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Is Santorum Behind Limbaugh’s Claim Obama Tampered With Weather Service Data?

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Rush Limbaugh infamously claimed yesterday that President Obama tampered with National Weather Service data to force the GOP to cancel the Republican National Convention in Tampa. But do you know what’s behind the real reason Limbaugh spun this wild yarn? Here’s what Limbaugh told his listeners yesterday:

The media is now out there saying that Hurricane Katrina is hanging like a pall over the Republican convention in Tampa. So this whole thing has been politicized, as the Democrats politicize everything, and that’s why we are talking about it. Now, I want to remind you: All last week… And, no, at no time here am I alleging a conspiracy. At no time. With none of this am I alleging conspiracy. All last week what was the target? Tampa. What was going on in Tampa this week?

The Republican National Convention. A pretty important one, too. Introducing the nominee, Mitt Romney. It’s only after the convention that Romney can actually start spending all of this money that he’s raised, so this convention is very important. It’s a chance to introduce Romney to a lot of people who don’t know him yet. And I noticed that the hurricane center’s track is — and I’m not alleging conspiracies here. The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department.

It’s the government.

It’s Obama.

Let’s look at the last part of that excerpt again:

The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department.

It’s the government.

It’s Obama.

Many will remember that last year, news broke that the Republicans have been for years trying to eliminate the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and its parent, the Commerce Department.

Who has been at the forefront of the madness to eliminate the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Service? Rick Santorum. And Santorum’s ignorant hatred of all things science may have led to Limbaugh’s attempt to de-legitimize the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Service, the NOAA, and the Commerce Department. In the Republican silo, one voice echoes loud, clear, and long.

To be clear, I’m not saying Santorum called Limbaugh and asked him to say stupid things about the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Service on the air — I’m just saying the Republican mindset is like the Borg.

In January, prior to the failed former Pennsylvania Senator’s pulling out of the presidential campaign, Politico reported:

While a seemingly obscure issue next to abortion, gay marriage and tax cuts, weather forecasting inspired a defining controversy for the tail end of Santorum’s U.S. Senate career: his sponsorship of a 2005 bill aimed at hobbling the federal agency’s ability to compete with commercial forecasters like AccuWeather.

…

The bill went nowhere but brought Santorum a nationwide pasting from bloggers, weather enthusiasts, airline pilots and other critics. Some of them noted that executives from AccuWeather — a company based in State College, Pa., in Santorum’s home state — had donated thousands of dollars to his campaigns over the years.

Doubling down later in the year, Santorum also accused the weather service’s National Hurricane Center of flubbing its forecasts for Hurricane Katrina’s initial landfall in Florida, despite the days of all-too-prescient warnings the agency had given that the storm would subsequently strike the Gulf Coast.

…

Under the bill, commercial weather providers like AccuWeather would have continued to get access to the weather service’s data, while the federal agency would have been prohibited from providing “a product or service … that is or could be provided by the private sector.” The legislation would have counteracted a 2004 policy change by the George W. Bush administration that had broadened the weather service’s ability to create new products and release data, including over the Internet.

At the time, Santorum said the bill was needed to prevent the weather service from driving competitors out of business.

…

Opponents, including Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), argued that the bill threatened to deny vital information to residents of hurricane-threatened states by reverting the weather service to a “pre-Internet era.”

One year ago to the day, yesterday, Fox News published a wildly insane op-ed in by Iain Murray and David Bier that claimed the National Weather Service “may actually be dangerous,” is too expensive and should be scrapped, as The New Civil Rights Movement reported:

Murray and Bier, ignorantly, stated, the NWS ”issues severe weather advisories and hijacks local radio and television stations to get the message out. It presumes that citizens do not pay attention to the weather and so it must force important, perhaps lifesaving, information upon them. A few seconds’ thought reveals how silly this is. The weather might be the subject people care most about on a daily basis. There is a very successful private TV channel dedicated to it, 24 hours a day, as well as any number of phone and PC apps. Americans need not be forced to turn over part of their earnings to support weather reporting.”

The authors posit “the National Hurricane Center and its parent agency, the National Weather Service, are relics from America’s past that have actually outlived their usefulness,” and complain the the public is forced to pay more than $1 billion per year for the NWS.” Which, asNew York TImes statistician Nate Silver responds, “costs average American $3 per year.” Silver also adds, “The daft Fox News editorial also ignores the fact that private companies like AccuWeather get most of their data from the gov’t (for free).”

By the way, that Fox op-ed ran during the Hurricane Irene aftermath, when only none people had been reported dead from the storm. That number jumped to at least 40 when all was said and done.

Of course, since logic is never a hammer in the GOP tool chest, Republicans have continued their war on all things federal, and want the Commerce Department, and services like the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service gone. This is the same GOP who think so little of FEMA that they put Michael Brown in charge of it, under President George W. Bush, from January 2003 until he resigned in national disgrace in September 2005, after the mess he made related to Katrina.

You’ll remember Michael Brown thusly:

Before joining the DHS/FEMA, Brown was the Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association, (IAHA), from 1989-2001. After numerous lawsuits were filed against the organization over disciplinary actions that Brown took against members violating the Association’s code of ethics, Brown resigned and negotiated a buy-out of his contract.

…

After Bush entered office in January 2001, Brown joined FEMA as General Counsel. He was the first person hired by his long-time friend, then-FEMA director Joe Allbaugh, who also ran Bush’s election campaign in 2000.

Meanwhile, back to the National Weather Service.

Just ten days ago, the Palm Beach Daily News reported “Budget cuts may ground NOAA weather satellite program“:

Less well known [federal budget cuts] are those that affect the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the parent organization of the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Sequestration would slash $182 million from NOAA’s satellite program, the lifeblood of weather forecasting, particularly during the hurricane season.

The NHC improves its tracking of storms a little each year.

…

Continuing improvement is dependent on technology and a new generation of satellites that could also boost hurricane forecasts in the weakest of areas – intensification prediction. Delaying or eliminating the new generation of satellites could shift NHC progress back down to neutral. Or worse.

As the old saying goes, you can either pay now or pay later. Weather-related damage cost Florida $31.4 billion from 2002 to 2010, according to Marion Blakely, president of the Aerospace Industries Association and former FAA administrator under President George W. Bush.

Residents of Florida, and particularly areas such as Palm Beach on the state’s vulnerable southeast coast, understand how important hurricane forecasting is. Most people also know that almost all the weather data analyzed and presented in the U.S. media – even by private commercial enterprises such as AccuWeather and Weather Underground – is generated by NOAA.

But not everyone knows how the chain of information works. Several years ago, a congressman asked a senior government official testifying about satellite budgets: “Why are we building meteorological satellites when we have the Weather Channel?”

Regardless of whether you get your information from CBS, CNN, AccuWeather or the Weather Channel, official hurricane forecasts all originate from the same place: The National Hurricane Center. There may be different interpretations of the data, but that’s where the information is collected.

The GOP’s war on science and women may some day be the end of America as we know it.

Hope you’re registered to vote.

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Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

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April 25, 2024

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Legal experts appeared somewhat pleased during the first half of the Supreme Court’s historic hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was the President of the United States, as the justice appeared unwilling to accept that claim, but were stunned later when the right-wing justices questioned the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s attorney. Many experts are suggesting the ex-president may have won at least a part of the day, and some are expressing concern about the future of American democracy.

“Former President Trump seems likely to win at least a partial victory from the Supreme Court in his effort to avoid prosecution for his role in Jan. 6,” Axios reports. “A definitive ruling against Trump — a clear rejection of his theory of immunity that would allow his Jan. 6 trial to promptly resume — seemed to be the least likely outcome.”

The most likely outcome “might be for the high court to punt, perhaps kicking the case back to lower courts for more nuanced hearings. That would still be a victory for Trump, who has sought first and foremost to delay a trial in the Jan. 6 case until after Inauguration Day in 2025.”

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the courts and the law, noted: “This did NOT go very well [for Special Counsel] Jack Smith’s team. Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh think Trump’s Jan. 6 prosecution is unconstitutional. Maybe Gorsuch too. Roberts is skeptical of the charges. Barrett is more amenable to Smith but still wants some immunity.”

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Civil rights attorney and Tufts University professor Matthew Segal, responding to Stern’s remarks, commented: “If this is true, and if Trump becomes president again, there is likely no limit to the harm he’d be willing to cause — to the country, and to specific individuals — under the aegis of this immunity.”

Noted foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator David Rothkopf observed: “Feels like the court is leaning toward creating new immunity protections for a president. It’s amazing. We’re watching the Constitution be rewritten in front of our eyes in real time.”

“Frog in boiling water alert,” warned Ian Bassin, a former Associate White House Counsel under President Barack Obama. “Who could have imagined 8 years ago that in the Trump era the Supreme Court would be considering whether a president should be above the law for assassinating opponents or ordering a military coup and that *at least* four justices might agree.”

NYU professor of law Melissa Murray responded to Bassin: “We are normalizing authoritarianism.”

Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, argued before the Supreme Court justices that if Trump had a political rival assassinated, he could only be prosecuted if he had first been impeach by the U.S. House of Representatives then convicted by the U.S. Senate.

During oral arguments Thursday, MSNBC host Chris Hayes commented on social media, “Something that drives me a little insane, I’ll admit, is that Trump’s OWN LAWYERS at his impeachment told the Senators to vote not to convict him BECAUSE he could be prosecuted if it came to that. Now they’re arguing that the only way he could be prosecuted is if they convicted.”

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Attorney and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa warned, “It’s worth highlighting that Trump’s lawyers are setting up another argument for a second Trump presidency: Criminal laws don’t apply to the President unless they specifically say so…this lays the groundwork for saying (in the future) he can’t be impeached for conduct he can’t be prosecuted for.”

But NYU and Harvard professor of law Ryan Goodman shared a different perspective.

“Due to Trump attorney’s concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there’s now a very clear path for DOJ’s case to go forward. It’d be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further. Justice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.”

NYU professor of history Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert scholar on authoritarians, fascism, and democracy concluded, “Folks, whatever the Court does, having this case heard and the idea of having immunity for a military coup taken seriously by being debated is a big victory in the information war that MAGA and allies wage alongside legal battles. Authoritarians specialize in normalizing extreme ideas and and involves giving them a respected platform.”

The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal offered up a prediction: “Court doesn’t come back till May 9th which will be a decision day. But I think they won’t decide *this* case until July 3rd for max delay. And that decision will be 5-4 to remand the case back to DC, for additional delay.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

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Justices Slam Trump Lawyer: ‘Why Is It the President Would Not Be Required to Follow the Law?’

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3 hours ago

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April 25, 2024

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Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court hearing Donald Trump’s claim of absolute immunity early on appeared at best skeptical, were able to get his attorney to admit personal criminal acts can be prosecuted, appeared to skewer his argument a president must be impeached and convicted before he can be criminally prosecuted, and peppered him with questions exposing what some experts see is the apparent weakness of his case.

Legal experts appeared to believe, based on the Justices’ questions and statements, Trump will lose his claim of absolute presidential immunity, and may remand the case back to the lower court that already ruled against him, but these observations came during Justices’ questioning of Trump attorney John Sauer, and before they questioned the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s Michael Dreeben.

“I can say with reasonable confidence that if you’re arguing a case in the Supreme Court of the United States and Justices Alito and Sotomayor are tag-teaming you, you are going to lose,” noted attorney George Conway, who has argued a case before the nation’s highest court and obtained a unanimous decision.

But some are also warning that the justices will delay so Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump will not take place before the November election.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“This argument still has a ways to go,” observed UCLA professor of law Rick Hasen, one of the top election law scholars in the county. “But it is easy to see the Court (1) siding against Trump on the merits but (2) in a way that requires further proceedings that easily push this case past the election (to a point where Trump could end this prosecution if elected).”

The Economist’s Supreme Court reporter Steven Mazie appeared to agree: “So, big picture: the (already slim) chances of Jack Smith actually getting his 2020 election-subversion case in front of a jury before the 2024 election are dwindling before our eyes.”

One of the most stunning lines of questioning came from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who said, “If someone with those kinds of powers, the most powerful person in the world with the greatest amount of authority, could go into Office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes. I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is, from turning the Oval Office into, you know, the seat of criminal activity in this country.”

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She also warned, “If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be a significant risk that future presidents would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon while they’re in office? It’s right now the fact that we’re having this debate because, OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] has said that presidents might be prosecuted. Presidents, from the beginning of time have understood that that’s a possibility. That might be what has kept this office from turning into the kind of crime center that I’m envisioning, but once we say, ‘no criminal liability, Mr. President, you can do whatever you want,’ I’m worried that we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office.”

“Why is it as a matter of theory,” Justice Jackson said, “and I’m hoping you can sort of zoom way out here, that the president would not be required to follow the law when he is performing his official acts?”

“So,” she added later, “I guess I don’t understand why Congress in every criminal statute would have to say and the President is included. I thought that was the sort of background understanding that if they’re enacting a generally applicable criminal statute, it applies to the President just like everyone else.”

Another critical moment came when Justice Elena Kagan asked, “If a president sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, is that immune?”

Professor of law Jennifer Taub observed, “This is truly a remarkable moment. A former U.S. president is at his criminal trial in New York, while at the same time the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing his lawyer’s argument that he should be immune from prosecution in an entirely different federal criminal case.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

 

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‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

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5 hours ago

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April 25, 2024

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The county clerk for Ingham County, Michigan blasted Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump after the ex-president’s daughter-in-law bragged the RNC will have people to “physically handle” voters’ ballots in polling locations across the country this November.

“We now have the ability at the RNC not just to have poll watchers, people standing in polling locations, but people who can physically handle the ballots,” Trump told Newsmax host Eric Bolling this week, as NCRM reported.

“Will these people, will they be allowed to physically handle the ballots as well, Lara?” Bolling asked.

“Yup,” Trump replied.

Marc Elias, the top Democratic elections attorney who won 63 of the 64 lawsuits filed by the Donald Trump campaign in the 2020 election cycle (the one he did not win was later overturned), corrected Lara Trump.

READ MORE: ‘I Hope You Find Happiness’: Moskowitz Trolls Comer Over Impeachment Fail

“Poll observers are NEVER permitted to touch ballots. She is suggesting the RNC will infiltrate election offices,” Elias warned on Wednesday.

Barb Byrum, a former Michigan Democratic state representative with a law degree and a local hardware store, is the Ingham County Clerk, and thus the chief elections official for her county. She slammed Lara Trump and warned her the RNC had better not try to touch any ballots in her jurisdiction.

“I watched your video, and it’s riveting stuff. But if you think you’ll be touching ballots in my state, you’ve got another thing coming,” Byrum told Trump in response to the Newsmax interview.

“First and foremost, precinct workers, clerks, and voters are the only people authorized to touch ballots. For example, I am the County Clerk, and I interact with exactly one voted ballot: My own,” Byrum wrote, launching a lengthy series of social media posts educating Trump.

“Election inspectors are hired by local clerks in Michigan and we hire Democrats and Republicans to work in our polling places. We’re required by law to do so,” she continued. “In large cities and townships, the local clerks train those workers. In smaller cities and townships, that responsibility falls to County Clerks, like me.”

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She explained, “precinct workers swear an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Michigan.”

“Among the provisions in the Michigan Constitution is the right to a secret ballot for our voters,” she added.

Byrum also educated Trump on her inaccurate representation of the consent decree, which was lifted by a court, not a judge’s death, as Lara Trump had claimed.

“It’s important for folks to understand what you’re talking about: The end of a consent decree that was keeping the RNC from intimidating and suppressing voters (especially in minority-majority areas).”

“With that now gone, you’re hoping for the RNC to step up their game and get people that you train to do god-knows what into the polling places.”

Byrum also warned Trump: “If election inspectors are found to be disrupting the process of an orderly election OR going outside their duties, local clerks are within their rights to dismiss them immediately.”

“So if you intend to train these 100,000 workers to do anything but their sacred constitutional obligation, they’ll find themselves on the curb faster than you can say ‘election interference.'”

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