Author: Trish

Florida Prosecutors Might Help Ann Coulter on Her Mission to Go to Jail

Trish

Ann Coulter must want go to jail. She’s cutting off any options for Florida prosecutors but to pursue a felony conviction for her voting fraud in a Palm Beach election earlier this year.

Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson said his office has been looking into the matter for nearly nine months, and he would turn over the case to the state attorney’s office by Friday…

Anderson’s office received a complaint in February that Coulter allegedly voted in the wrong precinct during a Feb. 7 Palm Beach town council election. Since then, Anderson said he has made repeated attempts to resolve the matter with Coulter and her attorney but has been rebuffed.

Anderson, a Democrat, said an initial letter was sent to Coulter on March 27…

Three more letters were sent to Coulter and her attorney over the next several months, but she has yet to respond with the information requested, Anderson said.

As you may or may not recall, Coulter said at the time that she can’t reveal her true address for fear she’ll be killed by the people she tries to destroy in her books. “Should we get my stalkers on the line with my address and apartment number?” she asked on the Sean Hannity show.

The problem is that the law doesn’t actually make exceptions for hateful harpy skanks that need to be protected from their own hateful harpy skankiness. Covering up your address to vote in a different precinct, or more than once, or where you like best is still a third degree felony that’ll get you up to five years in prison.

Republicans Fail to Fool Blacks; Democrats Just Plain Fail Them

Trish

They gave it their best shot, using everything from fear-based radio ads telling blacks that Democrats want to “snuff their seed,” to trotting out the tiny numbers of black Republicans at campaign stops and displaying them prominently. But new polls show the GOP hasn’t really reached black voters.

It seems like white Democratic candidates get healthy black support but the reverse is not always true

Black voters are far less likely to approve of the way President Bush is doing his job than voters generally and they are more likely to feel that the country is on the wrong track…

In what could be a particularly bad sign for Republicans in next week’s midterm elections, black voters also are more likely to say that the Iraq war was a mistake and that recent disclosures of scandal and corruption in Congress will be very important to their vote, according to an Associated Press-AOL Black Voices poll conducted Oct. 23 through Monday.

You can’t blame the Republicans for trying. Many black Democrats feel taken for granted and ignored so Repubs hoped they were ripe for picking.

And having personally just worked on a campaign for a black state representative, I have to say it seems like white Democratic candidates get healthy black support but the reverse is not always true. Unless you’re talking about Barak Obama, of course, and then people of every hue can’t gush enough.*

But black Democrats find themselves in the same pickle as white fundamentalist Christians — what cha gonna do? No matter how much the Republicans take evangelicals for granted, or how pissed off the Christian right gets, it’s not like they’re going to come over to our team instead.

So we’re all stuck. The Democrats are stuck with morons like John Kerry and the candidate Republicans love to hate most — Hillary Clinton. The Republicans are stuck with George Bush and John McCain and George Allen. And third parties keep coughing up hairballs like Ralph Nader. We’re all screwed.

* Including me.

Katherine Harris Planning Revenge With Tell-All Book

Trish

Look out, Republicans. Katherine Harris, abandoned by almost every office-holding GOoPer at the state and national level in her race for the U.S. Senate, plans to get the last laugh. Evidently she’s been filling the hours left unexpectedly free by the all no-shows at campaign stops with a more productive activity: cackling gleefully, frothing at the mouth, and making notes.

In blood, for all we know.

“I’ve been writing it all year,” she says. She smiles and cocks her head as if she’s letting you in on a secret. “It’s going to be a great book.”

Katherine Harris, who is trying to become a U.S. senator, says she is writing a tell-all about the many people who have wronged her. This includes, but is not necessarily limited to: the Republican leaders who didn’t want her to run, the press that has covered her troubled campaign, and the many staffers who have quit her employ, whom she accuses of colluding with her opponent.

“I’ve been writing it all year,” she says. She smiles and cocks her head as if she’s letting you in on a secret. “It’s going to be a great book.”

Is anyone besides me somehow flashing back on Kathy Bates in the movie “Misery?”

It’s doubtful the book will contain memories from former Harris staffers, such as this classic from strategist Ed Rollins, one of the earliest to recognize Harris is looney.

Rollins said Harris, who has compared herself to the biblical Esther, once told him that God wanted her to become a senator. ”Maybe God wants you to run because he wants Bill Nelson to be senator,” Rollins said he told her.

Or this lol tidbit:

Before Jim Dornan became the first of three campaign managers to quit, he programmed his cellphone to play the theme song from The Exorcist when Harris called.

Wouldn’t It Be Simpler to Drink a Shot?

Trish

Sometimes I see fellow editor Buck’s point about the emails from the Florida Democratic campaigns. This just in from governor’s candidate Jim Davis in regard to his debate tonight with Republican Charlie Crist:

Try playing this game, whether you’re attending a debate watch party, sitting around with your friends and family, or watching the debate by yourself at home. Grab a piece of paper and make a checkmark every time Charlie does one of the following:

* Each time Charlie calls for “more of the same,” “stay the course,” or any other reference to continuing the way things are going now
* Each time Charlie says “double the homestead exemption” – because it means Florida will have to wait four years for tax relief
* Each time Charlie mentions Jeb Bush
* Each time Charlie doesn’t answer the question (double it if Chris Matthews calls him on it)
* Each time Charlie gets visibly flustered or angry
* Each time Charlie expresses his love for Ronald Reagan
* Each time Charlie refers to himself as “the happy warrior”

At the end of the night, count all checkmarks and ask everyone to go online and contribute at least a dollar for each checkmark.

I think the chances of Charlie doing any of these things, now that he’s seen this email, are slim. If Davis really wanted to see Crist get “flustered or angry” he would have Matthews ask him why, as a gay man, he would be a Republican.

More on the Story That a Crist Male Ex-Lover Spilled the Beans

Trish

A Palm Beach independent weekly has more on the story that a former Katherine Harris staffer was heard by multiple sources to say he is one of the ex-lovers of Florida Republican governor’s candidate Charlie Crist.

The GOP staffer, 21-year-old Jason Wetherington, told friends at separate social functions in August that he had sex with Crist, according to two credible and independent sources who heard Wetherington make the claim first-hand.

‘”He was like [Katherine] Harris’s gay valet,” the source said.

Wetherington, who recently worked as a field director for U.S. Senate candidate Katherine Harris and currently works for state representative Ellyn Bodganoff’s reelection campaign, also named a man whom he said is Crist’s long-term partner, a convicted thief named Bruce Carlton Jordan who also recently worked for Harris in her long-shot Senate bid…

Jordan was charged in 2003 with stealing thousands of dollars from two organizations for whom he worked, including the Tallahassee-based Florida Funeral Directors Association, where he served as executive director. He completed a 60-day jail sentence in February and will be on probation until the year 2011, according to state records.

Sometimes, the very way someone denies something makes it hard to believe they could be telling the truth. This is one of those cases. Not only is Crist denying he and Jordan are long-time lovers, he says he can’t place the name or face.

When the [Miami] Herald questioned Crist about Jordan this past August, the frontrunner in the governor’s race told the newspaper that he doesn’t remember the man. “I don’t know who Bruce Jordan is,” he said at the time. “It doesn’t mean I haven’t met him. I don’t know who you are speaking about.”

I asked Crist during a phone interview on Monday morning if he had ever had sex with Jordan.

“No,” he said. “I don’t recall the name.”

That Crist doesn’t remember Jordan seemed incredible to me. Not only did the attorney general make a special appearance at the funeral directors’ conference, but former presidents of the association say Jordan was known to be pals with Crist.

Wetherington, a former Florida Senate page himself, publicly denies an affair with Crist. Privately it’s a different matter. […]

Girl in the War

Trish

If you haven’t heard “Girl in the War” by Josh Ritter, do yourself a favor and listen.

Peter said to Paul you know all those words we wrote
Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go
But now talking to God is Laurel begging Hardy for a gun
I got a girl in the war man I wonder what it is we done

I’ve said from the get-go that this war is different because it’s not just young men dying, it’s men and women of all ages, from all walks of life. However you get your death toll (I usually catch it on ABC’s This Week), you can’t help but notice the 30-something, 40-something, and even 50-something ages listed, along with occasional names like Deborah or Maria.

I work part-time at UPS, and one of our drivers, a guy named Henry, got word a couple of weeks ago that his 20-something Army officer daughter is being called to Iraq in November. He’s spent the time since trying to locate the special knives, armor, and other protection her friends already there have warned her to bring.

After he gave money to another driver to pick up something at a gun shop on that driver’s route, I asked him how he’s doing with the whole thing. “I’m not really thinking about it,” he said. “I’m trying to make sure she has what she needs but it hasn’t sunk in yet.” He paused. “It’s pretty scary.” I tried to think of something to say along the lines of, “I’m sure it will be fine,” or, “It’s so wonderful that she’s doing this with her life.” I settled on a line that was at least true. “You must be proud to have such a brave daughter.”

Because the keys to the Kingdom got locked inside the Kingdom
And the angels fly around in there but we can’t see them
I got a girl in the war Paul I know that they can hear me yell
If they can’t find a way to help her they can go to Hell
If they can’t find a way to help her they can go to Hell

Cheney: Not Just Yes, But HELL Yes, We Water Board!

Trish

Every chance we get. AP:

The White House said Friday that Vice President Dick Cheney was not talking about a torture technique known as “water boarding” when he said dunking terrorism suspects in water during questioning was a “no-brainer.”

…Earlier, White House press secretary Tony Snow denied that Cheney had endorsed water boarding.

Asked to define a dunk in water, Snow said, “It’s a dunk in the water.”

“You know as a matter of common sense that the vice president of the United States is not going to be talking about water boarding. Never would, never does, never will,” Snow said. “You think Dick Cheney’s going to slip up on something like this? No, come on.”

In an interview Tuesday with WDAY of Fargo, North Dakota, Cheney was asked if “a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives.”

The vice president replied, “Well, it’s a no-brainer for me, but for a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.”

Peppered with questions about the remarks, Snow said Cheney did not interpret the question as referring to water boarding and the vice president did not make any comments about water boarding. He said the question put to Cheney was loosely worded.

The administration has repeatedly refused to say which techniques they believe are permitted under the new law. Asked to define a dunk in water, Snow said, “It’s a dunk in the water.”

Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement, “What’s really a no-brainer is that no U.S. official, much less a vice president, should champion torture. Vice President Cheney’s advocacy of water boarding sets a new human rights low at a time when human rights is already scraping the bottom of the Bush administration barrel.”