Inauguration 2013: How Obama is different from four years ago (+video)
The shadow of President Obama is cast on a wall as he leaves a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington after the Senate Finance Committee voted to approve his health-care bill in this file photo. Obama will look to expand his legacy in his second term. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais…
US Vice President Joe Biden re-took the oath of office Sunday as Barack Obama officially begins his second term, a day ahead of public festivities planned for Monday.
Biden placed his hand on a thick and weathered-looking bible held by his wife, Jill, and pledged to "support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
The small morning ceremony was officiated by Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, and attended by a number of Biden's family members.
Obama will also take the oath Sunday in a ceremony at the White House to comply with the US Constitution, which dictates his first term ends at noon on January 20.
In a tradition honored when that date falls on a Sunday, Obama will repeat the oath in a public ceremony Monday, and deliver his inaugural address to Americans, and the watching world, outside the US Capitol.
There is a far less compromising mood coming from the White House – and a more aggressive political program
When the firebrand Republican senator Ted Cruz went on conservative Laura Ingraham's radio show last week, the topic of conversation swiftly turned to Barack Obama.
As the president prepares to be inaugurated on Monday for a second term, Cruz, who is a Tea Party favourite freshly elected from Texas, let loose with both barrels. "He is feeling right now high on his own power!" Cruz fumed.
Cruz was particularly angry about Obama's plan to try to enforce tighter gun controls. But the president appears to be preparing a whole series of reforms that will raise the ire of the right. He has vowed action on immigration, hinted that he will try to tackle climate change, and has already taken a much tougher line with Republicans on fiscal issues, forcing them to agree to a tax rise for the wealthy.
For many it seems that Obama has been reinvigorated by his victory over Mitt Romney and might be in a position to win back a liberal base disappointed by a first term that many saw as timid, overly concerned with Republican co-operation and – most important – hamstrung by the needs of dealing with the Great Recession. "Maybe we now get to see what Obama would have been like if there had been no financial crisis," said Professor Shaun Bowler, a political scientist at the University of California at Riverside.
The political ground that Obama is standing on as he maps out strategy for the next four years certainly looks fertile. He ended up beating Romney easily, seeing off a challenger whom many thought was the Republican party's strongest candidate, albeit in a weak field. But Obama is likely to strike quickly as the honeymoon period for second terms usually lasts little longer than a year before electoral considerations of the 2014 mid-term elections loom into view.
Indeed, he has already done so. After being widely criticised in his first four years for a lack of savvy during negotiations with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Obama has suddenly taken a much harder line. In debates over the so-called "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts at the end of last year, Obama's team secured a deal widely seen as a victory. That tougher stance has also been matched by Obama staking out a strong position on forthcoming talks with the Republicans in Congress over raising the debt ceiling. Indeed, only days after Obama gave a speech on the issue marked by stern language the Republicans last week appeared to cave in and moved to extend the ceiling for another three months.
It marks an apparent shift in Obama's view of the presidency, from one where he has to act as a conciliator to one where he can lead from the front. "He has made noises that he is going to give up his old theory of the presidency and he is going to now use it as a 'bully pulpit'," said Professor James Josefson, a political scientist at Bridgewater College in Virginia.
The change has also won Obama much praise among his party's supporters and top party advisers. "He will decide what he wants to do and he will just do it. He's going to push ahead," said Ted Kaufman, a former Democratic senator from Delaware who was Vice-President Joe Biden's chief of staff for 19 years.
But as Obama finds himself at the head of a relatively unified Democratic party he is staring at a Republican party in disarray and riven by civil war. Its conservative wing, still infused by the Tea Party, believes Romney lost because the party was not rightwing enough. But a powerful cohort of more moderate leaders, such as Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and New Jersey governor Chris Christie, want to broaden its appeal. They see the party as having lost five out of the last six popular votes at a presidential level and staring at a future where Democrat-friendly minorities, especially Hispanic voters, are getting ever more powerful at the ballot box.
That has seen the party indulge in rare outbursts of public bickering. Christie slammed House speaker John Boehner over delays to aid in the wake of Hurricane Sandy that devastated his home state. Jindal has even warned that Republicans need to "stop being the stupid party". The fight has reversed the usual dynamic of American politics – where Democrats are seen as fractious and Republicans disciplined – and raised hopes that Obama might actually extend his power in the 2014 mid-terms, which would usually be a tricky election to face. At the moment Obama's approval ratings are at a healthy 55%, compared with an anaemic 24% for House Republicans.
But it is not all good news for Obama and the Democrats. America's political system is defined by checks and balances between competing institutions, and Republican control of the House still acts as a major check on his ambitions. Though many experts believe the Republicans may have to give ground on an issue like immigration reform, other policy areas – such as gun controls and limiting the social impact of spending cuts – might still end up scuppered. "It still depends on how co-operative the Republicans are going to be, and for most of them Obama is just thought of as appalling, no matter what he does or says," said Bowler.
Republicans may be able to block a great deal of Obama's second-term agenda but on a host of things – from gun controls to gay rights to abortion and women's issues – they are frequently seen as far to the right of mainstream public opinion. "Obama is either going to win on these issues legislatively or he is going to win on them in the arena of public opinion. He is going to have a year of success ahead of him either way, even if it ends up being just as much appearances as substance," Bowler said.
That is a remarkable turnaround for Obama. It is only four short months since the president gave a disastrous performance during his first debate with Romney, causing the Republican to spike in the polls and suddenly look like he might win. Right up until election night itself last November many Republicans, including Romney himself, who wrote no concession speech, and a few nervous Democrats believed they could be witnessing the return of a Republican to the White House. Now, as Obama plots out a second term aimed at cementing his legacy, those doubts and fears feel a long time ago. "He has been freed by the fact that the American people seem to be on his side," Kaufman said.
WHAT THE VOICES SAY ON LEFT AND RIGHT
HEATHER HURLBURT
Executive director, National Security Network, focusing on foreign policy; speechwriter for President Clinton
Obama's first term foreign policy was spent working to clear away the debris of what had come before: Iraq, Afghanistan, torture, but also the threat of global economic meltdown and an Arab world hangover more than 30 years in the making.
In his second term, he now has the opportunity to reshape the model and direction of America's outreach to the world for the next 10 years or more. Here are longer-term priority areas:
Clarity and oversight on counterterrorism: setting clear limits and public oversight on where the US goes to war, and how, particularly around targeted killings and the use of remote or cyber-warfare tools, he can constrain his successors, set global norms and increase the effectiveness of a counter-terrorism agenda.
Economic statecraft: Hillary Clinton's signature initiative, reasserting the importance and breadth of economic diplomacy, must outlast her tenure. Efforts overseas will have to be matched by budget realignments at home, to make economic and trade diplomacy as empowered as the military-first approaches of the previous decade.
Pursue the promise of Prague: Obama cannot count on much help from Moscow or Tehran or even the US Congress in reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US security policy. But there are steps he can take alone: accelerating US reductions under the New Start [arms limitation] treaty, reconsidering and reducing the number of warheads demanded by US nuclear targeting policy, making further cuts without waiting for Moscow.
STEVE MITCHELL
Head of pollsters Mitchell Research and Communications
Any ideas that I, or any other Republican might have, would never be listened to by Obama. I don't have the time or inclination to think about what he should take a chance on doing. Obama's rhetoric and actions today are diametrically opposed to the ideals on which he ran in 2008.
Whether on the fiscal cliff, budget deficit, guns, or any other issue, he seems gleeful in his desire to bludgeon his Republican opponents and win every contest by 100-0.
The fact that he has four more years to do some of the things I think he may do is quite disconcerting to me. My hope is that he follows the Hippocratic Oath and "does no [more] harm."
JIM DEAN
Chair, Democracy for America
President Obama should stay in touch with his inner Teddy Roosevelt and continue to lead with the same strong conviction he is displaying regarding gun safety. Americans favour strong leadership, even if they do not always agree with the substance of a leader's position. If the recent elections proved anything, they proved that the country is continuing to move beyond the discourse in Washington that is too often fuelled more by money and less by public support.In the case of gun safety, most of the public, and even NRA members, support the President. It is time for him to lead the public rather than hope for acquiescence. The people have overwhelming elected Obama, not once but twice – now he must use that position to get things done, and not shy away from a fight.
LARRY HAAS
Political commentator and former aide in Clinton White House
In the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and elsewhere, dissidents are struggling to bring freedom and democracy to their nations, but the autocrats in power are finding harsher, more creative ways to crack down on them. Traditionally, the US has led global efforts to advance freedom and democracy around the world and US support has proven important to the important gains of recent decades.
To date, however, Obama has provided only lukewarm support for the cause. With his last election behind him, Obama should shift course and more forcefully put the US behind the brave democratic activists, labour leaders, journalists and others who are putting their lives on the line every day.
Bolder U.S. support for the cause will make it more likely that the dissidents and their movements will succeed. That, in turn, will make the world a safer and more prosperous place from which the United States and every other nation can benefit."
MEGAN CLYNE
Special assistant and speechwriter to President George W Bush and first lady Laura Bush
Obama should start by eliminating the danger to religious liberty posed by Obamacare. Under the law, most employers are required to pay for female employees' sterilisations and contraceptives, including some drugs that can destroy fertilised embryos. This presents many religious employers, both institutions and individuals, with an impossible choice: violate their religious beliefs, or close down.
Obama needed women's votes last year, and forcing religious employers to provide birth control was good politics. But the election is over, and the consequences of the "HHS mandate," as the requirement is known, are starting to be felt.
Obama can fix the problem himself by ordering health and human services secretary Kathleen Sebelius to rewrite the rule and exempt any employer who objects to the mandate for religious reasons.
MELISSA MCEWAN
Writer and founder of the progressive blog Shakesville
I would love to see President Obama take a more active role in defining the national conversation on reproductive rights, with an uncompromising position in favour of choice. During his first term, a record number of pieces of anti-choice legislation were proposed and passed in state legislatures and our pro-choice president must use his bully pulpit to give visibility to the war on agency being waged across the nation.
I was deeply moved by the president's affirmation of his support for marriage equality, which was followed by an increase in national support for same-sex marriage. I hope, in his second term, we may see a similarly influential advocacy on behalf of choice. He cannot intervene in state legislatures to stop assaults on reproductive rights, but he can be a vocal ally.
Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus says that conservative lawmakers in blue states like Wisconsin "ought to be looking at" ways to rig the Electoral College system to tilt elections towards Republican candidates in a way that could have allowed presidential candidate Mitt Romney to win.
On Sunday, the Journal Sentinel reported that Priebus had called on states that traditionally vote for Democratic presidential candidates -- but are controlled by Republican legislatures -- to devise a scheme to split electoral votes instead of awarding them to a single candidate.
"I think it's something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at," the RNC chairman explained, noting that such a system would give state lawmakers "more local control."
The Nation's John Nichols pointed out that an aggressive plan awarding electoral votes by districts -- which are already heavily gerrymandered by Republicans in states like Wisconsin -- would have turned President Barack Obama's 322-206 Electoral College win into a 280-258 win for Romney.
"If Republicans in 2011 had abused their monopoly control of state government in several key swing states and passed new laws for allocating electoral votes, the exact same votes cast in the exact same way in the 2012 election would have converted Barack Obama's advantage of nearly five million popular votes and 126 electoral votes into a resounding Electoral College defeat," FairVote election expert Rob Richie explained last month.
"The Republicans want to rig the game," Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett agreed recently told supporters in an email. "They know what they're doing and we need to stop them."
"Once again they're changing the rules because they lost the game - that's what this boils down to," Wisconsin state Rep. Jon Richards (D) insisted to the Journal Sentinel.
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter says that if newspapers are going to publish the names of people who have gun permits then they should also publish the names of women who had abortions because "mothers might want to know what other women on their street might be willing to murder a child."
New York newspaper The Journal News earlier this week said that it would hire armed guards after receiving threats -- including an envelope of "suspicious white powder" -- that could have been retaliation for publishing the names of gun permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties. The newspaper has defended its decision by insisting that readers had a right to know who owned guns in their area in light of the recent mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
Fox News host Sean Hannity, however, told Coulter that the situation was "really dangerous" because criminal who wanted to "rape, rob and steal" could find out which residents did not own guns.
"This is a wake up call to New York state," Coulter agreed. "To make these a public record has got to be changed."
"Why aren't we getting the names of recently paroled criminals?" she wondered. "People with gun permits, by definition, do not have criminal records. Why can't we get the criminal records?"
Coulter continued: "Why can't we get a record of women who have had abortions? They get money from Planned Parenthood, they get money from Medicare, from Medicaid. Much of this is tax subsidies. I think mothers might want to know what other women on their street might be willing to murder a child."
The conservative columnist went on to call for the names of people living in rent-controlled apartments and the names of "rich liberals" who had bodyguards with guns.
"They will not release the names of people who have been convicted of crimes, they will not be doing anything about manifestly crazy people. No, no, no. We have to let Billy Bob walk the streets of Manhattan, defecate in the street. You have the ACLU defending crazy people. All of these shoot ups, these precious protections for obviously mentally disturbed individuals. There is certainly no effort to reduce single motherhood, something that is also a contributing factor in many of these cases."
"Liberals won't let us go after the criminals," she added. "No, they specifically try to harm people who by definition do not have criminal records so that their guns can be stolen by criminals!"
Two Kansas abortion clinics in 2009 asked the state Supreme Court to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Attorney General Phill Kline after Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said that he had obtained the names of women who had abortions in the state.
Advocates say that leaking patients records violates the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which requires that medical providers get permission before disclosing medical history.
Watch this video from Fox News' Hannity, broadcast Jan. 3, 2013.
(h/t: Mediaite)
Former House Majority Leader and Tea Party favorite Dick Armey defended the huge payout he received for leaving FreedomWorks in an interview this weekend with ABC News, saying he, "couldn't leave with empty pockets."
After an acrimonious rift developed between himself and others at FreedomWorks, Armey quietly resigned from the group in December and took an $8 million consulting gig from one of the organization's board members. The deal raised eyebrows at the time, as Armey was guaranteed that huge sum simply to be a consultant with the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, a for-profit group headed by FreedomWorks board member Richard Stephenson.
In his remarks to ABC, Armey offered the most detailed explanation yet of the reasoning and timing behind his departure. According to Armey, he was prepared to leave FreedomWorks months earlier, but Stephenson and others feared he would sue them and generate terrible press for Republicans immediately before the election.
From ABC:
"[Stephenson] didn't want an uproar. We all understood if I take any action that made it at all public it would be a press nightmare and we didn't want that before the election...So Dick was saying, 'You know, Armey, my family and I have heard your story, about how you can't afford to retire and we want to help with your retirement,'" Armey said."
So when Stephenson offered him the consulting gig, Armey agreed to keep quiet and stick things out until the election was over.
"I can't stay [at FreedomWorks], I can't work with people like this, and I can't afford to leave with empty pockets," Armey told ABC of his thought process at the time.
As a consultant, Armey will receive $400,000 a year until he turns 92, a total of $8 million. The deal will allow him to, as he said, "never have to work again ever."
Armey's recounting of the events that precipitated his departure adds some detail to the story of how he surprisingly split from one of the most powerful Tea Party groups in the nation. Last week, the Washington Post reported that Armey led a failed coup attempt to take control of FreedomWorks in September, and that he did so with an armed aide by his side. Armey disputed that claim in his interview with ABC.
In the interview, Armey also discussed his gripes with FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe, saying Kibbe led a "dysfunctional" organization and that he was trying to use FreedomWorks to promote himself above the group's core causes. For instance, Armey claimed that Kibbe used FreedomWorks resources to write and promote his book, and that he then structured royalties from that book to pay out to himself, not to FreedomWorks.
In the 2012 election, African-American voters may have turned out at a higher rate than white voters for the first time in history. According to Politico, black voters clearly turned out a higher percentages of registered voters than other ethnic minorities, and if early results from the Pew Research Center are to be believed, they voted in greater percentages than white voters.
Pew's Paul Taylor wrote that Hispanic and Asian voters are growing in electoral clout by dint of growing population numbers, but the rising power of the black vote has come through organization, registration and mobilization. Higher percentages of registered black voters turn out on Election Day, a percentage that has grown in each of the last four presidential elections.
"These participation milestones are notable not just in light of the long history of black disenfranchisement," said Taylor, "but also in light of recently-enacted state voter identification laws that some critics contended would suppress turnout disproportionately among blacks and other minority groups."
Many election watchers worried earlier this year that voter ID laws in powerful swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania would disenfranchise millions of black voters, as well as attempts to suppress early voting by Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted.
"(A)ccording to census data and the election day exit polls," said the Pew report, "blacks made up 12 percent of the eligible electorate this year but accounted for an estimated 13 percent of all votes cast—a repeat of the 2008 presidential election, when blacks 'over-performed' at the polls by the same ratio. In all previous presidential elections for which there are reliable data, blacks had accounted for a smaller share of votes than eligible voters."
"Did the turnout rate of blacks exceed that of whites this year for the first time ever? For now, there’s circumstantial evidence but no conclusive proof,” said the report. “And there’ll be no clear verdict until next spring, when the U.S. Census Bureau publishes findings from its biannual post-election survey on voter turnout.”
[image via AFP]
Failed presidential candidate and Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) said in an interview published Thursday that the Republican Party should own up to the "big wave of change" that is engulfing the country and embrace same sex marriage equality and a pathway to citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants.
In a sudden turn of coats, Gingrich sat down for over an hour with The Huffington Post, wherein the former House Speaker, who helped pass the nation's discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, admitted: "the momentum is clearly now in the direction of finding some way to ... accommodate and deal with reality. And the reality is going to be that in a number of American states -- and it will be more after 2014 -- gay relationships will be legal, period."
He reportedly added that conservatives could console themselves by finally accepting that there's a difference between "marriage in a church" and "a legal document issued by the state."
On immigration, reporters Sam Stein and Jon Ward also noted that Gingrich threw his support to legislation "similar to the Dream Act." He called it "a path toward citizenship for young people."
The remarks seem to reflect what he reportedly called "the big wave of change we are now seeing" brought about by the reelection of President Barack Obama and, perhaps more importantly, by the whole Republican Party's media complex failing to comprehend what was happening in the country during the campaigns.
The former House Speaker has long said that same sex relationships should be "accommodated," but had previously only gone so far as to say that partners should get hospital visitation rights. He's also vigorously opposed adoption by same sex couples, and said that he believes LGBT people who vote are part of the "secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us."
Gingrich even said as recently as 2011 that he believes the movement for equality "is a temporary aberration that will dissipate." There was a hint that he may be softening on the issue earlier this year, however: Speaking to a crowd of Washingtonians in February, Gingrich announced that the state was going about legalizing marriage equality "the right way" by letting the voters decide.
Additionally, while Gingrich has never been much for the far right of his party on immigration, he's also leaned on "illegal immigrants" as a hot-button political issue. During the Republican Party's primary elections earlier this year, Gingrich told a crowd in Rosemont, Illinois that he's in favor of using the FedEx and UPS package tracking systems to pinpoint the locations of undocumented immigrant families for future deportation.
He did not, however, go as far as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's so-called "self deportation" plan, which Gingrich called "an Obama-level fantasy."
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Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com
The chairman of the Alachua County Republican Party told a newspaper this week that he and another prominent Florida Republican pushed for changes to the state's provisional balloting system in order to suppress young and poor voters, many of whom are students or rent their residence.
The Miami Herald found that the law, sponsored by State Rep. Dennis Baxley (R) and supported by Alachua County GOP chairman Stafford Jones, eliminated the ability of poll workers to quickly check a statewide database of voters registered in counties other than where they're casting a ballot.
The end result was a 25 percent spike in the use of provisional ballots, leading to more work for elections staff and much longer lines -- all of which was by design, Jones told the Herald.
"The liberals do a good job of bringing in college kids to vote on local issues," Jones reportedly said. "The kids vote on raising our taxes, but don’t have to live here to pay the consequences."
As it happened, those most adversely affected by the registration requirements were students and people who rent instead of own property, all of whom move more often than middle class and wealthy individuals.
Jones and Baxley reportedly said were bitter over the party's loss in Tampa's 2010 mayoral election, which was decided by just 42 votes. There's no proof that the 2010 Tampa mayoral election was stolen, and Jones reportedly cited blogs posts about people moving to cast their ballots as the inspiration for the change in state law.
Still, Baxley told the Herald that he believes Democrats somehow managed to whisk the office away from Republicans illegally. "It wasn't right for people to move in and steal an election like that," he said.
Baxley, however, isn't exactly known for supporting evidence-based policies. In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre in Connecticut, he said Monday that teachers and principals should be allowed to carry firearms in schools -- a policy the Florida Education Association said "doesn't make much sense to us."
The changes to Florida's voting laws ahead of the 2012 presidential election were just one front in a national campaign by Republicans who claimed to be concerned about supposedly rampant "voter fraud." Studies show, however, that the type of in-person voter fraud these laws would guard against is incredibly rare, and there's no evidence to support the conclusion that any U.S. election has been swayed by such tactics.
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Photo: Shutterstock.com, all rights reserved.
While the election ended over a month ago, relations between news outlets and the Romney campaign may become even more fraught in the near future.
Multiple organizations are preparing to file an official complaint regarding large charges billed to them by the campaign for meals and other events, reported BuzzFeed.
It is common practice for campaigns to front the cost of meals and other expenses, such as bus travel, for campaign reporters and afterwards bill the news outlets for the expenditures.
But now some outlets claim the bills are much larger than normal. In one instance, reporters were each charged $812 for a meal and a rented space where they waited before going to an event. Reporters were charged $745 after attending a "viewing party" for the vice presidential debate that featured food and alcohol.
BuzzFeed itself plans to be a party to the official complaint.
One anonymous campaign aide told BuzzFeed that the numbers were not inflated, but that the costs reflected a widely mismanaged campaign.
[Image via AFP]
Fox News host Geraldo Rivera on Friday said that "angry, old, white men" like Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) demanded Susan Rice give up any ambition to be secretary of state as a "minimum price" for the September attacks in Benghazi.
Speaking to the hosts of Fox & Friends, Rivera explained that female Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) gave cover to "the angry, old, white men" by joining in their attack on Rice "and then it couldn't be a male-female issue against this poor, beleaguered black woman."
"Angry, old, white men?" asked co-host Gretchen Carlson.
"I am speaking expansively and metaphorically and for effect here," Rivera insisted. "But it became clear she couldn't be the beleaguered damsel in distress -- the poor, black, embattled ambassador. It became clear that she was the minimum price... she was the minimum price to pay for the administrations dissembling on the facts and circumstances of the Benghazi attacks. She was going to be the minimum price that the Democrats, that the Obama administration had to pay for that clear offense."
"In Washington, you make minimum prices. She's the sacrificial lamb."
NBC News White House correspondent Chuck Todd, however, on Thursday said that Rice had also been a victim of conservative media outlets like Fox News.
"She became victim of the attacks. ... and it was all driven, in many cases, by conservative outlets who were making her the center of the Benghazi story," Todd told MSNBC's Martin Bashir. "It's too easy now in the way our media landscape is set up: You can become collateral damage in a hurry, in the way you can just get piled on — whether it's Twitter, whether its advocacy journalism, talk radio. ... That's what she was. Make no mistake, she was political collateral damage."
Watch this video from Fox News' Fox & Friends, broadcast Dec. 14, 2012.
(h/t: Mediaite)
A man carrying a long gun and wearing what appeared to be a Mitt Romney mask robbed a bank in Sterling, Virginia on Thursday.
WRC-TV's Pat Collins reported that the robbery "was not a grab-and-go type of operation" because the suspect went to all five tellers demanding money before he escaped.
Surveillance photos clearly showed the masked man as he exited the bank. Police interviewed employees at the nearby Party City to see if anyone had recently purchased a Mitt Romney mask similar to the one in the photos.
In 2010, the same bank was robbed by a person wearing a Hillary Clinton mask.
Watch this video from WRC-TV, broadcast Dec. 14, 2012.
View more videos at: https://nbcwashington.com.
Anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist says that President Barack Obama will have to "blow up small countries" because Republicans will not let him have "any fun at all" spending taxpayers' money.
"Obama will be on a very short leash, fiscally speaking, over the next four years," Norquist told C-SPAN on Thursday. "He’s not gonna have any fun at all."
"He may decide to go blow up small countries he can’t pronounce because it won’t be any fun to be here, because he won’t be able to spend the kind of cash he was hoping to."
The Americans for Tax Reform founder also said that "we" Republicans in the House and Senate would force the president to make spending cuts before passing any continuing resolutions, suggesting the threat of a government shutdown if conservatives did not get their way.
Although Norquist eventually soured on President George W. Bush's war of choice in Iraq, he initially supported the effort, which was predicted to cost $3 trillion.
"The Democrats were on the wrong side of the Civil War, the Cold War, and now the Iraq War," Norquist said in 2003. "Their batting average on these things is right up there with France."
Watch this video from C-SPAN, broadcast Dec. 13, 2012.
[Photo credit: Gage Skidmore]
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