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I would just like to remind CBS' John Dickerson of one thing. That "pound of flesh" he's talking about Republicans wanting to take from President Obama before they'd ever agree to increasing tax rates, is not actually coming from the President. It's coming from average working class Americans and seniors.

It would be nice to see the debate framed that way on these Sunday shows, when these pundits are casually discussing what pain Republicans would like to inflict on our population, rather than this just being some political game. I don't expect we'll see that happen any time soon though.

SCHIEFFER: Well, some people are actually saying maybe -- I'm hearing some liberal Democrats say let it go over the cliff. I mean, would they really do that? I mean, because what would happen, then you would have, I guess, the tax cuts would expire, but would they let these draconian cuts in, say, defense spending, where basically, the military wouldn't be able to buy gasoline for their vehicles and that kind of thing.

FOROOHAR: I think it's a dangerous argument. Now, I think the truth is if you go over the cliff for a couple weeks, no, that's not going to be a disaster to the economy if there's a deal in place, if a deal gets done quickly. But if you're on the cliff, off the cliff, and back on for weeks or months end that would have a really devastating effect not only on the economy but trust in our political system. And it's worth noting a recent Harvard Business School survey found most business leaders in this country see political dysfunction as the biggest impediment to growth.

SCHIEFFER: John.

DICKERSON: We used to walk up to the brink, now we basically live at the brink. All of this is the fourth or fifth round of negotiations of these budgets. And if you think about the politics of this, what is being debated is not just the central issues of taxes and spending that are key to both parties, but you have a president enjoying an election that he just won. He is doing well in the polls. The Pew Foundation put out a poll and said basically 53 percent of people would blame Republicans if we go over the cliff, only 29 percent would blame the president. CNN, 45 Republicans, 34 the president. He's feeling good about his political position.

You have got Republicans trying to figure out their new place in the world. And you have these various serious issues at stake. Basically, the thing to keep the eye on the ball here is the president wants Republicans to agree to increase rates. In 2010, Republicans were brought to office by anti-tax activists in the Tea Party. Their number one issue -- don't raise rates. So the president is asking them to do something right at the heart of their party. Two-thirds of the Republicans who were re-elected, were re-elected with big majorities, 60 percent. It's OK with their constituents if we go over the cliff because they're standing on principle. So how are they going to get the Republicans.

How is the president going to get Republicans to increase rates? He's going to have to do something on entitlements that allows those Republicans to say, hey, we -- sure, we agreed to increasing rates, but look at the pound of flesh we got from the president. The problem, is the president thinks he did well in this election. He thinks the country is behind him. He's not into giving a pound of flesh. They'll give something on entitlements, but so far it's not big enough to give Republicans what they need to get the vote here which is why we may go over the cliff.

And it's not just liberal Republicans -- Newt Gingrich, no liberal he, saying that the fiscal cliff is all - it's just a charade. It's something liberals are trying to do to get Republicans to agree to tax increases.

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Who needs Fox when we've got the talking heads over at CBS doing their best to keep up with them. Here's what the viewers were treated to just after Bob Schieffer's pearl clutching over whether David Axelrod was willing to use the word lie (gasp!) when talking about Mitt Romney -- CBS News Covers For Romney Campaign's Tax Doublespeak:

CBS chief political correspondent John Dickerson disputed President Obama's description of Mitt Romney's tax plan as a "$5 trillion tax cut" because one of Romney's advisers suggested he would reduce the size of his proposed tax cuts if he could not pay for them. But Dickerson is ignoring the fact that Romney running mate Paul Ryan suggested last week that Romney would not reduce the size of his tax cuts because lowering taxes is his highest priority.

During a panel discussion on the presidential debate on Face The Nation, Dickerson said that it was unfair to accuse Romney of being dishonest about his tax plan. Dickerson explained that a top Romney economic adviser "said we have two goals here. One is deficit reduction, the other is reducing marginal rates. If those come in conflict our primary goal is deficit reduction and the marginal rates might not go down as much."

That stands in direct contrast to remarks by Paul Ryan, who was asked specifically if Mitt Romney would "scale back on the 20 percent tax cut for the wealthy" if the cuts could not be paid for and replied "No, no.".

Dickerson also did his best to play the "both sides" are equally terrible false equivalency game by attempting to equate Romney's constant lying on the campaign trail about anything and everything he's done to President Obama for not keeping a campaign pledge to cut the budget in half and not closing Gitmo. As Axelrod rightfully pointed out, the comparison is utterly ridiculous, considering he was at the mercy of Congress on accomplishing both.

Whether Axelrod is right about the lies catching up, who knows, but it seems CBS is more than willing to do their part to help Romney out and gloss over them.

Transcript below the fold.

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From this Sunday's Face the Nation, Peggy Noonan once again proves herself to be one of the more petty and partisan pundits out there, even though she normally does her best to dress that up with lofty rhetoric which generally amounts to nothing more than empty platitudes.

I wish it were as easy as she pretends here to just ignore or blow off just how damaging to our country the Republicans obstructing just about everything President Obama has tried to get passed since he got elected has been to some meaningful economic recovery in America. I for one am sick and tired of any of them pretending, as the panel did here, that St. Ronnie or any other president could have dealt with this obstructionist, do-nothing, record setting with their refusal to work with the other side Republican House and filibustering minority in the Senate.

Tell those people who are still out of work "boo-hoo" Peggy and see what kind of response you get.

SCHIEFFER: Well, you know, that brings up a point. I mean, you know, this week you saw President Obama say, look, what I have learned is you can't run Washington from the inside, that you have to run it from the outside.

I guess what he meant was you have to bring pressure from the outside. But, you know, one of the main criticisms of President Obama is he's not very good at the inside game. And one reason that we're in the gridlock we're in right now is he is just not good at brokering deals.

NOONAN: Totally true.

CORN: But I disagree with that. I think, if you look at the tax cut deal after the November 2010 elections, that he actually got a lot more than the Republicans, if you look how he got START passed and "Don't ask, Don't tell." There are a lot of stories in which he has gone and done stuff, kind of, more on the inside than on the outside, and it's ticked off his base because they haven't seen this because it has been too much inside Washington. So it, sort of, cuts both ways.

STENGEL: He's nostalgic for the Obama of 2008 when he could run as an outsider. It's always easier to run, even when you're an incumbent, to run as an outsider. And he doesn't have that message anymore. So he lapsed back into that. The problem is he hasn't shown us why he as president needs to be rehired.

NOONAN: When a president of four years says, excuse me, "You can't change Washington from the inside," he is saying "I failed to change Washington from the inside."

He could not negotiate. He was no Reagan sitting down with Tip O'Neill.

GERGEN: Exactly.

NOONAN: If you if you are big, you can make a deal with the other side; you can move it forward. If you can't do that, then I guess you have to talk about how you can't change things.

GERGEN: I want to come back to this. I don't think you can read the Bob Woodward book and conclude that President Obama is good at the inside game. You just can't read it and figure that.

(CROSSTALK)

GERGEN: But anyway, he's a (INAUDIBLE), he has spent a lot of time doing it. But beyond that, you know, the classic book on the presidency was written by Dick Neustadt years ago, it's called "Presidential Power."

His whole argument was it is a combination. You have to be good at the outside game and the inside game. So two together. And President Obama's notion that you can do this from the outside simply doesn't work in contemporary politics.

(CROSSTALK)

SCHIEFFER: Well, have we ever had a president that was really good at both?

GERGEN: We have had occasional presidents who were really good at both.

(CROSSTALK)

GERGEN: Reagan was the best.

NOONAN: Ronald Reagan.

GERGEN: And Clinton was very good at it.

NOONAN: Ronald Reagan, LBJ, up to a certain extent.

(CROSSTALK)

CORN: ... the party Republicans, though. And, you know, you listen so someone like -- you know, look at the book that Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann wrote, and they're not flaming radicals.

And they blame the obstructionism mainly, almost essentially, on the Republicans coming in and saying, we don't care if you are Clinton or Ronald Reagan, we are just going to throw monkey wrenches into the works again and again and again, and see what happens at the next election.

NOONAN: Oh, my goodness. Boo-hoo.

(CROSSTALK)

NOONAN: Boo-hoo.

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A actor and activist who is famous for his role in the 1987 film "La Bamba" on Sunday said that Mitt Romney has begun pandering to Hispanic voters now that he has become the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

"We call that Hispandering," Esai Morales told CBS News' John Dickerson in a recent interview. "The problem is that, you know, with Romney, he's says his grandparents or his father was born in Mexico. I surprised I'm not seeing him in a photo op outside of a taco stand."

"But I'm in the middle on this one," he added. "I was looking forward to a lot more immigration reform from our current president. I supported him."

"Remember what you promised us," Morales advised President Barack Obama. "Be true to yourself because every time you don't, you give the opposition a lot of ammunition to say, you know, where's that change that was promised?"

During the Republican primary battle, Romney had courted conservative voters with anti-immigration positions. He called Arizona's tough immigration law a "model" for the country; he promised to veto the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act; and he said that undocumented immigrants should self-deport.

But now that the former Massachusetts governor has pivoted to his general election campaign, he is considering support for a version of the DREAM Act sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and insisting that he only supported the uncontroversial parts of the Arizona immigration law.

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The president of a conservative Christian group who argued that the judge that who struck down California's controversial Proposition 8 should have recused himself because he might be gay may have met his match.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins was blasted Sunday by David Boies, one of the lawyers who successfully argued that Prop 8 was unconsitutional.

Perkins maintains that Judge Vaughn Walker should have recused himself because the San Francisco Chronicle reported he was gay. "I think what you have is one judge who thinks he knows -- and a district level judge and an openly homosexual judge at that who says he knows better than not only 7 million voters in California but voters in 30 states across the nation that have passed marriage amendments," Perkins told CBS' John Dickerson. "This is far from over."

"You mentioned this claim that he's openly homosexual," said Dickerson. "I'm not sure if that's the case. Whether he is or isn't, what bearing does it have on the case?"

"Well, that according to the San Francisco Chronicle," replied Perkins. "That he is openly homosexual. One of two federal judges. I think, you know, had this guy been a, say, an evangelical preacher in his past there would have been cries for him to step down from this case. I do think it has a bearing on the case but this is not without precedent."

"He ignored a lot of the social science in his opinion," continued Perkins. "But in Nebraska in 2005 there was a similar ruling by another federal district level judge. It was overturned in the 8th circuit unanimously. So there is certainly not only based upon the social empirical data that's out there but on the legal basis this is a flawed decision. And, as I said, it's far from over."

Boies was cool as he explained Perkins' facts wouldn't hold up in court.

"Well, it's easy to sit around and debate and throw around opinions that appeals to people's fear and prejudice," said Boies. "Site studies that either don't exist or don't say what you say they do. In a court of law you've got to come in and you've got to support those opinions. You've got to stand up under oath and cross-examination."

"What we saw at trial is that it's very easy for the people who want to deprive gays and lesbian citizens of the right to vote to make all sorts of statements and campaign literature or in debates where they can't be cross-examined but when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross-examination, those opinions just melt away."

"And that's what happened here. There simply wasn't any evidence, there weren't any of those studies. There weren't any empirical study. That's just made up. That's junk science. It's easy to say that on television but a witness stand is a lonely place to lie. When you come into court you can't do that. That's what we proved. We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost," said Boies.

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It appears CBS has themselves a good little Republican water-carrier in the form of their legal correspondent Jan Crawford. Crawford apparently thinks that the Supreme Court has been politicized not by the fact that our court now is one of the most right wing, pro-corporate courts in history, but instead politicized because the Democrats had problems with the nomination of Sam Alito.

I hate to break it to Jan Crawford but if the Supreme Court looks politicized right now, that's because it is. It's extremely politicized in that everything corporate America does is right and anyone opposing that power is wrong. And you don't have to have the mentality of a 12 year old to hope to see that trend reversed and to know that Alito and Roberts were going to do nothing but continue to take the court in the direction that favors the corporate elite above average citizens.

Quite frankly I don't think most Americans are even paying attention to the hearings now, didn't pay attention to Sam Alito's nomination and couldn't tell you how many votes Alito got. I don't think sadly most Americans can even tell you who's on the Supreme Court and who nominated them, much less how many votes they got when they were confirmed.

What I can tell you is that even the people I work with that don't follow politics much do know that the Supreme Court just gave corporations the right to buy our elections, and don't like it.

Media Matters has done a good job of following Crawford's hackery and given her past reporting, this newest clap-trap of comparing Senators who had legitimate concerns about where a nominee is taking the Supreme Court to 12 year olds shouldn't come as much of a surprise. She looks like she's getting her talking points right out of the latest RNC email of the day.

Transcript via Lexis Nexis below the fold.

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I agree with Rep. Markey's assertions about BP, but that begs the question, why are the criminals still being allowed to manage the crime scene? Later in the program CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson said "I do know that seven senators have written a letter asking the attorney general to open a criminal investigation. I think we may see that." I would certainly hope so.

Is BP "Lying," Asks Dem, or Just "Incompetent"?:

Rep. Bob Markey, D-Mass., said today that BP knew the initial estimates of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the site of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig were larger than what they were publicly stating was the flow.

...The Democrat, who is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, said that the amount of oil flowing is tied to any fee that may be imposed on the oil company resulting from the spill.

"BP has a stake in their own liability here," Market said. "That means that the fine which can be imposed upon them is dependent upon how many barrels per day is going out into the Gulf. If it's 1,000 barrels per day, it's a relatively low fine, but if it's 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 barrels per day, it could wind up billions of dollars in fines that BP executives have to pay to the federal government."

...When Dickerson asked if he felt BP lied to the government, Markey said, "I think they were either lying or they were incompetent. Either way, the consequences to the Gulf and Mexico are catastrophic."

..."I have no confidence whatsoever in BP," he said. "I think they do not know what they were doing, in terms of anything that they're doing is going to turn out as they're predicting."

When Dickerson asked if BP should be held criminally responsible, Markey said, "Without question the word 'criminal' should be used in terms of an environmental crime against our country."

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Chuck Schumer on Face the Nation appeared to issue some of the strongest language yet on whether there will be a public option in the final version of the health care bill, but he gave himself some wiggle room. Just what does "some form of it" mean? Either there is a public option, or there isn't.

At least Schumer spoke out very well about what a bad idea waiting for things to get even worse and using a "trigger" before offering a public option would be. Everyone in America deserves access to affordable health care coverage now, not after the insurance companies have had a couple more years to rake us over the coals and line their CEO's pockets.

John Amato:

Here's what Chuck said that was stronger and somewhat more hopeful than normal.

Shumer: There will be a public option in the final bill, some form of it. And hopefully Chuck Grassley and I and others can come to an agreement on how that should work. We want it to be a fair, level playing field, but you need something the big boys honest. And the only thing that really is out there is a public option.

We don’t trust the private insurance companies left to their own devices and neither do the American people. Seventy percent of the American people support a public option.

The recent polling telling Congress that America wants the government to step into health care reform and offer a public plan cannot be minimized. We are going to hold you to it. We'll be running our Blue America ads shortly. I'll be writing a post to let you know by tomorrow.

Christy Hardin Smith writes: Health Care: We’re Gonna Hold You To That Guarantee, Sen. Schumer

We're going to hold you to that guarantee, Chuck. No idea when you became the Great and Powerful Oz on health care on the Hill.

But now that you've made this public guarantee? We expect you and everyone else in the House and Senate to deliver on it. And we'll be watching you closely to be certain that you do.

Yes We Will! That's my new slogan and I hope Congress is listening.

Transcript via CBS:

SCHUMER: Well, we’re making every effort to reach common ground. But let me just say this. We need somebody to keep the public -- the private insurance companies honest. They are terribly concentrated. In Chuck Grassley’s own state, 71 percent by one company.

In 94 percent of the markets, according to the Justice Department, health insurance is highly concentrated. So without a public option, you’re going to have no competition. And the public is going to be forced -- you know, they don’t like the insurance companies simply raising prices and raising prices and cutting back on coverage and cutting back on coverage.

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