Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, a co-author and key proponent of the Senate immigration bill, said he will revoke his support if an amendment is added that allows gay Americans to petition for same-sex spouses living abroad to secure a green card.
"If this bill has in it something that gives gay couples immigration rights and so forth, it kills the bill. I'm done," Rubio said Thursday during an interview on the Andrea Tantaros Show. "I'm off it, and I've said that repeatedly. I don't think that's going to happen and it shouldn't happen. This is already a difficult enough issue as it is."
The amendment, introduced by Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, would grant green cards to foreign partners of gay Americans. Leahy originally introduced the measure during the Senate Judiciary Committee markup of the bill, but he withdrew it under pressure from Republican lawmakers who said it would reduce the chance of the bill passing.

karn wrote:russia supports assad

we support the rebels mad

syria gonna be a fun one

soviet union done

WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE

pacino wrote:

allentown wrote:

pacino wrote:You are talking about military actions. The cia is not part of that, despite what you are saying. I am not worried about srones, but their use.
u
And this isnt a war, at best it's a policing action.

What makes it not a war? The CIA also fights in our wars. It's also perfectly lawful for the CIA to kill an enemy combatant. Your logic is it's ok for these guys to plant IEDs, which kill our soldiers and Afghan civilians, but it's not ok to kill them without giving them their day in court. That's silly. They're enemy combatants. They haven't committed a crime, other than skirting the laws of war, to which their organization never signed on, anyway. You fight, recruit the fighters, lead the fighter, you are a legit target.

no, 'they' never signed up for anything, whoever they is. somehow claiming AUMF for every action we take is pretty weaksauce. i guess you are also fine with Guantanamo Bay being open, being beyond any and all civilian law simply because we believe they may commit actions in the future. also, we dont have enemy combatants anymore.

pacino wrote:Rubio's outreach on gays and immigration:

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, a co-author and key proponent of the Senate immigration bill, said he will revoke his support if an amendment is added that allows gay Americans to petition for same-sex spouses living abroad to secure a green card.
"If this bill has in it something that gives gay couples immigration rights and so forth, it kills the bill. I'm done," Rubio said Thursday during an interview on the Andrea Tantaros Show. "I'm off it, and I've said that repeatedly. I don't think that's going to happen and it shouldn't happen. This is already a difficult enough issue as it is."
The amendment, introduced by Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, would grant green cards to foreign partners of gay Americans. Leahy originally introduced the measure during the Senate Judiciary Committee markup of the bill, but he withdrew it under pressure from Republican lawmakers who said it would reduce the chance of the bill passing.

dajafi wrote:Is there any possible way to explain this other than rank bigotry and cynical politics?

It would be fun to hear a reporter ask Rubio about his personal feelings toward Teh Gays. He'd squirm probably as much as he did when asked about the age of the Earth, and maybe would defer to the expertise of phrenologists and theologians rather than geologists or whatever.

Wisconsin's Republican-led state Assembly passed a measure on Thursday to make it more difficult to get an abortion by requiring women first undergo an ultrasound.

The bill, which also requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital, now heads for the desk of Republican Governor Scott Walker, who is expected to sign it into law

Anti-abortion activists have increasingly turned toward enacting new restrictions at the state level to the procedure, which was made legal nationally by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.

Passed with a vote of 56-39, the bill mandates an ultrasound be performed on a pregnant woman at least 24 hours before an abortion, a requirement that can be waived if the pregnancy is the result of sexual assault or incest.

The bill also requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles (48 km) of their clinic.

According Planned Parenthood, its facility outside of Appleton, one of the state's four abortion clinics, will be forced to close because doctors there do not have the required admitting privileges.

The Assembly on Wednesday approved a bill that prohibits the use of public funds to cover abortion in insurance plans for public employees and exempts religious organizations from having to cover contraception on employee health care insurance plans.

“I don’t have any problem with ultrasound,” Walker said Tuesday, according to the AP. “I think most people think ultrasounds are just fine.”

pacino wrote:i dont get why we are going to arm unknown rebels where we can't control what's going to happen. this isn't libya with such a well-defined opposition.

Surrounded by sleigh bell-ringing Santa Claus impersonators, Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday signed a law protecting Christmas and other holiday celebrations in Texas public schools from legal challenges — but also stressed that freedom of religion is not the same thing as freedom from religion.

It was a serious tone for an otherwise fun bill-signing and should bolster the governor's Christian conservative credentials before he travels to Washington for the Faith & Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority" conference with the likes of tea party darlings and U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Kentucky's Rand Paul and fellow Texan Ted Cruz.

Dubbed the "Merry Christmas bill," the bipartisan measure sailed through the state House and Senate to reach Perry's desk.

It removes legal risks of saying "Merry Christmas" in schools while also protecting traditional holiday symbols, such as a menorah or nativity scene, as long as more than one religion and a secular symbol are also reflected.

"I realize it's only June. But it's a good June and the holidays are coming early this year," Perry said. "It's a shame that a bill like this one I'm signing today is even required, but I'm glad that we're standing up for religious freedom in this state. Religious freedom does not mean freedom from religion."

Bohac said Perry "is not a governor that shirks away from the tough issues. And this should not be a tough issue, which is what's even amazing about all this. But this is just political correctness that's run amok and our brains have completely fallen out as a result."

dajafi wrote:Is there any possible way to explain this other than rank bigotry and cynical politics?

It would be fun to hear a reporter ask Rubio about his personal feelings toward Teh Gays. He'd squirm probably as much as he did when asked about the age of the Earth, and maybe would defer to the expertise of phrenologists and theologians rather than geologists or whatever.

pacino wrote:Rubio's outreach on gays and immigration:

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, a co-author and key proponent of the Senate immigration bill, said he will revoke his support if an amendment is added that allows gay Americans to petition for same-sex spouses living abroad to secure a green card.
"If this bill has in it something that gives gay couples immigration rights and so forth, it kills the bill. I'm done," Rubio said Thursday during an interview on the Andrea Tantaros Show. "I'm off it, and I've said that repeatedly. I don't think that's going to happen and it shouldn't happen. This is already a difficult enough issue as it is."
The amendment, introduced by Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, would grant green cards to foreign partners of gay Americans. Leahy originally introduced the measure during the Senate Judiciary Committee markup of the bill, but he withdrew it under pressure from Republican lawmakers who said it would reduce the chance of the bill passing.

SCOTT KEYES: The Senate this summer is going to be taking up the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which makes it illegal to fire someone for being gay. Do you know if you’ll be supporting that?

MARCO RUBIO: I haven’t read the legislation. By and large I think all Americans should be protected but I’m not for any special protections based on orientation.

KEYES: What about on race or gender?

RUBIO: Well that’s established law.

pacino wrote:

"I realize it's only June. But it's a good June and the holidays are coming early this year," Perry said.

Many senators elected to leave Washington early Thursday afternoon instead of attending a briefing with James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency (NSA), and other officials.

Only 47 of 100 senators attended the 2:30 briefing, leaving dozens of chairs in the secure meeting room empty as Clapper, Alexander and other senior officials told lawmakers about classified programs to monitor millions of telephone calls and broad swaths of Internet activity. The room on the lower level of the Capitol Visitor Center is large enough to fit the entire Senate membership, according to a Senate aide.
The Hill was not provided the names of who did, and who didn't, attend the briefing.

The exodus of colleagues exasperated Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who spent a grueling week answering colleagues’ and media questions about the program.

“It’s hard to get this story out. Even now we have this big briefing — we’ve got Alexander, we’ve got the FBI, we’ve got the Justice Department, we have the FISA Court there, we have Clapper there — and people are leaving,” she said

“If members were more diligent about attending briefings they would be far better informed about what’s going on, and they would also be far more willing to challenge the intelligence community on the conclusions that they come to,” she said.

“The truth is that members always come in at the end of the game, and as a result they take as gospel the assessments that they receive from the intelligence community,” she added.

Alexander has claimed the surveillance programs have helped thwart dozens of terrorist attacks.

Lawmakers often vote to approve the intelligence programs with only a vague idea of what they’re authorizing. Feinstein says her colleagues should have known about the NSA programs from prior debates.

“We have discussed this, we have voted on this in committee, on the floor. People should go out and see how the program is set up, see how it’s conducted, ask questions, come to the briefings,” said Feinstein.

Many senators claimed they were never briefed on the NSA’s surveillance programs when the British newspaper The Guardian caused a media firestorm by reporting their existence earlier this month.

“I’m pretty good about attending meetings; I don’t remember being briefed,” Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) told reporters on June 6, when the public learned the extent of the NSA’s collection of telephone metadata.

He voted for the Patriot Act, but said he did not intend to grant blanket authority to collect millions of phone records.

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney has no regrets about the Iraq War.

In a new Showtime documentary about the vice president under President George W. Bush, Cheney said that he would make the same decision to invade Iraq.

“I did what I did. It’s all on the public record and I feel very good about it,” Cheney said in “The World According To Dick Cheney.” “If I had to do it over again, I’d do it in a minute.”

The key quote here is, “We heard precisely that you could get the specific information from that telephone.” Notice: Nadler did not say they could listen to the phone call, he said “get the specific information.”

Here’s the actual video clip of the full exchange from C-Span, which explains the discrepancy. I’ve set it to start at about 46:00 into the hearing, right at the point where the exchange between Mueller and Nadler begins (click on the link to watch):

There’s no mention of it in McCullagh’s article, but this entire discussion was about metadata. They explicitly say this several times, using the word “metadata.” And metadata is not “listening to phone calls,” it’s the equivalent of looking at a telephone bill. That’s why Mueller begins (in the clip above) by saying that the Supreme Court has ruled that this kind of data is not protected by the Fourth Amendment.

The bottom line: this CNET article and headline are extremely misleading.

The distortion of Gore’s remark that he “took the initiative in creating the Internet” apparently originated in a March 11, 1999, Wired News article by Declan McCullagh, which stated, “It’s a time-honored tradition for presidential hopefuls to claim credit for other people’s successes. But Al Gore as the father of the Internet? That’s what the campaigner in chief told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer during an interview Tuesday evening.”

NADLER: Under Section 215, if you’ve gotten information from metadata and you as a result of that think that, “gee, this phone number, 873 whatever, looks suspicious and we ought to actually get the contents of that phone” — of that phone, do you — do you need a new specific warrant?

MUELLER: You need at least a national security letter. All you have is a telephone number. You do not have subscriber information. So you need the subscriber information. You would have to get probably a national security letter to get that subscriber information.

NADLER: And to…

MUELLER: And then, if you wanted to do more…

NADLER: You wanted to listen to the phone?

MUELLER: Then you have to get a special — a particularized order from…

NADLER: Particularized…

MUELLER: … the FISA court directed at that particular phone of that particular individual.

NADLER: Now is the answer you just gave me classified…

MUELLER: Is what?

NADLER: The answer you just gave me classified in any way?

MUELLER: I don’t think so.

NADLER: OK, then I can ask the — then I can say the following: We heard precisely the opposite at the briefing the other day. We heard precisely that you could get the specific information from that telephone simply based on an analyst deciding that, and you didn’t need a new warrant. In other words, what you just said is incorrect. So there’s a conflict…

MUELLER: I’m not certain that it’s the same answer to the same question. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…

NADLER: Well, I asked the question both times, and I think it’s the same question. So maybe you’d better go back and check, because someone was incorrect.

MUELLER: I will — I will do that. That — that is my understanding of the process.

NADLER: OK. I don’t — I don’t question it’s your understanding. It was always my understanding. And I was rather startled the other day, and I wanted to take this opportunity to…