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Looks like Kentucky Senator-elect TeaPublican Rand Paul is already flip flopping on whether he supports a ban on earmarks.

Senator-Elect Rand Paul Breaks Tea Party Pledge, Now Vows To ‘Fight’ For Earmarks:

Congressional earmarks has been one of the key targets of the Tea Party’s anti-spending fervor. Angry over the House GOP’s failure to include an earmark moratorium in its “Pledge To America,” Tea Party supporters looked to their Washington outsider candidates to champion their current raison d’être.

One Tea Party hero, Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-KY), jumped on the anti-earmark bandwagon early, making “a ban on wasteful earmark spending in Washington D.C. one of the key points of his campaign” in March. Lambasting lawmakers who opt for “photo-ops with oversized fake cardboard checks,” Paul vowed to “dismantle the culture of professional politicians” even if he “ruffled a lot of establishment feathers” while doing it.

But after joining the GOP flock on Election Day, Paul is singing a different tune. In a Wall Street Journal profile this weekend, Paul signaled an about-face on his earmark position, committing to “fight for Kentucky’s share of earmarks and federal pork.” After all, he’s “not that crazy” of a libertarian. [...]

UPDATE: Rand Paul's new-found support for earmarks marks a stark flip from his anti-earmark position he held as recently as yesterday. On ABC's This Week, host Christiane Amanpour pushed Paul on the ways he'd cut spending. When she asked about earmarks, Paul declared "no more earmarks"

His campaign made similar remarks to the staff of AC360:

COOPER: Well, after we taped that discussion this evening, we got an explanation from Rand Paul's office.

A spokesman told us "The Wall Street Journal" reporter is a good guy and a -- quote -- "thoughtful writer," but he -- quote -- "misunderstood" the part of the discussion he had about earmarks.

The spokesman for Rand Paul also told us that senator-elect Paul was saying that he will advocate for Kentucky's interests and -- quote -- "submit request for funding through the appropriations process, but he will not request earmarks."

We put in a call to "The Wall Street Journal" to see if they stand by their reporting. We haven't heard back from them. We will continue to watch what happens when Rand Paul gets to Washington.

Earmarks... did I say earmarks?

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While discussing the overblown "ground zero mosque" fake controversy on CNN's The Situation Room over the Cordoba House which as John noted started with wingnut extremist Pam "Atlas Shrugs" Geller, Bill Bennett decided to let America know that he thinks our illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq is "going nifty" and a "blessing for the people of Iraq". On what planet is having your country which was not a threat to us illegally invaded, millions of people displaced, your infrastructure blown to hell, being poisoned by DU, and another country occupying you so they can have military bases permanently set up on your soil something going "nifty" or "a blessing".

Someone should tell Bill Bennett that he really needs to lay off of Rush Limbaugh's drugs or whatever the hell he's taking. Un-friggin' believable... "a blessing". Hey Bennett, why don't we drop a few bombs on your neighborhood and then you can tell us how "blessed" you feel. Better yet, how about going over to Iraq yourself for a year or two to live and you can come back later and let us all know how wonderful it is there.

I recently posted Jeremy Scahill's speech talking about how terrible our "mainstream media" is and the need for more real journalists and especially those willing to go overseas and report on what's happening un-embedded from the U.S. military. Here's example 101 of the need for that... Bill Bennett, history revisionist who wants to tell us how wonderful things are going with our military occupation when I'm fairly sure he's never stepped foot in that country himself. I've never seen any reporting from Bennett from Iraq, just bloviating on the politics of our invasion as he did here.

BLITZER: So, Bill, is this going to be a huge political issue between now and November 2nd?

BENNETT: I think it will be big but it looks like Democrats are lining up against the president. 54 percent of Democrats the most recent poll don't agree with the president. I understand Harry Reid issued a statement he issued a statement saying he doesn't agree with the president. I don't know where his support is. Schumer and Gilibrand so far have been silent. This is a losing issue. He shouldn't have gotten into it. Gibbs said, the white house spokesman said for two weeks, this is a local issue. We're not going to get involve the in it, but they stepped in and now they're going to have to live in it. They're wrong on all counts and it will be an issue because you can not talk about 9/11 in this way as if you're instructing the American people as if they have it wrong. They don't have it wrong.

CARVILLE: Well, you know, I think that it's not a good idea. I didn't think it was a good idea, these wars. I don't think it's a good idea to try to change the way $1.2 billion people live.

BENNETT: I don't know what that means.

CARVILLE: That's what Donald Rumsfeld says. We're going to change the way they live.

BENNETT: What does have that to do --

CARVILLE: You're telling people you can't build a mosque at the old Burlington Coat Factory. I think the whole world is watching us.

BENNETT: That's -- that's right. We are saying it is wrong to build a mosque there because this thing was done in the name of Islam. And even though you may not have approved it, this guy Ralph's credentials are questionable. You should have the sensitivity to realize this is going to go down the wrong way for very rational reasons.

CARVILLE: I'll make the distinction. Islam did not attack us. Al Qaeda did. And we ought to be at war with al Qaeda and not Islamists.

BENNETT: Islamists did.

CARVILLE: I see the distinction clearly. We ought to be at war with al Qaeda.

BENNETT: The federal republic of Germany did not build Trablica but the federal republic of Germany should have the decency not to have a federal republic of Germany monument at the site of Trablica or Auschwitz.

CARVILLE: Again, I have many many Muslim friends that I hold their friendship dearly. They did not attack us.

BENNETT: Fine.

CARVILLE: And I see the distinction clearly. We ought to be at war with al Qaeda.

BENNETT: Have they condemned the attack?

CARVILLE: Plenty of people have.

BENNETT: Your Muslim friends? Would they come on my radio show and tell --

CARVILLE: We're nine years into changing the way they live. I don't think it's going too nifty out there, but that's me. Maybe I'm missing something.

BENNETT: Oh, you mean Iraq? Well, that is going nifty, as a matter of fact. That is a blessing for the people of Iraq.

BLITZER: On that note, we're going to continue this discussion. I'm sure in the days to come. Because I think both of you are right politically this issue is not going to go away. It's going to dog a lot of the candidates between now and November 2, and maybe even longer than that. Thanks very much, James Carville and Bill Bennett.

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Man oh man... all I can say is how'd you like to married to this woman? What's the deal with Republicans acting like spoiled children when they don't get their way and something pisses them off? Lady McCheney had a hissy fit on the air when her husband made the grave mistake of laughing at her when she accidentally said "tea bag people". Here's the bit that set her off while they were discussing Andrew Breitbart and his attack on Shirley Sherrod.

CARVILLE: He's at the fault of it.

MATALIN: The reason they keep repeating the same mistake and they don't take advantage of their teaching moments is because of the presumption of race and that Republicans and conservatives are racist. A year ago today or tomorrow, the president said the Cambridge cops were stupid. The tea bag people -- the Tea Party people -- see, I can't even -- they've call them that so much -- see what I mean?

They presume and they accuse conservatives of racism and they rush to judgment and they manufacture and flagrantly lie about conservatives of all stripes on radio, off the air, and they have this elitist --

CARVILLE: I'm sorry --

MATALIN: -- something despicable attitude and then they want to have --

CARVILLE: I'm sorry --

MATALIN: -- a national dialogue -- I'm not having this conversation with him, John.

CARVILLE: I'm sorry --

MATALIN: Do you want to have a conversation --

CARVILLE: I know. I'm sorry, but the person that edited -- the dishonest person in this was the filmmaker.

Sorry Mary, but no one ever said that all Republicans or conservatives are racist. The NAACP just asked the Tea Party to call out the racists in their ranks. And if you don't think there are any racists in the Tea Party, then maybe you can explain why white nationalists and members of sites like Stormfront are promoting them.

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Well this is one of the more encouraging things I've heard in a while about what's going to be done about this disaster in the Gulf. When I hear they're doing more to contain and capture the oil that's already out there I'll believe the administration is finally handling this in a manner that's actually going to do some good.

Douglas Brinkley talked to Anderson Cooper about what the Obama administration is going to do to attempt to restore the Gulf coast after years and years of neglect. Even "Be the daddy" James Carville sounded impressed. I'm holding my applause until after I see some action and not talk because it's already absolutely inexcusable that they've allowed all the dispersants to be poured into the water and not done more to contain and collect the oil so far while these BP executives are allowed to go on the air and continue denying that the huge oil plumes in the Gulf even exist.

Holding BP accountable later (which I'll believe when I see it) doesn't mean much to the people whose lives have been devastated and the dead animals in the Gulf where the environment has already been destroyed.

COOPER: Doug, what do you make of -- of the way the Obama White House is -- and federal response by the Coast Guard is -- is going?

BRINKLEY: Well, I mean, there are three things, I mean, I think, big baskets, going on.

One is close that well, get the -- capture as much oil as you can, keep the pressure on BP on the relief wells. Second is immediate cleanup. And I think more can be done by the Obama administration. And I -- and but I think the big third piece is coming, when President Obama comes to Florida and Alabama and Mississippi, and that is holding BP responsible for the Natural Resource Damage Act, for the Oil Spill Response Act. And, by that, I mean BP is going to end up paying somewhere from $10 billion to $15 billion, maybe even $20 billion, because they're going -- one of the only ways to save the Louisiana wetlands is going to be -- you know, the Mississippi River has been channelized for navigation.

Well, now the Mississippi River has to be redirected. It's going to have to be flooded and sediment pumped into these marshlands to save it. I think the Obama administration...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: So, no, wait. No, wait. Doug, is this just a hope on your part?

BRINKLEY: No.

COOPER: Or -- I mean, I know you have been talking to sources. Do you believe this is actually going to happen?

BRINKLEY: Yes. Yes.

And it's one of the reasons why the president is not talking to Tony Hayward. And they are going to come out with a large Gulf recovery act, because the oil and gas industry has been dredging. We have disappearing barrier islands. For 40 years down there, it's abused the wetlands.

This is a turning point. There is an appetite on Capitol Hill for Gulf recovery act. The Mississippi River is going to have to be redirected into the marshlands. And BP and Transocean and other, you know, operations, Cameron, other companies are going to have to pay up to $10 billion and $15 billion for breaking national acts.

(CROSSTALK)

BRINKLEY: In addition, for offshore drilling in the Gulf, Anderson, there will be a conservation excise tax that, yes, there will be offshore drilling, but Louisianians will start getting some of the revenue to stay in state.

CARVILLE: If -- if the president does that, I will be the biggest supporter in the world. He will be beloved in Louisiana.

If he -- if he has a restoration act and the kind of things that Doug Brinkley is talking about, who Doug, by the way, lived here. His wife is from here. He knows exactly what he is talking about. If there is that kind of action from the White House and this president, he will go down, in my opinion, as one of the great presidents in history.

And I have not hesitated to criticize him. But if that kind of action is -- that -- that kind of thing starts to happen, that's going to be a very encouraging sign for South Louisiana, and for the country, too.

COOPER: Doug, I mean, what percent -- I mean, you -- you -- you're saying this based on people you have talked to?

BRINKLEY: Yes.

And what is -- one of the reasons there's a frustration, because of the legalities of calling Tony Hayward and all, the -- the Obama administration has heard what's happening loud and clear. And you are going to have the full power of the administration going on the culpable parties.

All of these little articles start building up, the -- the one we talked about on the AP with the phony report about a -- they had their wildlife expert in 2009 for BP had actually died in 2005. Or, you know, it's just crazy stuff. It's all -- Markey and others are accumulating it.

Congress is going to go after BP, and they have now broken, as I said, National Resource Damage Act, Oil Spill Response Act. And in order to save the wetlands, which BP is responsible to, it's going to be -- the Army Corps of Engineers has directed -- if you fly over, it's like a bird's foot. There are three channels.

We're now going to have to redirect Mississippi River sediment and flood the marshlands to try to save them. That will occur after this -- the well gets capped, the relief wells are built. But, in the next year or two, this will be, for President Obama administration, I think something a Tennessee Valley Authority or a Saint Lawrence Seaway under Dwight Eisenhower, a major public works act, with BP...

(CROSSTALK)

BRINKLEY: ... the bill.

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Well isn't this lovely... Mr. Tell BP "I'm Your Daddy" James Carville apparently ran into BP CEO Tony Hayward and Admiral Thad Allen at dinner in Louisiana. After all the screaming he did at President Obama to get tough with BP and tell them who "the daddy" is and after numerous public temper tantrums about the response to this disaster in the Gulf, his description of the meeting to Wolf Blitzer on yesterday's The Situation Room sounds rather chummy to me.

BLITZER: Let's bring in James Carville. He's arrived from New Orleans. James, you've had some exciting moments over these past several weeks. Some of them too exciting. But tell our viewers what happened last night. You went out to dinner in New Orleans.

CARVILLE: I had actually driven up to Baton Rouge for a fund-raiser, the Congressman running for the Senate. And I was coming back and I called Ronny and Mike, two of my close friend whose work with me who work in the mayor's office. I said meet me at 1179. Let's get some dinner.

BLITZER: That's a local restaurant.

CARVILLE: It's a very kind of popular local Italian place. Mr. Joe is a very well known guy around town. I walk in and somebody says, hey, that's Admiral Allen having dinner over there, so I go over because we had talked to each other on the phone and we were going to hook up and I said, admiral, you know, how are you doing?

BLITZER: He said, hey, sit down. When an admiral sits down, you sit down. He said do you know who I'm having dinner with. I said absolutely. It's Tony Hayward.

CARVILLE: The CEO of BP.

BLITZER: The CEO of BP. So we had a pleasant conversation. I talked about working in Columbia and was going down to see my friend that I worked for. And he and Admiral Allen spent some time in Columbia with the coast guard drug interdiction and Tony at BP.

CARVILLE: Let me just set the scene. It's Tony Hayward, Thad Allen and James Carville, the three of you. You've been quite critical of Tony Hayward, everybody at BP. That must have been a little tense, that exchange that you had it.

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John King talks to James Carville and Mary Matalin who are in their home town of New Orleans looking at the damage so far from the disastrous BP oil spill. You know whatever anyone thinks about how President Obama has responded to the disaster, this woman has no right to complain about anything. Talk to your old boss Mary. He laid the groundwork for this mess. Drill, baby, drill as your good friend Sarah Palin says and we don't need no stinkin' regulations... right? That "freedom" isn't smelling so good as it leaches its way into your front yard, is it?

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I thought this sounded bad when I heard the sound byte Ed Schultz played in his Psycho Talk segment. I missed the Larry King Show on CNN the night this aired. After going back and watching the whole thing, Bay Buchanan's hackery about Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor was even worse than the short bit Ed Schultz played.

I'm no fan of David Gergen or James Carville, but they were right to call out Buchanan for her ridiculous arguments here. She loves Harriet Miers and Antonin Scalia but calls Kagan and Sotomayor "not the best and the brightest" as choices for the Supreme Court. As I noted in the other post, there are plenty of reasons someone that someone might object to Kagan's nomination, but calling her stupid isn't one of them. Both of these women are as bright and as qualified as anyone else sitting on that court. As James Carville pointed out in this segment prior to the part I posted, the biggest diversity problem the Supreme Court has now is that there is no one on there who's not a graduate from Harvard or Yale.

As Ed noted in his Psycho Talk segment, this attack is coming from someone who who praised Palin as a great choice for a Vice Presidential candidate and who was singing the praises of her accomplishments. Bay is about as credible as her brother who's got a bad crush on Sarah McQuittyWhileIRakeInTheBucks Palin. They've both got a love affair with the stoopid while trashing those who aren't if they don't fit into their political slant. It's really quite pathetic to watch since it's so transparent.

WOLF BLITZER: Bay Buchanan, do you agree with James on that?

BAY BUCHANAN: I do. I do agree with him, absolutely, Wolf. But I think there's another issue here. It's not -- and that will be used in this debate. The fact that it helps define Democrats and Obama as elitist. Everything is Ivy League. That's what makes you important.

This woman doesn't have any -- she's a blank sheet. The difference between her and Harriet Miers is Ivy League. That's it. And so, you have to wonder, is she truly qualified? Where are the writings?

If you're an academic, you write, you give your opinions, you develop, you know, motivation, certain philosophy. Where is it? There's nothing there.

And so, I have to think that this is just -- this is a very weak appointment.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: In fairness and I let David Gergen, pick this up.

David, she was the dean of the Harvard Law School. She was on associate counsel at the Clinton White House. She's a professor of law and the first woman solicitor general in the Justice Department.

DAVID GERGEN: Well, Wolf -- listen, I had the privilege to go to Harvard Law School. I'm a product of the elite schools. But I do agree with the general proposition that James advance, that it's important for the country to have all parts of the country and there are many other law schools. Bay Buchanan has a child at Stanford right now, first class law school. Chicago, there are many other law schools. So, I do think that.

But I also want to put in a word for Elena Kagan who is an excellent nominee. She is no Harriet Miers -- come on, give me a break. She was -- you know, she clerked at the court of appeals level. She clerked at the Supreme Court level. She's -- you know, she has worked at high levels in government.

She was not only an outstanding law professor but she was the first woman to being named dean of Harvard Law School, and conservatives, like Charles Fried, who is solicitor general under Ronald Reagan have written glowing reports about her deanship. She was on the short list to be a president of Harvard University. Probably good for her that she wasn't selected. She would have never made to the Supreme Court.

But she's got outstanding credentials. We've been arguing for years -- every person on the Supreme Court beyond her came up through the court of appeals. We wanted somebody with different kind of experience. President Obama has chosen someone like that.

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Larry King talked to Robert Kennedy Jr. who is representing the fishermen in Louisiana in a class action law suit against British Petroleum and James Carville about the incident at the Deepwater Horizon rig. Besides the problems with Halliburton and their faulty work with the cementing process and the lack of and the lack of an acoustic switch, Kennedy said they were also violating their permit by drilling too deeply. Although they were only permitted to drill down 18,000 ft., Kennedy said they now have evidence that they were drilling as deeply as 25,000 ft.

As Kennedy noted and Susie already wrote about here, it seems all they're worried about now is limiting their liability although the company is now trying to walk that back after the bad publicity.

The Democrats are introducing a bill to raise the liability cap that Kennedy also cited as a problem with their litigation. I think we're going to be lucky to ever get a penny back from BP or any of the companies involved but if BP violated their drilling permit as Kennedy claims here, it's going to make it harder for them to avoid responsibility for the disaster instead of pawning it off on the subcontractors.

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Sarah Palin wasn't too happy about what Joe Klein said about her on The Chris Matthews Show.

KLEIN: You know, I did—I did a little bit of research just before the show, it's no this little napkin here. I looked up the definition of sedition, which is "conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state." And a lot of these statements, especially the ones coming from people like Glenn Beck, and to a certain extent Sarah Palin, rub right next—right up close to being seditious.

Here's Palin's response crying to Sean Hannity on his show who Klein also called out but they didn't have much to say about...

PALIN: What a piece of work that Mr. Klein is for the piece that he wrote. That is something else. You know you would hope that the powers that be at a "quote un-quote" reputable organization like Time Magazine, that they would hold their employee and I assume Mr. Klein gets paid for the columns that he writes, that they would hold their employee accountable and they would actually ask him what is it that I or others in the conservative movement have said that would rise to the level of this inciting of violence and revolt and all these other things that evidently he claims.

For them to allow things like that to be printed just really discredits Time Magazine and other organizations that would allow that kind of rhetoric and false reporting. They're lies.

Sarah Palin apparently finds no irony in trashing Time Magazine for not holding their employees responsible for their words or what they write even though she works for a network that is nothing but a propaganda arm of the GOP and that has used racism and the Southern Strategy as a means to promote Republican candidates for office.

I look forward to Klein's response. He may not have gotten really specific during his statements on The Chris Matthews Show. That doesn't mean that Miss Reload should be allowed by the likes of Hannity, who Klein also called out during that segment, to dismiss the crap that's come out of her mouth. We've spent more than enough time documenting Sarah Palin and her hackery at C&L so I'm not going to rehash it here. There's just too much of it.

She and Hannity should not be allowed to be on our airways without disclaimers that right wing hatred is to follow. Sadly the same can be said for about every show on their network. I really do hope Klein responds to this nonsense. I'm no fan of Klein's since he's all too happy to promote Villager group think for my taste, but he was right to call out Palin in this instance.

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John King's new show on CNN is turning out to be just as hacktacular as I expected it to be. We already had a nice preview of what was to come from his gig hosting their Sunday bobble head show among other appearances. King decides to play the false equivalencies game with Mr. and Mrs. Carville, comparing the photos of the signing ceremonies of No Child Left Behind with Bush and the Balanced Budget Act with Clinton to the signing ceremony with Obama on the health care bill, and the horror!!... there aren't any Republicans standing behind Obama. My god how can the country survive this sudden lack of bipartisanship!? And of course it's all Obama's fault that none of the Republicans decided to play nice in Matalin's world which King is happy to play along with. Never mind that they decided to obstruct everything President Obama was going to do as soon as he got elected for political gain.

Thanks so much John King for that insightful analysis on what happened with all three of those bills and who supported them and why. Maybe you could help the Texas Board of Education with their textbooks and send them some pictures for the kids to look at, since that's obviously all they need to understand these three events.

Then King allows Lady McCheney to pretend that Joe Biden's gaffe during the press conference is somehow worse than Dick Cheney telling Pat Leahy to go f$#k himself on the Senate floor. There's no recording, so of course what Biden did much be worse, right John King? Jebus what a hack. Mary Matalin, you're right, they're not comparable, just not in the way you think.