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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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Dr. Richard Land, who is in charge of addressing social, moral, and ethical concerns as president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, says that dropping the ban on gay members and LGBT leaders will be a "catastrophe" for the Boy Scouts of America because excluding homosexuals represents the "heart and soul of scouting."

"What they've said to us and to other religious leaders is, 'We're doing this under pressure and we're going to give people, basically, what amounts to a local option,'" Land explained to CNN on Tuesday. "You can't have a local option of a core conviction."

"Yes, we live in a democracy and people can make this choice, but if they do, it's going to be a catastrophe because Baptist scouts and Catholic scouts and Mormon scouts and Methodist scouts, many of them are going to vote with their feet and they're going to leave the scouts," he added. "What they're doing is to appease their left coast and right coast appendages, they're cutting out the heart and soul of scouting in the rest of the country."

CNN host Brooke Baldwin noted that the Southern Baptist Convention had given local churches the option for the first time in 2000 of dropping the ban on women pastors.

"I hear you laugh," Baldwin said. "How is that different?"

"Well, we have about 45,000 churches, and we have about a hundred that have women pastors," Land replied. "So, I think the Convention has expressed its will. Our confession of faith is not binding on any particular Southern Baptist, but it's an expression of what we believe the Bible teaches, and the vast majority of Southern Baptist uphold that. What the scouts are doing is going back on a core value, and they're saying a core value is a local option."

"Are you saying that not allowing gay members is the heart and soul of scouting?" CNN host John Berman wondered.

"The scouts have said for themselves for over a hundred years that traditional morality is at the core value of scouting, teaching them to be morally straight," Land insisted. "And now, they're going to make it a local option under pressure from corporations and from some scout groups. A core value is not a local option."

"And let me say one other thing that nobody wants to talk about, and that is that homosexuals, by definition, are attracted to people of the same sex," he continued. "Now, I'm not accusing homosexuals of being pedophiles, but I'm accusing homosexuals of being what they say they are: attracted to males. How many people that are listening to me would allow their teenaged girls to go on camp outs and engaging in camping activities with heterosexual males?"

Baldwin pointed out that "homosexuals are no more pedophiles that heterosexuals."

"I didn't say that," Land shot back, pointing his finger at the camera. "I'm saying heterosexual males would not be allowed to be Girl Scout masters. Why? Because they're attracted to girls, to young women. In the same way, homosexual males -- I'm not talking about pedophiles -- homosexual means attracted to the same sex. Do parents really want to allow their teenaged boys to go on camp outs with men who are attracted to the same sex?"

"This verges on being beyond the realm of the rational, and it's going to lead to human tragedy. And the human tragedy is going to be, sadly, boys and men who are going to end up in relationships that are going to be tragic."

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Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins is defending the Boy Scouts of America's policy banning gay members by saying the organization wanted to "make good citizens" by encouraging scouts to be "morally straight."

In a letter earlier this week, Perkins had blasted UPS CEO D. Scott Davis after the shipping company decided to stop funding the Boy Scouts over its anti-LGBT stance.

"Apparently, the company isn't interested in true diversity but in strong-arming anyone who disagrees with their extreme agenda -- including a century-old youth development program, whose only crime is instilling character into millions of American boys," a statement on FRC's website said. "As for their longstanding policy on homosexuality, the Boy Scouts are doing what every parent would want them to: putting children's safety first."

CNN host John Berman on Friday, invited Perkins, who founded the designated hate group, to explain why his organization was boycotting UPS.

"Well, the Boy Scouts for over 100 years, as part of their moral code, has challenged boys to be straight and to be upstanding citizens," Perkins opined. "That's their code, morally straight, that they not engage in sexual behavior, that they keep themselves morally conditioned and mentally sharp, and that's been their code."

"What have you is you have a few corporations, major corporations, who are saying, look, unless you abandon a century old value set, we're not going to give you money," he continued. "And the -- some things don't change with time. The Boy Scouts are one that have laid down a marker and said we will continue with what's worked for our boys. We're going to continue to produce young men who make good citizens."

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Mr. Noun-Verb-and-Nine-Eleven Rudy Giuliani has finally decided to just openly admit that Republicans are happy to exploit the issue of terrorism if they think it will help them win elections -- Top Romney Surrogate Says Romney ‘Should Be Exploiting’ Libya Incident For Political Gain:

Top Mitt Romney surrogate Rudy Giuliani admitted that the GOP is accusing President Obama of covering up the violence that led to the death of an American ambassador in Libya for political gain.

During an appearance on CNN’s Starting Point on Monday, the former New York City mayor argued that the administration is purposely delaying investigations into the incident until after the election to “cover up” its own failures. But asked to substantiate the claim, Giuliani became agitated. He announced that he did not have to give Obama the benefit of the doubt or withhold judgment about the incident until a full investigation is complete because the president is a Democrat [...]

Republicans have a long history of politicizing acts of terrorism for political advantage: from using the 9/11 terrorist attacks to push the country into a war in Iraq, to portraying Democrats as terrorist sympathizers to score political victories in 2002 and 2004. Giuliani himself ran his presidential campaign on a “noun, verb and 9/11” and Romney’s first political instinct upon learning of violence in Libya was to accuse President Obama of apologizing for terrorism and sympathizing with the people who killed Amb. Christopher Stevens.

And as they noted, he was even less subtle during an appearance on Fox the same morning, not that it's all that surprising sine he was griping the entire time on CNN that O'Brien was defending the Obama campaign. He's in a lot friendlier territory over at GOPTV than on O'Brien's show. It seems Republicans have decided they don't need to be any more subtle about their fearmongering than they have been their race-baiting over the last few years. No more code words and dog whistles. It's sirens and blow horns these days.

Full transcript of the CNN interview below the fold.

Continue reading »

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Eric Fehrnstrom, Mitt Romney's senior campaign adviser, is denying that Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan suggested that President Barack Obama was to blame for a GM plant that was shut down while President George W. Bush was still in office.

Ryan's Wednesday night convention speech has been blasted by fact checkers at The Associated Press, USA Today and CNN (just to name a few) for what one Fox News contributor called "misrepresentations" and Salon's Joan Walsh said were just "nastiness and lies."

One of those misleading statements had to do with a Janesville plant that GM decided to close in June of 2008, but Ryan has repeatedly said that the president "broke his promise" by failing to keep it open after taking office in 2009.

"What Paul Ryan said there was clearly misleading," CNN host John Berman pointed out to Fehrnstrom on Thursday.

"Well, no," Fehrnstrom replied. "He didn't talk about Obama closing the plant. He said that candidate Obama went there in 2008, and what he said was with government assistance, we can keep this plant open for another 100 years."

The adviser continued: "Here we are four years into his administration. That plant is still closed. I think it's a symbol of a recovery that hasn't materialized for the people of Janesville, Wisconsin, just as it hasn't materialized for Americans everywhere."

"He left the impression that President Obama shut that plant down," Berman pressed.

"Well, I would encourage people to go back and look at what candidate Obama said in 2008," Fehrnstrom insisted. "What he said was with his recovery program, with government assistance, we can keep that plant open for 100 years. Four years later, it's still shuttered. I think it's a symbol of a broken economy under this president."

Earlier this year, Fehrnstrom was widely mocked after he said that Romney could shake up his campaign "like an Etch A Sketch" and "start over again" after spending the primary season pandering to conservative voters. As the general election campaign was underway in June, the adviser tried to deflect attention from the candidate's extreme positions on contraception and abortion rights by saying that women's issues were just "shiny objects" being used to distract voters.

(h/t: Talking Points Memo)

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Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Friday refused to explain why presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would not release his tax returns, calling the request a "distraction" that was bad as so-called "birthers" who believe that President Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen.

During an interview on CNN, host Brooke Baldwin pointed out that a recent CNN poll found that 63 percent of voters wanted Romney to diclose more than the two years of tax returns he had already released.

"Come on, Reince," Baldwin pleaded with Priebus. "It's a perfectly valid question. If American say -- if they say they want to see tax returns, why shouldn't -- they deserve to see them. Tranparency."

"I can think of a million interesting questions," Priebus replied.

"How about the answer though?" Baldwin pressed.

"It's ridiculous," the RNC chairman insisted. "I mean, he's released two years of taxes, he's releasing 2011, he released 500 pages of documents. This is -- the fact of the matter is any second that we spend not talking the fact that this president failed in his mission -- the mission to fix this economy. He campaigned on this economy. He hasn't accomplished a darn thing. We're worse off. That's the issue. And I'm not spending any more time talking about this issue."

Changing the subject, guest host John Berman noted that his sources had confirmed that billionaire birther Donald Trump claimed he would have a "major role" at this month's Republican National Convention.

"Donald Trump is a good friend of our party," Priebus explained. "And I'm thankful to Donald Trump for all the work that he's done for us and for Gov. Romney. So, I do agree that he's been a very good friend of ours, but I don't know right now what he's going to do at the convention."

"But I do know that he's important to us, and I know that he's somebody that we appreciate," he added. "Because he's telling the truth as far as where we're at in this economy."

"Is it a good message to send for a guy who's still a birther, still calling for the president to release his college transcripts?" Berman wondered. "Is that the kind of guy you want on the podium during the Republican convention?"

"I have been, from the very moment that I have been chairman of this party, very clear as far as where I stand on that issue," Priebus remarked. "And it's just as much a distraction as it is for people to ask for more, more tax returns and all of these other issues."

(h/t: Think Progress)