Think Progress

Right winger’s argument against a right to health care: ‘Should food be a basic human right?’

On MSNBC this afternoon, Firedoglake’s Jane Hamsher engaged in a spirited exchange with Townhall’s Jillian Bandes about health care reform. After Hamsher mentioned that she was speaking out in favor of the public option as “a sixteen-year cancer survivor,” Bandes replied, “I’m sorry I’m not a cancer survivor, but that doesn’t mean I can’t criticize a public plan.” When Hamsher argued that access to health care should be a human right, Bandes interrupted her and threw up her arm, asking “should food be a basic human right?” Watch it:

Bandes might not like it, but for most of the world, food is considered a human right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the U.N. in 1948, states that “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food.” The U.S. voted for the declaration.

Arizona state senator argues for uranium mining by claiming the Earth is ‘6,000 years’ old.

On June 25, the Arizona Senate’s Retirement and Rural Development Committee discussed the prospects for uranium mining in the state. During the hearing, State Senator Sylvia Allen (R), the vice chairman of the committee, argued in favor of mining by saying that the earth “has been here 6,000 years, long before anybody had environmental laws, and somehow it hasn’t been done away with.” “We need to get the uranium here in Arizona, so this state can get the money from it,” argued Allen. Watch it:

Phil Plait of BadAstronomy notes that the irony of Allen’s claim “is that she’s talking about uranium mining, and it’s through the radioactive decay of uranium that we know the Earth is billions of years old.”

FreedomWorks blogger inadvertently accuses Dick Armey of ‘smiley-faced fascism.’

On July 4th, FreedomWorks blogger Rossputin posted an essay called, “Happy Dependence Day,” in which he accused employees of GM, AIG, Citigroup, the Department of Education and lobbyists of being “the antithesis of this nation’s founding, the antidote to liberty and free markets, the source of the smiley-faced fascism which creeps further into our lives daily.” But as Chris Harris of Media Matters Action points out, by attacking lobbyists, Rossputin was inadvertently attacking the chairman of FreedomWorks, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who is currently a lobbyist with the high-powered D.C. lobbying firm DLA Piper. Read a list of Armey’s lobbying clients here.

Bachmann to speak at far-right How To Take Back America conference.

Until this year, the liberal group Campaign for America’s Future held an annual conference called Take Back America. Following the resounding victory for progressive change this past November, the conference was re-named America’s Future Now. But the Take Back America moniker didn’t stay dead for long. A coalition of far-right groups, led by Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, is putting together a “How to Take Back America” conference in September. RightWingWatch reports that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has confirmed that she will speak at the conference. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is also speaking at the conference.

Santorum claims liberal justices dissented in Ricci in order to ‘protect’ Sotomayor’s nomination. »

On Tuesday, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum discussed the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano on Frank Beckman’s radio show. The ruling overturned a decision made by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and two other judges on the 2nd Circuit. Though Santorum made the common conservative claim that all nine justices actually disagreed with Sotomayor, he went further than most, claiming that the liberal justices who dissented, particularly Justices Souter and Stevens, only dissented in order to “protect” Sotomayor:

SANTORUM: I could be wrong on this, but believe it or not, politics does inject itself into the Supreme Court and I think there were probably a lot of justices who may or may not have been on that side of that issue, but came down on that issue that way in a sense to protect her because she knew she was coming on the court, had to make sure she could get on the court. And to me, this should have been a nine-nothing decision. You know, there are a couple, you know, like Ginsburg, who is very much like Sotomayor, probably would have felt this way. But guys like Souter and Stevens and you just wonder why are they making decisions like this. This is, you know, identity politics and quotas and race-based kinds of decisions that really have no place in our Constitution.

Listen here:

As esteemed Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse noted in an op-ed this week, the court’s ruling wasn’t really about Sotomayor and her colleagues. “One thing that is clear from reading the Supreme Court’s 89 pages of opinions in the case is that Judge Sotomayor and her colleagues played by the old rules, and the court changed them.” wrote Greenhouse. “Although ‘Sotomayor Reversed’ was a frequent headline on the posts that spread quickly across the Web, it was actually the Supreme Court itself that shifted course.”

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Why are Palin, Perry and Jindal refusing to talk to Biden about the stimulus?

In a new article, Time’s Michael Scherer describes how Vice President Biden has been aggressively reaching out to mayors on the their use of stimulus money. “My rear end is on the line just like yours,” said Biden on a recent conference call with five mayors and county executives. “I’m the guy in charge of this deal. So if this doesn’t work, it’s me.” In a follow-up blog post, Scherer reveals that Biden has talked to “dozens of mayors and 47 of the 50 state governors about the Recovery Act”:

One interesting fact that didn’t make it into the story. Since March, Biden has talked, usually in conference calls, to dozens of mayors and 47 of the 50 state governors about the Recovery Act. The three governors who have not yet been on the line, though they have been invited: Alaska’s Sarah Palin, Texas’ Rick Perry and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal. You can draw your own conclusions.

Gay sailor found dead on military base in a suspected homicide.

Yesterday, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the body of openly gay Seaman August Provost was discovered in a guard shack at Camp Pendelton. A “person of interest” in connection to the suspected homicide is now being held in the Navy brig at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. According to Provost’s sister, he had recently complained to his family that “someone was harassing and bothering him.” According to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, Provost likely didn’t report the harassment because of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”:

The Navy would not comment on whether Provost’s orientation had anything to do with the death.

“While ‘Don’t ask, Don’t tell’ is in place, anybody in the military who is a homosexual has no place to go to get assistance or counseling,” said Ben Gomez of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group for gays in the military.

(HT: Raw Story)

Steele: Democrats ‘basically hijack elections at their whim.’ »

On his radio show last night, Hugh Hewitt asked RNC Chairman Michael Steele what he planned “to do to prevent strategic chicanery” of Democrats voting in open Republican primaries in 2012. Misunderstanding the question, Steele replied that he agreed with Hewitt that election fraud was a “frightening concern” because he believes that Democrats can now “basically hijack elections at their whim”:

HEWITT: What are you going to do to prevent strategic chicanery of the sort that you and I both know MoveOn.org and Code Pink and the rest of them are very capable of doing?

STEELE: Well, you know, I think you raise a very important and frightening concern here, and that is the Democrats have spent the last six to eight years building in place an infrastructure to allow them to basically hijack elections at their whim.

Listen here:

Steele claimed that Democratic secretaries of states are working with ACORN in a way “that basically land locks these elections in such a way that they basically walk out of the election with the votes that they need.” He added that “they have activities by groups like an ACORN, or individuals like George Soros through their funding, to help them augment the taking of these elections.”

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Glenn Beck claims supporters of cap-and-trade are either dumb, ‘greedy,’ ‘wicked’ or ‘treasonous.’ »

On his radio show today, global warming denier Glenn Beck played an audio clip of Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine speaking favorably of cap-and-trade, but saying it would be “difficult” to do it in Virginia alone. “This is something that is much better done, either on a very huge regional basis or a national basis,” said Kaine. Kaine’s comments caused Beck to accuse cap-and-trade supporters of being “the dumbest people to ever walk the face of the Earth,” “greedy,” “wicked” and even “treasonous“:

BECK: And these people know it. They are either the dumbest people to ever walk the face of the Earth, which I think some of them are. They are just greedy and just want their own power and their own control, which I think some of them are. Or, they believe in a different system other than the Republic, which I think some of them do. They are, they have exposed themselves as incompetent. They have exposed themselves as wicked. They have exposed themselves, quite honestly I think, as treasonous. I think some of them are treasonous. They have exposed themselves. Now the question is are there enough people in America still that believes in liberty and freedom and the Constitution?

Listen here:

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Steele’s latest analogy: Do you want to get ‘saved from the sharks,’ but ‘picked up by a bunch of pirates?’ »

RNC Chairman Michael Steele is known for his creative analogies. In April, he declared that regional differences in the GOP were just like people who wear their hats in different ways, a metaphor he used again at a recent College Republican conference. On Frank Beckman’s radio show on Wednesday, Steele broke out a new metaphor to describe why he thinks its bad for government to step in and help save jobs in private industries:

BECKMAN: And the people who are out of work, you know, they’re not much concerned right now about, about who saves them, whether it’s the private sector or public, they just want to be saved.

STEELE: Yeah, that’s true, but there’s a danger that lies in that. And I think that’s where an appreciation, if not an education, of the consequences of certain policies has got to get talked about and people really need to understand. You know, it’s like the guy who, you know, is in the water and you know, he wants to get saved from the sharks, but then — from the sharks — but then he gets picked up by a bunch of pirates or, you know, or some bad guys. You know, what’s worse being in the water or being in the boat where they’re beating the heck out of you every day? So, you know, the reality of it is, it does matter who saves you.

Listen here:

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Krauthammer on Sanford: ‘I think he doesn’t last a week in the office of governor.’ »

Following the surprising news that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford had an affair with a woman in Argentina, Fox News’ right-leaning “All-Stars” declared yesterday that Sanford’s political future is in serious trouble. “I think he’s toast,” said the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. The Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer agreed, saying “I think he is toast politically”:

KRAUTHAMMER: And resigning from the Republican Governors’ Association chairmanship is not going to do it, and the reason is that there is a dereliction of duty here. I know that’s the titillation of the reason for it, but even apart from that, he is the governor of the state.

The governor of the state is chief executive, and if there is a disaster in the state, and this guy is incommunicado, he is nowhere to be seen and he doesn’t transfer authority to his lieutenant governor who calls out the National Guard, you cannot recover from that. I think he doesn’t last a week in the office of governor.

Watch it:

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Family Research Council removes Sanford’s picture from Values Voters Summit website.

Previously, the website for the Family Research Council’s Values Voters Summit 2009 featured a picture of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, advertising that he was a potential speaker. But Pam Spaulding points out that following Sanford’s announcement of an affair, his picture was quickly removed from the website.

Before:

After: