In a speech earlier this month at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual conference, Americans For Prosperity-Michigan Executive Director Scott Hagerstrom revealed the true goal of his group and its allies like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) efforts. Speaking at CPAC’s “Panel for Labor Policy,” Hagerstrom said that AFP really wants to do is to “take the unions out at the knees”:

HAGERSTROM: It’s easy to go out there and fight taxes and increased regulation, you know we send out an action alert on taxes to AFP and we get thousands of people to respond. You send out one on a more complicated issue and it just doesn’t quite resonate…We fight these battles on taxes and regulation but really what we would like to see is to take the unions out at the knees so they don’t have the resources to fight these battles.

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Taking “the unions out at the knees” has long been a goal of the Koch brothers and their many front groups. In the run-up to the 2010 elections, the Kochs worked with other anti-labor billionaires, corporations and activists to fund conservative candidates and groups across the country. Now after viciously opposing pro-middle class policies for years, Koch Industries is trying to eliminate the only organizations which serve as a counterweight to the well-oiled corporate machine.

Earlier this week, ThinkProgress reported on the Koch brothers’ integral role in provoking Walker’s showdown with Wisconsin’s public sector unions. Koch Industries donated $43,000 to Walker’s gubernatorial campaign, and Koch political operatives encouraged the newly elected governor to take on the unions. Since the showdown began twelve days ago, Koch-funded front groups like Americans for Prosperity — which is chaired by David Koch — and the American Legislative Exchange Council have organized counter-protests, prepped GOP lawmakers with anti-labor legislative talking points and even announced an anti-union advertising campaign. Even while local business leaders have called for Walker to end his assault on Wisconsin unions, Koch executives have said that they “will not step back at all” and pointed to the importance of their “grassroots” group, saying, “it is good to have them on the ground, in the battle, trying to help out.”

For now, however, the AFP message doesn’t appear to be resonating: Koch-backed pro-Walker demonstrations have had low attendance and were dwarfed by pro-union supporters in Madison this week.

– Kevin Donohue

Fueled by the carbon pollution giant Koch Industries, Tea Party Republicans in New Hampshire are attempting to scuttle the state’s involvement in the region’s successful climate program. Robocalls from Koch’s Americans for Prosperity group flooded the state over the weekend in support of a bill that would repeal participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which has cut greenhouse pollution and created jobs as a result of energy efficiency. On Wednesday, the state’s overwhelmingly Republican House of Representatives voted to support HB 519 by a nearly party-line vote of 246 to 104. The bill is premised on extreme climate denial, such as this explanation from Deputy Majority Leader Shawn Jasper (R-Hudson):

Neither man nor cow is responsible for global warming.

In reality, with greenhouse pollution from fossil fuels and industrial agriculture building up in the atmosphere at an increasing rate, the world is now hotter than it has ever been in recorded history. New England is unambiguously warming. Fueled by the warmer world, catastrophic rainfall is rising, as “exemplified by the ’100-year’ floods that have occurred in southern New Hampshire in 2005, 2006, 2007.”

Gov. John Lynch (D-NH), who has touted the success of RGGI in making the air healthier while increasing economic prosperity, is expected to veto the bill if it wins final passage, but Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the New Hampshire legislature.

On Saturday, the Main Street movement will rally at the New Hampshire state capitol to save the American dream.

The world’s leading expert on frivolous impeachments of the President of the United States is calling on the current crop of GOP lawmakers to repeat the same mistake he made as Speaker:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who plans within two weeks to announce if he will run for president, said today that if President Obama doesn’t change his mind and order his Justice Department to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, Republicans in Congress should strike back and even consider impeachment proceedings.

“I believe the House Republicans next week should pass a resolution instructing the president to enforce the law and to obey his own constitutional oath, and they should say if he fails to do so that they will zero out [defund] the office of attorney general and take other steps as necessary until the president agrees to do his job,” said Gingrich. “His job is to enforce the rule of law and for us to start replacing the rule of law with the rule of Obama is a very dangerous precedent.”

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It’s difficult to count the problems with Gingrich’s proposal. For starters, Holder’s letter announcing that DOJ will not defend DOMA in court specifically states that DOMA will “continue to be enforced by the Executive Branch.” The only effect of Holder’s announcement is that the Department of Justice will no longer submit legal briefs supporting an unconstitutional injustice in court.

More importantly, if the House does take Gingrich up on his suggestion, it will also need to impeach conservative Chief Justice John Roberts. In 1990, then-acting Solicitor General Roberts refused to defend a federal affirmative action law after he successfully convinced the George H.W. Bush Administration that the law was unconstitutional. He failed to convince the Supreme Court, however, and the law was upheld. By declining to defend DOMA, the Obama Administration is following the exact same approach embraced by Roberts.

Gingrich’s plan to defund Attorney General Holder in retaliation for Holder’s invocation of the Roberts Rule is equally absurd. The Attorney General oversees thousands of federal prosecutors, law enforcement officers and anti-terrorism officials. All of these essential personnel would be handicapped if the Justice Department were suddenly decapitated to serve Gingrich’s petty vendetta.

Moreover, Gingrich’s grandstanding on the defense of marriage is a bit ironic.

Yesterday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) issued his first subpoena of the Obama administration with a request that Department of Homeland Security employees “testify about the department’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) policies and practices.” The subpoena has already caused a controversy due to Issa’s partisan approach. According to the Washington Post, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking member on the committee, penned a letter demanding to know why Issa’s staff deliberately circumvented the Democrats on the committee. Homeland Security staffers had been willing to comply voluntarily, and Cummings charged, “all three subpoenas appear unnecessary at this time and could have been avoided if you had adequately consulted with me and other Members of the Committee.”

In January, Issa made clear that he intends to scrutinize logs of FOIA information, possibly revealing the identities of various journalists and citizens who have issued requests to the government. As the New York Times has noted, Issa’s “extraordinary” demand “worries some civil libertarians” and could have a chilling effect to journalists. While Issa’s spokesmen have brushed aside criticism and claimed that the chairman’s purpose is aimed at improving government responses to the FOIA process, Issa’s personal record on FOIA undercuts his credibility. During the Bush administration, Issa was a loyal partisan who repeatedly tried to crush attempts at expanding FOIA and greater government transparency, even at the DHS, his current subpoena target:

– Issa Tried To Kill A Landmark Expansion Of FOIA Law: In 2007, a bipartisan bill HR 1309 was proposed to expand the FOIA process, including a tracking system for submitters to view the status of their request, new reporting requirements for congressional oversight, and a provision to ensure that requests not processed within twenty days would not require a fee. The Bush administration fought vigorously against the bill and promised to veto it. Issa even sponsored an amendment to the bill to kill off the proposed “open records policy,” claiming Al Qaeda would “harvest” the data. In the end, the bill passed by an overwhelming majority in the House, despite Issa’s “no” vote. Unfortunately, it died in the Senate.

– Issa Co-sponsored The Original Bill To Exempt DHS From FOIA Law: In 2002, Issa co-sponsored the bill to merge several agencies into one new expanded bureaucracy called the Homeland Security Department. Issa’s bill included a provision exempting the agency from some FOIA requests. Repeatedly, Issa voted against amendments to remove this exemption from DHS. For example, he voted against an amendment sponsored by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) to remove the FOIA exemption. Issa even supported an amendment that explicitly expanded the FOIA exemption to his DHS bill.

– Issa Helped Karl Rove And Bush Allies Hide Government E-Mails In RNC Accounts: In 2008, the House Oversight Committee investigated the fact that an estimated 5 million e-mails from Bush administration servers vanished from the president’s office. Although it was widely believed that White House adviser Karl Rove had used Republican National Committee e-mail accounts, in violation of the Presidential Records Act, to hide official communications, Issa used his position on the committee to try to squash the inquiry.

While it is laudable to strengthen the FOIA process, Issa’s behavior suggests that he is simply out to create a partisan investigation. For one thing, Issa’s position on the FOIA process appears to radically change depending on which party controls the White House. Furthermore, Issa’s backhanded attempt to sideline Cummings and other Democrats on the Oversight Committee undermines the legitimacy of his subpoena. Asked about Cummings’ letter, Issa’s press secretary Kurt Bardella cynically replied, “Another day, another complaint and more righteous indignation, what else is new?”

In fact, Issa has gone on record indicating that he is more interested in serving his party’s corporate benefactors than leading honest investigations.

Ironically, since Congress exempted itself from FOIA law, Issa has been less than forthcoming about record requests into his own office. At the behest of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, several lobbyists have provided letters regarding a request by Issa to entertain proposals from corporations seeking his help in eliminating regulations. Issa has not voluntarily released all of the other letters he received from lobbyists. Also, Issa has so far ignored a request by a group called the IssaFiles to respond to serious ethical questions raised by a New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza. The ten questions relate to a suspected arson at a factory insured by Issa earlier in his career.