Poor Mojo's Newswire

"Is it over the line politically these days, given the kind of climate we're in, to be talking about or graphically showing a politician in the crosshairs or talking about taking them out? Was it over the line, sort of specifically, since it's now being talked about everywhere, Sarah Palin's web ads for people she would like to see targeted for political defeat?" she asked. "Well, Candy, I think you're responsible, by bringing this up, of doing the very thing you’re trying to condemn," Alexander shot back. "You're making and implying a direct connection between Sarah Palin and what happened." "I think the way to get away from it is for you not to be talking about it," he added. Apparently Fox News agrees with the senator from Tennessee because when Palin's name was mentioned at a vigil for Giffords, they cut the video feed. Palin offered her "sincere condolences" on her Facebook page Saturday, but did not acknowledge any responsibility for inciting the shooting.

The announcement is the latest salvo by some lawmakers in statehouses and Congress who seek to restrict who receives the right of citizenship. Denying citizenship to a specific group of children born in the U.S. would create a "modern-day caste system," said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. The 14th Amendment, part of a package of Reconstruction laws passed after the Civil War, guaranteed citizenship to freed slaves. For more than a century, it has been interpreted by the courts to protect the U.S. citizenship rights of American-born Chinese children, Native American children and children born to Japanese American families when their citizenship was challenged during World War II. It is "extremely doubtful" that the Supreme Court would be willing to hear a case on this issue, said Walter Dellinger, a Duke University law professor and former solicitor general under President Clinton. "It is one of the great civil rights achievements of the United States," Dellinger said. "This issue is raised in every instance in a racial context. It is always a divisive issue."

A top House Republican says GOP lawmakers will go after President Barack Obama's health care law piece by piece to see if they can make it crumble. That effort, says Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, will follow a vote to repeal the health care law outright. Such a vote could come early in the new year after the GOP takes control of the House. Upton is the incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and he says that repealing the health care law is his top priority. He's hoping for a vote before Obama's State of the Union address. Repeal will be difficult because of the president's veto power. But Upton says he thinks Republicans can garner enough Democratic support to override a veto.

In announcing his appointees to run the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Natural Resources yesterday, Gov.-elect John Kasich used one word over and over: business. "These departments are going to send a message to Ohio that we are open for business," Kasich said in naming Scott Nally of Indiana as head of the EPA and former American Electric Power executive David Mustine as director of Natural Resources. Kasich, a former Republican congressman who will take office Jan. 10, emphasized that he doesn't plan to empower business at "the cost of environmental degradation." But in the next breath, he said he wants to "exploit the wonders of our state." "When you have something that's really valuable, use it," he said in a briefing at the Rhodes Tower. That includes drilling for oil and gas in state parks and on state land, he said. But he was cautious when asked about drilling in Lake Erie. "Lake Erie is a jewel," Kasich said. "When it comes to Lake Erie, we're going to be extremely careful."... "I'm not afraid to make the tough decisions," Nally said. "As he (Kasich) said, 'Nothing is sacred.'"