The President of the United States oversees the national response to Hurricane Irene

On Saturday, Obama chaired a meeting at the National Response Coordination Center at FEMA’s Washington headquarters, and “convened a conference call with members of his senior emergency response team including Vice President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, among others.” He also “heard updates on Saturday from governors and emergency management officials in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont.”

Right-wing pundits lashed out at Obama, bizarrely claiming that the President of the United States is engaged in a political campaign when he commands the executive branch’s response to Hurricane Irene:

“How to Politicize a Hurricane,” Koch Industries lawyer John Hinderaker cried, saying Obama “posed for a photo-op today, pretending to have something to do with the potentially-severe weather event.”

Scared Monkeys: “The President left the friendly confines of “Life styles of the Rich & Famous to try and act presidential. However, it seems like more of a shameless photo-op.”

“Fearless Leader “Takes Charge” At Hurricane Command Center…” Weasel Zippers writes. “More like a pathetic photo-op.”

Six years after the Bush administration’s criminal failure to protect the citizens of the Gulf Coast from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, American conservatives are still reeling. One of the prime tenets of the American right — that everyday Americans don’t ever need a strong federal government — was belied by the tragedy of Katrina. Bush put FEMA under the control of an Arabian horse commissioner, Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown, eviscerating the crucial agency and demoralizing its proud public servants. Instead of responding to the warnings of National Weather Service officials or to reports of levee failures and mass suffering, Bush spent five days on photo ops like cutting a birthday cake with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and playing a guitar with country singer Mark Wills, and going to political events to promote Medicare Part D.

Before this year’s billion-dollar climate disasters struck across the nation, Obama rebuilt the tattered Federal Emergency Management Agency into a shining example of how our government serves the Constitutional mandate to protect the public welfare in times of need. Not every president plays guitar and eats cake when the safety of Americans is threatened.

Robert George

Princeton University politics professor Robert George — the founding chairman of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage (NOM) — has announced that he will co-moderate Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-SC) The Palmetto Freedom Presidential Forum on September 5. The event is also being co-sponsored by George’s American Principles Project, a conservative group that kicked off this year’s boycott of CPAC to protest the participation of the Republican pro-gay rights group GOProud:

The Palmetto Freedom Forum will follow a unique format, designed to allow invited candidates to engage in a thoughtful, substantive discussion of their stances on the critical issues facing our country. Candidates will be featured on stage one-at-a-time and will engage in a question and answer session with three panelists: U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), U.S. Representative Steve King (R-IA), and Dr. Robert P. George, founder of the American Principles Project and a professor at Princeton University. The event will be moderated by David Stanton, a veteran of South Carolina presidential events and former local news anchor. [...]

Founder of the American Principles Project, Robert George, said, “The South Carolina presidential forum rests on a conviction—the belief that the way forward for our country is a renewed fidelity to the foundational principles of our civilization and the constitutional principles of our democratic republic. The forum will give those aspiring to the presidency an opportunity to demonstrate the depth of their understanding of our nation’s core principles, and the strength of their commitment to governing in accordance with them.”

George co-authored the 2009 Manhattan Declaration, a manifesto “developed after a New York meeting of conservative church leaders that “promises resistance to the point of civil disobedience against any legislation that might implicate their churches or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same sex marriage.” As a 2009 New York Times profile explained, George — the religious right’s intellectual leader — “argues that reason alone shows that heterosexual sodomy and homosexual sex are morally wrong, just as the Catholic Church, classical philosophers and other religious traditions have historically taught.” His declaration, meanwhile, encourages people to resist same-sex attraction. “[W]e pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God’s intention for our lives,” it says.

George has previously described homosexual behavior as “beneath the dignity of human beings as free and rational creatures” and argued that same-sex relationships have “no intelligible basis in them for the norms of monogamy, exclusivity, and the pledge of permanence.” Most recently, he even claimed that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo “shouldn’t be considered a Catholic because he signed marriage equality into law.”

Reports have indicated that invitations to the forum will only be extended “to Republican contenders polling at 5 percent support or higher in the RealClearPolitics.com poll average as of Aug. 22.” Under that standard, Huntsman and Santorum will likely be excluded from the event.

Oath Keeper Charles Dyer

Underscoring the danger of the Oath Keepers is the case of Charles Dyer, a former Marine from Oklahoma who served in Iraq and is now the target of nationwide manhunt after he jumped bail on charges of possessing a stolen grenade launcher and raping a 7-year-old family member. Dyer’s first trial ended in a mistrial, but he didn’t show up for the new trial Monday. Police are clearly concerned he could be dangerous:

“We’re sure he’s going to be armed,” said Stephens County Sheriff Wayne McKinney of Dyer. “There’s no doubt about that.”

McKinney also said Dyer had begun posting messages threatening local law enforcement: “If the sheriff’s office came to his house, he was loading his weapons and putting his bullet-proof vest on and having a showdown with us.”

“What concerns me is his ties with some of these very radical groups,” McKinney said.

Watch a report from New 9 in Oklahoma:

The core philosophy of the Oath Keepers is a list of “10 orders we will NOT obey,” including, “disarm[ing] the American people,” “confiscat[ing] the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies,” and “blockad[ing] American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.” In early 2008, the Rhodes warned that a “dominatrix-in-chief” named “Hitlery Clinton” would impose a police state on America and shoot all resisters. After primary voters chose a different candidate, the Oath Keepers simply rewrote their paranoid fantasy with President Obama as the arch-villain.

Dyer claims he’s a patriot who is being unfairly targeted by the government to keep him quiet. He has made numerous web videos and blog postings explaining his beliefs, saying, “At every turn my family and I have been threatened and bullied by both the state and federal governments.”

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is running for president and she is currently surging in polls. However, Bachmann isn’t exactly a foreign policy aficionado and she doesn’t talk too much about her views on international relations. Lake writes that when he started asking around about where she stands, he repeatedly was told to “talk to Frank Gaffney“:

Gaffney himself stressed that he had no formal relationship with Bachmann as an adviser. But he did say that he had contact with several of the GOP candidates. And, of Bachmann, he said this: “She is a friend and a person I admire. I hope she is getting the best counsel she can.” He added, “We are a resource she has tapped, I’m assuming among many others.” When I asked him whether Bachmann had been briefed on the Team B II Report, he replied, “We’ve spent hours, over several days with her. I think she’s got the bulk of what we would tell her in one of the more formal presentations.”

So it’s safe to assume that Bachmann is getting a regular dose of Gaffney’s crazy anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. Gaffney’s Islamophobia is well-documented. Last year he released a report purporting to document the threat posed by Islamic law in the U.S. (no Muslims actually contributed to the report). Among the report’s wild accusations, one was that members of the Obama administration are part of the “Iran lobby.” Gaffney thinks the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to infiltrate the American conservative movement. Before her confirmation to the Supreme Court, Gaffney claimed Elana Kagan would impose Sharia law on America. He even accused Gen. David Petraeus of “submission” to Sharia and thinks the president is secretly Muslim.

But Gaffney’s baseless far-right views aren’t limited to his Islamophobia. In addition to flirting with birtherism, as late as 2009, he claimed to have evidence of al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq “collaborating on all kinds of things.” He has even said Iraq was complicit in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Gaffney also once said that repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would lead to reinstating the draft (hasn’t so far) and he claimed the DADT repeal would force some “radical” LGBT “agenda” on the U.S. military.

More recently, Gaffney said Obama’s policy on Israel (which is basically the same as all of his predecessors) will “catalyze the next Middle East war.” He even said Obama might order a military attack on Israel.

This is Frank Gaffney, currently Michele Bachmann’s primary foreign policy adviser.

Former DHS Domestic Terrorism Analyst Daryl Johnson

The greatest threat of large-scale attacks come from individuals and small groups of extremists who subscribe to radical Islamic or far right-wing ideologies, said Gary LaFree, director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START. [...]

Ackerman said nationally, law enforcement has been focused since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001 on the threat of Islamic terrorism, even as the threat from domestic anti-government groups has been growing.

“Some people believe we have taken our eye off the ball when it comes to domestic right-wing extremists,” he said.

Sadly, the Department of Homeland Security reportedly isn’t taking these threats too seriously. Daryl Johnson, a former senior Department of Homeland Security domestic terror analyst, told the Southern Poverty Law Center last month that “there is just one person” at DHS who is focused on these issues. Why? Shortly after President Obama took office, DHS produced a report warning of the rise of right-wing extremism in the United States and that domestic extremists were looking to recruit Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

However, the report was leaked and right-wing media figures and Republicans in Congress were outraged. “The person who drafted the outrageous homeland security memo smearing veterans and conservatives should be fired,” Newt Gingrich said at the time. Michelle Malkin called it a “DHS hit job on conservatives.” Bowing to the right-wing hysteria, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano eventually ordered the report withdrawn.

Johnson, who describes himself a Republican, said that after the controversy, DHS gutted his unit:

When the right-wing report was leaked and people politicized it, my management got scared and thought DHS would be scaled back. It created an environment where my analysts and I couldn’t get our work done. DHS stopped all of our work and instituted restrictive policies. Eventually, they ended up gutting my unit. [...] Since our report was leaked, DHS has not released a single report of its own on this topic. Not anything dealing with non-Islamic domestic extremism—whether it’s anti-abortion extremists, white supremacists, “sovereign citizens,” eco-terrorists, the whole gamut.

“Sad to say, we were right on this one. History has shown that,” Johnson said, referring to the murder of abortion provider George Tiller and neo-Nazi James von Brunn who killed a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Many of these pundits, walking back their early accusations of Islamic terror, fell back on the notion that “jihadists” were still a threat no matter whether or not the Norwegian attacker was one.

“It’s one of the first instances since Oklahoma City when terrorism on this scale was not Islamic,” said a former Bush administration official on Fox News. (At the time, conservatives also tried to blame the Oklahoma City bombing on Islamic terrorists.)

“There are many more jihadists than blond Norwegians out to kill Americans, and we should keep our eye on the systemic and far more potent threats that stem from an ideological war with the West,” wrote Washington Post neoconservative blogger Jennifer Rubin from an American perspective.

But according to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, the Europeans — part of Jennifer Rubin’s “West,” to be sure — actually faced a minimal threat from Muslim extremist terror. Here’s a chart highlighting Europol’s numbers from 2009 and 2010:

So out of 543 failed, foiled or successfully carried out terror plots in Europe in 2009 and 2010, only five — less than one percent — were related to Islamic extremism. (HT: Dan Gardner)

ThinkProgress intern Sarah Bufkin contributed to this post.

Former State Dept. Official Christian Whiton

Today on Fox News, former Bush administration State Department official Christian Whiton acknowledged that the case in Norway “wasn’t Islamic terrorism,” but he quickly downplayed terrorist acts committed by those such as Breivik, saying it’s the first of its kind since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Whiton then attacked the Norwegians for not being serious about terrorism and claimed that European countries are susceptible to terrorism because they’re “neutral in the war on terror”:

WHITON: This wasn’t Islamic terrorism. It’s one of the first instances since Oklahoma City when terrorism on this scale was not Islamic. But steps you can take to defend your people and your government and your society against Islamic terrorism would also come in handy against lone wolfs as this is turning out to be. It just looks like the Norwegians didn’t happen to take them, nor did they approach terrorism in what frankly, was a serious manner I’d say.

GREGG JARRETT: Islamic terrorism is a problem in the Scandanavian countries. Were they just sort of turning a blind eye to it? [...]

WHITON: You know the problem in a lot of European counties is they think by being neutral in the war on terror as if any civilized society can be, that they won’t face the threats that we face. But that’s just not true, we do know al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist movements are targeting Scandanavian countries just like the rest of us.

Watch it:

Of course Whiton is wrong that the Oslo attack is the first act of terrorism since 1995 that didn’t involve Islamic extremists. Various nationalist and political terror groups have committed violent terrorist acts around the world since then, for instance the Real Irish Republican Army bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland in 1998.

CNN contributor Erick Erickson had a similar bait and switch today on his Red State blog. He acknowledged that he was “wrong” to blame the Oslo attacks on al-Qaeda affiliated groups, but then defended his position saying that Christians aren’t as violent as Muslims:

First, those of us on the right who point out the now fairly common ties between terrorists and Islam do so largely because the secular left has become willfully naive. The fact of the matter is violence and Islam may not be very common among American muslims, but internationally it is extremely common and can fairly well be considered mainstream within much of Islam. Read Andy McCarthy if you suffer on the delusion that it is not mainstream.

With Christians, it is rather rare to see a self-described Christian engage in heinous terrorist acts. In fact, in as much as there is an Arab Street filled with muslims more often than not cheering on the latest terrorist act of radical Islamists, you will be very hard pressed to find a Christian who does not condemn the act regardless of the faith of the person doing the killing.

Erickson then asked, “why is the left so gleeful that the Norwegian is a ‘conservative Christian’?” No one is “gleeful” that Breivik is right wing or a “Christian fundamentalist.” Responding to terrorism requires dealing in facts and dispelling speculation based on pre-conceived ideology.

First, banning dancing is a stupid response to a drunk-driving incident. If I were a mainstream evangelical, or a sensible small-town preacher, I might be seriously vexed right around now. Second, if this is a reasonably integrated community (at least when it comes to illicit teenaged dance parties), one would imagine there is a lawyer worth his salt somewhere in hollering distance who will sue the city to get rid of a clearly constitutionally untenable dance ban if only for the free publicity and to get himself to a firm at a bigger city. And finally, I am kind of depressed that in a town that seems like it is maybe sort of a baby theocracy, fighting against said clearly unconstitutional dance ban in City Hall is the epitome of teenaged activism. At least Hairspray had some nod to the idea that integration is a dandy idea if only because it lets you date cute guys. I cannot imagine what life is like for gay kids in this burb.

I mean, I get it, nostalgia is mandatory, logic is optional. And I get that there’s nostalgia for a time when our problems were smaller and our differences seemed more resolvable — and it’s true that the culture war still matters, that the right to express yourself matters, particularly when you’re 17 or 18. But as much as I’d like to believe we’re going to resolve the rifts in our politics and all make it to the big dance together, I don’t really believe we’ve packed our shoes for the same party.

Last week, Kimball and several legislators gathered in Greenfield, NH for a “Flag Day Picnic” with party activists. Explaining the sacrifices made by people in the military, Kimball warned ominously that all would be “completely in vain” if President Obama is reelected next year:

KIMBALL: Ladies and gentlemen, I’m looking at what has happened. All that we treasure lost: people, the loss of life, people who are psychologically and physiologically damaged for life, the sacrifices of the families that supported then. All of this. And I wonder what we did. Look at who we put in the White House. You think about that and we realize the profound responsibility that we have this time. In my view, if we reelect this man, all that all of the people fought and died for is completely in vain.

Watch it:

(HT: Miscellany Blue)

But at a town hall meeting that took place last week and was captured on YouTube, Goodlatte showed his pre-20th century view of the Constitution. At one point during the town hall presentation, Goodlatte displayed a pie chart to the audience showing the various programs that consume the federal budget, with Social Security and Medicare consuming the biggest sections. One constituent, referencing the pie chart, said that everything on the chart is unconstitutional. Goodlatte responded that he agrees, but that the courts keep ruling the opposite way:

CONSTITUENT: Everything that the federal government does on that pie chart is unconstitutional [...] If I violated my marriage contract the way the federal government violates the constitution I’d be in divorce court tomorrow!

GOODLATTE: I hope you’re not. Here’s the deal. You’re absolutely right! But you have one problem, the Supreme Court ruling that these programs are constitutional.

At another point, a different constituent made a similar point, saying that he couldn’t find Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security in the Constitution. Goodlatte agreed that the programs aren’t in the Constitution, but reiterated that the courts have stretched the document to say that these programs are allowed:

CONSTITUENT: I have three points I’d like you to elaborate on if you could. I’ve searched my Constitution for 20 years and I can’t find Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security in there. Those are forced on the American people by the courts. Now, we’ve all accepted that and American people have bought into that, but it’s unconstitutional simple as that, to me, I can’t find it –

GOODLATTE: Well, it’s not in the Constitution. The courts have stretched the Constitution to say its in the general welfare clause.

CONSTITUENT: So the courts are wrong, you can go back to Jefferson and check that –

GOODLATTE: Right, well we are where we are now.

Watch it:

It should be noted that Goodlatte voted, along with almost all House Republicans, for the GOP budget plan that would effectively privatize Medicare. Now we know why — he doesn’t think the health care system for seniors is constitutional in the first place. (HT: 2ndTCG YouTube account)

While many of the conservatives who are for expanding vouchers claim they are not trying to undermine public education but rather inject more competition into it — “school choice,” as they call it — Wisconsin’s superintendent Tony Evers said yesterday that it is morally wrong for his state to be expanding taxpayer funds for Milkwaukee’s voucher program while at the same time slashing money for the state’s public schools:

Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to expand the Milwaukee school choice voucher program to other Wisconsin school districts is “morally wrong,” state Superintendent Tony Evers told students and staff Monday at Green Bay Preble High School. [...] “Our public school system is under attack,” Evers said. “To spend hundreds of millions to expand a 20-year-old program that has not improved overall student achievement, while defunding public education is morally wrong.”

Indeed, it is a stunning statement on Walker’s priorities to have championed nearly $900 million in education cuts in his budget proposal while at the same time proposing a $750 million expansion of the state’s voucher system. Yet Walker isn’t alone in cutting back funding for public schools while expanding it for private schools. ThinkProgress has assembled a list of other states that are conducting a similar tradeoff:

FLORIDA: In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott (R) proposed nearly $3 billion in cuts to public education spending, claiming that he had no choice due to the state’s budget problems. Yet Florida Republicans — along with a bloc of Democrats who have received thousands of dollars in funding from related special interest groups — are simultaneously pushing school voucher legislation that is expected to cost “nearly $100 million in the upcoming fiscal year and would have a potential recurring cost of $242 million.”

NEW JERSEY: One of the first things New Jersey legislators did this year was to finance a school voucher expansion which “would cost about $825 million.” Yet at the same time, Gov. Chris Christie (R) slashed $820 million in school spending last year — meaning that there was an almost equal transfer of funding away from public schools towards private schools.

PENNSYLVANIA: In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Corbett (R) proposed nearly a billion dollars in education cuts, telling the citizens of his state that he had absolutely no choice, given budgetary constraints. Yet at the very same time, conservative legislators are, with Corbett’s backing, pushing a voucher plan that “is estimated to cost taxpayers $730 million in the first four years.”

By slashing funding for public schools while rapidly expanding funding for private, even religious, schools, these conservatives are showing their true colors. Their aim appears to be undermine public education and Americans should arm themselves with the facts.

For more on the war on public education, see today’s Progress Report, “The Billionaires Who Want To Privatize Our Schools.”

Despite the fact that Obama’s declaration was nothing new, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the idea of pre-1967 borders, even using a news conference with Obama to call the proposal “indefensible.” His chief political rival, Kadima’s Tzipi Livni, disagreed, noting that the pre-1967 borders is already American policy.

Now, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is announcing that he plans to introduce a resolution condemning Obama’s advocacy for pre-1967 borders. Hatch sensationally claiming that Obama is “rewarding those who threaten Israel’s very right to exist“:

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) issued a press release today stating his intention to introduce a resolution next week disapproving of the policy concerning Israel that President Barack Obama announced on Thursday. “Israel is the United States’ strongest friend and ally,” Hatch said in the statement. “By calling for a return to the pre-1967 borders, President Obama has directly undermined her.”

Instead, Hatch said, “President Obama is rewarding those who threaten Israel’s very right to exist.” “This is not only ridiculous, but dangerous,” he said.

Yet what Hatch, Netanyahu, and their allies in the U.S. Congress are not saying is that most Israelis and Palestinians actually support a settlement based around 1967 borders with mutually agreed land swaps that result in a safe, secure, free, and prosperous independent Palestinian and Israeli states. Here is a roundup of some of the recent polling on the issue:

- PALESTINIANS SUPPORT PEACE: It a common refrain among those who would deny rights to the Palestinians that they are militantly opposed to Israel’s very existence and would never support a peaceful resolution. Yet the facts do not support this assertion. Polling conducted in 2009 indicated that 74 percent of Palestinians support a two-state solution based around the contours of the international consensus. Polling conducted in 2010 found that 71 percent support peace negotiations with Israel and that a majority of Palestinians oppose rocket attacks on the country. Last month, the top Palestinian diplomat at the UN asked that the international community support a solution based on the pre-1967 borders and mutually agreed land swaps.

- ISRAELIS SUPPORT PEACE: While the pre-1967 borders were portrayed as primarily a Palestinian demand by the mainstream media and conservatives, the truth is that most Israelis are actually in favor of withdrawing settlements and establishing roughly these borders in exchange for peace. In a 2010 Brookings Institution poll, a plurality of Israelis supported this border arrangement along with mutually agreed land swaps. More recent polling from the Joint Israeli Palestinian Poll conducted by the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at Hebrew University and the Palestine Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 52 percent of Israelis support a peace agreement based roughly around the elements of the Saudi peace plan and Clinton Parameters, which would incorporate the pre-1967 borders, and that most Israelis support negotiating with Hamas. A 2011 poll conducted by a major Israeli newspaper shows that 53 percent of Israelis want Netanyahu to seriously engage in peace talks that includes significant concessions.

While it is true that mort Palestinians support this agreement than Israelis — the status quo is much worse for them — it is also true that narrow majorities of Israelis support the general contours of a peace proposal that Obama and the wider international community are endorsing. Netanyahu, Hatch, and their allies in the U.S. Congress and Israeli Knesset are staking out positions that are out of step with public opinion and reality. The question is whether Obama is will use the levers at his disposal to force them to the negotiating table.

In what police termed a “bizarre” series of events, Wintle allegedly started talking to Seamans about the infant that died this week at Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter on Ticonic Street and said he was looking for the mother’s drug dealer.

News reports made no mention of drugs involved in the infant’s death and did not reveal the family.

He then pulled a .22-caliber handgun out of his pants’ waistband and pointed it at Seamans in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot, located on Kennedy Memorial Drive.

Police confirmed that Seamans was “an innocent bystander” who did nothing to provoke Wintle. The two men reportedly had never met before. Wintle seems to be something of an amateur historian, and has “penned a series of stories about his miss-spent youth and family, faith, and heritage.” In what appears to be Wintle’s website promoting his writing, his biography suggests an interest in hunting, saying he “was born on opening day of deer hunting season October 21, 1952.”

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has signed a hefty tax break for Delta Air Lines Inc. The bill Deal signed into law on Wednesday will save the Georgia-based airline up to $30 million on jet fuel taxes over two years.

Supporters say the state must work to keep Delta in the state because it brings in millions of dollars in economic development. Opponents said when the tax break on jet fuel originated several years ago, the company was facing bankruptcy but it reported more than $1 billion in profits last year and doesn’t need the help now.

Many wondered why Deal and his GOP allies in the state legislature were so eager to reduce the flow of revenue to the state’s coffers at a time when budget cuts are forcing thousands of elderly Georgians to go without home-delivered meals and cutting deeply into the education system.

Now, a new investigation by Atlanta’s WSB-TV finds one possible answer why the state’s top GOP lawmakers gave Delta such a treasured tax break. The station found that Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle (R) and five Republican leaders in the legislature were given free “upgrades to platinum or gold frequent flyer status,” which include access to special security lines, far more frequent flyer miles, and free upgrades to first class in some circumstances.

While the company did register the upgrades as campaign contributions, the station argues that the company undervalued them. Delta said the upgrades were worth $1,600-$2,400, but renowned consumer reporter Clark Howard said the actual value of the upgrades was closer to $10,000-$15,000 a year, and that they should be registered as gifts from lobbyists, not simple contributions. Watch WSB’s report about the upgrades:

Commenting on the case, Georgia Politico’s Dustin Baker writes, “There are much more cost-efficient ways to get bumped up to first class. Then again, since you’re paying for it with Georgia tax dollars, I guess it is pretty much free for you.”

For some reason, the Beltway media is treating this as some kind of breaking news. Foreign Policy reported that Obama is altering U.S. policy and the Washington Post claimed that the Obama administration referred to the 1967 border as part of the solution “[f]or the first time.”

Next came the right-wing outrage that Obama hates Israel. Matt Drudge issued the marching orders soon after the speech ended with the headline, “Obama sides with Palestine.” Mitt Romney then accused Obama of “throwing Israel under the bus.” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said Obama “betrayed” Israel, saying on Twitter, “Obama’s call for 1967 borders will cause chaos, division & more aggression in Middle East & put Israel at further risk.” The far-right Simon Wiesenthal Center, which purports to promote tolerance, basically called Obama a Nazi, saying that “Israel should reject a return to 1967 ‘Auschwitz’ borders.”

But the problem is that this just isn’t new. Even President Bush in 2005 endorsed a two-state solution with negotiations based on the post-1949 Armistice, pre-1967 borders:

Any final status agreement must be reached between the two parties, and changes to the 1949 Armistice lines must be mutually agreed to. A viable two-state solution must ensure contiguity of the West Bank, and a state of scattered territories will not work.

And the 1967 borders were the basis for the two future states in negotiations during the Clinton administration. Then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, now Israel’s Defense Minister, signed a document “understanding that the negotiations on the Permanent Status will lead to the implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.” UNSR 242, passed in November 1967, calls for the “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

NBC’s Chuck Todd noticed all the commotion, tweeting, “Surprised at venom re: 1967 lines. Has been part of the proposed solution for years.”

Ali Gharib contributed to this post.

Yesterday, while speaking at a news conference at KUED, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) was asked about Ross’s idea. Herbert at first was hesitant about the idea, saying that it’s “worth exploring.” He later went into a more full-throated defense of privatizing his own state’s land, going as far as to claim that the land would be better in private hands because private owners maintained Indian artifacts and burial grounds better:

REPORTER: Governor, I’d like to get your comment on a comment that was made by a Tea Party caucus member from Florida, Representative Dennis Ross, who said in a conversation about reducting the federal deficit that he’s not an economist but he’s maintained a household. The federal government owns 70 percent of Utah, for example, there are federal buildings, if you need cash, let’s start liquidating. What do you think of the idea of starting to sell Utah land to help pay down the federal deficit?

HERBERT: Well, it’s an idea that’s not new. That’s been talked about for the last generation. If we want to reduce the deficit and balance the budget on a federal level, why don’t we sell some of the federal assets? And of course we have a lot of the private land, excuse me, a lot of federal land that they could liquidate and help balance the budget. I think it’s certainly worth exploring. I don’t think we’re going to sell off our national parks and some of those pristine areas. But there’s a lot of land that could in fact be privatized and help reduce the deficit. So I think it’s got some merit to it.[...]

REPORTER: Is there aconcern about the sort of camel’s nose under the tent kind of argument, that once the federal government has its eye on this piece of land and another then another and before you know it the state doesn’t have any control over what’s happening? Is there a concern about that?

HERBERT: I don’t think so, I don’t think the federal government has any appetite to sell anything they’ve got? They’re more than happy to live with deficits, unfortuantely. I don’t think there’s any appetite to sell anything off. I would argue that we could privatize this public land, develop it commercially, and in many ways protect it better. We’ve got instances around the state where land has been held in private ownership, and protected Indian artifacts, and ancient burial grounds, as well as campaign ground better than when it’s been turned over to the government manage. So I don’t think it’s going to be a big march towards liquidating our public land.

Watch it:

Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and John McCain (R-AZ) have introduced Senate Bill 635, which would sell off land in Utah and other western states. Lee estimates that selling off 3.3 million acres of federal land in the West would bring in a billion dollars — which would save, for example, four times less than Senate Democrats’ proposal to end subsidies for Big Oil would in a single year.

Ever since House Republicans proposed and passed their budget plan to effectively end Medicare and extend tax breaks for the wealthy, constituents have been voicing their displeasure at town halls across the country. That trend continued this week at a Pompano Beach, FL town hall held by Tea Party favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL).

The Florida congressman was asked by a constituent why he, along with nearly all of his Republican colleagues, voted for the Medicare-ending House GOP budget. West sidestepped the question, insisting instead that he doesn’t “think it destroys Medicare.” This earned West a chorus of groans, followed by chants of “hands off Medicare! Hands off Medicare!”:

WEST: I don’t think it destroys Medicare.

[Audience groans]

CONSTITUENTS: Hands off Medicare! Hands off Medicare! Hands off Medicare!

WEST: I will take my hands off Medicare and when there is no Medicare, then I will come see you sir. Next slide.

CONSTITUENTS: Hands off Medicare!

Watch it:

West’s angry constituents aren’t alone. Indeed, a Washington Post poll shows that 84 percent of Americans oppose Medicare cuts like the ones in the GOP plan, authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), including more than 7 in 10 Republicans. Similarly, other polls shows that over two-thirds of Americans want Congress to raise taxes on wealthy Americans making more than $250,000 per year.

One way states are looking to raise revenues is to close what has become known as the “Amazon Loophole.” Currently, online retailers like Amazon.com set up subsidiary corporations in states and then argue that the subsidiary corporation doesn’t obligate the parent company to collect sales taxes in that state.

Lawmakers in numerous states, like South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, and others are tackling this loophole by mandating that Amazon customers in their states pay sales taxes, which would both provide revenue for their states and deny Amazon and other online retailers an unfair advantage over local retailers whose customers do have to pay sales taxes.

Responding to these legislators, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos remarkably claimed today that state efforts to close the loophole and have Amazon behave like any other retailer are actually unconstitutional:

Now, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is saying that some U.S. states’ tax demands are violating the U.S. Constitution. [...] “First of all, most of where we do business – Europe, Japan, some of the states here in the United States – we collect sales tax. More than half our business,” said Bezos. “We do collect sales taxes, the European equivalent of value-added tax. And in the U.S., the Constitution prohibits states from interfering in interstate commerce. And there was a Supreme Court case decades ago that clarified that businesses – it was mail-order at the time because the internet did not exist – that mail-order companies could not be required to collect sales tax in states where they didn’t have what’s called ‘nexus.’”

Bezos is referring to a 1992 Supreme Court decision that said “that retailers who lack a physical presence in a state, or ‘nexus,’ cannot be required to collect tax.” Yet states aren’t claiming extraordinary powers to tax Amazon transactions. Rather, they are expanding the definition of “nexus” to “include affiliate programs, such as when Amazon pays a commission for links that result in sales.”

But the Amazon CEO should know that his constitutional argument is bunk. After all, his company lost a constitutional challenge to New York when it sued to stop that state’s efforts to close the Amazon loophole (Overstock.com lost a similar case). “Amazon should not be permitted to escape tax collection indirectly, through use of an incentivized New York sales force to generate revenue, when it would not be able to achieve tax avoidance directly through use of New York employees engaged in the very same activities,” said Judge Eileen Bransten.

It’s crucial that states are able to excise their powers of taxation to get revenue from transactions occuring within their territory, given that state governments are losing millions of dollars thanks to tax dodging by big online retailers. As just one example, in “2011 alone, Wisconsin will lose an estimated $127 million in uncollected sales tax on purchases made online.” Unfortunately, Amazon hasn’t reacted to these state efforts just by challenging them in court. When Texas tried to close its Amazon Loophole, the retailer announced that it would end all business there.

As the GOP encounters increasing division among its own ranks over the Ryan budget, Republican leaders are openly considering abandoning their plan to end Medicare. Indeed, multiple Republican senators have expressed significant reservations or outright opposition to the plan.

As a result, many on the conservative wing of the Republican Party are speaking out against the GOP leadership’s handling of the issue. One such man is Tea Party favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL).

ThinkProgress interviewed West prior to his town hall meeting this week in Riviera Beach. We asked the Florida congressman if he was worried about his party’s leadership wavering on the Ryan budget. West noted that while he stands “on [his] own convictions and [his] own principles,” he worried that Republican leaders might not possess the “moral courage” to reform Medicare and Social Security:

KEYES: Shifting gears slightly to the Ryan budget in Congress, there were some reports last week that some of the GOP leaders – Dave Camp – of the House Ways and Means Committee might be backing off, saying he doesn’t want to bring it up. A number of senators were saying that they weren’t wanting to support it, like Senator Portman, Senator Alexander. Are you worried that the leadership might be wavering on this?

WEST: No, I don’t, because I stand on my own convictions and my own principles, and if they don’t have the moral courage to understand that we’re dealing with a very serious situation – look the Medicare trustees report just came out Friday. It said in 2024 it’s over for Medicare and 12 years later it’s over for Social Security. So, we can continue to run around and lie to the American people and tell them the things we think that they want to hear just so we think that we can stay in political power or position, but what does that do for the future legacy of our country? What does that do for my 18 and my 14 year old daughters?

Watch it:

GOP leaders have seen disastrous polling on the plan to end Medicare and the resulting town hall backlash after its passage in the House. They are trying to prevent their party from being electorally crucified on the cross of Ryan’s budget. However, if Tea Party congressmen like West, who were elected in droves last year and paved the way for John Boehner to become Speaker of the House, have their way, it will be extraordinarily difficult for Republican leaders to walk away from the Ryan plan.