Archive for Lindsey Graham
Milwaukee police chief Edward Flynn wouldn’t let Lindsey Graham get away with pestering him repeatedly with NRA talking points at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) proposed assault weapons ban.
Lindsey Graham:
…We absolutely do nothing to enforce the laws on the books…
Flynn:
Just for the record, from my point of view, the point of a background check…
Graham:
How many cases have you made? How many cases have you made?
Flynn:
It doesn’t matter, it’s a paper thing. I want to stop 76,000 people from getting guns illegally. That’s what a background check does. If you think we’re going to do paperwork prosecutions, you’re wrong.
Feinstein found it necessary to scold Graham who then briefly brown-nosed the chief. But he continued to badger Flynn, who had no problem interrupting L’il Linds with his own points.
Graham:
How many cases have you made for somebody violating the background checks?
Flynn:
“We don’t make those cases. We have priorities. We make gun cases. We make 2,000 gun cases a year, senator, that’s our priority. We’re not in a paper chase. We’re trying to prevent the wrong people from buying guns. That’s why we do background checks. If you think I’m going to do a paper chase, then you think I’m going to misuse my resources.“
“We don’t chase paper. We chase armed criminals.”
Think Progress has more, including:
Graham said that limited resources for police departments is a reason to bolster gun ownership, arguing that citizens would have to take the law in their own hands and protect themselves. “What this police chief is facing, is what every police chief is facing, less money so you may have to defend yourself,” he explained.
Hmm, who does that remind you of? Ah, got it, this guy: Sheriff’s pro-gun radio ads to be paid by taxpayers. “This has nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with self-promotion.”
OMG, this is making my head hurt.
South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham has just sent a letter to Barack Obama’s defense secretary nominee, Chuck Hagel. Graham asks if, at a 2010 appearance at Rutgers University, Hagel said Israel “was risking becoming an apartheid state.”
A law student in attendance, Kenneth Wagner, wrote a contemporaneous email detailing Hagel’s remarks, saying the former Nebrasks senator had said the state of Israel risked becoming an “apartheid state.” These allegations were first reported Tuesday by the Washington Free Beacon. Here’s the relevant quote from the Free Beacon report:
“I am sitting in a lecture by Chuck Hagel at Rutgers,” Wagner wrote in the email. “He basically said that Israel has violated every UN resolution since 1967, that Israel has violated its agreements with the quartet, that it was risking becoming an apartheid state if it didn’t allow the Palestinians to form a state. He said that the settlements were getting close to the point where a contiguous Palestinian state would be impossible.”
Second hand emails… again. Ahem.
basically (ˈbeɪsɪklɪ) [Click for IPA pronunciation guide]— adv
1. in a fundamental or elementary manner; essentially: strident and basically unpleasant
2. ( sentence modifier ) in essence; in summary; put simply: basically we had underestimated mother nature
I believe those things are subjective, not objective. Someone who hadn’t lost their house in a storm might say, “Basically we underestimated Mother Nature” someone who lost their house might say “Basically, Mother Nature stomped on us”.
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Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Rachel Maddow:
“This has never happened before. To anyone. Ever.”
“Chuck Hagel does have majority support in the Senate… A minority of that body, the Republicans decided they were going to block him anyway. They filibustered a cabinet nomination.”
“This is a fresh hell in American politics.”
“They ‘might vote no’… but they wouldn’t block a vote!… They wouldn’t filibuster! …Well today… only Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski… kept their word. All the others said they would not filibuster, that that would be wrong. And then they did it anyway.”
“Sen. Graham… says he does not want his filibuster today to be thought of as a filibuster, even though that’s what it is. …He wants to use it as leverage to get more information out of the administration on the president’s birth certificate. I’m sorry I mean Fast and Furious. I’m sorry I mean aliens in Area 51. I’m sorry I mean his theories about what happened in Benghazi. What does nominee Chuck Hagel know about Benghazi? Precisely nothing. He has nothing to do with hit, he HAD nothing to do with it.“
“Why block his nomination?… Dunno. Why not? Wrecking stuff is fun maybe?”
“Harry Reid decided he would… make a handshake deal with the Republican’s top senator, Mitch McConnell. He said he was ‘satisfied’ with the Republicans just ‘agreeing’ to be more reasonable… Remember? … They would just agree as ‘gentlemen’ that the Republicans would ‘curtail the excesses’ of filibustering everything, and effectively ruling from the minority. … They said, you know, at a minimum this will at least improve the confirmation process for the administration’s nominees. How’s that working out now?… How’s that ‘gentleman’s agreement’ going now that we’ve just had a filibuster of a cabinet nominee for the first time in American history?“
Via Christine Pelosi, daughter of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, a response to Nicole Sandler’s tweet that the “filibuster rule can be changed any time”:
Now is good for me too, Christine (and nobody is saying get rid of the filibuster, as you may recall):
Remember, the filibuster wouldn’t have ended, and the Dems would still be able to use the option to filibuster when they are the minority party. The only difference is that it would have taken more effort and transparency to voice opposition. But because Democrats (and of course, Republicans) voted against the Merkley plan, the silent filibuster is still in place.
Christine Pelosi is an author, Campaign Boot Camp 2.0; Chair, #CADEMWOMEN; #SFGiants fan & volunteer; Yogamom
San Francisco · http://www.PelosiBootCamp.com
Hagel Gets Filibustered by GOP, While Dems Unanimously Backed Cheney, Rumsfeld for Defense Secretary
Your Daily Dose of BuzzFlash at Truthout, via my pal Mark Karlin:
So the Senate GOP successfully filibustered the nomination of Chuck Hagel to become Secretary of Defense, replacing Leon Panetta. This is the first time that a defense secretary nomination has been stalled by a filibuster – and this is a filibuster to prevent a vote from even happening.
In part, Harry Reid and Carl Levin deserve some of the blame for this, because per the flaccid Democratic caucus, they led the opposition to eliminating obstructive non-filibuster filibusters such as this. [...]
Hey, Harry, they are hardwired to be pernicious and ignore civility, what did you expect?
Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham – one of the three pro-war amigos with John McCain and ex-Senator Joe Lieberman – is “demanding” more answers on Benghazi. Good grief, will someone give that man a sedative? This Benghazi nonsense has been virtually the sole GOP foreign policy concern for months now. And it comes from a caucus that gave carte blanche to the multiple deceptions and lies that the Bush/Cheney administration used to launch a ruinous war in Iraq. We should also mention that it is the same caucus that gave Bush a pass on 9/11, even though he had been warned that something like the terrorist attack was probably imminent – and he did absolutely nothing to prevent it.
Compare the treatment of Hagel to how the Democrats historically dealt with Dick Cheney’s nomination as secretary of defense under President George Herbert Walker Bush. The Dickster received a 92-0 confirmation vote – no dissenting Democratic senators there.
The second time Rumsfeld was nominated for secretary of defense (he had first served in that position under President Gerald Ford), he was approved along with six other George W. Bush cabinet nominees by a voice vote in the Senate [...]
There’s a lesson to be learned here for the Democrats in the Senate: speak loudly and carry a big stick, but they never appear to learn it.
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