Security forces in the Mexican government may have been cooperating to facilitate hundreds of “enforced disappearances” of citizens as part of the failing struggle to rein in drug gangs, according to a new report.

Mexico has been steeped in a conflict with drug cartels for the last six years, resulting in the death of over 50,000 Mexican civilians. During the course of that conflict, hundreds of civilians have gone missing — or “disappeared” — and are presumed to be dead. Prominent NGO Human Rights Watch, in their report titled “Mexico’s Disappeared: The Enduring Cost of a Legacy Ignored,” alleges that the government of former Mexican President Felipe Calderón has not only failed to bring disappearances under control, but actively taken part in some instances:

Human Rights Watch has documented nearly 250 such “disappearances” that have occurred since 2007. In more than 140 of these cases, evidence suggests that these were enforced disappearances—meaning that state agents participated directly in the crime, or indirectly through support or acquiescence. These crimes were committed by members of every security force involved in public security operations, sometimes acting in conjunction with organized crime. In the remaining cases, we were not able to determine based on available evidence whether state actors participated in the crime, though they may have.

The report goes on to describe several of those disappearances in-depth, including the beatings by local police, detentions by federal police, and possible shootings ordered by the Navy. Calderon’s war on the cartels did not go as planned, with actions to rein in fighting between organized crime rings instead leading to greater bloodshed. By conquering all elements of crime and supplanting the government, the Zetas — the largest of the cartels — currently controls the third-largest state in Mexico.

In the end, Human Rights Watch urged newly sworn-in President Peña Nieto to take action to reverse the policies of his predecessor. “While disappearances may have started on Calderón’s watch, they did not end with his term,” Human Rights Watch Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco said in a release. In a visit to the White House in November, Nieto pledged to reduce violence within his country, without offering details on how.

Instability in Mexico is finally making its way into the politics of the United States, though in the context of border security and immigration reform rather than the war on drugs. During a town hall meeting, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) faced down a constituent who said invading Mexico was necessary to “clean up the cartels.” Despite the worries of many conservatives, the achieved nearly all of the targets for border enforcement in 2007, with 81 percent of the U.S.-Mexico border now meeting one of the top three levels of “operational control” by U.S. enforcement officials.

In a typical fair and balanced panel, Fox News warned on Wednesday that Al Jazeera is set to “infiltrate” the United States amid dire warnings about “sleeper cells” in the Muslim suburbs of Detroit.

Host Megyn Kelly began a segment about Al Jazeera’s expansion into the American television market by raising questions about the network’s “real anti-American bias.” Contributor Lisa Daftari agreed, veering into blatant Islamophobic fear-mongering in the process:

DAFTARI: The point is they want to differentiate themselves from their sister network, but at the same time, it’s the same thing. They’re having the same type of coverage. They’re apparently expanding to eight cities, including Detroit, Michigan. Detroit, Michigan is a large ex-pat community of Muslim-Americans and sleeper cells have been detected. You can Google this, you can find out all this information. So if you’re trying to set yourself apart the Qatari petro-dollars are backing this, you’re still developing in this area where the sleeper cells have been detected. They’re going to have do do much more to prove to me that they’re different from their sister network.

Watch it:

Daftari was referring to the suburbs of Detroit — like Dearborn, MI and others — which have high populations of refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority nations like Lebanon. Dearborn has been the target of hate speech and protests against Muslims for years now. As for the specific “sleeper cells” she was referring to, in 2008 a former Dearborn resident was convicted of “providing material support” to Hezbollah — hardly the makings of a widespread support for terrorism.

Conservatives have been concerned about the purchase of former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV by Qatar-based Al Jazeera since the deal was announced in January. Fox’s points about the difference in coverage between Al Jazeera English — which currently airs in millions of homes in the United States — and Al Jazeera Arabic — the original channel, which was the chosen distributor of Osama bin Laden’s video messages — would be accurate if they weren’t so hyperbolic and fearful of the encroaching Muslim threat. Also, Fox News’ concern about the presence of Middle Eastern oil money in U.S. media does not extend to Fox owner Rupert Murdoch’s deals with Saudi Arabia.

A journalist with the New York Daily News has come forward as the unintentional source for a rumor that Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel was receiving funding from the non-existent “Friends of Hamas” group.

Hagel has faced an uphill battle towards confirmation since his nomination in January, a battle aided by the unprecedented amount of falsehoods surrounding Hagel’s record and finances. One of those rumors, that Hagel was hiding funding from groups with anti-Israeli ties called the “Friends of Hamas.” Dan Friedman of the New York Daily News believes that he first coined the name, when asking a Republican Congressional aide about potentially controversial groups that Hagel had addressed previously addressed and from whom he had received speaking fees:

Hagel was in hot water for alleged hostility to Israel. So, I asked my source, had Hagel given a speech to, say, the “Junior League of Hezbollah, in France”? And: What about “Friends of Hamas”?

The names were so over-the-top, so linked to terrorism in the Middle East, that it was clear I was talking hypothetically and hyperbolically. No one could take seriously the idea that organizations with those names existed — let alone that a former senator would speak to them. [...]

The aide promised to get back to me. I followed up with an e-mail, as a reminder: “Did he get $25K speaking fee from Friends of Hamas?” I asked.

Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a confidential question soon escaped into the right-wing ether. The name “Friends of Hamas” was picked up by members of the right-wing blogosphere — starting with Breitbart News on Feb. 7 — and expanded outward rapidly. Appearing on Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business show, National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy brought up the mythical group as an example of what might be lurking in Hagel’s history.

The name continued to circulate until Slate’s Dave Weigel published a piece firmly establishing that the group doesn’t exist last week. If the rumor-mongering was limited to conservative blogs, it wouldn’t be as worrisome. Unfortunately, prominent Republicans have been all too keen to go along with the line of questioning started by Breitbart.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was strongly rebuked by his Senate colleagues for his lobbing claims — completely void of evidence — that Hagel had received money from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and North Korea that he was hiding from the Senate Armed Services Committee. While visiting Israel, former Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said that if Hagel’s ties to “Friends of Hamas” proved true, it would “disqualify” Hagel from being Secretary of Defense. Likewise, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in a radio interview indicated that the “Friends of Hamas” was just part of a string of new information that was “more and more concerning.”

All of this has yet to prevent Hagel from having locked-up the majority vote necessary to be confirmed when the Senate returns next week — as soon as the Republicans drop the filibuster they started to prevent such an up-or-down vote from occurring.

Iranian development of a nuclear weapon would not necessarily cause its arch-rival Saudi Arabia to pursue its own, contrary to conventional wisdom, says a new report out today from the Center for New American Security.

Titled “Atomic Kingdom: If Iran Builds the Bomb, Will Saudi Arabia Be Next? [PDF]” the report was drafted by former Obama Pentagon official Colin Kahl, along with Melissa Dalton and Matthew Irvine. Going against the conventional narrative, the researchers determine that the risk of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East following an Iranian nuclear test, while “greater than zero,” is unlikely.

Two of the main regional powers — Egypt and Turkey — would be unlikely to seek nuclear weapons due to lack of a threat from Iran on the part of the former and the guarantee of NATO’s nuclear umbrella on the part of the latter. This leaves the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as the most likely country in the Middle East to try to obtain nuclear weapons should Iran ever choose to build nuclear weapons. Saudi nuke acquisition, according to conventional wisdom, could either be in the form of a reformatting its native civilian nuclear research program to support military aims or a deal with Pakistan to provide a nuclear guarantee against Iran.

Either of those scenarios is far less likely than most would imagine, according to the report. Instead, as shown in the chart below, the authors believe that it’s far more probable that the Kingdom would rely on scaling up its conventional defenses against Iran or relying on a United States’ nuclear guarantee:

In reaching their conclusion, the researchers weighed the possible disincentives Saudi Arabia would face in opting to develop its own nuclear arsenal, including the risk of economic sanctions and a blow to the Saudis’ reputation globally. Possible security risks that follow along with the possession of nuclear weapons would also be a concern the Saudi government, as well as the odds that such weapons could lead to a split with the U.S. — a result that would far outweigh the benefits of owning nuclear weapons.

The “Pakistani option” — Saudi Arabia coming into possession of ready-make nuclear weapons from Pakistan — is likewise dismissed by the report. While Pakistan and Saudi Arabia maintain strong military ties, and the Pakistani Embassy in Riyadh once said “each Pakistani considers (the) security of Saudi Arabia as his personal matter,” Pakistan would be unlikely to provide nuclear weapons to advance any objective not related to countering India. As noted by CNAS, the nuclear club has not grown substantially since China tested weapons fifty years ago, and has in fact seen more states give up nuclear weapons than acquire them.

Iran still has not decided to pursue nuclear weapons, according to intelligence from the United States and Israel. And despite what the CNAS report views as the low chances of a nuclear arms race should Iran acquire a weapon, it also stresses that the United States’ policy should remain one of preventing Iran from doing so, with military force if necessary.

Following months of headlines about the rising threat of Chinese cyber-espionage, a report released today by cybersecurity company Mandiant ties extensive corporate espionage hacking campaigns against English-language companies to the Chinese Army. The report sheds new light on the hacking group commonly referred to in the press as “Comment Crew” and as Advanced Persistent Threat 1 (APT1) by Mandiant:

“Our analysis has led us to conclude that APT1 is likely government-sponsored and one of the most persistent of China’s cyber threat actors. We believe that APT1 is able to wage such a long-running and extensive cyber espionage campaign in large part because it receives direct government support. In seeking to identify the organization behind this activity, our research found that People’s Liberation Army (PLA’s) Unit 61398 is similar to APT1 in its mission, capabilities, and resources. PLA Unit 61398 is also located in precisely the same area from which APT1 activity appears to originate.”

According to the New York Times, this revelation lines up with a recent classified National Intelligence Estimate that “makes a strong case that many of these hacking groups are either run by army officers or are contractors working for commands like Unit 61398.”

Here’s what you need to know about this possible Chinese cyber-army:

APT1 is likely PLA Unit 61398. Mandiant believes APT1 is the same as the 2nd Bureau of the PLA General Staff Department’s 3rd Department, commonly known by its unit distinction 61398. Unit 61398 is classified, but Chinese network security experts have mentioned it as the source of their expertise in published reports, and an internal memo from state-controlled China Telecom obtained by Mandiant details how infrastructure for their headquarters was co-built with the Unit “based on the principle that national defense construction is important.” However, there is one unlikely alternative outlined by Mandiant:

“A secret, resourced organization full of mainland Chinese speakers with direct access to Shanghai-based telecommunications infrastructure is engaged in a multi-year, enterprise scale computer espionage campaign right outside of Unit 61398’s gates, performing tasks similar to Unit 61398’s known mission.”

APT1 victims are mostly in the U.S. and in industries China considers strategically important. Of the 141 breaches Mandiant has studied, 115 were U.S. based companies, and 87 percent of them were headquartered in countries where English is the primary language. English proficiency appears to be a key recruiting factor for Unit 61398. APT1′s victims include companies in four of the seven strategic emerging industries China identified as key in its 12th Five Year Plan.

The resources behind the attacks and amount of data culled are huge. Mandiant “conservatively” estimates 1,000 servers would be needed to support APT1′s current attack infrastructure with potentially hundreds of human operators. While it’s hard to put a figure on how much total data the group has lifted because of how well it covers its tracks, Mandiant witnessed them steal as much as 6.5 terabytes of compressed data from just one organization over a ten-month window.

APT1 attacks are long-term infiltrations. The attacks from the group started as far back as 2006 with an average of 356 days of access to a victim’s networks. Mandiant says APT1 maintained access to one victim’s network for at least 1,764 days — over four years.

China’s denies involvement. According to the New York Times: “Contacted Monday, officials at the Chinese embassy in Washington again insisted that their government does not engage in computer hacking, and that such activity is illegal.”

If Mandiant is correct in its assertions about APT1 and Unit 61398, China wouldn’t be the only country engaged in aggressive cyber actions as international norms in the space are still being shaped: The U.S. has reportedly engaged in malware development targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities and President Obama signed a secret directive in October aimed at reclassifying some cyberactions previously considered offensive as defensive.

Cybersecurity has increasingly been seen as a major national and economic security threat. President Obama recently signed another directive and an executive order aimed at improving the security of privately owned critical infrastructure via information sharing and lawmakers on Capitol Hill reintroduced the controversial cybersecurity proposal from 2012 CISPA the next day.

Israeli President Shimon Peres announced on Monday that he will award President Obama with the Presidential Medal of Distinction during his visit to the Jewish State next month.

In a statement, Peres — who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama last year — said the current U.S. president “is a true friend of the State of Israel, and has been since the beginning of his public life”:

As president of the United States of America, he has stood with Israel in times of crisis. During his time as president he has made a unique contribution to the security of the State of Israel, both through further strengthening the strategic cooperation between the countries and through the joint development of technology to defend against rockets and terrorism.

[Obama's presidency exemplifies] an unswerving belief and ongoing fight for equality without any regard for religion, race, sexuality or gender and the strengthening of the weakest in society in the United States; and for the fulfillment of the values of democracy, human rights, solidarity and peace across the world. [...] Through his personal story and his agenda as president of the United States of America, Barack Obama is a symbol of democratic values and he exemplifies the spirit of equality of opportunity in American society.

Israeli officials, including Peres, regularly praise Obama’s commitment to Israel. “I should tell you honestly that this administration under President Obama is doing, in regard to our security, more than anything that I can remember in the past,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said last October.

The neocons here in the States have spent a lot of time and money unsuccessfully trying to convince us that Obama is anti-Israel. Perhaps then their next ad should tell us how anti-Israel Israeli’s leaders are. (HT: The Hill)

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) levied a series of wild accuastions Sunday morning when discussing the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi last September, accusing the Obama Administration of perpetrating a “massive coverup” and NBC’s David Gregory of not caring about the death of American diplomats.

McCain’s outburst came after Gregory asked McCain what, exactly, the Administration was covering up. Taking umbrage at Gregory’s skepticism, the Arizona senator grew confrontational:

MCCAIN: We have had a massive coverup on the part of the administration.

GREGORY: I’m asking you, a coverup of what?

MCCAIN: I’m asking YOU, do you care whether four Americans died? The reasons for that? And shouldn’t people be held accountable for the fact that four americans died — including a very dear man?

GREGORY: You said there is a coverup. A coverup of what?

MCCAIN: Of the information concerning the deaths of four brave Americans.

Watch it:

As Gregory suggests, it’s not exactly clear what McCain thinks is being covered up. Both the lack of immediate military response to the attack on the consulate and the matter of UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s “talking points” on the attack were clearly explained several months ago. Nevertheless, McCain’s colleague Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has threatened to put a hold on the confirmation of the President’s nominees for both Secretary of Defense and CIA Director until he gets “the truth” on Benghazi.

The Senate GOP made history on Thursday, successfully filibustering a president’s choice for Defense Secretary. Senate Republicans — with the exception of a few — voted against a cloture motion yesterday afternoon, thus preventing an up-or-down vote to approve their former colleague Chuck Hagel and delaying his confirmation until after the President’s Day recess.

In a scathing editorial, the New York Times blasted the Republicans, saying “they hit a new low” in their four-year campaign of obstructing anything President Obama wants to get done:

The Republicans claimed they needed more information about Mr. Hagel, though he answered every question at his confirmation hearing and provided more paperwork than usual. As a former Republican senator, in fact, Mr. Hagel is better known to his old colleagues than most nominees. A delay of another week or two, which some members said they were seeking, is not going to change anyone’s opinion.

Other media figures piled on as well. “It looks terrible to people overseas,” TIME Magazine’s Mark Thompson said on PBS’s Newshour, adding, “you want a secretary of defense, especially when you’re at war and especially when you have these other issues hanging over your head. No good can come from this ambiguity that we’re currently facing.”

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, himself a former Republican congressman, was particularly upset with the Senate Republicans’ hold up of Hagel, expressing disbelief at Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) admission on Thursday that he’s opposing Hagel because Hagel broke with the GOP on the Iraq war: “They don’t have a Secretary of Defense running the Pentagon because of a 6 or 7 year old grudge? Really?”:

SCARBOROUGH: For the 66,000 troops currently serving in Afghanistan and for their families all across America this morning, I’m sure they’re glad to know that we don’t have a Secretary of Defense in place and we’re not going to because of 7-year-old political grudge. Forget about sequestration, forget about all the cuts, there are men and women on the ground in Afghanistan today fighting and possibly dying for this country and they don’t have a Secretary of Defense running the Pentagon because of a 6 or 7 year old grudge? Really? Is that how small we’ve become? And because this guy is disagreeable? …. It’s sort of frightening isn’t it?

“This filibuster, with the recess, permits the opposition to keep upping the ante,” said NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell in the same segment, adding, “Every time Chuck Hagel turns a corner, they’re throwing something else at him. Benghazi wasn’t even on his watch.” Watch the clip:

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“The impressive thing about the anti-Hagel effort is how politically tone-deaf it is,” writes the American Conservative’s Daniel Larison. It’s not just that their opposition is misguided, but they stand to gain nothing from it. No one outside of a small core of hard-liners sympathizes with what Senate Republicans are doing.”

“The Constitution says the Senate must give or withhold its consent to presidential nominees,” the Times notes, “it does not give minority blocs the power to determine the outcome.”

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told us how he really feels about Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel on Fox News this afternoon, saying “people don’t forget” when you cross your own party.

Speaking to Fox News host Neil Cavuto, McCain said that he still believed that Hagel would get the votes required to be confirmed. What followed was the clearest indication yet that he’s still bitter that Hagel turned against the Iraq War:

McCAIN: But to be honest with you, Neil, it goes back to there’s a lot of ill will towards Senator Hagel because when he was a Republican, he attacked President Bush mercilessly and say he was the worst President since Herbert Hoover and said the surge was the worst blunder since the Vietnam War, which was nonsense. He was anti-his own party and people — people don’t forget that. You can disagree but if you’re disagreeable, then people don’t forget that.

Watch McCain’s statements here:

McCain had just voted “no” on the bid to end debate on Hagel’s nomination, supporting the Republican filibuster. Just days ago, McCain insisted that he would do no such thing, and is currently claiming that he’ll vote to break the filibuster following the Senate’s President’s Day recess ten days from now.

The two, formerly close friends, faced off during Hagel’s confirmation hearing over the success of the 2007 surge in Iraq, highlighting McCain’s lingering frustrations with the former Republican Senator from Nebraska. That frustration is shared among many of Hagel’s other opponents, including the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, forming the backbone of neoconservative opposition to his confirmation. McCain is right, however, that once the filibuster breaks Hagel is still set to be confirmed in an up-or-down vote.

Senate Republicans today chose to uphold a filibuster against Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel, despite many of them previously pledging that they would be willing to allow him to be confirmed.

Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and John Cornyn (R-TX) all voted against cloture, despite their pleas during the Bush administration that a president’s Cabinet nominees should receive an up-or-down vote.

Four Republicans, Sens. Thad Cochran (R-MS), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Mike Johanns (R-NE), voted to break the filibuster. The final vote was 58-40, with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) voting present, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) not voting at all, and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) voting “no” as a procedural move so that he can bring another vote to the floor at a later date.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had originally scheduled the cloture vote for tomorrow morning, but surprised many by pushing it up to this afternoon. Earlier today, Reid took to the Senate floor to lambaste his Republican colleagues for delaying an up-or-down vote on Hagel, the first filibuster of a Secretary of Defense nominee.

Prior to the roll call’s beginning, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) attempted to explain that the vote that was set to take place was the vote “to confirm Chuck Hagel,” rather than merely being a procedural vote. Inhofe also claimed that a 60-vote margin was common practice, rendering the actions of the Republicans not a filibuster. However, the motion was still filed by Reid as cloture — the ending of debate — rather than the actual confirmation of Hagel, as laid out be Levin before voting. This leaves the door open for Hagel’s nomination to remain on the Senate floor and renders the GOP’s actions a filibuster under the Senate’s rules.

While Senate Republicans are opposed to voting on Hagel today, they seem to believe that they’ll change their minds after the Senate returns from its President’s Day recess in 10 days. This morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that he expected to be willing to move Hagel forward at that time, “unless there’s some bombshell that he likes blood sucking vampires.” Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and John McCain (R-AZ) said roughly the same thing today, leaving their votes against Hagel today confusing.

The hope for such a bombshell emerging seems far less than likely. A speech given by Hagel in 2008 that conservatives have long-sought as evidence that Hagel falls far outside of the mainstream was released today, turning out to be a dud. Likewise right-wing implications that Hagel was secretly being backed by a group called “Friends of Hamas” also proved to be utterly false, fabricated on a far-right media outlet.

After today’s filibuster, the Senate will reconsider Hagel after their break. While today’s vote showed that the GOP was willing to obstruct and delay, they ultimately will be unable to do this forever. In the end, Hagel still possesses more than the majority vote needed for final passage.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced today that he has scheduled a cloture vote for Chuck Hagel’s nomination as Defense Secretary for Friday morning.

In an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, Reid lambasted Republicans for their “unprecedented” obstruction on Hagel (this is the first time in the history of the United States that a president’s nominee for Defense Secretary has been filibustered). “It’s shocking,” Reid said, “that my Republican colleagues would leave the country without a fully empowered Secretary of Defense during all the things that we have going on in the world including a war”:

REID: I have heard speeches from the other side a lot saying, “you know the president should have the right to choose whoever he wants.” He has the support of this body, a majority vote in this body in this democracy. We are a nation, Mr. President, at war. We are whether we like it or not the world’s indispensable leader. We’re it. For the sake of our national security it’s time to put aside this political theatre and that’s what it is.

People are worried about primary elections. We know how the Tea Party goes after Republicans when they aren’t conservative enough. Is that something they need to have on their resume? “I filibustered one of the president’s nominees.” Is that what they want? The filibuster of Senator Hagel’s confirmation is unprecedented. I repeat. Not a single nominee for Secretary of Defense ever in the history of our country has been filibustered. Never, ever!

“We need a Secretary of Defense,” Reid said later. “It’s tragic that they’ve decided to filibuster this qualified nominee. It is really unfortunate.” Watch the clip:

Senate Democratic aides are reportedly saying they may not have enough votes to break the filibuster while some are reporting that there are enough votes for cloture, but the actual vote on Hagel’s nomination won’t take place until after the recess.

However, NATO is hosting Defense Minister meetings next week in Brussels where the allies will discuss the ongoing war in Afghanistan. “We need our new defense secretary to be there,” a White House spokesperson said today, calling the GOP obstruction “unconscionable” and adding, “It does not send a favorable signal for the Republicans of the U.S. senate to delay a vote. …It’s difficult to explain to our allies why that’s happening.”

Video transcript:

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As Republicans prepare to mount an unprecedented filibuster of Sen. Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense, they will demand that 60 Senators (a three-fifths super-majority) agree to proceed before he receives a majority vote on confirmation. But just a few years ago, when Republicans controlled the Senate, many of the same Senators pushed for the elimination of this same threshold for President George W. Bush’s nominees.

Three Senators considered likely to join in the Hagel filibuster, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senator Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) and Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) made comments during the Bush years that indicated they opposed filibuster of any presidential nominee — judicial or otherwise.

McConnell told CNBC’s Kudlow & Company in 2005, “I think the President is entitled to an up-or-down — that is simple majority — vote on nominations, both to his cabinet and to the executive branch and also to the judiciary.” McConnell was one of the first Republicans to raise the possibility of a Hagel filibuster (Hagel actually once voted to make McConnell the Senate Republican leader).

In a 2008 release called “Confirming President’s Nominees Matter of Fairness, Senate Duty,” Cornyn wrote:

Far too many judicial and executive nominees have been delayed by the majority party of the Senate. An up-or-down vote is a matter of fundamental fairness, and it is the Senate’s constitutional duty to act on each nomination. It is also critically important to our judicial system and the proper functioning of our federal government to fill these positions.
Senators have a right to vote for or against any nominee—but blocking votes on nominations is unacceptable.

Cornyn now doesn’t just plan to vote against Hagel, he is demanding the 60-vote threshold he called fundamentally unfair just five years ago.

Sessions said on the Senate floor in 2005:

The vote, historically, since the founding of this Republic, is a majority vote. Lets [sic] look at that. The Constitution says that the Congress shall advise and consent on treaties, provided two-thirds agree, and shall advise and consent on judges and other nominees. Since the founding of the Republic, we have understood that there was a two-thirds super majority for ratification and advice and consent on treaties and a majority vote for judges. That is what we have done. That is what we have always done. But there was a conscious decision on behalf of the leadership, unfortunately, of the Democratic Party in the last Congress to systematically filibuster some of the best nominees ever submitted to the Senate. It has been very painful.

Today, Sessions isn’t just seeking to block Hagel’s confirmation — he is also threatening to filibuster other cabinet nominees including Treasury Secretary-Designate Jack Lew.

If these and other Senate Republicans care at all about consistency and their own interpretations of the Constitution they took an oath to uphold, they must support giving Hagel and all of the president’s other nominees the up-or-down confirmation vote they say is required.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) today filed a cloture motion on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be the next Defense Secretary, saying he was forced to file the motion — which effectively means that 60 votes will be required for an up or down vote on Hagel — because Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member James Inhofe (R-OK) and other Republicans “aren’t willing to consider” the Nebraska Republican’s nomination.

“This is the first time in the history of our country that a presidential nominee for Secretary of Defense has been filibustered,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “What a shame.” Watch the clip:

The cloture vote is scheduled for Friday and It’s unlikely Senate Republicans will be able to derail Hagel’s confirmation. At this point, their obstruction and delay appears to be just that: obstruction and delay.

But it’s worth remembering who wants Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of Defense — former top military and defense officials from both parties, 50 former U.S. ambassadors, veterans and military families, a bipartisan group of former national security advisers, and the country’s most prominent newspapers and journalists — and who doesn’t: James Inhofe, Ted Cruz, Bill Kristol, Rick Santorum, Elliott Abrams, and Jennifer Rubin. You do the math.

Less than twenty-four hours after President Obama announced an executive order aimed at strengthening the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure and called for congressional action on cybersecurity in his State of the Union Address, Congressman Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) reintroduced the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) to the House.

CISPA caused widespread outcries from privacy and civil liberties advocates when it was considered in 2012 due to provisions that would in effect allow intelligence agencies a backdoor into the personal information of most Americans by allowing companies to share information about activities on their network with very little oversight. The version of the bill introduced for the 113th Congress is unchanged from the amended version from the 112th session, which President Obama threatened to veto. Indeed, press materials from the House Intelligence Committee say “the bill that was introduced today is identical to the ‘Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act’ (H.R. 3523) that passed the House by a strong bipartisan vote of 248-168 in April 2012.”

Online privacy advocates began organizing a response based on rumors of its revival earlier in the month, with Fight for the Future launching the site Cispaisback.com and Gregory T. Nojeim, Director of the Project on Freedom, Security & Technology at the Center for Democracy & Technology telling ThinkProgress “CISPA is deeply flawed” and recommending Members “seriously consider” if they wanted to re-open the debate over the bill.

In his State of the Union address last night, President Barack Obama referred to the need to reduce the force structure of our strategic military systems by cutting the number of deployed nuclear weapons. Press reports over the last year have indicated that military and civilian leaders have settled on a plan to reduce the number of deployed nuclear weapons by one-third, to between 1,000 and 1,100, down from 1,700. President Obama should push for such a reduction, which would follow the practice of his predecessors and improve our national security. As the Center for American Progress has argued for the last decade, this move makes sense both strategically and fiscally, and is long overdue.

When President George W. Bush entered the White House in 2001, he moved to cut our stockpile of nuclear weapons—which at that time numbered about 6,000 to the lowest-possible number consistent with our national security. The president offered to make these cuts unilaterally, but Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted the reductions codified in a treaty that would limit deployed nuclear weapons to less than 1,500 warheads for each country. In 2002, under pressure from Russia, President Bush agreed to a legally binding accord the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, or SORT—which stated that both sides will limit their arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 deployed nuclear weapons each.

Subsequently, in 2010 President Obama negotiated a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, with Russia that calls for reducing each country’s number of deployed nuclear weapons to 1,550 by 2018, but places no limits on the total number of warheads, which now number 5,000. This was an impressive and welcome achievement. But analyses by the Air War College, Gen. James Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commander of U.S. Strategic Command; and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) all argue that these numbers of deployed and reserve nuclear weapons and warheads are far more than the United States needs for the purpose of deterrence in the 21st century.

Analysts at the Air War College argue that the United States can achieve deterrence with a total nuclear force (deployed and reserve) of 300 weapons, while Gen. Cartwright believes a total of 800 (400 deployed and 400 in reserve) would be sufficient.

These reductions would result in substantial savings. The United States currently spends about $55 billion a year to maintain its triad of nuclear-capable bombers, land-based ballistic missiles, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Moreover, if the United States wants to refurbish, repair, and modernize its existing nuclear arsenal in its current size, we will have to spend about $600 billion over the next decade. Adapting the Cartwright plan would save approximately $120 billion. Depending on the specifics of its implementation, even President Obama’s more moderate target could save tens of billions over the next decade. Additionally, reducing our nuclear footprint will reduce long-term maintenance costs and reduce the risks of theft or mishandling of nuclear material.

Given the pressure that all government expenditures will face over the next decade due to our fiscal problems, maintaining our current oversized nuclear arsenal is unnecessary, unaffordable, and unwise. The savings from reducing our nuclear arsenal can be used for either more pressing national security priorities or to pay down the national debt. This is why the Center for American Progress has advocated for reductions to our nuclear spending for nearly a decade and why we fully support President Obama’s planned reductions.

Lawrence Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

During last night’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama pledged that the United States would work towards ending extreme poverty around the world within the next two decades.

“[P]rogress in the most impoverished parts of our world enriches us all,” Obama said standing before the combined Federal government. “In many places, people live on little more than a dollar a day,” he continued, referring to the much cited World Bank definition of extreme poverty.

Obama then described exactly what ending such abject poverty would entail:

OBAMA: So the United States will join with our allies to eradicate such extreme poverty in the next two decades: by connecting more people to the global economy and empowering women; by giving our young and brightest minds new opportunities to serve and helping communities to feed, power, and educate themselves; by saving the world’s children from preventable deaths; and by realizing the promise of an AIDS-free generation.

Obama’s declaration came amid a section of the speech talking up other, seemingly higher profile international issues — such as the use of targeted killing in the fight against Al Qaeda and warning North Korea against further provocations. The firmness of the statement, however, stood out as the first time that a President has directly set such a target during a State of the Union Address.

Obama’s commitment echoes the eight principles in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), set forth by the United Nations in 2000. The MDGs have managed several successes since their implementation, including cutting global extreme poverty in half ahead of schedule. Other goals, including reducing the number of urban-dwellers living in slums and improving access to clean water, have been met early as well.

Many goals, however, will remain incomplete when the 2015 deadline set for many of the MDGs is reached. CAP Chair John Podesta was named to be a part of the High-Level Panel on Development, charged with charting a post-2015 course for development, by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon last August. The panel has met several times already, discussing a wide range of issues, including those in the President’s call to action. Podesta has written a white paper detailing possible approaches to connect the poorest of the poor to the global economy and give the poor the tools they need, like access to education and health care, to contribute to the development of their countries. The Panel is due to present their findings to the Secretary-General by June.

President Obama signed a long rumored executive order aimed at strengthening the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure and a Presidential Directive on Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience before the State of the Union yesterday.

The executive order creates new information sharing programs under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to provide threat and attack information to U.S. businesses, opens up the voluntary Enhanced Cybersecurity Services program to other sectors participating in critical infrastructure beyond the defense industrial base, and calls for the National Institute of Standards and Technology to implement a cybersecurity framework to reduce the cyber risks to critical infrastructure.

Under the order, agencies and the private companies participating in the information sharing program are also required to incorporate privacy and civil liberties safeguards based upon the Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPS) and other applicable standards. The Chief Privacy Officer and the Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of DHS will also produce an annual report on the privacy and civil liberty impacts of the programs outlined in the order, and provide guidance on how to minimize or mitigate those risks.

Largely due to these provisions, online privacy advocates have applauded the order, in stark contrast to other cybersecurity proposals in recent years. While cybersecurity breaches have made big headlines in recent months, with the hacking of major newspapers and new revelations about the network insecurity some federal agencies, legislative efforts to address the issue languished in 2012 — although much to the dismay of privacy advocates, the most troubling of them, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), appears to be attempting a comeback.

Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) President Leslie Harris released a statement praising the order’s protections and emphasis on sharing the government’s cybersecurity expertise with private stakeholders:

“The executive order says that privacy must be built into the government’s cybersecurity plans and activities, not as an afterthought but rather as part of the design. By explicitly requiring adherence to fair information practice principles, the order adopts a comprehensive formulation of privacy. The annual privacy assessment, properly done, can create accountability to the public for government actions taken in the name of cybersecurity [...]

CDT has long argued that one of the best things government can do to bolster cybersecurity is to share the cyberthreat insights and expertise it has with private industry. Rather than having the government monitor private networks, it is better for security and privacy to have private entities protect their own systems and networks. Better sharing of what the government knows will enhance that effort.”

The Presidential Directive accompanying the order clarifies the role of many federal agencies in cybersecurity, with DHS leading the effort and other agencies working with sector-specific industries to promote cybersecurity best practices, and outlines three major imperatives for DHS to pursue to improve the resiliency of the federal government’s critical infrastructure against cyberattacks: Define current function relationships across across government, identify baseline data and systems requirements to enable information exchange, and implement an analysis and integration function with the capability to process and respond to cyber vulnerabilities.

This is the second Presidential Directive to address cybersecurity, following a secret directive signed by the President in mid-October that redefined some military cybersecurity actions previously considered offensive as defensive around the same time Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned of a looming “cyber-Pearl Harbor.”