Batshit Crazy in 140 Characters

My favorite Colorado GOPosaurus, state Senator Dave Schultheis, (R) Focus on the Family, is wracked, WRACKED I tell you, with guilt over vacationing while the economic and moral structure of the country is ruined by evil Obamatrons. I know this because he took time away from his Minnesota junket to tweet his emotional conflict.

John Ensign, Mark Sanford, Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Scooter Libby, Mark Foley and Duke Cunningham nod in agreement.

Maybe a Smart Phone & Google Latitude?

Sanford Will Now Disclose Schedule -- Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

In the wake of reports that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) regularly shed his security detail, he "will begin making his schedule available to the public and the media... a marked departure from the way the office has operated the past 6 1/2 years," according to The State.

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Accidental Commentary

MyDD :: Cheney Speech: When Subliminal Messaging is Accurate

Say 'Goodnight', Ted

Reid Says Stevens Cannot Serve - Roll Call

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was forced into the middle of Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R-Alaska) re-election bid late Saturday night after a senior Senate Democrat endorsed Stevens and called on voters to disregard his seven-count felony conviction.

In a bluntly worded release from his office, Reid warned that Stevens would not only face an ethics investigation but also expulsion proceedings regardless of his efforts to appeal the convictions.

UPDATE: Here's a petition asking Senate leaders to remove Stevens.

Palin Continues to Not Answer Questions

Political Punch

September 07, 2008 9:41 AM

Rick Davis, campaign manager for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., just told Fox News Channel's Chris Wallace that McCain running mate Gov. Sarah Palin won't subject herself to any tough questions from reporters "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference."

Davis assailed the way the media had discussed Palin and her family in the last week and said the campaign would wait until a less hostile media environment.

So when will she subject herself to questions?

"When we think it's time and when she feels comfortable doing it," Davis said, praising a Fox News Channel profile of Palin that ran last night.

This strategy seems riskier as each day passes. Without Palin available to the press the McCain campaign is forfeiting a valuable means of controlling the election narrative. Only a visible, accessible VP candidate can guide the press coverage.

The longer she stays underground, the more afield the press reports will become. Is this a gamble McCain should accept?

No Prosecution in US Attorney Firings

Mukasey Won’t Pursue Charges in Hiring Inquiry - NYTimes.com

Attorney General Mukasey has decided violators of public trust and Civil Service law deserve no further attention:

As last month’s report from the inspector general acknowledged, the hiring abuses by former Justice Department officials represented a violation of federal Civil Service law, but not of criminal law, he said.

“That does not mean, as some people have suggested, that those officials who were found by the joint reports to have committed misconduct have suffered no consequences,” Mr. Mukasey said. “Far from it. The officials most directly implicated in the misconduct left the department to the accompaniment of substantial negative publicity.”

“Their misconduct has now been laid bare by the Justice Department for all to see,” he said, adding that “I doubt that anyone in this room would want to trade places with any of those people.”

I might have taken that a little more seriously if "the officials" had actually been named. But apart from Monica Goodling who else does Mukasey mean? Alberto Gonzales?

HD 62 Candidate Randy Jackson OK with Gay Bathroom Sex

The Pueblo Chieftain

Colorado recently enacted SB 200, a bill that adds sexual orientation to the state's anti-discrimination statute. No longer can the LGBT community be legally ousted from the same public opportunities enjoyed by everyone else.
Naturally, this resulted in a cosmic wedgie to that christofascist in Colorado Springs, James Dobson, who spent a chunk of his not-for-prophet dough on publicity criticizing the bill, claiming it legalizes men in the ladies room, and predicting little girls will be savaged by grown men of icky persuasion, who now have the legal right to enter the "public accommodation" mentioned in the law's text.
I don't worry overmuch about James Dobson. His day has passed, and the brand of vicious bigotry he espouses will die with him. But now comes Republican candidate Randy Jackson, an apparently well-meaning oaf that has seized on the lies in the evangelical Dobson's ads to attack his Democratic opponents.

SB200 basically implies labeling restrooms as gender specific is discriminatory; hence, any man can now enter the little girl’s room if he feels like a woman, or for any other perverse reason.

There's a problem, of course. Despite Jackson's apparently sincere objections, SB 200 has nothing to do with legalizing men in the ladies room. It seems this has always been legal in Colorado.

It’s not Senate Bill 200 that makes it legal for a woman to walk into a men’s bathroom or for a man to walk into a women’s bathroom. That’s always been legal in Colorado, according to Mesa County District Attorney Pete Hautzinger.

It’s what a person does once they’re in the bathroom that could lead to an arrest.

There are a couple of layers of irony to this issue. First, nobody has demonstrated any episode of little girls assaulted by icky perverts in public restrooms (I am discounting a dubious claim made by an un-named Focus on the Family staff). Dobson and Jackson seem up in arms over an event nobody can show happened.
The second layer, one that should tickle the funny bone of any rational person, is that even though Dobson, and by extension Jackson, worry that "even a homosexual. . . might walk in and relieve himself" in the presence of little girls, SB 200 does nothing to outlaw behavior of the gay kind.
Maybe these fundamentally manipulative guys should worry less about a transgendered person using the appropriate facility and more about who's in the next stall. You never know - it could be Larry Craig.

Sad Day

FOXNews.com - Tony Snow, Former White House Press Secretary and FOX News Anchor, Dies at 53

While I often thought he was an infuriating sock puppet for a corrupt administration, Tony Snow was also a smooth master of public discourse. He was the sort of person you'd love to debate, and that debate would always take unexpected turns along the way.

Best wishes to his family. I know I'll miss Tony on the tube.

It's the Little Things

Cheney Apologizes For Quip on W. Virginia - washingtonpost.com

Vice President Cheney apologized for saying yesterday that he has "Cheneys on both sides" of his family tree dating back to the 1600s, "And we don't even live in West Virginia."

. . . The remark drew swift denunciations from West Virginians of both parties, with Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R) calling it "disrespectful" and "certainly not funny," and Gov. Joe Manchin (D) saying, "I truly cannot believe that any vice president of the United States . . . would make such a derogatory statement about my state, or any state for that matter."

VP Cheney insults an entire state and gets called on it. Normal adults might have apologized, refused to apologize or told West Virginia to get a sense of humor. But not the man a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

Cheney quickly moved to defuse the matter, with spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride telling the Associated Press: "On reflection, he concluded that it was an inappropriate attempt at humor that he should not have made. The vice president apologizes to the people of West Virginia for the inappropriate remark."

Except the VP didn't apologize - he outsourced it. Doesn't do much to jack up the Sincerity Meter, does it?

Question of the Day

THE NEW REPUBLIC | Blogs

. . . you just have to wonder, how is it possible that a ten-thousand-dollar Spitzer transfer to a prostitution ring tripped up authorities while the NRCC's treasurer stole one million dollars and nobody noticed anything?

Ann Coulter Must be Smiling

Romney Endorses Former Rival McCain | The Trail | washingtonpost.com

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney gave a big, wet kiss on Valentine's Day to his former rival, Sen. John McCain, endorsing him in Boston and calling him "a true American hero."

With McCain standing next to him, Romney said he was urging his 280 delegates to support the Arizona senator at the Republican convention in September.

At CPAC, or at least in the same hotel, Ann Coulter made a speech critical of McCain, pursuing her "my girl, Hillary" theme. Along the way she canonized Mitt Romney as the "true conservative", echoing Laura Ingraham's effulgent introduction for Romney's CPAC address the day before.

I wonder how the girls are feeling on Valentine's night, knowing the "true conservative" heartthrob has betrayed them with his endorsement of McCain, the Republican so loathsome even Hilary would be a better choice.

I felt so bad for Ann, knowing she'd invested so much in "my girl, Hillary", that I nearly overlooked one of her best lines, supporting a McCain:Romney ticket, "I led one impeachment, I can lead another."

Yeah. I bet Ann Coulter's smiling tonight.

Quote of the Day

On This Week with George Stephanopoulos, disgraced former House Speaker Tom Delay gave an example of why electing exterminators from Texas raises the quality of political discourse, in a sort of Lil Abner way:

It is attitude and, and understanding that in order to put together a winning coalition, you’ve got to have a winning coalition. You can’t just have certain groups. What’s happening in the Republican party right now is they’re trying to find ourselves.

The Increasing Irrelevancy of the Radical Right, Part 3

The Republican Reformation - New York Times

The failure of conservative voters to fall in line behind Mr. Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, among others, reflects a deeper problem for the movement’s leadership. With their inflexibility, grudge-holding and eagerness to evict heretics rather than seek converts, too many of conservatism’s leaders sound like the custodians of a dwindling religious denomination or a politically correct English department at a fading liberal-arts college.

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McCain Uses Naughty Language, Says Romney

The Associated Press: Romney Offers Democrats McCain Playbook

"Choosing to ignore substance and relevant issues, the McCain way has always been to attack opponents in a personal manner," read a Jan. 5 e-mail from Romney press secretary Kevin Madden. "Defending his amnesty bill, Senator McCain lost his temper and screamed, 'Fk You!' at Texas Sen. John Cornyn."

Dick Cheney nods in sympathy.

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This Can't Be Good

New details emerge in NRCC scandal

. . . at a recent meeting, the now former [National Republican Congressional Committee] treasurer, Christopher J. Ward, relented, giving [Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas)] what was supposed to be an official internal audit from 2006. That document was a fake, the GOP members said. Even the letterhead on which it was sent was a forgery.

Revelations about the falsified document touched off an unfolding scandal that has rocked the NRCC and spurred a criminal investigation by the FBI into the committee’s accounting procedures.

During an election year it's not considered good strategy to do the other side's oppo research for them.

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The Increasing Irrelevance of the Radical Right, Part 2

Dobson Endorses Huckabee - Politics - CBN News

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson officially endorsed the Southern Baptist minister Mike Huckabee in his GOP presidential bid Thursday night.

The endorsement doesn't appear to be too late, either, especially with Mitt Romney dropping out of the picture earlier Thursday.

"Doesn't appear to be too late?" Is there anyone at CBN with a calculator? As the AP reported it after Super Tuesday:

Overall, McCain led with 707 delegates, to 294 for Romney and 195 for Huckabee. It takes 1,191 to win the nomination at this summer's convention in St. Paul, Minn.

I've thought for some time Dr. Dobson's influence had crested. By now backing a certain loser, he may have just squandered the last bit of political capital he had left.

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