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Rachel reports on more astroturf groups, this time from the petroleum industry, and their efforts to affect health care and energy policy.

From The Houston Chronicle-- Energy workers rally against climate plan:

Local energy workers jammed a downtown Houston theater today to protest climate change legislation that the U.S. Senate will take up in the coming weeks.

The Energy Citizens rally, promoted by some major energy companies and business organizations as well as the Greater Houston Partnership, is the first of several such events planned in 19 states in the coming weeks.

About 3,500 people, or 1,500 more than expected, filed into the facility, many donning yellow T-shirts that were being handed out that read "I'm an energy citizen." Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane Jr. was the keynote speaker.

And TPM has more: "Sensitive" Oil Industry Memo Lays Out Plan For Astroturf Rallies Against Climate Change Bill:

A leaked memo sent by an oil industry group reveals a plan to create astroturf rallies at which industry employees posing as "citizens" will urge Congress to oppose climate change legislation.

The memo -- sent by the American Petroleum Institute and obtained by Greenpeace, which sent it to reporters -- urges oil companies to recruit their employees for events that will "put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy," and will urge senators to "avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill."

API tells TPMmuckraker that the campaign is being funded by a coalition of corporate and conservative groups that includes the anti-health-care-reform group 60 Plus, FreedomWorks, and Grover Norquist's Americans For Tax Reform.

The memo, signed by API president Jack Gerard, asks recipients to give API "the name of one central coordinator for your company's involvement in the rallies."

And it warns: "Please treat this information as sensitive ... we don't want critics to know our game plan."

Aside from the astroturf nature of the planned events, which appear aimed at passing off industry employees as independent citizens, the memo also raises questions about the positions of several major oil companies on the issue of climate change. BP and Shell both are members of API, and also of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of groups that supports Waxman-Markey, the very climate change legislation the memo criticizes.

API has spent over $3 million lobbying against that bill this year.

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Rep. Zach Wamp's office contacted The Rachel Maddow Show to complain about the C-Street coverage on her program last Friday.

Maddow: Well on Friday's show I quoted an account from the Knoxville News Centinal in which a member of congress who lives at C-Street described one of the most worrying aspects of this shadowy, powerful organization, its secrecy. The Congressman in question is Zach Wamp of Tennessee. He has lived at C-Street for a dozen years and here's what I said about him on Friday.

Zack Wamp of Tennessee is a Republican member of Congress who says he has lived in the C Street house for 12 years. Today, he told “The Knoxville News Sentinel” that the members of Congress who live there are sworn to secrecy.

Quoting from the “News Sentinel,” “The C Street residents have all agreed they won‘t talk about their private living arrangements, Wamp said and he intends to honor that pact. ‘I hate it that John Ensign lives in the house and this happened because it opens up all of these kinds of questions,‘ Wamp said. But, he said, ‘I'm not going to be the guy who goes out and talks.‘”

Maddow went on to say that although Wamp's office claimed he was misquoted on her show, but they have not asked the Knoxville News Sentinal to correct their article and until they do, she's standing by her reporting. Good for her.

I don't think Wamp's doing the GOP any favors by complaining and giving Rachal Maddow another reason to keep this C-Street story alive, not that Ensign and Sanford aren't doing a good enough job without his help.

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June 15, 2009 Rachel Maddow Show

Maddow: But first, it‘s time for a couple of holy mackerel stories in today‘s news. First up, the richest vein of news for the week is often late in the day on Friday. And late in the day this past Friday a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that John Yoo, the most notorious of all the Bush administration torture memo authors, is going to have his day in court.

Mr. Yoo is being sued by a U.S. citizen who was once declared an enemy combatant by the Bush administration. That man, Jose Padilla says that Mr. Yoo effectively created the torture program in which Mr. Padilla was severely physically abused while in custody as an enemy combatant.

Mr. Padilla is only speaking $1.00 in damages from Mr. Yoo. What he really wants is a court order declaring that his treatment was illegal and unconstitutional. John Yoo had asked that the case him be dismissed on the grounds that he was acting as a government official when he wrote the torture memo and he should be therefore be immune from getting sued.

But the judge in the case, incidentally, a judge appointed by George W. Bush disagreed with Mr. Yoo, ruling that, quote, “Like any other government official, government lawyers are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their conduct.”

The judge also ruled that Mr. Padilla had, quote, “alleged sufficient facts to satisfy requirements that Mr. Yoo set in motion a series of events that resulted in the deprivation of Mr. Padilla‘s constitutional rights.”

So the lawsuit against torture memo guy John Yoo proceeds. Do you want to know who is defending John Yoo in this lawsuit? You, not “Yoo” as in John Yoo, but “you” as in you and me. We‘re defending him.

The Justice Department of the United States is providing John Yoo‘s defense. We‘re paying to defend the torture guy with our tax dollars. I wonder if we can vote on that.

Finally, if you pay any attention to the tapes that are released periodically by al-Qaeda, by the As-Sahab, which is the al-Qaeda AV club, you might have noticed that in the last couple of years, As-Sahab was taken over by the American kid in al-Qaeda, known variously as Azam al-Amriki, a.k.a. Azam the American, a.k.a. Adam Gadahn. He‘s the chunky former Death Metal-loving dork from a California goat farm who renounced the United States and famously ripped up his U.S. passport on an al-Qaeda video. Ooh, like, we‘ll miss you.

In a surprise development concerning Mr. Gadahn, in a recording released over the weekend, Mr. Gadahn, Mr. al-Amriki, Mr. Azam, the American, came out as Jewish. Yes.

In a new As-Sahab tape, he admits that his grandfather was Jewish, that his grandfather gave him a copy of a very bad book once by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And he says his grandfather encouraged young Adam to get Israeli citizenship. This admission, of course, will probably make things really awkward at the next al-Qaeda mixer. I‘m just guessing.

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John Amato:

Things got a whole lot more interesting for President Obama. Justice David Souter is retiring from the bench and the president will be able to pick a true progressive judge to fill the vacancy in the coming months. I doubt he wanted to tackle this topic so soon with everything else on his plate, but that's the hand he was dealt and I look forward to being involved heavily in the process. I can only imagine what will come out of the mouths of the teabaggers and FOX News. Brace yourself, this is going to get ugly on their side very quickly. I hope to have our website released soon that will be dedicated to the Supreme Court. It's already designed and I'm lining up the troops as we speak.

From The Rachel Maddow Show April 30, 2009. Justice David Souter plans to retire from the Supreme Court. From the MSNBC press release:

NBC: Souter to retire from Supreme Court
His retirement would give Obama his first chance to nominate a justice

WASHINGTON - Supreme Court Justice David Souter plans to retire, sources told NBC News Thursday night.

Speculation about Souter's plans began to swirl as the eight other justices were known to have hired the four law clerks who will work with them in the Supreme Court term that begins in October. Souter has been the lone holdout, hiring no one.

A retirement by Souter, 69, would give President Barack Obama his first chance to nominate a justice and the next few months would bring Senate confirmation hearings.

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Thanks to last night's Rachel Maddow Show, we DFH's are now PLF's...watch that left eardrum, Mister P. Open thread below.

April 24, 2009 MSNBC Rachel Madow Show

Rachel Maddow talks to Lawrence Wilkerson about Dick Cheney's request to selectively declassify documents to try to prove "enhanced interrogation techniques" can't be considered torture because they worked.

RACHEL: On the issue of intelligence—tainted evidence and those things—were you ever present at meetings at which the interrogation of prisoners, like Abu Zubaida, other prisoners in those early days, where the interrogation was directed? Where specific interrogation techniques were approved. It has been reported on a couple of different sources that there were Principals Meetings, which you would have typically been there, where interrogations were almost play-by-play discussed.

POWELL: They were not play-by-play discussed but there were conversations at a senior level as to what could be done with respect to interrogation. I cannot go further because I don't have knowledge of all the meetings that took place or what was discussed at each of those meetings and I think it's going to have to be the written record of those meetings that will determine whether anything improper took place.

But it was always the case that, at least from the State Department's standpoint, we should be consistent with the requirements of the Geneva Convention. And that's why this was such a controversial, controversial issue. But you’ll have to go, and in due course I think we all will go, to the written record of what memos were signed. I'm not sure what memos were signed or not signed. I didn't have access to all of that information.

MADDOW: If there was a meeting, though, at which senior officials were saying, were discussing and giving the approval for sleep deprivation, stress positions, water boarding, were those officials committing crimes when they were giving that authorization?

POWELL: You’re asking me a legal question. I mean I don't know that any of these items would be considered criminal. And I will wait for whatever investigations that the government or the Congress intends to pursue with this.

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Rachel Maddow on the recent decision by a Spanish court to look into allegations of torture by former Bush administration officials. Ron Suskind, author of Way of the World notes that we always knew the Bush administration's defense of torture would break down as soon as the fear of retribution was lifted from those that might speak out about what happened.

From Perrspectives: Growing Blowback for Bush Torture Team:

The past 48 hours have not been kind to the architects of the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture. In the UK, British police are investigating whether its MI5 intelligence service was complicit in the torture of former Guantanamo prisoner Binyam Mohammed. Meanhile, a Spanish court is poised to launch a criminal probe of Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and four other Bush administration officials over their roles in crafting the legal framework condoning U.S. torture. And in a devastating piece in Sunday's Washington Post, Americans learned that the waterboarding of Bush all-star terror detainee Abu Zubaida "foiled no plots" and "produced false leads."

Rachel reminds the Democrats that they won the election mainly because the public did not trust the Republicans to run the economy and so they should fight against the GOP obstructing the stimulus bill. From Think Progress, it looks like they already caved on the family planning provision in the bill.

Rachel also takes the editorial staff at the Wall Street Journal to task for their article citing the debunked, nonexistent CBO report which the media has cited 81 times in the last six days. Talk about marching in lock step.

Rachel followed with David Sirota, who opined over why the Democrats are so worried about getting bipartisan support for the bill and what the costs are when appeasing Republicans.

Rachel Maddow talks to Bob Baer about the objections from Dianne Feinstein and Jay Rockefeller to the appointment of Leon Panetta to head the CIA.

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Rachel Maddow talks to Evan Bayh about the Indiana guardsmen who are suing KBR for exposure to hexavalent chromium in Iraq.

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From The Rachel Maddow Show Dec. 29, 2008. Sadly as someone who has read Molly Ivins' book Bushwhacked and after watching the debacle during Hurricane Katrina, nothing any Bush appointee does surprises me very much.

But first, it‘s time for a few underreported “holy mackerel” stories in today‘s news. The “Washington Post” front-pages a story today on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, the part of the federal government that deals with workplace safety. They provide information about workplace hazards. They regulate workplace conditions so that they are safer.

Of course, in the Bush administration, OSHA does a lot less of that. They do 86 percent less of that, if you want to be precise here. OSHA under President Bush issued 86 percent fewer significant workplace safety rules and regulations than OSHA under Bill Clinton. Now, that‘s not necessarily a big political surprise. Republicans are the pro-corporation, anti-regulation party even when they can‘t really agree on anything else.

But what is a surprise about OSHA under President Bush which we learned in today‘s “Washington Post” is—I‘m not actually sure that I can improve on the facts as they are presented in today‘s “Washington Post” article by the reporter, R. Jeffrey Smith.

Quote, “In 2006, Bush‘s first OSHA director, a former Monsanto employee was replaced by Edwin G. Foulke Jr., a South Carolina lawyer and former Bush fundraiser who spent years defending companies cited by OSHA for safety and health violations. Foulke quickly acquired a reputation inside the Labor Department as a man who literally fell asleep on the job.

Eyewitnesses said they saw him suddenly doze off at staff meetings, during teleconferences, in one-on-one briefings, at retreats involving senior deputies, on the dais at the conference, at an awards ceremony for a corporation, and during an interview with candidate for deputy regional administrator.

His top aides said they rustled papers, wore attention-getting garb, they pounded the table for emphasis or gently kicked his leg, all to keep him awake. But if these tactics failed, sometimes they just continued talking as if he were awake - ‘We‘ll be sitting there and things will fall out of his hands; people will go on talking like nothing ever happened,‘ said a career official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to a reporter.

In an interview, Foulke denied falling asleep at work, although he said he was often tired and sometimes listened with his eyes closed,” end quote.

Listening with his eyes closed? The man George Bush put in charge or keeping your workplace safe, America. Twenty-one days left - 21 days.

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Rachel reports on the crumbling state of America's infrastructure which is in dire need of repair and the Obama administration's plans to use infrastructure projects as a way to stimulate the economy. A.B. Stoddard weighs in on whether the Republicans will actually block the projects or not. If they listen to Karl Rove they will. Stoddard feels that if they keep the projects free of earmarks and pork they'll get them though. It is pretty astounding to see these Republicans finally finding religion on spending when they've had no qualms about a bottomless pit called Iraq for the entire Bush Presidency.

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Maddow: One of the things I think has been so I guess challenging to the American debate about this is that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have essentially argued that they have legalized waterboarding. That they have legalized torture. They think that the actions of their Justice Department made things like waterboarding not war crimes any more. Are they right?

Levin: You can't just suddenly change something that's illegal into something that is legal by having a lawyer write an opinion saying that it's legal. Things can't work that way or else someone could get a lawyer to say a crime is not a crime and then that would be a defense. That is not a defense and I just, I was astounded frankly when I heard the Vice President of the United States sort of just blandly, blithely saying that oh he thought that was an appropriate thing and yes he was involved in the discussions about it.

Senator Levin, why are you shocked about this when no one who has been paying any attention to what this administration has done is shocked? And can we get a straight answer that there should be prosecutions and not hedging?

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Rachel Maddow agrees with Dick Cheney:

Given what just happened to the emergency loan that didn't get made to the Big 3 auto makers, I owe a debt of thanks to Dick Cheney, not kidding for reminding us all why it is so important to keep Hoover in mind right now.

[snip]

And how does Hooverism or neo-Hooverism apply to us on this big full moon Friday night in 2008? Well last night Senate Republicans who spent the last eight years setting huge piles of taxpayer money on fire for nothing in return with two ill-advised endless wars they decided that they were the party of reduced spending and fiscal responsibility.

Hell, high water? Feh! Last night, with both hell and high water all around, Senate Republicans killed $14 billion of emergency loans to save GM, Ford and Chrysler. Why? Because they've apparently looked back at the Great Depression and decided that Hoover is their role model. Of course the government shouldn't spend money to shore up its economy and save jobs in a downturn! That might make economic sense. Couldn't do that!

The Senate Republicans are counting on our economic and historical ignorance to win short-term political points for refusing to spend government money on something that it hurts to spend money on. Nobody wants to bail anybody out. But sometimes, you have to. And frankly they are seizing the ideological opportunity to crusade against the unions and against the very idea of Americans making good wages at their jobs.

[snip]

So we're facing a looming three million job economic sink hole. Even if you don't care about those specific workers, those specific American lives, those specific American companies, those specific jobs. Even if you don't care about that everyone fears that a three million job sink hole could suck the world into a depression. Not just us. And in the face of that the Senate Republican caucus decided to block the rescue plan to make a principled point about how much they want to be like Hoover in the Great Depression. And how much they want to lower American wages.