Daniel Klaidman was just on MSNBC talking with Andrea Mitchell talking about drone policy and the attack on Anwar al-Awlaki. The gist is that despite Obama’s misgivings and/or opposition to torture and preventive detention he really had no misgivings at all about the fact the al-Awlaki was an American citizen — a judgment I agree with. Also a very interesting discussion of the role of Harold Koh. Video after the jump. Give it a watch. Read More
Steve King, the Tea Partier from Iowa at the center of the Rove/Tea Party war, enlists. “Nobody can bully me” out of a Senate run.
TPM Reader RS with some good insight:
I’ve noticed a trend in GOP positioning statements recently (and who knows, maybe it’s happening among Dems as well and I’m just too partisan to notice). Rather than saying “we dont want to do X,” the GOP’s position is stated as if it were an immutable law of nature.
It came to mind when reading Labrador’s statement on immigration reform: “If they want a political victory they’re going to draw a fine red line and they’re going to say, either a pathway to citizenship or nothing else. They know that the Republicans in the House are not going to be able to vote for that…”
Not able to?
Conservatives declare war on Rove over “hater” remark in new letter.
Former Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. reportedly facing “significant jail time” even if he strikes a plea deal.
More signs of a fissure between Republican defense hawks and fiscal conservatives over the the sequester-driven cuts to the Pentagon budget. The outstanding question is whether the split will be wide enough to force a deal to avoid the sequester. Brian Beutler reports.
Okay, back to Karl Rove and Steven Law’s Conservative Victory Project and their effort to shut down the Tea Party Senate candidates who threaten again to deny Republicans the Senate majority they probably should have won in 2010 and 2012. We thought of doing a post this morning about all the conservatives who are now claiming that Rove is actually no conservative at all. But while this was happening, a whole new part of the drama broke out. Read More
According to a new study coauthored by Brown University political scientist Rose McDermott, a fearful people are likely to have conservative attitudes to so-called ‘out-groups’. And that heavily affects attitudes on hot button issues like immigration, war, segregation, and racial and sexual difference. Read More
Pretty amazed by this. Sen. Levin appears to have consented to Sen. Cruz’s demand for an open-ended investigation into every speech Hagel gave in the last four years and what “foreign governments and foreign agents” may have influenced him.