Authorities hunt for suspect in Border Patrol agent's killing

By Jonathan Clark, Manuel C. Coppola and Terry Ketron

Authorities combed the rugged terrain west of Rio Rico on Wednesday, searching for a fugitive suspect in the deadly shooting of a Border Patrol agent near Rio Rico.

Four suspects were detained immediately after Agent Brian A. Terry, 40, was shot late Tuesday in the Peck Canyon area. But a fifth eluded capture and was last seen heading south on foot in blue pants and a blue-and-white-striped shirt.

Police radio chatter early Wednesday afternoon noted a possible sighting of the suspect on the west slope of Atascosa Peak. Shortly after the radio report, the Nogales International witnessed a Department of Homeland Security Blackhawk helicopter circling over the peak, approximately 15 miles northwest of Nogales.

 

Earlier that day, ranchers along Ruby Road said they were advised by the Border Patrol that the suspect might be headed in their direction as he tried to make his way toward the U.S.-Mexico border. Law enforcement vehicles from federal, state and local agencies were seen streaming up and down the road throughout the day.

At one point Wednesday afternoon, police stopped a man near Kilometer 9 on Interstate 19 who matched the fugutive's description, according to a police radio report. But a local law enforcment source said later that the man checked out OK.

Shootout with bandits

Sheriff Antonio Estrada said his office first received a call for assistance shortly after 11 p.m. Tuesday night.

“Border Patrol called our dispatch, reporting shots fired and requesting emergency medical services to meet with them at Peck Canyon and Circulo Sombrero,” Estrada said.

The shooting happened near Forest Service Road 4197, he said.

Terry was airlifted to a Tucson hospital, where he was pronounced dead early Wednesday.

Representatives of the Border Patrol agents’ union said Terry and three other agents were waiting for suspected border bandits when the shooting began. No other agents were injured, but one of the suspected bandits was reportedly wounded.

Estrada said the FBI had taken over the investigation, and the four suspects who had been detained were not being held at the county jail.

He said Terry was the first Border Patrol agent killed in Santa Cruz County since 1998.

Dangerous duty

Terry was based out the Border Patrol’s Naco Station and was working with one of the agency’s BORTAC teams at the time of his death, said Brandon Judd, president of the Local 2544 agents’ union.

BORTAC units are SWAT-type teams that respond to some of the Border Patrol’s most dangerous situations, Judd said.

“They specialize in activity such as what they encountered last night, that’s what they’re there for,” he told the NI. “Any time an agent encounters a known suspect that has weapons, we call BORTAC.”

The area in and around Peck Canyon has been plagued in recent years by border bandits, with Border Patrol agents, hunters, rancher and illegal immigrants regularly reporting encounters – sometimes violent – with armed men. It’s no coincidence that Terry was working in the area, Judd said.

“Anywhere that we know that bandit activity is taking place, that’s where BORTAC goes,” he said. “If BORTAC’s out there patrolling that area, it’s a bad area." 

Copyright © 2010 Nogales International

Obama tells lawmakers not passing tax deal could end presidency, Dem says

By Jordan Fabian - 12/15/10 05:33 PM ET

In urging lawmakers to vote for his tax deal, President Obama is using one of his go-to lines from the healthcare debate, according to a Democratic lawmaker. 

Obama is telling members of Congress that failure to pass the tax-cut legislation could result in the end of his presidency, Rep. Peter DeFazio (Ore.) said. 

"The White House is putting on tremendous pressure, making phone calls, the president is making phone calls saying this is the end of his presidency if he doesn't get this bad deal," he told CNN's Eliot Spitzer. 

But the White House shot back late on Wednesday.

"The president hasn’t said anything remotely like that and has never spoken with Mr. DeFazio about the issue," said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor.

Obama's push shows that the president is going to the mat in order to push through Congress the compromise brokered with Republicans. 

During the end of the healthcare debate, Obama reportedly told Democrats upset that the bill did not contain a public healthcare option that not passing it could put his presidency on the line and stall the liberal agenda for decades. 

The White House has been aggressively selling the deal, which includes a two-year extension of all the expiring Bush tax cuts in exchange for a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits, to skeptical lawmakers and the public.

The Senate passed the $853 billion legislation by an overwhelming 81-19 margin, sending it to the House. 

Though House liberals and some conservatives have voiced opposition to the deal, some opponents have conceded that the likelihood of the deal failing at this juncture is very low. 

Still, DeFazio has not been sold. 

"I don't feel that way — I think this is potentially the end of his possibility of being reelected if he gets this deal," he said. 

Updated 7:11 p.m. and 7:52 p.m. Sam Youngman contributed to this story.

Dec 15, 2010: Bill to Improve Prevention and Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease Headed to President

New Law Will Establish First-Ever National Strategy for Curing, Mitigating Effects of Alzheimer’s WASHINGTON, D.C. – The House and Senate have passed the National Alzheimer’s Project Act (N.A.P.A.) co-authored by Representatives Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Representative Chris Smith (R-N.J.), House co-chairs of the Bipartisan, Bicameral Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer's Disease. Introduced in February of this year, the National Alzheimer’s Project Act would create the National Alzheimer’s Project which would coordinate government efforts to prevent and treat the disease and create a national strategy for defeating Alzheimer’s. “When America has a game plan, America wins. Passage of this bill means we will help ensure that the federal government better coordinates all of the research and clinical programs dealing with Alzheimer's, which is now the seventh leading cause of death in the United States,” said Rep. Markey.  This bill requires a plan for beating Alzheimer’s and represents an important step forward in our country’s efforts in this area.” Today, the House gave final passage, by voice vote, to the measure which was championed in the Senate by Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine.).The bill is now headed to President Obama, who is expected to sign it into law, delivering one of the most significant victories in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease in the past three decades.   “Unless science finds a way to prevent or cure Alzheimer’s, nearly 16 million Americans will have the disease by the year 2050. That is going to devastate the families who have a loved ones afflicted with the disease.  It will also drain billions in treatment costs from Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health programs,” concluded Markey. “The passage today of the National Alzheimer’s Project Act is a huge step forward in our battle against the crisis of Alzheimer’s disease,” Smith said. “With the incredible devastation of over five million Americans afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease at an estimated cost of over  $170 billion – numbers expected to skyrocket in coming years without effective interventions – we need to be sure we are doing everything possible to reverse the course of this disease. By requiring the development of a coordinated, integrated national plan to address Alzheimer’s, N.A.P.A. will provide the framework to accelerate the development of efficacious care and treatments.” Under the legislation, the National Alzheimer’s Project will provide strategic planning and coordination for the fight against Alzheimer’s disease across the federal government. It would be located within the Department of Health and Human Services, be overseen by an advisory council and would coordinate and oversee federal research on Alzheimer’s disease.

      

 

DECEMBER 15, 2010

A Victory in the War on Alzheimer’s

By MariaShriver.com

Today, the National Alzheimer’s Project Act (NAPA) has passed, setting the stage for a coordinated national plan to combat Alzheimer’s -- through research, clinical care, institutional, and home- and community-based programs.

“The passage today of the National Alzheimer's Project Act is a momentous legislative victory for the millions of American families profoundly affected by this devastating disease, and the millions more who will be in the future,” said Maria Shriver. “Thanks to the bi-partisan actions of Congress and the leadership of the Alzheimer's Association, the United States is on its way to having a national plan so our country will be prepared to handle this national emergency and advance ourselves toward a cure. This year, we partnered with the Alzheimer’s Association to produce The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Takes on Alzheimer's, the first comprehensive, multi-disciplinary look at Alzheimer’s disease and its effect on women as caregivers, breadwinners and people living with the disease. The Report made some startling discoveries about the enormous burden of this disease on women, who make up the majority of patients and caregivers, and it underscored the importance of preparing our country's institutions for a future when Alzheimer's looms even larger in all of our lives. I am heartened that our country's lawmakers have made Alzheimer's a strategic priority and answered this critical call to action. Together, we are the hope to defeat this mind-blowing disease.”

As Harry Johns, President & CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association, explained, “More than 5 million Americans and their 11 million caregivers face the reality of Alzheimer’s every day. Passage of this critical legislation addresses the need for a coordinated national strategy to overcome this rapidly escalating crisis. The Alzheimer’s Association applauds the dedication and commitment of Maria Shriver. Contributing her energy and passion to the Alzheimer cause, including her partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association to produce The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Takes on Alzheimer's, she has been a tireless Champion educating the nation’s leaders and the public about the importance of swift, urgent action to deal with Alzheimer’s today and ensure future generations won’t have to endure the devastation of Alzheimer’s.”

The very last step for NAPA to take effect is for the President to sign it into law. Let him know you support it.

Snow and big freeze return to UK

 

Met Office issues severe weather warnings, with snow expected across western areas overnight

Get the latest UK weather forecasts

• Adam Gabbatt and agencies
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 December 2010 10.25 GMT
• Article history



Snow is expected across Scotland, Northern Ireland and much of Wales and England, with the odds shortening on a white Christmas. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Snow and freezing temperatures are set to return to the UK within the next 48 hours, with bookmakers slashing the odds of a white Christmas.

The Met Office has issued its second most severe weather warning across Scotland, Northern Ireland and much of Wales and England, with snow expected in the early hours of tomorrow morning.

While it was mostly the east of the UK that had snow last week, the west is set to receive its share overnight, with as much as 20cm expected in some places.

"We have got early warnings out for Thursday and Friday," said Charles Powell, a forecaster for the Met Office.

"Whereas a couple of weeks ago the main risk was in the eastern part of the country, this time the western side is most at risk. We are fairly certain that the western side will see some snowfall."

Powell said the snow would be "quite significant" and could cause disruption. The Met Office has issued "be prepared" warnings across all of Scotland and Northern Ireland and much of west Wales, north-west and south-west England and the Midlands.

Clare Allen, a forecaster with MeteoGroup, the weather division of the Press Association, said: "London will be minus 4C and Northern Ireland minus 3C. Scotland may be down as much as minus 6C and on higher ground it could be as low as minus 10C."

Bookmakers slashing the odds of a white Christmas has become almost as much a part of the festivities as leaving out a mince pie for Santa, but 2010 has the "shortest white Christmas odds in history", according to William Hill.

Aberdeen is 5/6 favourite to see snow on the 25th, with Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle at 11/10. London and Liverpool are priced at 6/4.

Before rushing out to wager the heating allowance on the chance of a sprinkling, however, prospective gamblers would be well advised to follow the advice of Rupert Adams, William Hill spokesman.

"The definition of a white Christmas is for one flake of snow to fall over the 24-hour period of Christmas Day, confirmed by the Met Office. So snow already on the ground does not count as a white Christmas for bookies," he said.

A fact sheet published by the Met Office [pdf] shows that, statistically, snow on the 25th is rare in the UK: 22% of Belfast's Christmases between 1960 and 2009 were white, while Edinburgh has only had snow on 20% of its big days. In London just 12% of Christmases have been snowy, a figure that falls to 8% in Cardiff.

Money, Money, Money

— By Kevin Drum

| Wed Dec. 15, 2010 3:37 PM PST

Paul Krugman asks a question:

But here’s an even more basic question: what is money, anyway? It’s not a new question, but I think it has become even more pressing in recent years.

Surely we don’t mean to identify money with pieces of green paper bearing portraits of dead presidents. Even Milton Friedman rejected that, more than half a century ago....Friedman and Schwartz dealt with this by proposing broader aggregates — M1, which adds checking accounts, and M2, which adds a broader range of deposits. And circa 1960 you could argue that those aggregates were good enough.

....The truth is that these days — with credit cards, electronic money, repo, and more all serving the purpose of medium of exchange — it’s not clear that any single number deserves to be called “the” money supply. Intellectually, this isn’t a problem; nor is there necessarily a problem maintaining monetary policy even if there isn’t any single thing you’re willing to call money.

I'm not sure if I agree with this or not. Intellectually, this does seem to be a problem. An awful lot of the technical discussion I see about stimulus and monetary policy and quantitative easing and so forth really does seem, at its core, to revolve around the question of just what counts as money these days.

So: What is money? The simplest answer is, "Anything you can pay your taxes with." Beyond that, there are things that can be converted into money so quickly that they're extremely money-like, followed by things that are increasingly less money-like. In this sense, "money" is a property, not a thing, and you can have lots of it (dollar bills, debit cards, checks) or only some of it (foreign currency, treasury bills, gold, etc.).

When I see people arguing, for example, that bank deposits earning 0.25% at the Fed are identical to treasury bills paying 0.25%, that seems to me to be an argument about the nature of money. Are those two things really identical? Or 99% identical? Or 90% identical? When interest rates change, bank deposits and treasury bills obviously become less perfect substitutes for each other. Does that mean that one or the other has become less money-like?

How money-like is debt? It depends on the debt. During the credit bubble of the aughts, debt skyrocketed, but normal monetary aggregates didn't. And yet, that debt had much the same effect as a huge increase in the money supply.

I dunno. I agree that this is not a new question, but I also agree that it's lately become a more pressing one. How can you properly do macroeconomic analysis in a world where no one even agrees anymore about what counts as money and what doesn't?

Turning Down the Volume

It is about time, I have had to turn down commercials because they come in at a higher level than what you are listening to with a regular television program.  It is very annoying........

— By Kevin Drum

| Wed Dec. 15, 2010 3:55 PM PST

What is money? What is — hold on a second. Who cares? The White House press office has emailed to tell me that President Obama just signed a new law:

S. 2847, the “Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation or the “CALM Act,” which requires the Federal Communications Commission to prescribe a regulation limiting the volume of audio on commercials transmitted by television broadcast stations, cable operators, and other multichannel video programming distributors.

IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME. Oops. Sorry about that. Anyway, assuming that the FCC adopts a decent rule, this is good news. And it only took 40 years

Big Pork in Omnibus Spending Bill

Working Database of All Earmarks Included in the Omnibus Spending Bill

No Last Minute Earmarks No Little Piggies  Click and vote no

Political coverage and musings on pop culture from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper and the ABC News White House team.

President Obama’s $8 Billion Earmark Rerun: Lesson Not Learned?

December 15, 2010 6:23 PM

ABC News' Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller report:

The Obama administration today told Congress to pass an omnibus spending bill containing $8 billion in earmark projects, even though just a few days ago the president said one of the lessons he learned from the 2010 midterm elections was to take more seriously the public’s disapproval of – and his pledge to oppose -- earmarks.

“We wish there were no earmarks and are troubled with their presence” in the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill, an administration source told ABC News. “But Secretary Gates has told the President that the alternative bill” – a continuing resolution that for one year funds the government, which is due to run out of cash at the end of the week – “doesn't have the funding critical for several national security priorities.”

Gates issued a statement this evening saying that without the omnibus spending bill, the Pentagon would be left  “without the resources and flexibility needed to meet vital military requirements” – specifically “the military pay raise, increases in military health care costs, higher fuel prices, and other ‘fact of life’ bills.” The shorter funding bill would “slow our efforts to meet unanticipated wartime needs,” he added, while the bigger funding bill would provide funding for “critical national security initiatives” including the new Cyber Command and increasing special operations forces.

The president’s acquiescence with a bill that contains $8 billion in earmarks stands in contrast with what he said was a lesson learned from the 2010 midterm “shellacking,” when he indicated that he regretted not taking more of a stand against a different $8 billion in earmarks in a 2009 omnibus spending bill.

At his press conference after the shellacking, the president said that upon taking office, “we were in such a hurry to get things done that we didn’t change how things got done.  And I think that frustrated people.”

The president said he’s “a strong believer that the earmarking process in Congress isn’t what the American people really want to see when it comes to making tough decisions about how taxpayer dollars are spent.  And I, in the rush to get things done, had to sign a bunch of bills that had earmarks in them, which was contrary to what I had talked about.  And I think folks look at that and they said, ‘Gosh, this feels like the same partisan squabbling, this seems like the same ways of doing business as happened before.’ And so one of the things that I’ve got to take responsibility for is not having moved enough on those fronts.”

The president said the midterms provided him with “an opportunity to move forward on some of those issues,” and he specifically cited incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., as wanting “to see a moratorium on earmarks continuing.  That’s something I think we can work on together.”

Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring said Wednesday evening that President Obama and Cantor have not spoken about earmarks since the president mentioned his name at that press conference.

“So right after his election rebuke, President Obama claimed that he to work together to reform earmarks and today he supports a bill that contains billions of dollars of wasteful pork,” Dayspring said. “If that’s the kind of reform the President had in mind, Eric Cantor isn’t interested.  People are furious and rightly so with the runaway spending and the joke process that they are watching Democrats are engage in.  Even after the election shellacking, the President and his party still don’t get it. If he is serious about working together, he needs to take it seriously and pledge to veto this pork laden spending bill.” 

The president told 60 Minutes last month that while he had “campaigned saying we should stop doing earmarks….I had to make a decision, ‘Do I sign this omnibus bill to finish last year's business? And, you know, make sure that I can keep on working with Congress to get all these things done? Or do I veto that bill and have a big fight right away in the middle of an economic crisis?’ Well, I decided to sign the bill. Now, that's an example of where I was so concerned about getting things done that, you know, I lost track of part of the reason I got elected. Which was we were gonna change how business was done here.”

After a number of decisions like that, the president said, “I think what people started feeling was, "Gosh, this is sort of business-as-usual in Washington,’ And that's part of what I ran against. And so, I reflect a lot about over the next two years, making sure that I remind myself, my job is not legislator in chief. It's not just a matter of how many bills I'm passing, no matter how worthy they are. Part of it's also setting a tone in Washington and for the rest of the country that says, "We're responsible’…”

--Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller

Snowe Pledges Support For Standalone DADT Bill

 

Megan Carpentier | December 15, 2010, 5:45PM

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) pledged her support for the standalone bill to repeal the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy this afternoon. Cloture to pass a repeal as part of the defense authorization failed by a mere 3 votes last week.

Snowe was among several theoretical supporters of repeal who said she voted against cloture because of procedural issues: Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) objected to the time allotted to debate the underlying bill; and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said that the timing for repeal was, in his view, not quite right.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) said, on the other hand, that she'd missed the vote because of a dental appointment. So, with Snowe's support, repeal supporters are within 1 vote of cloture -- and a repeal of DADT.

The House passed its own version of the DADT repeal bill early this evening.

NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS:

FreedomWorks 
Dec 15, 2010

 FREEDOMWORKS FIGHTS AGAINST THE “OMNIBUS” SPENDING BILL

Contact:
Jacqueline Bodnar

WASHINGTON, DC- With only a few days left until Christmas, Senate Democrats are planning to sneak a pork-filled “omnibus” spending bill through Congress, dumping over 1 trillion dollars’ worth of backroom bargaining into the stockings of American taxpayers. The bill is almost 2,000 pages long, and estimated to cost taxpayers about $575.13 million per page.

Despite the sweeping rejection of big-government in the 2010 midterm elections, Democrats have once again proved themselves out of touch with the majority of the American people.

“This massive bill is government gluttony at its worst,” commented Matt Kibbe, President of FreedomWorks. “This spending binge by Congress is their last attempt to pig out before we put Washington on a diet.”

The gargantuan bill is peppered with $8 billion in earmarks and pet projects, including:

• $522,000 for cranberry and blueberry disease and breeding in New Jersey
• $500,000 for oyster safety in Florida
• $413,000 for peanut research in Alabama
• $247,000 for virus free wine grapes in Washington
• $208,000 beaver management in North Carolina
• $300,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii

In addition, the bill includes over $1 billion in new Obamacare funding, a program recently declared unconstitutional by a Virginia federal judge.

Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Jim Webb (D-VA) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) are among the key targets in the upcoming vote- many of whom are up for re-election in 2012. Although support for the bill will come mostly from Democrats, a few lame duck Republicans are considering backing the last-chance spending spree.  Among them are defeated Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT), retiring Senators George Voinovich (R-OH) and Kit Bond (R-MO).

“Make no mistakes, the Republicans voicing support for this bill are on their way out for a reason,” warned Kibbe. “The people sent a message loud and clear to Congress this year: We are sick and tired of business as usual in Washington. We are not going away. We’re watching you, and we are going to be naming names after this vote.”

True fiscal conservatives in the Senate, including Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Jim DeMint (R- SC), are demanding that clerks read the bill in its entirety on the Senate floor before a vote.

FreedomWorks will be on the front lines in the war against excessive spending, and directing all members and grassroots activists to www.StopPorkSpending.com. Here constituents will be able to call their Senators and remind them that if they’re unable to defend our freedoms and advocate sustainable economic policy, we will vote in somebody who will.

KEY VOTE NO: H.R. 3082

FreedomWorks 
Dec 15, 2010

 FULL YEAR CONTINUING APPROPRIATION ACT 2011 AND "OMNIBUS" SUBSTITUTE

Dear Senator, 

On behalf of over one million FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to vote no on H.R. 3082, which as currently formulated would fund the government for the next ten months at current 2010 levels. With Congress failing to pass any of the required 12 annual appropriation bills, leaders have opted to put forth a massive $1.1 trillion continuing resolution that includes a number of costly provisions. If the proposed “omnibus” spending bill is introduced as a substitute for the continuing resolution, we also encourage you to vote against that.

On November 2nd, the American people’s voices were heard at the ballot box. Overwhelmingly, these voters choose to limit the size and scope of government. In just the past two years, total government spending has increased by 16.8 percent. With an estimated $1.3 trillion deficit in 2010 and national debt now over $13 trillion, Congress must take action to curb spending, not pass bills that maintain and even grow the size of our too big federal government. The continuing resolution would maintain government spending at bloated 2010 levels. 

We also urge you to oppose the omnibus spending bill that has been drafted as a substitute. This alternative bill is even worse. It spends $1.3 trillion and includes over one billion to fund the unpopular new health care law. The nearly 2,000 page bill includes an estimated $8 billion in earmarks for at least 6,600 pet projects. Furthermore, this costly omnibus was crafted in secrecy and outside of the normal appropriation process. 

Also troubling is that the FDA Food “Safety” Modernization Act has been inserted into the continuing resolution and the omnibus spending bill. This misnamed bill will grant the federal government unprecedented control over our diets while not making our food any safer.  If Congress votes on this overreaching bill, it must be done through transparent and constitutional means, not as something stuffed into another 2,000 page turkey of a bill.

Instead of passing either of these massive spending bills, the Senate should instead pass a short term continuing resolution to fund the government until the new Congress can prepare a better bill that reduces spending. The Republican Study Committee (RSC) has introduced a proposal to reduce domestic discretionary spending levels to FY2008 pre-bailout levels.  Perhaps the new Congress might go further and propose a reduction to the even lower FY2006 levels, the last budget before the Democrats took over and ratcheted-up spending.  Such spending cuts would move us in the right direction, while the continuing resolution and the omnibus spending bills do the opposite. 

We will count your vote on the H.R.3082, Full Year Continuing Appropriation Act 2011 and/or the “omnibus” substitute, as a KEY VOTE when calculating the FreedomWorks Economic Freedom Scorecard for 2010. The Economic Freedom Scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the Jefferson Award, which recognizes members of Congress with voting records that support economic freedom. 

Sincerely,

Matt Kibbe
President and CEO      
FreedomWorks
[Click here for pdf version of this letter.]

GOPers: The Best Way To Prevent Financial Crises Is Deficit Reduction

Megan Carpentier | December 15, 2010, 5:00PM

The four Republican members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission split off and issued their own report on the 2008 financial crisis today, a full month before the Commission is scheduled to release its report. The GOPers' surprising conclusion: "We caution our nation's leaders to learn the appropriate lessons from history and take seriously the need to reduce our federal deficit." What?

Former Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA), who once chaired the House Ways and Means Committee, joined with former CBO director and economic adviser to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign Douglas Holtz-Eakin, AEI scholar and Reagan-era Treasury official Peter Wallison, and Hoover Institute fellow and former George W. Bush economic adviser Keith Hennessey to issue their report, which largely focuses on the what they see as the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the crisis -- and the implications of moral hazard stemming from the government's implicit guarantees of the two institutions.

Their report discusses the housing bubble, the exposure of financial firms to risk because of mortgage-backed securities and segues, awkwardly, into a discussion of consumer panic before winding up at the bottom line: the government should reduce the deficit.

The 10-member bipartisan commission was created by the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The Commission's whole purpose was to look at 22 separate areas of inquiry -- including moral hazard, credit default swaps, regulation, fraud, credit rating systems, executive compensation and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- to develop a comprehensive portrait of the failures that led to the financial crisis that bankrupted companies, destroyed Americans' savings, led to devastation in the housing market and cost millions of Americans their livelihoods.

Instead, the GOP commissioners use their report to make the case that the housing bubble and the "unprecedented number of subprime and other weak mortgages in this bubble" were the ultimate cause of the financial crisis -- and seem to have little interest in looking further. They say, in fact, that it was all the fault of government:

There were three important ways that the government pushed investors toward investing in mortgage debt. First, the regulatory capital requirements associated with mortgage debt were lower than for other investments. Second, the government encouraged the private market to extend credit to previously underserved borrowers through a combination of legislation, regulation, and moral suasion. Third, and most important, during the bubble's expansion, the largest investors in the mortgage market, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs)--Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--were instruments of U.S. government housing policy

They site the "decline in lending standards" -- as spearheaded by the government -- as the biggest reason the economy went into decline, blaming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in particular for pushing banks to lend to unqualified borrowers and encouraging investors to buy into those debts. And then, they say, no one believed that housing prices wouldn't always go up, or that mortgage-backed securities might not be inherently stable.

After praising the government for stepping in with the bank bailouts and TARP -- after they accuse it of "effectively" seizing AIG -- they then go on to make their sole recommendation for preventing a repeat of the crisis or the housing bubble: reduce the budget deficit.

A partial lists of items from the mandate of the commission that the Republicans' report ignores includes:

• fraud and abuse in the financial sector, including fraud and abuse towards consumers in the mortgage sector
• Federal and State financial regulators, including the extent to which they enforced, or failed to enforce statutory, regulatory, or supervisory requirements
• the global imbalance of savings, international capital flows, and fiscal imbalances of various governments
• accounting practices, including, mark-to-market and fair value rules, and treatment of off-balance sheet vehicles
• tax treatment of financial products and investments
• capital requirements and regulations on leverage and liquidity, including the capital structures of regulated and non-regulated financial entities
• credit rating agencies in the financial system, including, reliance on credit ratings by financial institutions and Federal financial regulators, the use of credit ratings in financial regulation, and the use of credit ratings in the securitization markets
• affiliations between insured depository institutions and securities, insurance, and other types of nonbanking companies
• corporate governance, including the impact of company conversions from partnerships to corporations
• compensation structures
• changes in compensation for employees of financial companies, as compared to compensation for others with similar skill sets in the labor market
• derivatives and unregulated financial products and practices, including credit default swaps
• short-selling
• financial institution reliance on numerical models, including risk models and credit ratings
• the legal and regulatory structure governing financial institutions, including the extent to which the structure creates the opportunity for financial institutions to engage in regulatory arbitrage
• the quality of due diligence undertaken by financial institutions
• and, the causes of major financial institutions which failed, or were likely to have failed, had they not received exceptional government assistance.

Boehner, Cantor Back Family Research Council Campaign Against SPLC

Jillian Rayfield | December 15, 2010, 5:50PM

A number of prominent Republicans have signed on to the Family Research Council's "Start Debating, Stop Hating" campaign in response to a Southern Poverty Law Center annual report that labeled the Family Research Council a "hate group."

As we reported, the SPLC came out with its annual "hate group" list a few weeks ago, which this year included anti-gay groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association, alongside list mainstays like the KKK.

As Evan McMorris-Santoro wrote at the time: "Labeling the Family Research Council a hate group puts one of Washington's most powerful social issues advocates into the company of groups like the Nation of Islam and the now mostly defunct Aryan Nations in the eyes of the SPLC." And, by proxy, it puts social conservative politicians in this field as well, many of whom attended the FRC's Values Voter summit in Washington this fall.

Unsurprisingly, the FRC was not happy about the designation, and labeled the list "slanderous." And today they launched a "Start Debating, Stop Hating" website, and took out a full page ad inPolitco, Dave Weigel reports.

The ad says: "The surest sign one is losing a debate is to resort to character assassination. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal fundraising machine whose tactics have been condemned by observers across the political spectrum, is doing just that."

It continues:

The group, which was once known for combating racial bigotry, is now attacking several groups that uphold Judeo-Christian moral views, including marriage as the union of a man and a woman. How does the SPLC attack? By labeling its opponents "hate groups." No discussion. No consideration of the issues. No engagement. No debate!

Ironically, the ad argues that "our debates can and must remain civil - but they must never be suppressed through personal assaults that aim only to malign an opponent's character," right after it refers to the SPLC as "the radical Left" that's "spreading hateful rhetoric."

The ad is undersigned by a number of leading Republican politicians, social conservative and mainstream alike: House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Sen, Jim DeMint (R-SC), Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Rep. Steve King (R-IA), and even Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

See the full ad here.

In response today, the SPLC put out a statement calling the ad "a remarkable performance, given that it was precisely the maligning of entire groups of people -- gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people -- that caused the SPLC to list groups like the FRC."

"At the end of the day, it's hard to know if the politicians and other leaders who signed today's anti-SPLC statement really know some of things the groups they are throwing in with support. What's a fact is that, despite their claims, the groups have so far, without exception, failed to confront the facts of SPLC's report," the statement said.