As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell requested and received millions of dollars in earmarks for this year’s omnibus spending bill, but has now denounced the measure and plans to vote against it. Overall, Republican Senators have gotten nearly $2 billion in earmarks into the omnibus, and yet because of concerns over “wasteful spending,” they are threatening to block the entire bill — which contains not only funding for their own projects, but the money the federal government needs to operate past this weekend.

Yesterday, Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and John Thune (R-SD) denounced earmarks and the omnibus bill during a press conference, despite requesting hundreds of millions of dollars of earmarks between them. “I support those projects, but I don’t support this bill,” reasoned Thune. Cornyn defended himself in a “heated exchange” with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl:

Today, the Washington Post reports that two of the most prolific earmarkers in Congress — “unabashed spending barons” Republican Sens. Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran of Mississippi — are also planning to vote against the omnibus, despite being responsible for 405 earmarks costing over $865 million.

Sens. McConnell, Wicker, Cochran, Cornyn and Thune are far from the only earmark hypocrites, however. A large number of Republicans requested substantial earmarks for the 2011 omnibus, despite a history of demagoguing the earmark process, and also plan to vote against a bill that included many of their requests. An examination of Taxpayers for Common Sense’s database of earmark requests for this year’s omnibus and their database of who was awarded earmarks last year, along with Sen. Tom Coburn’s working database of the earmarks that actually made it into this year’s omnibus, reveal quite a bit of Republican hypocrisy:

– Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said on Fox News’ “Happening Now” this morning that he would vote against the omnibus bill. He requested 291 earmarks totaling over $770.5 million, and succeeded in getting 86 earmarks into the omnibus.

– Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is opposing the omnibus because it’s “full of unnecessary spending which grows the federal government.” He requested 116 earmarks costing $326.8 million, and the omnibus contains one of these for $379,000.

– Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s (R-TX) office said she will vote against the omnibus, which she tried to insert 119 earmarks into, at a cost of $770.9 million. She has $140 million earmarked in the bill.

– Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) will also oppose the omnibus, because it “simply spends too much.” Chambliss requested 122 earmarks totaling $492 million. He achieved $56 million in earmarks in the omnibus.

– Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) blasted the “massive, 2,000 page spending bill” in a statement. Burr tried for 82 earmarks, totaling $287.1 million, and received most of them.

– Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) “has been railing against the spending in that massive bill that could come to a vote before the lame duck session.” He requested 32 earmarks this year, totaling $115.8 million, and got nearly all of them — almost $100 million — into the omnibus.

– Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) tweeted today that “Defending the #earmark establishment is not leadership. Defending business-as-usual in Washington isn’t either. Leaders lead by example.” Rehberg is a proud member of the “earmark establishment” — last year he was the fifth-largest earmarker in the House, with 89 earmarks in the 2010 omnibus totaling $103.5 million.

– Rep. Chris Lee (R-NY) said on Fox Business Channel this morning that “It’s a week before Christmas, and unfortunately my Democratic colleagues like to play Santa Claus to the tune of $8 billion in new earmarks.” Lee was in a much more festive mood last year, with 36 earmarks totaling over $33.3 million in the 2010 omnibus.

– Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) tweeted today that “A HUGE spending bill is making its way through Congress. $1.1 trillion and 6,000 earmarks. We must stop it. I encourage the President to veto.” Last year, however, Wilson got 15 earmarks costing over $23.3 million in the 2010 omnibus.

It is the height of hypocrisy for these Republicans — all of whom have a long history of earmarking, and in most cases requested and received earmarks in this very bill — to suddenly oppose it because of a newly found opposition to “wasteful” spending.

As ThinkProgress previously reported, a commenter on the gay right’s blog Joe My God left a comment yesterday saying “all faggots must die.”  After some investigation, the blog’s author Joseph Jervis determined that the commenter’s IP address appeared “to resolve to the neighborhood of GOP U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ Atlanta office.”  Tonight, Chambliss confirmed that his office was the source of this hate speech:

U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ office has determined it was indeed the source of a highly publicized homosexual-bashing slur on an Internet site.

But in a statement, Chambliss’ office said it has not discovered exactly who was behind the slur, and has turned the matter over to the Senate sergeant at arms. The office employs 42 people.

“The [sergeant at arms] has worked side by side with our personnel to determine whether the comment in question emanated from our office. That appears to be the case,” an unsigned statement from Chambliss’ press office read.

“There has not been a determination as to who posted the comment,” the statement read. “That part of the review is ongoing, and is now in the hands of the Senate sergeant at arms.”

Chambliss’ decision to involve the Senate’s chief law enforcement officer is a good sign that whoever was responsible for the hate speech will be disciplined. But this step is cold comfort to the thousands of gay and lesbian Americans denied the opportunity to serve their country by Chambliss’ anti-gay voting record. If the senator truly wants to demonstrate that bigotry has no place in his office, he should start by reversing his unconscionable vote to continue Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell.

Yesterday, the LGBT rights blog Joe My God reported that a reader called “Jimmy” left a comment on a blog post about the the DADT cloture vote that said, “All faggots must die.” According to the blog’s author Joseph Jervis, the commenter’s IP address appeared “to resolve to the neighborhood of GOP U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ Atlanta office” and that the internet service provider is “United States Senate.” Jervis later reported that a reader suggested that the comment may have also come from Sen. Johnny Isakson, Georgia’s other GOP senator, because their offices are in the same area.

Late yesterday afternoon, Jim Galloway at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution picked up on the story and “confirmed” with Chambliss’s office that it is investigating the matter:

U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss confirmed Tuesday that he investigating whether one of his staffers left a threatening slur on an Internet discussion of the right of gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military.

“We have seen the allegations and are moving quickly to understand the facts. This office has not and will not tolerate any activity of the sort alleged,” Chambliss spokeswoman Bronwyn Lance Chester said. “Once we have ascertained whether these claims are true, we will take the appropriate steps.”

Galloway notes that “a spokeswoman for Isakson…said his staff quickly ascertained that the message did not originate with them.”

Jervis posted the IP address on his blog yesterday and asked readers to “get busy” finding its origin and said that it didn’t take long for them to come through. “Among the fields in which gay people are over-represented is the IT field,” he said.

TPM reports that “the Senate sergeant-at-arms, which administers the Senate’s IT systems, did not have a comment as of this morning.”

For his part, Chambliss voted against the defense authorization bill yesterday that would have lifted the military’s DADT policy.

After President Obama declared in his State of the Union address last week that he would “work with Congress and our military to finally repeal” the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy “this year,” conservatives predictably balked at the idea. “With all due respect to his sincerely held if abstractly formed views on this subject, it would be reckless to require the military to carry out a major sociological change, one contrary to the preferences of a large majority of its members, as it fights two wars,” wrote the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol.

With the push for overturning DADT gaining momentum and the support of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen, conservative fearmongering about the potential effects of repeal have gone into overdrive with suggestions that the policy change would “mortally” damage the all-volunteer military. During a hearing with Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates today, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) warned that allowing “the presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts” would pave the way for allowing “alcohol use, adultery, fraternization, and body art” in the military. On CNN today, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins suggested it could lead to the re-institution of the draft:

PERKINS: Let’s go back to the Military Times in 2008 had a poll of active duty military members. Fifty-eight percent said they were opposed to overturning this policy. And many have said that this will cause them to reconsider whether or not they will stay in the military. And it will have an impact upon recruiting. I mean this is an issue of retention and recruitment for the military and it ultimately could lead back to the imposition of a draft in order to fill the numbers and quotas in the military.

Perkins’ draft claim was echoed in a statement today by Rabbi Yehuda Levin of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, who also suggested that repealing DADT could cause earthquakes and other natural disasters. Watch it:

Dr. Nathaniel Frank responded to Perkins’ “fear tactics” about military retention — a claim that relies on a “unscientific, self-selective” survey by Military Times of its subscribers, not a random sample of active duty soldiers — by pointing out that “polls show in Canada and Britain that when they asked service members if they would, if they wanted to serve with gays, two-thirds of them refused. Absolutely refused. But when they actually lifted the bans anyway, about 2 people, 2 people, not the thousands predicted by the polls actually left.”

Nearly 14,000 gay and lesbian service men and women have been discharged from military service since 1993. Additionally, a 2007 study by the Williams Institute found that DADT hurts retention as “an estimated 4,000 lesbian, gay, and bisexual military personnel” per year since 1994 “would have been retained if they could have been more open about their sexual orientation.”