Big Harry deal
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the majority leader responsible for keeping sound Republican legislation from the floor of the Senate between 2007 and 2015, for telling an intentionally damaging lie about Mitt Romney's tax returns in the 2012 presidential race and for allegedly padding his own pockets while in Congress, says he needs the rules to be changed so his campaign fund can pay for a personal assistant for him once he leaves office.
The request, submitted to the Federal Election Commission, says the senator has "substantial post-retirement obligations arising from a 34-year tenure as a federal officeholder" whose responsibilities will not cease once he leaves Washington. So he needs to hire a full-time assistant to "review, organize, and arrange for transportation and storage of archival and office materials" and schedule appearances for him to discuss his time in office.
The FEC should turn him down flat on the request and verbally flog him for attempting to get an exemption to the rules for the use of campaign and leadership PAC funds.
The chairwoman of the commission argued in his favor, saying he unfortunately "probably had so much to do that he was unable to do some of the things that's necessary." Another member said correctly the change would be a bad precedent and would "fund the administrative overhead of being [any] former member of Congress."
The FEC's final response on the matter is scheduled for Jan. 25.
Obama administration-speak
North Korea, which has had nuclear bomb tests since 2006, recently tested a hydrogen bomb, a fact some dispute.
But, dispute or not, the Obama administration continues to refuse to acknowledge the country as a nuclear-armed state.
"We are not going to accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state," said State Department spokesman John Kirby in a media briefing last week.
However, he said, "we are going to deal with their efforts at developing that program."
Associated Press reporter Matt Lee was understandably flummoxed, saying, "Do you understand my confusion? I know this - I think it's illogical to say that you're not going to recognize them as a nuclear-armed state when, in fact, they are."
"There is a difference between dealing with what we know they're developing and what we know they're doing," Kirby said, "and officially accepting or recognizing it."
Is it just preferable to live in a fantasy world? Lee asked.
"I would challenge this idea that it's a fantasy world," Kirby said. "Just because - let me put it this way. At this level of foreign policy, you have to make choices. And you don't have to accept everything."
In other words, just pretend you don't know what you know, and everything will be all right.
Dishing on Debbie
It's not a good month to be Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The Democratic National Committee chairwoman is not only taking hits from Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley for her perceived efforts to crown Hillary Clinton as the party's 2016 nominee, but now two left-wing advocacy groups have drawn up petitions for her ouster.
One, RootsAction, has the same complaints as Sanders and O'Malley - that Wasserman Schultz is manipulating the primary to ensure Clinton's nomination. The other, CREDO Action, didn't like remarks she made about abortion and, like the others, felt she is rigging the primary process by limiting debates and scheduling them on weekends when no one is watching.
The abortion argument is interesting, though. Both Wasserman Schultz and CREDO Action are fans of a woman's decision to abort, but CREDO Action didn't like the Florida U.S. representative's remarks that she has seen "a complacency among the generation of young women whose entire lives have been lived after Roe v. Wade was decided."
Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chairwoman since 2011, is, according to CREDO Action, "out of touch with the progressive core values of the Democratic activist base."
The group also suggested she has "used her platform for her personal political gain."
Whoop, there it is
Many Hollywood celebrities love to pontificate about political issues, but most don't really know a whole lot about them.
Whoopi Goldberg proved again recently she is one of those when she complained to Republican presidential candidate and Sen. Rand Paul on "The View" that automatic weapons ought to be banned immediately.
"Automatic weapons, they're not for hunting," she said. "They do nothing - they're only there to kill. And you'll notice that a lot of the things that happened are with automatic weapons. When we see that, why don't we say, 'Who really needs to have one other than people that are at war?'"
"Truly automatic weapons we don't have," Paul said. "We banned truly automatic weapons in, I think, 1934."
But Whoopi, who claimed she is a gun owner, was undaunted.
"We still got a lot of them, Rand," she said. "C'mon!"
"What we have is not automatic weapons," Paul answered. "It's semi-automatic. So they fire in a fairly fast sequence, but you can't pull the trigger and they come like a machine gun. Those are no longer out there."
Her only reply: "But you know what I'm saying."
Brilliant!