Part of the Republican attempt to sabotage our nation, so they can blame Democrats for the chaos as a path to power has involved unprecedented obstruction of Obama’s nominees. Once in a while, they actually come up with a justification for blocking a nominee, invariably a lie. This time, their lie has been exposed for the garbage it is.

In 1979, a 25-year-old economics student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology named Ben S. Bernanke turned in his doctoral dissertation. In his acknowledgments, he thanked a faculty member, Peter A. Diamond, as one of four professors who “gave generously of their time, reading and discussing my work.” In April, President Obama nominated Mr. Diamond to the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, where his former student, Mr. Bernanke, has been chairman since 2006. But under an arcane procedural rule, the Senate sent Mr. Diamond’s nomination back to the White House on Thursday night before starting its summer recess. A leading Republican senator, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, said that Mr. Diamond did not have sufficiently broad macroeconomic experience to help run the central bank… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

Not only was Diamond the teacher of the current Fed Chair, but also, yesterday Peter Diamond won the Nobel Prize for economics. Rachel Maddow covered it in more detail.