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Judge Andrew Napolitano has now added “impeachment” to the list of usual Republican attacks on President Obama over the looming sequester cuts. During a visit to Fox & Friends, he and Steve Doocy went through some familiar right-wing myths about the sequester – that it’s just a small reduction in future spending and therefore no biggie – and went on to accuse “President Panic” of deliberately sabotaging the budget – i.e. making the cuts as damaging as possible in order to punish Republicans.

DOOCY: As Commander-in-Chief, he should be making any future reductions in future spending as easy as possible. But instead he and his cabinet are out there and they’re scaring the living daylights out of people. …He’s become President Panic.

NAPOLITANO: …This is almost an impeachable offense. If the President is deciding how to spend money in order to hurt us, rather than in order to provide us with the services for which we have paid, and for which we have hired him, he is doing the opposite of doing of what he has taken an oath to do. He has taken an oath “faithfully,” I underscore the word… to uphold the laws. That means make the government work. Don’t make it painful. Find a way to make it work on 2% less.

…Instead, he wants to cut in a way that’s gonna make us stand on line for five hours at the airport, quote, to teach the Republicans a lesson.

While the Foxies were busy maligning the president, they didn’t have time left to consider how the sequester might affect everyday people not earning television-pundit salaries and not with a partisan agenda: Teaching jobs and education funding are at risk; unemployment insurance benefits and aid for Hurricane Sandy victims are also subject to sequester. The Bipartisan Policy Center reported the following:

(T)he immediate and across the board nature of the cuts, along with their magnitude concentrated in a seven-month period, will impair economic growth as the year progresses. At BPC, we estimated last year that the sequester would reduce 2013 gross domestic product (GDP) growth by half a percentage point, and would cost the economy approximately one million jobs over the next two years. More recent estimates released by the CBO and Macroeconomic Advisors have roughly confirmed these projections.

I couldn’t find anything in their report that said these would only happen if President Obama deliberately jiggered the cuts.

Oh, and while they were salivating at the thought of impeachment (and never mind THAT cost!), nobody mentioned that President Obama has already put forth a plan to replace the sequester that includes over $930 billion in spending cuts and $580 billion in new tax revenue.

Buried in Ryan Lizza's juicy piece on the Republican Caucus of the House of Representatives is this tasty little nugget.

On January 15th, a few hours after I left his office, Labrador joined a hundred and seventy-eight other Republicans who voted against a fifty-billion-dollar relief package for areas in coastal New York and New Jersey that had been wracked by Hurricane Sandy. It was the second time that month that major legislation passed the House with a majority of Democratic votes. This time, Cantor voted for the bill.

So did Tom Cole. He was dumbfounded that so many of his colleagues voted against the fiscal-cliff deal. “These guys have no endgame,” he said. “I mean, they just are so desperate to do something that they don’t think past their nose. And that’s the dangerous part of this.” He added that he couldn’t understand what the opponents of the deal believed they were accomplishing: “I saw one of them on television who said, ‘Well, Obama will cave.’ Really? With all the polls running in his direction, his popularity moving up, ours in the tank? He’s not going to cave. Some of these guys will hold a political gun to their head and threaten the President: ‘Do what I want or I’ll pull the trigger!’ Like he cares?”

By the way, Tom Cole has a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 92, which I guess makes him a RINO these days. And he just called his fellow Republicans a bunch of suicidal crazies.

But the sequester is all Obama's fault!

[/Joe Scarborough]

Professor Lawrence Lessig lectures last week on 'Aaron's Laws - Law and Justice in a Digital Age.'

UPDATE: The White House directed today that the results of taxpayer-funded research be made "freely available" within a year.

This week, the HuffPo caught up to reporting I did in January, reporting that DOJ used Aaron Swartz’ 2008  Guerilla Open Access Manifesto to justify their investigation of him.

A Justice Department representative told congressional staffers during a recentbriefing on the computer fraud prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz that Swartz’s “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” played a role in the prosecution, sources told The Huffington Post.

[snip]

The “Manifesto,” Justice Department representatives told congressional staffers, demonstrated Swartz’s malicious intent in downloading documents on a massive scale.

[snip]

Reich told congressional staffers that the Justice Department believed federal prosecutors acted in a reasonable manner, according to the sources. He also made clear that prosecutors were in part influenced by wanting to deter others from committing similar offenses.

When considering punishment, courts are supposed to impose an “adequate deterrence to criminal conduct” under federal statute. Swartz’s “Manifesto,” prosecutors said they believed, made clear that he intended to share the academic articles widely.

But there’s something the HuffPo is still missing.

Not only does the Guerilla Manifesto advocate doing a lot of things that may well be legal — the biggest exception is the one most applicable, downloading scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks…

And look at the passage from the Manifesto they quote in the brief, which appears in this larger passage.

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.

We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. [my emphasis]

In context, much of the manifesto advocates for things that are perfectly legal: sharing documents under Fair Use. Taking information that is out of copyright and making it accessible. Purchasing databases and putting them on the web.

Aside from sharing passwords, about the only thing that might be illegal here (depending on copyright!) is downloading scientific journals and uploading them to file sharing networks.

But it’s the way the government used Swartz’ manifesto legally. They used it, as far as I’ve found, primarily to justify HOW they investigated Swartz.

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It's pretty clear what happened here: The Patriot Coal Corporation was created by Peabody Energy and Arch Coal so it could file for bankruptcy and rob workers of their pensions and health care coverage. The UMW says the company was designed to fail, and points out that not one of the people currently collecting benefits from the company ever worked for them.

We will eventually shut down these mines, because we have to, in order to save what's left of our environment. But there's no way in hell our judicial system should strip those workers of every single benefit they earned in the mines:

And the problems faced by Patriot miners and retirees is getting more attention, first with this story in the Wall Street Journal:Patriot Coal Corp., which is in bankruptcy-court proceedings, plans to seek to terminate the health benefits of up to 1,000 salaried retirees, according to court filings.

During the Patriot bankruptcy most attention has focused on about 22,000 active union miners, union retirees and their beneficiaries who are fighting to keep health benefits. While smaller in number, the salaried retirees could stand to lose more than unionized counterparts.

Salaried retirees, for example, would be ineligible to participate in a trust Patriot has proposed to cover some health benefits for retired United Mine Workers of America members …

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In Pennsylvania, ThinkProgress warns that the latest version of Republicans' plan to rig the electoral college has been introduced into the state Senate:

Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA) was one of the earliest supporters of rigging the Electoral College, backing a plan to do so as early as 2011. Republican state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi was one of the leading supporters of election-rigging the and late this week, he — along with a dozen other co-sponsors — introduced a new plan to rig the Electoral College votes in his blue state of Pennsylvania. Under this legislation, a large chunk of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes would be awarded to the Republican candidate even though Pennsylvania is a solid blue state that has supported the Democratic candidate for president in every election since 1992.

Meanwhile, MSNBC is reporting that Michigan Republicans are 100 percent behind a similar effort there:

The electoral college rigging scheme that drew criticism of cheating and was disavowed by many prominent Republicans now has the official backing of more than 1,300 Michigan Republicans.

According to the Detroit Free-Press, at the GOP party convention in Lansing this weekend more than 90% of Republicans voted in favor of a resolution to change the electoral vote distribution process from winner-take-all to one in which 14 of the state’s votes went to the winner in each congressional district. The final two votes would go to the state’s overall winner.

As we reported earlier this year, that planwould have given Mitt Romney 9 of the states 16 electoral votes, despite the fact that he lost the state by 9%.

But not all Republicans are on board with the plan. Governor Rick Snyder has said it’s ”not the appropriate time” to discuss a plan to change the electoral college, saying he’d prefer a bipartisan conversation held closer to a census.

Yes, well. Governor Snyder also said he wouldn't ram through a right-to-work bill in Michigan too, and after voters rejected right-to-work laws in that state, Snyder signed one into law anyway. I wouldn't take his concern over timing very seriously at all.

This isn't over. They're just operating in the shadows right now.

There's been a lot of buzz about Pope Benedict and the Vatican after the Pope announced his impending resignation from the Papacy earlier this month. It didn't make much sense to me, since it's the first time in over 600 years that a pope abdicated his position. Then an explosive story from Italy's La Repubblica claimed that the Pope left office because of a secret gay cabal that existed within the church after he read a 300-page dossier compiled by three cardinals -- and commissioned by Pope Benedict himself.

Pope Benedict XVI is a little more than two weeks away from beginning his retirement at the Castel Gandolfo, but his final days as head of the Catholic church don't look like they're going to be quiet ones. Unsourced reports coming out of Italy suggest that the pope decided to call it quits not because of his old age, but instead to avoid the fallout that could come from a secret 300-page dossier compiled by three cardinals he tapped to look into last year's leak of confidential papers stolen from his desk.

Those papers, widely known as the "VatiLeaks," raised questions of financial impropriety and corruption at the Vatican. The investigation that followed, however, may prove even more uncomfortable for church officials.
The secret dossier allegedly details a wide range of infighting among various factions in the Vatican's governing body, known as the Curia. But the headline-ready takeaway from today's report from La Repubblica concerns the existence of one faction in particular, a network of gay church officials.

Just in case that weren't enough to pique international interest, the Italian newspaper also reports that said officials had been blackmailed by outsiders. According to the report, the pope got his first look at the dossier—"two folders hard-bound in red" with the header "pontifical secret"—on Dec. 17, and decided that same day to retire.

In response to this report, the Vatican had some tough words rebuking that claim:

The Vatican on Saturday accused the Italian media of spreading "false and damaging" reports in what it condemned as a deplorable attempt to influence cardinals who will meet in a secret conclave next month to elect a new pope.

Since Pope Benedict announced his resignation on February 11, Italian newspapers have been full of rumors about conspiracies, secret reports and lobbies in the Vatican that they say pushed the pope to abdicate."It is deplorable that, as we draw closer to the time of the beginning of the conclave ... that there be a widespread distribution of often unverified, unverifiable or completely false news stories that cause serious damage to persons and institutions," a Vatican statement said.

Shame, shame, shame on you, Pope Benedict, for allowing so many children to be destroyed by sexual deviant priests. If you're so sure La Repubblica's report is bogus then release your dossier from the investigation you ordered:

A potentially explosive report into embarrassing leaks from the Vatican will be seen by only two people — Pope Benedict XVI and the man who succeeds him.

Italian newspapers have already angered the Vatican by suggesting that the report found evidence of corruption, blackmail and a gay sex ring, and that it triggered Benedict’s decision earlier this month to give up the papacy.

The Vatican said in a statement Monday that Benedict, who commissioned the report on leaks from three cardinals, is the only person who knows its contents and will make them available only to the next pope.

What's to hide, Vatican?

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Connecting the Dots: American faith leaders remind Congress that “whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

Addicting Info: Michigan Republicans press forward with plan to rig the Electoral College for the GOP.

No More Mister Nice Blog: Dov Hikind, Mike Huckabee’s tour guide in Israel, dons black face in Brooklyn.

Joe.My.God.: Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop has died at the age of 96.

Speaking of which, your quote of the day: “If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague.” (Mike Huckabee, 1992)

Guest blogging Mike's Blog Round Up this week is Jon Perr from Perrspectives. Send your tips, recommendations, comments and angst to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

A "Reefer Madness" style movie - with catnip? h/t Nonny and Our Kid.

Open thread below....

Every Monday morning, C&L's own Nicole Belle joins with Nicole Sandler at RadioOrNot.com to discuss the Sunday talking head shows in a segment they call "Fools on the Hill." This morning, they couldn't resist a bit of Oscar talk too...

Here's what Nicole Belle brought us this week:

Welcome to “The media is everything wrong with this country” Part the infinity.
You know, the media that inadvertently admits that they are impugning Chuck Hagel’s competence…er, I mean, questioning his competence.

Or lets Sen. Tom Coburn say that rather than strengthen background checks (which is universally more popular among the left and the right), Congress should just ‘eliminate recordkeeping’ on guns in the US.

Or lets Grampy McCain (who is on for the third Sunday in a row) say that he loves his townhall meetings and not bring up that he called an attendee a “jerk”.

Or whine about not knowing about the President playing golf because it’s all about their access.

And then there’s the Oscars. Which conservatives love to scoff at, although they still watch it. George Will actually believed that absent any evidence, Zero Dark Thirty would win Best Picture, to teach those Democrats like Levin and Feinstein a lesson. Because that’s exactly how the Academy thinks.

We've written many, many times about Fix the Debt's backers and the billionaires who created it along with the false flag over the debt, and now The Nation has dedicated an entire issue to this astroturf organization.

Mary Bottari's exposé names the 'puppet populists':

Behind this strategy are no fewer than 127 CEOs and even more “statesmen” pushing for a “grand bargain” to draw up an austerity budget by July 4. With many firms kicking in
 $1 million each on top of Peterson’s $5 million in seed money, this latest incarnation of the Peterson message machine must be taken seriously.

Fix the Debt has hired such powerful PR firms and lobby shops as the DCI Group, the Glover Park Group, the Dewey Square Group and Proof Integrated Communications, a unit of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller, which was the go-to firm for Big Tobacco. In the run-up to the “fiscal cliff,” these firms launched a flashy $3 million media campaign, blanketing Capitol Hill with TV, Internet, Metro and newspaper ads featuring slogans like “Got Debt?” and “Just Fix It.”

Fix the Debt’s stable of CEOs are a PR flack’s dream. Not only are they able to get meetings with everyone from John Boehner to President Obama; they can flood cable news with laughable messages of “shared sacrifice” and be treated with fawning respect. Fix the Debt’s David Cote, CEO of Honeywell, “brings serious financial muscle to the table” when he pushes “market credible solutions,” chirps The Wall Street Journal. There is no mention that Cote is a tax-dodging, pension-skimping hypocrite: Honeywell has a negative average tax rate of -0.7 percent and underfunds its employee pensions by -$2.8 billion, making Cote’s workers even more reliant on Social Security.

Creating a crisis is key. “America is more than $16 trillion in debt,” Fix the Debt’s website warns, calling it “a catastrophic threat to our security and economy.” The CEOs echo this warning, writing to Congress of the “serious threat to the economic well-being and security of the United States.”

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