Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond (r) has had a busy news cycle. Our previous post today: Senator Kit Bond (r): “Apologize, who me?”

And there’s this:

Martha Johnson: GSA Chief Confirmed After 9 Month Senate Hold-Up

First Posted: 02- 4-10 04:38 PM   |   Updated: 02- 4-10 05:08 PM

…Earlier in 2009, Johnson was unanimously approved by members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. But a single senator, Republican Kit Bond from Missouri, has used his symbolic ‘privilege’ to hold up consideration of Johnson’s nomination since last summer…

[emphasis added]

Oopsie:

Bond’s Senate Speech on Bannister Fears

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Kit Bond, R-Missouri, spoke on the floor of the Senate on Thursday, saying the General Services Administration has “apparently been unresponsive to the ongoing health concerns of their employees and tenants at the Bannister Federal Complex….”

…Bond made the comments while defending his efforts to block the appointment of the GSA’s top executive…

Yeah, the republicans woke him up when they assumed their 41-59 majority in the Senate. Only they forgot to feed him any coherent talking points.

Do you suppose maybe if the General Services Administration would have actually had an administrator to head the agency, you know, and administer it instead of being subject to the petulant temper tantrums and whims of a particular senator that the GSA might have been more “apparently responsive” to the problems at the GSA’s Bannister complex in Kansas City? Just asking.

I know, I know, people around here are saying, “Kit who?” The republicans must have woken him up now that they have a 41-59 majority in the Senate.

Toward the end of today’s White House press briefing there was a brief discussion of Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond’s (r) political posturing:

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

February 04, 2010

Briefing by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, 2/4/10

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

12:47 P.M. EST

…Q    One last — one question on security — one question, it’s important.  Senator Bond wrote a letter to the President today about a conversation that we had here in the briefing room yesterday and Bill gave a couple of answers — many answers, really — on there was no political nature to the White House explanation of the dealing with Abdulmutallab.  What Bond says in his letter is that the senators on the Intelligence Committee were briefed specifically earlier this week that the disclosure of Abdulmutallab’s cooperation should not be revealed because it was — he says in this letter — “Doing so would threaten ongoing efforts to stop operations the intelligence community thought were possibly happening against the United States.”  He writes in this letter, “Distortion of the congressional notification process suggests that other considerations are taking precedence over keeping timely and sensitive information away from our enemies” — I know a charge you would fundamentally reject, but I want to get your response to that.

MR. GIBBS:  Well, first and foremost, I don’t want to speak for Senator Bond, who, if the timeline you outlined — a Monday briefing for a Tuesday hearing — why he would in his Tuesday hearing use the statement that the subject refused to cooperate after he was Mirandized.

So I don’t want to speak for the senator who didn’t certainly use any of that information to correct what he said in public in a hearing that happens a day after.

I would say this, having read the letter.  During a hearing on Tuesday, information was released that clearly showed that Mr. Abdulmutallab was indeed talking again to interrogators.  For those of you that participated in the background briefing, you know that was not something that was timed purposefully.

Q    Were they not supposed to reveal it?

MR. GIBBS:  It was not timed purposefully.  Soon after that — soon after that, media reported — we felt it important to contextualize, because many of you were e-mailing us, what this testimony meant.

I would say, again, having read the letter, no briefing is done here or anywhere in this administration where classified information is used in a place where it shouldn’t be.  And I would suggest that somebody that alleges that when they know it doesn’t happen owe people an apology.

Any briefing that’s done here in order to ensure that the information that’s in the public is correct is done in conjunction with many agencies and done so so that information that is classified and shouldn’t be released isn’t released.  And in this case obviously it was not.

Q    So Bond owes you an apology?  Bond owes the President an apology?

MR. GIBBS:  No, I don’t think Bond is alleging that the President was in the briefing.

Q    On the — on the — two questions.

MR. GIBBS:  Hold on, hold on — just hold on, just — this is an important question, Lester.

Q    Oh, sure, okay.

MR. GIBBS:  The notion that somehow the White House, in conjunction with agencies involved in this interrogation, gave out classified information — yes, I think an apology on that is owed because it’s not true.  And I think anybody that was involved in knowing in the Senate Intelligence Committee what was briefed and what was reported would know that that wasn’t violated.

Again, Major, I don’t want to speak for Senator Bond in why, if he was briefed on Monday, why on Tuesday, why does he say that Abdulmutallab — the result of his refusal to cooperate after he was Mirandized?  Why does Senator Bond continue to knowingly not have information curb what he’s saying, or is this a bunch of politics?

Q    So he owes an apology to whom?

MR. GIBBS:  I think he owes an apology to the professionals in the law enforcement community and those that work in this building, not for Democrats and Republicans, but who work each and every day to keep the American people safe and would never, ever, ever knowingly release — or unknowingly release — classified information that could endanger an operation or an interrogation.

Again, I think that the reason that charge is made is only to play politics.  I actually don’t believe that that — that he thinks that’s a serious allegation.  I think that is — I think if you look at the letter, it’s clearly — this is about politics….

[emphasis added]

What else is new?

Senator Bond’s (r) press release and letter:

BOND QUESTIONS MOTIVATION BEHIND DISCLOSURE OF VITAL NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION TO MEDIA

Senator Urges President to Prioritize Security Over Politics

Print This: Print this page

February 4, 2010

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Kit Bond, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, today questioned the motivation behind the Administration’s recent disclosure of vital national security information on the Christmas Day bomber to the media.  In a letter to the President, Bond also urged President Obama to prioritize security over politics in the future.

The text of the letter is below:

February 4, 2010

The Honorable Barack H. Obama

President of the United States

White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC  20500

Dear Mr. President,

During my tenure on the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have worked with the Executive Branch to stem the disclosure of sensitive information.  In 2006, for example, I introduced legislation that would aid the Executive Branch in prosecuting individuals engaged in leaks of classified information.  In the realm of national security, sometimes it is necessary to withhold critical information from the public that may be used by our enemies to harm the American people.

Accordingly, I am deeply disturbed with the official handling of vital national security information regarding the recent cooperation by the Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab.   On Monday afternoon, the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee received notification from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) concerning Abdulmutallab’s recent willingness to provide critical information.  FBI officials stressed the importance of not disclosing the fact of his cooperation in order to protect on-going and follow-on operations to neutralize additional threats to the American public; FBI Director Bob Mueller personally stressed to me that keeping the fact of his cooperation quiet was vital to preventing future attacks against the United States.  Handling this information in such a sensitive manner struck me as entirely appropriate.

Twenty-four hours later, however, White House staff assembled members of the media to announce Abdulmutallab’s cooperation and to laud the events that led to his decision to cooperate with law enforcement personnel.  This information immediately hit the air waves globally and, no doubt, reached the ears of our enemies abroad.

At the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Annual World Wide Threats Hearing Tuesday, the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI Director, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency all stated they believe terrorists will attempt another attack on America within the next few months.  I cannot understand, Mr. President, why the sudden cooperation by Abdulmutallab would be broadcast publicly to the media in detail when your intelligence chiefs are unanimously warning that another attack on our country is imminent.  The release of this sensitive information has no doubt been helpful to his terrorist cohorts around the world.

It is deeply disturbing to me that the Intelligence Committee would be advised of sensitive information, and told of the vital imperative to keep such information secret for the sake of national security, only to see this information – less than twenty-four hours later -broadcast to the world from the White House.  This distortion of the congressional notification process suggests that other considerations are taking precedence over keeping timely and sensitive information away from our enemies.  

Some have tried to use Abdulmutallab’s sudden cooperation as a justification for prosecuting this foreign terrorist in an Article III court, but I believe this development supports an opposing view.  Because we treated him in this fashion, we followed Miranda and advised him of his right to remain silent, losing five crucial weeks for obtaining imminent threat information.  Miranda is issued when statements from the accused are needed to obtain a conviction, but in this case we did not need his own statements as the chemical evidence he was wearing and over 200 witnesses would ably suffice; hence, the decision to Mirandize made no sense on a practical or strategic level.  Additionally, Abdulmutallab’s family was key in gaining his cooperation, and in most cases the suicide bomber does not have a moderate Islamic family willing to work with the United States; in fact, the opposite is most often the case (as with the suicide bomber that killed seven CIA officers in Khost, whose wife applauded her husband’s actions).

I urge you, Mr. President, to consider the consequences of publicly disseminating sensitive information vital to the defense of the American people.  I do not believe the American people want this information jeopardized to further political arguments.  The American people rightfully expect the government’s first priority to be their security.   It is also critical that our courageous law enforcement and intelligence professionals know that they can trust that sensitive information vital to their efforts to protect the American people will not be disclosed.

Sincerely,

Christopher S. Bond

                                                                       United States Senator

“…yes, I think an apology on that is owed because it’s not true.  And I think anybody that was involved in knowing in the Senate Intelligence Committee what was briefed and what was reported would know that that wasn’t violated. …”

Should we await Kit Bond’s apology with bated breath? [sound of crickets]

Yeah, right, and Glenn Beck is gonna start speaking something other than random phrases from a teabagger manifesto.

Given his position as the ranking minority member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, it was probably too much to expect that Kit Bond would refrain from joining the chorus of what David Brooks, in an unexpectedly excellent column, called the “rabid denunciation and cynicism”  that has characterized the right’s response to the Christmas bomber incident. On the topic of the bomber, Omar Abulmutallab, Bond holds, along with the rest of his party, that treating terrorist crimes in the criminal justice system is to privilege terrorists in some inappropriate way:

This is not a case for a series of criminal trials, … .  We should have held him as an enemy combatant and tried him in a military commission.

Earlier, on the issue of the Gitmo detainees, he had this to say:

The Obama Justice Department has prioritized political correctness over protecting the citizens of this country.

Apart from seizing an opportunity to ring the proverbial Pavlovian bell with phrases like “political correctness” applied to Obama and terrorism, one wonders why would-be tough guy politicians like Bond fail to remember the equal determination of one of their close allies, Margaret Thatcher, to deny IRA men “special status”.  This status would have accorded IRA members a prisoner of war status not too dissimilar to that accorded to those held in the military system of detention and justice that Bond and his pals prefer.

In 1981 Thatcher permitted ten young hunger strikers to starve to death, one after another, in a protest against the loss of political status for those convicted of terrorism-related offenses. As Padraig O’Malley notes in his book about those events, Biting at the Grave (p. 19):

Having what amounted to de facto prisoner of war status was of immense propaganda value to the IRA. It allowed the movement to describe the conflict in Northern Ireland on its own terms  …  and to claim that the British government accepted the IRA’s legitimacy and hence the legitimacy of its cause.

So do Bond et al. really want to legitimate Al-Qaeda by according their members military status? Do they really want to keep on handing Al-Qaeda these great propaganda tools for recruiting purposes? For that matter, if they don’t want to glamorize the terrorists’ cause, maybe they ought to shut up about the “war on terror.” Didn’t they learn anything from their onetime good friend, Dame Margaret?

Of course, in pointing out this disjunction, I do not mean to overlook the obvious – which is that what Bond and his pals really mean to say is that it is hard to torture folks when the process is open to scrutiny. And of course, no matter what status prisoners enjoyed in Northern Ireland, Dame Margaret had the Special Powers Act which gave her almost unlimited power to do whatever she wanted. Thank God we still have a few rights left. Maybe.

ADDENDUM:  Via TPM, Bond amplifies his position today:

We have learned the hard way that trying terrorists in federal court comes at a high price, from losing out on potentially life-saving intelligence to compromising our sources and methods. We must treat these terrorists as what they are–not common criminals, but enemy combatants in a war.

In December 2001, the Shoe Bomber, Richard Reid, was immediately charged in federal court, rather than being designated as an enemy combatant and questioned about his terrorist ties,” says Bond. “Fortunately, the Bush Administration did not repeat this mistake with Jose Padilla who was named an enemy combatant, which allowed him to be interrogated, before eventually facing criminal charges.”

He continues: “Yet today with the experience of eight years in this war behind us, we have regressed, treating the Christmas Day bomber and the Somali pirate as common criminals, rather than seizing the opportunity to obtain timely intelligence from these terrorists. This is a grave error that could have dangerous consequences for our nation.

AS TPM notes:

It’s worth noting that President Bush had military tribunals as an option by November 2001 when he signed an order establishing rules for tribunals. That was a month before Reid’s attempted attack on American Airlines Flight 63.

…..

A search on Nexis found no evidence of controversy over Bush decision to try Reid in federal court, and no criticism from Bond on the handling of the case.

The Politico article on Bond’s comments (2nd link above) reported that that the administration already has a deal underway to get information from Abulmutallab, but that Bond, seemingly with no real information to back up his prescience, declared that that it “would take too long.”  He either has second sight or, like a dog with a bone, he just can’t stop demagoguing the issue.

We hear a lot about what will happen in the future if nothing is done to stop anthropogenic climate change, and we also regularly witness the on-going efforts of the big corporte stakeholders and their tame politicians to pretend that it isn’t so, or, when that line won’t wash, that the “anthropogenic” part can’t be proven. However, deny it until the cows come home, there is no way to avoid the fact that increased CO2 results in warming, and that humans have been pumping historically unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Nor is there any way to avoid the fact that we are experiencing the catastrophic effect of escalating climate and weather changes right now:

* Many citizens of the island nation of Kiribati have relocated to New Zealand because the rising sea level has washed away their villages.

* The President of the Maldives Islands is making desperate plans to forestall the effects of rising water levels, and to relocate thousands of Maldives citizens if his endeavors prove futile – if nothing is done and palliative measures come too late, “we will die” he says.

* Last summer, one of the increasingly more frequent and more violent tropical storms, Cyclone Aila, left the entire island of Gabura off Bangladesh completely submerged, displacing over 20,000 islanders.

These are only a few examples of what has happened last year, is happening this year, and will happen next year – not twenty, thirty, fifty years in the future. If nothing is done the future will be worse, thousands more will be displaced, and all of us will likely live in a world where massive starvation, epidemic disease, and war are commonplace.  

The U.S. will not be exempt – say good-bye to New York City, write off the Eastern third of Maryland.  Don’t believe me?  How about when you hear it from a hard-edged business trying to save its profit margins:

In 2006, Allstate announced it was no longer issuing new homeowners’ policies in states up and down the East Coast. In Maryland, the company shut its doors to new customers across 11 eastern counties, including parts of Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties. Why? First, the company said, sea levels are definitely rising worldwide based on irrefutable science. Second, Atlantic hurricanes are getting bigger and more intense as the planet warms.

Meanwhile, here in Missouri, too many of our intellectual and political leaders temporize, equivocate, pander and lie, while others seem too stupid to actually understand the urgency of the problem with which we are faced. Consider the following examples:

* University of Missouri President Gary Forsee thinks cap-and-trade legislation isn’t good for the University system’s bottom line – so to hell with the rest of the world!

* Rep. Roy Blunt, taking full advantage of the confusion engendered by climate denial goons in order to help out all the nice folks who keep his campaign kitty overflowing, asserts that “There isn’t any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth.”

* Rep. Todd Akin, who assures us that his science advisors have passed high school science, thinks it’s all a big chuckle, and is looking forward to the time when there will surf at the steps of the capitol building.

* Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer has introduced legislation to forbid U.S. funds going to the  United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which represents the thought of the majority of the world’s leading climate scientists, because, he asserts confidently, it “is engaged in dubious science.”

* Sam Graves voted against the House cap-and-trade legislation on the basis of a questionable claim that it would constitute a “national energy tax” that would “devastate rural America.” Wasn’t he aware of measures in the bill that were explicitly designed to mitigate any potential hardships?  Or was it just too inconvenient to explain why he opposed trying to making cap-and-trade work for everyone.

*  According to Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, cap-and-trade is risky because “Now the only experience that we’ve seen on this is what Europe has, and they have a cap and trade program that is not doing well, and so I think it is a stupid idea… .”  Of course, maybe Emerson’s just a bit too quick to put down the European experience; she probably ought to read up on what initial European cap-and-trade efforts have taught us.    

* Senator Kit Bond cites junk reports in his effort to destroy cap-and-trade legislation.

* Claire McCaskill, who claims to share progressive values in her fundraising letters, is insistent that climate legislation demands a “very gradual implementation,” otherwise Missourians might have to pay somewhat more for electricity.

* In Jefferson City, state legislators, whom Senator McCaskill so aptly described as a “vast sea of neanderthals,” have begun rumbling about the evils of cap-and-trade; a  trio of freshmen state representatives, Sue Allen, Cole McNary, and Andrew Koenig, have been working up the rural and tea-party contingent with state-of-the art climate denial propaganda. Probably much worse will be coming down the pike in the months ahead.

While most of the Missouri establishment has joined the chorus of the self-serving and the brain-dead, a few courageous souls deserve our thanks – at least for the time-being.  Ike Skelton, Lacy Clay and Emanuel Cleaver all come to mind.  One wonders, however, as the pressure builds, as the denialist lies proliferate, and the teapartiers rage, how long they will manage to hold out against expediency which seems to trump the ugly reality of global warming.

Kit Bond wasted no time before joining the Republican attack dogs frothing about the decision to bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four of the 9/11 cospirators to New York to stand trial.  Spouting what seems to be the agreed upon Republican rhetorical figure, he characterized the decision as prioritizing “political correctness over protecting the citizens of this country.” (Compare John Boehner’s similar statement that the decision “puts the interests of liberal special interest groups before the safety and security of the American people.”)

In regard to this line of attack, Glenn Greenwald gets it absolutely, spot-on right:

As always, the Right’s tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers.  Indeed, it’s hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.

Bond’s fearfulness is so extreme that it leads him to an implied repudiation of constitutional values:

…it an insult to the memories of those who were brutally murdered on September 11th that the perpetrators of these cowardly acts of terrorism will sit in a courtroom blocks away from Ground Zero and reap the full benefits and protections of the U.S. Constitution.

Strange sentiments indeed from a man who claims to value the principles embodied in the Constitution. When push comes to shove, Bond, clearly thinks that we can’t trust our form of government or our system of jurisprudence. Or maybe he just thinks that it’s in bad taste to insist that justice be served when you don’t like the folks it’s being served upon – that might be why he thinks that real justice, rather than unproven allegation and torture, would “insult” the memories of those who died on 9/11.

Perhaps Bond could take a lesson from the 9/11 victims’ family members who speak out about the promised trials in the ACLU video below:

Missouri’s Republican politicians are are working overtime to kill cap-and-trade. They insist that taking rational steps to move the U.S. off fossil fuels will cause the economy to crater. Even some Missouri Democrats who ought to know better,  Claire McCaskill, for instance,  voice concern about the economic impact of cap-and-trade on “Missouri families.”

Given all this wailing over the economic ruin that we face if cap-and-trade is enacted, it is instructive to learn, via FiredUp, that according to a new survey economists who have looked at the numbers conclude that

…the “significant benefits from curbing greenhouse-gas emissions would justify the costs of action,” . .. In fact, the survey of economists finds 94% believe the U.S. should join climate agreements to limit global warming.

This information should be especially reassuring to Sentor Kit Bond who explained his boycott of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee markup of cap-and-trade legislation by declaring:

Missouri families and workers expect me to know what this 1,000-page bill will cost them before I start voting on it …

Now that there is a consensus among economists, perhaps Bond can get back to work.  Of course, he and his fellow Republicans weren’t willing to accept the numbers offered in a study of the economic impacts of the legislation carried out by EPA economists, so maybe they don’t really care what most other economists think about cap-and-trade either.  

After Todd Akin’s recent diatribe – the one in which he trashed the CIA along with the rest of the “big government” bogeymen that worry him so much – we chided his fellow Republicans, including Kit Bond, for their inconsistency.  Bond, if you remember, had gone ballistic when Nancy Pelosi asserted that the CIA had lied to the Congress, but seemed content to hold his peace about Rep. Akin’s remarks.

Now it seems that perhaps Senator Bond might have learned something that led him to decide, however belatedly, that discretion really is the better part of valor. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, has confirmed five instances in which the CIA lied to Congress since 2001, including the situation cited by Pelosi. Schakowsky is pretty unequivocal about what she expects from the Republicans who ganged up on Pelosi earlier:

Schakowsky was asked on MSNBC whether Republicans now owed Pelosi an apology. “I certainly think they do,” she said.

Will Senator Bond be big enough to step up and offer a public apology? I don’t know about you, but I’m not holding my breath.

*corrected

Say what you will about the current Republican strategy in their ongoing war against reality, but they are disciplined.  Give them their cue and they respond right on time with the set pieces they have committed to memory and to which they will will hear no dissent, or, God forbid, any competing facts.  

Missouri’s Todd Akin (R-2nd) and Kit Bond are no exceptions. Today, they both mounted their favorite hobby horses, respectively health care reform (a.k.a. “big government”) and  energy policy, especially cap-and-trade legislation.

Speaking in the House today, Akin voiced his opposition to:

…socializing healthcare in America regardless of any so-called “opt out” provisions.

Congressman Akin noted that giving states the alternative of “opting out” of the proposed public option is a misnomer in the sense that is does not insulate the residents of state form increased taxation, Medicare cuts] and overall drag on the U.S. economy.

The key word above is “socializing,” as in socialism,  and it has the effect of drowning out any real-world issues for Akin and his fellow alternative reality enthusiasts.  

Of course, since not everybody has been trained to salivate upon hearing the magic words, Akin must manufacture claims about taxes, chimerical Medicare cuts and persistently ignore the real drag on our economy that will result if nothing is done abut the spiraling costs of our current, out-of-control health care delivery system.

Bond’s shtick is a little more subtle if just as narrow in focus. It consists of an appeal to cupidity with unfounded assertions about the costs of cap-and-trade. During his weekly conference call with Missouri reporters today, he once more cited bogus studies that assert that cap-and-trade would raise electricity rates.

If you are curious about how Bond thinks we need to go about fixing the climate crisis which, to his credit, he does not entirely deny, he offered this prescription:

Add a hundred new nuclear power plants, use electric-powered vehicles, conserve more energy and we could add jobs, produce more tax revenues, and avoid expending very expensive taxpayer subsidies on things like wind and solar which only work when the wind blows and the sun shines

Sounds familiar doesn’t it?  It’s all seems so easy when Bond puts it out there – go nuclear and just ignore long-term problems with safety and increasing piles of radioactive waste.  In a similar fashion, pretend that you don’t know that solar power, for example, contrary to the assertions of our Republican friends, is proving so viable that France plans to build solar plants in every region  and that even China recently jummped  on the bandwagon.  

If you listen to Mr. Bond, you would think that cap-and-trade is intended to happen in a policy vacuum. Bond is getting really good at banging that one-note drum to rally the forces against clean energy.  Too bad, as Media Matters demonstrates, he isn’t as good at facts.

Do contact these and other Missouri congress members and make sure they have their facts straight, but don’t expect Akin and Bond to change their tune.  Inconvenient facts only disrupt the harmonies that both these sons of Missouri like so much. No matter what arguments you raise, rest assured that Akin knows no other tune than his signature “Big-Government Rag,” while Blunt will continue to croon the “No-Cap-and-Trade Blues” no matter how often you show him he is wrong.  

I know lots of people who consider “politician” a dirty word. They figure it describes someone who’ll utter whatever contradictions it takes to please different voters. In that respect, I’d consider Claire McCaskill a politician. On her website, she pretends she understands the seriousness of global warming:

Global warming threatens our health, our environment and our national security. In Missouri, warmer average temperatures could increase heat-related deaths in the summer months and infection of insect-born diseases, such as West Nile Virus. It will also contribute to droughts and floods that lead to property damage. Over time, these higher temperatures are expected to alter the state’s environment — changing the trees in our forests, the fish in our rivers and further reducing the state’s vanishing wetlands.

Then she opposes the cap and trade legislation.

I expect that kind of behavior from Kit Bond. Senator Briggs & Stratton says, oh sure he says, that global warming is a problem, but three years ago he opposed lawn mower emissions reform. A lawn mower can emit as much air pollution in an hour as a car does in 13 hours, but Bond stopped Feinstein’s legislation because Briggs & Stratton had two plants in Missouri.

Someday, he’ll be saying, “Well, we would have saved the planet, but we figured it would cost too much.” Or maybe, in a rare fit of honesty, he’ll be more specific: “Well, we would have saved the planet, but it would have damaged the bottom line for Briggs & Stratton and Peabody Coal.”

Now Bond is saying the same thing about cap and trade as he did about lawn mowers:

“This is being pushed, absolutely, by the people of California and the people of New England who don’t rely on coal for electricity,” he said.

San Francisco flower children did not dream up this legislation. And the maddening part is that cap and trade will not cost coal dependent states more. As Clark pointed out here:

Congress Matters has a handy summary of the American Clean Energy and Security Act which points out that 32% of the allowances through 2025 will be given to regulated utilities to keep electricity rates low for consumers.

Furthermore, investing in alternative energy will give our economy a huge boost. What will cost us is if we’re late coming to the alternative energy industry. China is already revving up, getting seriously into building windmill generators.

But. I expect ideological, short sighted foot dragging  from Kit Bond.

The galling part is that I’ve come to expect short sighted foot dragging from Claire McCaskill as well. Last June, she tweeted that coal dependent states would end up paying too much under cap and trade. At least she didn’t repeat that canard in the Wednesday Post-Dispatch article, but she did bemoan the need for all these regulations:

“I haven’t been convinced yet that the cap-and-trade system is the way to address climate change,” she said. “We don’t want to create another market that is fraught with problems and not enough oversight. We just went through a meltdown because of problems with Wall Street and investment firms.”

Two observations: First, the problem with Wall Street wasn’t too much regulation but too little. And second, waiting around for the spirit of cooperation to move all American businesses is a recipe for disaster. You want more oversight? Add amendments to the bill.

Her other objection is that she doesn’t want us to let China and India continue to pollute while we play the sucker and rein in our emissions. Cutting our air pollution doesn’t make us a sucker. It positions us to deal with a planet that is changing. And besides, you sound like a five year old whining that Bobby got a bigger piece of the cake than you did. I want my Democratic senator to be an adult, who, by example, leads Americans–and Chinese, and Indians–to do what they know they must.

Repeat after me, Claire. Save the damn planet! Do not fiddle while earth burns.

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Kit Bond appeared with Senator Diane Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to discuss the disclosure of a second, secret Iranian uranium enrichment facility:

Bond’s demeanor during this interview illustrates the dilemma that faces erst-while moderates in the age of radical fringe Republicanism. On the one hand,  he is not a total ideologue so he strives for the appearance of rationality:

… I think that the election riots and the continuing unrest in Iran shows that there’s a significant body of Iranian people who don’t like the direction that they’re going.

And that’s why I think that strong economic sanctions, which have to be applied by the world community, not just us – we can make an impact – are the best way to go.

To get an idea about how much Bond is leaning toward the center here, contrast his statement with the rabid diatribe by former counselor to the Bush State Department, Eliot A. Cohen, that appeared in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.  Cohen states unequivocally that:

Pressure, be it gentle or severe, will not erase that nuclear program. The choices are now what they ever were: an American or an Israeli strike, which would probably cause a substantial war, or living in a world with Iranian nuclear weapons, which may also result in war, perhaps nuclear, over a longer period of time.

In comparison to such knee-jerk neocons, Bond seems positively sane.  

On the other hand, however, lest Bond’s more virulent fellow Republicans get the idea that he’s a weak sister, he does have to rattle his rather moribund sabre just a little and make a feint in the direction of the diplomatically inclined Obama administration. On the topic of Iran’s recent short-range missile tests, he declares in his best testy, elder statesman mode:

Today’s action in firing the missiles is really a poke in the eye to those who think that diplomatic efforts and agreements and inspections are going to change the way that Iran is going.

Has anybody ever implied that diplomacy or inspections unaccompanied by some source of leverage constitutes a viable strategy?  Or is Bond implying that sanctions are just a necessary run-up to military action (while somehow managing to agree with Secretary Gates that military action would be futile)?  Perhaps he is a little annoyed that Obama is so skillfully using the fact of Iran’s supposed intransigence to try to wrench cooperation from the Russians and Chinese.

Or, perhaps he’s just dancing around the issue trying to appear tough. Poor Senator Bond!  Trying to be responsible when you live in a nest of two-headed vipers must be stressful in the extreme.  No wonder he plans to retire.

Incidentally, if you you would like to fill in the holes in this interview with an alternative point of view, take a look at what Glenn Glenwald has to say.  He makes a good argument for exercising caution about the media coverage of Iran’s new facility, as well as the breathless alacrity with which our politicians, Democratic as well as Republican, have jumped on the bandwagon for what must seem to all of them a sure-fire political bet.