While the release by Al Jazeera on Sunday of over 1600 documents relating to a decades’ worth of U.S.-managed Palestinian-Israeli negotiations is certain to impact both the negotiations themselves and perceptions of those negotiations, because there’s so many of them, and because their veracity remains in question, it’s probably best for the moment to hold off on grand pronouncements about What They Mean. But here are a few impressions.

First, the documents seriously challenge the theory that unquestioning U.S. support for Israel is necessary to give Israel the confidence to make concessions for peace. From what I’ve seen so far, mostly from the George W. Bush era, the documents show that unquestioning U.S. support for Israel mainly gave the Israelis the confidence to continue to expect and receive ever more concessions from the Palestinians, while absolving them of any real pressure to actually make a deal.

This transcript of a March 2008 meeting is a good case in point. The Palestinians would like a discussion of future borders to proceed from the 1967 borders, that is, the 1949 Armistice lines, an approach grounded in international law and successive United Nations resolutions. The Israelis, on the other hand, prefer to start from a discussion of “reality on the ground” — a reality which Israel is, of course, in the process of changing every day through settlement expansion and wall construction.

In any normal negotiation, one party demanding that those negotiations occur within a frame of reference that that party is constantly unilaterally changing in its own favor would probably be laughed out of the room. But here, by virtue both of being the occupying power, backed unquestioningly by the world’s dominant actor, Israeli negotiators are able to sit back and do just that, and their Palestinian opposites have little option other than to note objection, and agree to disagree for now, knowing that when they next return to the table, reality on the ground will have changed again.

That brings me to the second takeaway from these documents, which is how starkly they reveal the massive disparity in power between the two sides. In an ironic sense, it turns out that the right-wing canard about there being “no Palestinian partner for peace” is true — they’re more like supplicants for peace. When one reads the extent of what Palestinian negotiators have, at various times, offered the Israelis — such as Saeb Erekat’s alleged offer on Jerusalem — it’s almost a relief that the Israelis didn’t accept, as it’s hard to imagine any Palestinian leadership, certainly not one this weak, selling capitulations that extensive to their own people. This would be an issue of concern to any genuinely honest broker. It does not appear to have been for the U.S.

Which brings me to the final point, which is not directly addressed in these documents but hangs over almost every page, and that’s the weakness of the Palestinian leadership itself. At this point, how much do these negotiations really matter in the absence of genuine political legitimacy for those doing the negotiating? The release of these documents is a disaster for Mahmoud Abbas and the current P.A. leadership, and a bonanza for Hamas and other critics of the peace process, which is now revealed as little more than a surrender process. While that may be good in terms of an honest reckoning, it does little in the short term to actually make anyone’s life better, or bring us closer to a resolution of the conflict.

The Center for Public Integrity reported last Tuesday that a number of high-capacity gun magazine manufactures are financing the National Rifle Association’s lobbying operations, and that two members of the NRA Board currently serve as the CEO of companies that sell high-capacity clips. The report is particularly relevant in the wake of both the Tucson shooting and a subsequent proposal in Congress to limit these clip sizes to around 10 cartridges per magazine. The NRA has recently criticized the proposed legislation, saying that high-capacity magazines are “standard” for “self-defense.”

Speaking of this close association with gun industry CEOs and the NRA, Josh Sugarmann, the executive director of the Violence Policy Center said, “The NRA’s priorities are not gun owners but the manufacturers of guns and accessories,” and that the NRA’s opposition to gun control legislation often “isn’t about protecting the rights of millions of gun owners [so much] as protecting the financial interests of NRA board members and the NRA itself.”

Pete Brownell is President of Brownells, Inc, — “the world’s largest supplier of firearms accessories and gunsmithing tools” — and was elected to the NRA Board last year. ThinkProgress caught up with Brownell at the SHOT Show convention in Las Vegas last week and asked him about this symbiotic relationship. Brownell denied that the NRA is working to benefit the gun industry financially, claiming that it only defends the Second Amendment. He also denied that his role at the NRA as a current gun supply company CEO is in any way nefarious:

BROWNELL: The NRA has always been active in the public interest. They’ve been a defender of the Second Amendment. It’s not because of financial interest, it’s because they defend the Second Amendment, what the founders, the original people that wrote this, were intending, what they actually wrote down. So they defend the Second Amendment. They don’t necessarily say, “We’re going to do this because someone is writing me a check.” [...]

We need leaders to lead organizations, and the one place they get leaders is the military. The other place they get leaders are politicians and really the third place they get them are entrepreneurs. You can’t just get leadership from one area because then you’ll become pretty myopic in that area as an organization.

ThinkProgress noted that many attendees at the SHOT Show this week disputed the NRA’s contention that high-capacity clips are needed for self-defense purposes. One gun retailer said, “If ten rounds of ammunition can’t do the job you probably shouldn’t own a gun.” But Brownell disagreed. “When you’re defending, you want to have as much of an advantage as possible so it does matter. … It’s just an advantage.” Listen to the interview:

Indeed, high-capacity magazines are an advantage. And one such clip was an advantage for Jared Loughner in Tucson this month, who was subdued by attendees at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ (D-AZ) constituent event only after he stopped to reload his 31-bullet clip.

Last week, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the former ruler of Haiti, unexpectedly returned to the country after a 25-year exile in France. Duvalier’s return has many concerned that his presence will once again stir up the animosity and violence that existed during his 15-year dictatorship. Duvalier’s rein saw the disappearance and torture of hundreds of Haitians and brutal crackdowns on democracy and human rights advocates (it should be noted that much of this was possible thanks to the international assistance of France and the United States).

Now, with Duvalier once again seeking to become a public figure in Haiti, he is working to rebuild his public image in the eyes of both Haitians and the international community. In order to do this, he has enlisted the help of numerous U.S. attorneys, including none other than former Libertarian Party presidential candidate and Clinton impeachment champion former Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA). Barr will serve as the former dictator’s “voice to the world,” and he told CNN that he plans to bring Duvalier’s “message of hope to the world“:

A former U.S. congressman was among a group of American attorneys accompanying former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier as he spoke in the country’s capital Friday. Former Republican Congressman Bob Barr said he is not serving as Duvalier’s attorney, but is in Port-au-Prince to consult, assist and be Duvalier’s voice to the international community. [...]

Barr “will be representing” Duvalier “in bringing his message of hope to the world,” the former Republican congressman’s website says. “I also am reminded of others who have risen from the ashes,” Barr told reporters Friday. “The city of Atlanta is the Phoenix city. The people of Haiti, likewise, will rise from the problems created by last year’s earthquake and emerge stronger and better than before. That I know is Mr. Duvalier’s deep wish and something that he knows in his heart.”

Accompanying Barr will be fellow Georgia attorneys Ed Marger and Mike Puglise, who practice law in the small rural towns of Jasper and Snelleville, GA respectively.

One has to wonder how Barr — who ran for president in 2008 to “deliver a refreshing message of liberty” — can reconcile his supposed right-libertarian beliefs with being on the payroll of a notorious autocrat who shut down elections and the free press and tortured nonviolent dissidents. (h/t Mike Elk)

Recently, a Seattle-based grassroots group called the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign purchased ads on the side of a dozen public buses in the King County, Seattle bus system. The ads featured the image of a destroyed Palestinian home along with the words “Israeli war crimes — Your tax dollars at work.”

The plans to place these ads were considered provocative by many that opposed the group’s campaign, and three other organizations quickly began to make plans to run ads “portraying Israel as the victim of Palestinian terrorism.” Yet despite the controversy, “Metro and County Executive Dow Constantine initially said the ad was consistent with county ad standards and that it would violate the sponsor’s free-speech rights” to cancel the ads.

Yet at the last minute, Constantine chose to reject the placement of the ads on the county’s buses. Constantine claimed that federal and local law-enforcement agencies warned that the bus system “could be vulnerable to disruption” if the ads were placed. The official went on to say that inserting ads that took part in a “vitriolic debate” would insert “new and significant security concerns [that caused the] reassessment,” essentially saying that placing the ads would’ve risked violence against the bus system.

Now, the ACLU of Washington is suing the bus system, claiming that the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign’s free speech rights were violated. Local news station King 5 covered the controversy in a special report. Watch it:

Interestingly, the King County Metro bus system has carried provocative messages several times before in the past. In 2005, buses carried ads proclaiming, “”War kills the innocent — Join together to end the Iraq War.” And in 2009 the buses had ads saying “Yes, Virginia … there is no God.” Given that county officials approved these and other provocative ads, which indeed were part of a “vitriolic debate” over the Iraq war and religion, it is curious to see them reject ads protesting US aid to Israel out of the supposed fear that it would incite violence.

ACLU Washington Executive Director Kathleen Taylor made clear at a press conference that the remote threat of terrorism is not sufficient reason to silent the activist group’s dissent. “The purpose of the First Amendment,” Taylor said, “is to protect speech that is difficult to hear and that makes people uncomfortable…Part of being a free society and a democratic society is we as citizens engage in the hurly-burly of free speech. We can’t say, ‘Oh, it’s inconvenient to have free speech.’”

Over a year ago, YouTube terminated ThinkProgress’ original account due to copyright infringement complaints. We were surprised to recently learn that the videos were removed due to complaints from NumbersUSA — a designated anti-immigrant group which has occasionally been a topic of my posts. The YouTube website reads:

YouTube account thinkprogress has been terminated because we received multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement from claimants including: NumbersUSA

Chances are, NumbersUSA took issue with two posts I have written in the past that included excerpts from troubling videos it was promoting on its website. One of those videos was aimed at making the case against Mexican migration and the “exportation of poverty.” The other included speakers who, in the past, have expressed concerns about an “illegal alien invasion” and the spread of bilingualism.

NumbersUSA adamantly denies the claim that it is anti-immigrant and its website clearly states “nothing about this website should be construed as advocating hostile actions or feelings toward immigrant Americans.” The group doesn’t seem to take any allegations to the contrary lightly. We learned that when a member of its staff sent us a sharply worded email threatening to sue ThinkProgress for libel after I wrote a post which linked back to a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report that identified NumbersUSA as an anti-immigrant group and quoted a respected researcher who challenged several of the group’s questionable research findings.

However, despite shutting down our YouTube account and using threats and intimidation against ThinkProgress, NumbersUSA has not been able to stifle its critics entirely. The perception of the group as an anti-immigrant organization has penetrated the mainstream. Roll Call recently reported on the “nativist lobby,” and specifically identified NumbersUSA as one of the groups founded by a Michigan ophthalmologist — John Tanton –with a white-supremacist ideology. “Tanton’s groups are making use of economic hard times to argue that immigrants — legal and illegal — are stealing jobs from Americans and straining government budgets,” wrote Roll Call.

Meanwhile, SPLC claims that NumbersUSA’s director, Roy Beck, was employed by Tanton for 10 years, edited his “immigrant bashing” magazine, and vacationed with him and his wife.

We take copyright complaints very seriously and respect NumbersUSA’s right to protect its digital property. But, we suspect NumbersUSA’s complaints to YouTube had more to do with waging an ideological campaign than a genuine concern about copyright infringement.

Jared Loughner, the alleged shooter in Tucson earlier this month, was subdued by attendees at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ (D-AZ) constituent event only after he stopped to reload his 31-bullet clip. Many have argued that perhaps other innocents would have been spared that day if it had been illegal to purchase such high bullet capacity magazines. In response to this idea, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) plan to introduce legislation to limit these high-capacity clips that allow shooters to fire large numbers of rounds without reloading.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) called the legislation “inappropriate,” and “political opportunism.” And the National Rifle Association, the powerful gun lobby, argued that high-capacity magazines are “standard equipment for self-defense handguns and other firearms owned by tens of millions of Americans.”

ThinkProgress attended the SHOT Show convention in Las Vegas this week — “the largest and most comprehensive trade show for all professionals involved with the shooting sports and hunting industries” — and asked many attendees if they thought these types of clips are necessary for self-defense. Most we talked to concurred, “Not really”:

TP: Do you think that for self defense purposes it matters whether you have 10 or 15 rounds in your magazine?

ATTENDEE 1: Probably not. No probably not. Honestly. [...]

ATTENDEE 2: It takes one shot to kill. … Anything more than one shot is excessive. I mean if someone is breaking in to your house at a panic you’re might going to shoot him once. You’re not going to empty your load on him while they’re lying on your kitchen floor. [...]

TP: If someone were to use a gun for self protection purposes, would they need 10, 30 rounds?

ATTENDEE 3: No, I hope not. I don’t know why. If ten rounds of ammunition can’t do the job you probably shouldn’t own a gun. I don’t want to live next to that guy.

Watch the interview clips:

Even avid gun hunter Vice President Dick Cheney suggested this week that limiting the amount of cartridges per magazine might be a good idea. “Maybe it’s appropriate,” he said.

Back in September, the judges of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request by Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R) to be a party in the federal government’s legal challenge to Arizona immigration law, SB-1070. Pearce, who sponsored SB-1070, claimed he has a “unique perspective” on SB-1070 and wanted to use his own attorneys to convince the appellate judges that all provisions of the law are legal. According to the Yuma Sun, Pearce seems to believe that there is evidence that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ), who is defending the law, does not believe that the statute in its entirety is legal. “Sen. Pearce is uniquely qualified to provide this interpretation of SB 1070 as its author and chief sponsor,” wrote his lawyers.

Pearce has never been known to give up easily, and this case is no exception. Coffee Today reports that Pearce introduced a bill, SB-1117, which would give the Senate President (who happens to be Pearce) and the leader of the Arizona House of Representatives the power to hire lawyers to initiate SB-1070 legal proceedings before state and federal courts, along with an unlimited power to use public funds to defend the controversial law. The bill states:

Notwithstanding any law to the contrary, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate may direct counsel to initiate a legal proceeding or appear on behalf of their respective chambers or on behalf of the legislature in any challenge in a state or federal court to laws 2010, chapter 113 and any amendments to that law. [...]

This act is an emergency measure that is necessary to preserve the public peace, health or safety and is operative immediately as provided by law.

As of the end of July 2010, lawyers defending SB-1070 have billed more than $1 million. So far, Brewer has been using money from the “defense fund” she set up which has attracted approximately $3.6 million in private donations. Pearce — who brags about being recognized as a “Hero of the Taxpayer” by Americans for Prosperity — essentially wants to reinvent the wheel by defending a law that Brewer’s administration already seems pretty committed to fighting for. All while the state’s budget deficit looms over the heads of lawmakers and the state legislature continues to uphold deathly cuts to the state’s medical transplant funding program.

Last week, history was made as enormous street protests toppled Tunisia’s autocratic leader President Zine El Abadine Ben Ali, marking the first time in modern history that an autocratic Arab leader was forced to step down following pro-democracy protests. Reactions from across the globe have generally been positive, with some commentators even believing that it could be the start of a wave of pro-democracy revolutions across the region.

Yet as the world celebrates the downfall of an autocratic leader, it’s important to remember that just a few years ago, high-ranking officials in the Bush Administration were moving to increase links between the United States and Tunisia and downplay human rights concerns. As Al Jazeera’s Imran Garda notes, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that Bush Administration officials are “admirers” of Ben Ali, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said the country provided “constructive leadership in the world“:

It is worth rewinding and noting some choice words that former US secretary of state Colin Powell had to say about the country when he visited in December 2003. “Our bilateral relationship is very, very strong,” said Powell. “We are great admirers of Tunisia and the progress that has been achieved under president Ben Ali’s leadership.” [...]

A visit to Tunisia by defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld in February 2006 proves even more revealing: “We have a very long relationship with Tunisia,” Rumsfeld remarked after the meetings. “Tunisia is a moderate Muslim nation that has been and is today providing very constructive leadership in the world. The struggle that’s taking place within that faith is a serious one, an important one. There’s a very small number of violent extremists on the one side against a broad, overwhelming majority of people who are moderate.”

Additionally, Rumsfeld, during a visit in 2006 seeking greater ties to Tunisia — where “freedoms of the press, association, and expression [were] extremely restricted” and much electoral opposition was outlawed — was quoted by the Associated Press as calling the country a “democracy“:

It should be noted that while high-officials in the Bush administration continued to lavish praise on Tunisia’s autocratic leader and seek closer ties to the country, American diplomatic staff bravely documented much of the government’s corruption and abuses towards its people. In a leaked American embassy cable dated June 23rd, 2008, an embassy staffer wrote that “the excesses of President Ben Ali’s family…inspire outrage” among Tunisians and that the “lack of transparency and accountability that characterize Tunisia’s political system similarly plague the economy, damaging the investment climate and fueling a culture of corruption.”

For more on the situation in Tunisia, see today’s Progress Report, “Arabs Doing It For Themselves.”

As ThinkProgress and The Progress Report have documented, there is a growing coalition of both Tea Party-backed conservatives and stalwart progressives who are coming together to demand cuts to the bloated defense budget. This coalition was given further momentum in late November, when 23 top conservative leaders wrote an open letter demanding that defense cuts be part of any comprehensive deficit reduction effort.

This morning, the Republican Study Committee (RSC) — “a group of over 165 House Republicans organized” around drafting and promoting conservative legislation — introduced its Spending Reduction Act. RSC Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), joined by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) — who plans to introduce a Senate companion to the bill — explained their legislation in today’s Washington Examiner. They advocate for cutting “non-defense discretionary spending to 2006 levels” and freezing spending at that level until 2012.

One thing they do not include are any cuts to military spending. In fact, the legislation does not even mention the Department of Defense. This completely flies in the face of the demands of many in the tea party movement and tea party-backed Republican politicians that back cuts in defense spending. Here are just some of these leaders in the Tea Party movement who advocated for defense cuts that did not make it into the RSC’s plan:

– GOP Sens. Pat Toomey (PA), Johnny Isakson (GA), Mark Kirk (IL), Bob Corker (TN), Mike Lee (UT) and Rand Paul (KY): All of these senators ran for office with the support of the Tea Party and all of them promised at one point or another to either cut waste or reduce the overall defense budget. The RSC plan does neither.

- Numerous GOP Reps., such as Eric Cantor (R-VA), Kevin Brady (R-TX), and John Campbell (R-CA): Most Republican members of the House of Representatives courted the Tea Party during this recent election. Campbell, a Tea Party-backed Republican, said recently that there should be “huge” cuts to the defense budget. Brady recently unveiled a proposal that would slash defense procurement by 15 percent. And Cantor has said that “everything has to be on the table” for spending cuts. And all three of these congressmen are actually members of the RSC that just ruled defense cuts off the table.

- Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips and Freedomworks CEO Matt Kibbe: As the head of their large right-wing advocacy organizations, Phillips and Kibbe both spent millions of dollars building and driving the Tea Party movement and electing Republicans. Both of them joined onto a letter of major conservative leaders written last month to the GOP leadership requesting that defense cuts be part of any deficit reduction package.

In addition to the growing calls for reducing military spending from the Tea Party movement, it is important to note that most Americans also view cuts to defense spending as the best place to make cuts. In a CBS News/Vanity Fair poll released earlier this month, cutting defense was the most popular option for reducing the deficit; five times as many people want to cut defense than want to cut popular social programs like Medicare and Social Security.

It appears that the leadership of the RSC — and DeMint, who warned shortly after the recent election that Republicans should “heed the call” of the Tea Party — is comfortable allowing Tea Party voters to bring them to power, but is now intent on ignoring what they actually want. The question is, will Tea Party activists demand that the legislators they brought into office listen to them, or will they simply allow their wishes to be ignored?

Via Steve Clemons, a number of prominent diplomats, analysts, and journalists have signed a letter to President Obama urging him “to instruct our Ambassador to the United Nations to vote yes” on a new UN resolution condemning Israel’s settlements and demanding that Israel “immediately and completely” cease all settlement activities “in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”

The letter states:

The time has come for a clear signal from the United States to the parties and to the broader international community that the United States can and will approach the conflict with the objectivity, consistency and respect for international law required if it is to play a constructive role in the conflict’s resolution.

While a UNSC resolution will not resolve the issue of settlements or prevent further Israeli construction activity in the Occupied Territory, it is an appropriate venue for addressing these issues and for putting all sides on notice that the continued flouting of international legality will not be treated with impunity. Nor would such a resolution be incompatible with or challenge the need for future negotiations to resolve all outstanding issues, and it would in no way deviate from our strong commitment to Israel’s security.

The administration has made clear that it doesn’t currently support the resolution, even though it essentially reiterates the administration’s own stated position on settlements. As Tony Karon points out, the Palestinians taking the issue to the UN (again) is clearly “a vote of no-confidence in U.S. peacemaking efforts.”

While it would be great if the Arab states would put half as much time into supporting Palestinian reconciliation and state-building as they put into these kinds of UN gestures, it’s important to keep in mind that the settlement issue is not simply a matter of concern between the Palestinians, Israel, and the U.S. Stopping their construction is not some favor the U.S. is asking of an ally (even though Israel already committed to do so under the 2003 Road Map), but a matter of international law regarding the administration of occupied territory.

As former Palestinian peace negotiator Hanan Ashrawi writes in the International Herald Tribune today, “It is universally recognized that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, and that without a full cessation of all settlement activity, Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and the two-state solution are both doomed.”

This is not rocket science. Settlements are built on occupied Palestinian land. They also entail the exploitation of Palestine’s natural resources, including water. Both belong to a future Palestinian state. Without them, no Palestinian state can be viable.

The true impact of Israeli settlements is measured not only by the way they undermine the two-state solution; it is also the enormous damage they inflict on countless Palestinian communities.

There’s been a very active campaign by conservatives to downplay the significance of the settlements, but such arguments are unconvincing to anyone who’s actually visited the territories and and observed the deleterious impact on Palestinian life that’s required for the settlements’ ongoing growth, maintenance, and security. While it’s true that the settlements are only one of a number of key issues bedeviling negotiations, more than any other, it’s the issue that can — and will, if they haven’t already — make the two-state solution into an idea whose time has passed.

Yesterday, the General Accountability Office — the investigative arm of Congress — released a report assessing the nation’s currently voluntary electronic employment verification program, E-Verify. The report, entitled “Federal Agencies Have Taken Steps to Improve E-Verify, but Significant Challenges Remain” found that though the program has significantly improved, it still contains some troubling problems:

Data Inaccuracies
A “tentative nonconfirmation” (TNC) means that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cannot immediately confirm the work authorization of a worker. When this happens, it’s up to the worker to clear up the error with SSA or DHS and they can’t work until they do. The GAO describes that process as “difficult” and rife with “formidable challenges.” There are a lot of reasons someone might receive a TNC, including SSA database errors or a failure to report a name change to the SSA. The GAO notes that USCIS has “reduced TNCs from 8 percent during the time period June 2004 through March 2007 to almost 2.6 percent in fiscal year 2009.” It sounds like a relatively small number, however, when spread over a large population, the error-rate is significant. According to GAO, if the program were made mandatory for new hires nationwide, about 164,000 citizens and noncitizens would receive a name-related TNC each year. That number would balloon if E-Verify were made mandatory for all employees nationwide and not just new hires.

Fraud
The GAO also affirmed that, ” Despite USCIS and SSA’s efforts to reduce erroneous TNCs, identity fraud remains a challenge in part because employers may not be able to determine if employees are presenting genuine identity and employment eligibility documents that are borrowed or stolen.” The report cites a separate study conducted in 2008 which estimated that of the 6.2 percent of employees who were not authorized to work in the United States, slightly over half of them were incorrectly confirmed by E-Verify as eligible to work.

Employer Misuse
The report also found that USCIS is “limited in its ability to ensure compliance with E-Verify policies and procedures.” Some of the noncompliance is unintentional and simply a result of employers not understanding the E-Verify program. However, other employers are abusing it. The GAO notes, “workers who are wrongly terminated or suffer other adverse employment consequences because employers fail to follow the MOU receive no protection or remedies under federal law.” Abuses can include “limiting the pay of or terminating employees who receive TNCs, using E-Verify to prescreen job applicants, or screening employees who are not new hires.” The program leaves employees vulnerable to civil rights abuses and discrimination.

Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), has already stated that he plans to focus on expanding E-Verify and potentially making it mandatory in some areas. After the GAO released its report, his office issued a press release calling E-Verify a “remarkably effective tool” and stating, “Expanding E-Verify and encouraging more businesses to use the program is an important step toward protecting jobs for American workers and eliminating the jobs magnet that draws millions of illegal workers to the U.S.”

Certainly, the nation’s current compulsory employment verification system needs to be improved. It’s hard to imagine that any solution will be perfect. Nonetheless, it’s worrisome that rather than focusing on how to improve E-Verify, Smith is already talking about expanding a program which seems like it has a way to go before it’s acceptable. In fact, the GAO went as far to conclude that if E-Verify became mandatory in its current form, “more unscrupulous employers could have the opportunity to hire unauthorized workers without much risk of detection.”

Days after the Tucson shootings, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) spoke out against calls for increased gun control, arguing that there should have been more guns at the site of the massacre. “I wish there had been one more gun there that day in the hands of a responsible person, that’s all I have to say,” Franks said.

Last night on MSNBC during an interview with Franks, host Lawrence O’Donnell noted that the alleged shooter, Jared Loughner, was subdued only after he stopped to reload his 31-bullet clip and argued that perhaps other innocents would have been spared if Republicans had extended a law banning larger magazine clips in 2004. But Franks refused to entertain that scenario, and just simply said that he wished Loughner never purchased a gun:

O’DONNELL: I’ll ask you again — do you wish Jared Loughner’s magazine only held 10 bullets instead of the 31 that he fired?

FRANKS: And I will tell you again, sir, that I wish he had not had a gun at all.

O’DONNELL: So, you’re not going to answer that question about the magazine? Will you answer the question about the magazine? […] Your constituents in Arizona would have been better off if Jared Loughner, by law, could only fire 10 bullets?

FRANKS: See, I think that that presupposes he couldn’t have changed clips or all kinds of things.

O’DONNELL: He couldn’t change clips because the colonel was there to stop him, because those heroes in that parking lot were there to stop him. We saw him try to change clips, and he couldn’t do it. That’s what stopped him.

FRANKS: Well, I give every credit to those who stopped him. But I will say to you again to blame the gun rather than the individual is why we continue to have these problems.

O’DONNELL: I blame the individual for the first 10 bullets. I blame the law for the next 21 bullets that he fired.

Watch the segment:

Franks “wishes” Loughner didn’t have the capacity to harm as many people as he did. But instead of advocating for tighter gun laws that would prevent the Jared Loughners of the world from having access to unnecessarily deadly arms, Franks wants to absolve himself of any power he has to do something about it. And at the same time, he wants more people to carry more guns, particularly in situations such as the shooting in Tucson.

As Slate’s William Saletan noted, having armed citizens in a similar situation could likely create more chaos:

In the chaos and pressure of the moment, you can shoot the wrong person. Or, by drawing your weapon, you can become the wrong person–a hero mistaken for a second gunman by another would-be hero with a gun. Bang, you’re dead. Or worse, bang bang bang bang bang: a firefight among several armed, confused, and innocent people in a crowd. It happens even among trained soldiers. Among civilians, the risk is that much greater.

However, the facts remain that the carnage in Tucson earlier this month could have been mitigated to a degree if Laughner had fewer bullets to work with.

Politico offers some new insights into Rep. Peter King’s Homeland Security Committee hearings next month on radical Islam in America:

In a move that will come as a relief to Muslim leaders, King told POLITICO that he’s not planning to call as witnesses such Muslim community critics as the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s Steve Emerson and Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer, who have large followings among conservatives but are viewed as antagonists by many Muslims.

Typically, Politico doesn’t bother to explain why many Muslims — and many non-Muslims — might view Emerson and Spencer as problematic figures: because they’re not so much “experts” as they are entrepreneurs whose product is fear of Muslims and Islam.

It will still be important to watch for whether the more presentable affiliates of the “Creeping Sharia” crowd are called to testify — people like Claire Lopez or Andrew McCarthy. This, however, is troubling:

Possible witnesses, according to King, include Dutch critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali and M. Zuhdi Jasser, president and founder of Arizona-based American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Jasser is a sharp critic of leading American Muslim groups, whose agenda he calls “Islamist.”

Hirsi Ali — a Somali Dutch immigrant and activist — believes, among other things, that “Islam is a cult,” that “There is no moderate Islam,” and that “we are at war with Islam.” What will Ali add to the hearings, other than general hostility toward Muslims and their faith?

In November, President Obama and NATO proposed a new timetable for the end of combat missions in Afghanistan. The White House has said it will begin a gradual withdrawal starting in in July of this year. According to an Afghanistan Study Group survey, two-thirds of Tea Party voters believe that “Washington should reduce troop levels in Afghanistan or withdraw from the region altogether as soon as possible.” 67 percent of Tea Party supporters worried that the war would hamper deficit reduction.

However, after a weekend trip in Afghanistan to be wooed “away from the Tea Party” by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Tea Party victors Sens. Pat Toomey (R-PA), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Marco Rubio (R-FL) have all decided to ignore the Tea Party and rebuke the idea of any timetable for withdrawal as “artificial”:

– Toomey: Though a “budget hawk” elected on platform of less wasteful spending, Toomey said that, “despite record budget deficits, a skeptical public and corruption within the Afghanistan’s government, the United States can’t afford to shortchange the war effort.” “This is the country from which al-Qaida launched the most devastating attack on America since World War II. The Taliban wants to take control again. Al-Qaida wants to have a safe haven. And that’s what would happen, I’m afraid, if we had a precipitous withdrawal,” Toomey said in Kabul.

– Ayotte: Supporting President Obama and NATO’s withdrawal date of late 2014 as an “aspirational goal,” Ayotte told reporters that “having now been here and visited, an artificial time line for withdrawal is not something we should have. … We’re making progress here and that [sic] we should obviously continue to assess the conditions on the ground.”

–Johnson: While the trip left Johnson “extremely optimistic” about U.S. progress in Afghanistan, the Wisconsin senator said “it was a mistake to announce a withdrawal timetable of 2014.” “We cannot set artificial deadlines,” he said in a conference call. “We’ve got to be committed to this.”

– Rubio: Though believing the U.S. is “on the timeline this year to have some real good news and make some significant progress” in Afghanistan, Rubio rebuked NATO’s withdrawal timeline for U.S. troops as “artificial.” “I think if you attach a date to it…you are really creating a difficult situation. The bad guys, the Taliban and even al-Qaida, must know all they have to do is wait.”

While Ayotte supported a withdrawal timetable as a candidate, it appears she is now reversing her stance, even though a timetable is supported by Gen. David Petraeus, the Pentagon, and NATO forces.

For all their anti-spending rhetoric, these senators’ desire to stay longer in Afghanistan would significantly expand the deficit. As it stands, both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have cost the U.S. over $1.21 trillion and could top $1.3 trillion in FY2011.

Last Friday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) addressed the 2011 Inaugural Conference of the Hispanic Leadership Network — an event that was “billed” as a forum for the 2012 Republican presidential field to speak directly to Latino voters. The main topic of Cornyn’s speech was immigration. Rather than taking responsibility for his party’s obstructionism on the issue, Cornyn proceeded to lay all of the blame for the lack of immigration reform squarely at the feet of President Obama and the Democratic Congress:

They [Democrats] have controlled Congress for four years, have occupied the White House for two years, and yet they’ve broken every promise to lead on immigration reform. During his campaign, President Obama promised both LULAC and the National Council of La Raza that immigration reform would be a top priority during his first year in office, but all that changed. [...]

I would say it’s pretty easy to see that there are not many alternatives to his [Reid] party which has cynically misled on a repeated basis the Hispanic community about their good faith in moving forward and their leadership in this important issue. [...]

You have to wonder if President Obama and Senator Reid could muster 60 votes for the health care bill, why couldn’t they show similar leadership and muster support to move an immigration reform bill. One that I believe would be supported on a bipartisan basis.

Watch it:

During his speech, Cornyn additionally accused Democrats of “poison[ing] the well” with the passage of the stimulus and “Obamacare.” Yet, he acknowledged the need for a “credible and compassionate solution” that addresses the situation of the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. According to Cornyn — who co-sponsored an immigration reform bill in 2007 — he will continue to work on the issue. “One thing I assure you that hasn’t changed is my own commitment to help fix our broken immigration system,” said Cornyn.

Cornyn presented Latinos with a pretty distorted perspective of what has happened over the past several years with immigration. While it’s true that Obama over-promised and under-delivered on immigration, I’ve repeatedly argued that pinning too much blame on Democrats fails to capture the political limitations the Obama administration has faced and distracts attention from the real culprits of the immigration debate.

From the time he took office, Obama always qualified his “promise” by noting that immigration reform stood in line behind health care reform, energy legislation, and financial regulatory changes. Republicans, meanwhile, have pulled every to stunt to block — or at the very least delay — the entire progressive agenda. Following the passage of health care reform, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — the only Republican who was open to co-sponsoring an immigration bill — simply decided to pull out, similarly stating that the “well has been poisoned.” Republicans continued to rail on immigration reform and trumpeted border security and overturning the 14th amendment to deny the American-born children of undocumented immigrants citizenship. In December, Republicans blocked the DREAM Act. If Republicans couldn’t accept a bill which would help undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children by their parents, it’s hard to imagine they’d be open to anything more ambitious.

Cornyn should know all of this because he was at the center of the debate last year. For a while, immigration advocates and Democratic leadership seemed to be lobbying Cornyn in hopes that he would join Graham as a second Republican co-sponsor. Ultimately, Cornyn backed away, accused Democrats of playing politics with immigration, and decided his party should single-mindedly focus on securing the border.

Cornyn is no stranger to pandering on immigration. Back in 2006, he received a lot of flack for speaking at a conference entitled “Defending the Homeland: America’s Immigration Crisis.” The event was hosted by the Rockford Institute — an organization described as “xenophobic, racist, and nativist” by its own ex-director. The conference was moderated by the group’s current president, Thomas Fleming, who once wrote, “Whatever we may say in public, most of us do not much like Mexicans, whom we regard as too irrational, too violent, too passionate.”

In a recent interview with Hannah Rosenthal, the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, here’s how Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin relayed Rosenthal’s answers about two recent TIME magazine stories:

Is a Time magazine cover story that asserts Jews in Israel only care about money or another article that analogizes the current climate in Israel to fascism in the 1930′s over the line? [Rosenthal] said without hesitation, “That is absolutely over the line.” Those types of assertions, she said, “are made by people who do not know history or misread history.“

A quick read reveals Rubin’s rendering of both the articles as deeply distorted. The first, from September 2010, claims that “Israelis are no longer preoccupied with” the peace process because “they’re otherwise engaged; they’re making money; they’re enjoying the rays of late summer.” One can agree or disagree with that claim, but the idea that it’s “anti-Semitic” to suggest that Israelis are more interested in living life and having a good time than in worrying about foreign policy — which is to say, acting like most people — or that such a claim amounts to “Jews in Israel only care about money,” is extremely tendentious.

As for the second article, which examines several new right-wing measures in Israel, including a law to investigate human rights groups critical of the government, the reference to 1930′s fascism was made by an Israeli, Ron Pundak, a historian who runs the Peres Center for Peace. Pundak “said he sees the current atmosphere of Israeli politics as the ugliest in the nation’s history“:

“It’s totally abnormal,” [Pundak] says. “From my point of view, this is reminiscent of the dark ages of different places in the world in the 1930s. Maybe not Germany, but Italy, maybe Argentina later. I fear we are reaching a slippery slope, if we are not already there.”

The point of the article is that Israel’s rightward lurch is scaring even some conservatives. This was made clear by the headline “Israel’s Rightward Lurch Scares Some Conservatives“:

Even inside Netanyahu’s coalition, minister without portfolio Benny Begin, the arch-conservative son of Menachim Begin, told Israeli Radio that the measure broke from the conservatism he knew: “This decision sends a warning signal — here is darkness.”

Considering all of this, I wondered if Rosenthal had read the articles, or if she’d actually intended to address them in the manner that Rubin reported. It turns out the answer to both questions is no.

“We did not discuss the substance of the articles and I clearly told her that I didn’t read Time,” Rosenthal said via email. “I reacted to the headlines only that depict stereotypes of anti-Semitism and that seek to compare policies to the Holocaust.”

According to Rosenthal, Rubin blatantly misrepresented Rosenthal’s answers as a condemnation of specific articles Rosenthal made clear she hadn’t read. This should raise serious questions about the veracity of the rest of the interview. At the very least, the Post owes a correction to its readers, and an apology to Rosenthal.

As ThinkProgress and The Progress Report have documented, there is a growing coalition of both Tea Party-backed conservatives and stalwart progressives who are coming together to demand cuts to the bloated defense budget. This coalition was given further momentum in late November, when 23 top conservative leaders, including the presidents of Americans for Tax Reform and Americans For Prosperity, wrote an open letter demanding that defense cuts be part of any comprehensive deficit reduction effort.

Perhaps in an effort to get ahead of this growing movement, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently announced $78 billion in cuts to the Pentagon’s budget over five years that would slow down the growth of the overall budget but fail to truly reduce its size. On Monday, during an appearance on Fox Business Network’s Bulls & Bears, Rep. John Campbell (R-CA) endorsed Gates’s savings efforts and championed taking “huge steps” that go beyond Gates’s recommendations and truly cut the defense budget. “This is just the beginning,” he said. “We need to look at some more, and look at what is our role, what is our role going to be going forward with the military to keep ourselves safe but know we don’t have unlimited resources.” He concluded, “The Defense Department should not be a jobs program”:

CAMPBELL: We have to get this debt out of control and you can’t go and say we’re going to go and take waste out of HHS or some other program, entitlements, whatever, without saying, there’s waste in defense too. We can do the job in national defense and save some money as well. I don’t think the cuts the Pentagon has put on the table are jeapordizing our national defense. And if you look it’s less than 2.5 percent over the next 5 years.

MCSHANE: This is to my point, we need huge reductions. […] Cutting out waste is only a small step in the right direction, we need to take huge steps. How are we going to do that?

CAMPBELL: You’re right. Huge steps in everything. In entitlements and the non-defense budget, but in defense as well. And obviously the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should be wrapping up here. Iraq should be wrapping up soon, and Afghanistan, in my opinion, that’s a whole separate issue but there’s a lot of money there are as well. And we should look not only in waste in some of these things and at the large civilian non-uniform employment of the defense department a lot of those things. But you’re right, this is just the beginning. We need to look at some more, and look at what is our role, what is our role going to be going forward with the military to keep ourselves safe but know we don’t have unlimited resources. […] The Defense Department should not be a jobs program!

Watch it:

If Campbell and other lawmakers are looking for ways to rein in the defense budget, they can reference the Sustainable Defense Task Force (SDTF) report released earlier this year. The SDTF — which was chaired by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and staffed by some of the nation’s leading defense and budget experts — identified nearly $1 trillion in waste and unnecessary programs that can be cut from the defense budget over the next ten years simply by eliminating outdated Cold War-era programs. They could also reference a recent report by Center for American Progress experts Lawrence Korb and Laura Conley that lays out $108 billion in defense cuts in the current 2015 budget forecast.

Yesterday, Kentucky legislative staff released a fiscal-impact statement on Senate Bill 6 — the Arizona copycat law that’s working its way through the state’s legislature. According to the statement, Senate Bill 6 would cost Kentucky a net $40 million a year in court, prison and foster-care costs. Yet, the Kentucky senate voted 24-14 last week to pass the bill without knowing its cost. The Lexington Herald Leader reports:

The Pew Hispanic Center’s best estimate on Kentucky’s illegal immigrant population is 50,000, the aides said. For the purpose of the cost estimate, the aides assumed that one-third of the men and one-fourth of the women now here illegally could be convicted under the law. Those jailed could serve an average of 60 days at a cost of $33 a day.

Overall, Kentucky could face $90 million a year in new costs for local jails, state prisons, the foster-care system (for the children of jailed parents), the Administrative Office of the Courts and public defenders, the aides said.

This sum does not include additional police costs or lost revenue from the approximately two-thirds of illegal immigrants in the work force, many of whom pay sales and income taxes, the aides said. Against that, Kentucky could save $50 million a year in education costs as illegal immigrants’ children are deported or otherwise leave with their families and in reduced services through Medicaid and local health departments, the aides said.

The net cost to Kentucky would be $40 million.

The bill’s sponsor — state Sen. John Schickel — admitted that “It does look like serious money.” However, he rejected the findings, stating, “But these are estimates, and quite frankly, I don’t agree with these estimates.” According to Schickel, “this assumes that law enforcement is going to enforce it to the maximum everywhere, and the bill leaves it open to each jurisdiction’s individual discretion.” Schickel also noted that as Kentucky gets a reputation for being less friendly to undocumented immigrants, fewer of them will come, which will drive a decrease in some of the costs of the bill.

Schickel may be right that the costs mentioned will go down as the state kicks out all of its undocumented immigrants and dissuades others from coming. However, it seems pretty irresponsible to propose a law that could cost taxpayers $40 million for one year alone as Kentucky faces a $780 million budget shortfall.

Also, as was noted in the report, it doesn’t take into account how much it would cost Kentucky in lost tax revenue and business activity. A 2008 study estimated that, if Kentucky successfully removed all of its undocumented immigrants, it would lose $1.7 billion in economic activity, $756.8 million in gross state product, and approximately 12,059 jobs. Meanwhile, Arizona’s Hotel and Lodging Association reported a combined loss of $15 million in lodging revenue due to meeting cancellations just four months after its immigration bill’s passage due to an economic boycott that was waged against the state. The actual lost lodging revenue from these cancellations could top $45 million. Kentucky is opening itself up to being the target of a similar backlash.

Finally, Kentucky’s law will probably invite litigation. The court costs included in the $40 million cost estimate only seem to include the dollar value associated with the legal process of convicting undocumented immigrants who break the new law. It doesn’t include the price of litigation over the law itself. Arizona spent over $1 million in 2010 alone to defend SB-1070 and the state still has a long way to go before the legal issues are resolved. Farmers Branch, a small town of 30,000 people, has spent over $3.2 million in defense of its immigration law and the Pennsylvania city of Hazleton is on the hook for the $2.4 million it has acquired in attorneys fees. The city’s mayor predicted that costs could rise at least another $2 million if it loses at the federal appeals court level.

Over the past few weeks, several outlets have pointed to the notable absence of a number of Republican rock stars at an event hosted by the Hispanic Leadership Network that was “billed” as a forum for the 2012 Republican presidential field to speak directly to Latino voters. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) declined the invite, as did Sen. John Thune (R-SD), and Govs. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) and Rick Perry (R-TX). Newt Gingrich never committed, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) was never mentioned, and my guess is no one thought Sarah Palin (R) would even bother to come.

Since most of the Republicans who are most often mentioned as probable top contenders in next year’s election won’t be speaking at tomorrow’s event, it seems worth going over what they’ve had to say in the past about immigration — one of the Latino electorate’s top concerns:

PALIN: After Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) lost his presidential bid in 2008, Palin openly lamented that “we didn’t get the Hispanic vote—and that was very significant.” For a while, Palin kept her opinions on immigration to herself. Shortly after Arizona passed the toughest immigration law in Arizona, Palin declared, “I think every other state on the border should emulate what Arizona has done.” She indicated that after the border is secured, immigration reform can be considered. In the meantime though, “other states should do what Arizona is doing.”

ROMNEY: This past summer, Politico reported that Romney “signaled quietly to [Sen.] Graham that Republicans must address immigration before the campaign heats up.” Romney hasn’t said much publicly on immigration ,other than pointing out that Arizona’s immigration law was a response to the government’s inability to secure the border. “It is my hope that the law will be implemented with care and caution not to single out individuals based upon their ethnicity,” he added. “It is increasingly clear that the time has come for Washington to fulfill its responsibility for border security.” It’s unclear what position he’ll be taking this time around, but during the last presidential primaries Romney ran a bunch of nasty immigration ads.

GINGRICH: Gingrich had a lot to say about immigration last year. In December, he urged Congress to undertake immigration reform, stating, “There has to be some zone between deportation and amnesty.” At the time, Gingrich didn’t provide a lot of details about what that zone would look like. However, in 2009, Gingrich told Univision anchor Jorge Ramos that the best way to deal with the 12 million undocumented workers currently living in the U.S. would be to convince them to uproot their lives and go back to their home countries for an undetermined amount of time in exchange for a temporary guest-worker visa with no guarantee of legal permanent residency.

PENCE: In an interview with Right Side News in May, Pence stated, “I simply believe that some day down the road we can find an intersection between the rule of law and the deep compassion of the American people — but in the intervening years, what’s become clear to me is that we must focus on border security and internal enforcement first.” Pence also justified Arizona’s immigration law by falsely claiming that Phoenix is the kidnapping capital of the world and saying, “there’s nearly a half a million illegal immigrants and, and a rampant drug trade and, and, and human trafficking trade that’s been besetting.”

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) is the one Republican 2012 presidential hopeful who will be speaking at tomorrow’s event. Today, Pawlenty touched on immigration briefly at a Press Club event, indicating that securing the border and making the electronic employment verification system — E-verify — should be “pre-requisites” to having a larger discussion on immigration which includes dealing with the undocumented population. Pawlenty compared “open and flagrant and sustained violations of [immigration] law” to allowing people to pee on sidewalks in New York City and how that led to “crack houses and the like.”

Watch it:

Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Two years into office, perhaps the biggest disappointment on its national security agenda for the Obama administration has been the lack of progress on Middle East peace.

This Incredible Hulk comic book from the early 1980s that I found in some old papers in my office serves as a reminder of a basic point that is often lost in the complicated analyses and media wars over the Middle East.

In “Power and Peril in the Promised Land,” Bruce Banner stows away on a ship and wakes up in Israel, where he befriends a young Arab boy who is killed by Arab terrorists. This angers Bruce, who turns into the Incredible Hulk and takes the boy’s body next door to Jordan, all the while chased by the Israeli super heroine Sabra.

One can imagine Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, George Mitchell or even President Obama sympathizing with the Hulk’s frustration found on the last page: “Boy died because boy’s people and yours both want to own land! Boy died because you wouldn’t share.”

Just before the Hulk heads off to Egypt, he rages, “Hulk came looking for peace — but there is no peace!” I know many people in the Obama administration who are feeling Hulk’s pain.

What’s interesting about this old comic book is that it was written long before the intifadas, the creation of the Palestinian Authority, the massive expansion of Israeli settlements over the last twenty years, and the start and collapse of peace talks several times. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge. The story’s simple plot highlights the human costs of a conflict that has dragged on for far too long. The fact the conflict still remains unresolved is a travesty.

There are more complicated explanations for the lack of progress on Middle East peace, and much ink has been spilt analyzing this topic, but the unwillingness to share — or even sit down in negotiations without preconditions or cease land grabs aimed at creating more facts on the ground — remains a core problem plaguing Middle East peace efforts.

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