On Friday we noted that The New Yorker had dug up a three year old speech in which freshman Sen. Ted Cruz had charged that there were at least a dozen professors at Harvard Law School during his time there in the mid-90s who “would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.” Read More
For the past 18 hours Republicans have been giddily waving around a new article by Bob Woodward as a smoking gun that proves sequestration should be replaced with spending cuts and spending cuts only — and that President Obama once conceded the point.
Here’s the key section, which certainly carries that implication. Read More
How is it that a Senator’s office ends up sending a form letter to a grieving parent of a child killed in a mass-shooting? The answer is that there’s no excuse. But two letters we received from TPM Readers shed some role on just how bad it’s gotten and the role of astroturf campaigns in the problem.
From TPM Reader MB …
It’s surprising how bad American political staffs have become at handling routine constituent correspondence like this — routine, that is, in the sense that elected officials can expect to receive frequent letters that require some modicum of understanding and acknowledgment.
TPM’s David Taintor is out with another story this afternoon on John McCain’s interactions with an Arizona couple whose son was killed in the Aurora movie theater massacre last year.
You may have already seen the video where McCain told the young man’s mom that she needed “some straight talk” on assault weapons. Now you can see the impersonal form letter McCain’s office sent earlier this month in response to a very personal email written by the man’s father.
Indiana Republicans pushing new transvaginal ultrasound mandate bill.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer tells Cavuto the majority of Americans oppose a ‘path to citizenship’ (even though the opposite is true). Watch.
In addition to being abrasive and serially disliked, it seems Sen. Cruz’s penchant for imitating Joe McCarthy may have been even greater and of longer standing than we knew. In this case, the habit of lying for political advantage seems even more clear.
Jane Mayer just posted this piece at The New Yorker website in which she notes that only two and half years ago Cruz gave a Fourth of July speech in which he accused at least twelve members of the Harvard Law School faculty of being not only “Marxists” but communists “who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.” Read More