Rachel Maddow points out that even the GOP's latest darling Paul Ryan who is the only member of Congress who's written a budget proposal is out there with the wingnuts and buying into Jonah Goldberg's revisionist history book Liberal Fascism. She forgot to mention that he's also a big fan of Ayn Rand.

Maddow: Congressman Paul Ryan is the Republican Party’s budget guy. He has proposed a GOP budget this year that would essentially get rid of Social Security and Medicare in the long run, slashes both programs dramatically and then privatizes them, so goodbye Medicare safety net, goodbye Social Security safety net. The Republicans are proposing to get rid of them.

Republicans like Michele Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Jack Kingston, Jim DeMint, these folks have been, recently been very happily arguing to kill Social Security and Medicare, but they are thought of as being on the far right of even their own party.

Paul Ryan proposing to kill Social Security and Medicare is another thing. He’s the only; his is the only budget that the Republicans have proposed for 2010. He’s supposed to be the Republican Party’s big brain on policy. He’s supposed to be a serious guy.

Well in an interview with The Daily Beast yesterday Paul Ryan was asked why if he’s so fiscally conservative he voted for the bank bailouts. In response the Republican Party’s serious, big brain policy guy explained that he voted for the bank bailout because of this.

Get it. See it’s a smiley face but it has a Hitler moustache! Because liberals seem nice but they’re really Nazis—Nazis were liberals and liberals are Nazis! Paul Ryan, the budget guy for the Republican Party tells The Daily Beast that a conservative book of revisionist history about how the Nazis were secretly liberals and liberals today are secretly Nazis, convinced him to vote for the bank bailout, because otherwise we’d have a great depression and then Obama could use that great depression as an excuse to impose his secret Nazi agenda. Obama’s liberal fascism.

And that is both an admission that even the Republicans admit that the bailout staved off the next great depression and a revelation that even the supposedly sane Republicans in Congress right now believe this stuff. Keep that in mind the next time someone proposes a bipartisan compromise with guys like Paul Ryan who proposed to kill Medicare and Social Security and who justify it by their votes on worries that Obama might secretly be Hitler.

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Of course, Geithner is pushing the Very Serious Idea of reforming Social Security and Medicare. Doesn't everyone?

Considering that the Greenspan commission didn't actually work - at least, not the way that Geithner says it did - it kind of leads me to wonder what he actually means.

From This Week:

TAPPER: Do you think the fact that you guys are pushing the bipartisan commission is indicative of the fact that our political system is not capable of taking on the serious challenges our nation faces?

You and I know that the money, as Willie Sutton says, said, that -- why do you rob banks? Because that's where the money is. The money is in entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, things that you do not touch in this budget.

The fact that you need a bipartisan commission to recommend cuts or tax increases, doesn't that indicate that our political system is incapable of making these tough decisions?

GEITHNER: Jake, I am very confident in our ability as a country to bring people together and make sure we are solving these challenges and these problems. We've done it in the past, it is completely within our capacity to do as a country.

But of course, it requires you bringing people together across the aisle to step back from politics, to try to bring practical solutions to things that are very important to our future as a country. And the president is committed to do that.

We're going to give the Republican Party the chance to share in the responsibility and the burden and the privilege of trying to fix the things that were broken in this country.

TAPPER: Republicans are afraid this is just a back door for tax increases. Are you willing to say that tax increases are off the table for this commission? Let's sit down and talk about the long-term structural problems with entitlement spending?

GEITHNER: The president's view, and this is a view shared by many Republicans, and it builds on what we've seen with effective commissions in the past, like the Greenspan commission that President Reagan established to help restore the financial footing of Social Security, is that for this to work, you've got to bring people together to step back from politics, day-to-day politics, and to bring fresh ideas to solve these kind of problems.

That's the only way to do it, we think. And we're committed to doing that. We've got to do it on a bipartisan basis, and we're deeply serious about doing this.

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In July, Sen. Jim DeMint was quoted as saying that if Republicans were able to stop health care reform it would "break" President Barack Obama. "If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him," said DeMint.

DeMint is now denying that his intention was to break the president.

"I did not want this to be the president's Waterloo," DeMint told ABC's Terry Moran Sunday.

(HUGE h/t to the always hilarious Blue Gal for the video)

I don't know how you feel, but to me, last week was truly a horrible, terrible, very bad, no good week for progressives and America in general. Looking at the schedule, I'm not seeing it get much better. Obviously, there will be much crystal ball gazing at the Massachusetts election and what that means on a larger level for the 2010 midterms. And with President Obama's first official State of the Union speech scheduled for this week, I'm sure that our perennial Sunday guest, John McCain, will have lots of doom and gloom to anticipate. White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod scored two appearances on This Week and State of the Union to spin the last week's disappointments into positives. Sadly, he's going to be followed by Jim DeMint and Orrin Hatch, respectively. WH Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett will be on Meet the Press, only to be followed by Mitch McConnell. And WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will be on Fox News Sunday, only to be followed by John Cornyn. Noticing a trend?

ABC's "This Week" - White House senior adviser David Axelrod; Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: David Brooks, Savannah Guthrie, Clarence Page and Kathleen Parker. Topics: Will Obama Recalibrate His Agenda In Response To Voter Outrage? White Flight: Why Have Working Class Whites Abandoned Obama? Meter Questions: Can Dems Neutralize the Throw-the-Bums-Out Attitude by November? YES: 4 NO: 8; Have the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Helped the Fight Against al-Qaeda? YES: 7 No: 5

CNN's "State of the Union" - Axelrod; Menendez; Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski on how to move forward in Haiti. Then, the people of Massachusetts sent a strong message to President Obama earlier this week - should he go left, right, or straight down the middle? Fareed and his panel of historians give their perspectives on what he should do next.

CNN's "Amanpour" - The rebuilding effort in Haiti.

"Fox News Sunday" - White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

So what's catching your eye this morning?

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Howard Kurtz did a segment on something I've wanted for a long time: Networks holding people accountable for what they say on our airwaves. A TV Ombudsman.

The more this idea gets out there, the more important it becomes to push it home -- although it would be a real miracle if it did happen. MSNBC did correct Giuliani's lie because it was a lie. Fox News ignored it because of partisanship. Kurtz should stop with the false equivalent comparisons. MSNBC does not promote an agenda for 24 hours seven days a week like Fox does, nor have they promoted a movement to overthrow a sitting president.

UPDATE: Michael Calderone got a response from David Gregory:

Over the weekend, I wrote about some recent criticism of the Sunday shows, along with suggestions such as running a fact-check online or mixing up the regular guests. And the piece prompted a few interesting responses, with more suggestions for utilizing technology better.

The Nation's Ari Melber noted that NBC didn't respond to Jay Rosen's fact-check suggestion that he addressed to "Meet the Press" EP Betsy Fischer a couple weeks ago, but David Gregory responded in a statement for my piece. "That's a big shift from refusing to respond at all," Melber wrote. "And while it's an improvement, it also shows how these programs tend to be more responsive to other members of the media than to their audience."...read on

UPDATE II: Nisha Chittal writes: What the Sunday Morning Shows Need Is A New Media Makeover

What troubled me the most was a quote in Calderone’s piece from Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse, who argued that the case for modernizing Sunday shows wasn’t that relevant because young people wouldn’t care enough to watch the shows anyway...
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I fully believe that the Sunday morning talk shows need a new media makeover, and I have a handful of ideas for how they can do so. I admit that I know absolutely nothing about what goes into the making of a political talk show. But what I do know is that my generation wants transparency, participation, and engagement in their political process – and their news. So here are my suggestions on how the Sunday shows might undertake a new media makeover that could finally usher them into the year 2010...read on

Nisha has a lot of nice suggestions, but without fact checking all these innovations are useless. It comes down to the truth. Sure, some things can be debated but not the core issue of a story. When Giuliani said America didn't have a domestic attack under George Bush that was a flat out lie and it needs to be cleaned up immediately and if need be, Rudy should be suspended from TV for a year. Do you think that would help things along? We need the media to do a better job. PERIOD.

CNN has the full transcript:

Kurtz: I talked on this program last week about whether all the Sunday shows and, indeed, all television programs should do more fact-checking of what guests say when politicians come and sit in those seats and make claims, some of which don't always bear that much relation to reality.

I want to play some sound. Senator Jim DeMint, the Republican from South Carolina, went on the "CBS Early Show," MSNBC's "Morning Joe," and he talked with Gloria Borger here on STATE OF THE UNION, making a charge about President Obama and the effort against terrorism.

Let me play that, and you're going to see this from Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program and how she took it on, on a factual basis.

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Rachel Maddow has some advice for Michael Steele and company who can't stop lying about the president's use of the word terrorism. What's pitiful is they pay no price for doing this day in and day out because almost no one besides Rachel is calling them out for it.

MADDOW: But first, Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele has told our booking producer on this show that he would love to do an interview with me, which is great. I would love to interview Michael Steele. The other folks at the RNC who decide what interviews Mr. Steele actually does, however, seem rather less certain that it will ever happen.

So, Mr. Chairman, between you and me, the invitation is open anytime.

Don‘t let your handlers hold you back. We‘d love to have you.

The reason you‘ve seen a lot of Michael Steele on TV recently is because he‘s promoting a new book, which is called “Right Now.” Its subtitle is more interesting. The subtitle is, “A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda.” Twelve steps, just like A.A.

The first and second steps, according to Mr. Steele, are that Republicans should “admit we have a problem, then admit our mistakes.”

In the spirit of trying to help Mr. Steele out so maybe some day he‘d come on this show, we have decided to try to help Republicans out with steps one and two. We have identified a problem that we‘d like to help Republicans admit to, because it is a political mistake.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has encouraged Republicans to believe that President Obama and his administration don‘t talk about war and terrorism. Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, even Chairman “Admit Our Mistakes” Michael Steele have also been out in public reiterating that, insisting that it‘s true—even though it‘s really not.

Congressman Peter King of New York has even taken this assertion to, as Mr. Steele would say, “beyond the cutting edge.”

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Rep. Eric Massa has been on fire lately. First he took down Dick Cheney with a fabulous moment on MSNBC and now he's going after yet another odious one.

I asked him if he would comment on C&L about the way Jim DeMint has been disgracing the halls of Congress with his outrageous behavior over national security and he stepped up to the plate and made an exclusive video just for us.

Massa: Let me be very clear. When Senator Jim DeMint personally and individually kept the appointed director of the Transportation Security Agency from being able to not only have a fair hearing and actually received that appointment, he placed the traveling American public at increased physical risk to terrorist attacks. And now that he's showing an incredible amount of cowardice by first denying that he ever did it and by nuancing that this is all about collective bargaining. He is demonstrating the kind of partisan destruction of our homeland security policies that is simply not accessible and so I call Jim DeMint out.

I'll debate him anywhere, anytime because I know what's he's doing. For him to insult the American public by saying that somehow collective bargaining will place us at greater risk is literally, is literally to denounce the services of great organizations as the NY Fire Department and the NY City police department who, when the towers were burning didn't think about collective bargaining, but ran in when others were running out.

So shame on you Jim DeMint. You are non deserving of the title that you have been given and you are not deserving the responsibilities that you must exercise for the protection of the American people. And I'm calling you out.

DeMint has been playing politics with our air travel security and it's as Eric Massa clearly states---"Shameful." Does Jim DeMint have the guts to stand up to Eric Massa and debate him on any show he wants?

Republicans have targeted Massa and he's up against a multimillionaire self-funder. If you can help this courageous American hero, please contribute to his re-election campaign here.

Howie Klein has some great background information on Jim DeMint:

South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint was born in Greenville in September, 1951. Eight years later, September, 1959, Eric Massa was born in Charleston. Two sons of South Carolina-- but on very different tracks. The son of a career naval officer, Eric Massa's life has been dedicated to serving his country. Long before being elected as the congressman from an Upstate New York district, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and then served in the U.S. Navy for 24 years, wrapping up a distinguished military career as aide to NATO Supreme Allied Commander, General Wesley Clark. He ran fro office as a staunch supporter of working families, particularly in regard to universal health coverage and the kind of FAIR trade that encourages domestic job growth, rather than the misnamed "free trade" that has seen millions of good-paying American jobs shipped overseas.

DeMint is the product of a tragic divorce and a hellish religious education. Though a right-wing hawk, he carefully avoided the Vietnam War and military service and, after college and its many deferments, went to work doing marketing research, starting his own firm and always known to be in pursuit of financial advancement. He ran for Congress on a platform extolling greed, selfishness, bigotry and elitism.

Now in the U.S. Senate, DeMint is the leader of the obstructionist bloc that has formed around the idea of doing everything in their power to hinder the normal functioning of government in the hope of sabotaging Obama's presidency.

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From CNN's State of the Union, Sen. Jim DeMint saying we need to "take the politics out of" the debate over how to respond to the attempted Christmas terrorist attack, while playing politics with the attempted Christmas terrorist attack. While Gloria Borger did at least ask a follow up question on how the President has down-played the risk of terror, which he did a terrible job of stumbling through answering, but here are the questions I wish these reporters were asking instead. Why do you think torturing someone is one, acceptable, and two reliable, since people will just tell you what you want to hear to make the torture stop. And for Clair McCaskill, why do you think dropping more bombs on poor people's heads is going to help end terrorism. It's pathetic that endless war and torture have just become an acceptable part of our political dialog with the politicians and the Villagers, instead of something to be horrified by.

DEMINT: Gloria, if we -- if we had treated this Christmas Day bomber as a terrorist, he would have immediately been interrogated military-style, rather given -- rather than given the rights of an American and lawyers. We probably lost valuable information.

It does come down to a decision of whether or not this is an act of war, an agent of terror, or just a criminal act. So there's some real implications of the direction that's being taken now. I agree with Senator McCaskill. We need to take the politics out of this. But there's no question that the president has down-played the risk of terror since he took office. He is investigating the CIA, rather than build them up.

BORGER: How has he -- Senator DeMint, how -- how has he down- played the risk of terror?

DEMINT: Well, it begins with not even being willing to use the word.

BORGER: Well, aside from the semantics, aside from that.

DEMINT: Aside from the semantics, he's been completely distracted by other things, as has already been -- been mentioned, and he is not focused on building security and intelligence apparatus of our country.

The last administration, President Bush made a huge mistake by sending the Yemenis back. The core leadership of Al Qaeda now is made up of those folks who were at the Gitmo prison. We can't make that mistake again.

So it's not just about this administration. It's about losing our focus on security. And I'm -- I'm afraid politics and political correctness has -- has become front and center of this debate.

MCCASKILL: You know, that's just not true. This president has focused like a laser on how to keep this country safe. His commitment his Afghanistan, even though there are those in his party that were -- that were very critical of a position he took, he took the time and the energy to determine that us ramping up in Afghanistan should have been done a long time ago. That's a -- a breeding ground for terrorists. This is a president that is taking strong action and is building up our intelligence community.

BORGER: Senator DeMint, Senator McCaskill, thanks for being with us this morning.

DEMINT: Thank you, Gloria.

MCCASKILL: Thank you. Happy New Year.

DEMINT: Happy New Year, Claire.

BORGER: You, too.

MCCASKILL: Thanks, Jim.

Graphic courtesy of BlueGal

Okay, I'm going to 'fess up that I'm extremely cranky this morning. On the advice of my doctors, I decided to start the new year with a two week detox--no caffeine, no alcohol, no meat, only whole grains and organic vegetables. Understand that coffee is one of my major food groups, so I've not quite stopped jonesing for that morning cuppa to feel the benefits of the detox yet. So maybe I'm not in the best frame of mind for the Sunday shows. It's clear that the Underpants Bomber is going to be the big topic of the day, but it's also clear that we're not really interested in discussing the subject honestly. As Media Matters notes:

Among the guests appearing tomorrow will be Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) on CNN's State of the Union. Will guest host Gloria Borger ask DeMint about his vote against the FY 2010 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, which included $4,358,076,000 in funding for screening operations by TSA, $1,116,406,000 of which was specifically for explosives detection systems? [Senate Vote #323, 10/20/09]

Or how about his vote against the Improving America's Security Act of 2007, which implemented recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, including several provisions related to airline security? [Senate Vote #284, 7/26/07]

Of course those questions won't be asked. Jay Rosen came up with a fairly simple (yet completely maverick) solution for the Sunday shows: fact-check your guests:

I think the situation calls for cynicism. But I have to admit that is not much of a call. So instead I propose this modest little fix, first floated on Twitter in a post I sent out to Betsy Fischer, Executive Producer of Meet the Press, who never replies to anything I say. "Sadly, you're a one-way medium," I said to Fischer, "but here's an idea for ya: Fact check what your guests say on Sunday and run it online Wednesday."

Now I don't contend this would solve the problem of the Sunday shows, which is structural. But it might change the dynamic a little bit. Whoever was bullshitting us more could expect to hear about it from Meet the Press staff on Wednesday. The midweek fact check (in the spirit of Politifact.com, which could even be hired for the job...) might, over time, exert some influence on the speakers on Sunday. At the very least, it would guide the producers in their decisions about whom to invite back.

The midweek fact check would also give David Gregory a way out of his puppy game of gotcha. Instead of telling David Axelrod that his boss promised to change the tone in Washington so why aren't there any Republican votes for health care? ... which he thinks is getting "tough" with a guest, Gregory's job would simply be to ask the sort of questions, the answers to which could be fact checked later in the week. Easy, right?

The beauty of this idea is that it turns the biggest weakness of political television--the fact that time is expensive, and so complicated distortions, or simple distortions about complicated matters, are rational tactics for advantage-seeking pols---into a kind of strength. The format beckons them to evade, deny, elide, demagogue and confuse.... but then they pay for it later if they give into temptation and make that choice.

Fact-checking, what a novel concept.

ABC's "This Week" - John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism; Sens. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, and Susan Collins, R-Maine; Reps. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Journalists' roundtable.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Brennan; former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; former CIA director Michael Hayden; Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Katty Kay, Dan Rather, John Harris, Helene Cooper. Topics: Which of Seven Tough Storylines Will Take Hold Against Obama in 2010? What Are the Big Political Predictions for 2010?

CNN's "State of the Union" - Brennan; former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, chairman of 9/11 commission; Sens. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; Fran Townsend, a former White House homeland security adviser for President George W. Bush; Richard Ben-Veniste, 9/11 commission member; former CIA official Michael Scheuer.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - As we approach the 1st anniversary of President Obama's inauguration, a look back at his first year in office. Did he meet the challenges? Plus, Fareed's conversation with Tom Ricks on the Battle of Wanat and what it means for the troops heading to Afghanistan. Finally, a new conversation with Asia expert Kishore Mahbubahni on whether China's economic and political strength will continue to grow and what that means for the rest of the world.

CNN's "Amanpour" - Women for sale; Afghan opium.

"Fox News Sunday" - Brennan; Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.

So while I shake off my coffee blues, what's catching your eye this morning?

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The similarities between failed airplane bombers Richard Reid and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab are striking. Each Al Qaeda convert was radicalized in London. Reid and Abdulmutallab were each subdued by fellow passengers after their explosive devices failed to detonate. The two men struck just as the President of the United States was starting his vacation for the Christmas holiday. In each case, the President spoke publicly about the incident only days later. And the Nigerian, just like Reid before him, will face criminal charges in an American civilian courtroom.

The only difference? Richard Reid hid a bomb in his shoe, while Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab packed his in his underwear. Oh, and the Democratic President Barack Obama has faced a firestorm of criticism from his political opponents and the media alike while Republican George W. Bush's silence during his extended holiday in 2001 was greeted with yawns.

Bush's Non-Response. While President Obama did not speak to the American people for three days after the Flight 253 incident, George W. Bush did not surface to address the December 22, 2001 attempted shoe bombing until six days after it occurred. Even then, as Huffington Post's Sam Stein recounted, "it was only in passing."

And that hardly caused a ripple. As the Boston Globe noted two days later on December 24, 2001:

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said that President Bush continued to monitor the situation and receive updates at Camp David. Bush has not issued any statements about the incident.

On Christmas Day 2001, the Houston Chronicle reported:

Hardly a creature was stirring at the White House yesterday as President Bush celebrated the Christmas holiday with tamales and family at Camp David...

Preparing for the big meal, the president hit the gym earlier in the day, where he worked out with family members.

Spokesman Scott Stanzel said he also received his daily intelligence briefings and called nine men and women in the military stationed overseas.

What a difference eight years - and a Democrat in the White House - makes.

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Sen. Jim DeMint went on Fox News' Your World yesterday to explain why he's been holding up the appointment of a new Transportation Safety Administration chief's appointment: Namely, he's more concerned about the potential unionization of the TSA than he is about the agency's ability to function properly.

Of course, he claims that keeping the unions out is essential to making them able to function well:

DeMint: It makes absolutely no sense to submit security in our airports and the passengers here in this country to collective bargaining with unions.

Of course, that would preclude such things as air-traffic controllers unions too -- but then, DeMint is probably fine with that. Because unions are a greater threat than terrorists.

McClatchy has the full story:

Who's running the TSA? No one, thanks to Sen. Jim DeMint

WASHINGTON -- An attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration — if there were one.

The post remains vacant because Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has held up President Barack Obama's nominee in opposition to the prospect of TSA workers joining a labor union.

... Two Senate committees have given Southers their bipartisan blessing. An acting administrator is in place pending his confirmation.

Marshall McClain, the president of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Association, said that the Senate should have acted sooner to confirm Southers.

"Friday's terrorist attack on U.S. aviation makes it all the more imperative that there be no further delays in filling this crucial position," he said.

DeMint said in a statement that the attempted attack "is a perfect example of why the Obama administration should not unionize the TSA." He wants Southers to clarify his stand on unionizing the TSA, a shift that Democrats support.

Without collective bargaining, DeMint said, the TSA has "flexibility to make real-time decisions that allowed it to quickly improve security measures in response to this attempted attack."

If organized labor got involved, DeMint said, union bosses would have the power "to veto or delay future security improvements at our airports."

ThinkProgress has more.

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From Fox News Sunday, Arlen Specter criticized the Republicans for planning to ‘break the President’ as soon as he was sworn in to defeat him in 2012 and Jim DeMint claims that wasn’t their intent. I’d like to know how they knew he was going to ‘take over’ the economy and add more debt the day he got elected. DeMint responded to TPM and his defense was basically to call Arlen Specter names and say he can’t be trusted since he switched parties.

Trancript via Lexis Nexis.

WALLACE: Senator DeMint, you have raised questions about whether or not either of these bills are constitutional. Do you plan to file a lawsuit if something is passed to block the enactment of health care reform? DEMINT: Chris, this fight is not over right now, and the only thing worse than the policy itself has been the process that the Democrats have followed to get this passed.

We all heard last week about vote buying and different things going on in secret. So there are a lot of problems with this bill. Whether -- who files a suit or what happens if they pass it is one thing.

But my hope now is as we reveal to the American people what's actually in this bill, what it will cost them, what it will do to our Medicare and health care system, that we'll get a few Democrats to stand up in the House that maybe didn't before and help us stop this thing.

It is really bad, and it -- and it is not the answer. It doesn't meet the goals of the president. We need every American to have a health insurance plan they can afford and own and keep. This bill doesn't accomplish that.

WALLACE: Senator Specter, as our legal expert here -- not to diminish in any case any of the other senators that are appearing -- are there constitutional issues here? And let me ask you specifically about one. How can the government mandate that every individual has to buy health insurance?

SPECTER: I do not think there are serious constitutional issues. The mandate provision is very similar to what was done in Massachusetts when they had mandatory reform.

I'd like to pick up on what Senator DeMint says about the process. I think the process was very bad, but the process is really caused in large measure by the refusal of the Republicans to deal in any way.

Senator DeMint is the author of the famous statement that this is going to be President Obama's Waterloo, that this ought to be used to break the president, so that before the ink was dry on the oath of office -- and I know this because I was in the caucus -- the Republicans were already plotting ways to beat President Obama in 2012.

Now, effective government in a democracy relies upon some bipartisanship, but there simply isn't any. And the process which was used was not good. The lead story today in the Washington Post is that after you reform health care, you ought to reform the Senate. And I would start with the process.

And if some of the Republicans would come forward with suggestions, offer a vote or two, or three or four, to take away the need to have every last one of the 60 Democrats, you'd have a much better bill in accordance with the tradition of the Congress, especially the Senate, on bipartisanship.

WALLACE: Well, let me bring in Senator DeMint as a matter of personal privilege. You get 30 seconds to respond, sir.

DEMINT: Well, thank -- thank you, Chris. I never wanted to break the president. We just wanted to break his momentum as he took over more and more of our economy and created more and more of our debt.

The reason the Republicans didn't have any ideas in the bill is that the Democrats didn't allow it, Chris. There was nothing that they would consider other than a government takeover of health care. Whatever words were used, that was their intent.

The Republicans have a number of bills, Chris, that would allow insurance to be more available and affordable to every American, but that was not the goal of the Democrats here. They want the government to run it. They want 80 or 90 percent of Americans on government health care. That's not a good thing for our country.

WALLACE: Let me -- let me -- let me...

SPECTER: Twenty -- twenty -- twenty -- 20 seconds...

WALLACE: Gentlemen...

SPECTER: ... 20 seconds in reply?

WALLACE: No, no.

SPECTER: Twenty seconds in reply?

WALLACE: Senator Specter, no, because, in fairness, I've got to bring in your two other colleagues, and I know you wouldn't want to take time from them.

Last Sunday Republican Jim DeMint appeared on Fox News and used the alleged Christmas Bomber issue to attack President Obama and the TSA because the agency's screeners might *gasp* unionize.

As it turns out, DeMint was really trying to deflect attention away from the fact that he voted against TSA funding earlier this year and has put a hold on Obama's nominee to head the department - hampering the agency's ability to put leadership in place:

As Republicans seek to put the blame for the widespread perception of ineptness at the Transportation Security Administration on the Obama administration, Democrats are arguing that Republican legislators bear part of the blame and that they're politically vulnerable on the subject.

Perhaps the largest impediment to change at the agency: South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint has a hold on the appointment of a TSA chief, over his concern that the new administration could allow security screeners to unionize.

DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton responds: Democrats have only themselves to blame for not having a confirmed TSA administrator. President Obama waited 243 days in office before making a nomination and Harry Reid has been too busy trading earmarks for votes on health care to schedule debate on the nominee. This is an important debate because many Americans don't want someone running the TSA who stands ready to give union bosses the power to veto or delay future security measures at our airports. Read on...

Senator DeMint is playing political games with funding and an important appointment to an agency tasked with keeping American travelers safe. You can find his contact information here if you would like to ask him to remove his hold on the TSA appointment so the agency can get down to business.

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A Republican senator from South Carolina has used the attempted attack on a airplane bound for Detroit as an excuse to voice opposition to unions. Sen. Jim DeMint told Fox News' Chris Wallace that unionization was a threat to airport security because collective bargaining prevents flexibility.

"We have to outthink the terrorists and when we formed the airport security system, we realized we could not use collective bargaining and unionization because of that need to be flexible. Yet, that appears to be the top priority now of the administration," DeMint said Sunday.

Whoops:

The top prosecutors in seven states are probing the constitutionality of a political deal that cut a funding break for Nebraska in order to pass a federal health care reform bill, South Carolina's attorney general said Tuesday.

Attorney General Henry McMaster said he and his counterparts in Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas and Washington state - all Republicans - are jointly taking a look at the deal they've dubbed the "Nebraska compromise."

"The Nebraska compromise, which permanently exempts Nebraska from paying Medicaid costs that Texas and all other 49 states must pay, may violate the United States Constitution - as well as other provisions of federal law," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said.

McMaster's move comes at the request of Republican U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

In a letter to McMaster, Graham singled out the deal to win Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson's vote on the massive health care bill the Senate is expected to adopt Thursday. Nelson held out as fellow Democrats worked to get 60 votes to foreclose a GOP filibuster and the bill was amended to shield Nebraska from the expected $45 million annual cost tied to expanding Medicaid programs.

"We have serious concerns about the constitutionality of this Nebraska compromise as it results in special treatment for only one state in the nation at the expense of the other 49," Graham and DeMint wrote.

Nebraska wasn't alone in getting Medicaid breaks. Vermont, Louisiana and Massachusetts also got help with their programs.[..]

Also Tuesday, U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said Republicans need to stop complaining about deals their colleagues made.

"Rather than sitting here and carping about what Nelson got for Nebraska, I would say to my friends on the other side of the aisle: Let's get together and see what we can get for South Carolina," Clyburn said.

Boy, this is a tough one. As much as I don't want to validate the petty obstructionist machinations of Republicans, I kinda wouldn't mind Nelson's sweetheart deal struck down. After all, he thinks we women are second class citizens undeserving of full health coverage.