Tag: Scandals

Florida Wants to Know: Is Our Lt. Gov. Gay?

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Carroll
Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll

After a term with Gov. Charlie Crist, you’d think Floridians would be used to rumors of gay goings-on in the governor’s suite. But even normally unflappable Floridians are reeling at the news that Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll (R) might be…How did that one really rude web site put it? Oh yeah, a “carpet muncher.”

Carroll, 52, a former Navy veteran born in Trinidad and married mother of three, including Miami Dolphins player Nolan Carroll, is known as an ultra social conservative, pushing abstinence-only education, among other favorite rightwing initiatives. She’s also had to explain shifting income reporting (her net worth has varied depending on whether she was filling out tax returns or applying for low-income minority business set-asides), how she made speeding tickets in her former legislative district disappear without paying any fines, and how she rented an office whose location would have shown eligibility to bid for additional female-owned business set-asides, except it was already occupied by a private detective.

Report: ‘When she entered the office, she found the Lieutenant Governor and her Travel Aide, Beatriz Ramos, in what can only be described as a compromising position’

Carroll, like her boss, Gov. Rick Scott, also has a reputation for dealing harshly with perceived enemies. Scott, for example, recently tried unsuccessfully to have three judges that he considered liberal prosecuted for improper election filings because they had their paperwork notarized by a state worker, a practice so common no one realized it was verboten.

Carroll took it even further with a former aide, having her arrested for disclosing to the press a conversation recorded in the lieutenant governor’s office. The practice of taping visitors and colleagues was said to be routine under Carroll, but the aide, Carletha Cole, shared the recording with a newspaper. The tape confirmed the chaos and dysfunction alleged in Carroll’s office.

But the arrest and resulting investigation might have consequences Carroll never envisioned, like allegations of an affair with her female travel aide, Beatriz Ramos.

[…]

Breaking News: Democrats Set to Walk Out on Holder Contempt Vote

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Joy-Ann Reid is reporting that House Democrats, outgunned and outnumbered by House Republicans and Teabillies, will join the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in walking out on the contempt of Congress vote set to be held on our hero, Attorney General Eric Holder, on June 28.

Yes, with all the pressing issues before the country, which, if you listen to FOX News is about to collapse from same, House Speaker John Boehner found time to not only investigate Holder (but not his predecessor in the Bush administration who started the Fast and Furious program), but to stop everything and take a vote on whether the voluminous information Holder has supplied to date is sufficient. The problem is that what Holder has coughed up does not show criminal wrong doing on the part of the Obama administration. Boehner and his co-conspirators want more, even if the proof they need never existed.

The CBC:

Instead of focusing on job creation and other critical issues before this Congress, we have been asked to engage in a political stunt on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. Our constituents elected us to do real work, not to engage in meaningless partisan activity.

For those keeping track, Pres. Obama announcing he will not enforce deportation of the narrow group of children and young adults defined by the Dream Act, which failed to get a filibuster-proof majority in 2010, is election year prostitution. But stopping the work of the House of Representatives to focus on a partisan witch hunt that, if anything incriminates Republicans’ gun lobby pals, is time well spent. Yeah, no.

Fortune Magazine Shows What You Suspected: Weak, NRA-Written Gun Laws Are to Blame for Fast and Furious

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guns

Fortune magazine proves what everyone who doesn’t watch FOX News suspected: The congressional investigation into the Fast and Furious program is a partisan witch hunt, and much of the responsibility for the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry has to go to the gun lobby, which blocks maintaining a database of firearms.

A six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging gun walking is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies

Quite simply, there’s a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.

Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that [ATF Supervisor Dave] Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case…How Fast and Furious reached the headlines is a strange and unsettling saga, one that reveals a lot about politics and media today…

“Republican senators are whipping up the country into a psychotic frenzy with these reports that are patently false,” says Linda Wallace, a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigation unit who was assigned to the Fast and Furious team (and recently retired from the IRS). A self-described gun-rights supporter, Wallace has not been criticized by Issa’s committee.

…Irony abounds when it comes to the Fast and Furious scandal. But the ultimate irony is this: Republicans who support the National Rifle Association and its attempts to weaken gun laws are lambasting ATF agents for not seizing enough weapons—ones that, in this case, prosecutors deemed to be legal.

Take a few minutes and read the whole piece.

Ties Between Ron Paul and White Supremacists Exposed

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PaulWhiteSupremacists
From left, Paul at the 2007 Values Voters debate with Don Black, of the neo-Nazi web site Stormfront, and his son, Derek Black

We’ve all wondered about the zealotry of Ron Paul followers and dismissed it as the idealistic naivete of his frequently young apostles. They call into radio shows and protest that their man isn’t being respected. They wave signs from freeway overpasses. They post on Facebook that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Paul still has a path to the White House. And they whisper to each other about a third party run.

But what if there is more to this devotion? What if, like the racist statements in Paul’s newsletters that appeared regularly and for years, it is exactly what it looks like?

Anonymous, the internet hacking group, is exposing close ties between Ron Paul’s campaign and neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

Members of the nationalist American Third Position Party (A3P), whose website was defaced by Anonymous, organised Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s meetings and campaigns, according emails hacked by the collective…

“According to these messages, Ron Paul has regularly met with many A3P members, even engaging in conference calls with their board of directors,” read a statement from Anonymous.

Paul is apparently unconcerned about these supporters’ views.

[…]

Toward Understanding Callista

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O.K., we’ve all seen this one on Facebook, although I think it does a disservice to Dwight:

NewtDwight

But what can we discover about Callista Gingrich from this?

callistacat

Here’s my theory. Remember when Newt told Mrs. Gingrich II that Callista didn’t care who he sleeps with? I think if Mrs. G III were to loosen up that helmet and let some oxygen get to her head, she might encourage Newt to satisfy his lusty urges with other women even more emphatically.

The White House Just Can’t Keep a Secret

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If we wanted this event to be a secret, we probably wouldn’t have invited the press corps to cover it, release photos of it to Flickr or post a video from it on the White House website.

The White House, quoted by Politico, reacting to assertions made in a new book called “The Obamas.” The book claims the president and first lady threw an Alice in Wonderland themed Halloween party on the down-low, hoping to avoid Marie Antoinette comparisons during the recession.

Republicans Don’t Care About Sexual Harassment

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54%

Proportion of Republican voters who said they were unconcerned that Herman Cain settled two sexual harassment claims while he was a lobbyist with the National Restaurant Association, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. The poll was taken in between the third and fourth women coming forward with similar experiences of Cain.

Cain Joins Every Guilty A**hole Before Him in Blaming Others for His Woes

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cainstupidFrom a CNN story titled, “Cain Denies Harassment Charges:”

“Since Washington establishment critics haven’t had much luck in attacking Mr. Cain’s ideas to fix a bad economy and create jobs, they are trying to attack him in any way they can,” J.D. Gordon, Cain’s campaign vice president, said Sunday.

Yeah, because that 9-9-9 thing is bulletproof.

What truly mystifies me is how someone could, say, be having an affair with their campaign videographer or have settled monetarily with women so they won’t tell the details of sexual harassment claims, and still think it’s a good idea to run for president. And when they begin to go down in flames, they always blame whoever let the cat out of the bag instead of…someone much closer to the issue.

Update: It’s all coming back to him, sort of. Cain is starting to remember more about the cases, which took place when he was a lobbyist for the National Restaurant Association.

Different Animals: Why Female Officials Don’t Cheat

Trish

The shorthand of it is that women run for office to do something, and men run for office to be somebody. Women run because there is some public issue that they care about, some change they want to make, some issue that is a priority for them, and men tend to run for office because they see this as a career path.

Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, quoted in a New York Times story on the disparity in scandals between female and male members of Congress.