CONSEQUENCE-FREE SPEECH

The video speaks for itself.

The Daily Show
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NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

ONE RACIST DOWN, MANY MORE TO GO

SAY GOOD BYE TO RACIST DONALD STERLING

New NBA commissioner Adam Silver took swift and very powerful actions on LA Clipper owner Donald Sterling over his racists comments. Silver lowered the boom and banned him for life from the NBA, fined him 2.5 million dollars, which is the maximum allowed under NBA rules and is urging the Board of Governors to make him sell the team. No matter what the owners decide, Sterling's lifetime ban will stick.

I can imagine soon - that the "baggers" will ooze from the woodwork, blaming Obama and Holder for denying this filthy pile of steaming crap his 1st Amendment Rights

The NBA has stepped up and done what little will do, they stood up to a disgusting racist and said, not on my watch. Finally, an organization with testicular fortitude!

Donald Sterling, you are NFTOS "Dick" of the year! Congratulations asshat!

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

MICHAEL GRIMM, GOP BULLY, THUG, AND APPARENT CRIMINAL IN FBI CUSTODY

MICHAEL GRIMM, BULLY, THUG, AND MAJOR ASSHAT

U.S. Congressman Michael Grimm (TEA BAGGER-NY) is in federal custody. No, not for threatening to kill a reporter. No, not for walking into a nightclub with a gun and threatening to pull the trigger. No, not for having sex in a bar bathroom. Instead, for this:

Grimm is believed to be facing charges related to a private business deal that he made prior to being elected to Congress that involved an Upper East Side health food restaurant.

He's expected to be arraigned in federal court later Monday.

Grimm was indicted on Friday. Today he's in custody. There is no word yet on whether Cliven Bundy's militia will be sending reinforcements to Grimm's defense making sure his Constitutional freedom to break as many laws as he damn well pleases.

Here's a link to the indictment.

Michael Grimm, may your stay in federal prison be a harsh one asshat!

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

HOW CAN THIS BE? THE SUPREME COURT RULED RACISM DOESN'T EXIST ANYMORE

KU KLUX KOURT

Donald Sterling, the owner of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, told his girlfriend not to post pictures on Instagram of herself with black people and not to bring black people to his basketball games, according to an audio recording posted by TMZ.

In the recording, Sterling and his girlfriend are fighting over a picture she posted to Instagram of herself with NBA legend Magic Johnson, and Sterling demands that she stop “broadcasting” that she associates with black people. Sterling tells his girlfriend: “You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games.”

Later, he makes the point specifically about Magic Johnson, telling her that “it’s too bad you can’t admire (Johnson) privately…bring him here, feed him, fuck him, I don’t care. You can do anything. But don’t put him on an Instagram for the world to see so they have to call me. And don’t bring him to my games. OK?”

Sterling’s comments about Johnson follow a long argument about his girlfriend — who says in the recording that she is half-black and half-Mexican — not understanding the cultural differences between white, black, and Hispanic people. At one point, Sterling asks her if she gets “a benefit” from associating with black people, and calls her “stupid” when she asks why the race of the people she associates with matters. Sterling doesn't answer when she asks if it would have been different had it been Larry Bird in the photo.

When it comes to race, the comments aren't even the most troubling incident in Sterling’s time as the Clippers owner. In 2006, he was sued in a housing discrimination lawsuit that alleged that Sterling wouldn’t rent apartments to black families in Beverly Hills and other LA neighborhoods. The suit alleged that Sterling had once said that “black tenants smell and attract vermin.”

Former Clippers executive (and NBA player) Elgin Baylor sued Sterling in 2009, alleging that the owner discriminated against him based on his age and race.

The NBA didn't take action against Sterling in either instance, even though there is precedent for doing so: in 1993, Major League Baseball suspended Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott for a full season for comments she’d made about black and Jewish people.

More than three-quarters of the NBA’s players are black, and the league has a larger share of minority fans than any of other major sports leagues. The NBA can’t take away Sterling’s team. But it needs to do something, especially because it has already let Sterling off the hook so many times before.

Congratulations Donald Sterling, you are both today's worst person in the world and our asshat of the day.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

HOW DO REPUBLICANS WIN IN NOVEMBER?

NEW RULES 4/25/14



Episode 315 by BillMaher1956

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

COMITATUS

Rachel Maddow points out that Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s racist remarks are unsurprising in the context of his apparent adherence to the philosophy of the Posse Comitatus and Sovereign Citizen movements, rooted in post-Civil War reconstruction.




NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief 

Roger West

LET THE RECORD SHOW, GOP AND DARRELL ISSA ARE FULL OF SHIT

JUST THE FACTS DARRELL ISSA

A series of IRS documents, provided to journalists under the Freedom of Information Act, appears to contradict the claims by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that only Tea Party organizations applying for tax-exempt status “received systematic scrutiny because of their political beliefs.” The 22 “Be On the Look Out” keywords lists, distributed to staff reviewing applications between August 12, 2010 and April 19, 2013, included more explicit references to progressive groups, ACORN successors, and medical marijuana organizations than to Tea Party entities.

The IRS provided the heavily-redacted lists - after nearly a year-long search. From the earliest lists through 2012, the “historical” section of the lists encouraged reviewers to watch out for “progressive” groups with names like “blue,” as their requests for 501(c)(3) charitable status might be inappropriate. Their inclusion in this section suggests that the concern predates the initial 2010 list.

Explicit references to “Tea Party,” included in the “emerging issues” section of the lists, also began in August 2010 — but stopped appearing after the May 10, 2011 list. From that point on, the lists instructed agents to flag all political advocacy groups of any stripe. The documents instructed the agents to forward any “organization involved with political, lobbying, or advocacy” applying for 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) status be forwarded to “group 7822″ for additional review. Groups under both categories are limited in the amount of of lobbying and political activity each can undertake.

Other types of groups received explicit scrutiny for longer than “progressive” or “Tea Party” organizations. These included applicants involved with “medical marijuana” but not “exclusively education” (19 appearances in the “watch list” section of the lists), which were to be forwarded to a “group 7888″ and groups believed to be possible successor-groups to ACORN, the now-shuttered Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (12 appearances on the “watch list” section). Those applications were also to be elevated to managers for further review. All 22 documents also flagged applicants with Puerto Rico addresses and certain types of “Testamentary Trusts.”

Last year, the IRS acknowledged that it had improperly flagged groups applying for tax-exempt status for additional scrutiny if they contained common Tea Party keywords in their applications. Rather than addressing the very real problem of political committees masquerading as 501(c)(4) groups to evade public disclosure laws, this approach instead delayed the process for several groups purely on the basis of their names. President Obama and members of both parties in Congress all agree that the IRS acted improperly in singling-out certain groups for more scrutiny than others.

In Issa’s committee’s recent report, “Debunking the Myth that the IRS Targeted Progressives,” the Republican majority staffers wrote that while the Be On the Lookout lists’ language was “changed to broader ‘political advocacy organizations,’ the IRS still intended to identify and single out Tea Party applications for scrutiny.” The report goes to great lengths to distinguish the different types of scrutiny provided to each of these types of flagged group. But the actual IRS records indicate that at least some additional scrutiny was required for groups of all types that had names that sounded political — and that the explicit heightened scrutiny for left-leaning groups was even longer-standing than for Tea Party groups.

IRS disclosure manager Bertrand Tzeng noted, in a letter, that these 22 released documents “constitute the set of criteria that were used by IRS employees and which were produced to the investigating congressional committees.” Tzeng added that while his office has been informed that “draft versions of some of these documents may also exist, we understand that such drafts would be exempt from disclosure under FOIA exemption” as simply part of the agency’s deliberative process.

the lists.

NFTOS

Staff Writer

Steve "Damn Nazi Liberal" Chevapravatdumrong

"'ACTING IMPERIALISTICALLY"

Rick Perry is stumping for the Oath Keeper vote by claiming the Bundys were pushed into the position of using force because it's the Bureau of Land Management that's acting outside the law.

Rick Perry was on Fox News discussing the recent dustup between anti-federal government zealots and the BLM, including this unfounded report that the BLM is going to confiscate privately owned lands in Texas.

He's obviously looking to secure the Oath Keeper and Militia vote by claiming the Bundys were forced into the position of using force because it's the Bureau of Land Management that's acting outside the law.

Everyone knows that Bundy is lying about his claims of "ancestral rights" on his property since his family didn't own the land until 1948. And we also know that he's violating multiple court orders and has refused to pay grazing fees for decades while all the other ranchers are doing just that.

Rick Perry has no problem with armed militias running around with guns, threatening federal officials. Who knew?

NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

Steve "Damn Nazi Liberal" Chevapravatdumrong

DISGUSTING AD TACTICS

If you want to run for office some day, you better not believe that everyone is entitled to legal counsel before the government locks them away. Or, at least, that’s the message sent by a new Republican Governors Association ad targeting Vincent Sheheen, a former prosecutor who now represents civil and criminal clients in private practice. Sheheen is a Democratic candidate for governor against incumbent Nikki Haley.

The RGA’s ad attacks Sheheen for “defend[ing] violent criminals” and ends with the tagline “Vincent Sheheen protects criminals not South Carolina.”




The implication of this ad is that Sheheen is somehow unfit for public office because he once provided legal counsel to people accused of crimes. Indeed, the ad lists several serious crimes, including sex offenses and child abuse, that Sheheen’s clients were accused of committing. It is likely that many of these clients are very, very bad people.

But in the American justice system, we do not presume that anyone is guilty of a crime until after they have received a trial where they were represented by counsel — indeed, we afford all criminal defendants a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Moreover, as the Supreme Court explained more than half a century ago, the right to a trial often means little unless criminal defendants enjoy the right to counsel. Without an attorney, Justice Hugo Black wrote in 1963, an innocent man “faces the danger of conviction because he does not know how to establish his innocence.”

Sheheen’s clients may very well have committed horrible crimes. But we do not lock people away in prisons in the United States until their guilt has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. This is how we protect innocent men and women from winding up in those same prisons alongside the guilty.

This ad is at least the second time in as many months that Republicans lashed out at an attorney because he stood up for a person accused of a serious crime in court. Last month, every single Senate Republican who voted joined with a handful of Democrats to vote down Debo Adegbile, who was nominated to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The fact that Adegbile once signed a brief arguing that a convicted cop killer was unconstitutionally sentenced to die played a major role in the campaign against him. A panel of predominantly Republican judges eventually held that this death sentence was, indeed, unconstitutional.

NFTOS

Staff Writer

Steve "Damn Nazi Liberal" Chevapravatdumrong

S.E.CUPP KNOWS THE NRA

NOT:

ABC This Week, April 20, 2014. While attacking New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's attempt to fight the NRA on gun control, pundit S.E. Cupp pretends that the group is not lobbying for the interest of the gun manufacturers, despite evidence to the contrary.




Ms. Cupp, A Sarah Palin geek with glasses, yet a better command of the English language . The Goober's version of an intellectual.

NFTOS

Staff Writer 

Steve "Damn Nazi Liberal" Chevapravatdumrong

HAPPY RESURRECTION DAY

NFTOS leaves you this glorious day with a little funk from a old favorite of mine:

Mother's Finest.
THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE"








NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West & STAFF

Harry Reid: 'If These People Are Patriots, We're In Trouble'

AMERICAN TERRORIST AIMING AT COPS AT BUNDY PROTEST

America's "American Taliban" in action.




Harry Reid will not stand down either, get em Harry!

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

CLINTON GRANDCHILD, A CAMPAIGN PLOY, OR ANOTHER OBAMA DIVERSION?

Maybe this is not a Hillary ploy - but one of Obama's diabolical schemes to create another diversion from Fast and Furious, IRS scandals and the worst terrorist event in our time, the dreaded Benghazi attack.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

"Women Need To Be Paid Less So They Can Find Husbands"

Phyllis Schlafly - Radical Right Wing Nut Job

On Sunday, Rep. Marsha Blackburn sought to advance the GOP’s re-branding effort among female voters by suggesting that Republicans have long “led the fight for women’s equality.” The statement came just days after Republicans voted down the Paycheck Fairness Act and sought to downplay the problem of equal pay for equal work by suggesting that Democrats were using the issue to distract from Obamacare.

Now three days later, a prominent member of the Republican movement further undermined the party’s campaign to appeal to women voters by suggesting that the current pay gap isn’t wide enough. In an op-ed published by the Christian Post, Phyllis Schlafly — the founder of the Eagle Forum — maintained that increasing the pay gap will help women find suitable husbands:

Another fact is the influence of hypergamy, which means that women typically choose a mate (husband or boyfriend) who earns more than she does. Men don’t have the same preference for a higher-earning mate. 

While women prefer to have a higher-earning partner, men generally prefer to be the higher-earning partner in a relationship. This simple but profound difference between the sexes has powerful consequences for the so-called pay gap. 

Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate. 

Obviously, I’m not saying women won’t date or marry a lower-earning men, only that they probably prefer not to. If a higher-earning man is not available, many women are more likely not to marry at all.

The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.

Schlafly has long been crusader for “traditional values” within conservative movement and the Republican party, serving as a member of the National GOP Platform Committee as recently as 2012 and as a delegate to the National Convention. Her Eagle Forum PAC has also donated thousands to prominent Republicans like Eric Cantor, Michele Bachmann, Steve King, and Ted Cruz.

Since losing the presidential election in 2012, Republicans have repeatedly tried to enhance the GOP’s appeal beyond its traditional white male voting base. In 2013, the Republican National Committee published a widely discussed “autopsy,” promising to “addresses concerns that are on women’s minds in order to let them know we are fighting for them,” and held training sessions advising candidates to simply avoid talking about rape. Schlafly’s comments appear to undermine that effort.

Phyllis Schlafly, you are today's worst person in the world. Congratulations!

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

ABORTION BAN OVERTURNED

A federal judge permanently struck down North Dakota’s six-week abortion ban on Wednesday. The so-called “fetal heartbeat” measure, which used to represent the harshest ban in the nation, had already been temporarily blocked from taking effect while the legal challenge against it proceeded.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland ruled that the law is “invalid and unconstitutional” and “cannot withstand a constitutional challenge,” pointing out that Roe v. Wade guarantees the right to abortion up until the point of viability.

Six week abortion bans seek to ban abortion after a fetal heartbeat can first be detected, even though that typically occurs so early that some women don’t even realize they’re pregnant yet. This type of restriction is so radical that many Republicans won’t sign onto it, signaling the beginning of a larger split within the anti-choice community. Although lawmakers in at least five different states considered fetal heartbeat bans this year, none have been able to advance.

Arkansas is the only other state that’s been able to pass a harsh abortion restriction based on the fetal heartbeat framing. After widespread outcry, that measure ended up being amended to a slightly less restrictive 12-week ban — but it hasn't fared any better in the courts. Last month, a federal judge struck it down.

The decision is a victory for women in North Dakota, who face huge barriers to abortion services. There’s only one abortion clinic left in the state, which has been struggling to remain open amid anti-choice attacks. Thanks to the hostile environment surrounding reproductive rights, many women in the state actually assume that conservative lawmakers have succeeded and abortion is already illegal.

Although abortion rights supporters have recently won several legal victories against harsh bans, it’s important to remember that other serious threats to women’s access to abortion often fly under the radar. States have successfully enacted a complex web of restrictions targeting clinics and providers that don’t grab as many headlines as more obviously harmful laws do. That’s why anti-choice groups tend to split over six-week abortion bans — the leaders of the movement know they’ll have more success with an incremental strategy to chip away at abortion rights when no one is looking.

“The court was correct to call this law exactly what it is: a blatant violation of the constitutional guarantees afforded to all women. But women should not be forced to go to court, year after year in state after state, to protect their constitutional rights,” Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “We hope today’s decision, along with the long line of decisions striking down these attempts to choke off access to safe and legal abortion services in the U.S., sends a strong message to politicians across the country that our rights cannot be legislated away.”

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

BUNDY RANCH TERRORISTS

With the withdrawal of agents of the BLM and their contractors from Gold Butte and the release of the cattle already rounded up, the right wing “militia” supporters of Cliven Bundy have declared victory over the “tyrannical” U.S. government. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) however, disagrees.

“Well, it’s not over,” Reid told KRNV-TV on Monday. “We can’t have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it’s not over.”

While Reid declined to speculate further on the next move, BLM has said it will return to the courts, although that route has proven ineffective against this family, who for the last 20 years, have defied both the BLM and the courts.

Meanwhile, Cliven Bundy and his two sons, defiant as ever, appeared on Fox News with Sean Hannity who asked Cliven for a response to Reid’s remarks

“I don’t have a response for Harry Reid, but I have a response for every county sheriff across the United States,” Bundy said. “Disarm the federal bureaucrats.”

There you have it, a true supporter of the Constitution, as are all of the thugs who traveled across the country to confront and intimidate law enforcement officers doing their job last week.

Bundy claimed that he and the “patriots” who supported him had so badly frightened the federal agents that they backed down.

“Let me tell you how they backed down,” he told Hannity. “They backed down, they run and got on the freeway and went to Mesquite and grabbed their stuff and moved out of the state, now, the state, towards the state of Utah. Utah county sheriffs finish this job that [Sheriff Douglas] Gillespie didn’t do, take the guns away from these federal bureaucrats.”

Cross-Posted from Crooks & Liars



NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

NOT SO GOOD NEWS FOR ACA NAY-SAYERS

Premiums for health care insurance in the Affordable Care Act are lower than the federal government had anticipated, the Congressional Budget Office reported on Monday when it revised its cost estimate for the health care law. The nonpartisan office now believes that the ACA will cost the government $5 billion less than projected in 2014 and $104 billion less for the 2015-2024 period. It also found “no clear evidence” that premiums will surge in 2015, noting that “enrollees in the future will be healthier, on average, than the smaller number of people who are obtaining such coverage in 2014.” The agency estimated that the national average premium for individual silver policy plans would increase by $100 that year.

The CBO attributes the additional savings to government, relative to the CBO’s last assessment from February 2014, to lower-than expected premiums, which in turn lowered the cost for exchange subsidies, and higher-than expected revenues from the excise tax on high-premium insurance plans.

“Despite projecting that slightly more people will receive insurance coverage through exchanges over the 2015–2024 period than they had anticipated previously,” the report says. “CBO and JCT project that costs for exchange subsidies and related spending will be $164 billion (or 14 percent) below the previous projection, mainly because of the downward revision to expected exchange premiums.” The office also predicted that plans offered in the exchanges will provide wider provider networks and higher reimbursement rates to providers as enrollment increases. “That pattern will put upward pressure on exchange premiums over the next couple of years, although CBO and JCT anticipate that the plans’ characteristics will stabilize after 2016,” it found.

The office also concluded that the law’s so-called shock absorbers — reinsurance payments that are distributed to insurers that attract high-cost enrollees — “reduced exchange premiums this year by approximately 10 percent” and will “reduce premiums by smaller amounts in 2015 and 2016.” CBO found additional savings in Medicaid, revising downward government spending per adult enrolled in the program.

Ultimately, 12 million more nonelderly people will have health insurance in 2014 as a result of the law. Twenty-six million more “will be insured each year from 2017 through 2024 than would have been the case without the ACA,” the CBO concluded.

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

Meet The 'New Republican Party'

Meet the new Republican party... same as the old Republican party.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

CALL OF THE RILED

Bill Maher ended his show Friday night going after right-wing talk radio and how, as he views it, the industry purely exists to “bitch” about the government where they can have a “greater effect on influencing stupidity outside of government,” and tear down any Republican who isn’t “the single biggest prick in the room.”

Maher was spurred on by the odd decision of Congressman Mike Rogers to resign for a position in talk radio, and Maher couldn’t figure out why someone who wants to have a bigger impact on policy would leave the very institution where policy is actually made.

“The GOP has kind of become talk radio, an echo chamber where people are not interested in actually legislating or compromising or fixing America, just in screeching about how liberals have ruined it. So why not do it on the radio? The money’s better. And no one can see your toupée.”

Maher argued that this “lucrative business of bitching about government” is so determined to take down any impure Republican that the only one they truly idolize is Ted Cruz, because as Maher put it, he views public office as “just a higher form of talk radio.”



Episode 314 by BillMaher1956

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

GRAZING IN THE GRASS

“We provide armed response,” according to a Montana militia member named Jim Lordy. Lordy traveled to Nevada in order to support a local rancher for believes that he should not have to follow federal court orders. When he arrived there, he told a local reporter that “we need guns to protect ourselves from the tyrannical government.”

Lordy belongs to a militia group called Operation Mutual Aid, which provides “defense of public and private property, lives, and liberty to exercise God-given rights, seen plainly in the laws of Nature, and codified in the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, at the request of such parties in need of such defense,” according to a website associated with the group. Although only three militia members had arrived at the Nevada ranch by late Wednesday, when the latest reports came out, other militia groups reportedly “inundated the rancher's household with calls and pledges to muster at the site.”

The Oath Keepers, a right-wing law enforcement organization that warns about the government “disarming the American people” and “blockading American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps,” also announced that it will send people to support the defiant rancher.

This conflict arises out of rancher Cliven Bundy’s many years of illegally grazing his cattle on federal lands. In 1998, a federal court ordered Bundy to cease grazing his livestock on an area of federal land known as the Bunkerville Allotment, and required him to pay the federal government $200 per day per head of cattle remaining on federal lands. Around the time it issued this order, the court also commented that “[t]he government has shown commendable restraint in allowing this trespass to continue for so long without impounding Bundy’s livestock.” Fifteen years later, Bundy continued to defy this court order.

Last October, the federal government returned to court and obtained a new order, providing that “Bundy shall remove his livestock from the former Bunkerville Allotment within 45 days of the date hereof, and that the United States is entitled to seize and remove to impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass after 45 days of the date hereof.” A third federal court order issued the same year explains that Bundy did not simply refuse to stop trespassing on federal lands — he actually expanded the range of his trespassing. According to the third order, “Bundy’s cattle have moved beyond the boundaries of the Bunkerville Allotment and are now trespassing on a broad swath of additional federal land (the “New Trespass Lands”), including public lands within the Gold Butte area that are administered by the BLM, and National Park System land within the Overton Arm and Gold Butte areas of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.” The third order also authorizes the federal government to “impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass.”

On Saturday of last week, the government hired wranglers to round up Bundy’s livestock. As of Wednesday, they’d impounded a total of 352 cattle. That’s when a tense standoff broke out between a group of Bundy’s supporters and federal rangers armed with stun guns and police dogs. In one video, a ranger tackles Bundy’s sister away from a moving vehicle (she later admitted that she was blocking the path of government trucks shortly before this incident). Another video shows rangers using a stun gun on a protester immediately after he kicks a police dog.




Bundy, for his part, claims that “our Constitution didn’t provide for anything like the federal government owning this land.” He’s wrong. The Constitution provides that “the Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.”

Congratulations both oath keepers and Cliven Bundy, you are today's asshats of the day.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

With the first enrollment period of Obamacare successfully concluded, despite its disastrous roll-out, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is resigning.

Mr. Obama accepted Ms. Sebelius’s resignation this week, and on Friday morning he will nominate Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to replace her, officials said. 

The departure comes as the Obama administration tries to move beyond its early stumbles in carrying out the law, persuade a still-skeptical public of its lasting benefits, and help Democratic incumbents, who face blistering attack ads after supporting the legislation, survive the midterm elections this fall. […] 

The president is hoping that Ms. Burwell, 48, a Harvard- and Oxford-educated West Virginia native with a background in economic policy, will bring an intense focus and management acumen to the department. The budget office, which she has overseen since April of last year, is deeply involved in developing and carrying out health care policy. 

“The president wants to make sure we have a proven manager and relentless implementer in the job over there, which is why he is going to nominate Sylvia,” said Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff.

Administration officials told The New York Times that the decision was Sebelius's and she wasn't being forced out, that she had been talking with President Obama about her future and about this transition since last month. “What was clear is that she thought that it was time to transition the leadership to somebody else,” McDonough told the paper.

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

HATRED OF THE LOST ARK

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took on the likes of Glenn Beck and his buddies over at Faux "news" to task for their carping about the new Noah movie, and the complaint that it's "not a documentary.

" STEWART: So you're telling me, the movie about a man who lives to 950 and loads two of every animal onto a 350 cubit long boat... you're telling me that film won't qualify to submit in the documentary category. That's outrageous. I guess what they're trying to say is this version is a bit different than what's from in the Bible."

Video Courtesy of Comedy Central

N FTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

AS ONLY MITCH MCCONNELL CAN

MITCH "THE TURTLE" MCCONNELL

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch "The Turtle" McConnell honored Equal Pay Day — a day that symbolizes the amount of time it takes women to earn what men make in a year — by accusing Democrats and President Obama of a “never-ending political road show” that merely blows “a few kisses” to their voter base.

“Instead of focusing on jobs, he launched into another confusing attack on the left’s latest bizarre obsession,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “Just think about that. The percentage of Americans in the workforce is at an almost four-decade low, and Democrats chose to ignore serious job-creation ideas so they could blow a few kisses to their powerful pals on the left.”

McConnell argued the fact that women still earn 77 percent of what men make should take a backseat to more serious Republican priorities. These priorities typically include building Keystone XL pipeline and repealing Obamacare (which Republicans have attempted more than 50 times).

Leading up to Democrats’ latest push for equal pay, Republicans have claimed that the gender wage gap is a “myth” and that it is “condescending” to discuss. But the reality is that women still earn less even when they achieve the same education and job level, with gender discrimination accounting for as much as much as 40 percent of their pay gap.

In the past, McConnell’s voting record against women has not stopped him from taking credit anyway. He once touted the Violence Against Women Act to women voters, although he opposed it in both 1993 and 2012. McConnell has also opposed both the Lilly Ledbetter Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. And the very health care law that McConnell wants to repeal prevents insurance companies from charging women more and ensures contraception coverage.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

'God Almighty Is A Hater' Too

Televangelist Pat Robertson on Monday blasted "gay activists" for forcing out Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich after it was discovered that he backed the California Proposition 8 effort that stripped LGBT people of their marriage rights.

"Here this man at Mozilla, Eich, had given $1,000 about six or seven years ago -- $1,000 -- to a proposition," Robertson explained. "And somebody came around and said, 'Will you contribute?' And he said, 'Here's a grand, get off my back.' I mean, that's probably all that it amounted to." 

"But instead of that, he's being forced out by gay activists, who said that was hate speech to say that the union between a man and a woman is marriage -- that's hate speech."

The TV preacher continued: "Well then, the Bible then is full of hate. If that the way it is, then God almighty is a hater. If that's the way they want to define it. And I, of course, don't agree."

Robertson said that this is the reason that the Internal Revenue Service should not force non-profit groups to disclose donors.





NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

Neil DeGrasse Tyson [SNL's] Explains Science to Fox & Friends

The Fox & Friends gang returned to SNL tonight to take on Obamacare. Brian Kilmeade complained, “It’s tough to sign up for things, I’ve tried for years to sign up for the NAACP!” They also found a typical American (played by host Anna Kendrick) who’s upset that President Obama promised you could keep your doctor, “but because of court order, I am not allowed within 500 yards of my doctor.”

They also took on climate change, with surprise guest Neil DeGrasse Tyson patiently explaining how science works to the confused hosts (including an especially dumbstruck Kilmeade), calmly talking about the seriousness of issues like climate change all while they laughed it off by assuring themselves that polar bears have Coke so their lives can’t possibly be that bad.

They also ran a laundry list of show corrections, including “Malaysia is not the female version of Asia” and “the periodic table is not about ‘lady stuff.’”

Watch the video below, via NBC:

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

WIENER SCHNITZEL

In New Rules last night Bill Maher discusses the middle class and income inequality.

Check it out below.

VIDEO COURTESY OF HBO


Episode 313 by BillMaher1956

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

INCOME INEQUALITY BILL O'REILLY STYLE

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

FLORIDA'S "THREATENED USE OF FORCE" BILL

JUSTICE FOR TRAYVON

Attempts to roll back any of the Florida Stand Your Ground law’s most incendiary elements have foundered more than two years after the death of Trayvon Martin. But a bill to expand the law passed Thursday, mere months after it was introduced.

The National Rifle Association-backed bill would expand Stand Your Ground-like protections to those who point a gun at an attacker or fire a gun as a self-defense threat or warning, expanding the scope of the discretion judges and juries retain to exempt shooters from criminal charges for gun violence. The final bill also includes a provision to keep Stand Your Ground records secret.

The “Threatened Use of Force” bill passed the Senate Thursday 32-7, and will become law if signed by Gov. Rick Scott. The bill initially gained traction after Republicans exploited the outrage over the 20-year prison sentence for Marissa Alexander, who fired a warning shot during an altercation with her abusive husband. The bill was then dubbed the “warning shot” bill, because a judge rejected Alexander’s move to invoke the law. But opponents were quick to point out that injustice in Alexander’s case hinged in large part on a draconian mandatory minimum sentence that required the 20-year prison term, insensitivity to domestic violence, and racial disparities that are already baked into the existing Stand Your Ground law.

Rather than protect those like Alexander, the law is likely to expand immunity for violent conduct in as vague and sweeping a manner as Florida’s existing Stand Your Ground law, and could represent the newest mechanism for encouraging even more vigilantism.

A new amendment that made its way into the final bill would also make secret all records from Stand Your Ground cases, meaning that the records would be sealed in cases where charges are later dropped, and those who are granted immunity would have their records expunged. But the law also means that media outlets seeking to document the impact of the law would not have access to any records.

Dream Defenders Legal and Policy Director Ahmad Abuznaid called this a “double standard,” pointing out that no legislation in Florida protects young children arrested for offenses that often amount to disciplinary violations. “If the legislature is concerned with expunging criminal records, they should start with the tens of thousands of students who were arrested in school for minor misbehavior last year or the many people of color unable to vote in Florida because of a broken criminal justice system – not defendants with an itchy trigger finger and unchecked biases against black and brown people,” he said in a statement.

Last summer, Dream Defenders led a sit-in at the Florida Capitol that lasted more than eight days imploring repeal after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin. But those efforts have been summarily rejected, even after a review panel was commissioned to identify flaws in the law. That “farce” panel stacked with many of the original proponents of the law did not even consider studies finding that the law is associated with a significant increase in homicides, has a disproportionate impact on African Americans, and does not appear to deter crime at all. The NRA continued its lobbying on this warning shot bill even as trial was underway for the killing of another Florida 17-year-old, Jordan Davis.

Over the past two years, Florida courts have granted immunity under the Stand Your Ground law to “a man who went back to his car to get a gun, and another who shot an acquaintance for threatening to beat him up.” And just last week, an appeals court ruled that a prison guard could invoke the law to defend allegations that he severely beat an inmate on the job. There is another new compromise bill advancing in the Senate intended to make some reforms to the law, but even that bill would make the legal process even easier for defendants.





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Roger West

LEGALIZED MONEY LAUNDERING

Chief Justice John Roberts begins his opinion in McCutcheon v. FEC with a flourish: “[t]here is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.” He then spends the next forty pages explaining why that participation includes the right of rich people to attempt to buy elections. Thanks to the decision Roberts and his four fellow conservative justices handed down today (Though Thomas did not join Roberts’ opinion, he wrote a more radical opinion calling for all limits on campaign donations to be eviscerated), wealthy donors now have a broad new power to launder money to political candidates — they just have to be a bit creative about how they do it.

Prior to Wednesday’s opinion, federal law placed two complementary limits on campaign donors. During the current election cycle, donors may give no more than $5,200 per election cycle ($2,600 for the primary and another $2,600 for the general) to a given federal candidate, and there are also higher limits on how much they can give to party committees and political action committees. These limits remain intact.

What McCutcheon invalidates are aggregate limits on the total amount of money that donors may give to all federal candidates ($48,600) and to all political committees ($74,600). Thus, before Wednesday, donors could spend as much as $123,200 seeking to influence the 2014 election cycle — now they can spend as much as they want. Make no mistake, this decision benefits no one except for a handful of very wealthy donors (and the candidates they give to). Who else can say that they’ve already given more than a hundred thousand dollars worth of donations and that they are upset that they cannot give even more?

A major purpose of the aggregate limits was to prevent money laundering schemes that could enable donors and political parties to evade the cap on donations to individual candidates. In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer lays out what some of these schemes could look like. The Democratic or Republican Party, in one example, may set up a “Joint Party Committee” consisting of all three of their national party committees and a state party committee from each of the 50 states. Under McCutcheon, a single donor may now give as much as $1.2 million to this joint committee, which would then be distributed to the various smaller party organizations.

Once the money is distributed, however, it can legally be redistributed to the races where it is likely to have the most impact. Thus, for example, the Republican Party committees in safe red states like Idaho, Utah or Mississippi — where large infusions of money aren’t exactly needed to win elections — can redistribute their funds to battleground states like Ohio or Florida. Meanwhile, blue state Democratic committees in Vermont and Rhode Island can do the same.

Similarly, the same wealthy donor might decide to write a maximum dollar donation to every single Republican House and Senate candidate in the country — perhaps by writing a single $2.4 million check to the same “Joint Party Committee” which then distributes the funds. Once this money is distributed, candidates in safe seats can then redistribute at least some of it to candidates in disputed seats — and the rest can frequently be used to benefit candidates in tough races through “coordinated expenditures.”

Roberts denies that these money laundering schemes will actually arise, but many of the arguments he raises to defend this point betray his own naivete how modern elections work. The Chief Justice argues, for example, that for these money laundering schemes to work a donor would have to engage in “illegal earmarking” — federal law prohibits a donor from “directing funds ‘through an intermediary or conduit’ to a particular candidate.” But a wealthy donor does not need to earmark his donations for these money laundering schemes to work. Indeed, it is in both the donor’s interest and the party’s interest if the donor does not do so. A donor will typically want his money to go to the candidates who are most likely to benefit from his money — those in closely contested races. By donating to a joint party committee, the donor gives their party more flexibility to redirect their money to the candidates who appear most in need as the election approaches.

Similarly, Roberts claims that “[t]he Government provides no reason to believe that many state parties would willingly participate in a scheme to funnel money to another State’s candidates.” But this argument assumes that each state Democratic or Republican Party is an island. If Republicans control the Senate, Mississippi’s Republican senators have more clout and Mississippi Republicans benefit. The same applies to Rhode Island’s Democratic senators when Democrats control the Senate. America has two national parties and it has a national legislature. When Iowa elects Republicans to Congress, that makes it more likely that Republicans in Mississippi will see their preferred policies enacted into law.

Roberts does, however, raise one fairly strong argument in support of his belief that wealthy donors will not resort to complicated money laundering schemes — thanks to the line of cases culminating in Citizens United, they won’t have to. Before McCutcheon, wealthy donors basically had free reign to spend as much money as they wanted seeking to influence elections, just as long as they give that money to “independent” organizations such as super PACs. In light of this body of law, why would a candidate resort to an elaborate money laundering scheme when they can simply write a check to the super PAC of their choice?

It’s a good question, and not an easy one to answer. But it’s hardly an argument for eliminating even more limits on how far the wealthy can go to influence elections. If allowing a single person to spend millions of dollars to change the outcome of an election is a bad idea, then it is a bad idea no matter what kind of legal regime permits that spending to take place.

cross posted from thinkprogress

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STAFF WRITER

"COOKING THE BOOKS"

OBAMA "COOKING THE ACA BOOKS"

A tea bagging senator said on Sunday that the lack of details about ObamaCare enrollment numbers suggests the Obama administration has “cooked the books.”

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, made his comments just hours before the Monday deadline to enroll in the Affordable Care Act and was skeptical of the administration’s most recent enrollment figure of more than 6 million Americans.

“I don't think it means anything,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “They are cooking the books on this.”

Watch below - as only Maddow can present

VIDEO COURTESY OF MSNBC

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Roger West