Source: billpressshow.com

Today’s Hot Topics

• Jason Collins has come out as the first gay NBA player. It’s a huge deal for professional sports.
• Karzai has confirmed that he received MILLIONS of dollars from the CIA.
• Now that the FAA has been granted immunity from the sequester, why can’t other programs get relief?

Guests

• Think Progress Managing Editor Igor Volsky
• The Nation Sports Editor Dave Zirin
• Huffington Post Reporter Arthur Delaney
• SiriusXM POTUS Channel Host Julie Mason
• Slate Politics and Foreign Affairs Editor Will Dobson

Source: billpressshow.com

Today’s Hot Topics

• The White House Correspondents Dinner took place on Saturday night. We were there, but how does the rest of the country view the shindig?
• Congress has acted to end furloughs for the FAA. What hypocrites. Shameful.
• John McCain and Lindsey Graham are sounding the war drums about Syria. Are we rushing into another war?

Guests

• USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page
• CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin
• Center for American Progress Senior Vice President for American Values & New Communities Daniella Leger
• Daily Beast Columnist Michael Tomasky 
• Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC)

Source: billpressshow.com

It was inspiring to see them side by side at Southern Methodist University in Dallas: Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. For their service to this country, we are indebted to each one of them.

It's just too bad they got together for such an inauspicious occasion: dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. I hate to be a party-pooper, but there are two things wrong with that. One, we don't need another presidential library. The landscape's already cluttered with 13 of them.

There's no George Washington Library. No John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, or James Madison Library. Yet, ever since FDR, we've bought into the rule that every president, good, bad, or blah, has to have his own egocentric, brick-and-mortar building - instead of building one new Smithsonian Presidential Library housing the papers of every former president.

Second thing wrong: for the next week or so, everybody's going to feel obliged to say nice things about President Bush. On his arrival in Texas, even President Obama, who repeatedly blasted "the failed policies of George W. Bush" and his "dumb" war in Iraq during his 2012 re-election campaign, praised him as someone "concerned about all people in America, not just those who voted Republican."� The Wall Street Journal trumpeted that Bush's approval rating is up since he left office. In the National Journal, Ron Fournier challenged all Americans: "Go Ahead, Admit It: 'George W. Bush is a Good Man.'

Well, I'll make a deal with Mr. Fournier: I'll admit that George Bush is a good man - if he'll admit that George Bush was a lousy president! I met President Bush a couple of times. He was always kind to me. He liked to joke around. He would have been fun to have a beer with, if only he'd have a beer. But that doesn't change the fact that his presidency was a disaster.

Yes, as WSJ reports, Bush's image has improved since 2008: from 31 percent favorable when he left office to 35 percent today. Hardly a cause for celebration. And the reason it's not higher is because Americans have not forgotten his record. It's too recent and too painful.

We've not forgotten that George Bush inherited a $236 billion surplus from Bill Clinton, but immediately squandered it with two rounds of tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans that put us back to deficit spending. We've not forgotten the ban on embryonic stem cell research. We've not forgotten the fact that George Bush launched two deficit-financed wars - a justified war in Afghanistan and an illegal war in Iraq, based on lies about weapons of mass destruction - which, together with the tax cuts, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, will account for almost half of the $20 trillion debt the nation will owe by 2019.

We've not forgotten the wave of illegal phone taps at home and illegal water-boarding abroad that followed September 11. Indeed, how could we forget? A two-year, nonpartisan review by the Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group, published this week concluded that "it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture" in the years immediately following September 11. Not only that, they also reported 'no firm or persuasive evidence'� that torture provided any information that could not have been obtained more readily by other, legal, methods.

We've not forgotten the slow and inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina, a direct result of Bush budget cuts to FEMA. Nor have we forgotten the crash of 2008, which brought this nation to the brink of financial disaster and resulted in the loss of 8 million jobs. In fact, we're still trying to recover from it.

Of course, George W. Bush also did some good things. He tried to soften the image of the Republican Party by steering it toward a policy of 'compassionate conservatism.'� He was the first to put forth a plan for comprehensive immigration reform, a plan almost identical to the one President Obama proposes today, and a plan Bush's fellow Republicans rejected to their own misfortune. And, unlike his former vice president, President Bush has set a model for former occupants of the Oval Office by staying on the sidelines and out of the headlines.

For this, we give him due credit. But that doesn't change the facts: George Bush is a nice man, but he was still a mediocre president.

Source: billpressshow.com

Today’s Hot Topics

• The Congress is making an exemption for how the sequester impacts the air traffic controllers. That sets a dangerous precedent.
• The George W. Bush Library is now open. Insert your joke here.
• Where do we go next in the case of the Boston Bombing?

Guests

• Boston Globe Reporter Bryan Bender
• Washington Post Early Lead Sports Blogger Cindy Boren
• Ploughshares Fund President Joe Cirincione
• Buzzfeed Political Reporter Kate Nocera
• National Council of La Raza Director of Immigration and National Campaigns Clarissa Martinez

Source: billpressshow.com

Today’s Hot Topics

• The sequester continues to hurt real Americans. Isn’t this what the GOP wanted?
• The media is rushing to rewrite history on George W. Bush. He might be a nice guy, but he was an AWFUL President.
• We continue to examine the Boston Marathon Bombing and what went wrong. Let’s talk about it!

Guests

• TIME Magazine Washington Bureau Chief Michael Duffy
• CQ Roll Call Congressional Reporter Meredith Shiner 
• USA Today White House Correspondent David Jackson
• Congressman Joe Courtney (D-CT)
• Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL)

Source: billpressshow.com

Today’s Hot Topics

• Some are using the Boston Bombings to politicize immigration.
• The AP Twitter account gets hacked and sends the markets into a temporary freefall.
• The furloughs continue to impact real Americans.

Guests

• Former Governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY)
• Wall Street Journal National Political Reporter Neil King
• NATCA Union Rep and Miami Air Traffic Controller Jim Marinitti
• Politico Reporter Ginger Gibson

Source: billpressshow.com

Today’s Hot Topics

• Furloughs for the FAA lead to longer wait times at the airport. You can blame the sequester!
• The Boston Marathon Bomber will NOT be tried as an enemy combatant. It’s the right thing to do!
• Was torture worth it? A new report says it wasn’t. Let’s talk about it.

Guests

• Think Progress Managing Editor Igor Volsky
• Constitution Project Task Force on Detainee Treatment Co-Chair Ambassador James Jones
• National Journal Chief Correspondent Michael Hirsh
• Roll Call Reporter, The Week Contributor Neda Semnani
• Retired MMA Champion Randy Couture 

Source: billpressshow.com

Let me begin this column with an apology. Once a week, I pick an important issue and offer my reasoned analysis, based on the facts, of what it all means and how we should react. But there are times when the intellect fails and the heart and gut take over. And this is one of them.

In the spring of 1968, I walked into the McCarthy for President office in San Francisco and signed up as a volunteer. That was my first taste of politics and I've been involved in politics ever since, both as practitioner and observer. I've managed local, statewide and national campaigns, raised money for candidates, served as Democratic state chair of California and run for statewide office. I've made my living as a political commentator on radio and television in Los Angeles, San Francisco and nationwide.

Throughout those years, I've experienced a lot of joy, but also a lot of disappointment. Candidates I supported lost their elections. Politicians I helped elect soon forgot who their friends were. Causes I passionately believed in failed in the legislature or on the ballot. Yet, through it all, I never lost my faith in the political system. I always knew, and preached, that things would eventually work out for the best. I remained a believer.

Until now. Until this week's shameful vote in the United States Senate on gun safety. I'm no longer a believer. I've lost my faith in our political system. I've given up on politics. And I've given up on Congress. Because if they can't get this right, they can't get anything right.

There is simply no excuse -- none! -- for voting against extending criminal background checks to cover all gun purchases. Indeed, the arguments made by opponents of the Manchin-Toomey compromise bill don't even pass the laugh test. How, for example, can anybody say he supports background checks at gun dealers, just not at gun shows? Really? In other words, it's not OK for criminals to buy guns at licensed dealers, but it is OK for them to buy guns at gun shows or over the Internet. Give me a break.

In the biggest lie of all, other senators insist that expanded background checks will lead to some Big Brother gun registry that will in turn lead to federal agents seizing everyone's guns. Baloney. Again, no such gun registry has been created to date, even though criminal background checks have been required of gun dealers since 1994. Not only that, both existing law and the Manchin-Toomey bill specifically prohibit storage and retrieval of personal data gathered in background checks. Manchin and Toomey make it a federal crime.

In the end, there are only three reasons why senators voted against common sense gun safety measures. One, they were born without a backbone. Two, they're owned lock, stock and barrel by the NRA. Three, they don't care. They don't care about the American people. They don't care about the victims of Columbine, Aurora or Virginia Tech. They don't care about Gabby Giffords. They don't care about 20 first-graders and six brave teachers from Sandy Hook Elementary School. They don't care about doing the right thing. They only care about saving their own political skin.

In the end, the vote on the compromise proposal to expand background checks was 54-46, six short of the 60 votes necessary to break the filibuster. Democrats share some of the blame. Four Democrats - Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Mark Pryor of Arkansas - voted no. But most of the blame lies with the Republican Party. Even though four of them -John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Mark Kirk of Illinois - broke ranks and voted yes, Republicans as a block voted against background checks. In fact, Buzzfeed reports, six Republicans - Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell, Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby, Mike Crapo and Chuck Grassley - who voted for universal background checks in 1999, when the NRA supported them, voted against background checks this week, now that the NRA opposes them.

As Wednesday's vote was announced, the cry of "Shame on you!"� resounded from the Senate gallery. It was the voice of Tucson hero Patricia Maisch, who grabbed a loaded magazine clip out of Jared Loughner's hands as he tried to reload. In that dramatic moment, she showed more sense and courage than the entire Senate. We might as well send them all home.

Source: billpressshow.com

Today’s Hot Topics

• We got the suspected Boston Marathon Bombers. One dead, one alive.
• How should the bombers be tried?
• We’ll talk about the media and how they handled the standoff in Boston.

Guests

• CNN Legal Analyst Avery Friedman
• Boston Globe Reporter Wesley Lowery
• Yahoo! News Reporter Chris Moody
• Politico Senior Media Reporter Dylan Byers