Like peas in a pod. A very scary pod:

Alter­Net
Rand Paul Con­tin­ues to Asso­ciate with Old Neo­con­fed­er­ate Allies as He Pre­pares a Pres­i­den­tial Run
Most pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates don’t have race-bait­ing ghost­writ­ers.

July 31, 2014

Rand Paul, the U.S. Sen­a­tor and 2016 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, keeps cross­ing paths with his noto­ri­ous polit­i­cal soul mate, Jack Hunter, who ghost-wrote Paul’s 2011 book but resigned from his Sen­ate staff last July after his past as a neo-Con­fed­er­ate blog­ger who praised Abra­ham Lincoln’s killer—and called for African-Amer­i­can film­mak­er Spike Lee to be whipped—caught up with him.

On Wednes­day night, Paul gave the keynote address to the Young Amer­i­cans For Lib­er­ty 2014 con­ven­tion in Wash­ing­ton. The Lib­er­tar­i­an group, which once hired Hunter—who had blogged as “The South­ern Avenger” and was known for wear­ing a Con­fed­er­ate flag facemask—is hav­ing him Hunter for a Fri­day morn­ing talk, enti­tled, “You Can’t Be A Con­ser­v­a­tive With­out Being A Lib­er­tar­i­an.”

As Ken­tucky civ­il rights pio­neer Geor­gia David Pow­ers told Alter­Net this week, Paul has a long his­to­ry of vot­ing against the inter­ests of African-Amer­i­cans, despite recent efforts to recast him­self as a racial jus­tice cru­sad­er. “A leop­ard does not change its spots,” Pow­ers said, adding that Paul has sur­round­ed him­self with white suprema­cists for years.

That brings us back to Hunter, who wasn’t just anoth­er south­ern­er vent­ing that the wrong side won the Civ­il War. Thanks to the Inter­net Archive Way­back Machine, you can read what he wrote in 2005 for the Charleston City Paper, where he rel­ished the per­sona that he cre­at­ed of a Con­fed­er­ate-flag-masked pun­dit seek­ing to offend Yan­kee sen­si­bil­i­ties.

In the piece where Hunter said that he’d be cel­e­brat­ing the birth­day of Lin­coln assas­sin, John Wilkes Booth, he also ridiculed the African-Amer­i­can hol­i­day of Kwan­zaa.

“Now, the South­ern Avenger isn’t one to begrudge oth­ers from cel­e­brat­ing what­ev­er they want. I know I raise a per­son­al toast every May 10 to cel­e­brate John Wilkes Booth’s birth­day,” Hunter wrote, before he turned on Kwanzaa’s founder. “Now you tell me. How did this race-obsessed, misog­y­nis­tic ex-con, get the main­stream Amer­i­can media to take a hol­i­day he invent­ed seri­ous­ly?”

You might think that a politi­cian with pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions would dis­tance him­self from peo­ple whose pasts con­tained beyond-stu­pid youth­ful indis­cre­tions. But not so, with Paul, wrote James Kirchik, for The Dai­ly Beast, where he last July detailed more of Hunter’s neo-Con­fed­er­ate rav­ings. He com­pared the anti-impe­ri­al­ism of the Old South to the Islam­ic insur­gents fight­ing Amer­i­cans in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mediaite.com, anoth­er right-wing web­site, not­ed that fel­low con­ser­v­a­tives had “out­ed” Hunter.

Before Hunter went to work for Paul’s sen­a­to­r­i­al staff, the Young Amer­i­cans for Lib­er­ty hired him as nation­al out­reach direc­tor. Here’s what their press release said, teem­ing with enthu­si­asm for their new like-mind­ed col­league:

“YAL is very pleased to announce the addi­tion of Jack Hunter, also known as the South­ern Avenger, to our nation­al staff. He is join­ing YAL in the posi­tion of Direc­tor of Out­reach, and will be respon­si­ble for build­ing and main­tain­ing good rela­tion­ships with our allies in the lib­er­ty move­ment.

“Jack has pre­vi­ous­ly been involved in YAL as a writer and con­tribut­ing edi­tor of Young Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion and a par­tic­i­pant and host at many of YAL’s events, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the annu­al CPAC con­fer­ence.

“Out­side of YAL he is wide­ly pub­lished, per­haps most notably as a coau­thor of Sen­a­tor Rand Paul’s book, The Tea Par­ty Goes to Wash­ing­ton. A promi­nent fig­ure in the lib­er­ty move­ment, Jack­’s most recent writ­ings and videos may be viewed at his web­site.

“I know I can speak for all of the YAL staff when I say we are thrilled to have Jack on board, and look for­ward to work­ing with him for years to come!”

Why does this mat­ter? Because Paul is a lead­ing 2016 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, who, among oth­er things, is going around the coun­try and giv­ing speech­es to civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions about reform­ing dra­con­ian fed­er­al drug laws that imprison minori­ties. As Kentucky’s for­mer state Sen­a­tor Geor­gia Pow­ers said, Paul is a “great pre­tender” who can­not be trust­ed. And trust is key here, because as a politi­cian like Paul moves into high­er orbits, the cir­cle of peo­ple who they know and trust shrinks.

Now, Hunter, accord­ing to a Mediaite.com arti­cle last fall, has been seek­ing to revive his rep­u­ta­tion and apol­o­gize for his racist rants—saying it was an insen­si­tive shtick for an arro­gant twen­ty-some­thing year old. “Hunter wrote that while Paul knew of his per­sona as the South­ern Avenger, the Sen­a­tor did not know of his pre­vi­ous state­ments, includ­ing toast­ing to John Wilkes Booth, call­ing for Spike Lee to be whipped, and more.”

Medi­aite is refer­ring to a Novem­ber 2013 piece in Politico.com, enti­tled, “Con­fes­sions of a Right Wing Shock Jock: I’m not a Racist; I Just Played One on the Radio.” Here’s an excerpt:

“Sen. Paul had known that I used to wear a Con­fed­er­ate wrestling mask as part of an old radio shtick, and I still some­times used the South­ern Avenger moniker—it was my Twit­ter han­dle and appeared on my Face­book page. But he hadn’t known about the many stu­pid and offen­sive things I’d said…

“It was painful to revis­it because it sounds awful to me today, so I could only imag­ine what it sound­ed like to African-Amer­i­cans in 2000. I recall mak­ing equal­ly insen­si­tive com­ments about ille­gal immi­grants and Mus­lims. When­ev­er I put on that wrestling mask, I took on a per­sona that was inten­tion­al­ly out­ra­geous and provoca­tive. I said many ter­ri­ble things. I dis­avow them.

“But let’s be hon­est: My com­men­tary wasn’t all that dif­fer­ent from what more main­stream con­ser­v­a­tives were saying—at the time and still today…Most con­ser­v­a­tives are not, and nev­er were, racists. But many have dis­played a dis­re­gard for minori­ties for a very long time and in a pletho­ra of ways. I cer­tain­ly did.”

This week, both Paul and Hunter are speak­ing on at the Young Amer­i­cans For Lib­er­ty 2014 con­ven­tion. The group’s mis­sion, tak­en from its web­site, is, “to iden­ti­fy, edu­cate, train, and mobi­lize youth activists com­mit­ted to ‘win­ning on prin­ci­ple.’ Our goal is to cast the lead­ers of tomor­row and reclaim the poli­cies, can­di­dates, and direc­tion of our gov­ern­ment.”

...

“It was painful to revis­it because it sounds awful to me today, so I could only imag­ine what it sound­ed like to African-Amer­i­cans in 2000. I recall mak­ing equal­ly insen­si­tive com­ments about ille­gal immi­grants and Mus­lims. When­ev­er I put on that wrestling mask, I took on a per­sona that was inten­tion­al­ly out­ra­geous and provoca­tive. I said many ter­ri­ble things. I dis­avow them.

But let’s be hon­est: My com­men­tary wasn’t all that dif­fer­ent from what more main­stream con­ser­v­a­tives were saying—at the time and still today…Most con­ser­v­a­tives are not, and nev­er were, racists. But many have dis­played a dis­re­gard for minori­ties for a very long time and in a pletho­ra of ways. I cer­tain­ly did.”

You have to love that expla­na­tion: Jack Hunter was­n’t racist and he dis­avows the awful things he said while being inten­tion­al­ly out­ra­geous provoca­tive. Also, what he was say­ing isn’t that dif­fer­ent from what you hear from more main­stream con­ser­v­a­tives today. So the good news is appar­ent­ly that pro­fes­sion­al racists aren’t actu­al­ly racist. They’re just huck­ster mer­ce­nar­ies. Assum­ing that’s actu­al­ly true, you have to won­der if that’s a bet­ter sce­nario for the nation at large vs one where shock jocks like Hunter real­ly are racists that are now pre­tend­ing to be huck­ster mer­ce­nar­ies. The answer isn’t obvi­ous.

He’s in it to win it!

TPM Livewire
Rand Paul Ready To Hire Con­tro­ver­sial Ex-McConnell Cam­paign Man­ag­er

By Daniel Strauss
Pub­lished Decem­ber 9, 2014, 10:17 AM EST

Sen. Rand Paul (R‑KY) said that Jesse Ben­ton, the for­mer cam­paign man­ag­er for Sen­ate Repub­li­can Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑KY), will be part of Paul’s cam­paign team in 2016.

Ben­ton, served as McConnel­l’s cam­paign man­ag­er for much of the 2014 cycle until he resigned amid ques­tions about the role he alleged­ly played in a 2012 Iowa pay-for-votes bribery scan­dal.

Paul, in an inter­view with WHAS11, said that he thinks “Jesse is hon­est, he’s good at pol­i­tics and I don’t think he’s done any­thing wrong.”

It was­n’t clear from Paul’s com­ments if he was refer­ring to his Sen­ate re-elec­tion cam­paign or the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign he’s rumored to be gear­ing up for.

.The impor­tant thing to know about Ben­ton is that he’s long been tied to the Paul fam­i­ly. He pre­vi­ous­ly was Ron Paul’s cam­paign man­ag­er when the then-Texas con­gress­man ran for pres­i­dent in 2008 and 2012. He was also caught on audio say­ing that he was hold­ing his nose to help McConnell so he could help Paul down the line.

“Jesse is mar­ried to my niece and was a big help in the Ken­tucky elec­tion here in 2010 and a big help for Sen. McConnell,” Paul said. “And, yes he’ll help us.”

Paul also sug­gest­ed that the fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion into the bribery scan­dal that result­ed in Ben­ton leav­ing McConnel­l’s cam­paign may have been taint­ed by pol­i­tics.

...

You have to won­der if a Rand Paul would be tempt­ed to just par­don par­don if he becomes pres­i­dent. It seems. pos­si­ble.

This should be a fun game: Guess why the GOP edit­ed out a sec­tion of Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s States of the Union address that hap­pened to con­demn both tor­ture and anti-semi­tism. Was the GOP try­ing to qui­et­ly express a pro-tor­ture stance or pro-anti-semit­ic sym­pa­thies? The GOP has yet to giv­en an expla­na­tion so there isn’t real­ly a wrong answer, although it’s hard to imag­ine an answer from the GOP that isn’t ‘wrong’ in some sense:

Think Progress
Repub­li­cans Post Doc­tored Ver­sion Of State Of The Union, Cen­sor Facts On Cli­mate Change

by Emi­ly Atkin
Post­ed on Jan­u­ary 21, 2015 at 10:42 am
Updat­ed: Jan­u­ary 21, 2015 at 11:41 am

The offi­cial web­site for House Repub­li­cans has post­ed on YouTube a doc­tored ver­sion of Pres­i­dent Obama’s State of the Union address which cuts out com­ments where the Pres­i­dent was crit­i­cal of Repub­li­can rhetoric on cli­mate change, ThinkProgress has learned.

In the website’s “enhanced web­cast” of the State of the Union speech, Pres­i­dent Obama’s com­ments crit­i­ciz­ing Repub­li­cans for say­ing they are “not sci­en­tists” when it comes to cli­mate change are erased.

At the 43:25 minute mark, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is sup­posed to say “I’ve heard some folks try to dodge the evi­dence by say­ing they’re not sci­en­tists; that we don’t have enough infor­ma­tion to act. Well, I’m not a sci­en­tist, either. But you know what — I know a lot of real­ly good sci­en­tists at NASA, and NOAA, and at our major uni­ver­si­ties. The best sci­en­tists in the world are all telling us that our activ­i­ties are chang­ing the cli­mate, and if we do not act force­ful­ly, we’ll con­tin­ue to see ris­ing oceans, longer, hot­ter heat waves, dan­ger­ous droughts and floods, and mas­sive dis­rup­tions that can trig­ger greater migra­tion, con­flict, and hunger around the globe.”

Instead, the entire sec­tion is skipped. Obama’s com­ments resume with “The Pen­ta­gon says that cli­mate change pos­es imme­di­ate risks to our nation­al secu­ri­ty. We should act like it.”

You can watch the gop.gov ver­sion of the video here.

...

The 43:25 minute mark is not the only place where the video is edit­ed. At the 44:51 minute mark, a sec­tion is edit­ed out where Oba­ma spoke of respect­ing “human dig­ni­ty,” pro­hibit­ing tor­ture, and speak­ing out against anti-Semi­tism. The sec­tion that is edit­ed out reads as fol­lows: “As Amer­i­cans, we respect human dig­ni­ty, even when we’re threat­ened, which is why I’ve pro­hib­it­ed tor­ture, and worked to make sure our use of new tech­nol­o­gy like drones is prop­er­ly con­strained. It’s why we speak out against the deplorable anti-Semi­tism that has resur­faced in cer­tain parts of the world.”

A spokesper­son for House Speak­er John Boehner’s office did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to ThinkProgress’ request for com­ment on whether the edits were inten­tion­al or not, but we’ll update if we hear back.

If it does turn out that the edits were inten­tion­al, it wouldn’t be the first time a gov­ern­ment offi­cial attempt­ed to cen­sor cli­mate-relat­ed con­tent. In 2005, media revealed that White House offi­cial Philip Cooney was alter­ing gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments to down­play links between fos­sil fuels and glob­al warm­ing. Cooney was the chief of staff to Pres­i­dent Bush’s Coun­cil on Envi­ron­men­tal Qual­i­ty.

Go ahead and take a guess! Remem­ber, there’s no wrong answer. And there could even even be mul­ti­ple right answers...right answers that hap­pen to be hor­ri­bly wrong. What a fun game!

While this edit­ing is ridicu­lous and clear­ly biased, the rea­son that they would edit out Oba­ma attack­ing anti-semi­tism is that it hurts their nar­ra­tive that they are the torch­bear­ers of sup­port for Israel, while he is not.

Oba­ma’s Israel record is a very mixed bag. On the one hand, no Amer­i­can pres­i­dent has done more to make sure Israel has the mil­i­tary hard­ware it needs. On the oth­er hand, he has hand­ed gifts on a plat­ter to the GOP with things like hav­ing Ker­ry try to use Turkey and Qatar as mod­er­a­tors in Gaza con­flict. That was par­tic­u­lar­ly appalling. But the GOP knows they have a win­ner by tak­ing a tougher anti-jihadist stance than the Democ­rats, and that is hope­ful­ly some­thing that is reg­is­tered as a “wake­up call” for Dem lead­er­ship after the most recent elec­tion.

@Tiffany: Along those lines, it will be inter­est­ing to see how the GOP’s sur­prise invite to Ben­jamin Netanyahu to address Con­gress plays out in com­ing months. The White House is clear­ly pissed about being blind­sided like that, so it’s prob­a­bly not an issues that’s going to fade away. Plus, hav­ing the Speak­er of the House invite a for­eign head of state to address Con­gress with­out the pri­or approval of the Pres­i­dent might have been ille­gal:

ThomHartmann.com
Is John Boehn­er a Trai­tor?

Jan. 22, 2015 12:52 pm
By Thom Hart­mann

John Boehn­er may be a trai­tor.

On Wednes­day, the Speak­er of the House con­firmed that he had invit­ed Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu to come speak to Con­gress, “on the grave threats rad­i­cal Islam and Iran pose to our secu­ri­ty and way of life.”

The announce­ment just so hap­pens to come as Repub­li­cans in Con­gress are push­ing for new sanc­tions against Iran, which threat­en cur­rent diplo­mat­ic nego­ti­a­tions with that coun­try.

As of now, Netanyahu is expect­ed to speak to a joint ses­sion of Con­gress in March, while he’s in the U.S. for the annu­al AIPAC con­fer­ence. So, why is Boehner’s invi­ta­tion to Netanyahu such a big deal?

First off, it’s a HUGE vio­la­tion of pro­to­col and MASSIVELY dis­re­spect­ful to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and the author­i­ty of the exec­u­tive branch. It is com­plete­ly unprece­dent­ed for the Speak­er of the House, or any mem­ber of Con­gress, to invite a for­eign leader to come to the U.S. and speak to Con­gress with­out get­ting autho­riza­tion and/or coop­er­a­tion from the White House. As Guy Ziv, a pro­fes­sor at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty who has stud­ied U.S.-Israeli rela­tions told TPM, “It’s unprece­dent­ed. It’s hit­ting below the belt. It’s tak­ing par­ti­san­ship to a whole new lev­el.”

By invit­ing Netanyahu to speak to Con­gress with­out the author­i­ty of the exec­u­tive branch, Speak­er Boehn­er is bad­ly blur­ring the lines of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, and again mas­sive­ly dis­re­spect­ing typ­i­cal pro­to­col. But, more impor­tant­ly, he may be in vio­la­tion of a num­ber of laws, which may make him a trai­tor. So, let’s take a look at a few legal pos­si­bil­i­ties where the Speaker’s actions may be con­sid­ered crim­i­nal.

First, you could make a case that by invit­ing Netanyahu to speak to Con­gress with­out author­i­ty from the exec­u­tive branch, Speak­er Boehn­er is com­mit­ting an act of sedi­tion. Sedi­tion is defined as con­duct or speech incit­ing peo­ple to rebel against the author­i­ty of a state or monarch. How­ev­er, it would be hard to prove that by invit­ing Netanyahu to speak to Con­gress, Boehn­er is try­ing to incite Amer­i­cans to rebel against our nation; he’s just using a for­eign leader to lob­by for his own leg­is­la­tion. This is why a bet­ter case for Boehn­er’s crim­i­nal con­duct can be made under the Logan Act.

Estab­lished back in 1799, the Logan Act makes it ille­gal for unau­tho­rized Amer­i­can cit­i­zens to nego­ti­ate with for­eign gov­ern­ments. Vio­la­tion of the act is a felony, and comes with a pun­ish­ment of up to three years in prison.

In order to pros­e­cute Boehn­er under the Logan Act, there would have to be suf­fi­cient proof that he was act­ing “with­out author­i­ty” when he asked Netanyahu to come and speak to Con­gress, and that “author­i­ty” isn’t spec­i­fied in the law, although at the time it was passed, it was clear­ly intend­ed to be held in the hands of Pres­i­dent John Adams, who was furi­ous that mem­bers of Con­gress were talk­ing to French politi­cians.

It’s also pos­si­ble that Boehn­er is in vio­la­tion of Fed­er­al Elec­tions Com­mis­sion (FEC) law. Sec­tion 441e of FEC law makes it ille­gal for, “a per­son to solic­it, accept, or receive a con­tri­bu­tion or dona­tion” from a for­eign nation­al. In oth­er words, if Speak­er Boehn­er were to accept cam­paign mon­ey from Netanyahu, or use the speech to help raise mon­ey for Repub­li­cans in any way, he would be guilty of vio­lat­ing FEC law. Some­body needs to look into this, par­tic­u­lar­ly to see if the hands of any of the Repub­li­can bil­lion­aires who obsess on Israel issues are involved in this.

Sec­tion 441e also makes it ille­gal for “a for­eign nation­al, direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, to make a con­tri­bu­tion or dona­tion of mon­ey or oth­er thing of val­ue, or to make an express or implied promise to make a con­tri­bu­tion or dona­tion, in con­nec­tion with a Fed­er­al, State or local elec­tion.” How is this speech not a thing of val­ue to the Repub­li­cans?

The bot­tom-line here is that, by invit­ing Prime Min­is­ter Netanyahu to speak to Con­gress, Speak­er Boehn­er may have bro­ken any num­ber of laws, and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice needs to inves­ti­gate. And even if no crim­i­nal activ­i­ty is found, we can’t for­get how mas­sive­ly dis­re­spect­ful this move by Boehn­er is.

...

“Sec­tion 441e also makes it ille­gal for “a for­eign nation­al, direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, to make a con­tri­bu­tion or dona­tion of mon­ey or oth­er thing of val­ue, or to make an express or implied promise to make a con­tri­bu­tion or dona­tion, in con­nec­tion with a Fed­er­al, State or local elec­tion.” How is this speech not a thing of val­ue to the Repub­li­cans?”

Would­n’t that be some­thing if, after Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and McCutcheon open the flood gates to secret unlim­it­ed cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions the, Speak­er of the House man­ages still man­aged to vio­late cam­paign finance laws in a very pub­lic way that does­n’t involve any mon­ey at all.

Also note that the state­ment from the White House on the mat­ter is that the Oba­ma won’t meet with Netanayahu dur­ing his trip. The rea­son? “As a mat­ter of long-stand­ing prac­tice and prin­ci­ple, we do not see heads of state or can­di­dates in close prox­im­i­ty to their elec­tions, so as to avoid the appear­ance of influ­enc­ing a demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion in a for­eign coun­try”:

Oba­ma will not meet Israel’s Netanyahu on U.S. vis­it

By Matt Spetal­nick and Jef­frey Heller

WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM Thu Jan 22, 2015 6:57pm EST

(Reuters) — Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma will not meet Israel’s prime min­is­ter when he vis­its Wash­ing­ton in March, the White House said on Thurs­day, after being blind­sided by the Repub­li­cans’ invi­ta­tion to Ben­jamin Netanyahu to address the U.S. Con­gress on Iran.

Bernadette Mee­han, spokes­woman for the White House Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, said Oba­ma was with­hold­ing an invi­ta­tion for Oval Office talks with Netanyahu because of Israel’s March 17 elec­tions.

“As a mat­ter of long-stand­ing prac­tice and prin­ci­ple, we do not see heads of state or can­di­dates in close prox­im­i­ty to their elec­tions, so as to avoid the appear­ance of influ­enc­ing a demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion in a for­eign coun­try,” Mee­han said in state­ment.

“Accord­ing­ly, the pres­i­dent will not be meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Netanyahu because of the prox­im­i­ty to the Israeli elec­tion, which is just two weeks after his planned address to the U.S. Con­gress.”

Ear­li­er on Thurs­day, Netanyahu announced that he would address Con­gress in March.

...

Netanyahu’s office said the Israeli leader would also attend the March 1 to 3 annu­al pol­i­cy con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton of the promi­nent pro-Israel AIPAC lob­by.

Israeli polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors por­trayed Boehn­er’s invi­ta­tion as either a Repub­li­can attempt to give Netanyahu a boost in the elec­tion cam­paign or an Israeli bid to med­dle in U.S. pol­i­tics, or both.

Some ana­lysts said, how­ev­er, that a third Netanyahu address to Con­gress would have lit­tle impact on Israelis long accus­tomed to his ora­to­ry skills in Eng­lish on the inter­na­tion­al stage.

...

“Israeli polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors por­trayed Boehn­er’s invi­ta­tion as either a Repub­li­can attempt to give Netanyahu a boost in the elec­tion cam­paign or an Israeli bid to med­dle in U.S. pol­i­tics, or both.” If that’s the dynam­ic already devel­op­ing in Israel around this issue and the White House already fram­ing its response to the ker­fuf­fle as one of con­cern over influ­enc­ing Israel’s elec­tions, you have to won­der if some sort of ‘Netanyahu-gate’ is just around the cor­ner. Prob­a­bly not, but you nev­er know.