Politics

That she decided to become a citizen of a nation known for it!

Rep. Michele Bachmann is now officially a Swiss miss.

Bachmann (R-Minn.) recently became a citizen of Switzerland, making her eligible to run for office in the tiny European nation, according to a Swiss TV report Tuesday.

Arthur Honegger, a reporter for public broadcaster Schweizer Fernsehen, told POLITICO the Swiss consulate in Chicago has confirmed that the former Republican presidential candidate became a citizen March 19.

And Bachmann said something I can agree with:

Asked if she would run for office in Switzerland — as she is now eligible to do — Bachmann joked that the competition “would be very stiff because they are very good,” referring to the parliamentarians behind her.

Yes they are! Switzerland used to have a healthcare mess much like ours here in the good ole' U.S. Luckily their "very good" parliamentarians were able to come together and create a decent healthcare program. They weren't out there crying "socialism' and saying how others were going to destroy their country. Nope - that is left to American politicians like Michele Bachmann.

Yesterday the draconian Republican leadership in the House decided to rush through the CISPA legislation:

Up until this afternoon, the final vote on CISPA was supposed to be tomorrow. Then, abruptly, it was moved up today—and the House voted in favor of its passage with a vote of 248-168. But that's not even the worst part.

CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, is a total invasion of our rights in this country. Basically it allows the government to conduct cyber surveillance and use that information for about anything - all without the oversight of a court issued warrant.

So who voted for this? Well the vote was pretty much party line, with the "small government, protect our freedoms" Republicans voting for it. The vote was also scheduled for today, but after some shenanigans the Republican leadership moved the vote up to yesterday, ignoring their pledges to let legislation be posted 72 hours before a vote. That move was done after some serious changes were made to the bill yesterday:

The vote followed the debate on amendments, several of which were passed. Among them was an absolutely terrible change (pdf and embedded below—scroll to amendment #6) to the definition of what the government can do with shared information, put forth by Rep. Quayle. Astonishingly, it was described as limiting the government's power, even though it in fact expands it by adding more items to the list of acceptable purposes for which shared information can be used. Even more astonishingly, it passed with a near-unanimous vote. The CISPA that was just approved by the House is much worse than the CISPA being discussed as recently as this morning.

Forget the good part of the 90's. It appears the Republicans are wanting to relive the bad part of them with bogus investigations into the President:

Now comes complainant Republican National Committee, snark firing on all cylinders, formally requesting that a government auditor look into whether President Barack Obama has been bilking taxpayers by billing them for what amount to campaign trips to battleground states. The White House immediately dismissed the suggestion of any impropriety.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus's letter to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, caps an escalating campaign of complaints by Republicans about Obama's election-year travel.

"On behalf of American taxpayers, I am writing to call your attention to a case of misuse of government funds," Priebus says in the letter's opening sentence.

Ahh yes - the never ending wave of investigations in 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. We've already seen tons of these go on through Darrell Issa and now the RNC as a whole wants to get into the game. This was the exact same tactic Republicans used in the 90's, including looking into the Clinton's Christmas Card list.

But what really amazes me is that the Bush administration lied us into a war that cost the taxpayers over a trillion dollars and cost us thousands of lives. Whenever Democrats talked about investigations the Republicans warned against them, saying that investigations into the President never works. Of course the yellow bellies of the left bowed down and obeyed. I wonder if they will do the same should anything similar happen in the future?

Chris Cillizza pulls out this chart from almost 2 years ago:

That's pretty sad when over half the people, who are responsible for choosing the future leaders of our nation, don't even know who the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is. That's exactly how biased media outlets can push so many falsehoods about the court so that they slant to their own views.

It makes you wonder if there is any hope for our country.

Wingnut conspiracy alert!!!!!!!!!

Apparently President Obama has secretly declared diabetes a disability!

Here's Ed Morissey at HotAir:

That seems to be the message from the White House, which is apparently a little desperate to make the case that Barack Obama has proven his historical and diversity mettle in judicial nominations. In a new infographic for the website, the Obama administration now argues that it appointed the first confirmed Supreme Court justice “with a disability” (via Twitchy):

President Obama has only nominated two Supreme Court justices, both of whom were confirmed by the Senate — Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. The only unusual medical or physical condition known about either of them is Sotomayor’s diabetes, which is presumably the basis for this claim. My wife had Type I diabetes for almost all of her life (until her 2007 pancreas transplant), which eventually caused her blindness and kidney failure. She is classified as disabled because of her blindness, but no one ever suggested that her diabetes was a disability — it’s a medical condition that can be managed and doesn’t physically disable anyone from anything on its own, except perhaps eating sugar.

Apparently Ed missed the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, which was so popular that it passed the Senate with unanimous consent and the House on a voice vote and was signed into law on September 28th, 2008 by then President George W. Bush. In the ADAAA Diabetes was listed as a disability.

President Obama said that it would be unprecedented for the Supreme Court to overturn a law passed on economic issues on Monday. Yesterday President Obama even went further into explanation of those remarks:

MR. SINGLETON: Mr. President, you said yesterday that it would be unprecedented for a Supreme Court to overturn laws passed by an elected Congress. But that is exactly what the Court has done during its entire existence. If the Court were to overturn individual mandate, what would you do, or propose to do, for the 30 million people who wouldn’t have health care after that ruling?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, let me be very specific. We have not seen a Court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on a economic issue, like health care, that I think most people would clearly consider commerce -- a law like that has not been overturned at least since Lochner. Right? So we’re going back to the ’30s, pre New Deal.

And the point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it, but it’s precisely because of that extraordinary power that the Court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly elected legislature, our Congress. And so the burden is on those who would overturn a law like this.

Andrew Breitbart is doing his vetting of the Obama administration beyond the grave and this time they have gone after Eric Holder:

Breitbart.com has uncovered video from 1995 of then-U.S. Attorney Eric Holder announcing a public campaign to "really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way."

Holder was addressing the Woman's National Democratic Club. In his remarks, broadcast by CSPAN 2, he explained that he intended to use anti-smoking campaigns as his model to "change the hearts and minds of people in Washington, DC" about guns.

"What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable, it's not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes."

This is another nuclear bomb being dropped by the right. How dare the future Attorney General say guns aren't cool! I mean going into schools and shooting students, shooting members of Congress and fellow workers - how much cooler can you get?

Of course the right has been pushing this lie since Obama became the nominee that he will take away everyone's guns. Funny that guns are still selling and people still have them. Even funnier is that the President hasn't proposed anything to limit those rights. Just more conspiracy theories being pushed by the biggest bunch of conspiracy theorists in the country - the Republican Party.

With all the problems facing this country, this is a priority?

The American Mustache institute earlier today made this surprising announcement:

After barnstorming the Nation’s Capitol in support of the proposed Stache Act (details and white paper here), the office of of [sic] Maryland 6th district U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett informed the American Mustache Institute that the congressman has begun the process of ensuring the‘Stache Act becomes law by passing the proposal to the House Ways and Means Committee for study — an essential first step for tax legislation.

The surprising thing is not that a congressman—Rep. Bartlett, a Republican—would support the creation of another tax loophole. “The Stache Act (Stimulus to Allow for Critical Hair Expenses) aims to earn a well-deserved $250 annual tax deduction for every Mustached American for expenditures on mustache grooming supplies,” the website reads.

Forget the lunacy of creating such a tax break, being pushed through by lobbyists as another one of our elected leaders bends over and lets them give it to him. Instead the real audacity of this legislation is the sexually discriminating nature of it. Why should men get a tax deduction on mustache grooming, yet women can't get one for hair coloring and what not? Sounds like another case of the sexist GOP in action if you ask me.