GOP House Chairman Apparently Auditions for Joan Rivers’ Job Hosting ‘Fashion Police’ – Criticizes Pres. Obama’s Tan Suit

Clockwise from top left: GOP House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King criticizing Pres. Obama’s tan suit on CNN; Pres. Reagan, in tan suit, with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; Reagan in tan suit with Australian PM Jack Hawke; Reagan addresses the media on Air Force One in sweat pants and a tie

With Joan Rivers lying in an induced coma in a Manhattan hospital, her fellow New York Republican, House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King, appeared to be angling for her job as host on E!’s “Fashion Police.” During an interview on Newsmax, a birther news website, King offered biting commentary about Pres. Obama’s decision to wear a tan suit at a hastily called news conference last week.

Described by one source as “seething,” King complained that, “For him to walk out — I’m not trying to be trivial here — in a light suit, light tan suit, saying that first he wants to talk about what most Americans care about the revision of second quarter numbers on the economy.”

What do Americans really care about? Not the economy, stupid! Terror, of course.

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Washington Post: ISIS Used Bush-Approved Torture Technique on Journalist James Foley And Other American Hostages

In late 2002 and early 2003, a group of top Bush administration officials approved a set of torture techniques for use on prisoners captured during the so-called War on Terror. Known as the Principals Committee, the officials who signed off on the torture manual included Vice Pres. Cheney, former National Security Adviser (and later Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Ultimately, however, the decision to turn America into a torture state was made by Pres. Bush.

Pres. Reagan signed an international anti-torture treaty that enjoined member nations to invade a country where torture was known to be occurring, arrest its leaders and bring them justice before a Nuremberg-style tribunal.

Among the torture techniques approved by Bush’s Principals Committee was waterboarding, a practice that the United States had deemed a war crime for which the penalty was death by hanging during World War II.

The Bush administration’s torture manual was also prima facie violation of the international anti-torture treaty passed by Congress and signed by Ronald Reagan in 1984 — a treaty that required member nations to invade a country where torture was known to be occurring, arrest its leaders and bring them justice before an Nuremberg-style tribunal.

Bush’s decision to torture prisoners not only reduced the United States to the same base level as its worst enemies, it guaranteed that terrorists would deploy the same techniques against American hostages some day. According to the Washington Post, that day has arrived.

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King Threatens Government Shutdown Over Immigration

If the president wields his pen and commits that unconstitutional act to legalize millions, I think that becomes something that is nearly political nuclear… I think the public would be mobilized and galvanized and that changes the dynamic of any continuing resolution and how we might deal with that.

— Rep. Steve King (R-IA), asserting that “the threat of another government shutdown could be Republicans’ leverage to pass border security and immigration legislation this fall,” the Des Moines Register reports.