There literally is no end to the extent by which Republican politicians will lie, distort, and manufacture statements in their efforts to disrupt, deny, and destroy the Obama administration's attempts to govern. At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on 9/11 trial, the Fort Hood shooter, and terrorism, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) decided to flip-flop on the designation of the Gitmo detainees. Are they "unlawful enemy combatants" or are they "prisoners of war"?

SESSIONS: The enemy, who could of been obliterated on the battlefield on one day, but was captured instead does not then become a common American criminal. They are first a prisoner of war, once they're captured. The laws of war say, as did Lincoln and Grant, that the prisoners will not be released when the war - until the war ends. How absurb is it to say that we will release people who plan to attack us again?

Sessions seems to be saying that because these detainees were captured by the military, they have become prisoners of war and should not be released - even if found not guilty or after serving a prison term (assuming less than a life sentence) - until the "war on terror" is over (which, under a Republican point of view, will never be over). But on the other hand, SecDef Don Rumsfeld and the other fun-loving bunch of Bushites were very firm about NOT calling them "prisoners of war" because they were not supposed to get rights under the Geneva Convention (or any other form of legal writs - see waterboarding, justification of).

In fact, as one of the commenters at the TPM post notes, there was public law developed to explicitly designate any non-US citizen who was accused of supporting terrorism or acting against the United States as a terrorist as being eligible for military commissions.

I thought like you until I read this, from the Military Commissions Act: "‘(e) Geneva Conventions Not Establishing Private Right of Action- No alien unprivileged enemy belligerent subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a basis for a private right of action."
See: here.

This discussion becomes quickly complex with legal passages as a debate over whether the military tribunals should take KSM or if the federal court system has adequate jurisdiction. But it's just so interesting how Republican politicians adroitly jump back and forth as to the question of the detainees' status to how it best fits their argument of the day - are we talking about Geneva convention rights, or are we talking about the process of legal courts?

And because I want to give credit to the interesting comments over at TPM, I will close with the following observations by the commenters:

"I guess when the Right/GOP can say, print (Palin's myth filled book), promote anything without any accountability by the Beltway Press, the GOP has no need for intellectually honest consistency in their claims."

"When did Sessions stop playing the banjo?"

UPDATE: Clarified the guilt point.

Well, looky here. Harry Reid is sending a not-so-veiled message to the insurance industry: You want to play dirty? We can play dirty, too. Here's hoping this legislation has a chance of getting passed:

In a rare appearance as a witness at a Senate hearing, the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, told the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that it should repeal a 1945 law that granted the insurance industry limited exemption to national antitrust laws by allowing states to regulate insurers.

The law, the McCarran-Ferguson Act, is often cited by Mr. Reid and other critics of the health insurance industry as a reason why coverage can be so expensive for many people. They say the law allows insurers to monopolize markets and fix prices in ways that are usually illegal.

“Since 1945, the insurance industry has enjoyed exemption from federal antitrust laws because of the McCarran-Ferguson Act,” Mr. Reid said. “Pat McCarran, who was the senior senator from Nevada at the time, lent his name to this piece of legislation. Although we’re both Nevadans, I’m not sure what Pat McCarran had in mind when he pushed this bill. And if Pat were around today, he couldn’t be happy with the state of the insurance industry.”

“Providing an exemption for insurance companies to antitrust laws has been anticompetitive and damaging to the American economy,” Mr. Reid continued. “Health insurance premiums have continued to rise at a rapid rate, forcing businesses to cut back on health insurance coverage and forcing many families to choose between health insurance and basic necessities.”

He added: “Insurance companies have become so large they dominate entire regions of the country. They have become so powerful they block start-up businesses from entering the market, and they put smaller companies out of business. They have become so dominant that they dictate business practices. They are so influential that they exert tremendous influence over public policy.”

The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, has introduced a bill — the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act — that would repeal the insurance industry’s limited exemption.

And some senior Democrats, including Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, have begun calling for Mr. Leahy’s bill to be included in the major health care legislation that is now advancing in Congress.

That effort could gain momentum as Democrats continue to hit back at a main industry trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, which issued a report on Sunday night asserting that the Democrats’ legislation would lead to a steep rise in health insurance premiums.

The White House, Congressional Democrats and other supporters of the legislation have worked to discredit the industry report, which was prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The firm has acknowledged that it looked at only four provisions in the huge health care bill and that it did not take into account federal subsidies that would be made available to help moderate-income Americans buy insurance.

Mr. Schumer, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, issued a news release Wednesday accusing the health insurance industry of trying to “sucker-punch” the Democrats’ health care legislation by issuing the report the day before the Finance Committee voted on its version of the bill.

Ezra Klein on the real reason Chuck Grassley is trying to sandbag healthcare reform:

The more plausible argument is that Grassley fears his fellow Republican senators. I'm hearing that Grassley is getting reamed out in meetings with his colleagues. The yelling is loud enough that staffers in adjacent offices have heard snippets. But the real threat isn't the yelling of his colleagues. It's their capacity to deny Grassley his next job. Ruth Marcus hints at this in her column on Chuck Grassley today, but it's worth explaining in a bit more detail.

This is the final year that Grassley is eligible to serve as ranking member — the most powerful minority member, and, if Republicans retake the Senate, the chairman — of the Senate Finance Committee. His hope is to move over as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, or failing that, the Budget Committee. But for that, he needs the support of his fellow Republicans. And if he undercuts them on health-care reform, they will yank that support. It's much the same play they ran against Arlen Specter a couple of years back, threatening to deny him his chairmanship of — again — the Judiciary Committee. It worked then, and there's no reason to think it won't work now.

So once again, I ask the question: Why are we negotiating with Republicans at all?

Via Atrios, Craig Crawford describes the political disaster that the GOP has decided to perpetrate upon itself:

Watching Lindsey Graham's gotcha grin as he needled Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with disingenuous and rhetorical questions you had to wonder what was so funny. Does the Republican senator think it is amusing that he and his party's condescending tone toward the Hispanic woman was costing them ethnic votes with each passing hour of Tuesday's Judiciary Committee hearing?

. . . Even if they vote for her, the fallout for Republicans could reach well beyond Hispanic voters. They are coming across as a bunch of snarky and bitter old white men who cannot bear the thought of their kind losing power.

The only thing that can make it worse for the GOP will be, as I noted earlier, if no Republicans vote for Sotomayor's confirmation. Here's hoping.

My oh my, I don't think the Republican Party is trying very hard to disprove the widely held notion that they are the party of privileged white men. Let's look at their perhaps unintentionally revealing tactics in questioning Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor:

First, we have Sen. Jeff "I couldn't become a federal judge because of my racist tendencies" Sessions basically telling Sotomayor that he expects her judgments to fall in line with other Puerto Ricans on the bench, because they're Puerto Rican. (h/t Think Progress)

And then Sen, Jon "We don't want no stinkin' Gazan refugees" Kyl goes off on a SEVEN minute rant to Sotomayor over his out-of-context interpretation of her "wise Latina" remark (thinking and talking points courtesy of Rush Limbaugh), despite the fact that Sotomayor had already addressed this issue a number of times.

And then Sen. Lindsey "I'm going to throw a tantrum and shut down the Senate if you get to see what we enabled" Graham treated Sotomayor with such attitude that even MSNBC's Tamron Hall and Mike Viquera termed it "patronizing".

And then to really hit home how the GOP's exposure to minorities come almost exclusively from TV sitcoms, Sen. Tom "Don't Ask, Don't Tell about my fellow GOP's sordid affairs" Coburn invokes none other than Ricky Ricardo to warn Sotomayor if she--metaphorically speaking, of course--attacked him.

Really, GOP...how do you think you're gonna attract that all-important Latino bloc of voters to your side in 2010-- with fried chicken and potato salad?

Glenn Beck wanted to use the senators' opening remarks at the Sonia Sotomayor hearings yesterday on his Fox News show to illustrate his claim that President Obama is shoving his agenda down America's throats, blah blah blah.

So he ran a pastiche of various warm remarks offered mostly by Democrats on the first day of the hearings, describing them thus:

Beck: America, I want you to watch this. As our country burns to the ground, because we all have this kind of stuff going on, this is the questioning -- now get ready, because it's a hard line of questioning -- here's what happened, this is what our senators were doing today. Watch this.

What he proceeded to show, of course, was senators making prefatory remarks to the nominee.

Because as anyone who glanced at the Judiciary Committee schedule for these hearings would know, the actual questioning was not scheduled to begin until today.

Beck also refers to Sotomayor's supposed high rate of reversal. But as Media Matters notes:

But according to data compiled by SCOTUSblog, Sotomayor's reported 60 percent reversal rate is lower than the overall Supreme Court reversal rate for all lower court decisions from the 2004 term through the present -- both overall and for each individual Supreme Court term.

America, watch this. Because this is what passes for insightful commentary on Fox News these days. As our country burns to the ground, as it were.

With the announcement of Sonia Sotomayor as the new candidate for the Supreme Court, I figured Andrea Mitchell would have on Orrin Hatch to get his opinion. What's interesting is that she jumped him when he started to backpedal on his support for her, because he did vote for her confirmation back in 1998 under Bush #41.

Mitchell: Let me ask you this Senator, I mean George Herbert Walker Bush first nominated her to the bench and...

Hatch: Wait a minute Andrea, wait a minute, I was on the Judiciary committee back then. At that time a district court judge was really effectively by the Senate so in this case both the...

Mitchell: I understand that both Senators from NY ...

Hatch: They had a one for one deal so I, she was chosen by a Democrat and George Herbert Walker Bush, really basically had no choice but to appoint her now...

Mitchell: You're saying by senatorial courtesy -- she was Pat Moniyhan's choice for the court. Let me ask you about your own vote in 1998, sir, I mean you voted for her, did you not? Or do I have that wrong? You were one of the seven Republicans.

Hatch: Well, let me just say this, I think the media tries to make something out of that because George Herbert Walker Bush was president. They shouldn't. She was basically picked by Senator Moniyhan, a Democrat. In 1998, for the Circuit Court of Appeals, I did vote for her because I believe in giving the president due deference, especially for Circuit Court of Appeals nominations, but now we're talking about...

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The attacks on Sonia Sotomayor are coming in like a tidal wave by the extreme right, but former Rep. Tom Tancredo, one of the harshest critics of the Latino community ever to run for president, actually called her a racist. This is the man who boycotted the Univision debate and then attacked their entire audience.

On The Ed Show today, Mike Allen of The Politico was pretty on point saying that she's not anyone that the right could attack and wouldn't investigate her supposed racism, but Tancredo uses the already debunked and discredited talking point about Latino lady judges being smarter than the Tancredo- looking judges of the world.

(rough transcript)

Tancredo: Unfortunately for her and fortunately for us there are plenty of things that we've even talked about her already. I'm telling you, she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context...
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Tancredo: You can still be a racist and have all those things in your background. You can be a racist and have all that stuff in your background.

Ed: How aggressive do you want the Republicans to be on the judiciary committee?

Tancredo: I think there's plenty of stuff that they can use and should. They should do to her what the Democrats did to Bork.

Ed: Like what?

Tancredo: I would continually bring up this quote of hers, I'd like her to explain that. It is incredible to me. There is no one else I can think of who could possibly have said the kind of things she said, If they are reported accurately about the benefits of being a brown women as opposed to a white man and interpreting the law and nobody can look at that and say that was not a racist, sexist statement that would disqualify anybody else...She is a Hispanic woman and we can't say anything like this..

His form of racism is an affront to all decency. As I've said before, I do not speak Italian because of the racism my grandparents endured when they came to America. He's Italian and he should be ashamed of himself. Why is this man on TV talking about race in America? What does he have to add? Here's one of Tancredo's racist campaign ads.

Tancredo's racism is such that he's the darling of the Malkin wing of the GOP. He's a man who even called Miami a "Third World country.”

I'm not kidding. And let's not forget his "bombing Mecca," statements either.

This isn't the pot calling the kettle black. It's the pot calling the tablecloth black.

With the announcement of Sonia Sotomayor as the new candidate for the Supreme Court, I figured Andrea Mitchell would have on Orrin Hatch to get his opinion. What's interesting is that she jumped him when he started to back pedal on his support for her because he did vote for her confirmation back in 1998 under Bush #41.

Mitchell: Let me ask you this Senator, I mean George Herbert Walker Bush first nominated her to the bench and...

Hatch: Wait a minute Andrea, wait a minute, I was on the Judiciary committee back then. At that time a district court judge was really effectively by the Senate so in this case both the...

Mitchell: I understand that both Senator's from NY ,,,

Hatch: They had a one for one deal so I, she was chosen by Democrat and George Herbert Walker Bush really basically had no choice but to appoint her now...

Mitchell: You're saying by Senatorial courtesy she was Pat Moniyhan's choice for the court. Let me ask you about your own vote in 1998 sir, I mean you voted for her, did you not? Or do I have that wrong? You were one of the seven republicans.

Hatch: Well, let me just say this, I think the media tries to make something out of that because George Herbert Walker Bush was president. They shouldn't. She was basically picked by Senator Moniyhan, a Democrat. In 1998, for the circuit court of appeals, I did vote for her because I believe in giving the president due deference, especially for circuit court appeals nomination, but now we're talking about...

How quickly Republicans forget about their up or down vote jihad in 2005 that was led by Orrin hatch and many other republicans who wanted every one of Bush 43's picks to be confirmed.

Hatch: All we're asking is that everyone of these qualified nominees who reached the floor receive an up or down vote.

First Read:

When the Senate confirmed Sonia Sotomayor to sit on the 2nd Circuit back in 1998, 29 Republicans voted AGAINST her -- including current Sens. Grassley, Hutchison, Kyl, McCain, McConnell, and Sessions (the latter of whom is the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee). But 23 Republicans also voted FOR her -- including current Sens. Collins, Gregg, Hatch, Lugar, Snowe, and Specter (the latter of whom is now a Democrat).

She's been confirmed before as Andrea Mitchell stated in the video clip.

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Will any media member ask Dick Cheney why HE never released any memos when he was in power? is that too much to ask. He's playing games right now and trying to suck the media and the American people in.
Dick Cheney was having a grand old time defending torture, saying that he wasn't in the torture business, but hey, we waterboarded a few people because his buddies at the OLC helped him out. He was spinning his web and telling us that the OLC and the Bush administration acted within the law when they starting waterboarding prisoners on Face the Nation. He denies that they ever used torture. Cheney also said George Bush knew and approved everything they did. I guess when he said we didn't use torture his was misleading America.

He also used the GOP talking point that we used the same techniques on our own troops in the SERE program so it ain't torture. His daughter (Liz Cheney) learned a lot from him because she used the same defense to Norah O'Donnell which didn't even pass her smell test.

He absolutely wouldn't change a thing and still wants more memos released. When will journalists ask Cheney why he didn't released these documents when he was in power? Bush was taking a tremendous amount of heat over the torture issue at the time.
Schieffer was asking him if he would allow himself to be questioned about these topics and go "under oath." Cheney dodged the question by saying he'd have to look into it legally and see what precedent he would set , but he's talking now. He WILL NEVER go under oath.

SCHIEFFER: Senator Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was on this broadcast recently. And I said, do you intend to ask the former vice president to come up? And he said if he will testify under oath. Would you be willing to testify under oath?

CHENEY: I'd have to see what the circumstances are and what kind of precedent we were setting. But certainly I wouldn't be out here today if I didn't feel comfortable talking about what we're doing publicly. I think it's very, very important that we have a clear understanding that what happened here was an honorable approach to defending the nation, that there was nothing devious or deceitful or dishonest or illegal about what was done.

He's just trying to justify torture and he's using TV to promote his views. Let's see if he'll go on with Lawrence O'Donnell and face some real questions. If Cheney will never appear with another guest or interviewer that uses facts to question him with, what makes you think he'll go in front of Leahy?

CBS has the full transcript and you can read more below the fold:

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Rachel Maddow reminds us of Jeff Sessions extremely ugly racist past. Steve Benen weighs in on how poorly it speaks for Republicans to promote someone like Sessions to take Arlen Specter's place as their ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Maddow: In terms of him having this leadership role on the Judiciary Committee for the next year and a half, presumably Sessions will make that committee run very differently than having the senior Republican on that committee be Arlen Specter, right?

Benen: I think that's fair to say. You know obviously Specter was probably one of the most moderate members of the Senate. Certainly the most moderate Republican on that committee. Jeff Sessions for all the reasons we just talked about is much farther to the right and he'll be the public's face. You know we talked earlier in the show about the rebranding effort. It undermines the branding when you have someone with these deep and ugly racial problems from dating back a couple of decades and now he'll be helping, he'll be the public face of the Judiciary Committee, not only on judiciary, or judicial nominations but also on issues like civil rights laws that automatically go to the Judiciary Committee. So this is a problem for the party. It's a problem for the committee and I'm anxious to see how it turns out for them.

Maddow: I'm anxious to hear him explain yet again how the disgrace to his race comment was a joke. That will be great.

Not many people know that Judge Jay ByBee is a Mormon and an anti-gay supporter. As Patrick Leahy, Russ Feingold, Jerry Nadler, and Jan Schakowsky all spoke out against him, Harry Reid wasn't saying much. Even though Diane Feinstein voted against his confirmation she now either has a no comment or is trying to wrestle control of the investigation.

Russ Feingold voted against his nomination back in 2003:

On more than 20 occasions, Mr. Bybee refused to answer a question, claiming over and over again that as an attorney in the Department of Justice he could not comment on any advice that he gave at any time. This is unfortunately becoming a very familiar refrain of nominees before the Judiciary Committee.
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But the failure to make OLC opinions available to the Judiciary Committee during the consideration of a nominee for a seat on a circuit court is unacceptable... The administration should be able to agree to an acceptable procedure to allow the Judiciary Committee to review Mr. Bybee's OLC opinions. Given the recent history of many OLC opinions being made public, it is hard to believe that there are no opinions authored by Mr. Bybee that could be disclosed without damaging the deliberative process. Indeed, it is very hard to give credence to the idea that OLC's independence would be compromised by the release of some selection of the opinions of interest to members of the Judiciary Committee or the Senate.

After the release of these memos why then is Harry Reid not in line with almost every Democratic Politician?

A serious setback, however: Harry Reid, whose Senate would rule on an impeachment in the House, doesn't seem to like the idea:

"Judge Bybee has a good professional reputation in Nevada," Reid spokesman Jon Summers said in an e-mail. "While the memos that have been released are disturbing to Sen. Reid, at this point in time, he doesn't think we should be making a rush to judgment."

And as Alex Koppelman reports in Salon:

Reid has also resisted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's request to create an independent commission to investigate the interrogation tactics. In a recent statement, Reid said, "I think it would [sic] very unwise from my perspective to start having commissions, boards, tribunals until we find out what the facts are.”

Reid sponsored Bybee's judicial appointment, along with fellow Nevada Senator John Ensign. Ensign has been adamant in his support of Bybee, referring to the calls for the judge's ouster as "outrageous" and saying that "This was not torture. This is the thing we have to get away from, that this is somehow accepted that it was torture. The United States does not engage in torture. This was 'advanced interrogation techniques.'"

My question is of Harry Reid. Are you supporting Judge ByBee because he is a Mormon? I'm not against religion as I've said many times, but if Bybee was involved with any other religion, would Harry Reid have supported him? Will any reporters pose that question to Harry Reid? It just seems odd to me that Reid didn't condemn the memos he's credited with writing much more harshly and is resisting any form of inspection. This is very troubling.