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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) is insisting that his famous family name will not hurt him at all if he decides to run for president in 2016.

Fox News host Chris Wallace pointed out to Bush on Sunday that his brother, George W. Bush, had been "somewhat unpopular" when he left office in 2009.

"Do you think there is any Bush baggage?" Wallace wondered. "Do you think that would be a problem?"

"No," the former Florida governor replied. "I don't think there's any Bush baggage at all. I love my brother, I'm proud of his accomplishments, I love my dad, I am proud to be a Bush."

"And if I run for president, it's not because of something in my DNA that compels me to do it. It would be that it's the right thing to do for my family, that the conditions are right and that I have something to offer."

According to a 2009 CBS News/New York Times poll, former president George W. Bush left office with an approval rating of 22 percent, the lowest approval since the Gallup began asking the question 70 years earlier.

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Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan believes that the US should "follow the law" and let the Bush tax cuts lapse. He disagreed Sunday with Republicans who say that tax cuts pay for themselves.

"I am very much in favor of tax cuts but not with borrowed money," Greenspan said during an appearance on NBC.

"The problem that we've gotten into in recent years is that spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous and my view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here," said Greenspan.

"You don't agree with Republican leaders who say tax cuts pay for themselves?" asked NBC's David Gregory.

"They do not," Greenspan replied firmly.

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I wonder if Sean Hannity fed Elisabeth Hasselbeck her talking points before President Obama appeared on The View this week? Hasselbeck got taken to school over jobs saved and unemployment by the President in this segment.

Hasselbeck: I want to get to something that’s really important to so many Americans. You had promised that the stimulus bill would cap unemployment at 8 percent. We’re at near 10 percent across the country, 12 percent in my home state of Rhode Island. We are in a state of chronic joblessness. Yet, and we heard in the beginning of the show as well, you claimed that there’s "saved jobs", something, a standard that’s not been used before by any administration. [Sigh]

It’s frustrating to hear that saved jobs boasting, because it doesn’t feel that way to Americans when they don’t have jobs and they’re losing jobs. How can you continue and your administration continue saying you’re saving jobs when in fact people are losing jobs?

Obama: Well, actually Elisabeth what’s happened is that we’ve gained private sector jobs for the last five months. So, we were losing jobs when I was sworn in, as I said 750,000 jobs per month. We’ve now gained jobs for five consecutive months in the private sector. You’re absolutely right that it’s not enough. And if you don’t have a job right now, the only answer you want to hear is "I’m hired".

Hasselbeck: Right.

Obama: So, the frustration that people have is entirely justified. Now, I have to tell you though, this isn’t just my standard, Elisabeth, or my administration’s standard. There was a report that came out by a couple of economists just today, including John McCain’s former economist, that said had we not taken the steps that we had took, you would have actually seen millions of more jobs lost and we would be in a Great Depression. So, I know that’s not satisfying and it’s not good enough. But...

Hasselbeck: I think it’s the word ‘saved’ is what’s troubling people cause they don’t feel it.

Obama: Well, it makes a difference though if your job is one of the one that was one of the ones that was saved.

Someone needs to ask Hannity in a skirt if she's seen Steve Benen's monthly jobs chart if she thinks that nothing's been done to improve things since President Obama came into office. Most on the left would argue that not enough has been done and we had a reversal in the trend last month but we're definitely moving away from the bottomless pit Bush was taking us into.

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Jebus these people just have no shame. Republican water carrier and toe-sucker Dick Morris goes after the Obama administration for not regulating the oil industry and cleaning up the Bush stink at the MMS in time to prevent this disaster we've got in the Gulf.

It's actually pretty pitiful that I find myself agreeing with him that better regulation should have been in place on the oil industry, but I don't ever remember hearing Dick Morris being some champion of regulation before this huge disaster and it's not like this is the first time this has happened. Now that things have turned into a huge clusterf**k Dick Morris and Sean Hannity have decided they're some great champions of government regulation.

What happened to the free market here guys? What happened to that evil "gubmit" putting its foot down on industry and slowing economic growth because of the horrible burdens being regulated would place on them? What happened to singing the songs of your favorite Fox News pundit Sarah Drill-Baby-Drill-Drill-Here-Drill-Now half term governor?

Sorry Dick but you can't have it both ways. And the same goes for you Hannity. You want your free market, here it is. Neither of you cared one iota for government regulation of the oil industry until you wanted government to come in and fix their mess. These two remind me of petulant children who demand their parents fix their toys after they throw them to the ground and want to know why they're broken.

I don't like what's going on with this gusher in the Gulf and we've been being lied to about how large it is from day one by everyone. BP has been completely inadequate with addressing the clean up or containment. Thad Allen looks like he's playing cover for BP instead of actually caring whether we get that oil out of the water but I would imagine it's also well over his pay grade to be bringing in tankers to suck the oil up.

That said Dick Morris and Sean Hannity need to STFU until they decide that maybe the free market and industries run wild are not the answers to everything and quit championing that when they screw up their losses should be socialized and the government has to fix it after they privatized the profits.

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You gotta' love that the Republicans aren't ashamed to trot good old Diaper-boy Vitter out there to remind everyone about those Republican family values. At the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, David Vitter basically tells us what we know already; that the Republicans are using the Tea Party movement to get their base fired up and win elections in the fall. This whole astroturf movement has been nothing but some major turd polishing to try to get the Bush-stink away from the Republican brand.

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April 01, 2010 FOX News

Heather: In one of the few sane segments you're ever going to find on the Glenn Beck Show, Naomi Wolf talks to Beck fill-in Napolitano about where we're headed if we don't have more cases like this one.

Judge: Warrantless Wiretaps Were Illegal:

The National Security Agency's program to spy on Americans without warrants was illegal, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. The ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker (PDF) was a win for civil libertarians, and a major victory for the plaintiffs in this case, Al-Haramain, an Islamic charity that was wiretapped, along with its lawyers, in 2004.

Groups like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have tried out numerous legal strategies in a years-long effort to challenge the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. The Al-Haramain case represents the first time that plaintiffs who claim they were wiretapped have been able to get around the so-called "state secrets" clause, which acts as a sort of "get-out-of-court-free" card for the government in many national security cases. Al-Haramain's win could be temporary, though: the Obama administration will almost certainly appeal the decision. (Update: Marcy Wheeler disagrees.) Read on...

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Dylan Ratigan allows Marsha Blackburn to come on his show and play populist with her concerns for transparency and the national debt. This woman is about as far to the right as you can get with her voting record but he's going to allow her to come out and paint herself as some politician that's just concerned for the average working person out there.

BLACKBURN: Dylan one of the things you have to do is regain their trust. You do that by transparency, by moving these discussions out in the open where the American people can see and hear what is being done and said and I think that's an important step in this process. Certainly you mentioned the Tea Party movement and Enough is Enough. That is what people are saying. They've had it. Enough is enough. They are looking at a budget that the President has brought forward today that is focused on debt. It is not focused on jobs and creating jobs. And I think that's why so many people have said look, we're frustrated with this.

One of the things I'm going to do is immediately file the bills I file every year that call for 1%, 2% and 5% across the board spending reducations. Let's actually begin to cut what the Federal government spends.

The Republicans are all suddenly worried about the debt now that a Democrat is in charge when we never heard this kind of carping out of them while Bush was running the show. Blackburn goes on to claim that she "doesn't do earmarks". From Media Matters -- Rep. Blackburn Blasts Earmarks, Forgetting Her Own:

In a December 2, 2009 op-ed in the Washington Times, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) urged Republicans to campaign on earmark reform, noting she had "sworn off" earmarks herself. During the preceding year, Congresswoman Blackburn requested nearly $12 million in earmarks. As Blackburn has no doubt realized, it's easy to fast immediately after a $12 million meal.

She then goes on to cite Rep. Paul Ryan's "Roadmap to Recovery" as a solution to America's financial problems.

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October 22, 2009 CBC The Hour

Bill Maher blast Bush and Obama on the economy and lots more

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October 20, 2009 PBS News Hour

The tenure of Berkeley law professor John Yoo has come under fire amid a backlash over the role he played in the Bush administration, advising on the legalities of now-controversial interrogation tactics used on terror suspects. Spencer Michels reports.

SPENCER MICHELS: Since the beginning of the school year, protesters dressed as prisoners or detainees have dogged law professor John Yoo at the University of California at Berkeley. They want the university to fire him for advising the Bush administration, as an attorney in the Justice Department, that it could legally torture suspected terrorists to get information.

PROTESTER: This is a not just a question of academic opinions. This is a question of war crimes. People like John Yoo, these people should be fired.

SPENCER MICHELS: Forty-two-year-old John Yoo has taught here since 1993, except for 2001 to 2003, when he worked for the Justice Department in the Office of Legal Counsel.

During those years, after 9/11, the U.S. was interrogating prisoners, suspected terrorists, at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Yoo wrote several memos on how far the interrogators could go in pressuring prisoners to reveal information. Those memos argued that techniques such as water- boarding, sleep deprivation, and exploiting a detainee's fear of insects were, in fact, legal.

Yoo's actions have reverberated throughout Boalt Hall, the Berkeley law school where Yoo teaches. Students and faculty are debating the bounds of academic freedom, and whether a professor should be held responsible for controversial work done outside the university.

DAVID ARABELLA, law student: I believe that he does have a right to teach here, because people can have controversial views. But, personally, I'm not going to enroll in his class.

SPENCER MICHELS: The law school dean, Christopher Edley, who has served in several Democratic administrations, has been besieged by messages, the majority against Professor Yoo.

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September 12, 2009 News Corp- Fox & Friends

Heather: Shorter Ralph Peters- Killing more brown people solves everything and we need that "decider" W back. Or maybe he meant Dick Cheney. God knows Bush wasn't deciding anything for eight years. We need to be getting the hell out of that country, not sending more troops.