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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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Here's your Congress at work, still doing the bidding of the NRA and Wayne LaPierre when they hope no one is paying attention. As Zack Beauchamp at Think Progress noted, you'd think that after the tragic shooting at Newtown any new gun regulations would tighten regulations and make it harder for criminals to attain them, but sadly, just the opposite is true.

The First Federal Gun Laws To Pass Since Newtown Are All NRA Approved:

Six gun provisions were passed as riders attached to the resolution funding the government through September on Thursday. While all six had been federal law since 2004, each was approved by Congress on a year-to-year basis only. Now, four of the provisions are permanent. According to National Public Radio‘s Tamara Keith, the NRA “is the driving force behind these provisions.” Here they are:

1) Limit enforcement tools against crooked dealers. One rider would prevent Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agents from shutting down gun stores due to “due to a lack of business activity,” arguably a sign of criminal sales.

2) Shield gun dealers who “lose” their guns. This legislation precludes any federal law that requires gun retailers to count their guns and submit the results as a mechanism of determining whether any weapons have been lost or stolen.

3) Interfere with ATF gun trace reports. The ATF is now mandated to include, in any reports concerning its tracing of guns back to crime, that trace data “cannot be used to draw broad conclusions about firearms-related crime.” Academic work on guns has used trace data to firmly establish that several firearm regulations effectively prevent the spread of guns to criminal.

4) Expand the class of protected guns. According to Roll Call‘s John Gramlich, the fourth permanent law would “place a broad definition of antique guns and ammunition that may be imported into the United States.”

As Martin Bashir pointed out in his rant above, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre might be crazy, but he's crazy like a Fox when it comes to the success of his lobbying efforts.

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On the ten year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, there has been an awful lot of naval gazing by our media, sadly with most of it being revisionist history on what happened during the run up to that invasion and occupation, with a lot of glossing over just how complicit the media was in helping the neocons beat the war drums. And as Jeremy Scahill noted during this interview on Martin Bashir's show, there's still a lot to answer for by our politicians on both sides of the aisles -- but in particular, the neocons and Bush administration.

It's too bad there wasn't any accountability for his fellow guest on the program, Michael O'Hanlon, who supported the invasion and who was as guilty as the rest of them with enabling the neocons. Scahill sadly didn't go after O'Hanlon, but I appreciate what he was given a chance to say during the segment.

SCAHILL: People like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith should not be able to show their faces in public in this country without being confronted with what they did to Iraq. I mean, the reality is... having spent time in Iraq throughout the '90's... many of the Iraqis I knew are dead. Many of the Iraqis that survived the war are displaced and with the millions of others that have been displaced.

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"Let these families take their White House tour next week and I'll cover the added expenses," he explained. "Word is it will cost around $74,000. If I can get the White House doors open, I'll pick up the tab... You know this is an offer you can't refuse. Give me a call."

"I think we just realized that The Five isn't your primary source of income," co-host Greg Gutfeld quipped.

Later in the hour, Fox News host Sean Hannity joined in Bolling's offer, tweeting, "[G]reat idea! Count me in, I will pay for a week also!"

But in all the fuss over whether or not lawmakers can give out White House tours as gifts, MSNBC host Martin Bashir pointed out that everyone was missing a very serious point that "it’s the public who are being injured by the sequester."

For the money that Bolling and Hannity have agreed to spend so that lawmakers can give constituents access to a short walk through the White House, the Fox News hosts could also provide one year of nutritional and preschool programs to 15 of the 75 children that could be cut from the Head Start program because of sequestration.

Or according to the Nation, they could fund over 90,000 meals to hungry families through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamps program, which is also expected to face cuts.

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It looks like "compassionate conservatism" is alive and well in Tennessee: Stacey Campfield, Tennessee GOP Lawmaker, Wants To Tie Welfare Benefits To Children's Grades :

Tennessee state Rep. Stacey Campfield (R) introduced a bill this week seeking to make welfare benefits contingent upon the grades of a would-be recipient's children.

Campfield's legislation, filed Thursday, would "require the reduction of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) payments for parents or caretakers of TANF recipients whose children fail to maintain satisfactory progress in school." TANF is more commonly referred to as welfare.

Under Campfield's bill, welfare recipients would face a loss of benefits if their children showed poor academic performance. It's unclear how these factors would be tied to one another, or how the children's performance would be assessed.

In a blog addressing his proposal, Campfield calls his bill a measure to "break the cycle of poverty." According to Campfield, education is a "three legged stool" comprised of schools, teachers and parents. He claims the state has adequately held the first two legs of the school accountable, but argues that it should apply more pressure on the third.

"The third leg of the stool (probably the most important leg) is the parents," Campfield writes. "We have done little to hold them accountable for their child's performance. What my bill would do is put some responsibility on parents for their child's performance."

This wingnut has been making a name for himself for quite some time now. You can read more about him at the links below:

The company you keep

Rep. Campfield (R) Linked to Racism

Tennessee State Senator Falsely Claims HIV Came From The Gay Community, Cites Advice Column From 1988 As Evidence

Campfield calls for drug testing for taxpayer-funded benefits

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Fox News host Geraldo Rivera on Friday said that "angry, old, white men" like Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) demanded Susan Rice give up any ambition to be secretary of state as a "minimum price" for the September attacks in Benghazi.

Speaking to the hosts of Fox & Friends, Rivera explained that female Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) gave cover to "the angry, old, white men" by joining in their attack on Rice "and then it couldn't be a male-female issue against this poor, beleaguered black woman."

"Angry, old, white men?" asked co-host Gretchen Carlson.

"I am speaking expansively and metaphorically and for effect here," Rivera insisted. "But it became clear she couldn't be the beleaguered damsel in distress -- the poor, black, embattled ambassador. It became clear that she was the minimum price... she was the minimum price to pay for the administrations dissembling on the facts and circumstances of the Benghazi attacks. She was going to be the minimum price that the Democrats, that the Obama administration had to pay for that clear offense."

"In Washington, you make minimum prices. She's the sacrificial lamb."

NBC News White House correspondent Chuck Todd, however, on Thursday said that Rice had also been a victim of conservative media outlets like Fox News.

"She became victim of the attacks. ... and it was all driven, in many cases, by conservative outlets who were making her the center of the Benghazi story," Todd told MSNBC's Martin Bashir. "It's too easy now in the way our media landscape is set up: You can become collateral damage in a hurry, in the way you can just get piled on — whether it's Twitter, whether its advocacy journalism, talk radio. ... That's what she was. Make no mistake, she was political collateral damage."

(h/t: Mediaite)

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Lil' Luke Russert explains to Martin Bashir why Boehner is putting Ryan in a leadership position on debt negotiations after voters rejected his policies.

It seems John Boehner is hoping to avoid having the same experience he did the last time around, where his caucus revolted on him while trying to negotiate a deal on the deficit.

Ryan's New Catbird Seat:

It’s fascinating (if somewhat predictable) to watch the rapidly diverging post-election prospects of the two members of the Republican presidential ticket. Mitt Romney is going to disappear from public view approximately ten minutes after his usefulness expires as a scapegoat for his party’s sins. But Paul Ryan is back in Washington, and back in the saddle again. This sentence from the New York Times’ Jennifer Steinhauer nicely describes his pivotal position with his party colleagues:

When Mr. Ryan returned to Capitol Hill last week, he was met with a standing ovation from his Republican colleagues, a bear hug from Mr. Boehner and the hope from conservatives that he would hold the line on taxes and other spending.

Yeah, Boehner’s hugging Ryan, all right, making it clear the Budget Committee Chairman is a key, and maybe the key, figure in the fiscal negotiations with the Obama administration and congressional Democrats. Whatever Boehner decides to do, he wants Ryan’s finger-prints all over it. And the more feral of House Republicans want Ryan very close to Boehner’s side to keep the Speaker from selling out America’s priceless heritage of freedom and low top marginal tax rates. Presumably Ryan will seek to reprise his role in earlier fiscal negotiations, re-establishing his MSM reputation as a “thoughtful” conservative “reformer” who always manages to be heavily involved in bipartisan discussions until the crucial point, when he invariably opposes compromise on one pretext or another.

Go read the rest of Ed's post for what this might mean for Ryan's future, but as Paul Krugman wrote about Ryan returning to his role as "Washington’s favorite Serious, Honest Conservative" -- A Public Service Reminder: Paul Ryan is a Con Man.

And TPM's Sahil Kapur reminded us what we can expect from these negotiations -- GOP’s Opposition To New Taxes: Same As It Ever Was:

Having run and lost on their central anti-tax stance, and with an austerity bomb nearing detonation, Republicans are softening their tone on the issue. But what may appear to be a meaningful shift on taxes among GOP leaders is belied by the unchanged policy specifics within the rhetoric.

“For the purposes of forging a bipartisan agreement that begins to solve the problem, we’re willing to accept new revenue under the right conditions,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) in a post-election press conference.

That leaves the impression that Republicans are willing to raise revenue by limiting deductions and loopholes. Correct, but they’ve always been open to that — if and only if the new revenue is used to lower tax rates rather than reduce the deficit. Look closer and it’s apparent that that stance is still the same. Read on...

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I can only imagine how much attention this story would be getting if it was a Democrat telling this easily disprovable lie, but given all of the other lies Ryan has been telling, it seems not only to be a pattern that Paul Ryan will lie about just about anything, but that the media will allow him to get away with it for the most part and either shrug their shoulders, or actually try to defend the lies.

Martin Bashir took Ryan to task for the latest, where Ryan got caught lying about having run a marathon in under three hours, and then later coming back and said he'd gotten his time mixed up with his brother's time. Which of course no one believes because the explanation is as ridiculous as the original lie. I was glad to see this story start getting some traction and more voices pointing out the obvious, that this is part of a larger pattern with Ryan. As Bashir noted in the clip above, Republicans were hoping to get a much more "serious" candidate in Ryan than they did with Palin, but even she wasn't just telling outright, bald-faced lies like we're getting from Ryan.

Here's more from Steve Benen: Ryan plays 'fast' and loose with the facts:

One of the more unexpected political controversies of the weekend involved Paul Ryan and, of all things, a marathon.

Pressed for an explanation, Ryan said through a spokesperson he mixed up his brother's time with his own.

Now, I couldn't care less about Ryan's athletic abilities, and the fact that he got caught lying about his marathon time is trivial when compared to the lies he told in his convention speech last week.

But therein lies the point: a pattern is emerging and it's an important one. When Paul Ryan talks about public policy, he says things that aren't true. When Paul Ryan talks about President Obama's record, he says things that aren't true. And when Paul Ryan talks about himself, he says things that aren't true.

I realize much of the political establishment resists this, because so many are invested in the notion that Ryan is a bold truth-teller with unimpeachable credibility. David Brooks defended the candidate's convention falsehoods by blaming Romney speechwriters for forcing poor Ryan to say things that aren't true.

But given the pattern, isn't it time to reevaluate those old assumptions? Isn't it possible that the establishment that celebrated Ryan's alleged honesty simply fell for a con?

James Fallows had a good piece on why he thinks the marathon lie matters. Read on...

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I assume MSNBC's Martin Bashir is on vacation this week since he hasn't been hosting his show, and I'm fairly sure that if he was there, guest and "Republican strategist" Juleanna Glover would not have been allowed to get away with this nonsense unchallenged.

LUI: But Juleanna, does Obama believe only that government builds things?

GLOVER: Look, I think that the problem with that speech was not just that phrase, that specific phrase that was referenced by the Romney campaign. It was the overall philosophy. I mean, for many people in this country the belief that, you know, it takes a village to do anything and that individual accomplishment shouldn't be lauded, it rings a little bit, a little bit like, sort of the Communist mantra of the 1950's and '60's.

And guest host Richard Lui and her other panel member, Julian Epstein, just let her get away with the red-baiting without a word of protest. Unbelievable.

Here's the way she was treated the last time I caught her on this show and Martin Bashir was there and she tried filibustering Bashir instead of answering his question.

And here's some background on this fearmonger for anyone not familiar with her. From her bio at The Ashcroft Group:

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In the wake of President Obama calling for the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small businesses making under $250,000 and the Republicans predictable response, which is to claim the tax increase will harm small businesses, MSNBC's Martin Bashir attempted to get his cohort, Luke Russert to admit the Republican leadership was fighting to the 2 percent and the 3 percent.

And he didn't have much luck getting an answer. After asking Russert three times whether he agreed with the sentiment or not, the most Bashir got out of him was some mealy mouthed response that if Bashir wants an answer to his questions, he'd better get John Boehner or Mitch McConnell on his show to ask them himself.

Bashir did get Russet to admit their rhetoric was all spin and talking points, and little more than election year rhetoric to throw red meat to their base, and accuse the Democrats of wanting to raise taxes. It seems little Luke is a whole lot more worried about keeping that access to Congressional Republicans than heaven forbid saying anything that might offend them. Bashir laid that bare when he continued pushing Russert to answer his question on who they were protecting by refusing to cooperate on the middle class tax cuts they're holding hostage for their tax cuts for the rich.

Since Russert is the one from the network with access to the GOP leadership Bashir told him he'd have to "suffice to take the beating." Russert couldn't resist getting in a cheap shot at Bashir about his Michael Jackson interview. Keep it classy there Luke. Russert seems to be learning his lessons well on how to be the next Karl Rove dance partner, David Gregory clone for the network.