: "May not find another chance to tweet but just remember what we said and what we stood for. God kept me alive to deliver the mssg 2 the umah."

On Tuesday, Hammami showed signs of life, tweeting that "Abu mansuur, afghani, hasan thahir uweys, &others passed a fatwa on http://aljahd.com that fighting us is haram &that we arent bughat." Berger translated on his own Twitter the meaning of the fatwa: "Shabab sheikhs Robow and Aways co-signed a fatwa related to Godane's 'attempted assassination' of Omar Hammami and other foreign fighters. I'll wait for a real translation for nuance, but the broad takeaway from the fatwa is: 'Do not obey the prince in disobedience to God.'" Godane, or Moktar Ali Zubeyr, is the leader of al-Shabaab. The fatwa was posted on the Jahad jihadist online forum. The fatwa "theoretically bodes well for Omar and his allies," Berger tweeted.

Despite being a terrorist with a $5 million bounty on his head, Hammami has become rather popular among the national security and counterterrorism Twitter crowd in DC. His regular tweeting provides a window into his unusual life, and he regularly interacts with his followers, who have varying degrees of sympathy for him.

"For about six months, Hammami has engaged in a public colloquy with American counterterrorism professionals, on subjects both highbrow (the meaning of jihad), lowbrow (barbecue tastes) and personal (the wisdom of Hammami remaining in Somalia while Shebab hunts him)," Wired's Spencer Ackerman wrote on Monday. "Those counterterrorism analysts have grown to like him, in spite of themselves, and feared that Hammami would not listen to their entreaties to turn himself in to U.S. authorities so he can live. Their worst fears might be about to come true."

"I have conflicted feelings about Omar," Ackerman told BuzzFeed. "I hope he doesn't die, and has the sense to turn himself in, rather than go out in a blaze of what he would probably consider glory. At the same time, he hasn't left himself many outs and he's a committed jihadi who claims to have killed people, hence my conflicted feelings."

"I have always felt sorry for Omar and his family that he's gotten mixed up in this stuff," said Will McCants, a former State Department counterterrorism official. "But I have less sympathy for him now than before he went on Twitter. He publicly told me that he has no problem killing American civilians. He's now learning the hard way that a lot of those who fight in the name of God are murderous thugs who wear the mantel of religion to cover their mundane ambitions."

"It's not just [counter-terrorism] people at this point, he's actually attracting a lot of sympathetic comments from around the Twittersphere," Berger said. "It's kind of amazing to watch. Outside of the natsec crowd, it's running probably about two to one, or three to two, for hate tweets versus "good luck" and "stay safe" tweets."

Berger emailed later on Monday night to note that the ratio had changed; "The Omar cheering section seems to have run out of steam, but the Omar bashers are still going strong." He declined to discuss his own feelings about what may happen to Hammami.

Meanwhile, Hammami is not yet out of the woods.

He tweeted on Tuesday: "They have started harrassing our wives. Army from gedo refused 2 come. Theysaid they will kill me even if they lose 100 despite defections."

Both he and Hillary Clinton have memoirs set for release next year. A “full and frank look” at the New York governor's “public and private life,” says HarperCollins.

Via: Mike Groll, File / AP

Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York and a possible Democratic candidate for president in 2016, is writing a book that will offer a "full and frank look at his public and private life," his publisher, HarperCollins, announced Tuesday morning.

Cuomo, thought to be an all but certain presidential candidate if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decides not to run herself, has recently brushed off speculation about his White House ambitions. He told an Albany public radio program that he was focused on his work in the State House and nothing else: "Hillary is going to do whatever Hillary Clinton is going to do, and I'm doing what I'm doing," he said.

But the new book deal is certainly a signal that the New York governor is looking to raise his national profile.

The memoir is set for release next year, when a new book by Clinton is also scheduled for publication. Bob Barnett, the D.C. superlawyer who represents the biggest names in politics — including Clinton — was named by the publisher as Cuomo's agent.

HarperCollins said the book will focus on Cuomo's childhood in Queens; on his relationship with his father, Mario Cuomo, who also served as governor of New York; and on his record of "fighting for justice and championing government reform" during his years as New York's Attorney General and as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton. Cuomo also plans to highlight the victories of his first term as governor, including his work in passing legislation for same-sex marriage and, more recently, a new gun control bill.

What may be of more interest to readers is Cuomo's relationship with live-in girlfriend Sandra Lee, a Food Network host, and his public split from Kerry Kennedy, who was not mentioned in the HarperCollins release.

"He will reveal the story of his history and will share personal and private moments that shaped his life: his father's legacy, his personal trials and tribulations, and his role as a father to his three girls, twins Mariah and Cara and his youngest Michaela," the Harper Collins release reads.

The publishing house, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, also has a standing contract for a Cuomo biography by Fred Dicker, a reporter for The New York Post, another News Corp property. A New York Times article said Tuesday that HarperCollins "is backing away from plans" to publish the biography by Dicker, whose relationship with Cuomo has reportedly worsened since the governor agreed to cooperate with the biographer in 2012.

But Tina Andreadis, a spokeswoman for HarperCollins, told BuzzFeed that Cuomo's memoir would not affect the Post reporter's standing project. "The book is still under contract," she said of Dicker's biography. "No publication date yet."

This post has been updated with information about Fred Dicker's Cuomo biography.

You too can some day be vice president!

"You know, I'm embarrassed. Do you know the Web site number? I should have it in front of me and I don't."

Via: ranker.com

“If you want to keep people away during an earthquake, buy some shotgun shells.”

Via: theblaze.com

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The president won't specify which options are actually on the table after evidence of chemical weapons by Assad's regime. “I've got to make sure I have the facts.”

Via: Jacquelyn Martin / AP

WASHINGTON — President Obama said on Tuesday that the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad's regime is still a "game changer" but refused to say whether or not the latest evidence of chemical weapons might mean U.S. military action.

"There are a whole host of steps that we've been taking precisely because even separate from the chemical weapons issue, what's happening in Syria is a blemish on the international community generally," Obama told reporters at a press conference in the White House briefing room.

"What I've also said is that the use of chemical weapons would be a game changer," Obama said. "That wasn't a position unique to the United States, and it shouldn't have been a surprise."

Obama said that there was evidence of the use of chemical weapons, but "we don't know how they were used, when they were used, who used them — we don't have a chain of custody that establishes exactly what happened."

"When I am making decisions about America's national security and the potential for taking additional action, I've got to make sure I have the facts," Obama said. "It's important for us to do this in a prudent way."

"What I've said to my team is we've got to do everything we can to establish with some certainy what has happened in Syria," Obama said.

When asked specifically what he meant by "game changer," Obama said, "I mean that we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us." He said he had asked the Pentagon and the intelligence community to prepare options for him "as early as last year."

"I won't go into detail about what those options might be," Obama said.

“They’re worried about their politics. It’s tough. Their base thinks compromise with me is somehow a betrayal. They’re worried about primaries,” Obama says of Republicans.

Via: Larry Downing / Reuters

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama Tuesday hammered congressional Republicans, accusing them of putting politics ahead of "common sense" solutions on mandatory spending cuts in an effort to shift blame fully onto Congress.

"I cannot force Republicans to embrace those common-sense solutions. I can urge them to, I can put pressure on them, I can rally the American people around those common-sense solutions, but ultimately they themselves" will have to do it, Obama said during a press conference marking the first 100 days of his second term.

"They're worried about their politics. It's tough. Their base thinks compromise with me is somehow a betrayal. They're worried about primaries," he said.

Pointing to Republican campaign rhetoric, Obama argued that initially the GOP appeared concerned about the effects of the cuts, known as the sequester.

But once the White House made clear they would only agree to changing the cuts if it included "closing some loopholes" in the tax code, "Suddenly, [Republicans said,] 'Well, you know what, we'll take the sequester.'"

Asked what he was doing to fix the sequester, Obama bristled. "You seem to suggest that it's my job to get these folks over there to behave. That's their job. Members of Congress are elected in order to do what's right for their constituents and the American people."

Obama also seemed to reject a piecemeal approach to addressing the cuts. "The only way we're going to lift it is if we do a bigger deal that meets the test of lowering our deficit and growing our economy at the same time," Obama said.

Still, he defended his decision to not veto a narrow fix to FAA spending that Congress passed last week to avoid massive flight delays, arguing to do so "just means that there'd be pain now, which they'd try to blame on me."

However, Obama said he remains hopeful some sort of compromise can be found with Congress, particularly on immigration.

"Right now things are pretty dysfunctional up on Capitol Hill. Despite that, I am confident there are a range of things we can get done," Obama said, predicting bipartisan immigration talks will "result in a bill that passes the Senate, passes the House, and gets on my desk."

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“America should be proud.”

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"I had a chance to talk to him yesterday. He seems like a terrific young man and I told him I couldn't be prouder of him. ... I think it's a great thing. And I think America should be proud that this is just one more step in this ongoing recognition that we treat everybody fairly. And everybody's part of a family, and we judge people on the basis of their character and their performance, and not their sexual orientation. And so I'm very proud of him."