Shortly after President Obama announced that he would recess appoint four officials in order to prevent Senate Republicans from effectively shutting down two key agencies through a filibuster, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) compared Obama’s actions to Pearl Harbor and promised a scorched earth campaign of obstruction against every one of the president’s nominees.

Fortunately, even most of Lee’s fellow Republican senators deemed Lee’s tantrum to be overblown. Last February, when the Senate voted to confirm Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo shortly after Lee announced his obstruction campaign, only five of Lee’s colleagues joined him. Yesterday, the Senate voted to confirm Judge Stephanie Thacker to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and Lee was only able to convince Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and David Vitter (R-LA) to join him in opposition. Even Tea Party stalwarts like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) who joined Lee in opposing Bencivengo, broke with Lee on Thacker.

In a mass proceeding a Catholic men’s march this weekend, Bishop Daniel Jenky delivered a homily that appears better suited to an episode of the Glenn Beck Show than to a celebration of religious faith. As part of a lengthy historical lecture on past attacks on the Catholic church, Jenky claimed that President Obama is following in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler:

The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate. . . .

Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

Listen:

For the record, Hitler tried to systematically exterminate the members of faiths that he did not approve of. Obama, by contrast, wants all working women to have access to contraception, regardless of whether they work for a religious employer. The very suggestion that Obama or his actions even vaguely resemble those of the Third Reich is deeply offensive and calls into question whether Bishop Jenky possesses the most basic understanding of the history of Nazi Germany.

Texas GOP Senate candidate Ted Cruz thinks that Medicaid is unconstitutional. He echoed Gov. Rick Perry’s (R-TX) claim that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme,” wants to privatize the program and to raise the retirement age. He proposed an unconstitutional backdoor plan to nullify the Affordable Care Act. His first campaign ad touts how he helped Texas kill an undocumented immigrant. And he believes that George Soros and the United Nations are engaged in a giant conspiracy to eliminate the game of golf. Seriously.

So, of course, wealthy Republican donors and corporations love him:

Texas Senate contender Ted Cruz might not be leading in the polls, but he leads in support from independent expenditure committees — not just in Texas, but across the nation.

An independent expenditure committee, many of which are known as Super PACs, can advocate a candidate to be elected or defeated as long as they are not in direct contact with the candidate’s campaign.

According to the Federal Election Commission, independent expenditure committees have spent $1,688,649.63 either in support of former state Solicitor General Cruz or in opposition to his Republican primary opponents, mainly Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the leader in several polls. . . . “He’s once-in-a-generation type candidate for FreedomWorks, for the Tea Party movement,” said Brendan Steinhauser, the director of federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks, a conservative group, which has spent $95,191.25 in support of Cruz.

It is not surprising to see a Republican like Cruz rolling in cash from Super PACs and other vehicles enabling the very wealthy to buy and sell elections, as these independent expenditure groups overwhelmingly favor Republicans. As of last January, seventeen of the top twenty donors this election cycle were conservatives or Republicans:

Nevertheless, the fact that Cruz appears to be winning the Citizens United lottery nationwide suggests that this kind of spending is particularly beneficial to the most radical conservatives. Admittedly, Cruz’s plans to dismantle much of the nation’s safety net doesn’t really distinguish him among Republicans — congressional Republicans nearly unanimously voted for Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan to phase out the Medicare program just one year ago. But Cruz’s penchant for conspiracy theories about evil Soros plans to wipe out our nation’s golf courses marks him as unusually radical even for a Republican senate candidate.

In the face of mounting pressure from progressive activists and its own corporate sponsors, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing group funded by corporations like ExxonMobil and Koch Industries, announced today that it will shut down a task force that deals with “non-economic issues,” like voter suppression efforts and “stand your ground” gun laws. ALEC came under intense scrutiny over the past few weeks after progressive groups like Color of Change began pressuring corporations that fund ALEC to drop their support. The Center for American Progress also released a report highlighting the right-wing group’s role in pushing voter suppression efforts around the country. As a result, 10 companies, including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Kraft, have pulled out from ALEC.

In response to the exodus of corporate funding, ALEC made the decision today to scale back its operations and focus on “economic” matters. The group released the following statement:

We are eliminating the ALEC Public Safety and Elections task force that dealt with non-economic issues, and reinvesting these resources in the task forces that focus on the economy. The remaining budgetary and economic issues will be reassigned.

This is a monumental move. The now defunct ALEC task force helped usher countless reactionary laws through state legislatures. Most prominent among these are “stand your ground” gun laws that came to the forefront in Florida after Trayvon Martin’s tragic death, and new voter ID laws that could suppress millions across the country, predominantly poor people and minorities.

Yet, while today’s announcement is an important victory, it does not change the fact that ALEC will continue to push corporate-friendly conservative economic legislation. Here is a short list of ostensibly economic measures ALEC has supported in the past:

• State union-busting measures
• Repealing minimum wage laws
• Privatizing public lands
• Repealing capital gains taxes
• Repealing the estate tax
• Fighting any efforts to address manmade climate change while touting “the many benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment”
• Repealing paid sick day laws around the country
• Requiring a super-majority to raise taxes
• Pushing rules that deem that kids eating rat poison is an “acceptable risk”

The U.S. military seems to be trying to deal with its troubling pattern of sexual assault cases. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the military will begin new procedures for handling sex crimes, including creating a minimum rank for service members who deal with those cases.

This news comes after a story that ran this weekend on CNN detailing cases of women in each branch of the military who were diagnosed with a mental disorder and dismissed from the military after filing a sexual assault or sexual harassment complaint.

The stories are gruesome, telling of several women’s experience of serious sexual trauma, who are then essentially rejected from the military when they share what happened to them.

CNN has interviewed women in all branches of the armed forces, including the Coast Guard, who tell stories that follow a similar pattern — a sexual assault, a command dismissive of the allegations and a psychiatric discharge.

Schroeder says a fellow Marine followed her to the bathroom in April 2002. She says he then punched her, ripped off her pants and raped her. When she reported what happened, a non-commissioned officer dismissed the allegation, saying, “‘Don’t come bitching to me because you had sex and changed your mind,’” Schroeder recalls.

Moore says she was alone in her barracks in October 2002 when a non-commissioned officer from another battery tried to rape her. When she filled out forms to report it, she says, her first sergeant, told her: “Forget about it. It never happened,” and tore up the paperwork.

“It felt like a punch in the gut,” Moore says. “I couldn’t trust my chain of command to ever back me up.”

McClendon says she was aboard a Navy destroyer at sea when a superior raped her on the midnight to 2 a.m. watch. After reporting the attack, she was diagnosed with a personality disorder and deemed unfit to serve.

ThinkProgress reached out to Kayla Williams, a female veteran and author of Love My Rifle More Than You, who has written extensively about women in the military, to see if the CNN report sounded correct to her. Williams not only confirmed the CNN article; she told a similar sexual assault experience she witnessed:

While I was at the Defense Language Institute, a woman reported sexual assault – and was threatened with disciplinary action for having been drinking underage when the assault happened. She was later discharged with a personality disorder diagnosis. Stories like that [discourage] victims from coming forward, which prevents justice from being done. Since those who commit sexual assault are often repeat offenders, discharging victims while not vigorously prosecuting those who commit assault could also ruin the careers – and lives – of multiple victims while allowing criminals the freedom to continue. The Department of Defense has been making progress in fighting sexual assault within the military, but it has a long way to go. Treating victims of sexual assault seriously and with the dignity and respect they deserve, rather than sweeping cases under the rug with this type of discharge, is an important step in continuing that progress.

Military sexual traumas, as they are called within the armed forces, are shockingly common and on the rise. 19,000 incidents were predicted (PDF) in the last year alone. But there is little transparency on sexual assault cases, and the ACLU has requested more information through a Freedom of Information Act. A judge ruled recently that the armed forces were too slow in fulfilling the request, and ordered the records released by this time next month. The military has not yet complied.

In the mean time, the new regulations announced by Defense Secretary Panetta will hopefully provide some relief to victims: Not only does it change minimum ranking, it also requires military investigators to be trained in helping sexual assault victims and requires troops to have sexual assault awareness training when they go into active duty.