In this video, when the Oakland police toss these at peaceful protesters, they call them smoke bombs, or tear-gas canisters.

If they get tossed back to the police...improvised explosive devices?

Reuters:

"Officers were pelted with bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans, improvised explosive devices and burning flares," the Oakland Police Department said in a statement. "Oakland Police Department deployed smoke and tear gas."

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The press is supposed to confront and challenge politicians, to fact check, to provide a service to their viewership to be informed.

Which is why I'm less upset at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly announcing that the Senate Republicans will be contributing an Amicus Brief to the case against President Obama's recess appointments than I am that Candy Crowley never bothered to mention that during the previous administration, Bush made 171 recess appointments--including Ambassador to the UN John Bolton--and Mitch McConnell never said boo to any of them.

There's nothing unconstitutional about Obama's appointments, as the Republicans well know:

The Justice Department is publicly rebutting Republican criticism of the legality of President Barack Obama's recent recess appointments of a national consumer watchdog and other officials.

The department released a 23-page legal opinion Thursday summarizing the advice it gave the White House before the Jan. 4 appointments. GOP leaders have argued the Senate was not technically in recess when Obama acted so the regular Senate confirmation process should have been followed.

Assistant Attorney General Virginia Seitz wrote that the president has authority to make such appointments because the Senate is on a 20-day recess, even though it has held periodic pro forma sessions in which no business is conducted. Seitz argued the pro forma sessions – some with as few as one member present – have not been sufficient for the chamber to exercise its constitutional authority to advise and consent to normal presidential nominations.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has said Obama has endangered the nation's systems of checks and balances, and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch says the appointments are a very grave decision by an autocratic White House.

Autocratic? Such pearl-clutching hypocrisy. Sen. Mike Lee has promised to obstruct all further nominations as retribution for this completely legal tactic made necessary by Republican obstruction. This, of course, doesn't bother Mitch McConnell either. Because the tyranny of the minority to hold the entire country hostage against the desires of its populace is absolutely acceptable practice, if you're a Republican.

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From this Monday night's The Young Turks on Current TV, Crooks and Liars managing editor Tina Dupuy, Turk's regular Ben Mankiewicz and Color of Change's Rashad Robinson discuss whether the Obama administration is finally going to crack down on the banks and whether we see newly appointed RMBS co-chair Eric Schneiderman or Treasury Secretary win out that battle.

Tina and Ben were hopeful we might finally see something finally be done. Robinson reminded the viewers that without pressure from progressive groups, we might not have finally seen President Obama finally make some moves towards some accountability. And Cenk wasn't so optimistic after the stalling and lack of accountability we've seen so far.

For more on that, here's Taibbi's take over at Rolling Stone -- A Victory for the Public on Foreclosures?.

Dave Dayen has more on whether we might see Schneiderman and this working group accomplish anything -- Schneiderman’s RMBS Working Group: Resources, Jurisdiction and Will.

And from C&L here's more on the pressure that's been put on the Obama administration to act from Mike Lux -- Word of the Day: Accountability and from Ken Quinnell -- AFL-CIO's Trumka Joins Chorus Calling for Investigation of Banks.

Next topic for the panel was the recent article at Politico -- Death of bipartisanship has killed the Washington deal. As they all noted, Republicans gave up on bipartisanship a long time ago and progressives haven't had too many real victories in quite some time given how far our politicians on all sides of the aisle have moved to the extreme right.

And one final note, C&L has been in talks with Current TV about Tina doing some correspondent work for them this election season and possibly covering CPAC next week. If you'd like to get a chance to see more of Tina on Current, send them a note and let them know how you feel.

You can contact them at feedback@current.com
or @current on Twitter.

Thanks everyone and we'll keep you posted!

This should be interesting. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan says she is going to call the national leaders of Occupy Wall Street this week.

"I plan to call some of the national leadership of Occupy this week to say that the Oakland group is not nonviolent and has not agreed to be nonviolent," Quan said in an interview on KCBS. "The national Occupy movement has said they are nonviolent."

There's more:

Quan said weekly protests by self-proclaimed members of the Occupy movement have cost the city millions of dollars.

I guess those "self-proclaimed" members are nothing like the "official national" ones?

I missed this interview with Quan before Saturday's protest where she plays the race card, of all things:

In an interview on January 27, 2012, before Saturday's protest, Quan told KQED-TV's "This Week in Northern California" that the movement's anger toward herself and Oakland has been unfairly portrayed by national media outlets in part because she is female and Asian.

"You don't see that kind of anger in San Francisco, where Mayor (Ed) Lee handled it in a different way," KQED-TV reporter Scott Shafer told Quan.

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After playing games at the end of the year with an extension of the payroll tax cut extension, it now appears that both Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader are in agreement, and something's going to be passed by the end of next month.

CNN's Candy Crowley pushed Mitch McConnell on whether Republicans would be willing to raise taxes in order to pay for it and McConnell wouldn't rule it out, saying he didn't want to negotiate the deal with Crowley on CNN, but given that they're all beholden to St. Grover and his no tax pledge, I'll be very surprised to see them agree to increasing taxes later. I'll also be surprised if they don't demand another pound of flesh from the working class and the poor in order to offset the cost as well since that's been their pattern for the last several years. Can't raise taxes on the wealthy or corporations, but they'll gladly go after the elderly and the most vulnerable in society.

McConnell couldn't manage to make it through the interview without taking a shot at the Solyndra debacle, as though that one small project is the worst example anyone could find of wasteful government spending. And naturally Candy Crowley didn't bother to point out that it was McConnell and his ilk that helped destroy the economy and blow up the deficit in the first place with tax cuts, a prescription drug giveaway to the big pharma companies and two wars that they kept off the books, none of which were paid for and the fact that they didn't have one iota of concern for the size of the deficit until a Democrat got elected to the White House.

She also didn't ask him about the games they were playing late last year when they could have passed an extension of the payroll tax cuts, but decided not to that Ken wrote about here -- John Boehner Kills the Payroll Tax Extension Because It Was Too Popular and Would've Passed.

Another week of meet the Republicans for the Sunday shows and another week where they're allowed to lie and prevaricate at will with no push back from our corporate media.

Transcript below the fold.

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Ron Paul

The GOP has a big problem which is playing out in Florida right now but won't go away anytime soon. This clip from Neil Cavuto's show last Friday is an excellent example of the inner Republican struggle between centrists and those on the very far right. Eric Bolling guest-hosted Cavuto's show, which was devoted to building up Mitt Romney while very subtly pulling down the other candidates. In this segment, former GE CEO Jack Welch is cautioning mainstream Republicans to treat Ron Paul with kid gloves so he can capture all of those passionate kids who have signed on to Paul's campaign.

There are numerous reasons for Ron Paul's popularity among younger people, but whatever the attraction, he will not win the nomination and he knows it. He has repeatedly stated that his goal is to amass delegates in order to push at the Republican convention for his largely libertarian agenda. And while Paul is certainly capturing the absolutist, idealist spirit in some young folks, he's also alienating the largest part of the Republican base: older Americans.

With all of that in mind, Jack Welch is cautioning Republicans to be very, very nice to Ron Paul and "give him a speech" at the convention as a way to "treat him with dignity."

Newt Gingrich

Meanwhile, John Heilemann thinks Newt Gingrich is just angry-mad-dog enough to keep pushing on past Florida, mostly because he hates Mitt Romney with a hard passion. In a column for New York Magazine, he says that Gingrich seems to understand that he will lose and lose big in Florida but has no intention of letting it go, and has begun to fashion a message rather than a series of attacks.

I disagree with Heilemann to some extent. Newt is not out there on his own limb frothing at the mouth. No, he's one of the candidates of choice for the astroturf section of the Tea Party movement, represented by groups like Tea Party Nation and Tea Party Express. These groups did not spring up in 2009 from grassroots origins, but represent the hardline conservative core of the Republican Party, as represented by the likes of Sal Russo and Judson Phillips. They are not going away quietly.

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Republican Louisiana Sen. David Vitter lashed out at a CNN host on Monday for asking if there were similarities between his prostitution scandal and the infidelities of Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.

"Newt Gingrich has been suffering some heat over his cheating on his first wife, cheating on his second wife with his third wife," CNN's Ashleigh Banfield reminded Vitter. "And you have also suffered heat in your political career as well back in 2007, admitting to having made call some calls to an alleged prostitution operation."

"You did very well when you ran for re-election in 2010," she continued. "In fact, if I look at the numbers, I think you trounced your opponent by, what, 19 points or something like that? You seemed to manage that baggage very well. I want you to weigh in on Newt Gingrich's baggage and handling that baggage, and what it is like for a politician who has some serious baggage trying to be elected."

"Ashleigh, the good news is, in America, it's not up to CNN," Vitter shot back. "It's up to American people and it's up to voters. That was the case in my election in 2010. That's going to be the case in this presidential election."

"Well, I appreciate that you say it's not up to CNN," Banfield replied. "But I like to say we're the messenger here and one of the messages that you gave was this quotation about your incident and you said, 'This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible.'"

"You're personally, in my opinion, outdoing King, but go for it -- John King, but go for it," Vitter said, in reference to a recent debate where CNN moderator John King asked Gingrich about allegations that he had asked his second wife for an "open marriage" so that he could carry on an affair.

"I'm not trying to outdo anyone, sir," Banfield told Vitter. "I am trying to hold you accountable for the things you did. ... What I'm asking you is -- can you compare the difficulties that you struggled with to what Newt Gingrich is struggling with?"

"No, I can't," Vitter grumbled.

"I appreciate greatly, not only you getting up early and coming in to speak to me, but also equating me with John King, because I think he's pretty great," Banfield said, concluding the interview.

You'd think Social Security would top the list of subjects for a Presidential debate in Florida. How many questions did Wolf Blitzer ask about it during Thursday night's Republican debate in Jacksonville?

Answer: None. The words “Social Security” never passed his lips.

It was almost as if there were a “gentlemen's agreement” among the five people on the stage. And we use that phrase advisedly, since Blitzer sealed the boy's club atmosphere by asking each of the candidates why his wife would make the best First Lady.

The candidates did mention Social Security a couple of times, but only in passing and only in the most misleading ways possible. It's too bad there wasn't, oh, a journalist nearby—one who was inclined to ask follow-up questions.

What was said that night? Rick Santorum and Ron Paul both attacked Newt Gingrich from the right on Social Security. Santorum suggested that the Speaker's proposals, which would cut benefits, were too expensive and would “create a brand new Social Security entitlement.”

Not true.

Ron Paul said that Gingrich's claim to have helped cut the Federal deficit was false—which is true. But then he said that the reason it's untrue is because Gingrich “doesn't count the money he takes out of Social Security”—which is false!

Confused yet? Stick around. The layers of artificial reality became as mind-bending as a Philip K. Dick novel when Gingrich responded.

Gingrich attacked Obama from the left on Social Security:

I propose that we take Social Security off-budget so no president can ever again threaten, as Obama did in August, that he would not send the check out, and you could set Social Security back up as a free-standing trust fund. It does have enough money and you could in fact pay the checks without regard to politics in Washington.

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About the only people on the planet who say the 2009 Recovery Act (ARRA) failed are Republicans. This is a necessary posture for them, given that not one of them voted for it. They have too much ideology vested in its failure to admit success, which is why they attack projects like Solyndra and green energy in particular. It's why the Republican governors in Republican states reject high-speed rail and other infrastructure projects. It isn't that it wouldn't be great for their states. It's simply that the funds came into being via the Democrat in the Oval Office and thin majority of Democrats in Congress, and so they just cannot, will not, bring themselves to be a party to possible success.

Their lack of patriotism is unsurprising, but still astounding in its cynicism. But was the stimulus package and overall success? Though there is a wide range of studies and opinions, the consensus among economists appears to be yes, it did.

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Animation: Palin Defends Newt (Actual Audio) from scottbateman on Vimeo.

Sarah Palin says "Rage against the machine, vote for Newt."

Rage against the machine?

Well, it is a cartoon, which is the only place Palin should be allowed to speak about politics.