Seems Kit Bond, in his best huffing and puffing style, has thrown a noisy little tantrum and resigned from the Senate Intelligence Committee panel charged with reviewing CIA Interrogation policies. He claims that the appointment of a federal prosecutor by Attorney General Eric Holder might bias the hearings and lead to a general unwillingness on the part of CIA officers to be forthcoming about their possible, past misdeeds:

“Had Mr. Holder honored the pledge made by the President to look forward, not backwards, we would still be active participants in the Committee’s review,” the ranking Republican on the intelligence panel, Sen. Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, said in a statement. “What current or former CIA employee would be willing to gamble his freedom by answering the Committee’s questions? Indeed, forcing these terror fighters to make this choice is neither fair nor just.”

Bond’s resignation doesn’t seem to bother panel chair, Dianne Feinstein, who has indicated that the panel will complete its task with or without bipartisan contributions. Perhaps one reason for her equanimity might be relief that she won’t have to deal with the overt bias that Bond himself displays when he speaks about the temerity of the DOJ in investigating individuals whom he salutes as “terror fighters.”  

Bond might just be worried, good Republican soldier that he is, that when faced with hard evidence about what the CIA actually did, he could find himself in a very hard place. He himself might be forced to condemn his beloved terror fighters.  Can’t somebody please explain to the senator that there is a word for governments that allow secret intelligence agencies to run amok, and that word is “dictatorship”?  

Our friends at Fired Up are reporting:

Bond, McConnell & McCain Holding Private “Health Care Reform Forum” Monday in Kansas City

Monday, Senators Kit Bond, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and John McCain will be the featured guests at a “Health Care Reform Forum” at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.

The 75-100 guests invited to the event have reportedly been “hand-picked” by Bond’s office to hear about Republican plans for obstructing real health care reform.

The forum is closed to the public.

Heh. Maybe they’re afraid the great unwashed would try to hold them accountable for Medicare Part D.

It’s one thing to not do town halls because they’ve been going badly, it’s quite another to hold a fake one and hand pick your crowd.

*it’s okay if you’re a republican

That’s the upshot of Bill Lambrecht’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on Blunt’s role in shaping GOP “policy” on health care reform. (I’m not sure you can call it “policy” when you can only produce a slim four page brochure chock full of slogans and devoid of numbers.)

Voters fed up with insurance companies’ red tape and denials of claims seem to favor a public option: 70 percent or more endorse the government’s entry into the health care competition, recent polls show.

But Blunt has been unstinting in denouncing a public option. He uses the phrase “government-run” to describe a shift that he sees as dangerous both to the health care system and to its clients.

“If there’s a government competitor, in the very short term, you wind up with no competitors,” he said in an interview. “When voters begin to understand that the government takeover of health care is really the end result of a government competitor in the marketplace, they’re not going to like that.”

Um, Roy, you might want to take a look at the level of competition among health insurance companies in Missouri. In your own district, 94% of Joplin’s citizens are insured by a single insurance company.

In any case, the article cites polling that shows an overwhelming majority of Americans as supportive of a public option, which Blunt opposes. Guess who also opposes the public option?

Not surprisingly, insurance companies are fighting to squelch a public option. Echoing Blunt, Robert Zirkelbach, director of strategic communications for America’s Health Insurance Plans – which represents virtually all of the nation’s health insurers – said government involvement would “dismantle” the current system and destroy corporate innovations that aid consumers.

“He (Blunt) is certainly very thoughtful on health care issues, and I think he showed that by the proposal they put forth,” Zirkelbach said.

Yup. Health insurance companies are ready to stand side by side with Roy Blunt in the battle against the public option and preserve a broken system of rapidly rising premiums and insurance company profiteering.

Yet another reason to contact Sens. Bond and McCaskill right now to ask for a strong and specific stance in favor of the public option. Pressure on McCaskill and Bond is necessary to make sure we have a strong public option and viable health care reform, which is anathema  to Blunt and insurance executives.  

.Sean focuses on one of Bond’s outrageous statements to KY3, namely that we should thank Bush for Iraq. (Sen. Bond, thanks, but no thanks.)

But I think the bigger story here is a leading Republican calling for the US to cut off the inflow of refined petroleum into Iran in order to change the government of Iran.

[Senator Bond] That will cause a change in the regime’s attitude, or a regime change, because they’re short of refined petroleum.

Iran is indeed short on refined petroleum, and there’s been some congressional support for trying to cut off refined petroleum exports to Iran in order to exert pressure on the Iranians to stop their nuclear program. But I can’t imagine a more direct way of “proving” to those Iranian people sitting on the fence that the reformists are American puppets than to threaten a US-led blockade on the Iranians in order to effect “regime change”.

Also, can we retire the term “regime change?”

Yesterday, I posted about some questions Chris Bowers composed to nail down our senators’ position on the public option. I e-mailed McCaskill and Bond, and while I’ve not yet received an official response, I’m told by a McCaskill staffer that they will get back to me.

The questions, again, are as follows:

Do you support a public healthcare option as part of healthcare reform?

If so, do you support a public healthcare option that is available on day one?

Do you support a public healthcare option that is national, available everywhere, and accountable to Congress?

Do you support a public healthcare option that can bargain for rates from providers and big drug companies?

Now, just because I sent my questions in, that doesn’t let you off the hook. It’s important that Sens. McCaskill and Bond hear from us and respond specifically to our questions. Please ask for specific responses. Don’t assume that just because Obama is president and that he has thrown his support behind a public option that a viable public option will automatically come out of the process.

For example, just today Obama’s first pick to head the health care reform effort and become Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, came out against a public option.

But we were concerned that the ongoing health reform debate is beginning to show signs of fracture on the public plan issue, so in order to advance the process of developing bipartisan legislation and to move it forward, it’s time to find consensus here,” Daschle said.

“We’ve come too far and gained too much momentum for our efforts to fail over disagreements on one single issue,” he said.

This despite the fact that 76% of Americans believe that a choice of a public plan offered by the federal government is either extremely important or very important to health care reform. That’s a result that surprised even the pollsters who conducted the survey. It looks like the only people insisting on the “consensus” that Daschle describes is the conservative Republicans he’s teamed up with to offer a watered down compromise plan.

Still, politicians don’t respond to generic polls. They respond to constituents and to people who contribute to their campaigns. The only way we are going to have more of an effect than the donors is if more of us constituents write in support of a public option.

Fortunately, Chris Bowers has teamed up with grassroots group Democracy for America and the Health Care for America Now! coalition to develop some tools and make it extraordinarily easy to ask our representatives these questions, and to collect their answers.

To write a letter, use DFA’s Whip Count tool. It’s got a sample e-mail you can edit, and it will automatically send the e-mail to the correct senator for you. http://www.standwithdrdean.com…

Once you get an e-mail response, you can send it in to HCAN using this webpage: http://healthcareforamericanow…

Or you can simply forward it to this address: response@standwithdrdean.com

Either way, please take just a couple of minutes to ask these questions of our senators.  

I’m pleased to know that at least one of our US Senators here in Missouri, namely Claire McCaskill, supports a public option for health care reform. Now, as we’ve seen with the Third Way nonsense, one can “support” a public option in about the same way George Bush supported “fixing” Social Security, with so many caveats and triggers that the ultimate aim is really pulling the whole thing down. I’m not accusing McCaskill of anything of the sort, but I would like to know a little more about what she thinks a public option should look like.

Chris Bowers over at OpenLeft has come up with a series of questions aimed at getting some more basic information about what kind of public option our senators will put their support behind.

The aim is to get answers from all 59 Democratic senators and some of the swing Republicans (in other words, the two senators from Maine.) And since our elected officials are responsive to constituents first and foremost, the questioning needs to come from us Missourians.

So will you write Senator McCaskill, ask her the following yes or no questions, and find out where she stands on the public option? (Since she has already professed support for the public option, instead of asking her about that, you might want to thank her.) Her e-mail contact form is here: http://mccaskill.senate.gov/co…

1–Do you support a public healthcare option as part of healthcare reform?

2–If so, do you support a public healthcare option that is available on day one?

3–Do you support a public healthcare option that is national, available everywhere, and accountable to Congress?

4–Do you support a public healthcare option that can bargain for rates from providers and big drug companies?

Once you’ve received a written response (that’s the reason we’re asking you to e-mail McCaskill instead of calling her office) post it in comments here.

For fun, you could always ask Senator Bond what he thinks about the public option here: http://bond.senate.gov/public/…

For more on the public option and why it’s essential for any real health care reform, Paul Waldman has an excellent article on the subject.  

Oh, brother. From a “Letter to the Editor” in today’s Warrensburg Daily Star Journal:

6/9/2009 9:31:00 AM

Keep Guantanamo open

Letter to the Editor

… Bringing terrorists who hate our country to U.S. soil during a time of war is not wise and even the president’s own Democrats can see that.

Doing this makes Obama seem as if he is not tough enough in the eyes of our enemies. This is not what Obama and America need right now. He does not need to make the American people feel vulnerable and our enemies feel that we have a weak president running America right now…

Where do people get this stuff? Why would people in Missouri be so fearful that our domestic federal prisons are sieves?

Uh, let’s see what the republican dominated Missouri General Assembly had to say about this:

HCR 16 Strongly urges Congress to reject any asylum, containment, transport, imprisonment, or state medical care of any suspected terrorists released from United States operated foreign prisons

Okay.

And Senator Kit Bond (r)?:

BOND: AMERICANS DON’T WANT TERRORISTS IN THEIR NEIGHBORHOODS

May 5, 2009

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Kit Bond, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, today made the following remarks on the Senate floor where he urged President Obama to abandon plans to close Guantanamo Bay, emphasizing that Americans don’t want terrorists in their neighborhoods….

I haven’t noticed any maximum security prisons in my neighborhood. There is a private correctional facility the next town over. Hmmm, I sense an entrepreneurial opportunity somewhere in this. Maybe that’s what they’re all worried about. You think?

Claire McCaskill (sort of) gets it – May 27, 2009:

…Question: Senator, what would you like to see happen with Guantanamo Bay, in your opinion?

Senator McCaskill: Well, I think there does need to be a plan. I think first and foremost,  everybody needs to take a deep breath and realize the President is not interested in doing anything that would jeopardize the safety of Americans.  It is almost silly the way people have begun bandying about this notion that we’re gonna let terrorists loose all over America. And, you know, that’s not gonna happen. [crosstalk]

Question: Our prisons are secure.

Senator McCaskill: Our prisons are very secure.  We have terrorists right now in America in our prisons.  Dozens of ’em.  And they are secure because we don’t let dangerous people escape from prisons in America.  I’m hopeful still that the vast majority of those folks will be placed other places than America.  And I think that there is a, a likelihood that may happen.  So I think Guantanamo will close, it should close. It is going to take some time. And I think just because the President announced he was gonna close it, I think everyone understood that he set the right tone when he announced he was gonna close it right after he was inaugurated. But that doesn’t mean he’s not gonna do it carefully and with caution. And that’s what you’re seeing now…

I dunno, I wonder if we have any experience prosecuting terrorists, convicting them, and detaining them in our prisons in the United States? From a Department of Justice release on June 9, 2009 (via Steve Benen at Washington Monthly):

Department of Justice

Fact Sheet: Prosecuting and Detaining Terror Suspects in the U.S. Criminal Justice System

…Nationwide, the Justice Department and its U.S. Attorney’s offices have prosecuted many terrorism cases in recent months and years . Last year, Human Rights First published a comprehensive study on prosecuting terrorism in federal court from 9/11 through the end of 2007. The study, entitled: “In Pursuit of Justice: Prosecuting Terrorism Cases in the Federal Court,” found that federal prosecutors achieved a conviction rate of more than 90 percent in the set of terrorism cases examined by the report’s authors. The study examined a specific set of 257 defendants charged with terrorism related violations in the United States between 9/11 and the end of 2007. Of the 160 defendants from this group who had their cases resolved, 145 were convicted of at least one count, either by a verdict of guilty after trial or by a guilty plea…

…There are currently 216 inmates in Bureau of Prisons (BOP) custody who have a history of/or nexus to international terrorism. Sixty seven of these individuals were extradited to the United States for prosecution, while 149 were not extradited. Seventy two of these individuals are U.S. citizens (45 of them born in the United States, 27 of them naturalized). The “Supermax” facility in Florence, Colo. (ADX Florence), which is BOP’s most secure facility, houses 33 of these international terrorists. There has never been an escape from ADX Florence, and BOP has housed some of these international terrorists since the early 1990s. In addition to the ADX Florence, the BOP houses such individuals in the Communications Management Units at Terre Haute, Ind., and Marion, Ill., as well as in other facilities among different institutions around the country…

Uh, we’re already housing international terrorists in our prisons in the United States. It makes you wonder why this has become one of the republicans’ favorite political footballs. Sorry, I just answered my own question, didn’t I?  

Hilda Solis was conformed as Secretary of Labor by the Senate today in an 80-17 vote.

Among the “No” Votes, Missouri Senator Kit Bond:

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 111th Congress – 1st Session

Vote Summary

Question: On the Nomination (Confirmation Hilda L. Solis of California, to be Secretary of Labor )

Vote Number: 66 Vote Date: February 24, 2009, 04:30 PM

Required For Majority: 1/2 Vote Result: Nomination Confirmed

Nomination Number: PN64-18

Nomination Description: Hilda L. Solis, of California, to be Secretary of Labor…

…NAYs —17

Bond (R-MO)

Bunning (R-KY)

Burr (R-NC)

Coburn (R-OK)

Cornyn (R-TX)

Crapo (R-ID)

DeMint (R-SC)

Ensign (R-NV)

Inhofe (R-OK)

Kyl (R-AZ)

Risch (R-ID)

Roberts (R-KS)

Sessions (R-AL)

Shelby (R-AL)

Thune (R-SD)

Vitter (R-LA)

Wicker (R-MS)

[emphasis added]

I wonder if Senator Bond will be marching in any Labor Day parades this year. Nah, probably not. Now that he’s a lame duck he doesn’t have to do any stinkin’ parades…

I can’t wait to see the man go.

In typical fashion, Kit Bond is heading on the road today to take credit for getting $40 million for low-income housing in Missouri, when he not only voted against the bill, but also trashed it as the “trillion dollar” baby. While the bill was being debated, he also tried to claim  we were on his side in opposition at a rate of 4 to 1, without evidence. Isn’t there, say, a union local or two in Southwest Missouri who could meet Bond and shame him for his opposition to the stimulus package?

This is on the heels of Blaine Luetkemeyer touting increased Pell grants in his district even after he voted against the bill.

Here’s a newsflash for you, Walter Kronkite. You do not get to take credit for a bill that you opposed.  

I hear what Fired Up is saying here, but why should it surprise anyone that reporters pass along Ed Martin’s press releases? He’s a former chief of staff for a GOP governor, so obviously he’s a Very Important Person whom we should all listen to.

Just like we should watch videos of Kit Bond claiming that 80% of all Missourians oppose the stimulus package, and not have to read any context or demand any evidence to back up the claim.

And we should all be thankful that Dave Catanese at least made us aware that it was a statement from Martin, and not simply reported as if it were fact, Fox News-style.