Today, President George W. Bush appeared on Rush Limbaugh’s show to promote his new book. For the most part, the interview was, as Steve Kornacki of Salon describes, “marked by excessive flattery and deference and a complete lack of follow-up questions.” Yet, Limbaugh did seek some answers on Bush’s immigration position — a topic which they probably don’t agree on. When Limbaugh first asked Bush what he thought about Arizona’s immigration law, Bush complained, “Now, you see, you’re trying to get me to make news. I don’t want to make news. I want to sell books, of course.” Eventually Bush simply implied that the whole Arizona immigration debacle could’ve been avoided if his immigration plan had passed:

BUSH: I think the federal government ought to have a comprehensive immigration law and the fact there isn’t one caused Arizona to react. And as you know, I laid out a comprehensive plan that I believed would work when I was president. I still believe it will work, and in the book I talk about that decision to try to get legislation passed.

RUSH: What was the objective of that legislation? What were you trying to accomplish with your comprehensive immigration reform because many people thought it was amnesty and that he they opposed it.

BUSH: No, I know, and that’s what happens a lot of times these issues get labeled and people react poorly. I couldn’t have said it more plainly: I was against amnesty. I don’t know many people who were for amnesty when it comes time for comprehensive reform. I’m sure there’s some, but, you know, all that would do if you granted amnesty is encourage the next wave to come.

I was trying to basically recognize that our economy required immigrants to work. I mean, there’s a lot of jobs Americans won’t do and therefore there needed to be an orderly, legal way for people to come and work on a temporary basis and that if you’d paid your taxes and had been here for a while and were a good citizen you had a chance to become a citizen, but you had to get at the back of the line. It was a plan that I felt addressed the issue in a good way. There is no plan — obviously there’s no plan, a comprehensive plan — yet, and therefore states like Arizona are reacting.

Listen:

Though Bush’s plan was the closest that Congress has come to passing comprehensive immigration reform in a long time, it probably wouldn’t have fixed the nation’s broken immigration system and prevented SB-1070. To begin with, under Bush’s immigration bill undocumented immigrants would’ve had to leave their jobs and families and return to their home countries for a period of time just to regularize their status. The “touchback” requirement would’ve probably lead to millions of undocumented immigrants staying underground.

One of the most troubling aspects of Bush’s legislation was the “point system” which would’ve sorted out lower-skilled immigrants from high-skilled ones and prioritized the latter in the allocation of visas with little to no regard for economic demand for workers or family reunification. The provision represented a “radical shift in the philosophy of the U.S. immigration system” and would’ve fundamentally changed the demographics of U.S. immigration. Then Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) called it a “radical experiment in social engineering.”

Finally, the bill included a controversial temporary worker program which was opposed by many Democrats who thought it amounted to “indentured servitude.” Most labor unions agreed.

In his interview, Bush also reminded Limbaugh that “not all Democrats were for it on Capitol Hill.” Bush is right. At the time, the Democratic Strategist wrote, “Democrats are restless about the implications of voting for an increasingly bad bill ‘to keep the process going,’ counting on the House to pass something more acceptable.” Overall, Bush’s bill was so flawed that the American Immigration Lawyers Association called it “unworkable.”

However, he is right about one thing: If Congress came up with an immigration plan that worked, the states wouldn’t be taking immigration law into their own hands. Of course, that would mean his own party would have to stop blocking it.

This afternoon, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), a member of the House Government Oversight Committee, appeared on MSNBC’s The Dylan Ratigan Show to talk about what he feels should be the GOP’s legislative agenda.

At one point, Chaffetz started to list off a number of investigations — like probing the Countrywide “Friends Of Angelo” scandal — he wanted to conduct in the House of Representatives now that Republicans are in control of that body. Ratigan asked the congressman how “far back” he thinks is “appropriate” for these investigations. He noted that Chaffetz had not listed a “torture investigation.” Chaffetz responded by saying that that “may be on the list as well. I’m not afraid of going after the Bush administration”:

RATIGAN: How far back do you think is appropriate? Because the one thing that’s not on this list is for instance a torture investigation.

CHAFFETZ: Well, it may be on the list as well. I’m not afraid of going after the Bush administration. I wasn’t brought here by the establishment. When I ran for congressman in 2008, I’m just a freshman year, George W. Bush, Orrin Hatch, and Bob Bennett, three Republicans, they campaigned against me. So I don’t mind going back and looking at ‘em. So I don’t have any hestitation whatsoever.

Watch it:

In endorsing investigations of the Bush Administration’s use of torture, Chaffetz is advocating a position that the Obama administration has thus far refused to take. Just this week, the Justice Department announced that it will not pursue any sort of criminal charges against officials who ordered the destruction of CIA tapes depicting torture of terrorist suspects during the Bush Administration. In an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer that aired last night, former President George W. Bush repeatedly admitted to authorizing waterboarding, a practice that is illegal.

Texas state Rep. Debbie Riddle (R) has been saying for some time now that she wants to introduce an Arizona-style immigration law in her state. Following what Riddle interprets as an electoral “mandate for the toughest possible crackdown on illegal immigration,” it came as little surprise when she decided to literally camp out on folding chairs outside the floor of the Texas House of Representatives to be the first in line on Monday morning to file her bills. Riddle — the lawmaker who called the children of undocumented immigrants “little terrorists” — filed House Bill 16, which would require voters to present photo identification at the polls and House Bill 17, which is similar to Arizona’s law.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) — who was easily reelected last week — has consistently said that he does not support enacting an Arizona-style immigration law in Texas. “I fully recognize and support a state’s right and obligation to protect its citizens, but I have concerns with portions of the law passed in Arizona and believe it would not be the right direction for Texas,” Perry said in a statement shortly after Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) signed off on SB-1070.

Others have suggested that since the Latino electorate in Texas is much larger and more empowered than its counterpart in Arizona, Texas lawmakers won’t be emboldened to pursue legislation that such a large segment of voters oppose.

However, the possibility of Texas enacting an immigration law like Arizona’s is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility.

Texas Latinos may oppose an Arizona-style law, but 57 percent of Texans support it.

For their part, Texas Republicans seem united in support of Riddle’s initiative. This past June, over 8,000 Republican delegates and alternates from Texas approved a GOP blueprint that prioritizes enacting Arizona-like immigration laws in their state. It doesn’t help that Texas Republicans appear to be just one seat short of a supermajority which would allow them to override vetoes and make constitutional amendments without input from the Democrats. That means just one conservative Democrat could help make Riddle’s bill law. (And those kinds of Democrats definitely exist.)

With all that said, passing an Arizona-style immigration law isn’t a very smart long-term strategy and chances are Rick Perry isn’t the only Republican in Texas who recognizes that.

With the President and the rest of his administration stating clearly that one of their top priorities during the lame duck is the ratification of the New START treaty, the stakes have been raised for the GOP leadership in the Senate.

The START treaty is likely to be one of the first real test of whether the GOP can actually take governing seriously. After all the New START treaty isn’t some left wing conspiratorial plot. It extends and updates a treaty negotiated by Ronald Reagan. It has the unanimous support of the military and of a who’s who of senior Republican foreign policy officials. On MSNBC, CAP President John Podesta explained that New START will clarify where Mitch McConnell and the Republican leadership stands. Podesta states:

Will Senator McConnell… get [START] done and go along with [the President]. … If he says no we are just going to be into obstructionism and the just-say-no-party — we’ll at least know where the Republican leadership stands.

Watch it:

The prospects of the treaty getting the 67 votes needed for ratification look somewhat promising, given that three Republicans (Richard Lugar, Bob Corker, and Johnny Isakson) have already voted for the treaty in committee and that the New England Republicans, as well as a scattering of other moderates, would likely vote for it.

So Mitch McConnell faces a clear dilemma. He can block START just to deny Obama a perceived victory and appease some Senate hardliners, but risk making Republicans look like a petty obstructionist far right party that is unfit to govern. Or, alternatively, he can support START, look like you are serious about governing the country and about bipartisanship, but risk some right wing ire and potentially give the President a feather to put in his cap.

From a purely political perspective for McConnell, passing START actually makes a lot of sense. The START treaty does not move the political needle very much in either direction, which makes it the perfect issue to show some bipartisanship. What better subject to show you are reasonable and can compromise than one that was both absent from the election and that few in the tea party (the people most opposed to compromise) care about. Nine months from now as McConnell is opposing and obstructing everything in sight, he can still point to the GOP’s support for START as evidence that Republicans are not just the “party of no.”

What most expect is for McConnell to keep on doing what he has been doing – obstruct and oppose – but given the new spotlight on the GOP that could be a politically dubious stance for them to take, especially since the treaty is seen as something that is just basic commonsense. As the Anchorage Daily News editorialized today:

Obama wants Senate ratification of an important treaty with Russia; Republicans blocked that pre-election. Really, if politicians can’t agree on not obliterating the planet, what can they agree on?

Should the GOP oppose or obstruct START explicitly, almost every editorial board in the country will rip them and there will be countless stories about the far-right shift of the Republican party. Foreign policy heavies like James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, George Schultz, among others, will likely rebuke the leadership and perhaps even leave the party. Therefore if McConnell is willing to oppose START it provides clear evidence that their partisan obstructionism and their significant lurch to the right over the last two years was not just some temporary tactical approach.

While it may not come as shock to anyone who has followed politics recently that the GOP will be both partisan and extreme, the difference now is that the GOP is entering a two year period where they have to prove they can actually be trusted with governing the country. Polls, such as the ABC/Washington Post poll from just before the election indicated that just 40 percent of the country trusted Republicans with governing, compared to 45 percent for Democrats. In other words, being the “party of no” was good enough to be entrusted to provide a check on the administration, but over the next two years such an approach is unlikely to be good enough to be entrusted with running the country.

Promoting his new book during an interview with NBC host Matt Lauer that aired on the network last night, President Bush defended his decision to authorize the waterboarding of terror suspects during his administration. Bush said it “saved lives” and was legal “[b]ecause the lawyer said it was legal.” “I am not a lawyer,” he added, “but you got to trust the judgment of people around you.” The Times of London reports that Bush reveals in his book that waterboarding “helped break up plots to attack American military and diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States.”

However, the Times also reports today that British officials dispute the assertion that waterboarding saved lives:

A former British government minister has cast doubt on President Bush’s claims that torturing terror suspects prevented terror attacks on London as Number 10 disputed his assertion that waterboarding does not constitute torture.

[Foreign Office minister] Kim Howells said he was not convinced that plots to attack Heathrow and Canary Wharf were foiled because of information obtained by waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and one other high profile suspect in Guantánamo Bay. [...] “I don’t think there was any doubt there were real plots,” Mr Howells told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. “Where I doubt what President Bush has said is that this, what we regard as torture, actually produced information which was instrumental in preventing those plots coming to fruition. I’m not convinced of that.”

At the same time Downing Street said the Government still considered waterboarding — or simulated drowning — to be torture. “It comes under that definition in our view,” a spokesman said.

Although Bush claims that waterboarding is legal, he seems a bit uncomfortable saying that it can be used on Americans. When Lauer asked if it is legal for foreigners to waterboard Americans, both in and out of military uniform, Bush refused to answer:

LAUER: So if it’s legal, President Bush, and if an American is taken into custody in a foreign country, not necessarily a uniformed American.

BUSH: Look, I am not going to debate the issue, Matt. I really –

LAUER: I’m just asking. Would it be OK for a foreign country to waterboard an American soldier?

BUSH: It’s – all I ask is that people read the book. And they can reach the same conclusion if they would have made the same decision I made or not.

Watch it:

“Waterboarding is torture; torture is illegal under international law,” said Amnesty International’s Steve Ballinger. “So President Bush’s statement is an admission that a crime has been committed.” Tom Porteous, the UK Director of Human Rights Watch said, “There is no point having international justice for petty African dictators if you can’t apply it to the leaders of powerful countries like the US. … “I’m not saying that [Bush’s] claim that torture evidence prevented terror attacks has no credibility whatsoever, but no evidence has been presented.”