Former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman will head a new Super PAC called the Congressional Leadership Fund that will be able to accept unlimited donations from corporations and other private interests.

The Congressional Leadership Fund plans to “counter efforts on the left including the House Majority PAC, unions and the ACORN style groups. This is an independent expenditure fund focused solely and exclusively on maintaining and expanding the Center Right Congressional majority,” according to its website.

Coleman currently heads the American Action Network (AAN), a conservative non-profit that spent at least $18 million for Republican candidates or positions in the last election cycle, according to Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW).

The group’s board includes other members of the American Action Network like former Minnesota U.S. Rep. Vin Weber and AAN President Brian Walsh Politico reports.  Last year, CREW asked the IRS to reconsider the American Action Network’s non-profit status due to its political activity.

The new organization is planning a fundraising event featuring Republican leaders from both houses of Congress on Nov. 2, according to CBS.

A ruling by the Federal Elections Commission this summer allows federal candidates to directly raise funds of up to $5,000 for Super PACs. Democratic congressional leaders have already adopted a Super PAC, the Majority PAC.

Due to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, Super PACs are unburdened can accept unlimited donations. The groups are increasingly influential in the political system, having already spent $2.5 million in this young election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Thomas omitted the earnings of his wife, Virginia Thomas, from his legally required disclosure forms six years in a row, according to the New York Times. Virginia Thomas drew a salary from the conservative Heritage Foundation of at least $686,000 during those years, according to research by Common Cause.

Clarence Thomas has said he misunderstood filing directions.

Democrats signed on to Thursday’s letter are skeptical of that excuse.

“Due to the simplicity of the disclosure requirements, along with Justice Thomas’s high level of legal training and experience, it is reasonable to infer that his failure to disclose his wife’s income for two decades was willful,” the letter explains.

The group also questioned Thomas’ use of a private yacht and airplane without disclosure.

“Particularly as questions surrounding the integrity and fairness of the Supreme Court continue to grow, it is vital that the Judicial Conference actively pursue any suspicious actions by Supreme Court Justices,” the letter read. “While we continue to advocate for the creation of binding ethical standards for the Supreme Court, it is important the Judicial Conference exercise its current powers to ensure that Supreme Court Justices are held accountable to the current law.”

The signatories asked the Judicial Conference—which is led by the U.S. Supreme Court chief justice and made up of the chief judge of each circuit and a district judge from each regional circuit—to refer the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice for civil or criminal action.

Rep. Michele Bachmann has added religious right attorney Jay Sekulow to her list of instructors at her Tea Party Caucus constitutional classes. Sekulow is the head of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a conservative religious law group televangelist Pat Robertson founded because he thought the American Civil Liberties Union was “hostile to traditional American values.” Sekulow joins Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and controversial history revisionist David Barton as an invitee of Bachmann to teach the courses.

Sekulow got his start by founding Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE) in 1990 to ensure the religious right has a voice in court cases involving the separation of church and state and abortion cases.

“I look for every opportunity God gives me in the courtroom to share the gospel,” he once said, adding that the religious right has a “cultural mandate” to change society in God’s image. “By whatever ethical means necessary, we need to engage in this struggle,” he said.

Sekulow’s work has come under some criticism from the legal community who see his legal empire as a way to support his “high-flying lifestyle.”

According to a 2005 profile in Legal Times, “Sekulow, through the ACLJ and a string of interconnected nonprofit and for-profit entities, has built a financial empire that generates millions of dollars a year and supports a lavish lifestyle — complete with multiple homes, chauffeur-driven cars, and a private jet that he once used to ferry Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.”

Bachmann was on Sekulow’s radio show on Thursday and invited him to teach her courses, according to People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch:

Bachmann: Our opening speaker was Justice Antonin Scalia. We had both Democrats and Republicans – we had four Democrat members of Congress. It was very civil, it was very open and we hope to invite all of the Supreme Court Justices to come and speak to us. But we also hope to have people like yourself, Jay – we’ve invited you to come and speak to members of Congress, to speak about the Constitution. The topic will be up to the speakers choice but the whole purpose and intent is to have members thinking about the Constitution and our limitations under the Constitution. That has not been a focus here in Congress in recent years. We intend to change that and this was a very good first meeting this week.

Sekulow: I look forward to participating [and] we appreciate you’re not only representing the people of your district, you’re representing all of use that share the concerns and the desire to see Constitutional Conservatism placed forward and Congresswoman, thanks for being with us and thanks for the bold stand you are taking in Washington.

Bachmann: Thank you. You’re wonderful and thank you for your ministry.

Kagan was a clerk for Marshall.

Franken laid out his argument by noting that numerous cases decided by the current Supreme Court would easily be construed as “activist” according to the Republican definition.

To Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., he said:

You said there are three things that judges hold to when they’re not activists. You said that they respect precedent. They make narrow decisions and they defer to the political branches, in other words the legislature. And there are a lot of recent cases that we’ve been talking about that instinctively strike me and a lot of other people as falling outside of these three guidelines. And I think that in these cases the Supreme Court was legislating from the bench, which is being activist.

But, Franken said, Brown v. Board of Education was not one of them. And that Thurgood was not an activist judge.

Here’s Franken’s full statement:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

The case, Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, is basically an appeal of two lower court rulings against Monsanto.

Monsanto wants the nation’s highest court to determine whether the lower court erred in three specific aspects of the National Environmental Policy Act when deciding the case. If the court sides with Monsanto, the threshold compelling government agencies to complete and publicly distribute environmental impact statements will be greatly reduced.

If the court sides with the respondents, government agencies will be put on notice that environmental law, as written, requires full public disclosure prior to deregulation of a product.

When the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the case, Justice Stephen Breyer recused himself due to the fact that his brother, Charles Breyer, was the judge who ruled in the originating decision. Advocates for maintaining, if not strengthening, environmental protection laws are quick to point to one other member of the court who should also consider stepping aside on the case: Justice Clarence Thomas.

Thomas, who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush and confirmed in 1991, has taken a share of criticism from such advocacy groups throughout his tenure on the court. Not only did Thomas work as an attorney for the Monsanto Co. in the late 1970s, he also penned the majority decision in a 2001 case that paved the way for companies like Monsanto to patent seeds. That same year he received the Francis Boyer Award established by chemical and pharmaceutical giant SmithKline Beecham, now known as GlaxoSmithKline.

Following release of the film “Food, Inc.,” which was highly critical of the nation’s “industrialized food system” and genetically-modified foods, Monsanto issued a statement specifically targeting the portion of the documentary that discussed Justice Clarence Thomas’ connection with their company.

“Clarence Thomas worked for Monsanto for a few years but has not been employed by Monsanto since the 1970s, long before the company was involved in biotechnology or owned a seed business,” reads the statement. “While Justice Thomas indeed wrote the majority opinion, this was a 6-2 decision. Justice Thomas was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Souter and Ginsberg — none of whom have or had any association with Monsanto. Justices Breyer and Stevens dissented, and Justice O’Connor did not participate in the decision.”

Since joining the court, Thomas has voted frequently with other conservatives, but has not been an automatic vote. In cases involving business, however, it is difficult to find a single instance where Thomas did not take a pro-business/deregulation stance. This is important because the heart of the Monsanto case before the court is whether or not court petitioners in cases involving environmental impact need to demonstrate a likelihood of irreparable harm in lieu of just a probability.

The court faced a similar question in 2008 during Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, and basically ruled that environmental impacts, if evident, were secondary to national security concerns. Thomas sided with the majority, agreeing that the U.S. military could continue to use sonar during training exercises off the California coast. Even without Thomas, however, the majority opinion would have prevailed — as is likely the outcome in Monsanto v. Geertson.

If the court expands its scope in the case beyond procedural questions related to environmental law and instead delves into specific areas of interest related to genetically-modified crops, there might be more calls for Thomas to step aside. Thomas no longer holds a financial interest in Monsanto, but his continuance as a party to the case is similar to the 1946 Jewell Ridge Coal case when Justice Hugo Black refused to recuse himself despite the fact that a former law partner argued for the prevailing side. Another justice in the case issued a statement following the case that Black’s decision was his own and that court did not endorse it.

In 1973 Justice William Rehnquist refused to recuse himself in Laird v. Tatum, a case challenging the validity of certain arrests, despite the fact that he had served as a White House lawyer who had supported the arrest program. And, in 2004, Justice Antonin Scalia also refused to recuse himself in a case involving then-Vice President Dick Cheney, despite the calls from many environmental groups that Scalia’s participation was improper.

The controversy over Thomas’ evident belief of conflict of interest also comes at a time when he is being publicly questioned for his wife’s continued political activities — most recently her embrace of the Tea Party movement.

FTN host Bob Schieffer asked, “There’s some interesting speculation that Sen. Amy Klobuchar might be on the list.”

“She’s a really impressive person,” said [CBS News Chief legal correspondent Jan] Crawford. “She’s got prosecutorial experience, and people are always clamoring for someone off the judicial monastery. This court’s got all former federal appeals court judges.

“But she is a Democrat from a state with a Republican governor [Tim Pawlenty], and so if you’re thinking politically about who you’re going to put on the court, and certainly Obama did last time with Sonia Sotomayor, [Klobuchar]‘s not the one you.”

Pawlenty could appoint a Republican to fill Klobuchar’s vacant Senate seat, said Crawford, and the White House wouldn’t want that.

Here’s the full video of the exchange:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Source: Wikipedia

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson has added Minnesota’s support to a lawsuit by the state of Michigan against the state of Illinois to force the closure of a canal connecting the Mississippi River to Lake Michigan. Unless the canal is closed, Asian carp will make their way into the Great Lakes and eventually Minnesota inland lakes, rivers and stream. The lawsuit will be heard by the U.S. States Supreme Court on Thursday.

“If they invade the Great Lakes, they will have access to the rivers and tributaries that feed into the Great Lakes, thereby threatening inland waters,” Swanson said in a brief to the high court. “This would be extremely destructive to Minnesota’s economy and way of life, where inland fishing is an important recreational and economic pursuit. Indeed, Minnesota is known as ‘The Land of 10,000 Lakes,’ and the recreational fishing in Minnesota alone is a $2.725 billion per year industry.”

The carp are invasive and reproduce rapidly, crowding out native fish. They also startle easily and have injured boaters when they jump out of the water.

Illinois constructed an electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to keep the fish out of Lake Michigan, but in November researchers found evidence of the fish above the barrier. That leaves only one lock and dam between the carp and the lake. Two weeks ago, Michigan filed suit to close that lock.

But business interests are fighting back. The Illinois Chamber of Commerce said that the closure of the canal will mean $500 million in expenses as grains, coal and petroleum have to be shipped on highways instead of the cheaper barges.

“There’s no monetary comparison to an ecosystem,” Swanson told the Christian Science Monitor. “They’re an American treasure. Once you contaminate them with Asian carp, that treasure is jeopardized and can’t be changed. You can’t pay Michigan or Ohio or Minnesota enough money to ruin the Great Lakes.”

Here’s a video of the carp jumping out of the water and onto boaters:

Photo: Chris Steller

Saying it protects the free market, U.S. Sen. Al Franken sounded optimistic in a speech today about the chances for preserving net neutrality by law. “For the first time, it looks like we might actually do this,” Franken told the Future of Music Coalition in Washington, D.C.

In his speech (pdf), Franken laid out the problem this way:

Right now, a blog loads just as quickly as a corporate webpage. … But recently, business executives from top ISPs have declared their interest in offering, quote, “prioritized” Internet service to companies who can pay for it. … That would transform the Internet from a free, open, and competitive playing field into a “pay-for-play” arena in which citizen bloggers, nonprofits, and small businesses are simply outgunned by major media conglomerates.

The stakes are high, Franken said:

As noisy and messy as it may be, the Internet is a democracy. And because of that, it is a critical part of our democracy. But, in the absence of strong legislation prohibiting ISPs from regulating content, that may not always be the case.

Net neutrality is especially important to people in rural areas who don’t have a choice of internet service providers, Franken said, and to people with unpopular ideas — ideas that are unpopular with their ISPs, anyway:

First, you may remember that in 2007, Verizon refused to allow the pro-choice group NARAL to send text messages to its supporters – even though they had signed up to receive them. Verizon’s explanation was that it had the right to block “controversial or unsavory” messages. Like, for example, that a woman should have control of her reproductive system. …

It is a twenty-first century reiteration of one of our most important constitutional rights – the right to free speech.

And it doesn’t interfere with the free market. It protects the free market.

Franken’s confidence arises from support he sees at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the White House, Congress, and even the U.S. Supreme Court, where he probed now-Justice Sonia Sotomayor on the issue during her confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He mentioned that today:

I asked her specifically about whether she thought that the American public has a compelling First Amendment interest in ensuring the Internet stays open and accessible. And if I could paraphrase her answer, it was “yes.”

Such is the life of a senator: only Sunday he shared a stage in Minneapolis with the president of Somalia, Sharif Sheik Ahmed, and today he’s on stage in the nation’s capital with the bassist of R.E.M., Mike Mills.

That was good for a few cracks from Franken about Mills’ little-known band: “I’ve had my eye on these guys, REM, and they’re going to take off — you just watch.”

But Franken made no mention of an R.E.M. song that Mills is said to have written, “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” The song was inspired by the 1986 attack on former CBS anchorman Dan Rather in which the question in the song’s title was hurled at Rather by his assailants — one of whom allegedly suffered from the belief that TV networks were trying to control him.

Kline gave the GOP response to President Obama’s weekly address, reaching a bit for Labor Day relevance by tying fears about health care reform to fears about job losses. (Gov. Pawlenty had his turn delivering the Republican message last April before another holiday — Tax Day.)

It’s a new role for Kline, a strong, silent type whose conservative credentials helped him leapfrog more senior Republicans in June to become the ranking member on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

Now he’s the GOP’s official point man attacking Democrats’ efforts to reform health care — though he’s outdone almost daily by his colleague in Minnesota’s Congressional delegation: Michele Bachmann.

She held a townhall on the topic; he won’t. But the man who once carried the suitcase containing the presidential Denny’s-style menu for nuclear war told a telephone townhall meeting that Senate Democrats passing health care reform by simple majority would be “the nuclear option, because it would cause the Senate to explode.”

The video of Kline’s Republican address is below. Here are the main themes:

Be very afraid

American families are worried … If you think that’s frightening, I’m sorry to say it could get even worse … No wonder Americans are scared … They also fear, and rightly so …

Au revoir, doc

What will happen to my coverage, and my choice of doctors? … the comfort of a familiar physician … Democrats’ plans may cost patients the right to see their family doctor …

Did I mention the re-set button?

It’s time to press the ‘reset’ button … It’s not too late to start over … honor American workers by hitting the ‘reset’ button on health care reform …