Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
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Is it just me, or are the Republicans just getting more and more brazen every day? They are out of power, say and do whatever they want, and they know no one in the media is going to call them on it. I’m actually shocked CNN has this story up:
An investigation into claims that faulty evidence led Texas to execute a man in 2004 was at a “crucial point” when the state’s governor replaced three of its members this week, one of the three said Thursday.
Gov. Rick Perry’s shake-up of the Texas Forensic Science Commission came two days before it was to hear from the author of a scathing report in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. That Friday session has been postponed indefinitely in the wake of Perry’s new appointments.
Willingham was put to death for killing his three daughters in a fire that arson investigators said had been deliberately set.
Yet death-penalty opponents say an impartial review of the case could lead to an unprecedented admission — that the state executed an innocent man.
Three reports, including one commissioned by the Forensic Science Commission, have concluded that arson was not the likely cause of the 1991 fire.
Perry’s office described the governor’s replacement of commission members as routine, saying the terms of Chairman Sam Bassett and commissioners Alan Levy and Aliece Watts had expired. But Levy said he told the governor’s office “that it would be disruptive to make the new appointments right now.”
“The commission was at a crucial point in the investigation,” he told CNN on Thursday.
Asked about the future of the Willingham investigation, he said, “I don’t know if it will ever be heard.”
I mean, if you are Rick Perry, why the hell not just do this? I mean, after all, the guy who was the HMFIC of the Tillman cover-up is now running the show in Afghanistan and playing political games in the media with the President, and no one seems to give a shit. So why not just do whatever you want? No one is going to make a stink about this except for some DFHer’s, and then the villagers can just point at them and wonder aloud if this will be a good time for Obama to have another Sister Souljah moment with the pinko commies.
And if they do even mention this, the very next thing out of the mouths of our media elites will be… Ricky Ray Rector.
Fred Thompson has gotten involved in the special election in NY-23:
With the NRCC posting stories that are more anti-Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava than anything, one has to wonder if there are Republicans who are quietly trying to sabotage Scozzafava and get behind Conservative Party candidate (and registered Republican) Doug Hoffman.
That theory might not be so far fetched.
The conservative Club For Growth endorsed Hoffman over Scozzafava today. You might remember that it was the Club For Growth that released a poll last week showing a very close race for Hoffman, Democratic candidate Bill Owens and Scozzafava.
Also on the conservative front, former Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson endorsed Hoffman as well.
Fred even throws in some teabag rhetoric in his endorsement:
“Doug is a conservative, who understands that our freedom is our greatest strength, that life is a precious gift, and that getting back to our founding principles will ensure our nation’s security and prosperity for us and for our children and grandchildren.”
And now a new Sienna poll shows teabagger Doug Hoffman polling at 16%.
If I were a Republican, a third-party teabagger screwing up what would otherwise be an easy win (Scozzafava is well-known in the district and her politics are close to dead center for upstate New York) would scare the hell out of me. But instead they’ve got Fred Thompson, and to some extent the NRCC itself, giving the bagger a hand.
Very strange, and possibly a harbinger of things to come.
Man bites dog Dog bites man isn’t news, as they say. But elite media pundit writes man was asking for it is news. The extradition of a single sex offender isn’t news, but the bizarre reaction to it is. Police arrest black man for no reason isn’t news (sadly), but media decides cops can arrest people in their own homes for talking back is.
Not to get all Bob Somerby on y’all, but I believe that the impeachment of Clinton — and the Village reaction to it — was the signature political/media event of my lifetime. The discussion surrounding the Polanski case reminds me of a weird photo negative of it — Clinton had to be impeached for a consensual relationship with an adult, Polanski should be pay no price for raping a thirteen year-old. There’s the placement of class before all else (Clinton was white trash, Polanski a high-class art director), the inability to stop talking about sex (read MoDo’s thong piece — correctly titled here — if you want to be a little sick), the strange fixation with extralegal remedies (compare “there’s a maddening frustration that the political system doesn’t have a set of penalties for this kind of activity” with “let me at him“). And even when the media condemns the craziness (via John’s earlier post), it denies its own role in creating it.
Things haven’t changed much since 1998.
This is actually starting to get funny:
“What I mean is they have got no plan,” Grayson told Wolf Blitzer. “It’s been 24 hours since I said that. Where is the Republican plan? We’re all waiting to see something that will take care of the pre-existing conditions, to take care of the 40 million Americans who have no coverage at all.
“That’s what I meant when I said that the Republican plan is don’t get sick. And if you do get sick, die quickly.”
***But Carville backed away from Grayson when the congressman said that Republicans he believes are obstructing health care reform are “foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.”
“I would call (them) regressive as opposed to Neanderthal,” Carville said.
Grayson also rejected comparisons between his comments and those of some Republicans, including former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, that the Democratic reform plan called for “death panels” to decide who would get life-saving treatments.
“I said to myself, ‘I wish Sarah Palin read the bill.’ That’s not what this bill says. That’s a scare tactic,” he said. “What I said is the god’s honest truth.”
Grayson said he decided to deliver his after-hours speech Tuesday after the Harvard study was released and he realized “we cannot go on any longer in this country where people cannot afford health care, where they coverage they got is good until they need it.”
Calling for universal health care, he slammed “whoever it is that’s causing the Republicans to fight tooth-and-nail against anything, absolutely anything, to have every vote come down to being 257 to 175 in the House, over and over and over again.”
“Those are the people who are really disserving Americans,” he said.
Grayson isn’t completely accurate. A lot of the Republicans think prayer is a health care plan, too. Personally, I think the holocaust remarks were over the top, but who will be the first villager to create a false equivalency between Grayson’s statements and some of the nonsense that oozes out of someone like Michelle Bachman’s mouth?
My money is on David Gregory. Although since he took over from Russert, no one even watches anymore. Well done, Stretch!
Lanny Davis is concerned:
I write columns and post blogs regularly, and I’ve made my share of factual mistakes.
So I do not sit in judgment of someone who goofed. But if you make a factual mistake, there are certain rules of the road that responsible writers and bloggers should follow: (1) immediately correct the error as soon as you find out — and in the same publication; (2) if it was also a personal attack in any way, which turned out to be based on a false statement, then personally apologize — no ifs, ands or buts; and (3) learn a lesson for next time — be more careful.
***Recently, one of the more well-known bloggers, Markos Moulitsas, founder of the liberal blog The Daily Kos, made a mistake in his Sept. 23 column in this newspaper, titled “Blue Dogs, beware,” and did so in the course of making a personal attack on the integrity of a Blue Dog Democrat, Rep. Jim Cooper (Tenn.). I met Mr. Cooper only once, just recently, but I have known of him for years as someone with an outstanding reputation for honesty, thoughtfulness and open-mindedness — even if some people, including myself, might disagree with him on certain issues.
I would like all of you to help me with a little project. Use the comments here to document every single lie, every bit of complete nonsense, and all the complete and utter falsehoods and bullshit that spewed out of the mouth of Lanny Davis from the start of the 2008 Democratic primary until now. Every single one, with a link to document it. Once we have compiled our dossier, we are going to do everything we can to demand that the Hill publish it. And then Lanny can spend the next six months apologizing, rather than whoring himself out to foreign interests.
If all Democrats were like Lanny Davis, I’d still be writing at Red State.