CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel won Senate approval to replace Mike Pompeo as CIA chief Thursday in a 54-45 vote.
Two Republicans—Rand Paul of Kentucky and Jeff Flake of Arizona—opposed her. The ailing John McCain would have voted against her too if he had been able to leave the hospital where he is under treatment for an aggressive brain tumor.
Six Democrats voted for her. Four of those live in red states and are running for re-election this year—Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Bill Nelson of Florida. But the other two—Mark Warner of Virginia and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire—aren’t up for re-election until 2020.
Elana Schor and Burgess Everett at Politico analyze the lost battle against Haspel’s confirmation:
Liberals had a real chance to defeat President Donald Trump’s CIA director nominee Gina Haspel over her ties to torture.
Instead, she skated to confirmation on Thursday — her nomination greased by a divided Senate Democratic caucus, leaders of the minority who opted not to twist arms, and advocacy groups that couldn’t mount an effective attack strategy despite what they saw as Haspel’s checkered record on human rights.
When she did prevail, winning six Democrats’ support despite three Republican opponents, the outcome did more than disappoint progressives. It shined a bright light on the political limitations of a Democratic minoritythat has also failed to unite members against Mike Pompeo’s bid for secretary of state and a banking deregulation bill.
“It’s more complicated” than it looks for Democratic leaders to keep the caucus together, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview. “We don’t have a parliamentary system … we don’t have that kind of party discipline.”
It’s a sad statement when party discipline that we don’t have is seen as the only way to get all Democratic senators to vote against a torturer who still refuses to call torture immoral (or even to call it torture). Sad and sickening.
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QUOTATION
“Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it.”
~~Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns (2011)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2012—Mitt, you dunce, you have to remember your lies:
Mitt Romney, who has a few months yet to stumble-tongue his way into another dozen or so memorable head-shakers before he actually gets the nomination, offered what may well turn out to be this campaign's most blunderful word-blunder yet. It's already viral, unrecallable:
Uh, I'm actually going to to, I'm not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was. And with regards to, uh, I'll go back and take at what was said there.
What's in evidence in this remarkable word salad is the mark of the bad liar.
We all know that Romney is a major liar. We've seen it over and over during this campaign. The pile of his lies already has grown enormously and the general election campaign is barely under way.
For someone with his assets, you would think he would have hired himself a better coach of effective lying. He can certainly afford it given the gobs of cash he's sucked up by destroying jobs and being rewarded for it. But apparently he's been a cheapskate on that front. Because he just isn't very good at it despite all the practice.