Drive-by post here, as I grapple with a deadline alas already in my rear view mirror, but I couldn’t resist offering up a taste of David Sirota’s latest for the commentariat’s mastication:
Federal law enforcement officials have launched a criminal investigation of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and members of his administration, pursuing allegations the governor and his staff broke the law when they quashed grand jury indictments against Christie supporters, International Business Times has learned.
Two criminal investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday interviewed the man who leveled those charges, Bennett Barlyn. He was fired from the Hunterdon County prosecutor’s office in August 2010, and subsequently brought a whistleblower lawsuit against the Christie administration, claiming he had been punished for objecting to the dismissal of the indictments of the governor’s supporters for a range of corrupt activities.
…The investigators are examining what state and federal laws may have been broken in the process. Barlyn said the investigators appeared to be at an exploratory stage, with no certainty that criminal charges would ultimately be filed.
Early days, obviously, and nothing yet (publicly) that links Christie himself to the events under scrutiny. Seems unlikely that this could be Bush Crime Family action either. I’d like to think the Bushies are at least smart enough not to get their mitts dirty when they don’t need to.*
So, I guess my take-away is that Christie-gigging has truly bipartisan appeal. Nobody likes the man.
IOW: Moah popcorn, please. (and my deepest sympathy to the citizens of New Jersey for being saddled with this sterling example of a public servant. Except maybe not that deep — y’all elected the guy yourselves, as I recall.)
*Christie in recent days has seemed to be his own circular firing squad. In such moments, it would seem to me to be the wisest course to let your rival keep enjoying the carnal knowledge of his own domesticated flightless fowl.
Images: Jacob Martham after an engraving by Hendrik Goltzius, Beached Whale, 1602.
Ferdinand Richardt, Still Life With Chickens and Fish, before 1895.
Roger Moore
And reelected him despite knowing what kind of governor he was. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, you don’t get fooled again.
jl
Just started reading. I already have one question.
” the commentariat’s mastication ”
Is ‘mastication’ a euphemism?
Southern Beale
Wow, Tom. Apropos of absolutely nothing but I actually have a copy of the Beached Whale etching. I used to have it in my kitchen. The giant penis freaked everyone out so I had to put it away. I think it’s in a closet now. It’s not Jacob Matham?
BGinCHI
Is it possible the third or fourth GOP Presidential debate will be held from inside a minimum security federal penitentiary?
Maybe Scooter Libby could moderate.
Southern Beale
Wow, Tom. Apropos of absolutely nothing but I actually have a copy of the Beached Whale engraving. I used to have it in my kitchen. It freaked everyone out so I had to put it away. I think it’s in a closet now. It’s not a Jacob Matham?
Iowa Old Lady
Last night, Chris Hayes said state governments were swamps of corruption. I can’t remember who he was talking about. It may even have been Christie and the “gifts” he’s taken. Sometime the truth is sad even when, as in this case, it’s satisfying.
SP
Yeah, thanks for the image of some colonial dude measuring the length of Christie’s dick.
Southern Beale
Can we start using the phrase “New Jersey-style politics” now, pretty please?
Tom Levenson
@jl: No.
Or, were we to tap our inner South Park,…
Tom Levenson
@Southern Beale: Just from the Wikimedia Commons site, I got the reference to the earlier engraving. Don’t know the history of the piece myself…Sorry. I’m jealous that you have one. Put it up over your dinner table, squeameries be damned!
Roger Moore
@Iowa Old Lady:
He’s probably correct, too. My general impression is that the lower level of government you look at, the worse the corruption is relative to the overall size of the government, but the less people realize how corrupt things are. I think that’s because the level of scrutiny increases with the level of the government. The scrutiny helps to prevent corruption but makes sure that any corruption that is found will be well publicized. Most local governments are absolute sewers of filth compared to the feds, but nobody knows about it because the local newspapers don’t have the resources to dig.
Amir Khalid
I’ve lost track. Just how many federales are investigating this guy, anyway?
BGinCHI
The genius of the GOP is to have yoked incompetence to corruption.
BGinCHI
@Amir Khalid: All the Federales say, they could’ve had him any day/
They only let him slip away, out of kindness I suppose…
Davis X. Machina
Scott Walker moves into the gap left by Christie — which leaves enough room for a Buick.
(Yeah, it’s a fat joke. My BMI is pushing 40, so I earned the right.)
Pogonip
That still life looks like Cole’s kitchen after Ginger got through with it, only with better lighting.
Mike in NC
Too bad Chris Christie didn’t follow up on his anti-vax comments in England by flying to Germany to demand the Berlin Wall be torn down.
Buddy H
The thing about beached whales… the gasses build up inside them, and then they explode.
Will it happen at a press conference?
What happened to his lady assistant (I can’t remember her name) with the pearls and the email? Did she ever turn?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@BGinCHI: I’m hoping these current federales have much less kindness than TVZ’s did.
trollhattan
@Iowa Old Lady: Once we’re through with him, I’m sure California will be happy to ship Shrimp Boy to Jersey. It doesn’t get much better than to have a character with that name in a statehouse scandal.
CONGRATULATIONS!
They are. Christie is a fucking amateur doing the bidding of others superior to him; he’s so fucking stupid he doesn’t even realize that. And good God he is bad at it. His greasy fat fingerprints are all over scandal after scandal, and one of these days he’s going to land in a cell for it…because he thinks he’s the mastermind, when in reality he’s just the errand boy. Bank on that.
jl
@Mike in NC:
Well, since you brought it up, thought I would repost this comment from a previous thread. Interesting the company Christie is keeping on vaccination. And while it appears that conspiracy enthusiast parents on both left and right are about equally likely to not vaccinate their kids, flying the anti-vax freak flag flying seems to be an exclusively rightwing thing among politicians and pundits. If this issue bubbles along long enough to hurt Christie, it will be thanks to the teabaggers he is courting in the primaries, not to people who would like to use it for attack ads in the general.
More evidence that bothsidesdoit on vaccination debate. Fox News legal analyst, BS revisionist and butt ignorant historian, and noted expert epidemiologist, immunologist, and public health and medical expert Andrew Napolitano slams the tyranny of compulsory vaccinations.
Fox Analyst Says Mandatory Vaccines Are Tyranny: ‘WHO OWNS YOUR BODY?’
‘ Napolitano went on to say that “the states, and not the federal government, are the guardians of public health,” and that under the Constitution (and the Declaration of Independence) people are free to reject “scientific orthodoxy.” ‘
‘ Napolitano went on to say that “the states, and not the federal government, are the guardians of public health,” and that under the Constitution (and the Declaration of Independence) people are free to reject “scientific orthodoxy.” ‘
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/andrew-napolitano-rand-paul-vaccines-tyranny
How ignorant and stupid do people have to be to believe this stuff, and same question for Napolitano for spouting it. Vaccinaiton laws are handled by the states now, and is there any federal legislation proposed for mandatory vaccinations.
And I am sure Napolitano knows what he is talking about wrt to Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Being a BS revisionist Civil War historian, he surely has read all the ringing denunciations of creeping public health tyranny written by Jefferson, Madison and John Adams as they watched several states pass mandatory vaccination laws in the first decades of the 1800s.
Actually, that is a trick statement, Napolitano HAS read all of them, because they do not exist..
How many crazed liberals have spouted anti-vaxxer BS? Maher, the comic and on some topics a total crank? Who else? Seriously, I would like to know if any other liberal pundits and journalists have said any dumb stuff on vaccinations.
trollhattan
@Mike in NC:
Knowing him he’d demand it be put back up. “Missus Merkel, rebuild this wall!”
Grumpy Code Monkey
@BGinCHI: So if Christie is Pancho, who’s Lefty?
Mike J
https://twitter.com/EJDionne
burnspbesq
It beggars belief that Christie, himself a former Federal prosecutor who made his bones on political-corruption cases, would allow himself to be in this position.
Well, on reflection, maybe not.
BGinCHI
@Grumpy Code Monkey: I’d tell you but I’d have to kill you.
GregB
Chris Christie is an errand boy for Blimpies.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Grumpy Code Monkey: that guy whose name we all knew six or seven months (or whenever) ago when MSNBC went all “Bridgegate”, all the time. The guy who went to high school with Bullyboy but was like totally a loser when our BB was the biggest man on campus, even dating Marcia Brady and shaking hands with JFK’s ghost.
jl
@Buddy H:
” The thing about beached whales… the gasses build up inside them, and then they explode. ”
I also think Christie will explode when he goes on national stage and gets some heat in public that he cannot dodge.
However, just the stench of slowly leaking fetid gas might doom him before that happens. Difficult for me to judge objectively, since I think he is crooked and a liar, but seems to me his is a very crude and transparent liar, and says things that will not pass the laugh test for most people. He is not good at plausible deniability, and gets nailed on lies. That happened several times in the bridge lane closure scandal. I think it will happen again and again over next two years.
Citizen_X
@jl:
Yeebus. I am headed down to Monticello straight away to hook up a dynamo to TJ’s body, because that’s going to be spinning for quite a while after that.
(That is where he’s buried, right?)
jl
@Mike J:
“I believe the starting point of faith is some doubt.”
Obama is a very pious man compared to Jefferson, who thought the starting point should be complete skepticism.
Iowa Old Lady
@jl: I cringed when he snapped at the reporter in London. “What part of no questions don’t you understand?” Great representative of the country, Chrissy.
catclub
@Citizen_X:
I would have guessed under the Jefferson Memorial. Was your question serious or ironic? Asking for a friend.
jl
@catclub: Jefferson is buried at or very near his Monticello home. In that plantation graveyard, but I forget exactly where that is. I’ve been there and saw the monument, but totally forget how close that is to the house.
Svensker
Yeah. The “liberal” choice was bankster scum and Democratic Party traitor Jon “my ego is bigger’n Christie’s butt” Corzine.
Svensker
@jl:
Quite close. Just down the hill a short stroll.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
Or are in on the corruption themselves, and have no desire to offend members of the publisher’s club or potential advertisers.
burnspbesq
@Svensker:
Who, with the benefit of hindsight, would have been the far better choice.
And the Republican alternative to Christie would have been Scott Garrett, or someone even worse, so in a sense the people of my boyhood abode actually did not get the worst-case scenario.
The worst Democrat is ALWAYS better than the best Republican.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq: Given that he was a willing enthusiastic minion of one of the most corrupt and incompetent administrations ever to inflict its willful stupidity and greed on the entire planet, not so surprising at all.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@jl: Let me introduce you to one of my favorite websites, the A-Z Encyclopedia of American Loons.
The left has been at this a LOT longer than the right. Thankfully, the right has determined to turn this into yet another crazed litmus test for politicians. The left anti-vaxxers have, until recently, had the good sense to keep it quiet as they know that their sane neighbors with kids don’t take that kind of woo shit too well.
The Republicans, with their “fuck my neighbors and fellow citizens” attitude, are going to get loud and proud about it, and I’m glad, because eventually we’ll all be Mississippi and everybody’s going to get vaccinated whether they like it or not.
Yeah, Mississippi. The sanest state in the US about something! Seriously, good for them.
I’ll simply give you one example of a lefty well-known for opposing mandatory vaccination: Jerry Brown.
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq: Who, with the benefit of hindsight, would have been the far better choice.
Is that pre-MF Global hindsight?
Citizen_X
@Iowa Old Lady: I hope he keeps that attitude up, because the Brit press will throw it right back at him. They don’t do the whole kiss ass for access thing. Something about “free press” and politicians being “public servants” and all that.
jl
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
” I’ll simply give you one example of a lefty well-known for opposing mandatory vaccination: Jerry Brown. ”
Thanks, that is bad to know, but useful, since Jerry is my gub. I noticed that he said this morning that he will give the CA bill eliminating the personal belief exemption from immunizations ‘very careful consideration’. Knowing now what you said, I don’t like what I heard this morning. He should have said that he will sign that sucker asap as soon as he checks it for any goofs. I hope Brown signs it.
SRW1
@Mike in NC: Actually, Berlin also has an outbreak of measles. And with more than 300 cases one that is even worse than the one that started in Disneyland. Maybe they needed some advice from an internationally reputed health expert on how to quarantine patients.
feebog
@jl:
I don’t think you have to worry too much about Jerry Brown signing the bill eliminating “personal belief” exemptions. He may be an old hippie, but he is also a shrewd politician and he knows which way the wind is blowing on this issue.
trollhattan
@CONGRATULATIONS!: @jl:
This Jerry Brown?
Tree With Water
I understand very little about east coast politics, having spent my life a continent away. One thing that does strike me about it, however, is the institutionalized nature of its corruption at each level of government, extending back decades (and even centuries). Much as east coast crime syndicates have a pedigree their west coast colleagues lack, so too the depths of corruption back east appears a far more complicated variety than the kind we have out here.
Svensker
@burnspbesq:
Oh, I know. I voted for Corzine. But I had to hold my nose. And a buncha Dem friends either refused to vote or voted for Christie. The one benefit is that Christie’s governortude seems to have brought him enough scrutiny that it may have deep-sixed his national ambitions.
Tree With Water
@Svensker: No “may have” where the deep six of his rabid presidential ambition is concerned- it’s as good as encased in cement shoes off Atlantic City. Christie will never be POTUS, and those few who believe otherwise are delusional.
opiejeanne
@trollhattan: who is shrimp boy?
jl
@Tree With Water: I hate to admit it, but there may be some truth to that aspect of East Coast snobbery.
Yes, we do bad driving on the East Coast, but we do it will skill and dash.
Yest, we are corrupt on the East Coast, but at least we know how to do it, and at least it is a fine old tradition.
trollhattan
@opiejeanne:
Shrimp Boy is a big player in the scandal that brought down Leland Yee.
Origuy
I found an article about Jefferson’s experiments with smallpox vaccination.
Thomas Jefferson and Smallpox Vaccination (PDF)
David Koch
AHAHHHHAHAHAHHAHHAHA
Remember when Cole insisted Fatso would be a formidable candidate in 2016.
Good Times.
EthylEster
TL wrote: to let your rival keep enjoying the carnal knowledge of his own domesticated flightless fowl
IOW let him keep fucking that chicken?
SiubhanDuinne
@Buddy H:
Bridget Kelly. Only reason I remember is because her first name begins with Bridge, and after that it’s easy (if your people came from the Ould Sod).
The last I heard, which was months ago, she and her lawyers were working with the prosecution to work out some kind of plea deal. Not sure where that stands at the moment, nor whether she has been able to find another job.
retiredeng
@Iowa Old Lady:
Well, Massachusetts certainly has its share of money grabbing weasels in local and state government. Almost all Democrats.
Bill Arnold
@retiredeng:
Is the money grubbing weasel percentage higher among Democratic Mass politicians than among Republican Mass politicians?
low-tech cyclist
@Iowa Old Lady:
Could have been ex-Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife in Virginia, or (token Democrat) Gov. Kitzhaber and his fiancee in Oregon, or the indicted ex-Gov. Rick Perry in Texas, or the trail of corruption around either Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin or Gov. Christie in NJ, or the shitshow at the statehouse in Albany, NY – that’s 6 states out of 50 right there, and those are only the ones that have made the national news.
Who knows what else is going on below the radar in the other 44 state capitals.
He’s certainly got the girth for it.
sm*t cl*de
Cetacean autoerotic asphyxiation was something of a genre then.
Also.
Lymie
Let the fat jokes go. Unnecessary, lots of other juicy material and it makes you into a lazy school yard bully.