Friday’s Mini-Report

August 31, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* As of this minute, Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) has not yet resigned.

* A couple of hours ago, the Idaho Statesman reported, “Republican officials say Gov. Butch Otter will name Lt. Gov. Jim Risch to the Senate if Sen. Larry Craig resigns. But Otter’s spokesman Jon Hanian said the governor hasn’t made that decision yet. ‘The governor has made no promises or guarantees to anyone regarding a seat that at this hour is still occupied by Larry Craig,’ Hanian said. ‘We have not heard anything otherwise from their office.'”

* A county judge in Iowa yesterday struck down the state’s law banning same-sex marriage and ordered the county recorder to permit gay couples to marry. Less than two hours after word of the ruling reached the public, two Des Moines men applied for a marriage license, which was accepted and filed.

* By 11am, about 20 gay couples had applied for marriage licenses in Polk County, Iowa, but officials stopped accepting applications after the case was appealed to a state appellate court.

* Despite being the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) announced today that he will seek a 16th term next year. “I never seriously contemplated not running again,” he said in an interview.

* Keep an eye on this one: The White House will not identify a private company which appears to be involved in the disappearance of millions of White House e-mails. The company was responsible for reviewing and archiving White House e-mails, a White House official told congressional staff in May, according to a letter yesterday from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Congressional investigators asked then for the name of the company and ‘have repeatedly requested’ the information since then, according to Waxman.” The White House refuses to share the company’s name? Doesn’t that sound a little suspicious?

* Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona recently alleged that his office was politicized by the White House, a claim the Bush gang denied. Carmona’s claims were substantiated yesterday by emails Sen. Ted Kennedy released from White House staffers showing them hoping to use Carmona as a political tool.

* Joe Conason: “The GOP’s crowded closet: The party’s culture of concealment has led to embarrassment and personal destruction. Isn’t it about time for the right to cure its homophobia?”

* Bush yesterday on 9/11: “People murdered Americans to achieve a political objective. There’s a debate in our country whether that’s true or not. I believe it’s absolutely fundamentally true.” There’s a “debate” over this? Since when?

* Jamie Kirchick: “Whereas once the AFL-CIO had a large and effective international office, you’d be hard-pressed to hear, for instance, what they’re doing for Iraqi trade-unionists.” Brad Plumer: “But you’d only be ‘hard-pressed’ if you didn’t have access to Google.” How does Kirchick even get these writing gigs? And why does he keep accepting them, knowing he’s going to appear foolish?

* Senate 2008 Guru put together a list of all the recent Republican sex scandals. If it seems like there’s been about one a week for quite a while, that’s because there has been.

* The right seems to get quite a bit of pleasure out of lying about Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.).

* U.S. News: “The government’s legal arguments justifying the detention of hundreds of people at the Guantanamo Bay naval base have been repudiated three times by the U.S. Supreme Court. But it’s not just outsiders who take issue with the U.S. Justice Department strategy: Up to one fourth of the department’s own civil appellate staff has recently opted out of handling the government’s cases against detainee appeals, two sources familiar with the matter tell U.S. News.”

* I was going to mock Peggy Noonan’s latest column, but Steve M. already delivered a stinging and thorough rebuke. Nicely done, Steve.

* Please, make it stop: “Continuing a pattern of uncritically calling Sen. John McCain a ‘maverick’ and a ‘straight talker,’ CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews suggested that, because McCain has called on Sen. Larry Craig to resign, he is espousing ‘straight talk from the Straight Talk Express’ and ‘is very much the maverick’ — despite other Republicans having called for Craig’s resignation as well.”

* And finally, today is Karl Rove’s last day in the White House: “Rove was nearly overcome with emotion Friday as colleagues privately paid tribute to the political adviser as he leaves the White House, senior officials say…. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow told CNN that Rove was so touched by the tribute that he didn’t have any final words for his colleagues. ‘He was pretty choked up,’ Snow said.” Knowing that Rove is leaving the White House, I’m feeling a little emotional as well.

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

As of this minute,…

I, for one, appreciate your increasing use of dry humor, Mr. Carpetbagger. Seriously.

  • It would be so awesome if MZM (mitchell wade, et al) turn out to be in charge of WH email archival.

  • Re: Bush’s remarks

    Well, there’s a question of how culpable Bush is as our negligent Commander In Chief.

    Consider this: if someone in the military or something comparable kept sending subordinates on hopeless suicide missions without telling them that was what the mission was like, would that commander be committing murder? Then consider, how far removed from that have Bush’s actions been, especially if he ignored the pre-9/11 Tenet PDB memo warning of an impending attack by Osama on American soil. Some way to treat our first responders.

  • Perhaps the reason the WH is not giving Waxman the Company’s name who was in charge of archiving the WH emails is because there was no such company. The WH never thought it would come this far. There is no legitimate reason for withholding this information other than covering up for the WH’s corruption. I believe they will stall as long as they can before feeding Gonzales and Rove to the committee. After all they were the ones involved that can be used as scapegoats when it becomes necessary.

    Notice how all this attention to the Craig ordeal has just wiped the Gonzales resignation from the front pages. Perhaps it was orchestrated by Gonzales to take attention off him.

    Bush on 9/11. Bush has a reputation of saying things that just make absolutely no sense. Who writes this stuff for him? And why aren’t reporters calling him out on it?

    Jerry Lewis flaunts his corruption in our faces and states that until the day he goes to prison he will continue to run for office and those who profit from his corruption will continue to support him.. Hopefully they will get his dirty hands even further away from the appropriations committees…even the sub committees before he furthers this agenda.

    John McCain’s insane. Just listen to him speak for ten minutes and it is readily seen. Piss him off and see it right away. He shouldn’t even be allowed in Congress because he’s past it. He does little good for anyone anymore, his absence from the senate is not even missed. McCain has been hiding it for as long as he can but now it gets easier to see on a daily basis…McCain is insane.
    btw…the $50 billion Bush added to the funding request that Gates was unaware of needing (he should know…it’s his budget) is to cover the initial cost of attacking Iran.

    The Senate republicans do not have enough votes to continue funding the occupation or enough votes to fund attacking Iran. Thank God the Democrats were able to finally stop Bush before he started another war. Whew!!!

  • “In terms of — murder is murder, and murder to achieve political objectives is — needs to be stopped. People murdered Americans to achieve a political objective. There’s a debate in our country whether that’s true or not. I’ve made up my mind. I believe it’s absolutely fundamentally true, because I’m listening to what the enemy says, the enemy of freedom, what they’re saying. They say, we want a caliphate; we want to spread our vision.” -Coward-In-Chief

    I think that he is referring to the 9/11 Truth Movement in his incoherent rambling. I’d argue, however, that there’s not much of a debate, Dear Leader, since to question the official government account of 9/11 is to acquiesce to the ridicule of mainstream society.

    Nonetheless, most rational people agree that there is a singular Truth to perceivable reality.

  • Congress should make it known that if the data storage company does not come forward on it’s own within a short period of time, its management will be subject to obstructiion of justice charges when they are inevitably exposed.

  • Sorry guys, I for one will not join the Larry Craig political death watch. Next week will be a new week and I will wait with bated breath for the next unseemly Republican scandal to unfold, as they do now on such a regular basis. Surely the next scandal will be at least as entertaining as this one was. The only question is, who’s next?

  • Re: bjobotts @ #5
    Who writes this stuff for him?

    I believe that this was a case of primitive simian language improvisation.

  • Pity the poor tap dancers who need to use the toilet. Misunderstandings abound.

    If Craig is not gay then he must be bisexual. Does he approve of two bisexual men getting married?

    Thank the god who isn’t there that Rove is finally off the premises. He should be crying about all the damage he’s done.

    * Bush yesterday on 9/11: “People murdered Americans to achieve a political objective. There’s a debate in our country whether that’s true or not. I believe it’s absolutely fundamentally true.” There’s a “debate” over this? Since when?

    Maybe for the perpetrators is was merely a religious objective?

    Hey the new Yahoo Email beta lets you list a blog just like a mail folder. The good thing about it is you don’t have to click “more” to read a whole entry. The bad thing is that you can’t see the comments.

  • Okay this is a bizarre association, but Kurt Vonnegut told the story about an alien coming to Earth with the cure for cancer and the recipe for world peace. He landed on a golf course ready to share this knowledge. Unfortunately his people communicated via farts and tap dancing. So the golfers beat him to death.

    Perhaps Craig is an alien from the same planet?

  • The White House refuses to share the company’s name? Doesn’t that sound a little suspicious? — CB

    Beyond suspicious; truly bizarre. Unless, as bjobotts (@5) says, there had never been any such company and the records had never been kept in the first place.

    “Rove was nearly overcome […] ‘He was pretty choked up,’ Snow said.

    “Nearly” is not good enough, alas. I guess the collegues who “paid tribute” to him weren’t the same ones who shrink-wrapped his car in plastic?

  • Senate 2008 Guru put together a list of all the recent Republican sex scandals. If it seems like there’s been about one a week for quite a while, that’s because there has been.

    He should put the Article 3 Groupie thing up there- corporate lawyer blogger posing as a vivacious woman (actually a man) has a bunch of flirty male commenters- all become vehemently pissed when it turns out Article 3 Groupie is not a female.

    Has the domain-name gayrepublicansex.com been registered yet? Seems there’s some money/buzz to be made there somehow.

    Re: Vonnegut

    That’s a funny. oblique slight of the stupid bourgeosie/upper-class: “Talk nice to us or we won’t take advantage of your offer to solve al our problems!!”

  • There is one lesson we can take from the Larry Craig scenario- we have found the worst enemey of America, and it is ourself.

    What we really need to do is round up, hell, near everybody. And then there will be only the good people left, and they will fix everything right.

  • Where I and most Americans are from, the Heartland, we spend all day fixing greasy tractor engines, and we know. You people just want to let all the dark people come and overthrow America. All you liberals care about is your cheese and wine.

    It is all really about sinful women lusting for the dark man. Just as it was written in the story of Odelia and Jehosophat in Genesis 3:16: “Let you say, woe cometh unto the LORD, and His fallow fields will lie dry.” Get back, Jehosophat! Just as Odelia traded the Fruit of the Loom for the pleasures of the flesh, so have you. And just as Jehosophat traded his holy currency for Gold Bond, so have you. The Lord Hath tried to prevent bestiality, but he Hath failed.

  • What we really need to do is round up, hell, near everybody

    We need to round them up, and give them tickets to Chucky Cheese restaurants so they can go there with their kids.

  • I don’t know what Anti-Christ that you worship, Republican, but here are the words of my LORD:

    “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;” -Matthew 5:38-44

  • “In terms of — murder is murder, and murder to achieve political objectives is — needs to be stopped. People murdered Americans( I mean Iraqis, wait…, I think that was me who did that] to achieve a political objective. There’s a debate in our country whether that’s true or not. I’ve made up my mind. I believe it’s absolutely fundamentally true, because I’m listening to what the enemy says, the enemy of freedom [that is, the Bu$$h regime], what they’re saying. They say, we want a caliphate[i mean, a theologocal corprotocracy]; we want to spread our vision.” -Coward-In-Chief, 5 Deferment Dick(less) Cheney.

    IMPEACH the SOBs.

  • Bush on 911: “People murdered Americans to achieve a political objective.”

    Correct, the stated objective was to force the withdrawal of US forces from bases in Saudi Arabia.

    It worked.

  • Somebody should put together a top ten Wolf Blitzer brain fart video. There’s got to be an embarrassment of wealth there for material.

  • “It is all really about sinful women lusting for the dark man.” – Republican @ #18

    This is one of the reasons that I vote Democratic.

  • This must be a JKap name-stealer troll, not the real JKap. You people just hate being made fun of, huh? What’s the matter? Can’t you take a joke?

    A real liberal would be able to see that “Republican” was a satire in a heartbeat.

  • Somebody should put together a top ten Wolf Blitzer brain fart video. There’s got to be an embarrassment of wealth there for material.
    ****************
    just watch him on any given night.You will see the sedulous, puerile master as he strokes the corporate Gods who create the miasma that we all must edure and that stuffs his divagate billfold on a nightly basis. Yes, Bllitzer is a subserviant talking head who deserves the same fate as those who will inevitably go down with the fustian, squalid ‘leadership’ who now infest the country’s highest posts. Let us hope it is sooner rather than later. And more importantly, let us WORK to make it so.

  • JKap: Iam from red America and I know far more about the Bible than you ever will. Your son is a whore.

  • LOL!

    ======

    Larry Craig, the lewd and obnoxious senator from Idaho, reportedly will resign today at a news conference. Word is it will be held in a bathroom at the Boise Airport, and Craig will plop down on a toilet seat, spread his legs (because “I’m a fairly wide guy”) and make the announcement by using under-the-stall hand signals and Morse Code foot-tapping . . .

    http://www.nypost.com/seven/09012007/sports/hondo_taps_tigers.htm

  • Correction on 9/11 victims “murdered for political reasons” – if this whole thing was as it seems, these people were primarily murdered for religious fundamentalist reasons. And Republican (and to a much lesser extent, JKap) shows the nonsensical religious argument thing in full glory when they can’t even be civil about how they worship Apollo, uh, I mean Jesus.

  • Pingback: Buck Naked Politics

  • It should be pretty clear from the first comment, where Republican writes, “And then there will be only the good people left, and they will fix everything right,” that he is lampooning Republicans, and if not, comment 19 is a dead giveaway.

    JKap and Colonpowwow are acting strangely, arent they?

    • Comments are closed.