Month: July 2013

In Screed against Weiner and Spitzer, Pat Buchanan Whitewashes Reagan’s Adultery and Nancy’s Pre-Marital Pregnancy

Jon Ponder
The Reagans’ wedding photo: From left matron-of-honor Brenda Marshall, Ronald and Nancy Reagan and best man William Holden — Nancy was about two months pregnant when this photo was taken

In a post titled “Pat Buchanan’s caliphate,” P.M. Carpenter has some fun with Buchanan’s lambasting the decadent immorality of liberal pols like Anthony Wiener and Elliot Spitzer compared with what he views as the minor moral failures of good Christian Republicans like Ronald Reagan:

Just strike up the paleoconservative, theocratic band and for heaven’s sake “Consider how far we are along the path that liberalism,” [Buchanan writes in a post at a wingnut site], “equates with social and moral progress”:

Ronald Reagan was the first and is the only divorced and remarried man elected president. But the front-runner in the New York mayor’s race today quit Congress as a serial texter of lewd photos to anonymous women. The front-runner in the city comptroller’s race was “Client No. 9” in the prostitution ring of the convicted madam who is running against him

Leaving aside the fact that the office of mayor of New York cannot aptly be compared with the U.S. presidency, Buchanan left out the worst of Dear Leader Reagan’s personal moral failings, which were far worse by Buchanan’s standards than consorting with prostitutes and sending naughty text messages.

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North Carolina Tea Party Gov Says He ‘Doesn’t Know Enough’ About Neo-Jim Crow Voter Suppression Bill He Plans to Sign

Jon Ponder

North Carolina’s tea party governor admitted on Friday that he has not read the voter suppression bill he’s about to sign into law:

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) said Friday he would sign a bill passed by the North Carolina legislature that would become the most suppressive voting law in the nation. But when asked to speak about a provision in the bill that would prohibit 17-year-olds from registering in advance of their 18th birthday, McCrory admitted he “did not know enough” and had not read that portion of the bill.

The bill, passed just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act and paved the way for new suppressive state laws, imposes a laundry list of new restrictions on access to the ballot, including eliminating same-day registration, cutting early voting, easing campaign contribution limits, and expanding the mechanisms for alleging voter fraud. In remarks saying he would sign the bill, McCrory focused on his support for the bill’s voter ID requirement — a particularly suppressive and discriminatory policy that McCrory has long supported. But when asked by an Associated Press reporter about another provision in the bill to limit new voter registration opportunities, McCrory said, “I don’t know enough. I’m sorry. I haven’t read that portion of the bill.”

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In Manning Trial, Army Casts Journalists as ‘the Enemy’

Buck Banks

Pfc. Manning was not a humanist; he was a hacker. He was not a whistle-blower. He was a traitor, a traitor who understood the value of compromised information in the hands of the enemy and took deliberate steps to ensure that they, along with the world, received it.

— Pfc. Bradley Manning’s military prosecutor, Capt. Ashden Fein, in his closing arguments in the Bradley Manning court martial, characterizing the recipients of the leaked NSA material — journalists — as “the enemy.”