Mitt Romney Wins: Florida Primary Results 2012

Much unsaid as Romney cites his tie to Mexico

By  Michael Kranish

Globe Staff   January 31, 2012

MIAMI – Mitt Romney, who rarely discusses his ancestry, has repeated a striking comment in Florida in recent days to soften his rhetoric about immigration and woo the crucial Hispanic voting bloc.

“My dad was born in Mexico,’’ Romney says at many campaign stops, as he expresses empathy and solidarity with immigrant families. It follows sharp rhetoric in places such as Iowa, where he decried what he called efforts to provide “amnesty’’ to the nation’s 12 million illegal immigrants.

Newt Gingrich, On Eve Of Likely Florida Loss, Unleashes Wild Attacks On Mitt Romney

GOP Seeks Big Changes In Federal Prison Sentences
NPR- by Carrie Johnson

January 31, 2012

Every year, federal judges sentence more than 80,000 criminals. Those punishments are supposed to be fair — and predictable. But seven years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court threw a wrench into the system by ruling that the guidelines that judges use to figure out a prison sentence are only suggestions.

Republicans in Congress say that has led to a lot of bad results. They’re calling for an overhaul of the sentencing system, with tough new mandatory prison terms to bring some order back into the process. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Wisconsin, brought up the subject at a recent hearing.

“A criminal committing a federal crime should receive similar punishment regardless of whether the crime was committed in Richmond, Va., or Richmond, Calif., and that’s why I am deeply concerned about what’s happening to federal sentencing,” Sensenbrenner said.

Since the Supreme Court acted in 2005 to make the sentencing guidelines advisory — not mandatory — Sensenbrenner said, judges in places like New York City have imposed sentences below the guideline ranges almost half the time. But judges only a few hours further north in New York are still following the guidelines.

Former prosecutor Matt Miner — who also served as GOP congressional aide — says that’s not justice.

The way you make sure the guidelines get due respect is to make them respectable.

- Douglas Berman, Ohio State University law professor

“We have a federal system. There should be consistency not just in the same courthouse and on the same floor, or district by district, but across the country, and we’re failing in that,” Miner says.

Douglas Berman, a law professor and sentencing expert at Ohio State University, said, “The way you make sure the guidelines get due respect is to make them respectable.”

A lot of people argue that ever since the Supreme Court weighed in, black men have it a lot worse.

Judge Patti Saris of Massachusetts leads the congressionally created U.S. Sentencing Commission. Saris spoke about the issue at a panel sponsored by the American Constitution Society and the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington earlier this month.

“The average sentence for a black male was 20 percent longer than that for a white male. … And I think what’s important to add there is that no one here is accusing judges of being racist,” Saris said.

So, then, what’s going on?

“It’s not that the black male sentences are going up. It’s that the white male sentences are going down,” Saris said.

Berman, the law professor, says judges think many of the suggested punishments are too tough, especially in the areas of corporate fraud and child pornography, where the guidelines call for people who download images of children to sometimes get upward of 20 years behind bars.

“There’s 2,000 child porn cases, and about 1,200 of them have below-guideline sentences, and they’re all white defendants,” Berman said. “And so now I think the easiest explanation for that entire 20 percent — or if not the entire 20 percent, than at least a big part of that — is, in fact, white child porn downloaders are getting significant leniency.”

The sentencing commission studies that feedback, Saris said, and it really tries to make things better. For example, next month the commission will hold a hearing on whether child porn sentences are fair.

“Congress thinks about the world’s worst offender when they’re setting up a mandatory minimum,” Saris said. “They’re thinking about the big bad guy that we’d all agree, ‘Gee, just send that person away.’ But … often, for every horrible, horrible [case] you tell me about, I can think of a situation which is far less severe.”

I would urge the commission to maybe sell Congress on the idea that the system is working pretty well.

- Amy Baron-Evans of the Federal Public and Community Defenders

Saris said despite all the criticism, the great majority of judges still give out punishments within the range of the old guidelines, even though they’re no longer mandatory. She said she continues to think the best approach is to keep the advisory guidelines for sentencing and to adjust them as needed based on feedback from judges.

Amy Baron-Evans, who works for the Federal Public and Community Defenders, said there’s nothing wrong with the way things are going now, and Congress shouldn’t take away the discretion judges have to evaluate each defendant case by case.

“I would urge the commission to maybe sell Congress on the idea that the system is working pretty well,” Baron-Evans said.

But that message can be politically unpopular, with some Republicans suggesting they might propose new mandatory sentences and cut the budget of the sentencing commission.

“I love that everybody wants to talk about how severe the system is,” said Michael Volkov, a former prosecutor, at the recent panel discussion in Washington. “I’m sorry — politically, that is going nowhere, folks. It’s going nowhere.”

Former prosecutor Bill Otis, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee last year, gave voice to those concerns.

“The commission either should return to its main job, creating mandatory guidelines, or give the taxpayers a refund,” Otis said.

The House Judiciary Committee is planning more hearings on the issue this spring.

President Obama is finding ways to get his message to the public without going through the White House press corps.

Obama on Monday held his “first completely virtual interview” as part of an event hosted by Google+, the social network the president called “a newfangled thing.”

The president joined a so-called “hangout”— a chat room of sorts on the social networking site — and took questions through YouTube on everything from unemployment to streamlining the federal government.

The event took place in the White House’s Roosevelt Room without the presence of television cameras or reporters.

The virtual interview is part of a larger effort by the White House to connect directly to Americans without going through the news media.

In recent months, Obama has hand-picked social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to relay his message on a variety of issues, holding town-hall meetings on both and even doing a third on LinkedIn.

And when Obama has sat down with reporters in recent months, it has been with hand-picked news outlets, which could allow the White House to better tailor the president’s message.

The effort extends beyond the president, too. On the heels of Obama’s State of the Union address last week, Vice President Biden and more than 30 White House officials went directly to the public by answering questions on Twitter.

The White House says Obama faces tough questions regardless of whether they are posed by reporters at a news conference or in an interview or from the public during social media events.

“I know we’re not picking the questions,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday, before quipping: “Would that we could.”

Still, journalists have taken notice. After all, Obama hasn’t held a solo, long-form press conference at the White House since the beginning of October.

“I worry sometimes that the administration subverts the Wild West appeal of new media by rather scrupulously scrubbing and screening questions — like they have done in various new media town-hall settings,” said Julie Mason, a talk show host on Sirius-XM and veteran White House correspondent who also serves on the board of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

To be sure, Obama participated in two sit-down interviews last week — as part of his post-State of the Union swing through five battleground states — with ABC’s Diane Sawyer and Univision’s Maria Elena Salinas. He also did a few television hits with local Telemundo stations.

But he hasn’t fielded a single question in a press conference setting in months.

Some reporters had expected the White House to hold a year-end press conference in December before Obama headed to Hawaii for his holiday vacation. After all, questions loomed on the payroll tax extension debate, the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline and a string of potential recess appointments.

But Obama — who issued a series of in-person statements — left town without answering questions at a press conference.

“I think at the end of the year, he would have done one but it was inconvenient,” said Martha Kumar, a professor of political science at Towson University who works from the White House and regularly tracks presidents’ interactions with reporters. “Presidents are always in the position to pick and choose how they want to convey their message.”

Kumar said she sympathizes with White House reporters, and acknowledged that the press conferences have become “erratic.”

But Kumar’s research indicates that Obama has held more solo White House news conferences — 17 — than his predecessor, George W. Bush, who held 11 in his first three years of office. On the other hand, Obama has held far fewer news conferences than former Presidents Clinton and George H.W. Bush, who held 31 and 56 news conferences, respectively.

Obama has also been less likely to answer impromptu questions at photo-ops and other spur-of-the-moment sessions with reporters. Obama has only held 94 of these fewer short question-and-answer sessions, while predecessors George W. Bush and Clinton respectively held 307 and 493 in their first three years in office.

Obama is out-performing both Bush and Clinton when it comes to interviews, however. In his first three years in office, Obama has sat down for 408 interviews, compared to Bush’s 136 and Clinton’s 166.

“He prefers interviews because he prefers speaking on a particular topic,” Kumar said. “He likes to develop his thinking. He likes to talk at length.”

Katy Culver, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said it’s beneficial for Obama to “take the temperature of different groups of people.”

“We used to live in a world of monologues,” she said. “But that world of monologues is gone now. It’s become of world of dialogues and the president is smart to tap into that. It expands the conversation.”

But, Obama should also regularly field questions from the people who follow his movements most, Culver said.

The social media events should be “in addition to, not instead of,” she said.

At the same time, Kumar pointed out that “things haven’t changed much” when it comes to presidents preferring to go it alone without the press.

“I’m reminded of Eisenhower’s press secretary who once wrote, ‘To hell with slanted reporters, we’ll go directly to the people,’ ” Kumar said.

HuffPost- First Posted: 01/30/2012  9:04 am Updated: 01/30/2012  1:22 pm

WASHINGTON — A liberal super PAC is set Monday to launch what it is billing as a multimillion dollar campaign to “Take Down the Tea Party Ten.”

The effort by the progressive outfit CREDO aims to use the new big-spending super PAC model, which can accept unlimited donations, to back extensive local organizing and “education” aimed at defeating 10 members of Congress seen by the left as the worst of the worst.

“We’re talking about some of the most odious members of Congress. Even for Republicans these guys are low,” said Campaign Manager Matthew “Mudcat” Arnold in a statement.

“We’re going to empower local activists to organize their friends and neighbors to lay out the truth about their representatives in the most basic terms,” Arnold added. “They are anti-woman. They are anti-science. They are hypocritical, bigoted, and have said and done things that are downright crazy. They’ve done more to embarrass their constituents than they have to govern or work toward solutions. They are unfit for Congress, and we’re going to help their constituents hold them accountable.”

The first six lawmakers targeted by the group are Reps. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), Steve King (R-Iowa), Allen West (R-Fla), Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), Frank Guinta (R-N.H.), and Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.). Four more will be chosen by CREDO’s members.

MORE HERE

This Blog Supports The Re-election of President Barack Obama!

As TP’s Igor Volsky pointed out today, Newt Gingrich has been accusing President Obama of perpetrating a “war on religion,” saying the president has made it more difficult for people of faith to practice their beliefs. But at a campaign stop in Florida this afternoon, Gingrich made that not all religions are created equally:

GINGRICH: Now, I think we need to have a government that respects our religions. I’m a little bit tired about respecting every religion on the planet. I’d like them to respect our religion.

Watch it:

Is This Land Made for You and Me – or for the Super-Rich?

truth-out Thursday 12 January 2012

by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Co. | Op-Ed

The traveling medicine show known as the race for the Republican presidential nomination has moved on from Iowa and New Hampshire, and all eyes are now on South Carolina. Well, not exactly all. At the moment, our eyes are fixed on some big news from the great state of Oklahoma, home of the legendary American folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose 100th birthday will be celebrated later this year.

Woody saw the ravages of the Dust Bowl and the Depression firsthand; his own family came unraveled in the worst hard times. And he wrote tough yet lyrical stories about the men and women who struggled to survive, enduring the indignity of living life at the bone, with nothing to eat and no place to sleep. He traveled from town to town, hitchhiking and stealing rides in railroad boxcars, singing his songs for spare change or a ham sandwich. What professional success he had during his own lifetime, singing in concerts and on the radio, was often undone by politics and the restless urge to keep moving on. “So long, it’s been good to know you,” he sang, and off he would go.

What he wrote and sang about caused the oil potentates and preachers who ran Oklahoma to consider him radical and disreputable. For many years he was the state’s prodigal son, but times change, and that’s the big news. Woody Guthrie has been rediscovered, even though Oklahoma’s more conservative than ever – one of the reddest of our red states with a governor who’s a favorite of the Tea Party.

Read article at truth-out Thursday 12 January 2012

Christmas Is No Time to Talk About War and Peace

truthout Sunday 25 December 2011

by: ,

When I heard the president speak to returning troops last week, my mind flashed back to an article I once wrote for our local newspaper. Each week, a different member of the local clergy would write a column, and I had been asked to write the piece for Christmas.

That year, all I could hear was the drumbeat leading toward a war with Iraq. I racked my brain trying to think of a way to put faces on the people we were about to bomb. Looking at a nativity scene, I thought, “The people we are about to kill look like that.” Maybe a reframed Christmas story could help Americans stop hating Saddam long enough to care about the people who will pay the real cost of this invasion. I submitted the following article, covering the Christmas story the way the US press was covering the buildup to the Iraq war. Looking back, I should have known what was about to happen.

Christmas Cancelled as a Security Measure

Ellis Island – The three wise men were arrested today attempting to enter the country. The Iraqi nationals were carrying massive amounts of flammable substances known as “frankincense” and “myrrh.” While not explosives themselves, experts revealed that these two substances could be used as a fuse to detonate a larger bomb. The three alleged terrorists were also carrying gold, presumably to finance the rest of their mission.

Also implicated in the plot were two Palestinians named Joseph and Mary. An anonymous source close to the family overheard Mary bragging that her son would “bring down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly.” In what appears to be a call to anarchy, the couple claims their son will someday “help prisoners escape captivity.”

“These people match our terrorist profile perfectly,” an official source reported.

All of the suspects claimed they heard angels singing of a new era of hope for the afflicted and poor. As one Wall Street official put it, “These one-world wackos are talking about overturning the entire economic and political hierarchy that holds the civilized world together. I don’t care what some angel sang; God wants the status quo – by definition.”

Read more at truthout

Well, it’s anther Christmas in Hooland and “The Grinch” just can’t stand it. With copious amounts of unpremeditated gall, he re-affirms his alliance with AIPAC, and CUFI “Christians United for Israel, Reverand John Hagee’s religious empire that has heavy ties with the occupation of Jerusalem. The old Grinch has decided to go sledding again, and we better be ready for him…G%

OpEdNews December 22, 2011

By Bob Johnson

Newt Gingrich, as a Washington insider, knows who to please in order to promote his political career. Top on the sycophant’s list of who to please, as it is of virtually all of the politicians regardless of political party, is the powerful Israel lobby.

The very first act Newt would make as United States President is not to address homelessness, unemployment, bank corruption, etc. No, it would instead be to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the international, but Israeli occupied, city of Jerusalem. This would help Newt win more Jewish support for his political career even though it is very likely to cause much more unrest and even new violence. It is also in direct violation of international law, in particular United Nations Resolution 478. (It’s interesting to see the priorities of politicians in America. The last on their list of importance is the well-being of their voting cattle — the American people! U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, from Florida, after winning his election went straight to Israel! For anyone with more than two braincells working it’s very painfully obvious that the Jewish state of Israel takes great precedence over America and the American people in the minds and hearts of the U.S. politicians of both parties.)

Read article at OpEdNews