Democratic Rep Not Sure Why Ted Cruz Went To Mandela Service

TOM KLUDT/TPM

If you're wondering why Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) accompanied a largely Democratic delegation to South Africa for Nelson Mandela's memorial service last week, you aren't alone. The Democrats weren't quite sure what to make of it either.

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) said Monday that while Cruz was cordial on board the flight to South Africa, she and others were "curious" about what motivated the tea party senator to join the delegation.
"I think that he was on the spot because there were many members who were curious, you know, about why he would want to take this pilgrimage," Moore said on MSNBC. "This was a solemn — it was hard trip, 40 hours and turning right around. And even the senator had to come right back and vote at 1 a.m."
Moore pointed out that the delegation was comprised mostly of Democrats, including some lawmakers who were active in the anti-apartheid movement.
"And so there was a lot of curiosity about [Cruz]," she said.
 Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), who was also in the delegation, said last week that Cruz "got an earful" from his Democratic counterparts on the flight.

At Stand Your Ground Hearing, Ted Cruz Argues Florida Law Helps African-Americans

BY REBECCA LEBER/Think Progress

With Trayvon Martin’s mother sitting just across from him, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) claimed that Stand Your Ground is beneficial for African-Americans. At the Tuesday Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing, Cruz claimed, “In Florida, the data show that African-American defendants have availed themselves of the Stand Your Ground law more frequently than Anglo defendants.” Indirectly citing a Daily Caller story that said black defendants were successful in 55 percent of fatal cases compared to 53 percent of whites, Cruz said this “isn’t about inflaming racial tensions though some might try to use it to do that.”

Shortly after Cruz described Stand Your Ground as protecting innocent victims from violent aggressors, Sybrina Fulton and Lucia McBath, the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, delivered emotional testimony about their murdered children.

GOP witness John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, also argued Cruz’s point at length. “Poor blacks who live in high-crime urban areas are not only the most likely victims of crime, they are also the ones who benefit the most from Stand Your Ground laws,” he said according to prepared testimony. Later, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he found Lott’s argument “compelling,” and that he did not see how the law “has a racial injustice about it.”

This is an oversimplified, if not misleading, portrayal of the racial disparity in Stand Your Ground. It looks only at the rate of successful Florida claims based on the shooter’s race, which indeed is slightly higher for black shooters than white shooters.

By no means does this mean blacks “benefit” under the law.

A report from the Congressional Research Service on inter-racial shootings nationwide shows disparity at work. Without looking specifically at Stand Your Ground, CRS found a clear racial disparity in shootings that were ruled to be justified, as well as an increase in cases of justifiable white-on-black homicides after states began enacting the ALEC model legislation in 2005. According tothe report, white-on-black shootings were considered justified far more often than black-on-white shootings.

The same data that Florida Cruz cited also shows that killers are far more likely to go free when their victims are black. In those cases with black or Hispanic victims, the killings were found justified by the Stand Your Ground law 78 percent of the time, compared to 56 percent in cases with white victims. The racial disparity among victims has also been confirmed by other studies, like the Urban Institute’s finding that in Stand Your Ground states, white-on-black homicides are 354 percent more likely to be ruled justified than white-on-white homicides.

Million Vet March Distances Themselves From Cruz And Palin

From Talk Radio News Service

The organization behind the Million Vet March appear to be frustrated with political tone that accompanied Sunday’s rally at the World War II Memorial.

“We feel disheartened that some would seek to hijack the narrative for political gain,” a statement on the Million Vet March’s website reads. “The core principle was and remains about all Americans honoring Veterans in a peaceful and apolitical manner.”

The statement goes on to specifically site Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, both of whom spoke at the rally.

“Mr. Cruz, Ms. Palin and some attendees, including political parties may have no been aware of the goals of the marches which took place in over 60+ rallies across the nation,” the statement reads.

In rally guidelines released before the event, attendees are advised to avoid “political rhetoric veering away from our core message.”

Veterans Slam Tea Party Politicians For Hijacking Protest Against War Memorial Closures

BY AVIVA SHEN/Think Progress

After driving the GOP’s efforts to shut down the government over Obamacare, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) headlined a march on Sunday to protest the closure of national parks and war memorials. Cruz and Lee shared the stage with former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin at the Million Veterans March. The Tea Party was out in full force, with attendees waving giant Confederate flags in front of the White House and speakers calling for President Obama to “put down the Quran” and “come out with his hands up.” One man was arrested at the World War II memorial with a rifle and ammunition.

Apparently, the original organizers of the veterans’ march are displeased with the Tea Party’s co-opting of their protest. On the Million Vet March homepage, the organizers suggest a local organizer invited Tea Party and birther groups against the wishes of the veterans:

The political agenda put forth by a local organizer in Washington DC was not in alignment with our message. We feel disheartened that some would seek to hijack the narrative for political gain. The core principle is about all Americans honoring Veterans in a peaceful and apolitical manner.

The organizers say they are simply calling for war memorials to stay open at all times and disowned the “disheartening acts of a few powerful Washington elite and political extremists jumping on the opportunity to make money.” On theirFacebook page, they blamed “certain groups that have piggy-backed off our grassroots efforts” for obscuring their message. “We made the mistake of trying to partner with some Washington insiders that thwarted many of our genuine concerns for keeping this apolitical and grassroots. While we support many of those groups common causes for Veterans, we do not support the manner in which they go about it. We chose instead to not incite or create panic.”

Ironically, Palin promised during her speech that she and other conservative public figures would “not be timid in calling out any who would use our military, our vets, as pawns in a political game.”

Radical lawmakers and the Republican National Committee have tried to useveteran protesters to shift blame for the shutdown onto Obama. So far, this strategy doesn’t seem to be working. Polls show most Americans blame Republicans for the shutdown, and both the GOP and the Tea Party’s popularity are at all-time lows.

Right-Wing Media Go Wild For Sen. Cruz's Fake Filibuster

MIKE BURNS, COLEMAN LOWNDES, & SAMANTHA WYATT/Media Matters For America:

Following a 21 hour fake filibuster by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), right-wing media figures were quick to praise the effort as "genius." Fox host Sean Hannity opened his September 25 show, Hannity, with an over-the-top montage of Sen. Cruz's filibuster alongside images of Gadsden flags, American flags, trains, and Americans getting their hair cut, while conservative radio host Bill Cunningham compared Cruz to Davy Crockett, James Bowie, and John Wayne:

Tea partier at Ted Cruz town hall: ‘Canada is not really foreign soil’

By David Edwards/Raw Story:

Even so-called birthers who falsely believe that President Barack Obama was Kenyan born and not a legitimate U.S. citizen seem to think that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) won’t have the same problem because “Canada is not really foreign soil.”

The Texas Tribune caught up with on of those birthers, Republican voter Christina Katok, at a tea party rally where Ted Cruz was speaking earlier this week.

Katok said that she never thought Obama met the constitutional standard of “natural born” citizen because, she reasoned incorrectly, that he was born in Kenya. The president was born in Hawaii and has released his birth certificate to prove it.

Earlier this week, Cruz released his Canadian birth certificate to The Dallas Morning News, proving that he was definitely born in a foreign country to an American mother.

But Katok told the Tribune that she wouldn’t hesitate to vote for Cruz.

“As far as I’m concerned, Canada is not really foreign soil,” she explained, adding that she was more worried about the president’s “strong ties to Kenya.” She noted that Obama had not released his long-form birth certificate until after he was elected.

For his part, Cruz has vowed to renounce his Canadian citizenship, which could require a security check and an eight-month waiting period.

Speaking to National Instruments in Austin on Thursday, Cruz poked fun at his own birth certificate situation, and at the same time, he seemed to be stoking those who don’t believe the president is a U.S. citizen.

“I promise that while y’all are out I’ll try not to give any like really juicy piece of crazy news,” Cruz said, adding, “I am secretly a citizen of Ethiopia.”

Watch this video from The Texas Tribune, broadcast Aug. 22, 2013.

 

The Birth Certificate Donald Trump Won’t Talk About

HUNTER WALKER/TMP

In the leadup to the 2012 election, entrepreneur, perennial presidential flirt and reality television star Donald Trump spent a good deal of time loudly spreading the false conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and, thus, ineligible to occupy the White House.

However, Trump seems far less interested in discussing the intricacies of 2016’s birther-esque drama — the Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) citizenship saga. TPM has attempted to speak with Trump multiple times over the past three days about the release of Cruz’s birth certificate and revelations the senator holds dual citizenship in Canada and the U.S., but Trump has not responded. 

On Aug. 11, Trump appeared on ABC’s “This Week,” where the network’s Jonathan Karl asked him about Cruz’s Canadian roots. In the interview, Trump said he had been told by “somebody” that Cruz was “born in Canada.” He went on to say that Canadian birth would “perhaps” make Cruz ineligible to run for president. Speaking to Salon the next day, Trump said that, if Cruz was indeed born in Canada, then the senator would have to “explain that.”

However, Trump has not weighed in since Cruz’s birth certificate was released on Sunday prompting the revelation that, as someone born in Canada, Cruz is a dual citizen. TPM first attempted called Trump’s office about the issue on Monday. During another attempt on Thursday morning, Rhona Graff, Trump’s assistant and a vice president at the Trump Organization, said he was “traveling.”

“If he’s able to get back to you and wants to respond, then you know he definitely will,” Graff said.

Trump’s quest to resolve the non-issue of Obama’s birthplace was relentless. He even took creditwhen the White House released the President’s “long form” birth certificate in April 2011. Since Trump seemed interested in getting an explanation from Cruz as well, it seemed almost inconceivable he would not want to weigh in on the release of Cruz’s certificate. TPM tried his office a final time Thursday afternoon. Graff said Trump was “visiting one of his many properties” and assured TPM she passed the message on to “somebody who’s with him” and that he would respond “if he gets it and wants to reply.”

In the meantime, Trump posted over 15 messages on his Twitter page during the course of the day Thursday. Since it seems to be his preferred mode of communication, TPM also tried to talk with Trump about Cruz on Twitter. He has not responded.

Release of Sen. Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth certificate sparks questions about dual citizenship

By Scott Kaufman/Raw Story

On Sunday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-T) released his birth certificate to the Dallas Morning News. The official document is from the Edmonton branch of the Province of Alberta’s Department of Health, and indicates that the Republican presidential hopeful was born in Calgary to a Cuban father and an American mother. To those who believe natural-born citizenship requires birth on United States soil, like Donald Trump, a Cruz candidacy would present similar eligibility issues to those that both President Obama and his opponent, Sen. John McCain, faced during the 2008 election. Constitutional scholars, including Cruz himself, think the “birther” issue is irrelevant, given that Cruz’s mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. Her American citizenship, they claim, makes him a natural-born, instead of a naturalized, citizen of the United States.

The requirement that Presidents be natural-born stems from an idea most succinctly articulated by Alexander Hamilton in “Federalist #68,” in which he notes “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in [American] councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?” In the case of Cruz, his status as a natural-born citizen would seem to preclude him from being such a creature.

However, Canadian lawyers inform the Morning News that Cruz’s Calgary birth automatically granted him Canadian citizenship because his father, Rafael Cruz, had moved to Canada in the 1960s and was considered a permanent resident at the time of Cruz’s birth in 1970. Canadian law stipulates that the child of a permanent resident is conferred Canadian citizenship.

The result is that Cruz apparently currently retains his citizenship in both the United States and Canada. No one claims that Cruz is a Canadian Manchurian candidate but, as the last two presidential elections have proven, any question about a candidate’s eligibility to hold the Office of the Presidency will find traction in certain portions of the electorate.

Unless, that is, Cruz publicly renounces his Canadian citizenship. His spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, indicates that is unlikely to happen: “Senator Cruz became a U.S. citizen at birth, and he never had to go through a naturalization process after birth to become a U.S. citizen. To our knowledge, he never had Canadian citizenship, so there is nothing to renounce.”

UPDATE: Cruz renounced his Canadian citizenship on Monday afternoon, but said he had nothing against the country.

“I got my U.S. passport in high school,” he said in a statement reported by the Associated Press.

“Because I was a U.S. citizen at birth, because I left Calgary when I was 4 and have lived my entire life since then in the U.S., and because I have never taken affirmative steps to claim Canadian citizenship, I assumed that was the end of the matter. Now The Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship. Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship. Nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth and as a U.S. Senator, I believe I should be only an American.”

Cruz: ‘Gay marriage’ leads to Christianity being defined as ‘hate speech’

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is predicting that tolerance of equal rights for LGBT people will result in Christianity being defined as “hate speech.”

In a recent interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, host David Brody told Cruz that activists saw the opposition to same sex marriage as “hate speech from the pulpit.”

“If you look at other nations that have gone down the road towards gay marriage, that’s the next step of where it gets enforced,” Cruz agreed. “It gets enforced against Christian pastors who decline to perform gay marriages, who speak out and preach biblical truths on marriage, that has been defined elsewhere as hate speech, as inconsistent with the enlightened view of government.”

“I think there is no doubt that the advocates who are driving this effort in the United States want to see us end up in that same place.”

Cruz also told Brody that the country was in need of a spiritual revival because “we’re at the edge of a precipice.”

“If we keep going down this path we’re risking losing our nation, we’re risking losing the incredible oasis of liberty,” he warned.

Watch the videos below from CBN, broadcast July 23, 2013.

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)

Tea party Republicans flocking to appear Monday at white nationalist-connected march

By David Ferguson/Raw Story

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Iowa Rep. Steve King, former Rep. Allen West and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions are all planning to appear at an anti-immigration reform rally held by a group with close connections to the white nationalist movement. According to Right Wing Watch, the Black American Leadership Association (BALA) is not the grass-roots organization it purports to be, but rather a longstanding cabal of anti-immigration activists who have “deep connections” to white nationalist John Tanton, a man the Southern Poverty Law Center calls“the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement.”

The march, called the “D.C. March for Jobs,” with its “Just say ‘No’ to Amnesty” theme is slated for Monday and is expected to draw a heavily tea party-affiliated, far-right crowd. Michelle Cottle at the Daily Beast wrote Friday that BALA is believed to be “the latest in a series of minority front groups providing anti-immigration extremists cover from charges of racism.”

Tea party leaders, wrote Cottle, have been “downright giddy” at having a group of activists of color on hand to point to when critics call out the recent anti-immigration reform putsch by conservatives as a display of racial animus.

BALA founder Leah Durant claims that the group’s mission is to protect the economic viability of African-Americans in the U.S. by stemming the tide of undocumented workers it believes are streaming into the country, thereby preventing the widespread black unemployment they say would result from the “devastating effects of amnesty and mass immigration.”

In a June open letter to the Senate Gang of Eight, BALA “implor[ed] each Member to fulfill his or her duty to the millions of Americans struggling to find work” by killing the Senate bill and taking measures to reduce immigration.

Durant has found herself inundated with media attention from right-outlets, including invitations to appear with Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Mike Huckabee and others. BALA’s efforts to kill immigration reform have been trumpeted by the Daily Caller and the National Review.

Cottle wrote that while BALA’s existence only dates to the publication of its Facebook page in mid-May, at least a dozen of its members are long-time anti-immigration activists have have spent decades pushing the message that immigration will be economically devastating to the black community. Under different names over the years, including the African American Leadership Council, Choose Black America and the Coalition for the Future American Worker, this group of activists have been pushing policy agendas that Cottle called “misleading, dangerously divisive, and sadly predictable.”

Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Human and Civil Rights, told Cottle, “We’ve seen this before. This is the same page pulled from an over-20-year-old playbook.”

Several BALA leaders — Durant, Frank Morris, the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, and T. Willard Fair — have worked for, lobbied with or supported the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a notoriously anti-Latino, pro-eugenics organization that the SPLC classifies as a hate group. FAIR was founded by John Tanton, who, in the late 1980s, was outed as a racist when portions of his private correspondence were made public — letters and memos in which he railed against the “Latin onslaught” and said that society was doomed without a “a European-American majority — and a clear one at that.”

Aaron Flanagan of the Center for New Community told Cottle that BALA’s newfound utility to the anti-immigration right is “blatant tokenism.” He said, “And tokenism is not a word I use lightly.”

Henderson expressed disappointment. “It’s troubling when opportunists use the economic challenges of the African-American community as cover for ideological and political extremism to align themselves with groups like FAIR, which had their own genesis in the eugenics movement.”

Joining the Republican Party politicians at Monday’s march will be fiery fundamentalist Christian pastor O’Neal Dozier, who was Florida state director of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)’s presidential campaign in 2012. Dozier declared that former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA)’s Mormonism made him a threat to the country and that it would “taint the Republican Party” to choose Romney as its nominee.

Dozier is also known for his extreme anti-LGBT and anti-Muslim statements, including the belief that homosexuality is the “paramount of sins” and that same sex partnerships are “something so nasty and disgusting that it makes God want to vomit.” He has publicly stated that Islam “has a plan, a 20-year plan, to take over America from within.”

Mother Jones reported that a charity Dozier supported and lobbied for with local Republican politicians swindled Haitian immigrants out of $3 million by charging them for U.S. work permits and other papers that they never received.

Senators Destroy Ted Cruz’s Argument Against The Assault Weapons Ban

By Nicole Flatow/Think Progress

A third measure to reform gun violence prevention passed the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday along party lines, but not without bitter opposition from Republicans, who claimed that such a ban would violate the Second Amendment and analogized restrictions on guns to censoring books under the First Amendment.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) battered Democrats with questions about whether they would support restrictions on the First or Fourth Amendments he claimed were similar to those an assault weapons ban would impose on the Second:

I pose to the senator from California [Sen. Diane Feinstein], would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the Second Amendment in the context of the First or Fourth Amendment, namely, would she consider it constitutional for congress to specify that the first amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?

But Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) obliterated his argument by noting the analogous actual restrictions on the actual First Amendment:

In reference to the question my colleague from Texas asked, would you limit books? Would you name specific books? Yeah. It’s constitutional within the ambit of the First Amendment to eliminate child pornography. And we have lots of laws that are very explicit about that. Very explicit. That are constitutional, that have been upheld as constitutional. Similarly, you can’t falsely scream fire in a crowded theater. Similarly, we have libel laws. Every one of these is an impingement on the sacred First Amendment, upheld as constitutional. There are reasonable limits on each amendment, and I think it is anomalous, to put it kindly, for either side to interpret one amendment so expansively and another amendment so narrowly that it just doesn’t add up because your interpretation of the Constitution should be consistent.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) then dealt the final blow with a direct comparison between First and Second Amendment restrictions both intended to protect public safety:

It is hard to imagine that it would be a violation of the First Amendment for somebody to yell fire in a crowded theater but it’s not a violation of the Second Amendment to prevent somebody from bringing a hundred-round magazine into a crowded theater in a Aurora, Colorado.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) made a different constitutional argument, noting “we’ve heard testimony there are some 4 million weapons” banned by the bill. He cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 opinion in D.C. v. Heller to assert that that 4 million weapons necessarily “qualifies as common use” as defined by the decision and “cannot be banned.”

While Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion did strike down a ban on weapons in “common use,” he specifically stated that the Constitution allows bans on “dangerous and unusual” weapons. Lee failed to explain how the fact that manufacturers of “dangerous and unusual” weapons have manufactured so many has any bearing  on whether are not they meet the definition of “in common use.”

Whitehouse lamented the “clear” intractable Republican opposition to the assault weapons ban and suggested that a separate vote on the high-capacity magazines element of the bill would have more success in passing the Senate. The Senate judiciary Committee has alreadyapproved measures to expand background checks and reduce gun trafficking, but they all face significant obstacles in both the full Senate and the House.

Ted Cruz Claims He Has A List Of Communists Who Have Infiltrated Harvard Law

By Zack Beauchamp/Think Progress

During the confirmation hearing for Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Sen. Ted Cruz engaged in guilt-by-association tactics that reminded several observers (including this author) of former Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI)’s baseless claim to have “a list” of Communists who had infiltrated the U.S. State Department.

It turns out Cruz was even more like McCarthy than previously thought. He believes that “Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government” have infiltrated the Harvard Law School faculty, outgunning the embattled campus conservatives.

Cruz’s Communist comments came in a speech to the Koch-supported group Americans for Prosperity unearthed by The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer. Mayer attended the speech, and wrote down the text of Cruz’ McCarthyite allegations, which also linked President Obama to the so-called revolutionary Marxists at Harvard:

Cruz greeted the audience jovially, but soon launched an impassioned attack on President Obama, whom he described as “the most radical” President “ever to occupy the Oval Office.” (I was covering the conference and kept the notes.)

He then went on to assert that Obama, who attended Harvard Law School four years ahead of him, “would have made a perfect president of Harvard Law School.” The reason, said Cruz, was that, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”

Like McCarthy, Cruz doesn’t name names, and that’s no surprise. As Mayer notes, “Under the Smith Act, it is a crime to actively engage in any organization pursuing the overthrow of the U.S. government.” So Cruz’s allegation could potentially mean he’s accusing a large chunk of the Harvard faculty of engaging in a federal felony.

It’s also extremely unlikely that there were any truly revolutionary Marxists at Harvard. The intellectual cohort Mayer guesses he was pointing to are advocates of Critical Legal Studies (CLS), an intellectual movement with strong roots at Harvard Law. CLS scholars argue that law and legal texts are indeterminate; in greatly simplified terms, that the law can be interpreted in basically whatever fashion judges choose. Taking after a long tradition of leftist thought (including Marx himself), CLS advocates argue that the fact of legal indeterminacy means law ends up reflecting the will and the interests of the powerful (principally rich, white men) rather than neutral adjucations of the principles that are supposed to underpin the law. A more comprehensive introduction, from Harvard Law Professor Roberto Unger, can be found here.

It’s true that this is an extremely left-wing analysis of the way that law works, but that doesn’t mean they actually wanted the Soviets to win the Cold War by overthrowing the US government, as Cruz said. Indeed, as Mayer notes, perhaps the most famous CLS exponent at Harvard, Duncan Kennedy, identifies as a “social democrat,” not a Communist and certainly not a revolutionary Soviet.

A majority of the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc attended Harvard Law School. No Marxists (that ThinkProgress is aware of) from Harvard have ascended to the Supreme Court.

Eight Senators Vote To Block Violence Against Women Act

By Annie-Rose Strasser/Think Progress

Eight Senators on Monday voted not to consider the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, a bill that protects victims of domestic violence. The Senators who voted against moving to debate on the bill were: Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Tim Scott (R-SC), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Mike Johanns (R-NE), Rand Paul (R-KY), Pat Roberts (R-KS), and James Risch (R-ID).

VAWA’s reauthorization has been caught up in partisan gridlock over added provisions that would protect undocumented immigrants, as well as LGBT and Native American victims of domestic violence. Congress failed to reauthorize the bill by the end of 2012, and the Senate is now considering the same legislation again, in its new legislative session.

All of the women in the Senate, with the exception of Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE), co-sponsored the legislation.

Once Senators consent to take up the measure, it will be voted on in its entirety. It is expected to pass, but will face a tougher battle in the House

Five Things Everyone Should Know About GOP Senate Candidate Ted Cruz

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress
Today, Texas Republican primary voters selected Ted Cruz as their candidate to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). Cruz, a former Solicitor General of Texas and law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, is among the nation’s most skilled Supreme Court advocates. Yet his considerable intellect is rivaled by his very poor judgment. Here are just five of the most revealing windows into Cruz’ Tea Party worldview:

1) Ted Cruz Believes George Soros Leads A United Nations Conspiracy To Eliminate Golf: In 1992, President George H.W. Bush joined the leaders of 177 other nations in endorsing a non-binding UN document known as Agenda 21. This twenty year-old document largely speaks at a very high level of generality about reducing poverty and building sustainable living environments. Nevertheless, Cruz published an article on his campaign website claiming that this non-binding document is actually a nefarious plot to “abolish ‘unsustainable’ environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads.” To top it off, Cruz lays the blame for this global anti-golf conspiracy at the feet of a well-known Tea Party boogieman — “The originator of this grand scheme is George Soros.”

2) Ted Cruz Wants To Gut Social Security: In an interview with the Texas TribuneCruz labeled Social Security a “ponzi scheme” and outlined a three-step plan to gut this essential program. Cruz would raise the Social Security retirement age, cut future benefits, and implement a George W. Bush-style plan to privatize much of the program. In other words, in addition to forcing them to work longer for fewer benefits, Cruz would place retirees at the mercy of a fickle stock market. Had Social Security been privatized during the career of a worker who retired near the end of the Bush Administration, that worker would have retired with less money in their privatized account than they would have if they’d simply kept their money between their mattress and box spring.

3) Ted Cruz Wants To Party Like It’s 1829: The Constitution provides that Acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land,” and thus cannot be nullified by rogue state lawmakers. Cruz, however, co-authored an unconstitutional proposal claiming two or more states could simply ignore the Constitution’s command and nullify the Affordable Care Act so long as they work together. Although the Constitution does permit states to join in “interstate compacts” that have the force of law, under the Constitution such compacts require the consent of Congress and can be vetoed by the President. Cruz falsely claimedthat states do not need to meet these Constitutional requirements to undermine laws they don’t like.

4) Ted Cruz Is An Islamophobe: At a campaign event earlier this month, Cruz touted another of the Tea Party’s favorite conspiracy theories, claiming that “Sharia law is an enormous problem” in this country. Although it is common for far right politicians to claim that American law is somehow being replaced with Islamic law, these claims have absolutely no basis in reality. Few American courts have ever even mentioned Sharia or Islamic law, and those that have generally only do so in contracts or similar cases where a party before the court agreed to be bound by Sharia law.

5) Ted Cruz Campaigned On How He Helped Texas Kill A Mexican: Cruz’s very first campaign ad encouraged GOP primary voters to support him because he helped make it easier for Texas to kill an “illegal alien.” According to the ad, “Cruz fought all the way to the Supreme Court” after “the UN and World Court overruled a Texas jury’s verdict to execute an illegal alien.” In reality, the case Cruz won had nothing to do with whether Texas had the authority to kill this man. Rather, it concerned whether Texas could defy a treaty requiring it to inform foreign nationals who are arrested of their right “to request assistance from the consul of his own state.” Even North Korea honored this treaty that Cruz fought to undermine.

TX Sen Candidate Ted Cruz Spouts Paranoid Fantasy About United Nations/George Soros Conspiracy To Eliminate Golf

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress



In an article that would appear to be a poorly-executed parody of Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz’s (R) right-wing beliefs it Cruz had not posted it on his own website, the Tea Party stalwart touts a truly ridiculous conspiracy theory about George Soros secretly partnering with the United Nations to come into our cities and eliminate our right to play golf:

In 1992, the United Nations adopted Agenda 21 to “achieve a more efficient and equitable world economy,” outlining a process to eliminate environmental decay and social injustice through micromanaging industries, communities, and culture. They will meet again next year to discuss its “progress” in over 100 nations.

The originator of this grand scheme is George Soros, who candidly supports socialism and believes that global development must progress through eliminating national sovereignty and private property. He has given millions to this project. But he is not the only one promoting this plan; in fact, the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) now consists of over 600 cities in the United States.

Agenda 21 attempts to abolish “unsustainable” environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads. It hopes to leave mother earth’s surface unscratched by mankind. . . . Agenda 21 subverts liberty, our property rights, and our sovereignty.

In reality, Agenda 21 is a twenty year-old non-binding resolution which speaks largely at a very high level of generality about reducing poverty and building sustainable living environments. The United States is one of 178 nations that signed onto this non-binding agenda — and we did so during the Bush Administration. So if Agenda 21 actually were a nefarious Soros plot to destroy paved roads and take away our sacred right to golf courses, it has worked very badly. Two decades after Agenda 21 was produced, Ted Cruz himself is still allowed to sell golf shirts on his website with minimal intrusion from UN peacekeepers.

Sadly, however, Cruz’s conspiracy mongering about George Soros’ war on Tiger Woods is par for Cruz’s course. When Cruz isn’t inventing fantasies about international plots to turn fairways into rough, he invents unconstitutional proposals to nullify federal laws or calls for a radical rereading of the Constitution that would lead to Medicaid and most federal education programs being declared unconstitutional.

There’s no word, however, on whether Cruz believes that the Constitution provides all of us with an inalienable right to play eighteen holes at Pebble Beach.