Year: 2014

Paul Ryan Can’t Differentiate Fact from Fiction

Buck Banks

I watched the first couple of episodes until he cheated on his wife with that reporter. It turned my stomach so much that I just couldn’t watch it anymore. His behavior was so reprehensible, and it hit too close to home because he was a House member, that it just bothered me too much. And what I thought is, it makes us all look like we’re like that.

— Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), to Parade, on why he doesn’t watch “House of Cards” anymore.

Rand Paul Calls for Demilitarization of Police

Buck Banks

When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury — national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, preconviction forfeiture — we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands. … Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.

— Sen. Rand Paul, in a column in Time magazine.

Reporters Working Under Threats in Ferguson, Mo.

Buck Banks

I had never witnessed police treat journalists like this in the four years I worked as a crime reporter in South Florida. Some officers have tried to keep me away from crime scenes, but never stopped me from covering a story altogether … It was also the first time I had ever felt afraid of a police officer.

— Alexis Campbell of the National Journal.

Republican Congressman Warns Against Impeachment Trap

Buck Banks

Believe me, let’s make one thing perfectly clear. The only people who want impeachment more than the right wing of the Republican Party is the entire Democrat Party. … They’re desperate for impeachment. They would love to be able to talk about impeachment and immigration between now and the November elections, instead of talking about jobs, and the economy, and health care. They are desperate to change the dialogue, which is exactly why you heard the president starting to talk about his amnesty cause he’s begging to be impeached.

— Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), warning Republicans against falling into an impeachment “trap,” BuzzFeed reported.

Rand Paul Takes Jab at Chris Christie

Buck Banks

Bridges.

— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), when asked in a recent interview to name one word when he thinks of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), CNN reports. “The Kentucky senator’s dig marks the latest round in the back-and-forth between the two potential presidential contenders — a feud started last year in a war of words about surveillance and government spending.”

Lauren Bacall, Actress and Liberal Icon, 1924-2014

Jon Ponder
March on Washington: Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart lead a contingent of actors, writers and directors from Hollywood to a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947

Lauren Bacall, who died yesterday just a month shy of her 90th birthday, will rightly be remembered for her A-list acting career and her marriage to movie legend Humphrey Bogart. But Bacall also had a record as a stalwart liberal. As she put it, “I’m a total Democrat. I’m anti-Republican.”

“Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you’re a liberal. You do not have a small mind.”
– Lauren Bacall

Her performance with Bogart in “To Have and Have Not” catapulted her to stardom overnight in 1944. A few months after the film came out, she made her political debut at an event for World War II service members in Washington, D.C., when she was boosted atop an upright piano and photographed lounging there as then-Vice Pres. Harry Truman played for the crowd.

After the war, Bacall, Bogart, director John Huston and others formed the Committee for the First Amendment in opposition to the Republican Party’s anti-communist witch hunts, which were championed by Hollywood figures like Ronald Reagan, Walt Disney and Hollywood Reporter publisher Billy Wilkerson. In 1947, Bacall and Bogart led a contingent of the organization’s members to Washington in protest of the right-wing pogrom and in support of Hollywood witnesses called by the committee who had refused to testify.

That was just the beginning of Lauren Bacall’s decades-long political activity and support for the Democratic Party. Michael Tomasky pays tribute to Bacall as “deeply liberal and deeply anti-communist” in a eulogy at the Daily Beast:

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