Kerry:Hey,Idon’tthinkIsraelisan

Kerry: Hey, I don’t think Israel is an apartheid state … yet

posted at 12:01 pm on April 29, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

After an avalanche of criticism across the political spectrum, Secretary of State John Kerry backed away from his use of “apartheid” in his criticism of Israel — but declined to apologize for it. Instead, Kerry blamed “partisan political purposes” in the criticism, even though members of his own party joined in the criticism, including his former Senate colleague Barbara Boxer (D-CA):

“I will not allow my commitment to Israel to be questioned by anyone, particularly for partisan, political purposes, so I want to be crystal clear about what I believe and what I don’t believe,” Kerry said after U.S. lawmakers and pro-Israel groups criticized him, with some demanding his resignation or at least an apology.

“First, Israel is a vibrant democracy and I do not believe, nor have I ever stated, publicly or privately, that Israel is an apartheid state or that it intends to become one,” he said.

“Second, I have been around long enough to also know the power of words to create a misimpression, even when unintentional, and if I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term to have a Jewish state and two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two-state solution,” Kerry said.

CBS notes that Kerry came in for plenty of Republican criticism. Eric Cantor, for instance, demanded an apology:

However, criticism wasn’t limited to that side of the aisle:

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California was also critical of Kerry’s comment, saying on Twitter, “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and any linkage between Israel and apartheid is nonsensical and ridiculous.”

DCCC chair Steve Israel (D-NY) rejected the idea that this was a political attack on Kerry, too:

John Kerry's statement on Israel was just plain wrong.

— Steve Israel (@RepSteveIsrael) April 29, 2014

A few news outlets called this an “apology,” but it’s pretty weak sauce, even if it includes the “if I could rewind the tape” phrase of regret. This sounds like a cross between the standard political non-apology apologies of “I’m sorry if you were offended” and “I’m sorry you’re too stupid to recognize my brilliance.” Given the utter debacle of American foreign policy under Kerry’s tenure and that of his predecessor Hillary Clinton, Kerry’s implicit invocation of his own brilliance is even more arrogant than it normally would be.

Remember …. this is Barack Obama’s top diplomat. Smart power, indeed.

Tags: apartheid, Barbara Boxer, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, John Kerry, smart power, Steve Israel

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Boxer:Whydoesn’tHobbyLobbyopposeViagra?

Boxer: Why doesn’t Hobby Lobby oppose Viagra?

posted at 12:41 pm on March 25, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Behold one of the most chronically misinformed members of the US Senate surprising utterly no one with the extent of her insight into the Hobby Lobby case.  Barbara Boxer appeared on MSNBC this morning to declare her support for the HHS contraception mandate, claiming at one point that it protects the religious freedom of employees. As Twitchy captured in this segment, Boxer then goes on to challenge Hobby Lobby’s owners for hypocrisy for not opposing insurance coverage of Viagra for men … which even flummoxes Boxer’s MSNBC interviewer:

First and foremost, Viagra (and other erectile-dysfunction drugs and treatments) aren’t widely covered by insurance. That’s one reason why a large online market for inexpensive purchases of the drugs exist. Second, as anyone who gives a moment’s thought about the subject would realize, such drugs would be appropriate to help empower natural procreation, which isn’t against anyone’s religion, last I checked. Lastly, and this is a more minor point, Boxer ignorantly invokes the Catholicism of the plaintiffs in this court hearing, when none of them are actually Catholic.

The religious objection is to contraception and sterilization, and in the Hobby Lobby case, it’s narrowed to a specific kind of contraception — abortifacients. Boxer blithely dismisses the distinction and blathers about the employer taking away the woman’s right to choose her form of contraception — which is nonsense. Just because an employer refuses to subsidize that choice does not mean they are forbidding it or blocking access to it. It’s the same kind of “war on women” double-talk that assumes that employers have total control over the private choices of their employees, when the existence of an independent salary demonstrates the exact opposite. No one gets paid in company scrip any longer, and haven’t for a century or so.

It’s utter drivel, and its source is unsurprising, to say the least.

Reuters, by the way, suspects that the majority of the court will rule on behalf of the businesses:

Majority of #SCOTUS justices appear likely to rule firms have right to religious claims, but ruling on merits unclear #breaking

— Reuters U.S. News (@ReutersUS) March 25, 2014

Take that with a Lot’s-wife-sized grain of salt, though. It’s usually a fool’s errand to guess the outcome of a Supreme Court case based on the tenor of the oral arguments.

Update: Ed Whelan hears second-hand that Justice Breyer may be a vote to overturn the mandate, and perhaps a 6-3 victory for Hobby Lobby is in the offing. We’ll check back when Whelan reads through the transcripts.

Tags: Barbara Boxer, contraception, HHS mandate, Hobby Lobby, Supreme Court, Viagra, War on Women

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SenateDemocratsplanall-nightglobal-warmingtalkathoninsupport

Senate Democrats plan all-night global-warming talkathon in support of … er …

posted at 9:21 am on March 10, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Talk about hot gas. Rick Perry may have affectionately mistaken our site name once, but Senate Democrats could be in position to trademark it for themselves after tonight. The caucus will hold an all-night talkathon to demand action on climate change, which has USA Today very confused. After all … don’t Democrats control that chamber?

A majority of Senate Democrats on Monday will launch an overnight “talkathon” until approximately 9:00 a.m. Tuesday to draw attention to climate change.

The overnight effort, organized by Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, is part of the recently launched Senate Climate Action Task Force headed by Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. …

The Democratic effort is cause for some confusion because these senators are calling for action in a chamber they control but without any specific legislation to offer up for a vote, or any timetable for action this year.

In other words, this is nothing but a stunt — and transparently so. Senate Democrats control all of the Senate committees, and what comes to the Senate floor. Boxer herself is the chair of the committee on environmental affairs, and could push through legislation any time she wants to the floor. They don’t have global-warming legislation bottled up by Republican obstruction, because they don’t have global-warming legislation at all. Why? It would kill any hopes of rescuing red-state seats for Democrats in the upcoming midterms, that’s why.

If these Democrats wanted to do something about this issue, they could put together legislation, and Senate Republicans would have few options to stop them. That isn’t keeping Democrats from blaming Republicans, though. Instead, they’re rallying for more executive action as a way to keep from dealing with the GOP:

Asked about the lack of a legislative proposal to serve as a focus for the talkathon, a Democratic aide suggested minority Republicans are at fault. “Our door is wide open for Republicans to talk through and discuss solutions as soon as they’re ready to accept scientific reality,” the aide said Sunday.

But it’s possible the Democratic campaign has little if anything to do with ever passing a global warming bill. After all, Senate Democrats had a huge, filibuster-proof majority in 2009 and 2010 and did not act on the cap-and-trade bill passed by the Democratic House at the time. It could be that the Senate Democrats’ strategy is more about encouraging the White House to take unilateral executive action on the environment than it is about Senate Democrats sticking their necks out by supporting major legislation in an election year.

“This caucus, what we have done is set up a Climate Action Task Force because we want to encourage the administration to take more action,” said Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin when the group introduced itself at a news conference in January. Beyond that, Cardin said, the Task Force wants to block bills that come from the House — no problem there, since that’s something that Majority Leader Harry Reid can do all by himself. Finally, Cardin said, Democrats want to make “incremental progress.” So the talkfest on the Senate floor Monday and Tuesday could well be an extended rah-rah for the White House more than a call to any legislative action.

Here’s a question. Since Senate Democrats don’t want to pass budgets (again demurring this year) and don’t want to write legislation for their own policy agenda, why are they contesting their incumbent Senate seats at all? After all, they’re not terribly interested in governance; they’re mostly interested in expanding the executive branch’s power so they won’t have to do their own jobs. If that’s all Senate Democrats want to do, let them join the executive branch, and Republicans can have their seats instead.

In a related note, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton wonders whether this is the worst Congress ever:

Veteran lawmakers are used to partisanship and stalemate, but they say Capitol Hill has sunk to a new dysfunctional low.

Congress has in some ways already closed for business until after the mid-term election. Any laws made between now and November will be minor.

President Obama’s “year of action” has started slowly and could end up as a punchline. Congressional approval ratings have hit all-time lows.

The relationships between congressional Republicans and Obama as well as between Democratic and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill lack the indispensable element of trust.

Well, when the Senate majority conducts a PR stunt without having the intestinal fortitude to back it up with action, the “dysfunctional” issues are clearly not equally applied across the aisle.

Tags: Barbara Boxer, climate change, Congress, global warming, Senate Democrats

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WhiteHousereleasesFY2015budgetreadout—$2.7

White House releases FY2015 budget readout — $2.7 trillion off from CBO projections

posted at 12:41 pm on March 4, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

The first question to ask is, why bother? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Budget Committee chair Patty Murray have already decided not to produce a budget for FY2015, an announcement that got a bit lost in the Russian invasion of Crimea at the end of last week. Consider this an example of listbox-checking at the White House, and little more. OMB rolled out its eight-page brief this morning of the budget proposal called “Opportunity for All,” which will end up being just as stillborn as Barack Obama’s last four budget proposals.

A Roadmap for Growth, Opportunity, and Fiscal Responsibility: The President’s Budget provides a roadmap for accelerating economic growth, expanding opportunity for all Americans, and ensuring fiscal responsibility. It invests in infrastructure, job training, preschool, and pro-work tax cuts, while reducing deficits through health, tax, and immigration reform.

Builds on Bipartisan Progress: The Budget adheres to the 2015 spending levels agreed to in the Bipartisan Budget Act and shows the choices the President would make at those levels. But it also shows how to build on this progress to realize the nation’s full potential with a fully paid for $56 billion Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative, split evenly between defense and non-defense priorities.

If this truly built on “bipartisan progress,” then Reid would rush it through the Senate to put pressure on House Republicans. Murray’s demurral tells us all we need to know about the White House’s “bipartisan” approach on budgeting. The tear sheet is basically a regurgitation of Obama’s continuing demands for “infrastructure” spending as “investments,” which the White House claims will reduce deficits, both in real terms and as a share of the GDP.

Pay attention to the lead set of bullet items, especially transportation:

Stronger Growth and Job Creation:
o Advanced manufacturing – Invests in American innovation and strengthens our manufacturing base, including a national network of 45 manufacturing institutes.
o Research and innovation – Supports ground-breaking research to fight disease, protect the environment, and develop new technologies, and makes permanent the R&D Tax Credit.
o Pro-growth infrastructure – Lays out an ambitious, four-year $302 billion surface transportation reauthorization proposal paid for with transition revenue from pro-growth business tax reform.
o Government reform – Promotes government management that delivers improved services that are more effective, efficient, and supportive of economic growth.

“Transition revenue from pro-growth business tax reform”? That would require the Senate to actually produce a business-tax reform, a possibility that the White House closed by making outgoing Senator Max Baucus the ambassador to China, even though he knew little about his assignment. Until then, he and Orrin Hatch had been working on the Finance Committee to produce an overhaul of the tax code for both businesses and individuals that would have made the US more competitive and tax planning more straightforward. His replacement, Ron Wyden, will have other priorities.

His colleague Barbara Boxer certainly does. The revenue for transportation spending will come from new or higher refinery taxes, Boxer told the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, since higher gas taxes are not politically possible and new mileage taxes are still a ways off. No matter what, though, Boxer pledged to get more funding, because Democrats won’t even consider looking for ways to spend less:

“I don’t see support for raising the gas tax and there is absolutely no way we’re going to cut spending, so it’s going to have to be a creative way to fund this in reality,” Boxer said.

“The administration, you are going to be hearing from them today, is that right? I think you’ll be excited at what they have done on this whole area of transportation,” Boxer told the annual AASHTO Washington Briefing. “They’re looking at tax reform which is certainly one way to make sure we have the funding for six years.”

The Federal Highway Administration has projected that the Highway Trust Fund, supplied by gasoline and diesel fuel taxes, will have to soon alter reimbursements to states for work due to a shortfall. The Congressional Budget Office predicts the Highway Trust Fund could run out of money by August.

Boxer says she’s supportive of new taxes for additional funding.

“Either we’re going to replace the gas tax with another way of funding which I love, which is the fee at the refinery level, I think I may be the only one that likes that idea, so I haven’t seen a groundswell of support for that idea.”

Note too the promise that government “reform” will generate more funds for Obama administration priorities. As far back as 2009, the White House has claimed that they couldn’t find any more spending to cut through reform. When did that change?

Readers probably didn’t need the Washington Post to tell them that Obama’s foreign policy comes from a rich fantasy life — and they won’t need the Post to tell them the same about his economic projections:

President Obama is just out with his newest budget request — which forecasts a dramatic reduction in deficits over the coming decade. The request paints a much rosier debt scenario than a report released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office a month ago. In his budget request, Obama projects public debt as a percentage of gross domestic project falling to 69 percent by 2024, while the CBO has it rising to 79 percent — a difference of 10 percentage points, or roughly $2.7 trillion.

This is largely because Obama assumes the passage of legislation that the CBO doesn’t, and he assumes those laws will generate far more revenue over the next decade. In 2024, the spending/revenue gap (i.e., the annual deficit) in Obama’s budget amounts to 1.6 percent of GDP. CBO’s projected deficit is more than twice that, at 4 percent of GDP.

A $2.7 trillion difference? That’s like an entire year of federal spending … or at least it was during the Bush administration and Republican control of Congress.

Tags: Barack Obama, Barbara Boxer, Budget, CBO, FY2015 budget, spending, taxes, transportation

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ProgressivesnotquitereadytoletthatKeystone

Progressives not quite ready to let that Keystone XL “conflict of interest” thing go yet

posted at 2:41 pm on February 28, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

When the State Department’s inspector general announced earlier this week that the investigation into an allegedly undisclosed conflict-of-interest problem with the contractor they hired to conduct Keystone XL’s draft environmental impact report failed to bear any fruit, Rep. Raul Grijalva — the same Arizona Democratic representative who put together this ultra-sciencey anti-Keystone vid and who’s been taking some heat for neglecting his Congressional duties in favor of showy protests with his fellow eco-radicals — was most displeased. He penned this little ditty over at the New York Times (I’ll direct you to Charles Cooke at NRO for a thorough dressing-down on that front), and rather conveniently, just the day before, Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island had begun a similar effort to leave no straw left ungrasped with a plea to Secretary Kerry to initiate a more health-centric impact study on the Keystone XL pipeline’s construction. Naturally, these hyper-progressives are now joining forces, via The Hill:

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is joining Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) in his call for the Government Accountability Office to investigate the State Department’s environmental review process for the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Boxer made the request in a letter sent to the GAO on Friday, just days after Grijalva asked for a similar investigation.

“I am writing to join Congressman Grijalva in his request. The State Department must not just follow a process for selecting outside contractors,” Boxer’s letter states. “The process must be rigorous, thorough, and transparent, especially when the project in question could put communities from Alberta, Canada, down to the Gulf Coast at risk. The American people deserve to know that their interests — not special interests — are being protected by our federal agencies.”

The GAO will probably take a couple of weeks to make a final decision on whether to investigate the process, an oh-so-auspicious use of our tax dollars on which these lawmakers and a bunch of environmentalist groups are now insisting — but please, by all means, proceed. At the end of the day, the Keystone XL pipeline will still be in our national interest, because the fact of that matter is that the United States needs to start laying down a lot more pipeline infrastructure to take better advantage of our shale oil and gas boom, and no amount of wind and solar energy is going to be able to provide a viable substitute for fossil fuels for a long time coming.

Tags: Barbara Boxer, Canada, environmentalism, Keystone XL Pipeline, Oil and Gas Industry, progressives

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Boxer,Whitehouse:YouknowwhatthisKeystoneXL

Boxer, Whitehouse: You know what this Keystone XL review really needs? A cancer study!

posted at 8:01 pm on February 26, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Just this afternoon, the State Department’s inspector general basically cleared the department of allegations (stemming from the Sierra Club and other environmentalist groups, as well as the likes of Rep. Raul Grijalva) that it violated conflict-of-interest procedures when it hired a contractor with potential ties to TransCanada and the America Petroleum Institute to conduct the draft environmental impact report. Nope, not much there, says the IG, via Politico:

The IG launched its investigation after environmentalists alleged that the contractor, Environmental Resources Management, had failed to fully disclose its ties to the oil industry and other interests that would benefit if the Obama administration approves the Alberta-to-Texas oil pipeline.

Greens also contended that the department failed to vet the company closely enough before hiring it to work on a sweeping study of Keystone’s environmental impact.

But after reviewing documents and interviewing State Department officials, the inspector general’s office found that the department had followed its prescribed vetting process — “and at times was more rigorous than that guidance.”

The IG also “found that the process the Department used to assess organizational conflicts of interest was effective in that (i) a reasonable review was undertaken to independently evaluate ERM’s certification that it had no conflict of interest and (ii) the process achieved its intended result,” the report continued.

OK, sweet — that’s resolved, so we can all move forward now with this job- and wealth-creating piece of pipeline infrastructure, of which our shale boom is in current and desperate need, and on which there have now been multiple environmental impact reviews, and for which there is large bipartisan support, and by which we would really help out our northern neighbor from whom we obtain a plurality of our energy imports? Right?

I kid, of course.

A debate of more than five years could stretch even longer with Wednesday’s call for a health study on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada.

Two Democratic senators — Barbara Boxer of California and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island — urged Secretary of State John Kerry to examine higher rates of cancer and other illness reported in places impacted by the “tar sands” oil from northern Alberta.

Their letter to Kerry sought to further delay the project that has support from Republicans, some Democrats, the oil industry and labor unions. A Pew Research Center poll in September showed 65% of respondents favored building it.

You can read more of her exact and asinine remarks here, but I just can’t, ya’ll. The lengths to which some of these progressives will go in their anti-intellectual crusade to forcibly wean us off of fossil fuels never ceases to amaze.

Tags: Barbara Boxer, bipartisanship, Canada, cancer, energy, environmentalism, Keystone XL Pipeline, Oil and Gas Industry, Sheldon Whitehouse

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