Lawrence O'Donnell pretty well eviscerated the "Independent" Women's Forum's Gayle Trotter, and her appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, where she testified that assault weapons should not be outlawed because they were the "weapon of choice" for young mothers who need a "scary-looking gun."

I was glad to see O'Donnell call out her organization for being anything but "independent" because they're not. And apparently attorney Trotter, who also opposes the Violence Against Women Act (go read why), isn't too fond of being called a right-winger. O'Donnell's back-and-forth with her starts about nine minutes into the clip above.

Here's more from O'Donnell's blog at MSNBC: ‘Guns make women safer,’ says Gayle Trotter. Study says, not so:

The use of assault weapons among women emerged as standout topic at Wednesday’s Senate hearing on gun control legislation. Gayle Trotter, a lawyer and senior fellow at the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, said women need that type of firearm to level the playing field when confronted by physically stronger male attackers.

The guns rights advocate told lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee that “guns make women safer.” To her, AR-15s are the “weapon of choice” because “they have good handling, they’re light, they’re easy for women to hold.” And the appearance of such a “scary-looking gun” deters violent male criminals during home invasions.

But a recent study conducted by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center disputed those assertions. The study found that women living in states with more accessibility to guns are at a greater risk for violent death. This includes “unintentional gun deaths, suicides and homicide, particularly firearm suicides and firearm homicides.”

During an interview on The Last Word Wednesday night, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell challenged Trotter for not being able to provide one real life example of a case when an assault weapon specifically saved one woman’s life in that kind of a situation. “You don’t go to the Senate to imagine things!” O’Donnell said.

While speaking in front of the senators, Trotter described a hypothetical scene of a “young woman defending her babies in her home” when faced with “three, four, five violent attackers, intruders in her home with her children screaming in the background” as a reason to own an assault rifle.

“The peace of mind that she has, knowing that she has a scary-looking gun, gives her more courage when she’s fighting hardened, violent criminals,” said Trotter, who was the only woman on the five-person panel.

“If we ban these types of assault weapons, you are putting these types of women at a great disadvantage–more so than men because they don’t have the same type of physical strength and opportunity to defend themselves in a hand-to-hand struggle.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse pointed out that the woman she referred to in her statement, a young Oklahoma mother who shot an intruder, used a gun that wouldn't be banned by the law.

DOWNLOADS: (1631)

PLAYS: (3201)

Embed

From Hardball, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Sen. Bernie Sanders discuss the progress being made in the Senate on the health care bill. It sounds like things are getting closer to a deal finally being struck. Sen. Sanders is right about what's going on. If the Democrats were serious about putting together some real reform, they'd be talking about single-payer. I love Bernie. God knows we need about fifty more of him instead of these guys on the take from the insurance industry right now.

MATTHEWS: Let`s start, however, with the important stuff, the gang of 10 Democrats trying to get health care reform done now. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is a Democrat from Rhode Island and Senator Bernie Sanders is an independent from Vermont.

Senator Whitehouse, your thoughts about this option, this new -- novel new plan to allow regular people to buy into the plan available to federal employees for health care? Your thoughts?

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: I would describe it as a helpful idea that has been added to the mix. I think the acid test is whether the public option that emerges from it will create actual competition for the insurance companies who dominate so many of the states with enormous market share, and whether it will help put an end to the insurance company abuses, where you get thrown off your coverage when you have the temerity to get sick, or when if you have a preexisting condition, they won`t insure you at all, when your doctor tries to send a bill out there, refuse to pay it, all that nonsense. There`s got to be an alternative to that.

MATTHEWS: Senator Sanders, your thoughts about this new option on the table?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, it is one of the ideas that`s out there, as Sheldon indicates. The bottom line is, many of us made it clear, we need a strong public option so the American people have a choice about something other than a private insurance company whose function in life is to make as much money as possible.

And secondly, Chris, if we are serious about cost containment, which we must be at a moment when health care costs are projected to soar, we need real competition for the private insurance companies, and that`s what the public option concept is all about.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (139)

PLAYS: (586)

Embed

During the Senate floor debate on the health care bill, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse calls out Republican hyprocrisy on their feigned concern for deficits and spending.

DOWNLOADS: (1362)

PLAYS: (1470)

Embed

Morgan Weiland at Media Matters summed up this segment nicely--Memo to the media: This has been a great week for health reform:

Discussing health care reform today on Morning Joe, co-host Joe Scarborough and NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd agreed that "[t]his week has been a mess for the Democrats." Todd added that "it does seem like they decided to take two steps back after they took one step forward because now they got a trillion dollar bill in the House, which is about $150 billion more than they said, than the President said that he wanted, and now they've got to have this back and forth and figure out how to get six to 10 moderate Democrats and Olympia Snowe on board."

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree that the past week was "a mess for the Democrats." Speaker Pelosi reported out a full House bill, the American Affordable Health Choices Act (H.R. 3962), that achieves a number of key fiscal goals that only this summer many in the media were insisting were out of reach. The Congressional Budget Office found that the bill reduces the deficit by $104 billion over the next decade, and continues to chip away at it in the subsequent decade. Plus it comes in under the magic $900 billion number for the net cost of coverage expansion over 10 years -- a cost that is, in CBO's words, "more than offset." And these achievements are doubly important because they satisfy President Obama's must-have requirement that reform "[w]on't add a dime to the deficit."

If anything, all of this adds up to a big step forward -- arguably a bigger one than has ever taken to achieve comprehensive health care reform in this country.

Not in the Villagers on Morning Joe's world though. In their view it's just terrible that the Democrats are breaking with the White House and their obsession with bipartisanship and catering to Olympia Snowe and her love of the trigger. They're more worried about advancing the meme that the Democrats are in disarray and everything is smelling like roses for the Republicans.

Of course we’re not going to get any sort of substantive debate about what’s actually in these bills and what those changes might mean to the American public. No, we get horse race coverage and meaningless talking points churned out as Chuck Todd whines about being criticized for the way they're covering the issue.

They also never talk about what it would mean if Harry Reid forces an actual filibuster--if he would make any of these Senators who are opposed to the bill have to stand up and debate until they dropped. Later in the segment Sheldon Whitehouse was asked if this could still be dragging along as it got close to the holiday break and would Harry Reid consider keeping all of them there instead of going home. He said this could very well go into the holidays or even the beginning of next year.

I wonder how that would play out? Tell them if they want to filibuster the bill, they're welcome to do it all week Christmas week, and let's carry it into New Years week for good measure. If Reid would grow a spine and actually do that I think I'd consider it a holiday gift, not that it's going to happen. It seems Reid and the media are more than content to pretend that Reid's silent filibuster is the norm. What does anyone think would have happened to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 if we'd had a Harry Reid around back then to deal with the likes of Strom Thurmond?

I'll gladly reserve judgement as I would expect everyone will as well on whether we should be clamoring for that or not after we see what makes it to the floor for a final vote. If they go back to either opt-in or Snowe's trigger I don't see how that's a step towards reforming the current system. The other compromises are bad enough already away from single-payer, which is what we should have.

July 23, 2009 C-SPAN

Part 1

Part 2

DOWNLOADS: (114)

PLAYS: (382)

Embed

Sheldon Whitehouse on The Rachel Maddow Show explains how everything we've been told about the Bush administration's torture program is not true.

Maddow: You are on the Intelligence Committee which of course is reviewing the treatment of high value detainees in what's described as being an exhaustive investigation. You gave a very powerful speech on the Senate floor two nights ago about torture. We played a long piece of it and you talked about the degree to which the American people have been misled on the issue.

In what way do you think that we've been, that we've been misled. What do you think is wrong about the way we've been talking about and fighting about torture?

Whitehouse: The story line Rachel has been that, here are these al Qaeda terrorists who are tougher than anyone, and if you put them in front of FBI agents who have to give them Miranda warnings and inexperienced Army interrogators, they get no place. But then you turn them over to the tough, experienced CIA interrogators and then suddenly, very significant information that saved lives begins to emerge.

Maddow: That sounds like the outline of the President's speech on that in September 2006. That's exactly what he said.

Whitehouse: And exactly what Vice President Cheney had been saying and it's been the party line on this subject really from the very beginning.

Maddow: Yeah.

Whitehouse: The problem is that as you drill into it, you find out that all of the different elements aren't true. You find out that the CIA was actually the amateurish organization in interrogations and the FBI agents and the military interrogators were the true trained professionals.

Whitehouse goes on to explain that they're not at the stage in the investigation where chain of command issues are yet raised. He says there is justification for those issues to be raised during separate, executive branch investigations, which may be yet to come, and where executive privilege does not apply.

Sen. Whitehouse's speech on the Senate floor below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (1541)

PLAYS: (3330)

Embed

Sheldon Whitehouse while being asked about the torture bombshell that Lawrence Wilkerson dropped on Dick Cheney says that if what Wilkerson asserts is true and the Bush administration went outside of the OLC's legal justification for the torture, it raises the prospect for criminal prosecutions.

Sanchez: We're hearing from ex-Powell Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson and he's making the argument that he believes that what the Bush administration was doing with enhanced interrogations was trying to make a case for the invasion of Iraq and trying to justify what happened in Iraq. So you believe that is actually what enhanced interrogation, "so called" torture was being used for?

Whitehouse: I've heard that to be true. There is some further evidence of that in Chairman Levin's Armed Services Committee report. There is not a great deal of evidence that came out in our hearing one way or the other about that. The one thing I will say about that is that if that is true, then it takes the application of these techniques out of the protected scope of the Office of Legal Counsel opinion.

Sanchez: And it makes this them political. It's not about we were scared, we wanted to defend the country any more. Now it's about we needed to have some political justification or something we wanted to do. (crosstalk)

Whitehouse: And that raises the prospect of there being a criminal prosecution that could justifiably emerge from these facts if that were in fact the motivation.

Sanchez: One quick thing before I let you go...Am I hearing you say that if there was evidence, enough evidence on this particular subject, that it was being used to try and get or boost the reason for the war in Iraq, that you would be more likely to push for criminal prosecution?

Whitehouse: Torture is criminal. If it's not justified by the OLC opinion. If there aren't any defenses that that raises because you've gone outside of it then it exposes people to that. That's a decision that should be made by the Attorney General, by an appropriate prosecutor or official...

Sanchez: But will you say on the record that if you find evidence of that you're more apt to want to push for a prosecution? Yes or no.

Whitehouse: One is more apt to do that--correct.

DOWNLOADS: (115)

PLAYS: (395)

Embed

Ed Schultz talks to Sheldon Whitehouse about tomorrow's torture hearings and on why Dick Cheney is speaking out in public the way he is.

Schultz: Senator, do you want to give us your opinion tonight why you think the former Vice President continually goes out and does these interviews? Is he ginning up support in case there are some legal ramifications down the road involving both him and the former President?

Whitehouse: Well he wouldn't be the first potential defendent to try to influence a potential jury pool. I think this would probably be the largest scale effort of that variety, but certainly there's a very intense messaging program going on and I think one of the things that these hearings will reveal is that the messaging program is very false and very misleading. But we want to develop it slowly and carefully through the evidence rather than running around making a lot of wild and unfactual assertions as the Vice President I believe is doing.