(from the 2008 Colbert Green Screen Challenge)

If I could remove one word from the lexicons of the Sunday Morning News Shows and other corporate media outlets, it would be "EXCLUSIVE!" There is nothing exclusive about having John McCain on your show for the upteenth time, David Gregory. And if you're trying to convince me that it's some sort of "catch" to get him on any specific Sunday, pull my other finger. I mean, leg.

"Face the Nation” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Judiciary Committee; Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee; Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Jan Crawford, CBS News Chief Legal Correspondent; David Martin, CBS News National Security Correspondent

“Meet the Press” Exclusive! Senator! John! McCain!
Also Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Sebastian Junger, author of "WAR"; Army combat veteran Wes Moore; Tom Ricks, Contributing Editor of Foreign Policy magazine and author;
NBC Military Analyst Gen. Barry McCaffrey (Ret.), Former Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Southern Command.

“Fox News Sunday” Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Mike Huckabee;

“ABC's This Week” Jake Tapper has an Exclusive Interview! with CIA Director! Leon! Panetta! The Panel will be: George Will, David Sanger, Robin Wright, Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

”The Chris Matthews Show” with Panelists Dan Rather, Gloria Borger, Katty Kay, and John Harris: Questions: Does General Petraeus Now Own the Afghanistan War? Sarah Palin's Year As Private Citizen: How's that Working Out For Her?

As a former constituent of Senator Sessions, my money's on him to bring the crazy this morning. What's catching your eye on the airwaves this am?

There literally is no end to the extent by which Republican politicians will lie, distort, and manufacture statements in their efforts to disrupt, deny, and destroy the Obama administration's attempts to govern. At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on 9/11 trial, the Fort Hood shooter, and terrorism, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) decided to flip-flop on the designation of the Gitmo detainees. Are they "unlawful enemy combatants" or are they "prisoners of war"?

SESSIONS: The enemy, who could of been obliterated on the battlefield on one day, but was captured instead does not then become a common American criminal. They are first a prisoner of war, once they're captured. The laws of war say, as did Lincoln and Grant, that the prisoners will not be released when the war - until the war ends. How absurb is it to say that we will release people who plan to attack us again?

Sessions seems to be saying that because these detainees were captured by the military, they have become prisoners of war and should not be released - even if found not guilty or after serving a prison term (assuming less than a life sentence) - until the "war on terror" is over (which, under a Republican point of view, will never be over). But on the other hand, SecDef Don Rumsfeld and the other fun-loving bunch of Bushites were very firm about NOT calling them "prisoners of war" because they were not supposed to get rights under the Geneva Convention (or any other form of legal writs - see waterboarding, justification of).

In fact, as one of the commenters at the TPM post notes, there was public law developed to explicitly designate any non-US citizen who was accused of supporting terrorism or acting against the United States as a terrorist as being eligible for military commissions.

I thought like you until I read this, from the Military Commissions Act: "‘(e) Geneva Conventions Not Establishing Private Right of Action- No alien unprivileged enemy belligerent subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a basis for a private right of action."

See: here.

This discussion becomes quickly complex with legal passages as a debate over whether the military tribunals should take KSM or if the federal court system has adequate jurisdiction. But it's just so interesting how Republican politicians adroitly jump back and forth as to the question of the detainees' status to how it best fits their argument of the day - are we talking about Geneva convention rights, or are we talking about the process of legal courts?

And because I want to give credit to the interesting comments over at TPM, I will close with the following observations by the commenters:

"I guess when the Right/GOP can say, print (Palin's myth filled book), promote anything without any accountability by the Beltway Press, the GOP has no need for intellectually honest consistency in their claims."

"When did Sessions stop playing the banjo?"

UPDATE: Clarified the guilt point.

Well, looky here. Harry Reid is sending a not-so-veiled message to the insurance industry: You want to play dirty? We can play dirty, too. Here's hoping this legislation has a chance of getting passed:

In a rare appearance as a witness at a Senate hearing, the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, told the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that it should repeal a 1945 law that granted the insurance industry limited exemption to national antitrust laws by allowing states to regulate insurers.

The law, the McCarran-Ferguson Act, is often cited by Mr. Reid and other critics of the health insurance industry as a reason why coverage can be so expensive for many people. They say the law allows insurers to monopolize markets and fix prices in ways that are usually illegal.

“Since 1945, the insurance industry has enjoyed exemption from federal antitrust laws because of the McCarran-Ferguson Act,” Mr. Reid said. “Pat McCarran, who was the senior senator from Nevada at the time, lent his name to this piece of legislation. Although we’re both Nevadans, I’m not sure what Pat McCarran had in mind when he pushed this bill. And if Pat were around today, he couldn’t be happy with the state of the insurance industry.”

“Providing an exemption for insurance companies to antitrust laws has been anticompetitive and damaging to the American economy,” Mr. Reid continued. “Health insurance premiums have continued to rise at a rapid rate, forcing businesses to cut back on health insurance coverage and forcing many families to choose between health insurance and basic necessities.”

He added: “Insurance companies have become so large they dominate entire regions of the country. They have become so powerful they block start-up businesses from entering the market, and they put smaller companies out of business. They have become so dominant that they dictate business practices. They are so influential that they exert tremendous influence over public policy.”

The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, has introduced a bill — the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act — that would repeal the insurance industry’s limited exemption.

And some senior Democrats, including Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, have begun calling for Mr. Leahy’s bill to be included in the major health care legislation that is now advancing in Congress.

That effort could gain momentum as Democrats continue to hit back at a main industry trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, which issued a report on Sunday night asserting that the Democrats’ legislation would lead to a steep rise in health insurance premiums.

The White House, Congressional Democrats and other supporters of the legislation have worked to discredit the industry report, which was prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The firm has acknowledged that it looked at only four provisions in the huge health care bill and that it did not take into account federal subsidies that would be made available to help moderate-income Americans buy insurance.

Mr. Schumer, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, issued a news release Wednesday accusing the health insurance industry of trying to “sucker-punch” the Democrats’ health care legislation by issuing the report the day before the Finance Committee voted on its version of the bill.

Ezra Klein on the real reason Chuck Grassley is trying to sandbag healthcare reform:

The more plausible argument is that Grassley fears his fellow Republican senators. I'm hearing that Grassley is getting reamed out in meetings with his colleagues. The yelling is loud enough that staffers in adjacent offices have heard snippets. But the real threat isn't the yelling of his colleagues. It's their capacity to deny Grassley his next job. Ruth Marcus hints at this in her column on Chuck Grassley today, but it's worth explaining in a bit more detail.

This is the final year that Grassley is eligible to serve as ranking member — the most powerful minority member, and, if Republicans retake the Senate, the chairman — of the Senate Finance Committee. His hope is to move over as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, or failing that, the Budget Committee. But for that, he needs the support of his fellow Republicans. And if he undercuts them on health-care reform, they will yank that support. It's much the same play they ran against Arlen Specter a couple of years back, threatening to deny him his chairmanship of — again — the Judiciary Committee. It worked then, and there's no reason to think it won't work now.

So once again, I ask the question: Why are we negotiating with Republicans at all?

My oh my, I don't think the Republican Party is trying very hard to disprove the widely held notion that they are the party of privileged white men. Let's look at their perhaps unintentionally revealing tactics in questioning Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor:

First, we have Sen. Jeff "I couldn't become a federal judge because of my racist tendencies" Sessions basically telling Sotomayor that he expects her judgments to fall in line with other Puerto Ricans on the bench, because they're Puerto Rican. (h/t Think Progress)

And then Sen, Jon "We don't want no stinkin' Gazan refugees" Kyl goes off on a SEVEN minute rant to Sotomayor over his out-of-context interpretation of her "wise Latina" remark (thinking and talking points courtesy of Rush Limbaugh), despite the fact that Sotomayor had already addressed this issue a number of times.

And then Sen. Lindsey "I'm going to throw a tantrum and shut down the Senate if you get to see what we enabled" Graham treated Sotomayor with such attitude that even MSNBC's Tamron Hall and Mike Viquera termed it "patronizing".

And then to really hit home how the GOP's exposure to minorities come almost exclusively from TV sitcoms, Sen. Tom "Don't Ask, Don't Tell about my fellow GOP's sordid affairs" Coburn invokes none other than Ricky Ricardo to warn Sotomayor if she--metaphorically speaking, of course--attacked him.

Really, GOP...how do you think you're gonna attract that all-important Latino bloc of voters to your side in 2010-- with fried chicken and potato salad?

Via Atrios, Craig Crawford describes the political disaster that the GOP has decided to perpetrate upon itself:

Watching Lindsey Graham's gotcha grin as he needled Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with disingenuous and rhetorical questions you had to wonder what was so funny. Does the Republican senator think it is amusing that he and his party's condescending tone toward the Hispanic woman was costing them ethnic votes with each passing hour of Tuesday's Judiciary Committee hearing?

. . . Even if they vote for her, the fallout for Republicans could reach well beyond Hispanic voters. They are coming across as a bunch of snarky and bitter old white men who cannot bear the thought of their kind losing power.

The only thing that can make it worse for the GOP will be, as I noted earlier, if no Republicans vote for Sotomayor's confirmation. Here's hoping.

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Glenn Beck wanted to use the senators' opening remarks at the Sonia Sotomayor hearings yesterday on his Fox News show to illustrate his claim that President Obama is shoving his agenda down America's throats, blah blah blah.

So he ran a pastiche of various warm remarks offered mostly by Democrats on the first day of the hearings, describing them thus:

Beck: America, I want you to watch this. As our country burns to the ground, because we all have this kind of stuff going on, this is the questioning -- now get ready, because it's a hard line of questioning -- here's what happened, this is what our senators were doing today. Watch this.

What he proceeded to show, of course, was senators making prefatory remarks to the nominee.

Because as anyone who glanced at the Judiciary Committee schedule for these hearings would know, the actual questioning was not scheduled to begin until today.

Beck also refers to Sotomayor's supposed high rate of reversal. But as Media Matters notes:

But according to data compiled by SCOTUSblog, Sotomayor's reported 60 percent reversal rate is lower than the overall Supreme Court reversal rate for all lower court decisions from the 2004 term through the present -- both overall and for each individual Supreme Court term.

America, watch this. Because this is what passes for insightful commentary on Fox News these days. As our country burns to the ground, as it were.

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With the announcement of Sonia Sotomayor as the new candidate for the Supreme Court, I figured Andrea Mitchell would have on Orrin Hatch to get his opinion. What's interesting is that she jumped him when he started to back pedal on his support for her because he did vote for her confirmation back in 1998 under Bush #41.

Mitchell: Let me ask you this Senator, I mean George Herbert Walker Bush first nominated her to the bench and...

Hatch: Wait a minute Andrea, wait a minute, I was on the Judiciary committee back then. At that time a district court judge was really effectively by the Senate so in this case both the...

Mitchell: I understand that both Senator's from NY ,,,

Hatch: They had a one for one deal so I, she was chosen by Democrat and George Herbert Walker Bush really basically had no choice but to appoint her now...

Mitchell: You're saying by Senatorial courtesy she was Pat Moniyhan's choice for the court. Let me ask you about your own vote in 1998 sir, I mean you voted for her, did you not? Or do I have that wrong? You were one of the seven republicans.

Hatch: Well, let me just say this, I think the media tries to make something out of that because George Herbert Walker Bush was president. They shouldn't. She was basically picked by Senator Moniyhan, a Democrat. In 1998, for the circuit court of appeals, I did vote for her because I believe in giving the president due deference, especially for circuit court appeals nomination, but now we're talking about...

How quickly Republicans forget about their up or down vote jihad in 2005 that was led by Orrin hatch and many other republicans who wanted every one of Bush 43's picks to be confirmed.

Hatch: All we're asking is that everyone of these qualified nominees who reached the floor receive an up or down vote.

First Read:

When the Senate confirmed Sonia Sotomayor to sit on the 2nd Circuit back in 1998, 29 Republicans voted AGAINST her -- including current Sens. Grassley, Hutchison, Kyl, McCain, McConnell, and Sessions (the latter of whom is the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee). But 23 Republicans also voted FOR her -- including current Sens. Collins, Gregg, Hatch, Lugar, Snowe, and Specter (the latter of whom is now a Democrat).

She's been confirmed before as Andrea Mitchell stated in the video clip.

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The attacks on Sonia Sotomayor are coming in like a tidal wave by the extreme right, but former Rep. Tom Tancredo, one of the harshest critics of the Latino community ever to run for president, actually called her a racist. This is the man who boycotted the Univision debate and then attacked their entire audience.

On The Ed Show today, Mike Allen of The Politico was pretty on point saying that she's not anyone that the right could attack and wouldn't investigate her supposed racism, but Tancredo uses the already debunked and discredited talking point about Latino lady judges being smarter than the Tancredo- looking judges of the world.

(rough transcript)

Tancredo: Unfortunately for her and fortunately for us there are plenty of things that we've even talked about her already. I'm telling you, she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context...

---

Tancredo: You can still be a racist and have all those things in your background. You can be a racist and have all that stuff in your background.

Ed: How aggressive do you want the Republicans to be on the judiciary committee?

Tancredo: I think there's plenty of stuff that they can use and should. They should do to her what the Democrats did to Bork.

Ed: Like what?

Tancredo: I would continually bring up this quote of hers, I'd like her to explain that. It is incredible to me. There is no one else I can think of who could possibly have said the kind of things she said, If they are reported accurately about the benefits of being a brown women as opposed to a white man and interpreting the law and nobody can look at that and say that was not a racist, sexist statement that would disqualify anybody else...She is a Hispanic woman and we can't say anything like this..

His form of racism is an affront to all decency. As I've said before, I do not speak Italian because of the racism my grandparents endured when they came to America. He's Italian and he should be ashamed of himself. Why is this man on TV talking about race in America? What does he have to add? Here's one of Tancredo's racist campaign ads.

Tancredo's racism is such that he's the darling of the Malkin wing of the GOP. He's a man who even called Miami a "Third World country.”

I'm not kidding. And let's not forget his "bombing Mecca," statements either.

This isn't the pot calling the kettle black. It's the pot calling the tablecloth black.

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With the announcement of Sonia Sotomayor as the new candidate for the Supreme Court, I figured Andrea Mitchell would have on Orrin Hatch to get his opinion. What's interesting is that she jumped him when he started to backpedal on his support for her, because he did vote for her confirmation back in 1998 under Bush #41.

Mitchell: Let me ask you this Senator, I mean George Herbert Walker Bush first nominated her to the bench and...

Hatch: Wait a minute Andrea, wait a minute, I was on the Judiciary committee back then. At that time a district court judge was really effectively by the Senate so in this case both the...

Mitchell: I understand that both Senators from NY ...

Hatch: They had a one for one deal so I, she was chosen by a Democrat and George Herbert Walker Bush, really basically had no choice but to appoint her now...

Mitchell: You're saying by senatorial courtesy -- she was Pat Moniyhan's choice for the court. Let me ask you about your own vote in 1998, sir, I mean you voted for her, did you not? Or do I have that wrong? You were one of the seven Republicans.

Hatch: Well, let me just say this, I think the media tries to make something out of that because George Herbert Walker Bush was president. They shouldn't. She was basically picked by Senator Moniyhan, a Democrat. In 1998, for the Circuit Court of Appeals, I did vote for her because I believe in giving the president due deference, especially for Circuit Court of Appeals nominations, but now we're talking about...

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