Yesterday, President Obama declared Oklahoma a disaster area thereby making federal funding available to affected individuals in Cleveland, Lincoln, McClain, Oklahoma, and Pottawatomie counties. FEMA immediately followed the declaration with a factsheet listing those assistance programs available to the area. So far, so good.Nonetheless, Oklahoma's Senators Tom Coburn and James Indore have routinely opposed disaster relief packages unless offset by cuts elsewhere in the federal budget, and Coburn is already on record to demand the same for Oklahoma tornado relief. CQ Roll Call indicates that "Coburn said he would '“absolutely' demand offsets for any federal aid that Congress provides." Huffington Post reports:Coburn spokesman John Hart on Monday evening confirmed that the senator will seek to ensure that any additional funding for tornado disaster relief in Oklahoma be offset by cuts to federal spending elsewhere in the budget. "That's always been his position [to offset disaster aid]," Hart said. "He supported offsets to the bill funding the OKC bombing recovery effort."Offsets can make sense, of course. Yet, during catastrophic emergencies approving disaster relief and mitigation funds requires swifter decision-making than, let's say, offsetting Senators' increased office expenses. The rule in the U.S. Congress had been to ensure relief funds as quickly as possible - to, in effect, remove partisan politics from intruding. In the muddy wake of the present-day GOP, ...

 Ten Thousand Men of Harvard want victory todayFor they know that o'er old EliFair Harvard holds sway.So then we'll conquer all old Eli's men,And when the game ends we'll sing again:Ten thousand men of Harvard gained vict'ry today."Ten Thousand Men of Harvard" Harvard's fight songEnter Jason Richwine, a reputed Harvard-trained Ph. D, now experiencing his 15 minutes of infamy. Surely, as fervently as a New England Congregationalist might, folks associated with Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) hope Richwine's notoriety quickly fades. You see, his debut on the national stage via the right-wing nut factory The Heritage Foundation will likely result in a nasty bit of paper shuffling and Committees of Excuse Us at the Big Crimson. Why? Well, for starters, Mr. Richwine is a racist. And a rather stupid racist, which is a stretch. Moreover, he's considered smart by the same people who consider Newt Gingrich an intellectual. People like Heritage Foundation brainiacs, and apparently HKS, which awarded him his doctorate in Public Policy in 2009.Richwine, now (still) a Heritage Senior Policy Analyst, Empirical Studies, was co-author (with Robert Rector) of The Heritage Foundation's just released immigration screed, The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer ( if you care to read it). It delivered all the usual Heritage Foundation humbug and right-wing hyperbole, and then some. "Then some" being Mr. Richwine's Harvard Ph. D dissertation, IQ and Immigration (

 Last night, from Abu Dhabi, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel revealed certain intelligence assessments of Syria's suspected use of chemical weapons against Syrian rebels and civilians, or at least for a moment it seemed like he did:"This morning, the White House delivered -- delivered a letter to several members of Congress on the topic of chemical weapons used in Syria. The letter, which will be made available to you here shortly -- as soon as George gets it, we'll get it to you -- states that the U.S. intelligence community assesses with some degree of varying confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin." [Italics added; for compete text and accompanying story]  We absolutely positively without a scintilla of doubt have some degree of varying confidence. Thus we have an official definitive conclusion that Syria's Assad regime may or may not have used deadly chemical weapons on its own people, perhaps as far as we know.  The White House letter Hagel referenced provided more detail about the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime, and included this: "Given the stakes involved, and what we have learned from our own recent experience, intelligence assessments alone are not sufficient – only credible and corroborated facts that provide us with some degree of certainty will guide our decision-making..."  [Italics added; for ...

 Reality Irrelevant. The man poised to replace Louis Gohmert (TX-1) as the most galactically loopy Texas representative, 36th Congressional District Congressloon Steve Stockman, is among the more vocal supporters of virtually unlimited 2nd Amendment rights. During February 2013 he invited the public to a meeting where they would learn of the "Fallacy of Gun-Free School Zones." Here's the headline on his invite:Grab free donuts and coffee before Obama grabs your gun!Also during February, Stockman issued this cris du coeur:I whole heartedly (sic) endorse the February 23rd “2-23 Day of Resistance” and urge every gun owner, and everyone concerned about civil rights and peace, to call their member of Congress and urge him or her to oppose all anti-gun legislation.The right of the people to keep and bear arms in an unalienable civil and human right. An armed populace is the reason the United States are (sic) the world’s oldest and most stable (sic) democracy.The purpose of the Second Amendment is clear. Every peaceful person should be able to possess arms without restrictions, reporting or permission to serve as (sic) an unorganized civilian military force to resist violence, oppression or invasion.Nest, reacting to an overwhelming need, he introduced H.R. 577. Among other things, this legislation would provide more 2nd Amendment protection for those unfortunate military ...

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all Partiesto leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history.Sir Winston ChurchillSpeech in the House of Commons (January 23, 1948)Yesterday, heeding Winston Churchill's advice, former SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, continued rewriting its history. Or tried to do so. Little needs saying here about how ludicrous his account is, and that of other co-conspirators as well, especially Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz. As President, poor Dubya never grasped what happened, to his country, to his legacy, to him. In 2008, taking his leave from the White House, he revealed his "biggest regret" was the "intelligence failure in Iraq," and concluded with this, "I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess." [Italics added] "I guess"? That's as much a baffling thought as it is clueless - he could have received good intel only by, among other things, cashiering Donald Rumsfeld, the man who now, ten years later, demands respect and appreciation.Here's Rummy's Iraq Invasion Day tweet:@RumsfeldOffice10 years ago began the long, difficult work of liberating 25 mil IraqisAll who played a role in history deserve our respect & appreciation.The liberation claim. Well, early on we all knew that "liberating the Iraqi people" was a trivial concern for the likes of Rumsfeld. His consistent callousness about Iraqis after the invasion was proof enough, and the failure to even plan for a ...

 Alabama, you gotThe weight on your shouldersThat's breaking your back.Your CadillacHas got a wheel in the ditch And a wheel on the track Neil Young,  AlabamaHarvest (1972)What are you doing Alabama?Yesterday's oral argument did not begin well for Bert W. Rein, Shelby County's lead counsel in the blockbuster Voting Rights Act case, Shelby County v. Holder. The word "gauntlet" comes to mind, an ordeal swiftly doled out by Justices Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Kagan. It was left to Justice Anthony Kennedy to calm the fray a bit. Inevitably, though, Rein fell into the loving arms of the dark eminences, Justices Scalia and Alito (while their brother dark eminence, Justice Thomas, retained his usual oral argument quietude).Nonetheless, the initial four questioners - a literal minority of the Court - sought to undress and uncover an obvious truth: Despite Rein's arguments, and the state's voting rights kicking-and-screaming progress since 1965, on its overall record, Alabama has "a wheel in the ditch and a wheel on the track." Still.Putting aside the legal and practical value of the three Madame Justices' fully unplugged and ...

 "Mr. Mica said of his House colleagues,'They wouldn't vote on a Mother's Day resolutionif it had extra spending on it.'"In August 2012, Mark Thoma, economist and Fellow at the American Century Foundation, commented on the incontrovertible need for U.S. infrastructure investment. He was stunned by Congress's inability to fund it, even though it would surely boost to the general economy, a supposed goal of the GOP:"The first is infrastructure spending. We cannot afford to fall behind the rest of the world in terms of our infrastructure development, but that’s exactly what we are doing. At a time when interest rates are as low as we are likely to see, when labor and other costs are minimal due to lack of demand during the downturn, and when the need is so high, why aren’t we making a massive investment in infrastructure, which is ultimately an investment in our future? There are many, many public investments we could make where the benefits surely exceed the costs – these are things the private sector won’t do on its own even though they are highly valuable to society – so what are we waiting for?Particularly confusing for Thoma - and for most of us - is the Republican blockade of infrastructure spending when, in fact, it betrays their own professed beliefs in supply side economics:"If there’s any policy Republicans ought to be able to support, it’s infrastructure spending. It’s inherently a ...

 Much of the time South Carolina's Senator Lindsey Graham reminds me of a grade school pest, someone you want to swat away. Lately his insistence on "Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!" was among the more unmoored and perhaps least useful. He strongly vowed to block Chuck Hagel's nomination, partly because of Benghazi, something Hagel had as little connection to as Graham's questioning had to relevance. Yesterday, Graham backed off, and on FOX News Sunday told Chris Wallace he'd support Chuck Hagel because “president deserves great deference in his choice.” HUH? Pest. He does that fairly often.Nonetheless, on immigration reform and a few other issues, in the age of red meat Republicanism, Graham is a bit of a centrist. He's more likely to showcase his wing nut nature these days, like his embarrassing questions during the gun control hearings, because he fears a 2014 re-election challenge by a really red meat candidate, as in Tea Party. Though not a centrist as in pre-Gingrich era centrist, Graham's among the more nearly centrists we have.About the sequester, though, Graham has always been clear in his distaste for it. (“I’ll fight it with every ounce of my being.”) During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Graham answered a Chris Wallace sequester question with this pesky reply, and tries to conflate defense spending wth Obamacare savings:"Well, all I can say is the commander-in-chief thought — came up with the idea of sequestration, destroying the military and putting a lot of good programs at risk. It is my belief — ...

 While addressing the Republican National Committee (RNC) last Friday in Charlotte North Carolina, another "intellectual leader" of the Republican party, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, got lost in the woods of logic as he struggled foot by foot, forest path by forest path to escape the land called Wing Nut. He started out well enough, but paths he believed would lead to brighter vistas spiraled to the right leaving the poor governor pretty much where he started. In an auspicious start he tossed up an idea generally left unspoken at RNC gatherings:"We must not be the party that simply protects the well off so they can keep their toys. We have to be the party that shows all Americans how they can thrive. We are the party whose ideas will help the middle class, and help more folks join the middle class. We are a populist party and need to make that clear." (Full text here)By the conclusion of his speech, however, that liberating sentiment turned out to be simply only a feint to the left soon abandoned for a path circling back to the right.Another long quote from the same speech uncovered his particular problem - he doesn't understand that speaking of change doesn't fool anyone if in the very same speech you aggressively reiterate the very same GOP principles that most need reform and correction.That only leads you back to Wing Nut City.Jindal:"Now let me shift gears and speak to changes I believe we must make if we are to win elections. As I indicated before, I am not one of those who believe we should moderate, equivocate, or otherwise abandon our principles. This badly ...