Progress Illinois

As we noted in the Early Bird, Rep. Mark Kirk is now expressing skepticism about John McCain's running mate. When asked if Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had the qualifications to become president, the North Shore Republican told the Tribune editorial board yesterday: "Quite frankly, I don't know." When pressed further, he told the assembled reporters "I would have picked someone different."

But one month ago, Kirk was signing a different tune.

Talking to the Tribune on September 1, he described himself as "encouraged" by the pick. In an September 2 interview on WLS' Don Wade And Roma In The Morning, Kirk praised the governor for her ethics crusading nature. Listen below:

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There's contrarian and then there's just silly. Speaking to WLS's Don Wade and Roma early this morning, Time editor-at-large Mark Halperin lauded House Republicans for protecting American taxpayers during the negotiations surrounding the mammoth -- and now defeated -- Wall Street bailout bill. Listen:

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HALPERIN: The House Republicans are kind of like the beleaguered, red-headed step children of our political system right now. They are the minority in the lower house. But if it weren’t for them, I think we would have had a deal passed that would have had less oversight, more money, more dictatorial powers. And so we're in a better place than we were, but it still ain't a great place. 

DON WADE: Are we marking down Mark Halperin: friend of House Republicans?

HALPERIN: A staunch backer in this case. I really think they did the public a lot of good because the House Democrats weren’t crazy about what the White House proposed.  But if House Republicans had stepped forward and said "We're in line, Mr. President.  We're going to vote for this," the thing would have passed probably largely the way the administration would have proposed it.

Where to start ...

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Some conservatives are laying blame for the mortgage crisis in all the wrong places.

Earlier this week, the National Review joined others on the right in in castigating the Community Reinvestment Act, which forced banks to loan in communities of color at the same level as other neighborhoods.

Others, like Chicago radio personality Don Wade, thinks it's the fault of Congress for their lack of oversight. While interviewing Rep. Jan Schakowsky on WLS' Don Wade & Roma In The Morning today, he asked: "But what about the very regulators who were supposed to be manning the gates – the people like [Rep.] Barney Frank [D-MA] and [Sen.] Chris Dodd [D-CT] and all of those people?"  Of course, many overlook that the securitization and selling of the debt got us where we are today, not the mortgage defaults themselves. This practice was made possible by Congress' dismantling of the depression-era Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, which had the effect of handcuffing government regulators whose job it was to prevent such risky financial maneuvers.

Schakowsky reminded the WLS hosts that not everyone in Washington supported that move. Listen below:

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ROMA: You guys were all overseeing all of this. You were supposed to be being sure everyone was on the mark as well. So I think the blame is going to spread both sides of the aisle.  I think it’s going to spread all the way up the tree to the top.  And I think the average citizen who takes out a mortgage in good faith is the one left holding the bag. I feel like I'm on a snipe-hunt.

SCHAKOWSKY: You know … in 1999, there were 57 of us who voted not to do the deregulation of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill that actually set the stage for all of this -- the repeal of Glass-Steagall. And you know, and this is the result of that. The Congress has been working all year to try and help homeowners and communities, not just people who got themselves into bad loans, and we did pass some legislation. But the regulation system is completely out of whack.

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Like other Illinois conservatives, former Speaker Dennis Hastert is thrilled with John McCain's vice presidential pick, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Why so pleased? Live from the Republican convention, he explained his reasoning on WLS' Don Wade & Roma Morning Show today, saying that she is "the only person that’s a real American family person that’s come out in this election." Listen here:

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What a patently absurd statement. After an auto accident claimed his daughter and wife, Joe Biden raised two young sons by himself, commuting between his home in Delaware and Washington D.C. by train every night to be with his family. Barack Obama's grandfather marched in Patton's Army and his grandmother worked on a bomber assembly line, later studying under the G.I. Bill. His mother raised the presidential nominee and his sister by herself, relying in part of food stamps so she could finish her bachelor's degree and put her kids through college on loans and scholarships. But Biden has been in the Senate too long to be a "real American family person."  Meanwhile, Obama doesn't share -- in Roma's words -- Palin's "recognizable American lifestyle."

Hastert's touting of Palin's American values also excuses her fringe belief, exhibited from the mid-1990s onward, that Alaska should secede from the union. Lincoln would be so proud.

Rep. Mark Kirk, in his first appearance on WLS' Don Wade & Roma Morning Show since the infamous "shoot on sight" fiasco, was back in rare form today. This time, the North Shore Republican offered listeners a false proposition: either drill for oil offshore or buy oil from the Iranians. Listen here:

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KIRK: We have a fundamental choice. We need to get off oil, but for the time being we are still dependent on it. We can either buy 80 billion barrels of oil from the Iranians or from ourselves. And we should buy it from ourselves.

It's unclear where Kirk got the 80 billion figure.  That aside, his assumption that the United States will be forced to rely on Iran if we don't feed our oil dependency at home is a pretty sneaky way of scaring voters into the GOP's pro-drilling camp.

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There aren't two Americans more fond of the GOP's "Texas Tea Party" than the hosts of WLS' Don Wade & Roma. As the so-called "protest" trudges along, the broadcast duo continues to have House Republicans on their show, thanking the representatives for their purportedly valiant efforts. Today, House Minority Leader John Boehner called in from the Cincinnati airport -- en route to the Capitol after some R&R on the golf course -- making sure to spread some distortions along the way.

For instance, while discussing Republicans' demand that Democrats return from August recess to hold a vote on the GOP's bill to increase offshore oil drilling, Roma and Boehner had this exchange:

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ROMA: In her interview with George Stephanopoulos, Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally ended up with one mantra at the very end of the 10 times he asked her tried and pin her on why she wouldn’t allow a vote. And she said finally, “I want to save the planet.” Is it because the Democratic Party has become beholden to the greenie groups that have funded their presidential runs so heavily?

BOEHNER: Oh yeah. They worship at the altar of radical environmentalism and that’s why they are standing in the way.

Their effort to paint Democrats as the side whose energy positions are controlled by special interests is quite remarkable.

Consider this: since 1990 environmental groups have contributed $17.7 million to candidates at the federal level -- most of which has gone to Democrats. During the same period, the oil and gas industry has doled out $220 million. These contributions have been directed at Republicans by a three-to-one margin.  But according to Roma and Boehner, it's the Democrats who are "beholden."

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On Sunday, Rep. Peter Roskam and his family decided to forgo their scheduled family vacation and instead headed east to Washington, DC, where a group of House Republicans were gathering to protest what they have termed the "Pelosi shutdown" -- the decision by Democrats to adjourn for August recess without first voting on offshore drilling legislation.

Yesterday, Roskam called into WLS' Don Wade & Roma to discuss his impromptu trip. After lauding him for his effort -- even thanking him for "helping America's families" by moving the energy debate forward -- the radio hosts assisted Roskam in obscuring some crucial facts about the drilling proposal. For instance, listen to this exchange:

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ROSKAM: Our desire is to move a holistic energy policy forward. There is an understanding that were not simply going to drill our way out of this, but you’ve got to pursue those sources of energy in the short-run.

But if we can't "drill our way out of this" energy crisis, as Roskam acknowledges, why should we devote resources to expanded offshore drilling? Why not instead focus most of our energies -- and taxpayer dollars -- on developing sustainable, alternative sources of energy?

Curiously absent from the 11-minute discussion on WLS was any mention of timeframes -- with one exception. During the above clip, Roskam appeared to suggest that increased drilling will help lower gas prices "in the short-run."

But a recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted we wouldn’t see “a significant impact” on gas prices until 2030. No economist from any ideological position disputes this point. So unless Roskam equates "20-plus years" with "short term," he's being highly misleading.

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Rep. Mark Kirk covered a lot of ground on WLS' Don Wade and Roma yesterday. In our rush to knock down his false claim on Chinese oil drilling and his major Obama-Osama gaffe, we forgot to highlight his objection to the recent Supreme Court ruling reinstating Habeas Corpus rights to Guantanamo Bay detainees, a decision Barack Obama supports.

Listen to Kirk assert that if we were to give Osama bin Laden the right to challenge his detention, "You could have a scene like Johnnie Cochran saying, 'If the headdress doesn't fit, you must acquit!' ":

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Kirk's silly analogy is based on the assumption that any legal standard extending habeas rights to bin Laden (or anyone else for that matter) necessarily means the statute is immoral and worthless. Tell that to the Founding Fathers, who inserted it in our Constitution as a basic human right, even before the Bill of Rights was enacted. From the Supreme Court decision (pdf):

"The Framers viewed freedom from unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty, and they understood the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom."

Just because the man is one of the worst on the planet doesn't mean we shouldn't uphold our oldest and most foundational laws. As Anonymous Liberal writes, "The whole point of due process is to determine whether someone is guilty. It’s the punishment that is supposed to vary depending on the seriousness of the crime, not the process."

And frankly, what is Kirk so afraid of? It's implausible to imagine any jury hearing the challenge of bin Laden and then overturning his detention. The Nation's Chris Hayes clearly articulated this on MSNBC's Countdown last night:

HAYES: I don't actually understand what Giuliani and McCain and Bush and conservatives are so scared of. I mean, let's imagine we got Osama bin Laden in custody and he challenged his detention before a court of law. Do we really think that there's any court that would look at the evidence and say, "Okay, you're free to go, Mr. Bin Laden"? Of course not.

The whole idea of Habeas Corpus is to allow people who have been wrongly imprisoned to bring their case before a court -- an impartial fact-finder. And we know there are people in Guantanamo who probably are there for the wrong reasons and it would mean they could go home to their families.

But in the case of Osama bin Laden it's just ludicrous to imagine that Habeas Corpus would lead to him being released.

Ludicrous, indeed.

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Another day, another instance of Rep. Mark Kirk twisting the facts.

Last week, we noted his falsehoods about the uninsured population in America. Yesterday, we thoroughly debunked his bogus claim that the federal unemployment insurance benefit extension he voted against would lead people to cash in after two weeks of work.

Then, during an appearance on WLS' Don Wade & Roma Morning Show today, Kirk falsely asserted that the Chinese are drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba. Listen here:

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Vice President Dick Cheney made the same claim last week in front of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, adding that "even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply."

But the assertion that the Chinese are drilling in the Gulf of Mexico -- first put forth by George Will -- is completely false.

Jorge Piñon, an energy expert at the University of Miami’s Center for Hemispheric Policy, told The Miami Herald that “China is not drilling in Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico waters, period.” The Congressional Research Service agrees.

After being called out on the mistake, Cheney backtracked last Wednesday, saying: "It is our understanding that, although Cuba has leased out exploration blocks 60 miles off the coast of southern Florida, which is closer than American firms are allowed to operate in that area, no Chinese firm is drilling there."

Why then, Rep. Kirk, are you still peddling this trash a week later?

And then there's this ...

Since Barack Obama stepped onto the national stage, public officials from John Ashcroft to Ted Kennedy to Mitt Romney have mistakenly referred to him as "Osama." Today, Mark Kirk added himself to this illustrious list. However, I think it goes without saying that he picked a most inopportune context.

Listen to Kirk express his support for a policy "where if we see Obama there's a shoot-on-sight order":

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Obviously, Kirk meant to say "Osama." But geez ... talk about a gaffe.

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This is a few days old, but I find it rather amusing.

Last Friday morning, former Hewlett Packard CEO and McCain campaign surrogate Carly Fiorina called in to WLS Radio's Don Wade & Roma In The Morning to discuss the presidential race. During the conversation, Fiorina said, "I'm proud that a woman and an African-American can run for the President of the United States. And I'm proud that this political season we had as diverse a slate of candidates as we've ever had in this country."

Listen:

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Obviously, what's funny about this is that Fiorina's party offered a slate of candidates that didn't include a single woman or person of color. So she is essentially saying she's proud of the Democrats.

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