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Marco Rubio claims he doesn't like or want to be racially profiling anyone, but he might be willing to make an exception for Muslim students. Nothing like watching him buy into the fearmongering and Islamophobia that's gone into high gear over at Faux "News" since the bombing attack last week.

After Boston, Rubio Entertains The Idea Of Not Granting Visas To Muslim Students:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Wednesday suggested that, given the attack on Boston carried out by two immigrants, he would consider barring young foreign Muslims from getting student visas to come the United States.

Prompted by host Neil Cavuto to address how the attack by the Tsarnaev brothers — neither of whom came to the country on student visas — had influenced immigration reform, Rubio said that he was willing to consider Fox News Host Bob Beckel’s suggestion that anyone who observes Islam should not get a student visa:

CAVUTO: Senator, there are some getting leery of all the Muslim students in America. Bob Beckel is among those saying stop grants visas, others speaking about slowing down the number getting into the country. What do you think?

RUBIO: We need to be open to changes that provide more security. I don’t like profiling anybody or singling or generally leading, on the other hand student visas are something this country does because it’s in our national interest but you don’t have a right to a student visa. I’m not prepared to take a firm position on restriction. I want to learn about what might have worked to prevent past attacks.

Islamophobia has been pervasive in the responses to last week’s attack on Boston. Read on...

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Who would have thought a study that wasn't peer reviewed could have caused so much misery for so many? Stephen Colbert did a great job of taking down the deficit hawks who relied on the flawed Reinhart-Rogoff study, as only he can on his show this Tuesday evening.

Now if we could just get our President and Congressional leaders to quit listening to the likes of Simpson and Bowles, who are still out there pushing a new plan for austerity, even after it was revealed that theirs relied on the discredited research.

Colbert got in a lot of good shots during the segment, but I think this was my favorite, other than what he did with Reinhart and Rogoff's names.

Colbert: Of course they didn't share their data. If they can't use Excel, I doubt they can send an email attachment.

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With Fox in full blown Muslim-bashing mode following the Boston Marathon bombing attacks, we all had to know this was coming. Heaven forbid they might ever pass up another opportunity to attack Rep. Keith Ellison.

Fox's Bolling: Rep. Ellison Is "The Muslim Apologist In Congress" And "Very Dangerous":

While calling for profiling of American Muslims, Fox News host Eric Bolling attacked Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), calling him the "Muslim apologist in Congress" and describing him as "very dangerous."

On Fox News' The Five, Bolling called for profiling of Muslims following the attacks of the Boston Marathon. During the segment, Bolling criticized Ellison, asserting that he's "very dangerous" and has been "the Muslim apologist in Congress for a long time." After calling him dangerous, Bolling noted that Ellison "raised his right hand and took the oath of office on the Quran":

Bolling's attack is part of a long line of smears directed at Ellison. Fox host Sean Hannity attempted to link Ellison to Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam. Hannity also compared Ellison's use of the Quran for his swearing-in ceremony to using "Hitler's Mein Kampf, which is the Nazi bible."

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Chris Hayes gave a little send-off to Sen. Max Baucus on the news of his upcoming retirement from the United States Senate. After running down a list of why the only people who are really going to miss him are the lobbyists who will likely see their salaries go down once he leaves, Hayes reminded his viewers of what it really means when we hear pundits talk about so-called "centrists" in Washington.

HAYES: I know some of Max Baucus' defenders. I like some of Max Baucus' defenders. And they will say to liberal critics like me that we don't understand that the man is from Montana, the conservative state, and he wouldn't have lasted very long in Washington voting or sounding like say, Elizabeth Warren.

But here's what's so notable about so many of the items in Max Baucus' record that are objectionable. When you scratch the surface, they don't seem to have a lot to do with public opinion, either in Montana or anywhere else. I doubt there's a groundswell of public opinion in favor of the very tax extenders included in the fiscal cliff deal, or for raising the payroll taxes for that matter. Or permanently repealing the estate tax, which he voted for in 2006. Or disallowing the government from using its purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices with big pHARMA.

No. The way to understand Max Baucus and the center isn't in terms of where the median voter is, or the peak in the bell curve distribution of Americans' political views, because the center in American politics is much less often the place of sensible moderation and much more often, the name we give to the place where power resides.

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If you need any proof that no bad deed goes unrewarded by our corporate media, you need look no further than this attention whore. Here's how you're rewarded for violent rhetoric and promoting torture on twitter these days.

New York lawmaker: I would torture an American citizen:

New York state Sen. Greg Ball (R) on Monday night reiterated his belief that Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be tortured even though he is a U.S. citizen.

During a tense interview, CNN’s Piers Morgan repeatedly asked Ball whether he was OK with torturing American citizens. While he refused to condone torture as a government policy, he said he was not opposed to personally torturing American citizens such as Tsarnaev.

“I’m telling you as Greg Ball, if personally put in a room with anybody from the most current scumbags to Osama bin Laden I’m telling you what I would do. As far as policy of the United States, you’ve got to take it up with your man Obama,” Ball explained. [...]

The New York Republican has repeatedly defended his support of torture since tweeting about it over the weekend.

In a separate interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night, Ball remarked he was speaking “from my heart” and acknowledged his comments might not help his reelection.

Morgan's follow up with Alan Dershowitz, who defended torture in some instances wasn't a whole lot better than his interview with Ball, who walked off of the set after this segment even though he said he'd come back. Note to Piers Morgan if you're going to have someone like this clown on your show again:

Torture does not work and provides unreliable information.

Torture is not consistent with our laws or with our Constitution and it's a war crime.

Torture does not save lives.

Torture does not serve our national interests.

And maybe you could ask this guy if he ever comes on again why we don't allow the police to beat confessions out of citizens on a daily basis and why our courts won't accept confessions obtained under those conditions as evidence. This interview wasn't quite as pitiful as the ones he did on Faux "News," but that's a pretty low bar to hurdle.

You can let him know what you think of his remarks on twitter here.

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Just what we need... another Republican bed-wetter screeching like a banshee on cable news in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing attack. First of all, who in the hell gave this clown a radio show? And second, why does MSNBC think that anyone in their audience cares what this disgrace of a former Congressman and deadbeat dad and known flamethrower Joe Walsh thinks about anything?

Having him on when he was a member of Congress and taking him to the woodshed over failing to pay his child support, as Bashir did a while back is one thing. Having him on there as someone to be taken seriously to discuss policy after he's been run out of Congress is quite another.

Jonathan Alter hasn't been much better with his usual appearances on the network where he's happy to help with the hippie punching and pushing for Democrats to go along with austerity measures, as he did with Sam Seder on his radio show as well not long ago, but in this segment, he was the voice of reason -- only to have Walsh insult him at every turn, just looking to start an altercation on camera with name calling.

I guess Ted Nugent and Glenn Beck were too busy to come spend some time as a "panel member" so they settled for Walsh.

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After first giving Pete Williams and the anchors over at NBC some praise for their coverage in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings and subsequent manhunt for the suspects, Jon Stewart tore into The New York Post's Rupert Murdoch, who refused to apologize for posting the pictures of two men who were not suspects on the cover of their magazine. But he spent most of his segment taking another shot at CNN for their terrible coverage following the attacks.

As Stewart noted, after not wanting to repeat their mistake from earlier in the week, where they claimed that someone was already arrested for the attacks when they weren't, CNN decided to take the streets instead and "report" from the sidelines that -- they had no idea whatsoever what the hell was going on behind police lines.

It also didn't stop them from getting in the way of the police or taking up their time having to run them off when they occasionally crossed those lines, even putting themselves into the line of fire when police had Dzhokhar Tsarnaev surrounded.

STEWART: What a great use of police resources... rushing the camera crew. [...] Even the TMZ guy would be like, "Back the f**k off and let them do their jobs."

Yes, indeed.

So Republicans, how's that minority outreach program of yours going? It seems xenophobes like Kris Kobach haven't learned anything from his buddy Mitt Romney's loss in the presidential election.

Big Surprise: Kris Kobach Still Believes in Self-Deportation:

Remember how the Mitt Romney-espoused "self-deportation" rhetoric was supposed to end up in the dustbin of history following President Obama's huge margins among Latino voters back in November? Apparently no one told Kris Kobach.

The Kansas secretary of state and intellectual author of harsh laws in states like Arizona and Alabama was back at it again earlier today, this time at the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings on the Gang of Eight's immigration bill. In response to questions from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Kobach said that "self-deportation is not some radical idea. It is simply the idea that people may comply with the law by their own choice."

GOP Immigration Guru Insists DREAMers Should Self-Deport:

Speaking at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing, Kobach insisted that DREAM eligible applicants, many of whom have lived in the United States for most of their lives, should not be rewarded for the “sins of their parents.” Instead, DREAMers should go back to their parents’ country of origin, Kobach said, and “get in line with the rest of their countrymen.” “That just defies basic compassion,” Durbin shot back, pointing to to Gabby Pacheco, an undocumented immigrant brought to America at the age of eight from Ecuador, who was testifying alongside Kobach. “She’s never known any other country,” Durbin explained, “this is her home.” [...]

Kobach responded by reviving self-deportation, arguing that “if you ratchet up the penalties for violating the law, people choose to leave.”

But Durbin predicted that the momentum has shifted from deportation to reform after the 2012 election. “Ultimately the voters have the last word. The voters had the last word on self-deportation on Nov. 6, so we’re beyond that now,” he said.

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Jason Easley over at Politicususa pegged this one exactly right when it comes to what to expect next from Republicans, given what we heard from a number of them on the Sunday bobblehead shows this weekend complaining about how the FBI handled the investigation of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011.

As Easley noted, "If you thought the Republican behavior after Benghazi was bad, their desperate fishing expedition on Boston could be even worse." Sadly, we probably haven't seen the worst of Sen. Lindsey Graham getting a chronic case of the vapors during a Congressional hearing just yet.

Republicans Launch Their Campaign to Blame Obama for Boston By Attacking the FBI:

Republicans took to the Sunday morning shows to attack the FBI, and to lay the groundwork for blaming President Obama for the Boston bombings. [...]

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where Graham and King are going with this. Soon they will call for hearings on how the FBI handled the intelligence they had before the events in Boston. Their purpose is twofold. They are looking for something to use to revive the Bush era war on terror policies, and they are searching for some way to blame President Obama for the attacks.

There is a difference between saying that the FBI needs to review how they handled any information they may have had before the attacks, and using politically loaded language like "the FBI dropped the ball." King and Graham are trying to set up a narrative that will tie any “failures” that they find to President Obama. That is where this is heading.

I'm sure it won't take too long to find out if he's right or not, and in the meantime, I wouldn't bet against the prediction.

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How bad are things when former Rep. Jane Harman is sounding like the voice of reason when it comes to our treatment of terrorism suspects? From this week's Fox News Sunday, she and Bloody Bill Kristol sparred over whether the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing should be treated as an enemy combatant or read his rights and tried in civilian court.

I'm not sure what good Kristol thinks it's going to do to try to interrogate someone who apparently has been shot in the throat and can't communicate right now if they wanted to, but the right does seem to love stomping all over our Constitutional rights (unless it's guns, of course) at every given opportunity.

Steve Benen made some of the same points as Harman during her back and forth with Kristol in a post he wrote yesterday which described what a dangerous game these Republicans are playing: The legal process ahead for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev:

The broader question -- I'm reluctant to call it a "debate" since the path seems so obvious -- is what happens after that. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have some thoughts on the matter.

Two powerful GOP senators are calling on the Obama administration to treat the captured suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings as an "enemy combatant" and deny him counsel even though he is reportedly an American citizen. [...]

Regardless his citizenship status, McCain and Graham say Dzhokhar Tsarnaev gave up his rights to a criminal trial when he allegedly participated in the bombings.

"Under the Law of War we can hold this suspect as a potential enemy combatant not entitled to Miranda warnings or the appointment of counsel," McCain and Graham said.

McCain and Graham are playing a dangerous game here. In case anyone's forgotten, we're talking about an American citizen, captured on American soil, accused of committing a crime in America. These Republican senators are arguing, in effect, that none of this matters anymore.

The same week in which Senate Republicans insisted that the Second Amendment is sacrosanct, McCain and Graham are arguing that the Fourth Amendment is a nicety that the nation must no longer take seriously.

By all accounts, the Obama administration is prepared to ignore the senators' suggestion. [...]

That's encouraging. Even for those on the right who are indifferent to civil liberties, the fact remains that civilian trials for terrorist suspects have proven to be an effective method of trying, convicting, and sentencing criminals, including accused terrorists. Military commissions, meanwhile, have proven to be an ineffective method.

When it comes to national security, foreign policy, and counter-terrorism, McCain and Graham have a track record of being remarkably wrong with incredible consistency. The more the Obama administration ignores their advice, the better.

Double that for Bill Kristol. And note to Chris Wallace in regard to the clip above, please quit calling the United States "the homeland." It's creeping me out.

Transcript via Fox below the fold.

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