On Friday, Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski challenged Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) to explain why he voted against a bipartisan proposal to expand background checks to gun shows and online sales. The measure, which failed in a vote of 54 to 46, would have required buyers to submit to a five minute screening to keep individuals with criminal records or mental illness from purchasing guns.

Barrasso pointed out that he was “the first Republican senator to meet with the families [of Newtown, Connecticut],” but explained that he opposed the background check amendment because he knew the government wouldn’t enforce it anyway:

We have one [background check ] law on the books right now. Under both President Bush and President Obama, they have completely failed. 44,000 in 2010, 44,000 felons and fugitives were caught trying to buy guns through a background check and only 40 of them were prosecuted. Less than 1%. It’s a failure of both the Bush administration and the Obama administration. [...]

The [background check system] that we have now they are not implementing and not enforcing. What makes you think they will enforce one that does more checks on more people?

In reality, from 1999 to 2009, 1.8 million people were blocked from purchasing guns after failing a background check and federal firearm prosecutions has remained steady, varying by no more than 5 percent each year, according to Department of Justice data.

Republicans and the NRA specifically cherry pick prosecutions for background checks to imply that the Obama administration has stopped enforcing existing law, though it has gone after gun-related crimes at the same rate as its predecessors. Law enforcement officials often see these cases as a poor use of resources because prosecutors must prove that “the person knew they were lying when they tried to purchase the firearm” in order to secure a conviction which “usually carries a maximum sentence of just six months.”

On Tuesday, a five-year-old Kentucky boy accidentally shot and killed his two-year-old sister with a gun he’d been given as a birthday present. The weapon, a small rifle, was manufactured specifically for children’s use.

The boy’s weapon was a “My First Rifle” .22-caliber gun from Keystone Sporting Arms’ youth branch, Crickett. Crickett’s website markets itself “especially for youth shooters.” The firearms come in several neon colors, and the website even has a “kids corner” featuring pictures of small children with guns:

Crickett does not manufacture bullets. The company offers books for “Grades 2-3 and up,” and says their guns are “ideally sized for children four to ten years old.”

The militarization of children has been tragically spotlighted in the aftermath of the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut last December. Since then, the country has paid heart-sickening attention to the myriad accidental shootings that have taken place around the country, and the growth of a market of bulletproof children’s clothing.

In one week alone last month, four people were shot by toddlers.

HILTON HEAD, South Carolina — A mysterious conservative group has been placing highly-misleading phone calls to South Carolina voters, trying to dissuade them from voting for the Democrat in an upcoming congressional special election.

South Carolina has a reputation for dirty tricks, and next week’s special election between former Gov. Mark Sanford (R) and businesswoman Elizabeth Colbert Busch (D) is no exception. One of the most popular tactics is known as “push polling,” whereby a group calls up voters under the guise of conducting a poll, only to ask questions that leave the voter with a highly-misleading impression about a certain candidate.

ThinkProgress spoke with multiple individuals in South Carolina’s first congressional district who have received push polls from an unknown conservative group that only referred to itself as “SSI Polling”.

April Wolford, a middle-aged woman who has long been active in Democratic politics in the state, was one. At 12:55pm on February 25th, Wolford’s cell phone lit up with “Unavailable” on the caller ID screen. A young man without a discernible accent – “he certainly wasn’t from South Carolina,” she noted – said he was conducting a poll and began with general questions about the race. “But they quickly got slanted,” Wolford noted, “and they didn’t ask a single question about Sanford at all!”

As the conversation turned, she asked him where he was calling from. “SSI Polling,” he told her, but wouldn’t elaborate.

The questions they did ask ranged from outlandish smears to thinly-veiled Republican talking points. Here are some of the issues SSI brought up in various iterations of the push poll, according to those ThinkProgress spoke with:

- “What would you think of Elizabeth Colbert Busch if I told you she had had an abortion?”

- “What would you think of Elizabeth Colbert Busch if I told you a judge held her in contempt of court at her divorce proceedings?

- “What would you think of Elizabeth Colbert Busch if she had done jail time?”

- “What would you think of Elizabeth Colbert Busch if I told you she was caught running up a charge account bill?”

- “What would you think of Elizabeth Colbert Busch if she supported the failed stimulus plan?”

- “What would you think of Elizabeth Colbert Busch if I told you unions contributed to her campaign?”

After about a half dozen of these questions, Wolford began to challenge the caller for asking such absurd questions. He apologized, telling her, “ma’am, I’m just paid to ask questions.” When Wolford asked who all he was calling, he demurred, saying he “just had to call the numbers they gave him.” She told ThinkProgress she suspects the calls were targeted towards Democratic women to try to discourage them from voting.

ThinkProgress spoke with April’s friend Flo Rosse who also received the push poll. She recounted a similar call with a young woman who began by asking standard questions but quickly moved toward those obviously meant to smear Colbert Busch. Rosse asked the caller three times who she was calling on behalf of, but, as she told ThinkProgress, “the pollster kept saying the name really fast so I couldn’t get it.” Disgusted, Flo hung up after just a few questions.

“It was so horrible,” Wolford said of the experience. “So ugly.”

When a subsidiary of Mark Zuckerberg’s new political group started airing ads for expanded oil drilling and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, CREDO Action decided to post an ad of their own calling Zuckerberg out — on Facebook.

This morning, Facebook rejected CREDO’s Facebook ad (pictured right). According to CREDO Action, Facebook initially informed them they rejected the ad because it used Facebook trademarks — specifically, Zuckerberg’s image. Though the image used was fully licensed for creative commons use, a Facebook representative told ThinkProgress that any images of Zuckerberg are off-limits, as he is part of the Facebook brand. The rules governing Facebook brand usage specify “trademarks, names, domain names, logos” but does not explicitly restrict images of Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg’s group, FWD.US, is ostensibly focused on passing comprehensive immigration reform, with long-term goals of expanding scientific research and reforming education. However, the group soon started funding ads promoting oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and constructing the Keystone XL pipeline. In the past, Zuckerberg has called for reducing fossil fuel usage in favor of more clean energy sources. FWD.US defended the ads as a way to shore up vulnerable Republican lawmakers who support immigration reform.

CREDO recently protested outside Zuckerberg’s recent fundraiser with Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), and decided to launch a Facebook advertising campaign “to make the connection about how political Mark Zuckerberg has become,” as CREDO told Politico. They’re not the only group taking to Facebook to challenge Zuckerberg’s political causes; the Sierra Club also asked members to share a graphic saying, “Zuckerberg promoting dirty fuels? DISLIKE.”

A top Republican senator said that lawmakers shouldn’t act to prevent terrorists from obtaining guns, arguing that additional restrictions would only reduce “the number of firearms nationwide” and undermine the rights of law-abiding Americans.

“It’s just ludicrous to think that the criminal element, somehow, will be legislated out of having weapons,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) said Monday on The Laura Ingraham Show. Asked if he would support prohibiting terrorists from buying guns — currently, individuals on the terror watch list can buy guns even if they undergo a background check — Inhofe replied that the “criminal element or the terrorist element they will be able to get those”:

INGRAHAM: What do you say to Joe Scarborough, all these other people who say, under your theory Senator Inhofe, a terrorist — someone in the country who wants to be a terrorist — nothing is stopping him from going into a gun show and getting a gun from a none licensed dealer….

INHOFE: Well, the terrorist, they are a part of, not by definition part of a criminal, because they are terrorists, but I would say the same thing is true for terrorists that is for criminals. And that is, if someone in the United States of America or any other place too the criminal element or the terrorist element they will be able to get those. The problem I have is that any restrictions, such as the ones we voted against last week, would have the effect of reducing the number of firearms nationwide and would disproportionately reduce them for law abiding citizens, that’s what I would say to Joe Scarborough.

In 2011, video surfaced of American-born al-Qaeda spokesmen Adam Yahiye Gadahn urging the terrorist group’s followers to exploit this so-called “terror gap.“ “America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms,” he said. “You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?”

In May of that year, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, encouraged by the NRA, voted down an amendment that would have prevented those on the federal terrorist watch list from buying guns, even though a Government Accountability Office had found that suspected terrorists bought firearms and explosives from licensed dealers 1,300 times since 2004.

Earlier this month, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) voted against a bipartisan measure to expand background checks for gun purchases conducted at gun shows and online and saw her approval ratings plummet by 15 points. But now the National Rifle Association, who spent millions lobbying against the popular measure is coming to her defense.

The organization is running radio ads thanking Ayotte for focusing on “meaningful bipartisan solutions” and opposing “misguided gun control laws that would not have prevented Sandy Hook.” The ad does not specifically mention background checks, but notes that Ayotte supports improving the mental health system as “the only way to protect our children” because she is a mother:

Washington is full of politicians out of touch with the problems of our lives. While we worry about keeping our kids safe, too many of them worry about keeping their own power. But Senator Kelly Ayotte is focused on meaningful bipartisan solutions to our nation’s problems. That’s because Kelly Ayotte is not just a senator, she’s also a mom who cares about protecting our kids. She knows that they only way to protect our children from tragedies like Sandy Hook is to fix our broken mental health system. That’s why Kelly Ayotte brought Republicans and Democrats together on a bipartisan solution and it’s why Kelly had the courage to oppose misguided gun control laws that would not have prevented Sandy Hook. Kelly Ayotte is focused on prosecuting law breakers and fixing our broken mental health system. Call her at 202-224-3121 and thank her for focusing on protecting our kids and our New Hampshire values. Paid for by the New Hampshire men and women of the National Rifle Association.

Listen:

Gun safety advocates confronted Ayotte for opposing background checks the day after the vote and asked her to explain her position. The first-term senator didn’t address the need to keep criminals or mentally ill people from obtaining firearms and instead explained that she wanted to protect gun shop owners from the burden of running additional background checks for sales conducted at gun shows or online.

New polling data from Public Policy Polling finds that the five senators from Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, and Ohio who voted against background checks have “seen their approval numbers decline, and voters say they’re less likely to support them the next time they’re up for reelection.”

A group of gun activists armed with AR-15s and handguns held a rally at the Tippecanoe County Courthouse in Indiana on Saturday to thank Congress for voting down gun safety measures, including a proposal to expand background checks for guns sales.

Indiana Moms Against Gun Control organized the event as a counter protest to Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense’s protest calling for stricter federal gun laws in the aftermath of the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Pictures from JCOnline.com:

The armed group had previously crashed a gun safety protest in March and insisted that they had a right to carry the loaded weapons on the streets. “To me, it’s normal,” one of the men told a local TV station, before admitting that he was carrying a loaded weapon. “Any weapon that’s not loaded is just a rock or a club,” he said.

Indiana does not prohibit assault weapons or place limits on magazine capacity.

Washington, D.C. residents have long fought for autonomous control over their budget, which has always at the mercy of Congressional approval and, recently, Republican whims. On Thursday, Rep. John Mica (R-FL), one of the committee members who oversees Washington’s budget, dismissed the district’s recent vote in favor of budget autonomy. In an interview with WTTG-TV, Mica literally laughed off the vote, comparing the 85 percent majority to his children asking for more allowance:

Well, when my kids were young teenagers, they always wanted budget autonomy too. But we always, you know, you allow them to go their own way, and if they get out of line, according to the Constitution, the Congress has the right to step in…As long as they are minding their P’s and Q’s, so to say, I think the government can back off. But we must remain vigilant.

Watch it:

Before he made the comment, Mica had just admitted DC’s finance management has vastly improved since the dissolution of a Congressional control board, which restored day-to-day budget decisions to the city council. Regardless of the district’s actual financial behavior, Mica felt that “regression” could take place and emphasized that Congress should continue to have oversight.

Since taking the House in 2010, Republicans have abused their power over DC’s budget to advance their own agenda. Lawmakers from other states have attempted to force the overwhelmingly liberal district to outlaw abortion, reduce contraception access, sell more guns, block union membership, cut public transportation funds, and pay for private schools.

Since DC voters approved budget autonomy, Congress now has 35 legislative days to review the amendment. It will become law unless both houses pass a disapproval resolution and the president signs it.

Congressional candidates who are down in the polls often pull unexpected stunts to try to shake up the race — but even the most cunning strategist would have to question the wisdom of publicizing an unredacted list of phone numbers from people who have called the campaign.

This past weekend, former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), best known for lying about an affair with an Argentinian woman, ran a full-page ad in the Charleston Post & Courier to support his congressional campaign after it was revealed that he had been charged with trespassing at his ex-wife’s house. In the ad, Sanford included his personal cell phone number and told readers to call him “if you have further questions.”

After Sanford published his own cell phone number, House Majority PAC, a Democratic-aligned super PAC, included his number in a fundraising email sent Wednesday.

Sanford responded Thursday by publishing a list of unredacted phone numbers from anybody who had called his cell phone in an attempt to publicly shame them. See a redacted version of the list below:

ThinkProgress spoke with three of the people whose numbers appeared on the list – all were surprised and upset to learn their private phone numbers had been published. Darla, who shares a home phone with her 80-year-old mother and 91-year-old father expressed concern that they might receive harassing phone calls. “It opens us up for all kinds of issues,” she noted, adding that Sanford “didn’t even have the courtesy of calling me back to answer my questions.” That Sanford instead decided to make their home phone number public “speaks to the kind of person he is,” she said.

Thomas, who noted that Sanford did not tell callers that he was going to publish their numbers in this fashion, called the move consistent with his record of dishonesty. “I called his office to find out the best spot to get on the Appalachian Trial,” he quipped.

Tina, who told ThinkProgress she had called Sanford with a question about his use of taxpayer dollars on his personal travel, said this move seemed “vindictive and petty.” “He gave his permission” for his own number to be published and she did not, she observed, adding, “I’m not too happy about it and I’m not sure what the point was. He’s a representative, he’s supposed to respond to us, not to try to get back at us.”

Sanford’s campaign has grown increasingly erratic as polls show him trailing Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, even in the strongly-Republican district. On Wednesday, in an homage to Clint Eastwood’s infamous RNC chair speech, Sanford used a campaign stop in Charleston to debate a cardboard cutout of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Adam Peck contributed to this post.

The five living presidents will meet in Texas on Thursday to dedicate the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. And while Bush and his aides are using the occasion to soften the 43 president’s image and solidify his legacy, a recounting of Bush-era policies — from his deregulation of Wall Street to the invasion of Iraq — greatly undermine the new rosy narrative of the Bush years:

Authorized the use of torture

Though the US Code bans torture, Bush personally issued a memorandum six days after the September 11th attacks instructing the CIA that it could use “enhanced interrogation techniques” against suspected terrorists. The methods included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and “stress positions.” A recently-released bipartisan committee concluded it was “indisputable” that these techniques constituted torture, and that the highest authorities in the country bore responsibility for the creation of a torture programs at Guantanamo Bay and CIA “black sites” around the world.

Politicized climate science

Bush’s “do-nothing” approach to climate change prevented the U.S. from pursuing meaningful action. Though he claimed that global warming was a serious problem that was either a natural phenomenon or caused by humans, the administration routinely edited scientific reports to downplay the threat of climate change, censored CDC testimony that climate change was a public health threat, and promoted climate denying studies financed by ExxonMobil. At the end of the Bush presidency, a top intelligence adviser warned the incoming president that climate change was a massive destabilizing national security threat that would lead to “Dust Bowl” conditions in the Southwest.

Ignored Afghanistan to launch a war in Iraq

Rather than consolidating gains after the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Bush and his neoconservative allies pushed for removing Saddam Hussein from power, kicking off a war that led to one mistake after another. Ten years later, the war is estimated to have cost cost up to $6 trillion and resulted in the death of more than 100,000 Iraqis, 4,000 Americans and another 31,000 wounded. Meanwhile, Afghanistan saw a resurgence of the Taliban after Bush shifted resources to Iraq.

Botched the response to Hurricane Katrina

Bush appointed Michael Brown — a man whose only real qualifications were political connections and a sting at the International Arabian Horse Association — to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2003 and he preceded to undo everything the Clinton Administration had done to make FEMA functional, botching the response to 2004′s Hurricane Frances so badly as to prompt calls for his firing. But Bush kept Brown on board and, as a detailed timeline of the response to Hurricane Katrina demonstrates, neither man took the storm seriously until it was too late. Bush, who famously said “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” midway through the crisis, thus presided over the most deaths due to a single natural disaster in the United States since 1900.
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