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Isn't this special? Chris Wallace decided to take up for his poor, downtrodden fellow Fox "News" contributor Karl Rove on this week's Fox News Sunday. Wallace wanted to know why Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin was picking on poor old Rove instead of going after liberal groups as well for claiming 501(c)(4) tax exempt status, and as Durbin had to explain to him, twice, he went after Rove because he was openly bragging about the fact that he was going to violate the law.

I was also glad to see Durbin take up Lawrence O'Donnell's cause here and mention that the law on the books actually says these groups should be exclusively engaged in social welfare (and it's a big stretch to call any of what they do "social welfare" in the first place) and not politics and that it should be applied to all of them equally. Good. Let's see an executive order mandating that the IRS fix their improper interpretation of the statute and make every one of these groups pay their taxes like the rest of us.

WALLACE: Senator Durbin, I want to pick up on this culture. Starting in 2010, a number of Democratic senators -- Democrat senators -- sent letters to the IRS asking them to investigate various groups that they said were seeking tax-exempt status, but were improperly involved in politics. Now, in October 2010, you sent a letter to the IRS in which you talked about going after groups.

But you only mentioned one specifically by name and I want to put this up from the October 2010 letter that you wrote to the IRS, "One organization whose activities appear to be inconsistent with the tax status is Crossroads GPS." That, of course, a group co-founded by Karl Rove.

Question, Senator -- why single out Crossroads when you did not mention one single liberal group, and there were a bunch that were applying for that exempt-status exactly that point, with the name "progress" in their names?

DURBIN: I can just tell you flat out why I did it, because that Crossroads organization was boasting about the money they were raising as a 501(c)(4).

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So Republicans, how's that minority outreach program of yours going? It seems xenophobes like Kris Kobach haven't learned anything from his buddy Mitt Romney's loss in the presidential election.

Big Surprise: Kris Kobach Still Believes in Self-Deportation:

Remember how the Mitt Romney-espoused "self-deportation" rhetoric was supposed to end up in the dustbin of history following President Obama's huge margins among Latino voters back in November? Apparently no one told Kris Kobach.

The Kansas secretary of state and intellectual author of harsh laws in states like Arizona and Alabama was back at it again earlier today, this time at the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings on the Gang of Eight's immigration bill. In response to questions from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Kobach said that "self-deportation is not some radical idea. It is simply the idea that people may comply with the law by their own choice."

GOP Immigration Guru Insists DREAMers Should Self-Deport:

Speaking at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing, Kobach insisted that DREAM eligible applicants, many of whom have lived in the United States for most of their lives, should not be rewarded for the “sins of their parents.” Instead, DREAMers should go back to their parents’ country of origin, Kobach said, and “get in line with the rest of their countrymen.” “That just defies basic compassion,” Durbin shot back, pointing to to Gabby Pacheco, an undocumented immigrant brought to America at the age of eight from Ecuador, who was testifying alongside Kobach. “She’s never known any other country,” Durbin explained, “this is her home.” [...]

Kobach responded by reviving self-deportation, arguing that “if you ratchet up the penalties for violating the law, people choose to leave.”

But Durbin predicted that the momentum has shifted from deportation to reform after the 2012 election. “Ultimately the voters have the last word. The voters had the last word on self-deportation on Nov. 6, so we’re beyond that now,” he said.

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Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham -- who once accused opponents of the Iraq invasion of trying to "subvert America" -- is now blasting the The Wall Street Journal for beating the "war drums" because the editorial board expressed support for President Barack Obama's use of drones.

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday asked Ingraham what she thought of the split within the Republican Party after Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) criticized Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) filibuster of CIA Director John Brennan over speculation that President Barack Obama might target citizens inside U.S. borders with drone strikes.

"John McCain, Lindsey Graham and The Wall Street Journal editorial board, extremely dismissive of Rand Paul," Ingraham pointed out. "Wall Street Journal said, 'Calm down;' said, 'You don't have to do more than fire up impressionable libertarians in their college dorms.'"

"I thought to myself, when is the last time a Republican managed to capture the imagination of young people, some people on the left, Mitch McConnell, John Thune, John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio?" she added. "There was a wide range of Republicans and people on the left who said, 'You know something? I think the attorney general should be able to answer a simple question [about the use of drones] with an unequivocal yes or no.' He couldn't do that, and Rand Paul served an enormously important function during that filibuster. He wasn't waving his hands and ranting and raving, contrary to what the Journal condescendingly said."

Liberal contributor Juan Williams argued that the targeted killing policy needed to have transparency and judicial review, but Paul was "grand standing" with his filibuster.

"But the fact is that no U.S. citizen has ever been targeted or killed by a drone on U.S. soil," Williams explained. "And secondly, the Constitution gives the president authority to go after a U.S. citizen if that U.S. citizen is somehow involved in colluding with an enemy of the United States."

"I just want to say that I love the fact that we have the hawk, Juan Williams, and the dove, Laura Ingraham," Wallace snarked.

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Who needs Fox when you've got hosts like NBC's David Gregory repeating Republicans' talking points for them as he did here on this Sunday's Meet the Press. Somehow I don't ever remember Karl Rove's dance partner ever complaining about out of control government spending back when George W. Bush was busting the bank with a couple of wars he left off of the books and with tax cuts for the wealthy.

GREGORY: I want to get back to the automatic spending cuts and ask a fundamental question that I think Republican critics of this president are asking. Do you not concede that there is a spending problem in Washington? Even when it comes to the 50% cuts out of the sequester that are for the Defense Department. You have said in recent interviews you could live with those. You don't like the manner in which the cuts would be made, but you could live with those cutbacks to the Pentagon. So isn't there a spending problem here that must be addressed?

DURBIN: Absolutely. And I believe, as chairman of The Defense Appropriation Subcommittee in-- in the Senate, that we can save money, cut waste in the Pentagon, and not compromise our national security. But to do this in such a haphazard way over the remaining six or seven months is going to be unfair to the military and their families.

Think about this for a second. Cutting back on psychological counseling for the members of the military and their family during the remainder of this year, when we have this grievous problem of suicides in the military and readjustment when they come home from battle? We can't do that.

GREGORY: But isn't there always a reason-- (crosstalk) Isn't there always a reason to spend the money in Washington?

Can't you always find a reason not to cut? Isn't this the Republican argument that, at least here, if worse comes to worse and the sequester passes, at least we'll get spending cuts, how else to force the President's hand?

DURBIN: But listen. Do we really want to base our spending cuts on reducing medical research in America, on eliminating 70,000 children from Head Start, that early learning program that's so important? These things don't make sense. Let's sit down and do this in a thoughtful manner. And let's include revenue. We should have half of this as revenue from tax reform and the other half in spending cuts. And I support those spending cuts.

Sadly what was not mentioned here is that the Progressive Caucus in the House has a plan for reducing the deficit without causing pain to the poor and the working class. If Sen. Durbin doesn't want to help Gregory push his right wing talking points, maybe he should consider bringing this plan up the next time he's on the air: The Balancing Act.

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Before the election, Rep. Kevin McCarthy said that electing Mitt Romney would mean that Republicans have a mandate to overhaul Medicare: House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy: Election is ‘Mandate’ to Overhaul Medicare:

House Republican Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) says electing Mitt Romney this fall means Republicans have a ‘mandate’ to overhaul Medicare. As McCarthy put it, “If there’s a mandate going through this election, it’s to save Medicare.” As I put it: When Republicans say “save Medicare” they mean end Medicare as we know it. They would keep a government program called Medicare but it would not be the Medicare that has existed for almost half a century. The Republican plan for Medicare is to turn it into a program designed to shortchange seniors while increasing profits for private insurance companies.

We have a single payer health care insurance program that works very well for senior citizens. We don’t need to hand Medicare over to private insurance. Republicans can continue to blame Democrats for doing nothing to “save Medicare” but Republicans are the “kill Medicare” party and they have been for decades.

If what he said on this Sunday's Meet the Press is any indication, McCarthy hasn't seemed to figure out that they lost. And we've already explained here why this trial balloon put out there by the administration, where it seems they've forgotten who won as well, is a really bad idea that needs to be pushed back against forcefully. As everyone explained, even partially privatizing Medicare is not going to "save" the program. It just makes the cost of health care coverage more expensive for seniors.

I was glad to see Sen. Dick Durbin say raising the age is off the table during this interview, but I wasn't thrilled about him offering up means testing. Digby has more on that here: Hot Air Trial Ballooning:

I have a sneaking feeling that Durbin is throwing up a smokescreen there (or he's been smoking some of that special Alan Simpson sensimilla.) He must know that the argument is that Obamacare will pick up the slack if they decide to raise the Medicare age. If he doesn't then he needs to find another line of work.

Even Mitt Romney's health care advisor, Avik Roy from the Manhattan Institute, knows that. Here's what he said on Up with Chris Hayes this morning (with Steve Kornacki subbing for Chris)

"I have to respond to this interesting hyperbole about Medicare death sentence. If you raise the retirement age for Medicare, we have the Affordable Care Act as the backstop. Everybody under 400% poverty level is still covered with the affordable care act in place. So what we are really talking about is means testing Medicare by raising the retirement age. People who are upper income, above 400% of the poverty level won't be subsidized if they're younger retirees. It's where entitlement reform should go, to expand it into the retiree population."

(Kornacki pointed out that ACA is being challenged so it's not exactly a backstop at this point, but he let the topic drop in favor of more masturbation over tax rates.)

It sounds as if Roy and Jonathan Chait may have found the bipartisan sweet spot for Obamacare. Privatize Medicare! Now that really is a Grand Bargain.

Before everyone gets into another tizzy about how shrill and unreasonable I'm being for taking this rumor seriously, let's have a little discussion of what a "trial balloon" is. It is, simply, a rumor that's purposefully spread during a negotiation in order to gauge the reaction. Therefore, it is important to react, not act all glib and self-assured that it could never happen. They want to know if you think this is a good idea, so if you don't you should say so. And you should say it in a shrill enough fashion that they know it's a very big deal, if you think it's a very big deal.

Transcript below the fold.

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It seems this ongoing feud between former Sen. Alan Simpson and anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist isn't going to end any time soon. Simpson went after Norquist again on Hardball this Tuesday while doing his usual fearmongering over the "fiscal cliff."

Alan Simpson on fiscal cliff: ‘Go big or go home’:

Piecemeal measures won’t save us from the fiscal cliff, former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY), told Hardball’s Chris Matthews on Tuesday. His advice for his former colleagues: “Go big or go home.”

“On Dec. 31st there’s a mess floating around right now, about $7.2 trillion bucks worth of stuff…[we’ve] got to do something,” Simpson said. [...]

Simpson said some lawmakers “love their party more than they love their country,” and that they would wait until the last minute to strike a deal. “They’re going to react right down to the last point when there’s going to be blood and hair and eyeballs all over the floor and they’re going to come up with something, but let me tell you, if it’s just kicking the can down the road, the can is now a 55 gallon drum filled with explosives. You can’t play that game anymore,” said Simpson.

If there’s no real deal, he said, “the markets are going to chop us up and it will be an unknown day.”

The former lawmaker also took a hit at conservative activist Grover Norquist’s crusade to get members of Congress to vow never to raise taxes.

“So how do you deal with guys who came to stop government, or Grover wandering the Earth in his white robe saying you want to drown government in the bathtub. I hope he slips in there with it,” Simpson said.

Of course Matthews let him get away with the typical false equivalency game they've been playing, where they pretend that the likes of Norquist is the equivalent of those on the left who don't want to see our social safety nets destroyed and calls everyone "loons." There's nothing "looney" about wanting to protect the poor, the elderly and the middle class and allowing people to retire with dignity, instead of having to work until they drop dead.

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I was glad to see Sen. Dick Durbin bring this up during his interview on Fox News Sunday and go after Darrell Issa for his document dump this week, because lord knows Chris Wallace or Sen. Lindsey Graham weren't going to mention it.

Durbin Attacks Issa For Compromising US Informants In Libya:

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) went after House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) for publicly posting State Department cables that compromised the names of several Libyans working with the United States and put them in danger.

"This idea of Chairman Issa, that he's going to dump the names in public of Libyans who are risking their lives to support America and keep us safe, in an effort to get a political toehold in this election is unconscionable," Durbin said. "It is unacceptable."

Wallace tried to get Graham to respond and asked him if he was just trying to politicize the situation as well, and Graham completely ignored Wallace's question and Issa recklessness, and just said "thank God for some Republican control of one branch of the government," and then continued to play politics with the embassy attack in Libya.

And right on cue, the right is going nuts over Durbin's Monday morning quarterbacking reference. Break out the pearls and the smelling salts, we've got their latest fake controversy to be outraged over.

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Here we go again with another beltway Villager giving Mitt Romney cover for not releasing his tax returns. From this Sunday's Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer took his turn and treated us to the false equivalency game with Harry Reid.

Apparently now politicians are supposed to be held to the same standards as journalists, not that I consider Schieffer a journalist. Schieffer was terribly very upset that Reid won't reveal his source on Romney's tax returns, and the fact that he won't of course means Schieffer thinks Reid is lying.

Never mind that Romney has given us no reason to trust him after he lied about his Massachusetts residency and had to retroactively amend his tax returns. It's too bad Schieffer doesn't think the guy running for president should be held to the same standards as the Senator from Nevada.

If Bob Schieffer is truly concerned about politicians lying, it might be nice if he mentioned the fact that the Romney campaign has been running on nothing but one lie after another, starting with his very first attack ad against President Obama which took him out of context while quoting John McCain. I'm not holding my breath though.

Transcript below the fold:

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This has to be one of the more ridiculous things I've heard out of a Republican in a while and that's saying a lot given the amount of lies that come out of most of their mouths most of the time their lips are moving. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl appeared on Meet the Press this Sunday and actually tried to blame outsourcing by corporations on taxes, regulation and "Obamacare" when asked about the dust up over Mitt Romney's outsourcing at Bain Capital.

It's pretty bad when even hack David Gregory has to point out that it's pretty hard to be blaming "Obamacare" or the Affordable Care Act for companies shipping jobs overseas since the practice has been going on for decades now. The truth of the matter is companies ship jobs overseas for cheap labor for one reason and that's to maximize profits. It's not for any concern for American citizens or the American economy. And because they're rewarded and not punished by our tax laws for doing so, we're not going to see the practice stop until our laws are changed.

Democrats have been trying to get Republicans to actually do something about this problem as Sen. Dick Durbin pointed out in his reply to Kyl's nonsense. Sen. Debbie Stabenow has introduced legislation that would "eliminate tax breaks allowing companies to deduct expenses associated with moving operations overseas, while still encouraging them to assist displaced workers. It also would provide a tax credit to corporations that bring jobs back to the United States."

So far the response from Republicans has been for John Boehner to refuse to allow it to come to the floor for a vote in the House and we're looking at the Senate voting on the bill later this month. Naturally when Durbin was trying to elicit a response from Kyl on whether the Republicans in the Senate would vote for the bill or not, David Gregory managed to change the subject so he had no chance for follow up with him.

Instead Kyl was allowed to spout his "we can't raise taxes on the job creators" nonsense with Gregory leaving him unchallenged on their B.S. talking point as well. For once I'd like someone to ask Kyl and his ilk why, if cutting taxes supposedly created jobs, we weren't at full employment while Bush was in office, or given his latest ridiculous argument here, why we didn't see outsourcing under Bush end or at least be reduced as well. If we had an actual journalist instead of a Republican water carrier hosting this show, we wouldn't even see the likes of Kyl show up as a guest, because it would not take a whole lot of follow up to make him look extremely foolish with the arguments he was trying to make here.

Transcript below the fold.

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Former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu on Monday attempted to defend GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's links to jobs that Bain Capital helped send overseas by claiming that President Barack Obama "outsourced" NASA's Shuttle program to Russia -- something actually orchestrated by former President George W. Bush.

Over the weekend, Senate majority whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that Romney was "running away from his company, Bain Capital, like a scalded cat" because he didn't want to be associated with jobs that were sent to countries like China by the companies it invested in.

On Monday, Sununu attempted to flip the outsourcing argument back on President Barack Obama and "the management eunuchs at the White House."

"You want to talk outsourcing?" Sununu asked CNN's Soledad O'Brien. "Let's go back to the Solyndra, Fisker, BrightSource, First Wind -- all of grants that were given to cronies, to people who bundled, to people who contributed to Obama."

"In fact, we had an event yesterday that wasn't well reported," he continued. "We launched a U.S. astronaut up to the space station. But you know how she was launched? She was launched on a Russian spacecraft because President Obama has outsourced a major portion of the U.S. space program to the Russians."

"So, let's stop playing games with this outsourcing distortion."

Only 12 hours earlier, the conservative Drudge Report had featured an all-caps headline reading, "OUTSOURCED IN SPACE: NASA SENDS ASTRONAUT ON RUSSIAN ROCKET" that linked to an Investors Business Daily columnist Andrew Malcolm -- who was previously listed as number 28 on Salon's "Hack List" -- calling the mission "real Obama outsourcing."

But it was it was president Bush in 2004 who announced that the Shuttle program would be retired before the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and Ares 1 launcher was ready to take American astronauts into space.

In 2008, Bush signed a waiver allowing U.S. astronauts to fly to the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz vehicles beyond 2011.