Joe Straus (R) is the Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. But there’s a problem. A number of his fellow Republicans say that having elected a House with “Christian, conservative values” they need a “true Christian” running it. And since Straus is a Jew his shot at meeting that standard is not good. Abby Rapoport has the story in the Texas Observer.
The vote this morning was 53-36 to extend the Bush tax cuts on incomes below $250,000 — seven votes short of the 60 needed.
Check out how the AP plays this: “Bill blocked to let upper-income tax cuts expire.”
A second vote is underway on extending the tax cuts on incomes under $1 million. That, too, is expected to be blocked by Senate Republicans.
New evidence that Julian Assange is actually in training to be a character in a James Bond movie. Behold these photos of Bahnhof AB, Wikileaks web hosting service whose facilities are carved into a rockface near Stockholm.
Here’s the front door. (Click the image to see the whole Mountain Cave Lair Slideshow …)
TPM Reader BH offer his experience of the Wikileaks fallout:
I work for a mid-size defense contractor. Earlier this week the corporate security office sent a memo to everyone reminding us that: 1) Wikileaks was blocked at the company firewall; and 2) people who had security clearances should not go to the Wikileaks site on their home computer.
We’ve gotten a lot of reader response from people inside government and who work for big government contractors on this issue of not being able to access from non-secure computers whatever classified information Wikileaks has posted.
Reading through the OMB guidance on this that our Rachel Slajda obtained, there’s a certain green eyeshade quality to the concerns that I can understand. Read More
Tea Party Nation founder says it’s probably a good idea to limit voting to property owners.
We’ve been following for much of the afternoon the U.S. government’s attempt to clamp down on access to the Wikileaks website (and its mirror sites) from within the government. What we’ve now learned is that the general counsel for the White House Office of Management and Budget today sent an email and a model memo to all federal agencies directing that federal employees not access Wikileaks. Rachel Slajda has our report.
The Library of Congress issues a statement confirming it has blocked Wikileaks on library computers:
The Library decided to block Wikileaks because applicable law obligates federal agencies to protect classified information. Unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.
I don’t like to be shrill, but this is a nonsensical argument and exceeds any plausible let alone reasonable understanding of what it means to protect classified information.
By the LOC’s logic, it should have blocked the Washington Post when Dana Priest blew the lid off the CIA’s secret prison system and the New York Times when James Risen exposed warrantless wiretapping.
We’ve now taken the protection of classified information — a legitimate goal in many instances — and stretched it to impose on the government an obligation to close normally open public channels of communication because they might contain classified information that’s already in the public domain. We’re unnecessarily starting down a very slippery slope.
From TPM Reader BA:
Speaking as a member of the library profession who interacts with the Library of Congress in various ways, I do not find this at all surprising. The Library of Congress (“LC” in librarian’s parlance) is a rather conservative, though non-partisan, establishment. They are nowhere near as concerned about or active in promoting free access to information as one might think or hope.
I have to say that I’m astonished at the speed with which bureaucrats in Washington are scrambling for cover in advance of the arrival of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
Already this week we’ve seen two examples where government entities whose funding is directly controlled by Congress have compromised their core missions in the face of political pressure, mostly from conservatives. Read More