• Chinese activist calls into 'emergency' House hearing
• Michele Bachmann endorses Romney for president
• Romney says Obama blocking offshore drilling
Good morning and welcome to your Thursday in politics, in easily digestible live blog format. Tom McCarthy here, and here's where things stand:
• Mitt Romney plans to go after President Obama on energy policy in a speech today in Virginia, where he will be flanked by Governor Bob McDonnell, whose name comes up in GOP veep discussions. The Romney camp has released a new video spot, "Broken Promises: Energy," as part of the offensive. More on the ad in a bit.
• President Obama's aides are "fretting" about a biography of the president about to be released, according to Politico. Not because they think revelations like the fact that the future president wrote seriously pretentious exegeses on T.S. Eliot in love letters are harmful. They just don't like losing control over the narrative of the president's life.
• The Republican National Committee is rolling out a new anti-Obama campaign that brands the president's legacy as "Hype and Blame" (get it? like Hope and Change?). You can get your bumper sticker here. (h/t: PMS)
• France saw a punchy presidential debate last night between incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Party challenger Francois Hollande. Sarkozy supporters looking for a chance to turn the polls around may have been disappointed. From an American perspective it was an occasion for envy: a zero-baloney policy smackdown, with the two candidates facing each other seated at a table, minimalist TV production and nearly three-hour running time. While we get American Idol graphics and a Jerry Springer audience. Kim Willsher's review is here.
• Yesterday Newt Gingrich dropped out of the race. Tomorrow Mitt Romney is meeting with Rick Santorum. The day after that Barack Obama holds his first re-election rallies. This race is morphing like a T-1000.
Newt Gingrich has yet to endorse presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney (cc: Rick Santorum). But today another erstwhile Romney opponent will cross over to the Mitt side: Michele Bachmann.
The Minnesota congresswoman will endorse Romney at an afternoon event in Portsmouth, Va., Maeve Reston reports in the LA Times.
The force of Bachmann's endorsement may be undercut by how long it took her to "decide" – and by her statement three months ago that she would endorse anyone the party picks.
"I'm on board with the team, put it that way. Whoever the nominee is, I'm with them," she told Bob Schieffer of CBS on Jan. 29.
Bachmann was still undecided in February: "I know there was a lot of speculation... people were putting out rumors that I was going to be endorsing," she told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "I am not. I'm not in negotiations to do an endorsement. So I want to make that absolutely clear, I have no plans to do that."
We're curious about the reasons for Bachmann's change of heart. We'll be listening this afternoon to hear her describe it.
Laugh lines with Tagg Romney.
(Tagg is Mitt Romney's eldest son. The NY Times reported this week that after the 2008 campaign, Tagg, 38 years old with no private equity experience, tapped political contacts to raise $244 million from private investors for a new hedge fund. "No one we went to as an investor said, 'Oh, your dad is Mitt Romney, I'm going to give you $10 million,'" Tagg Romney said. Because they gave more than that?)
hilarious. "@CarDealerEd: Haven't laughed so much at a twitpic in ages. My stomach hurts.twitpic.com/9gaj36"
— Tagg Romney (@tromney) May 3, 2012
What began as a diplomatic quandary in China for the Obama administration is turning into an episode that could tarnish the president's foreign policy record in an election year.
American officials originally characterized the turnover of blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng to Chinese officials this week as the result of diplomatic deal that would protect Chen while allowing him to stay in China. Chen had escaped house arrest and sought asylum at the US embassy in Beijing.
Now Chen says he was pressured to leave the US embassy and he would in fact like very much to leave China. The news hits as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opens a new round of two-way talks in Beijing. Clinton began the talks today with an appeal to respect for human rights. "All governments have to answer our citizens' aspirations for dignity and the rule of law and that no nation can or should deny those rights," she said.
The Guardian's Julian Borger captures a snapshot of the moment for Clinton and the Obama administration, and it ain't pretty:
From his bedside, Chen is now saying he wants to leave China on Clinton's plane, putting Obama's secretary of state in the full glare of a spotlight she had sought to avoid. She launched Thursday's talks with remarks that touched on human rights, but did not mention Chen by name. That evasion may not be tenable for too long. To shrug off Chen's plea for a seat on her official plane will cast her, and her boss in the Oval Office, as cold-hearted villains, sacrificing an injured blind man for the sake of geo-politics and grimacing handshakes with the Beijing elite.
Until the world sees a picture of a dead Osama bin Laden, the defining final image of the terrorist leader will be the one in which he sits alone in a room in his Abbottabad compound, remote control in hand, settled in for some telly.
The Al Qaeda crew were no casual viewers, it turns out. They were avid media critics, especially when it came to American news programming. In a letter to Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn said he thought Fox News "lacks neutrality"; he thought MSNBC, on the other hand, "may be good."
Al-Qaeda's views emerge in declassified documents released today by the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point. The documents are available for download here.
The Washington Post's David Ignatius originally reported on the documents in March. His report included the Gadahn statements about Fox News and MSNBC, but focused on Bin Laden's nascent plots to kill President Obama and Gen. David Petraeus.
Among the documents is a memo written to Bin Laden by Gadahn on Al-Qaeda media strategy in the run-up to the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Translations by the US Army:
In general, and no matter what material we send, I suggest that we should distribute it to more than one channel, so that there will be healthy competition between the channels in broadcasting the material, so that no other channel takes the lead. It should be sent for example to ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN and maybe PBS and VOA. As for Fox News, let her die in her anger.
Gadahn on MSNBC and the firing of Keith Olbermann:
I used to think that MSNBC channel may be good and neutral a bit, but is has lately fired two of the most famous journalists – Keith Olberman and Octavia Nasser the Lebanese.
Gadahn on the professionalism of the US media:
From the professional point of view, they are all on one level — except (Fox News) channel which falls into the abyss as you know, and lacks neutrality too.
(h/t: Business Insider)
Our Chris McGreal is digging more deeply into the documents. We'll have his report soon.
Bin Laden said it would be wrong to kill French hostages after Sarkozy's support for revolution in Libya bit.ly/JPMuVO
— Chris McGreal (@chrismcgreal) May 3, 2012
[CORRECTION: This post originally attributed to Bin Laden commentary on the media that actually was written by Al-Qaeda spokesman Gadahn. The post has been corrected.]
Washington officials and lawmakers are scrambling to find a favorable resolution to the case of Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng. See our earlier post describing Chen's plight.
My colleague Ewen MacAskill reports on activity on Capitol Hill: "The Republicans, with White House and Congressional elections looming in November, have been looking for foreign policy issues on which the Obama administration might be vulnerable," he writes.
Republican members of Congress have arranged an emergency meeting on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon with Chinese dissidents and human rights activists to discuss the case.
Republicans from the House Speaker John Boehner to Marco Rubio, a member of the Senate foreign affairs committee, united in calls demanding that the US help Chen.
Congressman Chris Smith, the Republican co-chair of a joint House-Senate panel on China, the Congressional Executive Commission on China, which is to hold a hearing Thursday afternoon, said: "The Obama administration must do everything it can to ensure that Chen Guangcheng, his family members and all those who have helped him are removed from harm's way and do not suffer any further abuse or retaliation for Chen's bold and courageous efforts to save his family and improve human rights for all in China."
Calling on secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who is in Beijing for talks with Chinese counterparts on trade and diplomacy, to visit Chen in hospital, Smith said Chen needs US help and the emergency hearing is to "underscore and manifest our profound support for Chen and his family.
He added: "Chen and his associates are at great risk if they stay in China. Even the hospital is a precarious place for this extraordinary human rights hero. The durable solution was, is and continues to be asylum."
The Guardian's Chris McGreal has been reading documents seized at Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound and released today by the US Army. His report follows.
Al-Qaida's leadership pondered changing its name in part to try and catch Barack Obama out when he says that the US war is not against Muslims but a terrorist organisation.
"Obama [says] that our war is not on Islam or the Muslim people, but rather our war is on the al-Qaida organisation. So if the word al-Qaida was derived from or had strong ties to the word 'Islam' or 'Muslims,' or if it had the name 'Islamic party' it would be difficult for Obama to say that," said a document whose authorship is not known.
The document suggested other names included the Monotheism and Defending Islam Group, the Restoration of the Caliphate Group and the Muslim Unity group.
Bin Laden called the Arab spring uprisings a "glorious event". "It is most probable, according to reality and history, that it will encompass the majority of the Islamic world with the will of Allah, and thanks to Allah things are strongly heading towards the exit of Muslims from being under the control of America, and the Americans worry about that, which is great" "These events are the most important events that the nation has witnessed for centuries".
But he is strongly critical of some of the Islamic organisations that moved to the forefront with the political changes, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt which he accuses of adopting "half solutions".
The American al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn in one document discusses the merits or otherwise of several US television news stations in considering an interview with Bin Laden to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, or the "Manhattan battle" as it is referred to.
Fox News is dismissed because it "falls into the abyss as you know, and lacks neutrality too". CNN's English service is thought to cooperate with the government more than others although its Arabic "version brings good and detailed reports". The merits and shortcomings of other major US broadcasters are considered before Gadahn concluded that maybe an interview isn't such a good idea after all.
"In conclusion, we can say that there is no single channel that we could rely on for our messages. I may ignore them, and even the channel that broadcast them, probably it would distort them somehow. This is accomplished by bringing analysts and experts that would interpret its meaning in the way they want it to be. Or they may ignore the message and conduct a smearing of the individuals, to the end of the list of what you know about their cunning methods," he wrote.
Gadahn also mentions sending "special media material" on the 9/11 anniversary to a number of newspaper journalists around the world, including Robert Fisk of the Independent. The intent, he said, is to "show the fairness of our case to the whole world and the European peoples in particular".
Gadahn said that he was focussing on the Irish, partly in the hope that anger toward the Catholic church over child abuse might turn people toward Islam. "This was after I noticed the sympathy of the Irish people to the Palestinian issue, and the soft treatment by the Irish Judicial system of the Muslims accused of terrorism, and also not participating with its troops in Bush's Crusade wars," he wrote. "Also, what helped to prepare the message was the last economic crisis that affected Ireland a lot, thus forcing its youth to look for sources of living in the outside. The other matter is the increasing anger in Ireland towards the Catholic Church after exposing a number of sex scandals and others. The people there are moving towards secularism, after it was the most religious of atheist Europe, and why do not we face them with Islam?"
Gadahn was also concerned about al-Qaida in Iraq's attacks on mosques, markets and other soft targets. He particularly criticised a massacre at the Catholic church in Baghdad saying that such things "do not help to gain people's sympathy".
"This attack came days after the declaration by Catholics of the Middle East, of their disagreement with Israel in a way that made the Jews and their allies angry, the Catholics refusing to utilise the Bible to justify the occupation and seizing of Palestine. Also the Catholics were historically the prominent enemies of the Jews, amongst the other Christians. They were also the original enemies to the Evangelist Protestant who were the vanguard of the Crusades. Their public in general, these days, is more sympathetic and understanding of the Muslims, than other Protestant and Orthodox Christians."
With Mitt Romney about to open a campaign event in Portsmouth, Virginia, attacking the president's energy policies, let's take a closer look at Romney's argument. Here's the new Romney ad, "Broken Promises: Energy":
The ad argues that Obama made big promises in the 2008 campaign about energy investments and job creation, but none of those promises have been borne out. The ad focuses on Solyndra, the California manufacturer of solar technology that went bankrupt after receiving a half-billion-dollar subsidy from the government.
She doesn't have a last name, she doesn't have a hometown – in fact she doesn't actually exist, but a woman named Julia is making a splash in the presidential campaign.
"Julia" is a character the Obama camp is using to depict how women fare better under the president's policies than they would under policies supported by Mitt Romney. The story of Julia unfolds in 12 stages in a sort of online comic book on the Obama site.
Republicans have called the "Julia" story patronizing. The Guardian's Ana Marie Cox says the joke's on them:
The invention of "Julia", on first glance, seems like a low point in a campaign season that's already seen debates flare up over so many imaginary issues you'd think there was a shortage of real ones....
On Twitter, Julia's life events have taken on life of their own, with conservatives offering up her struggles with rationed care, finding a job, gas prices and, more seriously, the fact that in #Julia's reality, Obama gets to be president for 67 years....
As silly as it is, even baiting the Republicans into mocking the Julia feint is a form of engaging them on the gender issue. Whether or not you believe Romney's policies are bad for women is an ideological issue, but the Obama campaign can point to the real consequences those policies have. The character is imaginary; the policies aren't.
This might be the first time political opponents are attacking a person who only exists in online, explanatory form #Julia
— Ethan Klapper (@ethanklapper) May 3, 2012
A Mitt Romney campaign event is under way in Portsmouth, Virginia. In attendance are Gov. Bob McDonnell and Rep. Michele Bachmann. Bachmann is there to endorse Romney.
McDonnell's role is slightly more ambiguous. He's playing host in his home state – but is he also auditioning for the bottom half of the GOP White House ticket?
McDonnell is a GOP star. He's a former army officer, state attorney general and current head of the Republican Governor's Association. He won his 2009 election in a landslide. He's pro-oil drilling, pro-life and pro-guns. He's a handsome chap.
ABC News tried to pin down Romney adviser Ed Gillespie on the question of a possible veep nod for McDonnell. Gillespie was chairman of McDonnell's 2009 gubernatorial campaign. Today he demurred.
Gillespie, before ducking from press, saying re: McDonnell/veepstakes: "The VP process is an ongoing one and I'm not deeply involved in it"
— Emily Friedman (@EmilyABC) May 3, 2012
Now Rep. Michele Bachmann is speaking at the Romney event in Virginia.
"We must elect Mitt Romney," she says.
Now she's talking about Doha, Qatar. She said the streets of Doha are "lined in gold." She describes the skyscrapers. She attributes the city's riches to its energy policy. She says the United States could be just like Doha if America adopted Mitt Romney's energy policy.
Bachmann introduces McDonnell.
McDonnell thanks Bachmann for her endorsement of Mitt Romney. A live video stream is here.
McDonnell says President Obama "has not always taken care of veterans." He says "President Mitt Romney" will do better.
McDonnell says the Obama presidency of one of broken promises. He mentions unemployment of 8.2%. "That may be the best Barack Obama can do, but that's not the best America can do."
Gov. Bob McDonnell says Romney's energy policy would mean an "explosion in our ports and in our shipping industry."
"Right now we have a surplus in Washington. That's right. A surplus of rhetoric and a deficit of results."
McDonnell introduces Romney. Let's listen to how he makes the case against Obama's energy policies.
Romney says the Obama administration has cut back on public licenses for oil drillers by 50 percent. He said the president is blocking offshore drilling.
"The Dept of the Interior says they're studying it," Romney says. "Studying it!? It didn't take them long to get the half billion dollars out the door to Solyndra did it?"
Now Romney addresses the Chen Guangcheng incident. It's the first time the candidate himself has spoken about the incident and he lays blame at Obama's door. He accuses the administration of nothing short of turning its back on freedom.
"Aren't we proud of the fact that people seeking freedom come to our embassy to find it," he says. Romney cites reports that the administration "probably sped up the process of [Chen] leaving the embassy. ... Our embassy failed to put in place the kind of verifiable protections" for Chen and his family.
"If these reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom."
Romney has criticized the president for scheduling a withdrawal from Afghanistan. He has said the president should accelerate a timetable for a military strike on Iran. Now he argues that the US should stake its China relations on the fate of a defector. Hawkish stances, all three.
Romney's digs against Obama for preventing oil drilling off the shore of Virginia and elsewhere are getting big audience applause. But are they accurate?
In March 2010 Obama proposed that an unprecedented swath of American waters be opened to drilling. As Romney said, two years later the Dept. of the Interior is still studying the proposal. The NY Times reported:
The proposal — a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations — would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, domestic crude oil production has increased under President Obama after years of decline. Between 2006 and 2008, production fell from 1.9M barrels a year to 1.8M. By 2011 the number had risen to 2.1M – the first time the figure has increased since 1990.
Romney wraps up. He didn't end up using his line about the Obama campaign slogan "forward": "Forward where? Over a cliff?!"
But he won generous applause anyway in a state with a crucial role to play in 2012. The speech closes with the execrable Kid Rock song "Born Free."
McDonnell's gone too. No hint as to whether we might have just seen running mates up there together. As a pair Romney and McDonnell would come across as upright (to the point of stiff); white; and aggressively groomed.
Words of wisdom we will never hear.
Rep. Michele Bachmann is being aggressively ushered away from the press and refusing to do interviews after her appearance with Romney.
— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) May 3, 2012
Let's take a quick trip out to Wisconsin, scene of an epic showdown between workers and a governor who signed a law curtailing the collective bargaining rights of unions.
Union activists and their allies have successfully campaigned to set up an election to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who signed the 2011 law. The recall election is June 5. A Democratic primary will be held Tuesday.
A victory for labor in the election could check the national advance of "right to work laws," which end requirements that employees join unions. In his Virginia speech today Mitt Romney called for the expansion of "right to work" laws. Wisconsin does not yet have such a law.
Walker has become a conservative hero for his willingness to take on public unions in the name of budget repair. The Guardian's Harry Enten checks up on the latest Wisconsin polls and sees a ray of hope for Walker:
Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker is in the "fight of his life" trying to fend of a recall challenge. The latest Marquette poll finds him leading by a single percentage point, while the most recent Public Policy Polling survey has him ahead by 5 points over his likely Democratic opponent Tom Barrett.
A Walker victory would be a major blow to state Democrats and labor unions who were stirred into action and organised a successful recall campaign by his signing of anti-collective bargaining legislation in 2011. Yet, while it is still very possible Walker may be defeated, his odds of survival have always been better than some might have wished to believe.
Tax Me, for F@%&'s Sake!
That's the title of Stephen King's screed of earlier this week advocating higher taxes on rich folk. The horror master's unfailing way with words has won the piece a wide audience. Not everyone will sit and listen to Grover Norquist. But who won't read this?:
Tough s*** for you guys, because I'm not tired of talking about it. I've known rich people, and why not, since I'm one of them? The majority would rather douse their d***s with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing "Disco Inferno" than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar.
King makes a direct appeal to Mitt Romney:
I don't want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share. That our civics classes never taught us that being American means that—sorry, kiddies—you're on your own. That those who have received much must be obligated to pay—not to give, not to "cut a check and shut up," in Governor Christie's words, but to pay—in the same proportion. That's called stepping up and not whining about it. That's called patriotism, a word the Tea Partiers love to throw around as long as it doesn't cost their beloved rich folks any money.
Perhaps you think King is wrong, and America ought to return to the Golden Days of Reagan, when the federal government tax monster wasn't all over everyone's back. In that case you should be informed that taxes now are much lower than they were in Reagan's day. In fact the top marginal tax rate in 2012, 35 percent, is well below the 50 percent that top earners paid for most of the 1980s.
The first secret that ever came between them.
Bill Clinton says Hillary kept him in the dark about OBL raid: "I didn't know about it until they told me... She never said a word."
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) May 3, 2012
Newt Gingrich is endorsing Mitt Romney on CNN. We haven't heard him use the word "endorse." He said: "I will do whatever I can to help defeat Barack Obama."
Newt to Wolf, maybe not helping so much: "Romney's running the campaign Romney can run."
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) May 3, 2012
Wolf Blitzer asked Gingrich the veep question. Gingrich mentions Marco Rubio, Condoleezza Rice, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels.
Newt continues, on Romney: "The governor said things that aren't true." Best surrogate ever?
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) May 3, 2012
We thought that Gingrich had announced that he was going to call a separate news conference to announce this? Why is he letting such a historic moment unfold where some Americans might miss it?
Or maybe he has another, fuller, official-er "endorsement-endorsement" of Romney in mind for later.
Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng called into an "emergency" House session on human rights abuses in China this afternoon. Speaking over a phone a translator held to a microphone, Chen repeated his desire to leave the country.
Eric Randall of theAtlanticWire:
He spoke to the hearing via an iPhone that a translator held up to a microphone, telling congressmen, as he's said in cell phone interviews with news outlets, that he'd like to leave China and fears for his family, but the moment was fascinating not so much for what he said but the fact that he could say it at all. ... Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal grabbed the screenshot posted below
With that we're going to wrap up today's live blog coverage of politics. Here's a summary of the day's developments:
• Mitt Romney attacked the Obama administration for its handling of the case of Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng. "It's a dark day for freedom," Romney said.
• Chen himself called in to a House hearing on human rights abuses in China. The blind lawyer reiterated his desire to leave the country.
• Newt Gingrich threw his support behind Mitt Romney, somewhat grudgingly. Rep. Michele Bachmann appeared at a Virginia rally and endorsed Romney enthusiastically.
• Romney was joined at that Virginia rally by Gov. Bob McDonnell. Romney criticized the president's energy policies, saying offshore drilling isn't moving ahead quickly enough. The president has opened an unprecedented swath of offshore territory to potential drilling.
• A trove of internal Al-Qaeda documents was released online. Osama bin Laden was a micromanager of potential Qaeda projects and he wanted to rename the terrorist organization, the documents revealed.