Come see the incredible shrinking tent.
If at first you don't succeed, maybe you should
take the hint already.
For yet another year, the Conservative Political Action Conference will exclude from its list of sponsors the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative group that advocates for gay rights. The conference has increasingly become an exhibition for the movement’s more bombastic characters, but it remains one of the more high-profile conservative events each year, providing a window into the id of the Republican Party at a given moment. Several potential presidential candidates, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), are slated to attend this year's conference, which will be held next week. [...]
“We were asking the ACU, ‘Will you take our money in support of the conservative cause?'” said Gregory T. Angelo, the executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans. “And the answer is no.”
Gay groups have been excluded from CPAC since 2011, when the Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council and other organizations
threatened to boycott the annual event if pro-LGBT groups were allowed to participate.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on the day after this date in 2009—Troop Surge in Afghanistan Means No Progressive Consensus:
President Barack Obama's Tuesday announcement that the U.S. will be adding 17,000 fresh troops to those already fighting in Afghanistan upended hopes among some progressives that the 60-day policy review he announced February 10 would be completed before any such surge. As has been becoming publicly clear for a while now, progressives themselves are split on the issue.
A few have complained that those who are objecting to Obama's course should have spoken up during his election campaign. This, delivered with a straight face in spite of the fact that there was broad progressive consensus that getting into a fight over Afghanistan would not help Obama's chances against McCain. So progressives who opposed a troop escalation in Afghanistan kept mostly silent. Back then, their perspective was simply that there would be time after November 4 to persuade Obama that expanding the U.S. military presence was a bad idea. But since they shut up then in the interests of the greater good, they are told they should shut up now because they didn't speak up then. Catch-22, subsection 3.
What was a campaign is now an administration. And while diplomacy and rebuilding efforts will surely be getting more attention, there is now every possibility that U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan will double, bringing the total NATO and American armed forces in that country close to 100,000. The NATO contingents are iffy in the long run, but the hints from generals like Petraeus, Odierno and McKiernan indicate that Americans could remain there for five years or more. In the view of some, including progressives, why not? After all, the U.S. still has tens of thousands of troops in Germany and Japan, and look how that turned out. Others see: quagmire.
The split among progressives became pronounced today in the form of a letter soon to be sent by the Get Afghanistan Right coalition to the President, his most powerful Cabinet members and the chief of the Afghanistan policy review team, ex-CIA employee Bruce Riedel. The letter, which argues that it is misguided to escalate U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, comes in response to efforts by the National Security Network to present a progressive consensus statement on the situation.
Tweet of the Day
free advice: stop digging; RT @JuddLegum "President Obama didn't live through September 11, I did" -- Rudy Giuliani
http://t.co/...
— @EricBoehlert
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show: The repugnant Dolph "Noun, Verb, Dog Whistle" Giuliani. GunFAIL follow-up: MI woman accidentally killed herself adjusting her bra holster.
Greg Dworkin has plenty to add on Giuliani, then wraps up the 2016 field polling and news, plus Oklahoma's A.P. derp.
Armando filled in for a bit, and had more on Giuliani, plus the Texas case blocking executive action on immigration, and how it plays in Congress. The ISIS thinkpiece collection. The crazy idiots think they've seen a "gang sign" again. More on scam PACs. Gun advocates latch on a new argument for arming campuses, and it's a subject conservatives are great at handling: rape.
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