Fire In The Hole

While we're aware of the NSA spying story that broke last night, we're not clutching our pearls and feigning surprise like so many other media organizations today. The NSA has been using its ability to spy on all Americans' phone lines for about a decade, thanks to the Patriot Act - so this "shocking" revelation is neither shocking or a revelation to anyone who's already been paying attention.

Instead, we've been focusing on the hearings on Capitol Hill this week, which have been stacking up rapidly as both houses of Congress finally have chosen to get some work done - or at least give the appearance of getting work done.

Among the many different IRS scandal hearings, several working groups tackling immigration reform, and other conferences and meetings, a very serious and important hearing was held on Tuesday, focusing on sexual assault in the military.

The problem with sexual assault in the military, across multiple branches, has been blowing up in the faces of U.S. military leaders and politicians recently like a hand grenade that's lost its pin.

From the top coordinator of sexual assault prevention in the Air Force, to a different sexual assault prevention coordinator in the Army - both of whom were arrested for sexual assault - and Army sergeant at Fort Hood who's been charged with being a pimp, the stories about sexual assault and misconduct have been on a non-stop march lately.

Which is precisely why lawmakers on Capitol Hill demanded a crackdown on sexual assault issues from the military's highest-ranking members at an eight-hour long Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday.

For the record, the hearing was an impressive show of bipartisanship. The committee was split not along political lines, as you might expect, but mostly along gender lines - even though women have not been the sole victims of sexual assault and rape in the military.

Senators McCaskill and Gillibrand were direct and brilliant, slamming the commanders on issues of trust and responsibility for how poorly they've handled this massive problem. We even have to give grudging approval to Nebraska's Deb Fischer for her stand on the issue. In short, the seven female Democratic and Republican Senators at the hearing were engaged in some of the most honest Congressional work we've seen in ages.

The men of both parties, however - especially the Republicans - embarrassed themselves with comments reflecting old-fashioned misogyny as well as just plain ignorance.

The core issue surrounding sexual abuse in the military is that the UCMJ - the Uniform Code of  Military Justice - allows for commanding officers to mete out justice themselves in cases of sexual abuse or misconduct. This means your commanding officer - who may have been the one sexually assaulting you - gets to decide whether your claim is valid, including if your accuser will even go before a court martial. If your attacker is convicted, that commander may also reverse the conviction, without needing a jury or other equally high ranked commander.

Even Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel - a veteran himself - agrees that taking the power to reverse a sexual assault conviction out of the hands of commanding officers is the right thing to do. Yet that is the one major change those in charge of the military are refusing to make.

After Tuesday's grueling hearing, we can't help but think Congress will change the rules soon, and once again protect the thousands of women and men who are raped, attacked, and abused every day by their superior officers and fellow servicemembers.

Protecting those that serve their nation is the least that Congress - and Americans - can demand of our military leaders, for all the servicemembers that protect us.

Going To The Dogs

Yesterday, we focused on the fact that whatever Republicans claim the problem is, their biggest problem is themselves - and that hasn't somehow miraculously changed in the last 24 hours. Republicans are still giving unprecendented levels of obstruction, as Greg Sargent accurately points out.

That said, just because the extremists in the Republican Party are the second biggest political obstacle to progress for our nation right now - second only to the nearly unregulated money in our political system - doesn't mean that organizations like the IRS are without fault. It's just not the kind of fault Republican extremists are desperately wishing for.

In fact, when Republicans began spinning the hype about the IRS scandals three weeks ago, as Steve Benen noted back then, many in both media and politics thought this IRS mess would likely end with a massive GOP overreach - in part because nobody likes the IRS, so who's going to defend them? Between the frustration of audits, and the possible penalties most Americans needlessly fear - everything from wage garnishment to jail - it's not exactly like Americans are predisposed to love our federal tax collection agency.

Sure enough, as Benen reiterated yesterday, this is exactly what scandalmania overreach looks like.

As we've pointed out more than once over the last month - and as leading Republican (and current Air Force Reserve JAG lawyer) Sen. Lindsey Graham strongly agreed with Monday - there is absolutely NO evidence that President Obama or anyone at the White House directed the IRS to target tea party and right-wing groups.

That fact still didn't at all stop the whine fest on Tuesday when extremist GOP nuts in the House rolled out the tissues and the red carpet for teabaggers to bawl and display their persecution complex in front of members of Congress. Unsurprisingly, no one at the hearing brought up the fact that all of the tea party groups were actually involved in politics, which - by federal statute - means they are not eligible for the 501c4 status they all currently retain, and that the IRS should have denied to any politically affiliated group.

So after nearly a month of these 'shoot first, ask questions later' dog-eared committee hearings, what is it that we've actually learned?

To start with, it appears the IRS mess happened because those people running the IRS very good at details - an oxymoron if we've ever heard one.

We've also discovered that the IRS has NOT been following a federal law regarding 501c4 tax exemptions since 1959! Instead, the IRS has been relying on its own internal rule that allows organizations that are "primarily" involved in social welfare to get the tax exemption. That's instead of following the law as it's written, by only giving the 501c4 tax exemption - and its associated donor anonymity - to groups that are EXCLUSIVELY involved in social welfare, and not at all involved in anything else, including politics.

The splashiest - though probably most embarrassing - thing Congress has discovered that the IRS has been guilty of came out this week: That the IRS spent $49 million on 225 employee conferences and other personnel 'moral boosters' between 2010 and 2012, including over $50,000 on a Star Trek parody movie.

What the hearings haven't discovered is any kind of Nixonian plot to go after only tea party extremists.

Instead, these hearings have served the GOP priorities of giving Fox & right-wing radio something to yowl about, while wasting even more taxpayer dollars. Meanwhile, issues like the looming increase on student loan interest and the ongoing sequester continue to take a bite out the American people.

We'd say it's not just the IRS that's going to the dogs… but we think you're probably already aware of that.

Focusing On The Wrong Problem

For those people not in the Republican Party, and not aligned with its machinery, the problems their party is having and the solutions to fix many of those problems seem incredibly obvious, based on simple facts.

The troubles facing the GOP seem as clear to us as the news that came out three weeks ago, from the National Transportation Safety Board, that states should reduce the legal blood-alcohol level from 0.08 to 0.05 because doing so would save lives. Indeed, the basic facts do agree - lower blood alcohol levels have already saved lives in other nations where a lower level has been tried. Most people already know that driving buzzed is still dangerous, even though far too many do it anyway. So the solution seems simple.

However, if you think merely lowering the blood-alcohol level by itself, without any other measures, will significantly decrease all vehicle accidents, then you haven't thought the problem all the way through. What about all the crashes that happen because of a driver texting while sober?

In a similar way, while a flood of data continues to come out about what the Republican Party is doing wrong, if all that political pundits are doing is looking at the headlines from that data, their recommendations on how to fix the GOP will likely crash and burn.

From the study by College Republicans of why fewer and fewer young Americans are voting Republican, to the latest Gallup poll on age and sexual orientation, time and again the solution for what ails the GOP seems to be simple to those on the outside. The Republican Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, even made it clear, at the beginning of this year, that he and others also know the outsider's proposed solution for the GOP: "We've got to stop being the stupid party."

Greg Sargent's advice to Congressional Republicans on how to prevent Democrat Harry Reid from using the nuclear option in the Senate echos that simple solution: "If Republicans don’t want Democrats to exercise the nuclear option and do away with the filibuster on executive branch and judicial nominations… drop the endless, unprecedented obstruction of those nominations."

We agree 100 percent with Greg and others that say that first step seems both logical and easy - but we admit, we're not trying to reform the Republican Party from the inside.

The concept of "conservative reform" has been tackled shrewdly by Mr. Sargent, and others lately, including Jonathan Chait, who recently wrote this brilliant note of truth: "In the long run, the resolution to nearly every policy problem [facing the U.S.] depends on the GOP refashioning itself as a normal, non-pathological party."

As one of those conservative reporters, Josh Barro, notes in his new column at Business Insider, the problem is that anyone who is trying to change the Republican Party - including reformists like David Frum and Barro himself - can't get certain others in his political party to actually LISTEN to their advice. Even on simple issues, like the myriad scandals Americans don't care about, GOP elders like Lindsay Graham and John McCain are obviously trying to shut down the destructive scandalmania. Yet right-wing bombthrowers like Ted Cruz and Darrell Issa continue their self-destructive ways, intent on doing everything but listening to either their elders or the GOP reformists.

As we noted earlier with the idea of lowering the blood alcohol level, the solutions for fixing problems may seem simple, at first.

However, as Barro, Frum, and the small handful of Republican reformers on the right are reminding the rest of us, those people who believe a simple solution can fix a complex problem aren't looking at the whole picture.