Earmark Hypocrisy? GOP Leaders Grilled on Spending

Jonathan Karl Presses Sens. John Cornyn and John Thune to Explain GOP Double-Talk

Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and John Thune, R-S.D., held a press conference today to rip the Democrats' new 1,924-page, $1.1 trillion omnibus bill for containing $8 billion worth of earmarks.
"The bill is loaded up with pork projects, and it shouldn't get a vote," Thune said.
"I think this is an outrage," railed Cornyn.
But Thune and Cornyn have tens of millions of dollars for their own earmarks in the bill, including Thune's request for $8 million for B-1 bomber fleet maintenance and Cornyn's request for $1.6 million for the Texas Army National Guard Counter-Drug Task Force.
"How do you have any credibility on this?," asked ABC's Jon Karl.
"Because we're going to vote against the bill," said Cornyn. "This is the wrong way to do business."
"Senator, were you wrong when you put these earmarks in before," Karl asked.
"Karl, this is not just about earmarks," said Cornyn. "Earmarks are a symptom of wasteful Washington spending that the American people have said they want reformed. We agree with them, and that's why we will vote against this bill. But you're missing the story if you think it's just about earmarks. This is about a flawed process of sweetheart deals cut behind closed doors, and a big bill, a spending bill, dropped on the American people and on us on December the 14th, without adequate time to amend it and debate it and to reveal to the American people what is in it so they can cast their judgment."
"So I think -- I think that's to me the context. And we've said very clearly -- we voted for an earmark moratorium. We will abide by that, and we will reject any earmarks requested by us or anyone else, because that's what the American people told us they want."
"Is that an acknowledgement that what you did was wrong, to put the earmarks in in the first place?" Karl said.
"I think you've asked the question about five times, and I've tried to answer it to the best of my ability," Cornyn responded.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, another Republican, anti-pork crusader, has said he would file an amendment to eliminate all earmark funding in the bill. For around 6,488 earmarks, he said, that comes to about $8.3 billion.
"I thought that the message was pretty clear, that the American people said, 'Enough with the spending, enough with the pork barrel earmark spending, enough of mortgaging our children's and our grandchildren's futures,'" McCain said on the Senate floor last night.
"The American people said just 42 days ago, 'Enough.' Are we tone deaf? Are we stricken with amnesia? What is going on here?"
"When we're running record deficits, when there's a $40,000 debt for every man, woman, child in America, we're going to have 6,488 earmarks totaling nearly $8 billion -- $277,000 for potato pest management in Wisconsin. You'll notice that there is a location for literally every one of these earmarks -- $246,000 for bovine tuberculosis in Michigan and Minnesota, $522,000 for cranberry and blueberry disease breeding in New Jersey, $500,000 for oyster safety in Florida. One of my favorites, $349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina. Another one of my all-time favorites that's always in there, $413,000 for peanut research in Alabama."
McCain even unveiled his top 10 list of pork projects in the bill. At No.1? $300,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii.
Meanwhile, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and other conservative senators want to force an oral reading of the massive bill on the Senate floor, which could take up to 60 hours.
"Americans didn't vote in November to ram through Obama's agenda in December," said DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton. "Congress should do what's necessary, stop tax increases and fund the government with a continuing resolution, and then wait for other important debates until the leaders Americans just elected are seated. This is a desperate last-minute rush by politicians thrown out of office to ram through deficit spending, pork-barrel earmarks and a treaty that could weaken national security on their way out the door."
Senate Democrats are now trying to dual-track the omnibus bill with the Start nuclear treaty with Russia. But Congress needs to act fast. If lawmakers do not extend funding for the government by Saturday night, then the government will shut down.

House Democrats should go big on the estate tax or stay home

Posted at 4:34 PM ET, 12/15/2010

By Ezra Klein

The House Democrats are pushing to amend the estate tax deal in the compromise -- which may blow up the whole deal. That sort of risk might be worth it for a major amendment to the policy, but that's not really what the House is offering up here.

There are basically three versions of the estate tax on the table. If we do nothing, it'll exempt the first $1 million of estates and tax the value above that at 55 percent. That would affect 2 percent of estates and raise about $700 billion over the next 10 years. The version in the tax deal -- also known as the Lincoln-Kyl rates -- would exempt $5 million and tax the rest at 35 percent. That'd affect 0.25 percent of estates and raise closer to $300 billion.

And then there's what House Democrats are fighting for: A $3.5 million exemption and a 45 percent tax rate. Chris Van Hollen calls this "the common sense compromise," but it really isn't. It's the same level as the Bush tax cuts set in 2009. It would raise about $400 billion and affect 1 percent of estates. It's much closer, in other words, to the Republican vision than to what'll happen if we do nothing.

I could see the argument for getting the estate tax back down to its 2001 levels. The rich have gotten richer since then, and their taxes have gone lower. But I can't see the argument for blowing up the tax deal over the difference between George W. Bush's 2009 rates and the Lincoln-Kyl rates. Over the next two years, the difference between those bills is $10 billion. If House Democrats are willing to risk the whole deal to fix the estate tax, they should actually fix the estate tax. Simply affirming the Bush rates isn't worth it and is arguably worse than just taking a hardline on the necessity of the 2001 levels when the Lincoln-Kyl levels expire in 2012.

A Tea Party Christmas

— By Stephanie Mencimer

| Wed Dec. 15, 2010 1:32 PM PST

While the media and liberal politicians have often portayed the tea party movement as a monolithic angry white mob, over the past year and a half, I've found that tea party activists are far from a homogeneous group, even if they are mostly white. I've met some real characters: A Tennessee lawyer who campaigned for Congress carrying a pitchfork who doubles as a volunteer fire fighter; a Virginia safety engineer and Navy vet who owns a lot of guns and drives a German car jury-rigged to run on vegetable oil (better known as a "grease car"); and then of course, there's Robin Stublen, a Florida activist who kills bugs and cuts grass for a living.

Usually Chrismas is a huge time of year for Stublen, because when he isn't campaigning for Gov-elect Rick Scott, blasting his local zoning board for some sort of incompetence, orcomplaining about feckless Republicans, he's generally working to cover his house with 350,000 Christmas lights. His house becomes such a major spectacle in the town of Punta Gorda that it has its own website giving directions and hours for the light show and indicating when Santa is likely to appear. The lights draw so much traffic that Stublen has been able to raise nearly $12,000 in donations in the past five years from passersby that he's donated to local Kiwanis clubs. It's an unusual hobby, and one you might not expect from your sterotypical tea partier, but Stublen is obsessed with what he calls "extreme lighting."

This year, however, he was supposed to have knee surgery, so he skipped the annual light production. But for those of us who won't be able to see the tea partier in his Santa suit, Stublen has put some of his display on video and posted it on YouTube.  For an entirely different perspective on the tea party movement, you can check it out here:

 

You have never seen The Drifters quite like this before.

Joshua Held is the individual responsible for the cartoon deer I used on White Christmas and other songs. Check out his classic YouTube video on his website: http://www.joshuaheld.com/

House votes again to repeal 'don't ask, don't tell'

Posted at 7:01 PM ET, 12/15/2010

By Ed O'Keefe

Updated 7:01 p.m. ET
House lawmakers approved a bill Wednesday to end the "don't ask, don't tell" law, giving new momentum to an effort backed by President Obama, Pentagon leaders and gay rights activists to end the ban on gays serving openly in the military this year.

The House voted 250 to 175 to repeal the 17-year Defense Department law that bars gays and lesbians from serving openly in uniform. The 75-vote margin was wider than a similar vote in May. Fifteen Republicans voted for the bill while 15 Democrats opposed it.

President Obama heralded the vote, saying in a statement that ending current military policy "is not only the right thing to do, it will also give our military the clarity and certainty it deserves. We must ensure that Americans who are willing to risk their lives for their country are treated fairly and equally by their country."

Wednesday's vote sends the bill back to the Senate, where a vote will not occur until next week at the earliest, according to a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).

The bill's language originally appeared in an 800-page defense authorization bill passed by the House in May. But the bill failed a procedural vote in the Senate last week, requiring the House to vote again on a new measure to end the ban.

Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) introduced the new bill last week, believing it will earn broader Republican support after the Senate completes consideration of the New START Treaty and government spending. Forty-seven senators, including Reid, are cosponsoring the bill.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said Wednesday she would join Republican colleagues Scott Brown (Mass.) and Lisa Murkowski(Alaska) in voting to end the ban if the Senate votes again on the bill.

The House voted first on the new bill because its cosponsors, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.) believed doing so would allow the Senate to consider it more quickly as a privileged resolution requiring fewer days of debate.

"It's time to end a policy of official discrimination that has cost America the service of some 13,500 men and women who wore our uniform with honor," Hoyer said Wednesday. "It's time to stop throwing away their service -- their willingness to die for our country -- because of who they are."

Most House Republicans opposed Wednesday's vote. In a conversation with reporters before the vote, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif), who is slated to chair the House Armed Services Committee in the next Congress, said Democrats "were more concerned about 'don't ask don't tell,' I believe, than about the military and about carrying out our responsibilities for those who are laying their lives on the line every day to protect us. That's a bad system."

In a bit of levity, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) later echoed McKeon's sentiments on the House floor: "Maybe that's why our approval ratings are somewhere between used car salesman and embezzler," he said. (A record low 13 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a Gallup Poll survey released Wednesday.)

A new version of the defense bill without language ending "don't ask, don't tell" is expected to come up for a vote in the House later this week.

In a joint statement, gay rights groups pushing to end the ban cheered Wednesday's House vote, saying it "provides another resounding indication that 'don't ask, don't tell' can and should be repealed legislatively this year." The groups, ranging from the liberal Center for American Progress to the pro-gay Log Cabin Republicans, plan to spend the rest of the week lobbying other moderate Republican senators, including Richard Lugar (Ind.) and George Voinovich(Ohio). Neither has said in recent days how they might vote.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Wednesday also asked the Senate to quickly pass the bill. Doing so would enable the Defense Department "to carefully and responsibly manage a change in this policy instead of risking an abrupt change resulting from a decision in the courts," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.

But Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness and a vocal defender of the current military policy, criticized Democrats for holding Wednesday's vote "before most members of Congress have sufficient time to consider the consequences of that reckless action."

"Congressional chaos has become the new normal," Donnelly said.

McCain, the leading Republican critic of efforts to end the ban this year, did not comment on Wednesday's vote.

A majority of Americans support allowing gays and lesbians to sesrve openly in uniform, according to a Washington Post-ABC News pollreleased this week.

Staff writers Ben Pershing and Felicia Sonmez contributed to this report

The GOP's Epic Financial Crisis Commission Fail

— By Nick Baumann

| Wed Dec. 15, 2010 2:52 PM PST

On Wednesday morning, I told you aboutShahien Nasiripour's warning that Republicans on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission—the group charged with investigating the cause of the financial crisis—were about to issue a report embracing the bogus claim that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and loans to blacks and Hispanics were responsible for the collapse. Well, the report is out, and it's worse than we thought.

Remember, the Republicans on this commission are supposed to be the responsible, informed, and above all serious types who deserve to handle complex tasks like investigating and explaining the causes of the crisis. We're talking about people like Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who ran the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, and Keith Hennessey, who headed the National Economic Council. They're supposed to be wonks—Republican-leaning wonks, but wonks nonetheless. They're not supposed to be hardcore partisan hacks. That's why it's so disappointing to see them issue such an incomplete, misleading, half-assed, throwaway "report." 

As Nasiripour's reporting anticipated, the words that most people associate with the financial crisis—"Wall Street", "interconnected", "shadow banking", "deregulation", credit default swap—are absent from the Republicans' report. The word "derivative" is nowhere to be found. (TPM's Megan Carpentier has a great list of over a dozen other items in the commission's mandate that the GOPers simply ignored.) Meanwhile, the conclusion of the nine-page, three-footnote report focuses on an issue almost entirely divorced from the causes of the financial crisis: the federal budget deficit. "We caution our nation's leaders to learn the appropriate lessons from history and take seriously the need to reduce our federal deficit," the GOPers conclude. A large portion of the document, meanwhile, focuses on just what Nasiripour predicted it would:falsely blaming Fannie, Freddie, and lending to minorities for causing the crisis. 

Is this seriously the best they have to offer? Any semi-competent RedState poster could have summarized the book This Time It's Different and rehashed old attacks on the Community Reinvestment Act and Fannie and Freddie. Why are these guys wasting their time—and ours—doing it? If you're going to break away from the rest of the FCIC and draft your own report, the least people should expect is that you do a halfway competent job.

As Mike Konczal says, this effort would have earned an undergraduate a D+. And while the GOP report is undoubtedly a failure as an explanation for the crisis, it's not even a success as a political document. Most liberals could have written a report that would be both more accurate and more critical of Democrats. As I wrote earlier, it's not as if either party did a particularly stellar job of regulating the economy and the financial sector over the past few decades. I'm sure that people like Konczal and Dean Baker will have more on this later (UPDATE: Here's Konczal), but for now, I'll give you what the Republican commissioners have to say about their own report:

This document adds to that conversation rather than closing it. The two seminal works on the causes of the Great Depression, Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 and Ben Bernanke's "Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression," were published in 1963 and 1983, respectively, many decades after the crisis had ended. We anticipate that future generations will continue to provide additional insights into the causes of this financial crisis as well.

We had better hope someone provides some additional insights. Because what this report is offering is just not going to cut it.

Banishing The Evil Spirits

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

by digby


Some people seem to be surprised at this, but I'm not:

The American public is highly critical of the recent release of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables on the WikiLeaks Web site and would support the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by U.S. authorities, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

Most of those polled - 68 percent - say the WikiLeaks' exposure of government documents about the State Department and U.S. diplomacy harms the public interest. Nearly as many - 59 percent - say the U.S. government should arrest Assange and charge him with a crime for releasing the diplomatic cables.

Why wouldn't they think this since virtually everyone on TV, including journalists, is acting as if telling the truth about the US Government, even when it's done in league with reputable newspapers, is going to kill us all in our beds? It's not as if they are being told the truth --- even about that.

And frankly, it's clear that under the stress of rapid social change and economic insecurity, America is morphing itself quite comfortably into a police state, yearning to believe that it is under the most serious threats mankind has ever known (well, except for the real ones like climate change, which they increasingly believe is a hoax)in order to justify putting themselves into the hands of people who say they are protecting them. Like those lab rats who repeatedly shock themselves for rewards, they are so overstimulated that they are excitedly eating up the fearmongering and demagoguery, just so they can watch the authorities use their power to make it stop. 

It helps them feel safe to believe that these allegedly mortal threats can be banished when the police incarcerate and punish a single "evil" man. It also means protecting the very people who are really making them so terrified --- but that's how authoritarians roll.


.
digby 12/14/2010 01:00:00 PM

Steve 
This is a great post except for one cognitive disconnect: the caveat about the threat of global warming.  Global warming and terrorism both exist, but both are equally still the subject of fear mongering and police statism.  To declare as demagoguery the Right's fixation while ignoring the pet fears of the Left is the pot calling the kettle paranoid.

Today, 17:43:58

– Flag – Reply

AlcibiadesSlim 
Pop Authoritarianism. It protects you and makes you feel exceptional. Better than any pill or soap. Consumer cultures breed infantile minds.

Today, 17:28:50

– Flag – Reply

Jose Chung 
America is morphing itself quite comfortably into a police state 

Love the cold sober analysis 

Today, 13:07:59

– Flag – Reply

shermhed 
So refute Digby's statement, otherwise it is just more of the same from you. 

Today, 14:21:01

– Flag – Reply

Guest 
Confinement of civilians and foreign nationals without trials? Check.
Endless state of war; only proper use of tax dollars is on "defense." Check.
Largest number of prisoners in the world? Two-tiered system of justice? Biased and ineffective propoganda instead of actual press? Etc. You know it's true.

Today, 18:36:17

– Flag – Reply

johnny 
For the most part, Americans believe what they are told to believe.

Today, 10:22:57

– Flag – Reply

Sam Simple 
Great post digby, but what a depressing article!  So, 68 percent of Americans think being lied to by your government is O.K. and that people who want to publish the truth should be punished?  Boy, we are more fucked than I realized when a full two-thirds of Americans are that far down the rabbit hole!

Today, 06:31:29

– Flag – Reply

Terrrier 
I'm not going to hold my breath.  We have no institution left to speak the truth and the intertubes will be a poor substitute once they are stolen and commoditized. Horse transportation may yet save us! (Damn little else can.)

Today, 00:55:42

– Flag – Reply

The Oracle 
If U.S. AG Eric Holder uses the Espionage Act against Assange if Assange is extradited to the U.S., then Mr. Holder will have to also use it against all the former Bush/Cheney administration officials who traitorously participated in the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, the biggest national security breach since the 1950s and the Cold War.

Valerie Plame Wilson's CIA identity was highly compartmentalized at the CIA. Very few people at the CIA, a handful at most, even knew that she was a covert non-official-cover CIA agent, and no one OUTSIDE the CIA was privy to this ultra-top-secret information...unless someone started digging...like top Bush/Cheney administration officials did in July 2003, apparently spurred on by Veep Dick Cheney's office.

Somehow this ultra-top-secret information about covert NOC CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson LEAKED out of the CIA and into the top echelons of the Bush/Cheney administration, where her name and CIA employment started getting tossed carelessly around.

A CIA official twice warned Robert Novak about revealing her ties to the CIA before his column was published, with the CIA official not being able to say specifically why this would be bad, so Novak did it anyway, blowing Valerie Plame Wilson's cover in the process.

Other "journalists" were also involved (Tim Russert, Judith Miller), who were also told about Valerie Plame Wilson's CIA connections, all for the purpose of top Bush/Cheney administration officials getting back at her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson.

And it doesn't matter who started this treasonous chain of events (Richard Armitage, or so it's claimed). Anyone with this ultra-top-secret information about covert NOC CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson in their possession, and then told others, violated the Espionage Act and should be tried and convicted, from George W. Bush on down...not just Scooter Libby.

And after top Bush/Cheney administration officials blew Valerie Plame Wilson's cover, they retroactively sought to declassify everything so that they could claim that they hadn't committed treason, hadn't violated the Espionage Act, hadn't revealed highly classified, ultra-top-secret information, hadn't blown a covert CIA agents cover for purely political purposes/vengeance.

So, Mr. Holder, do your job. Forget about Assange. Instead, go after the traitorous Republicans from the previous criminal Bush/Cheney administration and convict them for espionage, endangering our national security...which they definitely did.

Yesterday, 23:30:08

– Flag – Reply

News Nag 
Digs:  "America is morphing itself quite comfortably into a police state"

America is ALWAYS morphing itself into a police state.  America is a police state shape-shifter.  It is either the greater or the lesser police state.  Or actually the greater or the greatEST police state.  It's only a matter of degree, and it's never close to NOT being a police state.

Yesterday, 23:25:34

– Flag – Reply

jr 
sheep waiting to be sheared 

Yesterday, 23:20:59

– Flag – Reply

oh really 
Jeez, it's not like most Americans really support freedom, or a free press, or open government.

No surprise here at all.

Yesterday, 22:10:09

– Flag – Reply

Jan in Stone Mtn 
Americans, overall, don't like journalism, you know, the traditional bad news journalism, about corporate crime or bad news contradicting the glories of America.  On a maturity level, overall, Americans are about age 13.

Yesterday, 21:09:44

– Flag – Reply

shermhed 
Ding!

Today, 14:23:29

– Flag – Reply

Bob Soper, Jr. 
"On a maturity level, overall, Americans are about age 13." 

You are being far too generous. I would say it's more like age 5.

Apparently, a majority of Americans polled also support the Obama-GOP tax deal. I look forward to hearing their whiney protests when Social Security & Medicare are gutted like a dead fish as a direct result of said deal.

Today, 17:19:02

– Flag – Reply

Powkat 
These must bethe same idiots they interview in airports who all say some variation on, "Oh, well, it's what we have to do to be safe."  Some day I want to see the person who says, "It's all theater, and do you know that only 1/3 of the cargo gets checked, while you can't take your shampoo on board?"

Yesterday, 21:05:00

– Flag – Reply

iamdave 
And this is surprising because......?   The long term goal,defined 30 years ago is just about completed. 'Say goodbye to Hollywood'.  'My eyes could clearly see the Statue of Liberty sailing away to sea.' Sound taps. It is over.

Yesterday, 20:10:29

– Flag – Reply

Hmmm 
This is a good post by Digby.  It captures perhaps the only plausible reason for public reaction: a nation cowed into being lovers of police state 'security' they imagine awaits them for the mere price of shutting their eyes and ears to every possible inequity committed by their government in their name.  As the saying goes, "And they ain't seen nothing yet".

Yesterday, 19:42:58

– Flag – Reply

nogo postal 
one of my faves..via peking Duck
"As China ratcheted up the pressure on Google to censor its Internet searches last year, the American Embassy sent a secret cable to Washington detailing why top Chinese leaders had become so obsessed with the Internet search company: they were Googling themselves.
The May 18, 2009, cable, titled “Google China Paying Price for Resisting Censorship,” quoted a well-placed source as saying that Li Changchun, a member of China’s top ruling body, the Politburo Standing Committee, and the country’s senior propaganda official, was taken aback to discover that he could conduct Chinese-language searches on Google’s main international Web site. When Mr. Li typed his name into the search engine at google.com, he found “results critical of him.”
That cable from American diplomats was one of many made public by WikiLeaks that portray China’s leadership as nearly obsessed with the threat posed by the Internet to their grip on power — and, the reverse, by the opportunities it offered them, through hacking, to obtain secrets stored in computers of its rivals, especially the United States.
Extensive Chinese hacking operations, including one leveled at Google, are a central theme in the cables. The hacking operations began earlier and were aimed at a wider array of American government and military data than generally known, including attacks on computers of American diplomats preparing positions on a climate change treaty.
One cable, dated early this year, quoted a Chinese person with family connections to the elite as saying that Mr. Li himself directed an attack on Google’s servers in the United States, though that claim has been called into question. In an interview with The New York Times, the person cited in the cable said that Mr. Li personally led a campaign against Google’s operations in China but that to his knowledge had no role in the hacking attack.
…Precisely how these hacking attacks are coordinated is not clear. Many appear to rely on Chinese freelancers and an irregular army of “patriotic hackers” who operate with the support of civilian or military authorities, but not directly under their day-to-day control, the cables and interviews suggest.
But the cables also appear to contain some suppositions by Chinese and Americans passed along by diplomats. For example, the cable dated earlier this year referring to the hacking attack on Google said: “A well-placed contact claims that the Chinese government coordinated the recent intrusions of Google systems. According to our contact, the closely held operations were directed at the Politburo Standing Committee level.”
…[T]he cables provide a patchwork of detail about cyberattacks that State Department and embassy officials believe originated in China with either the assistance or knowledge of the Chinese military."

John Cornyn's Earmark Hypocrisy

— By David Corn

| Wed Dec. 15, 2010 1:15 PM PST

— WDCPix/Lauren Victoria Burke

On Wednesday afternoon, as House and Senate Democrats were trying to handle the end-of-session passage of an $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill to fund the federal government, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) sent out a blistering email fundraiser for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which he heads. In the note, Cornyn decried the 6,600 earmarks totaling $8 billion contained in the bill:

Will you help send a message to Senate Democrats? Go here and tell them that you will not stand for business as usual in Washington. They should not pass this bill and to stop spending money our country doesn't have.

Cornyn failed to mention that last year he numbered among Congress' top earmarkers—supporting dozens of earmark requests that added up to $228 million.

As for the current bill, Cornyn has had a tough time explaining his own contradictory actions. On Fox News, host Bill Hemmer hammered Cornyn for requesting $16 million worth of earmarks in the very bill he was denouncing Democrats for. "Can you defend that?" Hemmer presseed. Cornyn said that he supported the Senate GOP's two-year moratorium on earmarks and would vote against this spending bill. But with the Democrats in the majority, the bill could well pass without Cornyn's vote. Under that circumstance, he would be able to both claim credit for the earmarks and for voting against the Democratic bill.

At a Capitol Hill press conference on Tuesday, Cornyn ran into similar trouble. After both he and Sen. John Thune (R-SD) slammed the bill, reporters grilled them on why the measure contained earmarks they'd requested. "I support those projects, but I don't support this bill," Thune said. When one reporter said to Cornyn, "It appears like you're saying one thing and doing another," the senator replied, "Not at all." As a GOP staffer tried to end the press conference, another reporter asked Cornyn if he would acknowledge "that it was wrong to put the earmarks in in the first place." Cornyn responded, "You've asked the question about five times and I've tried to answer it to the best of my ability." Then Cornyn left the room.

So one of the primo earmarkers on the Hill won't say whether he should have shoved earmarks into the current (or previous) spending bill. But he shows no hesitation in blasting Democrats for passing a measure containing his earmarks. In that NRSC email, he exclaims, "Democrats have a lot of explaining to do to taxpayers." So, too, does Cornyn.