“We, in the last 24 hours, have expelled Tea Party Express and Mark Williams from the National Tea Party Federation because of the letter that he wrote,” federation spokesman David Webb said Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation.”

Williams wrote the blog post, which has since been taken down, in response to a resolution adopted by the NAACP accusing Tea Party leaders of tolerating racism within the movement.

“Dear Mr. Lincoln,” began Williams’ letter. “We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!”

Webb called the blog post “clearly offensive.”

Tea Party Federation Expels Mark Williams Over ‘Offensive’ Response To NAACP’s Racism Charge.

There’s no guarantee for such a delicate operation deep below the water’s surface, officials said, and the permanent fix of plugging the well from the bottom remains slated for mid-August.

“It’s not just going to be, you put the cap on, it’s done. It’s not like putting a cap on a tube of toothpaste,” Coast Guard spokesman Capt. James McPherson said.

Robotic submarines removed the cap that had been placed on top of the leak in early June to collect the oil and send it to surface ships for collection or burning. BP aims to have the new, tighter cap in place as early as Monday and said that, as of Saturday night, the work was going according to plan.

If tests show it can withstand the pressure of the oil and is working, the Gulf region could get its most significant piece of good news since the April 20 explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers.

“Over the next four to seven days, depending on how things go, we should get that sealing cap on. That’s our plan,” said Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, of the round-the-clock operation.

It would be only a temporary solution to the catastrophe that the federal government estimates has poured between 87 million and 172 million gallons of oil into the Gulf as of Saturday. Hope for permanently plugging the leak lies with two relief wells, the first of which should be finished by mid-August.

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Gulf Oil Spill: Cap Removed From Gushing Well, Oil Flows Freely.

By far the single most important of these is our current initiative to include substantial reductions in the projected level of American military spending as part of future deficit reduction efforts. For decades, the subject of military expenditures has been glaringly absent from public debate. Yet the Pentagon budget for 2010 is $693 billion — more than all other discretionary spending programs combined. Even subtracting the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military spending still amounts to over 42% of total spending.

It is irrefutably clear to us that if we do not make substantial cuts in the projected levels of Pentagon spending, we will do substantial damage to our economy and dramatically reduce our quality of life.

We are not talking about cutting the money needed to supply American troops in the field. Once we send our men and women into battle, even in cases where we may have opposed going to war, we have an obligation to make sure that our servicemembers have everything they need. And we are not talking about cutting essential funds for combating terrorism; we must do everything possible to prevent any recurrence of the mass murder of Americans that took place on September 11, 2001.

Immediately after World War II, with much of the world devastated and the Soviet Union becoming increasingly aggressive, America took on the responsibility of protecting virtually every country that asked for it. Sixty-five years later, we continue to play that role long after there is any justification for it, and currently American military spending makes up approximately 44% of all such expenditures worldwide. The nations of Western Europe now collectively have greater resources at their command than we do, yet they continue to depend overwhelmingly on American taxpayers to provide for their defense. According to a recent article in the New York Times, “Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism. Europeans have benefited from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella.”

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Rep. Barney Frank: Why We Must Reduce Military Spending.

But that was then. Today, American workers face the worst job market since the Great Depression, with five job seekers for every job opening, with the average spell of unemployment now at 35 weeks. Yet the Senate went home for the holiday weekend without extending benefits. How was that possible?

The answer is that we’re facing a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused. Nothing can be done about the first group, and probably not much about the second. But maybe it’s possible to clear up some of the confusion.

By the heartless, I mean Republicans who have made the cynical calculation that blocking anything President Obama tries to do — including, or perhaps especially, anything that might alleviate the nation’s economic pain — improves their chances in the midterm elections. Don’t pretend to be shocked: you know they’re out there, and make up a large share of the G.O.P. caucus.

By the clueless I mean people like Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for senator from Nevada, who has repeatedly insisted that the unemployed are deliberately choosing to stay jobless, so that they can keep collecting benefits. A sample remark: “You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job but it doesn’t pay as much. We’ve put in so much entitlement into our government that we really have spoiled our citizenry.”

Now, I don’t have the impression that unemployed Americans are spoiled; desperate seems more like it. One doubts, however, that any amount of evidence could change Ms. Angle’s view of the world — and there are, unfortunately, a lot of people in our political class just like her.

But there are also, one hopes, at least a few political players who are honestly misinformed about what unemployment benefits do — who believe, for example, that Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, was making sense when he declared that extending benefits would make unemployment worse, because “continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” So let’s talk about why that belief is dead wrong.

Do unemployment benefits reduce the incentive to seek work? Yes: workers receiving unemployment benefits aren’t quite as desperate as workers without benefits, and are likely to be slightly more choosy about accepting new jobs. The operative word here is “slightly”: recent economic research suggests that the effect of unemployment benefits on worker behavior is much weaker than was previously believed. Still, it’s a real effect when the economy is doing well.

But it’s an effect that is completely irrelevant to our current situation. When the economy is booming, and lack of sufficient willing workers is limiting growth, generous unemployment benefits may keep employment lower than it would have been otherwise. But as you may have noticed, right now the economy isn’t booming — again, there are five unemployed workers for every job opening. Cutting off benefits to the unemployed will make them even more desperate for work — but they can’t take jobs that aren’t there.

Wait: there’s more. One main reason there aren’t enough jobs right now is weak consumer demand. Helping the unemployed, by putting money in the pockets of people who badly need it, helps support consumer spending. That’s why the Congressional Budget Office rates aid to the unemployed as a highly cost-effective form of economic stimulus. And unlike, say, large infrastructure projects, aid to the unemployed creates jobs quickly — while allowing that aid to lapse, which is what is happening right now, is a recipe for even weaker job growth, not in the distant future but over the next few months.

But won’t extending unemployment benefits worsen the budget deficit? Yes, slightly — but as I and others have been arguing at length, penny-pinching in the midst of a severely depressed economy is no way to deal with our long-run budget problems. And penny-pinching at the expense of the unemployed is cruel as well as misguided.

So, is there any chance that these arguments will get through? Not, I fear, to Republicans: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something,” said Upton Sinclair, “when his salary” — or, in this case, his hope of retaking Congress — “depends upon his not understanding it.” But there are also centrist Democrats who have bought into the arguments against helping the unemployed. It’s up to them to step back, realize that they have been misled — and do the right thing by passing extended benefits.

Op-Ed Columnist – Punishing the Unemployed – NYTimes.com.

In an explosive interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the GOP leader also charged that Democrats are “snuffing out the America that I grew up in.” He added, “Right now, we’ve got more Americans engaged in their government than at any time in our history. There’s a political rebellion brewing, and I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it since 1776.”

Boehner did not go so far as to predict, as he has before, that this “political rebellion” would necessarily mean that Republicans will retake the House of Representatives in November, paving the way for him to become the next Speaker.

But he charged that the “American people have written off the Democrats. They’re willing to look at [Republicans] again.”

Boehner went on to say that the passage of the historic overhaul of the country’s health care system had “pushed most Americans over the edge,” and insisted that he would lead an effort to repeal the bill if Republicans were voted back into power in November.

Boehner’s criticism of the Democratic agenda then moved to the recently-negotiated financial regulatory reform package, which he likened to “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.” According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Boehner argued that the financial system would be better served by “more transparency and better enforcement by regulators.”

The minority leader also answered questions about Social Security, which he said could not remain solvent as it is currently structured.

Ensuring there’s enough money to pay for the war will require reforming the country’s entitlement system, Boehner said. He said he’d favor increasing the Social Security retirement age to 70 for people who have at least 20 years until retirement, tying cost-of-living increases to the consumer price index rather than wage inflation and limiting payments to those who need them.

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John Boehner: Raise Retirement Age To 70; Wall Street Reform Is Like ‘Killing An Ant With A Nuclear Weapon’.

After the hearing broke last night, TPMDC asked three of the top Republicans on the Judiciary Committee which of Marshall’s opinions best exemplified his activism. And while two of the three were careful to praise Marshall the man, none of them could name a single case.

“You could name them,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Pressed, though, he could not. “I’m not going to go into that right now, I’d be happy to do that later,” Hatch demurred.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) claimed it wasn’t about Marshall’s jurisprudence at all, but rather about how Kagan, as his clerk, drove his work on the court behind the scenes. “I don’t think it’s cases, it’s that she wasn’t looking at a legal outcome, she was looking at a political philosophy: on which cases were accepted, and which weren’t and the direction of those cases,” Coburn said. “It isn’t about Justice Marshall. It’s about what she did in prepping him or advising him. It’s not about his cases.”

Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) came closest to citing individual cases, though ultimately fell back on a generalization.

“Perhaps the most activist decision in history, or actually it wasn’t a majority decision, was Brennan and Marshall dissenting in every death penalty case because they said the death penalty violated the constitution,” Sessions claimed. “The only thing it violated was their idea of what good policy was. And they just dissented on every death penalty case. And said ‘based on my view that it’s cruel and unusual punishment.’”

By way of comparison, I asked him if yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, throwing out a handgun ban in Chicago, amounted to judicial activism.

Sessions insisted it did not. “It violated the Constitution,” Sessions said of the Chicago law.

How is that any different than Marshall dissenting in death penalty cases?

“Well, first you look at the Constitution as a whole….The Constitution says you can’t inflict cruel and unusual punishment. Well, every state had the death penalty. It wasn’t unusual. It has to be both.”

Notwithstanding their disagreement with his service on the bench, both Sessions and Hatch prefaced their remarks by lauding Marshall as a civil rights hero,

“Marshall was a fabulous lawyer and a champion of civil rights,” Sessions said.

“My feeling about Thurgood Marshall was that he was a great man. He wen through travails and problems that most of us never dream of,” Hatch gushed. “He was a gutsy guy that risked his life time after time for his belief in civil rights, and I don’t think it’s right for anybody to criticize him. Now, was he an activist in his decision making? Yeah.”

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GOPers Who Slammed Marshall’s Activism Can’t Name A Case Typifying It | TPMDC.

Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman told reporters after the 90-minutee West Wing meeting that Obama held firm in his calls for a price on greenhouse gases. But he acknowledged that he could agree to a more limited climate and energy bill than what they previously drafted.

“We believe we have compromised significantly, and we’re prepared to compromise further,” Kerry said.

Lieberman said a couple of Republicans in the meeting promised to keep talking about the prospect of a less ambitious climate program that includes a price on carbon, though he didn’t name names.

Kerry and Lieberman released a climate bill last month that capped greenhouse gases from power plants, transportation and trade-sensitive manufacturers.

Reaction to their bill since the introduction has been lukewarm, and the duo said they would keep talking to both sides of the aisle over the coming weeks to try to find a deal capable of winning 60 Senate votes.

Asked if a power plant-specific bill was in the cards, Kerry replied, “There are any number of varieties. That could be one of them.”

Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, Judd Gregg, Richard Lugar, Lisa Murkowski, Olympia Snowe and George Voinovich also attended the White House meeting, but left with a much different message than their Democratic counterparts.

“We’ve got to take a national energy tax off the table in the middle of a recession,” said Alexander, the chairman of the Senate GOP conference.

Gregg, who previously has backed emission limits just on power plants, urged Democratic leaders to focus solely on an energy bill that includes incentives for renewables, but no price on carbon emissions. “Our goal should be reducing our dependence on oil from people don’t like us,” he said.

Obama’s meeting with the senators, including Majority Leader Harry Reid, ran overtime. It was originally scheduled to last for under an hour.

The White House press office also abruptly canceled a brief pool spray where TV cameras and reporters were to be shuttled in for remarks from the president. White House officials said the cancellation was because of “scheduling considerations.”

The Tea Party-backed candidate was appearing on the Bill Manders show — a favorable platform for Republican candidates — when outlined her staunch opposition to abortion rights.

Here’s a transcript of the exchange:

Manders: I, too, am pro life but I’m also pro choice, do you understand what I mean when I say that.
Angle: I’m pro responsible choice. There is choice to abstain choice to do contraception. There are all kind of good choices.

Manders: Is there any reason at all for an abortion?

Angle: Not in my book.

Manders: So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something?

Story continues below

Angle: You know, I’m a Christian and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.

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Sharron Angle Opposes Abortion Even With Rape, Incest: ‘God Has A Plan’ AUDIO.

The House Democrat who oversees funding for Afghanistan’s redevelopment and reconstruction said on Monday that she is stripping money from her foreign aid bill in reaction to pervasive corruption. Dave Obey, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, supports the move made by subcommittee chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), according to an Obey spokesman.

Lowey cited pervasive corruption in Afghanistan as the cause for her decision to pull the funding from the appropriations bill working its way through her State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee.

“I do not intend to appropriate one more dime for assistance to Afghanistan until I have confidence that U.S. taxpayer money is not being abused to line the pockets of corrupt Afghan government officials, drug lords and terrorists,” said Lowey.

A Lowey spokesman said the restrictions would not apply to direct humanitarian assistance for projects such as refugee camps, but would limit funds for USAID and the State Department, which funnel money to reconstruction efforts — money that is often siphoned many times over.

The request that Lowey is rejecting amounts to $3.9 billion for the 2011 fiscal year.

On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she recently traveled to Afghanistan and found the corruption staggering. “I was just there for Mother’s Day, in Afghanistan, that weekend, and traveled into the country even more remotely than Kandahar,” Pelosi said in an interview in her office. “And the corruption issue, it’s problematic. And you know what? A lot of it is our money.”

“This is about systemic, huge money,” she said.

The chairman of the Senate subcommittee who oversees the same funding stream in the upper chamber is war opponent Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), who was chairing Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearing and couldn’t be reached.

Pelosi said that she wasn’t sure if there are enough votes in the House to approve funding for the war operations, either.

“I don’t know how many votes there are in the caucus, even condition-based, for the war, hands down. I just don’t. We’ll see what the shape of it is the day of the vote,” she said, but added that she believes President Obama’s surge should be given time to work until the planned drawdown in 2011. “The thing is, is this president has to give his plan a chance until next year, when we have to withdraw them,” she said.

A Lowey spokesman said that the chairwoman’s move was a response to a Wall Street Journal report about $3 billion in cash being openly flown out of Kabul International Airport over the past three years and a Washington Post item about top aides to President Hamid Karzai repeatedly derailing corruption probes.

“The alleged shipment of billions in donor funds out of Afghanistan and allegations of Afghan government insiders impeding corruption investigations are outrageous,” said Lowey. “Furthermore, the government of Afghanistan must demonstrate that corruption is being aggressively investigated and prosecuted.”

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House Dems, Citing Corruption, Block Reconstruction Funds For Afghanistan.

Obama named McChrystal’s direct boss – Gen. David Petraeus – to take over the troubled 9-year-old war in Afghanistan. He asked the Senate to confirm Petraeus for the new post “as swiftly as possible.”

The president said he did not make the decision to accept McChrystal’s resignation over any disagreement in policy or “out of any sense of personal insult.” Flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the Rose Garden, he said: “I believe it is the right decision for our national security.”

Obama hit several gracious notes about McChrystal and his service, saying that he made the decision to sack him “with considerable regret.” And yet, said he said that the job in Afghanistan cannot be done now under McChrystal’s leadership, asserting that the critical remarks from the general and his inner circle in the Rolling Stone magazine article displayed conduct that doesn’t live up to the necessary standards for a command-level officer.

Obama seemed to suggest that McChrystal’s military career is over, including in his praise of the general that the nation should be grateful “for his remarkable career in uniform.”

McChrystal left the White House following his Oval Office call to accounts, and returned to his military quarters at Washington’s Fort McNair. A senior military official said there is no immediate decision about whether he would retire from the Army, which has been his entire career. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

With the controversy have the effect of refueling debate over his Afghanistan policy, Obama took pains to emphasize that the strategy was not shifting with McChrystal’s outster.

“This is a change in personnel but it is not a change in policy,” he said.

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General McChrystal Relieved Of Command: Obama Takes General Off Top Afghan Post.