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Former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank (D) on Tuesday warned that Monday's twin bombings in Boston were an example of why lawmakers should proceed with caution when considering cutting taxes and slashing the budget.

In an interview with on CNN, host John Berman posited to Frank that "in some ways, the recovery is based on the response."

"Let's be very grateful that we had a well-funded, functioning government," Frank agreed. "It is very fashionable in America and has been for some time to criticize government, belittle public employees, talk about their pensions, talk about what people think is their excessive health care, here we saw government in two ways perform very well."

The former congressman pointed out that both local and federal government had worked together in "seamless cooperation."

"You know, I never was as a member of Congress, one of the cheerleaders for less government, lower taxes," he explained. "No tax cut would have helped us deal with this -- or will help us recover. This is very expensive."

"We're not asking people, 'Do you have have private health insurance or not? Can you afford this or not?' Maybe the government is going to have to pay for it. And this is an example of why we need -- if we want to be a civilized people -- to put some of our resources into a common pool so we are able to deal with this. And to deal with it, you can't simply be responsive once it happens."

Frank added that that "this is a terrible day for our society, but a day when I hope people will understand the centrality of having a government in place with the resources."

"At a time like this, no one thinks about saving pennies. But going forward, I hope people aren't going to think, you spent these tens and tens of millions of dollars -- that would probably be a low estimate -- let's just take that out of everything we have going forward. This is an example of why we need to provide the resources for our common good."

(h/t: The Huffington Post)

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After first attacking former Rep. Barney Frank and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer's remarks about the Boston Marathon bombings as being "irresponsible" -- because lord knows no one on Fox would ever try to make a political issue out of a tragedy -- and they really hate it if someone makes a valid point about the need for civil servants like policemen and firefighters and the taxes required to pay their salaries -- Sean Hannity asked his guest, Rudy Giuliani about who he thought was responsible for the attack.

I'm sure Mr-a-Noun-a-Verb-and-Nine-Eleven made him very sad with this response.

GIULIANI: My hunch, is that it's homegrown...

HANNITY: Explain what that means, when you say homegrown...

GIULIANI: I don’t think this is orchestrated by al Qaeda or any of their offshoots in Africa or other places from there. I think frankly if it was, we would’ve picked it up because it would’ve had to been communicated internationally.

Waiting for the attacks on Giuliani from the right to start in 10... 9...

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Retired congressman Barney Frank has changed his mind and is now actively seeking to fill the vacated Senate seat of John Kerry.

via Politico.

Barney Frank, one day out of Congress, said on Friday that he has asked Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to send him back as an interim senator when Sen. John Kerry becomes secretary of state.

“A month ago, or a few weeks ago, I said I wasn’t interested,” Frank said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “It was kind of like you’re about to graduate, and they said: ‘You gotta go to summer school.’ But [the fiscal cliff deal] now means that February, March and April are going to be among the most important months in American financial history.”

He added, “I’ve told the governor I would now like, frankly, to do that [serve as interim senator].”

From The PBS Newshour, correspondent Paul Solman asked retiring Rep. Barney Frank about the intelligence of members of Congress and true to form, Barney didn't pull any punches: Barney Frank: How Smart Is Congress?:

Paul Solman: How intelligent are House members in general? I hear some people say very intelligent, other people say, nah, they don't know what they're talking about.

Barney Frank: No. I think they do. Remember, if you're in the House, you are required to talk about a whole range of things...I have found, when I'm asked by a journalist what my opinion is on something, and I say I don't know enough to have an opinion, they seem frustrated and press me to have an opinion. And I say, "why do you try to get me to tell you something when I said I don't really know enough?"

Paul Solman: I have not heard you say that very often, at least to me over the course of time.

Barney Frank: That's because you ask very specialized questions. You have a special beat in business and about which I know something. But I get the general press asking, "do you want to comment on this and comment on that?" when I haven't read about it and don't know about it. And what I have found is that, on the whole, the members of Congress are smarter than average.

Now, here's the deal. It's not been the case with people elected in 2010 and this is important. Ordinarily, to get elected to Congress, it takes a certain amount of energy and creativity. When you get one of those elections where one party wins overwhelmingly, it tends to sweep in some flotsam and jetsam. And that's been true of the Democrats and the Republicans.

Normally, though, I think very highly of the intelligence of my colleagues. I will say this: when I was in the state legislature in the '70s, I would sometimes have to stop to say, all right, I've got to explain it. Let me think about how I explain it, how do I break it down. I have never felt the need to do that in the U.S. House of Representatives.

h/t Raw Story

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House Republicans are pushing to amend the "fiscal cliff" deal that just passed in the Senate, but as Rep. Barney Frank told TPM, "if House Republicans amend the Senate bill to include spending cuts, they'll effectively kill the deal.":

"If they do, that'll kill the package," he said after a Democratic caucus meeting.

"I would not predict what these people will try to do because they are in thrall to extremists," Frank said. "But if they amend this I don't know how they think they -- an amendment basically says, our ideology is too rigid and we're not really trying to really [reach a deal]."

Speaker John Boehner's (R-OH) office said his members have expressed "universal concern" with the agreement's lack of spending cuts. Rumors on Capitol Hill are that the House GOP is considering amending the legislation and sending it back to the Senate.

House Democratic leaders demanded an up-or-down vote on the Senate deal on Tuesday afternoon.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) declined to discuss whether a GOP amendment to include spending cuts would threaten the bill.

"Look, the country deserves an up or down vote on the compromise bipartisan bill that passed the Senate," he told TPM. "What we're calling for is an up or down vote. Let democracy work its will. ... Let's just take this step by step."

Here's more from The Hill: Senate-passed 'fiscal cliff' agreement in trouble in House:

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In a face to face confrontation that aired on Sunday, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) called out Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) for using "weasel words" to suggest that President Barack Obama knew about former CIA Director David Petraeus' sex scandal prior to the November election.

Hutchinson told CNN's Candy Crowley and a panel of lawmakers that she couldn't believe that an email threat that Paula Broadwell, Petraeus' mistress, allegedly made to another woman triggered a low-level FBI investigation that the president would not have known about.

"I'm very worried about this," she opined. "Did it really trigger an FBI investigation of the CIA director? At a low level? And it wasn't raised to a higher level? I mean, if anybody is investigating the director of the CIA, the president of the United States should know immediately. And I feel like, A, we don't know enough and, B, I have great concerns about a lot of this surrounding..."

"Nobody was investigating the director of the CIA," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) interrupted. "What they were inquiring into was whether or not somebody had unauthorized access or was taking advantage of access to the director."

"But at what level were these decisions being made?" Hutchinson insisted. "I just think there needs to be a whole lot more."

"Are you suggesting that there was some cover up, that the FBI was playing games, Kay?" Frank wondered. "I think we ought to be explicit about this. I'm troubled by the implication of your statement. Are you suggesting that something wasn't legitimate here? Because that would trouble me."

"I am suggesting that I have great concerns about the legitimacy of this," Hutchinson repeated.

"Using 'great concern' is kind of a weasel word," Frank shot back.

"No, I don't think it's a weasel word," Hutchinson replied. "A general in our military and the CIA director, to all of the sudden have this kind of upheaval when it appears that the president didn't know until two months later? Two months later?"

"It seems to me, frankly, that you're kind of hinting at something bad and I don't see what that could be," Frank pointed out. "I find those kind of implications very troubling. Do you distrust the FBI? Is [FBI Director Robert] Mueller lying? Who are you accusing of not having done the right thing?"

"I tell you what troubles me to some extent, Candy, if this was an investigation into David Petraeus' bank account instead of his sex life, all of us would be paying a lot less attention to it," the Massachusetts congressman added. "And I'm troubled by the prurience of some of this. And the prominence it's getting is -- privacy shouldn't totally disappear."

Earlier this month, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told reporters that the policy of not sharing facts about ongoing investigations with the White House had been followed because "there was not a threat to national security."

(h/t: Think Progress)

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I'm not sure what's gotten into Chris Matthews' drinking water lately, but we're seeing him be a bit harsher with Republicans who come on his show and just try to spew their talking points unchallenged. Matthews and Rep. Barney Frank grilled right wing bigot Tony Perkins last week over his stance on homosexuality and gay marriage, and this Monday, Matthews got a bit tougher with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers with her playing the role as GOP apologist for her party's continued attacks on women than we saw during his last interview with her.

He challenged her support of the Republican version of the Violence Against Women Act and it was nice to see him end an interview by telling her that her views are going to be pretty hard to swallow with the voters in her district, instead of praising her as one of the new, "great leaders" in her party as he did when she was blaming Democrats for creating "all this war on women stuff" during his interview with her a couple of months ago.

Matthews' other guest was Rep. Gwen Moore, who we posted about here, who is a sponsor of the Democrats' version of the bill, and who laid out very plainly why there should be protections extended to same sex couples, Native Americans and immigrants no matter what their legal status as long as they're cooperating with authorities. I think Moore made a pretty compelling case for why the law should be extended to all of these groups during this segment.

McMorris Rodgers on the other hand, kept attempting to take the debate back to the fact that there are no federal laws legalizing same-sex couples. I was happy to hear Matthews' response to that which was a similar one I might have made myself if asked and basically summed up with this statement when McMorris Rodgers tried to call those protections "a side issue."

MATTHEWS: Well, they`re not side issues if you`re getting beat up by your partner. That`s not a side issue, it`s your life.

Thank you Chris Matthews. I was happy to see him take her on and call her out for the fact that they don't want to protect women against violence because heaven forbid those protections might include groups they want to discriminate against. The GOP has entrenched itself to the point where they are so anti-gay rights and anti-immigrant that they'd rather tank an entire bill that protects women than heaven forbid vote for something which includes those groups and protections for any of them as well. And that in spite of, as Rep. Moore noted, the fact that those recommendations for those protections were made by those in law enforcement, the DOJ and the FBI.

I find it sad and disheartening to listen to the likes of McMorris Rodgers make excuses for her party being on the wrong side of bigotry, sexism, hatred and allowing for violence to escape prosecution if you believe the person the act was committed against is a second class citizen.

I know I should not be surprised by the fact that we've got women willing to make embarrassments of our sex by being willing to vote for issues that harm women as McMorris has done, but it doesn't make me any less disgusted with her ilk. She is doing as much damage to women making strides towards equal rights and protections under the law as hate monger Rush Limbaugh. She's actually worse, because she does it under the guise of pretending most women don't care if other women are abused and giving those claims credence in our corporate media.

Transcript below the fold.

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I have to say that Rep. Marsha Blackburn is generally one of the more infuriating Republican politicians to watch on television because her usual tactic is to talk over and filibuster whoever the other guest is on with her and run out the clock so they don't get a chance to talk. Rep. Barney Frank was having none of that during his appearance with her on This Week and I was glad to see him call her out for her voting record when it comes to deregulating the financial industries.

Republicans constantly complain about the bailouts and these institutions being 'too big to fail" as Blackburn did here, but in the end, they just want to continue to leave them to their own ends and let the "free market" prevail. Blackburn was very upset with Frank and claimed he was trying to "speak for her" and here's how he handled it:

FRANK: Well, I'm sorry, but she voted against this. This pattern of interruption and filibuster is really not a good way to discuss important issues. She voted for no regulation at all in 2010. They all did.

BLACKBURN: No. No, Barney. You can't speak for me. I didn't speak for you.

FRANK: That was the vote that you took! You voted...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Thank you. I -- I got to go. I got to go.

FRANK: I'm -- I'm quoting your vote. I'm not speaking for you.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Thank you both for your time this morning.

FRANK: I'm quoting your vote.

Good for him. Full transcript of their exchange below the fold.

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As I noted when Piers Morgan had Tony Perkins on his show on CNN this week, if someone is going to allow Tony Perkins on the air, they should be pointing out that his organization, the Family Research Council, has been labelled a hate group and why and not be allowing him to spew hatred towards the gay community unchallenged. This Thursday, Hardball's Chris Matthews did not point out the fact that his group has been labelled a hate group, but this interview was definitely a step in the right direction if he's going to be allowed on the air.

Here's more on that from Media Matters: MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Demonstrates How To Handle Tony Perkins On Television:

During the May 10 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews invited Tony Perkins – president of the anti-gay hate group Family Research Council (FRC) – and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) to discuss the issues of same-sex marriage and adoption.

Perkins’ presence on MSNBC isn’t surprising – the hate group leader has become a regular guest on the network over the past several months, and has typically been treated as a credible, uncontroversial political figure, especially on Hardball.

On Thursday, however, things were different.

For nearly 15 minutes, Matthews, with the help of Frank, grilled Perkins on his views on homosexuality, marriage equality, and same-sex parenting. Matthews challenged Perkins’ anti-gay misinformation, held him accountable for past statements, and demonstrated how out-of-the-mainstream his extreme positions really are.

This is exactly the kind of interview that major news outlets should be conducting when dealing with someone like Perkins.

I'll second that. It was nice to see him put on the defensive for once instead of just being allowed to spew his bigoted talking points like he usually gets away with. This March, Matthews was confronted by the group Faithful America about legitimizing the likes of Perkins with the type of softball interviews we've seen from Matthews with him previously. It looks like maybe their talk with him did some good.

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Outgoing Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank is preparing for his new role as a married man.

NECN reported on Thursday that Frank will tie the knot with his longtime partner, Jim Ready, in a ceremony in Massachusetts. The couple has been together since 2007.

"Look, I have a partner now, Jim Ready," Frank told PBS' Charlie Rose earlier this month. "I have an emotional attachment. I’m in love for the first time in my life."

Even though same sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts, the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) means that gay couples do not have true marriage equality.

"It is, of course, somewhat ironic that because of DOMA and because Barney is a federal employee, Jim won’t be eligible for any of the benefits that any other spouse would be able to get," Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders executive director Lee Swislow told The Associated Press.

"I think it’s always positive when public figures are role models in these critical societal institutions."

Frank, 71, announced in November that he would retire at the end of his current term. He has served as one of the most prominent gay members of Congress since 1981.

(H/T: Metro Weekly)