Archive for the ‘Georgia Legislature’ Category

In his discussion with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this morning, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky imagined himself as president of the United States. Had he been in that lofty position, he told Clinton, he would have removed her from office:

“I’m glad that you’re accepting responsibility. I think that ultimately, with you leaving, that you accept the culpability for the worst tragedy since 9/11. And I really mean that. Had I been president at the time and I had found that you had not read the cables from Benghazi, you had not read the cables from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post. I think it’s inexcusable….”

“I think it’s inexcusable that you did not know about this, and that you did not read these cables. I would think by anybody’s estimation Libya has to have been one of the hottest of hot spots around the world. Not to know of the requests for security really, I think, really, cost these people their lives. Their lives could have been saved …

Continue reading ‘President Rand Paul’ would have fired Hillary post-Benghazi »

Apparently, Washington Republicans didn’t much like the president’s speech.

“The words were code for a progressive agenda. I’m hoping that the president will recognize that compromise should have been the words for today, and they clearly weren’t,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), told Politico.

Wait: “Compromise”?

Did Mr. Fast and Furious actually say “compromise”? Somewhere, there’s an irony alarm going off.

U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, Republican of Texas, had a similar response, complaining that “Instead of ‘hope and change,’ Obama has offered only hopelessness, bitter personal attacks and politics as usual.”

And yes, that is the same Steve Stockman currently trying to gin up a campaign to impeach the president.

“President Obama needs to put an end to the extremism that led to record deficits and millions of unemployed Americans, and instead work with Republicans on bipartisan solutions to the serious problems facing our nation,” according to Rep. Steve Scalise, the new …

Continue reading The GOP’s unconvincing embrace of ‘compromise’ »

Last week, U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey, Republican from Marietta, announced that a former colleague who suggested that “legitimate” rape victims rarely become pregnant had been “partially right”.

Here are Gingrey’s remarks to a Chamber of Commerce breakfast, as reported initially in the Marietta Daily Journal:

“Part of the reason the Dems still control the Senate is because of comments made in Missouri by Todd Akin and Indiana by (Richard) Mourdock were considered a little bit over the top. Mourdock basically said ‘Look, if there is conception in the aftermath of a rape, that’s still a child, and it’s a child of God, essentially.’ Now, in Indiana, that cost him the election.

“And in Missouri, Todd Akin, a long-term member of the House of Representatives and a very, VERY good personal friend of mine, was asked by a local news source about rape and he said, ‘Look, in a legitimate rape situation’ — and what he meant by legitimate rape was this, look, someone can say I was raped: a …

Continue reading Gingrey, Broun would put rape theory into federal law »

Terrified by an intruder who had broken into her Walton County home earlier this month, Melinda Herman grabbed a .38-caliber pistol to protect herself and her two children. As the intruder drew closer to their attic hiding spot, Herman called upon her handgun training, practice and motherly protective instinct and fired six shots, five of which struck her target. The barrage drove the wounded intruder out of her home, where he was later arrested and hospitalized.

I do love a happy ending.

You can debate the statistics about how often guns kept in the home are used for good or evil. You can point out the many instances in which such weapons end up in the hands of children or criminals, or in which people mistake a loved one for an intruder, with tragic consequences. Those are facts that every would-be gun owner ought to know and weigh in their personal decision-making. But in this case, for Herman and her family, access to a firearm and the training to use it wisely worked out …

Continue reading Let’s limit guns to sane, responsible gun owners »

I see where Kentucky-born movie star Ashley Judd continues to talk about running for the U.S. Senate against Mitch McConnell. McConnell may be in a bit of political trouble, and as Al Franken has demonstrated, it is quite possible for a Hollywood celebrity to perform credibly in the Senate. But Minnesota ain’t Kentucky, and in this case, Judd has as much chance of becoming a U.S. senator as McConnell has of being a Hollywood leading man.

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Cyclist Lance Armstrong is scheduled to appear next week on Oprah, where he may finally, publicly confess to years of performance-enhancing drug use on the way to seven Tour de France titles, all of which have been stripped from him.

The American people will supposedly forgive almost anything after a public confession, and Oprah has become our culture’s official Mother Confessor. But all the tears from all the crocodiles on the planet won’t wash away the stain on Armstrong’s reputation.

Set aside, for the moment, his use of …

Continue reading On Ashley Judd, $1 trillion coins and other matters of import »

Amy Kremer, chairman of the national Tea Party Express and a Georgia resident, made it clear in a CNN interview today that as far as she’s concerned, U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss has earned himself a primary challenge with his vote in favor of the “fiscal cliff” legislation that passed the Senate by a vote of 89-8.

“The Tea Party Express, we haven’t decided anything at this point, but I can tell you I live in the state of Georgia and Saxby Chambliss is going to be primaried. Our own senator. It’s unacceptable to have somebody who votes with the Democrats more than they do with the conservatives, and he has proven time and time again he’s all about the spending.

“And we’re a red state, we deserve a conservative senator, a conservative senator that would stand with [Sens.] Marco Rubio [R-Fla.] and Rand Paul [R-Ky.] and Mike Lee [R-Utah] who all voted ‘no’ for this bill.”

U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, also of Georgia, also voted in support of the bill, which was opposed by all …

Continue reading Tea Party Express chair targets Saxby Chambliss »

For those unable to watch the video above, here’s a partial transcript of the scathing remarks made this afternoon by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, in which he lambasted fellow Republicans in the U.S. House for their refusal to act on an emergency-relief bill for his state and others devastated by Hurricane Sandy back in October:

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“Thirty-one days for Andrew victims. Seventeen days for victims of Gustav and Ike. Ten days for victim of Katrina. For the victims of Sandy in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, it has been 66 days, and the wait continues. There is only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these innocent victims: the House majority and their speaker, John Boehner.

“… National disasters happen in red states and blue states and states with Democratic governors and Republican governors. We respond to national disasters not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans. Or at least we did, until last night. Last night, politics was placed before …

Continue reading Chris Christie lashes out at GOP House, Boehner »

I had to smile, and not happily, when I read this from Politico:

“The National Rifle Association stunned Washington observers Friday when the group’s CEO announced a plan to install armed guards at every school in the country — its response to the Connecticut shooting last week that left 20 children dead…

… Close observers had expected the NRA to strike a more cooperative tone at the unusual press conference, as pressure is mounting in Washington for reform.”

I don’t know who these “close observers” might be, but most people who have paid attention to the NRA over the years are not stunned or surprised in the least. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” NRA executive Wayne LaPierre told the press conference, in statements that could have been scripted five years ago.

LaPierre did make valid points in his statement about the need to improve school security and, oddly, about the dangerous Cult of Guns. But he made not the slightest nod toward …

Continue reading NRA hasn’t changed its blustering self »

John Boehner is not acting like a confident man.

Yesterday, the House speaker made a curt, 52-second public statement regarding fiscal-cliff negotiations and then turned and left the room, unwilling to take a question.

Later in the day, the AJC’s Daniel Malloy saw Boehner in a heated discussion with a handful of Georgia Republicans on the House floor. Asked about it later, they told Malloy that Boehner was pleading with them to support his so-called Plan B, which would raise taxes only on those with annual incomes of more than $1 million. At best, they seem unconvinced.

The speaker’s proposal — floated as a way to demonstrate that House Republicans are “serious” about deficit reduction — is scheduled to be voted on today. There’s a chance that it will go down to defeat if enough of Boehner’s fellow Republicans refuse to support it on grounds that it raises taxes, if only on the top 0.19 percent of earners.

It’s also interesting to note that Pope Grover I of Norquist has …

Continue reading Man, I would not like to be John Boehner these days »

It’s hard to know what to say about the horror that took place this morning in a Connecticut elementary school. The combination of a madman, children and guns has left a reported 27 dead, including 20 children, most of them apparently executed in a single kindergarten classroom.

Again, 27 dead, and hundreds and hundreds directly connected to them have had their lives forever diminished. Even the millions of us who knew nobody in Newtown have been left chilled to the bone on this early winter day.

The 24-year-old gunman, dressed in paramilitary garb, is among those dead. His mother, a teacher at the school, is dead as well. Three weapons were reportedly found at the scene — a .223-caliber assault rifle and two semi-automatic handguns.

As always, the trauma inflicted on those families and that community is difficult to comprehend, and it is compounded by the brutal senselessness of the crime. Tragedies such as this always create questions — “How?” and “Why?” just the …

Continue reading Horror in a Connecticut elementary school »