Tenther U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT)

Just over one month ago, the Senate largely abandoned a plan to ambitiously reform the Senate rules after the GOP agreed to a “handshake deal” which would curb the unprecedented spike in filibusters since the GOP lost control of the Senate. Rather than uphold their side of the bargain, eight Republican senators have now promised to take their obstructionism to unprecedented heights.

Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK), John McCain (R-AZ), Jim DeMint (R-SC), John Ensign (R-NV), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) circulated a letter to their colleagues yesterday threatening to place a hold on any bill which does not comply with five very broad criteria. Given some of these senators’ bizarre views about the Constitution, one of their five criteria stands out as a particularly aggressive assault on the Senate’s ability to function:

Congress Must Not Infringe Upon the Constitutional Rights of the People: Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress a very limited set of enumerated powers.  Far too often, Congress infringes upon the rights and liberties reserved for the people and the states provided elsewhere in the Constitution.  These overreaches are no more than an afterthought when most bills are debated.  To restore the intended balance of powers between the states and the federal government and to preserve the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, all bills must have a clear and obvious basis connected to one of the enumerated powers and must not infringe upon any of the rights guaranteed to the people.

It is, of course, completely banal to say that Congress should not pass unconstitutional laws, but several of the eight signatories to this letter have fairly twisted views of the founding document, believing that the Constitution forbids pretty much everything. Coburn believes that all federal involvement in education — including Pell Grants and federal student loans — violates the Constitution. Paul believes that the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters violates the Constitution (though he walked that comment back). And Sen. Mike “a noun, a verb, and unconstitutional” Lee believes that child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution.

Indeed, it is questionable whether any bill will not be filibustered by one of these radical tenther senators, now that they are promising to obstruct any bill that they personally deem to violate their own idiosyncratic version of the founding document.

Conservative Republican Ron Johnson defeated incumbent Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) in the Wisconsin senate content this year. Many of the ads attacking Feingold came not from Johnson, but from outside groups like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business lobbying organization. The Chamber used outright falsehoods against Feingold, including one ad that falsely stated that he supported a “government takeover” of health care.

In response to the Chamber’s pivotal contributions to the race, the Los Angeles Times reports that last week Johnson visited the Chamber to personally thank Chamber CEO Tom Donohue:

When it comes to money in politics, the new normal is already on vivid display. It could be seen last week in posh restaurants and corporate townhouses on Capitol Hill, where politicians held fundraisers at a record pace. It was evident at Washington’s blue-chip law firms, where campaign finance lawyers began work setting up new political committees to collect unlimited donations. It was apparent in the halls of Congress, where lawmakers swapped strategies about how to contend with muscular interest groups looking to take them out. The unusually intense December bustle is the product of this year’s elections, where spending surged to $4 billion in sharp-edged campaigns across the country — a record for a midterm. [...] In a sign of the new order, a newly elected Republican senator, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, paid a personal visit last week to U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue to thank him for the chamber’s unsolicited support of his candidacy.

Earlier this year, ThinkProgress reported that, in addition to donations from health insurance companies and Wall Street banks, the Chamber had solicited donations from foreign businesses, including state-run oil companies in Bahrain and outsourcing firms in India. To his credit, Johnson was one of the few Republican candidates who called for the Chamber to disclose the funding of its ads. The Chamber so far has refused any voluntary disclosures — but will the newly elected senator from Wisconsin continue to press the Chamber for transparency? Historically, the Chamber fundraises for its political program by telling corporations that they may more effectively lobby by funneling donations through the Chamber. While its clear Johnson appreciates the help from the Chamber, what will he do in return?

Ron Johnson, the Tea Party-backed Republican candidate for Senate in Wisconsin, has enjoyed the support of several outside groups during his election campaign: he benefited from $1.3 million in television advertising from various political action committees and other groups, including ads from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that attack his opponent, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), for his support of health care reform.

Such groups are not required to reveal who is funding the political attacks. As ThinkProgress detailed last week, the Chamber of Commerce may be using foreign funds to support its attack ads in the United States, which would be a violation of federal election laws. Last night during a debate in Wausau, WI, Feingold pressed Johnson to call on these groups to disclose their funding sources. Johnson agreed and called for disclosure:

JOHNSON: You want to be able to select who can have free speech and who doesn’t want to have free speech.

FEINGOLD: I want everybody to have free speech, but I want them to be able to — as you just said, they ought to disclose. You haven’t even called on these people to disclose. You just said you’re for disclosure. You won’t even call on them to disclose.

JOHNSON: I’d be happy to have them disclose.

FEINGOLD: Well then why don’t you ask them to do it?

JOHNSON: Disclose.

Watch it:

So far, the Chamber has refused to provide evidence they are not using foreign money to fund political attacks, saying “We are not obligated to discuss our internal accounting procedures.” Perhaps if more candidates like Ron Johnson that benefit from Chamber attacks call for disclosure, the Chamber will feel compelled to reveal the well-heeled special interests behind their unprecedented political ad campaign.

Millionaire executive Ron Johnson, Wisconsin’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate, continues to deny the existence of global warming. Freak floods caused by historic rainfall are ravaging the state, during the hottest year in recorded history, which has brought climate catastrophes to every corner of the globe. In an interview with the Associated Press, Johnson insisted that the “science of global warming is unproven”:

The science of global warming is unproven. It just is.

“I’m not even sure if, if it were a fact, whether we could do anything about it anyway,” he concluded.

Watch Ron Johnson blame “sunspots” for global warming in August:

Despite decades of rapid planetary warming, and the consensus of every major scientific academy in the world that greenhouse pollution threatens the future of human civilization, the voters of Wisconsin are poised to send Johnson as part of a tsunami of global warming deniers to the highest legislative body in the nation.

Wisconsin GOP U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson often touts the fact that he comes from outside the political system and has spent his life building busineses in the private sector.

Yet before running for Senate, Johnson did have one prominent act of political participation. In January 2010, Johnson testified before the Wisconsin state legislature in opposition to the bipartisan Wisconsin Child Victims Act. The legislation, if passed, would alter Wisconsin law to eliminate the statute of limitations on civil suits for child abuse and allow a three-year window to bring suit for victims who were victimized before the bill. The legislation also specifies that the entities that can be sued would include not just individuals, but also a “corporation, business trust, limited liability company,” and other formal organizations that could be held accountable for the illegal behavior of their employees. As the bill’s authors write, “We believe that there should be no deadline on justice for child sexual abuse victims.”

But Johnson did not place protecting victims as his highest priority. In his testimony before the Wisconsin legislature, he said it was “extremely important to consider the economic havoc…and the other victims” that the new law would “likely create” — ridiculously comparing child abuse victims to the economic damages faced by employers being sued. Johnson warned that the Child Victims Act would lead to businesses or other organizations that work with children to be “damaged or destroyed” by civil suits and that it would “send a chilling signal” to civic-minded organizations like the Boy Scouts to not work with children in the future. He then opined that if the bill were passed, “I have no doubt trial lawyers would benefit, I’m not so sure that the actual victims would“:

JOHNSON: I think it is extremely important to consider the economic havor and the other victims [the Wisconsin Child Victims Act] would likely create. [...] I believe it is a valid question to ask whether the employer of a perpetrator should also be severely damaged, or possibly destroyed, in our legitimate desire for justice. [...] It would also send a chilling signal to avoid this civic minded activity in the future. [...] I have no doubt trial lawyers would benefit, I’m not so sure the actual victims would.

Watch it:

In an interview with a Wisconsin radio host, Alsion Arngim — child advocate, Little House on the Prairie actress, and a former victim of child abuse herself — said that Johnson’s statements “blew her mind.” Reflecting on Johnson’s positions, she asked, “Do you have to flunk a course in logic to run for office?” (HT: FDL).

Yesterday, Wisconsin businessman and U.S. Senate candidate for the Republican Party Ron Johnson gave a wide-ranging interview to the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. Johnson, a global warming skeptic, detailed his views on climate change and explained that he believes that extreme weather occurring across the globe — like record flooding in Pakistan and massive forest fires in Russia — may not be a result of man-made global warming, and that it’s “far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity”:

A global warming skeptic, Johnson said extreme weather phenomena were better explained by sunspots than an overload of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as many scientists believe. “I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change,” Johnson said. “It’s not proven by any stretch of the imagination.” [...]

“It’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time,” he said. Excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “gets sucked down by trees and helps the trees grow,” said Johnson. Average Earth temperatures were relatively warm during the Middle Ages, Johnson said, and “it’s not like there were tons of cars on the road.”

In fact, sunspots have been at a historic lows. As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson notes, “Severe weather fueled by global warming pollution is having an even more devastating impact around the world. … All of these disasters were predicted by climate scientists as a consequence of greenhouse gas pollution from burning fossil fuels.” Unfortunately, Johnson’s anti-science, anti-environment views aren’t limited to his bizarre theory about sunspots. Last June, he claimed that global warming saved Wisconsin from turning into a glacier, saying he was “glad there’s global warming … We’d be standing on top of a 200-foot thick glacier.” He has also told the press he is open to oil drilling in Wisconsin’s Great Lakes.