Photograph by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

Former Vice President Dick Cheney speaks at the Long Island Association fall luncheon at the Crest Hollow Country Club on Oct. 18, 2012 in Woodbury, New York.

Further proof that the rifts in Washington are not all partisan:

A Republican congressman unhappy with some of the wars the U.S. has waged suggests that former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the champions of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, will be joining the late President Lyndon Johnson, prosecutor of the Vietnam war, in Hell.

“Congress will not hold anyone to blame,”  Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina said at a weekend conference in his home state, according to the Huffington Post. “Lyndon Johnson’s probably rotting in Hell right now because of the Vietnam War, and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney.”

Jones, a libertarian, has been an outspoken critic of the Iraq war in recent years, the Hill notes. He was speaking at a meeting of the Young Americans for Liberty, an offshoot of former Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-Texas) presidential campaign.

Original post is Cheney Headed for Hell: Congressman by Political Capital.

Photograph by Craig Fry/The Yuma Sun via AP Images

Marine pilot Maj. Aric Liberman, second from left, poses for photos with, from left, Gen. James Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, and U.S. Sen John McCain on Nov. 20, 2012 after delivering a second F-35B Joint Strike Fighter at the conclusion of a re-designation ceremony for Marine Attack Fighter Squadron 121.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who left her state for an undisclosed destination on Dec. 2, is visiting Arizona soldiers in Afghanistan, according to a person familiar with the governor’s schedule.

The Republican governor’s absence was noticed yesterday when she didn’t attend the state’s official election canvass. Brewer’s office filed a routine notice with Secretary of State Ken Bennett that she would be out of the state until Dec. 8, leaving him as acting governor, according to Matt Roberts, a spokesman for the secretary.

“The governor is out of state on official business,” Matthew Benson, Brewer’s spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “That’s all I can disclose at this time.”

More than 9,000 Arizona Army and Air National Guard members have been ordered to active duty since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against New York City and the Pentagon outside of Washington, according to the Arizona guard Web-site. The person with knowledge of the governor’s schedule wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

The lack of information led news organizations, including ABC News and the Huffington Post, to speculate on the whereabouts of the 68-year-old governor, who came to national prominence for signing a 2010 immigration law that led to boycotts and a federal court battle.

The measure resulted in a high-profile fight with the Obama administration that ended before the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down much of the law. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit over Brewer’s decision this summer to deny driver’s licenses to young immigrants allowed to stay in the country under a new federal deferred action program.

The Arizona Republic reported that Brewer met with a wounded soldier at a hospital in Washington, D.C., yesterday.

Original post is Jan Brewer: Where in the World? by Political Capital.

In recent days, Norquist has wandered from The Nutcracker ballet to a crime scene investigation, to a Catholic schoolboy in the confessional, to a GOP lawmaker’s matrimonial vows — all in search of the right denunciatory images for the growing number of Republicans who say they’d consider raising taxes.

Those who would entertain a tax hikes have “sugar plum fairies dancing in their head,” Norquist, who is president of Americans for Tax Reform, told the Huffington Post Wednesday.

Backing a tax increase means Republicans would  “have their fingerprints on the murder weapon,” he said at a Politico breakfast on Wednesday.

Those talking about renouncing the anti-tax pledge are beset by “impure thoughts”, Norquist told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien on Monday.

In the same interview, Norquist said the idea that Democrats will agree to a fiscal-cliff forestalling package with enough entitlement cuts to offset a tax increase is like imagining “a pink unicorn.” He was talking about that unicorn on National Public Radio, too.

Also on Monday, Norquist took a swipe at Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, who said he’d consider repudiating the pledge he signed more than a decade ago because circumstances have changed.

“I hope his wife understands the commitments last a little longer than two years or something,” Norquist told CNN’s Piers Morgan.

Norquist is a “lowlife,” and his wife will “knock (Norquist’s) head off,” King subsequently fired back in Politico, proving, perhaps, that Norquist does not yet have the market on over-top-commentary cornered.

Norquist’s colorful defense of the pledge should not surprise anyone.

The vow itself is a yawner, but the animating statement underlying it is anything but.

“I don’t want to abolish government,” Norquist said on NPR in 2001. “I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

If enough Republicans stray from their vows and taxes are raised, it may be because lapsed pledgers agree with another recent much-publicized observation by Norquist, originally meant to apply to Mitt Romney.

They may decide, however, that it’s Norquist who is the “poopy head.”

Norquist’s facility with words does not extend to spelling them.

The ATR web page describing the pledge and how it has become mandatory for Republicans seeking office misspells “de rigueur” two different ways.

Original post is Norquist’s Brash Managerie: Pledge-Breakers Beware the `Sugar Plums’ by Political Capital.

Spirit Airline is offering “binders full of sales.”

Today come all sorts of discounts on its already discounted air fares — with a nod to Republican Mitt Romney’s debate remark about having “binders full of women” to consider for state appointments when he was governor of Massachusetts.

The Boston to Chicago fare could be of special interest to the Romney and Obama campaigns — check Web for fares, the airline suggests.

Bloomberg’s Julie Hirschfeld Davis notes that Romney’s appeal to women with his comments — offered in response to what he’d do about pay equity — “may have complicated his efforts to humanize himself for undecided voters, particularly women. President Barack Obama and his campaign team have seized on it to paint Romney as out of touch with women’s concerns and insufficiently committed to advocating for them.”

“Last night, the president talked about women as breadwinners,” said a message posted on Obama’s Twitter social media account today. “Romney talked about them as resumes in ‘binders.’”

As the Boston Globe also notes, those “binders full of women” which Romney said in debate with Obama last night that he sought after his own advisers offered few female nominees for appointments, “actually came from a coalition called Massachusetts Government Appointments Project, or MassGAP, that had formed in August 2002 to address the shortage of women in high-ranking government positions. They had started assembling groups of applicants, taking several months to reach out to women’s organizations around the state and preparing to present potential hires to whichever candidate won the election.”

“We contacted both candidates before the final election,”  Liz Levin, who was chairman of MassGAP until 2010, told the Globe. “This was an effort that we put our hearts in. We wanted to make sure that people knew how many good, qualified, terrific ladies there were.”

Staples, the office supplier that Romney’s Bain Capital launched, has a sale on Martha Stewart binders and accessories – coordinated dividers and zipper pouches for “stylish, functional organization.” This one does not appear debate-inspired.

And the folks at the Huffington Post have provided a quick “mash-up” of the debate:

Original post is `Binders Full of Sales’ (Women) — Marketing Meets Political Debate by Political Capital.

Photograph by Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Mitt Romney addresses the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles on September 17, 2012.

Updated at 9:55 pm EDT

There are reasons that campaign fundraisers are often closed-door events.

Evidence of one reason surfaced today with the revealed remarks of Republican Mitt Romney at a private fundraising dinner earlier this year.

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” Romney is shown saying with a backdrop of clinking silverware for a sound track in a secretly recorded video from a fundraiser that was obtained by Mother Jones magazine from an unidentified person. It also was posted online by the Huffington Post.

“All right — there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them,” Romney says, adding that they “believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, you name it.”

“They will vote for this president no matter what. The president starts off with 48, 49… he starts off with a huge number…. These are people who pay no income taxes — 47 percent of Americans pay no income taxes. Our message of lower taxes doesn’t connect,”  Romney tells his audience. “What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents, that are thoughtful and look at voting one way or the other…”

Romney’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Update: Gail Gitcho, the campaign’s communications director, later maintained that Romney wants to help “all Americans.” She said Romney “has made clear all year, he is concerned about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government, including the record number of people who are on food stamps, nearly one in six Americans in poverty and the 23 million Americans who are struggling to find work.”

The video drew quick criticism from President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

“It’s shocking that a candidate for president of the United States would go behind closed doors and declare to a group of wealthy donors that half the American people view themselves as ‘victims,’ entitled to handouts, and are unwilling to take ‘personal responsibility’ for their lives,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a statement. “It’s hard to serve as president for all Americans when you’ve disdainfully written off half the nation.”

At the dinner, Mother Jones’ David Korn notes, “Romney often stuck to familiar talking points. But there were moments when he went beyond the familiar campaign lines.”

Describing his family background, he quipped about his father, who was born while the family lived in Mexico, “Had he been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot of winning this.”

Contending that he is a self-made millionaire who earned his own fortune, Romney insisted, “I have inherited nothing.. There is a perception, ‘Oh, we were born with a silver spoon, he never had to earn anything and so forth.’ Frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you can have: which is to get born in America.”

This is the video, as reported by Mother Jones:

Original post is Romney’s 47 % Write-Off: Lost Vote by Political Capital.

He told musician will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas that he’s never been on stage with an artist “who’s been heard on Mars.”

Brokaw, the retired NBC News anchorman, shared the stage with the musician at a Huffington Post event on “What is Working” in inspiring job creation.

The event in Charlotte, site of the Democratic National Convention, was also sponsored by NBC News and Microsoft Corp.

If you think Brokaw was joking, you’re wrong.

Will.i.am partnered with NASA to become the first artist to have a song broadcast on Mars from the rover Curiosity. The musician did it all in the name of science — to inspire students to take up scientific pursuits. His students were able to hear the song at a NASA lab.

Original post is Brokaw: will.i.am on Mars, I’m Not by Political Capital.