Karoli Kuns — John McCain: Rand Paul Is 'Now Working For Putin'

Whatever became of the famous "collegiality" of the US Senate?

Crooks and Liars
John McCain: Rand Paul Is 'Now Working For Putin'

Karoli Kuns

Also

The Daily Caller
McCain: Rand Paul ‘Is Now Working For Vladimir Putin’
Alex Pfeiffer 

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity — US Media Ignores CIA Cover-up on Torture

A group of U.S. intelligence veterans chastises the mainstream U.S. media for virtually ignoring a British newspaper’s account of the gripping inside story on how the CIA tried to block the U.S. Senate’s torture investigation.…

The late William Colby, CIA director from 1973 to 1976, has been quoted as saying: “The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” Whether or not Colby was quoted correctly, the experience of the past several decades suggests it is largely true. Better sourced is a quote from William Casey, CIA director from 1981 to 1987: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”…

Does American democracy deserve any less than an intense investigation of the CIA’s obstruction of the democratic process in the 2000s?

What "democracy" would that be?

Consortium News
US Media Ignores CIA Cover-up on Torture

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Richard Kogan And Cecile Murray — Senate Proposal for Balanced Budget Amendment Would Require Extreme Budget Cuts

… the proposed amendment — introduced by Senate President Pro Tem Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and cosponsored by every Republican senator — would enshrine in the Constitution a severe cap on total federal spending set at 18 percent of gross domestic product in the prior completed calendar year.

This cap would compel policymakers to cut all programs by an average of more than one-fourth when it takes effect — we are assuming 2023. The total amount of cuts required would amount to $8 trillion over the next decade; starting in 2023, the cuts would be about half a trillion dollars a year deeper than those that would be made under the severe budget plan the House Budget Committee’s Republican majority passed earlier this year.

Latest from the loony bin. GOP Senators explore la-la land, doubling down on GOP House.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Senate Proposal for Balanced Budget Amendment Would Require Extreme Budget Cuts
Richard Kogan And Cecile Murray

Reuters — Senate Republicans vow to preemptively block any Supreme Court nominee from Obama

Chairman Chuck Grassley and the rest of the committee’s Republicans sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying they will not hold hearings on a nominee to replace conservative Justice Antonin Scalia until the next president takes office in January. Scalia died on Feb. 13.

McConnell afterward said the Republican-led Senate, which must confirm any nominee, will refuse to consider any Obama selection to replace Scalia. McConnell said he was not inclined even to meet with whomever Obama picks.…

Raw Story
Senate Republicans vow to preemptively block any Supreme Court nominee from Obama
Reuters

The GOP powers that be have handed President Obama and the Democrats an opportunity to turn this on them politically. It's a move to harden the base, but the Democrats will use it to nudge the center toward them.

Unfortunately, the courts have become hopelessly politicized and the Constitution should be amended to reflect this by limited terms for judges and justices who should stand periodically in elections like other political officials.

See also

McConnell's desire to preempt any Obama nominee is motivated by the fear that, when confronted by a nominee, his GOP colleagues will confront a Catch-22 in which, regardless of what they say or do, the GOP's prospects for maintaining control of the Senate in 2017 will be worsened.

VOX
The game theory behind Mitch McConnell's Supreme Court strategy
John Patty and Tom Clark

Robert Paul Wolff — Fascinating Trivium [about Elizabeth Warren's senate seat]

The U. S. Senate seat now held by Elizabeth Warren is, of course, Ted Kennedy's old seat. But did you know that that seat was previously held by John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Chales Sumner, Henry Cabot Lodge, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., and John F. Kennedy, among others? That is a brief history of America right there.

Big chair to fill. Will Warren fill it?

The Philosopher's Stone

Fascinating Trivium

Robert Paul Wolff | Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Rob Crawford — The CIA, the President, and the Senate’s Torture Report

Powerful forces on both sides of the partisan divide want the torture issue to disappear altogether. Many military, security and political elites recognize that U.S. torture, approved at the highest levels of government, created an unsurpassed crisis of legitimacy for the country. Their foremost objective is to restore that legitimacy. 

Arguably, this is the principal reason why Obama issued his executive order rejecting torture in 2009 (I believe that McCain would have likely done the same). It is why the new president counseled amnesia about torture and why he refused to initiate criminal investigations or even a commission of inquiry. It is why he has fallen mostly silent about the issue of torture. The U.S. relies on an image that it conducts its wars humanely and in accordance with international law. Brutality and illegality belong to the enemy. 

Occasionally, however, the brutal and unlawful exercise of state violence becomes public knowledge. The inhumanity of violence “shocks the conscience.” Legitimacy crises follow. For the U.S., the Abu Ghraib photos were a disaster but the disaster kept growing with a cascade of revelations that included documentation of torture of prisoners in Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan and CIA kidnapping, renditions, and torture in secret prisons. The reverberations are still being felt 

In 2014, national security elites in both political parties, including those who disagree about the permissibility of “enhanced interrogation,” are worried that the Senate report will further aggravate the prolonged crisis of legitimacy caused by U.S. torture—a crisis made worse by the government’s refusal to undertake criminal proceedings and support civil suits, and partisan politics resulting in continuing indefinite detention at Guantanamo prison camp and military commission trials that admit torture as evidence. Most Americans are still unfamiliar with the grizzly details of what their government authorized and which high officials did the authorizing. Globally, especially in the Middle East, the report will likely reactivate multiple resentments; and it may reinforce dismay among allies.…

For the national security elite as a whole, the history of state violence is better left buried or forgotten and dissident voices about current inhumane operations ignored. Above all, the use of violence as an instrument of policy must remain unencumbered.
For these reasons, even though the CIA will be rebuked by liberal Democrats and perhaps some legislative reforms will be attempted, calls for accountability will continue to be opposed. For national security elites, the release of the Senate report summary will be treated as the end of the story—time to turn the page to narratives more consistent with the myth of American Exceptionalism.  

Counterpunch
The CIA, the President, and the Senate’s Torture Report
Rob Crawford | Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences University of Washington, Tacoma

emptywheel — Time To Raze The CIA And Start Over

Addressing Robert Grenier's attack on Diane Feinstein and Senate Democrats' criticism of the CIA.

Crooks and Liars
Time To Raze The CIA And Start Over
 emptywheel

Arturo Garcia — Report: Senate Democratic staff took secret CIA documents years before anyone noticed (via Raw Story )

Report: Senate Democratic staff took secret CIA documents years before anyone noticed (via Raw Story )

Democratic party staffers for the Senate Intelligence Committee obtained secret documents related to a damning report against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) three years before the agency noticed and demanded their return, McClatchy Newspapers…

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Brad DeLong — Senate Votes for Federal Reserve Chair

The title says it all.

But… But… But… I was told last summer that a big argument for Janet Yellen was that she was clearly so well-qualified that lots of Republicans would vote for cloture, and she would clear the 60-vote cloture threshold easily…

Also shows why Larry Summers might not have been confirmed, with some Democrats also voting against him along with most Republicans.

WCEG — The Equitablog
Senate Votes for Federal Reserve Chair: 83 Volcker, 84 Volcker Reppointment, 91 Greenspan, 100 Greenspan Reppointment, 91 Greenspan Third, 89 Greenspan Fourth, 100 Greenspan Fifth, 99 Bernanke, 77 Bernanke Reppointment, 59 Yellen
Brad DeLong

Brian Beutler — GOP will be dared to filibuster debt ceiling: Harry Reid makes his move

Today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made his move. He plans to introduce legislation to increase the debt limit, and dare Republicans to kill it with a filibuster.

But it won’t be a straightforward dollar increase or a time-limited borrowing authority extension. Reid will likely use a mechanism to allow the president to increase the debt limit on his own, subject to a veto-able resolution of disapproval by the Congress. In other words, the only way the debt limit won’t increase is if two-thirds of both the House and Senate feel it must be pulled back into the realm of legislative horsetrading — something that will never happen absent bipartisan agreement.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (of all people!) originally designed the scheme back in 2011, when Congress was desperately trying to escape its disastrous debt limit brinkmanship.

Democrats finally decide to play hardball.

Salon
GOP will be dared to filibuster debt ceiling: Harry Reid makes his move
Brian Beutler

Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking — Letter to US Senate

Dear Senators,

It is now up to you to restore the integrity of the Department of the Treasury.

As the Department’s web site states, Treasury’s job is to:

“Maintain a strong economy and create economic and job opportunities by promoting the conditions that enable growth and stability…protecting the integrity of the financial system, and manage the U.S. Government’s finances and resources effectively.”

President Obama’s nominee, Jacob Lew, does not measure up to the task.

Since the days of the Clinton Administration, the office of the Treasury Secretary has morphed into the custodian of Wall Street interests, allowing fraudulent banking practices to lead us into a recession, paying little or no heed to the concerns of Main Street about economic growth or jobs. Moreover, unlike the George W. Bush presidency where Enron executives were jailed — little has been done since the latest crisis to prosecute the people responsible for the widespread criminality and total disregard of ethics and values in finance.

The new Treasury Secretary should be an individual who looks out for the 99%, not a Timothy Geithner clone who would rather save financial players than enforce the law. We need someone who will focus on the productive economy and jobs. We need someone who will push back against Wall Street, not someone who will do their bidding.

Jacob Lew’s tenure at the original too-big-to-fail bank, Citigroup, has disqualified him. He received a $900,000 bonus from Citi in 2008, essentially paid out of the taxpayer bailout, just before he returned to government. At best this has the “appearance of impropriety”.

As HSBC’s “too big to jail’ settlement shows, the too-big-to-fail problem persists. We need a Treasury Secretary who will work to address this. Despite being near the heart of the storm, or perhaps because he was at Citigroup, Jack Lew shows no recognition that the current structure of the banking system is the heart of the problem. We must block his appointment.

Criminality and greed are embedded in the culture of the financial system and only major reform will get rid of it. Please join us in our efforts to reject Jacob Lew and ask President Obama to nominate someone who can truly live up to the mandate of the U.S. Treasury.

Sincerely,

Members of the OWS Alternative Banking Group

Marni Halasa


Josh Snodgrass


Hannah Appel


Linda Brown


Nicholas Levis


Cathy O’Neil


Anchard Scott


Yves Smith


Akshat Tewary

Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking

Kevin Drum — Tea Party Shoots Itself in Foot Again

Sen. Claire McCaskill just got lucky.

...the winner of the Republican primary was the wingnuttiest of the three wingnuts in the race.

Karl Rove cannot be happy.

Read it at Mother Jones
Tea Party Shoots Itself in Foot Again
Kevin Drum