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Conservative columnist George Will on Sunday suggested that President Barack Obama could be impeached after it was revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeted tea party groups.

The Associated Press learned last week that the IRS had apologized for what it was an "inappropriate" investigation into whether tea party groups were abusing their tax-exempt status.

"How stupid do they think we are?" Will asked during an ABC News panel on Sunday. "Just imagine... if the George W. Bush administration had IRS underlings, out in Cincinnati of course, saying we're going to target groups with the word ' 'progressive' in their title. We would have all hell breaking loose."

"This is the 40th anniversary of the Watergate summer," he added, reading a passage from former President Richard Nixon's articles of impeachment.

He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.

"I think it would be irresponsible to start talking about impeachment over this," Democratic strategist Donna Brazile replied. "Clearly, there was some incompetence at some level or bureaucrats looking into all these applications in a rush after Citizens United [Supreme Court ruling] to see whether or not they were legitimate organizations with the word 'tea party' or 'patriot' in it. Yeah, there are progressive patriots as well."

"Given what George has just said, you better get ready for your audit," ABC News White House correspondent Jonathan Karl quipped to Will.

"The IRS commissioner was a Republican appointed by [former President George W.] Bush, who his term expired in November," Brazile pointed out.

There is no evidence that President Obama directed or even knew of the targeting of tea party groups.

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Conservative Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol is lashing out at Karl Rove and his American Crossroads super PAC for using last year's attacks in Benghazi to attack former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 presidential race.

During a Fox News panel segment on Sunday, Kristol complained that there had been a "partisan reaction" to both the attacks in Benghazi and the news that the Internal Revenue Service had targeted tea party groups to find out if they had violated their tax exempt status.

Kristol pointed to a web video released by American Crossroads last week that attacked Clinton for allegedly participating in a Benghazi "cover up."

"I do not like the conservative Republican groups putting ads up about Hillary Clinton," he said. "What is the point of that? That is just fundraising by American Crossroads and these other groups. It's ridiculous! There's no campaign going on!"

"Let's pull the partisanship back. It's a genuine outrage what happened in Benghazi, it's a genuine outrage what the IRS did... So I wish the Republicans would just be quiet for while -- I mean, the partisan Republican groups that are fundraising off this -- would be quiet on both issues for a while, and let's find out what really happened."

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Yeah, he went there if you can believe it. Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace actually asked disgraced former South Carolina governor and now newly elected Congressman Mark Sanford if he plans on running for president, Does anyone think he'd ever ask, say Anthony Weiner, if he throws his hat into the ring for the New York mayoral race, that same question? I didn't think so.

WALLACE: Back in 2009, before all this personal stuff, you were exploring a possibility of running for president in 2012, even exploring the idea of setting up a nationwide organization. So the question is, does your political comeback now end as a Congressman from the 1st congressional district of South Carolina, or is there the possibility of higher office?

SANFORD: What I say is, one, people will begin to look at that fully. There's a big gulf between them looking at it fully and saying you ought to do this, that you ought to look at this, and me doing it. So I haven't pulled any tripwire on that front, but you're exactly right, a number of people were suggesting those kind of things. My focus... my focus is to be the absolutely best congressman that I can be for the 1st congressional district of South Carolina.

Wallace followed up by asking him what the Republican party needs to do to start winning national elections again, as though this wingnut is going to have anything to recommend other than his party moving even further to the right where he and his ilk have taken them. If Republicans are going to get any help with their so-called "rebranding effort" it's not going to come from the likes of Mark Sanford.

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Mark Sanford, the South Carolina congressman-elect who notoriously lied and said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was actually in Argentina having an affair, on Sunday compared Fox News to The National Enquirer after a host asked him if he had set a date to marry his mistress.

During a Mother's Day interview following Sanford's win in South Carolina's 1st Congressional District, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked the former governor what he had learned from the scandal.

"You learn a lot!" Sanford asserted from his shotgun-adorned home on Seabrook Island. "You probably learn more in the valleys of life than you do in the mountain tops with regards to God's grace, with regard to the reflective grace through the people that you walk with on a daily basis. I have to say that I learned a lot about judgment, I learned a lot about forgiveness."

"You are now engaged to the women with whom you had the affair, Maria Belen Chapur," Wallace noted. "What did your four boys think of that and have they accepted her?"

"I'm not going to go into inter-family conversations," Sanford insisted. "But I would just say it is what it is."

"Do you have a date for your wedding and will your fiance come to Washington to live with you?" the Fox News host pressed, adding, "I feel like I'm The National Enquirer here."

"Exactly!" the South Carolina Republican laughed. "What is this Fox News or National Enquirer? So, I'm not going to make news on that front tonight -- or this morning."

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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) on Sunday insisted that "no one is calling for military action in Syria" even though several lawmakers have called for a strike on the country's air defenses to create a no-fly zone.

During an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) if the United States should "stand by and watch the slaughter continue" without taking military action.

"I have met with [Department of Defense] officials, I have looked at what the options -- at what the way the civil war is going, at how fractured the opposition is, at how Al-Qaeda is a huge part of that opposition," Smith explained. "And it's not that I'm not sure. Right now, my position is, if we were to go in there and try to arm rebel groups, it would make the situation worse and there would be an enormous risk of us getting dragged into a war that we don't know the first thing about how it would come out."

"Nobody is calling for military action in Syria. No one," Rogers declared. "There are some great options... This is not something we should be arguing about."

In fact, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Carl Levin (D-MI) suggested earlier this month that the U.S. should take out part of Syria's air defenses to create a no-fly zone.

"No one should think that the United States has to act alone, put boots on the ground, or destroy every Syrian air defense system to make a difference for the better in Syria," McCain explained. "We have more limited options at our disposal -- including limited military options -- that can make a positive impact on this crisis."

"We could use our precision strike capabilities to target Assad's aircraft and SCUD missile launchers on the ground without our pilots having to fly into the teeth of Syria's air defenses. Similar weapons could be used to selectively destroy artillery pieces and make Assad's forces think twice about remaining at their posts. We could also use Patriot missile batteries outside of Syria to help protect safe zones inside of Syria from Assad's aerial bombing and missile attacks."

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MSNBC's Chris Hayes slammed House Speaker John Boehner and the Republican party for being foolish enough to play a game of political suicide with this latest proposal of theirs called the Full Faith and Credit Act, which would, as Democrats have rightfully been going after them for, mean that the United States would pay China before paying our troops if Republicans decide to keep playing more games on raising the debt ceiling.

John Boehner On Debt Ceiling: Let's Pay China First, Then U.S. Troops:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday essentially agreed with Democrats' arguments that a Republican bill to prioritize debt payments would put China before U.S. troops -- except he suggested that would be a good thing.

During an interview with Bloomberg TV, Boehner was asked about this week's vote on the Full Faith and Credit Act, which, in the event that the U.S hits its debt ceiling, would direct the treasury secretary to pay only the principal and interest owed to bondholders before making any other payments. Money for other payments, such as those for veterans, Medicare and national security, would have to be divvied up from what remained of the scarce federal funds.

Republican supporters of the bill maintain that the most important thing is that the nation won't default on its credit as as long as those interest payments are made on time.

"Our goal here is to get ourselves on a sustainable path from a fiscal standpoint," Boehner said. "I think doing a debt prioritization bill makes it clear to our bondholders that we’re going to meet our obligations."

When show host Peter Cook asked if Boehner's comments mean that, as Democrats have suggested, Republicans are basically choosing to pay China before paying U.S. troops, Boehner didn't disagree.

Republicans never cared about blowing mile wide holes in our budget until we got ourselves a Democrat elected as President. Now they're continuing to be willing to play with the full faith and credit of the United States government over a budget mess they helped to create to score political points with their wingnut base.

Rough transcript of Hayes letting them have it for this not only being bad policy, but really, really stupid politically below the fold.

Continue reading »

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Cue the right-wing outrage over this Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher in 10...9...8... for the way he ended his New Rules segment while talking about the dangers of record income disparity in the United States:

MAHER: If you're rich, you should be begging the government to redistribute your wealth, because you know what happens in countries where there's a huge disparity between the rich and the poor? The rich get kidnapped. It happens seventy two times a day in Mexico.

He went onto talk about people resorting to using flame throwers on their cars in South Africa to stop it. He made a lot of really good points about what's happening to our society in the wake of the latest remake of The Great Gatsby being released, and our new Gilded Age which is worse than the last one. I'm sure all those on the right will hear is that he wants to raise your taxes and the clamor will be "Why doesn't he just volunteer to pay more himself?" -- because we all know how well just asking the wealthy to voluntarily pay more taxes, and only a tiny portion of them actually doing it, would work to solve our economic problems and the huge wealth gap we have now.

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I have no idea what she's talking about here. via Rightwing Watch:

On Wednesday, Religious Right activists and members of Congress gathered together for a prayer event held in Statuary Hall at the US Capitol called "Washington: A Man of Prayer."

Among the speakers was Rep. Michele Bachmann, who used the opportunity to promote the 9/11 prayer event being organized by Birther-king Joseph Farah, saying that "it is no secret that our nation may very well be experiencing the hand of judgment" and declaring that both the original 9/11 attack and the attack in Benghazi on 9/11 of last year were God's judgment.

As such, the only recourse, Bachmann said, is to humble ourselves before God and cry out in repentance for this nation.

God doesn't like where things are going so sent these 9/11 attacks to send us a message. That's about the size of it, huh?

Michele Bachmann: It’s no secret that our nation may very well be experiencing the hand of judgment. It’s no secret that we all are concerned that our nation may be in a time of decline. If that is in fact so, what is the answer? The answer is what we are doing here today: humbling ourselves before an almighty God, crying out to an almighty God, saying not of ourselves but you, would you save us oh God? We repent of our sins, we turn away from them, we seek you, we seek your ways. That’s something that we’re doing today, that we did on the National Day of Prayer, it’s something that we have chosen to do as well on another landmark day later this year on September 11. Our nation has seen judgment not once but twice on September 11. That’s why we’re going to have ‘9/11 Pray’ on that day. Is there anything better that we can do on that day rather than to humble ourselves and to pray to an almighty God?

There are reasons Michele Bachmann needed $25mil to squeak out a 1% win in 2012 in a decidedly red district over a Democrat she outspent over 10-1, but the main one is obvious: she's insane.

It's not often you hear references to Arrested Development by stuffy politicians but that's what happened a couple of days ago when Thomas Mulcair of the NDP asked about a large amount of money the ruling Conservatives couldn't account for. And for those of you teaching yourself French, it's 'L'argent est-il dans le kiosque à bananes?'

via Lauren Strapagiel at O.Canada.com

An Arrested Development reference in the House of Commons?

I’m afraid I just blue myself.

NDP leader Tom Mulcair was wondering where $3.1 billion in unaccounted anti-terrorism spending went when he uttered this gem:

“So the question is, is the money just in the wrong filing cabinet, is it hidden in the minister’s gazebo, is the money in the banana stand?”

Judging by the subsequent giggles, we can assume there’s more Arrested Development fans in the house. Or just people who think “banana stand” sounds funny.

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After the Minnesota state legislature voted to pass same-sex marriage yesterday, 78-59 in the lower chamber, with even some Republican support, Minnesota is now poised to become a state which allows same-sex marriage. But of course not all Republicans came away happy.

h/t Talking Points Memo. Video by Fox 9, Minneapolis.

“My heart breaks for Minnesota,” said a Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover.

“It’s a divisive issue that divides our state,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes as she stood on the House floor after the vote. “It’s not what we needed to be doing at this time. We want to come together for the state of Minnesota, we don’t want to divide it.”

Amendment 1, a proposal to ban gay marriage in Minnesota forever was passed by Republicans in 2011, but was later rejected by voters at the ballot box in November 2012, 52.6% - 47.4%, and "resulted in Minnesota being the first state, after 30 attempts, to defeat a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage". Millions of dollars were spent on both sides, evenly splitting the state for months with a long and rancorous debate.

But that's what happens when Republicans do things a lot of people don't like. In contrast, Thursday's vote was marked by civility.

The Senate is expected to vote on and pass the bill on Monday.