Brian Faughnan from the Weekly Standard reports from CPAC that right-wing pundit Ann Coulter still has plenty of books to sell:
Curiously untouched: Ann Coulter books. There are plenty left if you need to complete your collection. Note to my family: you know what you’re getting for Christmas.
Coulter was not offered a speaking slot by this year’s CPAC organizers.
It occurred to me that maybe Dave Berri has some counterintuitive argument as to why the Shaq-Matrix trade makes sense for Phoenix. The answer is no. Instead, he has a counterintuitive argument that even if Shaq were to return to his 2004-2005 season level of production the trade still wouldn’t help Phoenix. And, of course, that’s not going to happen.
Meanwhile, an additional consideration here is that Shawn Marion is not only better, cheaper, and younger than Shaq, but he logs more minutes per game. Indeed, he plays more minutes per game than anyone else on the Phoenix roster. So expect to see more Brian Skinner and Boris Diaw in the future. The (rare) defenses of this trade, meanwhile, don’t seem to grasp that just because Phoenix was relatively unlikely to win a championship pre-trade hardly justifies doing a deal that makes the team worse. The Wizards aren’t going to win as presently constituted, either, but that doesn’t mean Ernie Grunfeld should go do something ridiculous. Maybe if Phoenix hadn’t sold those draft picks they could have struck gold. Anything but this.
Today in a speech at CSIS, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) said that he is “preparing legislation that would give President Bush the war funding he wants this year, but on the condition that troops leave Iraq by the end of the year” and deploying troops be “fully trained and equipped.” Murtha will propose that the House vote on the bill next month.
Speaking to a right-wing crowd at CPAC today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was loudly booed when he mentioned his push for comprehensive immigration reform last year. (A position he has since given up.)
McCAIN: Surely, I have held other positions that have not met with widespread agreement from conservatives. I won’t pretend otherwise, nor would you permit me to forget it. On — on the issue of illegal immigration, a position which –
CROWD: Boo! Boo!
Watch it:
This morning, Politico reported that CPAC organizers had instructed conference attendees not to boo McCain. Last year, McCain was the only major Republican presidential candidate to skip CPAC.
It’s interesting that even a CPAC audience that provides wild applause for every lame right-wing talking point could barely muster a cheer for McCain’s promise to cut entitlement spending.
It’s nice to see McCain lying about FISA at his CPAC speech.
There are a lot of reasons you can come up with for why John McCain may not be a strong general election candidate. But this is the flipside. Since he has a reputation for straight-talk, he’s been granted by the press an unrestricted licenses to lie. It’s hard to beat someone with one of those.
After acknowledging for the first time publicly that the CIA waterboarded three prisoners, CIA Director Michael Hayden “left open the option of reinstating” the interrogation tactic in the future.
The FBI and Department and Defense, however, are standing by their position that waterboarding is unnecessary. The Pentagon has banned employees from using the tactic, and the FBI said “its investigators do not use coercive tactics when interviewing terror suspects.”
In a hearing today, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) asked FBI Director Robert Mueller and Lt. Gen. Michael Maples of the Defense Intelligence Agency why their agencies don’t use coercive interrogations: “Do you never interrogate people who have critical information?” The agency heads responded:
MUELLER: Our protocol is not to use coercive techniques. That is our protocol. We have lived by it. And it is sufficient and appropriate for our mission here in the United States. … We believe in the appropriateness of our techniques to our mission here in the United States.
MAPLES: The Army Field Manual guides our efforts and the efforts of the Armed Forces. … We believe that the approaches that are in the Army Field Manual give us the tools that are necessary for the purpose under which we are conducting interrogations.
Watch it:
The FBI has long warned against such interrogations. In 2004, agents “repeatedly warned” interrogators at Guantanamo Bay that their tactics “were legally risky and also likely to be ineffective.”
The Defense Intelligence Agency, like the CIA, runs intelligence operations around the world. In fact, some “missions have expanded into areas traditionally under the purview of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
In December, the House passed an amendment that extends the current prohibitions in the Army Field Manual against torture to U.S. intelligence agencies and personnel. Later in the hearing, Hayden “guaranteed” that if legislation is passed prohibiting coercive techniques, the CIA will abide by it.
I’ve seen lots of posts on Mittens’ wingnutty farewell speech that focus on the “surrender to terror” bit, but what about this?
Did you see that today, government workers make more money than people who work in the private sector. Can you imagine what happens to an economy where the best opportunities are for bureaucrats?
This seems bizarre. A lot of the people working for the government have specialized skills. They’re lawyers, scientists, accountants, etc. and, in good market fashion, they earn more money than do unskilled workers. Teachers, to name a very large category of public sector worker, are, for obvious reasons, better-educated than the average person. Police officers and firefighters have demanding, often dangerous jobs. It’s not as if the people handing out forms at the DMV earn more money than hedge fund managers. I’m retroactively reconsidering my support for this clown.
Eric Alterman makes the case for embracing it. It’s worth emphasizing that there’s something mighty impractical about the whole “no, we’re liberals” kick. Whatever the methodological problems with the National Journal “omg he’s the most liberal senator evar!” surveys it is, in fact, the case that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both in the left-most third of the Senator distribution and any reasonable approach will show that. Meanwhile, “liberal” just is the term people use for that side of the political spectrum in the modern United States.
Chris Bowers and the Center for American Progress don’t get to unilaterally alter the country’s language. If liberals don’t use the word “liberal,” in other words, the only people using it will be using it as an insult and people using it as a neutral descriptor. And the neutral descriptor people are going to keep using it no matter what liberals do.
Via Mark Kleiman, Rodger Payne rounds up the several respects in which Barack Obama has outlined a more sensible Cuba policy than has Hillary Clinton. He’s not been willing to move toward full sensibleness, but Clinton has indicated that she’ll take a full-on “whatever CANF wants” approach to the issue. Somewhat similarly, while Obama’s hardly been a saint on Israel-Palestine issues, he’s at least managed to make AIPAC somewhat uncomfortable with his approach.
This is how it goes down the line on foreign policy issues — there are no yawning gaps between Clinton and Obama, but across a broad range of subjects Obama has positioned himself substantively better, while Clinton has been very cautious about challenge any aspects of entrenched conventional wisdom. To me, ultimately, that’s what my preference for Obama is about. I find the cult a little creepy, too.
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