Senator Marco Rubio at CPAC: What a Mess!

February 28, 2015

The 2016 election is only 619 days away. From time to time, between now and then, MRW will highlight candidates/potential candidates and their flaws. Today, we feature Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) Senator Rubio’s campaign is nascent, and he helped himself not at all at CPAP on Friday morning.

Senator Rubio used his speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference, in part, to comment on the U.S. fight against ISIS. Steve Benen for MSNBC, in Rubio blasts ISIS strategy he supports, reports on the fiasco of a speech. First, he shares what Senator Rubio said, in part:

“ISIS is a radical Sunni Islamic group. They need to be defeated on the ground by a Sunni military force with air

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Bibi and the DHS Shutdown: Congress at Work!

February 27, 2015

Regular readers know that I avoid certain topics, including the Middle East. Nothing is absolute, however, and Tuesday’s speech to a joint session of Congress by Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu provides a more than adequate basis for commentary.

You’ve probably heard about this fiasco for awhile. The nuts and bolts are simple. Speaker of the House John Boehner invited the Prime Minister to address Congress while he was in Washington for the AIPAC (American Israeli Political Action Committee) annual do! The invite was not cleared with the State Department or the White House. It was arranged, instead, through Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, former Miami Beach resident and Republican Party operative Ron Dermer.

So what’s this all

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Obamacare News

January 29, 2015

Rich! Just really rich! That’s my reaction to House GOP Demands To Know What Obama Will Do If SCOTUS Guts Obamacare, posted at TalkingPointsMemo on January 28 and written by Sahil Kapur.

The issue is King v. Burwell, No. 14-114, the Supreme Court case to be argued on March 4. The plaintiffs claim subsidies cannot be provided to insureds in states without their own exchanges. Most of these states—which rely on the federal exchange—are red states, controlled by Republican governors and legislatures. (For more on the issues, read King v. Burwell: The Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court Meet Again from MRW, posted in November 2014.)

Mr. Kapur focuses on a January 28 letter from five House

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Keystone XL: What’s the Real Story?

January 10, 2015

The Keystone XL Pipeline will deliver shale oil from Canada to refineries in Illinois and Texas, and to a storage facility in Oklahoma. Will deliver is a misnomer, however, for a working pipeline from Alberta to Illinois and Port Arthur in Texas exists. Now.

So what’s all the fuss about, if the thing is already built? A bigger, more direct pipeline from Alberta to Steele City in Nebraska, apparently. (If you knew there was a working pipeline now, say so in the comments section. You’ll find no comment from me, by the way.)

I intended to focus on the January 9 decision by the Nebraska Supreme Court—and I’ll get to it—but learning about the existing pipeline makes it hard not

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