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The Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel on Sunday said that Republicans were succeeding at using "weapons of mass distraction" to obstruct President Barack Obama's second term agenda.

During an ABC News panel discussion about the a number of scandals that Republicans are using to attack the Obama administration, Washington Post columnist George Will asserted that IRS scrutiny of tea party groups was like Watergate because "it's the use of the federal machinery to punish enemies of the administration."

"Watergate? Seriously, George?" Vanden Heuvel replied. "I mean, Watergate was a scandal unique in its depths of criminality. You had a president at the heart of the White House directing the subversion of the FBI and other institutions, including the IRS... And the key scandal -- which you will disagree with -- is that we had after Citizens United a flood of money coming in, and you had groups which were clearly political and partisan trying to use this 501(c)4 [tax-exempt] categorization to escape political scrutiny."

Vanden Heuvel went on to point out that the Republican Party was trying to substitute the so-called scandal at the IRS, attacks in Benghazi and the Justice Department's seizure of Associate Press phone records for a real political agenda.

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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 columnist George Will on Sunday told Republicans that they should get behind immigration reform because "conservatism begins with facing facts."

During a panel segment on ABC's This Week, Will said that he understood immigration reform opponents -- like Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) -- who think allowing a path to citizenship would be "rewarding lawbreaking."

"However, conservatism begins with facing facts," he explained. "The facts are that of the 11 million people who are here illegally, two-thirds have been here a decade of more; 30 percent, 15 years or more. They're woven into our society, they're not leaving and the American people would not tolerate the police measures necessary to extract them from our communities."

"Therefore, the great consensus has to be on the details of a path to citizenship," Will insisted, adding that "even if the system weren't broken, even if we had no illegal immigrants, we'd still need to do something about this because we need the workers as the baby boomers retire and as the birth rate declines, we need something to replenish the workforce to sustain the welfare state."

A study published last year in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that conservatives were more likely to contort facts to justify their beliefs.

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Former budget director David Stockman says that a "huge cultural problem" concerning defense cuts and higher taxes is linked to a massive alleged conspiracy to cheat on standardized tests in Atlanta Public Schools.

Last week, former Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall was among 35 educators who were indicted for conspiring to rig standardized test scores between 2005 and 2009.

During a Sunday panel on ABC News, conservative columnist George Will pointed to the No Child Left Behind law passed under President George W. Bush and said that it had been a mistake to tie teacher pay to student test scores.

"We've put in all kinds of perverse incentives all linked to standardized testing," Will explained.

"Cheating is symptomatic of a huge cultural problem we have," Stockman opined. "The cheating that's going on in Washington today, in terms of not being honest about the real choices: higher taxes for you, Social Security cuts for the affluent, big declines in defense not there. The cheating that's going on in terms of the financial system that's totally out of kilter and really needs to be fixed in Wall Street is not even being addressed."

"So, that is symptomatic of a huge national problem."

As Reagan's budget director from 1981 to 1985, Stockman helped pushed through massive tax cuts under the theory that wealth would "trickle down" from richer Americans.

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From this Sunday's This Week on ABC, former HP executive and California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina apparently believes that people's civil rights should be put up for a vote... because we all know how well that's worked out in the past. And don't dare call anyone like John Boehner insincere or uncompassionate, because heaven forbid that might hurt their feelings.

We'd hate to get weepy Boehner crying again. And God knows we can't have any of those activist judges deciding things like this. They're only supposed to act that way when it comes to writing new laws that give corporations the same rights as people my friends.

RADDATZ; Let's more on to another big topic for the Republicans this week, and that stunning announcement by Rob Portman that he now supports same-sex marriage. Obviously a personal decision for him, the only Republican senator to support same-sex marriage. George Will, does this go anywhere?

WILL: He will not be the last, because the demographic tide here is large, powerful and execrable. I have said on this program before, opposition to gay marriage is literally dying, it's an older demographic. And if you raise the question among young people, they're not interested. And I dare say this is one of the good things about CPAC. As you saw at CPAC, this was another division and again, a healthy one. It's largely young people attend CPAC. And this is not at the top of their agenda. It's not even on their agenda

RADDATZ: I might take awhile for them to die out, though, George.

DOWD: I think that there's been an amazing -- and George is right, there has been amazing -- in the last ten years, I think there's been almost a 20-point change in people's perception of gay marriage in this country. I think Rob Portman is another domino in this whole effect.

I think Republicans, any Republicans that stand in the way of this, are standing in the way of march of history on this.

Rob Portman I know well. I did debate prep with Rob Portman in years past. He's a good person. And the people that I think that have criticized him and said, oh, by the way, hHe only did it was a personal thing that affected him personally, he wasn't going to do it otherwise. To me, why do we criticize people for that? The person that started MADD, it was a personal thing. The people that -- many people who have come out against gun control have been personally affected by it. If somebody's path to the truth, or somebody's path to a place where we actually think they're open and compassionate is a personal decision, god be wtih them.

FIORINA: I think we have to be careful, because John Boehner's views, which are different from Rob Portman's views, are equally sincere. And I think when we get into trouble on this debate when we assume that people who support gay marriage are open and compassion and people who don't are not. It's why I believe the right way to solve these very personal issues is to let people vote on them, don't have judges decide it, don't even have representative government decide it, let people vote on it in the states.

I think people of both points of view, accept the democratic process. What they don't always accept is a bunch of self-important, self-appointed judges saying this is culturally the new norm.

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Conservative columnist George Will on Sunday suggested that women shouldn't complain about the difficulties of juggling a family and a career because "no one can have it all."

During a panel discussion on ABC News, host George Stephanopolous noted that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg had started a national conversation with her new book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, which argues that more women need to pursue their ambition to be leaders.

"Just look at one the reaction to Sheryl Sandberg's book has done," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) observed. "It is so hard for women to wear our ambition on our sleeve, to pursue our dreams, to believe that we can reach the top on any profession and that we should always shoot for the stars."

The Florida Democrat added: "And what Sheryl Sandberg has done for little girls -- my two daughters and little girls across America -- is written a book, a manifesto, that says it is okay to ambitious to, it's okay to want to have it all, that balance is important, but there is nothing wrong with trying have a full professional life and be a leader and succeed as a woman and also having a full family life. You don't have to choose. It can be both."

Will, however, used to an column in The Atlantic by Ann Marie Slaughter to push back against the notion that women should expect to be successful in their careers while raising a family.

"And when Ann Marie Slaughter causes a huge national uproar with an article in, I guess, The Atlantic that says women can't have it all after all, I've got news for her, no one can have it all," he quipped.

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It was nice to see some push back from the constant drone we're treated to by the talking heads in the media, who apparently will not be happy until Democrats agree to inflict some more pain on their constituents and raise Medicare retirement age along with benefit cuts. As Krugman rightfully noted, all the happy talk about politicians sitting down and having dinner together isn't going to resolve the fundamental policy differences between the two parties -- or the fact that one of them wants to completely take down our social safety nets and privatize them.

He called out George Will as well who was demanding that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz explain whether Democrats would agree to raise the Medicare age:

KRUGMAN: Is it a condition of any Republican support that you have to go for really terrible policies? Because raising the Medicare age is a terrible policy. It raises medical costs, it does very little to improve the budget. It introduces a lot of hardship. Means testing in Medicare is a better policy. I don't particularly like it, but it's a better policy.

That's the whole idea. They know it's terrible policy and they want Democrats to do their bidding for them so they can immediately turn around and run ads against them in the mid-term elections. They were cynical enough to do it before and they'll do it again. So it's not just bad policy, it's bad and stupid politics as well.

The conventional wisdom talk from the Bloomberg White House corespondent here wasn't much better. There's nothing "optimistic" about these politicians potentially sticking it to the poor and the elderly when we've got record income disparity in the United States right now.

Full transcript below the fold.

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On this Sunday's This Week, guest host Martha Raddatz did a nice job of shooting down George Will's flawed arguments on lifting the ban on women in combat. We've had women out there putting their lives on the line for years now, and it's about time they were allowed the same opportunities and recognition as their male counterparts. That didn't stop Will from throwing the red herring out there: that it's a concern they won't be able to get someone physically larger than themselves off a battlefield. As Raddatz pointed out to him, there are women on the battlefield doing exactly that right now.

RADDATZ: And you've given me the perfect segue with Army and Marines to talk about what happened this week, lifting the ban on women in combat. There were all sorts of headlines this week lauding what happened, supporting what happened rather openly.

George Will, you think it's a good idea?

WILL: Well, it depends on how it's implemented.

RADDATZ: They say the physical standards will not change.

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I'm not sure what George Will was smoking before he made an appearance on ABC's This Week on Sunday morning, but apparently he believes that Democrats agreeing to extend tax cuts for income under $400-450K somehow marks the beginning of the decline of liberalism and now no other taxes can ever be raised. And of course in Will's world, we must go after "entitlements" because the only way to keep them was going to be to raise taxes on the middle class.

Never mind that, as Robert Reich reminded him, we did just raise taxes on the middle class with the expiration of the payroll tax holiday. I'm just wondering how many things Republicans have voted for to which he's asserted that same sense of finality? Or anyone else, for that matter? Will, like other Republicans, seems to have a little bit of trouble with that whole concept of compromising -- which, as much as people may dislike the results, is what used to be considered the normal way politics operated in Washington. Now it's become a series of hostage taking events, with Republicans continually threatening to kill the hostage if they don't get what they want.

I'm pretty sure Will has been predicting liberals' demise for quite some time now, but if his party thinks the way they're operating these days is an acceptable form of governing, and if they continue to push to destroy our social safety nets, the voters will start to wake up to the fact that we've got a problem with one of the political ideologies in this country -- and it's not liberalism.

Liberal groups in this country are the ones pushing back against austerity, against the unfairness of the unequal income distribution, pushing for a tax code that's fairer and pushing to keep our social safety nets in place. Will and his ilk are ready to throw grandma and the poor and the middle class under the bus and back over them a few times.

Transcript below the fold.

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Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and conservative columnist George Will told a Sunday panel on ABC News that gun violence in the United States was caused by mental illness, video games, violence in the media and even "unparented" boys from single-parent homes -- but they refused to accept that gun control was part of the problem.

"Look, I'm a concealed-carry permit holder," Chaffetz explained. "I own a Glock 23. I've got a shotgun. I'm not the person you need to worry about. And there are millions of Americans who deal with this properly. It's our Second Amendment right to do so. But we have to look at the mental health access that these people have."

"The gun rules are very stringent. There's a lot conjecture out there that I don't think would necessarily solve this particular problem. And I want to look at anything we think will solve all the problems, but we have to, I think, look at the mental health aspect."

"As a parent, we all shed a tear," Chaffetz added as he choked up. "You put violence and death and gore in a movie, you're not going to get an R rating. You do something else, okay. I got to tell you, I think the movie ratings are terribly misleading when it comes to violence, death, gore and glamorizing."

Will, however, pointed to boys in single-parent homes as a source of the problem.

"We ought to bring in Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago," he insisted. "Chicago is an epidemic of violence with young, largely unparented -- that is, no father in the home -- adolescent males. That's a problem quite separate from this."

The conservative columnist also worried that the massacre of 20 children at an elementary school in Chicago would be used to "ratchet up the security of schools and elsewhere in public spaces."

"Our public spaces are already blighted by this," Will ranted. "For generations, people have been using the water on the [National] Mall to run little sailing boats. Now, the government in its wisdom has banned remote-control little boats on the mall water in Washington because it somehow represents a security threat to the country. We have to be a little bit reasonable."