Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) vociferously defended Apple during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, as the tech giant fought against accusations that it used foreign subsidiares to dodge billions of dollars in taxes. The Tea Party favorite, who is openly considering a 2016 presidential bid, accused the government of “bullying” Apple and issued a personal apology to its executives.

Apple CEO Tim Cook appeared before a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations one day after Congressional investigators revealed that Apple avoided paying $2.4 billion in taxes in 2011 alone.

“I’m offended by the spectacle of dragging in Apple executives,” Paul said. “What we need to do is apologize to Apple and compliment them for the job creation they’re doing…Apple hasn’t broken any laws, yet Apple is forced to sit through a show trial,” he said. Watch some highlights:

However, Paul’s decision to stick up for Apple may be motivated by more than tax policy. Like any ambitious politician flirting with a presidential bid, Paul needs money. Lots of it. And, according to the Washington Post, he’s working to charm a fertile source of campaign funds: Silicon Valley. Later this month, Paul will travel to California for a speech at the Reagan Library, followed by meetings with tech executives:

His closest political strategist, Doug Stafford, resigned last week as chief of staff at Paul’s Senate office, moving to head Rand PAC.

Stafford said in an interview that fundraising and other operations are gearing up, both at Rand PAC and at Paul’s 2016 Senate reelection operation. He said the organizations will work aggressively in an area that was not available to the elder Paul, “which is the ability to reach out to high-dollar, traditional fundraising. . . . That’s something that we’ll be focusing on into next year.”

To that end, the senator’s Reagan Library trip will include meetings in Silicon Valley with tech industry executives, some of whom see Paul as an ally because of his opposition to Internet taxation and regulation. Paul aides see the tech industry, which heavily backed Obama’s campaigns, as a potential source of campaign donations for the senator or other Republicans.

Though Paul frequently rails against crony capitalism, there’s more than a bit of hypocrisy in his decision to stick up for a tax-dodging company in order to score more campaign donations.

Oklahoma residents will now turn to government assistance for emergency disaster aid after a tornado ripped through the state on Monday, leaving dozens dead and tearing apart hundreds of buildings. But the same night that many residents lost their homes, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) told CQ Roll Call insisted he would “absolutely” require any federal disaster aid to be offset by other budget cuts. He later clarified on Tuesday, promising, “I can assure Oklahomans that any and all available aid will be delivered without delay.”

Both of the state’s senators, Sen. James Inhofe (R) and Coburn, however, have long worked to undermine the Federal Emergency Management Agency, even though their state heavily relies on disaster aid:

– In September 2011, Coburn offered an amendment to offset $6.9 billion in FEMA funding.

– Coburn voted in 2011 against funding FEMA after it ran out of money, because, in his words, funding FEMA would have been “unconscionable.” Inhofe did not vote. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid fired back at Republicans blocking a bill for necessary funding to FEMA.

– Inhofe proposed removing grants for storm shelter programs coordinating with FEMA, and instead provide individuals with tax breaks.

– Coburn criticized items in Sandy disaster relief such as $12.9 billion for disaster mitigiation and $366 million for Amtrak as “wasteful spending.”

– After Hurricane Sandy, Inhofe and Coburn voted against a bill for $50.5 billion in Hurricane Sandy disaster relief.

– Coburn demanded that $5.25 billion in FEMA grant funds be reallocated because of sequestration in April 2013.

A spokesman told the Huffington Post that Coburn has supported offsets for the Oklahoma City bombing recovery effort, which tapped funds not yet appropriated.

Oklahoma and Texas rank as the top two states in FEMA disaster declarations; combined, they account for more than a quarter of declared disasters since 2009. So it doesn’t come as a surprise that the senators have requested disaster aid for severe storms and drought, even though Coburn is willing to hold up relief with his demands.

The tornado that hit Oklahoma on Monday resulted in more than 20 deaths and is expected to cost the federal government untold billions of dollars in aid and recovery. But Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who has long objected to federal funds being spent on everything from veterans benefits to relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, is already insisting that any additional appropriations should be paid for with cuts elsewhere. “That’s always been his position [to offset disaster aid],” Coburn spokesman John Hart said. “He supported offsets to the bill funding the OKC bombing recovery effort.”

Indeed, during his time in Congress, Coburn has portrayed his efforts to rein in federal spending as a principled stance against accumulating larger deficits and passing debt to future generations. But Coburn hasn’t always opposed government spending that is not offset by budget cuts. The senator known as “Doctor No” has voted to fund the war in Iraq, the 2008 bank bail out, and even relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:

– 2005: The “Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act” (H.R. 1268) provided $82 billion to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Coburn voted for the measure.

– 2006: The Defense Appropriations Bill (H.R.2863) provided approximately $40 billion for the war in Iraq. Coburn voted for the measure.

– 2006: “Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act,” (H.R. 4939 ) provided $72 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Coburn voted for the measure.

– 2005: After Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Congress passed two relief bills, allocating more than $50 billion and allowing the National Flood Insurance Program to borrow more money. One of the measures was adopted by unanimous consent and Coburn voted for the other.

– 2006: Congress approved a Department of Defense appropriations bill (H.R. 5631), including approximately $70 billion for the war in Iraq. Coburn voted for the measure.

– 2008: In October 2008, the Bush Administration and Congress enacted a rescue package to stabilize the financial system by creating the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Coburn voted in favor of the measure.

By insisting that funding for tornado relief be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget, Coburn representing his ideological purity rather than the needs of his Oklahoma constituents.

(Credit: Associated Press)

The Virginia Republican Party this weekend nominated for lieutenant governor a minister who has a history of virulent anti-gay statements, accuses the Democratic Party of enslaving African Americans, and criticized President Obama for having “Muslim sensibilities.” The former Senate candidate, who in 2012 garnered less than 5 percent of the vote in the Republican primary, bested six other candidates during the Virginia GOP convention, and will join conservative Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli on the Republican ticket. He is the first black candidate the state party has endorsed since 1988.

Here are some of the most alarming facts you need to know about E.W. Jackson:

• He has said gays and lesbians are “very sick people, psychologically and emotionally” whose minds are perverted. He has also said homosexuality “poisons culture, it destroys families, it destroys societies”
• He called alleged Democratic Party ties to Planned Parenthood “more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was” and thinks blacks who join the Democratic Party are voluntarily selling themselves into slavery.
• He has equated Islam with anti-semitism, and criticized President Obama for having “Muslim sensibilities,”
• He led an “Exodus Now!” movement encouraging African Americans to leave the Democratic party because opposition to same-sex marriage and government endorsement of religion means “Democrats are engaged in a concerted effort to do away with all symbols of our Judeo-Christian culture.”
• He rallied against hate crimes legislation as a “virulent strain of Anti-Christian bigotry and hatred.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) went on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday to use the IRS scandal to attack the Obama administraiton, but flubbed a key part of his case: he couldn’t defend the claim that IRS was targeting conservative groups as part of a political strategy to help the White House.

Paul, like most Republicans, has been spinning the scandal as an Obama Administration attack on dissenters. “What the IRS did is how the KGB used to target dissidents,” he wrote in a CNN op-ed. “It is how they deal with troublemakers in China.”

Some have argued the extra IRS scrutiny was part of a failed attempt to implement election law, as opposed to a political crackdown. Host Candy Crowley asked Paul why this interpretation was wrong. He couldn’t give her a reason:

CROWLEY: We do know this one place processes 70,000 applications. Can you see in your mind’s eye a way this might not have been political, that this was a misguided stupid way to sort but that they didn’t intend it to be some kind of political attempt to harass the Tea Party?

PAUL: I would think if there’s any chance that this was a mistake, the Investigator General wouldn’t be coming out and saying otherwise, and the IRS themselves wouldn’t be saying –

CROWLEY: They say it’s a mistake. I think the question is whether it’s political.

PAUL: Well, I think we’re going to have to see the memorandum. Apparently there is a policy, and I think we’re going to find there’s a written policy that says we were targeting people who were opposed to the President. And when that comes forward, we need to know who wrote the policy and who approved the policy…now there’s rumors who wrote the policy is the person running Obamacare, which doesn’t give us a lot of confidence about Obamacare.

CROWLEY: Senator, I have to run. I’m way over on this, but I have to just go back to something you said. Are you telling me you think there’s a memo somewhere in which someone said in the memo we’re targeting people going after the president? Is that what I heard you say?

PAUL: Well, we keep hearing the reports and we have several specifically worded items saying who was being targeted. In fact, one of the bullet points says those who are critical of the President. So I don’t know if that comes from a policy, but that’s what’s being reported in the press.

It’s unclear what Paul’s source for that last claim is, but the Investigator General’s report Paul references found no evidence that conservative groups were targeted as part of a political strategy to weaken the president’s political opponents. The report blamed independent IRS management for allowing the practice to go on in the lower-level Cincinnati office.

Republicans, by contrast, have tended to portray this as part of a concerted Obama Administration strategy to attack conservatives. They have also used the controversy to attack Obamacare.

On this week’s Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace pressured White House Senior Advisor Dan Pfeiffer about why the Obama administration didn’t act sooner to address the IRS’s inappropriate targeting of conservative groups applying for 501(c)(4) tax status, arguing that Treasury officials and administration officials were aware of an ongoing investigation.

Pfeiffer argued that it would have been “wholly inappropriate” for anyone in the White House to interfere with an ongoing investigation and claimed that the administration was never aware of the specifics of the probe. Treasury Deputy Secretary Neal Wolin was informed about the matter last year and the White House counsel’s Office learned of the examination in late April, before the results were available.

“[House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell] Issa was also told topline things,” Pfeiffer reminded Wallace. “Here’s the cardinal rule when you deal with situations like this: you never interfere with an independent investigation, you never give the appearance of interfering with an independent investigation.”

“Issa said he didn’t talk about it publicly — when you’re dealing with a nonpartisan agency like the IRS, you wait until you have the actual facts before you go out and make assertions,” he said.

Indeed, during an interview with Bloomberg earlier this week, Issa admitted, “I knew what was approximately in it when we made the allegations about a year ago.”

On his Facebook page Friday, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) denied he ever voted against strengthened background checks amid blacklash over his opposition to the bipartisan Manchey-Toomey background checks amendment.

Flake used his vote for a watered-down amendment offered by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to argue that he voted to expand background checks. In reality, the amendment would do little to expand background checks and in fact would weaken gun safety laws. Flake made the comments in response to an ad criticizing his opposition to Manchin-Toomey:

If you are anywhere close to a television set in Arizona in the coming days, you’ll likely see an ad about gun control financed by NYC Mayor Bloomberg.

Contrary to the ad, I did vote to strengthen background checks. I voted for the bipartisan Grassley Amendment, which included language from a bill I helped write which strengthened background checks for those with mental illness. The Grassley amendment also included language to increase prosecution of criminals and fugitives who circumvent the current background check system.

Mayor Bloomberg can spend millions trying to get me to support his view of background checks. That’s his call. But we Arizonans aren’t easily bullied. The legislation that would have done the most to keep guns out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them was the Grassley Amendment. And that’s the amendment I supported.

Flake has misrepresented his position on gun violence before. He once wrote to the mother of an Aurora shooting victim that “Strengthening background checks is something we agree on.” However, a month later, Flake voted against the Manchin-Toomey amendment to expand background checks.

What Flake voted for was a plan that would weaken gun laws by making it easier to buy and transport across state lines, helping people evade stricter laws. The central solution Flake cites from the Grassley plan — that states would share their mental health records and provides more prosecution of felons who seek guns — is only one step. It still does nothing to prevent people who take advantage of existing holes in the first place, like online sales. The Grassley amendment also would make it easier for some mentally ill people to obtain guns, by exempting patients who are involuntarily committed.

After his vote, Flake saw his approval rating tank. “Nothing like waking up to a poll saying you’re the nation’s least popular senator,” Flake wrote. “Given the public’s dim view of Congress in general, that probably puts me somewhere just below pond scum.” Flake’s colleague Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) is facing similar fire from constituents for her vote with the National Rifle Association.

This week, the national media has focused on the three different scandals surrounding the White House, devoting hours of coverage to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) improperly targeting conservative groups applying for tax exempt status, the talking points Susan Rice used in the aftermath of the attacks in Benghazi, and the Justice Department’s subpoena of phone records from the Associated Press as part of an investigation into a national security leak. The around-the-clock coverage comes even as a new Gallup poll finds that interest in the ongoing controversies is “lower comparable to major news stores in the past.”

And while these stories raise serious concerns about money in politics, embassy security, and freedom of the press, they aren’t the only problems impacting the American people. Here are five big stories the media isn’t obsessing about:

1. Carbon pollution reaches historic highs, threatening human existence. The concentration of climate warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “has passed the milestone level of 400 parts per million (ppm),” scientists estimate. “At the beginning of industrialisation the concentration of CO2 was just 280ppm,” said Prof Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “We must hope that the world crossing this milestone will bring about awareness of the scientific reality of climate change and how human society should deal with the challenge.” The last time the Earth saw carbon dioxide levels that high, humans did not exist. The West Antarctic ice sheet also did not exist, and sea levels were as much as 82 feet higher than they are today. During an earlier period when CO2 levels were this high, temperatures were 5° to 10°F warmer globally.

2. The devastating impact of sequestration on kids, cancer patients and first responders. On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the budget deficit will shrink to its smallest level since before the Great Recession in 2013, and it will continue to decrease through 2015. But despite the smaller deficits, Republicans remain focused on spending reductions — even as the most recent round of cuts has kicked children out of preschool, left cancer patients without needed screenings, undermined public health and fire safety, and gutted programs that help low-income Americans in a variety of ways. Those cuts have also threatened to derail the economic recovery, which has sputtered along despite the headwinds created by a consistent focus on deficit reduction.

3. Massive cuts to food stamps for the most vulnerable Americans. The House Agriculture Committee approved a farm bill late Wednesday night that would cut federal food stamps by $20.5 billion — more steeply than any legislation since the welfare reforms of the 1990s. Earlier this week, the Senate Agriculture Committee also agreed to a $4.1 billion reduction. The program keeps hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Americans out of the deepest pits of poverty, and even as the Great Recession swelled SNAP rolls, the program continued to push its erroneous payments rates to record lows.

4. 1100 workers die in garment factory collapse in Bangladesh and most American retailers plan business as usual. Since a factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing 1,100 clothing industry workers, American retailers have been hesitant to adopt safety plans that could prevent similar tragedies. Abercrombie & Fitch announced it would sign a safety upgrade plan that has been approved by six major European retailers and one other American company, but many other manufacturers — including Walmart and Gap — are holding out. Although some retailers fear the costs of upgrades, they could pass them on entirely to consumers and only raise prices by 10 cents per garment.

5. 4,000 gun deaths due to gun violence since Newtown. A crowdsourced effort to count every person killed by a gun in the United States since the Newtown tragedy is currently being hosted by Slate. As of this writing, the count is 4,150. The Senate rejected gun safety legislation in April and has not yet set a date for reconsidering the measure.

Daily deals site LivingSocial is under pressure from advocacy groups to stop promoting deals that package guns and alcohol. Credo Action and the Gun Truth Project released a report on Monday highlighting the many outings to shooting ranges and bars offered by LivingSocial all over the country.

Though the packages usually begin at the shooting range and end with alcohol, these groups protest the deal site’s glorification of the combination of guns and drinking. Many of the ads invoke American gun mythology, telling customers they can be like “cowboys,” “Annie Oakley,” or “James Bond” if they buy the deal.

LivingSocial told the Hill that participants are turned away if they seem like they have consumed alcohol or drugs before the event. Nevertheless, CREDO blasted the company’s hyping of firearms for profit:

“In the wake of Newtown, I’d like to know how the people who own or work for LivingSocial can justify profiting from the packaging of AK-47 shooting sprees with an evening of bourbon shots,” Becky Bond, CREDO’s political director, said in a statement.

The company, she added, “is endangering the public health by suggesting pairing assault weapons with alcohol binges is just good clean fun.”

LivingSocial’s competitor, Groupon, cancelled all gun-related deals in North America after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Mixing guns and alcohol is unfortunately common among those attracted to risky behaviors. As the report notes, 86 percent of homicide offenders were drinking at the time of the homicide. Gun owners also have far higher binge-drinking and chronic alcohol abuse rates than people who don’t own guns. People who carry concealed weapons or have confronted someone with a gun are more than twice as likely to drink heavily than non-owners. Ignoring this connection, many states — most recently North Carolina, South Carolina, and Louisiana — have recently pushed for legislation allowing guns in bars.

Four Newtown mothers whose children were killed during the December 14th shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School have a message for the country this Mother’s Day: “We are not going away.”

In a heartbreaking essay, Jackie Barden, Nicole Hockley, Nelba Marquez-Greene and Francine Wheeler reflect upon their childrens’ lives, thank those who have stood behind them and ask others to make the Sandy Hook Promise. They write that while they’re disappointed by the Senate’s recent failure to pass additional gun regulations, they aren’t giving up on their efforts to prevent tragedies like Sandy Hook from happening in the future:

There have been nearly four thousand gun related deaths since Newtown. Too many mothers are spending too much time talking to their children in heaven instead of across the kitchen table….It is time, as six-year-old Ana Marquez-Greene once said, to “let love win.” There are 150 million parents in this country and it’s our goal to unite them in a place of common ground. This is the Sandy Hook Promise.

This Mother’s Day, we encourage you to make the Sandy Hook Promise with us. Today is not about guns, laws or politics; it is about mothers and love. As “Sandy Hook Moms,” we often hear the phrase “I can’t imagine what you are going through.” Well, please imagine it. Imagine what it’s like to lose a son or daughter to gun violence and encourage your elected officials to do the same. We never thought our school, our community or these innocent children would ever face the unspeakable. The more we as parents expand the boundaries of our love beyond our family and to all children, the more likely a tragedy like the one that broke our hearts will never happen again.

The tragedy in Newtown has exposed the threats guns pose to children — not just in mass shootings but, for many children, in their everyday lives at home. In 2010, 15,576 children and teenagers were injured by firearms — three times the number of U.S. soldiers injured in the war in Afghanistan, according to a study by the Children’s Defense Fund. At least 71 children aged 12 and under have been killed by guns in the five months since the Newtown shooting. Several of these have been tragic accidental shootings by other children: on April 29, five-year-old Kristian Sparks shot and killed his two-year-old sister with a rifle marketed for kids. In the past two weeks alone, there have been at least eight accidents involving children shooting themselves or other children.

Proper firearm storage could prevent many of these accidental shootings: if children don’t have access to guns, they won’t be tempted to handle and shoot them. But about 29 percent of households with children under 12 don’t lock up their guns, and nearly half of U.S. states don’t have laws that punish individuals who provide children unsupervised access to firearms. And although the National Rifle Association — which fought hard against expanding background checks and other gun safety measures earlier this year — teaches a gun safety course for children, one of its convention speakers recently suggested parents store guns in a safe in their kids’ rooms.