Praise be to Judge Antonin Scalia, for he sees what the rest of us do not. The man for whom nasty, brutish and short is not simply a political formulation, but a mirror image, can look at hundreds of years of slavery, 100 more of legalised segregation and another 50 of daily discrimination and see "racial entitlement" in the basic right to vote in America. I guess it's kind of like the right-wing-clown entitlement enjoyed by our current Supreme Court.

Scalia, of course, was a modern Republican (in a robe) before it was even cool. I mean that in the sense that it's clear to anyone taking so much as a gander at what animates the GOP of 2013 - as well as Scalia's immunity to legal reasoning - that it's not any set of policy ideas, but simple emotion: all-consuming, blood-curdling, vein-bulging-out-of-the-forehead, Mel Gibson-watching-Fiddler-On-The-Roof ANGER.

Policy-wise, the GOP is an entity that literally lacks any new ideas, has no interest in governing and has rejected all of its own policy positions from as recently as early 2008 as "oh-my-God-we're-all-doomed!" creeping Socialism (see: cap and trade, earned-income tax credit, individual healthcare mandate). Rejecting anything right wingers sneeringly see as created by them-there libruls is the secret handshake of modern conservatism.

You believe in global warming? Then they don't, dang it! You accept that human beings didn't ride saddleback on a brachiosaurus into the Battle of Little Bighorn? They have an App for that, the Creation Museum, where you can ride Noah's Ark with your friendly Triassic-period imperial walker. You offer them way-too-friendly a deal on the budget? Then as Cartman from South Park says, "screw you guys... I'm going home".

The most potent example is the rise and fall of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as conservative heartthrob. He was a Republican Superhero just a year ago, when he headlined what Republican consultant Steve Schmidt called "The Star Wars Bar" of conservative gatherings, the CPAC Conference. Yet, he was quite publicly not invited to this year's CPAC.

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I'm shocked -- SHOCKED -- that Breitbart News would run with an echo-chamber created story about a group that doesn't exist at all, never existed, and has nothing to do with anything in the real world. Cenk pointed out five days ago that the mythical 'Friends of Hamas' story appeared to be nothing more than an unsubstantiated rumor started somewhere in the bowels of DC.

It turns out that it started over at the New York Daily News when reporter Dan Friedman asked a Congressional staffer whether or not they had any evidence that Chuck Hagel was fraternizing with shadowy terrorist groups the way Ted Cruz seemed to intimate.

On Feb. 6, I called a Republican aide on Capitol Hill with a question: Did Hagel’s Senate critics know of controversial groups that he had addressed?

Hagel was in hot water for alleged hostility to Israel. So, I asked my source, had Hagel given a speech to, say, the “Junior League of Hezbollah, in France”? And: What about “Friends of Hamas”?

The names were so over-the-top, so linked to terrorism in the Middle East, that it was clear I was talking hypothetically and hyperbolically. No one could take seriously the idea that organizations with those names existed — let alone that a former senator would speak to them.

By now, everyone should know that Republicans have no sense of humor, especially when it comes to terrorists! They're all about killing terrorists, destroying them, or else using them to strike fear in the hearts of every American.

That didn't stop the smartest-guy-in-the-room Breitbot Ben Shapiro from running with the story after he called the White House for confirmation and got the cold shoulder. Dave Weigel:

Following that, I checked with Ben Shapiro, the Breitbart.com editor and reporter who originated the "Friends of Hamas" meme in a short February 7 article titled "SECRET HAGEL DONOR?: WHITE HOUSE SPOX DUCKS QUESTION ON 'FRIENDS OF HAMAS.'" In it, Shapiro reported that "Senate sources told Breitbart News exclusively" of Hagel's "Friends of Hamas" problem.

"Have you found any more proof that this group exists?" I asked Shapiro.

"The original story is the entirety of the information I have," he said.

Shapiro appears to be resting his unwarranted certitude on the butt of his claim that he was merely repeating what he had heard from an anonymous Senate source. That didn't stop the entire right wing online universe from exploding with accusations and inflammatory articles, spreading the meme that Hagel might have received - gasp! - funding from terrorist groups.

Why Breitbart is taken seriously by anyone, I do not know. How many bogus stories do they have to blast out before they're no longer accorded any credibility by anyone, left or right? It seems the key to their success is merely to rest on form over substance, as Shapiro did today.

Shapiro, as you might expect, did not do that thing where he writes a correction/apology for putting up an wild-eyed article about a rumor that most vertebrates would at least treat with some degree of credulity. Instead, he's now accusing Friedman of lying about being the source. Shapiro's new take is as cleverly "caveated" as his last -- he gets to say that the source for his story didn't hear about the story from Friedman, but that doesn't necessarily mean Friedman wasn't on the end of the chain of whispers.

What Shapiro did is simple. He played an extended game of telephone and then did what gossips do: repeated the rumor with very careful language so it appeared to be fact. And then, because Breitbart's target is always the White House or damned libruls who support the guy in the White House, they called the White House with a stupid question which received the response it deserved. Whoever took the call hung up on Shapiro (according to Shapiro, of course), and so he ran with the whole White House doesn't deny Friends of Hamas thing.

See, a failure to deny something that doesn't exist means it exists, right?

I guess as long as stupid Senators like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz actually take whiners like Shapiro seriously in spite of their history, we're going to be writing these posts letting everyone know of the latest Breitbarting. I'm sure Andrew Breitbart is smiling on his young protege for asking himself WWBD* and then running with it, truth be damned.

*WWBD - What would Breitbart do?

Chuck Hagel is not my dream nominee (let's face it, he's still a conservative), but he has a saner perspective on the Middle East than anyone else that's qualified -- which is the reason progressives should support him. But for the first time, a secretary of defense nominee is being filibustered -- thanks to Grumpy McCain and Harry Reid's chronic enabling of the minority. Will the administration have the votes? They're not so sure anymore:

(CNN) – Multiple administration officials tell CNN the White House sent a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin in response to Republican senators asking for answers on the terror attack against a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi last year.

The three GOP senators-Sens. Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Kelly Ayotte–had demanded answers about the attack in a letter Tuesday to the Obama administration before committing to vote on Chuck Hagel's nomination for defense secretary. Graham had publicly stated that he was specifically asking whether President Obama called Libyan officials to help the night of the attack on the consulate in Benghazi.

Meanwhile, McCain told CNN Thursday morning that he had not yet seen the White House's letter.

The administration has been wary of responding–saying the GOP keeps moving goal posts–but the response is a sign they are losing patience and getting nervous about the Hagel nomination.

Hagel, who's battled his way through a rocky nomination process, faces an uncertain outcome during the Senate's critical vote on Friday, as Democrats attempt to break a potential GOP filibuster of the defense secretary nominee.

Doubts were raised Wednesday after McCain said he was reconsidering his pledge not to filibuster Hagel because the Obama administration was refusing to provide key details about the president's actions on the night of the attack in Libya.

McCain's vote is important because he is one of the leading Republicans on military matters and other senators are expected to follow his lead. But he was also one of just five GOP senators who publically announced they would not filibuster Hagel. If he supports the filibuster, it could be impossible for Hagel to get 60 votes.

Despite earlier optimism that Hagel would get confirmed, senior congressional sources in both parties are now less positive. They told CNN they now are not sure he will get the votes.

To anyone who didn't follow the whole Fox News Benghazi-Gate story all that closely, this interview ought to have them scratching their heads in confusion. What is it Senator Lindsey Graham expects to discover about Benghazi that we don't already know?

Via ThinkProgress:

BOB SCHIEFFER (HOST): I’m not sure I understand. What do you plan to do if they don’t give you an answer? Are you going to put a hold on these two nominations?

GRAHAM: Yes…How could Susan Rice come on to your show and say there’s no evidence of a terrorist attack when the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said they knew that night? I think that was a misleading narrative three weeks before our election.

How does this make any difference at all? Would there have been some advantage to downplaying terrorism in Libya? It's one thing to make a squawking fuss about attacks in your own country, but Libya was hardly considered safe territory. What would have changed? Would Romney have attacked Obama for an attack on American diplomats in a foreign country? I think he did that, along with Fox News and all the other right wing channels.

Graham and McCain got Kerry as Secretary of State after playing out their bogus Benghazi farce with Susan Rice. Still, he seems to be undeterred:

SCHIEFFER: Let me just make sure, because you’re about to make some news here, I think. You are saying that you are going to block the nominations — you’re going to block them from coming to a vote until you get an answer to this? Now, John McCain has already said he doesn’t think the Republicans ought to filibuster this. What will you do? You’re just going to put a hold on it? [...]

GRAHAM: I want to know who changed the talking points. Who took the references to Al Qaeda out of the talking points given to Susan Rice? We still don’t know…. I want to know what our president did. What did he do as commander in chief? Did he ever pick up the phone and call anybody? I think this is the stuff the country needs to know.

Let's say for the sake of argument that President Obama did change the talking points. What difference does THAT make? It robs terrorists of the glory they get when they actually land a punch. It doesn't change the body count or the fact that an attack took place that killed an ambassador.

Sounds like Graham is just pulling excuses out of thin air to keep a block on nominations. The thing is, he could just sit back and shut up and let Democrats do that. In Chuck Hagel's case, confirmation is likely. I'm not sure the same can be said of Brennan. Still, it seems to me that this is some kind of bogus stall to score a few more political points over something that in the end, just isn't a coverup.

Senator Graham, you might consider a different tack. This one just makes you look petty and stupid.

(h/t Mediaite)

Saturday Night Live's executive producer Lorne Michaels reserves the right to change his show right up to airing, the privilege of broadcasting live. Famously, Billy Crystal was part of the original cast and had a featured skit on the very first airing in October of '75, until Michaels cut it the day of broadcast and it took years for Crystal to officially join the cast. I offer this up as a caveat that it is not necessarily anything political that caused Michaels to cut the original cold open for last night's SNL episode, replacing it instead with a skit about CBS trying desperately to fill airtime during the 35 minute blackout during the Super Bowl. It is entirely possible that Michaels felt this was the funnier or more biting satire of which he likes to think SNL is capable. Whatever his reasoning, they did allow the dress rehearsal to be available online for comparison.

It is not hard to imagine the pearl clutching and cries of outrage (Outrage, I tell you!) had this skit gone out on the airwaves, depicting the blatant pandering and ridiculousness of the dialogue in Washington surrounding the hearing on the nomination of Chuck Hagel to the position of Secretary of Defense. I'm sure that Lindsey Graham and his BFF Grampy McCain would be issuing a proclamation of censure and a threat to deport Lorne Michaels back to Canada. How dare SNL mock the "When did you stop beating your wife?" line of questioning that the Republicans proffered to prove how much more they love the state of Israel? I'm still wondering if anyone in the Beltway media will ever wonder why blind obeisance to Israel is considered a requirement for holding an American political office.

Don't get me wrong, I believe Israel has a right to exist and a right to defend its borders. I'm just not sure that it should be a requirement that we have to act as an extension of that.

Personally, I thought Fred Armisen's imitation of Bernie Sanders was perfect and the skit was worth airing for that alone.

Monday night Rachel Maddow expanded on her Friday report about the weird ad running in opposition to Chuck Hagel's nomination. The group running the ad calls themselves "Use Your Mandate" and claims to be a group of liberals -- gay liberals, even -- who are afraid to come out into the light for fear of White House retribution.

Because this White House has been so bitterly retributive, don't you know? When I first heard about it I thought it was bull too, because liberals tend to oppose nominations loudly and without any guise of secrecy. In fact, I can't think of a time where any liberal group I've had contact with has been secretive about who they are and why they're running an ad. That seems to be the province of the US Chamber of Commerce and Koch-funded front groups..

Rachel's instinct seems to be right on the money. As she reports, "Use Your Mandate" used a media buyer in San Diego to place the ad by the name of Del Cielo Media, LLC*. Del Cielo Media is the company name for Sarah Linden, who is the west coast media director for Smart Media Group.

On Smart Media Group's resumé: Official media buyers for the McCain-Palin campaign, Republican National Committee, NRSC, and the US Chamber of Commerce, among others.

DelCielo Media's website is a splash page and a link to a map now, but as Rachel reports, one of Linden's clients is the Emergency Committee for Israel, a relatively new neocon group whose directors include Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer, and Michael Goldfarb. Michael Goldfarb is an advisor to Liz Cheney's neocon message machine, Keep America Safe, where Kristol also serves as a director.

The other firm Rachel mentions is Tusk Strategies. Michael Tusk was Michael Bloomberg's campaign director in 2009 and now has his own New York PR firm. Tusk's client list boasts of relationships with Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst and Education Reform Now, two groups which call themselves liberal but which are not, by any stretch of the imagination, liberal.

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This weekend, Republicans led by Senator John McCain stepped up their withering criticism of President Obama's nominee for Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel. In a new line of attack, Tennessee Senator Bob Corker questioned Hagel's "overall temperament." As it turns out, Corker's choice of words was more than a little ironic. After all, back in 2008 Corker and a host of other Senate Republicans with good reason said the same thing about their party's nominee for President of the United States, John McCain.

Back in 2009, Senator Corker joined his colleagues in a farewell tribute to the departing Senator Hagel. He praised Hagel as someone who exercises "tremendous independence" and "whom I have really enjoyed serving on [the] Foreign Relations [Committee]." But now that Hagel has been appointed to serve Democratic President Barack Obama, Corker's view has changed. As he explained his new doubts to George Stephanopoulos of ABC News This Week:

"Just his overall temperament and is he suited to run a department or a big agency or a big entity like the Pentagon," Corker told me. "I think there are numbers of staffers who are coming forth now just talking about the way he has dealt with them. I have, certainly questions, about a lot of things."

If that sounds familiar, it should. Five years ago, Corker expressed the same concern about Chuck Hagel's current grand inquisitor and then GOP frontrunner, John McCain. As ThinkProgress reported:

When asked by Alan Colmes whether McCain is "temperamentally suited to be President of the United States," Corker refused to say yes.

"You know, his temperamental issues have been written about," Corker said. Sometimes, McCain "says some things that I'm sure he doesn't mean, walks away, and goes, why did I say that!" Colmes remarked, "I noticed that when I asked you if he was temperamentally suited, you didn't automatically say yes." Corker avoided the issue by saying, "Well I think he is an American hero."

Corker acknowledged in the interview that he's "had his moments" with McCain.

As it turns out, so have many of Corker's Republican Senate colleagues.

Take, for example, the GOP's number two man in the Senate, John Cornyn (R-TX).

On Friday, Cornyn penned an op-ed for CNN opposing Chuck Hagel's nomination. But in March 2008, the former Giuliani supporter compared his grudging endorsement of John McCain to the death in the family:

"I sort of liken it to a grieving process. You come to acceptance," said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, ticking off the conventionally accepted stages of mourning.

Cornyn had good reason. In March 2007 he was on the receiving end of a McCain tantrum. Clashing over immigration policy, McCain dropped the F-bomb on Cornyn and called his opposition "chickens**t":

"F**k you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room."

Cornyn was not alone among Senate Republicans in feeling the wrath of McCain.

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This is so damn funny on so many levels.

CRUZ: You look at Chuck Hagel's record and it places him on the outer fringe in terms of his views on national security...Now, this is a man who served honorably for his nation, he was wounded defending his nation, I respect him personally. But his views are not in the mainstream, and I don't think they'd serve this nation well leading the Department of Defense.

So Ted Cruz, who calls himself a Teabagger (along with only 8% of Americans), who calls gun control "unconstitutional," promotes nutty UN conspiracy theories and warns that Shariah law is "an enormous problem" in the US -- he's the arbiter of what "mainstream views" are?

I guess on Fox News, that's credible. Everywhere else it's just hilarious.

Amid Republicans' weeks-long display of sound and fury, President Obama nominated Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense and John Brennan for CIA director.

At the moment, Hagel is being touted as the more controversial nominee by the Republicans. Log Cabin Republicans, who endorsed a virulently anti-gay candidate for President in Mitt Romney, are protesting Hagel's 1998 comments regarding the military's don't ask, don't tell policy, and put up a full page ad in the New York Times today opposing his nomination. On the other hand, neocons are outraged that Hagel isn't completely in the tank to blow up the world to save Israel.

All of this would be comical if it weren't so pathetic. After all, in 2000, Mr. Neocon Bill Kristol thought Hagel would be a perfect running-mate for then-candidate George W. Bush. Now that Hagel is Obama's choice, not so much.

Hero to zero politics at its best. Meanwhile, war hero Max Cleland says they'll quit the posturing and confirm Hagel. As much as I'd like to believe that, I have no confidence in Republicans' ability to scale down their insanity these days. The truth is, they'd oppose anyone Obama nominates, but Hagel scares them most because he's a Republican who isn't a neocon hawk or a policy elite.

John Brennan, on the other hand, is a more troublesome nominee. Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald has a must-read column about why his nomination for CIA is troubling:

In his current job, for example, Brennan has spearheaded some of Obama’s most controversial national security tactics, such as the aggressive escalation of drone strikes and so-called signature strikes, where targets are hit based on incomplete intelligence. He’s also caught flak for claiming drone attacks didn’t result in a “single” civilian death in Pakistan one year and for initially (and erroneously) claiming that Osama Bin Laden “engaged in a firefight” with Navy SEALs during the 2011 raid in which he was killed.

In 2008, liberals and civil libertarians were outraged by the possibility of Brennan heading the CIA. “Appointing Brennan to the CIA does not mean a change from Bush. That was absolutely a critical part of Obama’s message. With Brennan, we get the taint of a Bush and two-facedness of a Clinton,” Andrew Sullivan, then at the Atlantic, wrote at the time.

Four years later, civil liberties have largely disappeared from the range of issues liberals care about. Two weeks ago, the Senate quietly reauthorized the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment Act — which codifies warrantless wiretapping and email snooping — with little debate and no amendments.

I'm sure the confirmation hearings will be a hoot. Republicans are already on the bizarro train, so it could be entertaining. Or frightening.

The Republican opposed the Iraq surge and favored regional negotiations with Iran and Syria. The GOP luminary has cautioned against pre-emptive strikes on Tehran's nuclear facilities. He publicly criticized Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank. He advised the presidential campaigns of both John McCain and Mitt Romney on national security policy, and in 2000 helped secure Florida for George W. Bush. Oh, and he declared "f**k the Jews" and complained they "didn't vote for us anyway." Of course, that GOP leader wasn't Vietnam War hero, former Nebraska Senator and Obama Pentagon nominee Chuck Hagel, but Republican heavyweight James A. Baker III. And as it turns out, while Lindsey Graham called Baker a "role model," John McCain lauded the former Bush Secretary of State as "smartest guy I know" and wanted him to lead the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

Of course, you'd never know that listening to the incendiary rhetoric of Graham, McCain and other Republicans who have turned on their former colleague. Forgetting President Bush's selection of John Bolton as UN Ambassador, Senator Graham called Obama's selection of Hagel "an in-your-face nomination." On Sunday, Graham was not done in his criticism:

"Chuck Hagel, if confirmed to be the secretary of defense, would be the most antagonistic secretary of defense toward the state of Israel in our nation's history."

But Graham has a different attitude towards James Baker, the man neoconservative hardliners refer to simply as "F**k the Jews." After all, just a year ago the International Republican Institute (IRI) honored Baker with its 2011 Freedom Award for his exemplary public service and his work in international diplomacy. Among those lauding him that day was none other than John McCain's sidekick, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham:

"He was the right guy at the right time in so many circumstances and he has served our country in so many ways," U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said of Baker in presenting the award. "When it comes to spreading freedom, you have done more than your fair share and when it comes to setting a standard, you are a role model."

John McCain, the other half of Washington DC's most enduring bromance, was even more effusive in his praise of James Baker.

In November, John McCain proposed that former President Bill Clinton, "a person of enormous prestige and influence," should be appointed by President Obama to negotiate peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But in a May 2006 interview with the Israeli paper Haaretz, Senator McCain had a different man in mind as President McCain's Middle East emissary:

A McCain administration, alongside his close supervision from the White House, would send "the smartest guy I know" to the Middle East. And who is that? "Brent Scowcroft, or Jim Baker, though I know that you in Israel don't like Baker." This is a longing for the administration of the first president Bush, or even for the administration of President Gerald Ford in the mid-1970s. In both of them, general Scowcroft was the national security adviser. McCain will act to bring peace, "but having studied what Clinton did at Camp David, perhaps not in one try, but rather step by step, and I would expect concessions and sacrifices by both sides." In general, a movement toward the June 4, 1967 armistice lines, with minor modifications? McCain nods in the affirmative.

And why would John McCain say, "I know that you in Israel don't like Baker?"

As the CBC recalled, that unease stems from yet another U.S.-Israeli clash over expanding settlements in the West Bank:

In the early 1990s, when then president George H.W. Bush became annoyed at Shamir's refusal to stop building settlements, he cut off $10 billion in loan guarantees, which Israel needed to resettle Russian Jewish immigrants.

At the time, James Baker, Bush's secretary of state, publicly recited the White House switchboard's phone number, declaring to Israel: "When you are serious about peace, call us!"

And as Slate reminded readers in 2002, the dust-up over the loan guarantees for Israeli settlements was just the beginning:

Then there was Secretary of State James Baker's infamous "fuck the Jews" remark. In a private conversation with a colleague about Israel, Baker reportedly uttered the vulgarity, noting that Jews "didn't vote for us anyway." This was more or less true--Bush got 27 percent of the Jewish vote, compared with 73 percent for Dukakis, in 1988. And thanks in part to Baker, it was even truer in 1992, when Bill Clinton got 78 percent of the Jewish vote and Bush got only 15 percent--the poorest showing by a Republican candidate since Barry Goldwater in 1964.

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