Year: 2005

Poor Katerine Harris. The GOP is treating her just like the scum-sucking sell-out she is. The Tampa Tribune noticed when Ken Mehlman failed to give Katherine two big thumbs up.

Asked last week whether Republican Rep. Katherine Harris can unseat U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, national Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman praised Harris effusively – but didn’t say yes.

Mehlman’s response, when asked the question in an interview with the Tribune:

“I don’t know. I think it’s very early in the process. I think Katherine Harris is a great public servant. I think she’s somebody who’s got star quality, she’s smart, she has been a very effective legislator, she’s got a great ability to raise resources, and I like her a lot personally.”

You like her a lot personally? Well gee, Ken, don’t get all misty-eyed on us. Sounds like the GOP was happy to use Harris for all she was worth in 2000 and now they don’t want to pay her back. Yet she keeps cropping up, like Rumplestilskin, demanding tribute.

Mr. Pasty Face Karl Rove seems to have decided that Harris is too much of a reminder of stolen elections. As long as he is in charge, it’s likely that Harris will stay in the background. Whether she wants to or not.

It was widely reported last year that White House political operatives worked to dissuade Harris from running for the U.S. Senate in 2004. There have been reports that Karl Rove has asked Harris to stay out again in 2006.

Asked about a recent news story that said Rove was trying to keep Harris out, Mehlman didn’t deny it. “I don’t have any comment on that,” he said.

As if more proof were needed that fundamentalist Christianists have taken over our government, there comes the launch of a new government-funded website that discourages young people from using condoms, thereby endangering the health and even the lives of millions of kids whose parents are “embarrassed” to talk with them about sex.

Critics say the Web site, 4parents.gov, stresses the promotion of abstinence while branding LGBT youth as pursuing “alternative lifestyles.”

In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, 145 advocacy groups charged “4parents.gov presents biased and inaccurate information as fact and does not address the needs of many youth, including sexually active youth, youth who have been or are being sexually abused, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth.”

The letter also criticized the way LGBT youth were described. “For example, in the section of the Web site where sexual orientation is mentioned, it repeatedly uses the terms ‘alternative lifestyle’ and ‘homosexuality.’ This language assumes that being lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) is a choice and also reduces LGB people to the mere equivalent of their sexual activity.”

The site also offers inaccurate information about condoms – focusing on their failure rates without providing how-to information on using them. “This is like discussing how seatbelts can kill when used improperly, without also discussing how to properly use seatbelts,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a leading national gay rights organization.

The site advises parents: “If you believe your adolescent may be gay, or is experiencing difficulties with gender identity or sexual orientation issues, consider seeing a family therapist who shares your values to clarify and work through these issues.”

“That’s really a loaded statement,” said Beth Beck, director of health programs for National Youth Advocacy Coalition. “There’s no discussion for parents to express love if their children come out to them. LGBT youth are being stigmatized. I think the Web site is presenting a very ideological way for parents to talk to their kids about sex and sexual health.”

Three guess who’s really behind this disinformation. Yup, the Neanderthal wing of the Taliban party, in the guise of the National Physicians Center for Family Resources, which has close ties to Focus on the Family.

But here’s the best part: “Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt defended the site to USA Today, saying it was designed to help parents who are ’embarrassed.'”

We went from the Terri Schiavo death watch – was it really only 15 years? – right into the Pope’s death watch. Now we’re on Day 1 of wall-to-wall coverage his funeral, which I hear continues for the next eight days. Maybe after the Pope’s funeral, the cable news will go right into death watch for Prince Ranier of Monaco.

Meanwhile, with the cameras trained on the corpse of the Pope, what are the Gops up to in DC? We probably won’t know until it’s too late.

AP/Durham Herald-Sun – (via Pam’s House Blend):

A former sheriff’s dispatcher who quit her job after her boss found out she lived with her boyfriend is challenging North Carolina’s law against cohabitation. Debora Hobbs said she was told to get married, move out, or find another job after her boss found out about her living situation. The legal arm of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina filed the lawsuit Monday on her behalf.

The lawsuit seeks to abolish the nearly 200-year-old — and rarely enforced — law that prohibits unmarried, unrelated adults of the opposite sex from living together. North Carolina is one of seven states with such a law.

Convicted offenders face a fine and up to 60 days in jail. “The government has no business meddling in the private relationships of consenting adults,” said Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the ACLU-NC Legal Foundation.

Hobbs had been living with her boyfriend for about three years when she was hired as a Pender County 911 dispatcher in February 2004. The couple decided they didn’t want to marry; Hobbs quit last May rather than be fired.

Sheriff Carson Smith said last year that Hobbs’ employment was a moral issue as well as a legal question. He said he tries to avoid hiring people who openly live together, but that he doesn’t send out deputies to enforce the law.

A headline on the front page of today’s LA Times reads, “2 Issues Straining GOP Grip in Florida.” The article suggests that the confluence of unease among seniors about President Bush’s plans to phase out Social Security and the GOP’s meddling in the Schiavo matter has created a fissure among voters in Florida that may affect elections next year.

On both fronts, President Bush and his brother Gov. Jeb Bush are promoting positions that put fellow Republicans on the spot, just before important campaigns that will determine the governor’s successor and the fate of Florida’s lone Democrat holding statewide office, Sen. Bill Nelson.

Polls show the public overwhelmingly opposed to intervention by Congress and President Bush in the case of Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman whose family has been bitterly split over the decision to remove her feeding tube. But the religious conservatives who pressed hard for politicians in Tallahassee and Washington to act to have the the tube reinserted could play a pivotal role in the races for governor and Senate.

At the same time, public opposition has been mounting against the president’s plan to let younger workers divert a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into private investment accounts. The president’s proposal is particularly unpopular among seniors, and so candidates in the senior-rich state are especially vulnerable to the charge that such a change could endanger benefits.

“It may be that we tried to load the wagon with too many watermelons,” said Tom Slade, Florida’s former Republican Party chairman. “There’s not … a lot of good news on our side of the aisle at this minute.”

These controversies could put the seats of several Republican members of the U.S. Congress into play. The article cites representatives Clay Shaw, Ginny Brown-Waite and Katherine Harris as being particularly vulnerable to voter dissatisfaction. I would add closeted gay Rep. Mark Foley to the list.

What’s missing from the formula for GOP defeat, of course, is a plausible alternative to the Republican “values” theme from the Democrats. The upshot of the 2004 campaign from voters seems to have been, “We may not like Bush and the Republicans, or their message or their policies, but at least we know where they stand” – which is hardly a ringing endorsement.

If Martha Stewart can sell sheets in K-Mart, Democrats ought to be able to sell the precepts of liberalism – fair play and fair pay – to Wal-Mart shoppers. It shouldn’t be impossible to convince low-wage workers in Red states that voting for the party that is run by the corporations works against their own self-interests.