Sanders Wants to End Corporate Tax Handouts, O’Reilly Makes Big Error, and More

Impaired Hearing:

The confirmation hearing of John Brennan—President Obama’s nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency—was repeatedly interrupted by protesters angry over the CIA’s use of drone strikes that have killed an unknown number of innocent civilians. The demonstrators were so disruptive that the proceedings had to be halted and the room cleared in an effort to block them from returning. When Brennan did speak without being interrupted, the counterterrorism chief defended the controversial drone program in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Said Brennan: “I believe there are people who believe we take strikes to punish terrorists for past transgressions. Nothing could be further from the truth. The people who are standing up here today, I think, have a misunderstanding of what we do as a government.” (Read more)

Ax Shelter: Sen. Bernie Sanders has introduced legislation that would end huge corporate tax handouts and close tax loopholes, potentially raising hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue over the next decade. The bill, called the Corporate Tax Fairness Act, would prevent corporations from sheltering their profits in places like the Cayman Islands while also ending the practice of “rewarding” companies that ship U.S. jobs overseas with tax breaks. The measure states: “Under this legislation, corporations would pay U.S. taxes on their offshore profits as they are earned. This legislation takes away the tax incentives for corporations to move jobs offshore or to shift profits offshore because the U.S. would tax their profits no matter where they are generated.” (Read more)

All Is Not Right With the Right: The Republican infighting between Karl Rove and some conservatives seems to have reached a boiling point. On Wednesday, a group that includes activists Mark Levin and Tony Perkins requested that the spokesman for American Crossroads (a Rove super PAC) be fired for calling right-wing commentator Brent Bozell a “hater” over his opposition to Crossroads offshoot the Conservative Victory Project. Jonathan Collegio had gone on Washington, D.C.’s WMAL and said Bozell “is a hater, and he also, like, has a long, sordid history, like, hating Karl Rove, too. So he has, like, a weird personal ax to grind.” (Read more)

Kill Bill: One Republican lawmaker in Iowa is on a crusade to redefine abortion—which, let’s remember, is very much a legal procedure in this country—as murder. State Rep. Rob Bacon said he introduced the legislation because he personally believes abortion is murder and that Iowa law should reflect that belief (never mind what other people think). Under the measure, the definition of a “person” in a murder case would be changed to “an individual human being, without regard to age of development, from the moment of conception, when a zygote is formed, until natural death.” As a result, a woman who induces an abortion with drugs or a doctor who performs an abortion could be charged with murder. The bill doesn’t include exceptions in instances of rape, incest or in the event that the mother’s life is in danger, undoubtedly again reflecting the beliefs of the lawmaker who introduced it. (Read more)

Fox Talk: Fresh on the heels of parting ways with Dick Morris and Sarah Palin, Fox News is reportedly in talks with former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown to provide commentary for the right-wing channel. The news comes nearly a week after the Republican said he was not going to run in the special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by John Kerry. (Read more)

Video of the Day: On “The O’Reilly Factor” on Wednesday night, Bill O’Reilly criticized NBC News for not covering the leaked Justice Department memo that outlined the Obama administration’s controversial drone program. The glaring error in his attack? NBC News was the one that broke the story to begin with. As Rick Perry might say here, oops!