Pennsylvania Shouldn't Have Any Senators

post from The American Prospect on 16 March 2012 12:13:40 PM. © The American Prospect

Earlier this week Rick Santorum decided he didn't want to win Puerto Rico's upcoming GOP primary. "They'd have to speak English, that would be a requirement." Santorum said as a stipulation for Puerto Rico attaining statehood. "That's a requirement we put on other states. It's a condition for entering the union." Santorum walked the comment halfway back Thursday, but continued to insist on the supremacy of English in state law. "English should be taught here, and everyone should speak English here," he said.

Santorum recognizes that he is going to likely lose Puerto Rico?the popular governor of the island has endorsed Mitt Romney?so he's trading in some dog whistling for xenophobic GOP voters in the rest of the country. What's amusing though is Rick Santorum's clear lack of understanding in U.S. law.

If, as he first insisted, English had to be on the books as official state law, Santorum would have never been able to enter the United States Senate. His home Pennsylvania is one of 19 states that do not designate an official language. If Santorum's logic were extended to existing states?including others he hopes to win such as West Virginia, Texas, or Wisconsin?the flag would have a lot fewer stars. It'd be surprising if Santorum is unaware of Pennsylvania's lack of a law since Republicans in the state House introduced two measures to make English the official language this past fall.

For the record, Puerto Rico would already qualify under Santorum's arbitrary guidelines. English and Spanish are both official languages in the territory, though Spanish is more commonly spoken.

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http://prospect.org/article/pennsylvania-shouldnt-have-any-senators

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Ex-CBO Staffers Warnings About Foreclosures
Ignored

post from Firedoglake on 16 March 2012 12:13:15 PM. © Firedoglake

Dr. Lan Pham, a former senior staffer financial economist for the Congressional Budget Office, was fired from the organization for her attempts to quantify the economic implications of foreclosures and foreclosure fraud. The CBO rejected her analysis[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/Bv-LrvGm6Y0/

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Rick Santorum boasts of $1 million haul since
winning southern primaries

post from Daily Kos on 16 March 2012 12:09:26 PM. © Daily Kos

But it's one-third Romney's haul in double the time (Steve Marcus/Reuters)
Rick Santorum's campaign must be very proud:

Rick Santorum's campaign reported raising a million dollars since Wednesday.
Santorum's campaign confirmed the fundraising haul and the date it began to The Hill on Friday.

Unfortunately for Santorum, Mitt Romney raised $3 million on Wednesday alone?triple Santorum's haul in less than half the time. In theory, Santorum could go back to his donors?if they are all new?and raise more from them, because most of them won't have maxed out, unlike Romney's donors. But speculation isn't cash, and Romney still has more of it than Santorum. A lot more.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/27r8HYuP0KA/-Rick-Santorum-boasts-
of-1-million-haul-since-winning-southern-primaries

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Cartnoon

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 16 March 2012 12:04:33 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Crusader vs. the PiratesCrusader Rabbit Crusade 2 Episode 11Open Thread [...]

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http://www.docudharma.com/diary/29367/cartnoon-by-ek-hornbeck

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Additional Subpoenas Were Issued In Probe Of MEK
Speaking Fees

post from TPMMuckraker on 16 March 2012 12:01:37 PM. © TPMMuckraker

Speaking firms that represent at least two other former government officials who have been paid by a network of supporters of the Iranian opposition group MEK have received subpoenas from the Treasury Department, NBC's Michael Isikoff reported Friday.

In addition to former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), the list of officials whose speaking agencies have received subpoenas now includes former FBI Director Louis Freeh and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton.

Rendell told Isikoff that Freeh and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey (who told TPM he had no comment on the probe earlier this week) were hiring a lawyer to represent all the officials caught up in the probe.

"This is about finding out where the money is coming from," an Obama administration official familiar with the probe told Isikoff. "This has been a source of enormous concern for a long time now. You have to ask the question, whether this is a prima facie case of material support for terrorism."

Isikoff writes that it wasn't entirely clear why the Treasury Department began pushing the probe now, over a year after the lobbying campaign got underway. But he says that a small Pennsylvania-based firm called Speakers Access wrote an email to a national security expert asking the individual to speak in Switzerland "on behalf of our client, National Council of Resistance of Iran, Foreign Affairs Committee."

The email was turned over to the FBI and other U.S. officials because the National Council of Resistance is considered to be an alias of the MEK, designated as a terror group. The executive who wrote the email told Isikoff the email was a "mistake" and said the actual client was "the Committee for Human Rights in Iran," which Isikoff points out has the same contact in Paris as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Read the full report here.

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TPMmuckraker/~3/zvh8PhC0DGE/additional_subpoenas_i
ssued_in_probe_of_mek_speaki.php

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Congratulations! It's an iPad!

post from Talking Points Memo on 16 March 2012 12:01:07 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Look, we think Apple makes cool products too. They just don't excite us quite this much. [...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/-24P5kF44uM/congratulations
_its_an_ipad.php

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The Road We've Traveled

post from DemConWatch on 16 March 2012 12:01:00 PM. © DemConWatch

If you haven't seen it yet:

Read The Full Article:
http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com/diary/5227/the-road-weve-traveled

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War on Women: Best Ad Ever, Courtesy of
MoveOn.org

I saw this commercial on MSNBC for the first time on Thursday morning. I truly hope MoveOn has ad buys in all the national markets on all the cable channels. If not, they definitely should.

What makes this commercial such a grabber is using women to speak the words men have spoken against them. I wasn't paying attention at all to the commercials, but I did a double take on this because what they were saying didn't make sense for them to be saying.

Which is, of course, the point. Well done, MoveOn.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/best-ad-ever-courtesy-moveonorg

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Lemony Broccoli, Leek and Tarragon Soup

Reblogged from food to glow:

Lookin' good!

Read The Full Article:
http://kmareka.com/2012/03/16/43805/

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‘On the Road’ and ‘Hemingway
and Gellhorn’

So much of what works for me about On the Road lies in the prose, but if this trailer is any indication, the movie might actually succeed at capturing what it feels like to be young and having a set of experiences you’re convinced no one else has possibly had before and that no one will have in the future, because you are that unique:

On The Road – Official trailer – (HD 1080p) by MK2diffusion

It actually makes me wish someone would do A Moveable Feast, which has that same sense of impassioned naivete and openness to the world, that promise that “we’ll never love anyone else but each other,” “no. Never.” And I’m excited for HBO’s upcoming Hemingway & Gellhorn which is the experience to those stories’ innocence:

I’m not sure it’ll be good or not, but I do appreciate that it’s from Gellhorn’s perspective. She didn’t want to be a footnote in his life while they were both alive, and it’s nice to see she’s not here.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/03/16/445840/on-the-road-and-hemingway-and-g
ellhorn/

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